This Roy Singham guy is really something else...
We’ve read all about Neville Roy Singham’s connections to the Chinese government (he currently lives in China). Code Pink, who had condemned the Chinese government’s mistreatment of the Uyghurs, suddenly changed their tune after a few million from Singham (who married Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans - see photo above). Now Code Pink says the Uyghurs are “terrorists” and launched a campaign called “China Is Not Our Enemy”.
He also funds the ANSWER Coalition, Tricontinental Institute, The People’s Forum, and others.
===============================================================
This is a great overview of Singham:
Oakland Socialist: Who is Roy Singham? What does his web consist of?
Also these articles:
New York Times: A Global Web of Chinese Propaganda Leads to a U.S. Tech Mogul
Daily Beast: U.S Tech Mogul Bankrolls Pro-Russia, Pro-China News Network
Fox News: Far-left nonprofits in the hot seat as lawmaker exposes them for 'sowing chaos' in US
==================================================================
A friend online said Singham also had past associations with Wikileaks and a quick internet search revealed the extent of the relationship, which is interesting, because I associate Singham with China and I associate Wikileaks with Russia. But perhaps there is more collaboration than you might expect.
Singham has deep ties to South Africa, where this article was published: The Mercury: The struggle for Assange’s freedom continues by Imraan Buccus which claims Singham “had to flee the U.S. to avoid the clampdown on all actors associated with WikiLeaks…”:
“In 2019 Ola Bini, the Swedish coder who had provided tech support to Wikileaks was arrested in Ecuador… The Jamaican IT millionaire Roy Singham, who formerly employed Bini and is understood to have been a key funder of Wikileaks, is understood to have had to flee the US to avoid the clampdown on all actors associated with Wikileaks, and has since been repeatedly maligned in the liberal media via an unevidenced conspiracy theory that makes him out to be a Chinese agent…”
Just one of many places online where Singham is misidentified as “Jamaican”. Even though both of his parents were Asian, Singham (and his father) seemed to be considered “Black” in some contexts, even being associated with the Historically Black Howard University. A 1991 New York Times obituary for Roy’s father Archie said that he was “was a founding member of the social sciences faculty at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica, where he taught from 1960 to 1970” and a member of the editorial board of The Nation, whose publishers have long carried water for Russia and, in this century, specifically for Putin.
That means that Roy, born in 1954, lived in Jamaica from the age of 6 until he was 16 while his father taught there. But that doesn’t make him “Jamaican”.
According to a critical article in New Lines Magazine, The Big Business of Uyghur Genocide Denial, Singham “has long held an ideological affinity with the Chinese Communist Party, dating to his youthful membership in the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, a Mao-influenced group based in Detroit, Michigan. In his capacity as a cadre of the organization, which advocated revolutionary unionism in opposition to racist policies within reformist unions, Singham took a job at the Detroit Chrysler plant in 1972 at the age of 18.”
A 2010 Thoughtworks press release about that year’s Agile Conference in Beijing, sounds like a poor translation of a Chinese Cultural Revolution document from the 1960s: “On October 14, Roy Singham, as the founder of ThoughtWorks, the leading Agile enterprise worldwide, as well as the forerunner in promoting Agile in China, delivered his wonderful opening speech for the Conference…”
The release summarized Singham’s opening speech:
“He thought that Agile had developed faster than was originally imagined by the industry, and that constantly innovative development of software in China would create the opportunity for China to become the leading strength in the history of the Agile software revolution. Roy pointed out that the promotion of Agile in China has had deep influence on the top management of the enterprises and organizations, such as China Mobile, Huawei, Baidu, Alibaba and Nokia-Siemens, who have started paying close attention, so as to actively influence the development of Agile in the management and cultures of their organizations.”
=======================================
From Forbes, 2011. A WikiLeaks Forum featuring Roy Singham and Peter Thiel:
Singham speaking at NETMundial 2014 in Brazil. Assange appeared by video.
===================================================================
Singham caused a scandal in India about the influence of foreign funds on local politics.
Singham’s academic/activist father Archie with Fidel Castro circa 1980. Archie was born in British Burma. His parents were Sri Lankan.
An appreciation of Archie by Vijay Prashad (who received millions from Roy Singham): Archie and I: a Third World story
Archie married academic Shirley Hune, who was born in Toronto and is of Chinese descent (her family is from Guangzhou). In 1954, Shirley and Archie had a son they named Neville Roy Singham.
The official story is that Roy Singham made a fortune when he sold his tech company ThoughtWorks for $785 million in 2017, and then, as a Maoist and admirer/partner of the Chinese Communist Party and the government of the People’s Republic of China, proceeded to generously give away millions to “good causes”.
We have to question the timeline of his involvement with the CCP and PRC government, and their role in making him wealthy. His involvement with Huawei is particularly suspicious. Instead of Singham merely being incredibly lucky or incredibly smart, could it be that Chinese authorities helped him financially and otherwise at key junctures that contributed to his wealth and his success in the tech world?
Singham’s Timeline:
ThoughtWorks was founded in the late 1980s and was incorporated in 1993.
2001 - 2008: Singham was a strategic technical consultant for Huawei, a company tied since its inception to the CCP and PRC government.
2005: ThoughtWorks opens offices in China.
2008: Tremendous growth for ThoughtWorks.
2010: Singham “opened ThoughtWorks’ Fifth Agile Software Development Conference in Beijing, where he spoke about his influence on Huawei.”
2017: Singham sells ThoughtWorks to the private equity firm Apax Partners for $785 million, and moves full-time to China.
====================================================================
If you wish to support our efforts, please consider donating $1 (or more) to ThisSmallPlanet at Venmo @thissmallplanet