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Turkey’s Byzantine machinations with people trafficking for Europe, oil trading for ISIS

December 3, 2015

Turkey (and Erdogan and his family) are living up to my perceptions of supreme Byzantine duplicity. They are involved in a particularly dirty game of complex intrigue and unprincipled double dealing in Syria.

The EU is going to pay Turkey some €3 billion to control the flow of refugees to Europe and for housing refugees in Turkey. The better the control that can be shown the greater the payment by the EU. Now Turkey has a mechanism in place to earn money from people trafficking. There is real financial benefit to show more coming in to Turkey across the border with Syria and to show that less of them are leaving for Europe. Moreover Turkish citizens now have visa-free travel to Europe. The fault lines in Europe are easy to exploit and Turkey is running rings around the EU.

Henry Barkey in Carnegie Europe: That Europe is selling out to Turkey is perfectly understandable in this light. But many in Europe will perceive as excessive the deal reached by Brussels and Ankara on November 29: money, visa-free travel arrangements for Turkish citizens, and the opening of a chapter of Turkey’s EU accession process in exchange for better management of the refugees and steps to prevent them from reaching Europe.

The EU is coming out as naive and gullible and complicit in Turkey’s people trafficking games.

But far more damaging are the Russian allegations of the involvement of Turkey, and more specifically of the President’s son, Bilal Erdogan, in the trading of ISIS oil.

BBC: Russia’s defence ministry has accused the family of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of being directly involved in the trade of petroleum with the Islamic State group.

Deputy Defence Minister Anatoly Antonov said Turkey was the biggest buyer of “stolen” oil from Syria and Iraq.

The Russians are getting very detailed about the involvement of Bilal Erdogan in profiteering from ISIS oil and even about Erdogan’s daughter providing aid and comfort to wounded ISIS fighters

MintPressNews: …….. Others reaffirmed Lavrov’s stance, such as retired French General Dominique Trinquand, who said that “Turkey is either not fighting ISIL at all or very little, and does not interfere with different types of smuggling that takes place on its border, be it oil, phosphate, cotton or people,” he said.

……. And while we patiently dig to find who the on and offshore “commodity trading” middleman are, who cart away ISIS oil to European and other international markets in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars, one name keeps popping up as the primary culprit of regional demand for the Islamic State’s “terrorist oil” – that of Turkish president Recep Erdogan’s son: Bilal Erdogan.

Byzantine Empire in 650 AD Wikipedia

William Engdahl writes in New Eastern Outlook:

More and more details are coming to light revealing that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, variously known as ISIS, IS or Daesh, is being fed and kept alive by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish President and by his Turkish intelligence service, including MIT, the Turkish CIA. Turkey, as a result of Erdoğan’s pursuit of what some call a Neo-Ottoman Empire fantasies that stretch all the way to China, Syria and Iraq, threatens not only to destroy Turkey but much of the Middle East if he continues on his present path.

In October 2014 US Vice President Joe Biden told a Harvard gathering that Erdoğan’s regime was backing ISIS with “hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons…” Biden later apologized clearly for tactical reasons to get Erdoğan’s permission to use Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base for airstrikes against ISIS in Syria, but the dimensions of Erdoğan’s backing for ISIS since revealed is far, far more than Biden hinted. …..

The prime source of money feeding ISIS these days is sale of Iraqi oil from the Mosul region oilfields where they maintain a stronghold. The son of Erdoğan it seems is the man who makes the export sales of ISIS-controlled oil possible.

Bilal Erdoğan owns several maritime companies. He has allegedly signed contracts with European operating companies to carry Iraqi stolen oil to different Asian countries. The Turkish government buys Iraqi plundered oil which is being produced from the Iraqi seized oil wells. Bilal Erdoğan’s maritime companies own special wharfs in Beirut and Ceyhan ports that are transporting ISIS’ smuggled crude oil in Japan-bound oil tankers. ….

… In addition to son Bilal’s illegal and lucrative oil trading for ISIS, Sümeyye Erdoğan, the daughter of the Turkish President apparently runs a secret hospital camp inside Turkey just over the Syrian border where Turkish army trucks daily being in scores of wounded ISIS Jihadists to be patched up and sent back to wage the bloody Jihad in Syria, according to the testimony of a nurse who was recruited to work there until it was discovered she was a member of the Alawite branch of Islam, the same as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who Erdoğan seems hell-bent on toppling. …….. 

