The Gates Foundation is involved in some nefarious activities:
The Gates Foundation's Leveraged Philanthropy: Corporate Profit Versus Humanity on Three Fronts
By Anthony Cody on July 4, 2012 11:47 AM
Guest post by Chemtchr. Part One of Two.
Philanthropy wonk Lucy Bernholz defines the buzzword leverage
as "the idea that you can use a little money to access a lot of money."
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.
Gates' leveraged philanthropy model is a public-private partnership to improve the world, partly through targeted research support but principally through public advocacy and tax-free lobbying to influence government policy. The goal of these policies is often to explicitly support profitability for corporate investors, whose enterprises are seen by the Gates Foundation as advancing human good. However, maximum corporate profit and public good often clash when its projects are implemented.
For example, chemical giant Monsanto has partnered with the Gates Foundation, which reportedly works to suppress local seed exchanges and environmentally sustainable agricultural practices through its global agricultural charity work. Fraud-prone drug giant GlaxoSmithKline is a partner in the Foundation's work to leverage its own relatively fractional contribution to vaccination efforts, so that it centrally controls enormous world funds for purchase, pricing, and delivery of vaccines for world public health. And in its U.S. education reform charity work, the Gates Foundation has increasingly shifted its funding to promote market domination by its British corporate education services partner, Pearson Education...
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/07/the_gates_foundations_leverage.html
Then there is the $498,055 grant to develop the "Galvanic skin Response Bracelet".
the purpose of the grant is "... to conduct a pilot study to measure student engagement physiologically with Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) bracelets, which will determine the feasibility and utility of using such devices more broadly to help students and teachers.
Also, there was a $621,265 grant given to the National Center on Time and Learning. Its purpose is "to measure engagement physiologically with Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Galvanic Skin Response to determine correlations between each measure and develop a scale that differentiates different degrees or levels of engagement."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/gates-changes-galvanic-bracelet-grant-description/2012/06/12/gJQAPkEAYV_blog.html
Apparently, the Gates foundation has sponsored an astroturf advocacy group.
Behind Grass-Roots School Advocacy, Bill Gates
By SAM DILLON
Published: May 21, 2011
INDIANAPOLIS — A handful of outspoken teachers helped persuade state lawmakers this spring to eliminate seniority-based layoff policies. They testified before the legislature, wrote briefing papers and published an op-ed article in The Indianapolis Star.
They described themselves simply as local teachers who favored school reform — one sympathetic state representative, Mary Ann Sullivan, said, “They seemed like genuine, real people versus the teachers’ union lobbyists.” They were, but they were also recruits in a national organization, Teach Plus, financed significantly by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
For years, Bill Gates focused his education philanthropy on overhauling large schools and opening small ones. His new strategy is more ambitious: overhauling the nation’s education policies. To that end, the foundation is financing educators to pose alternatives to union orthodoxies on issues like the seniority system and the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers.
In some cases, Mr. Gates is creating entirely new advocacy groups. The foundation is also paying Harvard-trained data specialists to work inside school districts, not only to crunch numbers but also to change practices. It is bankrolling many of the Washington analysts who interpret education issues for journalists and giving grants to some media organizations..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/education/22gates.html?_r=1
Warren Buffet's wealth could be put to much better use than this.
= new reply since forum marked as read
