04.29.21

The Clown Song

Posted in Deception, Finance, Microsoft at 5:44 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Ponzi-Nadella: We're doing great because we say so!

Summary: Ponzi puts his Nadella mask on; the biggest scam since Enron and the 2008 financial crisis?

THE Ponzi scheme afoot
Shareholders we loot
The system we reboot
To tell the truth is moot

Everything is clown
Clown computing is the game in town
The finances may be down
Let’s rebrand before we drown

LinkedIn we reframe
Layoffs and write-offs are a shame
To Nokia we once came
And the outcome was the same

Office is the clown
Windows is the clown
Don’t you mope and frown
Even when Teams are down

Azure has layoffs, sure
Losses we ensure
Clown is the future, hear us roar!
Even when in reality it’s cannibalisation and gore █

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04.25.21

Richard Stallman: We Need to Restore Democracy

Posted in Finance at 11:02 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Dr. Richard Stallman, the Free Software Foundation’s founder, explains how plutocrats control society

Direct download as Ogg (00:05:02, 16.8 MB)

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04.24.21

Richard Stallman: We Need to Increase the Minimum Wage in the US

Posted in Finance, Free/Libre Software, Interview at 5:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Direct download as Ogg (00:05:20, 17.8 MB)

Summary: Dr. Richard Stallman, the Free Software Foundation’s founder, speaks about corporations versus benefits, among other related issues

[00:00]

(intro music)

Roy: We’ve spoken about poverty in general, it’s been shown recently that a thing the United States has dropped a great deal in terms of the levels of the child poverty in the Western world. I think it’s second worst now.

RMS: Well, that’s not surprising because you have Republicans doing everything key can to attack

[00:30]

anything that benefits most Americans and you have Democrats rather weak in defending those programs so they’ve been reduced and reduced and reduced. You get a Democratic president who said that he wanted to make budget cutting and deficit cutting a goal. That’s the wrong goal when you’re having a recession. What you need to get out of a recession is deficit spending. That’s what Keynes told us. So, they’re ignoring this. Why? Well, we

[01:00]

can guess it’s because the plutocrats want them to ignore this.

Roy: Would you say that the minimum wage is the main point to concentrate on?

RMS: I don’t know if it’s the main point because it’s one of many important things. Yes, we need to increase the minimum wage in the US. That’s not all we need to do. We need to do a lot of things.

Roy: I think there’s been a great deal recently in the media especially where they speak about how unemployment rates have gone down but they don’t really want to show you which companies were hiring and the fact they were

[01:30]

hiring temporary employees and part-time employees and that’s another issue which robs people from the rights to certain benefits of full-time employment.

RMS: Yes, in the US health benefits and some others are, including retirement income, these have been connected by a mistake in judgement with employment. However, employers don’t have to pay into these things for somebody

[02:00]

who’s working less than half-time. So that gives employers an incentive to hire only less than half-time workers and then people don’t get these things. Now, the solution, in regard to health care is disconnect it entirely from employment. It is a mistake, and likewise for support for the old, it shouldn’t be connected with employment at all. Because if it is connected with employment, that is economic pressure on companies not to employ workers in your country.

[02:30]

They would rather employ people elsewhere or use machines. They would rather spend a lot of money to automate rather than pay people. So it’s an undesirable incentive that this law places on employers. If we simply taxed businesses based on their revenue and used the money to provide health care and income for the old and everything else that is important to do for

[03:00]

people, then these companies wouldn’t have any incentive not to get their work done by hiring people. No, don’t stop it because I want to say a bit more. First of all, when I go into a supermarket or any other store that has self-checkout machines, I urge people not to use them because by using those machines they are increasing unemployment. I don’t use them myself, unless they basically give

[03:30]

me no other choice at all. And I tell the people who work in the store, I’m refusing to use those because I want you to continue to have jobs. You can do this too. We can all do this. We can make it a movement. Second, I learned a few days ago about the role played by offshoring, by complcated chains of ownership running through countries where

[04:00]

the real owners of a company can be secret so it seems that this is something that we need to put a stop to. But why don’t we? Plutocracy, of course. The governments that continue to allow this to be done are obeying the rich that they don’t dare disobey.

