A quietly remarkable man.

The funeral has been held in Rome for Fra’ Andrew Bartie, head for 20 years of the Knights Of Malta.

As a Retired Catholic I’m not in the habit of marking the passing of religious figures, but there are too few people in the world with the qualities of character which Fra’ Bartie displayed. He was a leader who stood at the front of his organisation, and not above it:

“ The fact that he makes an effort to meet every Order volunteer on their first trip to Lourdes overwhelmed me. For a man of his standing to acknowledge all the work of the volunteers in the Organisation, no matter of which branch is impressive.”

And to be honest, anyone who can make themselves understood in six languages has my admiration right at the start.

As a service to all voting Americans.

There is a 9-part movie on youtube about Hillary Clinton. Possibly someone has already linked to them and I haven’t noticed.

All nine are listed on this page.

This was no accident…the pissant or pissants involved are Neo-Islamists..

And this still goes on…sickening, it is.

Cao’s Blog

Want the straight on the Hussein Obama…light/dark pictures? May I introduce Mr. Charles Johnson, the dude that blew up Dan Rather and Mary Mapes.

LGF

Beware the politician posing as a scientist…If you immediately thought Al Gore…Wrong.

Christopher Booker squares up to Sir David King, the former Chief Scientist, whose knowledge of chemistry does little to underpin his crusading rhetoric as a green campaigner

One of the fond delusions of our age is that scientists are a breed apart from ordinary mortals, white-coated custodians of a mystery with authority to pronounce on any scientific issue, however remote it may be from their own field of expertise. A shining example was the status given to Sir David King, who has just retired after seven years as the government Chief Scientist. In 2001, when he was appointed by Tony Blair at the height of the foot-and-mouth crisis, Professor King’s speciality was ‘surface chemistry’. Yet immediately top of his agenda was the need to fight an animal disease.The man he called in to tackle the epidemic was Professor Roy Anderson, a computer modeller specialising in the epidemiology of human diseases but without any experience in veterinary matters. Shutting their ears to the pleas of the world’s leading veterinary experts on foot-and-mouth that the only effective way to stop the spread of the epidemic was vaccination, the two men flouted the law by launching their ‘pre-emptive cull’, the mass-slaughter of animals which never had any contact with the disease. As many as eight million healthy animals were unnecessarily destroyed, at a colossal social and financial cost which vaccination might have reduced to a fraction.

The next big issue to put King in the headlines was global warming, which in 2004 he described as ‘a far greater threat to the world than international terrorism’. At a press conference with Blair, he claimed that global temperatures were higher than they had been for 60 million years, predicting that by the end of the 21st century Antarctica would be the only habitable continent left on earth.

Top of the politicians’ global warming agenda at that time was the need to win ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by Russia, which would at last bring the treaty into force. On behalf of the EU, King led a team to a key international conference in Moscow, where their behaviour astonished those present. They demanded that scientists critical of Kyoto should not be allowed to speak. They frequently interrupted other speakers, or overran their own time at the rostrum. When King was floored by evidence from the tropical disease expert Professor Paul Reiter that the melting of the ice on Kilimanjaro was not caused by global warming, he stormed out.

The rest Spectator UK

U.N. panel calls for U.S. death penalty moratorium

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United States should impose a death penalty moratorium and stop sentencing young offenders to life in prison until it can root out racial bias from its justice system, a United Nations panel said on Friday.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination also called on Washington to end racial profiling of Americans of Arab, Muslim and South Asian descent, and to ensure immigrants and non-nationals are not mistreated.

The 18 independent experts expressed concern that racial minorities in the United States were more likely than whites to be sentenced to death or to life without parole as juveniles.

They recommended the United States “discontinue the use of life sentence without parole against persons under the age of 18 at the time the offense was committed, and review the situation of persons already serving such sentences.”

Their report also urged Washington to “adopt all necessary measures, including a moratorium, to ensure that the death penalty is not imposed as a result of racial bias on the part of prosecutors, judges, juries and lawyers.”

Reuters

HEY! I’m for it, yep. Just as soon as the U.N. straightens out Hamas, Gaza Strip, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, Kosovo, Serbia, Chad, Dar fur, Kenya, The Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Venezuela, North Korea and that tiny little bit of their bird droppings that the U.N. started, with the noblest of thought between North Korea and South Korea. You know like a peace treaty, not an armistice.Once the U.N. gets done with that…Yeah right.

