Fear of Death/Love of Life

Fear of death has been thought the greatest fear.  Many variations of the theme exist like fear of dying, fear of pain, fear of powerlessness, fear of loss of control, humility, and much more.  

The classic psychiatric text was Denial of Death by Ernest Becker.  Denial is the most primitive of coping mechanism and used primarily when overwhelmed or perhaps negatively surprised.

The historic and traditional, microcosmic and microcosmic, approach to death is reproduction.  Children have been humans ,individually and collectively, response to fear of death and mortality.  Art and empire and monuments are all other ways of attempting to reach beyond the apparent limit of life.  Religion and all manner of thought systems further attempt to extend this life.  Not only is this the forward thinking approach but the study of history and archeology further advance the idea that life isn’t brief and perhaps sordid but rather long and noble.  

Love of life and imnortality go hand in hand. 

Vanity.

Children and family and genetically related individuals and groups are the building block of society.  

Yet coitus interruptis, the ‘withdrawal method’ was mentioned in Genesis.  L’Chaim , to life, but not if it’s to one’s dead’s brother’s progeny which was the requirement of Hebrew Law. If your brother died without an heir, you were required to i pregnate his wife.  Onan, much maligned for Onanism, or masturbation, rather failed to impregnate his dead brother’s wife and give her and him an heir. Instead he wanted to keep the land for himself and his progeny.

Land and land ownership and all that ties to that was of course part of the need for the construct of permanence and denial of death and change and fear of course of change and death.

The reformer is the enemy of anyone who benefits from the status quo but as change is frightening.

Faced with fear we ‘freeze’, ‘fight’ or ‘fight’.

“Freezing’ is very popular.  However what happens to an ostrich who puts its head in the sand. “It doesn’t know who kicks it”.

Birth and death.

We only have other’s word about our birth and the Big Bang theory, and we can’t tell anyone about our death.  Just one more of the great paradoxes of life.

The Book of Mormon was a sublime comedy and satire of all philosophies and religions.  The play was a challenge to all ‘people of the book’.  The major books are Bible, Bhagadvagita, Koran, Talmud, the Tripitaka, the Tao, Communist Manifesto, and the list goes on.  Each book has a protagonist,  Moses, Mohammed, Jesus, Paul, Buddha, Confuscious, Marx, etc.  There are a variety of these emotionally carthaced individuals with a mythology that surrounded their venerable lives.

The notion of God is ideas coming down from God, Intelligence and ideas going up to God , competing elevator ideas.

The oldest law of the world is the Chinese Law of the Fish, there are Big Fish and Little Fish, and little fish must be fast and numerous.

Having children made people bigger.  We protestants didn’t like to fight the catholics because we had a couple of brothers and sisters in general and the catholics had a lot.  Throughout history empires were made on children who provided the armies and the equivalent of slave labour.  Today children are pets. Then they were tools.

Feminist is a great myth. Women’s individualism was a product of contraception and the myth of overpopulation and the Industrial Age.

The Machine,

The Dark ages aren’t as dark as intellectuals would have you believe The advances in engineering are mind boggling.  Just the idea of the lever and the pyramids and stone henge are more monumental than space flight. 

The dark ages and Middle Ages were a time of physical advancement and not just paintings.  The renaissance was a recovery and advance of science.  

Science joins two with the ‘neutral term’ ‘associated with’.  Marxism and it’s little sister feminism joins two ‘events’ with the value laden term ‘oppresses’. Hence the hysteria of victimship and legal equivalent of side taking, and blame and shame.  Politicians advance with divide and conquer and ganging up. 

Individualism was never desired.  In face of threat humans congregated.  Being alone was for the lunatic and the religious.  Even monks were a community as Thomas Merton showed in his study of Buddhist and we knew of the Dessert father.

War is us against them.  It’s all fear based and paranoia.  Steal a little and they put you in jail , steal a lot and they make you king. The winner writes history.  Women are equally guilty.  Eva Brawn and Hitler’s Mother created Adolf.

Women have been second class only because of their unwillingness to accept accountability.  No praise without blame.  Today the various victim cults want license not freedom. The language is changed to validate whatever ideology suits , such as murder and abortion or Medically Assisted Suicide,

I turned 70. I am an individual.  I realized 28 days alone at see with only a dog and a cat.  

The only day we have is today. Carpe Diem. ODAAT. One day at a tine,  We live from sleep to sleep. 

Life is a manifestation of memory desire and today.  Buddha did say desire is the root of all suffering.  Kierkegaard said life is suffering unto death.

Freud said Eros and Thanatos.  Life wish and death wish.

Politicians promote their children today and say vote for me “I”m a parent’.

The division is ‘parents and single’s, ‘families versus individuals’,  With the machine we don’t need many more. A dog and a cat perhaps, a God, a friend.  

Sex was first for pleasure.   Later it was connected to child making.  Later it was known that the largest armies one.  

Gender is a product of the past.  

Humans are heard animals. Raising children or even monkeys alone created insaniety, death wish dominant.  Raising biologically disconnected children, adopted, kibbutz etc worked.  

Science takes groups and compares them and finds general trends and directions which can guide but don’t predict the future of the individuals.

Individuals and individualism is associated by farmiles and countries.  The paranoid sees the individual as oppressed by the group.  Certainly the Communist Committee Gangstrism continues to oppress individuals.

Others see all relationships as mutual ,versus parasitic,

I like my dog,  Dog and human have been a long history of mutuality.  

I remember family and being born but my father’s generation was born into the celebration of the ‘family unit’.  The Asian family unit vernerates the old.  Children are a mother’s old age pensio.  Mother’s collectively are cared for by children in old age while the world is full of disregarded old men.  Men die 10 years younger than women because they are uncared for .  The lie of feminism was that women were tougher, but when put in the same jobs they died as young. Feminists haven’t been creative but have raised children for themselves .  Today women have sons on leash. Men have dogs on leash.  

Men are becoming women and women are becoming men,  God doesn’t make mistakes.  The whole idea of that is fate versus choice.  I chose to dress as a woman and because of that I can be deemed wrong, bad, mad.  But the other who says God made a mistake. Is the latest in the victim motif.  I love the advances of science and women getting big breasts and women getting little breasts is called cosmetic surgery. I’d like breasts as a man for the sake of cosmetic surgery.  Not because of fate or free will.

However the great industry of law and psychology is to ‘advocate’ for the outside.  Today one of the wealthier groups is the new ‘drug pusher’ who is the ‘advocate’ of the ‘drug addict’ who can’t abstain but must have safe source.  The natives did the land claims game with native getting 1 million dollars while two lawyer groups got 10 million dollars each to gabfest.  The safe source debate is little different,

The same debate occurred with Sangster and birth control and abortion.  The pregnant girl could abstain or the rape could have been compensated as in tribal society superior and more sophisticated than today which is a lewd and obscene society.  Neither better or worse. Difference.

The idea of the Christian’s refusing to take the plank out of their own eyes while attacking on mass the mote in their neighbours.  The Christian who is obese slanders the Christian who murders.

Hierarchy of hate and shame and inside out sider is perpetuated in the law of the fittest.  Are we reducing the gene pools but helping the wounded

I don’t have children. I like wearing dresses. But I liked wearing cammo. I liked wearing the military imitation officer suits popular with lawyers and politicians. I liked wearing yachting gear and dancing wear and clinical lab coasts and college cordoroy.  Gender is not who I am.  

Yahweh - I am who I am.  

Namastes - the God in me salutes the god in you.

Alone I am never alone,   I am a Christian.  The Christian god is loving and always loving and not judgemental ,  Incluseive , not exclusive.  But then God is loving and judgemental and inclusive or exclusive.  God is all or nothing and All and nothing.

I loved the 60 tv show Prisoner.  A totalitarian dystopia whereas I’ve a libertarian dystopia.

As a Christian I’m top of the class as married man with good kids today.  As a politicians, the same.  Historically the Christians were individuals and disciples and groups and some were alone and some some were married.  We don’t hear much of the children of the disciples.

Cherry pickin Christians have rejected Paul on women and slaves but also cherry picked Jesus ‘. Thoughts on enmity and money.  

I loved the 60’s books, Be Here Now (a take off from Brother Lawrence, Pracrticing the Presence of God’ and Elkhart Toole, Power of Now.,  I also like the couple who wrote ‘what to do till the messiah comes’.  A Jewish couple who did’t believe Jesus was the messiah,  I heard an Anglican Priest say he didh’t believe the Bible.  Another Protestant Canadian female minister didn’t believe in God or Jesus but wanted the job and pension.  

The government doctor told me “Act like a doctor’, and he had the arrogance to think he did To me he was just another ‘suit’.  

My life as a community psychiatrist was always “attraction’.  The world of ‘prevention’ is even more attraction.  The ‘police doctor’ the ‘licensing doctors remind me of the time when I was in charge of the asylum. If you wanted out you needed to do as I say.  There’s a world of coercion in medical politics,

In the healing profession the person is dying and you can delay the process and relief suffering.

All medicine is palliative care in face death,

I and my family go to heaven. You and your family go to hell. Your mother wears army boots.  Amazing what we can’t learn from what children discern. You’re in or out.  King Lear at the end speaking to his daughter.  Shakespeare calls it ‘court things’.

90% of cross dressing men are heterosexual .  The whole feminist movement of today is the woman wearing pants. Chanel to Hillary Clinton. The argument that post modernism is just a pretty name for the Super rationalism that denies the feminine and denounce the mother, the holy mother, the sacred mother.  Women in communism the religion of aetheism were denied children. Abortion and hysterectomy . Vasectomy is not a communist thing,  The primitive tribal woman says we count a man by the number of his children.  

