03.15.10
Gemini version available ♊︎Huffington Post, Technologizer, and Other Web Sites in Bill’s Pocket
Summary: The Gates Foundation still gets around, throwing money at all the right places for PR purposes while it’s making profit from patents and global influence
EARLIER this year we showed what Microsoft was doing with the Huffington Post [1, 2, 3]. Bill Gates is flirting with the Huffingtons (personally) and the Huffington Post has just outsourced a section to an online fundraising organisation, which GatesKeepers suspects is affiliated with the Gates Foundation.
Matthew Bishop, Huffpo, Causecast, Trevor Neilson, and the rest of the Philanthrocapitalist Complex
Who ARE these people and why do they want to advertise to us to make us think the way they do? Is it possible that members of the cabal have financial interests involved?
Does the Gates Foundation fund any Nieman activities?
According to this, “Prior to his work with the GBC [Global Philanthropy Group], Trevor served as the Director of Public Affairs and Director of Special Projects for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest foundation.”
Matthew Bishop and Bill Gates also seem to know each other pretty well and Causecast advertises the vaccine projects of Bill Gates. From now on, this interests circle of Bill Gates will help fund the Huffingtons.
As for Nieman Lab, look closer at the new article. Just look at the content. It has “Gates Foundation” written all over it because there’s a lot about malaria, for example (Gates and GAVI).
In October, The Huffington Post launched a new section with an unusual goal: turning an audience of passive readers into activists for good causes. The section’s underlying business model is novel, too: All of its content is outsourced to an outside company, a for-profit firm that has nonprofits for clients.
In exchange for that content, HuffPo shares the advertising and sponsorship revenue the section generates with the outside company, Causecast. And Causecast gets a platform to promote its services and the nonprofits it chooses to highlight, some of which are its partner organizations.
[...]
But that doesn’t mean Causecast isn’t writing about or linking to affiliated organizations. Here’s an example: On Jan. 31, Harris wrote a 76-word post titled, “Malaria Is The Cause of 2010, Declares Matthew Bishop and Malaria No More.” The quick post notes that the nonprofit group Malaria No More expects the World Cup in South Africa to draw attention to the disease. Underneath the post, a box features a link to donate money to Malaria No More, using Causecast’s donation tool. Harris doesn’t mention in the post that Malaria No More is a member organization of his employer, or that Causecast ran Malaria No More’s mobile fundraising campaign. Causecast lists the campaign as a case study for its text2give services.
Watch the comments too. Ben Parker writes: “Really really discouraging. The non-profit industry is woefully short of intelligent and independent journalism coverage already. This is banalising things further.” Another person says: “This makes me so angry – and I am sure the MD’s at Causecast are all on 6 figure salaries plus bonsus. Where’s the charity in that?”
“Is there some huge PR effort going on to try to rehabilitate Microsoft’s and Bill Gates’ reputations?”
–Pamela Jones, GroklawTruth be told, Gates has moved on to creating monopolies other than Microsoft. Only one of them is health related [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8].
There is some other ugly stuff surrounding Gates at the moment, including this pathetic excuse of an article from the Technologizer. “The history of Windows, the Pravda version,” calls it Groklaw. “Is there some huge PR effort going on to try to rehabilitate Microsoft’s and Bill Gates’ reputations? In any case, you may wish to peruse the Comes v. Microsoft exhibits, if Microsoft history interests you,” wrote Pamela Jones.
Could the Technologizer get the “Huffington treatment”? Technologizer is already accommodated by Microsoft fans (we have given examples before). Windows gets promoted with all sorts of lies that rewrite history falsely (here is an accurate timeline). Let us remember that Bill Gates is sponsoring people to write books the ways he likes them and the way that helps his agenda. The same goes for journalists whom Gates is funding. We gave actual examples that are factual and impossible to deny. “Bill writes a book review,” reveals GatesKeepers in a new post.
Bill’s new book review, had it been sent to the editor of a college newspaper, probably wouldn’t have been published or worth reading. It is not very good. But since he didn’t get an undergraduate degree we can’t fault him for not knowing this.
We need more serious thinking about responsibility and accountability and fewer book reviews on Gates Notes.
“10 Big Ways Bill Gates Wants to Change Education,” says this article about the man who wants to be de facto minister of education and tell children what to learn and what tools schools must use (Microsoft’s of course). We’ve covered the subject in:
- Bill Gates Puts in a Million to Ratify His Role as Education Minister
- How the Gates Foundation is Used to Ensure Children Become Microsoft Clients
- More Dubious Practices from the Gates Foundation
- Microsoft Builds Coalitions of NGOs, Makes Political and Educational Changes
- Microsoft’s EDGI in India: Fighting GNU/Linux in Education
- Microsoft’s Gates Seeks More Monopolies
- Gates Foundation Funds Blogs to Promote Its Party Line
- Microsoft Bribes to Make Education Microsoft-based
- Lobbyists Dodge the Law; Bill Gates Lobbies the US Education System with Another $10 Million
- Gates Investments in Education Criticised; Monsanto (Gates-Backed) Corruption Revisited
- Latest Vista 7 Failures and Microsoft Dumping
Based on this announcement, Gates is still funding people to speak about the subject of education and promote his own agenda in this area.
Did Cathy speak to a Gates Foundation Panel or a Gates Foundation-funded panel. Were Foundation people in the audience and listening?
Even foreign relations are an area that Bill Gates is now invading. GatesKeepers has a copy of documents that show this.
Observations on the Chair of the Gates Foundation at the Committee on Foreign Relations
“I do know that when programs are coordinated, held accountable, and designed based on evidence, they will work better.” How do local authorities ‘coordinate’ massive funding from big donors like the Gates Foundation and PEPFAR? They are swept off their own feet and worship at the feet of the donors. Can you imagine the Vietnamese government ‘coordinating’ Gates and PEPFAR and GAVI funded programmes worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year? And is Bill advocating for his own funding to be accountable?
Despite the massive PR campaigns, Gates poses a danger to all countries across the world. Like people before him (notably Rockefeller), he uses his money to expand his realms of influence but he is very careful to control how people perceive his actions. Going against Gates’ massive PR teams is an uphill battle, but people should make a start somewhere. █
“In the fall of 1982, Pam Edstrom [of Waggener Edstrom], a diminutive woman with piercing blue eyes, was recruited by Microsoft. [...] In modern-day business, flacks were responsible not only for avoiding bad press, but for spinning the good. [...] Hanson and Edstrom would spin a whole new image for Gates himself. They would tap the best and worst of Chairman Bill, changing his clothes, his voice, and his allegiances, driving him to become not just the boss, but, essentially, the company mascot—a sort of high-technology Colonel Sanders.”
–Pam’s daughter
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Yuhong Bao said,
March 15, 2010 at 10:50 am
“Windows gets promoted with all sorts of lies that rewrite history falsely (here is an accurate timeline)”
It is indeed mostly accurate, but see my comment for one error in it.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
March 15th, 2010 at 10:56 am
It’s quite an old summary, but a lot of people assume that if a story is told 20 years later, then it will be told more accurately; usually it’s the opposite. This relies on a new audience with ignorance or old audience with amnesia.
“Barbarians Led by Bill Gates“, a book composed by the daughter of Microsoft’s PR mogul, is a look from inside the company itself and it’s revealing.
Yuhong Bao Reply:
March 15th, 2010 at 11:26 am
“t’s quite an old summary, but a lot of people assume that if a story is told 20 years later, then it will be told more accurately; usually it’s the opposite. ”
Of course, for obvious reasons.