Free Republic

Bill Gates took on the Famine Lobby while addressing a forum on the world food supply in Iowa. Speaking at the World Food Prize Symposium in Des Moines, Gates took aim at the chorus of environmental leftists and organic food advocates who believe Africans should starve rather than eat genetically modified (GM) foods. “Some voices are instantly hostile to any emphasis on productivity. They act as if there is no emergency, even though in the poorest, hungriest places on earth, population is growing faster than productivity,” he said.The opposition is significant, because Gates is left-of-center himself. The Bill and Melinda...

Bill Gates took on the Famine Lobby while addressing a forum on the world food supply in Iowa. Speaking at the World Food Prize Symposium in Des Moines, Gates took aim at the chorus of environmental leftists and organic food advocates who believe Africans should starve rather than eat genetically modified (GM) foods. “Some voices are instantly hostile to any emphasis on productivity. They act as if there is no emergency, even though in the poorest, hungriest places on earth, population is growing faster than productivity,” he said.

Although large majorities of House and Senate Democrats have voted to cut off funding for ACORN, this rebuke could be reversed as soon as November 1st. This is a point that has been overlooked in press coverage of the besieged left-leaning community action group. Moreover, even if ACORN (the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now) does lose out on public funding it continues to receive support from foundations, corporations and individual donors, including George Soros. Despite the scope and magnitude of ongoing scandals that have ensnared ACORN officials, there remains a certain slyness to the news coverage in that...

Were you taken back by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg's recent admission that Roe v. Wade was decided because persons were worried about "populations that we don't want to have too many of"? Ginsburg's atavistic views can be traced back to the pioneering work of Margaret Sanger, the celebrated American feminist who later founded Planned Parenthood. Beyond her feverish crusade to convince women to use birth control, Sanger was an unapologetic eugenicist. In her book The Pivot of Civilization she wrote, "More children from the fit, less from the unfit — that is the chief issue of birth control." In...

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest private philanthropy fund, sold off almost all of its pharmaceutical, biotechnology and health-care investments in the quarter ended June 30, according to a regulatory filing published Friday. The Seattle-based charity endowment, set up by Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates and his wife, sold its total holding of 2.5 million shares in health-care giant Johnson & Johnson in the quarter, according to the filing.

Microsoft’s Gates gets Indira Gandhi Prize Foundation has committed nearly $1 billion to India for health projects NEW DELHI - Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates on Saturday received the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development from India's president, a government statement said. The prize recognizes his work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It is awarded annually to individuals or organizations for creative efforts that promote peace, development and a new international economic order. As of this month, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation had committed nearly $1 billion for health and development projects in India. Most of...

NEW DELHI (AFP) – Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said he was forced to give up on the social networking phenomenon Facebook after too many people wanted to be his friend. Gates, the billionaire computer geek-turned-philanthropist who was honoured Saturday by India for his charity work, told an audience in New Delhi he had tried out Facebook but ended up with "10,000 people wanting to be my friends". Gates, who remains Microsoft chairman, said he had trouble figuring out whether he "knew this person, did I not know this person".

The world’s richest man has joined the battle against the world’s most destructive weather. Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, is backing inventors and climate scientists who claim to have devised a technique for diminishing the power of hurricanes. Gates was named last week among a group of weather experts who have applied for patents on a system for lowering ocean temperatures. Using a fleet of barges equipped with pumps, Gates and his team believe a hurricane can be slowed by cooling the tropical waters that fuel its progress. American scientists agreed last week that the system was theoretically feasible...

The following letter was confirmed to me by Mr. Greenberg with the following statement:"The letter was sent to Senators Sessions, Hatch, Grassley, Graham and Coburn. It was also sent to Cong. Peter King (R) NY. The story is being covered extensively by the photo blogs, the trade publications and the NY Times. No politician has responded. The NY Times quotes attributed to me are accurate and therefore I assume that the quotes of my adversary Mr. Fairhurst are accurate as well."Text of the letter: I am an attorney in NYC who represented White House Photographer Chris Usher in litigation against...

In an era when slides and negatives are no longer the coin of the realm, the case of Usher v. Corbis-Sygma may seem to have lost much timeliness. Except for this: one member of the three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals that most recently heard the case was Judge Sonia Sotomayor. The portfolio included photographs Mr. Usher had taken during the 2000 presidential campaign. “The value of these images is certainly more than $7 each,” Mr. Usher, 47, said in a telephone interview Tuesday from Alexandria, Va., where he lives. “But I’d so much rather have the...

