Canary In The Coal Mine

Israeli Scientist Wins Nobel Prize for Chemistry

by Kenneth Chang  |  NYTimes.com  |  October 5, 2011

 

The scientist Daniel Shechtman, right, during a news conference in Haifa, Israel, on Wednesday after winning the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his discovery of quasicrystals. Photo: Ariel Schalit/Associated Press

 

An Israeli scientist won this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering a material in which atoms were packed together in a well-defined pattern that never repeats.

Recent Nobel prizes have generally split credit for scientific advances among two or three people, but this year’s chemistry prize and accompanying 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.4 million) went to a single scientist: Daniel Shechtman, 70, a professor of materials science at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Dr. Shechtman is also a professor at Iowa State University and a researcher at the Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory.

The citation from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences states simply, “for the discovery of quasicrystals.”

Such regular but nonrepeating patterns, defined by precise rules, have been known in mathematics since antiquity, and medieval Islamic artists made decorative, nonrepeating tile mosaics, but it was thought impossible in the packing of atoms.

Yet Dr. Shechtman discovered the same type of structure in a mix of aluminum and manganese. During a sabbatical in the United States at the National Bureau of Standards, now known as the National Institute of Standards and Technology, he took a molten glob of the metals and chilled it rapidly. The expectation was that the atoms would have been a random jumble, like glass. Yet when he examined his metal with an electron microscope, Dr. Shechtman found that the atoms were not random.

His notebook recorded the exact date: April 8, 1982.

Scientists believed that crystals in materials all contained repeating patterns. For example, a square lattice has fourfold symmetry. Rotate it by 90 degrees, and it looks identical. A repeating lattice with fivefold symmetry, however, is impossible. On that morning in 1982, the electrons Dr. Shechtman bounced off his aluminum-manganese alloy formed a pattern that indicated tenfold symmetry. Dr. Shechtman himself could not quite believe it. He wrote in his notebook, “10 Fold???”

While a periodic lattice could not produce that pattern, a quasicrystal could.

It took years for Dr. Shechtman to persuade others.

During the announcement, the Nobel committee noted that one colleague said, “Go away, Danny” and that he was even asked to leave the research group. Many scientists — notably Linus Pauling, the Nobel-winning giant of chemistry — argued vehemently that Dr. Shechtman’s data could be explained by defects within ordinary periodic crystals.

“That must have been intimidating,” said Nancy Jackson, president of the American Chemical Society. “When he first discovered these materials nobody thought they could exist. It was one of these great scientific stories that his fellow scientists thought was impossible, but through time, people came to realize he was right.”

An atomic model of an Ag-Al quasicrystal. Image: Ames Laboratory, via Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

Even the definition of crystal had to be redefined. Previously, a crystal had “a regularly ordered, repeating three-dimensional pattern,” according to the International Union of Crystallography. The new definition, adopted in 1992, states that a crystal is simply a solid with a “discrete diffraction diagram” — that is, something that produces patterns like Dr. Shechtman saw.

That leaves the door open for yet more different kinds of crystals in the future.

Quasicrystals have since been found in many other materials, including a naturally occurring mineral from a Russian river. Materials scientists have been exploring quasicrystals because of their distinct properties. One kind of highly resilient steel, consisting of hard steel quasicrystals embedded within softer steel, is now used in razor blades and thin needles for eye surgery.

 

Source:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/science/06nobel.html?_r=1&hp

An Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack on America?

by Kenneth R Timmerman  |  FrontPageMag.com  |  October 4, 2011

 

For most of this week, the Department of Energy and the states of Maryland and Florida will be holding emergency response exercises to determine their readiness in the event of a major failure of the national electric power grid.

The scenarios to be tested vary from a low-level event that would take out a handful of the transformers that control the grid that conceivably could be repaired within a matter of days, to a “worst case” scenario to simulate a total take-down of the grid, an event many experts believe could take four to six years to recover from.

William Forschen, in his novel “The Minute After,” helps us to imagine what America would be like after a major EMP event. Survivalists have even invented a new acronym to describe it: TEOTWAWKI – The End of the World As We Know It.

No cell phones, no personal or business computers. No gas stations, no natural gas or water service. Cold storage, down; food processing plants, off-line. No trucking, no railroads, no airplanes, no ATMs, no inter-bank transfers. Americans would revert to eating whatever food they could hunt, fish or forage within walking distance of their homes. City-dwellers would flee en masse, or face starvation.

Some experts point to the partial meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear power reactors in Japan after a tsunami took down the power grid in March as an example of what could happen here.

Even though the Japanese had help from the US and others that enabled them to bring on line backup generators, spent fuel rods in the cooling ponds of several reactors melted down, narrowly averting a major nuclear disaster. Without that outside help, a collapse of cooling power at US nuclear power plants could cause stored nuclear fuel rods sitting in cooling ponds to melt down, irradiating vast swathes of the country, Dr. Cynthia Ayers, a former National Security Agency analyst, told me recently.

Such an event is so catastrophic in nature you would think the federal and state governments had planned for how to handle it long ago. Think again.

We are woefully unprepared, even though solutions are cheap and near at hand. This is why Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) and several colleagues have proposed legislation known as the SHIELD Act (H.R. 668) that would promulgate standards necessary to protect the grid and require the utilities to install hardware solutions to protect the main components of the grid.

There are two main sources of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that potentially could take down the national electric grid: a major geomagnetic event such as the “solar maximum” flare expected to occur next year, or an attack by a hostile power using a “super-EMP” weapon detonated at high altitude over the US mainland.

The US military discovered the EMP effect in 1962 during the Starfish Prime nuclear explosion in the atmosphere over the Pacific.

Within instants, the lights went out 900 miles away in Hawaii, without any visible signs of an attack. The military designated a young Air Force 2^nd Lieutenant named William Graham to investigate. He determined that EMP was a bi-product of a nuclear blast, and that it had the effect of frying everything made of silicon hundreds – and possibly thousands – of miles away from the place of the blast.

Flash forward to 2001. Congress established an EMP commission to assess the vulnerability of the United States to an EMP attack or a massive solar flare. And they picked William Graham – now a distinguished scientist, who had served as President Reagan’s science adviser in the White House – to chair it.

The EMP commission issued a public report in 2004 that ought to be required reading for every American. They determined that a single EMP warhead exploded over the center of the US could bring down the power grid all across the country. A major geomagnetic event could have a similar impact.

Dr. Graham warned in public testimony that a major EMP event would take us back to a pre-industrial age, when the US population was just a fraction of what it is today.

EMPact America, an advocacy group run by Dr. Graham’s staff director on the EMP Commission, former CIA strategic weapons analyst Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, will be involved in most of this week’s exercises.

At a September 23 conference in New York sponsored by the group, national security consultant Peter Huessy said it would cost a mere $60-$100 million to protect the 300 largest transformers running the grid, and another $400 million to $600 million to protect an additional 3,000 transformers.

“These are one-time costs for equipment that bolts down, plugs in, and immediately works to protect against all forms of electromagnetic storms and nuclear EMP effects as well,” Huessy said.

He called it an “insurance policy” that amounted to a one-time payment of just over $3 per person for every American. As yet, until now the utilities, Congress, and the Obama administration have balked at making these improvements.

Contrary to most of Washington, Iran and North Korea have understood that the US power grid is extremely vulnerable to attack by an EMP weapon, and have tasked their scientists and military planners to study the strategic impact of an EMP event.

North Korea appears to have successfully tested a “Super-EMP” weapon during its 2006 and 2009 nuclear weapons tests, while Iran has tested ballistic missiles in an EMP mode – that is, detonating them at high altitude, not in a ballistic trajectory – and deemed those tests a success.

