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The Trump effect: Even the Pope switches to English for his greetings to the US

September 21, 2015

Pope Francis is going out of his way to be a populist Pope. It makes him seem – in my perception – to have few convictions which cannot be overturned to suit perceived public opinion. The Pope will soon move on from Cuba to the US for a 3 day visit. He has sent a video greeting to the US and it seems he has been listening to Trump. He has recorded the video in English though most of his speeches in the US are expected to be in Spanish.

Now if only some of his audience would use English a little more.

“I look forward to greeting the pilgrims and the people of Philadelphia when I come for the World Meeting of Families,” Francis said in a video shared Sunday by Archbishop James Chaput of the Philadelphia Archdiocese. “I will be there because you will be there! See you in Philadelphia!”

Catholics unlike socialists, atheists and Muslims are acceptable as Presidential candidates across all sections of US society.

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POTUS: Socialists, atheists and Muslims need not apply

September 21, 2015

Ben Carson is getting a lot of flack – but what he said was that those whose values are not consistent with the US constitution should not be President, and that he believed that Muslim values were not consistent with the constitution. (I just heard an idiot BBC radio correspondent parse this to say that Carson had said that the Constitution disallowed Muslims and that was patently wrong). Carson could have chosen his words better and said instead that the “values of radical Muslims would not be consistent with the Constitution” and nobody would have been able to quarrel with that. Donald Trump is being criticised for not defending Barack Obama against someone who charged him with being a Muslim. (He countered – but later – that it was not his job to defend Obama).

But the real point here is that even all the mainstream media and all the “conventional” politicians see the characterisation of being a Muslim as negative and as an attack. Now why would that be? Why object to Obama being called a Muslim if that was not perceived as being derogatory?

In June this year, Gallup conducted a poll about the acceptability of different categories of people as President of the US (a question which apparently was first asked in 1937). The results are quite clear. For the country as a whole, socialists, atheists and Muslims need not apply.

Between now and the 2016 political conventions, there will be discussion about the qualifications of presidential candidates -- their education, age, religion, race and so on. If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be _____, would you vote for that person? June 2015 results

The 3 least acceptable categories and their relative positions are the same across Democrats, Independents and Republicans.

Willingness to Vote for President of Various Backgrounds, by Political Party, June 2015

When looking at the differences by age, opinions are very soft for those between 18 and 29 ( which is to be expected since those under 25 have brains where the critical cognitive faculties are not fully developed). Opinions harden with age. But even here the 3 categories least acceptable across all age groups are always socialists, atheists and Muslims.

Willingness to Vote for President of Various Backgrounds, by Age, June 2015

Across all political parties and across all age groups, socialists, atheists and Muslims – in that order – need not apply. Of course what Gallup does not show is who the socialists, atheists and Muslims find least acceptable.

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India still ranks abysmally low in the ease of doing business

September 18, 2015

Two reports have just been issued. The first is the World Bank’s assessment of doing business in India where India’s ranking among countries is depressingly low (considering the size of India’s economy). At 142nd of 189 countries India is in the bottom quartile of all countries. The second report assesses the relative success of the various Indian states in implementing business reforms and is issued by the World Bank and the Indian Government.

  1. Doing Business India 2015 World Bank
  2. State Assessment Report 14 September 2015

The WB assessment is broken down into 10 main areas and they have ranked 189 countries. In most categories the Indian ranking is embarrassingly low. (Even where the ranking is not too embarrassing, I note that there is a downside. Getting credit is apparently not too difficult but the other side of the coin is that the banks are sitting with a great deal of bad debt. Similarly minority interests are well protected but there are many cases of tyranny by the minority). I show the Indian rankings alongside those for Russia, China, Bangladesh and Mexico for reference.

In the overall ranking for Setting up a business India comes in at a lowly 142 of 189 countries. (Mexico 39, Russia 62, China 90, India 142, Bangladesh 173)

The rankings in the 10 main sub-categories are

  1. Starting a business –  Russia 34, Mexico 67, Bangladesh 115, China 128, India 158
  2. Dealing with construction permits – Mexico 108, Bangladesh 144, Russia 156, China 179, India 184
  3. Getting electricity – Mexico 116, China 124, India 137, Russia 143, Bangladesh 188
  4. Registering property – Russia 12, China 37, Mexico 110, India 121, Bangladesh 184
  5. Getting credit – Mexico 12, India 36, Russia 61, China 70, Bangladesh 131
  6. Protecting minority investors – India 7, Bangladesh 43, Mexico 62, Russia 100, China 132
  7. Ease of paying taxes – Russia 49, Bangladesh 83, Mexico 105, China 120, India 156
  8. Trading across borders – Mexico 44, China 98, India 126, Bangladesh 150, Russia 155
  9. Enforcing contracts – Russia 14, China 35, Mexico 57, India 186, Bangladesh 188
  10. Resolving insolvency – Mexico 27, China 53, Russia 65, India 137, Bangladesh 147

The second report deals with the performance of the different states in implementing reforms. Of course the states ranked high are now crowing over those ranked lower down. The hope of the Indian government is that this league table will enhance competition between states and will add an impetus to development.

