John Holdren, Obama's Science Czar, says: Forced abortions and mass sterilization needed to save the planet

Book he authored in 1977 advocates for extreme totalitarian measures to control the population

Forced abortions. Mass sterilization. A "Planetary Regime" with the power of life and death over American citizens. 

The tyrannical fantasies of a madman? Or merely the opinions of the person now in control of science policy in the United States? Or both? 

These ideas (among many other equally horrifying recommendations) were put forth by John Holdren, whom Barack Obama has recently appointed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology -- informally known as the United States' Science Czar. In a book Holdren co-authored in 1977, the man now firmly in control of science policy in this country wrote that: 

• Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not; 
• The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation's drinking water or in food; 
• Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise; 
• People who "contribute to social deterioration" (i.e. undesirables) "can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility" -- in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized. 
• A transnational "Planetary Regime" should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans' lives -- using an armed international police force. 

Impossible, you say? That must be an exaggeration or a hoax. No one in their right mind would say such things. 

Well, I hate to break the news to you, but it is no hoax, no exaggeration. John Holdren really did say those things, and this report contains the proof. Below you will find photographs, scans, and transcriptions of pages in the book Ecoscience, co-authored in 1977 by John Holdren and his close colleagues Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich. The scans and photos are provided to supply conclusive evidence that the words attributed to Holdren are unaltered and accurately transcribed. 

This report was originally inspired by this article in FrontPage magazine, which covers some of the same information given here. But that article, although it contained many shocking quotes from John Holdren, failed to make much of an impact on public opinion. Why not? Because, as I discovered when discussing the article with various friends, there was no proof that the quotes were accurate -- so most folks (even those opposed to Obama's policies) doubted their veracity, because the statements seemed too inflammatory to be true. In the modern era, it seems, journalists have lost all credibility, and so are presumed to be lying or exaggerating unless solid evidence is offered to back up the claims. Well, this report contains that evidence. 

Of course, Holdren wrote these things in the framework of a book he co-authored about what he imagined at the time (late 1970s) was an apocalyptic crisis facing mankind: overpopulation. He felt extreme measures would be required to combat an extreme problem. Whether or not you think this provides him a valid "excuse" for having descended into a totalitarian fantasy is up to you: personally, I don't think it's a valid excuse at all, since the crisis he was in a panic over was mostly in his imagination. Totalitarian regimes and unhinged people almost always have what seems internally like a reasonable justification for actions which to the outside world seem incomprehensible. 

Direct quotes from John Holdren's Ecoscience 

Below you will find a series of ten short passages from Ecoscience. On the left in each case is a scanned image taken directly from the pages of the book itself; on the right is an exact transcription of each passage, with noteworthy sections highlighted. Below each quote is a short analysis by me. 

Following these short quotes, I take a "step back" and provide the full extended passages from which each of the shorter quotes were excerpted, to provide the full context. 

And at the bottom of this report, I provide untouched scans (and photos) of the full pages from which all of these passages were taken, to quash any doubts anyone might have that these are absolutely real, and to forestall any claims that the quotes were taken "out of context." 

Ready? Brace yourself. And prepare to be shocked. 

Page 837: Compulsory abortions would be legal 

As noted in the FrontPage article cited above, Holdren "hides behind the passive voice" in this passage, by saying "it has been concluded." Really? By whom? By the authors of the book, that's whom. What Holdren's really saying here is, "I have determined that there's nothing unconstitutional about laws which would force women to abort their babies." And as we will see later, although Holdren bemoans the fact that most people think there's no need for such laws, he and his co-authors believe that the population crisis is so severe that the time has indeed come for "compulsory population-control laws." In fact, they spend the entire book arguing that "the population crisis" has already become "sufficiently severe to endanger the society."

