Gilbert Hay, Dog of Dogs

These are pictures of Gilbert.  He has been the subject of death threats all month.  One of the people I saw has threatened me and Gilbert. I don’t mind being threatened as it’s been a normal part of my work all my life. It’s like my Vancouver Police Detective friend who told me years ago, “We take threats a lot. It goes with the job. It’s just not part of the job to have your family threatened.”
I’ve formally complained to the police.  So far nothing has been done.  It reminds me when I was getting death threats to myself and went to the RCMP. I was told then that they couldn’t do anything until the biker actually came by my house.
I called 911 when a fellow broke into my Shaughnassey home.  There was some fire and a riot going on and the police never did come.  They’d told me that the earliest they could get there was 20 minutes but it may be an hour because of the backlog of emergencies.
I just mention this because yet another person ‘stormed’ out of my office because I was running an hour behind. I can’t recall the last time I actually had a lunch break in this office. I drink coffee seeing people and a doctor is very angry at me because my waitlist is three months at the best of times and she is ‘shocked’ that I can’t see her patient sooner. I’m not an emergency service though increasingly patients tell me they wait 10 hours or more in the hospital emergencies. So there’s this back up through the system.
At night, I got home around 9 pm last night, I watch cop shows. I love how fiction is so effective. Everyone is doing one thing and they’re doing it well. It’s like the hospital and doctor shows. They’re all propaganda.  I still love it. NCIS is especially good with the lab spending literally millions of dollars on obscure tests every single case.  One show would use up the Vancouver Police Departments budget for the year.  My patients are always angry and demanding MRI’s and then even angrier when their doctors give them prescriptions for medications that cost hundreds of dollars a month.
I was looking at the latest Tesla Car and it was nearly $100,000.  Truvada the new medication that prevents getting HIV costs $50 a pill.  It’s like patients who objected to paying $10 for a viagra pill. But much of the new medications especially for niche populations, diseases that are not that common so there’s no money gain for ‘scale’, these commonly cost thousands of dollars a month.
I saw that a vacation for a week cost thousands. A cruise cost $10,000 and one island I’d love to go to cost $30,000 for a week.  There’s no hue and cry about these ‘costs’.  Last week the corruption in the music industry reared it’s all too common face with the Tragically Hip tickets selling out in minutes then being resold at hundreds of dollars profit.
Gilbert doesn’t care about all these things.  He wakes me in the morning like a wet alarm clock.  I’ve always been concerned about him being hurt or stolen so I’ve kept a pretty ‘short’ leash on him This last month I’ve arranged with a friend to watch him when I have to go out. We don’t feel safe leaving him alone anywhere.
He hurt his back in the fall.  He was paralyzed and we didn’t know if he would make it.  It’s amazing what advances have occurred in medicine. The steroids he got and catheterization let him get over the hump. I carried him for weeks and sometimes still he can’t climb up a flight of stairs, mostly at the end of the day.  So I carry him. It reminds me of my brother and I carrying our parents in their last year, lifting them, helping them. I do that for Gilbert. I can tell by his face that he doesn’t want to put me out.
My brother has been struggling with cancer and really a warrior. I love watching him with the dogs. When I visit there are three cockapoos cheering for him.  They’re a bundle of joy. Always up to something. Gilbert loves his niece cockapoos.  I just love watching all the motion around my brothers feet and in his lap when the dogs are vying for his attention.
One of my closest friends has been diagnosed with cancer and is having surgery now.  Several of my patients have cancer.  It’s caused me to appreciate life in a different way and be more protective of Gilbert. I wish people would just go after me and not the vulnerable ones I love.  I remember when my brother told me about how terrible it was for him when his sons were threatened when they were younger. He’s sat by many a bedside too when family were sick.  I’ve realized too that I’ve lived with sickness every day for nearly 40 years.  Every day year in year out I’m with really sick people.
