Science Refutes Evolution - Dr. James Tour
Monday, June 5, 2017
Chemical Evolution Has No Bases in Empirical Science
Consider what Dr. James Tour, Professor of Chemistry at Rice University, has to say about life's origens. He also teaches Computer Science, Materials Science, and Nano-Engineering. He is one of the world's leading experts in synthetic chemistry- the science of designing complex molecules. This is from a lecture at the University of Waterloo in 2016: "Abiogenesis is the prebiotic process wherein life, such as a cell, arises from non-living simple organic compounds: carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, proteins, and amino acids. All this is needed before evolution can begin. We have no idea how molecules that compose living systems could have been devised such that they would work in concert to fulfill biology's functions. We have no idea how the basic set of molecules, carbohydrates, nucleic acid, lipids, and proteins, were made and how they could have coupled in proper sequences, and then transformed into ordered assemblies until there was the construction of a complex biological system, and eventually to that first cell. Nobody has any idea on how this was done when using the known mechanisms of chemical science. Those that say this is all worked out, they know nothing: nothing about chemical synthesis. Nothing! From a chemical perspective, neither I nor any of my colleagues can fathom a prebiotic molecule route to construction of a complex system. We cannot even figure out the prebiotic routes to the basic building blocks of life: carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins. Chemists are collectively bewildered. Hence I say that no chemist understands prebiotic synthesis of the requisite building blocks, let alone assembly into a complex system. I've asked all my colleagues, National Academy members, Nobel Prize winners. I sit with them in our offices. Nobody understands this. So if your professors say, 'It's all worked out,' your teachers say, 'It's all worked out,' they don't know what they are talking about. It is not worked out. You cannot just refer this to somebody else. They don't know what they are talking about."
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
Merkel, After Discordant G-7 Meeting, Is Looking Past Trump
By Alison Smale and Steven Erlanger, NY Times, May 28, 2017
BERLIN–Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Europe’s most influential leader, has concluded, after three days of trans-Atlantic meetings, that the United States of President Trump is not the reliable partner her country and the Continent have automatically depended on in the past.
Clearly disappointed with Mr. Trump’s positions on NATO, Russia, climate change and trade, Ms. Merkel said in Munich on Sunday that traditional alliances were no longer as steadfast as they once were and that Europe should pay more attention to its own interests “and really take our fate into our own hands.”
“The times in which we could rely fully on others–they are somewhat over,” Ms. Merkel added, speaking on the campaign trail after a contentious NATO summit meeting in Brussels and a Group of 7 meeting in Italy. “This is what I experienced in the last few days.”
Ms. Merkel’s strong comments were a potentially seismic shift in trans-Atlantic relations. With the United States less willing to intervene overseas, Germany is becoming an increasingly dominant power in a partnership with France.
The new French president, Emmanuel Macron, has shown a willingness to work with Germany and to help lead the bloc out of its troubles. And Ms. Merkel sees Germany’s future more and more with the European Union of 27 nations, without Britain after its vote to leave the bloc.
“This seems to be the end of an era, one in which the United States led and Europe followed,” said Ivo H. Daalder, a former United States envoy to NATO who is now the director of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “Today, the United States is heading into a direction on key issues that seems diametrically opposite of where Europe is heading. Merkel’s comments are an acknowledgment of that new reality.”
Ms. Merkel’s emphasis on the need of Europe to stand up for its own interests comes after Mr. Trump declined to publicly endorse NATO’s doctrine of collective defense or to agree to common European positions on global trade, dealing with Russian aggression or mitigating the effects of climate change.
“We have to know that we must fight for our future on our own, for our destiny as Europeans,” Ms. Merkel said.
Ms. Merkel, who did not mention Mr. Trump by name, also spoke of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, which means the bloc will lose its second-largest economy and one of its two nuclear powers. Britain’s departure will also weaken trans-Atlantic ties and leave the Continent more exposed than before.
Given this new context for international relations, she said, “I can only say that we Europeans must really take our fate into our own hands–of course in friendship with the United States of America, in friendship with Great Britain and as good neighbors wherever that is possible also with other countries, even with Russia.”
With her statement, she seemed to be calling for German voters to get accustomed to a more active European role–and to more involvement by Berlin in crises on the Continent as well as global ones affecting Europe’s future.
Ms. Merkel was known to have been unsettled by her meetings with Mr. Trump in Washington in March, and she had been concerned that if Marine Le Pen won the French presidency this month, Germany would be isolated and the European Union badly damaged.
