Category: Politics


Censorship threat to Israeli web

May 29th, 2007 — 05:10 am

The ultra-religious party Shas is currently trying to pass a new law, aimed to censor sites containing “harmful content” to only consenting adults will be able to view them.

How? By forcing ISPs to block those sites, unless the surfer is identified by biometric means.
Who will decide what is considered “harmful” and who will own the huge database of resulting biometric personal data? Good question.

And the most frightening thing is the fact most of the public is completely complacent to this danger. I have had the chance of to see comments like “no way they are going to pass that, nothing to worry about” in political forums, and it’s alarming.
Edmund Burke said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”. This is very true in the fractured Israeli political system.

Fortunately, some bloggers are aware to the danger, leading to posts from Ayelet Noff (Blonde 2.0) and Jeff Pulver, as well as an excellent site from Hanad Cohen.

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I can’t stand smoking

April 9th, 2007 — 10:21 am

Everyone who knows me is aware to the fact I can’t stand smokers near me. Just try lighting a cigarette 10 meters behind me, and in 15 seconds I’ll ask you (politely) to put it out.

Israeli law forbids smoking in public buildings and requires a non-smoking section in restaurants to be completely separated from the smoking section. The problem is that as is the case with other laws, this one is mostly ignored.
You can go to a restaurant, sit in the non-smoking section, and 2 meters from you someone sits at the bar, smoking. Going out to a bar/pub is completely out of the question, unless you like smelling like an ash-tray at the end of the evening.

Some cities in Israel try to take example from New York and other smoking-free cities in the world, and forbid smoking in pubs, and naturally this raises an opposition from the smokers.
But as it turns out there are nice people out there, who desire to be forced to avoid smoking while going out, and they criticize that opposition:

“If smoking would have been invented today, every normal country would have outlawed it. Most countries in the world are already taking steps in that direction, trying to correct an historic error, and protecting people without capability of protecting themselves.
But Taub, for some reason, wants to kill the wrong messenger. Smoking in pubs, according to him, is one of the “Tel Aviv pleasures” the new law is about to destroy.
The law, in Taub’s view, is a kind of dictatorship on behalf of non-smokers.”If 100 people wish to kill each other”, he says “no one has the right to interfere. Let us commit suicide in peace. Get out of our sight, and leave the lighter…”

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