12.01.11
Gates Foundation Downplays and Intercepts Unwanted Communication
Summary: The PR operation of monopolist and lobbyist Bill Gates is being chastised by figures of authority, whereupon “communication problems” are blamed and money gets pumped into churching out this message
IT is becoming clear that tax evaders and so-called “job creators” are sometimes the same thing. The latter is a euphemism used for removing tax on the super-rich. The excuse is that they need to be kept happy (not taxed) to take care of the rest.
One instrument for dodging tax is a foundation. It is also a PR trick and an investment loophole. People need to speak about these issues because lack of criticism of self-labelled “philanthropist” foundations lets them escape bad things unaccountable.
Nowadays it is easy to see the Gates Foundation people (some of whom come from industry to serve that industry through the foundation) called out for their motives and then blaming “communication problems” for revelation of the truth. If it operates like a business, then it usually is one. Euphemisms and self-funded ‘studies’ for PR and lobbying purposes are yet more of what this foundation is doing. As one critic put it: “The Gates Foundation funded this study on listening to feedback. Sounds like a technical fix to what the Foundation is choosing to label a communication problem. If they are all so smart, why can’t they just apply this technical fix to their chronic communication problem? Is it possible that it is not a communication problem they have?”
To quote more of the same source, even authorities in the field are complaining about the Gates Foundation for interfering with research and taking away the voice of competing ideas:
In particular, we are disturbed by reports that key donors to WHO including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation may have unduly influenced the decision to halt publication of these completed guidelines, fundamentally undermining the legitimate guidelines development process. We believe this is inappropriate—and is resulting in a failure to implement proven life-saving, disease-preventing practice.
We wrote about this before because it is quite disturbing.
Monopoly is still the name of the game for Gates and his business partners, which include some big pharmaceutical companies and GMO giants like Monsanto. On the GMO side, mind complaints about Gates from a professor in Seattle:
Even absent the furor that surrounds genetic engineering, biofortification’s focus on single crops and Western-style agriculture is at odds with several expert panels that concluded a more sustainable solution for African poverty would use less water and chemicals and incorporate varied crops, said University of Washington professor emeritus Phil Bereano. He now leads Seattle-based AGRA Watch, which monitors Gates’ multibillion-dollar push for a new “Green Revolution” in Africa.
Gates does not need to worry about it so much. He already spends about $1 million per day just buying the press. He can just ‘plant’ some articles, buy some more newspapers and bribe the right people in the PR industry to buy himself the public image he craves. A lot of plutocrats do this. Why can’t Microsoft, the most hated software vendor? Reputation laundering is easier for a person than for a company that still operates. Abramoff is out of jail and he already rebrands himself as “against corruption”, just like Gates — formerly known as a major crook — buys himself a name as modern-age Mother Teresa. █
“Microsoft has demonstrated that it will use its prodigious market power and immense profits to harm any firm that insists on pursuing initiatives that could intensify competition against one of Microsoft’s core products.” –Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson in the Microsoft antitrust trial
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