Analyzing Israel's Strategy in Gaza

The threshold necessary for small groups to conduct warfare has finally been breached and we are only starting to feel its effects. Over time, as the leverage provided by technology increases, this threshold will finally reach its culmination—with the ability of one man to declare war on the world and win (Robb). His example: “In the summer of 2004, guerrillas attacked a section of the Iraqi oil pipeline infrastructure (Iraq has over 4,300 miles of pipelines). This attack cost the attackers an estimated $2,000 to produce. None of the attackers was caught. The effects of this attack were over $50 million in lost oil exports. The rate of return: 250,000 times the cost of the attack.” Jim Henley (in REASONLINE) kills this argument.

Robb refers to the damage an attack causes as its “return on investment”: Spend $2,000 to attack a pipeline, and get a “return” of $50 million in lost revenue to Shell. But this isn’t really a return on investment as the term is used in economics, because the attackers don’t have $50 million when they’re done. Shell has lost $50 million and the insurgents clearly have increased their utility somewhat; they obviously wanted to destroy that pipeline more than they wanted the $2,000. But it seems implausible to value their increased utility at anything close to $50 million. It’s a perfect illustration of the Australian economist John Quiggin’s dictum that war is a negative-sum game. The combined attacker/Shell system is worth a lot less after the exercise than it was worth before.

Take Hamas government in Gaza. The unattractiveness of this kind of warfare may prove more limiting than anything Israel can do to combat it. Hamas has proven it can keep the South of Israel from functioning but not that it can forge a functioning state of its own. Hamas is harming not just the people of Shderot and Ashkelon, but they are depriving themselves of education, fuel, electricity and potable water.

In this framework, Israel is trying to make them understand that it is not worth doing what they are doing, that the harm done to themselves is larger.

Reflecting ahead, Hamas may understand that the equation works against them and decide to save the day for another fight in some indefinite future. As the Egyptians and Syrians, they are dreaming of the day when they will take revenge on Israel, but acting as they were resigned to live in peace. We call that situation Peace, they call it truce. That is OK with us because it is the best we can achieve.






Another way of taking Israeli strategy is behavioural. For each Kassam rocket of theirs we hit back immediately, disproportionally, so they feel pain. At some point they will be conditioned to avoid attacking Israel. It is a learning process, it can be modelled and tested to verify its progress at field level. I hope someone is doing it.

Sharapova (X)

The logistic function

Today the subject of my class/exercise was "planning horizon in civil engineering" including population prediction. There are no females this semester, and the intellectual level is frightening. When making my descripion of the logistic function ("S" curve), I was asked to skip the talking and get to the function itself, and they reminded me that "we are fourth year engineering students". Wow! Hope they will keep forcing me to increase the level.

A logistic function or logistic curve models the S-curve of growth of some set P. The initial stage of growth is approximately exponential; then, as saturation begins, the growth slows, and at maturity, growth stops. As shown below, the untrammeled growth can be modelled as a rate term +rKP (a percentage of P). But then, as the population grows, some members of P (modelled as −rP2) interfere with each other in competition for some critical resource (which can be called the bottleneck, modelled by K). This competition diminishes the growth rate, until the set P ceases to grow (this is called maturity). A logistic function is defined by the mathematical formula:



for real parameters a, m, n, and τ. The idea is that the need for infrastructure is function of the population and we can predict future population applying the logistic curve. It works very well with lab mice.

BTW, wife surprised me preparing the beer can butted chicken and it was very good.

The Kassam Rocket

The Palestinians are attacking Israel with Kassam rockets, a very imprecise, unguided, home-made missile carfrying 5 to 10 kg explosive load. It is very easy to make, it is just an iron tube filled with a propellant mixture (possibly fertilizer) which any hobbyist can build for 100 dollars. When used as by the Palestinians, with launching site in the middle of densely populated neighborhoods, they are very difficult to provide protection against. The whole neighborhood has to be levelled to provide some kind of visibility. Each day they send dozens of rockets that kill a few of us and terrorize hundreds of thousand civilians. Children are very vulnearble to this kind of sustained terror. Israel's response is also missiles, which sometimes miss their targets and generate a similar kind of hysteria and panic among the Palestinian population. In the pic a Kassam launching site in Gaza, and a collection of remains in Israel. I dont like this kind of stalemate, it does no good to us.

