it's complicated....

It is useful to see how we got to where we are. It may be a way of avoiding pitfalls, making the same  stupid mistakes over and over again.

We are presently watching the rapid emergence of China, possibly to take over the world leadership, ( unless we keep believing that the USA is the leader of the so called free world...) no matter, like or not.
After the near  total collapse of the American economy and the resuling pressure on the Euro ( work in progress...Greece, possibly Portugal,Spain and Italy...Turkey?) the world is stupified by the  changed value system as we know it.

Mr. Obama was on the right track to find a way out of this mess, but the warboys appear to have ganged up on the man and no-one can predict where this is going. Most of what he promised to change is slowly going down the drain.
Some ideas....paradime changes:

A- Americans and their so called allies,get out of Iraq, now, no point to linger there any longer.
B- Americans and their companieros including Canada and Germany, get out of Afghanistan, now.
C- America, create a health plan of sorts to give every Americans  including 30 to 50 Million people without insurance some kind of basic coverage.
D- Make peace with Cuba, the current  useless state of affairs has been going on way too long. Make piece with North Korea. Try a working agreement with Iran.
E- Revamp, revise the infrastructure of America, USA, Canada, Bridges, Roads, Railways, Airports            and Waterways should be updated. Many local  sewer systems in the USA and Canada, watermains railways and bridges are over 100 years old and must be replaced. Some of these badly needed updates are far too extensive to be handled by local governments and need federal or state/provincial massive input and long term financing.

theft,fraud,and related lowlife activities..a Bell Canada Cellular complaint.

Miserable service by Bell Cellular Canada
I recently received  a call from a collection agency...D&C or something like that..looking for about 1200 bucks...a collection effort for Bell Cellular...overdue bill.

Closer scrutiny by the collection agency caller quickly  revealed that this bill obviously was not for me...not sure why Bell were not able to figure this out before handing their crap-bill to their  collectors. They have phone records and to track this down does not appear to be a big task.

I do have a Bell Cellular account, have had a Bell Cell account for many years and for what little I use it..it's paid up.
It is hard to believe  how I got switched around talking to all sorts of telephone company reps...all over the world...to get this sorted out.( Costa Rica, India, and somewhere out east..)..I got nowhere until I visited a local Bell-Phone l center and insisted that a security representative contact me.

Some piece of lowlife garbage  managed to use my name  with Bell ,supposedly used my social insurance number and set up an account.  Apparently with a home location and references in Etobicoke  that is part of ol Toronno .
I have  never lived  in or near Etobicoke.
I have not lost my wallet, or identification, heaven knows how this kreep got my I.D.

The collection agency contracted  by Bell:
D&A Corporation 131 Brunell Rd Mississauga Ont L4Z 1X3
employee to contact me,
Sam at 905-507-8889  1-888-395-1147 x6273
unpaid account, Bell ref  508851175 amount to collect $1139.345
name Fred  Weiss  reference Mark Quirk ( name slightly altered to prevent fraud)..
at 35 28th Street or St.Attol St. Etobicoke or similar
work phone 416-259-6322 turned out to be a leave message number by electronics firm?
refererred cel phone number...289-257-1205...that was the fraudulent Bell cel number...

My first contact with Bell Cellular about this  fraud scene was shabby at best. The only way I was able to make contact was by using my actual existing cel phone reference. I was informed that I should file a police report and submit it to Bell Cellular by fax, number 1-800-865-3055. Bell, at that time appeared to be totally uninterested in putting this right.

My visit to the Bell center (mall outlet) resulted in a contact with and a promise that Bell Security would contact me within 5 working days...they called me the next morning , a nice professional sounding lady finally understood the situation and cancelled this fraudulent account and collection order.

What more do I want?
To begin with, it appears that it is made far too easy for fraudsters to aquire cel phone in other peoples name.

Finally, instead of going after a long time customer with a fraudulent collection order, Bell shoulde have contacted me..with their extensive resources  and phone contact records they should have been able to do at least as much as this collection outfit was able to do.That is, contact me to establish if this is a valid claim and then gone after the damned fraudster.
In all,
Shabby service by old Mother Bell to be sure....
I am now expected to connect with the various credit rating agencies to put the record straight .

Help...Haiti..

If anybody can help it's  the USA...and they are in the process of doing so.
The task is grim, difficult and thankless.
Haiti, a totally failed state and the poorest of the american hemisphere.
..almost reminds you of civilwar pictures in the congo or somalia...

