INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY: WHO IS MAURICE STRONG?

[mick silver]

http://www.afn.org/~govern/strong.html ... The adventures of Maurice Strong & Co. illustrate the fact that
nowadays you don't have to be a household name to wield global power.
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By Ronald Bailey Published in The National Review September 1, 1997
Mr. Bailey is a freelance journalist and television producer in Washington, D.C. He is author of Eco-Scam: The False Prophets of Ecological Apocalypse (St. Martin's) and The True State of the Planet (Free Press).

"The survival of civilization in something like its present form might depend significantly on the efforts of a single man," declared The New Yorker. The New York Times hailed that man as the "Custodian of the Planet." He is perpetually on the short list of candidates for Secretary General of the United Nations. This lofty eminence? Maurice Strong, of course. Never heard of him? Well, you should have. Militia members are famously worried that black helicopters are practicing maneuvers with blue-helmeted UN troops in a plot to take over America. But the actual peril is more subtle. A small cadre of obscure international bureaucrats are hard at work devising a system of "global governance" that is slowly gaining control over ordinary Americans' lives. Maurice Strong, a 68-year-old Canadian, is the "indispensable man" at the center of this creeping UN power grab.

Not that Mr. Strong looks particularly indispensable. Indeed, he exudes a kind of negative charisma. He is a grey, short, soft-voiced man with a salt-and-pepper toothbrush mustache who wouldn't rate a second glance if you passed him on the street. Yet his remarkable career has led him from boyhood poverty in Manitoba to the highest councils of international government.

Among the hats he currently wears are: Senior Advisor to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan; Senior Advisor to World Bank President James Wolfensohn; Chairman of the Earth Council; Chairman of the World Resources Institute; Co-Chairman of the Council of the World Economic Forum; member of Toyota's International Advisory Board. As advisor to Kofi Annan, he is overseeing the new UN reforms.

Yet his most prominent and influential role to date was as Secretary General of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development -- the so-called Earth Summit -- held in Rio de Janeiro, which gave a significant push to global economic and environmental regulation.

"He's dangerous because he's a much smarter and shrewder man [than many in the UN system]," comments Charles Lichenstein, deputy ambassador to the UN under President Reagan. "I think he is a very dangerous ideologue, way over to the Left."

"This guy is kind of the global Ira Magaziner," says Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign-policy studies at the Cato Institute. "If he is whispering in Kofi Annan's ear this is no good at all."

Strong attracts such mystified suspicion because he is difficult to pin down. He told Maclean's in 1976 that he was "a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology." And his career combines oil deals with the likes of Adnan Khashoggi with links to the environmentalist Left. He is in fact one of a new political breed: the bi-sectoral entrepreneur who uses business success for leverage in politics, and vice versa.

Strong started in the oil business in the 1950s. He took over and turned around some small ailing energy companies in the 1960s, and he was president of a major holding company -- the Power Corporation of Canada -- by the age of 35. This was success by any standard. Yet on more than one occasion (including once in Who's Who), Strong has been caught exaggerating. He claimed, for instance, to have forfeited a $200,000 salary when he left Power. The real figure, said a company officer, was $35,000. Why this myth-making? Well, a CEO is just a CEO -- but a whiz-kid is a potential cabinet officer.

And it is in politics that Strong's talents really shine. He is the Michelangelo of networking. He early made friends in high places in Canada's Liberal Party -- including Paul Martin Sr., Canada's external-affairs minister in the Sixties -- and kept them as business partners in oil and real-estate ventures. He cultivated bright well-connected young people -- like Paul Martin Jr., Canada's present finance minister and the smart money's bet to succeed Jean Chretien as prime minister -- and salted them throughout his various political and business networks to form a virtual private intelligence service. And he always seemed to know what the next political trend would be -- foreign aid, Canadian economic nationalism, environmentalism.

In 1966, by now a Liberal favorite, Strong became head of the Canadian International Development Agency and thus was launched internationally. Impressed by his work at CIDA, UN Secretary General U Thant asked him to organize what became the first Earth Summit -- the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment in 1972. The next year, Strong became first director of the new UN Environment Program, created as a result of Stockholm. And in 1975, he was invited back to Canada to run the semi-national Petro-Canada, created by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in the wake of OPEC's oil shocks.

Petro-Canada was a sop to Canada's anti-American Left, then denouncing American ownership of the country's oil companies. Strong talked a good economic-nationalist game -- but he himself was a major reason why Canada's oil companies were U.S.-owned. Ten years before, while at Power Corporation, he had enabled Shell to take over the only remaining all-Canadian oil company by throwing a controlling block of shares in its direction. As Maclean's wrote, he now returned "amid fanfares" to rectify this.

After a couple of years, Strong left Petro-Canada for various business deals, including one with Adnan Khashoggi through which he ended up owning the 200,000-acre Baca ranch in Colorado, now a "New Age" center run by his wife, Hanne. (Among the seekers at Baca are Zen and Tibetan Buddhist monks, a breakaway order of Carmelite nuns, and followers of a Hindu guru called Babaji.) Not for long the joys of contemplation, however. In 1985, he was back as executive coordinator of the UN Office for Emergency Operations in Africa, in charge of running the $3.5-billion famine-relief effort in Somalia and Ethiopia. And in 1989, he was appointed Secretary General of the Earth Summit -- shortly thereafter flying down to Rio.

Strong's flexibility, however, must not be mistaken for open-mindedness. His friends, his allies among Canadian Liberals, his networks in the UN and the Third World, even his long-term business partners (like the late Paul Nathanson, wartime treasurer of the Canadian-Soviet Friendship Committee) all lean Left. He has said the Depression left him "frankly very radical." And given his ability to get things done, the consistency of his support for a world managed by bureaucrats is alarming. As Elaine Dewar wrote in Toronto's Saturday Night magazine:

[mick silver]

It is instructive to read Strong's 1972 Stockholm speech and compare it with the issues of Earth Summit 1992. Strong warned urgently about global warming, the devastation of forests, the loss of biodiversity, polluted oceans, the population time bomb. Then as now, he invited to the conference the brand-new environmental NGOs [non-governmental organizations]: he gave them money to come; they were invited to raise hell at home. After Stockholm, environment issues became part of the administrative framework in Canada, the U.S., Britain, and Europe.
IN the meantime, Strong continued the international networking on which his influence rests. He became a member of the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission). He found time to serve as president of the World Federation of United Nations Associations, on the executive committee of the Society for International Development, and as an advisor to the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund. Above all, he served on the Commission on Global Governance -- which, as we shall see, plays a crucial part in the international power grab.


Sometimes, indeed, it seems that Strong's network of contacts must rival the Internet. To list a few:

-- Vice President Al Gore. (Of course.)
-- World Bank President James Wolfensohn, formerly on the Rockefeller Foundation Board and currently on the Population Council Board; he was Al Gore's favored candidate for the World Bank position.
-- James Gustave Speth, head of the Carter Administration's Council on Environmental Quality, crafter of the doomladen Global 2000 report, member of the Clinton - Gore transition team; he now heads the UN Development Program.

