A Very Mexican Standoff

07/02/202207/02/2022 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

The current ‘red-herring’ sliding around the fish monger’s slab of international politics at the moment, is ‘war in Ukraine’.

Why so? Well, focus is slowly moving away from the ‘pandemic’ and Russia is seizing the moment to fill the vacuum of global politics. Moving troops from here to there and parking them in a notionally strategic position has been a war of nerves since the beginning of time. The fact that the current Russian force is roughly 120,000 troops with air support, tanks, artillery and mechanized infantry including specialised support does not mean the Russians will attack.

Ukraine has a far larger opposing Army some of which will have had recent experience of fighting in the East of the country. It also has the important advantage of being in ‘defence of the homeland’ – a double win strategically.

Russia is probably still be wiping it’s bloody nose after invading Afghanistan between 1979-89 and having to withdraw humiliated; a mistake curiously repeated in the previous twenty years by Western countries and the USA.

Russia will be aware of the domestic problems associated with fighting a war in Ukraine. When body bags start arriving back in the homeland military airfields, people and politicians become disheartened; which leads to social unrest.

President Putin is like the grinning fox in the tale of Little Red Riding Hood. He is nobody’s granny and hides his real agenda under a red cloak. So what is the fox up to?

Strategically, he wishes to rebuild the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The vulnerability of the Baltic States and Finland and the current moves by NATO to bolster forces in these countries, evidences a very real perceived vulnerability. In the south of Ukraine, Putin intends to encircle the southern states using the Crimea and it’s ports, and then head for Kiev. He might go around the Chernobyl exclusion zone or straight through it. It will not affect his mobile troops whose vehicles are protected from high dose radiation.

But in my view he does not need to do any of this. The implied threat is enough to rattle the Ukraine politician’s cages and create division amongst it’s allies. At some point he will move in a pro-Russian Ukrainian leader and the country will be in his control without a drop of Russian blood staining the Dnieper River.

No, using the distraction techniques of a deceiver, Putin is hiding his real intentions. In a grand way, Russia whips up fear in it’s citizens concerning the spreading presence of NATO in Eastern Europe. Strategically he is right to do so, for everything that NATO does to creep into countries sharing borders with Russia, arms Russia with this accusation. Even if such a country is pleading to join NATO, this is not a reason for NATO to accede to the request. It is wiser to maintain ‘buffer’ states that are neutral to both sides. ‘No-man’s land’ may not make a country feel particularly safe, but strategically it is less likely to become a place for battle.

If NATO agrees to expand for no better reason than being asked, it plays into the Russian politician’s political argument that it feels threatened.

Bear in mind that a wise general will be ‘pre-emptive’ just as will a street fighter in a back alley. Hit before you are hit, particularly if tactical nuclear weapons are in the mix, is a sound strategy because it gives the element of surprise to the attacker whilst giving the attacker the ability to describe the action as ‘defence’.

We know that ‘attack’ is the best form of defence from watching sports on TV. In the heat of war, who is defending and who is attacking becomes blurred. This means who is ‘at fault for starting it’, will be unclear.

So NATO’s growth towards the East into countries previously part of the Soviet Union or USSR, needs very sensitive consideration. Moscow argues that Russian speaking populations have a right to it s protection. English speaking countries, such as the Falkland Islands, do the same.

NATO is astonishingly powerful, especially with the mighty presence of the USA over it s shoulders. It is probably the most militarily powerful country in the world, even on it’s own. The NATO alliance has created peace through strength since the second world war and needs to keep it that way because not only Russia is rattled.

China is too, not least because of the powerful US naval presence in the South China sea.

Enter the Mexican Standoff. Three notional adversaries; three fingers on triggers. The triggers have become increasingly light to the touch with the appearance of powerful artificial intelligently controlled land, sea and air craft of all descriptions. No more dead soldiers and sailors for the folks to see at home; just heaped up robots.

A three sided standoff is presently occurring between NATO, Russia and China; forget Ukraine and terrorism and whatever other threat, for they are real but lesser evils.

Look down the barrel of the gun you are holding as two equally skilled marksmen look down theirs at you. You pause. If you drop your aim or so much as blink, you will be shot dead from two directions. If you shoot first, that might be the last thing you do. As you shoot one of your adversaries, the bullet from the third has already passed through your heart and embedded itself in the wall behind you.

A Mexican standoff breaks when one side becomes weaker than the other two. Then it is two onto one, although your next fight is with the second strongest, not the weakest.

Skilled fighters need to assess their opponents accurately and win the fight by patience not pride. Two Samurai in ancient Japan might face each other for minutes even hours, before replacing their swords, bowing and walking away. A fight is not worth starting if you are not going to win.

Armies deploy in the same way. At present, Russia and China are glancing at each other and moving, imperceptibly, closer together. That’s the movement that the false Ukraine ‘threat’ is hiding.

But in world politics, something else is happening. The Winter Olympics 2020 is all flags, bunting and lateral flow tests in Beijing. Traditionally a political truce is called for all participating countries. That’s what the five rings intertwined represent.

‘Please leave your armour and swords at the entrance to the stadium, proud warriors from all Greek city states.’

But most Western leaders have refused to attend for reasons that are not hard to find but should they not respect for the International Olympic Committee’s decision, and override your politics? Why was China ever permitted to bid for the Olympics if human rights is an glaring issue for so many?

One world leader had no trouble making the decision to attend; Vladimir Putin. Red carpets (and red flags) were rolled out for him as a line of black limousines slid up to the Birdsnest Stadium VIP entrance. The Olympic opening ceremony was about to begin.

