An example of how billionaires & their foundations use media to uninform you.

[Hannah Bell]

2010:

A small group gets a big PR boost in the Murdoch-owned WSJ:

For two years, local activists on a shoestring budget have been trying to document connections between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Monsanto, the company vilified by some for its heavy involvement in genetic engineering of crops. Try as they might, their work got little attention.

That all changed with the news, reported by The Wall Street Journal last week, that Monsanto was among the foundation's most recent portfolio investments. A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission says the foundation bought 500,000 shares of the stock between April and June; on Friday, the total value was $27.6 million.


Thus the rest of the media is obliged to take notice. Bill's home-town paper responds with this "fair & balanced" article:

Gates Foundation ties with Monsanto under fire from activists

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2012751169_gatesmonsanto29m.html

The article gives a reasonable summary of the WSJ piece, & then tells "both sides of the story" -- some people agree with these criticisms, some don't, e.g.:

"Our biggest concern is that the foundation is invested in Monsanto so they're looking for Monsanto to make a profit," said Travis English, of AGRA Watch. "What they're doing is opening up new markets in Africa for Monsanto to monopolize the seed market."

He sees it as a conflict of interest.

One philanthropy expert saw it differently.

Elise Lufkin, senior program director of Giving Assets Inc., a group that advocates socially responsible investing, said conflicts of interest usually arise when the programs a foundation funds are at cross purposes with companies in which they're invested — an environmental organization opposed to oil drilling whose endowment benefits from oil company stock, for example. The Gates investment is not necessarily a conflict of interest if the foundation and Monsanto share the same goals.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2012751169_gatesmonsanto29m.html


What the article doesn't tell you, though, is that "Giving Assets, Inc." is a non-profit registered in Washington but incorporated in Maryland. Spokesperson & registered agent Lufkin has an office on Eastlake in Seattle; the rest of the principals are in MD.

http://mobile.www.secstate.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=602976097

http://wa.14thstory.com/giving-assets-inc-dba-giving-assets.html.


A Seattle-based non-profit whose business is foundations & giving. If you're in the foundation/non-profit world in Seattle, you're connected to the Gates machine.

And indeed, "giving assets" is part of the Seattle Philanthropic Advisor Network, which is basically representatives of banks, corps, large charities, big seattle law firms, etc. who advise rich people about where to donate their money. The mucketies of the seattle charity world.

http://www.spanseattle.org/membership.php


Noticing that "giving assets" was incorporated in 2009, we find: in 2009 the rockefeller foundation donated $200K to "giving assets" for fy 2009-2010.

http://m.rockfound.org/grants/grants-and-grantees/20125a53-2df4-4192-a762-a8f4dff44ad2


Furthermore, we find "Giving Assets Inc" linked to the Rockefeller Foundation in a consortium here:

http://www.global50.org/p/partners-and-stakeholders.html


The founder of another member of that consortium, Ron Cordes of the Cordes Foundation, is also -- surprise -- one of the principals in "Giving Assets".

http://mobile.www.secstate.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=602976097


And we find that Lufkin & Freundlich were both formerly with Calvert, the final member of the consortium:

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/elise-lufkin/4/796/267

http://www.calvertfoundation.org/management-team/timothy-freundlich


And we find that the Gates Foundation became Calvert donors in 2006:

http://www.calvertfoundation.org/about/mission/timeline


Not only that; we find yet another consortium of foundations & non-profits organized for "impact investing" that includes Rockefeller, Calvert & Gates: The "Global Impact Investing Network":

The Global Impact Investing Network is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to increasing the effectiveness of impact investing. Impact investments aim to solve social or environmental challenges while generating financial profit.

“In June 2008, a broader group of 40 investors from around the world met to discuss what it would take for the impact investing industry to be able to solve more social and environmental challenges with greater efficiency. They organized behind a number of initiatives, including the creation of a global network of leading impact investors, the development of a standardized framework for assessing social and environmental impact, and a development of a working group of investors focused on sustainable agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa.”

http://www.thegiin.org/cgi-bin/iowa/home/index.html

http://www.thegiin.org/cgi-bin/iowa/council/member/index.html


Finally, to complete the circle of backscratching: We find that AGRA, the organization that was criticized in the WSJ article about the group AGRA-Watch, was founded by the Gates & Rockefeller Foundations in 2006:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Alliance_for_a_Green_Revolution_in_Africa


These alliances of "impact investors" seem to me to be nothing more than factions of capital organizing into gangs to steer the future their way -- using tax-free money.

My hypothesis is that Murdoch & Gates-Rockefeller belong to rival gangs.

[xchrom]

1. Recommend

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. The future, Mr. Gittes! The future!

