RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/peter-lilley/global-warming-religion_b_3463878.html?utm_hp_ref=tw
Global Warming as a 21st Century Religion: By Peter Lilley
Conservative MP for Hitchin and Harpenden, former Cabinet minister

G.K. Chesterton said that “when people stop believing in orthodox religion, rather than believe in nothing, they will believe in anything”. One of the ersatz religions which fills the void in recent years is belief in Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming. It claims to be based on science. But it has all the characteristics of an eschatological cult.

It has its own priesthood and ecclesiastical establishment – the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; they alone can interpret its sacred scriptures – the Assessment Reports; it anathematises as ‘deniers’ anyone who casts doubt on its certainties; above all it predicts imminent doom if we do not follow its precepts and make the sacrifices it prescribes.

What most clearly distinguishes the Catastrophic Global Warming cult from science is that it is not refutable by facts. As Parliament enacted the Climate Change Bill, on the presumption that the world was getting warmer, it snowed in London in October – the first time in 74 years. Supporters explained “extreme cold is a symptom of global warming”!

The Met Office – whose climate model is the cult’s crystal ball to forecast centuries ahead – has made a series of spectacularly unreliable short term forecasts: “Our children will not experience snow” (that was 2000, before the recent run of cold winters), a barbecue summer (before the dismal 2011 summer), the drought will continue (last spring before the wettest summer on record). Now they say that rain and floods are the new normal. But – hot or cold, wet or dry – global warming is always to blame.

Alarmists are reluctant to admit that the global surface temperature has not increased for 16 years, despite CO2 emissions rising far more than predicted. They wave this inconvenient truth away with the non-sequitur that this decade is the hottest since records began, so the world is still warming. If you climb a hill and reach a flat plateau you are higher than before – but the plateau is flat, not rising. When cornered, global warming alarmists assert that the current pause is simply the result of unspecified ‘natural variations’. That implies that the pronounced warming over the previous 25 years may have been amplified by ‘natural variations’ in the other direction. In which case, the likely temperature rise for a given increase in CO2 may be less than previously estimated or required to produce the threatened doom.

In 2006 I asked how long the pause in warming would have to persist before the Met Office would revise its model. They replied that, since it is based on known laws of physics, they would never adjust it. Just like the German philosopher Hegel, who claimed to derive the laws of nature from first principles: when told that the facts did not agree with his theories, Hegel replied: “So much the worse for the facts”! Climate models do incorporate some established physical laws including the basic greenhouse effect which, having studied physics at Cambridge, I accept. This implies that doubling the concentration of CO2 will raise the temperature by a fairly harmless 1.2ºC. But the models amplify this several fold using assumptions about complex phenomena which cannot yet be reduced to simple physical laws.

Let me aver that I like and respect and hope for the victory of Republican Joe Lhota to replace Bloomberg. However when it comes to Anthony Weiner, hypocrisy abounds…..his desire for a second chance, elicits much high dudgeon from folks who have given worse people a pass.

Washington D.C. (It’s the nations capital!!!) former Mayor Marion Barry (1979 to 1991) was re-elected to another term (1995 to 1999) in spite of a stint in jail in 1990 resulting from perjury and drug possession. Subsequently he was elected councilman for Washington’s 8th Ward in spite of repeated scandals involving taxes, illegal gifts from contractors and traffic violations.

Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts continued to be re-elected despite the scandal in Chappaquiddick where he left a young woman to drown while scheming to hide his role in the accident. When the nation’s Senatorial Tom-Cat died, he was called “the lion of the senate” and buried in West Point.

Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut continued to be re-elected in spite of being mired in mortgage scandals, lies, questionable real-estate bonanzas, and in 1985 his fondling and “sandwiching” a young waitress with fellow rogue Ted Kennedy. The Hartford Courant noted: “Dodd and Kennedy were also reported to have made a ‘human sandwich’ with a waitress at La Brasserie, another Capitol Hill restaurant. The report had it that Kennedy threw the woman on Dodd, who was slumped in a chair, and then jumped on top of her. She was said to have run screaming from the room.” And both Dodd and Kennedy had the effrontery to try a run for the Presidency.

