So oil shares and money were given by Aziz to some Frenchmen for supporting Iraq--what is different with this situation and Adscam? Those in charge pay off their buddies all around the world--this seems to be the norm rather than the exception.
The only problem I have with this reporting is that it seems to target those against the invasion of Iraq--the taking of money was criminal--but that is not unusual throughout the world--those taking the money--including Strong and Martin, were only doing what they have done in Canada and elsewhere--looked after their own interests and the people be damned.

So what's this got to do with Canadian Health care? What does Quebec say about this?
None of this would be happening if George Bush wasn't president.

Saddam Hussein didn't use 'paper shredders', he used 'wood chippers'. Imagine getting tossed into one of these- feet first, and getting a fraction of an inch of yourself shaved off by each blade that goes past! (Wow- that would be even more fun than a guillotine- and hey, you can hitch 'em to a truck and tow them!)

Strong>Chretien>Martin> Canadians >>> Saddam $$$$$

The Buck Still Hasn't Stopped
From the October 3, 2005 issue: The Volcker report on Oil-for-Food is sadly incomplete.
by Claudia Rosett
............
So let us focus on another character, Annan's former special adviser Maurice Strong, longtime U.N. guru of good governance. (Strong did depart the United Nations this spring, but with Annan's office expressing fervent hopes he will soon return.)

At some length, Volcker does the genuine service of laying out how Strong, in mid-1997, received a check for $988,885 made out to his name (a copy can be found on page 106, Volume II). The check was drawn on a Jordanian bank, funded by Saddam's regime, and delivered by Korean businessman Tongsun Park, who was a U.N. "back-channel" go-between with Saddam. Strong endorsed the check over to a third party to invest in a Strong family-controlled business, Cordex Petroleum. Interviewed by Volcker's team earlier this year, Strong said he did not recall receiving such a check. When shown a copy, he said he did not know the money came from Iraq. Volcker leaves the matter there, concluding that "the Committee has found no evidence that Mr. Strong was involved in Iraqi affairs, matters relating to the [Oil-for-Food] Programme or took any actions at the request of Iraqi officials."

But how hard did the Volcker committee look? In July 1997, the month before Strong cashed the Saddam-backed check, Annan was issuing his first U.N. reform program, reshaping the secretariat. Strong was the major architect of that reform, and was thanked profusely by Annan at the time for "his important contributions." A significant aspect of that reform was the consolidation of the then-new, ad hoc, and diffuse Iraq Oil-for-Food program into a single, more firmly entrenched office. This move tilted control of the daily administration of Oil-for-Food away from the Security Council and toward the secretariat. When the new, unified office set up shop three months later, in October 1997, Annan appointed Sevan as executive director. That marked the beginning of the stretch in which Sevan began taking bribes from Saddam, and the Oil-for-Food program, urged on by Annan, began to grow astronomically in size and scope. Lacking any disclosure of the secret U.N. paper trail that led to the creation of this office and its expanded mission, it is impossible to know whether Strong took a direct hand in setting up the office from which Sevan then, in effect, collaborated with Saddam. Perhaps Strong had nothing to do with it. But Volcker doesn't even ask the question.

Only in the case of Sevan, already documented in the press before the Volcker inquiry got started in mid-2004, does Volcker assign blame to a specific individual. And even there, the Volcker committee fumbled, issuing an interim report last February, which, after eight months of preliminary investigation, merely rebuked Sevan for engaging in a "grave and continuing conflict of interest." Two weeks later, Sen. Norm Coleman's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations accused Sevan outright of having taken bribes from Saddam. By the time Volcker finally worked around in his third interim report, August 8, to repeating the accusation, Sevan had made use of the intervening months to cash in his U.N. pension and leave New York. He is now widely believed to be back in his native Cyprus, which has no extradition treaty with the United States.

