Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Corruption roundup
Corruption roundup
Mar 19, 2026 7:54 PM

1) According to the BBC, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said, “The bulk of the money that Saddam [Hussein] made came out of smuggling outside the oil-for-food programme, and it was on the American and British watch”. This assertion is based on the contention that the $4 billion that Hussein was alleged to have received in the oil-for-food program is “dwarfed” by the $14 billion is said to e from “sanctions-busting,” illegally smuggling oil to neighboring states such as Jordan and Turkey.

Also, Bloomberg has the latest on US indictments in the case.

2) The Canadian government’s Adscam scandal has been called by an opposition leader “a criminal conspiracy of the like never seen in this country before.”

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Rev. Robert Sirico on ‘Social Mortgage’
Rev. Robert Sirico was recently featured in El Salvador’s newspaper El Diaro de Hoy. Consuelo Interiano interviewed him about the free market, and social mortgage. Sirico begins by saying that private property isn’t just important for businesses to thrive, it’s absolutely necessary for their existence. He goes on to say that businesses and panies are the best way to help individuals escape poverty. Companies, large or small, create opportunities for work and offer individuals a means to elevate themselves out...
Common Sense and Religious Hostility
There is a saying that going to church doesn’t make you a Christian anymore than standing in a garage makes you a car. Apparently, the good folks of Freedom From Religion Foundation and the 7th US District Court aren’t clear on this…and they are making a federal case of it. According to Robert P. George in The Washington Times, the Freedom From Religion Foundation can’t bear the thought of a public high school graduation being held in a church, even...
Terry Mattingly and Joe Carter on Surviving Easter
Leading mentator, Terry Mattingly looks back on Easter in an article about Catholics attending services despite the overcrowding from “Poinsettia and Lily Catholics,” those who only attend a Mass on Christmas and Easter. He describes how the influx of those attending mass affects Catholics who faithfully attend church every Sunday. He says: “I really am glad that they’re there,” wrote Fisher. “It’s got to be better than never going to Mass, and I do believe that the Holy Spirit could...
6 Things You Need to Know About Acton University
1. It’s truly international. Last year, we hosted 800+ people from over 70 countries. 2. You can create your own curriculum. Whether you’re interested in business, poverty alleviation and development, economics, history, social thought, urban ministry… just read the list of courses for yourself. You’ll find great stuff there. 2-1/2. We eat really well. 3. There is plenty of time to network, socialize and enjoy meeting all those people from all over the world. 4. The student fee is ridiculously...
Conference on Poverty Co-Hosted by Acton Institute and Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary
Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary and the Acton Institute are co-hosting a “Conference on Poverty,” May 31–June 1, on the seminary campus. Conference speakers include Jay W. Richards, author of Money, Greed, and God, and Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute; Susan R. Holman, senior writer at Harvard Global Health Institute, and author of The Hungry are Dying: Beggars in Roman Cappadocia and God Knows There’s Need: Christian Responses to Poverty; and Michael Matheson Miller, Acton Institute Research Fellow and...
How to See Like a State
What does it mean to see like a State? “In short, to see like the state is to be myopic,” says Brian Dijkema. “This myopia views geography, people, their customs and traditions in a way that “severely brackets all variables except those bearing directly” on the state’s interests of revenue, security, and order.” An example from the institutional point of view of schools illustrates the point well. Education, and the shape of the schools that provide it, is one of...
Does the Media Need to Be Schooled in Religion?
Nobody can know everything about everything, but in the age of the internet, fact-checking isn’t too tough. It’s one thing for a high-school student to attempt to slide by on “facts” in a research paper for sophomore social studies, but another when professional journalists make errors about easily investigated pieces of knowledge. Lately, the media has been getting blasted for getting the facts wrong about religion. Carl M. Cannon: The upshot during Holy Week this year was a spate of...
Before and Beyond the Common Good
I recently argued that although vocation is important, there is a certain something that goes before and beyond it. As Lester DeKoster puts it, “The meaning we seek has to be in work itself.” Over at Think Christian, John Van Sloten puts forth something similar, focusing on our efforts to work for mon good— something not altogether separate from vocation: There’s a lot of talk in faith/work circles about the idea of working for mon good – for the good...
School Vouchers Increase College Attendance for Black Students
New research suggests that school vouchers have a greater impact on whether black students attend college than small class sizes or effective teachers: Matthew M. Chingos of the Brookings Institution and Paul E. Peterson, director of Harvard’s program on education policy and governance, tracked college enrollment information for students who participated in the School Choice Scholarship program, which began in 1997. They were able to get college enrollment information on 2,637 of the 2,666 students in the original cohort. The...
Journalists Bearing False Witness in Boston
There are arguably two forces that may be destroying the ethics of journalism today. The first is petition for rankings and advertising that drives the obsession to report something “first” in a 24-hour news cycle. The second is that social media exacerbates the first. These two forces make journalists vulnerable to poor, unethical reporting. We are seeing this play out in what could easily be considered unethical coverage of the tragedy in Boston by CNN and other news platforms. On...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved