Colluli Potash sold to the Chinese

 
Thirteen years ago I discovered the  Danakali company established to develop the fantastic potash resources of Colluli in the Erythrean depression. I did not invest in it because its shares were available only in Perth, Australia, and to buy it would have been complicated, and needed an Australian broker in the Perth stock exchange. Pity.

 I thought that the Israeli firm ICL had invested in the firm, but now discovered that Danakali had sold it to the Chinese company Sichuan Road and Bridge Group. The share is valued at 0.42 Australian dollars and it is paying back 100% of it to the stockholders as DIVIDEND while continuing to actively look for other projects. It may have been a good investment. 

Ted (a commenter on Danakali's site), writes:The reason Denkali sold its interest to Chinese is they can’t raise the necessary capital because of the west make it hard to do business in Eritrea. Ask the executives they will tell you the reasons. Eritrea was consistent in its interest to work with mining companies from Canada and Australia but the business environment purposely made hard by the west to do business in Eritrea. The gap is filled by Chinese only because they come with the necessary cash, technology and human capital. 

"My dog gives me no advice."

Javier Milei, Argentina's President. He is very effective. 

Alberto Fernández

@alferdez

Si el presidente se refirió a mí llamándome “títere” quiero decirle que no lo soy, no lo fui ni lo seré. También debe saber que mi perro no me aconseja (y está vivo), que las “fuerzas del cielo” no me mandan señales y que mis acciones y reacciones son el resultado de la reflexión y no de alteraciones psicológicas .

Translation of the above dialogue of Argentina's presidents:

If the president referred to me as a "puppet" I want to tell him that I am not, I was not and I will not be. You should also know that my dog does not advise me (and is alive), that the "forces of heaven" do not send me signals, and that my actions and reactions are the result of reflection and not psychological disturbances.

Background:

Javier Milei's dogs are named after famous economists. He has five dogs, Conan the mastiff and four clones of the now-dead dog, who are named Murray, Milton, Robert and Lucas after economists Murray Rothbard, Milton Friedman and Robert Lucas. After winning one round of polls, Mr Milei thanked his dogs in his victory speech.

Israeli babies per UNICEF

 

174,648

Cats and cats

 

The Malaysian Wild Cat is a beautifully colored hunting cat.  Its look could be used as a camouflage pattern for jungle warfare uniforms. Nature is more creative than human imagination.

Who gets the bigger chipotle?

 

Somebody made a statistical analysis of the weight of chipotles bought online (blue) vs. those who bought them in person (red).  There is a 30% difference. If you want to get Chipotle for your money, you better buy it personally.  

Nothing works without personal presence. 

Chatarra

 

Scrap metal (chatarra) in an Air Force installation in the South. These are the rests of an Iranian ballistic missile that fell in the Dead Sea. On my basis, we too had a collection of Iraqi missiles sent to us free of charge by Saddam Hussein.  They have grown impressively since then...

BTW, there were no such girls in our place. Everybody had to wear military hide boots. Some things have improved. 

Trauma Society

 

I read that 50 survivors of the Nova massacre - killed themselves. That others are in closed mental hospitals. This surprised me as I grew up among Auschwitz survivors, most of them having lost their families and husbands and children, and they had remade their lives quite normally. My uncle Joshka remarried, moved to Buenos Aires, and had no more children because of his luxury-loving wife Etha. Why does a simple massacre - a seven-hour event - cause them such mental harm? I am really astonished that the day after having been targeted by 300 missiles, everything here continues as always, and the children go to school and people continue working like nothing. Today, the war cabinet is deciding how and when to attack Iran. The streets are full and I am going to the Rami Levi supermarket because today is Tuesday - יום שוק

I may be depressed or what

 

In the last three days, I have been unable to do any work on my projects. Why? Possibly, the Iranian attack and today, the preparations for the counterattack. Wifey is also at home, and we talk a little. Nothing is happening in Kfar Saba, children are in school, and no queues at the supermarket. Yet it does affect me. 

Hope that tomorrow my working spirit will be back. I want to help my youngest daughter to buy an apartment. Could be in Harish. I shall need money. 

