Friday, August 31, 2012

Blue Moon Weekend

This annual bowhuntfell on a Blue Moon weekend. Fitting, as it is always a rare and wonderful time with only one deer shot years ago with bow. Many deer, shot later in the years with rifle, have graced the table but mostly this weekend is a hot sunny walk in the woods with the dog or a zip around on the country on ATV or off road motorcycle. It's the autumn weather and the beginning of hunting season that are rich in promise.

Laura and I are on our 7th year doing this. It's Gilbert's third and I hazard to say about 20 or so for me.

This year we came up the Coquihala after fueling as usual at the Husky in Chilliwack, towing the Rockwood Mini Lite Trailer, this time with the Clipper Canoe on top of the Ford 350 diesel Harley Davidson Edition truck. I had hated the wind coming down this high mountain road last year after Sturges North Rock Festival and Motorcycle Rally, but going up it, even with the canoe on top, wasn't a chore at all.

We're here in Merritt. The Blue Moon is high above the RV. I've barbecued the IGA steaks and Laura has the potatoes boiled for topping with butter and sour cream. Really roughing it here with electricity, running water, heat and hot water. RV living is a wilderness experience. Tomorrow I'll take the canoe, Gilbert and the bow, leaving Laura with her fashion magazines and cute little home she really adores.

Because of the RV site and night , I've got Cat Steven's song, "I've been followed by a Moonshadow" running around in my head. Not a bad song to have living free in one's brain. On the way up we enjoyed Matt Maher's music. We heard him live at the Third Day concert in Langley last spring and now so love his uplifting music.









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Thursday, August 30, 2012

Chopping off the heads of others

"Chopping off the heads of others, to make yourself look taller".

There's always been this sort of 'critic' around. They lack accomplishment themselves, commonly resting on the laurels of their family and community,  and suffer from extreme inferiority complexes. Yet they commonly are arrogant. Their developmental emotional delay, the point where they began to fail to mature, is usually somewhere in early adolescence if not before. They have a childlike quality which can appear as superficially charming. They are equally insinuating. Their principle mode of interaction is passive aggression because they never were a 'winner' and did poorly in sports because they 'didn't like the rules'. They're antiauthoritarian and are sure to criticize anyone who is a leader of men, so long as it is out of their hearing. They are deeply angry, almost fixated in a perpetual pout which they cover up with chamelon smiles. They lack empathy. They're fully involved in filling that God shaped hole inside themselves that Pascal described, with anything but God. They may even talk about God or have participated in religious activities when they were younger with their families but they commonly criticize religion because they are basically lazy and religion requires effort and deeper thinking than 'whatever!"  They are prone to all the addictions as a consquence and are commonly seen in bars, brothels, casinos.  Often they are shopaholics.  They are the hollow men of T.S. Elliott. They are the Puers Eternus or flying boys and girls of Carl Jung.

They are consumed with envy and jealousy. They gossip whenever the opportunity presents. They commonly criticize others defining their worlds with negativity and wonder why they so commonly suffer anxiety and depression. As soon as any conversation becomes difficult for them they flit away in escape with 'whatever' or 'I don't care'. They do care but can't follow 'big people' into the 'big world' so desparage anything they don't understand without effort or learning.  They are the dilletantes.  They have delusions of grandeur and suffer extreme grandiosity but do their best at concealing it to infiltrate social groups where they can use people for their own ends. They are takers and consumers. They consume people lacking the capacity for truly cooperative behaviour.  Unable to follow they can't lead.

Not uncommonly the men have a woman who mothers them, herself  incapable of adult love or staying in a loveless relationship for the sake of her children. Developmentally they have commonly been mother's boys but the women they choose eventually give up on having an adult relationship with them and if they themselves have children begin to simply see their spouse as another child. Women in contrast are the 'daddy's girls' of older men though these days there are equal numbers of 'boytoys' for the older ladies, couples who are desperate for acceptance.  Yet there's always a sense among adults at parties that somehow the 'child' in the room on some friends arm isn't being 'entertained' and the host or hostess wishes they'd arranged to bring rattles or something to keep this 'bodies' occupied.   Thankfully these 'boytoys' and 'girltoys' have cell phones to play with and occasionally adults can actually have a conversation without disturbing their bubble heads.

They don't develop depth like other family men who participate in church, charity clubs and community but rather "play" with their own children in a frenzied twisted way which eventually shows itself as the raging soccer dads and parents who 'need' their children to satisfy their unfulfilled longing for accomplishment.

They can't admit their own cowardice. They often have dropped out of school before college or early in college unable to complete the work or compete with others because they cannot face their own inadequacy lacking the character to stay through tough times.  They often don't keep jobs beyond how they serve them so that their presence in the long run is often a loss for the companies given the training and investment involved.  They are the same in intimate relationships commonly 'cheating' and rarely maintaining long term relationships unless to a long suffering parental type, older partner, or someone with wealth who they are feeding off.

They want everything to be easy and if it's not easy then they criticize and reject it. While they want anyone with lesser education to 'respect' them and 'admire' their high school or college certificate they are utterly disrespectful of those above them because they know they themseves failed to progress. What they can't have they destroy. Sayings like 'you know thermometers have degrees and you know where we stick them' is a source of much humor among these arrogant toffers. They are full of resentments and quickly become nasty with a person who they once said they liked. Their world is commonly black and white, those who they believe are allies and those who they believe are not, or simply those they can use and those they cannot.

If they have money it is not the product of intellectual or physical work but a gift or a 'win' or a product of an earlier time before they did drugs or became intoxicated with themselves.  They commonly have had many opportunities, often have come from superficially successful parents but got caught up in the party and expected someone always to rescue them.  They commonly are very bitter as their lives go on and others surpass them.

If there is someone in their workplace or community who is admired they will 'backstab' that person relentlessly. These people are the great 'critics' of the accomplishments of others. Whenever someone says something about a star, an athlete, the garage a neighbour built, the university degree a person achieved, the first man on the moon, they will be sure to offer a snide, belittling or distracting comment. When children want attention of the mother these are the fathers who compete. Women of this variety are the party girls and princesses who are concerned about 'whose in and whose out' and their 'social standing' long after high school or sororiety days are over. If any serious conversation occurs they will flaunt themselves sexually to bring the conversation down to their level and around to them. Men do the same in a different way, often flexing muscles and talking about sports.These women control conversation with their sex whereas the men control conversation with their 'short fuses' and 'threat'.

Thoreau described these sort as 'living lives of quiet desperation' because they exhude such cowardice afraid of learning, afraid of participating in the higher culture and the community goals, afraid of real progress and critical of everything, but wanting everyone to admire them and becoming very angry or resentful if anyone who is 'real' is present.

They lie and steal and cheat because they lack conscience and are terrified that anyone would know them for who they really are. Today they often mouth the words of pop psychology to appear 'sensitive' but their actions are all purely self serving. They lack any generosity. What they give to their family they expect back in old age. What they give to anyone is an 'investment'. They belittle charity and only see things in terms of how they serve themselves never as to how they can benefit their children, family or community. If they want something it is 'good' and if they don't want something it is 'bad'.

They are ignorant. They see anyone's taste in music or fashion or sports other than their own as ridiculous. If they like roast beef then pork eaters are inferior. Their 'measure' of all of those about them is based on their own stupidity. They lack a measuring stick beyond their own limitations. They are the people who laughed at Columbus and told everyone a man couldn't be flown to the moon. They are the perpetual party poopers. They burst the ballon of fantasy and creativity. If a woman makes a child a birthday cake and the child loves it they will come in and snicker and make fun of the cake or even criticize the mother for 'wasting' resources and time. Meanwhile their activities no matter how banal are always explained as somehow terribly important. They always have promises and grand schemes and are waiting for the 'deal' to end all deals.

E. E. Cummings called them 'thosepeople', as an irony above their capacity for understanding. They are parasitic and can't stand their own aloneness but must feed on others. Vampire movies are made about these people who 'suck the energy from rooms' while appearing 'energetic'. They are the 'soul suckers' and the 'heartless'.  Today we more often consider them 'sick' and hope that one day they will get the help they need and stop hurting others in their immaturity.

They are the critics whose criticism is always 'destructive' and not 'constructive' and given not as something useful but as a distraction to deceptively obtain the limelight,   They always endeavour to 'chop the heads off others, to make themselves look taller".





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Tuesday, August 28, 2012

You are with me

You are with me
I need not be afraid
You are beside me
I need not be angry

I will resist my impulse to hurt
Yet another day
I know that beasts crawl
But I will walk
Because you are within me
And have set an example
I cannot humanly follow

As I want to run away
From bad news and stupidity
I know I need not run
Because you are always here

I feel my life a failure
In face of the facts
Of the same soul sickness
Kierkegaard described in his day
And it is tomorrow
And we are still in yesterday

The courts and politics
Of medieval times prevail
While we put men in space stations
And explore the region nearest the sun
The source of global warming

Our media is so much gossip
And lies, selling stolen naked pictures
And calling it news
Yet I will not despair
Because you are with me

Please today be close around
In and through, under and above
Every part of me and help me
Hear your wee small voice
And see your reflection in every face
For it is only fear I fear
And hate is only fear in masquerade

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Monday, August 27, 2012

Dusk Prayer

Thank you for this day, Lord
Thank you for all I have completed
Just by being there and here
Thank you for letting me be a part
Of your dance of creation
Thank you for your incredible choreography
For me and of those all around me

Thank you for all the choices
The freedom and autonomy
For all the help from others
For all the work of team and community
For the laughter, and the tears
Thank you for family, friends and work
Thank you for government and courts today
For vehicles and roads
For health and spirit, hospital and church
And school and for Gilbert , my cockapoo

The sunshine today was magnificent
Thank you for peace and bird song
Thank you for the knowledge I learned
All the little bits of mystery and intrigue
Thank you for this "bit" part
In your play, Lord.
You are the producer and director, Lord
But best of all thank you for letting me be
The kazoo in your symphony.



