The Zika virus

"The recent outbreak of Zika virus in Brazil is now being linked to genetically modified mosquitoes developed by the British biotech company Oxitec, which is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. "

"Oxitec has been releasing the genetically modified Aedes mosquitoes into the wild in Brazil since 2011 to battle dengue fever. The company produces up to two million genetically modified mosquitoes a week in its factory in Campinas, Brazil."

"The Aedes mosquito is the world’s most dominant variety of mosquito, and the only two countries in the Americas that don’t have this mosquito are Chile and Canada. The Zika virus, which has been detected in 18 of the 26 states in Brazil, is transmitted by the Aedes mosquito."

"Over 4,000 babies have now been born in Brazil with shrunken brains since November 1, 2015."

"Brazil normally gets approximately 150 cases of this type of birth defect each year, which means abnormal births of this type have increased by approximately 13,000 percent."

"While the Brazilian government rushes to blame the Zika virus for this huge rise in abnormal birth defects, the facts remain clear."
"Only a small number of babies with birth defects, who died, had the virus in their brain. This means a large number of the babies who died had no Zika virus in their brain."
"In late 2014, the Brazilian minister of health announced that a new Tdap shot would be mandatory for all expectant mothers starting in 2015. Records now show that all mothers with birth defect babies received this newly formulated vaccine while pregnant. The timeliness of the Tdap vaccine and the rise in birth defects is more than just a little coincidental. The consequences of this untested vaccine is what is being swept under the rug. Which brings us once again to Bill Gates, the King of Eugenics and Vaccines..."


"Now in addition to this just have a look at who first gathered and retained a sample of the Zika Virus back in the 1940’s:"

http://www.lgcstandards-atcc.org/products/all/VR-84.aspx?slp=1&geo_country=gb#history

"That`s right no other than the Rockefeller foundation."

http://www.oye.global/health/zika-virus-not-telling/

Motivation, mindset and grit

"Every year, hundreds of thousands of U.S. students take the National Assessment of Educational Progress (the NAEP), the federally authorized test known as the "nation’s report card." Education Week reported recently that, beginning in 2017, NAEP will ask "background questions" designed to gauge each student’s level of "motivation, mindset, and grit." It’s not enough for the federal government to keep tabs on whether your child knows the material he’s been taught. Instead, it wants to peer inside his mind and critique his personality to see if he has the "noncognitive skills" government thinks he should."

"As described by the Educational Testing Service at a conference of the Association for Psychological Science, two of the categories on the NAEP background survey will be labeled "grit" and "desire for learning." Questions in these categories will be presented to all test-takers. Specific subject areas may include additional questions about other "noncognitive factors" such as "self-efficacy" and "personal achievement goals."

"Almost any parent would read this and wonder why his child’s mindsets and personal goals are any of the government’s business. Indeed, there is serious doubt whether NAEP even has the statutory authority to delve into such matters. The federal statute authorizing NAEP requires that the assessment "objectively measure academic achievement, knowledge, and skills" and that the tests "do not evaluate or assess personal or family beliefs and attitudes . . . ." The statute further requires that NAEP "only collect information that is directly related to the appraisal of academic achievement . . . ."

"Presumably NAEP bureaucrats would argue that the background questions aren’t part of the assessment itself, so don’t violate the prohibition against assessing attitudes. Even so, is the non-cognitive information these questions collect "directly related to the appraisal of academic achievement"? Only in the sense that every aspect of one’s personality might theoretically affect one’s academic performance. If we take that broad a view, there is no limit to what NAEP can ask about..."

"The first objection that leaps to mind is that, for the most part, school personnel are not qualified to plumb the depths of a child’s psyche. As warned by clinical psychologist Gary Thompson, placing this type of responsibility on largely untrained personnel is playing with fire. And since the federal government is actively relaxing the privacy restrictions applicable to student data, the chances of this sensitive information getting into the wrong hands are enormous."

