Bill Gates invests billions in fast food, private prison and oil companies
Thirty-seven per cent of Bill Gates’ net worth would end world hunger. Instead, he invests billions of dollars into corporations blamed for many of the same health issues his foundation claims to solve.
The Los Angeles Times revealed back in 2007 that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had made millions of dollars each year from companies blamed for many of the same social and health problems it seeked to address.
The LA Times investigation revealed the Gates Foundation’s humanitarian concerns are not reflected in how it invests its money. In the Niger Delta — where the Foundation funds programs to fight polio and measles – the Foundation has also invested more than $400 million dollars in companies including Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp, and Chevron. These oil firms have been responsible for much of the pollution many blame for respiratory problems and other afflictions among the local population.
The Gates Foundation also has investments in sixty-nine of the worst polluting companies in the US and Canada, including Dow Chemical. It holds stakes in pharmaceutical companies whose drugs cost far beyond what most AIDS patients around the world can afford. Other companies in the Foundation’s portfolio have been accused of transgressions including forcing thousands of people to lose their homes; supporting child labor; and defrauding and neglecting patients in need of medical care.
With an endowment larger than all but four of the world’s largest hedge funds, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is easily one of the most powerful charities in the world. According to its website, the organization “works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives.” So how do the investments of the foundation’s $36 billion investing arm, the Gates Foundation Trust, match up to its mission? We dug into the group’s recently released 2012 tax returns to find out.
The Gates Foundation did not respond to Mother Jones’ requests for comment; however, its investment policy says the the trust’s managers “consider other issues beyond corporate profits, including the values that drive the foundation’s work.”
In its most recent annual report to investors, private prison company GEO group listed some risks to its bottom line, including “reductions in crime rates” that “could lead to reductions in arrests, convictions and sentences,” along with immigration reform and the decriminalization of drugs. One year after Mother Jones reported the foundations investment in this company, the philanthropy’s trust will not say if one of its most controversial holdings is still on its books. Military contractor DynCorp ($2.5 million donated by the foundation), meanwhile, has faced allegations of fraud, mismanagement, and even slavery from the Middle East to Eastern Europe. For Bill Gates to fund corporations such as Dyncorp, a military contractor, which financed the entire Iraq war, while 37 percent of his net worth could end world hunger, is not noble, and its ridiculous to consider it charity.
(SEE MORE): Gates Foundation Financials
Polio vaccinations by the Gates Foundation cause thousands of cases of AFP in India
A large portion of the world’s vaccines are given to the Third World as “charity,” when the underlying conditions of economic impoverishment, poor nutrition, chemical exposures, and political unrest are never addressed. Helping the effort against polio is a noble and inspiring thing to do. In India, Bill Gates’ funded polio vaccine is said to have wiped out the disease, which is considered to be a landmark achievement. But the country now has the world’s highest rate of non-polio AFP (acute flaccid paralysis) cases, which is linked entirely to his vaccinations. AFP is a condition in which a patient suffers from paralysis that results in floppy limbs due to reduced muscle tone. While AFP is symptomatic of polio, it can be caused by other diseases such as the Guillain Barre Syndrome and nerve lesions as well—the primary cause fuelling the argument that India is not really free of wild polio virus.
There is a dirty secret in the vaccine business that is very well documented: the live oral polio vaccine can actually spread polio and causes AFP. This is very well-known throughout the world, but in the U.S. mainstream media, this information is seldom, if ever, published. As usual, we need to research further past the mainstream media outlets to find out what is happening with vaccines around the world.
Data from India on polio control over 10 years, available from the National Polio Surveillance Project, has now been compiled and made available online for anyone to see.This shows that the non-polio AFP rate increases in proportion to the number of polio vaccine doses received in each area. Nationally, the non-polio AFP rate is now 12 times higher than expected. In the states of Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar, which have pulse polio rounds nearly every month, the non-polio AFP rate is 25- and 35-fold higher than the international norms.
LiveMint in India reported on the polio-free myth in India, explaining how the live polio vaccine was responsible for increases in paralysis. LiveMint is the second largest business newspaper in India and has an exclusive relationship with the Wall Street Journal. So this report was from the “mainstream” media in India.
(Vidya Krishnan reported the story: India to get polio-free status amid rise in acute flaccid paralysis cases)
What is clear from this report, and well documented in peer-reviewed literature, is that the term “polio-free status” is completely meaningless. The designation of a country as “polio-free” is simply a triumphant marketing cry to continue promoting polio vaccines, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that oral polio vaccines do far more harm than good.
The oral polio vaccine is banned in the United States and many other countries. The truth is that the reality is not pretty as we’d like to believe. Gates, and his very charitable organization, is part of the problem, while funding exactly what is wrong with the world. From dangerous vaccinations, to funding war, to Gates buying 500,000 shares of geo-engineering corporation, Monsanto.
It is time to expose him just like everyone else perpetuating the failures of our system. Because no matter how humanitarian they can appear to be, the money always tells a different story.
by Tony Geren
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