The practical upshot is that Gideon Levy is a source with low credibility level. This means that things reported by him range from accurate, through out of context and up to downright lies.
Dov Weissglas did, in fact, deny the quote. Whether you believe the denial or not is not the point. The point is that there is zero indication that this actually turned into policy that Israel carried out. This quote, whether actually said or not, is not proof that Israel is starving the Palestinian population in Gaza. At best, it's indication that some such suggestion was raised by someone at some discussions on the matter.
And this is precisely the sort of propaganda that makes Gideon Levy so unreliable. The question is not whether Dov Weissglas did or did not say that quote. The question is whether it turned, or even ever stood a chance of turning, into official Israel policy carried out in practice. If the answer is "no", then bringing it up is merely an attempt in slurring.
The actual situation is that the Gaza strip is receiving adequate amounts of all non-military provisions.
That isn't a criteria that ANY Palestinian meets in the eyes of the Israeli government. I doubt you would disagree with them
That's just hate speech. It's much easier to win an argument if you put words in your opponent's mouth.
No, I do not think all Palestinians are "actively working to kill civilians". Please note I did not count supporting war crimes (sorry, you want them called "terror acts") as active. I'm talking about planning, funding, training and carrying out violent acts deliberately targeted at civilians.
You may not like my stress on intent (and you seem to ignore it everywhere else you reply to me), but the simple fact of the matter is that this is the scale by which international law distinguishes between unwanted but unavoidable deaths of civilians during war and crimes against humanity.
Working under the same requirements,
Like I said, these requirements make no sense. Even so, there are 11 Arab Knesset members. Do you think they are even talking about killing Palestinians? I know you believe that all Jews think so, but that's just because you find it hard to believe that others don't follow your low standards.
can you list an Israeli politician who isn't ``actively working to kill Palestinian civilians''?
Just how incompetent do you take Israel to be? Do you honestly believe that, had Israel wanted to kill Palestinians, we really couldn't have managed to kill way more than we have? Over the past decade, less Palestinians died as a result of Israeli acts than the amount of Syrians who died as a result of the Syrian government over the past six months. Doesn't that, in an on itself, show that Israel's intent is not to kill Palestinians?
Oh, I forgot. You couldn't answer my question as asked, so you changed it.
Please name two Palestinian leaders (i.e. - not people actively working to kill Israeli civilians, but people who actually lead political parties) that were assassinated by Israel over the last decade, so we have concrete examples at hand. I can't think of even one.
So, a quote from a meeting becomes, in your eyes "official policy". Nice. Are food actually stopped?
There is control of Sugar, which is used to generate explosives (as there is for fertilizers, gas, and other stuff). That's what a "blockage" means - you filter out the provisions that are used against you. For the most part, there is no filtering of actual food. Just propaganda. See, for example, this.
To quote the parent:
It took five minutes to Google this up. Open your eyes and see that what has been happening for decades now is real and not just some "narrative."
Actually, it's "according to Gideon Levy". Take any anti-Israeli statement this man says with a grain of salt. The man was caught taking out of context, and in some cases downright lying, in order to make his point.
Ben-Dror Yemini actually took the time to systematically analyze one of his rants (to the British "The Independent"). Someone took the time to translate the original article to English. You can read Ben-Dror's refutation of the piece (and the man) here.
Wow it's great Israel is a democracy. Do the Arabs in the West Bank get to vote in elections?
Of course they do. As in the sentence "Abu Mazen was elected president of the Palestinian Authority".
They do not get to vote in the Israeli elections, but, then again, neither do the residents of South Dakota (except for a "token few" who are Israeli citizens).
Also, no loyalty declaration requirement. It never passed as law. I'm beginning to miss a "misinformed" moderation action.
Wow. I guess we can take this as an example of being able to make anything out of anything.
From the article you cite:
The mainstream media in the US and Israel places the blame squarely on Hamas. Indeed, a massive barrage of Palestinian rockets were fired into Israel in November and December
So, there was a barrage of rockets fired into Israel. The article fails to mention these were aimed at civilian population. But, no, we were in a ceasefire before that. Or were we? From the article:
the ceasefire was remarkably effective: after it began in June 2008, the rate of rocket and mortar fire from Gaza dropped to almost zero
Emphasis added.
