34 Comments
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Archit Mehta's avatar

In journalism, trust is everything. Over the past two months, I have been working on this story after Ryan Grim assigned it. I am grateful for a) the opportunity to work at DSN, b) employees at Cisco trusting DSN, and c) editors at DSN making sure the final product is ideal for our patrons who keep this incredible newsroom running. I hope to continue reporting on the genocidal big tech and other stories. If you are someone who works at big tech and has a scoop to share that can potentially end this genocide or other wars, please reach out via Signal at archit.01. And to everyone who read this story, thank you so much!

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Ed Protas's avatar

Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim have done so much to add honest and valuable information to the discourse; a quality totally lacking from what we now derisively refer to as the “mainstream media”. Your efforts add to the luster. Thank you!

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Ellen Shellstrom's avatar

Their writing is of such high quality, that is why I subscribed to DSN. The ‘corporate’ media is so old fashioned, so uninformed, so dishonest, for example calling the massacres in Gaza a ‘war’

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Ed Protas's avatar

When I read stories like this, I always think about what society was like in Germany in the mid to late 30s, as authoritarian forces and ideas began to spread like a cancer. I always come away from those thoughts understanding the frailness of humans and their reluctance to accept “humanity” as a core principle of everyday life. Now I get to see it real-time. It never ends well.

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Barry Dalgleish's avatar

I recently published an article comparing Nazi Germany with Israel https://shadowlightblog.substack.com/p/gaza-genocide-a-lesson-wilfully-ignored

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Didrik's avatar

I think, too, about the employees of Bayer back then and other industries of the day for whom pursuit of "business" was seen as the overriding driver of all else, and for whom political thought and expression was probably also seen as a distraction from the tasks they were being paid to focus on. Double-think reigns supreme.

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David Barnwell's avatar

I think those guys were also dedicated racists. I met lots of racists in college in the US.

I think lots of the employees at Cisco who support this would genuinely join Klan rallies if they could.

They're genuinely racist. They're genuine supremacists.

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Ellen Shellstrom's avatar

Yes I think so too

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huey's avatar

Its just so sad how deeply infected with Jewish Zionist racist control America is.

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Ellen Shellstrom's avatar

So so true, even the poorest American will defend Israel, totally uninformed!

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Doug Randolph's avatar

Horrific, shameful racism.

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Paul Bruce's avatar

Maybe because I am old enough to have attended school when what happened in Germany during the rise of fascism was still a open topic of discussion. The questions often raised were how did this happen and the complicity and acquiesce of the German people. An excellent film that parallels this issue is The Nasty Girl, based on a true story about a German student who asks too many questions about her town's past during the war. We are close to a point now where even to say the word "Palestine" can have major complications with our increasingly authoritarian society.

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Didrik's avatar

As then, so now, it was no doubt conveyed to Francine that if _she_ wouldn't do it, then they would find someone else who _would_. Fortunately, she likely utterly separates her business persona from her human wrapper, and embodies double-think in true 1984 fashion.

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Ellen Shellstrom's avatar

Yes, one can be arrested just mentioning the word ‘Palestine’ and not only in America. Zionists pay off everybody.

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catfish rushdie's avatar

Bravo! Bless your heart, Drop Site. Keep doing this quality reporting!

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Thomas Reyer's avatar

I really don't care if you're a private individual or a company- if you cannot stand up against Genocide you are closer to being a Nazi than a regular person, or , maybe, just a Nazi.

IT DOES MATTER with whom you do business!

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strong thoughts's avatar

Im kind of amazed that they were allowed to voice criticisms of Israel so openly. I work in tech, and any expression of personal opinion that even mildly divests from from the "norm" they work to establish is gone very quickly. Hats off to them.

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Didrik's avatar

Unlikely to happen, I realize, but it _would_ be interesting to see the severance agreements, &/or NDAs, if any, of the people who resigned or were fired, or whose positions "were eliminated," by the company.

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X K's avatar
Apr 18Edited

I am ashamed that Francine Katsoudas is Greek. Hello, does "birthplace of democracy" ring a bell? How about "foundation of Western civilization"? Or the basis of humanism and moral philosophy with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle? Of course all such human achievement is swept aside in the Zionists' all-consuming march toward a "Greater Israel" (was there ever anything "great" about it to begin with?).

Cisco (CSCO, NASDAQ listing), just one of the many IG Farbens of the 21st century.

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Joy in HK fiFP's avatar

Microsoft workers oppose ties with Israel.


Take action with us — and support the Microsoft workers organizing to cut the company’s ties with Israel’s military

https://act.mpowerchange.org/go/71588?t=3&akid=10199%2E809623%2EH7UcG5

Microsoft and other tech partners, like Google and Amazon, are helping redefine the ugly underbelly of U.S. technology’s use in war.

We’ve set up a digital action where you can send emails to Microsoft leadership, including AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, with just a few clicks.

And let’s tell Google to stop weaponizing AI, and to cut ties with Israel.

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-google-stop-using-your-ai-for-genocide-apartheid-and-border-violence?source=mc_GoogleNext_2025_04_10

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Ellen Shellstrom's avatar

Bill Gates isn’t even Jewish. He doesn’t mind seeing civilians die en masse in horrible ways just so he can become even richer

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Ellen Shellstrom's avatar

Google won’t stop supporting Israel, Sergey is Jewish isn’t he

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David Barnwell's avatar

I see stuff like this and I'm thinking Hitler must be rolling in his ashes. He must be saying, ["I was born too early. If I was Trump's age... my genocide could have been networked by Cisco." ]

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Linda Houghton's avatar

Restricted speech is a canard to protect Cisco Company from public acknowledgment it is working hand in glove with racist, genicidel government of Israel. SHAME!

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Antonia Lhamo's avatar

Oh oh oh

what a creature is it that will do ANYTHING FOR MONEY? such ethics is precisely what we heard from big German and other international companies during that other holocaust and they were damned....be clear, we chose the side of life or the side of death & destruction

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Kayode Bello's avatar

Shame!!!

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Quaid Saifee's avatar

Thank you, Archit. Big Tech is not only complicit in genocide but also in the suppression of free speech, particularly when it comes to Palestine. This supposedly communication company only wants the communication it allows.

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jose diablo's avatar

Thank you, Archit. Other than Drop Site News and “Wired” in October 2024 on a similar issue, no other news outlet even bothered tcovered this pressing issue.

This recent firing of an employee by Cisco for an employee’s constitutional right to free expression is a disturbing indication of the suppression of free speech and a stifling of legitimate criticism of Israel's actions. This situation reflects a broader issue where powerful corporations appear to prioritize political alignment over ethical and moral considerations, effectively endorsing the ongoing slaughter of innocent Palestinians and the genocide and humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

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