Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Ian Walker, UVic geography professor on coastal erosion and climate change: YVR landings require pontoons to splash down?

No mention in the Vancouver Sun newspaper on the status of Vancouver International Airport (YVR) if ..... it becomes flooded (kmz).

Boundary Bay Airport sunk, too.

Abbotsford will be high and dry.


Ian Walker, a geography professor whose specialties include coastal erosion and climate change, said areas such as Delta’s Roberts Bank and Boundary Bay, Vancouver’s Stanley Park, plus Wreck Beach and Point Grey bluffs are some of the region’s most vulnerable areas.

“We don’t really know if this is going to be the ‘monster’ that some researchers are calling it but all indications are it’s going to be really strong,” Walker said. “People living in low-lying coastal areas should be prepared for a great chance of floods and erosion.”  Vancouver Sun
 
Dikes coming to Metro Vancouver
pdf flood plain map
Dike Inventory Maps 

Monday, September 7, 2015

Robin Mathews: “The Mike Duffy Trial”. Is It A Gigantic Fraud From Start To Finish?

 "Unless you control your own economy, you cannot have your own culture and it is culture which finally determines the Canadian identity. - R. M."

“The Mike Duffy Trial”.  Is It A Gigantic Fraud From Start To Finish?   yes

by Robin Mathews, Sept. 2015

Journalists of the conventional press and media are asking questions. Questions.  Questions.  Will the Mike Duffy trial affect the October election?  Are Canadians paying attention?  Will they remember what has gone on, so far, in the trial when they vote?  Etcetera.  As usual the conventional press and media are asking the wrong questions….

Some of them, we may trust, are doing so deliberately, are employed to ask the wrong questions … deliberately.

They all should be asking and investigating…. They should be  challenging major actors, daily, on the key question:  is the whole operation a “fix”, a fraud, a scam, a gigantic, expensive make-believe construction?

Allied to that possibility … why has one of the (apparently) most important Canadian trials preceding the most important election in Canadian history been chopped into segments with weeks and months of hiatus between segments?  Did the lawyer for the Defence agree to that absurdity, or was it forced upon him by “the necessities [?] of Court scheduling”?

Why The Trial?

Let us consider a possible scenario for the Mike Duffy trial.  Nigel Wright with Stephen Harper and people in the PMO set about bribing Mike Duffy “to shut up, and pay up” some monies in order to disguise the fact that Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada were abusing and debasing the senate with every disreputable action possible, habitually.

Notice that Donald Savoie, expert on Public Administration and author, at Moncton University, pointed out on CBC (The Current, Aug 31, ’15) that “four hundred pages of emails” circulated among the principals involved in discussion of the proposed payment without any consultation with the Privy Council, Revenue Canada, or the Department of Justice. If that doesn’t suggest a conspiracy to undertake an unlawful act … then what would?

Mr. Duffy was to pretend that he had broken ranks by singly abusing senate procedures – to the surprise and moral horror of the PMO and Stephen Harper.  He was to show himself contrite and thereby front for the on-going abusive use of the senate by the Conservative government.

Remember major Conservative senators had criminal charges laid against them for work on the In-and-Out election scandal of 2006 – which happened eight years before the so-called Mike Duffy Scandal. The Conservative senate, it seems, was a cesspool of Conservative improper activity.

No Conservative reported the alleged acceptance of a bribe by Mike Duffy. The story broke in CTV news reporting.

At that point, we may theorize, the machinery of big time fraud “Banana Republic" Fraud went into action. To turn the attention of Canadians away from (1) Conservative Party and government corruption;  (2) to protect Stephen Harper and Nigel Wright (long-time soul mates and corrupt Party builders); (3) and to cover the flagrant Conservative misuse of the senate a Huge Diversion, a Dramatic Splash, a Public Circus, (whatever the financial cost) had to be staged.

Who Would Set Up The Fraudulent Trial?

The action required – and we may believe it may have gained – the corrupt cooperation of almost everyone involved in its production, a characteristic of Banana Republic Law.

The RCMP, it would seem, was corrupted to permit the investigation material of the Wright/Duffy relation to be perverted and misused.

