05.25.09
Gemini version available ♊︎Reader’s Report from Spain: “Bill Gates Meets Tomorrow with Spain’s Prime Minister in Order to Ensure Spanish School Students Get ‘Addicted’”
“They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”
Summary: Spain is being taken over by foreign agenda and corporations, according to an unnamed source
Microsoft hopes to do in Spain what Bill Gates did in France and in Finland over a year ago (and in Portugal less than a year ago). Microsoft is losing ground to Free software. It routinely sends the über-lobbyist [1, 2, 3, 4] Bill Gates to bypass technical decision-makers and strike predatory deals which do not account for the desire and welfare of the affected population (victims).
Here is a report that was sent to us from a reader in Spain this morning.
This is a big and long one. Let me introduce some economic background:
As you know, Spain is being hit especially hard by the current economic crash. Due to the country’s reliance on the building and real estate businesses and due to rampant speculation, there has been created an enormous speculative/corruption bubble that has just burst, leading to the highest rate of unemployment in the EU.Prime minister Zapatero has been trying to implement urgent measures and to boost public expenditure in order to alleviate the effects of this crisis. He announced plans to change the economic growth model from real estate and speculation (“the economy of the brick,” as we’ll call it here) to one of R&D, IT business, etc. One of his proposals was just announced a couple of weeks ago and it is to bring “a laptop per child” (kind of) to the Spanish school students, subsidising a laptop for each child of the fifth grade (12 years old) (a total of 400,000 or 500,000 units).
There is a document describing most these behind-the-scenes deals and the characteristics of this operation. The situation seems dismal.
http://devolucion.org/educacion20
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=es&ie=UTF-8&u=…It will provide Microsoft Windows pre-loaded HP mini-laptops manufactured in Portugal by a big OEM (Same as the Magalhaes program of the Intel OLPC rival) and these will be serviced by the computing division of “El Corte Ingles” (The Spanish equivalent to Harrod’s — very expensive department stores), leading to an unnecessary and very, very high expenditure, none of which will benefit the local economies (El Corte Ingles is one of the largest enterprises in the country, with a labor policy similar to that of Walmart, i.e. it harasses labor unions, and never gets criticised in the mainstream press for fear of losing the expensive ad campaigns the enterprise inserts constantly in all the major Newspapers, Magazines and Radio and TV channels).
The educational contents (with DRM!!!) would be awarded to Grupo Santillana, the biggest educational books publisher, and part of the corporation Prisa Group, which is the owner of the biggest newspaper in the country “El Pais”, as well as many editorials and several of the country’s biggest Radio (Ser, 40) and TV (Canal+, Cuatro) channels.
It all reminds me of the recent Chilean-Microsoft debacle.
http://eldiabloenlosdetalles.net/acuerdo-marco-de-colabora…
http://www.elfrancotirador.cl/2007/07/23/el-dia-que-chile-se-v…
http://sss.cl/noalacuerdoM-G/This measure has immediately been contested for its lack of planning and lack of any public tender by many consumer associations, retail vendor associations, teacher associations, and FLOSS associations around the country.
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2009/05/19/valencia/1242740973.html
http://www.apimadrid.org/2009/05/14/manifiesto-de-apimadrid-sobre-prop…
https://www.facua.org/es/noticia.php?Id=4146
http://www.apicv.es/?q=node/608As you know there have already been several very successful educational projects involving FLOSS and GNU/Linux in many regions of the country (Madrid, Extremadura, Andalucia, Catalonia, Valencia, Canary Islands), involving specially-tailored GNU/Linux distributions prepared for education and for different regional languages (Spanish, Catalonian, Valencian), most of which are varieties of Debian or (Edu)Buntu:
http://lliurex.net/home/en
http://www.juntadeandalucia.es/averroes/curso-guada…
http://www.educarex.es/linexcolegios/
http://www.educa.madrid.org/web/madrid_linux/archivos/cara…
http://www.educa.madrid.org/web/madrid_linux/archivos/pro…
http://linkat.xtec.cat/portal/index.php
http://www.gobiernodecanarias.org/medusa/contenidos…
http://lula.unex.es/index.php?seccion=participantesNow, guess what? Mrs. and Mr. Gates will be meeting with Spanish prime minister tomorrow (Tuesday, May 25th)
http://www.adn.es/politica/20090522/NWS-2387-Zapatero-Gates-Bill-proxi…
Supposedly in order to talk about development projects in Africa jointly with the B&M Gates Foundation, but I’m sure, he will be there to make sure the Linux projects get abandoned and instead the Spanish students get addicted to Microsoft’s (and its partners’) products, thus securing not only the calculated 50 million euros in software licences it will cost the government, but a whole new generation of captive customers (along with the teachers and the educational system nationwide, and associated support/software contracts with MCPs and ISVs). At the same time it eliminates one of the “rotten apples” that could serve of example for other European countries willing to empower their educational systems with GNU/Linux and FLOSS.
