The "FDA Delay Trade"

Protalix boards are debating something called the FDA Rejection/Delay Trade.

Every time there is a delay and/or rejection, buy at the open and you make 10% minimum within a few days or at most a couple weeks. MNKD, OREX, PLX, BIOD, it seems to happen every single time without exception.

Markets are known to over-react. The strategy seems reasonable. I have not sold my PLX Protalix shares. FDA wants to be sure if Protalix Carmiel plant is clean. It is in the Middle East, is it? The sewage runs on the streets, no? They wash hands with sand, do they?

Timnath cherec

Kifl Harith is a Palestinian village near the entrance to the City of Ariel in the Shomron. I drive by it frequently and wonder about the variously misspelled Hebrew, Arabic, English language road signs. What is the etimology of its name? The original Biblical name of the place was Timnath-heres and after the Hebrew conquest, it was given to Joshua. On his death, he was buried there. (Joshua 24:30). Like most original Hebrew site names, Timnath Cheres had evolved through the centuries to the Arabic sounding Khifl Hares.

One possible reading of the village's biblical name is tim-nath-he'res/timnath cherec "portion of the sun". Timnah תמנה from the root mana (portion) and cheres חרס = sun, a word that is uncommon in Hebrew. The current word for sun is Shemesh like in Beyt Shemesh, the House of the Sun God. Heres sounds close to the Egyptian Sun God Horus (pic above). The falcon-headed man was among the most important gods of Egypt, particularly because the Pharaoh was supposed to be his earthly embodiment. Old Egyptian and Hebrew were twin languages and the Hebrews used many Egyptian expressions, so I deduce that Timnath Heretz may have meant the King's Property. Hor being Egyptian for hawk, it may have also meant Land of the Hawk.

The Tomb of Joshua and Caleb is in the center of the village. Jews allowed to visit it once a year. The place is poor but not miserable. In the past, I had driven through place but took no pictures.

Networking Unnerves Chinese Government

Personnel Managers always demand that employees maintain their salaries in total secrecy. I never was sure if it was because I was paid over or under my collegues. Maybe it was only to isolate the employees, seed mutual suspicion and make networking difficult.

Apparently, it was networking that exploded the Middle EAst dictatorships. Now China is being extra prudent and has closed down most social networking sites on the internet. Today even the business networking site Linkedin was closed down as part of efforts to prevent a "Jasmine Revolution". Many "charged" searchwords in Google (such as Egypt) are censured.

America continues is efforts to subvert the Chinese government. A Jasmine Revolution meeting was being organized when the American Ambassador in Beijing suddenly appeared on the site and started talking to the presents. Does America want 民主 (chaos) in China?

Tel Aviv Poultry Processing Factory

I am starting to work on a project I have been postponing for the last three months. The Client is angry. Procrastination is my codeword.

Another Jewish Joke

A Carnival tourist cruise ship sinks in the South Pacific and survivors find themselves dispersed on isolated islands. On one island there are two German men and one German woman. On another, two Franch men and a French woman. And so on. After a month...

One Italian killed the other for the love of the woman.

The French formed a menage-a-trois and live in harmony and happiness.

The Germans organized a schedule of rotation and are strictly following it.

The Brits are waiting to be introduced.

The Greeks live together while the woman cooks and washes for them.

The Israelis are building a boat to escape from the woman, who never stops complaining how she is suffering from the sun, the salt, the lack of consideration, how much taller, wealthier, satisfying were her former boyfriends, how it is all their fault, and ...

Jewish Joke

Bill Gates was dying. Only a blood transfusion would save his life. But his blood was of a type that no compatible donors were known. A worldwide search was organized and a Brooklyn Jew was identified who had the required blood type. He agreed to donate but demanded to be paid a thousand dollars in advance.

"Dont you know who is Bill Gates? What is a thousand dollars for him?"

"I know. But I will not donate before being paid."

"What is your problem?"

"Once my blood is flowing in his veins, it will be impossible to extract a cent from him."

Why the media is falsifying reality

Thinking on the Lara Logan case (see yesterday's entry), one can generalize that the media is consistently misrepresenting the world, showing reality very selectively and even falsifying it. Western media never reports or covers up Black people's bestial behaviour, while White crime is inflated to show that we are all the same. The traumatic mass rape of Lara in the middle of Cairo's Liberation Square has caused radio-silence on Egypt, and the focusing on the psychologically acceptable massacres of neighboring Lybia.

