Ballet BC 30th Anniversary Season

What a joyful evening! Ballet BC has again outdone itself.  No individual performance, not a single outstanding piece de resistance tonight. Just simple grace of the whole with amazing choreography, lighting, set, music and voice. The ensemble was the thing. A fluid alive pulsating spectacular wonder of dance, bodies and minds melded with the beauty of theme, sound and silence.
Twenty eight thousand waves was whimsical yet deep, Choreographer Cayetano Soto  A touching piece of mastery.  The celebration of harmony in movement. Timing was everything. Everyone was there for each other.  On the mark.  Totally meditatively now.  An instant expanding in space with music touching soul.  A lovely moment by moment expression of form. Sufi-esque!
Awe was just that. Awe inspiring.   A world premiere.  The music and presence of world reknowned male vocal ensemble, Chor Leoni.  What a feast for eye and ear! A stupendous wedding of music, words, and dance.  Music of Janczak, Orff and Esenvalds with text of Leonard Cohen. Sheer brilliance.  A wonderful collaboration, Ballet BC and Chor Leoni.  Heavenly and Angelic.  I loved the interpretation.  Stijn Celis, Choreographer.  Erick Lichte, music director.  I feel truly blessed to have been there tonight. I could have gone home after seeing Awe and been simply fulfilled. A true dance and music extravaganza.
But then there was also Solo Echo. Choreographer, Crystal Pite.  The set design of Jay Gower Taylor and lighting by Tom Visser was the blessed backdrop to a dance of wisdom and spirituality.   The quote from Cayetano Soto in the program read, “I always find myself captivated by the thin line between life and death.”  The set and dance together spoke to this timeless space filling it with art and beauty. I was transfixed.  I simply loved this piece. The dancers were magnificent.
I love all the Ballet BC dancers individually but the corp is organic.  Tonight it was all about the troop, pas de dieu, pas de trois, men and women exploring.  The whole a thing alive.    I believe its ever increasing creativity,  cohesiveness and oneness reflects the visionary genius of artistic director,  Emily Molnar.
Of the dancers, Alexis Fletcher  is in her 11th season. I simply can’t get enough of her.  Every year I’ve watch her art grow. She is amazing.  Rachel Prince, 9 years with the company. stood out as well for me this night.  I loved too the maturity of Livonia Ellis dance interpretation. Now here 6 years,  I remember fondly her first season as if it were yesterday. Gilbert Small now in his 7th season is even more powerful today if such could be conceived.  Then Christoph von Riedman, in his second year,  shone  for me tonight. I love Rachel Meyers and Peter Smida is terrific.
The audience: intermission people watching has never been better.  Thank you young lady in the gold lame stilettos. Young man, your stylish and unique hair cut will definitely set a trend.  The model in that form fitting yellow dress  mesmerized her handsome partner.
But the best of all, this Vancouver audience collectively got it!   The volume of applause could challenge the theatres of New York and London.  There was that enthusiasm, appreciation and sophistication. The  packed  Queen Elizabeth Theatre, stood, clapping and cheering  fully appreciative of experiencing  culture in at it’s finest.  Thank you Ballet BC.  Thank you Chor Lioni.

Post Election Feelings

It’s post election.  Justin Trudeau is the new Canadian Prime Minister.  Everyone is excited that he’s young and that the cabinet he will be picking is young.  There’s that Rock Star equation that’s reminiscent of his father.  I voted for Pierre. Met him even.  Admired the intellectualism.  But looking back, can’t say in the long run I was right.  The red flag with eastern Canada’s maple leaf and the extortion of Quebec Separatism, the colonialism of western Canada raped for it’s resources, the legal theocracy of Charter of Freedom and Rights: they’re just a few of things that seemed so right at the time but now looking back seem so wrong.  Communist Canada.
I was hopeful for a while.  We have three parties and each takes about a third of the vote.  Each also wants the whole of Canada to agree with it.  It’s a trinity and it’s an earthly one.  Father Son and Holy Spirit.  Conservative, Liberal and NDP.  But in heaven they live in love. In Canada they war and belittle and main each other.
That said, we muddle along.  I’ll put up a picture of Justin Trudeau in my office.  I don’t think it’s right to have a picture of another country’s monarch.  Justin is more my leader than the Queen though I do love the monarchy. It’s the blue taint in my red blood.  They called me a red tory and when I was a whig I was centre of left.
But this election has pained me.  I just said I chose one team. It was all like sports for intellectuals and I voted for my home team. But the anger and the malicious attacks on my character and sanity were rife.  I have seen the same in the ‘climate change’ debate.  To listen to the climate change catastrophizers they are the only ones that can be right. There’s this royal arrogance among the most vulgar and common.  It’s fueled by declining ethics and morality and loss of direction in a consumer society.  The seller is a predator and the buyer is a consumer.  The seller is the bourgeoisie and the buyer is the proletariat.  Everyone meanwhile is relatively poor in these immensely rich times.  All the third world wants parity with the first world while the billionaires and above are spread through the world loving most the places of greatest security. If you want a billionaire make that place safe. Meanwhile the tyrants of the old world are toppling.
I have been distracted.  None of these political platforms have benefited me.  Politics is about money.  All around me I see people on the gravy train.  I’ve gone to work for more than 30 years doing 120 hours of work or more a week.  I play hard.  My time off is a ‘change’ rather than a rest.  I do what I do to gather the state of mind to face the negativity that it is my life to face.  I am hopeful in face of disease.  But now with aging and dying I am burnt out and worn thin.  Even now I must explain a death to superiors who ask why a man who is multiply addicted with a myriad of diseases dies.  The demand for perfection from these back benchers who have long ago failed to face the front is painful to say the least.  I have thoughts of my own death, think of suicide whenever I am faced by these people because they seem so impossible incompetent and stupid as to be a certainty that the world does not deserve to exist.  I must learn to forgive them for they know not what they do.  Kafka and Camus painted their pictures better than I can.  But my grief is ruined by their arrogance and superiority. They are the cancerous waste on human creation. I laughed to watch Tomorrowland and realize that even a movie has been made to address the smegma of their existence.
Yet I’m merely afraid.  I have seen first hand the abuse of power of these diaper wearing tyrants who come in single coloured committees.  I have shown them the killers personally and watched them cover up and cover up. I know they can not have passion or know depth for their shallowness is deep.
And the election has like that interfered with my peace.  It’s phony. It’s a facade. The distance from the front to the back  lines is ever greater. The leadership is no longer in ivory towers but on space stations.  The money that goes to corruption is no longer millions but trillions.
And I wait for death.  I meditate to come back from the abyss.  I have wallowed in the human struggle. My team lost.  And even now they belittle and shame and blame and kick the man that is down.  And it’s all just Scapegoats and 4 years until we get to turn around and piss on our enemies and shame and blame and kill in effigy like the Golden Bow.
I long for the buddhist end to life cycles now. I pray for Christian salvation. I wonder if I should suicide myself now that the supreme court has warmed to thanatos and introduced ‘physician assisted suicide’ for the poor and difficult.  I feel the look these days.  I’ve only been tolerated but now I can be removed.  I have been too honest. Too outspoken. I’ve stood in the way of ‘progress’, they once called it. “Change” they call it now. I’m a dinosaur. I’m a dying breed.  I’m a has been.  I’m an old man in a youth culture.
All around me I see the men and women I most admired attacked by committees like hyaenas.  I read Psalms and nothing is new.  Politics is just another soccer game.  It’s war in symbolism.  The silliness of power.  It’s King Lear and the Glass Bead Game.
I’m tired.  I don’t know why I have spent a life time joining the losing cause.  I have served the billionaire and the poorest of poor and sickest of sick.  But there is no hope for the centre.  It’s in the dichotomy that riches are made.  I am afraid to ask my richest of neighbours how many people they killed indirectly to afford their house. They increasingly come from poor countries with obscene wealth.  I am a boy scout and there is no place for boy scouts in this world.
Self pity is always there like a great demon waiting to devour the joy of my life.  Defeat is irrelevant. Death is certain.  I believe in after life as only those who have done their duty and service can.  I resist hedonism and murder equally.  I know tears and think it’s just the beginning of the rainy season.  The season is depressing with rare moments of photographic beauty.  The world is crying with us.  A huge cleansing time. It is only in soul wracking tears that we can release the demons to the atmosphere and shed the sadness of the ages.  In our despair and laughter we are freed from the lifetime of mutual restraint. We hold ourselves in check.
But who am I to speak for other than myself. I hold myself in check. I don’t say what I think. I moderate myself to the nth degree yet try to find the source of sickness in the other. With emotion I probe the heart of sadness and laugh.  Halloween has gone. The chance to jump worlds has passed. We now move towards Remembrance days.  Red poppies like our red flag.  Dead leaves and dead flowers.  The Remembrance of the stupidity of government.  Large groups of people have stupidly killed each other with greater brutality and efficiency.

