Observations on a Cesspool

Taking a Stroll Past the Tar Pit

A First Hand Witness Account

by

Kristie Elgersma

This happened for me recently. And I want people to know.
I posted it last week but FB won't let me get back there to reshare it.
I think more people need to know..... Especially considering the Keystone XL and the Northern Gateway Pipeline Project as a current topic of conversation....
"...I wanted to see what Desmond Tutu saw. And James Cameron. And Neil Young.
I needed to see too
I haven't been to the Alberta Tar Sands since I was a young girl....
I have lived around industry for most of my life. An asbestos mining community in the early 90's, another community hosting a coal mine and a lumber mill later on in the 90's, Edmonton's East End Industrial in the 2000's... And in the most recent years another coal mine and numerous oil & gas installations.....
25 years later.... I went to see....
And absolutely nothing in my lifetime prepared me for what I witnessed a few kilometres north of Fort McMurray.
I have zero frame of reference to compare it to.
They are truly struggling to keep up with the amount of infrastructure required to accommodate the sheer number of travellers to and from Ft. McMurray.... The highways are being twinned slowly. But, it doesn't make up for the white crosses that line the ditches every few kms.... Some have flowers at their feet, some have hard hats hanging on them.... In one spot there are seven crosses in a row...
People have been saying for more than a decade how dangerous Highway 63 is. And they weren't embellishing the truth at all.
Oil & gas sites start a ways out before the city... Nothing that I am unused to....
What I'm not sure of is the haze..... Is it the Earth sweating because it was so hot? Is it mist? Is it smoke? Is there a fire down where? Is it smog? I never did find out......
The city of Ft. Mac itself is a beautiful city, lots of hills, forests and greenery surrounding it, with a river running through it.
Many people pressed into a small area and it shows with the diversity of housing in place and going up.
Suncor, Syncrude and Shell have taken up a competition of sorts to see who can out best the other at ass kissing to the community they are destroying.... A new arena, rec center blah blah blah..... Patting themselves on the back because they think they've done something fucking decent.
If you continue on North Bound, off to your right you'll see it for a moment: Flashes of metal, flame, smoke, no life, no green... And then it's hidden by hills.... They have screened themselves in very well for the first bit of the road.
If you keep driving, you'll pass boarding residences and tiny matchbox apartments put up by the companies to house their employees.... They reminded me of the jail north of Edmonton. So insane what we condition ourselves to.
Once you pass those, the road gets curvy and winding... You'll see a large beautiful lake in your right, and suddenly you hear the gunshots.... And then you realize that you're not looking at a lake, you're looking at a tailings pond and you realize you are surrounded by them, this toxic killy shit and the gunshots are to scare the birds away so they don't land on it, 2 million birds dead already and the pond liners are leaking and that's what is fucking up the waters up there, and 40 years of waste water byproduct from cleaning the tar sands and they don't know how to clean the water! they don't know how to clean the water! They.Don't.Know.How.To.Clean.The.Water. , and it is the whitest sand you've ever seeeeeeeeeeen....
All over the place in piles....
Because of our need for oil. That's why.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Automated guns firing to frighten nature to protect it.
So I continue on....
The haze is heavier... You can't see the sun. And the keening sound coming from the engine is not the engine. It's me. And by the time I hit the smoke stack you see in the pics below, I am sobbing openly and helplessly and entirely overtaken with grief.
Even in that place there are residences built. Humans live at the foot of that fucking monster.
I stopped at a little learning center. There is bucket there placed in the middle of the concrete. You could park four of my sized cars in that bucket. In the field this thing is attached to a huge crane.... This crane is not on a track. It's on triangular wheels that 'walk', 8 meters per side. 24 meters per complete rotation. The bucket thunders itself into the earth..

 Digging digging digging...

Because of our need for oil. That's why.
Next to it on my left is another machine. This thing looks like a 2D wheel with jagged grooves all the way around it. The grooves protrude outwards slightly, each groove is like a shovel....
Imagine a chainsaw taller than the back fin of a 747 airplane that you turn on and lower into the earth that digs for you and you MIGHT have an idea of the monstrosity I stood before..... 

