Tag: European Union

April 18, 2023 Quick space links

5:19 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

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SpaceX and the Ukraine resolve funding issues for Starlink terminals

9:39 am

According to a Ukrainian official, the Ukraine has worked out a method to pay for another 10,000 Starlink terminals by obtaining funding from several European nations.

Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov has announced that over 10,000 additional Starlink terminals will be sent to Ukraine in the coming months, confirming that issues regarding how to fund the country’s critical satellite internet service have been resolved.

The governments of several European Union countries are ready to share payment said Fedorov (who is also Ukraine’s minister for digital transformation) in an interview with Bloomberg, affirming that “As of now all financial issues have been resolved.” Fedorov did not publicly identify which governments are contributing towards the payments but confirmed that there’s currently no contract in place and that Ukraine will need to find additional funding by spring 2023.

Elon Musk had threatened to end Starlink support without some form of payment. It appears his threat, which was almost immediately retracted, forced some action by these governments.

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EU advances proposal to build its own broadband satellite constellation

9:19 am

Capitalism in space? Despite negative assessments of the project by its own bureaucracy, the European Union has decided to move forward on a proposal to build its own broadband satellite constellation.

The board’s negative score was based on several factors, including a lack of “analytical coherence” about why the proposed constellation is the best solution to the problems it is intended to address about broadband access and secure communications, use of a “predetermined technical solution” that isn’t specified and a lack of a timetable. The board also raised concerns about the validity of the data the commission used to back the proposed constellation as well as climate impacts from deploying it.

According to E.U. rules, an impact assessment must receive a positive opinion from the Regulatory Scrutiny Board for it to proceed. If it receives a negative opinion twice, only the commission’s Vice-President for Inter-institutional Relations and Foresight, Maroš Šefčovič, can allow the initiative to proceed.

That was the case for the broadband constellation. “Because of the political importance of this Programme, the urgency of action and having the additional clarifications and evidence viewed as satisfactorily addressing the identified shortcomings and suggested specifications of the Regulatory Scrutiny Board, the Commission – also in the light of the agreement by the Vice-President for Inter-Institutional Relations and Foresight – has considered it opportune to proceed with the Programme,” the legislative proposal stated.

Except for a commitment to spend $6.8 billion, at the moment the proposal includes few details, including the type and number of satellites, what frequency they would use, what orbits they would be in, and who would build and launch them.

Based on the typical time schedule for other recent European projects, do not expect this constellation to launch for at least another decade, at which time it will be obsolete.

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Isar Aerospace wins $11.3 million in EU innovation competition

9:05 am

Capitalism in space: The German rocket startup company Isar Aerospace has won the first place $11.3 million prize in the European Innovation Council Horizon Prize in the category of low-cost rockets.

Isar was one of three finalists for the prize announced earlier this month by the European Commission, along with another German small launch vehicle developer, Rocket Factory Augsburg, and Spanish company Payload Aerospace, which is working on a reusable small launcher. Those three came from an initial pool or more than 15 applicants, Breton said at a ceremony during the conference to announce the winner.

Isar hopes to launch its rocket, called Spectrum, late this year.

Whether this contest marks the beginning of an open and competitive launch industry in Europe remains unclear. Apparently the EU is thinking of creating what it calls the “European Space Launcher Alliance,” which — from the vague descriptions of it as well as the reservations expressed by Isar officials — might force independent companies to cater their actions to the needs of the larger rocket companies, like Airbus and ArianeGroup. This quote suggests the thinking of those larger companies:

“We understand how important it is for Europe to grab and keep leadership,” said Morena Bernardini, vice president of strategy at ArianeGroup. “This is possible only if industry is pushing in one direction.” [emphasis mine]

If I was a new startup, the highlighted words from this powerful established big space company would worry me enormously. Who decides what that “one direction” is? And what if different companies want to approach rocketry differently?

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UK parliament approves Brexit deal at last

11:10 pm

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s deal to leave the European Union on January 31, 2020 was finally approved today by Parliament 330 to 231.

