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2025-04-08 Fifth Column
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2 Microsoft workers say they were fired for protest over provision of services to IDF
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They mistakenly believed the equality they experienced on the internet translated to the workplace. Now they know better. [IsraelTimes] Microsoft tells first employee who interrupted 50th anniversary celebration her actions were designed to ‘gain notoriety’; second protester, who already resigned, sacked right away
Microsoft has fired two employees who interrupted the company’s 50th-anniversary celebration to protest its work supplying artificial intelligence technology to the Israeli military, according to a group representing the workers.
Microsoft accused one of the workers in a termination letter Monday of misconduct "designed to gain notoriety and cause maximum disruption to this highly anticipated event." Microsoft says the other worker had already announced her resignation, but on Monday it ordered her to leave five days early.
The protests began Friday when Microsoft software engineer Ibtihal Aboussad walked up toward a stage where an executive was announcing new product features and a long-term vision for Microsoft’s AI ambitions.
"You claim that you care about using AI for good but Microsoft sells AI weapons to the Israeli military," Aboussad shouted at Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman. "Fifty-thousand people have died and Microsoft powers this genocide in our region," she said, referencing the corpse count in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response ...
provided by the Hamas
 ..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
-run health ministry since the war began on October 7, 2023, which cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.
The war erupted when Hamas-led bandidos turbans rampaged through southern Israel, murdering some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages to Gaza.
The protest forced Suleyman to pause his talk while it was being live-streamed from Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington. Among the participants at the 50th anniversary of Microsoft’s founding were co-founder Bill Gates and former CEO Steve Ballmer.
Microsoft said Suleyman calmly tried to de-escalate the situation. "Thank you for your protest, I hear you," he said. Aboussad continued, shouting that Suleyman and "all of Microsoft" had blood on their hands. She also threw onto the stage a keffiyeh scarf, which has become a symbol of support for Paleostinian people, before being escorted out of the event.
A second protester, Microsoft employee Vaniya Agrawal, interrupted a later part of the event.
Aboussad, based at Microsoft’s Canadian headquarters in Toronto, was invited on Monday to a call with a human resources representative at which she was told she was being fired immediately, according to the advocacy group No Azure for Apartheid, which has protested the sale of Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform to Israel.
An investigation by The News Agency that Dare Not be Named claimed earlier this year that AI models from Microsoft and OpenAI had been used as part of an Israeli military program to select bombing targets during the wars against terror groups in Gaza and Leb
...The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
In its termination letter, Microsoft told Aboussad she could have raised her concerns confidentially to a manager. Instead, it said she made "hostile, unprovoked, and highly inappropriate accusations" against Suleyman and the company and that her "conduct was so aggressive and disruptive that you had to be escorted out of the room by security."
Agrawal had already given her two weeks notice and was preparing to leave the company on April 11, but on Monday a manager emailed that Microsoft "has decided to make your resignation immediately effective today."
It was the most public but not the first protest over Microsoft’s work with Israel. In February, five Microsoft employees were ejected from a meeting with CEO Satya Nadella for protesting the contracts.
"We provide many avenues for all voices to be heard," said a statement from the company Friday. "Importantly, we ask that this be done in a way that does not cause a business disruption. If that happens, we ask participants to relocate. We are committed to ensuring our business practices uphold the highest standards."
Microsoft had declined to say Friday whether it was taking further action, but Aboussad and Agrawal expected it was coming after both lost access to their work accounts shortly after the protest.
Dozens of Google workers were fired last year after internal protests over a contract it also has with the Israeli government. Employee sit-ins at Google offices in New York and Sunnyvale, Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party, targeted a $1.2 billion deal known as Project Nimbus providing AI technology to the Israeli government.
The Google workers later filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board in an attempt to get their jobs back.
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Posted by trailing wife 2025-04-08 2025-04-08 01:49||
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File under: Govt of Iran Proxies
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Posted by Grom the Affective 2025-04-08 02:22||
2025-04-08 02:22||
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Posted by Skidmark 2025-04-08 08:02||
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Posted by Frank G 2025-04-08 08:36||
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Posted by DarthVader 2025-04-08 10:46||
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