Prime Time Crime
(Prime Time Crime exclusive Dec. 13, 2005)
By Scott Newark
In the past decade or so, the UN has been 'involved' in two major operational projects, the Oil for Food (OFF) program and the Kyoto Protocol or Money for Smog (MFS) program as it might perhaps better be described. Thanks to various Congressional inquiries and top notch reporting from people like Claudia Rosett, it is now absolutely clear that the OFF program was designed from the outset to financially benefit an adversary of America, Saddam Hussein, and frustrate American global interests. It is equally clear that it was administratively operated by the UN as designed and that it knowingly permitted kickbacks to Saddam, funding of unapproved and suspect suppliers and massive institutional corruption of itself and its officials. It also only came to an end when the tanks of the US Marines rumbled into downtown Baghdad.
Consider the Kyoto Protocol which was negotiated as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) and the brainchild of long time UN mandarin, Maurice Strong or Chairman Mo as he’s known back home in Canada. Strong’s Kyoto Protocol will bind ratifying nations to a similar system, with emission “caps” being set for each nation. Under the proposed treaty, nations that emit less than their quota of greenhouse gases will be able to sell emissions credits to polluting nations. Can anyone guess who gets to set the quotas and, more importantly, monitor compliance to determine whether a fast billion or two is available to be made? You got it…..it was a tough competition but based on its exemplary program administration track record, the UN picked the UN to run Money for Smog.
One other odd little detail of Money for Smog. Even though the Program and its ‘we know best’ advocates speak in lofty terms like ‘global responsibility’ and ‘global conscience’, some countries are effectively exempted because of their ‘developing’ status. By remarkable co-incidence, one such country, China, also happens to be the country that is increasing its greenhouse gas pollution faster than anyone else on Earth. It is also a fully ‘developed’ totalitarian gangster state but apparently these were not issues considered by the Chablis and Canapé set when determining who got the benefits of reduced compliance.
Never one to miss out on an opportunity, China has launched the world’s most aggressive program to build coal fired power generating plants which are cheaper than oil but produce far more prohibited emissions. Importing massive amounts of coal lies at the heart of China’s future energy strategy. It seems the Chinese want to take advantage of their new UN created opportunity to pollute at will augmented by a global system where they can actually sell credits to countries governed by rules that don’t apply to them.
Some critics, such as President Bush, have suggested that not only are there better ways to reduce greenhouse gasses but that this is merely a brazen attempt at forcibly redistributing wealth from the United States to others including some others that are decidedly hostile to America and what it represents. Who but the UN could have envisaged and actually approved such a daft scheme. With the benefit of knowledge of the Oil for Food scam, it isn’t safe to assume daffiness alone and thus it would seem to be appropriate to dig a little deeper.
On its face, like the Oil for Food program, Money for Smog is designed to benefit China and frustrate American global economic interests. Are there any other similarities? How about the newly exposed OFF bribee, Maurice Strong, who is currently keeping a low profile in, quel coincidence...China.
Is it also just a co-incidence that Strong is a long time UN envoy to China with personal "business" interests in that country, including interests with the same nice Canadian folks at Power Corporation who ran the OFF bank BNP Paribas and who just happen to have direct business ties to the politicians who have run Canada for the last fifteen years? Strong, by the way, is the former CEO and President of Power Corporation where Canada’s current Prime Minister Paul Martin worked for him and until the recent UN scandal, a “Special Foreign Policy Advisor” to the same Paul Martin. There’s more. Strong and Power Corp. are jointly invested in the aptly named Asia Power Group which is constructing coal fired power plants in China.
No wonder Prime Minister Martin, whose family business (Canada Steamship Lines- an ex asset of Power Corporation) ships coal to China, took time off from his re-election campaign to drop into a Kyoto pep rally in Montreal last week. Notwithstanding the fact that non Kyoto America has reduced its growth in emissions twice as much as Kyoto champion Canada, Prime Minister Martin chastised America for not adhering to the ‘global conscience’ defined by Strong and his Money for Smog scheme. Strangely, a spot on the Conference Agenda opened up unexpectedly when Chairman Mo was a no show which, of course, was in no way related to the call by a Congressional Committee that he and BNP Paribas face independent investigation for their roles in the OFF scandal.
Hopefully the US Congressional Committees that performed so valuable a public service by exposing the OFF will turn their sights soon to the Money for Smog program including the actions and business interests of Maurice Strong and Power Corporation in China. This is one rock that needs to be lifted up in the worst way.
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