Bad Vibes

China's foreign reserves topped 3 trillion. Three quarters of it originates in the USA. The U.S. unemployment rate is 10%. As Roubini said: This looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is a Peking Duck. Meaning that China is manipulating its currency to better exploit the USA. It cannot - will not - go on for long. China is underestimating the violence underlying American character.

The Ariosophic Roots of Nazism

When my uncle Felix Glucklich (he changed his name to Feliz Feliz) died in Buenos Aires, I was asked to look after his apartment, that was crowded with books on mysticism, many of them signed by their authors. He had lived in the India and been part of the inner circle of Krishnamurti. I took several books and after working myself through them, let my mother to throw them out during of her periodic fits of housecleaning. Feliz came to my mind because I found on the internet that Nazism was born from the same mud of Central European around-the-century mysticism.

As the Ariosophic movement spread from Austria into Germany it became overtly political. The Germanenorden, most of whose members had originally been active in the List Society or the ONT, was founded in Munich in 1912 as a secret anti-Semitic organization meant to counteract the supposed Jewish conspiracy to control Germany. In 1918 it was taken over by Rudolf Sebottendorff, who changed the name of the group to the Thule Society and transformed it from a religious cult into an organization of political activists dedicated to destabilizing the Weimar Republic.

In an attempt to attract a wider membership, the Thule Society founded a front called the German Workers Party (DAP) that offered the same anti-Semitic and racist ideas without mentioning occultism. This was the group that Adolf Hitler first discovered as an army intelligence agent in 1919. Hitler was soon elected to the leadership and in 1920 he renamed the DAP the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) or Nazi Party. Hitler eventually took over ownership of the Thule Society's treasury and weekly newspaper, and also recruited Thule Society contacts Rudolf Hess and Alfred Rosenberg who went on to become important officials in the Third Reich. As the emblem of the Nazi Party Hitler adopted the Thule Society's insignia, a swastika.

I remember the dedication (in English) in one of Madame Blavatsky's book: I am sure the Masters are still with us.

I aint gonna hunt the 'coon no more

Now my old hound dog lies asleeping
He don't know I'm gonna leave
Else he'd wake up by the fireplace
And he'd sit there, howl and grieve
But my hunting days are over
I aint gonna hunt the 'coon no more
Gabriel done brought in chariot
When the wind blew down the door
">
Ain't gonna need this house no longer
Ain't gonna need this house no more
Ain't got time to fix the shingles
Ain't got time to fix the floor
Ain't got time to oil the hinges
Nor to mend the window pane
Ain't gonna need this house no longer
I'm getting ready to meet the saints.

(What we wouldnt have given for a blue jacket like this! Oh tempora, Oh mores!)

The New Meat Factory Project

It has been ten days that I am working - on and off - on this meat factory project in the Jerusalem Mountains. The place was formerly Israel's largest chicken factory, it has been abandoned, and now two businessmen are rebuilding it as a specialty meat factory. It is rather complicated because several engineering firms have been working on it and it is difficult to make sense of it.

Now that the Agriprocessor Meat Factory has filed for bankrupcy and its owners are in jail, these Israeli factories may fulfil the vacuum they left. The Shor HaBor logo (pic) is now illegal in the USA. There is a large market for smoked and processed kosher meat products. BTW, the Hungarian salami industry - Pick and Hertz - was founded by Jews. Hungarian salami is a Jewish invention.

Ichimoku, Bloomberg Backtesting

Ichimoku Kinko Hyo (One Glance Balanced Chart) is a Japanese trend trading charting system that allows to visualize with a "cloud" low-probability trading setups from those of higher probability. It is not terribly effective. Bloomberg has a new feature - backtesting - very useful for trading. I learn all these techniques yet I am for value investing a la Buffet.

Exorcising Legionella

Yesterday I had a day trip to Tiberias on the Kinneret Lake. My mission: To map a large hotel's water and air conditioner system and write a program to avoid Legionella spp. The luxury hotel is owned by an European Church and is enormous, four towers and swimming pool, cascade, four hot water systems and so on. The Arab manager has studied in deep the Legionella problem and draw me a scheme of the complex water piping that would not shame a professional engineer. He had blue watery eyes and the hotel personnel were all pallid Arabs, some good looking girls, apparently Arab Christians.

The recirculating hot water system must store hot water at a minimum temperature of 60°C and deliver hot water of at least 50°C to the outlet. After fiddling around with the thermometers, they were unable to produce more than 50 centigrades, so I identified the problem - their heat exchangers were too small to maintain the minimum temperature of 60 degree Celsius required to kill the Legionella creature. The peak hot water requirement was at 10.30 AM and 4.30 PM (they had it all studied in detail) and then the water was almost cold. We are going to change the heat exchanger.
Apparently they had received advise from another water expert, because they had installed dozens of superfluous non-return valves, even in places not required by the Ministry of Health. Pic.below: Legionella pneumophila colony. The bacteria lives in water amoeba, one amoeba can contain 600 Legionella bacteria. A bad beast, it causes headache and nausea like I am having now, followed by painful death by pneumonia.

The Garage in Nahash Street

Richard Feynman the Bongo King

Invest in TASE

I do.

