Trump Tower, New York City

The security was certainly tight.  New York City police on every street corner. The press of people was awful.  No place for claustraphobia or social phobia.
When we crossed 5th Avenue to the Trump Tower side there were barriers up and police checking bags a block from the entrance.  At the entrance there was private security and a half dozen heavily armed helmeted flack jacketed Secret Police.  It reminded me of living in London when the IRA were blowing up people.  Or that other time when I was in Paris and Carlos was operational.  The French soldiers were on every street corner. Or Jerusalem when terrorist had struck there and I walked through men dressed like this, carrying automatic weapons, wearing helmets, knowing they were targets.  I always fear being collateral damage.
It took courage for Laura to come here. She was excited as was everyone else there.  History in the making. This was Trump Tower and Mr. Trump was the president elect of the United States of America. Still  he was getting as many threats as Martin Luther King and Gandhi.  Crazies were everywhere.  Americans had their Lincoln. They’d made a huge monument to him in Washington.  Here was another icon.  Andy  Warhol would have painted his face on a soup can if he were alive. Some one else would have put a bullseye over it.
Security checked our bags once more inside. The security was comforting.  I just wanted to go for a coffee in the Starbucks.  But it was too busy.  Everyone wanted to be in the Trump Tower it seemed.  The place was packed.  Maybe we’d see Ivanka, I thought, imagining her and her child passing through these crowds.
“Are you okay,” I asked Laura, as we rode up the escalator. “Yes, this is history in the making. It’s amazing. I thought they’d closed off the street. I never imagined we’d  be allowed inside Trump Tower."
It really was something.  The building was as beautiful as they say. The outside an architectural wonder. Inside a really beautiful space. I loved the water cascading down the wall behind the Christmas tree.   I loved  the elegant  decor of  restaurants and cafe.  We took the escalator to the outdoor public garden. I liked taking photographs.  We didn’t stay.  The line up for coffee at Starbucks  too long.
Admittedly I was anxious too.  I’d no need to be there if a suicide bomber decided to pick this time. There were safer places.  I felt that anxiety I’d felt many times before especially the times blood was drying on sidewalks.
“Thanks for your protection,” I said as I walked past the last of the security.  She smiled under her helmut and gave me a thumbs up.  Then we were out on the street moving in the crowds slowly away.
  

Refugee Warrior Army - The Free Syrian Force.