Roy: Because they fund them.

RMS: Exactly. So, you need politicians who are courageous enough to

[04:30]

say we are not going to play beggar thy neighbor any more. We’ve going to kick the banksters out of London unless they bow down to a state that isn’t plutocratic. And if they say obey us or we’ll leave, we’ll tell them good-riddance because trying to attract marauders like that in the hope of a little trickle-down

[05:00]

is in the long term a self-defeating policy which anyone can see by looking at it with the long perspective.

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04.23.21

In Favour of Splitting Up Companies Like IBM and Microsoft

Posted in Finance, IBM, Microsoft at 4:21 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Direct link

Summary: Dr. Richard Stallman, the Free Software Foundation’s founder, outlines his hypothetical plan for making corporations split into smaller units in order to reduce tax payments

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04.16.21

EPOLeaks on Misleading the Bundestag — Part 20: Taking Stock

Posted in Europe, Finance, Patents at 12:07 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Series index:

Ernst revolving door
Has the EPO degenerated into a self-service gravy train for those at the top?

Summary: Benoît Battistelli‘s legacy at the EPO is a legacy of corruption and cover-up; we take stock of how illegality was defended and persists to this day

In this series we saw how Dr Thomas Petri, the Bavarian State Data Protection Commissioner, and his federal counterpart, Ms Andrea Voßhoff, expressed concerns about serious deficiencies in the EPO’s data protection framework in 2014.

“Regrettably, as we have seen, their efforts were frustrated by the intrigues of a Tweedledum-Tweedledee duo, comprising EPO Vice-President Raimund Lutz and Christoph Ernst, an official of the German Justice Ministry who was also the head of the German delegation on the EPO’s Administrative Council at the time in question.”We also saw how press coverage in June 2015 about the deployment of covert surveillance measures at the EPO by Battistelli’s notorious “Investigative Unit” prompted Ms Voßhoff to bring these concerns to the attention of the Legal Affairs Committee of the Bundestag.

These conscientious and public-spirited officials responsible for the monitoring and enforcement of German and EU privacy law did their best to push for a reform of EPO’s data protection framework to ensure compliance with contemporary European standards.

Regrettably, as we have seen, their efforts were frustrated by the intrigues of a Tweedledum-Tweedledee duo, comprising EPO Vice-President Raimund Lutz and Christoph Ernst, an official of the German Justice Ministry who was also the head of the German delegation on the EPO’s Administrative Council at the time in question.

“The actions of this duo led to a situation in which not only the Federal Government but also the Bundestag and the German public were misled about the true state of affairs at the EPO.”The evidence on record suggests that Lutz and Ernst acted in a malfeasant and self-serving manner in order to sabotage the laudable efforts of Dr Petri and Ms Voßhoff to reform the EPO’s manifestly deficient data protection framework.

Lutz and Ernst
The suspected villains of the piece: Raimund Lutz and his protégé and successor, Christoph Ernst

The actions of this duo led to a situation in which not only the Federal Government but also the Bundestag and the German public were misled about the true state of affairs at the EPO.

However, neither Lutz nor Ernst suffered any sanction for these actions which appear to have been highly detrimental to the interests of all EPO stakeholders, including EPO staff, applicants and the general public.

On the contrary, a few years later as Ernst approached the statutory retirement age for public officials in Germany, he was “rewarded” by his buddies on the Administrative Council with a cushy little sinecure as the next EPO Vice-President for International and Legal Affairs.

This shrewd end-of-career move secured him a handsome five-digit tax free monthly salary for the next five years, i.e., until the age of 70.

Apologists for EPO mismanagement will no doubt try to dismiss these allegations against Ernst and his mentor Lutz as “ancient history” because they relate to events which took place back in 2015.

But the reality is that very little has changed since then.

Maas on a plane
The EPO echo chamber effect continues to encroach into the domestic political arena in Germany.

