Strong Woman

Paying for Alpha and Not Getting It

Israeli retirement and other public funds grew 0% in the last five years. The fund managers pocketed 11.4 billion shekels for this service. From Globes. I knew it.

Germany cracks whip, Europe falls in line

Germany cemented its control over Europe when 25 out of 27 EU states agreed to a pact for stricter budget discipline. The Brits and the Chechs refused to sign. "To write into law a Germanic view of how one should run an economy and that essentially makes Keynesianism illegal is not something we would do," a British official said.

Compare Europe indebtness with China's growing surplus and national savings of hundreds of billions. No debt crisis in China or Singapur. The world is sliding back to the situation of a thousand years ago, when China was so big and self sufficient, that needed nothing from the rest of the world and those Western Barbarians could be discounted as nuisance. And those Barbarians will, once more, try to pirate Chinese wealth.

Breaking Out

From its very birth, Israel was isolated like an island in the ocean of the Arab world. Gradually we are breaking out and connecting to the world. After trying desperately to connect to the Egyptian electricity network, and failing, we are now going to be connected to the European electricity grid. The cable will be 270 km. long and provide an energy connection between Israel and Cyprus, 2,000 meters below sea level. Electricity will be able to flow in both directions at a capacity of up to 2,000 megawatts. Another cable will connect Cyprus and Crete, which is part of the Greek electricity grid. Therefore, Israel will effectively be connected to the European electricity grid.

Are They Reading This Blog?

Two days ago I made fun of the Government of Israel's Program to Improve Marital Relations in the Ethiopian community. Today, the program was - partially - rejected. Did I do it?

I'll let that question open. The fact is that the Ministry of Immigration rejected the materials prepared for the program and will not make use of them. There is no need for explanations since the bitter rivalry among the Ministries is sufficient cause for rejecting each other's programs. Unnecesarily, they did provide an explanation: the program intends to remake Third World adults into Western middle class persons, which is the wrong approach. One should never take a person and erase its past, its culture and its traditions and refill its head, now empty, with foreign Western ideas. The correct approach is TO RESPECT and to build on on those rooted African traditions.

Like wife-killing.

A Learning Nation

The taking of the Turkish ship Navi Marmara left us a trauma: when attacked by a mob of unarmed Turks, our commando was forced to use firearms and kill nine. It was a major international scandal. But we learn. If anything, what distinguishes us Jews is that we are continuously learning. So the Israeli Army is learning Krav Maga (Contact Combat) to fight "white" that is non fire weapons encounters. Golda Meir lamented that the Arabs forced us to learn to kill, and learn we did. Now the Turks have forced us to learn personal violence, and we learn. We learn how to do "killer's eyes", how to develope a crazy berserk mood, how to cultivate and control a violent mindset and so on. We learn חוסן נפשי = spiritual stamina. Not what we Jews aspire to do or be.

Revolutionary Human Nature Remake Program by the Israeli Government: Ethiopians to turn into Ashkenazi Jews!

Israel has decided to change the inborn nature of its African immigrants and make them Ashkenazi Jews. TOCHNIT ZUGIOT LEOLIM - how to translate it? Program for Teaching Immigrants to live in Couple? has been launched by the Israeli Government. It is a grandiose and very expensive government program that will deal with the acute problem that Israel's newest immigrants, those from the Ethiopian highlands, do not form families in the traditional Ashkenazi (or Western) mold, but live and reproduce in a complex matrix of male-female relationships. I say complex because I (and all other Jews) dont understand it. it may be quite simple, I dont know. And there is the issue of wife killing. The Government has long proclaimed that there is a severe problem of wife beating and wife killing in Israel, and all public employees were sent to re-education courses. I worked for the Government then, and all the people from my office - 60 years old Russian engineers with coronary problems, unmarried secretaries, an old Moroccan protocol writer lady - divorced with adult children, the fat cleaning lady, Mr Goldfarb the 70 years old Polish outside consultant with stomach cancer - we were forced to attend a course in Jerusalem, where we were re-programmed to not to kill our wives. (*)

No one can say that the Israeli Government does not learn. Today they have discovered that all, 100% of wife killing episodes are committed by Ethiopian males, so they are leaving us Ashkenazi superannuated engineers in peace. The Government is launching a fantastic program to re-educated Ethiopians to teach them what a couple is and what must be the relationships within a Jewish couple. In the Haredi sector there are many courses of Jewish morals and relationships, very much enjoyed by Haredi women who have no access to kitchen-variety porn. But this Ethiopian reform program has nothing to do with Judaism. It has been designed by left-wing liberal progressive psychology professors, experts in social work, writers of educational brochures, in short the very cream of the Israeli social sciences establishment. I suspect the program means a large source of well paid employment for this sector, and not only at the academic level but also for the many thousands of female social science graduates continuously generated by the schools.

The Program has immense possibilities because it deals with a social problem that is not exclusive to Israel but to very common in all the African Continent and the African-American community in the United States, Great Britain, everywhere. The Israeli experiment will be fully documented and analysed, conclusions drawn and academic and policy papers written, and the results published (I have no doubt that the numbers will show a tremendous improvement. Boas and Levontin's blood still runs in our veins, no?). I prophesy that in 2022 American social scientists will come to study the program in Israel and our experts will be consulting for all Western Governments.

Ah! to be young today! To work on sex relationships within the couple with Israeli and American social sciences chicks! But I am an old water and sewage engineer...! :-(

Pic.: Social Sciences students in an American university, future implementors of revolutionary Israeli discoveries.
(*) The re-programming was totally succesful. Since then, no one killed his wife.

Healthy Americans

The world is scandalized by the pic of American marines urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban enemies. Let the impotent hypochrites lament, cry, condemn.

Well Done, Marines! You were sending a message. Hear their cries and understand that your message has been delivered. We shit on our enemies's corpses.