Gaza Drinking Contaminated Brackish Water

The pic shows a trail of smoke left by a Palestinian missile attack against Israel. Today we have another dead. Barack, our Minister for Defense, promised to stop these murderous attacks. By now the Gazans are drinking contaminated brackish water. Soon they may have even less. 52 of 140 wells used to supply water to Gaza residents were out of chlorine. By the end of the week all the chlorine supply will be out. An IDF spokesperson said Israel only received a request from the Palestinians for chlorine on Wednesday. "We are doing our best to allow the chlorine to enter the Gaza Strip as soon as possible," the spokesperson said, adding that it's a shame the Palestinians waited so long to notify Israel. About 100 wells in Gaza lack diesel fuel to power pumps used during frequent power outages. When the electricity goes out, the water is knocked out as well. Most Gaza residents who can afford to do so filter Gaza's salty, brackish tap water before drinking it. Filtration does not kill bacteria.

And Uzziyahu Built Towers in Jerusalem...

The Geva Benjamin Commercial Building project is nearing its completion. Instead of two floors it is going to be three, and will have a red roof to be seen from all Ramallah and surroundings. At least fifty Palestinians from the nearby villages are hammering around like possessed, making a noise like they are demolishing instead of building the structure. The pic above shows the third floor, a forest of iron columns, what is called "apropriate" technology (alias Third World). In April the place will open and start supplying Jewish pita and felafel to the Palestinians. In the other pic, the happy owner (middle), his one-eyed manager, and the supreme architectrix. She wanted to take down a shining nickel plated plastic lamp that the owner has bought, accusing him of turning his masterpiece into a Levantine bordello, worthy of Jaljuliya (a Palestinian village near Kever Benjamin City). My opinion was that the place had to be decorated according to local tastes, which made her to send me flying to Jaljuliya. Coming back to Kever Benjamin I lost my way. Suddenly the road became full of holes and the air was full of dust. Herds of famelic goats crossed the road and women in peasant black cloths carried things in their heads. Did I travel by mistake a hundred years back in time? I made an U turn before a frightening makeshift barrier with unarmed men loitering around and returned full gas to the Modi'in Road. I have been in Zone A.

Sharapova (IX)

Orckit Board Personae Getting Upset

Orckit Communications, a stock I hold intermittently for a year, is disappointing the members of Globes Orckit forum. The share had reached 26$ two years ago, after receiving a large (110 million dollar) order from Japan, as it seemed that it was going to monopolize the market for data transmission upgrading boxes. The Japanese order was completed and no follow up arrived. Then - no sales and no income in 2007. The share collapsed to 4$. A month ago a large contract was announced with Deutsche Telecom (see illustration). But the details have not been published and the actual orders are "conditional" and the money will start to flow in - in the best of the cases - in 2009. So Orckit's price just levitated a bit, to 8$. I could now sell with a 50% profit, or could wait for some levitating trigger. Today, a strange announcement appeared on Yahoo Orckit's board: First quotation was approved from DT - shipments in Q2/08 are expected to exceed $75M and ramping up Q3/4. Release in 7 days. Make your own DD. What is DD? Deduction? If this is true, and so it seems by its Germanic syntax, will the price reflect the good news? I have to work this out.

Beer Can Butted Chicken

Discovered a new way of cooking chicken: a half full beer can in its butt and 1.5 hours of roasting. It is an American discovery. Hats off to Yankis, they are so creative. Next Saturday I am making my first experiment.

Expert Witness

Today I took part in a Planning Committee meeting in Tzomet Re'em (Yoav County) and it was ugly. The President threw out the other party from the meeting because it was disorderly and then, on the car park, an ugly fight took place. It is about the stinking 20,000 turkeys at a stone throw from the kibbutz's new houses. I offered a solution, a 7 meter high earth barrier planted with tall trees, but the problem is that I disagreed (attacked) the Ministry of Environment's "expert".

Sharapova (VIII)

The Cookie Factory Job

A large and prestigious cookie factory near Kever Benjamin City rented my services to discover the cause and to correct the excessive FOG concentrations they were having during the last four years. First thing we pumped and pressure washed the three cell FOG interceptor. If the results are still bad, I will have to order the re-building of the ad-hoc structure they have, or advice the purchase of a ROMOLD German type plastic interceptor. A 10,000 liter grease interceptor cost 27,000 shekels (7,500 US $). Expensive business.

