Maurice Strong

[skeena484]

All of this, I contend, provides a unique opportunity for a new era of co-operation between the Chinese and the North American auto industries in which others, like India, could also participate.
The main elements of such an agreement would be: 1. Encourage and facilitate China to make major investments in General Motors, Ford and Chrysler that would enable them to reconstruct and revitalize their companies on a basis that would ensure their survival and competitiveness, including the use of Chinese components. This would be done through investment by, or joint ventures with, leading Chinese companies.

Ironic isn’t it that the Pelosi/Obama administration is on track to government ownership of G.M. and Chrysler while financing that purchase with billions of dollars borrowed from China. I can’t help wondering how the UAW think they will be better off when they’re forced to negotiate with the Peoples Republic of China.

[styky]

Suddenly this article has resurfaced and is posted everywhere today.


Maurice Strong: The new guy in your future!
By Henry Lamb
January, 1997

Shortly after his selection as U.N. Secretary General, Kofi Annan told the Lehrer News Hour that Ingvar Carlsson and Shirdath Ramphal, co-chairs of the U.N.-funded Commission on Global Governance, would be among those asked to help him reform the sprawling, world-wide U.N. bureaucracy. His first choice, however, announced in the Washington Post on January 17, 1997, was none other than Maurice Strong, also a member of the Commission on Global Governance.

Strong's appointment as Senior Advisor, "to assist planning and executing a far-reaching reform of the world body," is seen by U.N. watchers to be a masterful strategic maneuver to avoid political opposition while empowering Strong to implement a global agenda he has been developing for years. More than 100 developing nations coordinated a "Draft Strong" movement in 1995 to replace Boutros Boutros-Ghali. But Strong's name was never presented publicly as a candidate. His appointment avoids the public scrutiny and the possibility of a veto. As a Senior Advisor to Kofi Annan, Strong will have a free hand to do what he wants while Annan takes the heat - or the praise. Strong prefers to operate in the background. He, perhaps more than any other single person, is responsible for the development of a global agenda now being implemented throughout the world. Although various components of the global agenda are associated with an assortment of individuals and institutions, Maurice Strong is, or has been, the driving force behind them. It is essential that Americans come to know this man who has been entrusted with the task of "reforming" the U.N. - this man Maurice F. Strong.

According to Elaine Dewar, author of Cloak of Green. Strong is a Socialist. He was born into a family who worked to get out the vote for Prime Minister Mackenzie King, who in 1943 was promoting the National Council for Soviet-Canadian Friendship. Strong's cousin, Anna Louise Strong, was a Marxist, and a member of the Comintern, who spent two years with Mao and Chou En-lai. Her burial in China in 1970 was organized personally by Chou En-lai. Maurice is well received in China, partly because of his cousin's connections.[1]

Strong is also closely aligned with Mikhail Gorbachev and was a participant in Gorbachev's State of the World Forum in San Francisco in 1995.[2] His organization, Earth Council, and Gorbachev's organization, Green Cross International, are currently developing a new "Earth Charter" for presentation to the U.N. General Assembly and ratification by all U.N. members before the year 2000. He served on the Brundtland Commission, headed by Gro Harlem Brundtland, then-Vice President of the World Socialist Party. Strong's love for socialist ideas is scattered throughout his professional life - as they apply to everyone else. For himself, he is quite the capitalist.

He ran away from home at 14. His father retrieved him from Vancouver. But in 1945, after completing the 11th grade, Strong was off again to become an apprentice fur trader in Hudson Bay. Strong's business success was remarkable. At 19, he was an investment analyst. At 25, he was Vice President of Dome Petroleum. At 31, he became the President of Power Corporation of Canada. He headed both Petro Canada and Hydro Canada, and made a few deals on the side as well, one of which was the acquisition in 1978 of the Colorado Land & Cattle Company which owned 200,000 acres of San Luis Valley in Colorado -- from Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi.[3]

The ranch, called Baca, sat on the continent's largest fresh water aquifer. Strong intended to pipe the water to the desert southwest, but environmental organizations protested and the plan was abandoned. Strong ended up with a $1.2 million settlement from the water company, an annual grant of $100,000 from Laurance Rockefeller, and still retained the rights to the water.

Strong's success in business was exceeded only by his success in government. From his post as founding director of the Canadian International Development Assistance Program (CIDA), he was elevated by Prime Minister Lester Pearson to represent Canada's interests in international affairs.

Strong's first exposure to the U.N. came in 1947 when, at 18, he went to New York to take a job as assistant pass officer in the Identification Unit of the Security Section. He lived with Noah Monod, then treasurer of the U.N.. Here, he first met David Rockefeller and learned that the U.N.'s funds were handled by Rockefeller's Chase Bank. He also met the other Rockefeller brothers and other influential people as well.

The idea of global governance emerged during this era. John J. McCloy was a member of the law firm that represented the Rockefeller's business interests. McCloy helped set up the World Bank and became its first president. He also became an assistant to Roosevelt's secretary of war, Henry Stimson. McCloy had been with Truman, Andrei Gromyko and Stalin at Potsdam in 1945, and it was McCloy who first received word that the atomic bomb test at Almagordo had been successful. He was appointed to a presidential commission to respond to a Soviet proposal that the United Nations control future development of atomic power. McCloy recommended that the U.S. turn over all information about the atomic bomb, including where to find uranium, to the U.N.. This idea of allowing the U.N. to become a supranational agency was also promoted by the Rockefellers and the Rockefeller-funded Council on Foreign Relations.[4]

Although Strong kept his U.N. job only two months, he met very influential people through Noah Monod who would later prove to be very useful. Strong returned to Winnipeg, failed to qualify for the Royal Canadian Air Force, and took a job as trainee analyst for James Richardson and Sons. By 1951, he had taken a job with Dome Petroleum, on whose board of directors was Henrie Brunie, a close friend of John J. McCloy. Dome became one of the largest oil companies in Canada but its shareholders resided on Wall Street, never very far away from Standard Oil and the Rockefellers.

