Hungarian Freedom-Fighters of 1956: Not Antisemites

Russian propaganda presents to this day the Hungarian "Counter-Revolution" of 1956 as basically antisemitic and intending to re-establish Horthy's fascist regime. A recent book (in Hungarian) elaborates a synthesis of the work of Bela Kovrig, a Hungarian sociology researcher, who collected some 1500 questionnaires with data on the fighters that escaped to Austria after the failed revolt.

The demography of the refugees is remarkable: more than half are single men in under 25. 70% declared having taken part in the fighting. One third were students, a quarter workers and 20% professionals. Kovrig estimated that 10% were antisemitic, the rest followed the principle of "Keeping the Revolution Clean" - meaning no antisemitism should be allowed. They tried to create, as far they had a post-revolutionary political program, some kind of Social-Christian regime like that of West Germany at those times.

While the picture that emerges from Kovrig's questionnaires is clear and I believe representative of the actual fighters that escaped to Austria, in later phases of the process there was a re-emergence of older Fascist elements. I remember my parents during those times: we lived in fear. So much so that they left all their possessions - apartment, silver objects inherited from my grandparents, family photographs and who knows what else - and undertook a very dangerous escape from Hungary in war.

War-in-War against the Sufis

Within the long war between the Sunni and the Shi'a branches of the Islamic world, there is an ongoing war against the Sufi interpretation. The massacre that took place in the Sinai last week, more than 300 worshipers gunned down in a mosque, was a Sunni attack against the Sunni (Sufi) people. The Shi'a, in their own sphere, also exterminate the Sufis and destroy their mosques and shrines.


In Lybia, the rebels bulldozed the shrine of al-Shaab al-Dahmani, a revered Sufi sage. In Mali, they demolished mausoleums and libraries in the ancient Saharan town of Timbuktu which were UNESCO world heritage sites. Sufi worship halls have also been turned to rubble in Iran, where the Islamic government is has jailed thousands of Sufi followers. In Egypt, Sufi shrines have been torched and the Sufi chanting ritual called zhikr has been banned.

The Sufis are targets of the fundamentalist Islam that sees their kinder, gentler interpretation of the religion of Mohamed as a challenge to their own rigid orthodoxy. Sufi practices, like the whirling of the Mevlevi dervishes in Turkey, first practiced by Rumi himself, employ music, dance and spiritual recitation to awaken the God who Sufis say is asleep in the human heart. The poems of Rumi in translation are well known and loved in the West. What is unknown is the the bloody persecution of his followers in our days of resurgent, hardened, fanatic Islam.

I think that the pacifist, inner-orientated, purification-seeking philosophy of the Sufi is doomed. The stiffening of the Islam will lead toward its unification and toward a new round of clashes against the Christian world. The contact with this hardened Islam has already induced a hardening of Israeli Judaism, and in the long term, I presume, it will cause the resurgence of a hardened Christianity in the West.

(On the other hand, I always have another hand, the hardening of Israeli Judaism may have internal causes; and the hardening of Western Christianity may never happen.)

300 Sufis Killed in a Sinai Mosque

Discarded shoes of victims remain outside Al-Rawda Mosque in Bir al-Abd northern Sinai, Egypt. a day after attackers killed hundreds of worshippers, on Saturday, Nov. 25, 2017. (AP Photo)

The killers as well the 300 victims were Sunni fanatics. Why then? The attackers follow the strict Wahhabi (Saudi) line while the mosque follows the Sufi tendency. The Sufi are strict Muslims with a penitential, ecstatic, mystical orientation. Sufi means rough, woolen garb, while Saudi princes prefer white galabiya (long shirts) with golden decorations. Reason enough for exterminating each other. Although, who needs reasons? A good war needs no cause (Nietzsche).

The first fully rational beings on the planet

"The first fully rational beings on the planet will surely be artificial intelligence machines" (author).

We should not fear machines that are more intelligent and rational than ourselves, just as we discovered that there is nothing frightening about locomotives that run much faster and are a thousand times more powerful than we are. Someone could build a machine capable of leveling towns, but none one did it. I have a premonition that thinking machines will be used to help seduce women and other sexual activities; after all, everything living organisms do is for reproduction.  

