The Finder

How to Become a Guru

2011-06-12T13:18:00.000-05:00

The Finder has done it again! Being a self-anointed guru is not easy. First you need to get appointed...by this I mean someone has to name you an expert in the field you want to teach others to replicate. That person is usually one;s self....(check that spelling).

I have found gurus on Facebook, Twitter and a host of other social media sites calling themselves "Gurus". They are self anointed, self appointed and couldn't care less if you make it or not, they just want your money. Believe me, I can attest with all sincerity to the validity of what I am saying. Been there, done that and I have all the T-shirts for everyone of them...I have thousands of books, pamphlets, CDs, ebooks, articles, sites and bookmarks and an empty bank account to prove what I am saying is true.

In this article by Patric Chan "Excuse Me Mr. Guru, the Proof Please", you will understand that I am not alone. You have probably experienced some of the same people I have.

There are websites out there that will gladly take your money and give you information. These websites are designed to draw you in and make you spend your last dime, or first dime on their product, whether it will work for you or not, whether you need it or not. They are not interested in the outcome, they are interested in what is in your pocketbook, billfold, wallet, or credit card...that is their bottomline.

The article written by Patric Chan is superb, take heed and do not get caught up in the web of deceit that is out there. It is designed to separate you from your money.

Thanks Patric for enlightening all of us about the Guru's and their self-anointing practices.

If you study the Chan course you will soon be on your way to success. This course is designed for everyone and will easily spell out the day by day, step by step procedure you need to adhere to in order to make money on line.

This is not a get-rich-quick scheme, it is not designed to take your money. It is designed to aid you in your journey to become an entrepreneur and earn a reasonable amount of money online.

You will be happy with the results and if you are not, then just apply for a 100% return of your money within 60 days, no questions asked.

If you feel you cannot afford this course, then you shouldn't be online anyway, it is that reasonable.

Good luck with Patric Chan's course and be sure and tell him that "The Finder" sent you over there.

Earning Money Blogging

2011-06-09T00:39:00.002-05:00

/I have been blogging for sometime, I am not as successful as I would like to be, but I am still learning. I recently ran across an article by Dragonblogger and was very impressed. Earning money blogging has been so blown out of proportion and Dragonblogger has put it back into proportion for us.

If you are looking to get rich overnight, maybe you should read his post. I did and what I found was the truth. Getting rich overnight is a myth...you might get rich, but it won't be tomorrow. You must work at it, with a steady mindset towards the market and what is needed in the marketplace.

Some people say that blogging is an art, I disagree, blogging to me is "steady at the helm" . You must be patient, you must know your audience and your niche and you must interact. All of these qualities will make you a good blogger that people will listen to. There are several good bloggers around, some are great, some are okay and some are downright good, the downright good are the ones I study every move they make, Dragonblogger is one of the downright great. The reason why is his honesty....now in our society today if you can find one honest person in the marketplace...go to bed with him....literally, take him home with you!

Content is king, we have heard this, but very few people pay attention to what is being said and they decide to write a formal blog, by this I mean, it is so stiff you choke on the message and cannot gain from what is being said. Some bloggers never check their work and it is sloppy, not well written, but I think they have something to say, however they have not taken the time to correct their errors in the script. I dump them, I do not follow them and they lose and sometimes, so do I.

I don't think blogging needs to be stuffy, but one thing I do think is that it must be honest and that is how I ran upon my new friend Dragonblogger. His honesty sold me immediately, I am now a fan, I will listen to him and I will check out everything he has to offer. Blogengage is a new blogging community that I discovered through Dragonblogger, very interesting site with an interesting concept. I will be blogging and entering their contest.

I connected with the "Dragon" on Twitter and was delighted when I saw his tweet today, now I was going to find out how to really earn money blogging. What I found was right on the money, so save your dollars and get over to Twitter, Facebook and connect with the Dragon and learn how to make money online instead of beating yourself up everyday over blogging. When you start paying it forward, giving back to the community and are consistent and have established your presence in the marketplace, you can blog like the Dragon.

Until tomorrow this is the Finder...

If Your a Blogger, You Deserve The Best!

2011-04-07T22:04:00.000-05:00

<p>&amp;amp;lt;iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=thefin00-20&amp;amp;amp;amp;o=1&amp;amp;amp;amp;p=8&amp;amp;amp;amp;l=bpl&amp;amp;amp;amp;asins=B0014GFRPW&amp;amp;amp;amp;fc1=000000&amp;amp;amp;amp;IS2=1&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt1=_blank&amp;amp;amp;amp;m=amazon&amp;amp;amp;amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;amp;amp;amp;bc1=000000&amp;amp;amp;amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;amp;amp;amp;f=ifr" style="padding-top: 5px; width: 131px; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px;" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" align="left" frameborder="0"&amp;amp;gt;</p>If all of you bloggers out in the stratosphere are as tired of blogging everyday as I am and wish to do something different, consider my choices, you might like them.

With all the holidays upon us, one would think, let's do something different. So I have outlined some things that I think might interest you on these coming holidays

.

Easter

Now we all know that mama needs a new dress and all the accessories, but don't forget the jewelry, as that will accent not only the outfit, but show your love in many ways. Every woman loves flowers, call your local florist and have a beautiful arrangement sent to your wife, mother and yes, your sisters too.

You cannot forget the kids and what they will need for Easter holidays either.Just don't get too carried away.

Mother's Day

This is my favorite day of all days, even more so than Christmas. I like to give to Mothers. They are the most maligned people in the human race. Without Mothers, we would not be here. They carry us in their tummies for 9 months and then they carry us right to their graves.

When the world is against us and we are fighting our own battles and don't know where to turn, we go to our Mothers. They are there when we are little and scrape our knees, when we graduate, when we fall on our face, when we make mistakes, when we choose the wrong mate, when we fail in business, when everyone it seems turns against us, Mothers never leave us...they just clean up the mess. Mothers are forgiving, to a fault. Sometimes we forget how great our Mothers are and I think they should be honored above all else.

Easter falls on April 24 and 2 weeks later is Mother's Day-May 8, 2011. Remember these dates, put them on your calendar and don't forget your Mother this holiday. Take her to dinner and show her that you care.

Vacation

When dinner is over pack everybody in the car and head to the airport and take a much needed vacation. If you have been working non stop, I am speaking of all you bloggers, get the cobwebs out of your head and head to the beach for some much needed relaxation. You will be a better blogger when you return and just think of all the stories you can blog about, after your holiday.

Your family will never forget you and they will thank you for remembering them.

Happy Holidays

Guess Who Got Hitched?

2011-03-31T04:15:00.000-05:00

Yes, finally after all these years of being alone and struggling, I finally came to the conclusion that I needed to do something to get out of the mess I was in. So...

I put out some feelers, I contacted all my old friends and ask there opinion about what I should do and they all agreed that it was time for me to get hitched.

I started looking at my possibilities, what was in the marketplace and boy did I ever have a long journey.

First of all I wasn't looking in the right places. Second, those in my age group were just "out of the loop". So I decided I needed make some changes.

I needed to look at different categories and thus the journey began. One cold wintry day I was online and surfing the net when I came upon a likely candidate. He was fairly good looking, a little younger than me, but that didn't matter too much to me. I liked what he was about and his presence on the net, so I started following him. I followed him on Twitter and Facebook and found myself in a predicament. I was obsessed with this man and he didn't even recognize me.

So I decided it was time to change some strategy and what with my article writing all the time, I didn't really have time to look for someone suitable. I went to Squidoo and started writing up my little lens (pages) and was having a rather good time and learning too. I began reading some of the lens (pages) posted so that I could learn what I needed to do to be a better writer.