Makhteshim Agan Regains Citi's Favour

Citi has great expectations for generic agrochemicals producer Makhteshim Agan Industries Ltd. (TASE: MAIN), giving it a "Buy/high risk" rating with a target price of NIS 40, a 33% premium on today's opening price. Citi notes that Makhteshim Agan is traded at 20% below its level before the company's profit warning in early January. "Since then, it has become clear that the crop chemical industry is highly optimistic about growth in 2008. Makhteshim Agan's prospects are excellent this year, in our view, not least due to high grain prices and the need for yield growth." Makhteshim is among the three or four basic shares of my 2008 portfolio.

Good Winds

In Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. In the pic, Horatio Hornblower's Indefatigable.

ZIM in Hong Kong

Israel Corporation announced that it will float ZIM shipping in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. We are moving toward the new center of gravity, East Asia. The stock jumped about 5%. Israel Corporation is one of the three or four stocks I choose for the year 2008. It was a good decision.

Elon Moreh Wastewater Recycling Project

This morning I went to Elon Moreh (They call themselves Elon Moreh - Shechem. Shechem is Nablus in Arabic, a corruption of the Greek Neapolis) and made a fast noninvasive diagnostic of the Wastewater Treatment Plant, which is not working now for some years. The first pic show the wadi that currently takes the untreated wastewater from the settlement, its industrial area, and the nearby military base. The reeds show that it is an area permanently under water, the reed are dead because of the crude winter (the place is sited on Mount Kabir, the Big Mountain). The idea is to stop the stream and to pump the water to the agricultural area. That is my mission.

The lower pic shows the current situation of the treatment plant. The sewage pumping station is equipped with three submerged pumps and everything is untouched and operational, if full of biosolids. Under the mud flows the sewage to a bypass and then to the wadi. The plant (see mid pic) is composed by two large metallic aireation tanks (about 500 cu m each) which also seem perfectly operable and complete. I presume something broke down, like an remote distance controlled valve, and it was not repaired. Then the whole plant filled up with mud and was abandoned. In my professional opinion, the whole plant can be restarted with relative ease, and the water can be pumped for irrigation. The problem is to find a small contractor that will do the actual work. Elon Moreh is one of the Northern settlements, and the road is quite lonely and frightening. When returning, I took two soldiers from the base (they had an after) and they seemed quite nervous. I told them that in Argentina if I saw an armed soldier, I crossed the street to avoid it. People were shot because the stopped in front of army quarters. Different times, different places. They were clean eighteen years old boys with absolutely no idea that they were an occupying army. Unbelievable, but true.

Sharapova (VII)

Ferocious Gales

Winter in the Bay of Biscay brings ferocious gales and bitter cold discomfort for ships' crews aboard the British frigate Indefatigable. Horatio Hornblower, C.S. Forrester's dashing eighteenth-century naval officer, experienced the worst of conditions at sea while serving the arduous task of blockading the ports off the west coast of France. The excitement of battle came as welcome relief. Robert's magnificent painting depicts an exchange of cannon fire between Indefatigable - on the left - and a 40-gun French frigate attempting to run the blockade on a chill winter's morning. Moments later the two hulls crashed alongside each other, and the Frenchman was boarded and taken. This is just to record that the weather is cold and windy, and my portfolio has reached a new height.

Brainsway Optzia 1 Up + 40.12%

+ 40.12% I am following for a long time Brainsway, a start-up producing a futuristic looking machine to stimulate electrically deep brain areas, to combat depression. I checked the product and everybody I consulted said it is ineffective, cannot be done, you need to insert wires to conduce electricity. Today, suddenly, no one knows what was the trigger, there was a breakthrough in TASE and the stock went up 13% and the option 40%. I missed this one. I deserve it for spending time on researching The Prophet"s ascetic family life instead of TASE.

