text:
In the midst of combat, Israelis and Palestinian march for ceasefire
by Yonathan Listik
27 November 2012
Jerusalem - Ten days ago the impossible become reality. While the world was watching Palestinians and Israelis trading fire and hatred through every possible means, there was a rare moment of cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians who shared a mutual desire to put an end to the violence.
In the midst of the missiles, bombs and devastation that took place in Gaza and the south of Israel, a group of Palestinians and Israelis came together in the Palestinian town of Beit Jalla, near Bethlehem, for a joint march to demand a bilateral ceasefire.
We belong to a group called Combatants for Peace (CFP) formed by former combatants from both sides of the conflict who, after taking part in the cycle of violence, have decided to use the path of non-violence to protest against it. Everyone in our group is a former soldier or combatant and has a history of causing and suffering violence. We tell our stories so that other people can appreciate that there is always the option of turning towards non-violence. Moreover, through our personal stories we offer Palestinians and Israelis the opportunity to hear first-hand how the conflict is viewed by the other side.
What the joint march showed us is that even in the midst of war we can look beyond cultural and physical barriers and see that we are all in the same boat. We are all victims of a conflict that is dominated by the language of violence. During our joint march, we made the point that both sides can talk to each other and more importantly that there are people on both sides who want to live in peace with the "other" and can achieve it through non-violence. Through our actions we demonstrated that the common belief that the other side is unreasonable or inhumane does not hold water.
Seven years earlier we met in the same place to establish CFP. We believed that violence only begets more violence and that the real victors are those who look to the future rather than remain preoccupied with revenge over the past.
About 150 Israelis and Palestinians came to the march on 17 November. The march started simultaneously in areas of the West Bank under Palestinian and Israeli control. Israelis on one side, Palestinians on the other, we met at a crossroads that divides the two areas.
In Hebrew and Arabic we called upon Hamas and Israel to stop their violence. Together we called on the Israeli government to cease the expansion of settlements and enter negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, and on Hamas to stop firing missiles towards Israel. For Israelis to see a Palestinian condemning Hamas' missiles or for Palestinians to see an Israeli condemning Israel's bombing of Gaza is exactly the message we seek to spread.
You could clearly see the astonishment on the faces of passers–by as they watched Israelis and Palestinians, holding their respective flags, marching together. When our procession met with Israeli soldiers at the crossroads where they stand guard, you could see the Israeli soldiers and non-CFP Palestinians, who were not used to our demonstrations, preparing themselves for confrontation. Some Palestinians even left, fearing a violent clash. This is, after all, the routine most are used to. Only this time we talked to the soldiers, showing them that there would be no violence.
At first they remained in formation and adopted a cynical attitude. But as time passed, they relaxed realising that we meant what we said.
No doubt there is still a long road to travel but we do not lack in strength and hope. Those in power who choose violence are a great obstacle to negotiations. Needless to say there are many voices against ours.
Now that we have achieved a ceasefire we must make every possible effort to spread the message of cooperation against the Occupation and the conflict, showing our respective societies that the solution will only come when both sides achieve independence and security. This march was only a beginning, but it was an excellent one.
* Yonathan Listik is a member of Combatants for Peace, a philosophy student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a teacher. For more information about Combatants for Peace see: http://cfpeace.org/ or https://www.facebook.com/c4peace. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 27 November 2012, www.commongroundnews.org Copyright permission is granted for publication.


text:
A dual chamber mega hair mask intended to provide deep, intense conditioning, and a care extender to provide ultimate vibrancy that lasts up to 3 washes. Part of the SMART Haircare family, the Color Extend Magnetics Mega Mask for the color care of color treated hair has the power of the RCT Protein Complex.
A smart, targeted delivery system, the exclusive new RCT Protein Complex treats hair from the root to the core to the tip, giving all 3 levels the custom nourishment they need.
- Dual chamber design includes 2 different formulas to provide ultimate vibrancy
- Captures color for 4 weeks of vibrancy and radiance when using system of Shampoo, Conditioner, and Mega Mask

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Inflation is on the rise here in the U.S., but in some countries like Turkey, the situation is extreme. The new year brought a steep spike in food prices there and a currency crisis that's been going on for months. The Turkish president is taking an unorthodox approach. NPR's Peter Kenyon has been talking with people in Istanbul struggling to cope.
PETER KENYON, BYLINE: Nejdet Sik, who works in a kebab restaurant, says people are under a huge strain. He can feel it every time he rides the bus or the tram.
