Maurice Strong

[styky]

THE MANAGEMENT PLAN
PART 2

By Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D.
August 25, 2008
NewsWithViews.com

[Note: Obama campaign hypocrisy continued on FOX News Sunday, August 17. Obama National Campaign co-chair Senator Claire McCaskill said regarding Senator McCain’s strong response to the Russian invasion of Georgia that he shouldn’t be intervening because “we only have one Commander-in-Chief and one Secretary of State at a time.” The hypocrisy of this statement is obvious in that Senator Obama has constantly ignored the “one Commander-in-Chief” principle in his statements about Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and just about every other foreign policy issue.]

At the same time as Political and Economic Planning (PEP) and the National Planning Association (NPA) were in their early years in the 1930s, Charles Hitch became a Rhodes Scholar (1932-1933) in England and then returned to the U.S. Involved in systems management, Hitch in the early 1960s as comptroller at the U.S. Department of Defense developed the Planning-Programming-Budgeting System (PPBS).

At the same time that Hitch was in England, Peter Drucker moved from Frankfurt (where he received a doctorate in international law) to England and began working for an insurance company. Drucker then moved to the U.S. and later became a professor of management at New York University in 1950. The next year (1951), Armand Feigenbaum introduced the term Total Quality Management (TQM) in his book QUALITY CONTROL. W. Edward Deming would become perhaps the chief promoter of TQM, and Drucker would become known as the “Father of Modern Management,” describing how humans are to be managed across all sectors of society. <a href=http://www.newswithviews.com/Cuddy/dennis136.htm>continued</a>

[smallc]

September 4, 2008
No. 192

The Honourable David Emerson, Minister of Foreign Affairs, today announced the following diplomatic appointments:

Jonathan Fried becomes Ambassador to Japan.

[WereYouAware]

Can someone ask Maurice to save us by managing the sun? Kyoto was a scam - how will Strong tell us to act to control the sun and make it behave more appropriatlely? Maybe it is Bush's fault after all!


A Spotless Sun
By Alan Caruba Sunday, September 14, 2008


There’s a wonderful irony in the fact that, back in the 1970s, the Greens were issuing warnings and even writing books about the coming Ice Age. They would abandon this issue, based in well-known and accepted solar science, in favor of a vast international hoax alleging man-made global warming.

As the global warming hoax begins to lose its power to influence public opinion and policy, the Greens are not likely to be heeded for a long time to come because they were right about an Ice Age and lying through their teeth about global warming.

Scientists and laymen who follow the Ice Age cycles have been warning that, if not a full-fledged Ice Age, at the very least a Little Ice Age comparable to one that lasted from 1300 to around 1850 is on its way

Amidst all the media coverage of Hurricane Gustav and the Republican Convention, a report in DailyTech.com was not likely to get much attention, but it forecast a very cold world in the years to come. The Earth has already started to cool and scientists date the change from 1998.

Headlined, “Drop in solar activity has potential effect for climate on Earth”, the news is that, for the first time in 100 years, “an entire month has passed without a single visible sunspot being noted.” The author, Michael Asher, noted that “The event is significant as many climatologists now believe solar magnetic activity—which determines the number of sunspots—is an influencing factor for climate on Earth.”

My friend, Robert W. Felix, wrote an excellent book on this titled “Not by Fire, but by Ice” ($15.00, Sugarhouse Publishing, softcover, second edition) which can be purchased from his website at IceAgeNow.com.

“We’re beginning to realize that Earth is a violent and dangerous place to live,” wrote Felix. “We’re beginning to realize that mass extinctions have been the rule, rather than the exception, for the 3.5 billion years that life has existed on Earth.”

Felix has a new book soon to be published that addresses magnetic reversals, another cyclical factor affecting life on Earth. “During the last 4.5 million years, at least six out of nine radiolarian extinctions occurred at magnetic reversals.” They appear to be a factor in the sudden emergence of new species so Darwin’s theory is likely to be reexamined.

As the DailyTech report notes, “In the past 1000 years, three previous such events, the Dalton, Maunder, and Sporer Minimums,” of reduced sunspot activity, “have all led to rapid cooling,” adding that, “For a society dependent on agriculture, cold is more damaging than heat. The growing season shortens, yields drop, and the occurrence of crop-destroying frosts increases.”

