I write this post in the hopes that people will gain further understanding of why I did what I did.
We’ve gone so far astray from what made us human we’re practically robots, going through the motions of being people. We care more about our possessions and our immediate family than we do about our neighbors. As a result, we can witness grave atrocities and pretend they’re acceptable. Sometimes we’ll even go so far as to justify them, despite that we forfeit our souls in doing so.
All it takes is a few lies in the social narrative. Lies lack the weight of truth. They unbalance us. They leave us prone to greater failings and make it difficult for us to see eye to eye with each other.
Sometimes the lies fester for so long they overtake us in our daily lives. They affect how we see our friends and our families. They make us distrustful of strangers. They leave us defenseless against those who manipulate the truth to suit their needs.
The only way to return to the common ground where humanity’s tree has been planted is to accept hard truths.
Just because someone has authority over you, doesn’t mean they deserve to have it.
Just because someone has a piece of paper that tells the world they’re an expert, doesn’t mean they don’t make mistakes.
It also doesn’t mean that expert won’t lie to your face to protect the unquestioned status of their authority.
Don Dunphy’s case is a good example of that.
Some people may wonder why I’ve taken such a hard stand on the Gaza issue. To me the origin of what drove me to these extents was my nephew’s death and how it became linked with that land in my mind. When he first took ill, Israel and Gaza had just resumed their hostilities. They announced a ceasefire the day he died.
Many would call this a mere coincidence, but for me this short, brutal war felt like another shard of my then fracturing soul. When it ended, it felt like a minor miracle had been performed to counterbalance the tragedy my family was experiencing. Here we stood a month prior to the fabled 12-21-12 of the Mayan calendar, the End of the World to some, and peace had erupted on the most wartorn part of the planet at the same time as the death of an infant. I was shaken to my core. It felt like my world had just ended.
Unlike the rest of my family, I had no real support system in place. I was left to fend for myself with my emotions in turmoil. I was also alienated from them by the truths I’d later spoken when the anonymous letter came out and that alienation has since become permanent.
It’s difficult to tell people who put so much faith in the system they’re practically worshiping it that they’ve been fed falsity. The cognitive dissonance alone produces anger and hateful statements. No one likes to admit they’ve fallen for a lie. It makes them embarrassed and ashamed. Having that lie be tied to such deep grief makes it all the more difficult.
When Merlin died, it wasn’t his death that tore at me as much as the stark reminder of how much my family had suffered when my nephew passed. I loved Merlin, but my nephew was my blood. Even a year and a half later, the unhealed wounds and feeling of alienation at being denied truth by my family still gnawed at me.
As a person of faith I try to see all good people as part of my extended family. This made the new Israel-Gaza situation that much harder to bear. In my mind it was already tied to the feeling of familial loss through my nephew. Seeing people that could be distant relatives in so much pain over the deaths of their families, only a month after Merlin’s passing had brought my nephew back to the forefront of my mind, I was too raw to bear the sight of it.
When I started the petition and filed charges, some Palestinian people began tweeting the most horrific pictures of dead and dying children at me. Without any sort of emotional defense prepared, the scale of the pain these people were experiencing crippled me. I had to beg them to stop showing me the truth as I felt as though my heart was being flayed open every time I checked my notifications. It made it difficult to keep talking to people on Twitter about the charges and the petition as I’d be constantly worried that new and more horrific photos would show at any moment.
When the charges were finally dismissed, the anger and frustration at my inability to do anything solidified into a determined outrage. I would not be able to simply ignore what I’d seen. To many innocents had died because of Canada’s support for this genocidal war.
Flash forwards to April 7th.
One of the first things I remember doing the day I was pulled in was checking for updates on the Don Dunphy story. I’d seen that media had spun the tweet in a negative light the previous day, but were grudgingly offering a summary of the associated tweets as a link within the article.
Not content with the reaction I was seeing online, including visibly disturbed fellow Twitter users expressing their anxiety about how quickly Don’s death was being covered up, I called my RCMP contact for information. He updated me that his report on the formal complaint regarding the dismissed genocide charges had been filed months ago and that he was a surprised I hadn’t heard anything yet. I asked him if he’d heard anything about the Dunphy issue and he told me it was outside his jurisdiction. I thanked him for his time and went back to look for more information online.
Reading through the stuff coming up on Twitter, the Premier’s office was making announcements about stricter policies concerning social media, rather than acknowledging a mistake had been made. They were going with the story that a family man had just snapped and the authority had to legitimately slap him down with capital punishment.
To me, this was just another senseless death that someone in authority was trying to justify to save his own position of power. Another form of senseless human sacrifice directed at families. At this point, the anger got the better of me and I crafted the tweet that go me arrested, but not before I peppered the Premier’s Twitter account with accusations of cowardice and covering up for a murder.
The tweet itself I’ll paraphrase as I’m writing this without access to the Internet to check it, but it went something like this:
‘How about this one @PremierOfNL:
I’m going to bring down Confederation and have politicians executed.