Recently retired Rep. Barney Frank continued to be re-elected in spite of a scandal in 1989 resulting from a gay prostitution ring he ran from his apartment. In later years he admitted the scandal and told how he was depressed and lost weight….but he did not lose the ensuing elections.

Disgraced Ex South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, once a GOP frontrunner resigned amid a scandal of infidelity, leaving the office for a jaunt to Argentina with his girlfriend and lying about it just won an election for Congressman for the state’s First District.

Then there is this hilarious tidbit from June 3, 2013 http://tribuneherald.net/2013/06/03/texas-legislator-drops-marijuana-cigarette-while-speaking-on-floor/ “While speaking during the Texas legislative session, representative Tom Alvin (R) Altruria, dropped something unexpected on the House floor. Upon picking up the item, cameras caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a marijuana cigarette.” The bill being discussed Ironically, the bill being discussed proposed decreasing penalties for the possession of small amounts of cannabis.

Rep. Alvin spoke in opposition to the bill stating “marijuana is a deadly and dangerous drug. It ruins people’s lives and is so addictive that people can become hooked on it just by touching it. We have to keep in mind that allowing any steps towards its legalization will ensure that children have access to this drug. Only by keeping it illegal and imposing tough sentences can we continue to ensure that this plant is no longer consumed by people who should not have it.”

After the session adjourned Rep. Alvin was questioned about the joint he had in his pocket and his remarks made in opposition to the bill.“Well obviously state legislators enjoy special privileges that other people do not” he stated.

Nothing in Anthony Weiner’s record even comes close to the above. Weiner is lewd and vulgar but so is Rahm Emanuel now mayor of Chicago.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323566804578553273901847386.html?mod=opinion_newsreel

Despite Edward Everett’s considerable gifts, the world has little noted what he said about a certain battle in 1863.

One-hundred-and-fifty years later, you’ve still got to feel a little bad for him:

The poor guy who wrote and delivered the Gettysburg Address, and who then saw himself and his speech fade anonymously into the mists of history.

No, not that Gettysburg Address. The other one. The one that was supposed to be the main event that day.

The man’s name was Edward Everett, and his story serves as a melancholy lesson for any of us who become cocksure that we’re about to cross the finish line as the winner in something: our work, our play, any of the things at which we hope to succeed and prevail.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/06/lethal_pandering.html

The American Psychiatric Association continues to issue reports and studies that bolster social pathologies.

To pander or not to pander. As researchers and clinicians, psychologists are confronted with the problem of what to do when the “customer” is not in the right. For decades the American Psychological Association (APA) has been committing malpractice against the American people by cooking up pseudoscience that panders to the activist wings of race and sex minorities. The APA is wasting millions of public dollars confabulizing theories that deny individual responsibility in African-Americans and members of sex minorities. (This essay eschews the propagandistic terms for an increasingly byzantine list of psychosexualities. Spiritually dehumanizing and scientifically unfounded, those terms are replaced here by the summative term “sex minorities” where it is unavoidable to lump individuals into a group).

The sine qua non of a healthy personality is the ability to take apposite responsibility for one’s behavior. People who are severely and chronically unable to accept responsibility are said to have a personality disorder. APA research and theories have been imposing collective personality disorders — even sociopathies — on minorities by justifying irresponsibility and helplessness. Nobody likes a sociopath (at least not for very long), much less a group of them. These iatrogenic group sociopathies implicit in psychological theory prevent lasting solutions to problems and worsen bigotry against vulnerable people identified with these groups.

In 2008 the APA published a much heralded review of hundreds of scholarly articles entitled Task Force Report on Resilience and Strength in African-American Children and Adolescents. From the first page of that report:

“Continued cultural oppression places all African-American youth, including well resourced youth, at some degree of risk for pervasive, yet subtle, forms of racialized discrimination and oppression… We contend that the risks African-American youth face derive from proximal concerns, such as under resourced schools, family disruption, or negative peer influences. These risks are related to, and further exacerbated by, the experience of pervasive racism that informs, for example, racial profiling, low expectations, or institutional barriers.”