The Buzz Saw

The build west for the Northern Gateway has already begun up there. They think they have already won.
I came to understand that seeing healthy coyotes was unheard of. Mangy, scraggly, missing fur, sickly looking... Knowing that they are scavenger creatures, preying upon the most vulnerable, the weakest, the sick... Just what are they eating?
I had no idea what the fuck I was walking into.
The rest stops were disturbing.... Women's phone numbers.... 'Emergency turban repair' scribbled above the toilet paper dispenser with an arrow pointing downwards.... 'Abandon all hope ye who enter the Mac'... Swastikas...
I had left all my OpHumanAngels gear at home stupid me coming in for a crash landing unprepared. I don't even know if I would have thought in those moments to reface their energy. Fuck.
I did for a moment see a huge 1.5 ft tall Guy Fawkes mask stenciled to the outside wall of a rest stop. There are those up there that get it. They
know.
It is how they have all said it is.
It is a monstrosity. A blight on the face of this living, breathing planet. Anyone who says it is making zero impact is lying to themselves...
I understand just how many people it is helping to survive, to live.... Every nation up there is surviving and living off of it. White, red, yellow, black. They are all there.
I needed to know what we are supposed to prepare for. I needed to know first hand what we speak out against. I plan to go back there once more. I hope to bring people with me. Emissaries. Reface that whole fucking place with chalk and notes.
As a side note, a friend that pays attention to MSM only, just let me know that Oklahoma has had 200 earthquakes so far this year.... They were stunned I already knew. Their first guess was fracking.
I had a hard time not flipping out.
I am losing my patience.
Maybe I just need to grieve for my mother. She is going to fuck us up right good the great equalizer that she is, I love her so..... </3
There is so much else on my mind but I've kept you long enough.
I love you. Thank you for listening and letting me share this with you...."

And that was a Song worth the Singing

Blaine Barrett

TheSmeeGoanGuy

Rational Suicide- Part 3

Rational Suicide- Part 3

A Consideration of End-Of-Life Concerns

We Are All Going To Die

“How” Should Be Our Choice

The Last Six Stages to Death

Ageing= Love, independence, Pain, Dignity, DNR, Faith

The Canadian Medical Association has finally begun to realize that they are going to be hit with an overload of Dying Old Farts in the near future. They have been engaged in a series of Town Hall Forums across Canada in partnership with MACLEANS magazine to gather and assess the facts about End-Of-Life treatment in order to handle and devise a plan to deal with the problem. Unfortunately only the readers of MACLEANS were aware that they were all televised and could have been watched online. To this point there have been 4 meetings and MACLEANS fortunately has recorded all of them and they can be seen at the link referenced at the conclusion of this post.

1.    Feb 20-      St.John’s, NL

2.    March 24-  Vancouver, BC

3.    April 16-     Whitehorse, YT

4.    May 7-        Regina, SK

They present a stellar group of expert caretakers that have been gathered from nearly all aspects of Terminal Patient Care: Physicians, Nurses, Social workers, Hospital staff, Hospice manager, Nursing home and assisted living volunteers and others.

They are missing the fact it is doubtful the resources they are counting on will be available in time to handle the problem. In my opinion it didn’t matter which profession addressed the panel none of them mentioned the possibility that the growth of resources could not match the need for end-of life-care that will develop in the next thirty years because of the Bloomer Blooming that is now underway. There is no consideration in their planning for any of the threats faced by global warming reducing resources essential to support the demands of the global population. They all blithely assume that when the need arises all the facilities needed to care for our seniors will be available and paid for by somebody else. That quite simply is not going to happen.

With the current availability of resources; the growth of services required will never be met! They are too many. The cost of servicing them to support an aging population of the size anticipated is going to increase exponentially because aging requires changing residences to accommodate the differing stages we encounter with aging.

Simple examples are moving to a planned retirement home and then losing your ability to maintain the place and moving to an assisted living facility. Then you lose your mobility and here comes the wheelchair crowd at the old fogy’s joint and then inability to care for your personal needs and then back to the hospital and the doctors who will make your exit in a cloud of pain killers to handle surgery, radiation, and the horrible agony of chemotherapy side effects.

There are all kinds of needs and endings but the two most horrible in my mind are losing myself to Alzheimer’s, or worst of all; losing my ability to communicate and control my care then be confined to a hospital bed for as long as my personal service immigrant minimum wage girl can keep me alive. Isolation inside your own head, three tasteless feedings of hospital crap that you can then shit out and lie in until girlie comes to wipe your arse does not qualify as a “dignified death”.

Rational suicide is simply the right to get a “dignified death”, when I want one but that is another fight.

