The World's Richest Give Billions to Remake the World in Their Image

The $600 Billion Challenge

Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett are asking the nation's billionaires to pledge to give at least half their net worth to charity, in their lifetimes or at death. If their campaign succeeds, it could change the face of philanthropy.

By Carol J. Loomis, Fortune Magazine
June 16, 2010

Flying cross-country in March, Bill Gates stopped in Omaha to lunch near the airport with Warren Buffett at a Hollywood Diner, giving it a small place in history as one venue where the two made plans for their drive to boost giving. Buffett paid for lunch. Click on the photo for more pictures.

Just over a year ago, in May 2009, word leaked to the press that the two richest men in America, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, had organized and presided over a confidential dinner meeting of billionaires in New York City. David Rockefeller was said to have been a host, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Oprah Winfrey to have been among those attending, and philanthropy to have been the main subject.

Pushed by the press to explain, Buffett and Gates declined. But that certainly didn't dim the media's interest in reaching for descriptions of the meeting: The Chronicle of Philanthropy called it "unprecedented"; both ABC News and the Houston Chronicle went for "clandestine"; a New York magazine parody gleefully imagined George Soros to have been starstruck in the presence of Oprah. One radio broadcaster painted a dark picture: "Ladies and gentlemen, there's mischief afoot and it does not bode well for the rest of us." No, no, rebutted the former CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Patty Stonesifer, who had been at the meeting and had reluctantly emerged to combat the rumors. The event, she told the Seattle Times, was simply a group of friends and colleagues "discussing ideas" about philanthropy.

And so it was. But that discussion -- to be fully described for the first time in this article -- has the potential to dramatically change the philanthropic behavior of Americans, inducing them to step up the amounts they give. With that dinner meeting, Gates and Buffett started what can be called the biggest fundraising drive in history. They'd welcome donors of any kind. But their direct target is billionaires, whom the two men wish to see greatly raise the amounts they give to charities, of any and all kinds. That wish was not mathematically framed at the time of the New York meeting. But as two other U.S. dinners were held (though not leaked), Buffett and Gates and his wife, Melinda, set the goal:

They are driving to get the super-rich, starting with the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, to pledge -- literally pledge -- at least 50% of their net worth to charity during their lifetimes or at death.

Without a doubt, that plan could create a colossal jump in the dollars going to philanthropy, though of what size is a puzzle we'll get to. To begin with, a word about this article you are reading. It is the first public disclosure of what Buffett and Melinda and Bill Gates are trying to do. Over the past couple of months Fortune has interviewed the three principals as the project has unfolded, as well as a group of billionaires who have signed up to add their names to the Gates/Buffett campaign.

In a sense this article is also an echo of two other Fortune stories, both featuring Buffett on the cover. The first, published in 1986, was "Should you leave it all to the children?" To that query, Buffett emphatically said no. The second article, "Warren Buffett gives it away," which appeared in 2006, disclosed Buffett's intention to gradually give away his Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) fortune to five foundations, chief among them the world's largest, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. (For Buffett's thinking on the disposition of his wealth, see "My philanthropic pledge.")

Since then, in four years of contributions, Buffett has given the foundation $6.4 billion, not counting the 2010 gift, to be made this summer. The foundation in turn has in that same period combined Buffett's money and its immense gifts from the Gateses to raise its level of giving to about $3 billion a year, much of it for world health. One small example:

The Medicines for Malaria Venture, heavily funded by the Gates Foundation, has worked with pharmaceutical company Novartis (NVS) to develop good-tasting malaria pills and distribute them to millions of children -- the principal victims of the disease -- in 24 countries.

Another fact about the 2006 Buffett article is that it was written by yours truly, Carol Loomis, a senior editor-at-large of Fortune. Besides that, I am a longtime friend of Buffett's and editor of his annual letter to Berkshire's shareholders. Through him, my husband, John Loomis, and I have also come to know Melinda and Bill Gates socially. The Loomis team has even occasionally played bridge against Warren and Bill.



All that said, the question of what philanthropy might gain from the Gates/Buffett drive rests, at its outset, on a mystery: what the wealthiest Americans are giving now. Most of them aren't telling, and outsiders can't pierce the veil. For that matter, the Forbes 400 list, while a valiant try, is a best-guess estimate both as to the cast of characters and as to their net worth. (Buffett says he knows of two Berkshire shareholders who should be on the list but have been missed.) As Bill Gates sums it up, "The list is imprecise."

Those qualifiers noted, the magazine stated the 2009 net worth of the Forbes 400 to be around $1.2 trillion. So if those 400 were to give 50% of that net worth away during their lifetimes or at death, that would be $600 billion. You can think of that colossal amount as what the Buffett and Gates team is stalking -- at a minimum.

Leaving aside the Forbes 400 and looking simply at Internal Revenue Service data for both annual giving and estate taxes, we can piece together a picture of how far the very rich might be from a figure like that $600 billion. Start with an admirable fact about Americans as a whole: The U.S. outdoes all other countries in philanthropic generosity, annually giving in the neighborhood of $300 billion.

Some of that gets reported as charitable deductions on the tax filings made by individuals. But taxpayers at low income levels don't tend to itemize, taking the standard deduction instead. At higher income levels, charitable gift data begin to mean something. To take one example for 2007 (the latest data available), the 18,394 individual taxpayers having adjusted gross income of $10 million or more reported charitable gifts equal to about $32.8 billion, or 5.84% of their $562 billion in income.

And billionaires? Here, the best picture -- though it's flawed -- emerges from statistics that the IRS has for almost two decades been releasing on each year's 400 largest individual taxpayers, a changing universe obviously. The decision of the government to track this particular number of citizens may or may not have been spurred by the annual publication of the Forbes list. In any case, the two 400 batches, though surely overlapping, cannot be identical -- for one reason because the IRS data deal with income, not net worth.

