Bonum Certa Men Certa

Corporate Press Grooms Bill Gates While He Profits From Education Privatisation

Marketing Charlie (CBS)

Charlie Rose
Credit: Photo by David Shankbone



Summary: A look at some recent articles about the Gates Brand and how it makes billions while pretending to be "charity"

The Gates Foundation continues to show what hypocrisy is all about. The 'guardian' (misnomer because The Guardian guards the rich), funded by Bill Gates, has just published a new Bill Gates-funded (with Gates ads) article bemoaning "corporate colonialism". No, seriously. Gates is trying to portray himself as part of the solution,



"Gates started bribing bloggers for PR several years ago, so he sure is trying to gag critics, still."Some recent PR with Charlie Rose in CBS achieved more or less the same. It was a one-hour hogwash for Gates, trying to portray him as perpetually good and a changed man with some hip "2.0" buzz term (pure PR was emanating from it as this had been a "controlled" interview -- that being a condition most probably). As Toby put it, 'Gates 1.0: "Technology is an awesome tool for stealing your money."'

Whereas, as he put it, 'Gates 2.0: "Still stealing your money, but now I can pay media to paint me as a saint."'

In IRC, Toby adds that "it's impossible to criticise him in public places any more" (although this is changing gradually).

Gates started bribing bloggers for PR several years ago, so he sure is trying to gag critics, still. Another strategy is to outnumber criticisms by spending massively on PR and media placements. It's a fight he can't win. It's something Monsanto had to learn the hard way.

Meanwhile, Gates' feminine alter-ego lobbies for his education takeover. There was a widely-covered (with PR) lobbying keynote by Melinda at a Duke graduation ceremony, as noted the other day (no-brainers like this one make headlines, along with PR that's shaped like a personal story).

It is gratifying to see one branch of the corporate press having the guts to publish this slamming of Gates' agenda in education. It starts as follows: "As the Common Core continues to insinuate its way into public education, its price tag and problems keep mounting. Reasoned opposition among conservatives and liberals, parents, teachers, policymakers, and citizens is also growing.

"Is Gates profiting already? He sure made a lot of money in recent years.""And with good reason.

"Concocted by the same expert cadre that’s brought us every post-1970 education boondoggle, and resting on the same gross unfamiliarity with actual classrooms and students, the arbitrary, biased, technology-laden, assessment-obsessed Common Core is the creature of the Gates Foundation, with entities like the Pearson conglomerate sitting at Mr. Gates’s right hand. Pearson is the largest textbook and education software publisher in the world, as well as the world’s dominant education assessment contractor. Mr. Gates’s connection to the computer and software business is also a matter of public record."

Over at a Seattle blog that we like, teachers help show how Gates profits from the lobby. It says the following: "The Community Center for Education Results (CCER) was responsible for creating the proposal to collect an extensive amount of student data on our children. This pertains to Bill Gates’ desire to collect student information for each child in this country that can be accessed by those producing and profiting from products to be sold to school districts."

Guess who benefits from it? As put here, the surveillance by private companies (privatising the education system for profit) was "started with a hundred million dollar investment from the Gates Foundation" (it's one among several).

Investment, eh? Is Gates profiting already? He sure made a lot of money in recent years.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Security Isn't the Goal of Today's Software and Hardware Products
Any newly-added layer represents more attack surface
Godot 4.2 is Approaching, But After What Happened to Unity All Game Developers Should be Careful
We hope Unity will burn in a massive fire and, as for Godot, we hope it'll get rid of Microsoft
Purge of Software Freedom and Its Voices
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
 
