It has been a tough few months for Israel’s diplomatic corps. At the start of the year, diplomats were fending off accusations that Israel was using excessive force in its offensive against the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. After that conflict they faced a torrent of allegations that their actions had amounted to war crimes, claims that they deny. Just when diplomats thought things could not get worse, Avigdor Lieberman (pictured) arrived to take the helm at the foreign ministry. The leader of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party made clear he has no intention of treading softly. Taking the stage this month at the handover ceremony in Jerusalem, he delivered a scathing critique of the previous government’s efforts to strike a peace deal with the Palestinians to create an independent state. Although the two-state solution dominates diplomacy to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, now more than 60 years old, Mr Lieberman asked: ‘Does anyone think that concessions and constantly saying, ‘I am prepared to concede’, and using the word ‘peace’ will lead to anything? No, that will just invite pressure and more and more wars. Officials and diplomats were shocked. ‘We all felt that we are in for one hell of […]
SANTA ANA DE CHIPAYA — Its members belong to what is thought to be the oldest surviving culture in the Andes, a tribe that has survived for 4,000 years on the barren plains of the Bolivian interior. But the Uru Chipaya, who outlasted the Inca empire and survived the Spanish conquest, are warning that they now face extinction through climate change. The tribal chief, 62-year-old Felix Quispe, 62, says the river that has sustained them for millennia is drying up. His people cannot cope with the dramatic reduction in the Lauca, which has dwindled in recent decades amid erratic rainfall that has turned crops to dust and livestock to skin and bones. ‘Over here used to be all water,’ he said, gesturing across an arid plain. ‘There were ducks, crabs, reeds growing in the water. I remember that. What are we going to do? We are water people.’ The Uru Chipaya, who according to mythological origin are ‘water beings’ rather than human beings, could soon be forced to abandon their settlements and go to the cities of Bolivia and Chile, said Quispe. ‘There is no pasture for animals, no rainfall. Nothing. Drought.’ The tribe is renowned […]
If a carefree childhood is a goal, Western society seems to be failing miserably. And the media isn’t helping, some suggest. A trio of new surveys indicates kids are worried about modern problems and fearing things that weren’t even in youngsters’ vocabularies in generations past. And an alarming number appear to be bored to death. A survey of 500 U.S. children aged 6 to 11 found that one-third fear Earth won’t exist when they grow up. And 56 percent believe the planet will not be as good a place to live. (The truth: Earth may indeed become less hospitable in the next few decades as the climate warms and seas rise, but barring a surprise cosmic catastrophe -with odds that are astronomically long - the planet will be around for a few billion years. Feel free to share that with your kids.) The study was conducted by Opinion Research for Habitat Heroes, an environmental charity, and a report on it by Treehugger.com has been widely cited. It should be noted that the findings suggest the questions had an environmental bent that might have influenced the answers in a manner that is not representative of kids in […]
Americans changed residences less often last year than at any time since the Census Bureau began keeping track in 1948, the latest sign of how the recession and falling house prices are keeping more people in place. ‘We are normally thought of as a country on the move, but now all levels of migration have almost come to standstill,’ said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. ‘People are just staying put.’ The national mover rate was 11.9% last year, meaning 11.9% of the people lived in a different dwelling than they did the year before. That was down from 13.2% in 2007. In total, about 35 million people moved last year, down from about 39 million in 2007. With home values falling, many people have stayed in place, either because they can’t sell their homes or aren’t happy with prices offered. The breadth of the recession has exacerbated the slowdown. Unemployment has risen in every state, and fewer jobs in almost every community mean fewer people are moving for work. Job losses have continued through this year, and many economists expect that the national unemployment rate, currently at 8.5%, to […]
Low-energy nuclear reactions, historically known as ‘cold fusion,’ will get their 12 minutes of fame on CBS TV’s ’60 Minutes’ Sunday at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time in a program titled ‘Cold Fusion Is Hot Again.’ This is the second TV program on ‘cold fusion to run within the last few weeks. ‘Brin,’ show on Discovery’s Science Channel, ran an episode called ‘Cold Fusion Cracked?’ that aired March 27. According to ‘Brink’ guest Dwight Williams – introduced as a senior science adviser with the U.S. Department of Energy – there might, in fact, be something real about all of this – that is, real science, real hope and, quite possibly, a real source of energy. Jean Paul Biberian, a French researcher who has been working on LENR for 20 years, was quoted many years ago saying, ‘It’s history in the making, what we are living through here.’ The battle for credibility and redemption for the field has been long and hard-fought. German physicist Max Planck predicted the nature of such scientific revolutions. ‘A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light,’ Planck wrote, ‘but rather because its […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
