03.24.10
Posted in Kernel, Kyocera Mita, LG, Microsoft, Patents, Samsung at 3:01 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Kyocera introduces phones with Android, yet a lot of people do not remember the company’s deal with Microsoft and its effects
ONE of Microsoft’s lesser-known Linux deals (a patent racket) is with Kyocera [1, 2, 3] (category page here). This deal involves Kyocera paying Microsoft for Linux, which it uses in few of its products. According to this short new report, the racket will extend to Android phones (and be related to Sanyo too, being the exFAT collaborator and Kyocera adjunct).
Following the saying “The more the merrier,” I am pleased to announce that Kyocera revealed the launch of a new Kyocera (and Sanyo) branded Android device at CTIA 2010 today. The Kyocera Zio M6000 will be released in Q2.
So here we have a phone that will also have Sanyo involved in Microsoft’s racket. It’s all rather similar with Samsung, which has this new Android phone. It’s bad for Android [1, 2] because Microsoft is taxing Android here, behind Google’s back (it turns Android to Ballnux). Similarly, Samsung’s competitor in Korea, LG, makes new Android phones. These too will be taxed by Microsoft as LG will pass money to Microsoft for each one sold, based on the nature of the patent deals that are racketeering [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. Considering Apple’s Android lawsuit [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] which is supported by Microsoft [1, 2, 3], this is just part of the problem. Microsoft and Apple would love to treat Linux as though it is theirs. █
“Microsoft is asking people to pay them for patents, but they won’t say which ones. If a guy walks into a shop and says: “It’s an unsafe neighbourhood, why don’t you pay me 20 bucks and I’ll make sure you’re okay,” that’s illegal. It’s racketeering.”
–Mark Shuttleworth
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Law, Microsoft, Novell, OSI at 8:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Open source is an intellectual-property destroyer [...] and I don’t think we’ve done enough education of policymakers to understand the threat.”
–Jim Allchin, President of Platforms & Services Division at Microsoft
Bruce Perens at the launch event of GPLv3
Summary: Bruce Perens explains what he has seen Microsoft doing inside governments in order to marginalise Free software, mostly through hired guns like CompTIA and ACT
MICROSOFT IS A political problem, not just a technical problem. In previous posts we showed how Microsoft controls the United States government (along with other proprietary software companies), but it’s not just a problem in the United States.
For those who are not familiar with Bruce Perens, here are some of our posts that mention him:
Perens has just published this post about government legislation where he writes:
Equal Representation, and Visibility of Lobbying
It’s been obvious, whenever I talk with government, that there’s a well-staffed Microsoft lobbying organization nearby, as well as intermediaries who act for them like CompTIA. Against them, there’s been a low or no-budget representation for Open Source, sometimes just me all alone. And of course the proprietary software companies can afford more advertising and they create lavish events to promote themselves.
To level out this situation, and many others, we need required public reporting of all lobbying, including the parties present, the time and duration of the meeting, and the topics discussed. The general public should be able to see that information on the internet with no more than a day’s delay, if they are to have a chance to offset the effect of the deep-pockets lobbyists.
In addition, there needs to be legislation protecting and promoting the access of the less-grandly-funded to those in government who have or will receive other lobbies, so that there can be balance of representation.
The only group he mentions by name is CompTIA, whose corruption of the political system and standards body we have documented in many past posts. Bruce Perens has already responded to ACT, which is another Microsoft front group (Perens knows that). Both groups happen to have lobbied intensively against ODF and for OOXML. Given Microsoft’s history of corruption when it comes to document formats, nobody should be surprised that Microsoft uses outside lobbying groups. From Italy we hear that this corruption never ends. Posted some days ago:
Microsoft, where did you get those data about OpenDocument?
[...]
I already explained in another article that open file formats are essential to save money in Public Administrations and make them more efficient and that the right choice for office document is the OpenDocument Format (ODF).
Since I regularly follow these themes, in September 2009 I received this request from outside Italy:
I have read in a report that: “According to Microsoft Italian regional authorities have examined ODF, but proposal for adopting ODF as the mandatory standard have been rejected” (translated by the sender of the message). This fact probably comes from this Microsoft paper. And we are trying to fact check it… can you help?
Back then I knew, just as I know today, that there is no law or regulation in Italy, not even at the city level, that mandates ODF as the only accepted format for office documents, regardless of the context. What I did come across in the last year, instead, were cases where nobody seemed to know about ODF or law proposals that, albeit unvoluntarily, may make the situation even worse. However, I did not remember ever reading about proposals of that kind.