The IRS facts for 2007 show that the 400 biggest taxpayers had a total adjusted income of $138 billion, and just over $11 billion was taken as a charitable deduction, a proportion of about 8%. The amount deducted, we need quickly to add, must be adjusted upward because it would have been limited for certain gifts, among them very large ones such as Buffett's $1.8 billion donation that year to the Gates Foundation. Even so, it is hard to imagine the $11 billion rising, by any means, to more than $15 billion. If we accept $15 billion as a reasonable estimate, that would mean that the 400 biggest taxpayers gave 11% of their income to charity -- just a bit more than tithing.

Is it possible that annual giving misses the bigger picture? One could imagine that the very rich build their net worth during their lifetimes and then put large charitable bequests into their wills. Estate tax data, unfortunately, make hash of that scenario, as 2008 statistics show. The number of taxpayers making estate tax filings that year was 38,000, and these filers had gross estates totaling $229 billion. Four-fifths of those taxpayers made no charitable bequests at death. The 7,214 who did make bequests gave $28 billion. And that's only 12% of the $229 billion gross estate value posted by the entire 38,000.

All told, the data suggest that there is a huge gap between what the very rich are giving now and what the Gateses and Buffett would like to suggest is appropriate -- that 50%, or better, of net worth. The question is how many people of wealth will buy their argument.

Buffett, Gates, and Gates -- who have a combined net worth of around $100 billion -- have already committed most of their money to charity.

The seminal event in this campaign was that billionaires' gathering in May 2009 -- the First Supper, if you will. The Gateses credit Buffett with the basic idea: that a small group of dedicated philanthropists be somehow assembled to discuss strategies for spreading the gospel to others. The Gateses proceeded to arrange the event. Bill Gates says, with a grin,

"If you had to depend on Warren to organize this dinner, it might never have happened." In his office, meanwhile, Buffett scrawled out a name for a new file, "Great Givers."

The first item filed was a copy of a March 4 letter that Buffett and Gates sent to the patriarch of philanthropy, David Rockefeller, to ask that he host the meeting. Rockefeller, now 95, told Fortune that the request was "a surprise but a pleasure." As a site for the event, he picked the elegant and very private President's House at Rockefeller University in New York City, whose board he has been on for 70 years. He also tapped his son David Jr., 68, to go with him to the meeting.

The event was scheduled for 3 p.m. on Tuesday, May 5 -- a day urgently desired by Bill Gates, who wanted to fit the meeting into a short U.S. break he'd be taking from a three-month European stay with his family. Because Melinda elected to remain in Europe with their three children, she did not attend the first dinner, but lined herself up for any that followed. (The Gateses have considered this campaign to be a personal matter for them, not in any way a project of the Gates Foundation.)

Melinda also insisted from the start that both husbands and wives be invited to the dinners, sure that both would be important to any discussion. Her reasoning:

"Even if he's the one that made the money, she's going to be a real gatekeeper. And she's got to go along with any philanthropic plan, because it affects her and it affects their kids."

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The letter of invitation, dated March 24, went to more people than could come. But the hosts and guests who arrived on May 5 certainly had enough economic tickets to be there: a combined net worth of maybe $130 billion and a serious history of having depleted that amount by giving money to charity. Leaving aside the semi-observers, Patty Stonesifer and David Rockefeller Jr., there were 14 people present, starting with the senior Rockefeller, Buffett, and Gates. The local guests included Mayor Bloomberg; three Wall Streeters, "Pete" Peterson, Julian Robertson, and George Soros; and Charles "Chuck" Feeney, who made his money as a major owner of Duty Free Shoppers and has so far given away $5 billion through his foundations, called Atlantic Philanthropies. When Feeney was dropped from the Forbes 400 in 1997, the magazine explained his departure in words not often hauled out for use: "Gave bulk of holdings to charity."

The out-of-towners included Oprah, Ted Turner, and two California couples, Los Angeles philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad, and Silicon Valley's John and Tashia Morgridge, whose fortune came from Cisco Systems (CSCO). Both the Broads and the Morgridges had equivocated over whether to accept the invitation, regarding the trip as an inconvenience. But there were the signatures at the bottom of the letter -- from left to right, Rockefeller, Gates, Buffett. "Impressive," Eli Broad thought.

LOOK WHO CAME TO DINNER: The crowd at the inaugural event added up to a list that would make any charity – or any conspiracy theorist – swoon. Left to right: Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffett, Eli and Edythe Broad, Ted Turner, David Rockefeller, Chuck Feeney, Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, Julian Robertson, John and Tashia Morgridge, Pete Peterson

So on the appointed day the Broads found themselves seated with everyone else around a big conference table, wondering what came next. They mainly got that message from Buffett, whose quick sense of humor left him playing, says David Rockefeller Jr., "the enlivener role." He remembers Buffett as keeping the event from being "too somber" and "too self-congratulatory." Buffett set the ball rolling by talking about philanthropy, describing the meeting as "exploratory," and then asking each person, going around the table, to describe his or her philosophy of giving and how it had evolved.

The result was 12 stories, each taking around 15 minutes, for a total of nearly three hours. But most participants whom Fortune has talked to found the stories riveting, even when they were familiar. David Rockefeller Sr. described learning philanthropy at the knees of his father and grandfather. Ted Turner repeated the oft-told tale of how he had made a spur-of-the-moment decision to give $1 billion to the United Nations. Some people talked about the emotional difficulty of making the leap from small giving to large. Others worried that their robust philanthropy might alienate their children. (Later, recalling the meeting, Buffett laughed that it had made him feel like a psychiatrist.)