No one has suggested the obvious solution to the present problem of ISIS invasion.  ISIS is equivalent to the Hell’s Angels.  To put it in perspective the Hell’s Angels ride into your home town,  kill, main and pillage and people flee.  The reason the Hell’s Angels are able to do this is simply better training, superior weaponry and bad attitude.
There are two parts to the Syrian crisis.  The Syrian government leader, supported by Russia and clearly a tyrant caused a civil war.   This happened over and over again when other Satellites of Russian rebelled against Communist Atheist Dictatorships.  Eventually the people rose up and won. Communism died as a state and Russia went back to being a Christian nation.  The  civil war in Syria failed.  Moslems fought moslems.  Canada can't fight Russia and American and China aren't going to either. So the Syrian tyrant survives another day. The same occurred in Hungary.  The civil war is going on in only one part of Syria.
The other part of the equation is ISIS. Isis is in Syria, old Iraq and all over the place. ISIS is both and idea like atheist Communism but it's also a state.  Islamic State.  The idea is pure Moslem jihad.  It's the same idea the Christians fought against in Spain and Venice.  Jihad.  Saudi is probably backing ISIS now but they're not 'allies'.  They may be investors.  America probably backed ISIS in the beginning but not anymore.  ISIS has no 'allies', only "investors' right now.  
We now have a million and a half refugees and migrants.  Refugees are escaping and would like to go home.  Migrants are just looking for a better place to live. Canada says they’re going to accept 25,000 tomorrow.  We're not sure if they're going to be Refugees or Migrants.  I'd rather have Mexican Migrants.  But we can accept Syrian 'refugees'.  Instead of 3 years of screening we would normally use before taking refugee/migrants we're going to accept them this week because Justin Trudeau made a political 'promise'.  So we turn the Department of Immigration into a Fast Food joint. Give them a place to live.
Britain accepted refugees in the early part of WWII.  The difference there is that Britain armed their refugees.  They were called the Free French and Free Poles.   They prepared for D Day.
Watch Justin Trudeau ’s behaviour (don’t trust his smooth upper class privileged boy words).  He  give the Hell’s Angel’s California.  He says , let ISIS win. In WWII, the leader who said that was Chamberlain.  Winston Churchill was the other guy.  It was an Islamist Jihad convert who attacked Parliament. ISIS, like the Communist atheists before them, used propaganda to convert Canadians.  No one doubted that Communist Russia got it's nuclear weapon capacity because of traitors in Canada and the US.  The same traitors today leave to go join ISIS and plot to blow up Canada.
So we’ll let those who don’t want to live in California under a tyranny of killing, whoring, drug addicted criminals come and live in our country. Hell's Angels wins.   Naturally the Hell’s Angels will keep expanding.
 Canada the Coward forsakes NATO.  Coward Canada runs. When I travelled Europe Canada’s name and honour and respect was ‘won’ by the Canadian Armed Forces. Canadians were admired because they helped Europeans defeat Hitler. The idea that Canada is admired for leftist ideology. Canada is admired for it's success. It was admired in Europe for fighting Hitler. It won't be admired for cowardice.
A very large proportion, some say most of the refugee/migrants are young men, fit soldier aged men.  What if we take all the ‘young men’  and  simply offer to accept train, equip and lead them back to fight ISIS.  
Syria, backed by Russia isn’t going to give up.
If Californians ran to Canada to escape the Hell's Angels we'd support them by training, equipping and even leading them on a counter assault.  We'd help take back California from the Hell's Angels.
That's what Britain did.  Armed and equipped the Free French and coordinated the Free Poles and Free Dutch and lead the retaking of Europe. If you've watched American TV you'll be as confused about WWII as Canadians are today confused about ISIS.
That’s what we did with the Belgiums and French after the NAZI’s invaded their country.   ISIS is the new NAZI religious dictatorship.
The absurdity of Justin Trudeau’s solution, running and hiding under the bed, is classic Chamberlain, pro Hitler logic.  Instead we accept that the Hell’s Angels doesn’t have a right to California.  We Churchill the situation.  Follow the winners.   We train, equip and lead those refugees who want their homes back and they take middle eastern land back from ISIS.
Justin Trudeau is Chamberlain.
ISIS has threatened Canada  and Justin runs home.  The Hells Angels wins.  ISIS wins. California goes to the Hells Angels.  The Middle East goest to ISIS.  Paris this week. Ottawa next week.
It took Germany a few years to win Europe.  Time moves faster now.  The French learned their lesson when they ran away.  Now they stand and fight.  E
Justin Trudeau nees to stand up.  Right now he and Canada are seen as cowards by their NATO allies.  Take this opportunity. Kill two birds with one stone. Accept Refugge warriors and build a Free Syrian Army whose first objective will be to take back the land taken by ISIS. Refugees can return home.  Syria is divided.  The civil war is postponed.
Our military bases are for military training.  They shouldn’t be turned into homeless shelters.  Help the refugees get their land back the same way Churchill helped De Galle.  Build a Refugee Army to return and take back what ISIS has claimed.  That way Canada chooses when Canadians die rather than letting ISIS pick us off one by one, the terrorist way.

