Brain likes to read the comments. He's a sensitive little guy, so please be civil.
I have lost pretty much all support for Ms. Martin after this episode. I used to sympathise with her a great deal, but not anymore.
Sure, her rights were violdated and that needs to be addressed for the long term. But as to herself, she has now shown herself to be a a liar. She did say originally that no-one in the government came to see her, yet it now appears that government representatives came to her quite regularly.
With this in mind, how much of her story can one believe?
I still sympathize very much with this lady. She is obviously under extreme stress and she looks sick. She has suffered enough and the Mexican authorities should send her back to Canada on humanitarian grounds. What I find appalling is the way the Liberals especially McTeague have tried to manufacture a scandal to embarrass the Conservatives using this woman's sad situation.
Call me paranoid but I smell Liberal hands all over this case. So far the Libs have used a man trying to avoid deportation, a dead man, beaurocrats at Elections Canada and now Brenda Martin to try and smear the Conservatives. The problems they have are with their lack of viable leadership or viable platform, so they reach for the remote to change channels. But I,m probably just being paranoid....
The other interesting and often ignored fact the media loves to forget is the reason for their being no charges laid or sentencing to date... she chose her defence to be a constitutional matter... can you immagine a Mexican chosing their charges be a constitutional mater in Canada if they were suspect in fraud charges???
She made her own bed by her own actions and if she was stupid enough to take employment with someone that was not going out of the way to hide they made their money by stealing it from others what did she expect would happen... You can't work in that much of a bubble that you don't know something shady's going on when money keeps coming in and all your employer seems to be doing to urn it is traveling to vacation spots on the map one step ahead of the law...
Two years awaiting trial is actually almost standard in Canada; and the government has clearly been doing a lot to try and help her even before she got on W5. They screwed up not providing a translator, but that's about it as far as I can tell. They recommended four lawyers and she rejected them, they’ve called her many times; sometimes more then once a day; and they have raised her case at the highest level. The main complaint I have with Mexico regarding this case(and my only remaining sympathy to Brenda Martin) are the conditions they are keeping her in. sleeping in a room with 11 convicted Mexican inmates is against international law. Still, she appears to be well fed, clothed and medicated; and she has been allowed access to consular officials, the media and her beauty pageant (smirk). Another thing I should comment on is Brenda Martin's scorching smear on Helena Guergis (sp?). What Martin said is slander; I don't care if she is sitting in jail, slander is slander.
My biggest concern in all this: What the heck is happening to the other 20 Canadians being held in Mexico? The media hasn’t shown the slightest interest in their welfare. Let us hope the government of Canada is still working as hard for them as they are for Martin.
The more i hear, the more i want to change the channel. Especially now that every politician and his dog is dropping by to add his smell to the hydrant.
Today, I will celebrate the freedom of Saul Itzhayak who was very gracious towards those who worked on his behalf today.
Welcome home Mr. Itzhayak!
This story gets more and more suspect. Isn't she supposed to be so distraught that she would commit suicide ... still, she's in some sort of pageant.
Hmmm.
I think she's a player.
I feel sorry for Helena Guergis, Brenda and her friend deb like to single her out and the media jumps to it. Yet when Ruby Dhalla got into trouble in India at christmas the media bent over backwards to downplay the negative press. All women in politics are not treated equally by the MSM.
"Yet when Ruby Dhalla got into trouble in India at christmas the media bent over backwards to downplay the negative press."
Good point - I had forgotten about that. You are totally right.
"What is going on inside Brenda Martin's head?"
Not much.
The Liberals are seizing this one to take attention away from Dion perhaps.
Not sure what Brenda Martin gets from this ploy to bite the hand that supposedly has the power to play the 'get out of jail free' card, or so the scheduled rally would presume.
If I were in her situation, I doubt that I would be so antagonistic towards my own government which I was relying on.
The whole thing doesn't make sense and it has the smell of Liberal involvement.
Everyone is still ignoring the most basic issue here. She might actually be guilty. Given the cash flow evidence presented so far it certainly seems she was involved in money laundering. Whether its 16000 or 16 million is just a matter of degrees.
Just a comment on what could be going through Brenda Martin's head............given the information that she is on drugs, taken with some suggestions in other articles that she hits the bottle, I'm suggesting that she is not in any state to think clearly. It occurs to me that the Liberals, much to their shame, have twisted her thinking and convinced her to engage in this whole "bash the govt" strategy. This is really a sad statement on the lengths to which Liberals will go to bash the govt..that they would use a confused woman in legal peril outside Canada, possibly to her ultimate disadvantage, just to make points against the govt. They really don't care about Martin, they are just working their agenda.
Commenting by HaloScan
