Saddam got $1.8B in UN scandal

October 27, 2005
Saddam got $1.8B in UN scandal

UNITED NATIONS (CP) - Investigators of the UN oil-for-food program issued a final report Thursday that accused more than 2,200 companies, and some politicians, of colluding with Saddam Hussein's regime to bilk the operation of $1.8 billion US.

The 623-page document was a scathing indictment that exposed the global scope of a scam that allegedly involved such name-brand companies as DaimlerChrysler and Siemens AG, as well as a former French UN ambassador, a firebrand British politician and the president of Italy's Lombardi region.

The report meticulously detailed how the $64 billion program became a cash cow for Saddam and more than half the companies participating in oil-for-food. It blamed shoddy UN management and the world's most powerful countries for allowing it to go on for years.

"The corruption of the program by Saddam would not nearly have been so pervasive if there had been diligent management by the United Nations and its agencies," said Paul Volcker, a former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman who led the investigation.

Volcker and many countries said the report underscored the urgent need to reform the United Nations. His earlier reports have already led to criminal inquiries and indictments in the United States, France, and Switzerland.

The investigators found that companies and individuals from 66 countries paid illegal kickbacks using a variety of methods, and those paying illegal oil surcharges were from 40 countries.

Canadian firms appeared to have played a minor role: a handful were mentioned but actual amounts cited totalled about $130,000.

Most of the contracts went to Russian and French companies and individuals, who were rewarded for their governments' outspoken opposition to the sanctions.

The oil-for-food program, which ran from 1996-2003, allowed Iraq to sell oil provided most of the money went to buy humanitarian goods. It was launched to help the Iraqi people cope with UN sanctions imposed after Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

But Saddam, who could choose the buyers of Iraqi oil and the sellers of humanitarian goods, corrupted the program by awarding contracts to - and getting kickbacks from - favoured buyers.

Volcker's $38 million investigation had earlier faulted UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, his Canadian deputy Louise Frechette, and the Security Council for tolerating corruption and doing little to stop Saddam's manipulations.

The final report says there were two main ways they did it: through kickbacks paid for humanitarian contracts for spare parts, trucks, medical equipment and other supplies; and surcharges for oil contracts. Most of the illicit income - more than $1.5 billion - came from the humanitarian contracts.

The contracts of two Calgary-based companies were listed as having involved "after-sales service fees" - kickbacks - to Iraq.

The report said $15,272 in such fees was paid in a contract with Kvaerner Process Systems, which supplied electrical and oil equipment and spare parts; and $115,786 was paid in a deal involving Maloney Industries Inc., a supplier of well-potential testing skids.

Simmons Drilling (Overseas) Ltd., was listed as having faced a requirement to pay so-called "inland transportation fees" but no specific information was available on any payment.

The report said there was no response from Kvaerner when queried. Maloney and Simmons denied making payments to Iraq in violation of the program, the report said.

A call to Kvaerner Thursday was not returned immediately. Maloney Industries was purchased by Hanover Compressor Company in 2000.

Hanover complied fully with requests for information during the investigation, said Rick Goins, a Hanover spokesman in Houston. "The conclusion is the available evidence does not reflect that Maloney financed a kickback payment or Maloney's officers or employees were aware of or agreed to a kickback payment," he said.

The report emphasized the identification of a company's contract as having been the subject of an illicit payment "does not necessarily mean that such company - as opposed to an agent or secondary purchaser with an interest in the transaction - made, authorized, or knew about an illicit payment."

Several other Canadian companies were mentioned as having had contracts with Iraq, but there was no indication they paid any kickbacks or surcharges.

Among other companies that paid surcharges were South Korea's Daewoo International and three subsidiaries of Siemens AG of Germany, as well as the Brussels, Belgium-based Volvo Construction Equipment.

On the oil side, contractors listed included Texas-based Bayoil and Coastal Corp., Russian oil giant Gazprom, and Lukoil Asia Pacific, a subsidiary of the Russian company Lukoil.

The founder and former chairman of Coastal, Texas oil tycoon Oscar Wyatt, pleaded not guilty Thursday in New York to charges that he conspired to pay several million dollars in illegal kickbacks to Saddam's regime to win contracts through the program.

Volcker's report referred to Wyatt as a "longtime and loyal oil customer of Iraq," the lone exception to an Iraqi ban on selling oil to American companies.

