Microscoping Maurice Strong
by Judi McLeod
Saturday, April 23, 2005
Canadian businessman and UN envoy Maurice Strong is one weird dude.
Weird in his sidekicks. Mikhail Gorbachev, for one. The former Soviet leader and the Canuck really believe they can replace the Ten Commandments with their overstated Earth Charter,
Weird in his handpicked protégés. Try Canada’s Prime Minister Paul Martin, the career politician whose one and only trip to the election polls as Canadian PM reduced the powerful Liberal Party to minority status. This, after assuming the mantle left by the departure of Jean Chrétien in pomp and splendour Indian smudging ceremonies, addressed by Irish rock star, Bono. Martin’s surrealistic ascension to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) had such an emotional impact on Strong that he wept.
Strong actually teared up at the mention of Martin in the PMO on Canada’s state-controlled television network, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), which ran a special, called the Life and Times of Maurice Strong just three months after Martin’s December 12, 2003 swearing-in ceremony. In the special, CBC reporter Ann-Marie McDonald gushed about how Strong was a special guest in the still Gorbachev controlled Kremlin and how he came away with a saber-shaped bottle of brandy from Joseph Stalin’s special stock.
McDonald went on to describe Strong as “a cross between Rasputin and Machiavelli”, “the Michelangelo of networking” and an “international traveling salesman with buts of paper in his pocket”.
In spite of all of these monikers, Strong, McDonald said, “refuses to be pigeon holed”.
You can call it weird from whence Strong came in the world of business. He was spawned by the Montreal-based Power Corporation, whose CEO Paul Desmarais is a key figure in BNP Paribas, Saddam Hussein’s favourite bank and part of the oil-for-food investigation.
Martin, who was hired by Strong, got his start in business from the same source, and because of it ended up as the owner of Canada Steamship Lines. While Strong, now Martin’s senior advisor in the House of Commons is Martin’s long time mentor, the duo is so close that the men are, in some speculative quarters, alleged but unproven half brothers.
Strong is weird in the kind of advisors from whom he says he takes his counsel. For example, “Koreagate Man” Tongsun Park, with whom he admits he has continued to maintain a relationship, and who Strong said in a written statement, advised him on “North Korean issues in my role as a U.N. envoy.” In other words, Strong was taking advice from a man the U.S. Attorney’s Office is looking to arrest for allegedly accepting millions of dollars from the Iraqi government while operating in the U.S. as an unregistered agent for Baghdad.
You’d think “the Michelangelo of networking” could do better for himself than that.
Strong is weird in the kind of international assignments he lands. What really qualifies him to conduct UN reform? Precisely what credentials does Strong really have to be dispatched by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to global hot spots like North Korea, and what is he doing when he’s in China?
It is weird that Strong advocates for world depopulation schemes; tells the unwashed masses that both refrigeration and air conditioning are going to wipe out Mother Earth. It’s weird that as a practicing New Ager, Strong dabbles in the occult. Weird is that he didn’t know one of the largest American aquifers was sitting right under the 100,000-acre Baca Ranch in Colorado, he ran as a New Age Mecca with his wife Hanne, and that he came to acquire the property through Saudi arms dealer Adnan Koshoggi.
Weirdest of all is the spin that comes with the Maurice Strong package. The kind of spin about Strong that comes from Nicholas Sonntag, a Canadian who heads up the Beijing office of CH2M Hill, one of the world’s leading environment companies. Sonntag has said of Strong’s business in China: “They (China) are taking a big risk. They’re determined to be the economic engine of the world. This is why Maurice is here—to help them think things through.”
Why would an entire country rely on one man to “help them think things through”?
It’s a kind of spin that only the pros at Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor could stop. It shouldn’t matter that Strong is a Canadian spinmeister when it was the Rockefeller family that gained him entree to the United Nations.
Now that a link has been proven between Strong and Park, watch for senior UN officials to begin distancing themselves from “the man with the rolodex to die for”.
We can only hope that the mainline media does not forget that Kofi and Mo are the Frick and Frack of the fairytale world in Manhattan. Back in 1997, Maurice Strong’s UN offices were within spitting distance, just down the hall from those of Kofi Annan’s.
Even now, spin-doctor Annan is blaming everything but the UN for the oil-for-food scandal. Annan was only yesterday holding up the “He’s Innocent!” placard, and complimenting Strong just for cooperating with the independent probe panel investing oil-for-food.
