Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts

Thursday, October 19, 2023

Wow: With His Stolen Billions, Bankman-Fried Bribed the US Congress

Congressman Steve Scalise (R-La) who is undermining Jim Jordan for House Speaker, was bribed with money from SBF's FTX campaign finance operation, as were 13 of the 22 RINO holdouts. Source

Meantime: In Trudeau's Nazified Canada:

Trudeau's "Liberal" Party blocks bill that would have prevented Canada from euthanizing the mentally ill.

Historical Note: Britannica. T4 Program, also called T4 Euthanasia Program, Nazi German effort—framed as a euthanasia program—to kill incurably ill, physically or mentally disabled, emotionally distraught, and elderly people. Adolf Hitler initiated the program in 1939, and, while it was officially discontinued in 1941, killings continued covertly until the military defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.

Wednesday, July 20, 2022

Colonel Douglas MacGregor: Worshipping Dead Horses

By Colonel Douglas MacGregor

The American Conservative, July 18, 2022: Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus, known to history as Caligula, ruled as the Emperor of Rome from A.D. 37 to 41. For those who are unaware, Caligula, the great grandson of Rome’s first emperor, the brilliant Augustus Caesar, squandered the enormous wealth of the Roman State, declared himself to be a god, appointed his favorite racehorse to serve in the Roman Senate, and according to some sources, considered deifying the animal. 

After a little less than four years in office, Caligula was removed. Rome’s citizens, as well as its legions, were spared the indignity of having to worship a dead horse. Americans and Europeans are not so lucky.

Determined to fight his proxy war with Russia to the finish, Biden is losing the fight in Ukraine and his favorite, deified horse, NATO, is on life support. The only things sinking faster than Biden’s approval ratings are the American and European economies. 

Readers will recall that President Trump wanted to reduce European dependence on American military power—to make Europeans their own “first responders.” Biden reversed Trump’s policy and promised to reinvigorate NATO, in the words of French President Macron, the “the brain dead alliance.” 

The problem for NATO is the economic hardship wrought by Biden’s sanctions against Moscow are threatening Europe with economic Armageddon. It’s bad enough when European bond and stock futures plunge and the euro dips below parity with the U.S. dollar, but when Paris, the city of light, shuts off its famous night lights to save energy, things are truly horrific. 


Related: 


Moon of Alabama:
Three Other Writers With Thoughts On Ukraine

Consortium News

The Intercept
FOREIGN FIGHTERS IN UKRAINE COULD BE A TIME BOMB FOR THEIR HOME COUNTRIES

Yasha Levine

Scott Ritter on HIMARS Ukraine War Update July 21/2022

Scott Ritter on POSEIDON - Ukraine War Update July 22/2022

How corrupt is Justin Trudeau's Friend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky?

Ukraine Grain Exports - Myths And Reality


Ukrainian soldiers begin to rebel due to heavy losses in the conflict


US "Started" The Ukraine Crisis, China Says

Lavrov - Extended Range Weapons In Ukraine Will Lead To More Loss Of Its Land

US Signals (Urges) Ukraine It Can (to) Use HIMARS Against Russian Targets In Crimea
If they do, Russia will hit back hard against Kyiv, then the Nazi-backing NATO countries, like Liberal Canada, will urge Zel to hit back harder, then before you know it, we have WW3. Yeah, the mission of the handlers of a senile US President accomplished -- whether Biden will understand that or not.  

Joe Biden’s Secret War in Ukraine: American soldiers are already “boots on the ground”

China blames US for Ukraine conflict


Over 23,000 people evacuated from Ukraine, DPR, LPR to Russia in past day

Zelensky to consider replacing Catherine the Great statue with gay porn star monument in Odesa Which will absolutely insure the support of every witless, Western woke wimp for Zel's war on the Russian people and culture of Eastern Ukraine

Friday, May 27, 2022

NATO vs Russia: what happens next

Pepe Escobar:  

The Cradle, May 24, 2022: Three months after the start of Russia’s Operation Z in Ukraine, the battle of The West (12 percent) against The Rest (88 percent) keeps metastasizing. Yet the narrative – oddly – remains the same.

On Monday, from Davos, World Economic Forum Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab introduced Ukrainian comedian-cum-President Volodymyr Zelensky, on the latest leg of his weapons-solicitation-tour, with a glowing tribute. Herr Schwab stressed that an actor impersonating a president defending neo-Nazis is supported by “all of Europe and the international order.”

