[News] Yes, Monsanto Actually DID Buy the BLACKWATER Mercenary Group!
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Tue Jul 2 12:41:43 EDT 2013
Yes, Monsanto Actually DID Buy the BLACKWATER Mercenary Group!
Posted on June 29, 2013
<http://politicalblindspot.org/yes-monsanto-actually-did-buy-the-blackwater-mercenary-group/>
http://politicalblindspot.org/yes-monsanto-actually-did-buy-the-blackwater-mercenary-group/
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
<http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/xe-international-blackwater-sold/>,
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
<http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iv14RnpjJqraPQCs5aVH9PUXN9Jw?docId=CNG.ee663915284de0064f72d69189fad44d.71> 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
<http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/blackwater-founder-in-deal-to-sell-company/?partner=rss&emc=rss> 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
<http://manhattan-partners.com/pdf/xe_services_acquired.pdf>: 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
<http://fortenyc.com/bios_jason_deyonker.html>.
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 <http://manhattan-partners.com/>, 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 <http://manhattan-partners.com/>," but this will be their
first known foray into defense industries -- WarIsBusiness.com reports
<http://www.warisbusiness.com/features/deal-of-the-month/the-blackwater-vegan-soap-connection/> (via
Spencer Ackerman
<http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/12/will-blackwater-go-vegan-after-sale-to-hippy-firm/>):
Manhattan Growth Partners is led by Dean Bosacki and Patrick
McBride. Bosacki serves on the board of "the world's largest
commencement photography <http://www.gradimages.com/> 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/?
--
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