Chinese Beef

The Shomron is at peace and the Palestinians have been - as of today - pacified. I like to visit their villages and buy my groceries there. Grocers greet me in Russian, some of their clients are Russian Jews living in the area. Food is half price in the Palestinian areas than in Israel proper and it appears that that it is more open to imports than we are, because I find the most exotic stuff there. Yesterday I found Chinese halal frozen beef together with New Zealand lamb and Brazilian cuts. It seems perfectly good.

Amazing: a few years ago I wrote an article wondering if the Chinese nation will be able to feed itself (it was then uncertain), now they are out-competing traditional meat exporting countries. They have learnt to raise cattle and they have established the cold chains necessary for its distribution. I see the end of an era: Argentine cattle industry based on rich extensive pastures is doomed. The price of the land in Argentina will necessarily fall because there is not much else to do in the pampas.

It is wonderful how fast this is happening. Argentines eating Chinese meat.

Feeling Overwhelmed

I have written many times that I am the most overworked person in Kever Benjamin City, having lost control of my schedule, projects and the collection of my debts. I was feeling so lonely in my constant state of harassed confusion, because everybody I meet seems so composed, organized, focused and so totally in control.

The NYT reports: "For many young people, serious stress starts before college. The share of students who said on the survey that they had been frequently overwhelmed by all they had to do during their senior year of high school rose to 29 percent from 27 percent last year."

Well, that is OK for the students. They have to learn how to deal with stress, how to cope in modern life. They should feel overwhelmed by the homework we force them to do. On the other hand, we teachers should be allowed to live serene, meditative, worryless lives, writing our embellished memories of how things should have been.

Escape from TASE

Foreign and Israeli funds are selling off and taking their money overseas. Last year, TASE's turnover halved. the buyers have fled. The reason is the Arab Spring marking the region with a red Danger stamp, and the social turbulence in Israel, which I dismissed but foreign investors and their computers interprete as instability. I cant take seriously protests because the Pesek Zman candy which is sold cheaper in New Jersey than in Tel Aviv. 30% of local pension funds's money is invested in foreign markets, and that money is missing in TASE. Today was particularly bad day. I have been trapped, maybe, in a falling market.

Barbarossa

I buy small things like battteries from a mountainous red head of a man on Rotshschild Str. The small shop is full of a disordered mix of electronic trash, like a Persian bazaar. The gingerhead giant looks like a Scottsman from the Highlands, but je is a pious long-bearded Persian Jew. There is a chair outside of the shop, on the street, where his elderly Father uses to spend the sunny afternoons. Although I am the most busy man in Kever Benjamin City, having reached the status of a senile great-grandfather, I enjoy the privilege of starting uninvited conversations with total strangers. Thus I got to knew that the real color of the beard of this devote Persian is white (I asked), and he uses henna to achieve that carrot red hue. This is common among Middle East old men, but I know of no other with such a fantastic beard.

The man has many worries, apart from the taxman (he sells only for cash). His daughter has finished the religious girl school and has to get married. They connected with a suitable yeshive-bocher but the boy demanded the down payment of an apartment for the couple. Barbarrosa has not the required amount so they went to the Rabbi. The Rabbi mediated and contacted several gmach Charity Funds dedicated to marrying off kosher meydele, and the sum was reduced to 30,000 shekel (about 8,000 dollars). Which Barbarossa says he hasnt, so the daughter is still a spinster.

Meditating on this issue, I envy Barbarossa. In his world, the marrying off his daughters is construed as a monetary arrangement, the discussion is about money and never about... that Western invention of love. All the family is involved in getting the money demanded by the future husband, and not only them, the Rabbi and the community. They debate the amount, the timing and so on, the bocher dominating the discussion with his material demands and the family trying to negotiate a reasonable arrangement. I think this bargaining is beautiful and effective, the bachur gets closely aquainted with the family from a powerful position, that of the buyer, and mutual obligations are being formalized in a nuptial contract, the ketubah. The beauty of the thing is that while bargaining about money, they are getting to know each other - the boy, the girl, the parents, the community - that leads to the mutual accomodation that any succesful marriage is, and to the blood contract that makes each one member of the family responsible for the others.

I compare this process with the gehennon (inferno) of a lonely girl, without the support of her parents and family and community, setting out in a bar to get to know boys and trying to establish mutual arrangements and obligations. My heart fills with pity when I see these good Jewish girls facing the Chateau-type bastards in the "meat market" and fighting valiantly for the right of a family. We have left them alone and unprotected. Western society has destroyed the traditional protective frameworks and has abandoned its young to their weak devices and inexperience. May be the West is in transition towards better social arrangements in the future, but as for now, my lifetime, it is a sink of death. I hope some Js will be among the fortunates that cross these murderous mid-times and emerge safely on the other side, two hundred years in the future.