Page 786: Single mothers should have their babies taken away by the government; or they could be forced to have abortions 

Holdren and his co-authors once again speculate about unbelievably draconian solutions to what they feel is an overpopulation crisis. But what's especially disturbing is not that Holdren has merely made these proposals -- wrenching babies from their mothers' arms and giving them away; compelling single mothers to prove in court that they would be good parents; and forcing women to have abortions, whether they wanted to or not -- but that he does so in such a dispassionate, bureaucratic way. Don't be fooled by the innocuous and "level-headed" tone he takes: the proposals are nightmarish, however euphemistically they are expressed. 

Holdren seems to have no grasp of the emotional bond between mother and child, and the soul-crushing trauma many women have felt throughout history when their babies were taken away from them involuntarily. 

This kind of clinical, almost robotic discussion of laws that would affect millions of people at the most personal possible level is deeply unsettling, and the kind of attitude that gives scientists a bad name. I'm reminded of the phrase "banality of evil." 

Not that it matters, but I myself am "pro-choice" -- i.e. I think that abortion should not be illegal. But that doesn't mean I'm pro-abortion -- I don't particularly like abortions, but I do believe women should be allowed the choice to have them. But John Holdren here proposes to take away that choice -- to force women to have abortions. One doesn't need to be a "pro-life" activist to see the horror of this proposal -- people on all sides of the political spectrum should be outraged. My objection to forced abortion is not so much to protect the embryo, but rather to protect the mother from undergoing a medical procedure against her will. And not just any medical procedure, but one which she herself (regardless of my views) may find particularly immoral or traumatic. 

There's a bumper sticker that's popular in liberal areas which says: "Against abortion? Then don't have one." Well, John Holdren wants to MAKE you have one, whether you're against it or not. 

Page 787-8: Mass sterilization of humans though drugs in the water supply is OK as long as it doesn't harm livestock 

K, John, now you're really starting to scare me. Putting sterilants in the water supply? While you correctly surmise that this suggestion "seems to horrify people more than most proposals," you apparently are not among those people it horrifies. Because in your extensive list of problems with this possible scheme, there is no mention whatsoever of any ethical concerns or moral issues. In your view, the only impediment to involuntary mass sterlization of the population is that it ought to affect everyone equally and not have any unintended side effects or hurt animals. But hey, if we could sterilize all the humans safely without hurting the livestock, that'd be peachy! The fact that Holdren has no moral qualms about such a deeply invasive and unethical scheme (aside from the fact that it would be difficult to implement) is extremely unsettling and in a sane world all by itself would disqualify him from holding a position of power in the government. 

Page 786-7: The government could control women's reproduction by either sterilizing them or implanting mandatory long-term birth control 

So much more shocking information to read, so go to this link to read the whole page... http://zombietime.com/john_holdren/

American Czarism

By David Sirota

January 25, 2009 "SFC" - -January 18, 2009" -- History's great American parables teach that if anything unified our founders, it was a deep antipathy to dictatorship. As bourgeois revolutionaries from Boston to Philadelphia courageously split with the British crown in 1776, they created three equal branches of government to prevent, in the words of James Madison, "a tyrannical concentration of all the powers" in a president's hands.

For two centuries since, civics books, Hollywood biopics and party convention speeches have constructed a mythology insisting that this democratic commitment to checks and balances makes our country a beacon of freedom - the "shining city on a hill" overlooking a despotic world below. We are told that democracy's tumult - its messy debates, legislative sausage-making and electoral friction - is the best way to guarantee that public policy represents public will, therefore making us a strong and durable nation.

If that is true, then every patriot should be concerned about the intensifying efforts to supplant democracy with something far more authoritarian. Call it American czarism.

That term should be as impossibly oxymoronic as crash landings and deafening silence, considering our Constitution's desire to create a "government of laws and not of men," as John Adams said. But politics is filled with paradoxes from Reagan Democrats to Obama Republicans, and czars - i.e., policymakers granted extralegal, cross-agency powers - have become increasingly prevalent in our government over the past century.

After the Great Flood of 1927, for instance, President Calvin Coolidge named Herbert Hoover the federal government czar overseeing relief efforts, and Hoover subsequently appointed "dictators" (he actually used that term) to help coordinate the response.