Why is this so? Western media sees Whites as a mass of violent drunken peasants, embittered and full of repressed hate, always in search of a reason to form lynching mobs and kill and burn. These pitchfork-armed xenophobic drunkards have to be managed and appeased all the time, never giving them a cause to go out and machine-gun Blacks, Jews, Japanese, Arabs, the rich, the capitalists, those with university degrees, those speaking with a foreign accent or whatever. The media is aware of its power to provoke riots and pogroms, so it shows a world of love and harmony.

Media-workers deform reality because they conceive their mission as an idealistic calling. They know the instincts of their public and they know that reporting a heartbroken au-pair suicide will cause tomorrow the copycat suicide of dozens of girls abandoned by their boyfriends. They know that showing a salesman jumping from the bridge to his death will attract hundreds of others to jump from the same bridge. Living in a neighborhood of demented pyromaniacs, the media avoids reporting fires, or even showing matches that could give ideas to the violent morons watching them.

Interviewing post-mass rape Lara could easily incite the spontaneous formation of wild mobs going out in search of lynchable Arabs or - let our imagination fly - to cause wild pogroms against the rich, the intelligent or simply old Jews with thick glasses like me. BTW, it is not only the Western media. The Chinese media deforms even more grossly the world it reports, showing a universe of heavenly irreality. The illustration is from Singapur.

I am landing nice jobs

I have landed a nice consulting job. A large factory in the Judean mountains is being harassed by the Environmental Authorities (what is to say that they are violating environmental regulations). The management invited me to a meeting and the CEO lamented that instead of focusing on production and sales, he spends his nights worrying about the regulators. After nerve-wrecking negotiation, our native EPA agreed that they hire an expert and carry out his recommendation. Faking absolute self-confidence, I said: "Let me take this environmental burden on my shoulders. You do what you know how to do, and I'll do what I know to do which is to deal with environmental regulators, so worry no more." The next question was how much, I said a number, and wasting no more words, I was sent to tour the factory with the maintenance manager, a soft-spoken green-eyed Arab.

As it is always the case, the management was clueless and believing that their company had been singled out for a shakedown or whatever. The people actually doing the work in the shop floor knew exactly what was causing the problem. The Arab and his collegues proposed very sensible ideas. Now all I have to do is to put all down in an expert report format. A cakedance for J.

Most of the floor workers are young females. Jewesses of different tribes, Russian new immigrants, veiled Arab girls, tattooed Ethiopian negresses, anorectic Sudanese refugees. The dark Arab with disturbingly green eyes stopped near every attractive girl and flirted with them (should I say he sexually harassed them? but the girls seemed to play along.). I asked him how he can work in this Mohammed's paradise on Earth? "Ze Kashe", he answered. "It is difficult."

How it all ended in Egypt?

I am hearing very little about Egypt these days. From 24 hours on-line reporting, suddenly it has disappeared from the news. According to Takimag, it is because of Lara. The media cannot digest what happened to her. Quote Taki:

If you have not heard, CBS Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan was gang-raped by 200 or so Egyptian men in the moments following Mubarak’s abdication. They were celebrating, you see.

But to read the inevitable after-effect of media censorship over the past several days she was not raped, she was “sexually assaulted,” which soon became simply “assaulted.” Given enough revisions, one wonders whether she will have merely been insulted.

What does this nearly unimaginable bestiality have to do with the cessation of reporting from or about Egypt? Everything.

... when Western womanhood is gang-raped by dark people, networks become very nervous. Networks would prefer that viewers not think.

A Back Step in the Israeli Water Industry

The Israeli Water Desalination sector is based on private or semiprivate enterprises. Mekorot National Water Company, a government corporation, had been excluded from the desalination market. Mekorot operates on a cost-plus basis, and the Government pays its bills. Mekorot was found time after time cooking the books but the Finance Ministry is powerless to discipline the firm. Mekorot has been waging a publicity war against the Government's decision to exclude it from the desalination industry, accusing it of being in the pay of the "tycoons" (private groups). In the end, the Govenment agreed to allow Mekorot to build a desalination plant on the condition that its price will be equal or lower than the private plants. Mekorot found that it cannot produce water with the same efficiency and at the same cost, so increased its populist hate propaganda against private enterprise. The salaries of the CEO were published, fomenting a very ugly wave of envy against the capitalists. Shelly Yehimowitch, a left wing parlamentarian, headed a campaign against "delivering the water industry into the hands of the exploiters". It worked.

