Month: June 2022

Let Me In – part two

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Most European countries have at least one land border with another country. But the UK is an island and this proved a great strategic advantage for the British, stopping intending visitors like Napoleon and Hitler. The English Channel is now one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world so you might think that crossing it without being noticed and at least avoided, would be difficult.

This makes you wonder how seriously the borders of the UK are watched when rubber boats arrive who could be invaders from a hostile country. Dorset Police went out and bought three boats, which doubled the patrol capacity for the whole of the UK. Interestingly the Royal Navy have become involved…but only recently.

This essay is not principally about the UK. The plight of those wishing to enter it, is merely intended as an example of similar situations all over the world, such as Cubans wishing to enter the USA.

With climate change, scarcity of food, water and raw materials, wars, disease, corruption, rogue governments and other factors, the world needs to apply a united strategy to those affected. The mass movements of populations needs to be handled co-operatively and competently.

So let us re-focus the problem in the English Channel and consider how a strategy can be formulated and implemented rather than narrowed to a single issue.

Le Manche – as seen from France

Firstly there needs to be a ‘triage’ of emigrants who turn up at the in French sea ports and coastal towns. They will either be in the ‘criminal’ group (5) or one of the other groups listed in Let Me In – part one, and it is of primary importance to identify them in the interests of all countries.

They may well be pretending to be seeking asylum in the UK and will have worked carefully on a fictitious cover story. If and when known criminals are identified by security services, it is imperative that they are dealt with. Those who are known to be linked to crime, war crimes, terrorism, extremism etc. may already have international warrants for their detention enabling their immediate extradition to other countries. In doing harder, what governments should already be doing, there is no longer a temptation or excuse to treat the greater majority of genuine migrants, as criminals.

The ‘people trafficking gangs’ and their leaders clearly, also need to identified and put on trial. Good police work should be capable of locating and monitoring them by using surveillance and sting operations to infiltrate their organisations and make arrests. If this has ever happened it has not hit the headlines. Do more resources need to be aimed towards identification of the gang leaders? They may be linked to other organised crime such as drugs, sex trafficking, terrorism and the rest. This is just bread and butter policing and yet it does no appear, at least, to happen.

The sale of the boats and safety equipment which takes place in the Calais markets and Marine supply shops, could be licensed and stricly monitored by CCTV, forcing traffickers to transport this equipment from elsewhere. This will not stop them, but it will increase the risk of being caught in possession of it and having to spin improbable yarns to police.

Security services have teams scanning the dark web for extremists, terrorists and their associated criminal networks. Little is made public about this work; no doubt for good reason, but there needs to be some publicity if only to reassure the public on both sides of the channel that there is a raft of measures operating to close what is happening down. Why is it so difficult?

Post Brexit, the French north coast became a border of the European Union. As such it will have been given substantially greater security measures than the internal borders within the EU. If 440 people leave the coast in one day and there are 20 people on each boat, then that is 22 boats! The English Channel crossings are made in broad daylight from busy coasts. Do the general public, commercial and leisure users of ports and marine facilities report suspicious activity? Is there a Coastguard hotline to report such craft? If you ask Google this question the answer is yes; 1-888-373-7888, but it’s in the United States of America.

If we consider new technologies then it has become practical and effective to search for and monitor suspicious activity using drones. These will provide real time intelligence and enable land and sea based patrols to investigate in a timely manner. They can also be used to verify reports from the general public before allocating resources. Drones could be used on both sides of the English Channel. It is likely that members of the public with an interest in using drones, could work alongside coastguard officers; reducing costs and releasing officers for duties that require their legal powers and skills. (There will also be a spill over benefit help catch smugglers and other illegal activity.)

