Saturday, January 28, 2012

 

Given what you know today about BC Rail, does this sound right to you? Robin Mathews replies: Yes!

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BC Mary explains: With Robin Mathews' permission, I have posted something he wrote to another friend on the my previous posting: "BC Rail - does this sound right to you?"

Robin Mathews says:


Yes.  The early information provided here - "sounds right" - to me. 

                     The matter is a little more complicated than that, as I see it and have experienced it.  Mary has kept the drug aspect at the forefront because it was so closely tied to the investigation from the beginning - and, in fact, was the motivator for it at the start.  And then it was semi-split off; and as she points out the Bains trial and conviction were almost buried, as if the Crown (and its friends) didn't want it noticed, keeping the spotlight on Basi, Virk, and Basi.

                     But there is a problem.  It is the suspicion that matters were set up from the beginning to mislead the public in the whole matter.  And that nothing Winteringham says can be trusted. That suggestion is given basis by the end of the trial - when it was clearly evident that further cross-examination of the Gordon Campbell circle (as good a name as any) would reveal that they couldn't answer questions or they would prove the Defence claim throughout that big, big crimes were not the lower level misdoings of Basi, Virk, and Basi but the actions of very top politicians and their corporate allies.

                     When the court HAD TO give Defence the right to question on "connected matters" dealing with the Basi, Virk, and Basi charges [Berardino tried to get a ruling that Defence couldn't ask those questions - and even Anne MacKenzie, judge, didn't dare at that point support Berardino because and Appeal Court would have overturned her decision and slammed her for it], THAT BLEW THE TRIAL OUT OF THE COURT. The 'big boys' (as I read it) had to face grilling that they couldn't deal with because they would either say NOTHING or incriminate themselves.  I can imagine panic among the Gordon Campbell circle.  Then the rapid "deal making" with the Defence.  The three accused had REAL power in the deal-making - Dave Basi for instance insisting that all charges against his young cousin Aneal Basi be dropped completely, and they were.  And the infamous $6,000,000.00 paid (not to the Defence remember) but to the Defence ON BEHALF of the two major accused.

                     The matter is more complicated partly because of the experience I had.  First: no one of Mainstream Press and Media would TOUCH the information I unearthed that Bill Berardino was wrongly appointed, was illegitimate, and shouldn't have been in the court at all.  Even Big Hero Bill Tieleman not only refused to touch it but reported falsely on his blog or on Tyee that I was WRONG and Berardino had been cleared of suspicion! ! !  And Berardino had not been and never was.

                     The body language and actual interactions in court and in the foyer (where interviews, scrums, etc, happen) were very strange.  The three major Prosecutor people were Berardino, Winteringham, and MacKay.  First MacKay (who I always greeted and  small-talked with) cut me off and would sweep pass without acknowledging me.  (I thought that was dumb because it gave 'something' away.) That came after I began to insist in reports that Berardino was improperly in the court.  Then, very near the end of the trial, I came out to a media scrum that Berardino was addressing and he stopped, looked at me, and told me it was a private conversation, they weren't talking about the case.  I asked if the Special Prosecutor could have a private conversation with the press.  He insisted.  I went.  He came over to assure me it was a private conversation.  Then that evening, on his blog, Ian Reid who writes - is it "the Real Story" with the cow on the masthead? - wrote that he was in the scrum, it wasn't a private conversation, they were dealing with the case, and Berardino had lied to me.

                     THEN, as I see it, we got to the end, nearly, of the trial and its wrap up, and (I believe) a little piece of chicanery was set up - MSM would ask for the documents dealing with RCMP investigation only into, and only RCMP, of Basi, Virk, and Basi.  Some of it was pretty sleazy and would make the three accused look like sleaze artists.  Nothing else was to be released "to the public".  Anne MacKenzie, judge, said yes.  Then Janet Winteringham rose and said the material was sensitive and she thought it should only go to the "accredited journalists".  The court and the court's MSM committee had cut me out of the accredited journalist list.  The Defence rose and argued that if it was to be released to the public, it should not be restricted to the "accredited journalist" list only but to "the public".  (I believe the Defence got the message fast that Winteringham was trying to keep the material from ME.)  The judge didn't accept what Defence said.  I was cut out.  The Mainstream Press and Media could cut and paste the released material to protect the Gordon Campbell coterie and to keep me from seeing a shred of it.

