setting a goal that all middle school and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year and by developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free.

Right. I’m sure this is set in stone also.

The burning question on everyone’s mind, though, is what does he mean when he talks about his civilian national security force. Rahm Emanuel did a podcast a while back that might shed some light on the subject:

This is a whole new level of disturbing. Imagine what the left would be saying if Bush came up with a plan to force civilians into a program like this.

The group’s voter-registration fraud is rampant, and authorities plan a nationwide sweep of ACORN offices to collect records.

In Nevada, state officials say the fraudulent registrations included forms for the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team, including quarterback Tony Romo.

…

In North Carolina, where Obama has been running nonstop ads, ACORN has registered a record number of new voters, many of them suspicious. Statewide, Democrats are doing better than the GOP in new converts — even in traditionally Republican counties.

There have been 218,749 newly registered Democrats in North Carolina since January — more than five times the 38,337 new Republicans, state records show.

…

In Missouri, one ACORN registrant named Monica Rays showed up on no less than eight forms, all bearing the same signature.

Suspicious election officials sent letters to some 5,000 ACORN registrants in St. Louis, asking the letter recipients to contact them.

Fewer than 40 reponded.

In Kansas City, 15,000 registrations have been questioned, and last year four ACORN employees were indicted for fraud.

In addition, ACORN officials have also been indicted in Wisconsin and Colorado. Investigations against others are active in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

ACORN has also been registering convicted felons — including inmates — in Florida and other battleground states. ACORN boasts registering a record 1.5 million new voters so far this election.

They have been working overtime in Indianapolis, where 100% of the population is registered, plus another 5% cushion:

According to STATSIndiana, In 2007, Indianapolis/Marion County had an estimated population of 876,804. Of that number 232,607 were below 18 years of age, for a total of 644,197 people in Marion County/Indianapolis 18 or over and thus eligible to vote. (Indiana allows felons to vote as long as they are not incarcerated).

So we have 644,197 people eligible to be registered in Marion County/Indianapolis, and 677,401 people registered. Congratulations go to Indianapolis for having 105% of its residents registered!

Michelle Malkin hit on the fraud in Wisconsin, showing how members of the group were turned in for their nefarious deeds:

Of the 32 ACORN workers referred Wednesday to Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf, Edman said:

• Seventeen apparently filled out voter applications and then signed the cards themselves. That involved two to four cards in each case.

• Twelve submitted cards for individuals who later told ACORN they never filled out an application. That involved one card in each case.

• One submitted a card for a dead voter. That was the second such case; a Voters Project worker previously submitted a card for a deceased voter.

• One was apparently making up driver’s license numbers for an unknown number of voters.

• One submitted about a half-dozen applications for already-registered voters.

With Wednesday’s action, Edman has now referred 35 ACORN workers to Landgraf. She also has referred one worker from the Voters Project and one whose employer is unknown, and she plans to refer two more from the Voters Project.

But more workers from the Voters Project will come under scrutiny, because the group identified problems with a handful of the 7,500 cards it turned in Wednesday, Edman said.

That’s from August of this year. Malkin has an ACORN Watch she is running to keep up on this group.

Now, are you ready for the kicker? Check this out:

What does all this have to do with Obama, besides the fact that he’d be the beneficiary of most, if not all, of these new votes?

For starters, Obama paid ACORN, which has endorsed him for president, $800,000 to register new voters, payments his campaign failed to accurately report. (They were disguised in his FEC disclosure as payments to a front group called Citizen Services Inc. for “advance work.”)

What’s more, Obama worked as executive director of ACORN’s voter-registration arm, Project Vote, in 1992. Joined by two other community organizers on Chicago’s South Side, Obama conducted the voter-registration drive that helped elect Carol Moseley-Braun to the Senate that year.

The next year, 1993, Obama joined the civil-rights law firm Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland, where he sued the state of Illinois on behalf of ACORN to implement the federal “Motor Voter” law, which the GOP governor at the time refused to do. Then-Gov. Jim Edgar argued, presciently, that the Clinton law would invite voter fraud.