Ugly...part 16

I found this  a picture of the highway of death...that's the stretch between Kuwait and somewhere in Iraq. That's back in the days when Saddam Hussain was playing his ill fated,stupid war games.
After the Iraqs invading, plundering army was driven out of Kuwait by the American Army ( C.Powel, General Schwarzkopf, Gulf war Bush One)....
...leading to " no fly zone" bullshit during the Clinton years,and eventually the invasion of Iraq by BushTwo and leading to the present quagmire in that country. But, please consider this:-
Go back for a moment to the highway of death...the  fleeing troups of Saddams army with their loot were running north, direction Iraq, in vehicles...on a dirt road in desert terrain.

The American Airforce cut of both ends of the fleeing army...and bombed them..burning, killing somewhere between 10,000 and 40,000 men.This invasionforce in their stuper to invade and occupy Kuwait had no airsupport...only tanks and ground vehicles, unable to even defend attacks from the sky.

Mass murder is my opinion today, no matter how you look at the  misdeeds of Saddam or his soldiers.The US Army/Airforce had no right to kill...execute these men.Based on the Geneva convention these soldiers should have been captured as soldiers, interned and eventually sent home.
What the American Walker Bush Two administration did is nothing short of mass murder.

American...that is...the ugly american...part 15

Much of what happened at wars end,45 has been swept under the carpet...there ane many lies, much misinformation and of course this is going on to this very day.
At this time, the USA has a fine President, a decent and well spoken man who truly cares for his nation and the well being of the world and it's people.
But we must also understand that he is almost obligated to accept the lies of those who have gone before him..remember this fellow is in charge of 2,500 Generals and Admirals, with the by far largest armament budget of any nation in the world.
Are we ready to face the truth about Iraq? Iran?Afghanistan? Are we ready to change our attitude obout other people on this earth? Surely if we are not the third world will gang up on America and or the so called West and take it's revenge in whatever form they can.

Computer bugs,worms,viruses & Spyware,Adware,Spam

...not exactly a worldshaking event,just annoying and timeconsuming junk thrown at me and most of us hobby computer users as well as businesses, institutions and so on..

Once more my confuser has been highjacked by some garbage programme...this thing makes useless ads pop up while I do something else, it also shows a number of green underlined common words such as cash,hotel,credit,phone and a number of others converted to link sources. I guess I can live with it but it is not exactly fun. I keep cleaning and desinfecting my machine as much as possible, I do not open e mail unless I know the source, but still this stuff keeps creeping into my gadget.

So...what to do..

To start with, you may want to use the programme provided by your IAP..internet access provider, in my case The  Bell Telephone Company.
Their programme is called Sympatico Scan & Clean...it sort of works but still misses a lot.  

..later the same day:-/
at least one mystery has been solved..this multiple keyboard thing...to restore the slash thing////
  turns out that all I needed to do is to hold down Ctrl and tap on the Shift key.../ amazing/ it works.
But I still have this spy bug in the system...
more later, if and  when I find the answer.

Thank you to our hosts...

It was....just past thanksgiving.. that is American Thanksgiving....I guess this is as good a time as any to thank our hosts...the natives of north-america for their understanding, hospitality and their  willingness to tolerate our continued presense here in this wonderful land we like to call USA and Canada...

We are  confused as to what we should call our hosts...Native is one descripion often found on the front tag of cars.

Indians we called these people for several hundert years since it turns out Cristobal Colon (Columbus) was under the impression that he somehow ended up in India  on his voyage to find a shorter route to China and mistakenly referrred to these folks as Indians.

 Big mistake.

If I can speak, and think of myself as a European...I find it astounding what we have done to these people over the past several hundert years...it is amazing that some are still around after all the horrible  treatment  we have put them thru.

worldconcerns....thanksgiving 2009

This was New York, September 12Th. the day after the 9/11 tragedy with the dust and dirt of this horrendous happening still in the air.

the ritual...

rememberance day...when will we ever learn...

the ugly American 12

After WWII, 1945 statistics indicate that the number of newborn babies surviving the first year had dramatically changed, American policy or applied action systematically starved the Germans to death. I know it's true, I was six years old at the end of the war and part of the starvation period between 1945 to 48.

Tribal pain....

I think I look about as German as your typical German looks like. Blond, blue eyes at 5ft9 probably a bit short..but features mannerism, gate etc German alright.
I have been in North America for over fifty years. But that is not exactly what I wanted to write about. There are moments when I feel this nagging tribal pain. Looking at an old news clip for instance seeing close to a million German soldiers marched off to Siberia, that gives me deep feelings of sadness and pain.
Somewhere about 1925 one of my mothers brothers decided to leave Germany for America. Mother grew up with several siblings in an orphanage and lost contact with brother Karl who presumably was alive and well in America. About a year ago when the names of several Iraq GI casualties were announced , one of the fellows killed was named ... Bixler. Could he have been the grandson of my long lost uncle I wondered. Somehow I felt a sense of loss...someone I never knew gave me a feeling of tribal pain..