Even before this moment President Putin and President Xi Jinping had already met. In a long statement they expressed their mutual intentions through cooperation as;

“Russia and China stand against attempts by external forces to undermine security and stability in their common adjacent regions, intend to counter interference by outside forces in the internal affairs of sovereign countries under any pretext, oppose colour revolutions, and will increase cooperation in the aforementioned areas,”

The ‘adjacent regions’ includes Ukraine, no doubt, and interestingly the sovereignty of such regions is vowed to be mutually respected and defended. Even Putin could never honourably, invade Ukraine after such a statement. And if you are thinking that he is quite capable of lying, do not ignore the single, no-bluff. Putin could choose the ‘honourable path’ and ‘moral high ground’ because he has no intention of invading Ukraine and has nothing to lose by not doing so.

As China and Russia creep closer together the stakes in the poker game change and the facial expressions need to remain unreadable. But two guns versus one gun is dangerous for the one gun.

China and Russia versus NATO (and any countries insane enough to join NATO at this time), is one street fight nobody will ever win.

Perhaps this is the only glimmer of sunshine in a world crisis presently being ignored or unseen by Western media. If anyone shoots, all three will die, so they just continue to face each other down. But every moment focused on the ‘Ukraine Crisis’ is, in my opinion, the sight of NATO blinking and Russia and China seizing the advantage. Bang!

As Simple As 1,2,3

06/02/202214/03/2022 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

‘Shake the tree and not the branches‘

Philosophy is the study of tree trunks whereas much of the activity in the modern world is to do with shaking branches. Few attempt to shake the trunk of the tree as advised by the old proverb.

Grasping this concept will make you a philosopher. Breadth of understanding is akin to wisdom because it understands how things operate in their generality. Details fall into place once the correct concept has been initiated. A journey is started by selecting the road.

As a consequence of this ‘universality’ of truthful thought, we should understand what ancient people’s understood about the world – even though they lived millennia ago. Whilst the archaeologist are studying the shards of pots, philosophers are walking in the Palace of the thoughts of those who used them.

For example, the Trinity is a concept as old as the mountains and deserts. Long before the Christians used ‘Father, son and Holy Ghost’, something universal is described by the Trinity. It appears again and again in history as how a complimentary duality creates a mysterious third.

Pythagoras said the numbers are the first thing in nature. The number ‘one’ multiplied by itself, is one, and divided by itself is also, one. It is therefore a very unique expression of the fundamental reality of things. It is the Unity or ‘Godhead’ from which all other numbers are made. It anticipates what in theoretical physics is known as ‘the point of singularity’ or the original source of Creation at or/and, just after the apparent begining of all things.

Next, the One divides itself and creates duality. If the oneness is the perfection of the garden of Eden, then two-ness creates opposite and complimentary systems. The duality of ‘God’ and ‘Adam’ was the splitting of universal perception that God created to know Himself. To understand something it must be viewed from without as well as within.

In geometry, any two points can be connected by a straight line. These two points will always have the potential to be connected by a straight line but only on one spatial plane; meaning, able to move in any direction but not up or down.

We see this expressed in the two dimensional graphical representations of the perceived world in Islamic art and decoration.

The understanding of the triangle as the compilation of the concepts of both one and two, was in my view, one of the greatest achievements in understanding by mankind. Any three points will always make a triangle, a magic formula by any measure.

Both ancient Mayans and Egyptians, understood geometry and it’s value in describing the essence of things. They expressed this most memorably as a three dimensional square pyramid. This shape is so fundamental that it is easy to overlook and become distracted by the infinite and fascinating detail contained in their mathematics and cultural symbolism.

Archimedes famously discovered that the volumes of a cone sphere and drum have volumes in the ratio of one, two and three.

These are no longer puzzles in school exercise books, created for children to repeat without understanding. These are the building blocks of our perception and therefore understanding of the universe, as limited as that may be!

The Freemasons inherited much of their ancient knowledge of how thoughts and things are put together and work. Geometry is most perfectly expressed by buildings. The great medieval cathedrals of Europe continued the expression of geometry and measure contained in these ancient temples and pyramids around the world.

Freemasons represented the power of the three dimensional pyramid as the ‘Eye of God’ or sometimes the capital letter ‘G’. This is found today on the United States dollar bill. A pyramid built in thirteen courses, (twelve plus one – Jesus and his disciples) is topped by an Eye floating in a detached pyramidion. The concept of the ‘fractal’ or ‘all is One’ is expressed so simply that it could not be plainer to see.

The geometric trinity of space, as we experience the physical world, is made infinite and mysterious by a fourth dimension…time. Time is expressed in the physical world as ‘movement’; describe by the polymath Jean Cocteau as ‘the most beautiful thing in nature’. Time is created by man in an attempt to measure movement and like all such attempts may be mere illusion.

Ancient people were intimately connected to the apparent movement of the stars and planets and were able to measure and therefore, predict planetary movements and positions relative to each other and the sun; solstices, equinoxes and other astronomical events. In doing so, they were gaining an experiential knowledge of the Divine or sacred within and without of the physical world. They even joined the ‘dots’ of the stars to make meaningful patterns which today we call constellations. The passing of time was measured as ‘months’ as the twelve constellations of the Zodiac appeared on the horizon for the first time. As different energies were associated with these appearances the ancients knew auspicious moments for human activity which will end well.

The great lines of monoliths, menhirs, cromlechs, dolmens are reminders to us today of how magic is contained within this geometry, meter and movement. It is a magic that powers everything, that we know and experience.

If we are to understand ourselves and thrive on this planet, as did millennia of ancient Egyptian dynasties and Mesopotamian dynasties, we must follow truths that our ancient ancestors expressed and left for us to interpret and understand. The answers to life’s questions were written in stone in order to be ‘flood proof’ for they had an ancient universal memory of ‘the Great Flood’ and catastrophies further back in time.

The simplicity of geometry is akin to the simplicity of truth and how the world is merely a mirror between the smallest and grandest of scales. Add to that our tiny planet’s complex spiralling movements through space and time and other dimensions beyond and the simplicity of one, two, three can be lost – but we lose it at our peril for we are simple creatures of ‘little brain’ as followers of Pooh Bear will understand.

