Chinese Agriculture

 China imports 150 million tons of grains per year. It consumes some 700 million tons.  Chinese agriculture's problems are profound, but they are progressing.  

Tehran waterless in the coming summer

 

The Yemenites On Us

 An hour ago, the Houti (a Shia Sect) shot a ballistic missile on Central Tel Aviv.  This piece fell on a School near Jerusalem. It looks clean inox steel, not like a filthy Yemenite ballistic missile.  I think it is from our interceptor. We did nothing to those Arab fanatics, and try to ignore them. 

Oriental Phantasies

 

"A View for the future" is a cold, reasoned study of Israel's situation in 2030 (five years from now). Basically, the Palestinian author errs in extrapolating the trends of this time and does not take into account that everything is changing and that we, Israeli Jews, are the most dynamic force in the world and most certainly will not watch passively and dissolve like other "colonial" projects. 

A Sioux in 1810 could have written a similar scenario of the natives overwhelming the small American settlements on the sea board, but he too would have been wrong. The settlers did not sit quietly in Boston and Manhattan; they expanded inexorably till they conquered the Far West and then annexed half of Spanish Mexico and bought Alaska. Their momentum took them to the  Caribbean islands and to occupy the Spanish Philippines.  Fifty years later, they occupied Japan and South Korea. Then, the Yanquis took a rest, and the future is unknowable. In the same way, we cannot imagine the fate of this small but dynamic Jewish nucleus in the Middle East.   

US Defense Secretary Hegseth

Commonplace among GWOT veterans that fought against jihadists abroad. It’s a symbol of defiance against the bad guys.

See also his Hebrew tattoo: ישוע  =   JESUS.

Hegseth is a surname of Norwegian origin. The suffix "-seth" or "-set" in Norwegian refers to a settlement or farm, and "Heg-" could be related to a specific geographical feature of that location.

Overweight Jackals

 Tel Aviv and its surrounding areas are seeing a proliferation of wild fat jackals. The animals smell a barbecue and come in from miles away to feast. They also feed in open garbage bins. Jackals are expert hunters of rats and birds, but ours are lazy and overweight. They are known to make loud, high-pitched wailing howls. My auntie, who lived in Palestine before independence, told me about the frightening, outworldy midnight howling jakals on the streets. But I never heard them. 

The North Star

 I was astonished to discover it in the night sky when I was 8 y/o/ in a pioneer summer camp. I had long wondered what was its significance if any. It was autumn.