Parking Roof Collapse

Petach Tikva, the roof of a parking collapsed damaging a few cars. The fire fighters arrived inforce, four big new vehicles, dozens of clownish fighters, TV and of course the Minister who gave an interview. The firefighters received 800 new recruits, and many million shekels additional budget. The Minister had said that the fire fighters organization was resistant to changes, the union was too powerful and the employees received too high salaries. So all the new people and money is not poured into the old organization but created a parallel, semi-independent organization, sharing the same facilities. The idea is, I assume, to introduce some competition in the branch.

To me it is obvious that the collapse was caused by the rains, and the cement plate weakened by sewage piped embedded in it, something that should never be done. So much for Petach Tiwa Engineering Department. They know only to ask for more and more drawings, torturing us poor engineers. How was approved this monstruosity of a parking floor with 4" sewage pipe in it?

Anti-Jewish Hate Campaign in Israel

The caricature is from today's HaAretz, the most intelligent and well written paper in Israel (my wife is suscribed). This fishwrap is the driving force of the anti-Jewish campaign flooding Israel. The caricature shows a group of bearded religious Jews dancing with 100 dollar bills falling around from their pockets. Der Sturmer published this kind of caricatures.

The religious leaders have long said that HaAretz is antisemite and although it seems absurd that a paper founded by one of the leaders of German Jewry and written in (good) Hebrew could be qualified as anitsemite, I cannot but agree and say that HaAretz is antisemite. HaAretz and the people it represents, the leftist intellectuals, hate Jews and Judaism. Hate as in raging, furious, irrational, gut-level, blind hate.

Why should this thing be? One thng HaAretz maintains is that the religious are a burden to the State of Israel, that instead of working in the high tech sector they study ancient theological treatises full of superstition. All over the world students, specially university level divinity students, are exempt from military service and are subsidized. Religious students in Israel are NOT subsidized while (say) postgraduate studies in the Snake-cult religion of the Mayas ARE SUBSIDIZED.

HaAretz demands to stop social security payments to religious families. Apart from the sheer evility turning thousands of decent Jews into street beggars, about 60% of the religious population is under the age of 18, and in Israel's and all Western countries laws, minors are under State protection. If the parents cannot feed the children, the State takes them into institutions and feeds them and educates them till age 18. Under the Mapai regime, till the seventies, the State of Israel regularly abducted the children of large religious families and sent them to educate in remote left-wing kibutzim and "agricultural internates" so the parents could not visit them. That era has passed but HaAretz thinks that religious education is wrong and hurts the children making parasytes and bad persons from them. To HaAretz and the Labour Party chldren should be taken away from the bad influence of the ignorant parents as it was done in the not so far past. Of course caring for and educating these children within their own families costs much less than in public institutes, but they are ready to sacrifice us for the good of society and the future.

Why the religious Jews in Israel are hated to this irrational extreme and why intelligent people are demanding violent measures to punish them and their children, even at the cost of large public expenditure and risk to social stability? Why HaAretz goes to the extreme of publishing Der Sturmer caricatures against Jews?

In my opinion, the explicative power of Darwin's theory of evolution holds here. High IQ people are not having children in Israel (nor in other places). I see every day the bitterness of my friends and collegues for their "successful" but unmarried and sterile sons and daugthers, with their prestigious Ph.D. diplomas from Stanford and well paying jobs in Intel and Microsoft. I see the yellow envy in their faces when a 75 years old fellow announces in triumph that at long last he has turned grandfather.

A dying people must hate those reproducing. I can understand the theory that the genocyde that the Germans planned and executed on East European Jews was motivated - at some deep level - by the fear of being out-reproduced by them (Germans, then as today, was an aging population, while Eastern traditional masses were young and colonizing). Non-reproducing German Jews, on the other hand, were allowed to emigrate and escape the Nazi furor.

In conclusion, there is something in it when religious Jews in Israel say that they are being harassed like in an antisemite country. I shall vote for Netaniyahu.

Bank of Israel's Big Failure

Bank of Israel sold 1.5 billion worth of 10 year bonds at an average interest rate 2% above similar T bonds. There was demand for 5 billion dollars, it was oversubscribed.

This emmission is touted as a bid success, showing that investors have confidence in the State of Israel and that we are able to receive money much cheaper than any European country. Nice.

Just to vent out my inner overflowing evilness, I say it was a big failure. If the demand was so large as it was, Bank of Israel is overpaying and could well have sold the same bonds at American rates. Or Japanese rates, that is below 0%. Let investors pay us for holding their money. THAT would have been a triumph!

A good idea

Murray's New Book

Murray's new book describes the dissolution and degradation of America's White working class in the last two generations. Personally, the American Jews I meet here in Israel dont seem degraded except for love of free sex and late marriage. Remember: I am desperate to get rid of my unmarried daughters and Americans are not helping.

The weakness of Murray's work is his idealism, its total disregard of the economic infrastructure of his findings. He ignores Hegel's dialectics and ignores Marx's materialism, that class is consequence of the social mode of production and the new American class structure grows out of America's new methods of production.

Five or six thousand coal miners produce all America's coal, a few thousand farmers produce mountains of soybeans, corn and wheat that feed half of the world, a few dozen nuclear power plants generate much of America's electricity. Modern factories (and I know a few in Israel) are ghostly: large floors full of silent machines and nowhere a man to be seen. Simply put, there is no need for nor use for uneducated males. The economy can employ technically educated people, and not too many of them neither. There is unemployment among mathematicians too.

Murray describes what the surplus males do: Sunshine Club. They work and strive less than former American generations, they spend time in games and meaningless sex. Men will not marry.

All in all, America's GNP and military might will grow (without need for the White male proletariat). But the solution is obvious - America will be the New Rome. To keep the suprlus proletariat busy and maintain social stability, they will be give PANEM ET CIRCUS, social security and free TV. Maybe foreign low-tech wars to maintain their male self esteem.

