Should the Chief Rabbi be fired?

 
In the Galut, the Rabbi was hired by the community and fired if disliked.

 Here, Liberman's Yisrael Beytenu party called for Rabbi Lau to be fired from the position of Chief Rabbi in response to a letter.

"This attempt to hold converts hostage to the haredi establishment which has seized control of the Chief Rabbinate - like the threats from the Chief Rabbi against the minister appointed over him - crosses a red line and contravenes all accepted practice.

"We call on the Religious Affairs Minister to fire the Chief Rabbi immediately and to summon him to a disciplinary hearing, just like any other state official." Pic.: The first Rabbi of Sadigura.

Population Replacement in Europe

 

There is no doubt that Europe is changing, a non-European majority is already obvious. France and other large countries are camouflaging this unsettling near future, but here and there we can see what is happening. The majority of the babies being born in Belgique are of foreign origin (left: an official planning report). But it is not like the right-wing racists think, the foreigners are not having six or eight children, they cannot even be said to have large families. The average seems to be 1.9 children/foreign mother. And not all of them are Congo Bantus, most are from Eastern Europe. The replacement is by differential fertility, the native Belges almost stopped having children. Exploited, famished rural peasants and urban proletarians replenished in the past diminishing populations, but today those classes are non-existent.  

Chinese Poison-Speak

I used to quote Der Spiegel for their venomous articles about American society and President  Donald Trump. Now it is the turn of the Chinese: Below is a quote from Global Times.

"If the US could put aside political discord for one day of the year, then Christmas should be that day. But the fact is, even a Christmas call to express holiday wishes and gratitude for US military service members around the world is still used to express extreme political sentiment. American citizens may even abuse the president with euphemistic and insulting language on the phone. Such an abnormal situation shows the morbid division in US society and an inability to resolve social problems.

"Let's Go Brandon," a father and former police officer Jared Schmeck said on the phone when US President Joe Biden and the first lady were taking calls into the North American Aerospace defense Command Santa Tracker on Christmas Eve on Friday.

"Let's Go Brandon" is a vulgar anti-Biden slogan - a sanitized version of "Fxxx Joe Biden." The slogan has become an internet sensation in the US and is especially popular among supporters of former US president Donald Trump. 

"Let's Go Brandon" shows the US' morbid division, which has almost become an incurable disease in the country. What will the country become when half of the American people's wishes oppose the other half? The current division makes the country seem as if it is heading toward an inevitable decline. In a society that is so divided, almost no problem can be resolved, nor can anything be changed."

They seem to faintly dislike America and Biden. 

Two days of NADA

 
Sunday mostly slept. Today was spent waiting for an auto part for the annual road test. 

Antigone à Quebec

Yesterday we went to celebrate birthdays in a vegetarian restaurant, and then the Cinematec Tel Aviv.  Something about an Algerian refugee family: two brothers involved in the Habibi drug gang and the pure, virginal sister, Antigone. She had to take a decision to betray her brothers or be expelled. She decided that family loyalty beats loyalty to Canada's laws. In French: 

Vivant à Montréal avec sa grand-mère, sa soeur et ses deux frères, elle est une première de classe, une jeune fille comme une autre, à l'âge des premiers amours. Mais un jour, son frère aîné, Étéocle, est abattu gratuitement par un policier trop nerveux – et le cadet, Polynice, est arrêté et menacé d'expulsion du territoire. Antigone décide alors de tout risquer pour l'aider à s'évader.

I didn't like it. 

POTASH

 

I started to make real profits on the Stock Exchange with POTASH, when the magical CEO Mr.Doyle created a worldwide monopoly and the price went up to 1000 $/ton. I speculate that we are at the beginning of a similar cycle, as the company that ruined the cartel, Uralkali is being restrained by American sanctions. Belaruskali (Bielorussian potash - 20% of world production) is being punished for political reasons (siding with Putin). I think the conjuncture is so good that is safe to take out a loan to buy ICL. 

The State of Palestine (2022)

 

The Hyksos (Hebrews) of Avaris (Tel Yehudiya)

One has only to look at Ancient Egyptian monuments to understand how monstrous a people they were. Leons with human faces, humans with jackal faces, enormous pyramidal tombs for mummified cats, etc. Their religion was an absurd mix of crocodile gods, and so. Their king married their sisters, ensuring their progressive mental and physical decline. Their myths were pornographic like Kamutef, the sun god who every night inseminated Nut, the goddess of heaven. Every morning, she gave birth to him again in a process of daily renewal. Nut is therefore both the mother and wife of the sun. In royal mythology, the pharaoh hoped to achieve renewal in a similar way to the myth, in which mother and wife were conceptualized identically. The only sensible kings were the Hyksos, immigrant Hebrew pastoralists, who believed in one god and built no grandiose tombs. The natives were absolutely humiliated by being dominated by this small foreign, light-skinned tribe and after 150 years they expelled the Hyksos to their original country in Israel. 

