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03.24.13

Microsoft Price Gouging Allegations in Australia, Parliament Grilling Takes Place

Posted in Australia, Europe, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 9:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Rusty nails

Summary: A case of business abuse in the former British colony made relevant now that the UK ponders dumping Microsoft

In the UK, FOSS proponents celebrate a government interim decision to favour FOSS wherever possible. Microsoft likes to bribe, so we must keep a close eye on what’s happening. Meanwhile, says this report from the British press, Microsoft is under fire in Australia, a debt-saddled nation, for price gouging in government:

Adobe and Microsoft’s Australia’s managing directors have both struggled to answer hours of tough questions from Australia’s Parliamentary inquiry into IT pricing.

Apple’s Tony King was the first witness to front members of parliament for ninety minutes today of MPs today, and acquitted himself well.

Every morning on the radio I hear about our government’s plan to cut ‘spendings’ on benefits for the poor. Rarely is it suggested that Microsoft contracts get dropped and Britain made dependent only on itself for software. █

SUSE in Microsoft’s Fog Computing

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, OpenSUSE, Red Hat at 9:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Love

Summary: A new OpenSUSE is out and it is in Microsoft’s Azure lock-in, helping Microsoft tax GNU/Linux while controlling it entirely

The Microsoft-funded SUSE gets integrated with Microsoft Azure following a lot of Azure openwashing. The VAR Guy says this may be part of a bigger battle, fought between Linux and Ballnux (Ballmer-taxed Linux). To quote his new article:

Red Hat and SUSE are shifting their old Linux battle to a new market: Big Data. Both open source companies made major Big Data statements this week, but they are attacking the market using completely different strategies. Here’s what channel partners need to know.

Techrights ignored the release of OpenSUSE this month. It ought to be remembered that the role of SUSE as a whole, now financially tied to Microsoft, is to normalise Microsoft ‘Linux tax’. This site was founded to oppose exactly that. █

03.23.13

Links 23/3/2013: Google and Samsung Android Smartwatches Coming

Posted in News Roundup at 12:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux or GNU/Linux: Is the Distinction Worth Preserving?

    I also realize that it’s technically more accurate to call it GNU/Linux.

  • Desktop

    • GNU/Linux in Venezuela

      GNU/Linux share according to Statcounter has been hovering around a few percent for a long time but in 2012 it took off with 40% increase in share in one year. It’s probably too soon to be some effect of the death of Chavez so it’s likely a result of something his government set in motion.

    • Google’s Already Working On Haswell Chromebooks

      Intel hasn’t yet even released their Haswell processors to the general public for use within notebooks, ultrabooks, and desktops, but Google engineers are already hard at work on prepping Haswell Chromebooks.

  • Server

    • The Best Servers for Linux in 2013

      Linux may be reaching new heights every day in desktop and mobile computing, but if there’s any domain in which its might has long been undisputed, it’s servers.

      To wit: Linux is now used to run about a third of all websites, W3Techs reports. Linux servers in general now represent 20.4 percent of all server revenue, according to IDC. Then, of course, there’s supercomputing, in which it claims a full 94 percent of the world’s Top 500.

      There are numerous excellent Linux distributions available for use on servers, of course, and their relative merits are frequently debated here on Linux.com and beyond. What’s less commonly seen, however, is a discussion of hardware.

      Which of the many servers on the market are best for Linux? That, like so many such “best of” comparisons, lies largely in the eye of the beholder. Nevertheless, there have been a number of exciting new advances over the past year that bring a few particular vendors and machines to the fore. Here are the ones we think look best in 2013.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux Standard Base: Misnomer and Misconception

      By the same token, there is a corresponding perceived risk that inconsistencies and incompatibilities may arise born of the need to make changes driven by special interests and the need to make functional improvements. There is also in addition to natural variation an increased possibility for introduction of unintended errors, the result of neglect of implied standards of one kind or another that should be adhered to, but go unnoticed until after production general release.

    • PCI-SSD maker Fusion-io acquires Linux SCST developer ID7

      Fusion-io has announced that it has acquired the UK-based storage technology company ID7, the leading developer of the open source SCSI Target Subsystem (SCST) for Linux. Fusion-io specialises in acceleration technology including high performance and capacity PCIe SSD cards and is also known for employing Steve Wozniak as Chief Scientist. It supplies companies such as Facebook, Apple and HP with its cache technology, though it did note in its 2012 Annual Report that its top ten customers were responsible for 91% of its $359 million revenue and is therefore working to widen its customer base.

    • Graphics Stack

      • The X.Org Foundation Is Undecided About Mir

        The X.Org Foundation hasn’t firmly decided on their position of Canonical’s Mir Display Server versus Wayland.

        The meeting logs for an X.Org Foundation Board of Directors’ IRC meeting from earlier this month have finally been published to the X.Org Wiki.

      • Lima Driver Makes Progress With Shaders

        The open-source Lima driver project that has been working on a reverse-engineered ARM Mali Linux graphics driver is still advancing.

      • Differences Between X.Org, Wayland & Mir

        Canonical’s Christopher Halse Rogers has blogged some more about their views on the Mir Display Server and its design relative to X11/X.Org and Wayland.

        Rogers has already written a lot about Mir in Canonical’s attempt to promote the Wayland alternative and their views for designing it rather than using Wayland or forking it.

      • New VA-API Library Supports Wayland 1.0 Protocol

        VA-API, the video acceleration API preferred by Intel and implemented by their open-source Linux graphics driver, now works with the stable Wayland 1.0 series. There was already VA-API Wayland support since last year to expose this hardware-accelerated video decode/encode process on the X.Org successor while now it’s finally been updated to work with the stable 1.0 protocol.

      • Mesa 9.1.1 release
      • Intel 2.21.5 Driver Brings Fixes For Haswell, GLAMOR

        The xf86-video-intel 2.21.5 DDX driver was released this morning with a handful of fixes by Chris Wilson for the Intel X.Org driver.

        The prominent change warranting the xf86-video-intel 2.21.5 release addresses a crashing problem for Intel’s forthcoming “Haswell” hardware. “Haswell reintroduces a command to load the scanline window from the command stream and so requires its own specialised wait-for-vsync routine – failure to do so was then causing hangs when trying to do tearfree video or use a compositor.”

      • QXL Gallium3D Wrapper Driver Is Brought Up
      • SDDM Display Manager Sees Its First Release

        Mentioned a few times in recent months on Phoronix has been SDDM, a lightweight Qt/QML-based display manager. The good news now is that the Simple Desktop Display Manager has seen its first official release.

