Why Bono, Bill Clinton and Bill Gates' Philanthropy in Africa Largely Fails?

Paul Theroux Calls Bono, Gates and Clinton's Efforts Telescopic Philanthropy. His 2005 Suggestions Ignored as Work of a Crank. 

New York, December 2013

In a recent story in Barron's Paul Theroux discusses why poverty and other ills in Africa have increased despite hundreds of billions of dollars in western aid. (Full story in link below.)


The efforts of the U2 mega rock star Bono, former President Bill Clinton and Microsoft founder and billionaire Bill Gates, he says is "Curiously repetitive in nature, renewed and revised every decade or so, it is an impulse Charles Dickens described, in a wickedly accurate phrase, as "telescopic philanthropy." That is, a focus from afar to uplift the continent: New York squinting compassionately at Nairobi."

Likely that Bono, Gates, Clinton and others also focused on social audit of their aid - strict supervision of distributed funds to prevent looting and waste by local officials - after Theroux first pointed out that major flaw in a piece in The New York Times in December 2005. In the opinion piece, in link below, Theroux noted that in 2004 the new President of Malawi "... inaugurated his regime by announcing that he was going to buy a fleet of Maybachs, one of the most expensive cars in the world." So Theroux implied "Donors (like Gates and Bono) enable embezzlement by turning a blind eye to bad governance, rigged elections and the deeper reasons these countries are failing."

The fleet of Maybachs in Malawi are indeed a symbol of the excesses of the wealthy and the top bureaucrats amidst the poverty in the third world. Investor Jim Rogers, a partner of George Soros in his early days, chose a Mercedes Benz - manufacturer of the Maybachs - for his road travel around the world since he would find the best service for it. The Mercedes, as Rogers said, is the car of choice of most of the wealthy and top bureaucrats in the emerging markets and so there is a good network of mechanics that service it.
  

Bono responded to critics, apparently including Theroux, in February 2006 calling them "cranks carping from the sidelines. A lot of them wouldn’t know what to do if they were on the field. They’re the party who will always be in opposition so they’ll never have to take responsibility for decisions because they know they’ll never be able to implement them." Bono evidently did little research since Thoreaux spent decades teaching the poor in Malawi. Bono, Clinton and Gates have proceeded with their telescopic philanthropy. His, and Clinton's and Gates' advisers, must have asked them to keep quiet this time around to try to damp any larger discussion of the issues Thoreaux raises.  

Little has changed though in the lives of poor Africans since Theroux New York Times article eight years ago. As he notes in his Barron's story last month, "Never mind that Africa receives roughly $50 billion in aid annually from foreign governments, and perhaps $13 billion more from private philanthropic institutions.........I can testify that Africa is much worse off than when I first went there 50 years ago to teach English: poorer, sicker, less educated, and more badly governed. It seems that much of the aid has made things worse."

Key lesson for likely success, says Theroux, is to offer tools for education through self effort and get locals involved and responsible.
 

On that positive note: HAPPY HOLIDAYS AND BEST WISHES FOR 2014.

Here are the two articles by Paul Theroux: 

Africa's Aid Mess

By PAUL THEROUX | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

Renowned author Paul Theroux discusses why the philanthropy of Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Bono, and Jeffrey Sachs largely fails. Here's what works.

http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424053111903747504579185800700741812.html?mod=googlenews_barrons#articleTabs_article%3D0

The Rock Star's Burden - New York Times - The New York Times

www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/opinion/15theroux.html?pagewanted...‎

The Rock Star's Burden. Sign In to E-Mail This · Printer-Friendly; Save Article. By PAUL THEROUX. Published: December 15, 2005. Hale'iwa, Hawaii. Skip to ...

 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/opinion/15theroux.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Stop Soldier Suicide, CitySquash & Kucetekela Foundation on Giving Back to Society: Princeton Club NY

Stop Soldier Suicide, Citysquash and Kucetekela Foundation Founders Discuss Giving Back to Society at Princeton Club NY 

By Spencer Cheng

How do you show recipients of philanthropy to give back to society and expand the cycle of improving lives? This was the question  discussed by a panel on December 3rd  2013 at the Princeton Club of New York - which besides Princeton, includes Columbia, New York University, Williams and other college alumni. The event was moderated by Kathleen Kelley, founder of Queen Anne’s Gate Capital Management. Tim Wyant, Oliver Barry, and Brian Kinsella spoke about the efforts of their organizations to improve the lives of those less fortunate and inspired and reminded us of the responsibility we all have.  

