IN JANUARY 1899, A PACIFIST RELIGIOUS GROUP FLEEING PERSECUTION IN RUSSIA, EMIGRATED TO CANADA. ALMOST FORTEAN IN THEIR REJECTION OF ANY KIND OF AUTHORITY – THEY PROVED A THORN IN THE SIDE OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT. AUTHOR IAN MORFITT INVESTIGATES. (From Fortean Times 119)

[In January 1899], 8,000 Doukhobors from the port of Batum on the Black Sea settled in Canada in pursuit of a higher level of spiritual life. As they disembarked from the immigrant ship SS Lake Huron, each one hoped this was the Promised Land.

But the transition for this pre-industrial, rural, Russian Christian sect was not easy; their concepts of pacifism, animal rights and anti-materialism split the Doukhobor community into three factions. The most active of these was the ‘Sons of Freedom’, whose millennial zeal manifested itself in now-legendary nude marches and acts of violence that ran counter to their fundamental tenet of non-violence.

The need for strong spiritual leadership existed from the sect’s earliest days in Russia. Leaders who had visions or who received ‘visitations’ emerged according to a hereditary principal. The most influential of all was Peter Vasilievitch Verigin – known as Peter the Lordly – in the late nineteenth century.

Verigin’s influence held them together when, in an attempt to force to submit to Czarist state control, the Doukhobors were exiled to Siberia. It was under his direction that Doukhobors destroyed their arms in huge bonfires in a mass refusal to serve in the military in 1895.

Corresponding with Leo Tolstoy – whose admiration of Doukhobor ideals prompted him to become their greatest champion – Verigin saw the need to find a land where his people could live uncontaminated by a violent, selfish and materialistic society.

Verigin wrote that an earthly paradise was only possible by a return to “primitive conditions … and a spiritual stature lost by Adam and Eve.” Labour would be only in Christ’s service, currency returned to the Caesars that devised them, animals freed from enslavement. Metal objects were to be rejected because mining “tortured” people to obtain ore and food could be raised in abundance by solar heat. A new exodus was required to a land closer to the sun and closer to God.

Although some of Verigin’s phraseology sounds like half-baked religious philosophy, he was simply rejecting what he saw as the greedy exploitation of man and nature. He longed for a world without violence, where food was plentiful and neither man nor beast would suffer. “Plenty of corn exists, if only avarice were diminished,” he wrote. “The earth freed from the violence of human hands would abound with all that is ordained for it.”Ironically, a century on, this view is gaining more and more currency in western cultures.

A large segment – known as the ‘Independents’ – had already turned away from the communal Doukhobor lifestyle to run their farms on an individual basis. The first serious fracturing of the community was inspired, unwittingly, but the writings of Peter the Lordly himself, which were never intended to be read by his largely illiterate followers.

Embracing Verigin’s slogan “the sons of God shall never be the slaves of corruption”, a religious fervour took hold of another group. Releasing their livestock into the woods, the zealots hitched themselves to wagons when taking their produce to market. When hundreds marched barefoot and singing to preach to the unconverted, they burned leather and fur in ritual bonfires and discarded metal tools.

When Verigin arrived in Canada in 1903, the radicals were disappointed by his lack of commitment to their cause. In renewed zeal, they called themselves Svobodniki (Freedomites) or the ‘Sons of Freedom’ (SOF). Inspired by Verigin’s writings, they again took to the road to preach, only this time they marched in the nude, “in the manner of the first Adam and Eve”.

On their way to “destroy the throne of Satan”, the group chanced upon Verigin himself and forcibly freed the horse from his trap. But their march was intercepted by nearby villagers. Beaten and bleeding, they huddled together overnight exposed to the elements. Later, one recalled with amazement: “We remained naked and it was really wonderful to us that in such a wind we were not frozen. Those who stood guard over us publicly announced that the cold that came on was a very great cold, but not one of the naked was frozen.”

Marching on toward Yorkton, Saskatchewan, clothed but eating grass and leaves like their fellow animals, the SOF stripped before entering town. They were arrested and convicted of indecent exposure. Refusing to be bound over to keep the peace, they served jail terms before being returned to their home villages.

The peace was not to last long. Nakedness was a step closer to holiness, but there were other impediments to holy life, including technology. Zealots destroyed a wheat field with a roller, and the purifying powers of fire were applied to farm machinery.

The next march saw the SOF in long blue gowns and wide-brimmed straw hats chanting and denouncing the impure life and the moderate Peter the Lordly. They rented a house in Fort William for a New Year’s parade and marched naked through its snow-covered streets. Rounded up by police, they were taken back to the house where they sat naked on the floor around communal piles of fruit and nuts. A ceremonial burning of clothes in spring and more nude walkabouts resulted in further arrests and prison terms.