During the power consolidations of the New Deal in the 1930s, a Time magazine story headlined "Dictator or Democrat" reported on the "suspicions of those throughout the nation who have an uneasy feeling that [President Franklin] Roosevelt, under cover of the emergency, is trying 'to slip something over' on democracy." In the 1940s and 1950s, parks commissioner Robert Moses - famously known as "the power broker" - amassed so much personal authority that he was able to almost single-handedly redesign New York City. And lately, presidents have given us poverty, energy, drug, health and even Iraq war czars.

Until now, this slow lurch toward czarism has primarily reflected the ancient, almost innate human desire for power and paternalistic leadership. The current president reminded us that executives see all-powerful "deciders" when they look in the mirror. And Americans - sans kings to rally around - have been elevating commanders in chief to superhero status well before Barack Obama's Marvel comic-book debut and George Bush's flight-suited "Top Gun" impression in 2003.

In recent years, this culture of "presidentialism," as Vanderbilt Professor Dana Nelson calls it, has justified the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretaps and a radical theory of the "unitary executive" that aims to provide a jurisprudential rationale for total White House supremacy over all government. But only in the past three months has American czarism metastasized from a troubling slow-growth tumor to a potentially deadly cancer.

In October, Congress relinquished its most basic oversight powers and gave Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson sole authority to dole out billions of bailout dollars to Wall Street. At the same time, it did nothing when Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke used fiats to commit "$5 trillion worth of new money, loan guarantees and loosened lending requirements," according to Politico - all while he refused to tell the public who is receiving the largesse.

And the Washington Post has reported that lawmakers may appoint a "car czar" who "would essentially control the purse strings" of an auto industry bailout and "could force Detroit's Big Three automakers into bankruptcy" if he or she didn't like their behavior.

Put bluntly, the unprecedented usurpation of spending power by the executive branch and the Federal Reserve is systematically undermining our democracy's most sacrosanct principle - the one that is supposed to ensure "the legislative department alone has access to the pockets of the people," as Madison said. And this new czarism is so strident because it reflects both executive power lust and the 21st century economy.

Today, keystrokes and mouse-clicks instantly whisk trillions of dollars across the planet, and many of those keystrokes and mouse-clicks are uninhibited by the grindingly slow processes of democracy.

Saudi princes don't have to publish announcements in a federal register before moving cash from sovereign wealth funds into foreign investments. China's rulers aren't obligated to obtain legislative approval when buying or dumping U.S. Treasury bills; and transnational corporations will not wait for public hearings before shuttering offices, eliminating jobs and cutting off credit.

Our nation is integrally connected to this fast-moving globalized economy, and American czarism effectively posits that in order to compete, we must anoint strongmen as saviors, prioritize speed instead of sobriety and emulate dictatorship instead of democracy.

Indeed, the Economist magazine's prediction that the "economic crisis may increase the attractiveness of the Chinese model of authoritarian capitalism" is coming true right here at home, as we seem ever more intent on replicating - rather than resisting - that model.

This, as much as personal hubris, explains why Paulson and Bernanke sought unprecedented latitude in spending trillions - they want to be able to move as fast as their autocratic counterparts in other countries, and believe congressional oversight will slow them down.

It explains why UC Berkeley economist Laura Tyson says we need an auto czar who will "take a number of approaches to this problem that are already known, that have been discussed endlessly, and force it through" - because to economists, a czar quickly "forcing it through" is more important than any consideration for democratic deliberation.

And it explains why when Obama aides this week demanded complete control over the second half of the Wall Street bailout funds, House Financial Services Committee chairman Rep. Barney Frank, D- Mass., shirked his oversight duties and said he's "willing to accept their word" that they will spend the money responsibly. In czarism, that's what legislators do: "accept the word" of the czar.

In sum, it explains why the age-old struggle between capitalism and democracy is once again defining our politics - and why capitalism is now winning.

That triumph may be terrific for the czars and great for their industry suitors, but as the founders would likely agree, it is a pyrrhic victory for America.

David Sirota is an author and syndicated columnist.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21838.htm