A Land without a People

Post-Zionist historians see the founders of the Zionist movement as voluntarily blind to the existence of the Palestinian people living in this country. Yet their contemporaries, the Turkish government, also considered the area as empty, savage and needy of settlement and colonization. They actively promoted the immigration to Palestine (Cis and Trans Jordan), including the establishment of pioneer groups of deeply religious Russian and German agriculturalists. They also brought Circassian refugees from the Caucasus, uprooted by the Russian conquest. The history of the Circassian settlement in Palestine is only a generation younger than the Jewish settlement, and its histories describe an empty, abandoned land, without people except predatory nomadic beduins always on the move with their tents and cattle from Saudi Arabia to Damascus. Tour operators like to describe places like Nazareth and Amman (Philadelphia) as old, historic cities, yet they in fact absolutely recent, and only a hundred years ago they were only abandoned ruins. The people living in these places has nothing to do with the original inhabitants of the area. In my opinion, Palestinians and Jordanians are recent immigrants (mostly from other places of the Turkish Empire) and have no historical, cultural or genetic connection with the original Canaanites or Palestinians of Samson's time. Amman, for example, rather than being a city of the Antiquity, is as recent as say US's Salt Lake City or Argentina's Comodoro Rivadavia.

The first Circassians arrived in Amman in the year 1868 from the Shapsugh tribe, followed by the Kabardia, Abzakh, and Bazadoch. Some arrived in Beirut by sea and in Aleppo by land, while others landed on the shores of Palestine. There was no city in Jordan called Amman, but only the remnants of the old Roman city of Amoun, known as Philadelphia, including the Amphitheatre, the Roman Nymphiad, and the citadel overlooking five valleys. There was also an old abandoned mosque dating back to the Ummayad era, with a high tower similar to a minaret.

It is believed that the building and the tower date back to the Byzantine era, but were later converted to a mosque and a minaret. They eroded with time until the Circassians arrived and transformed the tower into a minaret. There was not a single house in Amman. The whole area was covered with forests and looked desolate. Members of the Shapsugh tribe lived for a long time inside the Roman Amphitheatre, in the citadel of Amman, and in the many caves adjoining the stream, whose waters spring from a spot called Ras el-Ain, and which runs eastwards to an unknown extent. On each bank of the stream were dense forests in which lived animals and predatory beasts.

The last group of Circassian immigrants arrived in Amman in the year 1900, via Damascus. They were members of the Glakhistani and Kabardian tribes, who settled in the Muhajireen Quarter after being transported from Mzairib station in Syria, where the railroad line then terminated. The police commander in Syria at that time was Khusrov Pasha, who ordered the railroad station to be used for staging the Circassian immigrants who arrived in Damascus from Turkey, via Beirut and Aleppo prior to moving them to Jordan where they joined their brethren who had arrived before them. They were transported on the backs of camels and mules in caravans under the supervision of Khusrov Pasha, assisted by Mirza Pasha also working in Damascus. A special committee under Mirza Pasha and Mohamad Effendi Habjouqa took over the task of settling those immigrants in the Muhajreen Quarter, after they had lived for sometime in the open around Ras el-Ain spring, exposed to the coldness of winter and the heat of summer. During this time they were subject to attacks by beduins who used to come to the spring for their cattle.

Jordan's Public Health

Rioters clashed with police in the village of Sakeb in Jordan on Monday over a food poisoning outbreak that has struck down over 300 people since Thursday. Ten people were injured and property was damaged as residents hurled rocks at police vehicles and blocked roads in the Jerash Governorate town in the north of the country, the Jordan Times daily reported on Tuesday. Security troops took action and anti-riot police fought to break up the protest to maintain order. Jerash Governor Ali Azzam has said the situation is now under control with police remaining in the village to prevent further escalation, the newspaper said. Residents have said the riots began after allegedly offensive statements were made by Health Minister Salah Mawajdeh on Monday during his visit to Sakeb to personally assess the situation. The minister’s office director has since denied the accusations.

Other residents have said the protests started because of a row over the cause of the outbreak, which many locals are blaming on contaminated water, while authorities insist it came from eating bad food from a restaurant that has since been closed down.

Jerash Public Hospital Director Yousef Qoqazeh said that water tests came out negative, while the results of tests on food samples were expected to be out late Monday or Tuesday, the newspaper said. Jordan’s Prime Minister Marouf Bakhit has said the health crisis is over as no new cases have been reported, according to the official Petra News Agency. The outbreak in Sakeb is the third such case in four months. In August nearly 250 people contracted salmonella poisoning from eating chicken shawarmas at a local restaurant in the Baqaa Palestinian refugee camp close to Amman. Two ministers in July quit over a water contamination scandal that saw more than 1,000 Jordanians needing hospital treatment.

German Word of the Week

Deutsche Welle, the official propaganda medium of Germany, has a cute weekly corner called the German Word of the Week. Today it is "Kadavergehorsam," literally "cadaver obedience," means abandoning one's own personality in blind, submissive obedience ("gehorsam"). It's usually used to refer to Prussian militarism in the Wilheminian era, covering the reign of William II, who became German emperor in 1888, to the end of the First World War in 1918.

Clueless: Oil Giants Lost in Space

BusinessWeek interviewed ConocoPhillips's CEO Mulva and it is an astonishing reading. Mulva is very pessimistic about its own company's future and about American oil industry in general, and is lost, has no plan, voices imbecilities that reveal that he has not a clue about what to do. After talking about the growing tightness of oil supply, he mentions another blow to the traditional oil majors' business model: the rising clout of national oil companies, which are now fierce rivals in the race for access to fossil fuels. National oil companies, which already own or control more than 90% of the world's oil reserves, can accept lower profit margins from exploration projects, an avenue not open to publicly held U.S. companies. Last month, Venezuela said it will invest up to $10 billion to develop a heavy oil patch in Venezuela for sale in the Chinese market (therefore ousting Conoco and other American companies from the Orinoco basin). Incredibly, he asks for government research money: We need to spend a lot more money on research," Mulva says. "The U.S. invests hundreds of millions in research while China provides billions in funds. [The U.S. government] shouldn't give us money, but instead give it to universities and research centers." In addition, he is exploring alternative and renewable sources of energy. ConocoPhillips joined meat giant Tyson Foods (TSN) in a joint venture to produce biodiesel from animal fats. The company also has teamed with German carmaker BMW to co-sponsor a CNN series on environmental dangers, Planet in Peril. When one of the Seven Sisters is into animal fat and greeny-sweety film production a la Gore, we can safely judge that these giants, that used to rule half the world for 100 years, are indeed in a very bad shape.

The pic shows Arturo Frondizi's influential book about oil and politics which made him Argentina's first elected president after Peron. He expulsed American oil companies and strengthened YPF (now a Spanish owned firm).

More Adventures in TASE

BieloRussian potassium fertilizer mine's accident (which produced 10% of world potassium and has now suspended production) has benefited POT and its allies, causing my virtual portfolio to change its numerator. I have been working on the portfolio all the year and lo! here it is. Just a number: 108.97 meaning I have doubled the value of my savings in shekalim. What do I feel? Emptiness. Anxiety. Vague, diffuse discontent. That is my natural state, Xeroxat could make me happy. It is all chemical.

On the other hand, my Brent crude future options, which I bought at 2500, are selling on TASE at 20 and are no takers. Brent is at 88 $/barrel, is there any chance it will collapse to under 70 during the next two weeks? Gary suggests it yet could collapse. I am tempted to buy more of these lottery tickets, they are so cheap now. Another speculative investment of mine is Orckit, which is maintaining itself but very nervously. Orckit has one product, some kind of data management system for fiberglass cables. A very large investment has been done all over the world in optical infrastructure, but it is not being exploited. Orckit sold its product to the Japanese a few years ago and it works and there is a possibility they will renew the contract. But no other cable-owner bought the product, and the negotiations are very slow. Currently there are no competing products but there are several under development. If one contract is signed, the share will double its value, if this situation of no sales continues, Orckit will die. On the basis of rumors and a general confidence in Israeli capability I bought Orckit and am waiting for the signature of contract. Lately I have been collecting BAZAN, the Israel Oil Refinery shares, a recently privatized company. Already I am 3 - 4% ahead but I think it has great potential: (1) Fu'ad (our Minister of Infrastructure) signed an agreement with the Turks to advance the infrastructure corridor - a 450 km long underwater pipe carrying water, oil, gas, electricity, whatever. The thing could provide cheap Azeri crude to BAZAN, which could grow, (2) BAZAN has capability to crack sour and heavy crudes (Israel is boycotted by the Arabs so has to get by with that it can get) which could be a great advantage in the future. The price differential between sweet, light crude and sour crude is growing and so more sour crude is being used. Sour crude is difficult to crack into gasoline but can be cracked into diesel.

Vicious Circle

The US economy is sliding into a recession, as the main industry - building - is slowing down with 2 million unsold houses. Oil is expensive and its consumption is falling. The US dollar lost about 15 - 20% of its worth against the Euro and other currencies. Japan is deflating.

Oil prices are rising, I am convinced, because supply is static while demand is rising. The dollar falling, high demand allows the Saudis to raise prices so that their oil continues to maintain its value in real terms and that China is key in both the high demand for oil and the falling dollar.

