‘…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:
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…
The People voted 52 to 48 per cent to leave; an estimated 74 per cent of MPs voted to remain.
No representative assembly can sustain such a gulf. Either People or Parliament must give way.
And so it has proved as, in its profound lack of wisdom and in its disregard for the central thread of its own history, Parliament has decided it is the People who should change. Or, rather, be changed.
This is not the first time such a thing has happened. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Communist states were ruled by similarly pampered, out-of-touch and privileged elites who, against all the evidence, claimed to represent the People.
The People, shame on them, were ungrateful and in the habit of rebelling. After one such protest, the German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote one of the great poems of political dissent, including the satirical lines:
Wouldn’t it Be simpler in that case if the government Dissolved the people and Elected another?’
When I first read the poem 50 years ago as a student, I laughed complacently because I knew it couldn’t happen here.
But it has. Since what is Remain or the campaign for a Second Referendum but an attempt to ‘dissolve the people and elect another’?
And where will it end? In another very British revolution? Or something nastier?
I don’t want to prophesy, good historian that I am, but I fear the worst.
The notion of "electing" another people, means in reality, suppressing native reproduction and replacing the British people with immigrants of alien race, religion, and culture. In short, genocide of the British nation by their own elite.
So yes, just wait while they bring in another coupla million, just five years worth of immigration, and then it will be time for a second vote, assuming Britain is not already back in the EU fold by then.
Also time then to end England's status as a Christian country and disband the Anglican church. After all, there'll be more Muslims in Britain than Christians by 2035, by which time the Muslims will certainly consider it time for them to rule:
But let no native of this ancient island nation object to the immigrant tide lest they be held guilty of enabling and promoting mass murder of blameless Muslim immigrants in New Zealand. Indeed no hate speech is more cruel than that directed against those who will not abide by the plan for the extinction of their own race.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) announced earlier this month that he is sponsoring a Senate bill that would prevent kittens from being killed after they are used in research, NBC News reported.
Though he is backing a bill to protect kittens, Merkley voted against the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. Democrats successfully blocked the bill, which would have extended protections for newborn babies born as a result of a botched abortion, in February.
A classic case of white self-hatred.
And it's not some rare mental disease. Try smacking the nose of someone's dearly beloved doggy that's just bounded up to you and slobbered on your freshly cleaned pants or overcoat, and they will more often than not go ballistic. Among such people, the protective love and attention that viable human society has for children, has been transferred to animals.*
Nothing, of course, will be done by our ruling elites to combat such degeneracy. It's what they want. The ruling class may not hate themselves, although quite possibly they do and certainly they should, but they sure hate the other 99% of humanity and wish to reduce it to the status of a totally brainwashed slave class, insofar as it cannot be eliminated altogether by means of automation and robotization.
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* Yes, of course, most normal people like animals too. But in a society with a future, human rights must trump animal rights in all cases.
How soon before this hideous crime is used to justify greater Muslim immigration to the West.
In the meantime, it serves the gun confiscation lobby. Thus, from Barack Obama we have already heard:
“thoughts and prayers” are not sufficient, only gun control legislation will do.
Good logic, eh!
Someone in New Zealand goes on a rampage killing a bunch of innocent Muslims, and America's hate-whitey liberal left want to disarm law-abiding Americans who own firearms for the purpose of self defense.
The fact is, if some of those unfortunate New Zealand Muslims had been armed, the death toll in yesterday's murderous rampage would have been much smaller.
And apparently, the carnage at one of the mosques that was attacked was brought to an end by someone with a gun
A second shooting happened at a mosque in the Linwood area of the city.
One Friday prayer goer returned fire with a rifle or shotgun.
Witnesses said they heard multiple gunshots around 1.45pm.
A well known Muslim local chased the shooters and fired two shots at them as they sped off.
And lifted directly from Vox Popoli under the heading "Outraged by Reality":
A controversial federal MP has sparked outrage for blaming Islamic immigration for the Christchurch mosque shooting which has killed 49 people.
Independent Queensland senator Fraser Anning said while any form of violence could never be justified, the growing fear of the 'increasing Muslim presence' was behind the massacre.
'The real cause of bloodshed on New Zealand streets today is the immigration program that allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place,' he tweeted shortly after the Friday afternoon shootings.
