The Legislature Raids

Martyn Brown is being questioned about testimony he gave last week in an appearance that was only supposed to last half a day but could now consume most of the first two weeks of the trial.

It seems that the very short term of this trial that Justice Mackenzie has planning on is not what she's going to get. Unless she just starts shutting down cross-examination of those emissaries of the regime sent to the witness box to lie their smarmy faces off. No doubt if the Defence keeps on grilling each and every one (as they're likely to) this could drag on as long as the Glen Clark trial.....though of course in that infamous case the Premier had resigned long before the accusations against him were made in court.....
 

Trial is postponed until May 31

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/05/25/bc-rail-trial-postponed-aneal-basi-sick.html

GAB
 

Let's do some speculating.

I am seeing a disturbing trend in the media analysis too. CBC this mornings panel of political experts questioned the relevance of the cross examining and the permissiveness in the judge allowing.

We are watching a masterful job of cross in my view and it is all relevant as hell. (every bit of it)

Take a look at Tielemans column at the Tyee for one theory.

another is that the money that changed hands was a slush fund for future rentacrowds etc.

btw doesn't laundering normally see a cut taken off the top for its trouble?
 

solocanoe,

Yes, I did notice the "Move along, folks ..." attitude on the first CBC item.

So, do you think the PAB worked overtime this holiday weekend, and we're watching the results?

It's almost too much to bear. But I just realized something:

I went onto the comments thread of that CBC story and said I thought that televising the court proceedings would allow Aneal in his sickbed and all the rest of us to watch all the Supreme Court proceedings.

My comment didn't show up.

Strange, I thought; and wrote it out again in a 2nd comment.

I don't think it has showed up either.

That's getting corrupt beyond my understanding, if a simple, polite comment on a CBC story isn't allowed.

And now, as you say, a panel of media experts came out with an almost scripted theory as to what Defence should, or should not be saying at trial?

Time to re-visit Robin Mathews and his decision to rise, in court, as an amicus curiae, and protest!
 

Solocanoe,

And another thing: someone who was in the Basi-Virk courtroom last week told me

that they were seated next to two (2) people from CBC who didn't seem to know much about the trial, and didn't seem to care, either.

I'm not sure what this tells us, except that we're in deep doo-doo if CBC has gone over to the Dark Side.
.
 

your comment has landed at the CBC story

way to many comments about grammar have been posted making it hard to find

(I am tempted to ask what language is this "amicus curiae" pretending not to know)

btw Mary, thanks so much for keeping the vigil going on this. I will nominate you later for the person most responsible for forcing the truth into the daylight.
 

CBC this mornings panel of political experts questioned the relevance of the cross examining and the permissiveness in the judge allowing.

LOL because not surprised. Editorializing against obvious morality has become one of their specialties, from Rex Murphy's contrarian apologisms and tub-thumps to the national panel a few months ago which held forth about Campbell being the "most interesting politician" in the country and how he was among their list of provincial politicians ready to take the national stage.

Don't forget they've ignored/covered up the Lara story like everybody else, and have otherwise played along. It's not like they were the standard-bearers of truth in the Gustafsen Lake era, and I'll point again to the outright military takeover during Oka. CBC pundits are hired because they can spin away difficult issues and "use their reputations" to pooh-pooh important matters, as they just have done here.

What business is it of journalists to criticize a cross-examination concerning evidence and a political climate they've spent most of their last several years pointedly ignoring? And saying someone is being too permissive is like saying someone isn't being submissive enough. Tugging the forelock is, after all, part of the national image of sufferance and humility; forceful ambition and defiant truth is highly un-Canadian, according to the shape of the CBC jelly-mold

And just like the CBC to effectively say "oh campaign donations like that have no connection to the pork barrel"...but they are part of the system in place to protect the pork barrel. They are themselves, in fact, beneficiaries of "the system".

Who was this "panel of experts" anyway. Which experts? On this case? Experts on this case would seem to be Robin, Bill, Mary, Koot etc....

"CBC who??"

I doubt that guy from Bloomberg made any such editorial criticism of defence. But then, he doesn't have our national honour to protect does he?

Maybe if Quebec were connected to this scandal CBC might be giving it more serious treatment....
 

"CBC who??"

Well asked, Skookum 1!

I've sent messages to the CBC a number of times with pointed questions about the state of BC Rail and the state of our province in general, and they have neither acknoledged me nor published anything about it. Yep, the neoliberals (Harper/Campbell/Stelmach) has those national CBC panel members by their twisted albeit shortened little porcine tails.
 

It would please me to no end to see everyone at CBC pounding the pavement in search of a job...hopefully at minimum wage. They're not worth any more than that.
 

Oh wait, this is about Quebec companies - isn't it?? CN, after all and even though it's primarily now American-owned is a Montreal company, with its official headquarters there - as CP also always has been.

Considering not just the Martin connections but also the usual Quebec Liberal ones, the "coup" in the Liberal Party in the mid-'90s, with Martin-allied Reformists and NPA types grabbing the reborn Liberal Party from Wilson, and blocking Gibson, all falls into perspective.

And given one of the Martin family interests is shipping lines and the shipping business, there's that odd surfacing of the Washington Group in connection to this case....another maritime company kindred to Martin's, and a family-run one (meaning father and sons). Washington Group was apparently wanting to have diversified into land-based transport in the form of CN....though not with, so far as anyone knows, any incidence of drug shipping as is the case with Canada Steamships. And knowing the adventurousness of the Washingtons so far, and not a small bit of panache, that might have had "British Columbia, Yukon and Alaska Railroad" written all over it...I'm actually surprised they don't own BC Ferries by now, and not just the fastcats....

