I so happened to come across this blog post about airport security. Although that story is about the passenger section, or as we cool kids in freight call it, “pax”. Pax usually have these more personal stories and it’s only one in so many who do get pulled out of the line – although, don’t get me wrong, each of them equally sad in its own way. So you guys in pax: wtf?

First, allow me to preface this and say that I personally haven’t really experienced being held up for security for very long first hand - being caucasian and having an Israeli name and passport aren’t really the types of things that get you pulled out of queues. I even had an airport access permit at one point (an “‘A’ tag”). But I do have strong opinions about this whole “security” charade in Israel regardless and thought I’d get this off my chest.

Working in airfreight export at the moment gets me face to face with airport security. Here in Israel, the terminals (Maman and the smaller Swissport) have security teams whose jobs are to identify bombs and so forth so they don’t blow up airplanes. Fair enough, except there’s one tiny problem…

They’re completely, way, way way off. Waaaay off. Customs rarely ever hold shipments for more than an hour or two, and rarely request physical examinations of outbound cargo. But then… there’s security.

If you’re a more casual type of exporter, your shipments are likely to be delayed for about 24 hours on “security status 3″ (can’t fly until further notice). Eventually, they’ll be released (“security status 1″) and hopefully in time for the flight, though you might just find yourself missing a few just because security decided holding your shipment for 24 hours is like, a wise choice somehow and will save planet earth from its demise or heaven knows what.

But here’s what really, really ticks me off. For instance there is one Arab exporter I work with. Based in Ramallah, arab name and all. It’s unmistakable. Their shipments always get held up for security. And we’re talking days here. And then when those shipments are released they enter “security status 7″ which means they can only be flown on freighters (cargo only aircrafts) and that the decision is not negotiable unlike “security status 2″ which will eventually be released. It can make the whole thing much more expensive for the exporter and sometimes means you have to book new flights if you don’t know it in advance.

Seriously? Seriously, guys?

While I’m at it, here’s another story. I take the train to work. Upon entering the station, I have to put my bags through an X-ray machine. In addition to the X-ray machine I have to go through a metal detector in gate configuration to make sure I’m not carrying any weapons. Strangely enough it never goes off even though I have a belt with a metallic buckle and my house keys on me and that usually triggers them at the airport. Then when the train arrives, you can’t board it until the “security examination” (a 23 year old running back and forth, that is) is over.

Oh and did I mention they have 1-2 large dogs they keep around and that all train personnel including drivers are armed with real live pistols?

But the best art is: soldiers carrying M-16s are free to walk in unchecked if they present a slip of paper showing that they’re allowed to carry weapons.

Wonderful…

This one came to me via a web2.0 service. It’s not very relevant to my interests usually, no, but here’s something that just made me think twice. Apparently there is someone out there on the blogosphere who’s wrong. Surprising! Wrong information, on MY intertubes?

No, of course, even with Israel’s underdeveloped blogosphere and web services in general – even there, some jerk could come in and pour their verbal manure on to a page. It only takes one. This time, it was about Israel’s oh no revolutionary biometrics act.

Turns out somebody’s quite scared, and has been watching a lot of cheap sci-fi to base their fears, too. So apparently the government will start a database with the fingerprints and “facial features” of citizens.

But here’s the thing, unless somebody screws up royally, there’s no reason for this to fail too hard at all.

So I’ll go one by one and debunk a few of the post’s misinformed ramblings.

There will still be other records that will be more meaningful.
Do you honestly think that any government will suddenly start relying solely on this system? Now, that would be stupid, wouldn’t it?

I can assure you, even though I haven’t read about this too thoroughly, that there will be other records, which will hold more credibility over this one.

We have checksums, and they only work one day way
We have this thing called checksums. Algorithms used to generate checksums generate a one way checksum. The only two ways you can find it out are either:

1. Brute forcing the data yourself
2. Find someone who already bruteforced a lot of data and use their DB (rainbow tables)

This is most likely how logging into your bank account works.

