28 January 2023

90 years ago in Germany

Exactly ninety years ago president Hindenburg of Germany nominated a new chancellor for his country. The name of the new leader was Adolf Hitler, who was the leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), that had a bit earlier become the biggest party in the parliament. 

After those developments a Dutch communist set on fire the Parliament building of the country which probably helped NSDAP to gain such popularity that in Elections in March the Nazi Party's share of the votes increased to 43.9 per cent, and the party acquired further seats in the Parliament. 

Thereafter Hitler was able to rise to a position of a true dictator of Germany via a "law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich" with the help of the small Centre Party. Today it is politically correct to call all of this a mistake and a huge disaster to the whole world - which I believe we all agree on - and not to think about anything about the alternatives of that time.

In order to consider alternatives, we should understand that Hitler started his political life in the Weimar republic, established after the loss of Germany in World War I. That suffered on many problems before mid-1920´s, but the society settled by the end of the decade, until the Great depression changed everything.  

According to Wikipedia: "the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), until then a minor far-right party, increased its votes to 19%, becoming Germany's second largest party, while the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) also increased its votes; this made the unstable coalition system by which every chancellor had governed increasingly unworkable. The last years of the Weimar Republic were marred by even more systemic political instability than previous years, as political violence increased."

And in another Wikipedia chapter: "from 1928 onwards (after Stalin reinstated Thälmann as KPD leader against the majority of the KPD central committee..., the party followed the Comintern line and received funding from the Comintern... the party was closely aligned with the Soviet leadership headed by Joseph Stalin; Thälmann has been described as ´the driving force behind Stalinization´... and ´Stalin’s right hand in Germany´. 

And somewhat later continues: "in February 1932, Thälmann argued that ´Hitler must come to power first, then the requirements for a revolutionary crisis [will] arrive more quickly´. In November 1932, the KPD and the Nazis worked together in the Berlin transport workers’ strike."

The question arising is: what was the alternative for Hitler in the Germany of 1930´s. Was it a democracy or was it a communist revolution supported by Josif Stalin. People of 2020´s probably think only about the first option, but in reality, it could as well have been a stalinistic Germany. 

What happened in early Soviet Union in 1930´s was not much different from what happened in Hitler´s Germany. People were massacred and both countries acquired military power. And it is also probable, that Stalin was planning on an attack towards the West in early 1940´s but Hitler started his operation Barbarossa before him. 

The question is that if such an attack would have occurred in collaboration with stalinistic Germany, would Western Europe have lost the war, and stayed under the occupation of Russian communists until the late 1980´s? And if so, would that have been better or worse than the German occupation for few years in 1940´s?
 
Naturally I have no answer to this question, because history is an invalid research topic where no repeated experiments can be organized. However, we may be happy to celebrate - instead the Hitler´s rise to the power 90 years ago - his loss of life in May 1945. And again, we can rejoice in the 70th anniversary of Josif Stalin's death on the fifth of March, just a bit more than a month from now.  

25 January 2023

A gift from the free world to Ukraine

Germany finally allowed Leopard battle tanks to be given to Ukraine. And even promised to send them itself. 

This all is excellent and shows that the free world is ready to defend itself against brutality and tyranny represented by Vladimir Putin´s army in Ukraine. And I am happy that my home country, Finland, will participate in this movement by adding some Leopards into the common effort.

As normal, our tanks are in a great shape and may be provided as soon as they will have a trained crew. Unfortunately, the number of these armored gifts is restricted due to our position as a neighbor of Russia and yet unaccepted application to join NATO - in this situation we simply cannot risk our own defensive ability.  

Anyway, I am sure that this day will be remembered as one of the most important turning points in the process of getting invaders out of Ukraine. And my only advice to the Zelenskiy´s army is: please, use the Leopards efficiently, and push you enemies to there, where they belong! 

22 January 2023

China uses Western universities to educate its youth

China was for a long time known as a country, that copies technology from more developed societies and wins markets by lower production costs. That worked well for a long time, but more recently China has put a huge effort to become a developed - science-based - producer of high technology and entrepreneurship. 

