Another Mill Bites The Dust

Where'sDaveyNow?
SoftwoodTankingVille


As we mentioned last week, Canadian lumber mills are being shut down all over the place.

Here's the latest one:

VANCOUVER - International Forest Products has announced the indefinite closure of its Queensboro sawmill in New Westminster, offering voluntary severance to the mill's 110 staff and workers.


This one is particularly scary, because it is:

(O)ne of only two modern sawmills on the B.C. Coast designed to manufacture lumber from the coast's growing supply of second-growth timber.


And while some might want to make a case that there could be a bit of anti-union retribution in the mix here, the business 'analysts' are apparently playing this in the usual straight-up fashion, re: the reasons for the shutdown:

(T)he mill has never performed to expectations, said Kevin Mason, forest products analyst for Equity Research Associates.

Mason said the prolonged downturn in demand for construction lumber in the U.S., coupled with the rise of the Canadian dollar proved to be obstacles too great to overcome.

Now, one thing Mr. Mason apparently did not mention (or if he did, it was not reported upon by Gordon Hamilton who wrote the piece for the V.Sun) is the fact that that:

"(I)n a down market like right now (also) sees you paying a 15 per cent export tax."

Why?

Why do Canadian lumber producers have to pay an EXTRA 15% on top of everything else that is stacked against them when the dollar is high and prices are bad?

Because that is precisely what Mr. David Emerson's Softwood Lumber Anschluss says they have to do.

Nice deal that, eh?

For the Americans we mean.

All of which has us wondering if Mr. Emerson also crossed the border when he crossed the floor so that he could keep on 'getting things done' while working for the HarperCons.

Sheesh.

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How Many Polls Can One Government Run?

FocusGroupsGoneWild
ConVille

Apparently, if you are the government of Stephen Harper it's lots:

Daniel Paille notes that the Conservative government commissioned more than two polls per business day in the past year, a figure he calls "quite astounding.''

His report shows that the government spent $31.2 million on opinion research in the last year -- more than any previous year and almost twice the $18 million spent on average during the Liberal years.

All of which is bizarre, in the extreme.

But here's something even crazier.......Mr. Paille was actually commissioned by the HarperCons to 'investigate' the excessive polling of previous Liberal governments:

An independent investigator hired by the Harper government to look into past Liberal polling practices has wound up shining an unfavourable light on the Tories' penchant for polling.


Sheesh, no wonder Mr. Baird is currently Canada's (anti)Environment Minister.

____
Original Link Source: Dana over at The Galloping Beaver.


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Rail-Gate-A-Go-Go.....

TheReturnOfHSTFridays(early)
LedgeRaidVille

________________

Please Note: Updates and additional tidbits at bottom of post

_____________

....It Was A Nice Place. They Were Principled People, Generally*

"(T)here are a hundred or more people wandering around Washington today who have heard 'the real stuff', as they put it - and despite their professional caution when the obvious question arises, there is one reaction they all feel free to agree on: that nobody who felt shocked, depressed or angry after reading the edited (Nixon) White House Transcripts should ever be allowed to hear the actual (Watergate) tapes, except under heavy sedation or locked in the trunk of a car. Only a terminal cynic, they say, can listen for any length of time to the real stuff without feeling a compulsion to do something like drive down to the White House and throw a bag of live rats over the fence."

Fear and Loathing In Washington: The Boys In The Bag
Hunter S. Thompson, RS #164, July 4, 1974

So, in the case of British Columbia's Rail Gate, what might the 'real stuff' be?

Well, it looks like maybe, just maybe, we got a brief peek at it yesterday.

First, from Bill Tieleman's eyewitness, almost real time, report:

The defence also alleged that Chris Trumpy, then Deputy Minister of Revenue to then-Finance Minister Gary Collins, was in a conflict of interest situation because of his multiple roles in both the sale of BC Rail and as Chair of the BC Investment Management Corporation, which held over $360 million in CN Rail shares at the time.

And defence counsel criticized BC government attempts to block disclosure of 17 documents to the accused based on solicitor-client privilege by revealing they had previously received two of the documents through a Freedom Of Information request filed separately two years ago.

So from that, we take it that the defence is alleging that a then deputy minister named Chris Trumpy, who worked for now long-gone Finance Minister Gary Collins, was in conflict of interest during the negotiation of the BC Rail sale to the CN. Additionally, the defense is alleging that the government is actually trying to block the disclosure of documents for no good reason at all given that they continue to try and block the disclosure of stuff that has already been released under an FOI request.

So, what might those two released documents have been about (ie. are they part of the the real stuff)?