Not so fast. The deal calls for eleven months of negotiations on the various issues involved for the exit, and the head of the EU was in London calling for an endless extension of that deadline.

The new president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen came to London yesterday for her first face-to-face talks with Mr Johnson. She was accompanied by the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier who will now lead trade discussions on behalf of the bloc after managing the divorce stage.

…During a speech at the London School of Economics, where she spent a year in hiding as a student in the late 1970s after becoming a target of the left-wing terrorist Baader-Meinhof gang, she said that a full deal would not be achievable in just 11 months. She said: ‘Without an extension of the transition period beyond 2020 you cannot expect to agree on every single aspect of our new partnership. We will have to prioritise.’

Mr Barnier echoed a similar sentiment in a speech in Stockholm today as he said: ‘We are ready to do our best and to do the maximum in the 11 months to secure a basic agreement with the UK, but we will need more time to agree on each and every point of this political declaration.’

This game by these elitists is getting very tiresome. Johnson responded by saying that there would be no extensions.

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UK parliament moves forward on Brexit

10:56 am

The parliament of the United Kingdom today voted to finally leave the European Union no later than January 31, as per the withdrawal agreement that prime minister Boris Johnson negotiated in October.

Both Northern Ireland and Scotland had voted strongly against leaving the EU. Those parts of the United Kingdom now face a choice. They can choose to leave the United Kingdom to join the EU, or stay with the UK.

I suspect they will pick the former. I believe the latter is the smarter choice, as they have far more in common with England than they do with Europe.

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UK to have general elections December 12th

3:17 pm

The British parliament has voted 438 to 20 to approve prime minister Boris Johnson’s demand that they hold general elections on December 12th in exchange for getting an extension to remain in the European Union until the end of January.

Though polls suggest that the public supports Johnson strongly in his effort to leave the EU, an actual election is something completely different. We shall now see if it will really happen.

Personally, I am pessimistic. The opposition to Brexit, like the opposition to Trump in the U.S., has never accepted the results of their previous defeats. I doubt any who voted against Brexit then have changed their mind since, while their unrelenting effort (like the resistance to Trump) has likely worn down its support.

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British parliament passes Johnson’s Brexit deal while pushing for more delays

12:16 pm

The British parliament yesterday finally for the first time passed a deal for leaving the European Union (EU), but then rejected the timetable created by prime minister Boris Johnson to complete that exit by October 31.

The PM [prime minister] did tonight what Theresa May was unable to do in three years – get a majority in the Commons to actually leave the EU. Boris this evening said it was “joyful” that MPs had finally “embraced a deal”.

But minutes later the PM tonight lost his vote 308 – 322 on the crucial timetable motion, leaving his promise to get us out of the bloc by Halloween in tatters. Furious MPs had claimed they didn’t have enough time to look at the 100 page bill.

The PM revealed he would put the Brexit Bill on ice and hit “pause” while the EU consider what to do.

Whether Johnson will have the UK leave at the end of the month, deal or no deal, remains unclear. It increasingly looks like the EU will not give an extension, so if parliament sticks to its guns on rejecting the timetable then the exit will occur on October 31st with no deal. Johnson in turn might also trigger a general election in response.

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Parliament rejects Johnson’s Brexit deal

1:48 pm

A coalition of leftists and former Tories (dumped from the party for being what conservatives in the U.S. call RINOs) today teamed up to reject the deal prime minister Boris Johnson had proposed for leaving the European Union by October 31, as demanded by the voters.

According the vote, Johnson is now required to request a further extension, something he said today he will not do. Instead, reports say he will call Parliament back on Monday to vote again.

Bottom line: The citizens of the UK voted to leave the EU. Parliament is defying the will of the majority by its intransigence and by its effort to water down the exit so much that it will be meaningless. Johnson in turn appears to be trying to represent that majority, which should give him and his now unified Tory party an advantage in the next election. The closeness of the vote, 322 to 306 for rejection, strongly reinforces this conclusion.