So, the Palestinian definition of "ceasefire" is "you don't shoot at us, and we hardly shoot at you as much as we want to".
If two rockets a week is your definition of "ceasefire", then, yes, I guess you can say Israel is the one who broke it. If, like me, you like your ceasefire fire-less, then Hamass broke the ceasefire.
Thus the latest ceasefire ended when Israel first killed Palestinians, and Palestinians then fired rockets into Israel.
So, Palestinians firing 11 times over three months is a "ceasefire", but Israel firing once over the same period is "breaking the ceasefire". Nice.
Long though it may be, your comment still contains far too many mischaracterizations to comfortably fit into a single paragraph.
1. I am not suggesting BDS is equivalent to anything in particular. I'm just stating that it is part of a propaganda warfare, rather than, like its supporters claim it is, a peaceful tool. 2. I'm not sure where you took that quote from. It fits with neither anything I'm aware that Israel has done, nor anything I'm aware that my (not always smart) leaders have said. Care to give the precise origin? 3. Long list of things Israel has, supposedly, done. Some of those are just a figment of someone's imagination. The rest are taken out of context so as to say "Israel is bad", rather than the more accurate "war is bad". In other words, it's propaganda.
But without real discourse, how can you tell the two apart? How can you get the context you need in order to evaluate whether Israel is indeed so much worse than any other country involved in urban warfare since the beginning of time, or did your sources merely mislead you into hating a country for no really good reason? If you shut yourself off from criticism, you are willfully ignorant. Be so, if you wish, but don't call yourself "intellectual" or an academic.
It is intended to remind them, peacefully, that they have the power to change this by electing a government whose policies do not violate international laws.
But what if I disagree with you that my government is, indeed, violating international laws? If you will not hear what I have to say (because you are boycotting my academia), then how will you find out in case you are wrong?
BDS is about saying "there is no chance we can possibly be wrong, and no further discussion is necessary", which is another way of saying it is just propaganda. It is also the anti-thesis of the most fundamental core academic value.
BDS is one piece of weapon in an arsenal diplomatic warfare. Yes, weapons can be used to push peace, but they are not, generally, considered a "peace device".
BDS is particularly evil for several reasons. The most ironical is that it attempts to collectively punish all Israelis for what Israel is supposedly doing, thus using collective punishment to protest collective punishment. Presumably, this is okay because it's done by "the good guys"(tm).
More to the point, BDS strives to prevent the other side from voicing its opinion to argue whether the acts protested are real, or just products of propaganda and distortion. In that respect, BDS is just another propaganda employed against Israel. Weapons may, in some rare circumstances, bring peace, but propaganda seldom does.
More to the point, however, BDS strives under all that is "Academia". I can sometimes agree that economical sanctions are in order (nothing that Israel has justified, but I can see how others might disagree with that sentiment). I can understand a cultural boycott, though don't see how it ever does any good. An Academic boycott, however, is never justified.
True discourse and exchange of ideas, some of which you might not like, is the cornerstone of academia. Shutting down someone else's voice is never an academic thing to do, least of all for political reasons.
Except police claim they can do it if a car is inside a garage, and they connect the device to the car's battery. It does not sound as if either criteria is being met.
A provisional is written in plain English. No lawerieze required. I'm not sure about the average Joe, but someone who's capable of inventing something worth a patent should be able to describe it in a patent.
As for provisional not counting as prior art - as far as I know, that is total BS. IANAL, of course, but AFAIK, filing a provisional and then not following it through is enough to invalidate any patent that tries to block the same invention.
One reason why individuals don't patent their inventions is because they can't afford the time and expenses.
A provisional for private and small entities only costs $110, and allows you to convert to full patent within a year. If you have an idea you want to show to big corporates, file for a provisional, and then show it to Big$$ with the heading "patent pending".
Or more simply; if I publish an idea on my blog and some company takes that idea and patents it, does my blog entry count as prior art?
Assuming your blog is public, yes, it counts as prior art. If you publish something which is novel in your blog, no one in the world can patent it (yourself included).
The main difference this brings is that you cannot publish something prior to patenting it, as your own publishing can act as prior art, invalidating your own patent. This means that you cannot take something published, say "hey, this would actually make a nice patent", and go around and patent it. You'd be committing fraud when signing the piece of paper saying that, as far as you know, the invention is novel.