Among individuals, investigators found that Jean-Bernard Merrimee, France's former UN ambassador, received $165,725 in commissions from oil allocations awarded to him by the Iraqi regime. He is now under investigation in France but has denied wrongdoing.

Other so-called "political beneficiaries" included British legislator George Galloway; Roberto Formigoni, the president of the Lombardi region in Italy; and Rev. Jean-Marie Benjamin, a priest who once worked as an assistant to the Vatican secretary of state and became an activist for lifting Iraqi sanctions.

Formigoni, in a statement, said he received "neither a drop of oil, nor a single cent." Galloway also denied the allegations, saying "I've never had a penny through oil deals and no one has produced a shred of evidence that I have."

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who heads Russia's Liberal Democratic party, and Alexander Voloshin, who at the time was chief of staff in the administration of Russia's president, were also named. Both have denied wrongdoing.

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On the Net: http://www.iic-offp.org/

Bailing out Grits

Bailing out Grits
By Neil Waugh

Alberta Premier Ralph Klein was back on his game in Fort McMurray last week.

It was just in the nick of time, especially after Prime Minister Paul Martin gave United States President George W. Bush what amounted to a crank call over the softwood lumber dispute.

Martin's constitutionally challenged Natural Resources Minister Bill Graham was over in China sounding like he's threatening to sell Alberta oil to the Chinese to spite the Americans. How he plans on doing that, goofy Graham never explains. But the premier felt it wise to remind the Ottawa Liberals of how the country is supposed to work nonetheless.

"Our government team knows that Alberta controls its own destiny," Klein told his Fort Mac fundraiser. "We are not going to squander this opportunity." Then he brought the hammer down. "We will not let Ottawa snatch that opportunity away from us, by an unfair raid on the energy sector or the wealth it generates," Klein spat.

Sure, Ralph's looking real bad on the Tyson Foods strike, clearly the victim of bad advice and B-team cabinet ministers. But there's no doubt where his heart lies when it comes to redistributing Alberta's windfall oil and gas billions.

He told the chamber of commerce suits, the opposition socialists and eggheads just whose side he's on: the folks he calls "severely normal" Albertans.

"I make no apologies for returning a portion of Alberta's windfall revenues back to Albertans," Klein said.

He talked about how "all of Alberta benefits" when the money is in our pockets. Then he took a well-needed shot at the "special interests" who have placed themselves on an intellectual plateau above us.

"Albertans are smart enough to know what to do with their money and don't need government to tell them how to spend it," the premier blasted.

Welcome back, Ralph. It's been a while.

Considering that Alberta just bailed Canada out of a big one and saved Martin's economic butt, you'd think Ottawa would be a little more grateful.

"Canadian exports back on track," boomed the Toronto-Dominion Bank's latest economic commentary. But don't congratulate the parts of Canada that votes for Paul Martin for saving our economic bacon.

"As expected, surging energy prices proved the cornerstone of the export growth," TD economist Eric Lascelles said.

Even though natural gas exports went down in volume, prices rose an incredible 13%.

Alberta's cow patch, now that the U.S. border is open again to live cattle, also made Martin's bottom line a lot blacker.

"Canada's sickly pallor on the trade front seems to be in the rear-view mirror," Lascelles whooped.

Thanks to Albertans.

But there are dangerous folk plotting against the province's fossil fuel-based economy. Especially with the big United Nations climate change conference in late November in Montreal, where the preposterous prime minister will once again pretend to be the savior of the world.

"Top Alberta air polluters revealed," screamed the Canadian Environmental Law Association press release. (I've never heard of them either.) The outfit fingered what it called the "dirty dozen" polluters which it claimed are causing "cancer, respiratory illnesses, reproductive harm, developmental harm and hormone disruption."

But breathe easy, it turns out the Alberta horror show isn't what it seems. The dirty dozen includes: Syncrude, the Sundance, Sheerness, Battle River, Genesee, Keephills and Wabamun power plants, Suncor, the Scotford upgrader and the Waterton, Kaybob and Ram River gas plants.

They are all operating within strict emissions guidelines. Yikes, that's the industrial heartland of Alberta.

And if this sinister environmental law group had its way, they would shut us down.

But there's one Ottawa Liberal who finally seems to get it. Federal Environment Minister Stephane Dion has a confession to make.