It’s possible to verify the authenticity of data with a public key
We have the technology right here and now, and it goes one way. This is how it works, roughly. I have a private key and a public key. The private key, combined with a password, applied to data, can sign the data.

Say you have 3 agencies sign the biometric data in that manner and each put it in their respective database. Let’s say the databases are all in separate places in Israel, connected using the government’s internal network (it exists, and it’s not a part of the internet) – how am I supposed to make sure they all agree for my evil “leet hacker” methods to work?

It’s not impossible to crack any (most) systems, but it’s not impossible to abuse others’ stupidity.
So called identity theft can be done using the following method.

1. Call unsuspecting victim, pretend to be calling from one of the following: the bank, their cell phone carrier, landlines carrier, some charity organization
2. Ask for unsuspecting victim’s personal information. For instance: credit card number, phone number, some ID number (its local variant), bank account number.
3. Wait a few days
4. Call again as someone else! (Go back to 1)

This is real. These things actually happen. And you want to tell me that the weakest link is… an electronic system? Them evil machines! It’s humans, with their utmost intelligent that provide a system of ultimate fortitude! Well, turns out that’s not the case.

I’ll go a step further and say that, no, physical storage of data is not all that safe either. Houses are broken into on a daily basis. As are shops. Sometimes, no matter how difficult it’s supposed to be to get out or in of some place, it happens all the time.

I have a lot more to say, but maybe I’ll just quit. It’s been fun, but it has to end. So there, I presented strong arguments why the fact that it’s a computerized database doesn’t honestly matter.

My job was to hand out shopping carts to costumers at the tax free store in the Ben-Gurion airport. Either that or “guarding” the exit, which primarily involved telling people where the entrance was, that they shouldn’t leave with the cart and where various facilities were located.

The goal of each and every actor in this charade had been to subject the docile minds of weak travelers to as many temptations as possible. For instance, the store’s manager had ordered for the passage between the tobacco section and the checkout to be conveniently obstructed by shopping carts, hence forcing smokers to take the long way around and hopefully buy a few things on the way. It looked like a supermarket, one where excess was displayed as a necessity and sold as if within anyone’s reach, if only they wanted it.

It was another day apart from the incident with the carpool which never arrived. I stood by the entrance, dispirited, broken and demotivated to do anything. Not that I needed to. Saturday mornings aren’t exactly ever full. The alcohol salesman approached me and, slumped over a shopping cart, he complained endlessly, praising himself. Poured his heart out on me like those liquor samples he was to give out. His stories were, without a doubt, over the top. Tall-tales he conjured, though not all of it I would imagine. How he worked as a bartender at one club or the other and that the entire town knew him. About how he “did” Swedes in Thailand and how he used to work in telemarketing.

I truly did not want to believe most of it. The part with the 13,000 shekel salaries in particular. And to think he was working on 24 shekel an hour plus commissions (and evidently didn’t sell much).

Complaints about the economy came and kept coming and by the end of it I felt bitter myself and began to question why I was there as well.

When I told him about my experiences with the carpool that morning he answered, “they’re stupid. They’re animals. It’s a dead end” and I didn’t argue. He was right after all. The drivers were those marginal leftovers that entered the workforce regardless of their utter lack of professionalism. It was enough for their accents to give that detail away, and I almost felt a hatred for them for having them – though I know, that’s just a convenient thing I can blame.

We and the drivers were both prole trash. But we weren’t on the same team. We hated them, and they hated us, and with such passion. Hard working men who didn’t give two shits whether I got to work or not, just as long as they could get paid. Did they even have free time?

A woman, maybe in her late twenties, a smoker, with the same light blue sweatshirt every day shared my woes at times in trying to make sense of this situation. Asked me if I wanted to share a cab once, but I brushed that off. I simply don’t have the money, it’s quite simple. The perfume promotion worker – a tall Romanian who was equally unhappy as I was about being a victim to this system had unlike myself a useful way to vent her anger. She told me how she on her first day of work gave a little bit of “straight-talkin’” to the driver on how he should watch his tone with her.

