RUTHFULLY YOURS

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

  http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2013/06/is_islam_truly_standing_shoulder_to_shoulder_with_other_religions.html Recently, Christian Bible translators considered changes that would make Christian scriptures more palatable to Muslim audiences. Instead of “in the name of the Father,” they put forth the phrase “in the name of Allah.” “Baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit” was reformulated as […]

E-pal Vin Ienco is a commentator and analyst on the effects of Global Islamism and a vocal opponent of Sharia Law.

http://unitedpatriotsworldwide.com/vinienco/
Shh! CAIR-D.C Member Arrested for Raping 12-Year-Old Girl

Omar Abdelbadie was born in Egypt, but has lived in the United States for the past eight years. He is currently studying Neurobiology at the University of Washington.

In his free time, he volunteers with CAIR-Washington, promotes interfaith unity as Vice-President of Bridges (the University of Washington’s Interfaith Council), and walks the streets looking for little girls to ply with drugs and take back to his apartment.

The only silver lining to this dark cloud of perversion is Abdelbadie’s unnamed friend, who called police after realizing that a sex-crime had just been committed. (If this friend happens to be Muslim, I tip my hat to him, for living a far better life than some of his Muslim brothers across the Atlantic have been living.)

Muslim preachers keep telling us that Islam is the solution to Western immorality. With so many recent cases of Muslim pedophiles targeting little (non-Muslim) girls, …

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Hamas Hangs Two ‘Palestinians’ Convicted of Spying for Israel

Hamas Hangs Two ‘Palestinians’ Convicted of Spying for Israel:

Two ‘Palestinians’ found guilty of spying for Israel over a decade were executed by Hamas on Saturday, the interior ministry of the terrorist movement’s government in Gaza said.

The executions are the first since the end of a month-long amnesty for informants in April.

A military court in Gaza had sentenced the two to “death by hanging after the tribunal accused them of charges ranging from collaborating with a hostile foreign entity,” to involvement in “killing and espionage for 10 years,” the statement said.

A total of 16 ‘Palestinians’ have been executed in Gaza for …

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Dhimmis Call for anti-Islam Protest through Croydon, England to be Banned

Dhimmis Call for anti-Islam Protest through Croydon, England to be Banned:

The leader of Croydon Council has called for a planned rally by a right-wing group to be banned.

The English Volunteer Force (EVF) plans to protest outside the headquarters of the UK Border Agency (UKBA), in Wellesley Road, on July 27.

The EVF, which claims to fight “the Islamification of Great Britain”, has said “all patriots are welcome” and has admitted it is likely to spark counter-protests from anti-fascists.

The move has angered many, with council leader Mike Fisher calling for the rally to be banned, stating: “We do not need this additional tension in …

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18-Year-Old Muslim Actress Attacked with Acid for Rejecting Marriage Proposal

18-Year-Old Muslim Actress Attacked with Acid for Rejecting Marriage Proposal:

A producer by the name of Shaukat attacked Pashto actor Bushra with acid after she allegedly refused to marry him, reported Express News on Saturday.

According to 18 year-old Bushra, already-married producer Shaukat entered her house last night and threw acid on her when she refused to marry him.

“A man climbed the wall of our house in the early hours, threw acid on my sister and fled,” Bushra’s brother, Pervez Khan said.

A local police official, Sultan Khan also confirmed the incident.

The teen was immediately taken to Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar where …

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40-Year-Old Muslim to Marry 13-Year-Old-Girl He Raped

40-Year-Old Muslim to Marry 13-Year-Old-Girl He Raped:

A 40-year-old restaurant manager has decided to marry a 13-year-old girl that he raped.

Deputy public prosecutor Ahmad Nazmeen Zulkifli told a Sessions Court here the girl withdrew her accusation against the accused in a police report on April 18.

The man had allegedly raped the student inside a parked car at a roadside in Inanam, near here, at 10am on Feb 18.

He claimed trial to the alleged offence on Feb 28. Counsel Loretto S. Padua, who represented the manager, told Sessions Court judge Ummu Kalthom Abd Samad that both the accused and the girl are …

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‘Ground-Breaking’ Ceremony for Mosque Site in Utah

‘Ground-Breaking’ Ceremony for Mosque Site in Utah:

Members of Utah Valley’s Islamic community are putting their faith on the line Saturday afternoon when they join forces with other community members to break ground for Utah County’s first Islamic mosque.

