Serbia cleared of genocide

By Mark Oliver, Mark Tran and agencies,
Monday February 26, 2007
Guardian Unlimited.

Serbia was guilty of failing to prevent the genocide of some 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995, the UN's highest court ruled today.

But the international court of justice cleared Serbia of direct responsibility for genocide and complicity in genocide in Bosnia, in the 1992-1995 war.

The decision took the form of several votes. In the key verdict, the court decided by 13 votes to two that Serbia had "not committed genocide, through its organs or persons whose acts engage its responsibility under customary international law". In another vote, however, the court found by 12 votes to three that Serbia had "violated the obligation to prevent genocide".

£300 million

The taxpayer is going to take a hit for £300 million because of NuLab's inability to give the farmers their money on time. Another Government IT failure ? and they reckon that ID cards will be secure- We need a new chief executive for UK plc

Blogger's block

Just like a writer’s block I am having a blogger’s block.

I look at the news and can not find anything relevant enough to write about. I look to what divide us and yet not a single word comes into my mind. I look at the world and it is the same. The war did not end, the hunger still exists, diseases are killing and there is no cure for cancer. So why this is not affecting me enough to, at least, write something about it.

Is it a blogger’s block or am I just to tire to talk about the same things?

A brief look at the World

Watching some headlines it seems that we are on the Apocalypse. For instance on Reuters I read that "Taliban deploy 10,000 fighters for attack"and that "U.S.-Iraqi forces meet little resistance in Baghdad". At BBC I read that "Chad may face genocide, UN warns". It is war, war and more war. I know that it has been always like that (I don't remember one year of my life that there was a war in this world). But it seems to me that there is a difference between old wars and the XXI century world. We no longer have ideology behind a war. There is no different sides that want to develop people welfare through different means (like Communism Vs Capitalism).
Some say that ideology is dead. I am a sceptic, I don't believe in that, I rather believe that we are living a period that ideology is resting, probably to "blow up" in a near future...

Love the sinner, hate the sin?

In Internet and other debates a distinction is often drawn between attacking a person’s ideas and attacking the person themselves. The first is seen as healthy, objective criticism, while the second is merely an ad hominem attack designed to rouse tempers rather than provoke discussion.

But can the distinction be so easily made? Can we draw a line between a person and the ideas they hold? I don’t think we can.

Consider the following: “It’s not you I’m calling hideous, just the clothes you wear!” Or, closer to home for a lot of us here: “I didn’t insult you, I just called your blog a mess of infantile, badly-written drivel!”

Both would be perceived as attacks on us by association: I choose the clothes I wear, I write my blog, etc. The same can be said for more ideological matters: Can we really separate criticising a religion from criticising those who believe in it?

Our ideas often have an emotional investment simply because they are our ideas. They reflect who we are and our ability to think. Suggesting that someone’s political views are misguided, for example, is inevitably to suggest that they themselves stupid enough to hold such views.

If we were purely rational beings, selecting ideas purely on a cost-benefit type basis, then we’d have no trouble adopting or abandoning them in light of new information. But we’re often more emotional/instinctive beings. The ability to rationally determine which political/economic system is best for 60 million odd fellow-citizens living in an increasingly connected world is beyond most of us, so we rely on gut-instinct and the emotional impact of certain events to guide us in what’s hopefully the right direction: a simple distrust of government, or experience of poverty can have more influence over our political thinking then the works of Smith, Marx, Keynes and Milton combined a lot of the time. Rational arguments are then drawn up after the fact to support our own beliefs and attack those which are different.

Human beings crave certainty: we like to think that our ideas are correct and that the life we’ve chosen is the right one. To this end, we wrap ideas and concepts around us like a protective cloak. To have someone start pulling on a loose thread can be an uncomfortable experience.

Climate Problems

“The IPCC, the most authoritative group on warming grouping 2,500 scientists from more than 130 nations, predicted more severe rains, melting glaciers, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels, especially if Antarctica or Greenland thaw.

The final text said it was "very likely" – or a probability of more than 90 percent -- that human activities led by burning fossil fuels explained most of the warming in the past 50 years.” (Taken from here)

First of all let me start to say that I like driving my car, I like travelling by plane, I like the products that some polluting industries give me, I like my lifestyle.

Saying this I have to say that I would like to see politics taking into account climate changes and its problems in their actions.

Why?

I won’t be moral about this issue (leave that for Greenpeace) but show one of my egoistic reason about this issue:
The natural resources that we use are scarce. What this affects me? Well, scarce resources will lead to nation conflicts (we have Iraq war as a good example) and to war. Almost all wars have economic reasons, more than moral reasons, to happen and most of them can be linked to the necessity of controlle of scarce resources. Also scarce resources will become more expensive to us which will lead to the end of our lifestyle.

I would like to leave a question: when will we start solving this problem?