Mekorot has won its battle against the Ministry of Finance to build the Ashdod desalination plant. After refusing to accept the ministry's demand to lower the price of water from the plant to NIS 2.36 per cubic meter, the ministry today accepted Mekorot's final offer of NIS 2.40 per cubic meter of fresh water produced. The difference of NIS 0.04 per cubic meter amounts to tens of millions of shekels over Mekorot's 25-year operating license for the plant. Two weeks ago, the cabinet rejected the Ministry of Finance's request to revoke Mekorot's franchise to build the 100 million cubic meter a year Ashdod desalination plant, and ordered the ministry to settle its dispute with Mekorot.

Why the Israeli Government is granting a 25 years water supply contract to the highest bidder? Why it is favouring an inefficient State-subsidized company vis-a-vis efficient private enterprises? Is Netaniyahu socialist? He sure is not, but even he could not resist the populist forces of anticapitalism. Yehimowitch is celebrating "the saving of Israeli water industry falling into the hands of greedy capitalists". We are going to pay for her victory during the next 25 years.

Protalix: The Money is Gone

The FDA did not approve Protalix's Guacher remedy produced by carrot cells. The share price collapsed 35%. A heavy loss for me.

The Food and Drug Administration asked for more data from two studies and information on testing specifications in the new drug application for taliglucerase alfa, developed to treat Gaucher disease, Protalix said today in a statement. No new trials were requested. The drug would compete with Genzyme Corp.’s top-selling Cerezyme and Shire Plc’s Vpriv.

“We don’t think this is going to be a very long process,” Protalix Chief Executive Officer David Aviezer told analysts and investors on a conference call today. The company plans to work closely with Pfizer and request a meeting with the FDA as soon as possible to determine what needs to be done for approval.

Benjamin Disraeli's Input: "All my successes are built on my failures".

Update: The message boards are doing the post-mortem analysis. I particularly loved the reaction of one nice fellow on Yahoo:

Well , I bet you feel pretty stupid now.. Anyone who listened to you must feel like a moron..

Hey , I respect you for even trying.. You gave it a shot.. You did the best you could. Nothing to be ashamed of.. You went for it and you got stomped on like an ant. At least you tried , you know? Anyway , you are my favorite message board character.. Hope your recent destruction doesnt stop you from making future calls.. you can make a huge comeback and redeem yourself. you may have just gone down HARD but now you can pick yourself up and get back the respect you just lost..

dont let this failure eat away at you... just get right back on the ball and keep your head up.. i hope to see some posts from you soon..

dont worry about it.. we all love to read your posts. i mean i dont read them , but everyone else does... get right back on it! You get great responses! take it back! TAKE THE POWER BACK!!!!!!!!

J's Strategy for Peace in the Middle East

By ousting the Taliban in Afghanistan, and then Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the United States removed two of Iran’s regional enemies who worked to contain its ambitions. Today, Iran is a major player in both nations. (From the NYT) We have learned in Lebanon the Law of Unintended Consequences: Dont try to change them, they will all turn against you as one man.

Game theory says that the number of players is important. The more players, the less they can unite. My strategy to peace for Israel: all Middle Eastern countries should be broken up into lesser units. It is unimportant how fanatically Islamic or anti-Israeli they are.

Islamic Emirate in Lybia

Italian Foreign Minister Francesco Franco Frattini said embattled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi had lost control of Cyrenaica and an Islamic emirate had been declared there.

It is a worrying developments if radical Islam is only a few hundred kilometers away from the European Union's front door.

But I read in the NYT that it was a popular revolution demanding American-style democracy ...

Pic.: The Emir Idris of Lybia. He was the leader of a Muslim (sufi) sect.

Is there any politics that is not ethnic competition?

I learned a new world: Krinaki. Near the City of Kever Benjamim there is a village founded by Lybian Jews where I have some friends. They always said that Ghaddafi was ethincally Jewish and that his family is Jewish. Ghaddafi is a common Jewish name. His son, who now appeared at the UN Assembly, is technically Jewish (mother 100% Hungarian Jewess). Apart from them, there are no known Jews left in Lybia.

These Tripolitan Jews say that the current Lybian riots have an ethnic background, Krinakis against Tripolitanians. Krinaki is, I discovered, Cyrenaica, and its people is far more primitive that the Europeans (in the Levantine sense) of Tripoli. Khadaffi displaced King Idris, an ethnic Krinaki, and favoured the Tripolitanians. So what those clueless CNN reporters see as a popular revolution demanding democracy, our neighbors see as an ethnic conflict.

