On 4/12/2021 8:48 PM, Dennis Brasky wrote:
https://newrepublic.com/article/162000/bill-gates-impeded-global-access-covid-vaccines
<https://newrepublic.com/article/162000/bill-gates-impeded-global-access-covid-vaccines>
Thanks Dennis, it's a very useful article. One friendly amendment to
this 'graf on access to generic (not branded) AIDS medicines:
"In Geneva, the lawsuit was reflected in a battle at the WHO, which
was divided along a north-south fault line: on one side, the home
countries of the Western drug companies; on the other, a coalition
of 134 developing countries (known collectively as the Group of 77,
or G77) and a rising “third force” of civil society groups led by
Médecins Sans Frontières and Oxfam."
My own no-doubt biased memory from two decades ago was that the most
dynamic /un/civil society forces were actually radicals in South
Africa's Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and the U.S. grassroots
movement AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, ACTUP! - though MSF and Oxfam
were certainly important, as were the other excellent NGOs and academics
mentioned in Zaitchik's article. Here's
<https://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2001/012001/interview-achmat.html>
part of an interview I did at the time with TAC leader Zackie Achmat:
/*MM:*//The drug companies are claiming that with their donations,
they are now doing as much as can be expected./
//
*Achmat:* Well, first, the various donations have come only because
of protest. These are, in any case, just holding operations for the
drug companies, which hope they can delay the import or local
production of generics in Africa. And the very large South African
private sector is still not covered in one of the largest deals,
between Pretoria and Pfizer, for Fluconazole.
Whatever the nature of a particular donation, we can't afford to let
up pressure on the drug companies, otherwise prices will go way up
again after they capture the market.
In any event, some of these programs are also financially
self-interested. In Botswana, for every dollar Merck gives, the
Gates Foundation gives a dollar, which comes back to the company
when they buy Merck drugs at wholesale price, which can be added to
Merck's tax deduction on the donation. The big question about the
drug companies' donations is how long they can be sustained, and how
many people will be reached? Evidence so far is not encouraging.
What is, however, most disturbing about the drug companies'
philanthropy is their ability to buy off potential protest from the
established AIDS organizations. Bristol-Myers-Squibb, for instance,
has given $120 million to a "Secure the Future" program over three
years, directed at women, children and NGOs. That gives them the
clout to go into established AIDS organizations and literally
purchase loyalty by researchers and NGO leaders. Some NGOs have
become much less critical than they should be.
And BMS's two drugs are ddI and D4T, which in any case were
developed by the U.S. National Institute of Health and Yale
University. Yet both are still priced prohibitively in South Africa.
//
/*MM:*//Is progress being made on a vaccine, and how are drug
companies doing in R&D more generally?/
*Achmat:* Of course we would support a vaccine. The World Bank,
Gates and other funders, including our government, all hope for a
magic bullet. In reality, however, there's no chance of getting even
a 50 percent effective vaccine within 7 to 10 years, according to
the main scientific researchers.
While they are looking for that magic bullet, millions are due to
perish, and millions more will contract HIV.
We wish they would spend a lot more of the resources now going into
vaccine work into something more practical, namely a microbicide
gell or spray which can prevent HIV transmission during vaginal and
anal sexual intercourse, because it kills off lots of STD bugs. It's
much more promising, but it's massively underfunded.
I think that so few companies are doing serious work on microbicides
because the people who will use them most are poor women. If the
perception within the drug companies is that the rich, white
heterosexual market doesn't need it, you can expect it to become a
fatally low priority.
https://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2001/012001/interview-achmat.html
The point, though, is that in November 2001, pressure from below -
activists plus African health ministers plus professionals in WHO,
UNAIDS and even the WTO - overwhelmed Gates and then U.S. Trade
Representative Robert Zoellick. The result was a massive increase in
generic availability in subsequent years, that here in South Africa
raised life expectancy from 52 to the current 65.
We obviously need to replicate that accomplishment for Covid-19 vaccines
and treatment, and the article gives excellent details about why Gates
and his Foundation stand in the way.
And here's critique of Gates from other perspectives, including the
other major intervention he's made in South Africa: racially- and
class-segregated sanitation (about which I've already posted the ghastly
details on this listserve a few weeks ago, here
<https://groups.io/g/marxmail/topic/but_beware_the_sadism_of/80894234?p=,,,20,0,0,0::recentpostdate%2Fsticky,,,20,2,0,80894234>).