NEJDET SIK: What can I say anymore? Economics - everyone upset. If you touch someone, they are really like the dog - want to bite you because stress, too much stress, brother, so I hope change.
KENYON: He says he completely understands how they're feeling, watching their standard of living decline before their eyes.
SIK: What they're going to do? They can't buy stuff, they can't give to electric, they can't give to the gas, look after the kids or give the rent. What they are going to do?
KENYON: Many economists will tell you that a big reason for Turkey's inflation problem is President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's unorthodox theory that cutting interest rates will bring prices down, rather than force them even higher, as most economists believe. In a speech to his ruling party members late last year, Erdogan appeared to acknowledge the risk involved in cutting rates. But he declared that in the end, it would pay off for the Turkish lira and the country. Analyst Can Selcuki at Istanbul Economic Research says while he doesn't support Erdogan's policy, he can explain what the Turkish president is trying to do.
CAN SELCUKI: So the two fundamentals of the new model is low interest rates and a depreciated lira, with the aim of boosting exports, construction and tourism, which in return will provide a surplus, which will be used for investments, thereby valuing the Turkish lira and bringing down interest rates.
KENYON: The problem, says Selcuki, is that no economist he knows believes the currency markets will respond the way Erdogan says they will.
SELCUKI: The belief in Erdogan's administration is that interest rates causes inflation, which is against any common wisdom or knowledge of economy that we have.
KENYON: But rather than reverse course, Erdogan has dug in his heels and vowed to continue. At an outdoor tea shop, I meet Bojana, who didn't want to give her last name when being critical of Turkey. She's a 42-year-old freelance filmmaker who moved to Turkey two years ago from Macedonia. She says obviously, this crisis in the Turkish lira works out well for foreigners who get paid in euros or other relatively strong currencies. But she's painfully aware of what it's doing to her Turkish friends.
BOJANA: You can see it everywhere. You can see it in the neighborhoods. You can see that shops are closing. You can see, of course, in the supermarket bills that they are now double, if not triple, what they were. But it is palpable. You can see it.
KENYON: By now, many in Turkey are aware that the lira lost nearly 40% of its value against the dollar last year, and they're wondering what the new year will bring. Peter Kenyon, NPR News, Istanbul. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


text:
Foreign interference is a very old problem, but most Americans didn't used to worry much about it and the security of elections.
Now, lessons learned about the Russian attack on the 2016 presidential election have brought the most intense focus ever on the U.S. information environment, elections practices, voter databases and other parts of the infrastructure of democracy.
With seven days to run until the end of voting in this year's election, here's what you need to know.
Is the election under attack?
Yes — but it's important to understand exactly what that means: Foreign nations probably cannot affect the casting and counting of ballots, U.S. officials say, meaning that voters can feel confident about submitting their choices and the practices involved with tallying them.
What foreign nations, especially Russia and Iran, are trying to do is chip away at Americans' confidence about that process. They're also trying to create an environment in which citizens don't feel they can believe what they see or accept that the results of the race are legitimate.
Complicating matters is the help given to those efforts — knowingly or not — by real Americans who say publicly that the race is "rigged" or likely to be plagued by "fraud."
How are foreign nations trying to interfere?
There are two big strategies: changing votes and changing minds.
Actually affecting ballots is difficult, and U.S. officials say it's unlikely that any foreign nation could tamper with, for example, a state's correct tally of ballots.
Changing minds is simpler, and that is where much of the energy is focused by governments hostile to the United States. There are two big sub-themes within this category: sowing doubt about the conduct of the election and spreading false or misleading information to influence voters.
Sowing doubt and confusion
U.S. national security officials have issued a series of bulletins warning about the prospect that foreign influence-mongers could try to attack systems adjacent to ballot infrastructure to cause doubts, even if the collection and counting of votes was proceeding honestly.
A cyberattack might try to shut down or deface a county website that showed vote tallies, for example, without actually affecting the true result.
Other strategies include making it appear that information about voters has been stolen and is being used to reveal for whom they voted or make more claims about deeper security compromises.
Iranian hackers, for example, sent a number of emails to voters in Alaska and Florida and said, in so many words: We know you're a registered Democrat but you better vote for President Trump "or else." The messages purported to come from the white supremacist Proud Boys.
Americans may get more messages like that before the election is over, national security officials acknowledge, and according to one cybersecurity report, many domains remain vulnerable to being spoofed in this way — including permitting attackers to pretend they're sending a message from an organization the sender knows.