I’m not immune. I got TB as a northern doctor. I was physically injured by dangerously insane. Sometimes my back reminds me of what it is like wrestling 300 pound psychotic men to the floor trying not to hurt them and not to be hurt oneself. I’ve had countless colds and flus always at the frontline of the latest contagion, envying my banker and administrative colleagues who never are near sickness or death except for their own family.  The AIDS epidemic was the scariest thing for me for those first few years.  I remember when my psychiatrist and surgeon colleagues died, the shame and despair.  There are diseases like leprosy where the stigma extends to the caregivers. I was helping AIDS dementia ‘biters’ and even staff would give me a wide berth that first year.  We knew so little.
Now I’m in the midst of a drug epidemic. Four of my patients died last year.  Overdoses and suicides. They went on runs.  This year its’ two. One suicide and another stabbed to death by his drug dealer.  I cry sometimes.  So many of my colleagues haven’t known people who killed themselves even though they work in the same field. When I was in charge of the ‘suicide’ ward in an asylum I took over a ward with 30 attempts a year and 3 to 5 deaths and reduced that to 10 attempts and no deaths.  I specialized in “Borderlines Personality Disorder” for a decade or two fascinated by the disorder I said eventually was ‘untreated ptsd until proven otherwise. Then my interest shifted to trauma and eventually drugs and alcohol
But my friend just asked if she could take my dog for a walk. She’s a minister. I worried and felt anxious letting him leave my sleep. I have ’t slept well all month. I’ve made silly mistakes.  In the background there is a man threatening me and my dog.  Pothead psychopaths killed my other dog when I wouldn’t lie about their ‘dirty urines’.
My older colleague and mentor told me that I’ll never succeed because I tell the ‘truth’.  I can’t forget what a liar Pierre Trudeau was . Justin Trudeau is certainly following in the old man’s footsteps.  I am watching now as Hillary piles up lies upon lies. Judges in this country lie.  Politicians and lawyers lie but doctors, well, when we lie there’s consequences.  More than money and reputation are at stake. Lives are lost.  Accountability is a thing that matters.  I tell the truth.  It’s been a problem.
I tell people I am afraid. It’s taken for granted that I’m a big tough courageous guy who has all his career worked where others wouldn’t.  I remember the wet reserves that I went to where the RCMP wouldn’t go and no doctor would go because of the killing and attacks. I remember running the length of a reserve with three drunken drug addicts with knives and broken bottles screaming “Kill the Whitey”.
It’s been all month that myself and my dog have been under constant threat of death.  I just assume this is normal in Canada now. There are so many murders in this city.  The poverty is third world and the rich are like nothing ever known before in Canada.  They own provinces of the countries they came from as well as houses here and they made their money in ways no Canadian can today.  Criminals are everywhere but the courts are mostly interested in approving killing people and approving bestiality.
I think of Donovan’s song, “Beatniks are out to make it rich, must be the season of the witch”.  It was a head of it’s time.
It just wears on me.
Gilbert’s back and I relax.  Nothing was done by the authorities about the men who killed my other dog.  I understand they died a short while later. I learned they’d had an ‘accident’.  They’d killed the wrong person’s dog after killing mine. I’ve loved knowing people who are less ‘civilized’ than I am and have a strong ‘vigilante justice’ streak.  It happened following people hurting the doctors up north.  There was an accident.  I feel like I have angels
But I’d rather my dog lived and I’d rather people didn’t threaten care givers.
But my friend just showed that 2000 doctors have been killed this year around the world.  It seems that people like to blow up hospitals and ambulances these days.
I am really looking forward to a vacation. I’m leaving Vancouver for a couple of weeks to go sailing and know that Gilbert and I will be safe at sea in storms more than we are among humans despite how many hundreds of thousands of dollars I’ve paid in taxes for safety. There’s just no law and order and terrorists have attacked the inside of our parliament.  So many of my patients have been raped, men and women, and so many bullied and so many threatened with knives and baseball bats , all the while the government spends millions on committees to talk about gun violence rather than addressing the ‘violent’.  It’s a silly world. I am sad to see more of the waste and shenanigans in government.