Nigel Wright, many may believe, was “good to go” on a trial against Mike Duffy just as long as he – Nigel Wright – was not charged with paying a bribe but was corruptly protected.  [Why has Onex, Wright’s employer, posted him to England? What relation has Onex Corporation to the Conservative Party of Canada?]  The neglect of Nigel Wright in the charges set up the basic insanity of the trial: Mike Duffy accepted a bribe from Nigel Wright.  But Nigel Wright didn’t pay Mike Duffy a bribe! The charges, I suggest, could not have been laid as they have been -considering that insanity - if the Prosecution was not, somehow, also brought on board.

That agency seems also to have been highly selective, failing to lay any charges under the Parliament of Canada Act, an Act which would likely have brought more people under close inspection for the possibility of engaging in serious wrongful acts.

Next … it is reasonable to believe the judge on this ‘judge only’ trial is acting where a ‘judge and jury’ should be at work.  The choice of a ‘judge only’ is open to question.  A trial of significant and large public interest should be a trial by judge and jury.  If Canadian law doesn’t specify that, it should.  A judge can be ‘naturally sympathetic to power’, can be ‘won over’, may be bribed or coerced.

Those things are almost impossible to be the case with twelve, independently selected jurors.

In a ‘judge only’ trial the judge must be scrupulously attentive and independent and must not simply accept the story-line of the Prosecution, especially in what might be (among other things, as in this case) a Revenge Trial.  The major charge of a bribe accepted but a bribe not paid (where the payer is as evident as a signature on a cheque and his own public admission) should be openly questioned by the judge … and the case discontinued if no satisfactory answer is forthcoming.

That would mean, one must consider in this scenario, that the judge had, somehow, to be made part of the “fix”, the fraud, the scam, the gigantic, expensive make-believe construction.  He had to allow that a bribe can be alleged to have been accepted without being alleged to have been paid.  The judge, also, some might argue, had to accept that Nigel Wright - because only a witness in his court - would leave Scot free, untouched, and would return to normal life.

One sign that democratic rights and freedoms are collapsing in any country is given when wealth and power can take over the judicial system and employ all its personnel to create wholly manufactured, corrupt (apparently legitimate) court cases.  Such cases may be called Banana Republic cases.  The Mike Duffy trial was, some will believe, manufactured in Conservative Party back rooms and is being carried forward despite huge absurdities.

Stephen Harper’s On-Going Role

Day after day, Stephen Harper (an undeclared principal in the case) has stated publicly the judgement he wants from the trial: Duffy to be convicted; Nigel Wright to be freed completely (as a witness who is not facing charges).  In addition, by repeating over and over that the matter was between Nigel Wright and Mike Duffy only, the prime minister of Canada (not under oath) is, in fact, saying he believes witnesses (under oath) who testify otherwise are lying, and that documentary evidence is false.

The judge on the trial has had every reason and every right to silence the prime minister of Canada … and the judge has not done that.


A ‘Gilbert and Sullivan’ Production 

There is more.  As if writing a script for a Gilbert and Sullivan Comic Opera, Prosecution laid 31 charges against Mike Duffy!  Ridiculous!  Hilarious nuttiness!

It is as if Prosecution tried to bury “a bribe accepted but a bribe not paid” with a torrent of 30 other charges to overwhelm the sensibilities of Canadians.

By the scenario suggested above, Stephen Harper, Nigel Wright, the RCMP, the Prosecution, and the judge on the case would all be part of the “fix”, the fraud, the scam, the gigantic expensive make-believe construction.

Not clear in the suggested scenario is whether the Defence lawyer can be fitted into the arranged game.  He has, however – some will believe – made too little of Nigel Wright as principal in the case – as a person who offered a bribe (if, indeed, a bribe was accepted).

Banana Republic Operations in Canada 

Perhaps the first, major, trumped-up Banana Republic trial in recent Canadian history was that of premier Glen Clark of British Columbia (2002) over tin-pot allegations that he had given favours for a $10,000.00 veranda he had built on his modest East Vancouver home (and had paid for).  At least three times during the 136 day trial, Clark’s lawyer (now deceased) asked the judge (Elizabeth Bennett (BC Rail Trial Too)) to close the trial for lack of cause.  She refused each time – and on the last day declared Glen Clark was guilty of … nothing.  But he was destroyed politically and the way was open for the ten years of corrupt Gordon Campbell neo-liberal government in B.C. before, that is, Campbell was named by Stephen Harper as Canadian High Commissioner in London.

