Midsommar’s Eve tomorrow and back to paganism

June 18, 2015

The summer solstice (June solstice) in the Northern Hemisphere, based on the actual movement of the Earth around the Sun falls this year on Sunday, 21 June 2015, 18:39 CEST.

Where we live the Sun will rise at 0346 and set at 2211 and the forecast is for an overcast, but dry, day and a maximum expected temperature of 17ºC. (Not exactly high summer weather).

Christianity did not like these “natural” feasts and festivals which had no connection to Divine happenings. All “pagan” and other natural feast days were gradually hijacked by the Church, and mid-summer was taken over by the Church to be the 24th of June as being the nativity (birthday) of John the Baptist. This was close enough to the pagan celebrations (in mid-June in medieval times) for the start of summer, for the feast to be appropriated by the Church. (Just as Christmas was used as the vehicle to hijack the birthday of the Sun). The text in Luke 1:36 – 56,57, puts this day 6 months before Christmas. But counting backwards from Christmas in the Roman way brings us to 24th June rather than the 25th.

Christmas was “the eighth day before the Kalends of January” (Octavo Kalendas Januarii). Consequently, Saint John’s Nativity was put on the “eighth day before the Kalends of July.” However, since June has only thirty days the feast falls on June 24.

Sweden reverts to paganism for Midsommarsafton (Mid-summer’s Eve) and for Midsommar (Mid-summer). But modern pragmatism and the need to have a national holiday has led to Midsommar always being celebrated on the Saturday lying between 20th and 26th June and this allows the preceding Friday to be the extra holiday for Midsommarsafton. This year Saturday is the 20th and tomorrow, Friday 19th, is the Midsommarsafton holiday.

However the solstice does not actually arrive till Sunday.

Midsommar is strawberries, flowers, spiced schnapps, pickled herring, boiled potatoes, cold beer and much carousing.  (I’ll take the strawberries and the cream and the schnapps but the herrings and the potatoes leave me cold). It used to be in Sweden that births peaked clearly in March following the midsommar festivities and drunken goings-on. But nowadays there is a sustained plateau which lasts from March till September with hospitals under pressure in July. (But the July pressure is mainly because everybody is on semester and much of Sweden is closed). That suggests that carousing begins in Spring and carries on till the end of the semester month.

I observe that if there is any national religion left in modern Sweden, it is no longer the Swedish Church, but is a return to pagan traditions and the worship of Midsommar followed by the month of semester. In fact the national religion is as close to Sun worship as any ancient civilisation may have had. And since I don’t have the appropriate cold-weather genes, my firm belief in Sol Invictus is reawakened every spring.

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If a Grexit is coming, ordinary Greek savers need to “go to the mattresses”

June 17, 2015

I was talking to a “middle-class” Greek acquaintance, and I don’t envy him the lack of options he has. He didn’t vote for Syriza and is resigned but a little bitter. Tsipras is caught in the double quagmire of trying to end “austerity” without ending it and of leaving the Eurozone without being blamed for it. What he will not tell his supporters is that a “majority vote” does not change reality. The only way left seems to be for a Grexit so that Greece can default, force the write-down of its debts, return to its own drachma, introduce exchange controls, spend as much as it wants to, and where the drachma will take its own value.

But the burning question for all those with their savings in Greek stocks, real estate or as cash in banks is how they can protect the value of what they do have? Their options are limited. Holding on to non-performing, and now almost unsellable real estate in Greece is virtually forced. The value of that real estate will be whatever it will be. Its value as security will be even further impaired in the event of a Grexit. Staying in stocks is now highly risky Even to stay in stocks of companies which are mainly export driven offers no great safety. To convert as much real estate, bonds and stocks to cash (pre-Grexit Euros) as possible and before the real rush starts, is probably the only way forward for the ordinary “middle-class” saver.