An article by William Livingston and Matthew Penn of the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, “Sunspots May Vanish by 2015”, predicts that sunspots will disappear completely. “Such an event would not be unprecedented, since during a famous episode from 1645-1715, known as the Maunder Minimum…” That solar cycle “was shown to correspond with the reduced average global temperatures on the Earth.” In other words, it’s going to get COLD.

The Little Ice Age had an effect on history as you might imagine. The French Revolution is attributed to it insofar as the cost of bread rose as wheat crops failed. Riots followed. Similarly, Napoleon’s invasion of Russia met with defeat thanks to a winter that killed thousands of his troops. In America, it was reflected in the travails of Valley Forge.

Over at IceAgeNow.com, Felix posts the latest news from around the world that tells of anomalous events ranging from freak early snow storms to expanding glaciers. Soon enough, those living in the northern hemisphere will become more aware as winters lengthen and become more severe. After that, the scenarios grow quite serious.

Even the venerable Old Farmers Almanac is making news these days forecasting a far cooler winter and suggesting that the Earth is already in a cooling cycle.

No doubt some diehard Greens like Al Gore will continue to spout nonsense that the cold weather is due to global warming, but it has to do with the Sun that’s gone quiet. It’s not myth. It’s reality.

[free_life2]

Who is Maurice Strong?

Long but very informative

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m ... i_19722906

[styky]

<a href=http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/5216>George Soros, Maurice Strong and company redefine the Middleclass</a>
Canada Free Press, Canada - 26 Sep 2008
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 ...

[Peter O'Donnell]

Look, nobody's saying they want to see Dion forming a government, he can hardly even form a sentence.

[Peter O'Donnell]

Whoops, that was supposed to be in the thread about not voting for Harper ... phone rang, I forgot I changed the screen to this thread ... as for Maurice Strong, he is gonna be an unhappy camper if Dion loses the election. But I'm sure they'll line up a new operative in no time.

[WereYouAware]

The U.N.'s Man of Mystery
Is the godfather of the Kyoto treaty a public servant or a profiteer?By CLAUDIA ROSETT
Article
more in Opinion »Email Printer Friendly Share:
Yahoo Buzz MySpace Digg Text Size
Beijing
"I don't trust you, and I also question your integrity." Thus did Maurice Strong offer me a seat on his living room sofa.
Often described as an "international man of mystery," Mr. Strong during his long, globe-trotting career has been one of the most influential architects of the opaque cross-border bureaucracy that is today's United Nations. He is probably best known as godfather of the U.N.'s 1997 Kyoto treaty, and as a former U.N. top adviser who in that same year received a check for almost $1 million, bankrolled by the U.N.-sanctioned regime of Saddam Hussein. (Mr. Strong told me that at the time he did not know the money came from Baghdad.)

