Summary: The acts of Microsoft’s co-founder are as monopolistic and self-serving as ever, but the PR efforts obscure the true nature of this situation; this post sheds light on what the press does not tell (or rarely tells) readers
This statement makes it sound as if the Gates Foundation didn’t have a project officer looking after the IDRC tobacco grant. Huh?
GatesKeepers is citing this article and as we pointed out last week, the Gates Foundation’s investment in tobacco goes a few years back when it was known. It seems more like it’s pretending not to have known what it invested in. Two days beforehand, GatesKeepersargued that: “The Gates Foundation, by announcing termination of the grant [for tobacco group], has claimed high moral ground. But the Foundation has been asleep at the wheel. They were forced to terminate the grant due to a conference boycott. How could they NOT know about the conflict of interest earlier?”
Exactly.
“The mainstream press missed the real story and instead played along with PR statements.”Like we proposed last week, the Gates Foundation ought to have known all along, but it “retreated” and pretended to be a victim, even though it had knowingly invested in tobacco for years (it also invests in alcoholic beverages). The mainstream press missed the real story and instead played along with PR statements. All they had to do is sniff around the tobacco fiasco in Canada and dig a little deeper. Gates has some other controversial relationships with the Canadian government, some of which continue to receive coverage even from The New York Times and the Canadian Press. For prior posts about Gates’ vaccination project in Canada (and the cancellation), see [1, 2, 3, 4]. We are also seeing some new vaccination initiatives in Africa . “Gates Foundation staff visits northern Nigeria to tell them what to do,” says GatesKeepers.
Wouldn’t it be better for northern Nigerians to make the call to end polio in northern Nigerial rather than someone from the Gates Foundation?
Africa’s polio push, where Gates employees give instructions, deserves a closer look. It’s akin to the tobacco fiasco.
Gates’ worshippers at philanthropy.com do no further investigation into it, despite recent blunders such as Gates-funded vaccines that allegedly killed girls. Gates allocates more money for the purpose of vaccination in Africa, which in a nutshell becomes a problem mostly because of patents that the public is forced to pay for (to make Gates richer).
“[T]he Gates Foundation is among the reasons for polio because of its investments in petrol companies that harm Nigerian children with unrestrained emissions.”As an important reminder from the Los Angeles Times, the Gates Foundation is among the reasons for polio because of its investments in petrol companies that harm Nigerian children with unrestrained emissions. The Los Angeles Timescriticised Gates a few years ago as his investments are among the causes for these diseases. Some of the press is now saying that the Gates Foundation “urges Northern rulers to fight polio”, which is reminiscent of the foundation’s so-called ‘fight’ against smoking while investing a lot of money in big tobacco companies.
There is this thing called “Rotary” which Gates gives money to, but how come nobody talks about how Gates’ investments actually contribute to polio?
A major Rotary emphasis for several decades has been the “Polio-Plus” campaign designed to eradicate polio and other devastating illnesses in the world. Since its launch in 1985, reported cases have dropped from 350,000 to less than 2,000 cases a year, a 99 percent decrease. Today only four countries in the world are still fighting polio, but Rotary International has recently accepted a matching-grants challenge from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to raise enough money to finally conquer this disease worldwide. In just three years, the Dalton club has fulfilled the six-year goal of committing $6,000 towards Rotary’s $200 million goal to match the Gates Foundation challenge grant. Further fundraising activities at the district conference raised enough money to immunize some 4000 children against polio and will be used by the Rotary Foundation for that purpose.
The Gates Foundation’s “challenge grant” is akin to those attempts from Gates to rally governments to give their money to companies that he invests in (their patents). “Challenge grant” is not the same as donation and we gave an example yesterday (about Monsanto).
The sentimental blackmail we are seeing in Africa is not to be taken at face value. There is a lot of money at stake because Africa has plenty of resources, it serves as a good breeding ground for experimentation with GMO, and it also serves as a good platform for experimentation with new drugs (if people die as a result of the experiments, then they won’t sue because they can’t). We continue to view with great caution the type of research Gates advances in Africa (same here) and yesterday we wrote about Monsanto's relationship with Bill Gates, noting in part that Gates had begun recruiting celebrity politicians like Timothy Geithner to market GMO along with him. A few days ago we learned that Gates is now using Colin Powell to market his “malaria campaign”. Considering Gates' investment in companies like Novartis, there is certainly money to be made here.
