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Vandana Shiva makes excellent points here about the integration of all life and corporate attempts to commercialize it even further. But one claim troubled me. Is it an example of Vandana falling into conspiratorial overreach?

She writes that "on March 26, 2020, at a peak of the coronavirus pandemic and in the midst of the lockdown, Microsoft was granted a patent by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Patent WO 060606 declares that ‘Human Body Activity associated with a task provided to a user may be used in a mining process of a cryptocurrency system…."

As far as I can tell, Microsoft, however, has NOT (yet) been granted such a patent. See application at https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2020060606&_cid=P11-KFL01W-25826-1

But the rest of what Vandana writes seems accurate. And it is reflective of a holistic vision of life that I share.

The corporate behemoth did apply for a patent, number WO2020060606A1 and then published that application.

Right wing blogs have gone to town on this. Some make a big deal in announcing that "the first inventor listed is a jew named Dustin Abramson, who is a software engineer working with AI. Here is a link to the patent and here is the archive of it in case the original is taken down."

To them, the fact that Abramson is Jewish (most likely) seems to matter. Why? No mention is made of the others listed as "inventors" and "agents":

Agents
The Q'Anon movement says that this is patent "666" -- the sign of the devil -- and that the "WO" stands for "World Order". The fact is that millions of patent applications before WIPO are assigned "WO," which signifies "World Intellectual Property Organization" and the year of application.

A1 signifies the patent is being applied for, but is not (yet) granted, though it well might be, down the road.

So are the remaining numbers 060606 the sign of the devil?

Evocative? Yes. How to interpret this -- the word of God warning everyone against Satan? A randomly selected designation -- the next number in line? or a number chosen by Gates or some other being to scare us, or warn us, or play with our heads?

Q'Anon and others say that patent application, if granted, would allow Gates et al. to 1) implant microchips into every person in the world, and 2) track and commericalize body activity. (Note that these are two separate claims that are being conflated.)

Microchips, Q says, are to be injected via this patent into every human being via Bill Gates' push for worldwide vaccination against Covid-19.

But the patent application is for wearable technology, such as a smart watch, and makes no mention of implanted microchips.

Instead, think of FitBits. Or, as per Microsoft, merging with BitCoins to form FitBitCoins.

Meanwhile, it's clear that the new 5G technology is needed to accumulate, access, quickly sort through, and commercialize such huge amounts of data.

Even debunking the idea of microchipping everyone, the commercialization of human biological activites (breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, sweating, etc.) is scary enough. It is capitalism, taken to the nth degree. Like genetic engineering, it seeks to colonize and profit from areas of life that had heretofore been walled off from direct commercialization.

Could the reason for getting us to stand six feet apart (as opposed to 4 feet, or 17 feet, etc.) be to enable satellites and other computerized "collectors" (which is what Microsoft's application actually includes) to obtain clear signals from each person, without one person's information signal interfering with another person's? Are we unknwowing victims of a social-psych experiment performed on us that takes advantage of the pandemic to prepare us for getting used to and accepting what's coming down?

I searched through other patent applications numbered 060606, and there are hundreds upon hundreds, with no relation to this Microsoft patent application:

WO/2009/037056PNEUMATIC VEHICLE TYRE
WO - 26.03.2009
Int.Class B60C 11/03 Appl.No PCT/EP2008/060606 Applicant CONTINENTAL REIFEN DEUTSCHLAND GMBH Inventor SENG, Matthias

This one actually sounds interesting:
WO/2012/168245CHICORY FOR PREVENTION AND TREATMENT OF NEURODEGENERATION
WO - 13.12.2012
Int.Class A61K 36/28 Appl.No PCT/EP2012/060606 Applicant NESTEC S.A. Inventor DURGA, Jane
The invention pertains to a composition comprising chicory, particularly roasted chicory root,for use in the prevention or treatment of a neurodegenerative disorder and/or a loss of cognitive ability. In a further aspect, the invention pertains to a non-therapeutic method for maintaining mental or cognitive capabilities.

What patent applications were numbered 060604, 05, 07?

Well, 060604 is also filed by Microsoft and it looks to be possibly related to providing functionality to the patent application under question:
METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR PERSONALIZED, ZERO-INPUT SUGGESTIONS BASED ON SEMI-SUPERVISED ACTIVITY CLUSTERS
Examples of the present disclosure describe systems and methods that provide a pipeline to generate personalized queries that are associated with and based on a user's interests determined from a user's past searches, on an Internet search engine, and/or the content the user viewed from the past searches. The suggested queries can be shown in a user interface component associated with the user interface of the search engine and before the user enters anything, such as a new Internet search. This pre-population of searches associated with a user's interests gives an opportunity to the user to try these queries without manually entering in a search string.

