Japanese Whitening Essence

Learning to use Google's translation application, one learns about strange products and customs. It appears that the Japanese are worried about their skin color no less than American Blacks, and whitening creams are common. Why is this?

Anon's Sustainability Ratio

A growing portion of the population of Western countries is feeling that their societies are headed towards disaster and ethnic strife. Commenter Anon proposes a rational, humane, almost medical approach to measure and to remediate the growing unsustainability. I take the liberty to reproduce his ideas here:

"...Nobody wants to gratuitously humiliate these people (ethnias genetically unfit for Western societies. J.) who are in a very real sense disabled, and badly so. They desperately need help, and this is why I think the problem is actually best conceived of in quasi-medical terms.

But the truth is that we need fewer of these people, not more, and the exuberantly dysgenic policies being pursued in the West, and by the West in Africa and elsewhere, are not aimed at containing the numbers of these people but rather at expanding them. The load placed on normal people, already under all sorts of other stresses, quickly becomes intolerable; low IQ people are often criminal, usually do not contribute to their own upkeep (unless they are "celebrities", of which there is no shortage), require constant custodial supervision and if present in large numbers, make life a squalid, violent hell for everyone including themselves.

As smart people give up and move out, the whole place gets worse and worse as the ratio of problem solvers to problem creators ("Anon's Ratio") tips over into unsustainability; witness Zimbabwe, Haiti and the Congo, for off-the-shelf examples, and parts of South Africa.

The UK, frighteningly, is not far behind.

The humane, albeit expensive solution is to assist these people with contraception, to provide supportive environments,and to understand the physical limits on their brains, and the mainly genetic underpinnings of their deficiencies. And then to think constructively how to really solve these problems in the long term. I don't doubt it's a long way off, but there might be low hanging fruit which could help a lot in the short term, especially in respect of the mildly impaired."

I feel we are advancing toward the definition of the issue and formulating a solution. Let close the decade with this note of optimism, and pray for a Happy New Decade.

Ex President Convicted

Katzav will spend the next fifteen years in jail. In the process, it became obvious that was an incompetent manager, failed to seduce even one office girl in his long career. I doubt he ever introduced his member into a woman other than his ugly wife. The judges said that Katzav's testimony had been "replete with lies," and that he should have accepted the plea bargain that was offered him. He turned it down at the time, saying he would fight for his complete innocence. But the barracudas ripped his balls off.

The Nova Project

My bid for the Nova Building in Rehovot Industrial Park was accepted and next week I have to start to study a solution. My impression of Nova: Crazy looking scientists walking purposeless and murmuring in Russian in the large, hyper-clean, empty corridors. Laughing people socializing and smoking in front of the building. No one was "working" or doing anything recognizible as work. I never heard of the company and didnt know what they were doing.

It appears that Nova Measuring Instruments Ltd. makes measuring instruments for semiconductor manufacturers. Conventional measuring equipment is too imprecise for 45 nm chips, so they invented some ingenious device. The owner, you guessed right, is Nochi Dankner.

The project: They hired an architect to add a restaurant and other facilities on the top of the ten floor building, but there are no drawings of the existing water and sewage piping. The kitchen drain should connect to a FOG interceptor in the street. They need ultrapure water or at least soft water. As usual, I am the third engineer on the problem, the others having given up or migrated to the USA. My mission, should I accept it, is to provide the solution and get it approved by the local building committee and supervise its execution. I should have asked for more money.

Mr. Doyle Does it Again

Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan (POT) lifted more than 5% today. In 2010, CEO Doyle (pic) rejected several large offers to sell the company, saying that it would be against the shareholders's interests. He was right! He is making rich his investors.

Israel near Energy Independence

Noble Energy published today the results of the Leviatan concession's gas potential, and now we know Israel soon will export energy. TASE jumped like crazy and we started disputing how we will spend the money. It was also published that Iran's nuclear bomb program was delayed three years by the Stuxnet. May be the Zionist dream, "To be a free people in our own country", is around the corner.

Gifted Ethiopians

Israel's Ministry of Education has an ongoing program to identify gifted children and direct them to special courses. Yet no children from the Ethiopian immigrant community was being selected. Their conscience (pic.: Prof. Firestein) could not stand this injustice. They had to do something.


They prepared a special culture-dependent test for Ethiopians only.

My souq informer supplies the consumables. He says that a bunch of bananas is lowered from the ceiling while the testees build wooden block structures to reach the fruit. He is a hideous racist; all souq merchants are.

The End of an Era

Makhteshim is one of Israel's first industries, established to serve the development of Israel's agriculture. In the era before the State, agriculture was seen as the necessary foundation of a healthy nation. Makhteshim grew to become the largest producer of ag pesticides and herbicides in the world. Then it was sold to a private businessman, Nochi Dankner, who is now selling it to ChemChina, a Chinese state-owned conglomerate. The last remnants of Israel's heroic, idealistic past, when each orange and each egg was considered a trascendent historical achievement, is moving to China.

