The Neurosurgery Department at Tel Aviv’s Sourasky Medical Center (also known as Ichilov Hospital) has partnered with Jerusalem-based AI company NeuroBrave in the field of brain-computer interfaces (BCI).
BCI creates a direct link between the electrical activity in the brain and an external device, such as a prosthetic or a computer.
The department’s Functional Neurosurgery Unit, a world leader specializing in the treatment of brain, spinal cord and nervous system disorders, intends to use the new partnership to advance developments in BCI and propel research and implementation of innovative solutions for both complex neurological conditions and patient care.
“For more than a decade, our clinical research team has been at the forefront of speech decoding and brain information research and has accumulated a vast amount of know-how and data,” said Dr. Ido Strauss, head of Sourasky’s Functional Neurosurgery Unit.
“The partnership with NeuroBrave opens exciting possibilities to take the next step in brain-computer interfaces, translate brain activity into speech, and help patients with various brain disorders to communicate,” he said.
“NeuroBrave unique AI and GenAI infrastructure, and the ability to translate, in real-time, neural information into cognitive and emotional insights, combined with the skilled hands and clinical expertise of TASMC Functional Neurosurgery Unit, will enable Israel to join the ‘Brain Chip Race,’ alongside Elon Musk’s Neuralink, and Synchron Inc, having Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos as stakeholders,” said th company’s co-founder and CEO Dror Talisman.
It’s Time for a Global Effort to Defeat Alzheimer’s
Advances in testing and treatment are galvanizing progress. Healthcare systems must also transform
George Vradenburg, Olivier Schwab
Rectifying inequities will be needed to reduce the numbers of people with dementia worldwide. Daniel Hertzberg/Theispot
This article was produced in partnership with the Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative by Scientific American Custom Media, a division separate from the magazine’s board of editors.
On behalf of the 55 million people worldwide who live with Alzheimer’s disease, the millions more who shoulder the burden of care and loss, and the younger generations whose futures are clouded by the threat of this disease, we issue a call to action.
The time is ripe. For the first time, we have an opportunity to defeat this disease, which robs so many otherwise healthy people of their memories and their identities and causes so much suffering and loss to them, their loved ones and society at large.
In recent years, scientists have made startling advances in their ability to detect Alzheimer’s disease in the early stages, when treatments are most effective. Drugs are now available that can slow the progress of the disease, having gone from the lab to pharmacy shelves, and more are in the pipeline.
The arrival of these twin advances in testing and treatments has galvanized medical researchers, entrepreneurs and healthcare professionals. Several big pharmaceutical firms that had backed away from the disease, because it was so complex that it defied quick solutions, are once again making big investments.Biotech firms are working to commercialize new technologies, such as blood biomarker tests and cognitive tests that can help in diagnostics and screening.What’s more, regulators have shown a new willingness to move drugs quickly through the approval process, which is spurring innovation.
This good news brings a new challenge: getting these tests and treatments to the millions of people in all corners of the world who need them. We formed the Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative (DAC) in part to address this challenge.
Part of this task involves bolstering our ability to detect Alzheimer’s early in the disease. Several blood tests that are currently on the market can measure telltale proteins, and more are due in the coming months. We need to make these tests cost-effective and plentiful.
Even though much of the technology needed for early detection is already in place, policymakers are underestimating the resources and assistance that clinics, doctors’ offices and public-health officials will require to adopt and implement early detection.
Putting tools in the hands of consumers is another effective strategy that could be helpful in early detection. Digital assessment tools are now available that allow you to test yourself for cognitive impairment—whether it’s memory, judgment or orientation. Such tests can help manage the screening workload in clinics.
We also need to raise public awareness about the new outlook for Alzheimer’s, so that people know there’s something they can do about the disease other than fear it. People should be asking their doctors, “How is my brain health?Is there a blood test I can take?”Doctors will need to figure out how to build Alzheimer’s testing into their routine clinical practice. DAC is helping them do exactly that.
Rectifying inequities is critical. So far, researchers developing treatments and tests have focused on people of northern European descent, neglecting the rest of the world, where the vast majority of Alzheimer’s patients are to be found.This is unfair, and it is also bad science, because it leaves out information contained in the full panoply of human genetic diversity. Research organizations are making efforts to rectify this gap, but much remains to be done.
Healthcare systems around the world, already strained by the growing prevalence of Alzheimer’s and other diseases, will need help in handling the new protocols for screening and treatment.
To seize this global moment, we must work together. At present, the field of Alzheimer’s is fragmented. Academics work with their cohorts, businesses have their product strategies, governments focus on their own citizens. This compartmentalization is a wasted opportunity to pool our knowledge and scale our resources.