I found a lens (page) by the Editor in Chief, Megan Casey and loved her picture and decided to read all her lens when about halfway through and at 1:00 a.m,. tired and weary from the reading, there he was...big as life and all this time I had missed him. All this time I didn't even know he existed. I hurriedly downloaded his material and was blown away.

Let me tell you about him.Talk about magic...American Way Magazine calls him, “America’s Greatest Marketer,” and his blog is perhaps the most popular in the world written by a single individual.

So you can by now understand why I got hitched...yes, on March 30, 2011, in a quiet ceremony held in my office, in the middle of the night, we tied the knot, or should I say "I" tied the knot?

Mother's advice

My mother always taught me that if you want to get somewhere, you must follow those who have been successful and are good at what they do. She said, "just hitch your wagon to theirs", I took her advice.

Let the honeymoon begin

You see I am a freelance writer, but not a strong marketer and I had been searching for ways to accomplish what I wanted to do in my field. Now I can write, my college Professor Francis McDonald tells me I am a good writer, but I just couldn't get anywhere online. So I set out to find out how to get where I wanted to go and thus I found "Mr. Right".

I must send thank-you cards to Squidoo who started this whole thing by allowing me to write lens (pages) for them. Then the Editor-in-Chief, Megan Casey had to go and make a lens about all these wonderful things that were happening with his e-book and so it really wasn't my fault that I fell head over heels.

If you don't know who he is by now, then there is a good chance your not on the net, or that you live under a rock somewhere (kinda like me), or that you really don't know a brilliant writer and marketer like Seth Godin.

So I have taken the advice of my mother and am now hitched to Mr. Seth Godin. He has become my mentor, the go-to man, for anything related to writing, blogging, marketing and if you need a star to follow, be sure and hitch your wagon to someone who knows what is happening and does not mind sharing his thoughts and his ideas with others.

Mr. Godin does not know that I exist, and that is fine, but I know that he does and that he makes things happen. Somehow our paths were meant to cross. He has left an indelible mark on my writing career. I was particularly impressed by his speech at the BizTechDay in San Francisco speaking about "Over Powering The Lizard Brain".

Mr. Seth Godin is a genius and yes, I have hitched my wagon to his star and will follow his writing, blogging and marketing ideas to infinity.

Please read his e-book, "What Matters Now", very good information, and you know what he will give it to you for FREE..

Have You Seen The Doctor Today?

2011-03-27T14:55:00.000-05:00

If you haven't been for a check-up lately, maybe you need to take the time. Seeing the Doctor at least once every 6 months for most people is good. However, the best advice I can give you now is to see him every week and in some cases everyday until you can get cured.

You say cured of what? Well if you don't know why your blog, your site, your podcast, is not going anywhere, maybe you need to see a Doctor. I have found one that I think you will learn a lot from. It may take you some time to get acquainted with his (office) site. But if you hang around long enough you will learn and you will prosper.

We think of Doctors as specialist, the Doctor I recommend is a general practitioner, and a specialist. He can help you in all areas. I highly recommend that you see him today so that he can prescribe what is needed to further your business endeavors.

Have You Been Branded Yet?

2011-03-24T16:43:00.003-05:00

People who are interested in making money on the web need to realize one thing, people will only buy from those they trust, i.e., a friend or an acquaintance.

So you must brand yourself (not the old Texan way) and sell yourself first…the oldest trick in the book. Even prostitutes know this, you must sell yourself first. So get busy and sell yourself or rather brand yourself. We should make friends and help each other, that is why I like pay it forward, this is helping others. If you do not help others, don’t worry, you will not have any business, at least none that you will have to worry about or make money with.

Making friends in the social stratosphere is your next step…get busy making acquaintances that you will turn into friends. Join Facebook, Twitter, Digg, LinkedIn and USfreeads and make yourself known in your market. Become the expert that you know yourself to be and knock them dead.

Everyone has a need, your need may not be their need, or their need may not be your need, however if you look at your market close enough you will find a need and you can fill that need. Filling the needs of others should be primary in your focus here, not your need. If you focus upon their need, your need will be met. I cannot stress this enough.

There are many outfits out there ready to tell you how many millions they have made online, however, BEWARE as you will go broke following everybody that tells you they have made a million online. There are some people online that are willing and ready to help you. I am going to list a few of the people that have helped me through the years, please at least look at what they are offering and see if they can help you. I am not being paid to do this, I care about people and think what we learn, we need to pass on to others.

I am now involved in "branding" myself.

It has taken me so long. Don’t spend your hard earned money on phony scams and millionaire promises, instead, copy those that have made it. Here is a list of people that have helped me…I am not self taught, these people helped me…they gave me the goods and I ran with it. And now I can make the claim that I am helping others, just as these sites helped me.

Just to name a few.

Mikeb302000: The Cost of the War in Libya

2011-03-23T21:57:00.000-05:00

Mikeb302000: The Cost of the War in Libya

Are You a Marketing Whore?

2011-03-23T01:00:00.007-05:00

The art of marketing your site is not something to take lightly or frivolously. There is an art to marketing online and it is much different than marketing that your mama taught you.

Know Your Market
Marketing online is an art and many times an overlooked art. Once you have gotten your site ready to publish, you know who your market is, or rather you should know who your market is, but you want the world to see your "new baby", your own creation, WAIT! Analyze where you are headed and what the results will be, the search engines will thank you.

Demographics
Rather than haphazardly submitting, plan your submissions. First your demographics will dictate the proper time for exposure, for instance if you are selling something to the public, you must first decide on where, when and how they will be using it so that you know when, where and how to present it. For example if I was selling a recipe for "stuffed grape leaves", I sure would look funny if I tried to market that product to the middle eastern countries. I would need to push that product in another area. The middle easterners make the stuffed grape leaves and they would not be interested in my recipe, so I sure would not get much traffic there. Again, know your market and what they need and fill that need. Do your homework and you will know when, where and how to market your products.

Wasting Time
If you tend to just submit your site to all the search engines may be a waste of time. If you send your site to Google, of course you are going to be seen in the USA and many other countries.A lot of the search engines are not active in all countries, hence a waste of time for you.

Target Your Market
Target your market and go for it. Look for hot items to address in your blog that coincides with the products you are trying to sell. If you market "YOU", the sales will come. Give people a reason to want to follow you, either by fulfilling a need or just by reaching out to people. Get involved in charities, in care groups, forums and blog, blog, blog. I have found the more active you are in these areas, the more the word gets around and soon you will be known in your industry.

Planning
I have seen those who would create a site and throw it up in the social media arenas and just let it hang there. This to me is crass, yes you want their business, but to slam them with your product as though your saying, "here, buy this now", is a market whore! The public is aware of what you are doing and they will be turned off by your tactics. Ask for advice, not only from the "gurus" but from your friends and neighbors in the social media places. when you involve your public they will feel appreciated for their knowledge and they will help you and they will respond to you. You must give them something to go away with, by this I don't mean a freebie, in as much as I mean something to feel good about themselves
and about you and your product. I remember an old story I heard which fits right here. Two bulls were up on the hill and saw all these females down on the range grazing, the young bull looked at the old bull and said let's just run down there and grab one of them. The old bull said oh no, let's just saunter down and get them all!

Do Not Push
Keep that story in mind when addressing your market, saunter into the market place and you will have the business,if you behave, or if you have the mindset of the young bull you may get one sale, but you will have left a mark on your market that Ajax can't take off.

Beware of being pushy in the market place.

I learned from the Squidoo Queen how to market and how not to market. She is an ace in this area and I found that if I follow her advice I am much further ahead in the game. If you haven't gotten your Squidoo lens, then you need to stop by and see Kelly and get a lens, you can make money with your lens.

Ask Kelly about her free lessons, they are excellent lessons about blogging, marketing, SEO,Amazon,AdSense and Wealthy Affiliate.

