Microsoft

Microsoft Fires Employees Over Gaza Vigil; Tech Giants Face Scrutiny

October 27, 2024 Palestine Chronicle. Educate! Gaza, Israel, Microsoft, No Tech for Apartheid, Palestine, Palestine Solidarity, Retaliation, Worker Rights and Jobs

Microsoft recently fired two employees who organized a vigil at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, to remember Palestinians killed amid Israel’s ongoing genocide on Gaza, the Associated Press reported. According to the employees, they were dismissed over the phone late on Thursday, following a lunchtime gathering they had planned on the company campus. AP reported that “both workers were members of a coalition of employees called ‘No Azure for Apartheid’ that has opposed Microsoft’s sale of its cloud-computing technology to the Israeli government.” Tuesday’s event, however, was reportedly similar to other charitable campaigns organized within the company to aid communities in crisis.

Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant To Reopen; Microsoft To Purchase Power

September 24, 2024 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Educate! Energy, Microsoft, Nuclear Energy, Pennsylvania, Radiation, Three Mile Island

In March of 1979, Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear plant — which was powered by two pressurized light-water reactors — experienced a cooling malfunction that caused part of the core of the second reactor to melt, releasing radioactive material into the environment. Constellation Energy has plans to reopen Three Mile Island, and Microsoft has agreed to buy power from it for 20 years. Recent United States government zero-emissions energy incentives have spurred owners of closed-down nuclear plants to consider reopening them, reported Pennsylvania’s WESA. Activists are asking the government of Pennsylvania to stop the reopening of the plant.

How US Big Tech Monopolies Colonized The World: Welcome To Neo-Feudalism

August 19, 2024 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Amazon, Apple, Big Tech, Capitalism, China, Facebook, Feudalism, Google, Instagram, Microsoft, Silicon Valley, Social Media, Socialism, Yanis Varoufakis, YouTube

US Big Tech corporations have essentially colonized the world. In almost every country on Earth, the digital infrastructure upon which the modern economy was built is owned and controlled by a small handful of monopolies, based largely in Silicon Valley. This system is looking more and more like neo-feudalism. Just as the feudal lords of medieval Europe owned all of the land and turned almost everyone else into serfs, who broke their backs producing food for their masters, the US Big Tech monopolies of the 21st century act as corporate feudal lords, controlling all of the digital land upon which the digital economy is based.

World Of Warcraft Developers Form Blizzard’s Largest, Most Inclusive Union

July 27, 2024 Ash Parrish, The Verge. Organize! Big Tech, Blizzard, Games, Microsoft, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

More than 500 developers at Blizzard Entertainment who work on World of Warcraft have voted to form a union. The World of Warcraft GameMakers Guild, formed with the assistance of the Communication Workers of America (CWA), is composed of employees across every department, including designers, engineers, artists, producers, and more. Together, they have formed the largest wall-to-wall union — or a union inclusive of multiple departments and disciplines — at Microsoft. This news comes less than a week after the formation of the Bethesda Game Studios union, which, at the time of the announcement, was itself the largest wall-to-wall Microsoft union.

Activision’s Union Is Now The Biggest One In Video Games

March 13, 2024 Mariella Moon, Portside. Organize! Activision, Games, Microsoft, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

The number of unionized workers for Microsoft's video game subsidiaries keeps growing, and the latest group to join the pool is the largest one yet. Approximately 600 quality assurance workers at Activision have joined the Communications Workers of America(CWA), making them the biggest certified union in the US video game industry. They're also the first Activision workers to organize under the agreement between Microsoft and the CWA. If you'll recall, Microsoft agreed to respect the right of Activision Blizzard workers to unionize as part of its efforts to secure regulatory approval for its $68.7 billion takeover of the video game developer.

How A Maneuver In Puerto Rico Led To A $29 Billion Tax Bill For Microsoft

October 16, 2023 Paul Kiel, ProPublica. Educate! IRS, Microsoft, Puerto Rico, Tax Avoidance

In a long-awaited development, the largest audit in the history of the IRS has finally taken its next step. On Wednesday, Microsoft announced that the agency had notified the company that it owes $28.9 billion in back taxes, plus penalties and interest. The case is epic not only in dollars but in scope. As ProPublica reported in an in-depth narrative in 2020, the IRS saw the case as a chance to prove the agency’s effectiveness. Often cowed by the prospect of facing off against corporations with endless resources, the IRS set out to be bolder and more aggressive. It took the unusual step of hiring a corporate law firm to represent the agency, a step that incensed Microsoft.