The communal Doukhobor life in Saskatchewan was brought to an end by the loss of the ‘Independents’ and government pressure to register their land. Having resolutely refused to acknowledge authority in any form since arriving in Canada – including sending their children to school and registering births, marriages and homestead property rights – the Doukhobors were officially dispossessed of their lands.

Peter the Lordly, lured by the promise of the lush fruit-growing valleys of British Columbia, used communal funds to purchase land where his people could relocate. The first prairie community, largely comprising Orthodox Doukhobors who still recognised the hereditary leadership of Verigin, were joined by the SOF.

Despite this new beginning, the SOF continued their nude marches – once acts of faith but increasingly becoming acts of protest. In 1922, under pressure from local to authorities to educate their children and adhere to laws, the SOF burned nine schools to the ground. In an attempt to liberate him from the contamination of material goods, Verigin’s own home was put to the torch as the SOF fuelled the fire with their own clothes.

Peter the Lordly’s regular denunciation of the SOF exacted the ultimate price when a train he was travelling in was dynamited in 1926. His death marked the first usage of this new form of protest. After much jockeying for position by heirs apparent, the mantle of leadership was assumed by his grandson Peter Petrovich Verigin. In aiming to unite Independent, Orthodox and SOF Doukhobors, his attempts to drive out the divisive forces earned him the title of Peter the Purger.

The Depression put paid to the promise of a better life for the Doukhobor community as repossession of property left them landless yet again. Frustration and increasing interference by authorities led once more to mass nude demonstrations.

Stripping and singing and torching of public and Doukhobor-owned buildings demonstrated their renunciation of the ways of the outside world. Pacifism gave way to other forms of protest called “black work”, lauded by many SOF. The greatest of Doukhobor taboos – violence – had become, paradoxically, a method to purge threatening influences.

Their belief that schools were a primary contaminating influence of schools led to an escalation of school burnings. “The cause of all this is the SCHOOL with its wrong orientation, thrusting sadism upon the youthful generation,” a SOF manifesto claimed. “Especially when a person partakes of higher education, or attends military academies, does he become a truly insane animal.”

Nude parents trying to physically remove their children from government schools were arrested and imprisoned. New schools, built to replace those destroyed, met the same fate within months of opening. Hundreds now joined the nude parades.

After the death of Peter the Purger and his unifying leadership, various leaders attempted to fill the vacuum. His son, John Verigin, was seen as too moderate for many SOF. Some turned to Louis Popoff – the self-styled ‘Tsar of Heaven’, known for his tendency to stride about in white robes and a crown of ripe oranges. John Lebedoff – respected in the hereditary tradition as a descendant of the first man to refuse military service in Russia in 1893 – also commanded a following. Michael Orekoff presented his credentials as a distant cousin of Peter the Lordly who had been visited by the Archangel Michael, and soon adopted the moniker of Michael the Archangel himself.

The government increased the indecent exposure penalty from six months to three years and conducted further mass trials but this served only to increase the frequency and numbers involved in nude protests. By May 1932 over 700 were incarcerated in a newly-built detention camp surrounded by 20 ft high barbed wire fences on a deserted island off the mainland coast of British Columbia.

The SOF were undeterred; in the following two years there were a further 153 acts of arson. As dynamitings and burnings of homes continued apace in the BC interior, government commission attempted to unravel the workings of destructive members of the community. Inevitably, a confession from one SOF member soon triggered a flurry of other confessions, accusations and counter-accusations that lasted into the Fifties.

Starved for strong leadership, much of the community turned to the exotic Stefan Sorokin who, like a latter-day Pied Piper, arrived in 1950 strumming his home-made harp and singing psalms he learned from Independent Doukhobors in Saskatchewan. A non-Doukhobor, he had escaped his native Russia and wandered for over twenty years, during which time he joined the Plymouth Brethren, Lutherans and Seventh Day Adventists.

During his short time in the community he toured settlements promoting an end to the “black work” and negotiated the release of 400 arsonists from prison. Stressing the need to find a new Promised Land, he took freely donated money for the search and settled on Uruguay.

Of the approximately 2,500 SOF Doukhobors, it was estimated that only 800 were involved in any real controversy and a mere 200 in the more violent practices. When the government, determined to find a lasting solution, made minor concessions to Doukhobor lifestyle, Sorokin encouraged his followers to drop their more controversial practices. While most of the SOF agreed, the most radical and fundamental believers waged the last and most violent campaign in 1962 involving 274 burnings and terrorist acts.

