OECD anti bribery panel to probe why SFO investigation was halted

"Last night, the Liberal Democrat leader, Menzies Campbell, demanded to know the role of the attorney general in concealing from the OECD the payments of more than £1bn from BAE to Prince Bandar as part of the al-Yamamah contract.

The money was paid from an account at the Bank of England into accounts in Washington controlled by Prince Bandar. Details of the transfers were discovered by the Serious Fraud Office during the marathon investigation into BAE.

However, the SFO inquiry was suddenly halted late last year. Al-Yamamah, Britain's biggest ever arms deal, which was signed in 1985, involves the sale of Tornado fighter jets and Hawk aircraft.

The Guardian has this week published accusations that £30m a quarter - for at least 10 years - was paid into accounts controlled by Prince Bandar at the Riggs bank in Washington."

What media bias??................

Majority?

The majority said this in a poll..........

......."a New York Times poll found that 69 percent of Americans said illegal aliens should be prosecuted and deported. (Of course, the Times included this only in a PDF file online and not in their May 25 article.)"


It took a while for the legislators to catch on , but they finally did.Meanwhile millions were lined up for years waiting to get in legally.

Jules Crittenden- terrorists .....by the numbers......apparently MSM doesn't report these numbers

Great posting by Michael Yon with the Brits in Iraq -photos

Transparency International Files Complaint against 57 German

Companies over UN Oil for Food Scandal in Iraq".........via Davids Medienkritik

Democracy in Belgium?.............................Brussels Journal

Lebanon on Friday was reportedly considering stopping issuing entry visas to Arab citizens at the airport in a bid to prevent any

terrorist infiltrations into the country.............via LGF.

Gary Bauer June 8

"Just as we were wondering whether anyone in Washington listens to the people, news came last night of the collapse of the putrid immigration deal. Drawn up behind closed doors by Senator Kennedy and his liberal allies, along with a handful of GOP senators and the White House, the bill was immediately embraced by Big Media, which told America that it was the best it could get. “We have to do something,” the wise heads intoned. (Here’s an idea: how about enforcing the laws already on the books. ) Well, America looked at the mess and said, “No thanks.”

Senate offices have been deluged with angry phone calls for days. Polls showed most Americans concluded that the bill was another shell game—amnesty would go through, border security would fall short, and within a few years we would once again be debating what to do about the new group of illegals that would flood into the country.

Most infuriating in the debate has been the incredible arrogance of the bill’s supporters. Those of us who had questions about the legislation were quickly labeled racists or “know-nothings.” Efforts to improve the bill by strengthening the border security provisions or by preventing gang members from receiving benefits and citizenship were voted down by the liberal majority in the Senate along with a handful of GOP senators. Meanwhile, millions of conservatives were wondering how people like Senator Lindsey Graham and White House advisors had reached the conclusion that what they really need to do is to cut deals with Ted Kennedy and then tell their most loyal supporters to accept it or else.

Now when the politicians who failed in this ill-conceived effort stop blaming their fellow citizens for the fiasco, perhaps they might want to try a different approach. Why not vote on a border security bill only? Ted Kennedy will oppose that, of course, which will be confirmation for the White House and Senator Graham that they are doing the right thing. (Here is a useful yardstick for the next two years—if Kennedy, Hillary, Pelosi and Reid are for it, the GOP should question where they went off track.) By the way, quit telling us the border can’t be secured. If it can’t be then we are no longer a nation.

Second, develop a national citizenship program, including no citizenship unless you speak English, obey our laws, learn our history and embrace our democratic values. If various industries such as agriculture need migrant labor, most people won’t have a problem providing for that and then returning workers home after the seasonal harvests. Then, after the public is reassured that this time we are serious about security and citizenship, we can take a look at humane, feasible ways to deal with other outstanding issues.

Now here’s the bad news: The immigration bill is not dead; it is just wounded. There will be another attempt by the Washington insiders to ram it through whenever they think you have gone back to sleep. Don’t do it! Stay alert. Tell Washington “no!” And keep telling them until they get it. Final note: Many thanks to stalwart senators like Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Jim DeMint of South Carolina among others, who held the line."