Many experts believe the weapons programs of these two countries have been developed as joint ventures, since Iranian scientists traveled to North Korea to assist in North Korea’s 2006 and 2009 nuclear weapons test campaigns, and North Korean scientists regularly travel to Iran to take part in Iran’s missile tests.

Is an EMP attack on America far-fetched? It’s hard to say. But an America without power would essentially revert to the early 1800s, when a pre-industrial America was able to sustain a population of fewer than 100 million souls. Such a catastrophe would give flesh to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s dream that a “world without America is conceivable.”

Similar damage to the national power grid also could be brought about by a geomagnetic solar storm. President Obama’s science advisor, John Holdren, warned in a March 10, 2011 oped co-authored with his British counterpart that such a solar maximum event could occur at the peak of the current solar cycle in the next 12-18 months, with catastrophic effects.

“Space weather can affect human safety and economies anywhere on our vast wired planet, and blasts of electrically-charged gas traveling from the Sun at up to five million miles an hour can strike with little warning,” Holdren wrote. “Their impact could be big — on the order of $2 trillion during the first year in the United States alone, with a recovery period of 4 to 10 years.”

Holdren and his British colleague, John Beddington, claimed there was “commitment on both sides of the Atlantic” to rapidly implement the technology fixes needed to shield the electric grid from such an event.

And yet, two congressional hearings earlier this year devoted to protecting the grid focused almost exclusively on the dangers of a cyber attack, not the dangers of solar flares or a nuclear EMP attack.

Many members of Congress may consider cyber-warfare to be “sexier” than the messy business of trying to evaluate the intentions of Iran and North Korea, or trying to chart solar activity.

Besides, a cyber warfare bill will pour oceans of money into an endless software race between ever evolving computer viruses, worms and Trojan horses, and cyber-antidotes. Great fortunes will be made, and careers advanced. Who knows how many Solyndras will make out like bandits on the taxpayers’ dime. Cyber warfare is a lobbyist’s dream.

The SHIELD Act requires US utilities to harden large transformers and other key elements of the nation’s power. It calls on the federal government to establish protection standards and hardware solutions in concert with industry, and includes a provision for cost recovery should industry incur substantial costs.

Rather than creating more government, as the cyber-warfare programs would do, the SHIELD Act relies on a public-private partnership – and no taxpayer dollars – to achieve its goals of protecting American’s power backbone.

The EMP Commission and the Strategic Posture Commission have warned in detailed reports of the catastrophic destruction an EMP attack or similar solar event would have on the American way of life. Similar reports have been issued by the administration’s own Department of Energy, and by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

Not protecting against such events is like playing Russian roulette, EMP expert John Kappenman tells me. “If you play Russian roulette long enough, you will lose.” In this case, Congress is playing Russian roulette with the entire American people.

Congress needs to get real and pass the SHIELD Act now, as if our lives depended on it.

Because they do.

 

Source:  http://frontpagemag.com/2011/10/04/an-emp-attack-on-america/

Entrepreneurs Gather In Jerusalem To Reshape The Jewish World

by Steve K. Walz, Jewish Press Israel Correspondent  |  JewishPress.com  |  June 15, 2011

 

JERUSALEM - A perfect storm of converging international business conventions and organizational meetings filled Jerusalem and Tel Aviv hotels to capacity this week as Israel became the focal point for some of the world's most important Jewish decision-makers.

Perhaps the most innovative confab took place in Jerusalem, where more than 150 Jewish social and business entrepreneurs, along with cutting-edge technology prodigies from China, Brazil, Australia, North America and Israel, participated in the ROI Global Summit of Young Jewish Innovators.

The fledgling global ROI Community currently consists of 600 social entrepreneurs and Jewish innovators in 40 countries on six continents who are creating unique concepts to connect and shape Jewish life in the 21st century.

"These young Jewish social entrepreneurs are transforming the Jewish world through their vital initiatives and commitment to tikkun olam, repairing the world," said Lynn Schusterman, the American Jewish philanthropist who in 2005 created ROI Community as a partnership with Taglit-Birthright Israel.

ROI Community has played an integral role in providing initial seed funding for Jewish start-ups such as MoisheHouse, Jewcology, Omanoot.com and Haggadot.com. ROI also offers an expansive Micro Grants program to help ROI members turn ideas into actual meaningful projects.

Michal Ansky, one of the Israeli participants in the ROI Global Summit, is on a fast track toward becoming an innovator of new gastronomic experiences for Israelis as well as Jews throughout the world. The 30-year-old daughter of a best-selling Israeli cookbook author and granddaughter of a Bible scholar who taught David Ben-Gurion, Ansky earned a Masters in Gastronomic Sciences from the Slow Food University of Italy. Along with her husband and a close friend, she recently opened Shuk Hanamal, the first indoor fresh seasonal produce market in the trendy Port of Tel Aviv promenade.

The market features fresh fruits and vegetables, which are brought directly from the fields on a daily basis, boutique European and Israeli cheeses, an American deli, a butcher and fresh fish stalls, one of which features Ansky's mother serving up homemade herring delicacies on Friday mornings.

"You can even find top quality glatt kosher products as well," Ansky told The Jewish Press. Ansky's growing popularity is such that her rookie debut as a culinary judge on Israel's interpretation of the hit TV series "Master Chef" in late 2010 led to an appearance on the American version, which will be seen on Fox next month.

"I think the ROI Global Summit is a terrific idea, because it allows young and interesting people to come up with innovative ideas on how to build things, whether in business, culture or food," said Ansky.

"I would love to create a culinary dialogue with my colleagues all over the world. Israel is a small place with a terrific culinary heritage. I'm proud of the great kitchens we have here and I think it's very important for Jews all over the world to visit Israel, not just for the historical or religious encounters but also for the fascinating gastronomic experiences, which is one of the reasons why I created the Shuk Hanamal. It's literally a playground for anyone who truly loves food."

 

Source:  http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/48630/

Israel: New Cure for Lymphoma Passes Phase II Clinical Trial

by Hana Levi Julian, MSW, LCSW-R  |  IsraelNationalNews.com  |  May 26, 2011

 

A new treatment for non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a cancer of the circulatory system, has passed its Phase II clinical trial.

The good news was announced by CureTech, a portfolio subsidiary of Teva, which holds 33 percent of CureTech, and Clal Biotechnology Industries. Teva has the option of purchasing all the shares.

Research lab in Haifa. Israel news photo: Flash 90

The treatment, CT-011, is an investigational anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody – a humanized monoclonal antibody that modulates the immune response and inhibits tumor growth and the spread of metastases. It interacts with PD-1 (Programmed Death-1), an inhibitory receptor belonging to the B7-receptor family that is expressed on lymphocytes and myeloid cells.

PD-1 and its ligand, PD-L1, have been shown to play a central role in tumor recurrence and progression. The presence of these molecules on different tumors, including lymphomas, colorectal carcinoma, renal cell carcinoma and others, has been associated with poor prognosis.

Preliminary analyses indicate that 70 percent of the patients treated with CT-011 were progression-free at the end of the follow-up period, as compared to only 47 percent in the historical control. Furthermore, 84 percent of the patients treated with CT-011 were alive by the end of the follow-up period, compared to only 62 percent in the historical control.

“We are very pleased to have achieved this major milestone in the clinical development of CT-011,” said Dr. Michael Schickler, CEO of CureTech.

So far, researchers say CT-011 has enabled patients with Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma (DLBCL) to reach a primary endpoint of improved progression-free survival (PFS) following autologous stem cell transplantation. In addition, statistically significant results were achieved in the secondary endpoint of Overall Survival (OS).