Protest

Manifestación, Antonio Berni, 1934. Foto: Gentileza Malba, Argentina.

Mnangagwa, the "Crocodile," sworn in as Zimbabwe president

Mnangagwa, the "Crocodile".

What can I add? except that I am impressed by his name and his avatar, the crocodile.

"Bibi" sounds babyish to me. It does not even approach the alarming neural impact of "Mnangagwa the Crocodile".

Aunt Genya Dead at 102

Aunt Genya arrived in Mandatory Palestine in the twenties or before from the Soviet Union. For some reason they left the country and lived a few years in Damascus, where she went to school. During the War of Independence, her perfect Syrian Arab became a rare resource and she was recruited into an organization that operated in the neighboring countries. She and her husband Juppah (a Hungarian-speaker)  spent their last years in a kibbutz. She was among the last of Israel's pioneer elite.
The pic is unrelated to her.

The Lebensraum Paradox

I always wondered about Germany's desire for more "living space" in the thirties, that ultimately led - among other motives - to its aggression against Russia. Among the other motives I count "opportunity", that according to Victor Davis Hanson, explains all the wars of the Ancient Greeks on.  Also, Nazis feared Communism, an international movement that saw as its duty to interfere in Germany's internal affairs. But from where the imperative of conquering more space? Germany was a large country, with excellent climate and agricultural lands, and with a rapidly declining population.

I found one possible explanation in Patrick Buchanan's latest article (about the Houtis of all Muslim sects). He mentions facts I had been unaware of. Quote:

Our aim is to “starve the whole population — men, women, and children, old and young, wounded and sound — into submission,” said First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. He was speaking of Germany at the outset of the Great War of 1914-1918. Americans denounced as inhumane this starvation blockade that would eventually take the lives of a million German civilians.

After the Armistice of Nov. 11, 1918, however, the starvation blockade was not lifted until Germany capitulated to all Allied demands in the Treaty of Versailles.

As late as March 1919, four months after the Germans laid down their arms, Churchill arose in Parliament to exult, “We are enforcing the blockade with rigor, and Germany is very near starvation.”

Buchanan holds the Allies responsible for German starvation, which is only half truth. Food was scarce everywhere. Yet that generation of Germans lived with a deep fear of starvation and may have felt that they needed the cereal growing lands in Ukraine and Russia. In spite of the fact that Communist Russia was selling them grains for German industrial products. That may explain the paradox of a rich country with falling population seeking "Lebensraum".

Surviving in an inflated world

Somebody paid 400 million dollars for an ugly painting by Michelangelo. OK, there are many collectors with much money out there and only one Michelangelo. Real estate is expensive beyond imagination, a two room derelict apartment in Tel Aviv sells for one million dollars. Digital tokens like bitcoin are inflated, because anybody who wants to transfer out money from countries like Venezuela and Brazil (and Israel) buys bitcoins and sells it in the USA.

In comparison, commodities and industrial products are stable and cheap, and stocks are reasonably priced. Industrial shares are cheap because they operate in a ferociously competitive environment and hardly survive. Interest rates are lower than the inflation rate, so there is nowhere to put one's savings.

TASE, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, is a failure. This year it is 30% behind the NASDAQ. The best companies, like Mylan, are leaving. Should I leave too?

Young Israeli Poets Believe in God

HaAretz is publishing a laudable anthology of young Israeli poets, edited by Beni Tziffer. The paper is shocked by what they see: The young generation believes in God! This dramatic change parallels the country's political turn to the right, rejecting the godless, leftist, socialist generation of their parents and grandparents.

Poets are important. I understood their worth when their portraits started to appear on Israel's new bank notes, with the despairing Nathan Alterman on the 200 shekel note (57 US$). It is quite possible that Ayala Glick, of the poem right, will decorate the 2,000 shekel note around 2050.

"When God betrayed me"

When God betrayed me the first time,
the leaves did not change their colors,
the cup of tea slowly cooled
no plates were broken

God lies to me with poker face
says that again will be late from the office
while I walk on my toes
to avoid waking

The heavens are lipstick red
the tea boils again
and the leaves
gods.

