Gaza Tel Aviv-Yafo 2011-2009 Lawrence Wright New Yorker

The Human Scale  
2011-04-04
The Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv hosts The New York Public Theatre with the one-man play:

The Human Scale 
Written and performed by Lawrence Wright
Director: Oskar Eustis
Lighting: Deb Sullivan; Video design: Aaron Harrow; Sound: Matt Hubbs; Scenic consultant: David Korins

In the spring of 2009 Pulitzer prizewinning journalist Lawrence Wright of The New Yorker approached the magazine's editor, David Remnick, and asked if he could write an article about the likelihood of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Most editors would have jumped at the chance of publishing an article by such a well known and admired writer, and on this particular subject - but The New Yorker wasn't crazy about the idea. "I wanted to write about the prospects of a two-state solution," Wright said in an interview, "but David didn't seem too excited. He said, ‘Why don't you write about Gaza?'"
So began Wright's trip to the region in the summer of 2009. The result was a 12,000-word story published in The New Yorker in November, at the height of the controversy over the Goldstone report, which concluded that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes in the course of Operation Cast Lead.

That article, entitled "Captives: What really happened during the Israeli attacks," has been transformed into a one-man play, written and performed by Wright, in a co-production with The Public Theater and 3-Legged Dog.
The Human Scale, directed by The Public Theatre's artistic director Oskar Eustis, gained critical acclaim in the United States. In it Wright presents his worldview on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in recent years, and explains how the parties reached the present impasse which he argues began with the abduction of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.
Like the article, the play sheds new light on both parties. "There's a dehumanization of the other side that makes it impossible to see things from another perspective," Wright said. "My goal was to try to enlarge the vision of both sides."
"In this efficient and engrossing 90-minute seminar on history both current and ancient, Mr. Wright trains his understandably wary attention [...] on the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians With a scholarly but sympathetic manner and a soothing voice that has just a hint of a Texas twang in it, Mr. Wright sheds a sharp light on this sorrowful subject, drawing on his own visit to Gaza."
The New York Times
The play will be performed with English with Hebrew sur-titles
Duration: 90 minutes with no intermission.
18-21 May - Cameri 4

Nazareth 13 May 2011 The double siege facing Palestinians in Israel

The double siege facing Palestinians in Israel

Abir Kopty, Friday 13 May 2011 AhramOnline

It is time for the Arab youth to break down all walls, including walls separating ’48 Arabs from the rest of the Arab world

I am from Nazareth. I’m Palestinian, one of the 1.3 million Palestinians known to many as “’48 Arabs”. I belong to the forgotten part of the Palestinian nation, who fought for decades to keep our “identity” (haweyyi) and our baqaa —call it our “right to remain”.

We did not immigrate or choose to live in Israel. It was Israel that emigrated to us. We remained on our lands and are still fighting against our transfer from our homeland.

And so we had Israeli citizenship imposed on us.

We hold the Israeli passport, which we did not choose as well. In fact, we had no other choice. It was either we give up and leave to join our brothers and sisters in refugee camps who were forced to leave during the Nakba, or we stay and stick to our lands and identity as the remaining part of the Arab Palestinian people.

We wrote back in the early 1980s in what we call the “document of the banned assembly” (referring to its ban by Israeli authorities): “We did not deny and we can’t deny, even if we are faced with death, our deep-rooted origin: we are alive, consciousand active part ofthe Palestinian Arab people.” This is who we are.

My generation, the third generation of the Nakba, maintained to hold this torch, we insist on our Palestinian identity, resist Israeli policies and refuse to be second-class citizens in Israel.

Yet since the establishment of the Israeli state we have been segregated by Israel in order to cut our relationship with our Arab world, and more importantly alienated by the Arab world, perceived as spies and traitors. For decades we did not have direct means to communicate with the Arab world. We were in a double-siege and our story did not come through for a long time. For decades we have not been allowed to visit Arab countries; today we have access to few of them. Even for those countries we are allowed to enter, we are automatic suspects due to the Israeli passport we hold. It is as if we are blamed for the Jewish militias who occupied Palestine, displaced our families and destroyed our villages, and built their country on our lands.

