The suffering of Odysseus

 

Reading Homer's Odysseus, Ulisses is well received when he leaves Calypso and lands in the paradisical city of the Phaeacians. Where is this city? Outside the Odyssey, the Phaeacians have no existence at all. There is a reason, of course, that the Phaeacians have no tradition outside the Odyssey, and that is that the Odyssey, which brought the Phaeacians into existence and gave them the function of “home-bringers,” also takes this function away from them. After delivering Odysseus to Ithaca, the Phaeacian ship is turned to stone by angry Poseidon on its return trip.

Another interesting point is that Menelaos does not sail home after the ten-year-long war in Troy but goes to Egypt. Those  Ἀχαιοί (Achaeans) as described by Homer, were blood-thirsty pirates and slavers. The sea-peoples' attack on Egypt is real, it was registered in the Egyptian royal archives. In Homer's story, the Phoenicians are a friendly people. It seems true that Lebanon was spared of their attacks. The Ekwesh of the Egyptian records were possibly the Acheans, but they were circumcised. In Homer, the Acheans burn their dead, while the Bronze Age "Greeks" build tumulus (burial mounds or kurgans). 

Yehiel Leitner, Ambassador to USA

 
Yehiel Leiter was born in the U.S. and immigrated to Israel four decades ago. He lives in Eli, East of the city of Ariel. His son Moshe was killed in combat in northern Gaza about a year ago. 

The post of ambassador to the U.S. is Leiter's first diplomatic job, after working for decades writing and researching in the Shalem Institute and Herzl Institute. He also served as a senior fellow at the Kohelet Policy forum.

In his youth, Leiter was active in the Jewish Defense League, an organization founded in the U.S. by Rabbi Meir Kahane and later designated as a terrorist organization by U.S. authorities. He was part of a group of activists within the organization who eventually moved to live in settlements in the West Bank.

Kahana's name and ideas were tabu in Israel under the socialist regime. I hesitated even to write his name for fear of losing my job. He was a soft-spoken New York Orthodox rabbi, fighting for the emigration of Soviet Jews. 

The sack of Lindisferne

 Anno 793 the great house of religion at Lindisferne was sacked by the Vikings, giving start to the Danish invasions of Great Britain. But the catastrophe only fired up English religious fervor. King Burgred of Mercia retired to a monastery when the Danes conquered his kingdom, and many royal princesses entered nunneries in their widowhood. The pilgrimage to Rome was very popular, although disastrous for females, as Cuthbert wrote "There are indeed few cities in Lombardy, or in France, or in Gaul, in which there is not an adulteress or harlot of the English race". Leofgifu, a London woman, died on the road to Jerusalem in about 1060. A Lincolnshire thane called Ulf set out for Jerusalem just before the Norman conquest and was never heard about again. West Saxon Wynfrith who took the name of Boniface became the archbishop of the Germans and it may be said that Western Europe was converted by English missionaries. 

All that from a book by D. Whitelock.

Then, in 1066 the Normans crossed the Channel, and divided the country among 180 Norman tenants-in-chief and innumerable mesne (intermediate) tenants, all holding their fiefs by knight service. The replacement of the English aristocracy with a Norman one was paralleled by similar changes of personnel among the clergy. The Saxons became the lower class and even today, a thousand years later, old French family names are frequent in England's aristocracy.

China's Persistent Food Deficit

My first article on China (30 years ago?) addressed the question of whether China could produce enough food to feed its large population. The fields I visited were very poor and highly contaminated with industrial pollution. I was shocked by the primitive wood water wheel pump, a noria  ناعورة, like pictured on Pharaonic tombs, and the state of the crops. In Yunnan, I saw people tending one miserable plant of corn in the depression of a stone and saw the use of black industrial waste as fertilizer.  I took pictures and told the magistrates I met, like the vice major of Tientsin. People told me that the local rice was bitter and they sold it and consumed rice from other provinces.

Reading today's paper, I see that the issue remained with China's fast development, and China apparently had given up on the quest for self-sufficiency. Their strategy is the importation of foodstuffs on a massive scale. 

"Lin said the Chinese leadership’s emphasis on diversifying food sources, along with consumer demand for diverse and upgraded diets, has also contributed to increased imports.

Under President Xi Jinping’s “all-encompassing approach to food” strategy, the State Council, China’s cabinet, in September rolled out a road map to broaden food production beyond traditional farmlands and crops, aiming to establish a diversified food-supply system by 2027 to increase self-reliance."

P.S.: I am not criticizing Chinese authorities, they are trying hard and are sincere. China is very large but has little arable land. The solution may be privatizing the land and allowing big commercial farms to "devore" the small ones. Politically it is totally unfeasible. 

Thanks Jefe!

 

Trump carried the elections and Kamala lost. Many were convinced that the millions of new immigrants were in the Democrats' little pocket and that a compact and permanent colored Democratic block had been created. It could have happened that way, but the Democratic leader Kamala was a neurotic, childless woman, while Trump is a real macho and caudillo, what we call in the barrio EL JEFE, shouting follow me while being shot in the head. See pic!

Anyway, Wall Street is optimistic, and NASDAQ added 2.5%. I made (on paper) more today than I did working a full year as a consulting engineer. Last night completed the Bilu Country Club project. It had been on my table for two weeks and was unable to get down and work on it. I am afraid it will be rejected with further, impossible demands, but for a time it is off my shoulders. At the end of my life, it is becoming material what I always knew, I have a good head for maths and finance. 

I am giving myself a guimel, a free day.   

It was close

Israeli plumbers are increasingly careless. A large sewage pipe just fell on a car stationed on the next street in Raanana. Or was it a Hezbollah rocket? 

Yes, that is. 

Women Drumming in Washington D.C.

 

They are demanding the right to kill their own children.

A comment on X:

It's much much more than a "sad state of affairs". It's a reprobate mind. These women are priestesses of Moloch. They are calling down the judgment of God on America.

What is "reprobate"?

An unprincipled or depraved person:  Cemeteries were seldom placed on the north side of a church, which, if used for burial at all, was reserved for unbaptized children, criminals, reprobates, and suicides.

(in Calvinism) a sinner who is not of the elect and is predestined to damnation.

Every day I am learning something new (for me)

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