What about 060605? Also filed by Microsoft, and also interrelated:
APPROXIMATE NEAREST NEIGHBOR SEARCHING STRATEGY GENERATING BASED ON REINFORCEMENT LEARNING
The present disclosure discloses a technique for generating nearest neighbor searching strategy for vectors based on reinforcement learning. A searching technology using vectors approximate matching may be applied in a searching engine. More particularly, the searching engine may be subjected to a training by suing a reinforcement learning so that a mapping relationship between a calculation state and a behavior action may be obtained. The searching engine may automatically generate a searching strategy for an enquiry content by using the mapping relationship.

How about 060607? Filed by Western Digital Technologies, it's also apprently applicable to the Microsoft patent applications (interesting that these all are located in the same patent sequences, as though nothing else in the world is being invented in that period!)
CUSTOMIZING CONFIGURATION OF STORAGE DEVICE(S) FOR OPERATIONAL ENVIRONMENT
Non-limiting examples of the present disclosure relate to execution of in-situ manufacturing for a data storage device. In-situ manufacturing is on-location configuration of a data storage device within an operational environment in which a data storage device is being deployed. In-situ manufacturing occurs at any point after a data storage device is shipped from a manufacturing plant or factory. When an operational environment of the data storage device is known, parameters of the data storage device can be configured (or re-configured) on-location within an operational environment to optimize capacity management as well as performance of the data storage device.
We should be examining others in proximity to these.

Vandana Shiva is, I think, onto something. And so are some claims of those movements deemed to be "conspiracies" and thereby dismissed as "serious" by the Left.

Vandana points to a way to challenge what's coming down without feeding into right-wing insanities, while addressing some of the underlying concerns that motivate many people to join movements like Q'Anon -- concerns that are being manipulated by Trump and others and distorted to serve a white supremacist and fascist agenda.

The Left, on the other hand, must take those concerns seriously, show how the underlying concerns are valid, and organize those same people into focused actions directed at the system itself and not onto the scapegoats the right wing is misleading people against.

- Mitchel Cohen

"The dystopia is one where children never return to schools, do not have a chance to play, do not have friends. It is a world without society, without relationships, without love and friendship. " 
- Vandana Shiva

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/09/24/bill-gates-global-agenda-and-how-we-can-resist-his-war-on-life/

September 24, 2020

Bill Gates’ Global Agenda and How We Can Resist His War on Life

by Vandana Shiva

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Photograph Source: Billionaires Success – CC BY 2.0

In March 2015, Bill Gates showed an image of the coronavirus during a TED Talk and told the audience that it was what the greatest catastrophe of our time would look like. The real threat to life, he said, is ‘ not missiles, but microbes.’ When the coronavirus pandemic swept over the earth like a tsunami five years later, he revived the war language, describing the pandemic as ‘a world war’.

‘The coronavirus pandemic pits all of humanity against the virus,’ he said.

In fact, the pandemic is not a war. The pandemic is a consequence of war. A war against life. The mechanical mind connected to the money machine of extraction has created the illusion of humans as separate from nature, and nature as dead, inert raw material to be exploited. But, in fact, we are part of the biome. And we are part of the virome. The biome and the virome are us. When we wage war on the biodiversity of our forests, our farms, and in our guts, we wage war on ourselves.

The health emergency of the coronavirus is inseparable from the health emergency of extinction, the health emergency of biodiversity loss, and the health emergency of the climate crisis. All of these emergencies are rooted in a mechanistic, militaristic, anthropocentric worldview that considers humans separate from­and superior to­other beings. Beings we can own, manipulate, and control. All of these emergencies are rooted in an economic model based on the illusion of limitless growth and limitless greed, which violate planetary boundaries, and destroy the integrity of ecosystems and individual species.

New diseases arise because a globalized, industrialized, inefficient agriculture invades habitats, destroys ecosystems, and manipulates animals, plants, and other organisms with no respect for their integrity or their health. We are linked worldwide through the spread of diseases like the coronavirus because we have invaded the homes of other species, manipulated plants and animals for commercial profits and greed, and cultivated monocultures. As we clear-cut forests, as we turn farms into industrial monocultures that produce toxic, nutritionally empty commodities, as our diets become degraded through industrial processing with synthetic chemicals and genetic engineering, and as we perpetuate the illusion that earth and life are raw materials to be exploited for profits, we are indeed connecting. But instead of connecting on a continuum of health by protecting biodiversity, integrity, and self-organization of all living beings, including humans, we are connected through disease.