Even for funds held at institutions, the window to do anything is very short. There is talk of exchange controls being introduced as early as the coming week-end. Shifting funds to non-Greek banks in the Eurozone is one way but that almost requires that they already have an account they can shift to. Opening a new bank account in say Germany or France will not be managed very quickly. Of course many Greeks (including my acquaintance) already have such accounts and the Greek banks could see (are seeing?) a flight of funds to Euro accounts outside the country. To move to another currency at a “safe” institution abroad (Dollars, Pounds, Kronor or Yen for example) is a lot safer than just staying in the Euro which will surely lose value with a Grexit. But this is not so easy for the ordinary Greek saver. He could convert to gold and maybe even some Bitcoins.

But so far as my acquaintance was concerned, the one thing he did not want to do was to hold “virtual” Euros in a Greek institution. He owed little on his house but he couldn’t sell it. He was quite resigned to the reduced value it has reached and after all, that value did not impact his daily life. He was not, at his age, moving out of Greece. He had sold off all stocks that he had which had increased or had not lost more than 10% of their purchase value. Paradoxically, he felt that companies which had already lost much greater value might come out best from the storm.  He had purchased US Dollars and GB Pounds (as physical banknotes) as much as he could. He was planning to buy some gold but was too wary to risk buying Bitcoins. As much of the rest of his savings as possible would be converted to Euro banknotes before this weekend. But he was worried that the banknotes would run out. He had invested in a very solid safe.

He was  planning, he said to, “go to the mattresses”. Literally.

I can only wish him luck.

 

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A feudal culture of sexual harassment at Greenpeace India

June 16, 2015

I take NGO’s with a very large bushel of salt. Many start with good intentions and are then corrupted, become family enterprises or are hijacked by the hard left who were rendered homeless by the end of the Cold War and the demise of state communism. The World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace and the Friends of the Earth are examples of hijacking by the homeless hard left. The Ford Foundation has for long been corrupted by the CIA and part of the foundation’s function is to serve as a covert arm for implementing US policy. In India many of the NGO’s have become expert at milking funds from local and foreign sources but the main beneficiaries are those who own or run the NGO. Many of the NGO’s in India operate as feudal fiefdoms with little external oversight over financial or behavioural processes.

UPDATE! Greenpeace India says it has sacked the two employees accused of rape and sexual harassment but have not said anything about correcting the prevailing culture.

I was not surprised when Greenpeace India was put on the government’s watch list. I am not much surprised either by the reports of an ingrained culture of sexual harassment and rape at Greenpeace India. I can well imagine that Greenpeace India operates in quite a feudal manner and that senior managers believe they have the right of droit de seigneur. Their “do-gooding” is supposed to absolve them of their sexual peccadillos. It is the same culture which led to the assumed privileges and the resulting sexual predations of Rajendra Pachauri as the head of TERI and Chairman of the IPCC. Possibly this culture is something local and not representative of Greenpeace everywhere, but similar allegations have been made against other local Greenpeace organisations (Indonesia for example).

DNA: Already mired in controversy, Greenpeace India on Monday tendered an unconditional apology for the way it handled an alleged sexual harassment case of one of its ex-employees and said it is investigating the matter.

The statement comes after one of its ex-employees wrote an article which was published on a web forum last week alleging sexual harassment and also rape by colleagues at Greenpeace India.

Unmid.com: In an article published on a web forum last week, an ex-employee (name withheld) of Greenpeace alleged that she had to leave her job in 2013 after being sexually harassed and raped by her colleagues. Narrating her ordeal, she said that it started a year after she had joined the NGO at their Bengaluru office. The first incident happened during an official trip in October 2012.

“I got a call from a senior colleague at 11 pm, asking me to vacate my room and insisting that I sleep in his suite. In another incident, he approached me physically despite my discomfort, insisted on force-feeding me birthday cake,” she told IANS.

Though she registered a written complaint with the HR manager, she did not receive any verbal or written communication from the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) of the organisation, which looks into sexual harassment cases. To her shock, she learnt that the person was a serial offender and no action had been taken against him despite his misbehaviour with two other female employees.

However, she said, she was blamed for registering the complaint. “Once in an official meeting, in my absence, two senior employees indulged in character assassination against me. Even some female colleagues, part of the ICC, made me feel that I was at fault, that I didn’t know how to ‘set boundaries’,” she said.