Governments around the world need to step up their game. The U.S. National Institutes of Health spent about $400 million a year on Alzheimer’s disease in 2010; it now spends $3.7 billion. No other government or region comes close. Europe, China, India and other nations need to join the U.S., U.K. and others in the fight against this disease.
The World Economic Forum and the Global CEO Initiative on Alzheimer’s Disease came together to form DAC, because we need an international organization that can coordinate an approach to Alzheimer’s disease that resembles the global effort to fight infectious disease. DAC was modeled on organizations such as Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and The Global Fund, which were formed as mechanisms for battling malaria, polio, influenza and other infectious diseases around the world.
Defeating Alzheimer’s will require a massive cooperative effort. DAC is already working to speed innovation and prepare healthcare systems to implement new technologies and strategies. We are enlisting corporate executives, government leaders and nongovernmental organizations in an effort to ease the burden of this disease and end the suffering it causes.
In the following pages you will read about our efforts thus far to make health systems better able to detect the disease early, reach underserved populations and to find new, innovative ways of bringing more providers to the frontlines.
Leveraging what we are learning from around the world, we are calling on governments to increase their investments in research, healthcare and treatments. Working together, we can beat this disease rapidly and comprehensively.
This article is part of The New Age of Alzheimer’s, a special report on the advances fueling hope for ending this devastating disease.
Learn more here about the innovation ecosystem that Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative is building to speed breakthroughs and end Alzheimer’s disease. Explore the transforming landscape of Alzheimer’s in this special report.
George Vradenburg is the founding chairman of the Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative. Olivier Schwab is the managing director of the World Economic Forum.
Because anger is fundamentally a raw emotion, we often don’t give it much analysis. But if you believe that you or someone you know has a real anger problem, investigating the origins of anger and how they affect feelings and behaviors can help. Understanding what makes you angry and how you respond won’t solve the problem, but those steps will start you on the right path.
Get your copy of Anger A bumper-to-bumper traffic jam… a hurtful comment…a relationship fight or breakup…an inflammatory online post…a rude store clerk…
There’s no shortage of things that can make get our pulse pounding with anger.
At best, such things can be distracting. At worst—left unchecked—they can be harmful to both your emotional and physical health, robbing you of the simple pleasures of life.
That’s why—for your health’s sake—the experts at Harvard Medical School have created Anger Management: How to Manage Your Volatile Feelings in a Skillful Way. It’s the research-proven online guide that reveals the effective tools to help redirect your anger in a more positive direction. SHOW ME MORE →
Identifying your triggers
Effective anger management is not just about dealing with anger after an outburst. It’s much better to prevent an outburst in the first place—by knowing your triggers and being ready with healthy responses. The first step in gaining a better understanding of your anger is figuring out what specifically makes you angry.
Everyone has a unique set of triggers. You may be someone who loses your temper quickly when things don’t go according to plan, or you are thrown off your schedule. Or you may get angry when the conversation turns to politics. And if you harbor anger about hurts or slights from years ago, simply being reminded of those painful episodes may be enough to make you upset.
To identify your triggers, think about why certain things always get to you. In a moment of calm, start a list of people or situations that seem to repeatedly stir up angry feelings. Later, when you find yourself starting to stew about something, add that to the list. Thinking about your triggers and labeling them as such can help you as you pursue ways of managing your anger.
Simply identifying the situations that get you steamed may help you view some of them differently, allowing you to find some perspective. But perhaps more importantly, knowing your triggers might allow you to anticipate your reaction and choose a more useful response.
Examining your responses
The second part of assessing your own anger issues, after identifying your triggers, is recognizing how you tend to respond to anger and starting to develop better coping mechanisms. First, take some time to think about what you do when angry. Friends, relatives, and co-workers may be able to help if you ask them to share their observations. While everyone deals with anger in their own way, people who could benefit from anger management to moderate or channel expressions of anger often share common traits.
They include the following:
Verbal outbursts. You often say things in anger that you later regret. Worse, you may not recall what you said or, if you do, you may feel no remorse or guilt.
Ruminating over negative or painful memories. You find yourself returning again and again to moments in your life that stir up anger and frustration.
Self-loathing. You may feel isolated, alienated, unloved, or underachieving, leading to anger with yourself for not having more financial or professional success, a more robust social life, or lasting relationships.
Blaming. You often look for other people to blame for your problems or the challenges in society.
Overreactions. You hear something that bothers you on the news, or you encounter some minor inconvenience, and your response exceeds the magnitude of the bad news or the problem.
Negative outlook. You see problems everywhere, are quick to start arguments, and are generally unhappy. Your vision of the future is more hopeless than hopeful.
