Sleeping and doing nothing

 After the family dinner, I took 40 mg of Valium by mistake and slept happily until midday. It was a very quiet Sabbath. I watched the Judge and Mearsheimer predict once more Ukraine's imminent collapse. Now, I am trying to do some work. But no, I cannot avoid wasting time on the net.

Doing "nothing" is very important. For example, what to do with this quotation from Goldman Sachs:  Jensen Huang’s prediction of a trillion dollars of computing capacity waiting for an upgrade. It is a very big market opportunity. Maybe INTEL will get a nice portion of it. INTEL is very cheap -- today.INTC ranks 4th on our list of Goldman Sachs' top growth investors.

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) is the beleaguered American chip manufacturing giant that has been one of the biggest stock stories of 2024 and for all the wrong reasons. Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC)’s decision to suspend dividends and lay off thousands of employees earlier this year decimated investor sentiment. The firm is currently focusing on developing the 18A chip manufacturing node through which it aims to take process leadership away from the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and cater to the growing chip needs of the biggest companies in the world. 18A is dead at the center of Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC)’s hypothesis, and the stock will respond based on developments regarding the technology’s execution milestones. Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC)’s contract manufacturing subsidiary is another key part of its story, but since it was made into a subsidiary earlier, its impact is less pronounced.

HaAretz

 
Friday double edition of this fishwrap and not a word of foreign news. Totally obsessed with BiBi. My wife does not want to buy another paper. She loves its kitchen pages.

Pic: Guideon Levy, of HaAretz. A self-hating destructive Jew.

Bombs from Space

Russia just sent a strong message to Europe and the US. His weapons are not only dissuasive but actually deployed in war. Russia feels menaced to the point that they are trying to break up and destroy it. On CNN I saw multiple (4 -5) explosions coming very fast in a vertical trajectory. The background is the city of Dniepr. Little explosive power.

The RS-26 is powered by a sophisticated three-stage solid-propellant engine. The first stage delivers a high-thrust boost, propelling the missile out of the atmosphere and minimizing its exposure to early-stage interception attempts. The second stage sustains acceleration, optimizing the missile’s trajectory for long-range flight and maintaining speed to avoid mid-course interception.

• The third stage plays a critical role in terminal maneuverability. Unlike conventional solid-fuel systems, the RS-26’s terminal stage may incorporate a liquid-fueled component, particularly when equipped with maneuverable warheads or the Avangard glide vehicle. This configuration provides enhanced control during the reentry phase, allowing the missile to adjust its trajectory to evade advanced missile defense systems and achieve high accuracy. The missile’s propulsion system enables a demonstrated range of approximately 5,800 kilometers. Its terminal speed exceeds Mach 20, translating to over 24,500 kilometers per hour. This extraordinary speed, combined with its maneuverable payload options, ensures the RS-26’s effectiveness in penetrating heavily defended airspace.

• 
  

  The RS-26 Rubezh is designed for both strategic nuclear deterrence and high-precision strikes on critical infrastructure and hardened military targets. Its road-mobile platform allows it to be deployed rapidly and unpredictably, significantly complicating adversary targeting efforts.

  With a maximum range of approximately 5,800 kilometers, the RS-26 can target locations across Europe, Asia, and parts of North America. The missile’s MIRV capabilities make it effective against multiple targets in a single mission, while its advanced counter-defense measures and optional Avangard glide vehicle payload enable it to defeat even the most sophisticated missile defense systems.

• "If true this will be totally unprecedented and the first actual military use of ICBM. Not that it makes a lot of sense given their price and precision," Andrey Baklitskiy of the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research posted on X.

They were right

At Trump's first election, German papers aggressively opposed him, describing him as psychotic and dangerous. Der Spiegel wrote in 2018: "Under the will-o'-the-wisp Donald Trump, the world has become a dangerous place." At that time, America had a large foreign exchange deficit, mostly with Germany and less with China. Trump observed that America was being bled by Germany while Germany was not paying for its defense. Germany, now I realize, was fearing Trump, and it appears, rightly.

According to the Economist, German industry today is bankrupt, its exports are falling and the Ukraine war has driven it into a direct conflict with Russia. Germany is in a bad corner and desperate. They had a reason to fear Trump. 

Now there are the millions of illegal immigrants in America who are trembling.  

ICL

 My favorite share was ICL, the Israeli Chemical (Potash) mine in the Dead Sea. The company advertises itself as a specialty chemicals factory; the potash business is now a sideline. All in all, I am losing 37% in many years of holding it. Something happened that I am unaware of. Pic The manager of this disgrace. 

