Rockefeller Foundation

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The Rockefeller Foundation (RF) operates out of New York City and was first established by John D. Rockefeller, Sr. in 1913. The Rockefellers are an American industrial, banking and political family dynasty. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, John D., Sr. (1839-1937) and his brother William Rockefeller (1841-1922) amassed the largest private fortune in history, primarily through Standard Oil. [1] The family is also known for its long association with and financial interest in the Chase Manhattan Bank, now JP Morgan Chase.[2] See also David Rockefeller.

Overview

On May 14, 1913, New York Governor William Sulzer approved the charter for the foundation. That year, RF was endowed with installments totaling approximately $250 million dollars. RF's International Health Division expanded the work of the Sanitary Commission worldwide and established a pattern for modern public health services. The RF built and endowed the world's first School of Hygiene and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University and spent another 25 million on institutions in the U.S. and 21 other countries. RF has been involved in international food production and funding for the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. RF helped in founding the Social Science Research Council. Other institutions RF funds are National Bureau of Economic Research, the Brookings Institution, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Russian Institute at Columbia University. RF also helped to establish the Stratford Shakespearean Festival in Ontario, Canada; the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut; Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.; Karamu House in Cleveland and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York. The market value for RF's endowment was $3.1 billion in the fiscal year ending in 2001.

History of pharmaceutical interests

In the early half of the 20th century, petrochemical giants organized a coup on the medical research facilities, hospitals and universities. The Rockefeller family sponsored research and donated sums to universities and medical schools which had drug based research. They further extended this policy to foreign universities and medical schools where research was drug based through their "International Education Board". Establishments and research which were were not drug based were refused funding and soon dissolved in favor of the lucrative pharmaceutical industry. In 1939 a "Drug Trust" alliance was formed by the Rockefeller empire and the German chemical company IG Farben (Bayer). After World War Two, IG Farben was dismantled but later emerged as separate corporations within the alliance. Well known companies included General Mills, Kellogg, Nestle, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Procter and Gamble, Roche and Hoechst (Sanofi-Aventis). The Rockefeller empire, in tandem with Chase Manhattan Bank (now JP Morgan Chase), owns over half of the pharmaceutical interests in the United States. It is the largest drug manufacturing combine in the world. Since WWII, the pharmaceutical industry has steadily netted increasing profits to become the world's second largest manufacturing industry; [3], [4] after the arms industry.

The Rockefeller Foundation was originally set up in 1904 as the General Education Fund. The RF was later formed in 1910 and issued a charter in 1913 with the help of Rockefeller millions. Subsequently, the foundation placed it's own "nominees" in federal health agencies and set the stage for the "reeducation" of the public. A compilation of magazine advertising reveals that as far back as 1948, larger American drug companies spent a total sum of $1,104,224,374 for advertising. Of this sum, Rockefeller-Morgan interests (which went entirely to Rockefeller after Morgan's death) controlled about 80%. [5] See also AMA.

IG Farben & Auschwitz

Auschwitz was the largest mass extermination factory in human history. However, few people are aware that Auschwitz was a 100% subsidiary of IG Farben. On April 14, 1941, in Ludwigshafen, Otto Armbrust, the IG Farben board member responsible for the Auschwitz project, stated to board colleagues:

"our new friendship with the SS is a blessing. We have determined all measures integrating the concentration camps to benefit our company."

Thousands of prisoners died during human experiments, drug and vaccine testing. Before longtime Bayer employee and SS Auschwitz doctor Helmut Vetter was executed for administering fatal infections, he wrote to his bosses at Bayer headquarters:

"I have thrown myself into my work wholeheartedly. Especially as I have the opportunity to test our new preparations. I feel like I am in paradise."

After WWII, IG Farben attempted to shake its abominable image through corporate restructuring and renaming. So great has been their success that the public has no idea that it many of the men responsible for such atrocities, were able to carry on their work even after the collapse of the Nazi regime. Namely, a medical paradigm that relies almost exclusively highly toxic drugs. Such men were in control of the large chemical and pharmaceutical companies, both well before and after Hitler. The Nuremberg Tribunal convicted 24 IG Farben board members and executives on the basis of mass murder, slavery and other crimes. Incredibly, most of them had been released by 1951 and continued to consult with German corporations. The Nuremberg Tribunal dissolved IG Farben into Bayer, Hoechst and BASF, each company 20 times as large as IG Farben in 1944. For almost three decades after WWII, BASF, Bayer and Hoechst (Aventis) filled their highest position, chairman of the board, with former members of the Nazi regime. Bayer has been sued by survivors of medical experiments such as Eva Kor who, along with her sister, survived experiments at the hands of Dr. Josef Mengele.[6] See also Bayer.