Physical outbursts. You slam doors, throw or break things, strike other people, or storm out of a room. When assessing your responses to anger, be as specific as possible.
Do you tend to get defensive when someone offers a suggestion or constructive criticism? Do you immediately reach for a drink when you start to feel angry or frustrated? Do you raise your voice as soon as you start to feel angry?
Think about actual instances when you feel your anger got the best of you and make a note of what happened—the cause of your anger and how you reacted.
To learn more about what may be causing your anger, read Anger Management, an Online Guide from Harvard Medical School.
Takeo Kanade, engineer: ‘Artificial vision will bring teleportation, but without decomposing your body and shipping it another place’
The Japanese researcher discusses the use of robots in surgical operations, virtualized reality and why we must be smarter and faster than malicious technologies
Takeo Kanade (Hyōgo, Japan, 78 years old) speaks fluently about artificial vision, a field of research he has been working on for more than 40 years. This scientific discipline allows you to see a soccer match from the point of view of the ball or a tennis match through a hawk’s eye. The fundamental algorithms that Kanade has developed with his colleague Bruce Lucas, called the Lucas-Kanade method, help computers and robots understand moving images.His work has also helped improve robotic surgery, self-driving cars and facial recognition. “In the future, robots will be better than humans, in one way or another,” he says.
The researcher received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Kyoto University in 1974. He discovered his passion for engineering when he went fishing at the age of five and made his own hook. He is now a professor of Computer Science and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and founder of the Quality of Life Technology Center, which he directed between 2006 and 2012.
Question. Do you think robotic vision will one day match human vision?
Answer.Yes, and at some point it may be better than human vision. In fact, in some areas it is already better, for example in computer facial recognition. For a long time it was thought that humans had a great advantage, as we are good at recognizing people we know. However, when we meet a person in a very unexpected environment, we quite often miss them.
Q. Which of the two is least likely to fail?
A. The human being. Self-driving cars can see up to 200 meters in all directions and recognize the location of other cars, pedestrians and bicycles very precisely, but we have a better understanding.We have some expectations about what is happening in the car in front of you. You can also recognize if you are driving near a school, and you know there’s a chance children may cross the road. Computers are trying to get to that level of understanding, but for now it’s not that good; and it is critical to avoid accidents.
Q. Are we going to have 100% autonomous driving in the future?
A.Within 10 years or even less. However, people have to be convinced. It is like the car, which we use, although it causes accidents and deaths. But the benefits of a car are so great that, as a society, we accept it.
Q. In the world of artificial vision, what are the upcoming challenges?
A.Can you be in a world that is mapped from the real world? That’s the next level. I call it virtualized reality.Virtual reality now is not virtual: it is a real world that is virtualized. The next thing is to interact with the environment and others who are virtually there. In this case, when there is a mirror in that virtual reality, you will be able to virtually see yourself in it. Another challenge is teleportation, but without decomposing your body and shipping it to another place, like in the movie Star Trek. It is done with tools, like drones, that give you a reaction force through your body to your legs so that you can teleport, visually and acoustically, and physically interact in real time.
A.I feel partially responsible for it. In 2010, I made a video of president Obama speaking in Japanese with images generated from my face. I thought it was a joke video. You can’t fight deepfakes, the only thing that prevents it is our integrity.
Q.But if technology can turn against us…
A.It is used for the purpose of deception, but the technology cannot know what its objective is. A type of technology can be created and used for purposes other than those for which it was developed. You have to be smarter, faster than it and be informed. The watermark, for example, once you do that and it is known, then there is an instant way of erasing it.
Professor Takeo Kanade.FUNDACIÓN BBVA
Q.How can computer vision be used to improve the quality of life of people with disabilities?
A. It is about developing quality of life technology, as we do in our center. Its essence is to increase the independence of people with disabilities or older people. It is not about robots doing everything, but the opposite. My formula for the perfect robot equals what you want to do minus what you can do.That is, compensate for the part that the human cannot do so that it can be done together with the robot.Furthermore, in cases of rehabilitation or education, the perfect robot must do a little less so that the person regains motivation and ability.
Q. How have your works contributed to surgical precision?
A. Surgeon robots can use more developed sensors than human surgeons. Human sensors are very limited, we do not have acoustic sensors or multimodal sensors. Before a surgical operation, robots can, for example, detect the location of a tumor, its shape or size, with X-rays or an MRI, and at the time of surgery, they use imaging sensors.
Q. How has origami helped your career?
A. The essence of my theory, A Theory of Origami World, is that the perception of the three-dimensional shape of an image must derive from a mathematical explanation and not from the result of learning. If, for example, you draw a box, there are five more possible shapes that are generated with exactly the same image, but are different from the box.When I give a talk, for example, I joke with the audience that the lecture hall and the building could be different shapes and the audience looks around and imagines it.