“[T]he racketeering operation known as “Intellectual Ventures” is also directly involved in this malaria project.”Let us remember that the President of the Global Health Program at the Gates Foundation carries a felonious baggage because he threatened academics who challenged his pharmaceutical agenda. These are the sorts of people who are working on this project and as we showed two weeks ago, the racketeering operation known as “Intellectual Ventures” is also directly involved in this malaria project. This has warning signs all over it. Intellectual Ventures is the world’s biggest patent troll, it is not a charity.
The Lancet has just published the study, which was financed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO is now being examined for its handling of the swine flu so-called pandemic. They stand accused of being in bed with pharmaceutical corporations to promote the use of vaccines. One of the Gates Foundation’s primary goals is to promote vaccines.
We wrote about this 'study' last week. It is self serving (showing the required outcome even though the results were publicly challenged by scientists without massive PR departments) as Gates too makes money from investments in this. The following new example seems to combine GMO with pharmaceuticals:
Amyris manipulates micro-organisms, primarily yeasts, so that they consume sugar and produce a desired product, which could be diesel, jet fuel, or other chemical products. The company founders had originally received a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to use its process for an antimalaria drug.
In the next couple of posts we will look at how the Gates Foundation encourages its rise in influence/monopolisation in other areas (along with Microsoft). █
Later on we are going to address Bill Gates’ influence on schools and what role it plays in ensuring that schools become indoctrination facilities for Microsoft (as far as computer education is concerned, not education as a whole). With its new partnerships, Microsoft is not only pushing "Live@edu" into schools (to manage the lives of their students from Microsoft servers); Groklaw was concerned enough about it to cite a roundup from a Microsoft-oriented site covering the financial results [1, 2, 3] and also the aforementioned deal with ePals. It says:
Microsoft is teaming with education-technology company ePals Inc. to expand the presence of the Redmond company’s email, calendar and other technologies in schools. Under the agreement, announced this morning, ePals says it will expand its service by offering Microsoft’s Exchange-based “Live@edu” system to millions of its users, which includes teachers, students and parents in 200 countries and territories. Among other plans, the companies say they’ll also work together to roll out Microsoft’s upcoming Office Web Apps in schools.
This is an abomination for reasons we explained before. Students are not only being brainwashed for Microsoft; their whole life is also being put on Microsoft’s turf and managed by Microsoft. This privatisation of education is a serious matter we will properly address later today or tomorrow. Here is another bit of ZDNet coverage about the ePals deal:
ePals, a leader in connecting students, classrooms, and educational activities worldwide with safe, secure email and Web 2.0 platforms, announced today that it has signed a “strategic technical collaboration agreement” with Microsoft. ePals will integrate Microsoft’s Live@Edu offerings with their extensive network for millions of users worldwide while the two companies will continue to expand their integration in the future with Office Web Apps and features of Sharepoint Online.
The further integration of Arabic language capabilities in internet and other technological architecture will grant millions access to the digital world, Microsoft and Google executives said.
“First, Microsoft broke the law to build a monopoly on tools that people manage their data with.”Microsoft says that users will “win” if they let Microsoft manage their data and it also says something along the lines of “trust us”, which is the classic type of sentence people say when they cannot and shouldn’t be trusted. Microsoft has spurred a big wave of more articles with 'cloud' hype and why governments and businesses ought to embrace ‘clouds’, as long as "evil" Google is not controlling them.
First, Microsoft broke the law to build a monopoly on tools that people manage their data with. And now, several years later, Microsoft wants people’s data too. █
“Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we’re doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.”
“Microsoft should put its own house in order on privacy rather than waving about a discredited blueprint as a model for others… This attempt to portray itself as a leader in consumer privacy is as preposterous as the notion that it has treated its competitors with high standards of business ethics.”
