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The Citizen, 2005-10-06, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2005. PAGE 5. Other Views No spam, thank you ma ’am Just a few short years ago it was a non- terribly chic luncheon meat. Or at best a song from a Monty Python skit. Today it is a global migraine. A mega- gazillion-dollar ripoff scam and a mammoth pain in the in-box for computer users everywhere. I speak, but of course, of spam. In case you’ve been living under a laundry hamper for the past dozen or so years, let me explain: spam is junk e-mail. The black fly of on-line activity. Mass blitzkrieg advertising of crap that nobody asked for and nobody wants but everybody finds in their YOU'VE GOT MAIL slot virtually every time they fire up their desktop or laptop. Why does spam advertising work? For the same reason that fishing with hand grenades works. You lob enough explosives into the lake and something will float to the surface. Similarly, if you blanket e-mail several hundred thousand unsuspecting recipients, a profitable few will be stupid enough to respond no matter how moronic the pitch. Just how dumb can people be? Hey. Who’s president of the United States? There are ways to combat spammers. The internet abounds with anti-spam software - much of it free - which will intercept the spam spewing swine and deflect their unwanted missives into deepest cyberspace. But spammers alas, are endlessly creative. Close one rathole and they gnaw themselves another. I, for instance, am well protected from on-line spammers. But now the beggars are coming through my fax machine. Politicians often ignore rights People protest against China’s abuse of human rights outside its consulate a couple of blocks from the legislature every day, but Ontario governments find it too far off to notice. All three major parties have expressed strong concern about the abuse when they were in opposition, but after they got in government ignored it. The latest to do so are the Liberals under Premier Dalton McGuinty. The premier had lunch with President Hu Jintao when he visited looking for trade and investment and said nothing on human rights over the chow mein and fortune cookies. While abuse of human rights in China is not in the news as much as it used to be, it has not disappeared. Around the same time United Nations’ rights commissioner Louise Arbour, a Canadian, told officials in Beijing she is concerned because racial minorities, labour leaders and journalists are being jailed merely for dissenting. She said she also is worried by China’s many executions and harsh prison conditions and even that her visit may endanger some activists. Ontario Liberals for decades have criticized China for “brutal use of force” against citizens and expressed solidarity with them “in their quest for greater freedom and democracy.” But those concerns were quickly forgotten in the interests of selling Ontario products and securing investment, and the Liberals joined a list of parties willing to forget them. The New Democratic Party traditionally has raised more concerns than others at abuse of rights abroad, including saying it was “shocked at the cruel cynicism of China’s rulers.” But after Bob Rae became premier he travelled to China on a trade mission with One in particular. It calls itself THE TRAVEL CENTER and it offers me. at least three times a week, FANTASTIC BARGAINS on cruises to ORLANDO, FORT LAUDERDALE and BAHAMAS. 1 do not wish to cruise to any of the above- mentioned destinations. Even if 1 did. I certainly would not do it through a company that besieges me with unasked-for come-ons and uses up my fax paper. Happily there is a number at the bottom of their advertisement that you can call to be removed from their advertising list. I called that number. Ten times. The faxes kept coming. So I phoned the main number (the one you call to sign up for a cruise). Five times. Each time an operator assured me that I was off the list and the faxes would cease. They didn’t. I called a sixth time and told the woman who answered that I would never book with them because I had asked very politely 15 times to PLEASE STOP THE FAXES. She hung up on me. So I called the Canadian Radio and Television Commission in Ottawa. They told me that since it was an American travel company, I should call the Federal Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien to sell nuclear and other technology and there is no record he said a word about its abuse of rights. When Rae returned. Progressive Conservative leader Mike Harris criticized him for going and failing to “take a clear stand on China’s human rights record.” Rae replied the best way Ontario could advance human rights in China was to be involved with it at many levels, including trade and culture. But Harris argued the need to increase trade should not be an excuse for downplaying human rights. He said Rae as Ontario premier was a reasonably significant player internationally and what he said on human rights would be noticed. Harris said Rae sent the world a message Ontario was soft on abuse of human rights. Harris insisted if it was to trade with China, it had to make clear it disapproved its violations. But then Harris was elected premier and made several visits to China, while Amnesty International warned its torture of political prisoners was widespread and growing, and never once criticized it for its abuse of rights. The only noteworthy parts of his trips were he managed to get golf, his favorite game for which he missed many legislature sittings, in a discussion of human rights. Harris was asked by a reporter if he would raise China’s record on human rights to help Toronto win over Beijing as the site of the Communications Commission in Washington. The FCC operator told me my complaint would be filed and the travel company would be ‘dealt with’. That was three weeks ago. While waiting for the