Should a major catastrophe hit the planet, a doomsday seed vault deep in the Arctic ice will ensure that survivors never go hungry.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, built by the Norwegian government for the benefit of mankind, is named after the archipelago where it is located. The Rome-based non-governmental organisation, Global Crop Diversity Trust, will fund its operation, according to a UN report. Continue reading
The fact that a permanent successor to outgoing National Security Council chief Ilan Mizrahi has not been chosen reflects poorly on the prime minister’s contention that much has been learned and fixed since the Winograd Committee issued its interim report in April.
In its final report issued on Wednesday, the committee found “serious failings and shortcomings in the decision-making processes and staff-work in the political and the military echelons and their interface,” and “serious failings and flaws in the lack of strategic thinking and planning, in both the political and the military echelons.”
The words “decision-making,” “staff work” and “strategic thinking” pop up everywhere in the report, invariably along with terms like “failed,” “flawed,” “absent” or “inadequate.” That the National Security Council remains sidelined is one of the central factors behind this.
The serious failures in the process of decision-making by Olmert, wartime defense minister Amir Peretz and then IDF chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz were highlighted in the interim report a full nine months ago. Apart from the continuing National Security Council debacle, in the intervening months, the Strategic Affairs Ministry was established, but saw little cooperation from the Defense and Foreign Ministries. With the departure of strategic affairs minister Avigdor Lieberman from the government, greeted with glee within the defense establishment, that ministry is left without a head. Assuming it is carrying out important work, why has Olmert not found an immediate replacement? Continue reading
As the clock struck 8 p.m. this past Sunday night, prime time in the Middle East and Europe for TV news broadcasts, the Al Jazeera satellite TV network opened its top-of-the-hour news bulletin with a live scene from Gaza City. The footage was powerful and unforgettable: thousands of people gathered to light candles in a Gaza City plunged into darkness. The possibility that Hamas itself had switched off the lights in the densely populated city to create the impression of an urgent humanitarian crisis was likely not considered by many watching the broadcast.
The Israeli decision over the weekend to reduce shipments of industrial diesel fuel to the Gaza power station, still fresh in the minds of worldwide viewers, was presumably seen overwhelmingly as the cause of the outage. Never mind the fact that Israel’s Ruttenberg power station in Ashkelon was still streaming electricity into Gaza and that there had been no Israeli action that shut the city’s lights off. Never mind the fact that the sun began setting over Gaza by 6 p.m., and that the Strip had been totally dark for over an hour before the central news shows began at 8 p.m. The lights in Gaza were shut off sometime between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. and a candlelight protest was organized. Continue reading
If it wasn’t so sad it would be funny.
Today’s front page banner headline in Yediot Aharonot read:
“Sources close to Olmert: This is anarchy! The company commanders have crossed a red line”
The subheadline was: “In a normal country they would be dismissed. If the company commanders had fought as hard during the war as they are fighting now to depose Olmert, maybe our situation in the war wouldn’t have been so bad”.
You know, I’ve been following the story of Iran’s march towards nuclear capabilities for years, but tonight, more than in the past, I feel in my bones what I think I’ve known all along: that this story is not going to have a happy ending, and that Israel and Iran may go to war over this issue.
Tonight I heard Deputy Defense Minister Gen. [res] Matan Vilnai say at the Herzliya Conference that a nuclear Iran is unacceptable to him as a citizen of Israel, and as deputy defense minister. He said that Iran is led by a regime motivated by extremist, radical and apocolyptic ideologies, and that the regime has no problem turning their entire population into martyrs. Vilnai: “Iran, and this is no secret, is a country run by fanatics.” Continue reading
Today I met with the chief editors of China’s top news and information websites and government information offices who are here on a fact-finding mission to learn about Israel, its media, and political situation.
As the discussion went on, I realized the delegation was asking me more and more questions about how we, at the jpost website, deal with talkbacks, bloggers and all other reader produced content. Their interest really piqued when I told them about Israel Hasson’s new proposed bill that would make it mandatory for websites to identify talkbackers or provide the authorities with the IP address of talkbackers should a legal case arise following a website’s publication of inflammatory or libelous talkbacks. Continue reading
The Transportation Ministry will from Monday pass on to the IDF information on youngsters who have been found fit to apply for driving licenses and who were released from army service due to psychological reasons. The data will also encompass soldiers who were discharged in the past few years, and will include the names of thousands of discharged soldiers.
The reasoning behind this latest move, part of a series of measures enacted recently by government bodies to fight a perceived rise in draft-dodging, is that if a youngster has managed to evade army service after receiving a discharge from an army psychologist, he or she cannot possibly be in a fit enough state to drive, and if they are deemed fit to drive, they should then be fit to serve in the army, the ministry said in a statement.
The cooperation between the ministry and the IDF will allow the army to “track down draft dodgers and impostors that were discharged on the basis of psychological reasons,” the ministry said. Continue reading
I’m reading Bernard Lewis’ History of the Middle East, and in it, he writes that in 1637 Sultan Murad 4th prohibited both coffee and tobacco, and ordered the execution of a number of smokers and coffee drinkers. I was in Turkey a few months ago and I can tell you that Murad’s reforms certainly did not take hold: it seems as if almost everybody smokes, especially in Istanbul.
So with that in mind, I read today’s AP story about a parliament debate coming up in Ankara over expanding the smoking ban [what smoking ban?] to bars and restaurants. I think the chances of this latest attempt to curb smoking in Turkey are close to nil. I’ve never seen so many people smoke in one city like I saw in Istanbul. Almost every cafe and restaurant is packed with smokers; even the military and police around the city seem to all be smokers.