(J.: Note that gods and leaves sound the same in Hebrew. She was born in 1988 in Jerusalem and served in the elite 8200 intelligence unit. She is working on her doctorate in theoretical physics. Married + 1) 

Terrorist attacks VietNam veteran

David Ramati is an American VietNam veteran who converted and lives in Kiryat Arba near Hebron.

From Arutz 7: “The terrorist drove past me, then made a U-turn, and at that point I understood that he was planning to attack me. I realized that I didn’t have time to draw my gun, so I jumped the fence. While I was in the air [jumping the fence], he managed to run into me with his car.”

Ramati added that just before the terrorist rammed into him, the terrorist smiled at him. “I saw the smile of the terrorist’s face. I told him ‘You’re not going to kill me today.’ I wasn’t afraid.”

Building Israel and Being Built in Israel

I am being pressured to work like a dog and produce more and more plans and designs for Haredi neighborhoods and Samaria. Money is no problem, they want more and they want it now. Now I have to submit a proposal for a synagogue/school in Samaria, it is a complicated topographic situation, I hate to work under pressure and for anxious nudnik Haredim.

The background of this urgency is Trump. After the unbearable political pressures and threats of Barack Obama, we are enjoying a window of opportunity for building in Samaria (quote):

Yesha Council Chairman Hananel Durani (pic). said that there are not enough construction plans in Judea and Samaria, and that there are not enough contingency plans for when the Prime Minister does decide to thaw construction within Yesha communities.

"I do not see the main freeze as a construction freeze; there is a lack of building plans" says Durani when asked about the current construction situation. "Even today, when the freeze breaks, there are not enough plans, so today we have to work very hard, not to wait, to prepare parallel plans and to advance whatever we can," Durani said.

"We have to work very hard", he says, and means this old Jewish engineer.

Chinese Fake Brides

Single men in China are hiring stand-in brides to pacify their anxious parents to show them that they are in a relationship and close to bringing them grandchildren.

Being an old Jew, I identify with Chinese parents, who willingly accept being lied to by their beloved only son, and also to keep up a fake facade of happiness vis-a-vis the neighbors.  Isn't that horrible? The son going to such extraordinary lengths to fake success and happiness ...  to make his parents happy. They take selfies smiling and radiant while inside they are anguished and desperate. And full of shame, hating themselves and the whole universe. Oh, Earth, open up, and swallow me!
 
The Chinese live in a society where they are forced to invest enormous energy in fake courtesy and fake posing, just to be allowed some tranquillity. Since Chinese are basically honest people, they live in permanent  fear of being discovered and publicly shamed. Everybody knows that all around them are faking it and fearing shaming, being all mutual accomplices in faking it. It is no wonder that Chinese escape China as fast as they can to live more honestly and in peace with themselves.

Unhappy Chinese Women

Take a look at the three Chinese women in the pic left. They look terribly unhappy. Why, I wonder?

May be watching that Slovenian beauty queen in the Gucci pseudo-Chinese thing with white mink sleeves eats their jealous hearts out.

If not for a miracle, Hillary Clinton would be walking down the aisle with President Xi and his official wife. Imagine!

Sunni Disarray

Before Bush Sr.'s invasion of Iraq, no one imagined that the ancient Sunni vs Shi'ite religious fracture of the Muslim world had any relevance today. Bush unleashed a chain of development where now there is actual hot war between two well-defined blocks: The Sunni, lead and financed by the Saudi ruling clan, and the Shi'ite, directed from Tehran.

The Sunni rebellion in NorthEast Syria and NorthWest Iraq developed into an independent state, the Islamic State, which imposed rough uncooked Sharia and metastasized into many provinces. It is now beaten and no more. Lebanon, the Christian enclave, has changed into a ferocious Shi'ite entity. It was assumed that Syria, ruled for two generation by the Assad family, was secular and socialist, but it emerged that it was a Sunni country ruled by a Alawi minority. The Alawi never defined to which sect they felt closest. In fact, it was doubtful if they were Muslims at all. With the hardening of positions, the Alawi are now clearly aligned with the Shi'ia.

The same process has turned secular/socialist (Ba'ath) Iraq into a Shi'ia dominated nation, aligned with Iran. And then we have Yemen, which appeared to be homogeneous and Sunni, where the unheard of Huthi rebelled and are turning into Shi'ite allied with Iran.