UPDATE: Johnson has sent three letters to the EU, one meeting the requirements of the law by asking for an extension but unsigned by him, a second covering letter stating that the first letter was from Parliament, not the prime minister, and a third letter bluntly disavowing the first letter to state that he absolutely does not want an extension.

The article notes that there is now a very good chance the EU will not agree to an extension, which will further benefit Johnson’s political position.

The article also has an interesting side note about how anti-Johnson protesters screamed and threatened an MP and his 12-year-old son as they left parliament, requiring police protection. These protesters are thus allied with the same leftist protesters in the U.S. that have abused Trump supporters. They don’t like democracy, and have repeatedly exhibited a blunt willingness to use force to gain their ends if they lose in the ballot box.

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Boris Johnson strikes Brexit deal with EU

11:00 am

Boris Johnson has made a deal with the European Union for Great Britain’s exit, but the deal’s approval by the UK’s parliament remains in doubt.

Johnson now needs to secure the votes needed at an extraordinary session of parliament on Saturday. But the arithmetic is not easy or straightforward for him.

The Northern Irish party that Johnson needs to help ratify any agreement, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), has refused to support it, saying it is not in Northern Ireland’s interests. The head of the main opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, said he was “unhappy” with the agreement and would vote against it. Labour has said it wants any deal to be subject to a public vote, but as yet has not indicated whether it will back any move for a second referendum on Saturday.

Johnson appears intent on presenting parliament with a stark choice — the deal he has struck or no deal — in the hope of securing enough votes to get approval. “The PM’s position is that it’s new deal or no deal but no delay,” said a senior British government official.

The main issue is Northern Ireland, which now has open borders with the rest of Ireland, as part of the peace deal that settled decades of unrest. Leaving the EU requires some sort of border control, since Ireland is in the European Union. Northern Ireland politicians oppose any border controls.

Johnson’s deal calls for limited border controls. If Great Britain exits with no deal, than full border controls would be imposed. Since Johnson seems very intent on honoring the voters’ decision to leave, one way or the other, we shall have to see which option Parliament chooses.

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Boris Johnson loses one-vote majority in House of Commons

9:58 am

In the continuing political battle in the British parliament over the decision by the voters to leave the European Union and prime minister Boris Johnson’s effort to abide by that decision quickly, a member of his Tory Party defected from that party today in a public stunt.

Boris Johnson has seen his one-vote Commons majority vanish before his eyes, as a statement by the prime minister to parliament was undermined by the very public defection of the Conservative MP Phillip Lee to the Liberal Democrats.

The stunt, in which the pro-remain Bracknell MP walked across the chamber to the Lib Dem benches flanked by two of his new colleagues, happened as Johnson updated the Commons on last month’s G7 summit, a statement devoted mainly to Brexit.

At the start of a crucial day in the Commons, Johnson condemned a backbench plan aimed at delaying Brexit to avert a no-deal departure, calling it a “surrender bill”. Jeremy Corbyn responded by criticising the PM’s language. MPs will vote on Tuesday evening on whether to take control of the order paper to allow the passage of the bill. Johnson has promised to seek a general election if they do so.

It is very clear that Great Britain has the same political problem as the United States: an entrenched elitist power structure that doesn’t wish to abide by the popular will, and is willing to do almost anything to maintain its power, even if that means corrupting or even destroying the democratic institutions that have made western civilization possible.

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Europe’s GPS-type constellation Galileo down

9:08 pm

For as yet unexplained reasons, Europe’s entire Galileo constellation of GPS-type satellites has been out-of-operation for the past four days.

The European GNSS Agency (GSA), the organization in charge of Galileo, has not published any information in regards to the root of the outage, which began four days ago, on Thursday, July 11. On that day, the GSA published an advisory on its website alerting companies and government agencies employing the Galileo system that satellite signals have degraded and they “may not be available nor meet the minimum performance levels.” The agency warned that the Galileo system “should be employed at users’ own risk.”

