position:one of the founders

  • #Fearless_Cities’ Movements Plot Common Path in Serbia

    ‘Municipalist’ movements from all over Europe met in the Serbian capital last weekend to exchange ideas and plan a common strategy against deeply entrenched political structures in their home countries.

    Municipalist activists from all over Europe descended on Belgrade in Serbia at the weekend for the fifth Fearless Cities conference, an event that seeks to elevate the discussion about the role that grassroots city-based groups can play in countering entrenched political structures and the rise of the far right.

    The conference last weekend was hosted by activists from Serbia’s Let’s Not Drown Belgrade [#Ne_davimo_Beograd], which was formed in 2014 to oppose a massive development project on the riverbank of the Serbian capital.

    The global municipalist movement met for the first time at the Fearless Cities Summit in Barcelona, Spain, in June 2017, at the invitation of Barcelona En Comú, with the stated goal of “radicalizing democracy, feminizing politics and standing up to the far right”.

    In a world in which it says “fear and inequalities are being twisted into hate, the movement says it is “standing up to defend human rights, democracy and the common good”.

    “It is a good opportunity to see how both smaller and bigger European cities are doing, and how we are actually on the same page for how we want to introduce citizens to decision-making,” Radomir Lazovic, one of the founders of Ne Davimo Beograd, said.

    “We are against the privatization and commercialisation of public assets, and we want to develop cities that belong to us, as citizens,” he told BIRN.

    Besides opposing the Belgrade Waterfront, Ne Davimo Beograd has supported months of protests in the Serbian capital against the government of President Aleksandar Vucic.

    The “1of 5 million” movement launched a series of protests on December 8 last year, demanding that Vucic and his governing Serbian Progressive Party resign, as well as more media freedom and fair elections.

    At the event in Belgrade, one of the panels gathered individuals from all over the Balkans, including North Macedonia, Albania and Croatia, to discuss the rise of local movements in their respective countries, and whether these movements actually have the potential to affect real change.

    Many panelists emphasized that in their home cities, members of the public often didn’t even know that they had neighbourhood councils and could have a real say in matters affecting their cities and towns.

    “Connecting and expanding our knowledge on the practices we are interested in is important, especially at a time when we see that right-wing formations and political parties are much better organized, much better mobilized and much more present in the general media with a higher impact on the general public,” said Ivana Dragsic, from the Skopje-based organization, #Freedom_Square.

    How municipalist movements can help shape the future of European politics was the main topic of discussion in #Belgrade.

    “Municipalism” emphasises the importance of allowing cities and towns to make their own decisions on issues like affordable housing, sustainable environmental policies and transparency.

    “Political parties have a problem because they … don’t follow the real process of societies,” said Ana Méndez de Andés, a member of the organization Ahora Madrid.

    “Municipalism looks at other ways of organizing. It’s about understanding that there is a need to change institutions and open up radical democratic processes starting from a scale that is closer to the citizens,” she told BIRN.

    Speakers from groups such as OccupyGaguta in Moldova, The City is For All in Hungary and Organized Society S.O.S. in Romania also presented their views at the conference, highlighting issues like participatory democracy, evictions, and environmental campaigns.

    “I am here in the Balkans because, as a Romanian, I can learn more about the experience in Southeastern Europe than I can from Western countries,” said Adrian Dohotaru, an MP in Romania and a member of Organized Society S.O.S.

    “We have a similar experience of commodification and privatization of public goods, a neoliberal system and in order to reverse this, we need to provide better policies against corruption.”

    Environmental justice was addressed by several speakers, including members of Keep Upright, KOD, from Montenegro, and Zagreb je NAS! [Zagreb is us], from Croatia.

    Other organizations like Spasi Sofia [Save Sofia] focus on promoting good quality public transport and green public spaces in the Bulgarian capital.

    “When the local government in Sofia canceled a big tramway project for the city we said: ‘This is enough. We have to really vote for ourselves because we love the city and we have to do something about it,’” said Andrej Zografski, from Spasi Sofia.

    “We have to learn from each other because we don’t have any other allies than ourselves,” he added.

    Opportunities to learn about issues specific to Belgrade were also offered at the conference, including tours of the Belgrade Waterfront and of the Kaludjerica settlment, which is often referred to as an illegal settlement due to the number of buildings built there without permits.

    Workshops to learn about different issues facing people in Serbia, like LGBT rights and the construction of hydro-power plants against public will, were offered as well.

    One of the discussions at the Belgrade event addressed the feminization of politics within a global context.

    Speakers from Colombia, Spain, Serbia and Croatia discussed the challenges of women trying to navigate and change patriarchal political systems.

    “If we don’t have a feminization of politics, we’ll lose many voices that are important in politics and, unless we change this, it’ll be difficult for these people to participate on equal terms with others,” said Laura Roth, a member of Barcelona en Comú.

    “This means distributing responsibilities in different ways and trying to break traditional gender.

    https://balkaninsight.com/2019/06/14/fearless-cities-movements-plot-common-path-in-serbia
    #villes-refuge #Serbie #asile #migrations #réfugiés #solidarité #hospitalité #municipalisme

    Ajouté à la métaliste sur les villes-refuge :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/759145

  • Fast.ai in production. Real-word text classification with ULMFiT.
    https://hackernoon.com/fast-ai-in-production-real-word-text-classification-with-ulmfit-199769be

    I’ve overcome my skepticism about fast.ai for production and trained a text classification system in non-English language, small dataset and lots of classes with ULMFiT.About the projectMy friend and classmate, who is one of the founders of RocketBank (leading online-only bank in Russia), asked me to develop a classifier to help first-line of customer support.The initial set of constraints was pretty restricted —no labeled historical dataobfuscated personally identifiable information“we want it yesterday”mostly Russian language (hard to find pre-trained model)no access to cloud solutions due to privacy regulationsability to retrain the model if new classes arise without my involvementThe scope of work was pretty straight forward — develop a model and serving solution for incoming messages (...)