Israel's strong economic performance will lead to a strengthening of the shekel to NIS 3.5/$ by June, according to a review by Bank of America Merrill Lynch. According to the investment house's COMPASS model, the shekel is 20% undervalued against the US dollar. Pic. BoI's Stanley Fisher.

Our illegal immigrant problem

But it is being dealt with, I think. Israel's primer minister Bibi Netanyahu declared that

The infiltrators cause cultural, social and economic damage and drag us into the Third World.

The government proposed to build a fence along Isael's borders. Also submitted a government-sponsored bill to block infiltration - which calls for serious imprisonment of infiltrators, makes it possible to hold them in administrative detention, and leaves open the possibility of swift expulsion for asylum seekers. Human rights groups adamantly oppose the bill, saying it ignores the moral and legal obligation of the state to not expel a person to a country that poses danger to his health or welfare.

Watch TASE

On May 27, ISRAELI STOCKS are included in MSCI's world developed-market indexes from their current home among emerging-market indexes. I think Israeli stocks will get an inflow of foreign capital from the change.

The problems of the Germans

Sie unterschätzt sich, er macht genau das Gegenteil - das ist kein Klischee, sondern wissenschaftlich nachgewiesen. Könnte eine Frauenquote dafür sorgen, mehr qualifizierte Frauen ins Management zu holen?

No, it is not about broken high heels of females executives. Or yes?

Nota bene: Look that legs! In my next life, I want to spend time in Germany.

Kevin MacDonald For Racial Conflict

Prof. Kevin MacDonald publishes a new article "Racial Conflict and the Health Care Bill" where - my interpretation - he advocates racial conflict and war. There is a fine line between a descriptive analysis of a social situation, like that there are increasing signs that political forces are aligning according to ethnic lines, and a jubilant ex-abrupto predicting - no, advocating - racial conflict in America. It is clear to me that Kevin MacDonald is rejoicing in the existing ethnic divisions in America and predicting - if not proposing - their develoment into open racial fight. Once I considered him a researcher and an university professor, but increasingly he is abandoning that role and becoming a political leader - and a subversive one. For much less Rabbi Kahana was put out of the law in Israel and forbidden political activity. But in America anyone can foment racial hatred and advocate ethnic civil war on the condition that he does not use "hate words" but polished prose. And no one dares to protest because he is only exercising his sacrosant right to free speech. He thinks...

It is encouraging that polls indicate that Whites are aware that the elites are arrayed against them. It is a short step for them to develop an explicit understanding that ... Jews are the financial backbone of the Democratic Party and its coalition of non-White minorities.

But everything would be fine...

...if very large percentages of Whites coalesce together politically, even if it is in the corrupt Republican Party, the reality of racial conflict will be simply too obvious for anyone to ignore. And then it will get really interesting.

Kevin MacDonald is clearly enjoying the vision of rivers of blood - Jewish, Black, Latino, White - running on the streets of America.

Pfuuia.

Drought in China

As all along its history, the Chinese lived in a permanent state of anxiety regarding water: once, the menace was flooding; today, it is drought. The pic shows the river Yangtze near Chongquing: Two restaurant boats are grounded because of the drought. The Three Gorges Reservoir is 15 meters under its planned level. China is investing much in water infrastructure, trying to supply the North (Beijing) with water from the South (the dwindling Yangtze).

The Coming Chinese Superstate

Coming soon !

From Sludge to Electricity, Again

Wastewater treatment plant sludge has been considered a potential source of energy since these plants were first built in England about 150 years ago. The idea seems so obvious that every elementary environment schoolteacher is convinced that only stupid or evil people is stopping it from happening. During the years I was a Plant Manager and later in the Water Authority, I was bombarded with ideas and proposals from all kind of idealistic but naive "green" people, normally a young female school teacher, who wanted my co-operation for her pilot project. Instead of the futility of explaining the energy balance of the process, which is negative, I always said yes and watched her to fade away when the practical issues started to appear.

Now I read in a trade paper that a Nevada university has designed yet another of these sludge-electricty schemes.

Our plan is to test the unit by about May 15," Chuck Coronella, principle investigator for the research project and an associate professor of chemical engineering, said. "We're designing, building and assembling a continuous-feed system that will ultimately be used to generate electricity. We'll run experiments throughout the summer, creating a usable dried product from the sludge." The experimental carbon-neutral system will process 20 pounds of sludge per hour, drying it at modest temperatures into solid fuel that will be analyzed for its suitability to be used for fuel through gasification and, in a commercial operation, ultimately converted to electricity. The refrigerator-size demonstration unit will help researchers determine the optimum conditions for a commercial-sized operation.

"The beauty of this process is that it's designed to be all on site, saving trucking costs and disposal fees for the sludge," Victor Vasquez, a University faculty member in chemical engineering said. "It uses waste heat from the process to drive the electrical generation. It also keeps the sludge out of the landfill."

Estimates, which will be further refined through the research, show that a full-scale system could potentially generate 14,000 kilowatt-hours per day to help power the local reclamation facility. The demonstration-scale project is a collaboration with the cities of Reno and Sparks, operators of the wastewater plant. The city councils signed an interlocal agreement recently to allow the research to integrate into their operation, providing space for the experiments, the dewatered sludge and other resources to help make the project a success.