6 Bullets - the Movie

I just enjoyed Jean Claude Van Dammess movie, 6 Bullets.  Maybe it’s the theme.  Human trafficking. Sale of girls.  Jean Claude Van Damme plays an ex Foreign Legion mercenary who rescues stolen children.  Special effects. Lots of war and police and gangs and guns.  The pathos of the parents is real and the acting, great for a fight action movie.  But mostly it was the theme.
I couldn’t help but identify with the parents, played so very well by Joe Flanigan and Anna-Louise Plowman, who didn’t feel these men should be protected by the law since the lawlessness of such crimes reaches so high.  The corruption in sex trade has always been in hidden places of power.  Hitlers SS were drawn from the ranks of pedophiles.  Those who steal and sell children, should they ‘protected’.  Charlotte Beaumont, played the kidnapped little girl Becky Fayden so very well. Ernie Barbarash's direction brought out the best in everyone.
I am actually against the death penalty only because of the multitude of mistakes made by beaurocracies of state.  Once a health ministry person insisted they couldn’t ‘find’ me, a doctor and listed as such.  The provincial minister was much more responsive to the ridiculousness of this error and the attempted cover up.  Using his resources he got to the bottom of the business and corrected it. But how often does some lowly person face a person in power, the individual and state scenario, so well captured in Jean Luc Picard's assimilation by the Borg.   Caught in mistakes they then deny and lies.  I rarely know that the mistake is truly made until I see the glaring signs of cover up and know that it's not just a 'little mistake' but something truly 'filty' if it needs a 'cover up".   Insisting the ministry didn’t know where I lived so they could not ‘contact’ me was absurd.  Thanks to our elected minister the absurdity was appreciated and the matter quickly and thoughtfully corrected.  Do we trust such folk with the death penalty especially as too many times we learn an innocent man is imprisoned by the ''system". Thankfully the system works so very well most of the time but not always.
I’m not judging. I’ve made mistakes. We all do. I'm just don't so often make a business of 'cover up'. That only compounds an error and changes what might have been an 'honest mistake' into something wholly contemptible.
But stealing children and selling them into sex slavery isn’t just a mistake or a matter of business. It's wholly contemptible.
Jean Claude Van Dames tackles the tough subject.  The interplay between the police chief, the embassy, and the security police is particularly complex and confusing as it no doubt must be in life.  But I like the police inspector, played so well by Steve Nicolson,  his character and his acting. The bad guys are good bad guys.  I’m left kind of thinking that maybe in the rescue of children ‘vigillantism’ has it’s place.  I thought the same when the movie Machine Gun Preacher recorded the life of the man who rescued the children in African stolen from their families to serve as child soldiers.
Only today as doctors we discussed how many people who are now immigrating to Canada bring tales from their homelands where war , corruption, slave trade and gangsterism were the norm.  I’m a so fortunate to live in Canada.  The gang wars building in Surrey right now might leave several more dead but some of my patients can talk of family killed by terrorists.  The brother of my friend at last year's conference was kidnapped by Al Quada.  At UBC when a strange man touches a student a national emergency is declared and shock troops are parachuted from all over the nation. I love our innocence.
Jean Claude Van Dame gets better as he gets older too. This is a very good action movie but so much more typical of his later work his action films grapple with critically important considerations.  Thanks to Netflix I got to see this movie I might otherwise have missed.

Sandy Hook, Guns, Asparagus and Social Terrorism

It's like Columbine all over again. The same occurred in Montreal. A tragedy occurs and those who have an ax to grind, or a gun to load or unload, derail the story with utter disrespect for the principal players, the victims and victimizer. These cabal of hyenas then put their brand all over the thing to sell their idea of a new world order or peace on earth stealing the Sandy Hook tragedy from those who forever live with the reality of the 'thing'.

What concerns me most about these random acts of violence, truly far rarer than the common random acts of human kindness that routinely go unreported, is that they overlook the most obvious facts of the critical drama played out by victims and victimizer.

 First and foremost the person who is accountable is the killer yet ever so very quickly we are distracted from the individual and individual responsibility to somehow feeling perhaps that his eating or not eating asparagus was as important as President Obama and the National Firearms Association.  The thing suddenly becomes about asparagus rather than about murder.

