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Patents: an Open Letter to my MP
,----[ Quote ]
| Dear Rob Wilson MP,
|
| My accountants have drawn my attention to a
| little-noticed clause in the Chancellor's
| recent pre-budget statement that announces
| a measure (curiously named the "patent
| box") whose effect is to offer a reduced
| rate of corporation tax for profits
| deriving from patents. The stated intent is
| to encourage and reward innovation. As far
| as the software business (so important to
| the economy of your constituency) is
| concerned, the effect is likely to be
| exactly the opposite, and I would therefore
| like to encourage you to oppose it and to
| ensure that a Conservative government will
| not only reverse it, but move in the
| opposite direction.
|
| First let me explain where I am coming
| from. After 25 years as a senior software
| engineer with ICL, I spent 3 years with the
| mid-size German company Software AG, and
| for the last six years I have been running
| my own one-man software company here in
| Reading. It's a successful small business,
| selling globally over the internet, and
| relying 100% on innovation: my competitors
| are companies like IBM and Intel. They have
| both produced products similar to mine this
| year, but 5 years behind.
|
| Technically, UK and EU law disallows
| patents on software. However, the patent
| lawyers have found ways around that, and
| the current situation is that the patent
| offices are accepting applications that are
| software patents in all but name, and the
| courts are accepting them as valid.
`----
http://saxonica.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2009/12/14/4404215.html
Mexico's transgenic maize under fire
,----[ Quote ]
| Mexico doesn't have an adequate system to
| monitor or protect natural maize (corn)
| varieties from transgenes, say prominent
| scientists concerned about the experimental
| planting of genetically modified crops.
|
| In the past month, Monsanto and Dow
| AgriSciences have received government
| permission to plant transgenic maize across
| 24 plots, covering a total of nearly 13
| hectares, in the northern states of Sonora,
| Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Coahuila and
| Tamaulipas. The planting of transgenic
| maize had been prohibited for 11 years in
| Mexico, where maize was first domesticated.
`----
http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/11758-mexicos-transgenic-maize-under-fire
Recent:
Training on journalism advancing the interests of the Gates Foundation or the interests of Africans
,----[ Quote ]
| Why is 'training' for journalists always
| issue-based? AIDS, agriculture, etc. The
| Gates Foundation wants to advance its own
| agenda. Why not fund an panAfrican school
| of journalism? Or five or six regional
| African schools of journalism? Africans can
| run their own schools of journalism.
`----
http://gateskeepers.civiblog.org/blog/_archives/2009/12/14/4404381.html
Filling a Need for African-Based Reporting on Agriculture
,----[ Quote ]
| But there are efforts underway to increase
| reporting about Africa from Africans. The
| International Center for Journalists
| received a $2 million grant, three-year
| grant in 2008 from the Bill & Melinda Gates
| Foundation to improve coverage of
| agriculture and health. They're placing
| journalists from the U.S. in four key
| African countries--Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania,
| and Senegal-- where they will lead projects
| with African journalists, helping them
| improve not only coverage, but the quality
| of the articles they're writing. The
| project will also help train "citizen
| journalist" stringers who can relay
| information from the village level via
| cellphones.
|
| And earlier this year, the Gates Foundation
| also awarded a two-year grant to the
| Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism to
| develop an intensive training program for
| African journalists to promote high-quality
| coverage of agricultural issues.
`----
http://www.mydd.com/story/2009/12/11/112817/24
Monsoft or Microsanto?
,----[ Quote ]
| Amazingly, David Boies, the lawyer that
| led the attack on Microsoft during that
| investigation, is also invovled: he is
| representing Du Pont, one of Monsanto's
| rivals concerned about the latter's
| monopoly power.
|
| Let's just hope that Monsanto becomes the
| subject of a full anti-trust action, and
| that the result is more effective than
| that applied to Microsoft. After all,
| we're not talking about software here, but
| the world's food supply, and monopolies -
| both intellectual and otherwise - are
| simply morally indefensible when billions
| of lives are stake.