People here confuse "first to invent" with "prior art". If something is published, it is unpatentable, no matter which system you use. First to file encourages early filing, as if you keep things secret, someone else might file a patent (due to unrelated invention), and you'd be left with nothing. This means you need to either publish (and prevent everyone, yourself included, from monopolizing it) or patent it early (a provisional is fine, so small inventors can still participate, provided they can spare $110).
Under the current system, patents could surface quite late in the game. So long as you have some proof that the patent was in progress, you could wait until someone else published it, and then run off to the patent office and patent it. That makes no sense. The purpose (original one) of the patent system was to encourage inventors to publish their inventions.
Nothing. The prior art rules are unaffected by first to file rules. Of course, IANAL, but, then again, neither is anyone else commenting on this thread.
I'm sorry, but this rant is just ignorance of how "first to file" actually works.
First to invent means, in theory, that you can build something, start selling it, and then file for patent. In practice, however, this allows big corporations to back-date an invention. There is no "chain of evidence" proving that you did, indeed, made the invention as far back as you claim you did.
With first to file, it is impossible to back-date an invention, as the one providing the time stamp is the (presumably reliable) patent office.
Now let's take the apocalyptic scenarios you describe and dissect them:
Now you could invent something, be using it and selling it for 10 years, and then Big Corporation file a $10,000+ patent and steal your invention and sue YOU for selling YOUR invention!
No, they can't. If you have been selling it on the market, it's prior art. No one can patent it. Even if that's not the case, first-to-file systems generally have "prior use" defenses. I cannot invalidate your patent by proving that I have been using it before you patented it, but I am exempt from licensing it from you.
since you can no longer prove "I've been using this for XX years!"
As far as I know, first to invent only goes back one year. That it the most you can back-date an invention. The load on the patent office will not change significantly.
But it will increase the filing process since they don't have to do any work, they don't have to figure out "Gee, does the wheel already exist? I swear this round thing looks familiar..." they can just do a quick search of their database and go "Nope don't find it here's your patent".
If it's published, it's prior art whether patented or not. If it's unpublished, then you can patent it. Nothing changes in that regard.
I'm not sure whether you actually got it in the end or not, but just to make sure...
The Police are not using your GPS in order to track you. As you said, it is a one-way device (though, to be honest, a-gps does reveal your general whereabouts to anyone listening, as it reveals what satellites you're interested in).
What this is talking about is a government program where they discreetly place a GPS + GSM module inside your car, and then track where you are going, without a warrant or probable cause.
Caveat - I have never actually tried it, and I developed it for adults. I still think it might work with 2nd graders (probablu too coplex)
Ask for a volunteer. Write a bunch of numbers on the board, and tell the volunteer to sort them.
Explain that this is not programming.
Now, cover the volunteer's eyes, write some more numbers on the board, and tell him to tell you to sort them. Allow asking "what is the first number" and such.
Explain that this is, also, not programming.
Now, tell the volunteer to tell you how to sort the numbers before they are written on the board. Explain that once the numbers are written on the board, you will not hear any comment from him. Write the instructions down on the board. When they are done, write down numbers and carry the instructions out. Try to pick numbers that won't work with their instructions. Allow the class to fix the instructions, but any time they do, restart the whole thing.
Anyway, I can personally tell you that we saw at least 1 DOA laptop for every 20 we sold (a certain brand or two I won't name that sold for cheap accounted for most of them)....
It pissed off the customer, and then usually the store ends up losing more money because of people who demand to be compensated for the time they spent bring the computer back to the store.
The solution ought to be obvious, then. Don't carry the brand. Over-all perceived quality of the store goes up. Customer satisfaction goes up (except those customers that come in wanting that specific brand, but those should be few). Profitability goes up. Everybody (except "CrapsRUs") wins.
Slashdot Mirror
Why should I avidly follow a known unreliable source? My time is precious too.
Either way, like I said, it's not what people say in closed meetings. It's what the country actually does that should count.
Shachar
The practical upshot is that Gideon Levy is a source with low credibility level. This means that things reported by him range from accurate, through out of context and up to downright lies.
