Idol Factory

The archaeological excavations at the First Temple site in Jerusalem discovered a mold for mass production of female figurines. These 10-12 cm idols may have been Ashtaroth, a Canaanite goddess. These clay figurines were found in many homes in the Judean mountains. The Bible tells us of the Prophets' struggle to eliminate idolatry and to impose Moses's religion. 

The Past and the Future

The family went to the kibbutz. The fat old man is the past, and the little boy is the future. The swimming pool is in a green valley with a spring, which is dry (Mekorot is pumping away the water). The place was not packed because many families prefer to stay at home, near the hardened refuges. Many are spending their vacations in the Greek islands. The country is on high alert, but nothing is happening. 

With so many oil refineries destroyed in Russia, Ukraine, and the Gulf, there is a "beautiful" difference between crude ($ 100 per barrel) and refined products. BAZAN in Haifa must be printing dollars. Claude says don't buy because it's high on the Ayatollah's target list.  

Strategic encirclement

The regime ruling Iran (there is a gay Ayatollah at its head, according to Trump) has closed the maritime outlets of the Middle East region. America is trying to reopen the straits and allow oil exports. 

In the past, America used to head an alliance, but this time its European allies refuse, leaving only Israel as a willing partner. 80 years since the big war, the peoples in the West are prosperous and have lost their bellicosity. As for me, I am suffering in this hot summer and uninterested in anything, trying to work a little, and dreaming of full, pale-skinned Jewish women.

Today is the ninth of Av. The Air Force is tense and waiting for the green light from Trump. The municipalities are opening the air refuges. I am finishing the Petach Tikva project. It is a meeting hall annex to the historical house called "Beit Svatitsky" at 3 Montefiore Street. Its purpose is to correct a historical wrong and foster dialogue on gender issues, promoting awareness of equality and empowerment. My purpose is to receive a few thousand shekels and to buy an apartment for my batshit crazy granddaughter. 

Sharpness and Clarity

Better than that, we now have clarity. We are no longer laboring under illusions, bidding for affection that was always going to be withheld. They were honest with us, in the end, and that honesty is its own kind of freedom. We can go our own way now: not into a ghetto (we still have real allies) but into self-determination, as individuals and as a global people. 

By Ben Freeman, in TABLET. On Antisemitism in the world.

Illustration: Mexican Black Obsidian Ceremonial Knife. Obsidian is sharper than steel. 

Fire destroys Gilead's Farm

The residents of the West Bank settlement escape the fire with the Torah scrolls. The village was burned to the ground. Today's temperature is over 35 Celsius, and the air is very dry. I feel tired, and it is difficult to work.  Clients are phoning me every hour, some are very angry, but I have no explanations to give. 

‘Do not worry’ | Ramokgopa says Koeberg radioactive contamination is safe

The Table Mountain in the background, Koeberg in the foreground, Africa's only nuclear power station. Beautiful!  

Don't worry, says Kagosientso Ramokgopa, Head of ESCOM. 

West Hollywood: Billion Dollars Failure

A large sinkhole closed down Sunset Boulevard. Utilities have been working to keep the aging water system running, but have struggled with limited funds, long project timelines, and the overwhelming length of the pipeline that needs to be replaced. “We have, in the water system, a capital improvement budget that is over a billion dollars,” Collins said.

I wonder what they will do if the San Andreas Fault snaps as it must. In the El Cajon Pass, stress has reached its maximum level. Several big companies have moved to Texas. Could it be connected? California is not what it used to be.

Crise de l'eau

 

Of course, TAHAL, the Israeli water consulting company I worked for many years, is no more. We worked mostly in Latin America and Africa. It was never able to set foot in any developed country, mostly because those countries had solved their water problems.  But now I am seeing growing difficulties, not only in France and Europe in general, but also in the USA, such as the Colorado River catchment area. The problems, at least in California, which I know personally, are the "greenness" of the regulation. A new TAHAL could find new markets in the West, as its water infrastructure and professional human capital degrade.

16% of France's waterways had dried up as of last June, compared to just 6% in June 2025. France 24

The country is experiencing its third heatwave in as many months, with wildfires further fueled by dry conditions. France 24

Broader European monitoring (EDO) shows watch-level drought conditions persisting or expanding in the Iberian Peninsula, France, southern UK, southern Germany, the Alps, and Italy, with alert-level conditions having emerged in France as well.

Ro Khanna at Zanuta

Congressman Ro Khanna staged a photo-op tour of Khirbet Zanuta ("khirbet" = ruins of a Judean village, repopulated by Beduins)) — anything to throw another accusation at Israel. Just another politician surfing the antisemitism wave to juice his presidential ambitions. And American Jews? Silent. Scared to say a word.

