Abolish the Water Corporations!

 

Water supply was traditionally part of the municipalities. They bought water from Mekorot and sold it for the double price. Maintenance expenses were low, so there were large sums available at the discretion of the local political chiefs. 

The idea of the corporations was to create financially attractive investment vehicles in the stock exchange. Today there are no infrastructure investments here. That did not happen: the corporations spent their profits on themselves, overinvesting in municipal water infrastructure and in personnel. 

Now the Minister for Energy Cohen (right pic) wants to dissolve the corporations and turn the operation back to the municipalities. Which would improve the situation of the local authorities. I expected this in the last ten years and now is being discussed. Good.

Back to the Middle Ages

Hundreds of artists have signed an open letter that calls on the Venice Biennale, the world’s top art festival, to drop Israel’s national pavilion this year. In continuing to mount the Israeli Pavilion, the artists say, “The Biennale is platforming a genocidal apartheid state.”

Only a century ago, Jews were discriminated against everywhere and not allowed to participate in general cultural-political events. Two hundred years ago they were not allowed to live in certain towns and areas. In Hungary, Jews had no civil rights and could settle in the cities only with special permits. Equality was granted to Jews only in the French Revolution.  

Once we were accused of having killed Jesus, the son of God. Now they have found another imaginary guilt to dislike us. 

I feel we are sliding back into our historical place of boycotted, rejected community. I am not afraid of it, we flourished mightily in our isolation.

Potash Troubles

 

The only troubled important share in my portfolio is ICL, the local potash fertilizer producer. From +100% it went to -25% and I am losing too much. International prices went down (see Rabobank graph) and Bielorrusia is having trouble getting out its product. I cannot find any reference to the Houthi closing down the only outlet for ICL potash to Asia, but I presume it is the main cause of ICL's horrible loss of worth. Geopolitical risk, they say. The Jordanian Potash company must also be suffering. But the main damage is being caused to the Suez Canal - Egypt. And Europe. A multinational force is trying to do something but the Houthis cannot be attacked from the air or the sea and no one will send troops for a land operation. Hamas is still fighting and speculating that Israel's internal turmoil is working for its benefit. Seems that 2024 will be a lost year for ICL and moi. 

Feelings

 

The center does not hold.

 "Iran's military forces have, in an armed clash inside the Pakistani territory, killed senior Jaish al-Adl militant group commander Ismail Shahbakhsh and some of his companions," Iran's state-run media reported on Saturday.

The development has come a month after the two countries conducted airstrikes on each other's territories.

Jaish al-Adl, a Sunni extremist organization, that is designated a terrorist organization by Iran, operates predominantly in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan (colored brown left).

Centrifugal forces are acting on Iran. 

Less for the same price

 

New tuna tin with less tuna. The price remains the same.

I did not realize the change and bought eight boxes.

Decadent Art (anno 1900)

 

Artist unknown. 

Decapitating the enemy

 
According to Gallant (Israel's Minister of Defense), “Hamas has no confidence in its commanders – this is very, very apparent. In addition, the Hamas-Gaza branch is unresponsive – there is nobody to talk to on the ground, and the external leadership [abroad] is looking for leadership [in Gaza]. This means that there is a ‘bid’ for who will manage Gaza – there is no party in control.

This is an opportunity to put some Hamas chieftain of our liking into the leadership position in Gaza and negotiate their surrender "with ourselves".   

Packed Plant

Packed WWTP with automatization was my idea 30 years ago. I proposed to build a prototype to a Start-Up State facility in Southern Israel, the project was accepted but the terms were leonine, they wanted most of the shares and my part was to be about 10-15%, so I abandoned the whole project.  I see now that the Chinese have produced it successfully and selling it at about 12000 dollars each (43,000 sheqel). It is dirt cheap. The factory is in Shandong and has sales of 1.5 million dollars. Admirable. 

 

Is TEVA cheap?

TEVA's stock rose 3-4% today, so some people think it is interesting. We can see from the most recent balance sheet that Teva Pharmaceutical Industries had liabilities of US$11.4b falling due within a year, and liabilities of US$23.2b due beyond that. Offsetting these obligations, it had cash of US$2.25b as well as receivables valued at US$3.39b due within 12 months. So it has liabilities totaling US$28.9b more than its cash and near-term receivables, combined. 

The graph shows that TEVA gradually is paying back its debt and reducing the total amount of debt. It looks encouraging. Let's sleep on it.

Hibernating

Up until October 7, Israel’s construction industry relied heavily on Palestinian manpower. About 75,000 Palestinians in the West Bank held permits to work in Israel. There were another 12,000 in the Gaza Strip, while about 15,000 illegal entrants were employed in the industry. That amounts to about a third of the workforce in the entire sector. With the outbreak of the Swords of Iron war, the entry of Palestinian workers into Israel was stopped entirely, leading to an immediate shortfall of 100,000 workers.

According to the Association of Contractors and Builders in Israel, however, the numbers are much higher. In response to the proposal by the Ministry of Finance in the revised 2024 budget, the Association wrote that even before the war there was a permanent shortage of 40,000 workers for the industry’s needs. In other words, the industry is actually now lacking 140,000 workers.

The Association adds that at present almost 50% of the building sites in the country are shut down, because of the severe shortage of manpower. Those that are active are working at 30% of normal output. The most recent survey by the Central Bureau of Statistics found that 41% of the building sites in the Tel Aviv and central regions and 58% of the sites in the Jerusalem region had been shut since the war broke out.

As for foreign construction workers, before the war there were some 23,000 of them in Israel, mainly from Moldova and China. About 3,000 were reported to have left at the beginning of the war, many of them because of the security situation. (From Globes 16-1-23).

As for me, I am sleeping and inactive. Several projects are detained but I am not pushing them. I am hibernating. 

Searching for Glitches aka Miracles

 

Somebody commented that if we think the universe is a simulation, then we must search for glitches in the program operating it. Isn't it the same as looking for miracles and other exceptional acts that may reveal God's plan? I don't think there was any believable. Therefore, the machine computing us or the universe itself must be perfect at our level. And we are left without any cue on the nature of reality, except that we have none and must continue searching.  

Computer glitches (or failures or bugs) can sometimes be very easy to fix. For example, restarting your computer is often sufficient to fix many simple glitches. Restarting your system clears your memory, shuts down running programs, and often gets rid of whatever combination of factors that may have created the glitch in the first place.