Economical Business Online101

2011-03-15T21:07:00.005-05:00

In today's economical downturn, people are looking for a way to save a buck. Old school teaching taught us that to make a buck, you have to spend a buck. This is true for online businesses as well. If you are a frugal shopper you will be able to economize and still get an online business started. You should be able to get a decent site up for about $100.00.

SO YOU WANT TO BE RICH
Can you handle it? That is the question. First of all, you can economize your excursion into the "ONLINE-OPRANET" by seeking out the truth on the net. Many sites will mislead you. You must be aware of the traps designed to insure that you will fail. Money grabbing sites that take your name and email then promise to send you to a site where you don't have to do anything just make money are scams. I don't care who they are, they are scamming you.

First of all they lie when they say you don't have to do anything. You do have to do something if you want to make money online.

WORK INVOLVED
You must decide on a market for your business. In other words, what will you be selling, shoes, makeup, gardening equipment, etc. Once you have reached this level, you must then decide on a name for your business and secure a domain name, then hosting for that domain name.

You will have to figure out what keywords you will use to get the search engines to your site. Then and only then are you just starting to get the idea that, yes there is work involved.

ECONOMICS 101 INTERNET STYLE
Securing a domain name is simple, you just plug in the domain name you want and the company that sells domain names will search to see if that domain name is free, if it is, BINGO you can own it. The cost to do this is minimal...I have seen some advertised as low as $1.98 and up.

Then you must secure hosting for your domain name because as of right now it is just floating in the air. There are many hosting companies out there, but the best I have ever used is Hostgator.com The quality of service by far surpasses any I have ever seen. The site is user friendly and this is a must. Hostgator.com is also very reasonable.

TOOLS
Now that you have your site and hosting you must concentrate on the tools you will need to get your site pulled together for the public to see. It is like painting a picture, you don't show the rough draft sketches to your audience, you wait until you have the finished product. It is the same thing with your site, wait until you pull it all together and have all the tools on your site and then you can present it to your audience.

When speaking of tools-of-the-trade, take a look at Wealthy Affiliate. This site has all the tools you will need and they have a crash course also. Follow their instructions and you will be in business in less than a week and earning income.

Another great tool for your ONLINE-OPRANET is Squidoo. Kelly Stone, who is the Queen of Squidoo will put you through the paces to help make you think, make you a better blogger, better site owner and money maker too. Now how can you go wrong with all this advice in one place.

SUMMARIZE
If you are really interested in starting a money making online business go DIRECTLY to Squidoo, and tell Kelly The Finder sent you. Then go to Wealthy Affiliate and tell Kyle and Carson hello for me. I promise that you will not regret it. Both sites are free to join and you can start immediately.

Tomorrow we will have a surprise for you, so please check back with us!

Please visit these sites and show your love - http://www.thebenefitsofhoney.blogspot.com
http://www.caregivingessentials.com

Finding a Diaper for the Boomers

2011-03-10T00:24:00.009-06:00

Do you know a Boomer, better still are you a Boomer? Whoever named them, wonder why they named them Boomers. We had the generation X which sounds mysticish (new word) but Boomers, reminds me of Pepto-Bismol...pink and yucky.

Boomers Coming of Age
We now have aging Boomers. Statistics tell us that Junior Boomers are not even there yet, we are looking at Senior Boomers now ready to retire and 41.8 million Juniors are right behind them according to the Census Bureau.

Essentials for Boomers
One of the first things the Junior Boomers will be doing is finding a Nursing Home for their Senior Boomers because they cannot have them live at home now with the economy suffering and 41.8 million Boomers getting ready to retire, they are in trouble.

This morning, Sen. Tom Harkin, Democrat/Iowa delivered the keynote address at the National Institute on Retirement Security's annual policy conference and I quote.. "The future of our nation depends on our ability to ensure that everyone benefits from economic growth. That means putting policies in place that build a strong and vibrant middle class – a middle class with good jobs, fair wages, and benefits. That’s the America I want to see. One where people who work hard and play by the rules can live comfortably. One where everyone has the opportunity for a safe and secure retirement. But that’s not where we are today."

Results
This would be a good place to start for the retiring Senior Boomers so they can pass on the information to the Junior Boomers. There are more matters to consider than just the day to day caring of the elderly. There are financial matters that have to be considered. Donna gives a good insight into what these retirees will be looking at down the road, maybe even sooner than they think.

The Waters Are Deep

2011-03-07T00:23:00.000-06:00

The Waters Are Deep

Keeps pulling me back
I feel like I’m drowning no where to get out
The boat is sinking with desperate alert
I keep reaching for shore but it eludes me for sure.

Friends try to help I keep pushing them aside
In desperation no where to hide
The darkness enshrouds me and leaves me so cold
The snake is around me there is no cure

I bite the hand, yet ask for more
Where or where my soul cries out is the shore
Big waves, or little doesn’t matter anymore
I’m surrounded by water and losing the shore.

Is POTUS learning to Dance?

2011-03-03T02:27:00.000-06:00

Today is a new day...the protesters in Libya are holding fast. Gaddafi's assets are being frozen, naval rescuers are just off shore and the UN is unhappy with the "Gaddafiosa" shooting at their own people. Col. Gaddafi and his loyalist, although dwindling" are shooting at civilians, mostly unarmed civilians and this is unacceptable in this civilized world today.

All countries should be condeming what is going on in Libya, the protesters are taking a beating and the world is standing by watching. POTUS has very little to say, of course he doesn't want to ruin his image by saying anything, it could be turned against him and after all he is headed to an election.

The only thing he has accomplished since being elected as president...he has hired good speech writers. This man gives more speeches and layers them with lies and promises...in the streets I believe they call this "skinnin and grinnin"!

We are a bankrupt nation, we are in trouble the world over, we have troops scattered everywhere, can't get out of the wars we are in now because we are in too deep, our economy is the worst it has ever been, the dollar is being devalued as we speak, inflation is at an all time high, unemployment is at an all time high, we are seeing protest in the USA and Pres. Obama wants us to re-elect him?

What we need is someone to take the reins and lead this country. Obama has been grandstanding, "skinnin and grinnin" throughout his term and has accomplished absolutely nothing since arriving at the Whitehouse.

Obama is the poster boy for teleprompters and Mrs. Obama is the poster woman for good eating habits. How has any of this improved this country or our standing in the community, i.e., the world's eyes? I don't think he has a clue...when Hillary said she was worried about the 3a.m. phone call, she was on the money. I wonder if Obama has a teleprompter next to his bed, because I know he will not know what to say unless someone tells him.

This president is a community organizer, nothing more, nothing less. He gives good speeches and that says it all. We need leadership, we need someone who can answer that phone at 3a.m. without a teleprompter and with enough gonads to do whatever is necessary to keep this country safe, sound and in good working order. President Obama does not fill the bill.

MUBARACK RESIGNS!

2011-02-11T10:30:00.003-06:00

President Hosni Mubarack has resigned as president of Egypt, according to Aljazeerah. The armed forces are in charge of the government. Liberation square is alive with people singing, worshiping and rejoicing.

The youth of Egypt were persistent in their struggle for freedom from a tyrannical leader. The protest was basically non-violent and the youth have brought this regime to their knees.

This is a day of celebration in Egypt. What does this mean for the USA. Who will be the next president, surely not Sulieman as the you do not want him in office either.

I cannot help but feel victory for the Egyptians, I have friends there and they are rejoicing.

Liberation Square is alive with the news, everyone is celebrating.

Clean My Life! | Authspot

2011-02-07T17:06:00.003-06:00

Clean My Life! | Authspot

This post was very touching to me...I found it while surfing the net. It spoke volumes to me. I hope it touches you!