In response to which, VP comments:
Every mass movement of peoples has always ended in bloodshed, sooner or later. Why would anyone expect the current migration cycle to end any differently?
The thing is, the globalists and their stooges who rule the Western nations believe the technology of brainwashing and mind control has so far advanced that they will be able to keep the lid on as they genocide the European peoples and replace them with a mongrelized race of slave labor, people with no silly ideas about the rule of law, human rights or nation state democracy. Hell, pretty-faced globalist shill Justin Trudeau has already declared the Canadian nation defunct.
The New Zealand mass murder, so VP, asserts is a false flag of which he writes:
the blood of the victims on both sides is on the hands of the evil politicians and activists who opened the borders of the nation-states of the West to foreign invaders. There is a reason Muslims refer to the lands outside the House of Submission as the Dar al-Harb, the House of War.
...In the largest known college admissions scandal in U.S. history, federal prosecutors on Tuesday said a California company made about $25 million by charging parents to secure spots for their children at elite schools, including Georgetown, Stanford and Yale, by cheating the admissions process. ...
I'm puzzled by this. I mean, America is supposed to be the home of the entrepreneur, and here's a company providing what is evidently a much valued service and the Federal Government is prosecuting them. What for I wonder.
But what seems hyper crazy is the reaction of those who weren't smart enough to buy their kid a place at Georgetown or Harvard or some other pricey snob school.
...a $500-billion US civil lawsuit filed by a parent on Wednesday in San Francisco accused 45 defendants of defrauding and inflicting emotional distress on everyone whose "rights to a fair chance at entrance to college" were stolen through their alleged conspiracy.
Half a trillion? Half a trillion dollars over hurt feelings!
Look, if your kid has a brain, he'll earn as much money after graduating from the local state university as if you'd pissed away a million bucks on a BS and Ph.D. from Harvard.
But if American courts are insane enough to award damages of half a trillion dollars over your kid not being accepted at Harvard, then, yeah, go for it. If you win, your kid won't need an education. You'll be able to pay a Harvard grad. to read for him.
Thing is though, why should a university not accept bribes or gifts, as in the case, for example, of Trump's Harvard educated son-in-law, Jared Kushner? I mean, Harvard is a private school. If they don't want to take your kid, perhaps because someone is willing to give them money to take their kid in preference to yours, why should they?
This seems just one more sign that the American Empire is about to descend into total madness.
"Hatred of immigrants remains the defining motive of her entire career."
This is the grotesque globalist slur used against people opposed to the destruction of their own nation as a racial and cultural entity through suppressed reproduction, mass immigration, and state-imposed multiculturalism.
People opposed to the genocide of their own national group do not hate immigrants. They hate those who promote the destruction of their national group through replacement by people from elsewhere.
Immigrants are, for the most part no doubt, fine people, smart people, people pursuing their own economic interest, people who, for example, want to give up riding a cycle rickshaw in Asia for two bucks a day, or growing yams on a tiny plot somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa to earn perhaps only pennies a day, for a job at twenty quid an hour driving a London bus.
But that doesn't mean they have a natural right to move to a prosperous Western nation, and collectively take over, as they have already in many European cities, London, for example, where the English are now a minority in their own home town, or Birmingham, England's second city, where English children in elementary school are not even the largest minority.
There are a billion, going on two billion, Africans and the majority say they intend to migrate to Europe within the next five years. Craig Murray wishes to encourage them. To Murray, therefore, I attach the label, "traitor." Africa is a vast continent, surely big enough for the Africans.
Likewise, Asia and the Middle-East. These are vast and vastly populous regions where the indigenous people should be encouraged to make their native land a decent place to live. It is not their right to usurp the place of the European peoples, in their rather small native lands.
Speaking of the appearance of US Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Jerome Powell, on CBS's 60 Minutes, James Howard Kunstler writes:
... Maybe it was an hallucination, but I heard him say that “the economy is in a good place,” and that “the outlook is a favorable one.” Point taken. Pull the truck up to the loading dock and fill it with Tesla shares! I also thought I heard “Inflation is muted.” That must have been the laugh line, since there is almost no single item in the supermarket that goes for under five bucks these days. ...