Thanks to our abominable, beastly, heinous, vile enemies that give us no pause, we in Israel are free of America's social problems.

Jeddawis Solving Sewage Problems

Jedda in the Hejaz (I dont recognize Saudi Arabia) has no working sewage systems, so the people dig big holes and let the liquid to infiltrate in the aquifer. Apparently they have yet to hear of the cholera epidemy in London in the eighteen sixties. The Sewage Authority suspects something may be wrong and is working to solve the problem. "Working" may be too hard a word for it. In their on own words:

"This trend is illegal and the branch municipalities are watching these phenomena with the aim of reducing it."

Meanwhile, director of Civil Defense in Jeddah Brig. Abdullah Hassan Al-Jiddawi warned against digging random wells and said it was a gross violation of the safety measures. “Many people have lost their lives by falling into these wells,” he said. Regarding intestinal diseases, they always were and always will be, Allah willing.

Jiddah means seashore, had about 25,000 inhabitants in 1947. Today it has 2 - 3 million and growing.

Orange Alert

It is hot in Argentina. "Orange Alert" in Buenos Aires.

Franchuta Vieja

I'm having a slow chat with an old friend in Argentina and at the same time, losing myself in the vastity of the Internet. Before English I learned French, which was more important in Argentina and reading the French Parlamentary Report on Israeli Apartheid the sound of French comes back to me. I never liked French literature.

La ségrégation est aussi hautaine et méprisante (« ces gens-là ne sont pas responsables »…répètent à l'envie certains responsables israéliens), vexatrice et humiliante (les passages aux check point sont restreints ou relâchés sans prévenir) voire violentes (la répression des manifestations fait régulièrement des morts…).

The report says nothing material about apartheid. There are no water fountains for Jews and water fountains for Palestinians, there are no WC for Jews and separate ones for Arabs, as was usual in South Africa under Malan (the report mentions him). It does not accuse Israel of stealing Arab water, as UN reports normally do. The most damning accusation I found in the report is about some Israeli official commenting that the Palestinian "responsibles" did not take their responsabilities very seriously. For the French hypocrite this is the odious attitude of a colonial. They invented diplomacy. They throw a stone and say it is a meteorite. Pfuiia. The title refers to a tango.

The Demand for My Services is Growing

I'm fully booked and new clients are begging me to accept their cases. An area I was involved from the beginning is starting to develope and become a serious market for my consulting services.

Tnuva, Israel largest dairy company, was fined 15 million shekel (about 4 million dollars). The reason, sending "polluted" wastewaters to be discharged to the sea. The charge is ridiculous and may seem bizarre to an observer in another country, yet 4 million dollars are real money.

Ten years ago it was legislated that nothing can be discharged into the sea without a permit. Seaside municipalities soon erected wastewater treatment plants and discharged only treated liquids. Municipal employees and ministry of environment employees are twin creatures, so they seldom attack each other. With hated private companies the attitude is different: "They should reduce their exaggerated profits and pay for using public space" (Free quote from the current minister of environment).

The first legislated area was "Timlachot" that is waters with a salt content 200 mg more than tap water. Tap water in Israel has about 300 to 600 mg salt content so we are talking about wastewaters with 800 mg NaCl content. It is absolutely forbidden to discharge those waters into rivers or lakes because of the fear that they may salinize groundwater. It is also forbidden to discharge them into sea, except with a permit. The idea is that this saltwater will pollute the seawater, which has about 35,000 mg salt content.

In my humble opinion, 800 mg water will DILUTE 35,000 mg seawater, not salinize it. They may have noticed that so the legislation was expanded to regulate additional parameters such as metals (seawater is even more rich in metal ions than in salt), BOD, COD, pH, odors and colors. All discharge was to be done only through two controlled sea outfalls - one in Tel Aviv and the other one in Haifa. The owners of the outfalls soon started collecting monopoly rents. They have a nice business model.

Now, Tnuva the hated dairy for-profit monopoly, sent its waters to be discharged into the sea and in some cases it was slightly acidic or milky/turbulent. The Ministry sent them letters, demanded explanations, requested to be submitted a technical plan to remedy the situation (the kind of things I do for a living), and demanded reports and so on. According to the lawyers (working on the bsais of percentage of the fines collected), Tnuva failed to submit those papers and continued conveying its waters to the outfall operator and paying the fees. But did not explain a thing. Now they will have to pay 4 million dollars and the minister is making political capital on its back, painting them as an environmental criminal greedy fascist monopoly and himself the defender of the public.

I can well imagine what happened. Tnuva is a large company and enjoys hundreds of regulators sucking its blood and living off it. Tnuva people felt they were complying with a stupid law at a large cost to themselves. They did not consider that the letters sent by the Ministry asking for information (they receive hundreds per month) had any importance. Probably they were standard letters signed with an (+) by a secretary. They let time pass without answering, hoping that the regulators will forget, be transferred or new things will come up. That is what many companies do.

But last summer Tnuva was the object of public protests and demonstrations, specifically for the price of its cottage cheese, which some ignorant journalist discovered was higher in Israel than Europe. (Europe subsidizes its dairy sector, but that is irrelevant). Tnuva became the symbol embodying the capitalist monopolist greedy corporation, and the perfect victim for a populist politician. Not answering those letters is costing Tnuva now 4 million dollars.

I always beg my clients to send me any regulatory letter of phone calls they receive, to answer and to keep entertained the bureaucrats. That works.

I learned that technique from my friend .. former chief of Shafdan Wastewater Treatment Plant. The plant is dumping untreated human sludge into the sea, against all the legislation and regulations. It was sued dozens of times in the last twenty years. They always answer politely and submit plans and designs and investment processes they are advancing. Myself participated in many meeting to decide which is the best technique to process, digest, pelletize, recycle, compostize, etc. the sludge. We had very important, very interesting debates. Foreign experts were called in and delivered magnificent powerpoint lectures. I spent days writing down protocols. Twenty years have passed and Shafdan is still dumping untreated sewage in the Mediterranean. It has yet to complete the design and then, surely, it will start arranging the financing and proceed to build the facility.

