Day Zero in Cape Town

Cape Town's five million inhabitants are suffering water supply restrictions because the five dams feeding the city are drying up. The reason is the El Nino climatic oscillation which has been occurring for thousands of years (see graph above), causing flooding in Peru's coastal deserts. The Incas made mass human sacrifices, that did not solve the problem but provided entertainment and felt good, and eventually the climate returned to regular. Since the water is still flowing from the taps, the situation is not catastrophic and the time has yet to come for real - human - sacrifices.  Alternatively, they can hire Israeli water magicians (moi!). I can promise contractually that I shall make rain in Cape Town - eventually. 

P.S.:  Yet if the choice is between suffering or Israelis, they will do without water and Israelis. The South African government, which is strongly aligned with the Palestinian cause, has snubbed informal offers of help made by the Israeli ambassador. Israel has substantial expertise in desalination technology, but last year the mere presence of a former Israeli ambassador on a panel to discuss water management aroused such protest that the event was cancelled.

Prepping for War in Sweden

The Swedish Government is distributing to the population a 1949 survival manual how to behave in case of war. What war?
(a) A violent reaction against the armed criminal "refugees" that are throwing grenades to police stations. There are no go zones where the Government is unable to police. Lofven said: “There are social problems. Last year 300 shootings occurred, 40 people were killed. It’s a terrible development I’m determined to turn around.”
(b) A foreign war, maybe vs Russia, that lately has been patrolling the Baltic. I don't know.

Expecting Drought

The climate change is here. We are in the fifth year of lower than average rainfall. Another desalination plant is being planned near the Lochamey HaGhetaot kibbutz. A large publicity campaign is being prepared for next March: Save Water. We shall manage, but the neighbors cannot. Will the Jordanians start a war if the price of the water in Amman increases? I don't think so. But our stupid leadership believes that revolutions are caused by poverty, hunger, drought. On the contrary, poverty is caused by revolutions and wars. Pic.: A tanker truck illegally takes water from a river in Jordan. (Image credit: Steven Gorelick)  We can be sure that widespread water penury in the neighboring countries will cause unbearable international pressure on Israel to give up its little water. In the best of the cases we will be seen as selfish and inhuman, in the worst case we will blamed for the penury of the Arabs.

TASE improving

TASE the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange is opening up and attracting more money. 5.2 billion dollars were invested in 2017 in Israeli start-up funds. Using La Griffe's methodology, how many start-up quality workers are in Israel? Take that number and divide by 5 (80% is not available for new projects because they have good jobs) and you reach the conclusion that each one has to burn about  2 million dollars per year. In the water sector, I know only one interesting start-up, a flow meter connected to the cloud where IBM WATSON's AI analyses the data. After two months of learning, it builds a model of the consumer's schedule and water use, and can alert losses, changes in water consumption of the machines, say washing machines, etc. The idea seems promising.

Another good news is that Paul Singer is buying Bezeq shares. Israeli managers and directors are already trembling. Bezeq - a communications company - is very solvent, but its owners and executives are being investigated by the police.

Economic Journalism a-la-HaAretz

The Central Bank of Israel decided to reduce the commission that small businesses pay to the credit card companies from 0.7%  to 0.5%. The idea, obviously, is to increase the use of credit cards and to improve the living standard of the population. How is this presented in the vicious anti-Zionist fishwrap HaAretz?

Front page of the economic section The Marker: "The Bank of Israel gave a present worth many billion sheqels to the banks". What? one may ask. It just reduced the profits of the banks, where is the present? HaAretz reasoning: The commission in the European Union is 0.3%, so by not reducing it to the same level, the Central Bank has benefited the credit card companies. But that is not all.

On page 4 of the same supplement, the title says: "The businesses will pay 2 billion sheqels more because of the slow reduction of the credit card commission." Thus, for HaAretz, the reduction of the commission hurts the credit card companies AND the small businesses. Should I have time to read the whole paper I may find a third article about how this reduction hurts the customers and specially, the poor, the disabled, and most of all, the oppressed segregated Palestinians in their bantustans.


The main article of today's paper deals with my former boss, Alex Viznitzer. The police has recorded all his phone conversations in the last ten years and the thing has reached HaAretz. Honest to God, my feeling while reading his out of context quotations was: Poor Alex, he was being sabotaged by competing bureaucracies and he asked for help from the Minister and political allies. He also tried to find ways to circumvent the "zonot" (sic). On the other hand, he was photographed with a black shirt (pic), revealing not only his vulgarian Pridnestrovian taste but also his membership in the Black Hand maffia. He was also negligent as water engineer (the blue hard hat identifies him as a pipe fitter or technician): look at the missing bolts in the flange and the overall corrosion.

Saving the Israeli Garlic

A large infrastructure facility in the Negev is protected by powerful floodlights at night. That is, it was. These days the regulators forced it to dampen the illumination because it bothered a rare, endemic species, the humble and barely visible Allium Kolmannianum, the Israeli garlic (pic). The strong light confused the poor garlic and could lead to its extinction. The facility was causing light pollution in the desert. One is learning new things all the time.

BTW the vegetable grows only in the Dimona - Beer Sheva area. Foreign satellite image analysts must be wondering why the area has been suddenly obscured at night. Clue: "Garlic".

Uber-capitalism in the UK: The Carillion Bankrupcy

The extremist capitalist concept of privatizing State functions had been first implemented in Britain - surely in the water sector that I am familiar with. Public (their shares are sold in the stock exchange) companies like Thameswater seem to be working, but the failure of Carillion may provide an argument against privatization and for socialization.

We all know that pens in the post office do not write, so it is assumed that private enterprise can do the job better and cheaper. Yet the experience in water is mostly negative. In Argentina and Latin America, several water monopolies were privatized (with World Bank assistance) but they did not last much. The Israeli experience with the Taagidey Maim is a total failure: they evolved into another bureaucracy and not even one of them tried to sell shares or bonds in the stock exchange as was intended.

I have no experience in other areas like public works where Carillion was operating. Now, thousands of staff of the collapsed construction firm Carillion will have their wages stopped. The firm also manages British jails and schools and other public institutions. 30,000 small firms are owed money by Carillion.


Apparently, efficiency is not always improved by privatization. It is agreed that Statism/Socialism does not work. What works?