BNC, the anti-war committee that leads a massive consumer protest effort in the united states and abroad against the vicious apartheid state of Israel, an arm of the overseas continual American war effort wrapped up in conspiracy theories, warmongering and blood has released an official statement about targeting Microsoft, for information recently made available that the company has partnered with the corporate backed war-state of Israel in what can only be described as American Corporatism coming back to roost with genocide.
The official statement from the BNC report, as follow
“Microsoft is perhaps the most complicit tech company in Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid regime and ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinains in Gaza which is why Microsoft is a now priority BDS target. Microsoft partners with the apartheid regime of Israel and its prison system. It provides the Israeli military with Azure cloud and AI services that are central to accelerating Israel’s genocide of 2.3 million Palestinians in the illegally occupied Gaza Strip. After 34 years of deep complicity with Israel’s military, the Israeli army relies heavily on Microsoft to meet technological requirements of its genocide and apartheid regime.“
In an effort to assist the state of Israel in murdering over 5000 Palestinians since October, a treasure trove of documents from Microsoft were leaked by employees that contain deep ties to the apartheid state’s ongoing bloodbath and murder of civilians – a lucrative bankroll for the company positions itself internally as being oriented to causes of social justice. A genocide is a genocide, and if you can’t take it from me – the International Court of Justice released a statement on the 26th of January that Israel’s actions plausibly constitute genocide.
These documents lay out concrete support from both the Microsoft Corporation as well as the independent AI wing OpenAI – alleging that not only have they materially supported Israel’s ongoing pogrom of Palestinians but that staff from both companies have served as a boots-on-the-internet tech rollout force in Israel. Staff assisting clients from the internet can often mean that Microsoft employees have been granted security clearance inside the Israeli government for operating essential software, which might mean that Microsoft has employees stationed inside the country of Israel, operating as Americans or elsewhere inside a foreign country during a war effort.
From +972 Magazine:
Army units revealed to be using services provided by Azure include the Air Force’s Ofek Unit, which is responsible for managing large databases of potential targets for lethal airstrikes (known as the “target bank”); the Matspen Unit, which is responsible for the development of operational and combat support systems; the Sapir Unit, which maintains the ICT infrastructure in the Military Intelligence Directorate; and even the Military Advocate General’s Corps, which is tasked with prosecuting Palestinians and lawbreaking soldiers in the occupied territories.
The ongoing Boycott, Divest, Sanction action being taken against Microsoft follows an essential employee led initiative that can be supported through the actionnetwork, No Azure for Apartheid, that led to the firings of two staff members late last year. Following Kaile Hultner’s lead over at Noescapevg, the current movement against Microsoft is asking people equipped with Microsoft hardware of all varieties a few simple asks to support the ongoing effort to try and move Microsoft’s bottom line:
1. Cancel your Xbox Game Pass subscription
2. Boycott Candy Crush, Minecraft, and Call of Duty—flagship videogame franchises owned by Microsoft
3. Boycott all Microsoft Gaming products, including Xbox-branded consoles, headsets, accessories, and all games published by Microsoft-owned publishing labels (such as Xbox Game Studios, Activision, Bethesda and Blizzard)
In what I’d probably myself describe as a Luxury Boycott – a boycott of nonessential items, the call has received (from inside the house, no less) almost no press from the larger Games Industry Network of associated small press and large press journalists, leaving large websites like IGN, Gamesradar and whoever else reads and writes about videogames to be making a curious amount of silence – smaller journalists from the games industry stepping up and writing about the effort for unrelated tech websites, like Autumn Wright crossing over to guest write at Aftermath. Much of the BDS practice is based on effective anti apartheid practices from a much different era of politics – but the capability of moving just in small part away from a retailer or brand has consistently proven effective in the past by not just divesting for no reason, but associating the act of doing so with prurient messaging.
At the current time in US politics, frayed tensions from a crumbling government with a quaking sycophant and new-york-gossip influencer Donald Trump heading up much of the loose coalition of companies that we’ve been calling a democracy for the last forty years leave American Companies (bless their hearts, bless the troops, etc) reaching for any potent enough war-chest they can float as a last ditch effort to secure bottom lines and a stable place in a world most aptly described as a free for all, for whatever-comes-next: Microsoft heads up a list of tech companies eager and willing to do all but erase their own histories to support whatever bloody war effort they can. In January of last year, it was reported that OpenAI (owned, again, by Microsoft) quietly removed a clause from their operating procedures about not using their technology in war efforts, either outside of the USA or abroad.
Some gaming websites are hesitant still to indulge in larger calls that position themselves as having any role in politics. A kind of meal mouthed assurance that they’ll keep their hat out of the race of poltiics. Who wants, after all to take the ire of a gaming public that seems to largely have abandoned supporting larger gaming websites in exchange for one-to-one parasocially driven direct sales reports from popular streamers and social media musicians? Assuring that at least as we watch the dwindling resources of what’s left of games journalism drown, they might think that if can be accomplished silently enough some Gamer somewhere might remember them fondly.