The substance of these stratagems can be traced to a think-tank study released in 1966 called the Report from Iron Mountain. Although the origin of the report is highly debated, the document itself hints that it was commissioned by the Department of Defense under Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, and was produced by the Hudson Institute located at the base of Iron Mountain in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. The Hudson Institute was founded and directed by Herman Kahn, formerly of the Rand Corporation. Both McNamara and Kahn were members of the CFR.

The self-proclaimed purpose of the study was to explore various ways to "stabilize society." Praiseworthy as that may sound, a reading of the Report soon reveals that the word society is used synonymously with the word government. Furthermore, the word stabilize is used as meaning to preserve and to perpetuate. It is clear from the start that the nature of the study was to analyze the different ways a government can perpetuate itself in power, ways to control its citizens and prevent them from rebelling. 

It was stated at the beginning of the report that morality was not an issue. The study did not address questions of right or wrong; nor did it deal with such concepts as freedom or human rights. Ideology was not an issue, nor patriotism, nor religious precepts. Its sole concern was how to perpetuate the existing government. The report said:

Previous studies have taken the desirability of peace, the importance of human life, the superiority of democratic institutions, the greatest "good" for the greatest number, the "dignity" of the individual, the desirability of maximum health and longevity, and other such wishful premises as axiomatic values necessary for the justification of a study of peace issues. We have not found them so. We have attempted to apply the standards of physical science to our thinking, the principal characteristic of which is not quantification, as is popularly believed, but that, in Whitehead's words, "... it ignores all judgments of value; for instance, all esthetic and moral judgments." 1

The major conclusion of the report was that, in the past, war has been the only reliable means to achieve that goal. It contends that only during times of war or the threat of war are the masses compliant enough to carry the yoke of government without complaint. Fear of conquest and pillage by an enemy can make almost any burden seem acceptable by comparison. War can be used to arouse human passion and patriotic feelings of loyalty to the nation's leaders. No amount of sacrifice in the name of victory will be rejected. Resistance is viewed as treason. But, in times of peace, people become resentful of high taxes, shortages, and bureaucratic intervention. When they become disrespectful of their leaders, they become dangerous. No government has long survived without enemies and armed conflict. War, therefore, has been an indispensable condition for "stabilizing society." These are the report's exact words:

"The war system not only has been essential to the existence of nations as independent political entities, but has been equally indispensable to their stable political structure. Without it, no government has ever been able to obtain acquiescence in its 'legitimacy,' or right to rule its society. The possibility of war provides the sense of external necessity without which no government can long remain in power. The historical record reveals one instance after another where the failure of a regime to maintain the credibility of a war threat led to its dissolution, by the forces of private interest, of reactions to social injustice, or of other disintegrative elements. The organization of society for the possibility of war is its principal political stabilizer.... It has enabled societies to maintain necessary class distinctions, and it has insured the subordination of the citizens to the state by virtue of the residual war powers inherent in the concept of nationhood."     

THE ENVIRONMENTAL-POLLUTION MODEL

The final candidate for a useful global threat was pollution of the environment. This was viewed as the most likely to succeed because it could be related to observable conditions such as smog and water pollution--in other words, it would be based partly on fact and, therefore, be credible. Predictions could be made showing end-of-earth scenarios just as horrible as atomic warfare. Accuracy in these predictions would not be important. Their purpose would be to frighten, not to inform. It might even be necessary to deliberately poison the environment to make the predictions more convincing and to focus the public mind on fighting a new enemy, more fearful than any invader from another nation--or even from outer space. The masses would more willingly accept a falling standard of living, tax increases, and bureaucratic intervention in their lives as simply "the price we must pay to save Mother Earth." A massive battle against death and destruction from global pollution possibly could replace war as justification for social control.

Did the Report from Iron Mountain really say that? It certainly did--and much more. Here are just a few of the pertinent passages:

"When it comes to postulating a credible substitute for war ... the 'alternate enemy' must imply a more immediate, tangible, and directly felt threat of destruction. It must justify the need for taking and paying a 'blood price' in wide areas of human concern. In this respect, the possible substitute enemies noted earlier would be insufficient. One exception might be the environmental-pollution model, if the danger to society it posed was genuinely imminent. The fictive models would have to carry the weight of extraordinary conviction, underscored with a not inconsiderable actual sacrifice of life.... It may be, for instance, that gross pollution of the environment can eventually replace the possibility of mass destruction by nuclear weapons as the principal apparent threat to the survival of the species. Poisoning of the air, and of the principal sources of food and water supply, is already well advanced, and at first glance would seem promising in this respect; it constitutes a threat that can be dealt with only through social organization and political power....