He means, of course, everyone except the 88 percent of the planet that subscribes to the Rule of Law – instead of the faux construct the west calls a ‘rules-based international order.’

Back in the real world, Russia, slowly but surely has been rewriting the Art of Hybrid War. Yet within the carnival of NATO psyops, aggressive cognitive infiltration, and stunning media sycophancy, much is being made of the new $40 billion US ‘aid’ package to Ukraine, deemed capable of becoming a game-changer in the war.

This ‘game-changing’ narrative comes courtesy of the same people who burned though trillions of dollars to secure Afghanistan and Iraq. And we saw how that went down.

Ukraine is the Holy Grail of international corruption. That $40 billion can be a game-changer for only two classes of people: First, the US military-industrial complex, and second, a bunch of Ukrainian oligarchs and neo-connish NGOs, that will corner the black market for weapons and humanitarian aid, and then launder the profits in the Cayman Islands.

Continue reading:

Related: 

As Things Fall Apart Biden May Want To Escalate

Will NATO Aggression Force Russia to Extend the Special Operation Beyond the Ukraine?

Friday, October 30, 2020

Are the People of the United States About to Elect a Traitor As Their Next President?

 Evidence has emerged apparently showing that Joe Biden and members of his family are traitors, selling influence not only to the dismally corrupt Ukraine, but to America's chief geopolitical rival, China. 

The American corporate news media, with few exceptions, give every indication of complicity in this corruption by failing to provide appropriate coverage of the story, while US law enforcement agencies seem loathe to act with any seriousness in the matter. Ditto the self-proclaimed alt media such as the Unz Review and the Intercept. 

Here is an article by Glenn Greenwald's that the Intercept refused to publish:

Article on Joe and Hunter Biden Censored By The Intercept

An attempt to assess the importance of the known evidence, and a critique of media lies to protect their favored candidate, could not be published at The Intercept

I am posting here the most recent draft of my article about Joe and Hunter Biden — the last one seen by Intercept editors before telling me that they refuse to publish it absent major structural changes involving the removal of all sections critical of Joe Biden, leaving only a narrow article critiquing media outlets. I will also, in a separate post, publish all communications I had with Intercept editors surrounding this article so you can see the censorship in action and, given the Intercept’s denials, decide for yourselves (this is the kind of transparency responsible journalists provide, and which the Intercept refuses to this day to provide regarding their conduct in the Reality Winner story). This draft obviously would have gone through one more round of proof-reading and editing by me — to shorten it, fix typos, etc — but it’s important for the integrity of the claims to publish the draft in unchanged form that Intercept editors last saw, and announced that they would not “edit” but completely gut as a condition to publication:


TITLE: THE REAL SCANDAL: U.S. MEDIA USES FALSEHOODS TO DEFEND JOE BIDEN FROM HUNTER’S EMAILS

Publication by the New York Post two weeks ago of emails from Hunter Biden's laptop, relating to Vice President Joe Biden's work in Ukraine, and subsequent articles from other outlets concerning the Biden family's pursuit of business opportunities in China, provoked extraordinary efforts by a de facto union of media outlets, Silicon Valley giants and the intelligence community to suppress these stories.

One outcome is that the Biden campaign concluded, rationally, that there is no need for the front-running presidential candidate to address even the most basic and relevant questions raised by these materials. Rather than condemn Biden for ignoring these questions -- the natural instinct of a healthy press when it comes to a presidential election -- journalists have instead led the way in concocting excuses to justify his silence.

After the Post’s first article, both that newspaper and other news outlets have published numerous other emails and texts purportedly written to and from Hunter reflecting his efforts to induce his father to take actions as Vice President beneficial to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, on whose board of directors Hunter sat for a monthly payment of $50,000, as well as proposals for lucrative business deals in China that traded on his influence with his father.

Read more

Related:

Z.H.: Senate Committee Verifies Bobulinski Evidence On Bidens (So Why Is MSM Covering It Up?)

Thursday, October 22, 2020

FaceBook/Twitter Dirty Tricks Control Your Access to Information

 No matter how much you dislike Trump, only a fool can fail to see the implications for public access to information of the massive suppression on the internet of the Hunter Biden leaks.