Summary: Microsoft’s close ties with NetProspex; AstroTurfing group “Consumer Watchdog” attacks Google; Microsoft’s privacy violations in Hotmail highlight Microsoft’s hypocrisy
SOCIOPATHS WHO RUN MICROSOFT have a long history of AstroTurfing. Friendship is the exception at Microsoft, not the norm. After all, Microsoft stabs its partners in the back. When Microsoft approaches (anti-)social Web sites like Facebook*, it is only looking to see what it can get out of them (advertising, search bars, Silver Lie inclusion, etc.) and the latest example that we gave was Facebook's promotion of Microsoft Office. Joe Wilcox calls it“the surest sign yet of Microsoft’s defeat”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made some amazing announcements yesterday, during the f8 conference. Docs.com wasn’t one of them.
Microsoft will try to use this to ensure that Facebook users have their data stuck in Microsoft formats and Microsoft sites/services. But another more interesting item that we found comes from a company called NetProspex, which is essentially funded by Microsoft (a major client, see the screenshot at the top) and it currently praises Microsoft, portraying it as social. Sure, it’s funny. The Microsoft boosters use this to generate hype and there is a lot of deceitful press coverage about it (no disclosure though).
NetProspex has Microsoft as one of its major customers (shown in the front page even, as one among just 3 companies) and a PR blitz is the least it can do to repay Microsoft (the site’s profiles seem like they are all about Microsoft). We attempted to find staff listings to see if former Microsoft employees run this company, but there is no such listing that we could find.
“Last year we also wrote about Consumer Watchdog. It is a group of AstroTurfers, probably like LawMedia, which Microsoft hired to AstroTurf against the Yahoo!-Google deal.”There is nothing too unusual about this. Microsoft is “social”, says a company that’s being paid by Microsoft. Likewise, we have come across an anti-Google study which was conducted by former Microsoft employees (also without disclosure). Then there are cases like comScore, which is a Microsoft partner [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10] that serves statistics in a way Microsoft likes.
Last year we also wrote about Consumer Watchdog. It is a group of AstroTurfers, probably like LawMedia, which Microsoft hired to AstroTurf against the Yahoo!-Google deal. According to many headlines, “Consumer Watchdog” is at it again [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. Basically, this AstroTurfing group which we suspect to be funded by Microsoft through their parent company which is all about AstroTurf, has asked the US DOJ to “break up Google.” Well, the DOJ is already in Microsoft’s pocket [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] because of its staff (post the DOJ vs Microsoft case). Combined with Microsoft AstroTurfing, this is an iffy recipe. IDG has attempted to speak to the DOJ about this (also in PC World) but got nothing:
A DOJ spokeswoman declined to comment on Consumer Watchdog’s request.
Other, more legitimate complaints about Google (from governments even [1, 2]) are being obscured by the AstroTurfers, “Consumer Watchdog” (it’s not about consumers and it’s not a watchdog, it’s a gun for hire). As we pointed out at the start, Microsoft has a history of hiring AstroTurfers to fight against Google. LawMedia is just one good example as it eventually enabled Microsoft to hijack Yahoo. Microsoft’s coup d’état is still being mentioned in some news sites and Yahoo’s collapse carries on now that the company’s head of advertising is said to be leaving. Will a former Microsoft employee occupy this position too? Microsoft has just injected some money into Yahoo! (as they agreed), making the company only more dependent on Microsoft. The news about Yahoo!’s latest results had “Microsoft” all over it. One might think that Yahoo! is just a Microsoft subsidiary now. Had it not been for Microsoft’s AstroTurfing with the LawMedia Group (and others), Yahoo! would be working alongside Google right about now.
In its rush to take on Facebook and Google Buzz, Microsoft is now collecting and displaying personal information on your Hotmail page — information you may never have wanted to broadcast.
Exactly how it’s mining this information is something of a mystery, but if you use Hotmail or Windows Live, it’s time to review your privacy settings — lest something you said or did comes back to haunt you.
Google may be stepping up its efforts to have developers pay attention to Android. The search giant – or rather, a division of it known as the “Android Advocacy Group” – has supposedly gone on the offensive, emailing a developer and offering him (or her) a free device.
