Ali Express

 

The Chinese web-traders know how to sell.

They are improving week after week.

Fear floats over the Street

The NASDAQ has reached such heights that people are feeling vertigo and fear of falling off.  Tomorrow, Nvidia will publish its quarterly results, which promise to be excellent. How is the street reacting? With fear. They are selling Nvidia and other high-tech papers. It is losing 3%! Fund managers are losing their nerves and selling... 

I am an optimist. Tomorrow, my portfolio will rise.

Britain's path to renewal: Cultural Revolution

 
It is becoming obvious that the key decision in China's path to renewal was the unsentimental destruction of all things past.  Mao sent youths to humiliate and exile respected teachers and to destroy the invaluable works of art from the imperial period. But Mao was right. New China emerged without the shackles imposed by Confucius. Zionism erased the Yiddish culture, changed personal and family names, and even invented a new language. England must destroy its venerable traditions and level historical cities, and build a new, modern society. The glories of the past have led to its miserable state today. I like the King, the Lords, the castles, the museums, and the Globe, but they must be given up.  But I doubt that the British renewal could happen. Already, Carl Marx predicted that the Communist Revolution would happen in all of Europe except Britain, because the British proletariat doesn't hate but negotiates with the capitalists.  

Officially a Teenager

Yesterday we celebrated her yom-muledet. She looks angry as always.  

Renewing Kfar Saba

This town was founded a hundred years ago, but is already being rebuilt. This is not Europe, where every old building is considered a piece of history and must be preserved.  My daughter and her then-husband bought an apartment on the fourth floor of an old building. No lift, no parking, poorly maintained. When she divorced and divided their common property, I paid off the boy's part, for her tranquility's sake. Years have passed, and now the rebuilding permit has arrived, and the building is being destroyed (pic). She will receive a brand new and larger apartment. Patience pays.

BTW, the first settlers in this town received large plots to build their homes. A friend of mine inherited such a plot and built two multi-story buildings; his children received each an apartment, and he is now wealthy. So are all those who believed in the Zionist enterprise in its beginning. 

Our new face towards Arabs

Captain Ella is our new face. Lt. Col. Ella Waweya, known in the Arab world by her online name "Captain Ella", will replace IDF Arabic spokesperson Avihai Adraee, who is leaving the IDF after 20 years of service.

Ella grew up in Qalansawe, and at around age 22 decided to perform national service, which she carried out at Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba. Two years later she decided to enlist in the IDF as well, and served as a new media officer in the Arabic communications section of the IDF Spokesperson's Unit. 

Il Ghetto

 Il ghetto nuovo di Venezia. 5,000 Jews of different "nations" lived crowded on a small island. The German nation (Ashkenazim), which also included Italians, was confined to the Campo di Ghetto Nuovo, and was joined by the Levantine (Turkish) nation, which occupied the neighbouring streets of the Ghetto Vecchio in 1541. Later, the Jews from the west, mostly Sephardic Jews, took up residence in the same streets. Other Sephardic Jews were granted houses close to the Ghetto Nuovo, forming the Ghetto Nuovissimo in 1633. The French Revolution liberated and dissolved the ghetto. Cecil Roth's book describes some exotic figures of the ghetto. 

In retrospect, Venice allowed a safe and stable, if marginal, existence for the Jews. All the while, Jews were forbidden to live in Spain, France, Scandinavia, and most of the German states.