4 Things You Probably Know About Poverty That Bill and Melinda Gates Don’t | Co.Exist
▻http://www.fastcoexist.com/3041841/change-generation/4-things-you-probably-know-about-poverty-that-bill-and-melinda-gates-do
4 Things You Probably Know About Poverty That Bill and Melinda Gates Don’t | Co.Exist
▻http://www.fastcoexist.com/3041841/change-generation/4-things-you-probably-know-about-poverty-that-bill-and-melinda-gates-do
How does the Gates Foundation spend its money to feed the world?
▻http://www.grain.org/article/entries/5064-how-does-the-gates-foundation-spend-its-money-to-feed-the-world
Pas encore lu
The #Gates_Foundation is arguably the biggest philanthropic venture ever. It currently holds a $40 billion endowment, made up mostly of contributions from Gates and his billionaire friend Warren Buffet. The foundation has over 1,200 staff, and has given over $30 billion in grants since its inception in 2000, $3.6 billion in 2013 alone.2 Most of the grants go to global health programmes and educational work in the US, traditionally the foundation’s priority areas. But in 2006-2007, the foundation massively expanded its funding for agriculture, with the launch of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and a series of large grants to the international agricultural research system (CGIAR). In 2007, it spent over half a billion dollars on agricultural projects and has maintained funding at around this level. The vast majority of the foundation’s agricultural grants focus on Africa.
An educator challenges the #Gates_Foundation - The Washington Post
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/10/08/an-educator-challenges-the-gates-foundation
Their approach has been to pursue standardization and the metrics of test scores in order to put market forces in the driver’s seat in education. This has had very bad effects on students, who are not at all standard, and on teachers, as well. I challenge them with the understanding I gained in my 24 years working in Oakland, where I came to understand the sort of collaborative environment we need to foster growth among teachers.
#éducation (à propos des #métriques qui constituent aussi le critère essentiel de la fondation Gates dans le domaine de la #santé )
New Cornell Alliance for Science gets $5.6 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to “depolarize” the #GMO debate | Cornell Chronicle
▻http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2014/08/new-cornell-alliance-science-gets-56-million-grant
A new international effort led by Cornell will seek to add a stronger voice for science and depolarize the charged debate around agricultural biotechnology and genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Supported by a $5.6 million grant from the Bill & Melinda #Gates_Foundation, the Cornell Alliance for Science will help inform decision-makers and consumers through an online information portal and training programs to help researchers and stakeholders effectively communicate the potential impacts of agricultural technology and how such technology works.
The project will involve developing multimedia resources, including videos of farmers from around the world documenting their struggles to deal with pests, diseases, crop failure and the limited resources available in the face of poverty and climate change.
“Proponents and opponents alike speculate whether biotech crops are of benefit to farmers, but rarely are those farmers engaged in the biotech discourse or their voices heard,” said Sarah Evanega, senior associate director of International Programs in Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), who will lead the project.
“Our goal is to depolarize the GMO debate and engage with potential partners who may share common values around poverty reduction and sustainable agriculture, but may not be well informed about the potential biotechnology has for solving major agricultural challenges,” Evanega said. “For instance, pro-biotech activists share a lot of the same anti-pesticide, low-input, sustainable-agriculture vision as the organic movement.”
(...) “Like elsewhere in the world, African scientists still find it challenging to effectively inform the public about their work and its relevance to society,” said Barbara M. Zawedde, coordinator of the Uganda Biosciences Information Center at the National Agricultural Research Organization. “Our effective communication will enable African farmers and citizens to exercise their sovereign right of informed decisions on whether to adopt certain crops and technologies depending on their needs and priorities.”
#OGM #science ou #propagande
Y aura-t-il une vidéo sur le suicide des fermiers indiens étranglés par les dettes liées aux achats de pesticides et de ces soi-disants semences miracles ? Et sur l’effet de l’ingestion de désherbants comme moyen de suicide ? Verra-t-on un scientifique essayer ?
#propagande
When research harms those it seeks to help
▻http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Home/STOI/All-That-Matters/When-research-harms-those-it-seeks-to-help/articleshow/34947738.cms
This is exemplified in three randomized controlled trials evaluating cheap screening methods for cervical cancer, a disease that kills at least 70,000 women every year in India and four times that number the world over.