Melanie Phillips

It is indeed vital that people understand that the boycott is a direct descendant of the century-old Arab attempt to drive the Jews out of their ancestral homeland altogether. It is thus an accessory to ethnic cleansing. But what hope is there of Britain grasping this when popular ignorance about Israel and the history of the Middle East and the Jewish people is fuelled daily by the BBC, whose venomous distortions and misrepresentations of Israel are now running totally out of control. To tune into the BBC on Israel is to be inundated by a tsunami of sheer hatred. And once again it is an American organisation, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, which is so appalled it has made a public protest at some of the BBC’s distortions which falsely represent Israel as the aggressor and illegitimate coloniser when it is the historic victim of injustice, dispossession and ethnic cleansing:.............

Victor Hanson- G8 Precipice

"The fitting geological metaphor for the so-called G-8 meeting in Germany is not a summit, but a precipice — as the world’s leaders scramble around to grab something before one of them falls into the abyss.

The old postwar order is tottering on the brink of Islamism, oil-price hikes, energy shortages, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, Russian belligerency, global-warming concern and hysteria, and war.

Europe is at the edge of the chasm, despite its strong euro and strengthening economy. Once convinced that they would serve as a kinder, gentler Western answer to the United States, Europeans would offer humanity a sort of soft-power colossus that would check George Bush’s “dead-or-alive,” “smoke-‘em-out” America. They would fix through good works what we had botched. That welcomed alternative seemed attractive to many as we slogged it out in Iraq, and the “I told you so” Europeans felt justified that military power really does cause far more problems than it solves.

But now suddenly regimes of a less liberal sort are calling the EU’s bluff — and Europe knows it. Historians looking back at Europe in 2007 will see a sort of summer of 1914 all over again: Never had things gone better just as they are about to become never so bad."

Caroline Glick

Harper shines at G8- PM has reclaimed Canada's role as honest broker

"For a leader attending only his second G8 summit, Stephen Harper looked quite sure-footed this week, assuming the Canadian role of bridging differences between Europe and America.

This time it was about climate change, and bridging the gap between the Europeans' strict adherence to short-term Kyoto targets, and the Americans' insistence on more achievable emissions reductions in the long term.

The compromise reported out of the Heiligendamm Summit yesterday, reducing emissions to 50 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050, has Canada's fingerprints all over it"

Crime beat-another group trying to set up shop in Canada

D- Day as today's MSM might report it....The Combat Report

Doug Farah-"How many organizations designated as uninindicted co-conspirators in terrorism-related cases still get invited not only to participate,

, but to play lead roles in major U.S. government events?"

Afghanistan -winnable

Bill Kristol -The next generation can pay a great price when the preceding one shirks its responsibilities-Time

"The generation of World War II is mostly gone. The generation that directly heard tell of World War II from its parents is moving on. We have exhausted, so to speak, the moral capital of that war. Now we face challenges almost as daunting as those confronting the nation when Lincoln spoke. The perpetuation of freedom in the world is no more certain today than was the perpetuation of our free institutions then. Of course, we have the example of Lincoln to guide us. And Ferguson's wry and sardonic account of the ways we remember him is heartening and even inspiring, almost despite itself or despite ourselves. But the failures of leadership of the 1840s and 1850s should also chasten us. Nations don't always rise to the occasion. And the next generation can pay a great price when the preceding one shirks its responsibilities"

Diplomatic clock ticking on Iran

Former UN official convicted for steering $100 million in business to pal in return for kickbacks

A federal jury took just four hours to convict a greedy U.N. official of steering a stunning $100 million in contracts to companies controlled by a rich business pal in exchange for a deeply discounted luxury Midtown condo, gifts and cash.

previously.....

http://www.nypost.com/seven/05232007/news/worldnews/u_n__hookers__hooch_antics_worldnews_kati_cornell.htm

"A federal jury got to glimpse the ugly underbelly of the United Nations yesterday as a crooked businessman described buying officials for cash, property and, in one case, a wild, booze-fueled night ending in a hotel romp with hookers.