Special Ops Marines Are Being Deployed to Egypt

2011-02-07T14:03:00.003-06:00

Special Ops Marines Are Being Deployed to Egypt

Welcome to the NEW WORLD ORDER!

Dell Hill has succinctly demonstrated in his article on http://www.uncoverage.net the ability to foresee exactly what is taking place in Egypt.

Why would the U.S.A. send in two (2) destroyers with a boatload of marines to evacuate the Americans...are we going to destroy them or just evacuate them? Good question. It also brings up the question of - where is the Massoud in all of this? One might ask, they have the most to lose in the breakdown of the peace treaty with Egypt.

Where are the unions in all of this squabble over who will rule in Egypt. No apparent leader has emerged because, they (the elites) are not ready to show their hand...we are sitting on a time bomb and no one is alarmed..Americans had better wake up...

Marketing Your Articles

2011-02-07T02:08:00.011-06:00

while surfing some of the many sites that try to explain "Article Marketing" I found an interesting site that has listed many of the "Article Marketing Houses", or "article directories".

I found the site Computersight and was instantly blown away with the information on article directories. I immediately set about to write an article for Triond, one of the directories listed in the article and was highly impressed with the many places for marketing my articles.

A List of Top Article Directories with High Pageranks

Read more: http://computersight.com/computers/a-list-of-top-article-directories-with-high-pageranks/#ixzz1DGAvt1qx

by Jewelstar

The shaping of a New World Order - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

2011-02-06T21:31:00.000-06:00

The shaping of a New World Order - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

CIA Officer- Robert Steele stresses the importance of Blogging - MONTAGE

2010-03-27T22:49:00.001-05:00

This is information you need to know. This information must be acted upon. As "We The People", it is past time to wake up!

more about "CIA Officer- Robert Steele stresses t...", posted with vodpod

INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY:WHO IS MAURICE STRONG?

2009-12-31T17:01:00.000-06:00

The adventures of Maurice Strong & Co. illustrate the fact that nowadays you don't have to be a household name to wield global power. By Ronald Bailey Published in The National Review September 1, 1997 Mr. Bailey is a freelance journalist and television producer in Washington, D.C. He is author of Eco-Scam: The False Prophets of Ecological Apocalypse (St. Martin's) and The True State of the Planet (Free Press).

"The survival of civilization in something like its present form might depend significantly on the efforts of a single man," declared The New Yorker. The New York Times hailed that man as the "Custodian of the Planet." He is perpetually on the short list of candidates for Secretary General of the United Nations. This lofty eminence? Maurice Strong, of course. Never heard of him? Well, you should have. Militia members are famously worried that black helicopters are practicing maneuvers with blue-helmeted UN troops in a plot to take over America. But the actual peril is more subtle. A small cadre of obscure international bureaucrats are hard at work devising a system of "global governance" that is slowly gaining control over ordinary Americans' lives. Maurice Strong, a 68-year-old Canadian, is the "indispensable man" at the center of this creeping UN power grab.

Not that Mr. Strong looks particularly indispensable. Indeed, he exudes a kind of negative charisma. He is a grey, short, soft-voiced man with a salt-and-pepper toothbrush mustache who wouldn't rate a second glance if you passed him on the street. Yet his remarkable career has led him from boyhood poverty in Manitoba to the highest councils of international government.

Among the hats he currently wears are: Senior Advisor to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan; Senior Advisor to World Bank President James Wolfensohn; Chairman of the Earth Council; Chairman of the World Resources Institute; Co-Chairman of the Council of the World Economic Forum; member of Toyota's International Advisory Board. As advisor to Kofi Annan, he is overseeing the new UN reforms.

Yet his most prominent and influential role to date was as Secretary General of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development -- the so-called Earth Summit -- held in Rio de Janeiro, which gave a significant push to global economic and environmental regulation.

"He's dangerous because he's a much smarter and shrewder man [than many in the UN system]," comments Charles Lichenstein, deputy ambassador to the UN under President Reagan. "I think he is a very dangerous ideologue, way over to the Left."

"This guy is kind of the global Ira Magaziner," says Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign-policy studies at the Cato Institute. "If he is whispering in Kofi Annan's ear this is no good at all."

Strong attracts such mystified suspicion because he is difficult to pin down. He told Maclean's in 1976 that he was "a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology." And his career combines oil deals with the likes of Adnan Khashoggi with links to the environmentalist Left. He is in fact one of a new political breed: the bi-sectoral entrepreneur who uses business success for leverage in politics, and vice versa.

Strong started in the oil business in the 1950s. He took over and turned around some small ailing energy companies in the 1960s, and he was president of a major holding company -- the Power Corporation of Canada -- by the age of 35. This was success by any standard. Yet on more than one occasion (including once in Who's Who), Strong has been caught exaggerating. He claimed, for instance, to have forfeited a $200,000 salary when he left Power. The real figure, said a company officer, was $35,000. Why this myth-making? Well, a CEO is just a CEO -- but a whiz-kid is a potential cabinet officer.

And it is in politics that Strong's talents really shine. He is the Michelangelo of networking. He early made friends in high places in Canada's Liberal Party -- including Paul Martin Sr., Canada's external-affairs minister in the Sixties -- and kept them as business partners in oil and real-estate ventures. He cultivated bright well-connected young people -- like Paul Martin Jr., Canada's present finance minister and the smart money's bet to succeed Jean Chretien as prime minister -- and salted them throughout his various political and business networks to form a virtual private intelligence service. And he always seemed to know what the next political trend would be -- foreign aid, Canadian economic nationalism, environmentalism.

In 1966, by now a Liberal favorite, Strong became head of the Canadian International Development Agency and thus was launched internationally. Impressed by his work at CIDA, UN Secretary General U Thant asked him to organize what became the first Earth Summit -- the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment in 1972. The next year, Strong became first director of the new UN Environment Program, created as a result of Stockholm. And in 1975, he was invited back to Canada to run the semi-national Petro-Canada, created by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in the wake of OPEC's oil shocks.

Petro-Canada was a sop to Canada's anti-American Left, then denouncing American ownership of the country's oil companies. Strong talked a good economic-nationalist game -- but he himself was a major reason why Canada's oil companies were U.S.-owned. Ten years before, while at Power Corporation, he had enabled Shell to take over the only remaining all-Canadian oil company by throwing a controlling block of shares in its direction. As Maclean's wrote, he now returned "amid fanfares" to rectify this.

After a couple of years, Strong left Petro-Canada for various business deals, including one with Adnan Khashoggi through which he ended up owning the 200,000-acre Baca ranch in Colorado, now a "New Age" center run by his wife, Hanne. (Among the seekers at Baca are Zen and Tibetan Buddhist monks, a breakaway order of Carmelite nuns, and followers of a Hindu guru called Babaji.) Not for long the joys of contemplation, however. In 1985, he was back as executive coordinator of the UN Office for Emergency Operations in Africa, in charge of running the $3.5-billion famine-relief effort in Somalia and Ethiopia. And in 1989, he was appointed Secretary General of the Earth Summit -- shortly thereafter flying down to Rio.

Strong's flexibility, however, must not be mistaken for open-mindedness. His friends, his allies among Canadian Liberals, his networks in the UN and the Third World, even his long-term business partners (like the late Paul Nathanson, wartime treasurer of the Canadian-Soviet Friendship Committee) all lean Left. He has said the Depression left him "frankly very radical." And given his ability to get things done, the consistency of his support for a world managed by bureaucrats is alarming. As Elaine Dewar wrote in Toronto's Saturday Night magazine:

It is instructive to read Strong's 1972 Stockholm speech and compare it with the issues of Earth Summit 1992. Strong warned urgently about global warming, the devastation of forests, the loss of biodiversity, polluted oceans, the population time bomb. Then as now, he invited to the conference the brand-new environmental NGOs [non-governmental organizations]: he gave them money to come; they were invited to raise hell at home. After Stockholm, environment issues became part of the administrative framework in Canada, the U.S., Britain, and Europe.