However, matters came to a head in 2013. “It was after a party, when a male colleague whom I knew quite well found me unconscious and raped me. You cannot imagine the pain and fear I went through. I was terrified to speak and I knew even if I had, no one in this organisation would come to my aid. I did not have the strength to report my rape, neither to the police, nor to my employers. How could I, when the processes had failed me once already?” she asked. Traumatised, she left the NGO after a few months. She said it took her long to overcome the incident, and finally, she decided to tell her story through a Facebook post in February this year.

Immediately after her post, Greenpeace issued an apology on their website and promised her to re-investigate the case in an adequate manner.
Admitting the lax attitude in dealing with the case in 2012, the statement said, “The victim deserves both an apology and a meticulous examination of what happened.”

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Pope’s fatwa presents a cosmic teapot and passes the buck on global warming

June 16, 2015

A draft of the Pope’s 192 page fatwa, due on Thursday, was leaked in an Italian magazine over the weekend. The Vatican protests that it is not the final version.

If the leak is correct, the Pope does not claim that he believes in the man-made global warming fantasy. He does not claim that he has received some Divine Revelation. He stops short of declaring jihad. Instead he takes a populist position but in a rush of cowardice he passes the buck to “numerous scientific studies”. For those (such as The Guardian and Huff Po) expecting authoritative support from the Catholic God, through the Pope as his infallible mouthpiece, this fatwa may be as explosive as a wet christmas cracker.

“though other factors may be involved, numerous scientific studies indicate that the majority of the global warming in recent decades is due to the large concentration of greenhouse gases… emitted above all due to human activity,”

He blames the developed world for the lack of development in the third world. He forgets that the developing world desperately needs to use fossil fuels to continue their development. He makes the fundamental mistake of thinking that the development of one part of the world is at the expense of other parts. He forgets, in his ignorance, that the poor are not poor because the rich are rich. This following section is from a translation at Bishop Hill

For poor countries, the priority should be the eradication of poverty and social development of their inhabitants; at the same time the scandalous level of consumption of certain privileged sectors of their population must be considered and better counter corruption. Of course, they must also develop less polluting forms energy production, but for this they have need to rely on help from countries that are grown much at the expense of pollution today the planet. The direct exploitation of abundant solar energy requires that you establish mechanisms and subsidies so that developing countries can have access to technology transfer, for technical assistance and financial resources, but always paying attention to concrete conditions, since the compatibility of the systems with the context for which they are proposed is not always properly assessed. The costs would be low when compared to risk of climate change. In any case, it is above all an ethical choice, based on solidarity of all peoples.

As usual the Pope – just like idiot Muftis promoting jihad – operates in the Space of Ignorance and as his “authority”, he presents the views of others operating in the Space of Ignorance.

The man made global warming “theory” is based on untestable hypotheses.  Climate “science” is not science it is advocacy.

Human emissions of carbon dioxide are less than 5% of all carbon dioxide emissions.

Carbon dioxide emission sources (GT CO2/year)

  • Transpiration 440
  • Release from oceans 330
  • Fossil fuel combustion 26
  • Changing land use 6
  • Volcanoes and weathering 1

Carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere by about 15 GT CO2/ year. The accuracy of the amounts of carbon dioxide emitted by transpiration and by the oceans is no better than about 2 – 3% and that error band (+/- 20GT/year)  is itself almost as large as the total amount of emissions from fossil fuels. ….. 

Bertrand Russel with his “cosmic teapot” pointed out that the burden of proof lies upon those making scientifically untestable claims rather than shifting the burden of proof to sceptics. To paraphrase what he wrote

Many orthodox global warmists speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in political IPCC  reports, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

Or as he elaborates

To take another illustration: nobody can prove that there is not between the Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think man made global warming just as unlikely.

O ignorant priest! O cowardly priest!

And not specifically for this Pope but for all “priests” everywhere and including the “high priests of false science” and the high priests of jihad : O who will rid us of these troublesome priests.