Frankly I'd think the Rifle Manufacturers wouldn't want to be drawn into this any more than a Toyota executive would wants to have his company's name mentioned when there's a car accident involving the deaths of dozens of 'victims'.   Rarely do I hear what 'brand of car' was involved in a drunken mass murder on the highways but  I actually learned what bullet types were used in this killing.  This is odd as  I can't recall anyone telling me the nature of the steel, domestic or foreign,  used in the recent slashing and stabbing that occurred down the street in my own city.

The critical factor to is that this man was part of a family and raised in a particular way in a particular community and went to a particular school. Somehow even our highly offensive media and this culture of irrelevance and  fatuousness have less influence on a person than the presence or lack of presence of a person's family. There is first and foremost accountability in the family and immediate community, followed by school and teachers and perhaps church, mosque synagogue and religion and lastly political party affiliation.   Did this kids' family vote democrat or republican in the last election?

For years we've been denying any relationship between children and their primary caregivers. This way when a child becomes a nobel prize winner we can't thank his parents for a job well done. Because simply, no praise, no blame. So some inanimate object, a tool, is held accountable for an intentional action rather than the people who gave birth and raised this child to manhood or increasingly in the case of violence these days womanhood. And I've known a mother who raised her son to jihad and spent every waking day of her time with him encouraging him to kill with revenge the infidels. But today I'd think Einstein wasn't responsible for relativity theory it must have been the pen or pencil he used that created that marvellous wonder of science.

It's amazing what can be given with mother's milk but we can't look there can we. We can't ask where was the father either.  Why wasn't  the father teaching his son the proper use and handling of guns. We can't ask either what gun safety programs were available in that community or what requirements specifically were in place around the purchase of guns if the guns were 'legitimate'. Somehow when teenagers are driving without a license and crash stolen cars we all register that there's something intrinsically wrong about the issues of possession, legitimacy and education in this case yet somehow those critical areas of concerns have been lost in competing agendas that have no respect for the victims or victimizers in this case and more concern with collecting funding for non profits and lobby group CEO's.

Not in a generalized consideration of a irrelevancies, but specifically what salesperson sold a gun to a man wearing a cap that said "I"m going to kill children first opportunity I have."? We ask bar tenders to assess the drunkeness of patrons before they are served so what occurred in this specific case? I don't know. I heard this whole important story immediatly hijacked by these dirty people with dirty agendas who simply love to pounce on these kinds of stories for their own promotion.  The causes and agencies with a dog in a wholly different fight were all over this story from the get go.  They lust for these kinds of the stories.

I never did hear the important parts of the very specific 'crime'. I don't know the name of the man who sold the gun to this man who was wearing a look "I want to kill my mother."  I want to know about that individual more than I want to know about asparagus.  I don't think what he ate was as important as what music he listened to or what magazines he read.

I want to know about this specific school and whether there were any courses on morality which I suspect were absent since God has been banned from the schools. I didn't hear any one saying 'perhaps we should return to having prayer in the school' since it seems these kinds of events have occurred in America since America dropped prayer from the curriculum. But I'm just a social scientist and I'd say that there have been guns around forever but this mass murder at the school seems to have taken an increase since we allowed the  courts rather than elected make decisions for society.

Now wouldn't that be interesting to hear from the media which frankly I would love to say caused these tragedies if only because there's often better news coverage these days from the late night comedians than the supposedly learned 'talking heads'. I do think that the whole exercise is about denying the individuals their personal tragedies and not letting the police do their work realistically, not politically and not as an 'entertainment' which this 'circus'  certainly became rapidly.

 It's not about guns as much as it's about accountability and responsibility and whether individuals, families, communities, business men or inanimate objects or whether he did or didn't eat asparagus is the problem. Next thing I'll be hearing is that this bad little monster kid ate at  Macdonalds and Big Macs cause mass killings so Macdonalds should go strictly vegetarian.