Migrant Boat – picture credit France 24

Crossing the Dover Strait from Calais depending on, wind and tides, speed of vessel etc. is going to take at least three to four hours. Crossing the shipping lanes is fraught with danger as all sailors know. This means that it is important to intercept emigrant boats before leaving the relative safety of the inshore waters. Maritime law requires interception of a such a vessel to be taken directly to the nearest safe place. If emigrant boats are allowed to stray too far towards the centre of the Channel this can become an issue between UK and French authorities. Should boats be turned around as they approach the other side of the channel (as the USA Coastguard does to Cuban refugees) or should a border be enforced in the centre of the Channel? Is this idea remotely practical in any case when emigrants dangle their children over the water as a threat to intercepting authorities or simply just jump into the water. At one point the Home Secretary Priti Patel wanted boats physically turned around, not appreciating or perhaps caring, how dangerous confrontations at sea are.

Newspaper articles and even presidents of countries will try to persuade the public that all or most emigrants are all criminals but statistically, the majority will fall into one of the other four groups already described.

Many will probably be without documentation often through no fault of their own. This issue could be solved by the often suggested policy of ‘creating safe routes’ and simply issuing temporary documentation. These can include biometric identification as is reasonably required by the UK government. (Scanning finger prints is part of process of identification of the known or wanted criminals and will already have been done. It takes a few minutes, not months, to do for each person.) The Prime Minister has lauded the idea of ‘safe routes’ in debate, but in reality the only safe routes the UK has set up are for Ukranian Nationals and a restricted number of Afghans.

My principle point, as I have almost certainly missed out many details and parts of a more general strategy simply because I am just writing this as a lay observer, is that controlling the mass movements of undocumented people is a complex issue. Enormous co-operation between nations is required, the sort of relationships that the European Union was partly set up to achieve.

There is an ‘elephant in the room’ however and they is why the UK is a honey pot to emigrants. Why do individuals and families wish to come to the UK so very badly they will risk their savings and their lives to get there? Perhaps the answer includes the facts that English is a lingua franca for many, it has given out UK passports following it’s Empire days (e.g. Hong Kong), it has a free health service based solely on residency and has a generous welfare system into which there is no immediate requirement to pay, in contrast to most other European countries.

picture credit: AA Milne and Walt Disney

The UK public might be proud of these humane and welcoming promises but it is cruel to dangle the carrot without letting go of it just as the donkey has finally completed the journey and this is precisely the strategy of the present government in most cases. In my view this is a slippery slope to the UK losing it’s reputation for fairmindedness.

This essay has been long and covered at lot of ground. This has been deliberate and well done if you have reached this far! My aim has to be to outline only the broad spectrum of issues around the mass movement of people around the globe, using the UK as a sorry example of ineptitude.

Governments ignore complexity at their peril. It is always tempting for policticians who often are vastly under qualified for the roles they attempt to do and say as little as possible. This is all very well for the ordinary person who knows they have no idea about international polictics, but leaders are expected to be better than this. The detail is most often where policies go wrong and ignoring detail is much the same as devil worship, for does he not love the same?

Let Me In – part one

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Governments have to identify goals which are desired by their supporters and decide the means by which these goals can be achieved.

This simple statement makes sense, until the details and the means are examined in depth. Specifically, the means may not either be effective, or worse, they bring about unintended consequences which may cause harm.

An example of this is happening in the United Kingdom right now over the issue of immigration.

Voters in the Brexit referendum of 2014 had many concerns and one was a perception (stoked up by the media over inadequate public services and poor town planning rather than economists) that immigration into the UK was a problem. Brexit was posited as a means to ‘take control of our borders’. Unfortunately the ‘problem’ was incorrectly perceived in my view and I will explain why.

Economist promote immigration as it promotes growth and prosperity. The Tory governments of the last decades have known this and Home Secretaries such as Teresa May, did little to control immigration. Why would you when you need foreign workers? But after Brexit voted against the free movement of people within the European Union, unemployment in the UK now stands at 1.3 million.

picture credit; I Volunteer International

The present argument by the Johnson government, is that the ‘problem of immigration’ is the number of people who die on inadequate boats whilst trying to cross the English Channel. This emotive argument correctly demonises the illegal traffickers but fails to approach the problem from a strategic perspective. If they used safe boats would that be okay? Is this a sea worthyness of boats problem?