-- Shridath Ramphal, formerly Secretary General of the (British) Commonwealth, now Co-Chairman of the Commission on Global Governance.

-- Jonathan Lash, President of the World Resources Institute -- which works closely with the World Bank, the UN Environment Program, and the UN Development Program -- and Co-Chairman of the President's Council on Sustainable Development.

-- Ingvar Carlsson, former Swedish prime minister and Co-Chairman of the Commission on Global Governance.


But Strong is no snob; he even counts Republican Presidents among his friends. Elaine Dewar again:

Strong blurted out that he'd almost been shut out of the Earth Summit by people at the State Department. They had been overruled by the White House because George Bush knew him. He said that he'd donated some $100,000 to the Democrats and a slightly lesser amount to the Republicans in 1988. (The Republicans didn't confirm.)
I had been absolutely astonished. I mean yes, he had done a great deal of business in the U.S., but how could he have managed such contributions?

Well, he'd had a green card. The governor of Colorado had suggested it to him. A lawyer in Denver had told him how.

But why? I'd asked.

"Because I wanted influence in the United States."

So Strong gave political contributions (of dubious legality) to both parties; George Bush, now a friend, intervened to help him stay in charge of the Rio conference; he was thereby enabled to set a deep green agenda there; and Bush took a political hit in an election year. An instructive tale -- if it is not part of Strong's mythmaking.


Most of Strong's friends are more obviously compatible, which may explain why they tend to overlap in their institutional commitments. For example, James Wolfensohn (whom Strong had hired out of Harvard in the early Sixties to run an Australian subsidiary of one of his companies) appointed him as his senior advisor almost immediately upon being named chairman of the World Bank. "I'd been involved in . . . Stockholm, which Maurice Strong arranged," says Wolfensohn, who, more recently, has been credited with co-drafting (with Mikhail Gorbachev) the Earth Charter presented for consideration at the Rio + 5 meeting in Brazil earlier this year. As head of the Earth Council, Maurice Strong chaired that meeting.
It's not a conspiracy, of course: just a group of like-minded people fighting to save the world from less prescient and more selfish forces -- namely, market forces. And though the crises change -- World War II in the Forties, fear of the atom bomb in the Fifties, the "energy crisis" in the Seventies -- the Left's remedy is always the same: a greater role for international agencies. Today an allegedly looming global environmental catastrophe is behind their efforts to increase the power of the UN. Strong has warned memorably: "If we don't change, our species will not survive. . . . Frankly, we may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse." Apocalypse soon -- unless international bodies save us from ourselves.

LAST week, Secretary General Annan unveiled Maurice Strong's plan for reorganizing the UN. To be sure, the notoriously corrupt and inefficient UN bureaucracy could do with some shaking up. Strong's plan, however, mostly points in a different direction -- one drawn from a document, Our Global Neighborhood, devised by the interestingly named Commission on Global Governance.

The CGG was established in 1992, after Rio, at the suggestion of Willy Brandt, former West German chancellor and head of the Socialist International. Then Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali endorsed it. The CGG naturally denies advocating the sort of thing that fuels militia nightmares. "We are not proposing movement toward a world government," reassuringly write Co-Chairmen Ingvar Carlsson and Shridath Ramphal, ". . . [but] this is not to say that the goal should be a world without systems or rules." Quite so. As Hofstra University law professor Peter Spiro describes it: "The aim is not a superstate but rather the establishment of norm-creating multilateral regimes . . . This construct already constrains state action in the context of human rights and environmental protection and is on a springboard in other areas."

The concept of global governance has been fermenting for some time. In 1991, the Club of Rome (of which Strong is, of course, a member) issued a report called The First Global Revolution, which asserted that current problems "are essentially global and cannot be solved through individual country initiatives [which] gives a greatly enhanced importance to the United Nations and other international systems." Also in 1991 Strong claimed that the Earth Summit, of which he was Secretary General, would play an important role in "reforming and strengthening the United Nations as the centerpiece of the emerging system of democratic global governance." In 1995, in Our Global Neighborhood, the CGG agreed: "It is our firm conclusion that the United Nations must continue to play a central role in global governance."

Americans should be worried by the Commission's recommendations: for instance, that some UN activities be funded through taxes on foreign-exchange transactions and multinational corporations. Economist James Tobin estimates that a 0.5 per cent tax on foreign-exchange transactions would raise $1.5 trillion annually -- nearly equivalent to the U.S. federal budget.

[mick silver]

It also recommended that "user fees" might be imposed on companies operating in the "global commons." Such fees might be collected on international airline tickets, ocean shipping, deep-sea fishing, activities in Antarctica, geostationary satellite orbits, and electromagnetic spectrum. But the big enchilada is carbon taxes, which would be levied on all fuels made from coal, oil, and natural gas. "A carbon tax," the report deadpans, ". . . would yield very large revenues indeed." Given the UN's record of empire-building and corruption, Cato's Ted Carpenter warns: "One can only imagine the degree of mischief it could get into if it had independent sources of revenue."

Especially significant for the U.S. was the CGG's proposal for eventual elimination of the veto held by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. The Commission knew that the current permanent members of the Security Council, including the U.S., would not easily surrender their vetoes, and so it recommended a two-stage process.

In the first stage, five new permanent members (without a veto) would be added to the Security Council -- probably Japan, Germany, Brazil, India, and Nigeria -- along with three new slots for non-permanent members. But the real threat to U.S. interests is the second stage: "a full review of the membership of the Council . . . around 2005, when the veto can be phased out." These plans are advancing. In March, the president of the UN General Assembly, Razali Ismail of Malayasia, unveiled his own formula for reforming the Security Council. It closely tracks the CGG's proposals. In particular, Razali proposed "urg[ing] the original permanent members to limit use of the veto . . . and not to extend [it] to new permanent members." He wanted to make the veto "progressively and politically untenable" and recommended that these arrangements be reviewed in ten years.

In July the State Department compromised -- accepting five new Security Council members but remaining silent on the veto. It plainly hopes that the veto issue will go away if the U.S. concedes on enlarging the Council. Yet the CGG's report makes clear that we are facing a rolling agenda to expand the power of UN bureaucrats. The veto issue may be postponed for ten years -- but what then?

"This is an initiative that should be resisted by the United States with special vehemence," says Ted Carpenter. For if the veto were eliminated, the United States would face the prospect of having other countries make key determinations that affect us without our consent.

THE Commission also wants to strengthen "global civil society," which, it explains, "is best expressed in the global non-governmental movement." Today, there are nearly 15,000 NGOs. More than 1,200 of them have consultative status with the UN's Economic and Social Council (up from 41 in 1948). The CGG wants NGOs to be brought formally into the UN system (no wonder Kenneth Minogue calls this Acronymia). So it proposes that representatives of such organizations be accredited to the General Assembly as "Civil Society Organizations" and convened in an annual Forum of Civil Society.

