Friday, February 26, 2010

Traceability in a Sustainable World

A look into the very real RFID agenda ensnaring the earth

Part 2: Politics, Pilot Projects, and the Banker to the Poor


In Part 1, I introduced you to GS1. A United Nations sanctioned not for profit organization with an intent to tag every thing with RFID technology. In this article I will expand on GS1, as well as introduce you to pilot projects, organizations, and people working to implement this agenda. This article will give readers a introduction to the cashless society, as well as the groups and people behind it. To fully understand this portion of the agenda, a brief review of some history is necessary. Many reading this will be familiar with the Earth Charter. This document more than any other helped lay the foundation of the Green movement. It was the base upon which the Kyoto Protocols and the failed Copenhagen Climate Summit were built. It has been well reported that Maurice Strong was instrumental in the founding of this document. What is not as well known to many are the signatories or drafting committee for this document. The drafting committee, which was hand selected by Mr. Strong and his friends, was chaired by Steven C. Rockefeller. It's signatories include notable names such as Federico Mayor, Mikhail Gorbachev, Muhammad Yunus, and Al Gore.

Yunus is a interesting fellow. A former Elder, in 2009 he resigned his position with the group, citing an inability to uphold his commitment to the group due to his work. The same work that has earned him the moniker of banker to the poor, the same work that brought him notable mention as part of the "Group of 12 doing the great work" during World Invocation Day 2008. Yunus is also listed as a ambassador for Lucis Trust's World Goodwill. This is the same World Goodwill currently listed as a Non Governmental Liaison to the United Nations. To his resume, Yunus can also add Nobel Laureate and card carrying member of the Clinton Global Initiative. So what is the work that has brought Yunus such connections?

In the 1970's Yunus was the pioneer of microcredit, a open ended financial structure used to provide people in impoverished countries with funding for small businesses, life sustaining needs, and infrastructure projects for those poor nations. These loans are provided to groups of people or nations as opposed to individuals. The individuals within the groups are then accountable to the whole of the group. If a single individual within the group fails to make their allotted payment portion, the group as a whole is cut off from the provided line of credit. These lines of credit can continue to be borrowed against indefinitely, which simply extends the pay off date for the group. In 1997 Yunus partnered with Lisa C. Billingsley, L. John Doerr, and Steven C. Rockefeller Jr to form Grameen Foundation. Grameen and its numerous subsidiaries are United Nations sanctioned not for profit organizations providing microcredit loans around the world. It is through this organization that many aspects of this agenda will come into focus. To get an idea of the pull that this organization has, let us first briefly examine the remaining founders.

L. John Doerr is a very prominent man in financial circles. He has managed capital funding for Intel, Intuit, Sun Microsystems, Compaq, Netscape, Amazon, and Google. Doerr has also participated in the World Economic Forum. Forbes has estimated Doerr's net worth as over $1 billion. In 2008, Doerr and Steve Jobs announced the founding of a $100 million iFund for the development of technology associated with the iPhone. Together they proclaimed the iPhone as the future of computers, while Doerr proudly proclaimed it as the beginning of a new world order. Doerr is also a partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, & Byers, an investment firm whose interests include green technologies, RFID, health care, and projects working toward collaboration amongst these sectors. Doerr also currently sits on President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Programs like Cash for Clunkers, the Stimulus Package, as well as every other major economic policy put forth by the current administration can be directly attributed to Doerr's influence.

Much like Yunus and Doerr, Steven C. Rockefeller Jr is a man who wears many hats. As a member of the infamous Rockefeller clan, Steven Jr proudly serves as a member of the Rockefeller Foundation, a group that has been tied with many New Age projects. Maurice Strong was a trustee for this group before his extended vacation to China. Another of Steven Jr's many roles includes his seat on the advisory board for Sparta Commercial Services, the nations leading power sports financier. There have been many financial deals made via this group that have benifited the RFID industry, but for the sake of space in this article, I will reserve exploring these for a future piece. Steven Jr also serves on the board of Soros Economic Development Fund. Through this fund Steven Jr along with George Soros have funneled huge sums of money into this agenda. I will be exploring these investments in depth in a upcoming article dedicated strictly to the funding of this system.