    #customer-support #fastai #machine-learning #banking #artificial-intelligence

  • Expanding the limits of Jewish sovereignty: A brief history of Israeli settlements - Israel News
    Gideon Levy and Alex Levac Jan 11, 2019 – Haaretz.com
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-expanding-the-limits-of-jewish-sovereignty-a-brief-history-of-isra

    At the end of the day, we stood above the ditch that holds the road designated for Palestinians who want to travel from an enclave of three West Bank villages – Biddu, Beit Surik and Qatannah – to Ramallah. Above that road, Israeli vehicles sped smoothly along Highway 443, the high road to the capital, without the drivers even seeing the segregation road below, which is hemmed in by iron fencing and barbed wire. The Israelis on the expressway above, the Palestinians on the subterranean route below: a picture that’s worth a thousand words. Israel dubs these separation routes “fabric-of-life roads.” It sounds promising but in reality these byways are just another, monstrous product of the apartheid system.

    A few hundred meters away, in Givon Hahadasha (New Givon) – and like the settlement, enclosed on all sides by iron fencing and spiky wire, and complete with electronic cameras and an electric gate – is the home of the Agrayeb family. Here the occupation looms at its most grotesque: a Palestinian family cut off from its village (Beit Ijza) in the quasi-prison of the enclave and left to live in this house-cage in the heart of a settlement, a situation that the High Court of Justice of the region’s sole democracy has termed acceptably “proportional harm.” At the conclusion of an instructive tour, the tunnel and the cage, Highway 443 and New Givon, the “proportional harm” and the “fabric-of-life roads” all spark grim, utterly depressing thoughts here in the realm of apartheid. The thoughts that arose in late afternoon on a cold, stormy winter day will long haunt us.

    Since the anti-occupation organization Breaking the Silence was founded in 2004, it has led hundreds of study tours to Hebron and to the South Hebron Hills, in which tens of thousands of Israelis and others have taken part. The tours, which draw about 5,000 participants a year, are aimed at the gut, and no one returns indifferent from the ghostly population-transfer quarter in Hebron or from the land of the caves whose inhabitants have been dispossessed, in the South Hebron Hills. Now the NGO is launching a new tour, analytical and insightful, of the central West Bank, which focuses on the history of the occupation from its inception down to our time.

    Yehuda Shaul, 36, one of the founders of Breaking the Silence, a former Haredi and an ex-combat soldier, worked for about a year and a half planning the tour, writing the texts and preparing the maps, drawing on some 40 books about the settlements and other materials found while burrowing in archives. Shaul is a superb guide along the trails of the occupation – businesslike and brimming with knowledge, not given to sloganizing. He is committed and determined but also bound by the facts, and he is articulate in Hebrew and English. His tour is currently in the pilot stage, before its official launch in a few months.

    A day in the Ramallah subdistrict, from the Haredi settlement of Modi’in Ilit to the home of the young Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi, in the village of Nabi Saleh, from the region of the Allon Plan to the fabric-of-life scheme – during this seven-hour journey, an unvarnished picture emerges: The goals of the occupation were determined immediately after the 1967 war. Every Israeli government since, without exception, has worked to realize them. The aim: to prevent the establishment of any Palestinian entity between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, by carving up the West Bank and shattering it into shards of territory. The methods have varied, but the goal remains unwavering: eternal Israeli rule.

    #apartheid

  • Atlantik-Brücke and the ACG
    http://www.transatlanticperspectives.org/entry.php?rec=133
    Des fois que vous nauriez jamais compris pourquoi l’Allemagne est le meilleur ami des USA en Europe voici le résumé de la thèse d’Anne Zetsche

    Transatlantic institutions organizing German-American elite networking since the early 1950s

    Author » Anne Zetsche, Northumbria University Published: November 28, 2012 Updated: February 28, 2013

    The Cold War era witnessed an increasing transnational interconnectedness of individuals and organizations in the cultural, economic and political sphere. In this period, two organizations, the Atlantik-Brücke and the American Council on Germany, established themselves as influential facilitators, enabling German-American elite networking throughout the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. The two organizations brought together influential politicians and businesspeople, as well as representatives of the media and the academic world.

    Efforts in this regard commenced in the early days of the Cold War, only a few years after the end of World War II. In 1949, two American citizens and two Germans began developing the plan to found the Atlantik-Brücke in West Germany and a sister organization, the American Council on Germany (ACG), in the United States. Their plan was to use these two organizations as vehicles to foster amicable relations between the newly founded Federal Republic of Germany and the United States of America. Only a few years prior, Americans and Germans had faced each other as enemies during World War II and many segments of German society, including West German elites, held strong, long-standing anti-American sentiments. The U.S. public in turn was skeptical as to whether Germans could indeed be denazified and convinced to develop a democratic system. Thus, in order to forge a strong Western alliance against Soviet Communism that included West Germany it was critical to overcome mutual prejudices and counter anti-Americanism in Western Europe. It was to be one of the central tasks of the Atlantik-Brücke and the ACG to achieve this in West Germany.

    Individuals at the Founding of the Atlantik-Brücke and the ACG

    One of the founders of the Atlantik-Brücke and the ACG was Eric M. Warburg. He was a Jewish-American banker originally from Hamburg where his ancestors had founded the family’s banking house in 1798. Due to Nazi Aryanisation and expropriation policies, the Warburg family lost the company in 1938 and immigrated to the United States, settling in New York. In spite of the terror of the Nazi regime, Eric Warburg was very attached to Hamburg. He became a vibrant transatlantic commuter after World War II, living both in Hamburg and in New York. In the intertwined histories of the Atlantik-Brücke and the ACG, Warburg played a special role, becoming their leading facilitator and mediator.