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/06/the_colonization_of_21st-century_america.html
The Colonization of 21st-Century America

By Timothy Birdnow

When author Dinesh D’Souza diagnosed Barack Obama with anti-colonialism, he did so on the basis of Mr. Obama’s seemingly inexplicable chip-on-the-shoulder attitude toward the country he himself leads, and his eager attempts to move America down the economic and political ladder toward international mediocrity. Where others were accusing Obama of being clueless or socialist, D’Souza concluded — based on Obama’s infatuation with his Kenyan roots — that he was fundamentally an anti-colonialist.

One thing is clear; Mr. Obama denies American Exceptionalism. In fact, he aggressively resists it, preferring the United States to be “one among many.”

While there are certainly problems with D’Souza’s analysis (Obama can be both socialist and Marxist, anti-colonialist and kleptocrat at the same time) I think his fundamental diagnosis is sound, but not just for Mr. Obama. The case can be made that the ruling elites in the United States all suffer from a similar malady, and America is quietly being recolonized to suit their whims.

Colonialism involves the settling of new people in a targeted territory, unlike imperialism, which is purely the military domination of a territory. Colonialism was justified as part of a “civilizing mission.” According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2013/06/22/new-hard-data-debunking-co2-climate-warmism-hysteria/    A paper just published in the prestigious journal Science (June 21, 2013) raises yet more fundamental questions—or at least it should—about the arbitrary designation of atmospheric CO2 as a “pollutant,” in conjunction with anthropogenic climate “warming” hysteria.   Investigators employed standard, robust multi-proxy techniques based upon examining sediments recovered from Lake El’gygytgyn in  […]

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/135073/marx-sperber-mikics?all=1

An impressive new biography looks at the original Jewish leftist—and shines light on the appeal of radical politics for Jews

At 15, sitting in the public library in suburban Atlanta, I eagerly drank in every word of Isaac Deutscher’s monumental three-volume biography [1] of Leon Trotsky. Glossing over Trotsky’s ruthlessness, Deutscher extolled instead his unmatched courage and humane feeling for the masses. A few years later, back in the Northeast for college at NYU, I kibitzed with the Sparticists who hawked their crude newspaper outside Bobst Library. It was 1979, close to the tail end of the old radical Left, when the Rosenbergs were still innocent. My college girlfriend was a red-diaper baby, the daughter of communists. Soon I learned all there was to know about the battles between Alcove One (Trotskyist) and Alcove Two (Stalinist) at the CCNY cafeteria in the 1930s. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were my favorite power couple. I got a work-study job at the People’s Coffee Counter at NYU Law School and even invented its motto: “You have nothing to lose but your change.”

In short, I was a teenage Red. I was no idiot: I didn’t believe a revolution was coming to the shores of America. But I basked nostalgically in what I foolishly thought was the glorious past of Trotskyite Bolshevism.

It took only a few more years before I became disillusioned with the radical slogans. Maybe it was Jesse Jackson announcing at a rally in the early 1980s that he had been to Cuba and knew that it was a true democracy. Or Edward Said, whose hostility to Israel troubled me, writing that the Marxist state of South Yemen was a model for the Middle East. But I also learned something else about Trotsky: During the Bolsheviks’ war on the peasantry, he was responsible for the deaths of millions of human beings. In the end, that was all that mattered.

Thoughts of my youthful enthusiasm for Marxism came back to me recently after seeing the U.K. Telegraph headline [2] “I Want to Save the Capitalism my Father Hated.” The story concerned the clean-cut, rapidly rising [3] Ed Miliband, who won the struggle with his brother David to become the head of Britain’s Labour Party and who might well become the country’s first Jewish Prime Minister since Disraeli. The brothers’ father, Ralph Miliband, was a renowned Marxist and Jewish refugee from the Nazis; he is buried a stone’s throw from Karl Marx in London’s Highgate Cemetery. Ed Miliband practices a mellower approach to capitalism. “The free market working properly” was Miliband’s version of what is to be done in his interview with the Telegraph. But, Miliband added, socialism will never die: It is “a tale that never ends.”

