bill gates as a 'friend' of development

The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that the foundation is funding inoculations to protect health, The Times found, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Total of France -- the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe.

Indeed, local leaders blame oil development for fostering some of the very afflictions that the foundation combats.

Oil workers, for example, and soldiers protecting them are a magnet for prostitution, contributing to a surge in HIV and teenage pregnancy, both targets in the Gates Foundation's efforts to ease the ills of society, especially among the poor. Oil bore holes fill with stagnant water, which is ideal for mosquitoes that spread malaria, one of the diseases the foundation is fighting.
Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation

So why is the Guardian promoting the Foundation (and the man) as a true friend of development? The article above identifies many more examples of the B&MG Foundation pouring money into companies which work against the poorest of the world.

Of course, the more the Gates Foundation funds the killers of development, the more there is to do to patch the sores created by those killers. And they - Bill Gates and Co. - will get the credit for their generosity (in giving away what they could not possibly need or spend themselves), and for the effectiveness with which they stick the sticking plaster onto sores they have themselves created.

At least - they will as long as people fail to make the links between the killing companies, and the Foundation Trusts set up by millionaires, which buy the killing shares and help the killing companies pour out their pollution and their GM seeds and toxic chemicals - as long as Gates, Buffet and Soros seem to be the ones mending the world, not funding its destruction. These men will be our liberal heroes, feted by the liberal press.

Letter to the liberal press

Dear Alan Rusbridger

I am astonished that the Guardian is happy to promote the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as a friend of development. I wonder if you are aware of the extent to which the Foundation's investment portfolio is made up of companies which actively worsen the cause of development, or whether you have made any effort to establish whether or not these companies' detrimental effects are outweighed by the 'good' done by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

If you are inclined to think that such a viewpoint is a fringe one, not worthy of the Guardian's consideration, can I direct you towards an article in the LA Times which looks in detail at the impact of the Foundation's investments, comparing it with their charitable work: http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jan/07/nation/na-gatesx07

If you ran advertisements paid for by the Foundation I would regard this as hypocritical, though not surprising. But at least with adverts the public is aware (in theory) of where they start and finish, and (in theory) adopts a slightly more sceptical attitude. Your whole new site has become a wing of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, promoting it on every page, above every article, as friend, partner and fellow actor in the struggle to meet the millenium goals.

Does it not concern you that in promoting the Foundation as 'partner' of the site, you are acting as advocate for the Foundation? Is that the role of a newspaper? Does it concern you that the site, in being (part) financed by the Foundation, is financed by dividends from companies which act against development, drive development backwards? And although you claim that the site is independent of the Foundation – and you will point to John Vidal's article on Gates and Monsanto as evidence – one article does nothing to dent the overall impression created by that all-pervasive banner. How could it: you would never run enough articles critical of the Gates Foundation to dent that impression, because the funder would then pull out and the site would collapse.

I regard this as a shameful decision. Development is about more than merely patching up sores: it is about not creating those sores in the first place. I am sorry that the Guardian will barely be able to cover that issue now.

ek

I copied the letter to several Guardian correspondents, all of whom had written for the new site. I heard back from just one of them - but a highly encouraging message complementing me on the 'excellent letter' and suggesting we talk when s/he returned in a few weeks. Renewed contact in 3 weeks led to a cold response, almost certainly because I had mentioned that although I was a keen follower of the Medialens site, I would guarantee to treat in confidence any further correspondence. That was enough for the journalist to clam up.

Charity today is the humanitarian mask that hides the underlying economic exploitation. In a blackmail of gigantic proportions, the developed countries are constantly “helping” the undeveloped (with aid, credits, etc.), thereby avoiding the key issue, namely, their complicity in and co-responsibility for the miserable situation of the undeveloped.

Slavoj Zizek, The Liberal Communists of Porto Davos