Well, for that we go to yesterdays' more cryptic, but still valuable, report from the Canadian Press:

"The Freedom-of-Information documents McCullough obtained include a Dec. 18, 2003, e-mail from Trumpy to Virk and others on the B.C. Rail evaluation team and a Dec. 19, 2003, e-mail to Trumpy from a lawyer titled "Advice to Trumpy re conflict."

So, two interesting things there.....

First, Mr. Trumpy appears to have been in contact with co-accused Mr. Robert Virk (who at the time worked for then Transportation Minister Judith Reid).

Second, the government and/or Mr. Trumpy may have been concerned about a conflict issue just nine days BEFORE the raid on the Legislature occurred.

So, knowing all that, what did then Finance Minister Collins have to say about Mr. Trumpy AFTER the raid?

For that we take you back to a media scrum with Mr. Collins in Sept 2004 that took place just after the RailGate search warrants were unsealed. We have this invaluable public record/transcript due to the yeoman's work of Sean Holman the proprietor of Public Eye:

Media Don't you think government has (a) responsibility to take a look into these things to make sure processes that are currently in place...?

Minister Collins But we did many things. The B.C. Rail file - we assigned one of our most senior and respected civil servants to lead that: Chris Trumpy. You all know who he is and his reputation is held in the highest regard by everyone. He was the one working on that.

Oh, and just so you know, Mr. Collins also reportedly said this during that infamous scrum:

Minister Collins Government is not doing an investigation. That's not our role. The investigators are doing their investigation. So we're not out there looking into any allegations that might be contained in there. There are people who do that. That's their job. They're doing that now. And when they're finished doing their job we'll all now about it.



Which is strange, to put it mildly, given how hard the government is now working to make sure we know nothing about anything.

Anyway, getting back to Mr. Trumpy......What might have been in that alleged Email that he sent to the co-accused, Mr. Virk, just BEFORE the Ledge Raids (ie. on Dec 18th, 2003) but AFTER the main-line deal with CN had already gone down (ie. on November 25th, 2003)?

Well, for that we return to Bill Tieleman's updated eywitness, almost real time, report:

(Robert Virk's defense counsel Kevin) McCullough later quoted from a December (18th) 2003 email from Chris Trumpy regarding the BC Rail Roberts Bank Sub Port privatization - a bid that was later cancelled after the RCMP advised the government it had learned the process had been compromised.

"I am stepping out of the evaluation process for the Sub Port until such time as I have received advice on a real or perceived conflict," McCullough said Trumpy wrote.


Now, this is important because the Roberts Bank privatization was, allegedly, a critical part of a purported 'quid pro quo' deal** that may have been the back-end plan for OmniTRAX, the railway company that lost the main-line deal to CN but stayed in all the way to provide competitive bid cover.

In other words OmniTRAX, presumably with Mr. Virk's and/or Mr. Basi's 'help', may have been angling for and/or perhaps may even have been 'promised' the Roberts Bank Sub Port deal in return.

Now, if Mess'rs Virk and Basi really and truly were just acting as off-the-rail, lonesome cowboys in their dealings with OmniTRAX, why was Mr. Trumpy, who was, according to then Minister Collins, the government's most trusted 'lead' man on the B.C. Rail file, communicating with Mr. Virk about this matter and suddenly getting all conflicty on a deal that apparently heavily involved OmniTRAX (ie. not CN, which is where there may have been a legitimate EARLIER conflict) just days before the Ledge Raid?

Then again, perhaps we shouldn't worry our silly heads about any of this.

After all, they all really do seem like such principled people, generally.

And if the British Columbia government that used to employ Mr. Collins would just let us see the rest of the 'real stuff' maybe we could make up our minds for sure.

OK?

______
*A quote from Robert C. Odle, office administrator for the Committee to Re-elect the President (a.k.a. 'CREEP') in the age of Nixon.
**The so-called 'Consolation Prize' that the Basi/Virk defenses have been fussing about recently.
Re: HST Fridays: This is an old bit we used to do 'round here in an effort to resurrect some of the long gone (ie. non-Vegas) writings of the guy who we consider to be the first real blogger (on an IBM Selectric, of course). Most of the posts are archived on the sidebar on the left, at the bottom, under the heading 'Res Ipsa.....No More' which is an old Thompson joke (sort of).
g west, in the comments, brings up an important point - it is entirely possible that Mr. Trumpy saw there was, indeed a conflict, and really was trying to do the right thing. I do not disagree that this is a distinct possibility and by framing all of this in the form of questions I hope that folks can see that I am not attempting to rule that possiblity out here. The point is - in the absence of the evidence that Mr. Collins alluded to, there is no way we can know, one way or the other.
For the record - this post has also been taken over to Mary's place so that the Anon-O-Mice can chew on it a little.
The 'real stuff' has been re-named the 'smoking gun' by the defense has gone post-VSun NaPo. Looks like, perhaps, the media times they just might-be-a-changin'.
Here's an interesting tidbit found while sniffing around the edge of the Google-cache: Just before the search warrants were unsealed, in the summer of 2004, Sean Michael Holman reported there were rumours that Mr. Trumpy might replace Mr. Kenneth Dobell, who would move on to become a content consultant extraordinare, as Premier Gordon Campbell's personal deputy minister. Obviously, in the end that did not happen, and instead the job went to Ms. Jessica McDonald late in the spring of 2005.

