Gates Foundation Funds Surveillance of Anti-Vaccine Groups

Green Med Info
Sayer Ji

The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation launched the Grand Challenges in Global Health (GCGH) in partnership with the National Institutes of Health in 2003 which, according to the GCGH website, is aimed at "creating new tools that can radically improve health in the developing world."  So far, 45 grants totaling $458 million were awarded for research projects involving scientists in over 30 countries.¹
But where has all the money actually gone?  Towards developing and implementing water purification and sanitation systems? Or basic nutritional support aimed at optimizing immune function? How about providing shelter and medical facilities for the homeless? Not even close.  

For example, a $100K grant was recently disbursed to Seth C. Kalichman, professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, for "Establishing an Anti-Vaccine Surveillance and Alert System," which intends to "establish an internet-based global monitoring and rapid alert system for finding, analyzing, and counteracting misinformation communication campaigns regarding vaccines to support global immunization efforts." [emphasis added]

We can only wonder what organizations might be labeled as "misinformation communication campaigns" considering the fact that Bill Gates, in a Feb. 4^th, 2011 interview on CNN with Sanjay Gupta said that "anti-vaccine groups "kill children."" Here is the full quote:

“So it's an absolute lie that has killed thousands of kids. Because the mothers who heard that lie, many of them didn't have their kids take either pertussis or measles vaccine, and their children are dead today. And so the people who go and engage in those anti-vaccine efforts -- you know, they, they kill children. It's a very sad thing, because these vaccines are important.”

It is quite possible that any dissenting voice not in support of universal vaccination campaigns may be included in this type of "surveillance and alert system" as a potentially endangering the lives of others, i.e. "killing children."  What is so ironic about the situation is that the Gates Foundation supported Polio Global Eradication Initiative may have resulted in over 47,500 cases of vaccine-induced paralysisin Indian children in 2011 alone, and which is twice as deadly as the wild-type polio it claimed to have put an end to officially on Jan. 11 2012. Who here then, is truly concerned about the health of children?
Moreover, it is exceedingly difficult to view Bill & Melinda Gates foundation's GCGH as a strictly humanitarian foundation considering many of the projects it chooses to fund. Here are a few listed on their website which have already received funding.