Israel is part of the West

 

Yesternight we were in danger and the West came to our assistance. It really is an ironclad alliance. We love the generous Anglo-Saxon people and their friends. 

Last Night's Victory

 

Pic of one of the ballistic missiles that fell near the Dead Sea. Of the 300-something missiles fired last night at Israel, all were neutralized and caused no damage. It is a fantastic achievement, a large victory. 

Mala tempora currunt, sed peiora parantur

Craig says we own nothing and that regulatory changes can erase even the illusion of owning financial goods.  True, there is no safety in financial property. In fact, there is no safety in any kind of property, not even your knowledge or prestige. 

Prestige used to be safe, but now the most famous scientists are being disinvited from meetings because they are Israelis or Jews or politically incorrect. The Haaretz supplement brings a psychologist who wrote a professional article on his treatment of Jewish refugees from the Gazan border and was refused because he had been treating people who were a potential danger to the Palestinians. 

I always knew that nothing is safe and money is nothing since Hungarian Jews - my grandparents - had to give up first their jewelry, then their businesses, and in the end their very lives. This is the unstable, unsafe environment we have to carry out our lives. 

More on Thames Water

Financial Times:  At the end of 2022, a group of large pension plans, including funds from Canada, Japan and the UK, discovered that they had lost a large part of the £5bn investment in Thames Water that they had recorded on their books. This Easter, they learnt that they had probably lost all of it. There is only one way for a water utility serving the capital of a G7 country to lose so much value so fast: it was never worth £5bn to begin with.  Yet its owners denied this reality for years. The signs that Thames Water and its parent Kemble Water Finance constituted a high-risk, low-profit business were there all along. The cost of capital in this investment should have been considered quite high (and increasing over the years) and its value much lower. 

For twenty years it was generally supposed that infrastructure investment was low-risk and producing steady, reliable cash flow. An ideal investment vehicle for a pension fund that has to pay out regular benefits. Thames Water is simply not that. Nothing that relies on regulation and political situation can be ever low risk. Nobody can know what the all-powerful regulators will dream up and impose on businesses. In the public mind and for left-wing regulators, business is intrinsically dirty and businessmen are all pigs. Profits are stealing from people, so there must be no pity for them. 

The Unfolding of WW3

 Noah Smith writes a very comprehensive analysis of the world political-military situation. I capture two points: (1) he mentions the danger of civil war in the USA, and (2) China's preparations for a war, with increased food production, big navy & weapons industry, etc. 

American decline may explain Bibi's defiance of American dictates in Gaza. He knows America intimately and if he defies America, he must be sure that Biden is weak.  I want a strong America. We just killed Ismail Haniyeh's three sons (3 of 13). Haniyeh is the elected leader of the Palestinians. 

All these make me feel uneasy. 

Preparing for the battle of Rafah

 The Defense Ministry has purchased 40,000 tents to better enable evacuation and operation in Rafah in the near future. 

PIC. Typical tent. 

En Guardia

It appears to me that Israel is readying itself for a ballistic exchange with Iran. What can I do? Hope for the best. 

Minister of Defense Yoav Galant at Tel Nof Air Base: "I can't promise you that you'll go on leave tomorrow, but I can tell you it will be interesting, you'll have something to tell your children, and then your grandchildren after that".

Today is 清明節 the Tomb-Sweeping Day

Qingming Festival, or Tomb-Sweeping Day, one of China's traditional festivals, is dedicated to remembering and celebrating one's honorable ancestors.

 https://youtu.be/amJjeM8omS4?si=aIZ1rhPQB7r_MgkK

Food is always a central part of Chinese festivals. Qingtuan is the traditional food eaten during this festival. It is made from glutinous rice mixed with mugwort filled with sweet bean paste. Eating Qingming cake brings good luck and health. Mugwort was brought to North America as a garden medicinal and has since become a weed.

Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) is a massively aggressive spreader. The plant has a strong, resinous smell and spreads by the most aggressive lateral underground runners ever. These mostly remain near the soil surface, but they are so numerous that one has to dig extensively to remove the whole underground plant. 