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Mt. Sinabung lava dome now at 3.3 million cubic metres and still growing

June 15, 2015

Mt. Sinabung started erupting on 27th August 2010 after being dormant for 400 years. It has caused evacuations a number of times and has then quietened down only to start again a few weeks later. Lava flows have reached some 5 km from the summit on a number of occasions. 16 people were killed in early 2014. Mt. Sinabung gives the impression of building up for what could be the next VEI5+ volcanic eruption. One visual indicator is the size of the lava dome building up though it cannot be predicted as to how large a lava dome can get before it collapses. Multiple small collapses are much preferable to a single large collapse. But this lava dome has now grown to about 3.3 million cubic metres.

The shape and size of lava domes varies greatly, but they are typically steep-sided and thick. The thickness can range anywhere from a few meters to nearly one kilometer in height. The diameter or length of these domes can range from a few meters to many kilometers. The form that the dome takes is a function of many factors including strength and viscosity of the lava, as well as the slope of the land they are erupted onto.

On June 6th the lava dome at Mt. Sinabung was assessed to have reached 3.1 million cubic metres having grown around 100,000 cubic metres from the day before. Further assessment since then has been masked by cloud and smoke from the simmering and ongoing eruption. Yesterday “Sinabung spewed hot clouds reaching 3,500 meters to the south and 2,500 meters to the southeast.”

Wrath of Sinabung:: Burning lava streams from the peak of Mount Sinabung in Karo, North Sumatra, Thursday night. The volcano has been spewing lava 100 times a day since the alert was raised to the highest level on June 2, monitors say. (Antara/Zabur Karuru)

Burning lava streams from the peak of Mount Sinabung in Karo, North Sumatra, Thursday night. The volcano has been spewing lava 100 times a day since the alert was raised to the highest level on June 2nd. (Antara/Zabur Karuru) – Jakarta Post

Jakarta Post:

“In today’s eruption, Sinabung’s hot clouds simultaneously moved to the south and southeast. The hot cloud releases to the south reached 3,500 meters, or farther than the ones in the southeast, which reached 2,500 meters. This is because the lava dome is in the southern side of Mt. Sinabung,” Deri told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.

He said Mt. Sinabung still had a huge potential to erupt as the volume of its lava dome was still quite large.

“From the latest data, the volume of Mt. Sinabung’s lava dome has reached 3.3 million cubic meters. Eruptions previously occurred have not yet fully abolished its lava dome; thus, there is still a potential for massive eruptions,” said Deri.

Pyroclastic flows are caused by collapse of parts of the lava dome. On 14th June around ten flows were observed descending to the south-east and through the east-North-east channel.

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Greek negotiating tactics are vacillating between “playing chicken” and bad faith

June 15, 2015

Another negotiating session ended in failure yesterday – after just 45 minutes. The Greek delegation were the visitors in Brussels. In any negotiation, the home side always has the “time” advantage in that that they can go as slow as they like. To neutralise this home advantage, a visiting side in a negotiation always needs to show more patience and always give the impression that they can sit there for ever. For a negotiating session to end in just 45 minutes would need the “visiting” delegation to actually walk away. And if the Greeks did walk away then it would seem that they are either playing a dangerous game of chicken or else that they are negotiating in “bad faith” with no intention of reaching a settlement. If the latter then they are just waiting for an opportune time – for domestic consumption – to bring this to an end and initiate a Grexit. If the former then they are waiting for a Grexit to appear inevitable such that they get some “final” concessions.

My own view is that any settlement now with Greece will only be a temporary fix – and the sins of past Greek profligacy will not have been fundamentally atoned for. The pension system that the Greeks awarded themselves are unsustainable even with the cuts implemented so far. A Greece forced to continue within the Eurozone will remain under debt pressure for a decade. Tourism will be constrained. No Icelandic type of recovery would be possible. Far better to bite the bullet now, allow a Grexit and begin to limit and later shrink the Eurozone. Both Greece and the Eurozone will eventually benefit.

Bloomberg:

Greece enters what could be a defining week after last-ditch negotiations between representatives of the Greek government and its creditors collapsed on Sunday.