Getting back to the CMA, listen carefully to the hair splitting they do when they consider all the ways that ending a life can be done but do not qualify as “Physician Assisted”  suicide.

If you watch one of these m,ake sure you watch the opening of the series at St. Johns Fe 2, 2014. That is ½ hour and effectively is the first half hour of the following three.

I will end this post now and ask you to watch some of the middle and end discussions in the series and make up your own mind whether they are just navel gazing and ignoring external reality re resources availability.

Please check this link out and I will be back with a following post to justify the inclusion of Rational Suicide as an alternative in the End-of-Life discussion.

http://www.macleans.ca/society/health/archive-canadas-debate-over-end-of-life-care/

Until later

Blaine Barrett

TheSmeeGoanGuy

Rational Suicide- Part 2

"Rational Suicide(2)"

Retirement

It’s Something to Consider Seriously!

The Times They Are a’ Changing!

Part 2 of ?

The Last Six Stages to Death

Ageing= Love, independence, Pain, Dignity, DNR, Faith

The Aging Process

At the conclusion of Part 1 I left you considering the future that you are now entering and asked you to think about money so let’s start there.

If you are over or nearing the age of 60 if you haven’t already planned on applying for your early Canada Pension Plan do so. Simple monetary fact: you pay a penalty but it is money to be saved but if you manage to last to the target age of 70 you wind up money ahead of the game. Check it out: when I did it took one month of unemployment to qualify for the early pension. That can be obtained with an unpaid leave of employment that most employers will be happy to grant.

The other thing I left you with was a comment about your social circle starting to shrink and that really accelerates on your retirement. If you are the man of the house be prepared to lose most if not all your friends at work. Simple fact is you aren’t there to witness the daily business transactions and relationships and that is what you talk about with your home boys.. You’re out of the loop and contacts are lost. The other thing you must be aware of is that your daily work location is going to move into your wife’s work location and conflict of schedules is almost inevitable. On the assumption that you do have a wife:

Some tips to take seriously

Tip #1:

The first thing to do is sit down and as best you can, estimate what your combined income will be when you retire. You calculate what your fixed income is going to be from all pension plans and hopefully a cash flow from your investments. When you are done take a good hard look at your monthly income because that is what you must survive on until you reach 90. Hopefully your investments are large enough to permit cash withdrawals on an occasional basis because sooner or later you are going to need all you can get to cover your care.

Tip #2:

If it is at all feasible get yourself a debit and credit card and switch to a plastic economy. If you pay on time it costs nothing and the statements provide a complete track of your spending. You can actually create a budget hopefully with a surplus amount to save or handle crises when they arrive. Unfortunately you can count on nasty surprises and unexpected expense. Shit happens!

Tip #3:

Don’t expect your sex drive or sex life to last forever. If you are lucky menopause didn’t cancel your wife’s desire out and she still wants some lovy-dovy.

Even if your partner in bed is willing, sooner or later almost every man will watch Big Red turn into Pinky Dinky and point at the ground. Use it or lose it holds true! That is one of the more nasty surprises you will encounter.

Tip #4:

Expect your memory to start screwing up and you start mistrusting your self about little details. Your car keys and wallet are always where they are supposed to be but when you leave the house you have sudden panic attacks and slap your pockets silly to find and reassure yourself you have keys and cash. You spend half an hour looking for your glasses and discover you’ve got them on, names get hard to remember and if things are not important we’ll just forget them and not bother remembering details.

I’m going to leave you here until the next post to just think about the sequence of events and the repercussions you can foresee from just leaving work, the reduction in income and coming home to roost under one roof. Talk it over with your partner because she’s going to share the same future with you. If you both can foresee problems in your future relationship, adjustments can be made to avoid conflict and keep caring for each other. That is of primary importance.

Having reached awareness of those problems in the first five years, my next post will deal with the physical deteriorations that seem to start at age seventy of even sooner and how to approach and handle them.

Until then

To be continued as

Rational Suicide (3)

Slowly Falling Apart

As soon as I get it written.

Blaine Barrett

TheSmeeGoanGuy

"Rational Suicide"

"Rational Suicide"

It’s Something to Consider Seriously!

The Times They Are a’ Changing!

Part 1 of ?

The Last Six Stages to Death

Ageing= Love, independence, Pain, Dignity, DNR, Faith

May 05, 2014: CBC News published an article on a controversial topic

“John Alan Lee pushes limits of Canada's assisted suicide debate”

Why Controversial?