The charitable causes discussed in those stories covered the spectrum: education, again and again; culture; hospitals and health; the environment; public policy; the poor generally. Bill Gates, who found the whole event "amazing," regarded the range of causes as admirable:

"The diversity of American giving," he says, "is part of its beauty."

At the dinner that followed, the conversation turned specifically to how giving by the rich could be increased. The ideas advanced included national recognition of great philanthropists (presidential medals, for example), or a film, or a philanthropy guidebook, or a conference of the rich. There was no talk of a pledge. Of the dinner, the junior Rockefeller says,

"The most important thing my dad and I came away with was that increasing giving would take work by many in that room -- delicate, and probably prolonged, one-on-one work."

The dinner, of course, had its unexpected coda: the leak. The leaker, with little doubt, was Chuck Feeney, and the leakee was his longtime friend Niall O'Dowd, the New York publisher behind the grandly unknown IrishCentral.com. (Fortune did not succeed in reaching Feeney; of our account, O'Dowd said, "I can't confirm that.") On May 18, two weeks after the meeting, IrishCentral.com posted an article of 14 short paragraphs headlined "Secret meeting of world's richest people held in New York."

With that, the fame of the website spiked, as the rest of the press picked up the news and ran with it.
The IrishCentral article exhibited some confusion about which Rockefeller starred at the dinner, or was even there, but otherwise provided the names of all the participants -- with the notable exception of Feeney, who apparently didn't realize he looked more conspicuous to the others by being left out. Feeney, however, appears to have been quoted anonymously in the piece, once as an "attendee" who thought Gates the most impressive speaker of the day, Turner the most outspoken (surprise!), and Buffett the most insistent on his agenda for change. In a second instance, Feeney was a good bet to have been the awed "participant" who extolled his fellow guests:

"They were all there, the great and the good."

The main effect of the leak was to place a "cone of silence" -- that's a description from the Gates camp -- over everything that transpired in the giving campaign over the next year. But there was certainly action, including a few small dinners abroad. Bill and Melinda Gates hosted a dinner in London, and Bill held a few others in India and China. Raising the philanthropic bar in foreign countries is a special challenge: Dynastic wealth is widely taken for granted; tax laws do not commonly allow deductions for gifts to charity; a paucity of institutions and organizations ready for gifts makes knowing whom to give to just not that obvious. Nonetheless, were the Gateses and Buffett to succeed in their campaign in the U.S., they would probably take it overseas.

But as last summer and fall progressed, Buffett and the Gateses did not even have a plan for how the campaign was to be structured. In this vacuum the idea of a pledge took hold and gained strength. It helped that more dinners were to be held. At them, says Melinda, the three principals would "float the pledge idea to see if it would fly."

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There then occurred the second and third U.S. dinners, most of whose guests have not been publicly outed because of the cone of silence. Secrecy, a Gates spokesman says, is partly a bow to moguls who have been exposed to the philanthropic sales pitch but would be embarrassed to have been identified in case they chose not to step up to the challenge.

In any event, the names of some of the participants are known. The noted philanthropists at the second dinner, held at the New York Public Library in November last year, included New York investment banker Kenneth Langone and his wife, Elaine, and H.F. "Gerry" Lenfest and his wife, Marguerite, from Philadelphia. Lenfest got rich when he sold his Pennsylvania cable television company to Comcast (CMCSA) in 2000, netting $1.2 billion for himself and his family. He promptly vowed that he would give most of it to charity in his lifetime. Now 80, he has so far meted out $800 million, a good part of it to schools he attended (Columbia Law School, Washington and Lee, Mercersburg Academy).

Lenfest's favorite moment at the November dinner was Buffett's declaration that Marguerite Lenfest had put forward the best idea of the evening when she said that the rich should sit down, decide how much money they and their progeny need, and figure out what to do with the rest of it. Says Lenfest:

"The value of Buffett and Gates is that they're going to make people sit down and think these things through."

The Third Supper, held in December in Menlo Park, Calif., at the Rosewood Sand Hill hotel, is known as the Bay Area dinner but drew from all over the state, including its entertainment precincts. In attendance were some veteran philanthropists, including venture capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins and his wife, Ann, and the Morgridges, who had selected the meeting site.

This dinner was somewhat different from the other two, says Melinda Gates, because a few people there were relatively new to huge wealth and were still forming their opinions about giving. Talk went on for hours, so long that the beef being prepared for dinner became somewhat overcooked. This is reported to have dismayed Rosewood's management, which may have noticed that the crowd in the Dogwood room was worth having back.

The dinner also brought out some of the fears that people have about philanthropy. What does going public with big gifts do to the peace in your life? Won't pleas from charities be unending? How do you deal with giving internationally, which too often seems like throwing money down a hole? These are valid concerns, say the Gateses, the kind raised by people who want to feel as smart about giving as they were about making their money. But the questions didn't stop the two from plugging the satisfactions of philanthropy.

At those dinners, says Bill, "no one ever said to me, 'We gave more than we should have.'"

Nor did the idea of a pledge get shot down at those dinners. It "floated" nicely, in other words. So as 2010 arrived, a pledge became the strategy. The idea of aiming for a 50% slice of net worth was pragmatically pulled from the sky, being less than the principals would have liked to ask for but perhaps as much, at least initially, as they can get. The pledges, meanwhile, were never envisioned as legal contracts but rather moral obligations to be both memorialized in writing and taken very seriously. They are in fact to be posted on a new website, givingpledge.org, whose construction Melinda Gates oversaw. The 99% pledge that Buffett is making is likely to be the No. 1 document on the website, if he is not beaten out by his Seattle friends.