Train tracks and a massive electrical power pylon joined the list of targets of the SOF, who continued to torch their own and their neighbour’s homes. Despite the attacks over decades, death was never the intent and rarely occurred. The curious combination of nudity and burnings were always the preferred means of resisting outside influence.

In their study of the Doukhobors, George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic described the effect: “The exciting break of fire as a kerosene-soaked house burst into flame, [and] the deep thud of exploding dynamite, carried an irresistible excitement. Fire had become its own end, a passion that excited some of the arsonists to the point of orgasm.”

In all the manifestations of protest and religious mania, it is difficult to envisage one more bizarre than ranks of nude arsonists ejaculating into the night air as the flames leap higher and higher to the glory of God.

The community as a whole remained scarred for years after. Despite the fact that less than a tenth of the SOF were ever involved in the most extreme activities, the bulk of the SOF and the Orthodox and Independent Doukhobors were, and would continue to be, identified by outsiders as members of the same faction.

By 1962, the difficulties of assimilating into a foreign culture while steadfastly holding to fundamental beliefs had run their course. The ingrained distrust of authority, bred by a fear of persecution, was finally overcome by the necessity of having to confront the outside world. Ironically it was education that defeated the old ignorance that promoted a slavish adherence to pseudo-religious acts of faith.

Today the Doukhobors continue to espouse their philosophy of non-violence and now maintain links with similar groups throughout the world. On a web site home page, a single sentence refers to the extremism of a few members of past Doukhobors. It is no wonder they wish to forget their most troubled time.

Read more about the Doukhobors in Fortean Times 119.

Further reading: Aylmer Maude, A Peculiar People: The Doukhobors (1904). Harry B. Hawthorn, The Doukhobors of British Columbia (1955). George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, The Doukhobors (1968).

From http://robertantonwilson.blogspot.com/index.html:

RAW Essence
Robert Anton Wilson Defies Medical Experts and leaves his body @4:50 AM on binary date 01/11.
All Hail Eris!

On behalf of his children and those who cared for him, deepest love and gratitude for the tremendous support and lovingness bestowed upon us.

(that’s it from Bob’s bedside at his fnord by the sea)

RAW Memorial February 07
date to be announced

Robert Fisk: Bush’s new strategy

So into the graveyard of Iraq, George Bush, commander-in-chief, is to send another 21,000 of his soldiers. The march of folly is to continue…

Published: 11 January 2007, The Independent

There will be timetables, deadlines, benchmarks, goals for both America and its Iraqi satraps. But the war against terror can still be won. We shall prevail. Victory or death. And it shall be death.

President Bush’s announcement early this morning tolled every bell. A billion dollars of extra aid for Iraq, a diary of future success as the Shia powers of Iraq still to be referred to as the “democratically elected government” march in lockstep with America’s best men and women to restore order and strike fear into the hearts of al-Qa’ida. It will take time oh, yes, it will take years, at least three in the words of Washington’s top commander in the field, General Raymond Odierno this week but the mission will be accomplished.

Mission accomplished. Wasn’t that the refrain almost four years ago, on that lonely aircraft carrier off California, Bush striding the deck in his flying suit? And only a few months later, the President had a message for Osama bin Laden and the insurgents of Iraq. “Bring ’em on!” he shouted. And on they came. Few paid attention late last year when the Islamist leadership of this most ferocious of Arab rebellions proclaimed Bush a war criminal but asked him not to withdraw his troops. “We haven’t yet killed enough of them,” their videotaped statement announced.

Well, they will have their chance now. How ironic that it was the ghastly Saddam, dignified amid his lynch mob, who dared on the scaffold to tell the truth which Bush and Blair would not utter: that Iraq has become “hell.”

It is de rigueur, these days, to recall Vietnam, the false victories, the body counts, the torture and the murders, but history is littered with powerful men who thought they could batter their way to victory against the odds. Napoleon comes to mind; not the emperor who retreated from Moscow, but the man who believed the wild guerrilleros of French-occupied Spain could be liquidated. He tortured them, he executed them, he propped up a local Spanish administration of what we would now call Quislings, al-Malikis to a man. He rightly accused his enemies Moore and Wellington of supporting the insurgents. And when faced with defeat, Napoleon took the personal decision “to relaunch the machine” and advanced to recapture Madrid, just as Bush intends to recapture Baghdad. Of course, it ended in disaster. And George Bush is no Napoleon Bonaparte.

