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Friday, December 01, 2006

Inseparable to the end!

Dorothy and Glen Baker, their hands clasped, died within hours of each other. Not too much to add, Patrick says it all.

By PATRICK MALONEY, LONDON FREE PRESS
Dorothy and Glen Baker, on their honeymoon in 1947.
When Dorothy Baker died in St. Thomas hospital last week, her husband Glen let go of her hand and followed a familiar pattern that repeated itself through their life together.


Anywhere she went, he followed.



It started the night they met in 1946 at a legendary Port Stanley dance hall, Glen persistently chasing Dorothy down until she agreed to dance.

After sparking a romance at the Stork Club, the couple married on June 14, 1947.

They settled in St. Thomas, his home town, to raise Lynn, their only child. Dorothy worked a variety of office jobs while Glen spent about 30 years selling furniture at Eaton's in downtown London.

They lived in the same Churchill Crescent home for 53 years, only moving out in October.

Throughout their marriage, she booked trips around the globe, and he gladly went too.

When he retired, he followed his beloved around the house, only reluctantly going out without her.

They were, as their daughter puts it, "a kind, little gentle couple who led this simple life together in St. Thomas."

So it was fitting, their daughter says, that when Dorothy -- who'd long battled a lung affliction -- died in the hospital's palliative unit last Friday, her ill husband lying beside her also died just two hours later.

"As soon as their hands were unclasped, they (the nurses) could start to see my dad fail," Lynn Baker said yesterday.

"They were so devoted, and they loved each other so much, that death didn't part them."

Or, as a doctor overseeing their care said: "It's much more explained by his desire to be with her than by anything I can explain to you medically."

Dorothy, 88, was admitted to the palliative unit Nov. 5. Glen, 82, was in and out of hospital two days later but re-admitted permanently with various ailments Nov. 14.

Last Friday, with an unconscious Dorothy's health faltering badly, and Glen also weakening, hospital staff wheeled him into her room and pushed their beds together.

He held her hand for hours before slipping out of consciousness himself.

Dorothy died at her husband's side at 7 p.m. Their hands were unclasped about two hours later as her body was taken away.

That's when Glen's condition unexpectedly worsened.

Within 30 minutes, he, too, died peacefully.

For the hospital staff -- whose compassion was lauded by the family -- it was an overwhelming experience.

"It touched everyone," said Dr. Sharon Baker, who is not related. "The love that they shared . . . it's why we come to work every day."

Fittingly, Glen and Dorothy will be buried together side by side in St. Thomas tomorrow, a love story without end.

"Everybody says he just wanted to be with Dorothy, no matter what," Lynn Baker said. "They had a true, pure love for each other."

"How can you be sad when you know that they're together forever?"

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The real "Jetsons"

Amsterdam always does things out of the ordinary so this building comes as no surprise to the locals.

They placed the 98 residential units on 19 floors, using the pattern of outdoor spaces to determine the overall appearance of the project.




The slightly irregular pattern alternates these outdoor spaces to create what are in effect double-height spaces. Each unit then receives more sunlight than a typical stacked composition.

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Thursday, November 30, 2006

Your rights stop where mine begin!

The United States has a problem with Islamic Fundamentalists but so far they seem to have a handle on things since 9/11. Canada, much to our surprise, has it's own terrorists as witnessed by the 16 wannabe's that were caught earlier this year.

In Scotland it's not much of a problem since the Scots don't take ANY shit from foreigners, but all of this seems to pale in comparison to the problems the authorities are having with Fundamentalists in France and Britain.

In England alone an estimated 3,000 young British Muslims have undergone training in al-Qaeda camps. Islamic terrorism, we are now told, will remain a fact of life for a generation in Britain.

This article by Douglas Davis, former senior editor of The Jerusalem Post and memeber of the Middle East Writer's Group, puts it into the proper perspective.

Britain's Muslim population numbers about 1.8 million. Most, of course, do not support terrorism. But, some do!

Actually, opinion polls indicate that about 160,000 (9%) of Muslims in Britain support some sort of terrorist acts on British soil to further their religion and ideology.

