Head of Israeli Secret Service: Impostor

Yaakov Peri, former head of the Shin Beth (the Israeli Secret Service)  did not serve in the Army and lied about it, according to the TV show “Uvda” aired Wednesday night, hours after the ex-Shin Bet chief resigned from the Knesset.


There is no evidence of Peri serving in the IDF, and that the listed reason for his exemption is that he is “permanently unfit.”


On the Knesset website, Peri, 74, is listed as having served as a paratrooper, and has talked about his IDF service in interviews and his biography.

Now, what does this information mean? Peri went through life (and reached the top) on the basis of a lie. I cannot believe that this was unknown to his bosses and environment. He must have a real health problem and tried to hide it from the public. I try to understand him, yet he was a definite security risk for the organization he served, and for the country. We are lucky that our enemies are so incompetent.

What happens on Day Zero?

No one is sure what will happen in Cape Town on Day Zero, except that the city will shut off the people’s taps.  Day Zero is when the last of the reservoirs dries up and the South African city of five millions stops the pumps and no water will flow from the taps. Day Zero is expected to arrive at end of April.

Prof. Thompson from Stanford U. has imagined that scenario. "Residents will then be able to pick up 6.6 gallons of water per day at one of 200 distribution sites that the city is setting up.  (By comparison, Americans use 80-100 gallons per day.)  If Cape Town is successful, it will have pulled off an amazing administrative feat.  One observer has estimated that each site will need to dispense water to people at the amazing clip of eight households per hour for 12 hours every day."

Africans are not noted for their social discipline. What happens when hundreds of thousands of people descend on each site for their daily water supplies? The military will have to protect the distribution sites.

Money that has nowhere to go

Tyler Cowen writes in Bloomberg that "There's a lot of wealth being created and not enough safe places to store it."  There are no enough instruments to transfer wealth from the present to the future. US bonds pay nothing and the dollar devaluates.  Gold keeps is worth, more or less. It is the most primitive safe heaven. So the money goes to American blue chips and real estate in London, New York and Tel Aviv. Can't somebody invent some kind of bank or financial institution better than gold?

Israeli bureaucracy: Invincible

In 2014 the whole Israeli gas industry was about to crash because Nobel wanted to leave the country. The reason was that the regulation and taxing rules were changing all the time. Netaniyahu promised to intervene and moderate and stabilize the regulation, but that did not happen. Last week the Commerce and Industry Chamber had a meeting to protest bureaucracy, and the facts revealed are shocking. Ten percent of the food cost is the cost of compliance with the paperwork required, and examples were given of large foreign companies that went back on their plans to enter the Israel market. It is impossible to open a small shop without violating some of the hundred rules and requirements. I am depressed. My designs get rejected by ignorant young women with dictatorial regulatory powers for capricious reasons, such as the scale is inexact, the lines are too thin and of wrong color, the position of the hot water tank is misplaced a few centimeters, spelling mistakes.

The Endangered Soreq Smelt

California has the Delta smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus) which is a small sardine infesting the freshwater-saltwater mixing zone of the Sacramento river estuary. California is suffering from very severe water scarcity but environmentalists have declared the smelt an endangered species (although it is indistinguishable from billions of other sardines) and forced the water authorities to spill good fresh water into the sea to support the ecosystem of this uneatable pest.

Lately I am hearing that the Soreq river carries less water to the Mediterranean (the drought, remember?) and there is a pressing need to restore the "delta". Our marine biologists are feverishly searching for the Israeli equivalent of the California smelt, so we too can be shamed to spill precious, expensive drinking water to the sea. Hereby I am baptizing this yet undiscovered but essential sardine - "the Soreq smelt". It is possible that by this time it is extinguished, and we need to import the California Delta smelt and acclimatize it, or to resuscitate it recombining ordinary sardine genes.

Growing Drought in Iran

Iran is an arid country and suffering from climate change as we do:  there is a 1.2 millimeters annual decrease of precipitation in Iran during last 20 years. The mean precipitation in Iran during September 23, 2017 to January 27, 2018 has been just 40 millimeters, despite the fact that the average precipitation in long run during the same period is 101 millimeters, said the director for drought and crisis management department of Iran’s Meteorological Organization.

Pic: Lake Urmiah.

Iran will follow Israel's path of seawater desalination and saving efforts; in fact, we are two countries complementing each other. It is a pity we are not friends.

Tension in Ethiopia/Sudan border

The war in Syria has exhausted the people and is slowly winding down. The next conflict is building up between Sudan and Ethiopia, with Egypt as would be mediator. All three countries sharing the big river Nile are nervous, the Renaissance dam will change the river's regime, and no one is sure how. These are big, poor, heavily militarized  countries.