Over in the UK, the story is similar but Microsoft’s lobbying groups are slightly different. Tim Anderson, a British Microsoft booster, gives lip service to a company which says that the UK government only gives lip service to F/OSS. Anderson writes about the claims from Ingres:
Ingres has a direct commercial interest in this, of course, so such statements are not surprising. Shine has a point though. It takes more than a few speeches to change the software culture of the myriad departments and other state-run entities that between them compose government IT.
Anderson is being an apologist here. It’s not just about Ingres getting a contract; it’s about a nation sticking to standards and to code that it actually owns and is allowed to modify and redistribute. It’s about the United Kingdom not being a hostage of some convicted monopoly abuser from the United States. There is no need for Microsoft apologists here, as they seem not to comprehend the very fundamental issues. The same goes for accomplices like BECTA, who take a similar approach of lip service. They try to silence opposition this way.
“It is crooked politicians like Luc Pierre Devigne and Pedro Velasco-Martins who allow this to happen.”Earlier today we posted videos from yesterday's event about ACTA, which Richard Stallman calls “Anti-Citizen Tyranny Agreement”. It shows how few super-wealthy corporations (mostly from the United States, but there is one Vivendi employee praising ACTA from the audience) take control of the law and actually run the governments against the people. It is crooked politicians like Luc Pierre Devigne and Pedro Velasco-Martins who allow this to happen. Given increased transparency, we can more effectively expose the conspirators involved in these unconstitutional steps that countries are taking to pass control to other counties (specifically to corporations in other countries). Here in the UK we have Mandelson with his Digital Economy Bill (DEB). █
“Business secretary Peter Mandelson is slimed by an environmental protestor outside the Royal Society on Carlton House Terrace, Pall Mall after allegations of ‘favours for friends’ over the Heathrow third runway decision” [Courtesy of “Plane Stupid”, via Wikimedia]
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Patents at 7:51 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Amazon implicitly parrots Microsoft rhetoric and discriminates against desktop GNU/Linux, which it does not support
LAST MONTH we saw Amazon selling out to Microsoft [1, 2, 3]. Amazon decided to allow Microsoft’s racketeering to receive legitimacy, after Amazon had accepted many Microsoft executives into its staff. Amazon was clearly transformed from the inside over time and although Kindle has run Linux for several years, we now find that it is supporting just two proprietary software platforms and ignoring Linux (on the desktop), which Amazon exploited to build the Kindle and its servers infrastructure. This is the attitude of a company that does not care about Free software in general and GNU/Linux in particular. It’s just a selfish user and this is not the only reason why we encourage readers to boycott Amazon, as some readers already do.
What Amazon is doing these days allows Microsoft racketeering [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] to carry on, along with the company's own patent troll, whose latest actions Glyn Moody has just explained. He calls him “King of the Trolls” and in our previous posts about this patent troll we showed just why (here is an index).
If you haven’t heard of Intellectual Ventures, you will do. Set up by ex-Microsoftie Nathan Myhrvold, with investments from Microsoft among others, it is basically a patenting machine – filing and buying them in huge quantities. Note that it doesn’t actually *use* these patents – except to threaten people with. In other words, Intellectual Ventures is a patent troll – or, rather the King of the Patent Trolls.
[...]
They don’t *invent* anything in the proper, deep sense of the word: they merely file and buy patents – with no intent of ever making stuff or solving real-life problems. It’s purely a cynical exploitation of the broken US patent system that grants very broad patents on often obvious ideas, which are then used to *impede* other companies’ activities.
[...]
This is the killer: Intellectual Venture’s business model is fear. “If IV breathes in your direction, take a license” – never mind whether their patent claims are valid, just roll over, because nobody messes with the King of the Patent Trolls.
Companies like Amazon and Microsoft have adopted software patents despite the fact that their existence — that of Amazon’s in particular — owes itself to the rejection of software patents by Berners-Lee. Moody writes:
Here’s a fine piece of hagiography, with a really excellent conclusion that touches on those diabolical software patents:
The founders of Google and Microsoft have made their fortunes out of the world wide web, as have numerous other dot-com entrepreneurs. Sir Tim, though, has never cashed in on his brilliant idea. He doesn’t have a yacht or a mansion or a private jet. But neither does he have any regrets about his lack of wealth.