In 1951 Strong married, and in 1952, abruptly sold his home, quit his job and took a world cruise. He wound up in Nairobi and took a job with CalTex, a company formed to exploit Saudi oil. His job involved travel to exotic parts of the world for two years. Strong visited his distant cousin, Robbins Strong, in Geneva, who was the Secretary of the Extension and Intermovement Aid Division of the international YMCA. He met Leonard Hentsch whose Swiss bank handled the money of the YMCA. Strong wanted to become an international ambassador for the YMCA, but settled for a position on the International Committee of the U.S.A. and Canada which raised funds for the YMCA.

This experience may have been the genesis of Strong's realization that NGOs (non-government organizations) provide an excellent way to use NGOs to couple the money from philanthropists and business with the objectives of government. In 1959, Strong created his own company, MF Strong Management. While serving as executive vice-president of Canada's Power Corporation, he also ran his own company, Alberta gas company, another company called Ajax, and elevated his role in the international YMCA and Canada's Liberal Party. He told Elaine Dewar, "We controlled many companies, controlled political budgets. We influenced a lot of appointments.... Politicians got to know you and you them."[5]

While Strong was expanding his influence in the business world and in Canadian politics, his friend, John J. McCloy became entrenched in the Kennedy administration as the head of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. McCloy continued to promote the idea of turning all defense over to the U.N. through his Blueprint for the Peace Race: Outline of Basic Provision of a Treaty on General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World (Publication 4, General Series 3, May 3, 1962).

By 1966, Strong had moved up again in government. He became Director General of Canada's External Aid. He also became President of Canada's YMCA. Strong's primary job was to deliver the foreign aid promised by Lester Pearson's government. Rather than hire a staff, Strong contracted with a Quebec-based engineering firm called SNC-Lavalin, to supply "technical facilities" with the proviso that the firm would hire only those individuals approved by Strong. External Aid was transformed from a one-man operation to the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) in 1968, which Strong headed. His mentor, Lester Pearson, created another institution called the International Development Research Center (IDRC). The IDRC was a quasi-government agency that had unique authority to receive charitable donations -- and issue tax deductible certificates -- and give money directly to individuals, governments, and private organizations. Strong became its head in 1970.

Through his creation and direction of CIDA, Strong controlled the implementation of aid programs on the ground -- including who was hired to do the work, and through the newly created IDRC, Strong controlled the issuance of tax deductible certificates and the distrubution of both private foundation money as well as government money. He was in the perfect position to make many friends around the world. Dewar describes the arrangement this way: "He had helped create a federally funded but semi-private intelligence/influence network that could have impacts both in Canada and abroad."[6]

Strong was chosen to direct Earth Summit I, in Stockholm in 1972, not for his demonstrated interest in the environment, but because the Swedish representative to the U.N. believed that only Strong, with his extensive worldwide network of friends, could get both the developed and developing nations to participate. Strong was very busy when asked to organize the conference. He was recruiting people for Trudeau's new government, and he was managing his private investments which included real estate holdings in a company consisting of two former Canadian officials and himself. He also took a position as trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation which supplied a grant for the running of the Stockholm Conference office. He was also given the writing services of Barbara Ward and of the French ecologist Rene Dubos, who worked for the Rockefeller Foundation.

The 1972 Stockholm Conference on Human Environment (Earth Summit I) had far more international significance than was ever reported. NGO's (non-government organizations) were funded by the Canadian government to attend the conference to give the appearance of participation by the general public. Of course, only those NGOs personally selected by Strong received funding. One such NGO was headed by William Turner, Strong's protege who then headed the Power Corporation which Strong once headed. Strong also personally softened the Chinese to Nixon's initiatives. Strong visited China to persuade them to participate in the Stockholm Conference; the Chinese had not appeared at any U.N. function since the 1949 revolution. The Chinese took Strong to visit the grave of his cousin, Anna Louise Strong. Nixon named Henry Kissinger, who came from the Council on Foreign Relations, as his Security Advisor, and his first assignment was to open secret discussions with China. The Rockefellers gave Kissinger a $50,000 bonus when he went to work for Nixon.

The 1972 Stockholm Conference institutionalized the environment as a legitimate concern of government, and it institutionalized NGOs as the instruments through which government could varnish its agenda with the appearance of public support. The primary outcome of the conference was a recommendation to create the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) which became a reality in 1973 with Maurice Strong as its first Executive Director. Not surprisingly, Nairobi, Strong's headquarters twenty-years earlier, was chosen for the permanent headquarters of the UNEP.

After establishing UNEP and setting its agenda, Strong returned to Canada where he resumed chairmanship of both Petro-Canada and the IDRC. He was introduced to Scott Spangler, who ran a Texas company called ProChemCo. Strong's partnership, Stronat, bought ProChemCo, and changed the name to Procor, which immediately entered into a complex $10 million deal to acquire AZL, also known as the Arizona-Colorado Land and Cattle Company. AZL's major stockholder was Adnan Khashoggi. In the end, AZL acquired Procor, but Strong landed in control of the conglomerate which owned feed lots, land, gas and oil interests, engineering firms, and 200,000 acres which included the Baca ranch in Colorado. Amid this multi-national deal making, Strong became a Vice President of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), a post he held until 1981.

In 1983, Strong was appointed to the U.N.'s World Commission on Environment and Development, headed by Gro Harlem Brundtland, Vice President of the World Socialist Party. Strong also had a colleague appointed as Executive Director, Warren "Chip" Lindner, an American lawyer, based in Geneva who had handled an intricate merger for Strong and who later went to work for the World Wildlife Fund in Gland, Switzerland. Strong, and the World Wildlife Fund, were largely responsible for the content of the Brundtland Commission's final report, Our Common Future. Before the report was released, Strong was looking to the future.

At a luncheon with Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson in 1986, Strong proposed another world conference on the environment to be held on the 20th anniversary of the Stockholm Conference. Both Sweden and Canada wanted to host the event, but Strong's visit to Collor de Mello, prospective Brazilian President, convinced Strong that the event should be held in Rio de Janeiro. Dewar says: "I was beginning to understand that the Rio Summit was part of a Rockefeller-envisioned Global Governance Agenda that dated back before World War II...."