Ismael RoldanIn his most recent stint at the U.N., from 1997-2005, Mr. Strong served as an Under-Secretary-General and special adviser to former Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He was point man on matters ranging from U.N. reform to environmentalism to North Korea. By some accounts, including his own, he has been a benevolent toiler in the multilateral trenches, a friend of Mikhail Gorbachev and Al Gore, networking to save the planet.
By other accounts, he's a self-dealing and self-declared socialist who has parlayed his talents into a push for collectivist global government. These days he is living in China, where he says his ties go back "40 years."
The apple-faced Mr. Strong was born in 1929 in rural Canada. He grew up with a hankering to see the world. His travels took him to New York, where he spent a few months working in 1947 as a junior security officer at the U.N. He went on to tour Africa, and returned home to climb the corporate and public-sector ladders in Canada. In 1970 he returned to the U.N. for the first in a series of high-level incarnations that included organizing the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the environment, founding and becoming the first head of the U.N. Environment Program, and chairing the 1992 Rio summit on the environment.
Over the decades, Mr. Strong has had close ties to at least five former U.N. leaders, from U Thant to Mr. Annan, and he implies that even now, in Beijing, he is informally in touch on occasion with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: "I do get the odd message now and then." (Asked to confirm this, Mr. Ban's office did not respond). Along with his labors at the U.N., Mr. Strong has been engaged for years with a kaleidoscope of nongovernmental organizations and private business ventures. A collection of his papers donated to the Harvard Library, spanning the years 1948-2000 runs to 685 boxes. A theme throughout, he says, is that "I've spent my life trying to help the U.N."
Mr. Strong no longer has any official ties to the U.N., however. In 2005, at the height of the investigations into the U.N.'s corrupt Oil-for-Food relief program for Iraq, news emerged of the six-figure check from Iraq. Evidence procured by federal investigators and the U.N.-authorized inquiry of Paul Volcker showed that Mr. Strong in 1997, while working for Mr. Annan, had endorsed a check for $988,885, made out to "Mr. M. Strong," issued by a Jordanian bank. This check was hand-delivered to Mr. Strong by a South Korean businessman, Tongsun Park, who in 2006 was convicted in New York federal court of conspiring to bribe U.N. officials to rig Oil-for-Food in favor of Saddam.
Mr. Strong was never accused of any wrongdoing. Asked by investigators about the check, he initially denied he'd ever handled it. When they showed it to him with his own signature on the back, he acknowledged that he must have endorsed it, but said the money was meant to cover an investment Mr. Park wished to make in a Strong family company, Cordex, run by one of his sons. (Cordex soon afterward went bankrupt.) Mr. Volcker, in his final report, said that the U.N. might want to "address the need for a more rigorous disclosure process for conflicts of interest."
During the inquiry, Mr. Strong stepped aside from his U.N. post, saying he would sideline himself until the cloud was removed. But instead of returning to his native Canada, he decamped from New York to Beijing, where he appears to have settled in. He has given few interviews from China, and for the past three years has refused my periodic requests to answer questions by phone or email.
Mr. Strong may have left the U.N. behind, but his current office is a penthouse suite in a building that houses at least three U.N. agencies (UNIDO, UNFPA and UNHCR), plus such diplomatic tenants as the embassies of Mozambique, Cyprus, and the Bahamas, as well as the Venezuelan defense attaché. He received me at his nearby apartment wearing a striped blue polo shirt, dark slacks and in his stocking feet. There were photos of Mr. Strong posing amid a multitude of world leaders at the Rio summit, and a close-up of Mr. Strong gazing into the camera beside a smiling Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The latter photo was taken in her office a few years ago, when "I went to brief her on a couple of things."
A soft-spoken man with a Canadian accent, Mr. Strong starts by giving me a piece of his mind. Not only does he not trust me, but he's still incensed by an article I co-authored in February, 2007, with George Russell of Fox News. In it, we suggested that if Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wanted to clean up the U.N.'s "tangled nest of personal relationships, public-private partnerships, murky trust funds, unaudited funding conduits, and inter-woven enterprises," he might start by investigating the trail of Maurice Strong. Flourishing a printout of the piece, Mr. Strong protests that "everything I did, I checked it out carefully with the U.S." He also charges that we made "no mention of what I did in putting the environmental agenda on the map." (Actually, we gave him full credit for that, but questioned the extent to which -- as an unelected official -- he had manipulated the U.N. system to support his own agenda).
"You called for an investigation," says Mr. Strong, "Actually, I wouldn't mind." He hands me a draft report by a former Swedish diplomat, saying it has not yet been released, but "you can have it." The document, subtitled "A Study in Leadership," describes in flattering terms Mr. Strong's maneuvers over many years to shape a U.N. agenda in which public conferences became largely a façade for decisions already brokered behind the scenes by Mr. Strong.
