Category Archives: Viva!

Schmidt’s School Sabotaged: A Call for President Abbas to Save the Heritage of Jerusalem


Since my call to the officials of Germany and the PA did not actually work, I at this moment address my pleas to President Mahmoud Abbas. I do genuinely feel helpless. I usually wonder about those call for help for someone who is sick or arrested or needs help in a crucial matter. This matter for me is no different. This is a direct theft of our heritage. To my memories. To a culture of education that I continue to be proud in front of my children. To an identity that not only reflects me, shapes me but makes me. Schmidt’s has never been just a school. It is an essential component of Jerusalem’s heritage. I am not exaggerating when I say that it means to me what the holy sepulcher and the dome of the rock mean to me. An integral part of my being.

I would not say I felt disappointed by the reaction of the administration of the school, or those new people who seem to be working for the school now, or the passivity in responses of people. A passerby would think, why to care for some mummified animals when a whole village is destroyed a few kilometers afar. Why care when all the city is being Israelized. Why bother when the entire world is watching the killings, the violations, the theft of land, the expansions of settlements, the expulsion of people. Why care about a museum that no one outside your own memory knows about?

It is because it is part of my memory, my personal mind. The memory of a hundred years of successive students, graduates, families, educators, that took part in the building of the society through this school. Ambassadors, CEOs, Representatives, Ministers, Physicians, Scholars, Scientists came out of this school. Every single thing related to this place is part of our upbringing, our history, our heritage, our culture, our struggle, and our existence… an existence that we seek to maintain from extinction, from forgery, from expulsion, and from deformation.

The administration fo the school represented by its board of directors wrote an announcement saying the following shallow statement: “about the allegations that the school donated the collection of stuffed animals by father Schmidt to the Museum of Natural History at Tel Aviv University: Schmidt’s Girls College does not own this collection. IT thus could not donate or lease this collection to anyone. ”

So if the school does not own it, and I, of course, agree with this, because this is a school owned by us, its students and its graduates. Its families and its teachers. IT is us who created and continue to build this school. Unless it is one of us who donated these belongings, which of course did not happen, and the school who is not the owner as they claim to the belongings that resided for more than a hundred years inside its building, in a basement that was designed as a museum for decades and decades. Then who did this?

The museum contents were stolen? Where leaked? What happened?

Who gave whoever did this the authorization to move antiquities from the school’s museum. If this did not belong to the school and the locals, then it belongs to the Palestinian authority in the form of education offices, or archaeology to the least, which the school administration very much know about?

They could have consulted al Quds university who have an archaeology and tourism department, or their Environment and species-saving department, by the way, all these are in the campus of Jerusalem not in Abu dees only.

Dr. MAzen Qumsiyyeh has created a nature museum precisely like this kind of museum to preserve Palestinian environmental heritage, and the museum is in excellent coordination with Palestinian universities and is hosted by the coordination of Bethlehem University. We are not out of options.

The Palestinian Museum, the prominent centers for heritage through the country …

Donating the museum belongings to the Tel Aviv University is a violation to all norms that hold up to the Palestinian identity of this city.

If the school sees itself outside this part of representing Palestinian localities, then let us have an announcement about that.

This school has gained its reputation based on the generations of graduates that represent my generations. If the new administration of the school defines itself differently, it is our right as graduates and as current students, and thus as parents and as a community to know the truth about this new administration.

I still call for the German Representative and Officials to respond to my appeal.

Please sign and spread the petition … maybe we can all become part of pressuring the nonstoppable injustice befalling on this city.

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Angela_Merkel_Anita_Schavan_Rami_Hamdalah_S_Saydam_K_Deibes_P_Beerwerth_Save_Schmidts_School_in_Jerusalem_from_Sabotage/?rc=fb&utm_source=sharetools&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=petition-537008-Angela_Merkel_Anita_Schavan_Rami_Hamdalah_S_Saydam_K_Deibes_P_Beerwerth_Save_Schmidts_School_in_Jerusalem_from_Sabotage&utm_term=cwMmnb%2Ben&fbogname=nadia

Extremist ‘pastor’ who harassed people at mosques likely to be deported

boor and dangerous fool

1400.jpg?w=300&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&f

New Zealand national Logan Robertson is being held in immigration detention as final decision is awaited

An extremist self-styled pastor, who harassed people at two Brisbane mosques, is likely to be deported after being arrested overnight.

The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, said Logan Robertson, a New Zealand national, was taken into custody on Friday evening and had been placed in detention.

Continue reading…

‘I was shocked it was so easy’: ​meet the professor who says facial recognition ​​can tell if you’re gay

The phrenoligists have a friend – and AI propaganda blossoms.

5716.jpg?w=300&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&f

Psychologist Michal Kosinski says artificial intelligence can detect your sexuality and politics just by looking at your face. What if he’s right?

Vladimir Putin was not in attendance, but his loyal lieutenants were. On 14 July last year, the Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, and several members of his cabinet convened in an office building on the outskirts of Moscow. On to the stage stepped a boyish-looking psychologist, Michal Kosinski, who had been flown from the city centre by helicopter to share his research. “There was Lavrov, in the first row,” he recalls several months later, referring to Russia’s foreign minister. “You know, a guy who starts wars and takes over countries.” Kosinski, a 36-year-old assistant professor of organisational behaviour at Stanford University, was flattered that the Russian cabinet would gather to listen to him talk. “Those guys strike me as one of the most competent and well-informed groups,” he tells me. “They did their homework. They read my stuff.”

Kosinski’s “stuff” includes groundbreaking research into technology, mass persuasion and artificial intelligence (AI) – research that inspired the creation of the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica. Five years ago, while a graduate student at Cambridge University, he showed how even benign activity on Facebook could reveal personality traits – a discovery that was later exploited by the data-analytics firm that helped put Donald Trump in the White House.