Bill Gates’ silver-bullet misfiring at the Mandela Memorial
Lecture
<https://www.pambazuka.org/global-south/bill-gates%E2%80%99-silver-bullet-misfiring-mandela-memorial-lecture>
Patrick Bond <https://www.pambazuka.org/taxonomy/term/3429>
Jul 14, 2016
On July 17, Bill Gates will deliver the annual Mandela Lecture in
Johannesburg, justifying his philosophy of market-oriented,
technology-centric philanthropy. Last year, French economist Thomas
Piketty’s speech on inequality attracted healthy debate
<https://theconversation.com/why-inequality-will-not-be-fixed-with-pikettian-posturing-and-distorted-data-48389>,
with even business notables
<http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/2015/09/28/pikettys-fix-for-inequality-in-sync-with-development-plan>
endorsing his concerns, given South Africa’s intense social conflict.
To illustrate, South Africa’s Gini Coefficient measuring inequality
<http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/default.asp?2,68,3,3639> is the world’s
highest (at 0.77 on a scale of 0 to 1, in terms of income inequality
from employment). Since 2000, social protests have numbered
<http://mg.co.za/article/2016-06-07-new-stats-show-that-nine-out-of-11-protests-a-day-are-peaceful>
an average of 11 per day. From 2012-16 the World Economic Forum’s
/Global Competitiveness Report /category measuring
<http://reports.weforum.org/global-competitiveness-report-2015-2016/>
worker militancy ranked South Africa’s proletariat as the angriest
on earth, while PricewaterhouseCoopers Economic Crime surveys
awarded
<http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/advisory/consulting/forensics/economic-crime-survey.html>
the gold medal for world corruption to the Johannesburg bourgeoisie
in 2014 and 2016.
In this context, Gates, who is worth $80 billion (up $24 billion
from 2011), will expound on redistribution. And to be sure, many of
his projects have been vital to human progress. But compare what can
be termed Gates’ ‘philanthro-capitalism
<https://www.thenation.com/article/philanthrocapitalism-a-self-love-story/>’
with Ford Foundation President Darren Walker’s proposal
<https://www.fordfoundation.org/ideas/equals-change-blog/posts/toward-a-new-gospel-of-wealth/>
for a more appropriate approach to giving in the 21^st century: “We
foundations need to reject inherited, assumed, paternalist
instincts… We need to interrogate the fundamental root causes of
inequality, even, and especially, when it means that we ourselves
will be implicated.”
In contrast, Gates specialises in top-down technicist quick-fixes –
‘silver bullets’ – which often backfire on the economic shooting
range of extreme corporate influence and neoliberal policies. As
Global Justice Now’s Polly Jones complained in a report
<http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/resources/gated-development-gates-foundation-always-force-good>
last month, Gates’ “influence is so pervasive that many actors in
international development, which would otherwise critique the policy
and practice of the foundation, are unable to speak out
independently as a result of its funding and patronage.”
Amongst the few exceptions are Katharyne Mitchell and Matthew
Sparke, whose research critiques
<https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Katharyne_Mitchell/publication/280624828_The_New_Washington_Consensus_Millennial_Philanthropy_and_the_Making_of_Global_Market_Subjects_with_Matthew_Sparke/links/55bf942808aed621de139aab>
Gates’ “highly targeted investments, market-mediated partnerships,
rapid technological fixes, constant assessment, quick exits, and the
use of competition, benchmarking and rankings to set funding
priorities.”
Bad examples can be drawn across the vast sphere of Gates Foundation
activities:
* Gates’ power
<http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/little-help-bill-gates-world-bank-creates-new-aid-conditionality>
threatens African food in part due to his advocacy
<http://acbio.org.za/the-chicanery-behind-gm-non-commercial-orphan-crops-and-rice-for-africa/>
of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), which benefit
agro-corporates such as Monsanto but wipe out local seeds. In
Kenya
<https://www.rt.com/news/328014-kenya-gmo-us-gates-monsanto/>,
Gates’ people and USAID appear to have succeeded in reversing a
GMO-seed ban (only four African states allow GMOs). The
Gates-supported Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa
“advised and lobbied the governments of Ghana, Tanzania, and
Malawi, among others, to adopt pro-business seed and land policy
reforms,” according to a critique by a progressive
food-sovereignty NGO, Oakland Institute.