"I've made mistakes here and there, yes," says Mr. Strong, but they've been "honest mistakes."
Talk skips around. He says that when he left New York in 2005, "I didn't just run away to China, I already had an apartment here." He adds that his departure from the U.N. was motivated not by the Oil-for-Food investigations, but by his sense at the time, as Mr. Annan's special adviser on North Korea, that the U.N. had reached an impasse. "It just happened to coincide with the publicity surrounding my so-called nefarious activities." He insists: "I had no involvement at all in Oil-for-Food . . . I just stayed out of it."
U.N. records show that he chaired Mr. Annan's 1997 U.N. reform panel, which among other items reorganized the initially ad hoc and scattered Oil-for-Food administrative apparatus into one big Office of the Iraq Program. That allowed Mr. Annan to appoint one man to directly manage the operation, the now-fugitive Benon Sevan, indicted in New York last year on charges of taking Oil-for-Food bribes. (Mr. Sevan has said he's innocent). Doesn't that early reshaping of the program qualify as involvement with Oil-for-Food?
"I chaired the process," says Mr. Strong, but "I got inputs from a whole series of people." On the creation of the office run by Mr. Sevan, "I didn't realize it had been done until someone pointed it out."
I have been waiting a long time to ask a further question, prompted by evidence that emerged in the Tongsun Park trial, showing that three years after delivering that Baghdad-funded check to Mr. Strong, Park was transferring money directly into Mr. Strong's personal bank account to pay the rent for a private office maintained by Mr. Strong in midtown Manhattan. Why was Mr. Park paying Mr. Strong's office rent? "He was paying his own rent," replies Mr. Strong, adding that the arrangement was a "sublet." "I had the U.N. office, so I didn't really need all that space . . . he wanted an address in New York."
But there were signs that the same premises were also used at some point as a New York office by the U.N.-chartered University for Peace (a small school headquartered in Costa Rica, which with Mr. Strong chairing its board from 1999-2006 developed an outsized interest in proposing U.N.-funded development projects for North Korea, and used U.N. facilities to arrange trips for North Korean officials to Europe). What was that about? "It was only interim," says Mr. Strong. "It was a motley office."
He grows irritable that I am "resurrecting all this." He talks much more cheerfully about his current projects. He says he is still Canadian, keeps a home in Canada, and pays taxes there. But most of his work right now is in China. His erratic health leaves him less interested in global travel. He says he suffers from diabetes, and has had five heart bypasses: "I have a cow's valve in my heart."
That hasn't slowed him down much inside China, where he holds appointments at three universities and serves as an adviser to the government. "My advice gets to the highest levels." he says. He has also been involved in setting up the Tianjin Climate Exchange for trading carbon credits: "the first climate exchange in China." It's a joint venture with several entities, including the Chicago Climate Exchange, where he holds a seat on the board.
At one point in our conversation, his cell phone rings, and while leaning back to chat with the caller about an environmental conclave he has just attended in the port city of Tianjin, he drops the name of China's prime minister: "I think the meeting with Wen Jiabao made a good impression."
Does Mr. Strong see any conflict in the fact that his signature U.N. product, the Kyoto treaty, grants big, profitable concessions to developing nations such as China -- and now here he is, involved in China's carbon trading and working as an adviser to the Chinese government? He replies that China when it signed on to Kyoto was not "the cause of the problem." He also says that his work for the Chinese government and universities is "all pro bono."
Asked whether he's involved in any private ventures these days, he says he was involved with the Chinese Chery Automobile Company, but as an adviser, not an investor, and he is now out of that. He says he's chairman of a company that's helping China earn emissions credits, the China Carbon Corporation. He's on the board of a U.S.-based engineering and construction firm CH2M Hill.
And what about the company listed on the business card his office assistant gave me: Cosmos International? He says it's a private firm, operating out of Beijing and Ottawa: "Just my little vehicle, it's just me and my son." He explains that he has two sons. Fred, who "does his own thing," and Ken, his youngest son, who is his business partner.
Mr. Strong has long been rumored to be a billionaire. I seize the chance to ask him how much he is really worth. He ducks: "Rumors of my wealth are greatly exaggerated. I have never been interested in money." OK, but how about a ballpark figure -- millions? Tens of millions? "Maybe a few millions, yes. I don't complain."
Is he planning to visit his old stomping grounds in New York City anytime soon? He hasn't been back in a couple of years, he says, "I'm just too busy." Speaking of which, another visitor has arrived at his apartment, and they have a lunch appointment. As we head down to the lobby, I ask if the building is new. Not really, he says, but he likes the place -- "It has its own internal air cleaning system." Donning his trademark trilby -- "white for summer, black for winter" -- he heads off into the haze of Beijing.
Ms. Rosett heads the Investigative Reporting Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and writes a weekly column on foreign affairs for Forbes.com.
Please add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122368007369524679.html