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Was Mr. Mulroney A Made Man......

WhatWillMilaThink?

IdolSchmidolVille

.....Right From The Get-Go?

KarlHeinz says yes.

And not only that, if the man who appears capable of generating at least 57 varieties on the truth is even half right this time, Mr. Mulroney's Irish eyes may have come pretty darned cheap:

Karlheinz Schreiber said Tuesday for the first time that foreign interests and money were involved in the campaign to unseat Tory leader Joe Clark at the 1983 Progressive Conservative convention.

Mr. Schreiber told the House of Commons ethics committee that the money he used to help arrange and pay for jets that transported anti-Clark delegates from Quebec to the convention in Winnipeg came from himself; the late Franz Josef Strauss, the chairman of Airbus Industrie; and probably from Mr. Strauss's political party, the Christian Social Union.

At that historic convention, Mr. Clark did not receive the support he was looking for in a leadership review. He then called a leadership race, which was won by Brian Mulroney.

“The money came from myself, and from the Strauss family, and probably from the [Christian] Social Union,” said Mr. Schreiber, adding the amount he contributed was about $25,000.

Imagine that.

_____
For the record, the not-so-Heinz 57-varietied, Mr. Jeffrey Simpson, was making a bit of a fuss about this in his Op-Ed page column a couple of weeks ago which is, unfortunately, behind that gosh-darned subscription wailing wall.


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Mr. Black Goes To Jail

BooRadlerPrevails
ConsForeverVille

For six-and-a-half years.

So, what do the nattering neighbobs of negativism, otherwise known as the NaPo, have to say?

Why, what else would you expect them to say, other than 'It could have been worse'......

To which we can only respond - sure thing.

After all, just imagine if, say, all those retirees that had their pension monies scooped after they spent their entire lives working for Dominion Stores, had been given their day in court too?

Or, put another way, 'Justice, sometimes it really is not just for the monied, the privileged and the powerful*.


OK?



_____
*Just don't say that to Hattie Carroll.
Oh ya, and while they may have little or no legal recourse, folks like this, also have interesting things to say.

.

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You've Already Heard.....

MediaTractorTireTraction?
RailGateRisingVille


Well, well, well, whaddy'a know.

A RailGate piece in the, wait for it......

Vancouver Province!

And the reporter, Keith Fraser gets right to the crux of the matter:

Former finance minister Gary Collins approved a "consolation" prize to be offered to the Denver-based railway company linked to the bribery case against three government aides, their trial heard yesterday.

Michael Bolton, who represents accused David Basi, told the court that it's a "big issue" as to whether OmniTRAX was induced to stay in the bidding process for the sale of B.C. Rail by a consolation that further business with the B.C. government was in the offing.

"You've already heard there are numerous telephone calls on Nov. 17, 2003, in which Mr. Basi conferred with Mr. [Bobby] Virk and others that minister Collins has approved the notion that there will be some form of a consolation in the way of future business with B.C. for OmniTRAX," Bolton told B.C. Supreme Court Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett.

"That, of course, is a very critical part of Mr. Basi's defence. Those calls were critical. But it will be even more critical to the defence to be able to demonstrate with reference to some of these documents, that it's not just Mr. Basi talking, that there was some awareness at a high level of some acknowledgement of this consolation."


Imagine that.



______
For a more detailed discussion of the alleged 'consolation' prize, which we have dubbed the 'quid pro quo', please see here and here.
Tip of the golden railspike, once again, to Mary for posting up Mr. Fraser's story.
Now, here's hopin' we see something in the 'lectronic media sometime soon.

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RailGate Revisited - The Crux Of The Matter

TheWheelsOfJustice
SlowlyGrindingVille


No byline on this CP story, but we would be willing to take very short odds that it is from our old favorite, Camille Bains.