Today I’m not laughing. Praise and thanksgiving are hard for me today.  There is sickness close to home. My dog limps. His back is injured. I’m in constant pain myself from similar injuries. He’s young and I’m relatively so but we’re a couple of old warriors who have come back from the weekend in the mountains and woods worn out.  I feel terribly old. I was hardly able to climb the ravine let alone the mountain. I couldn’t lift a deer and it was short years ago I butchered and cleaned moose and elk alone pulling them from the woods by myself .  I feel frail.  Fat out of shape.  Chained to a desk fighting to my last breath.  I was cold in the north.  I was shivering. The rain was horrid. I wanted silk and incense and soft beds and movies where I could transport myself to another world without the harsh feelings of actually being there.  Everything was tough and rough.  Lifting gas and diesel cans onto the truck. Driving the ATV.  Constant vigilance. Shooting the cannon to sight. Everything dangerous.  Realizing one is hours from hospitals.  I’m back from the wilderness.  Humbled.  It’s always humbling to leave the inner hive of the city and get out there where all is dangerous.  Each trip is tougher.
This time we returned wounded. Even the dog was injured.  Equipment broken.  Cuts and bruise to body.  Ego deflated.
I pray a lot.  All day.  I meditate.  I want some peace. It was silly to engage in the debate. Nothing that was being promised affected me. I just didn’t want more government and more taxes.  I am a walking meritocracy and I have a life time of caring for the mediocrity, giving it blood and sweat.  I carry the world on my shoulders.
The self pity is an insect that creeps under the skin. The comparison is a boil.
I am blessed. I am alive. I have air and water. I have warmth right now. I have over coats and clean underwear. I have a shower. I am thankful for all these blessings. Praise and thanksgiving.  Forget about how high the peaks seem where you are going and look back at where you have been.  You were imprisoned.  You paid the ultimate price for truth.  You sacrificed your freedom for love.
So much of what you feel is loneliness.  Godlessness. Anxiety is a measure of our distance from God.
Self Pity masquerades as depression.  Sloth and gluttony and greed don’t bring joy.  Joy is a choice.  It’s an attitude. It’s a search for the good and avoidance of the bad.  Now it’s time to Thank God the elections are over.  Thank God you are focusing again on the spiritual and character development.  You did your time in the asylum. You came out of the place of hiding and joined the fray.  Arjuna said to Krishna that his family was on either side in the war.  And Krishna replied that is always so. The only question was whether you would participate or not.  And I participated.  Jesus said there would always be war.
It was Facebook that made this election so personal.  All the attacks and mean spirited ‘ad hominem’, the rage couched in caring. The people who had something actually to win and their rejoicing.  They won the lottery.  I lost.  Win or lose - does it matter when the game is played in back rooms and the table is rigged.  It’s better here than elsewhere.  But I’d say it was rigged if I won.  It’s a casino. A crapshoot.  I”m not negative about the game. The game is the game.  This world is a gambler’s paradise. I’ve played on all three teams.  I know the game.  It’s not the game that bothered me as much as the rage and threats.  I took it personally.  I must have loved. I must have been less aloof than I claimed because I didn’t like that when I said I was voting for the other guy I was maligned and threatened and hated and portrayed as un Canadian.
Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings. I really thought I was Canadian but it appears a third of Canadians, the majority, see me as a scoundrel.  I understand why there is so much apathy here. I understand why people are afraid to vote or share their ideas.  There’s a viciousness that is Canadian.  We don’t discuss anymore. On the global stage we call each other names.  You’re a denier.  It’s not that we disagree but you are psychotic.  It’s not that we vote different but you are a fiend to vote that way.
I saw the 46 year wall in Belfast.  When the Berlin wall fell I rejoiced. But there are more walls today.  I actually live in a sort of gated community myself.  Trailer trash that I am.  Membranes not boundaries divide us.

Thank you God for this day. Thank you for all of life. Thank you for this election. I pray for Justin Trudeau and the Liberals that they may lead our country to greater prosperity and protect us from the uncivil civil wars that consume the world.

