207. When is a system CORRUPT* ?

VIEWS@13859

*corrupt |kəˈrəpt| adjective1 having or showing a willingness to act dishonestly in return for money or personal gain:• evil or morally depraved: the play can do no harm since its audience is already corrupt.
• archaic (of organic or inorganic matter) in a state of decay; rotten or putrid: a corrupt and rotting corpse.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Synonyms 1. false, untrustworthy, dishonest, venal (showing or motivated by susceptibility to bribery especially in public office), 2. one who acts on mercenary motives, without regard to honor, right, or justice. 3. A corrupt politician is one originally honest who has succumbed to temptation and begun questionable practices. A dishonest politician is one lacking native integrity. A venal politician is one so totally debased as to sell patronage., 4. contaminated.  5. putrescent, rotten,spoiled. 6. demoralize, bribe. 7. debase, vitiate. 8. contaminate, pollute,spoil, defile. 9. putrefy.
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Corrupt - in an exemplary democracy no less. What is it in our species that allows for this?Ultimately it must be greed, or some driven NEED, where the sense of 'having,' or belonging becomes the deciding factor. If you train the mind to pay homage to the hierarchy of the status quo, righteousness trumps conscience.* In sufficient numbers it verifies the elite's allowances. Who am I to question 'justice'? "That's just the way it is." Feudalism reigns on, alive and well. I keep reiterating: Survival of the fittest. Do as we say, or else. It may be as simple as that. 

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* conscience |ˈkänCHəns| noun; an inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one's behavior: he had a guilty conscience about his desires | Ben was suffering  pangs of conscience.
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So our demo-crazy continues to be governed by powerful hypocrites. This is now the norm.

Get used to it.  Can we, as serf plebeians, at least change their titles?   

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 judge |jəj| nouna public official appointed to decide cases in a court of law.• a person who decides the results of a competition or watches for infractions of the rules.• a person able or qualified to give an opinion on something: she was a good judge of character.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It doesn't state: a learned, qualified, noble, highly principled human being; merely: "a public official appointed to decide cases in a court * of law."who "watches for infractions of the rules." Though likely always aware of the infractions, all is guided by the 'rules' as interpreted from within, depending on the mood, the urge, the promise, the possible advantages and, yes, the demeanour of 'the party.' The chosen ones always benefit.  Questioning outsiders become mere fodder.   -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------* court |kôrt| noun1 (also court of law *) a tribunal presided over by a judge, judges, or a magistrate in civil and criminal cases: a settlement was reached during the first sitting of the court | she will take the matter to court| [ as modifier ] :  a court case.• the place where a court meets.• (the court) the judge or judges presiding at a court.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------* law |lô| noun1 (often the law) the system of rules that a particular country or community recognizes as regulating the actions of its members and may enforce by the imposition of penalties: they were taken to court for breaking the law| a license is required by law| [ as modifier ] :  law enforcement.• an individual rule as part of a system of law: an initiative to tighten up the laws on pornography.• systems of law as a subject of study or as the basis of the legal profession: he was still practicing law.====================================================
NOTE how it speaks of "a system of law" / "as the basis of the legal profession." 
====================================================Lastly: 
After some 4 months of corresponding with several individuals in the Minister of Justice of BC's Office (Time flies when you are dealing with 'The System'), though the tonality of exchange continues to be polite, it is becoming clear their officials are not prepared to discuss the specific details I am wanting to address.  I am speaking of Counsel to Counsel; me being the Plaintiff as Self Representing Litigant; they being the Defendant, as Government, as suggested in the Guidebook of the Crown Proceeding Act literature. The Government to be treated like just another 'individual' or 'corporation.'   
Answered responses generally contain additional references to legal text through government links, with a kind of arm's length attitude. I have encountered, and now clearly established, a certain impenetrable wall.
If only I could shout, as Ronald Reagan did at the Berlin wall,  "Take down that wall Mr. Gorbachev!" 
- Take down that wall you bureaucrats and let your people IN! 
I am awaiting response to a one last effort. Should it not render the requested information, I shall take a leap of faith soon, and see what happens.
The waste of time, energy and general cost remains horrendous.

 

205. Re: Government / Courts Websites.

VIEWS@13762

Below some quotes from today's 'Open Law Lab' Blog:

"When we talk about terrible websites, it's not just that they look like they're from 1999 (though that's definitely a part of it). It's also that the processes are burdensome, unclear, and made even more so with bad web experience and interaction design."

