Friends of Saddam

France's largest oil company

Lucrative oil deal with Saddam

"France’s largest oil company, Total (formerly TotalFinaElf) had negotiated lucrative oil contracts with the Hussein regime after Gulf War 1 to drill in Southern Iraq." (The Real Coalition of the Bribed and Coerced, GeoPoliticalReview, October 8, 2004). "These negotiations took place in anticipation of an eventual weakening or lifting of the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq, thereby allowing them to immediately execute said contracts worth approximately $650-billion. Without Saddam in power, those oil contracts would naturally be void, so France had incentive to keep him in power to maintain their competitive advantage. On a related note, the destruction of the homeland of the "Marsh Arabs" in Southern Iraq (much publicized after the fall of Baghdad) was reportedly done by Saddam at the bequest of Total representatives after coming under repeated attacks during their oil speculating endeavors in the region."
In other words, ensuring the physical safety of the agents of France’s biggest oil company, of which the Paul Desmarais Montreal-based Power Corporation is the biggest shareholder, had a hand to play in the deliberate destruction of what many regard as the cradle of civilization.

Saddam wiped out a people and the migratory fly way of millions of birds. What used to be the home of a million people is now a desert and the birds have died. This was the 2nd Genocide on Kofi Annan's watch. A United Nations definition of Genocide is in comments. Article with pictures of the area in National Geographic'.

"I think we can do business with this man," Kofi Annan.

2% right off the top

"WHEN UNITED NATIONS SECRETARY GENERAL Kofi Annan quipped several years ago that he could "do business" with Saddam Hussein, he meant it figuratively. In light of the substantive charges coming out of the ever-expanding Oil-for-Food scandal, the throwaway line seems revealing or at least ironic.
"I think we have to take him literally," says Republican senator Norm Coleman, who is leading one of eight investigations into the corruption and mismanagement of the U.N.'s largest-ever humanitarian relief effort.
The basic outline of the scandal is simple: Saddam Hussein used the Oil-for-Food program to circumvent U.N. sanctions imposed after the Gulf war and to enrich himself and his allies. He did this by bribing leading journalists and diplomats and demanding kickbacks from those who profited from selling Iraqi oil. That he was able to do so indicates at least that the U.N. badly mismanaged the program it set up in December 1996. None of this is particularly astonishing. No one is surprised to learn that Saddam Hussein cheats, that politicians take bribes, and that the competence level of the U.N. bureaucracy is, well, suboptimal."

From the start the United Nations was bought with Saddam's money. The United Nations became an enabler of theft and greed all for the 2% off of the top. Saddam an old briber from way back knew exactly what he was doing, he knew that kind of money flowing in to the UN would give him carte blanche with what ever he wanted to do, he paid everyone who put their hands out including members of the Security Council and their governments. Ron

A recap of UN abuse by Claudia Rosett

Iraq and the Importance of the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food Scandal

The oil-for food scandal the biggest heist in the history of humanitarian relief. It involved thousands of contractors in dozens of countries and Saddam personally obtained vast sums of money from the program. In all, the program is estimated to have involved $9-17 billion, but it may have been even more.
As a result, there are three investigations in congress, federal prosecutors have indicted suspects and named two officials and there has been an internal U.N. investigation. The organization has an important aim but a rotten core. In particular, the oil-for-food scandal demonstrates that, at the U.N., incentives matter, because there is a culture of privilege and secrecy.
There has been a proliferation of other U.N. scandals, such as the African sex scandal; auditing problems; the resignation of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees amid allegations of sexual harassment; and the U.N. Commission on Human Rights admitting Zimbabwe, and so on. None of these, however, have attracted the same amount of attention. This scandal has opened at window into the U.N. itself in a way other U.N. scandals have not.