“DLBCL is an aggressive type of non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma (NHL) affecting about 40% of all NHL patients," said Jacob M. Rowe MD, Director, Department of Hematology, Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, Israel. “I am very encouraged by the results of this trial and am certain that if these results will be confirmed in future controlled Phase III studies, CT-011, a truly novel anti cancer therapy will improve the lives of many DLBCL patients.”

“The results of this early study are exciting,” said Arnon Nagler, MD, Director of the Division of Hematology, BMT and CBB at the Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Israel and co-International Principal Investigator in the study. “There is a significant unmet medical need for therapies that could benefit these patients and I am pleased that such a promising treatment came out of Israeli science."

Final results of the study are expected within the next three months, the company said, after which researchers will present their findings to the international community.

 

Source:  http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/144511

Archaeologist 'Absolutely Sure' Structure Beneath Jerusalem's Holy Mount

From:  World News Daily  |  WND.com  |  June 5, 2011

 

2nd Jewish Temple just 'waiting to be unearthed'

One of the most prominent Israeli archaeologists declared today that remains from the First and Second Jewish Temple period – including the Second Temple itself – lie underneath the Temple Mount (Pictured Right) surface, just waiting to be excavated.

Dr. Eilat Mazar of Hebrew University accused the site's Islamic custodians of destroying Jewish artifacts while attempting to turn the Temple Mount into a "giant mosque."

"I think we will find all the remains starting from the First Temple period and remains of the Temple itself," said Mazar, a third-generation archeologist. "I mean, no one took it out, it's there."

Mazar said she is "absolutely sure" remains from the First and Second Temple periods, including "the Second Temple itself," as well as later remains from the Byzentine and early Islamic periods, are just under the surface of the Temple Mount.

Continued Mazar: "I am absolutely sure, in light of my very rich experience excavating Jerusalem for 30 years now, all these remains are waiting to be revealed. And if it can't be done nowadays because of all kinds of sensitivities, at least we should take care that it won't be ruined for future excavations when time comes."

Mazar was speaking in an interview with "Aaron Klein Investigative Radio" on New York's WABC Radio.

Mazar heads the excavation department at the City of David, an archaeological village at the foot of the Temple Mount said to be the place where King David built his palace and established his capital.

Mazar has led digs that discovered multiple Temple-era remains, including a tunnel used by the Israelites to conquer Jerusalem, as well as the world's largest ritual bath.

She accused the Waqf, the Islamic custodians of the Temple Mount, of destroying temple artifacts while attempting to turn the Temple Mount into a "giant mosque."

Mazar was speaking to Klein in light of the recent publication of a report by Israeli State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss, which included a special, largely secret section accusing the Wafq of disposing of Jewish artifacts.

Citing security concerns, the majority of the special report on the mount was not published, but the small portion made public revealed severe deficiencies in Israeli oversight of Islamic construction that has been done on the mount.

The report fingered four Israeli state agencies – the police, the Antiquities Authority, the Jerusalem municipality and the Justice Ministry – for not doing enough to conduct continuous supervision of Wafq construction.

"Protection of artifacts from the Temple Mount and preventing their ruin is a public goal of the first order," the report states. "It is important to note that any digging and other works on the Temple Mount must be conducted in consideration of the character of the place and after receiving all required permits and meeting all archeological guidelines. As a rule, use of heavy machinery should be avoided."

The reference to heavy machinery referred to a decision in 2007 by then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to allow the Waqf to use a heavy tractor to dig a 1,300-foot trench around the periphery of the Mount. The Waqf claimed the trench was necessary to replace electrical cables outside mosques on the site.

At the time, the Waqf was accused of destroying artifacts it found at the site.

Allowing the use of bulldozers at any sensitive archaeological site is extremely unusual, particularly at the Temple Mount, which experts say contains sealed layers of artifacts as shallow as two to three feet below the surface.

The mount never has been properly excavated. Heavy equipment could easily damage any existing artifacts, stressed Israeli experts at the time, who asserted the area should be excavated slowly and carefully by hand. 

History of destruction

The last time the Waqf conducted a large dig on the Temple Mount – during construction in 1998 of a massive mosque at an area referred to as Solomon's Stables – the Waqf reportedly disposed of truckloads of dirt containing Jewish artifacts from the First and Second Temple periods.

After media reported the disposals, Israeli authorities froze the construction permit given to the Waqf, and the dirt was transferred to Israeli archaeologists for analysis.

The Israeli authorities found scores of Jewish Temple relics in the nearly disposed dirt, including coins with Hebrew writing referencing the Temple, part of a Hasmonean lamp, several other Second Temple lamps, Temple-period pottery with Jewish markings, a marble pillar shaft and other Temple period artifacts. 

Mazar's earlier find

WND reported that in 2008 Mazar and a team of archaeologists unearthed what's believed to be the royal seal of an Old Testament prince who is said to have tossed the prophet Jeremiah down a well.

 

Royal seal bears name of Gedaliah, a prince to Judah's King Zedekiah, mentioned in the Old Testament Book of Jeremiah. (courtesy Dr. Eilat Mazar)

 

The stamped engraving, known as a "bulla," was discovered about 600 feet south of the Temple Mount in clay, astonishingly well-preserved, bearing the name of Gedaliah, the son of Pashur.

"How absolutely fantastic and special this find is can only be realized when you hold in your hand this magnificent one-centimeter piece of clay and know that it survived 2,600 years in the debris of the destruction, and came to us complete and in perfect condition," Mazar said.

Gedaliah is mentioned by name in Jeremiah 38:1 as he served Judah's King Zedekiah in the final days before Jerusalem was conquered by Babylon's King Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C.

The prophet's writings tell of the actions that Gedaliah and his fellow princes took against him:

"Then took they Jeremiah, and cast him into the dungeon of Malchiah the son of Hammelech, that was in the court of the prison: and they let down Jeremiah with cords. And in the dungeon there was no water, but mire: so Jeremiah sunk in the mire." (Jeremiah 38:6)

The letters on the seal are in ancient Hebrew, and Mazar told WND the relic was recovered through a wet-sifting process. She says the method was learned after the "illegal excavations" by the Waqf, the Islamic custodians of the Temple Mount, who have been dumping debris in huge mounds.

"The wet sifting that we did for the destruction debris from our excavations indeed allowed us to uncover hundreds of different kinds of small finds such as tiny fish bones, Phoenician glass beads, Hebrew, Babylonian and Egyptian bullae and seals, pits and seeds, hematite and limestone weights, arrowheads, figurines, jewelry and more," she said.

She added, "It is not very often that such a discovery happens to archaeologists in which real figures of the past shake off the dust of history and so vividly revive the stories of the Bible."

Source:  http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=307697

Hay Festival 2011: Professor Risks Political Storm Over Muslim 'Inbreeding’

by Jonathan Wynne-Jones Religious Affairs Correspondent  |  Telegraph.co.uk  |  May 29, 2011

 

Professor Steve Jones gives The John Maddox Lecture at the Hay Festival Photo: Clara Molden

 

 

The geneticist said that it was common in the Islamic world for men to marry their nieces and cousins.

He said that Bradford has a particular problem and warned that it could affect the health of children born into these marriages.

Prof Jones, who lectures at University College London, is likely to find himself at the centre of controversy in the wake of the comments.

Similar remarks made by Phil Woolas, a Labour environment minister, in 2008 resulted in calls for him to be sacked from the government.

Prof Jones, who writes for the Telegraph’s science pages, told an audience at the Hay Festival: “There may be some evidence that cousins marrying one another can be harmful.

“It is common in the Islamic world to marry your brother’s daughter, which is actually closer than marrying your cousin.