Incorrect Politicalness

13/01/202207/02/2022 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

News that the authorities in Quebec plan to tax people who have not been vaccinated for Covid 19 may seem reasonable. The argument is that half of the patients in ICU wards with Covid 19 have not been vaccinated so they have caused expense to the government. Greece is also following the same logic path as is Ikea in not awarding it’s unvaccinated employees full sick pay; just the legal minimum.

You might wonder what the ethical committees who study and promote good practice, make of this change in ethical standards. Presumably, they approve.

Clearly this problem is not going to happen in the USA as government there does not underwrite healthcare demand. If you want health care there, you pay for it with the taxes you haven’t paid into the system for health care. Note to self; don’t get expensively ill.

And if citizens are not being fined for refusing to be vaccinated, more subtle means of coersion are used. Governments are restricting the right to travel or visit public events such as the football in Cameroon at the moment. This is absurd in a country with only 3% of it’s population vaccinated. Africans top the list of vaccine distrusting continents. Is the desire to watch a football match an ethical motive to accept a medical intervention?

The first question has to be why people are refusing to be vaccinated. The Covid vaccines are known to have been produced in far less than the normal times for vaccines. There may be a scientific reason for this but most people cannot be expected to follow this as they are not medically trained. Neither do they understand the RDNA angle. Is that gene editing as in hamburgers? Who really knows?
The pointer we the people might look for, is whether the drug company underwrites their claims to their drug’s safety. In all cases, as far as I am aware, the companies have put in a disclaimer to injury to health or death resulting from vaccination. No doubt this is extended into perpertuity. Why would their lawyers not agree to claims in five, ten or twenty years time?
The vaccinated will have no rights if the vaccines prove over time to be harmful. It’s not that they are known to be harmful but the companies are showing that this is a consideration that they have made regarding the risk. They consider it high enough to need to exonerate themselves from responsibility for their product.
Given these facts, is it still unreasonable for people to be concerned about what the vaccine will do to their health in the short and long term?
The ethical question then is, who will take responsibility for the distribution and encouragement to take the vaccine, if not the progenitors? Is it the governments, the health authorities, the University professors, the doctors and nurses who give the ‘jabs’, the owners of the premises where the vaccinations were allowed to take place, the factory owners who made the vaccine, the distributors, the advertisers?
One thing for certain, it will not be ‘big pharma’ who have made huge profits out of the pandemic. They know that injury to health legal claims can bankrupt drug companies.
In twenty years time, will the vaccinated be the one’s occupying ICU wards and the unvaccinated paying their taxes to cover their medical expenses?
An absurd question you might say, but it’s an angle not considered in the media and that should give concern. What are the unvaccinated saying and should their views be respected or challenged as selfish?
The healthcare system in the United Kingdom promises ‘health care on demand’. No questions are asked whether the injury or disease is self inflicted or caused by poor lifestyle. It’s just, welcome, have a hospital bed and we will fix you.
No blame is brought against the sick and financial penalties inflicted for not preventing it. The moral and ethical stance is ‘you are the state’s responsibility’ whether you are rich or poor.
Those who smoke cigarettes for instance, pay tax on every packet of cigarettes. This tax, certainly in the UK, more or less pays for hospital treatments for disease caused by smoking. It’s an inexact science but ethically the stance is clear. Governments do not like to restrict the free choice of lifestyle of their citizens, certainly not in freedom loving democracies.
So what is happening in Quebec? You have to pay one hundred dollars a week if you wish to have a lifestyle choice that the government does no agree with. Really? Does this go for those practicing extreme sports, astronauts, high risk occupations such as fishing and construction, drug users, alcoholics?
The incorrectness of some governments judging lifestyles is trying to become ‘correct’ in the case of Covid 19 treatment. Will this trend spread to other socially funded healthcare systems and health insurers?
Political correctness usually tries to win by ‘ourtrumping’ common sense and established morality. It points to an extreme situation and says that ‘being safe’ is more important than anything; even freedom to choose one’s lifestyle.
Where before governments have been willing to accept taxes from smokers and drinkers, the political correct argument is that all forms of harmful pleasure or employment, must stop in order to ‘save lives’.
The ‘save lives’ trump card is as if risk does not occurr in anyones life and is no longer the responsibility of the individual.
And when decisions, on whatever issue, are no longer the responsibility of the inividual, citizens are living in an autocracy, a police state.
If the same pattern is followed on future issues, as is emerging for the control of virus transmission, be increasingly on guard for incorrect political-ness.

Don’t Bother Us

01/01/202207/02/2022 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

It happens sometimes, that social norms change. On the balance of probabilities, not all of these changes will be for the better. This leaves the challenging task of pinpointing the changes that are for the worse.

In pursuit of this task, I offer to the reader the common experience of telephoning a company or government department for some purpose or other. When you reach the correct recipient, you are greeted by yet another recorded message. It tells you politely that ‘you are in a queue’ and ‘we apologise for the delay due to an unusual high volume of calls’ and if it can get away with it, ‘call back later’. The caller is expected to think that he or she was in some way, adding to the problem for ringing the company at a busy time. We are expected to blindly accept the company policy of not employing enough call takers to answer the telephone in a timely manner.

You know this because there is never the message, ‘we have failed to employ sufficient people to speak to our customers and not valued you.’

The ebb and flow of demand is in some way is understandable. There is a phenomenon that makes shops sometimes empty and sometimes full. Anyone who has worked in a shop will have experienced this. Companies that operate public transport know that their buses and trains are insufficient to meet the demand in the rush hours and making huge loses the rest of the day. We get that, but it should never be a 24 hour excuse. Customers with any sense are going to use competitors instead, or in the case of government departments, start sending endless emails and create another problem.

My reply is that this attitude or ‘go away’, if accepted, is the ‘thin end of the wedge’. Of course phone calls can often be made again, later, but what happens when the stakes are higher?