That shouldn't come as a complete surprise. For years, Britain has been a haven for Islamic extremists from South Asia and the Middle East.

London, at times, has been called "Londonistan," and Britain has become the European hub for Islamist logistical planning, dissemination of propaganda (via mosques, the Internet, books and leaflets) as well as low-tech fund raising.

Prior to the bombings of July 2005 the British authorities had a tacit understanding with local Mosques that they would block their ears to the hate-filled preachings of Isllamic clerics as long as there was no blood on British streets.

England tried "appeasement" once before (WW-11)and it didn't work too well that time either. I's too bad Britain didn't take it's cue from France. One flash of rhetorical violence at a Friday sermon there invariably leads to a visit from the authorities and a deportation order shortly after.

When the British government finally decide to crack down in late 2005, it found itself hobbled not only by its own weak laws and generous asylum traditions, but also by civil rights legislation.

The net result has been a series of judicial locks and weak legislative attempts to deal effectively with the threat.

Sooner or later one of these many plots will succeed and we will witness a repeat of July 2005, but perhaps with many more victims.

Only then will the British State put aside political correctness and spring into action, much the same as Canada did when a member of a dissident Mosque informed on the 16 "would be" terrorists in Toronto and put an end to their plans.

This is one of those cases where the needs of the many override the rights of a few.

Your Scribe;
Allan W Janssen

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 (what the church doesn't want you to know!) at; www.God-101.com
And the petition to have people mind their own business instead of yours at; http://www.petitiononline.com/moses/petition.html

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Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Canadian Apologist

Canadian-American relations during the Liberal/Chretien era took a downturn but since the Conservative/Harper government they seem to have recovered somewhat.

In the spirit of reconciliation I would like to get all our cross border irritants out of the way once and for all.

I'm sorry about your war in Iraq but this time we will try not to take as many draft dodgers and we will continue to help out in Afghanistan to take some of the pressure off your army. (By the way, do you have a few extra rifles we could use, we still have the ones from that war of 1812 we had with you guys.)

I'm sorry about 9/11. As Canadians it really doesn't have anything to do with us but we do feel your pain and will always be here for you.

I'm sorry Canadians have almost taken over your television, music and movie industries, (especially the comedians) but I guess Canadians on average are just more talented and funny than Americans!

I'm sorry you have a these problems with illegal immigrants across the Mexican border but once aqain it doesn't really have much to do with us and if you continue to put restrictions on the Canadian border as a result, we will just stop going to Florida in the winter. Period!

I'm sorry that with the Oil Sands we now have much more oil than you do but if you promise not to invade us we will be only to happy to share. (For a price!)

I'm sorry the American dollar is falling in price against the Euro and Yen but if you ever want to borrow a few bucks just give us a call.

I'm sorry about our softwood lumber. Just because we have more trees than you doesn't give us the right to sell you lumber that's cheaper and better than your own.

I'm sorry we beat you in Olympic hockey. In our defense I guess our excuse would be that our team was much, much, much, much better than yours.

Speaking of 1812, I'm sorry we burnt down your White House during the war of 1812. I notice you've rebuilt it! It's Very Nice!

(With thanks to "This hour has 22 minutes." If you have any others that need to be expressed then by all means put them in!)

Your Humble Scribe;
Allan W Janssen

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Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Christmas for the guy who has everything!


A rocket powered shopping cart, of course!


What did you expect? A tie?

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To veil or not to veil?

REZZO, Italy - The immediate issue is how one woman in one tiny town in northern Italy dresses, so it made a certain kind of sense for Giorgio Armani to weigh in. His opinion? A woman should wear what she likes, even if what she likes is a veil that hides her face completely. "It's a question of respect for the culture of others," Mr. Armani, the fashion designer, said in a statement released late last month. "We need to live with these ideas."

He was speaking out in defense of Sabrina Varroni, a Muslim woman from this town near the Swiss border who has been fined 80 euros, about $100, for appearing twice in public wearing a veil that completely covered her face. Her punishment has won cheers from some Italians and has horrified others.