Read more http://thefederalist.com/2015/06/30/its-official-the-feds-will-collect-psycho-social-data-on-your-child/#disqus_thread

It is well to remember that the Named Person scheme in Scotland is just one example of a global push to database and profile the world`s children.　

Trusting science and the big corporations

"In the past few years more professionals have come forward to share a truth that, for many people, proves difficult to swallow. One such authority is Dr. Richard Horton, the current editor-in-chief of the Lancet – considered to be one of the most well respected peer-reviewed medical journals in the world."

"Dr. Horton recently published a statement declaring that a lot of published research is in fact unreliable at best, if not completely false."

"The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness." (source)

"This is quite disturbing, given the fact that all of these studies (which are industry sponsored) are used to develop drugs/vaccines to supposedly help people, train medical staff, educate medical students and more..."

"Dr. Marcia Angell, a physician and longtime Editor in Chief of the New England Medical Journal (NEMJ), which is considered to be another one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals in the world, makes her view of the subject quite plain:"

"It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine" (source)

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/05/16/editor-in-chief-of-worlds-best-known-medical-journal-half-of-all-the-literature-is-false/

THE TRUTHSEEKER...EXPOSING THE GLOBALIST DEPOPULATION AGENDA
THE TRUTHSEEKER...EXPOSING THE GLOBALIST DEPOPULATION AGENDAhttps://www.facebook.com/chris.vanwyck.3/videos/vb.100000441800874/785521744805878/?type=3A SUGGESTED PERSON TO WATCH...HE APPEARS ON RT...TOUCHES SOME GREAT TOPICS AND GIVES YOU GREAT INFORMATION...YOU CAN FIND HIS YOU TUBES BY SEARCHING "THE TRUTHSEEKER E"...AS HIS SHOWS ARE ALL NUMBERED https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=The+truthseeker+EBELIEVING THIS CONSTITUTES FAIR USEFAIR USE AGREEMENT17 U.S.C. § 107Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright
Posted by Chris VanWyck on Friday, June 13, 2014

 

http://rt.com/news/261457-monsanto-march-third-awareness/

Tracking children in schools

Graphic Journalism is a relatively new medium. Truthout has an article Children of the Code: Big Data, Little Kids by Adam Bessie and Dan Carino:

"In the era of Big Data, children are tracked, analysed and evaluated from birth - not only by corporations, but by the school system...."

It is worth exploring.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/29542-children-of-the-code-big-data-little-kids

In the video below Adam Bessie and Dan Carino discuss their motivations.

Open data

It was Open Data day on Saturday: 

"Open Data Day encourages citizens in cities around the world to write applications, liberate data, create visualizations and publish analyses using open public data to show support for and encourage the adoption of open data policies by the world's local, regional and national governments."

http://opendataday.org/

One of the benefits of open data is supposed to be that it increases transparency and accountability with respect to public bodies and services. Another is that it increases public participation in decision making. But it is not everyone who has the computing facilities to allow big data analytics. It is the big corporations who have these facilities and who are keen to access the data being made freely available by Government. It is why we have the Named Person and early interventions, all the better for gathering information. It is why there is a push towards computer game based learning in schools.

Data, our data, our children`s data is now a commodity.

Bates makes the case that the open data movement, in the UK at least, had little political traction until big business started to actively campaign for open data, and open government initiatives started to fit into programmes of forced austerity and the marketisation of public services. For her, political parties and business have appropriated the open data movement on "behalf of dominant capitalist interests under the guise of a ‘Transparency Agenda’".

In such cases, the transparency agenda promoted by politicians and businesses is merely a rhetorical discursive device. If either party was genuinely interested in transparency then it would be equally supportive of the right to information movement (freedom of information) and the work of whistleblowers (Janssen 2012) and also loosening the shackles of intellectual property rights more broadly (Shah 2013). Instead, governments and businesses are generally resistant to both.

Rob Kitchin, The Data Revolution: Big Data, Open Data, Data Infrastructures and Their Consequences (Sage, London).