Regardless, the piece gets right to the crux of the matter.

First, the defense has come out swinging by naming the name of the former long-gone British Columbia cabinet minister who, after the Ledge Raids, bailed-out faster than DB Cooper jumped out the belly of that 727 back in 1971:

VANCOUVER - Lawyers for two former government aides want access to documents police seized from their clients' legislature offices, saying important information involving former finance minister Gary Collins's involvement in the sale of B.C. Rail is needed to mount a defence.

Michael Bolton, who represents Dave Basi, told B.C. Supreme Court on Monday that crucial information about Collins approving a consolation prize for American company OmniTRAX to stay in the bidding process is relevant to the case.

Police raided Basi's and Virk's offices on Dec. 28, 2003, about a month after the provincial government completed the $1-billion privatization sale of Crown-owned B.C. Rail, which was bought by CN Rail.

Basi was then an aide to Collins and his co-accused, Bobby Virk, worked for then-transportation minister Judith Reid.

Bolton said the boxes of documents police carted away contain information pertaining to numerous phone calls on Nov. 17, 2003, in which Basi confirmed to Virk that Collins had dangled future opportunities for OmniTRAX to do business with the B.C. government if the company stayed in the bidding process.

"It's not just Mr. Basi talking but there was a high level of awareness and acknowledgment of this consolation prize issue," Bolton said.

Now, why is this 'consolation prize' business so important?

Because that would be the potential 'quid pro quo' in which Omni Trax may have been offered the spoils (ie. the Roberts Bank Spur Line ) in return for giving faux-competitive cover to the main line deal involving CN after CP dropped out screaming (that the fix was in).

This 'quid pro quo' business is something that we RailGate obsessives, and even Vaughn Palmer, have fussed about before.

And if it's for real it demonstrates the true rot of the situation and it would strongly suggest that at least two of the accused, Mr. David Basi and Mr. Robert Virk, may not have been acting alone and in fact may have, as Mr. Palmer has suggested, been acting to protect (B.C.) Liberal interests.

And what does the government (ie. the B.C. Liberals) for whom the long-gone Minister once worked have to say about all of this?

Well, of course, they say that all of this stuff must be kept under wraps, well, just because:

George Copley, a lawyer for the executive branch of the government, said the documents seized by police are protected by solicitor-client privilege and can't be released to defence lawyers.

He said they include advice from lawyers and bankers on the sale of B.C. Rail and are therefore confidential.

And as for the long-gone Minister himself?

Well, he's sticking with his Pavel Bure defense:

(former Minister Gary) Collins has denied any wrongdoing in the railway deal.

To which we can only answer that it will be we, the people of British Columbia, who will be the judge of that AFTER we see all the evidence, evidence that we believe belongs to us, not Mr. George Copley and/or his paymasters.

And why do we believe that the evidence belongs to us?

Because they were our, and not Mr. George Copleys' and/or his paymasters', assets that were sold to CN in the first place.

In other words, so-called confidential 'advice from lawyers and bankers' means nothing to us, because we never, ever gave the B.C. Liberal government our consent to conduct business such as this, business that is vital to the public's interest, under a cloak of double-secret-probation, cone-of-silence, super-dooper-ultra secrecy.


OK?


_______
Oh, and by the way, how the heckfire does advice from 'bankers' fit under the umbrella of 'solicitor-client privilege' anyway?
All in all, it's an excellent piece from the CP. It has all the important stuff in it that was missing from the piece we fussed about last Friday.
Oh, and just a reminder for those of you who are still wondering why there has been so little local coverage of this story recently, apparently, if you were to believe very fine media folk like Mr. Keith Baldrey, it is all because the long-goners are so long-gone that nobody cares. Sheesh.
And once again, our thanks goes out to B.C. Mary for all the work she's done keeping this thing alive and archiving the stories like Mr. Palmer's cited above so that we, the people (and, yes, the obsessives), can bring them back into the light of day once more.
Bill Tieleman, who for the first time in a long time as not in court today following RailGate, weighs in and points ount the following: "Collins denies any wrongdoing in the BC Rail deal but court has heard he was the subject of police surveillance when he met with officials from U.S. bidder OmniTRAX at Villa del Lupo restaurant in Vancouver in November 2003." Kinda/sorta pokes, at the very least, teeny, tiny hole in the P. Bure "I didn't do anything wrong" defense don't you think?


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Bali, H'ai!

