Funding better COVID propaganda: The Mercury Project – Part 3

What motivates tax exempt foundations to fund projects to persuade more people to take COVID jabs?

In Part 1 of this mini-series, I pointed out the self-evident redundancy of the Mercury Project, which is tossing over US$30 million at social science researchers to figure out how to persuade more people to accept injections for COVID-19 that have manifestly failed to “end the pandemic”.

In Part 2, I traced the history and rationale of the organisation that initiated the Mercury Project – the Social Science Research Council – and one of its principle founders and benefactors, the tax exempt Rockefeller Foundation.

And now, Part 3 will explore the history and intentions of the other organisations that are funding the Mercury Project.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

The origins of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation lie in the Johnson New Brunswick Foundation, established in 1936 by Robert Wood Johnson II, the president of Johnson & Johnson, with an endowment of 12 000 shares of his own J&J stock. Johnson was by all accounts a hard-working, highly principled and community-minded man who treated his employees fairly and respectfully, and firmly believed in the importance of public service. He died in 1968, leaving virtually all of his vast wealth to the Foundation in the form of over 10 million shares of Johnson & Johnson common stock, valued at around US$1.2 billion dollars. This bequest created one of the world’s largest private philanthropies, and, according to the Foundation itself, “the nation’s largest philanthropy dedicated solely to health”.

Once you grasp that the wealth of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is tied to the share price of the Johnson & Johnson company, you might be more inclined to question how the Foundation defines “health”, and formulates its plans for achieving it.

Because after all, we are talking about that Johnson & Johnson – the warm-and-fuzzy “family” company that knowingly peddled asbestos-laced baby powder for decades, and aggressively marketed narcotic drugs using “‘deceptive’ claims intended to break down caution among doctors about prescribing opioids”, fuelling the opioid crisis which has claimed over 6000 lives in the US state of Oklahoma alone since 2000.

The same Johnson & Johnson that, as I discussed in Meet the criminal corporations developing COVID-19 vaccines, won third prize for total value of fines for illegal activities by pharmaceutical companies between 2003 and 2016, racking up fifteen penalties which amounted to US$2 668 326 000 (equating to just 0.28% of the company’s total revenues), including nine off-label marketing violations, five disclosure violations, four each for kickbacks and misleading marketing, two pricing violations and one count each of selling adulterated drugs and bribery.

And of course, the very same company that, under its subsidiary, Janssen, brought the world the single-shot COVID-19 “vaccine” that sank almost without a trace after evidence emerged that it was associated with thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), a condition in which potentially life-threatening blood clots form, in combination with low levels of blood platelets. The FDA has now limited the authorised use of the Janssen COVID-19 injection to adults who can’t or won’t take any of the other experimental injections on the market.

Yes, that Johnson & Johnson.

To give credit where it is due, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has previously funded some truly worthwhile projects in, for example, emergency medical services provision, smoking cessation and addressing the root causes of childhood obesity.

However, its funding of The Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health – now the Center for Health Security – is eyebrow-raising, given that institution’s role in promoting a globally co-ordinated, militarised, highly authoritarian and vaccine-centric response to infectious disease outbreaks through a whole series of pandemic simulation games (including the notorious Event 201) that have taken place since the 1990s.

Moreover, in recent years, it has pivoted away from being “focused on discrete health problems”, now envisaging its role as to “inspire mass movements” and achieve “health equity“.

It has funnelled money to politically left-leaning causes and organisations through grants to the Tides Foundation, whose grantees include Black Lives Matter and 350.org. Despite claiming not to fund “lobbying for or against particular pieces of legislation”, it was a key funder of groups advocating for the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Popularly known as “Obamacare”, this act resulted in increases in health insurance premiums averaging 60%, and provided pricing protection for the pharmaceutical industry and patent extensions on biologic drugs that have generated record profits for Big Pharma (including Johnson & Johnson) – at the taxpaying public’s expense.

Given its more recent form, it is entirely justifiable to question the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s motives in contributing US$2 million to the original funding round of the Mercury Project. Is financing projects to persuade people in minority communities to accept COVID-19 injections that they don’t want, really a means of achieving “health equity”?

Or is it merely another instance of the “colonialism” that the equity advocates rail against? After all, the “vaccine hesitancy” of the Black and Hispanic communities has turned out to be more than warranted: the novel injections are not only spectacularly ineffective at preventing infection with and transmission of SARS-CoV-2, they are clearly the most dangerous “vaccines” ever unleashed on the public, with the risk of serious adverse effects outweighing any benefits of reduction in COVID-19 hospitalisation or death.

And of course, if the Mercury Project succeeds in its stated aim of “increas[ing] take-up of vaccines and essential health services”, Big Pharma behemoths like Johnson & Johnson stand to profit handsomely, which in turn increases the wealth and agenda-setting power of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Increasingly, the version of community-minded philanthropy that Robert Wood Johnson II apparently embraced, has been replaced by philanthrocapitalism. As I discussed in my previous article series, ‘COVID-19 and philanthrocapitalism’s War on Public Health’ (Part 1 and Part 2), philanthrocapitalism is the application of business-like strategies to philanthropy, including harnessing the profit motive in order to achieve “social good”. This “social good” is, of course, defined by the technocrats who control both the corporations and the tax exempt foundations that those corporations establish in order to further their agendas.

There are perverse incentives inherent in the “business of philanthropy” which should prompt any thinking person to ask, cui bono?

Craig Newmark Philanthropies

Craig Newmark Philanthropies was established in 2015 by the founder of the online marketplace, craigslist.

The US$500K that this relative newcomer to the world of tax exempt foundations contributed to the Mercury Project was all of a piece with previous grants to the Poynter Institute for Media Studies which operates the apparently unironically-titled “fact-checking” website PolitiFact, and Wikipedia.