There is nothing too nefarious here. It’s called “Advocacy”, not “Evangelism”, which is Microsoft’s code for AstroTurfing. █
______ * One ought to remember that Microsoft is among Facebook’s investors.
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to no longer breathe free…”
Summary: Microsoft is dumping on poor people in South Africa while indoctrinating the unemployed citizens of the United States
COVERING Microsoft can become a little tedious when the same patterns of operation repeat themselves and require new explanations with new victim names. One branch of Microsoft tricks we typically just lump together with EDGI, which is Microsoft’s way of fighting against Free software in impoverished areas of the world or areas that simply migrate to GNU/Linux (Microsoft calls these “Linux infestations”). Robert Mullins, who runs the Microsoft-boosting IDG blog*, is pushing that same old party line. It’s not much of a blog by the way; it’s akin to Ina Fried’s pseudo-journalism, which is like this new 24/7 (well, daily at least) Microsoft PR. These so-called ‘journalists’ are to Microsoft what O’Reilly/Beck/Fox are to the Republican party.
“These so-called ‘journalists’ are to Microsoft what O’Reilly/Beck/Fox are to the Republican party.”Anyway, Mullins is promoting that fake “Microsoft for the poor” pitch while Microsoft is targeting areas where GNU/Linux and Free software do relatively well. Microsoft is using some dumping tactics as usual, but it relies a great deal on shameless spin.
Yes, the latest news is that Microsoft fakes an “investment” (where it usually means software that costs nothing to make copies of) in South Africa’s black community [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. For those who are not aware, Microsoft has been sabotaging this nation’s migration to digital independence and this is not for the first time, either. They did this in South African schools for example.
The South African population is being victimised by yet another foreign invader (after it kicked out one major imperialist that we all know), but this time it’s a corporation. Microsoft uses similar tactics in the United States (a programme that we call “American EDGI”). This week we found an update about what Microsoft does in Massachusetts, pretending to help the disadvantaged while in fact just indoctrinating these people.
NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — A new state partnership with Microsoft will provide 26,000 vouchers for on-line technology training and testing accessed through 37 One Stop Career Centers including New Bedford and Wareham. The Elevate America program provides vouchers for free courses in Microsoft software programs to all Massachusetts residents except state employees and public workforce system employees.
Summary: How the public gets robbed by Monsanto and its shareholders, who are trying to impose their risky seeds monopoly on poor populations
WE HAVE written quite relentlessly about what Bill Gates is doing with Monsanto under the umbrella of the Gates Foundation. To name some of last year’s posts on the subject, we have:
Genetically Modified Soy Linked to Sterility, Infant Mortality in Hamsters
[...]
“This study was just routine,” said Russian biologist Alexey V. Surov, in what could end up as the understatement of this century. Surov and his colleagues set out to discover if Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) soy, grown on 91% of US soybean fields, leads to problems in growth or reproduction. What he discovered may uproot a multi-billion dollar industry.
After feeding hamsters for two years over three generations, those on the GM diet, and especially the group on the maximum GM soy diet, showed devastating results. By the third generation, most GM soy-fed hamsters lost the ability to have babies. They also suffered slower growth, and a high mortality rate among the pups.
Skeptoid, which is a good show, always gets it wrong when it comes to genetically-modified crops (here is just the first example). Brian Dunning is a clever man, but he is one among many GMO apologists who attack straw men by misrepresenting the arguments of those whom they arrogantly call “environmentalists” (it’s the way they say it which makes it insulting). Gates too used this word as an insult last year. Speaking from experience, the two key issues that are rarely addressed are:
Scientific tests which consistently show a causal correlation between GMO and negative health implications
The use of patents, racketeering, baseless legal threats, and monopolisation through pollination to create a form of monopoly abuse that also leads to imperialism and farmers being totally helpless (like computer users in the hands of proprietary software, but where food/life is involved)
Of course there are other aspects to it like the political corruption we have covered before. The short story is that companies like Monsanto engage in all sorts of criminal tactics, which more recently had the company fall under major federal investigations. So the problems are real; those who deny the problems are probably not malicious, they just need to read more and be willing to accept more information (if in doubt, skip to the bottom and watch the video).