I note that though Turkey is part of the US coalition, they have only attacked Kurdish fighters in their strikes in Syria. And now they have also shot down a Russian fighter which was threatening their oil from Da’esh. I am left with the perception that Turkey’s priority is overwhelmingly the suppression of the Kurds. Anything is acceptable to prevent a Kurdistan getting off the ground (let alone a greater Kurdistan). The second priority is to stir the conflict to make it as lucrative as possible for Turkey and its ruling families. Getting rid of Assad is also on their list, but not at the price of advancing the Kurds. If Da’esh (ISIS) is to take over from Assad and curb the Kurds, then that is perfectly acceptable. To fight Da’esh is not even explicitly on their list as an objective.

Why Barack Obama and John Kerry put up with the Turkish duplicity is not clear to me. That Turkey is a member of a belligerent and expansionist NATO (What has Turkey to do with the North Atlantic? and now Macedonia?), may provide some explanation. But recalling the way in which Biden changed his tune suggests that US “principles” are fairly flexible here. Unless Turkey’s protection of the flow of funds to Da’esh is stopped, no strategy to eliminate them can succeed. (Of course to stop the “idea” of Da’esh, requires that Saudi Arabia stop playing games). Now with Raqqa under attack it seems Turkey is also complicit in allowing Da’esh members to escape to Libya to set up an alternative “safe zone”.  Such a Turkey as a member of the EU and as its first majority Muslim country is almost frightening.

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Posted in Behaviour, Europe, European Union, Politics, Turkey | Comments Off on Turkey’s Byzantine machinations with people trafficking for Europe, oil trading for ISIS

A Holy European Empire is – for now – untenable

November 29, 2015

The EU has been facing an unprecedented assault on its borders with the refugee crisis. So much so that internal dissent about the free movement across the EU has never been higher. The Schengen agreement has been suspended and member states are reintroducing border controls. Political disparity across the member states ranges from far-left governments (Greece, Portugal….) to nationalistic governments which include far-right elements (Poland, Hungary…). Economic disparities across the member states are also extremely wide with the poverty (relative) of Greece and Romania at one end and the wealth of Scandinavia and Northern Europe at the other. Some members pay only lip service to fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets (inevitably these are left-of centre governments and includes France) while others keep within the nominally required deficit limit of 3% of GDP. Civic values are not homogeneous across the EU and individual behaviour follows national mores. In Greece, to pay tax is almost a “sin” and tax avoidance is a national game. In Sweden, it is almost considered a sin for a handyman to be paid in cash for fixing a creaking door and waiters are expected to declare and offer up their tips for taxation.

EU 28 members Oct 2013

EU 28 members Oct 2013

At the core of the EU idea has been a vision of a Holy European Empire which is far, far more than a free trade zone. It was a vision of a modern Utopia, a homogeneous Empire, a single state, administered from Brussels and stretching far into Asia, all the way till Kazakhstan. People would be citizens of Europe first. The nations would fuse their sovereignty into that of the Empire. Values and living standards and employment opportunity and prosperity would be uniform. There would be a single currency and a uniformity of education, health and welfare services across this new Empire. It would be a Holy Empire in that the values it espoused would be the envy of, and the standard aspired to by, the rest of the world.

There’s nothing wrong in having such a vision, but instead of trying to do this over a few centuries or a millennium, the EU has tried to do this over decades. Worse, EU leaders have not bothered to carry people with them but have allowed the administrators to lead the way. Country after country has been admitted to membership even though the disparities of values and prosperity and politics and behaviour were huge. In the last 30 years it has been an aggressively expansionist EU. The tail has been wagging the dog. Enforced monetary union has been used as tool to try and enforce a fiscal uniformity instead of being as a result of fiscal harmony. Free movement of labour has been encouraged before establishing harmony of unemployment and welfare benefits. There has been a significant number of people moving (always towards the more prosperous nations) – not for the sake of employment – but for the sake of the welfare services available. Brussels has became a place where the worst practices within member states become enshrined as the norm, rather than being from where best practices are disseminated.

The expansion has gone too far, too fast. And now the cracks can no longer just be papered over. The geographical boundaries have been expanded and the borders have become indefensible. So much so that “the fall of Rome” is being looked at as an analogy.