No, I would turn to another, less flamboyant, far more modern politician for prophecy, an American who understood, just before the 2003 launch of Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq, what would happen to the arrogance of power. For their relevance this morning, the words of the conservative politician Pat Buchanan deserve to be written in marble:

“We will soon launch an imperial war on Iraq with all the ‘On to Berlin’ bravado with which French poilus and British tommies marched in August 1914. But this invasion will not be the cakewalk neoconservatives predict … For a militant Islam that holds in thrall scores of millions of true believers will never accept George Bush dictating the destiny of the Islamic world …

“The one endeavour at which Islamic peoples excel is expelling imperial powers by terror and guerrilla war. They drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon… We have started up the road to empire and over the next hill we will meet those who went before.”

But George Bush dare not see these armies of the past, their ghosts as palpable as the phantoms of the 3,000 Americans let us forget the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis already done to death in this obscene war, and those future spirits of the dead still living amid the 20,000 men and women whom Bush is now sending to Iraq. In Baghdad, they will move into both Sunni and Shia “insurgent strongholds” — as opposed to just the Sunni variety which they vainly invested in the autumn — because this time, and again I quote General Odierno, it is crucial the security plan be ” evenhanded”. This time, he said, “we have to have a believable approach, of going after Sunni and Shia extremists”.

But a “believable approach” is what Bush does not have. The days of even-handed oppression disappeared in the aftermath of invasion.

“Democracy” should have been introduced at the start — not delayed until the Shias threatened to join the insurgency if Paul Bremer, America’s second proconsul, did not hold elections — just as the American military should have prevented the anarchy of April 2003. The killing of 14 Sunni civilians by US paratroopers at Fallujah that spring set the seal on the insurgency. Yes, Syria and Iran could help George Bush. But Tehran was part of his toytown “Axis of Evil”, Damascus a mere satellite. They were to be future prey, once Project Iraq proved successful. Then there came the shame of our torture, our murders, the mass ethnic cleansing in the land we said we had liberated.

And so more US troops must die, sacrificed for those who have already died. We cannot betray those who have been killed. It is a lie, of course. Every desperate man keeps gambling, preferably with other men’s lives.

But the Bushes and Blairs have experienced war through television and Hollywood; this is both their illusion and their shield.

Churchills have gone, used as a wardrobe for a prime minister who lied to his people and a president who, given the chance to fight for his country, felt his Vietnam mission was to defend the skies over Texas.

But still he talks of victory, as ignorant of the past as he is of the future.

Pat Buchanan ended his prophecy with imperishable words: “The only lesson we learn from history is that we do not learn from history.”

PREVIOUSLY IN MAGPIE:

Sept. 9, 02006: Arthur Magazine contributor John Patterson on “IDIOCRACY” (from his column for The Guardian)

Ilana Crispi
All Sides of a Sphere

January 6 – January 28, 2007

little tree gallery
3412 22nd St @ Guerrero
San Francisco, CA 94110
415.643.4929
http://www.littletreegallery.com
info@littletreegallery.com

little tree gallery is pleased to present the work of Ilana Crispi in her solo show entitled All Sides of a Sphere. Ms. Crispi will be showing a collection of 12 photographs that are all at once intriguing and striking, exemplifying the subtle force of her work.

Ilana Crispi has spent a good portion of her career working with ceramics. Taking clay, seeds, and legumes, Crispi forms spheres and places them against a white background, playing with depth and perspective. Each sphere is unique in material composition, color, and surface texture. A select group of spheres exhibit the early stages of life. The result is a fascinating alien aesthetic of sprouting grass, meandering root systems, and splitting seedpods captured in front of a minimal backdrop. Each orb is its own world: unique, familiar, and foreign. While expressing a multitude of organic colors and textures, the photographs solidly remain part of a cohesive thought.

All Sides of a Sphere is inspired by Sol LeWitt’ s recent work entitled All Sides of a Sphere lit from above, four sides and all their combinations. “The result,” Ms. Crispi explains, “was a minimal and beautiful collection of shadows, light, and form. It was also sterile.” Ms. Crispi follows LeWitt’s direction, but infuses the work with “something real and very much alive.”

Among Ilana Crispi’s numerous honors and accomplishments, Ms. Crispi was a recipient of an Eklind Fellowship; a resident artist at the de Young Museum and The Legion of Honor in San Francisco; and an artist in residence at the Rochester Folk Art Guild. Ms. Crispi is a recent graduate of Mills’ MFA program and has shown extensively in New York, Los Angles, and throughout the Bay Area.

little tree gallery is pleased to present Ms. Crispi’s work for a second time. For inquiries and questions regarding the show, please contact Forest Swartout or Brent Large by phone at (415) 643-4929 or by email at info@littletreegallery.com.

Los Angeles Times

A TIMES INVESTIGATION

Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation
The world’s largest philanthropy pours money into investments that are hurting many of the people its grants aim to help.