I presume they know better. The elder of this village receive monthly pensions from German Welfare, having been deported to Auschwitz in 1944-45. It was the end of WWII and the Germans had lost the war, but still had important things to finish. They erected a ghetto in Tripoli and shipped these people through a Mediterranean full of British warships to be killed in Poland. Tripolitanian Jews are not Ashkenazi Jews, they are apparently descended from Judean immigrants during the Greek colonization expansion 2500 years ago.

The pic shows recently discovered figurines produced by the pre-Greek natives.

Riot Police Camouflaged as Clowns

Those people dressed up in circus clown camouflage uniforms are Yemeni riot policemen.

Chinese Appetite for Silver and Gold

China is stocking physical gold and silver. Unlike the property market, retail investment in gold is something the Chinese government is encouraging. China has a centuries-long cultural attraction to precious metals and because it has started at such a low base, demand growth will likely stay strong for quite some time. For Chinese as savers and for China as a country, it makes much sense to put their reserves in metal and not in paper currency.

The scale of China's gold demand, which has increased on average at a double-digit clip over the past decade, has caught the market by surprise. Data showed China imported 209 tonnes of gold the first 10 months of last year, versus 333 tonnes by India for the whole year. ICBC launched its second physical gold investment product, which sells gold bars to investors, which can be resold for cash through ICBC based on real-time gold prices. Zhou, from the ICBC Bank, said there was also voracious demand for silver, with the bank selling about 13 tonnes of physical silver in January alone, compared with 33 tonnes in the whole of 2010.

Since the Chinese are not speculating in precious metals but hoarding it, prices will rocket till higher.

Metalworking Factory in Samaria

Another project, a metal working factory that is moving to the new industrial area in Ariel. They are making precision aluminium (or other metallic) parts using computer controlled machines.

New Export Cluster Forming

Everybody and his dog are shifting their attention to Asian export markets. How to compete with the Chinese, with Korea? Turkey is planning to increase its competitiveness vis-a-vis Asian economies in the next two decades. Its strategy: Rather than trying to penetrate independently into Asian markets, Turkey will be plugged into Germany to increase its chances in these markets. Many firms from Germany’s neighboring countries – such as Netherlands and Austria – work with Germany in order to penetrate indirectly into Asian markets.

Quantum Murphology

There is a fixed quantity of intelligence on the planet.

The population is growing.

Chevron in Ecuador

What causes Third World countries to cut repeatedly the branch they are sitting on? Ecuador had a dynamic oil exporting sector till populist regimes expropiated all oil companies and are trying to blackmail them in a monstrous fake judicial process. Chevron has been condemned by a corrupt judge to pay 28 billion dollar damages. I dont think Chevron will pay a cent, but anyone can see that Ecuador has caused a tremendous damage to itself. No oil company is going to invest in Ecuador for the foreseeable future and their extractive operations, if any, will be based on leaving the country as soon as possible with the maximum of profits. Nothing valuable will be left in Ecuador.

I am reading the scientific basis of Ecuatorial claims and there are none. Take one paragraph:

La actividad petrolera afecta las bases de la subsistencia campesina e indígena. El 94% de la población encuestada ha sufrido pérdidas de animales. Cada familia reporta una pérdida media de 8 vacas, 5 cerdos, 2 caballos, 43 gallinas.

It states that the oil extraction operations damaged local farmers: each family reports the loss of an average of 8 cows, 5 pigs, 2 horses. 43 hens. The author of the study does not even try to verify these claims that took place during the 20 years of Chevron in Ecuador. How the value of these dead cows and pigs adds up to 28 billion, that is not explained. Surprisingly, while Chevron was working in Ecuador, there were no claims against it for killing domestic animals or causing personal damages to the local population. The claims seem to have been taken from Avatar, a phantasy film.

Airport City Project

I have a project in Airport City, near the Ben Gurion Airport.

Blessing Oil Barrels

Globes is transmitting on line what is happening on the Meged site. At 1019 hs dozens of barrels of Israeli oil were taken out to the refinery. Investors watching the site kissed and blessed the barrels. The shares doubled in the last three weeks. Unfortunately, I am not in.

Update: One hour after I wrote the above, the share's price jumped 18%. I am not saying there is any cause-effect relation between the two.