It can be better understood why school curricula are being changed around the world when the data revolution is taken into account. Education is moving from a traditional knowledge based curriculum towards an outcome based system where it is not what a pupil knows or understands that counts, but rather the skills and attributes they have as persons. These skills might include motivation, team work, emotional and social learning, the soft skills that a future employer finds advantageous in its workforce. It is the kind of information they are prepared to pay for.

When it comes to gathering and using children`s data the U.S is at an advanced stage but it does allow us to see what will be coming our way soon. First, the curriculum was changed to Common Core and then each child was attached to a computer for personalised learning and assessments.

Here is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation:

We’re investing in a new generation of courseware that adapts in sophisticated ways to students’ learning needs. We’re also supporting game-based learning that generates rich data about students’ progress and challenges them with exactly what they need to learn next...

We’re particularly focused on providing students and their teachers with more rapid, useful feedback to inform their learning all along the way. The combination of more transparent and useful data and clearer expectations for students can help educators’ flag young people’s needs early and often, so their path to college and careers is a smooth one.

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/US-Program

Well that is the hard sell.  Here is the other side:

Stealth learning platforms and assessments (platforms and assessments that operate in real-time within the technology without a child knowing it) foster an education system where parents will have very little control over what our children learn and what they are tested on. Meta-data can be tracked through every key stroke, as well as facial expressions and behaviors through computer cameras, etc. And, the data collected from our children’s learning platforms will be used to control what and how their teachers teach, as well as what federal mandates will be placed on teachers and schools in order to make individual children "college and career ready."

https://whatiscommoncore.wordpress.com/2015/02/20/sage-as-red-herring-utahs-stealth-assessment-for-unrestrained-data-mining/

 
The corporations obtain the data free, do the number crunching, create the products, and then sell the products back to the government, paid for through taxes. The government gets better control of the population, corporations make a profit, but the data subjects themselves gain nothing worthwhile.

It`s a nice arrangement if you can get away with it.

Education for lifelong labour in U.S.A.

From Anita Hoge`s interview on Caravan to Midnight. 

Her journey began when her son came home one day and recounted that he had been given a weird test at school but he did not know how to answer the questions. The principal had taken the class down to a little assembly room and asked them questions like: "If you saw an old lady at the edge of the street, would you throw rocks at her or push her into the street?"

Alarmed, Anita Hoge saw the school superintendent because she wanted to see the test for herself but the meeting did not go well. She was shocked when the superintendent picked up a book and threw it across the room. "You and I are not going to be friends any more," she said. It was about a year before she saw any documentation and that was after being given the run around by various departments. The first document she saw was called Quality Goals in Pennsylvania and she learned that the goals being driven through the education system in Pennsylvania were all about the affective domain: attitudes, values, dispositions and beliefs.

After filing a complaint, she made a Freedom of Information request based on her own complaint, and that is when she was given a bundle of documents which supported the authority`s position; it included a copy of the test. The test consisted of 30 questions on reading, 30 questions on maths and an enormous 320 questions on attitudes, values, dispositions and beliefs. So now she had the evidence that this was actually being done in the classroom. These dispositions were all being scored; so there was an expected right answer and to graduate from High School a child had to have a minimum score on each one.

Anita Hoge goes on to describe the tests. They were presented as little hypothetical stories and measured self esteem, whether a child was internally or externally influenced. Would they go along with a group of children who were engaged in vandalism if the group happened to be their friends? They scored one if they would, and zero if they would not. Would they join this same group if they thought their parents would ground them for it? They scored one if they would, and zero if they would not. To obey their parents was not the right answer. What the testers were looking for was a willingness to join the group..

The information being collected included families. "Do you have books at home? What does your father do? Did your parents go to college? They were building up psychographics on individuals which could be matched to socioeconomic information," says Anita Hoge.

It has been a long 20 year journey for Anita Hoge and there have been many developments throughout this time. The Department of Education has the contract to collect the data on children and families in every State which links with the central Government longitudinal data system. The Government will have a psychometric dossier on every citizen which will include biometric information, iris scans, fingerprints, DNA profiles, all on one file. This data is going to be the new census. The data is identifiable and third parties such as corporations and voluntary agencies will be allowed access to it who are doing research - and they will not need consent.

