Mittstake
1,045,690,017
  and counting

How do you like your windows, so far, dipshit?

We need to have a Mitt Romney stupid statement clock, kinda like the debt clock the ReThuglicans were so proud of at the gathering of old angry white folks in Tampa, called  a convention. You just never know from day to day about the Mittster. Today will he say something stupid, mean, not true or all three at once?  Then maybe it is just  a description of every incoherent utterance that spews from the smirking mouth of the real life Montgomery Burns?

Today the Mittstake at the top of the charts is his complaint that airliner windows don't open. Apparently his wife's plane had to make an emergency landing to deal with an electrical problem and even though the good Doctor Dawg couldn't believe it was a real, in context quote, or from the Onion. But as the Doc discovered, nobody has to take the Mittster's words out of context or make up stuff as this is what he told a crowd at a Beverly Hills fundraiser, direct from the L.A. Times, which is still a newspaper for grown-ups, compared to the bird cage liners that litter Canada.  

“I appreciate the fact that she is on the ground, safe and sound. And I don’t think she knows just how worried some of us were,” Romney said. “When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous. And she was choking and rubbing her eyes. Fortunately, there was enough oxygen for the pilot and copilot to make a safe landing in Denver. But she’s safe and sound.” (emphasis added)

How the LDS hologram that walks kinda like a man managed to get through Harvard and Law School, without the advantage of being a legacy, like the last Republican village idiot that sat in the White House taking orders from DickHead Cheney is a real mystery. For starters if there was a fire, or likelihood of one on a plane, or any other enclosed space, the VERY LAST thing that is helpful is an infusion of oxygen. Maybe Mitt was busy shaving the heads of suspected fags when he should have been in science class.

I also am pretty confident that Mitt da Mutt has spent more time on jet airliners than myself, but even I know that some windows DO OPEN, not to get fresh air or play with your hand in the wind at 30,000 ft., but as an emergency exit, especially those over the wings, which then serve as an escape slide.

I'm starting to get in the habit of checking the headlines that are served up by my e-mail service provider and that is where I first heard of this recent (I almost said most recent, but he has been moving his lips all day by now, so you know that might be no longer true) Romney foot snack. I was led to this article -Why Plane Windows Don't Roll Down, as Romney Would Like - copped from the Canadian Press by Yahoo. With the help of LiveScience.com and Life's Little Mysteries Staff, the article goes on to explain in terms even a Republican should be able to understand, unless they were home schooled, why opening the windows at say 30,000 or 35,000 feet above the fruited plain would kill everybody on board and very likely suck them out of the window as well. That is why I show Mitt clutching the wing in the photoshopped picture at the top. (disclaimer - in reality, the world non-Republicans inhabit, Mitt wouldn't be clutching the wing, he would be the late, deceased Willard Mitt Romney - RIP - once you hit the ground, that is.

But don't take it from me Mitt. Why don't you round up your buddy Paul Ryan, KKKarl Rove, Dick Cheney, Eric Cantor, Michelle Bachmann and the bright lights of the Tea Baggers and take to the air with roll down windows. Leave them closed until you reach cruising elevation and then go for that fresh air, PLEASE! Oh I forgot, take Rand Paul, he is a doctor, so he should be able to explain the science to you.


Update on the BossyTool Resignation

Boozin' Ken and BeeCee Barbie

 A few, very few, facts about the Ken Bossenkool incident and subsequent resignation have been shaken out, though Queen Christy hasn't deigned to add to the public's understanding. It seems that the victim wasn't a waitress, but a government staffer, perhaps even under (in the administrative sense) King Ken in the chain of command (a specific question Christy refused to answer today). However she had prior to joining the BC liaR team of government and provincial ravishment indeed been a waitress at that same bar. Her husband as well had or still works/worked for the company that owns the bar where the incident occurred among others.

I commented yesterday about the apparent double standard applicable to "privacy" concerns surrounding personnel matters yesterday. However, I had completely forgot the glaring example of the BC Health employees a few weeks ago, whose indiscretions were described in great detail by the Minister of Health at the time, until I checked out the always informative Ian Reid this morning. 

......that wasn’t the story a few weeks ago when 4 BC Health employees were fired and 7 suspended without pay pending a police investigation of privacy breaches.

Three weeks ago, contrary to the “privacy laws” the Premier follows, the Health minister provided a significant amount of information about the fired and suspended staff in her ministry.

Go over to Ian's place to see the copious amount of info that apparently didn't violate Christy's new "rules." Don't take my word for it.

That’s a lot of info about the allegations, you have to admit.  But if the Premier is to be believed providing that info violates privacy laws.

But only if they aren’t your friends and allies it seems.  In that case mums the word.

Ian then goes on to discuss Global's role in burying the story as long as they could, It would seem they only jumped on sharing it with us when Christy realized the gig was up and it was gonna come out anyway. Then she went into her damage control mode that is more like a recipe for damaging herself even more.  Meanwhile, Global continues to minimize and essentially ignore the whole story, unless I nodded off during tonight's snoozecast. Of course anyone who is surprised by this behaviour by the fawning sycophants of the private sector PABlum Brigade must have just arrived from over a decade in Patagonia.

This entire incident has been portrayed as an alcohol fueled uncharacteristic once in a lifetime fuck-up by Mr. BossyTool, the Pretend Premieress and her fawning local press and broadcast media. However some claim complaints had been pouring in to extent he would qualify to join the Mounties. All I know is that I don't buy the claim that all of a sudden in his sixth decade of life Gordon Campbell got behind the wheel drunker than the proverbial skunk for the very first time. I think it just as unlikely  Mr. Bossenkool had never treated a woman, especially a woman technically in an unequal power relationship at the workplace, inappropriately until after that particular golf tourney and retreat to the nineteenth hole.  

 Finally, a shout out to the Slimy One 

Treason Steven was in New York City today, but he couldn't be bothered to attend the speech given by the head of state of our greatest ally and largest trading partner at the United Nations. I betcha he would have showed up if the Premier of Commie China was speaking. Actually the Prime Minister of Chinese and Corporate Canada was even invited to speak.

Peevy Stevie was otherwise occupied, cause he had to pick up his award as World Statesman of the Year. It must thrill your soul (assuming you have such a thing other than on the bottom of your shoes) to win best in show as Bibi the Butcher NuttyYahoo's most precious lapdog! 

BC liaRs' Mythical
Nasty Nineties

BC Family heading East to the Dust Bowl - 1995 photo-page 112
The BC LIEberal History of British Columbia
published by - Public Affairs Bureau - 2004
I figure we have at least eight months of hearing and seeing the horrors of the TERRIBLE last decade of the last century, or less - if Christy Clueless would grow a pair (even ovaries would do, she doesn't have to grow balls) and call either a fall sitting of the Ledge or even better yet, a fall election. Actually, a fall sitting would likely lead to a fall or winter election anyhow the way MLAs on the right are resigning cabinet posts, announcing they won't run, or bouncing from party to party like some kind of pinball.

If only Pinball in Chief, former Liberal Cabinet Minister, and former sole sitting BC Con, or the Auditor-General can break into the never never land where the liaRs hide the evidence of their crime spree. Then even the fence posts with fake hair, transplanted hair or genuine hair who have sat mute all this past decade plus, satisfied to watch the Campbell/Clark/Coleman/Collins/Heed/Les/etc. crime spree ravage the province might be ashamed to vote with what would be clearly seen for what it is - an organized criminal organization posing as a political party, posing as "responsible" government. They're RESPONSIBLE alright, when will they fess up and don orange jump suits and/or make compensation to their victims of crime - the citizens of British Columbia?