“We should be concerned about that as there can be a lot of hidden genetic damage. Children are much more likely to get two copies of a damaged gene.”

He added: “Bradford is very inbred. There is a huge amount of cousins marrying each other there.” Research in Bradford has found that babies born to Pakistani women are twice as likely to die in their first year as babies born to white mothers, with genetic problems linked to inbreeding identified as a “significant” cause.

Studies have found that within the city, more than 70 per cent of marriages are between relations, with more than half involving first cousins.

Separate studies have found that while British Pakistanis make up three per cent of all births, they account for one in three British children born with genetic illnesses. Prof Jones also said that incest was more common than is often realised in every part of society, adding that it had been particular prevalent among royalty and suggested it is still ­continuing.

“Royal families are the human equivalent of fruit flies because they do all the sexual experiments you can think of and there are some examples of inbreeding.

“Royalty did it to keep the heritage within the family line.

“Inbreeding doesn’t apply particularly to our own royal family, but there is some.”

He explained that Prince Charles and Diana could both be traced back to Edward I, with Prince Charles being able to do this through 3,000 “lines” – overlapping connections between people in his family tree – and his former wife being able to do it through 4,000, making the Princess of Wales “from stronger aristocratic heritage” than her husband.

“Their parents had much ancestry in common,” he said.

“We are all more incestuous than we realise.

“In Northern Ireland lots of people share the same surname which suggests a high level of inbreeding.

“There’s a lot of surname diversity in London but if you look at the Outer Herbrides there are rather fewer surnames in relation to the number of people.”

 

Source:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay-festival/8544359/Hay-Festival-2011-Professor-risks-political-storm-over-Muslim-inbreeding.html

Will Russia Win the Next Space Race?

by Kenneth Rapoza  |  Blogs.Forbes.com  |  April 12, 2011

 

 
 

On April 12, 1961, Russia started the 20th century space race, sending its first cosmonaut, Yury Gagarin (Pictured), into orbit for 108 hours aboard the Vostok spacecraft. Fifty years later, the country’s president Dimitry Medvedev is talking about the world’s next space race: a nuclear powered manned space flight to Mars.

“We still hope to able to travel to other planets,” he told Russian television Tuesday during a special Cosmonaut Day celebration dedicated to Yury Gagarin’s life.  “I don’t know how soon we will be able to achieve that, but I think that mankind will always…dream of exploring outer space,” he said, adding that space exploration brings scientific and practical benefits to life on Earth.

Back in the Soviet era, competition with the US pushed Moscow to invest heavily in space flight and new technology. Today, however, Russia is more likely to partner with the US and other countries to go beyond the shared International Space Station and deeper into the solar system. Medvedev is also talking about manned flights to Mars, and whether they are the first to make the next “giant leap for mankind” is still to be determined. One thing is certain, as a country, Russia is the one talking about it, and putting up the money to boot. Still, it’s a hard sell.

Ordinary Russians see little connection between space exploration and national economics. If anything, they see the Roscosmos space agency as a drain on the nation’s cash, or as one op-ed writer at Ria Novosti put it, “as if the dark vacuum of space somehow sucked the money right out of their pockets.”

Yet, the government is convinced that investing in the final frontier is important. It’s 2011 budget of $3.5 billion is almost three times more Roscosmos’ 2007 budget, and is the highest amount of money allotted for the space program since the Soviet Union’s space program budget back in 1991. Medvedev has said repeatedly this year that investments in space research are a way to diversify Russia’s economy.  As it stands, Russia is dependent on the oil, gas and mining industries.

Space might be a way Russia can get excited about itself again.  With Yury’s 50th anniversary celebration providing much of the motivation, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Tuesday asked neighboring Ukraine to join forces in building the $800 million Vostochny Space Center in Russia’s far east, a launch facility for satellite rockets.

Roscosmos last June began a Mars flight simulation program, locking three Russians, two Europeans and a Chinese astronaut in an 18,800-square-foot, five-module complex to live there in isolation for 17 months, Bloomberg reported on April 5. Russia will need a new rocket to get to Mars, though, and a new launch site to operate manned flights as early as in 2018.

For the past two years, Russia has asked NASA to help with a manned space flight to Mars.  NASA is seeking an $18.7 billion budget for next year, though, $300 million less than the funding targeted for this year. So Russia has since turned its focus on China, which made its first successful manned flight in 2003 aboard the Shenzhou spacecraft and plans to put a capsule on the moon in 2013.

Gagarin never made it to the moon. On March 27, 1968, Gagarin was killed in an air crash during a training flight. His ashes were interred in the Kremlin Wall in Moscow.

French astronaut Jean Loup Chretien called Gagarin an “idol” among the old school astronauts.

In London, Queen guitarist Brian May said he was teaming up with Tangerine Dream to compose a song dedicated to Gagarin, Ria Novosti reported.

The UN marked April 12 as the first annual International Day of Human Space Flight.  “Yuri Gagarin’s flight is an inspiration that engenders a quest for excellence; an inspiration that fans the flames of passion to pursue a dream, especially among the young. There is no higher value you can place on his achievement,” Mazlan Othman, Director of the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (Wow…there actually is such a thing?), said in a press release.

Last week, on April 5, a rocket carrying the Soyuz TMA-21 “Gagarin” spacecraft was launched from the Baikonur space center. Russia continues skyward.

Meanwhile back in the US, President Barack Obama ended NASA’s Constellation program developed under President George W. Bush. It was designed to build spacecraft for a return manned spaceflight to the moon by 2020. The decision was harshly criticized by former NASA astronauts, including Neil Armstrong, saying it would sideline the American space program. With no manned government rockets ready to go, US space programs could be outsourced to private companies who have no means to profit off such costly endeavors.

 

Source:  http://blogs.forbes.com/kenrapoza/2011/04/12/will-russia-win-the-next-space-race/

They Tried To Kill Us, We Won, Now We’re Changing The World

by David Horovitz  |  JPost.com  |  April 1, 2011

 

Editor's Notes: Saul Singer, co-author of the Israel-redefining ‘Start-Up Nation,’ urges Israel and its supporters to internalize just how profoundly our phenomenal capacity for innovation can better this planet.

To our considerable sorrow here at The Jerusalem Post, our super-smart, relentlessly questioning, insightful editorial writer, Saul Singer (Pictured Right), left the paper three years ago to write a book. To the great and still evolving benefit of the State of Israel, that book was Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle.

Along with his New York-based co-author Dan Senor (Pictured Left), Jerusalemite Singer set out to answer the question of how our tiny country, all but bereft of natural resources and in the midst of a constant struggle for physical survival, has nonetheless managed to outstrip every other nation on Earth in terms of hi-tech innovation.

The two answered that question with such conviction and flair as to turn their book into a bestseller, with over 100,000 copies in print in its English-language edition and numerous foreign language translations emerging worldwide. So compelling was their diagnosis, moreover, that the book is gradually transforming perceptions of Israel – at least in parts of the global technology world. Start-Up Nation, Singer reports, is being read in some economies as a kind of “how to” manual – as in, how to orient your economy to maximize its talent for innovation, with the Israel experience held up as an exemplar.

But as their book makes plain, and as Singer elaborated in an interview this week, replicating the Israeli model is not so simple. There are, we hardly need reminding, unique characteristics to this country. And aspects of its geo-strategic reality, of its ability to absorb immigrants, of its need to place immense responsibility on young shoulders in the army, are central to its capacity to thrive so strikingly in the field of innovation.

That capacity for innovation, says Singer, has gradually transformed the Israeli economy over the past three decades, but it has the potential to achieve a great deal more. It is already enabling us to genuinely serve as a “light unto the nations,” Singer argues – saving lives, bettering the world. Tikkun olam in practice.