Haz esta noche perpetua...

Is the new Chinese generation lactase tolerant?

 

How the market overcomes the obstacle of lactose intolerance in China?

It is true that Asian people are genetically predisposed to lactase-deficiency (around 85% of people suffer from lactose intolerance in China). Older generations of Chinese who were not used to consuming dairy products in their diets are also mostly lactose intolerant.

But this lactose intolerance in China will not slow down the market. First, because to create new generations of milk drinkers, society and government have taken several measures. Today Chinese babies are born with the ability to make lactase, which is the enzyme needed to digest the milk vector and which is lost as they grow older. Moreover, children do not stop drinking milk as they grow up and therefore continue to produce this enzyme.  Source: A market research consulting

The Israeli model farm near Beijing created this market in China. I was skeptical but Dr Moshe Mizrahi was right - the Chinese will learn to drink milk.  Curiously, the architecture of the ad looks Mediterrranean, Greek maybe. 

Lu Xun, The True Story of Ah-Q

 

Study the revolutionary spirit of Lu Xun, become a pathbreaker in the criticism of Lin Biao and Confucius, 1974

I am reading the complete works of Lu Yun, a radical Chinese writer of the 1920s who became the hero of the Cultural Revolution. His story The Diary of a Madman is rather impressive. The Chinese imperial society was really very bad, but the Maoist was not a paradise. I think they are regaining the balance now.  

Nothing works

Mussolini's Battle for Births was a failure. Marriage rates stayed virtually the same during Mussolini's reign, and birth rates decreased until 1936, after which there was a modest increase. The birth rate of 112 per 1000 in 1936 was below that of pre-World War I levels (1911: 147 per 1000). Mussolini felt that the lack of enthusiasm shown by the Italian nation had cost him 15 army divisions in World War II.

From Angela Mitropoulos : For fascists, population theory means the organization of a racial welfare state and the realization of a fascist demos that both displaces (and limits) the franchise as a mechanism of political legitimacy and structures population policy as a more or less explicit racial demography.

In his self-titled “Speech of the Ascension,” Benito Mussolini, declared that while “[s]tatistics has expanded its jurisdiction over all phenomena of life,” the aim of the National Fascist Party was to “take great care of the future of the race.” By his view, that meant investing the simple aggregate of a population with racial properties, the resurrection of a conscious, singular people. Indeed, Mussolini delivered this speech on the day of the Catholic feast day of the Ascension in 1926. To that end, he announced the fascist demographic policy of increasing the size of the population through an increase in the birth rate.

For the famous Italian statistician Corrado Gini, best known for his statistical formula measuring the wealth distribution within a national population (the ‘Gini coefficient’), and who was undoubtedly the most prominent government statistician of the Italian fascist government between 1926 and 1932, that argument was more than explicit.

In his 1927 essay “The Scientific Basis of Fascism,” Gini contrasted a liberal understanding of society as “an aggregate of individuals” with a “nationalistic theory,” for which society is “a true and distinct organism of a rank superior to that of the individuals who compose it, an organism endowed with a life … and vital interests of its own,” in which welfare policy meant the “coordination of the desires of the current generation with the with the interests of all the future generations which are to constitute the future life of the nation.”

No more hungry ghosts

Am reading Lu Xun's The Real Story of Ah-Q about a village idiot's life that ends as a dead rebel. Lu Xun is a Chinese literary hero for his short membership in the Shanghai Circle of Communist writers in the early 1920s. I remember reading the same story, probably in Hungarian, under the Stalinist regime. That or a similar story set in the Hungarian countryside. Lu Xun makes fun of traditional Chinese civilization. He hates Chinese Opera, with its noisy gongs and choreographed fights. Mao's Cultural Revolution roots may be found in Ah-Q.  

A nun said to Ah-Q : "May you die without descendants!" If I die without descendants, Ah-Q said to himself, I'll have no one to offer a bowl of rice at my grave... and then "There are three ways of betraying your parents, of which dying without descendants is the most serious".  They become hungry ghosts. 

The Chinese were always a most prolific civilization, how is it that today, the Chinese are not marrying and have no children? The Communist government thinks that the cause is Western influence and contra-Mao's Cultural Revolution, has adopted a pro-children traditionalist attitude. If they follow to the very end of this new tendency, Party cadres - the new mandarines - will have two-three wives and concubines, and clan tombs will be visited yearly to feed a steaming bowl of rice to the ancestors. Illustration: The Hungry Ghosts Festival refers to the opening of hell's gate for one month allowing all the ghosts full liberty to make trouble in the human world of existence. After the one-month period, the ghosts return to hell and the gate is shut for another year.