Dov Weissglas did, in fact, deny the quote. Whether you believe the denial or not is not the point. The point is that there is zero indication that this actually turned into policy that Israel carried out. This quote, whether actually said or not, is not proof that Israel is starving the Palestinian population in Gaza. At best, it's indication that some such suggestion was raised by someone at some discussions on the matter.
And this is precisely the sort of propaganda that makes Gideon Levy so unreliable. The question is not whether Dov Weissglas did or did not say that quote. The question is whether it turned, or even ever stood a chance of turning, into official Israel policy carried out in practice. If the answer is "no", then bringing it up is merely an attempt in slurring.
The actual situation is that the Gaza strip is receiving adequate amounts of all non-military provisions.
Shachar
That isn't a criteria that ANY Palestinian meets in the eyes of the Israeli government. I doubt you would disagree with them
That's just hate speech. It's much easier to win an argument if you put words in your opponent's mouth.
No, I do not think all Palestinians are "actively working to kill civilians". Please note I did not count supporting war crimes (sorry, you want them called "terror acts") as active. I'm talking about planning, funding, training and carrying out violent acts deliberately targeted at civilians.
You may not like my stress on intent (and you seem to ignore it everywhere else you reply to me), but the simple fact of the matter is that this is the scale by which international law distinguishes between unwanted but unavoidable deaths of civilians during war and crimes against humanity.
Working under the same requirements,
Like I said, these requirements make no sense. Even so, there are 11 Arab Knesset members. Do you think they are even talking about killing Palestinians? I know you believe that all Jews think so, but that's just because you find it hard to believe that others don't follow your low standards.
can you list an Israeli politician who isn't ``actively working to kill Palestinian civilians''?
Just how incompetent do you take Israel to be? Do you honestly believe that, had Israel wanted to kill Palestinians, we really couldn't have managed to kill way more than we have? Over the past decade, less Palestinians died as a result of Israeli acts than the amount of Syrians who died as a result of the Syrian government over the past six months. Doesn't that, in an on itself, show that Israel's intent is not to kill Palestinians?
Oh, I forgot. You couldn't answer my question as asked, so you changed it.
Shachar
Please name two Palestinian leaders (i.e. - not people actively working to kill Israeli civilians, but people who actually lead political parties) that were assassinated by Israel over the last decade, so we have concrete examples at hand. I can't think of even one.
Shachar
It's a free forum. You can say whatever you like, whether true or not.
Shachar
Can you cite a single case where Israel blew up children for fun?
Shachar
So, a quote from a meeting becomes, in your eyes "official policy". Nice. Are food actually stopped?
There is control of Sugar, which is used to generate explosives (as there is for fertilizers, gas, and other stuff). That's what a "blockage" means - you filter out the provisions that are used against you. For the most part, there is no filtering of actual food. Just propaganda. See, for example, this.
To quote the parent:
It took five minutes to Google this up. Open your eyes and see that what has been happening for decades now is real and not just some "narrative."
Shachar
According to Haaretz ...
Actually, it's "according to Gideon Levy". Take any anti-Israeli statement this man says with a grain of salt. The man was caught taking out of context, and in some cases downright lying, in order to make his point.
Ben-Dror Yemini actually took the time to systematically analyze one of his rants (to the British "The Independent"). Someone took the time to translate the original article to English. You can read Ben-Dror's refutation of the piece (and the man) here.
Shachar
Wow it's great Israel is a democracy. Do the Arabs in the West Bank get to vote in elections?
Of course they do. As in the sentence "Abu Mazen was elected president of the Palestinian Authority".
They do not get to vote in the Israeli elections, but, then again, neither do the residents of South Dakota (except for a "token few" who are Israeli citizens).
Also, no loyalty declaration requirement. It never passed as law. I'm beginning to miss a "misinformed" moderation action.
Shachar
I'm saying that, the way BDS is carried out, you cannot be sure whether the change you are trying to bring about is the right change.
Shachar
Wow. I guess we can take this as an example of being able to make anything out of anything.
From the article you cite:
The mainstream media in the US and Israel places the blame squarely on Hamas. Indeed, a massive barrage of Palestinian rockets were fired into Israel in November and December
So, there was a barrage of rockets fired into Israel. The article fails to mention these were aimed at civilian population. But, no, we were in a ceasefire before that. Or were we? From the article:
the ceasefire was remarkably effective: after it began in June 2008, the rate of rocket and mortar fire from Gaza dropped to almost zero
Emphasis added.
