From Orcas to Big Pharma and Putin, Out With Malevolence.

It is Halloween, we must chase the evil spirits and welcome all the saints.... I am at home in Ireland after three somewhat frustrating weeks in Nazaré. I had hoped to get the 'Anna M' dressed up in a coat of epoxy glass, but the weather turned against me. It was supposed to be brilliant, and indeed it was a couple of kilometres inland for most of the time, but a fog-bank installed itself on the coast, and didn't shift for days, too chilly and damp for epoxy. Then the weather turned rainy. I had just missed the chance of doing the job before the winter. Still I did get a lot of useful work done, painting and varnishing, inside and out, so hopefully it will not take too long to get her ready for the water in the Spring.

Finally the fog withdrew to seaward.

     While I was there a French couple, Maho and Fanny, sailed in with a fine strong aluminium boat, 'Liguane', with a coating of epoxy glass, whose drop-keel had been broken off by orcas, as well as the rudders being damaged. As can be seen in the photo, the keel was made of several layers of ply-wood coated with glass-fibre, and the power of the attack was amazing, showing extraordinary malevolence. There have been numerous such attacks on sailing boats off the Spanish and Portuguese coast in the last couple

Good job Maho is handy!

of years, with one boat actually being sunk.

The standard response these days is likely to be along the lines 'oh it's their sea, why shouldn't they attack sail-boats if they feel like it?' 'Probably some sail-boat gave them a hard time!' etc. They are much more likely to have had a hard time from fishing boats, which however they have not been attacking. I prefer the attitude of the Spanish firework makers who sell a box of grenades which are said to be very effective at scaring the orcas off.

    I have always disliked orcas because of the grief they give my humpback whale friends, attacking their calves if they can and eating the livers out of them. There are also plenty of reports of orcas killing seals and penguins just for the fun of it, when they don't even want to eat them. Some will say that it is foolish to assign attributes such as malevolence to animals. I disagree, believing as I do that evil or malevolent spirits do exist and are present just about everywhere.

    It is not even unrealistic to imply moral standards to plants, though here again some careful distinctions are called for. My homoeopath wife tells me how this or that 'weed' or 'poison' can be very effective remedies; so the moral quality is not intrinsic to the plant, but nonetheless weeds are bad when they choke ones vegetables. It's a matter of their role in a particular context. Even Putin, let alone Russians, are not evil in themselves, but they have misconstrued their context. The battle between good and evil is real, indeed it is the ultimate human context. If we mess up in our interpretation of it, we are in deep trouble. Fortunately Christ has the victory, for having attracted the ultimate malevolence to Himself, he was able to turn it into the means of our salvation.

    Times have changed lately; the values of tolerance and enlightenment, along with the institutions of liberalism and democracy, are looking more shakey than ever they have done before in my lifetime, which is especially shocking in the countries that have liked to see themselves as their principal bastions. It just happens that these orca attacks have coincided with a certain rediscovery of evil, most dramatically illustrated by both the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The fact of the matter is that the 'your truth and my truth' lark just won't do any more!

    I have been frankly shaken by the realisation of just how right my initial scepticism of the vaccines turned out to be, along with the profoundly troubling corruption of our whole medico/political/information establishment. As for the profound and mendacious malevolence of Mr Putin.... Let me say that I would not hesitate to use a grenade to scare off an attacking orca, and I would not be too bothered if I killed it. I do not believe Christ meant us not to stand up to bullies, and believe that the Catholic teaching about just wars is sound.

    Which said, it has to be remarked that the war in Ukraine, extremely regretable in itself, has yet done an immense favour to the environmental movement, ramming home the necessity of emancipating our economies and way of life from dependence on burning fossil fuels. Come to that, we have also been reminded of the dangers of nuclear power stations. People like Alec and I, who have been chuntering on for some years about, for instance, electrolysers, are suddenly getting the feeling that we may be taken more seriously, and something similar is true for those of us who have been saying that the medical establishment, taken over by commercial interests, is going off the rails, and is due for a complete overhaul.