"Economically, this makes sense," Coronella said. "Treatment plants have to get rid of the sludge, and what better way than to process it onsite and use the renewable energy to lower operating costs." Coronella added, "This demonstration gives the University an opportunity to involve students in development of waste-to-energy technology, which ultimately will benefit the community. It's a win-win for everyone involved."

The University's Technology Transfer Office, with assistance from the College of Business, is supporting the project with plans to make the system available to hundreds of communities around the country that operate water treatment plants.

The obsessive designing of small-scale pilot sludge to electricity models reminds me of India's scientists eternal building of cow-shit to cooking-gas projects. America is a very large and diverse country, so fortunately this project is not representative of its intellectual level.

Breaking the Probability Symmetry

Today my wife decreted a meatless day. Famelic, I had to buy a poppy seed strudel, which I devored. I found myself half dreaming about probabilities, about how I could win on the roulette wheel or the stock exchange. Both are probabilistic and symmetric, so the chances of winning are 50-50 minus expenses. Probabilities formed in my mind a stable structure like a human pyramid on the beach. To win, I had to break the Gaussian symmetry of this structure, which I could do by throwing balls of assymetry against the pyramid, or generating distabilizing winds of improbability, which were different representations of the same thing.

Now, how to create these quant objects? I needed condensates or waves of wildly improbable events that would distort the probability field around them, and break down the Gaussian structure and cause outcomes that I could catch and deposit in my bank account. I was trying to imagine how would look a concentrated, dense improbable-event-ball, when my daughter broke into my consciousness - she wanted the key of my car.

Females have a way of cutting down the flight of human imagination. They are pedestrians, stuck in the mud, holding down my spirit. And they are trying to starve me!

How Kosher is my Matza?

A pic of a mashgiach ritual purity supervisor of a Lakewood matza bakery (Thank K. for the pointer). I think the mashgiach of Hungary 1930 (pic below) took his job more seriously. I presume in a remote checkpoint of the Israeli Army, American immigrants may be debating how much matza is required for a kzayis according to the Law, in order to perform the mitzvah of matzoh. Kzayis means "a little" - now, isnt that a wonderful opportunity to discuss what IS "a little"? Anyone can have an opinion and be considered a man learned in the Tora (The Law).

BTW, 20 dollars for a pound of matza is a steal.

Judge Dan Bein on the Israeli Water Crisis

Yesterday Judge Dan Bein, the President of the State Water Crisis Investigative Committee, delivered the final report and defined the problem very clearly: Confusion and Inconsistency. Successive Israeli governments adopted decisions that were modified, forgotten, half or not implemented, there was never a firm decision on anything, the goals of water desalination were unclear from the start, there was constant infighting - one Ministry sabotaging the other one -, the usual Israeli mess. There are no conclusions and no one is being accused of having done anything wrong. Things just happened that way.

Argentine Default Bonds Now Worth 52%

In 2001 Argentine defaulted in its debt and refused to pay. Argentine bonds could be bought at 16% of its face value. Slowly, Argentina is getting used to the idea that debts should be paid and there is talk that it may pay about 52 dollars for each 100 dollar bond. Those speculators who bought Argentine bonds in 2001 and waited, may make a nice profit. I am not among them.

Tattoed Girl

Hungarian Harvest in 1930

A mashgiach - a supervisor of the kashrut (ritual correctness) of the matza unleavenaed bread eaten during Pessach - in Hungary of the thirties. The highest degree of kashrut requires watching the matza process from the harvest of the wheat in the fields. We were always a people much worried about ritual purity.

Stolen Aphorism

"Democracy can be likened to two wolves and one lamb voting on what to have for lunch." (unknown)

Menem on his way to the jail

Argentine military and political elite is murmuring about the country having been taken over by the Jews. The bloody antisemites always maintained that the Jews were ruling the country, since the 1906 novel "La Bolsa" (when Argentine Jews were pennyless refugees from the Tzarist Empire), but now they may have really something to fear from the Jews.

The turning point was in 1994, when a car full of high explosives destroyed AMIA, the building of the Jewish community, killing 85 people. The police destroyed evidence and mismanaged the investigation is such an incompetent criollo manner that soon it became known that the President himself, Carlos Menem (1988 - 1999) and his brother Munir Menem were actively working in the cover up.

For sixteen years the Jewish community doggedly pushed ahead the investigation and slowly all the local participants have been identified and put in jail. Only the Iranians have escaped and are enjoying the lives of heroes in Teheran. But the Jewish community has organized itself and has been worked methodically now for sixteen years and dozens of police and military officers were implicated in the ciminal act and sentenced. Now they have reached the head of the pyramide, the sanguinary head of SIDE (the secret police), the brother and factotum of the President, and the President himself. Soon they will all be sentenced and sent to the Ushuaia penitenciary in Tierra del Fuego.

In the long fight for justice, the organized Jewish community has acquired an enormous influence and much political power in Argentina. It is a small community, of 250 - 300,000 people, in a country of nearly 40 million, but they have an impact in Argentina like the Jewish community in the USA.

If not for the dynamiting of AMIA in 1994, Argentina today could be like Chavez's Venezuela, a country allied to Iran and violently anti-American and anti-Israel, with a frightened Jewish community. Instead, Argentina is strongly pro-Israel, with a power and revenge seeking Jewish community inside. Say thanks to the Ayatollahs.