      • The State Of OpenGL 3/4 Support In Mesa/Gallium3D
      • PRIME Sharing Comes To GLAMOR

        Michel Dänzer of AMD has provided a patch so that PRIME multi-GPU sharing will work with the GLAMOR 2D acceleration architecture, as needed for the Radeon HD 7000 series support and optionally for other generations of AMD and Intel GPUs.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • like an avalanche coming down the mountain

        When looking over the KDE landscape this week I was felt a similar Spring feeling in the air. There are new maintainers for Qt/KDE integration of PolicyKit and KMix. Sebas updated us recently on the huge progress being made for Plasma Workspaces 2, featuring a working shell on top of libplasma2 and QtQuick2. This itself is just a small part of the larger Frameworks 5 effort, and that is receiving more attention such as the recent sprint in Spain that Albert wrote about. Krita continues to amaze, Ingo has made a breakthrough in taming our web presence continuity and there is even work happening on Akregrator!

      • Plasma Media Center, aka KDE TV, out now

        The Plasma Media Center, built on KDE, offers a “rich experience” in its first release as a competitor to many other open source HTPC offerings

      • KDE Releases Plasma Media Center 1.0
      • QtWayland Shows Signs Of Progress, Plans Features

        A status update has been issued on QtWayland, which allows Qt applications to run on Wayland, and details about what’s being planned for Wayland with Qt 5.2 has been shared.

      • Qt Creator 2.7 Released With Improved C++11

        Version 2.7 of the Qt Creator integrated development environment has been released. There’s better support for BlackBerry development, improved C++11 language handling, and much more.

        Qt Creator 2.7.0 offers a wealth of C++11 improvements, QML support was improved for Qt Quick 2 development, there’s better BlackBerry support, experimental support for the QBS build tool, Android enhancements, and much more.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Distributions

    • Have an older PC? Try the new Ubuntu Linux-based LXLE

      For users of Microsoft Windows, frequent hardware upgrades tend to be a fact of life in order to keep each new iteration of the resources-hungry operating system running smoothly.

    • Favorite Distributions for Spring 2013

      Folks sure do enjoy trying to figure out which is most popular or the favorite Linux distribution. For years it was Ubuntu and lately, it’s been Mint. Mageia shows second at Distrowatch.com’s Page Hit Ranking, but others are desputing their ranking reflects real usage. A new Website has begun to try and tract actual popularity, but nothing is as fun me as a poll. Yes, it’s time once again for Your Favorite Distributions, Spring 2013 edition.

    • Clonezilla vs. FOG: The clone wars

      Computer cloning, also referred to as ghosting or imaging, involves setting up the operating system, drivers, software, and data on one computer, then automatically replicating the same setup on other computers. Clonezilla Server Edition and FOG are the most popular open source cloning systems. While both do similar jobs – clone and restore machines over the network using tools and services such as partimage, tftp, and PXE – they go about it very differently. Which is right for you depends on your network’s configuration and composition.

    • Screenshots

    • Gentoo Family

      • Sabayon 11 Review – Usability Upgrades
      • Sabayon 11 Xfce – Still no love for me

        Perhaps the Sabayon dev team did not invest sufficient resources to make the Xfce version shine just as well as their mainstream edition. However, somehow, I doubt it. Given my past experience, the overall behavior and feel appear to be a part of a longer trend. For some reason, Sabayon is losing its charm, and this version is no exception.

        Sabayon 11 is fairly fast, robust, relatively free of errors, and comes with a much improved package manager. But then, it’s also buggy, not really attractive, totes a meager app selection, and has a few really nasty problems, like Samba, multimedia and printing. The friendly tone is gone, and you’re facing a rather somber, unforgiving Gentoo distro that does not favor noobs. If you must then please do, but there are many simpler, more attractive alternatives. Xfce wise, Xubuntu leads the way, by far. And to sum it all up nicely, Sabayon 11 deserves around 6/10. And I want that Italian passion back.

    • Arch Family

      • Arch Linux Enables Wayland GTK+

        For those Arch Linux users looking to play with Wayland/Weston, the GTK+ package available within the distribution now enables support for the Wayland back-end.

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Adding real-time to Linux with Preempt-RT

      Linux.com has published a short Q&A with Steven Rostedt, kernel developer at Red Hat and maintainer of the stable Linux real-time patch. Rostedt discusses issues such as “hard” vs “soft” real-time, what the Preempt-RT patch can and can’t do, and how to get started using it.

    • $250 ARM Linux project kit includes LCD

      Gumstix shocked the embed-o-sphere today by unveiling a new board-level computer that’s neither the shape nor size of a gum stick. The “Pepper” board is based on a 720MHz TI Sitara ARM processor and is supplied in a bundle that includes a Yocto-built Linux filesystem on microSD, a 4.5-inch touchscreen LCD, and a DC power supply.

    • Samsung VP: We are building a smart watch
    • Google’s Android unit reportedly building a smartwatch
    • ARM CEO retires, leaves mobile revolution to Simon Segars
    • Intro to Real-Time Linux for Embedded Developers

      When embedded projects call for for a real-time operating system, Linux developers often turn to PREEMPT-RT, the real-time kernel patch, to get it done.

      “The PREEMPT_RT patch (aka the -rt patch or RT patch) makes Linux into a real-time system,” said Steven Rostedt, a Linux kernel developer at Red Hat and maintainer of the stable version of the real-time Linux kernel patch.

      The thing is, in most cases real-time requirements on embedded projects can be met without turning to a real-time operating system, he said via email. To developers, a real-time system “does what you expect it to do when you expect it to do it.” That’s all.

    • Phones

      • big.LITTLE: coming soon to a smartphone near you

        In this guest post, David Laing, a senior analyst at VDC Research, examines the emergence of ARM’s “big.LITTLE” processor architecture, whereby a single chip integrates multiple high-performance CPU cores along with a power-efficient core, enabling it to deliver greater performance at lower power-points than before.

      • Linux-powered CD player attempts audio perfection

        Parasound, a purveyor of fanatically high-end consumer audio equipment, has introduced a CD player that’s controlled by an internal Mini-ITX computer running embedded Linux. Using a CD-ROM drive for playing CDs, the “Halo CD 1″ sucks in the CD’s contents at 4x normal speed, giving its CPU time to detect and eliminate disc errors before outputting near-perfect audio.

      • Ballnux

      • Android

        • Google’s Schmidt: Android, Chrome Won’t Be Combined

          As for Android and Chrome, it’s a stretch even to call them birds of the same feather, so Schmidt clearly has a point. Chrome wants to makes its bones based on web applications in the cloud while Android’s cloth is cut from native apps installed in the mobile device. But the lines between the two will be blurred more, as evidenced by Google’s Chromebook Pixel, which features touch-screen technology.

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Mass. U.S. Attorney Won’t Appeal Tewksbury Motel Ruling

    “A handful of people have done some drug stuff over the years and they try to use that to steal my property without ever accusing me of a single thing,” he said.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • North Dakota Inching Ever Closer to Being First State to Enact Personhood Abortion Law

      The North Dakota House passed a bill this afternoon that would define life as beginning at conception, effectively moving one step closer to banning all abortion in the state without exception for rape or incest. Approved by the state Senate last month, the bill will now go to voters as a ballot initiative. This latest restrictive measure comes only a week after North Dakota legislators approved bills that would ban abortion beyond six weeks into pregnancy and ban abortion in the case of genetic abnormality, like Downs Syndrome.