One of the most notable of his many job titles is as the head of an advisory board for a company named CEO America. This company operates as the parent company to two different yet equally important companies in this agenda. The first is a company named Carbon Creditz. What they sell is exactly what their name suggests. However it is how they operate that should be of interest to readers, as Carbon Creditz operates in conjunction with CEO America's other company to sell their carbon offsets. The second company I am referencing is named Creditz. Creditz bills itself as the world's first digital currency system. In addition to the cross operations between Creditz and Carbon Creditz, Creditz also operates in conjunction with Grameen and its subsidiaries as the preferred repayment system for the microcredit loans Grameen provides. What has become of particular interest to this researcher is the interoperability between this digital currency system and RFID technology, as Creditz promotes customers who choose to do business via RFID to a higher standing than other customers. They refer to this as their Loyalty Payment System. CEO America has also signed some very lucrative marketing and development deals with Applied Digital Solutions through its subsidiaries of Verichip, Verifone, and Veripay. One should also take note that during the development of the Creditz and Carbon Creditz systems, companies like Verichip, IBM, Microsoft, Merryl Lynch, and Deutsche Bank among others, were tapped for funding and development of the system.

Now that we have established an understanding of these groups, you may be wondering how this is relevant to the coming global governance or the subject of my first article, GS1. Grameen and its members are active participants with Advocates for International Development, a not for profit advocacy group whose sole purpose is promotion and implementation of the United Nations: Millennium Development Goals. A4ID also partnered with groups such as Brookings Institute, Save the Children, World Trade Organization, and World Health Organization to help in their advancement of the Millennium Development Goals, the same goals that are the basis for all international sustainable development projects including Agenda 21, a model that includes massive depopulation goals as well as massive land seizures under the guise of sustainable development. Which brings us back to GS1. How might a impoverished nation go about implementing GS1 Standards when said nation does not have the funds to update it's infrastructure to meet them? The answer is GS1 partner organizations within said countries who take out microcredit loans from Grameen to fund the new infrastructure. This is already happening in impoverished nations like Indonesia, Cambodia, many Latin American nations, Singapore and Bangladesh just to name a few.

Now that readers have a better idea of what this system looks like and how it is being implemented through out the world. We can go forward in future articles and explore connections to United States elected officials, major corporations, the funding behind the system and much more. As always questions and discussion of the material presented here is encouraged. Again, special thanks go out to Susanna for her continued help in this project. There is still a lot of material to cover in future articles. So stay tuned!

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Traceability in a Sustainable World:

A look into the very real RFID agenda ensnaring the earth


Part 1: Introductions

Picture a future where your right to privacy is a thing of the past. Where your government, doctor, retail stores, your home, your neighbor, and you keep accurate details of every transaction you make, whom you associate with, the amount of every and any goods you use, where you worship, your impact on the planet, your impact on your community, and any other piece of data that can be recorded as it pertains to your life. Many of us have seen articles and books that advocate for just such a world. Many more of us have read opinion pieces, and heard rumors of plans for such societies. Most recently as the Healthcare debate was heating up here in the United States, a group promoting Congressman Ron Paul published an article on it's website claiming that such a system via microchipping had been written into the Healthcare Reform Bill. Is any of this true? If so, who's behind it? If so, how far has such an agenda spread? How close are we to implementation of such a systematic society? A short time ago, I asked Susanna, a research associate, to help me dig into these questions. What was found during our investigation will shock some, and will be hard to believe by others. In this article, and those that follow, I will attempt to answer all of these questions and many more. Our investigation will show that such an agenda not only exists, but is far more advanced than anyone had imagined. We will explore the history, funding, and implementation of the many arms of this agenda, as well as some that have taken hold under our noses while no one noticed. Over the course of this series of articles we will cover many subjects from U.S. Politics to Social Media, from international treaties to social services, from iPhones to Echelon. The full scope will take time to explore, and may take a few of these articles to become 100% clear to some. While others may begin to immediately see the bigger picture. As is suggested by the title of this part, this article is a introduction to the overall agenda. Here we will begin with the outline of the subject, which is global in nature. As I have found, one of the reasons this agenda went unnoticed is because many don't know what to look for and if they have seen it, it was not recognized for what it was. This is no fault of the average observer. There have been slick redefinitions of terms that have allowed this agenda to remain under the radar for as long as it has.