The number of children and number of wives

Anthropologists define the west as ‘serial monogamy’. In my childhood 50 year marriages were normal with divorce rare and families in tact to some degree mostly. Today the urban divorce rate is 50 % and 5 year marriages are the norm.  Based on individualism and science perhaps the 50 % marriages that persist are the bad marriage.

My friend who left high school and became a millionaire called me a slow learner because I spent another 12 years in institutional learning and even went not to teach at a couple of universities.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  Women act more like men than their mothers,  Marx and Engles wanted to destroy families as a threat to the almighty god of the State.  Communists call mothers ‘Breeders’.  

It’s fun getting to know women more.  I also see gays and other minority groups in a non child centered fear of death way.  

An early female Judge found 320 consecutive family cases against the man.  

The woman registrar at the College of Physicians and Surgeons said “Women don’t lie about sex”.  I have to date never been compensated for all the sexual harassment I have experienced in the work place, the rape, the caning in school, being hit in the head by a teacher’s wooden mallet, the individual list of ‘wrong’s’ and manure of self pity that power the ‘pay me’.  The story of the fisherman and the beggar is lost to history.   

I don’t like being among strangers.  I have worked in the jails and the asylums and I have been in government offices.   I am good at my work.  I’m like a motor parts guy, a spiritual fixit.  I know the products available and have a lot of answers to all manner of questions most of which people are afraid to share with others.  

Live and let live.

Jesus taught Love God and Love thy neighbour as yourself.  If any passage in the Bible veers from this then that’s what needs to be discussed not whether a trucker wears diapers.  

To thine own self be true.

God is all and I am a part of God.  

My identity is not my self’.  C.S.Lewis’s said thoughts are ‘creatures’.  St. John of the Cross, Nada.  The spiritual path.  The long dark night of the soul.  

I am a lone but not alone,. 

 

Homo Sapiens - by Harari

I bought this  2014 book two years ago.  I started it, reading maybe a third before I put it down. I liked it enough.I’d read H.G. Wells, History of the World as a teen. Later I’d be moved by Future Shock and Culture of Narcissism. It was that kind of read.  Seminal, they’d say, in history circles. Yet I’d found the author at times pedantic, opinionated, and even pompous.  I didn’t feel this eway about Guns, Germs and Steel by Diamond or Niall Ferguson’s Ascent of Wealth, a Financial History of the World,  or Paul Johnso’s  Modern Times, great read I’d so enjoyed.  It was that sort of Omnibus Read.  But I’d put it down. I was reading a History of Christianity at the time and I’d bogged down reading that too. I often have several reads on the go and with work I have to read increasing amounts of drivel and nonsense.

But a friend commented on Homo Sapiens. She’d really enjoyed Harari and I'd almost unfairlly damned him with faint praise.  The truth is I’d not finished his book and it really was well written and quite brilliant at the time. He certainly was erudite.  I’d wearied of marketting and saless, all that propaganda nonsense that passes as subtlety but irritates me in my advancing years. I realized I’d been unfair to Harari.  It was in the midst of Covid, being bludgeoned by misinformation and disinformation, lies and corruptions, Anitida uprising and Capitol hill mobs,  creating an overwheming stench when I picked Homo Sapiens up again. We quite well might be on the verge of something. War and Rumors of War.  Did Harari have an answer?

I was jealous of Harari, I realized.  It was clear in his thinking he knew something. With Rolling Stones singing Living in a Ghost Town, lockdowns and hysteria, I’d fallern to  reading westerns and erotic romance for escapism, binging watching Netflix tv. Animal Kingdom, the Crown, Tombstone, Flea Bag. It was getting me through the day.  So much despair and loss, depression and anxiety.  i’d just read Kate Lister’s a Curious History of Sex and could hardly put it down. it well research but also so wittingly written.  I considered Harrari more substantial.  He did make history appealling though like a Druidic Story teller he wove patterns with words.  He cast a spell.  I settled down to listen.  I am glad I did.

I was younger when I read the great omnibus reads and less opinionated and judgemental myself. I wouldn’t have noticed that when Harrari was critical of Christianity he didn’t mention Judaism and was almost gentle with Islam. He barely commented on Hinduism but almost sang the praises of Leonard Cohen’s Buddhism, his knowledge apparently deep yet almost superficial and very biased all the while he presented as unbiased in that deeply offensive way that the politically correct do. I kept asking who his audience was and realized he was writing to appease or appeal to his masters. Now who did he see these were I kept asking?  

Marx said Money is the God of the Jews. Harari certainly made a case for the religion of materialism and secularism.   I was half way through when I looked him up, finding he taught at the University of Jerusalem. I’d actually thought he was Persian at one point. I did though like how he included the Armenians and Georgians.  Later I’d really like how he brought in South America and Africa. He’d been focussing so much on ancient China and Europe. Yet his ideas were magical. Great swaths of data gathered and woven into this masterful tapestry.  

I actually grew to like him.  Halfway through the book I looked forward to reading it, not quite like a war thriller, or a Clancy.. He wasn’t Khalla or Coban. But there reaally was a Jurassic Park quality in the writing. He was truly brilliant. History as fiction. The whole notion that we have the imaginative scenarios and we prop them up with a whole lot of ritual. He gave us ancient history but he really got into his stride in modern times making sense of the Corprate power that toppled governments and the scientific advances that were so recent , mere hundreds of years or daring after  hundreds of thousands of caution.  I actually loved his explanation of exploration and colonialism and was delighted with his discussion of the ideas of religions and ideology, the confusion created by different words with similiar meanings.  He really was extremely erudite. 

I felt like I’d attended a lecture by a master. I’d signed up for a lecture by psychologist Jordan Peterson a year ago, cancelled by Covid, only because I’d loved  the way Peterson debated,more like a supreme court judge than an academic. I’d loved Steven Hicks lectures on philosophy yet here was this giant of literature and history, Harari,  entertaining me with his wit. He had a wealth of knowledge but his skill was selection.  

As I progressed I really did like his comments on behaviourist Harlow.  He mentioned Freud but didn’t give Victor Frankl his due though he was clearly a student of Seligman discussing happiness in modern times versus happines in medieval times. It was my area of expertise and I frankly thought he did a magnificent overview. Which is what he was doing with history. Overviews of economics, anthropology, culture, sociology, ethics and religions. I’d read Fields of Blood a marvellous work of history exploring whether religion or politics caused war.  There was the same selection bias and yet I couldn’t help but rememer the great talking head flick of all time, Dinner with Andre. The more I read Harari the more I felt like I was at a retreat with one of the spiritual masters, like Richard Rohr or Trungpa.   He told stories of facts like Jesus or the Dubliners. There was that quality of being given insights like the classic Spirituality of Imperfections gave to the wisdom teaching. More political and still with talk of war but nonetheless he included the bio engineering of a phosphorescent green bunny. He talked of the cyborg future and gave whole chapters  each of which could be a Ted’s talk on it’s own  

Crime overall is declining. War overall is declining. The life epectancy is increaing. Gigameth is a project of immortality. Science is religion.  Yet as different as life and death. There’s a novelty in the notion of today and yesterday, our perception of then so coloured by our immersion in now. Harari hints at this but doesn’t quite laugh at himself as one might imagine Kate Lister laughing at herself.  There’s a vanity to man and by the end of this great read I was actually amused by the human Harari.  He could admit to be lost as well as the next but there was an amusement to his predictament.  A reason for carrying on.  

I suppose I was arrogant when I first read Harrari, before Covid, before the disillusionment with politics and academics.  Yet I am so glad I picked him up after she said how much she liked him. It was in fact a gift of a read, an omnibus account of life, little weak on music and art but with a whole lot of the stuff that we learned with dates and numbers and names of self important people marketted by the powerful..  History is always written by the winners. Men but even nthe occasional woman gains  fame. Harari does well to mention Georgia, and talk of the little guys and gals suffering under the kings and queens, bankers and generals.   It was a serious work. There was a bit of tantalising porn for the intellectual, even some bits of Australian wankerism at times.

It didn’t leave me feeling like Waiting for Godot but again it gave me hope.  Slouching towards Bethlehem or Baghdad for that matter, Beijing or Washtington, London or Rio de Janeira I felt there was something special in a monkey sent to outer space. I suspect that Adams of Hitchker’s Guide to the Gaxay fame or Mr. Bean might well enjoy Harrari as much as Obama or Reagan. It might even appeal to a Saudi Prince though I doubt that Xi Jinping would care for it.  There are always those who read for dominance and would never like a DH Lawerence account of love.  Harari loves history, his subject and clearly us Homo Sapiens. That was what redeemed the work.  He is truly interested in all of us, the big guy and the little guy, the girls and the boys, the babies and the greats. It’s that kind of read. It was the Economist and New Yorker written with a view to the person who would like to listen to the BBC or watch PBS but not be above reading a People magazine waiting in line at the supermarket..  

Love God

I was taught to Love God. I was taught humility in my home. As a child I was taught to kneel beside my bed beside my mother praying to God. God was the parents of parents.  God was Father.  God was Creator. God was Mother. God was All.

Later I would learn the spiritual stories of God. I’d read the Scripture, the Holy Bible, the story of the Western Men and Women’s relationship to God.  I’d later read the Gita, the story of the God Krishna,  I’d read of the Yahweh and Allah and the Abrahamic God. I’d read of primitive peoples and the Golden Bough. I’d read of child sacrifice and killing the king. I ‘d read of cults of mushroom, Peyote, and drugs, then the cults of sex and tantra and all the taboos cults with their inner secrets, so often experiential and secretive. 