    • Internet innovations in India will come from Indians solving local issues: Eric Schmidt

      Google boss Eric Schmidt is currently in India, and while speaking on the nature of Internet in the country, Schmidt stated that it is time now that India decided what kind of Internet it wants – an advantageous open Internet or a regressive closed o

  • Security

  • Finance

    • Cyprus Protesters and Bank Employees Clash With Police; Europe and Russia Reject Bailout

      Local news in Cyprus is reporting an escalation in the protests that have begun in the wake of attempts by EU chiefs to confiscate the savings of depositors. The news of possible bank closures has enraged the public. It appears that in order to keep things under control, the Central Bank is discussing a possible bank merger rather than a full shut down.

    • Moyers & Company Part II

      Richard Wolff’s smart, blunt talk about the crisis of capitalism on his first Moyers & Company appearance was so compelling and provocative, we asked him to return. This time, the economics expert answers questions sent in by our viewers, diving further into economic inequality, the limitations of industry regulation, and the widening gap between a booming stock market and a population that increasingly lives in pove

    • Jobcentre sanctions: ‘Your money is stopped, you go into freefall’ – video
    • MasterCard stings PayPal with payment fee hike

      PayPal, Google Wallet and other online payment systems face higher transaction fees from MasterCard in retaliation for their refusal to share data on what people are spending. Visa is likely to follow suit.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Censorship

    • In India, Google’s Eric Schmidt Explains Why He Went to North Korea

      After first making a joke about playing basketball—a reference to the strange visit by Dennis Rodman a few weeks after Schmidt’s trip—the Google executive explained he went to Pyongyang on a mission to spread the good news about the power of the Internet. North Korea “is the last really closed country in the world,” he said. “This is a country that has suffered from lack of information. The Internet was built for everyone, including North Koreans. The quickest way to get economic growth in North Korea is to open up the Internet. I did my best to tell them this.”

    • Press regulation: newspapers bridle at ‘historic’ deal

      Protests from industry as David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband agree to create powerful regulator in late-night talks

    • U.K. to Create New Press Regulator

  • Privacy

    • Google’s Wi-Fi Snooping Settlement is Really, Really Awful

      The recent settlement [PDF] between 38 states and Google over the company’s Wi-Fi snooping fiasco sure is puzzling. While the settlement, called an Assurance of Voluntary Compliance, does little to punish Google for accidentally slurping up massive amounts of content from wireless networks using its roaming Street View vehicles, it does require the company to carry out a gratuitous and poorly thought out song and dance.

    • Cops: U.S. law should require logs of your text messages

      Silicon Valley firms and privacy groups want Congress to update a 1986-era electronic privacy law. But if a law enforcement idea set to be presented today gets attached, support for the popular proposal would erode.

  • Civil Rights

    • Inquest to open into death of prisoner convicted of stealing gingerbread man

      Foster family say courts should have considered James Best’s history of mental and physical problems

    • Human rights must be something we own

      Right now, in writing this, I am exercising my freedom of speech, which is a sovereign right, I own it. I can be silenced, either through being censored or physically silenced, but that silencing always requires an exercise of power, it cannot be removed in any other way or can it? What if I have learned to fear to speak out? Therein lies what I think is the problem of our times. We now live in a world where we have been coerced into fearing consequences such that we have learnt to silence ourselves. We haven’t lost the ability to speak out, but our will and determination has been eroded to such an extent that we have given up the right of our own volition, albeit through insidious coercion.

      With the widespread use of CCTV cameras, something that I find an affront to my human dignity, we’ve been fed the line, ‘If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about’. Actually I think we have a great deal to worry about in which the good they might be considered to do does not outweigh the greater harm they give rise to. Being a watched society is an insidious evil in which we are not party to those who make the rules nor those who watch and by whom we are observed and who watch us with suspicion. I feel it daily, in a very personal way which I can in no way put down to an overblown sense of paranoia.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

  • DRM

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Monsanto’s Death Patents

      Despite this unfortunate posture, the case does provide another opportunity for critical inquiry regarding the unprecedented and perverse level of control Monsanto is asserting over the food supply. It is estimated that 90 percent of the soybeans in the U.S. are genetically modified and thus subject to potential patents. A random handful of soybeans procured anywhere is likely to contain at least some Monsanto-altered beans. Such a near-monopoly effectively gives Monsanto the right to control access to a staple food item that is found in a wide range of consumer products.

    • Trademarks

    • Copyrights

      • The Pirate Bay Is A Trailblazer In Technical Resilience
      • Prenda Law Continues To Dismiss Lawsuits
      • Lawyer Suggests That Prenda Law May Have Only ‘Released’ Movies It Sued Over As A Honeypot For Lawsuits

        Another day, another story having to with Prenda Law (the hits just keep on coming). Found via FightCopyrightTrolls, we discover some research done by lawyer Graham Syfert, who has taken on Prenda/John Steele in a number of cases, including the infamous Florida case that was tossed out for fraud on the court following an Abbott & Costello-worthy transcript involving John Steele, Mark Lutz, and a variety of guest appearances from others on Team Prenda (despite Prenda claiming to both have nothing to do with the case… and with hiring the lawyers for the case, who were all trying to get off the case).

      • Did Prenda try to intimidate ID theft victim into dropping charges?

        After a Minnesota man named Alan Cooper accused Prenda Law of stealing his identity, the porn trolling firm responded with a defamation lawsuit. The lawsuit targeted Cooper, his attorney Paul Godfread, and numerous anonymous Internet commenters. On Thursday, Cooper and Godfread filed a 24-page response alleging that Prenda’s lawsuit amounts to an illegal SLAPP suit under Minnesota law, that Prenda can’t prove any of the allegedly defamatory statements are actually false, and that Prenda had invaded Cooper’s privacy by stealing his signature.

      • U.S. Congressmen Told About ‘Next Great Copyright Act’ at Hearing

        Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante puts a foot forward towards embracing changes to the music marketplace, cable and satellite transmissions, “bold adjustments” to the copyright term and more.

      • AP v. Meltwater: Disappointing Ruling for News Search

        A federal district judge in New York City issued a troubling ruling today holding that an electronic news clipping service infringed copyright when it republished excerpts of news stories in search results for its clients seeking news coverage based on particular keywords.

      • WOMAN WHO LOST DOWNLOADING CASE SAYS SHE CAN’T PAY

        A Minnesota woman at the center of a long-running court fight over the unauthorized downloading of copyrighted music said there’s still no way she can pay record companies the $222,000 judgment she owes after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear her appeal Monday.