This blog has been suffering a ratcheting of social media suppression for years, which reached its apogee in my coverage of the Julian Assange trial. As I reported on 24 September:

Even my blog has never been so systematically subject to shadowbanning from Twitter and Facebook as now. Normally about 50% of my blog readers arrive from Twitter and 40% from Facebook. During the trial it has been 3% from Twitter and 9% from Facebook. That is a fall from 90% to 12%. In the February hearings Facebook and Twitter were between them sending me over 200,000 readers a day. Now they are between them sending me 3,000 readers a day. To be plain that is very much less than my normal daily traffic from them just in ordinary times. It is the insidious nature of this censorship that is especially sinister – people believe they have successfully shared my articles on Twitter and Facebook, while those corporations hide from them that in fact it went into nobody’s timeline. My own family have not been getting their notifications of my posts on either platform.

It was not just me: everyone reporting the Assange trial on social media suffered the same effect. Wikileaks, which has 5.6 million Twitter followers, were obtaining about the same number of Twitter “impressions” of their tweets (ie number who saw them) as I was. I spoke with several of the major US independent news sites and they all reported the same.

Read More

Related:




Monday, August 24, 2020

In Canada, What's the Difference Between a Liberal and a Conservative: Nothing Really

A Statement by Maxime Bernier, Leader of Canada's People's Party:
Two years ago, I resigned from the Conservative Party of Canada and decided to launch a new, principled, and genuinely conservative party, the People’s Party of Canada.

I am more convinced than ever that I made the right decision.

I said at the time that under Andrew Scheer’s leadership, the Conservative Party had become too morally and intellectually corrupt to be reformed.

Instead of articulating a coherent conservative vision, all he did was play identity politics, pander to ethnic and interest groups, and try to steal votes from the Liberals by proposing centre-left policies.

Andrew Scheer’s leadership has proven itself to be an utter failure.

The party now has a new leader who will follow the same strategy.

Erin O’Toole said early in this leadership campaign that Peter Mackay would turn the Conservative Party into the “Liberal-lite Party” if he wins. He was right.

What O’Toole did not say is that he, as leader, will do the same thing.

Read more

As the leader of a new party without a seat in Parliament, Maxime Bernier looks like a no hoper. Except that:

(1) Bernier is a more experienced and vastly more charismatic politician than Erin O'Toole, the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.

(2) US President Donald Trump appears set for a second term during which there is every probability that he will complete America's turn from globalization. 

This raises the question: will Canadians be happy to continue under the corruptionist incompetence of liberal lefties such as Justin Trudeau and the Just departed Tory Party leader Andrew Scheer as the US rebuilds its industrial base, restores full employment, and unhesitatingly imposes tariffs on goods and services from a basically hostile and globalist Canada?

If not, the emergence of a nationalist conservative party in tune with the policies of an increasingly nationalistic US seems entirely possible. Maxime Bernier's People's Party could be that party. 

Related: 
Patrick Buchanan: 

Sunday, December 29, 2019

George Soros, the Nazi Jew, Working profitably With the UkroNazis

F. William Engdahl

New Eastern Outlook, December 6, 2015: Rarely does the world get a true look inside the corrupt world of Western oligarchs and the brazen manipulations they use to enhance their fortunes at the expense of the public good. The following comes from correspondence of the Hungarian-born billionaire, now naturalized American speculator, George Soros. The hacker group CyberBerkut has published online letters allegedly written by Soros that reveal him not only as puppet master of the US-backed Ukraine regime. They also reveal his machinations with the US Government and the officials of the European Union in a scheme where, if he succeeds, he could win billions in the plunder of Ukraine assets. All, of course, would be at the expense of Ukrainian citizens and of EU taxpayers.

What the three hacked documents reveal is a degree of behind-the-scene manipulation of the most minute details of the Kiev regime by the New York billionaire.

In the longest memo, dated March 15, 2015 and marked “Confidential” Soros outlines a detailed map of actions for the Ukraine regime. Titled, “A short and medium term comprehensive strategy for the new Ukraine,” the memo from Soros calls for steps to “restore the fighting capacity of Ukraine without violating the Minsk agreement.” To do the restoring, Soros blithely notes that “General Wesley Clark, Polish General Skrzypczak and a few specialists under the auspices of the Atlantic Council [emphasis added—f.w.e.] will advise President Poroshenko how to restore the fighting capacity of Ukraine without violating the Minsk agreement.”
Read more

Related: 
VOE: George Soros listed as 2nd most influential figure in Ukraine

Thursday, August 15, 2019

Justin Trudeau: Canada's Prince of Sleaze

Andrew Coyne: Conflict of interest is the least of concerns raised by SNC-Lavalin affair:

Conflict of interest, frankly, is the least of the concerns raised by this affair. There is a strong whiff, rather, of abuse of power and, possibly, obstruction of justice.