FCC to act I have received 11 faxes from the travel company. it’s too bad the Travel Center is located in Florida and not Russia. They know how to handle spammers in Russia - ask Vardan Kushnir. Oh, sorry, you can’t. Mister Kushnir is dead. Bludgeoned to death in his Moscow apartment by persons unknown. Do the police have any suspects? Yes, several million of them. Vardan Kushnir was Russia’s most notorious spammer, believed to have clogged the in-box of nearly every Russian who had an e-mail account. Kushnir was killed after someone posted his home address on the web, and Russian newspapers reacted with undisguised glee. THE SPAMMER HAD IT COMING read one headline. And another: AN ULTIMATE SOLUTION TO THE SPAM PROBLEM. I wouldn’t want to see anything that gruesome happen to spammers in this part of the world, but I wouldn’t object if our research labs started using spammers in place of laboratory rats. It’s a natural when you think about it. Research scientists sometimes get too attached to laboratory rats. That wouldn't happen with spammers. PETA would have no objections if animal experimentation was conducted exclusively on spammers. Besides. There are certain things a rat just won’t do. 2008 Olympic Games and replied “you don’t run down your competitors - you don’t do that in golf or in other sport or in life.” Harris also stood out because, while estranged from his second wife, he took along an attractive blonde girlfriend, Sharon Dunn, who appeared at dinner in a skirt slit almost to her thigh and, as one observer put it, almost gave China’s staid political and business elite whiplash. Harris also entertained two Chinese presidents here, giving one a sweatshirt bearing the name Ontario, but made no protest on human rights. Successive Ontario governments have entertained many tyrants, including Suharto of Indonesia, notorious for his mass murders in East Timor, and Toure of Guinea, whose purges killed many thousands. The politicians usually have rated squeezing bigger bucks from trade ahead of speaking up for human rights. They would not want their day disturbed by taking the route past the demonstrators outside the consulate. Letters Policy The Citizen welcomes letters to the editor. Letters must be signed and should include a daytime telephone number for the purpose of verification only. Letters that are not signed will not be printed. Submissions may be edited for length, clarity and content, using fair comment as our guideline. The Citizen reserves the right to refuse any letter on the basis of unfair bias, prejudice or inaccurate information. As well, letters can only be printed as space allows. Please keep your letters brief and concise. Bonnie Gropp The short of it Sharing genes It's always a surprise when it happens, yet it inevitably does. Here you are, a wife and mother, confident that you will not make the same mistakes your own mother made before. Then shockingly you hear the words — her’s — admonishments, hackneyed cliches, dire predictions. But, surely there’s some mistake because this time the remarks are coming from you. As every mom I’ve ever known 1 swore from the time of approaching parenthood that I would be different. I would be forever patient. 1 would offer undeniable wisdom in a manner that was gentle, understood and accepted. I would never react, always respond. And then it happens. Stressing over finances and schedules, a bad night’s sleep followed by a vile day at work, is capped by returning home to find the house a shambles. “Is it too much to ask, after all I do for you, that this place be tidy when I get home?” It’s always a surprise when it’s happened, but these parental moments have been experienced by the majority. The legacy of “If you don’t stop crying I’ll give you something to cry about”, “Because I said so!” and “Someday I’ll be gone and then you’ll be sorry” seems to carry on despite each generation’s best efforts. Fortunately we use them less in middle-age. Our parents no longer deliver ‘words of wisdom’ with regularity so we really have no touchstone to follow. What I’ve noticed now instead is that when I hear someone else’s words emanating from my mouth they seem to be my sister’s. As well, I see her mannerisms in mine and even some of her habits. My sister is almost of another generation than me. Ten years younger I remember her more as a second mother than a peer. Obviously we didn’t share common interests while living in the same house. She was at the age where boys were her life and I wished they weren’t even in life. However, one of life’s sweet ironies is that somehow as we got older we got closer in age. We can find music in common, we are thrilled by grandchildren and we both know all too well that the words hot flash aren’t referring to stolen camera equipment. We talk about the trouble with men and how much we like having them around. We still worry about our kids, but now more out of practice than need. My big sis married and moved away when she was 19. While I visited often and spent a part of each summer with her, one would assume she was not around enough to be a huge influence on me. And, geography continues to separate us; we now live more than 160 kilometres away from each other. Yet, like her, I rest my elbows on the table, hands clasped while listening to someone talk. I hear inflections in my speech that mimic her’s. Watching myself on video, I recognize my facial expressions as belonging to someone else. I once read a debate on how much heredity has to do with our development and how much is our environment. There was a strong argument suggesting that adopted children will often walk, talk or act like their parent simply because that is the one they have spent the time with. Physical traits it maintained, are inherited from biological relatives, but couldn’t it be possible that other traits might be acquired by exposure? It made sense then. Now I’m less sure.