Tag Archives: Margaret Kimberly

Privatized Ebola

Posted on by
Reply

Red Cross workers burry 14 May Italian nun Dinaros

By Margaret Kimberly

Source: Black Agenda Report

“The world of private dollars played a role in consigning thousands of people to death.”

Sierra Leone has waved the white flag in the face of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). Its meager infrastructure has buckled under the onslaught of a disease which could have been curtailed. The announcement that infected patients will be treated at home because there is no longer the capacity to treat them in hospitals is a surrender which did not have to happen. Not only did Europe and the United States turn a blind eye to sick and dying Africans but they did so with the help of an unlikely perpetrator.

The World Health Organization is “the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system.” Its very name implies that it takes direction from and serves the needs of people all over the world but the truth is quite different. The largest contributor to the WHO budget is not a government. It is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which provides more funding than either the United States or the United Kingdom. WHO actions and priorities are no longer the result of the consensus of the world’s people but top down decision making from wealthy philanthropists.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation may appear to be a savior when it provides $300 million to the WHO budget, but those dollars come with strings attached. WHO director general Dr. Margaret Chan admitted as much when she said, “My budget [is] highly earmarked, so it is driven by what I call donor interests.” Instead of being on the front line when a communicable disease crisis appears, it spends its time administering what Gates and his team have determined is best.

The Ebola horror continues as it has for the last ten months in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The cruelty of the world’s lack of concern for Africa and all Africans in the diaspora was evident by the inaction of nations and organizations that are supposed to respond in times of emergencies. While African governments and aid organizations sounded the alarm the WHO did little because its donor driven process militates against it. The world of private dollars played a role in consigning thousands of people to death.

Critics of the Gates Foundation appeared long before this current Ebola outbreak. In 2008 the WHO’s malaria chief, Dr. Arata Kochi, complained about the conflicts of interest created by the foundation. In an internal memo leaked to the New York Times he complained that the world’s top malaria researchers were “locked up in a ‘cartel’ with their own research funding being linked to those of others within the group.” In other words, the standards of independent peer reviewed research were cast aside in order to please the funder.

Private philanthropy is inherently undemocratic. It is a top down driven process in which the wealthy individual tells the recipient what they will and will not do. This is a problematic system for charities of all kinds and is disastrous where the health of world’s people is concerned. Health care should be a human right, not a charity, and the world’s governments should determine how funds to protect that right are spent. One critic put it very pointedly. “…the Gates Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates, do not believe in the public sector, they do not believe in a democratic, publically owned, publically accountable system.”

There is little wonder why the Ebola outbreak caught the WHO so flat footed as they spent months making mealy mouthed statements but never coordinating an effective response. The Gates foundation is the WHO boss, not governments, and if they weren’t demanding action, then the desperate people affected by Ebola weren’t going to get any.

Privatization of public resources is a worldwide scourge. Education, pensions, water, and transportation are being taken out of the hands of the public and given to rich people and corporations. The Ebola crisis is symptomatic of so many others which go unaddressed or improperly addressed because no one wants to bite the hands that do the feeding.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged an additional $50 million to fight the current Ebola epidemic but that too is problematic, as Director General Chan describes. “When there’s an event, we have money. Then after that, the money stops coming in, then all the staff you recruited to do the response, you have to terminate their contracts.” The WHO should not be lurching from crisis to crisis, SARS, MERS, or H1N1 influenza based on the whims of philanthropy. The principles of public health should be carried out by knowledgeable medical professionals who are not dependent upon rich people for their jobs.

The Gates are not alone in using their deep pockets to confound what should be publicly held responsibilities. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that he was contributing $25 million to fight Ebola. His donation will go to the Centers for Disease Control Foundation. Most Americans are probably unaware that such a foundation even exists. Yet there it is, run by a mostly corporate board which will inevitably interfere with the public good. The WHO and its inability to coordinate the fight against Ebola tells us that public health is just that, public. If the CDC response to Ebola in the United States fails it may be because it falls prey to the false siren song of giving private interests control of the people’s resources and responsibilities.