That case was created and heated (almost certainly) by Liberal Opposition forces in close collaboration with some RCMP and active conventional press and media people.  Needless to say, the arrangement of charges would have required prosecutorial work.

Briefly (as a further example) in the BC Rail Scandal case, 2007-2010, (which may be considered a direct sequel to the Glen Clark case) an illegitimate Special Crown Prosecutor laid charges (RCMP assisted) against three lower-level Sikh government employees.  That shifted attention away from the probably guilty powerful politicians and corporate actors in the BC Rail sell-out.

The judge refused to act on the illegitimate appointment of the Special Crown Prosecutor, as did the Attorney General, the Chief Justice, the Associate Chief Justice, and the Canadian Judicial Council (and the conventional press and media).  And so one may assume that the RCMP, the judges, and the reigning Liberal cabinet – as well as most conventional press and media were all corruptly involved.

But the Defence team was honest.

The accused in the BC Rail trial (as with the Mike Duffy case) were not ‘squeaky clean’, and so they were open to “overlord victimization”.  Nonetheless, the Defence shattered the carefully prepared scenario.  Charges against the accused in B.C. were heavily reduced to almost nothing, and the Gordon Campbell government paid the $6 million in costs of the accused … all their costs … in order to terminate the trial early and to get free of it before it blew up in their faces because of the work of the honest Defence team.

In B.C. the big criminals got away, the illegitimate Crown Prosecutor went untouched, the corrupt in the B.C. RCMP weren’t scratched. And both premiers involved – Gordon Campbell and Christie Clark - refused to tell (even the Auditor General) precisely which person in government okayed the $6 million payment to the accused. But the huge Banana Republic, fraudulent trial was exposed … and the accused somewhat exonerated (though not in any way by a perceptive and responsible conventional press and media).

In a much, much less publicly noticed Civil Case, I suggest, Banana Republic machinery was used in the heart-breaking economic destruction, psychological mangling, and massive injustice suffered by   Kelly Marie Richard and her two sons in their dental malpractice case in the Alberta courts (first decade of this century). The RCMP, lawyers, the courts, the CanadianJudicial Council, and IT forces, in my judgement, rallied to protect Big Capital in Canada against legitimate claims of damage done to ordinary Canadians.

The same in-court (Civil Case) hi-jinks, I am convinced, are taking place in the Jessica Ernst (fracking) case against Big Gas and Oil and the Government Regulator in Alberta.  The change of government from Conservative to NDP, mid-trial, in Alberta has not changed the Alberta Regulatory Structure or its chief personnel (from which much of the abuse of Jessica Ernst is alleged to have originated).  The new government seems unaware of the Jessica Ernst case against itself and its Regulatory body … and to be unaware of the possibility of Banana Republic conduct in the Court proceedings.

A characteristic of present-day political Opposition Parties appears to be their absolute determination to ignore some of the hugest and most threatening areas of public corruption.  When Big Capital and Big Government corruptly organize democratic institutions to assault and efface their enemies - victims of corruption fighting back, Opposition Parties look the other way.  They seem to do so especially when those victims of corruption are defenceless, alone, and relatively poor.  It is almost as if the Opposition Parties long for positions of power in which they, too, can enjoy the profits of corruption.

Nationally, I suggest, Canadians may well be watching an almost wholly corrupt, trumpery, Banana Republic trial being called “The Mike Duffy Trial”.  Looked at carefully, I suggest, the fraudulence of that trial will seem – to a growing number of Canadians - more and more and more evident. It is – among other things – a huge warning and wake-up call to Canadians.

And yet … not one Opposition Party, not one, has questioned the fraud all Canadians are probably facing in the trial.  That is a burden which ordinary Canadians are going to have to take onto their own shoulders … and begin action to bring about change. They may well start by placing the trial very high among matters they will act upon, in polling booths, across the country, in the coming October federal election.

October 7, 2015:
 Are you as depressed as I am about October 19??? - Robin Mathews