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Sunday, August 26, 2012

Timothy Shay, Poet

Timothy Shay, poet extraordinaire, read from his vast work of genius, humor and delight at the Summer Dream Writer's Festival at Trout Lake. I don't remember the names of any of the poems he recited. I just thought, this man could share a stage with Leonard Cohen, Layton, and Irving. I felt gifted to be Canadian. Oh yes, I remember now, he shouted a poem he said went over well when he shaved his legs on stage and recited poetry in drunken bars. Eat Meat!!!! But it was his touching poems that caught me, what he said was truer to his introspective nature. He has daughters and the women in his life had massaged his muse. His turn of phrase and erudition was T. S. Elliott. Layers upon layers of meaning and metaphor in couplets and rhyme. I felt privileged to have heard him at this festival. I'd come only because Robert Mackay was to be reading from "Soldiers of the Horse" and Margaret Hume was reading from her recent book written with her father, Albert MacLean, "My Life".
I didn't even know who Timothy Shay was, which bodes ill for me because he really is among the finest of Canadian poets, maybe not as sensuous as my poet friend Bernice Lever but definitely raw and naked. A man's poet too. I liked that about him. Maudlin at moments but strong and solid as a Tom Thomson Jack Pine.
When I googled him I found that he was published in many of Canada's finest literary magazines, Fiddlehead, Grain, West Coast Review and the CBC Anthology. His own book is called "This Cabin As The SS Titanic" . He has others as I came across "Unflux" too. He was recently Editor of Horsefly Literary Magazine and hosts monthly open mikes for poetry reading. When leaving the stage he did invite us to come out to Hogan's Alley Cafe at 789 Gore Ave, Chinatown Vancouver where he hosts an open mike with featured monthly poets as well.




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Tears on your Pillow

You were crying in your sleep again
Tears on your pillow
Memories of earlier life
Loudness, lies, threats, violence, alcohol
You were protecting little ones

The sleeping dogs hind legs kicking
Chasing rabbits or cats or ball
Little dog face serene

I woke in sweat again myself
Remembering fights with chains, knives, brass knuckles,
Ignorant skinheads calling me 'faggot' and 'long hair'
Their blood on my fists
Their faces pulverized to mush
Ambulances taking them away
Standing as a teen ager asking 'why'
No one wins this way

Later dragged and cuffed between uniforms
On our way to the peace festival
Men with clubs and power abused

Later as a physician
Still facing threats, guns, name calling, abuse of power
Still knowing it is easier to break than to heal
Boys destroy, men create
The real challenges lie in peace not war
Even as the man destroys
The woman creates

I push the hair away from your wet forehead
Caress your back till you quiet once again

The dogs back legs are no longer kicking
His face is even more serene








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Summer Dream Reading Festival - CAA

I received emails last week from the Canadian Author's Association telling me about this weekend extravaganza, "Summer Dream Reading Festival" at Trout Lake. Whose who and everyone whose ever written prose, poetry or jibberish was going to be there. Definitely a premiere authors and poet's event of Vancouver, British Columbia, Western Canada and the United States.
Joanne at work reminded me on Friday. My friend, Laura, whose 5th grandchild was distractingly clamouring to leave her mother's belly to attend, told me Saturday "Margaret and Bob are reading at 2 pm".
I'd not been to Trout Lake. The Trout Lake Market is already a global event which brings cars, trucks, motorcycles and prams from all over the North American continent. The "Summer Dream Reading Festival" added to that. There was no parking before Squamish north and White Rock south. Gilbert, the dog, loved the hike from the car to the park.
Bernie Lever, poet extraordinaire, told me later there was all kinds of parking a hop skip and jump away, on the Nanaimo side, away from the Market. The "food for the belly" folk apparently got in close so they could waddle back to their cars and left the parking nearer the reading area for the 'food for the mind and soul' folk.
Personally, I was more impressed by the gigantic UFO hovering over the event broadcasting subsonically, "There is intelligent life on earth. It's very creative too!"
I was sitting at the Granville Stage listening to a woman reciting children's poetry when I heard Bob Mackay's unforgettable voice. Writer of the award winning "Soldier of the Horse" he was at the Main stage.. I scurried over to the Main Stage recognising poet Jean Kay's coifed white hair anywhere. Jean's poetry is highly inspirational and oftimes very amusing.
Margaret Anne Hume was on stage reading a delightful passage from "My Life, Adventures of an RCAF Flying Officer, Eaton's Manager and Family Man" written with and by her father, Albert Mair MacLean.
Barbara Mumford was manning the Canadian Author's Association table which displayed the wealth of Mumford writings from travels around the world as well as books by a dozen other CAA authors. Poet Lilija Valis was present in fine form with her recent book, Freedom on the Fault Line.
Anita Meittune, our very own Vancouver CAA writer's circle coordinator waxed poetic about writing circles, only to have a circle of authors surround her to listen as a girl with fairy wings magically rode by on a bicycle towing a folded throne.
Gilbert, my cockapoo presented his poetry for me. A real scoop! I was glad to archive it at first opportunity so bid adieu.