Among the examples Singer cites here are Shai Agassi’s trailblazing Better Place electric car venture, and the dramatic new approach to teaching being pioneered by Time To Know, revolutionizing the classroom. (It has been widely reported, to give one more telling instance, that Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’s life was saved after she was shot in Arizona in January because the emergency medical team applied a revolutionary elasticized bandage, developed in Israel, that creates pressure to quickly staunch head wounds.)

We now need to more deeply internalize that potential ourselves, Singer says, maintain our cutting edge, and begin building deeper and wider relationships worldwide to further our positive impact.

When he stepped down from the Post three years ago, I should add, most of us knew Saul as quiet and understated, almost selfeffacing – a colleague who articulated himself most effectively in his writing. The Saul of 2011 is an extrovert with a cause, talking up Israeli innovation and its still untapped potential with almost evangelical passion.

In both incarnations, I should stress, Saul has always been kind, gracious and unimpeachably likeable. But a small, delightful subplot is that writing his book on the hi-tech transformation of Israel, and internalizing its impact, has quite evidently also transformed Saul Singer. Let’s start with some Start-Up Nation basics.

 

 

When was the book published?

In November 2009.

And where had it come from?

It stemmed from an idea Dan had when he was a student at Harvard Business School in 2001. He led a group of students to Israel – the first such group. Mostly non-Americans.

He wanted to give them a book on Israel’s entrepreneurial innovation. There wasn’t one.

So, years later, we decided to write it.

It would have been hard for a native Israeli to write a book like this alone. Even I, an oleh of over a decade-and-a-half’s standing, was too close to some of it. It needed a New Yorker to recognize what was being achieved here. I was on the inside, a journalist at that. I was used to complaining about the economy. He, as an outsider, was marvelling at the start-up scene.

And just how marvelous is it really?

Truly amazing. Israel has the largest number of start-ups per year outside the US of any country. Not per capita. The largest number. Period. We have about 500 a year, and all of Europe has 600-700. Our 7.5 million people compared to that whole continent’s 700 million people.

There is no sentiment involved in the allocation of venture capital to fund startups. It doesn’t care where it goes. Venture capital is looking for “the next big thing” – the next Microsoft or Google. And Israel gets two-and-a-half times as much venture capital per capita as the United States and 30 times as much as Europe.

The proportion of our GDP that goes on research and development is 4.8 percent. The OECD average is 2.5%, and the US is about the same. So Israel is far ahead in civilian R&D.

How do you explain the phenomenon. What’s the Israeli start-up secret?

That takes us into the nature of innovation. There’s a difference between ideas and startups. Generally, if you ask, “Why is Israel successful?” the answer you get is that “there are lots of smart people here.”

But that’s not really the answer.

Israel is No. 1 worldwide for patents for medical devices per capita. But we’re not No. 1 in patents per capita overall. There are five or six countries ahead of us, including Korea, Japan, the US, maybe Sweden. And those countries, with the exception of the US, don’t have so many start-ups. So it doesn’t just come down to the number of ideas and the number of smart people.

So what are the real factors?

There are two other factors: drive and the willingness to take risk. Israel has more of those qualities than other countries.

And why’s that?

We talk about seven or eight reasons in the book. Two of the most important relate to the military and to immigration.

There’s a misconception that the military plays a central role in Israeli start-ups through various IDF hi-tech units and through military R&D. In fact, the main military influence is cultural. So many Israelis go through the IDF, they learn leadership skills, they learn about teamwork, improvisation, sacrifice for a larger goal – these are things you don’t learn in school or in business. It’s a kind of third stage in life.

When people abroad characterize what’s unique about Israeli innovation, you hear the same two terms over and over: maturity and sense of purpose. And both of those come from the military experience. Sense of purpose comes, too, from the fact that Israel itself is a start-up. We all grew up on the story of the country – the determination and risk involved in building it. Every generation is maintaining that determination and readiness to take risk to further build the country in its own way.

For this start-up generation here, it’s not just about making money and finding an exit. It’s motivated by a desire to contribute to the country – 21st-century Zionism – and to the world. This is the new form of pioneering. Our grandparents drained the swamps. This – innovation – is what we do.

Start-ups are extremely hard to do. When you have a great idea, two things tend to happen: One, everyone says you’re crazy. Two, everyone reminds you that most start-ups fail.

And that’s true. So you need a lot of determination and you need to be prepared to take risks. Well, lots of Israelis meet both of those challenges.

And where does immigration fit in?

Most everyone here is either an immigrant, the child of immigrants or the grandchild of immigrants. That, by its very nature, took determination; it reflects a willingness to take risk.

There’s just been a study in the US which showed that half the companies in Silicon Valley were started by immigrants.

This is the most pro-immigrant country on Earth. Here we have politicians campaigning for more immigrants. We have an Absorption Ministry! Sure, we complain about how it works. But other countries are coming here to learn from us about how we absorb immigrants.

We’ve turned a potential problem into an asset.

Were there key players who set this remarkable start-up phenomenon into motion?

Economists talk of “clusters” – environments where one industry develops and snowballs. In Silicon Valley, the “cluster” comprised one key company, Hewlett Packard, a great university, Stanford, and nice weather. That’s what it took. Israel had the classic “cluster” elements. Intel came here. This was its first R&D presence outside the United States. Dov Frohman [the Holocaust-orphaned, Israel-raised, former Intel vice president who pioneered Israeli hi-tech research] had planned to come in 1973 but had to postpone that because of the Yom Kippur War. Intel opened here in 1975, which was incredibly early in terms of hi-tech. Remember, even into the 1980s, you had to apply to some government ministry to get a phone line. This was not the easiest place to get going, but Frohman had the determination and the drive. There were also great pioneering Israeli companies, like Uzia Galil’s Elron, which was founded in 1962. We had great universities. And we, too, had nice weather. That was our cluster.

All that was boosted by the Yozma program of the 1990s, which created a venture capital sector out of nothing. It established a threeway partnership: government funding was provided, local venture capital funds were created and American venture capital funds came in. The government took on some of the risk from the private sector. And that partnership funded all the great 1990s start-ups – ICQ and Checkpoint and Comverse and Amdocs and many others.

Yozma was the most successful government program ever. It came at the right time. It worked. It fulfilled its function. It disappeared. The private sector bought out the government.

So you had a kind of positive “perfect storm” in the 1990s: There was Yozma. The Oslo process from 1993 eased Israel’s economic isolation. People forget how strong the Arab boycott was before that. There were no Japanese cars; lots of other partnerships and presences people now take for granted didn’t exist. Then there was the overall growth in the global economy. The US was enjoying its hi-tech boom – the Internet bubble.

And of course there was the huge influx of Russian olim. We were the recipients, the beneficiaries, of much of the top talent of a nation of 200 million people – we, in our country of then six million people. It was an incredible injection of human capital. And we used it so well. There were, for example, large numbers of civil and mechanical engineers, and what we needed were electrical engineers. Well, for $2,000 per person, we trained engineers who became worth $200,000. It was a 100-fold return on investment.

Now, in 2000, all of those favorable conditions fell apart. There were barely any Russian immigrants. Oslo was over. The second intifada began. The Internet bubble burst and the global economy went south. So the Israeli start-up phenomenon should have shriveled and collapsed. The rug had been pulled out from under it.

And it didn’t because?

Israel got more global venture capital in 2005 than it had in 2000. We actually moved ahead during those years.

How’s that?

Israeli start-ups have transformed adversity of all kinds into a renewable source of creative energy.

Look at all the obstacles start-ups here face. They have no sufficiently large local market. They have no ready access to the regional market, because of hostility. Israel is under constant attack, and constant boycott pressure. All these adversities have been turned into assets.