The absurdly narrow focus on what the problem is and how to solve it, only satisfies voters who are content with a simplistic problem / solution statement. To gain a full grasp of the problem, I shall outline as best I can, the breadth of the issue of mass movements of people into the UK and how improved ‘control’ of the borders of the UK could be achieved.

Firstly, there are five types of emigrants;

  1. Those escaping hardship in their own countries through famine, war, climate change through no fault of their own.
  2. Skilled and unskilled economic emigrants who are seeking work and higher remuneration.
  3. Political emigrants who are escaping persecution by their own government because of their political views and acts and seek political asylum.
  4. Emigrants who are seeking to be re-united with their families; a group that includes children travelling alone.
  5. Those outside of the law in any country involved in subversive and or illegal activities, either in the interests of their own government or for criminal motives.

For each of these groups, there has to be a specific solution to their desire to emigrate to another country to live and work. But before I examine these, there is one further beneficial general approach.

The conditions in countries which people are seeking to leave own a large part of the problem. You might expect diplomats from countries likely to become unwilling hosts to emigrants to spend a large part of their time and resources in working on this problem with other governments. I personally suggest this should include processing asylum claims in local embassies (excepting when appropriate, political emigrants) and issuing temporary visas on ’emergency passports’ to enable safe travel using conventional means. Buying a 50 euro airline ticket instead of paying people traffickers, is no financial burden on the UK government and puts illegality out of business. It is certainly less than chartering an aircraft for 500,000 pounds to take the unwilling to Rwanda, but who am I to point this out?

But let us assume that all the targeted aid and supportive diplomatic steps have been taken and people are still desperate to leave their own countries. What interventions are available and appropriate for each of the five types identified above?

Group 1. Escaping hardship;

  • In the short to medium term, build refugee camps.
  • Identify suitable locations for these and provide appropriate support.
  • Have international protocols and means in place to be ready for the next global catastrophe, through non-political global organisations that are trusted by those seeking help.

Group 2. Economic migrants;

  • Maintain physical border controls so that border crossings can be managed and legal crossings enabled.
  • Put in place means to screen those with and without documents to confirm identity, purpose, ability for self support and seek work opportunities or evidence offers of employment.

Group 3. Political emigrants;

  • These should be identified by host countries only, as they will not wish to be intercepted by the countries they leave.
  • They may be oblidged to cross borders by illegal means in order to remain safe.

This group is likely to be used by group 5 (criminals) so particularly high security measures and screening methods will have to be used by potential hosting countries.

Group 4. Seeking family re-union;

  • Set rules for family members to be able re-unite after non-self imposed trauma legally and permanently.
  • Have facilities and protocols in place to process unaccompanied children.

This group would benefit from being able to apply for a visa and /or residency before leaving their own country.

Group 5. Criminals; This is the group that makes it necessary to have strict controls on all the rest.

  • They need to be identified at the earliest opportunity and dealt with according to international law and extradition agreements, much of which may need revue and extending in scope to fit the present movement towards a ‘global community’ rather than nationalist self interest.

You can appreciate that these principles apply to most emigration and immigration, and examples abound in today’s current affairs. To keep this essay focused I shall use just the example of immigration into the UK and the policy that the government believes will stop people crossing the English Channel in unsuitable craft.

My first point is a fault in the government’s argument. They state that the aim is to stop people drowning in the English Channel. Clearly no person is going to be against this. However their method is to deter people getting into unsafe boats and how strong a deterrent this is going to be, is unproven. The counter argument suggests the policy is ineffective and costly, at which point government ministers will accuse those against the policy of being ‘in favour of allowing people to drown in the English Channel’.