If you thought domination of the world's software market was cool, get a load of Bill Gates' next technological vision: giant ocean-going tubs that fight hurricanes by draining warm water from the surface to the depths, through a long tube. A second tube could simultaneously suck cool water from the depths to the surface. Microsoft founder Gates and a dozen other scientists and engineers have a patent pending for deploying such vessels, which they say would collect water through waves breaking over the walls of the tub. Some variations have the water moving through turbines on their way down, which...

The New Jacobin Elite | Print | Written by William F. Jasper    Wednesday, 24 June 2009 06:00 The Socialist Party of Great Britain is celebrating the reissuing of Peter Taaffe’s book, The Masses Arise: The Great French Revolution 1789 -1815. “Its republication by Socialist Publications, in time for the 220th anniversary of this great event in July 2009, is extremely timely,� says the party’s website. A different page on the party’s site promoting the same book instructs readers: “An understanding of the French Revolution remains crucial for all revolutionaries. Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky studied it intensely to gain an...

President Barack Obama sees his secretary of defense just about every day, but he still flubbed Robert Gates' name on Thursday. Gates was in the crowd for Obama's national security speech. Pointing him out, the president said "William Gates" was on hand.

NECN: Washington, D.C.) - President Barack Obama, preparing to give a speech on Bush administration interrogation techniques and the prospective closure of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, took a moment to share the names of the members of his cabinet that were in attendance. Except he got one wrong. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was in the crowd, but President Obama said that "William Gates" was on hand. Was that William Gates, as in the Microsoft billionaire? On Tuesday, Gates was introduced at a Pentagon ceremony as Ronald Gates. At the time, Gates joked that he had recently been introduced...

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama sees his secretary of defense just about every day, but he still flubbed Robert Gates' name on Thursday. Gates was in the crowd for Obama's national security speech. Pointing him out, the president said "William Gates" was on hand. Perhaps Obama was thinking of Bill Gates, the Microsoft billionaire. The defense chief, who goes by Bob, was also misidentified at a Pentagon ceremony on Tuesday. Then, he was introduced as Ronald Gates.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp founder Bill Gates is the richest man again, overtaking investor Warren Buffett, as the global financial meltdown wiped out $2 trillion from the net worth of the world's billionaires, Forbes Magazine said on Wednesday. The number of billionaires in the world fell by nearly a third to 793 in the past year, with large numbers dropping off the list in Russia, India and Turkey. Gates regained his title as the richest man in the world, with $40 billion after slipping to third last year when he was worth $58 billion. Buffett, last year's richest...

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sold 36,056 Class B shares of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRKA, BRKB), the holding company run by famed value investor Warren Buffett. According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Gates Foundation sold the shares from Jan. 5 through Thursday for a total of $99.7 million, or $2,766.66 a share. Berkshire Hathaway's Class B shares closed on Friday at $2,327.

You'd think the children of the world's richest man could get anything they wanted. But Bill Gates' kids aren't allowed to have any Apple products, the Microsoft founder's wife tells Vogue magazine. "There are very few things that are on the banned list in our household," Melinda Gates, a Microsoft millionaire in her own right, tells interviewer Michael Specter. "But iPods and iPhones are two things we don't get for our kids." It's pretty clear Bill Gates is familiar with Apple products — after all, Microsoft Word was first written for the original Mac. Yet the silken tentacles of Steve...

Microsoft to open own stores, take on Apple (Reuters) Posted on Thu Feb 12, 2009 7:20PM EST SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp announced plans Thursday to open its own chain of branded stores as it looks to catch up with rival Apple Inc's successful move into retailing. The world's largest software company, which also makes the Xbox video game console and the Zune digital music player, did not say how many stores it was looking to open, or when, or which of its products would be on sale. That is to be decided by David Porter, a former DreamWorks Animation...

To make his point about the deadly and fearsome plague of malaria, Gates released a glass full of mosquitoes on the unsuspecting crowd at the Technology, Entertainment Design Conference in Long Beach, California. Did Gates plan on infecting some rich folks to prove his point? The answer is yes, although Gates quickly pointed out that the pests released were not malarial. Mr. Moneybags only intended to infect his audience with guilt. And guilt-inducement is the last refuge of the liberal scoundrel. It has become the go-to move for so-called progressives when intellectual argument fails and one can't muster the facts...