By Charles Piller, Edmund Sanders and Robyn Dixon – Times Staff Writers

January 7, 2007

First of two parts

Ebocha, Nigeria – Justice Eta, 14 months old, held out his tiny thumb.

An ink spot certified that he had been immunized against polio and measles, thanks to a vaccination drive supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

But polio is not the only threat Justice faces. Almost since birth, he has had respiratory trouble. His neighbors call it “the cough.” People blame fumes and soot spewing from flames that tower 300 feet into the air over a nearby oil plant. It is owned by the Italian petroleum giant Eni, whose investors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Justice squirmed in his mother’s arms. His face was beaded with sweat caused either by illness or by heat from the flames that illuminate Ebocha day and night. Ebocha means “city of lights.”

The makeshift clinic at a church where Justice Eta was vaccinated and the flares spewing over Ebocha represent a head-on conflict for the Gates Foundation. In a contradiction between its grants and its endowment holdings, a Times investigation has found, the foundation reaps vast financial gains every year from investments that contravene its good works.

In Ebocha, where Justice lives, Dr. Elekwachi Okey, a local physician, says hundreds of flares at oil plants in the Niger Delta have caused an epidemic of bronchitis in adults, and asthma and blurred vision in children. No definitive studies have documented the health effects, but many of the 250 toxic chemicals in the fumes and soot have long been linked to respiratory disease and cancer.

“We’re all smokers here,” Okey said, “but not with cigarettes.”

The oil plants in the region surrounding Ebocha find it cheaper to burn nearly 1 billion cubic feet of gas each day and contribute to global warming than to sell it. They deny the flaring causes sickness. Under pressure from activists, however, Nigeria’s high court set a deadline to end flaring by May 2007. The gases would be injected back underground, or trucked and piped out for sale. But authorities expect the flares to burn for years beyond the deadline.

The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that the foundation is funding inoculations to protect health, The Times found, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Total of France — the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe.

Indeed, local leaders blame oil development for fostering some of the very afflictions that the foundation combats.

Oil workers, for example, and soldiers protecting them are a magnet for prostitution, contributing to a surge in HIV and teenage pregnancy, both targets in the Gates Foundation’s efforts to ease the ills of society, especially among the poor. Oil bore holes fill with stagnant water, which is ideal for mosquitoes that spread malaria, one of the diseases the foundation is fighting.

Investigators for Dr. Nonyenim Solomon Enyidah, health commissioner for Rivers State, where Ebocha is located, cite an oil spill clogging rivers as a cause of cholera, another scourge the foundation is battling. The rivers, Enyidah said, “became breeding grounds for all kinds of waterborne diseases.”

The bright, sooty gas flares — which contain toxic byproducts such as benzene, mercury and chromium — lower immunity, Enyidah said, and make children such as Justice Eta more susceptible to polio and measles — the diseases that the Gates Foundation has helped to inoculate him against.

Investing for profit

At the end of 2005, the Gates Foundation endowment stood at $35 billion, making it the largest in the world. Then in June 2006, Warren E. Buffett, the world’s second-richest man after Bill Gates, pledged to add about $31 billion in installments from his personal fortune. Not counting tens of billions of dollars more that Gates himself has promised, the total is higher than the gross domestic products of 70% of the world’s nations.

Like most philanthropies, the Gates Foundation gives away at least 5% of its worth every year, to avoid paying most taxes. In 2005, it granted nearly $1.4 billion. It awards grants mainly in support of global health initiatives, for efforts to improve public education in the United States, and for social welfare programs in the Pacific Northwest.

It invests the other 95% of its worth. This endowment is managed by Bill Gates Investments, which handles Gates’ personal fortune. Monica Harrington, a senior policy officer at the foundation, said the investment managers had one goal: returns “that will allow for the continued funding of foundation programs and grant making.” Bill and Melinda Gates require the managers to keep a highly diversified portfolio, but make no specific directives.

By comparing these investments with information from for-profit services that analyze corporate behavior for mutual funds, pension managers, government agencies and other foundations, The Times found that the Gates Foundation has holdings in many companies that have failed tests of social responsibility because of environmental lapses, employment discrimination, disregard for worker rights, or unethical practices.

One of these investment rating services, Calvert Group Ltd., for example, endorses 52 of the largest 100 U.S. companies based on market capitalization, but flags the other 48 for transgressions against social responsibility. Microsoft Corp., which Bill Gates leads as board chairman, is rated highly for its overall business practices, despite its history of antitrust problems.

In addition, The Times found the Gates Foundation endowment had major holdings in:

Pharmaceutical companies that price drugs beyond the reach of AIDS patients the foundation is trying to treat.