Iran is developing nuclear weapons and powerful missiles and has declared that they are directed to Israel. The logical strategy for Israel is to seek allies in the Sunni camp. Unfortunately, the Sunni champion - Saudia - is undergoing a violent purge and it may end paralyzed or much weakened. Our neighbors, Egypt and Jordan, and Sunni dictatorships, but they may be hiding pro-Iran dissidents we never thought of.

We can only hope that this internal Muslim struggle never ends and both sides lose. Pic.: Explorer Bertram in the Empty Quarter, Arabia, 1930.

NVIDIA Triumphant

The US dollar is weakening vis-a-vis other currencies, which depressed the Tel Aviv Stock Market. The virtual token bitcoin is approaching 8000 dollars. INTEL has poached chip designer Kaduri to be in charge of the effort to create a chip to compete with NVIDIA, but the immediate effect will be weakening the current competitor. As for now, NVIDIA is the best chip (pic) for bitcoin mining and Artificial Intelligence applications. I bought another handful. Today it raised  5%.

Britain seems to be mismanaging its separation from Europe. Saudia is undergoing a self-coup and two luxury hotels - the Ritz and the Hilton - have been converted into jails. Israel has vanquished the Hamas and Gaza has been passed to the Palestinian Authority's government. The Hartuv design was rejected by the Ministry and I had to remake the infrastructure plan. The client warned me that if I work on the Shabbes he will not accept nor pay for it, so I worked all night and missed an important meeting this morning and finished it on time.

Billion Smuggled Eggs

Israel has inherited from her socialist past a quota system in the egg market. Farmers settled in mountain areas or with poor soils where nothing can be grown received egg production quotas. The Egg Marketing Board buys the eggs at controlled prices, subsidizing in fact Jewish agriculture. The system has survived 30 years of right wing capitalist regimes.

The well known result of socialism is scarcity with overproduction. Thanks to planned economy, Israel imports and exports eggs simultaneously. The situation promotes trade and the (illegal) trade in eggs flourishes. In the pic., a smuggled egg warehouse operated by Israeli Arabs from the non-subsidized Palestinian Authority farmers. The eggs carried the stamp of the Egg Marketing Board, thanks to a corrupt pakid (officer). He will spend the next four years in jail eating eggs (and chickpeas) three times a day. Prison dietitians have a passion for healthy, sugar-free eggs (and chickpeas).

I realize we have been consuming enemy eggs for years. At least we have not sinned: Palestinian eggs are perfectly kosher. 

Engineering in Argentina: From Worse to Worst

 We started 600 in the Facultad de Ingenieria of the Universidad de La Plata, Argentina. It was in the sixties. I was the first to graduate in my class. I left immediately for the USA and never knew how did finished at all; I know about 25. Most of the students were not studying nor working but living off their parents, the "eternal student" life suited them.


Clarin writes that today there are 215805 engineering students in Argentina, and that in 2016 a total of 8303 were granted the diploma of engineer. That is fewer than the 8542 graduated in 2014.

Only one in five engineering students graduates, meaning that 80% of the students are wasting their time and the time of the faculty.  In 2010 the Government launched a well-funded campaign to promote the profession and distributed generous scholarships: Judging from the numbers, the campaign had negative effects.

The cause of this absurd situation is that no government in the last hundred years dared to restrict the entrance to the universities. During the Peron era even those who did not finish high school were accepted in the name of "justicialismo", the regime professed that they could not study because of poverty, political affiliation or police repression, but social justice meant that they too deserved to enter the university. 

The student life in La Plata was cheap and easy, so much that I too spent a whole year without attending class (next year I worked double plus hard).  I did not take money from my parents, I worked as lifeguard in the beach during the four month summer vacation and that was more than enough for the whole year.

FollowUp Nov.23 2017: Argentine submarine lost in the South Atlantic. No one knows what happened, but I assume it may be somehow related to the above note. Poor mariners.