That is the difference between Shafdan (a publicly owned non-profit corporation, paying fantastic salaries to its managers) and Tnuva (a greedy capitalist oligopoly): The bureaucrats of Shafdan know how to deal with fellow bureaucrats. As a former bureaucrat myself, I also know how to deflect stupid regulations, but I dont know how to make (real) money from it.

Gulag Rations

Boiled whole grain wild wheat with paper-thin chicken breast. Is this the fare of a Gulag immate? But what am I complaining of? This is a veritable feast on J's table. Normally it is boiled whole grain buckwheat, oat, millet, barley, etc. Horses liked it in the old country, they never protested, what was good for them, must be good for J. I am lucky she hasnt discovered (yet) that these are cultivated cereals, the real natural unpolluted wild ones are the Spelt, the Einkorn, the Emmer, the Durum (from the Latin "hard") and its Papa, the Paleolithic (*) Kamut.

(*) Paleolythic = Similar to an Old Stone.

The Great African Awakening

Barhano Taganiya, a leader of the Ethiopian Jewish community in Israel: "If we are not strong, they will trample us underfoot".

Boker Tov, Eliahu. (Meaning: Now you wake up, Eliahu? Where have you been during the last 20 years? I knew that after spending one week in this country.)

Good News

Sentiment is improving. The shekel is strengthening and TASE is climbing (5% this year). Still not sleeping well because of over-eating!

Preparing for the next war

Mass night behind-enemy-lines exercise in Israel. The brigade was parachuted from a number of planes and required to use night vision equipment and the constellations overhead to navigate to their respective battalions. After re-organizing on the battlefield, they marched while carrying 60 kilograms (133 lb) of equipment and took part in a live-fire exercise in which they ambushed enemy forces and occupied (yet unoccupied) territory. Pic. Zahal.

HaAretz Protests against Wife-killing

We have here 120000 Ethiopian immigrants, who brought with themselves the endearing custom of wife-killing. Dealing with rebellious womenfolk makes perfect evolutionary sense but Israeli society is dysgenic. Wife-killing worries the Israeli Ministry of Justice, fully in the hands of feminists, since punishing and re-educating Ethiopian males does not work. Thus the front page article today in HaAretz: The Government causes Ethiopians to kill their wives and hides the damning reports and research studies. No kidding. Enormous demonstrations this week in Israel where people paint their faces in black and white to protest against the racist discrimination (pic).

One point they do have is that the educational system (also peopled by Israelis of the feminist persuasion, although of a less virulent variety) discriminates against Ethiopian children who are not sent to regular classes. I tried to explain to my daughter that it makes no sense to mix children of IQ 120 with children of IQ 70, the level of overachieving Pan spp. Do you want violent morons in your class? Children who cant read and disturb the class? She says we are all the same and I am racist. On the other hand, that elitist class of hers caused the expulsion of violent non-Ashkenazi boys - arsim in the local lingo. The parents association acted decisively. She does not see any relationship. My hope is that when it comes to her personal wellbeing, she acts rationally.

El Gaucho Martin Fierro

Si hemos de salvar o no,
de esto naides nos responde;
derecho ande el sol se esconde
tierra adentro hay que tirar;
algún día hemos de llegar-
después sabremos a dónde.

Shall we save ourselves,
No one guarantees that;
Westward hides the Sun,
Far inland we should go;
Some day we'll arrive -
And learn where we are.


Fierro and his friend Cruz decide to leave civilization. Argentine epic poem and economic plan.

The Mefitic Effects of Climate Change

I'm a bit tired after spending the morning walking up and down in a tall (50m) building on Tel Aviv seaside. They hired me to solve an unsolvable problem of on-off air pollution (sewage odor) problem. The owners are terrified of getting a bad name - they explained me that today people post opinions on the internet and it is retransmitted like a wild fire, and the building can acquire in no time a bad name with dire commercial consequences. So I will not even insinuate which building it may be.

Standing in the strong wind at 50 meter high roof facing the stormy Mediterranean (Are you afraid of heights? the bastards asked) I formulated a theory: the strong wind may cause, by the Venturi effect, a suction force in the soil-air pipes and temporarily empty the odor traps in the higher floors. But why has appeared this issue now and never before? May be people was less sensible to air quality in the past, may be before the internet their opinion was of less consequence, and may be the climate has changed and the Eastern Mediterranean winds at that altitude are stronger than before. I asked for a thousand dollars for the solution. They insinuated that I was dirt cheap, the amount asked is insignificant relative the public relations disaster they are facing. They succeeded in spoiling my excitement of having a non-routine, interesting problem to solve. I'll keep myself (and you) posted about my progress.

La France Accuse: "Water Apartheid"

The News:

The French parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee published a report accusing Israel of implementing "apartheid" policies in its allocation of water resources in the West Bank. The report said that water has become "a weapon serving the new apartheid" and gave examples and statistics that ostensibly back this claim.

"Some 450,000 Israeli settlers on the West Bank use more water than the 2.3 million Palestinians that live there," the report said. "In times of drought, in contravention of international law, the settlers get priority for water."

The author of the report was Socialist Party MP Jean Glavany, who in the past served as agriculture minister under French President Lionel Jospin and as cabinet secretary for President Francois Mitterrand.

J's Comment: Yes, we use more water than the Palestinians. And Parisians use more water than Sudanese goat-herders. When Sudanese goats suffer thirst, Parisians dont help them. The French are shameless.

BTW, there are already 600,000 Jews living in the West Bank, about a third of the population. The idea is to become majority in our days amen.

The Graph of Our Lives

None of my daughters believes that this applies.

It will be our end.