It's all enough to raise questions about the agenda of the Volcker probe itself. As it happens, Rep. Henry Hyde's Committee on International Relations is planning to do just that. Hyde's investigators expect to focus on, among other things, why one of Volcker's lead investigators, Robert Parton, defected this past April with boxes of evidence. Parton explained via his lawyer that he had resigned on "principle" because the second of Volcker's three interim reports had been too soft on Annan. Volcker went through the courts to silence Parton, but that arrangement is about to end. Hyde's inquiry is expected to issue a report on the United Nations later this fall. Coleman's investigators into Oil-for-Food are also due to check in. Federal prosecutors have issued a number of indictments related to U.N. corruption. And--who knows?--Volcker next month gets one more chance.

Claudia Rosett is a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. >>>
http://www.rapp.org/url/?MU7F4V1Y

Do not forget Chretien and his ties through marriage and patronage and employment to Power Corp. Chretien who was so against the Iraq war and wanted the UNs blessing for anything. The Un that was benefiting Power Corp companies that had rights to oil fields and received oil for money contracts.
As usual, follow the money.
enough

So- Maurice Strong dosen't remember receiving a cheque made out to him for almost a million dollars! And even better still- he dosen't remember cashing it! (I guess we can't expect him to recall where the money went, huh?) Duh!

So what's this got to do with Canadian Health care? What does Quebec say about this?
None of this would be happening if George Bush wasn't president.
Posted by Duke at October 15, 2005 11:59 AM

Duke, buddy . . . time to get back on your meds.

No Fred, That's the average canadian twit. That is how they think. That's how they vote and there are many of them ... too many.

Sorry to interupt with another topic. But it's a biggie.
Life-and-death flu

Many of you folks need to tone down your finger pointing at chretian, martin, annan and chirac. If things go bad these guys have a long evil memory and they will not forget you. further, the comments about Canadians twits is interesting. I wonder if we had bombs and shootings here how many would even go to vote? OH.WELL, its raining and it's george bush that done that to!

Speaking of finger pointing, it's interesting that the National Review wrote, way back in 1997, that "...a small cadre of obscure international bureaucrats are hard at work devising a system of global governance that is slowly gaining control...Maurice Strong, a 68-year-old Canadian, is the 'insispensible man' at the center of this creeping UN power grab." They described Strong as having, early on, "made friends in high places in Canada's Liberal party...he cultivated bright well-connected young people -- like Paul Martin Jr., Canada's present finance minister...and salted them throughout his various political and business networks to form a virtual private intelligence service."

American deputy ambassador Charles Lichenstein said "I think he is a very dangerous idealogue, way over to the left...if he is whispering in Kofi Annan's ear, this is no good at all."

Eight years later, any LPC connections to the Oil-For-Food scandal would seem inconclusive and peripheral, if only they weren't so darned persistant. Along with Maurice Strong and his notably questionable dealings there is also LPC graduate Louise Frechette, who was the Liberal Party of Canada's Associate Deputy Minister in the Department of Finance, and then, from '95 to '98, Deputy Minister of Defense. Now, as the UN's Deputy Secretary General, she has been named in the Volker report for her "systematic attempt to block results of audits into the Oil-For-Food program from the Security Council."

Hmm, did the LPC let her get away, or was she just promoted?

And Volker himself!

On 2004-12-16 CNS News reported at http://tinyurl.com/7wrfd that Paul Volcker, head of the U.N. review of itself, is himself: "A member of the international advisory council of Montreal-based Power Corporation of Canada."

CNS goes on to note that "Power Corporation Chairman and Co-CEO Paul Desmarais, Jr., serves on the board of directors for French oil conglomerate TotalFinaElf. The company holds $4 billion worth of contracts to develop the Majnoon oil field in Iraq."

Canada has a problem called the Total Strong Power Oligarchy. Volker and the UN are part of the problem, not part of the solution. As Rex Murphy wrote, on 2005-04-04:

"[The oil-for-food scandal] was far worse than the most egregious scandals of recent days. The excesses and graft of Enron and Worldcom cannot claim as excuse that they occurred in an environment of abundance. But not even the rapacious capitalists of Enron or Worldcom built their Aspen retreats or fattened their grotesquely tumid bank accounts from money intended for children's medicine."

"How the United Nations survives its vast hypocrisies is at one with other mysteries: how it survives its ineffectuality (the killings in Darfur continue apace), the sexual scandals of some of its peacekeeping operations, and its sheer chilling incompetence."