So, the Palestinian definition of "ceasefire" is "you don't shoot at us, and we hardly shoot at you as much as we want to".
If two rockets a week is your definition of "ceasefire", then, yes, I guess you can say Israel is the one who broke it. If, like me, you like your ceasefire fire-less, then Hamass broke the ceasefire.
Thus the latest ceasefire ended when Israel first killed Palestinians, and Palestinians then fired rockets into Israel.
So, Palestinians firing 11 times over three months is a "ceasefire", but Israel firing once over the same period is "breaking the ceasefire". Nice.
Shachar
Long though it may be, your comment still contains far too many mischaracterizations to comfortably fit into a single paragraph.
1. I am not suggesting BDS is equivalent to anything in particular. I'm just stating that it is part of a propaganda warfare, rather than, like its supporters claim it is, a peaceful tool.
2. I'm not sure where you took that quote from. It fits with neither anything I'm aware that Israel has done, nor anything I'm aware that my (not always smart) leaders have said. Care to give the precise origin?
3. Long list of things Israel has, supposedly, done. Some of those are just a figment of someone's imagination. The rest are taken out of context so as to say "Israel is bad", rather than the more accurate "war is bad". In other words, it's propaganda.
But without real discourse, how can you tell the two apart? How can you get the context you need in order to evaluate whether Israel is indeed so much worse than any other country involved in urban warfare since the beginning of time, or did your sources merely mislead you into hating a country for no really good reason? If you shut yourself off from criticism, you are willfully ignorant. Be so, if you wish, but don't call yourself "intellectual" or an academic.
Shachar
It is intended to remind them, peacefully, that they have the power to change this by electing a government whose policies do not violate international laws.
But what if I disagree with you that my government is, indeed, violating international laws? If you will not hear what I have to say (because you are boycotting my academia), then how will you find out in case you are wrong?
BDS is about saying "there is no chance we can possibly be wrong, and no further discussion is necessary", which is another way of saying it is just propaganda. It is also the anti-thesis of the most fundamental core academic value.
Shachar
BDS is one piece of weapon in an arsenal diplomatic warfare. Yes, weapons can be used to push peace, but they are not, generally, considered a "peace device".
BDS is particularly evil for several reasons. The most ironical is that it attempts to collectively punish all Israelis for what Israel is supposedly doing, thus using collective punishment to protest collective punishment. Presumably, this is okay because it's done by "the good guys"(tm).
More to the point, BDS strives to prevent the other side from voicing its opinion to argue whether the acts protested are real, or just products of propaganda and distortion. In that respect, BDS is just another propaganda employed against Israel. Weapons may, in some rare circumstances, bring peace, but propaganda seldom does.
More to the point, however, BDS strives under all that is "Academia". I can sometimes agree that economical sanctions are in order (nothing that Israel has justified, but I can see how others might disagree with that sentiment). I can understand a cultural boycott, though don't see how it ever does any good. An Academic boycott, however, is never justified.
True discourse and exchange of ideas, some of which you might not like, is the cornerstone of academia. Shutting down someone else's voice is never an academic thing to do, least of all for political reasons.
Shachar
Except police claim they can do it if a car is inside a garage, and they connect the device to the car's battery. It does not sound as if either criteria is being met.
Shachar
A provisional is written in plain English. No lawerieze required. I'm not sure about the average Joe, but someone who's capable of inventing something worth a patent should be able to describe it in a patent.
As for provisional not counting as prior art - as far as I know, that is total BS. IANAL, of course, but AFAIK, filing a provisional and then not following it through is enough to invalidate any patent that tries to block the same invention.
Shachar
One reason why individuals don't patent their inventions is because they can't afford the time and expenses.
A provisional for private and small entities only costs $110, and allows you to convert to full patent within a year. If you have an idea you want to show to big corporates, file for a provisional, and then show it to Big$$ with the heading "patent pending".
Shachar
Or more simply; if I publish an idea on my blog and some company takes that idea and patents it, does my blog entry count as prior art?
Assuming your blog is public, yes, it counts as prior art. If you publish something which is novel in your blog, no one in the world can patent it (yourself included).
