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IBM Employees Protest Cooperation With Donald Trump (theintercept.com)
Reader Presto Vivace shares a report on The Intercept: IBM employees are taking a public stand following a personal pitch to Donald Trump from CEO Ginni Rometty and the company's initial refusal to rule out participating in the creation of a national Muslim registry. In November, Rometty wrote Trump directly, congratulating him on his electoral victory and detailing various services the company could sell his administration. The letter was published on an internal IBM blog along with a personal note from Rometty to her enormous global staff. "As IBMers, we believe that innovation improves the human condition. ... We support, tolerance, diversity, the development of expertise, and the open exchange of ideas," she wrote in the context of lending material support to a man who won the election by rejecting all of those values. Employee comments were a mix of support and horror. Now, some of those who were horrified are going public, denouncing Rometty's letter and asserting "our right to refuse participation in any U.S. government contracts that violate constitutionally protected civil liberties." The IBMPetition.org effort has been spearheaded in part by IBM cybersecurity engineer Daniel Hanley, who told The Intercept he started organizing with his coworkers after reading Rometty's letter. "I was shocked, of course," Hanley said, "because IBM has purported to espouse diversity and inclusion, and yet here's Ginni Rometty in an unqualified way reaching out to an admin whose electoral success was based on racist programs."
Preface: I voted against Trump.
In the first clip I'm noticing that Trump refers to borders and walls suggesting his mind is in the context of immigration from the south. That would mean his comments about databases refer to immigration in general. Islam isn't referenced until late in the clip, and then by the interviewer rather than Trump. My conclusion: Trump and the interviewer are talking about two different things. It's unclear if the interviewer intended for that to happen. It's also unclear whether some of the interview from before the clip we see would've established a Muslim context to what we see.
In the second clip Trump seems to try to avoid the question. I can interpret that as him being evasive or as him being annoyed at the question. Being annoyed would be understandable if Trump has not proposed a Muslim database. I haven't seen evidence he has. A smarter politician would've taken the opportunity to say "Muslim database? That's horrible idea and I'm against it! Now an immigration database would be handy to have in the unlikely event Canada invades..." if he has not proposed a Muslim database, but I don't think Trump is very smart (see my preface).
Hopefully they've learned to do a more effective job this time.
They did an effective job last time. Most of the death camps were profitable. They were very efficiently run, and IBM's tabulating machines helped with that.