CBC: RCMP looking at SNC-Lavalin affair 'carefully,' promise to take actions 'as required'

The RCMP says it's reviewing the facts of the SNC-Lavalin affair "carefully" in the wake of a new damning report from the ethics commissioner that found Prime Minister Justin Trudeau violated the Conflict of Interest Act, following renewed calls from the Opposition to investigate.

John Ivison: PM's defence to ethics czar reveals his nasty political side

In mid-July, after Dion [Canada's Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner] had presented Trudeau with the evidence he had gathered in the SNC Lavalin investigation, the prime minister’s counsel made a written submission, that tried (and failed) to sway the ethics commissioner from finding him guilty of trying to further the interests of the Montreal-based engineering giant.

It was an ugly, mean piece of work that not only sought to portray former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould as over-wrought, irrational and incompetent, it also attempted to exonerate Trudeau from any inappropriate behaviour by his staff. ...

Dion resisted the urge to nominate Trudeau for a meritorious service medal and instead found him guilty of contravening section 9 of the Conflict of Interest Act, which prohibits public officer holders from furthering the interests of people or organizations.

Friday, April 5, 2019

The Admission Scam Is Another Reason To Destroy Academia As We Know It

By Kurt Schlichter

Town Hall, April 4, 2019: American college is terrible and, as a society, we should stop doing it – at least how it is being currently done. The greatest benefit of a system where most citizens are pushed to get college educations, whether they truly need and want one or not, would be a society of really smart, informed, and engaged citizens. Do you see that happening?

No, you do not.

Instead, we have a bunch of people who are dragged down by crushing debt after wasting years of their youth chasing a piece of paper that often has no relationship to these graduates’ futures. Compounding the failure is how these grads march off campus infatuated with ridiculous commie notions abhorrent to a free people. The college system is a disaster – an expensive disaster that picks our pockets as well as those of the suckers who matriculate – and we should stop tolerating it. Time for conservatives to reform academia the hard way, and by “reform” I mean, “Destroy it, sow the campuses with salt, and rebuild academia into something that isn’t useless.”

Read more

Friday, March 29, 2019

Why Jodie Wilson-Raybould Resigned As Canada's Minister of Veterans Affairs

Jodie Wilson-Raybould (JWR) was fired as Canada's Justice Minister and Attorney General after refusing to abort the prosecution of Québec-based engineering multi-national, SNC-Lavalin on charges of bribery and corruption abroad.

She was subjected to political pressure to provide SNC with relief from Prosecution by the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, both in person and by letter, by members of the Prime Minister's staff, by Finance Ministry staff, and by David Wernick, Clerk of the Privy Council, Canada's most senior civil servant.

Specifically, it was expected that she would override the judgement of the independent Director of Public Prosecutions, by ordering that SNC-Lavalin be granted a so-called remediation agreement, under the terms of which penalties would be negotiated without criminal liability.

By way of pressure, JWR was given to understand that cabinet post was in jeopardy unless she submitted to the Prime Minister's wishes in the matter of the SNC-Lavalin prosecution.

JWR rejected these demands on the grounds that they amounted to interference in Canada's constitutionally protected traditions of prosecutorial independence and rule of law. Shortly afterwards, Prime Minister Trudeau fired JWR as Justice Minister and Attorney General.

Following her dismissal, JWR was offered the cabinet post of Minister of Veterans Affairs, which she accepted. However, following meetings with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on January 14th of this year, JWR resigned her new cabinet appointment. The trigger for this decision was a statement by the Prime Minister that with reference to the propriety of the Government's action in relation to SNC-Lavelin, JWR's ongoing presence in Cabinet spoke for itself. With reference to her resignation from Cabinet the following day JWR said: "I trust that my resignation also speaks for itself."

The recording of the telephone conversation between JWR and the Clerk of the Privy Council, Michael Wernick, is here.