I’d study in depth the first 300 years of Christianity. I’d see that the Church would be like a cellular creature dividing, not only in Christianity but in Buddhism and Islam.  Quickly one movement would become 10. Always the traditional would then war with the latest ‘anti traditional’.  They’d have the fanciest names.  It was always us and them.  The war was always among men to get you to agree with me. The old paranoid tribal chant. « You’re with me or a gin me.’  We are a religion of peace, only if you become Muslim.  We have the one God. We are the True Christian Church. We’re the only ‘right’ Buddhist teaching. We are only path. We are the one. Me first.  I am the prophet of all Gods. I’m the prophet of one God.  

People are funny.

Religion is made by people out of the god stuff of Spirituality.  Spirituality is about the Holy Spirit.  The second person of the Holy Trinity of Christ. The most basic idea is that there is an unseen world. Nature spirits and superstition.  Freud’s unconscious. 

The plants will grow only if you don’t have sex on Sunday.  The fear of this food or that clothing. It was everywhere.  You knew your tribe by the fears and superstitions.   You had to cut your hair in just this way. The penis was cut in this way. The Labia that way  If you were with us you had your patch that way. If you were agin us you had your triangle pointed up or down depending on whether or not you ate the placenta or were vegetarian. 

It’s truly bizarre.
Don’t criticize my dreidel and I won’t criticize your cross.  There was the war of weapons and the war of words. All over the world the war of religions went on.  

Then finally the best religion of all was the Trojan Horse religion calling itself Aetheism. We are the ‘No God’ religion and the Communists arose with their red colour and new rituals and their Trinity of Lenin, Mao and Marx.  Kill the ‘God’ people because we’re the « No God’ people . The Philosophers fought the Theologians and the Red hats slayed the white hats and aborted all their babies. The elites kept their babies and even created child sex cults in Brussels to play  with the babies of Catholics whose babies lived only because they were not being aborted..  

No God Religion with new or words and new old rituals fought the God Religions with Old new words and Old new  rituals. Separation of Mosque and State never occured.  The State had it’s State Religion and called them Chinese Churches.  The No God religion let in the God Religion and the Religion of no Separation of Church and State spread in the Religion of Acceptance, tolerance  and love.  The religion of the head in the sand.  While the nature spirit religion joined with the no God religion and they all got angry when you called their obsession God because they now used new term Culture, the culture religion fought the fashion religion.  Then the Secularists were the Aetheists in disguise when originally the secularists were for all God religion.  Pantheism and One God. The names changed faster than hockey teams.   

Only the children got confused with the names.  Vegas was Vegas whether it was Brussels or Dubai. 

The No God religion liked to propagandize the children like the God religion did. They all used the children for food and cannon fodder and propaganda movies.

It was ridiculous. It was all just absurd!

It was so human and adolescent. The Fuck God cult versus the Fuck No God Cult.  The idols of money and power and the planet. Save the goat in the Honduras. Help the spotted owl in the Congo.  Whose going to care for the homeless. I’m the Goddess of Fashion. Dress like me. Speak French like I do.  Drive a BMW,  Vegetarianism or insect eating .  Sex dolls.

It’s all such Silliness. God is a comedian.  The No God Religion has outlawed comedy as hate speech. 

Today it’s Christmas.  A baby was born.  The birth of Christ.  God came to see and live his creation.

Jesus, a God Spy.  

Jesus thought childhood was okay despite the constant attempts by the Big Man /Big Woman to kill his parents.  His friend John was beheaded by the Big Woman. The Big Woman just got the Little man to do her will. The Big Man killed babies.  But he didn’t Kill Jesus.

Arjuna asked Krishna why go to War.  Why not. The war will go on with or without you.
Buddha said « Desire is suffering ».

Killing women and children is easier than killing men.  It’s a major embarrassment if a Big Man can’t kill a little child.  Jesus lived.  

Jesus taught love.  The Big Man/Big Woman, the No God, and many Gods, Power and Money Gods, , really , everyone , they all killed Jesus.  But not as a child.  He was lucky. Today he’d be aborted.
But he made it to being a young man before they got him.  He fooled them. For awhile. It was all God’s plan, story,script.

The oldest law of the world is the Chines law of the Fish. There are big fish and little fish and the little fish must be fast and numerous.  

Jesus was killed as a young man.  Crucified.  But then he  resurrected.  Unlike today  they couldn’t censor the tv and internet in those days so the word got out. This world of money and power and big men and women,  No God and Idols, couldn’t stop the Gospel, the Good News. The word got out.

The Gospel spread.  The Holy Bible said the Baby Jesus resurrected. There was life after death. There was Good and Evil. God’s law said don’t fuck the children.  There is a God And God’s law. It’s not seen. It’s inside. It’s all creation. It’s here and now.  

Love God.  Love your neighbour as yourself.

Today is Christmas.  It’s not No God day. It’s not Santa day. It’s not Muslim day or Pagan day or Lenin Day or Mao day or Money day or shopping day or whiskey day. It’s the Birth of Christ. It’s the Birth of the one who said Love God and Love Your Neighbour as Yourself. So the Big Man and Big Woman Killed him along with all the people who couldn’t put Humpty Together . God Creates. Good m’en and women create. Bad boys and girls destroy.  The Creator came to earth and we killed him.

 I killed him. You killed him. We killed him  There’s only Now. Time is the illusion of mind. On this  day of the Birth of Jesus there was the Crucifixion and the Death of Jesus and the Resurrection of Jesus and God.  It’s all in the seed.  The idea of Love. 

Love God and Love your Neighbour as Yourself.

Love God and Love your Neighbour as Yourself

Love God and Love your Neighbour as Yourself.

That’s what Baby Jesus is all about. It will probably get you killed. you won’t be popular.  The nations of the world, all the United Nations,all the Prime Ministers and Presidents,Politburoes ,Priests ,No God Cults,Climate Change Cults , Drug Cults, Herb Cults, Nature Spirit  cults, Culture Cults, fuck baby cults and Kings and Queens aren’t going to much like you.  They’ll fake it.  Big people aren’t known for their humility.   

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Love God and Love your Neighbour as Yourself.

Today a Baby is Born.  

Politics and Spirituality

I study the peaceful warrior path, the gentle soul journey, I am a lover not a fighter. Give peace a chance. I was a hippy with love painted on my forehead in San Francisco dancing in the streets with flowers in my hair. I was with the most beautiful woman in the world. We were beautiful people. We marched for peace.  Later I’d get a sliver of the Nobel Prize as a member of Physicians against Nuclear War.

Today I’m older. 

I still meditate. I still believe it’s good to be slow to anger and I know that anger is really fear. There is only fear and love, love and fear.  I’m a lover still but I’ve been a fighter. 

 Jesus taught, Love God and Love your neighbour as yourself.  Christianity is the religion of Love. The church is connection. Spirituality is God made. Religion is man made. Religion must bow to the war state and spirituality does not need to.  The spiritual can be martyrs but the religious make better administrators. 

It’s all okay to dance in the streets and camp in tents and love one another but what next. The longest running ‘commune’ out of the 60’s has degenerated into a scolding paranoid community after years of seeing slackers, psychopaths and sociopaths steal and not return.  The socialism of the Apostle with the awe inspiring presence of Jesus aincarnate floundered immediately with members withholding and stealing communal funds. 

 It was funny listening to a documentary of commune by BBC and considering how they sounded just like the towns, islands,   villages and aboriginal reserves where I’d worked as a family physician and psychiatrist.  Well intentioned but quickly Balkanized.

Politics.

I admire my friend Aim who is a professor of politics. One of the most diplomatic people I know. Buddhist upbringing. Gentle old soul. earth mother. 

I met the Dalai Lama.  Nice man. Peaceful.  Calm.  Intelligent.

When the Chinese invaded Tibet the greatest peaceniks of all time sat cross legged in the path of Chinese tanks and troops and meditated.  Like John Lennon and ,wealthy beyond our wildest dreams, Yoko Ono sitting in a 5star hotel with maid service on a bed made for them, the sheets washed by laundry women, except in the front lines.  All the stupidest greatest ideas of delusional leadership come from the farthest from the front.

“OM...Give Peace a Chance”.  The Chinese, todays modern equivalent of the Vorgon of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Communist Binary Marxist mind being the stupidest lowest common denominator, so attractive to the thug, and lizard, fundamentally the ‘paranoid position of psychiatry’. Us and them.  Tribal. Kill them before they kill us. You’re either with us or agin us. 

The Chinese Aetheist communist socialists mowed down all the Buddhist priests and avatars and hippies.  Just like they’re doing today in Hong Kong. Just like the Russian Communists did in the USSR where they killed a hundred million in as many years.  Hitler and Fascism were just National Socialism. Communism was international socialism. Godless loveless Aetheist constructs, powerful and powerless. The re-enactment of the God emperor and peasant construct under facetious language and pseudoscience and pseudo intellectualism.

After the leaders of the Tibetan peace community were killed en mass in the beginning of the genocide which continues today, the second class monks, the ‘B’ students,  remembered the British Enfields and grabbed those and shot back at the Chinese with their tanks and machine guns. They died too.

My friend, a Buddhist psychiatrist, used to forget to ask about suicide. “It’s a personal intimate matter,” he said. “Easier for a Buddhist to ask a woman about her masturbation and sexual fantasies than to ask her about her suicidal ideation.”