Anita Hoge has obtained all the contracts which prove this.

She discovered that Pennsylvania had been used to benchmark the tests because the plan was that all States would be incorporated into the same educational plan.

"It was very deceptive," says Anita Hoge.  "People would say: don`t you want your kids to have good citizenship, honesty and integrity; don`t you want them to co-operate with others? And most parents would say yes. But what they were testing was compliance based on Skinner`s rewards and punishments - operant conditioning. They wanted children to move away from individualism towards collectivism."

"They were training children rather than providing them with an education. That is why each child had to be attached to a computer which is the perfect Skinnerian tool. For instance, train a dog to sit and it can perform. Then tell it to roll over and it will just look at you, because it has not been trained to do it. That is what is happening to our children. So they cannot think for themselves."

"There is no escaping these psychological assessments because they are embedded into subject areas. For instance, for a reading assessment a child might be given a story about a dove and an ant. The dove is a free flying spirit and the ant is an industrious worker who toils day and night. The first question might be: who are the two main characters in the story? So this is a straightforward comprehension question. The next set of questions might be: who would you rather be, the ant or the dove? Is there anybody in your family who is like the dove? Who is that? These questions are meant to test deeper learning, higher order thinking skills, or critical thinking. What that really means is that they are testing attitudes, probing values and dispositions. Any child who fails a standard will not be allowed to progress to the next stage and will be remediated. It does not matter how long it takes. As well as learning everything about the child, the Government will know about the family too."

In April 1992 the Department of Labour set out Learning a Living: a blueprint for high performance; that is, they laid out a plan that said every child had to meet particular outcomes which would meet the requirements for business. They also created a hypothetical resume which showed the personal qualities they were looking for - any child who failed to meet a proficiency level would not graduate and would be remediated. In this way education goals had merged with those of the Department of Labour. 

TITLE 1 grants used to be provided to the state to help poor children in their reading. The law changed so that a TITLE 1 grant follows any child who fails to meet a Common Core standard. Once in the system there is no escaping it. This is tied in with Obamacare because failing to meet a standard is now seen as a mental disorder which means interventions can by-pass parental authority.

"This is a decision making model which will determine what a child will be expected to do and it is central Government who  controls it."

A bill is being rushed through the Senate at the moment - all the details are on Charlotte Iserbyt`s blog (link below)  - which puts the final pieces of legislation into place. There is also a link to Anita Hoge`s interview on the radio show Caravan to Midnight.

http://abcsofdumbdown.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/update-on-reauthorization-of-esea.html 　

See http://alicemooreuk.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/bill-gates-and-common-core.html
　

Planned parenthood chief challenged about risky contraceptive

NEW YORK, October 10 (C-Fam) A UN event abruptly ended when a women’s rights attorney asked International Planned Parenthood Federation’s Director General why harmful contraceptives were targeted to poor women in Africa.

"In countries where HIV is a significant problem, where we don’t have access to good healthcare, why would we be using the most dangerous contraceptives," asked Kwame Fosu. Eleven studies, including one by Gates Foundation researcher Dr. Renee Heffron, concluded that users of the injectable Depo Provera have a significant risk of transmitting and acquiring HIV/AIDS, added Fosu.

Tewodros Melesse avoided answering. Instead, IPPF’s chief gave a general statement supporting Depo Provera. He failed to explain why African women are targeted with dangerous progesterone contraceptives rarely used by Caucasian women.

Co-sponsors IPPF, Denmark and Liberia organized the meeting to attract high-level ministers in New York for the UN’s General Assembly to garner additional support for family planning in the post-2015 development agenda.

Share on https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/meeting-shut-down-after-planned-parenthood-chief-challenged-on-giving-risky-drugs-to-african-women/

Curriculum for excellence and personalised learning

According to a document held in the archives on the UK government website, `personalisation` is a very simple concept. It is about enabling citizens to have their say about how public services are organised on their behalf.  In the education field it appears as personalised learning.