Thanksgiving Day and Dinner, Hay Family

I am blessed to be included in this Thanksgiving Day and Dinner, my brother, Ron, and sister - in - law, Adell, created in their Hay Bay home. They’ve been living here now a single year.
Canada’s thanksgiving has been a national holiday since 1879.  In 1957 a proclamation stated that Thanksgiving was to be “A Day of General Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the bountiful harvest for which Canada has been blessed.”  Thank you Almighty God.  Thank you Canada.  Apparently the first celebration of thanksgiving in Canada was in 1579 by Martin Frobisher when searching for the Northwest Passage.
My nephew Allan was here. We’d gone for hair cuts in honour of the occasion.  But mostly because both of us seem so busy that we rarely have time for things like haircuts.  He’s a psychologist and I’m a psychiatrist.  We have a lot to talk about.
Velma and Melvin are Adell’s closest relatives here, both retired, one a former librarian and the other formerly with child protection services.  I like them a lot.  Educated intelligent ladies with lots of wisdom and that challenging Christian pleasant politeness and good manners. They remind me a lot of my beloved deceased Aunt Sally, my favourite Baptist Bible.
My nephew Graeme arrived with Elysse. Graeme is a chemical engineer now working in a nuclear energy plant.  He’s also a photographer, moving maker and astronomer. Thanks to his telescope I’d get to see a close up view of Andromeda.  Pretty exciting stuff for an old guy who grew up on Space flights, Star Trek, Dr. Who and NASA.  Ellysse is a teacher.  My sister in law Adell taught but retired a Principal.  Allan was marking psychology papers this weekend. There was considerable talk of school related topics.
My nephew Andrew arrived with his wife Tanya.  Andrew is now working on his masters and Tanya is doing advanced computer studies.  It only seems yesterday that I was at their wedding wearing a Hunting Hay Tartan Kilt.
Gilbert and Eva had a marvellously exciting little dog bark fest and jump up and down a lot time as each visitor arrived.
Ron played guitar some. The young people played a couple of card games.  Adell and the ladies ‘worked’ in the kitchen on an off.  Melvin and Velma and I had some good books on the go.  We discussed politics.  We had a lot of negative things to say collectively about the Niqab and face coverings in Canada.  No one liked the Troudeau pot smoking platform but some liked the Liberal Party. The NDP and Conservative pros and cons were laid out.  One of my nephews wasn’t too keen on Canadian military spending.  Quebec corruption was a topic. Aboriginal chiefs million and welfare fraud upset people.  Everyone in the family is hard working. Everyone is going to vote. Mostly people were voting in self defence.
Adell’s Thanksgiving dinner was magnificent. Velma’s grace was a great prayer of thanksgiving. With Ron well I was fairly ecstatic.  We had a close call earlier this year and every visit I find him healthier and well. It’s a miracle really. I’m so thankful tor the time we have together as a family. His children are so amazing. His wife is a joy.  He started learning guitar a short while ago.  Now with each visit he’s progresses light years.  That’s my brother. If he puts his mind to something he succeeds.  He had Allan and I digging dirt for him. Now that’s another miracle.  Both Allan and I are desk jockeys but there we were slinging dirt in the wheel barrel.
I love the turkey.  We had Elizabeth and Phil’s BC Cranberries too.  We’d been to the Bath Market and I got pickled beets which always remind me of my Mother who always made these. I didn’t particularly like them as a kid but because of her and my fond memories of her I’ve grown to love them today.

Facing the Challenges of Aging and Dying, An International, Interdisciplinary Conference, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Catherine Dhavernas (French Literature, Theory, Queen’s University) and Janet Dunbrack (Board Chair, Hospice Care, Ottawa) organized a conference on Aging and Dying.   I attended this conference noting that increasing numbers of my patients are considered aging. Indeed I’m considered Aging.
It’s been many years since I studied with Elizabeth Kubla Ross and increasingly I have patients dealing with dying parents. Personally I am feeling my age as loss.  Once extremely fit and athletic a series of injuries in the last few years have taken far too long to recover from. The aches and pains remain and on top of that some fat old man seems to have invaded my body.  Where once I’d love to run today I walk and actually prefer to ride. I’ve had the loss of some smell after a particularly severe sinusitis and added to that is thinning hair and some mild hearing loss.  It has given new meaning for me personally to the classic Canadianism, “eh?"
My older brother, the rock of the family, the one who lead the way through childhood, the one who protected me in cubs and scouts, had a near death experience with a pulmonary embolism and subsequent discovery of pancreatic cancer.  Queen’s University oncology department doctors have been the best.  He’s responding to chemotherapy now.  We only just buried the ashes of my father and mother who died separately these last few years.  It was my brother who dealt with the bureaucracy of the funeral parlour and graveyard who tried to insist that only my mothers ashes, not a mix of my mother  and father’s ashes were ‘reserved’ a space in their prestigious graveyard.  It was my brother’s wisdom and patience that solved the problem waiting till the right time to stroke the outstretched palm, knowing that this was all it was ever about.  Baksheesh,  The trade in the dead.  My suggestion, typical through life, that I’d add some more corpses to their precious graveyard had been tempered by my brothers understanding and acceptance.  He’s been a voice of reason always.
As a psychiatrist who has helped stop literally hundreds from killing themselves I’ve been depressed with the Supreme Court’s new ‘physician assisted suicide’ stance.  I took an oath to ‘do no harm’ and the weasel words of their decision seem less logic and more convenience.  The UN Agenda 21 has invaded courts and bureaucrats like cancer offering death in the name of life wherever it goes.  I was excited by this conference because it promised to address this topic.  One of the leading lawyers involved in Quebec’s euthanasia program was to be a speaker as was the University of Toronto's leading medical authority on palliative care.
Nearly 25 years ago I’d been condemned for recommending ‘palliative care’ for a patient only to find that the doctor and nurse who were claiming to be more caring and more concerned than me and clinically wiser, were doing pharmaceutical company experiments on the elderly and demented for kickbacks without consent.  As so many were making such big money I was lucky at the time to keep my license, finding no friends in the very places where people were on high government pay to protect the lives and dignity of patients.  The practice stopped, I was ‘set free’,  I was hated by those who had lost a prime source of income and considered stupid for not accepting the lucrative olive branch offered to me to turn away.  I was thereafter designated a ‘non team player’ and suspect as ‘disloyal’.  Palliative care meanwhile was what was appropriate for my patient and supported by her family.  So in the end Palliative Care won out.  It’s today a cornerstone of end of life care and thinking. Yet I know this wasn’t always the case from my personal horrendous experience.  
 
The conference was held at the beautiful Isabel Bader Conference Centre at Queen’s University.  A truly lovely location with wonderful views of Lake Ontario and state of the art facilities.  Not surprisingly the symphony performs there which explains to some extent the elegance and sense of refinement that permeated the facility.