I’d like a good nights sleep knowing Gilbert is going to be safe.  I don’t know how anyone can feel a man in Canada because we really can’t protect even a little injured dog. If I defend myself or my dog I’ll go to to jail. That’s the Canadian way. I miss living in the States because there I felt the authorities supported my defending myself from criminals but here that’s not the way.
I’ve a skewed view of life having worked with so many drug addicts, victims and psychotic and abused trauma patients.
I have nightmares again and don’t sleep. It’s good for long periods but I can’t seem to push it all aside and feel happy when my dog is being threatened right now and the person who threatened my life is really only a concern to me.
Justin Trudeau always has four or six men with guns and police and military training surrounding him. Each man carries many clips, so they could kill dozens of people if they wanted to.  Obama usually has a dozen men and women armed to the teeth around him and they are carrying 20 to 40 shots minimum each so could retaliate by killing hundreds.
My dog is a cockapoo.  He’s trained as therapy dog. He’s a lover not a fighter.  I understand so many of my patients who don’t want to care for anyone or anything themselves in Canada anymore.  It’s easier not to love.  The poor and middle class can’t afford to love. It’s like all fascist and communist countries where only the rich are protected and only the rich can afford to care.
Cancer and love are lessons in holding and losing.  We’re born between piss and shit and we leave ashes to ashes. It’s a lonely world and it’s all an illusion , maya.  I know as a Christian and a mystical one at that, we’re all continue together in the afterlife, with the family and friends and dogs.  It’s this life that’s tough.  This kindergarten of suffering.
This place where they killed jesus. And they rape children.  And they bomb hospitals. And they threaten to kill cockapoos and no one really cares.  Not really.  Maybe.

Global Police State

A friend said that there is no longer any reason to run away.  "There's no place left to go."  Corruption and police abuse occur locally but are also global.  Whether it's overt or covert isn't as important as the fact that 'geographical solutions' no longer seem likely to be any more than lateral displacements.
The true nature of the police is to 'serve and protect'. Their success stems from their close relationship with the community they serve in. Further they are most successful when they represent the community ideals.  The fact remains that a fraction of all individuals are simply ferral and lack darwinian advancement to be able to consceputalize society at all. These are the psychopaths.  Psychopaths object most to being put in jail with other psychopaths.  They thrive on victims. A good police service is like the sheep dogs that serve the shepherd.
What is problematic is when the police serve tyranny or are politically at variance with the majority aims of the people.  Further, police are distinctly different from the military. The military's function is to find the enemy and extingquish the threat.  The paramitarization of the police is a concern because of the paranoid devision which results.  Military need an group enemy whereas police theoretically don't.
Organized crime today is becoming for some a 'blue collar' police force acting where the 'white collar' police force has failed.  Russia is described as in bed with the mafia and Japan has long cohabited with the Yakuza.  Gangs provide an order out of disorder. There's a history of gangs and unions that speak to the service this misled groups have in adressing chaos.  'Steal a little and they put you in jail, steal alot and they make you king, ' was a saying of Dr. Johnson, the english political critic.
Meanwhile bullying was a means of gaining power whereas killing might cost one the power that threat and extortion gained.  Southern writer Carl Hiaasen has quipped that the only things a southern politician can't do, all else being acceptable, is "being caught with a dead girl or a live boy "in their bed. There's a blurring of the boundaries which has given rise to various privatized 'security' forces and increased powers for 'private police'. Meanwhile in the school teachers are all on about 'anti bullying' which was once the 'private boys school learning grounds' for next generation leaders with hazing as central.
During the 30's in Germany and Europe as a whole there was a time of great spirituality and a time of eco awarenss.The great nudist and nature movements thrived between wars and prior to the development of the great police states of Communism and Nazism.  It is both exciting and concerning that we are faced again with a time of great spirituality and eco awareness.
