Spanish Energy Company Responds to Study. Badly.

[NoZed Avenger]

Saw this linked off Instapundit.

You may recall the flap about the Spanish study indicating that country's green jobs program was a failure in actually providing jobs. The study ( http://www.juandemariana.org/pdf/090327-employment-public-aid-renewable.pdf ) was authored by Dr. Gabriel Calzada of the University of Rey Juan Carlos.

I am not going to discuss or debate the rightness or wrongness of the study; just a particular reaction to it by one company:

Many people invested in the green program -- especially since it is an inspiration for the U.S. one -- were upset by the study.

The initial reaction seemed bad enough. (note not claiming unbiased source. We're stil not to the good part)

A minister from Spain’s Socialist government called the rector of King Juan Carlos University — Dr. Calzada’s employer — seeking Calzada’s ouster. Calzada was not fired, but he was stripped of half of his classes at the university. The school then dropped its accreditation of a summer university program with which Calzada’s think tank — Instituto Juan de Mariana — was associated.

Additionally, the head of Spain’s renewable energy association and the head of its communist trade union wrote opinion pieces in top Spanish newspapers accusing Calzada of being “unpatriotic” — they did not charge him with being incorrect, but of undermining Spain by daring to write the report.

However, energy company Thermotechnic turned the response up to 11 with the following:

Spain’s Dr. Gabriel Calzada — the author of a damning study concluding that Spain’s “green jobs” energy program has been a catastrophic economic failure — was mailed a dismantled bomb on Tuesday by solar energy company Thermotechnic.

(emph in original)



A bomb?

A company sent a bomb - dismantled or not - in response to a study?


Can I hear a WTH from the congregation?

Does anyone want to show me my old fashioned, wrong-headed thinking on how sending bombs (even dismantled) is bad? Granted, not as bad as a live bomb. But bad.

 

[bynmdsue]

Weird.Almost like they were religious fanatics or something.

 

[dasmiller]

Quote:
Spain’s Dr. Gabriel Calzada — <snipped> — was mailed a dismantled bomb on Tuesday by solar energy company Thermotechnic.

So . .. like . . . a disassembled videotape of "Alice in Wonderland?"

 

[WildCat]

A bomb?

A company sent a bomb - dismantled or not - in response to a study?


Can I hear a WTH from the congregation?

Does anyone want to show me my old fashioned, wrong-headed thinking on how sending bombs (even dismantled) is bad? Granted, not as bad as a live bomb. But bad.

And nobody has been arrested for that?

 

[383LQ4SS]

should have assembled it and sent it back

 

[Darat]

Where is this being reported? It seems such a major story I am surprised it isn't everywhere.

And of course if someone has sent anyone a dismantled bomb* I would have thought they would be arrested.

*For the pedants I mean as a threat, if your job is something to do with bombs it may of course be appropriate to be sent a dismantled bomb

 

[WildCat]

From what I gather from this Bing translation the company denies it.

Weird story.

 

[NoZed Avenger]

From what I gather from this Bing translation the company denies it.

Weird story.

Hm. I looked for anything else and didn't see anything (in English), but thought this was too weird not to at least post.

This just keeps getting stranger -- has the Professor gone off his twig? Or did someone at the company go rogue? Or . . . head hurt now. Mongo rest.

ETA - Ok. Read the painful translation. Looks like someone else could have accidentally mixed . . . but then . . . and . . .

I am guessing the Professor is reporting the conversation correctly, as his version of his telephone call and the companies match up. I am also crediting them with telling the truth. So my guess is a third party accidentally mixed packages or intentionally did so as a threat (assuming the Professor is telling the truth about his expert), and the rest was a miscommunication.

But the Professor bringing in a security expert and a reporter *before* knowing it was supposed to be a bomb. That smells a little . . . . off.

 

[Darth Rotor]

I'll offer a hearty WTF on the first part of the story, and a "huh?" to the bomb part of the story.

 

[geni]

I am guessing the Professor is reporting the conversation correctly, as his version of his telephone call and the companies match up. I am also crediting them with telling the truth. So my guess is a third party accidentally mixed packages or intentionally did so as a threat (assuming the Professor is telling the truth about his expert), and the rest was a miscommunication.

But the Professor bringing in a security expert and a reporter *before* knowing it was supposed to be a bomb. That smells a little . . . . off.

His story is more full of holes than swiss cheese.

Okey so firstly he gets a package he views as suspicious. Rather than contacting the police he contacts a "terrorism expert".

They then sit down in witha journalist and open the thing. Now it's possible that spain doesn't have the world's best "terrorism expert"s running around but given how long ETA was active for you would think they would have known that opening a potential parcle bomb is a bad idea.

Now it's possible that the scan revealed no explosives (tricky given the range availible) in which case any set of random electrical parts could be considered a disassembled bomb.