The GSA published a more dire warning on Saturday, July 13, when it said that Galileo was experiencing a full-service outage and that “signals are not to be used.”

I cannot imagine any technical problem on the satellites themselves that would cause them all to fail at the same time. Instead, this appears to be some form of sabotage, a variation of the recent Russian tactic of disrupting GPS in areas they consider sensitive.

It also may explain the announcement yesterday by French president Macron that France is going to create its own space command.

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Foreign elections: UK, India, France, Italy, Israel

6:16 pm

Foreign elections in the past week all suggest that Trump’s victory in the U.S. is no accident, and that our so-called betters in the elitist class in DC had better recognize this or they will find themselves out of work.

In Europe supporters of the European Union generally got crushed:

Turn-out was up across the board, which with these victories for the populist parties also indicates the public favors them, and wanted to give them victories. As one would expect, the press has routinely labeled the winners here as “far-right,” a slander aimed at discrediting them.

The European Union was without doubt a good idea. Sadly, its implementation by the elitists in Europe was terrible, as bad if not worse then the terrible job the U.S. establishment has done for the past three decades, failing to do anything right while simultaneously drowning the country in debt and stifling regulation.

Meanwhile in India, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi came away with a landslide victory. In many ways Modi’s win mirrors the European elections. Overall, Modi has worked to shift India away from the centralized socialist/communist policies that dominated its government in the last half of the 20th century, policies that are very similar to the policies followed by the ruling EU parties. In India those centralized policies worked as badly as they have in Europe and the U.S., which is why they experienced a political collapse.

Modi’s shift to private enterprise has resulted in a booming economy and great prosperity, so much so that it has allowed India to expand its space program significantly.

Finally, in Israel, the victory several weeks ago of Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition has not yet resulted in a new government. It appears Netanyahu is having trouble forming a government.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced that he would meet with the leaders of the prospective coalition parties in the coming hours in a final effort to save the new government and avert new elections. “I am now making my last-ditch effort to form a right-wing government and to prevent unnecessary elections. I gave the partners a proposal for a solution. It is based on the principles that the army has established and on the data that the army has established – there is no reason to reject it, “Netanyahu said.

It appears that the conservative haredi religious parties that normally ally themselves with Netanyahu’s Likud party have been playing hard ball, preventing an agreement. In other words, the demand is that the government shift even more righward, a pattern comparable to Europe.

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UK lawmakers reject all Brexit deals

9:57 am

The British parliament today rejected for the third and probably last time the deals negotiated by prime minister Teresa May in connection with her country’s exit from the European Union.

Right now it looks like the UK will leave the European Union on April 12, with no deal. While this possibility is causing heartache and terror among establishment politicians in Europe and Britain, it would honor the will of the voters, who voted to leave, period. The deals that have been offered have generally been a maneuver to nullify that vote.

Those establishment politicians have offered several new options to nullify the voters’ choice, including delaying the exit by a year to allow time for new negotiations, or offering a do-over election. Right now it looks like neither will happen, and Great Britain will leave.

Will an exit be good or bad? It is hard to say, but my sense is that it will be generally good for Great Britain, with most of the suffering focused among the establishment, who have used the EU as a means to power. An exit will strip them of this.

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European Court upholds conviction for condemning Mohammad’s child marriage

3:35 pm

Fascist Europe: The European Court today upheld the Austrian conviction and punishment of a woman merely because she gave a talk where she described and then condemned Mohammad’s child marriage to a six-year-old, that he consummated with a rape when the child was nine.

Sabaditsch-Wolff, a diplomat’s daughter who has lived and worked in the Middle East, was censured for having spoken at a meeting organized by the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party 10 years ago in Vienna. Her intention was to speak about the treatment of women and the practice of jihad (“Holy War”) in countries such as Iran and Libya, on the basis of her own experience.