Unfortunately this extremely poor level of debate and problem solving has been carried over from the Brexit referendum in 2014. The focus of the ‘benefits’ of Brexit was on immigration, stating a desire to reduce numbers entering the UK. Not surprisingly, by being no longer a part of Europe the interests of the Mayor of Calais became no longer aligned with the UK. The solution for the French to the problems around refugee camps in Calais, was to do as little as possible to stop migrants leaving for the UK. For this reason they expressed no interest in accepting UK money for extra police and border controls on French territory. Such measures are popular with voters but are again ineffective. Emigrants who have already made long journeys are expert at avoiding detection. Effective ‘strong borders’, require measures in place similar to those between North and South Korea and it is unreasonable for Calais to accept machine gun posts, razor wire and mine fields along it’s beaches.

picture credit; All That is Interesting

So after the UK government has stopped accusing France of being ‘uncooperative’ rather than understanding the points about motive and means just made, the brutal ‘one size fits all’, send-emigrants-to-Rwanda solution is put in place. The British public – who have traditionally been internationally respected for being fair minded – are expected to accept that denying the human rights of desperate men, women and children will deter others from entering the UK illegally.

On the first day that this policy started the plane carrying eight emigrants, was grounded by the European Court of Human Rights and 440 people crossed the English Channel successfully in the other direction. Even after a year of this policy in operation – is it really likely that there will be fewer people crossing the English Channel in boats and if so how many fewer? Is denying human rights as a deterrent really acceptable?

In my view the government’s problem solving ability would hardly be accepted in a school debating society.

to be continued

Snakes Alive!

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Serpent worship in some form has permeated nearly all parts of the earth.

Manly P. Hall

The 20th century author and mystic, Manly P. Hall then cites these examples of ‘serpent worship’ in his best known book, ‘The Secret Teachings of All Ages’.

Serpent mounds of the American Indians

Python; the great snake of the Greeks

Druids; sacred serpents

Scandinavia; Midgard snake

Burma Siam Cambodia; Nagas

Jews; brazen serpent

Orpheus; mystic serpent

Greek; snakes at the Oracle of Delphi

Egyptian Temples; sacred snakes, Uraeus coiled on foreheads of Pharaohs and priests

But clearly, from this general idea, there is plenty of detail to fill in. For ‘worship’ and ‘the use of symbols to express something greater than words’, are very different things. None of above list, in my view, are examples of worship of snakes as minor or major deities. They function rather as ‘tools’ for expression of energy and ‘symbols’ of natural law in some way.

Perhaps if we examine the snake as a symbol first, it will help us understand the root and branch of what universal and cultural expressions are being made.

The snake is of course a reptile and different from the mammalian kingdom by laying eggs and having cold blood. We know that reptiles are one of the earliest forms of life and are quite distinct from homo sapiens sapiens. However there is a ‘reptilian’ part of our brains that organises our most basic instincts and therefore we are not so far apart.

The snake moves in a most compelling way that even today makes human jump out of their way instinctively. Most snakes are poisonous and this memory is both in our bodies and our minds.

We should not be surprised that this poisonous aspect of snakes gives them power beyond their size, in fact the smaller snakes are often the most dangerous to humans. Alternatively the snakes that outsize humans several times are able to coil their bodies around us and crush us to death.

We should expect them therefore to be associated with ‘evil’ in our minds.

In addition the shape of snakes and how they move is fascinating to watch. They move on land and water as a ‘standing wave’, the tail taking exactly the same path as the rest of the body and the head.

Waves express energy as static and active states. We watch alternating current on our instruments as a sine wave and are immediately reminded of a snakes powerful and scintillating shape. They appear to move without moving and like energy have an ‘invisibility’ about them.

On a grand scale we see snakes represented in the landscape as rivers curling through flat plains and underground as coiling springs rising to the surface or plunging into the ‘underworld’.