[WereYouAware]

Why does Maurice Strong live in such a country as China that does such things? Why does he not speak out? Why does he not get his friends at the UN to do something? Methinks he supports it all!!



Bordering On Tyranny
By Claudia Rosett Thursday, October 9, 2008


TUMEN, CHINA -Set on the northern bank of the muddy Tumen River, this Chinese border town has one of the saddest backdrops in the world. Just across the river lies North Korea. It is so close that from a room in a local hotel, you can sit by a window and watch North Koreans trudging around the scrawny town of Namyang below the rugged hills on the far side of the river.

Officially, this is a friendly border. Two bridges span the river here, one rail and one road. But there is little traffic across them, and a vast difference between the two sides. On the North Korean shore, the most noticeable landmark among a huddle of dreary concrete buildings is a big portrait of the late Great Leader Kim Il Sung, gazing into China. At night, like the famous satellite pictures of North Korea (which shows up as a near-blank surrounded by a blaze of lights), the space below him is almost dark.

And while China by most comparisons is no free country, next to North Korea it is a land of liberty and wealth. On the Chinese side, there are bright street lamps along a river promenade, neon signs in the town of 136,000; restaurants and shops, pedicabs and cars.

The Chinese guard tower that straddles the entry to the road-bridge across the border has become a tourist site. Buses of South Korean and Chinese tourists roll up daily. They park in front of souvenir stands selling cosmetic cases, Russian chocolates, fur hats, tinned sardines, North Korean liquor, ginseng and photo albums of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. For a fee amounting to about $3, the sight-seers are allowed to walk past the Chinese guard gate and out onto the bridge until they reach a painted white line that marks the border no-go zone. There, they turn around and with North Korea in the background they smile for the camera.

If you have binoculars, which the Chinese souvenir stands also sell, you can zoom in on the guard huts placed every few hundred yards along the North Korean side of the riverbank, half-hidden by the thick foliage edging the water. These provide shelter for North Korean armed sentries, who emerge periodically to patrol along the river. Their main chore is not to keep intruders out, but to keep North Koreans in. The river in these parts runs so shallow in many places that it’s possible to wade across.

On a recent afternoon, I watched a group of South Korean tourists descend the riverbank on the Chinese side, don orange life preservers and board bamboo punts to be poled across the river. They came so close to the North Korean shore that the passengers could have stepped off onto the turf of Kim Jong Il (none did).

Without life preservers, and within range of the armed guards, hundreds of thousands of North Koreans over the last decade have braved this crossing in the other direction. Some have died trying.

Others have made it into China only to fall foul of a state policy that refuses to recognize any of them as refugees. They are all deemed illegal immigrants, to be captured and sent back. On the far side of Tumen, surrounded by a high wall, stands a big white building with a faded red roof and round guard tower. Local residents say that this is the detention center where North Koreans, when they are caught in this area, are held before being sent back to North Korea. There, they can face retaliation as extreme as imprisonment in slave labor camps or, in some cases, public execution.

In many parts of the world, it would be normal near such a border to have a United Nations refugee camp ready to receive such escapees and at least provide haven until they could gain entry to a third country. In China, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, has a spacious office in Beijing. But in deference to the Chinese government’s wishes, the UNHCR does not operate near the border and provides no systematic help for North Koreans trying to flee via China. The only real help comes from an underground railroad of private benefactors whom China also treats as criminals if they are caught. Some have served years in Chinese prisons for their pains.

The world has been hearing about this scene for years. There are many elaborate geopolitical rationales for why it must continue. But I can’t help thinking all those fancy geostrategists ought to spend a week in Tumen and then ask themselves again: Why is this a norm they can accept?

[Angleland]

This abomination should be stripped of Canadian citizenship or at least all hounors that have been bestowed upon him.

Maurice Strong: Ever ready to bow down and do obesisance to foreign princes and potentates. Will he finally be able to come out from behind the curtain if the Obamanation wins?

Anerica will finally bend its knee to its international betters. 'All Hail the Messiah, Obama Obama, The Path to the new Socialist Motherland..."

Mo Strong will pull the levers and chains and Obama will soeak.

In Canada, Bob Rae, Dancing Monkey to PowerCorp's organgrinders, will aspire to be The One for Canada.

[WereYouAware]

This is worse that Kyoto - emission reductions with legal penalties. Who is behind this? Why do our leaders drink the Kool-Aid? When will we be allowed to have a full debate on the science behind this and be guided accordingly?

The court would be led by ''retired judges, climate change experts and public figures" - anyone want to guess ahead of time as to the political leaning of that group?

From the Telegraph.UK

Lawyers call for international court for the environment

A former chairman of the Bar Council is calling for an international court for the environment to punish states that fail to protect wildlife and prevent climate change.

By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:29PM GMT 28 Nov 2008

Stephen Hockman QC is proposing a body similar to the International Court of Justice in The Hague to be the supreme legal authority on issues regarding the environment.

The first role of the new body would be to enforce international agreements on cutting greenhouse gas emissions set to be agreed next year.

But the court would also fine countries or companies that fail to protect endangered species or degrade the natural environment and enforce the "right to a healthy environment".

The innovative idea is being presented to an audience of politicians, scientists and public figures for the first time at a symposium at the British Library.

Mr Hockman, a deputy High Court judge, said that the threat of climate change means it is more important than ever for the law to protect the environment.