      • Opinion analysis: Justices reject publisher’s claims in gray-market copyright case

        The Court at last seems to have reached a consensus on a seemingly intractable problem of copyright law: whether a U.S. copyright holder can prevent the importation of “gray-market” products manufactured for overseas markets. When the Court tried to address this question two Terms ago – in Costco Wholesale Corp. v. Omega, S.A. – the Court was equally divided (with Justice Kagan recused). However, in today’s opinion in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Justice Breyer, writing for a strong majority of six, emphatically rejected the publisher’s control over the importation of such products.

      • Righthaven Copyrights ‘Sold’ Back To Stephens Media For $80k To Pay Legal Fees

        Sure, sure, this year we’ve all moved on to the crazy stories about the Charles Carreons and Prenda Laws of the world, but let’s not forget that last year there was just as much focus on Righthaven’s copyright trolling operation collapsing after judges realized that it was all effectively a sham in which the real copyright holder (mainly newspaper publisher Stephens Media) had not really sold off its copyrights to Righthaven, meaning that Righthaven had no actual standing to sue. Technically, Stephens Media tried to give the copyright to Righthaven, but since it retained all of the listed rights under copyright law, it was clearly not an actual transfer. In one of those cases, concerning a guy named Wayne Hoehn, who fought back against a Righthaven lawsuit filed against him, Hoehn’s lawyer, Marc Randazza fought for and won a request for legal fees. Righthaven stalled and complained and bullied, but the court told Righthaven to pay up.

      • Appeals Court Hands Veoh Another Win in Important Copyright Ruling

        The Ninth Circuit rejects Universal Music Group’s challenges on why the video-sharing site didn’t qualify for safe harbor from copyright claims.

      • Documentary Filmmaker Sues AP for Stealing Footage
      • UMG Loses Round Two in Veoh Copyright Case

        The video-sharing website Veoh is not liable for any copyright infringing material posted by its users, the 9th Circuit ruled Thursday for a second time.

      • Surprise: Register Of Copyrights Expected To Call For Reduction In Copyright Term

03.22.13

Links 22/3/2013: Chinese Government Chooses GNU/Linux

Posted in News Roundup at 8:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • M$ Bars Itself From New Industry

  • Science

    • Celebrated Scientist Renounces National Academy and War

      Last month, University of Chicago anthropologist Marshall Sahlins resigned from the National Academy of Sciences to protest the election to the group of Napoleon Chagnon, a peer whose specious arguments in favor of a natural human tendency toward violence have helped militarize the discipline and legitimize wars of aggression.

    • CHINA IS ENGINEERING GENIUS BABIES

      It’s not exactly news that China is setting itself up as a new global superpower, is it? While Western civilization chokes on its own gluttony like a latter-day Marlon Brando, China continues to buy up American debt and lock away the world’s natural resources. But now, not content to simply laugh and make jerk-off signs as they pass us on the geopolitical highway, they’ve also developed a state-endorsed genetic-engineering project.

  • Security

    • United States v. Auernheimer, and Why I Am Representing Auernheimer Pro Bono on Appeal Before the Third Circuit

      On Monday, Andrew Auernheimer was sentenced to serve 41 months in prison for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Auernheimer’s case has received a lot of press attention, and I think that attention is merited: I think the case against Auernheimer is deeply flawed, and that the principles the case raises are critically important for civil liberties online. For that reason, I have agreed to represent Auernheimer pro bono in his appeal before the Third Circuit. (I will be joined by the trial counsel Tor Ekeland and his colleagues Nace Naumoski and Mark Jaffe, together with Marcia Hofmann and Hanni Fakhoury of EFF.) In this post, I want to explain some of the issues in play in this case that I think make it so important.

    • Yet Another Reason Not To Use That Other OS

      Some people figure they must have that other OS on their PC even if they have a mess of servers. There’s evidence of malware for that other OS that targets GNU/Linux machines and wipes them…
      “The dropper for Trojan.Jokra contains a module for wiping remote Linux machines. We do not normally see components that work on multiple operating systems, so it is interesting to discover that the attackers included a component to wipe Linux machines inside a Windows threat.”

    • A Letter to Paul Wolfowitz

      Twenty years ago, you became dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and hired me as a minor staff functionary. I never thanked you properly. I needed that job. Included in the benefits package was the chance to hobnob with luminaries who gathered at SAIS every few weeks to join Zbigniew Brzezinski for an off-the-record discussion of foreign policy. From five years of listening to these insiders pontificate, I drew one conclusion: people said to be smart — the ones with fancy résumés who get their op-eds published in the New York Times and appear on TV — really aren’t. They excel mostly in recycling bromides. When it came to sustenance, the sandwiches were superior to the chitchat.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Washington Post Prints Iraq Lies, 2013 Edition
    • Statutes of Limitations Are Expiring on Some Bush Crimes
    • Time’s Rethink on Drones

      Crowley argues that “in political terms, it’s getting hard to tell the difference” between Obama and Dick Cheney. In the last few months, “his drone war has turned from asset to headache,” thanks to dogged criticism from human rights groups, international lawyers and a few politicians, including Republican Sen. Rand Paul.

      Crowley writes that the program “is increasingly straining against its legal authority” and that “a big practical problem with the drone war is that the rest of the world hates it.” He runs through various ideas that could introduce accountability or new legal mechanisms to constrain or refine the program–or “it might seem easier to simply wind down the drone war entirely.”

    • Ten Years After the Invasion of Iraq, Are We Any Closer to Peace?
    • Pepper Spray Torture–in the USA

      Amazing story today out of Maine, where the Portland daily paper has published an account of a prisoner being pepper-sprayed by prison staffers in June 2012–despite already being restrained in a chair. And: They have the two-hour video to prove it. And: They have posted the entire video on their site. Now the law wants to find out how they got the leak

    • Maine officials seeking pepper-spray video leak

      The Maine Department of Corrections is investigating to determine how the press obtained video and documents about a captain’s treatment of an inmate last year.

      [...]

      James Mackie, spokesman for the union that represents corrections officers, said he is not surprised that the department is investigating.

      “The number of investigations since (Ponte) has taken over have just increased exponentially,” he said.

      Mackie said he was surprised that the incident, which happened on June 10, took so long to come to light. Welch was disciplined in August and September.

      “We were all aware of the issue at MCC. There was no way it was going to be kept secret,” Mackie said.

      Breton said she does not know whether investigations have increased under Ponte.

      The newspaper’s story and the accompanying video offered a rare glimpse inside the prison and into a confrontation between officers and a medicated, mentally ill inmate.

      Paul Schlosser had received hospital treatment for a gouge he inflicted on his left arm, but had repeatedly removed the dressing in an effort to get medication and a book to distract him.

      Inmates who hurt themselves to manipulate staff are among the most difficult to deal with, Ponte said last week.

