03.28.10
IRC: #boycottnovell @ FreeNode: March 27th, 2010
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Microsoft Obeys Communism, Not Capitalism
Summary: Microsoft’s tax evasion in the United States expands (robbing the American population), whereas Chinese rules that suppress the population are upheld
A READER OF OURS CONTRIBUTED a couple of articles [1, 2] about his/her nation (China) and how Microsoft engages with the Communist party to suppress the Chinese people. That’s where we got the image seen above. Microsoft is obeying Chinese law but not obeying US law. According to the Seattle press, “Wash. gov approves smelter, server farm tax breaks” (meaning that Microsoft will be given even more tax breaks).
Gregoire said she’d spoken to Microsoft Corp. and other companies about their desire to build new server farms if the tax break were enacted, and predicted at least three of the facilities would be built soon.
Poor Microsoft. As a former Microsoft employee continues to stress, the company hoards money of very high proportions while avoiding tax.
I estimate that Microsoft has avoided B&O royalty tax on $149 billion in licensing revenue since 1997.
More here:
While we’re still reviewing and clarifying changes to the latest house-passed bill, it appears that the honorable Democratic Representatives Tomiko Santos and Kessler pushed through adoption of a last minute amendment (pdf) striking the clauses that might otherwise have given Microsoft’s tax dodge amnesty on an estimated $1.25 billion in unpaid taxes, interest and penalties.
You can see the amendments to SB 6143 here. The follow up amendment (pdf) by former Microsoft veteran Rep. Hunter directs the Department of Revenue to study the issue further, but does not forgive any tax debts, as his earlier bill seemed to….
Yes, Hunter does his duty to a former employer [1, 2, 3]. On the other side, Rep. Chase is actually serious about investigating the facts presented by Reifman.
Things are heating up in Olympia and Microsoft’s Nevada Tax Dodge is now being actively presented for discussion within the Democratic caucus. We greatly appreciate Rep. Maralyn Chase’s strong concerns for tax fairness.
Will Microsoft ever pay the tax it has been evading? With so much influence in the United States government it can get away with anything. In China it’s a different story. “Brin drove Google to pull back in China,” claims the Wall Street Journal.
“Ultimately I guess it is where your threshold of discomfort is,” Mr. Brin says. “So we obviously as a company crossed that threshold of discomfort.”
They claim that it’s to do with ethics and this was actually triggered by an Internet Explorer attack [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]. The chain reaction can easily be seen now that GoDaddy follows Google’s footsteps. Here are some more items on the subject:
• China condemns decision by Google to lift censorship
• Google stops censoring China-based search services
• Google Turns Up the China Burner, Microsoft Feels the Heat
• Microsoft’s Suport of Chinese Censorship: Smart Business, Poor Morals
• Google (Nasdaq:GOOG), Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) and China
• Google does the right thing in China — will Microsoft follow?
• Microsoft will not change China operations, official says
• Microsoft and Apple Should Follow Google Out of China
• Google China move puts pressure on Microsoft, Yahoo
Yahoo! is becoming just Microsoft’s relic after the corporate hijack. Upon completing his proxy battles, “Icahn’s Influence Fading From Yahoo’s Board,” says Nasdaq.com.
In any event, all companies depend on manufacturing in China, so Google’s departure too will not be a complete one. As for Microsoft:
• Google Exits China, But Microsoft is Staying
• China Rules Hurt U.S. Companies as Google Exit Looms
• Google’s China Loss is Microsoft’s Gain?
• We’re staying in China, says Microsoft, as free speech row with Google grows
“We’re staying in China” means “we’ll censor because of profit”.
Microsoft has been accused of “enabling tyranny” and the subject was covered in:
• Congress On China: Google Gets A Big Wet Kiss. Microsoft Is “Enabling Tyranny”
• Congress Rebukes Microsoft’s Chinese Censorship, Microsoft Fires Back
• Microsoft criticized for stance in China following Google’s shift
• Congressman: In China, Microsoft is ‘enabling tyranny’ (yes, even Microsoft Nick quoted it)
Microsoft came under attack Wednesday from a House lawmaker for not following Google’s lead in resisting China’s demand for foreign firms to abide by the country’s censorship rules and Internet restrictions.
During a hearing focused on Internet control in China before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Rep. Chris Smith, R-NJ, singled out Microsoft, which has said it will continue to operate in China and follow Chinese laws. Microsoft “needs to get with the program” and “join the side of human rights…rather than enabling tyranny,” Smith said.
Here comes the propaganda machine:
• The Ministry of Truth Limits Reporting on Google in China
• Chinese Gov’t Gives Press Orders On How To Report On Google’s China Decision
• The Trials of Being a Chinese Reporter
• China accuses Google of being tool of the U.S. government
• How China’s internet generation broke the silence
Microsoft has its own propaganda machine, so Microsoft apologists and fans (some of whom indirectly paid by the company) mostly look at this with glee:
• Microsoft response to Google maneuvers in China
• Google Ends Internet Search Censorship in China (also in here)
• Can Microsoft capitalize on Google’s decision on China?
