Shiraz burning, the West trembling

In the last four days has been no internet in Iran, as the Ayatollahs try to disrupt the co-ordination of the countrywide protests. Almost no news of what is happening in Iran: is this a passing grievance protest or an armed revolt? I heard in the radio that Shiraz was burning, all the banks and Army shops have been broken in and sacked, and the rebels had armed themselves with weapons taken from police stations. Their goal is to stop Iran's foreign wars: Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Gaza. Lebanese mercenaries are deserting and trying to leave the country. I love Shiraz because of its superb red wine and of course, Omar Kayyam poems. One day I may visit it. On second thought, the fanatic Ayatollahs may have forbidden the wine. Islam forbids alcohol, allows sex and drugs. The Infidels!

Regarding those Infidels: While the West is trembling and paralyzed in face of Islamic terrorism and aggression, China is showing the way. China, fearlessly, jailed one million Muslims to educate them in civilization and patriotism. The West, instead of following its luminous example, is piously condemning China's "inhumanity". Does not the West deserve, therefore, that bomb in the crowded Madrid train station, that heavy truck deliberately driven into Berlin Christmas street market, that minibus crashing into the English Parliament and killing policemen and cyclists? or that bloody massacre in the Charlie Hebdo magazine office? 

TEVA rockets 8%

The American stock exchange has risen to a peak. Financial assets are at an all time high. TEVA, a stock I own, lost 80% of its worth, but slowly is deleveraging and rising. For the last three months I did not pay much attention to my portfolio, but that is going to change. TEVA was hit by the loss of its star patent Copaxon, and then by a very bad investment that left it much indebted. Now is has stabilized, hopefully.

Dalio, from Bridgewater, suggests that a wealth redistribution is coming in America. That means a Democratic government again, and Latin American style expropriations a-la-Ocasio. Capital will move to... Russia, China. Some is already coming to Israel, but our absorbing capacity is minor. Israeli assets are expensive, due to cheap credit and the capital inflow. I may buy Summit which invests in rentable real estate in Germany. I am feeling that apartments in Israel are becoming cheaper, but still assuming a mortgage to buy one is risky. Pic.: Ray Dalio and Gwyneth (I do not know who she is, but looks well on my blog). 

The Difference between Right and Left

The clearest definition of the Left is set here in black and white. The Right sees say a bridge or a building or a successful business corporation and thinks that it just happened, no one created it nor invest thought and effort in bringing it about, and anyway, if the man who built it would not have built it, somebody else sooner or later would have done it. Things just happen inevitably, spontaneously, like the grass that grows after a rain.

In fact, it is clear to the Left that there is no pride nor achievement in the building of a bridge, a new road, a big corporation, and that all the human effort and work behind it is basically worthless, meaningless, basically harmful and counterproductive. The creator did not add anything to the universe, what he did was to appropriate or steal it for his own enjoyment and to the detriment of the enjoyment of the rest of humanity. 

Since I work day and night designing and building factories and so, and have never seen any of them appear spontaneously, I cannot suffer that people who takes the position that they are a given of nature. The grass grows naturally, bridges and cities appear because it is in their nature to do so, great fortunes are stealing what already is there or would be there anyway. In my daily life, I meet this world view in regulators, they cannot understand the effort to build something, they feel it is there by a law of nature. New buildings and new bridges are not splendid achievements of human effort but a nuisance and violation of the existing, sacred Nature, and should not be allowed to be built at all.

The Left has a belief that there is something called "environmental justice". It is the ancient illusion that there is a fixed amount of things out there and if you have two while I have none, justice requires a rebalancing. If Bill Gates has billions and I have just enough, I feel poor and claim for justice. Dalio says that social disturbance will appear and redistribution is inevitable. Preventively, I should redistribute too.  

Where are the descendants of Plato?

Nowhere. Plato was a homosexual who never married nor had children. He was member of Athens most distinguished family - where are they? Nowhere. They left no issue. The current population of Peloponnese carries the African gene against malaria, suggesting that the natives were semi-extinguished by malaria. The same is true of Sicily and even Rome.

The people found in Roman Cemeteries are mostly North African and East Mediterranean - few original Latin people. The malarial mosquito appeared in those areas during historical times and caused a profound population replacement. So we have an historically documented dying-off of the Classical Greek elite, and of Roman Senatorial families. If I remember the numbers, from the original 250 senatorial families none remained by the third century. Roman senatorial families did not necessarily ended for lack of children as adoption was widely practiced.

Most astonishing, the whole Greco-Roman world disappeared and its densely peopled cities were abandoned and forgotten. All that was known, over 95% of the books, was destroyed. Science had to be re-invented in the Renaissance starting in Northern Italy. On the other side of continental mass, on the Pacific sea board, the Chinese maintained uninterrupted civilization. What we learn from history? that it can happen again. 

Happy End to the Last Week's War

This morning it was announced that a ceasefire has been reached between the Islamic Jihad and Israel. In short: Israel fired a missile into the Jihad's military leader's bedroom, killing him and his wife, and they responded by firing 500 missiles to the Israeli South. 60% of the missiles fell in open fields, and 90% of the others was intercepted. 10% destroyed buildings, but people was in the refuges and there were no casualties. The most important achievement is the detachment of the Jihad, a terrorist organization, from Hamas, the religious movement that rules Gaza. Dividing the enemy is half victory. 

On the impermanency of borders

The King of Transjordan demanded the return of two border farms that "belonged" to his kingdom. We ceded them without protest. Borders are not sacred, they move and change all the time. The  seventy post-WWII years of fixed borders are an anomaly, explained by America's supremacy. But that, unfortunately, is changing. The next era will see large corrections. President Macron, in an interview to The Economist, insinuates just that.

To understand my point, look at the map of Central Europe around 1860. All the East is Hungarian, to the Adriatic. Prussia and Austria are the largest states. What is Konigsreich? Grossherzogtum? The Kingdom of Sardinia? Never heard of them. In a few generation no one will know that Gaza had existed. 

Proportionality in Gaza

The IDF is restraining its response to the current bombardment of the South of Israel out of respect of a fundamentally wrong international humanitarian and legal principle called proportionality. This European concept means that the punishment returned to the attacker must be equal to the actual hurt. When someone comes to kill you but he succeeds only to cut your little finger, you are not allowed to beat his brains out but just to sever his little finger with anesthetics, and no more. Eye for eye, etc. Game theory also says that the best rule is tit-for-tat or tit-for-two tats. Is it so? Most people in Israel think that our response should be to level Gaza like the Allies did in Dresden (pic). Revert Gaza to its pristine, sustainable habitat of grassland for goats and camels. Prof. Victor Davis Hanson thinks proportionality in war is stupid and wrong. He is right.