Personalised learning is a progressive idea and gone is the notion that there is a body of knowledge which should be passed on to the next generation. In place of that, attention is paid to what the learner already knows, including what they have learned outside the classroom. Learners set goals for themselves, create their own hypotheses, take risks, monitor their progress and with their teacher identify their next steps. So each learner is set on a different pathway through their own learning. According to these progressive ideas, learners will be fully engaged in their own learning and all can succeed.

Sound good ? 

David Miliband, in his 2004 conference speech, describes personalised learning as:

"High expectations of every child, given practical form by high quality teaching based on a sound knowledge and understanding of each child’s needs. It is not individualised learning where pupils sit alone. Nor is it pupils left to their own devices - which too often reinforces low aspirations.

It means shaping teaching around the way different youngsters learn; it means taking the care to nurture the unique talents of every pupil."     http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130401151715/http://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/DfES%200919%20200MIG186.pdf

Of course, in a classroom full of pupils on their personalised learning journeys there are bound to be important questions about how this is to be organised.  

Leaving that aside for the moment, what can we learn about personalised learning in relation to Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) in Scotland?  Curriculum for Excellence Briefing 5: Personalised Learning tells us that:
 

Personalised learning means tailoring learning and teaching to learners’ needs.

So far so good.

Staff do this by knowing learners well and building on prior learning so that all learners can participate, progress and achieve.

Recall that personalised learning includes the learning that the learner brings to the situation from outside the classroom. If knowing learners well is beginning to sound a bit GIRFECy, that is because it is: 
 

Personalised learning focuses on the individual learner from the earliest level through to lifelong learning. It is key to taking forward the ambitions of CfE and Getting it Right for Every Child (GIRFEC).  

 

Further into the document: 

Just as personalisation means a broad range of approaches to learning and teaching, it also means a variety of approaches to assessment. Assessment approaches within qualifications are being broadened to reflect personalisation more directly.

They are not exactly clear about what they mean by "assessment approaches are to reflect personalisation more directly,"  but it does not look good if you value a private life. 

For learners to experience personalisation within their learning, it is essential that they are known well and that their learning is recognised and valued, including where feasible their learning beyond the classroom. Wherever learning is taking place, the day-to-day interactions between staff and learners are vital for personalised learning. It is likely that a key adult has a holistic overview of a learner’s progress and personal development.

Key adult with an overview? Named person perhaps? Whatever this is, one thing is certain: it is going to be highly intrusive.

To get a clue to the real motivation behind personalised learning the Global Education Leader`s Program (GELP) offers some insight. It says a lot from the systems and organisational point of view which is going to be a problem if personalised learning is part of the government`s vision for education. Here is what they have to say about themselves:

 

The Global Education Leaders’ Program sets out to transform education, effectively and sustainably, at local, national and global levels. It envisages education systems that equip every learner with the skills, expertise and knowledge to survive and thrive in the 21st century. 

The Program is a partnership of thought leaders and consultants from world-class organizations, collaborating in a global community with teams of key education leaders who are seriously committed both to transforming education in practice and to developing the personal skills they need to lead the changes required. 

At the heart of GELP’s vision is the fostering of new pedagogies, curricula and assessment methods that enable every student to develop higher order capabilities. For this to be realised, appropriate technology, leadership, professional development, policies and governance also have to be in place.

 [The Scottish Government have all systems in place] 

http://gelponline.org/personalized-learning-study-visits-and-workshops-2014

When GELP discuss appropriate technology and systems they are talking about computers, Big Data and the standardisation of these systems across the globe. In order to justify the tracking and monitoring of every global student and their associated adults, it is essential that they have a concept to push like `personalised learning`; otherwise this project would be seen for what it is. There is a fortune to be made when all systems are in place by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who are supporters of GELP -  and fortunes to be made by other big corporations. 