As Strong organized the Rio Conference, he utilized his vast network to ensure the outcome. His office bought Bella Abzug's airplane tickets to attend a preparatory meeting in Geneva. He asked her to schedule a special conference in Miami for women through her recently formed NGO called Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO). Another NGO formed by Abzug in 1981, the Women's USA Fund, had been almost dormant until 1991, when the NGO received nearly $1 million. He arranged for the creation of the Business Council on Sustainable Development. Strong's long-time colleague, and former cabinet minister to Pierre Trudeau, J. Hugh Faulkner, was asked to leave his post as Executive Director of the International Chamber of Commerce to take charge of the new organization. The new organization was immediately accredited to the Rio Conference and designated to advise Strong who "needed people with their feet on the ground to do a reality check on these U.N. guys." The Canadian Participatory Committee for UNCED (CPCU) was entirely funded by the Canadian government and consisted of carefully selected individuals who represented various NGOs.

The practice started by Strong at the 1972 conference, of cloaking the agenda in the perception of public grassroots support from NGOs, culminated in Rio in 1992, with the largest collection of NGOs ever assembled in support of Agenda 21. Only those NGOs that were "accredited" by the U.N. Conference were permitted to attend. And only those which had demonstrated support for the agenda were funded. Dewar calls these NGOs -- PGOs -- Private Government Organizations.

Strong has influence with the major Foundations which provide the funding for NGOs and he has influence with the major international NGOs that coordinate the activities of the thousands of smaller NGOs around the world. Strong has served, or is currently on the Board of Directors of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN); the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF); and the World Resources Institute (WRI); the three international NGOs that have developed and advanced the global agenda since the early 1970s.

Strong also served on the U.N.-funded Commission on Global Governance, co-chaired by Ingvar Carlsson, and Shirdath Ramphal, former President of the IUCN. The Commission's final report, Our Global Neighborhood, sets forth detailed plans to achieve what is called "Global Governance." In his new position as Senior Advisor to Kofi Annan, Strong is again well positioned to implement the agenda he has been developing by calling its implementation "reform." Undoubtedly, Strong's NGO network, funded by Foundations and governments tied to Strong's worldwide interests, will be used to promote the agenda at the national level and at the U.N. level.

One of the first steps likely to be taken will be a recommendation to dissolve the U.N. Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). This cumbersome body is one of five original organs of the U.N. designated to oversee economic and social programs. Activities in these areas have expanded to the extent that programs such as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Development Program, and several others, now have their own budgets, staff, and independent headquarters facilities. ECOSOC has become a useless layer of bureaucracy. Strong will be praised for eliminating this waste.

In reality, the move will simply pave the way to strengthen the U.N.'s power and will actually result in more expense. The functions of ECOSOC will be divided between a newly created Economic Security Council, and a reorganized Trusteeship Council. In other words, we will praise the publicly touted "reform" of eliminating one U.N. agency, but probably never even be told of the new activities of two new councils. This projection is based upon published recommendations of the U.N.-funded Commission on Global Governance -- of which Maurice Strong was a member. The implementation of this "reform" will require an amendment to the U.N. Charter.

The G-77 nations, which represent 135 of the 185 member nations of the U.N. held a conference in Costa Rica in January [7] to outline amendments to Article 13 of the U.N. Charter which will be necessary to bring about global governance as described in Our Global Neighborhood. Costa Rica is the international headquarters of Strong's most recent NGO, Earth Council, and the U.N. University, where a portion of the conference was held. Among the other recommendations of the Commission on Global Governance is the elimination of the veto power of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, and a review of the entire concept of permanent member status in ten years. Another recommendation would make decisions of the International Court of Justice binding on all nations. Still another would create an International Criminal Court, and a U.N. standing army, and another would provide for independent finance in the form of various global taxation schemes.

Strong has worked diligently and effectively to bring his ideas to fruition. He is now in a position to implement them. His speeches and writings provide a clear picture of what to expect. In 1991, Strong wrote the introduction to a book published by the Trilateral Commission, called Beyond Interdependence: The Meshing of the World's Economy and the Earth's Ecology, by Jim MacNeil. (David Rockefeller wrote the foreword). Strong said this:

"This interlocking...is the new reality of the century, with profound implications for the shape of our institutions of governance, national and international. By the year 2012, these changes must be fully integrated into our economic and political life."

He told the opening session of the Rio Conference (Earth Summit II) in 1992, that industrialized countries have:

"developed and benefited from the unsustainable patterns of production and consumption which have produced our present dilemma. 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, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing -- are not sustainable. A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns."

In an essay by Strong entitled Stockholm to Rio: A Journey Down a Generation, he says:

"Strengthening the role the United Nations can play...will require serious examination of the need to extend into the international arena the rule of law and the principle of taxation to finance agreed actions which provide the basis for governance at the national level. But this will not come about easily. Resistance to such changes is deeply entrenched. They will come about not through the embrace of full blown world government, but as a careful and pragmatic response to compelling imperatives and the inadequacies of alternatives."

"The concept of national sovereignty has been an immutable, indeed sacred, principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation. What is needed is recognition of the reality that in so many fields, and this is particularly true of environmental issues, it is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation-states, however powerful. The global community must be assured of environmental security."[8]

Maurice Strong has demonstrated an uncanny ability to manipulate people, institutions, governments, and events to achieve the outcome he desires. Through his published writings and public presentations he has declared his desire to empower the U.N. as the global authority to manage a new era of global governance. He has positioned his NGO triumvirite, the IUCN, WWF, and the WRI, to varnish U.N. activity with the perception of "civil society" respectability. And now he has been appointed Senior Advisor to the U.N. Secretary General and assigned the responsibility of reforming the United Nations bureaucracy. The fox has been given the assignment, and all the tools necessary, to repair the henhouse to his liking.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Endnotes

1. Elaine Dewar, Cloak of Green (Toronto, Ontario: Lorimar & Co., 1995), p. 254.

2. The Gorbachev Foundation/USA, "Revisioning Global Priorities," Program Brochure, March 2, 1995. (On file)

3. Marci McDonald, Maclean's, October 10, 1994, p. 51.

4. Elaine Dewar, Op Cit., p. 263.

5. Elaine Dewar, Op Cit., p. 270.

6. Elaine Dewar, Op Cit., p. 274.

7. Robert Pease, "A Chance To Save the United Nations," Cape Cod Times, December 30, 1996.

8. Maurice Strong, "Stockholm to Rio: A Journey Down a Generation." (On file)

http://sovereignty.net/p/sd/strong.html

[styky]

I'd post it but it's 11 pages

Who is Maurice Strong?
National Review , Sept 1, 1997 by Ronald Bailey
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m ... _19722906/

[Angleland]

The man pulling the strings of the Iggy puppet.

