{"id":178730,"date":"2021-02-08T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2021-02-08T12:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=178730"},"modified":"2021-02-05T10:39:06","modified_gmt":"2021-02-05T10:39:06","slug":"bill-gates-and-neo-feudalism-a-closer-look-at-farmer-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/02\/bill-gates-and-neo-feudalism-a-closer-look-at-farmer-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Gates and Neo-Feudalism: A Closer Look at Farmer Bill"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cGates has a Napoleonic concept of himself, an appetite that derives from power and unalloyed success, with no leavening hard experience, no reverses.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u2014 Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, presiding judge in the Gates\/Microsoft antitrust-fraud case<\/p>\n

Bill Gates has quietly made himself the largest owner of farmland in the United States. For a man obsessed with monopoly control, the opportunity to also dominate food production must seem irresistible.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

4 Feb 2021 – <\/em>The global lockdowns that Bill Gates helped orchestrate and cheerlead<\/a> have bankrupted more than 100,000 businesses<\/a> in the U.S. alone and plunged a billion people<\/a> into poverty and deadly food insecurity that, among other devastating harms, kill 10,000 African children monthly<\/a> \u2014 while increasing Gates\u2019 wealth by $20 billion<\/a>. His $133 billion fortune<\/a> makes him the world\u2019s fourth wealthiest man<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Gates has been using that newfound cash to expand his power over global populations by buying devalued assets at fire-sale prices and maneuvering for monopoly control over public health<\/a>, privatizing prisons<\/a>, online education<\/a> and global communications<\/a> while promoting digital currencies<\/a>, high tech surveillance<\/a>, data harvesting systems<\/a> and artificial intelligence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For a man obsessed with monopoly control, the opportunity to also dominate food production must seem irresistible.<\/p>\n

According to the newest issue of The Land Report<\/a>, Gates has quietly made himself the largest owner of farmland in the United States. Gates\u2019 portfolio now comprises about 242,000 acres of American farmland<\/a> and nearly 27,000 acres of other land<\/a> across Louisiana, Arkansas, Nebraska, Arizona, Florida, Washington and 18 other states<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thomas Jefferson believed that the success of America\u2019s exemplary struggle to supplant the yoke of European feudalism with a noble experiment in self-governance depended on the perpetual control of the nation\u2019s land base by tens of thousands of independent farmers, each with a stake in our democracy.<\/p>\n

So at best, Gates\u2019 campaign to scarf up America\u2019s agricultural real estate is a signal that feudalism may again be in vogue. At worst, his buying spree is a harbinger of something far more alarming \u2014 the control of global food supplies by a power-hungry megalomaniac with a Napoleon complex.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s explore the context of Gates\u2019 stealth purchases as part of his long-term strategy of mastery over agriculture and food production globally.<\/p>\n

Beginning in 1994, Gates launched an international biopiracy campaign<\/a> to achieve vertically integrated dominion over global agricultural production. His empire now includes vast agricultural lands and hefty investments in GMO crops<\/a>, seed patents,<\/a> synthetic foods<\/a>, artificial intelligence including robotic farm workers, and commanding positions in food behemoths including Coca-Cola, Unilever<\/a>, Philip Morris (Kraft<\/a>, General Foods<\/a>), Kellogg\u2019s<\/a>, Procter & Gamble<\/a> and Amazon <\/a>(Whole Foods), and in multinationals like Monsanto and Bayer<\/a> that market chemical pesticides<\/a> and petrochemical fertilizers.<\/p>\n

As usual, Gates coordinates these personal investments with taxpayer-subsidized grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the richest and most powerful<\/a> organization in all of international aid, his financial partnerships with Big Ag<\/a>, Big Chemical<\/a>, and Big Food<\/a>, and his control of international agencies \u2014 including some of his own creation \u2014 with awesome power to create captive markets for his products.<\/p>\n

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 and partner to David Rockefeller, observed that, \u201cWho controls the food supply controls the people<\/a>.\u201d In 2006, the Bill & Melinda Gates and Rockefeller Foundations launched the $424 million Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)<\/a> promising to double crop productivity and boost incomes for 30 million small farmers by 2020 <\/a>while cutting food insecurity in half.<\/p>\n

