Interesting information

There is always some interest attached to Westerners, particularly if they have been involved in somewhat questionable political activity, who then decide to live in countries that are not, shall we say, entirely of Western persuasion.

For instance, two of the high-ranking American officials, investigated for their Communist links and espionage activity, which they vehemently denied and which have been definitively proved since, gave up their US citizenship to live somewhere else.

Take the case of Lauchlin B. Currie, who was Roosevelt’s special representative to China and is one of the people credited with making sure that help meant for the Nationalists never reached them, thus ensuring Mao’s victory.

He did other things. When the FBI started investigating one of the most successful Soviet spies, Gregory Silvermaster, Currie warned the MVD (the KGB was called that at the time). Silvermaster managed to get away and continued his work.

This is the real killer, so to speak. Mr Currie took part in preparations for the Bretton Woods Conference that set up both the IMF and the World Bank. Mostly the conference was organized by Harry Dexter White, a known Soviet agent himself.

Then in 1954, Lauchlin B. Currie resigned from his position, went to Colombia and gave up his American citizenship.

Or let us take the case of Frank Coe, a close colleague of the self-same Harry Dexter White at US Treasury and the IMF. Also a Soviet agent, an allegation indignantly denied, he resigned in 1950 and went to live in China in 1958. There he remained until his death.

So, apart from the fact that these unresolved issues from the thirties, forties and fifties are still poisoning politics in Britain and America why did I suddenly recall these individuals?

I opened my e-mail from the Wall Street Journal and found an interview conducted by Claudia Rossett, whose work I admire enormously with the man who proudly claims to be the “godfather” of the Kyoto Treaty, Maurice Strong. He, too, it seems has moved to China, the country that is least amenable to the sort of transnational control that Mr Strong has advocated all his life and has, one way or another, managed to inject into American politics. Oh and it is the country that is possibly the most polluted in the world.

It is well worth reading the article in its entirety. Mr Strong is, as it behoves a man who has had a long and successful career with the UN though it ended in unresolved problems to do with the Oil-for-Food scam and a very large cheque paid into his account, is very proud of the fact that, despite not being accountable to anybody he has managed to manipulate matters to such an extent that his favoured policies have been accepted by American politicians and imposed on the American people without their say-so.

In his most recent stint at the U.N., from 1997-2005, Mr. Strong served as an Under-Secretary-General and special adviser to former Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He was point man on matters ranging from U.N. reform to environmentalism to North Korea. By some accounts, including his own, he has been a benevolent toiler in the multilateral trenches, a friend of Mikhail Gorbachev and Al Gore, networking to save the planet.

By other accounts, he's a self-dealing and self-declared socialist who has parlayed his talents into a push for collectivist global government. These days he is living in China, where he says his ties go back "40 years."

Ms Rossett gives interesting details of Mr Stong’s political and financial dealings prior to his move to China. On this side of the Pond we are well used to this destruction of democracy but Americans who read this interview might find it all a little surprising and unnerving.