Horrible Mutations

 Ehlers-Danlos  Autosomal  recessive

Extreme  fragility  of  the  skin,  other  symptoms  include  blue sclerae  and  soft,  velvety,  hyperextensible  skin.  Marked  bruising  and  open  wounds following  minor  trauma,  the  excised  skin  can  be  torn  by  hand.   Epidemiology: The  disease  has  been  diagnosed  among  in  several  Ashkenazi  Jewish  families  In  one family  in  which  the  origin  was  determined  the  grand  parents  were  from  Belarus Molecular  genetics: ADAMTS2    gene  (chromosomal  locus  5q23)   Homozygozity  for  the  same  mutation  [Q225X]  was  found  in  all  the  Ashkenazi  Jewish patients.  Wiki says life expectancy is normal. Pic.: The wiki, from Premalatha S, Sarveswari et al. 

Fragile  X  syndrome 

94 X linked  dominant FMR1 gene  (chromosomal  locus  Xq27)   The  disorder  is  caused  by  the  absence  of  the  FMR1  product,  almost  always  as  a  result of  a  CGG  repeat  unit  amplification  (>  200  repeats),  rarely  because  of  a  mutation  in  the gene.   Epidemiology: Among    the  cases  of  fragile  X  syndrome  in  Israel  published  in  1997  it  was  apparent that  the  disorder  is  relatively  frequent  among  Jews  of  Tunisian  origin.  In  the  136 pedigrees  surveyed  at  the  time,  36  (26.4%)  were  of  Tunisian  Jewish  origin.  In  a  Tunisian  Jewish  control  group  4  were  carriers  of  the  fragile  X  mutation (3  premutation,  one  full  mutation).  Studying  the  Tunisian  Jewish  chromosomes  with the  mutation,  there  was  an  unusually  high  proportion  (20%)  that  completely  devoid AGG interruption.  The  largest  of  these  uninterrupted  alleles  was  found  on  a  unique haplotypes  suggesting  a  founder  effect  that  may  be  originating  from  the  Island  of Djerba. In  several  screening  programs  performed  among  Jews  in  Israel  the  incidence  of  the disorder  was  found  to  be  1:3000.  The  carrier  frequency  (more  55  repeats)  was approximately  1:150.  

From the wiki: Fragile X syndrome has traditionally been considered an X-linked recessive condition with variable expressivity and possibly reduced penetrance.^[12] However, due to genetic anticipation and X-inactivation in females, the inheritance of Fragile X syndrome does not follow the usual pattern of X-linked dominant inheritance, and some scholars have suggested discontinuing labeling X-linked disorders as dominant or recessive.^[40] Females with full FMR1 mutations may have a milder phenotype than males due to variability in X-inactivation.^{[citation needed]}

Before the FMR1 gene was discovered, analysis of pedigrees showed the presence of male carriers who were asymptomatic, with their grandchildren affected by the condition at a higher rate than their siblings suggesting that genetic anticipation was occurring.^[13] This tendency for future generations to be affected at a higher frequency became known as the Sherman paradox after its description in 1985.^[13][41] Due to this, male children often have a greater degree of symptoms than their mothers.^[42]

The explanation for this phenomenon is that male carriers pass on their premutation to all of their daughters, with the length of the FMR1 CGG repeat typically not increasing during meiosis, the cell division that is required to produce sperm.^[13][29] Incidentally, males with a full mutation only pass on premutations to their daughters.^[29] However, females with a full mutation are able to pass this full mutation on, so theoretically there is a 50% chance that a child will be affected.^[29][36] In addition, the length of the CGG repeat frequently does increase during meiosis in female premutation carriers due to instability and so, depending on the length of their premutation, they may pass on a full mutation to their children who will then be affected. Repeat expansion is considered to be a consequence of strand slippage either during DNA replication or DNA repair synthesis.^[43]

 Samaritan  myopathy

 Autosomal  recessive. In  contrast  to  other  congenital  myopathies  where  muscle  weakness  is  progressive  or stable  the  benign  Samaritan  congenital  myopathy  is  characterized  by  an  ‘‘inverse’’ course  of  disease.  The  patients  are  severely  affected  at  birth  and  improve  progressively being  minimally  affected  at  adult  stage.   Epidemiology  and  Molecular  genetics: RYR1  gene  (chromosomal  locus  19q13.1) The  diaese  was  reported  in  one  Samaritan  family  in  which  the  patients  were homozygous  for  c.3263A>G  (p.Tyr1088Cys).    The  Samaritans  are  an  ethno-religious group  of  741  people  living  in  Israel  and  Nablus.  Ancestrally,  they  consider  themselves as  descendants  of  the  10  lost  tribes  that  formed  the  Kingdom  of  Israel.  The  Samaritan population  has  the  highest  recorded  inbreeding  coefficient  in  human  populations  due to  almost  exclusive  intra-lineage  marriages.  