                      And I believe that is what the MSM did.

                      So there you have MacKay, Berardino, and Winteringham, the judge, and all the boys (mostly boys) in the MSM working to keep material from the only person who was not towing the line and doing what the Campbell coterie wanted done, and showing that they were really angry with me.  Andrea MacKay started the rejection of me by the Prosecution quite early on when I began talking about the evidence that proved Berardino was appointed in violation of the legislation covering appointments of Special Prosecutors, and I laughed to myself, thinking they have boiled behind the scenes and she is too dumb to keep up an appearance that they don't care.  When they cut me out of seeing the last released material, one of the MSM reporters who'd had a fairly nice relation with me admitted he thought it was awful what they did - but he didn't, of course, lift a finger publicly. 

                      I tell that aspect of the story because there is only one person who lived it and could see what was going on.  And that person is me.  I don't like talking about myself, but I have to here, to tell the story. 

                     good wishes,  Robin
                     
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BC Mary says: These following remarks are cross-posted from comments:

Every/Which/Way wrote: 

You're right about how the media $yndicate turned the provincial wurlitzer on Battershill when it suited.

He was too straight and knew about the twins, political and narcotic, borne of Everywhichway--yet he just wouldn't play along with the cover-up when that was about to take over.

Somebody close to the cover-up team, likely dohm, had no choice but to start ringing up concerned parties with the bad news that Battershill was not willing to get on-board with the rest of the pirates on this robbery. Those first calls would've gone out to several organizations all but simultaneously. Shortly after those bells had gone off, then somebody made another call, this time to the aspering boss of the western media canners on Vancouver Isalnd, in order to take out a media Hit on Battershill and thereby remove him from having any involvement in the case now going forward under dohm.

Truth is, Battershill is still alive today because the ole' boys trust him to keep his mouth shut. He took the oath and he's keeping it. What he couldn't bring himself to do was to turn a blind eye to capitol crimes while he was in uniform. To resolve the conflict, they just made him take the uniform off. Then they shooed him away to go and be ethical with his wife on a lake where they managed to completely lose track of him. Go figure.

And, i also thought Robin Mathews showed great courage in testifying to his peers like this. Those were rather interesting references to the roles that bill and ian have played in all of this, no?

Anyway, be(e) well.
                         
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Political Fix Was In has left a new comment on your post "Given what you know today about BC Rail, does this...":
To answer your question above, dohm's authority came as a part of the common law traditions of the British parliament. Dohm acted at the bequest of the BC Attorney General (pro forma initiated through the speaker of the house, then, Claude Richmond).

It was a brilliant legal strategy that intentionally sent the police to the people's common house so as to trigger the implementation of a series of legal checks. The insiders then took advantage of these procedures to get their guys in place and legally control the course of the investigation, not on behalf of the common weal but for the enrichment of their masters.

Consider this: Without having the legislature raids, there would have been no appointment of berardino, no authorization of dohm, and no bogus out of court settlement with basi. To miscarry, they had to breach.

So they settled on the basi angle (which was a very real aspect of the investigation but far from being even a big part of the railway robbery). In fact, i see dave basi as being set-up as a limited hang-out, a straw man character to be jettisoned if/when necessary to lend aid and cover to the bigger robbery.

When the legislature raids were executed, none other than Geoff Plant was boss at the a/g, seconded there by the very important and highest ranking provincial bureaucrat, Alan Seckel. What a shock it was to find that both Plant and Seckel just happened to have been partners in a prominent law firm, Russell Dumoulin, where--yes, surprise, surprise--they themselves held the authority a) to summons a loyal magistrate to survey the evidence; and, b) to appoint a special prosecutor by the name of wild billy berardino, who worked religiously with the rest of this cabal railroading the case away from revealing their biggest clients as the one who'd actually committed the BC Rail robbery.