Today we have a soldier on trial for releasing secrets that Wikileaks passed on to the people. The 'secrets' showed the corruption in the high places of governemnt.  Naturally this corruption undermined the 'police' themselves in North America.  9-11, the OJ trial, and countless other events have eroded our faith in the 'purity' and 'honesty' of leadership.  At the height of the Goldman Sachs,  Franny Mae and Freddy Mae debacle there were cocaine drugged executives whoring with high class prostitutes.
Locally a new 'watchdog' has been brought in to 'police' the 'police' yet hundreds break all manner of law defiantly squatting ('occupying '- note the military language) in public parks and 'disrupting traffic' because they like to.  The normal police are damned if they do and damned if they don't.  Increasing all over the world police are faced with containing 'protestors' in increasing 'civil war' like scenarios.  Yet if they 'act' in day to day scenarios they will be scrutinized and if they avoid acting to catch criminals they will be playing it 'safe'.  It's a confusing time to be a police man or woman.
The 'police' state depends on the judiciary.  Increasingly there's 'centralization' of control and judges demanding that there be no criticizm of them while increasingly there's a demand, much like with 'wiki leaks' to film proceedings. The Vancouver Riots court cases are due to be televized.  Not "Judge Judy' by any means, thank God, but a return to Solomon without the exclusivity and dark corridors.  Meanwhile Philip Slayton's book, Mighty Judgement , How the Supreme Court Runs Your Life has been published to show Canadians just how free Americans are compared to Canadians who behaviour politically fluctuates from silliness and irrelevance to abject vassal stateship.
Meanwhile as Christians we believe that God is in control of all aspects of life including politics and law though Jesus did say that a different ruler ruled the world before his death by the judges and police of his day was supposed to change things. Hitchens died recently and was famous for saying if the religious felt their homes were in the afterlife and heaven why were the religious organizations, be they Christian, Catholic, Moslem or Jewish so intent on acquiring land and power in this world.
The paradox has always been that we are 'gods that shit'.  We have minds capable of imagining peace on earth especially at Christmas but our bodies war with the very idea.  Freud was afraid of the "id' and the unconscious, according to Jung and Milton Erickson who felt the unconscious was to be embraced.
The police state is all about the rational limitting the unrational to all extents and purposes.  Historical 'rationality was the domain of man and irrationality the  domain of women."  This resulted in the quip that the heart has reason that the minds does not know of.    Yet in British Columbia, though half of the lawyers graduating are female, two thirds leave law rapidly because they apparently are so excluded that the law society is now finally attempting to make more room in it's irrationally rational corridors for the rationally irrational sex.  World War I was the war to end all wars and confirmed that the 'age of reason' had culminated in the most unreasonable of behaviour.
I for one am a healer. I'm on the side of motherhood and children. I think Dad's a bit over the top at times still I love him dearly.  It's  balance I love best. I'm a student of Freud but love Jung and Milton Erickson.  I believe that all the gold and bullion put into the hands of the controllers with first the failed war on Drugs and now the war on Terror would best be divided with those in education and medicine.  I think theres a place for prevention and enforcement but I think that we're way over the top with tanks in police forces.
I think it's time to win  hearts and minds and if we did that we'd have a global police state that 'served and protected' rather than tended more and more to the para military.
In Canada we all have to re think Troudeau despite my personal love for his red carnation. His calling tanks into the streets of Montreal may well have been the greatest failure in our history.   Perhaps the resurrection of the Canadian Liberal Party could phoenix from a re think of that sad moment in Canadian history.
I want to believe and see God in charge and know that I am safe in the hands of the Lord. I want to know too that my leadership isn't lying and stealing while smiling like Robert Hare's  'Snakes in Suits'.  I would have more faith in the future if countries like Canada lobbied on behalf of Julian Assange of Wikileaks.  We need to support authority but we can't stand for tyrrany.
Of course if Obama declares a state of war with China then we will have to accept 'loose lips sink ships' but until then we need to here and now to accept a Global Police State but work together to ensure that it's role remains 'to serve and protect'. My friends says, "there's no place left to run to."  Of course, I'm following the latest Mars expedition with keen interest.