The euro dropped as the European Commission said the talks in Brussels had broken up after just 45 minutes with the divide between what creditors asked of Greece and what its government was prepared to do unbridged. The focus now shifts to a June 18 meeting in Luxembourg of euro-area finance ministers, known collectively as the Eurogroup, that may become a make-or-break session deciding Greece’s ability to avert default and its continued membership in the 19-nation euro area. …..

……. “The shadow of a Greek exit from the euro zone is becoming increasingly perceptible,” German Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel wrote in an op-ed to be published in Bild on Monday. “Greece’s game theorists are gambling the future of their country. And Europe’s too.”

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UK Government commission perpetuates “class” divisions

June 15, 2015

A report today from the UK Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission is garnering some headlines today because the study seems to show that there are “non-educational barriers to top jobs” and that “working-class applicants struggle to get access to top jobs in the UK”.  But this is a case, I think, of a social study which starts with pre-conceptions, proves them and makes nonsense recommendations. They advise firms to loosen (and downgrade) their job requirements to suit a wider range of applicants even though they don’t have a problem to fill their needs. The commission forgets that education (including of the “working class”) has to suit the jobs available and it is not for the job requirements to be diluted to suit the applicants. If the objective of the commision is to improve the employment prospects of the “working class” then perhaps the education system has to make the “non-educational” factors – which apparently are important – part of the education system.

Press Release:

The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission has published research ‘Non educational barriers to the elite profession evaluation’ showing that working-class applicants struggle to get access to top jobs in the UK.

The research is the product of extensive interviews with staff from 13 elite law, accountancy and financial services firms, who together are responsible for 45,000 of the best jobs in the country.

It finds that elite firms are systematically excluding bright working-class applicants from their workforce. Data collected for the project showed that as much as 70% of job offers in 2014 were to graduates who had been educated at a selective state or fee-paying school, compared to 4% and 7% of the population as a whole.

Rt. Hon. Alan Milburn, the Chair of the Commission, said:

This research shows that young people with working-class backgrounds are being systematically locked out of top jobs. Elite firms seem to require applicants to pass a ‘poshness test’ to gain entry. Inevitably that ends up excluding youngsters who have the right sort of grades and abilities but whose parents do not have the right sort of bank balances.

Why can’t the comprehensive schools teach their “working class” students to be posh if that is what is required. Speaking and behaving “posh” is a matter of education not necessarily a matter of wealth. But that is not something that “political correctness” will admit. Of course Alan Milburn is a Labour MP with a vested interest in demonstrating that the “working class” are being hard done by. It is always wealth that must be shown to be the culprit. It could never possibly be the education of the “working class” which is inadequate. But what he, and the commission are actually doing, are perpetuating their preconceptions of the poor, discriminated against, working class.

The recommendations are equally silly:

Dr Louise Ashley of Royal Holloway, University of London, Research Project Lead, said:

Our research finds that recruitment and selection processes which advantage students from more privileged backgrounds remain firmly in place at most elite law and accountancy firms. As such, despite their focus on specific social mobility initiatives, the rate and pace of change is limited.

We make 3 key recommendations for firms wishing to access the widest range of talent to benefit their business and their clients in future; first, amend attraction strategies to encourage higher numbers of applications from students with a wider range of educational and socio-economic backgrounds; second, ensure that these diverse students have access to similar levels of support enjoyed by their more traditional peers, in order to navigate the selection process effectively; third, interrogate current definitions of talent, including how potential is identified and assessed, to ensure that disadvantaged students are not ruled out for reasons of background rather than aptitude and skill.

If speaking “posh” is a job requirement then perhaps the education system has to adjust. Firms will automatically adjust their requirements if they cannot get sufficient applicants who fit.

“Poshness”, however you wish to define it, is a perfectly valid job requirement. Lack of it among “working class” applications is a commentary on their education – not an excuse.

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Fatwas and papal encyclicals are all bull

June 14, 2015

I am distressed by the fact that so many humans give so much credence (or any credence at all) to priests. All “priests” are in the business of imposing their beliefs onto others. What is not knowledge is ignorance. And beliefs only exist in the space outside knowledge. Imposing beliefs on others is just the imposition of ignorance. Each individual should at least be allowed his own ignorance. The “good” priests at least confine themselves to imposing their beliefs onto those who choose to suspend their intelligence and agree to be subjugated. The “bad” priests are those who seek to impose their beliefs on all and using force if necessary.