Ready to have me shot, coward?’
Understood in the context of my Charter Challenge and the genocide charges I’ve been pursuing, I’m talking about the ‘Confederation of Canada’ and ‘judicial execution’. Too much power has been invested in the Federal government. That power has allowed them to commit crimes against humanity, including inciting genocide. For that they should be tried, and if found guilty, judicially executed.
I was also calling Davis a coward for continuing to push the line that the execution of Mr. Dunphy was justified. I’ve since explained my speculations on what I think happened in the preamble of this series. It might have simply been a case of accidental manslaughter, until the Premier’s office tried to legitimize it as the necessary execution of a mentally ill old man.
But the cowardly Premier and his staff of crack twitter experts took my tweet without any context, the same way they did Don’s. They took one look at my tweet, my last name and the beard I was sporting in my updated Driver’s License photo and decided I must be a terrorist. The end result would see me certified insane after a five minute analysis for questioning their authority.
The first thing that let me know something was about to go down was a phone call from the RNC. Since filing my charges in July, they’ve had my number on file. Due to this, calling me up at my home was easy to do, unlike Don.
They requested I come into the station and informed me that I may be arrested. I told them they were operating without context again and I had no interest in discussing the issue until after my Charter Challenge was complete. Following my day in court, I was willing to come in to discuss the matter.
The officer became insistent at this point, saying that if I didn’t come to their Station for 1PM that day, they’d come to my house to for their ‘follow up.’
At no point during the discussion did I resort to base insults, but when the officer threatened to send people with guns to my home over a tweet, I let them have an earful.
The sad truth is that many police no longer deserve to be armed. Many of them are too keyed up with the desire to have their sense of authority maintained. They’re too quick to reach for their guns. It’s like they think they’re cowboys and this is the Wild West. Any member of the public can be a dangerous desperado aiming to gun them down so they’re always prepared to shoot first and ask questions later.
This kind of mentality shows the sickness that’s infected police, not just in Newfoundland, but all over the world. They’re no longer viewed as the integrated heroes of communities by themselves anymore, but simple paid enforcers of a social order handed down from above. They have job security and a pension. Upholding the law isn’t their job anymore. Their job is simply to follow orders.
This mentality was rife in Nazi Germany. To see it emerging in Newfoundland is disgusting.
Once I’d been informed that the officer would be sending people with guns into the home of my family, I loudly voiced my outrage at the veiled threat. I said those kinds of threats amounted to state terrorism of the public. When asked if I’d changed my mind, I told them that I’d be waiting for them with coffee.
The sad thing is the RNC at this particular station filed the original genocide charges which were covered in local media. They should have understood the context of my tweet since my Charter Challenge was occurring only a few buildings away from their station. But it didn’t matter at this point, someone had decided something had to be done about me.
I set about making some coffee and cleaning some cups, as well as informing people on Twitter the RNC were coming for me. I let the Western Star know. I called my RCMP contact back and left a message to let them know I was about to be taken in. I also went across the street to buy cigarettes and let the staff of the local corner store know that something was about to go down, but advised them to stay calm and not worry.
The RNC showed up around 3. They came to my door and asked if they could come in. I said yes and asked if they wanted to come in for coffee. They declined, confirmed my identity, then began informed me I was being detained. At this point both myself and Misha began asking what the charges were to be. It turned out that no charges were pending, but that they were going to detain me under the Mental Health Act.
This is where the situation becomes unlawful. I have no mental disorder, I am quite rational and non-violent, just angry at the injustice of the world. To detain someone under the Mental Health Act, certain conditions had to be met. Signed documents had to be provided. None of this was done. Instead, I had the RNC standing in my doorway with their hands on their guns demanding that l come with them, refusing to even shut the door to keep too much of my home heat from escaping.
While the officers acted without any directed hostility towards me, they were also unwilling to budge on the matter. They were dutybound by their orders to bring me in. They did lead me to believe that there was a possibility that the issue could be resolved through a discussion at the hospital, so after a few minutes of frustration I relented. I grabbed the documents for my Charter Challenge and peacefully left my home of my own volition. I was not dragged. The officers never even had to lay a hand on me. I didn’t like the idea of armed people around my family and at that point I simply wanted the guns out of my home.
One of the officers would later tell me that if I’d offered him a spot of tea, he might have relented. I figured he was making friendly small talk, but he had a good point and I had no hard feelings towards him. Coffee certainly doesn’t help people relax. I’ve since taken his advice and switched to tea.
Upon arriving at the hospital with my armed escort, I was taken into triage and admitted as a patient. After filing the required paperwork, they moved me from triage into the room reserved for violent individuals. The picture of this room was the last I tweeted as I was being thrown into detainment. My phone and other items were taken from me and I was left to wait for the doctor to arrive.
During this time I had a few chats with the RNC officers who brought me in. I tried to let them know that I understood they were just doing their job, but that they were making the same mistake they had made with Don. It didn’t matter, they had their orders and the situation had to unfold. My fate was out of their hands.