The originators of the conference , Catherine Dhavernas (French Literature, Queens) and Janet Dunbrock (Board Chair, Hospice Care, Ottawa)
opened the morning sessions.

 “Aging and dying are a reality central to the human condition”.  The greater significance of this now is that ‘with growing aging population…raising the awareness (with) sense of priority and care they deserve…and belief in multidisciplinary exchange with an awareness of barriers."
She saw that the arts and humanities could work with the health professionals ,noting that her own interest and awareness had resulted from her volunteering to assist in the palliative care unit.
She introduced the topic of “Narrative Medicine”, and described how ‘literary studies help develop awareness."
She quoted Rita Charon, Narrative Medicine, Honouring the Stories of Illnesss, 2005

Rita Charon, Narrative Medicine, Honoring the Stories of Illness 2006

-“We clinicians act as ventriloquists to give voice to that which the patient emits.  I put it that way because the patient cannot always tel, in logical or organized language that which must be told. We let the other talk through us, finding the words in which to say that which cannot be said.”

“No story is possible, if by story one means: to tell a story of events which makes sense>”

Sarah Kofman, Smothered Words

She showed pictures by  Rembrandt and Goya (“Anatomy Lesson” Rembrandt1632 and ‘Witches Sabatth” Goya 1821-23 to illustrated the change from painting as a pursuit of knowledge and the dead as an object of knowledge to a different perspectives, a dead man as object of knowledge to superstition replacing knowledge.
 “Does medicine have to overlook the unknown? was the question raised.
Drawing from works of Marguera Yourcenar the Abyss, the movement from ‘self to other’ was discussed with the origins of the essence of ‘palliative care’ underlined. “the patient in the throes of death….acknowledges the unknown and unknowable….nonverbal only viable way to care for patient - invisible inarticulable care."
“our society, aging, denies unknown….promotes youth in denial."
It was a deeply moving presentation that raised all manner of considerations for me a physician.
They stated ‘Our hope is to open discussion across various disciplines to recognise aging and death."
The conference certainly did this for me.

I was moved by the pictures of the events of dying, the changes in perception over time and culture.  Each presenter was excellent.  I had come to hear mostly the University of Toronto physician discussing palliative care in light of the new physician assisted suicide changes in law.  There was a snag in the technology but I was delighted by how the planners rose above these post modern difficulties with almost medieval persistence.  The presentation was all I could have hoped for. I had also been most interested to learn from the lawyer who spoke on the Quebec legal experience of euthanasia. What was so satisfactory to learn was that  ‘Palliative Care’ was enshrined in the laws In Quebec.  Euthanasia was not something to be offered to the poor while the rich got Palliative Care.  The law demanded that the highest forms of Palliative Care be provided.
Now that said, I as a pragmatist and scientist was most impressed by the presentations by the ‘flaky’ arts faculty. Rather than ‘soft’ their presentations were hard and to the point.  I was truly challenged by the presentation on Caravaggio discussing the actual sense of timing and time as it changed. We have used ideas in science of brain death and such but here was a truly enriching consideration of the history of this idea of time and timing as related to art history.  Who would have thought!

(Instant of Never-Ending Death : Divergent Trajectories in Caravaggist Art

Itay Sapir

Art History

Universitye due Queebec a Montreal

Issues around death

-public versus private

-right to death

-technology)

I loved the whole idea of Ars Morendi and was thankful to learn of this. The discussion of the art of different periods and the ideas of what was important in the day and age most interesting.

(Ars moriendi - The Art of Dying in the Middle Ages

Thekla-Christine Hansen, M.A.

Art Historian , Mail: thekla.handsen@gmx.de

Christian-Albrecht-Universitat Kiel

Plan

preconditions - living conditions, medicine

 -ideas of afterlife in medieval times

Ars Moriendi- the art of dying well)

I loved the art and presentation and discussion of present day views of aging. Indeed, when the  somewhat fat old white guy torso was put on the screen I wondered for a paranoid instant who’d been taking pictures in my bathroom.  Yet, seeing this, I felt less ‘shame’ in my definitely changed look from the days when I too was young.  It struck home viscerally how much we are a youth culture and how ‘other’ I felt until hearing and seeing this.  I intellectually know this and yet the art and this presentation touched me in that experiential place where I went aha.  This was a great presentation. 

(The Art of Aging in the Photography of John Coplans, Suzy Lake and Cindy Sherman

-Meghan Bissonnette

Lecturer, Art History, Valdosta State University

Contemporary artist who —represent aging

1. aging as beautiful - 
2. coming of age - art and science - show - heartfelt/dignified/beautiful
3. rarely do we represent stigma - aging as sentimentalized
4. artist who take more critical stance
5. beyond stereotypical )

The presentation by a native woman brought home the importance of culture in any discussion of aging and death. AT UBC I’ve had the privilege of knowing and working with Dr. Soma Genesin, cross cultural psychiatrist who insights are always so profound.  This presentation raised the awareness of the cultural and aculturation aspects of aboriginal societies where a person’s belief systems could easily range from traditional to fully westernized so that ‘assumptions’ had to seriously be guarded against.  I was interested in the presenters tribal Mohawk nation ideas so different tribally from the Haida and Kwakiutl of BC and the Cree and Blackfoot plains tribes of mid west. Having worked extensively in the aboriginal cross cultural context with the benefit of First Nations Elder Anglican Minister Vivian Seegers medicine wheel insights I appreciated the difficulty the presenters had in general reducing so much material into an overview presentation.  The challenge would be akin to saying,  in 1 hour tell us about “European Culture”. The take home point was strongly made for the need to address this especially with the native elderly.

Finally , I loved Downar quoting Woody Allen,  “I don’t mind dying, I just don’t want to be there."

The conference was a day and a half. Unfortunately I had planned my flights originally flying out of Kingston but had changed to leaving Toronto so was unable to attend the morning conference.  I did enjoy the lunch and breakfast time which in ages gone by we called ‘mixers’.  There was a reception to and a celebration of the new courses and master program in Aging that had begun at Queen’s.  I do hope they continue this conference and would recommend it to all those who work with an aging population or have an special interest in aging and dying.  I’m very thankful to have attended

Justin Trudeau, Liberal Party, New Prime Minister of Canada and Drug Addiction

Justin Trudeau, leader of the Liberal Party, is the new Prime Minister of Canada. Though a long standing Liberal I left the Liberal Party some 15 years ago to join the Conservatives. I voted for Mr. Stephen Harper.  He lost after two terms as Prime Minister. I am by all measures a Canadian.  I loved Mr. Harper's service to the country. I loved the Conservatives in power if only because the Conservatives and NDP are the only parties that have cared for Western Canadians.  So I'm sad today that Mr. Harper and the Conservatives lost.