JWR's 21-page written submission of supplementary information for the Parliamentary Justice Committee relating to political pressure under which she was placed during her tenure as Canada's Attorney General is here.

Related:
Toronto Sun: Lilley — Trudeau's lies
CBC: Wilson-Raybould: 'no regrets'
CBC:Feast hosted for Jody Wilson-Raybould on Vancouver Island
Global News: Phone call leaves Liberals’ SNC-Lavalin narrative — and excuses — in complete tatters
Global News:Michael Wernick never briefed Trudeau on Wilson-Raybould phone call — says PMO
NaPo: Christie Blatchford: The Jody Wilson-Raybould solution
NaPo: Andrew Coyne: Wilson-Raybould recording brings SNC-Lavalin affair crashing back to reality
The Tyee: Jody Wilson-Raybould: Cassandra of the Trudeau Government

Monday, March 18, 2019

Boeing, Going, Gone?

Concerning Boeing's crash-prone 737MAX airplane, a commenter at the Unz Review states:

‘…what I find astonishing is that Boeing engineers specified, designed, tested, and then implemented a system (MCAS) that overrides all other controls and systems, including the pilot’s, but is itself so fault intolerant that in case of malfunction in a single component would fly the airplane into the ground unless disabled. How is that possible in a company as engineering intense as Boeing?
That Boeing then compounded the mis-engineering by keeping it secret moves it beyond astonishing and into criminal territory.
That the FAA then certified it amounts to dereliction of its duty to the public. Head’s should roll all ’round.’…
Most of what is known in answer to the question how such craziness occurred is stated with clarity in a response in the same discussion thread:
@FB:

These questions are the crux of the matter…and answers are emerging…

Flawed analysis, failed oversight: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

This is a tremendous piece of journalism published yesterday in the Seattle Times and reveals that concerned Boeing engineers and FAA officials spoke to the Times BEFORE the Ethiopian crash occurred…and what they revealed pulls back the curtain on a truly astonishing level of what can only be called corruption…

Here are the main points…

1. Boeing effectively browbeat the FAA into the letting the company sign off on crucial safety issues, instead of FAA officials

2. The extent to which the MCAS system is able to control the airplane is four times as much as what the FAA and airline customers were led to believe

3. The FAA allowed Boeing to sign off on using only a single AOA sensor to feed the MCAS system, based on faulty and unrealistic risk assumptions of something going wrong

So we have both Boeing and FAA insiders now stepping forward to whistle-blow…in fact this Seattle Times story was in the works long before the Ethiopian crash, and both the Boeing and the FAA were provided with copies of the story and the opportunity to respond before publication…in the meantime the second 737 MAX crashed…

and much more

And here (thanks to FB at Unz Review) a comment from the Moon of Alabama on how Wall Street made Boeing turn bad.

Boeing shares could yet have a long way to fall: like to zero?

Related: 
Zero Hedge: Boeing's Problem Is Not Software
Zero Hedge: Boeing Tumbles On Grand Jury Subpoena Probing 737 MAX Approval
Zero Hedge: Boeing Slides As BEA Confirms "Clear Similarities" In 737 Crashes, Ethiopian Air Freezes Orders

Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Trudeau About to Call Election?

Québec Newspaper: Trudeau likely to call May election:

The Suburban: Is Justin Trudeau really relaxing in Florida this week to recharge his batteries and forget about the SNC Lavalin scandal? Or is he getting ready to hit the road for a re-election campaign?

Several good sources tell me that Trudeau will soon pull the trigger on an early May election. It makes a lot of sense. He cannot have this story* follow him for the next six months. So after his party tables a good news budget, he will tell Canadians that he did the right thing by asking Jody Wilson-Raybould, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General at the time, to intervene in an ongoing criminal prosecution case against SNC Lavalin.
———
* The story, that is, of his determination to overrule the independence of the Attorney General in order to give Québec-based engineering giant, SNC-Lavalin, a pass on prosecution for systematic resort to swindling and bribery.
David Lametti, Justin Trudeau's accommodating replacement for attorney general Jodie Wilson-Raybould, can hardly order the Director of Public Prosecutions to grant SNC-Lavalin a remediation agreement during the run up to an election. The Liberals would be unable to outrun the stink. But waiting until October, the heretofore expected election month, may be unacceptable to SNC, who seem to be impatient for action now. Thus, for Trudeau, who for whatever reason, seems irrevocably committed to SNC's interest, the only option may be to call the election now, and do the deed for SNC immediately afterwards, that's assuming he wins another four-year mandate, God help us. 