Because it exceeds the limits of Euthanasia advocacy!

How so?

Lee’s death was not precipitated by a terminal illness or extreme suffering. Instead, it stemmed from Lee’s belief that he’d simply had "enough." He made a well thought out rational decision.
"It’s the Goldilocks problem," Lee said. "Not too soon, but if you wait too long and you end up in care, they won’t let you make that choice anymore. If I ended up in hospital or even a nursing care home, I would be prevented from making that choice and I know people for whom that happened. And they are cautionary tales for me."

They are cautionary tales for all of us and if you are reading this pay very close attention because it is talking about a future that everyone is going to share and you’re included.

Why are you included?

Because you will probably exceed a “natural” life span”

                            

                             What the hell is that?

70!

I base that statement on one made over two thousand years ago. It is based on historical observation of life until then by some very astute men who define the course of a natural life span as follows:

Psalm 90:10 :-: King James Version (KJV)

¹⁰ The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”
This is not a religious statement but a statement of fact that held true for all of history until the turn of the last century when some major developments began to change both society and the physical world.

1.     The world population has reached the point of exhausting the resources necessary for its sustainability as Malthus predicted in the1840’s and is still ignored.

2.    This has been exacerbated by the blooming of Medical Science and its incorporation that began with urbanization at the turn of the last century. That changed the profession into a commercialized industry whose major profits are from life extension.

3.    Pollution from human activity reached a point where global Warming and climate change now threaten the future of the environment.

4.    The monetary system on which the world’s population depends to pay for their daily survival has been co-opted by the Bilderberg Billionaires to the point where 1% of the population controls 99% of the money and a dollar is worth less every year

So Where Does That Leave Us?

Shit Outta Luck

at the mercy of a future we can all see coming but try to ignore.

In the course of the next 50 years the combined negative effects of the four listed Global challenges are going to come to fruition and it’s not going to be pretty. You can foresee shortages in almost near everything needed for survival in a time of impending environmental disasters of ever increasing severity. Sometime and place in that soup of disasters we are all going to die
With the arrival of the Baby Boomer Generation to near retirement age the competition for resources is going to explode and there is no way to predict how or when you will die but one thing is certain is that you are going to keep getting older and you are going to die. The unfortunate fact is that if you last long enough you wind up in total isolation and alone in the care of strangers. Not a nice place to be.
Unfortunately if you are 60 you are not going to put up with the crap ahead for just the next ten years until you reach your natural life span. Thanks to doctors and religion you can look ahead to an additional 20 years in the disaster zone. What I want to convey to all of you is the things that are unpleasant but almost inevitable that can happen on you on your way through the Six Stages To Death.

For simplicity in presentation following is what the aging process can and will probably present to you in the next thirty years of your life- If you last that long. You simply don’t know what or when it will hit you, but you will begin to lose:

1.    Love

2.    independence

3.    Pain

4.    Dignity

5.    DNR

6.    Faith

If you’ve reached the age of sixty you already have noticed your social circle begin to shrink. People start dying: the tempo increases through the first decade or so then it fizzles when the supply starts to dry up. Live long enough, it will and loneliness sucks.
Retirement is a big adjustment and you better get ready because you need a bankroll and if you don’t have a big one, the going can get tough. .
I am going to end here because I am running too long and I want to give anyone who has managed to follow me this far time to think about what is coming ahead. I am following this with a second post devoted to what can be involved in simply going through the process of aging.
It will walk you through what you will encounter with problems mental, physical, societal and fiscal as you continue to wake up each morning and face the coming day!
To be continued as fast as I can write it
Blaine Barrett

TheSmeeGoanGuy

This is Your Future: Old Age and Loneliness

A Wake-Up Call for the Boomers Kids

Time is Short

I was going to address this to what is called the Boomer generation only to find they are all old farts like me. The Boomers were born in the period 1946 to 1964 and now range in age from 49-67. They’re all too old to benefit from any advice I give because they are now learning the same difficult lessons I have had to absorb. First and foremost, Freedom 55 was a ridiculous idea and its failure revealed our whole generation’s lack of knowledge about how to manage money and plan for the future. If you’ve reached 60 without banking or investing that you can count on for a comfortable retirement, think again, there’s a rough road ahead

If today, you find yourself at retirement and you haven’t got that nest egg in a much protected state, then count on a shortage of yolk down the road. My son was born in 1964 so I guess I’m aiming this at all the Boomers little brats, not the parents. All of you readers who have reached the age of 50 are looking at a future where you will need to take advantage of all the Canadian Social Benefits that the Cons are determined to chop away at knee level. I’m not surprised at where we are in this country. for the last thirty years I have been watching an amoral control freak crawl his way up the political guts of our society to a leadership role. Yes, I’m talking about Harpo the Hypocrite.