Patent laws are not taking account of the culture that developed around technology. Thanks to the Internet, it is a culture of sharing and collaboration, not monopolisation and exclusion. Here is a funny new case about patents:
Tool Maker Loses Lawsuit For Not Violating Another Company’s Patents
Patent system supporters regularly point (slightly misleadingly) to the claim that the patent system gives patent holders the right to exclude others from using their inventions. And, thus, most lawsuits we see around patents revolve around cases involving a company manufacturing a product that includes a patented invention. But what about a lawsuit for a company that deliberately chose not to license or use a patented technology, because it was too expensive?
Welcome to today’s world.
Patents hamper society’s progress. But some rich companies with a lot of lobbyists love them. That is the subject of the next post. █
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, OpenSUSE at 7:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Don Quixote and his sidekick Sancho Panza. By Gustave Dore.
(January 6, 1832 – January 23, 1883)
Summary: Microsoft’s companions help the company either influence other companies or take over their agenda, Mono being the tool by which .NET gets injected into rivals
THE previous post argued that Novell’s Microsoft MVP (who does nothing but Microsoft boosting in his blog this week) could fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming an employee of Microsoft because Novell might be bought by Microsoft. Analysts say so too. Having already changed the direction of Novell to one that is centered around Mono (to promote Windows, Xbox, .NET, Visual Studio, and so forth), Novell becomes a more convenient target for Microsoft to acquire. We have warned about it for several years and it is no longer far fetched.
“…Novell becomes a more convenient target for Microsoft to acquire.”When a company adopts something like Mono, it is rather telling. One proponent of Mono is Mainsoft and this week we find Mainsoft helping Microsoft by augmenting its software or ecosystem. Another example is the Mono boosters from Microsoft itself (former Microsoft employees) who seem to be all over the place. Not even one of them seems to oppose .NET, not after leaving the company that treats .NET like it's a "religion" (there are several examples which we prefer not to name as that would make it personal or confrontational).
Meanwhile, Novell forgets about OpenSUSE. Some of the people who contribute a lot to Linux were let go and laid off (naming them would seem abrasive) while Novell increased focus on Microsoft-assistive software instead. In fact, Novell’s neglect of OpenSUSE is so apparent because the SUSE Planet is currently down and now we find out the reason:
Planet SUSE aggregates blog posts from the SUSE Linux universum, including openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise. It aggregates not only English blog posts but also as separate feeds German, Spanish, Polish, and Portuguese posts.
Planet SUSE has been unavailable for the last days due to some problems while renewing the domain. We have therefore setup an alternative DNS entry for the server under the openSUSE domain, you can reach the planet now as
planet.openSUSE.org. The alternative name will stay, so feel free to change your bookmarks permantelty to it.
If you’d like to see a blog shown on Planet SUSE, please tell the admins James Ogley and Pascal Bleser.
A special thanks to our Planet heros – James, Pascal, Darix and Justin,
Andreas
Last year we showed that Novell’s neglect of OpenSUSE was so serious that the project was looking for sponsorship. If it were Mono, this would never happen. █
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Posted in Microsoft, Novell at 6:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: As BrainShare kicks off it becomes apparent that Novell does not reject a takeover and Microsoft could be among the bidders
THE news continues to come regarding Novell's willingness to sell the company given the right offer/price. Brian from the Linux Foundation has this to say:
Why Novell waited until Saturday to announce the news is anyone’s guess, but since I can be classified as anyone, let me take a shot: rejecting what on the surface seemed a pretty solid bid as far away from stock market times as possible will will help alleviate any potential blow NOVL’s stock price this morning when the NASDAQ opens. Though, in early market trading this morning, NOVL was up, so perhaps that blow isn’t coming.
[...]
As for Novell, time will tell if someone comes up with another bid. And will that bid be a better one, or was Elliott’s first run the best offer?
Over at Linux Magazine we find this new article which ponders a Microsoft takeover of Novell. Since Novell has products that compete against Microsoft’s, there would be antitrust barriers, but if Novell was sold in pieces, it might actually work. Earlier this year we wrote about Novell transforming itself from a 4-unit company into a dual-unit company, possibly in preparation for a sale of one part. That was the argument we had made at the time, before more evidence came. To quote parts of the latest article:
What If… Microsoft Bought Novell?
[...]
What If… SUSE is to Windows as MySQL is to Oracle?
