independence

 you cannot live your life on the basis of what other people think you should do, because when the chips are down, nobody really cares. You're giving them a power they don't really have.  roger ebert on a bronx tale

10-year-old Palestinian Boy's Arrest by Israeli Troops

Gideon Levy Chilling Testimony From a 10-year-old Palestinian Boy's Arrest by Israeli Troops
In hot pursuit of masked youths in a Palestinian town, soldiers arrested, handcuffed and blindfolded 10-year-old Qusay al-Jaar, then took him away to be interrogated. He, his father and cousin recall the ordeal

Gideon Levy and Alex Levac Nov 08, 2019 10:07 AM, Haaretz

He’s a fifth-grader, 10 years old, with a speech impediment that constantly hampers him. He is the eldest of the four siblings in his family. Their home is small and cramped, located deep within the town of Beit Ummar, between Bethlehem and Hebron. It’s a town that evokes a feeling of despair, just upon entering it: There is a fortified guard tower, an iron barrier that is sometimes manned and sometimes not, a narrow road, neglect, commotion and filth. Merging onto Highway 60 is dangerous, almost impossible. But who needs a proper intersection with traffic lights? This is a Palestinian town, after all.

Wearing a black shirt, Qusay al-Jaar has a child’s captivating smile. His mother, Hitam, sits next to us in the small living room. The father, Ibrahim, works in construction in Israel.

On Friday, October 18, Qusay, together with a cousin, 17-year-old Rami, helped Ibrahim clear rocks from the roof of their one-story house, in order to put in flooring. The work involved filling pails with the rocks and taking them downstairs. Qusay would took the pails by bike to a place behind the house, where other construction debris was dumped. They began work in the morning: Being Friday, there was no school.

Sometime around 6 P.M., they noticed two young masked people running down the street outside, an army jeep in hot pursuit. With their disguises, Qusay and his cousin couldn’t identify the two, who fled into the alleyways, the vehicle behind them.

 few minutes later, the jeep returned, without having caught the masked people, and stopped next to Qusay, who was standing outside with his bike. Four Israel Defense Forces soldiers got out, grabbed Qusay by his shirt and dragged him forcefully into the vehicle. His mother and father shouted and tried to approach the jeep to free him. The troops fired into the air and hurled tear-gas canisters. Hitam was fearful for her son and for the safety of two of her other children, Ruya, her 3-year-old daughter, and the 18-month-old Umar, who were also on the roof at the time.

Ibrahim al-Jaar gave the following testimony to Musa Abu Hashhash, a field researcher for B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization: “I was removing debris from the roof of my house ahead of tiling. My nephew, Rami, who’s 17, and my son Qusay, 10, were helping me. They each got a pail from me, which they emptied near the house. Qusay carried the pail on his bike and then came back for another load. While this was going on, with me on the roof of the house, I saw two masked children running on the street nearby. I saw a jeep driving fast and figured it was pursuing the two of them.

“I went on working. After about five minutes the jeep returned and stood across from the house. Four or five soldiers got out. I saw Rami and Qusay standing next to the house. Two of the troops snatched Qusay quickly and pushed him into the jeep, and one of them shut the door. When I saw that, I jumped down from the roof. One of two soldiers fired two shots in the air. I saw Rami trying to approach the back part of the jeep; he tried to pull Qusay out. The soldiers kicked Rami hard in the stomach and shouted at him. I pulled Rami away and tried to calm him down.

“Very quickly women from the neighborhood arrived, and also my wife, Hitam, and she tried to intervene. My wife started to cry and begged the soldiers to release the boy. The soldiers threw stun grenades and tear gas, and then got into the jeep and drove away toward [the settlement of] Karmei Tzur. I had tried to explain to them that the boy is my son and that he was working with me; the soldiers spoke in Hebrew and ordered me to back off and shut up. I tried more than once to get close to the jeep, and my wife also tried, in order to get Qusay back, and then one of the soldiers fired a shot in the air.

“I calculated that the jeep was going to the military base next to Karmei Tzur. I went there with my two brothers, Mahmoud and Maher. The soldiers allowed only me inside. I saw Qusay, his hands bound in front and blindfolded, sitting on a chair, crying and scared.

“I stood near Qusay. There was a soldier – not one of the ones who arrested him – who asked him about his friends and people who throw stones. I tried to intervene, but the soldier ordered me not to. He asked Qusay about older friends, and Qusay told him he doesn’t have any older friends. The soldier said he was looking for an older boy named Abdallah. I intervened more than once during Qusay’s interrogation. The interrogating soldier said that he wouldn’t stop asking questions until Qusay gave him the names of the stone throwers.