One current example is the manner countries are operating their hospitals during the Covid 19 pandemic. Because of the fear of the hospital not being able to deal with a sudden high demand from patients with Covid symptoms, the solution is to empty the hospitals of other patients and any newcomers; refuse to give them beds. The system of ‘triage’ (treatment according to immediacy of need) is dropped. Cancer patients are sent home and those awaiting urgent operations are told to seek private treatment (certainly in the UK at least).

Picture Credit; Wales Online ‘Patients waiting up to 13 hours for a bed’.

Suddenly the health service’s problem of not having enough hospitals, beds and staff for national emergencies such as wars, famines, plagues, epidemics, pandemics…is not the hospital’s or anybody’s fault except the ill for being too many in number.

‘This situation is completely unprecedented,’ explains the UK government minister, in the hope that the public will accept the lie that pandemics have never happened before and are not at the top of the list of known and planned for threats to public health and social order.

Because society has already accepted the ‘don’t bother us’ reply to reasonable requests. The breaking of Hippocratic oaths by doctors and dereliction of duty and possibly criminal law by hospital managers and government ministers apparently goes unnoticed or at worst tolerated.

There may be differences around the world as to the degree of the point I am making but as a generality, the ‘don’t bother us’ excuse for poor planning and execution has become acceptable.

We should all ask ourselves; are governments guilty of watching people die for lack of or negligent plans for such events? If the current pandemic is not sufficient example to chew on, the next is indisputable.

Due to climate change, wars, famine, economic decline, inept and / or corrupt governments in the world today, there are mass migrations of people. Some are seeking a better life, some an easier life, some free hand outs, some legitimate political asylum. The problem of deciding on the motive of these people and whether to accept them as citizens is regularly discussed. In some blocks like the European Union, a policy which is acceptable to all it’s nation states is notably absent.

Historically, countries have prospered when they have had a benign policy to immigration and at times people have been encouraged to migrate and become citizens of say, Australia and the USA. But with more people on the planet than ever before, the sharing of resources is now problematic. Migration has to be controlled in an ethical manner respecting the human right to claim political asylum…but for governments the ever rising numbers of applicants has been put in the ‘difficult’ box.

In situations of life and death like this, the ‘don’t bother us’ reply that many governments would like to and have made, becomes immoral and bordering on fascism.

The United Kingdom has experienced a large rise in illegal immigration since it left the European Union. Before, it was able to co-operate with France, it’s nearest neighbour and controller of ports, roads and railways. But since the Brexit kick in the teeth to France, the French have far less interest in being part of measures to control the dangerous crossing of the English Channel. This a 30 mile stretch of water with dangerous tides, bad weather and one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.

People, families, have died attempting this crossing. One solution promoted by the current Home Secretary, Priti Patel, is to turn migrant boats around mid channel. You might as well erect a sign here or in the straights to Italy or Greece saying, ‘don’t bother us’.

So how is it that the UK can continue this ignorant (meaning to ignore in a base and uninformed manner) attitude and why are there no protest marches demanding taking the problem seriously? After all ‘immigration’ and ‘controlling our borders’ were two problems that swung the vote in favour of leaving the European Union.

Could it be because the citizens of Britain have become used to ‘don’t bother us’ as a reasonable reason for sending people away?

It is internationally enshrined in law, that a person must travel to a country before being able to claim political asylum. You might wish to question why when counting the washed up bodies on the beaches of Kent and Sussex. Why is it not possible to go to the British Embassy in say, the People’s Democratic Republic of Congo and make your case for UK political asylum there? No money will have passed hands to illegal traffickers, no houses will have been sold to pay the traffickers, no political confidences should have been breached creating a need to flee, and documents should be to hand. Certainly staff in any country’s local embassy, will have the best evidence to hand for proving or disproving claims. Even the creation of an ‘humanitarian visa’ for immediate travel would be a step towards respecting the basic human right to life and travel.

Why is it not so? I recently heard on the BBC radio that the reason you cannot claim asylum in this way is because Embassy’s will be unable to cope with the demand.

This is probably true, at least in the short term. People will be rushing to capital cities and setting up camp sites in the grounds of Embassy’s of their choice. But are they wrong to do this? Are they seeking preferential treatment? No, just wishing to make a claim for international help and avoid the perilous journey at the hands of criminals to safety.

Consider how much better the recent withdrawal from Afghanistan would have been if the processing of refugees was not taking place on the tarmac of the airport under the watchful eye of the Taliban, but in a safe and timely manner in an Embassy? There might be a coffee machine instead of a Kalashnikov.

But as things stand, governments reduce the risk of their various Embassy’s being ‘overwhelmed’ by forcing refugees risk their lives and perpetuated criminal trafficking gangs and modern slavers, before their claim will be considered.

The ‘don’t bother us’ principle is used to justify the injustice of the rules of the nineteenth century being applied in the twenty first. It’s as if the universality of the internet had never happened.

The question we should all be asking is, what will be our next vital need to be refused by our government on the grounds that the system cannot cope? Is their answer something we should question or tolerate?

Not Losing Our Heads

23/11/202111/12/2021 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

In my blogs I am often critical not of individuals but destructive thought patterns in common use. Thoughts have a life of their own both literally and metaphorically.

I shall ignore the former for now, and we are left with what Professor Carl G. Jung called the ‘collective unconscious’. This concept distinguishes the aptitude of a group of people to have shared unconscious awareness, similar the collective movements of a flock of birds. Sociologists who have studied the actions of rioters note how humans can act with a common purpose, which is part of the legal definition of ‘riot’. More worrying is that individuals are susceptible to consciously break personal moral codes – such as ‘thou shall not steal.’

*picture by Kim Aldis, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15534195*

I witnessed rioters in the Brixton area of south London in April 1981 running out of shops through broken display windows carrying swathes of clothing and other looted ‘goodies’. They were almost certainly not checking clothing sizes or colours when grabbing stuff…they just wanted to steal.