Characteristically, Gates\u2019 approach to global problems put technology and his chemical, pharmaceutical and oil industry partners at the center of every solution. As it turned out, Gates\u2019 \u201cinnovative strategy\u201d for food production was to force America\u2019s failed system of GMO, chemical and fossil fuel-based agriculture<\/a> on poor African farmers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

African agricultural practices have evolved from the land over 10,000 years in forms that promote crop diversity, decentralization, sustainability, private property, self-organization and local control of seeds. The personal freedom inherent in these localized systems leaves farm families making their own decisions: the masters on their lands, the sovereigns of their destinies. Continuous innovation by millions of small farmers maximized sustainable yields and biodiversity.<\/p>\n

In his ruthless reinvention of colonialism, Gates spent $4.9 billion dollars<\/a> to dismantle this ancient system and replace it with high-tech corporatized and industrialized agriculture, chemically dependent monocultures, extreme centralization and top-down control. He forced small African farms to transition to imported commercial seeds<\/a>, petroleum fertilizers<\/a> and pesticides<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Gates built the supply chain infrastructure for chemicals and seeds and pressured African governments<\/a> to spend huge sums on subsidies and to use draconian penalties and authoritarian control to force farmers to buy his expensive inputs and comply with his diktats. Gates made farmers replace traditional nutritious subsistence crops like sorghum, millet, sweet potato and cassava with high-yield industrial cash crops, like soy and corn<\/a>, which benefit elite commodity traders but leave poor Africans with little to eat. Both nutrition and productivity plummeted. Soils grew more acidic<\/a> with every application of petrochemical fertilizers.<\/p>\n

As with Gates\u2019 African vaccine enterprise, there was neither internal evaluation nor public accountability. The 2020 study \u201cFalse Promises: The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)<\/a>\u201d is the report card on the Gates\u2019 cartel\u2019s 14-year effort. The investigation concludes that the number of Africans suffering extreme hunger has increased by 30 percent<\/a> in the 18 countries that Gates targeted. Rural poverty has metastasized dramatically, and the number of hungry people in these nations has risen to 131 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Under Gates\u2019 plantation system, Africa\u2019s rural populations have become slaves on their own land<\/a> to a tyrannical serfdom of high-tech inputs, mechanization, rigid schedules, burdensome conditionalities, credits and subsidies that are the defining features of Bill Gates\u2019 \u201cGreen Revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

The only entities benefiting from Gates\u2019 program are his international corporate partners \u2014 and particularly Monsanto, in which the Gates Foundation Trust purchased 500,000 shares worth $23 million<\/a> in 2010 (but later divested those shares after pressure from civil society groups). Gates himself even filmed commercials for Monsanto\u2019s GMOs<\/a>, touting them as the \u201csolution\u201d to world hunger.<\/p>\n

In a typical example of Gates\u2019 strange largess, his foundation apparently made his taxpayer-subsidized \u201ccharitable\u201d grants amounting to $10 million to the Big Ag behemoth, Cargill,<\/a> to build his supply chains for GMO soy in South Africa. Africans call Gates\u2019 program \u201cNeocolonialism\u201d or \u201cCorporate Colonialism<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The AGRA Watch initiative of Seattle-based Community Alliance for Global Justice follows Gates\u2019 agricultural and food policies. According to Heather Day, an AGRA Watch spokesperson, AGRA is a trojan horse for corporate kleptocracy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Gates Foundation and AGRA claim to be \u2018pro-farmer,\u2019 \u2018pro-poor\u2019 and \u2018pro-environment,\u2019\u201d Day told me. \u201cBut their approach is closely aligned<\/a> with transnational corporations, like Monsanto, and foreign policy actors like USAID [United States Agency for International Development].They take advantage of food and global climate crises to promote high-tech, centralized, industrial agriculture that generate profits for Gates\u2019 corporate partners<\/a> while degrading the environment and disempowering farmers. Their programs are a dark form of philanthrocapitalism<\/a> based on biopiracy and corporate biopiracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gates\u2019 climate activism (A memo to my environmental colleagues)<\/strong><\/p>\n