The UN Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland this month is set to begin negotiations that will lead to a new agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol in Copenhagen next year. Developed countries are expected to commit to cutting emissions drastically, while developing countries agree to halt deforestation.

Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, has agreed the concept of an international court will be taken into account when considering how to make these international agreements on climate change binding. The court is also backed by a number of MPs, climate change experts and public figures including the actress Judi Dench.

Mr Hockman said an international court will be needed to enforce and regulate any agreement.

"The time is now ripe to set this up and get it going," he said. "Its remit will be overall climate change and the need for better regulation of carbon emissions but at the same time the implementation and enforcement of international environmental agreements and instruments."

As well as providing resolution between states, the court will also be useful for multinational businesses in ensuring environmental laws are kept to in every country.

The court would include a convention on the right to a healthy environment and provide a higher body for individuals or non-governmental organisations to protest against an environmental injustice.

Mr Hockman said the court may be able to fine businesses or states but its main role will be in making "declaratory rulings" that influence and embarrass countries into upholding the law.

He said: "Of course regulations and sanctions alone cannot deliver a global solution to problems of climate change, but without such components the incentive for individual countries to address those problems – and to achieve solutions that are politically acceptable within their own jurisdictions – will be much reduced."

The court would be led by retired judges, climate change experts and public figures. It would include a scientific body to consider evidence and provide access to any data on the environment.

Most importantly, Mr Hockman said an international court on the environment would influence public opinion which in turn would force Governments to take the environment seriously. He said: "If there are bodies around that can give definitive legal rulings that are accepted as fair and reasonable that has its own impact on public opinion."

Friends of the Earth welcomed the idea.

A spokesman said: "We think any institution that is going to promote and help people enforce their right to a clean and healthy environment is a good thing."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/enviro ... nment.html

[WereYouAware]

Will we hear from Maurice Strong about this travesty - or is silence a signal of consent? For that matter who in the Canadian Government has objected?

Iran Now Chairing the Board at UN’s Lead Agency
By Claudia Rosett Thursday, January 15, 2009


Truly, I had plans to write this week about something other than the United Nations. But over at Turtle Bay, here they go again.

To chair the 2009 governing board of the U.N.’s flagship agency, the multibillion-dollar globe-girdling United Nations Development Program, dedicated to promoting good governance and ending poverty, the U.N. has now picked--wait for it--the Islamic Republic of Iran.

This decision--reached last Friday--has escaped public notice, perhaps because the UNDP has neglected to advertise the news, or maybe because the world is too busy watching in Gaza the latest product of Iran’s terrorist development programs in the Middle East.

But handing Iran the gavel of the UNDP executive board ranks right up there with the U.N.’s choice in 2003 of Libya to head the old Human Rights Commission, or Zimbabwe in 2007 to chair the Commission on Sustainable Development.

Except in some ways it’s worse. For U.N.-sanctioned Iran, which last fall lost its brazen bid for a seat on the U.N. Security Council, this UNDP chairmanship is the next step in a creeping campaign for diplomatic influence and legitimacy at the U.N. via seats on the boards of the U.N.’s alphabet agencies--from UNICEF, to the United Nations Environment Program, to the World Food Program and beyond.

When I wrote about this pattern in December, Iran had just secured itself a three-year seat on the 36-member UNDP board. Now Tehran has been promoted to running the show.

Still worse, the UNDP is not just any old U.N. agency. It is the U.N.’s lead development agency, the chief coordinator in the field of almost all the others, loaded with money, dispensing high-level advice along with more than $9 billion per year around the globe--some $5 billion of that from its own budget and another $4 billion or so on behalf of other U.N. operations.

Headquartered in New York, across the street from the U.N. Secretariat’s landmark domino building, the UNDP is a vast bureaucracy, blanketed in diplomatic immunity, bankrolled both by U.N. member-state contributions and hundreds of opaque public and private trust funds (the U.S., which gives well over $200 million per year, is among the UNDP’s top donors).

Boasting a presence in 166 countries, the UNDP moves money, personnel and equipment across borders around the globe with minimal independent oversight. It does not bode well to have this kind of outfit chaired by Iran, with its record of running networks for terror and sanctions-busting nuclear procurement.

