Slashdot Mirror
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."
IBM partnered with a nice man back in the 30s from Germany and that turned out just great!
Where the fuck are all these special-snowflake IBM employees when they have no problem helping their corporate masters commit actual violations of civil liberties in China?
http://vannevar.blogspot.com/2...
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
video of Trump calling for Muslim registry https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Perhaps you should shift your history marker another 7 or so years before that.
Table-ized A.I.
I guess we're supposed to pretend that IBM's technology wasn't used 75-80 years ago to carry out the holocaust?
It's good that the company has learned something since then.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
f he did, it was — likely as not — out of concern for those freedoms and the rights we cherish. Because Islam is incompatible with many of them.
Yes, we must protect the values we cherish by destroying them.
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength
Furthermore, Trump never asked these companies to work on it. They were asked by "reporters" whether they would participate and they've been standing on soap boxes ever since. Fuck every single of them.
A fake news program, of the "shouting heads" variety. They were hilarious to watch on election night - very entertaining.
If Trump Derangement Syndrome is this bad when the guy's not even president yet, the public meltdowns when he actually starts doing stuff should keep me entertained for years.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You are inventing a false dichotomy.
Table-ized A.I.
While I agree that IBM should take a stand against violating civil liberties, Ginni Rometty's letter makes no offer to make such violations. It avoids the issue all together. Instead it offers a list of valuable and generally inoffensive services to the President-Elect.
It seems to me, that these IBM employee's are mad their company hasn't acted belligerently toward the future President. That would just be uncivil, and bad business. Ms. Rometty has instead been cordial and offered services that are well within the bounds of the the US Constitution.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
You are right. The Quran does advocate for genocide. Here's just some of those verses, straight from the horse's mouth:
And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain.
And we utterly destroyed them, ... utterly destroying the men, women, and children, of every city.
And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them.
And thou shalt consume all the people which the LORD thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them.
Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword.
But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth.
And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.
So smote all the country ... he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the LORD God of Israel commanded.
Thus saith the LORD of hosts ... go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.
Oops! Sorry about that. Those are from the bible.
The problem with crying racist is that you no longer have the ability to discern between real racists and simple political opponents. Apparently, we actually had to come up with a new word to differentiate between the normal right and the racist right, or alt-right. Unfortunately, I've now heard many identifying everyone who voted for Trump as alt-right. So, we're now going to need some sort of control to differentiate between the normal alt-right and the truly racist alt-right.
I propose "ctrl-alt-right".
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
No, he advocated for an immigration registry to help with the immigration vetting process. The "Muslim Registry" was part of that fake news that people seem to think helped Trump win the election.
I must call you out on this: it is not "fake news". It is actual news based on something he said. The transcript is here. It's clear that to a degree he is being led on by the reporter and, as is often the case, isn't really thinking about the answers he's giving. He provides vague replies about "management" being the solution and appears distracted. Nonetheless, what's most striking is that he doesn't attach much significance to the concept of a Muslim database. It seems like a totally reasonable idea to him. If I was a Muslim in the US, this is what would worry me. My worry would be compounded by his reaction to the questions in the second half of this video. He's asked about the racial discrimination which a database might bring about and repeatedly avoids the question. He has an opportunity to clarify his views and reassure, but he doesn't take it. It is worrying when someone reacts in the way that he does and none of this information is in any way "fake".
soylentnews.org
Because Islam is incompatible with many of them.
Yup yup, and hardline Christianity isn't. Any religion, when taken to extremes, is antithetical to a country that proclaims religious freedom as one of its cornerstones. Trying to single-out Islam as the problem is nowhere near the solution, it makes you one of them us-vs-them guys that fuels this fire even more.
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
Okay, let's compare a (failed) artist to a TV star. Better?
If the German citizens had nipped it in the bud, it may not have gone as far as it did. Otherwise, it's the equivalent of feeding a troll.
Table-ized A.I.
And yet, ritual infant male genital mutilation, even though it removes more tissue is a-ok. (You should review the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendation that we begin performing infant female genital mutilation in US hospitals to get a better idea what exactly it is.)
Oddly, the rest of that list is in both Christianity and Islam by way of the Old Testament, even including ritual infant male genital mutilation. Female genital mutilation is not a mandatory part of Islam.
If you're not certain, I'd invite this fellow called MikeeUSA to help out your understanding of the Old Testament. He does seem to know what he's talking about when you peel back the insanity.
The problem with crying racist is that you no longer have the ability to discern between real racists and simple political opponents.
Real racists are the ones who view everything through the lens of race. If you are always looking for it, the mirror is the best place to find it.
That's because the left was critical of the drone program, and since they're the ones who cry racism their own criticisms are immune.
I'd say it's hyperbole that any criticism of Obama was condemned as racism. But it did happen pretty frequently. e.g. If you opposed his pro-abortion policies, you were a racist because you wanted to make it harder for low-income black women to get abortions.
That's the problem with overplaying the racism or sexism card. Play it too often, and the general public (not the press, which is predominantly left-biased so this falls in one of their blind spots) begins to see what's happening, calls your bluff, and votes for Trump. (Note: I did not vote for Trump. I'm just agreeing that people tend to try to cast ambiguous divisive arguments in terms of unrelated "safe" arguments like racism to try to Godwin the debate.)
And, it took all of about 37 seconds before someone compared a businessman and reality TV star to a vicious, military-style dictator who started a world war that caused the death of more than one hundred million people and methodically murdered millions of people in concentration camps.
Old Adolf didn't start as a Dictator. He started as a ex-corporal and failed artist who found that he got a lot of attention screaming about how Jews were filthy and communists were evil in front of beer hall crowds. He wasn't particularly smart, but he was very charismatic. The similarities between Trump and Adolf's character and politics is striking and rather alarming to people who study world history. The people who just want to demonize Trump will of course throw around the comparison as it suits them.
No, Donald hasn't committed genocide. Comparing him to Hitler in that sense is completely ridiculous. I think the concern that people have about him is that he comes off as a populist bully, someone who is completely willing to throw followers of Islam and Mexicans under the bus in order to gain populist support. In that sense of the comparison, he is very much like Hitler.
Godwin's 'Law', notes that it is OK to discuss Nazis in the context of a topic that pertains to Nazis. So provided that we are not just trying to demonize him, it seems fair. There is a real concern that Trump is going to do some very evil things with power, and starting a national Islam database seems very similar to Germany's first steps with Jewish people. IBM was the company who sold Germany the machines to make punch cards and trace genealogy of Jewish people, so this should be a very touchy topic for IBM.
I don't care if you are pro or anti Trump. Don't get your opinions about him from pundits or talk show hosts. Just watch for yourself what he does very closely and think about history. It is usually a rerun...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!