I personally am soured by Mr. Justin Trudeau.  I appreciate his 'honesty' that he smoked marijuana while working. Was he smoking marijuana while a school teacher or just as a legislator? I hear he has perhaps minimized the times he smoked marijuana.  Politicians aren't known for their honesty.

I am glad too that marijuana has essentially be decriminalized this last decade. I fundamentally don't agree with legalization because that actually means that marijuana can then be sold like bread or milk anywhere. I was very disturbed that the illegal marijuania distributions centres of Vancouver were offering free marijuana to anyone who voted.

What fundamentally bothers me though, is that I personally smoked marijuana. The last time was 17 years ago.  I bought it from doctors, smoked it with doctors and saw a psychiatrist who recommended I smoke it.  The trouble was, that I felt wrong about smoking marijuana and working as a doctor. It especially didn't seem right that I was smoking marijuana and working as a psychiatrist.

I was never 'impaired' at work.  I wasn't an 'impaired physician'.  I didn't present a 'risk to patient safety'.  I just didn't think it was right that I was breaking the law.  I also knew too many people who had suffered negative consequences of using marijuana, loss of employment, legal records and jail time. I have seen far too many relationships and families devastated by marijuana.

Justin Trudeau's mother was a marijuana addict.  I have thought that Justin Trudeau must be in some serious denial about the effects of marijuana being the son of an addict himself.

I have mixed feelings about the process of my own recovery now.  Personally I appreciate the spiritual benefits of the wonderful learning of recovery. I am so very thankful to have the clarity of mind restored that seemed somewhat lost the last year I smoked marijuana.   Administratively thought the process was essentially 'punishment'. It was framed in different language but the process was still punishment.   It was heavy handed, threatening, bullying, incredibly expensive, and shaming. There was and remains a 'double standard'. There are those who didn't get 'caught' and those who got 'caught' and people like me who sought help only to get caught up in the mixed message of a very sick and disturbed administration.

Now here I am today an addiction medicine specialist. I have patients who were like me. They have safety sensitive jobs. I see doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals.  I am expected to provide a rigorous treatment program with many random urine testing and onerous requirements because as I was told, these jobs are a 'privilege'.  They're not a right.

Yet here the highest job in the country has gone to a person who has committed crimes without consequence.  He's never been subjected to random urine testing, required to see psychiatrists, required to see addiction medicine specialists, required to attend counselling, had supervision in the workplace, or had the threat of losing his job if any suspicion fell on him. He has not had to be 'caesar's wife' in regards to his personal behaviour vis a vis the drug using crowd.

He hasn't had to deal with both the wonderful people in the recovery health care movement and the utterly sick and disturbed power weilding petty beaurocrats who holier than thou revel in their being above the law because they haven't been caught in their addictions.  Being in the system I know so many people who have 'avoided' detection like the privileged who 'avoided' Vietnam leaving that war to be fought by the average joe.

Maybe my angst today is about the rich and privileged and the sons of the rich and priviledged.  I don't like the double standard. Indeed I could have at any time 'avoided' the negative consequences that came from my seeking help when I was concerned that my failure to do so would eventually lead to a poor judgement.  I held myself to a higher standard than those about me.   I was 'offered' ways 'around' the 'system'. I was told I could 'deny, deny, deny, and lie, lie, lie' .  Those close to me who had been 'caught' actually have used lawyers successfully to avoid consequences.  Seriously people have told me over and over again what a fool I have been for my honesty.

 I appreciate Justin's  honesty therefore.  I appreciate that the laws are wrong. There are many law which we don't agree with but there is a sharp division between the law breakers and those who don't.  At least there once was. I don't appreciate that so many criminal drug dealers got rich by being smart and have 'cleaned up their act' by whitewashing their past. I know so many incredibly wealthy people whose wealth has come directly from the multi billion dollar drug crime industry.    I'm a hopeless idealist and romantic. I have a horrible scar of cynicism.

There but for the grace of God go I. I am not here to "judge" Justin Trudeau. The country of Canada has accepted that a man of acknowledged deceitfulness and drug abuse is acceptable in the highest position. The former head of the Supreme Court of Canada was a roaring alcoholic or had a bit of a problem with drink (depending on what language one chose.)  But he wasn't engaged in criminal activities.  He wasn't a law breaker, that I know of.  Unlike Justin Trudeau and his mother and a minority of Canadians.

I've been arguing for years that our judges need to be random drug tested if we're doing that to our athletes, doctors and pilots.  There's a double standard. There's hypocricy that reigns.

I'm just struggling today wondering how I'm going to do my job. I'm kind of regretting too accepting the considerable abuse I experienced in recovery.  The stigma and shame and being shamed so seriously by my superiors who I learned later were drunkards and did more drugs than I'd ever done. It's such a hidden epidemic. Meanwhile the minimization and deceit is rampant.

That's what I remember most about when I had the occasional toke.  I didn't think there was anything wrong with it.  I just thought everyone should 'lighten up'.  Hell, I hoped everyone would 'light up'.

And it will get worse.

I see Justin Troudeau, not as others do but because of my own journey and the journey I have seen others on, I see the double standard. I wonder how I can cause people to lose their incomes and jobs and future and families by saying, it's because of the drugs ,when doing drugs has won Clinton, Obama and now Justin Trudeau their highest positions.  How can I say to kids not to smoke dope.  At least President Bush got recovery.  Mayor Ford got recovery.  Most of Hollywood got recovery.  But not these guys.

It's confusing for me.  It worries me.  I'm struggling today.  I don't really care that much if the Liberals beat the Conservatives because they're two sides of a very centrist coin. I'd rather the Liberals over the NDP but truthfully I'd really rather have had Mr. Mulcair Prime Minister over Justin Trudeau.  Tom Mulcair wasn't creepy.  But I'm probably wrong.

I did this silly little study and asked a hundred or more dope smokers and drug addicts and straights if they wanted their pilot or physician to be smoking marijuania.  They answered unanimously that they didn't want him smoking marijuana.

Now I have the head of a multi trillion dollar business called Canada admitting to smoking dope, not once, not twice, but countless times.  We don't accept the 'word' of a doctor that he isn't smoking dope. We don't accept the word of a criminal that he isn't doing crime.  We drug test and find that countless, a very very high percentage of people who have ever used drugs, lie.

