Summary: How the public gets robbed by Monsanto and its shareholders, who are trying to impose their risky seeds monopoly on poor populations

WE HAVE written quite relentlessly about what Bill Gates is doing with Monsanto under the umbrella of the Gates Foundation. To name some of last year's posts on the subject, we have:

1. With Microsoft Monopoly in Check, Bill Gates Proceeds to Creating More Monopolies
2. Gates-Backed Company Accused of Monopoly Abuse and Investigated
3. How the Gates Foundation Privatises Africa
4. Reader's Article: The Gates Foundation and Genetically-Modified Foods
5. Monsanto: The Microsoft of Food
6. Seeds of Doubt in Bill Gates Investments
7. Gates Foundation Accused of Faking/Fabricating Data to Advance Political Goals
8. More Dubious Practices from the Gates Foundation
9. Video Transcript of Vandana Shiva on Insane Patents
10. Explanation of What Bill Gates' Patent Investments Do to Developing World
11. Black Friday Film: What the Bill Gates-Backed Monsanto Does to Animals, Farmers, Food, and Patent Systems
12. Gates Foundation Looking to Destroy Kenya with Intellectual Monopolies
13. Young Napoleon Comes to Africa and Told Off
14. he publicly did this
15. Gates/Microsoft Tax Dodge and Agriculture Monopoly Revisited
16. Beyond the 'Public Relations'
17. UK Intellectual Monopoly Office (UK-IPO) May be Breaking the Law
18. “Boycott Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in China”
19. The Gates Foundation Extends Control Over Communication with Oxfam Relationship
20. Week of Monsanto

Last week we got a new example of the health damages claimed to have been caused by Monsanto's genetically-modified soy. It is not the first such example and we covered more of this before.

Genetically Modified Soy Linked to Sterility, Infant Mortality in Hamsters

[...]

"This study was just routine," said Russian biologist Alexey V. Surov, in what could end up as the understatement of this century. Surov and his colleagues set out to discover if Monsanto's genetically modified (GM) soy, grown on 91% of US soybean fields, leads to problems in growth or reproduction. What he discovered may uproot a multi-billion dollar industry.

After feeding hamsters for two years over three generations, those on the GM diet, and especially the group on the maximum GM soy diet, showed devastating results. By the third generation, most GM soy-fed hamsters lost the ability to have babies. They also suffered slower growth, and a high mortality rate among the pups.

Skeptoid, which is a good show, always gets it wrong when it comes to genetically-modified crops (here is just the first example). Brian Dunning is a clever man, but he is one among many GMO apologists who attack straw men by misrepresenting the arguments of those whom they arrogantly call "environmentalists" (it's the way they say it which makes it insulting). Gates too used this word as an insult last year. Speaking from experience, the two key issues that are rarely addressed are:

1. Scientific tests which consistently show a causal correlation between GMO and negative health implications
2. The use of patents, racketeering, baseless legal threats, and monopolisation through pollination to create a form of monopoly abuse that also leads to imperialism and farmers being totally helpless (like computer users in the hands of proprietary software, but where food/life is involved)

Of course there are other aspects to it like the political corruption we have covered before. The short story is that companies like Monsanto engage in all sorts of criminal tactics, which more recently had the company fall under major federal investigations. So the problems are real; those who deny the problems are probably not malicious, they just need to read more and be willing to accept more information (if in doubt, skip to the bottom and watch the video).

“The short story is that companies like Monsanto engage in all sorts of criminal tactics, which more recently had the company fall under major federal investigations.”We cover issues that relate to Monsanto for two main reasons: (1) Monsanto is a prime example of the problems we see in the patent system and (2) Bill Gates seems to be using Monsanto to make himself richer or at least put more power in his hands. To the African and Indian populations, Monsanto should be bad news. It's all business to them, but they mask it using slogans and euphemisms like "feeding the world" or "ending hunger". Science and history suggest that given more food, these populations will only reproduce further, thus never ending hunger and only becoming more fragile due to high dependence on 'enhanced' farming (which uses up nature's resources more quickly until they are depleted). With this somewhat obligatory background out of the way, we can hopefully approach the news without our criticism being lost or misunderstood. For those who are willing to take action, there is a new campaign titled "Stop the sneak attack on GMO food labeling!"

Some days ago it came to our attention that Gates may be promoting more GMO in India. We warned about this last year when he publicly did this and the following new article [1, 2], which was published in two Indian publications, says:

Gates praises Indian rice that can withstand flooding

[...]