“The short story is that companies like Monsanto engage in all sorts of criminal tactics, which more recently had the company fall under major federal investigations.”We cover issues that relate to Monsanto for two main reasons: (1) Monsanto is a prime example of the problems we see in the patent system and (2) Bill Gates seems to be using Monsanto to make himself richer or at least put more power in his hands. To the African and Indian populations, Monsanto should be bad news. It’s all business to them, but they mask it using slogans and euphemisms like “feeding the world” or “ending hunger”. Science and history suggest that given more food, these populations will only reproduce further, thus never ending hunger and only becoming more fragile due to high dependence on ‘enhanced’ farming (which uses up nature’s resources more quickly until they are depleted). With this somewhat obligatory background out of the way, we can hopefully approach the news without our criticism being lost or misunderstood. For those who are willing to take action, there is a new campaign titled “Stop the sneak attack on GMO food labeling!”
Some days ago it came to our attention that Gates may be promoting more GMO in India. We warned about this last year when he publicly did this and the following new article [1, 2], which was published in two Indian publications, says:
Gates praises Indian rice that can withstand flooding
[...]
“At a time of limited resources and large global challenges, this fund will leverage support from around the world to achieve lasting progress against hunger and bolster agricultural productivity and growth,” said US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner.
The short story is this: Gates is publicly appealing for donations from governments (going for taxpayers’ pockets) — donations to be passed to pay for patents of big GMO/pharma which overprices vital food/drugs (while killing off or buying out organic/generics producers).
Gates’ latest step receives publishable bashing from at least one informed writer who chose the headline“US Senate, Bill Gates Give the Planet a Middle Finger for Earth Day” (yes, how ironic).
Today the Senate Foreign Relations committee held a hearing on the Global Food Security Act (S.384), which, as I have documented on this blog before, Monsanto HAS been involved in lobbying on. The bill first came to my attention about a year ago, when the same committee held a very similar hearing about the same bill. In the year since then, I’ve become increasingly knowledgeable and outraged about the issues surrounding global food security. In the meantime, the Obama Administration took the lead on the issue of global food security from the Senate, and USAID is doing quite a bit already (in partnership with the World Bank and private organizations and companies) to really f*ck things up worldwide.
The same article also appears in the Huffington Post (many comments there) and it says:
A broad coalition including Bill Gates, Tim Geithner, the US State Department, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the World Bank, and others have a plan to help the world’s hungry by working in opposition to the recommendations of scientists worldwide, including the findings of a report commissioned by the World Bank and the UN. Ironically, they chose Earth Day to deliver this flaming bag of poop on Africa’s doorstep.
The article was published in response to Gates going into bed with Geithner. Here is the press release and the accompanying fluff from usda.gov. They are helping Monsanto expand to more nations with its patents and experimentation [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. It’s very irresponsible as the “Green Revolution” becomes the “Gates Revolution”, which is in turn a revolution to Monsanto shareholders and Gates’ ego/PR.
Gates gave just a small amount to this initiative ($30 million), but his worshippers at philanthropy.com are kissing the ground he stands on. The Guardianputs the £20 million price tag on the scale of this giveaway.
Gates made the announcement about his contribution at a joint press conference at the Treasury with Tim Geithner, the US treasury secretary, James Flaherty, the Canadian finance minister, Elena Salgado, the Spanish finance minister, Yoon Jeung-Hyun, the South Korean finance minister, and Robert Zoellick, the World Bank president.
These are very small amounts compared to the total. It is intended to get governments (i.e. taxpayers) to put money in companies that Gates loves as he’s an investor in them. Gates did exactly the same thing last month but that applied to big pharmaceutical companies that Gates is a shareholder of. He successfully convinced governments to funnel money into those companies, which means that taxpayers will pay them for patents that are a barrier to helping third-world nations. How utterly selfish.
The United States, Canada, Spain, South Korea and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have agreed to make small holder farmers, especially women, a major thrust of a new multilateral agriculture and food security programme.
More new grants from Gates to Ghana ought to show the increased level of influence which receives no scrutiny or contest (we will cover this in more detail tomorrow when we cite a new book that agrees with this perspective). Watch all the PR (including some from the MSBBC) which shows the failure of today’s press. Journalists are too afraid of getting sued or fired, so they do not investigate these issues; instead they just report what a legion of PR agents tells them. It works well for Monsanto, which has a history of intimidating journalists and getting them fired when they really investigate (so the issues never get reported). █
It’s been about a year since Conficker/Downadup hit in 2009, and although the threat didn’t turn out to be as grave as it had the potential to be, the 6.5 million PCs that remain infected today represent what Symantec Corp. calls a “loaded gun, waiting to be fired.”
