Earth Abides

 

Ecclesiastes 1:4  "Men go and come, but earth abides."

קהלת:  דּוֹר הֹלֵךְ וְדוֹר בָּא, וְהָאָרֶץ לְעוֹלָם עֹמָדֶת

My fav crown princess. 

Annette

Yesterday my daughter and her fiance took us to the Cinematek Tel Aviv, to see a very long "rock opera", Anette. It is about a double murder drama. Motive: Doubts about the paternity of Anette, the baby symbolized in the film by a puppet. The emotional crisis is represented by a fantastic storm in the sea. The monologues of the main character, a start-up actor are answered by a Greek chorus formed by the audience. It is extremely stylized. The catharsis came with the final scene in the jail when Annette - this time a real girl - rejects her father's love. I understood the story only after looking it up on Wikipedia.   

Wasting time

I caught a cold and slept badly. The last 2-3 days have been difficult for me to concentrate on work. I waste my time on the internet with Prof. John Mearsheimer lecturing about China's demographic collapse and a China - USA war. He has a strong New York accent but speaks clearly. He says that Communist rule is illegitimate in China so the Party whips up nationalism to stay in power. He doubts the formation of a NATO-type alliance in Asia because the distances are too big.  For him, the suppression of Tibetans and Uyghurs are publicity items. BTW I like the Chinese position on East Turkestan. We met their monstrous faces in the Raqqa Caliphate. In conclusion, I have to work.

Demographic Collapse — China's Reckoning (Part 1)

Extremely clear and logical exposition. 

The Future is Theirs

This is an impressive pic from Bangkok. The child is not losing a moment but studying with the assistance of her mother - while being inoculated. These are the future scientists and engineers. How different is  Asian culture from the American feel-good education!  The future is theirs. 

The Chinese Real Estate Development Model

Evergrande development company is stopping paying back its debt, and the world is anxiously expecting the consequences. It has 300 billion in outstanding debt and it was being financed by sales of unbuilt apartments.  The model is something similar to a Ponzi scheme, which works wonderfully till it does not. Earlier this month, the government barred private equity funds from investing in real estate, cutting off a major source of funding for builders.

The company’s electric vehicle business, China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group, also lost the equivalent of $741 million. The EV company’s valuation was estimated as high as $80 billion earlier this year and now sits at around $6.5 billion. The personal fortune of the worried man in the pic stood at 10 billion, before the debacle. 

What we learn? That economic management in China makes mistakes. What will happen now? The building sector will be re-organized and raw materials sales to China will fall. Evergrande owes money to Chinese financial organizations which will be badly hurt. The coming events may depress the Chinese and open opportunities to American financial firms. 

Political Mechanics

 The first law of states is to survive. Once survival is assured, it will try to widen its security strip around its borders, eliminating all foreign influence and military presence. That will necessarily lead to regional influence. China is now trying to extend its security surroundings, and the current world hegemon, the United States, tries to suffocate the emergence of a rival. As Mearsheimer said, the weak Massachusetts settlement that became the USA, from its very beginning, has been relentlessly extending its influence and fighting off rivals. He predicted that the strategy to be applied against China will be the same applied - successfully - against the Soviet Union. China already has been surrounded by American bases, and the neighboring countries inevitably are afraid of China and will ally with America. America will contain, isolate and weaken China till it collapses like the SSSR did, and breaks up into smaller, less menacing units. Today we see Australia formally siding with America (and Great Britain) and nullifying the 50 billion dollars purchase of French submarines. Apparently, this was the original idea of Brexit: Britain aligning with America vs. continental Europe. We in Israel are an American satrapy, in fact, part of America's Imperium. All this follows from the physical nature of the entities in play and the mechanics of their interactions. The world is anarchy, no one is governing it while is evolving following unfeeling, mechanical laws.