Is this a positive feedback system that will end in collapse? Or we are in the middle of a bull supercycle?

During the last two years there was almost perfect geopolitical quiet in the world, every conflict in its little box and no danger for the oil flow. This situation is highly anomalous and cannot last. Iran's leader promised to erase Israel and is building an atom bomb. Israel has asked the Americans and Europeans for help against Iran, but little is happening and is feeling abandoned.

Like the Talmud, this entry has no conclusion. It can be understood this way or the other. Life is like that.

Tim Price as Blogging Entrepreneur

Tim Price started as bond salesman in London and soon became a successful fund manager. He also writes and runs a financial advice service with a paid newsletter and a free blog "The Price of Everything". The blog is well inserted in his practice and it is also interesting, a teaser that makes one want more. The last note is very pessimistic: starting with Merrill Lynch's $7.9 billion write down on mortgage-backed securities, he mentions Bank of America's 3,000 job cuts, primarily from investment banking. In his pompous English prose: "To see anything remotely akin to a ‘resumption of normality’ in financial market conditions is to be blind to the sight of skies darkening with a burgeoning mass of chickens coming home to roost." In fact, I am also surprised by the large losses revealed by Wall Street banks, I had thought that they had packaged the bad mortgages and had sold them rapidly as hot potatoes to the Germans and Chinese. I didn't even remotely imagined that they were holding them! They believed in their own lies! This, my friends, is beyond belief. Could it be possible that in the speculation business I am not against the best minds of the universe and therefore I have not a chance? Could it be that they are not so clever and I could make it against them in the market? A disturbing thought.

Prviatization of Firefighting Services

It was coming and it has arrived in California. Soon it will be here in Israel. Originally firefighting was a volunteer activity, such as the first group founded by Ben Franklin in Philadelphia, or required from insurance companies, as in England. Now it is becoming private again, as neighborhood policing is. I am sure it will be introduced soon in Israel, and then exported as a civil defense-paramilitary service we are good at. Bloomberg writes:

Crays - a private fireman - doesn't work for a local fire department or the California Department of Forestry. He works for American International Group Inc., the world's largest insurer. If you're a client with a home threatened by California's worst wildfires in four years, you're getting service your next-door neighbor may envy. ``What we're trying to do here is provide our policyholders an additional level of protection,'' said Stan Rivera, director of wildfire protection for AIG Private Client Group. The average home insured by the unit is valued at $1.7 million.

AIG this year expanded its Wildfire Protection Unit to 150 ZIP codes in California and Colorado, up from 14 when it was formed in 2005. The unit has had the busiest week since its inception as fires burned at least 719 square miles (1,861 square kilometers) from Santa Barbara to San Diego, destroying or damaging about 2,000 homes and 200 businesses and causing at least seven deaths. The Wildfire Protection Unit has six trucks outfitted to spray Phos-Chek, the fire retardant used by the U.S. Forest Service. Customers can have Phos-Chek sprayed on brush surrounding their homes before each fire season. During a wildfire, the trucks are sent out whenever a fire comes within three miles of a home and spray all combustible areas. Such protection doesn't come cheap. It's available only to customers of AIG Private Client Group, which serves affluent individuals and their families. The average customer spends $19,000 a year on the insurance, which may also cover yachts, art collections and ransom demands, Rivera said. AIG Private Client Group has about 55,000 customers throughout the U.S., Rivera said. California is ``one of the biggest'' markets for the group, he said.

Fire destroyed at least 43 buildings in Rancho Santa Fe in northern San Diego, ranked the second-most-expensive ZIP code in the country by Forbes Magazine. The Wildfire Protection Unit has treated about 400 to 500 homes with retardant since 2005. Until this year, Rivera said, the unit had three ``saves,'' instances where ``the wildfire has burned right up to our Phos-Check lines and then stopped.''

It seems that their service is based ib Phos-Check. What it is?

Blogging Monetarized

How to make money from blogging has been in my mind from the very start of this blog more than two years ago. It is still an unsolved problem for me, and the ideas I collected on the internet are all inapplicable. Mr Free Exchange from The Economist is a very intelligent observer and has two potentially useful ideas.

The price of reading a blog is as close to a zero price as you're going to get in this world. The price of writing a blog is also zero. Why are they blogging? The dominant motive is blog as loss leader. You're hoping to sell some other attached commodity for a real price. Generally it is a book. Dani Rodrik started blogging a few months ago; he has a new book out. Greg Mankiw has a textbook he wants to sell more of.

For many other economics bloggers, the attached commodity is the blogger himself. The blog offers the prospect of demonstrating one's skillset for an interested public, many members of which work in talent-hungry organisations that pay real salaries. In his pompous prose, Mr Free Exchange says that blogging is social networking directed to find a job. I say it does not work. Personnel selection is a specialized process, in hands of people specialized in personnel selection and not the subject matter. No organization has readers of economy blogs hiring economists. This is fantasy.

Another fantasy (not Free Trader's) is to find a sex or other activity partner through blogging. I have read a few blogs with this stated purpose, like Megan's, and it is pathetic and worse, it does not work.

The second effective use of blogging is in the advice or consulting business. If you are an etzes-gayver in the investment advice business, a blog and attached email circular or newsletter is an useful tool of trade.

My idea of this blog was: (1) promote my book on water reuse (2) Promote my water consulting business. I went nowhere because I didn't work much on it, my writing wandered into family roots, the confessional and the politics fields, and I lost focus. In fact, I had started with a double focus: water and speculation, which are my two main activities. Since I sell water consulting, I should drop from this blog all mention of my speculating activity. But if I drop all that, this blog becomes a rather dry, commercial wall trade new paper. And that there are some very good ones being distributed freely on the Internet and maintained by Ministries and public entities. A one man trade paper will be, necessarily, very poor and uninteresting.

Blogging also has important disadvantages, which caused me more than once to consider stopping. One is the problem of exposition to hostile entities patrolling the Internet. Everybody and every organization learns very fast that the world outside is astonishingly venomous and vindictive, and therefore limits and controls the information projecting to the outside. The first lesson I received in the Ministry was formality: After sitting at my new desk, I sent a note to an engineering office (who was a friend) about a project, and the letter was written in a colloquial tone and was not thought out to the end. Later I told my friend to destroy it, but he said: No, I will not destroy it, it is an official letter from the Ministry signed by a high officer. Nothing ever said or written is informal, everything can be used against you. Every letter of the Minister passes through the vetting of the Legal Department, and also the Public Relations Dept. is very close to the center of power. I have seen many silly pieces of information malignantly deformed and misused to harm the Ministry or its generally well-meaning officers. When I was the manager of a large outfit, I was interviewed by the local press, and the note submitted to approval by the Press Office and it was okeyed before publication. But the editor made a trick on me: the note was published inside, while my picture was printed on the front page with a large headline: Drinking Water in Danger of Contamination. The content of the interview emphasized that there was NO danger of contamination, that everything was well, but who reads the article? The headline was enough to give the widespread impression that I had said that the water supply was problematic and endangered. Instead of soothing the panic, I had fed it. I had contributed to the major's political problems. Better to say nothing.

Blogging offers a free access to personal information and opinion, and it is in a digital media that can be easily processed by computers. The number and context of key words can be searched and profiling is made. To a honest and hardworking person like me that shouldn't be a problem, as I am under medication that makes me sexless and libido less, but mistakes are made by computers and my blog can make me figure in a list of bad people. Being in a black list is very difficult to prove and to clean one's image, no one has the time to analyze why the name slipped into the list and it is always more secure to leave it there than take it out, no one has the time nor the courage to study the context. If I would be the administrator of such a list, I would not dare to take upon me to delete anyone, since it is impossible to know what made the computer jump and put him on the list. Like the proverbial drunk that searches for his lost key under the lamppost (because there you can see), people who puts himself in the spotlight does it at its own danger. The most secure place is within the grey mass.

The environment in a totalitarian society operates a mechanism to induce fear and silence. Under Rakosi in Hungary, everybody had to write a list of people who knew and write down the person's political views. If the name of a suspect appeared on the list, the person was pressed to produce damaging information on the suspect, and many just to take the pressure off or trying to be more valuable and servile to the boss, offered made up or malicious information. Many people's carrier was cut without the person knowing the reason, many felt oppressed and persecuted by malicious ghosts. Russian immigrants to Israel in the seventies were obsessed by secrecy, they were afraid of expressing any opinion at all. Into these damaging information search machines one feeds voluntary (by blogging) tons and gigabytes of personal data and opinions, and the possibility is that a bit of this data will be find its way into some black list. No one, for sure, has the time to read and carefully analyze the whole content of this blog (900 something entries), so it is done in a second by unthinking robots.

After the fall of Berlin wall, a persecuted intellectual was interviewed about the reasons why the the frondous underground literature of the samizdat era has suddenly dried up with liberation. Now, that no one had to fear the secret police, there should be an outbreak of artistic and creative activity, but the contrary was happening. Why? The answer was memorable: Under the communist regime, intellectual activity was considered important. Every book or article was object of debate if it was to be published, the secret police investigated what was being done, and the police or its equivalents read our poems and called in the underground writer and asked what this word or other meant to say. After liberation, no one cares about this or other shade of meaning of a word in a poem. Freedom kills literature.