This is my personal problem.  It's a problem I have with Canada today.  It's a problem I have with our justice sytem.  It's a problem I have with the supreme court. It's a problem I have with the police.  It's a problem I have with authority. It's certainly a problem I have with the rich and privileged and those above the law.  It's a problem I have with double standards.   Its a problem I have with Justin Trudeau and his dynamic twisted family.

Maybe I'm just envious too. I've thought of that.

But this is why I didn't vote for Justin Trudeau more than anything else.  That's the best I can get to the matter of why I will support him as Prime Minister but I don't think I'll trust him. I won't trust him even as much as I trusted his father.  But I was younger when I voted for his father. I find it harder to trust today. I've been personally hurt by marijuana, drug dealers, tobacco companies, and especially drug addicts and twisted authorities and their sick double standard attitudes. I don't trust easily today. I don't trust Justin Troudeau.

I hope though that as Prime Minister he will earn my trust.But right now he has made countless promises. And I know drug addicts are the best people at making promises.

So I don't expect he will subject himself to random drug testing.  Even the Supreme Court expects that of others but won't submit themselves to that.  I would only ask that he make the one promise that really counts to me.

Justin, can you promise not to smoke dope any time during your reign as Prime Minister.  Really, if you talk the talk, can you walk the walk!

Climate Change Hysteria Wankers

“i’m a doctor to the planet,” the ecologist professor smugly told me.  He then went on to insist that his department needed all the funding in the university for research. He felt all governments needed to give all their money to the study of his ‘new kind on the block proposals.’  When psychology became a university department we heard all kinds of utopian claims.  Always they’re followed by ‘give us all the money. We’re most important."
Kiota Accords.
The United Nations.
“Don’t you care about planet Gaia?"
Lots of ad hominem.  “You’re a climate change ‘denier’"
“I”m not in denial you offensive little smegma. You’re misusing the language of psychiatry. I’m a psychiatrist. Biochemistry and chemistry were my pre medicine majors. I’m a scientist too.  I’ve heard every department in the university demanding money by saying that the world is going to end if they don’t get more money. You’re not new.  I’m just a little skeptical.  It’s an admirable trait in a scientist."
“You’re in denial."
“No i’m not. Again that’s a word from my scientific vocabulary. You’re an offensive little shit for calling me and other scientists names.  You’re a bully and a shit. So fuck off. That’s the language scientists use between scientists. Not this priggish political correctness bs."
So
1) Climate Changes….no one denies this.  You dreamed up the whole denial business because you are a bloody wanker.  There, wanker is a better term for you than denier is for me.  There are seasons. Seasons are change.  There are cycles. Cycles are change. There’s different temperatures throughout the day. No one doubts the ice age. Even the Bible talks about droughts and floods.  So shut the fuck up with your obnoxious bullying thug language couched in political correctness as an attempt to conceal the utter evil chicanery. The greatest political correct spokesman of all time was Hitler. He called the extermination of Jews as the ‘the Solution’. Didn’t mention Auschwitz gas camps. Didn’t mentioned killing and maiming babies. Just called it ’the Solution’. He was the supreme wanker of his day.  So yes I compare wankers.
2) Is the climate getting hotter? Probably. But heat isn’t too good but we’d better watch out if it’s cooling because the ice age something we really don’t want started tomorrow. Maybe if you live in LA it’s terrible to think of heat but I’ve lived in Winnipeg and the Arctic and I know an ice age would be more catastrophic, History says they really were.
3) Is Man ‘causing’ the presumed heating up of the planet?  No one doubts that he contributes. Politicians and climate change activists and everyone else expells hot air. Even wankers know that when they fart they heat up the atmosphere around them.  The question isn’t whether man and women are contributing but to what percent.  The Sun is the major heater in the Solar System. I know there are Sun deniers a plenty.  But the Sun is a particularly significant heat source.  Galileo and the Pope were at odds before. The present Pope seems on board with one group of scientists, the UN lot. The Catholic church got it wrong about Hitler. I preferred Bonhoeffer to the Pope of that day. This fellow though  seems a pretty jolly fellow.  But to err is human.  But lets be conciliatory with the paranoid arch evil climate change fanatics with their psychotic hysteria. Yes man farts. Yes man breathes. Yes CO2 is made by man and there is a need for less parking lots and more trees. I’ve written before I’m all in favour of cities being outlawed by the ecologists. The Pol Pot tried this.  They only killed millions but their ideology was another kind of hysteria.  Cities were bad.  Cities are bad. Those who live in cities are the most wasteful and leave the greatest carbon foot print.  So lets be serious about climate change and stop high rises. Universities have to stop building wasteful campuses.  Climate change conferences have to stop so that fewer jet trails will occur. All the ‘hot air’ of the United Nations should decease and desist.  It’s not just fossil fuels despite the take any sane person would have that this is more about an anti oil, gas and petroleum product political movement than anything truly concerned about the world future.
4) And if we admit that man contributes to climate change and his contribution can be changed by practical means such as limiting city growth then could the climate change hysterics admit that their projects are out by hundreds if not thousands of years.  We heard 10 year. We were told we had 10 years to live. We then got 100 years but the latest projections, projections which have been repeatedly off by decades, is thousands of years.  Science is about developing solutions and the solutions which can be developed in the next hundred years are light years further along than what we’ve done this last 100 years. There’s a science to this advance in solution resolving capabilities. The Science of Solution says that the capacity to solve problems scientifically outweighs the Capacity of Man to find problems.  Calm down the sky is not falling and we’re not going to boil up off the planet.  The prime and most expensive ocean side real estate shall lose value. This is a fact. All those who bought property close to the ocean are going to lose their shirts. Those poor folk with land in the midwest will see an increase in their investments.
5) Stop denying politics.  With change in energy source, China will gain from selling cheap solar panels while Canada will lose because it’s major resource has been natural products not manufactureing. We need to make a cheaper solar panel than China and make our Candu Uranium Generators safer and superior to the competitors.  That said wars are more likely to kill more people than heat.  Wars and famine have always been killers. Migration now is causing a whole lot of death. One child was found washed up on a beach. That wasn’t climate change. That was war.  If we want to stop war we can’t get there by marching for peace. I did that. It didn’t work.  The greatest peace marches of all time were in the 30’s occurring as the Nazis were arming.  Politics and power cost more lives than climate.