"The fact is," Dion told a climate change meeting in Montreal recently, "the fossil fuel industry is here to stay for a long time. It's too large a part of the global economy to be realistically eliminated from the world's energy mix in our foreseeable future."

Yup, he really said it.

Canada US Relations

October 16, 2005

No snoozing for Senator
Head of Security and Defence Committee isn't afraid to speak out on big issues
By Licia Corbella

Senator Colin Kenny walked into the Sun building carrying a briefcase over his right shoulder and a small airline pillow under his left arm.

He didn't wait for the wisecracks to come.

"I know this looks funny and plays into the negative senatorial stereotype of people asleep on the job," he said with a laugh.

"But this is for my left elbow, not my head," he added, referring to a recent operation he had to repair the loss of feeling throughout his left forearm.

"A kind flight attendant at Air Canada insisted I take it."

The irony of Kenny walking around with his own pillow is that he's undoubtedly the most vital, wise and hard working senator on Parliament Hill.

And to add to the irony, he's a Liberal.

However, unlike most Liberal politicians in Canada, Kenny is not afraid to break ranks and speak out against his own party and its policies.

Kenny, chair of the Senate's Standing Committee on National Security and Defence, released a report last month that is a stinging indictment of the incompetence, mismanagement and neglect the Liberal government has inflicted upon Canada's Armed Forces over the past 12 years.

The report's title -- Wounded: Canada's Military and the Legacy of Neglect, Canada's Disappearing Options for Defending the Nation at Home and Abroad -- pretty much sums up Canada's inability to protect itself from either attacks or natural disasters.

But it was what Kenny had to say about Canada's relationship with our only neighbour that was just as important as his lengthy report and should be heeded.

Kenny referred to a speech made by Frank McKenna, Canada's Ambassador to the U.S., in which McKenna criticized the U.S. government system as "dysfunctional" because it has checks and balances in its political system.

Curious, eh?

In Canada we have a prime minister who gets to appoint every member of the Supreme Court, the Senate, the head of the Armed Forces, the national police force, the ethics commissioner, the head of every government agency and corporation and McKenna says the U.S. system is dysfunctional?

What's more, in September, McKenna also told a Washington-based Canadian journalist that Canada's "energy file" could be "an important card" for government to use as leverage to push the U.S. administration to see things Canada's way in other trade disputes, particularly softwood lumber.

"The whole American file frustrates me no end," said Kenny.

"Can you imagine what would happen if the American ambassador had said something like that in Canada?" asked Kenny.

"We'd all be pulling our hair out.

"Getting the American file right should be file No. 1 for Canada. A trade war is not on," he added.

According to Andre Lemay, spokesperson for the federal government's International Trade ministry, in 2004 Canada exported $348 billion to the U.S.

In turn, the U.S. exported $209 billion to Canada. In other words Canada has a whopping $139 billion trade surplus.

"One out of every three Canadian jobs is directly or indirectly related to trade with the United States," said Lemay.

Fully 84.5% of Canada's exports go to the U.S.

Basically, Canada needs the U.S. more than it need us, though Americans would suffer greatly as well if we entered into an all-out trade war.

Canada imports more goods from the U.S. than all 25 countries of the European Union combined.

In 2003, U.S. exports to the province of Ontario alone were worth more than U.S. exports to Japan.

Lemay added that Canada does more trade with Home Depot's head office in Atlanta than it does with all of France.

So, yes, both countries would be hurt if we got into an all-out trade battle but Canada would be left knocked out and bloody, while the U.S. would suffer a black eye and some bruised ribs by comparison.

"The suggestion of linking one trade issue with another makes zero sense," continued Kenny.

"It doesn't make any sense economically when you consider the balance of trade and it doesn't make any sense in terms of how divisive it would be in Canada," he said.

"Are we really going to trade oil for lumber? I don't think so. Can you imagine how that would turn one Canadian against another?" Kenny asked.

What Kenny didn't say was that Prime Minister Paul Martin took part in some trade "linkage" himself, insinuating to a U.S. audience at the Economic Club of New York on Oct. 6, that Canada just might decide to sell its oil and gas and "exploit" Asian markets rather than sell to the U.S.

Indeed, a few days after that speech, he sent acting Natural Resources Minister John McCallum on a trade mission to China to find new markets for our energy.