Fertility and the Prophet

Infertility appears to have been a serious health issue in Prophet Muhammad's times. It is assumed that the fertility issue did not lie with Muhammad, as he had children with his first wife Khadijah, four girls and two boys. And he had one child, Ibrahim, with Maryam the copt slave who was given to him as a gift. Among the Prophet wives, two had children prior to their marrying Muhammad but none with him. Others had no children at all. I know little of the Quran but it bears reason that he did not practice poligyny out of cupidity but pity, to save these luckless women from the horrible life childless women had (and have) in Arab society. Of course, other interpretations are also possible.

Sawda: She was married to Muhammad shortly after the death of Khadijah, three years before the hijrah. She was a widow having married once before. There are conflicting reports in reference to her having children. Those that claim she had a child attribute one son to her. She bore no children while married to Muhammad.

Aisha: She was married to Muhammad in the same year as Sawda, although her marriage was not consumated until after the migration to Madinah. She was the youngest wife of Muhammad and the only virgin. She bore no children in her marriage.

Hafsa: She was married to Muhammad after becoming a widow at the time of the battle of Badr. She is said to have been around the age of nineteen at the time. She had no children in her first marriage and she bore no children in her marriage to Muhammad.

Umm Salamah: She was previously married to Abdullah ibn Abdu'l Asad and they had four children together, Zaynab, Salamah, Umar and Durra. She married Muhammad after becoming a widow and was still nursing Zaynab. She bore no children with Muhammad.

Zaynab bint Jahsh: She was a cousin of Muhammad and previously married to his adopted son Zayd bin Thabit. She bore no children in either marriage.

Juwayriyya: She was captured and then converted by MOhammed, who married her. She was previously married before being a muslim to Musafi' ibn Safwan. She bore no children in either marriage.

Rayhana: She was also of the captive women. She was freed, converted and than married Muhammad. She was married once before and had no children from any of the marriages.

Umm Habiba: She was previously married to Ubaydullah ibn Jahsh who turned apostate. She bore him one daughter and none to Muhammad.

Safiyya: She was a Jewess from the Banu Israel and captured during the attack on Khaybar. She was married twice before her conversion and she never bore children.

Maymuna: She was the last to be married by Muhammad. She was previously married to Ma'sud ibn 'Amr ath Thaqafir and Abu Ruhm ibn Abdu'l Uzza. She bore no children in any marriage.

Reflections on some old data

Prof. Lynn writes that there has been for the last century a negative correlation between intelligence and number of children. He quantifies the effect worldwide and estimates that the effect of this has been a decline in the world's genotypic IQ of 0.86 IQ points for the years 1950–2000. A further decline of 1.28 IQ points in the world's genotypic IQ is projected for the years 2000–2050. In the period 1950–2000 this decline has been compensated for by a rise in phenotypic intelligence known as the Flynn Effect, but recent studies in four economically developed countries have found that this has now ceased or gone into reverse. It seems probable that the whole world will move into a period of declining genotypic and phenotypic intelligence.

Now, plots of mean IQ and per capita real Gross Domestic Product for groups of 81 and 185 nations, as collected by Lynn and Vanhanen, are best fitted by an exponential function of the form: GDP = a * 10b*(IQ), where a and b are empirical constants. The implication of exponential fitting is that as a rough rule of thumb, an increase of 10 points in mean IQ results in a doubling of the per capita GDP.
Does it mean that world GNP is fated to stagnate? There are so many people out there that it doesnt seem probable. The Greeks developed a whole civilization with only 10 million people, and the Romans may have been 100 million. The Earth houses how 7,000 million people, enough to keep us advancing ahead.

Poor Dimitry Anatolievitch

Medvedev, who recently picked by Vladimir Putin as Russia's official leader (Putin will of course be the real leader), told a Russian weekly that he was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church at age 23. Russian Internet sites are full of reports that before that he was Jewish. The rumors are based in part on the fact that his maternal grandfather's first name was Veniamin - Benjamin - while his family name, Shaposhnikov, is a Jewish name. But beyond that, accusing an electoral rival of being Jewish is a tactic that nationalist parties have employed in the past, both in Russia and in other former communist countries. I could add that in Eastern Europe the elite has some remote Jewish roots, as did the aristocratic class in the past, so no one is above these accusations. In the case of Margret Albright and John Kerry, the facts were true. The internet is full of antisemite list showing people of Jewish origins, including Roosevelt and Eisenhower. What a nonsense.