    • DYING VET’S ‘FUCK YOU’ LETTER TO GEORGE BUSH & DICK CHENEY NEEDS TO BE READ BY EVERY AMERICAN

      I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

    • RepeatingHistory.org

      The NDAA and the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans

    • The New York Times and “Liberal Media” Helped Sell the Iraq War

      Michael Ratner: The NYT and other “liberal” commentators led the way in selling the WMD myth and justified the Iraq war; their mea culpas ring hollow.

    • CIA ‘to lose control of drone programme to Pentagon’

      John Brennan, the new CIA director and architect of Mr Obama’s expanded “targeted killing” campaign, is believed to be preparing to transfer more control of the programme to the Pentagon.

    • Obama rumored to shift CIA drone program to military
    • Little Will Change If the Military Takes Over CIA’s Drone Strikes
    • CIA Chief Tech Officer: Big Data Is The Future And We Own It
    • CIA’s Tech Head on Your Data: ‘We Try To Collect Everything And Hang On To It Forever’
    • CIA CTO: We want your data and will keep it forever
    • CIA and FBI Counter-Terrorism Officials: Cheney Lied About 9/11 Hijacker

      Mark Rossini, was then an FBI counter-terrorism agent detailed to the CIA. He was assigned the task of evaluating a Czech intelligence report that Mohammed Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker, had met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague before the attack on the World Trade Towers.

    • Three CIA officials declared Pos

      The three CIA officials, Assistant Sub-Inspector Shakeel Ahmed Butt, Constables Muhammad Ahsan and Mahboob Elahi, are accused of custodial killing of a father of seven, Niamat, by third degree torture.

    • Towards the Globalization of CIA Torture and Rendition

      There is enormous diversity among the countries involved. They include Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt, Pakistan, Syria and Jordan, which carried out the torture on suspects that the CIA rendered to them. Poland, Lithuania, Romania and Thailand hosted secret prisons operated by the CIA where detainees could be held clandestinely and have interrogations or torture conducted directly by American intelligence operatives.

      European nations such as Macedonia, Georgia, and Sweden detained and delivered suspects to the CIA to be tortured. Larger countries such as Britain or Germany conducted some of the interrogations themselves while smaller countries such as Iceland, Denmark, Belgium, or Greece provided intelligence, logistical support, use of airspace, etc.

    • US drones kill four in Pakistan: officials

      US drones fired two missiles at a vehicle in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt Thursday, killing four militants, security officials said.

    • Rep. Mike Rogers: No Americans are on drone ‘kill list’

      Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) told the National Journal on Wednesday that no Americans were currently on President Barack Obama’s so-called “kill list.”

      Rogers said as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee he reviews every drone strike on a suspected terrorist after it has been conducted. Though no Americans are currently being targeted overseas, the Republican congressmen described how that situation could change.

    • 400 civilians killed by US drones in Pakistan

      In evidence to Ben Emmerson QC, UN special rapporteur on counter-terrorism, the Foreign Ministry has said that the US drones have killed at least 2,200 people in the country, including at least 400 civilians. This is close to the bureau’s low range estimate of 411.

    • Drone Murder: War Crime or Superpower perogative
    • U.S. policy of death by drones is cloaked in subterfuge (Commentary)
    • U.S. drone policy killing hundreds of innocents, Obama says it’s okay

  • Cablegate

    • Wikileaks Was Just a Preview: We’re Headed for an Even Bigger Showdown Over Secrets

      I’ll do a full review in a few months, when We Steal Secrets comes out, but I bring it up now because the whole issue of secrets and how we keep them is increasingly in the news, to the point where I think we’re headed for a major confrontation between the government and the public over the issue, one bigger in scale than even the Wikileaks episode.

      We’ve seen the battle lines forming for years now. It’s increasingly clear that governments, major corporations, banks, universities and other such bodies view the defense of their secrets as a desperate matter of institutional survival, so much so that the state has gone to extraordinary lengths to punish and/or threaten to punish anyone who so much as tiptoes across the informational line.

      This is true not only in the case of Wikileaks – and especially the real subject of Gibney’s film, Private Bradley Manning, who in an incredible act of institutional vengeance is being charged with aiding the enemy (among other crimes) and could, theoretically, receive a death sentence.

    • NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake: All Doubts Dispelled, Bradley Manning’s a Whistleblower
    • Throwing Manning to the Wolves

      In media mythology, the years from the mid-’60s to the mid-’70s were the classical age, a heroic time of moral clarity.

      Mainstream journalism marinated in adversarialism. Little Southern newspapers infuriated their own readers by staring down segregation. Foreign correspondents forced upon an unwilling public the realities of a brutal war. Network news ignored official disdain and showed the bottomless suffering the war inflicted on the innocents it was supposed to save. With the Pentagon Papers, newspapers defied secrecy rules to expose government lies. With Watergate, reporters forced out a corrupt president.

    • Update 3/20/13: Rolling Stone magazine features major Bradley Manning story
    • WikiLeaks: Disappearances, Nishantha Gajanayake And Exclusive Photographs
    • Manning (WikiLeaks) ‘cablegate’ Trial reveals U.S. brutality in anti-terror war

      That’s what the US Marine Bradley Manning said on Thursday, March 01 in military court at Fort Meade, Maryland. He pled guilty to unauthorized possession of certain information, to willfully communicating that information to an unauthorized person, WikiLeaks, and that the conduct was “service discrediting” or prejudicial to the good order and discipline of the military.

  • Finance

    • Europe: Protests hit austerity

      When European Union leaders gathered at their economic summit meeting in Brussels, they were confronted by thousands of protesters who denounced them and their austerity policies. Working people and labor union representatives from all over Europe demonstrated at the European Commission and Council headquarters on March 14.

      At least 10,000 demonstrators denounced the “Troika” — the International Mone tary Fund, European Central Bank and European Commission — which has imposed draconian cuts in jobs, wages, benefits and public services in several southern eurozone countries as conditions for loans. Protesters demanded that the Troika stop all austerity plans, provide jobs and end the crises their policies have created.

    • US Begins Regulating BitCoin, Will Apply “Money Laundering” Rules To Virtual Transactions

      Last November, in an act of sheer monetary desperation, the ECB issued an exhaustive, and quite ridiculous, pamphlet titled “Virtual Currency Schemes” in which it mocked and warned about the “ponziness” of such electronic currencies as BitCoin. Why a central bank would stoop so “low” to even acknowledge what no “self-respecting” (sic) PhD-clad economist would even discuss, drunk and slurring, at cocktail parties, remains a mystery to this day. However, that it did so over fears the official artificial currency of the insolvent continent, the EUR, may be becoming even more “ponzi” than the BitCoins the ECB was warning about, was clear to everyone involved who saw right through the cheap propaganda attempt. Feel free to ask any Cypriot if they would now rather have their money in locked up Euros, or in “ponzi” yet freely transferable, unregulated BitCoins.

    • Is Cyprus in Our Future?

      The economic news this week highlights what happens when governments are unable to confront the root cause of the financial collapse – the risky speculation and securities fraud of the big banks. What happens? They blame the people, cut their benefits, tax their savings and demand they work harder for less money.