"At a time of limited resources and large global challenges, this fund will leverage support from around the world to achieve lasting progress against hunger and bolster agricultural productivity and growth," said US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner.

That's India again. The latter part gives a clue about how Gates uses politicians to further his agenda right now. Related to the above, one of our readers (Toby) passed on the warning from GMWatch, to which I said "it's worse than that. Clinton and Gates are lobbying for patents of big pharma which Gates invests billion of dollars in" (see the reference for more details).

The short story is this: Gates is publicly appealing for donations from governments (going for taxpayers' pockets) -- donations to be passed to pay for patents of big GMO/pharma which overprices vital food/drugs (while killing off or buying out organic/generics producers).

Gates' latest step receives publishable bashing from at least one informed writer who chose the headline "US Senate, Bill Gates Give the Planet a Middle Finger for Earth Day" (yes, how ironic).

Today the Senate Foreign Relations committee held a hearing on the Global Food Security Act (S.384), which, as I have documented on this blog before, Monsanto HAS been involved in lobbying on. The bill first came to my attention about a year ago, when the same committee held a very similar hearing about the same bill. In the year since then, I've become increasingly knowledgeable and outraged about the issues surrounding global food security. In the meantime, the Obama Administration took the lead on the issue of global food security from the Senate, and USAID is doing quite a bit already (in partnership with the World Bank and private organizations and companies) to really f*ck things up worldwide.

The same article also appears in the Huffington Post (many comments there) and it says:

A broad coalition including Bill Gates, Tim Geithner, the US State Department, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the World Bank, and others have a plan to help the world's hungry by working in opposition to the recommendations of scientists worldwide, including the findings of a report commissioned by the World Bank and the UN. Ironically, they chose Earth Day to deliver this flaming bag of poop on Africa's doorstep.

The article was published in response to Gates going into bed with Geithner. Here is the press release and the accompanying fluff from usda.gov. They are helping Monsanto expand to more nations with its patents and experimentation [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. It's very irresponsible as the "Green Revolution" becomes the "Gates Revolution", which is in turn a revolution to Monsanto shareholders and Gates' ego/PR.

Gates gave just a small amount to this initiative ($30 million), but his worshippers at philanthropy.com are kissing the ground he stands on. The Guardian puts the €£20 million price tag on the scale of this giveaway.

Gates made the announcement about his contribution at a joint press conference at the Treasury with Tim Geithner, the US treasury secretary, James Flaherty, the Canadian finance minister, Elena Salgado, the Spanish finance minister, Yoon Jeung-Hyun, the South Korean finance minister, and Robert Zoellick, the World Bank president.

These are very small amounts compared to the total. It is intended to get governments (i.e. taxpayers) to put money in companies that Gates loves as he's an investor in them. Gates did exactly the same thing last month but that applied to big pharmaceutical companies that Gates is a shareholder of. He successfully convinced governments to funnel money into those companies, which means that taxpayers will pay them for patents that are a barrier to helping third-world nations. How utterly selfish.

"Millions Sought for Global Fund to Aid Farms," heralds the New York Times. Melinda's 'own' publication (where she serves as a board member [1, 2] and occasional story planter) covered this too. Greenfudge.org goes with the headline "G8+Gates? Microsoft founder joins national governments in funding poor farmers"

G8, eh?

Does that make Gates' foundation more like a nation?

The World Bank is also involved (again with Gates) and it's actually a pretty self-serving organisation that often acts as a parasite against the interests of developing nations.

The Canadian government, which Gates gave billions of dollars to, is already hopping on board (money from taxpayers to Monsanto's and then Gates' pocket) and Korea does the same thing. Watch how the United States, Canada, and South Korea are mentioned in the following new article about agriculture in Ghana (probably GMO).

The United States, Canada, Spain, South Korea and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have agreed to make small holder farmers, especially women, a major thrust of a new multilateral agriculture and food security programme.

More new grants from Gates to Ghana ought to show the increased level of influence which receives no scrutiny or contest (we will cover this in more detail tomorrow when we cite a new book that agrees with this perspective). Watch all the PR (including some from the MSBBC) which shows the failure of today's press. Journalists are too afraid of getting sued or fired, so they do not investigate these issues; instead they just report what a legion of PR agents tells them. It works well for Monsanto, which has a history of intimidating journalists and getting them fired when they really investigate (so the issues never get reported). ⬆