Science is the process by which ignorance becomes knowledge. And beliefs are, of course, required only when there is no knowledge – in the Space of Ignorance.

What is not knowledge is ignorance. Religions only exist in the Space of Ignorance

I find the idea that a few people and their spokesmen, whether some Mufti or the Pope, are taken seriously when they tell others what to believe, quite repugnant. In fact I find the idea that any  “priest” who – by definition – operates in the Space of Ignorance – and tells others what particular bit of ignorance they are to follow, effectively denies and degrades the sentience of the “follower”.

And while I have no objection to anybody wishing to subordinate his own capacity for thought and to unthinkingly “follow” some other person’s belief within the Space of Ignorance, it does not increase my respect for that person. Encyclicals, bulls and fatwas are merely opinions. They are all about beliefs in the Space of Ignorance. They are required only for matters of belief and are not required for matters which lie in the area of knowledge. Papal encyclicals are of a somewhat lower status than a papal bull.

Slate: Encyclicals are authoritative, not to be criticized or rejected lightly by members of the church, but they are not infallible. Only three doctrines developed in the past 200 years are considered infallible, and all were issued as bulls: the Immaculate Conception (that Mary was born without original sin), the Assumption (that Mary was taken up body and soul into heaven), and the definition of papal infallibility issued by the First Vatican Council.

There is a distressing and contemptuous suspension of reason when a papal bull – regarded as infallible – has to be issued that the Pope is infallible. ” I am infallible because I am”.

But there is no difference between a papal encyclical which is a form of pastoral letter – sent by the Pope as a shepherd to inform all the unthinking sheep of his congregation what they are to believe, and the fatwa issued by some idiot Imam as a command to all those who choose to suspend their own intelligence. (A fatwa is actually a religious legal opinion and can only be pronounced by one who is a Mufti. All Imams are considered learned enough to be Muftis). Of course a papal bull would be a command to the faithful but would only have excommunication (nowadays) as the sanction for non-compliance. Non-compliance with a papal bull could be heresy and once upon a time demanded torture and death. A fatwa on the other hand is stuck in some distant past and may still require death for non-compliance.

In areas of ignorance where religious beliefs do not impinge, the process of science is not in conflict. But it took until 1835 for the Catholic Church to permit books on the heliocentric nature of the solar system:

The Catholic Church’s 1758 Index of Prohibited Books omitted the general prohibition of works defending heliocentrism, but retained the specific prohibitions of the original uncensored versions of De revolutionibus and Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Those prohibitions were finally dropped from the 1835 Index.

Many fatwas and encyclicals are opportunistic and often stupid. A fatwa from Saudi Arabia as recently as 2000 declared that the sun revolved around the earth. In 2005 an Indian mufti issued a fatwa against the tennis player Sania Mirza and her tight tops. Also in 2005 another Indian mufti declared that a 28 year old woman raped by her father-in-law was now in the position of mother to her husband and had to leave him. A fatwa from an idiot mufti in Malaysia banned “tomboys”. Children are still prevented from vaccinations against polio because of a fatwa.

Encyclicals from the Pope are more sophisticated than fatwas issued by a multitude of silly muftis, but just as opportunistic and equally inane. In 1864 a papal encyclical (Quanta Cura) condemned freedom of individual conscience or that the will of the public could override any law, human or divine, among many other idiocies. In 1937 a self-serving encyclical written in German (Mit brennender Sorge) was issued to protect Catholics in Germany and which denounced the theories of “race and blood”, but did not name the Nazis or Hitler. Just 5 days later another encyclical (Divini Redemptoris) denouncing communism and bolshevism and designed to mollify the Nazis was also issued. In 1968, another encyclical (Humanae Vitae) condemned contraception. In 1991 the encyclical Centesimus Annus praised labour unions and insisted that the end of the Cold War did not mean that Capitalism was the only model of economic organisation. In the last 100 years all the encyclicals issued have been about opportunism and political appeasement.

