Why did you cut your philanthropic efforts to fight climate change and disease? Why have you and your buddies fought for minimizing
The problem is that billionaires should not exist but come on. $80 billion already donated. $7 Billion more just for Africa. Hundreds of millions in malaria research.
Microsoft is perhaps the most complicit tech company in Israel’s illegal apartheid regime and ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. Microsoft’s complicity in Israel’s apartheid and genocide is well documented, exposing its strong ties to the Israeli military, its collaboration with Israeli government ministries, and its involvement in the Israeli prison system, which is notorious for systematic torture and abuse of Palestinians. Microsoft knowingly provides Israel with technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), that is deployed to facilitate grave human rights violations, war crimes, crimes against humanity (including apartheid), as well as genocide. In light of the International Court of Justice’s legally-binding rulings to prevent Israel’s plausible genocide in Gaza, as well as its July 19 Advisory Opinion affirming Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid system, Microsoft has failed its corporate obligation to prevent genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Microsoft, as well as its boards of directors and executives, may face criminal liability for this complicity.
Microsoft provides the Israeli military with Azure cloud and AI services that are crucial in empowering and accelerating Israel’s genocidal war on 2.3 million Palestinians in the illegally occupied Gaza Strip. Microsoft’s extensive ties with Israel’s military are revealed in investigations by The Guardian with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, demonstrating how the Israeli military turned to Microsoft to meet the technological demands of genocide.
The 7 billion to Africa isn’t as nice as it first seems either; it’s investments into venture capitalist solutions, much more restrictive that aid and the profits are not realized by the locals
And claiming Microsoft cloud services are worse than RTX’s actual bombs that kill children is a stretch.
They all kill children and I boycott them all. You’re the only one running defense by minimizing Microsoft’s role here.
For example, Amazon, Google and Microsoft have all launched major cloud computing centres in Israel, offering businesses infrastructure critical to data-driven products and services. Intel is the largest private employer in the country, having commenced operations in 1974.
Along with hundreds of other multinationals, Microsoft hosts its own research and development (R&D) centre in Israel, and it launched a chip development centre in Haifa. Nvidia, the trillion-dollar chip behemoth powering the AI revolution, has also announced it is expanding its already large R&D operations in Israel. The list goes on
Gates’ advice is reportedly treated as gospel, and he also played a crucial role in fostering Microsoft and OpenAI’s partnership, and consequently, the success witnessed in the category.
Claiming Gates isn’t heavily involved and influential in the business decisions is just straight up untrue, stop whitewashing his contributions to genocide.
In summary, Bill Gates’s relationship with Israel is characterized by his admiration for the country’s technological innovation and his significant investments through Microsoft and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. While he has not publicly engaged in the political aspects of the Israel/Palestine conflict, his actions and statements suggest a supportive stance toward Israel’s role in global technology. This support is evident in his continued investments and public recognition of Israel’s achievements in digital security and biotechnology.
You know what actually supports Israel? Food imports. You should be boycotting American, Swiss, German and Dutch farm produce. Cut off their food and they can’t bomb.
Along with hundreds of other multinationals, Microsoft hosts its own research and development (R&D) centre in Israel,
Any company with an office in Israel? You boycott every large business? EVERY ONE? Apple, AMD, Intel, ARM? They are all in Israel. How are you even replying to this post without uses the CPU’s that you claim to boycott?
and he also played a crucial role in fostering Microsoft and OpenAI’s partnership
AI isn’t killing children. Israeli leaders are killing children. OpenAI is super charged spell checker. Have you even used it? It fixes the grammar. It helps write software. But so did autocomplete before LLM’s.
They all “directly partner” AMD, Intel, and Arm are all deep in Israeli military.
Using AI to target strikes/etc
Image recognition was around decades before LLM’s became the new “AI”. Those weapons only function because of the Arm, AMD and Intel CPUs components What hardware is Microsoft cloud running on?
You said you boycott all of them. How are you posting a reply?
The problem is that billionaires should not exist but come on. $80 billion already donated. $7 Billion more just for Africa. Hundreds of millions in malaria research.
Philanthropists hoarding wealth and resources and then getting to choose which of the poors to allow to have any is actually part of the problem, even if it makes you feel good.
We saw that when Gates leveraged his contributions to force a vaccine that had been developed with public money for the benefit of humankind, to become patent locked and hard for the Third World to access or afford.
The problem is that the theft begins by simply becoming a billionaire in the first place. You don’t get to be one by playing nice and not exploiting a lot of people and rules along the way. Sure the government could be blamed some for not having enough regulations in place to prevent/stop that, but capitalism ensures that businesses exploit any available loophole possible to maximize profit, otherwise you’re a bad business.