Enthusiastic about leading the search for Great Givers, the Gateses and Buffett nonetheless have wanted a phalanx of strong supporters. Already committed to at least a 50% pledge are the Broads, the Doerrs, the Lenfests, and the Morgridges. With the online publication of this article, moreover, the three principals will send e-mails and make calls to other billionaires judged likely prospects. A bit later, all of the pledgers may join in sending a letter to a large number of other billionaires, asking them to join the growing crowd. In the fall there may even be a Great Givers conference.

The definition of success in this venture may take years to figure out, but each of the principals has reflections about the matter. Buffett knows that everyone rich has thought about what to do with his or her money:

"They may not have reached a decision about that, but they have for sure thought about it. The pledge that we're asking them to make will put them to thinking about the whole issue again."

He warns, most of all, against the rich delaying the decision of what to do with their money:

"If they wait until they're making a final will in their nineties, the chance of their brainpower and willpower being better than they are today is nil."

Bill Gates regards the 50% as a "low bar" encouraging high participation. People, he thinks, may be drawn in by that proportion and then surprise themselves and find they are giving at higher levels.

"This is about moving to a different realm," he thinks, and it will take time for everything to sort out.

Melinda Gates separates the near-term from the far. There are so many reasons that rich people don't give, she says: They don't want to plan for their death; they worry that they'll need to hire someone to help with the work; they just don't want to take the time to think about it all. So the initial goal of the pledge campaign, she thinks, must be simply to cut through that and get them moving in the direction of giving. And eventually?

"Three to five years down the road, we need to have a significant number of billionaires signed up. That would be success."

Society cannot help but be a beneficiary here, by virtue of at least some dollars and perhaps many. Nor will it be just the very rich who will perhaps bend their minds to what a pledge of this kind means. It could also be others with less to give but suddenly more reason to think about the rightness of what they do.

Reporter associate: Doris Burke


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The Gates Foundation, Vaccines and Population Reduction (Sterilization)

Bill Gates' mission to protect poorer populations from disease through mass vaccination, his sense of urgency that the global population is too large and needs to be reduced, and his deep financial and collaborative enterprises with the oligarchic elite, health agencies and multilateral organizations — with a past history of eugenic intentions and experimentation — make for a bizarre mix that raises serious questions about the truth behind his Foundation's motives... Nobody should doubt the eugenic agenda remains alive and well in America. In fact, behind the closed corridors among the global elite, it is gaining fuel. For these people, sacrificing poor people in the developing world on the altar of a distorted Manifest Destiny, and setting their own rules in modern technologies — vaccines and GMO seeds — with the potential to destroy every unborn child, is simply racism and bigotry...

The wealthiest elite on the planet are rarely questioned about the correctness of their actions and schemes. As long as one of these individuals says he is giving huge sums of money to a cause to end disease and suffering, we are not supposed to probe further. Rather, in the case of mainstream media, such people are to be worshiped as saviors. The oligarchic elite are so well interconnected on multiple boards of directors, clubs for the rich and powerful, think tanks, and among the high ranks of elected legislators and politicians, that it is difficult to have an open and honest debate on the merits of their actions and spending. When a Ted Turner says we should reduce the world's population by more than half, and Bill Gates suggests a 15 percent reduction, do we really understand they are following a form of eugenic genocide?



"If we do a really great job on new vaccines... we could lower [world population] by 10 or 15 percent." - Bill Gates

"He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity. When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes? The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt." - Ecclesiastes 5:10-13

"There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is common among men: a man to whom God hath given riches, wealth, and honour, so that he wanteth nothing for his soul of all that he desireth, yet God giveth him not power to eat thereof, but a stranger eateth it: this is vanity, and it is an evil disease... For he cometh in with vanity, and departeth in darkness, and his name shall be covered with darkness." - Ecclesiastes 6:1-2,4

Death By Vaccination: The Gates Foundation and the New Eugenics

By Richard Gale & Gary Null, Progressive Radio Network
September 22, 2010

While lecturing at the elitist TED 2010 conference in Long Beach, CA, Bill Gates slipped a statement while speaking on the dangers of climate change and over population: "Vaccines? I love them."

His admission was made in the context of his philanthropic strategy and, as we will see, vaccines play a dominant role in his firm conviction that population reduction is an urgent priority for the survival of humanity.

Then the question is, who should be eliminated from the population? Who is elected from the public to make such decisions? The short answer is no one. Hence it is being done quietly through foundations, international agencies and private industry.

Today the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is "the most powerful charity in the world, and one of the most quietly influential international organizations of any sort."[1] The Foundation is funded to the tune of $34.6 billion plus an additional $30 billion from Warren Buffet's investments. This is almost the entire budget of the World Health Organization (WHO).

Gates has followed in the footsteps of the Rockefellers' lead to usher the New Green Revolution, an aggressive onslaught of genetically modified seeds (GMOs) to increase large scale corporate-influenced agriculture in Africa, India and elsewhere. The international GMO initiatives have devastated small cooperative farms that have served as the lifeline of food for centuries and has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of farmers. Of course nobody among the oligarchic elite, such as Gates, Rockefeller and Monsanto execs, will suffer from the consequences of this failed revolution.

However, it is vaccine research and development targeting Africa primarily, but also other developing nations, that holds center stage in his Foundation's strategic funding. During the recent 2010 World Economic Forum, Gates announced he would spend $10 billion over the next ten years on child vaccine development for poorer nations.[2] While calling this admirable might appear to be an understatement, which vaccines and which channels of funding require scrutiny in order to assess the value and motives of the Foundation's mission.

