Gates foundation investment hypocrasies

Yes. I think the fundamental issue here is that American foundations, because of tax laws, generally give away about 5% of their net assets every year. And this allows them to avoid most taxes. The other 95% is invested. It's invested in a wide range of securities, stocks, bonds. And the reason why a wide range is used is that obviously a prudent investor wants to protect their investment.

Now, the issue that we found is that the Gates Foundation established a firewall between the people who manage its investments and the people who give away its grants, and as a result, there is no coordination made so that the investments don't tend to contravene the grants and the charitable goals of the foundation. And so, as a result, what we found is that the 95% that's invested every year, in large measure, tends to go to industries, to companies that not just may be doing some harm, because, frankly, a lot of companies do harm in the world, and it's a difficult thing to police at times, but they go to companies that in many cases directly engage in activities that tend to subvert the charitable goals of the foundation, not just in the pollution angle.

But we found, for example, $1.5 billion approximately in foundation investments in pharmaceutical companies whose practices tend to price their AIDS drugs out of reach of the very people that the Gates Foundation has decided are its highest priority to help: AIDS victims in the developing world who can only afford a very meager price for AIDS drugs, but are unable to afford the drugs from companies that the Gates Foundation is making hundreds of millions of dollars in profit from.

AMY GOODMAN: Charles Piller, we have less than two minutes. And in your second piece, you begin your piece, “Gates Foundation Invests in Firms Accused of Abuses,” about a couple, Cheryl and Jeff Busby, and Ameriquest. Please quickly describe that story.

CHARLES PILLER: Yes, well, one of the highest priorities for the Gates Foundation has been service programs within the Pacific Northwest, their home. And, in particular, they've attacked homelessness and housing instability as a key goal. What we found is that, as the Gates Foundation is giving tens of millions of dollars to assisting people in unstable housing and poor people who need help and homeless people, they are also invested to the tune of well over $2 billion in companies that are in what’s called the sub-prime loan industry.

Now, this is an industry that is designed to serve people who have less-than-perfect credit and still want to be homeowners. But this industry has been rife with abuse for many years, and as a result, many of the investments are contributing to the financial well-being of the Gates Foundation and to the companies that have been implicated widely in abuses of lending that have resulted in people losing their homes, thousands and thousands of people losing their homes all throughout the Pacific Northwest and throughout the country.

The Busbys are one example of that, a poignant example because Cheryl Busby works for an agency that was given donations by the Gates Foundation, in part to counsel victims of predatory lenders, victims of the sub-prime industry. And this same -- the company that was a predator in their case, Ameriquest, was implicated as a predator in their case, is also a company that the Gates Foundation is profiting from as an investor.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there. Charles Piller, Los Angeles Times reporter -- two-part series on the Gates Foundation -- I want to thank you very much for being with us. We’ll certainly link to it at our website, democracynow.org. [part one, part two]

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/09/1455200&mode=thread&tid=25

Renee Green - World Tour

from Renee Green:
"World Tour":
Adorno on American pop culture and California
Marcel Broodthaers
p54: "some of your work uses a kind of literalism as a way of addressing concepts. ... "reading between the lines," where you would literally read between the lines, and the literalization of some ideas about color per se. ... like Bruce Nauman... but with more specifically instrumental goals.
coloured thinking... creative misreading
55:
your work often requires the viewer to look through ... lenses. it puts a lot of emphasis on the actual process of seeing
RG: power is related to seeing and vision. being able to see and name something implies a certain amount of power. I keep trying to make viewers aware of the process involved in seeing, so that it doesn't just seem self-evident. I did a lot of reading a while back around these topics--Jacqueline Rose's "Sexuality in the Field of Vision", Foucault's "Power/Knowledge",--and, very importantly, the anthology edited by Henry Louis Gates, "Race," Writing and Difference".

shifting positions... to relate to the desire to get away from a fixed point of view, not just in the literal sense of the physical place from which you view the work, but also, in a metaphorical sense, in how you see the world.
RG: my idea was that the process of actually physically piecing things together would lead people to act out, even in an unconscious way, certain ideas having to do with power, movement, and the way places and positions are designated.