And I am going to benefit from the sale. The shares of Koor, owner of Makhteshim, lifted 9% yesterday.

ChemChina is buying the 53% of Makhteshim held by the public for $1.3 billion and is paying Koor $168 million for another 7%. All the shares will be sold based on the $2.4 billion valuation. Ergo, if and when the deal is consummated, ChemChina would end up with a 60% stake in Makhteshim, with Koor holding the rest. ChemChina is expected to extend a non-recourse loan of $960 million to Koor, secured only by Koor's Makhteshim stock payable in cash or shares. The floating rate loan is to be repaid in seven years at an effective annual rate of about 6% (based on the current relevant Libor rate). Interest charges for the first four years will accrue but not be paid. I dont understand what this loan has to do with the sale.

Government of Principles

Gafni, from the Religious Party, chairs the Budget Committee. Today he closed down his Committee and will not meet till the Government accepts his principle. Which is: No converts.

Your mother is Jewish and you are a Jew, or not. There are about 500,000 Nordic (Russian) immigrants in Israel whose Jewishness is openly put in doubt. The Army's Rabbinate established a course to convert the immigrant soldiers who wish it. Gafni is sabotaging it. The spirit of Christmas has not descended on him.

Biology Applied to Economy

The Lotke-Volterra Prey - Predator Simulation Model creates recurring cycles. Economic activity is also cyclical. No one knows why this should be significant. Maybe it is not.

The quiz shows that the model is incomplete. Instead of exponential growth, the logistic curve should appear, the carrying capacity being the upper limit.

Noble Metals Rally

Among the four precious metals— silver, gold, platinum and palladium —silver is up 74% this year, after palladium, which is up 86%. Gold is up a miserly 26% and copper, 28%. Rich Chinese love the sound of silver coins in their pocket. Me too.

It's Official: The Bears were Wrong

2010 was a good year for optimist bulls like myself. By bouncing back from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the U.S. has, once again, demonstrated its resilience. Israel is prospering like never. Older people is commenting on the "excessive" abundance. 2011 will be even better.

Stamina

The founder of Playboy magazine, Hugh Hefner, 84, is to marry a 24-year-old Playmate. I admire the stamina of the girl.

Stygian Net

People is writing about the Stuxnet thingie. It an automatic weapon directed at Iran's uranium gas centrifuges. These machines are controlled by SCADA, a common control program. I had many aireators and so on in my plant all operated by SCADA. The Stuxnet thingie gradually accelerated the centrifuges, damaging them. Getting into SCADA is very difficult, but it was done by whoever did it. The wiki says that

The name comes from the River Styx (Greek: Στύξ, Stux, meaning "hate" and "detestation") which formed the boundary between Earth and Hades. The gods respected the Styx and swore binding oaths on it. Its water had miraculous powers and could make someone invulnerable. Achilles was dipped in it in his childhood, acquiring invulnerability, with exception of his heel, by which his mother held him. This is the source of the expression Achilles' heel, a metaphor for a vulnerable spot.

כל הכבוד to the person who imagined that this thing was doable, to the one who approved the budget, and the project manager who made it happen. Great.

The USA or Israel?

No doubt Israel is the most dynamic and challenging small country of the world. Only in the USA and Israel a young Jew has the opportunity to participate in such exciting projects. Only the USA and Israel are in a state of permanent "hot" war. For a young Jew, this is the most interesting place. That is my personal experience.

Out of context addendum: Reading the autobiographies of Eastern European Jews, they all describe the schtetl as a very exciting place, where things were always happening. Schtetl were isolated small market villages lost in the tremendous vastness of Poland, Ucraine and Russia, with impassable roads and ignorant subsistance farmers. Yet the inhabitants of the schtetl lived lives full of enterprise and projects, full of family events and serious intellectual debate. It is not where you are, but with whom.

Swimming Pool Projects

In the past I have done several swimming pool designs. The last one, two years ago, was a heated swimming pool for treatment of children with nervomotor problems. My design was approved by the Ministry of Health with their exhorbitant demands, but the permit was refused because lack of parking space. Recently I have been asked to work on several swimming pools but I had no time. Now I am starting to understand: the Association of Hotels and Zimmers (Bread and Breakfast type of petit hotels) protests that permits are not granted to them because of the impossible demands imposed on swimming pools. Their argument is that the Ministry is applying the regulations taylored to large public swimming pools to their backyard family pools. For example, they need weekly bacteriological samplings, expensive monitoring equipment, a licenced lifeguard all the time and so on. The B&B are operating without business permits and no insurance company is willing to sell them insurance. Any problem they may have with the authorities or with the law, they are defenseless because they are operating without a permit. I have met with some of the owners and they are nervious wrecks.