To cloak his dystopian plans for humanity in benign intentions, Gates has expropriated the rhetoric of \u201csustainability,\u201d \u201cbiodiversity,\u201d \u201cgood stewardship\u201d and \u201cclimate.\u201d These causes are all grim realities that pose existential threats to our children and require urgent attention. However, Gates\u2019 record exposes his benevolent intentions as masquerades for his agenda to maximize personal profit and control.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s baffling to me how so many of my friends in the environmental movement have swallowed Gates\u2019 chicanery. In my 40 years as a climate activist, I saw zero evidence of Gates\u2019 funding of genuine climate advocacy; the Gates Foundation is AWOL in the climate wars.<\/p>\n

The leading climate groups, National Resource Defense Council, Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Waterkeepers, etc., receive virtually nothing from the world\u2019s largest philanthropy. His investment history suggests that the climate crisis, for Gates and his cronies, is no more than an alibi for intrusive social control, \u201cGreat Reset\u201d-scale surveillance,<\/a> and massive science fiction geoengineering<\/a> boondoggles, including his demented and terrifying vanity projects to spray the stratosphere with calcium chloride or seawater<\/a> to slow warming, to deploy giant balloons<\/a> to saturate our atmosphere with reflective particles to blot out the sun<\/a>, or his perilous gambit of releasing millions of genetically modified mosquitoes<\/a> in South Florida.<\/p>\n

When we place these nightmare schemes in context alongside the battery of experimental vaccines he forces on 161 million African children annually<\/a>, it\u2019s pretty clear that Gates regards us all as his lab rats.<\/p>\n

Gates has also heeded Kissinger\u2019s advice, \u201cControl oil and you control nations<\/a>;\u201d his energy holdings nowhere reflect his expressed antipathy for greenhouse gases<\/a>. Gates\u2019 personal investments in hydrocarbons include massive stakes in all the oil majors: Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Shell<\/a>. He owns the world\u2019s largest private jet company<\/a>. His outsized commitment to coal includes giant investments in the dirtiest coal-generating fleets including the Canadian National Railway<\/a> and CSX Richmond<\/a> which is the largest coal transporter east of the Mississippi River.<\/a> Gates is betting big on the future of carbon.<\/p>\n

Gates\u2019 energy-hungry data harvesting, processing and analytics centers <\/a>are among the world\u2019s fastest-growing sources of exploding energy demand. And, of course, Gates\u2019 chemical\/industrial agriculture enterprises are the antithesis of climate-friendly. His GMO corn requires heavy applications of fertilizers, pesticides, agro-chemicals made from natural gas and other fossil-fuel inputs<\/a>. He effectively forced Africans, in Michael Pollan\u2019s words, to \u201ceat oil<\/a>.\u201d African farmers call Gates\u2019 program \u201cclimate-stupid agriculture.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

Gates has learned to fatten himself on global crises, whether it\u2019s pandemics, climate, famine or mass extinction. Climate change has given Gates an excuse to create monopolies over seed, food and agriculture.<\/p>\n

In 2008, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced $306 million in grants<\/a> to promote high-yield sustainable agriculture among smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia<\/a>. The foundation\u2019s plans included creation, through genetic manipulation, of high-production, drought-resistant dairy cows<\/a>, and the development and proliferation of super crops<\/a> resistant to climate change.<\/p>\n

In other words, climate change was the guise for more mischievous geoengineering. Meanwhile, Gates\u2019 ag policies are destroying our planet\u2019s climate systems<\/a>, pushing millions of species to extinction, desertifying the soil, destroying water systems and enriching the Poison Cartel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So, a note to my fellow environmental leaders: Bill Gates is not our amigo! Furthermore, Gates has put climate reform in malodour with millions of Americans, who see his climate pretenses in context of his ambitions to control humanity and put an end to economic activity and personal freedom.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s largely Gates\u2019 doing that half of America sees climate change as either a \u201cGreat Reset\u201d flimflam to shift wealth upward, or a geoengineering boondoggle. It\u2019s on them that they don\u2019t recognize the serious peril of climate change. It\u2019s on us that we seem deliberately blinded to the peril of Bill Gates.<\/p>\n

Gates profits from all this confusion; the polarization of the climate debate paralyzes reform efforts thereby preserving the value of his carbon stakes. We all need to recognize who is really behind that Green mask!<\/p>\n

