- Bring back Jayson Blair! The New York Times has eliminated
the scourge of plagiarized journalism by eliminating journalism altogether
from its front page. Check this Sunday's edition: "Bill Gates is no
ordinary philanthropist," gushes a Times reporter named Stephanie
Strom, re-writing one of the digital diva's self-loving press releases.
Gates has saved 100,000 lives by providing vaccines to Africans, gushes
Stephanie, according to someone on the payroll of Bill Gates. And he's
making access to drugs for Africans, especially for AIDS victims, "cheaper
and easier." Stephanie knows because she asked Bill Gates himself!
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- Then we get to the real point of this journalistic Lewinsky:
"Those who think of Mr. Gates as a ruthless billionaire monopolist
may find it hard to reconcile that image with one of a humorously self-deprecating
philanthropist."
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- Actually, that's not hard at all.
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- Stephanie, let me let you in on a little secret about
Bill and Melinda Gates so-called "Foundation." Gate's demi-trillionaire
status is based on a nasty little monopoly-protecting trade treaty called
"TRIPS" - the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights rules
of the World Trade Organization. TRIPS gives Gates a hammerlock on computer
operating systems worldwide, legally granting him the kind of monopoly
the Robber Barons of yore could only dream of. But TRIPS, the rule which
helps Gates rule, also bars African governments from buying AIDS, malaria
and tuberculosis medicine at cheap market prices.
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- Example: in June 2000, at the urging of Big Pharma, Bill
Clinton threatened trade sanctions against Argentina for that nation's
daring to offer low-cost drugs to Southern Africa.
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- Gates knows darn well that "intellectual property
rights" laws such as TRIPS - which keep him and Melinda richer than
Saddam and the Mafia combined - are under attack by Nelson Mandela and
front-line doctors trying to get cut-rate drugs to the 23 million
Africans sick with the AIDS virus. Gate's brilliant and self-serving solution:
he's spending an itsy-bitsy part of his monopoly profits (the $6 billion
spent by Gates' foundation is less than 2% of his net worth) to buy some
drugs for a fraction of the dying. The bully billionaire's "philanthropic"
organization is currently working paw-in-claw with the big pharmaceutical
companies in support of the blockade on cheap drug shipments.
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- Gates' game is given away by the fact that his Foundation
has invested $200 million in the very drug companies stopping the shipment
of low-cost AIDS drugs to Africa.
-
- Gates says his plan is to reach one million people with
medicine by the end of the decade. Another way to read it: he's locking
in a trade system that will effectively block the delivery of medicine
to over 20 million.
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- The computer magnate's scheme has a powerful ally. "The
president could have been reading from a script prepared by Mr. Gates,"
enthuses the Times' cub reporter, referring to Mr. Bush's AIDS plan offered
up this week to skeptical Africans. The US press does not understand why
Africans don't jump for Bush's generous handout. None note that the money
held out to the continent's desperate nations has strings attached or,
more accurately, chains and manacles. The billions offered are mostly loans
at full interest which may be used only to buy patent drugs from US companies
at a price several times that available from other nations. What Africans
want, an end to the devastating tyranny of TRIPS and other trade rules,
is dismissed by the Liberator of Baghdad.
- We are all serfs on Microsoft's and Big Pharma's 'intellectual
property.' If Gates' fake philanthropy eviscerates the movement to free
Africans from the tyranny of TRIPS, then Bill and Melinda's donations could
have the effect of killing more Africans than then even their PR agents
claim they have saved. And for our own Republic, we can only hope that
when the bully-boy billionaire injects his next wad of loot into the Bush
political campaign, he uses a condom.
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- PRESIDENT TOP GUN: AFFIRMATIVELY MISSING IN ACTION
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- Wednesday July 9, 2003
-
-
- Note: It's getting mighty expensive replacing every television
I throw through the window when Mr. O'Reilly appears. And ripping up the
New York Times leaves me without the news I need to pick up after Pluto,
my retriever. There's only one thing to do: write the darn news myself.
I am, I've heard, a journalist - but it's only a rumor in the USA where
my reports for BBC Television and the Guardian papers are stopped by the
electronic Berlin Wall. So this missive today inaugurates Greg Palast's
Radio Free America, a web log of samizdat rants, raves and most important,
hard-core must-know facts from my investigative stories appearing abroad.
Three times a week at www.gregpalast.com you'll find the news not in your
news.
-
-
- And here's a taste, from the files of BBC Television's
just-broadcast one-hour special, "Bush Family Fortunes."
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-
- President Top Gun: Affirmatively Missing in Action
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- Forty-eight hours before ordering our troops into Iraq,
our President told us, "There's no certainty in war but the certainty
of sacrifice." For most of us, yes, but not, however, if your name
is 'Bush.' According to discomforting information my BBC investigative
team reported last week. In 1968, former Congressman George Herbert Walker
Bush of Texas, fresh from voting to send other men's sons to Vietnam, enlisted
his own son in a very special affirmative action program, the 'champagne'
unit of the Texas Air National Guard. There, Top Gun fighter pilot George
W was assigned the dangerous job of protecting Houston from Vietcong air
attack.