Obama downplays his ties to ACORN, and his campaign denies coordinating with ACORN to register voters.

ACORN is committing fraud all across the country, and Obama is funding them to the tune of nearly a million dollars. Not only that, but he lied about it and tried to hide it.

But then, maybe this isn’t the ACORN he knew.

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Is this the freedom of the press we can expect under President Barack Obama:

An ABC News producer was arrested outside a downtown hotel here Wednesday while he and a camera crew tried to shoot footage of corporate donors leaving a meeting with a group of Democratic senators.

Asa Eslocker, who works with the network’s investigative unit, was charged with trespass, interference and failure to follow a lawful order. He was released four hours later on a $500 bond.

“We expect to see this kind of behavior in Myanmar, not in Denver, Colorado, at a national political convention where a reporter is trying to videotape big-money donors trying to meet with elected officials,” said ABC spokesman Jeffrey Schneider.

Here’s video of how it went down.

Considering the threats and intimidation the Obama campaign has used to silence the Ayers ad, this type of behavior is even more troubling. Arrested for trying “to shoot footage of corporate donors leaving a meeting with a group of Democratic senators.”

Avastin is used to treat cancers of the colon, rectum, lung or breast. It is usually given as part of a combination of cancer medicines.”

It has been in the center of controversies in Great Britain because the NHS refuses to provide it to British cancer patients, patients like Debbie Hirst.

Avastin is an expensive drug, which is the main reason NHS won’t provide it:

The Financial Times “A dose of reality” explores the controversy over the British National Health Service’s (NHS) refusal to pay for medical services for patients who use certain high cost drugs. The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) advises the NHS on the cost-benefit of drugs. Genentech’s (DNA) Avastin cancer treatment is approved for sale in the UK, but NICE has determined that it is not cost-effective.

The solution? Just don’t tell the patients about the treatment:

The poll by charity Myeloma UK reveals doctors are now actively keeping information from cancer sufferers as a result of the drug rationing system.

Its findings are likely to reignite criticism of Nice, which is already under fire for a ruling earlier this month that certain drugs for kidney cancer are too expensive.

More than 103 specialists across England, Wales and Scotland took part in the survey, which shows how they struggle with NHS bureaucracy and cost-cutting.

In 96 per cent of cases where the specialists chose to keep quiet, they said they did so because it might “distress, upset or confuse” their patients.

You have to understand that even if the patient knew about the drug, most still couldn’t afford it. They may be able to afford the drug, but NHS policy is to then force them to pay for all their NHS treatment out of pocket. This is to avoid that nasty two-tier treatment plan. Instead they either get the bad news that there is a treatment the government won’t pay for, or they get no news at all.

Americans also face high drug costs. That’s no secret. But at least we know the treatment exists, and are not penalized for trying to get it.

Hat Tip: Secondhand Smoke

Pigtailed Lin Miaoke was selected to appear because of her cute appearance and did not sing a note, Chen Qigang, the general music designer of the ceremony, said in an interview with a state broadcaster aired Tuesday.

Photographs of Lin in a bright red party dress were published in newspapers and websites all over the world and the official China Daily hailed her as a rising star on Tuesday.

But Chen said the girl whose voice was actually heard by the 91,000 capacity crowd at the Olympic stadium during the spectacular ceremony was in fact seven-year-old Yang Peiyi, who has a chubby face and uneven teeth.

“The reason why little Yang was not chosen to appear was because we wanted to project the right image, we were thinking about what was best for the nation,” Chen said in an interview that appeared briefly on the news website Sina.com before it was apparently wiped from the Internet in China.