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Saturday, August 25, 2012

Compulsive Liars

I once worked with a compulsive liar. A female sociopath who was brought into my life by a female minister who promoted the compulsive liar, knowingly or unknowingly The damage she did eventually cost me more than $50,000 and left me feeling utterly violated. It turned out that the references she provided were from men who had previously had business with her but not the business she claimed. Given their claims on her behalf, regarding her character, not her physical skill, in retrospect I concluded that she must have threatened them as she threatened me, extortion being part of her repertoire, or being the business minded type of older men who liked adolescent women and had no character themselves. She stole but what was more extensive was the dishonesty, compulsive lying which verged on pathological lying.
In retrospect I couldn't sort out what she was other than mean, deceitful and despicable in the foulest of ways. Sadly her lies incorporated a dozen women of stirling character whose character was then doubted by a truly dubious female doctor whose capacity for gullibility bordered on the insane. She ignored the truth of a dozen upstanding women preferring the repeated lies of a crack and apparent sex addict who'd used a female minister for her nefarious ends.
The 'enabling' doctor was brought into the 'con' which all the while was devastating the community, hurting me and hundreds of others. The girl and her pimp like boyfriend were white and particularly racist and well as loathing of the rainbow community, The doctor was a conservative white lady known for her inferiority complex coupled with a superiority complex known for her fawning way or belittling of male specialists depending on how much the male doctors deferred to her outdated ideas. As one female specialist said she was a cow who found her calf and to this brilliant and beautiful psychiatrist that explained everything though it didn't particularly help me. She lived in an ivory tower protected by male and female doctors who themselves would have had the street smarts to smell a rat long before she could if she ever did.
In the end I swore I'd have nothing more to do with sociopaths and compulsive liars. My mother had died that year. Rather than focussing on mourning and remembering her for her great achievements, I was distracted by the sordid indecent drama of the pervert lying lady and her old lady doctor promoter. The female minister was by no means an Oswald Chambers, had beat a quick retreat from the disaster she had sewed preferring only the lush robes of office. She was no longer needed as the dubious doctor was the latest host for the parasite who lied for money and lied for lying. In contrast, my mother, a Baptist Christian lady of high character, had lived a life devoted to the truth.
Yet here once again a rat has got in my chicken coup. Jesus said sweep the house of demons and don't let one back in or they'll bring more with them. I can actually chart the part I played letting them scurry that first day into the bag of feed. When I had a chicken coup, that one rat I saw that day eating the chicken's grain didn't seem like much. Yet within days I was carrying two bags more of feed each week to the chicken coup, all profit lost as a result of the infiltration of rats, all joy gone, and my back aching from the effort to feed the chickens whose food was being stolen en mass by the rats. Rat poison, 12 guage shot gun shells galore, drowning and a number of cats never did get rid of the rats. In the end I moved. Life is too short for good people to live among rats if there are alternatives. I sometimes think Vancouver with it's bike lanes and multibillion dollar marijuana industry, housing prices inflated by heroin trade and crack industry, is particularly ratty. Yet others argue it's a product of the times and the decline in morality and rise in relative ethics. "It could be worse, Goldman Sacs could be your neighbour," my Vancouver loving friend argues.
Compulsive liars are often called rats. They and their lies proliferate. I'm dealing with a male one now. Despite all my experience and training and after that female Eva Brawn experience I thought I was over having them sneak under my radar. Yet they're superficially charming. Their lives are compartmentalized with no one knowing the full extent of their deception or how many people they hurt or are hurting until later. They commonly borrow money or steal from everyone and only later do people who know them meet up and go 'aha'.
Dr. Robert Hare has written extensively about sociopaths and psychopaths and documents how many people have rats in their lives, how the rats live, how they breed and where they like to leave their droppings and what lives they devour. When I beat myself up for letting this latest one in, I was reminded by a friend that even Jesus, had his Judas. I gather from that maybe 1 in 12 people isn't all human but more a rat like, Gollum, character who CS Lewis would say looks for the architect in the wall of the building. As I heard chanted in Indian, 'they love things more than people'. They like shiny things, like pieces of silver.
I haven't raised chickens since the rats came. I moved away from that town and took up other pursuits. The rats were real but also a metaphor. I'd had to deal with a liar whose eyebrows grew together and was glad I got out before the good people we knew there were destroyed by drug dealers and other sociopaths. Rats are parasites so if you remove the host the rats die or go elsewhere. Rats don't live long and aren't welcomed anywhere but in dumps.
All recommendations about Compulsive Liars start with the recognition that whatever they say is not true. Personally once I note that a person who I'm not being paid to work with, treating pathological liars is part of my business, I know that everything that follows is a lie. In terms of transactional analysis the compulsive liar 'wins', 'gets a reward' by gambling on you 'buying' their latest lie. Commonly the 'lie' is 'seeded' in a group of half truths and even an occasional truth. This person in my life right now owes me thousands of dollars and has caused me to drive hundreds of miles to be 'paid' and adjust my schedule on several occasions to 'meet' with them to be 'paid' only every time they "lie". They 'conveniently 'forget' and 'miss' appointments. Even now they want me to again accomodate my schedule and life to their chaos and deceit. The cost and pain of being 'played' by a sociopath amounts to far more than thousands of dollars of initial 'help'.
Books are written about them with titles like 'soul suckers' and 'emotional vampires'. That's part of the pattern of 'compulsive liars'. They play on the good nature of their hosts. They feed on food meant for others. They're takers and players. The pleasure for the liar is to 'manipulate' others around them and to 'control' others. They get everyone playing their game and are called 'king baby' because their games are so juvenile. Their behaviour, were it not for their age and wearing long pants, would be perfectly appropriate in a toddler, a terrible 2, or even tolerable in 13 year old. It's just painful when these compulsive liars are masquerading as adults hiding diapers under their stolen big people clothing.
Commonly these sociopaths are drug addicts as well and one doesn't know if the drug addiction has begat the compulsive lying or the compulsive lying is just a component of the immature character of the person. Pathological lying is commonly associated with alcohol and marijuana. Drug users commonly lie partly because of the brain damage (reversible or irreversible) and partly because of the grandiosity and arrogance that goes with addiction. Addicts live in a false reality where they preen before a magic mirror of their own making excluding any truth since truth might topple their fantasy world.
At work we get the 'cheques in the mail' lie too but we refuse to do business with such folk after the first lie. Countless businesses have died because of liars and many an idealist has become a cynic, thanks to one too many liars or sociopaths.
Compulsive liars want you to play their game of 'believe me' and 'trust me' so the can get close or stay close. Then they can throw a rock through your window. They say "trust me" and "I promise" but this is never a 'reliable' response because they lack the character to be able to be as good as their word. They and their word are wholly foul. The consequence then is that all who deal with compulsive liars must consider everything they say as untrue until they 'prove' by demonstration and action and repeated demonstration and action over at least a year that they have given up the addiction of compulsive lying. Prisoners in jails want out because they don't like being around compulsive liars and sociopaths. They're like a collection of virus who need hosts to infect. Rats aren't happy just to be among rats. They infest homes, towns and cities. If they'd stay in the dumps no one would care.
In addiction circles where compulsive liars are common the sayings which apply are 'don't tell me, show me,' and 'if you talk the talk, walk the walk.'
Personally I am feeling again so violated that I want to just leave and go anywhere that compulsive liars aren't enabled and supported. I am so tired of being hurt by these children, sick as they are.
Psychodynamics tells us that they are usually a product of equally sick parents where one at least of the parents, either themselves were a compulsive liar or addict or one that rewarded compulsive lying. The organizations Adult Children of Alcoholics shares their experience of being victimized by addicts who compulsively lied and routinely broke promises to their family while maintaining a fake personna in the community. Those in 12 step programs are in recovery and seeking treatment for the damage done often so they don't pass along the damage done to them to their children. Not uncommonly I treated three and sometimes 4 generations of compulsive liars and sociopaths, usually on welfare, sometimes running corrupt businesses, often criminal, and simply not knowing a life better than 'lying' and happy as bottom feeders living in the dark and afraid to walk in the light regardless of the lies they tell themselves.
Al anon, the sister organization of alcoholics anonymous, teaches their members to 'detach with love' when dealing with the alcoholic and their compulsive lying.
Still, while it's true they are sick individuals, like pedophiles are sick individuals, it remains that when one has slithered into your life or been brought in by well meaning people ,it's hard to think of them compassionately as they wreck so much damage and waste such valuable time that could be used elsewhere. Their 'king baby' 'drama queen' antics, thoroughly delighted with the smell of their own poopoo, they smear it all over their hand and reach out to shake yours again and again, laughing each time they catch you in another of their countless shitty little lies. It's then you relish the old language of seeing them as evil and demon possessed and want to stake them on the lawn to discourage their likes from coming around. I encouraged a patient to forgive a relative who is a pedophile and hurt his family, but know that it's incredibly hard to forgive when what one really wants to do is revenge.
I listened to the new Tenth Avenue North album, Struggle yesterday and enjoyed the young song writer talking about long ago using up his 70 times 70 minutes of his 'forgiveness plan' but then remembering Jesus on the cross saying 'Forgive them for they know not what they do."
As psychiatrists I raised this topic at my recent convention, sharing about my own openess and generosity making me prey to sociopaths, how "boundaries' were such a static pre global arty luddite term for a post internet, facebook, spy camera everywhere world, when as medical scientists we did need 'membranes' instead and we talked together of this mutually sharing our experiences.
I shared how the beaurocrats reminded me of the drunken irish lawyer who'd picked bar fights always winning because he was the lawyer for the Hell's Angels and the Angels stood behind him and his adversary always 'stayed down'. Boundaries was good for them because they lived in medieval ivory towers and ruled but it lost relevance in the real world where real doctors negotiated their influence and lived among people and didn't 'dictate' to them as 'administratives' types preferred. We shared how the police, judges and lawyers who so often work alot with these unwashed heathens make a strong point of having highly selective personal circles. My detective friends don't want just anyone around their families because frankly they need a 'break' from compulsive liars and sociopaths. There might well be described as a group who use 'moats' more than anything else.
As psychiatrists we weighed the pros and cons of very tight 'boundaries'. When I graduated we were told not to share any personal information with patients, women and men couldn't wear wedding rings, all of us had private phone numbers we didn't share and our addresses were sacrosanct. I spent years working like that, treating patients like they were somehow 'infectious' and wearing my doctor persona like a Hazmat Suit. The lawyer at the College wears just such a Hazmat suit and I always think she is afraid of being infected by 'doctors'. As psychiatrists we learned that the 'stigma' of mental illness extends to the caregivers as well. It's equally why so many people think of lawyers as 'liars' because they are 'stigmatised' with their so often criminal clientele.
Having been stalked, had my windows shot out, had my dog killed, and my life repeatedly threatened all related to work I fully appreciated the women psychiatrist who today wouldn't have anything but a very restricted artificial relationship with her patients . She admitted she was afraid of many of them and was glad to have a place where she could share her fear. Alot of my colleagues 'cherry pick' the 'worried well' or work in 'student mental health' or leave clinical medicine all together to become administrative doctors or doctors who police doctors because they are afraid too. I loved an old College Registrar who shared he was always delighted when I'd chat with him and share my trials and travails because he told me it made him thank his lucky stars he wasn't back in front lines faced with such awful decisions with so few resources. He said he'd got burnt out and looked for an escape and eventually ended where he was, an amazingly wife and compassionate gentleman whose contribution to medicine was truly admirable.
The psychiatrist working in the jail told us as well he couldn't even share that he had cancer because an inmate 'gloated' and used that as 'ammunition'. Sociopaths love to learn something about people and then use 'name calling', saying things like 'faggot' to put down those around them. They even use words like "Christian" or "doctor" or "worker" in a twisted way making a "positive" appear negative because that's really a reflection of their internal 'bizzaro' psyche. The jail psychiatrist would say that a sociopath could tone the word 'mother' or 'father' in such a way as to make those beautiful words sound like smegma. Sociopaths live to 'chop the heads off others to make themselves look taller'. None of the jail psychiatrists told their patients the names of their wives or children partly to protect them from physical harm but also to protect themselves.
Hearing them share this I reflected that I'd done a similiar thing when I worked in jails and asylums. I was reminded of this when a patient recently stole my personal laptop and I wondered if I wasn't too old for this work. All my life doctors have been pilloried in the media and by the government whereas drug dealers seem to be celebrated and rewarded in this part of the world. When I told Dr. Hildes years ago I wanted to be a missionary doctor he told me I didn't have to leave Canada. He got me working with the Northern Medical Unit at the time but I know now that as one of the wisest men I had the priviledge to train with his insights regarding health care weren't just limited to Circumpolar Health.
The private psychiatrists like myself however especially the older men who worked in addiction psychiatry, often had long standing relationships with patients where their personal lives were an open book. A number of the psychiatrists had written books with extensive autobiographical material which made it rather moot what they shared but they too could talk as I did about the days when we had our walls bare and answered every question with a question. I shared too that the woman doctor I'd mentioned who'd been thoroughly conned by the female sociopath had still been doing that when she retired.
When I was a small town country psychiatrist everyone knew everything about me and the country psychiatrists described the same experience of being on display today. I loved Scott Peck's book, "People of the Lie" better than "The Road Less Travelled". Over the years I've treated cleaning ladies of the rich and famous and learned all manner of details which I'm sure were 'priviledged'. My colleague said he liked the 'privacy' of his life in Burnaby compared to when he'd worked in Asia where every household had so many 'servants'. "So much of what I've read about 'boundaries" is wholly ethnocentric and western because it doesn't take into account servants or families or multi culturalism", he said. They found the big city psychiatrists talk of 'boundaries' priviledged and irrelevant , not at all realistic when their kids were all in the same school as their patients and they were coaching soccer teams and attending Bible studies with patients. "These guys must live on the moon and see patients from another planet," the way they write. The addiction psychiatrists described their experiences of being open about their lives in 12 step meetings where their patients were and then learning that one patient befriended another patient in the waiting rooom. That was why my psychoanalyst mentor had separate exit on his office so no patients passed each other.
While everyone had had similiar experiences which had helped them in being 'human' and clearly did a tremendous service for their patients and 'fellow humans' each had had a 'bad experience'. That's what we shared too. This conference is one I attend because it encourages doctors to share. Then we discuss options and reflect on solutions without doing that typical administrative and beaurocratic 'blame and shame' game. These are real physicians, healers, and not just paper pushers and rubber stampers.
I was reminded of when I played guitar on stage and sang Paul Simon's brilliant song, "I am a Rock I am an Island." The line I loved most was "I touch no one and no one touches me."
We reminisced how easy it must have been for the psychiatrists doing lobotomies and certainly surgeons can stay aloof like the administrative doctors try to be but in the end humanity seems to prevail. Only Ralf Nader could withstand having his garbage gone through daily by security firms hired for millions of dollars to find dirt on him. No one ever did but in the end he was thought a 'boring' man. In the end I thought he'd make a change as a politician and president but the hoi polloi didn't want saints ,preferring dope smoking womanizer Clinton and former alcoholic Texas bad boy Bush to Nader, the man with the cleanest garbage in history. Ralf Nader, himself, a man of truth, didn't accept politics probably because he knew politicians daily had to deal with lobbyists some of who were by nature compulsive liars.
Like the other older psychiatrists at that meeting of sharing about 'boundaries' and 'ethics' I remembered my psychoanalytic teacher saying that he wouldn't share an elevator with a patient under any condition. Yet Freud had his patients come to his house where they smelt what his wife was cooking along with every other household nuance of that canny old master, now quite unfairly criticized by 'johnny come lately's who have all benefitted from his pioneering genius.
Given the lies told about me by the sociopath and the public domain of a particularly deceitful divorce, I chose "transparency" as a measure of safety. In a particularly fascist community which thrived on dark rooms and 'secret discussions' and knew it's own share of 'lies' ,I was even 'declared dead' by a colleague who I'd named for killing patients, Unfortunately for him and his patients, I was very much alive and he was found wholly negligent and given the mandatory wrist slap.
The professionalism of the day was protect the leader at all costs and sacrifice the young for the sake of the old. It was a particularly toxic environment with some of the most heinous of acts making front page news. What was so often overlooked was that the vetting bodies were complicit in the crimes. Compulsive liars and sociopaths are most blatant in their 'cover ups' which are clearly not just 'mistakes' but declare best of all that 'evil intent' and 'false motive' were definitely present.
The recent financial crisis where the Fanny Mae and Freddie Macs compulsively lied before Congress showed that despite the lessons the world had learned from Hitler , yet again sociopaths and compulsive liars could get under the radar of countries and do all manner of damage to the world. This wasn't Stalin or the bad Chinese or really bad North Koreans but Canada's neighbour, America with Americans doing it to their fellow Americans. They're like a disease that can't even recognise their own. They behave like children whose parents just never could get them to understand that basic rule 'don't shit where you eat'.
We should all know today, only the rich or irrelevant can truly have secrets. Transparency has such merit that Beverley McLaughlan, the head of the Supreme Court of Canada has made it her central theme. Instead of "judge Judy' on tv, we can look forward to a return to real judges on television like the days of Solomon when court was an open forum and the judge didn't cut deals in his or her chambers.
Given the experience of dealing with the female doctor who rejected the truth of a dozen women of stirling character preferring her own skewed view reinforced by a crack addicted pervert whose failure to report relapses were part of her history of compulsive lying, I learned that people will often 'believe' what they want to believe and refuse to let the 'facts' get in the way of their 'opinions'.
I depend as much today on prayer and Grace as I do on 'boundaries' or 'locks'. As an old saying goes about a servant who didn't tie up the camels and they were gone in the morning, when he said to the master, "But you always say trust Allah", the master replied, "Tether the camels and then trust Allah." As Christians say, you are the hands of God. So a spiritual life isn't one of work without faith but rather work and faith. In the beginning and the end, all is God.
I have also learned that it doesn't help to confront compulsive liars , just as it doesn't help to confront a sociopath. It's like telling a cannibal that they are a cannibal. Cannibals don't care about this information. What is important is to get your hand back before they get your arm. The only hope for a compulsive liar or a sociopath is if they are an addict as well. Addiction is a treatable medical condition.
But addiction, compulsive lying, and sociopathy all share in common that for treatment the person must have reached a bottom, be coerced to accept treatment through intervention or have a moment of clarity or age. Prochaska has written very clearly about Stages of Changes starting with Precontemplation, Contemplation, Determination, and finally Action. Modern day motivation therapy encourages us to no longer waste valuable resources on patients who are not themselves further along in the process. Compulsive liars and sociopaths love an audience. Transactional analysis and other therapies showed that they 'score' not by changing for the positive but by 'defeating' your helping them.
Usually toyboys and party girls grow up in their 50's and though they do immense damage to their children along the way they might themselves find truth within their life time some being simply developmentally delayed. Others learn 'toilet training' early while this group sociologically are 'challenged' as the pc language would say. They think their shit doesn't smell even but eventually may 'get it' though frankly the evidence does suggest that as often die young.
The most important point though is that those around compulsive liars and sociopaths do best to keep them out, recognise the rat when it gets in and as quickly as possible get out before they bring more rats or tell more lies.