A papal encyclical has been expected for some time – any day now – on Climate Change. This would continue the recent tradition of populist political correctness. But it probably will not say very much about the sexual abuse of children by its priests. But addressing  climate change itself is some confirmation that, for the Catholic Church, hypothesised global warming (renamed to be the almost meaningless term “climate change”) lies in the Space of Ignorance and is not knowledge.  It is expected that the Pope will call on all good Catholics to stop using fossil fuels and stop eating meat or at least to get their cows to reduce their flatulence. But knowledge needs no papal encyclicals – only beliefs do.

Global warming belief is – as with all religions – placed in the Space of Ignorance. There is no “science” involved in “climate science”, when there is no testable hypothesis. No “climate policy” anywhere in the world has any climate parameter as a measurable goal. (The talk about a global warming of 2C is based on a parameter that is calculated not measured – and the calculations themselves are suspect). That the Catholic Church and this Pope espouse global warming orthodoxy is only “proof” that global warming is nothing more than a belief in the Space of Ignorance. It is Religious Alarmism of the worst kind. That the Catholic Church supports this belief could – hopefully – be its kiss of death.

But the bottom line is that encyclicals and fatwas are only needed in the Space of Ignorance and are all bull.

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Just a little bit funny, this Saturday morning …

June 13, 2015
  1. A white woman, Rachel Dolezal, believed all the claptrap about how race was just a social construct and decided to identify herself as an African-American. She has altered her appearance and hair style to convince her surroundings and has leveraged the duplicity to get a full scholarship at a black University and then to become President of the local chapter of the NAACP in Spokane, Washington. She has managed to keep this up for some 7 or 8 years. But she didn’t manage to change her ancestry and her genetics and was eventually betrayed by her (white) parents.
  2. King Felipe VI of Spain has removed the title “Duchess of Palma” from his sister, Princess Cristina, who is to go on trial charged with tax evasion. She was granted the title in 1997 when she married Inaki Urdangarin, a former Olympic handball player who is also accused of tax evasion. Presumably she remains a Princess of the Ignoble kind.
  3. Barack Obama demonstrated again that he is a leader incapable of even carrying his own supporters with him. A leader who follows. He is trying to negotiate a trade agreement among 12 countries around the Pacific. He asked Congress to give him “fast track” powers to negotiate the deal. The Senate agreed but his own Democrats killed the enabling bill in the House of Representatives. But Obama will try again.
  4. The AAP (Arvind’s Agitation Populace) are now the ruling party in the Delhi government. True to their ineptitude they appointed a Law Minister, Jitender Singh Tomar, who turned out to have faked all his degrees.
  5. Moldova’s Prime Minister, Chiril Gaburici, also resigned because he was found to have faked his school diploma.
  6. Prince Carl-Philip was the Crown Prince of Sweden when he was born in 1979.  But a year later he had to give up that position to his elder sister Victoria when legislation removed the hereditary preference for male progeny. (This was actually a compromise since legislation to abolish the monarchy failed to pass). Today, he marries a commoner, Sofia Hellqvist, 30, who will become Princess Sofia of Sweden. Hellqvist was something of a hell-raiser when she was younger and more foolish, with a period as a topless model and beauty queen and even as a reality TV participant hobnobbing with porn stars. Just a touch of ignobility here.
  7. In Japan a Supreme court ruling in 1979 established that in a case of a husband or wife cheating with a 3rd party (where the 3rd party was not a prostitute paid for his or her services) the cheated spouse could sue the 3rd party for compensation for disturbing the tranquility of the marriage. But this week a Japanese judge ruled that a Ginza bar hostess who had sex with her business-men clients, not for money but for their continued patronage, could not be sued by an “injured” wife. He argued that this “business adultery” was routine and did not disturb the tranquility of the marriage.
  8. Tony Blair is.