[WereYouAware]

A little bit of information on the UN where Maurice has such credibility - propaganda only allowed - no debate, no discussion.

From Geneva last week, working with Roger Simon to cover the UN’s racist conference on racism, starring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and officially known as the Durban Review Conference, I filed a column for Forbes.com on the UN’s Durban II Debacle .

In that column I mentioned the two watchdog NGOs that have provided great insight into the tyrannical and bigoted underpinnings of this conference. Here are the video clips in which they tried last week to make their statements from the floor of the UN conference chamber — interrupted, in both cases, by an envoy of Iran:

Here’s the video of Hillel Neuer, of Geneva-based UN Watch. (And from the transcript below the video frame, here’s a sample of Iran’s attempt to shut him up. Note the objection on procedural grounds to Neuer telling the truth:

IRAN: Thank you Mr. Chairman. We should kindly advise the speaker to confine his observation to the theme of item number 9 and reframe from making references to names of countries—member state countries. Otherwise, according to your ruling, he should be stopped from continuation of his speech.�


And here’s Anne Bayefsky, of New York-based www.EyeontheUN.org


These clips are not only Durban II in a nutshell. This is how the entire UN functions. And, if you’re an American taxpayer, the biggest share of it is on your dime.

[Angleland]

Has Mo ever done anything positive? His one foray into electoral politics back in 1978 was a desaster not ever repeated. He evidently came to prefer being one of the string pullers rather than one of the puppets.

[bluecon]

Looks like Strong and George Soros and the anti freedom gang have won.

[WereYouAware]

Still looking to profit from junk science

George Soros, Maurice Strong and company redefine the Middleclass

By Judi McLeod Friday, September 26, 2008
The Democrat-loving mainstream media is missing the boat on Warren Buffet’s take of America’s economic meltdown as …”a sort of economic Pearl Harbor we’re going through.”

That being the case, then surely the first question should be: “Who is attacking the U.S.?”

The billionaire’s $5 billion investment in Goldman Sachs Group Inc. at the same time he’s touting the Treasury’s $700 billion bank rescue plan, should be the tipoff.

With so many banksters and fraudsters openly treating the U.S. treasury as their private piggybank, one ponders what‘s really going on.

Is wholesale market manipulation the new al Qaeda?


Unfortunately that’s a concept based far more on fact than paranoia.

The big casualty in this 21st century U.S. civil war is the Middle Class and there will be no Code Pink protests calling off the troops.

While middle class Americans have been busy putting their youngsters through school and college, pooh-bahs like Buffet, George Soros and his Canadian sidekick Kyoto architect Maurice Strong, who hangs out with the likes of Al Gore and “Now-I’m-a-Christian” Mikhail Gorbachev have been rearranging their lives for them.

For all of those middle classers understandably ignoring a propagandist press, here’s the first hint: The pooh-bahs seem mighty gleeful that the U.S. is headed toward certain economic meltdown. Make that a meltdown with or without a $700 billion bank bailout.

With world attention on man-made global warming, (also arranged by some of them), these ageing power brokers actually predicted the economic meltdown.

Buffet, Soros, Strong and their ilk aren’t, as the mainstream media would have it, new age old men able to see through the mist of crystal balls. They’re influential powerbrokers in the corridors of power, enabled by vast personal wealth, and hard at work as agents of change.

Barrack Hussein Obama is the one out in front talking about “Change we can believe in”, but the senator from Illinois is only the Pooh-bahs’ latest puppet.

We already know from the Internet that Soros has gone a long way to bankroll Obama’s campaign, but not so well known is that Soros worked in conjunction with Strong to saturate the American automobile market with the China-produced Chery.

“Like the bad guys in a spy movie, Soros and Strong teamed up on the Chery, a sort of poor man’s made-in-China vehicle, with which they hope to flood the U.S. market next year.” (Canada Free Press, June, 2006).

Is it mere coincidence that during the $700 billion bank bailout debate, the House of Representatives this week approved a $25-billion package of low-cost loans to help hard-pressed carmakers and their suppliers finance plant modernization at a time of restricted access to public capital markets?

Isn’t what’s happening in the U.S. right now what this deadly duo always advocated? Strong has been saying all along that China would someday soon replace the U.S. as world economic leader.

Described in countless media write-ups as a cross between the Wizard of Oz and Dr. No, the Canadian oil billionaire was the Secretary General of the 1992 UN Conference on the environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro where the unveiling of Agenda 21 took place and subtly began to change the world as the rest of us know it.

It was on this momentous occasion where we discovered what Chairman Mo really thought of the middleclass…”current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class, involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work air conditioning, and suburban housing (emphasis Canada Free Press) are not sustainable.”

“With little media monitoring, Strong and Gore are cashing in on the lucrative cottage industry known as man-made global warming.” (Canada Free Press, March 13, 2007). “Strong is on the board of directors of the Chicago Climate Exchange, described as “the world’s first and North America’s only legally binding greenhouse gas emission registry reduction system for emission sources and offset projects in North America and Brazil.

“Gore guys his carbon off-sets from himself—the Generation Investment Management LLP, “an independent, private, owner-managed partnership established in 2004 with offices in London and Washington, D.C.”, of which he is both chairman and founding partner.”

So how does UN Poster Boy Maurice Strong intend to harness America’s middleclass?

This is what Strong told a reporter back in 1990, when he was describing what he called a fantasy scenario for the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland--where 1,000 diplomats, CEOs and politicians gather annually “to address global issues”.

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?…

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 this about?

“This group of world leaders forms a secret society to bring about an economic collapse,” Strong told the reporter in painting his so-called fantasy scenario.