What you really had to love was Mr. Powell’s explanation for the record number of car owners in default on their monthly payments: “…not everybody is sharing in this widespread prosperity we have.” Errrgghh Errrgghh Errrgghh. Sound of klaxon wailing. What he meant to say was, hedge-funders, private equity hustlers, and C-suite personnel are making out just fine as the asset-stripping of flyover America proceeds, and you miserable, morbidly obese, tattooed gorks watching this out on the Midwestern buzzard flats should have thought twice before dropping out of community college to drive a forklift in the Sysco frozen food warehouse ...
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?
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.
Moon of Alabama provides a good summary of what is now believed to be the reason Boeing's 737MAX airliner is crash prone.
Four factors seem to be responsible.
Suboptimal design:
In 2010 Airbus decided to offer its A-320 with a New Engine Option (NEO) which uses less fuel. To counter the Airbus move Boeing had to follow up. The 737 would also get new engines for a more efficient flight and longer range. The new engines on the 737 MAX are bigger and needed to be placed a bit different than on the older version. That again changed the flight characteristics of the plane by giving it a nose up attitude.
The plane is low slung for easy access to the baggage hold, but with larger engine nacelles it was necessary to raise the top of the nacelles above the leading edge of the wing, thereby creating additional lift. Thus, whereas, in most aircraft, if the pilot takes his hand off the stick, the plane will continue in level flight, the 737MAX is inherently unstable and tends to go nose up, leading to a stall.
Deceptive marketing:
The new flight characteristic of the 737 MAX would have require a retraining of the pilots. But Boeing's marketing people had told their customers all along that the 737 MAX would not require extensive new training. Instead of expensive simulator training for the new type, experienced 737 pilots would only have to read some documentation about the changes between the old and the new versions.
To make that viable, Boeing's engineers used a little trick. They added a "maneuver characteristics augmentation system" (MCAS) that pitches the nose of the plane down if a sensor detects a too high angle of attack that might lead to a stall. That made the flight characteristic of the new 737 version similar to the old one.
By calling the automated anti-stall system (ASS) the "Maneuver Characteristics Augmentation System" (MCAS) deliberately or otherwise deflected attention from the vital importance of that system.
A poorly designed engineering solution to the plane's inherent instability:
The 737 MAX has two flight control computers. Each is connected to only one of the two angle of attack sensors. During a flight only one of two computer runs the MCAS control. If it detects a too high angle of attack it trims the horizontal stabilizer down for some 10 seconds. It then waits for 5 seconds and reads the sensor again. If the sensor continues to show a too high angle of attack it again trims the stabilizer to pitch the plane's nose done.
MCSA is independent of the autopilot. It is even active in manual flight. There is a procedure to deactivate it but it takes some time.
One of the angle of attack sensors on the Indonesian flight was faulty. Unfortunately it was the one connected to the computer that ran the MCAS on that flight. Shortly after take off the sensor signaled a too high angle of attack even as the plane was flying in a normal climb. The MCAS engaged and put the planes nose down. The pilots reacted by disabling the autopilot and pulling the control stick back. The MCAS engaged again pitching the plane further down. The pilots again pulled the stick. This happened some 12 times in a row before the plane crashed into the sea.
To implement a security relevant automatism that depends on only one sensor is extremely bad design. To have a flight control automatism engaged even when the pilot flies manually is also a bad choice. But the real criminality was that Boeing hid the feature.
Concealment of a Fundamental System Vulnerability:
With seeming insanity, Boeing failed to inform pilots of how the "solution" to the plane's tendency to stall worked, or might fail to work, or if necessary, might be shut off to allow the aircraft to be flown manually:
Neither the airlines that bought the planes nor the pilots who flew it were told about MCAS. They did not know that it exists. They were not aware of an automatic system that controlled the stabilizer even when the autopilot was off. They had no idea how it could be deactivated.
Boeing's best way forward would appear to be the resignation of the entire board of directors and their replacement by responsible people with relevant qualifications. Likewise, the top guys at the Federal Aviation Administration which was responsible for giving the plane a certificate of airworthiness should, but won't, go now.
Speaking, I believe, of American affairs in general, although he may also have had pretty-face Justin Trudeau's scandal-plagued government in mind, or perhaps Thereason May's botched Brexit Britain, Theodore Beale writes:
The level of unmitigated stupidity and total lack of foresight on every side is simply astonishing.