• Synthetic Lymph Nodes: Steven Meshnick and Carla Hand of the University of North Carolina in the U.S. will develop a bio-compatible, biodegradable polymer device that can be placed under the skin to introduce vaccines and antigens to the immune system. The device will attract immune cells and trigger their proliferation as well asact as an adjuvant at the site of injection. If successful, the device could help boost immune response to new and existing vaccines. [see our article on transhumanistic technologies].
• Needle Free Vaccination Via Nanoparticle Aerosols: Vaccine delivery systems that target specific areas of the body have the potential to be especially effective against some types of infection. For example, inhaled vaccines may better guard against respiratory diseases, such as tuberculosis, and those that commonly infect the tissues of the nose and throat, such as diphtheria. Dr. Edwards is leading a multidisciplinary team using materials science technologies combined with infectious disease, device, and toxicology expertise to reformulate tuberculosis and diphtheria vaccines into aerosol sprays that can be inhaled. The team's ultimate objective is to develop a cell-based BCG vaccine for tuberculosis and a protein antigen CRM 197 vaccine for diphtheria in the form of novel porous nanoparticle aggregate (PNAP) aerosols.
• Plant-Produced Synthetic RNA Vaccines: Alison McCormick of Touro University, California in the U.S. will test the ability of a low-cost plant-based synthetic biology method to produce a combined viral protein epitope with an antigen RNA expression system for use in an RNA malaria vaccine. Using plants for this viral transfection system could make RNA vaccine production scalable and cost effective.
• Profitable Vaccine Distribution In Emerging Markets: Lisa Ganley-Leal and Pauline Mwinzi of Epsilon Therapeutics, Inc. in the U.S. will test the hypothesis that selling vaccines through medicine shops in emerging markets can lead to profits for both vaccine developers and the small business owners. Demonstrating profitability may lead pharmaceutical companies to invest greater resources in vaccine development and distribution and develop local partnerships for profitability strategies.
• Genetically Programmed Pathogen Sense and Destroy: Saurabh Gupta and Ron Weiss of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S. proposed creating sentinel cells that can detect the presence of a pathogen, report its identity with a biological signal, and secrete molecules to destroy it.This project's Phase I research demonstrated that commensal bacteria can be engineered to detect and specifically kill the model bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. In Phase II, Gupta and Weiss will engineer the human microbiota to specifically detect and destroy the gut pathogen Shigella flexneri, which is responsible for high mortality rates in children.
• Vaccine in a Salt Shaker: A New, Safe, Low-Cost Approach: Shiladitya DasSarma will lead a team at the University of Maryland, Baltimore in the U.S. to develop an inexpensive, safe, and effective oral vaccine against invasive Salmonella disease using gas-filled bacterial vesicles. The project seeks to produce a salt-encased, shelf-stable vaccine requiring no refrigeration for distribution worldwide.
• A Humanized Mouse Model to Evaluate Live Attenuated Vaccine Candidates: To develop new vaccines against some of the world's biggest killers, including HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis, scientists must be able to evaluate promising candidates. Some of the most promising potential vaccines, are made from weakened live versions of the infectious agent. As a result, they cannot be studied in human trials unless researchers can be confident that the weakened vaccines will be safe. Dr. Flavell and his colleagues are working to genetically engineer laboratory mice whose immune systems are similar enough to humans to permit testing of vaccines against diseases that disproportionately affect people in the developing world.
• Alternative Delivery of Human Milk Proteins to Infants: Qiang Chen of Arizona State University in the U.S. proposes to engineer edible plants, such as lettuce and rice, to express beneficial proteins found in human milk. The protein bodies in these plants allow for the stable, high accumulation of these human milk proteins, and the plants can either be eaten directly by infants or formulated into baby food to provide essential nutrients and antibacterial benefits.
• Non-Hormonal Female Contraceptive Targeting Egg-Specific Metalloprotease: John Herr of the University of Virginia in the U.S. will research the egg-specific membrane enzyme metalloprotease as a target for a non-hormonal female contraceptive. After determining the nature of the enzyme's catalytic pocket, a family of peptidomimetic compounds will be tested for their ability to bind to the enzyme and block its key role in egg fertilization.
• Bacillus-Fermented Natto as Edible Vaccines for the Developing World: Michael Chan of the Ohio State Research Foundation in the U.S. will develop an engineered strain of bacteria used to ferment beans in traditional Asian and African diets, to display an antigen from the Tuberculosis bacterium.  The engineered bacillus will then be used to make the traditional Asian dish natto, which can serve as a kind of oral vaccine to elicit a strong immune response. If successful, this strategy can be used to introduce a variety of disease antigens through culturally accepted foods.
• Nanotechnology-Based Contraception: David Clapham of Children's Hospital Boston in the U.S. will develop and test a nanoparticle contraceptive that releases sperm tail inhibitors in response to vaginal pH changes or exposure to prostatic fluid. If successful, the nanoparticles could be incorporated into a vaginal gel to block sperm motility required for fertilization.
• Circumcision tool For Traditional Ceremonies In Africa: Kathleen Sienko of the University of Michigan in the U.S. has developed a prototype circumcision tool for use in traditional ceremonies in Africa, and seeks to demonstrate the functionality, cultural suitability, and potential for low-cost mass production of the device. Such a tool could increase the circumcision rates leading to lower rates of HIV transmission in the region.
• Discovery of Chemosensory Molecules as Novel Contraceptives: John Ngai and Scott Laughlin of the University of California, Berkeley in the U.S. seek to identify chemical compounds in the female reproductive system that guide sperm cells to the egg. By characterizing these "odorants," synthetic versions can be produced and administered to disrupt this navigation system thus inhibiting fertilization.
• Transgenic Cow Milk Containing Human Antimicrobial Protein: Hironori Matsushima of the University of Toledo in the U.S. will test the hypothesis that adding an antimicrobial peptide to powdered milk products can confer protection against enteric diseases. Research will focus on testing the peptide for its ability to kill pathogens in stomach conditions, and on its ability to maintain integrity through the milk pasteurization and drying processes.
• Ultrasound as a Long-Term, Reversible Male Contraceptive: James Tsuruta and Paul Dayton of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill will study the ability of therapeutic ultrasound to deplete testicular sperm counts. Characterizing the most beneficial timing and dosage could lead to the development of a low-cost, non-hormonal and reversible method of contraception for men.