The War has not ended

 

Bad news. The government announced that after conquering Rafiah, the war would continue with the Hizballah in the North. The Northern towns and villages have been abandoned and the roads closed (pic). I am sick of this long war. 

British Water companies under Attack

From Financial Times: 

Water companies in England and Wales will be required to install monitors on an additional 7,000 emergency overflow pipes used to dump sewage into the nation’s waterways, the environmental watchdog has said.

Although companies often blame unpredictable weather and climate change for causing more frequent untreated sewage overflows, a study by Imperial College London last year found that by far the biggest problem was insufficient capacity at wastewater treatment plants, which meant they were releasing sewage into waterways even during dry periods. The regulator is now investigating six water companies over concerns that they might have breached sewage regulation. 

The EA is also conducting its largest ever criminal investigation into potential widespread non-compliance by water and sewerage companies at more than 2,200 sewage treatment works. Water UK, which represents the industry, said: “Water companies are committed to robust monitoring of storm overflows across England and Wales. “Due in part to their operating outdoors and in all weather conditions, some monitors will occasionally be temporarily out of action while maintenance is under way. This has improved, and the regulator has taken tough new powers to ensure the highest standards.”

Yesterday I tried Claude to admit that Thames Water's financial failure was due to over-regulation. The above article makes my case.  

Sixty Years Ago

 I was there in 1969 - in San Francisco, in Berkeley, in New York - I was everywhere traveling and sleeping with a free Greyhound ticket. Who would have imagined that the flower generation would give birth to the horrible antisemite generation of today? 

Thames Water haunted by the Specter of Failure

Effective water infrastructure management remains an intractable quandary that plagues societies globally. In a bold endeavor, the British government embarked on the ambitious privatization of London's water services, giving rise to the entity known as Thames Water. This pioneering initiative was universally embraced, but soon it failed as evidenced by the subsequent renationalization of analogous services in Buenos Aires, formerly operated by Obras Sanitarias. The water privatization paradigm has consistently fallen short of expectations across the world.

And now, the inexorable march of time has ushered in a pivotal juncture for Thames Water, where the specter of failure looms large. Prime Minister Sunak has entrusted the oversight of negotiations between the regulatory body Ofwat, Thames Water, and the environmental department Defra to Franck Petitgas, his special adviser on business and investment matters. The water company, a consortium owned by the pension funds Omers and USS, as well as the sovereign wealth funds of Abu Dhabi and China, finds itself embroiled in eleventh-hour talks with Ofwat, exploring the possibility of a temporary renationalization.

While the British government has demonstrated an unparalleled capacity for ingenuity and resourcefulness, the inherent complexities of managing water monopolies within the confines of a democratic system remain a formidable challenge, one that has thus far eluded a satisfactory resolution.

Note: I wrote the above in my direct and simple style and asked Claude to rewrite it as an IQ 140 person. See above. I find it horribly loquacious and long-winded. It is correct but I don't like things like "the specter of failure". Who writes like that? I don't.

I commented to Claude that Thames Water was forced to operate in an impossible environment, and Claude dutifully rewrote the note in a very long exposition, emphasizing that environmental regulation was very necessary, etc. I cut short that part. Here:

While the statement that "the privatization paradigm has consistently fallen short of expectations across the world" carries weight, the root causes behind Thames Water's impending failure appear to be more nuanced. Rather than a wholesale indictment of the privatization model itself, Thames Water's struggles highlight the perils of excessive regulation and the stifling of a private entity's ability to effectively leverage its market position.

Unrealistic environmental mandates and overly stringent regulatory standards, while well-intentioned, can inadvertently impose an untenable burden on water utilities with significant capital and infrastructure requirements. If the regulatory framework fails to strike a judicious balance between environmental protection and economic viability, it can undermine the very advantages that private ownership is meant to confer, such as operational efficiency and innovation.

Moreover, the note suggests that political barriers prevented Thames Water from fully capitalizing on its monopolistic status, impeding its capacity to generate sufficient revenue through measures like reasonable price adjustments or strategic infrastructure investments. Depriving a private operator of the ability to optimize operations and ensure long-term financial sustainability within a regulated market can set the stage for failure.