Even if you don't believe in God, you'd do well to pray, because neither science nor politics is going to get anyone out of this.
And as an atheist, I do support the advice to pray. It will surely light at least a small flame of hope.
Ron Unz, has a piece today, documenting evidence of corporate book burning: specifically, Amazon's engagement in the general corporate war on free speech. The piece starts well enough:
As most are surely aware, the last year or two has seen a growing crackdown on free speech and free thought across the Internet, with our constitutionally-protected First Amendment rights being circumvented through the agency of monopolistic private sector corporations such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Although as yet our government has not gained the power to ban discordant views nor punish their advocates, anonymous tech company censors regularly take these steps, seemingly based upon entirely opaque and arbitrary standards which lack any power of appeal. No one really knows why some individuals are banned or “de-platformed” and others are not, and surely this looming uncertainty has imposed self-censorship upon hundreds of individuals for every publicized victim who receives an exemplary punishment..
Unz then goes on to document several recent cases in which Amazon has burnt books, shoved them down the memory hole or otherwise made them unavailable to the significant portion of humanity that has come to rely on Amazon.com as the world's largest book distributor.
But Unz soon goes off on a theme he has often raised before; namely the evil influence of Jewry on American society.
The ADL ranks as one of our most formidable Jewish activist organizations, and according to media accounts it has been playing a central role in efforts to censor “hate speech” on leading Internet platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google’s YouTube. So it seems very likely to have also been behind Amazon’s recent purge, especially once we discover the nature of some of the more significant books now banned.
I am not sure what to make of this. When Unz warms to the theme of Jewish malfeasance, his allegations are so inflammatory as to make one wonder about his intention. Is it to incite the kind of anti-Semitism that promotes Jewish community adhesion, or is it, rather, the honest view of a sensitive person of Jewish descent appalled by the history of Jews exploiting those among whom they live.
My own assumption is that it is the latter, although, I think it is a counterproductive and therefore unwise. There are plenty of Jewish sons-of-bitches, some of them in America very powerful. Moreover, there can be no doubt that are Jewish religious fanatics who are racial supremacists who encourage the kind of brutal extremism that motivates the relentless drive to expel Palestinians from their own homeland. But the broad implication that most Jews throughout dispersed among the Western nations are fundamentally disloyal to those among whom they dwell is seems to me not only unfounded, but must inevitably undermine the loyalty of Jews to the communities in which they live.
In fact, the death of the Christian West as a unique and powerful civilization is due, I maintain, not to Jewish manipulation, however, massive the Jewish role in the death of Christendom has been, but to the treason of the Western elites, overwhelmingly, people of non-Jewish extraction. Book-burner -in-Chief, Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, for example is no Jew. Western non-Jewish elites have themselves trashed Christianity, and now believe in nothing much beyond money, sex and power, which means getting along by going along with whatever the Money Power demands, even if that means genociding your own people and trashing your own nation.
Indeed, the future of the Western nations would have been assured had Western elites adopted the ethnocentrism of Jews, however brutal that impulse has proved to be in Palestine today*.
Loyalty is a basic ingredient of party politics, and the long domination of Canadian politics by the Liberals Party of Canada reflects the party's tradition of strict party discipline.
But when the polls turn, or an election is lost, Liberals make short shrift of the leader. Thus of Liberal leaders past, the last three, Martin, Dion, and Ignatieff, all were gone within months of an election loss.
Now, seven months before an election, the polls have turned against Trudeau. What to do? Boot the pretty boy for someone able to think their way out of a paper bag.
The technical grounds for a prime ministerial defenestration are today once again concisely set forth by Andrew Coyne. The truly sordid, indeed grossly evil, character of those whose actions have brought Justin Trudeau to a deserved final public appearance on the scaffold are set forth in this National Observer article, accessible today without a subscription by way of Bourque.org.
And
A further aggravating circumstance is that this was not a classic case of pure bribery. SNC knowingly enabled and overlooked monstrous tyranny and abuse.
The company cannot pretend it was unaware of Gaddafi's vicious cruelty while expensing his son Saadi Gaddafi's prostitutes, lavish lifestyle, and showering him with millions of dollars a year.