Efrat Gosh: Alone Again

Does India and China need more rice than there is?

While pedalling on the threadmill this morning, and in the absense of new female asses to contemplate, I watched a business report about the coming scarcity (and high prices) of agricultural commodities such as cotton and rice. But the USDA report says production and demand are balanced.

My searching was activated by my big daughters crying that they had nothing to wear (Friday night...!). Their schmattes cost a fortune. I need to make more money. Speculate in Rice? Cotton?

Architect Liebeskind in Luneburg

This bizarre, irregular building will cost 75 million dollars. It is crazy.

Click on the pic to see better this monstruosity.

Lord get me high

Shlomo was descended from one of the oldest rabbinical dynasties in pre-Holocaust Germany. He was born in Berlin, where his father, Rabbi Hartwig Naftali Carlebach (1889-1967), was a rov. He made aliyah from Brooklyn schul he was leading, and established a community of rather strange grass smoking American hippies near Modiin. I met some of his followers in the army (my unit was full of anti-militaristic American and Russian Jewish neurotics). Although he composed thousands of songs, he couldn’t read musical notes.

The Weekly Portion

In this week's Parashat HaShavuah we learn about Moses Prince of Egypt escaping to the country of Midian. Imagine. The Israelites are labouring on a public works project. An Egyptian superviser is mistreating an Israelite. There comes Moses and kills the Egyptian. Rapidly, he hides the body in the sand. No one has seen him, he goes about his business. Next day, two Israelites are fighting. Moses tries separate them and as he should have known, both turn against him. "What, are you going to kill us as you killed the Egyptian?" they say. What a revolting people those Israelites! Instead of showing gratitude, they are ready to delate him to the police. Moses will not be safe in Egypt with these "stinkers" (delators) blackmailing him. He has to run for his life to the desert. What was Moses thinking while watching those stupid sheep ruminating in Midian? "Bloody Israelites! One saves their life and the next day they will delate you to the police! I'll teach them RELIGION! I'll put the Fear of God in their black hearts and straigthen out their slave mentality!"

Moses was a man of few words. Forty years later all those who blackmailed him were dead. Together with all the other Egyptian-born Israelites. Four thousand year after, the ghost of vengeful Moses is out there haunting us few Israelites still around.

Palestinians Learn About Bureaucracy

American Jewish media writes that the poor

villagers in Jubbet al-Dhib (a 160 inhabitants encampment near Jerusalem) have been filing repeated requests to be connected to the electricity network since 1988. The Israeli Civil Administration, which governs Palestinian affairs for the army in Area C, has turned down six requests since 2000 alone, on the grounds that the village lacks a master plan. But the Civil Administration has also turned down several master plans that the village has presented.

This picture is replicated across the Israeli-controlled West Bank, where Palestinians live with unpaved roads, dried-up wells, a lack of schools and medical facilities, and the persistent inability to obtain permission to build the simplest structures. Even chicken coops may be bulldozed by the Israeli army if they are built without a permit, which is nearly impossible to get.

Untypically, there is no exaggeration in the above. The UN Human Rights Watch is absolutely sure that Palestinians are suffering this oppression because of Israeli occupation. It is right. I know first hand that it is almost impossible to get any permit from Israeli bureaucracy. About chicken coops in particular I can personally certify that no one - Jew, Muslim, Christian, Idolater, atheist - ever gets a permit, not near Jerusalem nor in the Negev wastelands. The chicken coop regulations demand detailed designs including a theoretical AERMOD computer model of potential odor dispersion, costing about 15,000 US$, based on meteorological data from the last five years (bad luck if your village is far from a meteorogical station) which will certainly be rejected as insufficient. Your expert may have forgotten to include its dispersion model important potential polluter gases such as xylol. "Sir, you may re-submit the whole thing but since we are short of personnel, no one may look at it till I return from my three-month tour in the Himalayas. What is wrong, you ask? What do you think, I am here to teach you how to make a gas dispersion mathematical model?" This is not a caricature, it is how it is. For once, this is something I know, but no United Nations's Human Rights organization will believe me.

Work in an Ice Cream Factory

This morning I worked in Israel's largest ice cream factory! The meeting room was lined with freezers full of experimental products, such as different kinds of KremBO (a superpopular sweet), icecreams and caramel bars. And some secret suprises. No way to keep fasting in that room. I didnt.