58:
... It's not that I don't want to express certain ideas, or that htere isn't something to be gained in terms of understanding things having to do with African-American culture, but i think of it more in terms of a heuristic approach that is meant to spark interest in things, and pique people's curiosity,. I would just like there to be more of a multiplicity of ways that people can approach working. One of the most appealing aspects about being an artist is that you can have fun.

There's a real element of playfulness in your work. But the categories you fool around with often deal with areas which historically have been very seriously defended and contested.
RG: Right. and i would say that the whole idea of "race" is one of those categories. ... it's very limiting to always think in terms that are defined by certain ethnic, cultural positions. I work from my own subjective position, which, of course, is influenced by, among other things, being African-American as well as a woman.

... problematizing the idea of essences

Import/Export: you self consciously use an anthropological structure in this work that involves a multiple flipping of conventional expectations. you go to europe and conduct research there on their culture, but hte aspect of the culture that you're looking at turns out to be heavily dependent on African-American culture... the relationship starts to fold in on itself so much that it begins to problematize and break down some of the implied hierarchies of most cross-cultural exchanges.

... I've done a lot of text-related work in the past, and I'm interested in trying pieces that rely more on the formal aspects of the installation and the sound of ambient music, although I will also continue to use text.

Imperial Japan

He also said at the end of his sovereign reign that

The ties between Us and Our people have always stood upon mutual trust and affection and do not depend upon mere legends and myths. They are not predicated on the false conception that the Emperor is divine, and that the Japanese people are superior to other races and fated to rule the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Japan
----
Other forms of syncretism not directly related to religion are found in the modern world as well. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as cultural and/or social syncretism. Japanese culture after World War II and the moderate tendencies within Neo-Tribalism are sometimes offered as examples. The eclectic aspects of postmodernism represent an important contemporary example of cultural syncretism observable in much of the Western world. The socio-spiritual movement Ananda Marga, which originated in India in 1955, is based on a syncretic approach to the different strands of yoga, as propounded by its founder P.R. Sarkar. The stated purpose is "to help individuals achieve complete self-realization and to build a social structure in which the physical, mental and spiritual needs of all people can be fulfilled."

Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony

Gramsci's analysis suggested that prevailing cultural norms should not be viewed as "natural" or "inevitable". Rather, cultural norms - including institutions, practices, beliefs - should be investigated for their roots in domination and their implications for liberation.

Gramsci did not contend that hegemony was either monolithic or unified. Instead, hegemony was portrayed as a complex layering of social structures. Each of these structures have their own “mission” and internal logic that allows its members to behave in a way that is different from those in different structures. Yet, as with an army, each of these structures assumes the existence of other structures and by virtue of their differing missions, is able to coalesce and produce a larger structure that has a larger overall mission. This larger mission usually is not exactly the same as the mission for each smaller structure, but it assumes and subsumes them. Hegemony works in the same manner. Each person lives their life in a way that is meaningful in their immediate setting, and, to this person the different parts of society may seem to have little in common with him. Yet taken as a whole, each person’s life also contributes to the larger hegemony of the society. Diversity, variation, and free will seem to exist since most people see what they believe to be a plethora of different circumstances, but they miss the larger pattern of hegemony created by the coalescing of these circumstances. Through the existence of small and different circumstances, a larger and layered hegemony is maintained yet nor fully recognized by many of the people who live within it. (See Prison Notebooks, pp. 233-38.)