Don't cut dues, says Kofi

We need the money

"U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's chief of staff yesterday acknowledged that scandals involving Iraq, peacekeeping and human rights have hurt the world body, but said any move to freeze or cut U.S. dues would set back the cause of reform.
    "The option of withholding money immediately sets you off from all of your allies in this fight," Mark Malloch Brown, Mr. Annan's recently appointed chief of staff, told a House International Relations Committee hearing.
    "It would be seen as the United States once again acting alone," he said.

Kofi is the master huckster, always with this hand out. He has been promising reforms ever since the Rwandan Genocide when he pulled the troops back so that the killers had a better swing at their victims with their machetes. Well maybe its time to trust him one more time. Maybe this time nothing will happen, no one will get raped or their heads chopped off, or the head of some organization in the secretariat skims a couple of million for his retirement. Lets give them 200 Billion Dollars and see what they do with it. We can also join the Kyoto Protocols and start buying clean air chits from China and shutting down factories like Canada, sign up for the International Criminal Court and get the "Laws of the Seas" ratified. Sounds good to me and Kojo, what about you? Ron

Galloway on the Attack

NYT: British Lawmaker Scolds Senators on Iraq

In an appearance that seemed to catch a Senate committee off-guard, George Galloway, a maverick British member of Parliament, denied as "utterly preposterous" on Tuesday the committee's charges that Saddam Hussein's government had given him the rights to buy 20 million barrels of oil to sell at a profit.

Mr. Galloway also used the committee's invitation to testify under oath to turn the tables on his accusers, charging that the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations had "found me guilty" without having given him an opportunity to defend himself against allegations he had profited from the United Nations oil-for-food program.

"I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one, and neither has anybody on my behalf," he said. "The real sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians," he continued, but "your own companies with the connivance of your own government."

A flamboyant orator and skilled debater, he also attacked United Nations sanctions against Iraq, the program, and, above all, the American-led war to topple Mr. Hussein. The administration, he said, had based its invasion of Iraq on a "pack of lies" and was now trying to justify its actions with charges regarding the oil-for-food program and other allegations, which he called "the mother of all smoke screens."

I'm delighted that Galloway is digging such a deep hole for himself.

Cost over charge of $700 Million on UN renovation

It's either graft or stupidity

THE UNITED NATIONS has been in the news of late. As usual, most of the news is negative: evidence suggesting that one or more members of the Security Council were bribed by Saddam; an inability to deal effectively with various crises in Africa; the embarrassing presence of nations such as Iran, Syria, Libya, Zimbabwe, and Saddam's Iraq on U.N. commissions on human rights, proliferation and weapons of mass destruction; the oil for food scandal.

In the midst of these controversies, the United Nations is proceeding with plans to upgrade its Manhattan headquarters. The organization's headquarters at Turtle Bay were completed in 1950 and renovated in the 1970s. The United Nations now believes that another renovation project is necessary, and has prepared a $1.2 billion plan to carry out the work.

The United Nations has said its plans to renovate its headquarters at Turtle Bay will cost $1.2 billion.
That strikes Donald Trump as far too much. "The United Nations is a mess," the developer said yesterday, "and they're spending hundreds of millions of dollars unnecessarily on this project." Trump has gone further, expressing the view that the expenses projected by the U.N. can only be the result of graft or incompetence.

With a cost overrun like that one it could only be because Kojo is the contractor. Doesn't the United Nations put anything out to bid? Must it always go to good friends like the OFF banking business that was given by Mr. Boutros-Boutros Ghali to his good friends BNP Paribas with out a bid. Does it always have to be done in the back room with a handshake, wink and a nod. Why can't the UN Secretariat uses standard practices, why do they have to chisel and steal. This is the organization that is to good for Mr. Bolton? [Hat tip to Robert]

Galloway to testify tomorrow

Can't wait to take the stand

The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs permanent subcommittee on investigations, chaired by Sen. Norm Coleman, Minnesota Republican, last week released documents suggesting that former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, a close ally of President Jacques Chirac, and George Galloway, a British member of parliament, each received the right to market more than 10 million barrels of cut-rate oil from Saddam's government. Mr. Galloway, who denies any wrongdoing, is expected to testify before the Coleman committee tomorrow.