Chancay - Shanghai

 

The Chancay Port project is a collaborative project between China and Peru under the Belt and Road Initiative. Located in the Chancay district of the province of Huaral, Peru, the port is approximately 80 kilometers from the capital, Lima.
 
Chancay Port is positioned as Peru’s gateway port and regional hub, connected by a tunnel to the Pan-American Highway, directly linking it to the capital Lima. This enables goods to conveniently reach Peru and other Latin American countries, significantly enhancing trade efficiency.

China is building for the next hundred years.

 The Grey Wolf is a quadruped robot armed with an automatic weapon. China is serious.

The Ingalik

 The Ingalik shared the Northern Athapaskan worldview of a universe in which all objects had a spirit or soul, yeg. In the beginning, men, animals, and inanimate objects lived together and shared many traits. They later separated and lost the ability to communicate. People were dependent on animals for food and thus had to remain on good terms with them. This they did by observing taboos and treating animals with respect so they would continue to be available for food. Increase ceremonies were performed to attract game and ensure a steady supply. The Ingalik also used a variety of "songs" or magical chants to maintain the balance between the human and spiritual worlds. These songs could be purchased, and both sexes had them. Songs were used to gain good hunting and fishing luck, enhance skills, cure illness and communicate with the spirits. Through possession of songs, nearly everyone had a little shamanistic power. Amulets, often bits of animal skin, bone, or feathers, were worn by all and were often associated with animal songs. Amulets brought specific kinds of luck or conferred special abilities. There were numerous taboos and prohibitions, many of which related to animals. The Ingalik had a rich mythology in which animals and the ritual number 4 were prominent.

Source: The Internet

The Right Wins

 It seems to me that the American government will be dominated by rightists who are interested in foreign affairs. They want to re-organize the world. The Democratic party's campaign had degenerated into a disgusting carnival that Catholic Latinos could not accept. A new yuga is starting. 

I am sleeping too much and working little or nothing. Battling the bureaucracy is dispiriting, and impossible to find interest in the work. 

Now, go to work!

The suffering of Odysseus

 

Reading Homer's Odysseus, Ulisses is well received when he leaves Calypso and lands in the paradisical city of the Phaeacians. Where is this city? Outside the Odyssey, the Phaeacians have no existence at all. There is a reason, of course, that the Phaeacians have no tradition outside the Odyssey, and that is that the Odyssey, which brought the Phaeacians into existence and gave them the function of “home-bringers,” also takes this function away from them. After delivering Odysseus to Ithaca, the Phaeacian ship is turned to stone by angry Poseidon on its return trip.

Another interesting point is that Menelaos does not sail home after the ten-year-long war in Troy but goes to Egypt. Those  Ἀχαιοί (Achaeans) as described by Homer, were blood-thirsty pirates and slavers. The sea-peoples' attack on Egypt is real, it was registered in the Egyptian royal archives. In Homer's story, the Phoenicians are a friendly people. It seems true that Lebanon was spared of their attacks. The Ekwesh of the Egyptian records were possibly the Acheans, but they were circumcised. In Homer, the Acheans burn their dead, while the Bronze Age "Greeks" build tumulus (burial mounds or kurgans). 

Yehiel Leitner, Ambassador to USA

 
Yehiel Leiter was born in the U.S. and immigrated to Israel four decades ago. He lives in Eli, East of the city of Ariel. His son Moshe was killed in combat in northern Gaza about a year ago. 

The post of ambassador to the U.S. is Leiter's first diplomatic job, after working for decades writing and researching in the Shalem Institute and Herzl Institute. He also served as a senior fellow at the Kohelet Policy forum.

In his youth, Leiter was active in the Jewish Defense League, an organization founded in the U.S. by Rabbi Meir Kahane and later designated as a terrorist organization by U.S. authorities. He was part of a group of activists within the organization who eventually moved to live in settlements in the West Bank.

Kahana's name and ideas were tabu in Israel under the socialist regime. I hesitated even to write his name for fear of losing my job. He was a soft-spoken New York Orthodox rabbi, fighting for the emigration of Soviet Jews. 

The sack of Lindisferne

 Anno 793 the great house of religion at Lindisferne was sacked by the Vikings, giving start to the Danish invasions of Great Britain. But the catastrophe only fired up English religious fervor. King Burgred of Mercia retired to a monastery when the Danes conquered his kingdom, and many royal princesses entered nunneries in their widowhood. The pilgrimage to Rome was very popular, although disastrous for females, as Cuthbert wrote "There are indeed few cities in Lombardy, or in France, or in Gaul, in which there is not an adulteress or harlot of the English race". Leofgifu, a London woman, died on the road to Jerusalem in about 1060. A Lincolnshire thane called Ulf set out for Jerusalem just before the Norman conquest and was never heard about again. West Saxon Wynfrith who took the name of Boniface became the archbishop of the Germans and it may be said that Western Europe was converted by English missionaries. 

