Covid Journal, June 22, 2020
Curious Financial Dealings With Nova Scotia Shooter
MacLean’s (not my favourite newes source, but I’ll save that for another day) has done some investigation into some very bizarre and significant financial transactions with the Nova Scotia shooter who murdered 22 people April 18-19. Unfortunately, they mention his name many times (I remove his name below and insert ‘murderer/terrorist’ as a more appropriate label), but the point of the article is that there are some weird connections with the RCMP that seem to point to the shooter being an informant or collaborator with the RCMP.
Every paragraph of this story reads like a WTF moment on top of another WTF moment.
The withdrawal of $475,000 in cash by the man who killed 22 Nova Scotians in April matches the method the RCMP uses to send money to confidential informants and agents, sources say.
Sources in both banking and the RCMP say the transaction is consistent with how the RCMP funnels money to its confidential informants and agents, and is not an option available to private banking customers.
If [the murderer/terrorist] was an RCMP informant or agent, it could explain why the force appeared not to take action on complaints about his illegal guns and his assault on his common-law wife.
A Mountie familiar with the techniques used by the force in undercover operations, but not with the details of the investigation into the shooting, says [the murderer/terrorist] could not have collected his own money from Brink’s as a private citizen.
At a press briefing on June 4, Nova Scotia RCMP Superintendent Darren Campbell seemed to rule out the possibility that [the murderer/terrorist] was a confidential informant for the force. “The gunman was never associated to the RCMP as a volunteer or auxiliary police officer, nor did the RCMP ever have any special relationship with the gunman of any kind.”
The RCMP Operations Manual, a copy of which was obtained by Maclean’s, authorizes the force to mislead all but the courts in order to conceal the identity of confidential informants and agent sources.
Maclean’s reported earlier this week that sources say [the murderer/terrorist] had social relationships with Hells Angels, and with a neighbour, Peter Alan Griffon, who recently finished serving part of a seven-year sentence for drug and firearm offences linked to La Familia, a Mexican cartel. Sources say Griffon printed the decals that [the murderer/terrorist] used on the replica RCMP cruiser he used in his rampage.
It goes on. Every paragraph is a mind-buster.
I’m trying really hard not to fall for the array of conspiracy theories that are floating around during these days of Covid, but I’m also dumbfounded by the details that unearthed by MacLean’s.
The only thing that’s keeping me from believing this is a full-blown conspiracy is that there’s yet to be a ‘qui bono‘ moment. Covid vaccines? Blame Gates. 9/11? Blame the Saudis. Or the Pentagon. But 22 people murdered in Nova Scotia for … what? Being too idyllic?
I have to admit that this story has me a little shaken and I honestly don’t know what to make of it.
It’s VERY disturbing.
Is It Time To Force Companies to ‘De-Incorporate’ If Their Actions Result in Death?
This is a doozy of a topic. Most people will just brush the idea off and say that if the people involved are tried and convicted, why punish the shareholders, lenders and employees of a company?
Consider this story with Pacific Gas and Electric in California.
The CEO of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) pled guilty on behalf of the company Tuesday to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in a dramatic hearing regarding the devastating Camp Fire of 2018, but advocates for corporate accountability argued the nation’s largest utility should face more concrete consequences for the crime.
CEO Bill Johnson entered guilty pleas for PG&E for each of the 84 deaths on Tuesday as the Butte County Superior Court displayed photos of each victim. The company also pled guilty to starting the fire unlawfully, another felony.
Despite the investigation concluding that corporate wrongdoing in the interests of boosting shareholder profits and saving money for the $85 billion utility, which serves 16 million people, was to blame for the fire, Superior Court Judge Michael Deems is expected this week only to slap PG&E with a $3.5 million fine—equivalent to less than $42,000 per victim—plus $500,000 for the cost of the investigation.
Here’s the basic idea: the second a company like PG&E enters an investigation like this, the government would have the power to freeze all activities, including the stock, exchange of any assets and focus solely on paying employees what they’re owed during the proceedings.
I’m sure this happened to some extent, but here’s the next detail: if found guilty, the company would be desolved, the assets would be handed over to public ownership and representatives of the court would then first pay the families of the victims a reasonable setttlement (and not $42,000 per person). All remaining assets would then come under the ownership of the public to be sold off to competitors or nationalized as a functional public asset to be operated by the government on behalf of the people.
This bullshit of protecting the sanctity of the company has to end.
We use the guise of ‘the company’ to protect people from gross and indecent acts and we should no longer tolerate this.
Of course, I know it will never happen because what happens when the families of arms manufacturers take their complaints to the courts for various companies complicit in the murder of their loved ones? I can think of a couple of dozen companies that have based their entire existence on human misery for the last 100 years and they’re far too influential and powerful to allow some fantasy like this to actual come knocking at their door.