Mr. Armani's views were just one of the particularly Italian twists to questions facing much of Europe over its uneasy relationship with Islam.

The case of Ms. Varroni is not a simple one about religious freedom. Drezzo, population 1,800, is controlled by the Northern League, a political party in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's governing coalition that has advocated the secession of northern Italy and strict controls on immigration.

The case has been viewed by some as a telling clash of two ideologies: Islam versus Italian xenophobia.

To fuel that view, the mayor here, Cristian Tolettini, fined Ms. Varroni under a 1931 Fascist-era law banning the wearing of masks in public.

The Italian press got into the act when a reporter from the Milan newspaper Il Giorno showed up in Drezzo last month completely veiled, and was promptly fined, too.

Ms. Varroni, 34, a mother of four, is not one of the thousands of poor Muslims who have immigrated legally to Italy in recent years to seek a better life, or among the thousands more who have arrived illegally. She is a native Italian who grew up in Drezzo and married a Tunisian more than 10 years ago, converting to Islam.

Late last month, she wrote an impassioned letter to the Italian president, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, complaining of threats to her and her family and begging for help.

"I'm scared of the violence that this unwanted publicity will seek out," she wrote. "I've never tried to proselytize, or use my veil as a provocation. What harm am I doing? I am not masked. I'm simply wearing a veil that is obligated by my faith."

Similar arguments have been made by female students in France, Germany and Turkey, which restrict the wearing of a less severe symbol of Islam, the head scarf, in schools.

In June, the European Court of Human Rights rejected an appeal by a Turkish student, saying such laws "can be justified" to prevent fundamentalist groups from pressuring women to wear such symbols.

The problem in Drezzo, which has a handful of Muslim immigrants, started two years ago when Ms. Varroni showed up at the town hall, wearing a veil that covered her entire face. In a telephone interview, she said she began wearing the veil, called a nikab, about five years ago.

"I wear the veil because it is a law," she said. "It is an obligation of my faith."

The mayor saw it differently.

"I was stupefied," Mr. Tolettini, then the deputy mayor, recalled. "We have a lot of Muslims who live here, and they don't dress like that."

He asked her to show him her face so that he could identify her. She said, according to Mr. Tolettini, that she would reveal her face only to a woman. Mr. Tolettini said he decided to let it go, but warned her that laws prohibited appearing in public with a concealed face.

No problems occurred until July 2004, when she went to the town hall again and Mr. Tolettini, now the mayor, was there.

"My authority and my duty was to have her identified," he said. "She clearly refused."

The laws Mr. Tolettini cited are in dispute. Italy has two such laws, neither of which anticipated the issue of Islamic dress codes: one from 1931, under Mussolini's Fascist rule, and another, enacted in 1975 when fear of the Red Brigades guerrilla group was high, forbidding disguises that mask a person's identity.

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Sour Grapes

A duck goes into a bar and asks the bartender, "Got any grapes?"
The bartender says, "No. This is a bar and we don't sell grapes."
The duck leaves.

The next day, the duck goes back to the bar and asks, "Got any grapes?" The bartender says, "I told you yesterday. This is a bar and we don't sell grapes."

The following day, the duck returns and asks,"Got any grapes?" The bartender loses it, grabs the duck by the neck and yells, "I already told you twice! This is a bar! I don't have any grapes!
If you ask me again, I'll nail your beak to the floor!"

The next day, the duck goes in the bar and asks, "Got any nails?"
The bartender sighs and says, "No, we don't have any nails."
The duck says, "Good! Got any grapes?"

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Bang, Bang............stop or I'll shoot!

The police have a built in problem that affects every police force and individual cop on the planet.

A policeman (or woman) is an individual who has the power of the State vested in him/her so that we can maintain law and order.

Over the course of time, (sometimes quickly, sometimes later) this individual seems to loose the distinction of having the "authority" vested in him/herself and starts to assume that they "ARE THE LAW."

As I said, this eventually affects every cop on the planet sooner or later and the consequences can be severe!

These two examples from New York City show what can go wrong!

