10.24.09
Gates Keepers to Keep Track of Gates Foundation
Summary: On a Web site dedicated to watching the darker side of the Gates Foundation and its real impact on civilisations
WE HAVE received an E-mail from Gates Keepers, probably in response to yesterday's explanation of the Gates Foundation's obsessive occupation with patents. We are not alone among those who explore the darker side of Gates’ work outside of Microsoft. “Love your boycott novell blog,” writes Gates Keepers, who brought attention to his/her Web site. Since we keep track of this type of stuff, we wish to bring attention to Gates Keepers and also recommend it. To give just a sample of some recent posts from October, aside from copyright violations (Gates Keepers must really stick to snippets) we find some interesting items that are looking beyond the PR. Examples:
i. Chinese copy of the Gates Foundation
Monday the papers were all asplash with announcements that there would be a Chinese copy of the Gates Foundation. Now it appears that the celebration might have been premature. Perhaps New Huadu is a perfect imitator, as Microsoft also engaged in illegal activities before the Gates Foundation emerged.
ii. Chinese innovation and the Gates Foundation
If this is how the Gates Foundation tries to support innovation in China it is not trying very hard. China has lots of new tech talent educated in the US. If the environment is right in the next twenty years there will be lots of innovation. But are small timebound grants the way to support it?
iii. Unions, Bill Gates pump last-minute cash against Wash. ballot issue slowing gov’t growth (c/f Abramoff for similarities)
National labor unions and Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates are among the donors who have poured nearly $1.5 million of last-minute cash into the campaign against Initiative 1033, a ballot measure that would slow the growth of state and local governments.
iv. Gates Foundation program advisory panel member speaks out on war and security
v. Is the Gates Foundation listening?
Gates Keepers thinks there will be no Gates Foundation grants for Reganold or Herren forthcoming.
Isn’t it governance that is lacking for the Green Revolution in Africa? Does blaming people who question genetically modified plants help? Heim is asking the right questions of the right people. Is the Foundation listening?
See our posts about Monsanto for example:
- Bill Gates Takes His GMO Patent Investments/Experiments to India
- How the Gates Foundation Privatises Africa
- Reader’s Article: The Gates Foundation and Genetically-Modified Foods
- Monsanto: The Microsoft of Food
- Seeds of Doubt in Bill Gates Investments
We have also produced extensive evidence showing that the Gates Foundation is buying the press. Gates Keepers points to more examples from this month, e.g.:
i. Will Bill Gates Come to the Rescue of Journalists?
Online news site Crosscut’s announcement yesterday of a $100,000 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation surely raised some hopes in the tumultuous world of journalism. Is Bill Gates waking up to the havoc caused by the digital technology he has unleashed? Will his enormously deep-pocketed philanthropy come to the rescue of a profession–and means of informing that the public– that threatens to disappear? Can the New York Times expect a bailout next?
ii. Vanessa Mazal talks about how the Gates Foundation is getting into the media
This is frightening. She tries to simplify media development and media for development but in the end it all sounds manipulative … like our strings are being pulled by the Gates Foundation.
The author states in the comments: “Development of the public good of ‘media for development’ specifically benefits Microsoft when their products are used. Paying media organisations to put ‘health messages’ that specifically showcase the work of the Gates Foundation into their communications is manipulative. We used to call this a conflict of interest.”
Conflict of interests is also what we find in the Gates Foundation’s pharmaceutical investments [1, 2, 3, 4].
The one last item is a fascinating example of conflicts of interests: [via]
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has contributed $10 million to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, expected to open in late 2015 on the National Mall in Washington.
We wrote about this before (also in IRC). Patti Stonesifer became a chairwoman at the Smithsonian Institution shortly after she had left the Gates Foundation where she was CEO. We ‘caught’ her husband planting Gates Foundation glorification pieces in major magazines, as last mentioned here. They still control the mainstream press and thus they control the story (or the fantasy rather) absorbed by the public.
How far is Bill Gates going? Gates Keepers is not particularly optimistic. █
‘“Other than Bill Gates, I don’t know of any high tech CEO that sits down to review the company’s IP portfolio” —Marshall Phelps