As noted in the introductory parts of this series, the same EPO echo chamber effect attributable to Ernst and Lutz back in 2015 can also be seen in operation much more recently, namely in the responses of the German government to parliamentary questions about the EPO which were submitted in 2019 and 2020.

“The events which have been covered in this series suggest that this malaise affects not only the European Patent Office as such but also extends to the Administrative Council, which is perceived to exist in an unhealthy and incestuous symbiosis with the senior management of the Office.”The only difference to the situation in 2015 is that Christoph Ernst is no longer at the German Ministry of Justice but is now sitting at the helm of the EPO’s Directorate of Legal and International Affairs as the successor of his mentor, Raimund Lutz.

It has been claimed by critics of the EPO – both inside and outside – that systematic abuses of the organisation’s immunity and autonomous legal status – which reached unprecedented levels during the Battistelli era – have caused this once proud “model international organisation” to degenerate into a rather grubby little self-service gravy train for those at the top.

The events which have been covered in this series suggest that this malaise affects not only the European Patent Office as such but also extends to the Administrative Council, which is perceived to exist in an unhealthy and incestuous symbiosis with the senior management of the Office.

Over the last decade or so the Council – which is supposed to act as the governing and supervisory body of the organisation – has come to operate more and more as a self-serving clique of national civil servants whose activities are only nominally subject to ministerial oversight.

Indeed, if the German example covered in this series is anything to go by, some of the Council delegates seem to have become adept at pulling the wool over the eyes of their supervising Ministers.

It is important to note that the Administrative Council’s exercise of its supervisory role is seriously compromised by the fact that the Council stands in a relationship of “absentee ownership” to the European Patent Office (to borrow a phrase from the American economist and sociologist, Thorsten Veblen).

Thus, the national IP Offices represented on the Council reap the rewards of the EPO’s work – to the estimated tune of a grand total of EUR 611 million in 2021.

At the same time, in their capacity as “absentee owners” whose personal fiefdoms – i.e. the national IP Offices – benefit in an effortless manner from this arrangement, the Council delegates bear no apparent liability for the decisions that they take – or fail to take – in their capacity as members of the supervisory organ of the EPO.

Indeed, in recent years the impression has been given that this closed circle of “absentee owners” became so preoccupied with divvying up the spoils which can be extracted from the EPO that they completely lost sight of the need to pay attention to the proper governance of the organisation.

Maas wants money
The political masters of the EPO – both in Germany and throughout the contracting states – appear to be primarily concerned with maintaining and increasing the lucrative cash flow from the “Dukatenesel”.

At the same time, the political masters of the Council delegates – both in Germany and throughout the EPO’s contracting states – appear to be primarily concerned with maintaining and increasing the lucrative cash flow from the “Dukatenesel”. This in turn requires a high volume of granted patents.

“In addition to this, a whole host of matters of vital importance from the perspective of “good governance” have been ignored or dismissed as irrelevant over the past decade.”However, the obsessive fixation on the “bottom line” and the misguided pursuit of “profit maximisation” at all costs have produced highly deleterious effects on the overall well-being of the organisation.

In addition to this, a whole host of matters of vital importance from the perspective of “good governance” have been ignored or dismissed as irrelevant over the past decade.

Such matters include compliance with data protection and other generally recognised legal standards and the provision of a properly functioning internal justice system to protect staff from the excesses and abuses of a cynical and tyrannical management.

Beneficiaries of the current system like Lutz and Ernst try to justify this patently unsatisfactory state of affairs by pontificating about the right of the EPO “to make its own internal law independent of and deviating from the law of the contracting states and the EU”.

But in propagating their perverse apologetics for the Council’s failures, these virtuosos of legal sophistry ignore the fact that the EPO’s autonomous legal status does not absolve the members of the Administrative Council from observing and respecting internationally recognised legal principles and standards, including those relating to data protection.

All of the EPO’s contracting states are members of the Council of Europe and they have all subscribed to the principles of data protection adopted and endorsed by that body.