Four-time All-American and two-time captain of the Harvard squash team, as well as a member of the U.S. National Team, Tim Wyant, Executive Director at CitySquash, channels his passion for squash to help underprivileged students in the Bronx to fulfill their academic, athletic and personal potentials. The mission of CitySquash transcends the act of playing squash. It also serves to instill a culture of responsibility, honesty, and giving. Mentors act as positive role models, expanding their students’ horizons of the world they live in and offer life lessons on how to pursue their future aspirations. Founded in 2002, the CitySquash programs in the Bronx and Harlem now serve over 140 elementary, middle, high school, and college students and is amongst 12 member programs across the country. Since its founding, CitySquash students have matriculated to some of the country’s finest colleges. 

For more information, please visit www.citysquash.org.

Moved by his experience working to alleviate the suffering of children afflicted with HIV/AIDS in Zambia as a Princeton-in-Africa fellow, Oliver Barry founded the Kucetekela Foundation to empower and educate disadvantaged students to be the leaders of tomorrow so that they may initiate change within their communities and the larger world one day. Through Barry’s foundation, Zambian youths are given the life-changing opportunity of obtaining a high-quality secondary education. Education stands as the most powerful tool for Zambians, devastated by HID/AIDS. Nearly half of Zambian population is under 16 years of age and a shocking 85% of Zambians live below the poverty line.

For more information, please visit: www.kucetekelafoundation.org.

Having served as a United States Army Officer with active duty in Baghdad, Iraq, and Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Brian Kinsella has witnessed first-hand the effects that deployment can have on veterans and active-duty military personnel. Kinsella founded Stop Soldier Suicide to address the ever-increasing suicide phenomenon amongst veteran and active service members. Over twenty-two military men and women take their own lives every single day, Brian noted.  Understanding suicide is a complex task: the motive can stem from struggles with relationships, finances, employment, substance abuse, post-traumatic stress, paralysis or loss of limb and being lesbian or gay or bisexual or transgender. Although the causes are diverse, suicide is the last act of a very desperate individual – they do not want to die, but are looking for a way to escape their pain. The organization serves to bring awareness to, and actively curb, suicide rates amongst veteran and active service members. Because each individual’s situation is unique, each situation requires a unique solution; Stop Soldier Suicide partners with a multitude of different third-parties to provide the resources and mental health care that services members need to overcome their anguish.

For more information, please visit: www.stopsoldiersuicide.org. 

            The panelists addressed questions about their long term goals. There was a consensus among all the panelists that beyond their engagement in expanding the breadth of their services to humanity --- they are also actively working to instill a set of values in the lives they touch. By working towards a common set of values, City Squash, the Kucetekala Foundation, and Stop Soldier Suicide, positively impacts the people they serve as well as empowers those same individuals to serve others in the future.

Students enrolled in CitySquash have to finish mandatory community service projects that may involve distribution of food, an AIDS walk, or picking up litter. Students enrolled in the Kucetekala Foundation are given the opportunity of educating others. Also, the critical gift of education given to them opens a range of prospects, including the potential to be leaders and intellectuals of tomorrow who can lift their, friends, family, and communities above their present conditions. These two organizations reflect the belief that when recipients are shown compassion amongst a life of such adversity, many of these individuals will feel compelled to return the favor.

Kathleen Kelley, the moderator, pointed out that there is a difference between Citysquash and KF, since their recipients are children who are by nature eager to learn, while Stop Soldier Suicide deals with adults. Can new values be instilled in adults? Kathleen noted that soldiers are some of the most generous individuals in our society. After all, they have sacrificed so much of their lives for the safety of the rest of us. Brian Kinsella reiterated this view, stating that there is a strong sense among service personnel to volunteer their time and effort to help others, including with Stop Soldier Suicide.  

The beauty of giving back to society can take on many different forms: from donating funds to worthy causes to volunteering one’s time at a local homeless shelter. We must keep in mind that making this world a better place is not an individual effort, but rather a communal one. Together, we can succeed to make for a world where more are given the chance to lead a dignified and happier life. 
The event was organized by Ignatius Chithelen, founder Banyan Tree Capital Management.  
To contact author: nextnewpost@gmail.com

India: Shooting A Doctor For Spreading Science. A Falling BRIC

Killing A Doctor To Stop Spread of Scientific Thinking in an Indian Silicon Hub

 Pune, along with Bangalore and Hyderabad, is a center of India's booming information technology business, where operations of major foreign and Indian companies as well as start ups are located. It is also a major center of higher education with numerous colleges and research centers.
   
In this city, the former physician Narendra Dabholkar's "...goal was to drive a scientist’s skepticism into the heart of India, a country still teeming with gurus, babas, astrologers, godmen and other mystical entrepreneurs. That mission ended Tuesday, when two men ran up behind Dr. Dabholkar, 67, as he crossed a bridge, shot him at point-blank range..." the New York Times' Ellen Barry reported.

“Instead of dying of old age, or by surgery, which causes a lot of suffering, the death Mr. Dabholkar got today was a blessing from God,” an editorial by one of Dabholkar's critics, a former hypnotherapist now known as His Holiness Dr. Jayant Athavale, wrote in an editorial in his organization’s publication, Barry reports. 

