Taiwan´s president Ma Ying-jeou: "Sooner or later" there will be democracy in China

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou speaks about democracy in communist China in an interview for German Der Spiegel:

Ma: Of course, there will be many difficulties in bringing about a fully democratic system in mainland China. But when a society enjoys universal education and a prosperous economy, and when a middle class has appeared, more and more people will express their views about public policies. This has happened in Taiwan, Southeast Asian countries, Latin America as well as Arab countries. From relative poverty through reform and opening-up to the world, mainland China has experienced tremendous economic growth over the past several decades. And the advent of the Internet has enabled more and more people to express their opinions on public policies. This phenomenon is impossible to prevent, and I feel that sooner or later mainland China will move toward greater freedom and democracy.

PS
Ma is right. Human rights, freedom and democracy are coming also to China. The present corrupt leadership may still be able to crack down on human rights activists for a while, but not  very long.

Are people becoming stupid and shrinking in size because of global warming?

 

                              Stupid miniature people - Is this the future?

 

Today I found myself thinking about some of the serious challenges facing humanity in the future:

 

Bigger Brains Make Smarter People

For more than a century some of the biggest minds in science have debated whether brain size has anything to do with intelligence. A new study suggests it does.

Bigger brains make for smarter people, says Michael McDaniel, an industrial and organizational psychologist at Virginia Commonwealth University.

"For all age and sex groups, it is now very clear that brain volume and intelligence are related," McDaniel said.

---

In the old days, measuring brain size involved either the imprecise method of putting a tape around a person's skull or waiting until they died to examine their noggins. Over the past five years or so, various research groups have studied brain size using new imaging techniques that provide a more accurate gauge.

McDaniel examined 26 mostly recent brain-imaging studies to reach his conclusion.

Read the entire article published in LiveScience here

Compare this with a scientific paper published by Jessica Ash, a graduate student in psychology, and professor of evolutionary psychology Gordon G. Gallup Jr. in Human Nature magazine, described in ScienceDaily:

Global Warming Could Be Reversing A Trend That Led To Bigger Human Brains

"Specifically, we found that as the distance from the equator increased, north or south, so did brain size."

---

"the study provides evidence of the role of climate and migration away from the equator as selective forces in promoting human intelligence, and that the recent trend toward global warming may be reversing a trend that led to brain expansion in humans."

Read the entire article here

And its not only the brains that shrink. People and animals are actually thought to shrink in size due to global warming:

"Scientists postulate that the relationship between a warmer climate and smaller animals may be true for the animal kingdom as a whole."

And co-author Janet Gardner asks the question:

"How small can a bird go before its physiology is altered to the point where it can’t survive?”

Gardner did apparently not ask the obvious follow-up question: How small can a human being go before its physiology is altered to the point where it actually disappears?

So, if we are to believe the scientists (who believe in human induced global warming), the future of homo sapiens does, indeed, not appear to be very enticing:

In the year 2100 the earth will be populated by about 10 billion less than smart miniature people, basking in the hot sun of tropical jungles like Greenland and Alaska. "Think small" will be the winning political slogan of the century. People will probably not even realize how small they are, because all other animals and plants have shrunk in the same way!

Seriously speaking, there is no reason to worry: The predictions of the climate change alarmists will turn out to be as wrong as all of their other forecasts!  

Greece leaves the eurozone?

This is interesting:

Der Spiegel:

The debt crisis in Greece has taken on a dramatic new twist. Sources with information about the government's actions have informed SPIEGEL ONLINE that Athens is considering withdrawing from the euro zone. The common currency area's finance ministers and representatives of the European Commission are holding a secret crisis meeting in Luxembourg on Friday night.

AP-US Today:
 Greece is denying a report by a German magazine website that it is considering leaving the euro currency.

Is this the beginning of the end of the eurozone in its present form?

A definition of membership in the European Union

This recent definition by Irwin Stelzer is one of the best I have seen: 

Membership of the European Union is not a condition. It is a process. That process is clear: a steady transfer of power from nation states to Brussels. Eurocrats are not accountable to voters; they are judged only by their peers, the test of success being the expansion of power and the size of the bureaucracy over which they preside. Every effort is made to frame actions and decisions so that voters need not be consulted: witness the recent decision of the European Commission to amend Article 136 of the Lisbon Treaty merely by announcing an addition that permits the establishment of a permanent bailout mechanism to transfer credit from one country to another. This is the very thing the Germans were promised would not happen when they signed up to the Lisbon Treaty.