6) Now even when we agree that there is a problem.  But climate change hysterics are the sort that could find a problem on a blank wall, what is the solution.  What is the cost. How much money do you want?  The Kiota accords mean everyone in Canada pays everyone in hot countries their old age pension. It’s about that much. Yet tit for tat, no one paid us in Canada for being in the undesirable cold marginal world space while everyone else was living it up in the south. The reason is that no one in the north was smart enough politically to come up with a reverse Kiota Accord. With the old logic of war our forefathers conquered and took the winnings. Every single nation today has forefathers and foremothers who used that logic. The new deconstructionist logic is that we should be guity about our forefathers success and give to the southerners more resources. Carbon tax is just ‘more’ tax by a a different name.  I don’t want to give more taxes to a government that has proved it has no limit to it’s greed and waste.
7) The ecology department at the universities wants trillions of dollars. They have had millions and have been reduced to calling names because their science isn’t as sophisticated as the medical departments which literally wiped out malaria, the plague and all but cured AIDS>  I’d rather give my money to medicine.  I want to live a long life and I learned today that blood transfusions may be the answer against dementia.  Politically the United Nations other than the WHO organization couldn’t agree to fight it’s way out of a wet bag. It’s contributions to history have been utterly appalling.  Lots of cost and very little product for relative investment. Even the building has to be in the US because in most other places in the world the members would tear each other apart. Thanks to our forefathers the UN can exist but that doesn’t mean the tail should wag the dog.
8) I read a delightful book on Yellowstone National Park. It is the only patient that the Ecologists have so far had. I recommend everyone read this book on the history of the ecological interventions into Yellowstone National Park.  It’s a nightmare. Every ecologist solution created worse problems All their bright ideas cost worst waste. If my colleague who refers to himself with the height of arrogance as ‘doctor to the planet’ then he should also admit that he’s about where modern day medicine was therapeutically centuries ago.  Modern ecology isn’t even at the level of leeching.
9) So frankly I don’t want to give these clowns any more money. I know that ‘money’ and ‘grants’ are a pie and I know that they want the whole pie. The psychologists did too but have settled down into being a bit like the English department.  Languages in general is amazing but they really don’t want that much money. They do wonders for taking a lot of the fire out of debates. When people actually learn to speak their alternatives language there’s less fatuous thuggery like calling people ‘deniers’.  Accountants want to know what the climate change hysterics want in actual sums of money.  The question is simply is this the best way to spend my money.
10) the fact is people like variety. I had a ride in the Tesla car. It was fashionable. I’m more likely to buy it because of the quiet and lack of noise pollution than I am because of the energy debate. As a scientist I know how much coal is used to produce the electricity the electric cars run off. Just because the exhaust is over a factory far away, and therefore politically correct, doesn’t mean the car doesn’t have a huge carbon foot print.  Still it’s cute.  So lots of people are going to buy cute.  So when the strident ex hippy dope smoking loud mouths get off their soapboxes there will be diversity. It probably would have occurred because people like the colour green. We like paradise too. So since the industrial age we’ve been making great inroads in advancing technology with less destruction.  War is still a bit. And ISIS continues to chop off heads and destroy tourist sites destroying the future of whole peoples. I’d rather see money spent on killing ISIS and Boco Harem wankers than giving it to the guys whose best product is the history of Yellowstone National Park.  My total experience of the Climate Change folk is their strident hysteria and self righteous religious fervour but with little down to earth actual cash discussions. Their ‘Solution’ is to my mind as costly as the Nazi solution. I believe the planet will last a lot longer than the United Nations and the climate change financial orgy.  I think the department of medicine would spend the money the climate change folk want better. I think the engineers in general could build a better NASA escape elevator and maybe devise an umbrella to block the sun to a considerable part of the planet. Maybe with more money spent on space flight we could pick up some ice from space and rebuild the declining glaciers.  We don’t ever get around to discussing the ludicrousy of climate change projects because we’ve never got beyond them having great bitch fest talks and demanding more and more money.
I don’t like them.  I don’t.  There’s something about them that turns me off.  In fact I find the climate change histerics a bit evil.  I don’t trust them with the planet. I don’t trust the United Nations (period).  I think the climate change hysterics are academic terrorists.  And I think someone should tell the wankers to stop being greedy and to take their rightful johnny come lately place at the academic feeding trough. My money is on the robotic guys to come up with some incredible ‘solution’ and it will just happen scientifically without all that arty farty emotional hug fest and name calling Hollywood pissing contest.  That’s what I think.  I’m not voting for anyone who wants me to pay more money to some guys telling me they are going to save the world.  Wasn’t anyone paying attention when these same wankers insisted the world was going to end with the ozone layer disappearing, or the world was going to end at 2000 because the computers would shut down.
Didn’t you just notice we had Blood moons in spades and eclipses. The Mayans prophecies and the Messianic Jewish prophecies and Nostradamus and the galaxy and Yom Kippur all happened and the planet did not disappear. The rapture didn’t even occur and all the Wiccan ladies had to continue on with their day jobs because the season of the witch didn’t do anything.  That’s prophecy for you.
My prophecy is that we’ll survive. Some of us.  The others will die.  The human race will prevail.  And this will look like a fart to a future race of historians who look through history with their noses seeking to smell a rat. Something stinketh this way cometh.
And one day the banks will disappear and lawyers and doctors and socialists and capitalists like the tribal leaders of a yesteryear. And children in a future year will have individual energy and fly with thought alone and maybe engineered wings.  There will be heaven on earth and we’ll probably not notice because we have a tendency to focus more on things we fear than on things we love.  I’ll end being thankful.  What a great day this is. What a wonderful world.  The future is bright.  Maybe I’ll wear shades. Maybe I’ll not.