David Grossman Cannot Breath Israel's Air Anymore

Our leading liberal has a front page article on HaAretz whose objective is prove the world that he, the pure David Grossman, is not like us, those detestable Israeli Jews. An Arab criminal was caught by the police after infiltrating from Gaza into Israel and was taken for a ride in closed police cars and verbally treated unkindly. Grossman feels that he cannot live anymore in a such an unliberal country, he feels that the air is polluted and he cannot breath here.

Liberals in general are well to do middle class, who feel secure in their situations and so they tend to dismiss the fears of more conservative folk. Really, what can a bloody Arab criminal infiltrator do to mighty Israel? If he is left to roam free in Israel, will Israel collapse? Me Met? = Who died? he asks, in the sense what is the big deal with one little Arab "refugee" in addition to the million and half we already have living here? Why cannot be simply admitted in Israel? Why are we so evil? How can an ethical person live here with these bestial Jews?

My temperament is even more liberal than Grossman, who after all has fought Israel's wars and lost his son Uri (pic) when he was killed by the Arabs. The difference is in the perspective: he perceives Israel as a very strong, stable, robust State, that nothing can harm, while I see it as a struggling miniature refugee community permanently menaced by worldwide boycotts and condemnations, and by hundreds of thousands (yes!) missiles and shortly by nuclear weapons.

My heart bleeds with Grossman, but I want to live.

Too bad we Zionists want to be like all other peoples, and be allowed to do the same things they do. "Be allowed" is a slip of my tongue, what we want is not having to ask for the permission of anyone and never have to apologize for being alive.

The Poor Are Poor Because They Are Distracted

Princeton researchers have discovered that the poor are poor and make bad decisions not because of some inborn defect in their mental equipment nor God Forbid!, IQ. Simply, the poor are distracted and cannot focus on their real problems.

Obviously, if they only could concentrate or made to focus, poverty would disappear from the face of the Earth.

The researchers asked shoppers at a New Jersey mall to handle the following decision: Have your faulty car repaired for either $150 or $1,500. While the participants were considering how to decide, they were given simple cognitive tasks like solving puzzles. It was expected that the stress from contemplating the $1,500 expense would hurt performance. They were right. But participants with above-average incomes succeeded in their tasks under both scenarios, while those with average or low incomes did worse as repair costs climbed. Even the prospect of spending any money at all damaged the ability of low-income earners to think rationally.

May be less TV could help them (we have no TV at home). But I'm not convinced. This distraction thing - while true - is just another mental trick to avoid saying: the poor (in general) lack the equipment to get rich. The required equipment is a functioning brain, which we come with from the merging of our parent's ovum + sperm.

Börse Frankfurt Sentimentanalyse: Es wird ungemütlich für die Bären

Paradoxically, those dour unsentimental German bankers love analysing the sentiments of their Burse. Today's mail deals on the bears's feelings. I too wonder how those Black Forest's bears are feeling when waiting for Deutsche Bank's Herr Pierre De Wreck to take his morning paper from the silver tray.

Quant investing is wrong

After five years of studying the quant investing phenmena, I arrived to the conclusion that it is based on a mistake. The stock exchange generates immense quantities of numbers which can be graphed and processed, and one can calculate averages, B&S and all kind of correlations and indices. This property of the stock market that it is amenable to mathermatical manipulation generates the wrong impression that the market is ruled by mathematical laws. And that using math and statistics, we can "control" or predict what will happen. This is a mistake.

The problem is that the market is full of people who knows to use mathematics and is using it all the time. Math is fundamental to calculate compound interests, amortization, present value of a cash stream and so on. The numbers obtained ib this type of math are 100% true and reliable. But these highly numerate people tend to fall into the mental trap of thinking that the mass of financial data that the markets are vomiting out by the second is of the same nature and quality, that applying the Black and Scholes equation produces numbers of the same worth as applying the compound interest formula. But these are two completely different class of numbers.

If I am at it, lets notice that the newspaper headline method of investing is even less valuable. Today there is uncertainty if Greece will be able to pay debts due and the market value of some unrelated entity, say Teva Pharm, sinks 5%. Tomorrow there is a rumor that Greece will pay this month's coupons, so Teva rises. Some investors dont believe that there is any linkage, but they do believe in "sentiment" which is controlled, so they believe, by the headlines.

So what works? Inside information works. Knowledge of a particular industry or sector works. Hard work works.

Koko's Early Films

Koko is now an international rock star but we old Jews remember where she started her career. It was in "The Monster Walks" featuring Mischa Auer, in 1932. It is a film extremely cheaply done, even by poverty row standards of the time. This completely forgettable film features Koko the Talking Gorilla in a cage in the basement as well as someone who goes around strangling people through walls with a massive set of fake ape hands. The critics recommend that "you should avoid this movie at all costs unless it is the last movie on earth you have not seen and you absolutely have nothing better to spend your time on, like a root canal." I make that extensive to all Mischa Auer oeuvre, who was a good Jew but horrible "artist".

