Sunday, August 29, 2021

COVID is here to stay


 The virus cannot be defeated but contained with vaccines. Like the flu, each year we shall have a new vaccine. We will live with it. The countries like China, trying to be totally virus-free, are following the wrong strategy. A country cannot be isolated. 

Almost perfect exit from Afghanistan

 

America decided to leave Afghanistan years ago, and in the last years, there was practically no real fighting anymore. The idea of remaking Afghanistan and turn it into a liberal democracy a la post-WWII Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, proved a phantasy. They made peace with the Taliban, which co-operates with American forces. Thus, America avoided a catastrophe like Saigon. A popular Taliban government is de-facto an ally in American conflicts with China and Russia. Like Vietnam today. This is not a bad outcome, probably better than having an unpopular pro-American military dictatorship. The dominant ethnic in Afghanistan are the Pashtun, an unremarkable mix of  Middle Eastern races. In the map, the brown points. 

Polish government campaign encourages citizens to 'breed like rabbits'

 It is incredibly stupid governmental publicity. No sex at all, no cute babies. Maybe it works with Polish people. But the idea is clear. The Danish ad, in a bedroom in Paris, was more interesting.  

Thursday, August 26, 2021

Maybe It'll be OK



 U.S. officials gave the Taliban a list of names of U.S. citizens, green card holders & Afghan allies to grant entry into the outer perimeter of the city’s airport, prompting outrage behind the scenes from lawmakers and military officials.

In my barrio, the Yanquis were considered childishly innocent. Thanks to Heaven, they have not changed.

The rearguard of the US Army was attacked by ISIS. So there are left two and not one armed force in Afghanistan, ensuring the inevitable civil war. According to MEMRI, the Taliban and the USA are allies in the fight against ISIS.

Peter Munk: The Wasted Life of Hungarian Jew


The University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) board of directors voted at a meeting at the end of July to re-sign an open letter that demanded the university cancel a summer program in Israel and accused Israel of “genocide," according to The Varsity campus newspaper.

The letter also accused the university of being “complicit in the face of oppression and systematic change” if it did not cancel the summer program in Israel, “Coexistence in the Middle East Study Abroad” offered by the Munk School of Global Affairs.

Peter Munk, who died on March 28, 2018 at the age of 90, was one of Canada’s most successful entrepreneurs and one of its most passionate citizens. He was also an exceptionally generous philanthropist who, together with his wife, Melanie, gave the University of Toronto the landmark gift that established the Munk School of Global Affairs

After arriving in Canada in 1948 on a student visa, a few years after a narrow escape from Nazi-occupied Hungary, Peter earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Toronto. Recalling the warm welcome he received as a young man who arrived “not speaking your language, not knowing a dog,” retained lifelong gratitude to his alma mater and to Canada.

Another Project in South Israel

 

These Haredi folks are expanding and hired this alte pisher engineer. Yesterday it was a burning hell in the South -   36 degrees centigrade in shadow and there I was working. The way back took me two hours, because of the traffic (nothing special). Near the seaport, there was a queue of about a hundred heavy trailers. Whole neighborhoods are being built in the villages along the road, they look like the brand new cities in China. The whole day I was impressed by the vitality and activity of the South. Under a fiery sun.