Besides, the blogger may have real black points, which are exposed and registered in a blog. In the blog I may reveal a real fault of character making me unsuitable for the position or job I am looking for. I may be convinced that my faults are only too human and everybody has it, but to a robotic or just stupid observer, the existence of that black item kills my name on the list of possible candidates. If I have 100 names to fill a position, and I run a search on them, and in 10 appears a black point real or suspected, then I am only to happy to drop them from the list, making my workload a bit easier. That is why in bureaucratic systems, people with no past, no mistakes, nothing in their curriculum, that had done or written nothing in their lives, have the best chances of advancement and arrival to the top. American politics appears to be like that, candidate's past is searched and every bit of "dirt" can mean the end of his candidacy. People with no past will the only ones to pass this selection process. Anyway, I consider myself old enough to be out of the race and too unimportant for any future position or job. I could say I don't care, but that is not true. In my mind, I am 30 and still expecting things to do.

To end, blogging is easy for me. While most people needs hours to think out and write down a letter or to redact a document of report, I can do it in a few minutes. And in several languages too. My mind is always working and thought are streaming out like white sheep from a corral. This is a very important advantage of mine, I can do it very easily and abundantly and others cant. Now how to convert this advantage into cash?

Oil's Moment of Truth

It has arrived. Oil prices are between 80 and 90 $/barrel crude. OPEC had declared in the past that consider oil prices too high and they dont want to cause a worldwide recession. They promised to increase production. In this very moment, the Nasdaq is sinking 3%. Now is the time: if no more oil is thrown on the market, panic will ensue and price will cross 100 $ and we are all in a big bear market. Oil Drum's Oil Export Land Model is too optimistic. The Saudis will have to take classes in goat herding, which they forgot, and Iran will focus again on the Persian carpet industry.

The next morning: Yesterday ended with oil higher and the Nasdaq lower. The Economist has two opposite analysis, both brilliant and convincing. In Commodities they say that the oil market is in backwardization, that is prices in the future are lower than spot prices, so speculators buy futures (driving up prices) and wait till the spot price arrives there to take their profit. They also write that Francisco Blanch of Merril Lynch reckons that supply has contracted by 500,000 barrels a day, and stock for the winter season are the lowest in four years. This is very confusing - I reckon reflecting the market's own confusion.

Reflection: Million brains like mine are striving to understand what is happening. I certainly misunderstood oil, as bet a sizeable amount of my savings on prices collapsing in late September, repeating former years. It didnt happen and I am losing 98% of my bet (the meaning of this is that you can buy today my put options for 2% of what I paid for them six months ago. No one thinks my options are worth anything, all are sure that Brent will not sink under 70 $ by November the 11th.). If supply has contracted, (1) while the geopolitical situation is absolutely quiet and favourable as it is and while all the producing areas are producing at full volume and all the oil routes are open, and (2) while most oil producing countries are forced by internal politics to maximize their production with no regards to the future - Venezuela, Nigeria, Iran, Mexico, etc. are unable to keep oil in the soil for future governments..., then the conclusion is that oil must be becoming scarce. But then, also demand in importing countries is contracting and more and more oil is being consumed by the producing countries internal market. Gasoline is dirt cheap in Venezuela and Saudia, and weak governments are unable to free up product for export. It is similar to Argentina, the people there loves meat and consumes most of the national production. No government dared to cut local consumption to have more to export. And oil substitutes are already competing with oil - ethanol and LPG, and electric cars. If we have a recession, and if not for China we would be already in a worldwide recession, there will be surplus oil once more. It is a textbook cyclical commodity, isnt it?

More thinking: How much oil is being produced and whether the numbers of barrels are going up or down. Are the Saudis producing 11 million barrels as they say, or the 9 million Al-Jazeera suggests? All the oil figures are guesstimates. There is no independent regulator or international commodity organization like cocoa, or coffee, or uranium. “A lack of transparency in oil markets and poor quality information contributes to volatility and uncertainties. There is a simple explanation for the steady rise of oil prices and the curious obfuscations of OPEC spokesmen. We are nearing the phenomenon of global Peak Oil. OPEC has only a limited capacity to pump any more oil. ”Outside the FSU [Former Soviet Union] oil production appears to be very near peaking, with output from new discoveries just barely offsetting depletion in mature producing conventional oilfields.” If this is so, why don’t they say so? Probably because they are unstable régimes with booming populations, like Saudi Arabia, and fear that if they told the truth the US might invade them to grab the remaining oil. Or their people might revolt if they found out that their already declining standard of living was about to drop further. If we have hit the structural production peak of oil worldwide, then the trajectory of prices will be relentlessly upward, with only temporary respites. Journalists will blather on about ‘terrorism’ or ‘refinery fires’, but the prices will tell the real story. If the increasing prices start a recession that reduces demand, there will be another temporary ‘respite’ as production continues a relentless decline after we have gone over the peak.

Australia: Business Opportunity

Australia is in the middle of a water supply panic. In my opinion, Australia is on the forefront of the water technology world, but they seem to think they can learn something here. Who am I to tell them otherwise? Maybe it is an opportunity for me to get work in a normal country, with decent and intelligent people, who appreciate and pay acceptable rates for good work. From Globes:

Three Australian state ministers and one shadow minister will lead an unprecedented high-level business delegation to Israel next week, focusing on water and conservation business opportunities. The trip, organized by the Israel-Australia Chamber of Commerce, will comprise over fifty senior players on the Australian business scene. The group will spend a week in Israel meeting with political, business, and technology leaders, as well as attending the WATEC Israel 2007 Conference. The Australian delegation is being led by Nathan Rees, MP, NSW Minister for Water Utilities, Tim Holding MP, Victorian Minister for Water and Craig Wallace MP, Queensland Minister for Natural Resources and Water. The delegation also includes leaders of five different companies with a market cap above $1 billion, including Australian-based international mining giant Rio Tinto with a market cap of $100 billion. Australia, which enjoys significant bilateral trade with Israel, totaling some $750 million per year, is currently undergoing a severe drought and has implemented drastic water restrictions. In most areas of Australia, water storage levels are sitting at only 20-45% of their capacity.

The visiting delegation will be meeting with Israeli counterparts and exploring deals and agreements with a wide variety of Israeli companies and organizations involved in water conservation technologies. The New South Wales State Government recently commissioned a $1.4 billion desalination plant in Sydney and many Israeli companies are eager to offer their services. Similarly, the Victorian State Government in Australia has commissioned the world’s largest desalination plant for Melbourne. Currently, the world’s largest plant is located in Ashkelon, and the delegation will visit this site. According to the delegation’s leader, Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce Chairman Leon Kempler, “Australia and Israel share the unfortunate fate of having significant challenges to their water supplies. Israel has many companies that provide outstanding technology and solutions to water scarcity problems and this business delegation, the most senior ever to visit Israel, is keen to listen, learn and reach agreements.” During the visit, the ministers and various members of the delegation will be meeting with President Shimon Peres, Minister of National Infrastructures Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, Minister of Industry, Trade, and Labor Eli Yishai, Environment Minister Gideon Ezra, as well as a number of Members of Knesset.

Building in Geva Benjamin Industrial Zone

Yesterday I went to see the large food factory plus events hall and a large shop, being built in the Geva Benjamin Industrial Zone. I had worked with drawings and did not realize where the thing was sited. "Arrive to East Jerusalem and I will direct you by phone" the Client had said. East Jerusalem is a maze of high bridges over precipices communicating isolated Jewish neighborhoods, and serpentine bypass roads that go up and down in the hills to avoid Arab houses, and walls and concrete blocks being moved from here to there according the United Nations decisions in New York. I totally lost my way. I went down almost to Jericho and then back to Pisgat Zeev and then to the road to Ramallah, the capital of the Palestinian authority. The soldiers in the roadblocks, mostly ugly African girls, sat chatting among themselves and could give me no directions, they had no idea at all where they were stationed. At least arrived to the Adam settlement and found the man, who take me to the building site in nearby Geva Benjamin Industrial Area. The place has a large mall with a supermarket full of religious young women and lots of veiled Arab women. The center of the area has a cement water tank, very ugly and very unprofessionally looking, I wonder who is the engineer who committed that profanation. The industrial area is being built by a private company - Rafi Levi or something - and it appears to be a large success. The place is full of cars and buyers. It is almost in Ramallah, so I presume that many of the customers are well off Palestinians. My Client, the builder, is an Sepharadi Jew who started selling confectionery in a hole in the market wall, and now is building a 3 - floor modern building. He is trying to manage it by himself, and he asked me: "Secret Water Engineer, everybody in the building business is olam ha tachton (underworld)?" He had contracted a perforating machine by the day, the machine came but the stone resulted too hard for the machine. The contractor left the machine on the site and left looking for another one. In the meanwhile the clock is running, the contract is per day on the site. The Sepharadi is desperate, he begged them to take away the machine but they left it purposefully on the building site. The Sepharadi was calling the police to evacuate the machine from his property. The project and his team was all waiting for the results. All these was happening a stone throw distance from Ramallah, in the very heart of the territories. The place was full of women buying provisions, all with young children making a pandemonium, very very busy, no one giving a damn to anyone else and totally unaware of the desperation of the Sepharadi entrepreneur. In the middle of all the noisy chaos, you could find the Water Engineer trying to understand the engineering rationale of that water tank monstrosity and taking pictures of the place. The main water pipe had the flow meter incorrectly installed, the Y filters were mounted against the current, all a chaootic and noisy Middle East bazaar 570 meters on sea level on the Benjamin mountains.