    Not long after his escape from the Nazis, Warburg met Christopher Emmet, a wealthy publicist and political activist who shared Warburg’s strong anti-communist stance and attachment to pre-Nazi Germany. On the German side of this transatlantic relationship, Warburg and Emmet were joined by Marion Countess Dönhoff, a journalist at the liberal West German weekly Die Zeit, and by Erik Blumenfeld, a Christian Democratic politician and businessmen. There were two main characteristics shared by the original core founders of the Atlantik-Brücke and the ACG: firstly, each one of the founding quartet belonged to an elite – economic, social or political – and was therefore well-connected with political, diplomatic, business and media circles in both the United States and Germany. Secondly, there was a congruence of basic dispositions among them, namely a staunch anti-communist stance, a transatlantic orientation, and an endorsement of Germany’s integration into the West.

    The Western powers sought the economic and political integration of Western Europe to overcome the devastation of Europe, to revive the world economy, and to thwart nationalism and militarism in Europe after World War II. Germany was considered Europe’s economic powerhouse and thus pivotal in the reconstruction process. West Germany also needed to be on board with security and defense policies in order to face the formidable opponent of Soviet Communism. Since the Federal Republic shared a border with the communist bloc, the young state was extremely vulnerable to potential Soviet aggression and was at the same time strategically important within the Western bloc. Elite organizations like the Atlantik-Brücke and the ACG were valuable vehicles to bring West Germany on board for this ambitious Cold War project.

    Thus, in 1952 and 1954 respectively, the ACG and the Atlantik-Brücke were incorporated and granted non-profit status with the approval of John J. McCloy, U.S. High Commissioner to Germany (1949-1952). His wife Ellen McCloy was one of signatories of the ACG’s certificate of incorporation and served as its director for a number of years. The Atlantik-Brücke (originally Transatlantik-Brücke) was incorporated and registered in Hamburg.

    Transatlantic Networking

    The main purpose of both organizations was to inform Germans and Americans about the respective other country, to counter mutual prejudices, and thus contributing to the development of amicable relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States in the postwar era. This was to be achieved by all means deemed appropriate, but with a special focus on arranging personal meetings and talks between representatives of both countries’ business, political, academic, and media elites. One way was to sponsor lectures and provide speakers on issues relating to Germany and the United States. Another method was organizing visiting tours of German politicians, academics, and journalists to the United States and of American representatives to West Germany. Among the Germans who came to the U.S. under the sponsorship of the ACG were Max Brauer, a former Social Democratic mayor of Hamburg, Willy Brandt, the first Social Democratic Chancellor and former mayor of West Berlin, and Franz Josef Strauss, a member of the West German federal government in the 1950s and 1960s and later minister president of the German federal state of Bavaria. American visitors to the Federal Republic were less prominent. Annual reports of the Atlantik-Brücke explicitly mention George Nebolsine of the New York law firm Coudert Brothers and member of the International Chamber of Commerce, and the diplomats Henry J. Tasca, William C. Trimble, and Nedville E. Nordness.

    In the late 1950s the officers of the Atlantik-Brücke and the ACG sought ways of institutionalizing personal encounters between key Americans and Germans. Thus they established the German-American Conferences modeled on the British-German Königswinter Conferences and the Bilderberg Conferences. The former brought together English and German elites and were organized by the German-English Society (later German-British Society). The latter were organized by the Bilderberg Group, founded by Joseph Retinger, Paul van Zeeland and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. Those conferences began in 1954 and were informal, off-the-record meetings of American and West European representatives of business, media, academia and politics. Each of these conference series was important for the coordination of Western elites during the Cold War era. Bilderberg was critical in paving the way for continental European integration and the German-British effort was important for reconciling the European wartime enemies.

    From 1959 onwards, the German-American Conferences took place biennially, alternating between venues in West Germany and the United States. At the first conference in Bonn, 24 Americans came together with 27 Germans, among them such prominent individuals as Dean Acheson, Henry Kissinger, and John J. McCloy on the American side, and Willy Brandt, Arnold Bergstraesser (considered to be one of the founding fathers of postwar political science in Germany), and Kurt Georg Kiesinger (third Christian Democratic Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany and former minister president of the federal state Baden-Württemberg) on the German side. By 1974 the size of the delegations had increased continuously, reaching 73 American and 63 German participants.

    A central goal in selecting the delegations was to arrange for a balanced, bipartisan group of politicians, always including representatives of the Social and Christian Democrats (e.g. Fritz Erler, Kurt Birrenbach) on the German side and both Democratic and Republican senators and representatives (e.g. Henry S. Reuss, Jacob Javits) on the American side, along with academics, journalists, and businessmen. Prominent American academics attending several of the German-American conferences included Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Representatives of major media outlets were Marion Countess Dönhoff of Germany’s major liberal weekly Die Zeit, Kurt Becker, editor of the conservative daily newspaper Die Welt, and Hellmut Jaesrich, editor of the anticommunist cultural magazine Der Monat. The business community was prominently represented by John J. McCloy, the president of the Chase Manhattan Bank, and Herman Georg Kaiser, an oil producer from Tulsa, Oklahoma. From Germany, Gotthard von Falkenhausen and Eric Warburg represented the financial sector and Alexander Menne, a member of the executive board of Farbwerke Hoechst, represented German industry.

    Officers of the Atlantik-Brücke and the ACG were mainly in charge of selecting the delegates for the conferences. However, Shepard Stone of the Ford Foundation also had an influential say in this process. In the late 1950s and 1960s he was director of the foundation’s international program and thus responsible for allocating funds to the ACG to facilitate the German-American conferences. Shepard Stone was deeply attached to Germany as he had pursued graduate studies in Berlin in the Weimar period, earning a doctoral degree in history. After World War II he returned to Germany as a public affairs officer of the U.S. High Commission. Stone’s continuing interest in German affairs and friendship with Eric Warburg and Marion Dönhoff regularly brought him to Germany, and he was a frequent participant in the German-American conferences.