Security firm Cloudflare has built a public dashboard that shows some cyberattack activity targeting political and elections Web domains. CEO Matthew Prince said the intensity of attacks has been lower so far than in 2016 — "but that doesn't mean we can let our guard down."
Social media misinformation and agitation
The other big sub-strategy involved with changing minds is using the vast, popular and largely unregulated world of social media to try to make Americans believe things that aren't true, amplify disagreement and, in some cases, persuade people not to vote.
This was a big part of Russia's attack on the 2016 election and has never stopped, although researchers say the accounts involved have become somewhat more difficult to detect and other aspects of this work also have evolved since then.
One way is that foreign governments have moved some once-clandestine messaging into the open, making their statements with accounts linked to official spokesmen or state-controlled operations.
Another way is that foreign governments have moved the core of some information attacks off social media. In one scheme, for example, Facebook was being used only to recruit contributors who then posted on other websites controlled by the attacking nation.
National security officials say they're taking new approaches too, including knocking down these schemes as quickly as they can to deny time during which they might gain credibility. U.S. officials also are talking more openly than ever before about their work safeguarding the election.
What about freedom of speech?
The Big Tech platforms, especially Facebook, Google and Twitter, have struggled to strike a balance between permitting Americans to use their services within the bounds of Western values about expression — and identifying bad actors seeking to exploit those same freedoms.
Normal users and some American political operatives also are borrowing from the "active measures" playbook. The chain reaction of misleading or false information on social media now has ample fuel from domestic users and appears self-sustaining on its own even without foreign government efforts.
What about "deepfakes"?
Security-watchers fretted in an earlier stage of this election cycle about the prospect that Americans could be fooled by high-quality fake videos that depict political figures doing things or saying things that never really happened.
There are also less sophisticated "cheapfakes" in which videos are edited with cruder tools to make someone appear to be slurring her words, for example — as though the target were suffering from some kind of health affliction.
Many technology experts, however, think that the heightened awareness about this fake media means they couldn't convince as many unsuspecting people as once contemplated in the nightmare scenarios. And specialists have said they're confident the techniques for detecting fakes have moved faster than the software used to create them, suggesting that authorities could catch them before they fooled too many Americans and caused major disruptions.
How are we supposed to tell what's real and what's not?
Voters are the last line of defense, argues Chris Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Administration.
If you see something outrageous on Facebook or a story that doesn't seem right, be skeptical. Read more here about how to assess whether something you've seen might not be legit.
This is important when it comes to news or news-like items that spread on social media, and it's especially true about stories involving the actual operations of voting. If you have questions about your ability to find a polling place or cast a ballot, check with your local officials such as a secretary of state's office or a county elections official.
Krebs' agency also has set up a dedicated national homepage: Rumor Control.
Even before this era of "active measures," chicanery often intensified in the final few days before the end of voting. Be cautious about messages that say, for example, "Democrats' day to vote is Nov. 3; Republicans' turn will be on Nov. 4" — that's not true and never has been.
Election Day for everyone is Nov. 3, though early and mail-in voting options vary by state.
What about after the election?
This year may feature the most turnout ever, according to some projections, and combined with an expected surge in mailed ballots could mean that Americans don't get a definitive result on election night.
That in and of itself doesn't mean there was an attack or "fraud" or a problem.
However, the more uncertainty and controversy associated with the results following the morning of Nov. 4, the more appealing for foreign adversaries, as Laura Rosenberger, director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, warned ahead of Election Day.
That includes deception about deception, as Cloudflare's Prince observed.
"I continue to worry that the day after the election, Vladimir Putin shows up on TV and says, 'Well that worked out the way we hoped,' with a wry wink — even if there was no actual hacking," Prince said. "That's a really tough thing to overcome."
The task — and the challenge — for Americans is both to remain engaged and confident in their system as national security officials say is appropriate, while also preserving some skepticism, common sense and patience.
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


text:
>>>Boxes are now larger to accommodate the popular sharp-sided resin and metal dice sets!<<<
As all boxes are engraved to order, our current production time is (UP TO) 3-5 business days depending on order volume at the time. Please understand we always try our best to ship as soon as possible, and ship in order they were received. All domestic shipping is via USPS Priority Mail with a usual 1-3 day transit time to anywhere in the continental U.S. Thank you!