Evaporating Snowpacks

A very impressive photograph of Lake Mead bathtub like marks of descending water levels. All over America water levels are sinking, and in the case of the Colorado river, with its flow based on summer feeding by snowpacks, is disappearing. It is intersting to know what is happening in Bolivia's La Paz or Ecuador's Quito, whose water supply is based on the High Andes icecaps. La Paz is unsustainable and going to be abandoned in this generation, I presume. The capital will have to move.

A Rather Good Analysis of Oil

Free Exchange the Economist Blog comments the decease of Greg Mankiw's blog's comment section and goes on to analyse the incredible low cost of entrance into the internet journalism business. The result is that most journalism is now provided by non-profit or parent-organization media, that is, there is no commercial profitmaking journalism any more. The BBC is a good example, it is maintained by the British Government as a world propaganda tool. All information, therefore, should be suspected of a tendency, one should ask himself why someone is going to such length to provide this free information.

The Economist is managing well to maintain a balance between free and pais information. It is the only magazine I am paying for, in addition to the girls Cosmo I pay for to force them to think English. Fre EXchange offers, free, an interesting view of what is going on in oil. I suspect that he is (1) very intelligent (2) invested in oil.

He writes: The rise in crude has caught observers (and what about oil shorters like me?) by surprise. Back in August, the conclusion of the summer travel season and the onset of the global credit crunch led oil prices down from seasonal highs to just below $70, and autumn promised a respite before winter demand for heating oil pushed crude up once more. But prices climbed through September, and in the last week alone oil has jumped by about 5%.

Explanations for the phenomenon tend to run along three common themes:

(a) supply crunch,
(b) geopolitical uncertainty,
(c) speculation.

On the first count, OPEC reported this week that while the organisation planned to boost production (planned? meaning they didnt do a thing), output from non-member states was below expectations. Crude oil inventories were larger than expected, and American demand growth was lower than anticipated. Free Exchange says: "Call this category a draw for the moment." What is the fundamental situation of oil supply-demand? For one, supply is not increasing at all, on the other hand, high prices are causing to contract demand. It doesnt make much sense.

Geopolitical side of oil pricing: Sabre-rattling in the Turkish Parliament raised global fears bla bla bla. In fact, there is a global peace and order as the world has never seen since pre-WWI golden era. Are really oil speculators driven by the phantasms of fear? Dont think so.

Speculation is difficult to evaluate and I didnt really understand what he is saying. Those betting for expensive oil are making a bundle, but they should be balanced by the shorters. Where are the shorters? Short options are still selling at a premium, and in July I paid 20% above B&S value.

My conclusion: Oil production is undergoing one its cyclical bottlenecks. It will take a few years to develope more producing wells and flood the market again. Venezuela, Mexico, Ecuador, Nigeria etc. have the potential to increase production, but they are so mismanaged that it cannot be done. I dont know how long it will take to overproduce again. Not until Nov.11

Mao's Dream: The Yellow River is Turning Red

A half a mile section of the Yellow River, which supplies drinking water to millons,near Lanzhou, a city of 2 million people in western Gansu province, has suffered an industrial discharge of some unknown red substance which did not smell good. Kang Mingke, an official with Lanzhou's environment protection bureau, said there were no chemical plants located nearby, according to the Xinhua news agency. He said the red water could have come from central heating companies who dye their hot water to prevent people from diverting it for their own use. John Hocevar, an oceans specialist for Greenpeace USA, said that the photos he had seen of the spill might indicate a "red tide," a burst of toxic plankton in the water, spurred by the presence of nutrient-rich waste from the sewage spill.

I have been there and consulted for a very similar problem. The plancton I saw was toxic and people was dying from drinking the water. Comments: (1) Chinese Environmental Authorities are aware of the problem but keep lying to their bosses adn the public (in this they are no different from anyone), (2) The pollution problem is very difficult and several years after I was there it was not solved.

Mistake: Sewage in the Taps for Two Years

CHULA VISTA, Calif. -- Tests results reveal a shocking discovery in the water supply of an Eastlake business park -- treated sewage water has been flowing from the taps, NBC 7/39 reported. The water was intended to be used for irrigation only, and not for drinking. Seventeen businesses at the Fenton Business Center are affected. For some reason, the center was hooked up to a pipe carrying recycled water for more than two years. Several business owners knew something was wrong when their water tasted funny. Many of them had been complaining for months, leading the property manager to send a water sample to a private lab when they said the Otay Water District could not figure out what was happening.

A water sample taken from the business park just last week showed the presence of total coliform bacteria, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. Merchants claim the Otay Water District has assured them the water was safe to drink, despite what was described as a foul smell and a yellowish tint, the report said. The business park is home to two food-related businesses, The Candy Bouquet and Dream Dinners. Because they handle food, the Department of Environment Health has closed their doors until the water is found to be safe for use.

My Comments: The case proves conclusively that (1) treated sewage is no poison and causes no harm. The claims of irreversible damage to nature caused by the release of treated sewage is just purposeful panicking and terrorizing people. A fascist program of repression is behind these black legend. (2) Treated Wastewater can be supplied for drinking consumption for years, and nothing happens. This was an unintentional experiment on humans, and should be studied and published. (3) People gets used to it, except the change in color and odor. (4) The Water District authority had no idea of what was suppplying or happening for two years and kept blindly assuring people that everything was all right. Authorities assurances are, once more, nothing. (5) Most funny of all, the Department of Environmental Health closed down food related business AFTER the problem had been discovered and solved. (6) The Environment people's (over) reaction was irrational, blind, indiscriminate: they closed all food related business including one shop where no food was actually processed but only packaged items were sold.

Another Excellent Blog Hits the Dust

Mankiw is a Professor of Economics at Harvard. He started a blog as a way of helping his students in ec 10.

After a few weeks, however, the existence of this blog became more widely known, and the readership started to grow. One day last week, more than 20,000 visitors stopped by. This is now one of the top economics blogs, and it is one of the few that are free of advertising. The blog is sometimes even quoted in the mainstream media (such as in this recent NY Times article). All that is gratifying, but it is also time-consuming. In addition to this blog, I have classes to teach, students to advise, papers to write, textbooks to update, and three children to raise. Oh, yeah, my wife likes to see me now and then, too. It is fair to say that among all those activities, this blog ranks as my last priority.

So he disabled the comments facility and I presume will blog much less. Like other academics before, he discovered that blogosphere fame is useless at best and exposition to blogosphere stinging insects if harmful or fatal at worst. I started this blog as a way of promoting my consulting business. No business ever found its way to me through it. The only reason to maintain it now is the Roots section, the Ecce Homo of Arthur Koestler. To leave a note in the stone: That I have been here.

Black Sunday

This Maya Business is causing me distress. I started the job without signing a contract and no advance. I have no excuse for doing so. Now I almost finished the work and delivered it and asked for the advance, 500 dollar, and it was promised but not delivered. I had sent the receipt by post in advance !!! They published the bid and one of the contractor said that it was incomplete. I called him (Shaul from Liam Engineering) and he said that it is not his custom to badmouth engineers, since most probably we are going yet to meet for years. He said that most probably the bastards were just making up reasons to avoid paying me. It made sense to me so I sent a letter to everybody prohibiting to use my designs. The Maya partners, four cooks and other small tradesmen, asked desperately for the designs, dont worry about the money, etc. and I am so soft and imbecile that I sent it. I am feeling so bad - I worked about a week on the design, and I have no contract nor nothing. Of course the project is not finished, they need my approval and so on. But the relations have been spoiled. I am the only cause of this problem to myself, I am feeling bad, I had a stomach ache (possibly because of eating non fresh cream cheese, my wife hides the fresh one and feed me the spoiled food. She also made a hysterical scene to the girls because someone did not put the coffee tin back in the shelf but left it on the kitchen marble. Half an hour of sick shouting, the girls seem unaffected by it). I hope they will mail me the cheque. But it was mismanaged form the start, I did not behave as an engineer should. I am depressed, this business of designing fire systems is difficult, hard work and lots of responsability, and worse - it is unprofitable. I have to look for other specialities and hire a business manager. I got the flu and my muscles are aching and have a general feeling of acute disconfort.

It the next day's early morning now. I still feel sick but life goes on. I should say thanks to God for Sunday's bad day. I say God as a general source of imaginary comfort, since I have nothing else. I have hit the bottom and it is aching. The acute disconfort I am feeling will act on my unconscious mind and body to force it to proceed onwards.

Coccidioides immitis twarts development in California

As in everything, California is a generation ahead of the rest of the world. Now they have discovered that a native fungus produces a sometimes deadly illness called valley fever, a problem that has to be taken into account in development. An outbreak at a Central Valley prison last year has state and county health officials worried that a planned expansion of area prisons will lead to additional sickness, death and financial cost. Construction kicks up dirt and increases the risk of infection. I am in this development business already fifty years but never heard of fungus problems in construction. But if California gets flu, I bet we all here in Israel shall soon in bed with meningitis.