Happy Birthday President Mugabe

Kever Benjamin City loves old people and this year we are celebrating Mugabe's 88th Birthday. He is "fit as a fiddle" and sharp as a knife: "I have died many times - that's where I have beaten Christ. Christ died once and resurrected once." After 32 years in power, he is seeking re-election in polls due before 2013. What is his secret? He loves beautiful women (see proof in pic). He will never die.

Israeli BioScience Potential

I'm watching Protalix, my carrot-media drug development startup investment. Nobel Prize winner Kornberg says (to Globes) that "I have high hopes for Protalix. It has created an important niche for itself, and is being managed properly."

Why has the FDA been giving it problems?

"There have not been any serious problems. The FDA even requested that development be accelerated when there was a shortage of the product. Only when the shortage ended did the FDA request additional information. Protalix is now on the verge of receiving FDA approval. "

I am losing 35% on Protalix but there is hope at the end of the tunnel. Kornberg has recently joined OphthaliX Inc., Can-Fite BioPharma Ltd.'s (TASE:CFBI) spin-off in the ophthalmic industry. OphthaliX develops ophthalmic products, and the Dry Eye Syndrome product is especially exciting because it is almost ready for market.

"I am sure this is just the tip of the iceberg, because these receptors have many implications," Kornberg says. "Can-Fite might create additional spin-offs in new areas in the future. I have not spoken with the company about this, but I know they are aware of the potential. In many cases, Dry Eye Syndrome is inflammatory. Today, it is believed that cancer also begins with inflammation. It may take some changes in molecules to realize the full potential of the drug in the future."

Fock you Kornberg. Now I'm attracted to the idea of getting MORE loans and invest inthese startups. Ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo.

Operation Shylock

The last Greek crisis had jolted financial markets all over the world but now sentiment about Europe has improved. As the immediate danger to the euro recedes, and there is a sense of a political will to reform, things will start to improve. This week, TASE too has started to rise. Maybe taking that loan and buying stocks will prove in the end the right decision. Paying back the loan is very heavy. Collecting debts owed to me (my consulting fees) is most difficult but it has to be done mercilessly. Operation Shylock´s commander speaking here.

Paying Back Loans

The loan trick my Bank played on me, giving a new loan while promisng that it will merge it will the old one, ended in my having to pay back two loans at the same time. It is very heavy but sure it concentrates one's mind! I had to focus in completing standing projects and most importantly, on getting paid. Getting paid is an art, comparable to getting laid. The Client desires/needs one thing: the final and definitive signature of the regulator. All the intermediate steps are of no real interest to the Client, they are obstacles toward the goal of getting thepermit signed and sleep without further worry. The engineer, J, is a disgusting instrument he is forced to deal with, a hateful bearer of the celestial regulator's demands.

Since I know how difficult, lenghty and uncertain is the final signature, I want to make sure that I get paid for my work and make the Client sign a contract detailing what I am supposed to do and when I am supposed to be paid. Most of the time I cannot even get an advance, because the Client wants the permit and will not pay a cent for a mere promise. He wants to have something going on to show for his money, so I agree that the first payment will be at the submittal of the documents. This is a mistake.

After much work I am ready to submit and want to my advance. The Client does not pay, he says that submittal is nothing, he hired me not for making submittals but for the permit. At this point I say no advance, no submittal. But I have invested much work in the process so I am in a weak position and accept a token payment. The regulator out-of-hand rejects the submittal he has not bothered to open, and demands to have a conference with me. He demands a presentation show, which gives him the opportunity to play the judge and humiliate me in front of his colleges. And so on for months.

After many months of hard work, the Client starts to feel that the golden permit is about to materialize, so his refusal to pay is hardening till the very end. I am so involved in the process that I cannot stop and work like hell for no money. The Client starts to reject my phone calls and he is never available.

At last, after months of work, the permit arrives. The Client hides it and lies saying that he did not receive it. He needs me like a hole in the head. Always pestering him. I have to send a letter retiring my documents and demand the Ministry to freeze his permit. But the Ministry bureaucrats will not help me, for them the process has been concluded correctly and dont want to start again. The payment is between you and the Client. Leave us alone. Desperate, I write a letter revealing that some calculating was wrong and I am asking to re-submit the documents and drawings. I send the letter to the Client, who realizes that his permit is about to evaporate and he has to start the Via Dolorosa from the start. He makes an effort to renegotiate the contract and avoind paying the whole sum. I am so fed up with it all and I am not really interested in declaring that I made a mistake, so I accept.

A public employee be, never a self-employed consultant.

If you insist in masochism, follow Ringer's Looking Out for Number One book. He calls the process I just described "commissiondectomy". The Client will do everything to avoid paying the middleman or the engineer. Ringer got paid (and made his millions) by establishing his superiority in knowledge and capability, by painfully documenting the work done, and by instilling the fear of Hell in the black hearts of his Clients.

What I am thinking when I am not thinking?