Using the most recent data available, a Times tally showed that hundreds of Gates Foundation investments — totaling at least $8.7 billion, or 41% of its assets, not including U.S. and foreign government securities — have been in companies that countered the foundation’s charitable goals or socially concerned philosophy.

This is “the dirty secret” of many large philanthropies, said Paul Hawken, an expert on socially beneficial investing who directs the Natural Capital Institute, an investment research group. “Foundations donate to groups trying to heal the future,” Hawken said in an interview, “but with their investments, they steal from the future.”

Such blind-eye investing, they noted, rewards bad behavior.

At the Gates Foundation, blind-eye investing has been enforced by a firewall it has erected between its grant-making side and its investing side. The goals of the former are not allowed to interfere with the investments of the latter.

The foundation recently announced a plan to institutionalize that firewall by moving its assets into a separate organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. Its two trustees will be Bill and Melinda Gates. The trust will invest to increase the endowment, while the foundation gives grants.

“We’ve been operating under these principles for many years,” said Harrington, the foundation policy officer. “But having an official separation makes it even more clear.”

With the exception of tobacco companies, asset managers do not avoid investments in firms whose activities conflict with the foundation’s mission to do good.

“Because we want to maintain a focus on the programmatic work,” Harrington said in a written response to Times questions, “we have made it a policy to not comment on individual investment holdings.”

Finally, the foundation does not invest any portion of its endowment in companies specifically because they advance its philanthropic mission.

Much of the rest of philanthropy, however, is beginning to address contradictions between making grants to improve the world and making investments that harm it. According to recent surveys, many foundations, including some of the nation’s largest, have adopted at least basic policies to invest in ways that support their missions.

Major foundations that make social justice, corporate governance and environmental stewardship key considerations in their investment strategies include the Ford Foundation, worth $11.6 billion, the nation’s second-largest private philanthropy; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; the Rockefeller Foundation; and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.

Moreover, nearly one-third of foundations participate directly in shareholder initiatives, voting their proxies to influence corporate behavior. A few have become shareholder activists. In recent years, for instance, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, with an endowment of $481 million, has sponsored proxies to force corporations to address environmental sustainability and political transparency.

Harrington said the Gates Foundation’s investment managers vote proxies, but declined to give any specifics. The foundation would not make its chief investment manager, Michael Larson, available for an interview. In May, Harrington told the Chronicle of Philanthropy that the Gates Foundation did not get involved in proxy issues.

At the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, on the other hand, Michael J. Smith, its chief investment officer, said voting proxies to improve corporate behavior had become a fiduciary necessity.

“Companies that have good governance are generally well-managed,” he said, “and have a good record of profitably.”

Even the relatively tiny Needmor Fund, with a $27-million endowment, screens its investments to bar companies with poor environmental records, antagonism to worker rights or tolerance for repressive governments.

Leadership, however, is open to the Gates Foundation. It has unique power to move the debate, Bauer said. If Gates adopted mission-related investing, Bauer, of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, said in an interview, the shift in the world of philanthropy would be “seismic.”

The foundation did not respond to written questions about whether it might change its investment policies.

Life in ‘Cancer Valley’

At a clinic in Isipingo, a suburb of the South African port city of Durban where the HIV infection rate is as high as 40%, Thembeka Dube, 20, was getting a checkup.

Dube had volunteered for tests of a vaginal gel that researchers hope will be shown to protect against HIV. The tests are part of a study conducted by the New York-based Population Council, and funded by a $20-million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Dube’s boyfriend won’t use condoms. She hoped the tests would show she could use the microbicidal gel, called Carraguard, and stop worrying about AIDS.

Research into prophylactics such as Carraguard can fight AIDS by empowering women, Bill Gates told the International AIDS Conference in Toronto in August. “Whether the woman is a faithful married mother of small children, or a sex worker trying to scrape out a living in a slum … ” he said, “a woman should never need her partner’s permission to save her own life.”

Two days before Gates spoke, Kyrone Smith was born only a few kilometers from the Isipingo clinic. At the same time the Gates Foundation was trying to help Dube, it owned a stake in companies that appeared to be hurting Kyrone.

At six weeks, his lungs began to fail. Kyrone struggled to cry, but he was so weak that no sound came out — just husky, labored breaths.

His mother, Renee Smith, 26, rushed him to a hospital, where he was given oxygen. She feared it would be the first of many hospital visits. Smith knew from experience.

“My son Teiago was in and out of hospital since the age of 3,” she said. “He couldn’t breathe nicely…. There are so many children in this area who have the same problems.”

Two of the area’s worst industrial polluters — a Mondi paper mill and a giant Sapref oil refinery — squat among the homes near Isipingo like sleepy grey dragons, exhaling chemical vapors day and night.

