Bureaucratic Organizations

 
The Engineering Department of the Municipality of Ramat Gan employs about one hundred people. Ramat Gan has 150,000 inhabitants. They are open and accessible only for two hours,  three times a week. The rest of the time they are very busy with themselves. They never have time. I cannot get a small project through now for six months. The water department is an independent sovereign entity. About 1.5% of the total population "works" for the municipality. That is, about 5% of the working age population. The 98.5% pays their salaries. Twenty years ago the dept. employed about ten persons. The population did not increase.  

This New World

Adani, a large Indian conglomerate, got punctured and almost collapsed because a small Wall Street firm accused it of fraud. The rumor was enough for infamous Credit Suisse to reject anything linked to the group. 

In this new world 'where an anonymous letter accusing some professor or politician of racism or sex harassing is enough to destroy a lifelong career, a malignant review causes a large cement and mining corporation to fall into the mud. That's why everyone is demonstratively showing their good thinking. Publicity today shows blacks in incredible power situations coupled with star quality blondes, showing that THEY (and their tooth paste) are no racists, so no one will send that poison letter. 

 

Magyar hirek (Hungarian News)

 Youtube  shows Hungarian News, which fortunately am able to follow. They say things I never heard like that Polish minister proposing the fractioning off Russia into independent ethnic countries, which naturally will align with the West. She said that Russia is a permanent danger for Europe and must be destroyed. Israeli news don't think that Russia is aggressive. The Baltic countries - Sweden, Finland, etc. are very worried about Putin. The German government is infighting - Olaf Scholz is reluctant to start another Eastern Campaign. I conclude that the war is not yet a hi tech confrontation, the weapons are not the last generation, and follows WWII tactics. The Russian employ mass attacks, but are not winning. The Russian mercenaries use Ukrainian uniforms, which automatically condemns them to death if taken prisoners. Sentiment: Hungary and Europe are confused and afraid. War is very expensive and they have precious few young people. No one knows the number of casualties.   

The slow end of the Diaspora

 “Norway risks becoming a country without a Jewish population,” says an editorial in Aftenposten. According to the newspaper, 20 percent of the two largest communities (Oslo and Trondheim) have left. “Norway could be the first country in Europe to become jüdenfrei,” wrote journalist Julie Bindel. The synagogues of Oslo and Trondheim are the most protected buildings in all of Norway.

A day wasted

 Nervous breakdown is too strong a word for what happened yesterday: I simply went to bed and slept all afternoon. Why? I had worked hours on changes on the Felafel Beribua factory, which had been built months ago. I am having difficulties with the PDF files, my old version disappeared and I downloaded the free Microsoft version, which is almost useless. Why I had to update (with no additional payment) a project long ago built up and paid for? I felt my slaving was pointless and mailed an incomplete file (which I never do) and went to sleep. It is raining all day. 

About my farm in Argentina

 

I looked up the prices of farms in Pancho Cue (Argentina) and there are several farms like mine on sale. The prices are low, like 2200 US$/hectare that is  35200.  I had planted Pino caribe  for forestry and they told me that it had grown beautifully. A middle sized estancia in the same area, of 300 hectares is being offered at 790,000 dollars. Good that I did not feel tied down to the land and left everything. 

Thinking of Rome

 Reading Livy (but not in the original Latin, as former generations) I arrived to the mystery of the malaria in the gradual weakening of Rome and the Eastern populations in general. The disease appeared around 800 BC in Greece, and advanced westwards along the coastal swamps and wetlands. Possibly the climate was warming up too. 

Malaria is fatal for babies, and they found large cemeteries of babies in Italy, all dead in the same summer epidemy. The parasite evolved, the mosquito evolved and with them human populations, specifically thalassemia and sickle cell (the African variety but mutated independently in Greece too). 

Rome was founded in a swamp of the Tiber river, near the point where it could be traversed, hundred years before the arrival of the disease. When it arrived circa 100 BC, the number of children fell dramatically  (which now is attributed to infertility caused by lead in their wine and cooking in copper pots, although contemporaries attributed it to sheer unwillingness to marry and rear up children, not infertility.) and almost all senatorial families (clans) had disappeared by 100 BC. The lack of Romans  caused the collapse of the Republic when healthy "new immigrants" from the North understood the weakness of the ruling class. This narrative makes more sense than the battles lost and the strategic errors of war leaders.