The Spider Movie

Went to the movies. It is a Mossad Operation in Antwerp trying to discover a secret Syrian biowarfare factory. An old agent is in charge, but he is known to have embezzled payola monies. He asks for time and is attached a young assistant to watch him. Improbable romances and emotional father-son complications. There is also the car chase necessary for spy movies. I did not find my car in the parking and was rescued by a Good Samaritan. A real one. 

Lurking Danger

Erdogan (Turkey) is sending an armed expedition to Libya to install a puppet government. Egypt dislikes the Turkish intervention and detained four Turkish journalist in Cairo. We are a de facto ally of Egypt's Al Sissi. It is about the gas pipeline.

Pic. Turkish flotilla. Turkey is militarily active: fights side by side with Russia in Syria and patrols the surrounding waters.

P.S.: Bennet the Defense Minister met with its Greek counterpart. A coalition seems to be forming in the Eastern Mediterranean against Turkey's project to fetter it.

P.S.S.: The Israeli-Egyptian gas pipe should be defended by the Europeans because they are the beneficiaries of the gas supply. Today, Europe depends from Russia for a third of its energy supply, and Europe desperately needs to diversify its sources. Europe is rich in energy - oil, gas, coal, nuclear, etc. but for some mystical craziness it has forbidden for itself to develop those energy sources. It is developing solar energy which is a lost cause in the sunless, misty north, and wind energy, which dies when the wind stops. But Europe has no navy nor expeditionary forces, and no desire to confront the Turks. The young generation is mostly first/second generation immigrants, rootless and unintegrated, and unwilling to fight for their country. 

TEVA starting to breath

TASE at this hour shows a 7% jump in TEVA stock. Its Danish manager is succeeding in resuscitating this lemon.  Eternal optimist, I still have TEVA - and am still losing 80% of its purchase price.

Hope is the thing with feathers (quoted by Woody Allen). 

AI finds its niche: Policing

Having downloaded IBM's online free AI service found no use for it in my work. It appears that AI is, most of all, a perfect policing instrument, able to detect irregular behaviours and predict potentially outliers. China is using it for facial recognition, the NASDAQ is applying it for market surveillance and discover non-pattern, salient trades. Basically, the technology is being used for policing large number of actors. The consequence will be immediate discovery of anomalies (ill.) and the immediate, certain punishment of deviant behaviors and in the end, total uniformity. The Chinese will find it perfectly normal, for us Jews it will be a challenge. 

Ingenious Chinese are finding ways to confound AI by adding two more eyes on the face and using invisible masks, we shall madden AI by creating infinitesimal disturbances at irregular (non random) frequencies in bourse statistics. 

Prosperity in Sight

"Wall Street hits record, boosted by trade and earnings optimism". The Iran clerics are humiliated, China forced to sign a trade accord with America, peace on Earth and rising prosperity. My saving have inflated to meaningless numbers and inexplicably I feel anxious and have difficulty to start working. I received five new projects, I have to reject the Mishor Adumim winery project (but I am postponing it because feel unable to say no). Maybe Chinese chochmes (cleverness) will rise my spirit.

Zhuangzi and Huizi were walking on the bank overlooking the river Hao, when the former said, ‘These fishes come out, and play about at their ease – that is the enjoyment of fishes.’ The other said, ‘You are not a fish; how do you know what is the enjoyment of fishes?’ Zhuangzi rejoined, ‘You are not I. How do you know that I do not know what constitutes the enjoyment of fishes?’

But I don't get the cleverness of the Chinese. 

The chances of Krach

Krach meant in my times and places - Crash, that is, a general stock exchange and commercial bankruptcy. Like in 1929, when cheap credit and inflation of stock prices led to a sudden loss of confidence and collapse. We are having today almost costless credit and very high stock and real estte prices. Should I start thinking on protecting my portfolio?


Japan had its Crash ten years ago and since then they exist in a silent state of deflation and depression. No one is starving. 

Wisconsin, A White Refuge

Wisconsin is one of the last American places with 95% White population. It also hold the record for alcohol consumption. Paradoxically, the antislavery movement and the Republican Party were born there. Throughout the 1850s Wisconsin was a leader in the abolition of slavery. Slaves passed through the Underground Railroad on their way to Canada. In 1854 Wisconsin abolitionists held meetings in a schoolhouse in Ripon, where they recommended forming a new political party called Republican. (Today the Little White Schoolhouse, which is claimed to be the birthplace of the Republican Party, is a museum and national landmark.) That same year the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the Fugitive Slave Act was unconstitutional.