Hydralisk

Explanation: The Hydralisk is a Starcraft game creature, popular in Korea.

Trying To Understand

Globes reports that

Discount Investment concluded the year with impressive results and profit growth, thanks to handsome profits by Koor from its investment in Credit Suisse, as well as from Cellcom Israel Ltd. (NYSE:CEL; TASE:CEL), Shufersal Ltd. (TASE:SAE), and other companies. During 2009, Discount Investment distributed NIS 1.67 billion in dividends, giving a dividend yield of more than 26%. Discount Investment will distribute a dividend of NIS 270 million on April 21.

and then

Discount Investment's share price fell 3.4% by mid-afternoon today.

Not What You Think

There is no more "natural" meat. Animals are genetically designed to produce lean meat which in fact is uneatable - dry and tasteless. So the meat is injected with soya and animal proteins as well as with starchs (to give it consistency). It is "pre-marinated" and massaged. It is not meat in the conventional sense. There is no more "meat" anywhere these days.

Jeffrey Goldberg in Ketziot Camp

I am reading Jeffrey Goldberg's book "Prisioners" about his friendship with a Palestinian intellectual from the Jabaliya Refugee Camp in Gaza. Goldberg is one of the American Jews who came to Israel and found himself serving reserve duty in the Army. I served in an unit mostly composed by American and Russian immigrants about the same year, and we all ended spending one month periods in Ketziot. I was with five Americans in a faraway guardpost near the Egyptian border, near Azuz, and rarely visited the "michlaot" which were fenced in areas where the prisioners lived in tents. It was forbidden to talk to them and I never had the opportunity.

Goldberg is said to have ended in the military police, which think is a mistake, as I never met an American immigrant in that unit. The origin of the misunderstanding, I think, was the Keddumim Camp, a former Jordanian Army camp, which was turned into a conscripts training camp of the Military Police (For some reason they mixed immigrant conscripts with Israelis with police records). Later, Goldberg served as a guard at Ketziot, the vast, desolate prison camp that Israel set up in its southern desert to hold the Palestinian rebels of the first intifada, which broke out in 1987. All the guards were civilians doing their annual one-month reserve duty, nothing to do with military police.

Goldberg felt compelled to speak to the men he helped keep incarcerated. He hoped that by talking he might come to understand them and bring them to understand Israel. One prisoner in particular caught his attention: Rafiq Hijazi, a Palestine Liberation Organization leader, college math teacher and devout Muslim from the ugly Jabaliya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Later Goldberg returned home and Hijazi also moved to the United States so they continued their conversation.

There are many misinterpretations in the book - Goldberg is an American who like most immigrants, did not really immersed himself in Israel (I started to swim in the Israeli mainstream only when left TAHAL and when my children went to school). For example he confiscates a stone from a prisioner. The context of this action is missing: the prisioners had a "postal service" with paper messages attached to small stones, which they threw from one "michla'a" to the other. This stones were regularly collected and given to the small intelligence unit in the camp.

My memories refer mostly to the Roman ruins in the desert area where we had our small "machsom" - check post. Once I had to guard the Red Cross people who came almost every day, and once I had to accompany the prisioners carrying food to their camps. They were given all the food they wanted and they took it to their tents to prepare it as they wanted. These Palestinian cooks were given kitchen knives, which amazed me at the time. I arrived to the conclusion that they were not prisioners in the European or Russian sense, Israel simply collected thousands of young boys from the most troublesome neighborhoods, extracting them from "Intifada", and later, when things quieted down, they were sent home. As far as I know there were no interrogations and they were left alone in their tents. The only interesting happenings I know of were sexual: homosexuality was rampant (imagine thousands of well fed and bored Arab teenagers at night) and what I observed from outside were some apparent rapes and "marriage ceremonies" with boys dressed white. My American collegues were mostly interested in religious questions, what Rabbi had signed the kashrut certificate of the sardines (some Rabbis were not kasher enough for them), and if they can be eaten before or after the cottage cheese.

No More Tomato Paste Factories?

Two days ago I read a note "Rotten Tomatoes" in Slate. One sentence stuck in my mind:

The Big Five have enormous operations, but tight regulations and water shortages make it impossible for them to build new canneries. So they must run their existing plants with a frightening efficiency. The California canneries operate 24/7...

What? It is impossible to build new factories in California? As I am learning more about the food industry, factories are built and operate 20 - 30 years maximum, and then they are abandoned and replaced by new ones. This morning I toured a former chicken slaughterhouse complex at Har Tov, once the largest of this country. About ten years ago it was abandoned and replaced by new and more modern plants in the Negev. The place have subdivided and rented to ten medium size factories and several workshops. My client rented a ruined factory and intends to produce specialty meat products, sausages, smoked meat, etc. If California forbids the erection of new agroindustrial plants, then the whole sector is doomed to die and move to Central America. My mentor Chaim Ben Ezra (with his Sepharadi friends of Benny Gaon Holdings) has erected several tomato paste plants in the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Cuba, etc. Now I understand that he is going to win big.

I already learned that the permitting of a new oil refinery takes up to twenty years in the United States, in the best of the cases. The refining industry is frozen. Now I learn that the same situation reigns in the tomato paste industry, The Luddites rule in California and the State is agonizing.