You will notice from the examples listed above that all of these funded projects involve the development of proprietary (read: potentially profitable) and as-of-yet unproven technologies, and which will require the transformation and/or alteration of a natural process or substance. Also, many of the grant disbursements have gone towards contraception. This appears to diverge from the GCGH's mission statement of "improving health in the developing world," insofar as it is focused on reducing population in the developed world, rather than supporting the health of those already living, in need of help.
¹ Grand Challenges In Global Health, About Us

Sayer Ji is the founder and director of GreenMedInfo.com and co-author of the bookThe Cancer Killers: The Cause Is The Cure with New York Times best-seller Dr. Ben Lerner and Dr. Charles Majors. His writings and research have been published in the Wellbeing Journal, the Journal of Gluten Sensitivity, and have been featured on Mercola.com, NaturalNews.com, Reuters.com, GaryNull.com, Infowars.com and Care2.com.

US poverty on track to reach 46-year high; suburbs, underemployed workers, children hit hard

Washington Post

The ranks of America’s poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net.

Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks ahead of the November elections.

The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965.

Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth.

“I grew up going to Hawaii every summer. Now I’m here, applying for assistance because it’s hard to make ends meet. It’s very hard to adjust,” said Laura Fritz, 27, of Wheat Ridge, Colo., describing her slide from rich to poor as she filled out aid forms at a county center. Since 2000, large swaths of Jefferson County just outside Denver have seen poverty nearly double.

Fritz says she grew up wealthy in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch, but fortunes turned after her parents lost a significant amount of money in the housing bust. Stuck in a half-million dollar house, her parents began living off food stamps and Fritz’s college money evaporated. She tried joining the Army but was injured during basic training.

Now she’s living on disability, with an infant daughter and a boyfriend, Garrett Goudeseune, 25, who can’t find work as a landscaper. They are struggling to pay their $650 rent on his unemployment checks and don’t know how they would get by without the extra help as they hope for the job market to improve.

In an election year dominated by discussion of the middle class, Fritz’s case highlights a dim reality for the growing group in poverty. Millions could fall through the cracks as government aid from unemployment insurance, Medicaid, welfare and food stamps diminishes.

“The issues aren’t just with public benefits. We have some deep problems in the economy,” said Peter Edelman, director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy.

Gates Foundation Depopulation Summit Demands Global Approval

Occupy Corporatism
Susanne Posnel

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) are focusing on population control through their Global Health Development Programs. By using citizens in under-developed nations, like Africa and India, was Guinea pigs for their research and development for “new interventions such as vaccines, drugs and diagnostics”, these globalists hope to ensure their family planning schemes are effective.

Melinda Gates has made family planning and the population control agenda her personal mission . She justifies her cause by claiming that 100,000 women die in child birth from unintended pregnancies. Although this statistic has no scientific basis, since it sounds good and mainstream media do not check facts, it has helped the BMGF team up with the British government to raise more than $4 billion to fun depopulation programs under the guise of bringing contraceptives to under-developed nations.
The BMGF assert that by 2050 “the global population is expected to grow to over 9 billion people” and this is unacceptable to them. By applying pressure to social programs and resources, the BMGF want to use family planning as an investment for all national governments globally.
Strategies to accomplish their goals include:

•  Using financial influence to force governments and policymakers to implement their family planning schemes
  
•   Empower NGOs who promote family planning propaganda
  
•   Coerce the integration of family planning into all “humanitarian” efforts by using funds from the UN Global Fund
  
•   Pour money into efforts that further family planning through national policy controls that adhere to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals

BMGF has partnered with drug corporations like Shanghai Dahua Pharmaceuticals in China to develop implantable fertility controls that will be used in over 20 developing countries to curb population growth.