 

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

Talking About Mandela

Posted on by
Reply

NelsonMandela42yo_681489n

By Margaret Kimberley

Originally published at Black Agenda Report

Nelson Mandela belongs to history now. We should be able to look at his whole life, his whole record in perspective. That perspective ought to include who is praising Nelson Mandela nowadays and why.

Freedom Rider: Talking About Mandela

Nelson Mandela’s passing provides an important and rare opportunity for discussion of some very serious issues. We should not fear principled critique of people we admire but instead we have been treated to maudlin self-indulgence, useless idol worship and wrongheaded defense of Mandela’s memory.

Everyone looms large in death, and it is especially difficult to be truthful when a person of Mandela’s stature passes away. South Africa’s apartheid system was an international pariah, reviled by most of humanity and Mandela was the icon who it was hoped would bring it down forever.

Black Americans saw themselves in images of Sharpeville and Soweto. Mandela stood in for our assassinated leaders, political prisoners and victims of COINTELPRO. The South African struggle became our struggle and our chance to achieve what we were denied here at home. Of course Mandela’s release from 27 years of imprisonment brought near universal joy but it should have also raised more questions.

Mandela was one of the signatories of the Freedom Charter, which among other things demanded the nationalization of South Africa’s resources and reparations for the theft of African land by the Europeans. He was a member of the South African communist party, as were other leaders of the African National Congress. We should have known that the South African government wasn’t letting him go free without exacting a huge price. It is difficult to look the gift horse in the mouth, but the silence created a vacuum which made it easier for the rule of international capitalists to stay in place, even as they appeared to give up political control.

Mandela’s early history is something to honor and remember but now his memory comes wrapped in the poison pill of acceptance by the corporate media and disreputable democratic and republican politicians. Now when right wingers condemn Mandela as a communist, his admirers cringe and deny what is true. Instead of examining what a communist is and why the party was supported by the movement, we see black people instead take the position of our enemies and use the word as a slur. We must remember that scorn from certain quarters is a badge of honor.

Contrast the reaction to Mandela’s death with that of the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. While Chavez was equally beloved around the world, the American government gave no glowing tributes and sent no high level delegation. Chavez was every bit as deserving of praise and honor but unlike Mandela he succeeded in standing up to empire. He personally protested against George W. Bush and even called him the devil at the United Nations. Hugo Chavez prevailed when American presidents wanted him out of office. He won re-election and shamed this country when he donated Venezuelan oil to help poor Americans stay warm in the winter. Of course Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton were absent from his funeral.

Nelson Mandela had difficult choices to make. He chose to accept an IMF loan with strings attached that kept millions in poverty. He and his successors turned their backs on the Freedom Charter. No one can know his intentions but the results of those decisions were disastrous for the masses of black people in South Africa.

Mandela’s release from prison should have been seen as a new stage in the struggle and not the end of it. Those of us who came of age during the anti-apartheid movement and who truly loved the man have to admit the short comings of love when liberation is at stake.

There are many lessons to be learned during this time of mourning. Our emotions play an important role in inspiring us to take action against injustice but they can also betray us when we lack an understanding of what liberation really is.

Liberation may or may not come with a presidential inauguration. It certainly hasn’t come if the usual suspects in the corporate media, Pennsylvania Avenue and Downing Street suddenly give words of praise. The success of certain individuals is not liberation either. There are now black millionaires in South Africa but that does little good to the impoverished masses.

Liberated people don’t live in squalor. They earn more than a living wage. They need not fear loss of job or life if they protest their salaries or working conditions. They have free health care and education. They don’t fear incarceration and they don’t live in stratified societies. They live in safety and the law treats them all as equals to one another. They can protest and oppose the power structure without fear of repercussion. South Africa doesn’t fit these criteria, neither does the United States, and we who love freedom and justice shouldn’t spare anyone when we express these simple and obvious truths.

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

Editor’s note: In contrast to the insightful and honest reporting from Black Agenda Report and other independent news sources, corporate news has predictably been downplaying “controversial” aspects of Mandela’s life that threaten the status quo. In some cases, their coverage reveals surprising negligence, insensitivity and/or stupidity.