The stocks/finance-oriented Web sites love to talk about the Gates Foundation not because of charity but because of investment. The 'charity' is often a convenient disguise for lobbying for one's own investments and vested interests. Last month Gates invested in a company that uses patents, painting it also as a grant and investment (i.e. for-profit stake). "Meanwhile," says one report, "Anacor Pharmaceuticals ANAC shares jumped more than 8% to $6.51 in recent action after the company announced it was receiving a $17.7 milllion grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to study two filarial worm diseases as well as tuberculosis. The foundation also will invest $5 million in Anacor common shares."
"The goal here is to derive profit from influence and turn money into influence."Gates is lobbying and buying influence by putting a stake there. Afterwards he gets given platforms for political and scientific lobbying. "Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will deliver a keynote," says this story about vaccination. Gates is a vaccination expert? I didn't know. Did he graduate from college at all? No, but he is rich, so that must mean he is smartest on matters of vaccination. He is also lobbying in colleges by making keynote talks there and receiving PR from the media over minor talking points [1, 2]. It's inexcusable whitewash of a notoriously ruthless, corrupt businessman. These puff pieces characterise him as a gentleman (contradicting what his own employees said).
Going back to the investment in Anacor (covered in financial press for the most part, less so in medical press), it is an example of power grab, just like the education 'reform' initiatives backed by Gates, Murdoch, and Zuckerberg. Here is Murdoch's press pushing the agenda, piggybacking Facebook and characterising it as some kind of charity when all it's geared up towards is privatisation of education.
“In “‘creation myth’ of capitalist patriarchy”, rich & powerful men like Bill Gates own life through patents & IP.”
--Jose R RodriguezIncidentally, last month we saw this other lobbying/entryism, accompanying a campaign of bribing more schools to align Gates' way and take orders. Here is one of the latest examples, peppered and server using some PR with a personal story attached to it in corporate media like Murdoch's Fox 'news' (among other corporate channels [1, 2, 3]).
The goal here is to derive profit from influence and turn money into influence. Recently, Vandana Shiva said that "[o]ne rich man named Bill Gates is financing one Australian scientist James Dale who knows one crop, the banana, to impose inefficient and hazardous GM bananas on millions of people in India and Uganda." This is GMO promotion from Gates -- an issue we wrote about many times before. "In "'creation myth' of capitalist patriarchy"," quotes this activist, "rich & powerful men like Bill Gates own life through patents & IP." ⬆