Nishan Kohli testified in Manhattan federal court that he treated unnamed U.N. procurement officers to dinners, drinks and strip clubs in exchange for help in landing contracts - and once picked up a $6,000 tab for two officials to spend a night with prostitutes.

"I provided them with escorts and we had a hotel room and were there for the night," said Kohli, 30, whose India-based companies have provided $100 million in computer equipment, technology support and other services to the world body.

Kohli detailed his dirty dealings at the trial of former chief procurement officer and longtime family friend Sanjaya Bahel, 57, charged with steering contracts in exchange for cash, laptop computers, plane tickets and a sweetheart deal on a luxury apartment.

"He helped us primarily by giving information on what was going on at the U.N., by advising us how to correspond with the U.N.," said Kohli, who pleaded guilty to bribery charges in December and agreed to testify for the feds in a bid for leniency. "

Crime beat- Provincial Tory anti crime platform....Blizzard

"Under the guns and gangs section of the platform, the Tories note "Ontario has seen the highest increase in gang-related homicides in the country; these more than doubled between 2004-05."

They also say they will target marijuana grow-ops.

"They endanger neighbourhoods with hazardous chemicals and our entire province with their addictive products," says part of the platform.

They will advocate for mandatory minimum sentences -- something already in the works at the federal level. Tories also want the Criminal Youth Justice Act beefed up. Again, that's a federal responsibility.

The Tories promise to establish a registry to inform potential homeowners and renters that a property has been used as a grow-op, something Liberal Attorney General Michael Bryant mused about earlier this year.

Included in the platform is a pledge to crack down on white-collar crime with a promise to set up a new court with specialist judges to deal with corporate fraud and other swindles. A new securities fraud tribunal will protect small investors who've been scammed of their life savings. "



Perhaps they can provide the real statistics on the number of gangs and members since the City and Provincial government shy away from them and would like the great unwashed to think there are only a handful of bad apples on the loose.Before you can fix a problem, you have to acknowledge it.

Border Patrol agents re: Immigration Bill

G 8 - Global warming

Krauthammer- Endless campaign-In Britain, Canada and other civilized places, national elections are often called, run and concluded within six weeks

Sens. John McCain and Ted Kennedy don't think being a criminal should be a bar to the American dream..........

...."They were ordered deported for a reason, senator. In fact, there are more than 630,000 fugitive aliens who have been ordered deported on the streets of America — doing what, nobody knows.

The defeat of Cornyn's amendment came on the same day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials announced that 124 gang members had been arrested in Southern California over the past three months as part of a nationwide operation aimed at those who come across our southern border to commit crimes such as murder, robbery and drug smuggling. Los Angeles is home to more than 400 gangs that were blamed for more than half of the city's 478 murders last year.

As the Manhattan Institute's Heather MacDonald has pointed out, the problem of criminal illegal aliens is particularly acute in California. At one point, she noted, in Los Angeles 95% of all outstanding warrants for homicide were for illegal aliens, as were up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants."

Cancer Society recommends taking Vitamin C to lower cancer risk

"Long after natural "cures" such as shark cartilage and laetrile from peach pits flopped comes the first study of its kind to show that vitamin D is a potent cancer stopper.

The Canadian Cancer Society has used that finding and others in deciding to recommend for the first time that adult Canadians lower their cancer risk by taking 1,000 international units (IU) of vitamin D daily -- five times the current recommended daily amount for people under age 50.

The lead author of the new study called the Canadian move "outstanding," but said she would go even higher and recommend healthy adults pop between 1,500 and 2,000 IU of vitamin D daily.

"It's inexpensive, it's safe, and it's easy to take. It's something that should be considered by a lot of people," says Joan Lappe, professor of nursing and medicine at Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha, Nebraska. "It's low risk with maybe a high payoff."

IBD - Iran

Iran has been caught — again — sending arms to terrorists and insurgents who are trying to kill American soldiers. At some point, a line is drawn in the sand, and we either say "enough" or "we give up."