Eco-Friendly Zionists

Apparently this “evil racist apartheid” Israel is eco-friendly even before it has introduced the first world electric car network (planned for 2011).

Yale and Columbia university’s Environmental Performance Index (EPI) places Israel 49th among 149 countries and FIRST in the Middle East!

I guess the “evil” Zionists like their country clean…

According to EPI, Israel scored 97.9 (out of total 100) on Environmental health and 61.3 (out of total 79.6) on Ecosystem vitality.

Some more stats:

Israel scored 100 on sanitation, drinking water, and local and regional ozone,

67.8 on water quality and 16.9 on water stress.

By sub-categories:

environmental burden - 99.8;
water - 100;
effect of air pollution on humans - 92;
effect of air pollution on the environment - 75.2;
water ecosystem - 42.4;
biodiversity and habitat - 62.7;
productive natural resources - 76.6 including - 46.5 for agriculture;
climate change - 60.5

Still some room for improvement but hey, we’re getting there.

Just a question though: next time Arabs speak about “dirty Jews”, should they be reminded of this study? Or they will brand it as another Zionist conspiracy?

Link to EPI here

No Politics Sunday

Al Di Meola

From Talk To Solutions

While Bono, Al Goracle and other eco-frenzy clowns keep whining about global warming and score points in the Main Stream Media, Israelis (yeah, those “evil racist apartheid” ones) move from talk to actions:

Israel’s electric car will cut oil needs

On Jan. 21 the Israeli government announced its support of an ambitious plan to install the world’s first electric car network in Israel by 2011. The initiative is aimed at addressing global dependence on foreign oil from undemocratic regimes and mitigating the health and environmental damages caused by emissions from gas-burning vehicles.

“Today is a new age with new dangers and the greatest danger is that of oil. It is the greatest polluter of our age and oil is the greatest financier of terror,” said Israeli President Shimon Peres.

In a joint venture, Project Better Place, owned by Israeli-American entrepreneur Shai Agassi, will provide lithium-ion batteries and the infrastructure to refresh or replace them, while Renault and Nissan will build the cars. With the goal of making Israel a laboratory test for a new model of environmentally efficient transportation, Israel will offer tax incentives to purchasers.

The innovative model, developed by Agassi, would provide consumers with inexpensive cars, and they would pay a monthly fee for expected mileage, like minutes on a cell phone plan. Project Better Place will provide infrastructure including parking meter-like plugs on city streets or service stations along highways at which batteries can be replaced.

Peres, who was first exposed to Agassi’s idea at a 2006 meeting of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Forum, strongly promoted Israel’s involvement.

“Oil is becoming the greatest problem of our time,” he said. Not only polluting, but “it also supports terror and violence from Venezuela to Iran.”

Idan Ofer, chairman of Tel Aviv-based industrials conglomerate Israel Corp., provided the initiative and half of its $200 million funding. Building on the idea of Israel as an experimental laboratory for environmental technology, Ofer has begun targeting China and India, two countries with burgeoning oil consumption and attendant environmental hazards.

Ofer said that if Agassi’s plan works in Israel, “it will work even better in China. Their pollution is killing them and the rest of us, too.” And in Mumbai, he said, “you can’t even see the sky.”

Israel’s noted innovations in energy technology may also be utilized in generating “green” electricity for the project, specifically a plan involving the Negev desert, huge mirrors and solar energy in development by professor David Faiman of Ben-Gurion University in southern Israel.

Israel’s efforts to contribute environmental technologies also recently culminated in the passage of the American-Israeli joint energy research bill, signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush in December 2007.

The link to Project Better Place is here

Israel has been on the forefront of developing alternative energy technology and is a significant center for alternative energy research and development. More than 200 Israeli firms have so far developed environmental or energy-related technology.

Israeli companies have been working to provide alternative energy in the United States for decades. From 1984 to 1991, Israeli technology built nine solar plants in southern California. The plants are still operational today, eliminating the need for nearly 2 million barrels of oil each year and providing electricity to millions of Americans. Today, an American and Israeli company are working together in Nevada to build the largest solar power plant since 1992.

Europe has already begun working with Israel on alternative energy research. On June 9, 2007, German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel pledged nearly $2.2 million from his ministry to four separate German-Israeli alternative energy projects.

Israel’s alternative energy expertise includes seven universities that produce a higher number of engineers and scientists per capita than any other nation. The country also has 67.5 square meters of solar collectors per 100 people, the highest per-capita rate of solar collectors in the world.

EU Hypocrisy

EU hypocrisy is nothing new. This time it’s flushing out its traditional hatred of Serbs - the nation that would not submit to the appeasing/apologetic/spineless/faceless agenda of Western Europe:

EU concerned over Eurovision winner’s links to Serb nationalists

25 January 2008, 00:51 CET
(BRUSSELS) - The EU is considering whether last year’s Eurovision song contest winner Marija Serifovic should be allowed to continue in her role as an intercultural ambassador due to her nationalist leanings.