Project the right image? Isn’t NBC doing a good enough job for you? I mean, look at the crap they have been spewing since the games started:

NBC’s Matt Lauer, broadcasting live from the Great Wall of China on Monday’s “Today” show, referred to the “double-edged sword” of the world’s attention being on China for the Summer Olympic Games and asked a Chinese professor about how that “spotlight” might be “co-opted by party crashers who have a bone to pick with this country. He then asked the professor, “How worried are the people here about that?” [audio available here]

Lauer, who will be in China during the next weeks for the Olympics, interviewed Professor Teng Dimeng of the Beijing Foreign Studies University 20 minutes into 7 am Eastern hour of the NBC program. According to the University’s own website, it is a “key university under the [Chinese] Ministry of Education” and that “since her initiation, the [Communist] Party Central Committee and the late Chinese leaders, including Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, has provided great care and teachings for the development of the university.” Therefore, Lauer, despite introducing Teng as a professor, was actually speaking to an employee of the Communist Chinese government.
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Teng answered Lauer’s questions as you might expect a Chinese government employee would respond. He replied to the host’s “party crashers” remark that “China is a nation with a long history of forgiving, and also tolerance.” Lauer might want to check with the Dalai Lama and the Catholic bishops in China about that.

Maybe CBS isn’t helping project the right image when it talked about China gaining prosperity, “The Communist Way:”

On Monday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Julie Chen introduced a segment on China hosting the Olympics: “Well, the Olympic games are more than a chance for the world’s athletes to excel, they also give the host nation an opportunity to shine. For China and it’s 1.3 billion people, the Beijing games are feeding a groundswell of pride.” Chen then went to correspondent Barry Petersen who declared: “From designer clothes to new cars, China is getting rich. Democracies once bragged that theirs was the only way to economic success. China is doing it the communist way.”

100,000,000 dead. That’s the communist way. Don’t let a little fireworks, pretty flags and the best efforts of useful idiots make you forget that.

The Chinese government confirmed Wednesday what journalists arriving at the lavishly outfitted media center here had suspected: Contrary to previous assurances by Olympic and government officials, the Internet would be censored during the upcoming games.

Since the Olympic Village press center opened Friday, reporters have been unable to access scores of Web pages - politically sensitive ones that discuss Tibetan succession, Taiwanese independence, the violent crackdown of the protests in Tiananmen Square and the sites of Amnesty International, Radio Free Asia and several Hong Kong newspapers known for their freewheeling political discourse.

On Wednesday - two weeks after its most recent proclamation of an uncensored Internet during the Summer Games - the International Olympic Committee quietly agreed to some of the limitations, according to Kevan Gosper, chairman of the IOC press commission, Reuters reported.

Gosper said that he regretted the limitations but that “IOC officials negotiated with the Chinese that some sensitive sites would be blocked on the basis they were not considered Games related.”

You will read what the government allows, and you will be thankful. Welcome to China.

A young undercover city detective spent four years in the shadowy world of terrorist wanna-bes - taking part in jihadist discussions and training in parks in the dead of night - to get a handle on the homegrown threat.

At great personal risk, he participated in everything from prayers at a mosque to martial arts training under cover of darkness to watching jihadist videos, with many of the activities laced with talk of killing, according to a source familiar with the undercover’s investigations.

His experiences paint a vivid portrait of the potential for local terror. While the picture is in no way indicative of the city’s Muslim population as a whole, it provides insight into its most radical element.

The detective spent his time interacting with informal groups of youths and men who shared extremist views - and his experiences illustrate what police say is the potential for radicalization of some elements in the community.

He reported that after prayers at a neighborhood mosque, there were often private classes that included discussions about bombing different areas.

The men discussed violent jihad in bookstores, private houses and on buses en route to paintball and shooting-range events.

He was invited to join in “bonding” activities like working out at a gym and martial arts training in parks at night, during which the group discussed ideological justifications for killing Westerners.

He also watched military movies and jihadist videos with groups of young men in private homes. During one such evening, one man got so excited he punched a wall.

The detective reported that some youths became extremists after they traveled to their home countries; others went on the hajj - the pilgrimage to Mecca - and came back fired up by imams who encouraged violence as a religious obligation.

I’m sure there are undercover police across the country infiltrating Christian churches, trying to find out what they are doing after church. Here’s a glimpse.

Hat Tip: Jihad Watch

At a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor yesterday, I asked Pelosi if Pence failed to get the required signatures on a discharge petition to get his anti-Fairness Doctrine bill out of committee, would she permit the Pence measure to get a floor vote this year.