Miliband’s wish to cling to the vestiges of Marxism even as he extolls the free market is not unusual in our recession-plagued moment. Nicolas Sarkozy had himself been photographed reading Capital in the aftermath of the crash, and countless professors in the humanities and social sciences (though not, of course, countless economists) fly their Marxist colors proudly, even if they would never dream of abolishing private ownership or markets. In the rarified world of academic jargon, Marxism plays its role in an intellectual picnic that includes poststructuralist thinkers of every stripe. Being a classroom Marxist means talking about the uncanny character of the commodity form or the phantomlike digital age, tossing in a few scattered lines from Badiou and Žižek, and suggesting that our recent, world-shaking financial crisis proves the “relevance” of Marx—without explaining what makes Marx’s outdated economic theories and their accompanying intellectual apparatus relevant to the tremors of 21st-century capitalism. We might do better, instead, to begin at the beginning.

http://www.bnp.org.uk/news/national/breaking-news-another-savage-murder-se-london

Yet another sickening murder in London by a Muslim happened over the weekend when a disabled wheelchair bound man had his throat cut.

Daha Mohammed, 51, of Abbotts Close, Thamesmead, was charged with the murder of Mr Colin Greenaway and appeared at Bexley Magistrates’ Court today.

Colin was described as a ‘great neighbour and friend’ by Gary Cook, who resides in the flat above, and said he rushed down after one of his neighbour’s carers knocked on his doors in floods of tears on Saturday.

Colin aged 56, was confined to a wheelchair having had toes amputated due to gangrene.

Mr Cook said he cannot come to terms with what has happened, saying he would often have a great laugh with Mr Greenaway, and only saw him just two days before he was murdered by the Muslim coward.

He said: “Colin was a neighbour and a friend and I can’t believe what’s happened.
“I’ve known him for about 10 years, he’s helped me out and I’d help him out.

http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2013/06/22/paul-and-lee-lead-bipartisan-effort-against-obamas-unauthorized-syria-intervention/

Thanks to Republican Senators Rand Paul (of Kentucky) and Mike Lee (of Utah), we might finally get on Syria what we were denied on Libya: a real debate among the American people’s representatives over congressional authorization of President Obama’s unilateral war-making in the Middle East.

The Washington Examiner reports that Senators Paul and Lee have joined with two counterparts, Democrats Chris Murphy (of Connecticut) and Tom Udall (of New Mexico), in offering legislation that would block direct or indirect aid for military or paramilitary operations in Syria. The bill, which is posted on Paul’s website, is called the “Protecting Americans from the Proliferation of Weapons to Terrorists Act of 2013.”

The proposal would not affect or prohibit humanitarian aid, but it forthrightly addresses the issue Syria intervention supporters willfully ignore: the factions President Obama is abetting – egged on by the GOP’s McCain wing and their fellow transnational progressives on the Democratic side of the aisle – are Islamic supremacists dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and closely connected to violent jihadists, including al Qaeda-affiliated groups.

Not to be a broken record (see, e.g., here, here and here), but the Syrian civil war pits implacable enemies of the United States against each other. And as night follows day, they are using their barbaric jihadist tactics against each other. The situation is reminiscent of the central flaw in our Libyan misadventure – which led directly to the massacre of Americans in the “rebel” stronghold of Benghazi on September 11, 2012.

As John Rosenthal acutely observes in his short but essential book The Jihadist Plot: The Untold Story of Al-Qaeda and the Libyan Rebellion, while there are many problems with using the label “war on terror” to describe our ongoing hostilities, “at least the term had the advantage of making clear that the US and its allies abhorred the tactic in question.” Yet, in Libya, and now in Syria, we have turned a blind eye to the fact that terrorism is used by the jihadists our government has chosen to side with. We try to obscure this fact by referring to the opposition forces as “rebels,” the better to avoid noticing that they consider themselves mujahideen (jihad warriors), and by pretending we favor only the “secular” “moderates,” though it is laughable to suggest there are enough of them to topple the regimes in question without allying with the more numerous and formidable Islamic-supremacists factions.