Martin's audacity is immense.

As Alberta Premier Ralph Klein said recently: "I don't care if (Martin) wants to sell and promote our oil. But it's not his to sell."

Exactly.

Instead of meddling where he doesn't belong, Martin should focus on doing his job.

This past Friday, Martin finally called President George W. Bush to talk about softwood lumber.

That's a whopping 64 days after the final appeal panel on NAFTA ruled that the U.S. owes Canada $5 billion in unlawful tariffs charged to our lumber industry.

Sixty four days!

The man is a coward.

Senator Kenny may be the one walking around with a pillow, but unfortunately it's our prime minister who's asleep at the helm.

School Yards No Fun

October 13, 2005

Thrill is gone
By MICHAEL PLATT

I've been hanging around playgrounds. No, not like that -- there's no need to call the police, or keep your children locked indoors.

Maybe what I should say is we've been hanging around playgrounds.

You see, I have my own little girl, so my presence among the slides and swings is perfectly legitimate. Like any dad, I'm a slave to my wee one's thrill-seeking demands.

I push, slide and climb, both to make her happy, and to ensure she's safe.

I've found myself wedged inside playground tubes too tiny to comfortably fit a dachshund, and I've smacked my head on steel bars, while helping her onto slides designed for kids and circus contortionists. I hardly even notice the park gravel anymore, as it trickles into my shoes.

It's all in a day's work for a dad. And my daughter loves playgrounds, or at least the swings. The sheer rush of being a 26-lb. pendulum leaves her giggling and wanting more.

No ride makes her day like a good old-fashioned swing-set, and it's the same story for a lot of kids. Swings are the place to be, while the rest of the playground -- a spaghetti of wood, plastic and old rubber tires -- is usually neglected.

The basic swing, the only ride left over from my childhood (and the childhood of anyone raised before basic safety gave way to parenting paranoia) is now the most popular playground attraction.

It wasn't the case back then: swings were fun, but not like the skyscraper-high monkey bars, or slides that required a serious hike to the top, before shooting you back to the ground so fast your stomach felt a full second behind.

I don't have the heart to tell the truth to my daughter, even if she was old enough to understand.

She can't read, so it's safe to print it here. Modern playgrounds are boring.

Seriously -- they're tedious.

Since my playground knowledge contains a gap of about 20 years, can someone please explain what happened to all the good rides?

At what point, between 1985 and 2005, did someone step in and take the fun equipment away, replacing it with safe-and-dreary designs capable of thrilling no one, except over-protective mothers?

I miss things like merry-go-rounds; those spinning platforms kids would whip into a near-blur, before jumping on, clinging to the bars for dear life. We'd hang off the edge, face-down, playing "dropped-it/picked-it-up" with a twig or popsicle stick. Falling off meant nasty, dirt-filled scrapes, and every child had the scars to prove it.

Monkey bars were works of art: There were rocket ships, airplanes, chuckwagons and abstract towers. They were high, cold and dangerous -- and there was no better place to play tag. If you fell, you returned with a cast, or an angry bruise, ready to climb again.

The slides were impossibly tall, and built to ensure the ladder was only one route to the top. Scaling the actual slide, or the metal scaffolding, was far more daring. Especially in winter, when the steel was coated with ice.

As well as slides, there were fireman's poles, which took strong nerves and stronger ankles -- the landings were hard.

The old parks also had horses. Most hung like swings, but one rare type was the pre-motorized equivalent of a mechanical bull.

Long and low, with a row of seats, such horses would buck wildly, as six kids fought to hang on.

And there were see-saws. Nothing like the feeble plastic designs found on today's parks, these were massive planks of wood, rising six feet in the air.

Woe be the child whose partner jumped off, leaving the weighted end to crash down.

There were others, but my memories are hazy. Suffice to say, the best rides combined fear with immense fun, and kids loved them.

Today's playgrounds are low to the ground, with round edges with safety bars and soft gravel all around. It's no wonder many kids prefer to play video games at home -- broccoli gets the blood pumping faster than most modern parks.

Of course, I'll keep taking my little daughter to her swings, so she can laugh, and tell me to push harder.

And someday, when she asks me what the playgrounds were like when I was little, daddy will pretend he can't remember.

I wouldn't want to make her sad.