Prone to collaborating on “development programs” with some of the world’s worst tyrannies, from North Korea to Syria to Zimbabwe to Iran (where it fields a big office), the UNDP has inspired quips in recent years that its initials might better stand for “UN Dictators Program,” or that maybe, in the tradition of Oil-for-Food, the agency should be re-named “Dollars for Dictators.”

With Iran’s arrival at the helm of the UNDP’s governing board, will anyone be riding herd at the U.N. to ensure we don’t end up with “Moolah for Mullahs”?

That question needs asking at the confirmation hearing scheduled today for President-elect Obama’s nominee to the job of U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice.

Iran’s ascent to the chairmanship of the UNDP’s 36-member executive board took place last Friday, over the protests of the U.S., which broke with the U.N. custom of consensus decision-making to call for a vote. Iran won, 22 to four, with five abstentions and several board members apparently absent.

In response to my queries about this, a U.S. delegate to the U.N.’s Economic and Social Council, Ambassador T. Vance McMahan, said in an e-mailed statement: “The U.S. called for a vote on the chairmanship of UNDP because we believe that Iran is not a responsible member of the international community, and should not be given a leadership role at a major UN program, even if the position is a largely ceremonial one.”

But this is no purely cosmetic post. The UNDP’s own Web site includes an “Information Note,” detailing the substantial responsibilities of its executive board, which oversees not only the UNDP, but also the U.N. Population Fund, or UNFPA.

The board is tasked to receive information and give guidance to the heads of these agencies, monitor performance, approve programs, decide on administrative and financial plans and budgets, recommend new initiatives and submit yearly reports to the General Assembly’s Economic and Social Council.

In what universe does Iran’s oil-based tyranny qualify to chair this board?

Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran’s main entrepreneurial growth industry has been terrorism--witness Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and a bloody trail of bombings, mayhem, infiltration and subversion, from Beirut to Argentina to today’s Iraq.

At home, along with forcibly veiling its women and jailing and torturing its opposition, Iran--according to New York-based Freedom House--"is a world leader in juvenile executions.”

Iran’s “development” goals include the avowed desire of its president to wipe Israel off the map and Tehran’s evident plan to develop the nuclear weapons to do it--even if that means violating five U.N. Security Council resolutions to date and seeking ways around U.N. and U.S. sanctions.

Iran takes up the UNDP gavel at a sensitive time, both for a tumultuous world and for the UNDP itself. At its first regular board session next week--while most eyes are on Obama’s inauguration in Washington--the UNDP plans to forge ahead with re-opening its office in North Korea.

That office was shut down in March 2007, as a result of the so-called Cash-for-Kim scandal, which flared up after the U.S. Mission to the U.N. raised persistent questions about UNDP misconduct in Kim Jong Il’s North Korea.

It turned out the UNDP’s Pyongyang office, in violation of its own rules, had been funneling hard cash to Kim Jong Il’s regime, storing counterfeit $100 banknotes in its office safe and, with North Korea then on the UNDP board, was using development funds to buy business class tickets for North Korean officials to attend board meetings in New York.

A report last June from a panel authorized by the UNDP itself finally confirmed--well after the fact--that the UNDP had provided North Korea with scores of dual-use technologies, meaning that equipment shipped in under the U.N. label of “development” could also be turned to military use.

A Senate subcommittee investigation, led by Sens. Norm Coleman and Carl Levin, further discovered, as disclosed in a January 2008 report, that the UNDP in North Korea had transferred funds to North Korean front entities involved in arms and nuclear proliferation networks.

Some of these entities were in Macau. During a trip to the Far East last fall, I dropped by two of the addresses with which, according to the subcommittee’s exhibits, the UNDP in Pyongyang had been doing business. One was a basement supermarket, which the clerks said had been in business at that address for years. The other turned out to be a locked apartment in a residential high-rise.

The UNDP now proposes to re-open its North Korea office, following a “roadmap” offering assorted promises of good conduct. That begs the question of who will enforce discipline and oversight, not only for the UNDP’s resurrected operations in North Korea, but around the globe.

When Cash-for-Kim first hit the headlines, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon promised a system-wide audit of the U.N., then narrowed that down to an audit of the UNDP in North Korea--in which U.N. auditors never actually got into the country.

It took many rounds of concerted effort by a former ambassador at the U.S. Mission, Mark Wallace, to pry information from the UNDP about its doings in North Korea. It took months of work by Senate investigators to produce further findings. It took all that pressure, plus plenty from the media, to finally squeeze out of the UNDP some of the above information about UNDP doings in North Korea.