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23,142 views 9 Dec 2023 #intelligencesquared#danielkahneman#artificialintelligence Daniel Kahneman shot to fame in 2002 when he won the Nobel prize in economics for his work on the psychology of human judgment and decision-making. His first book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, was a worldwide bestseller and set out his revolutionary ideas about how human error and bias can be recognised and mitigated. Now Kahneman is back with an acclaimed follow-up, Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, in which he sets out how businesses and governments can make smarter, swifter and more accurate decisions in our increasingly frenetic world. In May 2022 Kahneman came to the Intelligence Squared stage for a rare live event in the UK – his first since 2014 – alongside his co-author Olivier Sibony. Together they argued that the key to creating successful organisations lies in reducing ‘noise’, defined as unwanted variability in human judgment. They set out a strategy for how we can identify bias and human error in organisations and implement a noise reduction strategy to correct it. They also examined the rise of artificial intelligence and discussed what this will mean for the future of decision-making. Join us for an evening of insight, understanding and a rare prescription for making coherent choices in a chaotic world.
Smartphones and social media have taken a toll on young people’s development. But one man has an idea about how to fix Gen Z. In his new book, “The Anxious Generation,” social psychologist Jonathan Haidt investigates the sudden collapse of mental health among adolescents. The author joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss ways for parents to head off the damage. Originally aired on April 1, 2024
Major support for Amanpour and Company is provided by The Anderson Family Endowment, Jim Attwood and Leslie Williams, Candace King Weir, the Leila and Mickey Straus Family Charitable Trust, Mark J. Blechner, the Filomen M. D’Agostino Foundation, Seton J. Melvin, Charles Rosenblum, Koo and Patricia Yuen, Barbara Hope Zuckerberg, Jeffrey Katz and Beth Rogers, Bernard and Denise Schwartz, the JPB Foundation, the Sylvia A. and Simon B. Poyta Programming Endowment to Fight Antisemitism and Josh Weston.
The future of Ein el-Hilweh, the massive Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon whose fate is linked to Gaza
Violence between varying factions ceased after the outbreak of war in October, but there is fear that fighting will break out if a ceasefire in the coastal enclave
Rahif Almeari, a 13-year-old Palestinian artist, draws in his room. On the walls, the marks of bullet holes from the last outbreak of violence in Ein el-Hilweh, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.Marta Maroto
He paints so as not to forget. “And to tell, through art, what the Palestinian people are going through,” Rahif Almeari explains, somberly. At 13 years old, he is surely the youngest artist at Ein el-Hilweh, the largest refugee camp in Lebanon, which is considered a kind of capital of the country’s Palestinian community. On panels of wood, the adolescent, who is the grandson of a carpenter who was driven from his home in 1948 following the creation of the state of Israel, paints the symbols of his grandparents’ homeland. “Israel wants to erase our culture, but it is my responsibility as an artist to paint the olive trees and the keffiyeh to tell the Europeans and all foreigners who we are,” he explains.
The 60,000 inhabitants of Ein el-Hilweh, which is the site of frequent showdowns between factions, follow the news from Gaza fearfully, because they sense that more than ever, their future survival is tied to what happens in the coastal enclave. “With what we are suffering, it makes no sense to be at each other’s throats,” says Almeari, indicating the marks of bullet holes in his bedroom. They are a reminder of the last outbreak of violence in the camp, which began last summer after the assassination of General Abu Ashraf al Armoushi, a high-ranking official from the Palestinian nationalist movement Fatah, the party of the current Palestinian government led by Mahmoud Abbas. His death was attributed to radical militias with ideological ties to jihadist groups like the Islamic State and the Al-Nusra Front, which through the years have found refuge in Ein el-Hilweh.
In that wave of conflicts between groups linked to Fatah and more extremist movements, at least 11 civilians died and more than 40 were injured. “They attacked the heart of the Fatah military branch with the goal of politically weakening us,” Yusef Zraihy, head of the party in southern Lebanon, told EL PAÍS.
But the war in Gaza put an end to these internal battles and in mid-October, rival militias arrived at a tacit agreement to lay down their weapons. These conversations moved forward with mediation by the Lebanese government, but the inhabitants of Ein el-Hilweh fear that a possible ceasefire in the Gaza Strip could mean the return of violence to their camp. Life in its streets has been paralyzed for nearly the past seven months and the bombings and death tolls in Gaza fill both daily conversation in the market and prayers, amid the general sense of helplessness over not being able to help their compatriots.
“All eyes are on Gaza and the political and security situation in the camps is calm. Still, we fear that when the war ends there could be an outbreak of new conflict,” says Samer Mannaa, a Palestinian activist. “And whoever controls Ein el-Hilweh will control the refugee community,” he concludes.
