The Chinese Strategy

Chinese thought is subtle and I am just now waking up to the meaning of the Belt and Road project. It is nothing less than building "caravan seray" in the hostile wasteland peopled by barbarian peoples surrounding China (as they see it). They realized that they cannot depend on trade with Africa without "forts" in the land, entrepots, and secure maritime and land roads to move the merchandise. China decided to open up and has no fear of competition. They realized - like the Japanese before them - that closing in was dangerous and not in their interest. And controlling the main trade routes is a fantastic source of rent and power. Ultimately China will have to build a large navy and air force to protect their entrepots and trade routes, just as England did in the colonial era. Or pay to Americans to keep protecting them, as the Europeans and the Japanese are doing. 

Counterattack in Gaza

Apparently, Zahal is preparing a significant action against Hamas in Gaza. Land frontiers had been closed, schools suspended classes, train service stopped in the South, Ashkelon opened all public refuges, soldiers are concentrating in the border with Gaza. Hamas says that the missile on Moshav Mishmeret (north of my town) was a mistake. But seven Israeli civilians were hurt  in their sleep in the very heart of the country and we are before elections when no government can show weakness.

I am hurt too. The stock exchange fell, I am so tired that could do little work today. 

Wake Up Call

At 5.00 AM the town alarm woke us and I took my glasses and moved into the hardened room. Then we heard the boom and went back to the bed.

The Gazan terrorists had fired a missile to the Sharon, wounding seven innocent sleeping people. pic.

They are begging for retribution. It'll come.

Ancient Sea Monsters Coming Back

The stock exchange is falling into a vacuum. Many esoteric celestial signs have been observed in the night sky, yield curves crossing ominously and sinister red comets rising from the East.....yet Jim Cramer says :"get ready to ride the rough seas of artificial "intelligence" that say sell, sell, sell."

I'll have to think something. 

Thinking is painful. I much prefer to drink red wine. 

Gurus are saying deflationary assets should be held like long term bonds. I am over seventy and never saw deflation. How can be a shortage of paper?

What the Hell is this?

At age 13 my auntie and her detestable husband moved out of our home and I received, the first time in my life, a small room only for me. That gave me the first opportunity to be alone and think, and thinking about who was I and what I was going to do in life, arrived to the conclusion that I was a self-reproduction machine and nothing else I could think of. In the absence of other ideas, I decided to fulfill the purpose of my body and reproduce, and then of my mind, and make money (we were penniless Hungarian refugees, seriously).  To make my objectives achievable, I put concrete quantitative goals to myself, so and so children and so and so dollars. It was 400,000 dollars, because that was the sum whose interest would amount to a good middle class salary in those times, about one thousand dollars per month.

In a few years I completed those objectives but for some reason, I cannot stop. I mean I am past the age of sex, but keep working without actually knowing why. I have a pension and children are grown up and independent, so I work because I like it and doesnt know else.

I kept thinking about what the Hell is where I am and what I am supposed to do here, but did not advance a iota. This Hell is very strange: the universe appears to be expanding faster than the velocity of light, which is an absolute limit, so humans will never reach the border of the universe and have a look what is there outside. On the other hand, we shall never know what is what we are made of, as the quantum realm "down there" is indefinite and nothing is real. It is like somebody put us definitive barriers that we can never break and discover the truth. We may be a simulation or we may be God's creation. Why should God busy itself in creating the universe? The Jewish answer is to be its holy people and sanctify him or whatever.

Whatever. Now I continue working, planning a mikveh. For money,of course. 

Walking tour in Tel Aviv

Yesterday I had to visit an underground storage on the HaArbaah street. The area had been an ugly industrial site and the Municipality transformed it into a nice open space. It was a sunny spring day and spend an hour drinking coffee and watching the giggling girls in their  fancy Purim costumes. Before the Liberation War it was a German village called Sharona, but when the Nazi forces approached from Egypt,  the British evacuated them to Australia. Instead of the original farm houses, hundred meters tall office buildings provide shade looking like Singapur. It was Purim, and Tel Aviv is a happy city with a young and active population. I like it.   

Purim

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Granddaughters dressed up for Purim (our own tribal  carnival).