    • Cyprus – Is this the next phase in austerity – naked theft?
    • The Miracle Product That Cures Degenerative Entitlement Syndrome!

      During last year’s presidential election, Dr. Willard M. Romney diagnosed a previously unrecognized epidemic illness that is eating away at the moral foundations of our country. Romney was the first medical scientist to grasp that 47% of our citizens have been transformed into an army of zombie parasites now known to the experts as “moochers.” The moochers have been infected with DES, Degenerative Entitlement Syndrome, a 21st century plague whose victims live lives solely devoted to sucking funds from the bank accounts of decent people. Not one to sit idly by while an invasive undead horde saps and impurifies our precious bodily fluids, Dr. Romney attempted to sound the national alarm about the moocher scourge. But alas, he was ahead of his time. The country was not yet ready to hear his bracing but prescient DES warning.

      Moochers might appear normal, but don’t be fooled by appearances! While these bloodsuckers are seemingly busy changing bedpans, waxing the floor at your office, serving up stacks of pancakes at Denny’s and standing in long lines to beg abjectly for “jobs’, they are all the while draining our hard-won and well-merited wealth. A tell-tale symptom of DES is that while moochers pay all kinds of sales taxes, payroll taxes and government fees just like the rest of us, they don’t pay any income taxes. Imagine! No income taxes! The DES sufferer will tell you that the absence of income tax obligations is somehow related to the moocher’s extreme deficiency in actual income. A likely story!

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • How to Read Stories About Israel in the NY Times (Hint: Very Carefully)

      So is the Times, in its own way, telling us not to trust the officials speaking on the record? That’s certainly one way to read the piece.

      Elsewhere in the paper we learn that part of Barack Obama’s visit to Israel includes a look at the country’s “Iron Dome” missile defense system, which is funded by the U.S. government.

    • Accidental Email Exposes Trolls of Governing Party in Spain
    • Machine Guns on the Vegas Strip? In Nevada, ALEC/NRA Bill Introduced to Stop Cities from Banning Machine Guns

      A Nevada politician has introduced a bill that would bar the city of Las Vegas from enacting tougher gun laws than the state as a whole, including language that would specifically protect “machine guns” from being barred on the Las Vegas strip if the state did not bar machine guns across the state. At the last known meeting of the “Public Safety and Elections Task Force” of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a lobbyist for the National Rifle Association proposed amendments to the ALEC “Consistency in Firearms Regulation Act” to add “machine guns” to ALEC’s model bill prohibiting local governments from adopting different rules for guns and ammo than a state has as a whole. On March 18, a Nevada state legislator introduced a bill in the statehouse that is almost a word-for-word copy from that ALEC bill, which ALEC has since attempted to distance itself from while doing nothing to stop or repeal such bills.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and The National Security State
    • CIA’s Gus Hunt On Big Data: We ‘Try To Collect Everything And Hang On To It Forever’

      The CIA’s chief technology officer outlined the agency’s endless appetite for data in a far-ranging speech on Wednesday.

      Speaking before a crowd of tech geeks at GigaOM’s Structure:Data conference in New York City, CTO Ira “Gus” Hunt said that the world is increasingly awash in information from text messages, tweets, and videos — and that the agency wants all of it.

      “The value of any piece of information is only known when you can connect it with something else that arrives at a future point in time,” Hunt said. “Since you can’t connect dots you don’t have, it drives us into a mode of, we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang on to it forever.”

    • Formerly Top Secret NSA Cryptologs From 1974-1997
    • Venezuela: ‘Destabilizing’ Twitter User Ortega Released

      UPDATE: Lourdes Alicia Ortega Perez, the Venezuelan woman who was arrested last week after mocking Hugo Chavez on Twitter, was released from police custody on March 16. Ortega was taken to court on charges of spreading false information and committing fraud. She has since been granted her freedom [es], but will be required to appear before the court every 30 days.

    • The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Is Asking Questions About Guantánamo the US Cannot Answer

      Recent accounts from Guantánamo paint a more chilling picture still: since February 6, 2013, the prisoners have been engaged in a peaceful, mass hunger-strike to protest deteriorating camp conditions and religious provocations by Guantánamo staff, including offensive searches of the prisoners’ Qur’ans. Ghaleb al-Bihani, a severe diabetic, is among the scores of men hunger-striking. He spoke to his lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights recently and explained that he has lost more than 20 pounds in a matter of weeks. His blood-sugar levels are fluctuating so wildly that Guantánamo physicians have told him they fear for his life. Other prisoners have lost consciousness; some are reportedly coughing up blood. This is to say nothing of the less visible, but equally grave health risks produced by years of indefinite detention. As Physicians for Human Rights explained to the IACHR, arbitrary, indefinite detention creates existential uncertainty that can destroy the body and mind. It can even be lethal. The story of Adnan Latif, the most recent prisoner to die at Guantánamo, is a heart-breaking reminder of this.

    • German government drops attempt to ban far-right party
    • Leveson Collateral Damage
    • Urban Exploration Helps Terrorism, Counterterrorism Agency Warns
    • The persecution of Barrett Brown – and how to fight it

      The journalist and Anonymous activist is targeted as part of a broad effort to deter and punish internet freedom activism

  • DRM

    • Defend the Open Web: Keep DRM Out of W3C Standards
    • DRM dispute around HTML5

      A plan by Google, Microsoft and Netflix to integrate an extension for playing back encrypted media content in HTML5 has caused dissatisfaction among US civil rights campaigners. The bone of contention is a proposal to integrate “Encrypted Media Extensions” (EME) that will serve as an interface for playing back DRM-protected content in the browser and which is currently being reviewed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The initiators of the proposal emphasise that this is not intended as a way of anchoring Digital Rights Management (DRM) facilities into the specification. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) translates this into: “We’re not vampires, but we are going to invite them into your house.”

    • Tell W3C: We don’t want the Hollyweb

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Why TAFTA Matters, and What We Should Do About It

      Back in January, I wrote about what I called the “Trans-Atlantic Partnership Agreement”, by analogy with the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, TPP, whose negotiations have already dragged on for several years. The formal announcement of what is now variously called the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) or Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), took place just over a month ago, but already Mexico has stated that it wishes to join, and there are rumours Canada might tag along too.

      This would then turn the EU-US agreement into a EU-NAFTA agreement – that is between the EU and the whole North American Free Trade Agreement area. If that happens, it’s quite possible that South American countries will start trying to join too, for fear of being “left out” (although they might do better to consider whether being in is actually better for them, given their limited ability to influence the negotiations between the two main partners.)

    • Transatlantic Civil Society Declaration: Leave Copyright and Patent Provisions Out of TAFTA

      Last month, U.S. President Barack Obama announced the launch of a new trade deal between the United States and the European Union. This transatlantic free trade agreement (TAFTA)—or what government leaders are touting as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)—is likely to carry copyright provisions that would pose a serious threat to digital rights. Past and currently negotiated trade agreements have enacted rules that would force ISPs to turn into copyright police, place harsh and disproportionate criminal penalties on file sharers, and seriously impair users’ ability to innovate and access content on the Internet.

