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/loca...
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/loca...
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/se...
http://wa.14thstory.com/giving-assets-inc-... .
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-g...
Furthermore, we find "Giving Assets Inc" linked to the Rockefeller Foundation in a consortium here:
http://www.global50.org/p/partners-and-sta...
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/se...
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...
http://www.calvertfoundation.org/managemen...
And we find that the Gates Foundation became Calvert donors in 2006:
http://www.calvertfoundation.org/about/mis...
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/i...
http://www.thegiin.org/cgi-bin/iowa/counci...
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...
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.
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