At the present time the news channels are reporting riots in cities around the world. Large numbers of people have decided not to be vaccinated. This has been respected up until now but governments are getting frustrated by the numbers of Covid cases continuing to rise. Vaccination is seen as the solution to disease control even though vaccinated people still spread the virus by touch and in their breath, and vaccinated people are being admitted to hospitals. The principle benefit of vaccination is that you are less likely to die. This is incentive to the individual and managing beds in ICU’s.

What governments principally want is an end of the pandemic – an objective almost certainly shared by 99% of the population. You might ask the question then, ‘if they agree, why are they fighting?’

The problem lies as always in the detail. Generalisations rarely reveal the truth but rather hide it. Is it not absurd that the government representing the people – fights the people? It is not absurd that some people ( whether the majority or not ) disagree with the methods by which the common objective is achieved.

This is the classic ‘the end justifies the means’ thought pattern.

‘Morally wrong actions are sometimes necessary to achieve moral right outcomes’. Wikictionary

The riots in Brixton were race riots by a young black community who felt they were not being given the same opportunities as other races.

They must have been thoroughly committed to their perceived morally high aim to risk skewering their life chances with a criminal record.

The question will always remain in any circumstance, what is the right thing to do?

In order to prevent ‘loss of life’ police in Holland, in the last few days, have been shooting protesters with lethal firearms. For their political masters, this method of achieving fewer deaths by Covid infection justifies the potentially murderous means to control of the population.

In the Western liberal democracies, individual rights of personal choice and freedom have been enshrined in human rights and other laws for decades, whereas the opposite is true in autocratic regimes like communist China. Should we be surprised that personal freedom symbolised by the ‘vaccine or no vaccine’ debate is held aloft as a morally high aim by Western individuals?

‘Actions can be considered right or wrong only in consideration of the morality of the outcome’. This extract from Wikitionary’s definition brings in another twist to the ends and means conundrum. How extreme can you go doing bad things to reach a good thing?

The answer for some is that humans can choose to go as extreme as they want. Terrorists who the night before are stroking their purring cats, will decapitate a human in pursuit of their ‘noble’ political aim, such as creating an ‘Islamic State’.

The most hideous of deeds appears to be justifiable in the human mind when ‘a good cause’ is the objective.

How can this stupidity be tolerated? Surely a sense of proportion and restraint should always be part of our understanding? A violent act is disproportionate to an action which is not violent.

This introduces the concept of ‘justifiably’. You might question whether the late Nelson Mandela was justified to commit terrorist acts in support of a political aspiration, acts for which he was jailed. Clearly public opinion changed over the decades as his political aims – the ANC to govern – became reality. He and his comrades were lauded as ambassadors of peace and released and accelerated to high political office.

The other day in the USA, a defendant was found not guilty by a jury of murder of two men and wounding a third using a gun. His defense was ‘self defense’.

Few people – even those untrained in law – will argue against a citizen’s right to defend themselves. It must be one of the most basic of human rights to preserve the life of one’s self…a suitably high moral mountain from which to also defend oneself from criticism.

And yet the most important nuance is being ignored which is – was the level of violence used in the act of self defense, proportionate?

I do not know about the case in the USA however I am baffled as to how a young man under 18 (a child in UK law) is able to be trusted with a lethal firearm and carry it in public at a political demonstration. I am also baffled as to how three men could approach this young man in such a way that the defendant thought they were about to kill him. Were they pointing guns at him? But most of all, I am baffled as to how the accused was able to kill two men and wound another without suffering any injuries himself. Were they unarmed?

In the United Kingdom the legal definition of self defense includes the measure of proportionality. So if someone attacks you in the street with a folded umbrella you may use your umbrella, and even your ‘Avengers’ bowler hat as well, to defend yourself. You may not pull out a knife to defend yourself an umbrella attack. This law is extended to private places so that if you should come across a burglar in your house you cannot shoot them.

I once confronted a burglar in my house when I was working as an architect in London. I used extreme verbal force which clearly scared the hell out of him. I was pretty confident in Shotokan Karate at that time and I had the option to floor him as he ran passed me to jump out of the window. But I was concerned he would fall on the radiator, hit his head and die. So instead I picked up the phone and called the police. Being an artist, I also made a pencil sketch of his face which I gave to police when they arrived. This later turned out to be a ‘dead ringer’ for a suspect a few weeks later.

My point is that proportionality is the greater part of the choice to justify an action. The end is like any future event; open to change and rarely achieved first time or in the expected manner.

We live in an increasingly fake and simplistic world. Public debate and political leadership is being reduced to three word slogans.

Thinking rationally is under threat in my view. If we lose this we will lose our freedoms and our democracies and accept whatever extremity is imposed upon us for ‘noble’ political aims.

The word has always be mightier than the sawn-off shotgun. May it always be so.

Prayer and Miracles

17/11/2021 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

Most people have some idea of what a prayer is. They will either pray on the basis of this belief or not. In the West young people are encouraged to pray in school and in some families at home as well. But as common as prayer is, I believe the question is rarely asked, ‘how does it work?’

I do not believe that prayer is a method of ‘getting things’ for yourself. It might be appealing to keep ‘requests to God’ as a back stop to failure in life, but that was never part of the deal with the Almighty. If we remember Genesis, part of the punishment for obtaining knowledge is freewill. That is, if we foul up it’s entirely our fault.

The Arabs have a saying; ‘Trust in God but tie up your camel first’. So when people ask the question, ‘how could God let this happen?’ they are imagining a perfect universe in which God is an autocratic ruler. That would be simple, but turning oneself into a victim and apportioning blame outside of oneself is a philosophy doomed to disatisfaction. It should be comon sense that camels will walk off on their own if not tied to a palm tree. We are responsible for our own actions and that was always the deal.

If you can agree with this philosophy of personal account and blameworthyness, then it is easy to adjust to the reality that God will not respond to prayers asking for earthly personal rewards.
To an intellectual where words are all that there is, this is an unsatisfactory state of affairs. They might become so frustrated by the lack of answers that they form the conclusion that ‘there is no God’. It’s logical but of course, logic does not run the Universe. If it did there would be no access to and need for spirituality.

