Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Now… Let Us All Savage Mike Duffy By Robin Mathews Dec. 22, 2015


A long, long road of sleaze, near criminal, and criminal attacks on Canadian democracy … and much more of ugly behaviour … marked the Stephen Harper Conservative years from 2006 to 2015. Almost numberless were the violations of the trust that Canadians place in their national government.

A part of the aftermath of that orgy of sleaze is the attempt by what I call the neo-fascist Big Media, now, to paper over – even to praise – the behaviour of those years. The (literal) “papering over” of the Harper years is in full swing by those major newspapers that supported him in the 2015 election even despite Conservative last-campaign-days devoted to strident racism and fear-mongering. During the long years up to that time, sleaze was everywhere a person looked ….

Even in the last days of Conservative power, dirty tricks were the name of the game.

Elizabeth Thompson and then Michael Harris (ipolitics) remind us that before the 2015 Election was even called, the PMO and Stephen Harper re-appointed top civil servant favourites when they weren’t anywhere near normal re-appointment date. To move them out will cost taxpayers millions of dollars if those faux-appointees don’t agree to slip away quietly. Every fake re-appointment bears Stephen Harper’s mark. As does the $90,000.00 Nigel Wright handed to Mike Duffy as a personal cheque.

Duffy testified in trial that Harper told him he had to pay back money even though he didn’t really owe it!

All of that is to say again that the Mike Duffy trial looks like a sham from start to finish. For instance -

Why was Duffy alone charged? With a ridiculous 31 charges? And an apparently fake bribery charge for headline purposes? Where are the other “bad” senators?

How is it - THE QUESTION again – that Nigel Wright could hand Mike Duffy a bribery cheque of $90,000.00 which facilitated Duffy being charged with receiving that cheque as a bribe – but Wright is not charged with paying a bribe for writing it and handing it to Duffy?

How is it that on October 20, 2015, finding that Stephen Harper was merely an MP, Defence lawyer Donald Bayne didn’t immediately apply to have citizen Harper testify at the Mike Duffy trial?

And how did the bribery charge continue when prosecution lawyer Joseph Neuberger told the CBC ”a conviction on the bribery charge may be unlikely”. (Advocate Daily.com) And how could Defence lawyer Donald Bayne let Nigel Wright slip away without pushing him very hard on the cheque he paid Mike Duffy as a bribe – pushing until it was all over the front pages of Canadian newspapers and forced into editorials questioning the credibility of the trial?

Something stinks.

If the bribery charge against Mike Duffy was rigged by RCMP and Prosecution at the instancing of the Harper/PMO gaggle, then all in the know at the trial would want to soft-peddle the issue … hoping it would somehow go away almost unseen.

Who has accepted all the absurdity of what seems to be a staged trial? The RCMP investigators. RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson. The judge and the Crown Prosecutor on the case. The Defence lawyer Donald Bayne. Mike Duffy himself… as well as all, all, all the conventional press and media. Something stinks.

The “something” that stinks might just be said to concentrate itself in the Christie Blatchford writing on the Duffy case. Apparently looking for an active ‘cleaning agent’ in the careful attempts to erase the record of Conservative crime from 2006 to 2015, Ms. Blatchford and her employers appear to have found what she needs. She hasn’t merely filled columns of print, but pages of it (obviously called for by Postmedia power brokers who then spread her “dispatches” across Canada).

What better way to take attention away from the Conservative Party led by Stephen Harper which actively crippled and exploited the Canadian Senate for dirty use than by concentrating on Mike Duffy (probably among the lowest ten per cent of Conservative bad actors)? MAKE HIM the big story of Conservative wrong-doing from 2006 to 2015.

What does this apparent across-the-board chicanery mean – with all the apparent across-the-board savaging of Mike Duffy? It constitutes such a stupendously large set of apparent acts of cooperation to shield the Conservative wrecking action in the Senate, in the PMO, in the House of Commons, in the Conservative Party of Canada that one can scarcely believe what is there in front of us all….

Readers who say “none of what has been written in this column so far is anything but sheer nonsense” might seem very clear-headed. Except … except there is just too much evidence of trial chicanery to say outright that it isn’t there.

Can we predict the outcome of the Mike Duffy trial? Mr. Justice Charles Vaillancourt might send Mike Duffy to jail for several years for – as a public servant (a senator) accepting a bribe in order to (a) do a favour to Stephen Harper and his cabinet, and (b) to seek to wipe out or disguise his own petty wrong-doing. Then Mr. Justice Vaillancourt could pile on censure (and perhaps more jail time) for all the other violations of trust that Mike Duffy (along with many, many other senators) is alleged to have engaged in over expense account infractions … and other misdeeds.