IN the meantime, Strong continued the international networking on which his influence rests. He became a member of the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission). He found time to serve as president of the World Federation of United Nations Associations, on the executive committee of the Society for International Development, and as an advisor to the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund. Above all, he served on the Commission on Global Governance -- which, as we shall see, plays a crucial part in the international power grab.
Sometimes, indeed, it seems that Strong's network of contacts must rival the Internet. To list a few:

-- Vice President Al Gore. (Of course.)

-- World Bank President James Wolfensohn, formerly on the Rockefeller Foundation Board and currently on the Population Council Board; he was Al Gore's favored candidate for the World Bank position.

-- James Gustave Speth, head of the Carter Administration's Council on Environmental Quality, crafter of the doomladen Global 2000 report, member of the Clinton - Gore transition team; he now heads the UN Development Program.

-- Shridath Ramphal, formerly Secretary General of the (British) Commonwealth, now Co-Chairman of the Commission on Global Governance.

-- Jonathan Lash, President of the World Resources Institute -- which works closely with the World Bank, the UN Environment Program, and the UN Development Program -- and Co-Chairman of the President's Council on Sustainable Development.

-- Ingvar Carlsson, former Swedish prime minister and Co-Chairman of the Commission on Global Governance.

But Strong is no snob; he even counts Republican Presidents among his friends. Elaine Dewar again:

Strong blurted out that he'd almost been shut out of the Earth Summit by people at the State Department. They had been overruled by the White House because George Bush knew him. He said that he'd donated some $100,000 to the Democrats and a slightly lesser amount to the Republicans in 1988. (The Republicans didn't confirm.)

I had been absolutely astonished. I mean yes, he had done a great deal of business in the U.S., but how could he have managed such contributions?

Well, he'd had a green card. The governor of Colorado had suggested it to him. A lawyer in Denver had told him how.

But why? I'd asked.

"Because I wanted influence in the United States."

So Strong gave political contributions (of dubious legality) to both parties; George Bush, now a friend, intervened to help him stay in charge of the Rio conference; he was thereby enabled to set a deep green agenda there; and Bush took a political hit in an election year. An instructive tale -- if it is not part of Strong's mythmaking.
Most of Strong's friends are more obviously compatible, which may explain why they tend to overlap in their institutional commitments. For example, James Wolfensohn (whom Strong had hired out of Harvard in the early Sixties to run an Australian subsidiary of one of his companies) appointed him as his senior advisor almost immediately upon being named chairman of the World Bank. "I'd been involved in . . . Stockholm, which Maurice Strong arranged," says Wolfensohn, who, more recently, has been credited with co-drafting (with Mikhail Gorbachev) the Earth Charter presented for consideration at the Rio + 5 meeting in Brazil earlier this year. As head of the Earth Council, Maurice Strong chaired that meeting.

It's not a conspiracy, of course: just a group of like-minded people fighting to save the world from less prescient and more selfish forces -- namely, market forces. And though the crises change -- World War II in the Forties, fear of the atom bomb in the Fifties, the "energy crisis" in the Seventies -- the Left's remedy is always the same: a greater role for international agencies. Today an allegedly looming global environmental catastrophe is behind their efforts to increase the power of the UN. Strong has warned memorably: "If we don't change, our species will not survive. . . . Frankly, we may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse." Apocalypse soon -- unless international bodies save us from ourselves.

LAST week, Secretary General Annan unveiled Maurice Strong's plan for reorganizing the UN. To be sure, the notoriously corrupt and inefficient UN bureaucracy could do with some shaking up. Strong's plan, however, mostly points in a different direction -- one drawn from a document, Our Global Neighborhood, devised by the interestingly named Commission on Global Governance.

The CGG was established in 1992, after Rio, at the suggestion of Willy Brandt, former West German chancellor and head of the Socialist International. Then Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali endorsed it. The CGG naturally denies advocating the sort of thing that fuels militia nightmares. "We are not proposing movement toward a world government," reassuringly write Co-Chairmen Ingvar Carlsson and Shridath Ramphal, ". . . [but] this is not to say that the goal should be a world without systems or rules." Quite so. As Hofstra University law professor Peter Spiro describes it: "The aim is not a superstate but rather the establishment of norm-creating multilateral regimes . . . This construct already constrains state action in the context of human rights and environmental protection and is on a springboard in other areas."

The concept of global governance has been fermenting for some time. In 1991, the Club of Rome (of which Strong is, of course, a member) issued a report called The First Global Revolution, which asserted that current problems "are essentially global and cannot be solved through individual country initiatives [which] gives a greatly enhanced importance to the United Nations and other international systems." Also in 1991 Strong claimed that the Earth Summit, of which he was Secretary General, would play an important role in "reforming and strengthening the United Nations as the centerpiece of the emerging system of democratic global governance." In 1995, in Our Global Neighborhood, the CGG agreed: "It is our firm conclusion that the United Nations must continue to play a central role in global governance."

Americans should be worried by the Commission's recommendations: for instance, that some UN activities be funded through taxes on foreign-exchange transactions and multinational corporations. Economist James Tobin estimates that a 0.5 per cent tax on foreign-exchange transactions would raise $1.5 trillion annually -- nearly equivalent to the U.S. federal budget.

It also recommended that "user fees" might be imposed on companies operating in the "global commons." Such fees might be collected on international airline tickets, ocean shipping, deep-sea fishing, activities in Antarctica, geostationary satellite orbits, and electromagnetic spectrum. But the big enchilada is carbon taxes, which would be levied on all fuels made from coal, oil, and natural gas. "A carbon tax," the report deadpans, ". . . would yield very large revenues indeed." Given the UN's record of empire-building and corruption, Cato's Ted Carpenter warns: "One can only imagine the degree of mischief it could get into if it had independent sources of revenue."

Especially significant for the U.S. was the CGG's proposal for eventual elimination of the veto held by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. The Commission knew that the current permanent members of the Security Council, including the U.S., would not easily surrender their vetoes, and so it recommended a two-stage process.

In the first stage, five new permanent members (without a veto) would be added to the Security Council -- probably Japan, Germany, Brazil, India, and Nigeria -- along with three new slots for non-permanent members. But the real threat to U.S. interests is the second stage: "a full review of the membership of the Council . . . around 2005, when the veto can be phased out." These plans are advancing. In March, the president of the UN General Assembly, Razali Ismail of Malayasia, unveiled his own formula for reforming the Security Council. It closely tracks the CGG's proposals. In particular, Razali proposed "urg[ing] the original permanent members to limit use of the veto . . . and not to extend [it] to new permanent members." He wanted to make the veto "progressively and politically untenable" and recommended that these arrangements be reviewed in ten years.

In July the State Department compromised -- accepting five new Security Council members but remaining silent on the veto. It plainly hopes that the veto issue will go away if the U.S. concedes on enlarging the Council. Yet the CGG's report makes clear that we are facing a rolling agenda to expand the power of UN bureaucrats. The veto issue may be postponed for ten years -- but what then?

"This is an initiative that should be resisted by the United States with special vehemence," says Ted Carpenter. For if the veto were eliminated, the United States would face the prospect of having other countries make key determinations that affect us without our consent.

THE Commission also wants to strengthen "global civil society," which, it explains, "is best expressed in the global non-governmental movement." Today, there are nearly 15,000 NGOs. More than 1,200 of them have consultative status with the UN's Economic and Social Council (up from 41 in 1948). The CGG wants NGOs to be brought formally into the UN system (no wonder Kenneth Minogue calls this Acronymia). So it proposes that representatives of such organizations be accredited to the General Assembly as "Civil Society Organizations" and convened in an annual Forum of Civil Society.