    The German-American Conferences and Cold War Politics

    All matters discussed during the conferences stood under the headline “East-West tensions” in the earlier period and later “East-West issues” signaling the beginning of détente, but always maintaining a special focus on U.S.-German relations. The debates from the late 1950s to the early/mid-1970s can be categorized as follows: firstly, bilateral relations between the U.S. and the FRG; secondly, Germany’s relation with the Western alliance; thirdly, Europe and the United States in the Atlantic Alliance; and last but not least, relations between the West, the East, and the developing world. The conferences served three central purposes: firstly, developing a German-American network of elites; secondly, building consensus on key issues of the Cold War period; and thirdly, forming a common Western, transatlantic identity among West Germans and Americans.

    Another emphasis of both groups’ activities in the United States and Germany was the production of studies and other publications (among others, The Vanishing Swastika, the Bridge, Meet Germany, a Newsletter, Hans Wallenberg’s report Democratic Institutions, and the reports on the German-American Conferences). Studies aimed at informing Germans about developments in the United States and American international policies on the one hand, and at informing the American people about West Germany’s progress in denazification, democratization, and re-education on the other. The overall aim of these activities was first and foremost improving each country’s and people’s image in the eyes of the counterpart’s elites and wider public.

    The sources and amounts of available funds to the ACG and the Atlantik-Brücke differed considerably. Whereas the latter selected its members very carefully by way of cooptation especially among businessmen and CEOs to secure sound funding of its enterprise, the former opened membership or affiliation to basically anyone who had an interest in Germany. As a result, the ACG depended heavily, at least for its everyday business, on the fortune of the organization’s executive vice president Christopher Emmet. Emmet personally provided the salaries of ACG secretaries and set up the organization’s offices in his private apartment in New York’s upper Westside. In addition, the ACG relied on funds granted by the Ford Foundation especially for the biannual German-American conferences as well as for the publication of a number of studies. The Atlantik-Brücke in turn benefitted immensely from public funds for its publications and the realization of the German-American conferences. The Federal Press and Information Agency (Bundespresse- und Informationsamt, BPA) supported mainly publication efforts of the organization and the Federal Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt) regularly granted funds for the conferences.

    Politics, Business and Membership Growth

    Membership of the Atlantik-Brücke grew from 12 in 1954 to 65 in 1974. Among them were representatives of companies like Mannesmann, Esso, Farbwerke Hoechst, Daimler Benz, Deutsche Bank, and Schering. Those members were expected to be willing and able to pay annual membership fees of 3000 to 5000 DM (approx. $750 to $1,250 in 1955, equivalent to approx. $6,475 to $10,793 today). Since the business community always accounted for the majority of Atlantik-Brücke membership compared to members from academia, media and politics, the organization operated on secure financial footing compared to its American counterpart. The ACG had not even established formal membership like its German sister organization. The people affiliated with the ACG in the 1950s up to the mid-1970s were mostly academics, intellectuals, and journalists. It posed a great difficulty for ACG officers to attract business people willing and able to contribute financially to the organization at least until the mid-1970s. When Christopher Emmet, the ACG’s “heart and soul,” passed away in 1974, the group’s affiliates and directors were mostly comprised of Emmet’s circle of friends and acquaintances who shared an interest in U.S.-German relations and Germany itself. Emmet had enlisted most of them during his frequent visits to the meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations. Another group of prominent members represented the military. Several leading figures of the U.S. occupying forces and U.S. High Commission personnel joined the ACG, in addition to ranking politicians and U.S. diplomats. The ACG’s long term president, George N. Shuster had served as Land Commissioner for Bavaria during 1950-51. In 1963, Lucius D. Clay, former military governor of the U.S. zone in Germany, 1947-49, joined the ACG as honorary chairman. George McGhee, the former ambassador to Germany prominently represented U.S. diplomacy when he became director of the organization in 1969.

    Although the Atlantik-Brücke had initially ruled out board membership for active politicians, they were prominently represented. Erik Blumenfeld, for example, was an influential Christian Democratic leader in Hamburg. In 1958 he was elected CDU chairman of the federal city state of Hamburg and three years later he became a member of the Bundestag.In the course of the 1960s and 1970s more politicians joined the Atlantik-Brücke and became active members of the board: Kurt Birrenbach (CDU), Fritz Erler (SPD), W. Alexander Menne (FDP), and Helmut Schmidt (SPD). Thus, through their members and affiliates both organizations have been very well-connected with political, diplomatic, and business elites.

    Besides individual and corporate contributions, both organizations relied on funding from public and private institutions and agencies. On the German side federal agencies like the Foreign Office, the Press and Information Agency, and the Chancellery provided funding for publications and supported the German-American conferences. On the American side additional funds were provided almost exclusively by the Ford Foundation.

    Although both groups were incorporated as private associations with the objective of furthering German-American relations in the postwar era, their membership profile and sources of funding clearly illustrate that they were not operating at great distance from either public politics or official diplomacy. On the contrary, the Atlantik-Brücke and the ACG represent two prominent actors in a transnational elite networking project with the aim of forging a strong anti-communist Atlantic Alliance among the Western European states and the United States of America. In this endeavor to back up public with private authority, the Atlantik-Brücke and the ACG functioned as major conduits of both transnational and transcultural exchange and transfer processes.

    #Europe #Allemagne #USA #politique #guerre #impérialisme #élites

  • OpenMandriva Council: new Chairman elected and welcome to new entries
    https://www.openmandriva.org/en/news/article/openmandriva-council-new-chairman-elected-and-welcome-to-new-entries

    First of all congratulations to Bernhard Rosenkränzer, aka bero, elected as new OpenMandriva Association Chairman. Bero is one of the most active developers inside OpenMandriva, and also one of the founders of the association. We also welcome two new Council members: Ben Bullard aka ben79 and Denis Silakov. Ben is one of the pillars of OpenMandriva, QA-Team member, he is the strongest link between the community and the development team (aka Cooker) and the most active forum user. (...)

