The center does not hold.

 "Iran's military forces have, in an armed clash inside the Pakistani territory, killed senior Jaish al-Adl militant group commander Ismail Shahbakhsh and some of his companions," Iran's state-run media reported on Saturday.

The development has come a month after the two countries conducted airstrikes on each other's territories.

Jaish al-Adl, a Sunni extremist organization, that is designated a terrorist organization by Iran, operates predominantly in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan (colored brown left).

Centrifugal forces are acting on Iran. 

Less for the same price

 

New tuna tin with less tuna. The price remains the same.

I did not realize the change and bought eight boxes.

Decadent Art (anno 1900)

 

Artist unknown. 

Decapitating the enemy

 
According to Gallant (Israel's Minister of Defense), “Hamas has no confidence in its commanders – this is very, very apparent. In addition, the Hamas-Gaza branch is unresponsive – there is nobody to talk to on the ground, and the external leadership [abroad] is looking for leadership [in Gaza]. This means that there is a ‘bid’ for who will manage Gaza – there is no party in control.

This is an opportunity to put some Hamas chieftain of our liking into the leadership position in Gaza and negotiate their surrender "with ourselves".   

Packed Plant

Packed WWTP with automatization was my idea 30 years ago. I proposed to build a prototype to a Start-Up State facility in Southern Israel, the project was accepted but the terms were leonine, they wanted most of the shares and my part was to be about 10-15%, so I abandoned the whole project.  I see now that the Chinese have produced it successfully and selling it at about 12000 dollars each (43,000 sheqel). It is dirt cheap. The factory is in Shandong and has sales of 1.5 million dollars. Admirable. 

 

Is TEVA cheap?

TEVA's stock rose 3-4% today, so some people think it is interesting. We can see from the most recent balance sheet that Teva Pharmaceutical Industries had liabilities of US$11.4b falling due within a year, and liabilities of US$23.2b due beyond that. Offsetting these obligations, it had cash of US$2.25b as well as receivables valued at US$3.39b due within 12 months. So it has liabilities totaling US$28.9b more than its cash and near-term receivables, combined. 

The graph shows that TEVA gradually is paying back its debt and reducing the total amount of debt. It looks encouraging. Let's sleep on it.

Hibernating

Up until October 7, Israel’s construction industry relied heavily on Palestinian manpower. About 75,000 Palestinians in the West Bank held permits to work in Israel. There were another 12,000 in the Gaza Strip, while about 15,000 illegal entrants were employed in the industry. That amounts to about a third of the workforce in the entire sector. With the outbreak of the Swords of Iron war, the entry of Palestinian workers into Israel was stopped entirely, leading to an immediate shortfall of 100,000 workers.

According to the Association of Contractors and Builders in Israel, however, the numbers are much higher. In response to the proposal by the Ministry of Finance in the revised 2024 budget, the Association wrote that even before the war there was a permanent shortage of 40,000 workers for the industry’s needs. In other words, the industry is actually now lacking 140,000 workers.

The Association adds that at present almost 50% of the building sites in the country are shut down, because of the severe shortage of manpower. Those that are active are working at 30% of normal output. The most recent survey by the Central Bureau of Statistics found that 41% of the building sites in the Tel Aviv and central regions and 58% of the sites in the Jerusalem region had been shut since the war broke out.

As for foreign construction workers, before the war there were some 23,000 of them in Israel, mainly from Moldova and China. About 3,000 were reported to have left at the beginning of the war, many of them because of the security situation. (From Globes 16-1-23).

As for me, I am sleeping and inactive. Several projects are detained but I am not pushing them. I am hibernating.