"It is true that the rate of pollution could be increased selectively for this purpose.... But the pollution problem has been so widely publicized in recent years that it seems highly improbable that a program of deliberate environmental poisoning could be implemented in a politically acceptable manner.

"However unlikely some of the possible alternative enemies we have mentioned may seem, we must emphasize that one must be found of credible quality and magnitude, if a transition to peace is ever to come about without social disintegration. It is more probable, in our judgment, that such a threat will have to be invented."

1. Ibid., pp. 66-67, 70-71. When the Report was written, terrorism had not yet been considered as a substitute for war. Since then, it has become the most useful of them all. Do not expect it to be defeated by Fabians. It serves their purpose too well.  

ENVIRONMENTALISM A SUBSTITUTE FOR WAR

It is beyond the scope of this study to prove that currently accepted predictions of environmental doom are based on exaggerated and fraudulent "scientific studies." But such proof is easily found if one is willing to look at the raw data and the assumptions upon which the projections are based. More important, however, is the question of why end-of-world scenarios based on phony scientific studies--or no studies at all--are uncritically publicized by the CFR-controlled media; or why radical environmental groups advocating socialist doctrine and anti-business programs are lavishly funded by CFR-dominated foundations, banks, and corporations, the very groups that would appear to have the most to lose. The Report from Iron Mountain answers those questions.

As the Report pointed out, truth is not important in these matters. It's what people can be made to believe that counts. "Credibility" is the key, not reality. There is just enough truth in the fact of environmental pollution to make predictions of planetary doom in the year two-thousand-something seem believable. All that is required is media cooperation and repetition. The plan has apparently worked. People of the industrialized nations have been subjected to a barrage of documentaries, dramas, feature films, ballads, poems, bumper stickers, posters, marches, speeches, seminars, confer ences, and concerts. The result has been phenomenal. Politicians are now elected to office on platforms consisting of nothing more than an expressed concern for the environment and a promise to clamp down on those nasty industries. No one questions the damage done to the economy or the nation. It makes no difference when the very planet on which we live is sick and dying. Not one in a thousand will question that underlying premise. How could it be false? Look at all the movie celebrities and rock stars who have joined the movement.

While the followers of the environmental movement are preoccupied with visions of planetary doom, let us see what the leaders are thinking. The first Earth Day was proclaimed on April 22, 1970, at a "Summit " meeting in Rio de Janeiro, attended by environmentalists and politicians from all over the world. A publication widely circulated at that meeting was entitled the Environmental Handbook. The main theme of the book was summarized by a quotation from Princeton Professor Richard A. Falk, a member of the CFR. Falk wrote that there are four interconnected threats to the planet--wars of mass destruction, overpopulation, pollution, and the depletion of resources. Then he said: "The basis of all four problems is the inadequacy of the sovereign states to manage the affairs of man kind in the twentieth century." The Handbook continued the CFR line by asking these rhetorical questions: "Are nation-states actually feasible, now that they have power to destroy each other in a single afternoon?... What price would most people be willing to pay for a more durable kind of human organization--more taxes, giving up national flags, perhaps the sacrifice of some of our hard-won liberties?" ²

In 1989, the CFR-owned Washington Post published an article written by CFR member George Kennan in which he said: "We must prepare instead for ... an age where the great enemy is not the Soviet Union, but the rapid deterioration of our planet as a supporting structure for civilized life." 3

On March 27, 1990, in the CFR-controlled New York Times, CFR member Michael Oppenheimer wrote: "Global warming, ozone depletion, deforestation and overpopulation are the four horsemen of a looming 21st-century apocalypse.... As the cold war recedes, the environment is becoming the  No. 1 international security concern."4

CFR member Lester Brown heads up another think tank called the Worldwatch Institute. In the Institute's annual report, entitled State of the World 1991, Brown said that "the battle to save the planet will replace the battle over ideology as the organizing theme of the new world order."

U.S. BRANDED AS ECOLOGICAL AGGRESSOR

The use of compulsion is an important point in these plans. People in the industrialized nations are not expected to cooperate in their own demise. They will have to be forced. They will not like it when their food is taken for global distribution. They will not approve when they are taxed by a world authority to finance foreign political projects. They will not voluntarily give up their cars or resettle into smaller houses or communal barracks to satisfy the resource-allocation quotas of a UN agency. Club-of-Rome member Maurice Strong states the problem:

"In effect, the United States is committing environmental aggression against the rest of the world.... At the military level, the United States is the custodian. At the environmental level, the United States is clearly the greatest risk.... One of the worst problems in the United States is energy prices--they're too low....