GettingToKnowSteve
GettingToKnowAllAboutSteveVille


Looks like a number of Earthlings are becoming increasingly perplexed by the fact that Stephen Harper appears to be doing his very best to help us continue to destroy the Earth:

GEOFFREY YORK
Globe and Mail Update
December 10, 2007 at 10:50 AM EST

NUSA DUA, Indonesia — Canada is under mounting attack at the Bali climate-change conference, putting it on the defensive as the conference begins its final week of negotiations.

Yvo de Boer, head of the United Nations climate-change agency, said Canada seems to be hypocritical in what it demands from other countries.

"I personally find it interesting to hear Canada just a little while ago indicating it would not meet its commitments under the Kyoto protocol and now calling on developing countries to take binding reduction targets," he told a press conference today at the Bali climate-change conference.

"So I wonder how that's going to be received," he added.

And it's not just the Pols and Diplomatic earthlings that are scratching their heads.

The scientists of the Terra are perplexed as well:

The latest criticism of Canada's position is coming from respected scientists and from fellow negotiators at the conference.

Rajendra Pachauri, head of the climate science panel that was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize today, has blasted the Harper government for its climate stance.

"This particular government has been a government of skeptics," said Mr. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore.

"They do not want to do anything on climate change," he added in a published interview in New Delhi.

Now, of course, given the title of this post, some may be wondering if we were to going to drop Mr. Stephen Harper into the Ray Walston role from the movie musical 'South Pacific' which, of course, included the song Bali H'ai.

But we thought better of it when we recalled that Mr. Walston also played an alien in the old TeeVee sitcom 'My Favorite Martian'.

Which, of course, would explain a lot.

The alien part we mean.

OK?

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Now That The Pickton Verdict Is In......

IgnoreThePostalCode
EverySinglePersonCountsVille

.....Let's Make Sure That Nothing Like This Ever Happens Again

Frankly, I am not overly concerned with the 'degree' .........

NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. - Robert Pickton officially joined the ranks of Canada's most notorious serial killers Sunday after being found guilty of six counts of second-degree murder.

And to be honest, at this very moment I am even less concerned about potential future trials for this particular Mr. Pickton......

The Crown is already laying the groundwork to try Pickton on a further 20 charges, but they acknowledge many, many obstacles remain before evidence is called in the case.

Now, please do not misunderstand me.

Because I fully realize how important this trial and everything associated with it has been for the friends and families of the victims...

"Today's verdicts are for the families and friends of these six women. The road to justice has been long and difficult and they have demonstrated remarkable patience and restraint," Crown spokesman Stan Lowe said following the verdict Sunday.

There were gasps, then muffled cheers in the courtroom from family members of the six women as the jury announced their guilty verdicts Sunday.

Some fled the courthouse in tears, running into the courtyard to huddle near a Christmas tree hung with lace angels representing their loved ones.

But here's the thing.

I also remember when all of this terrible, terrible stuff was happening, much of it right here on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

And I also remember how hard the local 'authorities' worked to try and convince everyone involved, including many of the women who themselves were at risk, that it wasn't happening.

Heckfire, I even remember when a fellow who worked for the local authorities developed a sophisticated geographic profiling system which very strongly suggested that it WAS happening:

....Kim Rossmo, a geographic profiler at the time who specialized in serial crime, had wanted the police department to issue a public warning in 1998 that a serial killer was possibly preying on women in the Downtown Eastside.

But other officers strongly objected to Rossmo's suggestion, so the department instead issued a news release saying police did not believe a serial killer was behind the disappearance of so many missing women.

And I also remember when those same local 'authorities' essentially ran Mr. Rossmo out of town because he kept on saying that it WAS happening in an effort to stop it.

In the Downtown Eastside, it was long rumoured a serial killer was taking women. But, in 1998, when Rossmo tried to send out a news release about that possibility, his superiors shut him down. He was soon demoted, his unit dismantled. He left the force and lost a wrongful-dismissal suit against it.

Pickton, arrested in February 2002, was long known to police and was a credible suspect early on, said Rossmo.

Please note the timeline, because a lot of terrible things happened between 1998 and 2002, including, it would appear, the deaths of many of the six women that Mr. Pickton was convicted of killing today:

Name: Andrea Joesbury
Born: Nov. 6, 1978 in Victoria
Children: Daughter
Police say last seen: June, 2001
Quote: "They (the missing women) didn't wake one day and be like, 'Well, you know what, I'm going to be a prostitute. Then I'm going to have HIV and then I'm going to get murdered.' " - Heather Joesbury, Andrea's sister, on frustration that police didn't move more quickly to investigate the disappearance of women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Name: Georgina Faith Papin
Born: March 11, 1964
Children: Seven, including one set of twins
Police say last seen: March, 1999
Quote: "Everywhere we went, people always went 'Oh hi Georgina.' Everybody knew her. I was really proud that she was my mom." - Kristina Bateman, Papin's daughter.

