No Ceasefire here

 IDF Chief of Staff Zamir during a visit inside Lebanon:

“We are not in a ceasefire; the IDF is in a state of war. Iran is much weaker, and Hezbollah understands it is isolated.”

Foundation of Maoz Tzur

 
In the ceremony of the foundation of Maoz Tzur settlement overlooking Route 433, Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana said, “What we are doing here today must be clearly stated: much of the world is not with us. Yet we have come, representing a broad cross-section of the government and the Knesset, to declare to the world, this is our land. We are not here as guests, nor are we here temporarily. When we are told to ‘go back to where you came from,’ we answer: we have returned to where we came from. The message from here is clear-we are here to stay for generations."

The pic represents the first foundation of Buenos Aires. The natives killed and ate the Spaniards, but the settlement was re-founded a second time and now has a population of 12 million. 

Spain changing sides

 Spain under Sanchez has refused to use American bases, and it is not strengthening its armed forces as NATO decided. Today, it is reopening its diplomatic relations with Iran while Iran is at war with the USA. Reading Spanish journals, I am surprised by their virulent antisemitism and shameless lies against Israel. Is Spain trying to profit from an anti-American position, such as gaining free access to the Hormuz or to trade with China? The democratic Assembly of Athens always reacted ferociously to the cities that tried to leave the Delian Alliance, just think of the Melians. 

Adult male Melians were massacred, and the rest were sold in slave markets. The land was divided among Athenian settlers. Spain is playing a dangerous game. 

 

Unquiet night

 

At 3 AM Israel, President Trump's fury against Iran was to start, so it was impossible to sleep. A pause was agreed upon a few minutes before the ultimatum, but the tension did not disappear. I woke up with a headache and am tired. What's more, with a sense that the war did not end. Pic.: an Iranian missile aimed at Tel Aviv.

President Trump is Angry

 

urbi et orbi

 

Liturgy comes from the Greek leitourgia — literally "public work" or "service of the people." It refers to the formal, structured order of religious worship — the prescribed texts, prayers, rituals, and ceremonies that define how a community practices its faith collectively.

In the Jewish context, the most obvious example is the Haggadah — the text you follow at the Seder. It is liturgy: a fixed order (seder literally means "order") of prayers, blessings, songs, questions, and narrative that structures the collective religious act of remembering the Exodus.

Escalation

Today's Israeli airstrikes on Iran’s Mahshahr petrochemical zone, including damage at the Fajr 1 and Fajr 2 facilities in Khuzestan. It is near the key port of Bandar Abbas. No significant military assets at Mahshahr — it's a civilian industrial zone. The target is Iran's income, not its weapons. Netanyahu even said it explicitly: "money machine."

F-15E downed

 

Lost over South Iran today.

Europe Paralized

European nations are sabotaging America's effort to open the Kharg Island toll to free navigation.  I think they fear that if they take part in the effort, Iran will boycott them. More probably, they fear being seen as colonizers and are afraid of their large, violent Arab minorities at home. President Trump calls them cowards. He may be right. 

What will be the fate of that block of 500 million Whitish people? Spain and France are openly anti-American; Germany, apparently, is busy preparing to fight Russia. Most surprising is England. It is led by a milketoast Human Rights activist, uninclined to foreign expeditions. They are still living the fantasy of colonialism, loving their enemy and hating themselves.

The world continues to change. More change, more opportunities (for my grandkids, not for me).

I worked in Nigeria a few years after independence, and I see the savagery now. English colonialism was a blessing. 

A hundred years later: Germany Re-Arming

 
Astonishing statement from General Carsten Breuer, chief of the German defence staff.

"Germany no longer regards the USA as a reliable defence partner. We are assuming conflict with Russia in the next few years is inevitable, we are re-arming.

We are back to 1930. Why is the war with Russia inevitable? Why?

Maximum optionality

 Lingo for "We are waiting for the right moment". I think that this month-long war is going well. As planned, the war has messed up the Middle East and is leading to the coalescence of a Sunni coalition of the Gulf emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and maybe Pakistan. Israel is not alone in facing Iran's nuclear bomb. The Shi'a of South Lebanon are being expelled, and Iran's fanatic Ayatollah regime has been replaced by a hard but rational military dictatorship. For more than a month, I have heard nothing about Gaza. Half of the territory has been bulldozed and made ready for civilization. What the war has not achieved is the participation of Europe, but I think they, too, will be forced to defend their oil supply if they want to exist as independent nations. Thanks to their passivity (cowardice?), the Anglo-Saxons are - once again - sitting on the world's oil and gas. We are on the side of the victors. 

 

Pirates of Barbary

 The pirates of Barbary (Algeria) kidnapped and enslaved millions of Europeans in the 17th and 18th centuries. Nothing was done; they paid the ransoms in gold. Till they made a mistake: they kidnapped a few Americans. President Adams sent the new republic's marines, and the whole Barbarian business ended quickly. 

Today, Iran and Yemen are trying to tax maritime traffic. Europe is impotent and will pay, as always. All are looking at President Trump to send in the Marines.