A couple of readers have asked me:

Why do I hate Stephen Harper? What do I have against him? Well, here’s the axe I’ve been grinding and have been for 3 decades. I would give a million dollars to have the privilege of being first in line to piss on his grave.

In 1989 we were living in Red Deer, Alberta in the heart of redneck Religious Fundamentalist country with its ignorant belief and prejudices. My son was a homosexual. He was born one, he grew into a talented artist: I knew who he was and accepted the fact. I think it was September when Lee had to go to a dentist and was turned away because he was contagious, he had HIV.

Our leader Mr. Harper was not really into politics as yet but was gathering his base with a thunder and lighting campaign based on religious bigotry and intolerance and somehow he got my attention and I started listening to him. It was not fun hearing my son was being punished by God for his evil ways and perverted conduct but the son-of a bitch would not shut up. It took my son 7 years of hell to die of AIDS when it fried his brain, and we had to watch the process, listening to the vitriol of an asshole on the radio vilifying our son. According to his belief structure my son was a sinner being punished for his perversion and choice of homosexuality and Harpo condemned d him to Hell. I can’t forgive that.

In 1997 my employer went bankrupt and we went through a very tough time when we needed help from the system and actually got it. EI saved our ass. Late that year Mr. Harper, the Great Pretender, gave a speech to a collection of right wing American fundamentalist business tycoons at an event in Montreal. In it he describes his appreciation of the Canadian social network and Canadians inattention, greed, and acceptance of a public dole. That alone displays some of the evil thinking he again needed in designing the MMPR. I quote:

“First, facts about Canada. Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term, and very proud of it. Canadians make no connection between the fact that they are a Northern European welfare state and the fact that we have very low economic growth, a standard of living substantially lower than yours, a massive brain drain of young professionals to your country, and double the unemployment rate of the United States.

In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don't feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don't feel bad about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance.”

The reality is boys and girls you children are going to experience what remains of our beloved compassionate system of giving a shit about your neighbor. Harpo has a majority and with his bigoted understanding of how to fix shit I will not hazard a guess as to what ruins will remain after his tenancy is ended.

Blaine Barrett

TheSmeeGoanGuy

A Politician Actually Listened to Me

A Politician Actually Listened to Me

The NDP Town Hall with Tom Mulcair

Sheraton Guildford: Fraser Room 1:45 PM

September 29, 2013

Dear Diary:

SURPRISE! SURPRISE!

Today I went to an NDP Town Hall Meeting with Tom Mulcair here in Surrey. I had no idea whether I would get the opportunity to speak with him. I wanted to ask about Medical Marijuana  and what the NDP could do to help with the disaster coming with the implementation of the MMRP. Not to worry!

Anticipating failure I prepared a request to be forwarded to someone in the NDP Hierarchy who could answer my questions with specifics and not generalities.

On my way into the meeting, I was fortunate to meet Jasbir Sandhu, my MP. He remembered me as the Marijuana Advocate who bugged him a year ago and after reading my written request, promised to forward it to Mr. Mulcair’s inner circle. Bonus! Half way there- somebody is going to have to deal with me. LOL.

I’m not dumb and when I took my seat I noted the position of lights, camera and the big Red Cross on the floor and positioned a seat where I could see his face at all times when he was speaking to the camera. This had the advantage of Mr. Mulcair having me in his field of view. There was an introduction our local MP hosts and then Mr. Mulcair took the stage. During his introductory speech he and I eyeballed each other and sized the other guy up. I think I got him right.

I think he got taken by the Bassett Hound eyes I inherited from my father. You know: that pleading look you get from buddy when you eat that great big hunk of steak. Tom proved he can recognize desperation and took pity on mine. The minute he opened the floor to questions and Holy Bejasus Mother of Earth and the Cannabis God struck and Mr. Mulcair pointed to me and I found myself with a microphone stuck in my face. What now??