The Sapref plant, which has had two dozen significant spills, flares, pipeline ruptures and explosions since 1998, and the Mondi plant together pump thousands of tons of putrid-smelling chemicals into the air annually, according to their own monitoring.

In 2002, a study found that more than half of the children at a school in nearby Merebank suffered asthma — one of the highest rates in scientific literature. A second study, published last year, found serious respiratory problems throughout the region: More than half of children aged 2 to 5 had asthma, largely attributed to sulfur dioxide and other industrial pollutants. Much of it was produced by companies in which the Gates Foundation was invested.

Asthma was not the only danger. Isipingo is in what environmental activists call “Cancer Valley.” Emissions of benzene, dioxins and other carcinogens were “among the highest levels found in any comparable location the world,” said Stuart Batterman at the University of Michigan, a coauthor of both studies.

The Gates Foundation is a major shareholder in the companies that own both of the polluting plants. As of September, the foundation held $295 million worth of stock in BP, a co-owner of Sapref. As of 2005, it held $35 million worth of stock in Royal Dutch Shell, Sapref’s other owner. The foundation also held a $39-million investment in Anglo American, which owns the Mondi paper mill.

The foundation has held large investments in all three companies since at least 2002. Since then, the worth of BP shares has shot up by about 83%, Royal Dutch Shell shares by 77% and Anglo American shares about 255%. Dividends have padded the foundation’s assets by additional millions of dollars.

The foundation has gotten much more in financial gains from its investments in the polluters than it has given to the Durban microbicide study to fight AIDS.

Sapref said it had cut sulfur dioxide emissions by two-thirds since 1997 and spent more than $64 million over 11 years on environmental initiatives. It said lead in its gasoline and sulfur in its diesel fuel were reduced a year ago. Plant officials said: “Sapref does not accept any responsibility for any health issues in South Durban.”

Mondi said that its Merebank paper mill had cut “chemical oxygen demand,” a key pollutant, in 2005, and that it was cutting its sulfur dioxide emissions. But by the company’s own estimate, the mill still releases about three times the combined amount of sulfur dioxide produced by Mondi plants in five other nations, and the other plants operate at nearly six times the capacity. Merebank uses a coal-fired power plant, while the others burn cleaner fuel.

Just as the Gates Foundation investments in Mondi, BP and Royal Dutch Shell have been very profitable, so too have its holdings in the top 100 polluters in the United States, as rated by the University of Massachusetts, and the top 50 polluters in Canada, as rated by the trade publication Corporate Knights, using methods based on those developed by the university.

According to the foundation’s 2005 figures, it held a $1.4-billion stake in 69 of those firms. They included blue chips, such as Chevron Corp. and Ford Motor Co., as well as lesser-known companies such as Lyondell Chemical Co. and Ameren Corp.

At the same time, the foundation held a $2.9-billion stake in firms ranked by the investment rating services as among the worst environmental stewards, including Dominion Resources Inc. and El Paso Corp.

Without double-counting companies flagged by both the University of Massachusetts and the rating services, the combination totals an investment of about $3.3 billion.

The Gates Foundation did not respond to written questions about its investments in companies that were high polluters or those rated as poor environmental stewards.

Drugs out of reach

Nearly every morning, a 56-year-old retired soldier named Felix makes a short trek from his house on the outskirts of Lagos, Nigeria, to a factory to purchase a 40-cent block of ice.

Felix has a pressing, private reason to get the ice: He needs it to keep his medicine from melting.

Two years ago, Felix’s wife died from AIDS, and he learned he was HIV-positive.

He told his six children, now 16 to 24 years old, but no one else. He was afraid of the stigma of HIV. He agreed to be interviewed only if he was identified by his first name alone. “I thought the world had come to an end for me,” Felix said. “Everyone believes that once you have it, you’re a living ghost.”

He took antiretroviral drugs and felt better. But his treatment was interrupted frequently because he could not afford the cost: $62 a month. His pension as a former staff sergeant was $115 a month, and the money came sporadically.

Worse, his body soon stopped responding to the drugs. His kidneys began to fail, and his count of immune cells crucial to fight off infections plummeted.

In May, Felix began taking Kaletra, a second-line AIDS drug — needed when the first round of treatments fail.

His health rebounded, but it came at a cost.

Gel capsules of Kaletra melt in Nigeria’s sweltering climate, where temperatures often top 100 degrees. Felix kept his Kaletra in a small chest filled with ice.

Each day, he had to go get more ice. And each day, he had to take Kaletra precisely at 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. These things made it difficult for him to work, even at odd jobs.

A new version of Kaletra does not require refrigeration. But his physician, Dr. T.M. Balogun, who helps run the AIDS program at Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, told him not to get his hopes up.

