RailGate For Real....Day 2 Updates....

AllTheTidbits
ThatFitVille

9:05pm: Summing up Day 2 succinctly, our friend, and citizen journalist extraordinare, BC Mary says: "The tables were turned..... (today) it seemed the province was on trial"......We assume Mary means the province's current government, headed by Mr. Gordon Campbell....We could not agree more....Meanwhile Gary Mason, in his (now daily?) Globe column, ties himself into a pretzel trying to convince us that dual defence strategies aimed at pointing out the serial lapses in the integrity of the government of Gordon Campbell as well as destroying the Crown's case are somehow mutually exclusive....After all, it was not the defence that led us down Martyn Brown's garden path of spotless integrity all morning long....


6:50pm: Brian Hutchinson in the NaPo (ie. CanWest, non-Lotuslandian Division...apologies I got moniker wrong first time 'round, Anon-O-Mouse corrected me in the comments, and rightfully so) notes in his Day 2 round-up that the defense is threatening to go back at the government's alleged pre-sale BC Rail 'failure strategy' (see earlier comments for details) when Bobby Virk takes the stand later (and, in fact, the header writer put the term 'devalued' into the screamer at the top of Hutchinson's piece - ha!).....Looks like the accused are not going to down meekly....But.....Mr Hutchinson, like so many others in the proMedia Herd are now 'suddenly' focussing on the fact that CN and it's CEO David McLean were big BC Liberal Party donors from way back....What the heck is wrong with these people?.....I mean can't they use the search function on the Elections BC website?...Or, failing that, the 'teh'?....Sheesh....


5:45pm: John McComb and reporter Marcella Bernardo on the (nolongerso)Giant'98 actually discussed, in some detail, the BC Rail 'failure strategy' that the RailGate defense alleges was used to justify the sale/not sale with malice aforethought by the Campbell government....The CKNW folks also noted the non-denial denial responses from M. Brown when he was under cross examination today (see today's earlier reports for details)...McComb and Bernardo also re-raised the issue of the historical big money donations to the BC Liberal Party by winning bidder CN Rail, which is an issue we raised last weekend on the eve of the trial (and no, unlike at least one rumoured proMedia member in this town, we do not have an 'in' with the defense)...For his part, under cross-examination, M. Brown just made like Sgt. Shultz on this one and said he 'knew nothing!'.......Well.....Alrighty then....

5:30pm: Mike Hanafin of CKWX has an interesting tidbit up on their website (with the help of CP files)....Apparently defense lawyer K. McCullough raised the issue of the early CP Rail pullout from the BC Rail bidding process with witness, and G Campbell chief of staff, Martyn Brown during cross examination this afternoon to make the point about a different kind of 'taint' than the one that was raised by SP Berardino in his opening statement for the Crown yesterday....In response, Mr. Brown apparently dismissed the 'taint' because of the findings of the 'Fairness Advisor'....Oh boy....The issue of the Fairness Advisor's Report...Raised in open court.... With the jury present!....In the word's of the immortal J. Ramone..... Hey-Ho, Let's Go!.....Because it would appear that Mr. Brown just may have let a whole lotta cats outta the 'pre-trial publication ban' bag.....Heckfire!

3:45pm: Neal Hall (him again!?, OK....maybe he can stay 'accredited' after all), is running with a new lede on K. McCullough's and the defense' strategy, which is that they will try to demonstrate that the fix was in, right from the beginning, for CN, and by extension, it's CEO, former chief BC Liberal Party fundraiser Mr. David MacLean, to win the bid for BC Rail's 'operations' from the get-go.....Again, Martyn Brown did not flatly deny this, but instead said, and I quote, "I don't believe that's true".....Now this is interesting.....Is there anybody else out there that just might be able to shed further light on this matter, under oath, if they were to be called by the defense as a witness down the road?....Does such a (at least so far) mythical/hypothetical person exist...I mean is there anybody else out there who has raised and/or donated lots of money for/to the BC Liberal Party that also may, or may not, have had working relationships with either or both CN and BC Rail....Is there?...Huh?....Hmmmmmm......Just thought I'd ask....But...Why is it I am suddenly conjuring up a not-so-mythical magic number?.....

3:30pm: Hey, Mess'rs Baldrey, Palmer and Good......If the folks interested in RailGate are nothing, as you have stated, nothing but a 'cult' of the of the same eight people, how come my site-meter has gone literally crazy in the last few days.....And on a related note, why are so many of those hits coming directly from the gov.bc.ca domain?

1:30pm: Neal Hall of the VSun is reporting that, under cross-examination from defense lawyer K. McCullough, G. Campbell chief of staff Martyn Brown went into non-denial denial mode on at least two counts....First, he skipped around the pre-2001 election promise issue, a promise authored, at least in part by Mr. Brown himself, by stating that the sell-off of BC Rail was not actually a sell-off, but instead was just the engagement of 'a private operator to operate the business' (me: for up to 990 years?....ha!)....Secondly, Mr. Brown called the possibility that there was a 'BC Rail must fail strategy' in the run-up to the sale/not sale 'absurd', and then when into a long-winded answer but apparently did not flat out deny that the strategy did not exist....Both points have us wondering if slithering-in-the-most-serpentine-fashion-possible when potentially damaging issues come up was a regular part of those morning loyalty oath sessions that Mr. Brown made such a big deal about in response to the more friendly questions from SP Beradino earlier in the day.....Next up, according to Mr. Hall's report, is former BC Rail CEO, both for the earlier Sale/Not Sale and for the later high-priced guardianship of the 'Spur' line that nobody, including OmniTrax, ever got 'consoled' with, Mr. Kevin Mahoney.....

12:30pm: No word on all this 'withdrawl of admissions' business that apparently took place this morning before things got rolling and which was mentioned in an earlier post.....Either it fell into the preTrial Catch-22....... or.....perhaps it was all just a little too complicated and/or arcane for the pack (and, yes, I will withdraw the comment and apologize if something turns up regarding this matter in the proMedia later)....

CBC BC is reporting that Gordon Campbell's chief-of-staff Martyn Brown re-took the stand this morning and stated, surprise!, that he 'never' authorized his charges, D. Basi or R. Virk to take gifts and gratuities from OmniTrax and/or their agent Pilothouse....But is that really the question that should be asked here?...And is Mr. Brown really the one that should be asked?.....More importantly, does SP Berar(n)dino, who is NOT highly experienced in criminal trials, actually think this kind of 'oath-based offense' will stand-up if, say, Gary Collins is cross-examined by the defense and the matter of, oh, I dunno, 'media-monitoring contracts' comes up?....Sheesh....No wonder the accused plead 'not guilty'.....

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