The weirdest thing about
John Kerry's
weekend speech on climate-change—other than the fact that this is
the same guy who in 1997 voted to forbid the U.S. from signing the
Kyoto Protocol—is that it begins by quoting something
Maurice Strong
said at the U.N.'s 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro: "Every
bit of evidence I've seen persuades me that we are on a course leading
to tragedy."
Mr.
Strong, a former oil executive from Canada (he was
Pierre Trudeau's
pick to run state-owned Petro-Canada in the mid-1970s), was for
many years the U.N.'s ultimate mandarin. He organized many of its
environmental mega-confabs, including the 1972 Stockholm Conference and
the 1992 Rio summit, before rising to become
Kofi Annan's
right-hand man. At various times Mr. Strong has served as
director at the World Economic Forum, chairman of the Earth Council and
the World Resources Institute, vice chairman of the Chicago Climate
Exchange and chairman of the China Carbon Corporation, to name just a
few of his many prominent affiliations.
In
2005 it emerged that Mr. Strong, who was the chairman of the U.N. panel
that created the Office of the Iraq Program, had accepted a check for
close to $1 million from a South Korean businessman named Tongsun Park,
who in the 1970s had been involved in an effort to bribe U.S.
politicians. Mr. Strong claimed that the check, from a Jordanian bank,
was meant as an investment in a family company that later went bankrupt.
Mr. Park (who also sublet office space from Mr. Strong) later went to
prison for trying to bribe U.N. officials overseeing the Oil-for-Food
program that was propping up
Saddam Hussein's
regime in Iraq. Mr. Strong was accused of no wrongdoing and has
denied involvement in Oil-for-Food. He left the U.N. that year and moved
to Beijing.
Draw your own conclusions. Ask yourself: Is this a guy who deserves a shout-out from the U.S. Secretary of State?
When John Kerry
speaks, people wonder: Is he seriously clever or totally oblivious?
Profound or void? Detective Columbo or Chance the gardener?
(Click link below to read more) READ MORE Sphere: Related Content
No comments:
Post a Comment