Expect to hear Fastcats, the turrible nineties, the fast cats, ooooh the nineties were so badddddd and ad infinitum. Already, eight weeks out we have a Same Old Dix, Same Old Tricks attack website, that only an eight year old with learning disabilities could be proud of creating. But the folks retarded enough to continue to vote for this gang of sleazeballs aren't exactly connoissuers of web design, HTML5, CSS or reason.

One would think upon approaching 12 years of poor government and ongoing breaches of trust and corruption the BC liaRs would tire of repeating the same canards about some imaginary 1990's!  But, then, only the dedicated choir wouldn't hoot or laugh them off a platform if they tried listing their accomplishments. The LIEberals always claim that the NDP drove the province into the equivalent of the dirty thirties during a time of economic fever. They don't mention though that the hot economy was to a great extent based on what turned out to be a bubble, a bubble of hourly high tech start-ups that collapsed, once it became clear that it took more than an registered domain name to become a titan of industry. Besides after almost a half century of one party rule by whatever name worked, Social Credit or Liberal, broken only by the three short years of Dave Barrett, and dem Dirty Nineties, B.C was hardly situated to take advantage of a high tech boom.

The so-called "free-enterprise" governments of most of my life time had neglected education, and any infrastructure more than necessary to chop down, dig up or dam and then send either raw energy or barely touched raw materials to the US and elsewhere so the jobs adding value would go to the customers across the border or across the sea....... Hmm sounds just like these days with the effort to ship dil-bit, or sludge processed ONLY enough to move through a pipeline bound to burst to be put on Chinese mega-tankers guaranteed to everntually run aground or sink in one of the wildest patches of ocean this side of Patagonia.  Meanwhile the sludge that doesn't wind up dumped in the pristine Spirit Bear Forest or into Douglas Channel, Hecate Strait or the Dixon Entrance can provide jobs in China where three Chinamen will work all day for what a B.C. resident needs to earn per hour, simply to live, eat and get to work.

The economic prospects weren't so good in the nineties, when all the (often imaginary) profits were being made in cyberspace and "bricks and mortar" were becoming passé, for a province that was still primarily (except down at the big smoke where the suits counted the profits from the toil of the hurtland) hewers of wood, bearers of water and diggers of rocks.  The resource commodities were in the toilet for most of the nineties, not surprising when brick and mortar places of business appeared to be going extinct and one of our biggest markets, Japan was going into a two decade or more decline. Check out the price of what once was BC's greatest export, once the gold rush slowed down, lumber.

(The data is small so to see these charts larger right-click on image to see full size in a new window. Charts come from IndexMundi.com)

Softwood wasn't the worst hit of BC's commodities, and our Douglas Fir, a species becoming almost non-existent in Oregon and Washington in large old and available stands is one of our most valuable. Yet during the NDP reign of terror, the price of a cubic metre ranged from a low of $175 to a high, briefly of just under $340. Don't forget the ongoing war over the Softwood Lumber Agreement that eventually Treason Steven and his sidekick Dave "the snake" Emerson caved in on once they had even a minority so-called government. Then the fiscal geniuses under the hand of Gordo, undoubtably with advice from his genius Michael, managed to virutally shutter the sawmill portion of the industry, during the biggest building boom (another bubble it turned out) in US history, as the only jobs left in forestry were chopping 'em down and putting them on barges or trucks.

The big commodities in my corner of the world are, besides electricity, which we know the LIEberals like to sell for a fraction of what they force BC Hydro to buy it for - buy high/sell low - WOW, thanks to their infinitely devious and evil Rape of the River IPP's are those metals processed at Tek-Cominco, in Trail.  Trail is of course the same city, about two hours away in SUMMER, where the Inferior Health Authority has decided I need to go to for any medical treatment much more complicated than taking an aspirin. I have charts for the individual metals, but this composite of copper, aluminum, iron ore, tin, nickel, zinc, lead and uranium is all relevant to BC, excepting the aluminum, since Alcan turned into another IPP, more profitable with less workers to pay, uranium, and iron ore.

The most important here in the Kootenays are lead, zinc and nickel, while copper is important over Kamloops and the Highland Valley way. Some of the individual metals have even worse levels during 1991 to 2001, but, overall, they all follow the same trajectory.  And don't tell me WORLD commodity prices are set high or low depending on who is the government in B.C., during the nineties people just didn't want much of the stuff we could dig up to sell. Meanwhile check out the climb right around the time Capo Campbell took office.......again IT WASN'T HIS doing, nor his idiot brother - all those metals gain in demand just like lumber when a building boom is underway.

Typical Kamloops Neighborhood circa 1996
....ibid. BC LIEberal History....
PAB Publishing

By the way, coal wasn't doing too well during the dirty nineties either, though it too began to climb in value once Magic Gordo's Butt hit the Big Chair in Victoria (the town Christy hates).

 

You may notice that this is the price of Australian Thermal, the only other graph I could find in the time I was willing to spend was for West Virginia Coal, and I figure BC is more likely to be competing with the Aussies to get out colonial master to buy our coal, and they do have an advantage in proximity. I was going to puncture some more LIEberal balloons of bullshit today, like how the NDP turned BC into a have not province that actually got equalization payments from Ottawa. But in reality it was the liaRs again, sucking up the modest surplus left to them by the NDP and going into debt to cover the generous tax cuts Gordo gave to his rich buds as soon as he had the official order in council fountain pen that would become a pen of penury for the rest of us, like our nation leading children living in poverty. But that's enough for today except for this short initial reaction to late breaking news.

Let the Door Slam on Your Ass
......or don't, Boosenkool, you Harper Tool!

Late this morning th ion as the Chief of Staff to the sinking barge the S.S. Clueless Christy.

After the delight of watching their main competition for the idiot vote shoot themselves in the foot, unfortunately for them it wasn't in the head, because they wouldn't notice that at their convention this weekend. They lost not only their only sitting MLA, but their chief Christy Basher, John Martin, decided he would rather run as a BC LIEberal than sit on the sidelines whining about how corrupt they were. Then of course they re-annointed Jesus as their Leader and Chief Curdmongeon when he can get time off from being a body double for a deceased Boris Karloff.

Anyhoo, Ken the Tool's resignation was accepted after dauntless Christy, our own Miss Snooki, "decided" they better - because whatever he did two weeks ago was gonna go viral any minute. Christy looked positively flummoxed at her presser hastily thrown together this morning, I guess it couldn't wait for Friday afternoon. She refused to confirm or deny Jas Johal's suggestion that it had to do with a waitress and a grope or..... ? citing employer confidentiality rules that apparently didn't exist when so many other LIEberal caucus or staff members had to hit the bricks, like a couple of dark boys named Basi and their cousin Mr. Virk. Or maybe the policy only applies to lily white " evangelical Christian(s) whose children are home-schooled."

The old flopping Mop and Pail of Puke might have beat the BC media in mentioning this, but then again what else is new. It took one of their commenters to actually post the resignation letter, I guess that would be too much like journalism for the urinalists of the G&M.

 Premier:

Earlier this month I was involved in an incident where I acted inappropriately. I was wrong, regretted my behaviour very much and immediately and unconditionally apologized.

Notwithstanding my genuine apology and sense of regret, and following my meeting with you earlier today I tender my letter of resignation as your Chief of Staff effective immediately.

This will give me a chance to return to Calgary to be with my family - who I have also let down - and from whom I have been separated on a weekly basis for most of the last eight months.

I have been very proud to be at your side and proud of what I helped the team accomplish. Nothing should stand in the way of your successful leadership and the accomplishments of your government in creating jobs and making family life affordable.

I wish you the very best.

Sincerely,
Ken Boessenkool

 That last paragraph makes me want to ask someone to gag me with a spoon, no a shovel, off of a giant front end loader.Though it was fortunate for us that the letter poster got there quick, as the comment thread was shut down in less than an hour, with 86 comments already .