Name: Marnie Lee Anne Frey
Born: Aug. 30, 1973, Campbell River, B.C.
Children: Daughter Brittney, born 1992.
Police say last seen: August 1997
Quote: "She played like a boy. She loved outside. She didn't care if it rained, snowed or was hailing. She didn't care. She'd be the only kid in the neighbourhood." - stepmother Lynn Frey about Marnie as a child.

Name: Sereena Abostway
Born: Aug. 20, 1971. Born with fetal alcohol syndrome.
Occupation: Prostitute, community activist
Police say last seen: Aug. 2001
Quote: "You were all part of God's plan. He probably took most of you home. But he left us with a very empty spot." - from a poem written by Abotsway about her friends that had disappeared from the Downtown Eastside.

Name: Mona Lee Wilson.
Born: Jan. 13, 1975
Children: Son
Police say last seen: Nov. 2001
Quote: "I remember her smile. I remember what a great girl she was. She would have been a great wife and a great mother. She had true love in her heart." - Greg Garley, Wilson's foster brother for six years.

Name: Brenda Wolfe
Born: Oct. 20, 1968, likely in the Lethbridge, Alta., area.
Children: Known to have had a son.
Police say last seen: February, 1999.
Occupation: Street enforcer in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, waitress, bouncer.

So what does Kim Rossmo, who went first to Washington D.C. after he left Vancouver and has since become a professor in Texas, have to say about it all now?

Well, he's still not pulling any punches, as told to us NOT by local media outlets like CITY-TV, BCTV or even the CBC, but instead by the BBC:

"These women have been victimised multiple times," former Vancouver police official Kim Rossmo - the first to suspect a serial killer was at work - told the BBC News website.

"By Pickton, by the system and the police because of the lack of response and, in some ways, they are being victimised in some interaction between the families and the media," he added.

Many were drug addicts, working in the sex trade to fund their habits - part of a transient and disenfranchised community.

According to Mr Rossmo, now a criminology professor at Texas university, the low social status of these women, many of whom were of aboriginal origin, contributed to the police's lack of concern.

"If these women had been from the affluent Westside of Vancouver, you can count on the fact that it would have been a very different response," he said.

In other words, what we really do NOT need to see, read and hear about, right here and right now, on CITY-TV, BCTV and/or even the CBC, are more, and even more lurid, details of the awful, heinous and truly evil acts of debauched cretins.

Because we already know enough about all that.

Instead, what we really DO NEED to see, read and hear about, right hear and right now, are stories about the specific processes and procedures that the local 'authorities' have put in place to make sure that nothing like this ever, ever, ever happens again.

Ever.

No matter who the potential victims may, or may not, be.

OK?


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Pacific Spirit Park Rally - Today!

Park or Condos.

Simple as that.

OK?

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Is This The Watergate Of Waterboarding?

ANationOfYesMen
NotLawsVille

If you are looking for a detailed primer on The Cheneyites' Torture Tape Travesty, you cannot do better than Marcy Wheeler's timeline.

It's a list that is so long, so annotated, and so filled-to-bursting with what appear to be the extremely culpable actions of multiple yes men that not even the ghost of Rosemary Woods could make it disappear.

But that's not really the point.

Because, as Jane Hamsher quotes Marty Lederman saying, 'Sometimes the Crime is Worse than the Cover-Up'


OK?

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If He Had A Million Dollars......

......Would He Buy Her A Green Dress?*

Carole&LarrySittin'InATree
Smilin'Sammy'sExileOnMainStreetVille

Looks like Senator Larry Campbell has big money on his mind.

At least as far as Carole Taylor is concerned.

Frances Bula has the story:

Senator Larry Campbell says he could raise a million dollars "now" for Carole Taylor if she ran for mayor of Vancouver.

And the outspoken former Vancouver mayor says Taylor could easily do in Vancouver what Dianne Watts did in the last election in Surrey: run as an independent mayoral candidate, capture a broad swathe of middle-of-the-road voters disenchanted with the old centre-right party and not willing to go to the left, and watch councillors align themselves with her once they realize she is what the public wants.

"She's going to be independent if she goes," said Campbell, who first approached Taylor, currently the provincial finance minister, in July about the possibility......


Oh Boy!

____
*But not a real green dress, because that would be really, really cruel.

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What The Canadian Press Didn't Say About RailGate

CrushedByThePointyEndOfTheInvertedPyramidLead
ProJournoVille

__________________

Update: Paul Willcocks has an excellent piece in which little, lead or otherwise, is buried, in Friday's Times Colonist.