Today, we look with admiration at our Arab peers in Arab countries who are demanding freedom and dignity; we pay respect to thousands of freedom martyrs. We follow minute by minute the Arab revolutions, share videos and information and praise their courage. A group of young local singers dedicated a special song they wrote and filmed to the Tunisian revolution; it was circulated widely through social media. When Mubarak stepped down, we took to the streets to celebrate as if it was our own revolution. We demonstrate regularly in Nazareth and other places to support and show solidarity with Libyans, Syrians, Bahrainis and Yemenis. We communicate with friends from the Arab world through new media —we share the same values.

These revolutions have given us the hope we were about to lose. We have been also struggling for decades for our freedom, to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine, to end Israeli racism and discrimination. You probably do not know that we are the makers of the “Land Day” which Palestinians and many Arabs worldwide commemorate. You probably do not know that the song “Unadikom” that you all know by heart was written by our poet and political leader, the late Tawfik Zayyad, who is from Nazareth. You probably did not know that poets like Samih Kasem and Mahmoud Darwish are from “’48 Palestine”.

During the Egyptian revolution I happened to be in Cairo. I was privileged to witness Egyptian people writing history. I felt thrilled to be part of this. And I would also say, like many Egyptians underlined, this revolution has changed my life. At the same time, I understood how much my story was unknown to many Egyptians, and how much my passport was a burden. Since then, I applied for visa to visit Cairo again; it was rejected twice, without any explanation.

I believe it is about time to break the siege that Arab regimes and their media imposed on us. We call on our peers, the generation of Arab youth, to help us break down the walls that have been separating us. We are not traitors and not spies, “we are alive,consciousand active part ofthe Palestinian Arab people”. We are proud Arabs, exactly like you, and thanks to you!

The writer is a Palestinian political activist, media consultant and analyst.

http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/11995.aspx

Lod 29 March 2011 Some 1,500 Israeli Arabs take part in Land Day protest in Lod - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

Some 1,500 Israeli Arabs take part in Land Day protest in Lod - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

Some 1,500 Israeli Arabs take part in Land Day protest in Lod

Demonstrators protest against government demolitions of illegal houses in Lod, other 'racist' government policies, burn pictures of Lieberman and carry signs reading 'Enough with the Ethnic Cleansing.'

By Gili Cohen and Haaretz Service Tags: Israel news

Some 1,500 Israeli Arabs protested in Lod on Tuesday against government policies which affect Israel's Arab sector, launching the events of Land Day, to be marked on Wednesday.

The protesters were demonstrating against the government demolition of the houses of the Abu Eid family, which left some 50 family members, 30 of them children, without a home.

The protesters raised Palestinian flags, carried signs reading "Enough with the Ethnic Cleansing" and burned pictures of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Israeli Arab Knesset members and Jewish residents of mixed cities also participated in the protest.

Ibrahim Abu Saluk, a member of the Popular Committee in Lod, condemned the burning of Lieberman's photo saying, "This is not the point of the protest, and whoever did that did it on his own accord. We want to show that the policy of demolitions is not the solution."

Abu Saluk emphasized that the main reason for the protest was to demonstrate against the demolition of houses in Lod.

"This problem requires an urgent solution," Abu Saluk said. "The authorities report 1,600 illegal houses throughout the city of Lod, and if they carry out the demolitions the same way they did with the Abu Eid family, a serious humanitarian problem will emerge. There is a problem here and the authorities are ignoring it. People are living here as though they were in a refugee camp."

On Land Day, which is marked on March 30, Israel's Arab citizens protest the expropriation of their lands by the government.

The first Land Day protests were held on March 30, 1976, to protest government expropriation of Galilee land for "security and settlement purposes." Those protests deteriorated into violent clashes with security forces, leaving six Israeli Arab protesters dead.