At the Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga, California, the infection rate skyrocketed last year after construction of a psychiatric hospital nearby released clouds of dust. More than 500 inmates, or about 10 percent of the prison population, showed symptoms of valley fever. Thirty-seven guards and prison staff also fell ill. Among them was Owen Kimberling, a 29-year-old guard who spent the summer of 2003 overseeing inmate crews working outside as the construction was going on. He woke up one morning with flu-like symptoms and a temperature of 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 Celsius). Over the next five months, he was rushed to the emergency room twice and missed nearly 40 days of work. ``There wasn't a day that went by when I didn't feel absolutely miserable,'' Kimberling said. Powerful antibiotics finally eased the symptoms, though they have recurred, he said. At its worst, the fungus can cause severe pneumonia or meningitis, sometimes leading to death, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. At least nine prisoners and one staff member have died of valley fever- related ailments, the Department of Corrections said. Everyone who lives in the Central Valley inhales Coccidioides Immitis spores, experts say. Lifelong valley residents tend to develop immunity and usually don't get sick. Transplants -- such as inmates, prison staff and others new to the area -- are more vulnerable.

Coccidioides immitis/posadasii is the causative agent of coccidioidomycosis in humans. This fungus thrives in the dry dusty desert environment (it was discovered by Argentine Dr. Posadas - see pic) and most probably is present in Israel's Negev. Coccidioidomycosis is one of the true systemic (endemic) mycoses. It is acquired by inhalation and initially presents with a pulmonary infection which may later disseminate to other organs and systems. Airway coccidioidomycosis involving the endotracheal and endobronchial tissues may develop. Inhalation of the dry arthroconidia of Coccidioides immitis/posadasii, which are carried by dust storms, initiates the infection. Afterwards, hematogenous spread of the organism results in infection of skin, bones, joints, lymph nodes, adrenal glands, and central nervous system. The clinical picture has a remarkably wide spectrum. The infection remains as an acute and self-limited respiratory infection in most exposed hosts, but it progresses to a chronic and sometimes fatal disease in others. Spontaneous healing is observed in as high as 95% of the otherwise healthy hosts. Dissemination may occur particularly during pregnany and carries a high risk of mortality. Activities and professions related to tillage of the soil, such as agricultural work, telephone post digging, archeology, or simply playing with soil appear to be associated with development of coccidioidomycosis [531].

Benjamin's Tomb

Benjamin's tomb (Kever Banjamin) is developing and a new mikva (ritual bath) for men has been built.

Insight: Water Repression is Coming

Thanks to a note in Mangan's Miscellany, asking what was the next global issue of the eco-left (now that Al Gore has received a Nobel Price and the warming of the Earth has been agreed and settled), and Mangan suggests resource scarcity. My insight that the global campaign to save water is the next plague on us.

Yes, the water fascist repression is coming. I feel it in my bones. Water - water is the next issue. We are bombarded daily with propaganda that water is precious and a limited resource and we have not enough of it and MUST be saved. In Australia swimming pools are shaded by law, to avoid evaporation. Australia's hysteria seems to be a premonition of what is expecting everybody. In general, from the internet I get the distinct impression that Australia has become the most energetic Anglo Saxon nation and is setting the world's trends. The Australians seem to pay a tremendous attention to saving water and to repress those showing indifference or carelessness towards Holy Water. Instead of producing it and they certainly can do it. They have a lot of brackish water to desalinate, for example. In Israel we are forced to install water saving toilets that leave half of the faecal material in our homes. Irrigation of the garden during the day is forbidden - and a Water police has been organized to enforce the law. I was there in the Netzivut HaMaim when it was being contemplated, I know it was done but personally I have never seen them in action. Of course the plants do not take up water without photosynthesis, so it is totally idiotic. Irrigation at night produces only mud, and the plants start "pumping" water from the soil only in the morning. At midday, when they are most thirsty, it is forbidden by law to give them water. Anyway, as my mentor TAU Prof. Fishelsohn z"l said, fresh water can be produced from sea water, the technology is here (just press the water through a selective membrane), so in fact and in reality it is an unlimited commodity. And it is very cheap: 0.50 $ per cubic meter (thousand liter). Why torture people to save a few drops? The essense of the "Save Each Drop" campaign is, now I knwo thanks to Mangan, is REPRESSION. The fascists are out to collect power, power of control over the people's lives, they need first to intimidate people. They need a reason, and the invented, inexistent water scarcity is a good reason. That in Bulawayo have water every eleventh day does not mean there is a worldwide water scarcity, it means they is not one competent water engineer or technician left there. Hunger in Zimbabwe does not mean that food is scarce, it means they dont know how to produce it. Here we are suffering from overeating, it makes no sense to save each crumb of bread. When a woman forces her husband and children to eat and finish the food she kept from last week, she is not saving the Earth, she is practicing repression. Regarding water, the largest users are agriculturalists, so the water saving measures are an attack on them. In the case of Israel, I would speculate that the roots of "Every Drop is Precious" campaign can be found in the current fashionable post-Zionism, that denigrates the country founders as criminal colonialists and racists, whose cultural and physical descendants the Israeli agriculturalists are. I cannot prove this connection, and it may be overextended, but it seems to me that it is the same people writing post-Zionist (in fact Anti-Zionist) history books and campaigning for clean aquifers and non-reuse of treated wastewater (there is no other here) in agriculture (that is, stopping irrigation and letting the land to revert to its state of imagined purity). Well, now to work.

Bulawayo with water every eleventh day

How fast can paradise become hell? Very fast. Bulawayo, the pearl in the middle of Rhodesia, is turning unlivable. Its municipal council reports that the poor inflows of water into the southern city's reservoirs has led to an increase in waterborne diseases. Council spokesperson Pathisa Nyathi said, "We are praying that we do not get a cholera outbreak because that will be difficult to control, but as water shortages continue we are likely to get a cholera outbreak in the city, but as of now we are doing everything to contain the diarrhoea and dysentery cases. The situation is critical and as water levels deteriorate, in October residents will be getting water once in every eleven days."

The pics show Bulawayo's 100 year old shul (synagogue) before,during after its destruction.

How the world's largest company started

The history of Microsoft and Gates's wealth is amazing. I came to it reading Arnold Kling's article about Masonomics today. While serving at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory, Ed Roberts and Forrest M. Mims III decided to use their electronics background to produce small kits for model rocket hobbyists. (When Sputnik was sent to space, a fever to build hobby rockets swept over the world. I and my high school friends also built several rockets. It was easy for us, as there was a whole street industry of exploding noise-making artifacts with metal tubes filled with match heads. We experimented with sheets of explosive heads that were sold at the Tellier street kiosk, for toy revolvers. We also bought quantities of end of year fireworks which we dismantled and rebuilt. The fireworks were in fact solid fuel rockets, reached easily 500 m height. We used long tails to stabilize the things. I was inspired by the above picture with Goddard, it shows a ridiculously simple metal tube thing with no moving parts, fueled by any comburant such as kerosene or alcohol. I was much inhibited by the extreme simplicity of the artefact shown in the photo, I could not make myself to believe that the thing was so simple and easy. But I was always a person of varied, multiple, competing interests, and never got to it. Pressing my brain I wrote letters in English to NASA, IBM and to many American hobby shops with addresses in Popular Mechanics and other magazines which I read in the Lincoln Library of Buenos Aires, asking for information. I received very impressive color photographs from NASA and very luxurious brochures from IBM. Never before such high quality graphic material had been seen by anyone in Buenos Aires's Jewish quarter. But then it was impossible for me in Buenos Aires to buy cheap parts from America.) Roberts and Mims, along with Stan Cagle and Robert Zaller, founded Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) in Roberts' garage in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and started selling radio transmitters and instruments for model rockets. (I may have written to them).

In 1969 Roberts bought out the others and moved to a larger office, where he manufactured calculator kits for hobbyists. Mims assisted by writing manuals for some of the products in return for kits. In 1972, Texas Instruments developed its own calculator chip and started selling complete calculators at less than half the price of other commercial models. MITS and many other companies were devastated by this, and Roberts struggled to reduce his quarter-million-dollar debt.

With the release of the first 8-bit microprocessor, the Intel 8008, in 1972, and the more powerful 8080 in 1974, a number of hobbyists started designing microcomputer kits. In July 1974 one such design, Jonathan Titus' Mark-8, based on the 8008, was advertised in Radio-Electronics magazine. The design was purely on paper, requiring the builder to track down the parts one at a time, a task that was virtually impossible outside of California. Although the Mark-8 was not a success, the editors at Popular Electronics wrote that someone would eventually decide to supply the public with a "real" kit, and decided they wanted to be the ones to do it.

The first kit was announced in the January 1975 edition of Popular Electronics. The timing seemed to be just right. The electronics hobbyists were moving on to computers as more and more electronics turned digital, and yet they were frustrated by the low power and inflexibility of the few kits that were already on the market. The Altair had enough power to be actually useful, and was designed as an expandable system that opened it up to all sorts of experiments. Roberts needed to sell 200 over the next year to break even, but instead received thousands of orders in the first month.

