Saturday, May 22, 2010

RailGate's Most Accredited Media Member Weighs In

ThePeople'sJournalist
Courtroom54Ville

I am convinced that Robin Mathews has spent more time in the RailGate courtroom than Special Prosecutor William Berar(n)dino.

Mr. Berardino is a fine fellow who was once partners with the even finer fellows that appointed him, former Attorney General Geoff Plant and former Deputy Attorney General (and now current Deputy Minister to Gordon Campbell), Mr. Allan Seckel (no conflict there, no siree). However, despite the fact that he is, allegedly, one of British Columbia's top legal minds, Mr. Berardino often left the RailGate pre-trial proceedings to his juniors (ie. he was nowhere to be found).

In contrast, Citizen Journalist Mathews has been there just about every single day since the very beginning.

Thus, Robin has also spent more time in the RailGate Courtroom than either presiding judge so far.

In fact, early on in the proceedings, when it became clear that the public was being shut out of the process, it was Robin who went to bat for us and convinced then judge Bennett to correct the situation.

As a result, at least in part, a flood of documentary evidence ultimately became available for the public's perusal, culminating in the court's release of 15 binders filled to bursting with things like appointment letters, Emails, financial information, fundraising details, propaganda strategies, and even a pretty much daily 'tell all' journal that was kept by an insider as the deal to sell/not sell BC Rail was going down. Unfortunately, this is all stuff that we are no longer allowed to talk specifically about, especially if we consider ourselves to be 'publishers'.

Which I do.

Consider myself to be a 'publisher', I mean.

Even if it is only as a publisher of this little F-Troop list blog.

However, while I cannot tell you specifically what's in, for example, the tell-all journal, I do feel that it is my duty as a citizen of the Province of British Columbia to let you know, without actually publishing any of them, that every single pdf-ed page of those 15 binders is still available for scrutiny by your personal peepers, here.

And if you go to the summary page and read some of the evidence that has been selectively placed there, I think you will understand why we, the citizen journalists who have been paying attention, call complete and utter Bullshit! on people like the editorial writers of the Globe (and no longer Empire) Mail when they write circumscriptive, corp-lovin' codswallop like this. Not to mention the fact that we will continue to point and holler at the mountains of cowshit that were never, allegedly, ever dumped on Jim Sinclair's lawn when people like Vaughn Palmer, Keith Baldrey and Bill Good continue to opine, on the public airwaves, that the RailGate defence has made a lot of accusations without providing any evidence.

Why will we continue to call out this crap?

Because, as detailed above, we know the evidence exists.

And so do they.

Heckfire, some of that evidence even exists in Mr. Palmer's own previously-published columns.

But.......

Just to be crystal clear, the evidence is most definitely piled highest in the many RailGate columns written by Mr. Robin Mathews over the years, most of which are archived forever at our good friend Mary's place and/or at Vive le Canada.

And now, finally, with the trial really, and still somewhat surreally, on for real, Mr. Mathews has written his first column of the post-pre-trial era.

An era where publication bans, either imposed from the court on high, or from a proMedia herded by its editors and/or its own collective tail, will no longer stand.

Because the citizens are watching and they are speaking loudly, forcefully, and often eloquently.

In fact, some of the best recent examples of that force and eloquence can be found in the fantastic thread of informed comment from the citizenry that followed the egregious Globe editorial mentioned above.

And, clearly, a citizenry that wishes to remain informed about what is really going down in RailGate courtroom from here on in would be well advised to read the columns of the most highly accredited member of OUR media.

Which would be Mr. Mathews.

OK?



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I must confess that there is only one thing that I have been really concerned about throughout the first week of the new post-pre-trial Era of real, honest-to-goodness Goldenness, which is the nagging feeling that a whole lotta of the evidence that we know exists may have been retroactively pulled back by Judge #2....This is something that Robin put very succinctly in his latest column when he wrote: "....(Defence lawyer) Mr. McCullough would ask the judge to mark a document for identification (for the jury) or as an exhibit (a part of evidence)..... She would agree, or disagree....." It's that last bit that really has me worried. In fact I recall an exchange where Mr. McCullough said something to the effect of 'not now?' and the Judge retorted with something like, 'Maybe never.'....Most worrisome, that.....
Of course, there is someone else who has also spent a kingheck lot of time in Courtroom 54, and that is Bill Tieleman.....Bill is, most unfortunately, away at the moment taking care of things, and folks, that really matter, but his archives will singe your eyebrows if you want to either get up to speed, revisit all the major events, or, perhaps, most important for the weeks to come, get to know the back stories of the almost all of the major players....

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7 comments:

Ian said...

RossK,

I have another worry to add to your pile.

McCullough has done such a good job destroying the credibility of the Premier's eyes and ears that the he's upped the pressure to get Brown off the stand. But that's not gonna happen with types like Brown until he's wrung the last drop out of them.

What does that leave? A deal. the pressure on the powers to be to offer a deal to shut this thing down grows daily.

RossK said...

Hang on just a second here....

