Gratitude for Canadian Judges

I have been fortunate to work in the courts in Canada and the United States. In both countries I have been very impressed with the knowledge and character of the judges who I have observed. There have been rare exceptions to this. Overall my experience has been exceedingly positive.
I had a moment to reflect on this when a middle eastern man reminded me that we are truly  fortunate in Canada to have judges who are experienced, trained, honest and just.
“In the middle east my business covered several countries and the nature of my business meant I was involved with the courts, legitimately, not criminally.   The courts and the judges there are are generally corrupt.  I’ve had a chance to compare. It’s a bit like hockey and soccer.  Soccer, you know the game is fixed.  Maybe not as bad as wrestling but fixed nonetheless. Alll those players falling down is just too convenient.  If hockey is fixed it’s not so apparent. Not with the players anyway. Maybe occasionally the refs."
He went on to say,"In the middle east, if you want to murder someone and you don’t involve the judge in your plan he’s likely to  consider it a personal affront. You see you’re supposed to speak to him first.  He’ll tell you how much he will need to get you off.  He’ll then say it’s okay to murder.  The police will catch you.  You will appear in court. But then the judge, if he’s been paid off properly, will find some way to let you go free.  If you don’t include him at the outset and just murder someone and show up in court, well, that’s just inconsiderate. You can still go free, if you pay the judge.  But the cost will be double or triple what it would have been.  That’s for disrespecting the judge.  Disrespect is the most serious crime. That’s what I mean when I say the middle east is corrupt."
I personally don't know if this is 'true'. It's certainly reflects what so many have told me.
I remember an experience when I was sailing along the coastal towns in Mexico.   I had to pay for a local license and visited the judge in his office.  The license was only a matter of a few hundred dollars but I’d brought a wad of pesos.  When I pulled it out of my jean pocket, the judge literally jumped out of his chair and began closing the blinds so no one could see in.
“I’m sorry about this,” he said, taking the money.”  “My predecessor was totally corrupt and wouldn’t do anything without his palm being greased. I took this position on the basis of cleaning up the corruption.  You can’t imagine how bad it would look for me if someone looked in and saw a gringo giving me this great wad of cash.  I’m sure you understand."
I thought him a brave man knowing how many people of integrity are killed in government position by drug and arms traffickers.
I laughed though and said I did understand. But really I didn’t.  Canada just never was that corrupt in my experience. Perhaps my concern is that when I was growing up we could leave our houses unlocked.  I lock everything in Canada today.
I knew that if I wanted anything to be done in Asia when I was there I had to give a little ‘incentive’ to the person serving me. It was like the hotel staff in New York City and Paris.  Hong Kong, Tokyo, and LA, this 'tip' thing may well be just 'big city' .  Hotel staff  stand  and wait clearing their throats until I pay them, leaving me feeling somehow 'unsophisticated' because I don't know the latest 'palm greasing percentage' or situations where this is warranted.  
A supervisor in provincial government services told me how frustrating it was these days constantly watching the new immigrant employees. “They simply can’t believe that we don’t get money on the side for every government transaction that we do. I’ve had to stop them repeatedly and even get them to give back money. They’ve actually complained that they wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of getting a government job if they’d known how little it was going to pay. “In our country,” they say, "the salary is just the base pay. All the real money is made in the  extras"  I have to tell them over and over again that’s called ‘extortion’ in this country. Of course Trudeau’s ‘pay for access’ makes them not believe me.  They tell me that Canada is multi cultural and wink. It’s  becoming a problem but only for me."
A professor of political science explained to me that we don’t have ‘baksheesh’ in the west like they do in the east but “institutional backsheesh’ is alive and well.  Our taxations schemes and various other formulas are used to reward or punish industries or companies. That’s what all the ‘lobbies’ are for, regulations that favour their clients. It's the foundation of the corruption in Ottawa and Washington and all government cities in Europe. Brussels is the absolute ground zero of this explosion in corruption.
In Communist Countries  judges routinely convicted prisoners of conscience and sent them to the Gulag or the Psychiatric wards.  As a member of the Psychiatrists against Political Abuse of Psychiatry and Human Rights Associations it's always amazing to see the endemic corruption in communist countries that seem to glossed over or completely ignored by the our mainstream media.   The 'missing persons of Argentinia' were a fraction of the numbers that still go missing in China.
You are considered a criminal or psychotic if you question government or say anything against Marx.  As a godless political system it takes as much offence to any questioning of Marx as the Muslims do when you question Mohammed or state the simple truths about Islam.  The judges in communist countries were all corrupt, individually and collectively.  Communism, a committee dictatorship, was like other dictatorships, corrupt to the very core.
I did pro bono work with Mr. Dugald Christie, the amazing lawyer who set up the pro bono services in the British Columbia. We attended church together and he really was a hard man to say no to considering his impeccable character. Indeed I never did say no to him.   But all the pro bono work I’ve done has sure got me in a lot of hot water with government.  There’s usually an unspoken and often political reason for a person being without support.  Dugald Christie argued that the cost of legal matters in Canada was such that the middle and lower classes simply couldn’t afford the process.  This was outside the domain of the judges and more a reflection of the political system.