I was contracted to correct the presentation of another engineer that was rejected by the regulators. The piping is terribly complicated (see the different colored pipes which no one knows what are conveying and to where). No piping scheme or drawing is available. It was built adding and changing new production lines and improving and enlarging the equipment. In the last forty years. Yehuda, the Maintainance Manager, was confused about what connects to what. Moreover, he didnt like that I was taking pictures in his factory. Now I have this weekend to imagine how all of it works. The people who employed me must believe I am such a brilliant engineer that I can walk through the factory with an ice cream cone in my hand and submit in a weekend the detailed engineering drawings.

The fact is that it works, the ice cream is excellent, now I have to put all on paper, calculate pressures and flows and temperatures and so on.

Are we stupid?

From Scientific American: The placebo effect works even if you are aware that you are taking sugar pills.

Patients who receive dummy pills often show clinical improvement. Placebos work, doctors believed, because the mind is a powerful thing. Just thinking you’re being treated can make you feel better. In this study, however, docs told patients they were getting placebos. Eighty patients with irritable bowel syndrome were instructed to take two sugar pills daily. The bottle even had “placebo” printed on it. After three weeks, 60 percent of the placebo group reported relief from symptoms, compared to 35 percent who’d received no treatment at all.

Bottom Line: Yes, we are stupid. That's why intelligence is useless in the stock market. And that's why I would prefer not to be the human animal I am. I would like to be something else, but there is nothing else and I have to live within myself till the end.

I was created to the image of God and am no Monkey!

Koko sent me the pic of his fiance, a bald (hairless) very muscular bonobo. The more I look at the picture, the more uncomfortable I am. He is short, wide shouldered with bulging biceps and a powerful hand. His teeth are large and white, and his expression is defiant and sarcastic. We are very different, very different.

The problem is that we are not. With some cosmetic surgery here and there, he would be easily hired as a nightwatch, a security guard, sargeant, rugby player, rock singer, army general, or CEO of a large corporation in need of a strong leader. He is human. Or it is me who is bonobo? No! I am a human being, no evolutionary twin of Koko-san. He is an animal while I was created by God.

Really, I felt in my guts the rejection of the mere idea that I am like this hairless anthropoid. I dont WANT to be an anthropoid animal. I am but I feel uncomfortable in my skin. I want God to create me and not to evolve in the African savannah.

If I could, I would be a Creationist.

Rabbi David Hay The Kohanite

הרב דוד חי הכהן Rabbi David Hay (The Kohanite, from the Priestly Tribe) is the head of the Netivot Israel yeshive (theology school) and head of the Orot HaTorah (Light of the Law) community in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bat Yam. He became instantly famous when he was warned by the Secret Service (The Jewish Section) to stop the street protests against Arab and African illegal infiltrators. His retort:

The Secret Service should busy itself with Arabs and not with Jews.

The Bat Yam demonstration triggered hundreds of similar demostrations all over Israel. The leftist media was taken by surprise, they had been harping for months against the cruel, "inhuman" return of a dozen Sudanese infiltrators to their homeland. They have campaigned for months against the Minister of Interior, Eli Yishay, from the SHAS party. This spontaneous wave of protest shows how disconnected are the intellectuals from the people. Eli Yishay, from Shas, has touched a very sensitive nerve and is riding high.

This evening TV was full of condemnations of "racism", but people here doesnt understand the idea, what the hell, how a God-fearing Jew can be racist? Even Our Teacher Moses משה רבנו took an African wife. Only our lily-white elite believes that Israel floats among the pure white clouds of the Swiss Alps, but the street shows how far we are from guilt-ridden America or old over-civilized Europe. Oriental Jews are much harder than we Ashkenazis, they are the hardest core of the Jewish people. The poster:

"They will not fuck my sister!"

Investing in a Screwing Machine

An analist writes that Mazor Robotics is worth 50% more than its current price on TASE. It sells a robot machine that accuretely screws pieces of cold metal into one's back bone. Their website is only for those who are not impressed by blood. I had no time to research competitors and markets, but seems an interesting Israeli startup. Very risky and I dont mean for those being screwed.

Israel-bashing as Lamb Marketing Tool

The Post comments:

(The Government of New Zealand's) overly strong reaction to Israel over this issue suggests the GNZ sees this flap as an opportunity to bolster its credibility with the Arab community, and by doing so, perhaps, help lamb and other products gain greater access to a larger and more lucrative market.

New Zealanders are so far from the Middle East that they imagine Arabs will pay more for their lambs if they castigate Israel.

HaTehof Armored Vehicle Factory - Closed

The Chinese did it.

The Ant People

Re-reading yesterday the Illiad, I tried to understand the discord between Achilleus, the leader of the Myrmidons, the Ant People, and the rest of the Acheans, led by the Mykonos's people (Cretans). Achilleus seems to have been something of a professional contractor working for the Cretan gang. He describes himself:

"Like a bird that brings back to her unfledged chicks every morsel she can find, and has to go without herself, so it has been with me."