Isn't Bolton coming in with the velvet hammer to pound the mincemeat flat next week...?

.

(and just who would be offering up such a 'deal' now that the ol'Deputy has been kicked upstairs to full 'protocol oversight duty... Oh, wait...)

North Van's Grumps said...

A "deal", not likely, it would be as good as admitting that Basi/Virk/Basi were not guilty of any of the charges.

However, going back to Kash Heed and the other Solicitor Generals that have "retired" from the field, I have to ask just how much the RCMP are involved in all of this. When Terrence Robertson was asked about the donations that his company made to the BC Liberals and wouldn't it appear as though there might be a conflict of interest in anything he might do as a Special Prosecutor, he over ruled them and said NO.

The RCMP are up for a renewal of their contract here in British Columbia, the Best Place on Earth. The word on the street was that the RCMP wanted to make the BC Liberals look bad..... LOL..... the BC Liberals have been doing a great job without the help of anyone....but going back to the donation angle.... if a $1,000 looks bad coming from one lawyer firm, how does it look to the jury where they have suddenly found out this:

"Are you aware CN Rail gave approximately $269,000 over the last nine years?" the lawyer asked.

"I wasn't aware until now," Brown replied. "I have nothing to do with fundraising."


Hmmmmmm

I wonder how much information the RCMP have gathered on the subject of donations made to the BC Liberals, which would probably contain a whole lot more than what we get to see in the PCS database at Election BC.

RossK said...

NVG--

Good points, and good questions.

As always.

Not to blow horns or anything, but I actually had the CN + DMcLean donation numbers up at my place the Friday before the trial started....For pointing this out I was, once again, called everything from a know nothing, to a cut-and-paster, to a troll by the cretins who love to obfuscate and fever swamp up the Tyee threads.....

And just so folks know, The Tyee is where the vast majority of my PAB Bot visits originate from.

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North Van's Grumps said...

Using your "CN + DMcLean donation" as a search basis I came up with this from Georgia Straight March 16, 2006

http://www.straight.com/article/b-c-liberals-fail-to-report-all-donations

B.C. Liberals fail to report all donations
By Russ Francis

"SNIP Kelly Reichert, the executive director of the B.C. Liberal party, emphasized that the $1,000 donation was made to Bhullar's campaign. "It was never a donation to the B.C. Liberal party," Reichert told the Straight. "In this case, it was a donation to the local campaign."

He added that the party did not know of the gift, because the donor was not issued a tax receipt: "We had no way of knowing whether they had actually received that donation."

The omission was "definitely" not intentional, according to Reichert, who noted that checking on all of the candidates' gifts is onerous. "We're dealing with literally thousands of donations and millions of dollars."

However, from now on, party officials will interview candidates' financial agents to make sure that all donations are included in the party's statements, Reichert said. "We have the checks and balances in place now to try and catch them." SNIP

In the same article there is a reference to something called Dogwood Initiative at www.dogwood initiative.org/ which has some interesting Posts if you use their search engine with the words "bc liberal donations" which resulted in this:

"After combing through public records, the advocacy group discovered many donations made to Liberal candidates, properly filed with Elections BC, were not added up and reported in the financial report the provincial party is required to file.

That means citizens would need to go through individual candidates reports to get the full picture of some donators to the B.C. Liberal party."

Source: http://dogwoodinitiative.org/media-centre/news-stories/leectionsBCpressed/?searchterm=bc%20liberal%20donations

kootcoot said...

"And just so folks know, The Tyee is where the vast majority of my PAB Bot visits originate from."

What a non-surprise. The Tyee threads are the recreation room of the PAB bots. David Beers treats them with a level of respect NO progressive individual can even hope to expect there. In a normal media world, it would be painfully obvious that the Tyee (the Mild One Online) is little more than a glorified fluff publication a notch above such TeeVee offerings as eTalk and Entertainment Tonight, that almost accidentally or against their will publish some good writers on occasion who address some serious issues.

Of course you have to get by the minefields created by Terry Glavin and his ilk, and the fashion and entertainment fluff. Then unless you are a LIEberal supporter, if you venture onto the comment boards (which default to NO COMMENTS that David and gang don't love) you must adhere to an inscrutable set of manners in order to not be censored or banned by Beers and crew.

Me, I go over and read Rafe, Will McMartin, Bill T and some others and don't waste my time even thinking of responding to the fake Skywalkers and such. Reading the work of the trolls can be amusing and good for a laugh or two, but not worth responding to!

RossK said...

Thanks NVG- The DI is most interesting tank, indeed...

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koot--

What really bugs me about the Tyee's threads is the fact that the authors of the pieces, especially the so-called blog pieces, so rarely wade into the threads - In my opinion that is how you get true 'moderation'. It also really facilitates informed discussion.

Regarding all the reactionaries that hang out there....I have no doubt that there is a degree of media-monitoring/deflecting going on there especially, as M. Brown put it, from folks doing it 'on their own time'. However, I also think it is an indication of how nervous they are about a media model like The Tyee that clearly could be an instrument of progressive uber alles-type mobilization.

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