Microsoft, IBM, Cisco And Dell Enable Surveillance And Control In Palestine

June 24, 2023 Jessica Buxbaum, MintPress News. Educate! Cisco, Dell, Human Rights, IBM, Israel, Microsoft, Palestine, Surveillance

In September, Israel installed an AI-powered gun at a military checkpoint in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron. Now, that same technology has been deployed at the entrance of the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem. Across occupied East Jerusalem, you can find surveillance cameras strategically placed on street corners. And throughout the West Bank, Palestinians’ encounters with Israeli soldiers often include not only violence but face-scanning apps designed to capture their personal data. Technology has become integral to our modern lives, but for Palestinians, Big Tech has also become another way Israel enacts control.

Former Israeli Spies Work Top Jobs At Google, Facebook And Microsoft

November 1, 2022 Alan MacLeod, Mintpress News. Educate! Big Tech, Facebook, Google, Israel, Media, Meta, Microsoft, Palestine

A MintPress study has found that hundreds of former agents of the notorious Israeli spying organization, Unit 8200, have attained positions of influence in many of the world’s biggest tech companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon. The Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) Unit 8200 is infamous for surveilling the indigenous Palestinian population, amassing kompromat on individuals for the purposes of blackmail and extortion. Spying on the world’s rich and famous, Unit 8200 hit the headlines last year, after the Pegasus scandal broke. Former Unit 8200 officers designed and implemented software that spied on tens of thousands of politicians and likely aided in the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Protesters Demand Microsoft Stop Profiting Off Concentration Camps, Immigrant Raids, Deportations

September 15, 2019 Close the Camps NYC, Medium.com. Resist! Concentration Camps, Deportations, Immigrant Rights, Microsoft

New York, NY, September 14, 2019 — Close the Camps NYC coalition led hundreds of protestors to peacefully march on the premiere retail location of Microsoft on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, staging a sit-in to demand that the tech giant stop allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to use its technology in the racist campaign against immigrants and legal asylum seekers. This action comes one month after the Close the Camps NYC coalition successfully gathered hundreds of protestors who shut down the West Side Highway. That event publicly shamed RXR Realty LLC for allowing ICE to covertly operate among social justice organizations in its Starrett-Lehigh office building. “By knowingly and willingly providing technology support to ICE, Microsoft Corporation is colluding with ICE and its racist mission to tear apart families, and mistreat children” said Andy Ratto.

Microsoft And The Pentagon Are Quietly Hijacking U.S. Elections

June 14, 2019 Lee Camp, Truthdig Educate! Elections, Electoral Politics, Microsoft

Why do we need an answer? Well, our election system is … how do you say … a festering rancid corrupt needlessly complex rigged rotten infected putrid pus-covered diseased dog pile of stinking, dying cockroach-filled rat shit smelling like Mitch McConnell under a vat of pig farts. And that’s a quote from The Lancet medical journal (I think). But have no fear: The most trustworthy of corporations recently announced it is going to selflessly and patriotically secure our elections. It’s a small company run by vegans and powered by love. It goes by the name “Microsoft.”

‘We Refuse To Create Technology For Warfare And Oppression:’ Microsoft Workers Demand Company End Army Contract

February 26, 2019 Andrea Germanos, Nationofchange.org Resist! Class Struggle, Microsoft, Technology, Wars and Militarism, Workers

"On behalf of workers at Microsoft, we're releasing an open letter to Brad Smith and Satya Nadella, demanding for the cancellation of the IVAS contract with a call for stricter ethical guidelines." Declaring to chief executives that they refuse “to become war profiteers,” a group of Microsoft workers on Friday demanded the company cancel a contract with the U.S. Army that they say would “help people kill” and turn warfare into a “video game.” Their open letter is addressed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and president and chief legal officer Brad Smith, and, according to the “Microsoft Workers 4 Good” Twitter handle, which posted the document, it got over employee 100 signatures in its first day.

Microsoft Workers Pressure Bosses To Cancel ICE Contract

June 21, 2018 Bryan Menegus and Kate Conger, Gizmodo.com Resist! Class Struggle, ICE, Immigration, Microsoft

Microsoft employees are putting pressure on their management to cancel a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of a backlash against the agency’s policy of separating children from their families at the U.S. border. In an open letter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sent today, employees demanded that the company cancel its $19.4 million contract with ICE and instate a policy against working with clients who violate international human rights law. The text of the employee letter was first reported by the New York Times and confirmed by Gizmodo. “We believe that Microsoft must take an ethical stand, and put children and families above profits,” the letter, signed by Microsoft employees, states. “We request that Microsoft cancel its contracts with ICE, and with other clients who directly enable ICE.

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