Hungarian Haiku

Életem tükrét arcomhoz emelem: szaz ev.
A képet egy ütéssel összezúzom -
A világ mint mindig; minden a helyén.

I lift the mirror to my face: Hundred years.
I break the image with one strike -
The world, like always; everything in its place.

Strategizing for 2010

The markets are nervious. When the new Greek government revelead that the former government had been hiding debts and that the real debt burden of Greece is the double of what had been known, it was discovered that PIIGs were hiding in the woods. They are Europe's indebted countries, basically bankrupt, with bonds worth little to nothing. Should one go down, the markets would panic like with Lehman. Wechtel writes in Alpha:

True, conditions aren’t exactly the same. They are much worse.

The US economy is weaker, having shed around 10 million jobs since then. The Federal Reserve has already shot most of its bullets. In 2007, the Fed had yet to resort to its unprecedented stimulus package of special bank borrowing facilities, bailouts, takeover off bad assets, cut interest rates from 5.25% to 0.25% (from September ’07 until now), taken over AIG for $85 billion (September ’08, and later another $40 bln given), initiated TARP for $700 Billion, bought close to $2 trillion in assorted US Treasuries, agency mortgage backed securities and debt (March 2009-forward)

He advises USD hedges, gold and oil, and other hard assets. For the rest of 2010, the fear and uncertainty should continue to favor the US Dollar and other safe haven assets. TASE, Israel's STock EXchange, is a safe heaven for the intrepids.

Advise: Escape New York Still There is Time

I am like Tevie the Milkman of "The Fiddler on the Roof" (pic), working hard in difficult conditions, with several kosher daughters of marriage age. An article in TAKI reflects my mind: it advises to escape New York still there is time. I did escape (not for me but for my grandchildren's sake) yet New York seems to have followed me to Kever Benjamin. Apart from disliking liberals like the author of the note, Gavin McInness, what can I do now? My time is over, what is done, is irreversible. I can only hope for the best and speculate on TASE.

Ladies, do yourself a favor, escape from New York. It is the worst possible place to find a man. The ones that are available have been spoiled rotten by the unequal distribution of women to men and even if you get one into a semi-normal relationship, he will cheat.

In New York it is perfectly acceptable to be a single male at 43-years-old. These particular men don’t want to settle down with a woman their age. Why would they? That leaves you old and alone with no hopes for continuing the 40,000 years of post Neanderthal humanity that brought you here.

The end result of all this “I’m OK You’re OK” propaganda is men can get away with things like picking up a girl at 27 and then dumping her at 32 like it ain’t no thang.

But, he concludes, besides being doomed, New York women are tenacious as hell. Tenacious, but doomed. To escape - where? Israel? I am afraid that for a secular Ashkenazi educated women, Israel provides not much of an escape from New York. Yet, the first of my daughters just got married recently. Am I being too pessimistic?

Food Factory Project

A large food production complex in the Industrial Area of Rishon LeZion, all smelling of vanille and chocolate. The problem is the high carbohydrates BOD content of the wastewater. The treatment plant seems inactive.

Warned

I was called in by the head of one of my courses and subject to a serious warning. Students have complained about my population estimate class. We build infrastructure to supply future demand, so we need to know how population will behave in the future. For example, to design a water supply system, we use the water demand 20 to 30 years from now. One of the techniques is based on the logistic or sigmoidal curve, where population growth is proportional to resource availability. I like to use real situations in my exercises, so I took the Israeli Statistics Bureau publications and adked the students to apply the method to two paired populations. I paired Tel Aviv with Rahat, a Beduin village in the Negev; Petach Tikva with nearby Arab Kafr Kassem, etc. When they went to the statistical yearbooks it appeared that many Arab villages had few hundred inhabitants in 1948 or, like Rahat, did not exist or were not registered. They didnt like the exercise and complained.

My course head didnt say a word about what was the issue at hand, and she didnt have to. Obviously, bad people out there are searching for imagined offenses so they can hurt careless persons like me and feel powerful. From now I shall use totally imagined situations, with no relation to reality. Most professors in Israel avoid anything related to Israel and use American statistics and examples that are not representative of our life here. I always criticised them saying they acted as if Israel was situated somewhere between California and Nevada, or between Switzerland and Austria, but now I understand they avoid anything remotely controversial or related to a real situation.

How do I feel? Very badly. Depressed. This too will pass.

Israeli Hercules Over Budapest

Scandal in Hungary: Two Israeli military airplanes approached Budapest airport and left without apparently doing anything. The maneuver was authorized by Hungarian Air Authority, but the Army says they didnt know anything. Bajnai Gordon, a Hungarian minister, ordered an investigation. No one, including the Israeli Ambassador who requested the permit, knows what Israeli planes were doing over Hungary. This nothing is like manna from Heaven for Hungarian antisemites, that maintain that Jews want to annex Hungary, etc.

Arbitrage Opportunity

If you have a canadian stock account, you can long POT in TSE market and short POT in NYSE market. POT at those two market price are:
125.70 USD & 126.58 CAD
Usually the spread should be 3-4 bucks.