Via Mangan's Breviary.

Gorgeous Piece of Gay Heaven

Tired of one hundred years of joyless Zionism and Hebrew Renaissance, Tel Aviv wants have fun. Last week, Tel Aviv was proclaimed the Best Gay City. Major Hoolda-ee celebrates with friends.

Greg Cochrane is Wrong About Ashkenazi IQ

From the Guard Your Eyes site:

Dear Guard your Eyes,

My husband is 30 years old and we've been married for 8 years. For the last 7 years (perhaps even longer, I don’t know) he's been a Lust addict. I've caught him with newspapers, with a magazine, on the internet, acting out, etc. There have been many ups and downs over the years (mostly downs) and I'm slowly reaching a point of despair. I am so full of questions and doubts, and most of all I have no-one to talk to. We recently started therapy...

I thought it was a satirical site, but not, it is dead serious. This site proves that everything Greg Cochrane wrote about Ashkenazi IQ is wrong. Somos mas locos que una cabra (we are crazier than a goat).

Pic.: Crazy goat at the top of the organizational tree.

Risking My Skin on the Market

I used to hang a poster in my bathroom: "If you are sleeping well, you are not risking enough".

Well, now I am not sleeping well because I have several loans pending and every week (!) I have a payment to do. And TASE is sinking like the Titanic.

What is IQ?

Henry Harpending defines it "as the direction in high dimensional space that is measured to impose class mobility."

I'll try to explain the concept to myself: IQ is the something that predicts social mobility (upwards, I presume). George Soros has much of it; his fellow pennyless Hungarian immigrant who waits on me in "Piroska" has little of it.

I proposed to measure IQ in a scale of H (for Human). Double H is an artist, like Cezanne or Van Gogh: he makes us perceive the world in a different light. Pic.: Afremov, after Cezanne.

Maria Shua: Transgression

Maria Shua is an Argentine writer focusing on ... what else, sex. She developes Simon Merrill's scifi "Sexplosion", where the NOSEX chemical weapon kills humanity's sex drive. Only the disciplined Japanese continue, on Government orders, to make sex and survive. Merrill was wrong: Japanese will not have sex even under orders. Argentines, on the other hand...

Argentina, The Incredible

I discovered through Facebook some old friends from Argentina and learnt what has happened to the country. It's incredible. Argentines live in a lie and they have no idea that something may be wrong. The economy is periodically readjusted according to the official cost of living index, which should be objective because anyway, people knows how much they are earning and what is the price of tomatoes. Example: a divorced woman with children asks the judge to re-adjust her alimonies, and the judge necessarily uses the official inflation rate, which was 10% for 2011. Since real inflation is more than double, in the last three year her alimony have been cut to a third. Salaries are adjusted according to the index of cost of living published by the Government, which is totally false. Everybody know that the Government lies but they keep pretending. According to the tables of the International Monetary Fund, this year's inflation was 26% and not 10%. In fact, the IMF stopped commenting on Argentine numbers, they simply ignore them and publish their own indices. My friends cant even imagine a society based on honesty and say Argentina is the best country of the world. Campeones del Mundo. Estamos ganando (We are winning, a headline during the Falkland War).

Ph.D. in Sustainability

The Herzliya Interdisciplianry College has launched a new academic diploma in Sustainability. I never liked it and now I have one more reason to hate it. The college's campus was formerly "my" base in the army, an Air Force installation near the Herzliya airport, and every time I drive by, see those "holy" buildings desacrated by future environmental activist scum. Secondly, I was there at the birth of the business. It started around 1990 in the Faculty of Law of the University of Tel Aviv when some famous professors felt they were not being paid what they believed they were worth and decided to sell their lectures for profit. Since only one in ten candidates are normally accepted in TAU, and the new college had the same, prestigious faculty, the for-profit enterprise was an striking success. I remember one meeting in President Yoram Dinstein's office, himself a luminary in international law, where TAU's elite found itself speculating how much "they" must be making. The figure that stuck in my mind is 38,000 shekel a month, about five or six times of a full prof salary then. Contrary to accepted wisdom, lawyers are very fast with numbers.

Anyway, if there is thing I hate is the concept of sustainability. My wife's fishwrap, HaAretz, details the new curriculum. It will be built around long term planning of ... water. What is the meaning of sustainable management of water resources when the our main source of water are water factories? Why not study the sustainability of some other factory made product based on unlimited raw material, like liquid nitrogen made from air, table salt made from sea water and so on? Even if water should be a legitimate subject (which is not), how it will be studied in a non technical social sciences college specializing in public law, environmental issues and political sciences? Water is now the favorite subject of all kind of vaporous environmental sustainibility bullshit, the main subject-matter in the new religion of greenness. Now you can get a diploma (after paying the tuition) in the Herzliya Interdisciplinary.

As for me, instead of ranting I wonder if me and my camel should join the caravan. Teaching for pay has a long and honorable history: Athens's Academy was a capitalist enterprise of Plato, and was inherited by his niece. Medieval universities (pic) were organized on the corporative model of a collegium (association) of free-lancing teachers. A college will teach everythng there is demand for. The Herzliya people sure made a market research and found that a course in Sustainability will sell, provided it is math free and without complex equations and computer models. Global warming (sans actual atmospheric modelling) is - I presume - another fundamental component in the Sustainability curriculum. Am I against making easy money? Am I not a Mensa Whore? As a bona-fide, published, experienced water professional and teacher, probably I could get a piece of the action. Hmm.