The Buddhist monks had a ‘good death’ creating delays to allow the child Dalai Lama, the incarnation of God, to escape to India who gave the Dalai Lama asylum while the Chinese communists continued to do their boorish stupid uncivilized rape and pillage of Tibet where they have planted countless Chinese Colonies. The Chinese make the European Imperialists look like saints and choir boys. The Chinese Communists are the ‘running dog Imperialists’. Thugs ,thieves and pigs. Xi Jinpeng is this generations Hitler or Lenin, whichever mass murderer you prefer from history.

The Communists are todays Nazi. Marx was an aetheist Jew, a kafetch, with an Inferiority Complex and grandiose delusions.  Lenin was a lover of murder and bank robbery and with Stalin, Molotov and Trotsky began the Bolsheviks with murder assasination and bank robbery, destroying the Parliamentary Democracy of Russia, killing off and threatening the Mensheviks and re writing history to obscure the Patricide of the day. At least the French Revolutionaris were more transparent as Robespierre indulged in patricide with his guilotines. The Enfant Terribles of history.  Matricidal and Patricidal revolutionaries. Politics. 

Mohammed’s Muslim religion, the Hadith and Koran,  like the Torah of the Jews is a tribal religion.  God is ‘my god’. And the People are ‘my people’.  The Muslim lie is that Islam is a religion of peace. It’s only killing competitor is the aetheist communist religion.  The Catholics hardly killed so many. Ghengis Khan and Alexander certainly did but they were fighting armies and overtly conquering nations. Mohammed and his Warrior Priests did that, killing all the Jews and Zoroastrians and Christians of the Middle East who wouldn’t convert until the Crusades stopped his progress.

 The Muslim hoards were turned back in Spain and at Venice.  We know the names of Patton and Monty, Constantine, Eisenhower but we’re not reminded in history of the Battle of Tours 732 when Christian  Charles Martel,  precursor of King/Pope/Emperor Charlemagne,  defeated the Muslim invasion of Western Europe or the Battle of Vienna 1683 King John III Sobieski defeated the last Muslim invasion of Europe. These are events as significant as the Berlin airlift defence against godless aggressive communism or finally the fall of the Berlin Wall and the freeing of hundreds of millions from Aetheist communist tyranny.

 We’re now in the midst of a ‘migration war’ which was the normal precursor of the great wars of history.  Before the muslim poor of Europe are clothed and fed their countries are providing resources for Mosques and other such staging areas if history is to be recalled.  The Nazis invaded Austria in defence of the Germans there who were the fifth column of WWII. Politics.

Love your neighbour as yourself.

Love your enemy. Spirituality.

Justin Trudeau, our pot head leader whose intellect has been described as the ‘depth of a puddle’ actually said, “If you kill your enemy he wins.”  No. Idiot.

Love your enemy doesn’t mean let him kill you. That turns him into a murderer and you into a suicidal. Better to defend yourself from the dangerously insane. 

I was in the peace movement and often irritated by the girls who had never fought and been protected all their lives by their fathers and boyfriends and thought like any Huffington Post Bimbo that sentimentalism is going to rule. These are the all style no substance hoard of the Kardasian reality tv slut world. These girls and boys get their ethics and morality off pornhub. 

 History tells us that Homo Sapiens were the successful Human species because they wiped out their sometimes peaceful neighbours..  They killed their neighbours, destroyed any men who where a threat, turned the women into sex slaves and made the children slaves warriors. This continued till a few hundred years ago as the Muslim mode of conquer.  The Muslims in India killed 250,000 Sikhs in one day. They infiltrated the Hindu south and then with treachery and war invaded and took doing just that. The British Empire with superior naval resources established a more economic colonialism like China is doing now in Africa but leaving some autonomy over social affairs with the locals. Politics.

The Spanish won the war against the Aztec of Mexico and South America not by sheer forth. Columbus had a few hundred men and his followers who went on to conquer and steal all the gold of central and South America despite being up against against millions of  armed natives.  They won because a whole lot of people were angry at the rulers stealing their virgin daughters and killing them en mass. They welcomed the Spanish and made an unholy alliance which overthrew the rulers of the day, a blood thirsty lot who favoured ripping the heart out of the chest of living victims just for starts. Politics.

Aboriginal Plains Indians didn’t introduce scalping as Hollywood history and misinformation propaganda declared, Whites introduced scalping, but the plains Indias did favour castrating their enemies and burying them in ant hills. The native women were the best of histories’ torturers only competing in the torture Olympics with Count Vlad who spiked his victims on his lawn leaving them to die over days as their bowel acids destroyed them from with in. With the stake up their anus and gravity they dies slowly impaled ever more as they flailed about.

Not a happy history. Politics.

Not many years ago Communist Pol Pot murdered half the nation of Cambodia killing millions. His concentration camps were very effective providing food only for work and starvation resulting for any slackards. The Gulags were also an educational enterprise like Neo Pagan Nazi socialists’s  Auswitch

In the Hindu Bible, the Bhagad Gita, sometimes shortened to the Gita, Arjuna, the boy king says to Krishna the god, ‘the war is going on but the combatants are all my family.’  Krishna replied, ‘that is always the way, “so the only decision is ‘whether you participate or not’.  

In India, the Brahman, meditators, peace nicks , merchants, all had a class of body guards, the caste of warriors.  CS Lewis, the great Christian teacher writer had the British Empire and army.  Trudeau who talks shit (reminds me of my self when I taught drama, did sports, and chased women other than my wife and talked swank, but I was in my 20’s,  not nearly 50 like he is, but nonetheless very similiar to my own youthful stupidity and cupidity so very mirroringly repugnant) has a half dozen body guards.  I never had body guards. The trust fund babies always had adult baby sitters. He still has today so can talk gun control for everyone but his fraternity/sorority bro’s. The elite always have weapons, or body guards or armies.

Steal a little and they put you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king.

The reformer is the enemy of anyone who benefits from the status quo. 

The principle protection from attack of the monk, like St. Francis, is that they had nothing to steal. The Vikings raided the Irish monasteries for the gold crosses but the individual monks were little more than target practice.  The good looking women were always raped first whether they wore a nun habit or a princess’s robes.

Jesus ‘s disciple chopped off the ear of one of his attackers who came to take Jesus. Jesus restored the ear and went with his capturer,  the established church of the day , whose coffers were being affected by his new brand teachings. 

 Religion is a brand and an industry.  Marx said ‘religion was the opiate of the masses’.  The tribe is divided into a war faction and a religious healing faction. The “hearts and minds’ approach of the war machine is to use religion and health care and economic benefits to get the people on the side of the ‘war machine’. 

 Jesus wasn’t so pacifistic as obedient and was following his father’s orders.  He was to die and besides if the authorities wanted to kill him anytime they could.

 Herod , the Jewish king had killed thousands of babies when he felt threatened, and the Romans introduced the term ‘decimate’. If anyone resisted their invasion they killed every tenth man, woman or child in the village from which the ‘terrorist/freedom fighter’ came from.  The Italians continued this into WWII.  

Jesus was not an advocate of gun control.  Stalin, Mao, Trudeau and Hitler are gun control advocates.  Jesus’ people had knives and swords otherwise the women would be raped and the children stolen. Today’s Christians prefer Colt’s Smith and Weston’s.  A really pious Christian pastor has an AR-15. 

The key o Jesus’s teaching was to be ‘slow to anger’. Forgive ‘70 x 70’ not indefinitely but a lot, a limited amount, but a lot. That said, the Quakers and Mennonites, the original hippy Christians escaped to America, served in all the most dangerous jobs in the war, as stretcher bearers and now that earth remains hostile will en mass be the first to man space ships to Mars to escape the murderous and godless.

An eye for an eye is the first law of Mercy.  If you hurt the Hay family of Scotland the whole clan hunted down every member of your tribe and killed you centuries thereafter. Today we cry ‘wipe out the enemy’s genes strain and see ourselves in defence as arbiters of the Worlds Darwin Awards. The Stuart’s are little better and the Irish collectively are as vengeful as Scottish clan individually. To this day most Scots are still suspicious of Campbells because they killed the Macdonald’s, their allies in their sleep.  Dastardly Campbells.  Cowards and whores. Politics. 

Tribes are about revenge.  

Most tribes called themselves ‘the people’. Inuit means the ‘people’.  Eskimo is the southern forest aboriginal’s name for theie northern neighbours - Eskimo means ‘fish eater’.  When the anthropologists were in Samoa they asked the tribe they encountered what they called themselves and they said ‘the people’ so they asked what they called the others who weren’t the people. “The edible ones’ they replied. Cannibals are alive and well and live among us. They are generally held in bad taste. 

Mathus said world population was controlled by starvation, war and disease.

The Modern Era has been the greatest time of history with the greatest developments, prolongation of life, reduction almost completely of starvation, disease prevention and control with greater longevity and reduced infant mortality. War continues but it’s limited.  

Thanks to the British Empire and then the AMerican Empire , Canada is relatively unique in that it has not had war on its soil for hundreds of years.  

Now Alcoholics Anonymous was said to be a ‘spiritual program’ but it’s been highly effective in the military and Americans in AA stayed sober while killing Germans and Italians inthe WWII campaigns. They weren’t into gun control or being Peace nicks back then because they’d not had television propaganda or been protected from reality by a variety of addictions offered to ‘useful idiots’ todays - tv, internet, sex of every sort, shopping,  gluttonous delight with take out and phone in, avarice wealth with stock market gambling and casino gambling. These are the best and worst of times.