As an experienced labor leader, he choose the most critical moment (in the middle of a difficult raid) to renegotiate his contract. So he went into a strike and waited for the boss to make an offer. In the end of his "position paper" delivered to the company negotiators led by Odysseus son of Laertes, Achilleus or the poet also mentions the injustice of having been "robbed" from his prize girl, as another - but not the main justification of his breaking the work contract and blackmailing his employer.

"I am the only Achean he has robbed", he says. Isn't Achilleus insinuating that Agamemnon is - generally - a just boss and that - under better contract terms - he would be ready to resume working for him?

The meaning of Myrmidons (or Myrmidones; Greek: Μυρμιδόνες) is the Ant People and they seem to have been an elite formation. Who were they? Ill.: Brad Pitt as Achilleus.

Madoff's Business Model

The fact that Jeffry Picower's estate is returning 7.2 billion dollars to the Madoff fund is difficult to understand except if Picower was a partner of Madoff. Apparently, Madoff relied on a core group of investors who provided Madoff with cash in key moments during the multi-decade Ponzi scheme to solve liquidity issues. Madoff was an exceptionally intelligent and experienced financier, so how he imagined that a Ponzi can be operated safely for long? What was his idea of how it was going to end? Is it possible that he has seen other Ponzis going on forever? and hoped to be among them? Or he had seen other Ponzis wind down quietly and hoped to be able to do the same thing? He must have had in mind some kind of end game.

My hypothesis at this moment is that there is a basic misunderstanding of Ponzi schemes. Madoff may have had the idea that a well managed Ponzi is viable forever. Many financial businesses, maybe all of them, are basically Ponzis. The American Social Security and many pension funds certainly are. Pic: Ponzi.

Celebration

I took the afternoon off to celebrate the achievement of a goal. With Murfatlar red wine. For the record.

Marxism

A man's only as old as the woman he feels (Groucho).

Biomedical Play: Protalix from Carmiel

Protalix is traded in AMEX:PLX and TASE 1120609 פרוטליקס It seems to fit my strategy of investing some money in startups. It is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of proprietary and biosimilar recombinant therapeutic proteins based on their proprietary ProCellEx™ protein expression system. Clal Investments recommends it. Pontifex fund of Eli Horowitz (founder of TEVA) is the main owner. I have to have it in my portfolio.

Mental Health in American Colleges

The NYT writes:

A recent survey by the American College Counseling Association found that ...44 percent in counseling have severe psychological disorders, up from 16 percent in 2000, and 24 percent are on psychiatric medication, up from 17 percent a decade ago. The most common disorders today: depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, alcohol abuse, attention disorders, self-injury and eating disorders.

Forty-six percent of college students said they felt “things were hopeless” at least once in the previous 12 months, and nearly a third had been so depressed that it was difficult to function, according to a 2009 survey by the American College Health Association.

Many teachers in Israel share my opinion that many students here are perturbed (Hebrew: מופרעים ) tending to crazy, that in addition of being semi-morons. What's going on?

Building Design Unapproved Twelve Years

Globes in its Hebrew edition quotes a letter by Shikun Ve-Binuy building company, Israel's largest, to the Minister of Housing Attias. The company describes several projects stucked because of the incredible bureaucratic Via Dolorosa of building approval. The bought a pice of land in Kiriat Ono (a Tel Aviv suburb) in 1978, intending to build 180 apartments, but the company's engineers and architect are unable to get the required building permit. The company is offering 25% of the apartments to be distributed free to homeless families by the Ministry of Housing (pic.: Poor Jews - a free kitchen in Tel Aviv), and begs for the Minister's help in starting the project. The letter describes several other projects that are waiting for the bureaucracy's approval.

The building industry here is in a state of slow move/paralysis condition. no bureaucrat signs anything, and they push the plans always to consideration by higher committees and always are demanding more information and changes. In the end, when there is an end, the projects have to be signed by the Prime Minister. Then, ten years after, the process the Prime Minister (the Olmert case of the Jerusalem project) as suspected of having approved the project for some kind of bribe, such as political support or because his retarded third cousin was employed by the company as assistant night watch.

Morning Fear Attack

My early morning fear attacks are back. I had been designing a large garage last night, I woke up at 0500 AM with fear and anxiety, feeling I was inside the garage and trembling. I think I am under the influence of two recent projects: Yesterday I went to the Commercial Center of Oranit (a settlement in Samaria) where the frightened contractor wanted to document the situation. The situation is that last week's rain filtered into the lower floors and caused damages, and he feels that their insurance will sue him. I took many photos that document that he didnt do it. He was so frightened that I cought his mood. Another weekend project was in Old Yafo. A group of investors bought the old Turkish Customs house and transformed it into 24 apartments and many shops. They were unsatisfied with the plumbing contractor and they did not pay him. Or maybe it is an excuse to avoid paying. He sued them and they are counter-sueing him for real and imagined faults. I am to write an Expert Witness document showing that almost everything is all right (the fact is 24 families are living there three years and everything works). The investing partners (that includes a lawyer) are claiming 400 dollars per day for unfinished contract, which comes to about 500,000 dollars penalty and that is not all. The plumber is frightened to death and begged me to please help him. So I wake up with guts contracted into a hard ball and uneasy, to say the least.

