06.07.13
Gemini version available ♊︎Bill Gates is Buying Out Education and Academia Using New Lobbies/Proxies Like Common Core and ResearchGate
“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 agency’s policy-making function.”
Summary: How Bill Gates’ monopolistic business model is expanding to the public sector, i.e. the sector which taxpayers are funding in the interest of taxpayers (Gates does not pay tax because the money gets laundered as “charity”)
The Gates Foundation wants to profit not only from the private sector but also the public sector. One example of it is the schools system. According to this piece, Gates has just gotten another lobbying group whose name is deceiving. To quote the piece: “The standards could easily reflect the political left leanings of its funders (Bill Gates), its creator (Marc Tucker), and the testing consortia (Linda Darling-Hammond). Proponents David Patti and Joan Benso, who wrote a recent Patriot News pro-Common Core guest commentary, failed to reveal that their organizations accepted huge amounts of money from the Gates Foundation to promote Common Core.
“The Gates Foundation wants to profit not only from the private sector but also the public sector.”“Teachers did not like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top because they were “teaching to the tests.” What profound differences will Common Core make in our educational system? Nothing, except that it will change education for the worse.”
So there we have another lobby among hundreds which Gates is using to get his way in school politics (we covered other such lobbies before, primarily the large ones). This is accompanied by buyout of scientists and the appropriate medium/media that they access. One new example of this comes from pro-Microsoft news sites which show the corrupting influence of Gates not just over individual journals (e.g. Lancet [1, 2, 3]) but an entire gateway like PubMed. Bill would love to gain control over many publications in one fell swoop, claiming the right to have become ResearchGates in ResearchGate.
“What matters is that those in power get served.”Here is the Gates Foundation hailed by a Microsoft booster with some “Nobel” flavouring amidst a hostile bid. It says: “On Monday, ResearchGate announced its third round of funding, $35 million, led by Bill Gates and Tenaya Capital.”
iophk says “Bill continues his attack on science” because he seems to already know what Gates is trying to achieve here. You can count on Bill’s fan press openwashing it. Well, it’s clearly not Open Source, but in Forbes, the billionaires’ fan press, facts don’t matter much. What matters is that those in power get served. “They’ve found that the name has positive connotations so they are abusing it to promote Bill,” iophk added.
“This can potentially make Gates a gatekeeper, pushing the agenda of his investments by giving funds selectively to those who write things in favour of the companies he derives profit from, in a sense monopolising by money distribution, as always.”So what is this move all about? It is about grabbing other people’s academic work (which they rarely get paid for) and trying to hoard the data, storing data locally, and even claiming credit for it and having control over what’s more visible (e.g. in search results). This can potentially make Gates a gatekeeper, pushing the agenda of his investments by giving funds selectively to those who write things in favour of the companies he derives profit from, in a sense monopolising by money distribution, as always. It’s about money and power, masqueraded as science. The grants are routinely allocated based on personal agenda of Gates. We gave a lot of examples of this and the quote at the top is telling.
Here is a new story of a teacher who was turned away because he did not comply with Gates’ will. To quote:
The first thing you need to know reader, is that there is no job security at a charter school. Even excellent veteran educators, like the three physical education teachers who were fired one year ago, are vulnerable.
We have already seen teachers suspended/expelled for not obeying Bill's orders. Here is a new protest Web site which introduces itself as “I AM AN EDUCATOR”. To quote the Washington-based teachers: “Well-funded but non-accountable organizations, such as the Broad Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, have invested their wealth to promote the policies of “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top”. These policies that purport to demand teacher accountability but ultimately reduce students and teachers to test scores–data points used to fire teachers, narrow the curriculum, keep students from graduating, privatize education, and close down scores of schools (primarily those that serve Black, Latino and students of color) across the nation.”
“Seattle-based blogs are among those which protest Gates’ agenda in education. Some of the rest have been bribed by Gates to counter those protests.”Seattle-based blogs are among those which protest Gates’ agenda in education. Some of the rest have been bribed by Gates to counter those protests. Gates has funding the lobby by paying Washington-based news sites and the outcome is clear to see (just see the comments). The Bill Gates-funded [1, 2] Seattle Times does its lobbying for Gates, failing to describe this as a politically-motivated (or for-profit) bribe. It is described as “aid” by the corporate press (also published here) as Gates is trying to generate PR by using slush funds, removing attention from actual teachers and instead generating puff pieces like [1, 2, 3]. See the report bearing the headline “More Gates dollars aim to bring charters to WA”.
“The short story is, Gates is paying for bogus studies and then bribes blogs and news sites to disseminate the resultant message for political change resulting in financial gain (privatisation).”The lobbying attempt is using bribed-for ‘studies’ which fail on many levels, as we showed here before. There is yet another new post breaking apart the latest propaganda from Gates. “This is from the Gates Foundation,” says this post which concludes as follows: “We’ve got a muddled middle, suggesting these predictions aren’t very good for 9 out of 10 teachers. One last point: Condensing the whole data set down to these 5% average points further “cleans” the data. To see what I mean, check out this post by Gary Rubinstein.”
The short story is, Gates is paying for bogus studies and then bribes blogs and news sites to disseminate the resultant message for political change resulting in financial gain (privatisation). Everyone including teachers seems too know it already, but Gates keep trying to gag his critics by overriding them or encumbering those who are still not enlightened with his PR. █
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