State rankings September 2015

The ranking of the NCR of Delhi is almost pathetic and lies even behind an Uttar Pradesh (boosted by Noida) and a Haryana (boosted by Gurgaon). And while Gujarat is crowing over Bihar and Tamil Nadu peevishly questions the data, they all seem to forget that these are just state rankings for a country ranking which is abysmally low. States lying below 50% are at levels comparable to the lowest 10% of the 189 countries that have been ranked.

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Europe’s refugees just follow the ancient routes for the peopling of Europe in the Neolithic

September 17, 2015

Compared to the population of Europe of 740 million (500 million in the EU), the total refugee numbers of some 400,000 are not large enough to talk about “invasions” or being “over-run”. (In the short-term numbers may, of course, be locally overwhelming). But the routes being travelled now are the same routes that were used for the peopling of Europe in the neolithic. Neanderthals probably retreated westwards as the hunter gatherers from central Asia arrived. They had been absorbed and were long gone as a separate “race” by the time the 2 main agricultural waves arrived.

And now the refugee numbers are beginning to be large enough to be a not insignificant impact on the populations of Europe. It could well be a new “peopling of Europe”. Or it could turn out to be not so large or important. But history will probably show that the migrations of peoples into Europe in the early 22nd century was of similar importance to the neolithic migrations. History will probably show that this  migration is what stemmed the downward population spiral that was troubling Europe.

In ancient times –

First came the movement of peoples westwards into Europe. This was during the paleolithic some 40,000 – 20,000 years ago with hunter-gatherers coming from the east. The “admixture” events between the Neanderthals and modern humans could have been along the westward moving front.

Then came the advent of agriculture, starting earlier but in earnest perhaps about 10,000 years ago. Genetic evidence indicates 2 waves of farmers from the east who then mixed with the hunter-gatherers already there.

So it would seem that hunter-gatherers mixed with farmers from the east who spread across Europe about 9,000 years ago. They formed the first agricultural settlements. Then came the invasion of the nomadic Yamnaya culture around 5,000 years ago. The Yamnayans were much more individualistic than the peoples they replaced and gave rise to the prominence of the nuclear family and the development of large family holdings of cleared lands, rather than the clusters of people in village settlements. They came on horses and brought livestock. But by about 4,000 years ago they too were overrun by the warlike Sintashta.

peopling of europe in the neolithic - via daily mail

peopling of europe in the neolithic – via daily mail

and now the current refugee crisis has about 400,000 people moving north westwards –

Business Insider: According to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), EU countries received 437,384 asylum applications from January to July. The UNHRC also reports that during that time, Germany was by far the country that received the most asylum applications, with 188,486. Hungary came second in place with 65,415 applications, and Sweden took third with 33,234 applications. Italy was fourth with 30,223, and France was fifth with 29,832 demands. Many refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war and ISIS have been entering the European Union through Greece — 258,365 refugees entered Greece by boat so far this year — after going through Turkey.

europe's refugee crisis - business insider graphics

europe’s refugee crisis – business insider graphics

Nothing new under the sun.

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Posted in Behaviour, Demographics, Europe, Genetics, History | 2 Comments »

Obama still has no strategy for ISIS

September 17, 2015

Last year Barack Obama admitted he had no strategy, “yet”, for ISIS. By the latest admissions, he still doesn’t. He is pouring money into “fighting ISIS” but it would seem that there are many expensive but ineffective actions ongoing – but there are few signs of any coherent, comprehensive strategy with any real goals.

The latest example of money down the drain, with nothing to show for it, is revealed by the testimony of Gen. Lloyd Austin to the Senate Armed Services Committee. The $500 million program to train 5,400 Syrian fighters against ISIS started off by training and sending 54 well-armed fighters. Only 4 or 5 remain. The others have been captured or killed by Al Qaida or ISIS or have abandoned the fight.