“People like that have no limits. You’ve got to draw the line.”
I shrugged and said, “I just try to let it go.”
“But you can’t let it go!”

I would have told her she was right, but I knew I couldn’t do it myself at the same time. I had to either soak the blows or avoid them altogether. But knowing myself for long enough, as much as I’d like to spit in their face and kick them in the eye, that never would have happened. At least not to their face.

The way it worked, my schedule for the next day or so will be sent out to the drivers and their respective companies and thus I will be put down on a list. The pickup location I chose, though, did not actually exist. That is, it showed up on the list of locations given to me, but if I wanted it I would simply be dropped from the lists for the way back and occasionally for pick-up too.

And so one day I made up my mind and decided to change my pick-up location to a different one. The “deputy” referred me to the shift manager. When I spoke to him, he said he would fix it temporarily, and told me to talk to someone who can only be reached during office hours for a “permanent solution”. But since it’s a Saturday, I have to wait until Sunday – office hours in particular – and speak to one of the two women in charge. Both of which had ridiculously similar names and functions. Lee and Lee-at. The latter was described as a “revengeful bitch” by the aforementioned alcohol salesman. Or it may have been the other – I quite frankly don’t know as they practically have the same name and job description.

He never actually did that “temporary solution” and I was dropped from the list on the way back, along with four others.

By the time I managed to get to one of the similarly named clerks, it was technically speaking the wrong one, and that took two days as well as she was in meetings (who would a lowly clerk meet?), generally unavailable (i.e. not answering the phone) and mysteriously gone (not in the office). That link between my employers and the carpool service was impenetrable to me.

Calling Bontour directly resulted in being shoved aside very rudely so and be referred to See & Tour, a different company. Though the logos on the side of the car did say Bontour, it’s unclear to me why. See & Tour gave me the same treatment. Some rude secretary answered the phone, gave me the usual “I don’t know” sorts of answers and rudely hung up on me. I recommend neither of these companies solely due to their employees’ lack of professionalism, repulsive behavior and failures to simply do their job. Getting me from point A to point B and back.

The carpool failed to come again. Or maybe it did come, except not to where I stood since the list failed to come through as intendede again and left me there twenty minutes before work wondering where the hell was my ride to the airport and how was I supposed to get there?

I called the shift manager, whose line was busy for some time, who told me to wait. I waited for a call back, and when it came, the answer was, “he was there at 18:03, you weren’t. There was also a bookstore worker there, but who knows. The only thing you can do is try to get here on your own.”

I tried to explain how there was no such way. I didn’t have a car, no money for a taxi and hardly even a train (which would have taken an hour as well). I said I can’t do that unless they stop pulling that shit on me. Except I used much nicer words.

I shouldn’t have, I should have just punched her in the face through the phone somehow.

The job itself, disregarding any flaky systems to get me there and back is just barely under the threshold of enjoyable. The costumers don’t hate you (though that’s because I wasn’t a cashier, who probably get more flak).

I speak of it in past tense and it saddens me to think that I may end up coming back to it after all. And it worries me to think I “have” to get along with these inferior types. Unfortunately, as someone who holds grudges, perhaps I ought to find something else to do.

It’s not really that easy, is it? It looks like something an Israeli right wing party would have done, but then again, the purpose looked – to me – akin to what the average left wing politician would have had in mind. Usually I’d be thinking somebody’s finally making sense up there, but the truth is more like… that they just can’t decide what the hell they want to accomplish and how.

Say they bombed 95% of Hamas’ military facilities. That’s all great except that in reality all it takes is just one Hamas official alive to get up and say “by the way, I’m still around” and rebuild that whole damn thing up again. Simply because there are enough Palestinians who are absolutely sure that this is the right thing to do.

