Herzliya Hills

I was invited to submit a proposal for a restaurant in the Herzliya Hills project. What? Since when there are hills in Herzliya? I looked up the project. It is where my old sewage pumping station used to stand. What did they do to that facility, with its historical and sentimental value? 

Intellectual Foundations of the Sandinista Movement

The Sandinista movement was perceived in America as ideologically Communist, and Ronald Reagan tried to destroy it through the covert Contra invasion. Of course it failed like the Bahia de los Cochinos invasion by John Kennedy. Reading Donald Hodgins, an American academic historian, it appears that, unlike in the CIA and the American government, in the academia it was well known that Marx was not among the intellectual progenitors of the Sandinistas.

Hodgins points out that Nicaraguan worldview was impressed by hundred years of American aggression, first to guarantee that no second transoceanic canal will compete with the Panama Canal.  Second, Nicaragua was "invaded" by American gold miners in transit to California, leaving a rather barbaric impression. Nicaraguans were also aware of the plans transfer the cotton/slave economy of the South, after the victory of the North, to their land. The Marine invasion in the nineteen twenties finally confirmed their fears of becoming an American colony.

Those were the ideological roots of Sandino, nothing to do with Marx or Russia. It is amazing that Reagan could be so blind, seeing Communists where there were none. In fact, the Sandinistas, when in power, held democratic elections and lost. And they moved aside and transferred the government to the Chamorro widow. They spent sixteen years in the opposition to recover the power. Today, the Sandinista leader Ortega and his family rule the country, more or less following the Somoza dynasty model. This time America lets it be. 

TAHAL and Kardan Serie A Bonds

My portfolio includes some Serie A Bonds of Kardan NV that will expire on 31 October and are sold today with a 60% discount on its peer value. The market is very cautious because Kardan has no cash to pay and it build on the sale of TAHAL to finance the payment, scheduled for February 2019. The Fortissimo Fund is interested in buying TAHAL, which has several contracts in Africa, mostly projects of doubtful profitability. Anyway, these bonds could be seen as an interesting speculation, save the existence of the Serie B bonds, whose owners are afraid that after the sale of TAHAL there will remain no saleable properties to pay THEM.  The situation is complicated because Serie B owners are considering to demand the immediate payment of their bonds, and that will cause such a legal jam that no one will see a cent for years. On the other hand, Kardan has been broke for years, yet it survives. TAHAL, the company that was my home for decades, was at some point offered on sale for one sheqel and no one wanted it. Benno Gitter, a banker specialized in appropriating State owned industries, rejected it. He told me. If Benno could mis-valuate TAHAL as worthless, then who am I to valuate Kardan today? Pic Yosy Grinfeld, owner of Kardan, the one who bought TAHAL now worth hundreds of millions.  

A Coming American Mass Aliyah

"Ron Unz pointed out that “a substantial fraction of our population has been reduced to a 21st century version of the drunken, ignorant, exploited, indebted, impoverished, and immiserated Slavic peasantry of the Jewish-dominated Pale of Settlement,” and though the peons are becoming increasingly enraged, they’re only aiming their ire at at trumped up, media hyped targets and scapegoats, but what do you expect from a population that’s ever more relentlessly brainwashed?"  Quoted from . 

More than ever, I feel that Israel must be prepared to receive a sudden mass emigration of American Jews. Poland too was - in the Middle Ages - a Goldene Medine. 

American Mistery

P.B., a veteran of Greg Cochran's blog, commented:

Then I was recruited on an emergency basis to teach an Oracle class at another private college. The scheduled Oracle guy had taken off. One of the students obviously had Down’s Syndrome. I question him. He had been enrolled in several classes and had always gotten good grades. He got it into his defective brain that he should be a Data Base Administrator. Impossible of course – he was seriously retarded. His company sent him to college and paid all tuition and expenses if he got a ‘B’ or better.

So when he turned in his final exam completely blank – I had a problem. Here was this handicapped guy who was going to be hit with a substantial set of payments if I gave him the ‘F’ he deserved.

I wasn’t tough enough. I gave him a ‘B’ just had a whole series of instructors before me.

I answered:

• J says:

  July 30, 2018 at 10:18 pm

  So when he turned in his final exam completely blank … Your charity was misplaced. You condemned that unlucky fellow to a life of suffering. He goes back to his employer and will be promoted to Administrator, a job he will not be able to perform. When dismissed, he may sue the company for “racism” or whatever you call it.

  What I wanted to say is that it is a mystery how, with such bleeding-heart computer science teachers, America was able to send manned missions to the Moon. Today, America is engaged in a life-or-death duel with Asian monsters like North Korea, and with covert intelligence-operations-minded Russia. Will it be able to cope with handicapped Administrators? I am convinced PB's generosity could never happen in China or Russia. In Israel, I am sorry to say, we follow America. Except that here, every once a while, we hit the hard wall of reality and are forced to return to our senses.

Identity Politics in Egypt

The Cairo Zoo thought it a good idea to paint black stripes on regular asses and to pass them as authentic zebras. The public and even the burros themselves were convinced they were zebras. Till a visitor noticed that these "zebras" had ink blots on their faces and their stripes were unlike born zebras. 

The Curious Case of the Sadistic Bodyguard

French President Macron's permanent companion is his bodyguard Benallah, who (pic) was recorded volunteering to brutally beat young street demonstrators. Sadism is a desirable feature in a bodyguard, but this could never happen to the bodyguards of the American President. The worst they did was drunken partying with prostitutes, but that is only expectable from young fellows in a foreign country. But then, Macron exceeded himself in the defense of Benallah, taking all the presumed blame on himself and ... "then came that curious denial that he was not Benalla's lover. It was not the first time Macron, who is married to his former teacher, a woman 20 years his senior, has had to protest that he is not homosexual."

Of course he is, not that I care. Arafat's bodyguards also served as his harem.