Mayor Michael Bloomberg weighed in yesterday on the uproar over a deadly police shooting, saying bluntly that officers appeared to use excessive force when they fired 50 shoots at an unarmed man in a confrontation outside a strip club hours before his wedding.

The groom, Sean Bell, 23, was killed and two of his friends were wounded early Saturday after a bachelor party at the strip club.

Suspecting (?) that one of the men had a gun, police fired 50 rounds into the fleeing vehicle. It turned out the men were unarmed but just the same one 12 year veteran of the force fired his weapon 31 times, emptying two full magazines of ammunition into the car.

It's nice to see someone so enthusiastic about their job. It must also be said that one officer was struck (but not injured) by the suspects car as they tried to leave, but this has not been proven.

The other case is even more bizzare. A few months ago in the Bronx, Amadou Diallo was an unarmed BLACK West African immigrant who was shot 19 times by four WHITE officers.

THEY WERE ACQUITTED OF ALL CRIMINAL CHARGES!

Your "lock the doors!" scribe:
Allan W Janssen

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Monday, November 27, 2006

Left, right, left, right! Forward march!

Unlike the U.S. where there are lots of right wing commentators like Rush Limbaugh, the Conservative Right has a rough time of it from the media here in Canada.

Other than the National Post and a few others everything here in the media is Socialist Left, so I am glad to do my part to champion the sensible middle!
TORONTO, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Popular Toronto author, columnist and television host, Michael Coren has been "blacklisted" from appearing on Canada's publicly funded broadcaster, the CBC.

Coren writes in a column in the National Post and the CBC had asked him to appear on a CBC News Sunday political program about the Conservative government's budget and then cancelled him without explanation.

Coren says the CBC cancelled his appearance on the panel because of standing objections at the CBC to "certain conservative, particularly morally conservative, voices in the media." Coren has his own television talk show, Michael Coren Live, on local Toronto station, CTS and a Sunday night show on CFRB.

Despite his support for a number of the left's favourite topics such as the cancellation of third world debt, Coren is cast as a "social conservative" by the only criteria that count in the Canadian media establishment: his opposition to homosexual "marriage" and abortion.

CBC anti-conservative bias has been a topic of conservative discussion for some years. Paul Tuns, author and editor of the pro-life newspaper the Interim, says that it is bad enough that "various conservative groups and individuals in Canada have had informal boycotts of the CBC because of their mistreatment of conservatives." Moreover, a website (http://www.cbcwatch.ca) has been created specifically to catalogue bias at CBC.

Tuns says, "The CBC cannot be trusted to present both sides in public policy debates. Even when there's a panel it will be 2-1 Liberals against Conservatives."

Coren writes in the National Post, "People used to run away to sea. Now they run away to the CBC. Well, at least the ones who don't like freedom of speech do so. The rest of us simply have to learn how to swim. With sharks."

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 (what the church doesn't want you to know!) at; www.God-101.com
And the petition to have people mind their own business instead of yours at; http://www.petitiononline.com/moses/petition.html

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Come-on a my house!

This my friends, is the world's only six-star hotel.




It's the Burj-al-Arab Hotel in Dubai.





If you have to ask - you can't afford it!


When the heliport is not in use they pay Tiger Woods
(1 million bucks) to drive a few golf balls!
Andre Agassi got paid about the same to play a bit of tennis!
Oh yea, I almost forgot. Room service is not too shabby either!

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Dad

You would have been 80 today and even though you have been gone for 10 years I still miss you!

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Pope

The visit to Turkey by the Pope is drawing closer and as it does more and more outrage is being voiced by Muslims in that land. They are still upset about the Popes comments that Islam is a religion of violence and have been demonstrating against the visit.

Expect the death threats to start any day now!!!!!!!!!

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 (what the church doesn't want you to know!) at; www.God-101.com
And the petition to have people mind their own business instead of yours at; http://www.petitiononline.com/moses/petition.html

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Some things you can do to bug a cat!

If this doesn't bug any cat enough I'm sure you could think of something better, just send it in!

(Doesn't look very happy, does he?)

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