• Could Google-China Spat Help Microsoft Bing?
This hopefully shows the effect of Microsoft spinners. They just seem to think what Microsoft can gain from this, so it’s not about the Chinese people. Nobody asks the right questions, excepting business morals and instead focusing on the competition between corporations, not the people of China versus their oppressor. █
Gates Foundation Roundup: Schools, Vaccines Monopoly, and “Fatally Flawed” Studies
“The chief of malaria for the World Health Organization has complained that the growing dominance of malaria research by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation risks stifling a diversity of views among scientists and wiping out the world health agency’s policy-making function. [...] Many of the world’s leading malaria scientists are now “locked up in a ‘cartel’ with their own research funding being linked to those of others within the group,” Dr. Kochi wrote. Because “each has a vested interest to safeguard the work of the others,” he wrote, getting independent reviews of research proposals “is becoming increasingly difficult.”
“Gates Foundation’s Influence Criticized,” in New York Times, February 2008
Summary: Comprehensive analysis of some of the latest information about the Gates Foundation’s activities and how PR agents dress these up
THE business of “donations” cast or treated as investments is very questionable because it describes as cherishable behaviour which is inherently selfish. One example of it would be the agri/pharma “donations” from the Gates Foundation. It helps this foundation enrich itself for reasons that we mentioned before. It is often assumed that short-term benefits will obscure the effects of a monopoly and perpetual dependency. Microsoft does the same thing. EDGI for example is a programme Microsoft has established for countering adoption of GNU/Linux. It is shown in a fine level of detail in antitrust exhibits. When a nation such as India has plans to move all schools to Free software, Bill Gates makes a surprise visit and uses the EDGI programme as a counter measure that he dresses up as a “donation” (true story). Examples of E-mails from Microsoft that talk about EDGI* and give instances of cities and countries where Microsoft used EDGI to suppress GNU/Linux adoption can be found here.
The key point to take from all that is rather simple. Whenever something is given away for free, people must become suspicious. The important question to ask is, how much reliance does the giveaway create, if any? Who does it empower? Free as in “no cost” (or “free beer”) is not the same as free as in “liberty”.
Shallow thinking leads to shallow coverage, which is strongly encouraged by PR agencies with expertise in spin. It’s easy to see how that’s done and how inquisitive reports are suppressed. A Microsoft employee has published: “What’s So Bad About Greed?”
I work at Microsoft. One of the biggest corporations in the world. And I can see what a big corporation can do for a community. Besides creating jobs for over 40,000 – and that’s only at the main headquarters, I can see how Microsoft fuels the economy and the community in the surrounding area.
At whose expense? How many companies has Microsoft put out of business through criminal activities? See, that’s an example of shallow thinking. Microsoft not only harmed Free software. Microsoft has destroyed many companies (leading to unemployment that they pretend to have combated by “offering jobs”), including those that produce proprietary software. Some people willingly refuse to look at the broad picture.
The employee above must have so heavily been indoctrinated by Microsoft that she cannot see the external effects of Microsoft’s actions. As GatesKeeper puts it, “An employee of Bill Gates at Microsoft loves that invisible hand that feeds her.” The “invisible hand” is a mythical notion about unregulated capitalism which would supposedly make itself flourish rather then be corrupted over time. This brings us to the “philanthro-capitalism” part of this post, which questions Gates’ motives. The man continues to make billions despite claiming to have decided to give his fortune away. Those who keep their eyes on the ball know that the wealth is invested in stocks that include oil companies, government ventures, and even notorious cartels.
One of the more controversial investments is one in vaccination. One blogger wonders whether it’s “Philanthropy or Ethnic Cleansing?”
At a recent invitation-only conference in Long Beach, California TED2010, Bill Gates actually revealed the true agenda of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In a speech titled, “Innovating to Zero!”, Gates announces that his one wish would be reducing man made CO2 emissions worldwide to zero by 2050. He declares: “First we got population. The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.”(emphasis added) — I generally try not to cuss but WTF!!!!!!!! If you think I’m making this up watch the video (here)
He actually said in plain English that he expects vaccines and healthcare to LOWER POPULATION GROWTH!!!! Yes, he said reproductive health services too but we all know that’s code for abortion and obviously that lowers population (especially in the black community but I digress). Oh yes, did you check out the picture behind him was composed of black and brown people? I tell you, these liberals really do just love black folks to death (pun most definitely intended).
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also cited in the following new article which is titled “Sterilisation-for-land deal not catching on in Colombia” (there has always been something iffy about methods for population growth/reduction control).
