Starting 01/01/2008, Bavaria had introduced a quite hard smoking ban, which also included bars and restaurants. It however contained a backdoor by excluding non-public locations, which led to the creation of 'smoker clubs' where you had to become a member to be admitted. At some point, most clubs were of this kind.

In August 2009, however, the law was changed to exclude beer tents (Oktoberfest ...) and small bars. Many people belive that this was to get votes on the elections in september 2009 (which ended up in a minus of 6-7% compared to the previous election and a historical low for the biggest party).

This caused several organizations to call for a public vote on restoring the smoking ban to the 2008 state (without the 'smokers club' backdoor). In order to force a public vote on a law (without the governments support!), we need 10% of the voters to register as supporters for the vote. You have to register at your registered home town. For Bavaria, this means about 940.000 supporters.

If you are registered voter in Bavaria, please drop by your municipality and sign up. You need an ID and 5 Minutes, that's all. 940.000 supporters is an incredible lot of people to get to the offices, take along your friends!

When we get enough supporters, the Bavarian government has two options: accepting the changes as proposed (and thus making the initative obsolete), or conducting a public vote on it, offering an alternative (e.g. the current law, no change) and have the voters decide (which is quite expensive, so if many many people sign up, they might save that money and just pass the proposed change themselves).

For more information (german only), check the Nichtraucherschutz Bayern Website, including the sign up office locations.

P.S. In other European countries, the introduction of a strong smoking ban has led to a 10-15% decrease in heart attacks (20% for non-smokers). The german constitutional court has also already ruled that the protection of non-smokers and employees from passive smoke weights stronger than the individual's freedom to smoke in enclosed spaces.

The biggest party in Bavaria and part of the current german government, CSU, has announced that they want to make the "production and distribution of killer-games" illegal in germany. They claim it's because of a recent highschool shooting (no fatalities except the shooter; there was one other highschool shooting in germany a few years ago with 16 fatalities. Yes, that is 17 fatalities in over 40 years, the 42 years old amok runner back then didn't play killer games, I guess, although he used a flame thrower...).

This would make the production and distribution in Germany unlawful, since we include games such as overkill, tremulous and openarena. Other distributions such as SuSE probably include some games that classify as "killer games" as well. Also note that "distribution" is a rather wide term. Does it apply to web sites? ISPs? If there is an online killer game, is the ISP "distributing" it?

Polticians (especially those from CSU/CDU/SPD) are such a bunch of idiots.

Please do NOT ever again vote for CSU. Software patents, killer games, "Problemfrauen & Schadbären", surveillance cameras and other surveillance, military inside germany (note that in desaster cases such as the flooding some years ago we could already deploy soldats without extra laws), shooting down of civilian airplanes, transrapid, reducing math and natural sciences in highschools, "google earth threatens worldcup security", police installing trojans on home PCs (because criminals don't install virus scanners?), kicking "irritating" students out of school, study fees, ...

Often they make George W. Bush look like a genius, don't they?

They don't do any important stuff, but just say whatever a majority people might want to hear. They waste our money (Transrapid). They destroy our biggest resource (changes in school system and university system, which will reduce average knowledge in germany a lot). They do lots of stupid things, which heavily invade privacy or public safety (military, surveillance) with no benefits in safety and many of which even where only stopped because they violated our constitution. Do not vote for them!

[Updates: Daniel, sorry for posting a non-english post to planet. I again put it into the wrong category; I intended to do a longer post (this one) in english later on. For clarification: CSU is the sister party of CDU, these parties have an arrangement not to compete by region and are closely affiliated. On the nation-wide level they have a joint list, which often is called CDUCSU. So they're not just an "affiliate", but a strong part of the ruling party.

Holger Levsen pointed out we are likely going to violate some laws much earlier by distributing ("hacker-") tools such as nmap, ettercap or whireshark.]

Neither of them can win this war. It will only cause more hatred. Killing civilians has always and will always be a bad idea.

So please stop this stupid war.

The only way of winning by military means would be genocide. Or more likely, geocide, since you'd need to get rid of all relatives and friends of your opponents around the world... Not really an option, is it?

The thing which bothers me is that the Israelis should know better. They've been trying this for years and it didn't help. Now why are they doing such a large military operation again? I mean, what is the true reason?

Read a statement by UNICEF and the WHO.

The psychological impact is serious, as people, including children have witnessed the death or injury of loved ones and destruction of their homes and communities.

Guess what, these will probably devote their life now to attacking Israel.

So no peace for Israel and the middle east for the next 20 years either...

Apparently both the U.S. and Israel like to use the excuse of fighting "terrorists, and not countries" to not follow international humanitarian laws. Which doesn't make any sense; if you want to fight terrorism, you must go way beyond what humanitarian laws enforce.

Bush has finally located the aI'kea headquarters. They're in Älmhult, Sweden. The military operation will begin any day now.

... unless, of course, someone with a cluebat comes along and puts an end into this "war on terror" madness.

After having seen another bullshit "terror warning level" app, this time a gnome applet - see Robert Love's blog - could anyone please stop this bullshit?

Does all this "terror warning level" thingy do any good?

Does being afraid of terrorists all day do any good?

Does it really help to have a gun at home when terrorists just use a airplane to hit some big building?

Well, i guess most have gone voting by now, and i really don't like Bush. But i cannot say i'm too proud of Kerry either: Anyone of them is pushing further into this direction: "All americans will die if we don't kill those terrorists"

Of course, if Kerry would say something different (for example: be nice to other countries, so they don't hate you that much) he would probably lose a lot of voters.

I do have the impression, that americans actually like to be afraid of terrorists, so they don't have to be scared of killing themselves or ruining the environment.