The King of the West and the King of the East divide Earth

In 1567 the King of Spain (pic) was engaged in several fronts: the Turks (Lepanto), the English (the Armada) while organizing expeditions to conquer China. The Portuguese already were established in Macao, so the Spanish had to settle further in Manila as the forward base facing South China. Manila and the Far East was attached to nearest Spanish center, in Mexico. In 1567, the local government of Mexico City (the Cabildo) sent a petition to Felipe II demanding

“repartir la tierra de las dichas islas de Poniente y de la China, perpetuándolas entre los descubridores y pobladores”. 

That is, to divide the land of the Western Islands (Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, etc. are Western regarding them from Mexico) and China, and grant formal titles of property to the discoverers and settlers. The Spaniards in Mexico, a large kingdom recently conquered and divided among Cortes and his soldiers, felt themselves numerous and powerful enough to ask the King to allow them conquer China and grant them royal titles of property. 

Those were the years when the Spanish and the Portuguese kings divided among themselves the planet: Portugal got Africa and Brazil, Spain - Mexico and Peru and the Far East (China). Today we would say they were suffering from megalomania and hubris: but no, they meant it. 

God will provide

History suggests there will be a recession soon.

I took that from the last The Economist. The sentence echoes the anxiety taking hold of the financial world, and why? Because everything is too good to be true, to last. Cannot last, they tremble at night, we are getting too rich and not one black cloud in the sky. Ten good years, the statistics are against the eleventh. In fact, statistics say nothing of the sort, past drawings have no effect on the next one, in roulette, the ball can fall on red hundred times and then the one hundred first too.

I had a conversation with the bank manager, he tried to convince me that my portfolio is VERY RISKY and should invest on Bank of Israel bonds. That have negative yield but are... SAFE!

I don't know if recession, earthquake, the Angel Gabriel or the Solaran space expedition will arrive tomorrow or never, but I reject the concept that their long absence MUST mean that their coming is around the corner. I always succeeded in my dangerous adventures, and I always lament the many, wonderful, exciting opportunities that I let go because of small faith.

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither

do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly

Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

Moldbug shocks me

Moldbug writes: "50 years ago, Detroit was a thriving metropolis, the fourth largest city in America. It had no presentiments whatsoever of any imminent disaster. Today it is a burned-out ruin, more or less. This is the sort of objective phenomenon that, if you’re a student of history, you can’t help but try to explain.." 

Moldbug links to an old  promotional clip proudly declaring that Detroit has "the best water of the world." That publicity point stuck in my mind, as I have been following the water quality catastrophe of Detroit and neighboring Flint, and the "National Emergency" of lead poisoning of their drinking water. How did that happen?

Moldbug's article brings to the foreground the nowadays inconceivable idea that government could be an instrument working for MY benefit, not for implementing some utopic nonsense or to win over the voting lumpen proletariat. The lucidity of Moldbug cuts like a knife' for example, he asks why San Francisco's school administration votes, year after year, for the expensive and complicated school busing scheme, trying to impose unwanted social equality while causing much inconvenience to everybody and specially the middle class they represent. I would think that the closing anecdote is imagined, if it was not so ordinary and everyday.

We need a modern Karl Marx who can make clear how society works and for whom. Marx founded a movement explicitly for the industrial worker class of England and Germany and without any shame proposed a dictatorship for their benefit. He had the courage of saying out loudly the word "dictatorship". Who dares today to proclaim that democracy is not working for us and that any day it may cause the sudden collapse of all, just like Flint and Detroit?

I am old man and past the age of politics, so Moldbug's ideas are just entertainment for me personally. I have known Detroit then and know it now, but no one ever had put the picture "before and after" so clearly in front of my eyes. It is shocking. BTW, last week we had a large Ethiopian riot in this country, I and my family were immobilized for four hours in the traffic, and the police did nothing. We too said nothing and did nothing, we accepted silently our suffering. We watched Black teenagers running around in the streets, boys and girls, looking as they owned the city and us.

The Radio-Kabbalist

Around midnight the famous radio kabbalist is on the air. People phone and ask for diagnosis and solutions, the kabbalist identifies on the run the issue, reads aloud a relevant chapter of his book (I assume it must be relevant, because he mentioned seraphim and other creatures), and gives advice to the crying sufferer. In all the cases he identified the problem as pertaining to זיווגים  zivoogim, that is, pairing = coupling, and he always appeared right. One old maid cannot find husband, an old woman feels his husband stopped loving her, a man left his wife but is unable to have intercourse with his new girlfriend, and so. The kabbalist told this man that there is something still linking him with her wife, and discovered that their engagement rings were stored in proximity, he was told to give away her ring and purify the house burning candles in certain hours of the night; the old maid was led to discover that a rival was "evil-eyeing" her and was told to collect sand from a cemetery and spread it on the suspected rival's door, and so. The kabbalist was very fast and diagnosed the most "reasonable" cause, dictated a convincing counter-action and people went away happy and thankful.

If we accept the magical aspect of human sexual relationships, the kabbalist is like a doctor with a keen eye providing solutions that (in that context) sound perfectly logical and probably - effective. It is fascinating to realize that most of the people live in an alternative invisible universe, where celestial creatures fly over their heads and powerful magical forces cause to fall in or out of love, make sick and kill innocents and gold engagement rings make healthy men impotent. It was early morning when I shut down the radio, concluding that (radio) kabbalah is entertaining, harmless and surely helps many. 

TEMASEK: We beat more pessimistic expectations (= we lost less money than they said)

Temasek, the Singapore national investment fund, published its report, and it is not good. Actually they lost money, in the midst of world financial bonanza, while NASDAQ lifted 15% and interest rates are negative. Brett, the chief adviser, sweetened the pill saying that "Temasek will be seeking opportunities to generate long-term yield and it may also have more time to prepare. The fact that it beat more pessimistic expectations suggests it’s adapting well to a challenging environment.” 

Does he mean that till now they were seeking short-term yield? and that they had no time to prepare? If a fund is losing money in a booming world economy, is it adapting well? Really?

I am getting to the point that stopped believing that famously smart people are that. The person whom I find consistently more intelligent than I am, Gregory Cochran, has stopped blogging. I miss him. I hope he is well. 

Chinese Artistic Dance

Chinese serious dancing is difficult to digest for a Westerner, it must be learned to appreciate and love. It is like Ferro Quina Bisleri, an old Argentine bitter aperitif, a taste that has to be cultivated.

Ottoman Cadastre say Turkey Owns 26 Countries

Turkey has been holding the land registration of 26 countries that inherited from the Ottoman Empire. This treasure can provide documentation for unending real estate disputes. The Sultan Abdel Hamid II alone had fifty large properties in Jerusalem, which now may be claimed by his descendants. The Sultan had 13 legitimate wives and 17 kids and hundreds of descendants, all hungry to get rich fast. It is probable we could also find the famous "Charter" (agreement) assigning South Syria (Palestine) to the Zionist Movement. Herzl paid for it in sacks of gold, but it could not be enforced while that gonef (Armin Vambery's word, he knew him well) was Sultan.