Biopiracy<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cA nation that destroys its soils destroys itself.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u2014 President Franklin D. Roosevelt\u2019s letter to all state governors, February 1937<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Long experience and research have shown that agroecology based on biodiversity<\/a>, Seed Freedom and Food Freedom is essential not just to civil liberties and democracy, but to the future of food and farming.<\/p>\n

For thousands of years, farmers\u2019 innovation and biodiversity evolved together to create the most efficient practices for sustainable food production and biodiversity. The United Nations\u2019 seminal 2009<\/a> study by the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD<\/a>) documents the incontrovertible evidence demonstrating the abject failure of the Gates\/Rockefeller \u201cGreen Revolution\u201d to improve on traditional agriculture.<\/p>\n

IAASTD deployed a team of 900 leading scientists, agronomists, and researchers<\/a> to study the issue of world hunger. Their comprehensive and definitive report<\/a> showed that GMO crops are not the answer to food shortfalls or rural poverty. That report definitively concludes that neither Gates\u2019 Green Revolution nor his GMOs can feed the world and at the same time protect the planet.<\/p>\n

IAASTD\u2019s comprehensive analysis<\/a> demonstrates that the Green Revolution that the Rockefeller Foundation launched in India and Mexico in the 1960s was a catastrophe; the chemical path of monocultures has undermined Earth\u2019s capacity to support life and food production by destroying biodiversity, soil and water, as well as contributing to climate change<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Green Revolution policies subvert food and nutritional security, and dispossess small farmers through debt for external inputs. IAASTD and numerous other studies<\/a> show that Seed Sovereignty<\/a>, Food Sovereignty<\/a> and Knowledge Sovereignty<\/a> are the only viable future for food and farming. The United Nations and the world\u2019s top agricultural scientists have admitted that GMOs cannot fight hunger<\/a> as effectively as traditional farming.<\/p>\n

Bill Gates has opted to ignore this reality, dismissing science-based evidence in favor of his messianic faith that he is ordained by God to save the world with technology. According to Dr. Gates, M.D., good health only comes in a syringe (he is the world\u2019s biggest vaccine producer<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Likewise, Farmer Bill preaches that good food only comes from monocultures, chemical pesticides and fertilizers, GMO crops and patented seeds that he happens to own<\/a>. In constructing his agriculture empire, Gates has repeatedly shown himself willing to ignore the voices of scientists and farmers, and to trample laws, treaties, traditions, civil rights, science, and sensibilities.<\/p>\n

Stealing seeds<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since the onset of the Neolithic Revolution some 10,000 years ago<\/a>, farmers and communities have worked to improve yield, taste, nutrition, robust seed qualities that enhance peculiar growth, medicinal and nutritional attributes, and the genetic resilience that allows certain seeds to flourish in particular soil and water conditions or resist predators.<\/p>\n

These vigorous, ingenious genetics are the products of a miraculous collaboration between humans, nature and their Creator during humanity\u2019s 1,000 generations of intense agricultural innovation. The free exchange of knowledge and seeds among farmers has been the basis for maintaining biodiversity and food security.<\/p>\n

Since 1979, under World Bank auspices, a consortium of agricultural research centers known as the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research<\/a> (CGIAR) has been collecting these premier seeds from small farmers across the globe and preserving them in 15 independent Public Seed Banks stationed in different countries. That venture sought to archive a complete inventory of heritage seed stocks for the benefit of all humanity so as to preserve crop diversity for the millennia.<\/p>\n

In the last 17 years, Gates has successfully maneuvered to gain control of those collections \u2014 comprising 768,578 seeds<\/a> \u2014 and to assert monopoly ownership of the world\u2019s premier seed inventories.<\/p>\n

Beginning in 2003, working in coordination with the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pumped $720 million into CGIAR\u2019s Seed Bank<\/a> project. As the largest funder of the CGIAR, Gates used his financial leverage to force the merger of the CGIAR\u2019s 15 legally independent centers into one legal entity, a sinister initiative that he calls \u201cGates Ag One<\/a>.\u201d He then moved to orchestrate the transfer of research and seeds from scientific research institutions to commodity-based corporations like Bayer and Cargill<\/a> with which he partners. In this way he is raiding, plundering and privatizing the seed stockpile for the most promising seeds from indigenous farmers around the world.<\/p>\n