The Good Life

Good Life, in the sense of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, is what I am living. I succeeded in stabilizing my family life, with the girls each striving towards a worthy goal, working and studying. I am spending time each day doing a follow up of my investment operations. The results are very satisfactory. And I am a well known consulting engineer in my speciality, with plenty of work orders. Only my administration is very poor, I am selling my work very cheap and below cost, and I am not collecting the money. I need a half-day administrator but that would force me increase my overhead, with a representative office, etc.

Remedy found for the Fat Epidemy

Good news. Bloomberg writes that ethanol has caused a domino effect. For the foreseeable future, consumers will pay more and more for food. I for one am sure to lose weight. I could never resist a self-service buffet breakfast, a free lunch, and all that caviar and herring and smoked beef mini-sandwiches are killing me.

Gold vs Inflation

Gold (see pic of a gold and nickel faucet) is rapidly reaching 1000 $/ounce as consequence of (demand and) American inflation. Inflation basically steals the savings of middle class people all over the world, that holds its money in monetary instruments, and gives it to the American government. The American government is not a person but a mechanism, and it ends by giving the buying power to American underclass and to pay back its debts for purchases done in the past. The inflation that Bernanke is causing is like the Biblical Shmitat hovot, the erasing of debts that Hebrew were ordered to perform each fifty years, and included the liberation of slaves. The past is deleted and everything is started anew.

Demography

I read in the Demography.matters blog that:

At the present point in time the United States and France are the only two developed countries which have managed to recover something near the magic 2.1 Tfr replacement number. We have therefore few strong reasons to believe, and indeed we may well have a good many reasons to doubt, that a significant number of countries globally will finally prove capable of retaining replacement fertility.

The blog is very professional and does not share the generally accepted vision of rapid demographic collapse. Moreover, it proposes that the strong patriarchal family system may have been the cause of dramatic demographic transition in Southern Europe (Spain, Italy, Greece) and in Iran (paradoxically, a country ruled during the last generation by an ideological Islamic theocracy). The reason is that the "cost of living" became prohibitive (buying an apartment) and these peoples postponed the age of marriage. I think the Palestinian population will undergo this process as soon there is some order and stability in their lives, and the ideology of their government (Hamas, Fatah) is in fact irrelevant. (Northern European countries are less affected by the high cost of family formation because illegitimacy is rampant and accepted: more than half of France's births are "bastards" in the sense that the mother is single or separated).

Sharapova (VI)

Message

"Israel was born from the ashes of the Holocaust," said an Israel security analyst. "As such, Israel, the Jewish people and every democratic nation would not allow a second Holocaust to take place. Israel is more than prepared to meet any challenge by the new racist Nazi regime in Iran. We know every step they take, we know the color of the underwear that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hassan Nasrallah wear. If they think that the US can shoot down a satellite with laser pin point accuracy, they have not seen the weapons that Israel would and could use to defend herself - and I am not talking about nuclear or biological."

Chicken Slaughterhouse

I received today two work orders, one for the industrial water treatment of a chicken slaughterhouse in Azor, near Tel Aviv, and a odor mitigation study for a new chicken growing operation in a kibutz in the North. The slaughterhouse is a terrible place to see, everything rusting and dirty, chicken heads and members thrown all around, busy rats running along the walls, cats calculating how to catch them, a terrible smell of chicken shit, fear and death. One problem is the salt, because it cannot be evacuated into the municipal network, that is treated and recycled for irrigation. The second problem is the high organic content of the industrial wastewater, which has to be settled and separated. The factory uses enormous quantities of water (the pics show a de-feathering machine, and a vacuum machine to extract the kidneys from the chickens). As always, the client advanced without a professional consultant till he hit a wall. Tomorrow arrives a 10 cubic meter FOG interceptor, and they dont know how to install it. The wanted to do it against the current, what is called zavit haphucha, reverse angle. Tomorrrow I have a second meeting on the site, fortunately it is not far from Benjamin's Tomb City. Then I'll have to write a report why 10 cu m is enough.