Alright then, let’s say some “genius” down in Jerusalem had this bright idea one morning: we can nuke the shit out of them. So long story short, nuke gaza area, everyone’s dead. Let’s assume we’re in a universe where something like that will just kill anyone who identifies themselves as a Palestinian and will leave minimal mess to clean up (nukes aren’t exactly safe).

I do believe that’s called genocide.

So bomb anything you like, as long as not everything there is dead, finished, done – you still have the Palestinians to deal with.

So before I get angry emails, please read all the way to the end. Look, people, what I’m saying is that there’s nothing anyone can do to prevent a Palestinian state and Israel’s future interaction with it. Meanwhile, I don’t think there’s much that can be done to prevent the continued existence of Israel in the future. Though I hope it will finally change its own definition of itself as a nation from “a Jewish nation” to something that actually allows for (gasp!) a multitude of religious and ethnic groups being in the same country and not necessarily kicking the shit out of each other just because.

So learn to deal with each other, is all I’m saying and will say about it.

(;_; I can’t believe I posted about this bullshit.)

Sure, this is a 2 Mb/s connection, but that shouldn’t mean my shit should be capped at 5 KB/s. Yes, 5.

My ISP is by the way, 012 “Kavey Zahav”. A tech support rep officially told me that they don’t cap connections. However, they do. The way she wanted to me to check it was (strangely enough) to point me to their own help site which contains a test file. Over HTTP. Over port 80. On their server. Sorry, what? I told her it makes no sense. Her response: “must be the hardware.”

I got sick of tech support’s stupidity at that point, but they haven’t heard the last of me.

Here’s what I checked so far:

• SSH to a certain remote machine on default port. Uploads at ~20 KB/s, downloads at about 10 KB/s.
• Uploaded a file to dushkin.org. Downloaded via HTTP yields reasonable speeds. FTP however is capped at about 15-20 KB/s or so.
• BitTorrent is crawling, enough said.

Exhibit 1:

4 KB/s

6 KB/s

I’ll be talking to tech support tomorrow yet again.

And another thing. Non-israeli websites seem to run significantly slower. For instance, a comparison between the download speed of downloading Ubuntu from a Danish server:

Downloading Ubuntu from a Danish server

As opposed to the exact same file being downloaded from an Israeli server

:

Clearly no issues

Needless to say, it came only as an EXE.

I spoke to a tech support rep on the phone who said he doesn’t support Mac and that my router is apparently not a router but a modem even though the interwebs disagrees. It’s time for some RL haxx.

And so I casually ask, “by the way, what’s the password for 10.0.0.138?”

“Just type in Admin password Admin.”

Yes, it’s that easy. Admin/Admin is the default password for the Aztech.

The next tech support rep said something along the lines of “I’M SORRY YOU HAVE A MODEM NOT A ROUTER I CAN’T TELL YOU HOW TO MAKE IT INTO A ROUTER BECAUSE THIS CALL IS RECORDED AND IT’S AGAINST THE POLICIES YOU WILL HAVE TO COMMIT TO US FOR 2 YEARS TO GET IT”. I hung up, though I should have just shot him in the face with my laser vision because he was an asshole. That laser vision sure is useful.

The next tech rep I called when I wanted to find out what my password was and also figure out the VPI/VCI values. He told me “kk sry i don’t speak mac lol go talk to these guys” and gave me another phone number. It had nothing to do with Mac, but sure, have it your way, silly tech support.

Tech support went something like “how do i shot web”. The values themselves I found on Bezeq’s website (!!) in another guide for a different router with an incredibly similar GUI. These are the settings I’ve used as they appear in the device’s interface after you click Quick Start:

TL;DR: 10.0.0.138. Username Admin, password Admin, click Quick Start, put above info spare the username and password which are meant to be your own.

Enjoy.