In the mean time Senator Carl Levin says: "We've got to look in the mirror at ourselves as well as point fingers at others," Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., told reporters in a conference call on Monday before the report was released. He is referring to news that has been in this blog for months, rather than look in a mirror he should look at his staff for not getting a clipping service if he is just now finding out about Bayoil and Mr. Chalmers. "The report claimed that Bayoil paid "directly or indirectly" some $37 million in kickbacks to Saddam even at a time that the United States and other members of the council had realized what Saddam was doing and began ordering price hikes to quash the kickbacks scheme."

In the mean time, Mr. Galloway when he got off the plane said: "It's Mr. Coleman who's been all over the news and he's a lick-spittle, crazed neocon who is engaged in a witch hunt against all those he perceives to have betrayed the United States in their plan to invade and occupy Iraq," Galloway told Associated Press Television News.

Sounds like it will be fun this Tuesday.

The Russian payoffs

Money went right to the top

Top Kremlin operatives and a flamboyant Russian politician reaped millions of dollars in profits under the U.N. oil-for-food program by selling oil that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein allowed them to buy at a deep discount, a Senate investigation has concluded. The allegations -- which also include descriptions of kickbacks paid to Hussein -- are detailed in hundreds of pages of reports and documents made public last night by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in advance of a hearing tomorrow.
The documents outline a trail of oil and money that leads directly from Iraq to the Kremlin and the former chief of staff to Russian President Vladimir Putin and former president Boris Yeltsin. The report said Iraq sought to influence and reward the Russian government because it sits on the powerful U.N. Security Council that oversaw sanctions against the Hussein government. Russia repeatedly sided with Iraq on issues before the Security Council.

In addition, the reports allege that Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, several Russian entities and a Houston-based oil trading company, Bayoil, "paid millions of dollars in illegal, under-the-table surcharges to the Hussein regime in connection with these oil transactions." U.S. officials say Hussein used illicit proceeds from oil sales to buy weapons, among other things.

Congressional committe releases documents

We didn't take money or oil they say.

"A congressional committee has released documents purporting to contain new evidence detailing how Saddam Hussein's government sought to curry favor with France and Russia in 2002 by exploiting the U.N. oil-for-food program. It was the second time in as many days that a congressional committee had distributed papers related to oil-for-food

The documents released Thursday from a subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce claim to show that in 2002 the Iraqi Intelligence Service drew up lists of French and Russian officials whom it hoped to influence.

Among French officials listed in the documents released Thursday is former Interior Minister Charles Pasqua. On Wednesday, the Senate's permanent subcommittee on investigations had released documents claiming that Pasqua and a prominent British politician, George Galloway, accepted oil allocations under oil-for-food. Both denied any involvement."

Very soon it will be a race to see which committee can get out the most documents. The new Iraqi government must be seething as they find out just who it was that worked with Saddam and his killer sons. Publicity is the mother's milk of politics, politicians have to have the ink or die.

George Galloway has volunteered to testify in his defense, get him on the stand, thats one to watch. He won a defamation of name law suit not to long ago against a British newspaper for saying just about the same thing, these documents are different ones however. Let the man testify and try to clear his name. Ron

From an article by Claudia Rosett, see below:

"Galloway went on to call Coleman’s team “a lickspittle Republican committee,” (in fact, both the committee and its report are bipartisan) and said he had received no response to repeated requests to appear before the committee and rebut their evidence.
This has produced in the past 24 hours a spirited exchange, in which Coleman issued a statement that “at no time” did Galloway contact his committee “by any means, including but not limited to telephone, fax, email, letter, Morse Code or carrier pigeon.” Coleman went on to invite Galloway to testify at a PSI hearing next Tuesday that will enlarge upon this week's report, under the title “Oil for Influence: How Saddam Used Oil to Reward Politicians and Terrorist Entities Under the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program.” Coleman promised that “There will be a witness chair and microphone available for Mr. Galloway’s use.” Galloway replied by telling the Financial Times that “assuming we get the visas,” he’ll be there “to give them both barrels — verbal guns, of course, not oil.”Go here for the full article