    #News

  • Rogue Founder Commits #crypto-Treason — Embezzles Oyster Pearl
    https://hackernoon.com/rogue-founder-commits-crypto-treason-embezzles-oyster-pearl-5fd330f3f756

    Rogue Founder Commits Crypto-Treason — Embezzles Oyster PearlBruno Block’s paranoid vendetta against his own project — an inside storyWe have grown accustomed to the unusual in cryptocurrencies.But even in crypto it’s not every day that we hear a story like this.This is the story of a gifted man, who used his talents to abuse his position of power and the trust of others. An unstable man with illusions of grandeur, exaggerated self-importance and contempt for mankind. A charismatic man that manipulated thousands of people to share his vision, only to then throw them all under the bus. And he almost got away with it.I am one of the founders of 8-Bit.io, the company behind KuCoin’s marketing and research. At the time of listing Oyster Pearl, we were also supporting KuCoin’s listing deals. The people (...)

    #ethereum #bitcoin #cryptocurrency #blockchain

  • Once again, Israel denies the Bedouin what it grants the settlers
    On Wednesday the High Court will hear petitions against the demolition of the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar, while two Palestinian villages request that the state demolish illegal structures in a nearby settlement
    Amira Hass Jul 27, 2018 10:23 PM
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-once-again-israel-denies-the-bedouin-what-it-grants-the-settlers-1

    Two Palestinian villages, basing their request on Civil Administration data, are asking the Israeli authorities to demolish illegal structures in the settlement of Kfar Adumim and outposts around it. In question are about 120 villas and other buildings in the settlement against which demolition orders have been issued (though, as of the beginning of 2017, at least half the structures had been approved retroactively), and in four outposts.

    In the outposts, most of the structures have been built on land defined as state land back in the days of Jordanian rule, and a smaller number have been built on land privately owned by village residents. This past Tuesday, at the Justice Ministry High Court department, Attorney Tawfiq Jabareen filed this request for the villages of Deir Dibwan and Anata, east of Ramallah, as the prelude to petitioning for the villages and some of their residents, owners of private land.

    In a preliminary argument, Jabareen talks about Israel’s “selective enforcement” policy. And as a reverse example — of “legalizing” the illegal construction in Kfar Adumim — he mentions the Bedouin village at Khan al-Ahmar, which existed long before the settlements were established and is now threatened by demolition, along with the expulsion of its residents. Before this request, a team of lawyers headed by Jabareen submitted two new petitions on behalf of the residents of Khan al-Ahmar.

    The deliberations on these petitions will be held this Wednesday, at a time when Khan al-Ahmar has become a focus of international interest and hosts protest gatherings every day. This comes against the backdrop of European and UN condemnations of the planned demolition and, in general, of Israel’s policy of thwarting Palestinian construction in the West Bank’s Area C, which is under exclusive Israeli control.

    Thus, three months before the law comes into effect denying the High Court authority to deliberate on matters concerning West Bank land and techniques for grabbing it from the Palestinians, a team of Palestinian lawyers who are Israeli citizens insists on bringing to the High Court matters of principle concerning discrimination, inequality and government arbitrariness.

    Settlements’ concerted action

    For its part, Kfar Adumim continues to demand implementation of the decision to demolish Khan al-Ahmar. This past Sunday, the settlement and two of its offshoots — Nofei Prat and Alon — asked to join the Israel Defense Forces and the Civil Administration as respondents in one of the two new Khan-al Ahmar petitions. This is the petition that asks to oblige the Civil Administration to relate to the detailed master plan recently submitted by the village. On behalf of the three settlements, attorneys Avraham Moshe Segal and Yael Cinnamon asked that the petition be rejected.

    A concerted legal and media battle by the three settlements over the past decade, as well as pressure from the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee’s subcommittee on West Bank affairs, led to the Civil Administration’s decision to demolish the village. During all those years, the previous attorney for the Bedouin village, Shlomo Lecker, managed to delay implementation of the demolition orders, including the order against the ecological school made out of tires.

    But in May a panel of justices headed by Noam Sohlberg, a resident of the settlement of Alon Shvut, ruled that there was no legal reason to intervene in the state’s decision to expel and forcibly transfer the village’s residents to an area the Civil Administration has allotted them next to the Abu Dis garbage dump.

    His partners in the decision were justices Anat Baron and Yael Willner; Willner has a brother and a sister living in Kfar Adumim, but she did not recuse herself from deliberating on the fate of Khan al-Ahmar, nor did she agree to attorney Lecker’s request that she do so. About a week after the High Court’s green light for the demolition, the Civil Administration’s Supreme Planning Council approved the construction of a new neighborhood for Kfar Adumim called Nofei Bereshit about 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) from the Bedouin community at Khan al-Ahmar.

    Preparations for the demolition and eviction began at the end of June, but the new petitions have halted them. It was Baron who issued a temporary injunction that has suspended the demolition.

    Attorneys Segal and Cinnamon, acting on behalf of the three settlements, write that the new petition (asking that the Civil Administration consider the master plan for the village) “is part of a broader move by the petitioners and influential elements on the ‘left’ side of the political map to ‘leave’ the ‘Palestinian construction criminals’ adjacent to the Israeli locales there and adjacent to Route 1 in order to create contiguous Palestinian settlement there.” (The internal quotation marks are in the original document).

    The settlements say that this is an illegitimate way to deliberate; it will let any judicial ruling be reopened in the hope that a different panel of judges will make a change. Regarding the matter at hand, the settlements note that the High Court has already addressed the possibility of preparing a master plan for the village at its current location and has ruled that there is nothing wrong with the state’s intention to demolish it.