People Knows

I had the privilege of working closely with sewage workers and as time goes, I am amazed how aware they were. For one, they saw through me as if I were transparent, they knew exactly what I was trying to do and when I was sincere and when not. As a rule they accepted my leadership and collaborated with my efforts, so we soon became the best paid employees of the organization and Israel's model of ecological water recycling outfit. Personally, the Ministry of Environment and even the Army asked me to give lectures and courses and made many foreign consulting jobs too.

Having satisfied my vanity, lets go to the point. Which is a conversation I remember with a drunken worker. He told me that his father was also a drunkard (שתיין) and they had thought why was so and arrived to the conclusion that it was because they were very intelligent. At the time it seemed to me a very strange thing to say.

Yet it appears that they were right. Intelligent people drinks more, drunkards are intelligent. Prof. Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist, says so.

"Not only are more intelligent individuals more likely to consume more alcohol more frequently, they are more likely to engage in binge drinking and to get drunk. Consistent with the prediction of the Hypothesis, more intelligent individuals consume larger quantities of alcohol more frequently than less intelligent individuals. The data presented in the post come from the National Child Development Study in the United Kingdom.... The more intelligent they are in childhood, the more and the more frequently they consume alcohol in their adulthood."

The pic shows Nakae Chosin, an exceptionally intelligent man. In Japan's strinctly stratified society of the 19th Century, he easily rocketed to the top. He was a famous drunkard.

Lara Gets a Taste of the Middle East

Last week there was it kind of disorderly in Cairo and the police had left the streets unpatrolled. This blonde South African sexbomb got herself lost in a dark alley and was raped by a mob whipped up to sexual frenzy. It only shows that these "reporters" have no idea who they are, where they are, what they are seeing and what is happening around them. Their reporting is worth nothing. Victorian explorers reported a truer image of the state of the world afar.

Israel is Prospering

Israel's GDP rose at an unprecedented pace of 7.8%,on an annualized, seasonally adjusted basis, in the fourth quarter of 2010, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported today.

Accelerating Evolution: Neisseria spp.

The number of recently emerged, antibiotic resistant pathogens being discovered is accelerating. This is going to have profound and may be dramatic demographic and evolutionary consequences. Now we learn that the horrible N. Gonorrhoeae bacteria ("clap") has mutated and acquired a bit of human DNA. We dont know yet what the bacteria is doing with human DNA in its genome but it means that it can "control" us in many new ways. Remember there are parasites that cause mice to lose their fear of cats so they will be cought and eaten, allowing the parasite to complete its cycle in the body of the cat.

Researchers at Northwestern University say this is the first evidence ever seen of a direct transfer of DNA from human to bacteria. "This has evolutionary significance because it shows you can take broad evolutionary steps when you're able to acquire these pieces of DNA," Hank Seifert, Northwest professor of microbiology, said. "The bacterium is getting a genetic sequence from the very host it's infecting. That could have far reaching implications as far as how the bacteria can adapt to the host." Since bacteria and yeast cells transfer genes among themselves with ease, our DNA is now available to the whole microbiological kingdom.

A Dream Destroyed

Developers of a winery, herb farm and restaurant complex at Moshav Kisalon in the Judean Hills are facing the prospect that their venture, already in operation, will be leveled to the ground by planning authorities. The saga began in 2001, when developers submitted the plan for a winery, herb farm and restaurant at Moshav Kisalon. The permit was granted but in the meanwhile a dispute about jurisdictions has erupted between planning committees and a destruction order for the whole complex has been issued.

As the Arabs say, sit at the entrance of your tent and watch your enemy's funeral procession go by.

Turbulence Ahead

32 Beduin tribes sent a protest letter to King Abdallah of Jordan saying that his wife is stealing their land to give it to her family (the Palestinian Yassin clan). The ethnic conflict between the Beduin tribes and the Palestinians is destroying Jordan. The King is a descendant of the Hashemite clan that ruled Mecca before Ibn Saud expulsed them. He is Beduin (his clear blue eyes come from her English mother) while his wife is Palestinian. The Hashemite family led the Arab revolt financed by Lawrence (of Arabia, more precisely from England) and this alliance holds till today. As for us, we only want that they leave us alone. It is to ask too much in this neighborhood.

Bull Market in Wheat

The province of Shandong received 12 mm rain this season. China will need to import much wheat this year. International prices will rocket. How to play this market?

The Buda Synagogue Invites You to Prayer

Minden szombat reggel 9.00-tól várunk a Vasvári Pál utcai zsinagógában és 9.30-tól az Óbudai zsinagógában

Main course: Solet (pic from the invitation). We are like that.