Continue reading…

Trump ‘will empower the Kremlin’ if he continues to undermine Nato

2634.jpg?w=300&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&f

Sir Malcolm Rifkind says Theresa May should warn the US leader on his UK visit of consequences of weakening alliance

Theresa May should tell Donald Trump during his visit to Britain this week that he will wreck his own mission to “make America great again”, and instead empower the Kremlin, if he continues to undermine Nato, the former Tory foreign secretary, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, has said.

Senior UK politicians and diplomats believe the next 10 days of international diplomacy – during which the US president will also attend a Nato summit in Brussels and hold talks with President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki – will be vital in determining the future strength of the western alliance as a bulwark against Russian aggression.

Continue reading…

Tit For Tat Tariffs

Even if you are a Repub you know that Trump has fired the shots of a tit for tat tariff war with China first and others to come…..and China will not roll over for Trump……

The United States hiked tariffs on Chinese imports Friday and Beijing announced it was retaliating against American goods in a technology dispute between the world’s two biggest economies that President Trump says he is prepared to escalate. Washington imposed 25% tariffs on $34 billion worth of Chinese imports, a first step in what could become an accelerating series of tariffs. Retaliatory measures “took effect immediately,” said a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Lu Kang. Hu gave no details, but the Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily said the customs agency was carrying out a plan announced last month to impose 25% tariffs on a $34 billion list of American goods including soybeans, pork, and electric cars, reports the AP.

The AP reports the first exchange of tariffs is unlikely to inflict much economic harm on either nation. Indeed, Asian financial markets took Friday’s developments in stride. Japan’s main stock index, the Nikkei 225, gained 1.1% while the Shanghai Composite Index added 0.5%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.8%. But President Trump said Thursday that he’s prepared to impose tariffs on up to $550 billion in Chinese imports—a figure that exceeds the $506 billion in goods that China actually shipped to the United States last year. Escalating tariffs would likely raise prices for consumers, inflate costs for companies that rely on imported parts, rattle financial markets, cause some layoffs, and slow business investment. A full-fledged trade war, economists warn, risks tipping the US economy into recession. See the AP for more, including the impacts the tariffs have already had .

I feel this is all just a feel good war…..there will be NO winners…..just workers losing…..

I would think that if someone was a graduate of the Wharton School they would understand the complexities of a trade war….but then I could be mistaken and Wharton does not teach such things.

The EU will be next on the targets of the Trump Tariff Train…..

Int trade4.jpg

Khan al Ahmar…another daily struggle for being Palestinians

 

For anyone who knows the area, Khan al Ahmar area is more of a trademark to those who go to Jericho or need to use the path to the south towards the dead sea or the north towards Tiberias.

The Bedouin community in that area has been historically residing there. My memories as a child and as an adult continue to see the tents, the tanks, the yards, and the sheep, donkeys and often camels wondering there.

I remember the excitement I the child in me when we passed through the road to see a flock of sheep or a camel in the horizon of the cliff. I continued this habit of excitement as I became a mother, with me the only excited person to see a flock of animals at the seams of the scene.

As Bedouins and their living styles may not be the most appealing image to urban people. They are by all means a natural part of the collective blend of the Palestinian society.

For the last, Bedouin almost two decades the communities in the Khan al Ahmar bedouin families struggled to survive in front a not stoppable attempt to transfer them. While roads and settlements were enslaving their peaceful living for so many decades, they managed to survive.. hardly, with the support of the international community and the locals who continued to support them with minimal aids. Not as a result of the shortage in money or resources, but because of the obstacles and restraints the Israeli government put on them.

In the dreamy time of Oslo, this nightmare was supposed to be handed to Palestinians, something that naturally falls in the 22 percent of future Palestine they agreed upon leaving to us. …well today we are aiming for 2 percent of sovereignty around the Muqata’a in Ramallah.

It is easy to convince the world that some chunks of metal for bedouins are better replaced with traditional buildings somewhere else..after all, they are Bedouin. However, the reality is entirely different. It is about identity, a way of living. Being a Bedouin means being exposed to space. The offers are boxes in comparison to how these people are used to live. It is a way to suffocate them and hence, another way in ethnic cleansing a nation with its different layers.

The EU, the Italians, the French, the Spanish and a long list of countries were involved in saving the Khan al Ahmar along the last decades. Maneuvering sometimes, and playing around other times, and trying to knock on the walls of the system many other times with Palestinians. Building a school for the five communities that live there, continued to be a struggle, in a place where no permits are allowed, and ring roads and settlements and checkpoints are surrounding them and blocking access tot he closest school in the area. The children have to walk around ten kilometers a day to go back and forth to the school at the entrance of Jericho.

A final demolition order to the village was released amid the mess in the surrounding, Ramallah is busy waiting for a new president, and new blocks of negotiations are taking place int he lounges of hotels and offices. Gaza is busy collecting wounded and deceased people while starving to death from lack of resources and brutal blockade. Jerusalem is swinging between Judaization and Israelization, and Kushner is spinning in the area while Trump is blocking the border in his district.

Why would the world feel sympathy for a Palestinian child beaten brutally or watching his parents lynched and prisoned or shot , when children on the borders of the immigration to States are facing the same treatment … in one way or another.. after all Israel has the right to defend itself from Palestinian children and families who are by nature terrorists!.

The struggle in Khan al Ahmar was halted for a week. An achievement amid the brutality of demolitions. A break the Israeli government is making to allow demonstrators and media with their cameras to turn their backs.

A struggle that will not end as long as the opponent is an occupation that has one mission in mind… ethnic cleansing.