Friday, March 8, 2019

Gerald Butts Offers Serpentine Explanation for Quitting as Trudeau's Brain

Asked by Liberal MP, Randy Boissonnault, during Wedenesday's Parliamentary Justice Committee hearing why he quit his job as the Prime Minister's Principal Secretary, Gerald Butts offered this gem of snake-like obfuscation:

I think I was put in a position where I had to ask my colleagues to fight another colleague over accusations a colleague was making, and I think that put the prime minister in an impossible position given the nature of our friendship.

Which interpreted, means:

I was put in a position

Justin wanted this.

I had to* ask my colleagues to fight another colleague =

I persuaded various cabinet minsters to make snide comments about then Justice Minister and Attorney General, Jodie Wilson-Raybould, with the intention of making the obdurate bitch resign from cabinet, thereby making way for some malleable tool who would follow directions and tell the Director of Public Prosecutions to drop the prosecution of SNC-Lavelin on charges of bribery and corruption, as conviction would have detrimental consequences for the Prime Minister.

over accusations a colleague was making =

The accusation being the fully justified objections that Jodie Wilson-Raybould had addressed to the Prime Minister and others, concerning efforts by Butts, the Head of the Civil Service, the Minister of Finance, the Deputy Minister of Finance, the Prime Minister's legal advisers, and the Prime Minister himself to interfere in the independent action of the Attorney General and the Federal Prosecution Service concerning the ongoing prosecution of SNC-Lavalin on charges of bribery and corruption. 

and I think that put the prime minister in an impossible position given the nature of our friendship =

It would have been totally out of character for me to have instigated the campaign of vilification against Jodie Wilson-Raybould without the Prime Minister's knowledge and approval, therefore, as a longtime close friend of the Prime Minister I am resigning to create the impression that the whole dirty scheme was entirely my own idea and carried out contrary to the commitment of the Prime Minister (if any) to the rule of law, even when the application of the law causes him a massive pain in the arse.

———
* Note the reference to compulsion: "I had to." In other words, what Butts did appears to have been something contrary to his own judgement of what was right, and must, therefore, have been ordered by the Prime Minister.

Related:

CBC: SNC-Lavalin loses bid for judicial review of prosecution decision

Monday, March 4, 2019

Trudeauphobia

IPSOS Poll:
Most Canadians Want Trudeau Out
And 85% want a police investigation.

As Justin Trudeau informs the world that he is "still reflecting" on whether  Jody Wilson-Raybould  (the just resigned Justice Minister) can remain in the Liberal caucus, another senior female minister, Treasury Board President Jane Philpott, resigns from the cabinet of Mr. Feminist, as the Prime Minister was contemptuously labelled by a female MP, last week.

Thus the Prime Minister's support at the highest level of the Liberal Party seems to be seriously eroding. Will others go? Unless Trudeau goes first, others surely will. The reason? Short-term pain for long-term gain. Since Trudeau's corruptionist balls-up over SNC-Lavalin, the Liberal Party of Canada has gone from a slim lead in the polls as the October general election looms closer, to a seven percentage point deficit. Better, then, so some must surely be calculating, to quit the cabinet now in the hope of being reinstated under a new leader with a chance of recouping lost ground, than sticking with a sinking ship.

So who's next. Or will the Liberals weakly  follow the lead of Mr. Feminist, the Imposter and Phony-in-Chief as he has been rudely named, on a near certain journey down the tubes.

Maclean's: Paul Wells — Justin Trudeau, Imposter
The story a few Liberals were telling privately, in the early hours after Jody Wilson-Raybould delivered her extraordinary testimony to the Commons justice committee about the endless procession of men who tried to make her cancel a criminal trial for SNC-Lavalin, was that she just didn’t get it.

The former attorney general is a nice enough sort, the story went, but she doesn’t really understand the way the world works. The whole point of amending the Criminal Code to provide for deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) was to make that option—a sort of negotiated fine in lieu of a trial for fraud and bribery—available to SNC-Lavalin. And if the option was available, why not use it? Jobs were at stake. Elections were at stake. Elections, plural, for Pete’s sake. First an election in Quebec last autumn, then a federal election this autumn.