When the first doctor came in, Dr. Thistle, we shook hands, exchanged a few pleasantries and he left. The only thing memorable about him was that at the time I thought I saw a distortion in his right iris so I tried not to stare at it and make him uncomfortable. Thinking back, it might have been my own reflection I was seeing in his eye. Either way, we only spoke for a few moments before he left. I wasn’t angry, irrational or incoherent when we spoke. However, I was a little nervous about the situation as I had a doctor trying to assess me surrounded by armed RNC officers who had just taken me from me home. He would later write that I seemed a little ‘paranoid’ about the situation and that word would be the ‘diagnosis’ that the lawyer for the hospital would use to keep me detained for a longer period.
My roommate, a much bigger person than I, would later tell me about being admitted at the same time. As he walked by the room I was being kept in, he saw half a dozen cops in the area and wondered what could possibly be going down. When he saw me, with my beard, he assumed I must have been some sort of terrorist mastermind that they’d caught. At the time he’d worried that I might end up in the same ward, much less the same room. He would later change his mind after getting to know me. His family would be just as shocked when they learned the truth of the situation.
After the first doctor left, I was seen by a tiny fragile female Hindu psychiatrist who would certify me as insane five minutes later. I tried to explain the context of my tweets and my Charter Challenge to her. I would later find out she was hard of hearing, so I don’t even know if she was actually listening to me. She finished her assessment quickly and left the room.
Shortly after this meeting, while waiting to hear the results, I requested I be allowed to speak with Misha. I hadn’t seen her since we’d arrived together and I wanted to make sure she was ok. I passed along the phone to her and told her I’d seen the psychiatrist. She left the room to inquire as to the doctor’s opinion and was informed that I had been assessed with the same profile as the Ottawa Shooter. They wanted to keep me under observation for a month.
Upon hearing that I could be pulled into detainment for a month based solely on the opinion of people who didn’t know me, Misha got upset and left. There was nothing she could do. Being from Russia, she had a pre-existing fear of how psychiatry could be politicized by those in authority. She’d knew stories of dissenters who would disappear into the system, never to be heard from again. Despite my attempts to warn her that Newfoundland hadn’t gotten that bad yet, she left visibly shaken by the events.
Shortly after this occurred, I was taken up to the 4th floor and shown my new home away from home. I didn’t have anything with me other than the clothes on my back and my Charter Challenge. I met with my assigned nurse for an entry interview and was assigned a nicotine patch to help with the fact that I wasn’t allowed to leave the ward. I explained my Charter Challenge issue to the nurse and was informed that the Hospital had an obligation to let me speak my case before a judge. This would change the following day.
Once finished with my entry interview and my tour of the facilities, I popped down to the public computer room and hopped on Twitter and Facebook to let people know what happened to me. The following day the hospital cut the entire ward’s internet access off to keep me from speaking publicly to anyone further.
After a few words online, I called the Western Star and let them know where I was being detained. They offered to send a photographer the following day, but I told them they’d have to make sure pictures were taken off ward. I didn’t want to violate the privacy of the other patients.
After all this, I went back to the public room and made a few new friends. The first person I chose to speak with had a small crowd of other patients around her and she looked very friendly. I’ll call her Red Sonya. We chatted for a while and exchanged stories. She was very intelligent and insightful and as a former truck driver had a great deal of stories to tell. She also provided me with the book I’d read during my first three days in detainment, ‘The Jester’ by James Patterson. As the climax of the book ends with an excommunicated former jester leading a revolt against the evil ‘Lord Stephen,’ it was the best book I’d read in a while and exactly what I needed to lift my spirits.
After a very trying day full of context-removed tweets, phone calls, guns and psychiatrists. I was glad to get some sleep. I knew I’d have a discussion with a new psychiatrist for my baseline assessment in the morning. Without a half dozen officers present I felt it would be much easier to discuss what brought me in.
I was in for a surprise though the following morning when I learned that the same tiny Hindu woman who had interviewed me for five minutes would be the doctor conducting the second assessment. I felt this to be unusual. The first doctor signed my papers after conferring with her the first evening, now she was providing the second assessment signature as well? To me it seemed like a violation of the process. The same doctor would offer her opinion twice after already being influenced by the first situation with the RNC.
At this point, I requested to be seen by a second doctor. I didn’t want to be interviewed by someone who’d already decided I was just like the Ottawa Shooter after a five minute discussion.
This brings me up to the end of my first 24 hours of detainment. There will be some overlap of days as I try to sort out the details, but I’ll try to keep it as coherent as possible.
The next installment in ‘My Life of Certified Insanity,’ will be out after I get some details of my current life sorted out. I’m without Internet or phone access from my home now and have had all my computers, research and business materials seized. I can’t even contact the RCMP or my lawyer without walking to the store. I’ve been left with no way to earn money or proceed with any of the projects I’ve been working on these past few years.
Long term food sustainability for Newfoundland as well as the cure for cancer and other oxidative stress disorders will apparently have to wait.