09.30.11
Keeping on Top
Summary: How to get particular types of news before this site does and a call for help from the readers/contributors community
TECHRIGHTS deals with some particular topics such as Comes vs Microsoft as time-insensitive tasks which need to be documented sooner or later. Cablegate, Gates Monitor, and several other such topics are among these. For those who wish to stay abreast, blogs like Seattle Education and Gates Keepers are ones we recommend. Recently, the Guest Editorial Team spent time indexing those, eventually coming up with the following short summaries:
Seattle Education Chronological
2011
- 01/31 – Firing teachers. Seattle Education warns about Washington state Senate Bill 5399, which proposes to fire teachers in mass layoffs based on unfair and poorly thought out performance metrics. They point to a Great Lakes Study which shows that the Gates Foundation evaluation methods are seriously flawed Wisconsin and Michigan schools have suffered serious state level power grabs and mass layoffs of teachers. From the Great Lakes report:
[the authors] found the Gates Foundation’s MET report to be based on flawed research and predetermined conclusions. … the [Gates Foundation] MET report draws conclusions that are not supported by its own facts, with some data in the report pointing “in the opposite direction” from what is indicated in its “poorly-supported conclusions.”
- 01/31 – Gateskeeper praises New York Times and Financial Times articles mildly critical of Gates Foundation Polio efforts
“Bill Gates’s obsession with polio is distorting priorities in other critical BMGF areas. Global health does not depend on polio eradication.” (The initials are for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.)… The skeptics acknowledge that they are arguing for accepting more paralysis and death as the price of shifting that $1 billion to vaccines and other measures that prevent millions of deaths from pneumonia, diarrhoea, measles, meningitis and malaria.
While the article points out minor factual mistakes Gates makes, it is strange that Gates is given an equal voice and credibility as polio victims and successful epidemiologist who are called “cynical” “skeptics”.
- 02/01 – Seattle Education reports a five community organization vote of no confidence in Broad Academy graduate Brizzard, Superintendent of Rochester, NY schools. Bizzard was fired but went on to take over Chicago’s schools. The vote of no confidence complains of an oppressive environment for children, preference for charter schools and “top down” management style that removes parent and teacher control. The Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation work together to bring these things on all schools.
- 02/02 – Shameless self promotion. Gateskeepers laments BBC medical correspondent’s uncritical promotion of Gates Foundation immunization efforts by “fawning” over Melinda Gates. Techrights has pointed out the conflicts between the foundations stated mission and investments in big oil and tobacco.
- 02/02 – Seattle Education documents a expensive proposed restructuring designed to eliminate Gates Foundation opposition leader Randy Dorn and promote a charter school champion, Ben Austin.
- 02/02 – Gatekeeper shows that Bill Gates has no respect for tenure but reads it wrong. Mr. Gates does not seriously suggest tenure for fast food employees, he wants to treat university professors like fast food employees, newspaper editors and other people he considers disposable.
- 02/03 – Ruining Science by Proxy. Gates Foundation funded Good smears leading epidemiologist, Richard Horton and Donald Henderson, as contentious, unethical bureaucrats because they disagreed with the Foundation’s emphasis on polio.
- 02/03 – Freakanomics reports a Stanford and other studies that show the charter schools set up by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation mostly (83%) do worse than public schools and none do better. Merit pay and standardized test scores failed to promote learning in Chicago and New York. At least one school in New York has done better doing exactly the opposite, respecting teachers and students alike.
- 02/04 – Interviewed on Al Jazeera English, Bill Gates promotes himself as a “health expert” and Melinda Gates acts as if she has a large network of friends in African villages that both know of and like what Gates is doing.
- – Bill Gates embarrasses himself by misinterpreting a murky IQ study based on a poor interpretation by the Economist. Mr. Gates simplifies it as, “national worm burden causes national stupidity.” An interesting correlation seems to be demonstrated between infectious disease burden and IQ, “when temperature, distance from Africa, gross domestic product per capita and several measures of education are controlled for,” but the entire concept of IQ has been questioned and it is hard to take a paper seriously which notes, “average IQ correlated significantly with average skin darkness.”
- 02/04 Sue p. of Parents Across America summarizes the damage done to educators and schools by Gates, Walton and Broad [GWB] as they seek return on investment in charter schools around the US.
- 06/16 – Washington state immunization rates are the worst in the US, with 6.2% not immunized. Bill Gates promoted a law to force “full immunization” for kindergarten. This is OK as long as Gates is not self dealing to make a profit selling needless immunizations. Supposed outbreaks of Whooping cough and measles are alarming. Gateskeepers finds irony in the low rate of immunization in Washington after Gates has spent billions on controversial polio and malaria programs.
Those who are willing to help Techrights keep on top of the news, please do get in touch. █