`----
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2009/12/monsoft-or-microsanto.html
AP INVESTIGATION: Monsanto seed biz role revealed
,----[ Quote ]
| Confidential contracts detailing Monsanto
| Co.'s business practices reveal how the
| world's biggest seed developer is
| squeezing competitors, controlling smaller
| seed companies and protecting its
| dominance over the multibillion-dollar
| market for genetically altered crops, an
| Associated Press investigation has found.
`----
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/AP-INVESTIGATION-Monsanto-apf-1335374142.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=2&asset=&ccode=
AP INVESTIGATION: Monsanto seed biz role revealed
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/8855598
How Monsanto owns and manipulates the world's food supply
,----[ Quote ]
| Steve Silberman sends us "A major AP
| expose of how Monsanto uses secret
| licensing agreements for its genetically
| manipulated crops to squeeze smaller seed
| companies, lock out competition, and keep
| food prices high.".
`----
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/13/how-monsanto-owns-an.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29
The Gates Foundationâs agriculture program: experimenting or floundering?
,----[ Quote ]
| Hereâs what we know about the Gates
| Foundationâs agriculture program:
|
| * Gates believes itâs suggestive that
| âApart from a few states and small, oil-
| rich countries, no country has managed a
| rapid rise from poverty without
| increasing agricultural productivity. In
| the poorest countries, agriculture
| employs a majority of the people.â
| * This isnât a new argument or an
| undisputed one. See Peter Timmer on
| Green Revolution âoptimistsâ vs.
| âpessimistsâ.
| * Gatesâs approach is âcomprehensive,â
| targets âno single, simple solutionâ,
| and includes farmer training/support,
| irrigation initiatives, market access
| initiatives, and funding of agricultural
| research with a focus on gender
| empowerment.
| * This isnât a new approach or a
| historically successful one. The World
| Bank has focused on essentially the same
| set of interventions recently, with
| unclear results, and the previous
| âholisticâ approach of âIntegrated Rural
| Developmentâ is widely considered to
| have failed. Details at our overview of
| agriculture aid.
|
| In other words, the Gates Foundation
| approach â as described â appears to be
| neither a continuation of things that have
| worked before nor a fundamentally new
| approach to the problem. So what might be
| different this time around?
`----
http://blog.givewell.net/?p=437
Kenya: Gates Foundation and Monsanto to Develop Genetically
Modified Seeds for Small Farmers
,----[ Quote ]
| Many of the emotionally charged headlines
| that drive Africaâs food security debate
| are intricately connected to the critical
| and complex Kenyan seed industry: Kenya is
| the second largest seed consumer in sub-
| Saharan Africa, and a key driver of
| agricultural research on the continent. For
| decades, donors and private interests have
| been funneling millions of dollars into the
| Kenya Agricultural Research Institute
| (KARI), in an effort to develop new plant
| varieties that can repel pests, withstand
| disease and produce higher yields.
|
| KARI is now one of the main partners in a
| new programme funded by the Gates
| Foundation that will attempt to develop
| genetically modified (GM) maize that can
| withstand drought. The plan is to
| distribute the seeds to small farmers in
| Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania
| and Uganda. The technology is coming from
| Monsanto, the American corporate seed giant
| that does a lot of work for the Gates
| Foundation in Africa. Normally Monsantoâs
| patented seeds come at a high price, which
| has inspired an endless stream of vitriol
| from activists who accuse the company of
| exploiting poor farmers for obscene
| profits. This time, farmers will receive
| the seeds royalty free â indefinitely â as
| part of Gatesâ push for a âgreen
| revolutionâ in Africa.
`----
http://www.ratio-magazine.com/200911261425/Kenya/Kenya-Gates-Foundation-and-Monsanto-to-Develop-Genetically-Modified-Seeds-for-Small-Farmers.html
Kenya: Gates Foundation and Monsanto to develop GM seeds for small farmers
http://www.freshplaza.com/news_detail.asp?id=54698
Hunger, Hypocrisy And The U.N.