“The soldier questioned me about the two minors who ran past the house before Qusay’s arrest. I told him that I didn’t know them and that both were masked. I heard Qusay tell the soldier that he wanted to go back home. The soldier told him he would be able to go back, but that he was waiting for an order. Qusay was released at 9:30 P.M. and I went home with him. Qusay was frightened and confused, and I tried to calm him down. A few relatives and neighbors came over to welcome us. After he ate supper he went to sleep. During the last few nights he’s been waking up suddenly and looking all around.”

The cousin’s testimony: “I am Rami Alami and I live with my family in Beit Ummar – my parents are not alive. I am in the 11th grade. On Friday morning, I went to my uncle’s house to help remove covering from the roof of his house. At around 6 P.M., while we were working, I saw an army jeep driving fast along the road close to us. I thought they were chasing two young people (minors). The masked people ran along the road before the jeep arrived. Five minutes later, the jeep came back and stood under the house. Qusay was close to me, with his bike. Without asking a question, four soldiers got out. Two went over to Qusay and one of them grabbed him by the shirt collar and pulled him toward the jeep. I heard and saw Qusay crying and shouting, ‘I didn’t do anything.’

“Just then, I saw Ibrahim jump from the roof to the ground. He started to talk to the soldiers and told them that Qusay was a minor and that he had been working with him. He tried to pull his son away, but then a soldier fired a shot in the air. Qusay’s mother, my aunt, also came out and tried to get close to her son and pull him away, but one of the two soldiers pushed her and kept her from approaching. Some women and neighbors gathered around and tried to get closer. One of the soldiers threw tear gas and stun grenades to disperse them. I also tried to get close to the jeep and pull Qusay out. One of the soldiers kicked me twice, once in the stomach and once in the leg, and threatened to shoot if I tried it again.

“One soldier quickly shut the back door of the jeep. Qusay was still crying inside. The other soldiers got in and drove off in the direction of Karmei Tzur. I saw Ibrahim and his brothers getting into a vehicle and understood that they had decided to catch up with Qusay. I knew they [the troops] were sending him to the military base near Karmei Tzur.

“I waited at my aunt’s house until 9 o’clock, in the hope that Qusay would return, but decided to go home. I was tired and went to sleep early. I found out in the morning that Qusay had been released at 9:30 and that he was back home. I learned that a soldier had accused him of throwing stones and had questioned him about whether he knew the names of the children who threw stones.”

Qusay’s testimony: “On Friday I was helping my dad… Around 6 o’clock that evening, when I was carrying a pail on my bike, an army jeep passed the house going fast. Before that, I saw two masked children running along the road. One of them was wearing a green shirt that was the same color as my shirt. After a few minutes the jeep came back and pulled up next to our house. I had enough time to get on my bike and stand next to Rami. Four soldier got out of the jeep fast. Two came toward me and one of them pulled me by my shirt into the jeep. I saw Dad jump off the roof and he started to talk to the soldiers. I heard the sound of a bullet fired in the air.

“The door of the jeep was open. Mom came out of the house and tried to approach me. She asked the soldiers to let me go and [told them] that I was a minor and hadn’t done anything. I saw a soldier push her and not let her stand there. My cousin, Rami, tried to get closer, and then the soldier kicked him and pushed him away from the jeep. I saw and heard women and men around the jeep who were trying to help me and were talking to the army people. Suddenly I heard the sound of stun grenades and smelled [tear] gas. The soldiers got in fast and the jeep headed toward the settlement. I was scared and I cried the whole time. I said I didn’t do anything. One soldier covered my eyes in the jeep and put metal handcuffs on me. After a few minutes they took me out and put me on a chair next to an army tower.

“A soldier came over to me and pulled the blindfold up and started to ask me if I threw stones, and I said I didn’t. I told him I was helping Dad take things off the roof. The soldier asked me to repeat what I said, because I have a speech problem. After half an hour Dad got there and stood by my side. The soldier was still asking me and kept on asking me. He asked me about my friends and their names and ages. I told him that my friends are in my class. He said he wanted older friends. He also asked me to give him names of people who throw stones and I answered him that I don’t know a single one.

“After my father got there, the soldier took the handcuffs off my hands, after I told him they were too tight. I saw the soldier asking my father questions about the people who throw stones in the neighborhood. I kept on sitting in the chair the whole time.

“After 9 o’clock, I heard the soldier tell Dad that I was getting released and sent home and that he was waiting for an order on the phone. After a few minutes they let me go. I went home with Dad and with my uncles, who were waiting outside. A little bit after I got there I went to sleep, I was very tired. During the arrest I was very scared and I cried all the time. I only stopped crying when Dad came to the place where I was under arrest.”