Within only six months competition arrived in the form of the IMSAI 8080, which was available with a keyboard, monitor and a floppy disk controller. Roberts was furious, and spent an increasing amount of his time trying to "knock off" these competitors instead of improving the Altair. By 1976 there were a number of much better built machines on the market, and when Roberts started demanding the newly-appearing computer stores sell only Altair machines, they instead turned to the competition and, in a turn of irony, MITS was quickly squeezed out of the market it had created.

Around this time Roberts received a letter from a Seattle company asking if he would be interested in buying its BASIC programming language for the machine. He called the company and reached a private home, where no one had heard of anything like BASIC. In fact the letter had been sent by Bill Gates and Paul Allen from the Boston area, and they had no BASIC to offer. When they called Roberts to follow up on the letter he expressed his interest, and the two started work on their BASIC interpreter using a self-made simulator for the 8080 on a PDP-10 minicomputer. They figured they had 30 days before someone else beat them to the punch, and once they had a version working on the simulator, Allen flew to Albuquerque to deliver the program, Altair BASIC (aka MITS 4K BASIC), on a paper tape. The first time it was run, it displayed "Altair Basic," then crashed, but that was enough for them to join; the next day, they brought in a new paper tape and it ran. The first program ever typed in, was "2+2", and up came the "4." Gates soon joined Allen and formed Microsoft, then spelled "Micro-Soft". (Most of the above is copied from Wikipedia, another amazing invention. Without it these small histories would have been lost forever, and no one could imagine that the all powerful monster of Microsoft was, not long ago, within my lifetime, a hobby idea, a letter sent out without nothing behind.) Conclusion: I should go on building my wastewater fuel cell model, trying to buy the graphite brush electrode. That is how very big things start.

Otrosi digo: While doing my weendly tour of duty in Kever Benjamin's Mega supermarket, I realized how extraordinary this story was. I was in California in 1970 and spent hours mesmerized by the mountains of electronic components on the tables of surplus shops, sold for cents. I had never seen much electronics before, and here I was in a place where they were sold by kilogram. These were hobbyists, putting together things for the sheer pleasure of being among likeminded friends. I knew these boys. my friend Victor Haar was like that, his room was full of oscillators and things nailed to wooden planks and a tangle of wires connecting them. He always tried to impress me with the figures he caused on the oscillator, I couldnt care less. I wanted to lose my virginity with his sister.

What did he say?

Statement by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Board of Trustees and President Bruce Stillman, Ph.D. Regarding Dr. Watson’s Comments in The Sunday Times on October 14, 2007

Earlier this evening, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Board of Trustees decided to suspend the administrative responsibilities of Chancellor James D. Watson, Ph.D., pending further deliberation by the Board.

Watson received the Nobel Price for discovering DNA.

View from the ruins of a town formerly known as Homesh

Homesh was destroyed in 2005 by the Israeli Army having been declared an "illegal settlement" by the Israeli Government.

פרשת לך לך - Get Yourself Moving

ב"ה - God Allowing

In this new cycle of the Torah, we have already arrived to historical times and are in the city of Ur of the Chaldean Nation, somewhere around Bagdad. A pastoralist is sitting at the opening of his tent, staring to nowhere, and he has a revelation in his mind: Lech lecha. Get Yourself Moving.

The words “Lech Lecha” are interesting. It is a double order. Go and Go. It can also be interpreted as Go by yourself, or Go to your self. What does this mean? Rashi, a commentator, says that the meaning is that the journey would be for his own benefit. I translate it as Get yourself moving. Then the Bible follows with Avraham's self-circumcision. He means it as Brit - a contract, an alliance - with God. Then he proceeds to build a stone altar. The description of Avraham's later life is quite typical for a pastoralist. He takes himself away from his family and wanders with his goats and sheeps westward. He moves around following the grass, establishing alliances with other herders and joining others to raid and rob following local custons. Towards the end of his life we find him in Hebron, in the Judean mountains, a rich old man buying a burial place for his wife and for himself. He had a long and successful life, for sure. Imagine meeting him in Hebron's shuk (marketplace), sitting in coffeeshop chatting with fellow semi-retired herders, no one would think he was special. God has talked to him, but in this Middle East, everybody and his dog are in talking terms with God. Yet, so precariously, he had started something, a people that extremely slowly is still moving, moving ahead to the Land that God promised to show to Avraham.

Chodesh Tov (Have a Good Month - we are starting a new lunar month) and Shabbat Shalom (Have a Peaceful Rest Day).

Why we hate America

America bought my eternal love and gratitude in Vienna, January 1957. I was a hungry and cold Hungarian refugee boy, and we had left Hungary with nothing and had no winter cloths. The American Friends (Quakers) opened big hangars where used cloths donated by Europeans and Americans was freely distributed. I remember the well ordered raws of second hand cloth, all out of fashion and all very used, obviously donated by people who were poor and had put quite an effort into keeping old cloths well preserved. (*). All was meticulously clean, spotless and neatly ordered. In 1957 Germans and Austrians were still very poor. My mother selected for me a German boy leather trouser, with a tie under the knee, already out of German and Austrian fashion in those times. I have never seen such a thing, I felt ridiculous and refused to use it. Then the American Army also opened a hangar with surplus material, all I remember I got a real, authentic, original green American Army jacket. No one can imagine what that jacket represented for the skinny Hungarian boy that I was in those times. A real American Army jacket. No one of my friends in Hungary ever had something remotely like that. It is difficult to explain now what it was for me. With that green jacket America bought my lifelong love and gratitude. The CIA could not have done anything more effective than that to get my eternal, deeply emotional attachment to the Ameican ideals of democracy and freedom or whatever. Since then, my brain is hardwired to think of Americans as a superhuman, amazingly generous, benevolent people.

On the practical plane, soon I had to discard the green jacket because it was impractical, unusable, with many open slits unsuited for the cruel winter of Vienna. Maybe it was too big on me or it had been discarded as failed piece of equipment. I dont know how American soldiers could wear it in their campaigns. Although I had to discard it, it was AMERICAN, ORIGINAL, US ARMY. It made me almost happy for a while.

Now, having discharged my moral debt of gratitude, I'll say why we (non Americans) hate America. It is because Hanit Kikos and Suleyman El-Abed.

The story started 15 years ago in the desert. Hanit Kikos was featureless girl from a poor Moroccan Jewish family living in a miserable, remote Negev development town. A fresh, 15 years old, black haired, olive skinned girl from the poorer Oriental Jewish communities. She disappeared having been last seen in the bus station on the main road. The police soon found a suspect, one Suleyman El Abed, Suleyman the Slave, a Black African beduin from one of the thousand pahonim (illegal beduin encampments) in the Negev. Jailed, the police applied the most infantile but effective trick in the world's police book: the medovev. A beduin informer was put in the same cell with the mission of earning his confidence. In a moment of weakness El Abed confessed to him that he was the assessin, and from then it was downroad, and he led the police to the place where he had buried the poor girl after brutally raping her. As usual in this country, the trial took several years and the man was duly sentenced to life. Justice had been done, innocent blood was not claiming for justice or vengance from Earth, life could proceed on.

But not in Israel. A group of indomitable civil rights fighters, all middle class European Jews, inspired in American political culture, started to agitate against the racist police and fascist judicial system demanded the trial to be reopened. It was brought into the public's attention that the psychiatric diagnosis of El Abed indicated a weak mind, that is he is an idiot, but not such an imbecile that could not stand trial. The psychiatric report was very large, full of illl-defined pompous words, very confusing. Second, El Abed was a multilingual illiterate, he could not read nor write in any language, so his signature on the confession was worthless and illegal. He could not have read what he signed. Since a large portion of Israel's immigrant population cannot read Hebrew or Arabic (the official languages), a complex system of certified translators and notaries is used to make sure that those legal documents are valid. But the system is much attacked, specially in last wills signed by illiterate people from exotic origins. Third, the confession was obtained by the racist fascist piggist police using illegal methods, almost equivalent to sadistic torture chamber sessions, such as playing a confidence trick on a pure-hearted naive criminal. Ultimately it was the racist, fascist, Nazi judicial system that had found extremely convenient that a lily-white (well, a bit swarthy) Jewish girl was ruthlessly raped and killed by an opressed, discriminated, powerless, defenseless member of the society, an African Slave or descendant of an African Slave of a goat herding Beduin tribe. The assimetry was too extreme, it had the smell of racism all over it. The justice fighters felt that the whole situation was wrong, had to be wrong.

If there is one thing that Israeli high classes cannot suffer is being accused of racism. The case was reopened at a higher circuit and El Abed, being the moron he is, kept supplying more and more evidence. The arguments were twisted and twisted again, all the usual socio-economic cultural etc. background themes were presented and largely debated in HaAretz, the exquisite intellectual paper we are suscribed to (thanks to wife). But there was no way to evade the sheer fact that El Abed had killed Hanit Kikos in a very classical sex crime. He had done it by the book. Politically very unacceptable and incorrect, fascist and racist, but this was a crime solved.

But no, our American style freedom fighters could not take the fact of an Israeli Black criminal (moreover, from the lowest of the low, a moron from the Beduin Slave clans). They agitated and pressed and called once more the system racist, fascist, corrupt, putrefact. The case was reopened once more and tried by Israel's Supreme court with the participation of all the nine Supreme Justices. Suleyman the Slave, once more, was tried and the sentence upheld. All the judicial instances had unanimously found Suleyman guilty, as he himself said he was.