"It is supposed to be the conscience of the world. Nations defer to its judgments. Canada based its non-participation in the Iraq war on the deliberations of the UN."

"Why our country farmed out a moral decision of that magnitude to this inept, useless and corrupt institution is a perplexity that will never be unravelled. There's talk of reforming the UN. The only reform, after oil-for-food, may be to shut it down."

Comment by a leftist moonbat; pinning the "monkey" in the White House for the failure/corruption of the UN.>>>>>

Saturday, October 15, 2005
The United Nations accuses the United States of war crimes: Fisking Jean Ziegler

Jean Ziegler, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, has accused the United States of intentionally starving Iraqi civilians:

"A drama is taking place in total silence in Iraq, where the coalition's occupying forces are using hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population," Mr Ziegler told a press conference.

He said coalition forces were using "starvation of civilians as a method of warfare."

"This is a flagrant violation of international law," he added.>>>>
Comment:
Dream on, believing your perception of reality is reality itself...
Being anti-american is no longer the privilege of Muslims, in case you neo-cons hadn't understood it yet.
We are many, not only here in Europe, who will do everything we can to thwart the US from becoming our master.
To hit you, we are going to hit the only thing that matters to you: your wallet.
I for one am not going to buy a single US-made product, as long as you have that bigot chimp in the White House.
Think about it...>>>
http://www.rapp.org/url/?MT0TOM62
tigerhawk.blogspot.com

Re: The cheque to Maurice Strong, what you people out there just don't get in all your indignation is that this is just change, pocket change to the liberals. When are you going to launch a class action suit against the Liberal party for assuming power in this country by using illegal funds?

"Statesman" in French must mean a sick pig wallowing in the blood money of innocent Iraqis.

If you have a concern about Mo Strong and Power Corp, et al it may pay you to spend a few minutes tracing the connections of Paul Desmarais and Power Corp. to the leading politicians, etc, of Canada. This association explains the Kyoto pact:

JOHN RAE: leading strategist for Prime Minister Chretien's election campaign. Was Executive Vice- President of Power Corp. and Paul Desmarais' right-hand man. His brother is....

BOB RAE: ex-NDP [Socialist] Premier of Ontario, who appointed....

MAURICE STRONG (his god father)to the chairmanship of Ontario Hydro, which he proceeded to dramatically cut in both skilled human resources and generating capacity [to provide a future need for power from James Bay] Past CEO of Desmarais' Power Corp., Strong received an appointment to the UN as senior environmental advisor to the UN Secretary-General and Chairman of the Earth Council. HE was responsible for the Kyoto accords.
More on Moe Strong: www.afn.org/~govern/strong.html

PAUL MARTIN: current federal Finance Minister. Rose through the ranks at Power Corp., mentored by Paul Desmarais. Bought Canada Steamship Lines
from him. Ran against Chretien for Liberal Party leadership.

JEAN CHRETIEN: Prime Minister. Daughter, France, is married to Andre Desmarais, son of Paul Desmarais, chairman of Power Corporation. Chretien's "advisor, counsellor and strategist" for the past 30 years has been ...

MITCHELL SHARP, who brought Chretien into politics when he was Finance Minister. Sharp has been, since 1981, Vice-Chairman for North America of the corporate globalist Tri-Lateral Commission.

DANIEL JOHNSON: Liberal [and Opposition] leader in Quebec Rose through the ranks of Power Corp. Key in delivering federal spending to Quebec based Power Corp. and other corporate welfare cases in the province

BRIAN MULRONEY: ex-Conservative Prime Minister. Now a lawyer and lobbyist for Power Corporation which, together with Ontario Hydro and Hydro Quebec, has just formed the Hong Kong-based ASIA POWER CORP., to help China to develop its energy potential. Power Corp.'s legal interests in Asia will be handled by a Hong Kong branch of Mulroney's Montreal law firm, Olgilvy, Renault.

PIERRE TRUDEAU: past PM and former Power Corp. lawyer. Introduced into the company by his father who had business connections to Desmarais. PET signed over millions to Power Corp. under federal grant programs. Desmarais funded his election campaign.