IANAL
Shachar
IANAL
The main difference this brings is that you cannot publish something prior to patenting it, as your own publishing can act as prior art, invalidating your own patent. This means that you cannot take something published, say "hey, this would actually make a nice patent", and go around and patent it. You'd be committing fraud when signing the piece of paper saying that, as far as you know, the invention is novel.
People here confuse "first to invent" with "prior art". If something is published, it is unpatentable, no matter which system you use. First to file encourages early filing, as if you keep things secret, someone else might file a patent (due to unrelated invention), and you'd be left with nothing. This means you need to either publish (and prevent everyone, yourself included, from monopolizing it) or patent it early (a provisional is fine, so small inventors can still participate, provided they can spare $110).
Under the current system, patents could surface quite late in the game. So long as you have some proof that the patent was in progress, you could wait until someone else published it, and then run off to the patent office and patent it. That makes no sense. The purpose (original one) of the patent system was to encourage inventors to publish their inventions.
Shachar
What does all this mean for "prior art"?
Nothing. The prior art rules are unaffected by first to file rules. Of course, IANAL, but, then again, neither is anyone else commenting on this thread.
Shachar
I'm sorry, but this rant is just ignorance of how "first to file" actually works.
First to invent means, in theory, that you can build something, start selling it, and then file for patent. In practice, however, this allows big corporations to back-date an invention. There is no "chain of evidence" proving that you did, indeed, made the invention as far back as you claim you did.
With first to file, it is impossible to back-date an invention, as the one providing the time stamp is the (presumably reliable) patent office.
Now let's take the apocalyptic scenarios you describe and dissect them:
Now you could invent something, be using it and selling it for 10 years, and then Big Corporation file a $10,000+ patent and steal your invention and sue YOU for selling YOUR invention!
No, they can't. If you have been selling it on the market, it's prior art. No one can patent it. Even if that's not the case, first-to-file systems generally have "prior use" defenses. I cannot invalidate your patent by proving that I have been using it before you patented it, but I am exempt from licensing it from you.
since you can no longer prove "I've been using this for XX years!"
As far as I know, first to invent only goes back one year. That it the most you can back-date an invention. The load on the patent office will not change significantly.
But it will increase the filing process since they don't have to do any work, they don't have to figure out "Gee, does the wheel already exist? I swear this round thing looks familiar..." they can just do a quick search of their database and go "Nope don't find it here's your patent".
If it's published, it's prior art whether patented or not. If it's unpublished, then you can patent it. Nothing changes in that regard.
Shachar
What I'm really interested in knowing - if anyone may do it to anyone, can I plant such a device inside a police car?
Shachar
I'm not sure whether you actually got it in the end or not, but just to make sure...
The Police are not using your GPS in order to track you. As you said, it is a one-way device (though, to be honest, a-gps does reveal your general whereabouts to anyone listening, as it reveals what satellites you're interested in).
What this is talking about is a government program where they discreetly place a GPS + GSM module inside your car, and then track where you are going, without a warrant or probable cause.
Shachar
Caveat - I have never actually tried it, and I developed it for adults. I still think it might work with 2nd graders (probablu too coplex)
Ask for a volunteer. Write a bunch of numbers on the board, and tell the volunteer to sort them.
Explain that this is not programming.
Now, cover the volunteer's eyes, write some more numbers on the board, and tell him to tell you to sort them. Allow asking "what is the first number" and such.
Explain that this is, also, not programming.
Now, tell the volunteer to tell you how to sort the numbers before they are written on the board. Explain that once the numbers are written on the board, you will not hear any comment from him. Write the instructions down on the board. When they are done, write down numbers and carry the instructions out. Try to pick numbers that won't work with their instructions. Allow the class to fix the instructions, but any time they do, restart the whole thing.
This is programming.
Shachar
Anyway, I can personally tell you that we saw at least 1 DOA laptop for every 20 we sold (a certain brand or two I won't name that sold for cheap accounted for most of them)....
It pissed off the customer, and then usually the store ends up losing more money because of people who demand to be compensated for the time they spent bring the computer back to the store.
The solution ought to be obvious, then. Don't carry the brand. Over-all perceived quality of the store goes up. Customer satisfaction goes up (except those customers that come in wanting that specific brand, but those should be few). Profitability goes up. Everybody (except "CrapsRUs") wins.
Opening boxes is not a solution.
Shachar