CBS News: Only four or five U.S-trained Syrian fighters remain on the battlefield against militants with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East acknowledged Wednesday in the face of withering criticism from senators who dismissed the training program as a “total failure” and demanded a change of strategy. Gen. Lloyd Austin told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the U.S. is looking at better ways to deploy the Syrian forces, but he agreed that the U.S. will not reach its goal of training 5,000 in the near term. ….. 

The first group of 54 U.S.-trained Syrian fighters was sent into Syria in late July. But a Syrian affiliate of al Qaeda attacked the group, killing several of the fighters and taking others hostage. A number of the remaining fighters fled. Officially called the New Syrian Force, the contingent was trained by the U.S. military at a base in Turkey and sent across the border into Northern Syria, ……..

The committee’s chairman, Republican Sen. John McCain, called the U.S. strategy against ISIS a debacle. He said assessments by Austin and the Pentagon that the U.S. strategy is working is “divorced from reality.” And other senators focused directly on the stumbling training effort that takes months to identify and screen Syrian rebels for the program and has lagged far behind original goals. “We have to acknowledge this is a total failure,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said about the training. “I wish it weren’t so, but that’s the fact.”

Congress has approved $500 million to train Syrian fighters. Officials have said fewer than 200 are going through training now.

Last week we heard how Obama and Kerry missed the opportunity in 2012 to work with Russia to arrange for Assad to step aside in an orderly transfer of power. Was it just ego that stopped that? Was it the wishful thinking that the support being given to the splintered Syrian rebels by the US and the Europeans, would lead to a complete defeat of Assad.

I certainly have the perception that the US (and their European partners) have been more than a little incompetent in their efforts at regime change – whether in Iraq or Libya or Syria or even the Ukraine. Like it or not, it is the lack of a coherent strategy and the incompetence of  implementation of ad hoc actions, which has provided the space for ISIS to flourish. While Saddam and Gaddafi and Assad were in place, many were throttled, but so was ISIS.

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Bill Clinton probably forgot to wash the server before Hillary wiped it

September 13, 2015

It is probably a good idea to wash before you wipe.

The Washington Post is now reporting that Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server may not have been “wiped” after all and that all her e-mails may well be recoverable. Hillary is probably not very amused. A month ago Clinton was being rather sarcastic about her “wiping” servers with a cloth. The FBI had reported that attempts had been made to wipe her server and Clinton responded at a press conference

When asked specifically if she wiped the server, she ‘ummed’ and ‘ahhed’ then jokingly said “what with a cloth or something?“

washing up

But perhaps her dishcloth reference was based on reality. Perhaps she really did think that that was how servers were “wiped” clean.

Clinton probably just forgot that you must wash your server first before wiping it. Or was it that Bill, who she shared the server with, was supposed to do the washing while Hillary wiped?

WaPo:

The company that managed Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private e-mail server said it has “no knowledge of the server being wiped,” the strongest indication to date that tens of thousands of e-mails that Clinton has said were deleted could be recovered.

Clinton and her advisers have said for months that she deleted her personal correspondence from her time as secretary of state, creating the impression that 31,000 e-mails were gone forever. ……… To make the information go away permanently, a server must be wiped — a process that includes overwriting the underlying data with gibberish, possibly several times.

That process, according to Platte River Networks, the ­Denver-based firm that has managed the system since 2013, apparently did not happen. “Platte River has no knowledge of the server being wiped,” company spokesman Andy Boian told The Washington Post. “All the information we have is that the server wasn’t wiped.”

The server that Clinton used as secretary of state was stored at her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., and was shared with her husband, former president Bill Clinton, and his staff. The device was managed during that time by a State Department staffer who was paid personally by the Clintons for his work on their private system. ……….

All the e-mails from Clinton’s tenure at the State Department were on the server when the device was taken over in June 2013 by Platte River Networks, four months after Clinton left office. ………

A company attorney has said that all of Clinton’s e-mails were then migrated to a new server. The e-mails were removed from the second server in 2014, with Clinton’s attorneys storing those they deemed work-related on a thumb drive and discarding those that they determined were entirely personal. Copies of 30,000 work e-mails were turned over to the State Department in December and are being released to the public in batches under the terms of a court order.

So if it was all Bill’s fault maybe Hillary can turn this around.

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UK MPs vote for the duty to suffer and reject the right to die

September 12, 2015

We live longer but – as a recent study suggested – have longer periods of disabling conditions at the end of life. It was suggested that – on average – our increase in longevity meant that we also had an increasing period of “vegetable-like living” and that this period was of the order of 10 years. Life expectancy is increasing faster than “healthy life expectancy”.