I got no dirty oil, says Galloway

Iraqi documents say Galloway took allotments

GEORGE GALLOWAY, the MP who taunted the Prime Minister over Iraq after scoring an upset victory in the election, faced fresh accusations last night that he had received oil allocations from the Saddam Hussein regime and may have used his Mariam Appeal charity to conceal payments.

A US Senate committee published evidence from Iraqi documents and interviews with Iraqi officials that the former Labour MP, re-elected to Parliament for his Respect party, received allocations for millions of barrels of oil.

Taha Yassin Ramadan, the ousted Vice-President of Iraq, told Senate investigators last month that Mr Galloway had been granted the oil allocations because of his opinions about Iraq and because he wanted to lift the embargo against the country. Another Saddam-era official told US Treasury Department officials in 2003 that a British MP, identified as Mr Galloway, “benefited tremendously from the illegal trade of oil by Iraq”.

The Iraqi's sound like they are getting their filling systems operable now. Just after the invasion paper and files were everywhere but now they are back in place and snoopers can find out the secrets of Saddams payoffs. There will be more revelations coming and there will be lots of embarrassment and heads rolling. Uday, Saddam's son seemed to like hidden camera's when talking to the bribed with out them knowing they were on "Candid Camera;" lot of shaking going on among the bribee's wondering if they will be getting some type of Iraqi version of an Oscar.

My favorite is the one I posted yesterday in comments, its really embarrassing and in case you didn't see it here it is again. The woman was a bribeee, she was Syrian and worked from France as a "reporter", she finally gets to meet the great murderer Uday and here is what she says to him on film. See yesterdays posting for the whole article in the "Weekly Standard".

"...in its exposé, Al Hurra showed new footage of a meeting between Naanaa and Uday that reveals her obsequiousness and sycophancy toward the dictator's son. After Uday greets Naanaa, she gushes, "Hello to you, the dear son of the dear and the precious son of the precious. Hello, is kissing allowed?" Kissing was indeed allowed. [this is where if Uday would have pulled off his shoe she would have given the bottom of his feet a tongue massage and his toes a good sucking, hope she's married to one of the Moslem maniacs an when he espies this, cuts her head off.]

"During their conversation, Naanaa refers to a "beautiful and sweet letter" that Uday had written to her, telling him, "I was so always looking forward to seeing you." Naanaa also expresses concern about the 1996 assassination attempt on Uday, saying, "We got worried about you, you know. . . . I just lost it when I heard the news." Have you ever heard such an unctuous spiel, if she didn't put horns on her old man that night it would be a surprise.

John Bolton is finally going to get a chance for an up or down vote. Just what were the recalcitrant Senators thinking of when they took the UN's side against a decent man. Don't they know or care just what the UN has been doing and has been involved in. Great thefts, rapes, molestation's, genocide's, this organization isn't trustworthy and the Senators brought shame upon themselves for bringing scorn on a man that has shown his loyalty to his country.

Al Jazeera takes bribe from Killer

Uday's Oil-for-News Program

Here is a story of where some of the "Oil for Food" money went. We all just 'knew' that Al Jazeera' was on the take and now we know it for sure because the stupid reporters allowed their sorry selves to be filmed sucking up to Uday, one of Saddam's murderous son's. Didn't we have a head of major US news organization do about the same thing, what was his name, wonder if the Iraqi have films of him taking money.