Looking at India, Melinda is doing a lot of PR there, but she is hiding from the media that cannot be predicted or interacted with via PR agencies.
Lucknow, March 24 (IANS) A tiny remote village of Uttar Pradesh Wednesday had a surprise guest — none other than Melinda Gates, wife of billionaire Bill Gates.
[...]
She, however, chose to keep away from the media.
This is also covered in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. She was talking about particular issues of “health”.
CPI State secretary K Narayana Wednesday wanted the State Government to stop administering the vaccine preventing cervix cancer, as there were reports that four tribal women died after they were administered the vaccine, which was supplied free of cost by the Gates Foundation.
There is that vaccine again. We do not subscribe to the beliefs of people who sensationalise the issue, but there are true implications to it and also an element of control.
“Too much money gets spent just controlling how these issues get covered.”Two weeks ago we showed what seemed like a financial tie between the Huffington Post and Bill Gates. It’s about covering issues that put Gates in a positive light at the Huffington Post [1, 2, 3] and last week we found more new examples where the Huffington Post looks only at one side of this foundation [1, 2] and ignoring the rest. Control of communication or taming of the press in particular is an issue that we covered before. Too much money gets spent just controlling how these issues get covered. This breeds suspicion.
Gates is also capable of controlling government sections with people like Rajiv [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], who came from the Gates Foundation to the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Rajiv Shah, former agricultural-development director at the Gates Foundation and now administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, returned to Seattle last week to address the life-sciences gathering.
Here is a new example of the Gates Foundation controlling coverage.
Can’t get enough Law & Order even though it’s on every single hour of every day? Mariska Hargitay, of the procedural’s Special Victims Unit series, will be in the District this week to talk about Hollywood’s portrayal of global health issues. Hargitay is joined by the show’s executive producer Neal Baer, as well as representatives of both the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Hollywood, Health & Society (the sponsoring organization).
As we showed quite a lot in recent weeks, information also gets disseminated with the help of fake (self-serving and self-funded) ‘studies’ from the Gates Foundation, as we even mentioned last week. Suffice to say, such studies are likely to be flawed and here is just one new example.
A Gates Foundation study that identifies an increase in production capacity for development-stage HIV vaccines has a “fatal flaw,” says a vaccine expert.
This vaccine expert is shown criticising the same Gates study in some other news sites. One has to remember that Gates was accused of monopolising research (patents) that involved companies Gates invests in. This is a complicated subject on the surface, so we will try to simplify it again and explain is using the news. Several days ago Associated Press (AP) reported on Glaxo and Pfizer “agreeing” to supply pneumonia vaccines.
GAVI’s program to treat pneumococcal disease received initial funding of $1.5 billion from the governments of Italy, the U.K., Canada, Russia, Norway and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
We wrote about GAVI on numerous occasions before. The private stakes in it create a conflict of interests and can tarnish its image. But let’s get the most important point out of the way: Glaxo and Pfizer receive money for their patents at the expense of citizens while they pretend that it’s a bargain with a “discount” [1, 2, 3, 4]. That’s really all there is to it, at least from their point of view. The Guardian is actually asking the right question:
A groundbreaking deal is struck with two major drug companies to provide vaccines to save the lives of millions of children in poor countries. But should donor governments really be subsidising Big Pharma?
The author wonders about “subsidising Big Pharma” and their shareholders, a major part of which is Gates. The term “donor governments” actually refers to taxpayers. Here is a new article we found about TB:
The Gates Foundation alone can’t underwrite such an effort. Spigelman expects government involvement and help from other nonprofit organizations.
There are other health-related donations, which are mostly to do with vaccines [1, 2, 3], but this is a subject that we already covered last week. Taxpayers are sought who will make up the donations, which in turn benefit shareholders of pharmaceutical giants. More writers should point out this problem, but very few do.
The Washington Post — with the Gates family as its conflict of interests — keeps promoting the Gates agenda and sometimes lets them write articles. Melinda Gates, who sits on the board, recently promoted her education agenda using this publication and now they are using their own ‘studies’ to influence libraries. Since quite a few politicians read the Washington Post, the influence here can be great. But as AP points out:
The study was paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and conducted by the University of Washington Information School, which gathered information in three ways…
This message is repeated without questioning in a lot of Web sites [1, 2, 3, 4] which neglect the factor of bias. Gates’ employees are paying academics to produce something they can later cite to support their actions. Later on we find them using their own ‘studies’ to influence education [1, 2, 3, 4] and there is new evidence of it in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. It is not good when education is run and controlled by private hands. It’s never good. How about this report from last week?
The committee researched the small schools initiative funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2001, the foundation gave billions in grants to break up large, failing high schools into smaller learning communities.
