Health Misinformation Part 2 - The Rockefeller Foundation and Its Proposal to Destroy Health Disinformation

If we are to believe the mainstream media and its owners, over the past few years, we have been subjected to a nonstop diet of disinformation.  Various organizations, governments and social media companies have taken steps to ensure that we are weaned off of the steady diet of lies that are being fed to us, particularly during the Trump era and even more so during the current COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine rollout.  In Part 1 of this two part posting, we looked at how the Biden Administration was leading the war against health disinformation.  Now, let's look at a new and highly influential player to the "disinformation game" which has pretty much sat on the sidelines until now, at least as far as the public is concerned.

  

Here is a recent announcement from the Rockefeller Foundation:

 

In case you aren't aware of the foundation, here is what The Rockefeller Foundation has to say about itself:

 

 

The Foundation was founded in 1913 as a philanthropic endeavour of Standard Oil billionaire John D. Rockefeller Sr.  According to Influence Watch, The Rockefeller Foundation is:

 

"...a major funder of liberal advocacy and public policy efforts, providing major support to New America, a left-of-center think tank; the Urban Institute, a left-of-center hybrid civil rights group and policy advocacy organization; and the Funders Committee on Civic Participation, a project coordinating left-of-center advocacy on Census and electoral issues, among other left-of-center interests."

 

What I find particularly interesting about the Foundation, particularly during the rollout of the incompletely tested COVID-19 vaccines and the associated subtext of population control, is this:

 

"The Rockefeller Foundation’s interest in population control programs is credited to the interests of John D. Rockefeller, III, grandson of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.  In 1952, Rockefeller convened 31 experts at Williamsburg, Virginia to create the Population Council, an advocacy group targeting supposed world overpopulation. Rockefeller funded the council’s budget from his personal fortune in its early years, while the Rockefeller Foundation began funding it from the late 1950s onward.

 

Many of the members of the Population Council were eugenicists.  Historian Linda Gordon counted six of the ten members of the council’s medical and scientific boards as having been associated with the eugenics movement.  Warren Weaver, the delegate to the Williamsburg Conference from the Rockefeller Foundation, said that “I will be blunt…We are talking about population from the viewpoint of Western Protestant philosophy,” highlighting the anti-Catholicism of some attendees. 

 

The Rockefeller Foundation continued to fund population control activities into the 1970s, but its efforts were overshadowed by far larger efforts by the Ford Foundation.  In addition, Dean Rusk, who served as Rockefeller Foundation president in the 1950s, led an effort to dramatically expand federal population control funds when he served as Secretary of State in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations."

  

To get a further sense of the Foundation's raison d'etre, here is a partial list of their major grant recipients:

 

By the 21st century, the Rockefeller Foundation had become a pillar of the liberal philanthropic establishment. Among the liberal groups receiving the largest share of Rockefeller Foundation funds through 2011 were the Urban Institute, which received $11.9 million; the New America Foundation (now New America), which received $11.3 million; PolicyLink, which received $8.8 million between 2000-2011; and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which received $7.5 million.

 

The Rockefeller Foundation supports strict government control of development and zoning, including restrictions on farming. Rockefeller grants pushing these so-called “smart growth” regulations through 2011 were directed to Living Cities, which received $16.7 million; the Brookings Institution, which received $14.7 million; and Smart Growth America, which received $9.7 million.

 

Another group supported by the Rockefeller Foundation was “Imagining America,” a coalition of colleges engaged in left-wing curriculum development. (The consortium’s 2017 conference addressed such topics as “demystifying environmental racism,” “silk-screening as a political movement,” “equity, social justice, and inclusion in the age of white supremacy,” “feminist pedagogies and participatory media,” and “sanctuary, solidarity, and resistance.”) “Imagining America” is not a nonprofit, but a “project” currently housed at Syracuse University. Rockefeller Foundation grants to support the group went to the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and to the University of Michigan.

 

Along with over 70 other donors, including the Ford, MacArthur, Knight, and Kellogg Foundations and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Rockefeller Foundation contributed $3.2 million from 2001-2015 to the Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation, a project of NEO Philanthropies. The committee has three “action funds” designed to support immigrants’ rights, reform state juvenile justice laws, and support “community-directed efforts working to organize educational excellence, equality, and opportunities for every child in low-income communities.”  Because of IRS restrictions against electoral interference by 501(c)(3) charities, these “action funds” claim to be nonpartisan."