Should Bill Gates be prosecuted?Bill Gates released a swarm of potentially deadly mosquitoes at a technology conference and yelled, 'There's no reason only poor people should get malaria'. What an idiot. While it is unlikely these mosquitoes were malaria carriers, there are a host of other potentially fatal diseases that mosquitoes carry. Among these diseases are various forms of encephalitis and West Nile virus that are common among North American Mosquitoes. My granddaughter got La Crosse encephalitis from mosquitoes a few years ago. She spent several very scary days in pediatric intensive care. Anyone who would deliberately release these potentially...

TED, the annual gathering of the most pretentious people from the fields of technology, entertainment, and design, just got punk'd. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates released a swarm of mosquitos into the crowd. Ending malaria is a particular passion of Gates's, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent millions fighting the disease. But he apparently didn't feel like TED attendees were taking the threat seriously. "Not only poor people should experience this," Gates said as he let the bugs loose on his audience, according to Facebook manager Dave Morin. (eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and Twitter CEO Ev Williams confirm the...

Many statistics and people say that atheists aren’t charitable people. However, they seem to miss that the nation’s largest charitable foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was founded by an atheist – Bill Gates. It was reported by the Associated Press today that several charitable groups have committed to continue charitable giving during this time of economic crisis. Among those committing to do so is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. What’s more is they have gone a step further.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has predicted it will take up to 10 years to weather the current global economic storm. "The financial market and economic conditions that have developed this past year are truly unprecedented," Gates wrote on Monday in his first annual letter about his work at the philanthropic foundation that bears his name. "I hope two years from now when I write this letter I can look at this section as a reflection of something that was short-term and that has passed," wrote Gates in a section of the 20-page letter devoted to the economic slump.

Obama's Billionaires Claire Obusan President-elect Barack Obama has had a slew of billionaire backers with him on his journey to the White House--plutocrats who provide economic and political advice and help to raise money. Lots of money. Obama's Billionaire Buddies Obama's national finance chairwoman during his presidential campaign was Penny Pritzker, one of 11 members of the famous Chicago family that appear on the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans (combined net worth as of September: $21.6 billion). As of Nov. 24, 2008, Obama's campaign had raised a record-breaking $742 million during the election, according to the Center for...

Sometimes I wish there were a humane way to get rid of the rich. Without the rich for whipping boys, we might be able to concentrate on what's best for the 99 and a half percent of the rest of us. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, with about $60 billion in assets each, are America's richest men. With all that money, what can they force us to do? Can they take our house to make room so that another person can build an auto dealership or a casino parking lot? Can they force us to pay money into the government-run...

Sometimes I wish there were a humane way to get rid of the rich. Without the rich for whipping boys, we might be able to concentrate on what's best for the 99 and a half percent of the rest of us. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, with about $60 billion in assets each, are America's richest men. With all that money, what can they force us to do? Can they take our house to make room so that another person can build an auto dealership or a casino parking lot? Can they force us to pay money into the government-run...

Bill Gates: I'd Work in Obama Administration Microsoft founder Bill Gates has met with Vice President-elect Joe Biden and said he's open to a role aiding the incoming Barack Obama administration. Gates is in Washington this week to promote the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's education and global health agenda. "Certainly my full-time job is being chairman of the foundation," he told The Washington Post. But he added: "If there was some committee or pretty focused task where I could contribute, I'd be glad to consider that, and I hope that the things we've learned about education, including the mistakes...

Yesterday the fourth law suit, challenging Obama's citizenship and Natural Born status reached the Supreme Court: 1. Philip J Berg, PA An answer from Barack Obama is due by Dec.1 2. Leo C. Donofrio, NJ The case is scheduled for conference by all 9 judges on Dec 5 3.Chris Strunck, NY filed with SCOTUS last week 4. Cort Wrotnowski, CT (second case)filed yesterday. many more to come... As explained earlier, Hawaii allows one to obtain a Certification of Hawaiian Live Birth based on a statement of one relative only. It means,that while Obama was born in Kenya, his grandma or...

Los Angeles: Barack Obama has promised to increase taxes if he becomes president of the United States. But the really rich want change and many of them have said they are voting for the senator from Illinois. Despite the tradition that says the country's wealthy tend to favour the Republican Party, there has been an unexpected swing ahead of Tuesday's election that favours the black Democratic candidate. For starters, the country's two richest men, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, have already said they will vote for Obama. According to Forbes magazine, Gates - worth an estimated $55.5 billion - contributed...