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Posted in Behaviour, Trivia | Comments Off on Just a little bit funny, this Saturday morning …

European Commission’s objections to GE/Alstom deal may come today

June 12, 2015

My previous posts about the GE/Alstom deal are here:

UPDATE2! The EC has apparently sent its statement of objections to GE:

WSJ: The European Commission, the EU’s top antitrust regulator, said it had sent a so-called statement of objections to the U.S. industrial company on Friday.

UPDATE! Reuters reports that Alstom has reacted to the press articles today and said that they will continue to provide evidence to the EC about the positive aspects of the deal for Europe. About the “statement of objections” they said “There have been press comments that a ‘statement of objections’ would be issued by the European Commission associated with the investigation of the sale of Alstom’s Energy businesses to General Electric. This is a usual step in a phase II merger case and it does not prejudge the outcome of the investigation. It will allow both General Electric and Alstom to address specific matters pointed out by the investigating team.”

The EC are playing hardball and seem to be looking for substantial concessions from GE before approving GE’s acquisition of Alstom’s power and grid businesses. According to Reuters a statement of their objections could come today (12th June).

Reuters: General Electric Co may need to offer bigger concessions to win European Union approval for its purchase of Alstom SA’s power unit as regulators plan to warn the U.S. company that the deal would harm competition, two people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

….. “A statement of objections could come on Friday,” one source said.

Such a document shows why the EU regulator views the deal as anti-competitive and is a prelude to a veto unless companies come up with strong arguments or significant concessions.

Alstom shares fell 3.2 percent following the Reuters story, while GE was down 0.3 percent. An EC spokesman declined to comment. Alstom had no immediate comment. GE said it was working constructively with the regulator.  “We are focused on a positive outcome that preserves the deal economics,” GE said, adding it was confident of closing the transaction in the second half of 2015.

As I have written before, I expect that the EC objections are centred around what will happen with Alstom’s Heavy Duty Gas Turbine (HDGT) technology and service business. GE has no immediate need for Alstom’s sequential combustion technology, though, in the long run, GE may be the best placed to utilise that technology to take gas turbines to new heights. Regarding the service business for gas turbines it is very rarely, and only for older machines, that a party other than the OEM can provide the most critical spares. So such spares for the Alstom machines would come in the future from GE instead of Alstom but it would be no real change to the competitive position. (For the critical, “noble” parts of any not-too-old gas turbine, the OEM has a virtual monopoly).

However what the EC may be struggling with is that

  1. insisting on Alstom selling the HDGT business to someone other than GE will not find any competent buyers and certainly not any price close to what GE would pay, or
  2. asking GE (or Alstom) to sell sequential combustion technology to a 3rd party could only find buyers a long way down the learning curve who would need deep pockets and maybe 5 years to bring themselves up to any kind  of competitive position, or
  3. asking GE to either commit to use the sequential combustion technology themselves but where GE would probably want to discontinue the Alstom machines quickly, or
  4. to make the technology  “generally available” (as some kind of open source technology) for other potential competitors which would also require that GE give up the service business for some of Alstom’s biggest engines (say the machines operating in Europe) so that they could be available as a “training ground” for any technology user trying to make a go of it (for example; Ansaldo/Shanghai, MHPS, Harbin, Bhel, Kawasaki Heavy ……)

None of these options would be easy to implement. Option 1, I think, will not fly. Option 4 is probably beyond GE’s walk-away point since the heart of their business plan – the service revenues – would be impaired. Some variation of Options 2 and or 3 and parts of 4 maybe will not chase GE away.

The EC is due to announce its decision by early August, and since the EC is in regular discussions with GE, it does look like there is a negotiation ongoing (even if it cannot ever be acknowledged to be a negotiation by either party). I suspect Alstom has no great part to play in this negotiation. The French government probably can not be seen to be involved, but they are certainly not happy with the EC and its objections. (Of course, it is inconceivable for the French government that the EC could possibly go against “French interests”).

The statement of the EC’s objections – if it comes out today – should give a good indication whether this deal is going to go through or will eventually die. But killing the deal is not really in Europe’s interests, so the EC will have to tread very carefully.

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Posted in Business, Energy, Engineering, Gas, Technology | Comments Off on European Commission’s objections to GE/Alstom deal may come today

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