The Celestial Empire

The most important historical issue is the rise of China as a great power, possibly the greatest ever. Australia is in China's hemisphere and the nearest Western outpost, and is worried. Kevin Rudd, an Aussie sinologist diplomat, says that the Chinese people feels humiliated (it was colonized in the past) and to maintain relations on a rational, non emotional basis, the West should apologize.

On the other hand, John Mearsheimer, an American public intellectual, sees the situation in black and white: It is war and Australia must be part of the Western alliance. China knows only tribute-paying barbarians and enemies. Both speakers are very impressive.

I have been many times in China and like it. The first Israelis in China were TAHAL experts, they travelled in secret under different passports because we had no diplomatic relations. I wanted very much to go but they sent Dr. Moshe Mizrahi instead. He was the first to introduce Israeli heifers and establish a dairy farm. I was so bitter that attacked the project, saying that Chinese lack the lactose enzyme and will vomit the milk. I was wrong, of course, and the local milk industry has developed tremendously since. We could have maintained our primacy but did not. New Zealanders are there.

China was known then as facing famine, and the question was if they could feed themselves. What they did was to forbid second child. I told my counterpart that it was a very wrong policy, and I think I was right. Today they are in need of those unborn babies. I told them that Chinese poverty is a temporary aberration, they were a hardworking intelligent people, and Chinese prosper everywhere they are. They were very afraid of the future. And yes, they feared Western colonization and division of the country.

They have good reasons to fear the West and Japan. But they are easy to live with, should the West let them to. Whites (and Blacks even more, but they lack intelligence) have aggressor genes and cannot stay quiet.

Tacit Corollary: (1) Both American and Australian thinkers assume as certain that China and America are in (cold) war, (2) China's economic size equals America and will be two times larger in twenty years. It is unsaid that for America, it would be advantageous to precipitate the confrontation as soon as the conditions become propitious. 

In the Stress Lab

I spent four hours today in the Stress Laboratory of Civil Engineering Dept. with Michael aka Zack (pic). He is another of the elderly Russian Jewish geniuses that found refuge in the University of Ariel.







The subject is boring - the distribution and propagation of stresses in structures - but he added probability calculation which made it more intriguing. The students followed  Zack's "experiments" without much enthusiasm. Probabilities always fascinates me. 

The Solgar Military Drone

The Turkish military industry, and industry in general, is developing fast. The new drone can fly 10 km and shoot 200 bullets with good precision. It is impressive because the platform itself is light, unstable in the air and each shot causes a reaction that changes the position of the drone. Turkish industrial products are low tech but effective, and most importantly, inexpensive - we have many JCBs in the construction industry. Turkey disputes maritime rights with Greece, it is a latent shooting war. Bibi said that we are allied to Greece since Turkey nixes our gas pipeline near Cyprus. 

My Clients are Better than I am

The Regulator sent me a list of 25 demands: another interceptor, ten more non-return valves, two pumps instead of one (extra safety) and so on. I said OK we shall do it. My Client said NO, we shall not, we shall fight the expensive, senseless demand of this bureaucrat person. On second thought, he is right. I give in too easily. 

The Red-Hot Competition for IQ 100 people

From Deutsche Welle (Germany's Official Propaganda Medium, like the BBC):

Germany is most in need of electrical engineers, metal workers and mechatronics engineers, cooks, nurses, aged care workers, computer scientists and software developers. The government has been looking to draw people who qualify from Mexico, the Philippines, Brazil, India and Vietnam, among others. 

Labor Minister Hubertus Heil sought to allay concerns among immigrant-wary sections of the population, telling the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper that the recruitment drive "is not about uncontrolled immigration, but about qualified people who we need so that our country can remain economically strong in the future."

This comes after Germany accepted more than a million Syrian refugees a year ago. Today the competition is not for mineral or other resources, but for working people. This is a totally new situation: People is not inexhaustible cannon fodder, but a scarce resource.  Argentina has about a million German descendants, mostly from the 19th Century, why are they unmentioned? 

Chinese Pre-History (and Post-History)

It is impressive how one is able to follow the linear progression of the numerous small villages in the Yellow River basin to larger political units and ultimately to the emergence of the enormous PR of China today. On the Western side of the Euro-Asiatic landmass, the parallel processes of empire formation were interrupted and re-started several times and no such continuity is evident. May be I am wrong, since Greek is still spoken and Latin (what is French if not Latin?) is the main European language group. The pic shows a pottery mask from a Neolithic site on the Yishui River (Hebei) village (8000 years BP). I think those civilizations appeared 2 -3 thousand years later than our Middle East settlements.

The Xi regime in China is in transition. It is possible that I may visit the large plaza in front of the Forbidden City - without Mao's mausoleum in the middle. Mao was a disaster for China, his mummy has to go. Arthur Waldron says that China's state enterprises are losing money, and taxation is very weak, so foreign investments are financing the regime. Stop the investments and stop foreign trade - the regime is g.o.n.e.

Gorbachev did the right thing in peacefully dissolving the Soviet Union, says Waldron. Everybody knew that the system was dysfunctional but its collapse could have involved civil wars and according to Yakovlev, about 70 million dead. One may wonder how the Chinese regime will mutate into a democratic, elected government, one ruling with the consent of the governed. Six months of civil disorder in Hong Kong indicates that the Chinese people rejects dictatorship, however mild it is for the average Han citizen. 

Venezuela: Ruined by Unearned Wealth

Three billion barrels of proven oil reserves, and people sleeps in the car at gas stations for days waiting to buy gasoline: that is Venezuela today. No one can beat Venezuela's socialist government mismanagement. The official price has not been changed in the last 18 years, and thanks to phenomenal inflation, its price is something of 0.1 cents/gallon - if you get it. There is no war in Venezuela but a third of the population has escaped and became refugees. 

Forty years ago, Venezuela became exceedingly wealthy thanks to the Saudi Oil Embargo (an act of war against Israel fighting for its existence in 1973). That incredible bonanza ruined them: they lost the habit of working and are unable to return to a honest, productive economy. Wealth is more destructive than poverty.