Cappadoecia with it’s underground churches in the middle of Turkey and Meteora with it’s Monasteries on the tops of Greek flutes , both were over run in time. Tibet was the last escape and the Chinese Aetheist Communists wouldn’t let anyone alone. They’ve developed surveillance systems the likes of which the KGB, CIA and Staci all are envious.  Obama and Homeland Security infiltrated even the leaders of their allies. Zuckerberg is the great angriest traitor to the world of all times when it comes to confidentiality and his promises. He’s watching me right now. Everyone is under surveillance. There is nowhere to run. That’s the real message of Bin Laden. 

Steal a little and they put you in jail. Steal a lot and they make you king.  Dr. Johnson

Everything is now stolen and the carbon tax is the taxing the air we breathe. Big government is huge. Big Brother and Big Sister are the Vorg. They are ‘one world government’.  A few hundred elite billionaires in the west and as many trillionairs in the Muslim dictatorships and communist aetheist dictatorships.

When I am “political’ on Facebook or in ‘debate’ I’m actually in a kind of ‘sophisticated’ ‘war game’.  I’m using language and gesture and ‘rhetoric’ and ‘logic’.  Animals have ‘mock displays’. This causes lesser beasts to back down without engaging. It’s a peaceful technique. All this ‘anti hate speech’ in fact increases war because it removes this ‘dance ‘ and ‘drama’ that causes the majority of actual encounters to be less.  Verbal warfare restricted, leads to actual warfare. The government is always into ‘divide and conquer’ increasing civil strife so that more government is  ‘necessary’.  Normal dominance hierarchies are established without bringing in the state. The whole death of Jesus is an interesting lesson in the ‘offended’s’ use of authority.  The child fighting with the sibling goes to the parents and lies. The parent engages and favouritism increases warfare.

Sports and debate are stylized warfare without carnage. Competition is central to evolution but increasingly denial looms among educational cretans confirming the old adage, ‘if you can’t do, teach’. Let’s give every kid a ribbon. Let’s reward the loser. That was Hitler’s ploy elevating the Brownshirts, todays low brow masked Antifid’s.

But the Security Council, France, Britain, China, Russia and America, the leadership of the UN is there purely to sell weapons and compete with arms and keep the others down.  The Desert STorm Arms Bazaar was a war weapon competition and the American capitalism and reward of the creative and ingenious beat out the Russian dictatorship weapons. Russians and Chinese have depended on mostly stealing technology.  The Desert Story Arms Bazzarrd beat the aetheists.  Constantine made his empire Christian because Christians were the greatest warriors and told the truth and kept secrets best. Aetheists are the worst and Muslims aren’t much better.  Corruption thrives where there is no God or where the dictator, king or committee is an autocrat. Fear drives dictatorships.  Patriotism drives democracy.

Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings.  Dr. Samuel Johnson.

Spiritually, to love my enemy, I’m to think that Hitler was ‘sicker’ not evil. I’m supposed to ‘pray’ for my enemies’.  Mostly this relieves me of obsessing about them and the genetically tried and prove trait of creative vengefulness. 

On Facebook I should be kind and nice to devious elite sociopaths like Greta Thurnberg a chip off Trudeau’s shoulder. Yet I know Climate Change as a political economic lie to create more government power and to tax Canadian middle class more for the elite wasted life style of Trudeau and his ilk.

Or do I engage in ‘verbal warfare’ , debate and the dance of ‘court room’ ‘rhetoric and media rhetoric and logic much like the idea that politics is the sport of the intellectual. These are irrational times and marketting knows that 19th century reason doesn’t sell consumer good. A picture is with a thousand words. 

Or do I withdraw for my peace of mind. The monk or villagers. 

I went to sea and had 25 days away from people, alone with my dog and cat, a luxury of all time. I had a ham radio but no telepone, tv, internet. I used my satellite phone only for strict emergency communication.  I used it once to get assistance with equipment failure repair. 

I visited monasteries and saw as Thomas Merton did that they were’ communities’ .  None of this ‘fool on a hill’ thing. The last Hermit in Canada was killed by the RCMP for isolating.  You can’t get away from the state. On land I’ve been able to build my own road back into the wilderness and get a week before others followed my off road trail. I’ve hiked into the mountains and had a week or so isolation before a ‘curious’ person appears..  It’s hard to ‘retreat’. Our backs are against the wall.

Especially since China, Obama and Zuckerberg began to spy on everyone.  Effectively. 

The Canadian Supreme Court Judge wanted Transparency for the courts but the courts want everything behind closed doors.  That was the British way, a public face and a private action.  Mr. Trump promises to drain the swamp but WW2 was won as much by gay Turing as straight Patton. Vegetarian drug addict Hitler never had a chance.

We don’t even know the richest of the richest people.  Fame and Fortune. Fame and poverty can go together but Fortune can and does buy anonymity and even some degree of isolation.  The king and queen have an inner sanctum. The people are out on the street. They even closed the asylums so on the rich had their personal lunatic wards and modern dungeons. 

Spirituality and politics.  

If I am a monk I can withdraw from the politics of this world but then I am stuck still in the politics of family and monastery. I’ve been reading a bout a monk who was expelled from his monastery.

If I am a part of the world then I can engage in ‘verbal war’ but not ‘physical war’ but my country under Trudeau is using every means possible to establish a dictatorship in Canada and suing comedians and denying confidentiality to everyone is all part of a move that’s terrifying.

Jesus said ‘Do not be afraid’.

The rule is the dictator always win if freemen remain silent. Need I be afraid? A slow painful death of agin or a bad day on the cross or a bad few day with Count Vlad. The sixties series, The Prisoner, like One Flew Over the Cuckoos nest is the modern torture, the isolation chambers of jails, Quntanamo Bay detention camp, forced to listen to Canadian music day and night. 

Perhaps the war will come after I die.  I was hoping people could talk instead of fight but the Islam is a religion of peace which demands everyone be Muslim and Sharia law rule so everyone can have peace. Aetheist communism is a religion of world peace which demands that everyone be communist so there can be world peace.  

We are in the midst of a world war.  I love chess where everyone moves their peices about. I truly believe Hillary would have caused a world war because all women leaders have lead their countries to war, matriarchies historically most violent in history, but we’re doing well without world war but increasing impoverishment of the only sane class, the middle class. The destruction of the middle classs is the rule of Communism and Islam. Dictatorsships are binary with Elite and Peasants. The trinity of the three classes with a middle class of unions and professions and the elite white collar welfare and peasant blue collar welfare is being destroyed today.

But I don’t know. I really don’t know. Is it better for me to remove myself. I’m of a retirement age. Maybe let the war games begin and the alliance of England, France and China against Russia and America or even England France and China and Russia against AMerica take place. Trudeau has alligned Canada with godless communists and muderous dictators against America, our greatest ally, and today our protector.

Germany, Italy and Japan alliance of WW2 is like the Aetheist Communists, Muslims wahabees and Socialist/communist Europeans like Germany today and Brussels. America has Poland now and many other allies like other democracies though Canada under Trudeau no longer is voting for democracy but rather going for Climate change destruction of economy while China and India build more and more coal mines and use excess oil.  

How can I love my neighbour and talk with idiots. Should I hold my tongue and live in fear. Canadians are known for their apathy and servility which masquerades as polite society but appears more like the mannerisms of inmates of jails or asylums. 

Gandhi was highly destructive with passive aggressive strikes and aggressive civil disobedience. If you stand up you make yourself a target. 

Can spirituality and politics coexist.Can a spiritual person be a politician today? However does one do it? Spirituality is the opposite of cowardice but there is nowhere left to retreat. 

Please God guide me. Let me be true but not so true as to be a martyr. 

Mostly I want to say Beam me up Scotty.  Uhura, Spock, Bonhoeffer  St. Joan of Ark, Anyone?

India - musings

When I first came to India in the late 80’s, I stayed in Bombay and environs for a couple of months. I’d thought to go further but so enjoyed the city and people there that I stayed and vowed to come back.  Here I am returned 30 plus years later and loving India even more. I’m more mature now and appreciate the breadth and depth of culture here. I remember being so impressed by the old and new then. I wrote about the juxtapositions and contrasts coming together back then. My favourite image was an old kabab shop which had used the wall of the Holiday Inn as part of it’s structure. Old and new. Adaptations.  

This time I see so much industry.  Everything is in motion. So much development.  It’s easy to see the lousy roads and poor sidewalks that make one think of Mexico but what jumps out at me is all the great corporate offices. In Delhi the contrast was Old Delhi and New Delhi. The hundreds of year old market place of Old Delhi was a world away from the grand government buildings of New Delhi.  

It’s such an inclusive world with an old bicyclist hauling bags of material on his ancient machine vying for road beside the latest commercial trucks and vans.  Everything imaginable is here.  Temple, church, mosque all in a row.  Restaurants serving vegetarian and non vegetarian foods, western foods and eastern foods.  

My brother who lived in Hong Kong and loved what I saw as chaos in the stores would love it here. A single store sells autoparts, canned vegetables and plumbing plungers.  I can’t imagine how this happens.  We have our stores separated and even our city blocks are specialized but not here to any great extent.  I imagine a diaper sales man coming into a lamp store and the deal is just too good for an Indian merchant to resist.  My brother had an MBA. He understood business better than me and appreciated the deal. I’m a doctor and see a foot categorized in the cranium.  I want my stores to be organized like the Hudson’s Bay of my childhood. I’m most comfortable in Harrods. There’s method in the madness here but it’s too obvious a different form of organizations is going on.

I love the ladies in colourful saris without helmuts riding side saddle on the backs of modern motorcycles.  The men wear helmets because it’s the law.  

The streets are a cacophony of sound with horns honking like a metallica symphony. In the holy places there’s quiet.