The Kineret-Hula Aquifer

The Kineret Hula Aquifer is going to be exploited by the Mey Golan Water Association, a competitor of the State Monopoly Mekorot. Three 1,500 meter deep wells are going to be sunk in the deep basaltic aquifer, to produce about 2.5 million cubic meter per year high quality water. As I remember the project being discussed, the water will be artesian and very hot. The project was conceived and carried forward by Dr Israel Gev (Ginzburg) from the Planning Dept. of Netzivut HaMaim.

Pair-like algorithm

Falkenblog wrote down his musings on the amazing Medallion Fund of Jim Simons's Renaissance that has made a consistent 45% per year. Simons is a mathematician who discovered something called the Chern-Simons form or invariants. Among the possibilities Falken mentions is that the fund is applying (1) superfast computers, (2) a pair finding algorithm, (3) market making in that specific segment (intensive selling and buying) and (4) an algoritm to exploit opportunities. The technique is obviously not scalable and must be kept secret to maintain it viable longer.

Falkenstein's thought-stream suddenly stops in the middle of a sentence, which is strange as he is a very well-rounded prosist. Maybe he suddenly he had insight of the "secret" and forgot he was writing down his thoughts. Good luck!

Petraeus Blames Israel

It is discouraging to see how the American military is starting to take the side of the Muslims. Instead of focusing on Iran's nuclear weapon program, they see the main danger to the region's stability in Israel. That is what Petraeus told the American Government, demanding a tougher attitude towards Israel. No previous CENTCOM commander had ever expressed himself on what is essentially a political issue. The Army collected the opinions of senior Arab leaders. "Everywhere they went, the message was pretty humbling. America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding."

Petraeus also demanded that the West Bank and Gaza (which, with Israel, is a part of the European Command -- or EUCOM), be made a part of his area of operations. Petraeus's reason was straightforward: with U.S. troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military had to be perceived by Arab leaders as engaged in the region's most troublesome conflict. He was asking for more power, which is as it should be with generals, yet his arguments are disturbing to Israel. I also interpret his demand as a sign of Obama's weakening position.

Deep Sea Political Change in America

It appears that a year ago, when I was thinking about Obama, I was right: he is the son of his Third-World World-Bank appropriate-technology ideology mother (no insult intended!), who will naturally gravitate toward the Palestinians. This is happening before our eyes: the American government is "angry" with obstinate Israel and openly siding with the "peace-loving" Palestinians. Israel's chief aim, which is to organize a worldwide coalition lead by America to force Iran to give up its nuclear weapons, is failing. Obama instead of leading the world to avoid the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the hands of unstable Muslim ayatollahs, is kowtowing to those perfumed Arab sheikhs.

There is always the Republican Party. Its leaders attacked the Obama administration with unusually harsh language, charging it with an "irresponsible” position against an ally, Israel. "In an effort to ingratiate our country with the Arab world, this administration has shown a troubling eagerness to undercut our allies and friends,” said the GOP’s only Jewish Republican Congressman, Eric Cantor of Virginia. He went so far as to say that the dispute "jeopardizes America's national security."

Israel's Planning Hell

The Planning Reform is proceeding towards approval and the whole system is going to be changed. The major change that will emerge, I suppose, is tha the green organizations have taken over the planning system and green considerations will be dominant in Israel's real estate development. The end result will be that almost no new infrastructure will be done in Israel and land will be left to "Nature". Except in Arab areas, where the Arabs themselves are "Nature" and no one dares to say anything nor protect any plant or animal.

In addition, on the basis of a proposal submitted by Minister of Social Services Isaac Herzog and the Prime Minister's Office, the ministerial legislative committee decided that the reform will strengthen the role of social and welfare aspects of planning procedures by, among other things, including a representative of social organizations in the National Planning and Building Commission. The committee also decided that a Ministry of Social Services representative will sit on the regional planning and building commissions. The minister of environmental protection will appoint representatives of environment organizations to planning commissions. In addition, the power of the regional infrastructures committees has been restricted on matters relating to open spaces.

A Statistic that Dare Not to Speak Its Name

The Independent reveals something I have been suspecting a long time. Last time I was in England I was surprised by its human masses. It certainly did not look like the aging, decaying, depopulating country the statistics were showing us. What is "really" going on?

It is the statistic that dare not speak its name, though eventually it must. It has huge ramifications for the civil and political life of this country, the health of the equity markets and, most immediately, the residential property market. So don't forget you read it here first: the population of the UK is presently somewhere between 77 and 80 million.

The 2001 census, already hopelessly out of date and easy to avoid for those who find filling in forms a trifle inelegant, numbered us at a little under 59 million. But as statistics go, that one's most definitely a damned lie.

My sources for the above statement are good, but scared of admitting the truth for fear of incurring the wrath of Whitehall. It's like the best way of monitoring illegal drug consumption: forget the pious statements from ministers – the foolproof method is to sample our water and the effluent in it. That's easily the best way of monitoring what the nation has been consuming.

Consumption – that's the thing. Based on what we eat, one big supermarket chain reckons there are 80 million people living in the UK. The demand for food is a reliable indicator; as Sir Richard Branson says, you can have all the money in the world but you can only eat one lunch and one dinner.

Europe's population is changing and growing, and its economy, far from contracting, is booming.

