$1.1 million-plus Gates grants: ‘Galvanic’ bracelets that measure student engagement
In the ‘you-can’t-make-up-this-stuff’ category, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is spending about $1.1 million to develop a way to physiologically measure how engaged students are by their teachers’ lessons. This involves “galvanic skin response” bracelets that kids would wear so their engagement levels could be measured.
If this tells us anything, it is that the obsession with measurement and data in school reform has reached new nutty heights.
Here’s the description of the $498,055 grant to Clemson University that was awarded in November (but that just recently became widely known by Susan Ohanian and Diane Ravitch):
Purpose: to work with members of the Measuring Effective Teachers (MET) team to measure engagement physiologically with Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) bracelets which will determine the feasibility and utility of using such devices regularly in schools with students and teachers.
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Ohanian notes here that the kind of technology needed to develop galvanic bracelets is part of the “emerging field of neuromarketing,” which “relies on biometric technologies to determine a participant’s emotional and cognitive response to certain stimuli.”
Tax Exempt Foundations and Think Tanks: The Process of Invisible Power
“Philanthropy is the essential element in the making of Rockefeller power. It gives the Rockefellers a priceless reputation as public benefactors which the public values so highly that power over public affairs is placed in the Rockefellers’ hands.Philanthropy generates more power than wealth alone can provide.” – Myer Kutz Rockefeller Power (1974)
The hidden influence of tax-exempt foundations and think tanks in the halls of power has dramatically impacted our society, and in turn the world. The Rockefeller dynastypaved the way for eugenics in 20th Century America and heavily influenced the education system. Now Bill Gates’ various philanthropic institutions are impacting the globe, with a new initiative promising to make the next several years the “Decade of vaccines“. These institutions are impacting the globe to such an extent that some have suggested that the large foundations are monopolizing development. The United States has seen a shift of power to individuals who have been called “action intellectuals”. Who’s agenda are they serving? We didn’t elect these individuals, but large foundations are functioning like national governments.
The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense has picked up on this trend in its Strategic Trends program. The MoD’s Global Strategic Trends – Out to 2040document foresees “…the emergence of a global elite, a powerful network of individuals and institutions that sits above the level of individual states and influences the global agenda…”
Our health, society and future are all impacted by these elites. Who are they? What agenda are they pursuing?
A look back…
The U.S. Congress first investigated the activities of the large foundations in 1915 under the Commission on Industrial Relations. The Commission found that,
“The domination by the men in whose hands the final control of a large part of American industry rests is not limited to their employees, but is being rapidly extended to control the education and social survival of the nation. This control is being extended largely through the creation of enormous privately managed funds for indefinite purposes, hereafter designated “foundations”, by the endowment of colleges and universities, by the creation of funds for the pensioning of teachers, by contributions to private charities, as well as through controlling or influencing the public press…”
Again in 1953 the Reece Committee found that tax-exempt foundations were wielding an unprecedented amount of influence over American society, including the education system. Norman Dodd served as the chief director of research for the Committee. In the monumental interview below, Dodd outlines what he found:
Foundations serve another, much less discussed purpose. The wealth of the individuals who own the large foundations is protected from taxation. The Rockefeller Foundation was conveniently founded in 1913, the same year that the income tax was ratified. John D. Rockefeller Sr. pioneered this art of so called “scientific giving”, and modern day philanthropists have followed in his footsteps. When John D’s public image became tarnished by his notoriously ruthless nature in his business dealings, he hired the PR man named Ivy Lee. Lee suggested that Rockefeller begin giving away his wealth, and give it away he did; with strings attached.
Gary Allen explains in The Rockefeller File,
“He [Rockefeller] would “give” money away to foundations under his control and then have those foundations spend the money in ways which brought even more power and profits to the Rockefeller empire. The money “given” away would be bread cast upon the waters. But bread that always had a hook in it. John D. Jr. was to refer to this as the “principle of scientific giving.”
The influence of large foundations on American society is documented by Dr. Lily E. Kay in her book The Molecular Vision of Life: Caltech, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of the New Biology. Kay writes, “Their numerous projects and the unprecedented scope of their financial and institutional resources shaped the development of culture and the production of knowledge in the United States. Through education, public opinion, stimulation of specific research agenda, and the promotion of selective categories of knowledge and research, the Foundation played a key role in the creation of a hegemonic bloc…”
Foundations Today
In May of 2009 several top philanthropists met at the home of Sir Paul Nurse, president of Rockefeller University. David Rockefeller Jr, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Ted Turner and Oprah Winfrey were all in attendance. According to the London Times, the meeting was so secret that, “…some of the billionaires’ aides were told they were at ‘security briefings’”. The Times reports, “Over dinner they discussed how they might settle on an “umbrella cause” that could harness their interests.” The Times interviewed a guest at the meeting, who said that the group wanted to meet in secret because they didn’t want their statements ending up in the media, “painting them as an alternative world government.”