The betting – from the information in this column – all goes the other way.

Mr. Justice Vaillancourt will decide that the acceptance of a bribe cannot be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. (Mike Duffy will sigh in relief, and Nigel Wright will be able to come out of hiding overseas and return to Canada.)

The judge will decide that trust practice and lax expense spending rules make it impossible to attach judicial blame to what Mike Duffy did in expenditure. (Duffy will sigh with relief, as will the Honourable Pamela Wallin and many, many other senators.)

The judge will decide that since Stephen Harper appointed Mike Duffy as senator for Prince Edward Island, Duffy’s claims for residence expenses in Ottawa are not clear enough as violations for a judge to rule upon….

Mr. Justice Charles Vaillancourt may find a wrong-doing or two (unique to Duffy) – such as perhaps the Ottawa living expenses - that he can censure and punish with a suspended sentence, house-arrest, and time spent doing constructive community work (the judge showing grand human generosity - in the light of Mr. Duffy’s ill-health).

And so millions and millions of taxpayers’ dollars have been spent in Harper and PMO-directed Senate chicanery, in (what became faux) RCMP investigation and reporting, in Prosecution Office time and expertise shaping a dubious case, in Nigel Wright’s improper activity, and in all the other many, many activities related to other Conservative wrong-doings carefully hidden from Canadians. And now we can look forward to the outcome - the trial outcome (costing a huge amount) doing nothing but covering-up the truth, with Mike Duffy fronting for the innumerable crimes that will never be faced.

That is why the almost unanimous cry has gone up – Far Right Media inspired and Conservative Party approved. It’s a huge smokescreen that’s working wonderfully well:

“Now’s the time… Now, Now. NOW… Let us all savage Mike Duffy!”


Contact: Robin Mathews

Thursday, December 17, 2015

Crossword Puzzle Creator BC Speaker Linda Reid's 2015

UPDATE: December 19, 2015 Linda Reid's  Crib sheet
Across
1. Type of wood in the Reading Room. _________________________

3. Found on a ship and in the Library dome. ____________________

4. A library service named after a fruit.  _____________________

6. Contains titles, authors and subjects.  _____________________

8. Has 140 characters.   ____________________

10. Italian marble on the Rotunda columns.  _____________________

11. Creature who lives in the dome.  ____________________

12. Printed media located in the Reading Room.  __________________

13. First female speaker.  ____________________

Down
1. First BC premier.  ____________________


2. Contains as many pages as a printed book.   ____________________


5. These are set up independent from government and can be either special or royal.   ______________

7. A structured set of data.  ____________________

9. Where the first Legislative Library was housed  _______________









Saturday, December 12, 2015

Where Power Really Lies In Climate Change By Robin Mathews Dec. 12th 2015

As we watch , huge criminal corporations, governments, and their lemming environmentalists race to the cliff edge in Paris, refusing to grapple with the reason they are racing….  They refuse – in any meaningful way – to challenge The One Per Cent head on, which is where effective solutions to climate change begin.

While a flood of information pours out of Paris about poor nations and rich nations and island nations drowning … and the undeniable fact of Global Warming, The One Per Cent grows richer and takes more of planetary wealth as a function of misusing populations, wasting raw materials, selfishly exploiting technology, destroying the biosphere and buying governments like picking up so many stock options.

The One Per Cent make up the people behind “Free Trade Treaties” that, in fact, remove national sovereignty, erase conditions for middle nation independence and climate viability, and lash huge populations – like galley slaves – to the profit machines of imperial nations owned by The One Per Cent and working (‘as if ‘democratic and/or “fair” societies) to funnel more and more of the world’s wealth into the pockets of a very few.

Behind all the (sometimes really intense and well-meant) negotiations and trade-offs in Paris operates the mafiosa hand of The One Per Cent.  And until it is addressed as what it is with a demand that (to use the language of Pope Francis) “the downtrodden  change the world economic order” the game of make-believe will go on.

One of the few truth-tellers, Pope Francis has spoken of “savage capitalism” and called money and modern capitalism “dung of the devil”.  He doesn’t pretend the present world order is, somehow, unrelated to the descent of huge populations into poverty and the globe moving ever-closer to climate Break Down.

In all the flood of information from Paris, The One Per Cent is never named as the Central Issue to be dealt with – for that would mean, as the Pope suggests, a reconstruction of power relations in the world.  And so, sad as it is to say, the nice, caring people in Paris (from Canada, too) are living in a land of make-believe. They refuse to ‘grasp the nettle’, to name the Elephant in the Room, to set out positions that demand the redistribution of wealth (and power).