In 2000, the Gates Foundation founded the International Finance Facility for Immunization (GAVI) and that organization's Global Fund for Children's Vaccines. GAVI is a global collaboration that includes governments, the Rockefeller Foundation, the World Bank, WHO, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, UNICEF, vaccine makers, and other influential entities. All of these are zealot vaccination promoters.

The organization's mission is to vaccinate every child in Africa. Through GAVI and its various programs, an estimated 250 million children in developing countries have already been vaccinated.[3] But the Foundation itself does not perform drug and vaccine research and development. In addition to traditional grant giving, it also provides lines of credit.

For example, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative received from the Foundation a $100 million line of credit to empower the nonprofit organization to influence HIV vaccine development within the vaccine industrial complex.[4]

Over the past several years, evidence is accumulating over Gates' and his Foundations' duplicity in saying one thing and acting otherwise. For example, frequently Gates has stated his opposition to Big Tobacco and claims he refuses to invest or fund any organization and company contributing to smoking. However, a recent investigation showed that the Foundation has in fact invested in Big Tobacco for quite some time.[5] Similarly, behind his verbiage on tackling climate change and shifting to non-fossil fuel technologies at the TED conference, Gates remains a heavy investor in Big Oil, particularly Exxon-Mobile and British Petroleum—perhaps the two oil companies with the most corrupt history in recent decades.[6]

We appear, therefore, to be faced with a serious uncertainty over the public image of the very likable, mild-manner Bill Gates, who expresses repeatedly his ambition to improve the health of the developing world, and then the possibility of other ulterior motives that are contrary to saving lives.

Should we take Gates and his Foundation's word that their primary objective is to improve the health and well-being of children in poorer nations by fighting disease and illness with vaccines? Or is his vaccine agenda another ruse with a more sinister agenda?

For example, it is hard to imagine that Gates is unaware that his commitment to the Green Revolution is, in point of fact, a Green Disaster and that no GMO has lived up to its promise. Yet he simply continues his enormous funding of agricultural genetic manipulation projects.

Therefore, we believe there is sound reason that his Foundation's many international vaccine initiatives represent much more than excessively kind-hearted charity.

Over the past several years, the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet has printed a series of in-depth analysis of the Gates Foundation with disturbing revelations. In a September 2008 article, "Mis-financing Global Health: A Case for Transparency in Disbursements and Decision Making," the authors' investigation came to the conclusion that aside from excessive funding of high profile Western institutions and organizations, there was "a heavy bias in funding towards malaria and HIV/AIDS, with relatively little investment into tuberculosis, maternal and child health, and nutrition—with chronic diseases being entirely absent from its spending portfolio."[7] And a later study by Dr. David McCoy from the Center for International Health found that "the grants made by the Foundation do not reflect the burden of disease endured by those in deepest poverty."[8]

None of these findings have been covered to any extent by mainstream media nor any governing body.

No one can doubt Gates' intellectual genius and talent. Neither are we questioning his philanthropic endeavors that exceeds that of any other human being. So, then, why is his Foundation spending such wealth unwisely, and why is it ignoring far more effective and less costly solutions and practices for relieving the suffering of millions of children, women and men throughout the developing world?

In his deconstruction of Bill Gates' charitable agenda, F. William Engdahl writes,

"Vaccinating a child who then goes to drink feces-polluted river water is hardly healthy in any respect. But of course cleaning up the water and sewage systems of Africa would revolutionize the health conditions of the Continent."[9]

Far more effective would be the Foundation donating its billions for improving sanitation and hygiene, providing nutrition to the 2.6 billion people who have none, and increasing clean water sources so that 900 million global residents can have access to drinkable water (now at 1 in 3 Africans). Instead, the Foundation could be funding thousands of health clinics focusing on the chronic illnesses these populations suffer from most.[10] This is simply common sense.

"Bad water," says the Stockholm International Water Institute's director, Anders Bentell, "kills more people than HIV, malaria and war together."[11]

Spending billions of dollars to develop new vaccines and launch monumental efforts to vaccinate African children plagued with diverse infectious illnesses promises to be a fruitless enterprise while these populations continue to live in squalor.

After decades of mass vaccination programs across Africa, current vaccines have neither proven their medical effectiveness or safety nor their ability to truly enhance the quality of life of impoverished Africans.

Instead, as part of its Millennium Development Goal, the Foundation prefers to make its Rotavirus Vaccine Program to battle diarrheal diseases one of its two major focuses (in partnership with PATH, the WHO and the CDC).[12] The FDA has already announced warnings of Rotavirus vaccine' life threatening adverse effects, such as intussusception or the severe twisting of children's intestines that can lead to death.[13]

Children in developing countries, lacking sanitary living conditions and already suffering from extreme immune-deficiencies and local diseases due to malnutrition, will have their bodies further weakened after any vaccination.

As a keynote speaker at the TED 2010 conference, Gates laid out his rationale for an international effort towards global depopulation. He said,

"If we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that [projected to 9 billion people by 2050] by perhaps 10 or 15 percent."

New vaccines for depopulation? What Gates might be referring to by "new vaccines" is the creation of new generation sterilizing and/or aborting vaccines with an ingredient or genetically-engineered component that can go undetected.
Vaccines to prevent pregnancy already exist; in fact, they have been with us for a long time.

One area of vaccine research the Gates' Foundation is funding in its Grand Challenges Explorations is the use of nano-particles.[14] Such engineered vaccines, with no gold standard for long term safety and efficacy, could virtually go undetected without highly advanced and expensive technologies to identify their presence.

As early as 1968, the Rockefeller Foundation's annual report recommended anti-fertility vaccines as a viable means for lessening the human population growth rate that should be aggressively pursued.