Serifovic won the annual Eurovision contest in Helsinki last year with her song Molitva (Prayer). She was subsequently chosen as one of 15 international ambassadors to represent The European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008, alongside veteran French crooner Charles Aznavour, French rapper Abd Al Malik and Brazilian lyricist and novelist Paulo Coelho.

But more recently it has been Serifovic’s links with Tomislav Nikolic, the eurosceptic nationalist candidate of the Serbian Radical Party, which has caught the European Commission’s attention.
“Any of the ambassadors are of course free to have political convictions whatever they may be,” John Macdonald, a spokesman for the EU’s executive on cultural issues told AFP.
“There is a problem if the activities of any of the ambassadors turn out to be incompatible with the stated aims of the European Year for Intercultural Dialogue, which is basically about promoting mutual understanding and a sense of belonging to the European Union”.

To those “concerned”, I suggest asking the French Armenian Charles Aznavour how he feels about Turkey and the Armenian lands that it keeps occupying. And it would probably be perfectly alright with the “concerned” if Albanian singer would express its support of independence of the Serbian province Kosovo, after all it’s “in line” with the EU agenda.

Bye-Bye Secular Turkey

I guess it was expected. The secularism imposed on the Muslim country has practically ended:

Turkish government and opposition agree to ease scarf ban

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey’s Islamist-rooted ruling AK Party and a key opposition party agreed on Thursday to cooperate to lift a ban on the wearing of the Islamic headscarf in universities, a move sure to anger the secular elite.

The secular elite, who include army generals, judges and university rectors, view the headscarf ban as vital for the separation of state and religion.

“Agreement has been reached … the issue of the headscarf was evaluated in terms of rights and freedoms and the technical work (on lifting the ban) is continuing,” said a joint statement by the AK Party and the nationalist MHP.

I hope those who campaign for inclusion of Turkey into EU pay attention to this process.

Peaceful Gaza

Yeah, did you know that Gaza was and is an island of peace, tolerance and joy? It appears that UNRWA chief - Karen Abu Zayd - thinks it is.

‘Gaza siege will breed violence’

LONDON - Irael’s lockdown of the Gaza Strip will foster extremism and violence, the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees wrote in The Guardian on Wednesday.

So, when there was no lockdown, Gaza flourished and thrived, and there was no extremism and violence?

Here are some more statements from Abu Zayd:

“There are already indications that the severity of the closure is playing into the hands of those who have no desire for peace,” she wrote.

Oh, I wonder who might be those people. After all, the Gazans are all pacifists.

“We ignore this risk at our peril … Hungry, unhealthy, angry communities do not make good partners for peace.”

Hmm…I didn’t know there are hungry, unhealthy and angry communities in the Persian Gulf, Malaysia and Brunei. And they still don’t have diplomatic relations with Israel (not that we really miss it, I’m just confirming the fact).

She added: “In today’s Gaza, how can we foster a spirit of moderation and compromise among Palestinians, or cultivate a belief in the peaceful resolution of disputes?”

Well, it depends whom you ask, but there is a variety of ways. But here are just a couple of examples:
If you ask “Palestinians” in Gaza, they will offer the Jews to just die off and then there will be peace. If you ask me, I’ll suggest reforming Islam. But I guess you won’t be asking me, will you, Mrs. Abu Zayd?

Israel Saves Gazan Children

In the past couple of days TV screens were flooded with images of citizens of Gaza, sitting under the candle lights and yelling about Israel killing their children because the hospitals don’t have enough fuel (another lie) to operate its electricity generators.

Bad Bad Israel…but hey, I guess the following story will never make it to the front page of al-Guardian, or al-Jazeera, or CNN

Via IRIN (UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs )

Gazan hearts saved in Israel as conflict rages on

HOLON, ISRAEL, 20 January 2008 (IRIN) - With violence in the Gaza Strip and along Israel’s southern border escalating, a small hospital in Israel offers a ray of hope for a handful of seriously ill Gazans.

“This child would have died without surgery,” said Dr Alona Raucher-Sternfeld, as she simultaneously looked at the small Palestinian baby, Jamal, and the echo machine checking his heart.

Six-month-old Jamal came with his grandmother, Haifa, from the Dir al-Balah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip to get a check-up on 15 January at the Wolfson medical centre, an Israeli governmental hospital in Holon, a suburb of Tel Aviv.
…
The surgery, hospital stay and logistics in bringing him out of Gaza were coordinated and partially funded by Save a Child’s Heart, an Israeli humanitarian organisation, with some European Union donations. In 2007, 128 Palestinian children from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, all suffering from heart conditions, were treated by the programme and the hospital.
…
Volunteers from Save a Child’s Heart stressed the apolitical nature of their programme, noting that the man who started it 10 years ago, Ami Cohen, who has since died, believed strongly in looking past race, religion and nationality, and instead preferred to focus on individuals.

“If there’s an Israeli child and a Palestinian child, whoever is in a more dire condition will get treatment first,” said a hospital nurse.