Groundbreaking ceremonies will be held Saturday at 5 p.m. on the construction site at 935 S. State Street in Orem. Dr. Brian Birch, associate vice president for academic affairs at Utah Valley University will speak at the event, and Imam Shuaib Uddin of the Utah Islamic Center in Sandy will offer the consecration prayer service.

“This is very important to us,” said Dr. Ruhul …

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Catholic Archbishop Dolan to Muslims: ‘You love God, We Love God and He is the Same God’

Catholic Archbishop Dolan to Muslims: ‘You love God, We Love God and He is the Same God’:

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, made his first visit to a mosque in New York City and it was the Albanian Islamic Cultural Center in Tompkinsville where he met with Muslim and other faith leaders.

The cardinal spent more than two hours touring the mosque and the Miraj Islamic School and having lunch with about 40 clergy and laity.

“I thank God that this day has arrived,” the cardinal said. “I thank you for your welcome, I thank you for making me feel …

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http://blogs.wsj.com/peggynoonan/

One of the great questions about the 2012 campaign has been “Where was the tea party?” They were not the fierce force they’d been in the 2010 cycle, when Republicans took back the House. Some of us think the answer to the question is: “Targeted by the IRS, buried under paperwork and unable to raise money.”

The economist Stan Veuger, on the American Enterprise Institute‘s blog, takes the question a step further.

The Democrats had been badly shaken by the Republican comeback of 2010. They feared a repeat in 2012 that would lose them the White House.

Might targeting the tea-party groups—diverting them, keeping them from forming and operating—seem a shrewd campaign strategy in the years between 2010 and 2012? Sure. Underhanded and illegal, but potentially effective.

Veuger writes: “It is a well-known fact that the Tea Party movement dealt the president his famous “shellacking” in the 2010 midterm election. Less well-known is the actual number of votes this new movement delivered—and the continuing effects these votes could have had in 2012 had the movement not been demobilized by the IRS.”

The research paper Veurger and his colleagues have put out notes that, in Veuger’s words, “the Tea Party movement’s huge success [in 2010] was not the result of a few days of work by an elected official or two, but involved activists all over the country who spent the year and a half leading up to the midterm elections volunteering, organizing, donating, and rallying. Much of these grassroots activities were centered around 501(c)4s, which according to our research were an important component of the Tea Party movement and its rise.”

More: “The bottom line is that the Tea Party movement, when properly activated, can generate a huge number of votes—more votes in 2010, in fact, than the vote advantage Obama held over Romney in 2012. The data show that had the Tea Party groups continued to grow at the pace seen in 2009 and 2010, and had their effect on the 2012 vote been similar to that seen in 2010, they would have brought the Republican Party as many as 5-8.5 million votes compared to Obama’s victory margin of 5 million.”

Think about the sheer political facts of the president’s 2012 victory. The first thing we learned, in the weeks after the voting, was that the Obama campaign was operating with a huge edge in its technological operation—its vast digital capability and sophistication. The second thing we learned, in the past month, is that while the campaign was on, the president’s fiercest foes, in the Tea Party, were being thwarted, diverted and stopped.

Technological savvy plus IRS corruption. The president’s victory now looks colder, more sordid, than it did. Which is why our editor, James Taranto, calls him “President Asterisk.”

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ OBAMAWAR 2: THE SEQUEL To invade Libya, Obama lied and told the American people that the residents of Benghazi were about to suffer a massacre that would stain “the conscience of the world.” No such massacre had taken place or was ever going to take place. The only innocent people who wound up massacred […]

The late Billy Carter, Jimmy’s smarter brother said in 1978 :

“The only thing I can say is there is a hell of a lot more Arabians than there is Jews.”

Well yes he was right….and he could have added that the “Arabians’ control the world’s energy supply, a fact that influenced the Middle East policies of all State Departments and Administrations since the advent of Israel.

Well now it appears that energy independence- and I don’t mean the chimerical notions of wind and solar power- is in the offing. Will it make a difference in international policies with respect to Israel?

In a sad word…..No!!

In Europe the thinking, the media, the academies are being subverted by Islam and in our own nation, ostensibly Israel’s best ally, the President has stacked his deck with- Susan Rice, Chuck Hagel, Samantha Power, and the eternally obtuse John Kerry- who babble on about solutions to the Middle East “conflict” that are inimical to Israel’s survival. And, no amount of energy independence will alter their bias.