During her speech aimed at an audience of about 30 people, she spoke freely about the prophet Muhammad and his relationship with Aisha, whom he saw and desired when she was six years old. He married her on the spot, and the union was consummated when she was nine. He “liked to do it with children,” she said, adding that she had argued with her sister about the words she would use to describe the facts.

She insisted on being straightforward: “A 56-year-old and a six-year-old? What do we call it, if it is not pedophilia?”

A journalist present at the meeting taped her words. His editor-in-chief went on to turn them over to the police, and Sabaditsch-Wolff was indicted for inciting hatred toward Muslims and for having disparaged their prophet as unworthy of veneration.

She was not found guilty of the first violation. But she was condemned for the “disparagement” in 2011 to a 480-euro fine (about 550 U.S. dollars) or up to 60 days imprisonment.

The court has essentially endorsed the heckler’s veto, though we all know that if a Christian tried to do the same they would be denied. What will now happen is that the European Union will team up with vast numbers of new Muslim immigrants it forced its member nations to accept in the past decade to impose sharia on Europe.

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Tory Party opposition to Theresa May’s Brexit deal grows

4:15 pm

Seven Tory officials have now resigned from Theresa May’s Conservative government in protest to her planned “Chequers” deal with the European Union for Britian’s exit.

It appears that the deal leaves Britain subject to EU regulations, something that the voters did not want. As noted by one Tory rebel,

Mr Bradley said the Chequers plan would wreck opportunities to develop global trade and be ‘an outward-looking nation in control of our own destiny’. ‘Being tied to EU regulations and the EU tying our hands when seeking to make new trade agreements will be the worst of all worlds,’ wrote the Mansfield MP, who voted Remain in a constituency where 70 per cent of voters opted to Leave.

The resignations follow those of Brexit Secretary Mr Davis, his junior minister Steve Baker, Foreign Secretary Mr Johnson and ministerial aides Conor Burns and Chris Green.

Right now it appears that this deal will likely fail, and that Great Britain will leave the EU without a deal, something that will probably please the voters. The EU’s regulations, created not by elected officials but by unelected bureaucrats, stifle competition and free enterprise as every stage of industry.

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Italy in uproar: President rejects election results

9:20 am

This is how you get Trump: Having rejected under their parliamentary system the nation’s recent election results that produced a government coalition strongly controlled by anti-European Union candidates, Italy’s president is now facing calls for his impeachment.

This was the first time in the history of the Italian republic that a president had thrown out the proposal for a government from elected parties, and even critics of the populist victors have acknowledged that the Italian people will take the move as a slap to Italian voters and the entire democratic process.

The bone of contention, Mattarella said in his rejection speech, was the candidate for the post of finance minister, Paolo Savona. “I have agreed with and accepted all the proposals for the Ministers, except that of the finance minister,” he said Sunday. “The designation of the finance minister always sends an immediate message, of confidence or of alarm, for economic and financial operators,” he added.

Paolo Savona, whom even his critics admit is eminently qualified for the post, has expressed concerns over the growth in power and reach of the European Union (EU) as well as the common EU currency, the euro, which he has referred to as a “German cage.”

Essentially he is saying that Italy’s elections are irrelevant, that no matter who the voters choose the government must be subservient to the European Union.

Expect new elections to produce an even more powerful populist government, even more hostile to the European Union.

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Victory for right in Austrian elections

9:44 am

The two parties in Austria that want to control immigration, reduce government, and are skeptical of the present policies of the European Union came in one and two in elections today, and will lead the government in a coalition.

The liberal party came in third, with its worst showing in a half century.

The article tries to associate the winning party with the Nazis, but to me that is absurd. The present hostility to immigration in Austria mirrors similar hostility throughout the west, and is fueled not by race hatred but by fury at the incompetent management by previous leaders, not just in the area of immigration but across the board. The leadership class in the past three decades has done a terrible job, and are now reaping the whirlwind they created for themselves.

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European commission approves Airbus-Safran buy of Arianespace

9:22 am

The competition heats up: The bureaucrats in the European Union have given their approval to the purchase by Airbus-Safran Launchers of Arianespace, thereby clearing the way for the privatization of that ESA entity and the construction, under Airbus-Safran control, of Ariane 6.