But how would these representatives be selected? This June, the General Assembly held a session on environmental issues called Earth Summit +5. President Razali selected a number of representatives from the NGOs and the private sector for the exclusive privilege of speaking in the plenary sessions. "I have gone to a lot of trouble with this, choosing the right NGOs," he declared. So whom did he choose?

Among others: Thilo Bode, executive director of Greenpeace, to represent the scientific and technological community; Yolanda Kakabadse, the president of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature; and "from the farmers, I have chosen an organic farmer, Denise O'Brien from the United States, who is a member of the Via Campesina." In what sense are these people "representative"? Whom do they represent? Were the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the chairman of Toshiba, and the president of the Farm Bureau all too busy to come talk to the General Assembly?

Another example of how this selection process operates was the "great civil society forum" convened at the behest of Strong's Earth Council and Mikhail Gorbachev's Green Cross International this past March. Some five hundred delegates met, supposedly to assess the results of the Earth Summit, but in reality to condemn the "inaction" of signatory countries in implementing the Rio treaties. The delegates were selected through a process based on national councils for sustainable development, themselves set up pursuant to the Earth Summit. Membership in these councils means that an organization is already persuaded of the global environmental crisis. So you can bet that the process did not yield many delegates representing business or advocating limits on government power.

[mick silver]

This kind of international gabfest is, of course, a sinister parody of democracy. "Very few of even the larger international NGOs are operationally democratic, in the sense that members elect officers or direct policy on particular issues," notes Peter Spiro. "Arguably it is more often money than membership that determines influence, and money more often represents the support of centralized elites, such as major foundations, than of the grass roots." (The CGG has benefited substantially from the largesse of the MacArthur, Carnegie, and Ford Foundations.)

Hilary French, Vice President of the alarmist Worldwatch Institute, justifies this revealingly as "a paradox of our time . . . that effective governance requires control being simultaneously passed down to local communities and up to international institutions." Paradoxically or not, the voters hardly appear in this model of governance. It bypasses national governments and representative democracy in order to empower the sort of people who are willing to sit in committee meetings to the bitter end. Those who have better things to do -- businessmen, workers, moms -- would be the losers in the type of centralized decentralization envisioned by Worldwatch. The result would be decisions reached by self-selecting elites. In domestic politics, we have a name for such elite groups -- special interests.

ANOTHER CGG recommendation is that the old UN Trusteeship Council "be given a new mandate over the global commons." It defines the global commons to include the atmosphere, outer space, the oceans beyond national jurisdiction, and the related environmental systems that contribute to the support of human life. A new Trusteeship Council would oversee "the management of the commons, including development and use of their resources . . . [and] the administration of environmental treaties in such fields as climate change, biodiversity, outer space, and the Law of the Sea."

It is hard to see what this expansive definition would exclude from the jurisdiction of the Trusteeship Council. Biodiversity encompasses all the plants and animals on the earth, including those that live in your backyard. Will UN troops swoop in to stop you from cutting down trees on your property? Doubtless not. But a recent case near Yellowstone National Park may be a foretaste of how international agencies can meddle in U.S. domestic affairs.

Yellowstone has been designated a "World Heritage Site." These Sites are natural settings or cultural monuments recognized by the World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as having "outstanding universal value." Sites are designated under a Convention ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1973, and it is possible to place such sites on a "List of World Heritage Sites in Danger."

In this case, a mining company wanted to construct a gold mine outside the boundaries of Yellowstone. The normal environmental review of the project's impact was still proceeding under U.S. law. But a group of environmentalist NGOs opposed to the mine were not content to wait for that review to take its course. They asked that members of the World Heritage Committee come to Yellowstone to hold public hearings. George Frampton, the Clinton Administration's Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, wrote to the WHC saying: "The Secretary [Bruce Babbitt] and the National Park Service have clearly expressed strong reservations with the New World Mine proposal." Frampton added: "We believe that a potential danger to the values of the Park and surrounding waters and fisheries exists and that the committee should be informed that the property as inscribed on the . . . List is in danger." Four officials of the WHC duly came to Yellowstone and held hearings. And at its December 1995 meeting in Berlin, the Committee obligingly voted to list Yellowstone as a "World Heritage Site in Danger."

"It was, in my opinion, a blatantly political act," declared Rep. Barbara Cubin (R., Wyo.) during congressional hearings about the listing. "It was done to draw attention, public reaction, public response, and public pressure to see that the mine wasn't developed." Jeremy Rabkin, a Cornell political scientist, agrees that the international listing of such sites "provides an international forum through which to put pressure on U.S. policy."

Would the mine really have endangered Yellowstone? We'll never know. The environmental-impact statement was never issued, and, under pressure, the mining company accepted a $65-million federal buyout plus a trade for unspecified federal lands somewhere else. Thus, even with no enforcement power, this UN dependency was able to make land-use policy for the United States.

These events prompted Rep. Don Young (R., Alaska) to introduce the American Land Sovereignty Act. With 174 co-sponsors to date, the Act aims to "preserve sovereignty of the United States over public lands and . . . to preserve State sovereignty and private property rights in non-federal lands surrounding those public lands." Congress would have to approve on a case-by-case basis land designations made pursuant to any international agreements.

But is U.S. sovereignty really in danger? In an interview, Strong dismissed Young's anxieties. "I do not share his concern. It is no abdication of sovereignty to exercise it in company with others, and when you're dealing with global issues that's what you have to do." He continues: "If you put yourself in a larger unit, of course, you get some advantages and you give up some of your freedom. And that's what's happening in Europe, that the states of Europe have decided that overall they're better off to create a structure in which they give up some of their national rights and exercise them collectively through the Union."

This example of the European Union, however, worries Ambassador Lichenstein. The EU's bureaucracy in Brussels, he complains, "is responsible to no one. Governments get together -- foreign ministers, finance ministers -- they presumably hand down the guidelines, but don't kid yourself, the bureaucrats are running things."

The Yellowstone case is an example of how "feel-good" symbolism about the environment can be transformed into real constraints upon real people imposed outside the law, with no democratic oversight and no means of redress. Ironically, Strong himself had a run-in with Colorado environmentalists over local water rights. They did not have the wit to call in an international agency against the New Age rancher -- or maybe they realized that Strong was one property owner whose rights the UN would respect.

AS troubling as the Yellowstone incident is, much greater potential for mischief lies in a new series of "framework treaties" designed to handle global environmental issues. Initially, the treaties called for voluntary actions by governments and set up a consultative process. But environmental activists like Hilary French know very well how this process works. "Even though it can look disappointing, the political will created [by these framework conventions] can lead to commitments of a more binding nature," she said. This is already happening. "Although its declaration of principles was transparently aspirational, the 1972 Stockholm world conference on the human environment is generally recognized as a turning point in international environmental-protection efforts," wrote Peter Spiro. "From it emerged a standing institution (the UN Environment Program); weak but more focused 'framework' treaties followed, which in turn are being filled out by specific regulatory regimes. The 1985 Vienna Convention on the Protection of the Ozone Layer itself included no obligations, but the 1987 Montreal protocols and subsequent amendments set a full phaseout of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-depleting substances by 1996. The regime covers 132 signatories with a total population of 4.7 billion people. Between 1987 and 1991, global CFC consumption was in fact reduced by half. A similar filling-out process is likely to occur with the biodiversity and climate-change conventions signed at Rio."

