• 3 Posts
  • 18 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • $previous_job allowed us to pick. One of my coworkers had to replace his laptop, and I convinced him to try out Linux this time. I handed him the bootstrap script and he was back to working by the afternoon.

    Our CEO got wind of this and said as a matter of policy everyone is switching to Linux unless they have a good reason (needing excel for financial reports is a good reason). The two new hires who had been setting up their dev environment for over a week at that point were the trigger for this.






  • I think I’m even less of a free speech absolutist than you, but you raise some very good points.

    The situation is incredibly complicated, which is why I’m picking everything apart to reduce the ambiguity of what they did as much as possible. It’s why I’m trying to figure out their intent at the time as well. These photographers didn’t document what happened in order to provide clear evidence of the crimes. They took pictures they thought would look good on a front page. Then they sold those images to news outlets. This means they didn’t consider whether or not they should notify anyone, or do the moral calculus to try to figure out if they could prevent it or even small acts like hiding a single child. If they did that, or even just published all their images for free the day after it would imply they understood that what happened was not acceptable.

    Bottom line is that line is extremely fuzzy and hidden in the fog of war, but I think they crossed it.


  • If that embedded reporter was aware the unit he is embedded in intends to target civilians then absolutely. If he doesn’t, goes along and takes pictures and then celebrates it with them then he’s complicit in that war crime.

    As it so happens, this is almost exactly what the NYT contracted freelancer did. The question here is if NYT should have done any further due diligence and refused to purchase the photos. I don’t think there’s a moral quandary in this specific case.

    I agree there is a moral difference between the two scenarios you proposed, but based on current OFAC guidelines, they are more likely than not the same. But that’s only for US persons. Most countries impose greater constraints on speech and the press and international outfits like AP and Reuters may need to worry about additional jurisdictions asking questions about their usage of freelancers with questionable ethics.



  • The issue here is that even if Reuters want told ahead of time, the paid money to a person who has a close working relationship with a foreign terrorist organization. Sufficiently close that they knew exactly where to go along a 60km (37mi) border in time to take pictures of hostages being brought into Gaza. At least one of the photographers took photographs of himself inside Israeli territory.

    The true focus needs to be on failed financial controls within these companies - transacting with sanctioned entities is a big fucking problem (strict liability fines, criminal liability) and should rightly worry these companies.

    I truly believe they just jumped on a huge story and had no malintent. This is mostly saber rattling by Israel to counter what they perceive to be biased reporting.