Summary: The acts of Microsoft's co-founder are as monopolistic and self-serving as ever, but the PR efforts obscure the true nature of this situation; this post sheds light on what the press does not tell (or rarely tells) readers

THE scandal around big tobacco business was covered here last week. The short story is that Bill's Gates Foundation was backing tobacco, even though it was masked as anti-tobacco (or "tobacco prevention"). As GatesKeepers (a longtime watcher of the Gates Foundation) put it, the response from the Gates Foundation had wrinkles in it:

This statement makes it sound as if the Gates Foundation didn't have a project officer looking after the IDRC tobacco grant. Huh?

GatesKeepers is citing this article and as we pointed out last week, the Gates Foundation's investment in tobacco goes a few years back when it was known. It seems more like it's pretending not to have known what it invested in. Two days beforehand, GatesKeepers argued that: "The Gates Foundation, by announcing termination of the grant [for tobacco group], has claimed high moral ground. But the Foundation has been asleep at the wheel. They were forced to terminate the grant due to a conference boycott. How could they NOT know about the conflict of interest earlier?"

Exactly.

“The mainstream press missed the real story and instead played along with PR statements.”Like we proposed last week, the Gates Foundation ought to have known all along, but it "retreated" and pretended to be a victim, even though it had knowingly invested in tobacco for years (it also invests in alcoholic beverages). The mainstream press missed the real story and instead played along with PR statements. All they had to do is sniff around the tobacco fiasco in Canada and dig a little deeper. Gates has some other controversial relationships with the Canadian government, some of which continue to receive coverage even from The New York Times and the Canadian Press. For prior posts about Gates' vaccination project in Canada (and the cancellation), see [1, 2, 3, 4]. We are also seeing some new vaccination initiatives in Africa . "Gates Foundation staff visits northern Nigeria to tell them what to do," says GatesKeepers.

Wouldn't it be better for northern Nigerians to make the call to end polio in northern Nigerial rather than someone from the Gates Foundation?

Africa's polio push, where Gates employees give instructions, deserves a closer look. It's akin to the tobacco fiasco.

Gates' worshippers at philanthropy.com do no further investigation into it, despite recent blunders such as Gates-funded vaccines that allegedly killed girls. Gates allocates more money for the purpose of vaccination in Africa, which in a nutshell becomes a problem mostly because of patents that the public is forced to pay for (to make Gates richer).

“[T]he Gates Foundation is among the reasons for polio because of its investments in petrol companies that harm Nigerian children with unrestrained emissions.”As an important reminder from the Los Angeles Times, the Gates Foundation is among the reasons for polio because of its investments in petrol companies that harm Nigerian children with unrestrained emissions. The Los Angeles Times criticised Gates a few years ago as his investments are among the causes for these diseases. Some of the press is now saying that the Gates Foundation "urges Northern rulers to fight polio", which is reminiscent of the foundation's so-called 'fight' against smoking while investing a lot of money in big tobacco companies.

There is this thing called "Rotary" which Gates gives money to, but how come nobody talks about how Gates' investments actually contribute to polio?

A major Rotary emphasis for several decades has been the “Polio-Plus” campaign designed to eradicate polio and other devastating illnesses in the world. Since its launch in 1985, reported cases have dropped from 350,000 to less than 2,000 cases a year, a 99 percent decrease. Today only four countries in the world are still fighting polio, but Rotary International has recently accepted a matching-grants challenge from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to raise enough money to finally conquer this disease worldwide. In just three years, the Dalton club has fulfilled the six-year goal of committing $6,000 towards Rotary’s $200 million goal to match the Gates Foundation challenge grant. Further fundraising activities at the district conference raised enough money to immunize some 4000 children against polio and will be used by the Rotary Foundation for that purpose.

The Gates Foundation's "challenge grant" is akin to those attempts from Gates to rally governments to give their money to companies that he invests in (their patents). "Challenge grant" is not the same as donation and we gave an example yesterday (about Monsanto).

The sentimental blackmail we are seeing in Africa is not to be taken at face value. There is a lot of money at stake because Africa has plenty of resources, it serves as a good breeding ground for experimentation with GMO, and it also serves as a good platform for experimentation with new drugs (if people die as a result of the experiments, then they won't sue because they can't). We continue to view with great caution the type of research Gates advances in Africa (same here) and yesterday we wrote about Monsanto's relationship with Bill Gates, noting in part that Gates had begun recruiting celebrity politicians like Timothy Geithner to market GMO along with him. A few days ago we learned that Gates is now using Colin Powell to market his "malaria campaign". Considering Gates' investment in companies like Novartis, there is certainly money to be made here.

“[T]he racketeering operation known as "Intellectual Ventures" is also directly involved in this malaria project.”Let us remember that the President of the Global Health Program at the Gates Foundation carries a felonious baggage because he threatened academics who challenged his pharmaceutical agenda. These are the sorts of people who are working on this project and as we showed two weeks ago, the racketeering operation known as "Intellectual Ventures" is also directly involved in this malaria project. This has warning signs all over it. Intellectual Ventures is the world's biggest patent troll, it is not a charity.

Here is a new article about the bully whom Microsoft appointed to become the President of the Global Health Program. These publication don't write anything about his shady past. Other suspicious staff is in the same foundation, including the CFO who joined a few weeks ago from Merck (see references therein for information about Merck's serious offenses and corruption).

Here is an interesting article from last week. It starts by saying:

The Lancet has just published the study, which was financed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO is now being examined for its handling of the swine flu so-called pandemic. They stand accused of being in bed with pharmaceutical corporations to promote the use of vaccines. One of the Gates Foundation's primary goals is to promote vaccines.

We wrote about this 'study' last week. It is self serving (showing the required outcome even though the results were publicly challenged by scientists without massive PR departments) as Gates too makes money from investments in this. The following new example seems to combine GMO with pharmaceuticals:

Amyris manipulates micro-organisms, primarily yeasts, so that they consume sugar and produce a desired product, which could be diesel, jet fuel, or other chemical products. The company founders had originally received a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to use its process for an antimalaria drug.

In the next couple of posts we will look at how the Gates Foundation encourages its rise in influence/monopolisation in other areas (along with Microsoft). ⬆