All that from a book by D. Whitelock.

Then, in 1066 the Normans crossed the Channel, and divided the country among 180 Norman tenants-in-chief and innumerable mesne (intermediate) tenants, all holding their fiefs by knight service. The replacement of the English aristocracy with a Norman one was paralleled by similar changes of personnel among the clergy. The Saxons became the lower class and even today, a thousand years later, old French family names are frequent in England's aristocracy.

China's Persistent Food Deficit

My first article on China (30 years ago?) addressed the question of whether China could produce enough food to feed its large population. The fields I visited were very poor and highly contaminated with industrial pollution. I was shocked by the primitive wood water wheel pump, a noria  ناعورة, like pictured on Pharaonic tombs, and the state of the crops. In Yunnan, I saw people tending one miserable plant of corn in the depression of a stone and saw the use of black industrial waste as fertilizer.  I took pictures and told the magistrates I met, like the vice major of Tientsin. People told me that the local rice was bitter and they sold it and consumed rice from other provinces.

Reading today's paper, I see that the issue remained with China's fast development, and China apparently had given up on the quest for self-sufficiency. Their strategy is the importation of foodstuffs on a massive scale. 

"Lin said the Chinese leadership’s emphasis on diversifying food sources, along with consumer demand for diverse and upgraded diets, has also contributed to increased imports.

Under President Xi Jinping’s “all-encompassing approach to food” strategy, the State Council, China’s cabinet, in September rolled out a road map to broaden food production beyond traditional farmlands and crops, aiming to establish a diversified food-supply system by 2027 to increase self-reliance."

P.S.: I am not criticizing Chinese authorities, they are trying hard and are sincere. China is very large but has little arable land. The solution may be privatizing the land and allowing big commercial farms to "devore" the small ones. Politically it is totally unfeasible. 

Thanks Jefe!

 

Trump carried the elections and Kamala lost. Many were convinced that the millions of new immigrants were in the Democrats' little pocket and that a compact and permanent colored Democratic block had been created. It could have happened that way, but the Democratic leader Kamala was a neurotic, childless woman, while Trump is a real macho and caudillo, what we call in the barrio EL JEFE, shouting follow me while being shot in the head. See pic!

Anyway, Wall Street is optimistic, and NASDAQ added 2.5%. I made (on paper) more today than I did working a full year as a consulting engineer. Last night completed the Bilu Country Club project. It had been on my table for two weeks and was unable to get down and work on it. I am afraid it will be rejected with further, impossible demands, but for a time it is off my shoulders. At the end of my life, it is becoming material what I always knew, I have a good head for maths and finance. 

I am giving myself a guimel, a free day.   

It was close

Israeli plumbers are increasingly careless. A large sewage pipe just fell on a car stationed on the next street in Raanana. Or was it a Hezbollah rocket? 

Yes, that is. 

Women Drumming in Washington D.C.

 

They are demanding the right to kill their own children.

A comment on X:

It's much much more than a "sad state of affairs". It's a reprobate mind. These women are priestesses of Moloch. They are calling down the judgment of God on America.

What is "reprobate"?

An unprincipled or depraved person:  Cemeteries were seldom placed on the north side of a church, which, if used for burial at all, was reserved for unbaptized children, criminals, reprobates, and suicides.

(in Calvinism) a sinner who is not of the elect and is predestined to damnation.

Every day I am learning something new (for me)

8

Dread in the Night

2.17 The city alarm woke me up followed by four or five explosions. I returned to sleep. The Lebanese had shot missiles at our quadrant and hit the upper floor of a building in the nearby Arab village, wounding a dozen Arab children and women sleeping peacefully. They are shooting blind in obscurity. 

Contracts with the Gods

 

Jewish magic consists of tricking god into some kind of contractual obligation and then forcing him to do what we want. (Because God never participates in the negotiation, it is all mental fiction.)  When I arrived in Israel, I visited my uncle Moishi in Jerusalem. He told me that his address was Honi Hameagel 6 Mea Shearim. I asked him to translate what is Honi Maeagel. It was about some old fart who drew a circle around himself in the sand and would not move till god opened the heavens and let rain fall. The idea turned around in my mind for long but I could not find any sense. Over the years I realized that this is the principle behind the Jewish religion: I say to myself that god wants me to be "good" and he will then recompensate me. In my twisted mind, I have established that some incantation if said "kavana hazaka" it will move god's heart. One has to be totally desperate to believe this logic. 