At least these events do wonders for reassuring us about the collective stupidity and herd mentality that will guarantee that more of these will occur. As we learned from teenage suicide epidemics, we can learn from Columbine and Sandy Hook , there's a whole lot of irrelevant inadequate needy individuals who will now know their way to fame is to shoot up their neighbourhood. That's why we put a muzzle order on the media reporting of terrorist acts back in the day of Carlos so that terrorists couldn't use violence as a means to get a stupid sideline view to the maximum number of people without going through American Idol like the rest of us.  As a result terrorism was then controlled better by the authorities. This kid was a social terrorist by any definition and these acts of apparently random violence are 'terrorism'.  As a result we should learn from the terrorist experts and take that learning into the schools.

When we advertise a teen suicide a dozen copy cats occur.   I'd like the media to be held accountable for it's celebration of death and to take some of the responsibility for this act of mass destruction. I'd point out to that the use of armed air marshals on planes and metal detectors are the best bet that multimillion dollar air industry has arrived at. When I enter a court room I have my bag scanned and empty my pockets.  I think kids would be safer in schools if the entrance had a metal detector and there was an armed security guard not unlike any government office. If anything perhaps we could learn from the death of the marines overseas and from these kids and ask what we can do to really make our schools safer because terrorism isn't going to go away just because we all collectively keened on face book.

While we're getting real we can also consider that this is the best evidence that removing God from the school has failed and perhaps suggest that a post constructionist study of morality and ethics in light of the learning spirituality should be as important to a school curriculum as art.  All the collective moaning and keening and angst isn't going to do much to stop the next attack. It's  being planned right now by some little nobody  needing serious psychiatric help in a society that would rather spend more money on public relations lawyers to do 'damage control' than on mental health resources to prevent the problem.

Let's get real. This isn't about inanamate objects, it's all about people. And personally I'm a little tired of those folk who get paid to hijack the news to their own ends. And yes we should also out law bombs, oops we did that, didn't we? And by golly gee, the president still has a security detail and the borders still have armed guards. Now why is that?  Don't you think we should care for our children, seriously.

Armageddon and Canada Day

Just last week several people from disparate walks of life talked to me about the alpha and omega.  They were concerned about world catastrophe, market crashes and end of the world scenarios.  They're mainstream moderates.  The crazies are getting to them.
I've never been the same since the Kennedy Missile Crisis.  Having some crazy woman tell us to practice getting under our desks or lining up ass to nose with other grade school students curled in a ball against the hall walls took away my trust in the world.
Yet that was so many decades ago and we've not blown ourselves up.  Fact is we're doing pretty good.  I reassure people mostly. I am a survivalist. I'm prepared in so many ways for Armageddon, wilderness medicine doc, off shore sailor, hunter, fisher, homesteader, scientist, a whole collection of skills that don't help too much in the economic world today but would make me a much sought after somebody post apocalypse.
We just watched the tv series, post Terrorist nuclear bombing of American cities, Jericho. Great show of best case scenario, all the bad stuff, gangs, rape and cannibalism happening with Shakespearean delicassey off stage. It was a terrific show with great characters and really deep community and family relationship writing.  Now we're watching the Outcasts, an English series , post apocalyptic about a new home for the earthlings who escaped the troubles and now are trying to survive on the planet Carpathia.  Great story, great acting.
Good entertainment.
The Jihads were going on in the time of crusades. The Chinese have been a war threat as long but their inherrent capitalism goes against the waste of all out war.  We had the Cold War with Russia and the West and now we have gangsterism around the world and competing arms dealers among the world's leading countries. It's just franchises and business as usual. Nothing terribly noble in sales since 'Death of a Salesman'.  The company doesn't take care of the workers even as well as feudal times which we call the dark ages but were they.  There's aloneliness and fear today that probably wasn't present when everyone knew each other from childhood..
A time of strangers. People don't even want to know what they eat and it's not even Solyent Green yet.
I stood in the rubble of the Armageddon dig in Israel. I think all Christians and Jews should pilgrimage there. Armageddon was a town at one time before it became a symbol.  It lasted a long time as long as any town did in the days of war lords. Now we have cities that are beyond anything that went before.  It's hard to  destroy cities.  Look at London.  Berlin is rebuilt.. Jerusalem and Mecca still stand.  Even Athens is muddling along. I love Mexico City, New York and Tokyo, and Hong Kong
What concerns me is those who say that humans are the parasites on the planet and should be wiped out. These are the eco terrorist suicide bomber ideas.  Kill the humans to save the mosquitos and cockroaches.  That's the nihilism that worries me.
There's a self loathing today and a denigration of human life. it's like the Holocaust reductionism of prisoners as bar codes.  With all the reality tv we're plagued with superstitions about Ghaia some earth goddess who sacrifices herself on the cross till one day she dies.  Forgive me but the earth has withstood far more than a few hydro carbons.  Men and women, children, and the sick will die alot sooner.  I don't think the planet huggers even care for their own and people who don't care for their own can't be trusted to care for each other.
Maltheus said that starvation, war and disease were the great correctors to human advance.  Just when Europe seemed as bad as the west was today Columbus and Marco Polo opened trade globally.  North America was as far fetched an idea then as Mars expedition and sentient dolphins are today.
I believe. I have hope. If Armageddon were just around the corner I think we all would have gone down in the Kennedy Missile Crisis or what the heck, maybe even the Rwanda Massacres.  That's more of what we need to be afraid of.  The Vancouver Riots over a hockey game speak to the mentality of the sports page whereas hundreds of thousands of Canadians were well behaved on Canada day.  That's politics and community.  .
We've got to get beyond playing games and realize Armageddon has come and gone.  That said there's a spirituality to living and spirituality is all about growing love within and celebrating life.