Saturday spent alone in my bat-cave preparing exercises in viscosity and solving stupid flow profile parabolas. The imbecile of Berkovich, my abominable opponent in the Jerusalem trial, says that water meters are more precise when the flow is turbulent. Yet at the end of the day I have made up my mind and am full of energy: It has been almost a year that I gave a thought to increasing my portfolio and I am going to focus on it.

Clal Insurance: I am losing 40%. Nochi Dankner was about to sell the company so I bought a lot. I went up then it desinflated. He failed in finding a buyer.

Bezeq: Losing 10%. Netaniyahu has triggered a ferocious competition in the cellular market and prices (and profits) have been falling. Partner's situation is even worse: minus 40%.

POT the Potach company. The bloody leftists imposed a huge tax on the company for exploiting natural resources, and they want it to restore the Dead Sea to its primeval deadness. Fock them.

Israel Corp.: Here I am losing the most. 40%. There is no reason for it but the HaAretz led campaign against concentration of wealth, power and political influence in a few hands. Investors are afraid of this corporations because they may be dismantled. Should tghey boil in sulphur for an eternity.

Tau: This financial magic how gave me nice dividends but then I failed to sell it immediately and now is 87% down.

Protalix: 35% down. They have a product but the FDA asked for more research. It may return.

Internet Gold: 40% down. I dont know why.

All in all I am some 30% down from my maximum a year ago in shekel terms. But the shekel was devalued from 3.20 a dollar a year ago to 3.75 shekel a dollar today. The meaning is that I need a 50% increase to reach my maximum of a year ago. Not massaging my portfolio has caused its shrinking. Will Europe collapse and we all go to hell or it will slowly recover like the USA? How shall we solve this Ahmedenijad problem? I'll spend once more one - two hours per day meditating on these things.

Tired

A stormy winter night in Kever Benjamin City. We had a family dinner and came home walking like a drunk, I was so tired that could not walk straight. I did not feel I had a specially tiring day, yet it must have been. Dreamt that the Water Corp. came to see me and wanted me back. I felt little and happy. Now, Shabbath 0500 AM, on to prepare classes.

Curing Homosexuality

Prof. Greg Cochran (pic), having finished decrypting Ashkenazi intelligence, is after homosexuals. In West Hunter blog, he has posed a clever theory that homosexuality is caused by a parasite. Well, yes, one can visualize a tiny AIDS like organism that, when injected into male babies, turns them ito homosexual men. Those parasited men develope increased sexual appetite and maintain an exceptionally intense senxual life with a gourmet hunger for very young boys. The parasite is transmitted by sexual contact, probably by semen or blood of faeces. Turning an infant into a homosexual converts him into an active diffuser of the parasite.

How is that some boys turn homosexuals and others- even identical twin brothers – do not? The boy who grows up to be a homosexual has been infected with the parasite at an early age. Since we are visualising a parasite transmitted by sexual contact, it can be assume that the babies who are to be future homosexuals have been in close contact with a phaedophile who infected them. People has instintive horror of pedophilia and it is severily punished. The people is always right.

Greg Cochran half-proposes a three-some life cycle like the the bug that causes mice to become sexually excited by cats and be eaten by them, facilitating the diffusion of the bug. If bizarre things like that are possible in real life, then why not a Cryptosporidium-human-parasite mechanism? If so, we could start searching for some tiny organism parasiting Cryptosporium. Crypto’s life cycle includes transmission by faeces. If we are talking about a parasite that rides on the shoulders of Crypto, then homosexuality exists mostly in areas where the population carries Crypto.

It could be easy to overlay a map of frequency of homosexuality in human populations on a map of frequency of Crypto parasitosis. If it does not work, superposition of homosexuality frequency maps (I never saw one) with maps of other parasites (the WHO has them).

What would be the social consequences if Greg Cochran's theory was proved as right? A vaccine against homosexuality would follow in about ten years. In the meanwhile, homosexuals would be strictly isolated from children. That they dont want, I presume.

AIDS was identified and “cured” in ten years. If society would recognize homosexuality as the horrible castrating disease it is, it could probably be solved in even less time.

Maybe finding a cure for sheep homosexuality would be less problematic. Improving the profitability of animal husbandry – and it could be done under the radar.

A Nobel Prize may be (or may be not) waiting out there.

On the other hand (unfortunately, I always see other sides of every issue), why cure homosexuality? In the old barrio we had a saying: “Sarna con gusto no pica”. Let them enjoy it.

"Sarna..." means something like "if you enjoy scratching, scabies is no disease". It is from Cervantes.

PS: Dr Greg Cochran wonders why nine years after announcing his theory of sheep/human homosexuality, no one did anything to research it. Elemental, Dr Watson! Deep back in our fish minds, we reproducing males are only too happy of the reduced competition. Let them bugger each other and leave the girls to us!

Klimt the Interior Decorator

Klimt's fascinating images must be enjoyed as wall decorations of public spaces. It is not painting in the rectangular frame format. I dont know if I would like to live in a house decorated by him.