"On January 6, 2005, the U.S.-funded Arabic satellite network Al Hurra broadcast an explosive exposé detailing the financial links between Saddam Hussein's regime and the Arab press. Al Hurra's documentary--so far overlooked in the West--aired previously unseen video footage, recorded by Saddam Hussein's regime during its murderous heyday, of Saddam's son Uday meeting with several Arab media figures and referring to the bribes they had received.
Recipients of this Baathist largesse appeared to include a former managing director of the influential Qatar-based government-subsidized satellite network Al Jazeera, Mohammed Jassem al-Ali. The videotaped meeting between Uday and al-Ali occurred on March 13, 2000, when al-Ali still worked as Al Jazeera's managing director. Their conversation makes clear that this was not their first meeting, but that they had met on prior occasions--and that Al Jazeera had put into effect the directives that Uday had proffered in those previous meetings." Much more at the site above, be sure to read it. Ron

I haven't forgotten Maurice Strong and his "Kyoto Protocols." We'll stay with that one for a few day's anyway. Its such a massive shift of funds from the Western Countries to China its strange that the money angle hasn't been considered more by the Western press. If the 17,000 experts on the various form of climatology are right, this could be much larger than the "Oil for Food" thefts. A Canadian wrote in with a quote from Maurice..."..."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." -Maurice Strong quoted in the September 1, 1997 edition of National Review magazine.

He's willing for the industrial nations to collapse, all based on phony jargon and what 17,000 scientists says is 'gobbledegook science' and this is Kofi Annan's main man, his main confidant, the man with the office right next door, the man who is on paid leave right now for paling around with the Korean bag man Mr. Park, "...saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse" this wording sounds like something out of Department 6, the Department of Disinformation which was at one time a real trouble maker. Wonder if he picked that up from his old Aunty, the one buried in Beijing by Mao himself so it has been written.

Here is some more eminent scientists that think something doesn't smell right when it comes to the Scam and Dazzle of the 'Kyoto Protocols': They are climate experts who disagree with the science at the heart of greenhouse gas restriction treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol.

George Taylor Oregon State Meteorologist, Oregon State University, Past President of the Association of State Meteorologists
Dr.Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen Reader, Department of Geography, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX, UK, Editor, Energy & Environment
Dipl.-Ing. Peter Dietze Climate consultant, official scientific IPCC TAR Reviewer, Germany
Dr. Sherwood Idso President-Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Tempe, AZ
Dr. Fred Seitz Past President, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, President Emeritus, Rockefeller University, New York, NY
Dr. Robert Balling Director - Office of Climatology, Arizona State University
Dr. Richard P. Lindzen Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric & Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. Chris de Freitas Professor, School of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Hans Erren Geophysical consultant, The Hague, Netherlands
Dr. David Wojick, P.E. Independent journalist and policy analyst, specializing in Kyoto issues
Art Robinson of OISM Founder - Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine
Dr. Asmunn Moene
Former head of the National Forecasting Center, Meteorological Institute, Oslo, Norway
Prof. Dr. Kirill Ya. Kondratyev Head of Russian Academy of Sciences; Academician, Research Centre for Ecological Safety, St.-Petersburg, RUSSIA
Dr. Petr Chylek Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Science - Dalhousie University
Dr. Ross McKitrick Professor of environmental economics at the University of Guelph - also expert in the science
Dr. Craig D. Idso
Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Tempe, AZ
Dr, Hugh W. Ellsaesser Atmospheric Consultant - previously with Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, CA
Dr. Philip Stott Emeritus Professor of Biogeography - University of London (UK)

Can't squeeze the toothpaste back in the tube

Volcker says the evidence has immunity?