One of the main streets of Ein el Hilweh, connected to one of the entryways to the camp. On the right side of the image, one of the UNRWA schools that was destroyed by armed factions.
Ein el-Hilweh is located just a few miles from the coastal town of Sidon, a city in southern Lebanon. It is the largest of the 12 refugee camps that were created in the country after the 1948 Nakba — “catastrophe” in Arabic — in which Palestinians were forcibly driven from their homes. Today, according to numbers from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), there are 500,000 registered refugees in Lebanon, including those who were driven out more than 70 years ago, and their descendants. The same agency estimates that no more than 250,000 refugees continue to live in the country, with the rest having emigrated elsewhere.Of this total, 200,000 receive annual assistance from the organization, which calculates that 80% of Palestinian refugees live in poverty.
A thousand shrapnel holes
With his gaze fixed upon an open book resting on his knees, Almeari waits in front of the small candy stand his family runs outside the front door of their house. The entire street, from the metal of the stand to the cardboard that protects it from the sun, is strafed with a thousand shrapnel holes, a landscape that has become normal at the camp. The boy sets off to look for the heavy, rusty keys for the doors of the house that his grandparents lived in until 1948 — reminders that Palestinian refugees and their descendants treasure.His father, Hussein Almeari, a carpenter who was also born in the refugee camp, has a map of the family lands that his father carved into wood. Rahif seems to have inherited his elders’ passion, creating scenes from acrylic paint on pieces of wood his father prepares for him.
“I adore Ein el-Hilweh, it is my home. That’s why it hurts me so much to see it like this,” says Hussein Almeari, gesturing to the walls. When the wave of violence took hold last July, the family evacuated the camp. When they came back at the end of October, their home had been nearly destroyed: they found numerous bullets embedded in the walls, which had been ripped through by explosives.
Their home is located at the crux of different neighborhoods which, just like the UNRWA schools, were the battlefields of rival militias. It’s not the first time that the educational facilities of Ein el-Hilweh have been occupied and destroyed, Dorothee Klaus, director in Lebanon of the U.N. agency, tells EL PAÍS. “Our response in the past was to increase fortifications to protect the children, but that had the opposite effect and turned schools into attractive areas for military operations,” she says.
Some of the drawings of young refugee Rahif Almeari on the pieces of wood that his father prepares. In addition to Palestinian symbols, the teen also paints nature scenes and landscapes.
The UNRWA — which employs 3,500 refugees in Lebanon — provides health services, education, basic infrastructure, social assistance and sanitation. “The host government has made it clear that it has neither the will nor the capacity to take on this responsibility, either politically or financially,” the director says. The lives of the Palestinian refugees are governed by autonomous rules that are independent of Lebanon, which in 1969 — two years after the Six-Day War, which caused the second large migratory wave of Palestinians to Lebanon — ceded political and security administration of the refugee camps to the Palestinian community.
Stripped of their rights
But that apparent Palestinian sovereignty in the Lebanon camps does not appear to have come with rights. A national regulation denies the refugees access to citizenship and property rights and also restricts the possibility of them occupying positions in key professions like medicine, law and engineering. “The Lebanese state deprives us of our basic human rights. We’re not even second-class citizens, because we’re not citizens,” says Hatem Mokdade, an unaffiliated activist.
The disappointment felt in the camps is refracted onto the United Nations agency, which has been accused of a lack of response. “We have not abandoned our right to return, but right now we need electricity, basic services and to address issues of corruption. The UNRWA has spent 75 years in a state of emergency, but what we need is development,” says Mokdade.
In addition to the complexity of the Palestinian situation, there is the reality of a Lebanon that is in permanent crisis and which, since October, has been in a war against Israel on its southern border through pro-Iranian militia Hezbollah.Plus, there are UNRWA’s economic difficulties, now exacerbated after donor countries suspending funding following Israel’s allegations that 12 of the U.N. agency’s staff had participated in the Hamas October 7 attack. In that attack, 1,200 Israelis were killed and more than 200 were taken hostage, a hundred of whom remain in the hands of their captors in Gaza.
The U.S. Congress has blocked the Biden administration from resume UNRWA financing until March 2025 at the earliest. The United States is the agency’s primary source of funds, but other countries, like Spain, have diverged from the U.S. decision and announced additional aid to keep the agency in operation.The Colonna Report, an independent investigation commissioned by the United Nations and led by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, which was published on Monday, April 22, concluded that Israel has not provided evidence to support its accusations against the UNWRA.
Translated by Caitlin Donohue.