“No,” the Speaker replied, without hesitation. She added that “the interest in my caucus is the reverse” and that New York Democratic Rep. “Louise Slaughter has been active behind this [revival of the Fairness Doctrine] for a while now.”

Pelosi pointed out that, after it returns from its Fourth of July recess, the House will only meet for another three weeks in July and three weeks in the fall. There are a lot of bills it has to deal with before adjournment, she said, such as FISA and an energy bill.

“So I don’t see it [the Pence bill] coming to the floor,” Pelosi said.

“Do you personally support revival of the ‘Fairness Doctrine?’” I asked.

“Yes,” the speaker replied, without hesitation.

Once again the Marxists in the Democrat party are trying to control the way we live. There is no reason for a Fairness Doctrine, other than to silence the opposition. The Fairness Doctrine will not add more liberal voices to the radio, but it will remove the conservative ones, as radio station owners seek to avoid fines for not broadcasting shows that fail to bring in listeners.

This is nothing more than an attempt to control the debate.

Glenn Beck covered this well:

In a statement, the 15-member body said a free and fair presidential run-off vote on Friday would be “impossible”.

Opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai said he would leave the Dutch embassy in Harare over the next 48 hours.

The Movement for Democratic Change leader took refuge there on Sunday night after pulling out of the poll saying he did not want more bloodshed.

He told Dutch radio on Tuesday that the Netherlands ambassador had received assurances from the Zimbabwean government about his safety.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon has said Friday’s election should be delayed, but Zimbabwe’s UN envoy insisted it would go ahead.

The people of Zimbabwe don’t need an election and they don’t need UN peace keepers coming in and raping their children. They need a Second Amendment and a large shipment of weapons. Or at least on really good sniper.

They need a revolution.

But assault weapons…that they could pull off. It’s what they classify as an “assault weapon” that needs review:

The gun control groups recognize that Americans are tired of handgun bans that don’t work, as seen in cities like Chicago and D.C. So instead of fighting to ban ordinary guns like handguns, the gun groups are now trying to get these ordinary guns classified as “assault weapons,” so that it easier to ban them. For example, nobody would think of an ordinary handgun such as the Springfield XD as an “assault weapon,” but the bans on “assault weapons” extend to cover this and many other handguns.

How, you ask? Simple: The bans on so called “assault weapons” define a magazine with the capacity to hold more than 10 rounds as a “high capacity assault weapon feeding device.” Then, ordinary guns such as the Springfield XD, or even the guns that have been around for over 100 years and won the wild west, are suddenly classified as “assault weapons.” Since such a definition defies common sense, most people don’t know that their ordinary handgun, or antique lever action rifle is now an “assault weapon” until they are arrested and jailed.

The first challenge is defining graffiti. The city’s ordinance defines it as “any inscription, drawing, picture, letter, number, symbol or other written communication sprayed, painted or in some manner inscribed on street, sidewalk, building or wall surfaces not intended primarily for such use.”

That is broad enough to mean just about anything the city wants it to mean, giving it the power to order the removal of just about anything it believes is offensive. The U.S. Supreme Court has taken a dim view of such censorship when it comes to individual expression at one’s own private residence. As the court said in a 1994 Missouri case: “A special respect for individual liberty in the home has long been a part of our culture and our law; … that principle has special resonance when the government seeks to constrain a person’s ability to speak there.”

The symbols on MacPebbles’ fence, which he describes as images of his pagan religion, raise additional First Amendment questions of religious freedom. Would the city prosecute MacPebbles if he painted a Star of David or a crucifix on his fence? City officials may not consider unorthodox religious symbols as legitimate, but the courts are not likely to be so dismissive.

The article is really useless without pictures, but I found a news article with pics. Here’s one:

HOLLY MCQUEEN/THE REGISTER

Now, that looks like graffiti, but if the owner did it himself, and wants it there, is it graffiti?