The injectable Depo-Provera is being sold to under-developed nations and being administered by healthcare workers and nonmedical providers, or by the women themselves. Policy and training systems are underway to ensure these drugs are utilized in areas like the sub-Saharan Africa. By using these areas as testing grounds for new fertility drugs, as well as forcible sterilization schemes, the BMGF are focusing on preventative situations over dealing with abortable pregnancies which become complicated.

On July 11th, the BMGF will attend the UK’s Department for International Development Family Planning Summit (FPS). Ministers of State and leaders from over 60 countries will join with major non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the private sector to make firm commitments to addressing the global short-fall in family planning provision to be agreed upon so that population growth issues can be dealt with by the global Elite.

Prior to this summit, the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), the modern version of the eugenic program founded by Margaret Sanger and Bill Gates’ father in the 1950s, will focus their efforts on coercing young people into supporting their family planning scheme by debating teenage pregnancy, unwanted births and maternal morality as defined by the eugenics ideal.

According to the FPS agenda “young people have to be at the heart of driving forward the ambitious developments in family planning provision which the Summit sets out to stimulate.”

Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the UN Population Fund, described the proposals at the FPS as the agenda to “transform” family planning into a global movement. Population control, with the assistance of the BMGF and their funders will build an army of coercive tactics that aim to reinvent the movement to ensure its success.

Osotimehin claims that family planning “enables women to take charge of their lives and for young people to plan their lives. It empowers a woman to do what they want to do in terms of the number of children they want to have and can afford.”

The Technocratization of Public Education

Global Research
Prof. James F. Tracy


Subverting educational practices

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is directing $1.1 million to fit students in seven US pubic school districts with “galvanic skin response” bracelets. The devices are designed to measure students' receptivity to teachers’ lessons through biometric technology that reads and records “skin conductance, a form of electrodermal activity that grows higher during states such as boredom or relaxation.” [1, 2].
The funding is part of the Gates Foundation’s $49.5 million Measures of Effective Teachers project that is presently experimenting with teacher evaluation systems. As Melinda Gates put it on the PBS NewsHour, “What the Foundation feels our job is to do is to make sure we create a system where we can have an effective teacher in every single classroom across the United States.” [3]

The effort of extraordinarily wealthy elites to further subvert educational practices through “neuromarketing” techniques is the latest example in a long sequence of educational reforms dating to the early 1900s. Indeed, the Gates Foundation’s fixation on stimulus-response measurement and data collection is a fitting chapter of this history.

State sanctioned education in the United States has become a type of task-oriented training, quite apart from what education once involved--the cultivation of the human will and intellect. Children in most public schools today receive this type of conditioning, while the more affluent often send their offspring to private institutions or home school. What passes for education today is to a significant degree the legacy of late-nineteenth-to-early-twentieth century German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt and the Rockefeller family's philanthropic project.

A professor at University of Leipzig, Wundt was the originator of what he termed a “new” or “experimental” psychology that stripped psychology of any of its potential philosophical concerns with the soul, will, or self-determination of the individual. In Wundt’s reconfiguration of psychology the mind is merely an apparatus that responds to given stimuli, and through the measurement and recording of the stimuli and responses of the subject the psychologist in the laboratory (subsequently the teacher—and now the students—in the classroom) can determine the effectiveness of one stimulus-response method over another, as well as the functional capacities of the student.

For Wundt and his followers the human being is the sum total of her experiences; devoid of character and essence that might interfere with the ends of the collective unit. This view of the human psyche set the stage for the establishment of eugenics, psychiatry, and the social engineering carried out in public school classrooms.

[Flashback] NASA Scientist: Persistent Contrails Cause Global Warming

Zen Gardner

Buried under years of misinformation and refusal to acknowledge the existence of deliberately planted aerosols known as persistent contrails or “chemtrails” is an article published in 1997 entitled:

Those Hazy Jet Trails May Heat Up The Debate About Global Warming

Published in the Christian Science Monitor, this article is a bombshell. (emphasis mine)

BOSTON — Patrick Minnis studies satellite images of aircraft contrails and thinks of climate change. Those pretty patterns in the sky may not be as benign as they look. They may be inducing enough extra cloudiness over heavily traveled Northern Hemisphere regions to significantly warm the ground below.