"Friday, at a hastily assembled press conference in New York, Mr. Volcker stepped forward to say he wants his evidence back. Mr. Hyde said no. That has triggered a potentially explosive showdown, pitting the powers of Congress against the privileges and immunities of the United Nations, which, by Mr. Volcker's account, extend to his "independent inquiry."All of which may be useful in illustrating the rules by which the United Nations, and now its "independent inquiry," play. Most involve the United Nations' climate of privilege and secrecy, whence sprang oil for food in the first place. Mr. Volcker's inquiry, for example, is funded at the behest of Mr. Annan

Were Mr. Hyde to comply with Mr. Volcker's demands, but send back the Parton papers in a manner consistent with the U.N.'s own recent record of dealing with Congress, it would be a long handoff. Congress is still smarting over the time it took the United Nations to turn over its oil-for-food internal audits.

Mr. Volcker's March report on Kofi Annan and Kojo Annan failed to mention that the younger Annan had served on the board of directors of a now-defunct company, Air Harbour Technologies, first alongside the U.N. secretary-general's special adviser, Maurice Strong, and then alongside an adviser for U.N. oil-for-food contractor, Cotecna Inspections. Mr. Strong has taken leave from his U.N. job until information about some of his own business connections can be clarified, part of a tangle arising from a federal bribery complaint issued last month and related to oil for food."

Maurice Strong's name keeps coming up in various articles. If you remember he is the person who promoted the Kyoto Protocols into existence and former president Clinton signed the agreement just before his final term was up. President Bush however killed it as soon as he was sworn in to office. Now a story has arisen about 17,000 scientists saying its based upon "bad" science and its a major Scam. It was signed into law in Canada and has already had cost overruns of $5 Billion Dollars just for starters. Its hard to think of a bigger Scam than "Oil for Food" but the Kyoto Protocols could surpass it easily and could ruin the industrial nations of the western world besides. The same type of scheme is before the Senate for ratification and its called, "Laws of the Sea" and it is a hot item for the Democrats.

The "Law of the Sea" is a UN thing and there are taxing provisions that could give the UN more money than any existing nation now in existence. Lots of liberal Senators like Kerry, Kennedy, Feinstein etc. have voted for the Kyoto Protocols and will vote for the "Laws of the Sea" because the UN wants independent financing for their operations. Maybe we should look at what 17,000 thousand scientists are saying about "Kyoto" because "The Laws of the Sea" is from the same bunch of rascals. Fox News, where are you, check this out.

Just got a list of names from the nice folks that think there is bogus science being practiced when it concerns the "Kyoto Protocols." These are experts that are saying something is very wrong with the data that can cost governments and industry Billions if not Trillions of dollars. For the kinds of money that will be transferred to China its worth a look and consideration. There is more names to follow, hey Fox News, check this out, could be 100 times bigger than the "Oil for Food" scam.

Some of the many climate experts who disagree with the science at the heart of
greenhouse gas restriction treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol.