* To address species-threatening climate change, a rather confused
<https://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/05/02/3770561/bill-gates-wrong-carbon-tax-2/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tptop3&utm_term=1&utm_content=53&elqTrackId=542661263f154a938c4befa8ac39aeeb&elq=ac0350c6e05b4a3d8707df77652fe9f1&elqaid=29979&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=5538>
Gates favours
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/opinion/bill-gatess-clean-energy-moon-shot.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region®ion=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region&_r=1>
‘Terrapower’ nuclear, a dangerous
<http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35229-bill-gates-nuclear-pipe-dream-convert-mountains-of-depleted-uranium-to-plutonium-to-power-earth-for-centuries>
distraction from the urgent need to both expand renewable energy
and radically reduce fossil-fuel abuse. As Exxon CEO Rex
Tillerson bragged
<https://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/05/26/3781761/bill-gates-exxon-climate-policy/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tptop3&utm_term=3&utm_content=53&elqTrackId=44f789141c5f47dd8f1cd48dd78f87a8&elq=8d16528f4c464f58a1b7ad777825445f&elqaid=30255&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=5704>
about Gates at his recent AGM, “there’s no space between he and I.”
* Privatised health and education are Gates’ speciality but in
India, a Gates-funded trial on the genital cancer-causing
disease /Human papillomavirus/ /was cancelled by the government
/because
<http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-08-31/news/53413161_1_hpv-vaccine-cervarix-human-papilloma-virus>
thousands of girls aged 10-14 were victims of ethics violations
such as forged consent forms and lack of health insurance; seven
died. The case is now in the country’s Supreme Court.
In South Africa, the techie-fix fascination is controversial in
Durban’s peri-urban settlements where Gates-backed ‘Urine Diversion’
toilets imposed <https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/39116> by the
municipality on nearly 100 000 poor black households are considered
a new version of the hated ‘bucket system.’ Higher-income residents
of Durban – including in the nearby, traditionally-white western
suburbs – don’t suffer this discriminatory indignity.
As an interesting aside, not only does Durban’s retired water
director now offer sanitation consulting to Gates, so too is the top
<http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Media-Center/Press-Releases/2008/01/Foundation-Announces-Geoffrey-Lamb-as-Managing-Director-Public-Policy>
Gates Foundation policy official, Geoffrey Lamb, a South African.
Once a hard-core Marxist (and son-in-law of ‘colonialism of a
special type’ inventor Michael Harmel), Lamb’s work once included
pathbreaking class analysis
<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-7660.1977.tb00728.x/abstract>
of the Tanzanian peasantry, and he was a PhD advisor when SA trade
and industry minister Rob Davies wrote his Marxist thesis at Sussex
University.
After an ideological U-turn, Lamb was central
<ccs.ukzn.ac.za:files:Bond%2520Elite%2520Transition%25202ndEdn.pdf>
to developing a ‘homegrown’ structural adjustment strategy working
at the highest levels of the World Bank during the 1980s, and
especially in its application inside the African National Congress
during the early 1990s.
But the most damage done within South Africa was Gates’ promotion of
intellectual property (IP) rights. Long-term monopoly patents were
granted not only to Gates for his Microsoft software, but for
life-saving medicines.
IP beame a fatal barrier to millions of HIV+ people who, thanks to
Big Pharma’s profiteering, were denied AIDS medicines which cost
R150 000/year fifteen years ago. The Gates Foundation was part of
the problem by insisting on Merck-branded drugs in its Botswana AIDS
clinics, complained
<http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2001/012001/interview-achmat.html>
Zackie Achmat of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in 2001.
With TAC instead demanding and finally – in the wake of at least
330 000 avoidable
<https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/researchers-estimate-lives-lost-delay-arv-drug-use-hivaids-south-africa/>
AIDS deaths – winning access to generic medicines made locally, the
cost to African governments became negligible and today nearly four
million people in South Africa alone get the drugs, which has raised
life expectancy from 52 in 2004 to 62 today.
Self-interest was perhaps a factor, because Gates got rich
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/the-secret-to-the-incredi_b_10580438.html>
from IP illegitimately acquired thanks to blatantly anti-competitive
practices, such as bundling
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.>
Windows with the slow, security flaw-ridden Internet Explorer
web-browser, according to US prosecutors. The emails that Gates and
his colleagues sent each other
<https://edition.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9811/17/judgelaugh.ms.idg/>
unveiled their cutthroat, illegal approach to IT (and Gates’ own
slipperiness), notwithstanding the internet’s massive government
subsidies.