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Dissociative Disorders

Dissociative Disorders in DSMV, Spiegel, Loewenstein, Lewis-Fernandez, Sar, Simeon, Vermetten, Cardena, and Dell, Depression and Anxiety 28:E17-E45 (2011) is really the definitive article regarding Dissociative Disorders today. It's extremely well researched and clearly thought through. David Spiegel, Department of Psychiatry, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California has long been a seminal thinker in the area of dissociative disorders as well as in hypnosis and hypnotic states.

The introduction asks the following questions in recommending revisions for the DSM5 due out next year, having not made this year's planned deadline due to the controversies surrounding it.

1) Should Depersonalization Disorder (DPD) remain or be moved to another section of DSM5?
2) Should Dissociative Amnesia (DA) continue to be conceptualized as a Dissociative Disorder or be moved to another section to emphasize its relationship to trauma, ie as part of PTSD or ASD -- stress disorders.
3) Does the data support Dissociative Fugue as a separate category or better be seen as part of DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) or Dissociative Amnesia or as not yet specified.
4) Should Dissociative Identity Disorder criteria be changed?
5) Should Dissociative Trance Disorder be included in appendix or be a specific dx.
6) What examples should be generated as not yet diagnosed categories?

The group reviews the recent data particularly neurobiological data supportig dx of Dissociative Disorders addressing controverises.

They recommend that recent research documents the utility of combining concepts of the domain of dissociative symptons from both DSM IV and the ICD 10.

"Dissociation is a disruption of and/or discontinuity in the normal, subjective integration of one or more aspects of psychological functioning,including - but not limited to - memory, identity, consciousness, perception and motor control. In essence, aspects of psychological functioning that should be associated, coordinated, and/or linked are not." p E19

"ICD-10 describes DD's as primarily acute disorders ......in contrast, the DSMIVtr conceptualizes several DD's as long-term, chronic disorders, including DID and some forms of DPD, DA, and DDNOS."

"The term dissociation has been used to describe a variety of processes of the human mind, including "normal" aspects of focusses or divided attention and absorption, some of which underlie hypnotic capacity, "semi-independent mental modules" that are not consciously accessible, and altered states of consciousness that can be activated in a variety of contexts such as religious ecstacies, hypnotic experience, and/or during traumatic or overwhelming experiences." p E20

"Dissociation also describes a psychobiological trait that can be measured in various populations.....may be two categorically distinct dissociative dimensions: "nonpathological" and "pathological".

"In addition, dissociation is used to described an intrapsychic experience of trauma, conceptualized in psychodynamic terms, ....."

"Dissociative Identity Disorder is currently understood as a complex posttraumatic developmental disorder that usually begins before the age of 5-6." p20

"individuals with childhood-onset DD's may have a different relationship to these life-long symptons than individuals who develop adult-onset dissociative symptons during an episode of acute trauma' p21

"It is hypothesized that dissociative symptons reduce subjective distress both in the immediate context of stress or trauma, as well as later when the dissociative processes protect the individual from full awareness of stressful, disquieting, and/or traumatic information" p21

"The notion that dissociative processes exist to reduce at least some aspects of subjective distress is consistent with the neurobiological data that individuals with dissociative forms of the PTSD show "emotional overmodulation" with increased activation of the orbitofrontal cortex inhibiting activation of the amygdala and insular cortex" p21

"Metaphorically speaking, fundamental aspects of dissociative responding can be conceptualized in terms of 'detachment' or 'compartmentalization'. Detachment includes depersonalization/derealization experiences; and compartmentalization includes dissociative experiences such as amnesia or separation of memory material from one's ongoing sense of self, etc."

"Unfortunately, dissociation generally interferes with processing of traumatic experiences, leaving memory material in nonverbal, emotionally overwhelming, usually imagic and sensory form."

Phenomenological studies show that psychotic and dissociative processes may produce symptons that superficially resemble each other, but have differing etiologies, treatment response, and presumptive psychobiology."