PolitiFact has been responsible for some of the most egregious instances of fact-denial during the COVID-19 pandemic, including labelling the lab leak origin theory of SARS-CoV-2 a “pants on fire” conspiracy theory (and then quietly unpublishing its “fact check” without admitting to any error on its own part), and denying the superiority of natural immunity gained from SARS-CoV-2 infection over injection-induced protection.

Wikipedia, meanwhile, has conducted an aggressive campaign of smearing, defaming and delegitimising anyone who questions COVID orthodoxy, locking its victims out of their own profiles so that they are unable to correct the outrageous lies being told about them.

In this light, Newmark's claims that his foundation is "defending against disinformation warfare" and providing "support for ethical and trustworthy journalism" are nauseatingly hypocritical.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Founded in 1934 by General Motors president and enthusiastic Nazi collaborator Alfred Sloan, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation funds research and education in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and economics, promoting these disciplines as “chief drivers of the nation’s health and prosperity”.

By awarding grants to filmmakers and film schools to produce films that portray scientists in a positive light, providing cash awards to filmmakers who agree to retain science advisors and accept its input into screenplay development, and furnishing prize money to film festivals, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is able to insinuate its technocratic agenda into popular culture.

Its influence also proved pivotal in the Tribeca Film Festival’s decision to pull out of screening the documentary Vaxxed: from Cover-Up to Catastrophe, in 2016.

Vaxxed tells the story of CDC whistleblower William Thompson, who confessed to scientist Brian Hooker – himself the father of an autistic son – that the CDC had intentionally destroyed data indicating that early-life administration of the MMR vaccine was associated with an increased risk of autism in males, especially blacks.

According to the film’s director, Dr Andrew Wakefield, the Sloan Foundation – a 15-year sponsor of the Tribeca festival and also a significant donor to the CDC – pressured the festival organisers to drop the film from their line-up.

And, just like the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Sloan has supported the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies (now the Center for Health Security), in its development of a technocratic approach to infectious disease outbreaks that completely contradicts evidence-based management principles.

The National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation, which formed a $20 million partnership with the Mercury Project, is “an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 ‘to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; [and] to secure the national defense.'” It funds approximately 25 per cent of all federally supported basic research conducted by America’s tertiary institutions.

In 2011, Republican senator Dr Tom Coburn issued a report criticising the NSF for mismanagement, waste and fraud, including pervasive porn-viewing by multiple employees (a senior executive amongst them); taxpayer-funded trips taken by a senior official for the purpose of romantic liaisons in Paris, Tokyo, and Vancouver; and funding studies of questionable value to the public, such as whether users of dating sites are racist, and if “playing FarmVille on Facebook helps adults develop and maintain relationships”.

Its provision of over $400K for funding a study on “feminist glaciology“, and over $200K to address “gender bias” in Wikipedia have drawn fire as indicators of its capture by leftist ideologies.

And a 2019 analysis by political scientist William Bianco revealed that

“Over the past 25 years, shifts in the states and districts represented by each political party have dramatically reduced the proportion of grants awarded to Republican constituencies. Leaving aside Republican rhetoric, their complaints about the NSF and other federal science agencies reflect a simple truth: These programs disproportionately benefit people and organizations represented by Democrats.”

Republicans don’t like the National Science Foundation, and there’s a perfectly good reason for it

As Heather Heying mentioned in the Dark Horse clip posted above, ‘Facebook fact-checkers’ “pants on fire” lie’, granting agencies like the National Science Foundation decide which research areas will be funded, and which will wither on the vine. This selection process is unavoidably political, in the definitional sense: Politics is the art of the exercise of power. Hence, the ideological leanings of the granting agency are highly relevant and should be disclosed to the public, whose taxes fund both the research, and the salaries of those who disburse the research funding.

Conclusion

There is considerable variation in the origin stories of the tax exempt foundations and their founders. Alfred P. Sloan held openly fascist views, loathed President Franklin D. Roosevelt and worked to undermine his New Deal; Robert Wood Johnson II accepted a chairmanship position from Roosevelt and was an early advocate for what has now been dubbed “stakeholder capitalism”. The Rockefeller Foundation is one of the oldest in the US and was built on oil, the sine qua non of the second industrial revolution; Craig Newmark Philanthropies is one of the youngest tax exempt foundations and was endowed by a fortune built on the communications technology that spawned the third industrial revolution.

Yet despite their differences, the various organisations co-ordinating and funding the Mercury Project have converged upon common ideological principles:

1. They all embrace the dogmas of the new Left (which bears no resemblance to the workers’ movements of the old Left), dutifully reciting their catechisms of “diversity, equity and inclusion”.

2. They are all technocrats, convinced that every problem that we face can and should be solved by putting scientists and engineers in charge.

3. They are all collectivists, prioritising “the greater good” over the individual’s right to live his or her life as he or she chooses. And of course, they arrogate to themselves the right to define what that greater good constitutes, and to use the wealth and power at their disposal to attempt to impose their utopian visions on others.

That last point is critical. Whilst some of the tax exempt foundations have unquestionably been involved in reprehensible activities, including promoting eugenics and suppressing free speech, one can question their right to use their enormous financial resources to exert influence on public policy, without necessarily assuming universally malign intent.

In fact, as C.S. Lewis poignantly observed, the greatest threat to human freedom may come from those arrogant enough to genuinely believe that we ordinary folk would be better off if we submitted to their rule:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

God in the dock : essays on theology and ethics

For information on my private practice, please visit Empower Total Health. I am a Certified Lifestyle Medicine Practitioner, with an ND, GDCouns, BHSc(Hons) and Fellowship of the Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine.