Argo, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and the Iranian Revolution

Global Research Editor’s Note

The script of Best Film Academy Award Movie  “Argo” which depicts the Iran Hostage Crisis is largely based on fiction.

The purpose of the film is to rewrite history, to falsify what actually happened as well as provide a human face to US foreign  policy.

Amply documented, the Iran Hostage Crisis was a complex CIA covert operation intent upon stalling the Iranian Revolution as well as spearheading the political demise of President Jimmy Carter.

The following article first published in 1995 is based on extensive documentation collected by Fara Mansoor, a prominent Iranian intellectual.

Michel  Chossudovsky, February 26, 2013

---

The Real Iranian Hostage Story from the Files of Fara Mansoor

By Harry V. Martin

Free America, 1995

Fara Mansoor is a fugitive. No, he hasn’t broken any laws in the United States. His crime is the truth. What he has to say and the documents he carries are equivalent to a death warrant for him, Mansoor is an Iranian who was part of the “establishment” in Iran long before the 1979 hostage taking. Mansoor’s records actually discount the alleged “October Surprise” theory that the Ronald Reagan-George Bush team paid the Iranians not to release 52 American hostages until after the November 1980 Presidential elections.

Mansoor’s meticulous documents, shared exclusively with this magazine, shows a much more sinister plot, the plot to take the hostages in the first place. “For 15 years the truth about the nature and origins of the Iranian hostage crisis has been buried in a mountain of misinformation,” Mansoor states. “Endless expert analysis has served only to deepen the fog that still surrounds this issue. We have been led to believe that the ‘crisis’ was a spontaneous act that just sprang out of the ‘chaos’ of the ‘Islamic Revolution’. Nothing could be further from the truth!”

“To really understand the hostage crisis and ‘who done it’, one has to look not only with a microscope, but also a wide angle lens to have a panoramic view of this well scripted ‘drama’,” Mansoor states. “That ‘drama’ was the result of large historical patterns, models, and motives. Once its true nature is understood, it will be clear how Iran/Contra happened.

Why Rafsanjani has been trying to ‘move toward the West,’ and why Reagan called him a ‘moderate’. And why, during the Gulf War, James Baker said, ‘we think Iran has conducted itself in a very, very credible way through this crisis’” Mansoor emphasizes that the “October Surprise” myth has served as dangerous misinformation.

THOUSANDS OF DOCUMENTS IN SUPPORT

With thousands of documents to support his position, Mansoor says that the “hostage crisis” was a political “management tool” created by the pro-Bush faction of the CIA, and implemented through an a priori Alliance with Khomeini’s Islamic Fundamentalists.” He says the purpose was twofold:

• To keep Iran intact and communist-free by putting Khomeini in full control.
• To destablize the Carter Administration and put George Bush in the White House.

“The private Alliance was the logical result of the intricate Iranian political reality of the mid-70s, and a complex network of powerful U.S.-Iranian ‘business’ relationships,” Mansoor states. “I first met Khomeini in 1963 during the failed coup attempt against the Shah. Since that time I have been intimately involved with Iranian politics. I knew in 1979 that the whole, phoney ‘Islamic Revolution’ was ‘mission implausible’.” Mansoor was frank. “There is simply no way that those guys with the beards and turbans could have pulled off such a brilliantly planned operation without very sophisticated help.”

Mansoor has spent 10 years researching the issue.

“I have collected enough data to yield a very clear picture. Mr. Bush’s lieutenants removed the Shah, brought Khomeini back to Iran, and guided his rise to power, sticking it to President Carter, the American people (52 in particular), and the Iranian people.”

He stated with boxes and boxes of evidence to support his contentions.

“My extensive research has revealed the heretofore untold truth about this episode. This is not another ‘October Surprise’ theory purporting how the hostage crisis resulted in some Khomeini-Republic better deal. That theory puts the cart before the horse. Its absurd premise is that a major international deal was initiated and consummated in three weeks. Give me a break! Bill Casey didn’t have to go to Paris to play lets-make-deal. The ‘deal’ had been in operation for at least two years. This game of blind-man’s-bluff around Casey’s gravestone was more disinformation, damage control.”

REAGAN, BUSH AND THATCHER IN IRAN IN 1978

Mansoor produced a confidential document called the “Country Team Minutes” of April 26, 1978, more than a year before the hostage crisis. The meeting was held in Iran. The second paragraph of the routine minutes, states, “The Ambassador commented on our distinguished visitors, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Margaret Thatcher, and commented that Teheran seems to be the site for an opposition parties congress.” Mansoor indicates the entire relationship was probably the most sophisticated criminal act in recent history. “That the people who, until recently, were holding power in Washington and those who currently are still in control in Teheran, got there by totally subverting the democratic process of both countries is news. That their methods of subversion relied on kidnapping, extortion and murder is criminal,” Mansoor states.

Mansoor became a target after he did a radio show in Portland on November 13, 1992. It was the first time he attempted to go public with his documents and information. The Iranian regime has placed a bounty on Mansoor’s head and he has received many death threats.

Is Mansoor just another conspiracy nut? Ervand Abrahamian of Baruch College of New York stated in a letter to Mansoor,

“As you know I am very weary of conspiracy theories. But, despite my preconceived bias, I must admit I found your manuscript to be thoroughly researched, well documented, and, of course extremely relevant to the present. You have done an first-class job of interviewing participants, collecting data from scattered sources, and putting them together like a highly complicated puzzle.”

Mansoor’s meticulous research clearly demonstrates how Khomeini’s published vision of an Islamic Government (Vilayat-Faqih) dovetailed with the regional and global strategic objectives of a hard-core subset of the U.S. National Security establishment loyal to George Bush. It shows that the Iranian hostage crisis was neither a crisis nor chaos. In 1953, the CIA orchestrated a coup in Iran, which threw out the democratic government and installed the Shah.

In order to understand the imperative of this Alliance, we must realistically examine the sociopolitical alignment both in Iran and the U.S., and accurately assess their respective interests to find the command ground for this coalescence. The anti-monarchic forces in mid-70s Iran consisted of various nationalists groups including religious reformist, the Islamic Fundamentalists, and the leftists and communist.

The Nationalist forces were varied. Some were from within the government, but they were poorly organized and without grass-roots support. Their position was clearly anti-left and anti-communist, but they were vulnerable to being taken over by the well-organized left.

The Islamic Fundamentalists had no government experience, but they had major grassroots supports. Islam, in its Shi’ite format was deeply embedded in the lives of the vast majority of the Iranian people. The Fundamentalists were absolutely anti-communist.

CARTER FIRES 800 CIA COVERT OPERATORS

The philosophical divide within the U.S. National Security establishment, especially the CIA, became quite serious in the aftermath of Watergate. To make matters worse, the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, his campaign promise to clean the “cowboy” elements out of the Central Intelligence Agency and his “human rights” policies alarmed the faction of the CIA loyal to George Bush. Bush was CIA director under Richard Nixon. Finally, the firing of CIA Director George Bush by Carter, and the subsequent “Halloween Massacre” in which Carter fired over 800 CIA covert operatives in 1977, angered the “cowboys” beyond all measure. That was Carter’s October surprise, 800 firings on Halloween 1977.

Bush and his CIA coverts were well aware of the Shah’s terminal cancer, unknown to President Carter. The team had an elaborate vested interest to protect. They were determined to keep Iran intact and communist-free and put George Bush in the White House.

TIMELINE: SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

Hence, the Islamic Fundamentalists were the only viable choice through which the Bush covert team could implement its own private foreign policy. The results: the birth of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the fall of President Carter, and the emergence of something called the “New World Order.” Mansoor’s documents show step-by-step events:

1. In 1974, the Shah of Iran was diagnosed with cancer.

2. In 1975, former CIA director, and the U.S. Ambassador to Iran, Richard Helms learned of the Shah’s cancer through the Shah’s closest confidant, General Hossein Fardoust. The Shah, Helms and Fardoust had been close personal friends since their school days together in Switzerland during the 1930s.

3. On November 4, 1976, concurrent with Jimmy Carter’s election as President, CIA Director George Bush issued a secret memo to the U.S. Ambassador in Iran, Richard Helms, asking:

“Have there been any changes in the personality pattern of the Shah; what are their implication pattern for political behavior? Identification of top military officers that most likely play key roles in any transference of power if the Shah were killed…who will be the leading actors? How will the Shah’s pet projects, including the economic development program, be effected by his departure?”

4. By July 1977, anticipating trouble ahead, the Bush covert team issued preliminary script for the transition of power in Iran. According to John D. Stemple, a CIA analyst and Deputy Chief Political officer of the U.S. Embassy in Iran,

“A ten page analysis of the opposition written by the embassy’s political section in July 1977 correctly identified Bakhiar, Bazargan, Khomeini and Behesti as major actors in the drama that begin unfolding a year later.”

5. Contrary to this analysis, in August 1977, the “official wing” of the CIA fed President Carter a 60-page Study on Iran which concluded:

“The Shah will be an active participant in Iranian life well into the 1980s…and there will be no radical changes in Iranian political behavior in the near future.”

6. On October 31, 1977, president Carter made good on his campaign promise to clean the “cowboys” out of the CIA. He fired over 800 covert operatives from the Agency, many of whom were loyal to George Bush. Carter’s presidency split the CIA. It produced in them, among whom were “many well-trained in political warfare, a concerted will for revenge.” By the end of the 1970s many of these special covert operatives had allied themselves with George Bush’s candidacy, and later with Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign.

7. On November 15, the Shah of Iran visited Washington, D.C. Carter toasted his guest, “If ever there was a country which has blossomed forth under enlightened leadership, it would be the ancient empire of Persia.”

8. On November 23, Ayatollah Khomeini’s elder son, Haji Mustafa, died mysteriously in Najaf, Iraq. According to professor Hamid Algar, he was “assassinated by the Shah’s U.S.-instituted security police SAVAK…the tragedy inflamed the public in Iran.” Ayatollah Khomeini placed an advertisement in the French Newspaper Le Monde which read: “thanking people for condolences that had been sent of the murder of his son”. He also “appealed to the army to liberate Iran, and to the intellectuals and all good Muslims to continue their criticism of the Shah”.

9. December 31, 1977, Carter visited the Shah in Iran. He toasted the Shah for maintaining Iran as “an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.” Ironically, that so-called stability evaporated before the champagne lost its fizz.

10. On January 7, 1978, an insidious article entitled Iran and the Red and Black Colonialism, appeared in the Iranian daily newspaper Ettela’at. It castigated the exiled Khomeini, and produced a massive protest riot in the Holy City of Qum the next day. The clergy had little choice but to rally to Khomeini’s defense. The Qum incident shifted many of the clergy from a position of support for the Shah’s monarchy to an active opposition. That “dirty trick” perpetuated by General Fardoust was the trigger that sparked Islamic movement participating in the anti-Shah democratic Revolution. John D. Stempel, characterized Fardoust’s importance to the Alliance: “it is hard to over estimated the value of having a mole in the inner circle of the Shah.”

11. On February 3, a confidential communiqué from the U.S. Embassy clearly reflected the vision of the Alliance:

“Though based on incomplete evidence, our best assessment to date is that the Shia Islamic movement dominated by Ayatollah Khomeini is far better organized, enlighten and able to resist Communism than its detractors would lead us to believe. It is rooted in the Iranian people more than any western ideology, including Communism.”

12. April 1978, Le Monde “identified Khomeini’s Liberation Movement of Iran as the most significant force in the opposition followed by the Shi’ite Islam joins the reformist of progressive critics of the Shah on the same ground. In fact, this analysis was contrary to what Mohaammad Tavassoli, leader of the Liberation Movement of Iran, expressed to John D. Stempel on August 21, 1978:

“The nationalist movement in Iran lacks a popular base. The choice is between Islam and Communism…close ties between the Liberation Movement of Iran and the religious movement was necessary. Iran was becoming split by Marxist and the religious.”

13. On April 26, the confidential minutes of the U. S. Embassy Country team meeting welcomed Bush, Reagan and Thatcher.

14. On May 6, Le Monde became the first western newspaper to interview Khomeini in Najaf, Iraq. Khomeini acknowledged his compatibility with the strategic imperatives of the Bush covert team, “we would not collaborate with the Marxists, even to the overthrow of the Shah.”

15. The same month, Khomeini’s old ally from the failed 1963 coup (that resulted in Khomeini’s arrest and major uprising in June 1963 and his subsequent exile to Iraq) General Valliollah Qarani sent his emissary to meet Khomeini in Najaf. Qarani had been a major CIA asset in Iran since the 1953 coup. Seeing another chance to gain power for himself, he advised Khomeini, according to former Iranian President Abol Hassan Bani-sader:

“if you settle for the Shah’s departure and don’t use anti-American rhetoric, Americans are ready to take him out.”

16. In August, the Bush team sent its own point man to meet the exiled Ayatollah in Najaf. Professor Richard Cottam carried excellent credentials. During the 1953 coup, he had been in charge of the CIA’s Iran Desk, also, he had been in close contact with Dr. Ibrahim Yazdi in the U.S. since 1975. Curiously, he admitted to Bani-sadr in 1987, that he had not been working for the Carter Administration. Cottam’s visit must have had an impact, because Iran suddenly began to experience a series of mysterious catastrophes:

• In Aberdeen, Fundamentalist supporters burned down a theater killing the innocent occupants, blaming it on the SAVAK and the Shah.
• There were riots in Isfahan that resulted in martial law.
• On August 27, one of Khomeini’s rivals among the Shia Islamic faithful outside of Iran, Ayatollah Mosa Sadr mysteriously disppeared. According to an intelligence source he was killed and buried in Libya.

17. By late August, the Shah was totally confused. U.S. Ambassador Sullivan recorded the Shah’s pleadings over the outbreak of violence:

“he said the pattern was widespread and that it was like an outbreak of a sudden rash in the country…it gave evidence of sophisticated planning and was not the work of spontaneous oppositionists…the Shah presented that it was the work of foreign intrigue…this intrigue went beyond the capabilities of the Soviet KGB and must, therefore, also involve British and American CIA. The Shah went on to ask ‘Why was the CIA suddenly turning against him? What had he done to deserve this sort of action from the United States?”

18. September 8, the Shah’s army gunned down hundreds of demonstrators in Teheran in what became known as the “Jaleh Square Massacre”.

19. On September 9, President Carter phoned the Shah to confirm his support for the Shah, a fact that enraged the Iranian population.

20. A few days later, Carter’s National Security aide, Gary Sick, received a call from Richard Cottam, requesting a discrete meeting between him and Khomeini’s representative in the U.S., Dr. Yazdi. Sick refused.

21. Khomeini for the first time, publicly called for the Shah’s overthrow.

22. In Mid-September, at the height of the revolution, “one of the handful of Khomeini’s trusted associates”, Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Beheshti, secretly visited the United States among others, he also meet with Yazdi in Texas. Beheshti was an advocate of the eye-for-an-eye school of justice.

23. In early October 1978, the agent for the Bush covert team arranged to force Khomeini out of Iraq.

24. October 3, 1978, Yazdi picked up Khomeini in Iraq and headed for Kuwait. According to Gary Sick, he received an urgent call from Richard Cottam, learning for the first time that Khomeini had been forced out of Iraq. Sick was told that Khomeini and his entourage were stuck in no man’s land while attempting to cross the border. Cottam was requesting White House intervention to resolve the issue. Sick respond, “there is nothing we could do”.

25. October 6, Khomeini’s entourage, having gotten back through Baghdad, popped up in Paris. According to Bani-sadr, “it was Khomeini who insisted on going to Paris instead of Syria or Algeria”. Whoever helped Khomeini out of the Kuwaiti border impasse had to have been on good terms with both the French and Saddam Hussein.

26. December 12, Yazdi made a trip to the U.S. to promote Khomeini and his Islamic Republic. Yazdi met secretly with Henry Precht on an unofficial capacity. Precht was the Director of the Iran Desk at the State Department and one of the Bush team’s main choke points in the Carter Administration. Later Precht and Yazdi appeared together for televised discussion of Iran. Yazdi assured the American public that Khomeini had not really called for a “torrent of blood”, and that the “election would be absolutely free”. The Islamic Republic “would enjoy full freedom of speech and the press, including the right to attack Islam.

27. December 28, Cottam visited Khomeini in Paris where he noted that U.S. citizen Dr. Yazdi was the “leading tactician in Khomeini’s camp” and apparent “chief of staff”. Khomeini was not interested in the Mullahs taking over the government. Also noted that “Khomeini’s movement definitely plans to organize a political party to draw on Khomeini’s charisma. Cottam thinks such a party would win all Majlis seats.”

28. Leaving Paris, Cottam slipped into Teheran, arriving the first week in January 1979, to prepare Khomeini’s triumphal return to Iran.

29. January 4, 1979, Carter’s secret envoy, General Robert Huyser arrived in Iran. His mission was to prevent the “fall of the Shah”. According to Huyser, Alexander Haig, ostensibly a strong Shah supporter-inexplicably, “took violent exception to the whole idea.” Huyser recalled that “General Haig never gave me a full explanation of his strong objections.” Huyser also revealed that Ambassador Sullivan “had also expressed objections.” Two pro-Shah advocates opposed to the prevention of the Shah’s fall.

30. On January 14, President Carter finally “authorized a meeting between Warren Zimmerman and Ibrahim Yazdi. On the same day, Khomeini, in an interview on CBS claimed, “a great part of the army was loyal to him” and that “he will be in effect the strong man of Iran.”

31. On January 16, in an exact repeat of the 1953 CIA coup, Bush’s covert team ushered the “eccentric and weak” Shah out of Iran.

32. On February 1, 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini staged his own version of a “triumphal return” in the streets of Teheran.

33. Khomeini moved quickly to establish his authority. On February 5 he named Mehdi Bazargan, a devoted Muslim and anti-communist, interim Prime Minister. Yazdi and Abbas Amir Entezam became Bazargan’s deputies, Dr. Sanjabi Foreign Minister, and General Qarani was named military Chief of Staff.

34. On February 11, 1979, in seemingly a bizarre twist, General Qarani asked the Shah’s “eyes and ears” General Hossien Fardoust for recommendations to fill the new top posts in Iran’s armed forces. Outside of the Chief of SAVAK, all the other recommendations were accepted. Shortly after, General Fardoust became head of SAVAMA, Khomeini’s successor to SAVAK.

35. On February 14, 1979, two weeks after Khomeini’s return to Iran, the U.S. Embassy in Teheran was seized by Khomeini supporters disguised as leftist guerrillas in an attempt to neutralize the left. U.S. hostages were seized, but to the chagrin of Khomeini’s Fundamentalist, the Iranian coalition government restored order immediately. Ironically, in the same day in Kabul, Afghanistan, the U.S. Ambassador was also kidnapped by fanatic Islamic Fundamentalists disguised as leftist guerrillas and killed in the gunfight.

36. On February 14, soon after the order was restored at the U.S. Embassy in Teheran, Khomeini’s aide Yazdi supplied the Embassy with a group of Iranians for compound security. Ambassador Sullivan installed armed, and trained this Swat squad lead by SAVAK/CIA agent Mashallah Kahsani, with whom Sullivan developed a close working relationship.

37. By August, pro-Bush CIA official George Cave was visiting Iran to provide intelligence briefings to Khomeini’s aides, especially Yazdi and Entezam. These intelligence exchanges continued until October 31, the day Carter fired Bush and the 800 agents. Then with all the Iranian officials who had restored order in the first Embassy seizure eliminated, the stage was set for what happened four days later.

38. On November 4, 1979, the U.S. Embassy was taken again. Leading the charge was none other than Ambassador Sullivan’s trusted Mashallah Kashani, the Embassy’s once and former security chief.

With the evidence and documentation supplied by Mansoor, the alleged October Surprise would not have been necessary. President Carter was the target, in revenge for the Halloween Massacre, the night 800 CIA operatives and George Bush were fired by Carter. The main thrust, however, was to prevent a communist takover of Iran on the Shah’s anticipated death.

- See more at: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-real-iranian-hostage-crisis-a-cia-covert-op/5324385

The HORROR of the Sequester

Yes, this is how much the sequester is in relation to everything else.  Didly.  Yet, Congressmen worried about votes from the future unemployed, make a lot of noise.  Remember the deficit is over $1 TRILLION dollars.

Blame Game Starts as the Countdown to Martial Law Continues

Divide and conquer is an age old military strategy for defeating your enemies. I believe that Sun Tsu, who wrote the Art of War gets credit for describing it in writing.

The following is from the New York Times, Sunday edition.

"Are Republicans in Congress really willing to let these cuts fall on our kids' schools and mental health care just to protect tax loopholes for corporate jet owners? Are they really willing to slash military health care and the Border Patrol just because they refuse to eliminate tax breaks for big oil companies?"