Burnaby Victoria Day journal

I'm here in my motorhome with Laura and Gilbert. We'd planned to go away hunting and fishing but because of a minor financial shortfall with taxes and high overhead I didn't feel up to spending money on travel. We'd planned to go to Clinton and frankly I didn't feel much like driving up the canyon towing the motorhome.  It's serious scarey business.  People die on roads.  Towing means all the concentration of driving my Harley without the sense of freedom. I feel like a water buffalo in the truck towing my RV whereas on the Harley I feel like a free spirited stallion.  I just have to concentrate a whole lot more.  The Mazda Miata is a gelding compared to the Harley but much more responsive to the touch and a joy to drive.  I don't have to worry about Gilbert beside me whereas when he's behind me on the Harley I always worry if he's okay.  Laura loves the Miata and the motorhome.
I love Burnaby.  Came here circa 1970 after the Strawberry Mountain Peace and Love Festival in the Colorado mountain.  True hippy ecological peace and love event where you had to back pack up the mountain and there was only acoustic guitars, gorgeous girls, tents and hugs. After that we hitchhiked to San Francisco wearing flowers in our hair, marching through the streets by the 10 thousands and dancing.
 Then we came to Vancouver for a European songfest. Thousands of voices singing of peace and unity.  Most had been written between the wars, after the War to end all Wars before Hitler then Stalin tore up the world with megalomaniacal dreams.  We were all afraid Vietnam was the beginning of WWIII and a nuclear holocaust.  Easy to think back now and see that things didn't turn out that way.  I like to think the peace movement had its influence on the industrial war complex.  Caused them to rethink war.  Okay to keep blowing up foreigners but had to figure out a way to kill less of one's own.  After Vietnam the world needed popular wars.
But Stalin had enslaved most of the world then and it wasn't even possible to think of the Berlin Wall just coming down.  Later that year we'd be in London with IRA bombings and all the talk would be about Carlos and terrorism. We never envisioned 9-11.  The terrorists just scared us and made us thankful for our own laws and order. Government by suicide bomber.  Later I'd learn all the ammunitions, studying physics and chemistry with an appreciation I'd not have had were I to stay in a suburb, go to a university and not ever encounter the Europe of the 70's when such skills seemed necessary as we all might have to fight terrorists with  their own tools.
I was raised by cowboys.  Long gone were the days of honor and men fighting one on one.  It was a dark world of shady deals and gangs on one.  No heros.  Just survival.
Burnaby at the time was the house of a family friend with all the loveliness of my mother's home. Quilting and embroidery and gardens and family and fine meals.  I loved the greenery outside the window. It rained the whole weekend that I recalled. But it was lovely rain.  Like the rain today.
There's something special about rain when all around there's grass and trees and bushes.  In Vancouver downtown the rain is an irritation because there's just concrete and parking lots. The city doesn't need bike lanes. It's needs boulevards and more sky trains.  I love Stanley Park but it's out of the way.  I don't get over there enough.  Maybe I should get an apartment off Denman so I can use the park. I did when my sailboart was moored near there in  Coal Harbour. Every day I'd walk around the lagoon. Stuart loved the walks in the park and I loved taking pictures of the ducks. The swans laid eggs that year.  The year before vandals had destroyed them. What kind of people destroy the eggs of swans.  It's always a reminder that port city hide trolls and psychopaths.  It's why Vancouver and New Westminister have so much drug traffic whereas Burnaby is relatively free of such sordid insaniety.
I've just come from swimming in the pool. Earlier today I walked Gilbert for an hour along the Brunette River.  Yesterday I spent hours researching medical legal topics, reviewing the literature regarding patients cases, trying to stay up to date this year, 2012, when only last month I read the report of a rich administrative doctor who'd not cracked a clinical text in 30 years or more by his recommendations, yet he was still practicing and telling others how to practice. It's all the rage to get MBA's instead of specialties.  Money is more important that learning yet I want my patients to get better and maybe there's something new I can learn. Always learning. Always driven to study and go to lectures, go to conferences, search the internet.  I miss working overseas when I could read for an afternoon and be available for the hospital at the same time. I was on so many physician discussion sites back then.