The IDF Spokesman’s Office told Haaretz in response that the incident is now under investigation.

According to B’Tselem, at the end of August, a total of 185 Palestinian minors (under age 18) were incarcerated in Israeli prisons, two of them under the age of 14. In the past few years, the number of children and teens imprisoned by Israel has ranged between 180 and 400 at any given time.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-chilling-testimony-from-a-10-year-old-palestinian-boy-s-arrest-by-israeli-troops-1.8095912

Nagen

Rabbi Yakov Nagen Interview part 2- Torah Study, Zohar, and Interfaith

by Alan Brill

The first, the Brisker approach, views the Torah as divine and eternal in which the
Torah is abstract and autonomous, and thereby disjoint from life and reality.
The Torah being alienated from the nature flow of life is, in most aspects, a Brisker
dogma and ideal. They created a closed language of lamdanut, denigration
of “baalabatish” reasoning, and seeing a divide between how people think and
how the Torah thinks. They view the Torah as devoid of emotional or human
elements, thus claiming that the mitzvot lack reasons. 

Microsoft

The Truth about Bill Gates and why most of the super wealthy don't earn their money
https://www.quora.com/Is-Bill-Gates-evil

Bill Gates is a thief and robber baron on a massive scale not seen since the late 1800s. He didn’t actually invent “any” of the technologies you are referring to… almost all of those technologies existed decades before Microsoft was founded. The underlying structure of Windows and all related Microsoft products was invented by US universities using public (government-provided) funds; or by IBM; or by Xerox in their Palo Alto Research Center (also known as Xerox PARC).

What Bill Gates “did” do, is incorporate those technologies into software his company made - and then took advantage of general computer illiteracy to hoodwink the US Patent Office into approving patents for his products. Although others had built operating system before Gates, using the same underlying technologies, no one else tried to patent those technologies before because it’s not legal to copyright publicly-funded work performed at universities.

He then sued every one of his competitors, using funds leveraged by borrowing from his VERY rich parents (No Bill Gates is not a rags-to-riches success story in any way. He was born extremely wealthy and would have died super-rich even if he never earned a penny on his own.); or else obtained by other means that many courts have repeatedly determined to be fraudulent.

He literally out-lawyered and out-spent smaller competitors - most of whom had legitimate claims to their intellectual property that he simply stole by incorporating it into his own products without any acknowledgement or payment - until they went out of business because of the cost of legal battles.

He then entered into a partnership with IBM to build PC’s for them… and stole the computer code and related technologies IBM built for the “OS/1” and “OS/2” products. He then entered into a partnership with NeXt Computing and did the same thing to them - Microsoft’s lawyers are the primary reason NeXt went out of business, even though NeXt built much better products than anyone else at the time (including the first color GUI and first integration with the mouse for commercial use). He stole most of the code for Office products by copyrighting work of US universities or much-smaller commercial competitors; and then suing those same universities or business competitors until they gave up their patents or granted nearly-free licensing rights to Microsoft (universities); or went out of business (smaller competitors).

In reality, Microsoft didn’t invent any of the code or hardware innovations underlying windows and office and related products. For example:

The mouse was invented as a taxpayer funded research project in 1962 while Bill Gates was still in elementary school. Plug-and-play hardware & software was invented in 1969 while Gates was still in high school. The base code for the windows operating system graphical interface (GUI) was invented in 1970, several years before Microsoft came into being as a company. Colorized GUIs with fully integrated keyboard, mouse, plug-in play hardware, and portable CPU and screen - were invented in 1974. This was before Microsoft came into being as a company, while Gates was still a college sophomore. Email software was invented in the mid-1960s. HTML was invented in the late 1960s. GUI email software was invented in the early 1970s. GUI spreadsheet software was invented in the mid-1970s. Etc, etc… all well before Microsoft was formed as a company, mostly while Bill Gates was still in elementary or high school. What you may not be aware of is that Bill Gates owns many media companies and multiple news outlets. Gates spent a very large fortune planting old-media and internet news stories touting his genius and philanthropy. The sum total of all Bm Gates’ charitable contributions amount to less than 2.3% of his enormous wealth.

There’s a gold-plated train to hell reserved for people like Bill Gates.

Rural_squirrel

Speaking as an older computer guy who lived through the era of Microsoft's rise: this is mostly wrong. Although I agree that Microsoft was not very innovative, nearly all of the details are wrong.

Microsoft did not get big by using patents. That never happened. Microsoft also did not steal "the computer code and related technologies IBM built for the “OS/1” and “OS/2” products." There never was even a thing called "OS/1".