“It’s February. They’re all at Davos. These aren’t terrorists. They’re world leaders. They have positioned themselves in the world’s commodities and stock markets. They’ve engineered, using their access to stock markets 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 hostage. The markets can’t close…

Two weeks ago, financial analyst Jim Rogers said the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made America more communist than China! “This is welfare for the rich,” he said. “This is socialism for the rich. It’s bailing out the financiers, the banks, the Wall Streeters…

Voices calling alarm include Anne Coulter:”now at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, middle-class-taxpayers are going to be forced to bail out the Democrats’ two most important constituent groups: rich Wall Street bankers and welfare recipients.”

Reminding the middleclass that America’s spiral into economic chaos started with President Bill Clinton, Coulter wrote: “Political correctness had already ruined education, sports, science and entertainment. But it took a Democratic president with a Democratic congress for political correctness to wreck the financial industry.”

According to Congressman Ron Paul, the $700 billion bailout is only the beginning.

“Financial institutions are “designated as financial agents of the Government”. This is the New deal to end all New Deals.”

So where does Buffet fit into the puzzle?

The world’s second richest man, worth some $44 billion, gave 85% of his wealth in July of 2006 to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The lion’s share of the Gates foundation goes into United Nations sanctioned projects. Make that the fomenting for One World Government anti-American United Nations.

As Henry Ford once said: “It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. The one aim of these financiers is world control by the creation of inextinguishable debt.”

Welcome to One World Government. Not only has it slipped in through the back door, it is right here about to keep you awake at night.


http://www.canadafreepress.com

[WereYouAware]

Claudia Rosett does it again - exposing Maurice Strong and now the UN and diplomacy. When do we learn?

The ‘Disappointing’ Lingo Of Modern Diplomacy


By Claudia Rosett Thursday, August 13, 2009
- Forbes

We’ve entered an age of growing threats and great perils. Rogue states seek nuclear weapons, terrorists enlist modern technology in service of mass murder and tyrannical regimes spin networks and alliances that cross oceans and span continents, from Iran to Venezuela, from North Korea to Burma, from China to Sudan.

With what kind of language do the diplomats and political leaders of the democratic world address the fomenters of these threats? All too often, they default to lingo also applied these days to naughty 4-year-olds.

“Disappointing.”

That’s how British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon described Burma’s recent verdict on democratic dissident Aung San Suu Kyi. Having spent the past 19 years under the boot of the Burmese junta, Suu Kyi has become a symbol of an entire people stripped of any rights, brutalized, impoverished and--during mass protests in 1988 and 2007--slaughtered in the streets. Now she has been sentenced to another 18 months under house arrest.

Was this actually “disappointing”? Or, to be fair to Brown and Ban, and tack on the adjectives they threw in, was it not only disappointing, but “profoundly” and “deeply” so? What were these gentlemen expecting? In putting Suu Kyi through a sham trial, Burma’s despotic junta clearly set out to grind down internal opposition, as it always does. The results were hideous, malicious, vile and repugnant, but to call them disappointing is either disingenuous or utterly clueless.

Here’s another one of the policymakers’ favorite words for addressing rogue regimes: “Unacceptable.”

That’s from President Obama, in a series of statements he’s made about Iran’s regime variously murdering demonstrators in the streets, detaining Western embassy staff and acquiring nuclear weapons. What “unacceptable” means in practice is anyone’s guess. In polite company, it usually befits offenses such as jumping the lunch queue. Addressed to kids, it might serve as a strong hint to stop kicking your sister under the table. At the Obama White House, it has been invoked, along with such other favorites as “unsustainable,” to deplore everything from cost overruns to current health care arrangements to letting children get fat.

But “unacceptable” has also crept into political discourse as the chiding of choice for rogue states trying to rack up a nuclear arsenal. A classic of this kind is Obama’s comment in June that North Korea’s record of proliferation “makes it unacceptable for them to be accepted as a nuclear power.”

Not that this began with Obama. The George W. Bush administration, especially as the president turned to soft-power diplomacy during his second term, had officials roaming the world pronouncing themselves “concerned” and “disappointed” by various “unacceptable” activities on the part of regimes in places such as Russia, Iran and Libya. At one point, in 2006, both Russia and South Korea chimed in with former Bush envoy Chris Hill to describe North Korea’s nuclear ventures as “unacceptable.” Trying to nail down exactly what that meant, NPR at the time aired a segment trying to translate this “diplomat-ese” into English. The results were, one might say, disappointing. Three years later, all we know for sure is that North Korea has not accepted “unacceptable” as a constraint on its nuclear program.

There’s a comic side to this, as over-use and misuse combine to empty this already vacuous jargon of any real meaning. In March, protesting U.S. sanctions on Iran, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Ali Larijani, scolded Obama’s actions as “disappointing.” And in May, perhaps trying to speak the local language during a visit with Obama at the White House, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Iran’s open calls for the destruction of Israel as “unacceptable.” One might read that as wry understatement.

But there’s an alarming aspect to it as well. This lingo goes with a mindset that equates the behavior of rogue tyrants with that of unruly children. Rather than describe something as flat-out wrong, or evil, or so genuinely “unacceptable” that even at high cost it will be stopped in its tracks, the aim seems to be to nudge the evil-doers gently in a better direction. The paradigm appears to be one in which the transgressors are seen as still unformed, as malleable and as needing merely a firm (but not overly wounding) word to guide them toward more “acceptable” behavior.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton articulated this view quite precisely just last month, when she likened North Korea’s regime to a bunch of misbehaving juveniles: “The experience I’ve had with small children and teenagers and people who are demanding attention: Don’t give it to them.” Clinton explained, “Maybe it’s the mother in me.”

Memo to Clinton: These are not children. They have reached a form of maturity in which, however warped they may be, they function as capable and extremely dangerous adults.

Tyrants, as a rule, have made a long series of deliberate choices to become what they are. By the time they reach the cockpit of your average rogue state, they are heavily invested in systems which reward them for atrocious, underhanded and often murderous acts. In places such as Iran, Burma, North Korea, Syria, Cuba and Sudan, the incentives for those at the top are not to lie awake at night wondering if they should try to be less disappointing or more acceptable to the matrons now tending the world’s leading democracies. They are much more likely to be wondering what they can get away with next.