On the other hand, anxiety improves potency. Strange.

The Case for Israeli Banks

European banks were on the brink of default in July 2010 and were saved by Germany injecting money into the system. In fact, printing euros. They underwent American style stress tests to regain public confidence and avoid a run like on Lehmann. But hear Strauss-Kahn:

“There is no certainty whatsoever that if a similar crisis occurred, that parliaments would be prepared to cough up billions to save the financial system [...] Are taxpayers going to be ready to finance such a thing? It’s uncertain.”

In America, the dollar is being devalued, which has improved the balance of payments and is firing up the economy. The banks are strong but the dollar is weak. This may be the window for "exotic" banks from countries with a strong and stable currency to put a foot in the door of the world's financial market. Such as Israel.

I am collecting Bank HaPoalim shares.

Communist-Crimes Denial

Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic are calling for the punishment of "public approval, denial or belittlement of totalitarian crimes. "While denial of the Holocaust is punishable by law in Germany and several other countries, they say the denial of communist atrocities "must be subjected to the same standards in order to prevent the resurgence of totalitarian ideology." Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg said both totalitarian systems can be measured to the same degree, and that both Hitler and Stalin were mass murderers and those who served them were abettors.

Slowly but surely the Holocaust is being "relativized" and "revised". The revisionists are winning. The next step will be to teach that Jewish communism was the crime and the Holocaust the punishment. One learns today on the internet that Auschwitz was, in fact, a holiday camp the Nazis built for the Jews's enjoyment. Apparently my four grandparents and many uncles didnt know how to swim in the pool (pic), that's why they never came back from Auschwitz.

Daughter Receives Technion Scholarship

At least something to be proud about. My daughter received a Dean's Scholarship in the University. Initially I refused to fill the thirty pages form and attach the infinite number of documents including bank statements and tax receipts demanded, thinking that she had not a chance in a million. You know, she is not Arab, Ethiopian, Sepharadi or some other favoured ethnic, her home in Kever Benjamin is not a "development town" (aka slum), no one of her family is disadvanted (no one in jail or the mad house), and her parents's finances are definitely not in her favour. But she persisted and won. Why did she was selected from two thousand assistance requests? I am not sure, may be because she is such an extraordinary a talent, or probably because "J&daughter" were among the few who filled correctly the form and did follow up work on the Dean's secretary.

Chinese Interest in Good Genes

The Reykjavic Post thinks that Chinese authorities are spying on companies involved in genealogy and medical research in Iceland. They use human intelligence and technical equipment, such as bugging telephone lines and breaking into databases on the internet.“What disturbs me a little is that a more than vivid imagination is needed to think that genealogy research in Iceland is being spied on if there is nothing behind it,” Stefánsson said.

It is possible that the Chinese suspect that there is a Western eugenics program operating in isolated Iceland (see ill.). Maybe they have one or want to have one operating in a remote area of China.

Hizballah as Marketing Tool: The Case of BEAM startup

The Lebanese Army says in its website that discovered an Israeli targeting device (pic) placed at 1,715 meters height and made up of two artificial boulders with one containing equipment for transmitting and receiving signals and the other contained several batteries to provide power for the equipment for several years. A Turkish site shows details of the device including a Hebrew plaque identifying the object as made in Israel by Beam Systems Inc.

I have never heard of BEAM so I googled it and certainly, there it was. It is an Israeli startup financed by a Canadian Venture Fund. It seems very promising, and now that it has been seen operating in enemy territory, it will be desired by many foreign armies. The question confronting me on thios Shabath mormning is how to profit from BEAM's business success?

Beam Networks has developed a unique and innovative 60 GHz wireless technology capable of supporting multi-gigabit per second data rates. Why is this exciting and compelling? Beam’s wireless technology will enable communications and computing products to transfer gigabytes of content in seconds rather than the long wait times experienced today. High definition video can be transported over-the-air in its full, uncompressed native form. The need for expensive and cumbersome cabling can be replaced with a 60 GHz wireless link which eases setup and expands placement flexibility. Expensive, high-capacity, last-mile fiber optic networking links can be also be replaced with Beam’s multi-gigabit high-bandwidth wireless solution. Beam has chosen to focus exclusively on developing a 60 GHz analog universal transceiver, which has proven to be a highly capital-efficient approach. Beam is working in close partnership with IBM to commercialize this wireless solution.