Following an in-depth review, the European Commission has approved under the EU Merger Regulation, the acquisition of Arianespace by Airbus Safran Launchers (ASL), a joint venture between Airbus and Safran. This approval is subject to conditions. Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said: “A well-functioning satellite and launcher industry is important to guarantee that European companies and institutions can gain access to space at competitive terms. The commitments offered by ASL ensure that after its takeover of Arianespace, all players in the industry will continue to have incentives to innovate.”

The Commission had concerns that the transaction would give rise to flows of sensitive information between Airbus and Arianespace to the detriment of competing satellite manufacturers and launch service providers. The Commission’s approval is conditional on the implementation of the commitments offered by the companies to address these concerns.

I must say that, in reading this story, I understood far better why the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. Though this particular deal is certainly different and involves many important government issues, if every private business deal is subject to the numbing concerns of this commission, I myself would run screaming from them as fast as I could.

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The fascist nature of the European Union

9:58 am

The political leaders of both the European Union and the countries that belong to it have consistently defied the voted wishes of the electorate.

“Respect for the outcomes of referendums is perhaps not the most prominent feature of the sorry history of the E.U.,” said Philipp Genschel, a Professor at the Schumann Center for Advanced Studies. “However, the standard way not to respect the outcome of a referendum is not open defiance […] but the repetition of the referendum until it yields the ‘right’ outcome.”

In fact, the European Union as we know it today was built on a series of rejections of public votes. When the Danes in 1992 declined to accept the Maastricht treaty — which paved the way for a more integrated political union — the European Union made some concessions and then staged a second referendum in which voters finally approved of it. The same happened in 2001, when the Irish rejected the so-called Nice treaty as the bloc expanded eastward, and in 2008 when they opposed another treaty over further E.U. integration. Last year, Greek voters rejected bailout conditions proposed to the country by the European Union. But the leftist government in Athens ended up agreeing to most of those conditions anyway. Earlier this year, the Dutch voted against closer ties between the E.U. and Ukraine — a decision which was interpreted as a backlash against the hard-line stances of many E.U. governments toward Russia. The Dutch government is now considering to simply ignore the outcome of this referendum.

In other words, according to these preening self-righteous and power-hungry bureaucrats, to hell with democracy. We are your betters, and we will decide what you get, regardless of how you vote.

I suspect that, more than any other factor, it is this sorry history that drove the citizens of the UK to reject the European Union last week.

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Elite journalist considers murder the appropriate response to Brexit vote

9:50 am

Fascist: A British journalist asked her readers today to consider whether they’d kill the leader of the UK’s movement to leave the European Union.

A journalist working for the Telegraph has asked her Twitter followers to consider if they would kill UKIP leader Nigel Farage, comparing him to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. “You know that time travel conundrum: would you kill baby Hitler? Same but Nigel Farage”, wrote Catherine Gee, who claims to have been “writing about culture for the Telegraph since 2007”, and has also written for the Guardian, Western Mail and Clash.

She has deleted the tweet, but only I think because it embarrassed her, not because she realized how barbaric it was. Worse, she is not alone.

Over the course of just a few hours, Breitbart London uncovered hundreds of tweets and Facebook updates dating back as far as 2010, with some as recent as last Thursday afternoon after Member of Parliament Jo Cox was murdered.

The revelations go some way to shattering the narrative that “hateful” or “aggressive” rhetoric emanates from only one side of UK politics. Most of the messages listed below are from younger people, and Breitbart found that most were either Liberal Democrat, Scottish National Party, or Labour Party supporters. Most of them also expressed pro-European Union sentiment and were overwhelmingly supportive of the ‘Remain’ campaign at the European Union referendum.

Basic level searches under the search terms “shoot Nigel Farage”, “stab Nigel Farage” or “kill Nigel Farage” reveal hundreds of messages, some of those in fact with further messages of support for the notions in the replies.