Just the day before my grandma and her husband (which is technically not my grandpa), came over – mom of course, started cleaning up like I haven’t seen her before. She even told me to try to keep the house clean. When my dad did me a great favor by asking the question that I’ve been dying to make my mother face – whether she’s afraid that grandma might judge her.

“Judge me? No, she doesn’t care how the house looks, it’s not her house anyway; and I left home years ago anyway, she can’t give me orders anymore” she replied with absolute certainty.

The house was spotless, you could eat a cookie even if it fell on the toilet seat. You could lick the laundry room (which is more of a storage room) floor and not come down with a terrible disease for a change. It was clean to say the least.

Grandma doesn’t dominate you, I see.

I’ve had my share of this mother-daughter complex back a few months ago with my ex. Again, the same problem, “mom has no control over me whatsoever”, but when mom says “foreigner bad, foreigner problem” – mom must be right, no? It took her about a month, but she did it, she got rid of this terrible foreigner. But really, don’t parents just love nerds? We still talk, but when she came to town this weekend she refused to see me. It all fell into place when I realized she was with her mother. Her sick dominating mother.

So if you ever wonder why I’m not that full of regrets about that whole thing I had with her – yeah, it’s also because she reminds me of my mom.

Brings back when mother’s unwillingness to leave to move to a new house back a few years ago in Israel. It was because we were living only one block away from no other than grandma. Grandma, oh grandma. When my parents are coming back to Israel (I will be tagging along for a short period of time before getting the fuck out of there) they’re coming back to the same house. One block away from grandma.

There was a plan to come back to a different house – on the same street as to not get away from grandma almighty.

And now she’s here. For two weeks, leaving oily marks on various tupperware boxes in the fridge, making the house smell like old people and making everyone’s life miserable by giving orders.

My dad doesn’t get any orders though.

“Fine, you don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to”, “why does this house look like a dump?” and a wide variety of classic Jewish complaints. Since I became German she at least doesn’t express her (now ridiculous and redundant) hate for Germans.

When she’s around everything feels like you’re walking on a wire suspended between two really tall buildings with my brother shaking the wire every now and then. No matter how much you beg, he either won’t get it, or will try harder.

They’re not even getting letters from me once I’m gone.

Brainwash, oh, sorry, indoctrination, is of course everywhere.

The only way to really get over it, I would say, is by a change of context. Possibly the best thing that could ever happen to anyone is to be torn away from where the were born and move somewhere else, I’m not kidding. To grow up one place and mature someplace else, just to get a proper perspective.

I was in 7th grade back in September 11 2001. A day known for one thing which will in turn change things as we know them – in the mind of the average republican anyway.

The average Israeli worships the US, anything to do with it, anything with the slightest relevance. Of course, after that day, it would seem to them, that the US became just a little more like Israel. To be honest, it probably did a little bit – hey, the conservatives did stay in office.

And so some teacher, I think, said something rather awkward in retrospect. “There’s been a conspiracy that the Jews sabotaged the world trade center,” she said, “but the reason why they were absent that day was because they all went to a certain funeral.”Wait a second, what? Citation needed, don’t you think? Of course there’s going to be conspiracies, but what kind of a crappy excuse is that?

Reminds me of something my history teacher at the time said, that “Jews were hated in Europe because they were” according to him, “better in every way.” It all just clicked in my mind: I was being very obviously brainwashed constantly. That’s education for ya’.

Among other things, this awful brainwash (that is, education) included: The bible (the old testament of) was taught as factual and true.

That polytheists are primitive. Give me a break, it’s all the same. Who am I to tell others that their religion is defective?

That circumcision is not only good, but it’s also required and does not reduce sexual pleasure; uncircumcised males will have problems at some point, it’s disgusting, etc. But of course, it’s not really endorsed by urologists (anymore, as far as I know) and is only done is certain cases of infection if anything – it’s rare anyhow and easily treatable.

