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`Chairman Mo' trades North Korea for China

By Judi McLeod
Saturday, July 23, 2005

Toronto-- Now that the dust has settled over his last UN contract not being renewed, Canadian Maurice Strong seems to have traded in North Korea for China, his first love.

Dropped by the United Nations as its special envoy to North Korea, Strong is returning to the People's Republic of China to devote his time to environmental issues.

Indeed, Strong says his mission in North Korea, which the UN curtly announced it wouldn't be renewing for him last week, was something he had planned to give up anyway to make more time for China.

With a curious knack for turning setbacks into corporate appointments and honours, Strong is now a professor at the University of Beijing. Not bad for a former 14-year-old schoolboy dropout who only last week got his walking papers from the UN.

While saving the planet and reforming the UN, Strong has been China's biggest booster.

Long before China had a tentacle in every corner of the global village, Strong was boasting that the Red Dragon was fast on its way to replacing the United States of america as world economic leader.

In reaching that goal, China is so dependent on Kofi annan's main man that Nicholas Sonntag, a Canadian who heads up the Beijing office of CH2M Hill, one of the world's largest environmental companies, once said of Strong: "They (China) are taking a big risk. They're determined to be the economic engine of the world. That's why Maurice is here–to help them think things through."

For China, that's a fulfilled prophecy that seems to have originated with Maurice Strong and Canadian friends.

"Over the past decade the Liberal government has given one billion dollars to China in foreign aid and will give another $50-million this year as the communists continue their record military build-up," says Helen Guergis, Canada's Official Opposition Critic for International Cooperation. "Every dollar that Canada gives to China, no matter how well intended, is a dollar that the Chinese government can spend on its military, space program and propping up other corrupt and abusive regimes like North Korea or Zimbabwe."

China clearly does not need Canada's hard earned tax dollars, says Guergis. It has the world's largest army, the world's second largest economy, a space program and a nuclear weapons program.

Guergis also blasts Strong protégé, Prime Minister Paul Martin who "likes to spend his personal dollars in China but that's no reason for him to continue giving away the hard earned tax dollars of Canadians to a government that now holds almost one trillion dollars in currency reserves."

Much of the one billion Canada gave China originates with the Canadian International Development agency (CIDa), an organization once headed up by Strong.

When the media weighed in on his contract not being renewed as special envoy to North Korea, Strong made it clear that he didn't like the "inferences drawn" between himself and the UN oil-for-food scandal.

Lamenting that his reputation has been unfairly tarred by the media, the architect of the Earth Charter let it be known he was irritated and annoyed.

Meanwhile, Strong won't be missing his North Korea portfolio. He's too busy grooming China to replace the U.S. as a world economic leader.


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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