In my own view and probably others, prayer does create change but an inward change, not outward. If you examine the palmed hands and prostration and kneeling common to many religions, it is obvious that a submissive posture and quiet mind is paramount to effective prayer. The effect of this is like plucking a guitar string in one room and somewhere else another guitar string chimes in sympathy. This is the resonant universe in which all things are connected quiet naturally and without effort. In this way, I argue, we are connected to the all powerful Creator God however you imangine that ‘Mind’ to be.

If you look at sacred imagary throughout history, minor gods and angelic forms are depicted carrying and playing musical instruments. The classic example is angels with harps, flutes and even reeds in the wind are metaphors for resonance between God and the physical world.

Prayer, in any religion, can have the effect of stilling the human mind and spirit to become in harmony with the God-self, that is the tiny part of the Creative Mind within ourselves. This is hidden reason why Muslims are required to pray five times a day, to keep the inner Divine strings humming constantly.

Resonance, to paraphrase the prophet of Islam, Mohammed, (sas) can move mountains.

Tibetan monks in 1939 were recorded by Kjellson levitating huges rocks up a mountainside to build a monastery. They used the power of their long musical horns arranged in a specific pattern and backed by rows of humans in prayer.

By becoming One with the Universe we can create events that we want.
This is part of the paradoxical nature of being alive in which a human with freewill can direct that freewill to union with the Creator of freewill and thus a ‘connection’ that is not connected…as in two strings vibrating in harmony.

So we move on to miracles. I said at the begining that prayer is not a means to get what we want. That was not quite true because there is an exception and that is miracle making.
There are rare moments (and by that I mean very rare) where Divine intervention at a resonant level as described, can make a humble individual ‘all powerful’.

Jesus the Christ was revered for his miracles, some of which are described quite literally in the Holy Bible and some allegorically. An example of a literal miracle is raising Lazarus from the dead, something Jesus was taught to do by the gnostics of the time. An example of an allegorical miracle would be turning water into wine.
In the old testament we have the Israelites being chased by the mighty Egyptian army and trapped by the Red Sea. One faithful follower entered the waters and started to walk. At the point where his head went under water the seas parted.

So if we ignore the allegorical stories about miracles as having another purpose, we can see the common theme that real miracles happen when an individuals or a collective’s very existence is in danger of extinction. It may not happen at a time and in accordance with human desire.

Delay and misdirection are caused by the impurity of our human resonance with God, not the other way around.
As the old saying goes, ‘the pot always calls the kettle black’. So the sooner we stop ignoring or doubting His prescence within each one of us, the sooner our lives will change.

You Will Own Nothing and You Will Be Happy

17/11/202122/12/2021 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

Quotation from ;The Great Reset by 2030 – World Economic Forum

What do the bad guys usually want? From the Blofeld’s and Goldfingers of our imaginations to the Alexander the Greats and Caesars, we might think the answer is, ‘world domination’.

In our present era, there is indeed smoke in the air warning us of a world conflagration. The word ‘global’ is something we are accustomed to hearing; in a way that would not have been, say one hundred years ago.

Since then, we have had round the world flights and sailing navigation’s and of course two world wars. Now we are told of a global climate emergency. Global is the new National.

Sadly, for we had to wait until the sea was lapping at our toes and the wind spinning away our hats before taking responsibility – if that was achieved at the recent COP 26 in Glasgow. Those living near the sea may be wise to go out and buy aqualungs.

*picture credit Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists*

Concurrently we have yet another global emergency called the ‘pandemic’. This could also have been better prepared for, as humanity has been fighting virus’s for it’s entire history and has never been so well armed to respond as we are today; even if the common cold has escaped elimination.

And then there is China, and the Chinese Communist Party. When I studied China in school fifty years ago, the Chinese people went around on flocks bicycles and ‘stuff’ was made in Hong Kong. Now the Chinese are the center of the world’s commerce and principle producer of goods. This is driven by low wages, long hours ( ‘search engine ‘ the numbers 669) and economical (though global climate harming ) global traffic and trade. Most Pacific rim nations view the highly capable Chinese military as their principle threat and many human rights organisations lay numerous allegations of inhumanity, at the door of the Chinese leaders.

First Chinese bicycles. Historical artwork of people riding bicycles in Shanghai, China, in 1900. Taken from: Histoire de la Locomation Terrestre, published in Paris in 1936. Credit Science Photo Library

Is all this global Covid, Climate and China just chance or should we be suspecting ‘foul play’ on a scale never conceived of before?

If humanity feels it is being forced into a corner with basic freedoms being taken away, why is this and who is doing it?

In my view the ‘giant at the top of the bean stalk’ is technology. No one ever voted for new technology. A few scientists have had second thoughts on realising how destructive their discoveries are e.g. the A-bomb…but most inventions, like the washing machine, set us free.

For the freedom loving democracies, life, in my view, is about to become a whole lot less free. To understand the means to this end one must only look at China and how it uses technology to control in fine detail, the lives of it’s citizens. CCTV cameras produce images with names and numbers floating above each face in the supermarket or airport concourse. Money as cash has long gone as it cannot be traced. Instead citizens wave their phones at tills in shops and the transaction goes straight to CCP headquarters…just in case they might need it.

By the time it reaches Europe and the USA I predict mobile phones will enable our governments to more or less monitor and control our lives. Everything you are and do will go to a special sealed circuit board in your phone. It will be called your ‘Freedom Pass’. Sounds okay doesn’t it, but read on. Interestingly Elon Musk has other plans to insert this techology directly into your brain, something that may be used instead of or as well as mobile phones. Both will of course be presented as benefits to the individual.

‘Everything you are’ means your personal details and bio metrics, consumer profile, money and possessions, travel, education, health and politics.

‘Everything you do’ means your work and leisure, credit and tax records, work skills and placement, travel credits, health status, voting credits.