I suspect the moderator was getting tired as it seems that half of the comments are identical to this one.

 Score: 25
Name withheld

1:27 PM on September 24, 2012

This comment has violated our Terms and Conditions, and has been removed.

At least twenty five people must of seen this before the overworked mod could remove it, because that many, at least agreed with it, more if some disagreed. I suspect that it was favorable to the Christy Gang, because some that are rude to them are in the high negative, like -37, the sign of some good little Pablum Brigade Troops earning their big bucks. I can't help but wonder what the "removed" were like, since the remaining ones are often pretty, shall we say, risque and not particularly respectful, respect being something neither Mr. Boosenkool nor the Glove and Mail particularly deserve.

I hope Mr. Boosenkool, former (and most likely at the ear of Christy) lobbyist for Enbridge isn't happy to go, because his job here is done and the Pipeline from Hell is a done deal. It AIN'T a done deal, and will never be built other than over the dead bodies of many British Columbians, INCLUDING this one. So, Treason Steven, Colonial Counsel for our masters in China, either give it up, our you better get dem troops home from Afghanistan, because you will have to use them against us, just like Assad uses his army against his own citizens in Syria.  We will of course exhaust legal avenues and casual sabotage before resorting to full scale armed resistance - so listen to all Canadians, but particularly the ones in British Columbia.

And Ken, I'm happy to see you going back to Harper Heaven, otherwise known as Calgary. If you leave Alberta again, go east young man. As a final bit of advice let me paraphrase that Canadian Icon, Red Green.

Ken - Keep your stick on the ice, AND your you know what in yer pants or yer hands to yo self! After all you represent the real Jesus, don't you?

Lisa will Save
Hockey 

Come on Lisa, think of th Holy Economy

How convenient that when the greedy Billionaires locked out the greedy millionaires at midnight Saturday, Lisa and the rest of the Harper Government(tm) were already planning to start a session of Parliament Monday morning. Otherwise Lisa would have had to ask King Steve to call an emergency session to deal with the NHL Labor dispute.  I have no doubt that Ms. Raitt will be as quick to cure this danger to Harper's Prosperity(tm) as she was with Air Canada and the Postal Service. After all a good argument can be made that the NHL disruption is more damaging to the economy than temporarily losing one choice of air carrier.  I would imagine more people would be watching NHL games on TeeVee and the advertising that sponsors it than fly anywhere. So right off the bat jobs and revenue will be lost at CBC (which makes Harper happy), ESPN, TSN and SportsNet not to mention at the various advertising agencies.

But the biggest hit will come to the seven Canadian cities and the thousands of people with jobs that will become redundant without forty-one games, not counting possible playoff cash cows. Parking lots will be empty downtown at night, sports bars will seem like some small town legion and all the non-playing staff for the team and the arenas will find themselves on the unemployment line, but find themselve disqualified because they will be out of work due to a labor dispute.

I'll even go so far as to try to anticipate what Lisa will do, based on past performance since the Harper Government(tm) managed to cobble together their coveted majority, in spite of the fact about three quarters of Canadian voters didn't vote for them and it still isn't clear that they didn't steal the election as much as Bu$h did in 2000 and 2004, using many of the same techniques (and operators in some cases)

Before the end of the week I expect there will be legislation before the house containing these relevant highlights.

1. Since the players are perfectly willing, indeed anxious, to play under the existing agreement as long as genuine negotiations continue apace the owners will be given 72 hours from the time the legislation becomes law (and the Harper Government(tm) can act fast when they want to, and probably will have no opposition, indeed this bill might get a everybody to zero vote to end the lock out and let training begin and the pre-season/regular season games to proceed.

2. Of course this will only apply to the seven Canadian teams, though perhaps Buffalo should be invited since fans from Ontario follow them and Buffalo is certainly one of the more depressed cities in the Northeastern US. For much of the US no NHL games will have a very minimal effect economically, people will just be able to afford to go to more NBA and NFL games. The Red Wings being from another depressed city could be offered the eighth slot should Buffalo decline or even the Wild.  With one of these teams the 2012 NHL could sport two four team divisions, east and west. With Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg making up the western conference.

3. If the owners don't comply each owner will be fined 1,000,000 dollars per day. Some of the richer teams, like the Habs, Maple Laffs and Canucks might not notice the sanction for a few weeks, but Ottawa, Edmonton and Calgary might fold sooner. The Leafs might hold out all year, because by not playing at all they would have their best season in decades.

4. Then again, Lisa could just determine the details of the settlement, as she has done for other disputes and declare that until further negotiation and a new contract is hammered out the revenue will be shared 50-50.  But I guess Billionaires might be too greedy to go halfsies, that's why they are Billionaires.  Maybe this would satisfy Lisa's sense of equity and fairness, because only the Millionaires would be giving up anything - though not as much as the owners are after.

What should be part of any new agreement is some kind of revenue sharing like the arrangement that helps not only make the NFL a monster money machine (with so few games per year, but big venues) but allows small market teams like the Packers, community owned for jebus sake, not only compete but actually win the Super Bowl.

So if this comes to pass, remember you read it here first, but otherwise it is parody, or April Fool's Day in September - got it?

Christy - Milk Carton Girl

I just have to throw in my nickel's worth (two cents worth is being "deprecated" - a programming term, and since your're on the inter-toobz you can look it up if you don't know what it means) about the Romneyesque performance of our non-elected premier who not only has refused to hold an Autumn session of the Ledge, but has also gone the extra miles across the Strait of Georgia to get away from the wild tribespeople of Vancouver Island, but not before insulting them as much as possible without using "dirty" words. Even the ever so timid next to "power" Evan Solomon and the august propaganda sheet the National Post and many other BC LIEberal sycophants  have found this abrogation of the people's work worthy of criticism, though they try to remind us "they all do it."

Of course this Spring a whole bunch of incomplete legislation was shoved through the house at the end, with the assurance that the details would be filled in during the fall session. So much for the removal of the HST, that won't be gone until the day before an election, if then. But I guess everything is going so good in B.C. the government should just get out of the way and let B.C. lead the nation in child poverty yet another year, let the forest industry die completely, poison ever more water in the quest for shale gas that is hardly worth bringing up much less processing and shipping, and then there is all them cuts to environmental protection, navigation and safety on our west coast to deal with thanks to her Tim Horton's Hockey bud Harper. What will we do when an oil tanker in Burrard inlet collides with a Cruise Ship under the Lion's Gate, it ain't Stephen's problem.

 Earlier this year around the time they decided to vacate Victoria the Clueless one stated:

"When the House rises at the end of [May], you're never going to find me in Victoria, I'm going to be traveling the province for the next year.

"I try never to go over there. Because it's sick. It's a sick culture. All they can think about is government and there are no real people in Victoria, and you get captured by  this insidethebeltway debate, and it's really unhealthy."

There is so much wrong with the two little paragraphs above I hardly know where to begin to eviserate the stoooooooooooooooooooopidity! And my " pen pal and bunk buddy" Grant, (well according to the sewer where dwells the king of libelous insults) and the Mound of Sound both have informative and entertaining posts contrasting the above with other diametrically opposed statements from Princess Precious over the years, so I won't bother with that.  I will say though that if Mittens "Montgomery Burns" Romney decides to go fundie Mormon and move to Bountiful, Christy might be well advised to apply for the job of second wife. I would drive all the way over to Creston, not all that far and I do have friends there,  just to watch them gymnastically flip flopping together, sort of like a cross between synchronized swimming and gymnastics, while Anne brushes her horse named "$70,000 Tax Credit." I'm confident that Treason Steven will be as accommodating as possible in helping the Man from Bain with his "tax management." 

