"Gates' gimmick of becoming a philantropist repeats the Rockefeller scam almost one to one a century later."

--Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation

Summary: More detailed explorations and explanations of how the Gates Foundation profits from patents under the guise of "charity"

WE have written quite a lot about the for-profit (and no-tax) foundation of Bill Gates, his father, and his wife. A great volume of substantiated criticism does exist. It's all factual, but it is scarcely being covered by the business press, which is preoccupied with glorification of the super-affluent.

One of the sins of the Gates Foundation is centered around GMO [1, 2]. Those who are not familiar with it really ought to learn about the fascinating impact that stakeholder rarely tell the public about.

Glyn Moody, a veteran journalist and the famous author of Rebel Code, writes about the Gates Foundation's latest GMO trick:

So Gates' donations are ultimately promoting an agriculture based on intellectual monopolies - just as Microsoft does in the software field. The latest $300 million doesn't sound quite so generous now, does it?

"That's why Bill [Gates] is now bribing patents into the 3rd world," explained Fewa a couple of hours ago.

Sadly, the mainstream press will always play the strings of big business, like a fiddle incapable of real investigation and bold criticism.

We wrote about a similar subject a couple of weeks ago, namely WIPO's keeping of "traditional knowledge" in the hands of those who have a right to this knowledge. Here is a followup post about it:

On 1 October 2009, the last day of the 47th Series of Meetings of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) General Assemblies, a new mandate for its Intergovernmental Committee on Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (commonly known as ‘the IGC’) was agreed by the Member States. The last minute agreement, following a year of wrangling, was hailed by many as a major breakthrough (see IP-Watch story), particularly for the African Group. WIPO’s Director General called it “a real step forward”. The African Group, with the support of many developing countries, had insisted on a mandate that would deliver a ‘binding’ treaty on these issues in two years time.

As the dust settles the question that arises is whether this new mandate will, in reality, be able to deliver. This question is particularly pertinent when looking at the debate around the “biopiracy” problem which was the primary driving force behind the creation of the IGC nine years ago.

Intellectual monopolies are no friends of Africa and neither is WIPO, which is an institution that's build around intellectual monopolies. Africans should really reject bodies such as WIPO, whose job is to protect or restore domination by Western nations, all at the expense of "wage slaves" in developing countries. Knowledge wants to be free. ⬆