"Dissociative patients may have reexperiences or reenactments of trauma during which they believe that they are actually in a different time/place undergoing that traumatic experience." p22

"Dissociative patients do not report delusional explanations for hallucinations or FRS. Rather they tend to experience these symptons as inexplicable and frightening, indicators that they are 'crazy'. "

This is my first pass reviewing this extraordinary paper by Spiegel et al. I'll put it up here and come back to it another time. I've a committment to seeing some friends read from their recent books or I'd continue through this really inspiring and thought provoking discussion.



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Friday, August 24, 2012

Late Summer Morning

I wake to briskness in the air
Harbinger of bow hunting
Fall paintbrush dipped in orange and brown
You are nearer always
Aging brings you so
Not like adolescence when distracted
Your surprises unforgettable
Now as a lover companion
Walking with me
Whispering remembrances
Pointing to distant hills
Nearer with time
Higher still
But no more daunting
Just waypoints on the closing journey
Love conquers all
And fears are soon forgotten.




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Thursday, August 23, 2012

Prince Harry is not Normal

I read in the BBC that an American anthropologist had declared Prince Harry drunken nude behaviour "normal". I'm sure this is true and it reflects the reason for many parents wanting the universities to remove bars from their grounds, the very reason for MADD, and an increasing desire for more honesty in advertising as it pertains to alcohol. The Royal Family suffered a tragedy with the alcoholism of Lady Di and the perversion of the then papparazzi so I'm sure it's a serious concern to Queen Elizabeth whose reign has been the epitome of clear mindedness.
The difficulty is that Prince Harry isn't supposed to be "normal' and clearly has demonstrated himself to date to be an above normal human being. He's truly remarkable in every way. By all accounts his intelligence is exceptional as is his kindnes, personality and consideration of others. He's thoroughly admired in the military and has demonstrated himself to be the finest of characters.
Alcohol is called the 'great eraser' simply because it takes away the higher levels of function and leaves the more animalistic and lizard like aspect of the brain in tact to the last. So, of course 'bad' behaviour, product of a 'sick' brain, is normal when one is drinking just as 'bad' driving while drun is as well. I suspect that alcohol explains why Prince Harry's billiard game was wanting and he was undressed as a consequence of 'strip billiards'. His father Prince Charles behaviour was never improved with excessive alcohol because like Prince Harry, Prince Charles is human. Alcohol doesn't care if one's blood is red or blue.
So lots of young men and women in their 20's are binge drinking these days as shown by the profusion of 'alcohol treatment centers' in Hollywood. Perhaps if more youth attended "finishing schools" with appropriate drug and alcohol prevention programs this would not be the case.
Prince Harry is an above normal human who has like the best before him been brought low by alcohol which respects none.
If Prince Charles could survive this age there's no doubt that Prince Harry will prevail. The Royal Family is luckiest to have Queen Elizabeth who is clearly 'not amused'.
Yet what concerns me most is not the drunkeness or nudity as they go hand in hand and young women and men, especially those in high risk industries like the military, will forever be the envy of the gossips, especially the white hairs, who have lead such disturbingly boring lives that they take a rather unwholesome interest in Prince Harry, truly one of our finest young men. More so I am concerned about the paparrazi and the one who took the photo and distributed it. Clearly that individual or individuals did so because Prince Harry was physically and socially their superior in every detail.
Privacy is a concern where such darkness is meant to conceal devilish politics that serve a demonic few at the cost of many. Ironically at this very moment Julian Assange is being persecuted for such expose however I would be personally much more impressed with a government that put one thousandth of its resources to the capture and severe prosecution of the abnormal pervert that took these pictures and the psychopaths who distributed them for profit. Those individuals are clearly 'abnormal' and their perverse interest in the privates of the Royals is far worse than anything that Julian Assange has ever been accused of in his attempt to uncover the unholy 'cover ups' that plague world affairs.



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Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Jurnista

Jurnista is the trade name for hydromorphone HCL. It is indeed a break through in technology as it provides a new long acting formulation in a 'prolonged release tablet' allowing for once daily dosing.
In the treatment of pain disorders requiring narcotic medication long acting preparations are superior in the long run to the short acting preparations. 

Narcotic abuse is sought mostly in the short acting rapid rise preparations.  These short acting medications which peak within minutes to hours are associated with the 'rapid onset high' like the one armed bandit of the casino.  Crack as a drug of abuse is associated smoke rapid brain access.  Smoked marijuana is addiction whereas historically 'ingested' ie eaten or taken as a tea marijuana was considered medicinal. 

In pain short acting medication given 3 or 4 times a day can be like a roller coaster ride for chronic pain.  Yet it's safest to start a short acting medication especially in acute pain.  Hydromorphone now comes in three preparations. IR Hydromorphone given 3 to 4 times per day, CR Hydromorphone given twice a day and now Jurnista given once a day. 

Daily dose of hydromorphone is converted to jurnista using a 1:1 ratio. 

Summer Vancouver Morning

Pleasant dream wakening
Sea breeze air
Boat gently rocking
Happy faced dog waiting for master's eye opening
Licking face alarm clock
Squirming little body

Staggering self goes groggily to head
Thankful for indoor plumbing
Walks dog up dock
Across parking lots
Industrial spaces
Men early working
Dog business done

Fresh coffee soon bubbling up
Sunshine streams through windows
First sip
Warmth and wetness on lips and throat

I call you
Fair haired friend
Hear your answering machine voice
Imagine you in shower
Text message day's greeting
And write this poem

Amazed at what Vancouver becomes
With a little dry and sunshine
A Wonderland beyond all wonders
Home of the sacred and profane.


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Tuesday, August 21, 2012

TJ Beans Coffee Shop, Ganges, Saltspring Island

This is a fabulous coffee place. Not only great coffee and I've personally enjoyed the cappucino, cafe au lait and mocha but the food is terrific too. I especially love the all day breakfast sandwiches. There's great wraps and the service is superb. I love the decor and the outdoor tables. There's a welcoming atmosphere. It's a place to read the paper or do some laptop writing. The washroom is clean. The staff are delightful. I love this place. It's one of the reasons I love Ganges and keep coming back to Salt Spring Island whenever I can.









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Salt Spring Island AA Round Up 2012

Again and again the Salt Spring Island AA Round Up has proved to be the best destination for sobriety in August. This year I sailed my off shore yacht, SV Giri, to Ganges Harbour with Laura and my cockapoo, Gilbert. It was a long day Friday with a false start because of the need to replace the Yanmar diesel engine starter. After that we connected with the passes perfectly enjoying a marvellous motor under clear skies and long over due summer sunshine.

When we arrived in the evening we were just too tired from the sun and sea to go ashore. In the morning though we were up and refreshed and dinghed ashore tying up the tender at the dock before hiking up past the school to the farmer institute.

Immediately I saw Donny, my motorcycling buddy who took me off to the Oyster Festival Biker Rally a couple of years back with a number of other sober riders. What a day that was! He was looking great and just a delight to see. So many folks one meets over the years and then we connect again at these rallies and round ups.

Pre registered, Laura and I hurried in to hear the Al Anon speaker. She was real. A beautiful woman sharing her experience strength and hope. A profound tale from the very heart and soul. One minute we were laughing and the next we were crying. The human condition unfolded as she told of her journey and the man she'd travelled through life with. It reminded me of Lois, co founder of Al Anon, wife of Bill Wilson, cofounder of AA.

Another speaker spoke right from the heart with such inspiration and hope that the room seemed to resonate love, the agape kind, that which binds people and community. Then, after the applause died down we stood and said the Serenity Prayer together. The sound of birds outside could be heard as renewed in spirit we stopped to chat with old friends. Murray's tale of Kaffkaesque beaurocracy was hilarious.

What a gift it was to see Brian again. He'd been RV'ing for the last 3 months across Canada and proceeded to tell us of his adventures in Newfoundland and meetings in the prairies. We'd hugged on meeting and then he said, "This Saltspring Island Round Up is one of my milestones. I come to it because it seems to sum up the passage I've been on the year before."

He introduced me to his friend who had over 40 years of recovery and we talked of a mutual friend who will be having a cake in Palm Springs this year to celebrate his 50 years of continuous sobriety.

Laura and I headed down the hill after that, walking back to town where I got Laura some earrings to replace the ones she'd lost on the boat. We had coffee and the breakfast sandwich at TJ Bean's. Gilbert was able to sit outside by the table where he didn't fail to beg for tidbits.

Then we made our mandatory stop at the incredible bookstore. The Market has banned dogs so we considered that off limits. They have someone dog sitting from the SPCA but Gilbert is too precious to be left with strangers while we shopped. As it was the main stores of Ganges welcomed Gilbert. Mouats had the boat part I needed. We both got jacketshells at the luxury clothing store next to it. Clouds had come up and we'd not come prepared if it rained which it did for just a bit later. We were glad for them too that evening as the clouds turned a hot summer day into a cool breezy evening.

We were back in time for another Al Anon speaker who was thoroughly entertaining with a remarkable tale that began in Europe and wove it's way through the fabric of Canadian history. This scooter riding elder was a delight to hear and so uplifting.

After that we all congregated outside to wait for the lamb roast. They have lamb and pork and vegetarian chillis. Brian joined us and we chatted up a storm about RV's and travelling. Margaret appeared too and was looking so healthy. Standing in line every now and then I 'd see someone I knew and be thankful for another year together.