Here is the link to the full article:

Battling Superstition An Indian Paid With His Life

A Falling Bric: the Rupee collapse and hot money fleeing India:

A) Typically financial markets ignore a growing balance of trade deficit till a crisis brings attention. Then, till strong measures are taken to resolve it - the balance of trade and not other peripheral troubles - the issue will continue to depress currencies and stock markets.

B) Crude oil is India's largest import. It is growing both in volume and total hard currency costs and accounts for a big portion of the ballooning negative balance of trade over the past decade and more. 
While part of oil imports is refined and exported, overall the negative hit from crude oil imports will get worse: 1) given policy measures aimed at growing the domestic auto and truck markets 2) lack, so far, of new major oil deposits in India.

And worse, since oil is priced in dollars, a depreciating Rupee means higher oil import costs.  
C) While not bluntly stated, the policies of most emerging countries is aimed at attracting hot money, in strong competition with one another. Such money helped India raise over $30 billion in hard currency bonds in recent years. Some of this money is now trying to exit, exaggerating the Rupee's decline. So, while hot money boosts capital inflows in the short term it causes much harm over the long term. 

Long term the Rupee will continue to depreciate. And putting in limits to curb foreign currency flows, as taken in the past weeks, without concrete measures to boost exports and reduce imports, ends up having the opposite effect.

Amazon's Media Purchase & Usage Data May Have Led Jeff Bezos to Buy The Washington Post

Jeff Bezos Insights From Amazon Likely Led Him to Pay $250 million for The Washington Post

Citizen Bezos?

The big news in media last week was how perhaps Web billionaires may rescue the shrinking newspaper industry. Headlines, following the August 5 purchase of The Washington Post for $250 million by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, included "Citizen Bezos", a twist on Citizen Kane the 1941 classic Orson Welles movie about media mogul William Randolph Hearst.

In interviews Post Company CEO Don Graham said: “The Post could have survived under the company’s ownership and been profitable for the foreseeable future. But we wanted to do more than survive. I’m not saying this (sale to Bezos) guarantees success, but it gives us a much greater chance of success.”

Graham added that Warren Buffett "thought Jeff was the best CEO in the United States". As a Post article on the news noted, "billionaire Warren Buffett, has been a mentor to Washington Post Co. Chairman Donald E. Graham. Buffett sat on the Post board for (26) years as its largest outside shareholder."

Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway owns nearly a billion dollar of Washington Post stock, resigned from the Post company board in May 2011 "because of travel commitments linked to Berkshire Hathaway's acquisitions abroad."  He said  "the newspaper business will be tougher and tougher and tougher, and it is already plenty tough." So he may have had some hints that the Graham family, which owns 14% of the Post Company, may decide to sell the Washington Post newspaper.

Why did Buffett not buy the Post? John Cassidy writes in The New Yorker, The Washington Post  "newspaper division lost about a million dollars over the past year, which means its earnings multiple was negative—hardly a buy signal for a value investor like Buffett."

Why then did Bezos, whose Internet retail giant Amazon is quietly destroying numerous businesses including rival booksellers like Barnes & Noble, pay $250 million for The Washington Post? As anyone who has used Amazon knows, the online retailer has the widest range of product offerings, prices that beat most rivals and  good customer service. This plus its refusal so far to collect sales tax has enabled it to cripple its rivals, apparently its primary goal at present.

Then, given its edge in technology and analysis of digital data from traffic and transactions, Amazon must have the best insights into customer purchases of media products, including books as well as through its Kindle e reader, electronic versions of books, magazines and newspapers. So, based on such insights, as with Amazon, Bezos likely has a long term strategy of how to profitably expand The Washington Post into a digital platform for news, opinions, videos, coverage of arts, style and people.

Its too bad that since The Washington Post will be privately owned by Bezos personally, the conduct and results of this experiment will not be known publicly.

Brave Peter Buffett Attacks the Charitable Industrial Complex

Peter Buffett on Philanthropic Colonialism and Conscience Laundering by the Wealthy.

Peter Buffett, son of Warren Buffett the third richest man in the World, raises major issues about charities  which, as he notes, is "an old story."


He writes, in The New York Times, see link below,  "Inside any important philanthropy meeting.... heads of state meeting with investment managers and corporate leaders .. are searching for answers with their right hand to problems that others in the room have created with their left... (While) inequality is continually rising..... (B)etween 2001 and 2011, the number of nonprofits increased 25 percent. Their growth rate now exceeds that of both the business and government sectors. It’s a massive business, with approximately $316 billion given away in 2012 in the United States alone and more than 9.4 million employed."