Christy (Christy now, not that other Christy that "said during the Liberal leadership race that she would like the legislature to sit more") is of the opinion that time spent in the Peoples House is a waste of time, though how she would know, seeing as of the piteous 47 WHOLE days the House was in session, the Queen BeeBonnet was almost conspicuous by her absence physically (photo ops and Asian junkets being so much more, um, constructive. Even when her bloated and ill looking body was there she rarely seemed engaged beyond pounding the desk when her pal Ding-Dong or Foghorn Kreuger scored a zinger on the opposition by creative fabrication and revision of history and an ongoing informal inquiry about the nineties, apparently the most significant decade in BC history. 

I'm not feeling masochistic enough to do the math on some of these piggies at the trough, especially her Cluelessness and Cabinet, and calculate some day rates at their bloated salaries, not counting perks. I know that MLAs "supposedly" do important stuff away from the Ledge, but lets face it, their constituency staff do most of the heavy lifting and much more regularly than 47 days a year. The other "thing" they do is talk with constituents (especially those in the 1%), but hey, guess what, I speak with constituents of my riding daily, it's called life in a community, and I don't get slightly south or much north of $100K for doing it - I guess I'm self-employed (and self compensated).

Well I couldn't help myself - using a simple $100,000 per year which is a bit more than some backbenchers and a lot less than those with a portfolio or other perhaps meaningful title (only two of the current caucus) and dividing it by 47, yields a pay rate of $2,127.66 per day. But hey you say, many of them have to travel, especially those in the north or my neck of the woods, but oh yeah, we pay their way to work and back by plane, helicopter, chauffeured limo or whatever mode of transport necessary to assuage their sense of entitlement. Then if they get hungry, we buy their lunch and not a five or ten dollar special at the drive-thru. If it is too hard to go home at night after each of 47 days of work, we rent them a place to stay. Ida Chong has us pay her expenses and she effing lives in Victoria, though maybe she will follow Christy into hiding over the fall and winter doing important stuff away from those assholes "inside the beltway." I haven't been to Vickytown for awhile, I guess dem BC LIEberals had some road builder friend that talked them into building a 3P beltway - after all, Washington DeeCee has one.  

(super irony alert) Besides, who in hell is Christy gonna talk to in the rest of the province that ain't Vancouver Island. Maybe seniors, toddlers, and prisoners, because everybody else is too busy working thanks to Christy's super successful jobs programs. She will provide a certain amount of employment for security firms, because her and her cohorts should be nervous out here in the Wild West. The last time Campbell visited my area, even the mayor of the town didn't know about it until he was safely on his way back to safer locales, or that's the only reason I can think of for sneaking into town, meeting with sworn supporters and then leaving before anybody else knew he was here - and compared to Christy his was Canadian Idol at the time, though really falling in love quotient hereabouts, as I am fortunate enough to live where people generally don't elect Cons or BC liaRs, with one four year "mistake" when only Joy and Jenny had to go to scary Victoria for the NDP.

Christy, get over your snit and come out of hiding and act like a leader and call a sitting of the Legislature, hold in in the Robson Square theatre like space if Victoria is too much, or maybe you can use the arena in Nelson - or Chilliwack.

I DARE YOU!

Killing The CBC
Slowly

I've been kinda attempting to write about the CBC for a couple of months now. Once again I got a column in my e-mail from Robin Mathews that seemed to say synchronicity does indeed exist, as he sent me his thoughts about the book recently published by a former CEO of the CBC, while I've been trying to organize my thoughts about yet another betrayal of the CBC mandate that has personally affected me.

Sometime in July, I learned that the CBC would be shutting down the through the air analog television repeater/transmitter that has served my small Kootenay valley for decades. Actually in my valley we are fortunate to have a local group that with minimal support from local taxes provides most major US networks (ABC, NBC and CBS, originally out of Spokane, now from Seattle) and CTV Vancouver, Global Vancouver and my favorites PBS from Seattle and BC KnowledgeTV.   Our local society maintained the service on everything but the CBC, whose own technicians would come to deal with maintenance or outages.  Sometimes some channels would be out of service, sometimes the CBC would be the only channel working, and sometimes it would be the only one not working. However that is just a part of choosing to live and work (or retire) in a rural/remote area.

Talking with people in town, I learned that others were concerned about the loss of a CBC signal and various ways to deal with it were being pursued. I was somewhat irate to learn that the CBC was willing to LEASE the equipment to the TV Society for just shy of $5,000 per year and we would have to maintain it. I mean, I was under the impression we already BOUGHT the equipment in essence through our taxes over the decades that helped support the CBC.  The Society was also considering receiving another CBC signal from a satellite, similar to the way other channels are brought into the valley, but all these proposals seem to be dead in the water now that Shaw has announced it's FREE (most likely introductory) offer to provide service to some households as long as they met certain criteria, like having never had cable (unavailable for miles in all directions) or satellite service within the last ninety days to the household.  For more details on the Shaw offer see this article from the Revelstoke Times-Review.

The few holdouts who watch CBC TV via bunny ears will bid farewell to Peter Mansbridge, Coronation Street and Don Cherry on July 31. For those of you born after 1980, bunny ears are the twin car antennae protruding from the back of your grandpa’s TV set. Peter Mansbridge is the host of ... oh, never mind.

The CBC is ending its free analogue broadcast to Revelstoke and many rural markets across B.C. and Canada on that date..../snip

.......The impending cancellation has been known for some time and was hastened by recent budget cuts to the CBC by the Harper Conservative government.

A lesser-known fact is a government regulator has ordered digital television provider Shaw Direct to provide a remedy for free-to-air users. We’ll spare you all the unnecessary details on how regulatory bodies arrived at this decision. Here are the key details: Shaw Direct has a one-off, $15-million fund and will install a free satellite receiver at the home of displaced analog users in rural who qualify for the program.

Once installed, you’ll receive eight free digital satellite channels. They are CBC Vancouver, CBC Yellowknife, CBC French language, CTV Vancouver, City TV Vancouver, CTV2 Vancouver Island, Global TV BC and CHEK Victoria.

Too good to be true? The Times Review called the hotline and confirmed the Revelstoke postal code is eligible.

There are restrictions. You have to have been an analogue user. You or your household can’t have had cable or satellite at your address in the past 90 days. And there are some technical requirements for your TV.

The program is first-come, first-served until the $15 million runs out, and the final deadline is November 30, 2012.

Since I share my home with a disabled person at the other end, who has Bell Satellite service, this isn't an option for me. However I'm not that confident in things provided by Shaw, even when it is mandated by the CRTC or any other government body. Years ago I used to be involved in television production at Shaw's facility in Nelson. As a musician I performed and often was involved in the production end, mainly of other musical presentations. At this time Shaw was obligated to provide a community channel and some production space and equipment in return for the right to provide cable service in the community (for serious bucks).  There were a very small number of jobs at the Shaw building, a clerk or two to answer the phones and deal with billing issues and a technician or two to assist the lay folks with using the equipment, and maintain the equipment. Today as far as I know one can't even pay their BILL for cable in person in Nelson and Shaw has NO physical presence in the city.  The building that once house Shaw in Nelson is now either a mortuary or a restaurant.