So you could drag SNC through the mud of a court trial, long after the individual executives who actually did any frauding and bribing had fled the company, for what? To visit punishments upon everyone else in the company? To maybe scare it out of Montreal for good? To endanger the jobs of thousands of fine upstanding Quebecers and other Canadians? On the eve of elections? Plural?

All of this was just so obvious to everyone who leaned on Wilson-Raybould, it was said privately. What the heck was she missing? Why didn’t she get it?

If it’s any comfort to the former attorney general, at least she can rest assured that she’s not the only person who didn’t get that blindingly obvious fix-the-Criminal-Code-to-suit-SNC-Lavalin-and-save-jobs-and-Liberal-hides connection. Because also out of the loop were the people of Canada. And if we were out of the loop, it’s because Justin Trudeau and his apparently inexhaustible supply of yes-men worked hard to keep us uninformed.

Long story short, the government of Canada was telling one story to itself and another to Canadians. To themselves, they said they were protecting jobs. To the rest of us, they said they were getting tough. A government that indulges in that much sustained double-talk clearly thinks it has something to hide. It’s being disingenuous. It’s being phony. And since the lot of them never stop calling themselves #TeamTrudeau on Twitter, I guess we can, without fear of contradiction, say the Prime Minister of Canada has been the phony-in-chief.

Read more
Related: 
NaPo: Trudeau gets a lesson in politics and principles
Canspeccy: Justin Trudeau, the Worst Canadian Prime Minister Since Pierre Elliot Trudeau

Quote of the Day:
Andrew Coyne: Monday morning the Prime Minister was musing aloud whether Jody Wilson-Raybould, having resigned from cabinet and laid bare the sordid inner dealings that make up the SNC-Lavalin affair, should be allowed to remain in caucus. By Monday afternoon, with the resignation of Jane Philpott, the question was whether he would still be allowed remain as prime minister. Read more

Thursday, February 28, 2019

While Trudeau Tries Selling Canadians on the Virtues of Corruption, Five Former Attorney's General Call for a Police Investigation

Justin Trudeau and his palace guard have repeatedly claimed that prosecuting Québec-based engineering firm SNC Lavelin for bribery and corruption (including according to press accounts, the provision of whores, nude dancers, pornography and airline tickets for the delectation of Saadi Gadhafi, son of murdered Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi) is contrary to the public interest, since it would, um, well discourage SNC Lavalin from engaging in similar bribery and corruption when seeking further work abroad.

SNC-Lavalin paid for the debauchery of Gaddafi's son while in Canada
The Londoner:
A report by Montreal’s La Presse newspaper says that SNC-Lavalin allegedly paid for a sex-filled trip across Canada for the son of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

“Naked dancers, porn movies and many, many, many prostitutes,” the story states.
The argument is that without the bribes, jobs would be lost. But whose jobs? Mostly, SNC Lavalin operates abroad and of those it employs abroad few are actually Canadian. So why should Canadians care?

Then there's the sob story from the Prime Minister's supporters about the poor suffering share-holders of SNC, poor sods, for whom not buying prostitutes for the worthless progeny of foreign dictators would mean lesser returns on their investment. What's more, failing to satisfy the apparently gross appetite of the likes of Saadi Gaddafi no doubt hurts the domestic white slave trade. 

So, no, let corruption blossom. 

Source: Canada — so pure: pure corruption-free blue. According to
perception. A perception our glorious leader wishes to change
Except, might not their heretofore reputation for stainless integrity be of value to Canadian firms seeking government contracts in at least a few countries? Are there no ruling elites that wish to uphold a reputation for honest dealing? In which case, isn't the prosecution of SNC Lavalin for bribery and corruption abroad a net positive for Canada?

So, apparently, some former Canadian Attorneys General seem to think. Indeed they're calling the cops on Trudeau

Related: 

Canadian Press: Former MUHC manager pleads guilty in SNC-Lavalin bribery case

Michelle Rempel, Calgary MP, Consigns Fake Feminist Trudeau to the Garbage Can of Canadian Political History Brilliant:

Monday, February 18, 2019

Justin Trudeau's Final Blunder?

Among journalists, Andrew Coyne is a very much smarter than most, and in the matter of SNC-Lavelin and the resignation of Trudeau's Justice Minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould, he appears to have left the rest of the commentariat in the dust.

