The Prince of Power [Maurice Strong]

[Quibus_Licet]

The prince of power

Peter Foster
Financial Post

May 19, 2005


Anybody suggesting that there is a vast left-wing conspiracy centred
in the United Nations is usually written off as a right-wing crackpot.
Most people are prepared to believe that the UN is corrupt and
incompetent, but spare us all that stuff about black helicopters.

However, according to David Henderson, former chief economist for the
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the dangerous
collectivist tides currently sloshing through both governments and
executive suites have their origins down at Turtle Bay. Mr. Henderson
is correct, but his story is Hamlet without the prince.

According to Mr. Henderson, the great psycho-wave of the past 35 years
is "global salvationism." This quasi-religious belief has two ill-
fitting articles of faith: environmental alarmism, and the assertion
that Third World poverty is in some way due to the West taking more
than its fair share of global resources. Both problems are alleged to
require top-down global political solutions, including giant
corporations accepting more "social responsibility."

The focus of this global master-plan is the bland but subversive
notion of "sustainable development," that without extensive UN-
administered government controls the world is going to Hades in a
handbasket, due to man-made global warming, species extinction,
resource depletion, pandemics, obesity. You name it.

Mr. Henderson has laid out his concerns in an excellent recent book,
The Role of Business in the Modern World, and in a series of recent
speeches (see excerpt at right). However, what Mr. Henderson’s plot
lacks is a central character. Whom should it be? None other than
Canada’s own Maurice Strong, the world’s best-connected doomster and
inveterate promoter of a more powerful UN (which is, admittedly,
something of a tough sell at the moment).

Mr. Strong has recently been in the news in connection with the oil-
for-food scandal and for having employed his stepdaughter, against the
rules, in a UN position. It seems extremely unlikely that Mr. Strong
will be found to have been involved with illicit Iraqi oil, despite
his business dealings with alleged Korean Saddamite Tongsun Park.
There is a widespread misconception among those aware -- and
suspicious -- of Mr. Strong that his public-service persona is somehow
a cover for making money. Quite the reverse. Mr. Strong’s top priority
has always been his self-professed socialist political agenda.

Mr. Henderson admits that he himself should have been more aware of
the threat presented by the 1992 Rio Conference, which spawned Kyoto.
But he notes that the global salvationist movement goes back to the
early 1970s, and in particular to the UN conference in Stockholm in
1972. It is hardly coincidence that Mr. Strong happened to be the
guiding light and chairman of both conferences. Mr. Henderson notes
that the foundation of the United Nations Environment Program, UNEP,
was a "landmark." Guess who created UNEP. Again, sustainable
development emerged from the 1987 Brundtland commission, one of whose
self-described "eminent persons" was Mr. Strong.

Mr. Henderson notes that the Rio conference was a major victory for
the forces of global salvationism. What made it so important was the
alleged new threat of anthropogenic global warming, which got the
attention of governments, plus the fact that Rio’s powers-that-be
allowed activist NGOs into the proceedings. Who let in the NGOs? Who
has tirelessly worked to funnel government money their way? One
guess.

Meanwhile, Mr. Henderson notes that organizations such as the World
Economic Forum and the World Business Council on Sustainable
Development have been crucial in sucking the corporate sector into the
salvationist movement. Mr. Strong has been a seminal figure in
promoting both groups of "useful idiots."

Mr. Henderson notes that the UN International Panel on Climate Change,
IPCC, is far from independent. Why? Because one of its institutional
parents is the Strong-created UNEP. (Mr. Henderson has personal
experience of the kind of rough treatment dealt out to naysayers. He
has produced damning criticism of the IPCC’s economic assumptions, but
has been insulted and dismissed for his pains.)

The trends described by Mr. Henderson have their ultimate roots in an
almost universal failure to appreciate the strength and complexity of
markets, combined with an elitist power lust -- wrapped up in
moralistic posturing -- that seeks to exploit such ignorance. These
are compounded by a tendency to conform with "conventional wisdom,"
particularly when it is promoted by governments, CEOs, NGOs and the
UN.

It would be simplistic to suggest that Mr. Strong is the intellectual
Svengali behind the whole current catastrophist/global-
redistributionist agenda. However, he has played a key role in
promoting it. His unique skills lie in his organizing ability and his
acute political antennae, which have always guided him towards the
strategies necessary to keep his ideological dream alive. Mr. Strong
has always wanted to save the world. Mr. Henderson points out why
global salvationism is such a bad idea.

© National Post 2005

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