Then the plates were being filled to overflowing with salads and roast and just the best makings of baked potato, sour cream and bacon bits with buns and country butter. What a feast! Not much talking happened from the moment we sat down till our plates were finished. Gilbert was happy to have a taste but settled right in to cleaning the paper plates. I was off for pie and ice cream then. I was was able to carry one for Laura and a coffee for myself.

After that the Saturday night speaker came on. A troubled man indeed who told a twisted tale that made us all thankful he was here and not there. We sat outside at the back with Gilbert on a leash as required. Occasionally a 'dry' dog would go by without a leash and no master in sight.

It was dark when Laura, Gilbert and I walked down the hill, the humans swinging pen lights to let the rare passing car better see us. Thanks to Laura we found the dinghy at night. She'd taken a better fix on our proximity to the little island. The boats we'd anchored by had gone and new ones had replaced them so I was confused and glad to follow her proposed course which disclosed the GIRI nestled behind a new arrival. Good to be aboard.

Great to talk about the meetings and chatter on about old friends and reflect on previous round ups. This was Gilbert's third. I'd come many times, by car, van, motorcycle and a few times sailing over. The last time we'd tented whereas some times I'd stayed in bed and breakfasts. The funniest time was when Bill and Brian had come and Bill had forgotten to put the fly on his tent and been thoroughly rained out. Then there was the great night Bob played guitar and sang into the wee hours. It's great to be sailing but camping with the couple of hundred other people tenting certainly is a real community level of coming together.  This year there'd been some really good musicians jamming in the campground.  I was sorry we'd miss the morning spiritual speaker and the incredible music that is so much apart of Salt Spring Island.

But then it was good to weigh anchor and head up Trinicomalli Channel to catch the turn at Porlier Pass, cross Georgia Straight in a chop and arrive home in Coal Harbour late afternoon. What a great combination, sailing and a round up. But most of all it was wonderful to see such marvellous friends and hear the stories of their lives since last we'd shared.




























Monday, August 20, 2012

Fundamental Theological Beliefs

I believe I am not alone. I believe in a God which has been given many names over the years by many people. I believe the differences are not in the God but in the development and perspective of the people referring to this 'other' as God.

The following names are the ones I prefer to call this God. Yahweh, Creator, Lord, Father, Mother, Higher Power, Jesus.

I believe the Bible is the story of the man's relationship with this God first as the representative tribal experience of the Jews until the birth of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Jesus taught that he was the son of God and that we were the children of God. I believe this fundamental familial relationship exists though it is hard for me to maintain this belief when I am afraid or angry. Jesus said "Do not be afraid". I consider fear as often as not my enemy. Sometimes fear is a friend. Anger is mostly an enemy.

I believe that God is loving. I believe in the Trinity, Father, Child and Mother Holy Spirit. I believe the Holy Bible is the sacred text. I believe other sacred texts exist and have become sacred as both a gift of grace and by the study of spiritual followers. I believe St. Paul spoke truly when he said that now 'we see as through a glass darkly". This existence has a 'cloud of unknowing'. Truth lies in 'insights' and in the human heart. Outer reality is not so deep as the 'collective unconscious' or what can be called the 'soul' that which connects us to God who relates to us individually as we relate to Him.

I believe that all roads lead home and that death is a rebirth to another dimension, life or heaven, hell or purgatory. I believe that hell is not 'eternal' but rather at most for a 'long time'. I believe that a loving God will wait for all his children to come home. Hell is a 'choice' and a 'state of mind' and a 'place' but that place is solely one's 'turning one's back on God' and preferring one's own shadow to the light of God. Humility is acceptance of divinity in the duality and that that divinity is not 'me' but 'Thou'.

I believe all that we can know, feel and experience is God 'stuff' as God has made this all from God self. We are all created in the imagination of God and that all is God.

I pray and meditate to know God more fully. Each day I ask that God guide me in my actions and help me. 'Thy Will not My Will be done."

I believe in the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." I believe Jesus' command, "Love God and Love your neighbour as yourself." This is also called 'divine retribution' and 'karma'. I believe there is 'temporary evil' and 'everlasting god'.

There is much more that I believe, especially scientifically, but it all begins with God and my relationship with God. I believe in the importance of fellowship in knowing God and this world.

Thank you Jesus for this day. Hallelujah.



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Saturday, August 18, 2012

Fishy Speakers

I remember when my friend claimed to be a spiritual guru of a kind but confessed years later he had been still smoking marijuana, Something about the way he spoke then had caused me to be cautious. Since he quit smoking dope he's humbler and real. His guitar playing and songs are a whole lot more authentic too.
When a positive person shares dates, of say, birthdays, that are really important to them, they are shared in a different way than mundane dates of negativity or neutrality.
Sometimes people use emotional 'tricks' such as maudlin reference to random death or a personal loss which rings untrue. This might then indicate some underlying level of dishonesty.
Mostly my ear seems tuned to the areas of 'specificity' versus areas of 'generality'. Carl Jung focussed on the emphasis and delays that people shared their inner character with.
There's also the criticism and expressions of superiority. These may be valid if there's more constructive reasoning and some evidence of superiority. But without these, 'preaching' often belies the dishonesty. When people other than 'preachers' 'preach' they're doing a 'one up' 'one down' thing out of a specific context.
I've even found myself asking if a person is what or who they say they are especially when they claim to be telling truth. Truth can be recited but doesn't necessarily come from the heart. I heard a young man sing a blues song once written by a very old man. It came off sounding pretty and clever.
There's a part of myself where 'discernment' lies and I'm thankful that it's like a sense of smell that says something is off without my needing to taste it. Whatever it is, isn't wasted because it can be used as compost. Yet it's not quite what I want for dinner at this point.
A lie detector might help but only if it had a sense of smell.


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Vancouver to Ganges Harbour, Salt Spring Island, Sailing

Laura, Gilbert and I anchored the SV GIRI, my 39.9 foot cutter rigged 13 ton steel sailboat off Jericho Beach last night. In the morning the starter gave up the ghost. I called Jim (James Geisbrecht of Jim's Marine Electrical - www.jimsmarineelectrical.com) and he was kind enough to confirm my diagnosis by listening to the sick engine sounds over the cellular. I took the diseased engine part out with the help of wrenches and screwdrivers. Gilbert, the dog, licked the sweat off my forehead. I had a back up part remaining from my last offshore cruise.

Jim was really terrific to make a house call. I was reminded of my housecall days first as a family physician and later as a psychiatrist. I picked him up in my dinghy at Jericho Beach. It was a beautiful sunny day with blue skies and light winds. The little sailboats were out in force with lots of folk paddling standing up on their surfboards and others swimming near the beach.

Gilbert barked ferociously when Jim appeared then recognising him brought him a ball convinced that I, having tired of throwing his ball, had graciously gone and brought him a fresh recruit. Jim had the new starter installed and rewired in minutes while I held the lights. (Modern engine compartments sometime in the distant future will come with lighting pre installed.) Having never installed a diesel starter I didn't know that the teeth didn't need to allign as this occurred when the starter engaged. I'd marked the wires I'd taken off so would have been able to rewire it okay myself. Without Jim this time it still would have been a challenge. In surgery we always said, "see one, do one, teach one." Now I'd seen one so soon I will be teaching starter installation.

Returning Jim to dry land I brought the Achilles dinghy with Yamaha 4hp back to tie on a long line behind the boat. Cranking over the new starter again the engine ran fine. I engaged the electric winch to pull in the anchor, then with care I avoided running over any of the children out in their training sailing boats that looked like babies in bathtubs with diapers aloft on a pole.

Low tide and lots of the sand banks were bare right out to the markers. Lots of folk and dogs playing on them. It was going to be a very hot day and everyone who could was down on the beaches of Vancouver.

I was glad my Wagner Autopilot was working good enough that I was able to plot in a course off Pt Atkinson for Porlier Pass. It's approximately 20 miles from Vancouver but the water running through the channel can make it very treacherous or impossible to go through except very near the 'turn'. The 2012 Canadian Tide and Current Tables gave me that as 5:30 pm, factoring in daylight saving. We weighed anchor at noon and pulling the dinghy at an easy 2500 rpm I was getting 4.5 to 5 knots. What great serendipity!

Laura loved the channel crossing. There was so little wind I didn't put the sails up but relied on the 'iron jenny'. Blue sky and sunshine, gentle breeze and calm blue seas all around. Great scenery of snow capped mountains in the distance. A whole lot of blue really. A large freighter came quite close and we had a really fine time just short of Porlier moseying along having arrived a bit early for the 'Turn'. On the way I'd made toast with cream cheese and honey open faced sandwiches. Gilbert and Laura had lain in the sun on deck. I'd read in the cockpit mostly wandering around the boat occasionally to do the captain thing of checking stuff. What stuff never matters. I found a line that needed fixing and fixed it. Otherwise I enjoyed a western. Laura was reading fashion magazines. Gilbert was gnawing on chews or begging with a toy in his mouth to have one of us throw it for him.

Porlier Pass was exciting but not as exciting as it's been on some occasions when I've missed the Turn and being experienced and stupid have 'shot the rapids'. Having been a white water canoeist ,doing this is like that ,but far more dangerous and not recommended. Frothing white water and great whirlpools that threaten at any moment to swallow the 40 foot 13 ton boat whole. This time the ripples on the surface and the stresses on the helm just spoke of what was waiting below for the unwary or intrepid. The lighthouses here are extremely pictuesque. Only a couple of boats were fishing in these salmon rich waters.