Microsoft started out by selling a BASIC interpreter to microcomputer manufacturers. Then they sold other products to consumers and manufactures, many related to programming languages.

When IBM wanted to get into the PC business, it went looking for a partner to create an operating system for the new computer. IBM approached Gary and Dorothy Kildall of Digital Research, the creators of CP/M, which was the leading operating system for 8-bit microcomputers. The Kildalls famously would not agree to IBM's terms, at first even refusing to sign the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) so that they could negotiate in secret (and not let IBM's competitors know that they were creating a PC). Kildall also said that he couldn't have a 16-bit operating system ready by the time IBM wanted it.

IBM then made a deal with Bill Gates. Microsft purchased the rights to 86-DOS (also called QDOS) from Seattle Computer Products. Microsoft also hired the programmer who wrote 86-DOS. This was the basis for PC-DOS, as IBM called the operating system, and MS-DOS, Microsoft's version of the operating system sold for other systems.

Microsoft also made a deal with Apple (the writer is apparently confusing NeXT with Apple) to create software for their new Macintosh system and to get the right to use elements of the Macintosh system in their own products. Microsoft created Windows from that. Apple later sued Microsoft: "Apple had agreed to license certain parts of its GUI to Microsoft for use in Windows 1.0, but when Microsoft made changes in Windows 2.0 adding overlapping windows and other features found in the Macintosh GUI, Apple filed suit. Apple added additional claims to the suit when Microsoft released Windows 3.0."

This lawsuit was a huge overreach on Apple's part, both from a contractual standpoint (their claim centering around the contract's grants of rights on "derivative works") and, more importantly, their claim that copyright law covered the overall "look and feel" of programs. If Apple had succeeded on that front, they would would have exclusive rights to the interfaces similar to the Macintosh for 95 years. This would have been disastrous to computer users, since every computer program would then have to make their program as different as possible from every other computer program that came before them. Think about what it would be like if you drove a Mercedes using a steering wheel and pedals on the floor, but a Ford using a stick for steering a lever to control the throttle, and on a Chrysler you would use buttons and knobs, etc.

As to the claim about Microsoft Office, this is fiction. There were computer systems dedicated to word processing from both big companies —IBM's Displaywriter— and smaller companies, like Redactron and Wang Laboratories. People then created microcomputer word processing programs, like Electric Pencil, Wordstar, Magic Wand, and dozens of other. Microsoft Word was just one among many.

Microsoft Excel was created in imitation of Lotus 1-2-3, which was created in imitation of (and great improvement on) Visicalc. Microsoft Excel, especially the Macintosh version, was really a very, very good program on its own merits. Microsoft didn't steal any code for Microsoft Office. The lead programmer on Microsoft Office was Charles Simonyi, an extremely talented programmer who became a Microsoft billionaire and was able to become one of the few space tourists because of it. Lotus 1-2-3 continued to exist and Lotus was eventually bought by IBM.

The reasons for Microsoft's success:

Competence. Microsoft was able to deliver software consistently in a timely manner. Lots of other companies just failed at this.

Good choices on what markets to enter. Gates dropped out of Harvard because he thought he would miss his chance if he waited two more years to start a business. When Apple created the Macintosh, he immediately embraced the GUI concept, creating software for the Macintosh and creating Windows. He recognized the importance of the World Wide Web and made Microsoft become internet-centric.

Luck. Microsoft became the vendor for IBM's PC operating system. When PC clones arrived (Compaq, Dell, Gateway, etc.), Microsoft had MS-DOS ready for them and a huge torrent of cash came in, allowing Microsoft to do whatever it wanted.

Aggressive marketing and use of exclusive deals with computer manufacturers. PC vendors needed MS-DOS and, later, Windows. Microsoft made them sign deals to not have other operating systems and to bundle other Microsoft software, such as Office, on their systems. This was the most controversial part of Microsoft's business, and what eventually led to the antitrust action against them.

Software patent battles were not a big part of what was going on in the software business in the 1980s and 1990s and I don't remember Microsoft initiating any lawsuits or any threats over patents until 2003, long after their rise to dominance.

Also, Gates came from a rich family, but they were not billionaires. He would not be "super-rich" if he never created Microsoft. Their wealth allowed him to go to a private school which had computer access, which was highly unusual at the time. And he went to Harvard for a couple of years. He was able to raise some start-up capital from them and some of their friends, which was important in Microsoft's early years. Apparently his parent's contacts were also helpful in his coming to the attention of Microsoft when they needed an operating system. The assertion that "the sum total of all Bill Gates’ charitable contributions amount to less than 2.3% of his enormous wealth" is also wrong.