-
-
- BBC thought it worth a look into our Commander-in-Chief's
Vietnam war record after the White House staged our President's dramatic
landing by fighter jet on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abe Lincoln
to announce our victory over Iraq. Hey, Churchill never did that. (And
kudos to Tom Brokaw and the other US network performers for maintaining
their patriotically solemn expressions -- even when our President, unlike
experienced flyers, kept his parachute clips fastened under his crotch,
making him look a little less like Tom Cruise and more like that first
chimp in space.)
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-
- In 1968, to qualify for the single available pilot spot
in the Air Guard, young George took a test. He scored, out of a possible
100, only 25. (Word is that the chimp scored 26.) How then, did our future
President - opponent of affirmative action, who believes no one should
get their post except through merit -- leap over thousands of other applicants
and cinch the get-out-of-'Nam post?
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-
- Here's what you won't see on US TV: Years back I got
my hands on a copy of a document languishing in Justice Department files
in Austin, Texas. In it, a tipster fingers two political friends of Bush
Senior who, the source claimed, made the call to get young Bush out of
the war and into the cockpit at the Air Guard. But the Feds could not act
without corroboration. Now we have it. To the BBC crew, one of those named
confessed to making the call - at Bush Senior's request - to help George
W dodge the draft. (I've posted the letter at http://www.gregpalast.com/ulf/documents/draftdodgeblanked.jpg).
-
-
- Look, I don't care if President Bush cowered and ran
from Vietnam. I sure as hell didn't volunteer but then, my daddy didn't
send someone else in my place. And I don't march around with parachute
clips around my gonads talking about war and sacrifice.
-
-
- But what the heck, Bush's supporters respond that the
man did at least he 'serve his country' in the Air Guard. Or did he? Questions
have been raised over the years about whether the younger George, having
nailed the cushy pilot seat, failed to report for duty. On camera, I spoke
with Texas cattle rancher Bill Burkett, formerly a Lieutenant Colonel in
the air guard. Seems that Burkett was in the office of the Guard's Adjutant
General when a call came in from then-Governor George W. Bush's office.
As is normal procedure, the call was put on the speaker box, but the request
was not so normal. The Governor's office was sending over an official biographer
and the Governor's minions wanted to make sure the files did not contain
not-so-heroic info. Burkett told me:
-
-
- "I was in the General's office, General Daniel James
. He gets a telephone call from Joe Albaugh, who was the Governor's chief
of staff, and Dan Bartlett on the voice box and they wanted General James
to assemble all of the Governor's files, that [Karen Hughes, Bush's aide]
was going to write a book. But Joe told General James, 'Make sure there's
not anything in there that'll embarrass the Governor.'"
-
-
- And there wouldn't be. Burkett asked if the general's
staff really intended to purge the files; and sure enough, as evidence
of the affirmative reply, he was shown the piles of pay and pension records
in the garbage pails destined for the shredders. Colonel Burkett did not
run off with those files so we can only conclude this: the only evidence
that Bush showed up for duty during the war is now missing. Military pay
records are public records - and now they are conveniently unavailable.
-
-
- By the way, the White House, where Messrs. Albaugh, Bartlett
and, of course, Mr. Bush, work, turned down BBC's offer to deny the charges
of the draft-dodge fix and the purging of Dubya's files.
-
-
- That's far from the end of the story. There are only
two men alive today (outside the Bush family) who knew exactly how George
Bush ducked the draft. Both men became high-powered Texas lobbyists. To
an influence peddler, having damning information on a sitting governor
is worth it's weight in gold - or, more precisely, there's a value in keeping
the info secret. One of the lobbyists, former Texas Lt. Governor Ben Barnes,
appears to have made lucrative use of his knowledge of our President's
slithering out of the draft as a lever to obtain a multi-billion dollar
contract for a client. The happy client paid Barnes, the keeper of Governor
Bush's secret, a fee of over $23 million. Barnes, not surprisingly, denies
that Bush took care of his client in return for Barnes' silence. However,
confronted with the evidence, the former Lt. Governor now admits to helping
the young George stay out of Vietnam.
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- For the full story of our president's war years and the
$23 million payment, read the title chapter of The Best Democracy Money
Can Buy, nominated last month by the California State University's for
a Project Censored Award - and excerpted in this month's Hustler Magazine.
(To read the story with less lubricated illustrations, go to http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=233&row=1.)
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- This week, on July 6, George W. Bush turned 57. William
White was born the same day in 1946. I mention this because, if you're
old enough, you'd remember that young men were drafted for Vietnam based
on a grim lottery - if your birthday was picked out of a hat, you went.
I got White's name off a black wall in Washington. He went to Vietnam when
George W went to the Air Guard in Houston. White never came back. Happy
birthday, Mr. President.
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- Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller,
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Penguin 2003). Read his comments and
view his reports for BBC TV at www.GregPalast.com
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