The "conventions" that Spiro was talking about emerged from the Earth Summit chaired by Maurice Strong. They deal with two of the alleged global environmental crises -- global warming and species extinction.

At the time of the Earth Summit, some scientists predicted on the basis of climate computer models that the earth's average temperature would increase by 4 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century because of the "greenhouse effect." These predictions are controversial among scientists. And as the computer models are refined, they show that the atmosphere will warm far less than originally predicted. Furthermore, more accurate satellite measurements show no increase in the average global temperature over the last two decades. Finally, an important study published in Nature concluded that even if the warming predictions are right, it could well be less costly to allow greenhouse gas emissions to continue to rise for a decade or more because technological innovations and judicious capital investment will make it possible to reduce them far more cheaply at some point before they become a significant problem. In other words, we needn't take drastic and costly action now.

The process forges ahead anyway. The Framework Convention on Global Climate Change signed by President George Bush at the Rio Earth Summit is already beginning to harden. Initially, countries were supposed voluntarily to reduce by the year 2000 the "greenhouse gases" to the level emitted in 1990. Then, a year ago, at a UN climate-change meeting in Geneva, the Clinton Administration offered to set legally binding limits on the greenhouse gases the United States can emit. In June of this year, at the UN's Earth Summit +5 session, President Clinton reaffirmed this commitment. And mandatory limits on carbon emissions are to be finalized at a global meeting of Convention signatories in Kyoto this December.

Estimates of the costs to the United States of cutting emissions range from $90 billion to $400 billion annually in lost Gross Domestic Product and a loss of between 600,000 and 3.5 million jobs. Global costs would be proportionately higher.

Yet while the U.S. may be committing itself to limits, 130 developing nations, including China and India, are excluded under the Framework Convention from having to reduce their emissions, which, on present trends, will outstrip those of the industrialized world early in the next century. If the U.S. and other industrial countries have to limit energy use while the Third World is exempt, many industries will simply decamp to where energy prices are significantly lower.

If they are permitted to do so. For, as Sen. Chuck Hagel (R., Neb.) asked at a conference on "The Costs of Kyoto" held by the Competitive Enterprise Institute: "Who will administer a global climate treaty? . . . Will we have an international agency capable of inspecting, fining, and possibly shutting down American companies?" Sen. Hagel is not alone is his concern. In July the U.S. Senate passed 95 to 0 a resolution urging the Clinton Administration not to make binding concessions at the Kyoto conference.

But the climate-change treaty is not the only threat to U.S. interests. Though Mr. Bush refused to sign the Bio-diversity Convention at the Rio Earth Summit -- chaired, remember, by GOP contributor Strong -- that only delayed things. The Clinton Administration signed shortly after its inauguration. Since the treaty obliges signatories to protect plant and animal species through habitat preservation, its implementation could make the World Heritage Committee's activities on U.S. land use seem penny-ante by comparison.

MEANWHILE, how much further down the path sketched out by the CGG will the UN reforms developed by Maurice Strong and announced by Kofi Annan last week take us?

The most important initiative is the recommendation that the General Assembly organize a "Millennium Assembly" and a companion "People's Assembly" in the year 2000. (The "People's Assembly" mirrors the CGG's "Civil Society Forum" idea -- among other things, only accredited NGOs would be invited to advise the General Assembly.) But what would these grand new bodies actually do? The Millennium Assembly would invite "heads of Government . . . to articulate their vision of prospects and challenges for the new millennium and agree on a process for fundamental review of the role of the United Nations [emphasis added]." That last innocuous phrase is diplomatese for opening up the UN Charter for amendment. If that happens, so could anything -- notably eliminating the veto in the Security Council.

The Millennium Assembly would also consider adopting Strong's Earth Charter. For the most part the Charter reads like another feel-good document -- its draft says that "we must reinvent industrial-technological civilization" and promises everybody a clean environment, equitable incomes, and an end to cruelty to animals -- but we have seen how such vacuous symbolism can have real consequences down the line. Inevitably, the Charter advocates that "the nations of the world should adopt as a first step an international convention that provides an integrated legal framework for existing and future environmental and sustainable-development law and policy." This is, of course, a charter for endless intervention in the internal affairs of independent states.

Which leaves external affairs. Hey presto! In line with the CGG's plan, Annan/Strong urge that the UN Trusteeship Council "be reconstituted as the forum through which member states exercise their collective trusteeship for the integrity of the global environment and common areas such as the oceans, atmosphere, and outer space."

For the time being, however, Annan and Strong have avoided calling for global taxes or user fees to finance the UN. One spokesman said that the issue was simply "too hot to handle right now." What they propose is a Revolving Credit Fund of $1 billion so that the UN will have a source of operating funds even if a major contributor (e.g., the U.S.) withholds contributions for a time. In short, the CGG's blueprint for a more powerful UN closely resembles the movement to expand the requirements of the Framework Convention on Global Climate Change. While the process may be piecemeal, the goal is clear: a more powerful set of international institutions, increasingly emancipated from the control of the major powers, increasingly accountable not to representative democratic institutions but to unelected bureaucracies, and increasingly exercising authority over how people, companies, and governments run their affairs -- not just Americans, but everyone. In short, Col. Qaddafi's definition of his leftist Green Revolution: "Committees Everywhere."

If so, the future looks good for Maurice Strong. One UN source suggested that, at the very least, he would like to be made Secretary General of the Millennium Assembly or the People's Assembly. Others suspect that, even at age 68, Strong is angling to be the next UN Secretary General.

Such eminence may help explain a puzzling incident in his early career. Having long had political ambitions, he decided to enter the Canadian Parliament. A candidate was evicted from a safe constituency by the Liberal leadership, and Strong moved in. Then, with only a month to go before the 1979 election, he suddenly pulled out of the race. Strong's business deals were especially complicated at the time -- he was setting up a Swiss oil-and-gas exploration company with partners that included the Kuwaiti Finance Minister and the Arab Petroleum Investment Corporation -- and that is the explanation usually given. But maybe he just decided that for a man who wants power, elections are an unnecessary obstacle.

