Paying the national media, manufacturing a false image

Summary: Amid Microsoft scandals (past and present) we continue to see Microsoft's cofounder and largest shareholder shaping the big media by paying it to publish puff pieces

Microsoft's legacy of corruption, which goes on to this date (lots about it in the news this week), will never be fully realised because everything is happening behind closed doors. Someone from Cyprus told me:

They should also check for briberies in Cyprus. The Papadopoulos administration signed a "Memorandum of cooperation" with Microsoft. During Christofias administration, Microsoft was a sponsor of the Cypriot Presidency in Europe. And the best of all; the current President Anastasiades has appointed Lakkotrypis, the Public Sector Director of Microsoft Cyprus official as Minister of Commerce and Energy.

http://cy.linkedin.com/pub/george-lakkotrypis/15/242/625 http://www.mcit.gov.cy/mcit/mcit.nsf/dmlmessageen/dmlmessageen?OpenDocument

We wrote about Microsoft's history of documented bribes the other day. It's not a single incident; far from it. A lot of newspeak names bribery 'incentives', 'contributions', donations' etc. Bill Gates, for example, is bribing the press for puff pieces through the Gates Foundation. This man whose brand is "Gates" got $7 billion richer last year, trying to brand himself as poor or "for the poor". It is all about marketing and branding of his name. He wants people to forget where he came from and what he did. Here is an example of the Gates-funded NPR posting a puff piece and the BBC, also funded by Gates (more than once) promoting Gates' agenda. A few years ago Gates was bribing The Guardian and he still does based on the advertisements/paid endorsements appearing at the top of articles like this about a dictator (notice the "Poverty matters" euphemism).

My criticism of Gates' hidden agenda are mostly posted in sites like Identica and Twitter, but there is some stuff which merits more attentions and requires more characters. Here is a new articles titled "Humanitarian Imperialism: Charity for Power". Gates is covered in it:

Mr. Bloomberg has recast himself as a do-gooder despite his origin as a cut-throat Wall Street investment banker and partner at Solomon Brothers. Likewise, Mr. Gates has metamorphosed into a saint, although his fortune originates from a corporation (Microsoft) that has been accused of unfair monopoly practices for bundling its operating system together with its own programs for browsers, etc. Such transformations of the wealthy are facilitated by news agencies like National Public Radio (NPR) that enjoy their donations. They enthusiastically promote, for example, the message that the world must urgently eradicate polio. Bill Gates himself has labeled polio the “world’s biggest problem.” But is it? Back in 2001, there were only 496 cases of polio in the entire world and the disease was disappearing on its own from improved nutrition and availability of clean water. In principle, the decline to zero should have been accelerated by a public-health effort. In practice, however, since the start of the Gate Foundation’s more than $8 B eradication project, to which Mr. Bloomberg recently added $100 M, the polio cases have not even been halved. In 2012, India was held up as a great success because its cases of polio dropped to zero from being half the world’s total. The price for this, however, appears to have been over 47,500 cases in 2011 alone of an infectious disease, with polio’s symptoms but twice the lethality, labeled “non-polio acute flaccid paralysis” (NPAFP). The incidence of NPAFP is directly related to the number of oral polio vaccine (OPV) doses a person receives.

The vaccine opposition is being polluted by many extremists whose role seems to be demonising those whose concerns are sometimes informed and legitimate. But the matter of fact is, Gates seeks to hoard credit for the collective fight many wage against diseases. And policy-setting is the next big adventure for him, having used crime to become wealthy. Money and power are not mutually exclusive. ⬆