Much like MySQL, Linux is growing and isn’t going to simply fade away. While Oracle would probably like everyone to just purchase a large Oracle license it’s clear that’s not going to happen for a large percentage of potential customers, so they should probably just take whatever profits they can from MySQL licenses. Sell Oracle where you can. Sell MySQL where you can’t.
Microsoft could use this strategy with SUSE. Concede some areas where Microsoft struggles to Linux, force SUSE out of others, tighten the integration between the OSes and reconcile the issues of a competitive product mix with your sales team.
Messy. Complicated. Still, it’s possible and Microsoft could use a new revenue stream. But very few in the Linux community would believe MSFT was giving SUSE a fair shake.
What If… Microsoft Declares Total (Patent) War?
Possibly the most popular of the potential What If…? outcomes, Microsoft could use the ownership of Novell to push patent-laden code into SUSE (and potentially upstream into the Kernel) creating a cascade of licensing litigation/strong-arming and, possibly, the crippling of the GPL.
This is really just a variation on what many think Microsoft is already doing (See Microsoft Patches Linux; Linus Responds and Trimming the FAT: Linux and Patents). The difference in this scenario, of course, is that their ownership of SUSE could speed the process along.
Whoever buys Novell (and it’s likely that it will be sold somehow and sometime this year), the company’s output is a toxic asset to anyone who buys it. To buy products from Novell is to acquire technology whose short-term future is unknown. It’s just another reason among many more to avoid Novell products. █
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03.22.10
Posted in America, Antitrust, Courtroom, Fraud, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Windows at 7:23 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Trouble for Microsoft in Argentina; our source suggests that unless Microsoft pulls a legal stunt (or corruption), the major fine will soon be announced
LAST year’s repulsive incident in Argentina showed a Richard Stallman talk getting cancelled, allegedly after Microsoft had played a role. That old post also contains many references about the state of Free software in Argentina. The following new article from the Miami Herald indicates that Argentina has just acquired a quarter of a million small laptops, but it does not say which operating system these come with.
On March 17, Peru signed a deal for an additional 260,000 laptops from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program, a nonprofit venture that is selling laptops for $188 each. The new order will bring to 590,000 the number of laptops delivered to Peru’s elementary school children under a program that provides most of the machines to one-teacher schools in poverty-stricken rural areas.
On March 18, Argentina’s government delivered the first of 250,000 Intel “Classmate” laptops for students of technical high schools, only hours after the mayor of Buenos Aires, an opposition leader, announced that his city will order 190,000 laptops for elementary school children.
Last month, Brazil announced a bid to buy 1.5 million laptops for elementary school children.
Neighboring Uruguay recently became the first country in the world to give all elementary school children in public schools one Internet-connected laptop each, which is their own property and they can take home.
We have covered many success stories of GNU/Linux in south America, including several that show how Microsoft brutally strikes back and attempts to derail any attempts of digital independence in the region.
“It’s most odd. I went into a computer store recently and saw nothing but “Windows 7″, this in stark contrast to 4-6 months ago where they had low-end ASUS running a variant of Linux.”
–Anonymous readerIn our Wiki we have a list of posts that reveal how Microsoft sabotaged GNU/Linux in sub-notebooks (it didn’t quite work out for Microsoft, but the company did try and it fell under antitrust investigations for it). “It’s most odd,” told us a reader today, “I went into a computer store recently and saw nothing but “Windows 7″, this in stark contrast to 4-6 months ago where they had low-end ASUS running a variant of Linux. What gives?”
Our reader then informed us of the following new post from Argentina. It says that “Microsoft [is] under fire in Argentina: it faces a fine of more than 50 million euros for anticompetitive activities”
But starting from 2 years ago, I have seen that it has become impossible to find any longer a single machine with GNU / Linux in retail: worse, we saw some very dubious agreements negotiated under the high patronage of the founder of the multinational software company that monopolises the operating systems market.
One may well ask why: this is not without reminding us of the situation here in France, where after SFR placed on the market more thatn 250000 Netbooks all equipped with GNU / Linux about two years ago, we can not find now a single netbook without Windows (yes, I write the name in full letters now, because I am particularly upset: I wanted to buy one for personal use this Christmas, but despite my efforts, I have not found a single model with a GNU / Linux preinstalled in France).
The few remaining fans of software monopolies like to say that this sudden vanishement proves that the other operating system is superior to GNU / Linux.