“When we look up at the sky or down from a satellite, it’s possible we are viewing a cloud that would not have been there if it hadn’t been for a jet aircraft,” Dr. Minnis says. Sketchy contrail statistics gleaned from satellite images had suggested jet trails would be climatically insignificant. Minnis says “we know better than that [now].”

Satellite analysts had not connected sharply defined contrails seen in some images with cirrus clouds seen subsequently in other images covering other areas.

Minnis – an atmospheric scientist at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. – has made that connection. He took part in a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) field experiment in May 1996.

Infrared images taken every 15 minutes by the GOES-8 weather satellite enabled him to track distinctive contrails for six hours or more.

It gets better.

You’ll never hear this from a scientist today. I don’t know if he’s spoken any more about “persistent contrails” since this time, but that’s supposed to be his job. He’s still listed as the Principal Investigator on the NASA Langley Cloud and Radiation Group home page. I would sure like to talk to him.

At a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Baltimore last May, Minnis told how he followed a 100-kilometer-long, oval contrail made by a NASA DC-8 research aircraft. The contrail formed cirrus – covering 4,000 square kilometers (1,500 square miles) at its peak.

A Figure 8 contrail apparently produced over south Texas or Mexico by an unknown aircraft grew to a size of 20,000 square kilometers as it drifted over the Gulf of Mexico.
Minnis calls such observations solid evidence that contrails can cause cirrus coverage far beyond that of the young contrails that are easily identified.

Millions of people see this effect everyday. He doesn’t mention why jet craft are doing ovals and a figure 8, but at least he states that. Just the configurations these pilots fly prove it’s an aerosol program.

Enter the Climate Impact of “Persistent Contrails”

Brian Toon, who is with the University of Colorado at Boulder, and is project scientist for the field study, notes that this points up the need to assess the area of the earth covered by contrails and figure out what’s happening to the climate.

Recent research has found what Minnis calls a strong correlation between contrail frequency and fuel usage over the United States. In 1992, 93 percent of aircraft fuel was burned in the Northern Hemisphere – 70 percent of it between 60 and 30 degrees north latitude. The 1992 statistics could indicate where the climate impact will lie. It could be anything from a mild nighttime warming to a climatic big deal.

Minnis notes, for example, that average cloudiness over the United States has increased 5 percent in the three decades since jet travel began to intensify. He explained that, if the increase is all due to contrails – a big if – we’re looking at a potential warming from the contrails that would amount to one-third to two-thirds as much warming as we already have from the buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide during the past century.
No one knows how much of the increased cloudiness to pin on contrail cirrus. But any significant fraction that is due to contrails would be of climatic concern.

Here comes…..

Clouds can cool the planet by reflecting sunshine back into space, or warm it by trapping outgoing heat. Contrails form cirrus clouds with the type of structures and  at levels in the upper atmosphere that make them climate warmers.

Thar She Blows!

There goes the global warming reason–shot to hell where it belongs. For these bought-off fake scientists to ramble on about cooling the earth by putting up highly toxic reflective metallic particles by the millions of tons–which they have already done and continue to do–is not just fraudulently ludicrous, it is insanely criminal.
The article finishes out–excerpts:

World Bank Nominee Tied to Monsanto Shareholder Bill Gates, Soros

Natural Society
Tim McCoy

Obama nominated Dartmouth University president Jim Yong Kim, M.D. to head the United Nations World Bank.  Most people think that UN agencies benefit poor people, but this is far from the truth.

The UN World Bank claims to fight poverty in developing nations by financing infrastructure projects. But the UN World Bank is really a tool used to acquire Third World natural resources through conditions on loans that are extremely difficult to repay. The raw resources are then privatized by insider multi-national corporations.  The World Bank actually creates more poverty.

The nomination of Jim Yong Kim indicates that the World Bank may shift away from focusing on infrastructure and will instead turn toward providing health care in Third World countries.  Jim Yong Kim’s areas of interest include vaccines for tuberculosis as well as drugs for HIV and AIDS.

