Wil's Rant

Conservative Deputy Mackay is reported to have referred to Gagliano as a member of La Familia( a mobster). I certainly hope that he has some facts to back up this suggestion. The whole sponsorship scandal is so polluted that it's impossible to come to an informed opinion as to what exactly took place there. Should Mackay prove to have no other cause than his own prejudice for his comments, then he owes all Italians an apology. I have leaned nothing but the greatest respect for Italian Canadians. This group of Canadians makes up the largest portion of my business customers. As such I have been able to come to the conclusion that the Italians I know are hard working, honest, social, and frankly damn fine people to work for. Are there exceptions? Of course. Does this erase the finer qualities of the majority of Italian Canadians? Absolutely not!

Apparently we are not the only ones who allow people to assault children over and over, slap them on the wrist and send them out to do it again until they finally start killing kids. There are so many cases in Canada of repeat offenders re-committing the same crimes it would appear to be the norm as opposed to the exception.

You teach your kids that if they are in trouble just find someone wearing a policeman's badge and they will help and protect them. These two pukes hurt a lot more than just the woman they raped. They hurt the confidence and faith of all citizens in the justice system and those who enforce it.

The Care organization has pulled its people out of Iraq. I wonder if this was one of the goals of the operation to kidnap their Baghdad director? These monsters have to be stopped, but it shoudn't be the Americans who do it. The American record in this case is very tainted and another international force should take over. For this to happen, the Americans have to agree to withdraw. Anyone care to guess at when and if that will ever happen while oil still flows in Iraq and their are still billions to be made in the rebuilding effort. For gods sakes Americans, get rid of George and replace him with someone whose primary concern is not always money and power. And to the Iraqi monsters holding Mrs. Hassan- let her go! You do your cause no good whatsoever, so much so in fact I might suspect these guys of working for the Americans because their actions assist the Yanks so much in their battle for world opinion. How is any of these actions, American or Iraqi supposed to be helping the Iraqi people which everyone involved keeps saying is their primary goal.

According to the reports, Canada is about to agree to go along with the missile defense plan. This is a terrible mistake. Why would we need the plan anyway when the Americans seem very willing to attack any nation that even might have these weapons and pound them into the ground. If Iraq is any indication of American policy then the threat is, to say the very least, slightly overstated. The track record of George Bush would leave one with absolutely no faith in his assessment of current strategic capabilities of any nation, and no trust in his ability to handle any crises in an ethical and just manner. So why the hell would we want to go along with this one!

Once again, the American justice system has had to deal with our Canadian garbage. I don't know if these two monsters were ever charged in Canada. The trend hear seems to be that whenever the police finally catch and charge someone, the courts give them a very light sentence and the criminal in a very short time gets to go back on the streets to do it all over again. Repeat at least three times before they ever get anything significant in the way of jail sentences. This holds true even for very violent or serious crimes. This is one area where Canada might learn something from the U.S., at least in regards to violent crime. The drugs laws in the U.S. are archaic and need to be changed. But back to the Canadian problem. We are failing ourselves and our friends to the south when we fail to properly deal with our own garbage which too many times results in the Americans having to do it for us. Many murderers in Canada serve less than five years. The guys from B.C. got three consecutive life terms. Unless they escape, they will never walk free again. This is a very appropriate sentence for their crimes.

The criminals have kidnapped an aid worker Iraq this time. You'd think that an aid worker would be fairly safe from this ongoing campaign against non-military targets. There is no honour in the battle that these monsters are waging against innocent people. They do more harm than good even to their own cause. I hate to side with Bush and his band of merry profiteers but these monsters have to be stopped. They harm their own people with the same zeal that they attack others, giving credibility to George W. While I agree that the Americans have no just reason for being there and that they must get out, I don't agree with this type of action any more than I agree with the deaths of the many innocent Iraqis who have died for the cause of American National Interests.

Slowly but surely the Canadian feds are getting on board with this whole environmentally sound energy generation. The new wind farm in Alberta is a good example. The economic incentive for doing so is becoming greater and greater, however the question remains whether or not we will be able to save the planet given our current rate of destruction and our current rate of replacing bad technologies with good ones.

If you haven't had the chance to see this movie, you probably should. The really scary part of the movie is the fact that I wasn't surprised by what was shown. Most of the details I already knew, while I had never seen it presented in this way. I wasn't able to find many points I could argue in the film. My one problem with it is the fact that George Bush, other than his expressions, comes off sounding a lot smarter than I ever gave him credit for. It does say much about the money picture, and how it is this money that provides the real motives behind the traveling Bush family circus. I felt particularly bad for the woman who at the beginning of the movie is proudly talking about her children, several of which are in the forces, at least one of which is in Iraq at the time. She is a very patriotic woman, very proud of her country. After having lost her son, her opinion changes drastically. This has destroyed her life. While I would have wanted her to see the light, I certainly wouldn't wish this anguish and torment on anyone. The affects of Napalm on Iraqi women and children was also horrifying. The people of the U.S. must not allow their leaders to use their forces in this manner. The fine people in the forces deserve better for one thing. The Iraqis deserve better. The American people deserve better. The world deserves better. The whole planet must not live in fear of American Economic Interests. The gap between Bush's " haves and haves mores" and the rest of us is getting much bigger. We can only make the western system work if the people truly are in power. It is almost too late!