For Republicans, who oppose any tax increases, Mr. Hoeven countered: "He blames Congress for the sequester, but Bob Woodward, in his book 'The Price of Politics' sets the record straight. Woodward says it was President Obama who proposed - and promoted - the sequester."

What makes this debate over blame so odd is that both sides' fingerprints - and votes -are all over the sequestration concept. The point of sequestration, in fact, was to define cuts that were so arbitrary and widespread that they would be unpalatable to both sides and force a deal.

That won Republicans' support for increasing the government's debt limit in 2011, and averted the nation's first default. The Republican-led House and Democratic-led Senate each passed the accord overwhelmingly, and Mr. Obama gladly signed it.

It appears the US national government is finally out of money, out of credit, and out of time. The can kicking is over. Apparently we should all care because our hard earned tax dollars have been used up paying the interest on the loans our government pays to fund its activities. That money goes from your pocket to that of the Federal Reserve, a private banking cartel, and its charter members, foreign and domestic.

With the passage of the Federal Reserve Act December 24, 1913, with 3 congressmen voting, and President Woodrow's final signature, our own government privatized the exclusive right to coin money, explicitly defying the US constitution.

100 years later we are facing bankruptcy for at least the third time, not the first as the New York Times suggests.

The first was in 1933-1934 when then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took us off the full gold standard after the our economy was in shambles.  If you recall it was loose monetary policy characterized by excessive money printing, excessive lending, and excessive speculation, across the board. When the insiders popped the stock market bubble and took their profits, the market tumbled, and the rest is history.

The second time America went bankrupt was in August 1971 when the Saudi Arabian oil company, ARAMCO, a US joint venture demanded gold in exchange for the dollars they held. Nixon declared a suspension of redemption of gold for US dollars. The Vietnam War and the ever expanding military industrial congressional complex had bankrupted the government.

Now, the US government is once again facing bankruptcy after all of us have fallen for the same con.

It's the charter memebers of the Federal Reserve that have manipulated, bribed, coerced, cajoled, and blackmailed us into this mess.

They are the ones we should be furious with, not our fellow citizens or congress. A reasonable man could not possibly be aware of this conspiracy without exceptional study as the junk food for the brain that Hollywood and corporate mass media spew out is deceptive.

The article goes on to say

"The idea for sequestration did come from the White House, as news accounts made clear at the time. Jacob J. Lew, then Mr. Obama's budget director and now his nominee for Treasury secretary, was the main proponent."

So maybe we should also blame Lee and Obama for at least committing treason by conspiring to bankrupt the country and / or provoke a civil war and impose a heightened police state.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F Kennedy. A thorough investigation, albeit well after the trail has run cool, would reveal that the very same money powers behind the Federal Reserve and behind his death.

The question is, what are you going to do about it?

The Return of Imperialism in Germany, Germany Rearms

Let's hope this is nonsense. The source is The World Socialist Website and I have seen that their conclusions are to blame capitalism and call for socialism. Generally the Global Research site typically exposes and elaborates on the conspiracy of the high cabal, who are wealthy collectivists that privatize the gains and socialize the losses while attempting to bring about a New World Order of totalitarian rule under their control.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-return-of-german-imperialism/5323719

Currency War is MORE Than Economic Policy, It's TRADE WAR!

If Currency Wars are not real, just debate, then why is the Pentagon hiring consultants like James G Rickards to help with doomsday simulations?

What is Russia doing in this Currency War?

The following article if from the New York Times and as always, supporting their agenda, which is to support the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve continue to hollow out the American economy and debase the currency.  It's a long story but the point I would like to investigate here is as follows:

When the US, Japan, the ECB, or BOE print money and increase the money supply and suppress interest rates, how does the inflation get "exported" to smaller economies, what happens to those economies when there is an influx of foreign money chasing domestic goods and services, corporate, and government bonds, etc? And lastly, how do foreign governments fight the inflation?

LEGAL/REGULATORY| DEAL PROFESSOR FEBRUARY 19, 2013, 6:17 PM 3 Comments ‘Currency War’ Is Less a Battle Than a Debate on Economic Policy
BY STEVEN M. DAVIDOFF

...the talk in some quarters is that the biggest threat to Asia and the rest of the world today may very well be a “currency war,” in which countries race to devalue their currencies in a desperate attempt to stimulate growth...It is really a debate about how industrialized countries will grow out of their economic malaise.
...Instead, Mr. Mantega was really talking about the United States. The huge quantitative easing undertaken by the Federal Reserve has created an environment of low interest rates and put downward pressure on the dollar while pushing the currencies of other countries up.

... the Fed’s actions have pushed hot money into countries, mostly emerging markets like Brazil, with higher interest rates. This creates bubblelike asset prices and spurs inflation.

Normally, the response of Brazil or another such country would be to ease its monetary policy and possibly also lower interest rates in an effort to tamp down demand for its currency. The problem is that Brazil has stubbornly high inflation at 6 percent and can’t respond the way the United States could.

...Bigger, more mature countries are responding to their own economic downturns by adopting easy money policies. But the problem is that the emerging market economies can’t respond with similar effectiveness because of their own economic or political issues.

...the Japanese yen, which is down more than 20 percent against the dollar since November...has reaped billions of dollars for hedge funds betting against the currency.

The slide in the yen is a product of an effort by Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, to revive the no-growth, no-inflation Japanese economy that has been mired in stagnation for more than two decades.
Mr. Abe is not only openly advocating an inflationary policy with a 2 percent target, and more stimulus, he is talking down the yen. And this week, Japan is expected to appoint a new head of the Bank of Japan. Whoever that may be is expected to be on board with Mr. Abe’s plan for further stimulus and inflation, a course that is likely to result in further yen depreciation.

As a result, Japanese exports have suddenly become significantly cheaper. And when an exporting powerhouse like Japan devalues its currency that quickly, other nations suddenly find that their goods are much less competitive on the global marketplace.

And once again, the issue is not that every country will depreciate, but how emerging market economies respond. These countries could respond in the easiest manner by letting their currencies appreciate. Many economists would say this is the ideal. Both the United States and Japan would benefit by having a cheaper currency and more growth, while developing nations would benefit by having a stronger currency and ability to buy more goods for consumption.

For many emerging market countries, this is hard to do politically, because it will mean that in the short term, their goods will be less competitive and their manufacturing bases will decline, meaning lost jobs.
Instead, these countries are more likely to try to deal with the yen’s depreciation by doing the exact opposite. They will try to halt the appreciation of their currency. Obviously, economic policy is complicated and economists love to disagree, so the responses of each country may vary, but there are three common policy ways to lower a currency rate: do a round of quantitative easing to expand the balance sheet of the central bank; lower interest rates; or impose capital controls.

The various possible responses show that the currency war is really about genuine policy disagreements between economies over how to address the easy money policies of the bigger industrialized countries, in light of the fact that many emerging market companies cannot respond with the same policies. The European Union has chosen another path by declining to adopt a stimulus approach.