These days its hard to keep up again.  I feel behind and know it's at most only months.  There's no money in knowing the latest or doing the best.  All the riches go to the businessmen not the clinicians.  There's no bafflegab in the life and death questions.  And I realized that I haven't done what I set out to do when I entered medicine. I wanted to lazarus and be like Jesus, heal by touch and raise the dead.  Now I'm a cog in a wheel.  Anyone who actually questions the system is called a 'disruptive person'.  Anyone who wants to cure cancer really is called 'grandiose' and delusional. There's such negativity and heavy weight in the overly beaurocratized system of non believers and pay cheque seekers.
And I'm not much better. I'm older now.  I sometimes find myself working for weekends. After a year or two of being caught up with morons, psychopaths and criminals in the system I'm only happy seeing patients and trying to figure how to save just one.  What can I do for this person. Mostly it's just band aids now.  So little time, no resources and a deluge of sick and dying, the aging, like me.  Too many of the people I thought were heros too have retired and I don't know the young who are smarter into 9-5 and overtime.  I never was paid for over time.  Millions lost in service when she told me "it's just a job'.  The doctors call them clients today and even customers.  I gave my pound of flesh.
There's nothing in self righteousness or self pity.  Both are dirty urinals.  I have to raise my eyes.  Climb another mountain. My friend still does the Grouse Grind.  I wonder if my knee could do it. Its been several years since I could climb stairs without pain.  I always feel better in the desert. Loved being in Arizona and Texas.  The rain is beautiful today but it's hard on the joints.  Something about barometric pressure.  The joints love celebrex but the stomach doesn't
I'll go back to my book. It's about India and terrorists.  I just learned 70,000 Indians died in WWI and 9-13 was the Mumbai equivalent of 9-11.  Hundreds killed by terrorist bombers.  One character commented on the Pakistan Indian War.  Another talked about the War of Independence. They're trying to protect athletes in the games from terrorist bombs.  Canadians aren't described as good sports.  Helicopters and Chinese near Kashmir.   So many of my patients or their parents are immigrants. I read histories of the areas where they come from.  So many have been tortured or jailed, some from refugee camps, boys who sold themselves, a woman raped dozens of times by roaming gangs.  I see the soldiers who have nightmare about what they can't forget but would like to forget.
Just had some Murchies Golden Jubilee Tea - Queen E II 1952 to 2002.  Laura says her diamond jubilee is coming up.  Today is Victoria Day.  British empire and the queen who said, "we are not amused'.  I  listened to the CBC podcast Divine Blake and read some William Blake poetry after listening to Bob Smiley the hilarious Christian comedian.  We ate elk curry I made a couple of days ago and put away for a rainy day in the freezer. Laura's daughter just got some baby goats. We pray each day for the baby that is coming too.
God the rain is beautiful with all the green around. Thank you Lord for this day and for this life. Thank you for the challenge and prividge of medicine and healing.  Help me through another week and help me pay the taxes and not regret all the nights and days and weekends I worked for free.  Instead God make the monetary system a 'calling' and let them work for free for a change.  I'd rather that than think the materialists are all headed for hell and I'm going to be in heaven with saints and me a sinner knowing even Jesus supped with tax collectors while Paul was as much a beaurocrat as a tent maker.  Let me be less critical of groups and focus on the individuals who make Darwin's Awards so appealing to even Christians who otherwise have no use for such religion.
It's a short work week and I'm already worrying about all that needs to be done and how little time there is to do all that others say you must so they can be idle.  Lord let there be more Indians and fewer chiefs.
I talked to Dad today.  That was good too. Thank you Jesus for caring for him.  I read my brother's blog and enjoyed his pictures. Thank you for family Lord.   It was sunny there.  Dad was glad to hear of Gilbert and his always wanting to play ball.