In New Denver, at the mouth of Carpenter Creek, the CBC tower is located, basically at the lowest possible location available without going under water. We still receive CBC 1 Radio from this tower, as long as BC Hydro isn't having one of their increasingly frequent outages. Thanks to a dictate of the Harper Government(tm), the CBC was obligated to rent telus space on this tower to provide extemely limited and frankly crappy cell phone service to the area, or a small part of the area.  While two small wireless internet providers have managed to set up systems at high locations, for better coverage, including one with NO ACCESS to Hydro at the site of a former Wildfire Lookout, telus couldn't be bothered and preferred to piggback on the cheap, with resulting poor coverage, that disappears entirely with a power outage, so much for the handiness of a cell phone in an emergency. Our community was split over telus forcing themselves on us, and personally I was offended that they wouldn't do it up in a manner that wouldn't lose coverage in some directions only a mile or two from the tower. Telus of course won the battle, after all, the Harper Government is of the Corporations, by the Corporations and FOR the Corporations.

I'm still a regular listener of CBC radio, I detest commercial radio unless perhaps I could be in L.A or the Bay Area and have access to some decent jazz or sports stations.  I must admit though, that even CBC Radio, under the ongoing onslaught of corporate governance, accelerated by the fascist Harperites is going downhill due to ongoing, unending budget cuts to satisfy their corporate media donors. I'm especially cheesed off that in this time of budgetary restraint the CBC can find the means to open a completely new broadcast station in Kamloops, a city of 85,000 mostly retarded souls (judging from the folks they send to Victoria and Ottawa). I think it would have made more sense to improve the programming out of Kelowna for Southern Interior BC, for Kamloops, Kelowna, Cranbrooks etc.   What's next, a separate station for Surrey and another for Chilliwack?

For over forty years now the CBC, radio and TeeVee has been my link to the rest of Canada. For years I lived in Kaslo, where CBC was the only game in town, likewise on Haida Gwaii and other remote locales in Southern BC. I still remember one spring day paddling along the east shore of Moresby Island, listening to the game as the Habitants won yet another Stanley Cup. Of course Treason Steven isn't into anything that brings Canada together, he would prefer to divide us into an imitation of the polarized looney bin to our south, if not indeed another part of it!

Now I will share Robin Mathews thoughts on the CBC in general and Richard Stursberg's self serving tome.

Richard Stursberg and the CBC.
Telling It Like It Isn’t.  

submitted by Robin Mathews

 

THE TOWER OF BABBLE, Douglas and McIntyre, 2012.

Richard Stursberg was made CBC’s head of English Services in 2004, plucked from outside, not having grown up inside the Corporation.  He held the position until 2010 – when he was dumped.  In those years the CBC entered a crisis period which remains.  Many factors make up the crisis – the most important being the Harper determination to destroy public broadcasting (to destroy public EVERYTHING).

Stursberg’s tale of those years could be a key reference point for all thinking about the contemporary CBC  - and about the future of broadcasting/communications in Canada.  He was there.  He was at the centre.  He saw. 

But his book is a gigantic disappointment.  Other, well informed reviewers describe it as unreliable in fact and politically infantile. The book is a personalist, fists-first account of Richard Stursberg’s fight against the dead wood, the destroyers of talent, especially CBC president Hubert Lacroix, in an attempt to build CBC, to give it increased audience, to make it alive and fun – with the goal of serving Canadians they way they should be served.

Even while praising Stursberg for his “inside the belly” discussions of the terrors and difficulties of making CBC work, his critics grant him very little. They praise his first-hand, at-the-tiller reports of financing, of overloaded bureaucracy, of rigid Old Guardism, of the incredible failures to share – in the simplest ways – francophone and anglophone broadcasting experience, and of the structural obstructions to moving CBC quickly about … anything.

But they crush his book as repeatedly factually wrong – a matter of huge importance.  Martin Knelman, long-time entertainment columnist, calls it, as well – “blatantly self-serving”.  Howard Bernstein lists what he claims are factual errors and doubtful claims of achievement.

Of the famous CBC lockout/labour battle of 2005, the union reviewers from the CMG (Canadian Media Guild) claim the chapter on the subject “is so riddled with factual errors that it taints the credibility of the rest of the book….”  Still another critic, armed with statistical weaponry, denies Stursberg’s claim to have significantly increased the numbers who view and listen to CBC programs.

Even his apparent frankness, his tell-all determination fades at the end.  Of the final confrontation with CBC president Hubert Lacroix, Stursberg writes: “What happened after this I cannot say. The terms of my separation agreement forbid me from describing the moment.”  That is rather like General Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham sneaking away before he can receive his death wound in order to make sure his pension is safe.

Critics have nailed Richard Stursberg’s Sins of Commission.  Probably even worse are his Sins of Omission. He harps on the fact that English Canada, unlike French Canada (and almost everywhere else on the globe), prefers U.S. broadcasting to its own.  There is a reason.  Stursberg never gives it. And, apparently for the same reason, he will not deal with the fact (which he records) that Canada’s public broadcaster is almost the least government supported in the world! He avoids that subject like the plague.

The answer in both cases is politics – and Richard Stursberg flees from facing up to real politics.

The fundamental fact of CBC’s existence is political.  It cannot be dealt with unpolitically.  Back in the earliest days, the U.S. media barons fully intended to broadcast without impediment for all the U.S. and Canada.  The creation of the CBC was an actively political, anti-imperialist move … to assure Canadians their own voice, their own culture, their own view of the world.  The move to create the CBC was daring.  It was courageous.

And like all daring and courageous moves to ensure the distinctive quality of Canadian existence, it came under attack from the first hour.  The private corporate Canadian opportunists fought and fought, forced Royal Commission after Royal Commission, each time cutting away a piece of the power of the CBC and conferring that power on private, corporate, Americanizing, colonial pirates.  They keep the pressure up still (with active Harper government support) to strangle the CBC financially.

As if their work with broadcasting were not enough, the private corporate opportunists did even worse with the other major indoctrination entertainment force that lasted almost one hundred years – the movie industry.  That incredible story has been told over and over. (Try Pierre Berton’s HOLLYWOOD’S CANADA.)

It is a story of Canadian governments – one after the other – destroying an always nascent, always genuinely promising, potentially dynamic Canadian film industry – to please U.S. power and movie producers in the U.S.A. It is a story of greedy Canadian corporations and spineless governments sacrificing the right of Canadians (especially English Canadians) to know themselves, to celebrate their culture, to gain employment in brilliant creativity … for what?  In order to gain the approval of pirates colonizing Canada, sucking away jobs, wealth, and opportunity that belong rightfully to Canadians in their own country.

The U.S. movie industry – let loose with no holds barred in Canada, and the broadcasting industry – increasingly delivering U.S. culture - almost literally removed a huge number of (English) Canadians from their own country and culture.

The job of the CBC to bring Canadians back to Canadian broadcasting has to be fully explained so it can make sense to the people.  By the same token, Stephen Harper’s determination to cut the throat of CBC and responsible broadcasting in Canada has to be exposed, explained, shouted about over and over and over. 

Don’t ask for any of that from Richard Stursberg’s book.  It isn’t there.

Finally, amazingly – as if self-hypnotized – Stursberg misses a KEY point (and, of course, it is a political point).  Hubert Lacroix (like many, many Harper appointments) appeared out of nowhere. He was, I believe, a know-nothing (about broadcasting) placed in a top job to do a very real piece of work. Almost every one of Lacroix’s actions and those of the mostly government appointed Board members have been the actions – I believe – of brilliant, fumble-headed, dedicated, seemingly opaque, even sincere destroyers.  They are there, I believe, to engage in destruction that was politically set up to happen.

And Richard Stursberg fumbles again, almost as if on purpose.  Throughout his book, he praises people warmly or the opposite.  He seems to find people like Brian Mulroney and Leonard Asper pleasing, just as he finds many more displeasing. Readers may not approve of his taste, but he seems to be frank about it.

