Zalaegerszeg

 

My family escaped from Hungary during the winter of 1956. We took a train to a frontier town, Zalaegerszeg, and at midnight we walked to the Austrian side. It was dangerous. In Kaisersteinbrück, we were received by Austrians with hot chocolate, the first time in my life.  

This week, after 80-something years, local Jews re-established the community and received a Torah Scroll from the Budapest community.  

El Auja Beduins Moving Out

The Ras El Auja Beduin encampment is being vacated. El Auja (the meandering) is an important wadi (creek) in Eastern Samaria, the dry side of the Samarian hills. It had been occupied by nomadic Bedouins, who were primarily based on sheep and goat herding. After two or three years of peaceful pressure (and discrete payments), they are vacating the land. The strategy was to outcompete the nomads by herding animals that pastured on the same miserable grass. Courageous boys on mules kept these herds till the nomads decided to pack and move to greener pastures. 

 

Feints

 

Last night

 The US signaled an imminent attack, triggering full Iranian mobilization. 

 The Gain: Critical intel on radar sites, defense protocols, and leadership locations.

 

 Prediction: The US will use these insights to perfect its actual strike plan (will take another few days). 

The Armchair General: Feinting has taken on new dimensions with cyber warfare, where hackers and state-sponsored actors employ feints to divert attention from their true targets or mislead defenders into taking defensive measures that are ultimately futile. The feint remains a fundamental component of military strategy, exploiting the enemy's natural desire to respond to perceived threats and creating opportunities for decisive action elsewhere on the battlefield.

World Battle for Oil

 Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven reserves. Under Maduro and sanctions, production collapsed from roughly three million barrels per day to under 800,000. The removal of Maduro and the installation of an American-aligned successor government opens the possibility of Venezuelan production rehabilitation at scale—a massive supply injection, sold at steep discounts to rebuild market shares, into a market already suffering from fears of oversupply and price volatility. Iran presents the same logic at an even greater magnitude. If the Islamic Republic falls amid the current protest wave and a successor regime normalizes with the West, Iranian production could return to four million barrels per day or more without sanctions constraints. Taken together, the normalization of both Venezuelan and Iranian output would structurally undermine OPEC+ leverage and place sustained downward pressure on prices, precisely when Saudi Arabia needs elevated revenues to fund its ambitious projects, which are already struggling, and defend its regional position in a time of intensified competition.

Saudi Arabia simply wants Iranian oil out of Western markets. A pariah Iran under sanctions is a gift to Saudi market share and pricing power. The current developments pose a long-term threat to oil rents, which makes Saudi Arabia's regional strategy possible in the first place. The Saudi pivot is also a hedge against an American-led reordering of global energy markets that Riyadh cannot predict or control.

Corolarium: If Trump liberates Venezuelan and Iranian oil, Saudia will suffer. Russia will suffer. American producers will suffer. Oil is very cheap these days. Cherchez la femme!

More Jewish Redheads Coming

The Nefesh b'Nefesh program is recruiting more Jewish redhead girls. I have two red granddaughters to make them feel at home in Israel. 

Iran Today

 
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz stated that he believed the Iranian government would fall.

"I assume that we are now witnessing the final days and weeks of this regime," he said, adding that if it had to maintain power through violence, "it is effectively at its end".

Investing in Europe

Michael A. Arouet

@MichaelAArouet

·

2h

House prices in the EU are no longer supported by rents. Given the demographic crisis Europe is heading into, one‘d have to be crazy to invest in residential real estate there. Many properties will become vacant and worthless.

So it looks. But also in America:

@atxREpodcast

Example of crazy regs: Have a house under construction in both the Austin and Travis County jurisdictions. So both City and County want to review and inspect. Austin - 12 active permits Travis Co - 3 active permits So, 15 permits to build a single home. And about 40 inspections.