Over 350,000 women in villages in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra and in Mumbai slums were recruited for these trials which were funded by the Bill and Melinda #Gates Foundation and the US National Cancer Institute. The three trials started in 1998 and 2000 and the first results were presented in 2007, the most recent in 2013.
(...)
The 136,000 women in the comparison or control arms of these trials were not given any screening. Instead, they were educated on the importance of screening and told where it could be obtained. The researchers describe this as ’standard care’ in India.
(...)
Some researchers in these trials have stated that these studies looked at interventions relevant to poor Indians; the women in the control group were not deprived of anything since they would not have not have had access to screening. It was necessary to have a no screening control to evaluate the true impact of the screening techniques. And misconceived criticism of the trials’ ethics harms the cause of science. To this, one really has just two questions: Would these studies have been possible in the US? And would the researchers have recommended these trials to people they knew?
As much as it is the job of scientists to seek knowledge through research, they have an ethical responsibility to their research participants.
voir ▻http://soniashah.com/books/the-body-hunters de Sonia Shah, traduit en français chez Demopolis ▻http://www.demopolis.fr/livre.php?Clef=3
I love #Bill_Gates!
The #Gates_Foundation Tries to Defend Its Investment in Private Prisons
Do the ends justify means of extremely doubtful morality? That’s the question immigration activists are asking the Gates Foundation today with a delivery of thousands of petitions in boxes. The foundation’s investment arm, according to its 2012 tax returns, has invested $2.2 million in the GEO Group, the second largest private prison corporation in America.
▻http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/04/10/the-gates-foundation-tries-to-defend-its-investment-in-private-pri
#Gates Foundation won’t take a stand on universal health coverage | Humanosphere
▻http://www.humanosphere.org/2014/04/gates-foundation-takes-a-stand-neither-for-or-against-universal-health
A funny thing happened at the World Bank the other day.
The international financial institution devoted to fighting poverty and advancing economic growth in the poorest parts of the world held an event last week, Toward Universal Health Coverage by 2030.
That wasn’t the funny part. What was funny (or, well, funny-strange maybe) was watching the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation work so hard to avoid taking a position on this goal of ensuring all people have access to affordable, basic health care.
Qui finance la santé mondiale ?
Financing Global Health
▻http://viz.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/fgh
La #Fondation_Gates ou la charité (mal) ordonnée | CNCD-11.11.11
▻http://www.cncd.be/La-Fondation-Gates-ou-la-charite
La Fondation investit les deux tiers de ses dons, soit 2 milliards de dollars, dans le seul secteur de la santé, en concentrant son action sur quelques programmes. Elle coordonne par ailleurs ses investissements avec d’autres donateurs privés, ce qui la rend totalement incontournable auprès de ses bénéficiaires. Après 14 ans à peine d’existence, cette institution est en train de « transformer radicalement le paysage de la santé publique mondiale », analyse Michelle Bertho-Huidal, chercheuse à l’Université de Berkeley en Californie et auteur de Charity business (éd. Vendémiaire/Broché), un essai consacré aux fondations. [1]
Quelles sont ces transformations ? L’influence grandissante du secteur privé dans la prise de décisions politiques, tout d’abord. Au Botswana, par exemple, pays d’Afrique australe particulièrement touché par le sida, la Fondation Gates s’est pratiquement substituée au ministère de la Santé en montant, avec la Fondation Merck, un laboratoire pharmaceutique, le projet Achap (African Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Partnerships).
Avec ses tests de dépistage gratuits et ses distributions de médicaments, Achap est un succès. En 2009, la moitié de la population du Botswana a bénéficié d’un test et 87 % des séropositifs dépistés ont été soignés. Mais le coût du projet est particulièrement élevé. Malgré les dons des deux fondations, le ministère de la Santé publique botswanaise débourse encore 1 000 dollars par an pour chaque patient, ce qui représente quasi la totalité de son budget. Le Botswana n’a donc pas de politique publique de santé autre que le projet Achap, dont le centre de décision se trouve à Seattle au siège de la… Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
En outre, le projet ne prévoit aucune action de prévention du sida, la seule manière véritable d’enrayer la pandémie. Pour Michelle Bertho-Huidal, « la Fondation à fait reculer la mortalité, mais pas la maladie ». Ni même sa dépendance aux médicaments.