No place can this be better witnessed than within the constructs of a United Nations sanctioned not for profit organization called GS1. Before we get into the redefinitions we must first understand what GS1 says about itself, its duties, and who makes up the organization. According to GS1: "GS1 is a leading global organisation dedicated to the design and implementation of global standards and solutions to improve the efficiency and visibility of supply and demand chains globally and across sectors. The GS1 system of standards is the most widely used supply chain standards system in the world. " http://www.gs1.org/

So in a nut shell GS1 is a organization that sets standards for supply chains internationally. This doesn't sound too bad does it? What though are the standards that GS1 wishes to have set? One of these is the GS1 Global Traceability Standard which requires everything produced for any use be tagged and identifiable via varying means, from bar-coding to RFID chipping. Among the Traceability Standard we also find that any machine used in production of materials must be identifiable in the same way. The same can be said for trucks, planes, or boats shipping the goods, crates which goods are packaged in, stores where the merchandise is sold, as well as any other aspect which influenced the production or sale of the product. The products range from cell phones, to fresh produce, to automobiles, to clothing, as well as anything else that can be produced or sold. In a normal world this is where a supply chain ends. However, in the GS1 dictionary, supply chain means from start of production to the end of a products life. This means they want continual information on the product long after you have purchased it. Another aspect that must be taken into account is the traceability standard that states the system must incorporate real time identification of parties, items, and events that have had a relationship with the product within its life. Did you catch that? Parties!!! According again to GS1 and their standards, parties refers to any individual involved in production, shipping, sales, or purchasing of a product. How was it GS1 proposed to identify things within the supply chain? Does GS1 have different systems in place to identify these parties? No they do not. GS1 proposes to identify YOU the same way they want to identify every other object, through RFID.


Now that we have established a desire by a group to do such a thing, one is left wondering is this fanciful talk or a viable threat? To answer this, let's look at who is working to implement GS1 standards. Driving forces for GS1 include North Atlantic Treaty Organization, World Trade Organization, World Health Organization, and World Customs Organization. Partners of GS1 include corporations influencing all walks of life including, Microsoft, Baxter, GM, IBM, Pfizer, Walmart, Google, and many many more. So many more that the odds are much better of you guessing who is on the list than who isn't. GS1 has branches in many of the countries which have agreed to implement their standards, these include India, Japan, China, Russia, the EU, and the United States. In the United States, GS1 has partnered with the US Chamber of Commerce, FDA, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Defense and many others to see to the implementation within the US. In June 2009, the EU GS1 launched the Transatlantic Traceability Infrastructure (TTI) Project. This part of the project was designed to fast track RFID implementation across Europe. What has remained quiet is that TTIP is a collaborative agreement between the US and the EU to fast track implementation in both. The projects of GS1 take into account anyway someone may purchase a product. This includes a section on Ecommerce which by its own definitions would make the Internet of Things a reality. There are also provisions for ordering products over the phone, which we will explore in more depth in a upcoming article. Now that you have a basic understanding of GS1, you may ask how far out is full implementation? GS1 has available on its site implementation projections which are sobering. According to GS1, 2009 was to be the year of preparation. All products and pieces of infrastructure were to be developed and in place by the end of 2009. Again according to GS1, this goal was met ahead of schedule. GS1 also claims 2010 as the year full implementation and operation is to begin, and again GS1 is ahead of schedule. There are still a couple of sectors where work needs to be done for this to be achieved. One of these is the healthcare industry, is it a coincidence that the Healthcare Reform Bill would make the healthcare industry in compliance with GS1 standards? This subject we will be looking at in depth in a upcoming article. Now that you understand the part of this international organization in implementing a complete RFID infrastructure, we can now go forward in upcoming articles and look at pilot projects, funding, the politics behind the agenda, and much more.

This agenda is real, and its implementation will forever alter life as we know it. The provisions within GS1 cover all aspects of business. There are numerous connections to be made, which will take us from captains of industry, to US politicians, deep into the Green movement, to some of the richest men on the planet, to those that were bailed out due to their "bad practices". My upcoming articles will explore these connections and how we got here. While we slept, a trap has been set, one that will soon ensnare the earth. My goal with these articles is to educate those reading in such a way that you will recognize the agenda when you see it. Only then can you be able to educate others. I encourage questions and discussion and will do my best to answer any directed my way. Susanna is well educated on this subject as well, and I must convey a great deal of thankfulness for her help on this project. Without her this project would not be as full of information as it is. To all others who have sent me information or have expressed an interest in this agenda, I thank you as well and hope this first article has been educational. For the rest of you, stay tuned as we are just getting warmed up!