Most compelling of all is the way in which this ‘earth energy’ or ‘chi’, ‘ki’ or ‘prana’, is coiled at the base of the human spine. Through yogic practices (the path to union with the Divine) as described by Arthur Avalon in his classic book ‘Serpent Power‘, human beings can experience the uncoiling of this energy vertically through the chakras and nadis associated with the spinal column and it’s rampant tower of nerves.

When we have ‘spine tingling’ experiences through realisation or fear, we can feel this primal energy and experience being intensely alive.

Not only in these peak moments but also the every day health of the body depends on the balance and even flow of prana as expressed in our every breath. Becoming unwell may have many causes but the return to health involves re-balancing of the powerful creative and destructive processes of living beings.

When we watch waves building and crashing on a beach we are able to tune to this understanding of a most basic truth of nature. Life is given and taken away. The caduceus is a rod entwined by counter coiling serpents is a symbol of this used even today in medicine.

Perhaps the most intriguing and unspoken parts of the human body in which the serpent is expressed, is the male penis which is able to coil and stand erect like a cobra. In it’s standing moments it is able to literally express Prana in the life creating process as a most god-like creative experience of the human body. It literally creates the life of a new being and gives a surge of energy (experienced as ecstasy) so powerful that it enables a soul to be ‘kick started’ into this physical world.

The Ancient Egyptians depict the standing penis unselfconsciously in their wall paintings, but certain prudish visitors to these depictions chose to deface and remove them whenever they could! Perhaps they were influenced by the story in Genesis told in gilded form to wide eyed children.

The story of Old Testament the serpent in the Garden of Eden perpetuates the negative associations of the serpent as a symbol.

But the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat from it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Genesis 2:17

And the argument of the serpent made to Eve giving her reason to disregard God’s command is clever (and reminds us of the ‘fake news’ of today!)

For God doth know that in the day that ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. Genesis 3:5

Interestingly the first example we are given of knowing good and evil is Adam and Eve realising they are naked and feeling this as an ‘evil’ to be redressed by ‘doing good’. They make ‘aprons’ to cover their genitals – a tradition echoed in the Masonic symbols of modern times.

Certainly Adam’s ‘serpent’ is so banished as rapidly as is tried today to the ‘fake news’ distributor.

We might also interpret that this sacred ‘knowledge’ is both a curse and a blessing. For accompanying the descent of human beings from eternal life (Heaven) into the physical world (a garden), they do indeed acquire the awareness of duality represented by the two extremes ‘good’ and ‘evil’.

The dualistic form of thinking is a serpent with so many heads, humans cannot work out which one is real and we are turned to stone; made useless. This understanding is contained in the Greek myth of the goddess Medusa with her head made of serpents.

Psychologically we have descended from the bliss of ‘oneness with God’ to a psychotic state in which we cannot determine the difference between dream and reality, happiness and sadness, toil and rest, gain and loss, good and bad. Our lives are lived in this constant confusion created by a dualistic outlook; believing all things are polarised.

We have to look to the Eastern religions for the veil of this dualistic perception to be lifted. In Zen Buddhism they would only see the whole serpent, not it’s head or it’s tail or it’s body. The real world is a cosmic Unity; a place described as the original Garden of Eden or state of bliss.

Some alchemical gnostics in the West knew this truth and the symbol of the serpent swallowing it’s tail is the expression of this truth, as not told in the Bible.

The serpent’s tale is then one of great complexity throughout history, well beyond what Manly P. Hall describes as being an ‘object of worship’. It appears as a figure holding two serpents in the manner of a pair of scales, with as much regularity as any other. The scales represent objective judgment; the giving of balanced views and feelings which we call wisdom.

It tells us we are not necessarily ruled only by our heads and the compulsions that we imagine derive from our thoughts, but rather we are a function of the coiling energy paths and nexuses in our own bodies. These are neither right nor wrong, good nor bad, but merely the experience of being neither an unborn human being, nor a dead one.