Anyway like I said there is Quebec politics involved here. And I think we'd find interesting ties between CN and Quebec Liberals, too....maybe the reason the "just shoo along by folks, nothing to see here" is that underneath all this is something much bigger and dirtier involving the Canadian establishment, and not just the British Columbia pirate king and his pals.

I'm waiting for McCullough to come at Brown, or whomever, about the same kind of devaluation of CN when it was in its last days of being a Crown Corporation as went on with BC Rail. And what Martin's role is in all this, and why it's all "his people" in this case, on both sides, but it's kind of like he's as insulated from it all like they've tried to keep Campbell.

How deep does this dirt go?

Whatever happened to that Arab World company that got turned down to manage major US ports, and was also in the bidding to operate Prince Rupert? It's just the role of American companies in this railway takeover is notable, similarly port management.....in other words:

Control of transportation infrastructure in British Columbia is a US national security priority....which brings me back, once again, to the Salmon War and Glen Clark's confrontation with the continental New World Order....

Funny though, that the police investigation that has been finally (if only partly) to trial was launched as a result of drug-trade shootings outside a Vancouver restaurant, and a parallel and interconnected also deadly gunfire exchange in Los Angeles, all for the control of a big chunk of BC's drug trade....a lot of which comes in by (wait for it) ship......

It's British Columbia. Nothing is unconnected, no matter how paranoid it seems.....it's all true.

The Quebec lead still taunts me here, how the war between CN and CP for control of this railway, and how CN had beaten its competitors to the punch by funding the installation of a friendly government....what are the machinations within the Quebec money and power circles about that? This isn't just about BC; maybe that's one reason the national media, though actually covering it unlike the provincial media, still has managed to very deliberately keep the scale of the scandal, and who's involved, on the farther side of the mountains.....
 

Oh wait, this is about Quebec companies - isn't it?? CN, after all and even though it's primarily now American-owned is a Montreal company, with its official headquarters there - as CP also always has been.

Considering not just the Martin connections but also the usual Quebec Liberal ones, the "coup" in the Liberal Party in the mid-'90s, with Martin-allied Reformists and NPA types grabbing the reborn Liberal Party from Wilson, and blocking Gibson, all falls into perspective.

And given one of the Martin family interests is shipping lines and the shipping business, there's that odd surfacing of the Washington Group in connection to this case....another maritime company kindred to Martin's, and a family-run one (meaning father and sons). Washington Group was apparently wanting to have diversified into land-based transport in the form of CN....though not with, so far as anyone knows, any incidence of drug shipping as is the case with Canada Steamships. And knowing the adventurousness of the Washingtons so far, and not a small bit of panache, that might have had "British Columbia, Yukon and Alaska Railroad" written all over it...I'm actually surprised they don't own BC Ferries by now, and not just the fastcats....

Anyway like I said there is Quebec politics involved here. And I think we'd find interesting ties between CN and Quebec Liberals, too....maybe the reason the "just shoo along by folks, nothing to see here" is that underneath all this is something much bigger and dirtier involving the Canadian establishment, and not just the British Columbia pirate king and his pals.

I'm waiting for McCullough to come at Brown, or whomever, about the same kind of devaluation of CN when it was in its last days of being a Crown Corporation as went on with BC Rail. And what Martin's role is in all this, and why it's all "his people" in this case, on both sides, but it's kind of like he's as insulated from it all like they've tried to keep Campbell.

How deep does this dirt go?

Whatever happened to that Arab World company that got turned down to manage major US ports, and was also in the bidding to operate Prince Rupert? It's just the role of American companies in this railway takeover is notable, similarly port management.....in other words:

Control of transportation infrastructure in British Columbia is a US national security priority....which brings me back, once again, to the Salmon War and Glen Clark's confrontation with the continental New World Order....

Funny though, that the police investigation that has been finally (if only partly) to trial was launched as a result of drug-trade shootings outside a Vancouver restaurant, and a parallel and interconnected also deadly gunfire exchange in Los Angeles, all for the control of a big chunk of BC's drug trade....a lot of which comes in by (wait for it) ship......

It's British Columbia. Nothing is unconnected, no matter how paranoid it seems.....it's all true.

The Quebec lead still taunts me here, how the war between CN and CP for control of this railway, and how CN had beaten its competitors to the punch by funding the installation of a friendly government....what are the machinations within the Quebec money and power circles about that? This isn't just about BC; maybe that's one reason the national media, though actually covering it unlike the provincial media, still has managed to very deliberately keep the scale of the scandal, and who's involved, on the farther side of the mountains.....
 

I'll grant, Sklookum1, that both the Martin and the Quebec (CP/CN) railways connections are deep in the mix of the sale.

My ongoing concern about the CBC is that they have morphed from just plain sheep into cartoon sheep since the mini-Bush Harper has had his minority. The nightly "National" pundits are a bit of a sad joke. Their points of view are invariably restrained. And, never do they give the NDP any role as a possible contender except consider them as a spoiler for the Liberals. The debate is always about the right and the far right. From where I stand, I can barely detect a hair's width of difference between the Cons or the Libs.

The Liberals are Pierrot clowns. How could they claim a leader that, by choice, spent the bulk of his adult life in the USA!? It is as if they want Harper to have a minority so that the nastiness being done to the working & middle classes, to women, to children to minorities and to the environment is not being done while the country was under their watch. It is as if Harper is working for them. What a crock of peas!