Well, I happen to have in my hands right now a copy of the appeal filed against Microsoft by the little Argentine SMEs Pixart, and it is very helpful in understanding what really happened there … and very likely what is happening here too.
[...]
But this time there is a difference: if Microsoft was convicted in Argentina, my legal contacts there tell me it would risk a fine of approximately 300,000,000 pesos, which, at the current exchange rate, would amount to more than 55 million euros.
Corruption is rife there: an official, a lawyer or a witness might be tempted to pocket a tidy little sum for losing a piece of evidence, let a legal deadline slip trhough, change the judge, or any other action that contributes to bury the trial before the interesting pieces of evidence are exposed to the light.
But I hope that this time, no civil servant, no politician in Argentina will accept to earn a few pennies to help the software juggernaut deprive his country of 55 million euros, crush a small Argentinian company struggling to maintain local industrial capacity in Free Software, and imprison again the country behind the bars of a Windows prison.
This isn’t the first time and there is similar action up north in Canada [1, 2]. Microsoft is still an abusive monopolist that stifles choice in the market. Let’s wait until a fine is made official. Microsoft’s legal team is said to be resorting to criminal activities, so maybe they can pervert justice in this case. The system is south America is probably more susceptible to it. █
Update: the scale of the projected fines has been amended to half of the original, i.e. 150,000,000 pesos.
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Posted in Africa, America, Bill Gates, Finance, Microsoft, Patents at 9:35 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A long and hard look at what Bill Gates is doing outside Microsoft in order to increase his wealth/power and improve his image at the same time
THIS is the latest summary about the Gates Foundation, which is a large body of philanthro-capitalism, i.e. making money while making it appear like philanthropy. We will try to make this a weekly-occurring type of post. This latest post will explain how Bill Gates uses new ventures to increase his power and his wealth while the public usually views him as a national or international hero. Everything in this post is based on the past week’s news, so readers can verify with the original sources and decide for themselves.
As we have shown many times before, the Gates Foundation is increasingly running the education system and controlling how/what children are taught, especially in the United States [1, 2, 3, 4]. In order to achieve this goal, the Gates Foundation prepares ‘studies’ (it’s paid for by Gates, thus the scare quotes) to change and influence how education is done. Watch how they interject themselves into articles about education.
“It’s really a combination of all of this together,” said Diane Troyer, a former Houston-area community college president who’s a senior program officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “It adds up to a situation that now is getting really strong national attention. I think for the first time we really have the light shone upon this in a way that’s going to make a difference.”
There are other new examples where the Gates Foundation uses its private funds to drive education [1, 2], even if that involves trips to Washington, D.C. and issues that relate to the Gates lobby [1, 2, 3, 4]. No lessons learned from the Gates-Abramoff visas blunder? They can affect the minds of children through their teachers whom they pay. The Gates Foundation almost speaks ‘on their behalf’ now, using Gates-sponsored ‘studies’ and other funds [1, 2] that can drive/alter agenda.
Now check out how Gates funds are actually being used (highlight in red added by us):
Although New York was named a Race to the Top grant finalist this month by the U.S. Department of Education, how the department scored the application and the amount of funding that may be coming New York’s way are still unknown.
[...]
According to the Associated Press, 14 finalists, including New York, received grants of up to $250,000 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to hire consultants to help construct their applications. Delaware and South Carolina were the only two finalists that did not use Gates Foundation funding.
Cornell University receives Gates funds for malaria and other universities show that Gates staff can take the podium and pitch its own “health” interests that we’ll come to later.
Athens, Ga. – Dr. Julie Jacobson from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program will be the featured speaker for the next “Global Diseases: Voices from the Vanguard” lecture on Tuesday, March 23 at 6 p.m. in the University of Georgia Chapel.
Gates makes money from disease, as we will show later in this post (we have covered this for years and provided evidence from reputable sources). Gates’ huge PR campaigns are doing a wonderful job daemonising any potential critic of the Gates Foundation. They are controlling the message the public receives and O’Neill carefully complains about it:
Taking Gates for a spin
It’s hardly Gatesgate, but it does beg a key question.
Why does the School District of Hillsborough County need to spend $375,000 on an outside public relations firm to explain the $100 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the public — and to its 17,000 teachers? The district has its own staff of communications specialists. If this doesn’t fall within its purview, priorities or skill set, something’s wrong.