Now, October 2007, a book has been written exposing, once more, the unwashable racism of Israeli judicial system. The fascism of its police. The intrinsical evil nature of Israeli society. Its guilt. Its badness. Hearing the writer's cultured, reasoned, academic arguments on the radio, I asked myself, what he is talking about? Half of the Supreme Court Justices are survivors of the Holocaust, hating racism from the depth of their hearts. The other half are representatives of Oriental Jewry, refugees from Muslim lands. There is an Arab Supreme Justice who certainly would not tolerate the smallest act or attitude of discrimination against his people. Obviously, the writer was living in a civil rights film, believing that Netivot development town in the Southern Dessert was Little Rock. He did not see Netivot police as it really is, as poorly paid poorly trained Yemeni, Moroccan, Afgan Jews trying to perform their work. He could not see that they were not racist White sherifs of the American South. In his fantasy world, the writer was defending American Negroes against an unjust society, against a deeply racist power establishment. American culture has infiltrated so deeply our society that everything is defined in American terms and American experience. We are all role playing in a Hollywood fantasy film. It was American culture that had caused fifteen years of agitation and sense of uneasiness. And this thing will go on forever, books and interviews will try to convince us that we are evil slaveholders, persecuting innocent Black Arabs, racist to our innermost. This is America's influence on Israel, and I dont like it. Presumably even the Beduins hate it and I dare to suppose that Suleyman The Slave's own clan would like to forget the whole thing, and are happy that the rapist moron is securely behind closed doors. They must be truly bewildered about Israeli society. Initially they had tried to behave following their traditional ways of solving a blood crime: they send respected emmissaries, proposed to pay a fair compensation (how much a 15 y.o. virgin was worth in the desert? 10 adult female camels? 200 goats?), they wanted to make a large, public shulcha feast to show that a blood feud (that may have gone on for generations) had been avoided and the difficult issue had been settled. Thanks to American inspired idealists, the issue has been now irremediably confused and increasingly unsettled. We dont need American ideals, let us be what our fathers were and let us follow their wise ways. And I am not talking for the beduins, for Saudi Arabian beduins like Bin Laden, or for the Muslim world. I am a Hungarian-born Jew living in Israel.

Follow Up: The former Chief Supreme Justice has called for freeing Suleyman the Slave. She says that wants to reduce the charge to rape alone (no assessination). Suleyman soon will be a free Beduin Slave. We Jews are such an enlightened, liberal people that we cannot bear the mere idea of having Suleyman the Slave in Jewish jails. Pfuiia.

Next Week Follow Up: Former Supreme Court justice Miriam Ben-Porat has recommended that Justice Minster Daniel Friedmann shorten the sentence of Suleiman Abeid, convicted of murdering teenager Hanit Kikos in 1993. She based her recommendation not on a classical legal consideration and evidentiary law, but on another idea: public confidence in the justice system. This consideration was traditionally excluded from the legal world, but it is now apparently becoming one of the main factors in making judicial and quasi-judicial decisions - not only in criminal law. Ben-Porat arrived at two main conclusions in her opinion. First: The sum total of legal evidence found in the Abeid case, which led the Supreme Court to convict him of the murder and rape of Hanit Kikos, convinced Ben-Porat he was guilty of perpetrating the acts. "I would have signed the majority opinion," wrote Ben-Porat. Second: This was, in fact, only the court's majority opinion - there was no consensus among the courts which convicted Abeid. In his trial in the Be'er Sheva District Court, he was convicted of murder and rape by a majority of 2-1. The same was true of the second part of his trial, which was conducted after Kikos' body was found; Abeid was once again convicted only by a majority opinion. At first, the appeal to the Supreme Court resulted in an absurd outcome: Abeid was convicted of rape by a majority but was found innocent of murder, by a majority of 2-1. This outcome led to the decision to conduct an additional proceeding with a panel of nine judges. Here, too, the justices were divided: Abeid was convicted of murder by a majority of six of the nine justices, and of rape by a majority of seven. Although this is the end of affair (legally speaking), the public found it difficult to accept the fact that three Supreme Court justices thought he should acquitted of murder - but he would nevertheless serve a life sentence. "Anyone who is not a legal expert is certainly liable to get the impression that there is a suspicion here of miscarriage of justice," wrote Ben-Porat, "and it is possible that such a suspicion should be given certain weight, since justice must be seen as well as done."

My take of the former Supreme Court's recomendation: The Supreme Justice is totally convinced that Suleyman the Slave raped and assessinated 15 y.o. Jewish girl Hanit Kikos as charged. But court judges were not unanimous, there was always among the judges one that didn't agree with the sentence. As if this was not always so. Specially in Israel, where two Jews need three synagogues. This lack of unanimity could give the impression to the ignorant, malignantly suspicious public the idea that there is still some doubt about the crime or the process. In an astonishing show of lack of self-confidence, she says: Let us free the criminal. Better have this monster raping and killing more Jewish (or Arab) girls than bear the stain of racism. The issue that Suleyman the Slave is a disadvantaged African Beduin living in a holy-pure-lily-white Jewish state and therefore he is untouchable, is left unmentioned. Pfuiia pfuiia.

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(*) From the perspective of Kever Benjamin 2007 it is impossible to imagine the poverty of those times. Each morning I take the trash out, find very good shoes and unused dresses there. Cloth is so cheap that instead of washing or mending, people buys new ones. In those times, a shoe was an expensive porperty and was taken care and repaired to last several years. A good jacket was for life, and dresses were passed down from mother to daughter.

Also, looking at my image in the mirror, an old obese Jew, it is difficult to imagine that I was hungry till we arrived to Argentina in January 1957. I distinctly remember being very hungry in Vienna. Hunger caused no fear nor anxiety because I was within a stable family framework, but hunger it was. Also the Viennese children of my age (I was forced to start going to school the second day of our arrival to Vienna, speaking no German at all) were hungry and badly fed. I have never read about post-war years of mass famine in Europe, except in Holland. Holland is a very well organized country, it came out undamaged from the war, its field and industries working normally. Yet there was a famine. Imagine if rich Holland went hungry, how much more Germany, Austria, Hungary, and the terrible silent postwar famine of Russia that lasted well into the sixties. My wife has symptoms of hunger during her years of development, yet she remembers no famine. Hunger is a funny social phenomenon, it is invisible, symptomless and soon forgotten.

Unsolved mystery

Someone posed the question: Why are we asking ourselves why Jews did not run away in time from Hitler? We should be asking why someone did not put a bullet in his head in one of those open air meetings.

Good question. Jews were the terror of European rulers in the early 20th Century. Lenin was shot by a Jewish fanatic. A Jewish commando put the Romanov Tzar against the paredon with his family and servants. Famous Swedish diplomat in Israel was shot by the Etzel. The Etzel also blew up the British Headquarters in Palestine. Violence, extreme violence, is no stranger to my people. One of the 50,000 Jewish German front soldiers had to blow out Hitler's brain in one of its frenetic tirades against Jewish cowards in a beergarten. Why it was never done? Why it was not even attempted?

There is only one answer possible. Never again.

If they only would understand ...

The Economist falls, like millions before them, in the Socratic trap. Socrates (via Plato) argued that it is logically impossible to be bad, that people was naturally good and would also act good if only they understood what they were doing. I want to vomit. The good people of Athens voted in their benevolent masses for having him killed by poison. Thousands are convinced that if only Jews and Arabs knew other personally, there would be peace and harmony. Even our president, who should know better, is voicing this platitude. Thousands of get-to-know-each-other summer camps and seminars are being financed, a whole village called Peace something has been built to show that war is the consequence of not knowing each other. Pfuiia, in the words of Nero Wolf. Now the economists of The Economist are saying that if people were aware of the benefits of cooperation, love and peace and free trade would rule the world. If they only would understand...

I have long discarded the idea that people is stupid and lacks the cognitive instruments to see their true interest. As I am getting older and having deeper experience with a wider range of people, specifically business with low tech entrepreneurs and tradesmen, who are the people I am trying to extract from my income, make them pay rent for my property, make them pay for my engineering services, make them build complex industrial and residential plumbing infrastructure for less, and so on, the more I am amazed how these illiterate people know exactly what they are doing and how they try to improve their bargaining situation while conserving self-respect and a generous self-image. These people, Jews and Arabs, work very hard and they understand they have to pay for my work, and they do, but nothing in economic theory that I could explain them would improve their situation and behaviour.

The Economist, presuming everybody else is an idiot, condescends to explain the benefits of free trade in words that they think everybody can easily grasp:

Even if Iga is better than Og at both fishing and fruit gathering --

-- It takes Og 3 hours to catch a fish and would take 4 hours for him to gather some fruit,

-- While it only takes Iga 1 hour to gather some fruit, and 2 hours to catch a fish,

Then is still pays for Iga to get her fish from Og. She could gather 2 meals of fruit and swap one of them for Og's second fish.

Because that way Iga works only 2 hours for a meal of fruit and fish, instead of 3 if she was self-sufficient, and Og only works 6 hours, instead of 7 if he was self-sufficient.

The principle of comparative advantage is one of those ideas that can completely transform the way you see the world, once you really internalise it. That everyone, even those who are best at nothing, can benefit themselves and others through co-operation is a beautiful idea that points to the possibility of a benevolent world.