A brief overview of the activities of these groups will show that they have been acting as an alternative world government, and that they have been for decades. Through their grant-making power and immense wealth, they can effectively choose which scientific research projects are funded, what education reforms are initiated, and in turn the entire direction of society at large.
In an interview with the Seattle Times, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was asked, “Some say the emergence of super rich philanthropies like the Gates Foundation has undermined the effectiveness of the U.N. and its member organizations, like the WHO.” Moon responded,
“On the contrary that is what we really want — contributions from the business community as well as philanthropies. We need to have political support, but it doesn’t give us all that we need. NGOs and philanthropies and many foundations such as Bill Gates Foundation — they’re taking a very important role…”
In October of 2007, the Global Impact Investing Network was established by the Rockefeller Foundation. The GIIN will “help solve social and environmental problems” by encouraging investment that will bring both profit and produce real world change. The GIIN is taking John D’s “principle of scientific giving” to another level. This conglomerate of various banks and foundations will attempt to mold industry and society by investing in selected social programs and “screening” out investments for Co2 emitters and others deemed to be unworthy. A few of the banks and organizations involved with GIIN include:
- Acumen Fund
- The Annie E. Casey Foundation
- The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
- Calvert Foundation
- Capricorn Investment Group
- Citigroup
- Deutsche Bank
- Equilibrium Capital
- Generation Investment Management
- J.P. Morgan
- The Rockefeller Foundation
Think Tanks: A profile on an “action intellectual”
“Herman Kahn has been a major figure in one of the most fascinating shifts of power in U.S. History: from identifiable public leaders to the ‘action intellectuals.’” – Life Magazine, December 6, 1968
Herman Kahn is known as one of the founding fathers of future studies. After working for the RAND Corporation, Kahn founded the Hudson Institute in 1961. The satirical film Dr. Strangelove is largely based on real documents and ideas that came from RAND. The December 6, 1968 edition of Life Magazine details Kahn’s career, and the larger implications of an unprecedented shift of power to unelected “action intellectuals.”
“…Herman Kahn has been a major figure in one of the most fascinating shifts of power in U.S. History: from identifiable public leaders to the “action intellectuals.” As counselors to the decision-makers, men such as Kahn often have access to future technology (what is known, but not yet disclosed) and official intelligence (what is known, but not yet revealed, about the capacities and plans of other nations).
Thus, decisions – based on private knowledge, analyzed by private consultants and debated in private – can become public policy. This is a process of invisible power. At its extreme this influence can commit a nation to social programs and military actions which have neither been fully explained nor publicly debated. One day, as that power pervades and grows more sophisticated, it may so affect the course of government that any nation’s policies may be locked in, as if by automatic pilot, years before the men who are elected to govern ever take office.”
Whos agenda are they serving? We didn’t elect these individuals. The historical record is ripe with open admissions on part of the elite to use their philanthropic power to manipulate society at large. The world is now in their sights. Whether the elite’s intent is good or bad, are they giving us a choice?
Bilderberg’s Tax Returns 2007-2010
The group operates under the business entity “American Friends of Bilderberg” as a 5013c3 tax exempt foundation. The documents show that in 2008 they received $645,000 in contributions to fund their annual meeting, with money coming from Goldman Sachs, the Washington Post, Microsoft, Henry Kissinger, and others. How did I get these documents? Well, the IRS requires 501c3 Tax Exempt Foundations to make certain records public. I guess you just have to know where to look. (Mark Dice)
Bilderberg 2009 Tax Returns 21 pages
Bilderberg 2010 Tax Returns 23 pages
Documents Reveal Rockefeller Foundation Actively Engaged in Mass Mind-Control
From archive material from the 1940s onward, it has become apparent that the Rockefeller Foundation has for decades now fanatically nurtured research into fear-inducing brainwashing techniques for the masses.
In a series of generous grants in the 1940s- and 50s, extended to Professor Carl I. Hovland of Yale University, the Foundation actively funded research into “the psychological mechanisms through which communications exert their influence.” Main research subject deals with the question of “how the individual deals with the welter of conflicting ideas with which he is constantly bombarded; how “wishful thinking” and emotional bias affect judgment; and whether the judgment process is transferred from one situation to another are among the problems to be studied”, we read in the 1954 Rockefeller yearly report.
Hovland, besides conducting research into behavioral and attitude-changes of groups, was also part of the Rockefeller Foundation’s social science staff. In addition to that, the professor was heavily involved in other branches of the Anglo-American establishment. In the study Origins of mass communications research during the American cold war by Timothy Glander, the author explains:
“(…) Hovland held key positions on several major national boards, including the Air Force’s Human Resources Research Institute, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Office of Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, and he doubtlessly had input in determining the research agendas that these organizations pursued.”