Mubarrak Wanted

Globes (in Hebrew): the FBI is investigating Mubarrak's accounts in the US. Switzerland closed his and his family's accounts. The chase is on to locate Mubarrak's fortune. This will inexorably lead to a death sentence. I hope "in absentia". The pic is fake.

Contra Paleo Diets and Pro Gourmet Plates

As K. wrote in the comments, we are adapted to eat cooked food, therefore our small teeth and weak stomach. We are not made to process and digest raw carrots nor celery leaves. Therefore, I reject the theoretical basis of Paleo diets. What is the food that goes with my nature?

Since it appears that human evolution has accelerated in recent times and much of what I am was formed in historic times, I dont have to look very far. I never met my grandparents not older family members, But I know what my Mother cooked and I like it. It was Hungarian Jewish food. It certainly included schtrudels of green baked apples and whipped cream.

The Jews of Hungary, as far as I know, had a relatively comfortable living standard. Food was abundant and the Jews soon adopted Hungarian plates, which are as different from European cuisine as the Magyar language. Hungarian Jews made always a big thing of food and it was central in any family or social meeting. Hungary was so prosperous that attracted large immigration from Germany, Galitzia (Jews) and other surrounding countries.

Conclusion: My ancestors evolved to eat elaborate gourmet food. That is my nature. I have convinced myself and am going to eat Hungarian salami with kimmel bread. Then start my work day till midnight.

About the illustration: During Pessach we eat unleavened bread - motze - to remind ourselves how our ancestors suffered during the Exodus. Then Hungarian Jews invented the motze-torta.

Recent Human Evolution

It was thought that our mental traits, like all other traits, are products of ancient environments, when humans lived by hunting and gathering. Well, that is not so.

Evo says

The higher IQ of East Asians, for example, almost certainly came about during historic times and was probably favored by the widespread use of exams as a means of social advancement. Likewise, the higher IQ of Ashkenazi Jews and other European populations is probably post-medieval in origin and driven by the high fertility of successful entrepreneurs.

Another relevant factor is the rise of the State, particularly its monopoly on violence (Frost, 2010). This is discussed with respect to English society in Gregory Clark’s Farewell to Alms. Clark (2007) argues that the slow but steady demographic expansion of the English middle class from the 12th century onward gradually raised the population mean for predispositions to non-violence, deferment of pleasure, and other future-oriented behavior. Although the embryonic middle class was initially a small minority in medieval England, its descendants grew in number and gradually replaced the lower class through downward mobility. By the 1800s, its lineages accounted for most of the English population.

If we evolved in modern times, what humans and pre-humans ate in the Paleolithic is totally irrelevant. We are adapted to the food our grandfathers ate, which in my case includes Apfelschtrudel.

Egypt Jubilant

There is little to be jubilant about Mubarrak's downfall. Having lived through four or five military uprisings and coups (in Argentina), the Communiqué Number One sounds awfully similar to one. Egypt is under the military since Gamal Abdel Nasser's coup. “The armed forces are committed to sponsor the legitimate demands of the people,” the statement declared. But weeks of rioting has a momentum that will be difficult to downwind. Only a few days ago there were spontaneous mass pogroms against Christian Copts in Egypt.

BTW, what is happening in Tunisia?

LAMPEDUSA, Feb 11, 2011 (AFP) - Italy on Friday warned of a looming immigration "emergency" and appealed for European Union assistance, as coast guards intercepted hundreds of undocumented immigrants sailing from Tunisia. "There is a risk of a real humanitarian emergency," Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said. The uprising in Egypt and last month's revolt in Tunisia are leading to a "mass flight" to Italian shores by immigrants, he added."

That answers my question. But what is happening in Iran?

Iran is electronically jamming the BBC's Persian language television broadcasts over its coverage of the mass protests in Egypt, Britain's state broadcaster said on Friday. The interference began on Thursday evening after the BBC's Iranian service showed extensive rolling news coverage from the demonstrations against President Hosni Mubarak.

Midnight Knock on the Door of Rabbi Lior

A couple of years ago the 77 y.o. Rabbi endorsed the book "Torat HaMelech" ('the King's Law') dealing with relationships between Jews and non-Jews during situations of life and death in war. On a cold and windy winter night in Hebron, the police visited this venerable teacher with a warrant of arrest, for racism and for owning forbidden racist books, demanding to know his opinion on the matter. Pic.: The Rav with students.

