Mohit Malhan’s Blog

This one took a little bit long time to come out, but never late then ever. I went up to the Cinemark theater in Plano last week to watch “Angels and Demons” which is about 2hr 20min file casting Tom Hanks. ‎ - This file is a 2009 American film adaptation of Dan Brown’s novel by the same name. It is the sequel to The Da Vinci Code!

This movie provoked my though process which was in line with the Galileo Galilei theory of science.

This post is all about discussing the conflict between Galileo with the Catholic Church (also known as the Roman Catholic Church) over his support of Copernican astronomy, is often considered a defining moment in the history of the relationship between religion and science.

Before Galileo invented the telescope and came out with his theories which stated sun to be the center of universe, people belived in the Ptolemaic theory of geocentrism that the earth was the center of the universe and that all heavenly bodies revolved around the earth.

This was the fact that was been accepted as it came out from the Roman Catholic Church. Further, this fact was supported by arguments such as Incarnation the Son of God had descended to the earth and become man, earth was supposed to be the center around which all other celestial bodies moved.

Heliocentrism, the theory that the earth revolved around the sun, contradicted both geocentrism and the prevailing theological support of the theory.

There are many questions which came up to my mind and which drenched in the pool of thoughts, Was this really a conflict between the religions and science?

What were Galileo Galilei’s conflicts with the Roman Catholic Church?

While unfolding the answers it was evident that It was not a simple conflict between science and religion, as usually portrayed. Rather it was a conflict between Copernican science and Aristotelian science which had become Church tradition. Galileo expressed his scientific views supporting Copernicus as well as his biblical views in a 1615 letter to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany which became the basis of his first Church trial and censure. A major work published in 1632 resulted in Galileo’s conviction on suspicion of heresy and a lifetime house arrest. The Galileo affair provides important lessons and applications to the Church and to science today.

Aristotle believed the universe is finite and spherical with a stationary earth at its center. Enclosing the whole universe is the sphere of the Prime Motion turned by the First Unmoved Mover. Inside that were transparent

Until 1610, when Galileo built his first telescope at age 46, he focused mainly on physics, not astronomy. He soon made discoveries which shook the foundations of the Aristotelian cosmos. He saw mountains, valleys and other features indicating change on the moon. He observed the motion of four of Jupiter’s moons, now referred to as the Galilean moons. No longer could scientists say that heavenly bodies revolve exclusively around the earth.

This was very certain that The Roman Catholic hierarchy and their Aristotlean-Ptolemaic advisors were never ready to belive his advice. The Roman Curia promptly banned and confiscated Galileo’s monumental work; and it became the basis for his second trial, censure, and lifetime house arrest by the Holy Office of the Inquisition in 1633. The Roman Catholic Church convicted him of breaking his agreement of 1616 and of teaching the Copernican theory as a truth and not a hypothesis. They suspected him of holding heretical opinions condemned by the Church, which they ordered him to abjure. Seven of the ten Cardinals presiding signed his condemnation.

Today, Science views Galileo’s conflict with Church hierarchy as a great triumph of science over religion. Today Science is king, Nature is the Creator, and God (if He exists) is irrelevant. Galileo would not have viewed it thus, for his faith in the truth of God’s Word remained strong. He recognized that God is King and Creator, not Nature!

So just in case if you had patience to go over through this whole piece of article, reward yourself by watching the must watch movie!

Again, I haven’t yet been through over the bible nor have many roman catholic friends, but this is something that I was able to understand by my research since last couple of weeks ever since I watch that movies. So lot of material mentioned her comes from various papers of authors around on nets, pool of other bloggers, and certainly the wiki encyclopedia.

I am going to discuss my personal views about the Auschwitz Concentration Camp through this post.  It was during May 2009, when I was traveling to Poland along with my team from UTD, I got an opportunity to travel one of the World Heritage Site, The Auschwitz Birkenau. As student back in Gujarat,  I always used to memorize each and every thing that used to come in social studies, may it be history, economics, civics etc…and I am sure every one of us have been through the history of both World Wars at one or the other stage.

Auschwitz Concentration Camp was a concentration camp that was been set up in Poland after Germany invaded Poland in September 1939.

Hitler always thought that Jews were the one because of whom Germany was defeated in the First World War, and he took all the Jews to be one of the principal adversaries of Germany.

Auschwitz was a death camp which has witnessed death of 3 million people in it most of them where Jews. Most victims were killed in Auschwitz gas chambers; other deaths were caused by systematic starvation, forced labor, lack of disease control, individual executions, and purported “medical experiments”.

It is very important to understand the construction of this concentration camp to realize how horrifying it might have been to be inside the camp. Please refer the following link for an audio-video description for the construction of the camp. (Auschwitz)

After invading Poland, Germany had set up several concentration camps to slaughter the Jews and Auschwitz was the biggest of them.

All the Jews (referred as shipment) were been transported to the camp from all around the country by the death gate termed as “gate to hell”

Picture on right displays the view from inside the camp.  Jews were been transported inside the camp through this tracks.

A sign over the entrance to the camp read ARBEIT MACHT FREI, which means “work makes one free.” In actuality, the opposite was true. Labor became another form of genocide that the Nazis called “extermination through work.”

Each day was a struggle for survival under unbearable conditions. Prisoners were housed in primitive barracks that had no windows and were not insulated from the heat or cold. There was no bathroom, only a bucket. Each barrack held about 36 wooden bunkbeds, and inmates were squeezed in five or six across on the wooden plank. As many as 500 inmates lodged in a single barrack.

Inmates were always hungry. Food consisted of watery soup made with rotten vegetables and meat, a few ounces of bread, a bit of margarine, tea, or a bitter drink resembling coffee. Diarrhea was common. People weakened by dehydration and hunger fell easy victim to the contagious diseases that spread through the camp.

Victims who were spared immediate death by being selected for labor were systematically stripped of their individual identities. They had their hair shaved off and a registration number tattooed on their left forearm. Men were forced to wear ragged, striped pants and jackets, and women wore work dresses. Both were issued ill-fitting work shoes, sometimes clogs. They had no change of clothing and slept in the same clothes they worked in.

At Auschwitz children were often killed upon arrival. Children born in the camp were generally killed on the spot. Near the end of the war, in order to cut expenses and save gas, cost-accountant considerations led to an order to place living children directly into the ovens or throw them into open burning pits.

Women were not been spared either, they were been subjected to the various biological experiements been conducted over them by the German group of doctors. In December 1942, Professor Carl Clauberg came to the death camp Auschwitz and started his medical experimental activities. He injected chemical substances into wombs during his experiments. Thousands of Jewish and Gypsy women were subjected to this treatment. They were sterilized by the injections, producing horrible pain, inflamed ovaries, bursting spasms in the stomach, and bleeding. The injections seriously damaged the ovaries of the victims, which were then removed and sent to Berlin.

The photo on the left displays the group toilets “latrines” that prisoners used.

Escape from Auschwitz was almost impossible. Electrically charged barbed-wire fences surrounded both the concentration camp and the killing center. Guards, equipped with machine guns and automatic rifles, stood in the many watchtowers. The lives of the prisoners were completely controlled by their guards, who on a whim could inflict cruel punishment on them. Prisoners were also mistreated by fellow inmates who were chosen to supervise the others in return for special favors by the guards.

About 700 prisoners attempted to escape from the Auschwitz camps during the years of their operation, of which about 300 were successful. A common punishment for escape attempts was death by starvation; the families of successful escapees were sometimes arrested and interned in Auschwitz and prominently displayed to deter others. If someone did manage to escape, the SS would pick ten random people from the prisoner’s block and starve them to death.

Internet Footnotes:

About Nazism:  www.nazism.net

Online Encyclopedia: Wiki

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The images that are been uploaded are copyrighted by Creative Commons Attribution Share License.

Abstract

I had a very short visit to Poland which didn’t last for more than 7 days at disposal.

I was traveling to the country as a part of my course work IMS Study Trip to Poland. As part of this trip I was assorted a project to work up on and submit a paper discussing Poland Business Environment and steps taken by government to enhance Business. I don’t think I am qualified enough or I don’t see myself at a level in which I can visit a country and submit my views about the steps taken by the government. Yes this visit created my interest about the Polish culture and as a student from Management School it further made me think more over the business aspects of doing the business in Poland.

The paper mentioned below is my research from the articles that I covered during my information research which are available at disposal on Internet and the College Library of the school. I have explicitly mentioned the references that I used and covered while doing my research over these topics.  The first part of the paper will give a brief introduction about the Polish Culture, later I have focused the subject material to my research findings from out visit to the local administration to Niepolomice. Here, I have discussed how the local government was able to attract the multinationals in the city to set up their production centers which in return generated various growth and employment opportunities for the local residents of the town. In the later part of the paper, I have discussed various provisions that are been taken by the Polish government to maintain International Currency.

Interesting findings and facts about Business in Poland:

Poland is the land of opportunities, a growing and bubbling economy, throttling at full fledge to come out and the European nations.

I was fortunate enough to visit Poland as part of my IMS-8V60 course, study trip to Poland. During my visit I was always trying to analyze how it feels like living in Poland and doing business here. I have reached some conclusions and this paper is a brief introduction about my views on Poland from the business prospective.

I was in Poland from May 16-21. During these 5 days we visited many Industrial sectors trying to analyze the way they work in European economy. It was way to fascinating to know that though a small country, an off-the-cut answer to question “About living and doing business in Poland” is “great”. Poland is a very different pattern of work culture; maybe this gets carried from or inherited by the eastern countries.

Polish culture - Key concepts and values

Identity - A characteristic feature of Polish culture is its commitment to and involvement in the life of the country. Poland is a patriotic nation, united by the strong sense of community felt by its Citizens. Following centuries of invasion from neighboring countries, the Polish people are proud to have maintained an unbroken cultural identity and value their recently attained autonomy.

Relationships - As a family-focused society, the Polish are reliant on the building and maintaining of close personal relationships. Given Poland’s history of occupation, it is generally the case that outsiders must earn the trust of their Polish acquaintances before a close relationship forms. For this reason, when conducting business in Poland, you may find that your Polish colleagues adopt a fairly formal approach to begin with and it may take several meetings before any final decisions are made.

Roman Catholicism - At various points in this country’s history, religion has played a central role in Polish society. As a result, Roman Catholicism serves as the foundation of Polish identity. As one of the most devout nations in Europe, almost the entire population of Poland is Roman Catholic. Even in present-day society, the Roman Catholic Church has a significant bearing on many aspects of Polish life and culture. It continues to provide both the country and its people with a basic sense of solidarity and constancy for the future.

Poland is a large country with nearly 45 Million inhabitants who are able to live, work and transfer with each other without any problems. The economy is mainly private but there is still a significant proportion in the government’s hand. This gets reveled from our visit to Local Corporation to Niepolomice.

Niepolomice is a town in southern Poland, situated in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship (since 1999), previously in Krakow Voivodeship (1975-1998). It is situated on the Vistula River, 25 km east of Krakow on the verge of a large virgin forest. There is a 14th century gothic hunting castle in town built by Casimir III, as well as a conservation center for wisents nearby.

Niepolomice has been very successful in implementing schemes for attracting Investors. The municipality gained fame after it attracted a major investment by the Coca Cola Company.

Initially, Coca Cola intended to open a plant in Krakow. However, negotiations between the company and Krakow’s local government were substantially delayed after Coca Cola encountered a number of problems. Niepolomice took advantage of the situation and sent their representatives to persuade Coca Cola to invest in their town. They brought the company an attractive offer: a plot of land had already been allocated, and the bureaucratic procedures required for initiating the investment were simplified. After having shown such initiative, it was not surprising that Niepolomice succeeded in attracting Coca Cola to their municipality.

It’s definitely where MAN is at: last month it officially opened a 250,000m² plants at Niepolomice near Krakow in Southern Poland. It’s on a 142-hectare site, and represents an investment just shy of £70m. At present, 400 staff is employed at the site, the workforce is scheduled to rise to 650 by the end of 2010.

Trial production started in July. When it’s running at full tilt Niepolomice will have an annual capacity of 15,000 units from a single shift. Production will centre on the TGA-WW (World Wide) range, which is a toughened variant of the outgoing TGA designed to cope with the tough operating conditions in Eastern Europe, the CIS and the Middle East - markets MAN expect to grow fast.

Why locate here? After all, labor rates in Poland will inevitably rise, eventually getting close to parity with Western Europe, so the short-term saving on labor costs is bound to diminish. Similarly, while the Eastern European and CIS markets are currently rocketing upwards, over time this too will settle down, and demand patterns will shift towards those seen in Western Europe. MAN’s view is rather more bullish.

The Niepolomice plant is not just about reducing pressure on its Western European manufacturing capacity it’s also about meeting what it expects to be long-term and sustained demand from non-traditional markets.

While it is forecasting that the overall European market above six tons will rise by 6% during 2009, its predictions for the Polish market suggest that business here will increase by 60%. In fact MAN chairman Anton Weinmann believes more MAN trucks will be sold in Poland next year than in the UK. Further East and demand for MANs in the CIS has risen by no less than 800% since 2005.

That said, the site has considerable room for expansion. Of its 142 hectares, only 25 are currently in use. In part, this is because 80% cent of components

are shipped direct to the line - the building is surrounded by loading bays - with major assemblies such as cabs and axles unloaded from trucks and taken

almost immediately to the vehicle for which they are destined. In any case there’s plenty of room to develop a supplier park on site. MAN’s management seems keen to do this, so Niepolomice is set to become a components centre as well as an assembly plant.

Demand from Eastern Europe seems to have taken most of the European manufacturers by surprise, but they’re reacting fast: the Niepolomice plant has gone from its ground breaking ceremony to full production in little over a year. MAN must be hoping that its forecasts for Eastern Europe and the CIS come true. But in the meantime this additional capacity will ease the pressure on MAN’s other factories around Europe and, crucially for operators in search of a truck, it may allow lead times to be reduced. We’re used to seeing trucks leaving Western European factories and heading east - it looks like that flow is about to go into

reverse.

I was happy to know that Woodward Governor, Poland has launched the construction of a plant in Niepolomice, as part of the Krakow Technology Park. An engineering-production facility and an R&D centre for the entire corporation are to be built there.

The cornerstone was laid by Gerhard Lauffer - the company president and Stanisław Kracik - the Mayor of Niepolomice known for his unique ability of attracting investments. The groundbreaking ceremony was also attended by Eric Agnello - RD bud executive.

Woodward Governor Poland was granted a business permit to operate in the SEZ in September 2008. The facility in Niepolomice is to hire up to 150 people.

Woodward designs, manufactures, and services energy control systems and components for aircraft and industrial engines and turbines.

I was going through one of the articles which was been published by EUbusiness. It was titled on “World Bank expects growth in Poland in 2009″. As quoted in the article it is very much visible that Poland is likely to be the only ex-communist country in the European Union to see its economy grow this year despite the global economic crisis, a World Bank economist said Thursday in Warsaw.

Poland’s finance ministry has forecast growth of between 0.3 to 2.0 percent this year, while the European Commission believes growth in Poland will shrink by 1.4 percent.

The World Bank foresees a 3.0 percent contraction in GDP for the entire EU10 in 2009 and stagnation next year.

Steps Taken by Polish Government to maintain International Currency”

There are constant efforts that are been taken by the polish government to enhance and maintain the international currency exchange rates between the Euro and Zloty.

Poland’s government has been trading directly in currency markets to keep the zloty at around the level of 4.50 per euro, dealers said on Thursday.

The finance ministry has been converting euros from European Union funds on the currency market through a state-owned bank since February when the zloty has almost touched its all-time low of 4.93 against the single currency.

Last month a government source told Reuters the ministry was keen to keep the zloty at around 4.50 as it was good for exporters and did not hurt too many lenders who got their loans in foreign currencies.

Poland’s zloty has shed around 30 percent since last summer. But since end-February, where the first quasi intervention took place, the unit has fluctuated in a band of 4.23-4.74 per euro, having regained some 9 percent of its value from even deeper lows.

The ministry announced its presence on the market only when it had bought zlotys for the first time, but dealers said since then the ministry’s activity had taken place several more times.

‘The government maintains its view it wants a stable zloty and sometimes we see its presence on the market,’ said another Warsaw-based dealer. ‘And if it has those funds, it is using them for the zloty’s stability.’

The ministry could also use those quasi interventions to prove the currency is stable enough in a context of a possible ERM-2 entry, dealers said. The government sees the zloty’s volatility as the biggest obstacle to enter the pre-euro ERM2 mechanism, a necessary step for its goal of adopting the single currency in 2012.

References:

• Business in Poland, 16 October 2003 by Joe Smoczyński
• Forbes Magazine, [Polish govt defending zloty at 4.5 per euro-dealers
• The Development of Entrepreneurship in Rural Areas by Przemyslaw Kulawczuk
• Doing Business in Poland‎ by British Telecom, CBI Initiative Eastern Europe - Law - 1991
• The Poland Business Forecast Report‎ by Business Monitor International Ltd
• Doing Business and Investing in Poland‎ by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP., PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP

Internet Footnotes:

• Polish Market Onine: www.polishmarket.com
• Oliver Dixon: www.raodtransport.com Powered by Commercial Motor
• Online Encyclopedia: Wiki.
• Doing Business In Poland: www.communicaid.com

# This paper appears as academic research done Poland’s Business Environment. This paper is not/will never be submitted to any conference for publications. The only intent for getting this paper is to spread awareness about the polish business among students.