The quandary lies in an ethical, moral and transparent means, which honor the free choice of the individual, for reducing the global birth rate. Unfortunately, past history shows that previous attempts to inoculate communities with anti-fertility vaccines have not only been unethical but covert and criminal.

And when one thinks about it, what better way to lessen population growth, in addition to reducing years of life-expectancy, than through family planning vaccination programs spearheaded by government-mandated international finance and health organizations, such as the World Bank, UNDP and WHO, and by willing governments and billionaires who are happy to help fund eugenic efforts? In addition, there are many powerful non-profit organizations, such as Save the Children and US Aid, who benefit handsomely from these multilateral institutions and rely upon their funding to carry out their demands.

An early anti-fertility trial using human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG), a hormone essential for pregnancy, in vaccines was completed in 1988 in India through a Rockefeller collaboration with India's National Institute of Immunology. The Rockefeller annual report declared success.

Yet according to Betsy Hartman, Director of Hampshire College's Population and Development Program, "although one vaccine has been tested on only 180 women in India, it is being billed there as safe, devoid of any side effects and completely reversible."[15]

Perhaps the most thoroughly-documented investigation into the covert use of anti-fertility vaccines is a 1995 report, "Are New Vaccines Laced with Birth Control Drugs," compiled by J.A. Miller, a correspondent for the pro-life missionary movement Human Life International.

In the early 1990s, the WHO (supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, the World Bank, the UN Development Programme, and the US's National Institutes of Health) undertook stealth anti-fertility initiatives under the disguise of tetanus vaccination programs. These vaccines were administered to unsuspecting and poor communities in Mexico, Nicaragua and the Philippines.[16]

The tetanus vaccines, manufactured by Connaught and Intervex in Canada, and CSL, Ltd in Australia (a leading maker of the H1N1 flu vaccine that has been implicated in statistically significant numbers of seizures and heavily supported by the Rupert Murdoch family), were laced with hCG.[17] Scientists working on the project discovered that the tetanus vaccine was an ideal vehicle for introducing hCG peptides that, when injected into a woman's body, would induce hCG antibodies, thereby preventing pregnancy. In brief, a woman's body turns on autopilot to attack her own natural production of hCG.[18]

All would have gone well for the scheme's masterminds if it were not for individuals working in local religious charities having observed some highly suspicious procedures. For example, why were only women between the ages of 15 to 45 receiving the tetanus shot and no men? And why were multiple booster shots required during the following months when a single tetanus injection is well-known to provide protection for ten years?

In the Philippines, laboratory results of vaccinated woman in almost all cases discovered the presence of hCG antibodies; lab investigations into the vaccines uncovered the presence of hCG; and a subsequent investigation found that none of the hCG-laced vaccine lots had been registered with the government's Bureau of Food and Drugs. The episode was entirely a black op, a super human stealth experiment preying upon poor innocent women.[19]

While the above is the best documented example, other less well known eugenic experiments during the 1990s using anti-fertility vaccines have been conducted in Haiti and among the Akha people in Thailand, in poorer African-American neighborhoods in Los Angeles, and among indigenous people in North and Latin America.

A 1995 BBC documentary, "The Human Laboratory," interviewed Filipino women's activist Mary Pilar Verzosa, who reported on the vaccine's adverse effects. These included fertility cycles that were "all fouled up," spontaneous bleeding and miscarriages.[20] Seemingly, women were not screened to determine whether or not they were pregnant before injections. Consequently, in addition to interfering with a woman's ability to become pregnant, the WHO was launching a clandestine experiment to observe whether the vaccine would trigger miscarriages.

No published studies exist for long-term follow-up on women receiving hCG-laced vaccines and associated severe adverse effects. Given the WHO's past record of seriously flawed misjudgments and secrecy—their recent fabrication of a level-6 H1N1 pandemic being an excellent recent example—and those of the other organizations complicit in covert vaccine operations, we should not be surprised that such studies exist.

Because the hCG hormone is involved in many other bodily functions besides pregnancy, it is likely that artificially creating hCG antibodies in a woman would result in a cascade of serious incurable health problems. The hormone plays an important role in endocrine functioning of the brain's hypothalamus. It is a known diagnostic marker for certain types of tumors. Artificially interfering in its production could potentially cause any number of different cancers. Since hCG is essential for healthy pituitary gland function, such toxic vaccines would interfere with this master gland's regulatory function of maintaining homeostatic balance, hormonal equilibrium, throughout the body's endocrine system. There can be an incalculable number of adverse conditions resulting from such a vaccine.

If used with the wrong motives, vaccines can be excellent devices for lessening lifespan. In addition, there are unanswered questions about how safe and effective vaccines actually are. For example, a child will not develop cancer or acquire a chronic autoimmune dysfunction a week or two after receiving a flu or measles injection. Yet, vaccines, especially those relying upon animal tissue to culture viruses during the manufacturing process—the influenza, the MMR, and yellow fever vaccines—are known to be highly contaminated with foreign animal viruses (including Avian Leukosis Virus and Equine Arteritis Virus), genetic fragments of such viruses, oncogenes (genes that turn normal cells cancerous), and prions (tiny proteins responsible for incurable diseases and neurological disorders in animals and humans). Public awareness of this fact appeared in transcripts from private meetings of the Center for Disease Control's Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee and the Evolving Scientific and Regulatory Perspective Workshop in 1998 and 1999, respectively, and obtained by British investigative journalist Janine Roberts.[21]

According to the committees' participants representing, "the largest public health institutions in the West," it is impossible to remove DNA contaminants from vaccines. When the question was raised whether or not vaccine DNA contamination could cause cancer or autoimmune disease, one respondent stated,

"When you consider that almost every one of these vaccines is injected right into the tissue... I think you couldn't do much more to get the DNA expressed [to get contaminating cancer-causing DNA taken up by human cells] than to inject it into a muscle in the way it's being done."[22]

Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, Chairman of the health committees in the German Parliament and the European Council, reported that Novartis was using a "nutrient solution" relying on cancer-cell lines in a bioreactor to manufacture its H1N1 vaccine. He issued warnings that adverse reactions to this kind of engineered vaccine are unknown.[23]

Bill Gates' mission to protect poorer populations from disease through mass vaccination, his sense of urgency that the global population is too large and needs to be reduced, and his deep financial and collaborative enterprises with the oligarchic elite, health agencies and multilateral organizations—with a past history of eugenic intentions and experimentation—make for a bizarre mix that raises serious questions about the truth behind his Foundation's motives.