Nobel Prize winner Obama

Much has been made the last few days of the fact that US President B.Obama received the Nobel Piece award. I agree with this decision...but the remarks I observe are generally negative...like, he just got started...has not accomplished much so far.
I disagree, strongly.
The mere emergence and presence of the man has had a more positive effect on the world than the various misdeeds during eight long years of GWB the shrub yokel. Well, that's my opinion anyway. Out of over 200 nominations for this award I believe Mr.Obama is the first choice.

Public commentary:
How ironic that Obama should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize at a time when he is planning to increase the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. He now joins other illustrious 'men of peace' such as Teddy Roosevelt (invaded Cuba), Henry Kissinger (helped plan the bloody coup that overthrew Salvador Allende's democratically elected government in Chile) and Arafat (one of the progenitors of today's Islamic terrorist movements).
Although they didn't win, some of the other nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize included Adolf Hitler (nomination withdrawn), Josef Stalin and Benito Mussolini. It is especially noteworthy that Mahatma Gandhi also failed to win the prize. Clearly, the Nobel Peace Prize, like so many other accolades given to and by the wealthy, influential and powerful of the world, has less to do with peace than with the elite rewarding those within their club...

Ontario...waste of good money

Apparently...it has just come to light from a report by the Ontario Auditor General ( financial provincial watchdog reporting annually); that over a Billion Dollars of Health Contributions..by the Taxpayers have been pointlessly wasted with little or nothing to show for it...and yet the Ontario Liberal Premier looks like he and his gang have nothing to do with it...sticking their head in the sand and pleading ignorance is a lousy excuse for this squander of funds. This money was supposed to be used for a E-Health registry system to combat waste in the health care business.

The last true Tory...

...25 years later....Montreal party for the ex Prime minister....Brian Mulroney.

A fitting tribute to our past Federal PC Prime Minister and a remarkable feat his election was indeed.

Two back to back Majority Elections by the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, followed by a long reign for the Liberals.

When he was done...the PCs were finished. The party was in dire straights.But that was then.

The PC party of today is a totally different organization ,born out of the Alberta based( Preston Manning) Reform party, the Ontario remnants of the Provincial PCs. and fragments of the Eastern Region leftovers of the once powerful ruling PCs. the party is struggling to hold on to power with a minority government which could fall almost any time. My hope is that the next election will give us a slightly bigger PC government..hopefully picking up a few seats in Quebec from the ridiculous separatists. Good luck Mr. Steven Harper.

Libya

Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi

...after watching this cook dictator on TV for almost two hours doing his United Nations thing...I have these comments......what a joke...this clown covered everything imaginable during his almost two hour rambling mutterings..

At 27 he managed to get rid of the king who was away for treatment in Turkey. After the demise of the once powerful Ottoman Empire of which Libya was a part, it became an Italian Colony for a while and eventually gained independence.

the ugly American 11

I just spent a few days in the states... we finally managed to get a family reunion thing into the works, decided to stay a couple of days just east of Buffalo NY at a nice Hampton Hotel..Walkerville.
On the way back from Buffalo and the American Falls, just about at the Hotel an incident took place which could easily have turned into a disaster. I crossed the light,driving my Impala, then it turned red. I was about to turn into the Hotel Parking lot when I took one more look into the rear view mirror...no good reason..just prudence I guess, at high speed a black pickup truck rapidly approaching...there was no way this idiot would or could stop at the red light...and if I had made my proper legal turn into the hotel parking lot..we surely would have been hit or wiped out.

My point here is that there are an overabundant number of stupid and ugly drivers on the road in the USA and one must wonder why.Is it the easy and relatively inexpensive availability of booze or what brings these maniacs out...or the inadequate policing or what else causes these idiots to act the way they do. Bullies.. This was not the first time I've seen this erratic and criminal behavior on the road...we are no angels here in Canada, particularly in Toronto but this scene and similar situations I've observed in the USA are far worse.