Trinicomalli Channel was lovely as always. A long stretch of protected water with islands on either side. One of the most beautiful of cruising channels I've enjoyed. Many's the time I've gone up or down it the whole way wing on wing as the winds can be so perfect here. Today though it was good for boating and while Laura had a shower below I began to read "The Legend of the Painted Horse" by Harry Combs, possibly one of the greatest of western writers, the author of 'Brules'. It's a joy to start a new book by a favoured author.

Before long we were coming into Ganges with the sun setting over the town. Much fewer crab pots made the passage into the anchorage area a whole lot easier than some years. Hot dogs with cheese made for an easy dinner then we were in bed enjoying the gentle motion at anchor, looking up through the hatch at the stars above. Gilbert, always the chaperone, when good night kisses are going around ,had stuffed his squirming little body between us so he could alternatively lick each of our faces. Eventually we all slept to wake this morning in absolute paradise.

I've had coffee and Laura is ready so we'll take the dinghy in town and spend the day at the Salt Spring Island AA Lamb Roast Round Up. What a great trip over thanks to Jim's help and God's Grace. Now for a day of sunshine and inspirational speakers. Spirituality is a marvellous place of soul. I love to gather with others and celebrate gratitude and focus on the positives rather than the negatives of life. Together we share our experience, strength and hope. Al Anon Family Groups is the organization of friends and family that comes everywhere as well. Now I've come to this 'Round Up' by Motorcycle, Car, and Sailboat and now Sailboat again. The organizers always make it a great time. A wonderful August weekend and destination. It's Gilbert's third year. Each year we wonder about enrolling him in a "BA" group for his ball compulsion but so far he insists that it's just a social thing. When the dog police stop him he insists he's only has 2 balls. Outsiders don't know how many he has hidden and buried.












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Friday, August 17, 2012

Yanmar 3GM30F Starter and Yachting




I woke this morning anchored off Jericho Beach, English Bay. Vancouver looked beautiful in the clear blue sky with sun shining and calm sea. I started the engine. Awful sound. Just an awful sound. I woke the sleeping beauty blond and asked her to press the starter while I looked at the engine. Awful sound. Nothing happening. It sure sounded like the Starter was hooped.

I phoned Jim Giesbrecht. He's a major asset to my SV Giri.  (Jim's Marine Electric)

"Jim, listen to my engine. Nothing else is happening." I held my cell phone closer to the engine.

"Sounds like the starter. "

"Would you have any time to fix it?"

"I have to come into Vancouver so I could pick it up from you and get a replacement part. Do you think you can take it out yourself."

"Sure thing."

I'd just fixed my downrigger that morning. I was all set to catch a salmon as I headed over to Salt Spring Island. So I'd been rummaging about for tools. Now I rummaged some more. Looked in the spare part bin, remembering I'd got a spare starter when I'd gone offshore. Found that.

Couldn't find the 14 mm wrench I needed. Couldn't wrench the second nut off. Found the socket wrench. One handle didn't fit in the small place. Engine bit a knuckle. It's got to happen. A necessary blooding for the god of engine. Dispell the demon. I got the second nut out.

Taking off the wires I got a very impressive arc. Turned off the battery then. Took the cables and wires off.


"Jim I've got a spare starter looks just like the other one. The housing cap on the old one looks broken."

"Can you do it yourself."

"I could in an emergency but I've not replaced a starter and would appreciate your assistance if it's not too inconvenient."

"I'm at Stem to Stern and they don't have your modell. Good you have a spare. They'd have to order one in. They say the housing often breaks on that. I'll be another hour before I get there."

So I then set about getting the dinghy in the water. I'd made the mistake of taking the boat keys off the boat when I was flying south for a conference. They were now still at Laura's place.

That meant I had to use the 'spare' set of keys. I got the bolt cutters out and cut the chain holding the dinghy to the deck , then cut the lock holding the motor to the railing. I don't know why I bother with keys. The bolt cutters work so well.

It's already hot. Carrying the Yamaha 4 hp outboard motor across the boat and lifting it over the sailboat side, balancing in the dinghy while i swung it around to attach to the transom is a major chore for the old man back. Starting the dinghy motor then took the last ounce of energy out of me. I've sweated 2 pints already. Being a desk jockey does't keep one in shape for this sort of boat maintenance.

Now I'm waiting for Jim off Jericho Beach. It's a beautiful view. God yachting is such a relaxing past time.



"


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Thursday, August 16, 2012

Journal - Aug 16, 2012

Thank you Lord for this sunny day. Thank you for clean air and blue sky. Thank you for Gilbert whose fascination with 'ball' and 'fetch' reigns eternal. Thank you for his curiosity that so entertains me. This morning it was the seagulls. One indignant and one quite not understanding why any living creature wouldn't like it's butt sniffed.

Thank you for this boat with all it's memories of journeys and adventures. Thank you for the technology and repairs that have shown me the history of man's development from the water tightness to solar panels. Thank you for allowing me to be part of such an extraordinary time of history. I am touched to have seen the first Sputnik, watched the first satellites appear in the sky at night, see men on the moon on television and now watch pictures of Rover Curiosity on Mars. Thank you too for India's plan to next year launch an unnmanned satellite to Mars as well. Thank you for economic recovery. Thank you for my work and the work of others.

Thank you for my father. Thank you for years that mother was here and I pray to her in heaven. Thank you for my family. Let me ever enjoy the maturing drama of the young men and may I know the whole range of cousins better. I would travel to see those distant ones but thank you for them and all their worldly successes. Thank you for loved ones everywhere.

Thank you for the saints and geniuses. Thank you for the peace keepers. Thank you for the police and politicians and governments that bring order from chaos and manage men's lives and women's lives.

Thank you for the seas and the mountains. Thank you for these legs that still allow me to hike and climb. Thank you for the eyes that give me sight. Thank you for my touch and those I may touch. Thank you for the cool breeze this morning over the water bringing a fresh smell of sea air.

Thank you for laughter. Thank you for the good humor of co workers. Thank you for the white laughter and black laughter. Thank you for the kindness and calmness and serenity. Thank you for my Thursday friends. Thank you for the clinic and the office. Thank you for my education, my training, my skills and my experience. Thank you for my colleagues. Thank you for the libraries and the collected learning of the ages.

Thank you for my conscience and morality and ethics. Thank you for their guidance. Thank you for your son Jesus. Thank you for the Bible and all the teaching of sages and saints through the ages. Thank you for the Golden Rule. Thank you for the laws of spiritual life and the laws of the physics.

Thank you for our relationship, God. Thank you for showing me over and over again your love and greatness. Help me to know you more and be of more service to you.

Thank you for coffee. Thank you for yoghurt. Thank you for bananas and toast and peanut butter and butter. Thank you for my car, truck, and motorcycle. Thank you for the mechanics and insurance people. Thank you for soap and showers and indoor plumbing. Thank for heat and fans and air conditioning and computers, radio and tv. Thank you for Third Day and Sarah McLaughlan. Thank you for Gordon Lightfoot and Leonard Cohen. Thank you for all the entertainers that have uplifted as Bach of all most uplifts me. Thank you for Handel.

Thank you for over the shoulder bags and tables and ipads and iphones and communication networks and hubs and news and jets and all the people who make the global and local industry work. Thank you for the honest bankers and devoted CEO's. Thank you for the leadership of the great men of today who like those great men of yesterday were often not appreciated until long after they were dead and buried. Help us to show appreciation in the life time of those who deserve our respect most.

Thank God for those men and women who catch, imprison and reform drug dealers. Thank God for all who stop pedophiles from their abuse of children. Thank those who care for women, children and old people. Thank you for the Canadian Veterans Affairs that has helped the soldiers who have helped us be the free and great nation we are today. Thank you God for freedom and liberty. Thank you for human rights and civil liberties.

Thank you for International Doctors in AA and the Christian Medical and Dental Society. Thank you for St. James Anglican Church and those who serve there. Thank you for the ability to lift my eyes towards heaven, to give thanks and sing praise. Thank you for the inner world of thought and the quiet spirituality of meditation. Thank you for prayer. Thank you for writing. Thank you for ideas that are good and pure. Thank you for music.

Thank you for all the women and men I have loved. Thank you for all the friends I have played with. Thank you for the teams I was on and the games and the sports. Thank you for fellowship. Thank you for the friends from those forgotten names of children I played marbles with in Toronto to the others we dug together with under the old house, to Kirk and Garth and all the friends and acquaintenances that began with neighbourhoods, kindergardens, and schools to build out to churches, recreational activities, universities, international travel and work. Thank you for the people who befriended me as I bicycled in Canada and later across Europe. Thank you for the men and women of AA and NA who met me when I sailed across the Pacific to Hawaii. Thank you for the men and women of the church who met with me in Hong Kong. Thank you for the incredible friends of Saipan. Thank you for all the men and women I knew when I worked in northern Canada. Thank you for polar bears and seals.

Thank you for people, Lord. Thank you for diversity. Thank you for the capacity to appreciate the similiar and love as well the strange. Thank you for your command, Jesus, Do Not Be Afraid. Help me to love today and not hate. Help me to follow in the path of St. Francis. Help me to be like you Lord. Help me to ever give thanks.