Mais est-ce vraiment étonnant ? La Fondation Gates détient des actions dans les neuf plus grandes sociétés pharmaceutiques du monde et recrute parmi elles certains de ses cadres. Ainsi le directeur de la branche Santé publique de la Fondation vient de Novartis (Suisse) et son prédécesseur du géant britannique GlaxoSmithKline.
je suis tout à fait pour la critique des programmes, des logiques d’entreprise, du recrutement, des liens financiers, de l’hégémonie etc de la fondation #Gates, mais je ne peux pas lire sans sauter au plafond une phrase comme :
Mais quel est l’intérêt de sauver un adolescent de la tuberculose s’il doit mourir plus tard d’un banal accident de la route, qui reste la première cause de décès des jeunes dans le Sud ?
Oui, remarque grossière limite insultante qui voulait très très maladroitement, souligner le manque de « finalité sociale » du programme …
Dans le contexte :
L’effet de la concentration des actions pose aussi d’autres questions. La Fondation Gates se focalise sur trois maladies : le sida, le paludisme et la tuberculose, à l’exclusion des autres pathologies et/ou problèmes sociaux. Mais quel est l’intérêt de…
Voir ▻http://seenthis.net/messages/242488 pour un beau reportage de terrain sur la lutte contre le #paludisme ; l’ACT, seul traitement qui marche bien actuellement (et peut-être plus pour très longtemps) n’est pas du tout de la high-tech. Ses inventeurs ne vivent pas dans des jets privés et des conférences dans des hôtels de luxe, mais continuent à soigner dans des campagnes perdues aux confins de pays en guerre.
La technicité n’est qu’un des multiples facteurs de prix : par exemple, les multithérapies contre le VIH sont assez sophistiquées sur le plan technologique, et pourtant très peu chères ; cela, grâce au combat pour les génériques, qui permettent des négociations d’achats massifs via des mécanismes comme le Fonds mondial. Par ailleurs je ne crois pas qu’il y ait une course à la high-tech pour le seul plaisir du « high », mais aussi parce qu’on ne sait pas bien faire autrement.
The flaw in Bill Gates’ approach to ending global poverty - the first step is not identifying technical solutions, but ensuring poor people’s rights:
▻http://seattletimes.com/html/opinion/2023217879_williameasterlyopedgatesfoundation25xml.html
#Easterly #Gates #aid
How #Bill_Gates Is Helping KFC Take Over #Africa | Mother Jones
▻http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/01/kfc-africa-chicken-usaid-gates-foundation
The #Gates_Foundation and #USAID are helping the Colonel’s African expansion, perhaps at the expense of local farmers.
#Gates, complètement schizo… - Politis
▻http://www.politis.fr/Gates-completement-schizo,25023.html
Le plus grand philanthrope de tous les temps est-il le plus grand des cyniques ? La Fondation Bill et Melinda Gates (36 milliards de dollars de capital) a été épinglée par un journal américain qui, en épluchant ses déclarations fiscales, a révélé qu’elle était l’actionnaire des pires multinationales de la planète. Cette vénérable institution qui lutte contre la malnutrition, la pauvreté et le réchauffement climatique participe aussi, à hauteur de plusieurs milliards, au capital des champions de la malbouffe (McDo, Coca…), de l’exploitation salariale (Walmart…) et de la pollution (ExxonMobil, BP…). Puisque les intérêts de ces placements vont à de bonnes causes, il n’y a pas de raison de se priver des investissements rentables… Ben voyons !
Reprise probable de ce qui était pointé ici ▻http://seenthis.net/messages/207004
On peut penser que ça va plus loin que la simple schizophrénie…
Les campagnes de la B&MGF mettent systématiquement l’accent sur le recours à la vaccination. Deux grandes campagnes posent de graves problèmes :
• vaccin contre le paludisme
• vaccin oral contre la polio
Une charge sur le sujet (juin 2013)
Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and Fake Philanthropy —
▻http://alternativepoliticalnews.blogspot.fr/2013/05/bill-gates-and-fake-philanthropy.html
Now, quite literally hundreds of studies, papers and analyses have determined that the best way to reduce infection and mortality rates from diseases such as Malaria and Polio, is to increase the standard of living and education of its population.