“We don’t have time to do PR,” communications director Steve Hegarty told the Tribune.
We’re told that the Gates folks were adamant in putting a premium on communicating what’s entailed in its seven-year commitment to change how county teachers are recruited, trained and paid. Of course, they want this explained effectively. Nine-figure overhauls require no less. But they never demanded it be put out for bid.
$375,000 is a lot of money to be spent on merely “communicating” with the public (engagements with the press for example). Gates is also producing papers and influencing politicians for similar reasons, leading to fluff like this:
A report recently published by Public Agenda/Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (www.publicagenda.org/files/pdf/theirwholelivesaheadofthem.pdf) reveals the reality of the guidance received by high school graduates who are college-bound. It doesn’t reflect well on our state of affairs at the national level, but it does shed some light on the fact that students need help. More students are dropping out of college than are graduating. And this can be avoided.
So, Gates’ investment firm is now an authority by which to decide how education should be done? This is a risky step of privatisation. Gates also has people in the US government [1, 2], leading to complaints/skepticisms like this one:
Rajiv is on a roll. In his new role, is it any surprise that he prioritises Gates Foundation priorities on a visit to Seattle?
Nieman fellows or former fellows are still being used as worshipers of Gates and the following new post from Nieman confirms that Gates is paying journalists who cover his own investment work and fields of operation.
Mason and Albrecht were two of nine journalists whose fellowships in global health reporting were supported over three years by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Now, the global health grants have expired, but the significant impact of their work affirms the Nieman Foundation’s commitment to this effort.
We have already covered many other examples where the Gates Foundation pays for people to write about its activities (positively of course, as the funding implicitly demands it).
As we showed some time in the past, the Gates Foundation is also investing in the Canadian government where there are Microsoft troubles with the law [1, 2 and some migrations to GNU/Linux. According to the following news article, the Gates Foundation has actually had a “joint venture” with the Canadian government. The article is about vaccination.
Butler-Jones and Aglukkaq both said the funding that was to go the facility is still going to the CHVI and the government and the Gates Foundation are discussing how it will now be used.
Butler-Jones said he could not say when a decision will be made.
The CHVI was created in February 2007 as a joint venture of Canada and the Gates Foundation. Ottawa put up $111 million and Gates $28 million.
This is also covered in:
1. Report used in shelving HIV-vaccine facility flawed: critique
The HIV-vaccine facility was supposed to be the centrepiece of the Canadian HIV Vaccine Initiative but it was cancelled last month when the government said none of the proponents met the criteria and a study by the Gates Foundation said such a facility was no longer needed.
2. Gates study on HIV vaccine facility ‘fatally flawed’: expert
A new report from a Canadian vaccine expert pours water on the Harper government’s argument a non-profit HIV vaccine manufacturing facility is no longer needed, opposition critics charged Thursday.
Ron Gerson, president of vaccine manufacturer PnuVax and a pharmaceutical and vaccine industry consultant, critiqued a study from the Gates Foundation, which was one of the main reasons Canada shelved its plans to build a manufacturing facility.
Gerson, who was involved in initial reviews of bids for the facility, called the Gates study “fatally flawed” because it looked only at the quantity of manufacturers available to produce HIV vaccines for clinical trials, not the quality of their work.
3. Flaws cited in report used to shelve HIV-vaccine facility
4. Health boss grilled on city vaccine plan
He said at the same time the Gates Foundation, Canada’s partner on CHVI, produced a study which says there is now sufficient capacity available in existing facilities to produce enough research vaccines for use in clinical trials.
[...]
She dismissed the Gates study, saying it was always known there was capacity to produce vaccines but there is a difference in having private-sector versus non-profit capacity.
5. Feds drop plans to build vaccine facility
6. Health Agency Defends Decision to Cancel HIV Vaccine Facility
7. Health Department Under Scrutiny after Scrapping HIV Vaccine Facility Plan
8. Feds drop plans to build vaccine facility
“After weighing all of the evidence, the Government of Canada and the Gates Foundation have decided not to proceed with the pilot-scale vaccine manufacturing facility,” says the notice.
They act like it’s an extension of the government, in which Gates put literally billions of dollars. For some newly-written background from CBC:
The facility would have been the main project in the $111-million Canadian HIV Vaccine Initiative, a venture between Canada and the Gates Foundation that was announced three years ago.
