The Legislature Raids

On July 1, the Vancouver Sun newspaper will face the tax. This
citizen journalist will not be taxed and will continue to report from
Courtroom 54.

I don't understand that; maybe it's to do with something said in the editorial, which I confess to not having read.

Substitute "tax" and "taxed" with "axe" and "axed" and it might make interesting sense.

Please explain.
 

The most interesting thing about the Sun editorial is that it completely abdicates the role of a newspaper - to seek the truth. Even if the material quoted by the defense is not presented as evidence in the narrow sense of the Sun editorial, it should, for any journalist worthy of the name, present an opportunity for investigation.
In the case of Glen Clark, the Sun followed this route and set up a "war room" to investigate the allegations. In the BC Rail Corruption trial, not only is there a willful absence of investigation, there are editorials that warn against it. This is not only a politically motivated double standard, it's an abdication of journalism.
 

I second Skookum's request, I'm also puzzled by that last line in Citizen 54's otherwise cogent contribution.
 

That the father of the prosecutor has been in the court room since day one (allegedly) and has always sat directly behind the defendants where it is easy to hear (allegedly) whatever is said by them and their lawyers tells me that this "trial" has been a sham from day one!

He is (allegedly) not allowed in the court room henceforth, but does that really change anything? He knows what he's heard, so you can bet the prosecution knows what he's heard as well. Daddy looking after whom? Which prosecutor lays claim to this debacle? Who wants to admit it was their Daddy helping to set the stage? Was Chase even needed to report back to the government types who paid him? At least that's how I see it.

And the part that infuriates me is, MSM seems to have no real issues with it - they've not picked up a badly dropped ball to run with it. They've done NOTHING in the way of investigations before, or during this trial! Quite simply - the MSM and every "journalist" working for them is owned...lock stock and barrel...by a corrupted government and Supreme Court. They obviously see nothing wrong with that...which makes every word out of their mouths a lie at best. We simply MUST clean our house, starting with the Supreme Courts on down, RCMP, MSM, MLA's, and government aides and ministers with bad memories. I wonder if a 25 year stint for treason might jar a memory or two? That would require integrity on the part of the bench. Not gonna happen.

It seems to me that the ONLY sources that can be trusted to tell the truth of this trial are those NOT accredited by Hall et al. We can be sure they won't be jonesing for a senate seat, or a corporate board chair. They're in it for the truth, and nothing more.

I can't remember in my lifetime EVER feeling ashamed to be a Canadian, British Columbian in particular. That has changed. I wish just one MLA, one Justice, one RCMP, one Journalist...could feel some of the shame I'm feeling today - it might make a difference. That requires integrity - something none of the above is labored with it appears.
 

I think that last line refers to Campbell's HST tax - the writer should have spelled it out.

I am still puzzled as to how the Sun could write the editorial as we have not heard any evidence for 2 weeks!??

What is the point of the Sun editorial?
 

Gary Collins was under investigation, why won't anyone write about that??
 

Anon-At-The-Top-Of-The-Thread--

Any info on who populated said WarRoom that worked so hard to carpet bomb that back deck?


______
Anon-At-Bottom-Of-Thread--

What wass the point of the VSun's editorial?

Hmmmm.....

Maybe pushback against, oh, I dunno, Bloggers?

Not to mention the fact that their affiliates were recently caught with there fingers in the "bad header" cookie-jar.

All (not-quite) snark aside, it is important to remember that the publisher of the Vancouver Sun gave $50,000 to the Committee To Re-Elect The Premier (eg. BC's very own homegrown 'CREEP') so that then campaign co-chair Patrick Kinsella could put Mr. Campbell back in office in 2005.

Thus, it is not unreasonable for a reasonable person to conclude that it is just not possible for the editorial board of the VSun to be unbiased on any and all matters pertaining to the future political viability of Mr. Campbell's governent.

OK?

.
 

The bizarre incident at the SkyTrain station needs further investigation. Was an offer made?

The prosecutor of said father must be removed from the court case immediately as it seems the whole process has been tainted.
 