(…)
Back to Bill Gates. He is a pretty smart guy, as a matter of fact he is considered to be one of the most intelligent people on the planet. I am quite certain that he is also not ignorant, so why would he embark on a massive vaccination campaign when the same amount of money could have been invested in genuine sustainable community development and public health programmes? Because that doesn’t make money.
La thématique d’Arte sur les dollars de BG contre le paludisme (novembre 2013)
▻http://future.arte.tv/fr/sujet/les-dollars-de-bill-gates-contre-le-paludisme
Le vaccin oral contre la polio, à base d’un virus actif, donne lieu à controverse, d’une part parce qu’il induit dans un très faible nombre de cas à un polio induite par le vaccin, d’autre part à cause du risque de mutation du virus injecté pouvant le transformer en une souche contagieuse.
Cf. ▻http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio#Prévention
Pour la version sans polémique (10/11/13)
Bill Gates : What I Learned in India’s Fight Against Polio - WSJ.com
▻http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303309504579181753580988412
India’s success in eradicating polio offers lessons for solving other human welfare issues world-wide
Gates Foundation scores “very poor” on #transparency index | Humanosphere
▻http://www.humanosphere.org/2013/10/gates-foundation-scores-poor-transparency-index
The #Gates_Foundation is (...), according to the 2013 Aid Transparency Index, one of the least open and accountable organizations in this arena – ranking 43rd out of the 67 aid and development agencies or humanitarian organizations assessed this year.
Bill #Gates admits Control-Alt-Delete was a #mistake, blames #IBM
#Microsoft #smh
►http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/26/4772680/bill-gates-admits-ctrl-alt-del-was-a-mistake
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has finally admitted that forcing users to press the Control-Alt-Delete key combination to log into a PC was a mistake. In an interview at a Harvard fundraising campaign, Gates discusses his early days building Microsoft and the all-important Control-Alt-Delete decision. If you’ve used an old version of the software or use Windows at work then you will have experienced the odd requirement. Gates expains the key combination is designed to prevent other apps from faking the login prompt and stealing a password.
“It was a mistake,” Gates admits to an audience left laughing at his honesty.
Bill #Gates: #capitalism means male baldness research gets more funding than #malaria - ▻http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-03/14/bill-gates-capitalism #research
Behind the scenes with the #Gates_Foundation’s ‘strategic media partners’ | Humanosphere
▻http://www.humanosphere.org/2013/02/a-personal-view-behind-the-scenes-with-the-gates-foundations-media-par
The public doesn’t see much coverage of the media’s collaboration with the Gates Foundation. Yet it’s substantial, influential
#média #santé #journalisme #philanthrocapitalisme via @jamie_love
The Gates Foundation’s Leveraged Philanthropy: Corporate Profit Versus Humanity on Three Fronts
►http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/07/the_gates_foundations_leverage.html
It’s hard to think of the #Gates Foundation’s $26 billion leverage effort as “a little money”, especially since it’s been spread over the globe to gain access to vastly more resources than it contributes, including U.S. tax dollars, the foreign exchange of emerging African nations, and United Nations funds for international development and world health.
Sam Dryden: the most powerful figure in the global south’s agriculture? | Global development | guardian.co.uk
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/jul/06/sam-dryden-global-south-agriculture
The #Gates Foundation’s head of agriculture has attracted criticism for his involvement with global agribusiness, but he insists his aim is to improve life for the world’s poorest farm
Dryden dismisses this. For a start, he says, only 5% of Gates’s agricultural money is directed at transgenic research and development. That may be around $100m since 2007 – more than any other government or world body is known to have handed out – but 95% of the foundation’s work is devoted to developing better conventional seeds, and improving farming practices.
