Canadian Bruce Vigfusson’s year in a Mexican jail

Bruce Vigfusson

Canada’s central role in the global mining boom has meant that more Canadians are working in countries where they are at high risk of getting dragged into some serious trouble. That seems to be the case with Canadian Bruce Vigfusson, 43, who has been in jail in northern Mexico since September, 2012.

Vigfusson, who has worked as a surface driller for the Canadian firms G4 Drilling and Teck, as well as a local Mexican company, Itzcoaltl Drilling and Services, is now serving a four and a half year sentence in Mexico for assault.

“Bruce Vigfusson was already in Mexico when he started to work for us,” Robert Daigle, director of G4 Drilling Mexico, tells La politica. “He worked for us from April 27, 2011, until April 13, 2012.”

According to Mr. Daigle, after that Mr. Vigfusson went to work for Teck, where he didn’t last very long, and then to Itzcoaltl Drilling and Services.

Note to Trudeau and Freeland: China and India are not backing Canada’s middle class

Weiwei after the police assault:
The life of an artist in a "basic dictatorship" 

The Canadian Press recently reported that, as head of Reuters Digital in New York, Chrystia Freeland, who is running as the Liberal candidate in Toronto Centre, “moved the digital newsroom to New York and shipped the bulk of its work to the Bangalore operation”.

That in itself is hardly news. Many news organizations, including the Toronto Star, outsource some of their operations. However, most outsource call centres, classified, and design, while keeping editorial close to their chests. This, in fact, is what the Star does. It can then defend the action because it is able to allocate newsroom resources to its core business: journalism. And in fact the Star can argue it has been successful at this, breaking the Ornge scandal and bringing us the sordid truth about Toronto’s sordid mayor, Rob Ford.

With Chantal Hébert turning on Trudeau, odds now in favour of having hit Peak Justin

Freeland and Justin: hand-picked and parachuted

The media are often misunderstood. If they are perceived as not being objective, they are criticized as “biased”. The truth is that the media function more like a pack of jackals or, worse, vultures. They descend when they observe weakness, and fawn when they believe they are in the presence of success, confidence, and power.

Which is to say that the media do not behave like individuals, but like craven pack animals. Though they can have ideological slants, which can hasten or delay their arrival at a “story”, once a belly is revealed they will turn and dine on the carcass.

Media roundup: Justin, we have a problem

Not the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada

For many months now La politica has expressed dismay at the popular support for the phenomenon that is Justin Trudeau. No doubt, Trudeau’s relentless showering of platitudes, aggressive fundraising, low-key performance in the House of Commons,  and unwillingness to offer specifics on any issue outside of the Keystone XL pipeline and Quebec’s proposed “values” charter, have combined to form an effective strategy.

In one day, however, it all fell apart. He participated in an ill-advised “ladies night”, then said he admired China’s government above all others. In a heartbeat, Trudeau found himself in the midst of a withering attack by the media, that very group that for so long has given him an easy ride.

Pardons, American style: Peña Nieto frees Alberto Patishtán

Free at last

A pardon is an acknowledgement of two injustices. The first is the injustice of the initial conviction and sentence, and the second the injustice that a regal, presidential, or bureaucratic body can override the rule of law.

In parliamentary democracies, as in Canada, pardons tend to be bureaucratic, and are handled via parole boards. A pardon in Great Britain is rare, and does not have the formal, ritualistic quality common to departing presidents in the United States. Presidential republics, perhaps as a kind of psychological need to mimic the powers of the dethroned monarch, tend to relapse into a medieval, regal authority, with the commander in chief tossing out pardons at the end of a presidency much like condemned kings en route to the guillotine.

Was the Acapulco hit on Moreno Gallo local, or did the Mafia come to town?

The restaurant in Acapulco

At 9:20 Sunday evening at Forza Italia restaurant in Acapulco, Mexico, Moreno Gallo, 68, an Italian mobster who lived for decades in Canada, was gunned down.

Gallo was deported from Canada in 2012 due to his criminal record. He is understood to have once had significant influence within the Montreal mafia.

Mexican oil union boss dead at 91: thanked cartel leader for saving life from government killers

A long life

Joaquín Hernández Galicia “La Quina” the, 91-year-old former Pemex Union leader, has died in a hospital in Tampico, Tamaulipas.

Only last month Hernández Galicia told the Mexican press that it was thanks to psychopathic killer Caro Quintero, erstwhile leader of the Guadalajara Cartel, that his life was saved in prison. Caro Quintero was recently released on a technicality and now has a $5 million US government bounty on his head, with Mexico’s Supreme Court reversing the lower court decision that resulted in his release.