While I can respect a lot of those philanthropic efforts, those should not be his decisions alone to make. That money should’ve been paid into taxes and distributed in agreed upon ways. $7 Billion dollars to Africa is just great, but it could do a lot of help here, too. I have no issues with sending $7B to Africa, but that sure seems like something the people should agree upon first, through some sort of national aid, and not as an effort to spare the conscience of an aging billionaire.
The problem is that billionaires should not exist but come on.
Was your first point. I expanded on it by calling out that it is specifically theft and then going further to illustrate that he was using that theft to make personal choices about how that money should be spent, compounding the reasons I find this distasteful.
Forgiving it simply because it’s philanthropy plays exactly into their narrative. Don’t buy it! Don’t defend billionaires to any extent.
theft implies violating laws, which few billionaires explicitly do, because other billionaires made the laws and intentionally provide legal methods to extract wealth from the poor.
while i don’t think it should be a moral issue, i think we need to stop trying to make this a fair argument out of some desire to be on some high ground here. what you described is fucked up and we should give them no latitude. it is theft even if they made the laws. the staggering level of difference in energy put forth versus compensation is ridiculous. When someone makes more in an hour than their least paid employee will gross over their entire lifetime…there should be no justification for the billionaire’s existence.
While I can respect a lot of those philanthropic efforts, those should not be his decisions alone to make. That money should’ve been paid into taxes and distributed in agreed upon ways.
As a capitalist, all of his solutions are capitalist. His efforts to slow climate change are primarily technological, with a focus on unproven horseshit like carbon capture rather than proven improvements like better, less car centric urban planning and reducing meat intake. He would never even consider an strategy of economic degrowth to fight climate change even though available evidence shows that that is exactly what we need.
I think we’re well past the chance of urban designing our way out of the climate collapse.
We need to make major changes in our consumption to even make a dent, but I say our best shot is cold fusion and carbon capture. Those are obvious longshots.
We’ve created a runaway greenhouse gas effect. Even if we cut emissions to 0 temperatures will continue to climb.
Obviously cutting emissions to 0 would give us more time to fix this mess though
We need to make major changes in our consumption to even make a dent, but I say our best shot is cold fusion and carbon capture. Those are obvious longshots.
I would argue for extensive rewilding as an alternative
Still the wrong conversation. Yes he was appropriately villainized for anticompetitive behavior running Microsoft, accumulating excessive wealth at the expense of many others, but come on ……
I have no issues with sending $7B to Africa, but that sure seems like something the people should agree upon first,
Just no. His philanthropy, his wealth. His choice.
But I’m with you on inadequate taxation for the wealthy, and that we have a responsibility as a country to help the less privileged of humanity, and should not just assume someone’s personal largesse.
Well now no US tax money is going to Africa, since people voted for Trump. Most Americans would rather see Africans exploited, starve and die than pay a bit more in taxes.
Gates has history of lawsuits against open source projects. And he actively donates against any real systemic change. For example he has invested heavily in carbon capture technology which is useless to making impact to climate change.
The problem is that billionaires should not exist but come on. $80 billion already donated. $7 Billion more just for Africa. Hundreds of millions in malaria research.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2022/11/17/bill-gates-foundation-pledges-7-billion-to-support-africa-health-and-agriculture/
Could he do more? Sure. But attacking someone who is doing a little because he isn’t doing more doesn’t seem fair.
Years ago Elon said he was disappointed when he met Bill Gates because Gates only wanted to talk about philanthropy and climate.
The 7 billion to Africa isn’t as nice as it first seems either; it’s investments into venture capitalist solutions, much more restrictive that aid and the profits are not realized by the locals
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/12/02/perhaps-bill-gates-not-best-expert-hunger-africa
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/11/10/open-letter-bill-gates-food-farming-and-africa
Bill Gates hasn’t been CEO of Microsoft in 25 years. He left completely in 2008.
He didn’t completely leave, he’s literally the technical advisor listed under “key people” for Microsoft
Bill Gates continues to ‘backstage’ manage Microsoft despite official departure, as Satya Nadella relies on his advice for Microsoft’s transformative AI initiative
Saytalla seeking advice doesn’t mean Gates is making the business decisions.
And claiming Microsoft cloud services are worse than RTX’s actual bombs that kill children is a stretch.
They all kill children and I boycott them all. You’re the only one running defense by minimizing Microsoft’s role here.
Claiming Gates isn’t heavily involved and influential in the business decisions is just straight up untrue, stop whitewashing his contributions to genocide.
You know what actually supports Israel? Food imports. You should be boycotting American, Swiss, German and Dutch farm produce. Cut off their food and they can’t bomb.
Any company with an office in Israel? You boycott every large business? EVERY ONE? Apple, AMD, Intel, ARM? They are all in Israel. How are you even replying to this post without uses the CPU’s that you claim to boycott?
AI isn’t killing children. Israeli leaders are killing children. OpenAI is super charged spell checker. Have you even used it? It fixes the grammar. It helps write software. But so did autocomplete before LLM’s.