Who creams off the prosperity bonanza

Nov 6 Excellent apartment,near shenkin street ! ₪2650000 1br - 48m² - (Heart of TLV)
(= 757000 US$)


 
Enrico Moretti in the New York Times via the excellent MR blog:

Over the past two years, San Francisco County added 38,000 jobs, reaching its highest employment level ever. Yet only 4,500 new housing units were permitted. For all those new families knocking on San Francisco doors, new units are available for less than 12 percent of them. The numbers for Silicon Valley are even worse. This is why the rents skyrocket.
 

The problem is largely self-inflicted: the region has some of the country’s slowest, most political and cumbersome housing approval processes and most stringent land-use restrictions.

…One way to think about it is that the enormous increase in wealth generated by the tech boom is largely captured by homeowners in the urban core who bought before the boom.

In Israel we have the same situation. The sheqel is overvalued and is the second most expensive currency (the first: the yen). Building permits in Tel Aviv are in-achievable, it takes from five to ten years. Two room old apartments sell for a seven hundred thousand dollars (pic). I am selling TASE shares and buying NVIDIA on Nasdaq.

Holy shi'ite!

TEVA near bankruptcy!  Owes 36 billion dollars! We are putting all our hopes in the hands of one Dane, Mr Schultz.

Metamphetamine Pipe

The clip where we see Hillary Clinton fainting and being thrown to the van like a sack of potatoes was the pivotal moment when his candidacy died. I felt it immediately and wrote about it in my former blog. Now it appears that the Democratic Party felt the same but at that point it lacked the balls to present another candidate.

Now they say that the propaganda about her health (Parkinson) was "fake news" originated in the Russian Secret Service. The pic apparently shows a metamphetamine pipe. I never saw one and I cannot judge if it is "real". I do not know, she seemed really frail. If it was Russian propaganda, it certainly was very effective. The bottom line seems to be that her political program was irrelevant, her lack of vitality vs Trump's natural exuberance decided the issue. 

Quark fusion bomb

Prof Marek Karliner from Tel Aviv University calculated the energy released by the fusion of two quarks, and it is greater than the fusion of two hydrogen atoms (the H bomb). He says that the discovery has no military application.

The same was said of Einstein's theory a hundred years ago.  I give fifteen years till the first quark bomb explodes in space.

Kissi Penny Code

Bloomberg says that the total worth the crypto tokens has passed the 100 billion dollars. What do I think?

“I know that once upon a time, a coin was worth $5 if it had $5 worth of gold in it,” Blankfein said. “Now we have paper that is just backed by fiat ... maybe in the new world, something gets backed by consensus.” I think he is wrong, consensus i.e. public opinion, is fickle and cannot for the basis of a monetary system.

The crypto will start to be a serious currency the moment that a stable, reliable bank or a state will exchange the token for "real money" - dollars or better, gold. If a Swiss Bank announces that it will exchange bitcoins for cash dollars or gold coins at a certain rate, that rate will become a basis and people will be able to calculate the risk of variations. A futures market with enforceable contracts would also act to solidify the token.

A solid token would harm the world's government power to manage their currencies. I doubt if they will tolerate it. I also doubt if they can co-ordinate their actions to destroy it. Bottom line: I dont know.

P.S.: In itself, there is nothing exceptional that a block chain is considered money. I wanted to illustrate the concept with a Spartan iron bar money, but none could be found on the net. So the pic shows the kissi penny which was a bundle of small iron bars. One could buy a slave for 300 bundles.

Lykurgus dropped the iron money in vinegar to make it fragile and useless, yet ,most monies had some use. Post stamps were valued by collectors once, cowrie shell could be used in personal decoration. Spartan money was backed by the State. Bitcoins have no use, no one is collecting them, it is backed by nothing.  

Liquidity Fuels Stock Bubble

Every analyst and her cat are warning about the inflation of stock exchange prices. The phenomenon is caused by the availability of cheap money, which is channeled to the stock exchange, because it has shown the fastest growth of all alternatives. Never in human history has been such liquidity anywhere. Gold and silver were always very scarce.

What could cause a reversal of the trend? Higher interest rates? The American Government sucking off money from the economy to pay it debts? How long can this moneymaking machine be maintained? Now the blockchain money inundation is injecting even more liquidity into the economy.


 I would like to be more intelligent to solve this conundrum. Maybe I should drink more.


Ancient Greek drinking games.