Dr. Tim Patterson Professor - Department of Earth Sciences (Paleoclimatology)
Carleton University, Ottawa
Dr. Ian Clark
Professor, Isotope Hydrogeology and Paleoclimatology, Department of Earth Sciences (arctic specialist), University of Ottawa
Dr. Tim Ball Environmental Consultant - 28 years climatology Professor University of Winnipeg
Dr. Madhav Khandekar Environmental Consultant (extreme weather events)
25 years with Environment Canada in Meteorology
Dr. Tad Murty Climate researcher, Natural Resources Institute, University of Manitoba., Editor - "Natural Hazards". Previously Senior Research Scientist for Fisheries and Oceans Canada; Former Director of the National Tidal Facility of Australia
Dr. Fred Michel Professor - Department of Earth Sciences (Permafrost specialty)
Carleton University, Ottawa
Dr. Sallie Baliunas Astrophysicist - Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Dr. Paul Copper, FRSC Professor - Department of Earth Sciences, Laurentian University, Sudbury
Dr. Vincent Gray Expert reviewer for the IPCC climate reports and author of "The Greenhouse Delusion; a Critique of 'Climate Change 2001'", Wellington, New Zeeland
David Nowell Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, Canadian member and past chairman of the NATO Meteorological Group, Ottawa
Dr. Roy W. Spencer Principal Research Scientist, Earth System Science Center of the University of Alabama in Huntsville
Dr. James O'Brien Robert 0. Lawton Distinguished Professor of Meteorology and Oceanography; Director, Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL
William Kininmonth Managing Director, Australasian Climate Research, Kew, Australia
Paavo Siitam Agronomist (soil chemistry, fertility and microbiology), Colborne, Ontario
Dr. Ian Plimer Professor/Chair, Department of Geology, University of Melbourne, Australia
Dr. Gary D. Sharp Scientific Director, Center for Climate/Ocean Resources Study, Salinas, CA
Dr. Kenneth Green Chief Scientist, Fraser Institute, Vancouver, British Columbia
Dr. Paal Brekke Solar physicist, European Space Agency, Norway
Dr. John Christy Director, Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama
Dr. Chris Essex Professor of Applied Mathematics, University of Western Ontario
Dr. Roger Peilke Professor and Colorado State Climatologist; Current President of the American Association of State Climatologists
Dr. William M. Gray Professor of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University
Dr. Howard C. Hayden Emeritus Professor of Physics - University of Connecticut;
Dr. Lee C. Gerhard Principal Geologist, Kansas Geological Survey; Adjunct Professor, Colorado School of Mines; Noted author and geological expert on climate history.
Dr. Fred Singer President of The Science & Environmental Policy Project, Distinguished Research Professor at George Mason University, Professor Emeritus of environmental science at University of Virginia.
Dr. Pat Michaels Research Professor, Dept of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia
Dr. Willie Soon Astrophysicist - Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Please give the boxes back, pleads Mr. Volcker

Henry Hyde is laughing

"Mr. Parton, a former FBI agent, and a fellow investigator quit Mr. Volcker's $30 million investigation last month to protest the soft treatment they felt was given to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Mr. Volcker also said the congressional committees probing the $10 billion Iraq oil-for-food scandal should immediately return more than a half-dozen boxes of documents Mr. Parton turned over to the House International Relations Committee Thursday in response to a subpoena. Mr. Parton's cooperation with Capitol Hill committees would violate the U.N. inquiry's immunity and also a confidentiality agreement he signed when he joined the inquiry last year.

Paul Volcker, the head of the U.N.-appointed panel probing the oil-for-food scandal, yesterday asked Congress to drop its efforts to force an investigator who resigned from the panel to testify about any top-level corruption at the world body."

Sen. Coleman and Rep. Hyde must have a great deal of satisfaction hearing Mr. Volcker ask for the evidence back that Mr. Parton brought to them. Henry Hyde was treated like like a child by Kofi Annan when he asked for cooperation by formal letter in April of 2004. Mr. Annan didn't even have the courtesy to give Mr. Hyde a reply for over 6 months. We can see by the information that has dribbled out just why Mr. Annan didn't want to cooperate, his son and most of the Secretariat and even the former Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. Boutros-Boutros Ghalli were involved in scamming. Mr. Annan's former chief of staff Mr. Riza tried his best to run boxes and boxes and hundreds of thousands of pieces of evidence for 24/7 through the shredders; how galling it must be that Hyde and Coleman got some of it before it could be destroyed.

Henry Hyde finally gets the respect due

Now Henry has the information

 Robert Parton, a former FBI agent and the top investigator with the United Nations' $30 million oil-for-food investigation, delivered at least a half-dozen boxes of documents to comply with a subpoena issued last week by the House International Relations Committee.

    Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde, Illinois Republican, praised Mr. Parton for complying and warned Mr. Volcker's panel against seeking retribution for his cooperation.
    "It is my hope and expectation that neither the United Nations nor the [Volcker] inquiry will attempt to sanction Mr. Parton for complying with a lawful subpoena," Mr. Hyde said yesterday.