Uggie: "I am big fan of England"

"The Artist's dog Uggie visits the Guardian and tells Xan Brooks about his artistic ambitions and the ruff and tumble of modern showbiz" (from The Guardian). Yesterday we went to The Artist, a black and white silent film. How can I describe it? Boring. Endless. Pretentious. It is one of those egotistical "artistic" creations, of talentless writers writing about themselves writing, of talentless actors and film makers about themselves acting and making films. They are in love with themselves and believe that everybody should be passionately interested in their professional doings. The Artist is about an actor of silent films who finds himself unemployed when the talking film technology arrives. Sure it was a great and dramatic event for the film industry anno domine 1927, but why on Earth J and wife in Tel Aviv 2012 should be interested in it? That technological advance leaves bodies alongside is a common event and as far as I am concerned, the pain felt by aged hydrogeologists as their specialized skills became useless with the advent of computer models is more pathetic and heartbreaking. But no one is making films about that and no one has the pretentiousness of those brainless actors who think that the arrival of the talkies was Apocalipsis itself.

Girl, Look My Shmuel!

This attractive girl is, my theory, Woody Allen's Whore from Mensa. Kanazawa has demonstrated that beautiful people are smart.

He got fired for writing this, so logic says Kanazawa is ugly.

My Pride

My pride is not reciprocated.

She is not proud of me.

She is proud of her curls.

The First Jewish City After 2000 Years

Tel Aviv.

Elected the Best Gay City of the World (American Airlines).

If so, Jerusalem must be Number Two.

I am sooooo proud...

Camps for Alawi Refugees

Assad's regime is about to fall and we are preparing camps for the coming Alawi refugee wave. For the last two decades, Assad didn't shoot at us so we "owe" it to his tribe. After abandoning Lebanon, we granted immigrant status to the South Lebanon Army members who fought along the IDF. They made good here, they provide the best Oriental restaurants and excellent "Lebanese" arak. We didnt start out as a refuge for persecuted minorities, but here we are filling up with Miaphysites, Assirian Christians, Fake-Muslim Sectarians and Fire Worshippers. Somebody must already be planning what to do with ten million Coptic Christians, whose fate is most uncertain.

Dont Judge

Very few people risked career and life to save Jews during the Nazis. Yad Vashem institute is trying to separate the good from the evil and say thank you to the good Christians of Europe. As the years pass and more information is becoming available, we are seeing how difficult a task is and how mixed are human motivations. Many of those who saved Jewish lives - the good people of Europe - were not nice characters at all. In Hungary it was the criminal underground that was ready - for pay but not always - to hide and to get Jews out of the country. They were the ones that had no fear of doing things that were forbidden. The Schindler case revealed another shady character who stole Jewish factories but saved the lives of its (former) owners and workers. Now the case of a Belgian police chief - who had been awarded by Yad Vashem - us surfacing. The man was a raving antisemite, deported Polish Jews from Belgium, yet saved many others. Is he a good Samaritan?

I conclude that we should be open even towards antisemites like Prof. K.MacDonald, because fate is unknowable and one day we may find ourselves in the same front-trench. We should deal with them as political enemies that in the right circumstances may become potential allies.

ALERT! Deflation!

While worrying about inflation, suddenly I realize that my problem is DEFLATION. Maybe it was wrong to accept bank loans, even at low interest rate. Israeli concerns are defaulting on their bonds. European sovereign debt is being subjected to haircuts. This is important. Copied from elsewhere:

When enough people and businesses default on their debt, they set off a chain reaction. Banks, hurt by loan defaults, have to raise capital to cushion against further losses. That means selling profitable divisions, because those are the only divisions they can sell. As profitable divisions get chopped off, bank stock prices fall, banks lend less, and the economy grinds to a halt. Already, European banks such as Banco Santander and Deutsche Bank are peddling highly profitable ventures, such as Deutsche Bank's asset management business.

And your neighbor's foreclosure may be part of a larger trend. "Any surge in debt-repayment problems are a byproduct of a deflationary trend," says John Lonski, chief economist for Moody's Analytics. "The inability to pay off debt usually flows from two things: Either your cash flows are less than anticipated or the value of the collateral declines precipitously." (J.: TRUE. Nahi Dankner's investment in Credit Suisse stock lost 50% of its worth, and the whole pyramid is collapsing!!)

Most individuals have seen their income tumble. As unemployment has soared, businesses have discovered that they can get away with paying employees less or withholding raises. Median household income fell 2.3% in 2010, according to the Census Bureau. And many of those who have been laid off have to take a lower salary than the one they had before.

Companies have also found that bankruptcy filings can force employees and unions to accept lower wages. Towns and cities, struggling with labor costs, could also start looking at bankruptcy as a way to force wages and benefits downward, Lonski says.

Another source of falling wages: competition from overseas. Factories in China and the Far East can produce goods at much lower labor costs than the U.S. The result is a relentless downward push on U.S. wages, particularly among unskilled or semiskilled labor.

"Germany paid a negative yield to investors at a debt auction, joining Switzerland and the Netherlands." What? Negative yields? That is the DEFINITION of deflation. The crisis is coming to its dénouement and it seems to be a long period of deflation and depression, like Japan's lost years (it keeps losing them even today).

I am indebted and fear chills my blood; may be I slept too much and my blood has a high level of serotonin. But I shall not be paralyzed because "Fear not my servant Jacob, and be not dismayed Israel: for I will save you and the Jews in the Galut too; and Jacob will relax as there will be none to frighten you."

OPERATIVE CONCLUSION: Focus on high yield SAFE bonds!

Pic.: Ken Katzen. Jacob and the Angel. I like it, KK sees that mysterious dream as no one saw it before.

Avoiding Innovation's Terrible Toll

The WSJ has a front page article about "Avoiding Innovation's Terrible Toll". The toll in question is Kodak and Barnes&Noble's demise. I'm very old and was just reminded of my mortality (this morning, a 50 y.o. anastesiologist fell dead in Meir Hosp.) but I am for change. Old is bad, decaying, must be destroyed; new and striving is good. Innovation cannot, should not be avoided. The toll has to be paid.