In such a layered hegemony, individual common sense, which is fragmented, is effective in helping people deal with small, everyday activities. But common sense also inhibits their ability to grasp the larger systemic nature of exploitation and hegemony. People focus on immediate concerns and problems rather than focusing upon more fundamental sources of social oppression.[1]

Although leftists may have been the primary users of this conceptual tool, the activities of organized conservative movements also draw upon the concept. This was seen, for instance, in evangelical Christian efforts to capture local school boards in the U.S. during the 1990s, and thus be able to dictate curriculum. Patrick Buchanan, in a widely discussed speech to the 1992 Republican Convention, used the term "culture war" to describe political and social struggle in the United States.

^ Stuart Hall, “The problem of ideology: Marxism without guarantees,”
---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci
Gramsci’s theory of hegemony is tied to his conception of the capitalist state, which he claims rules through force plus consent. The state is not to be understood in the narrow sense of the government; instead, Gramsci divides it between 'political society', which is the arena of political institutions and legal constitutional control, and 'civil society', which is commonly seen as the 'private' or 'non-state' sphere, including the economy. The former is the realm of force and the latter of consent. He stresses, however, that the division is purely conceptual and that the two, in reality, often overlap.

Gramsci claims that under modern capitalism, the bourgeoisie can maintain its economic control by allowing certain demands made by trade unions and mass political parties within civil society to be met by the political sphere. Thus, the bourgeoisie engages in 'passive revolution' by going beyond its immediate economic interests and allowing the forms of its hegemony to change. Gramsci posits that movements such as reformism and fascism, as well as the 'scientific management' and assembly line methods of Frederick Taylor and Henry Ford respectively, are examples of this.

democracy now excerpts

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/01/1455255
US Travelers Electronically Analyzed For Terror, Criminal Threat
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security has acknowledged the existence of a program that assigns travelers crossing US borders a computerized score rating their risk as terrorists or criminals. The risk assessments are kept on file for forty years. Travelers are not allowed to see their own ratings. The program has affected nearly every traveler crossing US borders in the last four years – including US citizens. David Sobel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said: "It's probably the most invasive system the government has yet deployed in terms of the number of people affected."
---
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/03/1459244

WAYNE BARRETT: Right. The firefighters were using the same radios that they used at the ’93 bombing, even though we found a report that was written in 1990 that said that they were already obsolete and that they were a danger to the life of firefighters. And the firefighters are still carrying those same radios eight years after the 1993 bombing.

But what we focus on -- I mean, just take the bunker, for example. It turns out we discovered memos where his top security advisors say you can't put it in the World Trade Center complex. We discovered a five-page memo from Jerry Hauer, who was the head of Emergency Management under Giuliani, that wanted it to be located in Brooklyn in the Metrotech complex. That happens to be roughly where Mike Bloomberg has since put it. It's a block away from Metrotech in downtown Brooklyn. Giuliani said, “No, I want it within walking distance of City Hall.” No one could figure out the security rationale for that. But once he said it had to be within walking distance, Jerry Hauer then said, “You can't go underground, because it’s all below the flood plane within walking distance, so you’ve got to go to a tower.” The nearest tower was the World Trade Center complex.

The 23rd floor of 7 World Trade had never been rented. It was built for an investment banking firm as a trade floor. It had extremely high ceilings. It had been laying vacant for more than ten years. The private landlord who owned that became a gigantic donor to Rudy Giuliani, threw two big fundraising events on his yacht for it. They move into that floor, and it is a disaster on that day. We quote people from John Farmer, who was the staff attorney who wrote the chapter that deals with the city's response for the 9/11 Commission, as saying that if they had had a functioning command center that day, it would have saved the lives of many firefighters and police officers and rescuers. They had no functioning command center. They had no functioning command center, because of terrible decisions that were made.

Even Howard Safer, who was the police commissioner appointed by Giuliani, who goes way back with Giuliani to his federal days as a prosecutor, even Howard Safer warned him. We quote from a meeting of the cabinet, in which he called it in 1997. He said, “You can't put it in ground zero.” He called it “ground zero” then because it had already been bombed. Rudy just brushed aside all of this advice, was determined to put it there, put it there, and it had dire, even deadly, consequences that day. So that's just one example of many that we raise in the book.