Had Franklin Delano Roosevelt used today’s political vocabulary, he would have denounced the bombing of Pearl Harbor not as “A date which will live in infamy,” but as something along the lines of “A deeply disappointing cause for concern.”

Ronald Reagan, instead of calling the Soviet Union the “evil empire,” would have had to fall back on something like “an unacceptable framework from which we would like to see more positive results.”

Should today’s leaders of the free world wish to come up with more vibrant language, where might they turn for inspiration? For a lesson from the master, turn to Shakespeare’s “Henry V,” Act I, scene ii. In answer to King Henry’s claim of certain dukedoms in France, the French Dauphin sends a mocking tribute of tennis balls. Does Henry reply that he is “disappointed” and this mockery is “unacceptable”?

No. His message for the Dauphin is:

“When we have matched our rackets to these balls,
We will in France (by God’s grace) play a set
Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard.”

(Let’s indulge; the world today could use a lot more Shakespeare.) He continues:

“And tell the pleasant Prince this mock of his
Hath turned his balls to gun-stones, and his soul
Should stand sore-charged for the wasteful vengeance
That shall fly with them; for many a thousand widows
Shall this his mock mock of their dear husbands;
Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down;
And some are yet ungotten and unborn
That shall have cause to curse the Dauphin’s scorn.”

Not that we should expect anything like this from the State Department, or from a White House that has translated the word “war” into the phrase “Overseas Contingency Operations.” But I suspect that even a pale imitation of King Henry’s retort would give pause--in places such as Tehran, Pyongyang, Damascus and Rangoon--in ways that no amount of “disappointment” ever will.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/12/obama- ... osett.html

[WereYouAware]

Where is Maurice Strong when we need him?

The U.N. Kicks Off Another Season Of Bedlam
Claudia Rosett, 08.20.09, 12:01 AM ET


Next month brings the annual opening of the U.N. General Assembly in New York. Even more than usual, it is shaping up as such a carnival of thugs that not only does Libya's Muammar Gaddafi look likely to make an unprecedented appearance, but jokes are circulating that he wants to bring his own tent.

Not that anything going on at the U.N. by now is likely to cause shock. The core scandal at the United Nations these days is that there have been so many scandals, with so few penalties paid, that sleaze, moral bankruptcy and high times for tyrants have again become accepted features of the landscape. It seems there are only so many times the public can hear about bribes, kickbacks, rapes committed by peacekeepers and sanctions-busters swanning around in the Delegates Dining Room before the tales all run together, and with glazed eyes, the audience nods off.

Back in 2003, it caused horror when the U.N. picked Libya to chair the Human Rights Commission. This September, it's business as usual that one of Gaddafi's longtime servants and former foreign ministers, Ali Abdessalam Treki, will take over the 2009-2010 presidency of the entire U.N. General Assembly.

Treki will take charge of an opening debate in which, as each of the U.N.'s 192 member states gets its 15 minutes to speak onstage, the provisional lineup for the first day, September 23, includes President Barack Obama, followed immediately by Libya's Gaddafi, and later in the day, Iran's "reelected" president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Looking at a wide array of U.N. positions, meanwhile, one might almost suppose that being under sanctions by the U.N. is one of the prized criteria for member states to win important slots at the institution. The truth may be that sanctioned member states have more incentive to lobby behind the scenes for influence, and they apparently find highly effective ways to do so. Thus does it happen that the biggest single voting bloc in the General Assembly, the 130 member G-77, is presided over this year by Sudan. Iran sits on a slew of governing boards supervising various agencies, and chairs the governing board of both the U.N.'s New York-based flagship U.N. Development Program, and the U.N.'s Copenhagen-based Office for Project Services, or UNOPS.

To give just a sample of what else is simmering away largely unnoticed at Turtle Bay, both these U.N. agencies--the UNDP and UNOPS--have turned up recently in connection with questions about nepotism. There's no sign that the nepotism allegations have anything directly to do with Iran, but neither is it reassuring that Iran--ranked by the Berlin-based organization Transparency International as one of the most corrupt countries on the planet--currently chairs the governing boards which are supposed to provide both the UNDP and UNOPS with guidance and oversight.

The UNOPS nepotism questions center on Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon's son-in-law, Siddarth Chatterjee, who along with Ban's daughter, Ban Hyun Hee, was working for UNICEF out of Nairobi when Ban became the U.N.'s top administrator in January, 2007. Since then, Ban's son-in-law has been rapidly promoted, via a stint in Iraq, to a high-level post with UNOPS in Denmark. This may be entirely reasonable, but there is no way to know. U.N. correspondent Matthew Russell Lee, of Inner City Press, has been asking questions about the specifics of Chatterjee's rise and terms of employment. He's been getting no clear answers.

Slightly more excitement has attended upon allegations of nepotism on the part of Ban's special representative to the Congo, Alan Doss, whose daughter recently landed a job at the UNDP. But the main focus has been not on any questions of nepotism itself, but on the accompanying frisson of the arrest in Manhattan of the previous occupant of the position, Nicola Baroncini--who was forcibly removed from the premises, and during the scuffle allegedly bit a U.N. security guard (all parties claim they are innocent).

Other disturbing insights into the U.N. continue to riffle across the back pages, or turn up on the Internet--but get no traction. Two years ago, when stories broke about the UNDP in North Korea funneling cash to the regime of Kim Jong Il, the resulting Cash-for-Kim scandal made headlines and drew enough attention to warrant a U.S. Senate subcommittee inquiry.

But just last month, George Russell of Fox News (with whom, in years past, I have co-authored articles that helped expose U.N. scandals which led to convictions in U.S. federal court) wrote a well-documented piece for the Fox Web site, nothing that the U.N.'s World Food Program has been paying outrageous fees for the privilege of shipping free food to North Korea. Russell pointed to signs that a big portion of these fees might be flowing to the government of North Korea and asked if that was the case. Good question; but there's no sign yet that anyone in officialdom cares.

In years past, the job of policing the U.N. has fallen largely to the U.S. Congress, which, courtesy of taxpayers, provides more funds to the U.N. system than any other member state--some 22% of total annual country dues, plus additional contributions, which bring the U.S. yearly grand total to more than $5 billion. But Congress these days shares the Obama ethos, in which the solution to problems at the U.N. is not to try to clean it up, but to hand it more authority and shovel in more money.