An Era of Rotting Technology, Migration Crises, and Cliffhanging
We've covered examples from IBM, resembling the Microsoft world
First Iteration of Techrights as 100% Static Pages Web Site
We want to champion another decade or two of positive impact and opinionated analysis
Links 25/09/2023: Patent News and Coding
some remaining links for today
Steam Deck is Mostly Good in the Sense That It Weakens Microsoft's Dominance (Windows)
The Steam Deck is mostly a DRM appliance
SUSE is Just Another Black Cat Working for Proprietary Giants/Monopolies
SUSE's relationship with firms such as these generally means that SUSE works for authority, not for community, and when it comes to cryptography it just follows guidelines from the US government
IBM is Selling Complexity, Not GNU/Linux
It's not about the clients, it's about money
Birthday of Techrights in 6 Weeks (Tux Machines and Techrights Reach Combined Age of 40 in 2025)
We've already begun the migration to static
Linux Foundation: We Came, We Saw, We Plundered
Linux Foundation staff uses neither Linux nor Open Source. They're essentially using, exploiting, piggybacking goodwill gestures (altruism of volunteers) while paying themselves 6-figure salaries.
Linux Too Big to Be Properly Maintained When There's an Incentive to Sell More and More Things (Complexity and Narrow Support Window)
They want your money, not your peace of mind. That's a problem.
Modern Web Means Proprietary Trash
Mozilla is financially beholden to Google and thus we cannot expect any pushback or for Firefox to "reclaims the Web" a second time around
GNU/Linux Has Conquered the World, But Users' Freedom Has Not (Impediments Remain in Hardware)
Installing one's system of choice on a device is very hard, sometimes impossible
Another Copyright Lawsuit Against Microsoft (or its Proxy) for Misuse of Large Works by Chatbot
Some people mocked us for saying this day would come; chatbots are a huge disappointment and they're on very shaky legal ground
Privacy is Not a Crime, Reporting Hidden Facts Is Not a Crime Either
the powerful companies/governments/societies get to know everything about everybody, but if anyone out there discovers or shares dark secrets about those powerful companies/governments/societies, that's a "crime"
United Workforce Always Better for the Workers
In the case of technology, it is possible that a lack of collective action is because of relatively high salaries and less physically-demanding jobs
GNOME and GTK Taking Freedom Away From Users
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
GNOME is Worse Today (in 2023) Than When I Did GTK Development 20+ Years Ago
To me it seems like GNOME is moving backward, not forward, mostly removing features and functionality rather than adding any
HowTos Are Moving to Tux Machines
HowTos (or howtos) are very important in their own right, but they can easily distract from the news and howtos are usually quite timeless or time-insensitive
Proprietary Panda: Don't Be Misled by the Innocent Looks of Ubuntu (and Microsoft Canonical)
Given the number of disgruntled employees who leave Canonical and given Ubuntu's trend of just copying whatever IBM does in Fedora, is there still a good reason to choose Ubuntu?
Debian GNU/Linux is a Fine Operating System, But What if People Die Making It for Somebody's Corporate/Personal Gain?
Will companies that exploited unpaid volunteers ever be held accountable for loss of life, caused by burnout, excessive work, or poverty?
Links 24/09/2023: 5 Days' Worth of News (Catchup)
Links for the day
Leftover Links 24/09/2023: Russia, COVID, and More
Links for the day
Forty Years of GNU and the Free Software Movement
by FSF
Gemini and Web in Tandem
We're already learning, over IRC, that out new site is fully compatible with simple command line- and ncurses-based Web browsers. Failing that, there's Gemini.
Red Hat Pretends to Have "Community Commitment to Open Source" While Scuttling the Fedora Community (Among Others)
RHEL is becoming more proprietary over time and community seems to boil down to unpaid volunteers (at least that's how IBM see the "community")
IBM Neglecting Users of GNU/Linux on Laptops and Desktops
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Personal Identification on the 'Modern' Net
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Not Your Daily Driver: Don't Build With Rust or Adopt Rust-based Software If You Value Long-Term Reliance
Rust is a whole bunch of hype.
The Future of the Web is Not the Web
The supposedly "modern" stuff ought to occupy some other protocol, maybe "app://"
YouTube Has Just Become Even More Sinister
The way Google has been treating the Web (and Web browsers) sheds a clue about future plans and prospects
Initial Announcement of GNU (for Gnu's Not Unix) on September 27, 1983
History matters
Upgrade and Migration Status
Git is working, IPFS is working, IRC is working, Gemini is working
Yesterday in the 'Sister Site', Tux Machines (10 More Stories)
Scope-wise, many stories fit neatly into both sites, but posting the same twice makes no sense logistically
The New Techrights Will be Much Faster
A prompt response to FUD is important. It's time-sensitive.