    In their statement accompanying the request to join the respondents, the settlements write that the petitioners from Khan al-Ahmar are “construction criminals who have made a law unto themselves and have wittingly and without building permits built on lands that do not belong to them, adjacent to a major transportation artery [and then] brazenly applied to the honorable court to help them prevent the implementation of the demolition orders.”

    The settlements argue that the petitioners built the structures without any building permits and on land that “no one disputes that they do not have even a speck of a right to claim as theirs.”

    First construction, then legalization

    The Bedouin village’s tents and makeshift shacks are on plots of land belonging to residents of Anata, for which they have received the owners’ permission. These plots include a are part of a large area of lands under private Palestinian ownership listed in the Land Registry, which Israel expropriated in 1975 but has not used since. Route 1, which links Jerusalem to Jericho, was far from Khan al-Ahmar, and only when the road was widened was the distance decreased.

    One of the founders of Kfar Adumim, current Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel, submitted an action plan to the IDF back at the end of 1978 or the beginning of 1979. The plan confirms that Bedouin communities were living in the area before the settlements were established, but the plan demands that these communities be expelled, Palestinian construction be curtailed and contiguous Jewish settlement be established.

    On the basis of Civil Administration data, the planning rights group Bimkom published an opinion in 2010 on the pattern of planning and construction in Kfar Adumim and its offshoots: first construction without permits and only then planning that legalizes it.

    The settlement was established in 1979 but a detailed master plan was approved only in 1988. New homes were built without permits, awaiting legalization in another master plan approved years later. Before all the possibilities for construction in the 1988 plan were used up, detailed master plans were advanced aimed at establishing Alon and Nofei Prat, which are called neighborhoods even though they are not contiguous with the mother settlement. Each of these “neighborhoods” spawned an illegal outpost of its own.

    In his preliminary argument to the High Court, Jabareen mentions the Civil Administration’s demolition orders against large private homes in Kfar Adumim. He also mentions the legalization of at least half the structures against which orders were issued, and the four outposts created by the settlement and its offshoots Alon and Nofei Prat. The information about the outposts is based on Civil Administration and Peace Now data.

    The outpost Givat Granit was established in 2002 on about 70 dunams (17.3 acres) of land, of which 10 are privately owned land and the rest is state land from the Jordanian period. Five residential structures and part of the approach road are located on privately-owned land.

    The outpost Haroeh Ha’ivri was established without a master plan in 2015 on about 20 dunams of state land and serves as an educational farm school. The road to the outpost runs along private land, and the outpost receives funding from the Education Ministry. An events venue and desert field lodge was established on about 15 dunams of state land in 2012, and the outpost Ma’aleh Hagit was established in 1999 on about 70 dunams of state land with incursions onto privately-owned parcels.

    In the Kfar Adumim statement to the High Court, the attorneys write that the Khan al-Ahmar petition is political, “and to this will testify the deeds of the petitioners who exploited the temporary order they received for purposes of opening the school year and populating the school building (made of tires) with pupils . The entire aim of the petition is to advance the petitioners’ political agenda and their attempt to create contiguous Palestinian settlement in strategic areas of Judea and Samaria. The petitioners’ attempt to depict the issue as a legal issue is flawed to a large extent by artificiality and testifies to the petitioner’s lack of good faith.”

  • Former Jaysh al-Islam leader stole millions to make business in Turkey - reports
    https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/former-jaysh-al-islam-leader-stole-millions-to-make-business-in-turkey

    Former leader of the militant group Jaysh al-Islam, Mohammed Alloush, has stolen $47 million from its budget, reports the FARS news agency, citing media activists close to the group. There were no official reports confirming the information.

    According to the news agency’s sources, he used the money to buy restaurants and commercial centers in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Jaysh al-Islam commanders reportedly called on Alloush to return the stolen sum.

    Mohammed Alloush was one of the founders of the Jaysh al-Islam militant group and until recently lead its political division.

    He resigned from his post on May 3, after the group sustained several defeats at the hands of the Syrian army in Eastern Ghouta.

    Source iranienne, mais information plausible. Tout le monde n’a pas tout perdu en #Syrie...

  • Heir to OxyContin fortune buys $22.5M Bel Air mansion - Curbed LA
    https://la.curbed.com/2018/3/8/17098042/oxycontin-david-sackler-bel-air-mansion-cash

    One of the heirs of Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, has just purchased a stylish 1980s estate in Bel Air for $22.5 million.

    TMZ reports David Sackler, the grandson of one of the founders of Purdue, paid entirely in cash for the nearly 10,000-square-foot estate on about four acres.

    The gated estate holds a two-story atrium, sweeping spiral staircase, and a master suite that occupies nearly the entire second story of the residence. The grounds hold a tennis court and pool, and large expanses of green lawn.

    Sackler is the grandson of Raymond Sackler, one of the three brothers who together launched and ran Purdue Pharma. (By 1996, when the company introduced OxyContin, only two brothers and their families were still involved in the business.)

    #Opioides #Sackler

  • Jewish-American protester hurt by Israeli cops: I’m proud to be Jewish, but occupation is not Judaism
    Veteran activist Sarah Brammer-Shlay may need surgery for the broken upper arm she suffered when police dispersed demonstrators at the annual Jerusalem Day Flag March
    Allison Kaplan Sommer and Steven Silber 25.05.2017 16:04 Updated: 4:05 PM
    http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.791844
    http://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.791857.1495707583!/image/607255258.JPG_gen/derivatives/headline_1200x630/607255258.JPG

    A young American Jew whose arm was broken by the police on Jerusalem Day Wednesday says this was the “most violently” she has ever been treated at a demonstration.

    Sarah Brammer-Shlay, a 25-year-old native of Minneapolis, said doctors at Hadassah University Hospital told her she had a fracture above her left elbow and faced a 50 percent chance of needing surgery.

    She and about 50 other people were protesting Wednesday at the annual Flag March, a high-profile event on Jerusalem Day, when Israel celebrates the capture of East Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War.