The company financed his soccer aspirations and sponsored his team despite widespread reports that, just a few years earlier, his bodyguards had opened fire on soccer fans for booing a referee favouring him. Between 20 and 50 were killed in the ensuing chaos.Then there was Bashir al-Rayani, a professional soccer coach who challenged Saadi Gaddafi in 2005, only to disappear shortly before his bludgeoned body was dumped near his home.
According to witnesses, al-Rayani was last seen alive at Gaddafi's seaside villa.
And still, the reported gusher of cash to Saadi from SNC-Lavalin never stopped. After the revolution, Saadi Gaddafi was charged with this murder, but acquitted at trial in 2018.
From the Lockerbie bombing of the 80’s, to the prison massacres, the disappearances, the tortures and football killings, the systemic rape of young girls in the 2000’s, the blood trickled down through the decades, even through its brief years of Western “rehabilitation” after 9/11.
A deal that would be impossible for a company either convicted or on trial for bribery and corruption. And what's in it for Trudeau. LOL. Corruption is as Canadian as maple syrup, and the Trudeau Foundation is always open for donations.
In the struggle for political power, it is rarely useful to deploy the unvarnished truth. But occasionally, for whatever reason, the truth will slip out, as when US Congresswoman Ihlan Omar described fellow Muslim and African, Barack Obama, as the brutal and ruthless person he actually is.
Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar ripped former President Barack Obama in an interview published Friday, belittling his “pretty face” and saying his agenda of hope and change was an illusion.
She cited the “caging of kids” at the Mexican border and the “droning of countries around the world” on Obama’s watch — and argued that he wasn’t much different from President Trump
“His policies are bad, but many of the people who came before him also had really bad policies. They just were more polished than he was,” Omar said.
“And that’s not what we should be looking for anymore. We don’t want anybody to get away with murder because they are polished. We want to recognize the actual policies that are behind the pretty face and the smile.”
Here’s why a wise Darwinian need find no conflict between religious faith and pursuit of scientific truth. Indeed, it is a statement of why a wise evolutionist can be, and perhaps always should be, an exponent of religious faith:
Without a religious dimension, a commitment to human freedom is likely to be attenuated, too weak to make sacrifices in its name.
Europe’s political elites especially, but its citizens as well, believe in freedom and democracy of course, but they are reluctant to put the “good life” on hold and put lives on the line when freedom is in need of a champion — in the Balkans, the Sudan, Darfur or, in the Middle East.
The good of human freedom, by European lights, must be weighed against the risk and cost of actually fighting for it.
It is no longer transcendent, absolute.
In such a world, governed by a narrow utilitarian calculus, sacrifice is rare, churches go unattended and over time the spiritual capital that brought forth all that we know as the West is at risk of being lost.
Let me name five things that might turn the tables and perhaps, even begin to, if I was so bold to suggest, revive Europe.
First, coming to grips with its unique place in world history and renewing the importance and source of those original ideals.
Second, some comprehension that culture matters and Europe’s culture has been the most formative for Western-Christian civilization, what used to be termed, Christendom.
Third, accepting the social, political, economic and especially military responsibility of a great continent, now more and more united.
Fourth, realizing the too evident demographic realities and Islamization and stepping up to reverse them so as to avoid an eventual Eurabia.
And finally, and most critically in my estimation as a Christian, sparking the second great Reformation, spiritually such that there is a wider recognition of transcendence and a moving of the spirit of God across the whole continent from the western most shores of Portugal, Ireland and Britain to the eastern most steppes of Russia.
This statement draws urgent attention to the role of religion in determining the fate of civilizations. What it asserts is that religious faith, where it exists, through its influence on the behavior of both individuals and organizations alters the prospects for survival of human groups, whether they be families, tribes, or nations.
Evolutionists such as Richard Dawkins who deride religion because it is based on propositions that are inconsistent with scientific truth make a mockery of their own claimed scientific expertise. There is no reason why a religious faith should be based on literal scientific truth any more than nursery rhymes, fairy tales or epic poetry should be based on literal scientific truth. In fact, religion, like nursery rhymes, fairy tales or epic poetry, would have little appeal without an element of the supernatural. What matters, from a Darwinian perspective, is how faith, or for that matter nursery rhymes, fairy tales, or epic poetry, serves to shape individual and group behavior.