So...we have the CONSERVATIVE party [via Mulroney], the LIBERAL party [via Trudeau and Chretien], and the NDP [via Rae] all tightly connected to....Paul Desmarais and Power Corp. And we have the Prime Minister, the Finance Minister, and the Prime Minister's key aide all tightly connected to....Paul Desmarais and Power Corp.

We now see the Power Corp. key alumnus in the UN Kyoto deal which so coincidentally benefits the (largely unpublicized) business interests of
Desmarais alumnus. Maurice Strong has now joined Brian Mulroney and Paul Desmarais in investing in the Asia Power Group's $100 million venture capital in "small coal-fired power plants being built in the south of China". They are also
looking at "larger projects in northern China, as well as in Malaysia, the Philippines and India." The Asian economies are expected to spend $1 trillion [US] on essential infrastructure, of which an estimated $400 billion [US] will be on power generation. Chinese and Asian labour costs are low - as low, in China, as $45 per month - and potential profits are enormous.

The Nov/Dec. 1993 issue of Council on Foreign Relations' publication FOREIGN RELATIONS contains an article, THE RISE OF CHINA, in which we are
warned that China will begin to use more energy than the United States within a few decades, massively straining the world's energy supplies. If you were a power company investment magnet where would you place your future fortunes? In a nation wracked with environmental paranoia or a
developing, unregulated energy hungry industrial giant? China is gearing up to be the world's dominant manufacturing power. Most of China's energy comes from the burning of soft, high-sulphur, highly- polluting coal. In 1991 alone, 11 trillion cubic meters of waste gases and sixteen million tons of soot were emitted into the atmosphere over China - and it has only just begun its long process of increased energy generation! The sulphur in this coal causes acid rain. The burning of the coal releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the most efficient "greenhouse gas" in the global warming process.

There are indications that Strong , Desmarais and their crones (under ghost corporate affiliates) are behind the current rash of buying of low grade coal mines in depressed nations to fuel these projects. But this is yet to be fully substantiated. Who would invest so massively in low grade coal when it was targeted as Kyoto taboo commodity?

Maybe someone who knew in advance they would be able to burn it with out regulation in China? Green house fears bottomed out the price of these coal purchases.

If it can be used for power generating fuel, you stand to have a very inexpensive fuel source. China continues to burn coal in it's power
production unregulated by Kyoto.

Now the real hook. You remember Maurice Strong? Desmarais' familiar and corporate confidante, ex Power boss, major investor in 3rd world coal fired energy enterprise? Well Maurice ended up appointed to the UN as head advisor to the UN Secretary-General on environmental affairs Is this irony? He was campaigned for that position
by Canada's PM's and diplomats. As such, he called a little multi national conference called Kyoto! Maurice and his friend Jean Chretien wrote and signed an agreement which effectively
will destroy their pal Desmarais' chief energy competitor (Alberta Nat Gas) and gave Power Corp investment in China coal/energy an enormous competitive advantage.

Anyone who thinks this as mere coincidence is unaware of the networking of internatinal corporate elites. This revelation makes it clear the Kyoto earth summit was a vehicle used by corporate (Strong/Chretien) bag men to create a huge global shift in power generation profits. They were backed by one of the worlds most
devious businessmen.

Oh, and Paul Desmarais? In September, 1993, he joined the Tri-lateral Commission. He spearheaded the Tri-lat initiative of promoting a Kyoto-like conference over concerns for the planet from carbon emissions produced by the DEVELOPED NATIONS.

The Cockeyed Optimist.
And you thought it was all about saving the planet? For whom?

Wonderful post, Cockeyed optimist. You have connected all the dots for us -thank-you! This will be picked up and posted in every major newspaper tomorro but just in case there is a dead fish in some hospital in Regina that MUST be chewed over and over on T.V., I better copy it and hand it out. The people of Canada will want to know what is going on.

Chretien and his family the Desmarais' and the Powercor insider globalist profiteering alumnus were neck deep in a scam to break the UN embargo on Iraqi oil [rofiting Saddam and profited hansomly from washing his cash and taking oil futures in trade for "banking services".