The chicken odor problem is manageable. The kibutz is in train of killing its own dream project by linking the new building with the transference of the existing chicken coop near its own residential area to the far end of the kibutz and on the limit with a moshav. The dominant winds will carry the odor to the moshav. The kibbutz is peopled by Ashkenazim, many of them American Jews, while the moshav is Oriental. In Israel, the ethnic conflict is always simmering in the background, and here somebody found he could exploit the chicken issue for political gain and is using the Ministry of Environment to kill (or at least to torture) the profitable chicken vision. Since my success in the Southern turkey odor problem, am I being consulted as an expert in these smelly issues. I have much work, but this month I had no income yet!

Working people

Now that I am an independent consulting and design water engineer for more than a 1 1/2 years, I am coming into close working contact with the real working people of Israel. Most of my former career was within the framework of civil service organizations, or TAHAL, a government owned large consulting firm that operated on a cost plus basis. What I have discovered is that the working people in Israel ... works very hard. I can now compare teams changing or repairing street pipes in several European countries, China and in Israel. The Hungarian teams are made up by gypsies and they do no actual work. The German teams look very well ordered, delimiting a clean work area in the street and filling it with mechanical equipment and materials, doing much preparatory opeations but little actual work. In China there is much repartee and the work seems to be done without effort, but there is much disorder. In Latin America there are lots of people all around and the work is very sloppy. In Israel one can see teams working like possessed on the streets, very focused and organized, finishing the work very fast. It is all an apparent disorder, no one uses hard hats or security equipment, but the quality of their work is good, I think better than European standards.

I dont know how the establishment leaders made us used to work so hardly, so intensely. Israeli workers come from the Third World and are not known for their high IQ. In the pic, an Arab sub-sub contractor, working for the plumbing sob-contractor that is working for the management company contracted by the Supermarket chain to prepare a new shop in Rosh Ha Ayin. There are no European Jews in the whole operation: the supermarket is owned by a Bucharan Jewish family, the management firm is led by a "bad" tempered Moroccan Jew, the contractors are all very experienced and professional Oriental Jews and Palestinians. Most of the Palestinian workers seem to be illegal, in the sense that they speak little Hebrew and are afraid to be photographed. The preparation of a new supermarket is, in Israel, done by at least one hundred small independent tradesmen and engineers, the Moroccan coordinates everything from his head and I think it is very well managed. His oiginal name was Buzaglo, a mythical name in Israel for the lumpen. But this man works like hell, thinking in every detail, coordinating our work, giving orders in the exact level of aggression that are just tolerated, just one shade above the limit when his face risks being shattered in anger. I admire him. In my surprise supervision visit this morning I met this lonely Palestinian intensely concentrated in perforating the holes for the plumbing according to my design. The man was so totally concentrated in his work. Although all is in disorder and the man sits on an improvised plastic container, the holes were very clean and precise.

Sharapova (V)

Old Kibbutz Industry

This morning I went to meet a client (a Chocolate Factory that was ordered to install a sprinkler system) in the industrial area of Kibbutz Givat Brenner, near Rehovot. Maybe it is the grey, cloudy, winter weather, but the visit did touch me emotionally. Givat Brenner used to be the largest, most industrialized, most successful of all kibbutzim. Their web site shows young enthusiastic pioneers building the communal children's house, the first water tower (see pic above), the first calves born. I was member of a youth movement and was scheduled to become a kibbutz member, so I can see myself building a new country and at the same time creating the new Socialist man, without personal property and liberated from the mental oppression of capitalism. As things turned out, the first opportunity I had to join the kibbutz movement, I ran away from what I found and never looked back. I still resent their condition to joining that we delay having children, so we would not use the kibbutz's social services (feeding the baby, kindergarten, etc.). They wanted healthy, dedicated, productive workers "netto" with any bagagge. Pfuia.









What I found were ruins of decrepit factories, empty kindergarten, kitchen transformed into a factory mess, decaying and unused animal husbandry section. Under the rain it looked all so sad and melancholic.

The chocolate factory is a primitive private enterprise, with dozens of very old women sitting around a table making small umbrella shaped chocolate forms with brightly coloured aluminium envelope. At the entrance, parking for motorized wheelchairs. Obviously the factory is based on the exploitation of the old halutzot (kibbutz pioneer girls) work force, in some kind of work therapy program. Or no therapy at all, the kibbutzim never thought of themselves as a multigenerational community and made no preparations for their own old age. (Contrary to the propaganda pictures of blond children living in their self-managed children's house, the kibbutz was in my experience a very antichildren oprganization). They lived an illusion, and now old kibbutznikim have no retirement funds and are dirt poor and are forced to work for subsistance. Or they are still socialists, carrying out to the very end the Zionist-Socialist dogma of Ber Borochov that physical work in our own country is the redemption of the Jewish people. Their fate is tragic or they deserve it, I can never be of one opinion. May be both.

