11.23.09
Microsoft Builds Coalitions of NGOs, Makes Political and Educational Changes
Summary: Microsoft grooms its alumni to acquire influence; Microsoft captures more academic environments and its political agenda is at stake
IN ORDER to understand how “non-profits” work for Microsoft, one need not look further than the Gates Foundation. There are other similar foundations (like Rockefeller’s) that serve similar functions, but they are beyond our scope.
This long post looks at a variety of new ways in which Microsoft helps itself by helping others. The links below are less than a week old.
We begin today’s journey by noticing that former Microsoft employees are given money from Microsoft, just like the world’s biggest patent troll. Microsoft is grooming entities that will be helpful to it in the future. From the Seattle Times:
The Microsoft Alumni Foundation awarded its first “Integral Fellows” awards to three nonprofits started by company alumni.
Each receives a $25,000 grant “as well as access to the talents and skills of alumni to help support their ongoing efforts.”
It is almost as though Microsoft is building little coalitions outside the company. Microsoft is buying influence this way. For instance, see how Microsoft may have bribed many NGOs in India for OOXML pressure.
The press release is purely promotional, Seattle coverage is a little more informative, but this new article reveals the scale of this phenomenon.
She’s one of the more than 150 former Microsoft employees who have started nonprofit organizations, taking with them the same philanthropic impulse of their former employer, company founder Bill Gates, whom Time magazine recognized as a Man of the Year in 2005 for his humanitarian actions.
That’s the same Time magazine that glorifies its funders and publishes articles from the Gates Foundation itself (husband of the head). Those who engage in research into the Gates Foundation will discover its many dark sides, which are always concealed by extensive PR that acts as a moral shield. The above suggests that Microsoft garners influence groups, such as Ignition Partners. People who leave Microsoft sometimes continue to serve Microsoft as alumni.
One of Microsoft’s most effective illusions of “charity” is internally known as EDGI. It is ultra-anti-competitive, possibly illegal. It is still ongoing, but the public identity of it changes (“Unlimited Potential”, “*Spark”, “Elevate America”, et cetera). We are currently finding more dumping against Free/libre software. Here, for example, is “BizSpark One”, which we wrote about in:
- Poor Microsoft Gives Poor Software to Youngsters, Hoping to Remain Relevant
- Microsoft’s Anti-Linux Dumping Crusade: Chapter 11.1
- Microsoft Tries to Fight Libre with Gratis
- An Open, Gentler Microsoft: The Best Illusion Only Novell Can Buy
- Microsoft’s Last Breath: BAD (Bribing, Addicting, Dumping)
- Microsoft’s B.A.D. (Bribing, Addicting, Dumping) Comes to the Philippines
- Down with Microsoft… in India (Updated)
- Microsoft Takes Dumping Tactics up a Notch
- The EDGIfication of the Philippines
- Microsoft Tries to Associate Itself with Open Source in Order to Spread Lock-in, Dump Proprietary Software on Clients
- Beware the Microsoft Bearing Gifts
Microsoft has just picked up more BizSpark (“BizSpark One”) members and more dumping partners for the “WebsiteSpark” programme. We wrote about WebsiteSpark in [1, 2, 3], so it’s probably not worth explaining again.
Another similar technique of dumping is Live@edu and it continues to do harm in Australia thanks to lazy, negligent (and possibly bribed) staff.
The South Australian Employment, Training and Further Education Minister, Michael O’Brien said today that Microsoft’s ‘Live@edu’ email service and collaboration platform has won the contract and will be available across all TAFE SA campuses ready for the start of classes in 2010.
Microsoft is now dumping some more in the United States, this time at the Dimock Community Center. (emphasis in red is ours)
Along with sending technology and volunteers to places like Dimock Community Center, Microsoft supports larger organizations locally such as the United Way with both cash donations and volunteer support. And sharing the education spotlight with Dimock is Microsoft’s apprenticeship program through Citizen Schools that has employees teaching middle school students. In fact, during Citizen Schools’ May fundraising weekend, Microsoft donated $854,000 worth of software to the organization.
[...]
Interesting philanthropic activities: Microsoft supports Citizen Schools with apprenticeships in which Microsoft employees teach junior-high students.
Software cannot be donated because it’s immaterial. In this case, these are licences that ensure students don’t walk away to non-Microsoft software and additionally, in exchange for this bogus “donation”, Microsoft staff will get to brainwash students (one-on-one). This is not the exception, it’s typical.
What’s even more shocking is that entire states are now falling for the same type of scam at a macro scale. The latest victim is North Carolina, whose administration sold out to Microsoft.
The software company is teaming with the N.C. Community College System, the N.C. Department of Commerce and the N.C. Employment Security Commission to distribute 23,700 training vouchers during the next 90 days across the state. Courses cover basic to intermediate skills.
This is also covered here, here, here, here, and here. State by state, Microsoft imposes "American EDGI", turning people into slaves of Microsoft with consent from the short-sighted local government which gets deceived by propaganda. That makes a total of 8 states so far, reveals Advantage Business Media.
Needless to say, funding and other resources will go only towards Microsoft indoctrination (GNU/Linux is always excluded [1, 2, 3]), turning those who are residents into Microsoft’s future workforce. They are rarely given another choice.
So, how does Microsoft manage to obtain such great leverage over curriculum? First of all, there are former Microsoft employees like Doug Burgum, who was invited to be president of North Dakota State University earlier this month. Watch what he is getting right now: “Burgum receives North Dakota’s highest honor”
Gov. John Hoeven presented the award to Burgum Friday during a surprise ceremony at Fargo’s Microsoft Corp. campus, where Burgum served as the company’s senior vice president. He’s the 37th person to receive the award.
But Burgum is small potatoes compared to people who run the world (not literally). This brings us back to the Gates Foundation, whose role in (mis)education we wrote about before [1, 2]. It’s an international issue. This self-congratulatory bubble manages to portray itself as educator of the public when in fact doing the very opposite. It’s PR skill, turning self-servitude into what seems like an act of goodwill.
“This self-congratulatory bubble manages to portray itself as educator of the public when in fact doing the very opposite.”But Microsoft investors don’t do “charity”, they invest. In the cases above, Microsoft is just doing what’s right for Microsoft profits and influence on education comes from its #1 lobbyist, Bill Gates [1, 2, 3]. As Associated Press put it a few weeks ago, “The real secretary of education, the joke goes, is Bill Gates.” Now watch this from the news: “Microsoft Co-founder Bill Gates Donates $90 Million To Memphis City Schools”
Well, well…
Isn’t that adorable? That’s the same Gates who together with Abramoff ensured that when these children grow up they will have no job. Yes, and the H-1B fiasco is back not because of Grassley but because many citizens of the United States increasingly realise that Gates and his elite friends are ruining the US economy.
H-1B Visa Beef May End Up in Supreme Court
[...]
H-1B visa opponents have turned to the Supreme Court in a last-ditch effort to overturn a 2008 Department of Homeland Security decision that the Programmers Guild, the Immigration Reform Law Institute and others claim is a back-door circumvention of the H-1B visa cap.
For those who are interested in Microsoft’s labour affairs, here is the latest.
The Labor Department gave Microsoft Corp. final authorization Thursday to fund benefit risks through the Vermont branch of its Bermuda-based captive insurance company.
It ought to be added that Microsoft and Gates are dodging tax. █
dyfet said,
November 23, 2009 at 11:06 am
This reminds me once again why I am very happy to work in the free (as in freedom) world rather than in the often socially destructive practice of proprietary software. Any large entity that rewards best those who are most sociopathic helps create a more sociopathic society.