Freedom and democracy cannot stand if it is considered acceptable to call for the murder of your opponents.

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The howl against democracy

8:10 pm

Link here. Key quote:

In all the years I’ve been writing about political stuff, I cannot remember a time when anti-democratic sentiment has been as strong as it is right now. No sooner had an awe-inspiring 17.5m people rebelled against the advice of virtually every wing of the establishment and said screw-you to the EU than politicos were calling into question the legitimacy of their democratic cry. Apparently the people were ill-informed, manipulated, in thrall to populist demagoguery, and the thing they want, this unravelling of the EU, is simply too mad and disruptive a course of action to contemplate. So let’s overturn the wishes of this dumb demos.

The author then outlines the numerous calls by EU supporters in the UK to do anything possible to void the will of the people in a legitimate vote. Why would I not be surprised if these same people also align themselves politically with today’s American Democratic Party, which increasingly sees the Bill of Rights and freedom as an obstacle and an evil that must be destroyed.

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The elite speak!

8:54 am

The coming dark age: The journal Science published on Friday a nice collection of tweets from a lot of scientists expressing their contempt and disgust at the vote by the citizens of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union.

Two tweets say it all:

Dear Europe – for the record, I didn’t want this to happen. Please don’t judge all Brits by the poisonous rhetoric of the Leave campaign. — Dr Heather Williams (@alrightPET) June 24, 2016

Today is a sad day for science and sanity. #Brexit — Hannah Wakeford (@StellarPlanet) June 24, 2016

In the first the scientist accuses the Leave campaign of expressing “poisonous rhetoric”, while the second (one of many quite similar) declares anyone who disagreed with the Remain campaign to be insane. Does anyone but me see the blind stupidity here?

Not one of these tweeters, all supposedly highly educated scientists, consider for an instant the quite valid and reasonable intellectual arguments of the Leave campaign. Leave is wrong, and don’t you dare think otherwise! Some also suggest that the vote should be ignored, or invalidated, because they don’t like the result. So much for open-mindedness and a respect for democracy.

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Science elites move to block UK exit from EU

10:29 am

A statement today from the UK’s Royal Astronomical Society, reacting to yesterday’s vote to leave the European Union, calls for the government to do whatever it can to nullify that exit.

Professor John Zarnecki, the President of the Royal Astronomical Society, commented: “We must remember that whatever happens, science has no boundaries. It is vital that we do not give the message, particularly to our younger colleagues, in the UK and beyond that our country is not a good place in which to do scientific research, however uncertain the economic and political environment is.

“I have been privileged during my career to have worked in a research environment in Europe which has had few borders for either people or ideas. We must strive to make sure that these rights are not taken away – this would be enormously to the detriment of UK society.”

The statement includes a laundry list of benefits that membership in the EU brings scientists, including lots of funding to pay the salaries of these scientists. The statement also insists that all these benefits must be maintained, despite the will of the electorate.

While many of these benefits (easy travel between nations) are beneficial and a reason to have a European Union, the electorate understood that the benefits have been increasingly outweighed by the heavy regulatory burden imposed by the EU, with no democratic recourse allowed.

Articles in the science journals Science and Nature, here, here, and here, also note the distress and opposition by scientists to yesterday’s vote.

This unwillingness of the elite community to accept the will of the public is part and parcel to the same bubble I found in Washington when I attended the CNAS conference. Unfortunately, I see no evidence of a willingness in the elite community to bend at all to the will of the general public, meaning that we can only expect the conflict between the top and the bottom to intensify in the coming years. The question will be whether our institutions of democracy will be able to withstand that battle, especially when those in power continue to find their power being attacked from below.

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UK votes to leave EU

9:32 pm

The revolt continues: The voters of the United Kingdom tonight chose to leave the European Union.

The EU was a great idea, unfortunately spoiled in the past few decades by a crushing regulatory bureaucracy unaccountable to anyone, which is why every single time the question has been put to the voters in recent years the voters have chosen to quit the EU.