Read the entire New Statesman article here

(Irwin Stelzer is director of economic policy studies at the Hudson Institute and a columnist for the Sunday Times)

Not a (Europe) day without new EU fraud and corruption

Happy Europe Day on May 9! Let´s celebrate with "Connie´s Glacier Special"

EU fraud and corruption cases are now so numerous that they are seldom even reported in the main media. Here are just a couple of the latest examples:

NEARLY 6,000 Andalucian firms have been accused of misusing 23 million euros of EU funding.
The companies allegedly took grants to create new jobs for the unemployed and then laid them off.
In order to qualify for the grants – between 1,500 and 3,000 euros per employee – companies were expected to offer jobseekers a permanent contract and keep them on the payroll for at least four years.
However, according to the Employment minister Manuel Recio, in at least 3,790 cases the new employees were fired as soon as the grant was paid out.
The latest findings come after an investigation into the job history of 15,063 people.
And the numbers are expected to be even higher as 44,177 people are still to be investigated.

Read the entire article here

Italian authorities investigate suspected fraud network in EU-funded research projects

05 May 2011 | 13:58 | FOCUS News Agency

Home / European Union

Brussels. Italian authorities announced today in Milan that, on the basis of information and assistance received from OLAF and the European Commission, the Italian judiciary has concluded a criminal investigation into a suspected fraud network in EU-funded research projects. The investigation in Italy concerns 22 projects with a total amount of funding paid of more than 50 million euro and is part of a broader OLAF investigation.
“Thanks to intensive cooperation over several years between OLAF, the European Commission, the Italian judiciary and Guardia di Finanza, a very sophisticated fraudulent network affecting the EU’s research budget has been eliminated. This case shows that OLAF and the European Commission by working closely together with judicial authorities in the Member States can successfully fight fraud against the EU budget,” said OLAF Director-General Giovanni Kessler, the press service of OLAF announced.
Evidence initially collected by the Commission (DG Information Society and Media) in the course of its audit work has been combined with information gathered by OLAF. Networks of inter-related companies operating in several Member States are suspected of claiming reimbursements of non-existent expenses in an organised manner using fictitious companies as partners or sub-contractors of research project consortia.
The suspected fraudulent activities were organised in a very sophisticated manner, with the intention of deceiving the Commission's control mechanisms. The organisational structures created were deliberately opaque and span several countries. Some of the methods used are similar to those used in money laundering and other organised crime schemes.

Hague versus Ashton

British Foreign Secretary William Hague has in a "landmark speech" eloquently defended his government´s emphasis on bilateral relations instead of relying on the EU´s External Action Service:

"UK champions own diplomacy over EU 'action service'

"I have never believed that the EU could or should act as if it were a nation state with a national foreign policy. Any attempt by EU institutions to do so would end in embarrassing failure," he said. "Over the last year we have placed a renewed emphasis on bilateral relations, alongside Britain's role in multilateral institutions."
The speech reflects traditional Conservative Party policy and Britain's eurosceptic culture. But it comes at a testing time for the EU's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, a member of the Tories' rival Labour Party.
Ashton has over the past year tried to forge a single EU foreign policy on explosive issues such as the Middle East peace process and the Arab spring. But the UK and France have time and again taken the lead on big ticket items, leaving her to play catch-up.
In a bad day for the EU's high representative, Belgian foreign minister Steven Vanackere also on Wednesday told Belgian daily Le Soir that Ashton has left a vacuum at the centre of EU policy-making.
"If there is silence and this silence is 'occupied' by France, Germany etc., Belgium will search for partners in

Read the entire article here

Hague´s choice of words was probably welcomed by most people in the UK, but on the other hand, quite a few would probably like to remind him of some of his, and David Cameron´s  previous, not so euro-critical moves.  

And almost while Hague was speaking, his EU colleague, "foreign minister", Labour Baroness Cathrine Ashton was giving her own "victory speech" at the UN:

EU wins super-observer status at UN

The European Union on Tuesday secured super-observer status at the United Nations after overcoming objections from small states that they could see their influence eroded

A vote was passed by the 192-nation UN General Assembly after high-powered lobbying by EU foreign affairs representative Catherine Ashton and ambassadors from the 27-nation bloc.