"All of it adds up to hugely expensive sites that are not usable for the target audiences, and that aren't flexible enough to adapt to changing times' standards of what good, trustworthy, engaging, confidence-inspiring websites look like."

"This certainly isn't just a federal government agency problem. The same bad-outdated-confusing website criticism applies to most every court website I have experienced."

Attesting to the above, I recount my online government instructions regarding the filing/ service methods of my 'Written Questions' during the Discovery phase, way back in 2010, as per Rule 35.01 (below). 

When you visit the CANLII.org site you will note the continuous 'updating' by year....although the below texts continue to be the same...
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RULE 35 PROCEDURE ON EXAMINATION FOR DISCOVERY BY WRITTEN QUESTIONS

35.01  An examination for discovery by written questions and answers shall be conducted by serving a list of the questions to be answered (Form 35A) on the person to be examined and every other party. 

ANSWERS

35.02  (1)  Written questions shall be answered by the affidavit (Form 35B) of the person being examined, served on the examining party within fifteen days after service of the list of questions.

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FAILURE TO ANSWER

Further List of Questions

35.04  (1)  Where the examining party is not satisfied with an answer or where an answer suggests a new line of questioning, the examining party may, within ten days after receiving the answer, serve a further list of written questions which shall be answered within fifteen days after service. R.R.O. 1990, Reg. 194, r. 35.04 (1).

Court Order for Further Answers

(2)  Where the person being examined refuses or fails to answer a proper question or where the answer to a question is insufficient, the court may order the person to answer or give a further answer to the question or to answer any other question either by affidavit or on oral examination

........... .....>>>>......

Additional Sanctions

(4) Where a person refuses or fails to answer a proper question on a written examination or to produce a document that he or she is required to produce, the court may, in addition to imposing the sanctions provided in subrules (2) and (3),

(a) if the person is a party or a person examined on behalf or in place of a party, dismiss the party’s action or strike out the party’s defence;

(b) strike out all or part of the person’s evidence; and

(c) make such other order as is just.  R.R.O. 1990, Reg. 194, r. 35.04 (4).

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Ah Yes! a 'proper' question. Not one with a 'semblance' of relevance, but relevant to the issues at hand!  Well, the issues "at hand" I have learned, are whatever the court decides to be 'relevant.'

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IMPROPER CONDUCT OF EXAMINATION

35.05 On motion by the person being examined, or by any party, the court may terminate the written examination or limit its scope where,

(a) the right to examine is being abused by an excess of improper questions; or

(b) the examination is being conducted in bad faith, or in an unreasonable manner so as to annoy, embarrass or oppress the person being examined. 
(Underlined + emboldened by me) 
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So, having prepared some 100 + RELEVANT, contract related questions, I served and filed them.

Having noted a 15 day legal window allowance for a Defence's response, after a reminder to their Defense Counsel to please acknowledge receipt of same, and, upon receiving it being asked for a time  extension, I offered "a month."  This turned out to be insufficient, and the battle was on. 

Matters went down-hill ever since. Not only was the 15 day legal response ignored, I was sent a 'newer' longer, more expansive 'Discovery Plan' to which the parties were to sign up for and agree upon. 
The earlier, acknowledged delivery of my written questions was now being entirely ignored. 

Not only did Master Roger at a September 2010 first Conference acknowledge my earlier delivery of the Rule 35A Questions, the fact some 5 months had passed WITHOUT ANSWERS was NEVER QUESTIONED.

And in the end, both Court and Defense Counsel, with their direct objective to drive me COMPLETELY INSANE, had decided to activate the above 'IMPROPER CONDUCT OF EXAMINATION ' themselves, by asking me to answer such questions as to: "When did I retire?" and "What jobs did I perform as a Handyman?" All clearly questions relevant to a fully paid for earlier unusable website. 

