A report by Jeremy Scahill in
The Nation revealed that the largest mercenary army in the world, Blackwater (later called Xe Services and more recently “
Academi“)
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.
So why were so many media outlets, editorialists and bloggers clamoring to say that the purchase was a “hoax”?
That’s a good question. The more cynical among us might suspect a
financial incentive from Monsanto itself to such “journalists.” Monsanto
indeed has hired a public relations team to seek out critical blogs and
websites reporting on their crimes against both Nature and humankind.
We have seen this first hand in comments on PoliticalBlindSpot.com
articles on Monsanto. It is not beyond the realm of possibilities that
they have created blogs where seemingly legitimate authors write organic
thoughts, observations and rebuttals. The public presumes these are
real-world people, when in fact they are working PR for the company.
But the core argument of those who claim that the Monsanto purchase
of Blackwater is not true lies in the fact that we can only officially
document Blackwater being hired by Monsanto for years. Immediately
following this extensive work that Blackwater did for Monsanto, they
sold the company. Because of the nature of how the sale transpired, it
is impossible to document who the sale was to. The obvious and logical
conclusion to insiders (particularly in the private security industry),
however, is that the sale was in fact to Monsanto who had been employing
the group.
Xe (now Academi) has, indeed, been purchased,
and while there’s no way of DOCUMENTING who the new owners really are,
the logical conclusion would be that Monsanto, who had been employing
them prior to the sale are the new owners. This, of course, would also
make sense of the secrecy surrounding the deal and the identity of the
new owners. The
company was bought out by
private investors via private equity companies that don’t have to
divulge any of their dealings, with Bank of America providing much of
the
$200 million in financing for the deal.
New York-based USTC Holdings said it will acquire Xe and
its core operating subsidiaries, but did not disclose the price or terms
of the agreement in a statement.
USTC Holdings is an investor consortium led by private equity firms Forte Capital Advisors and Manhattan Partners.
Various researchers have been trying to document the buy via a paper
trail, but so far without much luck. That, of course, is the point…
Keeping it private
One thing
that is known: Forte Capital Advisors is the baby of long-time Blackwater ally Jason De Yonker:
DeYonker has unique experience with the Company that
dates back to its founding in the late 1990s. He advised the Company
through development of its early business plan and expansion of the
Moyock training facility as well as supporting negotiations of its first
training contracts with U.S. government agencies. Between 1998 and
2002, Mr. DeYonker co-managed Xe founder, Erik Prince’s family office
which included management of Mr. Prince’s portfolio companies.
What does that mean? The guy is a
glorified accountant.
Prior to joining Forté, Jason co-managed a +$100 million
family office. In addition to actively managing various platform
companies, Jason was a part of the executive team responsible for family
wealth management.
Jason has spent the last 18 years advising on various mergers,
acquistions and divestitures with an aggregate transaction value greater
than $1 billion. Jason’s experience include: transaction advisory,
portfolio management, real estate development, venture capital and cross
border dealings. Jason began his career with Arthur Andersen Corporate
Finance Group, and was a Director in Deloitte & Touche’s Corporate
Finance Group. He also was the Finance Director for the West Family
Trust, a venture capital group focused on cross-border transactons.
Jason recieved a Bachelor of Business Administration, with a
concentration in finance and accounting, from the Univeristy of
Michigan.
The other investor? It looks like the very junior partner will be
Manhattan Partners,
a private equity company – a shop that gathers money
from anonymous rich investors and uses the pool of cash to leverage
buyouts of big companies they wouldn’t have been able to take over on
their own.
Manhattan Partners invests in “compelling growth and
special situation transactions,” but this will be their first known foray into defense industries –
WarIsBusiness.com reports (
via Spencer Ackerman):
Manhattan Growth Partners is led by Dean Bosacki and Patrick McBride. Bosacki serves on the board of “the world’s largest commencement photography business,”
among other companies. Manhattan Growth Partners, which describes
itself as “a progressive thinking private equity firm,” also holds a
majority interest in Hugo Naturals, a line of organic, vegan-friendly
soaps, lotions, scents and soy candles sold at Whole Foods and other
greenwashed retailers.
At the end of the day, it would seem the logical conclusion is that
in spite of arguments to the contrary, Monsanto in fact did by the
Blackwater mercenary group… or at least the renamed Blackwater Xe (now
Academi) Services group. The big question now is
why?
http://politicalblindspot.org/yes-monsanto-actually-did-buy-the-blackwater-mercenary-group/
Posts
President
Obama famously said, during the gun control debate of 2012, that,
"AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not on the streets of America."
Yet it is his administration that's putting weapons of war on the
streets of America via local police departments. By arming police and
training police in the hardware and tactics of military warfare, the
Obama administrations is doing an end-run around Posse Comitatus and effectively putting wartime troops on the streets of America.
It later turned out that the entire Boston marathon bombing was 
Now,
apparently, local law enforcement can simply utter the word "manhunt!"
and completely ignore all citizens' rights, the Bill of Rights, due
process and state and federal law. Police have become rogue gangs with complete immunity
from all crimes even while they are the ones committing crimes on a
massive scale. They can pull you over for no crime whatsoever, stick
their fingers inside your anus and call it a "roadside search" while
using the same glove on you that they just used on somebody else's anus.
(
So
here's the question: At what point will Americans realize their country
has become a Stasi-inspired police state tyranny? When will they march
on their state capitols and demand to be treated with dignity and
respect rather than being beaten, shot, arrested, intimidated and
censored by police?
This
will happen as long as Americans allow it to happen. Every day that the
American people spend distracted by gay marriage, sports celebrities,
TV programs and the Kardashians is another day that the criminal elite
running this country build up their infrastructure of terror and
oppression against the People.
The U.S. government abides by no law
and respects no limits whatsoever to its power. It is a rogue,
out-of-control criminal mafia that has taken over positions of
government in order to grant itself the appearance of authority.
The
money was apparently spent on social media advertising campaigns
designed to lure in fans. What this has to do with diplomacy and foreign
relations is hard to determine.
Wisconsin became the latest state Friday to legislate tighter abortion laws after Republican Gov. Scott Walker signed a controversial bill that requires women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion.
