Railing In The Bloggodome: Conversations With My Spiritual Papercarrier

MapleSyrupRevolutionRevisited
GazzCastNo.4Ville


The PacificGazette's Audio Sunday Story #4 is a conversation with the infamous Reverend Paperboy (aka, Kevin Wood).

In the late spring of 2010, the good Reverend called me up on the Skypemobile and asked me a bunch of questions about the BC Rail sale/not sale just as the real/notpre-trial was finally sputtering to life.

The Rev then made a podcast of the publication that he put up for awhile on his late, great 'Maple Syrup Revolution'.

So....

Given Bob Mackin's high level overview that ran on CKNW earlier this week, I figured fellow Railgate Cultists might find my talk with the Rev interesting because he does a good job of forcing me towards the heart of the matter which, in my opinion was that the fix appeared to be in right from (before) the (bagman-assisted) beginning. Furthermore, we also discuss the possibility that, if such a fix really was in from the beginning, the accused might have, at the very least, been egged on by their political masters to try and smooth the bidding process over.

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Now.

Before you have a listen, there a few things you might want to consider...

First - all that retroactive publication ban stuff was still in play at the time, so there were a lot of known knowns that could not be talked about that forced us to go all Rumsfeldian for a bit.

Second - The current (not) Premier had still not made her play, and thus she is not discussed (other than obliquely, again because of the publication ban).

Third - We discuss who was most active in trying to get to the bottom of things in the Lotuslandian Bloggodome at the time (and before anyone gets huffy, please remember that wayback in June of 2010 Alex Tsakumis not yet dumping RailGate documents, big-time, with any regularity). In my view, the work of the amateurs was important given how little was being done in the then CanWest-dominated Pro/CorpMedia.  I apologize to anyone we may have missed - The Rev and I got into that in more detail in a later conversation that I'll try and get from him to post up later. Even having said all that, I have no idea why I didn't mention Mr. T the other, Bill Tieleman, who did yeoman's work on Railgate from the very beginning and whose 'A to Z Guide', first published in late 2008, is still the best reference if you need to figure out and and/or all the major players involved. 

Fourth- The Rev and I spend quite a bit of time discussing the potential 'Quid Pro Quo' (eg. the Roberts Bank Spur Line) that everybody is now pretending never existed despite the fact that its sale was suddenly halted when the RCMP told the political masters that the bidding may have been 'tainted'. To the best of my knowledge, the evidence/findings that led to those warnings of 'taint' from the Horsemen to the Campbell/Clark government have never been make public, although transcripts of wiretaps that were published in the public prints later sure had a lot of folks wondering if there was another player, other than OmniTrax, in the running.

Fifth - Please note my extreme concern/paranoia that a deal might be made and the trial might suddenly come to an end before any and all political masters would have been forced to take the stand and answer questions, under oath, for all to see. Crazy talk, right?

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OK, that's enough with the keyboard babble.

With a million thanks to the Reverend Paperboy, here goes...

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You know, I've often wondered if there was some specific bit of evidence that the defense was threatening to bring up at the trial that did, suddenly, lead to the six million dollar deal that did shut the trial down for good later that year....Any guesses?

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