Tuesday, August 01, 2006
By Michael Y. Park  
When students living in Berkeley, Calif., crave a chicken burrito with an extra heaping of guacamole at High Tech Burrito, a Bay Area-based fast-food chain, they need to remember to bring only two things — an empty stomach and a forefinger.
That's because even when they leave their wallets in their other pair of pants, they can pay up by simply using their fingerprints.
High Tech Burrito is one of 2,100 stores in 44 states that are or have been clients of Pay By Touch, a company that lets customers use biometric identification — body-based measurements unique to each person — instead of cash or a credit card to pay their bills.
For Pay By Touch and its clients and customers, biometrics is the cutting edge of convenience and consumer technology.
For critics, biometrics straddles the line between privacy rights and identity security on one side and the selling-out of personal data on the other.
"Paying by card is antiquated," Pay By Touch COO John Morris said from the company's headquarters in San Francisco. "It's a constant from a long time ago. But people love [biometrics], people love the convenience — ...   more »

Disney's ABC television network has dropped plans to produce a Holocaust-themed miniseries, originally supposed to be created in collaboration with Mel Gibson.
The news came just days after Gibson was arrested for drunk driving and accused of launching an anti-Jewish tirade.
Hope Hartman, a spokeswoman for the network, said the cancelled series was unrelated to the new scandal. She was quoted in the New York Times saying, "Given that it's been nearly two years and we have yet to see the first draft of a script, we have decided to no longer pursue this project with Icon," referring to Gibson's production company.
Gibson's statements led to heavy criticism, including arguments that he should be prevented from producing the Jewish themed series, even though he issued an apology for his remarks.
Original Source
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By Israel Insider staff and partners  August 1, 2006  
A French language Lebanese publication, citing an unnamed source in Hezbollah, has claimed that the organization placed a rocket launcher on the roof of the notorious building in Qana to provoke an Israeli attack and brought invalid children inside to serve as victims and blacken Israel's name.
The Lebanese magazine LIBANOSCOPIE, associated with Christian elements which support the anti-Syrian movement called the "March 14 Forces," report that Hizbullah masterminded a plan that would result in the killing of innocents in Qana, in an attempt to foil Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's "Seven Points Plan" calling for deployment of the Lebanese army in southern Lebanon and the disarming of Hizbullah. The magazine reported:
"We have it from a credible source that Hezbollah, alarmed by Siniora's plan, has concocted an incident that would help thwart the negotiations.... Hezbollah gunmen placed a rocket launcher on the roof in Qana and brought disabled children inside, in a bid to provoke a response by the Israeli Air Force. In this way, they were planning to take advantage of the death of innocents and curtail the diplomatic initiative," the site stated.
The site's editors claimed that ...   more »

by Tzvi Fishman
Jul 31, '06 / 6 Av 5766
While the war is still raging in Lebanon, and everyone is talking about air strikes, ground offensives and cease-fires, it is worthwhile to remember what our sages have taught us about war.
The Biblical perspective on war can be summarized in David's confident proclamation to Goliath: "And all of this assembly shall know that the L-rd saves not with sword or spear; for the battle is the L-rd's, and He will deliver you into our hands." (I Samuel, 18:47)
Rabbi Uzi Kalcheim, in his book Aderet Emunah, writes that regarding the nations of the world, victory in war results from natural and physical causes, such as the military's size and weaponry, or the nation's resolve for battle. Israel's successes, however, come from the Living G-d. The Jewish soldier must make the necessary preparations and not rely on miracles; yet, he must know that salvation comes from G-d. Thus, we find in the Torah that "The L-rd is a Man of War." (Exodus, 15:3)
In the rise and fall of nations, and in the ever-changing sweep of history, our sages recognize that it is the Almighty who brings everything to pass. ...   more »

by Rebbetzin Tzipporah Heller
The same covenant that promises suffering, promises redemption.
By every measure the Jewish month of Av is tragically unique, one in which the worst disasters in our history took place.
Disaster is no stranger to us. In many ways it is part and parcel of God's covenant with Abraham. When Abraham was told that his people would be chosen, God told him that there would be a price to pay. What is that price? One look at Jewish history tells us two pieces of information that make us unique. One is that we don't disappear because we recognize that we are a people who are united in what the Vilna Gaon would refer to as "rectifying ourselves and rectifying the world." The other is that the when we try to disappear, the results have been disastrous.
Abraham was a seeker. His search took him far beyond his one land, and even further from the assumptions that virtually everyone else in the entire world had about life. To Abraham, God was not only in the heavens, but very much here in the earth, with us. Abraham integrated the world of thought with the world of action. While ...   more »

By Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez*
I walked down the street in Barcelona, and suddenly discovered a terrible truth - Europe died in Auschwitz.
We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, and talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world.
The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world. These are the people we burned. And under the pretense of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.
They have turned our beautiful European cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime. Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.
And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, ...   more »