Gates Ag One\u2019s director, Joe Cornelius<\/a>, is a former executive at Bayer Crop Science<\/a>. Prior to that, he was Monsanto\u2019s Director of International Development<\/a>. Working with Cornelius, Gates has perfected the techniques Monsanto pioneered in the 1980s when it led the push to propagate GMOs, and to patent seeds. Gates has made himself the Commanding General in Big Data\u2019s pirate war to plunder and monopolize the common genomic data of millions of plants bred by peasants over the millennia.<\/p>\n

Gates funds Diversity Seek (DivSeek)<\/a>, a global project he launched in 2015 to map the genomes and genome sequences of the peasant seed stocks held in seed banks. DivSeek and Gates Ag One are the tips of his spears, \u201cmining\u201d seed data to \u201ccensor\u201d out the commons. In other words \u2014 to terminate the public\u2019s ownership claims.<\/p>\n

Using artificial intelligence (AI) and digital technologies, Gates\u2019 minions at DivSeek and Gates AG One scan these seeds and categorize their genetic data to map, patent and pilfer humanity\u2019s global seedstock heritage. Gates bolsters his patent rationale by using CRISPR technology<\/a> to selectively edit the heritage seed genomes, making changes sufficient to withstand patent challenges.<\/p>\n

Gates\u2019 principal objective is to breed Green Revolution<\/a> varieties engineered to respond to chemical inputs produced by Gates\u2019 \u201cPoison Cartel\u201d partners<\/a>: Monsanto, Bayer, Dow\/DuPont, CropLife, BASF, Syngenta, Corteva, etc. In short, Gates deliberately robs the seed of its integrity and diversity, erasing evolutionary history and its links to the soil<\/a>, reducing it all to a simple \u201ccode.\u201d In this way, Gates captures our planet\u2019s genetic diversity, rewrites it, patents its code, steals the seeds from humanity and marries them off to the chemical conglomerates.<\/p>\n

By centralizing the Seed Banks and manipulating intellectual property laws, Gates has launched a campaign of \u201cgenetic colonialism\u201d to rob the world\u2019s peasants and indigenous farmers<\/a> of their hard-earned seeds and knowledge.<\/p>\n

\u201cGates Ag One\u2019s aim is to take control over the genetic diversity of this planet,\u201d agricultural freedom activist Dr. Vandana Shiva<\/a> told me. According to Shiva, Gates \u201ccontinues to subvert and sabotage both farmers\u2019 seed sovereignty and the seed sovereignty of countries. \u2018Gates Ag One\u2019 is a clear declaration of his intent to create an empire over life and biodiversity, over food and farming, and over our sustenance.\u201d In the process, says Shiva, \u201cGates is financing infernal Frankenstein experiments that defile God\u2019s creation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Citizens, governments and farm organizations have written many laws and governments have adopted international treaties on biodiversity protection, including the Convention on Biological Diversity<\/a> (CBD) and the Cartagena Biosafety Protocol<\/a> to the CBD. By conning government officials, manipulating intellectual property law and rewriting seed regulations, Gates has been able to bypass or trample<\/a> these statutes and treaties,<\/a> and to evade the multilateral governance structures that governments put in place to prevent global corporations from hijacking the planet\u2019s biodiversity and the seed commonwealth of peasants and farmers.<\/p>\n

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gates\u2019 missionary faith in technology as the solution for every human ill, from food insecurity and disease to climate health, explains his obsessive promotion of GMOs. Gates\u2019 zealous GMOs idolatry<\/a> and gene-editing technologies<\/a> leave him deaf to the mountains of peer-reviewed scientific evidence and warnings by agronomists, nutritionists, toxicologists and other scientists who question their safety.<\/p>\n

GMO vaccines and medicines are mainstays of his public health enterprise, and Gates finances research, development and proliferation of GMOs as the fix for every agricultural problem. He funded<\/a>, for example, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna<\/a>, the two CRISPR chemists who won 2020 Nobel prizes for gene editing.<\/p>\n