"Hostia, hostia, ¡a tomar por culo! "

 Today, a missile was intercepted over my head, and pieces fell in the neighborhood. I don't know what this thing is; maybe it is part of a missile from Iran. It caused some damage to an apartment, while the people were safe in the basement. I downloaded the pic from the media. The Gov asks not to publish anything, but this has already been published. 

Iran is attacking left and right, frightening half the universe. The Spanish have the ugliest attitude, their President announced: "Why should we be suffering? We did nothing. It's all because of the Jews." This resonates with Europeans as they will pay more for gas, spend on re-arming, and their chronic stagnation will turn into a full recession. 

From La Vanguardia, a progressive Spanish paper, today:

 "Hostia, hostia, ¡a tomar por culo! Nos estamos desconectando": así reaccionaron en el centro del control de Red Eléctrica (REE). Si España no existiera, habría que inventarla.

Status and Prole

The political consequences of low elite fertility among the Roman elites were highly unstable succession to the Roman throne and frequent internal conflicts. Hereditary succession was acceptable to the senate, "but the main problem was that from the time of Augustus to the mid-third century (almost three centuries), only three emperors – Vespasian, Marcus Aurelius, and Septimius Severus – had sons who could inherit."

The Changing Middle East

Syria's former and current ruling couple. 

Western values are not winning. 

 

Crabtree's Prediction

 
From Wikipedia:   In 2013, Crabtree published "Our Fragile Intellect" in Trends in Genetics, The prediction that our intellectual abilities are genetically fragile was based on the determined rate of human de novo mutations (those mutations that appear in each generation). This rate has been determined in several human populations to be about 1.20 x10^-8 per nucleotide per generation with an average father's age of 29.7 years. This rate doubles every 16.5 years with the father's age and ascribes most of the new mutations to the father during the production of reproductive cells.  Thus about 45 to 60 new mutations occur per generation per human genome with each new generation.  The conclusion that the accumulation of these new mutations over the generations would lead to intellectual fragility was based on the estimate of the fraction of genes necessary for normal development of the nervous system, which is thought to be several thousand. The nervous system is unique in that an extraordinarily large number of genes are required for the development and function of the brain, representing perhaps 10–20% of all human genes. The simple combination of the number of genes required for normal brain development (>1000) and the fact that each human generation has 45-60 new mutations per genome led Crabtree to suggest that our intellectual abilities are particularly genetically fragile over many generations.

His thesis: Each generation, humans accumulate ~50–60 new mutations. Most are harmless. But some are slightly harmful and aren’t removed. They stack. Over ~3,000 years, humans may have accumulated multiple mutations affecting cognition. In the past, natural selection filtered out harmful traits. Today, modern society buffers survival, meaning that those mutations may persist rather than be removed.

I think that natural selection is active no less than before, and intelligent people do reproduce themselves. Today, that is unclear because of the general mixing that takes place. 

Half of TASE's trade is by foreigners

TASE, Tel Aviv's stock exchange, is gaining popularity among financial circles. TASE is not only the best market in the world, but also the inflow of foreign currency has strengthened the Israeli shekel tremendously. Personally, it means that the modest profits from my savings allowed me to help my daughter buy a nice kitchen. 

From Globes: "The scale of foreign trading activity has increased, among other things, following the transition to a Monday-Friday trading format, which contributes to deepening liquidity in the market."

TASE data also show that foreign investors have deepened their trading activity in Tel Aviv throughout the war. The share of foreign investors in daily trading on the TASE jumped from 35% before the war to 41% of trading during the war. The boom in trading in dual-traded stocks is important to the TASE for another reason. Following the recent listing of US cybersecurity giant Palo Alto Networks in Tel Aviv TASE VP economic department Ron Klein explains, "We are seeing a very significant increase in companies contacting us regarding dual listing. I estimate that we will see a significant number of new dual listing companies."

The illustration is unrelated to the kitchen mentioned above. 

Iranian Rial and its worth

I think the Rial originally was the Spanish Real made from Mexican silver, which was the currency accepted all over the world in the 16th Century.  

Each silver real weighed 3.433 grams at a fineness of 93.1% silver. Today's silver price (March 23, 2026): $70.78 per troy ounce (31.1035 g). One Spanish real would be equivalent to $7.28 USD. Ten Million Iranian Rials would be worth... not much.

5,000 km missiles

 Iran fired two intercontinental missiles at the Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean. One was shot down, the second missed. This proves that Iran has the means to bomb European capitals, just as it is doing to us. Bibi called on European nations to join us in our fight against the danger. I think it is a mistake; they will not help because they hate us so much that no Jewish appeal can move them. On the contrary, any call coming from the Jews is a balm for their cruel hearts, so to speak; they hate Jews, and they hate America. They are enjoying the idea that Tel Aviv is being destroyed (as shown in all European press, not in reality) and wish us more suffering. Europeans are afraid and fear that American bases are endangering them. Thanks God for Donald Trump.

 https://x.com/i/status/2035762512147128344

Northern Light

 They lead the war: Central Command, Pete Hegseth, Vice President, and the President. Tall Nordics all.