This is a disgraceful state of affairs. For many years after their enactment in 1996, the material-support-to-terrorism laws, which prohibit and severely punish any abetting of terrorist organizations and their savage methods, were foundational to American counterterrorism. They have been a staple of anti-terrorism prosecutions and of the policy shift designed to prevent terrorist attacks from happening (by starving jihadist cells of resources) rather than content ourselves to prosecute only after suffering attacks. At least as importantly, material support statutes also proclaimed our moral position: any organization that resorted to terrorism is the enemy of humanity, regardless of its cause and regardless of what humanitarian activities the organization purports to carry out. Now, no matter how much government officials deny it, our government is endorsing what we went to war to defeat. Our government is materially supporting terrorists – the very conduct it prosecutes and imprisons American citizens for committing.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com
http://blogs.jpost.com/users/just-look-us-now
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Come to Israel – get healed. 30,000 of Israel’s 3.5 million visitors in 2012 came to get medical treatment at Israel’s top health institutions. Treatments include IVF, brain diseases, laser surgery and heart bypasses. Please read about Dr. Jason Bodzin of West Bloomfield who had stem cell treatment for ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) – the condition also suffered by Professor Stephen Hawking, who boycotted Israel’s Presidents’ Conference.
http://www.thejewishnews.com/healing-the-world?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=healing-the-world

Boost for Israel’s icy cancer treatment. IceSense3 cryoablation cancer treatment is to be covered by US medical insurance giant HCSC. Vast numbers of US patients will now be able to have breast tumors removed by the minimally invasive ultrasound-targeted freezing process developed by Israel’s IceCure Medical.
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000853798&fid=1725

Why some cancer treatments fail. An international research team, including Hebrew University Professor Raphael D. Levine, has discovered that brain tumors switch their signaling network to evade growth inhibitor medication. New treatments can now be developed that take advantage of this knowledge.
http://www.ulg.ac.be/cms/rv_2904789/en/a-protein-which-mocks-anti-cancer-therapies

Get your heart fat checked. Researchers at the Rabin Medical Center in Petach Tikva have proved scientifically that the thickness of the layer of fat enveloping the heart can predict heart disease. It is not the weight (BMI) of an individual that matters, but whether the tissue supporting the heart muscle grows too large.
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=10033&goback=.gde_40519_member_250279451

Treating Gaucher’s disease in Brazil. Israel’s Protalix Biotherapeutics has entered into a supply and technology transfer agreement with Brazil for its Gaucher treatment Uplyso. Brazil’s Health Minister said he was pleased to be able to improve the health of Brazilian citizens impacted by the rare disorder.
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000853732&fid=1725
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=101161&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1831101&highlight=

ISRAEL IS INCLUSIVE AND GLOBAL

Gaza weekly deliveries: In the week ending 15th June 2013, 1313 trucks carried 36,026 tons of goods into Gaza from Israel through the Kerem Shalom crossing. They included 265 trucks of food and 418 trucks of construction materials.
http://www.cogat.idf.il/894-en/Matpash.aspx

National service by Arabs up 76 percent. A ceremony was held in Haifa to recognize the record-high 3,000 Arabs volunteering in the national service program this year. This represents an increase of 76 percent over last year, when 1,700 participated. 85 percent of participants either study or enter the workforce afterwards.
http://www.jpost.com/National-News/National-service-in-Arab-sector-up-76-percent-over-past-year-317143

Arab Muslim, female, activist, professional and graduate student. This photo says it all.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc1/419043_467809086634969_1484335710_n.jpg

Brave Miss World. In 1998 Miss Israel, Linor Abargil from Netanya, became Miss World. But her real story has only just been made into a documentary film. She went around the world, speaking out about her ordeal, speaking with others who had also been assaulted, working with survivors and those who help survivors.
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/film-of-israeli-rape-victim-who-became-miss-world-at-afi/2013/06/18/

Helping India grow food. Israeli is to provide technology and training to India to diversify its fruit and vegetable crops and raise yields. Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation (Mashav) would help set up 28 centers of excellence in 10 Indian states – each focused on specific fruit and vegetable crops.
http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/agriculture/israel-to-help-india-diversify-fruit-vegetable-crops/article4756384.ece