The judges in Canada, as I’ve already said, have all individually with rare exception been stirling characters.  We are very fortunate and I do hope that we can remain so with all the pressures on them these days from the Dark Side.  I don’t think we appreciate the judges as much as we deserve because Canadians compare them in general against some ‘idealized’ standard.
I’d not exchange our Canadian or the American judges I've known for any judges in other parts of the world even the little I do know of them.  Certainly I'd not want to face judges in dictatorships like most of the UN member countries or  the communist countries, or South  Americas, and definitely not most of Africa and  increasingly in more countries in Europe where corruption stories are rife.   Definitely I don't want to face judges in the middle east.  This may be in part because I've seen first hand and heard first hand the stories of rank abuse physically and sexually from patients who've had that misfortune.
We simply are very fortunate in Canada to have the judges we have.  We really should acknowledge it .

Journal Feb. 3, 2016

There was more light this morning as I walked the dog.  The alarm is a fixed reference.  I felt it was warmer too.  There probably are crocuses out but I’ve yet to see them. I’m thinking about the colours of the tulips I’ll see in coming weeks.  The reign of darkness has passed. The shadow has moved on.
I’ve lived another wet and gloomy season.. There has been no war. I have not killed myself.  My dog’s back heels.  My own back and hip pain me more.  My concern is more that I won’t be able  to carry a haversack far. I haven’t the strength to lug ammunition to safety. I can’t carry food and water.  I don’t know how many arrows I can pack.  These are things to concern oneself with in times of trouble.  Electioneering.  Threats and rage.
I’ve watched the never new news.  I’ve been listening to audio courses from the Texas Mideast Lecture Series about Desert Storm.  Time and again the people have risen against the tyrants and been beaten down.  One revolution after another in Teheran.  Here we think of it as ‘over there’.  “Somebody else’s problem”.  A Muslim thing. “Muslim fighting Muslims”.  Like the gangs of Surrey.  Still the revolutions have taken on three characters - anti colonial - fighting the Corporations left over from the imperial invaders of the 19th century.  The leftover of WWII where the Ottoman Empire and Persian Empire were cut up by the ruling west into pieces of nation states that really didn’t have much in common.  Shii and Sunni combinations like an experiment, in one country a minority, in another a majority.  The Sufi’s sidelined.  So there’s that.  This ‘us against them’ at the global level.  East versus west.
But then there’s nation against nation.  Saudi versus Iran.  Good old fashioned politics and war.  Some of it just ‘proxy war’.  I called it the Desert Storm Arms bazaar.  The competition between Wal Mart and Target.  Western capitalist arms manufactures competing with Communist arms manufacturers and the west won. The fall of the USSR because no one wanted to buy their weapons after the awe of Desert Storm. Tough competition from the Chinese.  Everyone selling guns and tobacco.  We’re not saints.
I had a checkoslovakian pistol.  The left loves the Scandinavian countries now. Not least because of their tall and naked women. But the ex Nazi Swedish Socialism lives off the arms trade and dirty coal.  I can not afford the finest Finnish shotgun.  The precision machinists of those countries make bigger and better weapons.  Canada made armoured cars.
But the Desert Spring uprisings had an older twist.  Fighting off the foreigner, then fighting one against another politically and also the old religious fight between fanatics. The muslem brotherhood and Hamas and Hizbollah.  Extremist radical jihadists and the rest of the population that would rather just move forward. Most people want internet with free libraries and better food. They don’t want a war. But there are those that want to overthrow. they want to return to when the Mosque was in charge.  Before even the Ottoman’s if truth be told.  The dictatorships of the land have been like the Ottoman but these rebels want the divinity of the holy warrior.  They want the jihad. They want the Divine Nero. They would watch Rome and the world burn for their ego. They are actually believing god tells them to fuck little girls and kill the other guy.
And always there are criminals taking advantage of the disorder. Selling cigarettes and sex slaves.

I woke this morning disgruntled.  I had bitter thoughts of past wars in my own life.  Resentments that came on wakening.  I prayed for family friends and enemies and wanted to crawl back into bed like a Government Worker or Union member. I have made it through Monday and Tuesday.  I threw out an anchor to the weekend to kedge my way their. We’re staying in a hotel for long showers and HBO tv.  A changes is as good as a rest. I want to be somewhere I can let the dog off leash without other bigger dogs to bully him, healing as he is. I want a trail or field where he can run and play and believe that life did not hurt him. I want to be beyond my own guilt that if I’d done more I might be a better person or more secure.
I talk to God and the atheists are ending their lives as my is just beginning. I can not believe the loving God would force an afterlife on those who don’t want it.  I might gloat or despair at this never ending whining pitifest. I am lost in the uncertainty of my activity.  The cloud of unknowing.  I ask is this really what I’m supposed to be doing. I have social suicidal tendencies, the desire to run away to the north or south. I would flee government look for wilderness , go anywhere there are no bullies.