However, the ties between the foundation and US biotech companies are strong. Within nine months of his arriving at Gates, the foundation had invested $23m in Monsanto, but although it may partner biotech companies and governments such as the UK to develop GM crops, Dryden says it is fiercely independent.
mmm
#Bill #Gates backs climate scientists lobbying for large-scale #geoengineering | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/06/bill-gates-climate-scientists-geoengineering
A small group of leading climate scientists, financially supported by billionaires including Bill Gates, are lobbying governments and international bodies to back experiments into manipulating the climate on a global scale to avoid catastrophic climate change.
The scientists, who advocate geoengineering methods such as spraying millions of tonnes of reflective particles of sulphur dioxide 30 miles above earth, argue that a “plan B” for climate change will be needed if the UN and politicians cannot agree to making the necessary cuts in greenhouse gases, and say the US government and others should pay for a major programme of international research.
(...)
“We will need to protect ourselves from vested interests [and] be sure that choices are not influenced by parties who might make significant amounts of money through a choice to modify climate, especially using proprietary intellectual property,” said Jane Long, director at large for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US, in a paper delivered to a recent geoengineering conference on ethics.
(...)
Pressure to find a quick technological fix to climate change is growing
(...)
As well as Gates, other wealthy individuals including Sir Richard Branson, tar sands magnate Murray Edwards and the co-founder of Skype, Niklas Zennström, have funded a series of official reports into future use of the technology.
(...)
Analysis of the eight major national and international inquiries into geoengineering over the past three years shows that Keith and Caldeira, Rasch and Prof Granger Morgan the head of department of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University where Keith works, have sat on seven panels, including one set up by the UN. Three other strong advocates of solar radiation geoengineering, including Rasch, have sat on national inquiries part-funded by Ficer.
(...)
“Regarding my own #patents, I have repeatedly stated that if any patent that I am on is ever used for the purposes of altering climate, then any proceeds that accrue to me for this use will be donated to nonprofit NGOs and charities. I have no expectation or interest in developing a personal revenue stream based upon the use of these patents for climate modification.”.
#Monsanto Now Owns #Blackwater (#Xe | #Academi)
►http://www.darkgovernment.com/news/monsanto-now-owns-blackwater-xe
(via #wikileaks)
No wonder that a company engaged in the “science of death” as Monsanto, which has been dedicated from the outset to produce toxic poisons spilling from Agent Orange to PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), pesticides, hormones and genetically modified seeds, is associated with another company of thugs [Blackwater].
Almost simultaneously with the publication of this article in The Nation, the Via Campesina reported the purchase of 500,000 shares of Monsanto, for more than $23 million by the Bill and Melinda #Gates Foundation, which with this action completed the outing of the mask of “philanthropy.” Another association that is not surprising.
It is a marriage between the two most brutal monopolies in the history of industrialism: Bill Gates controls more than 90 percent of the market share of proprietary computing and Monsanto about 90 percent of the global transgenic seed market and most global commercial seed. There does not exist in any other industrial sector monopolies so vast, whose very existence is a negation of the vaunted principle of “market competition” of capitalism. Both Gates and Monsanto are very aggressive in defending their ill-gotten monopolies.
Dark side of giving : The rise of #philanthro-capitalism - Economic Times
►http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-03-25/news/29188722_1_rwanda-agra-agriculture
Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (#AGRA) — an initiative driven by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill & Melinda #Gates Foundation, the oldest and the largest philanthropic repositories, respectively, in the world? The Gates Foundation alone has committed $264.5 million to AGRA.
“They are using the pitiable condition of the African people to get a foothold into the continent,” explains Som Pal. “Their large philanthropic resources are being utilised to further the interests of business.” In countries with weak governance mechanisms, like in Africa, it becomes a lot easier.
(...) There is its growing stranglehold in the policy-making space across emerging markets, especially in education, healthcare and agriculture.
The $23.1-million investment by the Gates Foundation in #Monsanto, the world’s largest producer of GM seeds, is a small example of a trend.
Gates discloses media grant after report | Puget Sound Business Journal
►http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/2011/03/gates-discloses-media-grant-after-report.html
When the Seattle Times published a lengthy profile of the Bill & Melinda #Gates Foundation’s #grants to professional #journalists on Feb. 19, the foundation apparently never disclosed that it had already approved its largest award ever to a #media organization.
#cdp
La #Gates_Foundation finance beaucoup de « partenariats médias »
►http://humanosphere.kplu.org/tag/media