Oilpatch demonized

October 10, 2005
Oilpatch demonized
Essential industry convenient scapegoat for politicians
By EZRA LEVANT

Last Monday, the other Calgary daily ran a large editorial cartoon attacking the oilpatch. A cigar-chomping caricature of a corporate fat cat -- standing in front of a billboard saying "BIG OIL," just in case the cigar and wine glass were too subtle -- explains economics to Calgarians.

"It's a simple case of supply and demand," says the fat-cat. "I demand a lavish lifestyle, and you supply it." The editorial message is clear: people who work for oil companies are greedy and oil prices are high because of their greed.

One might have expected such a cartoon to run in a Montreal or Toronto newspaper, for those cities are a breeding ground for anti-Alberta envy these days. But in Calgary?

The personal demonization of oil executives is stomach-turning. Who is that fat-cat supposed to be? EnCana's Gwyn Morgan, Calgary's most respected businessman? Or Talisman's Jim Buckee, whose company donates millions to Calgary community projects?

Or is it supposed to represent the industry as a whole -- the thousands of Calgarians who work directly or indirectly in the energy sector as accountants, engineers and a hundred other noble professions and trades? Or is the target the families of those workers, whose "lavish lifestyles" are paid for by having a breadwinner in the oilpatch?

There is no satisfactory answer.

What is such an opinion called? What is it called to rename someone with an unappealing name (Big Oil), make them look physically repulsive (a cigar-chomping, wine-swilling egotist) put appalling words in their mouth ("I demand a lavish lifestyle") and blame that scapegoat for troubles in our lives (high oil prices)?

It's called bigotry.

Here's a lesson about oil prices for that cartoonist. Oil prices aren't set in Calgary. They're not set by "Big Oil." They're the result of growing demand, especially in the U.S., China and India, and tight supplies because of political uncertainty in the Middle East, Venezuela and Nigeria, and the hurricane-wrecked oil facilities in the Gulf of Mexico. How do Calgary oil men fit into that -- other than as people pumping as much as they can to fill the shortfall?

It's unlikely Paul Martin saw that cartoon, but he'd like it if he did. Last week he went to New York, where he threatened to restrict energy exports to the U.S.

Martin hinted to New York investors, and then again on CNN, that he would use energy exports as a way to punish the U.S. for not giving in to other Canadian diplomatic demands. According to news reports, Martin said Canada could easily shift its oil exports away from the U.S. and to China and India instead.

Let's not get distracted by focusing on how Martin has frittered away an already deteriorating relationship with the U.S., from his Ballistic Missile Defence flip-flop, to his passive-aggressive approach to the softwood lumber case. This is about Martin feeling comfortable using the oilpatch -- translation: Alberta -- as a weapon in Canada-U.S. relations. Do you think for a second that he'd get away with that if he threatened to use Ontario's auto industry in the same way?

The oilpatch already has enough enemies in Ottawa. It doesn't need more in Calgary newspapers. Where are the oilpatch's advocates? Or have they taken the cartoonist's cue, and become self-loathing?

Have they bought into the demonization?

As the poet W.B. Yeats wrote 85 years ago, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity."

Better to consult Vikings on Kyoto

October 13, 2005
Better to consult Vikings on Kyoto
By LICIA CORBELLA

Way back in the years 1000 to 1200 AD, Vikings farmed on the now frozen islands of Greenland and Iceland.

That's right, 800 to 1,000 years ago, when the Earth was sparsely populated and the internal combustion engine wasn't anywhere close to becoming even a spark of an idea, the Earth was warmer than it is today.

How can that be when we keep hearing that the earth is getting catastrophically too warm?

That's the kind of question Dr. Douglas Leahey, President of the Calgary-based group Friends of Science, is hoping more and more Canadians ask themselves -- and soon.

Yesterday, Friends of Science launched an ad campaign in vote-rich and Liberal-ruled central Ontario to bust a few global warming myths. And there are many.

The 30-second radio spots asks listeners to engage in a quick true-and-false quiz.

1) Global warming causes the violent weather worldwide.

2) The Earth is warmer today than it has been in 1,000 years.

3) Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is dangerous pollution.

"If you said 'yes' to all three then you've been misled," states the radio ad, urging those listening to ask their MP why they want to spend $10 billion on unproven global-warming theories and inviting listeners to visit the group's website: www.friendsofscience.org

Log onto that site and it's positively chock-a-block with myth-busting facts, all backed up with scientific articles and studies.

In fact, Dr. Tim Patterson, a professor of Geology at Carleton University in Ottawa, is quoted on the site saying: "If back in the mid-nineties, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would not exist because we would have concluded it was not necessary."

Dr. Timothy Ball, Canada's first climatology Ph.D states it even more forcefully. "The Kyoto Protocol is a political solution to a non-existent problem without scientific justification."

Leahey said numerous other climate scientists along with himself have watched in alarm as much of the world and its media "buy in 100 percent to the notion that man's emissions of CO2 was causing rapid global warming."

"We saw billions, if not trillions of dollars being earmarked for the Kyoto protocol and we felt very concerned that science was being pushed aside by hysteria over global warming," he said at a news conference at Calgary's Chamber of Commerce.

But Leahey, Patterson and Ball don't stand alone as voices crying out in the wilderness as to the foolishness, wastefulness and ineffectiveness of Kyoto. They are joined by no less than 19,700 other scientists -- 95% of them Ph.D's -- who have signed the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine petition which states in part: "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."

There are many other global-warming myths being debunked, and many can be found at the Friends of Science website -- which is funded mostly by a University of Calgary trust fund.

For instance, most people keep hearing from environmental groups and media that the Earth's poles are warming. But that's just not what science indicates. Studies show that while the western Arctic is getting a little warmer due to "unrelated cyclic events in the Pacific Ocean," the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder.

The small Palmer Peninsula of Antarctica is getting warmer, while the main Antarctic continent is actually cooling.

Leahey points out that the $10 billion the federal Liberals plan to squander on implementing Kyoto would be better spent on fighting pollution or hiring more doctors.

"The only thing that is certain about climate," said Leahey, "is that it will change."

It always has and always will. Science proves it. While most of the world's climate scientists now say man-made global warming is mostly just a bunch of hot air, they are hoping politicians will soon catch on.

Frankly, with the corrupt, incompetent and deceitful lot we have running this country, don't hold your breath.

A male bastion once more

A male bastion once more
Women turn away after years of gains Universities try

to lure them back

LOUISE BROWN
EDUCATION REPORTER

Engineering schools in Ontario are grappling with a drop in female students in an alarming reversal of the trend everywhere else in universities.

Women have fallen to just 20 per cent of first-year engineering classes in Ontario, down from almost 30 per cent five years ago — just as they reach nearly 60 per cent of all university undergraduates, more than 53 per cent of medical students and nearly half of law and business classes in North America.

Worried educators blame the drop partly on engineering's outdated image — "We're not all nerdy Dilberts!" insists one female prof — but also on a daunting new Grade 12 math course believed to be scaring off many students, especially less math-cocky females.

"The new math course is killing us, because even though girls do well in math, they often don't think they're any good, so they'll decide not to take it and then don't choose engineering," said biophysicist Gillian Wu, York University's dean of science and engineering.

In a bid to halt the growing gender gap, Ontario's 15 engineering schools held an emergency summit last winter and have launched a number of rare steps this fall:

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They have changed entrance requirements this year to make them more female-friendly, by scrapping the dreaded Geometry and Discrete Math course as a compulsory requirement for engineering, and instead making it one of several options students may take, including biology, a subject girls often prefer, as well as earth science and data management.

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They have banded together to host simultaneous hands-on workshops next Saturday at campuses across the province to pitch engineering to girls and their parents as a "people profession" that helps others as much as the health professions so popular with teenaged girls.

The five-hour event, called Go Eng Girl, will try to replace the notion of engineers as "grease monkeys who just tinker with machines," says mechanical engineer Lisa Anderson, Ryerson University's full-time co-ordinator of women in engineering, "with the more up-to-date image of engineers doing everything from designing hip replacements to finding ways to reduce pollution."

Go Eng Girl workshops will run from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at the University of Toronto and 10 other campuses. See http://www.ospe.on.ca/goenggirl to register.

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They have formed a new province-wide committee to ensure high school guidance counsellors realize engineers are not merely "math nerds with pocket-protectors who work in cubicles all day long," said engineer Marta Ecsedi, the University of Toronto's advisor on women in engineering.

"We know girls are drawn to professions they see as `caring' for others, so girls who are strong in math often veer towards health sciences," said Ecsedi, whose daughter is a mechanical engineer working on ways to relieve spinal cord pain.