Stress

This morning I went to see a new urgent project in the Azrieli Towers, in Tel Aviv (the statue stands at its entrance). A Hungarian born young chef has bought Sb... Pizza and is transforming it into a fancy restaurant. He desperately needs the designs for Sunday morning. Too much stress for this old man, but I need the money to pay back the bank loans. The bank had said that they would merge old loans at 3% with new loans at 1.5% In fact, I have now both! The Stock Exchange is sinking, Europe is poisoning the financial world.

Multi-Ethnic Israel

I'm the engineer for the Japanika restaurant chain and yesterday I had something to do in the expensive Herzliya Pituach branch. They have two Japanese looking chefs preparing sushi in the front - they are for the show. The waiters are sex-crazed local boys and girls, busy spreading pheromones around. The cooks are adult Oriental Jews while the dishwashers and the cleaning boys - smiling and happy African refugees that work non-stop like posessed demons. The owner is Ashkenazi counting the money in a nearby office. I sampled a hot fried shrimp and it was so full of soya oil that made me almost vomit. There is a 8000 liter fat separator and it is barely large enough. I didnt realize how much soya oil these fancy restaurants consume. We succeed in making junk food even from Japanese raw fish. The place is a gold mine.

Pigs in Space!

Not exactly pigs, but old fashioned Nazis. All this time they have been busy building a huge colony in the dark side of the moon and planning their revenge. A new film shows them in their kitsch.

The Nazis have definitely entered humanity's Jungian collective subconscious. We dream with them, we fantasy with them, we masturbate with them. The murderous seriousness of real Nazis has evaporated and in its place we have a phantasyworld of sartorial clowns. Their defeat couldnt be more complete.

Formation of Ethnic States in the Middle East

The MIddle East is undergoing the same nation-forming process that was completed in Europe after the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Ethnic minorities are being cleansed out and strong ethnically homogeneous states are emerging. Now we are witnessing that process in Syria. It is a 90% Sunni country, with a 10% Alawi minority. Nowadays the Army has split along ethnic lines, and the Alawi group is fighting the deserters and shooting at the population. The 90% Sunni are boiling in anger, and there are only two possible outcomes:

(1) The Army massacres the rebels and Alawi domination emerges stronger than before, or
(2) The Army loses control, a popular rebellion institutes street terror and the Alawi have to run for their lives.

There are only two possible neighbor countries where Alawis may seek refuge: Turkey and Israel. Turkey is preparing large refugee camps near the Syrian border. We are mining the border so no one will pass. We are an ethnic nation and do not want two million more Arabs here.

Once completed the formation of ethnic states in the Middle East, the area will be ready for peace. Like Europe.

Black and Scholes is Wrong

Are Black and Scholes and their equations to blame for the financial meltdown we are living these last five years? The Guardian writes that B&S created the derivatives market and a pletora of evermore complex financial instruments that were based on false assumptions.

The B&S equation presumes that past volatility has predictive power. i never understood why it should be so. Yet I made some money using it till about four years ago when realized that it stopped working. Looking back, it is incredible how eveybody believed that future could be calculated precisely. Many still do.

I think that the stock market is a battleground, setting minds against cheating minds. My ethanol-fueled mind cannot out-think those genius giants fighting for their lives on the field, so the outcome is unknowable. To me, at least.

Am I a Proletarian?

It was Marx who invented the proletarians. Under feudalism, each family owned the means of production: a loom, a mill, a smithery, a bakery, a watchmaking shop. In capitalist production, artisans cannot compete against large factories so they lose their livelihoods. To produce, people needs access to the means of production: machines, distribution chains, patents, etc. Those who own those things employ those who dont and extract a profit from their work.

Do I own the means of production? No, I have no machines nor patents nor anything. I have to sell my work to those owning the means of production and who can make my work useful. I am, by definition, a proletarian.

Addition: One problem to this definition is that about half of my work cannot be classified as productive since its only purpose is to fulfil regulatory requirements. The capitalist owners of the means of production - chicken farms, industrial factories, restaurants, catering services, etc. - need to comply with regulations including submittal of complicated documents, which I do. They need me to be able to operate, so in that narrow sense, I am productive. Do they exploit me? My clients feel otherwise, that I am exploiting them and producing useless documents.

Another half of my work - in the University - consists in providing some engineering techniques to young people and grant them certification to exercise the civil engineering trade. Am I productive? I think so. Am I being exploited by the owner of the means of production (the University of Ariel)? In this case, the staff is well organized in unions and extract good conditions from the employer. The employer transmits this cost to the State and to the tuition paying students.

Another half of my work (I work much more than full time) is bona fide hydraulic design. In this case, my employers are contractors and builders, who have the financial and physical capability of building up a project. Do they exploit me? Sure they try - for them, I am an input whose cost must be reduced to zero.