This explains why the world’s financial officials and central bankers have not taken much of a stand.
After Lael Brainard, an under secretary for the Treasury, decried the “loose talk about currencies” and said that the United States supported “efforts to reinvigorate growth and to end deflation in Japan,” financial ministers of the Group of 20 nations released a communiqué.

It stated that their policy was not “to target our exchange rates for competitive purposes” and that “excess volatility of financial flows and disorderly movements in exchange rates have adverse implications for economic and financial stability.”

This followed a slightly different statement from the Group of 7 nations saying that the countries “have been and will remain oriented toward meeting our respective domestic objectives using domestic instruments, and that we will not target exchange rates.”

Bland prose like this is typical of these gatherings, yet the Group of 7 appeared to endorse Japan’s efforts. But if you look at the statement from the Group of 20, which includes Brazil and South Korea, it was less favorable, saying merely that there would not be a competitive devaluation. And no surprise, these are the countries most effected by the actions of the United States and Japan.

Ultimately, though, talk of a true currency war, where countries competitively devalue their exchange rates in a zero sum game that recalls the old Matthew Broderick film “War Games,” is overstated. Remember that in “War Games,” just by playing, you lose.

The reason is that even for those countries that can devalue, too much is at stake in this game. Instead, we are more likely to get what Goldman Sachs in a recently released research report called a “global exchange rate mechanism, but in a new noncooperative variant.”

Countries will act within bands based on their options and status, but no one country will take the same tack at the same time because of their different economic positions In other words, a country can’t merely turn on a switch and start a currency war of the sort people are talking about. Some don’t want to, others cannot and the rest are constrained in how they can act.

And while disruptions may happen from time to time, equilibrium is more likely to set in as each country responds slowly. So the currency game will play out in slow motion as each country adopts its preferred approach.

This is a game that has been going on for years. Instead of a currency war, what we are seeing is the everyday problems of a global economy where countries are highly connected and quite distinct.

Steven M. Davidoff, a professor at the Michael E. Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, is the author of “Gods at War: Shotgun Takeovers, Government by Deal and the Private Equity Implosion.” E-mail: dealprof@nytimes.com | Twitter: @StevenDavidoff

nonsense about Chinese hackers. What happened to the drumbeat against Iran?

From NYT, nonsense about Chinese hackers. What happened to the drumbeat against Iran?

By DAVID E. SANGER, DAVID BARBOZA and NICOLE PERLROTH Published: February 19, 2013

On the outskirts of Shanghai, in a run-down neighborhood dominated by a 12-story white office tower, sits a People's Liberation Army base for China's growing corps of cyberwarriors.

The building off Datong Road, surrounded by restaurants, massage parlors and a wine importer, is the headquarters of P.L.A. Unit 61398. A growing body of digital forensic evidence - confirmed by American intelligence officials who say they have tapped into the activity of the army unit for years - leaves little doubt that an overwhelming percentage of the attacks on American corporations, organizations and government agencies originate in and around the white tower.

An unusually detailed 60-page study, to be released Tuesday by Mandiant, an American computer security firm, tracks for the first time individual members of the most sophisticated of the Chinese hacking groups - known to many of its victims in the United States as "Comment Crew" or "Shanghai Group" - to the doorstep of the military unit's headquarters. The firm was not able to place the hackers inside the 12-story building, but makes a case there is no other plausible explanation for why so many attacks come out of one comparatively small area.

"Either they are coming from inside Unit 61398," said Kevin Mandia, the founder and chief executive of Mandiant, in an interview last week, "or the people who run the most-controlled, most-monitored Internet networks in the world are clueless about thousands of people generating attacks from this one neighborhood."

Other security firms that have tracked "Comment Crew" say they also believe the group is state-sponsored, and a recent classified National Intelligence Estimate, issued as a consensus document for all 16 of the United States intelligence agencies, makes a strong case that many of these hacking groups are either run by army officers or are contractors working for commands like Unit 61398, according to officials with knowledge of its classified content.

Mandiant provided an advance copy of its report to The New York Times, saying it hoped to "bring visibility to the issues addressed in the report." Times reporters then tested the conclusions with other experts, both inside and outside government, who have examined links between the hacking groups and the army (Mandiant was hired by The New York Times Company to investigate a sophisticated Chinese-origin attack on its news operations, but concluded it was not the work of Comment Crew, but another Chinese group. The firm is not currently working for the Times Company but it is in discussions about a business relationship.)

While Comment Crew has drained terabytes of data from companies like Coca-Cola, increasingly its focus is on companies involved in the critical infrastructure of the United States - its electrical power grid, gas lines and waterworks. According to the security researchers, one target was a company with remote access to more than 60 percent of oil and gas pipelines in North America. The unit was also among those that attacked the computer security firm RSA, whose computer codes protect confidential corporate and government databases.

Contacted Monday, officials at the Chinese embassy in Washington again insisted that their government does not engage in computer hacking, and that such activity is illegal. They describe China itself as a victim of computer hacking, and point out, accurately, that there are many hacking groups inside the United States. But in recent years the Chinese attacks have grown significantly, security researchers say. Mandiant has detected more than 140 Comment Crew intrusions since 2006. American intelligence agencies and private security firms that track many of the 20 or so other Chinese groups every day say those groups appear to be contractors with links to the unit.

And the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Tuesday that the allegations were ''unprofessional.''

''Making unfounded accusations based on preliminary results is both irresponsible and unprofessional, and is not helpful for the resolution of the relevant problem,'' said Hong Lei, a ministry spokesman. ''China resolutely opposes hacking actions and has established relevant laws and regulations and taken strict law enforcement measures to defend against online hacking activities.''

While the unit's existence and operations are considered a Chinese state secret, Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview that the Mandiant report was "completely consistent with the type of activity the Intelligence Committee has been seeing for some time."

The White House said it was "aware" of the Mandiant report, and Tommy Vietor, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said, "We have repeatedly raised our concerns at the highest levels about cybertheft with senior Chinese officials, including in the military, and we will continue to do so."

The United States government is planning to begin a more aggressive defense against Chinese hacking groups, starting on Tuesday. Under a directive signed by President Obama last week, the government plans to share with American Internet providers information it has gathered about the unique digital signatures of the largest of the groups, including Comment Crew and others emanating from near where Unit 61398 is based.

But the government warnings will not explicitly link those groups, or the giant computer servers they use, to the Chinese army. The question of whether to publicly name the unit and accuse it of widespread theft is the subject of ongoing debate.

"There are huge diplomatic sensitivities here," said one intelligence official, with frustration in his voice.

But Obama administration officials say they are planning to tell China's new leaders in coming weeks that the volume and sophistication of the attacks have become so intense that they threaten the fundamental relationship between Washington and Beijing.

The United States government also has cyberwarriors. Working with Israel, the United States has used malicious software called Stuxnet to disrupt Iran's uranium enrichment program. But government officials insist they operate under strict, if classified, rules that bar using offensive weapons for nonmilitary purposes or stealing corporate data.