In abandoning Christianity, the West has abandoned belief in absolute values of right and wrong for the Humean proposition that "honesty is the best policy but the wise knave will take advantage of every exception." In fact, the condition of the post-Christian West, indeed the anti-Christian West, is even worse than that. Today, far from considering it knavish to be relentlessly self-serving, many consider it stupid to be otherwise. We know where that led the Soviet Union, but benighted rulers in the West unhesitatingly lead in the same direction.
That is not to say that all religions are equal. Some religious beliefs can no doubt be highly detrimental to human group survival, the Ebionite heresy, for example, which eschewed marriaged and child raising. There is little reason to doubt, however, that much of what has been best in Western civilization was the work of Christians and often inspired by religious ideals.
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.
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* 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.
Why he uses the word pure, I'm not sure, but as I recall from a history of the Victorian era, a means whereby poor city dwellers might earn a living was to collect dog shit, which they could sell for a shilling a bucket to tanneries, where it was used it to cure skins being made into leather. This useful commodity was known in the trade as pure. My assumption, therefore, is that Murray's use of the word pure indicates his view of the composition of the "official Skripal narrative."
In any case, Murray's provides a well informed examination of ten significant aspects of what he describes as a dark business.
Governments play dark games, and a dark game was played out in Salisbury which involved at least the British state, Russian agents (possibly on behalf of the state), Orbis Intelligence and the BBC. Anybody who believes it is simple to identify the “good guys” and the “bad guys” in this situation is a fool. When it comes to state actors and the intelligence services, frequently there are no “good guys”, as I personally witnessed from the inside over torture, extraordinary rendition and the illegal invasion of Iraq. But in the face of a massive media campaign to validate the British government story about the Skripals, here are ten of the things I do not believe in the official account.
Murray's review is both informative, and in a macabre way, amusing.
The very first person to discover the Skripals ill on a park bench in Salisbury just happened to be the Chief Nurse of the British Army, who chanced to be walking past them on her way back from a birthday party. How lucky was that? The odds are about the same as the chance of my vacuum cleaner breaking down just before James Dyson knocks at my door to ask for directions. There are very few people indeed in the UK trained to give nursing care to victims of chemical weapon attack, and of all the people who might have walked past, it just happened to be the most senior of them!
Of particular interest are points considered rarely if at all by other commentators, Murray, for example, points out the suggestive connections that Sergei Skripal had with the BBC, the British foreign intelligence service, MI6, and the creators of the anti-Trump Russian dossier.
In conclusion, Murray states:
I do not know what happened in Salisbury. Plainly spy games were being played between Russia and the UK, quite likely linked to the Skripals and/or the NATO chemical weapons exercise then taking place on Salisbury Plain yet another one of those astonishing coincidences.
What I do know is that major planks of the UK government narrative simply do not stand up to scrutiny.
Plainly the Russian authorities have lied about the identity of Borishov and Petrov. What is astonishing is the alacrity with which the MSM and the political elite have rallied around the childish logical fallacy that because the Russian Government has lied, therefore the British Government must be telling the truth. It is abundantly plain to me that both governments are lying, and the spy games being played out that day were very much more complicated than a pointless revenge attack on the Skripals.
It tells much of a man, the kind of people he seeks to have around him. This week, Canadians saw something of the quality of the man said to be not only the Prime Minister's closest friend, but until the week before last, the Prime Minister's Principal Secretary.
That man is Mr. Gerald Butts, and he came to public view while giving evidence, at his own request, before the Parliamentary Justice Committee. Here's one person's take on his character:
Mr. Butts ... was unctuous, slippery, flattering beyond bearing. Has he ever met a person for whom he doesn't have the highest regard and admiration, with whom he isn't friends, who isn't of the most sterling reputation and unassailable character.
He has not.
Christie Blatchford, NaPo, March 7, 2019
Not, perhaps, a personality best suited to advise a willful, inexperienced and none too bright leader. And surely not the best man to serve as the as the Prime Minister's whisperer.*
For the Liberal Party of Canada, the choice seems clear: drop Trudeau or lose in October by a landslide. The Conservatives, presumably, are rooting for Trudeau.