The Little Red Book

Yesterday I discovered the unsurprising fact that Mao's Little Red Book is a copy of a Stalinist Red Book. Mao got all his ideas and even the format of his bestseller from the Russians. The 1954 edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia's article on Karl Marx had been published in the small pocketbook format in Russian and then in many other languages.

I was travelling on the 149 bus line to the Port of Tel Aviv for a consulting job, and the old Russian Jew next to me was reading the Red Book of Marx. Since I talk to strangers all the time (and accept candy too) we commented on the divine authority the Encyclopedia used to have and how forgotten it is today. The book quotes young Marx: "Everything existing has to be mercilessly criticised". And he started by attacking the most respected German philosopher of his time, Hegel.

It appears that Marx was unaware of his self - a hyper-aggressive atheist Jew in a Prussia trying desperately to emerge from weakness and poverty, and the impression his vitriolic criticism was creating among his professors, because after his Ph.D. he applied for a teaching position.

Marx was begging to be rejected. He was.

The Great Racial War

teo commented about the great racial war called WW2.

Germans tried to wipe out the slavs. Got completly crushed. Being a rather generous and gentle man Iosif Djugasvili, the destroyer of the nazi beast, decided not to reply in kind and closed the subject. He said : "Hitlers come and go, but Germany and the German people remain." Jewish commnunity was almost obliterated.

I like teo's wry style and maybe unwittingly he got it right. After the WWII, the question of what to do with the German people was debated. Roosevelt considered de-industrializing Germany and reducing it to a peaceful Ruritania; about the debate in Russia we know little but East Germany was effectively dismantled. There were more extreme proposals too, for sure, but the Germans did little harm to AngloSaxon peoples so they did not develope the amount of fear and hate required to condone their obliteration. Moreover, the AngloSaxons re-industrialized and re-armed Germany and had them ready to re-launch the war against Russia if Russia ever became a nuisance.

The roots of PC antiracism can be found in this great racial war and it is written in the founding documents of the United Nations. But in seventy years anti-racism has turned to something unrecognizable and deals mostly with Africans. African people are insignificant from every point of view and the discrimination they are supposed to be suffering is ridiculous in terms of what "real" racism is. Who cares that there are proportionally few African rocket scientists? I dont. We should spend no time obsessing on that kind of "racism".

Spiritual Progress

I met the Zazen shosu at the "By the Way" restaurant on Route 4 near Raanana Tzafon. He was contemplating a large club sandwich.

- Master, it is the third day that my mind is working on zazen and I feel that I am not progressing.
- Progress! like hastening the coming of the Messiah?
- Yes, like in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress or Saint Augustine's City of God.
- There is no progress in zazen.
- Three days I am non-stop walking and learning. Did I move ahead?
- In zazen, there is only sincerity and persistence. Objectively, you have been walking and learning three days, which is the measure of your zazen progress and your sincerity.
- Shall I be nearer to enlightment a year from now?
- No. You are complete now and will be complete then.
- Shosu, without progress, nothing is worth doing.
- You are getting the idea. Now keep on walking and learning. I'll be merging with this sandwich.

J Roots

A hundred years old photo of J's family. The tall man with the modern hat is my Grandfather Dubche, his wife Anna is the beautiful lady sitting second from left, her mother is next to her. The old Jew sitting second from right is my great-grandfather Abeles, next to him with the silver headed walking stick is his brother. They were deported to Auschwitz in August 1944 and only the blond boy dressed as a sailor, Itzig, returned. He settled and died in Australia. One hundred years after, we are more numerous and wealthier than in the pic. Haman the Evil One lost this round too.

Where I discover that London is nearer to Tel Aviv than to Paris

A new car was born into the family, forcing a redistribution where I got the oldest Subaru as it behooves. The strongest and clearest radio station on it is the BBC from faraway London. How could it be?

I had thought that the British Empire had been long dismantled. Wrong. The Brits are still our next door neighbours, holding on firmly in the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia, occupying some 500 sq.km. BBC transmitters are on British soil and there is nothing but open sea between them and Tel Aviv. So I enjoy excellent reception, dubious programmes.

Gas and oil has been discovered by Noble Energy Corp. in the Eastern Mediterranean and the rights are shared by the sovereign countries bordering it, so the Brits must be partners in this venture. The Turks are militarily menacing Noble Energy towers so Israel and Cyprus are preparing for their defense. There are rumors that Israel has been allowed to station warplanes and ships in Cyprus, which is member of the EU and NATO. And we have the Brits literally in the middle of it all, and the UK + USA is NATO.

I'm reading a book on Ibn Saud and the creation of Saudia. It is wonderful how the Brits were involved in it from the beginning, providing finance and leadership (for example, Philby, Lawrence). Two hundred years after, the Brits are still the same Brits and fully engaged in the evolution of the Middle East. They are still all over the world.

To this born Anglophile, these are wonderful news. Do London theater companies show in Akrotiri? How do I buy tickets?