I know that in the breakdown of societies the judges and lawyers are first to be killed.  I know that Lenin was a lawyer and they have long held sway so that jokes abound about them as much as politicians. In the French Revolution they got the politicians.  This time round they’re get the lawyers but thats sad because they’re indiscriminate. The good guys and gals I know will go like the soldiers and police who just wanted a good job and didn’t mean to kill the citizens and support sociopaths.  Every revolutions the bankers are at risk.  The clergy took it hard in the French Revolution. The teachers went down hard when the Pol Pot took control They’re always killing Christians.  One religion or ethnic group against another.
Trudeau has been spreading racism.
I think the leadership would welcome rebellion. They’re like ‘let them eat cake’ while everywhere the drug addicts and homeless and ex convicts are angrier than I’ve ever known them.  The baby boomers aren’t going ‘quiet into that still night’.  Their houses are going, their cars are being taken with licenses and eyesight. There’s an edge of despair. No one is prepared for a ‘good death’ and there’s not enough botox for the alternative.
The old bridges are falling and the work on the Lion’s Gate shows the shoddy engineering and the corruption in the City and the trades. No better evidence of graft and corruption than roads that were built for 50 years falling apart in 10.
But I’m just an observer.  Frightened, lost.  I convinced so many to live and stop drugs and now my government wants them to suicide and take drugs.  Decades we struggled against the Tobacco Lobby wasting all our free time and energy fighting to save a lung, begging the government to shut down the psychopaths that sell cigarettes and they kept taking their kick backs and protecting the mass killers, worse than nazis really, in sheer numbers.  Here among us.  And we finally felt we were going forward but then the Liberals bought in to marijuana smoke
And Nero played his violin as Rome burnt.  There’s so much lust in destruction.  Give them cake.  Smoke.  Have a smoke.  Cancer of the lungs and throat.
I gave it up. Smoking.
I’d smoke whatever.
It was the smoking.
Now I don’t smoke.
I have a CPAP machine to sleep through the night and go to face another day, fight another day for ‘public health’.  Save another life.  Get paid a pittance what the killers get. Listen to more lies.
Bow down to Justin Trudeau, the new Nero. Emperor.  Wife Sophie.  Cute kids like the Queen’s kids.  That whole layer is like a cast of gods and superhero.  I don’t even know they’re real.  Acts.
All the world’s a stage, said Shakespeare.
My problem is I’m a critic.
I should be applause.  Bravo. Hooray. Hallelujah.  Be with me today Lord Jesus.  Help me in all my actions.  Be my mouth and words and hands.  Let me do thy will because frankly my will sucks.  The winter is still on us.  The death of the winter world still lingers. I must believe in spring. The ground hog spoke. There is easter and resurrection to come.  This is lent.  Days from now.  Ashes.  A milestone in the year like a coffee break in the day.
I must go to work. The coffee is finished and there’s drugs to be sold and hope to be sown.  My government tells me to offer pot and physician assisted suicide.  That’s all they have. Their casino parliaments have taken the money for health care and turned it to death and empty words. It’s all about hot air.  Save the planet in 2500. Let th people die this week. Give them cake.
Shake it off Bill.  You must ‘sell hope’ .  You’re in the business of ‘life’.  Let the politicians deal in death but you must remain a healer.  Get on with it and stop your bloody whining.  The world doesn’t need another bitter old man of any religion or colour.  We need laughter.  So fucking laugh you wanker or I’ll …..what…..what will you do.
I don’t know.
Have a shower.  Get dressed.  Do the drill.  Routine. Discloline.  The light is out.  Winter is passing. The groundhog said spring is here.  Soon Jesus will be risen.  Come on. You can do it. It’s Wednesday. You can do another wednessday. Forget about the mountain of wednesdays you’ve already done.  I know the government people, the bosses say you’re never good enough. They’re trying to shut down the old guys and girls.  I see them turned out in the fields. Useless.  Their souls sucked and bones picked, Meanwhile the wealthy from around the world are streaming into the country after killing off their own, after their lives of wealth and slave labour fearing uprisings. They’ve stolen all the countries moneys and run off. Canada is a haven for them.  They’re criminals in their countries but here they’re rich and smug.
I couldn’t become rich like they did. I didn’t have slave labour and I couldn’t use gangster connections. I couldn’t bribe a judge or policemen. I couldn’t get away with murder.  They did.  There’s blood on their hands and they scare me. I’ve no blood on mine . the police and military here are only for the protection of the rich. I have to hope they won’t want to kill the doctors when the end comes.  It’s not going to come here. Everyone is going to be smoking dope and hanging around and no one is going to revolt especially with all the criminals from other countries coming here to avoid having the children treated like they treated others children. Tribalism is here to stay.
The glass is half full, ass hole.
Stop your belly aching. Look to the half full glass. Be optimistic.  There’s enough fear mongering and begging blaming self pitying on the CBC.  You don’t have to join the collective moan.
Get in the shower. Get out of your head.  Go now. Thank you Jesus.