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Adrian Dix's wiki page tampered with, missing critical details to his past, the work of pro-NDP backers

Common sense

By Common sense
in Off-Topic General

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Common sense Canucks Second-Line

Common sense

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Full story is here - http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Someone+keeping+Adrian+squeaky+clean+Wikipedia/8219088/story.html.

To sum it up, Adrian Dix's wiki page has been whitewashed and altered to make it biased, including the removal of key content from his past. Missing content from the page include a neutrality warning that warns readers the page contains biased editing/writing, as well as details of the Glen Clark memo scandal and Dix's subsequent resignation as Chief of Staff. An in-depth picture of the missing content is here.

Now, if this were the work of anonymous IPs, there would be no way of tracking who did what. It just so happens that it's registered Wikipedia member who have been editing the Dix article, namely a long-time Wikipedia editor who has also whitewashed other BC-political articles to reflect a pro-NDP stance.

From the second article:

Cleven is an extraordinarily prolific contributor to Wikipedia, having made more than 71,000 edits since he became a member in 2005. He is one of Wikipedia's 400 most active editors. Much of his work involves correcting and adding to BC Place names.

But Cleven also has a history of making changes to biographies — principally those of living politicians — that has brought charges that he's politically biased. He has acknowledged in several posts that he has a conflict of interest when it comes to editing some pages because of criticism he has levelled on other websites and in blogs.

In the last four days Cleven was responsible for removing references to Dix's memo-writing controversy five of the 10 times it was posted on Wikipedia by other users.

He also has edited references on Premier Christy Clark and former premier Gordon Campbell (in one case changing Campbell's job as a real estate developer to "real estate lobbyist". He is actively involved in shaping how information is relayed about the BC Rail scandal that plagued Campbell's government, and believes that mainstream reporting of the casino scandal that led to the fall of Glen Clark's NDP government is biased and shouldn't be used in any Wikipedia article about it.

A number of users have complained about Cleven to Wikipedia's conflict of interest board, and have criticized him in posts on the site. The user whose Dix notations Cleven repeatedly removed tried but failed to have him banned by Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is governed by a strong set of guidelines that dictate articles — particularly those involving living people or controversial subjects — must be written from a "neutral point of view."

In a posting on the website alternatehistory.com a decade ago, Cleven illustrated his views about the NDP and his disdain for the B.C. Liberals which had just been elected. He called them "the Carpetbagger Party" and wondered about an alternate history if the NDP had not squandered their time in government.

My conclusion? What a petty move by Cleven and other wikipedia users to add their own biases to articles and to censor information.

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Wetcoaster Canucks First-Line

Wetcoaster

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Perhaps someone can add additional information to Wikipedia on Adrian Dix's antics when doing the bidding of his past master, Premier Glen Clark. Vaughn Palmer has laid it out clearly and it shows that the fraudulent Casinogate memo was but one in a series of questionable and even illegal actions Dix was involved with during time as a political appointee.

AdrianDix-Memo.jpg

As Vaughn Palmer wrote on January 19, 2011 in a column on Dix and his time as chief political operative and fixer for Glen Clark and notes that Adrian Dix does not come to the table as the saying goes "with clean hands":

When the New Democrats faced a trio of recall campaigns against their MLAs in the late 1990s, then premier Glen Clark called, as he usually did, on the skills and drive of his chief political operative Adrian Dix.

Dix put together what proved to be a successful effort to quash the recallers, lining up support and resources from NDP headquarters and the trade union movement.

He did most of this by phone, though twice he visited the key battleground of Prince George at his own expense. He also persuaded government staffers to go into the field on their own time, while facilitating an arrangement that saw the labour movement quietly cover several thousand dollars' worth of travel expenses.

All this had to be done on the sly. The NDP-authored recall legislation imposed strict spending limits. And the NDP line was that local MLAs were unfairly targeted by dark forces -- "outsiders, special interests, lobby groups" -- from beyond their ridings.

Accordingly, Clark denied the role of his own office in stage-managing the fight. "Mr. Dix has a job in Victoria," he told the legislature. "He was not involved in the recall campaigns in those ridings."

Only after an NDP field operative blew the whistle to the news media did the truth come out. "I had quite a bit of involvement," Dix conceded.

Not only then and there. A review of the files finds Dix playing a central role in many of the controversies in the Clark era.

Six Mile Ranch was a proposal to build a resort on agricultural land in the NDP-held riding of Kamloops. The New Democrats were pressuring the independent agricultural land commission to release the site from the land reserve and at one point Clark dispatched Dix to personally sound out commission chair Kirk Miller.

Miller came away from the session with Dix under no illusions: "I was aware that the premier's office was looking at whether or not something like this should be declared in the provincial interest."

The "provincial interest" being a legal declaration that allowed the cabinet to overrule the commission and remove the land from the reserve. As indeed happened. Whereupon Miller demanded a public inquiry. But the New Democrats, being no fans of public inquiries in those days, balked.

The Raiwind power project was an ill-fated partnership-cum-offshore tax dodge involving BC Hydro and a dubious operator in Pakistan. When news of it broke on the eve of the 1996 election, Clark fired the NDP-appointed Hydro chair John Laxton and later president John Sheehan as well.