I identified my self as a Medical Marijuana Licensee and advocate and more or less asked him this.

“I am aware of the party policy regarding this whole legalization kerfuffel and I am largely in agreement with it. There are millions of questions to be answered but nothing is going to be implemented until a change of Government 2 years away.

I have a much more immediate short term problem to be dealt with and that is how to survive the destruction of the Medical Marijuana Program and the financial consequences of the MMRP.

He listened seriously

I’m a Senior on fixed income, I have occasional neurological pain and depression. I can only afford a minimal 2 gr./day dose at the cheapest source: HC at $315/month. A probable doubling of that cost from entrepreneurs and the difficulty in accessing vendors will simply divert me to any illegal source who undercuts the profiteers. That applies to virtually every other licensee whwere the only alternative is grow your own and risk mandatory prison time just for relieving symptoms. Would he and the NDP give this a problem a priority consideration and try to help with our problems?

I’m not going to try and quote his reply except to say that he accepted my request and Medical Marijuana will be a priority in all NDP consideration of whatever develops regarding Marijuana at large.

More importantly than misquoting his words: I Believe him.

I sat through another 45 minutes listening to him on a very broad range of problems facing Canadians and while I don’t wholly agree with some of his answers I trust him to honour his word based on his excellent background and knowledge of the political history of Canada. I actually think I may have found a Man of Character who understands the moral and ethical principles that Canadians have always valued as a matter of pride.

I finally found a Canadian Politician worthy of my respect: He’s one of a small handful from 50 years of disgusted observation of the Ottawa circus. He’s got good company with Broadbent, Layton and Pearson.

He may not like the company of good old Pierre but liking is a personal matter. Respect is earned.

Enough praise and Kissy Kissy for Mr. Mulcair. While he comforted me with his leadership role, he did not provide me with any specifics re policy and understanding of the problem. That will be forthcoming as a result of that Request for Information that Jasbir Sandhu is passing on.

This is the Request for Information I submitted:

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Thursday, August 29, 2013

To Someone familiar with NDP Party policy and plans regarding Marijuana.

My name is Blaine Barrett and I live down the street.

I am an Advocate with a Blog.

“Medical Marijuana With TheSmeeGoanGuy”

at

http://goan-smee.blogspot.ca/

I am familiar with the Party position regarding Legalization of Marijuana and have no problem with it. That is a long term problem for you to deal with. What I want to know and will publish if informed is just what is the Party proposing to do about the immediate problems facing the Medical Marijuana Patient population by the stupidity of the Medical Marijuana Research Program. It’s passage will financially destroy access to sufficient dosages of marijuana to provide proper relief for their symptoms.

It’s time for some clarification and I would like to be contacted by someone with the ability to provide specifics and not generalities.

I can be reached at 604-585-0236 or by e-mail to

thesmeegoanguy@gmail.com

In anticipation of a prompt reply

Best regards,

Blaine Barrett

TheSmeeGoanGuy

You want to know who I am just Google the Word

Now I wait!

And so must you!

UNTIL???

An Open Letter To Matt Mernagh

An Open Letter To Matt Mernagh

The TheSmeeGoanGuy strikes again

I hope I Found A Crack in His Armour

Attn: Matt Mernagh

Good Morning Matt

My name is Blaine Barrett, with a nom de plume TheSmeeGoanGuy

I’m a Medical Marijuana Advocate with a blog and Dr. Rob Kamermans is one of my near and dear causes. When you commented to Tom Blackwell about Rob Kamermans you made a minor slip of the tongue that I have to challenge. You made a couple of way out of line comments about a man you obviously know very little about.

You owe Dr. Kamermans an apology!

It was stated:

“Yet the fees for signing marijuana forms did rankle some of Dr. Kamermans’ patients.”

Where did that come from? Who!

There has never been one complaint from any patient regarding the matter of fees. That is because if you were one of his patients you would know that if you told Rob you had a problem and needed a refund there would never be an argument. You are his patient! You have a problem; His fee is hurting You: to refuse a refund would be to do You harm!

“FIRST! DO NO HARM!”

That is the whole fucking reason he’s in this mess!

He honored his Oath as a Physician!

Does anyone have a problem with that?

He signed applications in a futile but commendable attempt to relieve the Hurt being caused by the refusal to do so by 67000 of his fellow Physicians on the advice of the Canadian Medical Association.

They consequently have turned their backs on him!

He can expect no support from them!