Evacuating

Israeli Military Issues Evacuation Order for Lebanon's Baalbek City for Second Day in a Row. October 31st, 11AM 

Wiki: A few kilometers from the swamp from which the Litani (the classical Leontes) and the Asi (the upper Orontes) flow, Baalbek may be the same as the manbaa al-nahrayn ("Source of the Two Rivers"), the abode of El in the Ugaritic Baal Cycle

 discovered in the 1920s and a separate serpent incantation. Baal is the principal Aramean god, although the pantheon includes El which is superior to Baal, and Anath or Oshrat, the sister and consort of Baal. And Mot (the Death god) and Yam (the Sea god).  The serpent incantation appears to be an amulet that consists of an incantation written on a common domestic earthenware.

The incantations are both stylized and structured, and consist of various elements, such as opening formulae, name invocation, sequences in both mystical and liturgical styles, biblical quotations and stories of magical activity located in the distant past in which well known figures of authority, such as great sages and prophets, successfully vanquished demonic forces. At the same time the incantations also have the form of legal documents, and so depict the belief that supernatural beings are subject to a juridical system that covers all created beings. In the Jewish texts, the ultimate authority is the Jewish God; in the Mandaean it is ‘The Great Life’; in the pagan and Gnositc texts the nature and identity of that which holds supreme authority is less clear. This is best illustrated in how adaptations of the legal formula found in the Jewish bill of divorce, the get, are prevalent in the bowl incantations. Simply put, the logic is that just as the get is a binding legal document that affects the separation of man and wife, so too it has the force to separate and banish demon from human.

The Onitsha Market

 

Many years ago Mr Egbo took me in his Mercedes to Onitsha on the mighty Niger.  He had a son in a school and the Headmaster had called him. The Onitsha market was the largest in Africa, and it was well-ordered. I bought lots of locally made iron tools; unfortunately, I had to leave them in Bauchi, which was never sent after me to Buenos Aires. The Ibo had advanced in metallurgy and fabricated wonderful brass sculptures, iron farming implements, and weapons. The Hittites reached the iron age about 3500 years ago, while the Nordics only 1500 years ago. The Ibo were well-advanced on the path to industrial economy. The contact with the Portuguese resulted deadly for them. 

The girls of Caphtor

 

Knossos fresco. Now, they are known as Minoans, an invented name. They were originally from Caphtor (see the Tanach).

Negotiating the 2025 national budget

 

The official picture says it all: Netanyahu, Smotrich, Head of Bank Israel et al. deciding the fiscal year 2025 national budget. Observe all of them with tightly closed fists on the table, muscles contracted to the breaking point, not a paper anywhere, - why should they need tables when it has been decided that they will not release even one shekel? There is no need for Excel tables; it is a fight to the death for each penny. 

British, we are not.    

Fire in Karaj

 The internet reports that a nuclear energy facility caught fire. The Picture shows three cooling towers, so it may be hot. The wind is steady at 14 km/hour toward the East, so the radioactive isotopes may reach Tehran in 4-5 hours. I hope it is not true. 

Claude says Karaj is approximately 20-30 km west of Tehran's western edges. Assuming an eastward wind, smoke or airborne particles take around 1-2 hours to reach western Tehran. That means that by now radioactive smoke has reached the capital.Wow!

De-Cluttering

I took a lot of my beloved books to the waste and observed that the former lot of my books was there. It has been there for three days, and no one wants them. People in this building and on my street are uninterested in my books. Big, new, luxurious dictionaries purchased when I was penniless will be recycled. I had been offering my daughters Please take some books, but nobody reads books these days. 

My shoes and the rest are gradually disappearing. We are an old couple living in a large five-room apartment and my wife is emptying it, starting with me and my things. I shall take nothing with me to the tomb, there will be no place there. In Kfar Saba, three bodies are laid one above the other in every square meter. Like in the old Frankfurt ghetto's cemetery. 

FDTEC (Information Technology ETF)

 

The fund invests at least 80% of assets in securities included in the fund's underlying index.

 The fund's underlying index is the MSCI USA IMI Information Technology 25/50 Index, which represents the performance of the information technology sector in the U.S. equity market. It may or may not hold all of the securities in the MSCI USA IMI Information Technology 25/50 Index. The fund is non-diversified.

Annual Total Return (%) History

Year

FTEC

Category

2023

53.30%

43.43%

2022

-29.59%

-37.39%

2021

30.49%

15.09%

2020

45.87%

55.91%

2019

48.93%

37.49%

2018

-0.37%

-3.21%

2017

36.83%

35.35%

2016

13.92%

10.84%