America has a long history of eugenic science through the first half of the twentieth century—John D. Rockefeller, Margaret Sanger, Paul Popenoe, Madison Grant and others. The names of the organizations and facilities they founded or supported tells the story. Andrew Carnegie's Institute was the primary funder of the Eugenics Record Office that operated from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories. The Laboratory was closed in 1944 after the public became aware of thousands of sterilizations it oversaw.

Likewise, the Rockefellers were major funders of not only Cold Spring Harbor but also the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Eugenics, which became the center of the Nazi's extermination experiments. The Rockefellers' Population Council, with the mission to advance birth control, was first headed by Frederick Osborn, a leader in the American Eugenics Society.[24]

And there is no reason to believe America's eugenic tradition has died out, although it has mutated into what might appear to be a less malignant form compared to the days when over half of the fifty states were conducting forced sterilization on poor woman and inmates in prisons and mental institutes.

Nobody should doubt the eugenic agenda remains alive and well in America. In fact, behind the closed corridors among the global elite, it is gaining fuel. For these people, sacrificing poor people in the developing world on the altar of a distorted Manifest Destiny, and setting their own rules in modern technologies—vaccines and GMO seeds—with the potential to destroy every unborn child, is simply racism and bigotry.

Kenyon College anthropologist Ken Smail, in a 2004 World Watch article, wrote,

"That there will be large scale reduction in global human numbers over the next two or three centuries appears to be inevitable. The primary issue seems to be whether this process will be under conscious human control and (hopefully) relatively benign, or whether it will turn out to be unpredictably chaotic and (perhaps) catastrophic."[25]

The weakness in today's elites' depopulation agenda is fourfold:

1. First, it has always been the poorer, less-educated segments of humanity that should be reduced, and no one else.


2. Therefore, second, since they cannot be allowed to have a freedom of choice or vote on the matter, the elites must make this decision for them.


3. Third, their argument crumbles since it is the elites themselves that place value on one particular life as being different than another.


4. And finally, since depopulation cannot be executed transparently, it must be done through deceit and clandestine means.

So what are the lessons to be learned from this? The wealthiest elite on the planet are rarely questioned about the correctness of their actions and schemes. As long as one of these individuals says he is giving huge sums of money to a cause to end disease and suffering, we are not supposed to probe further. Rather, in the case of mainstream media, such people are to be worshiped as saviors. The oligarchic elite are so well interconnected on multiple boards of directors, clubs for the rich and powerful, think tanks, and among the high ranks of elected legislators and politicians, that it is difficult to have an open and honest debate on the merits of their actions and spending. When a Ted Turner says we should reduce the world's population by more than half, and Bill Gates suggests a 15 percent reduction, do we really understand they are following a form of eugenic genocide?

NOTES

[1] Beckett, Andy. "Inside the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation." Guardian UK. July 12, 2010.

[2] Engdahl, F. William. "Bill Gates Talks about Vaccines to Reduce Population." Financial Sense Editorials. March 4, 2010.

[3] "Gates Foundation Decade of Vaccines." The Lancet. March 2010. Vol. 10. No. 3. p. 39

[4] Beckett, Andy. Op cit.

[5] Schestowitz, Roy. "Gates Foundation Retreats After Being Exposed as Funder of Big Tobacco." Techrights.org. April 19, 2010.

[6] Schestowitz, Roy. "Bill Gates Invests Heavily in Deception about Global Warming and in Abusive Monopolies." Techrights.org. February 22, 2010.

[7] "What has the Gates Foundation Done for Global Health," The Lancet. Vol. 373, no. 9675. May 9, 2009

[8] Ibid.

[9] Engdahl, F. William. Op cit.

[10] Deen, Thailif. "Summit Failure on Water, Sanitation Would be Recipe for Disaster," Commondreams.org September 14, 2010

[11] Deen, Thailif. "Time Running Out Faster than Water, Experts Warn," IPS News. September 6, 2010

[12] GAVI Alliance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAVI_Alliance

[13] "New Rotavirus Vaccine Danger: FDA Warns as Possibly Life-Threatening for your Child" Health and Wellness. February 13, 2007

[14] Butler, Byron. "Gates Foundation donates $7.8 million to global initiatives." The Daily Tell. May 14, 2010

[15] Maessen, Jurriaan. "Rockefeller Foundation Developed Vaccines for "Mass-Scale" Fertility Reduction." Infowars. August 5, 2010.

[16] Miller, JA. "Are New Vaccines Laced with Birth Control Drugs?" Human Life International Reports, Vol. 13, No. 8, June/July 1995

[17] Centers for Disease Control. "ACIP Recommendation for Use of CSL Influenza Vaccine." CDC Press Release, August 5, 2010

[18] Miller, JA. Op cit.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Taylor, Daniel. "Vaccinate the World: Gates, Rockefeller Seek Global Population Reduction." Global Research. September 7, 2010.

