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War crimes tribunals and their real worth

I believe this was mentioned in a comment on a previous thread - I should in justice find who first bought it up but

The chief Prosecutor for the ICTY the august body that has been trying individuals for war crimes during the series of wars that resulted from the breakup of Yugoslavia has made this claim.

KOSOVO Albanian leaders have been implicated in the war-time trafficking of organs taken from hundreds of Serbs, according to a book by former UN war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte.

In the lead up to that war many atrocities were committed in that province but when the legal and recognized government of that territory tried to restore order Nato stepped in.  The real ethnic cleansers were turned into victims and the province was seized by Nato.

Of course the Serbs have been demonized as a matter of political convenience  but the fact that Karla Del Ponte is now speaking out shows that Nato's involvement in this was wrong, probably criminal and was really about expanding the EU's control over the Balkans rather than having any humanitarian goal.

I am fairly sure though that the west and the EU in particular will come to regret this particular action.

And that Bill Clinton's major legacy will be his role in the destruction of Yugoslavia to enhance German and French interests.

The war crimes trials are of course a farce and have been from day one.

Hear yea, hear yea, China emits more carbon than the USA

Well according to this story from the BBC based upon a to be paper published the Journal of Environment Economics and Management, anyway, China overtook the USA as the biggest polluter around about 2005 or 2006.

Although how a  compound that has been part of the earths atmosphere since creation can be classed as pollution strikes me as an absurdity. But then politics and politicians are generally absurd and the political convenience of lambasting carbon based energy sources as a mechanism for gaining control over peoples lives and the creation of phantom products (carbon credits) is too good an opportunity for the power hungry to ignore.

Incidentally  it is now 10 years  since "the warmest year  on record"  which was  according to the methodology of the alarmists 1998.  That 1998 was the warmest year on record is a matter of some dispute since the records and methodology for defining how warm a year is or was has not been  consistent "since records have been kept".  There is good reason to believe that using the current methods and definitions that the "warmest year since records have been kept" actually occurred sometime during the nineteen thirties but that is an "inconvenient truth".

Whatever, now we have the much heralded free trade agreement with China we can help them get even further ahead in the race to become the biggest carbon emitter by selling them more of our West Coast Coal to fuel the industries that produce the products we will buy in exchange.

And the global warming industry will continue to flourish by morphing into the climate change industry as the predictions of the IPCC fail to come to fruition.

How Labour intends to use its position of incumbancy to overcome the EFB

Audrey Young in the New Zealand Herald is reporting that Labour is planning to use pamphlets produced by IRD on "Kiwi Saver" and Work and Income on "Working for Families" as election material.

Apparently Labour Party activists have been advised to distribute this material pointing out that National opposed these measures.

Labour pushed through the Electoral Finance Act by spinning it wasn't fair that the "rich" could "buy" elections.

Last election they sowed the seeds of religious disharmony by slandering  a religious group they disapproved of, mostly because this group promote clean living and family values amongst their members.

This group, as you will recall, used their own money to campaign against the Government.  In the meantime Labour was stealing taxpayers money for their campaign material, including the famous pamphlet containing  the airbrushed image of our Prime minister.

It will take more than airbrushing to convince this voter that the Labour Party stands for anything other than staying in power at all costs and that they a fundamentally  dishonest.

I can't wait until one of their robots comes around to my door to try and convince me that they are worthy of my support.

They will probably leave in tears after the ear bashing they will receive.

Or perhaps I will even manage to get them to see the error of their ways in supporting this bunch of crooks and they will quit.

You never know your luck.

What does this have to say about how we value the mentally disabled?

It seems a regular occurrence now but the Dominion Post reports on a teacher caught using a school computer to watch porn involving boys.

He is no longer a teacher, having been de-registered after being caught, by pupils of the school as it happens.

I wouldn't normally have bothered with this except for this, it being a common enough occurrence in this day and age it seems.

But

The teacher - who resigned and now works for an institution that cares for mentally disabled people - had gone into school early in the mornings to prepare for classes "and usually that was all I did", he said.

So he is now working around people even more vulnerable than the  students at his school .  In fact some of the most vulnerable in our society.

And that is a little troublesome to my way of thinking.

Sometimes the truth is not popular

Are we a sinful generation?

Is it the job of the Church  to help us overcome our sinfulness?

Does doing so make the Church popular?

The Sydney Morning Herald thinks it is "an extraordinary attack" when a Pastor points out sin to a member of his flock.

The real issue here in my mind is that the Judge made personal correspondence between himself and this Anglican minister public.

I am not sure how how Anglicans view the relationship between a spiritual adviser and themselves but I have the utmost confidence when I talk with my Priest that whatever passes between us is sacrosanct.

A confessor is obliged to keep it this way and I consider violating this relationship most reprehensible, regardless of any other issues being discussed here. 

The new world order and Kosovo

Its hardly been noticed in our isolated little corner of the South Pacific but a new European "nation" came into existence a few weeks ago.

The thing about this "nation" Kosovo is that it is the creation of Nato and the EU (with the UN's reluctant compliance).

Kosovo has always been part of Serbia, in fact it was the heartland of Serbia.

There was unrest in Kosovo during the nineties with an organization called the KLA  (Kosovo  Liberation  Army) bringing chaos, death and destruction to the residents of the province, not only to the Serbs but the Albanians who did not go along with their program. Many atrocities where committed.

The Yugoslavian authorities tried to restore order but Nato stepped in.  They forced the Yugoslavian government to cede control of Kosovo to them by   bombing the hell out of them.

This effectively completed the EU's dismemberment of Yugoslavia, which now has been split into 7 nations, some are now EU members, some potential EU members and the official line being the Serbs are the bad guys.