Ontario's engineering schools hope to change public perceptions
"They need to understand that engineering is also a `caring profession' that works on ways to detect breast cancer earlier, or clean up contaminated soil or reduce malnutrition in the world through measures like fortifying salt."

Student Sweeny Chhabra, 19, a third-year engineering science student at the U of T, says she had been encouraged in high school to choose medicine because she was good at math.

"But I don't like the idea of working with bodies. I actually prefer to work hands-on with machines, and I'm thinking of going into biomedical engineering; maybe the field of X-rays or MRIs," she said. "Engineering is so broad."

The U of T's Ecsedi first noticed the drop in female engineers four years ago after Ontario launched its new four-year curriculum, which leaves teens less time for optional subjects than under the old five-year plan. The new Grade 12 Discrete Math course was a prerequisite for engineering, but fewer students were signing up for it because it was so intimidating, she said.

"And we know if girls have any doubts at all about their math skills, they need a nudge or they'll drop it," she said. "We're not sure they're getting that nudge.'"

While girls consistently perform every bit as well as boys on Ontario's Grade 9 math test, only 25 per cent of girls say they think they're good at math, compared to 37 per cent of boys.

Ontario is reviewing the course this fall as part of an overhaul of the new math curriculum, but in the meantime engineering faculties decided to make entrance requirements more flexible.

"We've raised the red flag about this because engineering needs to represent the full diversity of life experience — cultural and gender — to be truly creative," said Ecsedi.

Go Eng Girl activities are free (register at http://www.ospe.on.ca/goenggirl), but girls must come with a parent because it is often parents who have outdated views of engineering, say organizers.

There are even experts on "math phobia" who will speak to parents to try to dispel the myth that girls can't do math and suggest how they can encourage their daughters even if they aren't math whizzes themselves. And then there's the old raunchy image of engineers.

"Look, the old image of engineers staying up all night drinking and waking up nurses doesn't really appeal to many girls today — or many of their parents," said York University's dean Gillian Wu.

"But people don't really know much about engineering, the way they understand dentistry or teaching or business. They'll read about some fabulous new building designed by architect Daniel Libeskind — but they won't realize it's engineers who will actually build it," said Wu. "Maybe we need a prime-time TV show like `CSI' to popularize engineering."

More 'useful idiots'

More 'useful idiots'
By SALIM MANSUR

Vladimir Lenin coined the apt phrase "useful idiots" to describe those living in western democracies who made common cause with his Bolshevik politics.

He understood them well, held them in contempt while exploiting their despicable naivete and self-loathing for propaganda purposes of the gulag he made of Russia, and his successors from Stalin to Gorbachev served as chief wardens.

Similarly, Mao Zedong of China had his legion of useful idiots, such as the American journalist Edgar Snow, justifying his sadism as a display of earth-shaking statesmanship.

Mao's most recent biographers, Jung Chan and Jon Halliday, in a massive tome of impeccable scholarship, have given us the inside view of a China where people were raped, starved and murdered systematically.

Mao surpassed Stalin and Hitler -- it is some record to reflect upon -- to become, in Jung Chan's words, "the biggest mass murderer in the history of the world." The number of Chinese who perished in Mao's China exceeded 70 million.

In a free society, as in nature, aberration is not uncommon. "Useful idiots" are aberrations in a democratic society, frequently seditious, and a reminder that freedom has costs free people must bear vigilantly.

The recent anti-war demonstrations in Washington and elsewhere are comprised of the useful idiots of our time, who make common cause with bloody-minded insurgents determined to derail the difficult transition of Iraq, from tyranny to freedom.

Their public representatives, such as British MP George Galloway and Michael Moore, the duplicitous American filmmaker, openly embrace "jihadist" insurgents -- the fanatical dregs of the Arab-Muslim world -- colluding with former Baathists loyal to Saddam Hussein.

Galloway is on record stating: "It can be said, truly said, that the Iraqi resistance is not just defending Iraq. They are defending all the Arabs and they are defending all the people of the world against American hegemony."

In the excuse of opposing war, these useful idiots defend mass murderers, trade in conspiracy theories and spurn democratic societies by being obsequious to despots.