But Mr. Macron, who was meeting Mr. Trump for the first time, appeared to have a less negative impression of the outcome of the talks than Ms. Merkel. In a news conference at the end of the Group of 7 conference, Mr. Macron took a glass-half-full approach, saying that he believed, over all, that despite Mr. Trump’s earlier hostile language toward NATO, multilateralism was intact and there was a shared vision in a number of areas.
Mr. Trump campaigned on a platform of trade protectionism, nationalism and skepticism about multilateralism and climate change–all issues on which most European leaders disagree with him. Europeans also depend on NATO for their ultimate defense and are more concerned about an increasingly aggressive Russia than Mr. Trump seems to be, although his defense secretary and national security adviser, both senior military officers, insist that the president is fully behind NATO’s Article 5, which requires all members to come to the defense of any country in the alliance that is attacked.
As they traveled back to the United States over the weekend, White House officials said Mr. Trump had succeeded in delivering a blunt message about self-reliance to American allies in Europe.
They said the president’s decision to scold the NATO member countries about their contributions to the defense alliance would reduce the need for the United States to carry the financial burden for the Continent’s defense. And they said the president’s tough position on trade would help protect American companies from unfair practices.
“This was a summit in which the goals and priorities of the United States and the president really were felt deeply,” said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the president’s conversations with other leaders. Mr. Trump “has changed the way many people around the world are thinking about these issues.”
White House officials expressed little concern about the personal interactions between the president and other heads of state. The administration official said Mr. Trump had built “an extraordinary rapport with the other leaders.”
As for Mr. Trump, he says the trip was a resounding success. On Sunday, after being restrained on Twitter while abroad, he returned to form, unleashing a barrage of posts. Among them: “Just returned from Europe. Trip was a great success for America. Hard work but big results!”
Mr. Daalder disagreed. “The president’s failure to endorse Article 5 in a speech at NATO headquarters, his continued lambasting of Germany and other allies on trade, his apparent decision to walk away from the Paris climate agreement–all suggest that the United States is less interested in leading globally than has been the case for the last 70 years,” he said.
Saturday, May 27, 2017
Germany Is Quietly Building a European Army Under Its Command
EuroBy Elisabeth Braw, Foreign Policy, May 22, 2017
Every few years, the idea of an EU army finds its way back into the news, causing a kerfuffle. The concept is both fantasy and bogeyman: For every federalist in Brussels who thinks a common defense force is what Europe needs to boost its standing in the world, there are those in London and elsewhere who recoil at the notion.
But this year, far from the headlines, Germany and two of its European allies, the Czech Republic and Romania, quietly took a radical step down a path toward something that looks like an EU army while avoiding the messy politics associated with it: They announced the integration of their armed forces.
Romania’s entire military won’t join the Bundeswehr, nor will the Czech armed forces become a mere German subdivision. But in the next several months each country will integrate one brigade into the German armed forces: Romania’s 81st Mechanized Brigade will join the Bundeswehr’s Rapid Response Forces Division, while the Czech 4th Rapid Deployment Brigade, which has served in Afghanistan and Kosovo and is considered the Czech Army’s spearhead force, will become part of the Germans’ 10th Armored Division. In doing so, they’ll follow in the footsteps of two Dutch brigades, one of which has already joined the Bundeswehr’s Rapid Response Forces Division and another that has been integrated into the Bundeswehr’s 1st Armored Division. According to Carlo Masala, a professor of international politics at the University of the Bundeswehr in Munich, “The German government is showing that it’s willing to proceed with European military integration”–even if others on the continent aren’t yet.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has repeatedly floated the idea of an EU army, only to be met with either ridicule or awkward silence. That remains the case even as the U.K., a perennial foe of the idea, is on its way out of the union. There’s little agreement among remaining member states over what exactly such a force would look like and which capabilities national armed forces would give up as a result. And so progress has been slow going. This March, the European Union created a joint military headquarters–but it’s only in charge of training missions in Somalia, Mali, and the Central African Republic and has a meager staff of 30. Other multinational concepts have been designed, such as the Nordic Battle Group, a small 2,400-troop rapid reaction force formed by the Baltic states and several Nordic countries and the Netherlands, and Britain’s Joint Expeditionary Force, a “mini-NATO” whose members include the Baltic states, Sweden, and Finland. But in the absence of suitable deployment opportunities, such operations-based teams may as well not exist.