Except … except … he has to report ugly acts done by Stephen Harper, and does, without comment. Slashing funds. Refusing a meeting with the CBC president. Refusing to communicate – all the bullying and intimidation tactics from Stephen Harper that we are used to. Stursberg reports, because he has to.  But he makes no comment about Harper’s actions.  Never.  Nowhere in the book does he deal with Harper’s long-term policy.  And nowhere does he hint that he might have an opinion about Stephen Harper. For once, Richard Stursberg is strangely silent.

That, I would say, is no accident.

Richard Stursberg wants the story of THE TOWER OF BABBLE to be a story of an unpolitical war of personalities, a battle between progressive imagination (his) and stumbling Old Guardism.  He wants it to be a story of stupid, backward, insensitive, sclerotic CBC’ers fighting a knight in white shining armour arriving to bring them “the Good”. 

He does not want to face reality, that the fight for the CBC – as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be – is a deeply political fight, in fact a major part of the fight for Canada’s very existence.  Many will assert I am sure that by failing to tell the real story and trivializing most of the rest Richard Stursberg joins the long list of destroyers he apparently sought to overthrow. 

ReThugs try
Evolution

Willard the Mittens guy who would like to be Preznit of the Excited Snakes of Amurica managed to even embarrass many of his Republican backers, who are almost immune to embarrassment, with his ill conceived comments regarding the unfortunate events yesterday in Egypt and Libya.

from Smirking Chimp ....

 He did however inadvertently illustrate that whether or not the rag tag collection of cults from "born again fundies" to the Latter Day Stains that he is a member of believe in evolution, they are indeed evolving - from a party led (or fronted by) a smirking chimp to one that now wants to install a smirking SMUCK in the Whitehouse. After eight years of mis-government by a smirking chimp, who danced to the organ grinding of Dick Cheney, the men behind the curtain like KKKarl Rove, Adelson, Pat Robertson and the Koch brothers think we need..........a new smirk!

....to Smirking Smuck

The picture above is of our man smuck, Willard "Mitt" RMoney, smirking with lips firmly closed to hide foot, after shooting his mouth off about foreign policy before bothering to aim (as President Obama pointed out). But inside he is obviously so pleased with himself, thinking he has really stuck it to the black guy he wants to replace. As told by Joshua Holland at Alternet:

The Romney-Ryan campaign achieved a new low on September 11. In the morning, Romney promised reporters that he has detailed foreign policy plans, but refused to offer any details. But before the day was out, his campaign was spreading a blatant falsehood about a series of riots in Egypt and Libya that had left four Americans dead, including ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

Now the candidate for Smuck in Chief was blaming President Obama for a statement made by the embassy in Cairo condemning an absurd anti-Islamic film made in L.A. that had sparked riots and protest at the embassy, which was eventually breached enough to change the flag, with no injuries or loss of life. But the Mittster's (irony alert) grasp of foreign policy was brought into stark relief when later, after learning of the attack on the consulate in Ben Ghazi that cost Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans, plus a number of Libyan defenders, their lives, the man from Bain doubled down on his recurrent theme of Obama "apologizing" for America. 

Then, on Wednesday morning, Romney scheduled a press conference a half-hour before Obama was scheduled to address the nation from the White House. Romney doubled-down on his claim, saying, “It's a terrible course for America to stand in apology for our values.” As if Terry Jones' overheated religious bigotry isn't in fact antithetical to our values. (Romney, ever the opportunist, had condemned Jones' Islamophobic provocation in 2010, and in typical form, he did in fact condemn the movie later on Wednesday, just as the Egyptian embassy had the previous night.)

For starters, it actually seems to me that a country that illegally invades a nation (Iraq) for a ginned up collection of lies and then consistently violates the Geneva Conventions and International Law with torture, extra-judicial murder and a license for Wall Street to commit fraud on a global basis might actually NEED to at least apologize on occasion, and preferably also change their behaviour. But of course the Mittster thinks that just like his Latter Day Stained Saints, America is "exceptional" and thereby not required to operate in any moral or ethical manner, since might makes right and their Military is bigger than everybody else's combined!

As of this morning US embassies are under siege all over North Africa and the Middle East, think of it as more chickens coming home to roost, like they did in 1979 in Tehran after decades of US backed abuse of the Iranians by the Shah.

When will the United States (and their little butt-boy in Ottawa, Treason Steven) accept the fact that it isn't "American Values" that piss off so much of the world, but American ACTIONS that exploit, maim and kill people, especially brown, black and yellow people, all over the world in the name of American Corporate Greed!

The story of Mitt's gaffes has been particularly troubling for the Grey Lady, former home of "Kneepads" Judith Miller, who had such a crush (and gullibility for) Curveball and Scooter Libby, the New York Times. Over the course of the day they continued to rewrite the story of Mitt's comments and comments by various named and unnamed  members of the Party of the 1% and Teabaggers. Michael Calderone and Ryan Grim detail the ongoing rewriting here. To compare the first article with what replaced it pretty well entirely some hours later, check out both at NewsDiffs.

Obama hasn't exactly been without his disappointments as President, but it is clear that the only good reason to elect Mitt Romney would be to accelerate the onset of the revolution that is increasingly seeming to be necessary to effect change that is necessary to get the world and its people on a path towards a planet that can survive economically and environmentally.

Vote RMoney and Lyin' Ryan and who knows, they might even appoint Bibi the Butcher to be both US Secretary of Defense and State!

A Few
Good Apples
 

Dudley (Doesn't) Do-Right
Horsemen Write Letters

Today's post features another superb essay by Robin Mathews, but first I would like to bring your attention to some criticism of the RCMP that comes from within the para-military organization itself. Earlier I covered the difficulties women face when trying to be part of the Force, which seems to think its motto is all about maintaining the right "wing."

It isn't only female officers who feel that the Force has been going astray as evidenced by the recent letter from 39 year veteran Cpl. Loren Chaplin to his MP the junior Strahl, who apparently inherited the seat previously held by his father, Chuck. As the Chilliwack Times puts it:

"Cpl. Loren Chaplin writes that the force "needs to be burnt to the ground, metaphorically speaking, and either resurrected from the ashes with clear new focus and direction ... or it needs to be buried once and for all as having outlived its intended purpose."

Current Harper appointed figurehead Bob Paulson is apparently on holidays and couldn't be reached for comment when this letter surfaced, so Marc Richer, Ottawa based spokesman for the SS RCMP replied in the typical way that everything would be just fine if everything stayed buried and secret from that nosy public.

"Insp. Marc Richer, a national spokesman in Ottawa, said in an e-mail that the "obsession with making public these intended private communications only serves to undermine the majority of hard working members who are dedicated to the well-being of the communities they serve and safety of all Canadians."

This is the third letter from disgruntled members of the Force to surface in recent weeks, and this doesn't include any allegations from Cpl. Galliford or other women currently pursuing legal action against the RCMP, whose defense has been undertaken by Big Steve Hisself as Robin points out in his wide ranging tale of Mountie wrong doing and wrong headedness for the last couple of decades in BeeCee alone.

 The RCMP.
Getting Away With Murder.

 submitted by Robin Mathews

 The conclusions arrived at in this consideration of the RCMP are clear.  They will be hotly disputed for many reasons.  The Force is in almost total denial.  The Stephen Harper government (for its own unsavory, neo-liberal reasons) seems to support and encourage the present intolerable condition of the RCMP.  Courts often abet wrongdoing by the Force or refuse to face its obvious obstructions of justice.  The Mainstream Press and Media engage in faulty and sensationalist reporting of RCMP actions… without responsibility to law, justice, or the Canadian people.

Overall, those forces are all a part of the neo-liberal movement in Canada, a movement intended to rob democratic freedoms from Canadians and to create a fascist state here.