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45,850 views 22 Apr 2024 #ColDouglasMacgregor#USCongress#Ukraine The US government consists of 535 lobbyists, says Colonel Douglas Macgregor. All of them, with very few exceptions, are bought men
Reflections by Fr. Shay Cullen, – The real purpose of Israel’s occupation of Palestine
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The real purpose of Israel’s occupation of Palestine Fr. Shay Cullen 20 April 2024
It was a shocking and painful “no” vote by the United States to veto a draft declaration at the United Nations (UN) Security Council recognizing Palestine as a full member of the United Nations. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the U.S. veto and said it was “unfair, unethical, and unjustified.” Twelve members of the Security Council approved the recommendation to the 193-member UN General Assembly for its approval that “the State of Palestine be admitted to membership” of the UN. Only the conservative British and neutral Switzerland abstained.
The United States is more and more isolated by the world community by its seemingly endless support for Israel even when it bombed and killed 35,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, starving more to death, and bombed Iran this week. All this was done with US-supplied munitions and missiles in retaliation for the killing of 1,200 Israelis and taking of 250 hostages by Hamas, named as a terrorist organization by western countries.
In a strong emotional statement, the Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour at the UN said: “The fact that this resolution did not pass will not break our will and it will not defeat our determination. We will not stop in our effort.” The declared hope of most nations and of Palestine is for an end to hostilities, peace-making and a two-state solution. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is totally against a two-state solution and so are some of his backers. The question is why?
He is the longest-serving prime minister in the country’s history, having served for a total of over 16years. He is very unpopular in Israel for his savage retaliation and conduct of the war against Hamas and the killing of so many innocent Palestinians and his failure to win the release of 150 or so hostages held by Hamas.
In 2019, Netanyahu was found to have committed criminal acts such as breach of trust, bribery, and fraud.When he is out of power, it is likely he could be convicted and go to jail.He formed an extreme fanatical right-wing government to stay in power and avoid prosecution. He is also criticized for his total opposition to any two-state solution.
It was on his watch that the savage attack by Hamas fighters took place last 7 October 2023. He is also responsible for allowing Hamas to grow so strong by allowing huge sums of money to flow to them from Iran and Qatar and other sources. These payments in US dollars were flown into Israel and delivered directly to Hamas in the Gaza strip.
That is proven in a powerful video expose, well-documented by the BBC Panorama program titled “Hamas’s Secret Financial Empire” by John Ware. Netanyanu indirectly armed Hamas, a policy opposed by Israeli military commanders who warned Netanyahu. The BBC, citing documents and interviews with retired Israeli military intelligence commanders, showed that there was nothing secret about these funds.
The reason Benjamin Netanyahu allowed this money to flow to Hamas was to keep the Palestines on the West Bank and in Gaza corrupted, appeased, divided and fighting each other politically. The policy and plan is that they must never be allowed to unite and form a single Palestine state.
That would defeat the long-term goals of Zionist elements in Israel. Their plan is to permanently divide and conquer, and to claim all of Palestine lands as part of the State of Israel. The surviving Palestinians would be powerless and contained.
But Israel’s policy is to occupy more and more of Palestine land with illegal settlements, even killing and driving away the original owners and making their stolen lands their own. The same goes on in East Jerusalem. There is little or no justice for the Palestinians.
There is hardly a squeak of protest from Western politicians and leaders other than vocal Irish campaigners and politicians that denounce the destruction that Israel does in the name of self-defense.
While Israel has a right to self defense against terrorist attacks, what they are doing has reached a state of mass killing, called “genocide” by the International Court of Justice last January 2024.
Genocide is the gross violation of human rights and is immoral, criminal, illegal, wrong and unjust. It is the total destruction of the Palestinian homes and is a war by starvation driven by greed.
The military assaults fueled by revenge in retaliation for the biggest defeat suffered by the Israel army ever by Hamas are indefensibly funded by Netanyahu himself as explained above, thanks to the BBC Panorama investigative report.
There is a grim and deadly impunity for all this granted to Israel by the western world. No demand for a ceasefire by them other than a weak whimpering cry for restraint. Millions of people around the world are calling for an immediate ceasefire but they are ignored while Israel continues bombing.
One compelling explanation of the massive western support for Israel to continue to occupy Palestine and even take total control of the lands and sea is of course the massive deposits of oil and gas that lie beneath Palestine land and waters off the coast of Gaza. A UN Trade Development Report says “geologists and resources economists have confirmed that the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) lies above sizeable reservoirs of oil and natural gas wealth, in Area C of the West Bank and the Mediterranean coast off the Gaza Strip.”