[mick silver]

A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmental damaging consumption patterns.
Maurice Strong

After all, sustainability means running the global environment - Earth Inc. - like a corporation: with depreciation, amortization and maintenance accounts. In other words, keeping the asset whole, rather than undermining your natural capital.
Maurice Strong

Also, it is interesting that developing countries, with China and India perhaps in the lead, where the future of the global environment will be decided are now on board with the case for sustainable development.
Maurice Strong

Don't accept that you can't make a difference. Because if you can't make a difference, you won't make a difference, and if you put a multiplier on that we will continue on an unsustainable pathway.
Maurice Strong

I am convinced the prophets of doom have to be taken seriously.
Maurice Strong

I am on the board of corporations who contribute both to environmental problems and their solutions. And I am on the NGO side: the Earth Council and other organizations.
Maurice Strong

I am President of the UN created University for Peace, which has a strong commitment to the relationship between peace, security and the environment. I meet with young people around the world and I always come away enthused and encouraged.
Maurice Strong

I believe we are going to move into a situation where the more effective conferences will be smaller, more specialized, more focused, with occasional large gatherings to get the attention of the larger world.
Maurice Strong

I was with Ted Turner when he came to see Kofi Annan - the Secretary-General of the UN - to announce his decision to put $1 billion to the service of UN projects and programs.
Maurice Strong

I've developed a huge regard for Toyota for its environmental awareness, for its immense commitment to research and development in this field, and for its leadership in developing hybrids which others are now following.
Maurice Strong

If you want to maintain a sustainable supply of fish you have to farm the fish, rather than mine them. So putting your money into fishing fleets that are going to exacerbate the problem by over-fishing is not the way to preserve the underlying asset.
Maurice Strong

In addition to this, they already have a fuel cell car on the road in Japan. It is subsidized from within the corporation because they are still at a high cost.
Maurice Strong

Inertia is a powerful force in human and political affairs.
Maurice Strong

Licences to have babies incidentally is something that I got in trouble for some years ago for suggesting even in Canada that this might be necessary at some point, at least some restriction on the right to have a child.
Maurice Strong

Nevertheless, the concept of sustainable development is now known - even amongst those who haven't accepted it - and it's recognized, debated and followed by an increasing number of businesses.
Maurice Strong

Not to say that corporations are perfect today, but even grand corporations like Dupont have made immense progress in translating some of their past environmentally damaging practices into new profit opportunities.
Maurice Strong

One of the things that I've always thought I would like to do is to develop an environmental index. Then people can measure their own environmental performance on an index as they do in other ways.
Maurice Strong

So, what we do as individuals matters. It adds up.
Maurice Strong

Ted Turner is still a leader. And he sets a great example. His ability financially has been reduced, but his influence and his example still is an important asset to the whole environmental movement.
Maurice Strong

The Prime Minister of India, at a meeting that I co-chaired a few months ago, stated that any development that is not sustainable is not development.
Maurice Strong

[mick silver]

The tendency is to keep doing things the way you have done them.
Maurice Strong

Toyota was the first to put a commercial fuel cell powered car on the road, and I have no doubt that Toyota will continue to be in the front lines in the development of competitive fuel cell vehicles.
Maurice Strong

We in the industrialized world make a greater difference because our ecological footprint, our impact on the condition of the environment, is 40 to 50 times larger than that of people in the developing world.
Maurice Strong

We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.
Maurice Strong

We must, from here on in, all go down the same path... There may not be another chance.
Maurice Strong

We need what I have often called an ecological approach to the management of these resources and we do not have that now. We have the inertia of past habits, unsustainable habits.
Maurice Strong

We owe at least this much to future generations, from whom we have borrowed a fragile planet called Earth.
Maurice Strong

We're either going to save Ihe world or no one will be saved.
Maurice Strong

Well they do have a use, but we should never believe that any international conference is going to suddenly solve problems like the condition of the global environment.
Maurice Strong

What pleases me most is that sustainable development is on almost everybody's agenda now.
Maurice Strong

[mick silver]

you guys need to read what he says and does .... We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.
Maurice Strong

[mick silver]

The U.N.'s Man of Mystery Is the godfather of the Kyoto treaty a public servant or a profiteer? ... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122368007369524679.html

[mick silver]

At the United Nations, the Curious Career of Maurice Strong, From Oil for Food to the latest scandals involving U.N. funding in North Korea, Maurice Strong appears as a shadowy and ... http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,250789,00.html

[mick silver]

Maurice F. Strong, PC, CC, OM, FRSC (born April 29, 1929) is a Canadian businessman. He is an entrepreneur, environmentalist, and one of the world’s leading proponents of the United Nations's involvement in world affairs. ... http://www.bing.com/reference/semhtml?title=Maurice_Strong&src=abop&fwd=1&qpvt=maurice+strong&q=maurice+strong

[mick silver]

Maurice Strong: The new guy in your future!
... http://www.sovereignty.net/p/sd/strong.html

[mick silver]

Maurice Strong ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Strong ... Maurice F. Strong, PC, CC, OM, FRSC (born April 29, 1929) is a Canadian businessman. He is an entrepreneur, environmentalist, and one of the world’s leading proponents of the United Nations's involvement in world affairs and strong proponent of "New World Order". A one world government with an objective of redistribution of wealth from the industrious nations of working individuals, to those of non-industrious and non-educated nations of non-working individuals.

Born in Oak Lake, Manitoba, Strong had his start as a petroleum entrepreneur and became president of Power Corporation until 1966. In the early 1970s he was Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment and then became the first Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme. He returned to Canada to become Chief Executive Officer of Petro-Canada from 1976 to 1978. He headed Ontario Hydro, one of North Americas largest power utilities, was national President and Chairman of the Extension Committee of the World Alliance of YMCAs, and headed American Water Development Incorporated.

Today Strong lives in the People's Republic of China,[citation needed] and is President of the Council of the United Nations's University for Peace. UPEACE is the only university in the UN system able to grant degrees at the masters and doctoral. He is an active honorary professor at Peking University and Honorary Chairman of its Environmental Foundation. He is Chairman of the Advisory Board for the Institute for Research on Security and Sustainability for Northeast Asia.[citation needed]

Contents [hide]
1 Business
1.1 American Water Development
2 United Nations work
2.1 Stockholm Conference
2.2 Earth Summit
2.3 2005 Oil-for-Food scandal and hiring practice criticisms
2.4 UN Secretary General's tribute
3 Honors and Awards
4 References and notes
5 External links

[edit] Business
Maurice Strong had his start in business as a specialist in oil and mineral resources for a leading brokerage firm, James Richardson & Sons. Moving to Calgary, Alberta, he became assistant to one of the most colorful and dramatically successful leaders of the oil industry, J.P. Gallagher. At Gallagher's Dome Petroleum, Strong occupied several key roles including Vice President of Finance.

In the 1950s he took over a small natural gas company, Ajax Petroleums, and built it into what became one of the leading companies in the industry, Norcen Resources. This attracted the attention of one of Canada’s principal investment corporations with extensive interests in the energy and utility businesses, Power Corporation of Canada. It appointed him initially as its Executive Vice President and then President from 1961 until 1966.

In 1976, at the request of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Strong returned to Canada to head the newly created national oil company, Petro-Canada[1]. He then became Chairman of the Canada Development Investment Corporation, the holding company for some of Canada’s principal government-owned corporations.