Business Insider: Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte suggested that western European states might need to bring in a “mini-Schengen” to deal with the bloc’s migrant crisis, ….. He turned that into a more startling analogy, according to a report from the Financial Times. Here’s the kicker:

“As we all know from the Roman empire, big empires go down if the borders are not well-protected,” said Mr Rutte in an interview with a group of international newspapers. “So we really have an imperative that it is handled.”

Niall Ferguson is professor of history at Harvard University and writes in the Boston Globe:

Paris and the fall of Rome

…. Here is how Edward Gibbon described the Goths’ sack of Rome in August 410 AD:

“In the hour of savage license, when every passion was inflamed, and every restraint was removed . . . a cruel slaughter was made of the Romans; and . . . the streets of the city were filled with dead bodies . . . Whenever the Barbarians were provoked by opposition, they extended the promiscuous massacre to the feeble, the innocent, and the helpless . . .”

Now, does that not describe the scenes we witnessed in Paris on Friday night?

True, Gibbon’s “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’’ represented Rome’s demise as a slow burn over a millennium. But a new generation of historians, such as Bryan Ward-Perkins and Peter Heather, has raised the possibility that the process of Roman decline was in fact sudden — and bloody —rather than smooth: a “violent seizure . . . by barbarian invaders” that destroyed a complex civilization within the span of a single generation.

…. Let us be clear about what is happening. Like the Roman Empire in the early fifth century, Europe has allowed its defenses to crumble. As its wealth has grown, so its military prowess has shrunk, along with its self-belief. It has grown decadent in its shopping malls and sports stadiums. At the same time, it has opened its gates to outsiders who have coveted its wealth without renouncing their ancestral faith. Uncannily similar processes are destroying the European Union today, though few of us want to recognize them for what they are. …….

It is conventional to say that the overwhelming majority of Muslims in Europe are not violent, and that is doubtless true. But it is also true that the majority of Muslims in Europe hold views that are not easily reconciled with the principles of our modern liberal democracies, including those novel notions we have about equality between the sexes and tolerance not merely of religious diversity but of nearly all sexual proclivities. And it is thus remarkably easy for a violent minority to acquire their weapons and prepare their assaults on civilization within these avowedly peace-loving communities. ……

…… I do know that 21st-century Europe has only itself to blame for the mess it is now in. ……. “Romans before the fall,” wrote Ward-Perkins in his “Fall of Rome,” “were as certain as we are today that their world would continue for ever substantially unchanged. They were wrong. We would be wise not to repeat their complacency.”

The EU has to put its grand visions of a Holy European Empire on the shelf for now. It has to focus on the building up of the fundamentals of economic prosperity and fiscal rigour and trade among its members, and forget – for now – its ambitions to force economic uniformity on its members. It has to stop interfering and trying to be a social engineer. Values cannot be imposed, they have to develop naturally. When all member states have achieved, each in its own time, a uniformity of values, fiscal structure and economic prosperity, a single currency will be the natural outcome. And if a Holy European Empire is ever to develop it can only do so when it becomes the obvious choice for the peoples of its member states.

 

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G20 meets in Turkey today – but will Saudi and Turkish (and EU) support for ISIS be confronted?

November 15, 2015

The agenda of the G20 meeting starting in Turkey today will be dominated by Paris – and so it should.

The G20 is made up of 19 countries and the EU: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and the European Union.

129 people died in Paris on Friday night and another 90 are still in critical condition. At least two of the terrorists had posed as refugees passing through Turkey and Greece just about a month ago. One more has now been identified as a known, 29 year old, “radicalised” French citizen.

The G20 is intended primarily as an economic forum, but Paris and Syria and ISIS can be expected to dominate. But I am not sure that any discussions about ISIS will be open enough or sufficiently meaningful in addressing root causes. To do that the agenda would have to include,

  1. the tacit support for ISIS from Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and
  2. the funding and growth of ISIS caused by the EU and US support of anti-Assad  rebels, and
  3. the misguided “multiculturalism” in the EU which – among other things – allows Saudi funded, radicalising mosques and madrassas all across Europe, and
  4. the EU “soft” policies which have now probably allowed at least hundreds of terrorists to be sneaked into Europe as “refugees”.