On the street there’s often disrepair but when I pass through the doors of shops, hotels and office buildings I find myself back in the 21’s century.  There’s so much corporate wealth and so much old wealth. I think when I was in Bombay I was more impressed by relative poverty.  The country was poorer then  An economic revolution has occured.  I walked all over Bombay, and there were crowds walking in the streets with lots of bicycles, occasional cars and a few scooters.  The material wealth today is so apparent in vehicles and smart phones.

I loved seeing the Harley Davidson dealership here in Kochi. It was near to the Mercedes and Porche dealerships.  

I read a book about the last Jews of Keralla.  Jewish merchants had been here for the spice trade since long before BC.  St. Thomas, the disciple of Jesus had walked here from Israel and seeded 11 churches in India.  In general the disciples followed the already established jewish trading communities. Here the backwaters make this whole area extraordinary, the rivers being an amazing protected highway system.

The Indian Navy has a port here on the Arabian Ocean.  The Portuguese were the first Europeans to come here but were soon pushed up to Goa where they remained.  The area of Keralla has a mix of Hindu, Moslem, Christian and communists.  I laughed reading a novel set in the region where a wise man accuses the Communist Party leader of worshipping the trinity of Marx, Engels and Lenin, the trinitarian god of the godless. Communism or rather socialism are working well here, the area being one of the most prosperous in India.

The hotel offers ayurvedic medicine and massages . I’ve been considering an ayurvedic massage. Laura hasn’t any interest in the spa. She’s so enjoyed the Crown Plaza rooms. Room service has been excellent. I’ve just enjoyed sweet lassies , a plate of cheese and crackers and cappuccino. The cappucino in India is the best I’ve ever had.  

I love that people speak English. There’s still a lot of misunderstanding both ways with nodding and smiling but it overall makes things a whole lot easier.  There’s so much kindness here and people really do want to help. This Crown Plaza hotel has been extraordinary for that.  I stop to think and someone asks if they can help.  It’s unnerving at times but mostly its rather pleasing.

10% is the standard tip but everyone seems pleased with 50 or 100 rupees for most other things.  100 ruppees is a couple of dollars. it’s a bit like New York but there that sense that everything revolves around money is hit or miss here.  Here it’s muted. Paris, in my limitted experience of the city, it was always in your face.  This morning the waitress commented on Laura wearing the Kochi Harley Davidson tshirt the day before.  She was positively interested in Laura as one human to another. I dont’ get the sense of entitlement with ‘tips’ that I’ve experienced in other big cities. Here it’s appreciated obviously but it’s not demanded.

In my day to day life at home tips don’t really enter into it much. I don’t get tipped and generally only tip at meals or with hair dressers for me or my dog. I remember my political science professor friend saying that in Indian ’there’s individual baksheesh, while in Canada the backsheesh is institutionalized.’ 

The most valuable experience is the sights and sounds and being apart of the culture and history of the place.

I’m loving taking pictures and enjoying reflecting on what I’m seeing. I’m enjoying writing about my experiences and pleased that friends appreciate this and thank me.  Photography and writing are what I really enjoy especially when I have so much new and interesting to photograph and see. My friend Anil paints and draws so we so enjoyed when he posted his pictures ,as he did them in Venice.  

I like to draw and have when I’ve had more time.  I imagine I’ll get back to it one day, when a whole day lays before me like a blank canvass.Even now I’m wondering about going outside for a walk down the street. We’ve been enjoying being in the room and hanging out today, the trip a bit of a whirlwind, so a down day has been appreciated.  

I think of Somerset Maugham writing of his travels and describing the meal as the important  event in the slow steamship journey.  We’ve certainly enjoyed our meals here, such flavours and variety.  We also get a peak at the other guests. This morning there were three very peculiar old birds I imagined were spinstered friends who’d all offed their husbands in some Agatha Christie manner.  

Time moves so fast now. I believe it was slower back then.  Maybe that was just for the elite and priviledged, the characters in then Bronte Sisters novels.  Here you get some sense of the 19th century days of sophistication. The princes held this land and the Moghuls and the British at different times. Now India is the world’s largest democracy despite Nehru’s interest in central government and control.  Their beurocrats and government services were always important. The city is a hub for that.  

When I was driven out to the Elephant Training Camp I drove by small farms and beautiful large homes. They were vaguely reminiscent of southern plantations.   If I’d gone further I’d have ended up eventually in some of the primitive villages which were described in the public health presentations at the conference I attended.  Here I’m in the bustle.  I’m pre retirement but as we hear of friends becoming sick and others dying the sense of time takes on a new meaning.  

This is an ancient land of many empires.  Canada is such a young land.  There are 1.3 billion people here and 37 million people in Canada.  

Right now I’m a tourist in paradise. I’m here with a beautiful lady and am so thankful I’ve come. 

  

Spirituality

I know I exist.  Descartes said, “Cogito ergo sum” .  I think therefore I am.

But working with psychosis as I have, and addiction, I see that people can be alone and create an ‘imaginary world’. 

What then is religion? 

What does it mean to have a friend in Jesus?

To know God.

I really don’t have the capacity to create life. There’s a long list of things I can’t do but mostly I am here with no real understanding of how I happened on this planet spinning around the sun in a questionable suburb of a vast galaxy.

The story of Jesus is that he came to say that God is love, that he was the son of god and we were the children of God.  The government crucified him for teaching love.  

That alone is a good moral story. The government hasn’t seemed to be any less likely to day to kill God or his children.  Abortion and euthanasia are the governments latest endeavours en mass. Not their own people. Indeed immortality is their own aim and the perpetuation of the wealth and privilege of their own in government seems paramount. 

So if Jesus came today, virgin birth, or spaceship, he’d likely get the electric chair to maintain the ‘status quo’.  

In meditation I breathe in and I breathe out. This is a true fundamental.  The rhythmic pumping of my blood is another.  

The idea of a central light and I as a spark or a ‘word and I a sound within the word appeals as well. 

Reading the Holy Gospel and Science texts overlap.  It’s all too often that modern scientific knowledge was first intuited by ancient philosophers and theologians. A study of time today says little different than what St. Augustine said nearly 2 millennia ago.

I exist.  But what is my purpose. What is my meaning. What is the meaning of this life.

I have this day.  The past and future may well be ‘constructs’.  Owen Barfield discussed ‘saving the appearances’ and Piaget wrote about how the mind developed abstraction.  Confabulation is another consideration.

 Each aspect of the Jesus story is worthy of consideration in and of itself as a teaching tale.

The virgin birth is a favourite to be poopahed by the city person ignorant of the capacity of reproduction to occur without the earthly male.  I love the mother and child. I love the mother and child depictions from around the world of Christ Jesus and Mother Mary. I am reminded of how safe I felt when my mother held me as a child. There’s a universal here.  

Anxiety is said to be a measure of one’s distance from God.  God as the maternal aspect.  Jesus as the one who called God ABBA, papa, the loving God, not the ruling patriarchal God.  

What is love.  

There are those who worship Darwin and Freud but won’t countenance Moses or Jesus. 

If I contemplate Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit, the three persons in one, the family God, the Alpha Omega, perhaps I can find insight into my own being. Jesus is a child God.  The message of Christianity is equality.  Not a warlord or a ruler but rather an outcast.  The message of forgiveness is there too.  Sacrifice and service too.  

Spirituality is at the core of all religions.  Spirituality is God man. Religion is man made.  The more deeply one contemplates the relationship of God and man and man and man the more meaning and direction is found.

Almeda, CBC and Fake News

Alameda University and Master of Divinity and Fake News

-William Hay, MD FRCPC CCSAM

I wrote about this some years back but the twisted tale gets even more convoluted. I told Dr. James Houston the former chancellor of Regent College that God had a sense of humor.  Dr. Houston has a great sense of humor and he thought this a funny story indeed.

It’s most recent twist is a request from a CBC news reporter to discuss my Almeda Degree. I’ve been vociferous about CBC Fake News for a year, which is rather disappointing as I’ve been a fan of CBC programs for decades. How sad that CBC News once reliable has gone over to the Dark Side.

I have lots of prestigious “Paper’, a Medical Degree from University of Manitoba, and a Canadian Fellowship in the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons. In addition I had my FLEX, the American Medical Degree, and subspeciality certification in Addiction Medicine, in Canada, the US and Internationally.  I’ve taught at University of Manitoba and the University of British Columbia.  I’ve 30 years of medical and psychiatric clinical experience and am an acknowledged expert in Canadian and American courts.  

I didn’t ‘need’ more paper.  But I’m a Ship’s Captain having sailed solo in winter to Hawaii.  Technically I can ‘marry’ at sea but I wanted a piece of paper. My psychiatrist friend had got a piece of paper on line and married his daughter and I thought such a diploma might come in a handy if I wanted to place a blessing and a curse on some unsuspecting couple. I’m personally divocred and women have aborted my babies suggesting that even the idea of being married by someone such as myself would be suspicious. A fake marriage? 

I also have been studying Spirituality and Christian theology formally for longer than I have been a doctor. At the University of Winnipeg I studied Literature of the Bible with Dr. Carl Ridd back in the 70’s.  I grew up a Christian and have studied the Bible and Christianity all my life, studying all manner of courses in churches and teaching Christianity, prayer and meditation. I published a number of papers on Christianity, religious studies and comparative religions.  The most prestigious was an article I published in the Journal of Science and Religion.  

