Comments:Beleaguered British Columbia Premier resigns

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Use of political blogs as reliable sources

I'm not familiar with WikiNews protocols so hesitate to add information and context to this article if I am limited to using the mainstream media, who in British Columbia are widely considered untrustworthy and evasive and very much an information organ of the political alliance underlying the present government and how it came to power. Certain blogs have been critical to the ongoing public investigation of the activities of Campbell and his government and his allies, with the mainstream media only picking up on certain issues when they had to, and only attending court, in the case of the Basi-Virk matter, on rare occasions, and rarely (if ever) reporting on the - again, only when they had to, or when something was deemed too sensational to be able to withhold (such as the destruction of years of email records, legally mandated to be preserved, by someone in the Premier's Office in the weeks leading into the last election, a matter which remains uninvestigated and also passed over by the mainstream media, though they did report on it at the time. The major media's compliance with the re-instated court ban on that case, vs. their determined effort to open the concurrent Pickton trial evidence and proceedings, also originally under a publication ban, made public.

I bring this all up in re the current content, which does not fully capture the mood of public outrage in the wake of the resignation speech in combination with resentment against the sudden, evidently bought, closure of the BC Rail trial and all the evidence that was lining up to prove massive conspiracy and fraud by politicians and corporate interests. The mainstream media have been claiming it's only the HST that brought Campbell down and is the reason for the incipient revolt in the Liberal caucus; Bill Bennett's resignation points to a great deal more, and if you dig for Paul Nettleton's speeches and letters, there's even more in there. BC Hydro/IPPs, fish farms, rotten PPP deals on infrastructure, outsourcing of government agencies and services to US companies - the media have ignored all that, blithely going along, but the public have been outraged for a long time; the secret deal (and accompanying publication ban) on the guilty plea, the muzzling of Dave Basi with stiffer sentence conditions because he attempted to give an interview to the CBC, and now the new mega-Ministry of Natural Resource Operations which other cabinet ministers and the caucus had not been consulted on (that's reached the Globe today, however); that's all raised in the blogs first, with the major papers and networks all following on, slowly and inaccurately, when issues revealed in teh blogs become too hot to remain silent on. The "commercial alternative media" like the Georgia Straight and The Tyee covered things very well, in limited space, but they are not nationally syndicated or condensed like the mainstream media do, as also with independent journalists of note like Sean Holman and Kevin Potvin; other Canadians, and others in other countries, do not know about the abuses of democracy and public trust underlying this resignation and of the evidence of sweeping, systemic corruption in British Columbia governance, whther it's influence peddling or rigged contracts and rigged bdding processes (or just sometimes no public tender at all, which is illegal). but many things that are illegal the courts, teh RCMP, the Crown/Ministry of the Attorney-General are in control of investigating or not; traditional media's investigative role in BC has long been neutered, the growth of BC's political blogging community in response to that vacuum in reportage/investigation is in fact a very newsworthy story in its own right, with the internet proving to be the organ of democracy that the mainstream media have not just failed to be, but avoided being.

Already in Wikipedia, certain journalist blogs and leading political blogs like BC Mary (http://bctrialofbasi-virk.blogspot.com), journalist blogs like Tieleman, Rafe Mair and independent researchers like Laila Yuile are recognized sources of open, public information and debate; there's also the Terrace Daily and the Gulf Islands Tides and the paper in Powell River, among others, which have led the charge with the facts, while the mainstream media spew only disinformation and spin pretending to be news. All these are used in Wikipedia, I hope they're OK here....

As a COI disclosure, my well-known Wiki username is also my blogging name, though I do not run my own blog, so my efforts here will attempt to be as neutral in tone (though complete in content) as possible - though it's also necessary to cite analyses and opinion originating somewhere than on the national networks or out of the mouths of party and public relations spokespeople. Of course anything *I* add will have to be fully cited, and my intention isn't to "blog the article". But there's lots to update here, perhaps further articles/headlines rather than lengthening this one, but the political crisis in BC is only going to get bigger; hopefully there's enough contributors such that WikiNews can be the free press that the mainstream press aren't. Updates include the opening of the leadership race with Moira Stilwell and I think Blair Lekstrom, plus Christy Clark going away to thinkg about it (though I saw a "Draft Christy Clark" ad on Facebook a little while ago). Underlying context is reports - even in the mainstream media - that the caucus and cabinet are upset with the recent cabinet shuffle, even more than they were with the 15% tax cut, since withdrawn, which they were left uninformed about and not consulted on. We may see a caucus revolt yet...given who wins the leadership race, or before then, if it turns out the Campbell has demurred on his resignation - instead of immediately stepping down - he's staying on long enough to set things in motion that no future government can reverse, of whichever party.

Calls for a public inquiry into the conduct of his government are mounting (again, not just in blogspace, though it started there) and news that the RCMP have promised to protect the case evidence for at least twelve years, guaranteeing it will be available to any such inquiry (this on Tieleman's blog from Kelly deBruckyere), underscores the reality that it's not just resentment against the HST that pressured him from office - what really did it was the direction the Basi-Virk case was going, with aggressive defence lawyers embarrassing the government, and its Crown witnesses, in a direction that was going to lead to awkward interrogations of the heads of CIBC World Markets, all the major railways, party backroom deity Patrick Kinsella, the Premier's staff including his with-him-all-the-time Executive Assistant, and not a few cabinet ministers. And that's only the Crown's witnesses, not the Defence's unknown list. The Crown sought an adjournment to shorten the witness list from 40 to 20 - similar its move to extend the length of the trial from its originally scsheduled and incredibly brief six weeks - but I'd imagine a lot of those witnesses didn't want to go up on the chopping block. The adjournment was a smokescreen; by the end of the weekend news of the guilty pleas and whatever secret bargain got them, and arranged for the defendants' legal bills to be covered, hit like a brick, and more questions started to be asked - including those about corruption of the court process, the inaction of the RCMP, the selective targeting of only certain evidence and only three staff, the closure of discussion on the defence position that they were acting under orders (the Premier's orders).....the public knew all this - and more importantly, so did, increasingly, the power brokers behind who gets into power and who gets to stay there. Campbell bought himself time, apparently, so as to "get things done", including this new vision of "Natural Resource Operations", but given the scale of public discontent - and avid curiosity - the power brokers told him "time to go, there's too much evidence, it's only going to get worse and it's not just you that might wind up in jail". That's the scenario - public outrage over the Basi-Virk deal and everything associated with it - not the amount of public money paid out (which if anything raised the huge question of "Why?"). That public resentment/outrage, and all the questions it raised (and won't go away) is's why he resigned, not the HST. But he didn't really resign; word was he even intended that the leadership race be postponed until later in the year.....that was prevented by the threat of a repeat of the caucus vote. Where did I learn all this? Not in the mainstream media (except in scattered pieces from them, and "only when they had to").Skookum1 (talk) 05:52, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I'd hope that there are other contributors, and I also hope that the wider internet community becomes aware of the possibilities of WikiNews, for whatever country or province or state. Much under-utilized, but takes input to really serve "the news" well...but also a platform for news sources and news services, not limited to "mainstream" reliable sources, but open to ALL reliable sources; many of which are far more verifiable than the mainstream media can quite reliably be shown not to be....the blogs are where the issues come from, the media usually only admit to whateever after the fact, often by many months....Skookum1 (talk) 06:03, 30 November 2010 (UTC)