Both Saudi Arabia and Turkey are members of the G20, but their support for ISIS, not officially perhaps, but indirectly and by inaction and by default, will not, I think, be confronted directly. Turkey is a Nato member and is “protected” from criticism of its excesses. Criticism of Saudi Arabia is always muted from those countries dependent on oil imports or defence exports.

A great deal of ISIS financing is from private Saudi sources but surely not without the knowledge of the Saudi authorities. The official Saudi support is ostensibly for groups of Sunni rebels who are opposed to Assad and who are also said to be opposed – sometimes very mildly – to ISIS. Moreover some of these groups are no more than conduits to ISIS and al Qaida. Saudi Arabia’s primary aim seems to be to support anti-Shia groups and opposition to ISIS is only secondary. If ISIS was the only Sunni group available to oppose the Shia forces then Saudi Arabia would make sure they were supported.

Prince Bandar bin Sultan, once the powerful Saudi ambassador in Washington and head of Saudi intelligence until a few months ago, had a revealing and ominous conversation with the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove. Prince Bandar told him: “The time is not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be literally ‘God help the Shia’. More than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them.”

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the other Sunni Gulf States, all want the Shia to be wiped off the face of the Earth and if that means supporting the murderous psychopaths of ISIS – well, the end justifies the means.

In the case of Turkey, it is also an overwhelming desire to prevent any Kurdish state which rules their actions. Turkish hatred of a Kurdistan is on a par with the Saudi hatred of the Shia. They are also against terrorism, provided that the Kurds are first defined as terrorists. And ISIS, as an enemy of their Kurdish enemies, is often their friend. Turkey sees Kurdish successes in Northern Iraq and parts of Syria as ominous and are quite happy to bomb Kurds in or close to Turkey, even if it helps ISIS to gain territory.

Greater Kurdistan dreams map from Jon Davis via Quora

Greater Kurdistan dreams map from Jon Davis via Quora

Turkey will not take actions against ISIS if there is any chance that Kurds may gain an advantage.

I don’t expect the G20 meeting to get more than empty statements from Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Obama will order a few more air strikes. The EU is now a dithering and fractured entity. In fact the EU is now part of the problem and European countries (France, UK, Germany …) will need to act independently to oppose and attack the growth of ISIS. The G20 meeting in Antalya will get no commitments

  1. from Turkey to attack ISIS even if it helps the Kurds, or
  2. from Saudi Arabia to shut off all private funding for ISIS, or
  3. even to withdraw official Saudi support from Sunni groups who “leak” funds to ISIS, or
  4. from the EU to stop the funding from the Middle East of radicalising mosques and madrassas in Europe, or
  5. from the EU to winnow out the terrorists and criminals from among the influx of “refugees”

Sunni Muslims across the world need to pay more than lip-service to opposing the barbarism of ISIS. The Shia are already opposed to all things Sunni. But far too many Sunnis – by inaction – allow their own fanatics to prosper. They allow their fanatic imams to continue preaching their brand of hatred. They turn a blind eye to their radicalised sons and daughters. They too harbour dreams of the establishment of a new Islamic (Sunni, of course) Caliphate and have secret sympathies for the objectives of those “fighting” or murdering for this dream.

I am afraid that Sunnis anywhere (and for me that means all over Europe and the Middle East, Africa and even India, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia) who do not declare themselves – by word and action – to be against the Islamic Caliphate must be taken to be supporters of, and sympathisers with, ISIS.

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Poland demonstrates that the EU is not one country – yet

October 26, 2015

Poland has moved quite decisively to the right and towards an anti-EU stance. It demonstrates once again that the dreams of a New Holy Roman Empire in the form a single European nation state are more than a little premature. A single state can only follow a levelisation of living standards and a natural homogenisation of fiscal and monetary policies. Brussels has to learn (and so do Hollande and Merkel) that a single EU state cannot be imposed by dictat or by fiscal and monetary coercion. The Euro has to be a consequence of levelisation. As a tool for levelisation, it is a very blunt and ineffective instrument.

Colours of the EU

Colours of the EU

BBC:

Poland’s conservative opposition Law and Justice party has won parliamentary elections. Exit polls suggest it has enough seats to govern alone, with an anticipated 39% of the vote.

Its eurosceptic leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has claimed victory, and the outgoing Prime Minister, Ewa Kopacz of the centrist Civic Platform party, has admitted defeat.