[edit] American Water Development
As Chairman of AZL Resources Incorporated and American Water Development Incorporated, Strong instituted a program to pump underground water and send it to the suburban Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo. Townspeople of nearby Crestone, Colorado created a grass-roots movement against the business project. The project was opposed by the Colorado Division of Wildlife and National Park Service, both claiming it would cause significant environmental damages to nearby wetland and sand dune ecosystems. After a lengthy trial, Colorado courts ruled against AWDI and required payment of the objectors' legal fees, $3.1 million.[2] Afterwards, Strong was quoted as saying, "My interest in the water went beyond it being a good business. I saw development of the water as an exceptional opportunity to apply my sustainable-development principles on a real-life scale."[3] When his partners opted for an alternative plan to export the water from the valley, Strong donated his interest to charity (the Fetzer foundation).[3]

[edit] United Nations work

Strong first met with a leading UN official in 1947 who arranged for him to have a temporary low-level appointment, to serve as a junior security officer at the UN headquarters in Lake Success, New York.

[edit] Stockholm Conference

UNEP logo.In 1971, Strong commissioned a report on the state of the planet, entitled “Only One Earth: The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet” [4] and co-authored by Barbara Ward and Rene Dubos. The report summarized the findings of 152 leading experts from 58 countries in preparation for the first UN meeting on the environment, held in Stockholm in 1972. This was the world's first "state of the environment" report.

The Stockholm Conference established the environment as part of an international development agenda. It led to the establishment by the UN General Assembly in December 1972 of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, and the election of Strong to head it. UNEP was the first UN agency to be headquartered in the third world.[5] As head of UNEP, Strong convened the first international expert group meeting on climate change.[6]

Maurice Strong was one of the commissioners of the World Commission on Environment and Development, set up as an independent body by the United Nations in 1983.

[edit] Earth Summit
His role in leading the UN’s famine relief program in Africa was the first in a series of UN advisory assignments, including reform and his appointment as Secretary-General of the UN Conference on Environment and Development—best known as the Earth Summit.[7][8]

After the Earth Summit, Strong continued to take a leading role in implementing the results of agreements at the Earth Summit through establishment of the Earth Council, the Earth Charter movement, his Chairmanship of the World Resources Institute, Membership on the Board of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, the Stockholm Environment Institute, The Africa-America Institute, the Institute of Ecology in Indonesia, the Beijer Institute of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and others. Strong was a longtime Foundation Director of the World Economic Forum, a Senior Advisor to the President of the World Bank, a Member of the International Advisory of Toyota Motor Corporation, the Advisory Council for the Center for International Development of Harvard University, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the World Conservation Union (IUCN), the World Wildlife Fund, Resources for the Future, and the Eisenhower Fellowships. His public service activities were carried out on a pro bono basis made possible by his business activities, which included Chairman of the International Advisory Group of CH2M Hill, Strovest Holdings Inc., Technology Development Inc., Zenon Environmental Inc., and most recently, Cosmos International, and the China Carbon Corporation.

Strong lobbied to change NGO perspectives on World Bank.[9]

In 1999, at the request of then UN Secretary-General, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, he took on the task of trying to restore the viability of the University for Peace, headquartered in Costa Rica, established under authorization of the UN General Assembly.[10] The UN’s reputation was at risk as the organization had been subjected to severe mismanagement, misappropriation of funds and inoperative governance. As Chairman of its governing body, the Council, and initially as Rector, Strong led the process of revitalizing the University for Peace and helped to rebuild its programs and leadership. He retired from the Council in the spring of 2007.

From 2003 and 2005, Strong served as the personal envoy UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to lead support for the international response to the humanitarian and development needs of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.[11]

[edit] 2005 Oil-for-Food scandal and hiring practice criticisms
In 2005, during investigations into the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food Programme, evidence procured by federal investigators and the U.N.-authorized inquiry of Paul Volcker showed that in 1997, while working for Annan, Strong had endorsed a check for $988,885, made out to "Mr. M. Strong," issued by a Jordanian bank. It was reported that the 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 Hussein. Mr. Strong was never accused of any wrongdoing.[12] During the inquiry, Strong stepped down from his U.N. post, stating that he would "sideline himself until the cloud was removed". Strong now lives in Beijing.[12]

Strong was the UN's envoy to North Korea until July 2005. According to Associated Press his contract was not renewed "amid questions about his connection to a suspect in the UN oil-for-food scandal", Tongsun Park, as well as due to criticism that he gave his stepdaughter a job at the UN contrary to UN staff regulations against hiring immediate family.[13]

[edit] UN Secretary General's tribute
Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, near the end of his term, paid the following tribute to Maurice Strong:

“ Looking back on our time together, we have shared many trials and tribulations and I am grateful that I had the benefit of your global vision and wise counsel on many critical issues, not least the delicate question of the Korean Peninsula and China’s changing role in the world. Your unwavering commitment to the environment, multilateralism and peaceful resolution of conflicts is especially appreciated. ”

[edit] Honors and Awards
Maurice Strong has received a number of honors, awards and medals. He has received 53 honorary doctorate degrees and honorary visiting professorships at 7 universities.

Among the honors and awards:

2005: He was Awarded the Order of Manitoba the Highest Award in the Province of Manitoba.
2003: Public Welfare Medal from the US National Academy of Sciences: First Non-US Citizen to receive the medal Retrieved on December 27, 2007
2002: Carriage House Center on Global Issues: Candlelight Award Retrieved on December 27, 2007
1999: Companion of the Order of Canada Retrieved on December 27, 2007
1998 he was given the Order of the Southern Cross by the Government of Brazil [1]
1996: Swedish Royal Order of the Polar Star Retrieved on December 27, 2007
1995: IKEA Environmental Award Retrieved on December 27, 2007
1994: Asahi Glass Foundation Award: Blue Planet Prize Retrieved on December 27, 2007
1994: Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding Retrieved on December 27, 2007
1993: International St. Francis Prize for the Environment
1993: Alexander Onassis Delphi Prize Retrieved on December 27, 2007
1997: Henri Pittier Order of Venezuela
1989: Pearson Peace Medal Pearson Medal of Peace Recipients Retrieved on December 27, 2007
1981: Charles A. Lindbergh Award Retrieved on December 27, 2007
1976: he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and was promoted to Companion in 2000.
1975: National Audubon Society Award Retrieved on December 27, 2007
1974: Tyler Evironmental Prize Retrieved on December 27, 2007
Other honors and awards include:

The Brazilian National Order of the Southern Cross
Commander of the Order of the Golden Ark (Netherlands)
International Saint Francis Prize, Fellow
The Royal Society (UK) Retrieved on December 27, 2007
Royal Society of Canada Retrieved on December 27, 2007
Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Retrieved on December 27, 2007
Honorary Board Member, David Suzuki Foundation Retrieved on January 13, 2008
Distinguished Fellow, International Institute for Sustainable Development Retrieved on January 13, 2008
John Ralston Saul dedicated his polemic Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason In The West to Strong.
[edit] References and notes
1.^ "Maurice F. Strong Is First Non-U.S. Citizen To Receive Public Welfare Medal, Academy's Highest Honor". National Academy of Sciences. http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=12032003. Retrieved 2008-01-20.
2.^ "Rural area beats back water diversion plan" article by Barry Noreen, High Country News May 30, 1994
3.^ a b Where on Earth Are We Going?. April 23, 2001. Texere.ISBN 158799092X: On AWDI, page 169: "My interest in the water went beyond it being a good business. I saw development of the water as an exceptional opportunity to apply my sustainable-development principles on a real-life scale." page 170: "Initially my partners had all given at least passive support to my plans for the project, which I had insisted from inception to be an example of environmental and socially responsible development." page 171: "I donated my interest to the Fetzer Foundation."
4.^ Ward Barbara Dubos Rene. Only One Earth. May 25, 1972. Andre Deutsch Ltd.ISBN 0233963081
5.^ http://www.unep.org Website of the United Nations Environment Programme
6.^ "A super agency?". Globe and Mail. Link to Article (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/Page/document/v5/content/subscribe?user_URL=http://www.theglobeandmail.com%2Fservlet%2Fstory%2FRTGAM. 20070307.wcoclimate07%2FBNStory%2FClimateChange%2F&ord=4762007&brand=theglobeandmail&force_login=true.) Retrieved 2008-01-14. Member account login required to access full article.
7.^ Report of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio, 1992
8.^ Tribute Special Supplement: On the Road to Rio. (1991). World Media Institute, Ottawa, Canada
9.^ http://www.mauricestrong.net/2008072115/strong-biography.html
10.^ "University of Peace Makes New Appointments and Agrees on Major Expansion". Science Blog. http://www.scienceblog.com/community/older/archives/L/2000/B/un001921.html. Retrieved 2008-01-05.
11.^ "UN urges North Korea-US talks". London: British Broadcasting Corporation. April 4, 2003. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/2916473.stm. Retrieved 2008-01-05.
12.^ a b "Maurice Strong: The U.N.'s Man of Mystery - WSJ.com". online.wsj.com. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122368007369524679.html. Retrieved 2010-03-16.
13.^ The Globe and Mail
[edit] External links
Official website of Maurice Strong
United Nations University for Peace
Is a threat to US sovereignty

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Strong"
Categories: 1929 births | Canadian businesspeople | Canadian environmentalists | Companions of the Order of Canada | United Nations Environment Programme | Living people | Members of the Order of Manitoba | Members of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada | Members of the United Church of Canada | People from Westman Region, Manitoba | Power Corporation of Canada | United Nations officials


EDIT: Replaced long link with named link to prevent horizontal scrolling. -Gaillo

[mick silver]

is this the man who is behind every thing that is happening . the more i read and see about him i just dont know . i would like to know is he controll by someone else are is he the leader of the NWO

[mick silver]

List of members of the Order of Manitoba ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Order_of_Manitoba

[mick silver]

THIS IS THE PART THAT MAKE ME THINK HARD AND LONG ABOUT THIS GUY .... Maurice F. Strong, PC, CC, OM, FRSC (born April 29, 1929) is a Canadian businessman. He is an entrepreneur, environmentalist, and one of the world’s leading proponents of the United Nations's involvement in world affairs and a strong proponent of "New World Order". A one world government with an objective of the redistribution of wealth from the industrious and hard working people of one nation, to the non-working or non-educated people of corrupt and dependent nations

[mick silver]

Stockholm Conference

UNEP logo.In 1971, Strong commissioned a report on the state of the planet, entitled “Only One Earth: The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet” [4] and co-authored by Barbara Ward and Rene Dubos. The report summarized the findings of 152 leading experts from 58 countries in preparation for the first UN meeting on the environment, held in Stockholm in 1972. This was the world's first "state of the environment" report.

The Stockholm Conference established the environment as part of an international development agenda. It led to the establishment by the UN General Assembly in December 1972 of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, and the election of Strong to head it. UNEP was the first UN agency to be headquartered in the third world.[5] As head of UNEP, Strong convened the first international expert group meeting on climate change.[6]

Maurice Strong was one of the commissioners of the World Commission on Environment and Development, set up as an independent body by the United Nations in 1983

[TPTB]

Great thread, mick...

The idea of a Global Commons got me thinking that perhaps what we might soon need are "Quantum Commons." :) You know, physicists have discovered a veritable wilderness of empty space, or dark matter between every atom in the universe, and no one is currently governing it. No one is charging fee's for it's use.

As far as I know, no one has even laid a claim on it. WTF man... Imagine being the sole owner of all the dark matter real estate in the Universe.

You can own all the stuff, but I'll just charge you a small fee for a place to put it. :D

[mick silver]

Manitoba ................ http://www.gov.mb.ca/index.html

[mick silver]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRlcnwoKiEw&feature=related

[mick silver]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YCatox0Lxo&NR=1

[mick silver]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu_XGuP_LY8&feature=related

[mick silver]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5rf6NTVHMU&feature=related

[mick silver]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm4h-f6nRDY&feature=related

[mick silver]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AeLR3Az3Ns&feature=related

[mick silver]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XueBqv_dpM&feature=related

[mick silver]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8OiDUtC2nA&feature=related

[mick silver]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih1UPeEK9Ig&feature=related

[mick silver]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm54OTiTR6E&feature=related

[mick silver]

back up ... i see no one know who he is are care to talk about him

[Dirty Harry]

Missed this one...from 2008. Chilling...


http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/6485

United Nations and its carefully managed One World Order

The new world devised by Maurice Strong and George Soros
By Judi McLeod Monday, November 24, 2008

Have you ever wondered how capitalism was pushed over the edge of the cliff just six weeks before the American presidential election?

According to financial experts, the world, as we know it will change dramatically by the year 2012. People, who provided for their families only three years ago, will be desperately searching for food.

The story of the economic meltdown of 2008 begins and ends with the United Nations and its carefully managed One World Order.



Behind the curtain of this dark chapter in human misery are ogres Maurice Strong and George Soros.

It is both power lust and an all-consuming hatred of the United States of America that elevated this deadly duo to ogre status.

Fortunately for all of those searching for answers, much of their plan for the world, post November 4, 2008 is already mapped out in writing.

Leading economic experts and Strong agree that in 2012 people will be going hungry.

“Strong has worked diligently and effectively to bring his ideas to fruition, He is now in a position to implement them.” (Henry Lamb, The Rise of Global Governance, available at soverignty.net). “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.”

These chilling words are in line with ones he used for 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.”

The only change that has happened since 1992 is that Strong and Soros now have their Agent of Change coming to the White House.

In other words, the world according to Maurice Strong, is unfolding as it should.

In an era ridden by bankruptcies and job loss, Zombie-like cultists will swarm Washington, D.C. for the January 20, 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama.

Voluntary acceptance of global governance is the preferred means of achieving a takeover of America without a single shot having been fired.

“Education programs to teach the “global ethic” have been underway by UNESCO and by UNEP for more than twenty years.” (Page 90, The Rise of Global Governance). “That the U.S. government, through its representatives to the various U.N. agencies, has not already crushed this global governance agenda is s testament to the effectiveness of the U.N.’s education program.”

Back to how to how ogres Strong and Soros, along with others, were able to hijack a world economy.