When Dolly Parton speaks people listen. At least that's what opponents to an upcoming Federal Communications Commission vote on opening up "white space" spectrum hope. Earlier this week, country western star Dolly Parton sent a letter to the FCC asking the agency to delay its vote to open up the unused spectrum for unlicensed use. "As someone who uses the white spaces and knows the value of them for the work that I and many of my friends around the country, I ask the FCC to recognize the entertainment industry's valuable contribution to the cultural life," Parton wrote in her...

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded 100,000 dollars each on Wednesday to scientists in 22 countries including funding for a Japanese proposal to turn mosquitos into "flying syringes" delivering vaccines.

Well it's a done deal. Barack is not a socialist because he thinks Warren Buffet would be a good policy wonk on his cabinet. And some have said, even McCain thinks Warren Buffet would be a good policy wonk. Senator McCain, two things, open ANWR and in the words of P Diddy; "Come on man", McCain, Warren Buffett as Secretary of the Treasury? Hell no. Warren Buffett, is the guy who invested millions in PetroChina ( Darfur, Darfur, Darfur) when currency traders were hedging against the dollar in 2002, which led to the dollars' devalue and the rise in oil...

A baffling Microsoft advert featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates discussing shoes before the software billionaire shakes his behind as he walks across a car park has disappeared from the air after critics described it as "awful" and a "train wreck". BIll Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. Viewers struggled to fathom what the two men's oblique and unfunny discussion had to do with computers The 90-second spot, one of three adverts for which Seinfeld was paid a reported $10 million, was designed to kick off an ambitious $300 million campaign to relaunch the software company and its troubled Windows Vista operating...

Pakistani convicted for plot to bomb New York subway05-25-2006, 00h32 NEW YORK (AFP) In this courtroom illustration, James Elshafay (C) and Shahawar Matin Siraj (R) appear August 2004 in Federal District Court in New York, before Magistrate Kiyo Matsumoto (R rear) during an arraignment on charges related to an alleged plot to bomb a New York City subway station. Standing at left are Assistant US attorneys John Nathanson (L) and Kelly Currie (2nd L). (AFP/Getty Images/File) A Pakistani man was convicted of planning to blow up a New York subway station ahead of the Republican National Convention held before the...

Excerpt - Microsoft Corp., weary of being cast as a stodgy oldster by Apple Inc.'s advertising, is turning for help to Jerry Seinfeld. The software giant's new $300 million advertising campaign, devised by a newly hired ad agency, has been closely guarded. But Mr. Seinfeld will be one of the key celebrity pitchmen, say people close to the situation. He will appear with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates in ads and receive about $10 million for the work, they say. ~ snip ~

REDMOND, Wash. (Reuters) - Bill Gates said a teary goodbye on Friday to Microsoft Corp, the software maker he built into the world's most valuable technology company based on the ambitious goal of placing a computer on every desk and in every home. He leaves Microsoft, which he co-founded with childhood friend Paul Allen in 1975, to focus on his philanthropic organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest charity, funded in part by his vast fortune. At an employee event at Microsoft's scenic headquarters campus here, Gates joined Chief Executive Steve Ballmer on stage to deliver a...

A video spoof shown during the CES 2008 keynote by Bill Gates about his last full day at Microsoft in July starring himself, Brian Williams, Steve Ballmer, Matthew McConaugheyr, Robbie Bach, Jay-Z, Bono, Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, Jon Stewart, Kevin Turner, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Al Gore, Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie,

"For the opening piece in our series on Gates leaving daily life at Microsoft, one goal was to give a clear picture of the Microsoft co-founder's role inside the company, as a gauge of the impact his departure will have," Todd Bishop writes for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Microsoft Blog. "As part of that, I went back through the internal e-mails turned over in the antitrust suits against the company, looking for new insights into his personality." Bishop found a doozy, which also happens to illustrate perfectly why Mac users have such disdain for the "Windows experience." If you've ever...

A Harvard University dropout who ushered in the home computer age and made billions of dollars along the way will have his last official day of work at Microsoft on June 27. Three people will essentially fill the void left behind when Bill Gates retires from the company he and friend Paul Allen co-founded in 1975. Since Gate's began his transition from leading Microsoft to heading his personally-bankrolled charity, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation , his job as chief software architect has been handled by Ray Ozzie. Craig Mundie inherited Gate's chief research and strategy officer duties, while former...