Are you an executive at Microsoft? Because if you aren’t YOU DON’T KNOW THAT.
https://www.techspot.com/news/107724-sources-detail-growing-rift-between-sam-altman-satya.html
Directly partnering with and providing services/technology/AI to a state’s military, that is in the act of war, is facilitating that war.
Using AI to target strikes/etc., is absolutely AI making the decision to kill. They just chose to let AI do it for them.
They all “directly partner” AMD, Intel, and Arm are all deep in Israeli military.
Image recognition was around decades before LLM’s became the new “AI”. Those weapons only function because of the Arm, AMD and Intel CPUs components What hardware is Microsoft cloud running on?
You said you boycott all of them. How are you posting a reply?
Philanthropists hoarding wealth and resources and then getting to choose which of the poors to allow to have any is actually part of the problem, even if it makes you feel good.
We saw that when Gates leveraged his contributions to force a vaccine that had been developed with public money for the benefit of humankind, to become patent locked and hard for the Third World to access or afford.
The problem is that the theft begins by simply becoming a billionaire in the first place. You don’t get to be one by playing nice and not exploiting a lot of people and rules along the way. Sure the government could be blamed some for not having enough regulations in place to prevent/stop that, but capitalism ensures that businesses exploit any available loophole possible to maximize profit, otherwise you’re a bad business.
While I can respect a lot of those philanthropic efforts, those should not be his decisions alone to make. That money should’ve been paid into taxes and distributed in agreed upon ways. $7 Billion dollars to Africa is just great, but it could do a lot of help here, too. I have no issues with sending $7B to Africa, but that sure seems like something the people should agree upon first, through some sort of national aid, and not as an effort to spare the conscience of an aging billionaire.
Fuck all billionaires. Every. Last. One. Forever.
That’s why that was my first sentence!
Was your first point. I expanded on it by calling out that it is specifically theft and then going further to illustrate that he was using that theft to make personal choices about how that money should be spent, compounding the reasons I find this distasteful.
Forgiving it simply because it’s philanthropy plays exactly into their narrative. Don’t buy it! Don’t defend billionaires to any extent.
theft implies violating laws, which few billionaires explicitly do, because other billionaires made the laws and intentionally provide legal methods to extract wealth from the poor.
while i don’t think it should be a moral issue, i think we need to stop trying to make this a fair argument out of some desire to be on some high ground here. what you described is fucked up and we should give them no latitude. it is theft even if they made the laws. the staggering level of difference in energy put forth versus compensation is ridiculous. When someone makes more in an hour than their least paid employee will gross over their entire lifetime…there should be no justification for the billionaire’s existence.
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As a capitalist, all of his solutions are capitalist. His efforts to slow climate change are primarily technological, with a focus on unproven horseshit like carbon capture rather than proven improvements like better, less car centric urban planning and reducing meat intake. He would never even consider an strategy of economic degrowth to fight climate change even though available evidence shows that that is exactly what we need.
I think we’re well past the chance of urban designing our way out of the climate collapse.
We need to make major changes in our consumption to even make a dent, but I say our best shot is cold fusion and carbon capture. Those are obvious longshots.
We’ve created a runaway greenhouse gas effect. Even if we cut emissions to 0 temperatures will continue to climb.
Obviously cutting emissions to 0 would give us more time to fix this mess though
I would argue for extensive rewilding as an alternative
Both are good. I’m not convinced it’ll be enough to stop things, but a massive help still
yeah we need every tool at our disposal fs
Still the wrong conversation. Yes he was appropriately villainized for anticompetitive behavior running Microsoft, accumulating excessive wealth at the expense of many others, but come on ……
Just no. His philanthropy, his wealth. His choice.
But I’m with you on inadequate taxation for the wealthy, and that we have a responsibility as a country to help the less privileged of humanity, and should not just assume someone’s personal largesse.
Not his wealth. That’s my point.
It is his wealth. We don’t have to like it, but that’s how the current system works.
The current system needs to be retired. Wealth and power should not be concentrated to the degree that it is.
The human race is committing suicide needlessly, all because of concepts like “cost” and a system and world order that is out of control.
Well now no US tax money is going to Africa, since people voted for Trump. Most Americans would rather see Africans exploited, starve and die than pay a bit more in taxes.
Gates has history of lawsuits against open source projects. And he actively donates against any real systemic change. For example he has invested heavily in carbon capture technology which is useless to making impact to climate change.
I’m fuzzy on the timeline but wiki says the sco Linux lawsuit was 2003. Gates had already quit being CEO in 2000.
I resist the urge to become a billionaire every day.
I’ve allowed trillions of dollars to continue circulating in the global economy, undisturbed by my whims.
I’m a goddamn philanthropic hero compared to Gates.
And you can tell I’m better than him, cuz I didn’t have to slap my name on a “Foundation For Leaving People The Fuck Alone” to do it.
At least your ego is bigger than a billionaires fortune
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