3 million new Europeans

 El Mundo reports that Spain is granting citizenship to three million illegals. The Sanchez government has blocked the Extranjeria (the department normally dealing with foreigners), and the police have been charged with issuing EU identity documents. Gradually, they and their families will move on to Europe's heartland. They are Hispanos from Colombia and Venezuela, others from Spain's  African former colonies. They are all sure votes for Sanchez and Europe's Socialists. 

Why they keep selling on credit to the USA?

 I am an Israeli water engineer of a curious nature. Some of my clients are not paying (yimach smam - a Hebrew curse), and I wonder if I should continue working with them. Thinking from a global perspective from my 3 m by 2 m cave, I wonder why America can keep trading with a persistent current-account deficit that reached $1.12 trillion in 2025 — 3.6% of GDP. By trading partner, the largest bilateral deficits are with China (~$270 billion), Mexico (~$157 billion), Vietnam (~$113 billion), Ireland (~$80.5 billion), and Germany (~$76.4 billion). America is more indebted year by year, yet it makes no difference. Maybe its military strength explains this kind of imbalance. Israel, fortunately, is a structurally strong country with a large savings account. We can do without foreign assistance.

Pic.: Mongol taxman collecting tribute.

Kissinger: Order above Peace

 
I am rereading Kissinger's World Order. He died at 100 on November 29, 2023, but the book was written in 2014. He was against negotiations with HAMAS for peace; he advised reaching some acceptable mechanism for co-existence. Trump is following his advice in fighting the Ayatollahs: he is not interested in peace, but in workable rules for maritime passage through the Hormuz Strait and controlling the development of nuclear power. Even these limited aims are very difficult to agree on for the Shia clerics, as they are waging a long war of vengeance for the assassination of Abu-Bakr 1600 years ago.

Growing force on the left

Being an ancient Israeli, with only a few more years to live, American politics has little relevance to me. But the Mamdani phenomenon cannot be looked over: it portends real change. Meisner writes:

This revolution kicked off last year when Zohran Mamdani was elected as the mayor of New York City. He is a Muslim Indian, born in Africa. This is notable in many ways, one obviously being racial, the other religious, since America is traditionally Christian and the historical enemy of Christians had been Islam. He will be a key figure going forward. He is already commanding great influence as he endorsed the above candidates as well as other non-White neo-liberals around the country. He is building a coalition which may well catapult him into the White House in the future.

Only years ago, America became predominantly Latino et al. Yet, against the ethnic vote, Trump took the presidency. So, American politics is fluid. 

 

The Secret Science of Biology

I used the Fable AI model to write a wastewater treatment report, and it was lying and complicating things. It made things difficult. I moved to Sonnet, which is - so they say - a less capable model, and it explained to me that sewage treatment is a biological area, which is a subject prohibited by Fable's rules. 

What is so secret and sensitive in biology? Then I remembered the question in the Senate nomination of Judge Sotomayor: What is a woman?  The fat woman answered: I don't know, I am not a biologist. Therefore, she cannot know. Science and common sense are so controversial that even the powerful Anthropic is fearful of treading on them.

I illustrate this short reflection with a picture of a woman from Google. Is she a woman? I do not know.

PS.: Why should the question of who is a woman be so sensitive? Homosexuals believe they are women and will fight to be recognized as such. Who wants to oppose hysterical people for a definition? Not Sotomayor. 

Secrets are secrets to take advantage of others, and the biggest is paternity. Human females dissimulate their fertility status (monkeys publicize it), making genetic paternity uncertain. Males will fight and kill to ensure paternity, which is not only vanity. Kingship depends on paternity; when it is in doubt, civil wars follow. King Charles III of Britain was married to Diana and had two sons. The second boy apparently is not his, and he divorced her. The secret (if true) can destroy the whole dynasty. Fable is right; biology is a taboo subject. 

Maximum Alert

 The internet warns that Israel entered a state of maximum alert, although the regular Pikud HaOref is silent. President Trump called the Iranian leadership cookoo and suspended further negotiations. 
MSN

Trump: "If we make a deal with Iran, I'm not sure that will stick because I've found them to be very dishonorable people."

“They said to us, please don't kill us during the funeral. I said I won't, and we didn't do anything then they attacked three ships.

Summer Nausea

It is the classic "natsu-bate" (夏バテ) scenario. Lack of appetite and lethargy during the hot & humid summer. There must be a word for it in Hebrew, but I don't know it. 

Argentina attacks Britain

 Those were the times! Argentina was ecstatic.