And as Edward Snowden showed, Microsoft is in league
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data>
with the United States National Security Agency’s Prism snoop
service to hack your computer, Outlook, Hotmail and Skype accounts.
Speaking of secrecy, Microsoft’s offshore tax-avoidance policies
today earn
<http://www.ibtimes.com/microsoftadmits-%20keeping-92-billion-offshore-avoid-paying-%2029-billion-us-taxes-1665938>
the company more money than Gates gives annually in donations (less
than $4 billion/year).
Next Sunday, Gates will get even richer, in terms of the moral
legitimacy bestowed by the Mandela Lecture. But to explain this,
perhaps more context is useful.
The 1990s witnessed a series of debilitating concessions
<https://theconversation.com/why-south-africa-should-undo-mandelas-economic-deals-52767>
to multinational corporations by Mandela’s African National
Congress. Mandela Foundation director Verne Harris acknowledges
<http://www.truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/20974-mandela-was-unable-to-dismantle-the-white-oligarchy-keeping-south-africa-in-economic-chains>,
“Under Madiba’s leadership the ANC embraced a neoliberal agenda with
unseemly haste and we’re paying a terrible price for that now.”
Added Harris, “We’re only beginning to understand the nature of this
phenomenon. From the late 1980s, a huge seduction was underway, of
the liberation movement by capital and it’s playing out in
all kinds of destructive ways now, from arms deals to corruption.”
Gates has apparently not (yet) reached the stage of
philanthro-seduction of radical social movements, trade unions,
feminists, Black Lives Matter activists, LGBTI scene,
environmentalists, Occupiers, anti-imperialists, youth and
progressive political parties which do so much to withstand
<http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/default.asp?2,68,3,3639> the inequality,
state surveillance, racism and other features of contemporary
economic tyranny.
These forces show, objectively, that the world urgently needs far
less corporate power – including in the hands of Bill Gates and
Microsoft – and many more bottom-up activist initiatives to achieve
thorough-going wealth redistribution.
***
Over the past few months, updated concerns about Gates are well
expressed by Vandana Shiva's Navdanya International
<https://navdanyainternational.org/>, which is especially hard-hitting
on GMOs and climate crisis "false solutions."
Academic critique of Gates - and philanthro-capitalism
<https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=philanthrocapitalism&btnG=>
more generally - includes fine analysis by Univ of California radical
geographers Matthew Sparke
<https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22matthew+sparke%22+%22bill+gates%22&btnG=>
and Katharyne Mitchell
<https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22katharyne+mitchell%22+%22bill+gates%22&btnG=>.
Actually, speaking personally, the biggest dilemma, I find in
contributing to this network of /left /critics, is being drowned out by
- or worse, co-opted into
<https://www.google.com/search?q=rfk+%22bill+gates%22+%22patrick+bond%22&client=firefox-b-d&ei=krx0YMrtCcPSkwXqtonoCA&oq=rfk+%22bill+gates%22+%22patrick+bond%22&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAM6CAguEJECEJMCOgQILhBDOgoILhDHARCvARBDOggIABCxAxCDAToFCAAQsQM6CAguEMcBEKMCOgUILhCxAzoICC4QsQMQgwE6BwguEEMQkwI6BwgAELEDEEM6CAguEMcBEK8BOgIILjoCCAA6BAgAEEM6BggAEBYQHjoFCCEQoAE6BAghEBU6BwghEAoQoAFQvq4BWMLVAWDr1wFoAXAAeACAAesCiAHTOZIBBjItMjUuNJgBAKABAaoBB2d3cy13aXrAAQE&sclient=gws-wiz&ved=0ahUKEwjK_vSS1PnvAhVD6aQKHWpbAo0Q4dUDCA0&uact=5>
- /rightwing /conspiracy mongering about Gates, for which I first blame
Robert F. Kennedy Jr
<https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/government-corruption/gates-globalist-vaccine-agenda-a-win-win-for-pharma-and-mandatory-vaccination/>
and his anti-vaxxer crew.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group.
View/Reply Online (#7969): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/7969
Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/82046432/21656
-=-=-
POSTING RULES & NOTES
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
-=-=-
Group Owner: [email protected]
Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy
[[email protected]]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