The genesis of Beam’s technology has its roots in radar and data transmission research commercialized from the Israeli defense establishment. Beam’s 60 GHz wireless transceiver is based on combining silicon germanium RF chip technology and an extremely small array of antenna patches to generate a focused, high power density beam which is insensitive to interference and can pass through or reflect off of walls. Unique analog beam steering electronics allow the Beam transceiver to simplify and eliminate costly baseband processing, leading to an overall lower wireless solution cost. Beam’s analog beam steering approach is independent of any particular baseband solution, allowing support for multiple standards or proprietary approaches. This baseband-independent approach results in the investment funds being applied to the very challenging (but requiring far fewer engineering resources) analog transceiver design, resulting in a far more capital-efficient model than competing approaches.

BEAM's CEO is Avigdor Berlin has over 35 years of experience in aerospace and defense industries. CTO and co-founder Dr Alberto Milano (pic) spent many decades designing antenna, radar and microwave systems for military and commercial applications.

Carol

Hark The FX angels sing,
"Glory to devaluing!",
What on earth? These movements wild,
Get those trades all reconciled.




Vengeful, all the nations rise,
Join to sell down from the highs,
With the CB host proclaim:
"Devaluation is our aim".
Hark! The FX angels sing,
"Glory to devaluing!"

From: Macroman

Thinking

ITMN Rockets

There are several medical ventures on Tel Aviv Stock Exchange but I own none of them. Yet the potential payback is fenomenal. For example, yesterday the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP), the European FDA, granted marketing authorisation for Esbriet for treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). The patent is owned by ITMN. Many fortunate people's lives will be saved. Some fortunate investors will be rich investors today. Pic.: Steven Cohen, rich investor. If ITMN's treatment for Hepatitis C is approved, he will be a very rich investor.

Israel's Watching Stones

The Lebanese discovered than the stones were watching and hearing them.

Cheap Vacations in Europe

We have received the bills of our Czech Republic and Eastern Germany tour, and it amounts to peanuts. The euro has lost its worth and Europe is cheap for us Israelis. How the powerful have fallen! Merkel says that the situation of the euro is "exceptionally serious" (read Gary). That means that we may be able to take a ski vacation in Austria, I mean, financially. I dont like skiing. What else may an Israeli do in Europe that cannot do in Israel?

In my water field, German products are by far the best, but they had been too expensive for Israel. Now, if the euro collapses, importing German water fittings may become a doable business. I think the water sector is not an exception, thus a cheap euro will favor Germany. And it will suffocate American and Japanese export industries. So the dollar will have to be depreciated, and we have arrived to the currency war scenario. The euro has lost 15% of its worth tete-a-tete the dollar, which itself has been steadily loosing buying power. The latest bonds sold by Spain pay only 5.5% interest. I cant imagine anybody sober buying them with his own money. It must be Germany buying them. אלוהים ישמור God help us!

The Steady Hand behind Hugo Chavez

The Post describes Venezuela's Chavez as "mercurial" - a weak personality that cracks under stress - but one who is saved by the steady hand of his mentor, Fidel Castro. Once, when the military was conspiring (and when they are not?), Chavez was weeping while Castro personally "worked the phones" to create a consensus for his protege.

Chavez relies heavily on Cuban advisors to implement programs that are one of the keys to his political success. We assess there could be as many as 40,000 Cubans currently in Venezuela, managing, guiding, and implementing Chavez' social missions (e.g., Barrio Adentro medical program, Mision Robinson literacy program, Mercal state-owned grocery chain, etc.) Rumors swirl about Cubans taking central roles in sensitive government functions, including in Chavez' personal security, the military, the National Electoral Council, the national identification Office, even land titling offices. The Cubans are getting paid hard currency for it.

Interestingly, the word "Communist" is not mentioned by the "Post", although what he is describing is classic "socialist solidarity". In fact, the concept of communism or even ideology is absent from the State Department verbiage. Maybe they feel that their bosses are socialists. Instead, they focus on personalities, on election chances. Their main fields of interests are arms and drugs smuggling. Maybe the real hard material is marked "Top Secret" that was not leaked.

Antioch is No More

Antioch was the main Middle East metropolis up to the Middle Ages, with half a million inhabitants. It was a center of the new Christian faith. The city was fed by the Orontes river. That was in the Antiquity. Today, the river is of nobody, and suffers the fate of the commons. There is no water sharing agreement of the Orontes between Syria and Turkey. Antioch is a ghost town, abandoned, not even a tourist attraction for its ruins, and the mighty Orontes is a poisonous seasonal streamlet.