The European Patent Organisation should not be permitted to arbitrarily deviate from these principles on the basis of dubious legal sophistry promulgated by certain individuals in pursuit of their own hidden agendas and personal ambitions.

“In the year in which the Council of Europe and its member states commemorate the 40^th anniversary of Convention 108, there really is no excuse for the shameful failure of the EPO’s Administrative Council to provide the organisation which it purports to govern with a fully GDPR-compliant data protection framework.”In conclusion, it is worth recalling that Convention 108 which laid the foundation of contemporary European data protection law was opened for signature by the Council of Europe on 28 January 1981, which is celebrated as European Data Protection Day.

In the year in which the Council of Europe and its member states commemorate the 40^th anniversary of Convention 108, there really is no excuse for the shameful failure of the EPO’s Administrative Council to provide the organisation which it purports to govern with a fully GDPR-compliant data protection framework.

“As long as the contracting states continue “duck away” from their international obligations in this regard (to borrow a phrase from Heiko Maas), it would be naïvely optimistic to expect that any effective action will be taken to remedy the problems which have been identified in the present series.”Unfortunately, there is at present no sign of the political will which would be required to rectify the situation – neither inside the EPO’s Administrative Council nor at a ministerial level in the contracting states, which – under the terms of the EPC – remain the ultimate guarantors of the proper functioning of the organisation and its compliance with the rule of law.

As long as the contracting states continue “duck away” from their international obligations in this regard (to borrow a phrase from Heiko Maas), it would be naïvely optimistic to expect that any effective action will be taken to remedy the problems which have been identified in the present series. █

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04.13.21

During Pandemic, With Rising Inflation, Corrupt EPO Management With Its ‘Shadow Budget’ Cracks Down on Education and Childcare Allowance

Posted in Europe, Finance, Patents at 5:50 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Source: Wage theft (Wikipedia)

Summary: While hoarding and misusing money [1, 2, 3] (by basically granting lots of patents that ought not be granted) the management of the EPO hides it aside, then proceeds to crushing salaries and benefits of staff, even pensioners

“In this open letter to the President,” the Central Staff Committee of the EPO recently noted, “we request that the reform of the Education and Childcare Allowance be adjourned, until the present crisis is over and proper and fruitful negotiations can take place. However, we also request that a proposal to amend Article 71 ServRegs be submitted for statutory consultation and be put on the provisional agenda of the forthcoming BFC meeting (BFC/126) of May 2021 for decision, exclusively for the purpose of extending the education benefits for the post-secondary education to employees who are nationals of the country where they serve in the next school year 2021-2022.”

Archambeau and Campinos Someone has passed us the letter below, dated the end of last week. It’s a letter to António Campinos, who lied to the Parliament yesterday. That’s what happens when politicians’ mouths or lips move; if only the EPO was run by scientists again — as was the case as recently as 1.5 decades ago — there would be basic adherence to facts and more compassion where possible.

European Patent Office | 80298 MUNICH | GERMANY

Mr António Campinos
President of the EPO

ISAR – R.1081

OPEN LETTER

Adjournment of the reform of the Education and Childcare Allowance and amendment of Article 71 ServRegs

Dear Mr President,

In view of the current pandemic situation, the immense level of stress it has imposed on our colleagues, and the subsequent impossibility to consult properly all involved stakeholders, the staff representation hereby requests to adjourn the reform of the Education and Childcare Allowance, until the present crisis is over and proper and fruitful negotiations can take place.

The staff representation also requests that a proposal to amend Article 71 ServRegs be submitted for statutory consultation and be put on the provisional agenda of the forthcoming BFC meeting (BFC/126) of May 2021 for decision, either of your own motion or in accordance with Article 9 (2.2)(b) of the Rules of Procedure of the Administrative Council, exclusively for the purpose of extending the education benefits for the post-secondary education to employees who are nationals of the country where they serve in the next school year 2021-2022.