It has been almost 2 years and Microsoft’s blunder with Conficker still has these damaging proportions that cost everyone a lot of money. █
Old posts about Conficker (starting with 2008, oldest at at bottom)
As part of a strategy to take advantage of the open government initiatives, Microsoft Monday released a new cloud-based crowdsourcing platform for public officials and candidates running for office.
Microsoft rarely addresses the needs of the public (Microsoft tells the public what it supposedly wants), but here it is pampering politicians, who used to scrutinise Microsoft for its many violations of the law.
The Inquirer is one among several publications which reported that Microsoft was somehow getting past the flights suspension caused by the volcano. To quote:
It seems lots of European employees were visiting Redmond to receive their instructions from the Supreme Vole, Steve Ballmer. While the Euro Voles were recovering in Microsoft’s post-Ballmer recovery room, they got the news that they were stuck in Redmond for the foreseeable future.
But Steve apparently didn’t like the fact that there were all these spare foreign Voles hanging about. They were making the place look untidy, so he ordered his minions to do something.
A potpourri of reports about some of the world’s worst patent trolls and their highly damaging enablers/facilitators, including Microsoft which claims that it “loves Linux” whilst attacking it with patents by proxy
Some of the patent microcosm, or those who profit from the bureaucracy associated with patents, responds to claims made by Techrights (that software patents are a dying breed in the US)
Firms that are profiting from patents (without actually producing or inventing anything) want us to obsess over and think about the rare and few cases (some very old) where judges deny Alice and honour patents on software
The issues associated with the UPC, especially in light of ongoing negotiations of Britain's exit from the EU, remain too big a barrier to any implementation this year (and probably future years too)
India's resilience in the face of incredible pressure to allow software patents is essential for the success of India's growing software industry and more effort is needed to thwart corporate colonisation through patents in India itself
A look at some of the latest spin and the latest shaming courtesy of the patent microcosm, which behaves so poorly that one has to wonder if its objective is to alienate everyone
In defiance of common sense and everything that public officials or academics keep saying (European, Australian, American), China's SIPO and Europe's EPO want us to believe that when it comes to patents it's "the more, the merrier"
The problem associated with Battistelli's strategy of increasing so-called 'production' by granting in haste everything on the shelf is quickly being grasped by patent professionals (outside EPO), not just patent examiners (inside EPO)
Free/Open Source software in the currency and trading world promised to emancipate us from the yoke of banking conglomerates, but a gold rush for software patents threatens to jeopardise any meaningful change or progress
To nobody's surprise, the past half a decade saw accelerating demise in quality of European Patents (EPs) and it is the fault of Battistelli's notorious policies
New trouble for Željko Topić in Strasbourg, making it yet another EPO Vice-President who is on shaky grounds and paving the way to managerial collapse/avalanche at the EPO
The utter lack of participation, involvement or even intervention by German authorities serve to confirm that the government of Germany is very much complicit in the EPO's abuses, by refusing to do anything to stop them
Another example of UPC promotion from within the EPO (a committee dedicated to UPC promotion), in spite of everything we know about opposition to the UPC from small businesses (not the imaginary ones which Team UPC claims to speak 'on behalf' of)
Uploaded by SUEPO earlier today was the above video, which shows how last year's party (actually 2015) was spoiled for Battistelli by the French State Secretary for Digital Economy, Axelle Lemaire, echoing the French government's concern about union busting etc. at the EPO (only to be rudely censored by Battistelli's 'media partner')
In violation of international labour laws, Team Battistelli marches on and engages in a union-busting race against the clock, relying on immunity to keep this gravy train rolling before an inevitable crash
A new year's reminder that the EPO has only one legitimate union, the Staff Union of the EPO (SUEPO), whereas FFPE-EPO serves virtually no purpose other than to attack SUEPO, more so after signing a deal with the devil (Battistelli)
Content is available under CC-BY-SA