I conclude that – whatever else it may be – the RCMP has to be described as a criminal organization.  By that I mean an organization frequently, consciously involved in criminal acts, frequently involved in the obstruction of justice, frequently closing ranks and purveying false information to protect RCMP wrongdoers, and – at its highest reaches – accepting political direction or compliantly submitting to political direction or, even, cooperating with reactionary governments to commit criminal acts or to cover for the criminal acts of politicians.

The claim that the RCMP is an excellent organization possessing “a few bad apples” must be dismissed.  A new claim must be made.  The level of corruption in the RCMP is so deep and ubiquitous it must be considered a deeply corrupt organization with, (fortunately) “a few good apples”.

Examine basics.  There is no doubt in the minds of thoughtful Canadians that the RCMP is in serious trouble. That fact is thrust in their faces almost daily. The last Inquiry into the RCMP was conducted by David Brown QC and four others, reporting in December 2007.  The Report of the Task Force on Governance and Cultural Change in the RCMP called for changes in governance and accountability.  And it called for a “new independent body for complaints”. David Brown spoke of a broken organization, but he did not speak of a criminal one.

Nothing, of course, was done. Talk goes on tirelessly about the Stephen Harper appointed Commissioner Bob Paulson failing to act seriously to make required internal changes.  Just as William Elliott, his Stephen Harper appointed predecessor, failed to do so. Even in the face of RCMP internal criticism made public, Stephen Harper, I believe, does not want effective, remedial changes in the RCMP. If his intentions are to strip Canadians of democratic access to information about government, to scientific evaluations of natural resources, to rights of movement and expression, and to free and fair elections, Stephen Harper will need police forces loyal to him – not to Canada and its traditions of freedom and the rule of law. 

Examine basics.  If the Harper government wishes to change the flagrantly obvious corruption in the RCMP, it can do so in days … by legislation.  It can act without delay.  It proved it could do that when it went after enemies – organized labour in Air Canada and Canada Post and CPR.  In a few days the Harper government acted to legislate contract conditions and other matters.  Using its majority (but with Opposition support almost assured) the Harper government could change the face of the RCMP, create a genuinely  independent Force, create a real public oversight body, and assure a national police force of scrupulous integrity.  The Stephen Harper government, I am convinced, does not want an honest RCMP.

In the light of the ready ease with which the Harper government could tend to the problems of the RCMP, the appointment at an obscene salary of a U.S. person by premier Christy Clark and Attorney General Shirley Bond to help fashion a civilian oversight process for police in B.C. is a huge, expensive farce, a joke, and an insult.

Richard Rosenthal has a very mixed record in the U.S.A.  His appointment, I insist, is a cosmetic, a cover-up, a sham, and an attempt by the Christy Clark cabinet to pretend it wants a clean and effective RCMP. The B.C. government itself could set up a provincial oversight body for police, in the legislature, publicly, with full discussion and debate. Instead, for a huge salary, a foreigner (without Canadian experience) is brought in to build a toothless and inadequate structure.

His appointment is a classic move. An outside appointee without natural contacts in the local population can be isolated, kept from contact with the community, manipulated, and presented as an independent, objective actor.  He has worked, in fact, in secret with police organizations who are under serious criticism for wrong doing.  There is no evidence he even met any community groups or organizations closely familiar with life in B.C. to seek their views on “oversight”.

And then … and then … his office – the Independent Investigations Office (which, almost bound and gagged, only takes some of the investigation of claimed police wrongs from the police) is overseen by the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner.  That Office has such a sorry reputation that – even if he meant to be good – we can say ‘bye bye’ to Richard Rosenthal.  (I am not one of those who believes for a moment he ‘meant to be good’.)

The whole story of the appearance of Richard Rosenthal is in keeping with a Stephen Harper government that does not want an honest RCMP.

That allegation is compelling, and it becomes more compelling as facts about RCMP corruption come to light.  There is a large list of lawless acts, betrayals of trust, conspiracies to pervert the law, and failures to undertake the simplest lawful acts required of those in the RCMP employed “to keep the peace”.

The story is much larger, obviously, than the RCMP itself, which is only one factor – though a hugely important factor – in the present condition of Canada.  The story of our time in Canada is of a move through neo-liberalism towards neo-fascism.  It is a huge move with octopus arms.  The RCMP is a highly visible arm of the octopus.  Even so, Canadians tend to see only its obvious, blatant violations of lawful practice.  They are important.  But behind them, I allege, is an organizational move, less visible, to support the forces taking Canada into fascism. That move has speeded up with the advent of the Stephen Harper reactionaries.  But it is older than his government.

In the highly visible realm are too many examples. One is the event, when four officers caught on film, showed themselves wholly responsible for the death of an innocent immigrant (Robert Dziekanski, 2007) in Vancouver International Airport.  The facts were and are concrete and undeniable.  Every false move of the RCMP hierarchy after the act (and it made almost no moves but false moves) has condemned it to universal contempt.

The same may be said, for instance, when an RCMP officer, Paul Koester, shot Ian Bush of Houston, B.C. through the back of the head in the RCMP office (October 2005) over the matter of a can of beer, open in a public place.  Every arm of the RCMP including the fake oversight body, The Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, went to work to whitewash that ugliest of events. I believe there was an outrageous failure of justice in the matter.  In an attempt to get some kind of justice the mother of Ian Bush began a civil suit against the RCMP which she was forced to abandon because of a lack of money.  Paul Koester was transferred to another posting.

Of less blatant violence but containing a series of injustices that are breathtaking, the case of Kelly Marie Richard in Alberta reveals the RCMP viciously at work to protect large private corporations by tearing honest policing to shreds.  My involvement with the Kelly Marie Richard case brought me up against an RCMP – from Deputy Commissioner down, and involving the Commissioner in Ottawa as well as the laughable Commission for Complaints Against the RCMP – determined, in my judgement, to act lawlessly and to protect all those inside and outside the RCMP engaged in destroying the legitimate complaint of Kelly Marie Richard and her sons. She has written the story. It may be followed in detail by going to your computer and searching the Kelly Marie Richard case. In my work on the case, RCMP officers involved in the dishonest shut-down of inquiry were working in three provinces.  The B.C. story is only one face of the RCMP at dishonest work.

Of less blatant violence but heavy with meaning is the present case against the RCMP for unrelieved sexual harassment of a fellow female officer, Corporal Catherine Galliford. (Galliford’s legal action has been followed by a growing number of women working towards a class action suit against the RCMP. “Hundreds of women join RCMP harassment lawsuit”, Canadian Press, July 30, 2012).

Galliford’s case may be seen as transitional between individual cases of gross injustice and what seems to be the institutional determination of the RCMP to identify itself with reactionary government, in this case with Stephen Harper policy and practice.

The real character of the Galliford trial is muted by the Mainstream Press and Media.  In the Globe and Mail (July 21, 2012), for instance, Gary Mason, columnist, writes a large story.  All the way through it, Mason refers to the Mounties fighting Corporal Galliford.  But they are not.  The (nasty, personal-attack style) Defence is not being conducted by the RCMP but (formally) by the Government of Canada (Stephen Harper) and the Government of B.C.  Except Shirley Bond, B.C.’s Attorney General, quickly made clear that B.C. is named as a defendant but has nothing to do with the action. So it is Stephen Harper’s show.

James Keller for the Canadian Press writes of “the federal government, which represents the RCMP”.  If that was ever common practice, it should not be.

There are many RCMP lawyers. RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson and his senior officers could hire a few more if necessary from outside the Force to tackle the case.  Instead, as I see it, he has been brushed aside by the Government of Canada. It is collapsing the absolutely necessary arms-length separation of the Force and the Harper government and, in effect, declaring that the RCMP is made up of boot polishers for the Harper cabinet. That has become increasingly evident to watchful observers since the Harper forces took power in Canada.