And that creative energy has not only been focused on hi-tech innovation. It has also been channeled into social entrepreneurship. Into the arts. Start-ups are just a part of it.

So the global economic downturn was just one more factor to grapple with. Our economy has suffered only a single quarter of negative growth since the 2008 economic crisis struck, and not a single full year of negative growth. Our stock market was the first to recover. The Bank of Israel was the first to raise interest rates – which showed that there was concern here about too much recovery!

Why did all that happen? For one thing, a start-up-centric economy is less vulnerable to a global downturn. It doesn’t have lots of customers, so there’s less significance to a drop in customers. For another, a downturn period is a good time to start start-ups. People are out of work. They are looking for something new. You don’t need too much money to get a start-up going.

Also, maybe you’re more ready to take risks, because there’s less to lose. How central are Israel’s start-ups to our overall economy?

There’s a big debate over the relative importance of start-ups and big companies. As we quote Shimon Peres saying in the book, Israelis and Jews, we have a tendency to be dissatisfied. That was certainly true in the hi-tech sector. We had Nokia envy. People were asking, “Where’s our Nokia? If Finland can do it, why can’t we?” People don’t say that as much anymore, now that Nokia is not in such great shape. But still there are some who say we must build big companies.

To which I say, yes, but that tends to downplay the importance of the start-ups. We are and must continue to be a start-up-centric economy. That’s our comparative advantage. We envy other countries’ big companies? Well, they envy our start-ups. They’re coming here to learn. Others are looking to us for innovation.

The world needs innovation more than ever. The pace of change in the world is only increasing. Twenty years ago, who knew what the world would look like? Mark Zuckerberg was, what, six? [Spot on, Saul. He turned seven in May 1991.] There was no Google. No Facebook. Barely an Internet.

Twenty years from now, even more change will have occurred. In a world like this, the premium on innovation only goes up. It’s a world of opportunities for start-ups. If our start-ups grow into big companies, fine. But our challenge for the future is to produce a growing crop of cutting-edge start-ups.

I probably should have asked you this earlier: How do you define a start-up?

A new business built around something innovative. Not necessarily technology. Israel is increasingly offering three types of innovation. Right now, it is mostly in technology. But already there is more “business model innovation” and “globalization.”

Shai Agassi’s Better Place is an example of that second kind of start-up, business model innovation. Its essence is that Agassi recognized that electric cars were already cheaper than gas cars if fuel costs are included. Build cars and infrastructure to support swappable batteries, and suddenly electric cars are cheaper, more convenient, and have the same infinite range as gas cars. And this is happening now. I’m going to be able to buy a car with no tailpipe this year and drive it anywhere in the country. This wasn’t revolutionary technology, although there was plenty of innovation. The key innovation was in the business model.

The same applies to Strauss, which is now selling coffee in Brazil. An Israeli company selling coffee to Brazil! They found a better way to sell coffee. A more innovative business model.

As for globalization, a recent example is the Chinese company that just bought Makhteshim, the Israeli fertilizer company. They didn’t buy it for its technology. They bought it because it is working in 120 countries. That meant instant globalization for the Chinese.

We’re good at globalization. Why? Because we’re geniuses? No, because of the particular challenges we face here. A French company sells first to the domestic French market, then to Europe and then to the world. Israeli companies have to think globally from day one.

Coming back to my question: How central are start-ups to the Israeli economy?

If you look at a graph of Israeli exports down through the decades, you see “oranges” trundling along at the bottom. And then hitech kicks in and sends the graph soaring. Half of our exports come from hi-tech. And we’re an export-driven economy.

And yet things are far from perfect here economically…

Absolutely not. When one part of the economy races forward, and the rest gets left behind, as has happened here, you get wide social gaps. But the solution is not to complain about hi-tech. Without hi-tech we’d be left with the oranges. The solution is to bring up the rest of the economy. Take advantage of the hi-tech sector. Learn from it. And specifically, introduce the key factors that have boosted hi-tech to the rest of the economy.

For instance?

Hi-tech has thrived with low taxes, low regulation and high competition. The rest of the economy is the opposite – high taxes, high regulation and low competition, so it’s no surprise that the rest of the economy isn’t doing so well.

Now there are real problems, notably the low participation in the labor force of entire demographic sectors – ultra-Orthodox men and Arab women. And then there are the familiar problems with our education system.

And yet take somewhere like Tel Aviv University. For all the higher education woes, Tel Aviv University is ranked 11th in the world in citations per faculty member – how often people are cited by their fellow academics. That’s a figure you can’t play with. TAU is behind Harvard and MIT but ahead of Oxford, Cambridge and Yale. So we have both a world-class education system and a failing one.

We have to deal with falling test scores in our schools. We have to deal with the brain drain from our universities. But there are also some leading academics here who argue, with some sense I believe, that we should be doing much more to encourage foreign academics to come here. Not just Jews and returning Israelis. More and more students are studying abroad. We should take advantage of this.

Let’s go back to the book for a moment. How has it fared in terms of sales and impact?

It reached No. 5 on the business bestseller lists of both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. It has been the No. 1 English book at Steimatzky’s here ever since it came out. It has been a business bestseller in India and a general bestseller in Singapore. It’s on its fifth printing in Korea since August. The Korean government and Samsung bought hundreds of copies.

It’s either out or coming out in translation in China, Taiwan, Korea, Russia, Portuguese in Brazil, French, German, Hebrew, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Turkey.

It’s coming out soon in Arabic. It will be published by the United Arab Emirates’ Institute of Strategic Studies. It’s already circulating among the Arab elites in English. A friend of mine was just at a conference in Morocco. They’d all read it. Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad knows all about it. Fareed Zakaria on CNN made it a book of the week and said that every Arab businessman and politician should read it.

I’m particularly pleased about the Turkish version. A leading economic institute there helped find a publisher and is doing a launch event. You have “conflict” on one hand, and the book on the other. There is so much interest in the Israeli economy in the Arab and Muslim world.

I also just got my first e-mail from Mongolia. A school there wants to translate it. I told the Israeli Embassy in China. So we may have a Mongolian edition.

Has official Israel realized its potential?

I’ve spoken at various officially organized conferences, in Brussels, in Berlin. I know that many ambassadors and commercial attaches are using it.

How many copies in print in all?

In the US edition, about 100,000. And the paperback is coming out this year.

Are you planning a sequel?

Dan and I are talking about another book. It won’t be a sequel. It will be a business book that will be based on Start-Up Nation, but won’t just be about Israel.

Now let’s talk a little about the wider implications of Israel being the Start-up Nation, and especially how we should do more to internalize and utilize the fact.

We need to update our narrative. The Jewish narrative has changed over the years. We need to enter the 3.0 era.

1.0 was the era of the Bible. What we Jews were about then was purpose. And our purpose was to transform the pagan world – the world of child sacrifice and extreme immorality. Along with Christianity and Islam, we succeeded to spread a message of one God and of ethics. The pagan world was transformed. Mission accomplished. And we grew as a people. But then we faced the destruction of the Temple and exile.

And that took us into the 2.0 era. 2.0 was the era of survival. In that mode, what we Jews were about was survival, and the dream of a return, and messianism. We were hoping we’d be around to see the future. That 2.0 period lasted 2,000 years.

And today?

Today, we’ve still got this narrative: They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat. That’s how we still think of our narrative.

Amusing, but not good enough?

That’s a narrative of survival. That’s not a purpose. Unless you call survival a purpose.

Which you don’t?

Of course not. We must update the narrative, to: They tried to kill us, we won, now we’re changing the world!

