Thinking about Turkey

 

Turkey's foreign exchange reserves (black line) have reached minus 60 billion. Net debt. The coming step is a deep devaluation of the lira. This is a playable situation, although one must remember Eliezer Fishman's losses on the same place. 

In the meanwhile, the seqel is strengthening. Economically, Israel is strong. This corona epidemic is focusing the public's anxiety and desperation on Netaniyahu. But he is a good leader. 

A Bahrain Jew

 A remarkable Iraqi Jew I met in Tel Aviv in the mid-seventies had been the accountant of the Arabian American Oil company at Bahrain. When Israel achieved its independence, the Arabs rioted and the community moved to safety in Bombay, India. Bahrain is an island situated at two days navigation from Basra, Iraq, the port serving the Gulf. Basra had a community of merchant Jews, and they traded in the booming Gulf seaside villages aka Trucial States. Jews could not participate in the caravan trade of the mainland,  due to Wahhabi fundamentalists. This respectable Iraki Jew told that Bahrain houses had flat roofs, and the community moved on the roofs when they escaped for their lives. He spoke a painfully correct Hebrew, like my Father spoke Spanish, having learnt the language as an adult. 

The climate is horrible: August-September average 40 C and the northern wind brings humidity, creating a day-and-night suffocating climate. Bahrain and the rest of the Gulf Arab settlements are now very wealthy and westernized, and they tolerate Christians and Jews. Most of the population is transient, Arabs from the Levant and Pakistani, Malaysian, etc. The future is unknown: the climate change may turn the place uninhabitable by 2100, and the oil may become worthless. The current cities are built on abandoned ruins of undiscovered civilizations, nothing lasts forever.  Pic: the Kedourie Family. of Bahrain. 

Addendum:  Bahrain is welcoming Jews and grants them citizenship, which is more valuable than a Green Card. 

I could not avoid posting this picture of the King of Bahrain and the local Habad emissary. What a pleasure to find some-body fatter than I am!

Hard Times

In the last week I have worked very little,  lack of energy. Today I took part in a ZOOM meeting of a Commercial Center project under The HaEmek Hospital. I asked for my proposal to be signed, and the bastards changed the content: things I wrote were changed to the opposite. I resigned the job. Depressing. 

The Revenue hit me with a large amount for 2019 and this month I am paying more tax than my income. Depressing. 

The University is open and my absence has gone totally unnoticed. Twenty years driving to Ariel and now I am a stranger.

I am searching for a purpose but nothing interests me. I am going to bed to read Naipaul's Stanleyville story. Pic.: There were no roads and all the traffic moved with the weekly steamer.  It took a week on the Congo River to reach the capital (2000 km). The verbosity of Naipaul is tiring. He over-analyses his feelings in every situation. The description of the Indian trading settlement in Zanzibar and East Africa is interesting. Till Idi Amin expelled them. 

 

Substitute Godesses

 Belief in a god or gods who intervene in the world to create order is a core element of global religions,” (Adam Green).

Without belief in that God, people choose to subscribe to conspiracy theories. While there are certainly unseen actors, more elaborate and improbable conspiracy theories are obviously a substitute for God for those who can no longer make themselves believe in Him.

Things just aren’t all that well-run. If only it all was a giant conspiracy theory. Then we could all rest assured that like the stock on any other well-run ranch, we would be properly fed and watered before we were sheared.

…but we haven’t even that consolation. If anyone is in charge, they’re spectacularly incompetent.

Ill.: Athena and Poseidon, competing for the title of Patron God of the City. Athena won. Athena never had a lover and was known as Athena Parthenos, “Virgin Athena”. The temple Parthenon takes its name from her virginity. Mary, the wife of Joseph and mother of Jesus and his brothers, is also believed to be a virgin. What obsession these peoples had with virginity?

The Attraction of Judaism

We are a very small people but exert a disproportional influence on humanity. A large number of people from all over the world tries actively to join us. I think it is because of our aura of success and wealth, however precarious the reality turns out to be. On the other hand, we are engaged in a competition to protect Jewish majority in Eretz Israel, so we cannot be too selective, and anyone with some (presumed) blood connection to the historic Jewish people is accepted. And because of this existential imperative of having a larger head count, Israel is forced to follow a pro-natalist policy. And a westernization policy for its Arab minority ("westernization" does not mean becoming Western, European or American, since Oriental peoples like the Japanese are the undisputed champions in not reproducing). Pic.: Bnei Menashe immigrants (they are from NorthEast India, no genetic link to any Middle Eastern people).

Second wave in Israel

Coronavirus cases peak - 12% of those tested have the virus. More than 900 people are hospitalized, including 476 in serious condition, among them 137 who are intubated. 

 People is fed up with the disease and the quarantine ordered by the government, one week we are clean and the next general closure and isolation of cities. People arrived to the conclusion that the government does not know what to do and tends to ignore it. The protests are growing, but they are focused on Bibi as if its decapitation would solve something. The police is confused, are unable to distinguish between violent protesters and the inoffensive jobless artists present in search of a public. Yesterday, Shoshke, a parody of Sara Netaniyahu, was arrested "protesting" in front of the Netaniyahus residence for being "sexually offensive" (sic). 

Katza Closed

Kfar Saba is a Green City yet we feel the virus floating in the hot air above it. The main school Katzenelson is closed and two kindergartens. I feel depressed because this unending stress. Pic.: We may be the most liberal, secular city in this country, but in the Katzenelson School events the girls sit behind the boys.