"What you will hear is a clearer voice to the United Nations from the European Union," but one that is "extremely and absolutely respectful" of the UN institutions

Read the entire article here

PS
It certainly looks like Mr. Hague´s man in New York, Sir Mark Lyall Grant, Ambassador of the United Kingdom Mission to the United Nations, also participated in the "high-powered lobbying" for making the EU "act as if it were a nation state".  

PS
No surprise that this was what EU "president" "Haiku-Herman" Van Rompuy tweeted after the vote:

euHvRHerman Van Rompuy

Thanks to today's @UN Resolution, the European Union achieves an important recognition as a global actor at the United Nations

 

I wonder, what, if anything, William Hague tweeted?

In praise of shale gas - James Delingpole at his best

                                                          The first shale gas well from 1980

James Delingpole at his best:

What I simply want to do here in my first blog back (and no, my health thing hasn’t got better yet, I’m afraid, so please don’t expect me to be too Stakhanovite in my production rate) is remind you of the horrendous socio-political crisis we in the free world are facing today: one in which economic progress and commonsense threaten to be undermined at every turn by an insidious, mendacious and terrifyingly powerful global green movement which has its tentacles in almost every pie from the Obama administration to David Cameron’s Coalition to the EU to the UN to the MSM to the schools, universities and NGOs. The ideology of these Watermelons has virtually nothing to do with saving the environment (if it were, they’d be embracing shale gas wholesale) and almost everything to do with an instinctive loathing for economic growth combined with a bullying, puritanical urge to impose energy policy by diktat rather than by allowing the market to decide the most effective method.
Shale gas won’t die: the economic arguments in its favour are too powerful for it to be ignored (especially in countries like Poland, which has massive shale gas reserves and, like most of the former Eastern Bloc really has no desire to be blackmailed by Vladimir Putin’s Russia any longer than is necessary). But what we are going to see in the next few months and years are very concerted efforts by green campaigners and their sympathisers in the EU to besmirch the name of shale gas in favour of their preferred (and – of course – disastrously expensive and environmentally destructive) power source, renewable energy.
We mustn’t allow them to get away with it. Our economic future – not to mention the size of our fuel bills – depends on it.

Read the entire article here

In his column Delingpole describes the Global Warming Foundation´s new report "The Shale Gas Shock", written by Matt Ridley and with a foreword by Freeman Dyson.

An excerpt from Freeman Dyson´s foreword:

It is not a perfect solution to our economic and environmental problems, but it is here when it is needed, and it makes an enormous difference to the human condition. Matt Ridley gives us a fair and even-handed account of the environmental costs and benefits of shale gas. The lessons to be learned are clear. The environmental costs of shale gas are much smaller than the environmental costs of coal. Because of shale gas, the air in Beijing will be cleaned up as the air in London was cleaned up sixty years ago. Because of shale gas, clean air will no longer be a luxury that only rich countries can afford. Because of shale gas, wealth and health will be distributed more equitably over the face of our planet.


From Matt Ridley´s own introduction:

Cheap And Abundant Energy Is On Hand
Shale gas is good news for America and China (which probably has even more of it than America), consumers (cheap fuel means higher standards of living) and farmers (fertiliser is made from gas). It is bad news for Russia and Iran (which hoped to corner the gas market in coming decades), for coal (until now the cheapest fuel for electricity) and for the nuclear and wind industries. The last two had expected to be rescued from dependence on subsidies by rising fossil fuel prices. They may now not be.
The losers are formidable enemies, so there is a movement, whose fans range from Gazprom to Greenpeace, to strangle the shale-gas industry at birth, by claiming that drilling for it contaminates water with carcinogenic and even radioactive chemicals. This turns out to be true only in the sense that coffee is carcinogenic, bananas radioactive and dihydrogen monoxide (water) a chemical.

You can download Matt Ridley's report on the shale gas revolution and its implications here

PS
What Ridley says about Gazprom, Greenpeace and the other losers is, of course, true. They will do their utmost in order to strangle the coming shale gas revolution. It is now up to sane people to make sure that they will not succeed.

Here, and here is what we have previously written about shale gas in Europe.