KEVIN KEATING: ...You know, Giuliani, we quote the head of -- his own commissioner from the Department of Design and Construction, who ran the ground zero cleanup. He said he dealt with Giuliani every day, that Giuliani only asked him one question: how much debris did you remove yesterday? Are we on schedule? Are we ahead of schedule? All he cared about, even though the fires were still burning and spewing toxins in the air, all he cared about was the public relations. I mean, obviously, it's five years later. Nothing’s been built there. What was the rush? The public relations question of making it look like they were efficiently cleaning up the site. And the consequences have been dire.
---

democracy now excerpts

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/01/1455255
US Travelers Electronically Analyzed For Terror, Criminal Threat
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security has acknowledged the existence of a program that assigns travelers crossing US borders a computerized score rating their risk as terrorists or criminals. The risk assessments are kept on file for forty years. Travelers are not allowed to see their own ratings. The program has affected nearly every traveler crossing US borders in the last four years – including US citizens. David Sobel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said: "It's probably the most invasive system the government has yet deployed in terms of the number of people affected."
---
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/03/1459244

WAYNE BARRETT: Right. The firefighters were using the same radios that they used at the ’93 bombing, even though we found a report that was written in 1990 that said that they were already obsolete and that they were a danger to the life of firefighters. And the firefighters are still carrying those same radios eight years after the 1993 bombing.

But what we focus on -- I mean, just take the bunker, for example. It turns out we discovered memos where his top security advisors say you can't put it in the World Trade Center complex. We discovered a five-page memo from Jerry Hauer, who was the head of Emergency Management under Giuliani, that wanted it to be located in Brooklyn in the Metrotech complex. That happens to be roughly where Mike Bloomberg has since put it. It's a block away from Metrotech in downtown Brooklyn. Giuliani said, “No, I want it within walking distance of City Hall.” No one could figure out the security rationale for that. But once he said it had to be within walking distance, Jerry Hauer then said, “You can't go underground, because it’s all below the flood plane within walking distance, so you’ve got to go to a tower.” The nearest tower was the World Trade Center complex.

The 23rd floor of 7 World Trade had never been rented. It was built for an investment banking firm as a trade floor. It had extremely high ceilings. It had been laying vacant for more than ten years. The private landlord who owned that became a gigantic donor to Rudy Giuliani, threw two big fundraising events on his yacht for it. They move into that floor, and it is a disaster on that day. We quote people from John Farmer, who was the staff attorney who wrote the chapter that deals with the city's response for the 9/11 Commission, as saying that if they had had a functioning command center that day, it would have saved the lives of many firefighters and police officers and rescuers. They had no functioning command center. They had no functioning command center, because of terrible decisions that were made.

Even Howard Safer, who was the police commissioner appointed by Giuliani, who goes way back with Giuliani to his federal days as a prosecutor, even Howard Safer warned him. We quote from a meeting of the cabinet, in which he called it in 1997. He said, “You can't put it in ground zero.” He called it “ground zero” then because it had already been bombed. Rudy just brushed aside all of this advice, was determined to put it there, put it there, and it had dire, even deadly, consequences that day. So that's just one example of many that we raise in the book.

KEVIN KEATING: ...You know, Giuliani, we quote the head of -- his own commissioner from the Department of Design and Construction, who ran the ground zero cleanup. He said he dealt with Giuliani every day, that Giuliani only asked him one question: how much debris did you remove yesterday? Are we on schedule? Are we ahead of schedule? All he cared about, even though the fires were still burning and spewing toxins in the air, all he cared about was the public relations. I mean, obviously, it's five years later. Nothing’s been built there. What was the rush? The public relations question of making it look like they were efficiently cleaning up the site. And the consequences have been dire.
---