Chretien's decision to not aid the US was a direct response to his investment in clandestine Iraqi oil futures. Futures that would go into the wind if Saddam was deposed. This is history but you will never read it in the corporately controlled Canadian MSM...only Western Standard and Toronto free poress have examined the Powercor thumb in the Iraqi pie.

One of the Oil for food culprets sits in the PMO and is Martin's mentor. The web of corporate corruption in Canada has always revolved around the PM/PMO and the faction which owned it. When King was in it was his pal Rockefeller who controlled the PMO, later the Bronfman consortium bought into it for a decade but it has been the Desmarais-Powercor cartel which has had an iron grip on the PMO for the past 30 years. The last 4 PMs either worked for him or are related to him, or networked to him.....hell, Paul D sr. even sits on the privy council ferkrissake and there isn't a word about this level of long-term corporate cronyism in the Canadian MSM.

Can you imagine what the US MSM would say if the last 4 presidents and most of the important cabinate had been former employees of Haliburton? The outrage would have brought down the US regimes....why does this go on in Canada?

cockeyed optimist said:

"If you have a concern about Mo Strong and Power Corp, et al it may pay you to spend a few minutes tracing the connections of Paul Desmarais and Power Corp. to the leading politicians, etc, of Canada. This association explains the Kyoto pact: "

This is the way real politics are played Cockeye....this is REALpolitic...the silly partisan tribalism these guys have created domestically is diversionary. Left-right partisanism was designed to keep us devided and at each others throats and fool us into thiking there is choice/hope while the big players who own the parties and the PMO come up the center with their quiet, incrimental insider profiteering and control grid.

Interesting to note is that the Powercor Cabal has owned both PC and Liberal PMs and has many high placed NDs and socialists like the Reas and Strong in it's wings. This is how the big money plays politics....they buy all the "sides" in a political agument so they can't lose.

In the US it's no different, the international money that owns the Democrats has just put their boys in the whitehouse under a GOP label......and if conservatives need a wake up call to see that Bush is as captivated of gun control, dirty CIA intrigue, international insider deal making and martial law domestically as Klinton was. Look how buddy-buddy the Klintoons and the Bushes are now ....Klinton and the NEO-Con Cabal have the same statist ideals and the same corporate masters.

This is real politics....the theater of multi party democracy propagandised in the MSM is illusion.....the globalists and tri-lats that own the Liberal party own the PC parties and have a good downpayment on the NDP....Harper and the CPC was a wild card...they don't control him and the party is run by the membership ( so far). Naturally the corpoate media must be brought to bear to destroy any party and leader who is outside the political control grid of Canada's international profiteering political cabal.

Desmarais is a tri-lat, Strong is a UN globalist attached to the PMO...Martin and Chretien have been their puppets for a decade.....do you really believe they will allow some unconnected, ethical hockey dad from Alberta screw up this level of control with hopes of "democratizing" the control system??

Harper will be destroyed in the MSM ( as were Manning, Day and Klein) in the next election...secondly the MSM/Liberal cartel will concoct a scare tactic and attach it to the CPC and Alberta while at the same time creating a direct cash incentive to return their criminal cartel to office.

This is real politics...the cartel's political puppets create a problem or "scare" then offer solutions which favor them and the public plead to be saved .... and in every case they freighten the public so deeply, that they willingly render up their wealth and freedoms to be saved from the bogyman the control-freak political cartel created.

Think back how the Liberal/Powercor cartel have gained power:

First it was the FLQ "crisis" to scare us into blindly accepting a charter which removes our absolute individual rights and places the government as our master ( read charter sect. 1)

Then they worked the separatists against us to engage in decades of fiscal rape of the taxpayer and the provinces to pour billions into Powercor connected business in Quebec.

Then it was a gun scare...we would all be massecred by Marc Lepine madmen if we don't register our duck guns for future confiscation and give the police warrantless search and seizure powers. Quickly, don't think, vote for us, there is a country full of gun crazies after you...those Sask. duck hunters are just mass murderers in cammo...we must evicerate charter rights and expand the police state to save you from them.

Then it was the healthcare scare: evil Alberta reformers/fundamentalists are coming for your abortion clinics, welfare and old age checks and they want to destroy an already unsustainable, decrepit public health system...you must vote for us to save "Canada" and your ever defunded social benefits that we use for slush funding our elections, global investments and payola network. Please don't pay attention to our revenue "surpluses".