Science Daily: Global life expectancy at birth for both sexes rose by 6.2 years (from 65.3 in 1990 to 71.5 in 2013), while healthy life expectancy, or HALE, at birth rose by 5.4 years (from 56.9 in 1990 to 62.3 in 2013).

That is 9.2 years of “unhealthy life” in a total of 71.5 years (12%). It would seem that each increase in life expectancy consists of about 90% of that increase being “healthy”.

But UK MPs believe the elderly have a duty to suffer. Virtually every organised religion lobbied against the bill to allow assisted dying and the bill was duly quashed yesterday. Yet about 80% of the UK population support such a bill. Perhaps this bill did not have enough safeguards but that was not the reason the bill was rejected. The real reason, I think, is the puritanical view of suffering being a duty – especially when it is the suffering of others.

There is no parliament in the world where the over-70s are not grossly under-represented. There is something illogical when medical assistance is available to terminate a foetus – with no consent by the foetus – but medical assistance is denied to people who are suffering and who, not merely consent, but wish to terminate their suffering.

Perhaps it is the views of the sufferers which should come into play?

BBC: 

MPs have rejected plans for a right to die in England and Wales in their first vote on the issue in almost 20 years.

In a free vote in the Commons, 118 MPs were in favour and 330 against plans to allow some terminally ill adults to end their lives with medical supervision.

In a passionate debate, some argued the plans allowed a “dignified and peaceful death” while others said they were “totally unacceptable”.

Pro-assisted dying campaigners said the result showed MPs were out of touch.

Under the proposals, people with fewer than six months to live could have been prescribed a lethal dose of drugs, which they had to be able to take themselves. Two doctors and a High Court judge would have needed to approve each case.

Dr Peter Saunders, campaign director of Care Not Killing, welcomed the rejection of the legislation, saying the current law existed to protect those who were sick, elderly, depressed or disabled.

He said: “It protects those who have no voice against exploitation and coercion, it acts as a powerful deterrent to would-be abusers and does not need changing.”

But Sarah Wootton, the chief executive of Dignity in Dying, said it was an “outrage” that MPs had gone against the views of the majority of the public who supported the bill.

But this will come. Currently life expectancy increases by about 2 -3 months  every year. By 2100 most people will be living to over 100 years. More than half will not suffer significant degradation for any lengthy periods at the end of their lives. But up to half will – unless they have the option to choose.

 

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By the numbers – Trump plus Carson could be formidable

September 12, 2015

Trump-CarsonProbably unthinkable, but from the outside looking in, the numbers suggest to me that a Trump + Carson ticket could overwhelm all the other Republican candidates. One Republican candidate has left the race (Rick Perry). Huckabee and Santorum will probably be the next to leave. And the Trump bubble is not imploding as all expected. In fact, the polls suggest that Trump is still gaining strength.

From RCP:

trump plus carson

GOP polls on 12th September 2015 — Real Clear Politics

The Republican establishment has proven to be a most ineffectual opposition to a weak indecisive President. They have not been able to use their strength in the house to actually do anything except to try and block Obama. Trump and Carson could ride an anti-establishment wave (tsunami?).

Against the Democrats, it is then difficult to see what permutation or combination of Clinton, Sanders, Biden and anybody else could withstand a Trump + Carson ticket.

The entertainment continues.

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Kick them, trip them, film them

September 9, 2015
After Petra Laszlo (original photo Reuters)

After Petra Laszlo (original photo Reuters)

The behaviour of Petra Laszlo, a camerawoman working for a station which is affiliated with Jobbik, Hungary’s far right party, has caught the headlines in all the media including in the New York Times.

It is not very pretty.

Is it just her values on display or were they “Jobbik’s values” or “Hungarian values” or “European values”? Or were they the “Christian values” of the Hungarian PM which were being defended? Or “Aryan values”?

NYT:

After more images appeared online showing Ms. Laszlo kicking migrants, including a child, her employer, N1TV, which works to popularize the virulently anti-immigrant Jobbik party, said in a brief statement that she had “behaved in an unacceptable manner,” and had been fired.

Video recorded by Ms. Laszlo for the broadcaster’s YouTube channel showed the man she tripped carrying a child in his arms as he ran from a police officer. The footage was edited to conceal the fact that Ms. Laszlo, wearing a surgical mask, had stuck out a leg to send the man sprawling.

This report is from Quartz:

After a Hungarian camerawoman was caught on film tripping a refugee carrying her child who was running away from Hungarian police, the camerawoman’s employer, N1TV, decided to terminate her contract.

The same camerawoman can also be seen kicking other refugees, including a young girl.