More on this topic

• Police brace for possible Israeli Arab unrest on Land Day

World 2011 Cyber Word AE2011

Inside Outside.
I want to describe and share my experience Wednesday  March 9th  2011 and itś Implications.
For the first time I was at Cinema City Mall Rishon Lezion which is very New Mall.
IBM invited us to an hours presentation of IBM Software Group with a lot of talk about Cloud Technology.
After that we saw "True Grit" the Cohen Brothers film on a very Large Screen and all the sound Effects.
When I arrived at the "City" it was rain and stormy weather. Inside we were  cut off from the Outside News and Weather. Fully Air Conditioning and Heating. It was very Middle Class and I would say Upper Middle Class With big parking lots. You did not have too spend any Money but there are many attractions.
Now True Grit is very much Cowboyś and Indians period. But Texas is Texas and USA Federalism is basically the same for over 200 years. Texas is still very different to Massachusetts New York Chicago and California.
But I think the Cohen's (Coen's) are hinting on Present Law and Order, Lawlessness Power Violence and Politics Today. Karl Marx thought a revolution would happen in GB or Germany and he did not live to see it in Russia. All that Collapsed in 1989. Now we are going through the "Arab 1989" as some call it but the end results are not clear following the 2009 Crunch. And the Implications on the rest of the World, India, Pakistan and China too.
Inside I mean also those humans kept in Prison for Long Periods and In General living in "Bubbles".
Uncle Sam

Information technology in transition: The end of Wintel | The Economist

Information technology in transition: The end of Wintel | The Economist

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Information technology in transition

The end of Wintel

As Microsoft and Intel move apart, computing becomes multipolar

Jul 29th 2010

THEY were the Macbeths of information technology (IT): a wicked couple who seized power and abused it in bloody and avaricious ways. Or so critics of Microsoft and Intel used to say, citing the two firms’ supposed love of monopoly profits and dead rivals. But in recent years, the story has changed. Bill Gates, Microsoft’s founder, has retired to give away his billions. The “Wintel” couple (short for “Windows”, Microsoft’s flagship operating system, and “Intel”) are increasingly seen as yesterday’s tyrants. Rumours persist that a coup is brewing to oust Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s current boss.

Yet there is life in the old technopolists. They still control the two most important standards in computing: Windows, the operating system for most personal computers, and “Intel Architecture”, the set of rules governing how software interacts with the processor it runs on. More than 80% of PCs still run on the “Wintel” standard. Demand for Windows and PC chips, which flagged during the global recession, has recovered. So have both firms’ results: to many people’s surprise, Microsoft announced a thumping quarterly profit of $4.5 billion in July; Intel earned an impressive $2.9 billion.

So now is a good time to take stock of IT’s most hated power couple. As The Economist went to press, Intel was on track to reach a settlement with America’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which would in effect end the antitrust woes that have plagued both firms. And Microsoft has recently strengthened its ties with ARM, Intel’s new archrival. This suggests that the Wintel marriage is crumbling.

Critics have often questioned both firms’ technological prowess. Yet Windows 7, the latest version of Microsoft’s operating system, is excellent, and customers have snapped it up. As for Intel, its manufacturing machine is peerless. Some of its transistors are so tiny that 2m would fit on the “.” at the end of this sentence.

Both firms have often co-operated, despite occasional crockery-throwing. Microsoft has been pushier: in the mid-1990s, for instance, Mr Gates leaned heavily on Andy Grove, Intel’s boss, to stop the development of software that trod on Windows’ turf. Intel backed down.

2010 Tel Aviv-Yafo - Chicago 1999

8th August 2010 Tel Aviv reminded me of Chicago 1999.
In Chicago when I went to most McDonalds and asked for a meal without French Fries- Chips they did not understand me as most of the workers where from Mexico.
In Tel-Aviv August 2010 escaping the Sticky Weather I found the same.
The Boss's are Israeli and all the Regular Workers are from all over the
World and do not speak Hebrew, sometimes English.
This is happening very fast.
Clothes are Cheap when Food is expensive. And Rent of Course.

2010 Egypt: A special report on Egypt: The best man always wins | The Economist

A special report on Egypt: The best man always wins | The Economist

ONE of the endearing things about Egypt is that although nearly everyone fiddles, breaks or ignores the rules, everyone gamely pretends to respect them. Elections, for instance, are an elaborate charade. Rarely does turnout exceed 20%, and this from a list of registered voters that, in 2005, covered only 40% of the eligible pool, by official count. Few people register because the legal period for doing so is short and comes many months before elections. Besides, registration involves a visit to a police station, which many Egyptians prefer to avoid. Foreign election observers are banned. The parties allowed to run for the People’s Assembly, Egypt’s parliament, are selected by a committee controlled by the ever-ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), which is headed by Mr Mubarak. Independents can stand, which is how the Muslim Brothers, banned as an organisation, field their candidates. But they risk arrest on some pretext, and harassment even without one.
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