Senator Coleman gets UN records

This will be interesting

Documents inolving actions taken by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (search) in the Oil-for-Food investigation were handed over to Congress on Wednesday night, FOX News has learned.
The documents were given to federal lawmakers by Robert Parton (search), a former senior investigator on the Independent Inquiry Committee (search) probing the $64 billion program.
Parton and Miranda Duncan (search), who both resigned from the panel last month in protest, have accused the IIC of downplaying Annan's role in the Oil-for-Food corruption scandal in an interim report released by the panel last March.

Kerry campaign worker disregards United Nations Charter provisions.

Volcker misses a big one

The importance of following the money trail

Where was Mr. Volcker when this congressional investigation was going on? Why didn't Mr. Volcker come up with this information? We should have been reading this in some of his reports but instead we get the informaiton from an article in the New York Sun by Claudia Rosett. Maybe we shouldn't be to hard on Mr. Volcker however, this could be information that was shredded by Mr. Annan's right hand man Mr. Riza and Mr. Volcker didn't know about it. This is the bank that Mr. Boutros-Boutros Ghali personally picked to handle the "Oil for Food" money. Why didn't Mr. Volcker do the obvious in an investigation, why didn't he follow the money trail? Another question that might be answered is just who owns BNP Paribas and who owned it when this was happening?

"The fresh clues to the money trail are emerging from a House hearing that focused last week on BNP Paribas, the French bank picked by the United Nations to service the bulk of the U.N.-supervised deals. At the hearing, one of its officers acknowledged a number of what he characterized as "mistakes" in the handling of funds under the oil-for-food program.

But the documents provided by BNP under congressional subpoena and examined by The New York Sun suggest to congressional investigators that some of these mistakes involved the rerouting of money through a global web of companies linked not only to terrorist funding and arms trafficking but also to anti-sanctions campaigning and front operations for the Iraqi regime itself.These breaches were obscured by a double-wall of BNP confidentiality and U.N. secrecy during its program, which ran from 1996 to 2003. Even today, not one of the ties associated with this money trail has yet been brought to light by the U.N.-authorized investigation launched almost a year ago by a former Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Volcker."

Here is more on BNP Paribas

Senator Coleman will subpoena Robert Parton and Miranda Duncan to testify.

Volcker say's they have immunity

Senator Coleman, who has called on Mr Annan to resign for mismanagement, vowed to force a showdown by issuing the subpoenas anyway. “I spoke with Mr Volcker and expressed my grave and growing concerns about the credibility and independence of the investigation into the criminal misconduct that occurred in the UN Oil-for-Food programme,” he said.

Questions have been raised about Mr Volcker’s impartiality by the resignation of the two investigators and by his ties to a company once run by Maurice Strong, a Canadian tycoon and diplomat under investigation by the Volcker panel.In the 1960s Mr Strong, 76, ran Power Corporation of Canada, which later hired Mr Volcker as a paid consultant. The UN is refusing to reveal whether Mr Strong played any role in recommending Mr Volcker for his post as head of the Oil-for-Food inquiry.

Just who is this Maurice Strong everyone is not talking about? Why, he is the man who single handly put together the "Kyoto Protocols" and what is that you might ask? Well, basically its a way to get the industrial nations of the world to buy hot air credits from China and a few other places. Here is an article where you can get a very good idea what is transpiring. article

Senator Coleman to subpoena former investigators

Please don't do it, asks Volcker

How ironic. When he took on the task of heading up the oil-for-food investigation, Paul Volcker brushed off criticism that without subpoena power, his committee would be toothless. Now rebel investigators under him, as well as a key witness whose testimony he has pooh-poohed, are about to be subpoenaed by Congress.
And even worse for Mr. Volcker, the plan to subpoena the two investigators who have quit the Independent Inquiry Committee, Robert Parton and Miranda Duncan, plus a former business partner of Kojo Annan, Pierre Mouselli, is designed to expose inadequacies in the U.N.-mandated investigation by showing that it went too soft on Secretary-General Annan.