Both would later testify that Dix, acting as Clark's eyes and ears, had attended most of the Hydro board meetings where the partnership was discussed and approved.

Dix initiated the negotiations with Gordon Wilson, the apostate B.C. Liberal leader, which led to him joining the New Democrats in exchange for a cabinet post. He was the government sweet-talker to the business community, when Clark shifted the labour code in favour of the unions. And when Clark pulled the rug out from under the campaign for no-fault auto insurance, the premier's liaison was, you guessed it, Adrian Dix.

"There are public servants, of course, who give input, and then Adrian runs their input through a strategic NDP filter," Clark would say. "I don't rely on one source for input or advice, but he's the one I rely on most."

More than that, Dix was his friend. The two shared a condominium near the legislature and at the end of a typical, workaholic day, they would unwind by talking politics and, when that topic was exhausted, sports.

In the darkest hour of his political life, Clark fell back on Dix. The police had raided his home. He stood accused of favouring a friend's application for a casino licence. And there was Clark, brandishing a memo over Dix's signature, saying the premier had ordered him to ensure he was insulated from the licensing decision.

The notorious memo to file. Only later did it come out that the document was in several respects bogus. Typed up months after the order was supposedly given. False dated by Dix himself, who wound back the premier's official date stamp with all the craft of a used-car dealer tackling an odometer.

"A mistake," Dix says today, and professes to have learned from it.

Doubtless, he'll never get caught doing anything as sneaky as that again.

Plus, as he says, the foregoing happened a long time ago. "If the Liberal party wants to campaign on the 1990s, they will lose."

Surely.

"If you liked Glen Clark you're going to love Adrian Dix," is a good laugh line. But the Liberals will need more than fading memories of the Clark regime to persuade voters to trust them with a fourth term. They'll have to overcome a hefty weight of controversy and scandal from their own decade in power.

Indeed, in light of those vulnerabilities on the Liberal side, some New Democrats are hoping to ground their election platform on a promise to clean up government.

But it needs clean hands to lead such a campaign. And among the half-dozen contenders for the NDP leadership, Adrian Dix is not the best qualified to make the pitch.

http://www2.canada.c...002230f2521&p=1

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Sapper Abbotsford Star

Sapper

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From last nights posting discussions in the other thread it was being debated

- my post # 24 in Christy Clark BC rail where wet posted this info

I can understand why it would be removed - It is not a fact based account but offers up personel opinion and comparisons. With the adds running non stop during Hockey games every man women and child in BC knows what dix did in 99. ( when one thinks of the 15 thousand jobs lost last month and the cost of those adds - this alone should have every worker stompin mad that this bunch )

When you read the wiki enteries and you see things like "dark times" - "like a car saleseman rolling back the odometer" etc - it kinda kills the neutrality and makes it the history "as written by the BC Liberal party " If the only thing stated was the factual step by step of the memo I would support calling this petty and wrong to remove it - history can not be cleaned away. However it was clearly written from a right wing attack add point of view and as such I support its removal.

Also the current write up includeds it - but from a "it happened" point of view versus the sensationalized editoral that was added to sex it up for the right wing

From the current wiki write up

He served as Chief of Staff to Premier Glen Clark from 1996 to 1999, a position from which he was dismissed for falsifying a memo to protect the Premier from conflict-of-interest charges.[5] Police raided Clark's home over a potentially lucrative casino licence handed to one of the premier's friends. The memo, falsely back-dated eight months earlier, said Clark had personally instructed Dix to "ensure that he [Clark] take no part in any aspect of the decision" to award the casino licence."[6]

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Wetcoaster Canucks First-Line

Wetcoaster

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From last nights posting discussions in the other thread it was being debated

/topic/343161-christy-clark-cleared-of-conflict-in-bc-rail-sale-by-bcs-conflict-of-interest-commissioner/">http://forum.canucks...t-commissioner/

- my post # 24 in Christy Clark BC rail where wet posted this info

I can understand why it would be removed - It is not a fact based account but offers up personel opinion and comparisons. With the adds running non stop during Hockey games every man women and child in BC knows what dix did in 99. ( when one thinks of the 15 thousand jobs lost last month and the cost of those adds - this alone should have every worker stompin mad that this bunch )

When you read the wiki enteries and you see things like "dark times" - "like a car saleseman rolling back the odometer" etc - it kinda kills the neutrality and makes it the history "as written by the BC Liberal party " If the only thing stated was the factual step by step of the memo I would support calling this petty and wrong to remove it - history can not be cleaned away. However it was clearly written from a right wing attack add point of view and as such I support its removal.

Also the current write up includeds it - but from a "it happened" point of view versus the sensationalized editoral that was added to sex it up for the right wing

From the current wiki write up

He served as Chief of Staff to Premier Glen Clark from 1996 to 1999, a position from which he was dismissed for falsifying a memo to protect the Premier from conflict-of-interest charges.[5] Police raided Clark's home over a potentially lucrative casino licence handed to one of the premier's friends. The memo, falsely back-dated eight months earlier, said Clark had personally instructed Dix to "ensure that he [Clark] take no part in any aspect of the decision" to award the casino licence."[6]

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