Carlos the Jackal

Carlos the Jackal movie, french director, Olivier Assayas.  Fascinating!. I grew up on the Jackal.  Forsyth and the Cold War novels.  The proto terrorists.  Carlos was the Osama bin Laden of the day.  The IRA were bombing buildings when I lived in England.  Che was a romantic doctor.  The University of London bourgeosie communists were all the rage. They're so passe today.  My classmates in medical school from rich families upset Papa and Mama by becoming Trotskyites or Maoists before going on to be Lawyers, Bankers and Doctors. They were so silly. I knew it at the time. They took themselves so seriously. I took myself too seriously and  I was only  reading Gandhi and Martin Luther King.  I was marching for peace while these kids were fighting each other in the streets.  The Stockholm Syndrome got it's name from those days.  The left wing women were the sexiest.  They were the heart of liberation.  The men were talk, hair triggers and cowardly. Vietnam vets were coming home with far away looks while these 'cafe revolutionaries' preened and pranced.  The movies touched on that. I admired Carlos for his functional genius.  He 'achieved' something.  He was 'professional'.  So many of the other revolutionaries seems so amateurish. It was a serious affair. The Palestinians and the Zionists. The communists and later the Islamists.  I met some of each in Europe.  My friends were Israelis. They'd fought on the border but I met Palestinians who told their own story. I was dancing and laughing, Canadian on walk about from university.  It was all so different from Fort Garry and Riverheights.
The movie showed the old men with vengeance and the young men with something to prove.  The women were all so sexy.  Everyone had guns.  Guns for causes.  Guns for ideals.  Not just gangs, robberies and drugs.  Killing had a WWI high minded flair. Not like the post Vietnam ennui.  Middle east as simply tribal.  Proto national.  I loved the character who played Jackal, Edgar Ramirez. All the characters were so real. True drama.   I liked the movie even if it was long  at times.  As much documentary as fiction.  In the end there's the story of the aging man.  Hunted.  Sad.  Like Elvis and Michael Jackson.  Aging poorly.  French with english subtitles.  Given the significance of the Carlos to the rise of Homeland Security and need for all the measures of airport security today, it's a very important movie.  I would recommend it for sure..  More as History, Political Science and a day in one  man's life.  There's another era.  It seems so long ago for yesterday.  Little has changed too.  More complicated.  We all grow fat in our own ways.