Speculation: Top it maybe with some tax exemptions following the Irish (Microsoft’s European Tax Heaven) model, so MSFT can help Zapatero (being a total technological and computer illiterate, and ill-advised by lobbyists as most of politicians) with the “growth model change”???And in exchange for what? Well, Joe Biden, who is leading a crusade to defend US media and entertainment industry and to obtain legislation similar to the French HADOPI, met recently with Zapatero and there has been an attempt to pass an EU-wide law that would allow national governments to impose their own “HADOPIs” with the typical excuse for the angered citizens “…we have no choice: the EU commands that we do this”.
Also, the US secretary of transport Ray Lahood will be visiting Zapatero next Saturday in order to look at high-speed trains and infrastructure: Many construction enterprises that are rapidly getting into deadline to pay their billionaire debts with the big banks (Santander Bank, BBVA and others would lose millions in their balance, should these deadlines expire and they would have to re-structure their balances, publicly acknowledging loses and losing many good ratings in the international stock markets) and are badly needing new contracts are expecting to be awarded contracts to build the railway infrastructures in the US (these are very big fishes of the Spanish stock exchange IBEX35 index, that many people suspect financed the political parties and campaigns in exchange for public works and building concessions by the governments: Ferrovial, ACS, Sacyr, Acciona…) and also there is the train builder Talgo…
As you always say: Follow the money…
More answers might come tomorrow. █
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Karsten said,
May 25, 2009 at 8:36 am
Oh, and I thought he is so busy with his charity and does not care for the company anymore…
Roy Schestowitz said,
May 25, 2009 at 9:55 am
It only ascended higher up from technology to national and international politics.
ricardo nunes said,
May 25, 2009 at 11:23 am
He now represents the NWO, after all Billg&wife foundation is just a front for NWO policies.
From GMO’s to health and Pharmaceutical-Industrial Complex, billg is one of the top figures leading this type if policies, that are spreading all over the world.
Something that Michael Parenti describes very well in this article, the so call ‘reforms’….
“A new favorite among deceptive labels is “reforms,” whose meaning is inverted, being applied to any policy dedicated to undoing the reforms that have been achieved after decades of popular struggle. So the destruction of family assistance programs is labeled “welfare reform.” “Reforms” in Eastern Europe, and most recently in Yugoslavia, have meant the heartless impoverishment of former Communist countries, the dismantling of what remained of the public economy, its deindustrialization and expropriation at fire sale prices by a corporate investor class, complete with massive layoffs, drastic cutbacks in public assistance and human services, and a dramatic increase in unemployment and human suffering. “IMF reforms” is a euphemism for the same kind of bruising cutbacks throughout the Third World. As Edward Herman once noted, “reforms” are not the solution, they are the problem.”
http://www.michaelparenti.org/MonopolyMedia.html
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
May 25th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
A few minutes ago I found this report in Stallman’s blog. Companies now acquire land in other countries.
twitter Reply:
May 25th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Which is more foolish? Old style land colonization or media and information control through digital restrictions. Nineteenth and twentieth century history provide plenty of warning for those who would buy or steal land. The present example of digital colonization looks to be a more stable form of theft because it involves power structures that were built locally. Looks are deceiving because nothing is so easy to replace as software and nothing is more difficult to control than culture. Microsoft’s flunkies must stoop to ever more repressive measures to keep M$’s present position but this is not tenable because real control freaks will reject Windows. At some point, sensible repressive contries will realize the threat foreign, non free software is to their own control. What self respecting autocrat will tolerate software like Vista, which sends encrypted communications back to Redmons? In free countries, businesses are already rejecting Windows for the same reasons. They will not be happy when schools churn out Windows using drones instead of people who can solve problems. Empires are a difficult and stupid game.
ricardo nunes said,
May 25, 2009 at 1:06 pm
yes, i’ve been reading that report that i also found in RMS blog.
it’s a crime against mankind, but you won’t hear it on mainstream news.
it’s just like Kissinger once said, ‘If you control the oil you control the country; if you control food, you control the population.’, and that’s exactly what they are doing.
i’m very pessimist, i don’t see any future for our planet…