I think that the cause of all innovation is government's rapacity and regulation. I mean, once a business starts to work on a rutine and predictable way, the government or the nearest people with power will take it over and regulate it. The goal of regulation is mostly to create stability and predictability. An area occupied by the bureaucracy is dead for outsiders. If outsiders are forced by the circumstances to look for a living, they will try out new things and new businesses in yet uncolonized areas. If they are really desperate and they have no way of return, they will do miracles. Like the Puritans in New England, like the Huguenots in South Africa, like the Jews in Western Europe and America.

Innovation comes by way of desperate people. In these days, the Chinese are the most desperate people on the planet and will bring the next wave of innovation. Here in boycotted Israel we still have a deep reservoir of desperation. The British people is also building up bitterness and desperation, they may still break out once more. The pic shows the commander of the HMS Beagle that shot himself in Puerto Hambre, on the Magellan. Out of desperation.

Hungary in Trouble

I'll start by establishing the fact that Jews are a protected, privileged minority in Hungary 2012 and live in safety and freedom. Yet those stupid Hungarians managed to paint themselves as a fascist, intolerant, racist - even Nazi nation. They dress like Nazis, they erect memorials to the Nazi column that retreated "heroically" from the Red Army assault of Budapest. The Germans are fighting the renaissaince of the Nazis in Germany itself (let specify: not because of the Holocaust but because the annihilation Nazis brought on their country) and they get an epyleptic seizure each time they watch Hungarian Nazis goose-marching in Budapest. But it is not only them. Louis Michel, a French speaking politician, is taking time from his human right affairs in the Belgian Congo to focus on Orban, the Hungarian leader. He is trying to bring him to submit to the Hague International Court of Justice, like those bloody Slovak generals. With Europe in financial turmoil, it is a bad time claim the Nazi heritage. Germany, already tired of banking half Europe, refuses to talk to Nazi Orban, so Hungary is unable to roll-over its debt. I can see a scenario where Hungary goes broke and is thrown out of the EU, Orban and his ministers delivered in chains to Hague and Hungary broken up once more. Burgerland and the Danube strip will be Austrian, the East - Romanian, and so on. Anyway, Hungarians are a foreign, non-European insert that belongs to their ancestral Ethelköz homeland in Central-East Asia rather than Europe. All in all they are not a bad people (although given to excessive self-pity while drinking).

The Art of Living

Fatness, solved.

I have solved the enigma of fatness epidemy that has taken over first the American proletariat and has spilled over all the world, including my corner in Kever Benjamin City. Simply put, food quality has improved exponentially. That's all.

In my childhood, mothers were desperate to force their children to eat, because all of the children were skinny, anemic and sickly. And not only the children, adults were also always diseased, cold, spitting yellow-greenish asquerosidades, feeling tired and weak. People joked when drinking that alcohol was the best to kill the worm, and in fact, intestinal worm infestation was widespread. Low level food poisoning was common, we were forbidden to eat in the street or eat unknown food. My father loved to stop and buy chorizo sandwiches from street vendors followed by complaints of stomach aches and vomiting. People would not recognize what we ate then: the bread was heavy and dry, potatoes that were small and bitter, apples always had a worm wriggling inside. Cold chains were unknown, ice was brought for the ice but it can be said with confidence that most food we ate was spoiled in different degrees. We bought the hen in the market and my mother selected with care the healthiest, fattest looking bird. We butchered it at home, and the price pieces like the liver were fried with the fat and divided among the family members. The liver portion for each one was microscopic. Chicken bones were strong and big, and the meat was hard and scarce. Every part was processed and consumed. I am sure that fecal bacteria was swarming on everything, since the fields were fertilized with human and animal excreta. We were not specially hungry, but we were mostly weakened by parasites and diseases, and food quality was similar to what today can be found only in rotting landfills. And we were upper middle class in Hungary and rich in Argentina. We ate the best money could buy then.

Everybody was buying some kind of fortifying drink, like the bitters with iron supplements (against iron deficiency, anemia, which was widespread. See pic.), and quina (against intestinal worms). My parents fed me fish oil.

My children have never seen a worm in an apple and health regulators order immense quantities of food to be destroyed after "ate by date" arbitrary limits. In America, I have read with astonishment, all the lettuce produced by some farm were retired and destroyed not because some fecal bacteria was discovered alive on the leaves, but because it was suspected that the bacteria may be found in an adjacent field. The cleanness, the purity, the freshness and the quality of the food is so high that people has no parasitical infestations at all, they are very healthy and extremely well fed. And fat.

Digestive Bitter

In my times, old people in Buenos Aires drank Hesperidina, Pineral, Ferro Quina Bisleri, Amargo Obrero and so, but they have all disappeared to the point that empty bottles are sold in antiquities shops. They were bitter tonics with presumed medicinal-digestive qualities. Amargo Obrero's bottle was black and red with a sickle, as behooved to a true anarcho-sindicalist (later Peronist) drink. What can an aged Üttöro (komsomolchik) now bourse speculator drink in Israel?

The Fall of the Innocents

In my mind, I see the US surging ahead this year, leaving behind Europe and China. Why? Because hubris has seized the rulers of Iran and fall they will. They proclaimed their intention to close the Strait of Hormuz and shown that they mean it.

Should they be provoked to provide a casus belli (such as taking prisioners like the British sailors a few years ago), America and Britain will launch a blitzkrieg and destroy Iran's naval and air forces, occupying a wide strip along the Strait.

The price of the oil will rise 50%. Guess who will benefit? America, of course, since it is self-sufficient in oil. Europe, Japan and China will suddenly be imposed a heavy energy tax.

Iran argues that international laws suport its case. "Article 25: The coastal State may take the necessary steps in its territorial sea to prevent passage which is not innocent."

It is Iran who is being innocent and naive. Astute lawyers (and battle groups) will turn Iran's argument on its head. Yes, and Ahmedenijad himself too.