Anon 7:25AM said bears repeating:
In the case of Glen Clark, the Sun followed this route and set up a "war room" to investigate the allegations. In the BC Rail Corruption trial, not only is there a willful absence of investigation, there are editorials that warn against it. This is not only a politically motivated double standard, it's an abdication of journalism.

The Vancouver Sun's slogan should be:

Hear no evil, see no evil, REPORT no evil
–– except that which perpetuates the grip of Gordon Campbell on BC.

That noise we're all hearing in our heads is the death rattle of this province. The python-like grip of Campbell and the corrupt BC mainstream media have squeezed every bit of life-sustaining value out of our province right under our very noses.

CC
 

Well, if the Sun believes that everything heard in court during court is NOT evidence, then it's not subject to the publication ban, is it?

I doubt Justice Mackenzie would see it that way. But if she did indict someone for contempt for defying the publication ban by publishing things already published and a matter of public record, it would skyrocket this case into the Supreme Court of Canada and also into Commons debate. You can't censor history, although she's obviously tried a go at it; and the Sun has been doing it for years, of course.....

IMO the accreditation issue is a Charter case; I"m sorry I don't have the money or wherewithal to launch it; or to dare the test case against the publication ban by publishing all the stuff that's supposedly not evidence that the rest of us already know.

If Berardino gets his way and "makes it so" that the Reichert-deBruckyere relationship is not part of the case, the backfire on that is that it can then be widely published (and available also to the jury, who great efforts are being made to hide the full scope and context of this case from).

Look at it this way; for everything that Berardino and CanWest and ACJ Mackenzie determine is not relevant to the case, each and every item is thereby implicitly NOT under the publication ban.

Logic is not taught in law schools, though. Nor in journalism schools either. Not lately anyway.
 

LOL Skookum! Remind me to never play a hand of Texas Hold'Em against you.

Excellent catch.
 

Why do we still not know the name, or the background, or this person at the SkyTrain station? Why has he not been charged with attempting to intefere with a jury?
 

Because the Justice in the trial has closed the issue - therefore; MSM has also closed the issue. You didn't really expect them to do anything else..did you?
 

Bang on, Leah.

Apparently, it has been deemed "without significance" ...so insignificant that the person at the SkyTrain station will no longer attend court and neither will, inexplicably, another regular attendee, a relative of another member of the prosecution team.


Yes, indeed, "why would we expect anything else?"

The history of this case, so far, has been all about the transformative "power" of turning significance into insignificance ....from concern raised over the appointment of the SP, to concerns about disclosure of cabinet e-mails, to concerns about replacing one judge with another, to concerns about the accreditation process itself.... etc. etc. etc.


insignificant: unimportant, of minor/no importance, trivial, trifling, negligible, paltry, scanty, petty, irrelevant, not worth mentioning....."without significance."
 

Lynx; that same tactic was used in Wikipedia in order to vet and utterly transform articles on the 2010 Winter Olympics. Not just in general, but to specifics such as blanking out mention of the Amy Goodman matter as "a side issue" and insistently removing any mention of Chris Shaw's Five Ring Circus book and the associated documentary. Eagleridge Bluffs is similarly downplayed.

My attempts to correct this included my calling those who had done this "censors", and you're not allowed to use "personal attacks" in Wikipedia, which it is complained that includes calling someone a censor; much like in the House re calling someone a liar, even if they are one.

But a liar is a liar and a censor is a censor

By denying truth relevance, however, the MSM have proven their own IRrelevance.

The new media is blogdom and not subject to the editorial control by corporate interests; and not subject to courts and governments beholden to that corporate interest.

News is public property, not something a self-appointed, appropriative "accreditation committee" has any relevance in pretending to rule.

Something will eventually blow this case wide open and sky high, and no amount of MSM or PAB papering-over will fix it....

A complaint should be made to that federal judges' review committee about Justice Dohm and those extraterritorial warrants, and his intervention and influence on the substitution of judges, removing a public-minded one with a clearly partisan, control-driven pro-government judge.