"It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class ... involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and 'convenience' foods, ownership of motor-vehicles, numerous electric household appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning ... expansive suburban housing ... are not sustainable."   1

Mr. Strong's remarks were enthusiastically received by world environmental leaders, but they prompted this angry editorial response in the Arizona Republic:

"Translated from eco-speak, this means two things: (1) a reduction in the standard of living in Western nations through massive new taxes and regulations, and (2) a wholesale transfer of wealth from industrialized to under-developed countries. The dubious premise here is that if the U.S. economy could be reduced to, say, the size of Malaysia's, the world would be a better place.... Most Americans probably would balk at the idea of the U.N. banning automobiles in the U.S." 

Who is this Maurice Strong who sees the United States as the environmental aggressor against the world? Does he live in poverty? Does he come from a backward country that is resentful of American prosperity? Does he himself live in modest  circumstances, avoiding consumption in order to preserve our natural resources? None of the above. He is one of the wealthiest men in the world. He lives and travels in great comfort. He is a lavish entertainer. In addition to having great personal wealth derived from the oil industry in Canada--which he helped nationalize-- Maurice Strong was the Secretary-General of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio; head of the 1972 UN Conference on Human Environment in Stockholm; the first Secretary-General of the UN Environment Program; president of the World Federation of United Nations; co-chairman of the World Economic Forum; member of the Club of Rome; trustee of the Aspen Institute; and a director of the World Future Society. That is probably more than you wanted to know about this man, but it is necessary in order to appreciate the importance of what follows. 

A PLOT FOR ECONOMIC CRISIS

Maurice Strong believes--or says that he believes--the world's ecosystems can be preserved only if the affluent nations of the world can be disciplined into lowering their standard of living. Production and consumption must be curtailed. To bring that about, those nations must submit to rationing, taxation, and political domination by world government. They will probably not do that voluntarily, he says, so they will have to be forced. To accomplish that, it will be necessary to engineer a global monetary crisis that will destroy their economic systems. Then they will have no choice but to accept assistance and control from the UN.

This strategy was revealed in the May 1990 issue of West magazine, published in Canada. In an article entitled "The Wizard of Baca Grande," journalist Daniel Wood described his week-long experience at Strong's private ranch in southern Colorado. This ranch has been visited by such CFR notables as David Rockefeller, Secretary-of-State Henry Kissinger, founder of the World Bank Robert McNamara, and the presidents of such organizations as IBM, Pan Am, and Harvard.

During Wood's stay at the ranch, the tycoon talked freely about environmentalism and politics. To express his own world view, he said he was planning to write a novel about a group of world leaders who decided to save the planet. As the plot unfolded, it became obvious that it was based on real people and real events. Wood continues the story:

"Each year, he explains as background to the telling of the novel's plot, the World Economic Forum convenes in Davos, Switzerland. Over a thousand CEOs, prime ministers, finance ministers, and leading academics gather in February to attend meetings and set economic agendas for the year ahead. With this as a setting, he then says: 'What if a small group of these world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it?... The group's conclusion is 'no.' the rich countries won't do it. They won't change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?' 

"'This group of world leaders,' he continues, 'form a secret society to bring about an economic collapse. It's February. They're all at Davos. These aren't terrorists. They're world leaders. They have positioned themselves in the world's commodity and stock markets. They've engineered, using their access to stock exchanges and computers and gold supplies, a panic. Then, they prevent the world's stock markets from closing. They jam the gears. They hire mercenaries who hold the rest of the world leaders at Davos as hostages. The markets can't close. The rich countries...' And Strong makes a slight motion with his fingers as if he were flicking a cigarette butt out the window.

"I sit there spellbound. This is not any storyteller talking, this is Maurice Strong. He knows these world leaders. He is, in fact, co-chairman of the Council of the World Economic Forum. He sits at the fulcrum of power. He is in a position to do it.

"'I probably shouldn't be saying things like this,' he says." 1

Maurice Strong's fanciful plot probably shouldn't be taken too seriously, at least in terms of a literal reading of future events. It is unlikely they will unfold in exactly that manner--although it is not impossible. For one thing, it would not be necessary to hold the leaders of the industrialized nations at gun point. They would be the ones engineering this plot. Leaders from third-world countries do not have the means to cause a global crisis. That would have to come from the money centers in New York, London, or Tokyo. Furthermore, the masterminds behind this thrust for global government have always resided in the industrialized nations. They have come from the ranks of the CFR in America and from other branches of the International Roundtable in England, France, Belgium, Canada, Japan, and elsewhere. They are the ideological descendants of Cecil Rhodes and they are fulfilling his dream.

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