One of the most successful business partnerships in history was coming unraveled. It was early 2000, and Bill Gates had relinquished the chief executive's job at Microsoft Corp. to Steve Ballmer -- for the first time taking a back seat to his college pal and right-hand man of 20 years. Mr. Ballmer got the title. But Mr. Gates retained the power, triggering a yearlong struggle between the two men that until now has remained largely under wraps. Things became so bitter that, on one occasion, Mr. Gates stormed out of a meeting in a huff after a shouting match...

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said there will be a vast shift in Internet technology over the next decade as he met Tuesday with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak. "We're approaching the second decade of (the) digital age," the software mogul and philanthropist told Lee at the start of their meeting at the presidential Blue House, according to a media pool report. "The Internet has been operating now for 10 years," Gates said. "The second 10 years will be very different." Microsoft Corp., the South Korean government and South Korean companies are investing $313 million in...

MIAMI (Reuters) - China's growing wealth is good for the world, and there will come a time when the influence of the United States shrinks to the level of its share of the world population, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said on Friday. ADVERTISEMENT Asked at a meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank in Miami whether he regarded China's growing influence in Latin America as a threat, Gates, one of the world's richest people, said not at all. "The fact that China is getting rich is overall a very good thing. The fact that more minds are getting educated is huge....

WASHINGTON (AP) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) Chairman Bill Gates said Thursday he expects the next decade to bring even greater technological leaps than the past 10 years.[snip] [snip]Gates' speech came after he testified to Congress on Wednesday advocating greater investment in math and science education and more relaxed immigration rules that would allow foreigners who obtain college degrees in the United States to work here after graduation. Current policy, he said, forces many bright, capable students to return to their native countries after the U.S. has invested in their education. Gates said Thursday he was optimistic that policy makers would...

Excerpt - NEW YORK (AFP) — US financier Warren Buffett has overtaken Bill Gates as the world's richest man, according to Forbes annual billionaire's list, which this year saw Russia, China and India making increasing inroads. Buffett, the 77-year-old chief of the Berkshire Hathaway holding company, saw his wealth jump from 52 billion dollars last year to 62 billion, pushing Microsoft co-founder Gates into third position after 13 years at the top. Mexico's telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helu grabbed second place with a tidy nest egg of 60 billion dollars, up from 49 billion last year. ~ snip ~

Bill Gates has signaled his intent to leave behind the day-to-day leadership of Microsoft, turning his attention and formidable resources now toward fighting global poverty and diseases like Aids, Malaria and TB. (1) What Mr. Gates has achieved in the world of computers and software is mindboggling. He won’t have similar success in these new endeavors. Why? Computers and software are real sciences where facts and physical laws are recognized, adhered to, and followed. Poverty and disease are junk sciences where facts and physical laws are commonly ignored. That is why progress in computers and software is light-years ahead of...

Capitalism Doesn't Work, Mr. Gates? By Lawrence Kudlow Friday, January 25, 2008 Bill Gates, bloviating at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is issuing a clarion call for a "kinder capitalism" to aid the world's poor. Gates says he has grown impatient with the shortcomings of capitalism. He thinks it's failing much of the world. This, of course, from a guy who's worth around $35 billion (give or take a billion). Don't you just love it? A guy without a college degree who invented a new technology process in his garage that literally changed the entire world, a guy...

DAVOS, Switzerland (CNN) -- Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates announced a new direction Friday as he pledged $306 million in grants to develop farming in poor countries, leading the charge for corporate responsibility at a major meeting of business chiefs. The announcement by Gates, who is to step down from the computer giant later this year, drew attention from the financial woes that have dominated the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Gates received a standing ovation for his announcement at the suggestion of U2 frontman Bono. The move, the first foray into agriculture by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,...

Bill Gates seems to think there are bugs in the operating system of the modern economy. It doesn’t fight poverty well enough and sometimes suffers debilitating crashes. While attending the World Economic Forum at Davos, he called for a more “creative capitalism” than the one that America hasn’t had to seriously reboot since The Great Depression. He defined “creative capitalism” as follows: "The challenge here is to design a system including profit and recognition to do more for the poor," he said, calling for a new form of "creative capitalism.""Creative capitalism is an approach where governments, businesses and NGOs (non-government...

Excerpt - Free enterprise has been good to Bill Gates. But later today, the Microsoft Corp. chairman will call for a revision of capitalism. In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the software tycoon plans to call for a "creative capitalism" that uses market forces to address poor-country needs that he feels are being ignored. "We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well," Mr. Gates will tell world leaders at the forum, according to a copy of the speech seen by The Wall...