The United States finds itself in something of an asymmetrical digital war with China. "In the cold war, we were focused every day on the nuclear command centers around Moscow," one senior defense official said recently. "Today, it's fair to say that we worry as much about the computer servers in Shanghai."

A Shadowy Unit

Unit 61398 - formally, the 2nd Bureau of the People's Liberation Army's General Staff Department's 3rd Department - exists almost nowhere in official Chinese military descriptions. Yet intelligence analysts who have studied the group say it is the central element of Chinese computer espionage. The unit was described in 2011 as the "premier entity targeting the United States and Canada, most likely focusing on political, economic, and military-related intelligence" by the Project 2049 Institute, a nongovernmental organization in Virginia that studies security and policy issues in Asia.

While the Obama administration has never publicly discussed the Chinese unit's activities, a secret State Department cable written the day before Barack Obama was elected president in November 2008 described at length American concerns about the group's attacks on government sites. (At the time American intelligence agencies called the unit "Byzantine Candor," a code word dropped after the cable was published by WikiLeaks.)

The Defense Department and the State Department were particular targets, the cable said, describing how the group's intruders send e-mails, called "spearphishing" attacks, that placed malware on target computers once the recipient clicked on them. From there, they were inside the systems.

American officials say that a combination of diplomatic concerns and the desire to follow the unit's activities have kept the government from going public. But Mandiant's report is forcing the issue into public view.

For more than six years, Mandiant tracked the actions of Comment Crew, so named for the attackers' penchant for embedding hidden code or comments into Web pages. Based on the digital crumbs the group left behind - its attackers have been known to use the same malware, Web domains, Internet protocol addresses, hacking tools and techniques across attacks - Mandiant followed 141 attacks by the group, which it called "A.P.T. 1" for Advanced Persistent Threat 1.

"But those are only the ones we could easily identify," said Mr. Mandia. Other security experts estimate that the group is responsible for thousands of attacks.

As Mandiant mapped the Internet protocol addresses and other bits of digital evidence, it all led back to the edges of Pudong district of Shanghai, right around the Unit 61398 headquarters. The group's report, along with 3,000 addresses and other indicators that can be used to identify the source of attacks, concludes "the totality of the evidence" leads to the conclusion that "A.P.T. 1 is Unit 61398."

Mandiant discovered that two sets of I.P. addresses used in the attacks were registered in the same neighborhood as Unit 61398's building.

"It's where more than 90 percent of the attacks we followed come from," said Mr. Mandia.

The only other possibility, the report concludes with a touch of sarcasm, is that "a secret, resourced organization full of mainland Chinese speakers with direct access to Shanghai-based telecommunications infrastructure is engaged in a multiyear enterprise-scale computer espionage campaign right outside of Unit 61398's gates."

The most fascinating elements of the Mandiant report follow the keystroke-by-keystroke actions of several of the hackers who the firm believes work for the P.L.A. Mandiant tracked their activities from inside the computer systems of American companies they were invading. The companies had given Mandiant investigators full access to rid them of the Chinese spies.

One of the most visible hackers it followed is UglyGorilla, who first appeared on a Chinese military forum in January 2004, asking whether China has a "similar force" to the "cyber army" being set up by the American military.

By 2007 UglyGorilla was turning out a suite of malware with what the report called a "clearly identifiable signature." Another hacker, called "DOTA" by Mandiant, created e-mail accounts that were used to plant malware. That hacker was tracked frequently using a password that appeared to be based on his military unit's designation. DOTA and UglyGorilla both used the same I.P. addresses linked back to Unit 61398's neighborhood.

Mandiant discovered several cases in which attackers logged into their Facebook and Twitter accounts to get around China's firewall that blocks ordinary citizen's access, making it easier to track down their real identities.

Mandiant also discovered an internal China Telecom memo discussing the state-owned telecom company's decision to install high-speed fiber-optic lines for Unit 61398's headquarters.

China's defense ministry has denied that it is responsible for initiating attacks. "It is unprofessional and groundless to accuse the Chinese military of launching cyberattacks without any conclusive evidence," it said last month, one of the statements that prompted Mandiant to make public its evidence.

Escalating Attacks

Mandiant believes Unit 61398 conducted sporadic attacks on American corporate and government computer networks; the earliest it found was in 2006. Two years ago the numbers spiked. Mandiant discovered some of the intrusions were long-running. On average the group would stay inside a network, stealing data and passwords, for a year; in one case it had access for four years and 10 months.

Mandiant has watched the group as it has stolen technology blueprints, manufacturing processes, clinical trial results, pricing documents, negotiation strategies and other proprietary information from more than 100 of its clients, mostly in the United States. Mandiant identified attacks on 20 industries, from military contractors to chemical plants, mining companies and satellite and telecommunications corporations.

Mandiant's report does not name the victims, who usually insist on anonymity. A 2009 attack on Coca-Cola coincided with the beverage giant's failed attempt to acquire the China Huiyuan Juice Group for $2.4 billion, according to people with knowledge of the results of the company's investigation.

As Coca-Cola executives were negotiating what would have been the largest foreign purchase of a Chinese company, Comment Crew was busy rummaging through their computers in an apparent effort to learn more about Coca-Cola's negotiation strategy.

The attack on Coca-Cola began, like hundreds before it, with a seemingly innocuous e-mail to an executive that was, in fact, a spearphishing attack. When the executive clicked on a malicious link in the e-mail, it gave the attackers a foothold inside Coca-Cola's network. From inside, they sent confidential company files through a maze of computers back to Shanghai, on a weekly basis, unnoticed.

Two years later, Comment Crew was one of at least three Chinese-based groups to mount a similar attack on RSA, the computer security company owned by EMC, a large technology company. It is best known for its SecurID token, carried by employees at United States intelligence agencies, military contractors and many major companies. (The New York Times also uses the firm's tokens to allow access to its e-mail and production systems remotely.) RSA has offered to replace SecurID tokens for customers and said it had added new layers of security to its products.

As in the Coca-Cola case, the attack began with a targeted, cleverly fashioned poisoned e-mail to an RSA employee. Two months later, hackers breached Lockheed Martin, the nation's largest defense contractor, partly by using the information they gleaned from the RSA attack.

Mandiant is not the only private firm tracking Comment Crew. In 2011, Joe Stewart, a Dell SecureWorks researcher, was analyzing malware used in the RSA attack when he discovered that the attackers had used a hacker tool to mask their true location.

When he reverse-engineered the tool, he found that the vast majority of stolen data had been transferred to the same range of I.P. addresses that Mandiant later identified in Shanghai.

Dell SecureWorks says it believed Comment Crew includes the same group of attackers behind Operation Shady RAT, an extensive computer espionage campaign uncovered in 2011 in which more than 70 organizations over a five-year period, including the United Nations, government agencies in the United States, Canada, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam were targeted.

Infrastructure at Risk

What most worries American investigators is that the latest set of attacks believed coming from Unit 61398 focus not just on stealing information, but obtaining the ability to manipulate American critical infrastructure: the power grids and other utilities.