But how would these representatives be selected? This June, the General Assembly held a session on environmental issues called Earth Summit +5. President Razali selected a number of representatives from the NGOs and the private sector for the exclusive privilege of speaking in the plenary sessions. "I have gone to a lot of trouble with this, choosing the right NGOs," he declared. So whom did he choose?

Among others: Thilo Bode, executive director of Greenpeace, to represent the scientific and technological community; Yolanda Kakabadse, the president of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature; and "from the farmers, I have chosen an organic farmer, Denise O'Brien from the United States, who is a member of the Via Campesina." In what sense are these people "representative"? Whom do they represent? Were the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the chairman of Toshiba, and the president of the Farm Bureau all too busy to come talk to the General Assembly?

Another example of how this selection process operates was the "great civil society forum" convened at the behest of Strong's Earth Council and Mikhail Gorbachev's Green Cross International this past March. Some five hundred delegates met, supposedly to assess the results of the Earth Summit, but in reality to condemn the "inaction" of signatory countries in implementing the Rio treaties. The delegates were selected through a process based on national councils for sustainable development, themselves set up pursuant to the Earth Summit. Membership in these councils means that an organization is already persuaded of the global environmental crisis. So you can bet that the process did not yield many delegates representing business or advocating limits on government power.

This kind of international gabfest is, of course, a sinister parody of democracy. "Very few of even the larger international NGOs are operationally democratic, in the sense that members elect officers or direct policy on particular issues," notes Peter Spiro. "Arguably it is more often money than membership that determines influence, and money more often represents the support of centralized elites, such as major foundations, than of the grass roots." (The CGG has benefited substantially from the largesse of the MacArthur, Carnegie, and Ford Foundations.)

Hilary French, Vice President of the alarmist Worldwatch Institute, justifies this revealingly as "a paradox of our time . . . that effective governance requires control being simultaneously passed down to local communities and up to international institutions." Paradoxically or not, the voters hardly appear in this model of governance. It bypasses national governments and representative democracy in order to empower the sort of people who are willing to sit in committee meetings to the bitter end. Those who have better things to do -- businessmen, workers, moms -- would be the losers in the type of centralized decentralization envisioned by Worldwatch. The result would be decisions reached by self-selecting elites. In domestic politics, we have a name for such elite groups -- special interests.

ANOTHER CGG recommendation is that the old UN Trusteeship Council "be given a new mandate over the global commons." It defines the global commons to include the atmosphere, outer space, the oceans beyond national jurisdiction, and the related environmental systems that contribute to the support of human life. A new Trusteeship Council would oversee "the management of the commons, including development and use of their resources . . . [and] the administration of environmental treaties in such fields as climate change, biodiversity, outer space, and the Law of the Sea."

It is hard to see what this expansive definition would exclude from the jurisdiction of the Trusteeship Council. Biodiversity encompasses all the plants and animals on the earth, including those that live in your backyard. Will UN troops swoop in to stop you from cutting down trees on your property? Doubtless not. But a recent case near Yellowstone National Park may be a foretaste of how international agencies can meddle in U.S. domestic affairs.

Yellowstone has been designated a "World Heritage Site." These Sites are natural settings or cultural monuments recognized by the World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as having "outstanding universal value." Sites are designated under a Convention ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1973, and it is possible to place such sites on a "List of World Heritage Sites in Danger."

In this case, a mining company wanted to construct a gold mine outside the boundaries of Yellowstone. The normal environmental review of the project's impact was still proceeding under U.S. law. But a group of environmentalist NGOs opposed to the mine were not content to wait for that review to take its course. They asked that members of the World Heritage Committee come to Yellowstone to hold public hearings. George Frampton, the Clinton Administration's Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, wrote to the WHC saying: "The Secretary [Bruce Babbitt] and the National Park Service have clearly expressed strong reservations with the New World Mine proposal." Frampton added: "We believe that a potential danger to the values of the Park and surrounding waters and fisheries exists and that the committee should be informed that the property as inscribed on the . . . List is in danger." Four officials of the WHC duly came to Yellowstone and held hearings. And at its December 1995 meeting in Berlin, the Committee obligingly voted to list Yellowstone as a "World Heritage Site in Danger."

"It was, in my opinion, a blatantly political act," declared Rep. Barbara Cubin (R., Wyo.) during congressional hearings about the listing. "It was done to draw attention, public reaction, public response, and public pressure to see that the mine wasn't developed." Jeremy Rabkin, a Cornell political scientist, agrees that the international listing of such sites "provides an international forum through which to put pressure on U.S. policy."

Would the mine really have endangered Yellowstone? We'll never know. The environmental-impact statement was never issued, and, under pressure, the mining company accepted a $65-million federal buyout plus a trade for unspecified federal lands somewhere else. Thus, even with no enforcement power, this UN dependency was able to make land-use policy for the United States.

These events prompted Rep. Don Young (R., Alaska) to introduce the American Land Sovereignty Act. With 174 co-sponsors to date, the Act aims to "preserve sovereignty of the United States over public lands and . . . to preserve State sovereignty and private property rights in non-federal lands surrounding those public lands." Congress would have to approve on a case-by-case basis land designations made pursuant to any international agreements.

But is U.S. sovereignty really in danger? In an interview, Strong dismissed Young's anxieties. "I do not share his concern. It is no abdication of sovereignty to exercise it in company with others, and when you're dealing with global issues that's what you have to do." He continues: "If you put yourself in a larger unit, of course, you get some advantages and you give up some of your freedom. And that's what's happening in Europe, that the states of Europe have decided that overall they're better off to create a structure in which they give up some of their national rights and exercise them collectively through the Union."

This example of the European Union, however, worries Ambassador Lichenstein. The EU's bureaucracy in Brussels, he complains, "is responsible to no one. Governments get together -- foreign ministers, finance ministers -- they presumably hand down the guidelines, but don't kid yourself, the bureaucrats are running things."

The Yellowstone case is an example of how "feel-good" symbolism about the environment can be transformed into real constraints upon real people imposed outside the law, with no democratic oversight and no means of redress. Ironically, Strong himself had a run-in with Colorado environmentalists over local water rights. They did not have the wit to call in an international agency against the New Age rancher -- or maybe they realized that Strong was one property owner whose rights the UN would respect.

AS troubling as the Yellowstone incident is, much greater potential for mischief lies in a new series of "framework treaties" designed to handle global environmental issues. Initially, the treaties called for voluntary actions by governments and set up a consultative process. But environmental activists like Hilary French know very well how this process works. "Even though it can look disappointing, the political will created [by these framework conventions] can lead to commitments of a more binding nature," she said. This is already happening. "Although its declaration of principles was transparently aspirational, the 1972 Stockholm world conference on the human environment is generally recognized as a turning point in international environmental-protection efforts," wrote Peter Spiro. "From it emerged a standing institution (the UN Environment Program); weak but more focused 'framework' treaties followed, which in turn are being filled out by specific regulatory regimes. The 1985 Vienna Convention on the Protection of the Ozone Layer itself included no obligations, but the 1987 Montreal protocols and subsequent amendments set a full phaseout of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-depleting substances by 1996. The regime covers 132 signatories with a total population of 4.7 billion people. Between 1987 and 1991, global CFC consumption was in fact reduced by half. A similar filling-out process is likely to occur with the biodiversity and climate-change conventions signed at Rio."

The "conventions" that Spiro was talking about emerged from the Earth Summit chaired by Maurice Strong. They deal with two of the alleged global environmental crises -- global warming and species extinction.