____________________

Look.

I don't want to slag the work of Camille Bains, who is a very good reporter for the Canadian Press.

And I realize that the CP has an extremely tight, lead-driven format for their wire stories.

Having said all that, I am starting to become quite concerned that the really important stuff is being wiped from our collective memory as the sporadically published RailGate stories get more and more formulaic.

What the heckfire am I talking about?

Well, as time drags on without an actual trial for the media to chew on, the vast majority of the ProJourno print stories* are boiling down to the following formula:

First - lead with the factual description of yet another bizarre procedural gambit in the courtroom.

Second - get a quote from a 'talking head'/'expert' about the legal implications of said bizarrity.

Third - finish up with a barebones explanation about what RailGate actually is.


By way of illustration, here is how Ms. Bains' RailGate story on yesterday's super-secret, cone-of-silence Supreme Court hearing fits the formula:

First the Lead On The Bizarrity.....
A B.C. Supreme Court judge has ruled reporters and the public will be excluded from the courtroom during testimony from a police officer connected to the B.C. legislature raid case.

The officer is expected to testify that documents turned over to defence lawyers for former government officials facing several charges were censored to protect the identity of an informant.

Justice Elizabeth Bennett ruled Thursday that defence lawyers for Dave Basi, Bobby Virk and Aneal Basi could remain in the courtroom if they promised to keep the information confidential.

But Bennett allowed the Crown to file a federal statutory certificate indicating it was necessary to conduct the hearing in secret, without defence lawyers.

Crown lawyer Janet Winteringham orally filed the certificate, saying defence lawyers must be excluded to protect the confidential informant's identity.

On Thursday afternoon, Bennett began hearing arguments from defence lawyers in a separate in-camera session to determine if they should be entitled to participate in a hearing to determine the legal validity of the certificate.

That hearing was also closed to the media.

Solid stuff there - factual, but detailed and to the point (although, for those who haven't been following the case closely, they would have missed the fact that the 'Crown lawyer' Janet Winteringham is actually the 'junior' special prosecutor, which suggests that, once again, the big kahuna, Bill Beradino wasn't present when the going got tough).


Second, the implications of the Bizarrity:
"There's a secret hearing to determine whether the accused's counsel can attend another secret hearing," said Roger McConchie, a lawyer representing The Canadian Press and other media.

McConchie said the complex case that has already included several legal battles between Crown and defence lawyers is like a maze or "a nested doll situation."

"How far down is this series of nested in-camera dolls going to go?" McConchie said outside court. "This is the first time I've seen the nested doll syndrome go into operation."

He said the case is so mired in legal wrangling that a trial could be derailed.

If that happens, the public may never learn what led to the legislature raid on Dec. 28, 2003, when police carted away boxes of evidence from Basi and Virk's offices.

A recent Supreme Court of Canada decision gives judges the power to order closed hearings to avoid identifying confidential police informants.

(Justice) Bennett is presiding over pre-trial hearings to discuss evidence for a corruption trial slated to begin next March involving the three former B.C. government officials.

This, too, is fair enough - although it's interesting to note that Mr. McConchie is actually working for the CP (and other ProMedia outlets) on this matter. Thus, Ms. Bains didn't have to go very far to get his opinion.

Third - The Bare Bones Wrap-Up:
Virk and Dave Basi are former ministerial aides charged with fraud and breach of trust connected to the $1-billion privatization of B.C. Rail in November 2003, which was followed a month later by a police raid on their legislature offices.

Aneal Basi, Dave Basi's cousin, was a government communications officer and is charged with money laundering in connection with the case.

The Crown alleges that between May 2002 and December 2003 Basi and Virk received benefits from lobbyists at a firm called Pilothouse Public Affairs Group in exchange for providing them with confidential government documents regarding the sale of B.C. Rail.

Pilothouse was representing OmniTRAX, an American company that was among the bidders for B.C. Rail.

The winning bidder was Canadian National Railway.

Now, one could fuss about things like the lack of inclusion of 'Project Every Which Way' (ie. the drug investigation that led to the defendents initially becoming persons of interest), the interminable delays to the start of the trial (and all the obfuscation that has gone regarding what is, and what is not, 'evidence') and/or the connections to the provincial or federal Liberals (ie. the connections of the defendents, the connections of the lobbshop, the pol work of one of the principals of the lobbshop, and/or meetings of at least one cabinet minister with the rail company involved before the deal was done), but that might be seen as quibbling, given the format contraints.

