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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.

Contents

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 I.G. Farben. After World War Two, I.G. 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 and Roche. 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]

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. [6]

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.[7]

Board of trustees

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Executive Committee 1980

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Trustees

Upper-Class Members

  • Barry Bingham (Middlesex School, Harvard University) is the publisher of the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Louisville Times, and an 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) is a Boston banker who sits on many corporate boards.
  • Arthur Amory Houghton, Jr. (SR, NY), is president of Corning Glass and a director of New York Life Insurance and U. S. Steel, among others.
  • John R. Kimberly (Phillips Andover, MIT) inherited the Kimberly-Clark Company of Wisconsin, which was originally a paper-making firm. He sits on the boards of Northwestern Mutual Life, First National City Bank of New York, Corning Glass, Lawrence College, and the Episcopalian Church Foundation, as well as being president and chairman of the family firm.
  • Lord Franks of Headington, chairman of Lloyd’s Bank, Ltd., London.
  • John D. Rockefeller III (SR, NY) is the Rockefeller brother who spe¬cializes in cultural matters. As chairman of the foundation he has a firm grip on its activities. Other trustees come and go—he does not. He is president of the Japanese Society, the Asia Society, and the Council on Economic and Cultural Affairs. He is chairman of the National Council of the United Negro College Fund.

Thomas I. Watson, Jr. (SR, NY), is head of IBM and a director of Bankers Trust, Time, Inc., Cal Tech, and Brown University. William B. Wood, Jr. (SR, Baltimore), is vice-president of Johns Hopkins.

Representatives from Upper-Class Businesses

  • Frank Stanton is president of CBS, a director of New York Life Insurance Company, and chairman of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences.
  • George D. Woods is chairman of the board at First Boston Corporation, which is the biggest underwriter of utilities in the world.

Others

  • Ralph Bunche (AB, UCLA; Ph.D., Harvard) is 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 is president of Dartmouth.
  • Lee A. DuBridge is president of Cal Tech.
  • Robert F. Goheen is president of Princeton.
  • Clifford M. Hardin is president of the University of Nebraska.
  • I. George Harrar, a former professor, is an expert on plant pathology who is the foundation’s director for agriculture as well as its president.
  • Theodore Hesburgh is president of Notre Dame.
  • Clark Kerr was president of the 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. The Pharmaceutical Racket, Part 9, Campaign Against Fraudulent Medical Research, 1995
  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. Steve Weissman Why The Population Bomb Is a Rockefeller Baby, Eco-Catastrophe , pg. 27-41, Ramparts, 1970
  7. Steve Weissman Why The Population Bomb Is a Rockefeller Baby, Eco-Catastrophe , pg. 27-41, Ramparts, 1970

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