    There must be a reason why the simple technology of hydrolysers has not been employed long since, for a start by radically reducing both fuel consumption and emissions from internal combustion engines,- and not a reason all that different to why alternatives to vaccinations as treatment for covid were systematically suppressed. One might call it 'capitalism', but I don't. There is no reason why capitalists should not be open and rational about what they do, and there is nothing wrong with making a profit on it. The problem is when the profit becomes the guiding principle, and the pursuit of it causes capitalists to distort and indeed hide the truth about what they are doing, especially when it happens to be against the interests of their customers, which they are there to serve. This is not the inevitable truth about capitalism; it is just greedy badness. It is remarkable how powerful, how obstructive of simple things like treating ill-health or getting around affordably, such people can be, as they hide behind the desperate need for real business to find ways of meeting genuine needs. Capitalism is morally neutral, like a plant or a ship, which is as good or bad as its owners and crew; the trouble is that it is made of money, 'that tainted thing', which so easily becomes an end in itself, a false god. Honesty and transparancy promptly disappear when it does so!

    Vast sums of money are being pushed out by governments and banks to 'mitigate the climate crisis', but how little of it has shown up around us in practical ways actually doing it! Those with access to the money remain more interested in wheeling and dealing on the whole, rather than the uncertain and laborious business of innovating, finding solutions and actually producing things. Meanwhile down-to-earth people have such a struggle to survive that they have little time or energy to even think about such things.

    Well, Alec finally fitted the electroliser in my 08 Citroen Picasso, before I drove it home by way of Bilbao. We had plenty of hydrogen bubbling out of it on Alec's work bench a couple of years ago now, but much time was wasted while I looked around, in vain, for someone to fit it in Ireland. Perhaps we may succeed now that it is in the car and working. I am looking for someone who would like to specialise in this kind of business, but first I suppose I must be able to demonstrate its effectiveness. Alec reckons the one he has in his Transit van improves diesel consumption by over 30%, something like the percentage of European energy that came from Russia before the war, and massively cleans up the exhaust. We believe the hydrogen improves the combustion in the engine so that much more of the energy potential of the fuel is released. I have been carefully recording my petrol consumption/distance travelled since I got the car in March 2020. All I can say so far is that it seems to be doing the job. The car floats along like a boat with the wind behind it, with noticeably less need to put one's foot down on the accelerator. I put exactly 40 litres into the tank very soon after the fuel alarm went off in Bilbao, and am still running on it. When it goes off again, we shall have a pretty good idea how far the 40 litres has taken us; see next blog!

    

    Since the ferry was delayed by weather, I was given a chance to explore Bilbao,- a very

interesting city. Of course I had to see the Guggenheim Museum, a fascinating building, even if one might have reservations about much of the art inside it. It intrigues me, how the loss of the Faith entails the loss of faith in even human attempts at realising rational order; so artists end up talking about dodgy 'Pseud's Corner' stuff like 'Transcending the Spiritual', while they try to reach directly for our subconscious sensibilities and to bypass the conscious mind that they have given up on, not believing the two may be reconciled.

    What a relief to come into St James' Cathedral, with its Madonna who has her eyes wide open, while holding a rose! We all need to take a step backwards, maybe here in Ireland just into the old culture of our Western coastlands, to see if we can knit artistic and technical endeavor together again, work with fun, technology with the love of nature, physical with spiritual life.

    Meanwhile the 'Anna M' is ready for her electric drive, but we are out of capital for now. Alec is trying to find business partners in Portugal, as I am here in Ireland. The vision is simple enough, of a company delivering custom-built electric/hydrogen drives especially for boats, but also vehicles and all kinds of down-to-earth applications. Electrolysers and fuel cells are of particular interest. It would be great to be up and running here in West Clare when they start to bring the mooted off-shore wind power ashore. Whatever the application, it starts with cheap, green electricity,- hence a whole new future for wind power, be it from sails or windmills. It is fun to have such an open field before us!