The new discoveries of oil and natural gas in the Levant Basin, amount to 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas at a net value of $453 billion (in 2017 prices) and 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil at a net value of about $71 billion. This offers an opportunity to distribute and share about US$524 billion among the different parties in the region and promote peace and cooperation among old belligerents, the study notes.
Israel is presently tapping into those resources with a huge oil rig in the Mediterranean. These resources are partially owned by the Palestinians and denied to them.
The Palestinians have no share so long as they are divided and not recognized as a sovereign state. Is that what is behind the veto by the United States?If there was an independent Palestine state, it would have total control over its own natural resources and reap the benefits for the well-being and recovery of its own people.
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Fewer screens and more domino: Why playing cards and board games are staging a comeback in bars
The sight of a group of friends playing a game together is no longer confined to retirees. Young people are rediscovering Connect 4, Trivial Pursuit and chess, and establishments are embracing a long-term business opportunity: building a community among their clients
A couple plays Scrabble while sipping wine in a Los Angeles bar.Jay L. Clendenin (Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag)
A few months ago, Bloomberg journalist Joe Weisenthal humorously lamented on the social network X: “All the cool people of NYC are playing chess late at night in bars now. Wild times.” The post, which was accompanied by a photo of various people gathered in front of chess boards, opened a small debate and generated more than 300 comments where people were mostly in favor of the late-night games. “Where is that?” someone asked. “It’s the only bar I’d like to go to right now.”
Although the New York scene of dancing and debauchery until dawn is certainly not dead, it is becoming more and more common, in New York and elsewhere, to find late-night tables where people consume pints, cocktails and juices while playing board games. And this is not just in bars. Board games have invaded spaces where it was unthinkable a few years ago. Last week, there was a TikTok video of group of young people playing Catan before a concert of the Argentine band Miranda!
These are not isolated facts, but proof that traditional games have established themselves as a leisure activity option among people in their 20s and 30s, something that few could have foreseen. We are told of a youth absorbed in the screens that would eventually lose all human contact but, all of a sudden, a bunch of kids under 20 are sitting at a table in a bar and one of them takes some cards out of his backpack and they all get into a game of something as unfashionable asChinchón or Brisca (both popular Spanish card games).
A couple plays chess in a Berlin bar.Sean Gallup (Getty Images)
In addition to the “Mobile, wallet, tobacco, keys” as sung by Las Bistecs in their song Cosas Negras, we should now add the Spanish deck of cards by Heraclio Fournier, something of a national treasure in Spain.“They don’t take up any space and you can play anywhere. If the bus takes a long time? One game. As long as there is more than one of you, you can play,” says María, who never leaves home without them. “Also, if you play something familiar, you can focus on the game while you talk about anything else.”
This is not a far cry from the leisure time enjoyed by our grandparents, who always sat at a table for four, singing and playing the dominoes while at another table a group of ladies shook the Parcheesi cup. Interestingly, and according to the people who have participated in this article, women over 40 years old are the ones who play the least. In most of the hotel establishments there have always been cards and a board, but until a few years ago they came to be seen as ornamental objects. Younger people were reluctant to ask to use them, playing games seemed to be confined to the faculty cafeteria or family evenings, but this scenario has changed in the last few years.
These are not leisure places exclusively for games where you can also drink, but bars that have made room on their shelves to display them as an extra, just like the newspapers, the television set or Wi-Fi connection.“The idea came up during a trip to Copenhagen,” says Inés, who owns El Paraguas with her husband Jorge, a popular spot in the nightlife scene of the Spanish city Oviedo, where you can always find someone playing chess or Trivial Pursuit. That trip served as the inspiration for a second location, La Armónica del Paraguas, where games have a prominent place. “There we discovered the Bastard Café, a downtown classic where you can find over a thousand games, and we loved it. There were all kinds of players, but most of them were in their 20s and 30s.”
A couple plays Scrabble in a London pub.ADRIAN DENNIS (AFP via Getty Images)
They were inspired and, eight years later, they feel that it is a success. Manu, who is in his 20s and has always been a fan, runs the establishment. “I used to play Bang!, Virus, Saboteur, Shit Happens [special card games]… but then there was the lockdown and that was the end of that.” As soon as the Covid-19 restrictions began to be lifted, the gatherings on sidewalk cafés for “board game evenings” returned. “We would play Time’s up, Trivial Pursuit and Risk until it was curfew [under the pandemic restrictions]; and the next day we would meet on another sidewalk café to play Secret Code and Wingspan. There wasn’t a week that went by when I didn’t have a chip or the dice in my hands.”
He now provides advice to others on games, but has not given up on them. “Sometimes my friends play Taboo at the bar and want me to join in while I’m slicing lemons.” Manu notices differences in the types of customers who come to have a game. “The younger ones prefer Dixit, Dobble, which has caused more than one friendship to break up, or Trivial Pursuit, and those in their 30s and older prefer backgammon and chess.” He has also identified what he calls “Tinder couples,” who he says are first-timers, and who opt for another classic, Connect 4.