Now it's the Alberta "scare" ...these "greedy" yankee-luvin' oil tycoons got all the cash and we need a strong central authority to wrap itself in the flag and destroy constitutional jurisdictional safety valves and go in there and steal it from them. Theft is the "Canadian" way! To arms, To Arms the Alberta-Yankees are gonna get us if we don't destroy our constitution!

And of course the "terrorism" scare which they have used to impose a quasi state of martial law by suspension of charter legal rights in this nation with their nebulous legislated definition of "terrorist". The second enabling factor of their anti-terrorist bill was to militarize the civilian police function and expand government surveillence and evesdropping of innocent civilians communications to a conmmon everyday fact of life. Get your retena scans, government controlled internet II and national "transponder chip" ID cards here folks! It's all for your own good to keep the "terrorists" away! Who is really terrorizing the population?

And it doesn't stop at election fear mongering...we have the feds destroying property rights, constitutional jurisdiction and land acts under the guise of Kyoto and environmental scares. We see a phoney animosity trumped up in the MSM between us and the Americans to give justification to the PMO selling off our resources at bargains basement prices to the Chinese...guess where the Powercor cartel are heavily invested now...ya China!

The sccamming of these insider profiteers and their puppet liberal government go on and on without a word in the MSM and with a nation of indoctrinated sheep chewing on the cud the MSM feeds them.

After each subsequent election where the Desmaria/globalist backed government wins, we are left poorer and more in control.
It's becoming so formual you don't need to read an MSM paper to predict what will happen.

Seems Cockeyed optimist and a few others here are aware of the real politics at play in Canada. The phoney left-right partisan wars are just a friviolous distraction.

That's a whorehouse, not a government.

"Old China Hand" McCallum has soft noodle! Beware the "super-enthusiastic and energetic" minister! Beware Canada: China will latch onto McCallum! >>>

Canada must latch onto superpower China: McCallum

Natural Resources Minister John McCallum on CTV's Question Period

Natural Resources Minister John McCallum on CTV's Question Period
Industry Minister David Emerson on the softwood lumber dispute and NAFTA

Industry Minister David Emerson on the softwood lumber dispute and NAFTA
David Biette with the Canada Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington

David Biette with the Canada Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington

CTV.ca News Staff

Updated: Sun. Oct. 16 2005 3:29 PM ET

Canada's natural resources minister says the increasingly hostile softwood lumber dispute with the U.S. was on his mind when he talked energy with top Chinese officials and business people in recent days.

John McCallum was in Xiang He, China, near Beijing, attending a weekend G20 meeting. While in the country, he also met with the Chinese president, three foreign ministers and the top two heads of state oil companies, pitching Canadian oil and gas.

"To all of them I said the same thing: we have a strategic framework just signed as a strategic partnership. Let's put meat on the bones. We want to sell you energy, we want you to invest in energy," McCallum told CTV's Question Period from Xianghe on Sunday.

"And to a person they were extremely enthusiastic."

He said Canada has to acknowledge China's growing weight in the global economy. And given the "voracious" Chinese appetite for Canadian oil, it's in Canada's interest to improve its trade and investment relationship with the growing superpower.

McCallum added that strengthening business ties with China is even more important considering the inefficacy of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

He said the U.S. refusal to respect a NAFTA ruling on softwood lumber -- that Canadian lumber exports pose no threat of injury to American producers -- has turned him from a "very energetic, enthusiastic" energy minister, into to a "super-enthusiastic and energetic" one on this trade mission.

"I think the difficulties with the Americans simply underlined the importance and the urgency of this task."
http://www.rapp.org/url/?FXSILTZ2

I saw and heard the same thing Mazz2 - sent chills down my spine - even though I have known for sometime that PMPM and the gang of Liberanos have more in common with the Commie thugs as far as morals, values, opinion of peons (us, the working people) etc. than they do with any Democracy. Macallam also said Sask. is ready and itching to trade with their 'brothers' in Red China. Do you Sask. people share old Culverts enthusiam?