All posts by bcjustice

What A Great Example of Using Social Media To Address An Issue When Authority Figures Are Slacking

Some of you may have seen this viral video “Taipei MRT Racist” of a man who was living in Taiwan where he happens to be a foreigner in the country. Because of this, as it turns out he received some pretty racist hate over this where one person was blunt about it. Even though everything was captured on video the guy didn’t care and continued to throw out racist remarks. You can see the video here:

While the person tried to get the police involved to handle it the proper way, he simply got the run around to the point where nothing got solved. As a result, he decided to publish the video online where millions of people saw the story. From what I read in the comments, the person throwing out the racist remark was then held accountable for his actions as the public began to research into it instead.

This is still what I think people in BC and Canada in general need to do when it comes to trying to fix the justice system. For the most part, you need to try and publish your stories to the general public like this. Like how this guy tried to go to the police station, I can just imagine trying to get like a chief judge or court official to actually take your concern seriously would probably go on deaf ears. Maybe one day it won’t be like that, but at this moment that is how it seems like.

This Laughing Witch And Thunderf00t Saga Makes You Think

This story is going to be very awkward for those who don’t exactly follow online media sources. But it demonstrated almost exactly on how I feel using social media and regular people can flush out the truth way more efficiently for standard cases rather than say a judge in a court room. At least the ones here in BC Canada. Fortunately, since this social media story was mostly told through videos I am hoping you will simply watch them to get the full details as I relate them back to the court process I experienced.

In a nutshell, a lady named Jennifer Keller who goes under the alias of “Laughing Witch” disagrees pretty passionately with the views of a man named Phil Mason who is identified online as “Thunderf00t.” The topic revolved about feminism and as you can imagine that usually generates angry debates if the two sides don’t see eye to eye. Keller decided to write a letter to Mason’s employer in hopes that the institution would see how his behavior is unacceptable where she at first denied writing the letter. For one reason or another, she thought he got fired over this and many of her supporters seemed like they were celebrating over this fact.

However, with Internet research it was exposed pretty quickly that she was indeed the writer of the letter. Now Mason didn’t get fired over this too as some assumed. As a result, he released these facts on the Internet and the online audience began to research out of curiosity.
Keller also spoke in a video how essentially no one can do anything to her if they say wrote a letter to her boss as that is her husband since they run a business. Boy was she wrong though. People started to take initiative and expose to the world factually on her actions to educate others on what the owner’s of the business have done.

As a result of this, it appeared that they started a campaign of sort to demonstrate how they are being targeted by a vicious hate mob with no merit.

They even created a funding campaign asking for $25,000 to help circumvent this whole incident.

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As well, it appeared they got the local media to do a report on it which you can see here:

A different Internet user decided to investigate into the business and its dealings. There was some interesting discovery as you can see here:

The saga continues it seems, but from what I read Mason seems to be winning factually. That media report of the incident in essence reminded me exactly like how the BC court process was. It’s almost like saying, it becomes more of a game on trying to create a story narrative and hoping the right people will believe it. This is as opposed to simply throwing the facts and focusing on getting the truth. Like the media example too, depending on which journalist you get the facts can be ignored.

Now what happened when the story got out to the general public to research about the issue? While it may not exactly be the most politically correct way of handling it, enormous pressure was placed on people to find out the truth. While I don’t think it is right to leave say fake negative or positive comments to a business to get attention, this is kind of a classic example on how if one party feels that the repercussions to telling a false story is nonexistent then why would people bother to say tell the truth?

In this case, the pressure came from the public that was insistent in pushing until the truth came out. The repercussion, while unfortunate, was that Keller and her business will never hear the end of it until people feel they got the whole truth out. As well, every false story or fact presented was archived, scrutinized and taken seriously where the perpetrator will for sure see a repercussion to it. So reflecting this back to the courts in Canada, why is there not a mandatory law of sort that effectively punishes people for telling false stories in court? Is it not obvious like here on how immediate repercussions of actions like these help to flush out the truth faster?

I can imagine if this dispute went to court we would basically be trapped in a situation where it is simply watching news reports and trying to determine who is telling the truth that way. You may think I am exaggerating, but if you have not already you can read all of the documents I submitted about my experience in taking a person to court. Just makes me think more that a truly open public courtroom of sort is way more cost effective and efficient for simple cases. It doesn’t need to be super complicated or expensive as ordinary people can be just as good if not better in compiling the facts.

What The Trial of Yuan Xi Tang Made Me Think About Court Stories And Resources

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Recently there has been news all over about this story of a person who murdered his mother to then place her in a suitcase. While at first he was claiming that he knew nothing about the incident and even went on a campaign in an effort to ask for help in finding her, later on he admitted to killing her. From what I read on the news, this was a result of people such as undercover police officers allegedly getting him to admit this on camera.

One thing it made me think of was would we have cared about this story/incident if it didn’t have such a crazy premise of a son murdering his mother and placing her in a suitcase? I am inclined to say probably not where this would simply be one of the many cases that would go under the radar. In many ways though it’s important for people to be engaged about these kinds of issues I feel. This person is living in your community right? Would you not want to know what the real deal was? If I wanted to learn about someone’s court case story that means having to spend a ton of money unless it is sensational enough for a large media outlet to want to eat the cost in reporting it.

At the same time, it made me rethink back to my court case and how I actually expressed that it seemed like such a waste of time to spend money and time on people like mediators. While I always said my case wasn’t like a criminal case, putting resources towards hiring people who specialize in getting the truth would have been way more efficient. Do you think a person like Yuan Xi Tang would have admitted to anything if it wasn’t for the police? I doubt it personally as most likely he would just continue on with the charade.

Using my case as an example, one big key of evidence in order to flush the truth out should have been evaluating the consistency of the statements submitted by both sides and looking at the facts. So instead of wasting time and money getting a person to help people talk it out, wouldn’t it make more sense to hire like an auditor for an hour or two? Basically like in my claim, one key to finding the truth is to find out who took what money, where did it go, what was the purpose, etc.

You should assume if two people are going to court then one person isn’t telling the truth. So like there, why not have like a court auditor where their job is to actually go through facts and statements initially for inconsistencies where it is made clear that everything will be documented and published?

I know some of the arguments to this is that it would be too costly or time consuming. But just using my case as an example look at how many people the court was paying a salary for to simply talk things out for the most part. With that amount of time and money spent, I would have rather had like a police officer spend that time doing record and background checks on people where they treat it as serious as if it was a criminal case. Everyone wants the truth and swift justice right? So why not actually design the process and resources in getting the truth out from the start as opposed to treating it like a tea party?