In order to have well educated working power, China has allowed - and even encouraged - students to move overseas. Thereafter the Chinese government launched a program to recruit and nurture high-caliber, early-career expatriate scientists who return to China. 

A recent study examined how effective the program has been, and how well it has supported the young scholars’ productivity when they returned to China. The comparison was made to their peers that remained overseas.

The investigation found that the scholars outperformed overseas peers in last-authored publications - typically showing the leading position among the authors - because of greater access to larger research teams and better research funding in China. However, although the returning scientists were generally of high caliber in research they fell below the top category in pre-return scientific productivity.

Taken together, the study has important implications for global academic mobility and international competition between East and West. 

The Chinese students form a large share of the US and EU PhD graduates and are among the most productive one. And in the future China probably continues to invest in higher education and academic talent, which results in more and more Western-trained Chinese students returning to China, because their universities can be expected to become more attractive locations for Chinese students with poor future options in Western countries. That will bring huge support to Chinese research and innovation, and ultimately narrow the technological gap between China and Western countries.   

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
China is betting on scientific excellence
Does China prove the superiority of market economy?
Could China take advantage on the weakness of Putin´s Russia?

19 January 2023

Erdogan wants fighter jets, and uses Finland and Sweden to get them

Foreign minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu of Turkey is currently negotiating with his colleague of the United States, Anthony Blinken, about buying General Dynamics F-16 fighter jets to his air force. They have asked those already quite a while ago, but only now have got their chance.

The reason is that Finland and Sweden have asked to be accepted as members of the NATO. And that provided Turkey a chance to blackmail Joe Biden´s regime to accept the trade. 

That probably is also the reason why Turkey is setting impossible demands to Sweden for a positive response. That is, asking Sweden to even change its legislation in order to send Kurdish refugees to be sentenced to jail for issues that are not crimes in the Nordic countries.

* * *

In both Turkey and Finland people are waiting whether Americans will couple the fighter trade to President Erdogan´s approval of the applications of Finland and Sweden. And to help in such a way to increase our safety as neighbors of the aggressive Russia. 

While waiting for Turkish ratification I would like to point out to Turkey´s regime, that keeping Finland out for too long does not enhance positive attitudes of Finns towards the country. Actually, the reluctance seen thus far has already injured sympathy that prevailed between the people of the two nations just few years ago. 

Turkish behavior is also followed in other Western countries, and therefore the ruler of the Bosporous strait is now under a lot of pressure from other NATO members. A common expectation, however, is that Turkey would actually be ready to accept Finland and Sweden, but wants to get a reward for its graciousness. That is, modern fighters to be used in it own interest in Near East and elsewhere. 

15 January 2023

Is the moral of Russians collapsing

A former leading member of the Wagner group - a Russian mercenary army forming one of the stronges units of the attacker in Ukraine - has asked asylum in Norway. The decision on his request has not been made yet. 

It remains to be seen, what happens next, but one possible interpretation on this case could be loss of morale among the fighters of Wagner. That would not be a miracle taken the huge losses of the Russian army during the last eleven months. 

There are naturally also other possibilities, but it is good to make the optimistic interpretation, but be prepared for the worst. And therefore countries of Europe need to continue their support to Ukraine. That is, anti-aircraft missiles and battle tanks - or whatever the heroes of this war need to beat the enemy. 

That is because it should be understood that the loss of Russians in this war is not only a big win to Ukrainians, but its importance will be even bigger to the whole world by showing that a violent attack against innocent people cannot any more be counted as a way to change the world.  

11 January 2023

Reducing taxes, enhancing export and paying the governmental debt

Finland is a small country with a relatively high standard of living. According to a new report, that is largely paid by the efforts of export industry.  

The report points out that "contribution of the export industry to the Finnish national economy is approximately 47 per cent of the value added and approximately 42 per cent of the employed. In terms of taxes, the impact is approximately one third of the total tax revenue."

