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Dave Bull / 2009-08-21 11:35:47
YANKS HAVE GOT IT RIGHT
It’s not often I think the yanks have got it right…just see our letters page now and again and you’ll see but this week they got it bang on when they described the release of the Lockerbie bomber as a ‘grave error.’ Abdel Basset al-Megrahi is a free man – free to die. He knows when he will die…soon, and how. Not a benefit he (and whoever was behind him) afforded to the 270 poor souls that perished on the Pan –Am flight that day in 1988. Before anyone starts saying ‘well it probably wasn’t him…’ as some of the comments have been, all I can say is he was tried, convicted, and sentenced in a court of law and therefore he is the remaining link to the tragedy and should pay for it. Being released to die is very noble of Scottish minister Kenny MacAskill but, would he have done the same for Myra Hindley? Fred West? I doubt it because that would have affected the voters who give him his position – one in which he was a total unknown to the outside world until a week or so ago. No, to release a murderer to die in peace with his family around him is the height of compassion – but then I thought he lost those rights when he decided to kill for a living? Obviously not according to MacAskill
NO BULL WITH FRANK
Whether you agree with it or not, the news of Frank Evans, the British Bullfighter returning to the ring after serious operations is amazing. For forty years Frank has been plying his trade in Spain and has been accepted in the most traditional of Spanish activities. His book, which is due out at the end of the month will make fascinating reading and for the first time we’ll be able to find out the insider knowledge of this bloody sport – but from a British perspective. As I said at the beginning, you don’t have to agree with this ‘sport’ to find out about it and in the words of a Mancunian it’ll be frank, open and honest and, I’m sure, an eye-opener.
HAVE A GOOD LOOKY LOOKY
We often wonder why the street sellers are so keen to keep coming back, again and again. How many times have you said ‘no’ to the DVD seller only to see him return fifteen minutes later to ask again? Or the looky-looky man who brings the sun-glasses around while you’re on the beach or taking a coffee, only to be replaced five minutes later with another? The reason is the debt they are forced to pay back for their journey here. They live in squalor with anything up to 30-40 people in a house sharing. And they are desperate. They are brought over on the promise of streets paved with gold only to find themselves working 16-20 hour days for a pittance. Having said all that – they still smile.
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Tags: Dave Bull,
jill starr 24-02-2011 / 20:21
What It’s Like to Chill Out With Whom the Rest of the World Considers As The Most Ruthless Men: Ratko Mladic, Goran Hadzic and Radovan Karadzic (+) Confessions of a Female War Crimes Investigator By Jill Louise Starr NJ USA
https://sites.google.com/site/jillstarrsite/what-it-s-like-to-chill-out-with-whom-the-rest-of-the-world-considers-as-the-most-ruthless-men-in-the-world-ratko-mladic-and-radovan-karadzic-confessions-of-a-female-war-crimes-investigator
Retrospectively, it was all so simple, natural and matter of fact being on a boat restaurant in Belgrade, sitting with, laughing, drinking a two hundred bottle of wine and chatting about war and peace while Ratko Mladic held my hand. Mladic, a man considered the world’s most ruthless war criminal since Adolf Hitler, still at large and currently having a five million dollar bounty on his head for genocide by the international community. Yet there I was with my two best friends at the time, a former Serbian diplomat, his wife, and Ratko Mladic just chilling. There was no security, nothing you’d ordinarily expect in such circumstances. Referring to himself merely as, Sharko; this is the story of it all came about.
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Irrefutable Proof ICTY Is Corrupt Court/Irrefutable Proof the Hague Court Cannot Legitimately Prosecute Karadzic Case By Jill Starr
http://picasaweb.google.com/lpcyusa
(The Documentary Secret United Nations ICC Meeting Papers Scanned Images)
https://sites.google.com/site/jillstarrsite/irrefutable-proof-icty-is-corrupt-court-irrefutable-proof-the-hague-court-cannot-legitimately-prosecute-karadzic-case
This legal technicality indicates the Hague must dismiss charges against Dr Karadzic and others awaiting trials in the Hague jail; like it or not.
Unfortunately for the Signatures Of the Rome Statute United Nations member states instituting the ICC & ICTY housed at the Hague, insofar as the, Radovan Karadzic, as with the other Hague cases awaiting trial there, I personally witnessed these United Nations member states having a substantial conversations, and, openly speaking about trading judicial appointments and verdicts for financial funding when I attended the 2001 ICC Preparatory Meetings at the UN in Manhattan making the iCTY and ICC morally incapable trying Radovan Karazdic and others.
I witnessed with my own eyes and ears when attending the 2001 Preparatory Meetings to establish an newly emergent International Criminal Court, the exact caliber of criminal corruption running so very deeply at the Hague, that it was a perfectly viable topic of legitimate conversation in those meetings I attended to debate trading verdicts AND judicial appointments, for monetary funding.
Jilly wrote:*The rep from Spain became distraught and when her country’s proposal was not taken to well by the chair of the meeting , then Spain argued in a particularly loud and noticably strongly vocal manner, “Spain (my country) strongly believes if we contribute most financial support to the Hague’s highest court, that ought to give us and other countries feeding it financially MORE direct power over its decisions.”
((((((((((((((((((((((((( ((((((((((((((((((((((((( Instead of censoring the country representative from Spain for even bringing up this unjust, illegal and unfair judicial idea of bribery for international judicial verdicts and judicial appointments, all country representatives present in the meeting that day all treated the Spain proposition as a ”totally legitimate topic” discussed and debated it between each other for some time. I was quite shocked! The idea was “let’s discuss it.” "It’s a great topic to discuss."
Some countries agreed with Spain’s propositions while others did not. The point here is, bribery for judicial verdicts and judicial appointments was treated as a totally legitimate topic instead of an illegitimate topic which it is in the meeting that I attended in 2001 that day to establish the ground work for a newly emergent international criminal court.))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
In particular., since “Spain” was so overtly unafraid in bringing up this topic of trading financial funding the ICC for influence over its future judicial appointments and verdicts in front of every other UN member state present that day at the UN, “Spain” must have already known by previous experience the topic of bribery was “socially acceptable” for conversation that day. They must have previously spoke about bribing the ICTY and ICC before in meetings; this is my take an international sociological honor student.
SPAIN’s diplomatic gesture of international justice insofar as, Serbia, in all of this is, disgusting morally! SPAIN HAS TAUGHT THE WORLD THE TRUE DEFINITION OF AN “INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT.”
I represented the state interests’ of the Former Yugoslavia, in Diplomat Darko Trifunovic’s absence in those meetings and I am proud to undertake this effort on Serbia’s behalf.
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