Staff at Digital Bond, a small security firm that specializes in those industrial-control computers, said that last June Comment Crew unsuccessfully attacked it. A part-time employee at Digital Bond received an e-mail that appeared to come from his boss, Dale Peterson. The e-mail, in perfect English, discussed security weaknesses in critical infrastructure systems, and asked the employee to click a link to a document for more information. Mr. Peterson caught the e-mail and shared it with other researchers, who found the link contained a remote-access tool that would have given the attackers control over the employee's computer and potentially given them a front-row seat to confidential information about Digital Bond's clients, which include a major water project, a power plant and a mining company.

Jaime Blasco, a security researcher at AlienVault, analyzed the computer servers used in the attack, which led him to other victims, including the Chertoff Group. That firm, headed by the former secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, has run simulations of an extensive digital attack on the United States. Other attacks were made on a contractor for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, a lobbying group that represents companies that make components for power grids. Those organizations confirmed they were attacked but have said they prevented attackers from gaining access to their network.

Mr. Blasco said that, based on the forensics, all the victims had been hit by Comment Crew. But the most troubling attack to date, security experts say, was a successful invasion of the Canadian arm of Telvent. The company, now owned by Schneider Electric, designs software that gives oil and gas pipeline companies and power grid operators remote access to valves, switches and security systems.

Telvent keeps detailed blueprints on more than half of all the oil and gas pipelines in North and South America, and has access to their systems. In September, Telvent Canada told customers that attackers had broken into its systems and taken project files. That access was immediately cut, so that the intruders could not take command of the systems.

Martin Hanna, a Schneider Electric spokesman, did not return requests for comment, but security researchers who studied the malware used in the attack, including Mr. Stewart at Dell SecureWorks and Mr. Blasco at AlienVault, confirmed that the perpetrators were the Comment Crew.

"This is terrifying because - forget about the country - if someone hired me and told me they wanted to have the offensive capability to take out as many critical systems as possible, I would be going after the vendors and do things like what happened to Telvent," Mr. Peterson of Digital Bond said. "It's the holy grail."

Mr. Obama alluded to this concern in the State of the Union speech, without mentioning China or any other nation. "We know foreign countries and companies swipe our corporate secrets," he said. "Now our enemies are also seeking the ability to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions, our air-traffic control systems. We cannot look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing."

Mr. Obama faces a vexing choice: In a sprawling, vital relationship with China, is it worth a major confrontation between the world's largest and second largest economy over computer hacking?

A few years ago, administration officials say, the theft of intellectual property was an annoyance, resulting in the loss of billions of dollars of revenue. But clearly something has changed. The mounting evidence of state sponsorship, the increasing boldness of Unit 61398, and the growing threat to American infrastructure are leading officials to conclude that a far stronger response is necessary.

"Right now there is no incentive for the Chinese to stop doing this," said Mr. Rogers, the House intelligence chairman. "If we don't create a high price, it's only going to keep accelerating."

China Says Army Is Not Behind Attacks in Report By DAVID BARBOZA Published: February 21, 2013

SHANGHAI - A day after a United States security company accused a People's Liberation Army unit in Shanghai of engaging in cyberwarfare against American corporations, organizations and government agencies, China's defense ministry issued a strong denial and insisted that the report was flawed.

At a news conference in Beijing Wednesday, the ministry suggested that the allegations were destructive and challenged the study, which was produced by Mandiant, an American computer security company. The report identified P.L.A. Unit 61398 in Shanghai as one of the most aggressive computer hacking operations in the world.

Geng Yansheng, a spokesman for the Ministry of National Defense, said that China had been the victim of cyberattacks that have originated in the United States, and that Mandiant mischaracterized China's activities.

"Chinese military forces have never supported any hacking activities," Mr. Geng said at the briefing. "The claim by the Mandiant company that the Chinese military engages in Internet espionage has no foundation in fact."

On Tuesday, a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, Hong Lei, made similar remarks, arguing that cyberattacks are difficult to trace because they are "often carried out internationally and are typically done so anonymously."

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that a growing body of digital forensic evidence pointed to the involvement of the P.L.A. unit in Shanghai and that American intelligence officials had also been tracking the unit's activities.

On its Web site, Mandiant released a lengthy report on Tuesday detailing some of its evidence, including Internet protocol addresses and even the identities of several Chinese individuals it believes were behind some of the attacks. Mandiant said it monitored the hackers as they logged onto social networking sites or through e-mail accounts.

Attempts to contact two of the individuals through telephone numbers and instant message services were unsuccessful. In one case, one of the individuals - whose online profile says he is 28 years old and a graduate of a university that specializes in computer science - declined to answer questions.

Several military analysts said they had also traced some major cyberattacks back to the People's Liberation Army. and its Shanghai Unit 61398, which is known to be engaged in network security.

Still, many security experts concede that it is difficult if not possible to know for certain where attacks originate because hackers often take control of computers in various locations.

Chinese officials have insisted in recent years that China is one of the biggest targets of cyberattacks.

"Statistics show that Chinese military terminals connected to the Internet have been subjected to large numbers of attacks from abroad," the defense ministry said Wednesday, adding that Internet protocol addresses "indicate that a considerable number of these attacks are from the United States, but we have never used this as a reason to accuse the United States."

"Every country should handle the problem of cybersecurity in a professional and responsible manner," the ministry said.

UN Links Overpopulation to Climate Change, Launch Programs for Depopulation

From "The End of the World" After reading this, learn about the UN's Agenda 21.

One Less Child? Environmental Extremists Warn That Overpopulation Is Causing Climate Change And Will Ultimately Destroy The Earth