The report also lists elements necessary for the future success of export industry. They need a lot of new talent i.e. sufficient number of competent experts, courage to be creative by increasing research, development and innovation as well as long-term industry policy ensuring competitiveness for themselves. 

I do not claim against the report. It will, however, be interesting to see how the Finnish political apparatus will respond to the needs of its industry. During the last years it has only succeeded to ruin the public economy by spending considerably more money than taxes and other incomes would have allowed. And therefore the government debt has increased from 106 billion euros in year 2019 to 129 billion euros in 2022. 

The interests of that burden alone are estimated to triple in this year to 2,4 billion euros. To be covered by Finnish tax payers for nothing. 

Fortunately, this reality is well understood by the ordinary people. According to a recent opinion poll only 18 percent would like to cover public spending by additional debt instead of reducing public spending. And to improve the operating conditions of companies.

The next elections of the Finnish parliament will be in April. The opinion polls suggest that the two most popular parties will be Conservatives and True Finns. Both of which have promised to reduce governmental budget. In other words, people are now looking for a change to the current left wing government led by the beautiful prime minister Sanna Marin of Social Democrats

Taken together: next summer we will see, whether Finland will have a government program improving operating conditions of export industry, reduce governmental debt and retain the best parts of the Nordic welfare society so, that the political left will not make a comeback in elections 2027 to return the country back to the harsh economic position it is right now.
 

8 January 2023

Military advice: Ukraine needs modern tanks

Russia did not keep peace in Ukraine during their Christmas-time although they made such a promise. Obviously, that was not even a purpose, but some kind of propaganda action directed towards ordinary Russians by enabling dictator Putin to blame Ukrainians for not respecting holy religious values. 

Yesterday a retired Finnish general Pekka Toveri reminded that Ukraine needs modern military material from the Western countries in order to enable them to push the invaders out of their country. Right now - after giving up-to-date air defense materials and light tanks - battle tanks should be provided to Zelenskiy´s army. 

The General proposed that 300 to 400 Leopard tanks would make a difference, but also any other modern tank superior to Russian equipment would do. Leopards are, however, best available in Europe.

The problem may turn out to be a permission needed from Germany - where Leopards are made - which has shown weakness throughout the war in its willingness to help Ukrainians. Fortunately, however, Germans have slowly started to realize that help for the defender is not an aggression towards Russia but an obligatory self defense action to secure democracy and values in Europe. 

If Europeans including Germany will follow General´s suggestion, they will send the necessary number of battle tanks to Ukraine, and train crews for them. As a result, Ukraine would have enough power to push out Russians from the occupied areas in eastern and southern parts of the country. 

The alternative for providing tanks to Ukraine would be an enormous number of dead Ukrainian and Russian soldiers - and Ukrainian civilians - in a slowly progressing war reminding us on the horrors of the World War I, during which the defense lines of neither side could be broken, but human lives were lost in an unfathomable rate.

So, it is up to us Europeans to decide, whether we will defend democracy and save human lives in the war of Ukraine. Or in other words, whether we will provide the Russian dictator a clear sign to stop his attack against our values - and save both Ukrainians and Russian soldiers from paying with their lives our inability to make difficult decisions.

In Finland there is no problem in understanding this. According to the chairman of the defense committee of its parliament, Finland is ready to participate - but only as part of a European action.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Good news from Ukraine
Finnish Winter war showed the way to help Ukraine
Ukrainian army should be equipped with the best possible weapons against missiles

7 January 2023

Arctic sea ice contradicts with the climatic model predictions, but is that changing now?

One of the items I am deeply interested is the development of the climatic change in the Arctic area. For that purpose, I have made statistical analyses on the dependence between the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and the area of the arctic sea ice.

I published today my most recent analysis in Finnish, and decided also to write a short summary of that in English. I have also previously written a post on this topic into this blog, and recommend reading it in case you - my highly valued reader - are interested in details of this analysis. 

