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A Reasonable Proposal
,----[ Quote ]
| Indeed, the dirty secret of world hunger is
| that the creation of a grain surplus is no
| solution. There is plenty of food on earth,
| more than double that needed to feed all 6.5
| billion of us.4 The problem is not food
| availability, but price. People starve when
| the daily pay check doesnât cover the daily
| bread.
|
| All of which is not to say that small
| farmers do not need our help. But instead of
| installing futures markets and teaching the
| nuances of arbitrage, Bill Gates and the
| World Food Programme might consider
| expending their manifold resources on
| emergency income creation and employment
| programmes. Perhaps even more important,
| small farmers and landless peasants need to
| be supported in their efforts to gain
| political voice and power. As Amartya Sen
| has often pointed out, there has never been
| a famine in a representative democracy.5 A
| political voice is often the shortest path
| to a full stomach. Finallyâstrange as it may
| seemâthe best early warning system for a
| hunger crisis is not a futures market but a
| free press. Rulers do not like to see their
| starving subjects on the front page.
|
| Gates and the World Food Programme could
| spend their money to much better effect than
| on a programme like Purchase for Progress,
| because the totemic worship of liberal free
| market economics is not a reasonable
| solution to world hunger. And in this
| particular case, not being reasonable has
| fatal consequences.
`----
http://frederickkaufman.typepad.com/frederick_kaufman/2009/12/a-reasonable-proposal.html
More than 100,000 Indians fast against GM crops
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| On Martyrs' day today, more than one lakh
| Indians observed a one-day fast to emphasise
| that the hard-won independence led by
| Mahatma Gandhi cannot be lost now to agri-
| business MNCs, with their technologies like
| GM seeds. Thousands who observed the one-day
| fast throughout the country sought to
| remember the Mahatma's dream of Hind Swaraj
| and to uphold the food sovereignty of the
| country from the onslaught of technologies
| like GM seeds. "Remember the Mahatma, Stop
| Bt Brinjal and Protect India's Seed & Food
| Sovereignty" was their message.
`----
http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/11901-more-than-100000-indians-fast-against-gm-crops
Genome as Commodity
,----[ Quote ]
| In a few years, millions will have purchased
| their own genome
`----
http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/diagnostics/genome-as-commodity
Recent:
PPS and the philanthro-capitalists
,----[ Quote ]
| The free market approach to enrollment and
| funding is a demonstrable failure in
| Portland, when measured by access to
| educational opportunity. Unless the
| district is willing to significantly reduce
| opportunity for the white middle class,
| thereâs no way they can pay for equity of
| opportunity without balancing enrollment,
| that is, by curtailing school choice. This
| is a significant element of the high school
| plan. With it, the district appears to be
| forging a path independent of current
| trends pushed by Gates, at least for high
| schools.
|
| But the district appears unwilling to apply
| the same lesson to middle grades.
|
| Sara Allanâs contention that itâs not the
| structure of the school that matters, but
| what goes on in the classroom, also closely
| parrots the current line being sold by
| Phillips, now head of education for the
| Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
|
| Phillips was the keynote speaker at the
| Council of The Great City Schools
| conference held in Portland last month,
| attended by Allan and quite a few of her
| administrative colleagues. In her speech,
| Phillips promoted merit pay for teachers,
| the latest policy thrust of Gates.
|
| While superintendent in Portland, Philips
| was responsible for both the transition to
| K-8 schools and the âsmall schoolsâ
| initiative, funded largely by the Gates
| foundation, which dismantled every
| comprehensive high school in Portland
| serving majority non-white students, and
| split them into rigid âacademies.â These
| academies forced students to choose a
| narrow field of study as freshmen, and
| didnât allow students to take electives
| offered in other academies in the same
| building.
|
| [...]
|
| Gatesâ quiet partner
|
| The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has
| grown to be the dominant voice in the
| national education dialogue, heavily
| influencing the federal education policy of
| both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. But
| even as PPS appears to be taking a non-
| Gates path on high schools, the district
| continues to be enamored with Gatesâ
| biggest private-sector education policy
| ally: Eli Broadâs education foundation.
|
| [...]
|
| âStudent performance,â entirely measured by
| standardized test scores, correlates highly
| to poverty. Broadâs scheme would almost
| certainly assure that teachers in poor and
| minority communities would make less than
| their colleagues in wealthier schools, only
| worsening the achievement gap. This puts
| the lie to Broadâs (and Gatesâ) stated
| mission of closing that gap.
|
| [...]
|
| âStudent performance,â entirely measured by
| standardized test scores, correlates highly
| to poverty. Broadâs scheme would almost
| certainly assure that teachers in poor and
| minority communities would make less than
| their colleagues in wealthier schools, only
| worsening the achievement gap. This puts
| the lie to Broadâs (and Gatesâ) stated
| mission of closing that gap.
`----
http://ppsequity.org/2009/11/30/pps-and-the-philanthro-capitalists/
Related:
Dark cloud over good works of Gates Found
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,6827615.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Gates Foundation Revokes Pledge to Review Portfolio
,----[ Quote ]
| ...the Gates Foundation took down their public statement on this
| and replaced it with a significantly altered version which seems to
| say that investing responsibly would just be too complex for them
| and that they need to focus on their core mission: 'There are
| dozens of factors that could be considered, almost all of which
| are outside the foundation's areas of expertise. The issues
| involved are quite complex...
`----
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/12/1756212&from=rss
Gates Foundationâs Influence Criticized
,----[ Quote ]
| The chief of malaria for the World Health Organization has complained that
| the growing dominance of malaria research by the Bill and Melinda Gates
| Foundation risks stifling a diversity of views among scientists and wiping
| out the world health agencyâs policy-making function.
`----
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/science/16malaria.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation- Truth Revealed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttq0IdULfjg
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation- Truth Revealed Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVlnqnMHQ1c
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