“A new Economic Security Council (ESC) would replace the existing Economic and Social Council. The new ESC would consist of no more than 23 members who would have responsibility for all international financial and development activities. The IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO—virtually all finance and development activities—would be under the authority of this body. There would be no veto power by any nation. (Italics CFP’s). Nor would there be permanent member status for any nation.”

Bloggers and website owners may recall how the Ohama campaign team seemed to have thousands of volunteers available with G-Mail accounts to send out a barrage of nasty letters any time a blog or website asked too many questions or dared to criticize “The Messiah”.

In a post January 20 world, it seems that Obama will develop his activist base from within the White House.

But in Maurice Strong’s New World, NGOs will flag the new order about truth tellers: “The Commission (on Global Governance) believes that the U.N. should protect the “security of the people” inside the borders of sovereign nations, with or without the invitation of the national government. It proposes the expansion of an NGO “early warning” network to function through the Petitions Council to alert the U.N. to possible action.” (Italics CFP’s).

Maurice Strong has had a longtime 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.

Small wonder that Strong spends his time far away in Communist China these days.

But there is a silver lining to be found even with the darkest of storm clouds over America and something for Americans to contemplate over the upcoming holidays.

In spite of the hype coming out of the Office of the President-elect, Obama is merely a fop for the global elite. He is their, and not the people’s true agent of change.

The January 20 inauguration with its promise of 5 million observers in Washington, D.C. will be the extravaganza of a lifetime, deepening recession notwithstanding.

It is Obama’s job to demoralize the 58 million people who did not buy into his campaign and for all of those who do not want One World Order.

Starring among all the glitterati at the Inauguration Ball, Barack and Michelle are like the stick figures from a kindergartener’s drawing, for this is an emperor who truly has no clothes.

[FreeEnergy]

This is wicked:



Rothschild, Rockefeller, Maurice Strong, Al Gore, Goldman Sachs, Mayor Daley, William Ayers, Saul Alinsky, Saudi Arabia, China and the United Nations equals Barak Obama.

When we look at what has happened to the American dream, the American Constitution, the American economy in the past 12 months, it seems that there is a deliberate plan to completely destroy the entire American way of life and even the country as we know it.

When you look at the national debt, the bail outs of the banks, the fake stimulus bill, the health care bill, the coming cap and trade, the loss of jobs at the same time government workers have increased wages by 100% and more, and the exposed lies about Global Warming and Obama’s birth and mother, we can only conclude it is a master plan to destroy America.

But I have had a problem finding out who is behind all these obvious changes, which are against the will of the people. In order to trace “why” and “father” of these problems, I have had to go back 50 years and found the organization and man behind all this and the front man behind Barak Obama.

His name is Maurice Strong, born in Canada, lived in New York, and now exiled in China, but still the power behind Obama and the liberal House and Senate of America. To start to understand this man and his influence read his statement below to a group of reporters.

“In order to save the planet, the group (GIM) 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 (GIM) forms a secret society to bring about an economic collapse.”

Maurice Strong – regarding Generation Investment Management LLP

George Soros and his Canadian sidekick, Kyoto architect Maurice Strong, are the brains behind the likes of Al Gore, Mikhail Gorbachev and Barak Obama, all who belong to the above and the “Chicago Climate Exchange” which will make billions on climate change.

continued at:

http://whitelocust.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/who-is-maurice-strong/

[I am me, I am free]

Secretary Generals come and go at the UN, yet Mo Strong remains (at the top at the UN). What does that tell you?

[mick silver]

i see him as a very powerful man .. it look like he maybe a leader of the world order

[I am me, I am free]

i see him as a very powerful man .. it look like he maybe a leader of the world order


"Maybe"???

After all the info you posted you still have doubts???

[mick silver]

they all have cover men . that why i ask have you hears of this man because most have never hears of him ... does he work for him self are does he have a boss ... i know he has powerful friends . but who are the people we dont see

[Shami-Amourae]

Glenn Beck has been asking viewers to send any information on Strong to his people so they can expose this asshole. No seriously.

becktips@foxnews.com

@16 minutes:
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/40600/

BTW please don't smite me for promoting Beck. I think this is very important if Beck exposes Strong like he did Van Jones.

[TPTB]

I keep telling everyone it's the damn Canadians... but no one ever listens to me. :D

[hoarder]

Glenn Beck has been asking viewers to send any information on Strong to his people so they can expose this asshole. No seriously.

becktips@foxnews.com

@16 minutes:
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/40600/

BTW please don't smite me for promoting Beck. I think this is very important if Beck exposes Strong like he did Van Jones.
What is very important is not that Beck "exposes" Strong, but what he does not expose about Strong. Beck is a void filler.

[hoarder]

Secretary Generals come and go at the UN, yet Mo Strong remains (at the top at the UN). What does that tell you?
Yes, kind of like Fed Chairmen.

One of my relatives worked for the UN for almost 20 years. As I see it, the UN is about 92% left-leaning overpaid useful idiots and 8% Khazars there as sheperds to make sure the idiots stay useful.

[mick silver]

a guy i know told me there a vid of the man saying he want to lead the world .. i hope he mail it to then i will post it

[mtnman]

If you'd watch Glen Beck you'd know who Maurice Strong is. Mr Beck has been outing M Strong on his show last week.

[Terry853]

I keep telling everyone it's the damn Canadians... but no one ever listens to me. :D
As a Canuck that gave me the best laugh I have had in awhile..Tho I gotta say thanks to Mick.. it sure does make you think. When you look at what is happening in the gulf and the agenda of the Dems..

[hoarder]

If you'd watch Glen Beck you'd know who Maurice Strong is. Mr Beck has been outing M Strong on his show last week.
Let me guess, Beck has been "outing" Strong as a "liberal commie" or something like that. ;)

[mtnman]

If you'd watch Glen Beck you'd know who Maurice Strong is. Mr Beck has been outing M Strong on his show last week.
Let me guess, Beck has been "outing" Strong as a "liberal commie" or something like that. ;)


No need for guessing, just watch and see.

[Horn]

I keep telling everyone it's the damn Canadians... but no one ever listens to me. :D


Where the British Imperial bloodlines ended up after tormenting the U.S. for the better part of a century.

[hoarder]

No need for guessing, just watch and see.
Hoarder does not watch teevee anymore. ;D

[mtnman]

No need for guessing, just watch and see.
Hoarder does not watch teevee anymore. ;D

Then you don't have a dog in this fight so butt out.

[hoarder]

Then you don't have a dog in this fight so butt out.
ANYONE who gets any substantial air time on teevee playing the left vs. right BS paradigm is controlled opposition, especially Glen Beckstienbergwitz.
Do yourself a favor and throw away your teevee.

[TPTB]

I keep telling everyone it's the damn Canadians... but no one ever listens to me. :D
As a Canuck that gave me the best laugh I have had in awhile..Tho I gotta say thanks to Mick.. it sure does make you think. When you look at what is happening in the gulf and the agenda of the Dems..



I gave you your very first applause, Terry, but don't think it's because I like you...

I merely think it wise to keep my enemies close. :)

[mick silver]

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