History of agribusiness interests

American Farm Bureau

The myth that American Farm Bureau (AFBF) represents the interests of farmers is longstanding, though long debunked. In his 1971 book, Dollar Harvest: The Story of the Farm Bureau, Samuel Berger argued that the AFBF was:

"quietly and systematically amassing one of the largest business networks in America, while turning its back on the deepening crisis of the farmers whom it supposedly represents."

The AFBF is controlled from the top and its leadership is self-perpetuating, which is how it was designed. It was founded in the early 1900s by the New York Chamber of Commerce and funded by the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts via the Chicago Board of Trade. [7], The Farm Bureau was designed to counter the nonpartisan, populist farm movement that was emerging at the time. [8] See also American Farm Bureau.

The "Green Revolution"

A new look at international intervention came during the Indian famine of ‘65 and ‘66; the most well advertised famine to date and a major boost for RF's population control campaign. Since the Chinese Revolution, India had been the bastion of the “free (enterprise) world.” However, western businessmen had long worried over its "neutralism”, “socialism” and economic restrictions on foreigners. That ended in 1958, when India experienced a foreign exchange crisis. The World Bank intervened with the “Aid India Club” and one billion dollars a year in aid. International investors like RF and the Ford Foundation, immediately seized the opportunity. The Ford Foundation stepped in with a “food crisis” team, pushing agricultural spending at the expense of housing and social services. Undersecretary of Commerce Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr., led a delegation of executives to New Delhi for the purpose of "persuading the government to adopt policies more attractive to potential investors". Rockefeller’s Jersey Standard wanted price and distribution restrictions lifted on their Bombay fertilizer plant. Petroleum producers lobbied to set up fertilizer plants to utilize naphtha, an otherwise useless petroleum by-product. The Ford and Rockefeller foundations also wanted to expand the use of their new high yield seeds, deliberately bred for large fertilizer and pesticide inputs.[9]

The "Second Green Revolution"

Beginning in the first decade of the 2000s, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Gates Foundation together began funding efforts for a "Second Green Revolution." The Rockefeller Foundation provided grants to this effort as follows:[10]

  • Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa:
    • January 2007: $50,000,000
    • December 2007: $46,463
    • January 2008: $15,000,000
    • January 2008: $2,000,000
    • October 2011: $5,000,000
    • Total: $72,046,463
  • Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CITA): $74,750 in July 2007 "for use by its Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility Institute toward the costs of a symposium, "Innovations as Key to the Green Revolution in Africa: Exploring the Scientific Facts," to be held in Arusha, Tanzania, September 2007."
  • Columbia University:
    • February 2008: $368,600 "for use by its Earth Institute in support of the meeting, "Scaling up the Global Financing of an African Green Revolution," to be held at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center, Italy, February 2008."
    • September 2008: $140,300 "for use by its School of International Relations and Public Affairs to document the root causes that led to the post-election crisis in Kenya in early 2007, the mediation process that installed a coalition government and brought the conflict to an end, and the longer-term actions taken to address the underlying causes of the crisis."
  • International Fertilizer Development Center: $246,400 in January 2007 "toward the costs of facilitating the implementation of the "Abuja Declaration on Fertilizers for the African Green Revolution," a twelve-point plan to remedy the deficit in fertilizer use throughout Africa, by providing technical assistance to the New Partnership for Africa's Development and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa for their work in soil health."
  • International Water Management Institute: $994,537 in January 2009 "in support of assessing the availability and sustainability of groundwater resources in sub-Saharan African countries and, where appropriate, developing these resources to provide greater food security and enhance agricultural development."
  • Meridian Institute: $100,000 in November 2010 "toward the costs of launching an Initiative on Food and Agriculture Policy (IFAP), an effort to develop a donor coalition to examine opportunities where U.S. farm, food and climate change policy reforms could help break cycles of hunger in developing countries."
  • Pamoja Media East Africa Limited: $89,950 in November 2010 "in support of an online and mobile social networking platform to build agricultural capacity among a new generation of farmers in Kenya."
  • Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture, Limited: $99,000 in October 2010 "in support of an event to build capacity for African tertiary institutions to utilize foresight methods and techniques to plan for training Africa’s agriculture sector in the near- and long-term, to be held at the Ministerial Conference on Higher Education in Africa, Uganda, November 2010"
  • Salzburg Global Seminar, Inc.: $50,000 in January 2008 "toward the costs of a conference to help stimulate and guide new investments in African agricultural development, to be held in Salzburg, Austria, spring 2008."

