by Judi McLeod
September 22, 2004
Like his mentor Maurice Strong, Martin’s pet project is to revamp the UN to make it more effective. Revamping the UN is a job assigned to Strong at the formal request of UN Secretary General Kofi annan. Kyoto architect Strong, who chaired the 1992 Rio conference on global warming, is the man annan most trusted to get the job done.
Martin, once Strong’s personal assistant at the Montreal-based Power Corporation, brought Strong into his Ottawa office after being sworn in as Prime Minister last December.
Martin, who went on to co-chair a UN commission probing how the Group of Eight countries can help small businesses in developing countries, promised the world body last March that Canada would take a leading role in developing a brokerage system to help finance, lend information and provide markets to business in poor countries.
In the Old Boys’ Network running the UN, nepotism is not only alive and kicking; double-dealing is becoming the norm.
Canada, for instance partners with France as a member of La Francophonie, a network of 56 States and Governments with French as a common language. In his UN address yesterday, French President Jacques Chirac called for the imposition of an international tax to help fight poverty. Chirac praised a report by a French working group proposing a global tax be levied on arms sales and some financial transactions.
Claiming the group’s proposal was one based on "technically realistic and economically rational solutions", Chirac lauded group members for attempting to push forward their plan with a goal of cutting in half the number of people in poverty on a timeline of 2015-- the same thing promised by the UN back in 2000.
Martin, Strong and Chirac are now all singing from the same hymnbook. Last year the test balloon on global tax was sent up at the G8 summit. Not only would G8 movers and shakers support the concept of a global tax on arms sales, at the suggestion of Chirac, they would include a tax on gun purchasers by individuals.
But isn’t France a big player in the arms trade industry?
Didn’t the U.S. State Department confirm intelligence indicating that the French had given support to Iraq’s military?
In his book Treachery, Bill Gertz, defense and national security reporter for the Washington Time, exposes the central figure in the (Iraq) weapons ties as French President Jacques Chirac. "His relationship with Saddam dates back to 1975, when as Prime Minister, the French politician rolled out the red carpet when the Iraqi strongman visited Paris.
"` `I welcome you as my personal friend,’" Chirac told Saddam, then vice president of Iraq.
"Frances’ corrupt dealings with Saddam flourished throughout the 1990s, despite the strict arms embargo against Iraq imposed by the UN after the Persian Gulf War.
"as of last year, Iraq owed France an estimated $4 billion for arms and infrastructure projects, according to French government estimates.
"U.S. officials thought that this massive debt was one reason why France opposed a military operation to oust Saddam."
Then there’s Maurice Strong who not only hobnobs with global bluebloods, but with dictators and despots too. after a business deal with arms dealer supremo adnan Khashoggi, Strong ended up as the happy owner of a 200,000-acre ranch in Colorado, part of which his wife, Hanne runs as a New age spiritual colony to the present day.
as George Orwell might have said, "Some arms sales are more important than others."
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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