But under the bland label of the Framework Nations Concept, Germany has been at work on something far more ambitious–the creation of what is essentially a Bundeswehr-led network of European miniarmies. “The initiative came out of the weakness of the Bundeswehr,” said Justyna Gotkowska, a Northern Europe security analyst at Poland’s Centre for Eastern Studies think tank. “The Germans realized that the Bundeswehr needed to fill gaps in its land forces … in order to gain political and military influence within NATO.” An assist from junior partners may be Germany’s best shot at bulking out its military quickly–and German-led miniarmies may be Europe’s most realistic option if it’s to get serious about joint security. “It’s an attempt to prevent joint European security from completely failing,” Masala said.
“Gaps” in the Bundeswehr is an understatement. In 1989, the West German government spent 2.7 percent of GDP on defense, but by 2000 spending had dropped to 1.4 percent, where it remained for years. Indeed, between 2013 and 2016 defense spending was stuck at 1.2 percent–far from NATO’s 2 percent benchmark. In a 2014 report to the Bundestag, the German parliament, the Bundeswehr’s inspectors-general presented a woeful picture: Most of the Navy’s helicopters were not working, and of the Army’s 64 helicopters, only 18 were usable. And while the Cold War Bundeswehr had consisted of 370,000 troops, by last summer it was only 176,015 men and women strong.
Since then the Bundeswehr has grown to more than 178,000 active-duty troops; last year the government increased funding by 4.2 percent, and this year defense spending will grow by 8 percent. But Germany still lags far behind France and the U.K. as a military power. And boosting defense spending is not uncontroversial in Germany, which is wary of its history as a military power. Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel recently said it was “completely unrealistic” to think that Germany would reach NATO’s defense spending benchmark of 2 percent of GDP–even though nearly all of Germany’s allies, from smaller European countries to the United States, are urging it to play a larger military role in the world.
Germany may not yet have the political will to expand its military forces on the scale that many are hoping for–but what it has had since 2013 is the Framework Nations Concept. For Germany, the idea is to share its resources with smaller countries in exchange for the use of their troops. For these smaller countries, the initiative is a way of getting Germany more involved in European security while sidestepping the tricky politics of Germany military expansion. “It’s a move towards more European military independence,” Masala said. “The U.K. and France are not available to take a lead in European security”–the U.K. is on a collision course with its EU allies, while France, a military heavyweight, has often been a reluctant participant in multinational efforts within NATO. “That leaves Germany,” he said. Operationally, the resulting binational units are more deployable because they’re permanent (most multinational units have so far been ad hoc). Crucially for the junior partners, it also amplifies their military muscle. And should Germany decide to deploy an integrated unit, it could only do so with the junior partner’s consent.
Of course, since 1945 Germany has been extraordinarily reluctant to deploy its military abroad, until 1990 even barring the Bundeswehr from foreign deployments. Indeed, junior partners–and potential junior partners–hope that the Framework Nations arrangement will make Germany take on more responsibility for European security. So far, Germany and its multinational miniarmies remain only that: small-scale initiatives, far removed from a full-fledged European army. But the initiative is likely to grow. Germany’s partners have been touting the practical benefits of integration: For Romania and the Czech Republic, it means bringing their troops to the same level of training as the German military; for the Netherlands, it has meant regaining tank capabilities. (The Dutch had sold the last of their tanks in 2011, but the 43rd Mechanized Brigade’s troops, who are partially based with the 1st Armored Division in the western German city of Oldenburg, now drive the Germans’ tanks and could use them if deployed with the rest of the Dutch army.) Col. Anthony Leuvering, the 43rd Mechanized’s Oldenburg-based commander, told me that the integration has had remarkably few hiccups. “The Bundeswehr has some 180,000 personnel, but they don’t treat us like an underdog,” he said. He expects more countries to jump on the bandwagon: “Many, many countries want to cooperate with the Bundeswehr.” The Bundeswehr, in turn, has a list of junior partners in mind, said Robin Allers, a German associate professor at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies who has seen the German military’s list. According to Masala, the Scandinavian countries–which already use a large amount of German-made equipment–would be the best candidates for the Bundeswehr’s next round of integration.
So far, the low-profile and ad hoc approach of the Framework Nations Concept has worked to its advantage; few people in Europe have objected to the integration of Dutch or Romanian units into German divisions, partly because they may not have noticed. Whether there will be political repercussions should more nations sign up to the initiative is less clear.
Outside of politics, the real test of the Framework Nations’ value will be the integrated units’ success in combat. But the trickiest part of integration, on the battlefield and off, may turn out to be finding a lingua franca. Should troops learn each other’s languages? Or should the junior partner speak German? The German-speaking Dutch Col. Leuvering reports that the binational Oldenburg division is moving toward using English.