>>>Jake Gittes: How much are you worth?
Noah Cross: I have no idea. How much do you want?
Jake Gittes: I just wanna know what you're worth. More than 10 million?
Noah Cross: Oh my, yes!
Jake Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can't already afford?
Noah Cross: The future, Mr. Gittes! The future. >>>>

CHINATOWN


>>>>These alliances of "impact investors" seem to me to be nothing more than factions of capital organizing into gangs to steer the future their way -- using tax-free money.>>>>>

[OneGrassRoot]

3. Wow. Thank you for this, Hannah Bell. K&R and bookmarked. n/t

[MaeScott]

4. K and R. nt

[Hannah Bell]

5. kr

[Hannah Bell]

6. unreccers out

[Hannah Bell]

8. k

[Odin2005]

7. Another gread thread by Hannah!

:yourock: :loveya:

[Starry Messenger]

9. k&r

Silence from the Gates acolytes as usual.

[Hannah Bell]

15. and i specifically linked one of them to the thread. :>)

[Starry Messenger]

17. Well, I'll just kick it again in case they got lost.

:D

[Hannah Bell]

20. it appears they're still lost despite your help. starry, take a look at this puff piece on cordes:

Impact Investor: Finance Guru Ron Cordes Is Pointing Billions of Dollars in Better Directions

Call it a midlife crisis gone terribly right. After 28 years in finance, Ron Cordes--co-chairman of the $21 billion asset management firm Genworth--is dedicating his energy to building an online portal that will make impact investing a whole lot easier...

As he approached the age of 50, Cordes found himself in rural Uganda, in a village five hours off the beaten track. The place was full of widows who had lost their husbands to a two-decade long civil war; Cordes had funded a small microfinance program there, and the women were now running successful small businesses and supporting their kids. "One woman came up to me and said, 'We appreciate it when come to try to save our children, but we need to be able to save our own children. Thank you for investing in us so we can do that.' I'll never forget that moment..."

ImpactAssets is a platform that will bridge high-rolling investors with social enterprises. Financial advisers will find information about solid impact investment options. The absence of a good system of finding, processing, and measuring impact investments, he says, is barring billions of dollars from being invested in good causes. "There's no ecosystem to help advisers have conversations with their clients about social and environmental investments,” says Cordes. “U.S. investors own $37 trillion of investment capital. Even catalyzing 1% of that is $370 billion--enough to have amazing, groundbreaking, life-changing differences."

So when clients go to their financial advisers asking what impact investing is, or how to incorporate their favorite causes in their investment portfolio, the advisers will be able to dig up information on ImpactAssets and make informed suggestions--they might tell a client interested in microfinance about MicroVest in Washington DC, which has a strong track record of managing funds investing in microfinance, or clue a fair trade enthusiast into RootCapital in Boston, which provides supply chain financing for farm cooperatives around the world..."I've never been so excited about getting up in the morning. Philanthropy alone won't solve the world's biggest problems; I see a higher social purpose and a real opportunity to move the ball forward and make a difference."

http://www.fastcompany.com/1701985/impact-investor-how-finance-guru-ron-cordes-is-pointing-billions-of-dollars-in-better-direct.


Ten years ago I would have read that & thought "Oh, how nice." Today I read it & want to cry for the people of the world.

There are so many things wrong with this story, I can't even begin to dissect them. Such an orwellian matrix shitpile it makes me sick.

Bringing false consciousness to the masses.

[Starry Messenger]

22. 10 years ago I would have thought the very same thing.

Billionaires have been buying up allies in the art community for years, and I was a huge sucker for that shit. If you ever visit CalArts college in SoCal, you would puke at the names on the buildings. But when I worked there one summer, no one batted an eye at it. "They're 'giving back', now isn't that sweet??" It isn't until you drill down and see that money is just candy given to children to distract while the real wet-work is going on below the surface.

[leftstreet]

10. Jeebus. "to solve more...challenges...while generating financial profit"

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

The only way the Capitalists MAKE more profit is by CREATING the friggin 'social and environmental challenges' to BEGIN WITH

AAARRRGGGHHH!!!!

[jahlove17]

11. Insanity

Money rules

[OhioChick]

12. K&R n/t

[Luminous Animal]

13. Thank you for the follow up to yesterday's OP. (n/t)

[Raine]

14. THANKS

for posting this information, we need to know this.

[RandomKoolzip]

16. Damn. Great work. K&R.

[handmade34]

18. rec

[hay rick]

19. K&R

[truedelphi]

21. Thanks for this post.

The Gates Foundation monies helps make sure that no little kid is ever too far away from some Big Pharma drug pushing experiment. Why test drugs only on lab rats - when third world kids are able to pony up for drug trials in return for some small trinket.

[bongbong]

23. asdf

You're channeling "The Constant Gardener"!