• hector@lemmy.today
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    21 hours ago

    I actually liked him because of his PR people making him seem eccentric and slipping the stuff into our English 101 class, his charity work, that he was frugal, rode on a plane with a blanket over his head, in coach, like a weirdo. Wore dirty sweaters, worked all the time. I realized it was PR but because of the charity stuff and other PR I sort of liked him, until 2020 when my friend told me about the Monsanto investment, which I investigated and it was true.

    It’s been one thing after another since then. He intervened to prevent an freely available open source vaccine in covid, to make sure it was all private for profit companies, the pesticide thing, The information about him with Epstein. Which he played off as not knowing him well while we keep finding out he was a lot more involved.

    The geo engineering, which I take a very dim view of, these billionaires think they are the smartest people in the world because they have the most money, as if they could know the knock on effects from spraying enough sulfur dioxide in the upper atmosphere, or whatever they spray, to actually cool the earth and not have the law of unintended consequences come down hard. As if they could forsee how it would work despite unknown interconnected variables that make it unknown, and that they have a right to do it for some nation states while it affects others that didn’t agree.

    His support for pesticides in general is the big one. He bailed out Monsanto when they were in trouble from the lawsuits, and bought a bunch of stock, and has been a big proponent, and customer, him owning what 5% of US farmland, and amplified American Chemistry Council talking points uncritically, buying hook line and sinker their ad hoc aruments that to feed the world we need to genetically modify plants to take more of their pesticides, and in the process make seeds private and not replantable, and needing extra amounts of pesticides like roundup, but certainly not limited to it. (Apeel sound familiar vaguely but idk exactly thanks for the link I will check it out shortly.)

    Worldwide insect populations are down 90 percent from 30 years back. Pesticides are perhaps the main factor in that I believe. If you were around, recall a summer night after a country drive, the entire car would be covered in bug splatters. You might have had to use the washer fluid and wipers on the way. Not anymore, you might have a few. It’s a portent, they are more susceptible to pollutants but it affects us all too. Sperm Counts are down worldwide, frog populations have crashed, amphibians are especially susceptible to endocrine disruptors like many pesticides, wiping out populations at concentrations in the water in the single digit parts per billion, turning the frogs hermathroditic and sterile. As per the work of Tyrone Hayes, covered in Mother Jones, The Frog of War, and it’s follow up articles. (He was viciously attacked by Syngenta, the maker of Atrazine, the 2nd most popular herbicide that his work studied. They attacked him personally in every way they could, tried and succeeded at first, to get his funding cut, etc. But Tyrone was fearless and refused to be bullied.)

    So Bill Gates, supports systematic poisoning with pesticides, on patented seeds engineered to take more pesticide (shown to not produce higher yields after the first few years;) supports unilaterally using his influence to get countries like he US to pay them to spray masses of aerosols or other substances to blot out the sun in a Mr. Burns style villainy that will have unintended consequences; is an Epstein Pal, lied about it, now caught as more involved; defeated the open source non patented vaccine for covid to make sure it was all for profit companies to prevent a precedent being set. I feel like I’m forgetting one too. None of this is contested, in doubt, made up, this is all public knowledge, reported in the papers, including reuters and others on the switzerland conference every year to coordinate pr and selling governments on the geo engineering. The public investments in monsanto and parroting of American Chemistry Council Points, (they are the devil.)

    I used to sort of like him, he didn’t deserve it, and the right making shit up about him doesn’t excuse his real faults, we can’t defend everything about anything that’s criticized unfairly by the right, support what is fair in that, because knee jerk blanket support is part of how the republicans are seen as the party of reform. In a good way to half the population.