They refuse to speak of a global reorganization of work and of production for use rather than for profit in a process that completely removes the employment of destructive climate pollutants.  By ignoring the broad papal hints, the Paris negotiators bring two inevitable things closer: (1) crisis in climate conditions and (2) the absolute certainty of major, wide-spread wars of “revolutionary” and “repressive” kinds: of social chaos amidst a crumbling and humanly destructive ecosystem.

 
The corrective doesn’t need (or want) name.  Because the general road is clear.  The Ninety-Nine Per Cent can quite easily eliminate The One Per Cent in its character as a grossly wealthy force putting human existence at risk.  Liberated from The One Per Cent burden, many of its members might become useful agents in constructing a new society.  The language has to be about human survival and the absolutely necessary reconstructions of human work, human creativity, human administrative talent, the meaning of wealth, and the human power necessary to effect what is, in fact, revolutionary change in the modes of administering publicly responsible power in the world.

What They Don’t Talk About In Paris

How much, just for instance, has the horrendous, unnecessary, lunatic-driven war in the Middle East – since 1980, contributed to climate change?      Thousands of polluting aircraft, millions of polluting weapons and explosives, numberless polluting fires raging without letup, millions of polluting corpses lying in the desert sun.  The U.S.- backed Iraq invasion of Iran is said – alone – to have cost a million lives.  And then there was the U.S.-instigated demolition of Iraq… and then Libya … and now Syria…. (“Bomb them some more”, says the morally challenged British prime minister, David Cameron, while his representatives in Paris negotiate to prevent climate change.)

Do the Paris environmental experts have a way of computing the number of human murders and increases of warfare created climate pollution in direct relation to the increase in Capitalist wealth? In direct relation to the growing wealth of The One Per Cent? 

Plainly, The One Per Cent –  made up of acceptable environmentalists,  co-operating governments, and Capitalists masquerading as concerned ‘leaders’ – are going to have to be confronted as never before on Climate Change. They are going to have to be moved over by the people… as a start, if anything meaningful is going to get done. They are going to have to be moved over to make room for brilliantly staged reconstructions of power and wealth by peaceful means.  If that doesn’t happen … welcome CHAOS.

There is a lesson here, ‘Writ Large’, as they say. And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see it.  Canadians must really challenge the present inaction (called “action” and “new targets” and “hopeful goals” and “real assessments”).  Canadians must move “acceptable” environmental “experts” right out of the picture.  Canadians must insist governments act upon solutions that directly address, directly seize, redirect, and put to constructive environmental use the wealth of The One Per Cent – wealth that has, heretofore, been gained cruelly and often brutally through demonic instruments of human and ecological destruction operated on massive scales. That is wealth which, now, must have a completely different character and function.

If Canadians don’t face that reality, if they don’t face The One Per Cent, and act, directly, for change, then it’s all over. Then it’s Cultural Suicide without a good aspect to be found anywhere in the process. 

Contact: Robin Mathews 

Saturday, December 5, 2015

BC Premiers Bill Bennett and Bill Vander Zalm have similarities but.....siblings? Posted September 23, 2012



Bill Bennett  August 18, 1932 - December 3, 2015
  In office as Premier on  December 22, 1975 – August 6, 1986

Bill Vander Zalm was born on  May 29, 1934 - 
          In office as Premier on August 6, 1986 – April 2, 1991

Their similarities would end there, except for the merest of coincidences because they were both members of the same political Party.

  • Bill Bennett is older than Bill Vander Zalm by almost two years
  • Bill Bennett joined the BC Social Credit Party before Bill Vander Zalm
  • Bill Bennett was Premier of BC before Bill Vander Zalm
  • Bill Bennett was Premier longer than Bill Vander Zalm
  • Bill Bennett left Office before Bill Vander Zalm assumed Office
  • Bill Bennett Kelowna bridge named after him, Bill Vander Zalm anti-HST, anti-BC Liberal

While researching down at the Vancouver Public Library, and reading specifically the BC Report magazine (covered earlier in the BBC) we came across something that made us all go Hmmmmmmmm!!!

If some postage stamps can be so rare, because of an error in their printing that they are now worth millions, if not Billions of dollars, why not a magazine?    One Postage stamp is printed in a far greater number for the use of a Country's citizens than one magazine publishing for it's readership in one Province, therefore the value of a printing error in a magazine could be more valuable, depending largely on the topic, of course.

A postage stamp that has an image upside down and the printing right side up, is rare!


Famous Stamps


Once a magazine or book is published, in hard copy, how can they possibly be clawed back from the public domain?    The online version can be removed or "modified" except for the cache version.


