Lindsey Graham: I am a single white man.

Yesterday's Senate Committee meeting was riveting. I found many little diamonds hidden in the manure-mound of the debate. At least we know Lindsey will never be accused of inappropriate behavior with a woman. I liked his blond clean look and I was impressed by his strong speech in the debate. He was the only man among those lachrymose little politicians, all shamelessly licking the ass of that woman. What she was doing at 15 in a drinking ski party with four bigger boys? 

Senator Graham, who has been in office since 2003 and serves on the armed services senate committee, shares with us the opinion that the last thing the world needs is a nuclear-armed Iran.  Quote: 'My view of military force would be not to just neutralise their nuclear programme, which are probably dispersed and hardened, but to sink their navy, destroy their air force and neuter that regime." Graphicly said, Sir. 

Warning

I am watching Judge Kavanaugh confirmation. Senator(ess) Clobuchar just said "We have to consider what internet sites (the defendant) looks to". She was not referring specifically to Judge Kavanaugh but to her experience as prosecutor.

Warning!  Don't look at this site if you want to be confirmed to anything. I am a natural born Jewish intellectual, lifelong liberal (almost socialist), but many classify me as rightist because I love the settlers of Judea and Samaria. I even think that the rapid re-peopling of those "territories" (a miserable plot of infertile calcareous soil of 10,000 sq.km.) in our generation is like a dream, like a miracle. Be warned that this is a Zionist pro-settler site.

Ariel Sharon (L) sits with his wife Lily (3rdL) and his sons, Gilad (2ndL) and Omri (4thL) in the West Bank in this picture taken in 1977. I think the pic was taken at the foundation of the city of Ariel. Begin spoke. I was there. 

Where are the slaves of the Ethiopian Jews?

An entry in Facebook tells about the Ethiopian Jews. They like others in Ethiopia, they too had Sudanese Bantu slaves, that trekked with their masters and families to the Sudan, where they too were all taken to Israel. The writer says that the original Jews do not marry with the slaves even in Israel, and there are cases that the original Ethiopian Jewish recruit refuses to obey orders from an Ethiopian officer of the slave class. I never heard about this but it would be only too human if true. Pic.: The origin of the story. 

Trump is winning the trade war against the world

Trump has done little in terms of foreign trade, yet he has frightened China, Germany and other exporting countries to discipline themselves. Almost all the currencies have lost worth vis-à-vis the mighty dollar. CNBC  estimates that the external debt of 205 countries is $76.9 trillion in dollars. A 1 percent increase in the cost of debt results in a need to increase interest payments by $769 billion dollars. A 2 percent increase, which is close to what has been the rise in the effective Fe Funds rate, if spread globally, would force nations to increase their payments by $1.5 trillion. To the USA. What are the tariffs on 200 billion dollars on China imports? Peanuts. 

Jews paying most of the tax in California

Delano county pays 12 million tax per year, Palo Alto many billions. This was the typical situation in the German towns in the Middle Ages, where the municipalities were financed by Jewish taxes. My grandfather paid the largest taxes in his city of Vac (Weitzen) in prewar Hungary. 

Pic. Andy Cheng celebrating bar mitzva in a Palo Alto synagogue. 

Misunderstanding with Russia

Israel sent 4 F-16 to destroy some Iranian facility in North Syria and coincidentally, a IL-20 Russian spy plane was arriving. The Syrian antiair using Russian S-200 downed the Russian with 15 dead. A tragic fuckup. Now the Russian are accusing the Israeli planes that they hid behind the Russian one, causing its destruction. It is a very serious issue. Syria is owned by Russia.

Next Day: Russia decides to supply  S-300 antimissile systems to Assad. It will make more dangerous to bomb Syria, for Israel and for the USA too. Not to mention that S-300 in incompetent hands represent the most danger to the Russians, as proved by the incident that cost the lives of 15 Russian personnel. Not good.

Astonishing! The Russian report does not mention the Syrian antiair battery that shot down the plane. It talks only about the Israelis. It reminds me of the famous case of a Jew beaten to death under the Szalasi fascist regime in Hungary, where in a fight among Nazis, a Jew ambled in and seeing a chair coming in his way, he moved aside and chair hit a Nazi. The gang stopped fighting and moved as one man to beat the Jew. 

The Spanish plan to conquer China

The Spaniards started early: already in 1526 the conqueror of the Aztec Empire Hernán Cortés (pic)  wrote a petition the Spanish government to allow him to explore the South Seas, that is, the Pacific Ocean. Cortes plan was to start conquering some island like Malacca and then jump to the continent, just as he did starting from Cuba in his way to Mexico. 

The plan was accepted but only in 1564, Miguel López de Legazpi was given five ships and 500 soldiers to take some seven thousand islands, which he named the Philippines. Established in Manila, the Spaniards sent missionaries all over Asia. One of them, Father Martín de Rada, wrote a memorandum comparing the poverty of the islands and the wealth of China, describing its inhabitants and its (nonexistent) military capability. His idea was to abandon those miserable islands and focus on rich China. 

Next, the Spanish governor of the Philippines Francisco de Sande proposed a detailed plan. He asked for five thousand soldiers from Mexico or Peru, and smiths, carpenters, master sailors and other tradesmen to build ships in the Philippines. He even offered to pay for the expedition, which he calculated would be profitable. He described the Chinese as "bad people, drunks, cowards, submissive. Their mandarins treat the people very tyrannically". The King did not approve the plan because Spain was broke and the difficulties of communication (it took four years to send a letter and receive the answer).

Successive plans took detailed and concrete form. The number and specialties (arcabucero, piquetero, etc.) of soldiers from the Spanish dependencies was estimated, and their equipment, salaries, etc. Spain would supply bronze for the cannons and technical personnel for shipbuilding and weapons manufacture. Most of the materials were to be procured in China itself (a cannonball cost two reals in China against nine in Spain). There was a need for silver to bribe the mandarins, corrupt then as now. The expedition would include 5000 Japanese Christian soldiers who hated the Chinese, and auxiliaries from the islands. They would land in Fujian while the Portuguese forces, led by Matias de Panela, would advance from Macao. They would meet in Peking. The Ming administration was to be conserved. 

The Spanish had no doubt about the feasibility of the enterprise. Ming had two million soldiers but no discipline, no training, no loyalty, and they could be mobilized only very slowly. After 800 years of war, the Spaniard had just finished the Reconquista of the peninsula, vanquished the Turks in Lepanto, conquered the kingdoms of America, they felt unbeatable.

The Spanish analysis of the weakness of China was proved true in the next century, when Manchu nomads broke through the Great Wall and China could only present a 50,000 strong army to beat them back. The victory of Nelson at Trafalgar put an end to Spanish plans and the incoming power - England - wanted only to exploit but no to rule China.

Addenda:  Can China be conquered today? I don't think so. It has a national Han government, it has a loyal well equipped army, many bases. There was a window of opportunity under Nixon, when Brezhnev (pic) proposed a concerted nuclear attack on China. Nixon took the English road and opened China for trade. The future is unknowable.