Actually....a few days later....,I've reflected on this..my writing above that is, kicked it around long and hard. My opinion has not changed much.In fact, if we...North Americans want to tell the world how to live, we should straighten out our own act. We have no business in Iraq or for that matter in Afghanistan or elsewhere in the world if we are unable to behave decently on our own territory.We Americans....hm...have the highest incarceration rate in the world...and in my view a lot of evildoers are out there never apprehended I know a thing or two about the criminal element...thieves...I've been in the business of selling and installing burglar alarms for many years.

now

...mid august was my last posting..much work here in Cobourg, a new garage roof,the driveway fixed, a new large solid deck was built in the back and a number of other related tasks have been completed..a new little Ford Ranger truck was purchased as well as this goofy little front loader yard tractor....

Canada-Ontario;Courtice,east of Toronto

Just a sign of life folks, yes I am still around. The puter still gives me some challenges but I am all hooked up now in the new town and ready to roll.

I hope to be able to get back and do some art in the near future, just as soon as all my junk is unpacked or disposed off.

computer virus etc

...somewhere down page I've been dealing with this problem, a Russian Rip off scheme which sells antivirus software that does damage instead. These bandits make millions off cheated customers and it does not appear that there is anyone to make a serious effort to curtail their activities.

Ten major viruses, Trojans, and spy ware applications that you may be at risk for.


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Malware threats such as these can lead to criminals turning your computer into servers for SPAM email and installing spyware applications. These threats can also allow intruders to steal address books, credit card numbers, private information, and browsing histories.
If you do not have proper virus protection,
please scan your PC with Anti-Virus PLUS today to see if you are infected.
Run a Free Virus Scan and See If You Are Infected
Thank you and best regards,
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I purchased this software a while ago and am quite impressed with it.
I am promoting this software because it works, there is no reward involved.

CP Train derailment...Oshawa Ontario Canada

Apparently 27 rail cars went of the track this week in Oshawa...CP this time...some of them ending up in residential backyards. People were evacuated until it was considered save to return to their homes. Toxic cargo. ...sooner or later there must be some changes made. What are we waiting for? Do we really need a huge disaster to happen and only then take any needed action,
should we not be proactive and fix this now?





I wrote about this sort of thing a little while back....Ratatat..see details on my blog.
Derailments will happen occasionally, one would think with modern technology this could be avoided or minimized...27 cars in a city that's serious stuff and just to clean the mess up...pay the customers for their lost or spoiled cargo and collect insurance is not good enough.
I believe we lost CN and CP...both sold out to American interests. Can't see them investing in new and relocated facilities any time soon although that should be a mayor consideration...get dangerous cargo..or in fact any cargo away from residential areas...
We live in the second largest country on earth, surely the time has come to invest heavily in the future and improve the railway system. I can not comment much on reasons or causes for these derailments, antiquated rail lines and equipment are only some of the causes....but there is one cause I can and should comment on.

Jim D. two doors up from my house in the city ( Torronno) worked for CN. It was his job to replace bearings on rail cars. Apparently they wear out after a while and need to be replaced.These things were not like the ball bearings we are familiar with. But instead they were cast brass and lead hunks of metal...sort of kidney bean shaped,about 40 pounds or more a piece, and they are placed around the Axel pressure or weight point of the rail car. As they wear out, they need to be replaced. Instead of installing and replacing these bearings Jim would simply take them to a scrap dealer...never mind the old ones...the brand new bearings never got installed. He did that for years. Sometimes several hundred pounds a week, straight from the repair yard brand new stuff to the scrupulous scrap dealer.
I would imagine that sooner or later as these old bearings get worn out....the axle runs hot, ceases up and there you have it...one of many reasons for a derailment....
...see my blog of Feb.17/09 with these comments...:-
Rut-tat-tut-rat-ta-tut.....a train with about 100 rail cars rumbles through town..a small town on lake Ontario, Port Hope or Cobourg..does it really matter?The point is,that these rail-links are old and should have been replaced long ago.Rail is about the cheapest way to move goods unless there is a possibility of traffic by water, a barge system.And yet we see thousands of transport trucks 18 wheelers with often overtired operators slugging it out on our highways.Does it not make sens to review our transportation system? Is it not time to have a good look at where we are and where we should be going with this. During economic so called hard times we should find or create the resources to fix or renew this part of our infrastructure. People are looking for jobs and things to do and are less likely to want to go on strike for unreasonable demands. We should claim our railways back, they once were the backbone of what we were as a country and this would be the time to update the antiquated system .Years ago I suggested to build a rapid rail-link between Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal with an international Airport in or around Kingston..If this system would have been implemented we could have, today one of the most modern commuter, people moving systems in the world.Instead multi millions were wasted acquiring land in Pickering ( east of Toronto) and a totally useless airport was built in Montreal ( Mirabel,now mothballed).