A People Fiercely Decided to Get Rich

East Asiatics are a talented people but given to collective hystery. South Korea is so intensely focused on its GNP that has forgotten to reproduce. Korea's total fertility rate stood at 1.15 last year. It reached a low of 1.08 in 2005 but rose to 1.25 in 2007 due to the Year of the Pig, thought to be auspicious. Since 2008 it has been falling again.

445,200 children were born last year, down 21,000 from a year earlier and falling for the second consecutive year. The average age of first-time mothers was 31 last year, up from 30.79 from 2008. The age has been rising, crossing 30 for the first time in 2005.

One Down; More in the Queue Ready to Go

Today we completed my daughter's marriage ceremonies, which started with the mikweh, the hennah ceremony, the marriage, the shabat chatan in the synagogue and the seudah (family lunch). Here are two pic from the hennah, with the exotic Yemeni belly dancer, and the lucky henna in the hands. Now we are exhausted. One gone, others in the queue ready to go.

Hannibal's Suzumushi

In "Hannibal Rising", young Hannibal Lecter searches Paris for a Suzumushi (鈴虫), the Japanese bell cricket. He was in love with his Japanese auntie and wanted to surprise her with the ring of the suzumushi. It is most refined to enjoy the insect's love call.

In China, I saw a cricket fighting match but I am a rather gross spirit who did not appreciate the sport. Wiki says that

the Cricket masters pick the strongest warriors and then train them using mouse whiskers or yard grass to be even more aggressive. To promote prowess and focus, a cricket needs to have sex before combat, and the fighting space must be free of pollutants like perfume, smoke and alcohol fumes. Doping with drugs like Ecstasy is a problem, since a high cricket is a better fighter, plus his opponent will detect chemical enhancement and turn tail.

Orckit Conference Call

Orckit, an Israeli company I am following, had a conference call. Schmuchster, on Yahoo Fiance, copied down the best quote:

"...garble, unintelligable, garble, mumble, mumble, garble, garble, garble, unintelligable, garble, mumble, mumble, garble, unintelligable, garble, mumble, mumble, garble, garble, garble, unintelligable..."

Like pretty much every one of the calls, it's just about impossible to understand these senile old geezers. (no problem hearing or understanding the operator)

How's about you guys SPEAK UP, take some english lessons, or get a freeking translator to do your talking!

Schmuchster thinks it is a problem of translation. I think Orckit leaders have nothing to say.

POT back to its Peak Price

The Potash fertilizer market seems to be reverting to former cartel structure. I didnt believe that it was possible to rebuild a cartel once broken (and sold half of my holdings). I still doubt it. Yet Morgan Joseph noted that “both distributors and growers are reverting back to their traditional buying habits,” which will in turn push potash prices higher. The firm also said that POT is “the running-away leader in the potash industry with, by far, the largest reserves, and a large program to continuously boosts them.”

In these moments, POT shares are lifting to 125 or about 7%. The trading day is young. Never a dull moment. (Illustration: A mine in Saskatchewan, Canada).

Some girls will, some girls wont

Some girls will, some girls won't
Some girls need a lot of lovin' and some girls don't
Well, I know I've got the fever but I don't know why
Some say they will and some girls lie

So here I am in front of you
Not really knowing what to do
My heart is feeling something new
Nervously I turn away from you
I see the looks you're sending me
Is this the way it's meant to be?
It's something we should talk about
Just give me time to work it out

Baruch Marzel Fights Assimilation

Israeli leader Baruch Marzel urged supermodel Bar Refaeli not to marry her actor boyfriend, Leonardo DiCaprio:

"It is not by chance that you were born Jewish. Your grandmother and her grandmother did not dream that one of their descendants would one day remove the family's future generations from the Jewish people. Assimilation has forever been one of the enemies of the Jewish people."

Marzel told Refaeli that he "has nothing against Mr. DiCaprio, who is a talented actor." Still, he urged Refaeli: "Come to your senses, look forward and back too - and not only the present. Don't marry Leonardo DiCaprio, don't harm the future generations."

Rewriting Jewish History

I knew we had been missing something! In our blind imitation of America, we had none of the Black Studies stuff where the Civil War was fought mainly by Afro-Americans and where most of American music and literature were created by Negroes. Thanks Rabbi Menachem Waldman, for the first time we have a new Haggadah (Jewish traditional text) where Ethiopian Jews with its unique traditions and customs are given their due.

The 195-page Haggada features prayers and commentaries on the story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt translated from Amharic into Hebrew, as well as an account of how Ethiopia’s Beta Israel community escaped to Israel first via Sudan in Operation Moses in 1984-85 and later during Operation Solomon in 1991. The book also includes extensive photographs and detailed explanations of Ethiopian Jewish traditions and customs connected with Pessah.

I already have seen illustrated bibles where everybody is African. King David himself, although described in the Bible as ruddy and clear-eyed, is painted as a mulatto. The latest representations of Theodore Herzl, the Budapest-born founder of Zionism, show him suspiciously dark skinned. I presume our next step will be a half blood Ethiopian Prime Minister in Israel.

How to make a world tour and miss (almost) everything

Forbes published its new list of 500 richest persons on Earth and suddenly there is a person I know. He had migrated to another country and thirty years ago he came to Israel to attend a family event. It was a very nice gesture from his part and I remember he brought me a nice present. I have only a blurred memory of him because I passed though those happy years in a state of low-level drunkenness.