In a weekend article in the National Post, he makes five points that seem to leave little more to be said, other than Justin Trudeau's resignation speech. 

First:

The director of public prosecutions, Kathleen Roussel, it has been widely reported, decided not to offer SNC-Lavalin the remediation agreement it had so feverishly, and successfully, lobbied for. But in fact she may have had no choice. The relevant provision (sect. 715.3) of the Criminal Code sets out a long list of “conditions” that must be present and “factors” prosecutors must consider before they can even enter negotiations on such an agreement; another list sets out the “mandatory contents” of the agreement itself.

First, prosecutors “must” consider “the circumstances in which the act or omission that forms the basis of the offence was brought to the attention of investigative authorities,” in the service of one of the legislation’s key objectives, “to encourage voluntary disclosure of the wrongdoing.”

But SNC-Lavalin didn’t voluntarily disclose that it allegedly paid bribes of $48 million to Libyan government officials and defrauded various organizations in the country of $130 million. The matter only came to light after a lengthy police investigation.
Second:

... the agreement must include “the organization’s admission of responsibility” for the alleged offence. Has SNC-Lavalin explicitly admitted corporate responsibility in the Libyan affair? A lawyer friend who has closely followed the case can find no example of it, in any public statement. It has dismissed the charges against it as “without merit,” insisting any alleged crimes were the work of a few rogue executives “who left the company long ago.” Perhaps that weighed heavily in the director’s deliberations.
Third:

Finally, there is sect. 715.32 (3) of the Code, under the heading “Factors not to consider.” For offences under section 3 or 4 of the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act, it reads — SNC-Lavalin was charged with one count of corruption under sect. 3(1)(b) of the act, along with one count of fraud — “the prosecutor must not consider,” inter alia, “the national economic interest.” (This is not only a matter of domestic law. It is a virtual word-for-word transposition of our obligations under the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials.)

So its defenders’ stated rationale for sparing SNC-Lavalin from prosecution — the dire consequences for jobs and the economy should the company be convicted, and presumably collapse — is not only economically suspect (SNC-Lavalin is not the only employer in the construction industry, nor would the work for which it has contracted disappear just because the company did) and morally dubious. It’s expressly precluded in law.
Fourth:

The DPP was not only within her rights, then, to refuse to negotiate a remediation agreement, she would arguably be breaking the law if she did.

Suppose that were not true. Could the attorney general order her to? That, too, is far from clear. Under the law the attorney general is required to sign off on a prosecutor’s decision to negotiate a remediation agreement. But the prosecutor needs no such consent to decline to negotiate; neither is there anything in the law that says the attorney general can order her to.
Fifth:

This is not contradicted, as another lawyer friend points out, by that much-quoted provision in the Director of Public Prosecutions Act — the one obliging the attorney general to make public any order “with respect to the initiation or conduct” of “any specific prosecution.” Whatever limits that places on the AG’s ability to influence the “conduct” of a prosecution, it would seem to grant no power to stop one after it has started, still less to order a remediation agreement be pursued in its place.

Understandably, therefore,Trudeau keeps Wilson-Raybould firmly gagged by the solicitor-client privilege that only he can waive. After all, who better than the former Justice Minister to draw the attention to the circumstances that make Trudeau's action in firing Wilson-Raybould indefensible.

Source 
Related:
CanSpeccy: Justin Trudeau: The Worst Canadian Prime Minister Since Pierrre Elliot Trudeau?

Saturday, October 29, 2016

America: A Failing State

The headlines indicate that the US Empire is coming apart.

The reasons are multiple, but the rot is from the head, the result of an elite mental illness giving rise to the delusion that the heaven-born ones, the Ivy-League-trained scions of the one percent of the one percent, can create their own reality simply by ordering that it be made so.

Like George Soros, they believe themselves to have become gods, free to treat ordinary, deplorable Americans with unlimited condescension, ridicule, and contempt.

The process whereby this once great nation is in the process of self destruction resulting from ruling class madness is spelled out in an essay After the Republic  by Angelo M. Codevilla, from which the following is ane excerpt.

Under our ruling class, “truth” has morphed from the reflection of objective reality to whatever has “normative pull”—i.e., to what furthers the ruling class’s agenda, whatever that might be at any given time. That is the meaning of the term “political correctness,” as opposed to factual correctness.