The idea of the analysis is simple: I am using September data (i.e. annual minimum) for arctic sea ice area of the National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and carbon dioxide concentration measurements conducted in Mauna Loa. The latter ones are not available for year 2022 due to the eruption of the volcano, and therefore I had to use an estimate based on two previous measurements. The development of the concentration is given in the figure below, where the measured concentrations and estimated value are marked with blue and red color, respectively.



In the next figure I have marked the number of years after which a connection between the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere and the area of the Arctic ice sheet is statistically significant in two consecutive years. In X-axis I marked the year from which each analysis series started.


The left side of the figure (yeasts 1979-2001) is according to the hypothesis, and the blue columns - i.e. number of years needed for statistical significance - are shortening from left to the right as predicted by the climatic models. However, starting from 2002 there are no consecutive two years with statistical significance, and therefore these columns are marked with red color. And their height is simply the number of data years used for each analysis. 

Thus, my analysis suggests that the prediction based on climatic models are supported by data from 1979 to 2001, but thereafter there is a strict contradiction between the models and observations. Normally such a discordance between observations and theory is used to falsify scientific hypotheses. I have, however, not seen that the such a decision would have been made or even discussed among the community of climatic researchers.

* * *

Before ending this blogpost, I would like to point out that the most recent daily measurements of the Arctic sea ice extent have shown an extremely interesting change, where the relative extent of the ice has decreased compared to previous years. As a result, right now (January 5th) the size of the Arctic sea ice is the second smallest ever measured (for the fifth day of each year) despite the fact that e.g. in 5th November it was only at 11th position. 

Therefore it will be extremely interesting to follow how the Arctic sea ice develops in this year. Will its development return back to the development predicted by the climatic change, or will the last weeks´ phenomenon turn out to be only a temporary exception caused by e.g. exceptional weather conditions in the Arctic region. 

6 January 2023

Ayatollahs in Iran demonstrated their ridiculousness

Freedom of speech is a serious matter in France. This was demonstrated e.g. eight years ago after the terrorist attack to Charlie Hebdo magazine, when the French didn't even listen to the Muslims' instructions to close the magazine.

Now the same magazine has published excellent caricatures of Iran's religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The reason for the pictures was the violent treatment and even killing of women - and many men - asking for human rights in the Islamic theocracy. According to the Norwegian-based Iran Human Rights organization, almost 500 protesters have been killed.

Stung by the publication of the satirical pictures, the fanatic Iranian leadership decided to close a French research institute. The reaction was not completely unexpected, but it is very enlightening. This is because it confirmed the inability of Islamic fundamentalists to understand the freedom of speech in Western countries.

It is clear that France will not listen to Ayatollahs stupid demands. As a legacy of the Great Revolution, the country is exceptionally strongly stuck to the freedom of speech. So the ayatollahs only made themselves and their ideas ridiculous - although their own existence is a deadly serious matter for Iranians who yearn for their freedom.

So serious, that the collapse of their regime would be a great gift to the whole world. And not least to all sensible Iranians.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Independence day of Finland now and 83 years ago
Sweden already in trouble - Finland following
Riots in Sweden: what next?

1 January 2023

Availability of coffee in a warming world

Most of the coffee-plants are grown in Africa, South America, south-eastern Asia and Indonesia. Despite that, more coffee is drunk in Finland than in any other country, when consumption is compared to the number of the population. Finns consume almost 10 kg of roasted coffee per person every year.

Therefore it was interesting to note that global warming may soon make it impractical for many plantations to grow the world’s most popular coffee bean, Coffea arabica. As a solution, coffee growers in Africa have seriously turned their view to a long-forgotten variety, C. liberica.

This plant was widely grown in the 1870´s, but due to its fruits being large and hard to process, the bean lost its popularity at the turn of the 20th century. Due to problems with C. arabica, Ugandan farmers have recently started to ramp up cultivation of a subspecies "excelsa" of C. liberica , which is resistant to wilt and other diseases. 

It produces excellent coffee and does not need chilly high altitudes to thrive. Therefore it seems that coffee cups can be kept full even if the planet warms as predicted. I believe this is a welcome news for the caffeine-addicts throughout the world - and especially valuated in Finland inhabited by the record holders.