Zsemm

- Teacher, what is the meaning of zen?
- Meditation.
- Zazen?
- Meditation sitting in a chair.
- What is its goal?
- The non-thinking.
- How may one achieve non-thinking by thinking?
- Just do it.
- Yesterday you said I should walk. Where to?
- The universe is boundless so intrinsically there is nowhere to walk to. Just walk.
- When shall I have my enlightment?
- The universe is timeless so "when" is meaningless. Enlightment will come on time, there is no such thing as too late. Keep moving.

Pic.: Master Lloyd Blankfein, the laughing buddha (looks like Papa J).

"How to be a Black Woman" Lecture

Anon mentioned a new concept "Corrective Rape": What is it? It appears that corrective rape is an innovative educational technique developed by South African professors that teaches girls to become well-rounded Black Women. Like Domestic Economy, African Cooking, Relationship Psychology, or the soft porn course of Maintaining the Flame of Love.

Khena, a recently graduated South African woman, describes her experience. "I had boyfriends but I never became sexually intimate with them. I was raped by my ex-boyfriend because I refused him sex. The last time I was raped, I was 18 years old, it was a family friend who said to me that I had to be taught how to be a black woman."

Fiesta para los Ojos

The Zazen Master Speaks

Fresh winter morning and the zazen master receives at his ancestral table of the Rothschild St. sidewalk coffee, next to the Bank.

- Teacher, what is zazen?
- I dont know.
- Would studying Zazen add to my life?
- I dont know.
- Then why people study Zazen?
- I dont know.
- I walk through life feeling inferior. Worse, I know I am inferior because I am incompetent in everything.
- We all are. Thingies change all the time, and the moment you start getting it you find yourself facing a different thingie.
- How could I feel well with myself being incompetent?
- You dont draw your sense of yourself from being something. All somethings are impermanent. But you walk and learn.
- Shall I feel better walking and learning?
- I dont know.
- I'll still be an incompetent, a walking and learning incompetent.
- Yes. A non-stop walking and learning whatever. You dont care.
- But I care!
- In Zazen nothing matters. You dont care. I dont care. Now go on walking and learning.

The Master has a strong accent. His Zazen sounds like "djemm" - "confiture" in Hungarian. He couldnt care less. Pic.: Danny Rogoff z"l

Egypt Jails Foreign Agents

Egyptian military government has repeatedly pointed to "foreign hands" behind Egypt's problems throughout the past year. The population loves these shady conspiracy theories and phantasizes in fighting foreign devils. The most active foreign subversives, the Americans NGOs, believed that their alms would buy them immunity. About six Americans have been arrested with forty local employees, charged with subversion of Egypt's democratic process. Myself also find American subversives, naive and sincere, most irritating.

Arab Countries Sinking into Chaos

Egypt, the largest Arab country, has collapsed and is functioning no more. The Sinai pipeline, which also supplies gas to Jordan, has come under attack 12 times since president Mubarak was toppled in 2011. Egypt is unable to continue supplying and earning money from its gas. Syria is in civil war, half of the army deserted and fights the regime. This turmoil has knocked out our nearest enemies, leaving standing only Iran.

Greens Hurting Israel's Economy

The Minister Landau is learning Israeli reality and dares to tell it in public. He has accused the environmentalists of causing electricity shortage in Israel and the need to burn coal instead of gas, poisoning the environment. True. The Ashdod electricity generation plant project, to be based on natural gas, was sabotaged and ultimately abandoned because of ferocious opposition of the Israeli nature loving movement. The minister for environment Ordan (left pic) capitulated to the greens and sank the project. Now we are burning coal and breathing in the particles, and on top of it, the price of electricity is doubling these days.

Landau (pic right) is the only politician linking the housing shortage in Israel and the high prices of apartments with the Greens that have been systematically killing construction projects all over Israel to protect nature and large create "green lungs" - to allow "breathing" in this overcrowded Israel.

Yet even Landau did not dare to accuse the greens of our loss of Makhteshim to the Chinese. The chemical company in the Negev was so harassed during the last ten years that they decided to move to China. No one talks about that.

El Hüesero

Western Hunter the blogger remembers his friend the witch doctor (in fact, his friend was a patient of the good doctor). I lived many years among non-Western peoples but never had the patience to explore their imbecile spiritual universe. When I worked in the Province of Corrientes I used to patrol like a fool the Ibera wetlands half in my official mission of controlling the carpincho skin trade, half trying to trap carpinchos for my self, and met many families living in the estero. They knew many clever tricks to prosper in the sand islands and never felt I was superior in any way. Yet I had a very wide range of knowledge, so made them many small favors like reading users instructions of drugs and remedies, and telling them things of general knowledge but that were unavailable in their environment. Those were times when even transistor radios were unknown in those parts. Soon they came to me and made me talk endlessly about everything, asking me about the Jewish religion, but after many turns the issue came to some physical ailment. Every boy-scout knows how to fix a broken finger or arm, how to stop a bleeding and so on. Soon they were calling me behind my back El Hüesero, the Bone Man, something like a witch doctor without the spiritual jumbo-mumbo. They brought me presents like a big fish, a live lamb or some other animal, and I shamelessly accepted all. I lived then with a mulatita who made wonderful soups from those fishes and unkosher animals. Pic. My parents visiting me. Yapeyu was a Jesuit mission where San Martin was born. His "Casa Natal" didnt exist, the place had maybe ten miserable ranchos and a museum (the big building behind) housing El Libertador's sword.