According to the International Labour Organization, ‘1.6 billion informal economy workers (representing the most vulnerable in the labour market), out of a worldwide total of two billion and a global workforce of 3.3 billion, have suffered massive damage to their capacity to earn a living. This is due to lockdown measures and/or because they work in the hardest-hit sectors.’ According to the World Food Programme, a quarter of a billion additional people will be pushed to hunger and 300,000 could die every day. These, too, are pandemics that are killing people. Killing cannot be a prescription for saving lives.

Health is about life and living systems. There is no ‘life’ in the paradigm of health that Bill Gates and his ilk are promoting and imposing on the entire world. Gates has created global alliances to impose top-down analysis and prescriptions for health problems. He gives money to define the problems, and then he uses his influence and money to impose the solutions. And in the process, he gets richer. His ‘funding’ results in an erasure of democracy and biodiversity, of nature and culture. His ‘philanthropy’ is not just philanthrocapitalism. It is philanthroimperialism.

The coronavirus pandemic and lockdown have revealed even more clearly how we are being reduced to objects to be controlled, with our bodies and minds as the new colonies to be invaded. Empires create colonies, colonies enclose the commons of the indigenous living communities and turn them into sources of raw material to be extracted for profits. This linear, extractive logic is unable to see the intimate relations that sustain life in the natural world. It is blind to diversity, cycles of renewal, values of giving and sharing, and the power and potential of self-organising and mutuality. It is blind to the waste it creates and to the violence it unleashes. The extended coronavirus lockdown has been a lab experiment for a future without humanity.

On March 26, 2020, at a peak of the coronavirus pandemic and in the midst of the lockdown, Microsoft was granted a patent by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Patent WO 060606 declares that ‘Human Body Activity associated with a task provided to a user may be used in a mining process of a cryptocurrency system….’

The ‘body activity’ that Microsoft wants to mine includes radiation emitted from the human body, brain activities, body fluid flow, blood flow, organ activity, body movement such as eye movement, facial movement, and muscle movement, as well as any other activities that can be sensed and represented by images, waves, signals, texts, numbers, degrees, or any other information or data.

The patent is an intellectual property claim over our bodies and minds. In colonialism, colonisers assign themselves the right to take the land and resources of indigenous people, extinguish their cultures and sovereignty, and in extreme cases exterminate them. Patent WO 060606 is a declaration by Microsoft that our bodies and minds are its new colonies. We are mines of ‘raw material’­the data extracted from our bodies. Rather than sovereign, spiritual, conscious, intelligent beings making decisions and choices with wisdom and ethical values about the impacts of our actions on the natural and social world of which we are a part, and to which we are inextricably related, we are ‘users.’ A ‘user’ is a consumer without choice in the digital empire.

But that’s not the totality of Gates’ vision. In fact, it is even more sinister­to colonise the minds, bodies, and spirits of our children before they even have the opportunity to understand what freedom and sovereignty look and feel like, beginning with the most vulnerable.

In May 2020, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York announced a partnership with the Gates Foundation to ‘reinvent education.’ Cuomo called Gates a visionary and argued that the pandemic has created ‘a moment in history when we can actually incorporate and advance [Gates’] ideas…all these buildings, all these physical classrooms­why with all the technology you have?’

In fact, Gates has been trying to dismantle the public education system of the United States for two decades. For him students are mines for data. That is why the indicators he promotes are attendance, college enrollment, and scores on a math and reading test, because these can be easily quantified and mined. In reimagining education, children will be monitored through surveillance systems to check if they are attentive while they are forced to take classes remotely, alone at home. The dystopia is one where children never return to schools, do not have a chance to play, do not have friends. It is a world without society, without relationships, without love and friendship.

As I look to the future in a world of Gates and Tech Barons, I see a humanity that is further polarized into large numbers of ‘throw away’ people who have no place in the new Empire. Those who are included in the new Empire will be little more than digital slaves.

Or, we can resist. We can seed another future, deepen our democracies, reclaim our commons, regenerate the earth as living members of a One Earth Family, rich in our diversity and freedom, one in our unity and interconnectedness. It is a healthier future. It is one we must fight for. It is one we must claim.

We stand at a precipice of extinction. Will we allow our humanity as living, conscious, intelligent, autonomous beings to be extinguished by a greed machine that does not know limits and is unable to put a break on its colonisation and destruction? Or will we stop the machine and defend our humanity, freedom, and autonomy to protect life on earth?

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The above is excerpted from Vandana Shiva’s book Oneness vs. the 1%: Shattering Illusions, Seeding Freedom (Chelsea Green Publishing, August 2020) and is reprinted with permission from the publisher.