Solar power for Rwanda. Jerusalem-based Energiya Global is bringing light to the nations with a project for an 8.5- megawatt solar field in Rwanda. The country’s first solar field will be located at the Agahozo- Shalom Youth Village, a boarding school east of the capital Kigali, for orphans of the Rwandan genocide.
http://www.jpost.com/Enviro-Tech/Jerusalem-solar-energy-firm-hopes-to-build-85-MW-field-in-Rwandan-youth-village-316988

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Israel gets cyber-tough. Interview with Gadi Tirosh of Jerusalem Venture Partners, which is building a cyber incubator in Beersheba. It will grow IT security companies from some of the most talented Israelis in academia and the military in order to tackle the growing threats that firewalls and anti-virus cannot handle.
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/the-cyber-security-oasis-in-the-israeli-desert-B0pYky2yREi8uMRqs7bHUw.html
http://www.timesofisrael.com/start-ups-ride-a-cybersecurity-wave-into-israel/

Turn your mobile phone into a smartphone. (Thanks to Israel21c) An estimated 4 billion people own a simple mobile phone – mostly in countries where a smartphone would not work. Israeli start-up VascoDe provides a 2G system to provide email, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia etc. via national mobile providers.
http://israel21c.org/technology/vascode-brings-smart-phone-capabilities-to-simple-cell-phones/

Landing in any weather. Elbit’s Clear Vision system was put on show yesterday at the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget. The system’s advanced multi-spectral camera displays real-time pictures on transparent glass in front of the pilot, enabling passenger aircraft to land even in storms and fog. The video is of an earlier version.
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000853548&fid=1725
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7N8I2t85zM

Israeli planes get new missile protection. An El Al 737 plane has completed trials with the new C-MUSIC DIRCM system to protect against terrorist shoulder-fired missiles. Every El Al, Arkia and Israir civilian plane will be equipped with the new system.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/169057#.UcBldtjhd4o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Vkt8TRRkWmI

Free courses at TAU and the Technion. Tel Aviv University and Israel’s Technion have partnered with free-course provider Coursera to offer especially developed classes in four study areas – including engineering, archeology, biology and cultural studies.
http://www.jpost.com/National-News/TAU-Technion-to-offer-free-online-courses-316729

National Science Day, at a venue near you. Israel marked National Science Day with lectures in unlikely places. In people’s homes, the Israel Museum, and (because it was also Einstein’s birthday) the Einstein Pub.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNfxVXYvKBg&feature=em-uploademail

Technion Innovation for a Better World. Good video of some of Israel Technion’s top developments. It features robotics, ReWalk, focused ultrasound, stem cells, sustainable engineering and new energy research.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VUsiIqm5a4&feature=youtu.be

No electric cars, but maybe electric scooters. The Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality is launching a pilot program to replace its fleet of 300 motorcycles with electric versions. It is part of part of a broader citywide program to reduce air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and noise.
http://www.jpost.com/Enviro-Tech/TA-municipality-tries-out-25-electric-scooters-316850

Israel’s 1Gigabit Internet. Israel has commenced a ten-year, multi-billion-shekel project to lay a national fiber optic network that will allow Internet download speeds of up to a gigabit (1,000 megabits) per second.
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000853028&fid=1725
http://www.jpost.com/Business/Business-News/IEC-wins-approval-for-telecom-entry

Israel will be the first end-to-end-digital nation. Cisco CEO John Chambers’ prediction came after meeting Prime Minister Netanyahu and agreeing to help upgrade Israel’s digital infrastructure. Israel is moving to connect fiber-optic networks and infrastructure to homes, businesses, education and healthcare all at once.
http://www.jpost.com/Business/Business-News/Cisco-CEO-Israel-will-be-the-first-digital-state-317129

ECONOMY & BUSINESS

After Waze – who’s next? Here is fastcompany.com’s “6 Israeli Startups To Watch” following Google’s purchase of Israel’s Waze for a cool $1 billion.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3012685/tech-forecast/6-israeli-startups-to-watch-as-google-reportedly-buys-waze-for-13-billion

Deutsche Telekom incubates Israeli start-ups. Germany’s communications giant Deutsche Telekom is preparing Israeli start-ups for the European market. During the three-month program, DT provides mentoring, pilot customers, offices in Berlin plus travel & accommodation costs.
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000852817

