EDITOR, The Tribune

There’s a video on YouTube and Facebook of a Gulf stream G650ER leaving the Lynden Pindling International Airport several days ago. According to Business Insider, a Gulf stream G650 costs $65 million – out of the financial reach of 99.9 percent of Bahamians. Rumours have circulated throughout the country among alarmed Bahamians that the jet is owned by American billionaire Bill Gates. They have concluded, without ironclad evidence, that the billionaire had visited The Bahamas in order to distribute vaccines for the COVID-19 outbreak.

Interestingly, neither The Nassau Guardian nor The Tribune reported this. Their silence tells me that there’s no merit to this unsubstantiated rumour. Gates has a net worth of $105.6 billion, according to Wikipedia. He built his immense wealth through his technology company, Microsoft, which was founded in 1975 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, by him and the late Paul Allen. As a philanthropist, along with his wife, Melinda, Gates heads the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which aims, among other things, to “harness advances in science and technology to save lives in developing countries,” through its Global Health Division. If nothing else, the wealth of the alleged atheist Gates and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who once identified himself as an atheist but is now dabbling with Buddhism, poises an insurmountable obstacle to the TBN prosperity gospel that has pervaded the Bahamian church since Nassau got cable television in 1995 or thereabouts. In October of 2019, the Gates Foundation, along with The John Hopkins Center for Health Security and the World Economic Forum, hosted an event dubbed Event 201 in New York City, aimed at discussing the issue of global pandemic preparedness. Some conspiratorialists in the United States and The Bahamas have alleged that the Gates Foundation is behind the current COVID-19 pandemic, aimed at population control. Gates is reported to be a supporter of eugenics -- a word coined by Sir Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin, in 1883.

Eugenics was carried to its logical conclusion by Planned Parenthood founder, Margaret Sanger. The abortion industry in the United States is motivated by eugenics. Since 1973 – the year of the Roe vs Wade Supreme Court ruling, 44 million abortions have been carried out, with 19 million being black babies. This means that despite African American women making up approximately 14 percent of the childbearing population, as if 2011, a disproportionate number of black babies are being systematically murdered. And with the Bahamian population being 85 percent black, Gates’ alleged presence in The Bahamas would undoubtedly sound the alarm among conspiratorialists. Bahamians are mainly traditionalists, who value human life, notwithstanding the nearly 1700 murders committed in our country since 1999. But as I have mentioned above, there is simply no rock-solid evidence that these troubling stories are true concerning Gates. May I suggest to Bahamians that they stick to the two dailies to get their news, rather than getting it from unaccountable gossipers on social media.

KEVIN EVANS

Freeport,

Grand Bahama,

August 7, 2020.