The city has told him to remove it, but he says:

“Those are religious symbols; they’re not mean or obnoxious in any way,” said Ryle MacPebbles who lives in the 2000 block of Southeast Sixth Street. “I just don’t like them telling me my religion isn’t anything.

“When they start making it personal with my religion, I’m sorry, we’ll take it to court,” said MacPebbles, a member of the American Pagan Church.

So, while he has a point, so do his neighbors. His decorations are unsightly, regardless of the symbolism. If you want to decorate your residence with religious symbols, at least try to make it attractive. Is there something about paganism that says you have to use black spraypaint?

Get some real decorations, Ryle. Be considerate of your neighbors. But, at the same time, the government shouldn’t make him remove them. They are not overtly offensive, just unattractive.

Your thoughts?

D’Escoto served as foreign minister of Nicaragua during the Sandinista dictatorship of Daniel Ortega in the 1980s and is known for his extreme, stridently anti-American views.

In a June 2004 radio interview with Democracy Now, the Los Angeles-born Roman Catholic priest referred to former President Reagan as “the butcher of my people”, who was “responsible for the deaths of some 50,000 Nicaraguans,” and a leader who was “possessed by demons.” According to D’Escoto the United States was “the greatest enemy of the right of self-determination of peoples” and declared Americans to be “the most ignorant people around the world.”

D’Escoto was the pick of the 33-nation Latin American and Caribbean group within the UN. Under the system of regional rotation the bloc was able to put forward its own candidate for the presidency of the General Assembly (which controls the UN budget) without challenge from the rest of the world. He will take office at the next Assembly meeting in September, succeeding the low-key former foreign minister of Macedonia, Srgjan Kerim.

The UN budget is $4.2 billion for ‘08-’09. America’s portion of that budget adds up to around 23% of the total budget. That comes out to just a little over $966,000,000. Almost a billion American dollars, in the control of an organization that becomes more anti-American every day.

Isn’t it time to leave the United Nations?

The evangelists say they were threatened with arrest for committing a “hate crime” and were told they risked being beaten up if they returned. The incident will fuel fears that “no-go areas” for Christians are emerging in British towns and cities, as the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, claimed in The Sunday Telegraph this year.

Arthur Cunningham, 48, and Joseph Abraham, 65, both full-time evangelical ministers, have launched legal action against West Midlands Police, claiming the officer infringed their right to profess their religion.

Mr Abraham said: “I couldn’t believe this was happening in Britain. The Bishop of Rochester was criticised by the Church of England recently when he said there were no-go areas in Britain but he was right; there are certainly no-go areas for Christians who want to share the gospel.”

The West Midlands police refused to apologize for the officer’s behavior, but they did say he was going through “training in understanding hate crime and communication.”

In a 2007 report, an ultra-liberal think tank known as The Center for American Progress issued a report called “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio.” Jim Boulet of English First says its agenda was to cleverly recast the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” by using the term “localism.”

“In 2007, they issued a report in which they bragged that if they could get more women and minorities to own stations, there’d be fewer stations carrying programs like Rush Limbaugh. What the regulations also do is we create a board of censors, really, who the radio station would have to meet with four times a year to listen to all their complaints — and if they weren’t satisfied, the radio station could lose its license,” Boulet points out.

What they can’t stop with the “Fairness” Doctrine, they will stop with affirmative action in broadcasting.

One of the proposed regulations would require racial and sexual quotas for station ownership, and another would require that all “licensees should convene and consult with permanent advisory boards.” Boulet says he knows what that will mean.

“These boards are going to be made up of people like the [Council on] American-Islamic Relations, The National Council of La Raza – all a bunch of professional grievance mongers who will never be satisfied until programs like Rush Limbaugh are no longer on the air,” Boulet explains.

According to Boulet, the review process is expected to end on June 11, at which time the FCC will decide what to do.

There is an alternative. We preach active citizenry here, and one way of making your voice heard is via petition. There is a petition to tell the FCC what you think about this. It is at Keeprushontheair.com.

It is incredible they are even considering these things. As one Freeper said, “What part of the First Amendment, is so complicated?”