At the very same time these useful idiots gathered together last month to display their wretched time-worn politics of anti-war, making fools of their apologists in the lib-left media, Jalal Talabani of the emergent Iraq was attending the annual United Nations summit in New York.

Talabani is an Iraqi Kurd, a social democrat by conviction, a lifelong opponent of Saddam and a genuine hero of freedom-loving Iraqis. He was voted president by the first freely elected Iraqi parliament.

In a column published by The Wall Street Journal on the day he appeared in New York, Talabani addressed those who continue to be skeptics about Iraq and its future.

He wrote: "Without foreign intervention, the transition in Iraq would have been from Saddam's bloodstained hands to his psychopathic offspring. Instead, thanks to American leadership, Iraqis have been given an opportunity of peaceful, participatory politics. Contrary to the new conventional wisdom, Iraq and the history of 20th-century Europe demonstrate that force of arms can implant democracy in the most arid soil."

Despite the insurgency, he said, Iraq held an open election last January, "has a democratically elected head of state, government and Parliament" and "members of the most repressed ethnic groups now hold the highest offices of state."

These came about, Talabani reminded everyone, as "a result of the courage and vision of President (George) Bush and his allies, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard, leaders whose commitment of troops to enforce UN Security Council resolutions liberated Iraq."

The useful idiots embracing insurgency in Iraq want, instead, to reverse history's forward march into freedom there, and elsewhere, consistent with their record.

Toxic change targets Alberta and lets Ontario go free

Feds cloud real plan
Toxic change targets Alberta and lets Ontario go free
By Ezra Levant

Carbon dioxide is a colourless, odourless, harmless gas.

Actually it's not just harmless -- it's necessary for life on Earth, as all green plants require it for photosynthesis.

But on July 16, the federal government announced its intention to classify carbon dioxide as a "toxic chemical" under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

According to the Act, a toxic chemical is defined as "an immediate or long-term harmful effect on the environment," or "a danger to the environment on which life depends" or "a danger in Canada to human life or health". To call carbon dioxide any of these things is to lie. Carbon dioxide is essential not only to plant life, but it's the gas that humans -- and animals -- exhale when we breathe.

Carbon dioxide is not a toxic chemical in science or in common sense, so what's going on? In the same official notice, the explanation was provided: It's the way Ottawa plans to get jurisdiction over the oil patch to implement their Kyoto taxes.

The Kyoto Protocol is a dead letter. Most of the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases are simply exempt from the treaty, including China, India, Brazil and OPEC. The treaty itself was rigged to give Europe a mulligan -- Europe got credit for East Germany shutting down its Soviet-era factories and the U.K. moving away from coal, even though both of those changes happened in the 1980s, a decade before the treaty was signed. The few countries who signed the treaty and are bound by it -- like Japan and the U.K. -- have admitted there is no way they can meet the treaty's requirements, so they're simply not going to try.

After all, the treaty has no enforcement mechanism.

But the real point of Kyoto -- UN and European bureaucrats designing a treaty to hobble the U.S. economy -- has been moot for years, ever since the U.S. Senate voted unanimously it would not implement Kyoto if it hurt the economy.

So the treaty is in a shambles, and its chief architect, Canada's Maurice Strong, has resigned in disgrace from the UN after his company, Cordex Petroleum Inc., received $1 million from Saddam Hussein. (Maurice Strong's protege, Prime Minister Paul Martin, is also an owner of Cordex.)

The most telling thing about the July 16 notice is it doesn't apply to Ontario's massive auto industry, which is exempt. But page after page goes into detail about how Alberta will be targeted, with fines of up to $200-million per megaton of carbon dioxide.

Question: Why is carbon dioxide considered toxic, and subject to a $200-million/megaton fine when it comes from Alberta, but harmless and untaxed when it comes from Toronto?

The Kyoto Protocol isn't about fighting pollution -- carbon dioxide isn't a pollutant. It's not about stopping global warming, either -- the Kyoto Protocol's own scientific panel predicts even if every country in the world were to fully implement the treaty, it would only make 0.2C difference by the year 2100. That's less than the natural annual variation of the world's climate.

There's no scientific or diplomatic reason to proceed with this treaty. But it's not about science or diplomacy.

This is just what it looks like: An excuse to tax Alberta. Too bad Ralph Klein has retired on the job. Too bad the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers is more interested in lobbying Ottawa than fighting it.

Levant is publisher of the Western Standard