PERSONALIZATION: Giving as a gift or want something more personal? We offer personalized engraving services! See the listing in our shop here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/472585469/personalized-engraving-for-one-dice-box
Eldritch Arts presents our Mark IV Single Set RPG Dice Box:
Store your favorite set of polyhedral dice in their own hardwood box featuring powerful magnetic closure and laser engraved artwork on the lid. Crafted here in the USA, we use one of the hardest of hardwoods – Brazilian Cherry (Jatoba) to ensure the durability and longevity of our dice boxes. Highest strength grade N52 rare earth magnets keep the lid secure and the felt lined dice chamber keeps everything in place for travel. We feel our boxes make a great personal gaming accessory, wonderful gift for your favorite fellow player, game or dungeon master, and will last for a lifetime of adventure – or even longer.
Proudly made and shipped from the U.S.A.
Foam inserts and gift bag are included.
Dimensions: (Now larger!)
External measures roughly 7.58"L x 1.69"W x 1.27"H (192mm L x 42mm W x 32mm H)
Internal measures roughly 5.65"L x 1.04"W x 1.04"H (143mm L x 26mm W x 26mm H)
Made of Brazilian Cherry (Jatoba)
Why Brazilian Cherry (Jatoba)? We chose to use Jatoba due to it's strength, wear resistance and beautiful reddish hue. Also known as Brazilian Cherry, it is often used for flooring due to it's incredible hardness - ranking over 2800 on the Janka Hardness Scale (nearly twice the hardness of oak). Over time with exposure to light, Jatoba will darken and take on a rich reddish hue. We felt that the durability and beauty of the wood naturally lent itself to use for our boxes and helped to ensure they would last for a lifetime – or longer!
*Please note: due to the natural variations in wood color, grain & detail, items may vary slightly from the picture.
***Safety Warning*** These products contain small magnets. Keep magnets away from small children as they pose a serious choking risk and possible injury to internal organs if swallowed. Seek immediate medical attention if any magnets have been swallowed or inhaled. Recommended for ages 9 and up.
*** Dice not included.
Eldritch Arts® is a registered trademark of Eldritch Arts LLC.
3-5 business days
I'll do my best to meet these shipping estimates, but can't guarantee them. Actual delivery time will depend on the shipping method you choose.
Buyers are responsible for any customs and import taxes that may apply. I'm not responsible for delays due to customs.
Just contact me within: 14 days of delivery
Ship items back to me within: 30 days of delivery
Buyers are responsible for return shipping costs. If the item is not returned in its original condition, the buyer is responsible for any loss in value.
Please contact me if you have any problems with your order.
Dec 30, 2023
Really nice quality. Looks amazing. I doesn't fit larger dice, but still an amazing box
Dec 21, 2023
My boyfriend absolutely loved this!
Dec 9, 2023
This will make a wonderful gift, thank you so much! I have ordered several boxes from Eldritch Arts and continue to be impressed by the designs and overall quality.
Dec 3, 2023
Wish the inside was a little wider to fit the larger dice
Nov 11, 2023
Great item…and arrived fast! Thank you


text:
GNOME 3.0 has a gsettings key to also trigger this behaviour on a per-user basis (see bug 633863). The default value is off (false). Settings applied from the desktop environment overwrite xorg.conf(.d) settings, so to get middle button emulation in GNOME simply toggle the gsettings key and don't worry about xorg.conf(.d). The command to toggle the key is:
$> gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.mouse \
middle-button-enabled true
Since this gsettings are persistent, setting the key once is sufficient. It will be applied after login, for each device and as new devices are hot-plugged.


text:
Docent lecture: Advanced materials characterization with x-ray computed tomography for road infrastructure innovation and sustainability
Welcome to the docent lecture of Dr. Alvaro Guarin, the Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering, Division Building Materials.
Time: Tue 2020-12-15 15.00 - 16.30
Location: Zoom
Participating: Alvaro Guarin
In this docent lecture, Dr. Guarin will summarize the use of x-ray computed tomography at KTH for advanced characterization of the internal microstructure of materials, as a tool for the development of innovative and sustainable road infrastructure. Some research projects including porous asphalt, compaction of asphalt mixtures, and shotcrete reinforced with steel fibers will be briefly described. Particular attention will be given to emphasize how x-ray computed tomography results can provide enhanced understanding of certain key material properties and/or mechanisms, which have also been significant steps towards the future development of road infrastructure.
The lecture is open to the public and will be held in English. The lecture is held on Zoom only.