Who is, esssentially, little more than a political appointee....
 

"A complaint should be made to that federal judges' review committee about Justice Dohm and those extraterritorial warrants, and his intervention and influence on the substitution of judges, removing a public-minded one with a clearly partisan, control-driven pro-government judge.

Who is, esssentially, little more than a political appointee...."

A "political appointee"...or a "puppet?"
 

Fascinating post, Skookum1....seems their need to control and distort the flow of information extends in every direction....through time/history as well.

Quote: "By denying truth relevance, however, the MSM have proven their own IRrelevance. "

Exactly, could not be said better.

What I find so strange is this: At this critical juncture in history, is there not a more worthy or necessary job than to be an investigative reporter? And yet they've almost all abdicated their responsibility - we have tamed news readers.....who seem content to spend year after year reading prepared and pre-packaged messaging without questioning their source...or the information itself. It's all surface stuff.

Quote: "Something will eventually blow this case wide open and sky high, and no amount of MSM or PAB papering-over will fix it...."

Undoubtedly. This case has a lot of ragged seams....a little tug on a delicate thread....and the frantic unraveling begins.

You gotta write that book, Skookum1.
 

The "book" is really "a history of corruption in British Columbia" because the seeds of this are in the way the colony was run, and the way it was usurped by "liberals" like Amor de Cosmos who railed against the autocratic style of Governor Douglas, then adopted it themselves. De Cosmos was, no less, a newspaperman, and a scandaleer too, with his hands dirty with Texada Island's iron ore.....you can't really write a history of BC without writing about corruption; which is where the recent works by Barman and Bowering fall flat on their stuffed-up faces....

But I've tried to just boil down the BC Rail story, to make it comprehensible and relevant to other Canadians, and to Americans and Brits and others; and there's so much context, so many overlapping threads, so many confused sources and confusing spins, it's really hard to do; especially to put it into a single newspaper/magazine-length column.

Between the jury tampering by the prosecutor's father and the imputations of foreign influence over politicians and the evidentiary proof out there of a massively rigged bidding process, there's more than enough that this should be headline material not just elsewhere in Canada but in the UK and US. Maybe that will happen once CP and BNSF execs hit the stand and accuse CP and the BC Liberals of collusion.....

The scale of crimes involved here make the Mulroney case pale to petty filching by comparison; yet our courts and police refuse to examine them, even refuse to admit that they're relevant.

It's not Dave Basi and Bobby Virk who should be on trial here; in fact their defence tactic as we all know is to put the BC Liberal Party and its senior members on trial....which is as it should be.

Funny how it was only Erik Bornmann (and presumably Brian Kieran?) who were promised amnesty in return for finger-pointing the men who they set up into a crooked deal; how come Basi and Virk couldn't come to another deal, where they fingered their bosses.....which is what they're doing now, and rightly so.

I gotta say about B, V and B.....political slime-mongers though they were, they're turning into interesting anti-heroes. With enough valour and honesty, they might even pull their own political careers out of the sewer by opening a window on "the way things are done" in BC, thereby bringing about real political reform. But it won't happen as long as judges are political patsies, prosecutors place spies behind the Defence bench, and the Liberal backbench rank-and-file keeps its dirty lips sealed.

That courtroom may implode; maybe once this case reaches the bench of SCC Justice MachLachlan we might actually see some proceeding that's in the public interest, not contrived to defeat the public interest and protect the guilty.

-----

And re Neal Hall's insistence that only "working journalists" should have accreditation, that's a truly ironic statement coming from a senior member of a press monopoly who will only allow journalists to work if they're prepared to spew lies and disinformation. How long is the roster of people who are no longer working at CanWest because they wouldn't do their master's bidding?

"We will only accredit people we've taught to lie properly". That's what Hall's really saying.

And the Accreditation Committee should be struck down as contrary to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Be interesting if Campbell were to try and use the notwithstanding clause to protect it huh?
 

Way to go Citizen journalist - you are the eyes for the people who cannot attend and disregard the msm who do not wish to report the facts about Gordon Campbell