Hat Tip: Humbled Infidel

The U.S. military is confirming that a former Guantanamo detainee from Kuwait carried out a recent suicide attack in northern Iraq.

A spokesman for U.S. military’s Central Command told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi took part in an attack in Mosul.

These guys are not in Gitmo because they were singing too loud in church, you know. Allahpundit at Hot Air says:

I can’t find any explanation for why he was turned over to Kuwait. Possibly because he was wanted there on charges of fundraising for Al Qaeda (and ultimately duly acquitted, natch) or possibly as a goodwill gesture from Uncle Sam to the international community, to prove that we’re willing to let jihadist cretins go even when they promise to go right back to doing what they do.

Respect to JammieWearingFool, who wrote:

I hope our friends at the ACLU rest comfortably tonight, knowing their efforts sprung this maggot so he could go back to doing what he was meant to do: murder innocent people.

The blood is on their hands.

Exactly.

Jodie Evans, a Code Pink leader, gathered at least $50,000 from friends and associates and donated it to Obama’s presidential campaign, according to information compiled by the nonpartisan watchdog group, Public Citizen.

…

The donations have raised questions about Obama’s association with the more radical elements of his base. Code Pink has harassed, vandalized and impeded military recruiters across the United States in a campaign it calls “counter-recruitment.” The group also gave $600,000 to the families of Iraqi terrorists in Fallujah, whom it called “insurgents” fighting for their homes. [Human Events]

So they give money to the families of terrorists, and they give money to Barack Obama. If the lack of experience, the racist spiritual adviser, and the complete lack of a platform with any substance weren’t enough, I think taking money from the morons at Code Pink would cause me not to vote for Obama.

Obama should have refused to accept the money. Instead, he is receiving support from an anti-military organization who believes that our military is no more than a machine for mass murder.

Added Bonus!

Here’s a short video from The Daily Show that is both funny and informative.

The Berkeley College Republicans are looking to get the same permit privileges that anti-war group Code Pink use to protest outside the Marine recruiting center in Downtown Berkeley.

Working with Councilmember Kriss Worthington, the group is asking for sound waiver permits and a parking spot reservation outside the center on Wednesdays from 12 to 4 p.m., the same time Code Pink protests outside the center, said Kimberly Wagner, activism chair for the Berkeley College Republicans.

“(Code Pink’s) claim is that they’re protecting free speech,” she said. “I kind of don’t feel they are, they are inhibiting the recruitment center in general. It’s important that they are not unopposed, that there are people willing to fight them. Even though it’s Berkeley, the liberal center of America, there will be people (opposed).”

All American Blogger applauds the Berkeley College Republicans. It’s sad that the city council of Berkeley is allowing the liberal wingnuts from Code Pink to harass our Marines. Let’s see if they will allow the same freedom to speak to these conservative students that they have allowed to the liberal protesters.

Two years later, he helped lay the foundation for the Kyoto Protocol at the Earth Summit in Rio De Janeiro. His name is Maurice Strong, and he would love to see America collapse.

Who is Maurice Strong?

Billionaire Canadian Maurice Strong is a man of profound influence. He’s been called the “Michelangelo of networking,” “an international traveling salesman with buts [sic] of paper in his pocket” and described as “a cross between Rasputin and Machiavelli.”

He is known as the “Godfather of the international environmental movement” and the “architect of the Kyoto Protocol.” Both of those are ironic titles for a man who started out in the oil business.

Strong traveled Africa in the 1950s, creating a network of service stations for Dome Petroleum and recruiting locals to man them. In the 60s, he took Ajax Petroleum, renamed it Canadian Industrial Gas & Oil Co. and turned it from almost busted into an oil giant. In 1975, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau started a state-owned gas company. Strong accepted the position as president of Petro-Canada.

While his private sector resume is impressive, it is his public sector experience that is shaping environmental policy today. While he was dabbling in oil, he was also starting his political career. In 1966, Strong led the Canadian International Development Agency. After four years of that, he went to the United Nations. In 1972, Strong was the secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden. Later, he was executive director of the UN Environmental Program.