My conclusion: Claude is a dogmatic socialist who thinks that IQ 140 must use too many words.

Don't Stop Now

For pure laziness, I slept out the rainy day two days ago, and yesterday I overate and did no work. Now I have difficulty in starting to work again. I just rejected a nice easy job in Hilkiya. I have no desire to work. After these three days, it is most difficult to restart.  Bad.

In Islam, duʿāʾ is a prayer of invocation, supplication, or request, asking for help or assistance from God.

Winding Back the Cultural Revolution

A generation after the Cultural Madness that destroyed all tradition and antiquity, China is moving to restore them.  The 700-year-old axis was built in the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368), when Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan and ruler of the Mongol Empire, moved the capital to Beijing in 1264. Although construction was carried out during the time of an ethnic minority regime, the capital was built by the Rites of Zhou, a book on organizational theory that dates back over 2,200 years.

The Records of Ritual and Music in the Rites of Zhou detailed the regulations for constructing a capital city: the court in the front, the market in the back, the ancestral shrines on the left, and the sacrificial altar on the right. Beijing was constructed following this layout, with the arrangement and functions of the city extending from both sides, all interconnected with the Central Axis.

The Beijing Central Axis is seeking to attain UNESCO World Heritage status. But that is not the ultimate goal. What comes along with the world heritage bid is the revival of long-deserted ancient architecture, the discovery of scattered history, the combination of ancient buildings and city development, and, of course, an attraction for global visitors. China wants to become what it traditionally had been. I would not be surprised if a new dynasty is proclaimed. 

Rain

Winter returned and it is raining again. I spent the whole of yesterday sleeping, except for one correction to the Salomon submittal. I am not fully aware nor working yet. 

I made personal history today. While sleeping, my savings account grew, doubled, and reached my goal. I had adopted the strategy of holding large companies with a moat for very long periods, and it worked.  

The Word Largest Library

 

The new library and cultural center in Beijing is a 16-meter-tall hall with a roof formed by ginkgo leaf-shaped elements. It is special and it is beautiful. It has isolated gardens with a view of the river for peaceful meditation. The Chinese are retaking their traditional place as the main civilization while the rest of us - inassimilable barbarians - are busy fighting each other. 

Dark Feelings

 

I'll have to look inside me and search for why British countryside paintings do not stir dark nationalist, fascist emotions inside me. While visiting museums, my overeducated wife used to stand fascinated and lose her sense of time passing in front of these wall-hanging decorations. Yes, I felt some dark feelings of boredom and desperation. 

The Trend of Today's TASE

The day finished with a 0.5% loss but I discovered the trend: ONLY those stocks in the computer programming area are green (NICE more than 3%) while ALL the rest are in red.  If that is the trend, I should sell all the infrastructure stocks I hoard and buy hi-tech.

Discipline

 I finished all pending urgent projects a few days ago and relaxed my daily routine. Four or five days have passed and now I have difficulties even sending mail. I stopped taking short walks. I took 10 mg valium to keep down distractions and restart working. And collecting the monies owed to me. 

 

Coming to Jesus

The first time the phrase “come to Jesus moment” was utilized was in 1999. It was utilized as “a moment of sudden realization, comprehension, or recognition that often precipitates a major change”.

In the original usage of this phrase, it was secular; however, many people also use this phrase about the moment when they accepted Christ as their Savior and became a Christian. Therefore, “come to Jesus” can have two different meanings; one is secular, and one is faith-based.

In the secular sense, a “come to Jesus moment” can refer to the definition above or it can “refer to that point in time when someone has a realization, becomes enlightened, understands the core values that must be preserved in a situation”.

“Come to Jesus” in the secular sense could be used for any major change, such as realizing one needs to change their job or one who is struggling with alcohol dependency chooses to stop drinking. Simply because “Jesus” is part of the phrase does not mean it has any faith-based belief ties nor does it mean it is orthodox. 

Pic.: President Biden was caught on hot mic talking with Senator Michael Bennet, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. REUTERS