Poignant Yiddisch Revival - Without Yiddn

The internet allows me to watch marvelous video clips of Yiddish folk dancing festivals in Germany, Poland, Russia. I am amazed by these beautiful blond young boys and girls dressed as Jews in the last century (only much nicer), dancing stylized Ashkenazi dances, with the praying movements so typical of the Galut Jew. In the clips I see hundreds strong professional dancing ensembles, in enormous and opulent operas and other palaces of culture so typical of the Russian and other European capitals. The shows have a strong emotional effect on me, because they are authentic, they look like Jews, only that they are so much more beautiful, clean, European than the original. We Hungarian Jews hated the Ost-Juden, and they hated themselves, for their poverty, ignorance, dirt, sloppiness, their pleading tone of speaking, their false-humility gestures, their un-Europeness. Hungarian Jews adopted the Hungarian language and culture as soon they could, and in America, the first thing Jewish immigrants did was to abandon their names, their look, their Yiddisch language, and their old-world religion. Only now, a hundred years after, the shtetl is remembered with nostalgy, when it did exist and was full of folk-Jews, it was universally hated as ugly, dirty, ignorant, opressive.

The old Galut Jew of Eastern Europe was already disappearing when it was exterminated by the Nazis. Now their figures are coming to life, and in my opinion, the copy is faithful and much better and beautiful than the original. Seeing the dance of the blond yeshive-bochers one gets the image of the Jews as they dreamed to be. These beautiful non-Jewish Jews are what Walter Rathenau was speaking about, of Jews being a German tribe as the Schwabians or the Prussians were. Had we looked like these "koshere katchkes" and "yeshive-bochers", we would have been easily accepted as Europeans, but we are not.

I also hear young people speaking Yiddisch obviously learned in an University. They speak so nicely, so correctly, that they speak better than the original. The Yiddisch as spoken when it was a living language was a jargon, a formless and grammarless dialect, for day to day communication in the village or in the criminal underworld. The stylized, sterilized, academic yiddisch is correct, but its "feeling", its soul is so goyische. I am writing this with pain in my heart, and with amazement and respect towards the Europeans that in 2008 study the ways of a people that is no more.

Arms race between Venezuela and Colombia

Venezuela is engaged in a conflict with its neighbor Colombia, forcing both of them to spend money on arms. The race was started by Chavez three years ago with the purchase of 100 000 Kalashnikok AK-103, 53 helicópteros Mi-26, Mi-35, Mi-17, and several Sukhoi-30. In 2006 Chávez bought MIG-29 and in 2007 five submarines. While Venezuela buys its arms in Russia, Colombia has signed contracts for thirteen new Kfirs and eleven old ones will be renewed in Israel. Chavez is acting very anti-American and for some reason he is also opposing Israel in Latin American and world organizations. Chavez is also trying to organize an Anti-American boycott.

Real Estate in Ariel

I am still ruminating on the idea of buying real estate in Ariel. According to an Anti-Zionist document:

The ever expanding artificial "exclave" settlement of Ariel (established in 1978, now with some 20,000 residents) is at the core of the "Ariel Bloc," which includes 25 other settlements, secular and religious, among them ultra-nationalist Kedumim. The municipality has been keen to cultivate ties to Christian evangelical "Zionists" in the U.S. and elsewhere. Palestinians view Ariel darkly. Ariel is projected to expand by 50% over the next few years; it lies 25 miles east of Tel Aviv, connected to the metro Tel Aviv area by the Trans Samaria Highway, and 30 miles north of Jerusalem. The plateau-top fortress remains one of the truly major obstacles blocking any reasoned hope of Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories.