 “They seemed exorbitant,” said Matt Mernagh,

a prominent medical-pot activist.

His Greed and Criminality is the product of Cop propaganda and you’ve apparently bought the slander. You demonstrate your ignorance of fact when you comment about his intentions and apparent greed as evidenced by the outrageous exorbitant fees he was charging.

What is reality about this Greedy Criminal shit?

Pay Attention: It’s a lesson in elementary Mathematics!

It’s common to hear $250 cited as his fee. Correction! That’s one of his fees. That was what he charged to make a House Call in Halifax. He intentionally saved his Halifax patients half the return fare to come to him in Ontario, and he saved them a hell of a lot more when you look at fares from BC.

You might also consider that the average cost of a signature was ($500,000/4100 signatures) = $120. That’s not too bad is it? It’s a lot lower that the outrageous exorbitant $250 Halifax Home Call and that brings up a question: What were the minimum charge and the lower fees that dropped the average that much?

I can’t answer that but I have someone who just did. This morning I got an e-mail from my friend and ally Jon. He has Crohn’s disease in all its nasty ways and it’s bad. He lives near Rob and is a long time patient. He is outraged by the treatment being accorded Rob and is extremely critical and sensitive to anything written about his doctor. He disappeared on us for two weeks we feared he’d died but there was no way to contact anyone to find out. He popped up two days ago and won’t say a damn thing about whatever happened but he read the Kamermans column he felt compelled to supply a few missing details that answer

What was the minimum charge and the lower fees that dropped that much?

Jon’s Criticism of the Blackwell Kamermans Article

From: jon

9:22 AM  July 28, 2013

to me, tblackwell

B.

A Very good and fair article.

Few things i did not see addressed, local & regular patients paid nothing, zilch, zero for signings of MMAR forms, i know of many that were not even asked and a handful of others that traveled to see him and did not have the cash to pay because of being on ODSP or other pensions / assistance and he just signed for free or on condition they donate to the local food bank.

The only 2 doctors advocating and actively signing at that time were Rob Kamermans and doctor David Saul (see the order entered by the College of Physicians and Surgeons against David Saul - -  an older and longer haired near-clone of Kamermans in looks and advocacy) and both became overwhelmed by demand from patients that could get no offer of help anywhere else.

Dr.Saul also did not charge many of his patients unless they could afford and offered.

Dr. Rob also throws patient Xmas parties at a local tearoom, does house calls and invites patients over for dinner or to help pick fruit or hang out with him and his wife.   Since being charged he has cut back on his open heartedness but not by much and still calls to patients to see how the new meds are working, to remind of pending appointments or to do 'well being calls' when appointments are missed.

What other doctor calls you to say "the cherries are ripe, come by and pick some?"

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That is a question for you Matt. I think you owe it to him to check out the truth about him. You’re a person of experience in this sort of shit and I think you could do him a great favor! You’re a Celebrity and your large following deserves the truth. Take the time to find it out about Rob and then tell them what reality is!

Both his character and professional reputation need salvaging because of the Character Assassination he’s had at the hands of the police. There is another matter where you could be of great assistance but before I say anything about put on your lawyer hat.

Financially Dr. Kamermans is now in really deep water. His Insurance Coverage for Legal Representation just ran out and he is now in the position of having to defend himself. NFW! That is hopeless. He has none of the basics skills, knowledge, but most of all his character is such that for him to assume an adversarial posture is impossible.  

I don’t know if the man has ever felt rage or wanted revenge.

He needs help and I am confident all 4100 of his patients will join me in asking you to do so.

Please consider my request for assistance for the man. He is ruined. Even if he managed to get the whole pack of bullshit legal charges dismissed he still will have no practice, no employment and a bunch of bills that aren’t going to go away

In conclusion Matt, you think just like the Doc. I can hear him saying what you did about him in the first person:

 “Part of me feels that I’ve been thrown under the bus.

Part of me feels, ‘You kind of did it to yourself.’ ”

 Maybe he did but his intentions were honorable and they made him a victim

 If you extend him some help you will be helping a Doctor who demonstrates the Six Pillars of Character that C.M.A., and the rest of our modern society, have either forgotten or never were taught.

Trustworthiness. Respect. Responsibility.

Fairness. Caring. Citizenship.

The Medical Marijuana Community owes him some payback.

I hope you can provide some.

 Best Regards,

Blaine Barrett