LEGO Brick Timeline: 50 Years of Building Frenzy and Curiosities

Did you know……………..

LEGO brick curiosities

• There are about 62 LEGO bricks for every one of the world’s 6 billion inhabitants.

• Children around the world spend 5 billion hours a year playing with LEGO bricks.

• More than 400 million people around the world have played with LEGO bricks.

• LEGO bricks are available in 53 different colors.

• 19 billion LEGO elements are produced every year.

• 2.16 million LEGO elements are molded every hour, or 36,000 per minute.

• More than 400 billion LEGO bricks have been produced since 1949.

• Two eight-stud LEGO bricks of the same color can be combined in 24 different ways.

• Three eight-stud bricks can be combined in 1,060 ways.

• There are more than 915 million combinations possible for six 2 x 4 LEGO bricks of the same color.

• 7 LEGO sets are sold by retailers every second around the world.

• The LEGO bricks sold in one year would circle the world 5 times.

• 40 billion LEGO bricks stacked on top of one another would connect the earth with the moon.

• LEGO bricks are so much more than just toys. They are used in classrooms from preschool to university level to teach everything from math, language skills and science to engineering and technology principles.

• The LEGO brick has inspired generations of innovators, like Jonathan Gay, inventor of Flash.

• World-renowned author Douglas Coupland believes the LEGO brick represents a “language in itself.”

• A January 2008 Google search produces 57.6 million references to LEGO bricks.

• There are 55,600 LEGO videos on YouTube.

• Google co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, used LEGO bricks to build the external low-cost and expandable casing for 10 4GB hard disks when they were busy developing the Google search engine (today, they have reportedly been used in Google’s college graduate recruiting exercises to test potential candidate’s creative horsepower).

Gizmodo.com

Libyan Strongman Qaddafi Weighs In on American Presidential Race, Citing Democratic Call for ‘Change’

“They all keep saying ‘change, change,’ ” he continued, adding Hillary Clinton to his reference. “They want to change America and its current political system. They want to make a change in their lives. They say their system is a failure, that their government is a failure, and that their elections are a failure.”

Qaddafi offered up Libya as a model for “change,” predicting that “the whole world will return to the model of the republic of the masses, to communes, to popular security, to popular defense, to popular capitalism, and to popular socialism.

“The whole world will return to the Libyan model” he said.

Watch Qaddafi’s speech at Fox News

Muammar, has a point. If the wrong one gets elected, Muammar will be seen as the modern day, Edgar Cayce.

The Defining Question of the Age: VOTE!

Yes, I know the correct answer.

The Prayer

I give you, the only good performance I’ve ever accidentally caught on “Australian Idol”, “The Prayer” by Anthony Callea.

Happy International Women’s Day!

Do you men have an International Men’s Day yet?

Artistic Censorship in the West

Over the past decade, there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of political correctness and censorship in order to accommodate an inflow of immigrants from regions such as Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. These areas have great cultural differences to Australia, the US, Britain, Canada and the North-West areas of Europe, however these are the destinations of choice for these immigrants.

Many of these immigrants are practicing religions such as Islam, and as such, have strict religious views that they feel they must adhere to. One of these views is to not eat pork, to abstain from alcohol, to pray towards Mecca, and to refrain from artistic depictions of the Prophet Mohammed.

When Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper, printed twelve cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, there was a significant response from both the Muslim community and the sensitive Left. Riots occurred, and death threats were issued against the cartoonists, as well as the editors of Jyllands-Posten. This reaction was well over the top of the offence originally caused by the printing of the cartoons, as these riots occurred long after the original cartoons were printed, having only occurred after another three, more offensive, cartoons were published in a different forum.

Which leads me to the question, what is the appropriate response to offensive artwork? Is it to threaten death? Is it to burn cars? Is it to burn buildings? Is it to write a letter of complaint to the person who displays the artwork? Is it to write a letter to the person who distributes the artwork? Is it to lay charges against someone who does something that is deemed offensive?

It is my view that the appropriate response to offensive artwork is very much a product of the way a person was raised. In many parts of the world, Muslim children are raised to take offence to any slight against their Prophet, and often react in a violent fashion. Burning cars, buildings and homes doesn’t seem to be a very effective way to deal with offensive artwork, but rather a way to ensure that your religion loses any respect that it has garnered.