My insistent request on having the following sentence handed me down by Master Roger explained: "Under the circumstances all questions are found to be relevant; the Plaintiff shall answer them."  
was met by the following Court responses, which led to the claim's dismissal: 

The senior Master's response was to pass the proverbial 'Jurisdictional' buck by reference to the previous Master:

McLeod: "...that is what Master Roger was supposed to take in to account when he made his order." ...."into account proportionality and the other purposes of the rules. And one of the things that the court can do is to intervene to prevent ongoing, unnecessary discovery, but..."
Steen: (hopeful) "Yes."
MacLeod: "...that's not what we're dealing with today."
Steen: "Well, that's what I thought we were dealing with." 
Macleod: "Well, we're not. We're dealing with the fact that you were ordered to answer these things, so the determination that they were necessary has already been made by the court, you've just..."
Steen: "Without.."
Macleod:...decided...
Steen:... without...
Macleod: ...to disagree...
Steen: ....explaining it? 
Macleod: "Well, it's not the role of the Court to give you advice, so..."
etc. etc. 
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Ah yes, 'WELL' there you have it. This time the Officer in Charge of the Court proceedings decides it does not give advice. I never asked for advice in the first place; I asked for a legitimate EXPLANATION! 
BUT! All is under the bridge now. The Court has a mind of its own, each time it hands out an ORDER!

Do not QUESTION THE COURT, because they are beyond The Law; each and every one of them.
It took me a long time to figure this out. Thanks to Rodell and others, I get it now. 
From Kaiser Harper and his Superior bunch in Ottawa, to a circuit Judge in Rural BC, 
>  relevant truth is in the eye of the beholder.

Corruption is alive and well, and without a conscience, reigning over us.

Have a nice day > EH?    

204. Chapter one: "MODERN MEDICINE MEN"

VIEWS@ 13,734

I have been reading Fred Rodell's book 'WOE UNTO YOU, LAWYERS.'
Written in 1939 (year of my birth) at 32, he re-published it in 1957, deciding to leave it exactly the same.

What is remarkable about both the book and the man who was Professor of Law at Yale University,  it is still so timely, and colloquial. The book's home is at UBC, made available through the interlibrary loan system. I am amazed and thankful of this fully-free service!

His foreword starts: "No lawyer will like this book. It isn't written for lawyers. It is written for the average man and its purpose is to try to plant in his head a seed of skepticism about the whole legal profession, its works and its ways." It ends with: "When I was mulling over the notion of writing this book, I outlined my ideas about the book, and about the law, to a lawyer who is not only able but also extraordinarily frank and perceptive about his profession. "Sure," he said, "but why give the show away?" "That clinched it."

Here are some additional quotes:

"Plenty of people have long suspected that the lawyers with their long words were indulging in nothing more or less than wholesome flimflam, but when it comes down to trying to take the flimflam, with all its myriad trappings, apart, people just can't be bothered. And even a personally conducted tour through the mirror mazes of legal logic becomes tiring and confusing."

Don't I know it!

"Certainly it is only because of their passionate belief in the machine-like and inexorable quality of The Law that non-lawyers continue to submit their disputes and their civilization to legal decree. Certainly too, the law boys themselves are anxiously aware that they must keep up the pretense if they are to keep their prestige and their power."  

"The sober truth is that the myriad principles of which The Law is fashioned resemble nothing so much as old saws, dressed up in legal language and paraded as gospel." ... "The Law not only is not an exact science, but cannot be an exact science - so long as it is based on abstract principles while dealing with specific problems." "It would be far too easy to pile up example after example of the nonsense that is legal language." "Thus the whole abracadabra of The Law swings around a sort of circular paradox." ..."No wonder then that the lawyers can never translate their lingo in to plain English so that it makes any sense at all."... "Thus legal language works as a double protection of the mighty fraud of The Law."

"Moreover, the fact that The Law is constantly for sale, and generally to the highest bidder, ties right in to the fact that The Law as a whole is a fraud..... It lies behind all the inequalities and all the injustices."

Rodell's last Chapter: LET'S LAY DOWN THE LAW, opens with Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part II line: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."

Ah yes, well, all the world's a stage and easy for Shakespeare to say. But really?

"What is to be done about the fact that we are all slaves to the hocus-pocus of The Law - and to those who practice the hocus-pocus, the lawyers."

Rodell suggests the following:
"There is only one answer. To get rid of the lawyers and throw The Law with a capital 'L' out of our system of laws. To do away entirely with both the magicians and their magic and run our civilization according to practical and comprehensible rules, dedicated to non-legal justice, to common-or-garden fairness that the ordinary man can understand, in the regulation of human affairs....."

"It is never easy to tear down a widely and deeply accepted set of superstitions about the management of men's affairs. But it is always worth trying. And given enough support, the effort will always succeed. The difficulty lies only in convincing enough people that they are being fooled."

Rodell actually suggests a civilized and peaceful revolution.  Again, he wrote this in 1939!
Please Google this fascinating man, who died in 1980, after writing several other, no doubt informative books.    