 

The Foundation is also closely linked to the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton family.  Its current president, Rajiv Shah, served in the Obama Administration as Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and also worked for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (how surprising is that?) as shown here:

With that background, let's go back to the recent announcement by The Rockefeller Foundation.  In response to the Surgeon General's Advisory on this issue:

 

Perhaps if governments and politicians didn't make a habit of lying to voters, we would be able to trust their word on health issues, minimizing the likelihood of "health misinformation".

In response to the Surgeon General's announcement, here is what The Rockefeller Foundation had to say:

 

"The Rockefeller Foundation is announcing $13.5 million in new funding to strengthen Covid-19 response efforts in the U.S., Africa, India, and Latin America to counter health mis- and disinformation – confusing, inaccurate, and harmful information that spreads at an unprecedented speed and scale and threatens the health and wellbeing of communities around the world. The announcement responds immediately to Confronting Health Misinformation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on Building a Healthy Information Environment, which calls for a “whole-of-society” effort so that people around the world know what to do—and trust the sources they hear from—during a public health emergency.

 

“By identifying mis- and disinformation as a challenge to our collective health, the Surgeon General’s guidance reinforces The Rockefeller Foundation’s role in investing in data-driven public health interventions to meet the unique challenges of today’s media environment,” said Bruce Gellin, Chief of Global Public Health Strategy at The Rockefeller Foundation."

 

The funds will be used for the following:

 

"The funding will support the design and evaluation of interventions, tools, and methods to build trust in Covid-19 vaccination efforts and counter inaccurate information, and research to understand how inaccurate health information impacts online and offline behaviors, the true cost of mis- and disinformation on health and economic outcomes, and what strategies might be most effective to counter and manage inaccurate and harmful information from malicious sources. Funded projects will provide a foundation for modern information and communication networks that better serve people and are better prepared to encourage actions and behaviors essential to public health response efforts. Detailed information is slated to be released by the end of 2021."

 

This program builds on The Rockefeller Foundation's Achieving Vaccine Equity program as shown here:

 

...and here:

The Foundation has a significant interest in vaccination as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic as shown here:

 

...and here where the Foundation links COVID-19 vaccines to sustainable economic growth, something that falls under the purview of the World Economic Forum:

 

Here is a quote from the vaccination and stable growth report:

 

"There are moments in history that call for bold and unconventional steps. We are at such a moment right now.

 

To date, COVID has killed millions and undermined life for billions. An insufficient and inequitable response to the pandemic risks dividing the world in two. Advanced economies, with fiscal and monetary stim- ulus and early access to vaccines, can hope to move beyond the worst of the pandemic later this year. Meanwhile, developing economies, with less fiscal space and access to vaccines and future treatments, may be mired in the pandemic for years.

 

Fortunately, the world has the means and the mechanisms to end this pandemic and assure a broad, equitable, and sustainable global recovery. It is imperative we come together now to take those steps to put Covid-19 behind us and protect the most vulnerable and the planet itself. Not doing so endangers us all. Current vaccination plans and the funding behind them are simply not enough to protect us all and instead, makes it more likely that unchecked, even more dangerous variants will emerge that know no borders.

 

With this action plan we focus on the most pressing need – a financing strategy to stop the pandemic

by the end of 2022 by vaccinating up to 70 percent of developing countries’ populations. In this paper, we lay out the details for leveraging a large issuance and reallocation of International Monetary Fund (IMF) Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) to make this happen.

 

But we cannot stop there. Covid-19 has delivered a once-in-a-century shock to global health, global economic well-being, and global development."

 

Doesn't that sound like this?

 

"COVID-19 lockdowns may be gradually easing, but anxiety about the world’s social and economic prospects is only intensifying. There is good reason to worry: a sharp economic downturn has already begun, and we could be facing the worst depression since the 1930s. But, while this outcome is likely, it is not unavoidable.

 

To achieve a better outcome, the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a “Great Reset” of capitalism."

 

That's a quote from this man:

 

That is more than sufficient information for one posting.  To me, all of this information from the past two postings have raised three questions:

 

1.) Whose truth do we believe?  The governments?  The Rockefeller family's sanitized, cherry-picked version of the COVID truth that favours their narrative?

 

2.) In this particular example, what does The Rockefeller Foundation have to gain by taking this approach to disinformation and vaccination?

3.) Why should we trust only certain mainstream media outlets when it comes to telling us the truth about the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated vaccines?

 

As I have said repeatedly during the pandemic, follow the money.  One thing that we can be certain of is that the oligarchs have no real interest in our well-being or whether we are receiving accurate health information from online sources unless it benefits them in some way.