Kim brokered a deal with Big Pharma and the UN World Health Organization for expanding the pharmaceutical drug market to a larger populace in exchange for lower drug prices for second-line tuberculosis drugs.  Second-line drugs are used when basic treatment fails because of drug resistance.  Drug resistance similar to the new ‘resistant White Plague‘ brought about by big pharma’s drugs. Many in the medical community believed it would be dangerous to distribute second-line drugs widely.  Kim is also responsible for pushing HIV/AIDS retroviral drugs in developing nations.

HIV/AIDS drugs used in the Third World have profound side effects that include eye, kidney, liver and heart problems.

Jim Yong Kim says that the highest point in his career was when George Soros donated to Kim’s tuberculosis vaccine program, which was followed by a a huge grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for $44.7 million.  Monsanto shareholder Bill Gates, who has repeatedly stated that Monsanto’s GMOs are the answer to starvation despite scientific proof of the contrary, gave a controversial speech at a Ted conference outlining the controversial population reduction plan through ‘healthcare’:

“The world today has 6.8 billion people… that’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.”

Additionally, Kim is the co-founder of Partners in Health along with Paul Farmer who is famous for saying that healthcare is a right.  Healthcare as a “right” disables health freedom to escape the medical health paradigm and choose your own methods of healing.  In addition, it also enables the government to determine whether or not an individual may receive care — the ‘right’ to live or die.  Therefore, this shocking and disturbing program falls into the category of a eugenics-based plan.

Conclusion:

The objective of Jim Yong Kim heading the UN World Bank appears to be to promote ludicrous policies by expanding healthcare through dangerous drugs.  Kim’s support for redistribution of wealth and socialized medicine may come with a tremendous price tag for developed countries (especially the US).  If the UN World Bank was truly a benevolent organization, the focus for the Third World would be on support for independent farming, clean water and food.

Bill Gates backs climate scientists lobbying for large-scale geoengineering

Editor's Note:  Global warming is now being blamed for the hundreds who froze to death in Europe, which demonstrates that the rush to implement policy will not be interrupted by reality.  Will we later see catastrophic anthropogenic global warming used as an excuse to poison us from above?  Proactively? Covertly?

The Guardian
John Vidal

The billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates is backing a group of
climate scientists lobbying for geoengineering experiments.

The billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates is backing a group of climate scientists lobbying for geoengineering experiments.

A small group of leading climate scientists, financially supported by billionaires including Bill Gates, are lobbying governments and international bodies to back experiments into manipulating the climate on a global scale to avoid catastrophic climate change.

The scientists, who advocate geoengineering methods such as spraying millions of tonnes of reflective particles of sulphur dioxide 30 miles above earth, argue that a "plan B" for climate change will be needed if the UN and politicians cannot agree to making the necessary cuts in greenhouse gases, and say the US government and others should pay for a major programme of international research.

Solar geoengineering techniques are highly controversial: while some climate scientists believe they may prove a quick and relatively cheap way to slow global warming, others fear that when conducted in the upper atmosphere, they could irrevocably alter rainfall patterns and interfere with the earth's climate.

Geoengineering is opposed by many environmentalists, who say the technology could undermine efforts to reduce emissions, and by developing countries who fear it could be used as a weapon or by rich countries to their advantage. In 2010, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity declared a moratorium on experiments in the sea and space, except for small-scale scientific studies.

Concern is now growing that the small but influential group of scientists, and their backers, may have a disproportionate effect on major decisions about geoengineering research and policy.

"We will need to protect ourselves from vested interests [and] be sure that choices are not influenced by parties who might make significant amounts of money through a choice to modify climate, especially using proprietary intellectual property," said Jane Long, director at large for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US, in a paper delivered to a recent geoengineering conference on ethics.

"The stakes are very high and scientists are not the best people to deal with the social, ethical or political issues that geoengineering raises," said Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace. "The idea that a self-selected group should have so much influence is bizarre."
Pressure to find a quick technological fix to climate change is growing as politicians fail to reach an agreement to significantly reduce emissions. In 2009-2010, the US government received requests for over $2bn(£1.2bn) of grants for geoengineering research, but spent around $100m.