Bandits by any other name.

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First to Profit from $1Billion Smart Meter Program: Liberal Insiders (March 2011)

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Firm winning $73 million contract is connected to BC Hydro director, has close ties with Libs.

By: Will McMartin
TheTyee.ca - 7 March 2011

View full article and comments:

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2011/03/07/SmartMeterProfits/

BC Mary comment: It would be well worth your time to read this 2011 roll call of all our old friends and what they were getting up to even then ... although I don't understand all the herky-jerky promotions(?) of David Emerson, do you? I understand that he's working(?) for a very large Chinese corporation now.

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Thursday, January 26, 2012

 

BC Rail under attack again

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Port's hunger for farmland a 'declaration of war'

By Jeff Nagel

Richmond Review - January 26, 2012 DeltaFarmer-BJ-7web.jpg

Metro Vancouver politicians are up in arms after Port Metro Vancouver CEO Robin Silvester told them more Agricultural Land Reserve farmland should be sacrificed to make way for more port expansion and the jobs that will bring.
 
Silvester made the presentation Thursday at a special strategy session of the Metro board in Chilliwack, where he described the ALR as emotionally but not economically important to the region and said more must be done to ensure land is available for industry.

Read more HERE:



http://www.burnabynewsleader.com/news/138168994.html

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Given what you know today about the corrupted sale of BC Rail, does this early info. sound right to you?

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BC Mary comment:  This is something I saved from long, long ago. I  re-discovered it today, while searching for another ghostly figure, Cirilo Lopez, who seems to have disappeared from our West Coast media without further trace just like Jasmohan Bains did. Note that the Brotherhood of ... Trainmen is headquartered outside Canada, in Ohio.  Does this make them more free to report the facts? I doubt it. I think it suggests that blatant self-censorship has been at work in Vancouver newsrooms.

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1370 Ontario St. - Mezzanine, Cleveland, Ohio 44113 • (216) 241-2630 / Fax: (216) 241-6516





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__ Drug probe led to B.C. Rail case (The Canadian Press circulated the following story on May 8.)[BC Mary says: I don't think so. I searched and found nothing similar. If others find Cirilo Lopez and/or Jasmohan Bains reports, please let me know. Thanks.]

VANCOUVER — A former government aide facing fraud and breach-of-trust charges was allegedly involved in laundering drug money before police began investigating him in connection with the sale of B.C. Rail, a Crown lawyer said yesterday.

Janet Winteringham said that, starting in August 2002, police were investigating Dave Basi's alleged drug connection with his cousin, for whom the Crown alleges he was buying property to launder drug cash.

She said word on the street was that Jas Bains, Basi's cousin, had taken over the drug trade on Vancouver Island after another man, Cirilo Lopez, was arrested in the U.S. for importing drugs.

In April 2003, police connected four calls from Bains to Dave Basi's cellphone at the B.C. Finance Ministry, Winteringham said. In November 2003, police learned that Basi was involved in alleged criminal matters related to the sale of Crown-owned B.C. Rail, Winteringham said. Basi, who was an aide to former finance minister Gary Collins, has been charged in connection with the sale of B.C. Rail to CN Rail.

The second probe spun out of the drug investigation and led to a raid on the provincial legislature in December 2003.

Bobby Virk, Basi's brother-in-law, who was an aide to then-transportation minister Judith Reid, is also facing fraud and breach-of-trust charges, while Aneal Basi, another cousin, is charged with money-laundering in the B.C. Rail case.

The Crown said it has not decided whether it will go ahead with any of the alleged drug charges against Dave Basi.

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.

The second round of proposals for the B.C. Rail sale was also leaked by Virk and Basi, Winteringham said, adding they were promised federal government jobs to hand over the documents.

In November 2002, both men went to Denver, where they were entertained by OmniTRAX, one of the three bidders for B.C. Rail, Winteringham said.

The government abandoned its plans to sell B.C. Rail's Roberts Bank spur line after the information was disclosed, she added.

Tuesday, May 08, 2007