I propose that the people is well aware of this concept, and it has been from pre-historic times, and it has not caused a benevolent world nor brought the Moshiach any nearer. The reason should be obvious even for an Economist: Everybody benefits from cooperation, but some benefit more than others. Those more able and powerful, profit much more than the less able. Iga gets a meal in 2 hours, it is unfair. The long term effect of cooperation is to make the powerful more powerful and the poor, relatively more poor. If you are engaged in a dog-eat-dog competition, where the losers got eaten in the end, it is a very bad idea to allow your enemies to become more powerful, disproportionately more powerful than you are. You get the crumbs of the system, some benefits trickle down to you, but having your enemy to get all powerful can only end badly. You will not presume to tell us that the English opium-pushers are a force for good, and not our enemies? The poor knows that the rich get richer not because they are taking anything away from the poor, but the idea of differential development is unacceptable and dangerous. Therefore the poor and weak are against cooperation and free trade, because it is against their longterm interest. The argument that they dont want to help their enemies to get more powerful, sounds ugly, so they invent all kind of anti-imperialist and anti-globalization bullshit arguments. Under the rethoric is the truth, free trade will make our potential enemies more powerful, so they can cut our neck with less relative effort. In this case I am talking like the weaker party, while I am definitely on the other side.

I am not really interested in these ideas, I have other problems. For example, wife quote of the day:

"I dont care how large your portfolio is. What I want is a new car".

As said, it is not a problem of her not understanding the difference between dividend-paying investment and sheer consumption. No amount of economic theory explaining can help me.

Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo

My travels with the Hitlerjugend

Of course there was no Hitlerjugend in Argentina and any member of it was a generation older than me so I could never have travelled with any of them. But there was this group of tall, slim, blond (pelo lacio), coloured eye students in my University, mostly with German, British and Spanish family names (yes, Spaniards -known as Godos, Goths - are a Nordic nation). They had this suntanned skin only acquired through hours of practice of rugby, polo, tennis and yachting, all those open air goyische team sports. Buenos Aires's English schools were famous for their rugby teams, an exclusive sport totally foreign to my mentality. I never understood it, I was physically revolted by it. However, I bought a large T shirt with wide horizontal red and white strips, related to any of those fashionable local school rugby (American football) teams. I recognize that it is a shame, my fake look of rugbier, but I pardon myself because it was decades ago and it only shows - once more dear - that I am a suggestible fashion moron like everybody else. The Hitleryouth were uniformly mediocre students. They were very intelligent but had this inhibition to outshine their friends. Only we, the Jews, were ferociously competitive in school, although the Japanese also were excellent students but they didnt look the part. They looked like pampa natives, ordinario. I used to travel weekends from La Plata to Buenos Aires in the train, meeting my School's Hitlerjugend sitting all together. I would have loved to be invited to sit with them, but never was. They were indifferent. Never offensive, they just felt no need to have me with them, they felt no curiosity towards me. When young, I was tall, blond and athletic, and smart and rich too, but in the train they put up that invisible sign of "To the Future Israeli Water Engineer: Not interested". If I became pushy and actively tried to make friends with them, I was never rejected nor accepted, they tacitly made me feel out of my place, which I was. Nothing was ever said or done that I could feel angry at. I cannot even say that they were cold or chilly towards me. They were OK.

I remembered all these reading about the prepuce-pullers. When Judea became part of Alexander's empire, the Greeks built gymnasiums and practiced open air nude wrestling and other typical goyishe sports. Jewish boys wanted to be part of this proto-Hitlerjugend crowd and they were accepted and made members of the best gymnasium. But I bet Jewish boys felt out of their place, not rejected neither insulted, exquisitely politely and fairly treated. The Hitlerjugend is very good at being politically correct. The Greek boys called the Jews prepuce-pullers, because they vere ashamed of their circumcized organ and they trained it by pulling down the little skin they have left, hoping that it will distend and appear as an uncut Ancient Greek prepuce. Coming to think of it, what an artistic, exquisite insult! Prepuce-puller! First, it is true and undeniable. They were all the time pulling it. Second, it makes no reference to any inborn body feature, like a sneering "No foreskin!" or your skin is black, or you smell like a piece of shit, or your ears are like a monkey's. Each people has its preferred way of insulting: Romans and their Latin American descendants never forget to remind one of our mother's original profession, the Hungarians insult one's God and promise to anally rape him, our cousins the Arabs love to recall one's ancestors, the pigs and the monkeys. We contemporary Israelis have yet to develope an unified style, as the Ashkenazi elite's efforts (Ben-Amotz) were not adopted by shuk's masses. Prepuce puller is the original politically correct antisemitic non-insult. My fellow Hitlerjugend travellers in the Buenos Aires - La Plata train had a natural feeling for this exquisite art of politically correct non-insulting. They were born masters in this art.

I would have loved to sit with them on the train.

The pic illustrates what I am talking about. The pic shows el Che, later known as Dr Ernesto Guevara, in his Buenos Aires rugbier Hitlerjugend phase.

Cuando se pronuncia el nombre del "Che" se piensa en todo menos en el rugby. Aunque fue un ignoto jugador, quienes lo conocieron lo recuerdan por su buen tackle, el ventoline y porque era el único back de la época que jugaba con orejeras. Se inició en rugby en el año 1942 en el desaparecido Estudiantes de Córdoba, luego se trasladó a la Ciudad de Buenos Aires y allí jugó en tres clubes entre 1947 y 1950. De esta experiencia surgió el Guevara periodista que en 1951 fundó la revista Tackle junto a su hermano Roberto y un grupo de amigos. El resto de su vida transitó por otros horizontes.

Nobody likes a traitor

The goneff (a Jewish thief, in yiddish) Abraham Hirschensohn had attracted my attention already a decade ago. The German Government had approved additional compensation to Auschwitz survivors, and my mother who is one of them was expecting the money which was not coming. A year after the Germans had transferred the money, no survivor had seen a cent. Trying to help my mother, I was forced by the circumstances to have a look from short distance about how the large German payments were negotiated, managed, distributed, in order to tranquillize my dear Mother. I discovered that the German money was managed by a special committee headed by someone called Hirschensohn, an unknown askan (faceless party hack), with an office in the Knesset in Jerusalem. I called him several times and he never answered nor got any reaction from his office. I sent him registered letters asking what is happening to money's of the Holocaust survivors and even went to talk with his secretaries. I was so scandalized by the unimaginable stealing of the money that I said to one of the eldest secretaries, that I will make my 80 y.o. mother to demonstrate in front of his office with a sign "Thief". What would the police do to an old Holocaust survivor? She said it may be helpful. I was very angry but later I gave up the idea as it would have been inhumane to take these very old, very sick ladies to demonstrate in the street. Later my mother received about 1,000 dollars. Since only about 30,000 Jews survived Auschwitz extermination camp (from one to two million inmates) and the pointless death marches in Germany, the total living potential recipients in Israel must have been about three thousand, indicating that the total amount of money distributed to the old and the very sickly survivors must have been about 3,000,000 dollars, and the rest, about 3 to 5 billion, distributed among the inside lawyers and activists who had dealt with the negotiations (and were paid at the going rate for New York lawyers which many were. I am for paying well successful lawyers). But most of the money had simply been stolen. I wrote to the German embassy for details and received a pedantic answer (OK, sorry, no offense intended, a correct German bureaucratic answer) and I felt if they were saying: Sir, we are innocent, we paid and will pay, we are not a position to interfere in the Jew's monkey business. Then I wrote a very ugly letter to Hirschensohn calling him a thief, a shameless thief, but never received any answer. With his criminal looks, I would be very quiet too. Since the next step had to be take my Mother to the street and fight, which I was not ready to do, i let the issue to fade away.

So it was a surprise to hear that Abraham Hirschenshon had been designated Minister of Finance two years ago. I presumed he had stolen the survivors money in order to finance party activities, and now he was being rewarded. I did not imagine him to be personally corrupt, even if the man actually looked and talked like a classic gonev from the schtetl. He had a crooked look, he looked like a crook.

Two months ago his stealing from the Histadrut came into the light and he had to resign. 300,000 US dollars were found in his son's bank account and he could not explain anything. The actions that leaked from the police investigation show that the man was very careless, he took money from public accounts and put it in his son and daughter's accounts. He had been doing so for so long that thought no one is looking or that no one was crazy enough to sacrifice his job to expose him. He was almost right.

The whistleblower at the National Workers Organization (Histadrut HaOvdim HaLeumit) who exposed former Minister of Finance Abraham Hirchson has spoken publicly for the first since being fired earlier this week. Maayan Agam said, "It's a system where if you open your mouth you're out. The policy was that you're not supposed to know anything, and you don't ask any questions." Agam said that there had been rumors that people were being followed and that their phones were tapped. "They scrimped on everything, but they had luxury cars and their offices refurbished every Monday and Thursday," she added. "I realized that there was financial activity going on beneath the surface. Money was disappearing and we weren't supposed to ask where it went."

A spokesperson for the National Workers Organization said, "The National Workers Organizations rejects the absurd suggestion that the employee was fired because of her revelations about corruption where she worked. Not only did she prove a failure professionally on many occasions, but she also repeatedly breached basic disciplinary rules."