Bigger fish...

Through all the mind-numbing histrionics of the Rob Ford saga, the large pachyderm in the room is not the Mayor himself but THE question: what could be the target of Toronto police investigations?

It was StunTV Ezra Levant who indirectly raised the edge of the rug, with his habitual shrieeking excesses on the Ford Nation premiere* yesterday. His flamboyant misdirection might have backfired, in this case.

At DJ! we started wondering about the Fords' agenda, back when Rob tried so desperately to bring a casino to Toronto.

Gambling and organized crime are long-time associates. It's worth noting that Sheldon Adelson is a huge supporter of the Republican party, and is currently under investigation.

And now, the Fords have retained the counsel of George Rust-d'Eye** to defend Rob's interests. Some say he's an over-rated, over-priced, way past his best-before-date shill. Will taxpayers have to pay for Crack Mayor's legal bills?

Rust-D'Eye is known for spectacular invoices that he believes reflect every penny's worth of his *expertise*, and his overbearing manner of delivery.

A carefully cultivated façade of punctilious and unctuous civility... The man has a history of advancing semi-truth, under the cover of legal advice and 'integrity'... though eventually facts do surface.

But back to Levant. The overweening excuse for his trademark trashy and flashy infotainment glurge: that he has a civic duty to speculate about the underbelly of his ideological and political opponents.

So, let's speculate about the Fords, shall we?  Are investigations also probing the possible existence of organized crime schemes? 

Is the family business involved with wise guys?  Did the illegal adolescent antics of Doug, Kathy and Rob provide leverage to pressure Doug Senior into mutually beneficial business arrangements?

There are historical precedents.  The Kennedy dynasty and wealth was founded on criminal entrepreneurship.  And the stench never left that cursed, tragic family, in spite of patriarch Joe's obssessive drive for respectability and political power.

Consider the range of resources dedicated to Ford surveillance.  It only makes sense to use a plane and that level of staff deployment if there's much, much more involved than only Rob scoring dope. Are there many Canadian and US law-enforcement agencies conducting forensic analysis to follow financial transactions and shipment of goods? 

Project Traveller looked at guns and gangs. Project Brazen dealt with drug dealers.

What else could there be... Money-laundering? Drug-smuggling? Contracted murders?

What other factual dots remain to be connected?

Here's a link to a brilliant compilation of Ford Bros shenanigans from Alison at Creekside. The picture at the top is her work.

My co-blogger fern hill has done much heavy lifting to date, in blogposts after blogposts about dodgy and bizarre Ford clan machinations, as well as documents linking them to criminal elements.

If TPS investigators have diligently and scrupulously gathered evidence required so that charges can be filed, and prosecutors can make their case, it will be an EPIC take-down.  No wonder Police Chief Blair was so circumspect during his media conference.

Unfortunately, the Fords (and their silent business partners?) have deep, deep pockets.  

As with Michael Bryant, lawyers will use all the legal tactics and loopholes available to get their clients off the hook, if the TPS investigation even gets to trial.

It was clearly said here, you can bully and bluff your way out of anything, when you're a wealthy, christian, well-CONnected, privileged, heterosexual and cis white man.

*Just when I was about to publish this blogpost, we heard that StunTV has aborted Ford Nation.  Darn.  And I was about to launch the hashtag #FORdNicATION, too!

** Thanks to our Vaughn insiders who steered me towards more info about Rust-D'Eye.

Is the CPC a criminal organization?

According to this recent Supreme Court of Canada decision which defines a "criminal organization", Harper's CONservative party is that, in its repeated and sytematic and widespread disregard for Elections Canada laws and regulations.

The Criminal Code defines “criminal organization” as any group of three or more people “however organized” whose main purpose or activity is the commission of serious crimes.

The definition excludes a group that just gets together to commit a single office.

Fish wrote that courts should take a flexible approach in defining what constitutes a criminal organization.

“Care must be taken, however, not to transform the shared attributes of one type of criminal organization into a ‘checklist’ that needs to be satisfied in every case.”

Not every gang has to be as structured as the Mafia or the Hell’s Angels.

“Courts must not limit the scope of the provision to the stereotypical model of organized crime — that is, to the highly sophisticated, hierarchical and monopolistic model,” he wrote.

But there should be some structure and some longevity.

“Some criminal entities that do not fit the conventional paradigm of organized crime may nonetheless, on account of their cohesiveness and endurance, posed the type of heightened threat contemplated by the legislative scheme.”

How CONtemptuous! How CONvenient!

Source of illustration: Montreal Simon's blog.

Is it crying time again?

Please shed a tear or two for poor persecuted pope Maledict and his Vatican Taliban.

According to this, catholic church officials are "perplexed and amazed" that their private banking institution have come under criminal investigation. It is also reported that they are "in shock" because the state has frozen accounts.

An update:

The Vatican says the seizure by police of €23 million ($30 million) from a Vatican bank account and the investigation of two top bank officials is due to a misunderstanding that should be clarified quickly. [...] Italian financial police seized the money as a precaution Tuesday and Rome prosecutors placed the bank's chairman, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, and his director general, Paolo Cipriani, under investigation for alleged mistakes linked to violations of the norms.

Just a misunderstanding. Say, isn't that the same excuse used for decades to justify clergical obstructiveness with regard to preventing the criminal investigation of priests' pedophilia?

More:

[...] the Vatican bank had neglected to communicate to financial authorities where the money had come from. The reports stressed that Gotti Tedeschi wasn't being investigated for laundering money himself but for a series of alleged omissions in the transactions. [...] Gotti Tedeschi has said he was "humiliated and mortified" by the probe but that the transfers in question were for perfectly normal transactions.

It's simple. Just tell the secular authorities where the money originated, Gotti. Shouldn't the chairman of a financial institution, likely paid a 7 digit salary + benefits, know about such regulations?

The Family That Preys Together.

Via Crooks and Liars, we learn the evangelical religious writing of John Eldredge - who broke away from Focus on the Family - is providing La Familia Michoacana, a notorious Mexican drug cartel, with a blueprint for the ideal organizational structure.

By using a patriarchal family model as the template for building the perfect hierarchy

... La Familia has developed into a faith-based right-wing populist social movement emanating from and orchestrated by an organization that happens to be a well-armed, well-financed violent criminal enterprise.

... an internal intelligence report on La Familia from the Mexican justice department surfaced, bringing the news that the faith-based cartel grounds its indoctrination program on the writings of macho Christian author and veteran Focus On The Family senior fellow John Eldredge, who now heads Ransomed Hearts Ministries in Colorado Springs.

Eldredge made his name as one of the prime leaders for Dobson's anti-gay crusade when he worked for FOTF. There is more about his influence in this July Dogs blogpost which also includes a grisly photograph of severed heads from an execution carried out by La Famila members. It would seem that some macho adherents of Eldredge's "muscular" and "tribal" religious doctrine are following it literally.