Yours sincerely,

Alain Dumont

Chairman of the Central Staff Committee

They assume “proper and fruitful negotiations can take place” some time in the future; remember that the “Orange One” (of EPO, not the White House) refuses to talk to the staff’s union, sometimes even to the Central Staff Committee. So much for dialogue and negotiations… █

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04.10.21

EPOLeaks on Misleading the Bundestag — Part 12: A Worthy Successor to His Mentor?

Posted in Europe, Finance, Patents at 2:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Series index:

Christoph Ernst money series
Ernst’s professional background is in taxation law and corporate accounting standards.

Summary: We examine the role of Christoph Ernst in EPO management, both in the Benoît Battistelli era and the António Campinos era (plenty to hide)

Christoph Ernst’s sudden rise to prominence in the governance circles of the European Patent Organisation is somewhat enigmatic in view of the fact that his professional background and expertise lies in the area of taxation law, corporate accounting and financial reporting standards.

“…there is no indication that he had any prior involvement with IP and patent law matters before 2011, when his name first crops up in the records of the Administrative Council as the new head of the German delegation following the appointment of Raimund Lutz as EPO Vice-President.”Puff pieces which have appeared the IP media have regularly claimed that Ernst has “extensive knowledge of intellectual property”. However, there is no indication that he had any prior involvement with IP and patent law matters before 2011, when his name first crops up in the records of the Administrative Council as the new head of the German delegation following the appointment of Raimund Lutz as EPO Vice-President.

We remind readers that during the first decade and a half of his career at the German Justice Ministry, Ernst had languished in relative obscurity as a humble Undersecretary (“Ministerialrat”) working in the area of financial reporting and accounting standards.

Back in those days his public profile was limited to occasional appearances as an guest speaker at the annual symposia of little-known academic discussion groups for economic policy wonks such as the Ulm Forum for Economic Studies (“Ulmer Forum für Wirtschaftswissenschaften”).

Christoph Ernst in 2006
Ernst as a guest speaker at an obscure policy wonks’ symposium in 2006.

Ernst’s career at the Justice Ministry started to take off following his appointment as head of the BilMoG project. From 2007 onwards he was suddenly in great demand as a guest speaker at various corporate accounting events [PDF] sponsored by the likes of Handelsblatt and Price Waterhouse Coopers. His newly acquired popularity in these circles was due to his insider knowledge of the impending reform of corporate accounting law.

Christoph Ernst banking
Due to his insider knowledge of the BilMog, Ernst was in great demand as a guest speaker at corporate accounting events sponsored by the likes of Handelsblatt and Price Waterhouse Coopers.

In May 2010 Ernst was promoted to the position of Deputy Director General (“Ministerialdirigent”) in the Justice Ministry´s Commercial and Intellectual Property Law Department.

In April 2011, shortly after Lutz had taken up his new post as EPO Vice-President, Ernst was appointed as his successor to head the German delegation on the EPO’s Administrative Council.

After that whenever Lutz turned up for a photo-op at some IP junket or EPO extravaganza, Ernst was almost certain to be seen in close proximity, grinning like the proverbial Cheshire Cat.

The pictures below show Lutz with Ernst at a junket organised by the German Federal Patent Court in 2011 and with Boards of Appeal President (Carl Josefsson) and the Mayor of Haar (Gabriele Müller) at the formal inauguration of the new Boards of Appeal premises in Haar in December 2017. (warning: epo.org link)

Christoph Ernst and Lutz
Ernst was frequently seen in the company of EPO Vice-President Lutz (these photos are from 2011 and 2017, left and right respectively).

For EPO staff, Ernst’s tenure as Chair of the Administrative Council was hugely disappointing because he turned out to be every bit as subservient to Battistelli as his predecessor, Kongstad.

Although Ernst was described as a “moderate critic” of Battistelli by JUVE in June 2017 (copy here [PDF]), it soon became clear that he was – as Techrights put it – "just a megaphone of Battistelli’s EPO" and – just like Kongstad – another one of "Battistelli's protectors".