I also studied Yoga with the Self Realization Fellowship of Paramahansa Yogananda obtaining my diploma from that institute, travelling to Encinadas and later India.  That was back in the 70’s and 80’s before I studied Hypnosis and Self Hypnosis with the Ericksonian Institute.  A long time fan of Dr. Herbert Benson’s Relaxation Response I published a paper on meditation and blood pressure treatment back when I was delivering babies and doing surgery. 

Around that time I was asked to teach a class of young women Hatha yoga and threw out my bag trying to impress these girls with a humble presentation meant to help overcome ego. 

I have never missed an opportunity to study with religious leaders of a variety of religions, spending hours in sweat lodges with indigenous elders, going through various ceremonies, studying Tai Chi and taoism, studying Buddhism with a fellow physician, taking courses in Hinduism, learning from a Sufi, spending time with an Orthodox scholar, dating a Bahi and an aetheist and learning from osmosis. I have learned from Sikhs and Hindus and recently from a Zoroastrian.  I studied the Classics and learned the pagan religions of Greece, Rome and Egypt. I have enjoyed  reading the major texts of world religions.  I read the Torah and discussed Judaism at length with my mensch friend Sam and took guidance from Dr. Rabbi Twerski. I definitely enjoyed meeting the Dalai Lama and Bishop Tutu and have been blessed in countless spiritual encounters with men and women I could only admire and hope perhaps to emulate in some small way.

Though I ‘d been president of Amalgated Baptist Youth groups I would go on to publish a paper on how I was a better doctor than I was a Christian in the Medical Post. .  This was around the time when I had travelled to Israel on pilgrimage and began decades of travel to various spiritual sites, often designated Heritage sites.  One day I hope to write a book of these travels and the meaning they had for me. I’ve blogged them with the photographs I’ve taken and discussed the various followers I’ve talked with along with the spiritual leaders I’ve met.

About 20 years ago I began studying theology in night school formally focussing on Christian Spirituality, taking many courses over the years at Vancouver School of Theology, St. Mark’s Catholic College and Regent College.  I’d also taken church courses like Alpha and studied the Holy Spirit with the Pentecostals. I was meditating with a Benedictine Nun at the time and reading books like neuroscientist’s Mario de Beuregaard’s Spiritual Brain.  I especially liked How the Irish Saved Civilization series too. Though raised Baptist and been a member of the United Church of Canada I was formally baptized Anglican and became a reader at Christ Church Cathedral.  

I was doing readings and discussing ministry with pastors and ministers and thought I’d like a Masters of Divinity in Christian Spirituality or Ecumenical Studies.  This would allow me to marry on my yacht, a dubious matter and would also document this informal aspect of my training which was increasingly a direction I was taking in my addiction medicine clinical work where it was obvious that addiction was conceptualized not just as a disease but also a spiritual malaise.  

When I looked for an institute that would provide such a degree I found that none were indeed ecumenical. I could get a masters in religious studies and having shared with various institutes what I had accomplished was repeatedly told that I could indeed obtain with some extra study what I wanted but nothing was ‘ecumenical’.  Comparative religions yes, religious studies yes, but nothing like Christian Ecumenical Spirituality.  The Baptists have their M Div universities, the United Church theirs , the Catholics theirs, the Hindus and Muslims and Taoist their’s . I found that interesting because it appeared the religions had attempted through actual amalgamation religions like the Bahai’s and perhaps Muslims and  perhaps Mormons to create a religious equivalent of Esperanzo while individually academically  they really were quite divided.  I didn’t want an Anglican Master of Divinity as I really didn’t want a job. I was a Doctor. 

The music director of my church called me, a Christian Psychiatrist, an Oxymoron because Freud had been an aetheist and he considered psychiatrists Priests of Science. I told him that while I was Freudian trained I’d also studied in depth the theist Dr. Carl Jung and been mentored by the great Christian spiritual psychiatrists Dr. White, Dr. Gutowski and Dr. Ney. 

That’s when I came across the idea in California of on line degrees based on experience and review and questions by on line faculty.  I liked the secular nature of Almeda ironically and frankly for $1000 I was pleased to get an Almeda University degree that was backed by the government of California.  The process of finding all the paper that supported the above studies and more, getting the various universities to forward evidence of my attendance, finding copies of publications and answering endless questions in this regards was itself fascinating. Then I got this diploma.  

Psychologically at the time I was also somewhat miffed by the general institutional university’s monetary elitism as the costs of study were becoming exorbitant and exclusive for my patients.  I had had scholarlships but the education debts that my patients carried were a form of indentured servitude. Yet their future employment increasingly depended on these diplomas. Also increasingly students from other countries arrived with diplomas which had no real equivalency with Canadian or American or British or European or Indian or South African degrees. I saw an increasing disparity in this and learned around the same time that the University of Toronto had granted medical degrees to students who had been failed by the faculty but by threatening legal action passed by the administration.  In California there were simply not enough positions for the number of people who wanted to study and on line universities were becoming the answer.  I’d studied Aboriginal Studies in distance learning from University of Waterloo in the 80’s and have maintained my medical scholarship in part by constant listening to medical tapes, then discs the USB sticks in my car or truck.

I supported this process and thought there really was a place for experiential equivalency. This came about when I was training nurse practitioners who were doing the work of a general practitioner though not in a hospital setting.  I thought Almeda was a phenomena but clearly institutions have an invested interest in exclusivity and branding.  

I followed the scandal of Almeda and other on line institutions which were increasingly exposed as traditional and conventional universities increasingly replaced these original rogues with their own brands. 

At the time I was asked to be on the board of an off shore medical university by a former ambassador. The whole issue of education changing with some off shore universities being acknowledged as equivalent while others didn’t meet the varying standards.  It was also apparent that much of the certification process at the institutional level depended on whose hand your greased and by how much.  

I’d met doctors from some countries who knew less than first year medical students while some countries graduated doctors superior to myself and classmates. When I was accepted for a position at Stanford I was considered one of the ‘foreign doctors’ and discussed this when I was interviewed at Berkeley and in a Virginia position.  Increasingly much of Continuing Medical Education, which I’ve dutifully completed with honours and excess is highly suspect.

About the same time a beurocratic doctor who to my mind was best described as frankly, stupid, and  received an honary degree causing me to reflect on the whole ‘business’ of education for  cash and influence of the honorary degree. Wasnt the online experiential degree an honourable extension of this existing questionable practice?  

I just learned that the Engineers are adamantly questioning the relevance of professional studies past training since the nature of professional standards is self study and self awareness and task specific. Now i’ve heard that many other professions are questioning the training in their departments and finding that these certifications and recertification amount to little more than a money grab as they’ve been shown increasingly to be scientifically irrelevant.  They have made a very lucrative business of charging students who agreed to pay up front over and over again for the same training which is increasingly irrelevant to the older members in the field. 

My Queen’s Counsel friend shared one night how his legal work is so highly subspecialized that there are only 2 or 3 in Canada doing it. The continuing legal education in his field is generally set by academics at the level of law students with little relevance given the generalities of the knowledge base. I feel the same. Worse in my continuing medical education certified training there are increasing sign in sheets and the didactic lectures are the only thing valued by these low brows in the increasing policing of doctors education by low level political factions intent on making more money as ‘educators’.  The best education I have at conferences is the discussions over coffee with colleagues and rarely in the didactic presentations where we go back to sitting in desks and being obedient students as fun as that is.

So psychologically I was glad to have this On Line Degree and put it up on my wall . I’d a diploma up there also which declared  “I bought the band a drink’.   Indeed it is one of the fancier ones and was only first noticed months after I put it on the wall.  Both degrees allowed me to ask patients what they wanted a degree for and what was education. I've been encouraging patients for ever to get education while bemoaning Canada's tendency to mediocrity. A master's degree is well supported in Canada and repays the effort but my phD friends and medicine specialists versus surgeons feel that the further specialization its not reimbursed as it is in the US and Europe. 

It could be said that I had some ambivalence about the academic institutions especially since a government in my former home province had under funded education with the result that my own Medical Degree, once one of the top three in Canada had been devalued by these thug politicians none of whom had much education at all among themselves.  There was a mediocrity growing in Canada and the education systems were in chaos. My second university had fallen in 'value' whereas my first and third degrees were ''devalued". 

My father used to complain that he had to stop hiring union men because increasingly the carpenters despite their “trade” papers seemed solely to be incestuously related but lacking the the capacity to distinguish hammer from saw. In those contracts he was required to hire union he was hard pressed to complete the job as opposed to other contracts where he could hire individually according to merit.

In Canada the illiteracy rate of high school graduates with the stoppage of national high school proficiency exams became such an issue that universities eventually introduced admission exams because Canadian high school diplomas no longer had currency with institutions of higher learning. Many argued the was a product of liberalism socialist  or communist influence. Everyone was. ‘Entitled’ to a degree rather than being required to ‘earn’ a degree.

It was also easier and cheaper for me to get an American license to practice medicine than to great a Canadian license in another province because of the increasing politicization and Balkanization of education in Canada. It remains the case that Ontario doesn't quite acknowledge medical education from other provinces charging several order more to Canadians to have their training acknowledged than any province charges Ontario in return despite Ontario degrees being the most suspicious in the country given how many are obtained by legal threat.  

Spiritually I was amused at the degree too. One of  my favourite religious teachers had been Brother Lawrence who was the monastery’s kitchen help.  

Then I heard Almeda as an institution died. The folk just closed up shop. This interesting innovator It was presumably beaten down by existing institutions and laws and killed.  I really don't know what they did to bring upon themselves systemic wrath but the there obviously was some back rooms decision to regulate the university degree granting process. 