The hospital is helped by the Nigerian government, which gets money from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The fund has been awarded $651 million by the Gates Foundation. Yet the hospital does not offer the new Kaletra. It is too expensive.

In August, private pharmacists said they could sell it for $246 a month. But that was far out of Felix’s reach.

Kaletra is made by Abbott Laboratories. As of this September, the Gates Foundation held $169 million in Abbott stock. In 2005, the foundation held nearly $1.5 billion worth of stock in drug companies whose practices have been widely criticized as restricting the flow of key medicines to poor people in developing nations.

On average, shares in those companies have increased in value about 54% since 2002. Investments in Abbott and other drug makers probably have gained the foundation hundreds of millions of dollars.

Drug makers say they need price protection for research and development. “Our global needs and global systems are in conflict,” Miles White, Abbott’s chief executive, wrote in the Financial Times last year. “This threatens to harm one goal, innovation, in the name of another, access to medicine.”

In 1994, however, the drug makers, with other research-intensive businesses, lobbied hard and successfully for the international Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, which made it harder to move from costly brand-name drugs to cheap generics. The agreement protected new-drug monopolies for 20 years or more.

This meant no low-priced generic for Kaletra. The pact locked in Abbott as its sole supplier, and Abbott set prices for the world.

Under pressure from activists, Abbott and other companies cut prices for key AIDS drugs in poorer nations. In Guatemala and Thailand, the new Kaletra costs $2,200 per patient per year, plus taxes and fees — a fraction of the more than $8,000 it costs in the United States. In poorer Nigeria, the official price was $500 a year.

But this was still too costly for most patients, including Felix.

The industry’s approach “has the effect of making medicines available only to a narrow spectrum of a rich elite in a developing country,” said Brook Baker, an intellectual property expert at Northeastern University.

He called it “pharmaceutical apartheid.”

Drug companies say critics overlook billions of dollars worth of drugs they donate to developing nations. Abbott says it has given AIDS drugs to 25,000 patients, along with millions of test kits, and has underwritten a major project to improve AIDS services in Tanzania.

In emergencies, critics welcome donated drugs. The problem, they say, is that donations scare away generic suppliers. Donations, said Ellen ‘t Hoen, who directs a drug-access program for Doctors Without Borders, “remove the prospect of any stable supply.”

And when the free drugs are gone, patients die.

Most medicines are reliably profitable. In the most recent quarter, Abbott posted a gross profit margin of 59% of sales, and recently paid its 331st consecutive quarterly dividend. A congressional analysis shows that during the first six months of 2006, the 10 largest drug companies earned $39.8 billion in profits.

The Gates Foundation’s top priority is stopping AIDS, Bill Gates told the International AIDS Conference in August. Since its inception, the foundation has donated more than $2 billion to fight the disease.

The foundation did not respond to written questions about the problems of patients who cannot obtain needed AIDS drugs due to pharmaceutical company policies.

Meanwhile, the foundation holds its grant recipients to a far higher standard than the drug companies on which it bets large portions of its endowment. Its grant form says it expects recipients “to exercise their intellectual property rights in a manner consistent with the stated goals of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to promote the … availability of inventions for public benefit in developing countries at reasonable cost.”

Some critics say the foundation’s failure to use its own investments “to promote … public benefit in developing countries at reasonable cost” might trace back to the source of most of its money — Microsoft — which Bill Gates serves as chairman.

Microsoft monopolies in computer operating systems and businesssoftware depend upon the same intellectual-property and trade-law approaches favored by drug companies.

“The Gates Foundation is in a position to change the dynamic, to make sure that drugs get first to the places they are most needed,” said Daniel Berman, deputy director in South Africa for Doctors Without Borders. “But it conflicts with the interests of Microsoft.”

In response to written questions, Harrington, the Gates Foundation policy officer, said the foundation tried to guarantee that grantee discoveries made in partnership with for-profit companies trickled down to people in developing nations.

“The foundation’s goal is to help ensure that new scientific knowledge is broadly shared … and that lifesaving health advances are created and made available and affordable to those most in need,” she said. “We also recognize that private industry needs adequate incentives to develop new drugs.”

The foundation’s pharmaceutical company investments, Harrington said, “are completely separate from what’s being done on the programmatic side to help spur the development and delivery of drugs/vaccines.”

charles.piller@latimes.com

edmund.sanders@latimes.com

robyn.dixon@latimes.com

Sanders reported from Nigeria, Dixon from South Africa and Piller from San Francisco. Times staff writer Doug Smith, data analyst Sandra Poindexter and researchers Maloy Moore and Robin Mayper contributed to this report.