November 17, 2009

By Admin

As negotiations for the Copenhagen climate change treaty intensify, environmental extremists are once again attempting to link climate change with overpopulation and are warning that if drastic measures are not taken to reduce population growth it may mean the end of the world as we know it.  Unfortunately, the ranks of these environmental extremists are not limited to a few wacky professors and a couple psychos who are running around out there slashing the tires of SUVs.  Rather, those pushing an agenda to control "overpopulation" include high ranking members of the U.S. government, some of the most prominent scientists in the world of academia and some of the wealthiest men and women on the entire planet.
There are even very powerful international organizations that do nothing but sit around and think of ways to attack the "overpopulation" problem.
For example, the Optimum Population Trust bills itself as "the leading think tank in the UK concerned with the impact of population growth on the environment". Some really big names are involved in the Optimum Population Trust including Sir David Attenborough, Stanford Professor Paul Ehrlich and Dr. Jane Goodall. One of the stated goals of the organization is to "advance the education of the public in issues relating to human population worldwide and its impact on environmental sustainability".
In a recent press release, the Optimum Population Trust clearly linked the issue of overpopulation to the fight against climate change and the upcoming Cophenhagen treaty. In their statement, the OPT strongly urged nations across the globe to enact policies to "stabilize" population growth and to fund "family planning" programs in poorer countries.....
"The Optimum Population Trust says today (August 17, 2009) that the climate change talks which will culminate at Copenhagen in December must ensure that all countries adopt non-coercive policies to limit and stabilise population growth. Family planning programmes in poorer countries should be treated as “legitimate candidates for climate change funding."
Their site even includes a "Stop At Two" pledge in which they ask visitors to their site to take "another green step towards environmental survival for all" by making the following pledge:
I'm going to try not to have more than two children!
But unfortunately the Optimum Population Trust is far from alone on this issue.
At a recent roundtable discussion on "climate change" in India, Hillary Clinton noted that "one of the participants pointed out that it’s rather odd to talk about climate change and what we must do to stop and prevent the ill effects without talking about population and family planning."
"That was an incredibly important point," Clinton went on to add. "And yet, we talk about these things in very separate and often unconnected ways."
In fact, key Clinton adviser Nina Fedoroff was even more blunt when she recently told the BBC One Planet program the following:
"We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can't support many more people."
While it may be easy to dismiss the ramblings of Hillary Clinton and her advisers, the reality is that even the United Nations appears to be totally committed to reducing the population of the earth.
One incredibly disturbing example of this population reduction agenda is the recently discovered U.N. Population Division policy brief from March 2009.  This shocking document openly asks how fertility decline in the least developed countries can be accelerated.
The March 2009 U.N. Population Division policy brief can be found right here (it is a PDF document so you will need a PDF viewer to view it):
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/UNPD_policybriefs/UNPD_policy_brief1.pdf
When you first open up the policy brief, you are greeted by this cheery headline:
What would it take to accelerate fertility decline in the least developed countries?
The report goes on to discuss how big a problem overpopulation is (especially in "poor" countries) and what can be done to make sure that fewer babies are born in the "least developed" nations.
So why do the global elite have such an obsession with population control?
Well, the truth is that many of them actually believe that overpopulation is going to destroy the environment and bring about the end of the world as we know it.
For example, in a recent interview for his new book, "Will Population + Technology = Armageddon?", Syracuse University professor Henry Mullins offers a chilling forecast for the future of the world if the population is not reduced.....
When a system gets knocked out of equilibrium, feedback within it brings it back, or the system collapses.
I have three story lines. We exceed the carrying capacity, the earth system adjusts, and we have an equilibrium number of people at our carrying capacity. Everything’s fine.
Another possibility is the catastrophe — nuclear winter, or pandemics, or runaway greenhouse effect, whatever. It causes a drastic reduction in our numbers. We go back to pre-industrial times, when we only had a few billion people on the planet.
Worst-case scenario is extinction. Most species before us — about 99.9 percent — are now extinct. We’ve only been here a short period of geologic time.
While most people simply cannot understand why the global elite are so incredibly obsessed with population issues, the inescapable reality is that they are.
But now this obsession with population is spreading - particularly through colleges and universities.  You see, professors such as Henry Mullins get to spend all day shaping impressionable young minds in the classroom.  Inevitably, at least a few of them are going to become convinced of the need to reduce the population.
In particular, those who consider themselves to be "environmentalists" seem to be very willing to embrace the philosophy that humanity is a disease which is spreading too quickly.
For instance, there is actually a website entitled "One Less Child" that openly seeks to promote the idea that couples should have less children. Their mission statement says the following about the need to control the population.....
To have couples consider population reduction through less offspring. Having less offspring actually increases the quality of life of your current offspring, which is what every couple wants.
Not only that, but in a position paper published in November 2007, the Sierra Club made this stunning statement: "Given the grave implications of population growth, the Sierra Club urges greater effort to explain how population pressure is affecting the environment and stronger support for the programs – family planning, health care, and education and opportunity for women – that most effectively encourages smaller families."
This bizarre population control agenda is even represented in the White House. Barack Obama's "science czar", John P. Holdren, once co-authored a textbook entitled "Ecoscience" in which he advocated population control measures that are so extreme that it is hard to believe that a sane man came up with them.  The following are actual quotes from Holdren's textbook.....
Pages 787 and 788.....
“Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would haveto meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock.”
Pages 786 and 787.....
“A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.
The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.”
Page 838.....
“In today’s world, however, the number of children in a family is a matter of profound public concern. The law regulates other highly personal matters. For example, no one may lawfully have more than one spouse at a time. Why should the law not be able to prevent a person from having more than two children?”
Remember, Holdren is Barack Obama's top science advisor.
In addition, some of the wealthiest men and women in the world are also absolutely obsessed with overpopulation.  Back on May 5th, Bill Gates, David Rockefeller, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey and several other of the wealthiest people in the world gathered for a clandestine meeting in Manhattan.  The meeting was supposed to be so absolutely secret that many of the billionaires’ aides were only told that they were at "security briefings".
So just what was the meeting about?
Fortunately some details from the meeting have emerged.
According to one major U.K. newspaper, one individual who attended this meeting confessed that "a consensus emerged that they would back a strategy in which population growth would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat."
Once again we see another example of the absolute obsession that the global elite has with overpopulation.
The article quotes one attendee of the meeting as saying the following about the overpopulation problem.....
"This is something so nightmarish that everyone in this group agreed it needs big-brain answers."
Apparently they do not intend to include the rest of us as they come up with their "big-brain answers".
The truth is that most in the global elite consider overpopulation to be the number one problem in the world.  They are absolutely committed to trying to "solve" this "problem" in this generation.
So what will their "solutions" look like?
Only time will tell.
Meanwhile, the spreading obsession with population control is even reflected in comments by visitors to this site.  In our recent article about the coming global famine, two visitors made the following comments.....
Timothy J. Frohlick:
It means that we must reduce the human population by humane methods without recourse to war or starvation. On the other hand, if humanity stubbornly persists in overbreeding then we will probably lose one to three billion people in the next ten years.
Perhaps a mumps virus that induces sterility in all affected males would do the trick. It would certainly be better than being fried in wars or dying of nutrient deficiencies such as Kwashiokor or pellagra.
Fred:
The problem isn’t children about to be born, it is feeding the humans currently sucking air on the big blue marble. We are already overpopulated.
People actually believe this stuff.  But the truth is that there are vast tracts of land all over the world that are barely populated.  There is much more land that could be used for farming and for food production.  There would be more than enough food and resources for everyone - if the global elite were not so incredibly, incredibly greedy.
You see, the top 20 percent of the world's people who live in the highest income countries have access to 86 percent of world gross domestic product. The bottom fifth, in the poorest countries, have about one percent.
In addition, the assets of the world's three richest men exceed the combined gross domestic products of the world's 48 poorest countries.
The problem is not overpopulation.  The world could easily accommodate billions more.  The problem is greed.  The vast majority of the world's wealth is concentrated in the hands of a very few.  Now that they have accumulated so much of the wealth, they have decided that they do not need nearly as many slaves serving the system that they have created.
So in the name of fighting "climate change", these elitists plan to implement measures to address the "overpopulation problem" that they are determined to solve.  As these elitists pursue their sick obsession with population, it will have serious implications for every man, woman and child on earth.  May God have mercy on us all.