A U.K.-based campaign group Global Justice Now have just released a report which says the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is funding strategies that promote multinational corporate interests at the expense of social and economic justice. The activists for social-justice accuse the Microsoft billionaire of distorting global-development priorities through the immense wealth and influence of his Seattle-based foundation. The Seattle Times reports: With assets of $44 billion, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is not only the world’s biggest philanthropy, but it also spends more on international aid and global-health programs than most nations. That financial clout gives the foundation an outsized role in shaping global-health and agriculture programs, says a new report titled “Gated Development: Is the Gates Foundation always a force for good?” Yet the foundation’s emphasis on vaccines, technological solutions and specific diseases undermines support for basic health systems in poor nations, argues the report’s publisher, Global Justice Now, a U.K. group with 60,000 members that advocates for more just policies around trade, food and energy. At the same time, the foundation both invests in and collaborates with pharmaceutical and agricultural corporations, creating “a corporate merry-go-round where the (foundation) consistently acts in the interests of corporations,” the [...]