Refugees and the News

1) I don’t want more criminals.
2) I don’t want terrorists.
3) I don’t want refugees who aren’t refugees but migrants wanting to jump the immigration que into Canada.
4) I don’t want radical moslems.  I know countries who take more than Canada but the media has lied about them.  Some countries like Sweden have taken a lot of orphaned children. Other countries have only taken Syrian Christians. Some have taken women. The question is who are all these strong young angry men who appear to be principally from Pakistan and the other Stans where Russia has been fighting them. I have read the news of black market identifications and passports being sold by the millions.
5) Canadians are fairly soft bellied.  Travelling I’ve repeatedly met the gangs of young men who have killed in their military. They are not like Canadians,  ’soft’. I was mugged by a Moslem gang of men who with military precision descended on me in the centre of Athens in a lighted tourist district, calling me “Infidel’ and ripping the gold cross from my throat. The world is a changed place.   Millions of young girls have been raped by Moslem male gangs in England, 1400 in one English town. The power of political correctness and the utter fear of the entrenched radical moslem violence has caused these girls to go without justice.  England and Germany have both declared multiculturalism a failure. What am I supposed to learn here in Canada.  I was in Istanbul where the murderers of Charlie were being celebrated by the crowds of Moslem Brotherhood who thought it right a comic should be killed for drawing a caricature.
6) I’m old and my government is saying it’s going to take my pension and give it to strangers.  Trudeau says he wants a hundred million dollars to bring in 20,000 Syrians.  I’m sorry but I’d rather he distribute that money to me. I’ve given the government my left kidney in taxes and I don’t have hope for the future because Syrians as a culture don’t support democracy. These people are tribal and family based. They don’t know a secular society where we all contributed by our work so that when we couldn’t we would be cared for by pensions.  Our pensions are being taken. We’re being told that we have to work another 2 or 5 years more to pay for all those who stopped working. We learned that first generation ‘refugees’ are a huge burden financially. But immigrants produce the second and third generation of Canadians that make this land powerful and secure. Refugees often don’t participate, but take, waiting for their chance to return or move on to somewhere better like the States. Immigrants are a different matter.  They specifically come to Canada and want to come to Canada. Canada has always wanted immigrants. Except the First Nations.  First Nations don’t like immigrants. They probably have their reasons.  We might have something to learn from them.
7) I’m old and know change can be good or bad or worse. I’ve accepted so much nonsense from my government for decades and frankly I’m full up with the lies of parliament and the supreme court. The Liberals before the Conservatives disgusted me . The provincial NDP wasted my province and encouraged all manner of crime..  The national governments regardless of party haven’t helped me very much. I worked and pay huge taxes.  My skills are taken for granted and all the charity I give to various causes results in the government taking credit but the money going to paying their cronies. Cronyism reigns in Canada.  Jenny Kwan makes Mike Duffy look like a choir boy.  Our media has become the greatest source of propaganda of all times. Goebels could learn a think or two from our CBC news. The disinformation is precious.
8) I want this election to be something.  But mostly I’ve seen things get better. Different governments.  More taxes. More corruption.  And I get older and I work and I grow more and more tired. Dying looks more attractive each year.  Yet in reality we're progressing.  It really is getting better and better.
9) Agenda 21 is real. The United Nations wants to kill us.  The communists broke up unions with scab labour Jews they could kill if they wanted.  Jews have been a great scapegoat.   Maybe the Moslems will be the new Jews.  I’d rather have Hindus and Siks as refugees.  I like moderate Muslims.  I want  someTaoists. I’d like best if we took the Christian refugees from the Sudan. The Moslems rode through their villages with machetes killing and maiming men women and children but like Rwanda it wasn’t a popular war. The media didn’t get involved. Who cares if a pastor is whacked.  Christians don’t walk out of their countries en mass and invade others insisting they’re refugees. They’re trying to rebuild their countries. They’re still fighting. Last I heard the Chinese were moving into the Sudan.  I think it’s unfair that the US gets Mexican migrants. I’ve studied Spanish. I like Spanish speaking people. Why can’t we take in Catholics.  We once didn’t accept Catholics. Couldn’t we have catholics. Catholics women wear bikinis. I don’t like any religion that bans bikinis. I don’t want women going around with their face covered.  I don’t want men to have to dress like ISIS killers either. I think we should send Mila Cyress to Syria.  If they won’t accept Mila then we won’t accept them.  We should give them the Kardashians too.  I expect they’d want us to take a few thousand refugees if they’re going to get the Kardashians but it would be all in the name of fair trade.
10) I’m fed up with the CBC news.  The news seems to be mostly propaganda.  BBC remains the best of a bad lot but it's even packaged and sterilized for political correctness consumption.  Info Wars and  Ezra Levant are the only 'dissenting opinions' to the mass already digest talking heads effluence that passes today as News.
11) I feel sorry for the refugees.  I feel sorry for those who have lost their homes.  The media has caused me to feel sorry and guilty daily because the media is obsessed with tragedy voyeurism.  I’ve seen too much tragedy close up. I’m a front line worker. I know the devastation in my family and neighbourhood.  I know my family’s history. My grandfather’s were immigrants.  I know the misery one left.  I also know that a community can only tolerate a certain amount of change in a certain space of time without insanity following.  My problem with the refugees is mostly my problem with the media.  I keep learning that the story that they’re telling isn’t true.  I keep hearing their bias and misinformation.  Then I have a problem with people I know because they’ve swallowed hook line and sinker the propaganda of the party line.
12) I have trained for years in CBT, cognitive behavioural therapy.  I know the danger of ‘emotional reasoning’.  I have heard the hysteria of CBC news and the utter insanity of their journalism of emotional reasoning over this refugee issue ad nauseum.  I heard that our government was methodically and responsibly doing the job of screening and bringing in refugees and immigrants.  We’d just accepted 20,000 Afghans. We’ve accepted 5000 Syrians.   Yet someone said, what about the “boat people”.  And no one considered the ‘Boat People’ were our ‘allies’.  The communists were killing the democrats so yes we accepted a whole lot of boat people.  Yet Syrians were the ally of Russia and the Moslems were not accepting them and the Russians weren’t coming to their rescue.  Why should we as Canadians?  Especially when Justin said he wanted a hundred million dollars to bring in 20,000 refugees.  Meanwhile the refugee problem is a product of the ‘human trafficking industry’ profiting off the crisis.  Further it turns out that 80% of refugees aren’t Syrians but rather Pakistanian migrants. And if we’re considering taking migrants, personally I’d prefer Mexicans if only because they like Bikinis too.  And if you think the Bikini versus the Niqab trivializes the discussion then you're a bit too concrete for adult conversation.  Read a little Jung and Symbols and make a leap into 'abstract reasoning'.  Think outside the box.  Imagine a nation and culture that kills anyone who criticizes the ruler.  Imagine someone who bans Bikinis.  Imagine.
At the end of the day I trust all government little, our government the most and I especially trust our Foreign Affairs better than I trust the CBC news.  Mostly I hate them and anyone implying or saying I don’t care and I don’t understand and I’m not being loving when I am all of those and have served and am relatively poor because I have served the needy and worked in the areas of greatest need with the most desperate people.  I have also helped refugees and immigrants and love these people with true agape. I admire so many of my immigrant friends. So I don’t like this constant shaming and guilt mongering done by the media and capitalized on by political parties.  When I raise my concerns I also don’t like being shouted down by thugs whose only tool of debate is emotional reasoning, threats, and ad hominem.  What concerns me most is that we’re getting such skewed news about the Refugee crisis because lies appear to sell more than truth in media today.