Transphobes also hate ace people. Acephobes also hate trans people. This is as predictable as the summer monsoon rains and we need to stop being surprised that we’re getting dumped on.

It comes from the same place: the idea that there is a right and normal way to be and the people who defy it are demanding “special rights” and “special attention” and making a mockery of good, normal people, the people with real problems.

Refuse to accept that. We all need to be allies to each other.

It’s ALSO worth saying that police dogs serve a significant role in worsening police brutality. A dog trained to attack a human will maim them. A cop looses a police dog on someone, and that person is expected to peacefully cooperate while a dog is trying to tear their limbs off. It is very easy for those massive wounds to get infected. It is an absurd amount of violence. And beyond the initial attack, the fact that a “poor sweet innocent doggo” did this is used to excuse that brutality in court. Especially if the victim, panicking in the moment, lashed out at the dog. As this website has demonstrated many times, majority-white juries have more sympathies for injured dogs than the people of color who are most often victims of police brutality. So they’re not just systemic animal abuse, they’re also a tool for increased police brutality and to excuse

In case you're doubting this, here's evidence that these dogs are abused.

Dogs that fail police training are usually put down. They're trained to be violent but the obedience part didn't take.

Dogs that fail at service dog training are not put down. They're given to families. Dogs that fail at hunting or sheep herding or sledding are given to families. Those dogs are fine even if they weren't trainable to the precise degree the trainer needed them to be.

K9 units¹ aren't like that. They're taught to lunge. They're taught to be aggressive and scary. They fight with other dogs. They are so traumatized that most people don't have the patience or ability to rehabilitate them.

This is abuse. The only way that you make a dog that aggressive is by subjecting it to all sorts of punishments until it becomes violent. It's rewarding bad behavior and punishing normal dog behaviors, pushing dogs to see normal dogs as a threat.

1 I am specifically talking about standard police dogs used to control riots or "dangerous" suspects. I do not know about drug-, bomb- missing person-, and corpse-sniffing dogs, all of which have different training.

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A statement from the BNC laid out the rationale:

Microsoft is perhaps the most complicit tech company in Israel's illegal occupation, apartheid regime and ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinains (sic) in Gaza which is why Microsoft is now a 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 acceleration 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.

The committee is asking all those who have taken its pledge to take three concrete steps, according to a statement provided to Drop Site:

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)

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