Christmas for the guy who has everything!

A rocket powered shopping cart, of course!


What did you expect? A tie?

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.

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?"

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

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

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!

Dad

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

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

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?)

The shape of things to come, boys and girls!

You can bank on us!

One of the reasons I started this blog was to give me a chance to rant about stuff like the following. Paul Reviczky is an 89 year old man who lived in his small house on Sheppard Ave. W. in Toronto.Paul was content to live out his last few days in peace and quiet in the house he had called home for the past 50 years but then someone got a hold of some info on Paul, went to a bank, and put a mortgage on his house without his knowledge.

One thing led to another and now the bank has foreclosed on his house and he is out in the street! It is totally beyond me how something like this could have happened.

First of all the bank should have done a better check on the person applying for the mortgage and if not, I would think that THEY were on the hook for giving money to someone through fraud.

Instead, since the banks have a lot more power than some small guy on the street, they went after Paul and decided he was responsible even though he had absolutely nothing to do with anything!

It's almost like a comedy of errors except that I can assure you that Paul is not laughing. How this twisted bit of logic came about that Mr. Reviczky was responsible in any way is mind boggling.

This seems to be a perfect example of "might makes right," since the Banks have enough pull to go after anyone, for almost any reason, no matter how flimsy or twisted their logic seems to be.

A further example of this is when I had a cheque bounce a few months ago because I was about two dollars short.

NOW, the reason I was short was becaus the bank took out five dollars in service charges for something or other on the same day and decided that it was the cheque that had to be returned, not their charges.

Oh yea, and then they charged me thirty five dollars for the bounced cheque so I was about forty bucks in the hole anyway.

I have since changed banks but I don't think they really give a shit. P.T. Barnum once said: "There's a sucker born every minute!"

Your pissed scribe;
Allan W Janssen

One foot in the door!

You know someone with a name like Ezekiel Rubottom is a person to watch. Described as a "21-year-old artist, occasional hip-hop emcee, and recovering methamphetamine addict, Mr. Rubottom was also born with a club foot.

This summer, upon advice from his doctor, he had the foot amputated, but instead of letting the hospital dispose of the body part, he took it home and stuck it (along with a can of beer and a porcelain horse!) in a bucket of formaldehyde on his front porch.

When a neighborhood kid told one of his parents about seeing the foot, they called the police, who in turn confiscated the foot pending an investigation.

As it turns out, it's perfectly legal to keep your own body parts, so the foot was returned to Mr. Rubottom, who's already planning on giving a couple of toes to close friends.

Pick your poison!

It might surprise you to know the number of hate groups that are flourishing in the good old U. S. of A. Matter of fact the only States with no groups in them are Vermont, North Dakota, Maine, Rhode Island, Hawaii and New Mexico. All the rest have at least a few and as many as 25 for Michigan and 52 for California. They range from the Klan to Black Seperatists to Neo-Confederate to Christian Activists to Neo-Nazi to Skinheads and good old "other."

I feel so fortunate living here in London, Ontario. I think the only hate group we have here is people who hate Mondays!

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

Women thought they had it rough!

Oooppps!

Borat in space.

The Expedition 13 crew have returned from the International Space Station to Earth --specifically, the dry steppes of Kazakhstan, where they landed Thursday night local time in a Soyuz TMA 8 spacecraft.

In the NASA image above, from left: Flight Engineer Anousheh Ansari, Commander Pavel Vinogradov and space tourist Borat who accompanied Expedition 13 crew members.

Just a few minutes before this photo was taken, they were extracted from their Soyuz capsule after landing on the Russian steppes.

Expedition 13 was up there for six months, and a NASA report says their tasks included ..."the arrival of two space shuttle missions, resumption of construction of the orbiting laboratory and the restoration of a three-member crew."

They'll now spend a few weeks in Star City, near Moscow, for debriefing, medical exams and rumba lessons.

One a day vitamins!!!!

I have no idea what's going on with these pills, all I know is that there are one hell of a lot of people taking them! I would even bet they are doing a lot more than one-a-day!

Of course, it does explain a lot about the state this world is in!

My home town

Even though I haven't lived there in over 25 years I still consider Toronto my home town. Here's some different shots of the CN Tower.


Moscow has a tower too. Same thing on a foggy day!


Seattle is not too shabby either!

The only drawback to night scenes is that you can't see Mt. Baker in the background!

Tattoo You

We are all going to Hell in a handbasket. The GR8 TaT2 Maker is a
toy tattoo gun for your little budding skin-artist: "Open up your very own pretend play tattoo parlor. This easy-to-use tattoo maker kit includes an electronic tattoo pen and funky stencils. Using soft, safe pulsating action, the tattoo pen creates realistic, washable designs with dramatic effects."

For added realism, decorate juniors room to look like a jail cell!

Saddam Shmaddam, kill the bastard.

A New York based human rights group and bunch of bleeding heart pacifists called "Human Rights Watch" have come to the defense of Saddam Hussein of all people. The Iraqi court that sentenced Hussein to death this month was flawed and its verdict was unsound, the said on Sunday.

"Serious administrative, procedural and substantive legal defects" prevented the deposed Iraqi dictator from getting a fair trial on charges of crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch says in a 91-page report.

The report describes the court as "an institution struggling with all aspects of conducting these legally and factually complicated trials, beset by external problems: misunderstanding and hostility in public opinion and from political leaders' grave and increasing security threats to all participants."

Three defence lawyers were murdered during the trial, and the first chief judge resigned.

"Under such circumstances," the report concludes, "the soundness of the verdict is questionable. In addition, the imposition of the death penalty — an inherently cruel and inhumane punishment — in the wake of unfair trial is indefensible."

I bet a million bucks they wouldn't feel that way if they had lived in Iraq when Hussein was still the Dictator, especially if they were Kurds, or Shia Muslim.

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