Apart from a few lonely holdouts in Congress, outside oversight of the UNDP has all but dried up. Wallace resigned from the U.S. Mission last year.

Coleman, who took the lead on Senate investigations of the U.N., looks doomed to be replaced by left-wing comedian Al Franken. At the U.N., Ban Ki-Moon, in response to Cash-for-Kim, basically backed away and ceded to the UNDP full turf rights to police itself, undermining his own ethics office and betraying a UNDP whistleblower in the process.

The UNDP’s current administrator, Kemal Dervis, has announced plans to step down in March. Subject to approval by the General Assembly, it will be up to Ban Ki-Moon to nominate a successor, in consultation with the UNDP board--which has just elected, as its chair, Iran.

What are Barack Obama and Susan Rice planning to do about this?

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

[WereYouAware]

Why does the Post allow this nonsense? China buy Detroit? When Maurice Strong has financial interests in China's auto industry?

If you read this article without your critical faculties ion top gear your IQ is at risk!


Let China buy Detroit
Maurice strong
National Post Feb 6, 2009
It is surely clear that the bailout of the U.S. automobile industry will not resolve its fundamental problems. But it could provide the time for a new approach that accords with the realities of the industry and can contribute to a resolution of its problems.
While I would not pretend to be an expert on the automobile industry, the close association I have had with it and my concern with its impacts on the environment — particularly the risks of climate change — have convinced me that radical changes are needed in the design and the use of automobiles. The need is particularly urgent in making the transition from fossil fuels to more environmentally benign alternatives and to develop new people-friendly approaches to transportation.
It would be unrealistic to expect that this can be done by denying ownership to people in China, India and other developing countries. The automobile industry is experiencing a growth that can be slowed down and rationalized but cannot be stopped. A prime example: The need to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from autos is urgent and immediate. It cannot be achieved without giving high priority to the development of alternatives to oil and gas as their fuel, and to improved judgment and greater care in vehicle utilization. To be sure, some promising technologies and approaches are being developed, but thus far none are being developed on a scale that can be expected to meet this need in sufficient time.
The current crisis in the industry makes it possible to break new ground in resolving this fundamental dilemma in ways that would have been seen as unrealistic before the crisis. The Chinese have always regarded crises as creating opportunities. Now China could play a major role in helping to rescue the U.S. automobile industry while contributing to resolving the economic and environmental issues confronting the industry worldwide.
China’s domestic industry has been developing rapidly. Chinese companies are already moving into international markets and are inevitably targeting the U.S. market. While they have yet to meet the rigorous quality standards required, it is only a matter of time before they achieve this. In the meantime, the Chinese have provided U.S. and other foreign companies with some of their most profitable markets. And companies of both countries confront the challenge of leading the transition to the post fossil-fuels era.
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. 2. The U.S. and Canadian markets would be opened on a selective basis to Chinese automobiles, which would be marketed through the General Motors, Ford and Chrysler dealer networks, restoring the viability and profitability of dealerships afflicted by the industry crisis. 3. The U.S. companies would have their established positions in the China market secured. They would obtain the right to expand their production and distribution in that market in co-operation with their Chinese partners. 4. The United States, Canada and China would agree to undertake and support a co-operative program of technological development in which their main companies would lead. These developments would be designed to produce a new generation of environmentally benign, people-friendly automobiles with particular focus on the development of alternatives to fossil fuels as well as alternative approaches to personal transportation
There is no question that the negotiation of such an agreement, involving the governments of the countries as well as their industry leaders, would be difficult and complex. But the massive economic and environmental benefits that would accrue to them, and indeed to the entire world, provide a powerful incentive to undertake it. The new administration in the United States and the demonstrated capacity of the Chinese government to manage the processes of fundamental change make this challenging opportunity unique.

[T.G.]

Why does the Post allow this nonsense? China buy Detroit? When Maurice Strong has financial interests in China's auto industry?

The guy's totally nuts ... or evil. He often advocates for political positions that would improve his own personal financial interests.

[Angleland]

Why does the Post allow this nonsense? China buy Detroit? When Maurice Strong has financial interests in China's auto industry?

The guy's totally nuts ... or evil. He often advocates for political positions that would improve his own personal financial interests.

While others might advocate positions that are beneficial to themselves there are few that do it so blatently and with such hypocrisy as Mo Strong. Bow down and do obeisance to his sock puppets. He likes to stay behind the curton pulling the levers and chains.