That event is associated in my mind with a book with the improbable title of "How to miss everything in a world tour" or something to that effect, where the author decribes how - touring Egypt he missed the pyramids (he spent the time in a local bar), then how he missed the seven world wonders and arrived home with pleasant memories having seen none of the famous monuments. That was more or less my state of mind in those times, I was invited to luxurious parties and all I remember is the horrible sweetness of the wine served, the taste of the vodka Keglevich (a vomitable syropy concoction then popular in Israel) I used to smell of and so on.

I found a twin spirit learning blogger in World Drinking Tour . Lets quote him:

Aruba is not exactly what you'd call a beer destination. Like other Caribbean destinations, it's the land of fruity drinks and bland lagers. But that's ok. The local beer, Balashi, tastes pretty good when you're sitting on the beach. If you're going to have a couple of beers, I always recommend drinking local, so be sure to have a couple of Balashis. On the other hand, if you're going to have 11 or 12, then I'd recommend the Heineken (usually not my first choice ... but Heineken does encourage you to enjoy Heineken responsibly, which I think means that you can keep drinking it until you accidentally spill one)...

What else did I learn?

I learned about heretofore little known and mythical religions of the Indian subcontinent. Then again, perhaps the religion was not native to India, and had only been outsourced there ... that doesn't make it any less significant to the people who lost their religion because of this outsourcing, but I digress.

What was I talking about again?

The Drinking String. An inspiring religious tradition.

A group of young Indian men approached the hot tub, and one had a long string draped over his shoulder. Naturally we inquired about the string, and it was explained that it was of religious significance.

The young man's religion did not allow him to buy alcoholic drinks. However, when he wore the drinking string, we was able to accept drinks purchased by others.

Last, but not least, if you're in Aruba, you might as well ride the Kukoo Kunuku party bus (pic) one night. Where else will they take you to a bar where they still play "Where the f#*$ is Alice"?

This man, although only a beer aficionado, has travelled all over the world courageously exploring the drinking jungle, bringing us his first-hand report of cool, darkened bars we shall never know. I compare him to fearless explorers like Speke and Livingstone who discovered the sources of the Nile.

Remembering Jos

I was based at Bauchi, Northeast State of Nigeria, and used to make my shopping in Jos, which was the nearest town with a bank, a supermarket and a garage managed by a Swiss professional. The Plateau had a better climate than the Sahel, and European colonials tended to make their holidays there. The Plateau lacked pasture lands, so the Hausa and the Fulani pastoralists had left the people there unconquered. Jos also had attracted a middle class of Ibo tradesman and ironmongers, and I collected handmade knives, cutlasses and farm tools (but my best items were from the large Onicha market on the Niger River. It was all lost in the shipping to Argentina.)


These days a ferocious ethnic extermination war is being waged in the North of Nigeria, with hundreds of people killed. Southern peoples are more intelligent and advanced, but I dont know if they can survive in the Muslim North. Politics in NIgeria was always tribal, ethnic. Like elsewhere.

The pic shows a manilla bracelet, produced by the AFricans and used as money. Later the Portuguese made them to order in Birmingham and the Low Countries for trade in West Africa. They were abundant and cheap in Onicha and I collected many of them. They were lost except one.

Financial Markets Ignoring Ahmedinijad

Worth reminding:

"I don’t see other countries showing growth rates like the rate shown by the Israeli economy," Deutsche Bank chief currency strategist Bilal Hafeez. "The shekel will get much stronger against the dollar and euro over the coming year.

"The most significant thing is Bank of Israel intervention in the foreign currency market. We believe that Governor Stanley Fischer's interventions will diminish this year and that the shekel-dollar exchange rate will reach NIS 3.50/$ by year-end." (from Globes)

Israel will seek a benchmark offering of at least €1 billion eurobonds” said Eyal Klein, a former Finance Ministry director for external debt and chief strategist at Israel Brokerage & Investments, said. “This is going to happen sometime this week.”

Israel’s gross domestic product grew an annualized 4.4 percent in the fourth quarter after expanding 3% in the previous three months. Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer raised the benchmark interest rate at the end of December by a quarter-point to 1.25%, his third increase since the economic recovery began.

“I expect huge demand and pricing that will match the solid standing of Israel’s economy,” Klein said. The country’s growth rate is among the highest in the Western world, he said. The pricing for the bonds will probably be more than 100 basis points lower than Greece’s last issuance.

If Moody rating for Israel is so high, and we are able to sell bonds, why am I worried about Ahmedinijad? The markets seem not worried at all.

Henna Ceremony

My daughter is getting married and yesterday we had a Henna party with a Yemenite belly dancer and many sweets. We all dressed colorful galabiyas. Henna actually is a plant and it is made into a paste that leaves yellowish marks on the skin. Henna is a Middle East tradition, my daughter wanted it. It is a symbol of good luck, fertility, prosperity and shared happiness.

Historian Benzion Netanyahu is 100

Born in an Eastern European stetl, Netanyahu Sr is a noted revisionist writer. Revisionism is the Zionist right-wing movement founded by Vladimir Jabotinsky as opposed to the left-wing Mapay leadered by Meir Dizengoff and Ben Gurion. The pic shows him in the bris (circumcision ceremony) of his great-grandson.