But rather than burn things, perhaps the Christian and Jewish communities have a far better take on this situation.

In 1989, Andres Serrano created what he described as an artwork named “Piss Christ”, which was a photograph of a crucifix in a glass of Serrano’s urine. It is an artwork which is offensive to a great many Christians, but also applauded by many atheists and many on the Left. However, the way the Christians dealt with the offense they felt against Jesus is far different to any reaction of Muslims against offense they feel against Mohammed.

The Christian response to “Piss Christ” was to:

1. Protest the $15,000 grant given to Serrano for producing the work;
2. Request that the artwork not be displayed in public; and
3. In the case of Catholic archbishop of Melbourne Dr. George Pell, seek court-ordered injunctions to prevent the photograph from being displayed in the National Gallery of Victoria.

Not a single person was threatened with death, not a single car was burnt, and not a single threat was issued against the artist. In the case of “Piss Christ”, the artist was well aware that his artwork would cause offence, and was notified about it. His life wasn’t threatened, and he wasn’t harmed in any way.

So… d’you reckon a few people need to grow up and relax a bit when it comes to offensive artwork?

Hypocrites

From Bolta’s: 

Halberstram replied to Halberstram
Fri 07 Mar 08 (02:22pm)

By we I assume you mean the Government supporters ?

The carping and negativity on this blog against the government is starting to border on disloyalty to Australia.

You are talking down Australia and potentially impacting on our image overseas.

Its almost treason.

If I recall correctly, and I bloody well do, for the past 11 years the Labor supporters such as this guy, were taking every opportunity they got to be disloyal to Australia and protest everything done by the Coalition Government, led by the Honourable John Howard. They were carping on about how HoWARd lied, and how Australia should be known as the United States of Australia, and so forth.

They were constantly negative about whatever John Howard wanted to do, such as:

• the intervention in Aboriginal communities (a move which would save thousands of children from the worst kind of abuse possible);
• the war in Iraq (a move which prevented many innocent people from being murdered and raped by the Hussein regime);
• the introduction of WorkChoices (a move which removed unions from having the power to affect the employment of those who choose not to be part of a union and allowed for employees and employers to negotiate their own employment contracts without the interference of the union, unless the employee chooses to have a union representative);
• keeping interest rates lower than, as Howard said, they would be under Labor. (1.5% increase over 11 years vs 4 interest rate increases in 100 days. It’s a no-brainer);
• the deployment of troops to East Timor (which prevented East Timor, a Christian nation, from being under the control of the Indonesians, a Muslim nation, and prevented Indonesia from gaining control of the East Timorese oil supplies);
• the choice not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol (which is a huge farce, because it will have absolutely zero effect on any temperature changes which may in fact be attributable to carbon);
• the choice not to adhere to the Global Warming Religion (which is also a huge farce, considering they blame carbon, one of the few substances actually needed to produce life. Huh?);
• overseeing economic reforms which decreased unemployment from 8.5% to 4.2% (more jobs = more taxes = more for Kev to now spend on useless shit);
• overseeing economic reforms which greatly pushed down inflation (inflation down = no interest rate rises);
• overseeing budget surpluses which enabled Australia to pay off $96 billion debt left by the Keating Labor Government;
• overhauling the waterfront (allow for much more efficient practice in stevedoring and stopping the Maritime Union of Australia from completely ripping off import/export companies);
• controlling illegal immigration effectively (the boats stopped coming as soon as they realised they’d have incredibly limited freedom instead of coming in legally);
• bringing the States together to overhaul gun control laws (making guns harder to get than nuclear warheads… just!); and
• increasing the average wage by just under 20%.

Do those read like the achievements of someone without Australia’s interests at heart?

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Porky Pig

Man Dies When Wind Flips Mattress He Was Moving

MOUNT JULIET, Tenn. — High winds are blamed for the death of a man who died when a mattress he was sitting on was blown off the back of a pickup truck.

Police said Doyle Smith, 42, a public works employee, was helping move the mattress Monday.

The wind flipped the mattress and Smith fell and hit his head on the road. He died at Maury Regional Hospital.

Mount Pleasant Police Chief Tom Wilson said the death would be classified as weather-related stupidity.

Sorry he died (and in Tennessee, too)…BUT….as is said…Ask and ye shall receive.

Fox News