Obama Taps Jim Yong Kim for World Bank
President Barack Obama on Friday nominated Dartmouth College president and global health expert Jim Yong Kim to lead the World Bank, an unconventional pick that could help to quell criticism in the developing world of the U.S. stranglehold on the international organization’s top post.
Obama said Kim, a Korean-born physician and pioneer in the treatment of HIV, AIDS and tuberculosis, has the breadth of experience on development issues needed to carry out the financial institution’s anti-poverty mission.
“It’s time for a development professional to lead the world’s largest development agency,” Obama said Friday morning during a Rose Garden ceremony.
$28 billion health fund backed by Bill Gates and Bono is investigated for fraud
A multi billion dollar global health fund backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is being probed for widespread fraud after it emerged grant money to developing countries had been ‘eaten up by corruption.’
The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), which distributes $28 billion in aid, found that two-thirds of the money from some grants had been stolen or misused by recipient countries.
As a result of the internal investigation, donor countries Germany and Sweden have withheld over $250 million in aid money from the Global Fund on the back of the claims.
The Fund’s newly reinforced inspector general’s office, which uncovered the corruption, can’t give an overall figure on the size of the fraud because it has examined only a tiny fraction of the $10 billion that the fund has spent since its creation in 2002.
To date, the United States, the European Union and other major donors have pledged $21.7 billion to the fund, the dominant financier of efforts to fight the three diseases.
The Global Fund receives money from 54 countries and charitable foundations such as (Product) Red, which is supported by rock star Bono.
Other prominent backers of the Fund include former U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan, French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gives $150 million a year.
The controversy over the misuse of Fund health money erupted after a report from the Fund’s inspector-general found that ‘as much as two-thirds’ of some health grants to developing countries had been ‘eaten up by corruption.’
Reports specifically named projects in Djibouti, Mali, Mauritania and Zambia, and cited forged or non-existent receipts for ‘training events,’ fake travel and housing claims and outright theft, along with shoddy bookkeeping.
A full 67 percent of money spent on an anti-AIDS program in Mauritania was misspent, the investigators told the Fund’s board of directors.
It also emerged that 36 percent of the money spent on a program in Mali to fight tuberculosis and malaria, and 30 percent of grants to Djibouti were similarly misappropriated.
In Zambia, where $3.5 million in spending was undocumented and one accountant pilfered $104,130, the fund decided the nation’s health ministry simply couldn’t manage the grants and put the United Nations in charge of them.
The fund is trying to recover $7 million in ‘unsupported and ineligible costs’ from the ministry.
Despite the reports of widespread corruption, Fund executives said the amount involved was only a pittance compared to some $13 billion in spending so far.
Warren Buffett’s Son Disagrees With Bill Gates
Deal Journal already brought you some of the juicy tidbits from Howard Buffett’s interview last night on “60 Minutes.” But we were struck last night by the revelation of philosophical disagreements between Warren Buffett’s son and Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and Warren Buffett’s close buddy.
Howard Buffett has plowed some of his Buffett fortune into promoting sustainable farming techniques in poor countries. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — which has been handed $31 billion of Warren Buffett’s money — has turned its considerable charitable funds to help poor farmers in Africa. Howard Buffett thinks some of the Gates Foundation’s approach is doomed to fail, he told “60 Minutes.”
Buffett says the Gates Foundation approach is to focus on high-tech farming techniques including hybrid seeds and synthetic fertilizers that aren’t sustainable in poor countries. “We need to quit thinking about trying to do it like we do it in America,” Howard Buffett said about the farming programs underway at the Gates . “At some point those guys are going to go home and the money going to not be there.”
“I’m not saying it’s all wrong,” Howard Buffett said. “Bill Gates is the smartest guy in the world, next to my dad.”
Bill Gates Warns Countries Need To Embrace GMOs or Citizens Will Starve
Entrenched in action and always on the front lines of saving the world and feeding the hungry, Bill Gates gets right to the “root” of solving the world’s food shortage by putting his money where his friends at the Rockefeller Foundation tell him to.
This week, The Associated Press reported Bill Gates believes “Countries can embrace modern seed technology and genetic modification or their citizens will starve.” This comment was directed at the naysayer’s of genetically modified (GM) seeds and the belief that “high-tech” solutions to world hunger are bad for the environment.
Why are Bill Gates and The Rockefeller Foundation supporting the proliferation of patented seeds, GMOs, and at the same time, investing tens of millions of dollars to preserve every natural seed variety on this planet in a bomb-proof doomsday vault? Wouldn’t it be best to cultivate the world’s natural seeds, while preserving them, and nourishing and nurturing our world’s farms and precious soil?
Is Gates confused and misled? I think not.