Watch how Microsoft approached the Canadian government very recently:
Microsoft Canada Inc. announced today it is working with local open government experts and Vancouver-based developer Nitobi, to help make government data more easily accessible and useful for citizens. Leveraging the City of Vancouver’s Open Data catalogue and Microsoft’s Open Government Data Initiative : (OGDI) platform, Nitobi has developed VanGuide : , a web and mobile based social mapping application that enables citizens to tag, rate and comment on Vancouver landmarks and locations.
They then misuse the term “open source”. They love doing this. Last week they sent out unsolicited mail to Canadian Free software users/developers so that they create/increase their government's Windows lock-in.
Hitherto, a lot has been said about Gates’ interest in vaccines, but not much has been said (repeated) about the motives.
For those who do not know yet, Gates has shares (stock) in the pharmaceutical cartel, which he obviously wants to become more profitable (at the expense of generics for instance). What’s good for the pharmaceutical cartel is good for Gates. The following new article shows Pfizer connections to Gates. We previously wrote about Pfizer (just over a week ago) because it helps kill the Indian population for the sake of its patents (price fixing). It’s all about profit to these people, but they are good at disguising their motives. Good luck telling poor people that they die needlessly because of this thing called “patents”, which many of them can’t understand or even justify.
As for Gates himself, he is looking to raise money from taxpayers — money that will in turn be passed to companies that Gates has shares in (he has made around $13 billion in the past year, despite claiming to have decided to give away his wealth). We have already shown how Bill and Melinda lobby governments to pay money to these initiatives from which they profit. We have the references in last week’s long summary (which we shared publicly). For those who are not familiar with Gates’ new monopolies, here is a place to start.
“Gates-linked vaccine group wants $4.3 billion,” heralds Associated Press.
A global vaccine initiative launched with the help of Bill Gates is seeking $4.3 billion in new funding to ramp up child immunization campaigns against deadly diseases such as hepatitis B, diarrhea and pneumonia in the developing world.
The Geneva-based GAVI alliance, launched a decade ago as a partner of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said governments and other donors could help save 4.2 million lives if they meet the funding demands through 2015.
They are currently raising funds (while already linked to Gates, who does not offer such money). This is the type of action that we see all the time. Bill and Melinda occasionally add their “rockstar status” and widely-recognised faces to these causes from which they profit. The pharmaceutical giants are akin to mercenaries in Iraq in this context. A lot of money passes to private hands at the expense of taxpayers, yet nobody wants to talk about it. The most important point to remember is that the public is paying for patents. Medicine has an over-inflated if not altogether imaginary value given the low production costs. And yet, proponents of this profiteering operation sell the illusion that Gates donates $10 billion when this money in fact goes towards patents from the very same companies he works with and invests in (so it’s like Microsoft's warped notion of "donating" software to poor people).
But forget about the truth. A lot of PR staff is pushing this spin from Gates and GAVI the into big papers, e.g.:
• Donors asked for $4.3 billion for vaccines for poor
• Nature News examines GAVI Alliance’s budget gap
• Alliance seeks billions to boost life-saving jabs for poor
• Decision to Implement Hib Vaccine Influenced by Policies of Neighbouring Nations
This is a perfect example of the “philanthro-capitalism” which we mentioned at the start. Some people are getting extremely rich in this process, but all the public can be told about are those poor people who “we” — the generous people from the West — are saving with our tax money. A better solution would cut off the leeches and provide cheaply-manufactured medicine without press releases that have gigantic fake numbers in them (like reports from the RIAA, the MPAA, and the BPI).
Last week we showed that the Huffington Post had signed a new deal that seemed to fund the site through Gates, in exchange for positive articles about philanthro-capitalism. Here again is a promotional article for him, courtesy of Huffington, as usual [1, 2, 3].
Bill Gates Can’t Do it Alone
Next week GAVI’s donors will sit together in the Netherlands and consider new pledges to support GAVI’s work. Many will no doubt be looking to the Gates Foundation, which recently announced $10 billion in funding for vaccine research, development, and delivery over the next 10 years to fix this problem. But in this case, Bill Gates is just not rich enough to fill this gap on his own. Other donors must step up and help to fill the breach as well.
These are the same fake numbers which we explained earlier. The number overwhelmingly refers to patents, so it’s akin to Microsoft’s claims of “donations” using licences to run some binaries. They usually mix the numbers with a tiny portion of something else in order to claim that there is something tangible too (relative proportions are rarely emphasised). We see this pattern all the time.