¡Las Malvinas son argentinas! 

Except that they are not.

Journal

 
Kfar Saba 33 Celsius. I ate a whole head of ice lettuce and feel sick. I lost my will to work and cannot find it. 

Pic.: A crater in Yokneam, produced by an Iranian missile. The phreatic is near the surface.

Fable or Opus?

 

Anthropic upgraded me to Fable. I asked it if it was for my benefit. It said, "No, it is twice as expensive, and you don't really need the power of Fable." These AIs are too clever for me.

Bad Ideas Never Die

 
Pope Leo XIV has issued his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas ("Magnificent Humanity"), subtitled "On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence" — a comprehensive position paper on AI. Its thrust is unmistakable: AI is dangerous, it will displace human work, and it will bring dislocation and pain to society. Opposing change is a bad idea, but then religion itself rests on bad ideas. Not that the alternatives have fared better — the French Revolution tried to extinguish Christianity and replace it with the cult of Reason, and failed.

The Pope is resurrecting the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi, who diagnosed the cause of India's poverty as the introduction of industrial cloth — better and cheaper than the traditional handmade cottons that had allowed every Hindu to spin at home and earn some money. Gandhi convinced the country that mill-made cloth was the source of Indian poverty, and that a return to the charkha — the hand-held spinning wheel — would magically create wealth. As part of his swadeshi (self-sufficiency) movement, he obliged every member of the Indian National Congress to wear khadi, homespun cloth, and placed the charkha on the flag of the independence movement — thereby prolonging India's underdevelopment by eighty years.

Mao Tse-tung was infected by the same bad thinking. During the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), he rejected industrial steelworks in favour of  "backyard furnaces," in which peasants melted down their own agricultural implements to produce worthless pig iron. The consequence was famine.

All these low-technology solutions are bad ideas, rooted in the feeling that high technology is out of reach. Now the Pope is frightening people and preaching underdevelopment.

In Israel, we are lucky: we are forced to defend ourselves against the wealthiest states in the world, which can buy the highest-technology weapons and turn them against us. This leaves us no room for "bad ideas". We are compelled — against our will — to adopt effective high technology, or perish. Necessity has spared us the luxury of romantic underdevelopment.

Discord in Iran

IRAN STATE TV CUTS OFF GHALIBAF LIVE, EXPOSING THE RIFT WITHIN ITS OWN REGIME. Iranian state TV abruptly cut off Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf during a live interview as he addressed critics opposing negotiations with the United States. State TV later claimed the second part of the interview will air tomorrow. Iran’s political wing is trying to manage negotiations. The IRGC hardliners are signaling war. 

No one knows who is in charge. 

Garcia Lorca

 Y que yo me la lleve al río

creyendo que era mozuela,
pero tenía marido.
Fue la noche de Santiago
y casi por compromiso.
Se apagaron los faroles
y se encendieron los grillos.
En las últimas esquinas
toqué sus pechos dormidos,
y se me abrieron de pronto
como ramos de jacintos.
El almidón de su enagua me
sonaba en el oído,
como una pieza de seda
rasgada por diez cuchillos
Sin luz de plata en sus copas
los árboles han crecido,
y un horizonte de perros
ladra muy lejos del río.

Pasadas las zarzamoras,
los juncos y los espinos,
bajo su mata de pelo
hice un hoyo sobre el limo.
Yo me quité la corbata.

Ella se quitó el vestido.
Yo el cinturón con revólver
Ella sus cuatro corpiños.
Ni nardos ni caracolas
tienen el cutis tan fino,
ni los cristales con luna
relumbran con ese brillo.
Sus muslos se me escapaban
como peces sorprendidos,
la mitad llenos de lumbre,
la mitad llenos de frío.
Aquella noche corrí
el mejor de los caminos,
montado en potra de nácar
sin bridas y sin estribos.
No quiero decir, por hombre,
las cosas que ella me dijo.
La luz del entendimiento
me hace ser muy comedido.
Sucia de besos y arena,
yo me la lleve del río.
Con el aire se batían las
espadas de los lirios.

Me porté como quien soy.
Como un gitano legítimo.
La regalé un costurero
grande de raso pajizo,
y no quise enamorarme
porque teniendo marido
me dijo que era mozuela
cuando la llevaba al río.

We learned Garcia Lorca in high school. This romance is so harmoniously constructed that I automatically learned it by heart and remember it. Google quoted it incorrectly, changing the words it considered offensive. In AI's view, the poem treats women as objects; "mozuela" means virgin, and in the end, she was not, which is the point of the poem, but meaningless in today's culture. The poem emphasizes her whiteness, which AI condemns as racist. And so on. I love Rioja Tempranillo wine and identify with Spain's past culture. 