Manu believes that the people who come to play create “a better atmosphere.”“They want more than just a bar, they want to experience a fun atmosphere.” He also says that those who come to play “long games” tend to consume little alcohol: “They come, order something, usually soft drinks or juices, grab the game they have their eye on, put the tables together and start playing. And they stay there happily. From time to time I pass by to see if they need anything, but I don’t interrupt. They get into the game, laugh, joke, pause if someone needs to smoke or go to the bathroom, and then someone comes to ask for something that is missing. But maybe after an hour and a half, they’ve had three orange juices, and now they’re having a Nestea and a Kas. Not a drop of alcohol and they’re enjoying themselves. If they’re having a good time, why should they drink?”
Pensioners in Ciñera, León, play dominoes in a bar.David Ramos (Getty Images)
While there are bars where after a certain time the cards and boards disappear, for Manu it is not a problem for people to occupy a table for hours (and anyone who has played Risk knows that it is literally for hours). “We’re aware that there are other types of venues that favor heavier consumption with music, lights and dancing, and that in relaxed places you always have the risk that people will gather without consuming, but I don’t think that games encourage this. We’ve gone for something quieter, although we know that we won’t get rich with this business model,” jokes Inés.
This is very much in line with the thoughts of David, owner of La Raposa, an establishment where you can listen to hardcore music and watch a soccer match while playing a game of Jenga. “We want to offer more than just a place to drink; we want to create community.”David sought to replicate the environment in which he grew up: “Playing created some great dynamics.” When it comes to choosing games, he is quite selective: “As it’s a bar known for its left-wing ideology, I try to include games that also encourage critical thinking, such as the feminist trivial game and so on.” He also agrees that the public is heterogeneous, but that young women are the ones who tend to gather to form playing groups.
He is not surprised that someone might bring their own games from home, but he is that the game extends into the early hours of the morning when it was customary for evening and weekday entertainment. “Now large groups of kids come on Saturdays to play a game of Trivial Pursuit or Dixit and stay there all night. Hanging out and playing is a way to curb the anxiety of planning where you will go next.”
He also has a response to another of the comments to the tweet that mocked the “wild” New York night and asked why these people didn’t play in their homes: “I share an apartment and, though my roommates are nice, I cannot occupy the living room to play a game of Risk for hours on end or make too much noise.” And some games are noisy or too festive, such as Time’s up or Party, two of the most popular board games. He also claims that a bar that has games “sends a message”: it is usually a quiet place, “with a good vibe.”
Men play cards in a bar in Acciaroli, southern Italy.KONTROLAB (LightRocket via Getty Images)
The fact that there are different personalities among those who come together to play is important for Patri: “You need a balance between those who are competitive and those who are compliant so that everything goes well, so that there’s the right balance to enjoy it without it getting out of hand. The intensity and the way of playing changes and that’s the beauty of being able to play in a bar, you can adapt it to the spirit of the group.” Socializing is one of the strong points that always comes up when talking about board games. “People like to socialize and one of the oldest tools that exist for this is board games. We like to challenge each other, but most of all we like to have a good time and have fun. That’s what a board game does, it gives you hours of quality entertainment,” says Fernando Falomir, marketing manager of the Spanish gaming company Falomir.
Its potential to connect people is one of the main advantages of board games: it is a way to make friends, which is why in Spain, the bars that provide this type of entertainment are often the first stop for foreign students, especially for those from northern European countries, where this type of entertainment is a daily feature. “It’s a totally different experience and is compatible with electronic leisure: it’s something that requires meeting up, getting together and spending time with friends. Many adults now associate the screen with work and want to take a break from spending so many hours in front of a computer and on a cell phone,” says José Luis Viruete, head of communications at Asmodee Ibérica, whose extensive catalog includes popular games such as Dobble and Dixit.
The introduction of new audiences and new scenarios has certainly contributed to this booming market. “Although the confinement saw a boom that obviously couldn’t continue in the same way in the following years, the sector has been growing for 10 years and will continue to do so in the near future,” he points out. Fernando Falomir agrees: “Right now, the sector is in a very good moment for the consumer, as both creators and publishers are trying to launch games of increasingly higher quality both in terms of mechanics and components.”
The companies that market the games are not surprised that they have found their way onto bar tables: “We believe this is a natural evolution of gameplay,” says Viruete. “It’s very much our custom, and if our elders gathered to play dominoes or Mus [a card game], it was only a matter of time before others did the same to enjoy a game of something like Exploding Kittens.”
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