After listening to Pete Santilli try to tell the story (not a critcism) about the DOJ prosecution of a French Cement Company called LaFarge that then drifted into a story about Ericsson, a Swedish telecom company, I thought I would gather up links and information I have relevant to both stories.
Department of Justice, Press Release on LaFarge Video of the Press Conference
[Note: I also wrote about suspicious activities of a Mexican Cement Company called CEMEX].
The stories of the cement companies and the telecoms are related but I think that the Ericsson story is the easiest entré into it.
Ericsson
One of the DOJ Press Releases on Ericsson and one about the Ericsson employee that was charged in a foreign bribery scheme can be found by clicking on the links.
The ICIJ published this report about Ericsson and ISIS: After ICIJ exposes possible ISIS deals, US accuses Ericsson of breaching corruption agreement
I did a search on my hard drive to see if I had anything on Ericsson. I hit the Jackpot. In the Millennium Summit Report, Chapter VI, Renewing the United Nations, bottom of page 6:
I am pleased to announce the launch of a new disaster response programme,which will provide and maintain mobile and satellite telephones as well as microwave links for humanitarian relief workers.
This initiative will be led by Ericsson, in partnership with United Nations entities and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (see box 11).
Logistical planning and operations in complex emergencies can also benefit from better use of available technology. In Kosovo, for example, the International Rescue Committee created a shared satellite/wireless Internet network in Pristina. Every United Nations agency, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, several national missions and the majority of non-governmental organizations are connected via the network around the clock.
Background
In 1994, G7/G8 decided to jointly develop global systems.
In 1995, they decided to build a suite of eleven global systems.
Theme 7 is the Global Emergency Management Information Network Initiative (GEMINI). (Note: I have since found out that different countries use similar but different names. As I understand it, in the US, the systems is simply called GEMS – Global Emergency Management System.
I have been working on a report about Bill Clinton’s President’s Council on Sustainable Development, Metropolitan Strategies because I connected the work of the Task Force on Sustainable Communities to what happened to Boise. Idaho beginning about 1997. As I was reviewing the material I have on the subject, I came across a report I wrote in 2007. It has a link to an article on Crossroads titled Rapid Reaction against UN Foes that has the following information:
2. In 1995, a detailed report titled Towards A Rapid Reaction Capability for the United Nations was prepared by an International Consultative Group co-chaired by Sir Brian Urquhart of the Ford Foundation and Dr. John C. Polanyi, Nobel Laureate of the University of Toronto. This Group consisted of “experts drawn from governments, academic institutions and nongovernmental organizations” and included U.S. leaders such as Dr. Jessica Mathews, Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations. Published by the Canadian government, it called for UN management of satellite surveillance, information systems, databanks, and every other technological tool for managing people. It concluded that–
“As long sovereign states retain the right to decide on the deployment of their national units, there will never be complete assurance that a UN force can meet an urgent situation on time . . . .” 4
“Command, Control, Communications, Computer and Intelligence systems (C41) would incorporate the full range of strategic and tactical communications networks, together with data processing capabilities and real-time information transfer….
“… A number of UN Member States are bound to be wary of systems and equipment designed for advance surveillance, intrusion detection, early warning and enhanced analytical capabilities, even if similar systems are already part of the national inventories of neighbors or adversaries. Some of these systems…might be considered too “intrusive” for use by an inter-governmental organizations. Even if these political hurdles can be overcome, acquisitions of these capabilities face enormous financial obstacles . . . .
“A prudent, long-terms approach… would focus initially on the acquisition of advanced communication/information management systems for UN headquarters and the field. These would be “secure” systems which could readily be linked electronically to a variety of national systems provided to the UN under memoranda of understanding. The UN could then build upon this base…. “5
I found the report on the Canadian Government, Global Affairs Digital Library website:
Towards a Rapid Reaction Capability for the United Nations (PDF)
What captured my attention in the Crossroads article quote was that International Consultative Group co-chaired by Sir Brian Urquhart of the Ford Foundation.
In June of 2021, I wrote an article about a report produced by members of the Socialist International (SI). The title of the SI report is Common Responsibility in the 1990s: The Stockholm Initiative on Global Security and Governance, April 22, 1991.
Beginning on page 42, the participants who produced the report are listed. The last name on the list is Brian Urquhart. Because the only credits listed for Brian Urquhart were that he was from Great Britain and he was working for the Ford Foundation, I researched him and found out this from his obituary that he had been with the UN from the beginning .
Urquhart was the second staff member hired by the UN following its founding in 1945 and worked as a principal adviser to five UN secretaries general in his 41-year career. . . After the war he served as a British member of the preparatory commission that established the UN framework. . . As an aide to secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld he helped to define the UN’s scope of action in addressing armed conflict and other global challenges. Urquhart joined the Ford Foundation after he retired and wrote books and frequent commentaries for the New York Review of Books and other publications.
In the section about Brian Urquhart, there are two reports listed that Urquhart wrote with Erskine Childers while at the Dag Hammerskjold Foundation. sponsored by the Ford Foundation.
A World in Need of Leadership: Tomorrow’s United Nations 1990 sponsored by the Ford Foundation
Towards a More Effective United Nations, 1991 Also sponsored by the Ford Foundation.
Ford Foundation has been on my radar screen since about 2006 when I first found their involvement in Boise, Idaho prior to the subprime mortgage meltdown in 2008. At the time, I couldn’t figure where the momentum was coming from but I knew what was happening wasn’t good. I did a timeline and I documented what I could find about the financing and who was involved. Ford Foundation was involved. (I now know that they were implementing the community plans initiated by Bill Clinton’s Council on Sustainable Development, Sustainable Communities Task Force). So what is the connection between Boise and the emergency management system? In the timeline as the Treasure Valley Partners was being formed, there is an entry in 1997 titled, Planting the Seeds for Regionalism. It links to this article that has the following paragraph:
There’s really two big issues: land use, and police powers. Only the municipal elected officials can deal with those.
“Before the Partnership, police in one city or county couldn’t arrest suspects across jurisdictional lines. They had to go through a complicated process to follow, arrest and prosecute criminals. And ambulances couldn’t assist people in cases where they were over the county lines, even if the “appropriate” ambulance was much further from an accident! We got an early win during the first year when the Partnership members began to sign memos of understandings (MOUs) allowing their respective ambulances and police officers to cross jurisdictional lines.”
De facto, what they are talking about in terms of cross-jurisdictional emergency response is a cross-jurisdictional 911 system.
More recently, I encountered Ford Foundation again, this time connected to the Montana Human Rights Network and Eric Ward of the Western States Center. Those connections will have to wait for the next update of this post.
While researching refugee resettlement in Idaho, it was found that the International Rescue Committee is one of the leading organizations involved in importing very healthy looking male “refugees”.