At the time of the Earth Summit, some scientists predicted on the basis of climate computer models that the earth's average temperature would increase by 4 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century because of the "greenhouse effect." These predictions are controversial among scientists. And as the computer models are refined, they show that the atmosphere will warm far less than originally predicted. Furthermore, more accurate satellite measurements show no increase in the average global temperature over the last two decades. Finally, an important study published in Nature concluded that even if the warming predictions are right, it could well be less costly to allow greenhouse gas emissions to continue to rise for a decade or more because technological innovations and judicious capital investment will make it possible to reduce them far more cheaply at some point before they become a significant problem. In other words, we needn't take drastic and costly action now.

The process forges ahead anyway. The Framework Convention on Global Climate Change signed by President George Bush at the Rio Earth Summit is already beginning to harden. Initially, countries were supposed voluntarily to reduce by the year 2000 the "greenhouse gases" to the level emitted in 1990. Then, a year ago, at a UN climate-change meeting in Geneva, the Clinton Administration offered to set legally binding limits on the greenhouse gases the United States can emit. In June of this year, at the UN's Earth Summit +5 session, President Clinton reaffirmed this commitment. And mandatory limits on carbon emissions are to be finalized at a global meeting of Convention signatories in Kyoto this December.

Estimates of the costs to the United States of cutting emissions range from $90 billion to $400 billion annually in lost Gross Domestic Product and a loss of between 600,000 and 3.5 million jobs. Global costs would be proportionately higher.

Yet while the U.S. may be committing itself to limits, 130 developing nations, including China and India, are excluded under the Framework Convention from having to reduce their emissions, which, on present trends, will outstrip those of the industrialized world early in the next century. If the U.S. and other industrial countries have to limit energy use while the Third World is exempt, many industries will simply decamp to where energy prices are significantly lower.

If they are permitted to do so. For, as Sen. Chuck Hagel (R., Neb.) asked at a conference on "The Costs of Kyoto" held by the Competitive Enterprise Institute: "Who will administer a global climate treaty? . . . Will we have an international agency capable of inspecting, fining, and possibly shutting down American companies?" Sen. Hagel is not alone is his concern. In July the U.S. Senate passed 95 to 0 a resolution urging the Clinton Administration not to make binding concessions at the Kyoto conference.

But the climate-change treaty is not the only threat to U.S. interests. Though Mr. Bush refused to sign the Bio-diversity Convention at the Rio Earth Summit -- chaired, remember, by GOP contributor Strong -- that only delayed things. The Clinton Administration signed shortly after its inauguration. Since the treaty obliges signatories to protect plant and animal species through habitat preservation, its implementation could make the World Heritage Committee's activities on U.S. land use seem penny-ante by comparison.

MEANWHILE, how much further down the path sketched out by the CGG will the UN reforms developed by Maurice Strong and announced by Kofi Annan last week take us?

The most important initiative is the recommendation that the General Assembly organize a "Millennium Assembly" and a companion "People's Assembly" in the year 2000. (The "People's Assembly" mirrors the CGG's "Civil Society Forum" idea -- among other things, only accredited NGOs would be invited to advise the General Assembly.) But what would these grand new bodies actually do? The Millennium Assembly would invite "heads of Government . . . to articulate their vision of prospects and challenges for the new millennium and agree on a process for fundamental review of the role of the United Nations [emphasis added]." That last innocuous phrase is diplomatese for opening up the UN Charter for amendment. If that happens, so could anything -- notably eliminating the veto in the Security Council.

The Millennium Assembly would also consider adopting Strong's Earth Charter. For the most part the Charter reads like another feel-good document -- its draft says that "we must reinvent industrial-technological civilization" and promises everybody a clean environment, equitable incomes, and an end to cruelty to animals -- but we have seen how such vacuous symbolism can have real consequences down the line. Inevitably, the Charter advocates that "the nations of the world should adopt as a first step an international convention that provides an integrated legal framework for existing and future environmental and sustainable-development law and policy." This is, of course, a charter for endless intervention in the internal affairs of independent states.

Which leaves external affairs. Hey presto! In line with the CGG's plan, Annan/Strong urge that the UN Trusteeship Council "be reconstituted as the forum through which member states exercise their collective trusteeship for the integrity of the global environment and common areas such as the oceans, atmosphere, and outer space."

For the time being, however, Annan and Strong have avoided calling for global taxes or user fees to finance the UN. One spokesman said that the issue was simply "too hot to handle right now." What they propose is a Revolving Credit Fund of $1 billion so that the UN will have a source of operating funds even if a major contributor (e.g., the U.S.) withholds contributions for a time. In short, the CGG's blueprint for a more powerful UN closely resembles the movement to expand the requirements of the Framework Convention on Global Climate Change. While the process may be piecemeal, the goal is clear: a more powerful set of international institutions, increasingly emancipated from the control of the major powers, increasingly accountable not to representative democratic institutions but to unelected bureaucracies, and increasingly exercising authority over how people, companies, and governments run their affairs -- not just Americans, but everyone. In short, Col. Qaddafi's definition of his leftist Green Revolution: "Committees Everywhere."

If so, the future looks good for Maurice Strong. One UN source suggested that, at the very least, he would like to be made Secretary General of the Millennium Assembly or the People's Assembly. Others suspect that, even at age 68, Strong is angling to be the next UN Secretary General.

Such eminence may help explain a puzzling incident in his early career. Having long had political ambitions, he decided to enter the Canadian Parliament. A candidate was evicted from a safe constituency by the Liberal leadership, and Strong moved in. Then, with only a month to go before the 1979 election, he suddenly pulled out of the race. Strong's business deals were especially complicated at the time -- he was setting up a Swiss oil-and-gas exploration company with partners that included the Kuwaiti Finance Minister and the Arab Petroleum Investment Corporation -- and that is the explanation usually given. But maybe he just decided that for a man who wants power, elections are an unnecessary obstacle.

By Ronald Bailey Published in The National Review September 1, 1997

Mr. Bailey is a freelance journalist and television producer in Washington, D.C. He is author of Eco-Scam: The False Prophets of Ecological Apocalypse (St. Martin's) and The True State of the Planet (Free Press).

Christ will not be allowed...but Allah is okay!

2009-11-16T16:03:00.000-06:00

What The Media Isn't telling about Judge David Hamilton
Posted by DeannaZ on Monday, November 16, 2009

This judge ruled that any prayer using the name or title "Christ" is unconstitutional saying it is too sectarian but ruled the the use of the name or title "Allah" was constitutional.

This judge was deemed "not qualified" by the American Bar Association when they tried to get him through the last time.

Now, all of a sudden, in the very few reports you are hearing in the media they are saying the Bar Association says he is qualified so either the Bar has flip flopped or the media is misleading us again.

Now Sen. Harry Reid is trying to sneak him through again. Why, because he wants to fix the court to rule the way he wants because he is pro abortion and if he has to keep the "no government funding for abortion" in his bill to win and it is challenged in court the pro choice will win.

This judge has already ruled to block reasonable informed consent abortion laws.

He is also a former advisor to ACORN. This man has a long history of overt judicial activism and has stated that he believes it is the courts duty, not the people and states to make amendments to our Constitution. Wrong!!

Another Chicago Businessman Found Dead!

2009-11-16T15:43:00.000-06:00

Was it suicide as they are claiming? The body of Chicagoan Michael Scott, head of the Board of Education was found floating in the river.

Now I ask you, when you are going to commit suicide do you march down to the river and wade in sans watch and good shoes...with pistol in hand and blow your brains out, if so the gun would be in the water, or at best on the shore....no gun, but he killed himself.

A distraught soul looking for comfort goes to a quiet place they are familiar with when committing suicide, check the cases that have been recorded throughout history. No one goes to the river and wades in with a gun to kill himself. He was shot somewhere else and thrown in the river. I hope the "Daily Machine" can solve this one.