In the case of the BC Report magazine, what would be the value of their limited copies, from a once upon a time, robust, four issues per month publication,  now reduced to a state of non-existence?



To the best of our knowledge there are only TWO known copies in existence of this typo:


SNIP                                     Steve MacNaull




Who knows, maybe the typo was what brought about the sudden end to the BC Report magazine.

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

BC Rail Trial single deleted emails: Justice denied by Supreme Court Judge Bennett - 2009. Over to you Gov. Lawyer Copley

Starting an investigation into George Gretes triple deleting of emails has come a long way from 2009 when the norm was a SINGLE delete to stop FOIs.

Four years of B.C. cabinet emails erased

Vancouver — The Globe and Mail
Published

.... "I'm (Justice Bennett) not keen on having these individuals [responsible for managing government records]cross-examined…If the documents are not recoverable it doesn't mean anything unless you [first]establish likely relevance," she said.

Justice Bennett told the defence to argue the relevance issue Tuesday, while submitting a set of written questions to Mr. Copley (lawyer representing the Executive Council, which includes both the Premier's office and cabinet) to get more details on what exactly was done to search the government records.

Leonard Krog, NDP justice critic, said it is "extremely troubling" that important government files may have been destroyed.

"The Document Disposal Act requires that [electronic records]be kept for seven years," he said. "It raises incredible suspicions and someone farther up the political chain that Mr. Copley is going to have to appear in court and explain what happened."

The government of B.C. has a detailed protocol covering both the preservation and destruction of its records.

Formal records can be destroyed, but only after the action has been approved by a public documents committee, the legislative assembly or the attorney general (or the Deputy's $6 million payoff)

The Corporate Information Management Branch, which provides guidelines for government employees, states that e-mails must be copied to a central document management directory before individuals delete them from their personal files.  ....


Mark Hume
Vancouver — From Friday's Globe and Mail
Published


.... Two weeks ago, the defence filed an application for the disclosure of the e-mail records of Mr. Campbell, several cabinet ministers and numerous staff, arguing the communications could shed light on whether the accused were acting on their own, or under directions from superiors.

But earlier this week George Copley, a lawyer representing the Executive Council of the B.C. government, told court a search had failed to produce the e-mails sought because the data system keeps backup tapes for only 13 months.

Yesterday, he elaborated on that point, saying the e-mails may have been deleted because they were defined as "transitory" under document-management regulations.

He said "routine records of no value" are labelled transitory and are deleted.

"It is possible the e-mails you were asking about were considered transitory in nature or there may be other explanations," Mr. Copley said.

One explanation he offered was that about half the officials the defence wants e-mail records for had left government by the time the application was made and their e-mail accounts were erased. ....
Terminating half of the political appointees (OIC) allowed the government to 'legally' erase their email accounts.  Novel idea in 2009.

Is it still happening as we speak?  eg. Gretes, suspended, not terminated

Is there's a move afoot, as we write, new terminations in the fallout of those that have been triple deleting their files upon orders of Christy Clark's Deputy Chief of Staff or whatever her title is now.

***************

Robin Mathews:

February 5, 2009 Letter to:

The Honourable Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett,
The Supreme Court of British Columbia,

....George Copley’s silent presentation is just one of the absurdities common to the pre-trial hearings involving Basi, Virk, and Basi, and common to Supreme Court of British Columbia in its behaviour. It is an outrage, for instance, that people seeking transcript material and other material on public record should face refusal or unseemly delay, bureaucratic complexity, and then often  huge costs paid to private corporations whose profits Supreme Court judges seem more concerned to assure than they are to assure the public’s right to know and its certainty of the fair pursuit of justice.

    Private corporate control over court documents and records must end.  In addition, repression of materials on public record for in-house reasons under so-called “Practice Directions” must end.

   In a public matter and trial of such importance as this one - with which you are seized - a printed transcript of every day of hearing should be available on the next sitting day, in the courtroom, for all who wish to have a copy.  If that statement surprises you, I suggest – with the deepest respect – you may have forgotten the duty our legal system has (and you have as judge) to support the fair pursuit of justice openly and with regard to all citizens. 

  So much material on public record is presently kept secret for reasons I consider indefensible that suspicion may fairly arise among some Canadians that rule-makers in the Supreme Court of British Columbia are either petty tyrants or are complicit with others wishing to prevent justice being done – and being seen to be done. ...

.... Mr. George Copley is a servant of the B.C. Cabinet.  He is appearing in Vancouver Supreme Court on February 16 in order to shield what cabinet documents he can – relating to the BC Rail Scandal – from the Defence (and the British Columbia public).  His presentation will be extremely important and MUST be fully audible.  - ViveleCanada