I am doomed

I have to reduce my weight by some 30 kg to survive a little more. I did it more than once but always gained back the fat loss and some more. Mood: Fakir-esque. Depressed. 

"Bassa"

 

Bassa means swamp or just depression in the Hebrew/Arabic lingo we speak here. I am a bit depressed because it was discovered that I suffer from BP.

Dear Wife is angry. She says that I don't see her. That no one sees her. She has chronic backache. I am trying to be nice to her. 

Persia

TAHAL worked in Iran till the fall of the Shah and I remember that in the general assembly of that year, the employees that escaped were celebrated. I talked with the agricultural - irrigation experts and they had a rather poor opinion of the local farmers. Iran, then, was considered underdeveloped. 

Now they are saying they will burn Tel Aviv and Haifa. One paper even published a map with the targets - it includes Hebron and Ramallah. It is part of the negotiations in Vienna, which seem to go well. The Brits, this time, are with us: 

 "This is the last chance for Iran to come to the negotiating table with a serious resolution to this issue, which has to be agreeing to the terms of the JCPOA," said Truss, adding, "This is their last chance and it is vital that they do so. We will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon."

A line in the sand

 I bought Barr's book and I painfully am reading it. It is long, detailed, and complicated. It tells the seventy years of English (and French) conflict in the Middle East to divide the Turkish possessions after WWI. The English intelligence officer, the faintly feminine T.E. Lawrence created the Arab national movement (paying off lots of gold) which twenty years later the Brits had to put down (more gold and 100,000 "rations" = soldiers). They still subsidize the Kingdom of Jordan, to keep Lawrence's promise of a kingdom for Faisal and Abdullah. 

It is rather surprising the difficulties of the British (and French) armies in eliminating irregular Arab forces in Syria, Lebanon, and of course Palestine. Israel, once established, fought against the same forces and, apparently without too much effort, Ariel Sharon (*) conquered Beirut in two days and we ruled South Lebanon for a decade. I don't know the secret but we are different.     

(*) and moi. I was there. 

Commenter TIM in Amazon resumes: None of the actors come out of this well. The squabbling, fading empires of France and Britain are at the heart of it all, both obsessed with maintaining their place in the world at the expense of the Arabs. The Arabs themselves come across as bumbling and incompetent, except for perhaps the Druze and Bedu, but they are all riven by petty infighting that allows the "great powers" to maintain control of their lands. The Zionists come later to the story as ruthless killers and extremists - founding a country, etc.  

Amira's Honor

 سبحان الله !....الشعب الفلسطيني المسكين المحتل المهجر المشرد المتآمر عليه دوليا و إقليميا و حتى عربيا من طرف بعض الأنظمة العربية المطبعة الخائنة ، وصلت بهم الدرجة التشكيك في "شرف و عرض " الشعب الفلسطيني ! تحياتي لكل شريف فلسطيني  و شريفة

Glory be to God!...the miserable, occupied, displaced Palestinian people, that were conspired against internationally, regionally, and even in the Arab world, by the treacherous media, have reached the low point that its very honor is being questioned! Greetings to every honest and honorable Palestinian! 

The reactions to the Egyptian film Amira have been very emotional. Above is one comment. (The translation is mine). The story is about a prisoner's sperm being smuggled out by a guard, who substitutes the sperm with his own. Since hundreds of children were born this way, the film undermines the honor and the morale of the Palestinians. 

Rotten tomatoes writes:

Amira is a highly contrived, ridiculous melodrama seeping with endless implausible details that rob the story of any credibility it may have had. The biggest crime of the film though is its portrayal of Palestinian society.

The community of Amira - essentially a microcosm of Palestine as the film implies - is a band of freaks: a company of sexist brutes with not an ounce of empathy in their souls. The Palestine of Amira is a conservative, hypocritical place populated by merciless patriarchs only concerned with preserving their honor rather than safeguarding the daughter who grew with them and among them; a daughter who had no hand in the great shame they plaster her with.

