09.04.14
Bill Gates Investments Harm the World, Not Improve the World, Based on New Exclusive Piece of Investigative Journalism at The Nation
Summary: The Gates Foundation’s profiteering efforts and lack of ethics outlined in a new report that many sites around the Web find fascinating and mostly irrefutable
When Bill Gates does invest (for profit of course) in a company that enables tyrants to demolish homes and one that murders union organisers (these are some of his biggest investments which we covered before) he sure invests in even more evil companies, such as G4S. He hopes people won’t notice, but some do. A widely-cited (even in Gates fan press) report with an accompanying press release says a lot more and gives many examples. To quote the press release: “That report found that the foundation had vast holdings in big-pharma firms that priced AIDS drugs out of reach for desperate victims the foundation wanted to save. It benefitted greatly from predatory lenders whose practices sparked the Great Recession and chocolate makers said by the U.S. government to have supported child slavery.”
Here is the original article:
How the Gates Foundation’s Investments Are Undermining Its Own Good Works
Soon after Susan Desmond-Hellmann became chancellor of the University of California San Francisco medical center campus, she faced an acute personal embarrassment. Financial disclosures revealed that she and her husband, both physicians, owned a sizable chunk of stock in Altria Corporation, a top cigarette maker. The chancellor commendably divested those shares and donated the proceeds to tobacco-control research.
“Rockefeller … believed his money was given to him by God, which must have been nice for him.”
–Arundhati RoyMeanwhile, the Bill Gates-bribed paper Seattle Times [1, 2] unintentionally shows another revolving doors incident (salary as reward, lobbying, etc.) that helps Gates profit from the education system. More on that in our next post…
Arundhati Roy has published an excellent article (part of her work as an author of books) [1] in which she explains how instruments such as the Gates Foundation really work. The excerpt below includes a bit about Gates. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Arundhati Roy: How Corporate Power Converted Wealth Into Philanthropy for Social Control
What follows in this essay might appear to some to be a somewhat harsh critique. On the other hand, in the tradition of honoring one’s adversaries, it could be read as an acknowledgment of the vision, flexibility, sophistication, and unwavering determination of those who have dedicated their lives to keeping the world safe for capitalism.
Their enthralling history, which has faded from contemporary memory, began in the United States in the early twentieth century when, kitted out legally in the form of endowed foundations, corporate philanthropy began to replace missionary activity as Capitalism’s (and Imperialism’s) road-opening and systems maintenance patrol.
Among the first foundations to be set up in the United States were the Carnegie Corporation, endowed in 1911 by profits from Carnegie Steel Company, and the Rockefeller Foundation, endowed in 1914 by J. D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil Company. The Tatas and Ambanis of their time.
Some of the institutions financed, given seed money, or supported by the Rockefeller Foundation are the United Nations, the CIA, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), New York’s most fabulous Museum of Modern Art, and, of course, the Rockefeller Center in New York (where Diego Riviera’s mural had to be blasted off the wall because it mischievously depicted reprobate capitalists and a valiant Lenin; Free Speech had taken the day off ).
Rockefeller was America’s first billionaire and the world’s richest man. He was an abolitionist, a supporter of Abraham Lincoln, and a teetotaler. He believed his money was given to him by God, which must have been nice for him.
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How else would Bill Gates, who admittedly knows a thing or two about computers, find himself designing education, health, and agriculture policies, not just for the US government but for governments all over the world?
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