Indeed it hardly seems to be an exaggeration to say that following Ernst’s appointment as Chairman of the Council, Battistelli ended up with not just one but two subservient German “Duckmäuser” at his disposal: one in-house, in charge of his Legal and International Affairs Department, and the other conveniently in charge of the Organisation’s governing body.

In June 2018 – as Battistelli’s departure from the EPO was imminent – Kluwer Patent Blog published a farewell article about the “tarnished reputation of an EPO President”.

At around the same time Techrights reported on calls for Ernst “to be forced by national politicians to step down with immediate effect”.

However, it would appear that the main concern of Ernst’s boss, Justice Minister Heiko Mass, was to preserve the German share of the “loot” from the EPO’s "Dukatenesel". Maas would never have dared to upset the apple cart by calling his “Ministerialdirigent” to account.

And Ernst, for his part, had no intention of falling on his own sword voluntarily.

Au contraire, as he approached the statutory retirement age in 2018, he allowed himself to be rewarded by his buddies on the Administrative Council with a cushy little sinecure [PDF] as the next EPO Vice-President for International and Legal Affairs.

Christoph Ernst revolving doors
In 2018, Ernst was rewarded by his buddies on the Council with a well-paid sinecure as EPO Vice-President.

Thus, in addition to his entitlement to a generous public sector pension for previous service in the Justice Ministry, Ernst is now in receipt of a juicy five-digit monthly tax-free salary as an EPO Vice-President.

Unfortunately, his track record as Vice-President so far has been every bit as disappointing as his earlier track record as Administrative Council Chairman – although cynics might be inclined to say that he is indeed a worthy successor to his mentor Raimund Lutz.

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Ernst was rarely seen on EPO premises. During 2019, he seems to have spent most of his time on “duty missions” travelling to attend various IP junkets and boondoggles around the globe, particularly in the Far East.

He has also been implicated in the "Doyen for a Yen" scandal where the former Vice-President Željko Topić managed to become a European Patent Attorney without passing the European Qualifying Examination.

As reported by Techrights, Topić’s bogus application to be registered as a European Patent Attorney must have been rubber-stamped by EPO Directorate 5.2.3 which falls under the responsibility of Christoph Ernst as Vice President of DG5.

Furthermore, Ernst has conspicuously failed to press for the adoption of appropriate measures to ensure that the EPO’s data protection framework is truly fit for purpose for the twenty-first century.

Instead of doing what badly needs to be done in this regard, Ernst seems to be content to sit on his hands and continue peddling the untenable EPOnian myth of GDPR-compliance which he inherited from his mentor Lutz.

In the next part we will continue our review of Ernst’s role in EPO affairs by looking into the failed promise of a self-styled “good governance” guru. █

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04.04.21

Microsoft as Large Military Contractor, Living Off Taxpayers’ Money

Posted in Finance, Microsoft at 4:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Older: Microsoft Looking to be ‘Bailed Out’ by Militarism, Imperialism, Racism and Fascism

Summary: The video above (download link) talks about what Microsoft nowadays does to ensure it remains relevant, even if that means killing a lot of people and committing crimes against humanity

THE old monopoly of Microsoft is waning (market share of Windows at around 31%) and Free software makes gains on every front. Sure, we don’t run TV commercials to boast about the world running on Free software (more and more so over time). But it’s definitely happening.

“Microsoft has, in recent years, become one of those “Big Tech” monopolies that are living on subsidies and taxpayers’ money, which doesn’t even exist but manifests itself through soaring debt levels (or ‘money-printing’).”Absent from the corporate/mainstream media is a simple explanation of the growing debt in the US (soon exceeding 30 trillion dollars), which is tied to military expenditures and imperialism. An imperialistic overstretch is killing what’s left of the middle class and all that money ends up in few private pockets, in effect enriching themselves by enslaving and bombing millions of people.

Microsoft has, in recent years, become one of those “Big Tech” monopolies that are living on subsidies and taxpayers' money, which doesn’t even exist but manifests itself through soaring debt levels (or ‘money-printing’). The video above discusses those things. An article on this matter will soon follow. █

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