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* In Ancient Rome, a slave would continuously whisper ‘Remember you are mortal’ in the ears of victorious generals as they were paraded through the streets after coming home, triumphant, from battle.
Gerald Butts, former Principal Private Secretary to Prime Minister Trudeau, testifying before the Parliamentary Justice Committee to address charges that the Prime Minister's Office had improperly interfered in the work of the former Attorney General, opened with the words:
I can assure all members of this committee that I will tell the truth.
Oh good oh, now we can be confident of learning the unvarnished truth.
Butts then continued:
I would like to acknowledge that we are on the ancestral lands of the Algonquin people.
Wow! From a Prime Minister with a former Principal Secretary so sensitive to First Nations sensibilities, how could it be true, as alleged by the father of former Justice Minister and Attorney General, Jody Wilson-Raybould, the first First Nations person to serve in the Federal Government, that Justin Trudeau had kicked said Attorney General in the teeth?
In fact, from such a source, it seems hardly worthwhile to consider the specifics of his testimony. The guy is all spin and groveling flattery. But one thing he makes absolutely clear is that, in his view, government is not about facts and logic, but about ends. To the desired and predetermined ends, all facts and logic must be made to conform. And if that effort to create the Prime Minister's own reality does not at first succeed, then there must be meetings, and more meetings, and consultations, text messages, pressure even, and perhaps some interference in the course of justice, until the bullshit ultimately baffles brains. No wonder then that the Prime Minister's brains seem to be made of mush.
Clearly many liberals want out of this mess, and in particular, want new leadership. In 2015, after failed attempts by Martin, Dion, and Ignatieff, Trudeau, the man with the looks, the name, and the trendy SJW agenda, swept the liberals to power. But the promise far exceeded the performance, and in the wake of LavScam, the Libs face the possibility of a near wipe-out in the forthcoming fall election, their standing in the polls falling by the day. The sooner Trudeau steps aside to make way for a steady hand and level head at the helm, the better.
For the Conservatives, exactly the opposite consideration holds. The multi-balls-up Trudeau is their best hope of power under the leadership of the very pleasant and ineffectual-seeming Andrew Scheer. In the coming weeks, we may expect, therefore, to see the Tories offering little more than half-hearted criticism of Trudeau. Indeed, they must surely be hoping to see Gerald Butts, the PM's erstwhile brain, back at the PMO filling the PM's ear with soothing flattery and dreams of endless power. Related:
... Taken together, Butts’s testimony adds up to a portrait of a governing inner circle that would not ever take a “no” from a director of public prosecutions as final. They would not ever take Jody Wilson-Raybould’s refusal to correct the prosecutor as final. They could not believe an important decision could be made in a week and a half. They could not, themselves, manage a cabinet shuffle in a much longer span of time, except by making a mockery of its central strategic imperative. And they can provide no evidence for the jobs claim that, to this day, Gerald Butts still uses to browbeat anyone who would disagree with the government’s behaviour throughout this saga.
This was Team Trudeau’s best day since the saga began, because at least it featured somebody close to the Prime Minister speaking in complete sentences in a setting outside a campaign rally or a space-exploration news conference. I still found very little of it encouraging. ...
More than once in the course of his testimony to the Commons justice committee Gerald Butts said that he was not there to call anyone names or to cast aspersions on the character of Jody Wilson-Raybould.
Which is why the prime minister’s former principal secretary confined himself to depicting her as sloppy, closed-minded and unco-operative, while heavily implying the former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada was a serial fabulist who said nothing to anyone about attempts to interfere with her authority over criminal prosecutions until after she was shuffled out of her “dream job” in January. Otherwise he might have gotten really nasty. ...
...The government has tried to explain its belabouring of Wilson-Raybould as being perfectly appropriate. She was supposed to verrrry carefully consider the fate of 9,000 SNC-Lavalin jobs and a head office in Quebec, and then consider it again, and then consider it again. Butts tells us that they weren’t looking for a particular politically convenient answer, mind you.
They just stayed after her to keep reconsidering the answer she kept giving, explicitly or implicitly. They reassured her at every turn that the decision was hers. And then they got rid of her and made it someone else’s. ...
T
How much more punishment will the Liberals absorb before ditching Trudeau?