Obama's cabinet-level ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, gave a long speech Aug. 12 at New York University, in which she stressed Obama's vision that "the U.N. is imperfect; but it is also indispensable."

Just how imperfect, however, is a question that no longer seems to attract any serious official scrutiny. A few years ago, the Southern District of New York had a team of prosecutors who pulled in a 100% success rate of convictions and guilty pleas in a series of U.N.-related bribery, money-laundering and fraud cases. That team has moved on. Congress had staffers and even lawmakers who had taken the trouble to learn enough about the U.N. to be appalled, and call for remedies. With a few exceptions, such as Sen. Tom Coburn and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, they are gone. The anti-corruption task force set up at the U.N. itself to delve into procurement corruption has been dissolved.

The U.N. Ethics Office, set up with much fanfare almost three years ago to enforce honesty and protect whistle blowers, has proved impotent. It is less a help to whistleblowers than a danger to those trusting enough to go there. The promised review of the U.N. clutter of more than 9,000 mandates, meant to help prune the bureaucratic jungle, never got around to eliminating anything. The personal financial disclosure by high U.N. officials, promised by the Secretariat, has turned out to be a farce in which officials have the option of not going public at all. Those who choose to disclose anything now file a one-page document, once a year, on which they either list a few generic and unrevealing items, such as assets consisting of "bank savings accounts." Or they can tick a box disclosing to the public that they choose to disclose nothing at all.

Were the U.N. in the habit of holding public confirmation hearings, or open town- hall-style meetings, there might be at least some mechanism to help check abuse. But information is so tightly held these days that even the usual noon press briefing by Ban's office has been cut back this month from five days per week to three.

Not that the noon briefings cover the entire U.N. system. Fanning out around the Secretariat is a sprawling empire of U.N. funds, agencies, departments and programs, some of which answer only to their own member-state assemblies, some to the General Assembly, and some, in effect, to no one at all. This global U.N. system is so tangled and opaque that it is a nearly impossible project to try to get a clear handle on its total budget.

Three years ago, Kofi Annan put it at $20 billion. Currently, the U.N. web site says it is $15 billion. Even taking into account some of the exceptions the U.N. attaches to this figure, that still seems a wild under-estimate--not least because the U.N. keeps growing, not shrinking. The annual core budget for the Secretariat alone is about $2 billion, parts of which are then entwined with a peacekeeping budget now close to $8 billion, plus there was $5 billion in 2007 for the UNDP alone. That already adds up to $15 billion even before factoring in such massive agencies as UNICEF, or the U.N.'s rapidly expanding web of eco-entities and "public-private partnerships."

A U.N. spokesman for the secretary-general, reached by phone, confirmed that there is no answer readily available to the question of the real, system-wide budget: "It's not something that we keep track of in any systematic way."

That's quite a contrast to the care with which U.N. officials keep track of money they want to collect. Recall Ban's description in March of the U.S. as a "deadbeat"--despite America's sugar-daddy role as biggest single donor.

Of course, for many things in life, there are cycles. So it may be with the U.N., now in a phase in which less oversight, more money, and seats at the high table for the likes of Libya, Sudan and Iran are all accepted as mere imperfections attached to an institution which Ambassador Rice describes as "vital to our efforts to craft a better, safer world." My advice, as the Obama administration's rubber meets the road at Turtle Bay, is brace for impact.

Claudia Rosett, a journalist-in-residence with the FoU.N.dation for Defense of Democracies, writes a weekly column on foreign affairs for Forbes.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/19/united ... osett.html

[WereYouAware]

Climate change forecasts no longer possible - get word to Maurice. edit undo for Kyoto!

History can no longer guide farmers, investors-U.N.
Wed Aug 26, 2009 6:59am EDT
* Refined climate change data required for agriculture

* Energy investors need projections on rainfall, sea levels

* U.N. conference aims to improve environmental monitoring



By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Climate change has made history an inaccurate guide for farmers as well as energy investors who must rely on probabilities and scenarios to make decisions, the head of a United Nations agency said on Wednesday.

Michel Jarraud, director-general of the World Meteorological Organisation, said that water and temperature projections have become more valuable than the historical weather data that long governed strategy in agriculture, hydro-electric power, solar technology and other fields.

"The past is no longer a good indicator of the future," the WMO chief told a press briefing, describing climate modelling and prediction as key to fisheries, forestry, transport and tourism, as well as efforts to fight diseases such as malaria.

People looking to build energy infrastructure are especially hungry for specific environmental information that can affect the long-term profitability of their projects, he argued.

"If in 100 years there is not going to be water going into the dam, it's not a brilliant investment," Jarraud said.

In the farming sector, the Frenchman suggested that guidance passed down through generations about how to prepare and manage crops was becoming less relevant because of changing patterns of heat, humidity and water access around the world.



TRADITIONAL WISDOM

"This traditional knowledge is no longer adapted. It's exactly because your grandfather did this that you shouldn't do it, because the context has changed," he said.

"This is something completely new -- to make decisions not on facts or statistics about the past, but on the probabilities for the future," he said.

About 1,500 policy-makers, researchers and corporate leaders will meet next week in Geneva to seek to improve the way climate information is collected and shared, among governments and also with the private sector.

That Aug. 31 to Sept. 4 meeting, which will take the pulse of countries who will seek in December to clinch a new global climate pact, is due to include top U.N. officials including Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and 80 ministers and 20 heads of state or government, mainly from the developing world. (For Reuters stories on the politics, economics and markets of climate change, see: [ID:nCLIMATE])



http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCr ... 30?sp=true

[WereYouAware]

Wow - actual court charges - will Maurice be next?


British traders charged over Iraqi oil-for-food affair
(AFP) – 2 days ago

LONDON — Two British oil traders have been charged with breaching UN sanctions in the "oil for food" programme imposed against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, reports said on Thursday.

Aftab al-Hassan was due to appear in a London court Thursday over allegations he funnelled 900,000 pounds in payments into offshore bank accounts run by the Iraqi government, the Financial Times said.