To achieve real and lasting progress, education systems must also innovate and learn. This is a problem, because the measures that currently dominate educational assessment do not allow education systems to learn as they strive to improve. Without the right measures, and the ability to apply them coherently and systematically in thousands of locations simultaneously, educational achievement will be held back.

Our collective progress depends on creating and using new measures of success in keeping with today’s expectations of learning.

Greater transparency can combine with richer information to support students, teachers, schools and systems as they learn. We need new measures that can provide rich and rapid data about what is working in our efforts to innovate.

http://gelponline.org/sites/default/files/resource-files/gelp_statement_june_2014.pdf 

While this Orwellian nightmare continues to evolve here is a quote from the Giants Report which brings back a bit of sanity.

The emphasis these days is on ‘personalised learning’ – a programme of learning to suit each individual child. This ignores the fact that a body of subject knowledge cannot be personalised. Fundamental building blocks, such as axioms in mathematics or grammar in language learning, cannot be personalised for an individual learner.

Whole class teaching is efficient and effective, tried and tested. It runs against the prevailing fashion in this country for personalised learning but is central to successful education systems across the world. The growing fashion for ‘personalised learning’ in our schools has led to a great surge in reliance on technology. It is through computers that learning can be made truly personal. It allows pupils to proceed at their own pace under loose supervision by a teacher. Technology certainly has an important part to play in our schools but its effectiveness over more traditional resources is very much open to question. 　 

http://www.cre.org.uk/docs/5-Giants-Report.pdf

See the cooperation agreement set up between UNESCO and Microsoft. (UNESCO Headquarters Paris, 17 November 2004)

http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/strategy_microsoft_agreement.pdf

For anyone who would like a sense of what personalised learning in the digitised classroom might be like have a read at the following: Robotic, sterile, empty -  are some of the words that come to mind.

http://www.siia.net/PLI/presentations/PLI_ELEM_scenario.pdf 　

Child Poverty

It`s ironic that in the same week there is a large gathering in Hyde Park campaigning against malnutrition and the millions of children who die globally each year, there are figures out that show an increase of 300,000 children in the United Kingdom are experiencing poverty. This makes a total of 2.6 million facing hardship.

According to David Cameron the appearance of more and more food banks is a sign that Big Society is working.  If David Cameron does not know that the coalition`s austerity measures are the reason for the food banks and increasing child poverty then he has nothing worthwhile to say about anything.

From the Save the Children UK website we are told that Eglantyne Jebb, one of the founders of the charity, wanted to make the rights and welfare of children a major issue around the world and she has nearly succeeded. Her "Declaration of the Rights of the Child" was adopted by the League of Nations and inspired the present UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Whenever this legislation is introduced into a country it invariably undermines parental rights and allows the State, by acting for the child, to dictate what should happen to families.

Another NGO, UNICEF which was behind the Big IF rally against child malnutrition at Hyde Park is also United Nations based. But it is important to know that these non-governmental organisations have a hidden global agenda.

There`s been a lot of rhetoric about tax since the Bilderberg meeting in Watford last week where it is believed by some that tax evasion by big corporations was discussed and has been hyped up in the mainstream media in order to begin to push through a world tax system as the solution. Then at the Big IF rally in Hyde Park, tax evasion was cunningly linked to child malnutrition in order to play on people`s emotions and muster support.  A global taxation system would be one step along the way to a one world government, something the United Nations and Bilderberg globalists have been working for through their various NGOs and charities for years.

Please read about Big If`s celebrity speaker Bill Gates and his global vision and involvement with Monsanto, agriculture and eugenics HERE. Also note his involvement in planned parenthood and population control HERE  All these issues are part of the United Nations global agenda.

Let`s see what comes out of the G8 summit in Ireland next week, but whatever it is, it will be important to read between the lines, unless of course Syria tops the bill.

 

guardian.co.uk,               

13 Jun 2013 17:37  http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/shocking-child-poverty-figures-show-1950944

http://www.endagenda21.com/bilderberg-policy-makers.html