Shmuel Muchnik

A Road in the Judean Hills. This is an original vision of the solitary roads of in my travels. Like. 800 dollars. Should I buy it?

James Clapper: Not Clairvoyant

USA's Chief Intelligence official said they have been tracking unrest in North Africa for years. "But we are not clairvoyant," said James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, at a House hearing this morning.

That is a wild understatement for a visually-challenged (I almost said blind) person. When talking about Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, he said that it was a non-religious civil movement. American ignorance of foreign languages and countries is legendary, but one would expect more from its chief intelligence official. He probably thinks that Al-Qaeda is the Saudi YMCA.

Germans To Deport Jews from Wall Street

That is a wild exaggeration. They are only buying the New York Stock Exchange. I imagine that the Deutsche Börse's looming takeover of New York financial industry must be causing some silent consternation in Wall Street.

I read the Frankfort Burse's website and love those incredible German words. But secretly I prefer antisemite websites. I miss Prof. Kevin MacDonald's elucubrations. There, we Jews are eternally manipulating international finances and exercising our control of the world's gold and money, we joyfully inject our mighty genes into innocent blond maidens. What a contrast with this grey, depressing, dry announcement that the Germans are coming and taking over. Dry, yes, the Germans of our days have reformed and even have given up their insaciable thirst for beer.

Crisis in Swiss Banking

Yesterday, Credit Suisse lost 7% on Nasdaq. The bank, based in Zurich, reported a net income fall of 24 percent, to 5.1 billion francs, compared with 2009. Other Swiss banks are also in a bad situation. Having revealed the names of their foreign clients to the tax authorities, they have nothing to offer. British banks have problems with new regulations. Israeli banks are not exploiting this opportunity.

Friday night Update: Mubarak left Cairo and the next minute, the Swiss announced that they are freezing all accounts of Mubarrak and his relatives and friends. I recommend to all Arab dictators, kings, ministers or just corrupt officials to deposit their savings with Israeli banks.

We are most discrete and never, never, never betray our friends and allies.

The Budapest Ghetto

It looks like that. We lived at Almasi ter 8 third floor. The school was on the other side of the square. I remember that most of the time it was very cold. Coal was scarce.

Russia Making Fertility History

Russia's TFR has risen from a nadir of 1.16 children per women in 1999, to 1.49 children in 2008 (and thus also breaking the "lowest-low" fertility hypothesis that states that no society has ever recovered from a fertility collapse to below 1.30 children). More recent figures are encouraging.

The graph shows that late marriage is not such a recent phenomenon. Apparently, there are unknown social forces governing it.

Bundesverfassungsgericht untersagt erneut Käfighaltung von Hühnern

In short, battery laying hens are forbidden.

You know where.

Because it is inhuman.

My input: Nice Legs.

Prof. Harsagor z"l

Today, at age 87 died Prof. Michael Harsagor, from Kever Benjamin City. Born Goldberg in Bucarest, he studied in the Sorbonne. I met this small old Jew many times in the Rothschild corner Weizmann St. bookshop, and used to enjoy his radio program "History Hour" while waiting in the car for my daughters's swimming training. He knew the most secret sexual habits of all the historical figures, from Nikolay Chauchescu to the French kings.

R comes to the masses

Some people are promoting quant trading platforms in Israel. You only need a good algorythm to make millions without effort. I am not into it, I am of the old buying and holding school.

No Revolution in Egypt

Two weeks after the first mass riots, what just days ago seemed like an “Egyptian revolution” has turned into a vague promise of reform, if not the complete extinguishing of a dream for a more democratic country.

New Leader: Benny Gantz

This time they checked the candidate to Chief of Staff's past regarding his building activity. It was found that Gantz had closed a balcony in his home without receiving first the building permit, making him not less a "criminal" than Galant and the rest of the suffering people of Israel. But the Government decided that it does not disqualify Gantz as Chief of Staff. Retrospectively, it appears that Galant was thrown out because he tried to hide his building permit issue and was not totally honest about it.

Chinese Bubble?

From Warren Meyer (Coyote Blog):

The totalitarianism that is, depressingly, so admired by the US intelligentsia is just going to lead China into the abyss. Already we can see bubbles emerging due to the state’s forced mispricing of key economic inputs, from capital to oil. The burden of spending on triumphalist projects like super-bridges and mega-buildings and Olympics and high speed trains is going to start appearing over the next few years.