What choice does Strong have but to cooperate with the probe? He may be Envoy God to Annan, but not to serious investigators.
Even in Canada where he’s senior advisor to the prime minister, average Canadians know little about Strong, who is remembered most for trying to use their tax dollars to purchase a Costa Rican rain forest when he was running Ontario Hydro.
Strong is out there alright, but somewhere in all the either and the fog.
In the end it could have been the weirdness of Maurice Strong as described by those media outlets Strong catalogued as believing in black helicopter conspiracies that inadvertently kept him covered in a fog.
It’s time for Maurice Strong to be dragged in out of the fog and examined close up if only to ascertain who and what he really is.
MAURICE STRONG — HILLARY AND FACTION TWO
Posted By: ZARATHUSTRA
Date: Monday, 16-Apr-2001 17:21:29
In Response To: CUSTODIAN OF THE PLANET — MAURICE STRONG (ZARATHUSTRA) I found this in the RuMills Archives. One of my email buddies suggested I take some time and wander through the archives on this webpage. He was right. They ARE a treasure trove!!
(Begin Clipped
- mostly about Hillary and Bill
End Clipped)
As you read the following, remember that Bill and Hillary Clinton have
been groomed by the same people who shaped and molded the thoughts of
Maurice Strong. Most of the beliefs that Strong professes are also held by
Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as Al Gore. But these views are not just
held by Democrats. Many Republicans hold similar beliefs. The
following gives a brief overview of what these beliefs are:
The Center for Public Policy Research continues its analysis of Maurice
Strong by saying; “...placing Strong in charge of U.N. reform could pose a
significant threat to the American way of life as Strong has used his
position to centralize power in the U.N. at the expense of national
sovereignty.
In the early 1970s, U.N. Secretary General U Thant tapped Strong to
organize and direct the Stockholm Conference on the Human
Environment. The conference came to be known as the first Earth
Summit. In the following year, Strong became the first director of the
U.N. Environment Program. These two U.N. positions marked the
beginning of Strong’s methodical march toward global governance.
Strong’s most significant role at the U.N. to-date has been his position as
Secretary General of the 1992 U.N. Conference on the Environment and
Development, the Rio Earth Summit.
In the opening session of the Rio Earth Summit, Strong commented: “The
concept of national sovereignty has been an immutable, indeed sacred,
principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only
slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental
cooperation. It is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised
unilaterally by individual nation states, however powerful. The global
community must be assured of environmental security.”
Interestingly, Strong had initially been blocked from participating in the
conference by the U.S. Department of State. When Strong learned of this,
however, he persuaded then-President George Bush to overrule the State
Department.
Strong is also involved in the U.N. Education Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO). Through his work in UNESCO, Strong
promotes Gaia, the Earth God(dess), among the world’s youth. Strong is
also the director of The Temple of Understanding in New York. He uses
The Temple to encourage Americans concerned about the environment to
replace Christianity with the worship of “mother earth.”
Strong also directs the U.N.’s Business Council on Sustainable
Development. Under his leadership, the council tries to affect peoples’
lives through U.N. policies that attempt to reduce the availability of meat
products; limit the use of home and workplace air conditioners;
discourage private ownership of motor vehicles; encroach on private
property rights; and work to reduce the number of single family homes.
Selected Strong Quotes
Strong on national sovereignty at the opening session of the 1992
Earth Summit...
“The concept of national sovereignty has been an immutable, indeed
sacred, principle of international relations. It is a principle which will
yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global
environmental cooperation. It is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be
exercised unilaterally by individual nation states, however powerful. The
global community must be assured of environmental security.” -Maurice
Strong at the 1992 Earth Summit.
Strong responding to a question by a reporter asking why he gave
large donations to both political parties in the United States during the
1988 election cycle...
“Because I wanted influence in the United States.” -Maurice Strong
quoted in Saturday Night magazine.
Strong on the impending global environmental catastrophe...
“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.” -Maurice Strong quoted in the September 1, 1997
edition of National Review magazine.
Strong discussing the role the Earth Summit would play in the
emerging system of global governance...
“[The Earth Summit will play an important role in] reforming and
strengthening the United Nations as the centerpiece of the emerging
system of democratic global governance.” -Maurice Strong quoted in the
September 1, 1997 edition of National Review magazine.
Strong discussing his political inclinations...
“[I am] a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology.” -Maurice
Strong as quoted in Macleans.