    • Defend the Open Web: Keep DRM Out of W3C Standards

    • Trademarks

    • Copyrights

      • Motion Picture Association: The Cloud Is A Threat To Us And The Best Response Is Censorship

        The Motion Picture Association is somewhat notorious for flipping out over every new technology and how it will, without doubt, mean death for them. Most famously, of course, the prediction that the VCR would be the “Boston Strangler” to the movie industry a mere six years before home video revenues outstripped box office revenues. However, this seems to be somewhat instinctual behavior. Everything new must automatically be classified as a threat, and the best response is to kill it outright. The latest version of this appears to be the threat of (gasp!) “cloud computing.” At a get together in Hong Kong, in which the movie industry was supposed to be talking about “protecting the screen community in the cloud era” apparently there was the typical predictions of doom with little in the way of suggestions. But there were some.

      • Copyright Chief Urges Congress to Produce ‘Next Great Copyright Act’

        Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante told a House congressional subcommittee Wednesday that everything from anticircumvention provisions and fair use to length of copyright and performance royalties should be on the table.

      • European Court: Pirate Bay co-founders lose free speech bid in Strasbourg

        Last week, the European Court of Human Rights (European Court) rejected the complaint of the ‘The Pirate Bay’ (‘TPB’) co-founders against their criminal conviction for facilitating copyright infringement. ARTICLE 19 is concerned at the Court’s apparent reluctance to become the next battleground for advancing the right to freedom of expression against copyright claims.

      • UK ISPs Start Blocking KickassTorrents, H33T and Fenopy
      • Fresh Calls to Congress to Make Movie and Music Streaming a Felony
      • Brazil’s music collecting societies convicted of forming an illegal cartel

        The Competition Authority in Brazil (CADE) convicted om March 20th the country’s six major collecting societies and their central office (ECAD) – responsible for the collection of music royalties for public performance in Brazil – of formation of cartel and abuse of dominant position in fixing prices. According CADE, the Ecad and its associations not only organized to abusively fix prices, but also created barriers of entry for new associations to join the entity.

      • Leaked! MPAA Talking Points On Copyright Reform: Copyright Is Awesome For Everyone!

        With the possibility of comprehensive copyright reform in the US in the air, we warned that lobbyists from all sides were about to be very, very busy on Capitol Hill, and it has already begun. We’ve heard from very reliable sources that the MPAA has basically been blanketing Congress with the attached document, visiting as many offices as possible and leaving it behind as their talking points on why copyright is just freaking awesome.

      • Ebook pirates highjack the name of anti piracy campaign

Grooming Microsoft as the Voice of Free/Open Source Software

Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 11:34 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Staging a connection

Groom and bride

Summary: Shameless, dangerous hijacking of the voice of Free/open source software by Microsoft and its notable proxies

Mac Asay, who had applied to work for Microsoft, was too soft on the company amid the latest openwashing attempts. There seems to be a big campaign right now to make Microsoft seem like an open source player, with Microsoft allies doing a lot of the work.Microsoft Gavin promotes and grooms Miguel de Icaza this week and Microsoft’s mole in FOSS, Mr. Walli [1, 2, 3], calls FOSS freeloaders in this new article. Yes, freebies is how Microsoft wants us to perceive Open Source, as if freedom is all down the trash along with the GPL and the FSF. There is something called “Future of Open Source Survey”, which is being promoted right now without revealing the Microsoft connection. Black Duck is pushing around this stuff in social networks (using its corporate account). It is a recipe for trouble. The openwashing of Azure, as seen here, may be the reason, or one among several. Black Duck, which is openwashing its partner Microsoft, is behind some of it and here it is interjecting itself into the press. It says: “Perhaps no one knows this better than Dave Gruber, Black Duck Software’s Director of Developer Programs. Black Duck is a software management and consulting firm. The company does not specifically market its own open source product line. Instead, it focuses on helping software developers build better software faster through open source.”

No, it is exploiting FOSS, patenting software, and taking away other people’s word (Palamida for instance) while openeashing partners like Microsoft. Black Duck is scooping up data analytics and forums related to FOSS to speak on everyone’s behalf and form a pseudo-authority. No wonder Black Duck was founded by a former “Evangelist” of Microsoft, a euphemism for AstroTurfer.

The “Open Source Think Tank” too is Black Duck-controlled and Red Hat makes a mistake by participating. Here are some older posts about the Open Source Think Tank:

Microsoft’s Gianugo Rabellino, in the mean time, finds a way to promote his new paymaster’s agenda by openwashing in ZDNet with this:

  • Higher mobile penetration a call for greater interoperability

    SINGAPORE–The pervasiveness of multiple device ownership has made mobile a key area to further the open source and open standards momentum, and one project Microsoft Open Technologies is driving is the introducing specifications related to enabling Web pages on any browser to understand different inputs such as touch-based movements.

What utter nonsense. This has nothing go do with open source, it’s just called Open Technologies and it brings code into Microsoft’s proprietary stack. Microsoft does not invite FOSS developers, it invoices them.

Resist Microsoft’s abduction of the Open Source message or see the term dying, even in governments which claim to adopt open source software. █

Bill Gates Promotes Junk Food for Profit, Pretends to Fight Hunger (With Patent Maximalism)

Posted in Bill Gates, Patents at 9:32 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Coca-Cola “successfully pursued water privatization” (see killercoke.org)

Red can

Summary: Petrol, Coke and burger/fries investments without all that ‘pesky’ federal tax; or, how Gates became far richer last year despite financial meltdown and so-called ‘giving pledge’

The Gates Foundation has had Bill Gates pushing his patent crusades under the guise of charity. It’s privatisation of nature’s food resources with marketing propaganda, usually patents disguised as “helping feed the hungry”. The food monopolies, turning nature (public) into “intellectual property” (private), are a subject we addressed here many times before. Here is some Gates marketing that neglects to name the patents for a reason. It would not be golden marketing if people knew that some people get rich in the process. Dr. Glyn Moody says “translation: ripe for patents” when he links to the article “Bill Gates: Food Is Ripe for Innovation”. He is right about the motives, it is about patent monopolies. It is not just GMO anymore.

Mr. Gates now invests (for profit, of course) in Exxon Mobil, Wal-Mart, and Caterpillar. So much for charity, eh? See this new article for more such examples. This other article names Coca-Cola, Caterpillar, and McDonald’s. The business of the foundation (it’s a business, but “charity” disguise gives tax exemptions) is investment. To quote Forbes: “Bill Gates Foundation buys Coca-Cola Co, Procter & Gamble Co, Wal-Mart Stores Inc, Willis Group Holdings PLC, Signet Jewelers Ltd, Autoliv, Inc., Orbotech, Ltd., sells Costco Wholesale Corporation, CSX Corp, Expeditors International of Washington, Inc., Cemex, S.A.B. de C.V., Comcast Corp, The Greater China Fund, Inc. during the 3-months ended 12/31/2012, according to the most recent filings of his investment company, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. As of 12/31/2012, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust owns 26 stocks with a total value of $16.8 billion. These are the details of the buys and sells.”