,----[ Quote ]
| This is hypocrisy of the vilest sort. In
| fact, U.N. agencies, programs and policies
| themselves have prevented farmers in the
| developing world from obtaining the tools
| they need to become more productive. That
| gets us back to Bill Gates and his big
| plans: His choice last year of former U.N.
| Secretary General Kofi Annan to head a new
| group intended to achieve a "green
| revolution" in African agriculture, the
| Alliance for a Green Revolution--established
| with an initial $150 million grant from the
| Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the
| Rockefeller Foundation--was
| incomprehensible. If past performance is any
| indication, the only things likely to become
| greener are the numbered bank accounts of
| Annan and his cronies.
`----
http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/20/united-nations-bill-gates-world-hunger-opinions-contributors-henry-i-miller.html
Monsanto: Making Microsoft Look Good
,----[ Quote ]
| Do genetically-modified seeds bring
| increased productivity? There seem doubts;
| but even assuming it's true, Gates sets up a
| false dichotomy: one reason GMO seeds aren't
| sustainable is because they are patented.
| That is, farmers *must* buy them year after
| year, and can't produce their own seeds.
| It's a situation that's relatively easy to
| solve: make GMOs patent-free; do not place
| restrictions on their use; let farmers do
| what farmers have done for millennia.
|
| And look, there you have it, potentially: productivity and
| sustainability. But we won't get that, not because the idealistic
| environmentalist are blocking it, but because the seed industry
| wants farmers dependent on their technology, not liberated
| by it. It is sheer hypocrisy for a fan of patents to
| accuse environmentalists of being the obstacle to
| productivity and sustainability: that would be the
| industrial model of dependence, enforced by
| intellectual monopolies, and espoused by big
| companies like Monsanto, the Microsoft of
| plant software.
`----
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2009/10/monsanto-making-microsoft-look-good.html
No Patents on Seeds...or We're Really Stuffed
,----[ Quote ]
| Good to see that I'm not a lone voice crying
| in the wilderness:
|
| The continuing patenting of seeds,
| conventional plant varieties and animal
| species leads to far-reaching
| expropriations of farmers and breeders:
| farmers are deprived of their rights to
| save their seeds, and breeders are under
| strong limitations to use the patented
| seeds freely for further breeding. The
| patent holder controlls the sale of the
| seeds and the planting, decides about
| the use of herbicides and can even
| collect royalties at the harvest â up to
| the finished food product.
|
| Our food security is increasingly
| dependent on a few transnational
| chemical and biotechnological companies.
| The European Patent Office (EPO) has
| continuasly broadened the scope of
| patentability and undermined existing
| restrictions, in the interest of
| multinational companies.
|
| [..]
|
| This exactly parallels the situation with
| software patents, where the EPO is using
| every trick in the book to approve them;
| except it's even worse.
`----
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2009/10/no-patents-on-seedsor-were-really.html
Related:
Dark cloud over good works of Gates Found
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,6827615.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Gates Foundation Revokes Pledge to Review Portfolio
,----[ Quote ]
| ...the Gates Foundation took down their public statement on this
| and replaced it with a significantly altered version which seems to
| say that investing responsibly would just be too complex for them
| and that they need to focus on their core mission: 'There are
| dozens of factors that could be considered, almost all of which
| are outside the foundation's areas of expertise. The issues
| involved are quite complex...
`----
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/12/1756212&from=rss
Gates Foundationâs Influence Criticized
,----[ Quote ]
| The chief of malaria for the World Health Organization has complained that
| the growing dominance of malaria research by the Bill and Melinda Gates
| Foundation risks stifling a diversity of views among scientists and wiping
| out the world health agencyâs policy-making function.
`----
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/science/16malaria.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation- Truth Revealed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttq0IdULfjg
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation- Truth Revealed Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVlnqnMHQ1c
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