Only an electoral sweeping out of this administration will help, unless Hillary Clinton becomes President, and then things will be even worse.

Incidentally Billy Carter also argued that the “Jewish media [tore] up the Arab countries full-time,” and defended Libya against charges of state-sponsored terrorism by saying that a “heap of governments support terrorists and [Libya] at least admitted it.”

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3827/the_great_renewables_scam_unravels

Energy insiders have long known that the notion of ‘renewable energy’ is a romantic proposition – and an economic bust. But it is amazing what the lure of guaranteed ‘few strings attached’ government subsidies can achieve. Even the Big Oil companies bought into the renewables revolution, albeit mostly for PR reasons. Like Shell, however, many quickly abandoned their fledgling renewable arms. Post-2008, they knew, the subsidy regimes could not last. Neither was the public buying into the new PR message.

Now it was just a question of time before Europe’s world leading pioneers of solar and wind power, Germany and the UK, decided they had had enough of the self-inflicted economic pain. And all the signs are – as Germany’s solar sector just went belly up and the UK is made aware of how much every wind job actually costs – that the slow implosion of the renewables revolution is under way.

The plain fact is that installing solar panels, especially in the northern hemisphere, makes about as much economic sense as Iran heading up a UN Human Rights Commission (which it has done by the way). Equally, the viability of windfarms has always been the renewables industry’s worst kept secret.

And yet, aided by aggressive and heavily-funded green lobbies, leftist social engineers, appalling journalism, naive politicians and unscrupulous opportunistic renewable energy entrepreneurs, wind turbines and the photovoltaic industry quickly became established facts on the ground, giving the appearance of economic ‘viability’. Why else would government back them using our cash?

I have written before about ‘Hamish’ who is convinced that his wind turbine investment offers him some ‘free’ energy – ‘free’ so long as you overlook the double-whammy of ‘front end’ feed-in tariffs and other green levies and the ‘back end’ high energy bill tariffs passed on by the power companies to others now forced to buy Hamish’s electricity at above market prices.

And that’s before you consider Hamish’s maintenance costs, his need for hydrocarbon back-up, intermittent and unreliable generation, and the fact that the power company cannot store his product which may never be used.

http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/north-korea-holds-un-press-conference-check-your-sanity-at-the-door/ For the first time since 2010, North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations, Sin Son Ho, held a press conference [1]Friday at the UN — thus establishing that once every three years is far too often. Sin held forth for about 50 minutes, most of which he spent reading a prepared statement denouncing the […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2013/06/barack_bamboozles_berlin.html Barack Obama showed up again in Berlin. Sadly, 194,000 of the fawning devotees that cheered him like a rock star in 2008 chose to skip the 2013 encore. Nonetheless, directly out of the Brandenburg gate, the president commenced with injecting race and gender into the conversationwhen he said “Angela and I don’t exactly look […]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-are-the-nsa&WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20130621

A metadata expert reveals the sobering implications of personal data collection by governments and companies

Earlier this month, former NSA employee Edward Snowden revealed the agency is collecting data on millions on Americans, from phone call durations to Facebook posts, all through a program codenamed PRISM. The resulting media backlash has revived the debates about internet privacy and government surveillance techniques, but questions remain: how is the National Security Agency taking in the data, and how much of a threat to our civil liberties does such data-collection efforts pose?

To find out, Scientific American spoke with metadata expert Mark Herschberg, CTO at Madison Logic and instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Herschberg has worked with the programs used to gather big data and was able to elucidate how our internet data has become an important—if not invasive—commodity.

An edited transcript of the interview follows.

What kind of software can be used to collect big data?

It can be collected a number of different ways. It sounds like the NSA is going into the servers of Facebook and others and accessing their log files through some kind of “backdoor.” In that case, you can write pretty simple programs that can copy those files and transfer them to local servers. You could also get this data by installing spying software on an individual’s computer. The third option is actually listening through the pipe, the digital version of wiretapping.

When an individual downloads something or visits a webpage, all the data go through the Internet service provider. By effectively wiretapping their line, you can see every single byte they’re sending back and forth.

Why would the NSA want access to things like Facebook posts?

What you can get are signals. For example, if you look at teens committing suicide, they often spend a lot of time thinking about it and planning. There are signs that professionals have been trained to look for, such as saying goodbye to people before they take their own life.