The incident happened in the town of Roszke in southern Hungary, close to the Serbian border, as refugees broke through a police line at a collection point. The woman has been identified as Petra Laszlo. The station she was on assignment for is affiliated with Jobbik, Hungary’s far right party.

 “An N1TV colleague today behaved in an unacceptable way at the Roszke collection point,” the TV station’s editor-in-chief said in a statement on Facebook, in which he also announced contract was terminated on the same day.

The video went viral, sparking outrage in Hungary and elsewhere. Opposition parties spoke of launching charges against Laszlo for “violence against a member of the community.”

Camerawoman for N1TV trips a carrying a small child as he runs from police

Embedded image permalink

Same N1TV camerawoman also caught tripping a young girl –

Embedded image permalink

How many more refugees did she kick that day? Perhaps she kept score.

Reuters has the picture of the man and his terrified son in all their misery after they were tripped by Petra Laszlo.

Photographer Marko Djurica, Reuters / Tuesday, September 08, 2015

Related:

Religions have no values – people do

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How Syrian refugees are helping to solve a German conundrum

September 8, 2015

Germany is now perceived as the land of “sanctuary” in Europe, which was once a position occupied by the UK for many years. Certainly after the xenophobia exhibited by the Hungarian government (but not by all Hungarians) and the reluctance of some other European governments to accept refugees (Czech Republic, Poland, Serbia, Denmark …..), Angela Merkel has won many brownie points by exhibiting a generosity not visible from other countries. In fact the response means that Germany now occupies the moral high ground. By announcing that they can take up to 500,000 per year for several years, they make other EU countries look like “hardhearted cheapskates”. The UK response, with 20,000 in 5 years makes Ebeneezer Scrooge look generous.  Even the US is shown up by German actions as just one of the group of countries who speak highly about the value of compassion but fail to walk the talk.

The Guardian:

Germany could take 500,000 refugees each year for “several years”, the country’s vice-chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, has said, as fresh clashes broke out overnight between police and refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos and thousands of people gathered amid chaotic scenes on the Greek border with Macedonia.

“I believe we could surely deal with something in the order of half a million for several years,” he told ZDF public television. “I have no doubt about that, maybe more.” Germany expects to receive 800,000 asylum seekers this year, four times the total for 2014.

But this generosity is not entirely due to altruism.

In March this year I posted about a study by the Bertelsmann Stiftung which pointed out how Germany needed to have an immigration level of 500,000 per year till 2050 to overcome labour shortages and compensate for an ageing population. It pointed out that “efforts to attract skilled workers from non-EU countries should be intensified.”

The report also pointed out that it would be difficult to maintain the level of skilled immigration needed. It would seem that for Germany to be fairly generous with its approach to Syrian refugees is not just altruism but may well be in Germany’s self-interest. The Syrians generally have a much higher level of education and skills than is evident from refugees originating from Africa and those that stay in Germany may well be able to enter the productive work force much faster.

The Syrian refugees help solve a conundrum that was faced by Germany.

Zuwanderungsbedarf aus Drittstaaten in Deutschland bis 2050

Press Release: Without immigrants, the potential labor force would sink from approximately 45 million today to less than 29 million by 2050 – a decline of 36 percent. This gap cannot be closed without immigration. Even if women were to be employed at the same rate as men, and the retirement age was increased to 70 in 2035, the number of potential workers in the country would rise by only about 4.4 million.

In 2013, a total of 429,000 more people came to Germany than left the country. Last year, the net total was 470,000, the Federal Statistical Office reports. According to the study, net immigration at this level would be sufficient for at least the next 10 years to keep the country’s potential labor force at a constant level. From that time onward, however, the need for immigrants will grow, because the baby-boomer generation will be entering retirement. One out of two of today’s skilled workers with professional training will have left the working world by 2030. …

….. the current high levels of immigration from EU countries (2013: around 300,000) will soon decline significantly, as demographic change is shrinking populations across the European Union, and because incentives to emigrate in crisis-stricken countries will decline with economic recovery. The experts forecast an annual average of just 70,000 immigrants or fewer from EU counties by 2050. For this reason, efforts to attract skilled workers from non-EU countries should be intensified. …

But Angela Merkel is implementing today actions that will be needed by nearly all European countries suffering from a declining fertility and a rapidly ageing population. It is no accident that Germany is probably best placed in Europe to have a chance of maintaining the critical ratio of its working population to its supported population (under 15s and over 65s) beyond 2050.

I begin to see Angela Merkel as being much more long-sighted and much more of a visionary than I have ever given her credit for.

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