Garcia Lorca was considered leftist and was homosexual. At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, he was arrested by Nationalist (Franco's) forces in Granada and executed by firing squad, his body never found. The reasons were his association with leftist figures and homophobia. Franco's regime banned his work for years afterward. 

Polish colors

Each nation's folklore has its colors. Asians love Yellow/Greenish. Andean indians love strong magenta/violet tones (pic). I feel an affinity for the Polish red. Also, Polish folk songs sound best to my ears, not the Hungarian beating the boots -  heyyehuyya hey!

Argentine history: as taught and real

In the school, I learned about the INVASIONES INGLESAS of Buenos Aires in 1806 and the heroic resistance of the local patriots. Fake:  Beresford accepts his defeat (pic: "The English bite the dust of the defeat").

 It took me another 70 years to discover that the English had no intention of colonising Argentina; their motive was to seize the silver being exported to Spain through Buenos Aires, which they did with no resistance. Got the treasure and left. A few English soldiers deserted and married into the local aristocracy. Generations of Argentine children were taught that the British invaders had been completely defeated, so it is no surprise they expected to occupy the Falkland Islands easily. The Argentine Army surrendered as soon as the Royal Marines arrived.

 The prize carried off by the Narcissus to London consisted of more than 28300 kilograms of pure silver coins.  The treasure was divided into eighths according to the British Navy rules. Beresford and Popham took home the lion's share and became very wealthy. 

The Bank of England recorded 27 tons, 17 hundredweight, and 4 lbs of silver. Those are avoirdupois units (the ton/hundredweight system), so:

• 27 long tons × 2,240 lb = 60,480 lb
• 17 cwt × 112 lb = 1,904 lb
• 4 lb = 4 lb
• Total ≈ 62,388 lb avoirdupois ≈ 28,300 kg (28.3 tonnes)

Converted to troy ounces (how silver is priced): 28,300 kg ÷ 31.103 g = roughly 909,000–910,000 troy ounces. Silver is trading at roughly $59 per troy ounce right now — so the melt value of that hoard today:

≈ 910,000 troy oz × ~$59/oz ≈ $53–54 million USD (2026).

In actual pieces of eight (Spanish reales), it was about one million dollars (the sign $ means Spanish dollar). 

Bayer Saved from Ruin

 THE SUPREME COURT JUST HANDED Bayer Corporation—and its wholly owned subsidiary Monsanto—a major victory. In an 7–2 decision, the Roberts Court ruled that the moment the Environmental Protection Agency approved Roundup’s label, the company bore no responsibility for what the product did to the people who used it. With that, Missouri farmer John Durnell’s quest to get compensation for the cancer he says Roundup caused screeched to a halt—along with the claims of about two hundred thousand other plaintiffs. The halls of justice are now closed to them.

At least for now, America has evaded the environmentalist craze. Bayer is a good agrochemical company. It is a treasure for farmers everywhere. 

Breaking through the barrier of fear

 
Netanyahu said that the State of Israel is stronger than ever, and this is not only reflected in the regional arena but also in the national consciousness: "We changed the rules of the game in our region from the ground up, but above all, we changed ourselves." He claimed that Israel "managed to break through the barrier of fear with initiative and aggression."

Per contra, HaAretz opposition fishwrap, writes:

A Collapsing Society: Israel Suffers a National Mental Crisis Due to the War

Darializa Avila Chevalier

Darializa Avila Chevalier is an American community organizer who just won a Democratic primary. She defeated five-term incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat to become the Democratic nominee for New York's 13th Congressional District. She identifies as Afro-Latina and hates Israel. About 60% of New York City is ethnically Caribbean (Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, etc.), and 10% elderly Jews. She will join AOC in the American Congress.

Elon Musk

@elonmusk

·

27m

This is happening throughout the West

Quote

Stephen Miller

@StephenM

·

4h

Change the voters, change the country.

TAHAL had a project in the Republica Dominicana, and I rented a room in Trujillo's kept woman's home. He gave her a big house where she lived surrounded by several criadas. It was a beautiful house, built of coral-cement. The State's sources of income were the lottery and alcoholic beverages. People were deeply Catholic and friendly to Israelis. I fed on fried plantains and fish in the street. 

On my last tour in New York, we lived in City Island. In the long trips on the train to Manhattan, I always talked to strangers, mostly in Spanish. Caribbean people were relaxed and friendly, but Afro-Americans were tense and "acomplejados" (neurotic). The trains were old, noisy, and jumpy. Third world class.