Population: Rockefeller family plan

In of June 1952, John D. Rockefeller III, father of four and chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation, hosted a select conference on population in Colonial Williamsburg, restored to its pre-Revolutionary beauty by the RF. After two and a half days, 30 eminent conservationists, public health experts, Planned Parenthood leaders, agriculturalists, demographers and social scientists formed a group which described itself as “a coordinating and catalytic agent in the broad field of population". The group was christened "The Population Council" by John D III, who also appointed himself its first president. [11]

Trustees (2023)

Board of trustees (2020)

2006

Source

1980

Executive Committee 1980

Alternatives

Finance Committee

Alternatives

Source pdf

=Dec 1979

1975

April 1969

1955

1955 Annual Report

Trustees

Upper-Class Members

  • Barry Bingham - Middlesex School, Harvard University) - Publisher of the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Louisville Times. Heir to a Standard Oil fortune. He is an Episcopalian, a Democrat, and like many upper-class Southerners, a listee in the Washington Social Register.
  • Lloyd D. Brace (SR, Boston) - Boston banker who sits on many corporate boards.
  • Arthur Amory Houghton, Jr. (SR, NY) - President of Corning Glass. Director of New York Life Insurance and U.S. Steel, among others.
  • John R. Kimberly (Phillips Andover, MIT) - Inherited the Kimberly-Clark. Sits on the boards of Northwestern Mutual Life, First National City Bank of New York, Corning Glass, Lawrence College and the Episcopalian Church Foundation. President and chairman of the family firm.
  • Lord Franks of Headington - Chairman, Lloyd’s Bank, Ltd., London.
  • John D. Rockefeller III (SR, NY) - Specializes in cultural matters. As Chairman, he has a firm grip on its activities. Other trustees come and go; he does not. President of the Japanese Society, the Asia Society and the Council on Economic and Cultural Affairs. Chairman of the National Council of the United Negro College Fund.
  • Thomas I. Watson, Jr. (SR, NY) - Head of IBM; director of Bankers Trust, Time, Inc., Cal Tech, and Brown University.
  • William B. Wood, Jr. (SR, Baltimore) - Vice-president of Johns Hopkins.

Representatives from Upper-Class Businesses

Others

  • Ralph Bunche (AB, UCLA; Ph.D., Harvard) - One of the nation’s most prominent African American citizens. A professor before he became a United Nations official, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950.
  • Lowell T. Coggeshall - formerly a research physician with the foundation, is a dean at the Rockefeller-founded University of Chicago, and a director of Commonwealth Edison of Chicago.
  • John S. Dickey - President of Dartmouth.
  • Lee A. DuBridge - President of Cal Tech.
  • Robert F. Goheen - President of Princeton University.
  • Clifford M. Hardin - President of the University of Nebraska.
  • I. George Harrar - Former professor & expert on plant pathology. Foundation’s director for agriculture as well as its president.
  • Theodore Hesburgh - President of Notre Dame University.
  • Clark Kerr former president of University of California.

Articles & sources

Sourcewatch articles

References

  1. World's largest private fortune - see Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., London: Warner Books, 1998. (p.370)
  2. Rockefeller Family, Wikipedia, accessed October 2009
  3. Ivan Fraser, Mark Beeston The Pharmaceutical Racket, Biblioteca Plaeyades, accessed April 2010
  4. A Short Curriculum Vitae of I.G. Farben, Biblioteca Plaeyades, accessed October 2009
  5. Hans Reusch The Truth About the Rockefeller Drug Empire: The Drug Story, CIVIS Foundation Report number 15, Fall-Winter 1993
  6. Mark Sircus Pharmaceutical Terrorism: The Backbone of Modern Medicine, rawfoodinfo.com, accessed March 2010
  7. A.V. Krebbs, Corporate Reapers: The Book of Agribusiness, February 1992
  8. Scotty Johnson, Sam Husseini Right-Wing Business in Farmer's Overalls, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, September/October 2000
  9. Steve Weissman Why The Population Bomb Is a Rockefeller Baby, Eco-Catastrophe , pg. 27-41, Ramparts, 1970
  10. Grant Search, Accessed March 28, 2012.
  11. Steve Weissman Why The Population Bomb Is a Rockefeller Baby, Eco-Catastrophe , pg. 27-41, Ramparts, 1970
  12. Rockefeller Foundation Trustees, organizational web page, accessed Marcg 5, 2023.
  13. Rockefeller Foundation Trustees, organizational web page, accessed June 4, 2020.

External articles

External resources

Books