This was at the time I’d bought a hard bottomed rubber boat which sprung a leak.  When I tried to get parts the company had gone out of business.   This was just capitalism and market forces at work. The same had occurred with the radar I had when it was damaged. I couldn’t get parts. I have a hard drive from a company now defunct and I only learned of it when I found it didn't interface with new software. Interesting exclusive parallels with market forces and centralized regulatory forces competing.

About this time I also finally found years later a university offering Ecumenical degrees in divinity and theology.  This was at Columbia University and the Irony was that the program was started by a psychiatrist with interest in divinity.  I’ve considered taking classes and do hope to continue to study theology in formal didactic classes alongside my ongoing informal study.  The trouble is that increasingly degrees are being issued with a shelf life. I didn't renew an American Certificate I had because the prestigious institution could only vouch for its own diploma for five years. As a learning machine professional I was interested then that these institutions of supposed higher education were unable to produce a training program of the likes of my medical degree which was a life long degree with no shelf life limitation. I don't think i’d stop being a medical doctor if my university stopped paying the rent or defaulted on a loan. My Master of Divinity degree retains inherently the value of equivalence of the citizenship status of a person whose country has been dissolved by war perhaps.

My personal learning includes going to places like Instanbul where I hired a Turkish professor of religion and history and was guided for days through mosques and museums studying Islam as well as visiting the underground churches of Cappadocia.  I have had a number of torture victims as patients who had escaped from Muslim prisons and countries.  At the same time I’d been a presenter in Azerbaijan with a most delightful Muslim physician who answered my religious questions about his religious experience devoutly.  In the last few years because of the horrid ignorance of the Canadian politicians regarding religion I've been reading more extensively about the church development and religion and state interface. Where once I was reading Kierkegaard and Buber I found answers in Karen Armstrong’s Fields of Blood. I'm also reading the history of council and creeds withe the dicussions of orthodoxy and apostasy. At the the of King Lear he says “Lets talk of court things, whose in whose out”. Because the matter of whose in the in crowd as in the high school yard chum circle functions well beyond the school yard. Indeed President Obama gave out medals once reserved for the courageous and brave to comedians as the Queen Knighted Beatles and the Nobel Prize for Literature was given to Bob Dylan. 

The mystery is with everyone shelling out experiential degrees who indeed did Almeda offend, whose hand did they fail to grease and why as a true innovator in the process did they fail. I expect the answer is money. They simply didn't have the resources to muddle on like other similar bodies had through history. Time magazine with its ‘person of the year’ awards survived the probable error of the infamous Hitler choice. Perhaps if Almeda stuck to Divinity degrees no one would have cared but their administration degrees might have been used by too many Canadian Senators resulting in that once august body having shameful ignominy today. I am glad I didn't marry anyone because they might well have overnight joined the ranks of the unmarried without the blessing of the legal system which is making a killing off an institution once principally a source of ecclesiastical revenue.

I reported a fake doctor who had risen in the ranks of our local government concealing his never having obtained a doctorate from the august instition he claimed he had. What fascinated me was that he had appealed so much to the authorities. He was consulting on policy and nor practicing in a physical manner where our Fake surgeon surgeons or Fake pilots show up rather obviously. This fellow merely had the gift for the gab and said what our local government wanted to hear. His recommendations were so alien to the university position I knew that I questioned his credentials. Sure enough he was an imposter. But his policy persists today as abhorrent as it is because the government wanted a stamp of approval on their cost cutting nonsense. The matter which interested me most was his success at fooling literally hundreds if not thousands before I personally called him out as a fake, a liar, a fraud. It was a very dangerous tim. 

It goes to the naming of a thing - godly or ungodly. Are the fruit trees Adam named wrongly named today as we found only later that Adam disobeyed God. Are the names given since the Apple less or more valid. 

Personally I see the future as closer to retirement, some five or 10 years out, with the idea that I’ll see myself studying more religion and theology and spirituality, meditating more and writing and reading more in the area of spirituality. I don’t know if I’ll marry anyone at sea.  I have my ship’s captains papers for that as it is though I believe it would require me being in international waters. I may have to get a new degree if I want to host a dock party wedding and sactifymthe occasion.

But it was fun to have a CBC Fake News journalist call me and ask me about what is now being  called a ‘fake degree’.  I don’t know that it is. It’s a bit like when a country changes its flag.  Like Canada today, increasingly a communist police state with all the assaults on freedom speech and the death of journalism.  I grew up with a journalist mother during the hey day of the Winnipeg Free Press and have watched  journalist friends leave Canada because they say news journalism can’t be done here any more.  I do believe one can be  a sports journalist still but I don’t know any more. Will hockey be as fake as soccer any day soon? 

I think it’s ironic that I get a divinity degree and the institution fails.  If I was grandiose I would think my intrinsic evil nature , that binary gnostic self,  had destroyed this institution.   Perhaps it’s  just a reminder that religious studies is an ongoing , one day at a time, matter.  Like my boat and radar I guess I may have worked my studies so hard that I simply need a new one.  

I laugh too, sure that the young CBC journalist who called was probably given the story by someone who I’ve insulted for being a pot head sharia communist Liberal liar who panders to the shirtless Prime Minister Trudeau who supports the destruction of freedom of speech with anti Semitic Islamaphobia legislation.  I still have the Master of Divinity Certificate from when it was considered ‘good’.  It’s a bit like Canadian Currency though. Since the liberals came into power my dollar is now only 70 cents on an American dollar. I much preferred it a couple of years ago when it was almost par with the American dollar. 

I’m actually thankful because it brought me back to reflect on this journey and how I really must spend more time in my spiritual pursuits having been way laid by political discussions which do not appeal to me nearly as much as talking about Jesus or asking why Christians can’t create a ‘core’ study program like medicine with it’s subspeciality degrees.  I love medicine that way. After a generalist degree in medicine and surgery,  subspecialized in Community Medicine, Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine. I 

think it would be great if there was a 4 years religious studies program and then you  could get  a Christian degree, a Catholic degree, a Judaic degree, Moslem degree, or a Hindu degree etc.  There is initially shallow generalist knowledge and later deeper specialist knowledge.   Thomas Merton was a much deeper student of east and west and I really have a long way to go.  

I believe there is one God. I believe that Jesus was the son of God and that humans are the children of God.  I believe what Jesus said summed up religion as later stated by Hillel, Love God and Love your neighbour as yourself.  I wrote a paper at Vancouver School of Theology on comparing heavens and concluded that Mark Twain’s description of heaven was the one I wanted.  

Yesterday I listened to a Methodist minister share his views on hope.  I hope to get a new Theology degree. I’ve got a new radar and a new boat to replace the previous hard bottomed dinghy.  I have hope that CBC News will one day stop being so Fake and that the present Liberal Government will be replaced by a government less promoting of drugs and impaired consciousness.  It seems fake to me.

But there is a fundamental confusion today about what is truth and what is fake.  I miss the blue on the Canadian flag I grew up with.   I do hope University of Manitoba and University of British Columbia maintain their standards.  Poor socialist Venezuelans today have a country that is unable to feed their people and no doubt their university degrees are becoming like their other paper currencies.  I don’t think I’d like to be operated by a doctor who graduated from Somalia or one who bought his degree with lawyers from University of Toronto. 

I think it’s ironic that my spiritual degree has returned to the little off shore island where it began.   Almeda was the brain child of some academics with an office  on a Caribean Island back when.

Addendum

I just learned that Almeda apparently had been bought in recent years by a Pakistani ‘diploma mill’  I received a call from the CBC News reporter today having written this after the email arrived last week.  

I immediately wondered if this was where Prime Minister Trudeau’s gifts of Canadian tax payer’s millions of dollars  to Pakistan was going.  The plot thickens. What is true and what is fake?

I have agreed to talk with the CBC reporter next week to discuss this. 

My natural paranoia is such that I can’t help but think that CBC News would take an interest in this after I’ve been such an out spoken critic of CBC Fake News.  The reporter denied knowing I was a critic of CBC yet admitted to reading my on line writing.  What is true?   

I’m especially a rather loud critic of the unholy relationship between CBC News and the Liberal government.  The Liberal government has given CBC news more money despite the increasing number of jokes circulating on the internet about CBC reporting. My personal favourite is  “Is it fake news or is it CBC?”   

I am thankful that the email occasioned my reflection on this which I share but I sensed that the motivation might well be an attempt at character assassination since the Liberals have excelled in Ad Hominem and all the CBC News seems mired in innuendo and suggestion.  Fear mongering always and what sells rather than what is true.  

So much of it does come down to the rhetoric “Appeal to Authority”.  Clearly CBC, Pakistan and Almeda today all have issues with Authority "image" .  My ‘spiritual’ authority is questionable as a ‘sinner’ .  My authority is as a doctor.   I do have a diploma which was validated by the California Education system.  But today it is questioned. 

That this was nearly a decade ago when Almeda was as valid as the CBC news of that era makes one question "perception".  What is the 'shelf life' on a story especially a CBC story. I find CBC news tedious because it sounds increasingly so much like Pravda and gives speculation and opinion rather than stating the 'facts' before getting into the talking heads.  Reuters retains some respectability as it continues to focus on fact more than the journalist, not that there is any objectivity since Heissenberg.  

 Tarek Fatah would say Pakistan has had image problems longer than Almeda or CBC so why is Trudeau giving them Canadian  money.  Why is CBC questioning education that originates in this Muslim country. Is this Islamaphobia? Is it news?  Whose paying for this.  What’s my part in it. Why me. Why today.  

Of course as a spiritual person, I ask what does God want me to know from this?  A thrice divorced man, I probably shouldn’t be marrying people?