Law and Justice has strong support in Poland’s rural areas. If the numbers suggested by the exit poll are confirmed, it will be the first time since democracy was restored in Poland in 1989 that a single party has won enough seats to govern alone, the BBC’s Adam Easton in Warsaw says.

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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 »

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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Religions have no values – people do

September 5, 2015

I wish all organised religions were obsolete and I am hopeful that eventually they will be. I find it obscene that children are brainwashed into “religious beliefs” and that organised religions presume to impose their orthodoxies onto others. A belief cannot exist in the space of knowledge. All religions are merely “belief systems” which live in the space of ignorance and it irritates me that religions compete on the grounds of “my ignorance being superior to yours”. An individual can well have religious beliefs and I see nothing wrong with that. What I dislike is that a group imposes a “belief” – which is nothing but an ignorance – on an individual. That is my definition of brain-washing. “What I don’t know is better than what you don’t know”.

Values are created from an informed judgement by a thinking person. Is it good, is it bad? What is beautiful, or admirable, or ethical, or not, are all judgements made by individuals after a cognitive process. They do not come out of group-think. I would suggest that an individual’s value comes first and the values of a group can only be built up as a composite of the many different individual values in the group. A “group value” once created can be imposed on an individual as “a rule to be obeyed”, but that does not make it his value. A value requires a cognitive process, and as long we don’t have ESP the cognitive process is an individual property.

Values are – and can only be – those of individuals – not of religions. Religions kill infidels or unbelievers alike by exploiting those of their followers who give little value to human life. Religions make rules. These rules are not values. Values, as a cognitive property, are inherent in thinking individuals. Unthinking individuals follow a lazy path and adopt – or are coerced into adopting – religious rules to be their “values”. Or they accept the imposition of somebody else’s values because they are too lazy to think through their own. It is the same with governments. They make rules. These rules are not values.

I cannot see that there is any such thing as “Christian values” or “Muslim values”. I can see the values (or absence of values) exploited by the hierarchies of organised religions. Were Nazi values also Christian values as they claimed to be? Were they Christian values on display in Northern Ireland? or in Bosnia? Is anti-semitism a fundamental Christian value? Or were they Muslim values which led to all the predatory grooming of young girls in Rotherham? Or Muslim values which gives the barbarism of the IS? Catholics versus Protestants is not so different to Shia versus Sunni.

In the current displacement of Syrian and other refugees – from countries destabilised and bombed to ruins by the EU and the US in the name of democracy – there is much talk of “European values”. Without the destruction of Iraq and Libya and attempted nation building in Syria by the EU, there would be no IS and few Syrian refugees.  “European values” are being used to both argue for and against providing help to the refugees created to a large degree by US and European actions. These supposed ” European values” are used both by the left to prop up their moralising and by the nationalist right to paint alarmist pictures. The right likes to see the issue as an epic battle between “Christian values” and Muslim values”. It is also worth noting that in Europe today, it is Germany – not the UK – which is perceived by refugees as the land to seek sanctuary in. But there is no such well-defined thing as “European values”. Values across Europe are not homogeneous. They are a mishmash of values ranging from sanctimonious humanism at one end through to virulent xenophobia at the other.

I find that values are independent of religion but a supposed connection is hijacked by political parties to suit themselves. The nationalist right still believes they are on a Crusade. The IS does the same in their pursuit of jihad. But the reality is as the Hungarian Prime Minister puts into words. It is what is thought by virtually all right wing nationalist parties in Europe and their supporters (and that includes UK, Sweden, Germany, Austria, France, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Greece among others).

IB Times:

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has warned that the growing Muslim influx is threatening Europe’s “Christian roots”. Defending Hungary’s response to the migrant crisis, Orban said his country did not want to admit large numbers of Muslims.

Writing an opinion piece in Germany’s Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung, the Hungarian prime minister said: “Those arriving have been raised in another religion, and represent a radically different culture. Most of them are not Christians, but Muslims. That is an important question, because Europe and European culture have Christian roots. Or is it not already and in itself alarming that Europe’s Christian culture is barely in a position to uphold Europe’s own Christian values? …. Is it not worrying in itself that European Christianity is now barely able to keep Europe Christian? There is no alternative, and we have no option but to defend our borders.”