This is an insultingly regressive, bafflingly over-simplified, imprudently outdated treatment of a Palestine clearly concocted by an outsider. Its take on identity is shallow and largely underexplored; its depiction of the downgraded status of women in middle-class families is Victorian in essence. At a time when the evolving discourse around women's rights across the region has shifted towards body integrity and equal rights, Diab is still stuck on honor and virginity.

Cultural Origins of Demographic Transition

 

The mystery is perfectly explained in this research paper by Guillaume Blanc, Brown University. It is secularization. Everywhere. Always. 

Dollar Inflation > 7% p.a.

 

Much of the world's gold is in India. Unfortunately, we use the dollar, which in 2021 lost 7% of its worth. One could even say that the American Government expropriated 7% of the world's dollar income to spend it on public programs, such as food stamps. Also in keeping open and safe sea and air routes. Next year the dollar interest rate will jump from zero to 10-15%. Many will lose their savings. 

Expecting Something

 The American government established a task force dedicated to discovering what are those unidentified (1) flying phenomena UFOs, (2) transmedium objects or devices, and (3) submerged objects or devices. The last point means that they have "seeings" of submerged phenomena that need to be investigated, that were never published. It is probable that they have palpable things in hand, and are preparing the world for some event, say contact.  

Solemnizing Nvidia's 500%

 

Not long ago I bought Nvidia shares. I told everybody to put their savings in it. They thought it was already expensive and no one followed me. Today, I see that my original investment has multiplied by five. Today I bought Kenon. One of the Ofer brothers owns it: his auto factory in China failed but Kenon still holds ZIM, which rocketed 5% yesterday on NYSE while on TASE Kenon rose only 1%. Are Israelis .. slow? 

Flint gets $626 million for incompetence

After Benton Harbor—a city of nearly 10,000 people, over 80% of them black—made headlines for its water crisis this year, Michigan promised to replace all the town’s lead service lines within 18 months. (It is being done on schedule). That did not stop its residents from filing a class-action lawsuit in November alleging deliberate government indifference (against the local Municipality and the State government). The same day a judge approved a $626m settlement for people affected by a water crisis across the state in Flint, which caused a similar media frenzy after residents complained about tainted water in 2014. Getting national attention, it seems, pays off. 

Source: The Economist. In America, baseless accusations of systemic racism get you compensated even if the water is turbid because of your own stupidity and incompetence. In America 2021, you can blame the government for indifference and get paid for it. This way lies madness ... 

Babysitting

 
Ayala feels unwell and asked us to spend the whole day babysitting Shakadudu aged two. Took the computer but produced nothing all day. It is raining. Nahal Raba was wet. At sunset, I could see the lights of Dir Balut or Zawiya, Palestinian settlements in the Shomron. Newe Afek is a nice clean, quiet neighborhood. I like it. 

Suze Orman says Buy Banks

 Suze Orman is a Lesbian from Chicago who produces sound financial advice. She is a fantastic self-promoter. About inflation, she says buy banks. 

"With soaring inflation no longer "transitory," according to the Fed, Americans are preparing for their purchasing power to take another hit.

But whether inflation is coming out of hibernation or we’re heading towards a bear market, Suze Orman, personal finance expert, says you should still lean on stocks for the long haul.

“Over the long-term stocks have produced the best gains after factoring in inflation,” wrote Orman in a blog post this past summer. “Bonds and cash struggle to keep pace with inflation; only stocks have a track record of earning more than inflation.”

Some areas of the stock market perform better than others during periods of high inflation. A bear market offers the chance to snap up more top-shelf stocks at bargain-bin prices. When the next pullback happens (and it will happen), there’s one place investors might want to look to first: banks.

Unlike the vast majority of other industries, banks actually fare well when the Fed tightens up because of their asset-sensitive nature. When interest rates rise, bank assets like bonds and loans tend to climb higher than their liabilities such as deposits.

Rising rates also mean that banks can earn a wider spread between what they pay out in savings account interest and what they earn from Treasuries.

P.S.: I don't really understand her reasoning. I think natural resources rise more. 

Terror in Beverly Hills

How times have changed! Beverly Hills was the world's most elegant neighborhood, where very rich and famous people had their residences. TV police series were made on that glamorous place and its blonde millionaire residents. See pic. Not these days: a famous woman - Jacqueline Avant - "was shot and killed early Wednesday by an intruder at her home in Beverly Hills. The police chief confirmed that a security guard was at the home at the time of the incident, and was unhurt. Police received a call at 2:23 a.m. Wednesday indicating that someone had been shot in the 1100 block of Maytor Place, in the Trousdale Estates area." From Variety.

Hanukka

 Today the grandkids came for candle lighting and singing. Six energetic, noisy little savages. I took the day off.