You might think that with all our advanced capabilities when it comes to spacecraft that we would be able to ensure that they don't come crashing down on some unsuspecting person. I have only a very basic understanding of the process used to launch and control these craft. Judging from the results, they are quite good at controlling these machines. So what happens when it comes time for one of them to come back? Is it always out of control at this time? Knowing that a time will come when the satellite is either going to loose power or fuel, would it not be wise to cause it to go into a controlled re-entry? Like I said, I don't know much about the process, but these questions immediately come to my mind.

In what I can only describe as another warped application of the Internet, suicide clubs are growing in popularity. In Japan, there have been several cases of groups of people meeting to commit suicide together. This is a very tough one. I support a persons' right to take their own life if they should choose, but I believe the rest of us should do our utmost to convince them not to. There are exceptions. The terminally ill are one. Why should they be forced to suffer needlessly. However, I find the concept of groups of young people meeting to kill themselves highly disturbing. I find the presence of internet sites promoting it even more so. It is one thing to provide advice to someone on how to successfully kill themselves, and another to form groups of people to do it together. Would not this make it easier for a person to make the decision to end their lives if they knew they wouldn't be alone. Does this not make the site share in the responsibility of young persons needlessly taking their own lives.

Legally, this is a very difficult one to handle. Any law designed to end this will certainly step on personal rights. I would be interested to hear of an approach to the problem that would help without doing more harm than good.

I don't know whether it's guts or just plain arrogance. After all that has gone on til now, you would think that Donald would pretty much stay silent about Iraq in fear that anything he says will automatically be dismissed as false. His credibility at this point is nil. I'm still holding my breath hoping that this particular administration will be a thing of the past very soon. Only time will tell. Be that as it may, I'm sure we'll all be happy to hear that the U.S. is winning the war on the insurgents, according to Rumsfeld. I'm very sure that this is very comforting to the families of all the people who have been beheaded to date.

If the numbers quoted by this article are anywhere near correct, it's surprising that anyone out there has a working computer. From what it says most people don't think about security very much, as a result the vast majority have been the victims of some sort of internet shenanigans. Having been the victim of many attempted attacks, I can testify to the fact that the threat is very real and everyone should consider their computer security as their first priority. Even if you don't lose your data, the time spent making repairs makes the cost of the software minimal in comparison.

Humans continue to impact their environment in detrimental ways. The fire ants in Taipei are a classic example of the affect of human interaction on a global scale. Each time a new insect in introduced into an ecosystem it has the chance of creating a domino affect on that system which could completely disrupt it. As each additional insect is introduced those odds increase at an exponential rate. It should be interesting to see when the next disastrous infestation will occur as the result of humans. This is one problem that is not going to go away. Short of sterilizing everything that travels between countries, there is no real way to avoid it so long as we operate on a global scale. The only thing we can really do is minimize the risks. Limit travel and shipping of goods between nations unless absolutely necessary. The alternative is the eventual and gradual loss of all diversity of life on the planet as some species become prevalent and others can't compete with the new species and don't have the time to evolve defenses. Without the presence of humans, this migration would follow more natural patterns and species would have time to adapt to the new conditions.

The NOAA came out with a report essentially saying that diverting water from the North of California to the south will cause substantial damage to the Northern Winter fishstocks. Not a problem, a senior official simply orders his people to change the wording so as to make the report say the opposite. I guess Bush is right. Dealing with the ecology is no where near as difficult as it would appear. It's really a matter of having the right management personnel on the job. At least until all the rivers become barren wastelands.

Five of the big e-mail providers are set to impose new rules in their attempt to limit Spam. You think spam is bad? I have a fax machine. Spam wastes a great deal of time, but faxes have that beat by a long shot. I have actually stopped leaving it on. I can't believe that any company would think that by sending me an advertising fax I would use their service. This is one of the best ways I can think of to make sure that I never, ever buy from them. That's right, they send me a fax, costing me money in paper and ink, in an attempt to advertise their company. I absolutely refuse to pay for another companies' advertising, so I have resorted to turning my fax off unless I need to use it. This becomes inconvenient when I need to receive a fax. Advertising faxes take the whole spammer concept up an order of magnitude.