Here is my prediction: The Chinese are going to have a bubble burst that will rival any such economic explosion that we have seen in the last century. I have been looking at the situation and by a number of metrics, the bubble is already huge. I would bet against China, but the problem (as with all shorts) is timing.

Hercules in Germany

The German Minister of Agriculture poses as a man of the soil, a rude farmer, with a big cigar and a desdainful attitude towards the Greens. He likes to talk in parables. "For the fifth labor, Eurystheus ordered Hercules to clean up King Augeas' stables. Now King Augeas owned more cattle than anyone.

So the muscleman tore a big opening in the wall of the cattle-yard and then he made another opening in the wall on the opposite side of the yard. Next, he dug trenches to the river which flowed nearby. He turned the course of the river into the yard and let the rushing waters to flush out the Augean stables."

He concluded saying something like this: It is possible that EU's strict environmental rules against river pollution with animal husbandry wastes are not always enforced in Greece. But I shall not allow happen this in Germany.

Blond Jewish Baboonchik

Pic.: Blond Tel Aviv born baboon. One should be very careful to draw conclusions.

Work Stress

Last night, the Judge Ben-Attar put his head into a poliethilene bag. His suicide note says that the work stress was too much for him. He had returned from a meeting with his superiors who questioned his fitness to be a judge, since he was unable to make up the accumulated delay of his caseload.

The Minister of Finance fainted and was hospitalized yesternight. He just returned from a meeting where he was held responsible for the recent rises in food and gas prices, while tax revenues are larger than planned. Leftist parties smell a popular issue that they can ride against the government and they are organizing demonstrations. He said that international commodity prices were not under his control.

So it is not only me who is working too much.

City of Petach Tiqva: Busted!

Following a secret investigation, the police has detained Itzik Ohayon, Petach Tikva's Major, and Uriel Bosan, his vice. I work with the municipality's engineering department but no one ever mentioned anything.

Bread Riots in Israel?

Israeli Hebrew press is inciting to a food riot, saying that prices have rised and people goes hungry. The price of bread is cheaper in the Palestinian territories, it is almost free there. The price of gas is very expensive in Israel, I am paying 7 shekel per liter, that is, almost 8 dollars per gallon. The government says that world prices have risen, which is true. According to Krugman, bread prices have changed because of the harvest failure in Russia and Ucraine, caused by global climate change, and recent Chinese purchases for animal feeds.

Ikhwan al-Muslemin

I was reading about the life of Ibn Saud and the Ikhwan, which is the basis of the Saudi Arabian National Guard. Ikhwan is translated as Brotherhood, but I think it is the Arabic equivalent of the Hebrew Akhwah (אחווה) which is the favorite word of Rav Kahana to describe the Jewish love and care for each other. The Ikhwan almost toppled the Saudi dynasty in the twenties because of its links to Egypt, which was considered a country of unbelievers. Pic.: an Ikhwan dance.

Green Building

The Green Building concept is the most important selling point today in the Israeli real estate market. In my opinion, it is nonsense. I have many potential clients demanding grey water recycling but I am resisting them. Greywater is dirty water and stinks.

The pic shows a Spanish green project. The concept was to create a green living shade (see model). Reality is a bare skeleton of asymetric, disharmonic giant toothpicks in the air. I wonder how to they imagined to maintain the plants, how they would clean dead leaves, what if the leaves collect dust, what with the dirty pidgeons nesting in front of one's window. Windows are supposed to let in the air, the light, the sun, the sky, the sea, the mountains.

Globes turns against Mubarrak

The Israeli economic paper Globes publishes in Hebrew (but not in English) that Mubarrak has a 70 billion dollar secret fortune in investments in the USA, Switzerland and other places. That the customary cut in Egypt is 20% (while in the Gulf countries it is 51%). By publishing this and the above pic, Globes is clearly saying "Good Bye" to the (former?) Egyptian Dictator.

Follow Up: An hour ago, six days later Globes salute, Mubarrak resigns and leaves Cairo. This Globes people are clairvoyant.

Blond Jews

Szombat, a Hungarian Jewish internet page, notes that one of every four Hungarian Jewish girls is blonde. Of course, one of the supressed publications by Austrian Nazi race-scientists shows that the frequency of blue and light eyes among Austrian Jews was higher than among the "Arians". Anyway, how did look the Jews of the Antiquity? In this mosaic of the Bet Alpha synagogue, they seem to have been mostly blond (yellow hair). Not that it is important, but interesting. In Argentina, anyone with red hair or freckles was automatically classified as Jewish.