That takes us to the word “miracle” in the book’s subtitle. When I moved here 16 years ago, we thought that the dream of being a light unto the nations probably had to wait for peace. We were busy surviving. That challenge is still there. But what we learned writing this book is that the light unto the nations dream is already happening. We are saving lives though medicine – through medical innovation. Better Place is showing the whole world how to get off oil. Almost every technology you look at – computers, cellphones, Internet – has a piece of Israel in it. Almost all of the major technology companies are doing some of their research here. We’re having an impact and it can increase dramatically. There’s tremendous potential for it to grow.

And somehow this positive impact has to be integrated into our narrative: what we’ve achieved; what we can do.

Yet that’s not what we talk about when we talk about Israel. It’s not what we show when we bring people to Israel. It’s not integrated into the way we think about our purpose as a people in the world. Not yet.

We’ve not internalized what we’re achieving here?

That’s right. This is the 3.0 era. This should impact the way we talk and think and act. It should impact the way the Jewish world talks, thinks and acts about Israel.

Can this also have a positive impact on the ongoing challenge of survival?

Yes, definitely. The way we currently deal with the threats and challenges of delegitimization, of boycotts, is defensive. But you can’t win by being defensive. “Winning,” with that strategy, is merely moving from negative territory to zero in the best-case scenario. You’re not advancing positive thinking on Israel in that way.

The real way to fight disinvestment is with investment. The way to fight disengagement and boycott is with engagement.

Take anybody, anywhere in the world. They’re interested in their work, their business, their community. In all of these areas and more, there’s something going on in Israel that can help them. They can enhance their world with a partnership with Israel, and produce something that benefits everyone.

It’s the same in Europe. It’s the same in the US. This is the way to fight isolation – improve the world though cooperation and creative energy. This is not just about business. It’s about people.

I was recently at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. I had been invited to the area by the local Cincinnati Jewish Federation. The hospital has a research budget of $130 million. I saw their labs. If they do some of that research together with Israel, it will be more effective. Again, not because we’re geniuses, but because we’re used to small budgets. We do more with less. They’d benefit and so would we.

The Jewish community has barely begun to mobilize in this direction.

You mean in encouraging those kinds of partnerships? So what should be done?

Connect at a business level and at the nonprofit level. Businesses and universities. The Diaspora Jewish community is the natural place to lead that kind of effort, but it doesn’t have to just be Jews.

As things stand, the Jewish community is speaking to the shrinking converted. Birthright widened that community. But we have to reach out to people who don’t have any kind of Jewish connection. And what’s meaningful to everyone is to innovate and make a better world.

China and Mongolia are not interested in Israel because it’s the Jewish state, but because it’s innovative and creative. That’s the Jewish to non-Jewish connection.

What about in our hostile region?

I met last week with an Israeli woman who was very critical of Israel, very active against some of the bad things we do regarding the Palestinians. But she said it made her feel proud to realize what Israel is doing in the field of innovation. It didn’t make her forget the things she doesn’t like. But it did make her proud.

And how does that extend to the Arab world?

Our capacity to innovate cannot, by itself, have a dramatic impact. But the key component there is the elites – the elites that would engage with us if the situation allowed it. This [start-up phenomenon] can’t create a new situation [in terms of our relations with the Arab world]. But it does constitute a further incentive to bring about change.

And it certainly shows another side of Israelis?

Yes, and that’s helpful.

How much further can the Israeli start-up sector grow?

The potential is enormous. Over 80% of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Israel comes from the US. That makes no sense. Why is the rest of the world less than 20%? Yes, US companies are tech-oriented. But that still doesn’t explain those proportions. Plainly there is potential to build wider relationships with Europe and with Asia. The firms competing with IBM, Microsoft and Intel, why aren’t they here? These US firms have injected themselves into our strength: innovation.

We’re not good at everything. We are struggling when it comes to scaling up. The CEO of General Electric, Jeff Immelt, said to companies here on a visit last month: bring us your innovations; we’ll help you scale up. That’s a model for a natural partnership with other parts of the world, too.

Now, of course, they, too, can innovate and we, too, can get better at scaling up. But our comparative advantage is in innovation. And that’s a great niche to be in. We certainly shouldn’t complain about being in that niche. In fact, we better make sure we stay in it. Improve in it. That we not take our leadership in it for granted. Others are coming up.

There’s plenty of room at the cutting edge, and we’ll be fine if we stay at the cutting edge. But we can’t afford to fall back. If we don’t stay at the cutting edge, we have nothing to offer. Other countries do.

We mustn’t be complacent about our place as a start-up phenomenon. And that means we can’t be complacent about education.

And you worry that we are getting complacent?

This is a watershed moment. We can go one of two ways. If we get complacent and fail to deal with our education problems, we will lose our edge. I hope we’ll fulfill our potential – that we’ll grow the start-up sector at the same time as we build big companies. What we’ve achieved to date is just the beginning.

And the geo-strategic element of this is that the Israeli economy can become a factor that other countries have to take into account in this hi-tech world. They don’t at the moment. Only 1% of Europe’s exports go to Iran, but even that relatively tiny commercial relationship impacts on Europe’s thinking on Iran. Economic factors affect countries’ political thinking.

Now we certainly can’t compete in terms of getting large numbers of countries on our side in UN votes. But we can compete in terms of economic significance. We can create a situation in which it is not a free ride to moralize at Israel’s expense. Already our economy is greater than the combined economies of our four neighboring states – Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

Just elaborate a little on the specific potential for further expansion of the start-up sector.

Shai Agassi puts it well. He describes Israel as “a Beta country” – a testing ground for trying out solutions for the global economy. Innovate here, see if it works, then scale up for global application – exactly as Better Place is doing.

I’ll give you another example, another Israeli start-up: Time To Know, which has a system to reinvent the classroom.

The classroom has remained unchanged for hundreds of years. They’re redoing it. A laptop for each kid; maybe an iPad soon. And teachers freed to teach at many levels at once. No need for tests, because there is a realtime feedback from the kids to the teachers, to principals, to parents.

It’s being used in some schools in Tel Aviv already. I just visited one. They say it would be “unthinkable” to go back to the way things were before. The program has been running for a while in Texas too. And now it has started in New York.

It’s not the education panacea. A lot more is needed to fix education. But this is an example of innovation to tackle a world problem.

If we in Israel can solve our education problems, as we must, we can then take those solutions and spread them, and turn a disadvantage into an advantage.

We can do the same in health care. We can do the same when it comes to the management of water.

Sometimes our own start-ups skip Israel. It’s nice when they don’t. It’s good when they test their ideas in Israel.

I see a multitude of ways that the creativity in this country can have a huge impact. As I said, we can find and test and demonstrate solutions to world problems. We can be, we are, a key part of the engine inside large companies.

And maybe we can start to build large companies of our own. Maybe the next Facebook can come from here. If it does, it will come from a start-up.

That’s one more reason I’m so excited that the book has been out for the past two months in Hebrew. I don’t think Israelis are generally appreciative enough of the comparative advantage we have here – of what we have to offer the world.

There is plenty to fix here. But first we have to realize what our strengths are. That’ll enable us to fix things more effectively.

Most of our focus in this country is on the political. But we have to focus on what we are working towards. This book gets to the essence of our potential, and it’s not just in economics. We can go into anything. Social start-ups. Maybe applying some innovative thinking to government...

Tell me more.

Well, for a start, clearly governments have to do a better job of interacting with their electorates. You need better feedback mechanisms. Government must be more responsive. There’s certainly scope there for innovation. I don’t know anybody who’s working on that here, but the need is there.