Hey, but that’s education, I guess? Or is it just the horrible crushing majority of Jews in Israel? Pluralism will not exist for at least another 2-3 generations ahead.

I’m off the bandwagon, lucky for me. See you then, Israel.

He does legally hold two nationalities, and yet neither of them is in fact related to his current position on earth, or maybe just by a broad definition – “European.”

He makes attempts to learn the local language and fit in, presents himself as a local, or a “citizen of the world”, but hits the same brick wall – he does not fit exactly, but merely some of the time. He may hold two passports, but not want to have much with one nationality, and being very distant from the other.

His previous experiences in life, the language which he had acquired mean absolutely nothing in his current surroundings – a recently planted tree, significantly smaller than the rest in the forest. Will he ever bear fruits or repay society? That’s most certainly his plan, whether or not

Thanks to involuntary military service, a large Jewish orthodox sector, extreme weather, lack of respect for the environment and the beaurocracy’s helplessness facing these issues – I decided to take the plunge and be this proletariat drifter scum.

Luckily, I managed to get a hold of a German passport. Since Denmark is in the EU, I’m pretty much set. I am able to receive free tuition and even subsidy. Arrangements are being made, and the day slowly nears that I will come back, in 2009, or maybe even late 2008 and become a proletariat drifter scum.

To be honest, my life as a proletariat drifter scum can’t possibly be worse than my life as a local would have been in Israel. It’s just not going to work with me and Israel, we’re too different. Too different, and indeed, we must therefor break up, peacefully and quietly.

Socialism is definitely the way to go. Israel isn’t really my thing. The issue’s pretty much solved.

So that’s it, I’ll be living the next few years in Denmark, that’s for certain – most likely even the next few decades. And me, I couldn’t get any happier. I’m not alone as I am now, and knowing Danish (properly at least) would be even better.

May 2008, I finish IB. August 2008, I’m going to fight for my freedom in the battle against the involuntary military service in Israel. Then later in 2008, or even at late as 2009, back to Denmark.

So I won’t have the right to vote, like anybody cares. So long, Israel.

In short, Israel is a country, whose existence is more or less on a limb as it is filled with a majority of Jews. The stress levels are somewhere between “extreme” and “insane”, the common language is Hebrew (with varying accents and vocabulary depending on socioeconomical status) and the common layman is a hardline fascist.

The weather was for a change something I can cope with. Not too bad at all, a slight breeze every now and then, 22°C more or less. To be honest, it’s rarely ever this great and during the summertime the heat is absolutely unbearable, often rising to 35°C or even 40 in some places. Life can be a bitch over in Israel without a proper A/C as my grandmother demonstrated – she’s got about 3 of them in her house.

The common Israeli person is a loud somewhat dark-skinned, short in European scales, has no sense of respect/manners/etc. and wears cloths with poorly phrased English slogans printed on them.

Last Thursday (I believe it was) I paid a visit to the post office to mail some postcards. I stood in what I thought was the line, and waited. Some old woman who could barely walk decided to cut me in line, ask how much some little notebook cost, pay for it, get the change back and leave all the while I was standing in line in front of her. I came there first, and she saw me there when she came, it was no mistake. But I mean, whatever, it’s just one person, right?

Along came a young trendy man with the usual marine-style haircut common around Israel. He stands right next to me and directs the clerk to bring him some sort of package, again, while I’m just there standing in line, or at least trying to. The clerk brought him that package, and gave him some tiny piece of paper to sign. So in other words, he was cooperating.

I eventually handed my postcards, he put some stamps on them, charged me 3 shekel or so (less than a dollar) and told me he’ll take care of them.

And I was there for only 10 minutes..

So now I’m here down with some sort of a disease which seems to affect my stomach for the most part. My back is killing me, because there’s hardly anywhere in here where I can actually sit, making it really hard to use my MacBook. But hey, at least I have an internet connection.

I can’t wait to come back to Denmark.