He has had other positions of influence at the United Nations, including “commissioners of the World Commission on Environment and Development, set up as an independent body by the United Nations in 1983″ and senior adviser to secretary-general Kofi Annan.

Journalist Elaine Dewar interviewed Strong and wrote about him in her book Cloak of Green. She writes, “He could raise his own money from whomever he liked, appoint anyone he wanted, control the agenda.” Also:

“He told me he had more unfettered power than a cabinet minister in Ottawa. He was right: He didn’t have to run for re-election, yet he could profoundly affect lives.”

That “unfettered power” led to his role in creating the Kyoto Protocol.

“An agreement reducing their impact on the environment”

In 1990, Maurice Strong gave an interview to WEST magazine, where he described how he envisioned the Earth being saved:

“Each year the World Economic Forum convenes in Davos, Switzerland. Hundreds of CEO’s, prime ministers, finance ministers, and leading academics gather each February to attend meetings and set the economic agendas for the year ahead.

“What if a small group of these world leaders were to conclude that the principle risk to the earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment? Will they do it? Will the rich countries agree to reduce their impact on the environment? Will they agree to save the earth?

“The group’s conclusions is ‘no.’ The rich countries won’t do it. They won’t change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilization collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”

Two years after making that statement, Strong laid the foundation, and helped in the creation of the Kyoto Protocol. According to Wikipedia, “The Kyoto Protocol is a protocol to the international Framework Convention on Climate Change with the objective of reducing greenhouse gases that cause climate change.” Another way of saying that is “an agreement reducing their impact on the environment.” What has been the result of the agreement? “The rich countries won’t do it. They won’t change.”

Japan, Italy and Spain face payments of as much as $33 billion combined for failing to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions as promised under the Kyoto treaty.

…

Spain faces a $7.8 billion cost, and Italy and Japan each may owe about $13 billion, based on estimates by their governments and the current price for permits.

It seems the rich countries are up to their necks in fines, while the developing countries don’t have to worry about caps on emissions. Sound familiar?

If the United States were to sign the treaty, it is expected to have disastrous results:

…according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, [ratifying Kyoto] could cost the economy $400 billion per year, raise electric utility rates by 86 per cent, hike the cost of heating oil by 76 per cent, and impose a permanent “Kyoto gasoline tax” of 66 cents per gallon. In total, each U.S. household would have to spend an extra $1,740 per year on energy. WEFA, an economic information and consulting firm, reports that 2.4 million jobs would be lost and manufacturing wages cut by 2.1 per cent.

Kyoto is actually destroying Europe’s economy. Strong, however, is not concerned with the success of the world’s economy. In fact, it seems that is part of the plan. When an economy grows, greenhouse gases tend to grow with it. Strong knows this and says, “Economic growth is not the cure, it is the disease.”

Unless we are talking about Strong’s economic growth. He’s used environmentalism to make a lot of money.

“A socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology.”

In the 1990s, Al Gore heaped praise on a company called Molten Metal Technology, Inc. This company, a hazardous waste management firm, claimed to have a new technology, “a promising adaptation of steelmaking chemistry to create a closed-loop system for turning industrial wastes into chemical feedstocks.”

Gore’s hype helped the company’s stock jump to $35 a share. After receiving over $25 million dollars in federal grant money from the Department of Energy, the DoE figured out that the techonology was a bust. It simply didn’t work.

Maurice Strong ran Molten Metals, and when the federal government decided to stop handing out grants, he and the other corporate officers sold off $15.3 million in personal shares of stock. The stock dropped to $5 soon afterward, but Strong had already made his money.

Today, Strong is on the Chicago Climate Exchange board of directors. The CCX “is North America’s only and the world’s first global marketplace for integrating voluntary legally binding emissions reductions with emissions trading and offsets for all six greenhouse gases.”

The more global warming gets hyped, once again by Al Gore, the more green technology is worth. So while Strong may be “a socialist in ideology,” he is definitely a “capitalist in methodology.”

