Posts Tagged ‘BILL Gates’
Guardian criticises Gates Foundation for helping ‘for-profit companies’; takes Bill Gates’ money
Linsey McGoey has been writing about The Bill and Melina Gates Foundation for the Guardian. The article begins with a rather ghoulish view that the charity would be better were Gates dead:
Would the Gates Foundation do more good without Bill? Philanthropic organisations such as the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations have had greater flexibility since their founders died
As Gates wonders whether death would be helpful to his causes, McGoey looks at the living Bill Gates:
What the sociologist Darren Thiel and I term “charismatic advantage” is more than just celebrity pulling power; it is the way one of the most powerful organisations in the world largely escapes negative media attention because Gates has come to signify something sacred about ourselves.
It’s an advantage that Bill Gates did not strategically design, and in many ways, to his credit, he doesn’t necessarily cultivate. But it means that important critical debate doesn’t happen as openly as it should.
Good job the Guardian is there to peer inside and investigate Bill.
At a time when activists are challenging corporate clout, the Gates Foundation is enriching for-profit companies: it has offered tens of millions in non-repayable grants to wealthy corporations such as Mastercard and Vodacom.
We need to challenge this silence. We need loudly to ask an uncomfortable question: do foundations narrow wealth inequalities or simply preserve them? Are foundations at their most radical when they exist to serve a benefactor’s hopes and whims – or when they’re emancipated from such an obligation?
In other news in the Guardian:
Mug Shot: Bill Gates Arrested For Driving Without A License, 1977
BILL Gates once had a window with bars on it:
Microsoft boss Bill Gates was photographed by the Albuquerque, New Mexico police in 1977 after a traffic violation (details of which have been lost over time).
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Posted: 27th, June 2014 | In: Celebrities, Flashback | Comment
George Osborne’s £50m grant for better condoms
The team behind the wonder material graphene – developed at the University of Manchester in 2004 – has just got a big new commission: making condoms.
Graphene is strong, light, nearly transparent, and an excellent conductor of heat and electricity, qualities that have got it dubbed a supermaterial and tipped for use in airplane wings, internet cables and foldable computers. Chancellor George Osborne is a vocal fan, putting £50m into the department making it in 2011 and trumpeting the superthin layers of carbon as a bright new hope for British industry.
But that’s not all graphene is good for … some of the team working on it at Manchester have just landed a deal to make condoms out of it.
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Posted: 20th, November 2013 | In: Technology | Comment
The Guardian’s publishing flat out economic ignorance about Bill Gates, billionaires and capitalism
IT had to happen of course: that the Guardian would go from being partisan on the subject of economics (and why not?) to publishing stuff that is just flat out ignorant. Take this about Bill Gates for example:
One of the most peculiar but least understood developments of our time is the emergence of billionaires against capitalism. Even some of the greatest beneficiaries of the market system seem deeply disillusioned with it.
The same mistake is made throughout the piece. Capitalism and markets are not the same thing, not the same thing at all.
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Property Porn: Photos Of Bill Gates’ Holiday Home
WANT to know what Microsoft boss Bill Gates is getting for the $600,00 a month rent he’s lashing out for his eldest daughter’s home?
The Sun-Sentinel looks at the property in Wellington, Florida, where 15-year-old Jennifer Gates will be an agonist at the Winter Equestrian Festival.
Well, the 1997 home has: 4 acres; eight bedrooms; six bathrooms; 7,352 square feet of living space; a fountain with horse heads made of stone; a pool; lots of chairs and a wine cellar.
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Tripping Steve Jobs Gets The Taiwan CGI Treatment: Bill Gates Is Darth Vader
STEVE Jobs is starring on Taiwan’s NMA News channel. Yep. He’s finally made it. You will see the the drugs haze, the birth of a computer, a fight with Bill Gates and a bout with death. Who wins..?
Posted: 26th, August 2011 | In: Technology | Comment
Billionaires Give Away Money But Will Muddle Along On Remaining Billions
BILL Gates and Warren Buffett (£96bn combined) have led a The Giving Pledge campaign that will see 40 billionaires give away half their fortunes to charity and “good causes”. If this still leaves you with a billion or more in the bank, then grandstanding your generosity – you get to write letter explaining how nice you are to the world – may not lead to a big reduction in living standards for the donors.
And then the donors can pledge to give the money after they die. Sign up now and Buffett will stop asking you to sign up. Although if you delay singing up long enough he may start offering inducements, like a free tumbler, a free tumbler factory or to have France renamed in your honour.
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