There is also something interesting going on in Florida [1, 2, 3, 4] where “Florida Senate passes SB6, eliminating teacher tenure”:
Teachers say this is the most controversial off all education proposals being decided on.
Hillsborough is exempt, because it has received a $100 million grant from the Gates Foundation to improve teacher quality.
To any rational person, to “improve teacher quality” is to make more teachers tied to a particular curriculum. But whose? Will children be taught how to use Free software? Will they be taught about exploitation of Africa? Gates is making a lot of money in Africa (with Monsanto [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] and some oil giants), so giving some money to officials to keep them on Gates’ side [1, 2, 3] is not something to be accepted blindly. It’s not just a Gates problem by the way; The Rockefellers do that too.
The Global Impact Investing Network is funded by private investors including the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Gates gets compared to other billionaires who do not enter the business of philanthro-capitalism (making money from what seems like charity) [1, 2, 3, 4] and the Seattle Times continues to be one of the major peddlers of Gates PR, with placements/interviews like this one.
In a recent Seattle Times interview with Ki-moon [1, 2, 3, 4], it was made apparent that he is fine with privatisation of aid and we could not help spotting the following paragraph in the Economist (from the new article “A world without Aids”):
Nearly 30 donors to the Global Fund met this week in the Hague, Netherlands, to review global health progress and assess funding needs for the period 2011 to 2013. osted by the government of the Netherlands, this is a preparatory meeting ahead of a pledging conference for the Global Fund at the UN Headquarters on 4 and 5 October, which will be chaired by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The preparatory meeting in the Hague was attended by delegates from 27 countries and the United Nations Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and UNITAID.
Ki-moon is a close friend of the Gates family who defends the idea of private hands taking over such issues, using funds of course [1, 2, 3]. There are mostly patents at stake.
In summary, we increasingly see a privatisation of schools, vaccines, and seeds for agriculture. Very few powerful companies gain even more power this way and their shareholders, which include Bill Gates, benefit from it (and avoid paying tax if they do so under the identity of a foundation). This tax issue is the subject of the next post. █
___
* Microsoft talks about “Linux infestations” and uses other derogatory terms.
Novell News Summary – Part III: Pulse Beta and Many New Adverts
Summary: Novell’s proprietary news from the week of BrainShare 2010
THIS week was mostly about BrainShare 2010 and Bob Sutor turns out to have given a talk at BrainShare.
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03.27.10
BrainShare 2010
Summary: Coverage of key items from the past week’s Novell event in Salt Lake City
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Novell News Summary – Part II: SUSE (SLES/SLED) in BrainShare 2010, Samsung and Kyocera With Android
Summary: News about companies that pay Microsoft for Linux for no good reason
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Novell News Summary – Part I: OpenSUSE 11.3 Milestone 4, Upstart Introduced
Summary: OpenSUSE has a new test release but very little news apart from that
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Citrix and Amazon Climb on Microsoft’s Bed
Playing with Windows toys rather than mission-dedicated GNU/Linux
Summary: Citrix is promoting if not prioritising Windows Server and so does Amazon, which continues to discriminate against GNU/Linux
Microsoft booster Paul Thurrott writes the article “Microsoft’s Virtualization Jihad” — an article in which he describes an issue that has worried us for quite some time. All along Microsoft has just been buying its way into virtualisation and disrupting many companies in the process. This includes XenSource, which was acquired by Microsoft’s ally Citrix (Novell too plays a role in this).
“All along Microsoft has just been buying its way into virtualisation and disrupting many companies in the process.”According to many articles [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8], Microsoft and Citrix grow even closer. “Microsoft squeezes Citrix into Windows server pack,” says this one report and one blogger asks: “What’s Microsoft’s real reason for killing VECD?”
We are actually made a lot more concerned not by Microsoft’s increased relationship with Citrix but about what goes on at Amazon.
Early this morning, we received an announcement from Amazon the company is launching a pilot for EC2 customers to allow your enterprise organizations to move existing Microsoft Windows Server licenses to Amazon and receive a proper discount for the new EC2 instance.
As we explained last week [1, 2], Amazon grew increasingly hostile towards GNU/Linux, which it sold out to Microsoft [1, 2, 3] after it had hired many former Microsoft employees. Amazon is now encouraging adoption of its Windows servers using “discounts” [1, 2, 3] and one must not forget that Microsoft’s lawyers were first with the news that Amazon will pay Microsoft for Red Hat servers. No “discounts” from Amazon for GNU/Linux? No “opt-out” for “Microsoft tax”?
As a SAAS blogger states in his new headline, “Microsoft really, really, hates the cloud” and Microsoft is trying to marginalise GNU/Linux where it is really successful, using racketeering tactics [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. This is not the behaviour of a software company, whose former employees changed Amazon like they were part of a political movement. █
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