I had a boss in Argentina called Gaupillot who used to say that where the Arab puts down his foot, no grass will ever grow again. He meant the Syrian-Lebanese immigrants in Argentina that caused the desertization of the North (La Rioja, Santiago, Salta, Jujuy, etc.). The depopulation of Eretz Israel started with the Arab conquest. Today we are seeing the final destruction of the Mesopotamia - the valley of the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers.

The (Transitory) State of Palestine aka TransJordan

A sign of the growing success of the Israeli right's strategy is the fact that the idea that the Kingdom of Jordan is in fact Palestine is evermore alive. Ethnic tensions are tearing apart every one and all Middle Eastern countries. Today I read about a suicide bombing in Iran, committed by Shiites against the Sunni. Iran itself is a fragile multiethnic state, and large portion of its population is Turkish and feels closer to Azerbaijan than Teheran. Jordan is half Beduin and half Palestinian, and the two groups dislike each other. That fishwrap HaAretz writes that

the king is concerned that Israel will take advantage of the tensions to promote "the alternative state," a theory that holds that Jordan is the Palestinian state.

It seems to me if we hold out long enough, the Palestinian problem will solve itself to our advantage. Personally, I think that CisJordan is ours, and TransJordan as well. But we are open to temporary transitory political arrangements.

Pre-Greetings for Year 2011

To all my friends who last year sent me wishes of health, prosperity and happiness, please take note that IT DID NOT WORK!

So for the coming year 2011 please simply send in the cash.

Sweden is No Sanctuary

Muslim terror has reached Sweden. An e-mail minutes before the blasts addressed to Sweden’s security police, told “Sweden and the Swedish people” that a terror attack was imminent. “Now, your children — daughters and sisters — will die like our brothers and sisters and children die,” it continued. “Our actions will speak for themselves. As long as you do not end your war against Islam and the insult against the prophet and your stupid support for that pig Vilks.” The question is if Sweden will react like Spain or like the USA.

Addenda: The terrorist stereotype is wrong. The terrorist (pic) is a Swedish educated Iraki born young man. He looks healthy and is married with two healthy children and wife pregnant, and has a profile in a Muslim dating site looking for a No.2 wife. Apparently, the terrorists are the elite of their people, and not marginal, desperate, depressed, masturbatory misfits.

Israel's Business Meeting

I heard a few important opinions at the current meeting. Everyone agrees that Europe is in serious trouble, some say also the USA. We are in the middle of a process of the East's rise. Agriculture is going to have problems in the next decade, mostly because raw materials are becoming expensive, so there are opportunities to make money there.

Conspiracy and the Conspirator

I have decided that I dont like Julian Assange and his Wikileaks. He has developed an ideology:

Less that exposing misdeeds, his goal is to impede the ability of state and military actors to communicate reliably amongst themselves: …while an organization structured by direct and open lines of communication will be much more vulnerable to outside penetration, the more opaque it becomes to itself (as a defense against the outside gaze), the less able it will be to “think” as a system, to communicate with itself.

It is a clear anti-state, anarchist political program. I dont like it because I think that my State, the State of Israel, embodies my self and my people, and it works to defend my life and towards my prosperity. I see other states as organizations created to defend the security and the interests of other peoples, and not as obscure, nebolous conspiracies to oppress. In the case of the United States, I see (from the leaked cables more than ever) that its government is much focused on its people's security and their jobs tete-a-tete amoral economic competitors such as the Chinese.

As a person, Assange has had unprotected sex with two fertile women, against their expressed wishes to do it with a condom on. It is obvious to me that he was trying to get them with his child. He is following the human evolutionary strategy of becoming salient and famous, and thus improve his chances of accessing females and impregnating them. He is definitely acting against established social order, where you have to marry and invest many years to reproduce. He has violated European ways and morals. He also paints his hair ash blond. Pfuiiia.

Dog Death

Mark Madoff hanged himself with a dog leash from a pipe in the ceiling. He should have got drunk instead.

Chinese Religion

"Some firms would have been put off by the fact that non-Muslims are barred from working in Mecca, so China simply converted hundreds of railway workers to Islam."(From Economist, on the Mecca Railway Project).

Predicting a Stampede

No one is predicting a stampede on the Stock Exchange, except moi. Pallid and vacillating bulls are appearing on the horizon. Gary quotes Barclays 2011 prognosis:

Economic data over the past few months clearly indicate that the global recovery is intact, and fears of a double-dip recession have abated. Barclays recommends pulling back from emerging markets and instead focusing on developed world economies with EM exposure. Specifically, it favors US industrials, technology and energy "which benefit from an improving domestic growth outlook.

I prefer Israeli financials (Bank HaPoalim, Insurance houses).

Buenos Aires Today

Four dead in today's riots. The City tried to vacate public spaces such as parks occupied by squatters.