“It’s all about PR, branding, and mind control.”Is this charity? It is worth noting that Melinda Gates becomes a Huffington Post writer after the scandal which threw her out of the trend-setting media. Melinda, as usual, is pretending to be the world’s parent (she and her husband belittle all except themselves and their authority in a God complex/megalomaniac fashion) with articles like this one. No comment needed.

How does Gates feel about promoting and advancing the agenda of the companies which do exactly the opposite of what he claims to be his “causes”? Like companies that cause polio, promote tobacco, advance wars, reduce populations, cause starvation, reduce the reach of education, poison human/animal organs, and so on? We gave a lot of examples before. People ought to develop sceptical skills and recognise that Gates has been buying the big media for over a decade, making it almost unthinkable to say — let alone believe — that he does the opposite of what he claims to do. Ethics are not profitable. In order to grow his wealth, which he still does, Gates needs to do one thing while pretending to do another. Nothing is more bothersome than mass deception of the public, especially with media complicity. That’s how rogue political parties come to power and how third-world nations get lured into modern-age inhumane labour or bondage slavery. It ought to be noted that Coca-Cola, a hugely unethical company (see killercoke.org), is often cited (by name!) by Bill and Melinda as the thing they strive to mimic. It’s all about PR, branding, and mind control. Physically, it’s all water, sugar, caramel, and some chemicals inside glass, plastic, or aluminum. Hypnosis of association — assimilating a soda drink to sex and popularity — is truly an art form. Gates does not stand for poverty, he causes poverty and he is very comfortable in his plutocrats’ circle. █

More Propaganda Films From Bill Gates Target ‘Education’ While His Education Lobby Expands to the United Kingdom

Posted in Bill Gates, Deception, Europe, Microsoft at 9:05 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Imperialism the other way around

Old Union Jack

Summary: Bill Gates is trying to abduct and privatise the system which indoctrinates the public not just in the United States but also in other countries

The sad thing about US policy is, it often spreads to other countries sooner or later. This is especially true when it comes to the copyright industry. Concerns about Gates’ abduction of US education policy is that it may, in turn, spread to other countries. Some years ago we saw Gates expanding its lobbying apparatus, the Gates Foundation, to the UK. Now we learn that the “UK to house a new national education center.” It is Gates- and Hewlett-controlled, just like in the US where the Murdochs, Rockefellers, Broads, Waltons etc. seek to privatise and control children by their minds (schools). Here is a new report:

The National Center for Innovation in Education will be funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and UK, according to a UK news release.

The Gates family has not been hiding its vision and agenda for schools. This is a cumulatively multi-trillion-dollar opportunity for profit and control over minds of future adulls. Consider what we wrote in posts such as those found in the Gates Foundation wiki page .

There is more of the same going on this year. Gates is lobbying to change teaching methods (Gates himself never graduated from college or taught) and he is lobbying by funding generation of data supportive of his agenda. He is seeding awards to promote agenda, using money to control behaviour and policy. As one article put if: “The goal is to better align the district’s budget with agreed-upon goals for reform. ”

With strings attached then, eh? The Washington Examiner has this new article on the subject and it says:

Education watchdogs are raising concerns over the Gates Foundation’s involvement in shaping public education policy, saying the private foundation’s influence in public education policy interferes with the democratic process and local input.

Watch some nasty characters trying to label those who say the obvious “conspiracy therorists” and mind the comments. Even academics are now being insulted by Gates’ minions. Remember that Gates is funding blogs, too, as long as they promote his agenda in education. Here is Gates funding and running conferences with agenda, working to give funds selectively, etc. “Of the 316 scholarships awarded,” says this article, “more than a third — 111 — went to students at Friendship Collegiate Public Charter School, Dan Cronin, a spokesman for Friendship Public Charter Schools, announced Monday.”

Charter school, eh? Sometimes Gates is giving loans — not donations — with lobbying strings attached, as shown here.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, another propaganda firm is coming to assist Gates’ lobbying in education, including Microsoft agenda:

“‘Someday, and that day may never come,’ Don Corleone says famously in The Godfather, ‘I’ll call upon you to do a service for me.’ Back in 2010, filmmaker Lesley Chilcott produced Waiting for ‘Superman’, a controversial documentary that analyzed the failures of the American public education system, and presented charter schools as a glimmer of hope, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-backed KIPP Los Angeles Prep. Gates himself was a ‘Superman’ cast member, lamenting how U.S. public schools are producing ‘American Idiots’ of no use to high tech firms like Microsoft, forcing them to ‘go half-way around the world to recruit the engineers and programmers they needed.’ So some found it strange that when Chilcott teamed up with Gates again three years later to make Code.org’s documentary short What Most Schools Don’t Teach, kids from KIPP Empower Academy were called upon to demonstrate that U.S. schoolchildren are still clueless about what computer programmers do. In a nice coincidence, the film went viral just as leaders of Google, Microsoft, and Facebook pressed President Obama and Congress on immigration reform, citing a dearth of U.S. programming talent. And speaking of coincidences, the lone teacher in the Code.org film (James, Teacher@Mount View Elementary), whose classroom was tapped by Code.org as a model for the nation’s schools, is Seattle teacher Jamie Ewing, who took top honors in Microsoft’s Partners in Learning (PiL) U.S. Forum last summer, earning him a spot on PiL’s ‘Team USA’ and the chance to showcase his project at the Microsoft PiL Global Forum in Prague in November (82-page Conference Guide). Ironically, had Ewing stuck to teaching the kids Scratch programming, as he’s shown doing in the Code.org documentary, Microsoft wouldn’t have seen fit to send him to its blowout at ‘absolutely amazingly beautiful’ Prague Castle. Innovative teaching, at least according to Microsoft’s rules, ‘must include the use of one or more Microsoft technologies.’ Fortunately, Ewing’s project — described in his MSDN guest blog post — called for using PowerPoint and Skype. For the curious, here’s Microsoft PiL’s vision of what a classroom should be.”

It says: “Innovative teaching, at least according to Microsoft’s rules, ‘must include the use of one or more Microsoft technologies.’”

Quite telling, eh? And this is the type of people we want controlling UK education? After we got rid of BECTA? Napoleon got exiled after his megalomania caused much stress to France. Maybe we should take a lesson from that. █

After Microsoft Corruption Bill Gates Buys the Press to Whitewash and Deflect

Posted in Bill Gates, Microsoft at 8:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Paying the national media, manufacturing a false image

Microsoft BBC

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. █

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