He adds, "As more lives and communities are destroyed by the system that creates vast amounts of wealth for the few..... (“conscience laundering” involves feeling) better about accumulating more than any one person could possibly need to live on by sprinkling a little around as an act of charity. ....as long as most folks are patting themselves on the back for charitable acts, we’ve got a perpetual poverty machine."


Peter Buffet says charitable intervention cannot solve the issues of providing clean water, access to health products and free markets, better education and safer living conditions. "It can only kick the can down the road."

He implies that billions of dollars of charitable giving is thus being wasted, including by his dad Warren Buffett as well as Bill Gates, head of the Gates foundation which handles the bulk of Warren Buffett's philanthropic giving. Also in criticizing market based methods of measuring charitable impact, like return on investment, is Peter Buffett's attacking the Gates foundation, which uses similar measures?

So what then is the role of charities like the one Peter Buffett heads? He has no answers but writes, "It’s time for a new operating system.... something built from the ground up. New code." This lack of solutions is likely to be the focus of counter attacks on him by the charitable food chain, arguing  that "New code" sounds naive while the charities are at least tackling specific problems however imperfectly.  

Best wishes to Peter Buffett for bravely pointing out the conscience laundering factories. Wonder if the impact of his arguments will be more than cocktail chatter at upcoming fund raising galas, which are the core of social life for many involved in the charitable industrial complex.

His sister Susan A. Buffett runs The Sherwood Foundation, which got its name from the Sherwood forest in Nottinghamshire, England the hiding place of the legendary Robin Hood and his group.


Peter Buffett: The Charitable Industrial Complex

Top Jokes About New York City (c)

Jokes About Dogs in New York (c)

• Why does it rain in New York?

So the dog poop on the sidewalks can be washed away. 

 

• Why do New Yorkers keep dogs?

So they have a reason to go outside to smoke while talking on their cell phones. 

 

• Who do New York smokers talk to while outside with their cellphones? 

HappyToChatWhileUSmoke.com, the cheapest chat service based in Bangalore India. 

 

• Why is there a pond for miniature sail boats in Central Park?

So that dogs of wealthy residents can get a wash by jumping in the water. 

 

Jokes About Traffic in New York (c)

• Why are there bus lanes in New York? 

So the bicyclists can ride at 70 miles per hour

• Why are there bike lanes in New York?

So the pedicabs and Chinese food delivery boys can go at full speed.

• Why are there pedestrian only zones on some New York streets?

So the European tourists can enjoy a leisurely ride on their rented bicycles

 

       Jokes About New York City neighborhoods (c)

 Why are parts of Brooklyn and Bronx safe to walk around even at 3 am?

There is no unorganized crime in these areas.

 

(C) no use in any form or copying without prior written or email permission from NextNewPost.com

Anti-Frieze for the Frieze New York Art Fair

Frieze New York Art Fair: The New York Times' Story Pours Some Much Needed Anti-Frieze

Photo source: Artnet.com

 

Comment May 12, 2013

The Frieze Art Fair import from London, at a snaking pavilion on New York's Randall's Island, is only two years old but deserves the yawning response it generated.

During the early VIP session on opening day, the European upper crust perhaps, or their imitators, discretely went around snubbing those they perceived to be below them in the social ladder. At the evening public  session many of the Euro masses were loud and smoked, ignoring the no smoking signs, to show they were anti-establishment.

Besides three separately timed VIP entries, Guy Trebay of The New York Times noted ".. there is always a further level of importance and inclusion, another door opened to the elect, the artist Liz Glynn had constructed the Vault, a Prohibition-style bar...The prize, of course, was reveling in the knowledge that you were on the inside." Guess next year, to generate fresh excitement, Frieze may need  a bar up in a balloon plus seven VIP entries.

Discussing the 80-foot red balloon dog by Paul McCarthy, Trebay concludes, "Or was it a reminder that bubble markets are like blowup puppies? All it takes is one sharp prick and ... well, we all know how that story ends."

Here are the links to Trebay's story:

The Elite Browse and Forage at Frieze Art Fair - NYTimes.com

www.nytimes.com/2013/.../the-elite-browse-and-forage-at-frieze-art-fair.ht...

May 10, 2013 – The Frieze Art Fair's New York iteration has become the latest stop for wealthy buyers of contemporary art, a well-established, defining marker ...

 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/fashion/the-elite-browse-and-forage-at-frieze-art-fair.html?_r=0

 

 

Oprah Winfrey "OK to Fail". Video of speech to Harvard graduates

OK to Fail Oprah Winfrey tells Harvard graduates

Oprah Winfrey, in her commencement speech to Harvard University's class of 2013, said it is OK to fail, as she digs out of a ratings slump for her new TV show.

Here is the link to the official video of her speech:

 http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/multimedia/oprah-winfrey-commencement-speech-harvard-commencement-2013/

And a link to the full text of her speech:

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/05/winfreys-commencement-address/