But the drift of the RCMP into being a palace army for reactionary government is not new – and in British Columbia it has had dramatic expression.  In 1995 the RCMP conducted what was said to be the largest RCMP operation in modern times.  I believe it was a criminal operation, brought against Native People at Gustafsen Lake in B.C. At the time B.C.’s Attorney General, Ujjal Dosanjh, approved of draconian actions like the firing of thousands of rounds of ammunition by RCMP in the dispute, the calling in of military support, the creation of an exclusion zone in which the RCMP could (and dishonestly did) create any scenario it chose to offer the public – being unbothered by the presence of journalists or others.  All to deal with about two dozen Native People.

Two RCMP officers are caught on a being-prepared training film saying  that the RCMP are specialists in smear and disinformation.  The film fell into hands the RCMP didn’t intend. One of those officers became the lead investigator a few years later (1999) in what I believe was the wholly trumped-up case against then B.C. Premier Glen Clark.  Clark was charged with accepting about $10,000.00 worth of work on a residence deck for … possible favours.

That case must be seen very clearly.  The first reports that Clark may have been acting wrongfully came from the constituency office of Gordon Campbell who became premier of the province.  The lead investigating officer, Sergeant Peter Montague, had been offered a chance by Campbell, on two occasions, to run as a Campbell Liberal candidate. When the RCMP arrived at Glen Clark’s house with a search warrant, BCTV’s John Daly accompanied the Montague group and filmed through the Clark residence windows. When the investigating officer retired some years later, journalists (including, apparently, Mr. Daly) attended his retirement party and gave him a gift. There is every likelihood he deserved it … and much more.

In a round-up story on Glen Clark’s political destruction, Kevin Potvin wrote in The Republic of East Van an interesting remark.  “The fact that the Ottawa headquarters of the RCMP somehow found over $5 million in a tight budgetary environment to finance a bogus investigation of Clark raises grave suspicions….”

Incidentally, I wrote the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP for an investigation of the time taken and the conduct of the investigation against Glen Clark.  RCMP officers in Vancouver closed it up.  I protested.  Three full years later, the Commission’s Report on the matter sent to me concluded (A) that RCMP officers had “wrongfully” closed the investigation, and (B) that the Commission would leave up to the discretion of the RCMP whether or not it would re-open and pursue the investigation!

I firmly believe that the Gordon Campbell neo-liberals, their private corporate friends, the RCMP, and the Mainstream Press and Media set to work to hound the NDP out of office and out of favour illegitimately and to replace it with a neo-liberal government.  That is most certainly what happened.

The Gordon Campbell Liberals then set to work to privatize, dismantle, and sell off any resource wealth held by the people of British Columbia – energy, water power, BC Rail, and – as much as could be slipped past British Columbians of – the holdings and potential of BC Hydro.  To do what they did – and to do it very much in secret – required, I am certain, major actions constituting Breach of Trust and, very likely, other criminal actions.

The Auditor General of B.C. has stated that over ten years, financial accounting by BC Hydro has been so bad he cannot approve it.  Part of BC Hydro’s work was contracted to offshore Accenture which was (under another name) connected to the Enron Disaster. Parts of that contract are still – years later – kept secret from British Columbians.  That secrecy is not only unacceptable but smells of wrongful dealings which should have been investigated by the RCMP long ago.

The B.C. Rail “sellout” is accepted by many observing British Columbians to have been a corrupt transfer of assets to CNR. Gary Bass, top RCMP officer in British Columbia was formally requested to begin criminal investigation of Gordon Campbell and his associates regarding the corrupt transfer.  Bass refused.

Out of the investigations around the corrupt transfer two cabinet aides and one media employee of B.C. faced a number of criminal charges.  The laying of charges, pre-trial hearings, and trial covered more than six years. Throughout the proceedings, Defence counsel insisted the three men had been targeted and the charges against them tailored in order to avoid investigation and charges against superiors in government and in private corporations. Thousands upon thousands of pages of documentation were piled up.

From the hundreds, only, that I was able to have access to, I concluded that, at least, fraud, conspiracy, and criminal breach of trust were involved in the “preparation” to sell B.C. Rail.  [The immediate response of lawyers is that “conspiracy” is almost impossible to prove. That doesn’t change my point.) The RCMP would not touch the material easily available to them in order to begin serious investigation of the corrupt sale.  I believe the refusal of the RCMP to act was the result of its political direction and its political allies.

We must remember that Defence counsel continuously criticized the work of the RCMP, and continuously suggested the accused were targeted, charges against them tailored.  That would be by co-operative action of the investigating RCMP and the Special Prosecutor appointed to conduct the case.  It is not irrelevant that the Special Prosecutor was exposed during the process as having been appointed in flagrant violation of the legislation covering the appointment of Special Prosecutors. Nor would it be irrelevant to point out that the leading RCMP investigator on the case was revealed by Defence to be the brother in law of Kelly Reichert, executive director of the B.C. Liberal Party – a man who had constant contact with Gordon Campbell, premier.

Finally, we must remember that when the list of private corporate people connected to BC Rail and top political actors began to be cross-examined by a searching and determined Defence team, a sudden deal was made to reduce charges against the men to almost nothing and to have the Gordon Campbell government assume all costs that had been built up by the two major accused over at least six years. The sum paid by the Gordon Campbell government to Defence counsel for the cover-up was $6 million. That government paid the illegitimate Special Prosecutor, it is reported, $10.7 million.

What I firmly believe is that the RCMP assisted in the fraudulent destruction of a fairly elected government and aided its replacement by what had to be an illegitmate force.  I believe, moreover, that the RCMP protected and probably assisted in the criminal actions of members of that government.  I believe the RCMP was renewed as a major police force in British Columbia in a twenty year contract because of its lawless relation to the government in power. And I believe that the former premier of the province, at an all-time low in public regard – Gordon Campbell – was made Canadian High Commissioner in London by Stephen Harper because of the picture I have drawn above.

I believe Stephen Harper’s neo-liberal politics and the move under his government towards fascism explains why he has no intention of making the RCMP a just, lawful, efficient, respected force.  It explains why he chooses apparently incompetents to head the Force.  It explains why the men in the RCMP who brought down disgraced Commissioner Juliano Zaccardelli and then the man judged incompetent, Commissioner William Elliott, were given no serious role in the reconstruction, repair, and management of the Force. In fact, they are nowhere visible in the present front-line personnel of the RCMP.

The present Commissioner, Bob Paulson, appears to have been appointed because he was not a part of any reform group. And it has just been revealed that though he was involved in the Missing Women/Pickton Farm murder matter, he has been shielded from appearing at the Inquiry.

It explains why Guiliano Zaccardelli as RCMP Commissioner interfered on behalf of the Stephen Harper forces in the 2006 federal election.  It explains why then B.C. premier Gordon Campbell met top RCMP officer Gary Bass and expressed his sympathy for the killers of Robert Dziekanski.  It explains why then Commissioner William Elliott telephoned three of the four involved in the death of Dziekanski to express his sympathy for them – never telephoning Robert Dziekanski’s mother to express sympathy for her.

It explains why Deputy Commissioner Gary Bass refused to investigate for criminal liability Gordon Campbell and his associates in the corrupt transfer of B.C Rail to the CNR.  It explains why – across Canada – the RCMP fails consistently to investigate wrongdoing in government unless “called in” by Stephen Harper in order to make him look good.

Until a new government takes power in Ottawa, Canadians will, more and more, I believe, see the RCMP as an enemy of the law and justice in Canada. They will have more and more reason, I believe, to fear the RCMP as a criminal organization.

Something to Remember

For those of you whose French is either rusty, or never was, this plane towed banner which was allegedly grounded by the RCMP who then interrogated the pilot says:

STEPHEN HARPER HATES US