The first of these should not surprise us as this is what computers do and have been doing since the 1990’s. What we haven’t reached yet is the experience of having our money and assets frozen because we voted for the wrong party ( oh yes, you will use your phone to vote ) or our self drive car restricted to no further than a five mile radius, (known as a withdrawal of travel credits ) because we put up a post on social media criticising the government.

Cleverly your ‘Freedom Pass’ will measure your ‘credits’ not take your ‘freedom’ away. It will just take credits that you were awarded for following government protocols, away. Your fault, not the governments.

If this future shocks and horrors you then there is an alternative, but be warned, it is not for the faint-hearted.

*picture credit Maribyrnong City Council*

The alternative is to throw your mobile phone into a lake. Some of us lived before mobile phones and before domestic computers and I can assure you, life was fine and dandy. Birds sang, beaches were clean and people made love not war.

If you fancy this lifestyle today it is probably because you are spiritual. I mean by this that for your life is not just about local gossip and watching TV and going to the supermarket – the sort of life style acted out on the TV soaps.

Those who have a deeper vision of what it is to be human and free will probably be either extremely rich ( so that they are part of the Global Government Party ) or spiritual. By spiritual I encompass all religions and those who have a feeling of a Divine presence or if you prefer ‘goodness in life’. For them it is not important if the supermarket refuses to accept payment because their money credit has been taken over by the State. There is an option, an alternative lifestyle that is not ‘Mad Max’.

You will have to leave the cities, where 50% of humanity have already been funneled. Eventually most people will eventually be sent to cities in order to ‘protect the environment’ or ‘preserve a scientific special interest zone’ or some other ‘desirable noble cause’. In reality it is to put the sheep in their pen.

Freedom lovers will vote with their feet and choose to live in small self-sufficient communities in remote locations. The governments will be powerless to stop this because they will not need to. People living ‘off the grid and off the net’ are no threat to what governments are aiming to achieve. However hard you try to grow just corn, there is always a corner or a dip in the field where weeds grow. Governments know this.

There will be ‘sheep’ and ‘goats’ in most countries across the globe. The sheep will be tended for their basic needs but under the watchful eye of the sheep dog. The goats will move to the wild lands, too high for sheep, too few in number for the sheep dog to chase.

Perhaps you will see in front of you the stairs that enable believers to climb into the ‘New Earth’ as Dolores Cannon calls it. Your vibrational level will change your perception fundamentally. Dolores uses the metaphor of an aircraft propellor which becomes invisible when it changes frequency of spin.

So even though your are still here , you will not be. What was important in the material world will become inconsequential. As a Tibetan monk once told the Dalai Lama after 18 years of captivity by the Chinese, ‘I was in danger twice. Both times because I came close to not forgiving my captors.’

Images of Horror

31/10/202111/12/2021 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

At this time of year on this particular blending of day and night, the troubles and terrors of other worlds come by.

At the crossing point of summer and winter there is a bridge that we all have to cross, like it or not.

Traditionally, Halloween or All Hallows Eve is celebrated, if that is the right word, all over the world, each in their own way for different reason and sometimes, the same.

The spirit worlds are occupied by all kinds of colourful folk and the nearest and perhaps dearest are the departed. If you wish to say one last thing to a recently departed loved one, now is the time to say it. For the two worlds are separated by little more than a thin curtain at this particular time and we can whisper what we wish to those we cared for.

Apart from these dearly departed there are other spirits. Some on the wild side have never left the pull of the earth’s gravity, wishing instead to experience life’s promised pleasures – even from a tantalising distance. The great show of human kind must be fascinating to watch from above, below and sideways. If you wish to demonstrate a tantrum of feelings and send down a little abuse to those who cannot usually see or hear your footfalls, then tonight is the night.

Evil of a greater kind is naturally also present and not so far off as many ‘good folk’ would wish. It bends a curled line of finger tips through the intervening space and grabs unlucky souls from behind, twisting their lives in directions no sane person expected. Whether it is a war or a car crash or a boat disaster of the clashing of people in normally loving families, the great long bearded shadow comes down harder than people fall.

And all of this has become Walt Disneyised. While Celtic folk are keeping their doors closed for the passing of Samhain and the Witches Sabbath, curiously dressed children wander in the streets knocking on doors. The inhabitants are invited to give them fear or favour, in the expectation that nothing could possibly go wrong, and usually, thankfully, it does not.

But you have to ask, what do these children think they are doing? And the older ones who arrive in each others houses for a ‘party’ dressed as ghouls and fools and everything in between.

As if the spirit world and the horror of it’s separation that we call death, is entertainment. In a society where everything is ‘rock solid’ and ‘safe as houses’, materialism blinds the sixth sighted ( as we all are ) from the more gaseous reality of our forefathers and fore mothers. Perhaps they believe the energetic world of the disembodied was jno more than ‘once upon a time’. Despite the ‘Faerie Stories’ of childhood when distant memories of ancient archetypes are explained to the very young ( at their repeated insistence ), despite this grounding in the aerial worlds, they have forgotten or lost the ability to believe.

Like Wendy and Peter Pan, you only have to believe, to fly and live for all eternity. But instead we settle for rattling the bones of the unloved and invisible from the comfort of living rooms and television screams.

In my humble view we should tread carefully on graves and respect what we do not know and would not wish to know if we knew. Horror is not just the jingling of the vertebrae of the spine. It is as real now as it ever was, in fact more so, for the skin of the world is unpeeling before our eyes. Like lava pouring from the cauldron of La Palma and climate change, we risk being overwhelmed by what we summon up through ignorance.

LEAR 270Howl, howl, howl, howl! Oh, you are men of stones. Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so That heaven’s vault should crack. She’s gone forever. I know when one is dead and when one lives. She’s dead as earth. Lend me a looking-glass. If that her breath will mist or stain the stone, Why then, she lives.

KENT Is this the promised end?

EDGAR Or image of that horror?

