> Greg Palast wrote:
>
> I bet Mr. Gates, so quick to shout "piracy!" could name two products that
> depend heavily on the lifted intellectual discoveries of others: MS-DOS and
> Windows. To make sure no one could steal from him what he had so freely
> boosted, Gates has run an international campaign to legally lock up his
> monopoly on ideas. Bill's nobody's fool. He must know that if the
> intellectual property defenses are breached, it will come from the need to
> get cheap AIDS drugs to Africa. So we see Gates putting his two cents (in his
> case, two billion) into the Africa AIDS holocaust issue. In February 2002,
> Bill and wife Melinda made the cover of Newsweek for their bighearted
> philanthropy. The grinning couple's foundation has spent hundreds of millions
> for AIDS treatment in Africa, working paw-in-claw with Merck and other Big
> Pharma corporations tied to a PR campaign that drowns out the calls of
> doctors pleading to end TRIPS restrictions. If there's any doubt where the
> Gates's hearts lie, the Wall Street Journal notes that their foundation has,
> oddly, invested over $200 million in drug company stocks. If
> this "charitable" operation eviscerates protest against the TRIPS
> thought-police and medical patents are upheld, Gates's donations could have
> the effect of killing more people than they save.
>
>         From "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" page 190

This is hate-mongering, pure and simple.  Please do not post it to this list.

-Ralph Johnson