Bonum Certa Men Certa

Cablegate: Gates and Microsoft 'Love' Children in America

Girl in Antigua, Guatemala



“They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”

--Bill Gates



Summary: Diplomatic cables help show how Microsoft along with the Gates Foundation is distorting publicly-funded education systems and other taxpayers' institutions (public services) for its own selfish benefit, typically under the guise of "protecting" children

WIKILEAKS has brought us Cablegate, which in turn brought us a lot of facts from privileged sources. Techrights has done some research based on the latest 10,000 or so cables, concentrating specifically on America (the continent of course, not any nation in particular). As Eduardo Landaveri from the Spanish portal of Techrights can tell us, Microsoft loves exploiting south America just like many other countries and companies. The difference is, Microsoft uses taxpayers' money to indoctrinate the kids so that they become paying clients of Microsoft. It is a very serious abuse that almost no politician pays attention to. The Gates Foundation too intervenes in this corruption of the education systems whenever Microsoft alone cannot ensure that severe lock-in remains for future generations to cope with. How cruel is that lobbying tag-team act? They turn many children into to-be 'pirates' with debt to Gates and Microsoft.



Rather than dwell in diplomatic cables, let is be said that Microsoft adopts the "think about the children" attitude, which is part of the PR campaign. Rather than the predator that it is, Microsoft wishes to be perceived as a friend of children at schools. The "think about the children" line is used to pass all sorts of outrageous laws and justify extreme actions, too. Be careful any time it's seen or heard.

So anyway, in this cable we see that "Child Exploitation Tracking System(CETS) program developed by Microsoft at the behest of the Toronto Police," verifying a sort of collusion between Microsoft and authorities. Should Microsoft be involved in such a project given its violations of the law? There is something too awkward about it. Yes, Microsoft works with Toronto's police whilst asking everyone to install unauditable binaries on their PCs (the police has back doors into Windows). How about this cable which says:

--Proximity and relative strength of the U.S. market: the CVCA confirmed that of Canada's best ideas migrate to the U.S. where venture funding is more readily available. As a result, Canada faces the "perverse" situation that its publicly funded university system acts as a great incubator for innovative ideas that are then developed commercially south of the border (ref (B)). A good example is the University of Waterloo, a leading Canadian math and high-tech engineering university, which supplies over 50 percent of its graduating classes to Microsoft Corp. (NOTE: Bill Gates has taken a personal interest in this university, often slipping in quietly to meet with Waterloo students, as he did on October 7. END NOTE)


Gates Foundation and Microsoft working together, as they usually do e.g. in Vietnam. In this cable we see yet more interesting stuff:

IDRC partnered with Microsoft and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation to support information technology and communication development in the Middle East and North Africa through social investment in grassroots "telecenters."


AstroTurfing much?

Further south we discover Microsoft's involvement in Costa Rica: "In December 2005, PANI implemented a national information campaign in conjunction with Microsoft to help school children navigate safely on the Internet."

The context is all sorts of documents from Costa Rica where Microsoft is shown to be making public services a Microsoft-dependent mess. Terrible stuff. In some other new cables we see references to Microsoft software by names and sometimes the requirement of presentations in "Microsoft PowerPoint". This type of mentality comes from schools, which Gates and Microsoft are feeding with their proprietary products, using teachers as their own private trainers who are funded by taxpayers to essentially be Microsoft's unavoidable marketers (schools are obligatory). Watch this cable from Peru. It states: "As of February 2009, FIU has been under the leadership of Ramon Enrique Saldivar Bocangel. Most recently having served as advisor to the President of the Supreme Court, he has also been the head of the Prime Minister's National Office of Electronic Government and Information. Prior to these positions, Saldivar worked in the private sector, including five years with MICROSOFT. He holds multiple degrees from the best universities in Lima in Economics and Business Administration and has attended the Microsoft Latin American Executive Training Program in Bogota."

Cronyism much? Revolving doors?

Here is Microsoft using the Ricky Martin Foundation for "a joint project with Microsoft to protect children" (yes, somebody think of the children!).

With similar involvements in Bogota and elsewhere it sure is evident that Wikileaks provides an important view on how Microsoft abuses its power and exploits children (who are obviously too young to stand up and resist). Microsoft's greedy executives should mind their own children's business before they decide to impose on everyone's children all around the world what they should and should not do.