[21] Gale, R, Null G. "Vaccines' Dark Inferno: What is not on Insert Labels" Global Research. September 29, 2009; also see, Roberts, Janine. Fear of the Invisible: How Scared Should We be of Viruses and Vaccines. Impact Investigative Media Productions: Bristol UK, 2009

[22] Ibid.

[23] "Does Virus Vaccine Increase the Risk of Cancer." Bild.com (Germany) September 7, 2009

[24] Taylor, Daniel. "Eugenics Moves to the Twenty-First Century," Old-Thinker News. August 27, 2007

[25] Smail, Ken. "Global Population Reduction: Confronting the Inevitable," World Watch. September/October, 2004

Bill Gates on End of Life Care (Death Panels) v. Saving Teachers' Jobs

If you want to know what the elite have in store for you, just listen to Bill Gates. Gates says that saving 10 teacher jobs is worth more than extending a human life three months.

All Voices
September 15, 2010

Bill Gates made a comment regarding decreasing the world’s population and favoring the ‘death panel’ which incited a huge outcry amongst the conservatives.

Bill Gates is the founder of Microsoft and one of the richest men on earth and is also running a foundation called ‘Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’ which provides vaccines to third world countries. So when Bill Gates made the comment of decreasing the population of the world and favoring the ‘death panel’, it came as a huge surprise for most people.

The interview of Bill Gates regarding the ‘death panel’ was taken two months back in Aspen, but it only recently came to the attention of people when some conservatives posted his video on some websites.

Bill Gates is a strong eugenicist who believes that instead of spending millions of dollars on old people who just have months to live, the money should be spent elsewhere where it can actually benefit people. These comments by Bill Gates and the ‘death panel’ have incited a huge outcry amongst the public and this is likely to have repercussions on his reputation.

Bill Gates Endorses Death Panels

Gates says end of life care is a waste of money? Will the Microsoft Billionaire use the same logic if he is sick?

Mike Francesa.com
August 9, 2010

Michael Savage is the only major media figure reporting that former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates believes that death panels are a good thing and we shouldn’t waste money on end of life care. Is Bill Gates a Fascist? First he endorses China’s right to censor its citizens and shows no corporate leadership in taking any stand against a country that abuses human rights. Now Bill Gates deems that end of life care is a waste of money.

Gates, from his billion dollar ivory tower, says saving ten teacher jobs is worth more than extending a human life three months. Has Gates seen the horrible public schools in this country? But that is not the question, the real question is what will Gates do when he is facing a major sickness? I’m sure that the billionaire Gates will spare no expense to elongate his life. You might say, well of course, he has the right to spend as much money as he wants to extend his life, he is rich. You are right, but Gates has no right to tell a middle class hard working American that he must die in order to save worthless teacher jobs.

The arrogance and cluelessness knows no bounds. Here is Gates being interviewed by Walter Isaacson in Aspen, Colorado (video above), declaring that end of life care is a waste of money and endorsing death panels:

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said Thursday that the U.S. must get medical costs under control and re-examine its funding priorities to prevent its education system from further erosion.

Gates spoke at a packed house at the Benedict Music Tent in an Aspen Ideas Festival event.

He said medical costs are dominating state and federal budgets in the form of Medicare and other payments. Fewer funds are available for education. Tuition is soaring at many public universities, pricing out many would-be students.

“The access that used to be available for the middle class is just rapidly going away,” Gates said. “That’s a trade-off that society is making because of very, very high medical costs.”

The country has demonstrated an unwillingness to question if “spending $1 million on the last three months” of a person’s life is a cost-effective direction, especially considering the same amount of money can keep 10 teachers employed.

Gates called for the nation to do a better job of examining the benefits of costly end-of-life medical care.

“That’s called the death panel and you’re not supposed to have that discussion,” Gates said, taking a jab at critics of the health care bill that Congress considered earlier this year.

But it gets even better, Gates actually believes that we (the ignorant, schmuck, serf, American idiots) should sign up with HMO scum organization Kaiser Permanente; yeah, I’m sure Gates and his family are long standing members:

He advocated more participation in HMOs such as Kaiser Permanente, but acknowledged that would be difficult to dictate. “Forcing people into HMOs, I’m told, is politically difficult,” he said.

Later Bill Gates attacks medical specialists:

In a fast-moving and broad-ranging interview with Aspen Institute President and CEO Walter Isaacson, Gates criticized the medical system for having three times as many specialists as general practitioners. That is uniquely American, he said. Germany has a one-to-one ratio of specialists to general doctors and has created one of the highest-quality and lowest-cost health care systems in the developed world, according to Gates.

In America, numerous specialists take care of “little pieces of things” and there is no incentive to keep a person healthy with preventative care. “There’s now some artificial thing where the sicker the patient is, the more money you make,” Gates said.

Someone should remind Bill Gates that America/U.S.A. has the world’s best cancer survival rates:

The data show that cancer patients live longer in the United States than anywhere else on the globe.

Overall Cancer Survival Rates. According to the survey of cancer survival rates in Europe and the United States, published recently in Lancet Oncology : 1

American women have a 63 percent chance of living at least five years after a cancer diagnosis, compared to 56 percent for European women. [See Figure I.]

American men have a five-year survival rate of 66 percent — compared to only 47 percent for European men.

Among European countries, only Sweden has an overall survival rate for men of more than 60 percent.

For women, only three European countries (Sweden, Belgium and Switzerland) have an overall survival rate of more than 60 percent.

These figures reflect the care available to all Americans, not just those with private health coverage. Great Britain, known for its 50-year-old government-run, universal health care system, fares worse than the European average: British men have a five-year survival rate of only 45 percent; women, only 53 percent.

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