Soon the semester will start and I will be travelling a lot. The prices are:

3 - 3.5 room apartment 80 - 90,000 US$

"Villa" with possibility of a second "living unit" 150 - 180,000 $

The question if it is a good investment? Ariel is within the area to be exchanged with the palestinians, so it will not be evacuated in the seeable future. The road is good and secure. The industrial area is adding 140 new factories. The university is growing very fast. Apartements can be rented out to students for 300 $ a room.

DryShips Miracle Results

I am invested in Israel Corporation, owner of ZIM shipping company, on the basis of the prospects of this business. My model was Dry Vessels, of George Economou.

"We are very pleased to report the best quarter in the Company's history so far. Since our IPO in 2005 when we started out with a fleet of 6 vessels with an average age of 19 years we have grown to the biggest drybulk company listed in the US with a fleet comprising of 47 vessels with an average age of 8.8 years. In the meantime, our stock price has risen from $18 per share to $84.25 per share as of today's close, which implies a return to our initial shareholders of 368.1%. Our clear market view and choice of spot employment has been proven correct and has created superior shareholder value.

We enter 2008 with a great deal of optimism. The supply and demand balance for this year remains extremely tight. In 2008 we expect to have approximately 17% more fleet operating days compared to 2007 and as of today approximately 63% of the fleet operating days remains unfixed. DryShips is in a unique position to take advantage of the strong freight rate environment and continue to maximize shareholder value."

As for me, I am losing 10% on Israel Corp.

Ofran. She Loves Samaria.

Hagit Ofran is the new chief of Peace Now's Settlement Watch. There is such organization. Ofran grew up in religious family (she is grand daugher of Prof. Yehoshua Leibowitz, an important Jewish thinker), loves the West Bank for the same reason that the settlers love it: She's as religiously and emotionally attached to it as they are. But love for the land of Israel, she says, ought not blind one to the best interests of the state of Israel. She is the chief malshina (delator) reporting the addition of each building block or roof tile to a house, the planting of a tree, the repair of a pot hole in a road, to the haters of Israel all over the world (there is no shortage of them). What she is doing is ugly as sin, but she feels purified by the scorn she harvests among our sworn enemies.

Obama has Something

George Soros is one of the main financiers of Democratic politicians, including Barak Obama. But when a year go Soros (who is a Hungarian Jew like myself) wrote a beastly article against AIPAC's (aka Jewish) influence in American foreign policy, Obama issued a strongly worded dissent. Jen Psaki said

"On this issue he and Senator Obama disagree. The U.S. and our allies are right to insist that Hamas — a terrorist organization dedicated to Israel's destruction — meet very basic conditions before being treated as a legitimate actor. AIPAC is one of many voices that share this view."

Obama, son and grandson of Luo Muslims, raised as Muslim till age ten, a follower of a vicious anti-Jew Black preacher, has shown that has character, has a backbone, that he is not in anybody's small pocket. he can say no when to say nothing would be better for his political career. African men are not known as reliable, hardworking, with strong and coherent opinions, and firm, rigid backbone. But this man, a very well looking man, has something. How confusing.

Saudia combats immorality

Saudi Arabia has asked florists and gift shops to remove all red items until after Valentine's Day, calling the celebration of such a holiday a sin. "As Muslims we shouldn't celebrate a non-Muslim celebration, especially this one that encourages immoral relations between unmarried men and women, " said Sheikh Khaled Al-Dossari, a scholar in Islamic studies.

Evogene's breakthrough contract to improve Canola

Evogene Ltd. (TASE:EVGN) is an Israeli startup that has signed a model contract with Viterra Inc. (TSX:TV) (Saskatchewan Wheat Pool Inc.) to develop canola with improved yield and tolerance to abiotic stress (cold, heat, drought). Under the three-year collaboration, the companies will assess a number of Evogene discovered gene candidates in trials involving Viterra's canola lines. Evogene discovered the genes using its Athlete in-silico gene discovery platform. These genes have been evaluated in model plants, showing improved yield under both normal and adverse environmental conditions. Western Canada is one of the world's main canola growing regions. The companies also intend to sign a co-operation and project funding agreement with the Canada-Israel Industrial Research and Development Foundation (CIIRDF) to finance the join project.

The pic, taken by Greenpeace in Japan, shows spillover genetically modified cultivated canola competing (and presumably intermingling) with local wild canola. There are no pure races anymore, but racism is everywhere.