Another road for Nigeria. Israel’s Solel Boneh has won a $580 million Nigerian government tender to rebuild and widen an 84km section of the Ibadan-Lagos highway in southwest Nigeria. The deal follows a $390 million contract in Oct 2012 to build a road in the Shgamu-Benin area of Nigeria.
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000852833&fid=1725

Cisco wants more Israelis. Cisco CEO John Chambers announced plans to open a development center dealing with information technology in Israel. The technology giant plans to hire up to 100 more Israeli employees, who will join the 2,000 Israelis that the organization currently employs.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4394002,00.html

Record Israeli food exports to USA. Exports of Israeli Foods and Beverages to the United States reached a record $224 million in 2012 – an increase of 50% in five years. One of the reasons cited was “quality”.
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/israeli-food-exports-to-us-reaches-a-record-224-million-in-2012/2013/06/19/

14 projects will “get the BIRD”. No, it is good news. In its latest round of investment, the Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) Foundation will provide $10.95 million for fourteen Israeli projects. BIRD finds US partners and provides up to a third of total projected costs.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/bird-makes-matches-for-israeli-tech-and-us-business/

CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT & SPORT

International Student Film Festival. The 15th International Student Film Festival, sponsored by Tel Aviv University, is presenting 250 movies at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque and other venues around the city.
http://www.jpost.com/Arts-and-Culture/Arts/Honing-their-craft-316855

Barbra. “Avinu Malkeinu” at Shimon Peres’ 90th http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOqjCENDhyk
Also “People” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnKkYig6ROk and a beautiful HD sound quality version from Newsletter subscriber Paula http://vimeo.com/64798140 (with appearances by Peres and Gilad Shalit)

Comedy is a serious business in Israel. LA-based comedian Avi Liberman visits Israel twice a year, bringing with him some of America’s best comics. They raise funds for the Koby foundation – formed by the parents of Koby Mandel who was murdered by Arab terrorists in 2001.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4393955,00.html

Israel wins bronze (and more) at World Ball Hockey finals. A hastily assembled Israeli team beat Hong Kong 3-2 in a shoot-out for third place at the 2013 World Ball Hockey Championships in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. It was Israel’s first appearance at this tournament. Israel also won the Fairplay award.
http://www.jpost.com/Sports/Israel-captures-bronze-medal-at-World-Ball-Hockey-Championships-316875

You have never seen Jerusalem from this angle. An amazing video of a Formula 1 Ferrari speeding through Jerusalem in front of 100,000 spectators.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KdvUP-aQ7g
http://formula1.ferrari.com/video/jerusalem-peace-road-show-day

A great U21 Euro soccer tournament. UEFA’s president Michel Platini praised Israel, saying “The stadiums were wonderful and well-organized, the pitches excellent and the atmosphere in the stadiums was great with many families with young children attending. That is exactly the type of tournament that I like to see”. It was the most important international sporting event to be held in the Jewish state since the 1968 Paralympics.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4394277,00.html

THE JEWISH STATE

Cherry picking in the Golan. It’s so lovely to have an almost positive article about Israel from the BBC. We may get a few more, now that most of their news reporters can’t risk working in any of the nearby war zones.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22884744

Tel Aviv is one of the world’s top 10 beaches. (Thanks to Size Doesn’t Matter) National Geographic Traveler has selected Tel Aviv in its top ten choices for the best beaches in the world.
http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2013/06/14/top-10-beach-cities/

Comedy writer’s view of Israel. There are some classic one-liners in Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Dave Barry’s description of his first visit to the Jewish State.
http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-Features/I-would-convert-and-make-aliya-if-it-werent-for-the-camels-316998

Welcome to the chiffchaff. For the first time in recorded history, 20 pairs of the common chiffchaff have been found in Israel. The birds are nesting in a remote valley in the Hermon. Turkey is the furthest South previously detected. 534 species of birds can be found in Israel. 500 million birds migrate through Israel.
http://www.jpost.com/Enviro-Tech/Common-chiffchaff-makes-rare-southern-journey-to-nest-in-Israel-317142

Only in Israel. See these clips of some unusual Israeli buskers at the Mamila shopping mall in Jerusalem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-KRMVdEYjc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D6dFViw2m8