This is the second businessman in Chicago to die in recent days. Something must be going on in Chicago. Michael Scott was purported to have been heavily invested in the Olympics coming to Chicago, he stood to make millions on real estate business there. After the Olympic bid was lost, Scott was on the hot seat regarding his business with the Olympic Bidding. mmmmm This story sounds so fishy, it is not even funny anymore. Chicago politics at its best.

The Berlin Wall has been moved.....

2009-11-12T13:28:00.001-06:00

Who said our young people were brainwashed to believe in this new Progressive Movement of Socialism for America?

Take a look at these students at Washington University...are they not saying what we are all thinking, God bless them all. We need to support them and stand behind them and you too can join their organization Young Americans for Liberty

They are speaking out by building a gulag and telling us what could happen if we allow Socialism to takeover in this country, this land of liberty, America.

We were informed by the MSM that the young people are the ones that voted President Obama into office, I don't think so. These young people do not want their liberties trampled on and they do not want Socialism. They are brave enough to speak out and what does the University do but trample on their rights as free citizens in a free republic to speak out.

Seems to me that the conspiracy theorist were right, our freedoms are slowly being removed and replaced with "PC Behavior", that is politically correct language and politically correct ideas fomented by the liberals.

The Berlin Wall was removed, only to be raised years later in the United States of America...WAKE UP AMERICA!

Are We Being Blackmailed?

2009-11-12T10:41:00.000-06:00

As the leader of the free world, why in the world or should I say, how in the world did we allow ourselves to be put in a situation whereby we must pay off other nations for our carbon emissions?

Just because we have bartered and played both sides of the fence with these other nations, we have appeared to be the bully to other nations by lending them money and then forclosing when they wouldn't or couldn't pay us back, does the IMF ring any bells here? Just because we have invaded sovereign nations and taken over their livelihood (oil), (diamonds) and other resources, or just because we think the world stage is our play ground does not negate the fact that there are millions of Americans who do not want to go to a global governance, who do not want the NWO agenda.

Dana Milbank has written an article telling us the time and date of the arrival of the New World Order (NWO), in case anyone missed it. Our country has allowed an armed entourage of Ban-Ki Moon, the UN defacto leader from North Korea to stand in our country and give a speech telling us what we need to do. Now correct me if I am wrong but weren't we just trying defuse the situation with North Korea and now here we find ourselves being lectured by this man about what we need to do in the global scheme of things. I am confused, one day we are against North Korea and the next we are listening to their communist message that we need to get on board this NWO train.

So what could possibly be in the minds of John Kerry and Joe Leiberman to side with the enemy? Thirty years ago this would have been treason of the highest form. Now we look the other way and call it progress. These progressive socialist thinkers are leading us in a direction we DO NOT want to go and nobody is shouting from the rooftop for this to stop.

I believe that all nations should move forward into the twenty first century and that certain changes have to be made to move ahead, in other words things must change, but does this include giving up our place in the grand scheme of things and moving from the mansion to the trailer park so that we can all be equal, I don't think so...

In a perfect world changes are made to move forward but this change is causing some grief as they will be moving backwards not forwards. By taking away the middle class and regulating them to a lower realm and joining forces with the enemy is not progress, it is change none of us should have to live with and I am appalled at the lack of leadership at the helm of this great ship we call America. I am alarmed at the quietness with which this is being done.

It would appear that those in government who disagree with the NWO and the changes taking place, have joined the "Witness Protection Program", they have disappeared and there is no trace left of them.

I remember many books and articles I have read over the years of the great holocaust and how the people thought if they just kept quiet no one would bother them. This seems to be the prevailng fear amongst the general population in America. This Draconian measure of being "dragged away in the middle of the night" for being a dissident, being labeled a conspiracy theorist has taken hold in this country.

We were critical of the way the Jews allowed themselves to be lulled into apathy by Hitler and his regime and yet, we find ourselves doing the same thing they did during WWII. Why are we so complacent when the changes being made will affect our lives as well as the lives of the people we love the most, our own children?

So, when your children reach the age of understanding, sit them down and explain it like this:
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When they came for the conspiracy theorist, your mother and I agreed we were not Conspiracy nuts, so we didn't say anything;

When they came for the main stream media, we weren't involved, so we didn't say anything;

When they took away our First Amendment Rights, we kept quiet for fear of causing trouble;

When they took away our Constitutional freedoms, we didn't want to cause trouble and be labeled a dissident, so we kept quiet;

When they taxed us so heavy that we could not make it without your mother going to work and us putting you into government controlled facilities (school), we stayed quiet so as to not upset our neighbors;

When they took away our healthcare they limited our lives by a few short years and we just felt that the "government knows best", so we didn't say anything;

When they took away our right to defend ourselves (guns), we knew then that we were in trouble because they had forever changed the way we lived our lives as free men in a free world with choices.

We are so sorry that we didn't stand up and defend our "Rights", we are sorry that we didn't listen to the conspiracy theorist who told us what would happen. We thought they were a bunch of nuts and that the things they were telling us...no one would dare do that in this country - America, land of the free!

But now you will have to live under a different set of rules than we did as children. You will not be able to call things as you seen them, because you might not be politically correct. If you see a terrorist, don't say anything, as you might be dragged into court to defend your position, as you don't have the right to say anything about anyone anymore, after all we "wouldn't want to offend anyone", especially not a terrorist!

Also, when the food shortage starts, don't grow a garden, as you will be limited to what you can consume, you will not be allowed to grow more than you can consume within a certain period of time and it is very short;

You see your mom and I didn't fight back, we didn't voice our opinion as we thought that we would be labeled a "combatant fugitive" (Patriot Act) and likely we would be jailed. We thought our place was with you and we couldn't let them take us away, so we kept quiet;

When the Patriot Act was written, we didn't even read it as we knew we couldn't do anything, I mean we were just two people who were not educated in the "ways of the world", so we sat quietly;

I hope you will forgive us for not speaking up and try to understand we didn't want to go to jail. Besides writing all those letters to congressmen and calling them all the time, they wouldn't listen to us anyway, so we didn't bother, we just let them play their role and we kept on re-electing them.

Please try to forgive us for selling you out on this as we had no idea it would get this bad!

The Finder

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PLAGUE WARNING BACK IN AUGUST !

2009-11-06T12:10:00.001-06:00

This video just blows my mind. Why in the world would someone want to go to all the expense, rummage up all the equipment to take out one lone man in a little car. He didn't look threatening in the video, they clearly showed him looking at the camera, he looked like he was in shock.

First the armored tank rams his car from the front and then he is literally attack from all sides. He didn't have a weapon, it would appear. He seemingly posed no threat. Why were they so afraid of him. The very words he uttered were the cause of all of this take-down.

If what the man said was not true, they wouldn't have bothered with him. This says to me that what he was saying regarding the bio weapons in the flu vaccine must be true, otherwise they wouldn't have wasted their time with him. They could have written him off as a nut case, however, they are so afraid of what he has to say, they must literally destroy him. They will dress this up with all kinds of stories about how he did have a weapon, he was a threat, blah blah blah.

What have we come to in this country when no one can speak their mind. We were once a free nation, but they are literally destroying that portion of the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and our Republic.

This whistleblower has been arrested, and deported all within a small amount of time and now he has suddenly disappeared and no one knows all the details. This is exactly what happens when you oppose the government forces.

Join http://www.firecongress.org or http://www.firecongress.meetup.com

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Congressman Mike Rogers' opening statement on Health Care reform in Washington D.C.

2009-11-04T13:02:00.001-06:00

Listen to what Mr. Rogers of Michigan is saying. The people need to hear this loud and clear and call your representatives and ask that they not vote this healthcare reform bill into law.

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