The split up of Yugoslavia was as we all know messy, bloody  and had huge cost in human lives.

The UN set up a war crimes tribunal, the ICTY to try those who committed atrocities during this process.

And although individuals from all factions have been indicted and prosecuted by this body, the majority of defendants have been Serbs.

One non Serbian defendant before this august body was Ramish Hajradinaj, leader of the KLA and at one time Prime minister of Kosovo, after  Nato's imperialistic takeover at the behest of the EU.

Anyway he was tried before the ICTY and last week acquitted, no surprise there. In fact the only surprise about this whole farce is the fact the chief prosecutor Karla del  Ponte admitted that his trial was a worthless because everybody knew that anyone who testified against him would not have a very bright future. Particularly so since unlike most defendants before the ICTY, he was not held in custody while awaiting trial but allowed to return to Kosovo to continue his "political"  activities.

Even though many of the member states of the EU feel disquiet over the annexation of Kosovo by Nato and its new status as a "nation" it marks the way the powerful are building their empire, a secular socialist big government model with which they hope to control every aspect of peoples lives.

Of course since they annexed Kosovo  and now have it, and they also have all the troubles that go along with it. It is of course the major center of people and drug trafficking into western Europe. It is also the Wahabi Muslim bridgehead into Europe and again no surprise here, as   Christian Churches and monasteries are being destroyed Saudi money is being used to raise new mosques in their place.

The big Government statests have never succeeded in their ambitions, in fact all they have ever bought is bloodshed and human misery.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if future historians mark the beginning of the end of the EU with Nato's annexation of this small Serbian province.

So this guy threw hedgehog at a boy

I wonder how many people in the English speaking world have ever heard of Whakatane?

It has achieved 15 minutes of fame because of one William Singalargh, resident of that town, who threw a hedgehog at a 15 year old boy.

The hedgehog is  now deceased and William Singalargh has been charged with assault with a weapon for his actions.

I assume the hedgehog was actually deceased when thrown, or that there is some doubt about its vital status at the time else William Singalargh would most surely be facing animal cruelty charges.

Anyway for some reason this sorry little anecdote of a  Saturday night incident in small town New Zealand  has spread through the international media. The BBC, USA Today, Associated Press and UPI amongst others have all worked it over.   

Personally I wonder why it is a police matter in the first place,  let alone worthy of the attention of such august institutions such as the BBC.

Darned if I know, I am well beyond involving  in Saturday night fracas but there are plenty of incidents in my past which would have seen me before the courts as a defendant or appearing for the prosecution as a "victim" if this hedgehog throwing incident is any indication of what the authorities now deem appropriate to bring before the judiciary.

I know a fellow about the same age as the hedgehog throwing culprit who spends just about all his free time playing Warcraft on the internet, it has become an obsession in fact.

I suppose it lets him get the biffo out of his system in a socially acceptable manner but I doubt that it is healthy, mentally or physically.

But at least it keeps him out of the dock.

Words of gold from the head of a private boy's school

Anyone who has a boy will know that this Headmaster speaks the truth.

Bubble-wrapped boys are missing out on crucial rough and tumble in a "feminised" school system that doesn't allow them to let off steam, a headmaster says.

Ross Scrymgeour, head of private Hereworth School, Havelock North, says the banning of physical games like bullrush and murder-ball illustrates a "softly softly" approach to education that does not suit boys.

His boys-only school's "play rough" philosophy made pupils more attentive in class and taught them about physical boundaries.

This quote comes from a Dominion Post story titled appropriately enough: Boys missing out in 'feminised' schools - headmaster.

My boy Nik is 15 now.   When he started secondary school, two years ago now, we moved him to a boys only school.  the best move we ever made. He is flourishing. And this is for the very reasons articulated by Ross Scrymgeour in the story.

Nik is a keen cricketer, as were some of schoolmates at primary school, a school with only one male teacher incidentally.   And they would have liked to  play impromptu matches during breaks in school time.

But this required getting the teacher on playground duty to unlock the "sports shed" and get out the plastic cricket balls and bats. Using their own gear was verboten.  Far too dangerous!

Playing rugby, or the schoolyard version scrag of course was nearly a capital offense.

The only formal team sport the school offered was T-Ball, with mixed teams and handicaps applied.

As we all know and the statistics reinforce boys are missing out academically in the brave new world of feminised education.  There is little doubt in my mind that this goes part way to explaining it.

There are other factors in the decline of boys in the upper echelons of academic achievement   but that may be a post for another time.

In the meantime the chances of New Zealand  winning the Cricket or Rugby world cups in the future are dependent  upon educators like Ross Scrymgeour continuing to run their schools the way they are doing and speaking out.

Election 2008 - Zimbabwe

MMP sucks but it has it all over the Zimbabwean electoral system.

Hilarious

Quote

"Some people wonder why church leaders almost always back left wing Governments, despite the fact that conservative parties always have a much much higher proportion of true believers and church goers.

The answer tends to be that few (not all) church leaders actually literally believe in God (as taught in the Bible), and are far more concerned with social issues than religious issues.

Again this is not new, and I refer people to an excellent Yes Minister episode on this issue."

I saw that episode, its very funny.

But that is satire.

However could this  response from Poneke  be satire?

This is not at all far fetched. The gay minister of the church whose kindergarten my children attended is an atheist. His Christmas sevices for the kindy kids were a marvel to behold, containing not a mention at all of Jesus, Mary, Joseph or anyone like that, but many calls to arms against the oppressors of the poor and the downtrodden. He certainly bewildered a lot of three and four year olds, who until then believed Christmas was about Santa and presents. :-)

I'll let you be the judge of that.