Machines of War: Blackwater, Monsanto, and Bill Gates

Pravda
Silvia Ribeiro
La Jornada

A report by Jeremy Scahill in The Nation (Blackwater's Black Ops, 9/15/2010) revealed that the largest mercenary army in the world, Blackwater (now called Xe Services) clandestine intelligence services was sold to the multinational Monsanto. Blackwater was renamed in 2009 after becoming famous in the world with numerous reports of abuses in Iraq, including massacres of civilians. It remains the largest private contractor of the U.S. Department of State "security services," that practices state terrorism by giving the government the opportunity to deny it.

Many military and former CIA officers work for Blackwater or related companies created to divert attention from their bad reputation and make more profit selling their nefarious services-ranging from information and intelligence to infiltration, political lobbying and paramilitary training - for other governments, banks and multinational corporations. According to Scahill, business with multinationals, like Monsanto, Chevron, and financial giants such as Barclays and Deutsche Bank, are channeled through two companies owned by Erik Prince, owner of Blackwater: Total Intelligence Solutions and Terrorism Research Center. These officers and directors share Blackwater.

One of them, Cofer Black, known for his brutality as one of the directors of the CIA, was the one who made contact with Monsanto in 2008 as director of Total Intelligence, entering into the contract with the company to spy on and infiltrate organizations of animal rights activists, anti-GM and other dirty activities of the biotech giant.

Contacted by Scahill, the Monsanto executive Kevin Wilson declined to comment, but later confirmed to The Nation that they had hired Total Intelligence in 2008 and 2009, according to Monsanto only to keep track of "public disclosure" of its opponents. He also said that Total Intelligence was a  "totally separate entity from Blackwater."

However, Scahill has copies of emails from Cofer Black after the meeting with Wilson for Monsanto, where he explains to other former CIA agents, using their Blackwater e-mails, that the discussion with Wilson was that Total Intelligence had become "Monsanto's intelligence arm," spying on activists and other actions, including "our people to legally integrate these groups." Total Intelligence Monsanto paid $ 127,000 in 2008 and $ 105,000 in 2009.

No wonder that a company engaged in the "science of death" as Monsanto, which has been dedicated from the outset to produce toxic poisons spilling from Agent Orange to PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), pesticides, hormones and genetically modified seeds, is associated with another company of thugs.

Almost simultaneously with the publication of this article in The Nation, the Via Campesina reported the purchase of 500,000 shares of Monsanto, for more than $23 million by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which with this action completed the outing of the mask of "philanthropy." Another association that is not surprising.

It is a marriage between the two most brutal monopolies in the history of industrialism: Bill Gates controls more than 90 percent of the market share of proprietary computing and Monsanto about 90 percent of the global transgenic seed market and most global commercial seed. There does not exist in any other industrial sector monopolies so vast, whose very existence is a negation of the vaunted principle of "market competition" of capitalism. Both Gates and Monsanto are very aggressive in defending their ill-gotten monopolies.

Although Bill Gates might try to say that the Foundation is not linked to his business, all it proves is the opposite: most of their donations end up favoring the commercial investments of the tycoon, not really "donating" anything, but instead of paying taxes to the state coffers, he invests his profits in where it is favorable to him economically, including propaganda from their supposed good intentions. On the contrary, their "donations" finance projects as destructive as geoengineering or replacement of natural community medicines for high-tech patented medicines in the poorest areas of the world. What a coincidence, former Secretary of Health Julio Frenk and Ernesto Zedillo are advisers of the Foundation.

Like Monsanto, Gates is also engaged in trying to destroy rural farming worldwide, mainly through the "Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa" (AGRA). It works as a Trojan horse to deprive poor African farmers of their traditional seeds, replacing them with the seeds of their companies first, finally by genetically modified (GM). To this end, the Foundation hired Robert Horsch in 2006, the director of Monsanto. Now Gates, airing major profits, went straight to the source.

Blackwater, Monsanto and Gates are three sides of the same figure: the war machine on the planet and most people who inhabit it, are peasants, indigenous communities, people who want to share information and knowledge or any other who does not want to be in the aegis of profit and the destructiveness of capitalism.

* The author is a researcher at ETC Group