"My children - in many dimensions they're as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod."

--Steve Ballmer (on CNN)



"Children are often taught "computer skills" that are really "Microsoft Windows skills" – how to use Microsoft's operating system and its Office suite (its two monopolies) – rather than the possibilities of making computers do what you want. As such, children are being equipped to be uncreative office workers, just as those at the end of the 19th century were equipped for the routine of adding up huge lists of numbers in the accounts departments of big companies."

--The Guardian

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

“Twibel” Actions Against Comedians (and Why It's a Truly Low Blow)
they try to make up in quantities for a lack of merit or quality
Rewriting Things in Rust
How far would you go?
What Microsoft Reputation Laundering (With a Weaponised Law Degree) Looks Like in a Foreign Continent
You would expect this in uncivilised and primitive countries
Slopwatch: LLMs 'Write' Fake or Distorted 'News' About "Linux"
LLM slop disguised as news
 
Leadership in Free Software
Don't let IBM lead. It's a terrible flag bearer.
Linux Foundation Apparently Flirting With Slop (Marketing by LLM-Generated SPAM)
The Web is in a really bad state!
COVID-19 Sped Up Site Improvements in Techrights
A few months later we created our very own IRC network
Gemini Links 05/07/2025: Negative Questions and 'Touching Grass' (Going Outside)
Links for the day
Links 05/07/2025: Dalai Lama Succession as 90th Birthday Approaches, 40 deg C in China
Links for the day
Links 05/07/2025: Hungary and US Defecting to Russia, "Google's Hotseat Hypocrisy"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/07/2025: 4th of July 2025 and "Zig Roadmap 2026"
Links for the day
How to Combat the Exploitation and Abuse by Microsoft GitHub
Not to mention corruption and crimes against women
Bryan Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People
"[Lunduke] is actually sending his audience to attack people."
Even The Right Wing is Rejecting Bryan Lunduke
no wonder he became so irrelevant and marginal
Microsoft's MSN Helps Microsoft Spread Lies About the Layoffs' Scale (Well Over 25,000 People Laid Off This Year)
There seem to be monopolies on lies and on truth
The Death of X Has Been Greatly Exaggerated (by Compromised Media)
X.Org Server is alive and well
In 2025 Everything is "AI". Remember Blockchains?
Talk about what companies and things (services, products, software) actually do, not the labels they use
Julian Assange Has Been Free for a Year
Julian Assange and I disagreed on some things
Monopolies and Scalping
Monopolies gravitate towards price hikes
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 04, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, July 04, 2025
Microsoft's August Layoffs Wave: "August is Confirmed for Additional Performance Based Cuts"
"August is confirmed for additional performance based cuts from the recent connects along with additional organizational cuts."
Links 04/07/2025: Google Replaces the Web With Slop, "AI Might Kill Us All"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/07/2025: Mindfulness and F1
Links for the day
Weeks After Microsoft Bankruptcy in Russia the Company Shuts Down in Pakistan, Too
Last month Windows' share in Pakistan fell to an all-time low
Rob Musial's June 2025 Additions of Malware in Proprietary Software
Via the GNU Web site this week
Links 04/07/2025: Microsoft's H-1B Visa Applications Show Another Crisis Unfolding, Many More Deep Cuts and Shutdowns Revealed, Complete Microsoft Exits
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/07/2025: A Day To Remember and "Stop Killing Games"
Links for the day
Crime and Corruption at Microsoft GitHub Cannot be Covered Up by SLAPPs in Another Continent
We'll write about this for a long time to come
Slop Videos Are Disappointing Garbage, Nothing New, Just Brute Force up on Display or a Pedestal of Slop
Slop videos aren't a new thing
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 03, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, July 03, 2025
The War on Local Storage (People Hosting Their Files Locally and Privately)
There's nothing wrong with controlling one's computing
What Digital Independence Means
Independence in the digital realms means abandoning platforms like GitHub, not just rejecting proprietary software
NVidia is a Bubble
they temporarily see fortunes and wrongly assume perpetuity thereof
Fedora Does Not Care About Diversity and Inclusion, It's About Optics (Corporate Image)
any notion of inclusion is superficial and misleading
Don't Buy the Excuses for Microsoft's Mass Layoffs
Back in the 90s, Microsoft bought a lot of companies to get and stay ahead