The Global Crop Diversity Trust is based in Rome. Its Board is chaired by Margaret Catley-Carlson a Canadian also on the advisory board of Group Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux, one of the world’s largest private water companies. Catley-Carlson was also president until 1998 of the New York-based Population Council, John D. Rockefeller’s population reduction organization, set up in 1952 to advance the Rockefeller family’s eugenics program under the cover of promoting “family planning,” birth control devices, sterilization and “population control” in developing countries.
Other GCDT board members include former Bank of America executive presently head of the Hollywood DreamWorks Animation, Lewis Coleman. Coleman is also the lead Board Director of Northrup Grumman Corporation, one of America’s largest military industry Pentagon contractors.
And so the plot thickens. Are Gates and his GCDT buddies on a mission from God to feed and serve the world’s hungry, or are they on a mission to control the world’s population through mass planting and distribution of GMOs?
Cables released by WikiLeaks on Wednesday, January 25, 2012, reveal new details of the US effort to push foreign governments to approve GE crops and promote the worldwide interests of agribusiness giants like Monsanto and DuPont.
A key component of the US plan to dominate world agriculture with GM seeds is the absence of labeling of GM foods. No labeling means US consumers can not exercise informed choices in the marketplace, reducing the likelihood of a consumer revolt.
Last year, Miriam E. Sapiro, Deputy US Trade Representative, urged the European Commission to break its longstanding impasse blocking GM foods. Because GM seeds are patented it is illegal for a farmer to retain seeds for next years crops – offering huge financial benefits over traditional seeds.
If I were to gander a guess why Gates is so keen on feeding the hungry, I’d have to go with keeping up appearances as a free-spirited generous guy who’s only concern is for the health and advancement of his own, yet to be revealed, agenda.
Monsanto Investor Bill Gates Says GMO Crops Needed to Fight Starvation
Bill Gates, the heavy Monsanto investor who purchased 500,000 shares of the biotech giant in 2010, has been toting Monsanto’s genetically modified creations as a tool that is necessary to prevent starvation in poor nations. The same poor nations where thousands of farmers routinely commit suicide after being completely bankrupt by Monsanto’s overpriced and ineffective GM seeds. The samecompany that we recently exposed to be running ‘slave-like’ working conditions, forcing poor workers to operate the corn fields for 14 hours per day while withholding pay.
According to Gates, this is the company whose GMO crops are going to save the world from starvation. Of course along with ‘saving the world from starvation’, GMO crops also bring along a large number of unwanted health and environmental effects. A prominent review of 19 studies examining the safety of these crops found that consumption of GMO corn or soybeans can lead to significant organ disruptions in rats and mice – particularly in the liver and kidneys.
What’s more is that Monsanto’s best selling herbicide Roundup has been completely devastating farmlands for years through the creation of resistant superweeds. Experts estimate Roundup usage to result in the destruction of over at least 120 million hectares of farmland thanks to these superweeds.
Is it any wonder that in 2008 a startling report uncovered Monsanto’s blatant abuse of poor farmers in the very poor countries that will supposedly benefit from GMO crops? Thanks to an article in the Daily Mail, it was revealed that thousands of farmers were committing suicide after using Monsanto’s GM seeds. Due to failing harvests and drastically inflated prices, the bankrupt poor farmers began taking their lives — oftentimes drinking the very same chemical concoctions provided by Monsanto as a method of suicide.
‘We are ruined now,’ said the dead man’s 38-year-old wife. ‘We bought 100 grams of BT Cotton. Our crop failed twice. My husband had become depressed. He went out to his field, lay down in the cotton and swallowed insecticide.’
Monsanto actually conned the farmers into buying their GM seeds, majorly overpriced and performing far worse than even traditional seeds. Monsanto went as far as to charge these poor farmers £10 for 100 grams of GM seed, while they could have purchased 1,000 times more traditional seeds for the same amount. The result? A career-ending harvest that led to mass farmer suicide.
It is quite clear that Monsanto really has no intention of helping these farmers fight starvation in their communities, as Monsanto investor Bill Gates would have you think. You can view Bill Gate’s speech about how GMO crops are the answer to starvation and see for yourself how he puts such strong emphasis on that selling point.
Bill Gates: End-of-Life Care vs. Saving Teachers’ Jobs
COMMENT: Why not the end of war vs saving teachers jobs? We could let granny live a few extra months, give children an education they deserve, give some little brown children their right to life back all at the same time and still have enough change to make your pants look like MC Hammer’s. Tax-free foundations and ‘philanthropic’ organisations of the elite’s have been used for decades as a cover for other activities. I’m not saying they’re all guilty, but some of the company this man is keeping doesn’t show me that his foundation is any different. The Rockefeller Foundation has an especially disgusting history. Horrible horrible people who believe their life is of so much more value than the rest of us. ‘We’ve got big brains and lots of money so we decide whether you live or die.’ Not any more.