Argentines Replaced by Grotesque Critters

It has been a long time that I have visited Argentina. Lately, re-established contact via Facebook with friends and their families, and they sent me pics. Something terrible has happened to the Argentine people, they are no more, a strange race has taken their place. No picture shows a typical porteño pituco (well dressed resident of Buenos Aires) but grotesquely obese creatures in gigantic T shirts with futbol clubs's colors. In my time, an Argentine over the age of 12 would die before being seen in shorts ("pantalones cortos"!!) or without a fancy Italian silk tie, yet now everybody is wearing tent-like blue-jeans and ties are unknown. Buenos Aires today is not the Paris of the River Plate. But Paris is not Paris anymore.

You know you have been too long in Israel when...

... you start to like the sound of Hebrew.

Tel Aviv as Europe's Technology Hub

Zionism's success is surpassing Dr Chaim Weizmann's wildest phantasy. Weizman was Israel's first President and established a small research laboratory in Rehovot, a goat-cum-Beduin-infested shit-hole. The Weizman Institute had its first Nobel Prize winner last year. But who would have imagined that the Wall Street Journal will seriously consider Tel Aviv as Europe's Technology Hub, far ahead of London and Berlin?

According to Tel Aviv major, Ron Hulda'i, it is the ''Field of Dreams'' model. If you build it, they will come. It is no coincidence that Tel Aviv was recently named the world¹s best gay city. "It is about building an environment that is supportive," he said. Young digital entrepreneurs tend to be counter-cultural— attracted to cities that are vibrant, diverse and international. One third of the city is under the age of 35, and there is one bar for every 200 residents.

If the number of bars per capita is the relevant index, Dublin should have more hi-tech companies than Tel Aviv. But Tel Aviv hosts more than 600 early stage companies. Access to venture capital is, per capita, 20-fold greater in Israel than in the rest of Europe. "If you take the amount of VC per capita, in Europe, it is $7. In the U.S. it is $72. In Israel it is double that," Jan Müehlfeit, Microsoft's European chairman asserted last year.

For an old and tired Jew, born following the Holocaust, this is a miracle. Some (like Ahmedenijad) say that the five or six million Jews are America's brain, but who dared to imagine that Tel Aviv would be the continent of Europe's brain? We are arriving to a point where writing about Zionism's success does not add to our security. I think that Lewontin and Gold tried to demonstrate that we are all the same because it is fatal for us that the dumb masses learn how different we are. January has been very rainy and cold here. I planned to go to the theatre in London, but I had to work extra-hard to pay debts. February will be easier and the March, I hope, bearable. I am still 20% below my top.

Philosophy of the Orange

There are times when you have to pick yourself up and continue walking.

RussAtom Bought by ECI from Petach Tikva

Something like that. The Russian State monopoly that owns and manages Russia's nuclear power plants is buying Israeli electronics company ECI. I worked at the ECI campus in Petach Tikva (they paid on time, which is J's first criterion if a company is healthy). The cafeteria was full of attractive Russian Jewish girls (second criterion). Maybe the Russians regret that they left them out and want them back. Or they want a reason to visit Tel Aviv beaches.

Supermarket in Little Baghdad

Buildings have lives of their own. I was called to inspect an large supermarket in Ramat Gan peopled by Iraqi refugees of the fifties (known as Little Baghdad) with chronic unsolvable plumbing problems - odors and humidity. It is a non-kosher grocery store full of tempting Russian vodkas and heyzer sousages, but manfully I took the treifl assignment. It is a sixty years old building, in a very bad condition. The asbest cement and cast iron pipes have been repaired and modified - it is a dark humid jungle inside, with hanging fungi and slimy reptiles. After walking up and down the fourteen floors and opening all false roofs with the building manager (pic, an athlete in his seventies), looking down from the 14th floor I saw a small hidden patio at third floor. It has been raining and it appeared flooded: somehow, through the unseen kishkes of the building the water emerged in the supermarket. The man said that the office floor is owned by a crime family and he will not approach the place. Courageously I passed alone through successive security doors and cameras, and met a tiny old Iraqi Jew with transparent pergament skin and a ridiculous coal-black hairpiece, with a miniature X legged mummified wife. The man was extremely polite, took the keys and led me to the hidden patio, aknowledged the problem and promised to waterproof it. No threat to my life was aired. One of the questions in Murray's new class quiz asks if one ever worked a day and arrived home dog-tired with an aching body. I did. But being a prole has its rewards: I sent a bill for 400 dollars.