Underground Tel Aviv

My work gets me into places otherwise I had not even imagined that existed. Today I went to a large, underground club with a big, gorilla like fellow, all dressed in black and with impressive 45 mm firearm at his side, guarding the entrance. It was early morning and few clients. The problem was a bad sewage odor, whose source they couldnt identify. The pic shows the pipe running under the ceiling - it had been painted over but the connecting isolation rubber rings were dry and ineffective. And being deep under the ground level, they had two wastewater pumping stations but not visible air vents. They have a maintenance plumber and he started to shout furiously at me contradicting my observations so I cut him short. I got the impression that the maintenance man purposefully had been maintaining the problem to keep milking the owner. Now I realize that I may have been endangering not only his income but his life too.

Demographic War in Palestine

Jews are fighting a historic demographic war with Palestine natives to acquire majority and therefore international legitimacy for the existence of an ethnic Jewish country. Palestinians understand this very well and they are waging a persistent war against Israel. They have exceptionally high vegetative growth, but I doubt it is a managed phenomenon as Palestinians have demostrated that they are unable to act collectively, and much less in a complex social phenomenon (which even highly organized nations like Germany are unable to influence). What remains is the manipulation of demographic data for propaganda purposes, which they can do and do shamelessly.

As Ambassador Yoram Ettinger writes, the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics publishes numbers – which have yet to be audited by the US - that enable the Palestinian Authority to rob US taxpayers and those of other generous countries. Western foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority has been partly based on the highly ballooned number of Palestinians.

Moreover, the PCBS feeds demographic misperceptions, which constitute effective psychological terrorism, eroding optimism and confidence in the future of the Jewish State, and scaring Israel into sweeping concessions. These misperceptions undermine Israel’s national security policy and diplomacy, and they attempt to generate pessimism, causing a setback to Aliya, long-term planning and overseas investments in Israel.

In fact, the Westernization of Arab fertility has been consistent with Mid-East reality. According to the CIA Factbook, Iran’s fertility rate has plummeted to 1.9 babies per woman, Jordan – 3.4, Egypt – 2.97, Syria – 2.94, Saudi Arabia – 2.3, North Africa – 2, etc. Israel’s Jewish fertility rate – 3 births per woman and trending upward due to the secular fertility surge - is higher than all Arab countries, other than the Sudan (4.9), Yemen (4.6), Iraq (3.7) and Jordan (3.4).

Israeli left that criticise ferociously Haredi fertility is objectively fighting on the Palestinian side. The left rules the media and makes much noise, but fortunately it has lost effective power in Israel.

Depressing Knowledge

Steve Sailer wrote: "There is tentative evidence for evolution of more defenses against influenza -- in general, blacks had a hard time surviving in the North due to respiratory tract infections, which is one reason slavery faded out in the North, which [is] something they ought to teach you when you study the Civil War."

C. Aubrey commented: "Two reasons they will never teach it: 1) it suggests that blacks are physically different in some way - their inability to handle respiratory viruses; 2) it suggests that Yankees didn't reject slavery simply because they were moral giants."

There is more and more evidence that things we think that are important, such as morals, ethics, etc. exert almost no impact on human affairs. Unseen factors like genetic disease resistance decide the fate of wars and of races. The New World was conquered by a handful of Spanish military entrepreneurs only because they had resistance to epidemic diseases. Ashkenazi Jews accumulate more capital than other people, in part, because we have less diseases and in average live longer. No need for moral or conspiratorial theories.

Uranium at 120 meter

Meir Dagan, ex chief of Special Projects (aka Mosad) is now in the drilling rights business. Gingko is a small company that joined Urieli (a small contractor from Herzliya that built the Tnuvot Wastewater Treatment Plant) to form Gulliver (what a pompous name!) that has won a few drilling rights in the Mediterranean and the Aravah Desert. The Arava's water is radioactive, and it is known that there are phosphate deposits with uranium in several layers. Can this deposit be exploited? I think there are technologies of injecting solvents into the rock and pump it up to the surface. Is it profitable? Will Israel subsidize uranium mining? Gingko is asking investors to give it money. Will I live long enough to see the fruits of Gingko?

HaAretz: Journalism Bizarre

It is bizarre to find an ugly antisemitic caricature in the pages of my wife's daily extremist left-wing fishwrap (HaAretz) but it is even more bizarre to read that the author is a New York Jew and this is his contribution to the Israeli Antisemitic Caricatures Competition. It appears there is such a thing.

Thinking it over, it is not really so bizarre. Antisemitic literature always gave me a huge ego-bust: according to it we Jews (moi!) had a mysterious magnetic power that attracts gold to our pockets, we (Yo, Sí Señor!) can control presidents and dictators from behind the scenes, we (aka "J") have such a powerful sexuality (Exactly! That's me!) that blonde virgins cannot resist our advances, et cetera. Sometimes it seemed that antisemitic literature was not the masturbatory phantasy of sickly pervert antisemites, but Jewish adolescents like me.

Well, THIS specific caricature is product of Jewish phantasy, so it may follow that all or most of it is. Or much of it. May be some of it. Who knows?

Haredi Kindergarten Project

Bney Brak, a Haredi Kindergarten. Large four stage building, they want to add two floors. The neighborhood is a slum near the Industrial Area. Fat women with shiny plastic parookes, unfinished walls, dangerous badly built staircase, not very clean. Beautiful Jewish children in dirty rags walking around the playground like drugged zombies, indifferent to us. The rav (pic) very knowledgeable about building and knowing exactly what he wants from me. They want to do it at minimum expense, without a contractor, lowest quality construction possible. While I am strongly convinced that this institution is in a sacred mission for the survival of the Jewish people, they are achieving what no other nation can do (that is a growing population), one cannot but observe that from zero distance it is most depressing, smelling of raw sewage, with unkept, abulic children. People idealizes the schtetl, but it must have been a cheerless place.

Jamming in Tel Aviv

Assaf Adiran. The critics are divided but I think he is not bad.