    Brammer-Shlay told Haaretz that about 20 of the protesters were linking arms trying to block the Old City from the flag marchers, when the police started pushing them to the ground. Once on the ground, they linked arms again and the police started dragging them off, some being choked while they were dragged.

    She said the police then threw protesters on top of one another within a small area fenced off by metal barricades. The police then tried removing her from the caged-off area.

    “They pulled my left arm; I heard and felt my arm pop and I knew something horrible had happened,” she said. “I was screaming ‘my arm, my arm,’” she said, noting that she “was having trouble walking, my arm hurt so badly.”

    The police did not respond to a Haaretz request for comment.

    Brammer-Shlay, one of the founders of the Washington chapter of the anti-occupation group IfNotNow, was the coordinator of the IfNotNow protest at the AIPAC conference in Washington last March. She moved to Washington after graduating from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities in 2012.

    Brammer-Shlay has been involved in social activism in the United States and Jewish activism since college, mostly concerning domestic American issues.

    She says that at protests in the United States there’s a protocol; the police normally warn demonstrators about what they are going to do. On Wednesday, such warnings were rare, Brammer-Shlay said.

    “There was no sense of control by the police officers,” she said. “They looked so angry. You don’t need to break my arm to stop me from linking arms with somebody. It was apparent that they didn’t care.”

    Brammer-Shlay, who has also been a trip leader for the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, is currently studying Hebrew in Israel. In the fall she will start studying at rabbinical school to become a Reconstructionist rabbi.

    “They say Israel is here to protect Jews, and that’s not true,” she said. “It’s here to protect a system of occupation. When Jews push back against the system they are no longer protected. If this were a Palestinian protest, I’m sure the injuries would be worse than a broken arm.”

    As Brammer-Shlay put it, “I’m going to rabbinical school. I’m very proud to be Jewish and I’m devoted to the Jewish community. And I also know that the occupation is not Judaism .... But today I think the biggest crisis facing the American Jewish community is our support for the occupation.”

    According to Leanne Gale, the spokeswoman for the protest Wednesday, three organizations took part: IfNotNow, its Israeli counterpart All That’s Left, and Free Jerusalem, which describes itself as a solidarity group of Jewish Israelis working with Palestinian partners to combat the occupation in East Jerusalem.

    “To my knowledge, this is the first time local Jews and Diaspora Jews have put their bodies on the line to prevent the violence of the march of flags from imposing itself on the Palestinian residents of the Old City,” Gale said.

  • #WikiGate” raises questions about Wikipedia’s commitment to open access
    http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/09/wikigate-raises-questions-about-wikipedias-commitment-to-open-access

    Scientific publisher Elsevier has donated 45 free ScienceDirect accounts to “top #Wikipedia editors” to aid them in their work. Michael Eisen, one of the founders of the open access movement, which seeks to make research publications freely available online, tweeted that he was “shocked to see @wikipedia working hand-in-hand with Elsevier to populate encylopedia w/links people cannot access,” and dubbed it “WikiGate.” Over the last few days, a row has broken out between Eisen and other academics over whether a free and open service such as Wikipedia should be partnering with a closed, non-free company such as Elsevier.

    Eisen’s fear is that the free accounts to ScienceDirect will encourage Wikipedia editors to add references to articles that are behind Elsevier’s #paywall. When members of the public seek to follow such links, they will be unable to see the article in question unless they have a suitable subscription to Elsevier’s journals, or they make a one-time payment, usually tens of pounds for limited access.

  • Les Comités locaux de coordination dénoncent la CNS :
    http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2015/08/02/Syrian-anti-regime-group-quits-major-bloc-.html

    A major Syrian anti-regime group, the Local Coordination Committees, announced Saturday it had quit the opposition in exile, accusing it of being undermined by internal conflict and manipulated by foreign powers.

    In a letter to the Syrian National Coalition, the LCC denounced what it termed the SNC’s transformation into “blocs linked to foreign forces”, referring to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.

    “We wish to inform you that the LCC has decided to withdraw officially from the coalition,” the group of activists said in a letter, a copy of which was seen by AFP.

    “We had hoped that this political grouping, of which we are one of the founders, would realize the aspirations of the people and the principles of the revolution for which it has paid an unimaginable price,” the letter said.

    “Unfortunately, we have on several occasions noted its inability to undertake this mission,” added the LCC which through its network of activists across the country has covered events since the beginning of the Syrian crisis in 2011.

  • Ethiopia’s jailing of Zone 9 bloggers has a chilling effect on freedom of expression | World news | The Guardian
    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/27/ethiopia-zone-9-bloggers-jailed-freedom-expression

    “Initially, it was not about political activism or about criticising the government. It was to connect with like-minded people,” said Soliyana Shimeles, 28, one of the founders of the blog Zone 9.

    Today, six of the bloggers are in jail facing terrorism charges in what human rights and press-freedom advocates call an example of an alarming crackdown on government critics.

    The Zone 9 bloggers are accused of “creating serious risk to the safety or health of the public” under the country’s controversial anti-terrorism law passed in 2009. The charges further allege the bloggers were linked to Ginbot 7, an opposition movement based abroad that the government labelled a terrorist group in 2011. The bloggers have pleaded not guilty.

    #Ethiopie #médias #liberté_d'expression #répression

  • How Permaculture Chickens Could Revolutionize Your Entire Property | Community Chickens
    http://www.communitychickens.com/permaculture-chickens-revolutionize-entire-property

    One of the founders of Permaculture design, Bill Mollison, wrote in his book, Introduction To Permaculture, “The core of permaculture is design. Design is a connection between things… Education takes everything and pulls it apart and makes no connections at all. Permaculture makes the connection, because as soon as you’ve got the connection, you can feed the chicken from the tree.”

    Let’s use the chicken for example.