He has been charged with 13 counts of breaking sanctions imposed by the United Nations between January 2001 and April 2002, the FT said.

"Our client's defence is that any payment he made was perfectly legal. There was nothing underhand or illegal about any of the 13 payments," his lawyer told the newspaper.

A second trader appeared in court on August 19 on similar charges, the Daily Telegraph newspaper said.

The charges are part of a wide investigation by the Serious Fraud Office over allegations British companies paid bribes to the former Iraqi dictator's regime to win lucrative contracts.

The oil-for-food programme ran from 1996 until 2003, when US-led forces invaded Iraq.

It allowed Baghdad to sell oil in exchange for humanitarian goods which the country lacked because of tight UN sanctions imposed after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Saddam's government allegedly embezzled millions of dollars from the scheme, sparking a scandal that caused major embarrassment to the United Nations.

A damning 2005 UN report named 2,000-odd companies from 40 countries that allegedly paid "commission" fees to the Iraqi government in the 1990s.

[WereYouAware]

Will Maurice attend this latest gong show?

Prepared With the Help of Russia, China and, Of Course, Iran…
Yes, there are a number of disturbing things which could fit under that heading, including such unsavory items as Iran’s nuclear bomb program. And for reasons not fully explained in the public relations materials, you can also find this trio on the 26-member organizing committee of the latest in the endless series of United Nations climate conferences, this one meeting right now in Geneva, Aug. 31-Sept. 4.

Billing itself as “Not just another climate conference,” this gathering is crammed with the usual UN has-beens, wannabes and hangers-on, including former Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and many of the same UN climate crowd whose deep interests in rationing your use of energy have, of course, required that they jet around the world — much of that at public expense — to climate conferences in recent years in venues from Rio to Bali. Some 1,000 “decision-makers and scientists“ from more than 150 countries have signed up to attend. It’s all part of the UN effort to build momentum for the “seal the deal” Copenhagen climate pow-wow scheduled for December.

For the current conference, the ambitions include… well, see what sense you can make of this UN-speak, which translated into English means, roughly, that the UN wants license to intrude in virtually every aspect of human life, oversee monumental wealth transfers around the globe, and effectively bill you for the experience.

Attuned, perhaps, to criticisms that there is a certain amount of hypocrisy involved in UN conferences that entail hundreds of people jetting in for a week of dining, wining and filling the plush hotels, the conference organizers have included in their materials some suggestions for making their conclave “more climate friendly.” This includes the reminder, “Don’t forget to turn the light off when you leave the room.” Actually, that could stand as a motto for the entire endeavor. All over the world, if this UN campaign gets any more traction, a lot of lights are going to go out. It’s happened before, and there’s a name for it: The Dark Ages. For that, perhaps it makes some sense to have the governments of Russia, China and Iran on the organizing committee.

http://pajamasmedia.com/claudiarosett/

[WereYouAware]

How UN 'audits' work. This explains how Maurice got missed in the Oil for Food Scandal - hide the money - no accountability.

Before You Send the Kids Out Trick-or-Treating for UNICEF
Have a look at the web site of their Iran office, which has been soliciting donations for use in terror-sponsoring Iran and for relief for terrorist-controlled Gaza through an Iranian state-owned bank, Bank Melli. (Caveat: If you live in America, Australia or a country in the European Union, it is illegal to donate to the account listed on the UNICEF site).

Bank Melli is under sanctions by the U.S., the European Union and Australia for what might basically be called proliferation banking. The U.S. Treasury describes Bank Melli as having “facilitated numerous purchases of sensitive materials for Iran’s nuclear and missile programs on behalf of UN-designated entities.” Treasury adds that Bank Melli has also “provided a range of financial services to known proliferators, including letters of credit and the maintenance of accounts.”

The UN itself, in its series of sanctions resolutions on Iran, called on all member states in March, 2008 to “exercise vigilance” over any ties between financial institutions on their turf and Bank Melli. More on this in my Forbes.com column this week on “UNICEF’s Proliferation-Prone Banker.”

Does UNICEF’s American executive director, Ann Veneman — former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture – see any problem with this arrangement? When I asked, earlier this week, she was unavailable for comment.

This comes alongside another disturbing UN solicitation for relief funds for terrorist-controlled Gaza, which turned up earlier this year under a photo of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. Ban was advertising an emergency appeal by UNRWA (the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East). That appeal included a special account for donations from Syria – via a Syrian Bank that’s been under U.S. sanctions since 2004, the Commercial Bank of Syria (which Treasury alleges has provided banking services to terrorists, and during the days of the UN Oil-for-Food program served as a conduit for Saddam Hussein to launder a torrent of illicit loot).

Is there a pattern here? We have at least two UN agencies – UNICEF and UNRWA – picking some very disturbing bankers, especially in the fraught matter of transferring funds from terrorist-sponsoring Iran and Syria into Gaza, which is controlled by the terrorist group, Hamas. These are just two instances I happened to come across while looking at UN web sites which actually provided a detail or two of their banking arrangements, because they were soliciting money through the accounts. As a rule, UN banking setups are not remotely transparent, and we are left to trust UN officials who assure us they are … trustworthy. What else is going on with the opaque and diplomatically immune banking arrangements of the vast web of UN agencies operating in the Middle East?

The UN record of accountability and due diligence is abysmal (Oil-for-Food, we were once assured — as UN officials tried to deflect initial calls for an investigation – was the most audited UN program ever). The UN agencies answer to governing bodies stacked with the likes of Iran, Cuba, Sudan, China, Russia and Libya. In the parade of dictators due to traipse through the General Assembly opening in New York later this month — including Libya’s Muammar Qadaffi and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — we’re about to get a further display of the character of the UN. Who, these days, is keeping an eye on the UN’s far-flung bank accounts?

http://pajamasmedia.com/claudiarosett/

[WereYouAware]

Maurice Strong is still at it - recent quoatation below is frightening - governments need to do radical things? Very scary that this guy has any voice in any forum.

"Copenhagen is very very important. I have to say that so far we have not seen real evidence that the governments are prepared to do radical things that they must to in Copenhagen. If we just patch up the existing system, it will not work. It will come back and bite us even more strongly"

No patches - just change the whole thing - give control to Maurice and his ilk.