The truth about BNP Paribas and Power Corp. sheds a new light on Canada's seemingly bizarre anti-American foreign policy in the Middle East, in China and elsewhere.

[. . . . ] Top among these is the European-based BNP Paribas bank, which the U.N. chose to administer the program and which reportedly received nearly $1 billion for its efforts. Congressional investigators reviewing the bank's actions have discovered broken rules, missing documents and improper transfers by BNP Paribas, which up until now has been assumed to be a French bank.

In fact, BNP Paribas is actually controlled by Power Corporation, an appropriately named Canadian company that has a shocking track record of 'business' relationships with the worst gangsters and tyrannical regimes in the world.

BNP Paribas also has one other distinguishing feature: a direct corporate and familial relationship with the persons running the government of Canada for the last 20 years.

The truth about BNP Paribas and Power Corp. sheds a new light on Canada's seemingly bizarre anti-American foreign policy in the Middle East, in China and elsewhere.

[. . . . ] Pargesa, and thus Power Corporation and the Canadian Desmarais family, holds a controlling significant stake in TotalFina Elf, the Belgian-French petroleum multinational corporation formed from the merger of Total and Petrofina.

BNP Paribas and TotalFina may have blood-stained corporate histories, but the intimate and intricate connections of Power Corp. to Canada's governing elite raise the truly disturbing questions. [. . . . ]

Fallen behind on your scandal news lately? Well, don't look now, but the doozy the United Nations has brewed up in its Iraqi oil-for-food program is about to come to full boil. The Treasury Department, the Department of Justice, the Manhattan district attorney's office, five legislative committees, at least three foreign governments, and, oh yes, the United Nations itself are asking who's responsible for the more than $4 billion in illegal kickbacks on Iraqi oil sales and goods from suppliers exporting food, medicine, and other materials to Baghdad.

[. . . . ] Politics aside, there is abundant evidence of substantial fraud and mismanagement in the U.N. program. A Pentagon audit that examined just 10 percent of the oil-for-food contracts pending at the time of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 found that the costs of nearly half the contracts appeared to be inflated. . . . "after sales service charges" of between 10 and 20 percent. . . . In order to pay the surcharge fees, it appears, some companies either inflated the cost of goods sold or delivered fewer goods than called for in their contracts. Former Iraqi ministries, the Pentagon report related, said surcharges and kickbacks were "standard practice." [. . . . ]

[. . . . ] Today it’s the American captains of industry often working through joint business ventures in China who are producing a plethora of easily accessible products for Americans, not just a wealthy few, but in the process have caused surging trade deficits and a loss of U.S. jobs.

The People’s Republic of China has evolved into a factory to the world.

[. . . . ] Thus the world’s largest dictatorship holds a huge cash reserve sloshing around by buy Boeings, Airbuses and also other items we would rather not think of. With such favorable trade earnings, not only are we losing jobs — and this is true in Europe too — but we are equally financing the strategic dreams of the dragon to purchase high end military hardware and electronics.

Beyond also facilitating weapons R&D one does not need to be too creative to presume that People’s China uses a considerable sum for black budget espionage and active measures intelligence operations targeted not only at the Republic of China on Taiwan, but equally to intimidate and penetrate large overseas Chinese student as well as exile communities in the USA, Canada and Western Europe. [. . . . ]

OTTAWA - The government of Lebanon awarded a consortium led by Quebec engineering giant SNC-Lavalin Inc. and Canada Post a 12-year contract to modernize its derelict postal system in 1998, just weeks after the Canadian government announced a $925,000 grant for a university owned by the Lebanese prime minister's own private foundation.

The Canadian government also provided an extra $281,000 in foreign aid to help retrain Lebanese postal workers, money which Canada's foreign aid agency paid directly to an SNC-Lavalin affiliate as part of the Lebanon postal project. [. . . . ]

Justice John Gomery's investigation into the $250-million sponsorship scandal is expected to end with a dramatic climax later next month when former prime minister Jean Chrétien and current Prime Minister Paul Martin will make unprecedented back-to-back appearances before the commission.

While it may go down in Canadian history as the first time both a former and sitting Prime Minister have appeared before a judicial inquiry, the question on the minds of political junkies is whether the hearings will open another new chapter in the now legendary battle between the two veteran political players' respective supporters within the governing Liberal party. [. . . . ]

STAR WITNESSES TO COME

* Prime Minister Paul Martin: Feb. 10-11

* Former prime minister Jean Chrétien

* Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew

* Environment Minister Stéphane Dion

* Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Lucienne Robillard

* Former Liberal minister Denis Coderre

* Former Liberal minister Martin Couchon

* Former Liberal minister Marcel Masse

* Former Liberal minister Diane Marleau [. . . . ]

Harjit Singh, the Brampton, Ont., pizza parlour owner who claims Sgro promised to help him overcome a deportation order in return for favours, should never have been allowed to stay a day in Canada much less to tie up our courts, legal system and governments as he and his family have for 16 years.

Along the way, despite his tenuous status as a refugee applicant, he was able to bring in relatives [. . . . ]