    #permaculture #poules

    • Education takes everything and pulls it apart and makes no connections at all

      C’est pas tant l’éducation que la pensée analytique cartésienne, qui prétend comprendre les choses en les séparant en parts et en comprenant chacune de leurs parts séparément. Par opposition à la pensée synthétique, plus à même de comprendre les écosystèmes et des notions comme celle de propriétés émergentes. Me semble-t-il.

  • LibreOffice makes its case as open source alternative to MS Office
    http://www.cnet.com/news/libreoffice-makes-its-case-as-open-source-alternative-to-ms-offic

    Pas mal un article de PR par libreoffice mais y a des informations intéressantes :

    The latest update comes as the organization behind LibreOffice says that its products are now being used by some 80 million users around the world. In contrast, only 10 million users had downloaded the software by Sept. 2011.

    Executives from The Document Foundation expressed confidence about getting 200 million active users worldwide before the end of the decade. Italo Vignoli, one of the founders of The Document Foundation, also expressed hope that a decision governing the use of open source software by the UK government will prove to be a harbinger of more rapid adoption.

    Les UKs bougent :

    Earlier this week, the United Kingdom finally put in practice a directive that all official office suites must support an open format for documents called ODF. Government officials say the move to standardize around open formats will reduce costs associated with the Office suite and break what they describe as the ’oligopoly’ of IT suppliers. (Or at least one supplier in particular. Wink, wink.)

    Et la document foundation se comporte pas comme la majorité des autres dev libre :

    “The Open Source community has always had a problem with marketing,” Vignoli said. “I think it was a fundamental mistake because if you talk to developers, they’ll tell you that if the product is good, then you don’t need marketing. But that’s the most absurd thing you can say. You need marketing for every product. Even if you don’t use marketing, you need a strategy on how to bring the product to market....you must make the user aware that you’re product is there.”

  • Quantified Self and the ethics of personal data
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2014/06/qs-ethics-of-data

    This year a big unofficial theme of the conference was the importance of #data #privacy and security. The ethics of capturing and manipulating #self-tracked data was mentioned several times during the opening keynotes by Gary Wolf (one of the founders of the Quantified Self Labs). Gary talked about lifelogging as an acceptable activity at the conference during the introductions. However Gary made it clear that if anyone felt uncomfortable about being photographed, a request for privacy should be respected. The stories in the press about Google Glass and the controversies associated with #lifelogging were at the back of everyone’s minds, and nobody wanted to see them repeated.

  • Lebanese Resistance Leader: The Saraya Is Here to Stay | Al Akhbar English
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/lebanese-resistance-leader-saraya-here-stay

    A few weeks ago, the Saida branch of the Lebanese Brigades to Resist the Israeli Occupation launched an internal workshop to strengthen its organizational structure and members’ commitments to Saraya principles. However, the workshop is not set to address accusations against of the group’s "thuggery and assaults.”

    According to Hossam, one of the founders of the group in Saida, the Saraya "is taking the normal path of such organizations when they emerge,” after being forced to postpone due to security concerns, especially the Ahmad al-Assir phenomenon.

    The group does not require the help of Hezbollah to oversee the workshop. “The group is capable of organizing itself,” insisted Hossam. He is a veteran of the leftist resistance, which he joined when he was 16. “I am still a Marxist Leninist and a believer in social justice and armed struggle for people’s liberation,” Hossam said

  • Ruptures with guest John Imad Nasr (29 July 2013) (John, c’est un peu mon cousin quelque part)
    http://rupturedonline.com/2013/08/07/ruptures-with-guest-john-imad-nasr-29-july-2013

    Lebanese musician and producer John Imad Nasr, one of the founders of hip-hop crew Fareeq el Atrash, pursues his regular appearances on Ziad Nawfal’s weekly radio show Ruptures, playing some of his favorite musical cuts from Beirut’s effervescent alternative scene, and beyond.

    http://ruptured.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/ruptures-john-nasr-2-part-1.m4a
    http://ruptured.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/ruptures-john-nasr-2-part-2.m4a

    @opironet, ça pourrait t’intéresser.

  • Israeli commentator: I would give murderous blows to conscientious objectors if allowed
    http://www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/features/updates/6582-israeli-commentator-i-would-give-murderous-blows-to-conscienti

    Israeli analyst and commentator Ben Caspit said he would give “murderous blows” to conscientious objector Natan Blanc, Ishai Menuchin (one of the founders of Yesh Gvul) and other conscientious objectors “if it was permitted”.

    (Ben Caspit est notamment chroniqueur sur Al Monitor.)

  • Mort d’Abu Maher Yamani à Beyrouth.

    The Daily Star - Marxist Palestinian group co-founder Yamani dies
    http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=1&article_id=123265#axzz1A9JKQ7Nv

    One of the founders of the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (P.F.L.P.) Ahmad Yamani died in Beirut at the age of 86, it was announced Tuesday. Yamani, better known as Abu Maher Yamani, was one of the moderate figures of the P.F.L.P. A member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the P.F.L.P. was launched by the late Palestinian leader George Habash in December 1967, and Yamani was considered one of the group’s moderate figures. Abu Maher played a key role in the reconciliation between the Lebanese government and Palestinian factions during Lebanon’s Civil War. He will be buried in Beirut Wednesday.

    Le communiqué du PFLP :
    http://www.pflp.ps/english/?q=pflp-salutes-great-leader-ahmed-hussein-abu-maher-

    The Palestinian masses in every camp and location know of Abu Maher as a solid fighter and a leader who always held the feelings, problems and concerns of the people at the forefront and gave expression of the struggle for return, freedom, dignity and self-detemination.

    The Arab people know of Comrade Abu Maher as a freedom fighter committed to Palestinian and Arab unity as a way to liberate every inch of Palestine and achieve the aspirations of the Arab nation for liberation, democracy, socialism and unity.

    Et un article dans al-Akhbar :
    http://www.al-akhbar.com/?q=node/1169

    #Abu_Maher_Yamani #PFLP #Palestine #Liban