I am not a crook: ‘I am not soft on crime,’ Rich Coleman insists after damning casino report. This is a smoking gun.  If Coleman isn’t soft on crime, Eby is rock hard.

“We could have done a better job,” Coleman said, calling the German report “fair and balanced” while deflecting Eby’s harsh criticism”. The fentanyl crisis. The housing crisis. How many people have died and you’re just playing this off as a bit of red tape that got in your way?

Like water off a duck’s back: ‘It was an unintentional failure,’ says former attorney general of money laundering fiasco. What the fuck is an unintentional failure? Is that a tacit admission that their litany of other failures were intentional? BC Rail? Quick Wins? Triple Delete? Site C? Air Christy? ‘Wild West of Fundraising’? Shadow Flipping? ICBC? BC Hydro? Mount Polley? Prosperity Fund? Boesenkool? Laura Miller? Om the Bridge? The death of Roderick MacIsaac? The deaths of children coming out of Foster Care?

It boggles the mind that these people think that they are not criminally responsible because “no government is perfect”. The B.C. Lottery Commission was bringing in more than $1.1 billion to government coffers. Since 2005, the B.C. Liberal Party has accepted $232,709 in donations from casinos across the province. This is not a “failure of co-ordination between the different bodies”, this is crime.

It’s a ‘sad exercise’ blaming past politicians for money laundering failures, says B.C. Liberal leader. It’s a sad exercise pinpointing with incredibly detailed accuracy the exact root of the problem. I guess people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones at the people who built the glass houses and then flipped them to buyers paying in laundered cash.

Meme of the day:

While the image above is funny, don’t let it detract from the absolute seriousness of this report. “This is too big. The public interest demands accountability from cabinet ministers, officials, and law enforcement agencies who so clearly abrogated their duty”: Stop whitewashing the bloodstains from BC’s Dirty Money Laundromat. Sandy Garrosino’s “I told you so” moment.

And who profits from all this “organized” crime?

The same people who are washing their money in our casinos. Or loaning it out to gambling addicts there, which is another version of the same thing. Money laundering is the heartbeat of organized crime’s circulatory system. Without entry to the legitimate marketplace, illicit cash is almost all dead weight.

Then there’s us. We profit too, when we look the other way.

While we accrue speculative value on our houses then call for the government to be shot. While we pen letters lamenting I am not rich. While we throw molotov cocktails at people sleeping in tents in Nanaimo. While we further criminalize homelessness in Surrey. While we use fake licence numbers on AirBnbs. While we say – officially – that $1,903 rent for a one bedroom in Kerrisdale is affordable.

While we are forced into ever increasingly precarious jobs which drain our souls, our creativity, and our vigour only to then get called ‘millennials’ by the one percent vis-a-vis the media to “infantalize, discredit, and instil distrust of an educated, hard-working, low earning, fed up generation of 20 and 30 year olds (ahem and 40 year olds) living through the worst of capitalism, police brutality, government corruption, and a resurgence of hate violence. The way millennials are referred to is nothing short of gaslighting. We inherited an environment and society that is unsustainable, but our protest and call for revolutionary change is written off as some sort of tantrum”. – Dana Vivian White

Bullshit jobs and the yoke of managerial feudalism. Admission: I’m totally using “Retinues of basically useless flunkies” as a future song title…

“Psychologically, it’s not exactly that people want to work, it’s more that people want to feel they are transforming the world around them in a way that makes some kind a positive difference to other people. In a way, that’s what being human is all about. Take it away from them, they start to fall apart.”

And if we dare to stand for something? Vancouver restaurant manager unrepentant after refusing Trump supporter. “We don’t discriminate against people based on political beliefs.” You do not know what discrimination means. I would advocate a boycott of the Sequoia Group, but it’s not like any of my readers actually eat at these tourist traps.

OK, so remember above when Anton said that Dirty Money was an unintentional failure? She’s also against proportional representation: This Wealthy Tycoon is Behind a New Shadowy Group Running Ads Attacking Electoral Reform in BC. Fuck. They are going to win, aren’t they?

Meanwhile…

So, 11 months after illegally placing snow fencing in B.C. rivers to prevent Chinook salmon from spawning, #KinderMorgan is finally being punished. The total fine is … $920. #bcpoli #wildsalmon #TransMountain #whatajoke pic.twitter.com/9IcIPQVBmT

— Kai Nagata ?? (@kainagata) July 4, 2018

Making this one of the most timely and visually stunning pieces of direct action in recent memory: Pipeline protesters rappel from Ironworkers Memorial Bridge, blocking tanker.

Hometown FIFA official slams B.C. for withdrawing from 2026 World Cup bid. Horgan simply did a VAR and reversed the call on the field. The people lamenting this are worse cry babies than Neymar.

Aldergrove residents say legal grow-op is loud, smelly and ruining neighbourhood. Um, have you smelled Aldergrove? I’d welcome the sweet smell of fresh kush over its usual stench any day.

Alberta of the day: That Canadian Convenience Store Robbery Is The Year’s Most Suspenseful Movie.

Rookies of the day: Bad acid trip triggers North Shore Rescue response.

PSA of the day:

People! Keep your mouths closed while cycling; the flying ant infestation is back.

— Becky (@bferg_1) July 5, 2018

Honour Bound: GoFundMe launched to support surviving girlfriend of vlogger who died at Shannon Falls