We were nothing

 James Barr writes in the Epilogue that "It was the struggle between France and Britain for mastery over the Middle East that led the two countries to carve up the Ottoman Empire with the Sykes-Picot agreement, and it was British dissatisfaction over the outcome of this deal that led them, fatefully, to proclaim their support for Zionist ambitions in the Balfour Declaration."

In other words, Zionism was then an unimportant plaything between two imperialist powers. A hundred years later, we have grown. Our population and economy are larger than middle-sized European countries like Switzerland and Austria, and our military power is far greater. And we are growing fast. 

On a personal level, I discovered an autobiography of an old love. I am absent from it, and that hurts but is entirely justified. We met after a year in Bauchi, when I was in bad shape. There I got malaria and other bad infections, I drank Methylated alcohol that almost killed me, and the company never paid me so I just took a bus to Lagos and returned to Buenos Aires. There I was without money and a job. Friends were disappearing - that was the time of the Argentine military terror. I tried to move to Venezuela, which was booming, but so many Argentines were trying to escape that the Consulate's door was closed. I took a plane to New York and then to Tel Aviv. She married a German guy and is happy. 

Coming Famine in South Africa

 Pic. The Anglo-Boer War Women’s  Monument opened in 1913, commemorates the 26370 Boer women and children who died in the concentration camps during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899 to 1902.

The monument commemorates the Burgers killed during the war and draws out the emotions experienced by departing Commando, the pain of a child dying in his mother's arms, and the losses inflicted on civilians and combatants. 

This morning, I drank a strong coffee and felt so sleepy that I had to return to bed. I had a vivid dream that I was in a group with Boers, and we were discussing today's Expropriation Law with nil compensation. South Africa is following Rhodesia's disastrous example, and soon, there would be no food in the republic because the Zulu were no farmers. I dream very little, but this was strong. 

Untold Crimes

 
Joe Biden, on his last day in office, forgave Anthony Fauci retroactively, starting ten years ago. What was his crime?

The USA disaffiliates from the WHO. Why? It has something to do with the last COVID epidemic. 

I know nothing.

Fauci, who has never been charged with a crime, served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for nearly 40 years, including during the emergency phase of the Covid pandemic. Evidence suggests the Wuhan lab was working to modify coronaviruses to infect humans — what is known as "gain-of-function". Fauci financed the research. 

Bad Feeling

Tomorrow at 0800 will take place the exchange of prisoners between Israel and Hamas. The details of the agreement were not published, but many of the hostages are not alive and we are paying for them living terrorists. I expect that the population will receive a deep shock tomorrow. I am already depressed. I have reached the chapter on "Palestine" in the A line in the sand book and had to stop reading. The previous chapter is also depressing: In 1944, De Gaulle sent 800 Senegalese colonial soldiers to Beirut and they practically demolished it. The Lehi (the Stern Gang in the book) killed Lord Moyne. 

Itzhak Shamir (pic) explained: 

Lord Moyne was the highest British official in the Middle East …. and because we fought against the British in this area, we took him for a target. This was the main reason for his assassination.

El Varon de Rabinal

Pic.: A Maya carved jade plaque from Nebaj in Guatemala depicts a Maya king with a headdress sitting on a throne and paying attention to a little person to the left of the scene, who is shown with crossed arms, the sign of greeting and respect. The plaque dates from the Late Classic period, c. CE 600-800.

I am reading Rabinal Achi, a song and dance drama about a historical feud between the Rabinal and the Qiche peoples.  El Varon de Quiche destroys Rabinal villages and tries to kidnap their children. After being caught by the Varon of Rabinal, he is judged, asks for a drink and a woman, and then submits to be sacrificed. Justice is done and the conflict is solved. Amazingly for a pre-modern story, it is totally secular, and no god or spirit is mentioned. 

P.S.: It is not amazing. The Spanish conquest destroyed all pre-Christian religious objects. Cardinal Landa, the first Inquisitor of Maya Lands, persecuted and killed many shamans and unbelievers. The Rabinal Achi song and dance presentation was kept secret by the Mayas for two hundred years till the French religious Brasseur arrived and paid for the necessary feathers dresses and masks.

British Facts

 As an example of the ridiculous factors behind these misleading Western GDP statistics, he pointed out some of the items that the British had chosen to include in their own GDP:

A side note, I also ran across some less wholesome facts when doing research on the subject. I refer to a Financial Times report just for a laugh. In 2014, UK started to include prostitution and illegal drugs in its GDP reporting to the tune of 10 billion pounds a year. This raised the reported UK GDP by 5% in an effort to help the government raise its debt ceiling.

To derive at this number, the statistics bureau had to make some assumptions: “The ONS breakdown estimates that each of the UK’s estimated 60,879 prostitutes took about 25 clients a week in 2009, at an average rate of £67.16. It also estimates that the UK had 38,000 heroin users, while sales of the drug amounted to £754m with a street price of £37 a gram.”

Thus, Western economists have adopted a bizarre framework in which rising crime levels contribute to the official economic measure of national prosperity.

From Unz. But Unz does not understand, that GDP measures "economic activity" and crime (what crime?) is economic activity par excellence.

Havana Syndrome and How to protect oneself

The former conclusion about Havana syndrome was the assumption that the existence of an energy weapon—a device that could cause the kind of injuries Havana-syndrome victims suffered—was implausible and not supported by evidence. But the officials and victims assembled in the Situation Room considered whether this assumption was really valid. An independent panel of experts, convened by the intelligence community, had suggested that an energy weapon could use “pulsed electromagnetic energy, particularly in the radiofrequency range” to cause these symptoms.

I think I know how to protect myself. 

From the Atlantic.