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Disconcerting is that while so many in our society are under its spell, few are prepared to challenge it. Truth is, these systems are so well dug in, to change them would literally take a revolution. However, people are generally too busy to bother. The work to achieving anything would take gargantuan efforts of organization, whether it is tackling the Banking system, the Police, Insurance, Health, Real Estate, large Corporations, name it, the fine-lawyer-written print ne'er read by any of us absolves them all. So we rather continue to live the hypocrisy of a skewed and corrupt existence.

But with the access and speed of the Internet now, we can reach each other in seconds. This is the Information age, bringing greater awareness at lightening speed. Organization itself is sped up as we can note with the birth of a plethora of well-meaning online run, serious causes.

If they could only band together we might really be able to create a sensible democracy. Sure, we'd piss off the few well-established, but at least we'd be more fair to the masses, while living a more honourable existence. The opportunity to put an end to feudalism? Doesn't it sound tempting?

And hey! We need not kill anyone; merely give them the option to live with cleaner consciences.
And since we would still require their services, giving those professions a more acceptable entitlement by rediscovering a truer more wholesome meaning of life, while managing towards reform and rediscovery of our equilibrium amongst all creatures, we could truly become a better integrated species.

(From Susan Miller's Astrological predictions for a new century: 'The Age of Aquarius'
"Aquarius puts emphasis on group activities and community, thus we have the Internet and the eye of the global village which we call television. Aquarius is a very social sign." 

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PS: Continuing to take my time preparing my application against the Minister of Justice,
I am at this stage attempting to receive direct input response from their office.
Acknowledging the office, as if it were "a person," as suggested by the Rules, below, my efforts are as I would proceed/ speak with any 'other' opposing Counsel.

As can be expected, having managed several exchanges (which I am appreciating) the timbre of the office's response is to neither answer my rule allowable questions, nor give me the sense I am dealing with an individual (i.e., I am receiving a bit of a generalized run around by several deputies).

At some point soon I will need to take the plunge, file, and absorb the response.
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CROWN PROCEEDING ACT

[RSBC 1996] CHAPTER 89

(c) the government is subject to all the liabilities to which it would be liable if it were a person, and

(d) the law relating to indemnity and contribution is enforceable by and against the government for any liability to which it is subject, as if the government were a person

203. Legal Versus Justice

VIEWS@13653

Chris Budgell emailed me below, and allows me to post it here.

"Jan,

I long ago understood from my reading that a legal system is not necessarily a justice system.  This observation has been made countless times by members of the profession, but the average citizen doesn't really understand what that means.  There is now a great deal of rhetoric extant about "the rule of law".  This includes that there is a "thin" version and a "thick" version.  One can easily argue that we are the beneficiaries of the (or a) thin version, which starts with a principle that all laws must be knowable to everyone they effect.  Nominally we have a structure in Canada that makes all our laws "knowable" (though I would say in practice that's not even close to being true).

A dictator (name your favorite) can then easily claim to be in compliance with this thin rule of law.  What we have is a very complex tyranny, but it is a tyranny nonetheless.  It is much harder to discern such a complex system as a tyranny.  It is easy for those who collectively wield the power to confuse the public with rhetoric.  They are assisted by a compliant press.

I don't think that leaves us with only the options of acquiescence or revolution.  It's still early days for the Internet, that no one, crucially those who wield the power, saw coming.  You now have the means to access the vast body of laws and the record of jurisprudence.  That has allowed me, an unschooled amateur, to find the evidence I think conclusively proves certain people have lied.  They lied, and are continuing to lie, at the Labour Board about the legislation (Labour Code section 13) that they claim enables them to summarily dismiss duty of fair representation complaints.  That evidence includes a document signed in 1998 by four people, one of whom is now a sitting judge.  I've named her in three complaints filed with the Canadian Judicial Council.  In responding to me they alerted me to the fact that they illegally altered their bylaws, by creating section 2.2 of what they now call their Complaints Procedures.

These two examples of lawlessness (and recklessness) suggest that the record contains a great many others that no one has gone looking for.  Sooner or later someone is going to find a way to put something of this sort to a jury.  Or a member of the press corp will find the courage to present it to the court of public opinion, a court that has recently been demonstrating that it can try and convict people.  There are signs that is starting to worry the authorities.  And that would be because they know their system has no real legitimacy.

... cb "