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Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Vancouver Thieves

Out walking Gilbert this morning. Half dozen guys gathered in the parking lot.
"We've had thieves," one said to me.
"My cooler was stolen."
"New batteries were taken right out of the box of my truck."
"I just set down some luggage and was going back to get it. This guy was walking off with it. I called out for him to stop and got it. I was just unloading my car and this guy was taking the stuff."
I know that's normal in Vancouver. Even the head of the RCMP and the Chief of the Vancouver police are more concerned about complaints from criminals about police use of bad language than the city being safe from crime. Everyone I know tells a tale of theft and mayhem. Assaults are common too. But no one reports anything any more. Police say they aren't allowed to fight crime in Vancouver and their only job is to 'record' crime.
Two friends describe recurrent thefts to their property which resulted not in criminals being caught but in them being denied insurance.
The principal theft in the city is associated with the drug trade. A heroin addict needs roughly $300 a day for their habit not to mention the crack and other drugs. Since the exchange rate on stolen property is on 10 cents on the dollar this means that each heroin addict must steal $3000 dollars a day 356 days of the year. That translates into roughly a million dollars a n addict a year in theft.
The best treatment for individual and society is the methadone maintenance program. The best legal response is the Vancouver Drug Court. Yet the Vancouver Drug Court despite it's high success compared to traditional 'punishment' models is the least funded of services despite having the most enlightened judges and the greatest success rate addressing theft and crime.
The city collectively is losing dozens of minutes per day per citizen working because they can't even put a shopping bag down beside a cart without risk of these legions of thieves picking it up. Everyone, myself included, wastes an inordinate amount of time locking and checking and placing cameras and such to attempt to compete against the criminals whose full time occupation is to steal from the workers of the city.
Over the years there have been a variety of measures taken to address theft in communities, certainly community service and repayment of the debts to individuals and society is high on the list in communities that have gone beyond barbarism. Thousands of years past cities used 'banishment' from the city to reduce crimes of theft. Clearly I consider it a priviledge to live in Vancouver on the west coast in a kind climate compared to Yellowknife but should we not support the police and simply have those people who have had recurrent theft charges have their right to be in the city removed until their pay their debts to those they have stolen from. 
The notion of 'gated communities' has been ridiculed as a place where theives know the location but historically people had to be able to show reason to be in 'areas' of cities.  Interestingly in the 1800's in Milan Italy, the famous Gallerina Centre was developped as a 'safe shopping site'.  In the Pentagon no one enters without a pass.  Clearly some areas of the city could be considered 'theft free' and people with a history simply not allowed to enter.  Yet that brings to mind the Scarlet Letter debate as a means to identy crime and criminals.  Where does one draw the line. What does work.
The beauty of drug treatment is that a thieve who steals from innoscent people is by addressing their drug dependency taking 'action' to address their 'theiving'.
Of course not all drug dependent are theives and some theives are simply psychopaths and sociopaths. But then society has to really question it's fundamental attitudes towards multiculturalism as a leading provincial representative argues that it is 'ethnocentric' of the 'majority' population to impose it's views against theft on a 'culture' who have use thieving as their main means of survival.
First Nations people rarely speak about their historic and traditional 'punishments' for offences against the tribe. All manner of highly objectionable punishment occured within different tribal systems.  Theft between tribes was celebrated at times where as theft between individuals was as much as an offense as today.  The notion of communal ownership or the idea that we don't 'own' but 'borrow' the land still causes anger and fear in children who having 'borrowed' something take offence at someone else 'borrowing' it back. In general if a man stole the Chief's head dress for instance, there would be hell to pay. Commonly death sentences were the norm  in many of the 'cultures' that make up Canada yet in 'multicultural' Canada we reject this.  
As a Christian I noted that the first deaths in Christian history in the Christian community were recorded in Acts when a man and woman died as a consequences of stealing from the communal group.
My Christian childhood neighbourhood didn't require locks on the door and we didn't lock our bicycles and we didn't know theft. I miss that world where I wasn't constantly looking over my back worrying if I locked my computer, my car, and afraid to set down a bag beside a car for fear it will be snatched.  I miss a world in which people trusted each other and collectively no one stole and respected each other's boundaries and property.
Personally I think it's time for the Bible to returned to the classroom. If not then lets have a review of the multicultural laws regarding 'theives' and do something more 'effective' than we are. What are the new "morality and ethics' classes doing and are they as effective?  I don't believe it's at all Canadian to be a thief and it's fundamentally against Canadian Culture to Steal. Canadians believe collectively 'thou shalt not steal'.  The problem lies not with the collective culture but rather what one does to achieve this agreed principle of living.s
People are not 'stealing for food'. This is not a "Jean Val Jean" times. There is so much 'food' in the downtown eastside that people are trading the sweet stuff for drugs. Theft remained a major concern in Communist Russia and continues to be a major concern in Communist China.  The extent of theft in these anti religion secular theocracies is probably greater than in traditional non ideological societies.I don't steal because to steal would be to steal from God and hurt my very soul. The 10 commandments say 'thou shalt not steal'. That's Hebrew, Christian, and Moslem. The Buddhists and Hindus believe that a thief will come back without hands in the next life. Karma is a the consequence of theft but in the countries with the highest density of buddhists or hindus theivery is punished worse than it is in an Christian country. It appears even in countries which believe in reincarnation no one is ready to wait for the criminals to get their just desert in the next life. This is no different in Judeo Christian society where we believe that theives will burn in hell but historically were happy to chop off their hands, burn them in oil or send them to Australia before God got his licks in . First Nations killed theives just as most pagan cultures. Indeed Christians and Jews collectively in the world have the greatest history of mercy despite their otherwise tough approach to sin.
Dr. Johnson was paraphrased by Bob Dylan in that great philosophical theological treatise "I and I',  "steal a little and they put you in jail, steal alot and they make you king".  Theft then has been a matter of the most powerful nations taking from less powerful nations but within these nations at the neighbourly level there is still the sanctions surrounding theft. It might be alright for the King, Queen or Commissar to steal since as in  "Animal Farm" some animals are more 'equal' than others.
Faced with the theives in Vancouver I really do wonder how people are raising their children. Historically in many cultures in the east the parents and family are held accountable for the thefts of children with the consequence that the community approach to crime is found most effective.   This proved a highly effective collective strategy which might well be considered in our individualist culture.
Possibly if we got it together to address theft at the parking lot and back yard and office level then we'd really be in a place to be righteously indignant about CEO's and Banksters stealing massive amounts of pensioner funds and the bottles out of the babies of the nations mouths.
Personally in Vancouver I've had my houses broken into despite cameras and locks, my cars and trucks broken into repeatedly, (car insurance never has paid for the loss or more importantly the cost in time dealing with broken glass and such) ,  my boat broken into, an office staff who turned out to be a psychopath lying and stealing but actually admitting her theft to the police without any consequence to her, ultimately costing me $50,000 because of corruption in the system,  despite her chronic history of theft and deceit and my being 'targetted' by her,  several computers have over the years been  stolen from work, though thankfully no confidential data loss. Still  I fear putting through insurance claims though I've had hundreds of thousands of dollars stolen in my life time and pay roughly tens of thousands of dollars insurance a year. What a waste of a life!!!! Why should any one get a job and build and create if theives can come and take without consequence?  That's what I 'feel' some days and 'emotional reasoning' dictates. Yet when I talk to friends and neighbours they describe similiarly horrific experiences yet continue to muddle on. The power of good people to persist with so little support from the authorities and so many psychopaths and sociopaths parasitizing them remains utterly astonishing. I learn from construction company executives that they have horrendous losses from theft but just "soldier on".  Society grows and people generally prosper. Our lives are longer and never before in time were as many as rich as they are today. 
Several gang members who I've known over the years in work or riding my Harley have told me that just as there are private schools and a private postal system and Canadians cross the border for private health care in the US (our longstanding 2 tier medical system) there has always been an alternative 'police' system provided by 'private' services. I've spoken with many people from ethnic communities who have no faith in the Canadian 'services' and they admit that they aren't concerned about the RCMP or Vancouver Police because some member is caught on video kicking someone.
They just don't think the Canadian police will get their stuff returned or do anything but "record" crime. Japanese society and America in the times of the Kennedy's certainly had an 'arrangement' with the so called 'criminal forces' of the world and times.  Given the example of the Rolling Stones concert with 'private' security services that became more dangerous than the crowds needing 'security' control ultimately ruined what could have been a truly great concert.  Sadly there are simply too many people who feel entitled to what Mick Jagger has without realizing the tremendous work he does.
 It does appear that there is a vacuum of law enforcement regarding 'theft'.  Theft is now considered a 'virtue' by the kids raised in schools without Bibles in court rooms without Bibles in a world where work is for suckers and theft is what the smart one do.  But Plato and Socrates didn't condone theft any more than Moses or God.  So all societies have to judge themselves on how well they protect those who create.
It's hard to start the day and go to work when my neighbours are collectively standing about in a parking lot 'frustrated'. I see the leading news story by the head of the RCMP is that the 'culture' of the policing must change. I know I'm old fashioned but I'm of the belief generally that the police and citizens are frustrated because the countries leadership is living on a different planet and watching too much You Tube and not hearing the frustration people have who are doing everything to work and pay taxes but are routinely having stuff stolen. Break and entries, cars, purses, and offices theived. Why should anyone go to work in Vancouver when theft is so much easier and clearly in Vancouver has little consequences.  Crime pays and the police, if not their politically correct  leadership  would truly like to do something about it.  In these economically difficult times can we really afford to put political correctness over protection of person and property.

British Columbia has the greatest property crime in Canada second only to the N.W.T.   Some 5,600 property crimes per 100,000.  This doesn't even touch the full extent of crime as so little of the total is reported.  What's most infuriating as a tax payer is that when ever I am robbed I am invariably 'blamed' for it as if the beaurocrats and insurance people and indeed the police themselves aren't all in this same mess together with me. I feel like Job talking to these morons whenever I've been violated and something has been stolen knowing full well that they cannot be immune from theft as I despite my best efforts have experienced it repeatedly in this city where property crime is literally ubiquitous.  
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