So, what's the problem then, you may be asking yourself?

Well, it's those last two sentences, which are so cryptic that they are, in my opinion, actually misleading with respect to what really happened.

Here they are again (stuff in brackets mine):

Pilothouse (the lobbshop) was representing OmniTRAX, an American company that was among the bidders for B.C. Rail.

The winning bidder was Canadian National Railway.

Now, let's pretend you are a member of the public and that you do your best to keep up with current events but, because this is the real world, you are not obsessed with RailGate. And let's say you opened your paper this morning and read those last two sentences at the end of a wire story buried in your Globe and/or your Sun on pg S3/A11.

With a set-up like that, isn't it pretty darned likely that you might conclude that this entire thing is nothing more than a tempest in a teapot given that those last two sentences imply that the bribery did not work and that the big, bad Americans did not get their hands on our rail lines (ie. the company with the 'Canadian' moniker, CN, won the bid anyway).

So, what's missing?

What is that thing that was left unsaid at the end of Ms Bains' story that might lead a reasonably well-informed member of the public to come to very different conclusion?

Well, it is a thing called a 'Quid Pro Quo'.

Which is otherwise known as a purported before-the-sale deal, perhaps brokered by the accused and/or the lobbshop in question, between the Provincial Government and OmniTrax (who stayed in the bidding to give 'competition cover' after the other 'Canadian' railway, the CPR, dropped-out early screaming that the fix was in) for the left-overs (ie. the Roberts Bank spur-line).

Now, it's important to realize that this quid-pro-quo thing is not just a figment of the fevered imaginations of we, the non-real-world, RailGate obsessives.

Unless, of course, you also think that Vaughn Palmer is also obsessive.

Regardless, if the average member of the public knew that there is a very real possibility that bribery-fueled secret deals were used to grease the wheels of a rigged sale of public assets to a hand-picked private sector company** in perpetuity (and/or 990 years, which ever comes first), don't you think that he or she would feel very differently about this thing?

I do.

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*I'd be happy to comment on the 'lectronic media coverage of RailGate, but that would be impossible because there isn't any.
**Which also turns out to be a formerly public, now private, company that has donated about $150,000 to the BC Liberal Party since the current premier, Mr. Gordon Campbell, became its leader. Interestintly, it is also a company that, along with its chairman, Mr. David McLean, just keeps on giving.
To give Ms. Bains her due (and I really do understand the pressures of her format, and also understand that it may have been an editor who slapped those last two sentences, sans explanation, on the point of her inverted pyramid), BC Mary is reporting that she, Ms. Bains, was one of only two, count 'em two!, members of the media who were in the Studio 54 courtroom yesterday. The other one, according to Mary was our own ol' reliable (and we mean that in a good way), Bill Tieleman.

.

RailGate - Defense Back In......

....Public and The Press Still Out.

TrialOfTheCentury
TapestryOfJusticeVille

In case you missed it, everybody except the representatives of the crown were thrown out of Studio 54 on Robson (ie. BC Supreme Court LedgeRaid hearing location) earlier this week.

Something to do with secret witnesses and/or police informers wanting to remain double-super-ultra-secret.

But now, apparently, defence counsel have been let back into the Disco, but only if they stand directly under the cone of silence.

As for the Public and the Press?

Well, they're still standing out on the street trying to convince the bouncers to let them back in.

Bill Tieleman has the story; Mary, GWest, gary e. and the Anon-O-Mice have the discussion.


OK?

____
Mistah T. also had an inverse trapezoid lead that quoted big Media lawyer Roger McConchie as saying all this double-secret probation/cone-of-silence stuff could delay the actual start of the trial yet again (ie. push it back from it's now scheduled Mar 2008 date, which would move it closer and closer and closer to the next provincial election).
One last interesting/troubling tidbit - once again, when the going got tough the big boss special prosecutor was nowhere to be found. Instead, his junior was forced to throw another Hail-Mary (ie. Section 37 application) in an attempt to re-exclude the defense. The Judge was not amused, especially when the Junior tried to run out the clock (again).


.

First There Was 'Winter' Crow....

MakeThe$*&%@#!Pay
SuckerPunchVille


Then there was 'Summer' Crow.......

And now, it looks like there just might/maybe/allegedly be a 'Black' Crow.......

Court documents obtained by CBC News contend that Todd Bertuzzi's infamous sucker-punch of Steve Moore came after former Vancouver Canucks head coach Marc Crawford pointed at a board and said "he must pay the price."

Only time, screeching ravens and/or high-priced lawyers will tell, I reckon.

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