But I want to end by restating my central conviction about start-ups and their potential for transforming the Jewish state. Our purpose, the Jewish people’s purpose, is not to survive. The purpose of surviving is to have a positive impact. It so happens that innovation, and solving world problems, is the main means by which we have been having a positive impact so far, and it offers potential for even greater impact in the future.

But beyond that, once we start thinking in terms of the positive impact we can have, and not just in terms of our survival, this has implications across the board, not limited to the Start-Up Nation perspective. It has implications for everything from the macro to the micro, from our foreign policy strategy to the way we conduct ourselves when manning roadblocks.

The truth is that increasing our positive impact on the world already does help toward survival in many ways, but that shouldn’t be the driving force here. Some of the world’s best companies are driven by something in addition to profit, a creative, world-bettering imperative, but that actually makes them much more profitable. This country is being driven, and needs to be more driven, by a creative, world-bettering imperative. I’m convinced that will actually make us more successful in every way, including in the struggle for our survival.

 

Source:  http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=214670

Turkey Dismisses Israel's Concerns Over Satellite

by Ibon Villelabeitia / Reuters  |  Reuters.com  |  March 11, 2011

 

 Turkey will be able to sell the images obtained through the Gokturk satellite to other countries. Israel is currently attempting to negotiate with Turkish officials to ensure Turkey does not sell images of Israel to other states. However, the response of Turkish officials was clear: “We decide how to use the images taken by our satellite.” From Today's Zaman on 05 March 2011.

 

ANKARA, TURKEY -- Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan dismissed on Friday security concerns expressed by Israel over the launch of Turkey's first spy satellite.

"We are sending our Gokturk satellite to space in 2013. Some people are disturbed by this. They say: 'Turkey will watch us from space in the future'. You have been watching us for many years, decades," Erdogan told youth party members of his ruling AK Party, without mentioning ex-ally Israel.

Erdogan spoke after a senior Israeli defence official told Reuters the launch of Gokturk had prompted discussions in Israel about the viability of a U.S.-backed blackout on high-resolution commercial photography of Israel from space.

According to Jane's Defence Weekly, Gokturk will provide images of objects of 0.8 metres across. At present 2 metres across is the finest grain available when it comes to pictures of Israel, thanks mainly to U.S. legislation from the 1990s.

Relations between Turkey and Israel hit a historic low after Israeli commandos raided a Turkish aid ship bound for the Gaza Strip last year.

Turkey, ruled by Erdogan's Islamist-rooted government, has demanded an apology as a condition for mending ties.

Turkish Minister of Transport Binali Yildirim told domestic media this week Ankara did not believe concerns by other countries were "binding".

The so-called "shutter control" over commercial satellite cameras is anchored in an amendment to the 1997 U.S. National Defense Authorisation Act, which banned disseminating satellite images of Israel of a grain higher than that available from non-American commercial sources.

The satellite will ease Turkey's reliance on U.S. intelligence in its operations against the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which launches attacks on Turkish military targets from bases in northern Iraq.

Turkey has used U.S. intelligence to support operations against the PKK in mountainous Iraqi Kurdistan, targeting the guerrillas' headquarters and training facilities in cross-border raids.

The Gokturk satellite, expected to cost around 250 million euros ($344 million), is being developed by Turkish defence contractor AselsanandFinmeccanica's unit Telespazio.

 

Source:  http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/11/turkey-israel-satellites-idUSLDE72A1VM20110311

Israeli Pilgrims to Egyptian Grave Met With Hostility

by David E. Miller  |  December 28, 2010

Hebrew signs reading "death to the Jews" greeted Israeli pilgrims who came to the Egyptian Nile Delta village of Damtu to commemorate the annual anniversary of death of a 19th-century rabbi.

Visitors to site are greeted by signs in Hebrew declaring ’death to Jews’

Some 550 Israelis arrived Monday at the mausoleum of Rabbi Yaakov Abu-Hasira, a revered Moroccan rabbi, who died in Egypt in 1880 en route to the land of Israel. But 3,000 Egyptian security personnel cordoned the village, closing down local businesses for the day.

Last year, Egyptian President Husni Mubarak allowed Israeli pilgrims to enter Egypt, responding to a personal request by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Pilgrims had been refused entry the previous year, when the anniversary fell immediately after Israel's Cast Lead offensive on the Gaza Strip, and Egyptian security officials agued they couldn’t ensure the safety of Israelis in the country.    

But Egyptian opposition parties said the event shouldn’t pass quietly this year either. The local chapter of the Nasserist Party launched a campaign titled "You shall not pass on my land," calling on the government to disallow the presence of "Zionists" in Egypt.

"I welcome Jews from all parts of the world in my home and I will be their servant," Gamal Munib, secretary-general of the Nasserists and coordinator of the campaign, told The Media Line. "But I refuse to welcome Zionists, who killed Egyptian prisoners of war and are killing my brothers in Palestine."

Munib said his party convened an anti-Zionist meeting Monday night, and was organizing a protest vigil on Thursday across from Damanhour's municipal court with the participation of "all national forces.”

The burial site wasn’t identified as Jewish until 1996, when it began being developed, Munib added. The Nasserist Party petitioned the court to declare the area isn’t a historic site, a move that would ban the annual Jewish festivities he said included the drinking of alcohol. In 2001, the court accepted the appeal.

Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP) won and overwhelming majority of the seats in Egypt's parliamentary elections November 28. Opposition groups and international observers accused the regime of widespread election fraud and a violent crackdown on opposition activists.   

Munib said Mubarak's regime was ignoring the court ruling and allowing Zionists to enter Egypt in order to buy the world's silence regarding his election fraud and plans to bequeath the regime to his son, Gamal.

"When elections were falsified in Iran the world was in an uproar, but Europe remained silent about election fraud in Egypt, which was a thousand times worse," he said. "I simply can't understand the European criteria on this matter."

Another grassroots campaign, the coalition of "Bloggers against Abu-Hasira", sharply criticized the government and called for the arrest of the Egyptian official who allowed the festivities to take place.

"It isn’t surprising that the regime, which falsified the will of the Egyptian people, would allow the Zionist regime to trample the will of Egypt, its laws and its constitution with recurring visits throughout the year, and especially during December," the coalition told the Egyptian daily Al-Yom A-Sabi'.

In January, the Egyptian state prosecutor charged a local armed group with plans to bomb Abu-Hasira's mausoleum during the annual festivities as well as American ships in the Suez Canal, the Egyptian daily Al-Masri Al-Yom reported.

Yaakov Yehudayoff, a Jerusalem resident and Abu-Hasira's great great-grandson, has been visiting the grave in Egypt since 1988. He said that Egyptian authorities repeatedly amounted difficulties on Israeli pilgrims.

"We've never encountered hatred, but you can tell from their faces that they don't like us there," he told The Media Line. "At the grave itself they take our cell phones, our alcoholic beverages, and act very aggressively."

Yehudayoff added that Egypt often denied entry visas to Israeli pilgrims. "Last year they refused 180 applications after we had already booked an airplane," he said.

Yehudayoff denied allegations that pilgrims were trying to take over Egypt. He said that Abu-Hasira was buried in a small Jewish cemetery on land owned by the local Jewish community.

When Israel and Egypt signed the Camp David peace accords in 1978, Israeli Minister of Religious Affairs Aharon Abu-Hasira, a relative of the deceased rabbi, requested that his remains be moved to Israel. But the rabbi's grandson, the renowned Rabbi Israel Abu-Hasira, also known as Baba-Sali, refused.

"According to the historic account, a week before his death Rabbi Yaakov Abu-Hasira told the community in Egypt that he is about to die. They wanted to bring him to Alexandria, but he said 'the soul will go to its resting place, but the body shall remain here," Yehudayoff said.      

Source:  http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=30952