The issue of the day – and for the next few years – in Europe is the inflow of foreigners (refugees, asylum seekers, guest workers, and other immigrants) in to countries where otherwise population would decline. (And therefore for the next decade it is going to be the issue of “immigration” which will dominate all European elections). The paradox I see is that Europe needs to get its population to stop declining. The “native European” birth rate is not going to increase and therefore immigration must increase. And at the same time so will the xenophobia – at least for another decade or two.

Neither governments or religions have – or can have – values. People do. And when it comes to Christians versus Muslims, I wish “a plague on both your houses”. When organised religions finally do become obsolete, it will not eliminate the murderous inclinations of many humans. But it will remove one excuse used to justify the hate and the barbarism.

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A real correlation from a real causal relationship

August 31, 2015

A green fantasy rather than just a mirage. And I am afraid that the fantasy is intentionally malicious and not just the delusions of sanctimonious do-gooders. Just following the money reveals those who have gained the greatest benefit.

No doubt the Danes and the Germans have ensured a mild and benevolent climate for themselves?

Note that this is just the direct price paid by the consumer and does not include the cost of subsidies which are sourced from general taxation.

Chart by Euan Mearns.

The Y-axis shows residential electricity prices for the second half of 2014 from Eurostat. The X-axis is the installed wind + solar capacity for 2014 as reported in the 2015 BP statistical review normalised to W per capita using population data for 2014 as reported by the UN.

Renewable energy does have a niche where it makes very good sense – but it is not common sense which rules in Europe today.

 Eurostat

2015 BP statistical review 

UN population data.

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Surge of news articles suggests that EC will approve GE acquisition of Alstom’s power and grid businesses

July 22, 2015

I speculated a few days ago that the remedies that GE had submitted to meet the European Commission’s concerns for this deal could well succeed. I also speculated that GE would have addressed concerns in two main areas; gas turbine technology and the business of servicing the Alstom fleet of gas turbines.

The EC decision is not due till late August but I observe that there has been a surge in speculative reports about a likely approval. These are appearing in the business and in the trade press and my guess is that they must be based on some background, unattributable discussions not only with Alstom and GE officials but also with officials of the EC. It does seem that a conditional approval will come in August and with the time needed for implementing the proposed remedies, financial closure could come early in 2016, Q1. Financial closure by the end of 2015 would be a little optimistic.

Reuters: France sees ‘reassuring elements’ in GE/Alstom bid

Nuclear Power Industry News: GE Proposes “Remedies” In Push For Alstom Acquisition

WSJ: GE Says It Submitted Remedies to EU Regulators for Alstom Deal

Recharge: Alstom CEO says GE deal ‘moving ahead’ as pair await EU verdict

The Street: GE’s $13.8 Billion Alstom Deal Likely to Get EU Approval, Alstom CEO Says

 

 

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GE close to getting EC approval for Alstom acquisition

July 18, 2015

After a closed door meeting on 2nd July with the EC to explore the EC’s concerns over its acquisition of Alstom’s power and grid business, GE was given till 16th July to make a written submission of any modifications to the deal. The EC decision is expected by the 3rd week of August.

GE has now made its written submissions and they should now be clearly focused on the EC’s concerns. My guess is that GE would have addressed two areas:

  1. So as not to block potential – and qualified – competitors from entering the HDGT market, GE may have offered to make “open source” that technology and IP from Alstom which they do not use themselves. This could, for example, be done by making specified patents and associated test and operational results “freely” available though, perhaps, subject to some nominal royalties. These concessions may satisfy the EC’s concern that the number of OEM’s for HDGT’s would decrease such that there would be an unhealthy concentration of market share.
  2. So as to ensure that pricing for the servicing and for spare parts for Alstom’s fleet of engines would not be unduly or unfairly increased, GE could have offered to limit some margins on this business. They could, for example, hold or index prices for spare parts to 3rd party service providers in – say – Europe for machines installed prior to – say – the year 2000. I suspect that GE would have found a creative way to ensure that their business plan revenue from the service business was maintained with concessions to the EC only on margins rather than on revenue. This should bridge much of the gap, since the EC is primarily looking to avoid monopoly or predatory pricing and unjustifiable margins.

I expect that EC approval for the deal is now very close. Perhaps one more iteration will do the trick. Of course I am only speculating and I personally would like to see the deal go through.

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