The Oldest Profession

18/10/2021 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

The Prime Minister of Spain, Perdro Sanchez, has announced his intention to make prostitution illegal as it ‘enslaves’ women. There certainly is no monetary benefit for the government to do this;

Prostitution was decriminalised in Spain in 1995 and in 2016 the UN estimated the country’s sex industry was worth €3.7bn (£3.1bn, $4.2bn). ( Source BBC News )

I live in Spain and when I first saw the ‘clubs’ on the edges of towns, I thought how sensible to make brothels legal, healthy and safe places. In the UK they are illegal and of course driven underground means illegal, unhealthy and unsafe. An estimated one in three Spanish men use them.

I am surprised that Snr. Sanchez uses such a crude approach to problem solving. The technique he is applying is commonly known as ‘throwing the baby out with the bath water’. In other words he has over simplified the problem and in doing so, lost the good as well as the bad.

Clearly a better approach to problem solving is to examine the detail first.

Prostitution is often referred to as ‘the oldest profession’. In ancient Egypt, Rome and Greece sex for money or sex without consent with slaves (or rape), was a social norm. Thankfully we have moved beyond slavery today, or have we?

Most people are aware that ‘sex slaves’ are imported into modern rich countries against their will. The organisers and pimps will attract young women with promises of a visa respectable job, a plane ticket, accommodation and a wage. Spurred on by a wish to get a better life for themselves, the victims eventually realise they have been trapped into slavery. A ‘debt’ has to be repaid for setting them up as a prostitute in another country. They are paid so little, if at all, that their prospects ever to move on are hopeless.

It should not be hard for a prime minister to focus his resources on finding such ‘sex slaves’ in his own country. A simple help line, a Facebook page and a team of volunteers giving support and passing intelligence to enforcement agencies is an obvious way forward. Slavery, rape, imprisonment, human trafficking and illegal immigration require no new laws.

The size of the problem should not be underestimated.

The Spanish police freed 896 women being exploited as sex workers in 2019 and estimate that over 80% of those working as prostitutes are victims of mafias. (source BBC News)

896 is a small proportion of the estimated 300,000 sex workers in Spain and the question should be asked of the police why only 896?

Whatever the mix, there are two types of prostitutes. Those who see themselves as legitimate ‘sex workers’ who demand and get respect and support from society and the state and those who are prostitutes against their will.

The second variety are really those who Mr Sanchez has legitimate concerns for but to fudge these concerns with ‘respect for women’ is to lose focus. The example I have given of sex trafficking and slavery, demonstrates that the Mafia is not interested showing respect to anybody. Strict enforcement of the law is absolutely necessary to protect sex workers and give modern slaves their freedom.

However, if a women chooses to become a sex worker and feels good in themselves for their free choice of occupation, who are we to judge? Some claim that this is economic co-ersion but by any measure is not a factory worker a victim of needing money to live?

Judgment opens the gates to hypocrisy at the most extreme level. The Victorians in 19th century Britain were against all sorts of things based on religious dogma. This did not prevent them committing mass murder during colonisation and non-consensual sex. ‘Jack the Ripper’ was a sort of emblem of how hatred of women can emerge as acts of pure horror.

Clearly laws did not prevent Jack from committing his fowl acts. A new law in the 20th century in Spain is not going to change behavior and it’s causes either. The whole profession is going to be moved out of the benign influence of health workers, social workers, immigration officers, police… into an underworld where ‘respect’ is seen as weakness.

In my view Spain is already a flag ship for showing respect to men and women working in the sex industry. Is the ‘high moral ground’ of ‘respect for women’ a disguise for old fashioned prudery?

All humans need to express their sexuality, whether we like it or not. Marriage used to be the means of making such feelings ‘sacred’ and approved by God no less, but as communities have at least half of their population enjoying a single life, making sex illegal between consenting adults (even if one party is being paid) is opening the path to hell. History tells us that just as history tells us slavery is wrong.

Understanding the problem before reaching a solution, is a skill not taught in schools, churches or political science degrees. In my view, generalised slogans such as ‘respect women’ and ‘black lives matter’ create well intentioned feelings without knowing what is wrong and how to fix it.

Agro and Shampoo

05/09/202111/12/2021 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

What is it with Hotels? I have to admit to having a problem with them.

The clue is in each hotel room. Central to the arrangement of most hotel rooms is a bed and a bed is generally, for sleeping in. And there we have the crux of where I find most hotels get it wrong. The whole notion that their guests basically just want to comatose, appears to be foreign to them. Because of this fundamental misunderstanding, much of what hotels provide becomes a waste of effort and money for all parties. People who want to sleep and or are asleep, do not require a conference suite, a swimming pool, a spa, a restaurant, a dining room, a library, a grand view of the city, an entertainment programme, a stage, a discotheque, wide screen television for sports coverage etc. etc.

We just want a bit of peace, and a toothbrush.

Instead, you get aggravation and cheap shampoo.

The problem with so called ‘facilities’ is generated in part by the hotel star system, which awards stars not on the quietness of the hotel and politeness of its staff, but on the breadth of it’s facilities.

I can accept there may be families and business travellers who intend to spend days and weeks in the hotel and need these things. In this case these quests should be directed to hotels which do not provide an environment for guests to sleep.

If I were head of the United Nations Peace on Earth Commission (if they don’t have one, they should), I would categorise hotels between places of rest and the rest. I would award ‘bed’ symbols for quietness rather than ‘stars’ for what are sources of sleep deprivation.

Perhaps it is time to give some examples of what I mean. I look back to earlier last year when I went with friends to a charming town in the Alpujarras in Southern Spain. The hotel where we stayed the night had a central courtyard around which corridors accessed private rooms. The floors and walls were compleltely tiled. This meant that every footstep was amplified depending on the size of guests steel toe caps. Every cough, conversation and slamming door, was heard by everyone. My friends in the morning, complained that they had to endure a woman talking for two hours on her mobile phone in the corridor, before they could get to sleep.

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