The architect of Kyoto has made millions off of environmentalism, but still finds himself unable to pull America into the snare. But he has a plan for that also. In 2006, he described what he thought was necessary to keep the green movement alive…fear:

Speaking of the environmental movement post-2012, the year Kyoto expires, Strong laid out a vision for what he thinks it will take to keep the green movement alive in the hearts of world governments. “What we really need are massive incentives for the right kind of behaviour,” Strong explained at one seminar to an audience of roughly 400. “Economic incentives, but also moral incentives, ethical incentives, psychological incentives . . . fear.”

…

“Political leaders cannot go far beyond what their constituents are prepared to accept, nor can those who are negative be more negative than what their constituents are willing to support,” notes Strong, acknowledging that democratic solutions have their limits. “So, politics really responds to public movements. If you look at the great movements in history, the abolishment of the slave trade and all that, they didn’t start with individual policies from governments. They were forced on them by people’s movements. And that’s the same with the environmental movement.” Later, he adds: “And remember: the communist revolution was a people’s revolution.”

Maurice Strong would not shed a tear at the collapse of the American economy or our way of life. He has stated before that “current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air conditioning, and suburban housing are not sustainable. A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns.” In other words, the demise of the American way of life is necessary for the survival of the Earth. This perspective poses little threat from a normal environmentalist. In the hands of the “Michelangelo of networking,” “an international traveling salesman with buts [sic] of paper in his pocket” and “a cross between Rasputin and Machiavelli,” it is an all too real threat to America.

A video taken inside a secret Syrian facility last summer convinced the Israeli government and the Bush administration that North Korea was helping to construct a reactor similar to one that produces plutonium for North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, according to senior U.S. officials who said it would be shared with lawmakers today.

The officials said the video of the remote site, code-named Al Kibar by the Syrians, shows North Koreans inside. It played a pivotal role in Israel’s decision to bomb the facility late at night last Sept. 6, a move that was publicly denounced by Damascus but not by Washington.

Sources familiar with the video say it also shows that the Syrian reactor core’s design is the same as that of the North Korean reactor at Yongbyon, including a virtually identical configuration and number of holes for fuel rods. It shows “remarkable resemblances inside and out to Yongbyon,” a U.S. intelligence official said. A nuclear weapons specialist called the video “very, very damning.”

Of course, Syria is denying it all, saying that we shouldn’t trust the U.S. government more than the North Koreans and the Syrians. Personally, I’ll stick with the CIA on this one.

A passage from this article that really sticks out to me is here:

U.S. officials said that Israel shared the video with the United States before the Sept. 6 bombing, after Bush administration officials expressed skepticism last spring that the facility, visible by satellite since 2001, was a nuclear reactor built with North Korea’s assistance. Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal that it has never declared.

But beginning today, intelligence officials will tell members of the House and Senate intelligence, armed services and foreign relations committees that the Syrian facility was not yet fully operational and that there was no uranium for the reactor and no indication of fuel capability, according to U.S. officials and intelligence sources.

The first sentence makes sense, in that we are explaining how we saw the video. But then the second seems like some kind of anti-Israel texual Tourettes statement. I mean, it really doesn’t belong there. It’s like they had to get it in the story, but didn’t know where to put it, so they just jammed it in there and then they go right back to the story.

What does it even have to do with the fact that North Korea was helping Syria build a nuclear reactor? Nothing.

It seems, however, that the Iraq War is having a positive influence on the region:

Syria’s top envoy to Washington said the CIA briefings were meant to undermine diplomatic efforts with North Korea, not to confront Syria. Why, Moustapha said, are “they repeating the same lies and fabrications when they were planning to attack Iraq? The reason is simple: It’s about North Korea, not Syria. The neoconservative elements are having the upper hand.”

He added, “We do not want to plan to acquire nuclear technology as we understand the reality of this world and have seen what the U.S. did to Iraq even when it did not have a nuclear program. So we are not going to give them a pretext to attack Syria.”

Good call, Moustapha. Now let’s talk about Hezbollah.