“It turns out now that Gates takes a leading role alongside the FDA (which he is also connected to through Monsanto) in the TB Alliance.”A very recent study showed that most news is simply PR (about 60% of it), which means it’s pushed or ghostwritten by PR people. Here again is Huffington spinning Microsoft’s collaboration with suppressive regimes last week. We wrote about this earlier, omitting the unnecessary spin. There is something increasingly sickening about what Huffington is doing, maybe because it’s desperate for revenue so it puts PR before investigative reporting.
Earlier this month we wrote about Microsoft's new hire from the FDA, which will help the company lobby the government. It turns out now that Gates takes a leading role alongside the FDA (which he is also connected to through Monsanto) in the TB Alliance. Gates was accused of monopolising research in these areas.
The companies will attend regular meetings led by the Gates Foundation and the TB Alliance, and researchers will work with the FDA to determine which combinations should be tested and how the trials should proceed, Stoffels said.
More connections with the pharmaceutical cartel:
FDA Looks to Streamline Rules for New Drug Cocktails
[...]
Two pharmaceutical consortia want to use the new approach, the article says. One is a group of 10 drug companies and several nonprofit organizations convened by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop medicines to fight tuberculosis. The other is an effort by Merck and AstraZeneca, which are jointly testing two anticancer agents. Others may be interested as well.
Merck is utterly corrupt and it is connected to Microsoft. The above is the blog item corresponding to the final report from the Wall Street Journal, which says:
At least two pharmaceutical consortia are poised to take advantage of the forthcoming policy: a group of 10 drug companies and several nonprofit organizations convened by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop medicines to fight tuberculosis; and pharmaceutical giants Merck & Co. and AstraZeneca PLC, which are jointly testing two anticancer agents.
People must remember that Gates was openly criticised for greed in his health agenda, even by very notable people who dared to face the PR machine which spews endlessly. There is a dark side to all this and those who consider themselves victims of the pharmaceutical cartel can probably tell their story. Usually it takes an illness for people to actually study the truth.
Here is Gates himself trying to push for more spendings in areas that he invests in. He wants the governments — not businesses — to fuel the companies that he has shares in. Need one mention the personal connection Gates has with the UN, as we have repeatedly shown for years? It’s a reciprocal but dangerous relationship because it does not take into account the externality, which is all of us outside Gates’ private enterprise and the UN. They can give Gates all the medals that they want, but this older article reminds us of the UN’s view. It’s an interview with the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, who is literally hanging out in Bill's and Melinda's mansion in Washington (there are also Microsoft-UN connections [1, 2, 3]). Here is what Ban Ki-moon said:
Q: Some say the emergence of super rich philanthropies like the Gates Foundation has undermined the effectiveness of the U.N. and its member organizations, like the WHO.
A: On the contrary that is what we really want — contributions from the business community as well as philanthropies. We need to have political support, but it doesn’t give us all that we need. NGOs and philanthropies and many foundations such as Bill Gates Foundation — they’re taking a very important role. The United Nations stands in the center of mobilizing and raising awareness of climate change and food security. When this H1N1 flu broke out I immediately had a meeting with WHO Director Margaret Chan. We even convened a meeting with international pharmaceutical CEOs in Geneva. We were discussing how pharmaceutical companies could help providing vaccines for developing countries. Major pharmaceutical companies have now donated 150 million vaccines.
Our reader who brought this up has more to say on the subject. “Gates energy talk at TED might spur investments,” says this article. It says “spur investments” (not “donations”). How telling. Putting aside the seemingly more innocent investments, there is an increasing amount of intervention in Africa, which has a lot of minerals and other natural resources the West drools over. Here’s a little bit of detail and insight into Gates’ role:
But that’s exactly the point, says Todd Barker, a partner for the Meridian Institute, which organized the trip with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
People who do not know what Gates does with Monsanto in Africa can start in, e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. It’s a tad creepy that Gates is now supporting a monopolist of the world’s food supply. Additionally, now he is taking his children more public around the nuclear industry, appearing with his son at the Hanford site [1, 2]. These are the young people whom he will pass his ventures to, just like the Rockefeller dynasty. The vision is one where few super-rich people decide very privately how the world should be run. Ask Ban Ki-moon about it. █
“Gates has created a huge blood-buying operation that only cares about money, not about people.”
–AIDS organisation manager, December 2009 (New York Times)
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