The unrest among American voters, fueling the success of outsiders and the defeat of incumbents in recent elections, is based on similar issues and dissatisfactions. I thus expect similar surprises here come November. This essay expresses these circumstances here in the states quite nicely:

This is not about ideology. If people trusted elites and institutions they defend to look out for them, in a non-ideological sense, the breakdown of our systems would have been mitigated or confined. The fact that it is so sweeping is due to a generation of elites who didn’t do their jobs well, or pretended things weren’t their job for too long.

We have breakdown, chaos, and upheaval in our politics today not because the people are “insane”, as Rauch writes, but because they are sane. They know the leadership class which held power for the past generation has not looked out for them. Don’t blame a people for turning on elites who thought they knew better but proved over and over that they didn’t. It is thoroughly rational to want something else instead. Even if that something else turns out not to deliver either, at least you know it’s not the same as what’s failed. [emphasis mine]

Remember, the definition of insanity is doing the same failed thing over and over again, even though it is proven to never work. This what our elites have been doing for the past three decades. The voters, however, are increasingly showing that they are not insane, that they want to try new things. Kudos to them!

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Backgrounder on June 23 UK vote on EU membership

10:36 pm

Link here. The videos at the link are especially informative.

Polls have recently shifted strongly in favor of leaving the union, but that is not a certain result. If it happens, however, I will consider that decision by the public to be another example of a growing revolt by the general public against the intellectual elites who presently rule western society, since most of these elites appear to favor keeping the United Kingdom in the European Union.

Posted from Washington, D.C.

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New EU tax law puts thousands out of business

11:42 am

We’re here to help you! A major revision to the VAT tax in the European Union tax has caused the shutdown of thousands of businesses because they cannot afford to meet the complex rules and bureaucracy required.

Designed to prevent large businesses locating themselves in VAT-competitive territories, it had the predictable effect of drowning small businesses under a sea of bureaucracy, forcing them to access the data required to prove the customer’s location, figure out which of more than 80 VAT rates to apply, and issue an invoice in the correct language, currency and layout. Unable to afford the costly software required to deal with the regulation, thousands of small business and sole traders have closed or abandoned their enterprises. Most of those who have continued to trade have either moved to third party platforms, losing up to 70 percent of their total revenue (not just non-domestic sales) in commission, or spent thousands on software.

“The human cost to these businesses is vast”, Clare Josa is co-founder of EU VAT Action commented for EU Observer. “The only reason the Digital Single Market is still functioning is because awareness levels are below 5 percent, so most businesses are continuing to trade under the former system. As awareness rises, the damage will soar.”

Read the whole article. The quote above only gives a small taste of the problem caused entirely by government bureaucrats and elected officials who seem divorced from reality. And though this is a European governmental disaster, it is instructive for Americans to learn about it. Like Obamacare, the new VAT tax rules were imposed with the best of intentions, but completely ignored the reality of meeting those intentions. The result is financial ruin for thousands of businesses and individuals.

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The European Union’s program to reduce carbon emissions is in disarray.

12:08 pm

The European Union’s program to reduce carbon emissions is in disarray.

The article at the link is probably one of the worst written stories in the history of journalism. It is incoherent, disorganized, and confused. Moreover, the authors are so in favor of the regulations to limit fossil fuels that they are unable to even consider any reasons which might explain why Europe’s carbon credit market is collapsing and why the EU’s legislators rejected a rescue plan to save it.

In fact, because of their biases, the authors buried the real story, which is this:

Parliamentarians on April 16 voted 334 to 315 for blocking the carbon market rescue.

“This is the first time I can remember when parliament has put economic survival and jobs ahead of green orthodoxy,” said Roger Helmer, a member of the U.K. Independence Party who has been in the parliament for 14 years and opposes emissions trading. “It marks an absolute watershed.”

The bad economy and high debt in Europe is making the idea of raising taxes and adding more restrictions on fossil fuels very unappealing to politicians.

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