12.27.09
Microsoft’s Gates Seeks More Monopolies
“How many crimes are committed simply because their authors could not endure being wrong.”
–Albert Camus
Summary: Education is under threat because of the Gates Foundation and other bizarre moves pique people’s curiosity
MR. Gates claims to have retired from Microsoft (he is still active over there, mostly as an über-lobbyist) and as de facto minister of education [1, 2, 3, 4] he continues to bother people, even in Portland schools. Here is an interesting and very detailed post from a month ago. Gates is being called a “philanthro-capitalist”, which is a good title for businessmen who disguise their for-profit operations as “charity” (Gates is not alone in this).
The free market approach to enrollment and funding is a demonstrable failure in Portland, when measured by access to educational opportunity. Unless the district is willing to significantly reduce opportunity for the white middle class, there’s no way they can pay for equity of opportunity without balancing enrollment, that is, by curtailing school choice. This is a significant element of the high school plan. With it, the district appears to be forging a path independent of current trends pushed by Gates, at least for high schools.
But the district appears unwilling to apply the same lesson to middle grades.
Sara Allan’s contention that it’s not the structure of the school that matters, but what goes on in the classroom, also closely parrots the current line being sold by Phillips, now head of education for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Phillips was the keynote speaker at the Council of The Great City Schools conference held in Portland last month, attended by Allan and quite a few of her administrative colleagues. In her speech, Phillips promoted merit pay for teachers, the latest policy thrust of Gates.
While superintendent in Portland, Philips was responsible for both the transition to K-8 schools and the “small schools” initiative, funded largely by the Gates foundation, which dismantled every comprehensive high school in Portland serving majority non-white students, and split them into rigid “academies.” These academies forced students to choose a narrow field of study as freshmen, and didn’t allow students to take electives offered in other academies in the same building.
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Gates’ quiet partner
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has grown to be the dominant voice in the national education dialogue, heavily influencing the federal education policy of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. But even as PPS appears to be taking a non-Gates path on high schools, the district continues to be enamored with Gates’ biggest private-sector education policy ally: Eli Broad’s education foundation.
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“Student performance,” entirely measured by standardized test scores, correlates highly to poverty. Broad’s scheme would almost certainly assure that teachers in poor and minority communities would make less than their colleagues in wealthier schools, only worsening the achievement gap. This puts the lie to Broad’s (and Gates’) stated mission of closing that gap.
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“Student performance,” entirely measured by standardized test scores, correlates highly to poverty. Broad’s scheme would almost certainly assure that teachers in poor and minority communities would make less than their colleagues in wealthier schools, only worsening the achievement gap. This puts the lie to Broad’s (and Gates’) stated mission of closing that gap.
We have also discussed in great length Gates’ aspirations when it comes to controlling agriculture and food around the world. For the uninitiated (as Gates controls/manipulates the press which writes about the subject, using selective funds [1, 2]):
- With Microsoft Monopoly in Check, Bill Gates Proceeds to Creating More Monopolies
- Gates-Backed Company Accused of Monopoly Abuse and Investigated
- How the Gates Foundation Privatises Africa
- Reader’s Article: The Gates Foundation and Genetically-Modified Foods
- Monsanto: The Microsoft of Food
- Seeds of Doubt in Bill Gates Investments
- Gates Foundation Accused of Faking/Fabricating Data to Advance Political Goals
- More Dubious Practices from the Gates Foundation
- Video Transcript of Vandana Shiva on Insane Patents
- Explanation of What Bill Gates’ Patent Investments Do to Developing World
- Black Friday Film: What the Bill Gates-Backed Monsanto Does to Animals, Farmers, Food, and Patent Systems
- Gates Foundation Looking to Destroy Kenya with Intellectual Monopolies
- Young Napoleon Comes to Africa and Told Off
- Bill Gates Takes His GMO Patent Investments/Experiments to India
- Gates/Microsoft Tax Dodge and Agriculture Monopoly Revisited
- Beyond the ‘Public Relations’
- UK Intellectual Monopoly Office (UK-IPO) May be Breaking the Law
- “Boycott Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in China”
According to this news report, Gates may have just acquired a large farm. If this is true, what would be the motive?
Now, they’re wondering whether the company that paid $27.1 million for the very large farm is owned by Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman and the world’s wealthiest man.
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Local officials say the rumor is rampant, but they don’t know whether it’s true. Public records lend support to the theory but aren’t conclusive.
“The Gates Foundation and WHO attack small businesses,” says Gateskeepers, who points to this short article:
“For us to take on WHO is like David taking on Goliath. We’re not ‘big tobacco’ and our mom-and-pop retail members are just small businesses selling legal products that adults enjoy like fine wine or top-shelf Scotch whiskey,” McCalla said, “but we cannot stand by while WHO makes outlandish and outrageous claims that are an affront to the intelligence of all thinking people,” he said.
McCalla chose not to repeat the controversial WHO claims so as not to give them further coverage. However, he explained that they had to do with alleged health issues related to smoking and secondhand smoke.
“They say there are no safe levels of secondhand smoke, but the Occupational Safety and Health Administration says otherwise,” McCalla explained. “OSHA has, indeed, set safe levels for secondhand smoke and those levels are 25,000 times higher than are found in bars and restaurants.”
Among contributors to WHO is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which, despite its support for WHO’s work with preventing and treating malaria, has been criticized by top WHO staffers for not allowing its funding to be more broadly spent.
What’s ironic is that they don’t actually prevent smoking. A few weeks ago we wrote about the Gates Foundation investing in Big Tobacco. This is not exactly news and it is not surprising, either. In a way, it is in Gates’ financial interests to harm small tobacco companies not because smoking is bad but because Big Tobacco’ is inside his portfolio.
It is hard to explain the rationale behind all of this, but such factual observations may help in explaining future actions. Microsoft's patent troll, whom Gates invests a lot of money in, has already begun his racketeering operation (he runs the world’s largest patent troll). He keeps those patent stunts and positive press going [1, 2] while rather awkward is the global warming-related patent promotion. They try to glorify patents by portraying them as a tool that will literally save the world. We last mentioned this right here and we also showed that Nathan Myhrvold funds studies that defend and even promote patent-trolling/harvesting.
As a side note, Microsoft turns out to have sought more control of the VoIP market, but it lost in bidding.
O2 is #1 in bid to acquire Jajah
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Now it seems the company has caught the attention of O2 who has made an offer to buy Jajah for $200 million according to TheMarker financial website, as reported by Reuters. O2 beat Cisco and Microsoft who were also in the running to acquire the company.
Luckily it’s Telefonica which got it, not Microsoft. Microsoft would love to control telephony (communication) too.
Telefonica Europe, better known as O2, already has a user-base of more than 48 million as a part of its communication business, and the addition of Jajah to its stable would presumably help the company beef up its offerings to attract more customers.
Microsoft was built by a determined monopoliser, whose appetite for more monopoliies never abated. In the early days of Microsoft he told a popular magazine (only in print) about his aspiration to control the world. He actually said that. But now he wears the costume of a “philanthro-capitalist” rather than that of a ruthless, merciless dictator who disregards the law and pays the fines later, only to prove that crime pays off. █
