Friday, June 24, 2011

In Memory of LCDR Andrew Vaughn Witherspoon

In memory of our GREAT friend, LCDR Andy Witherspoon:

Andrew Vaughn Witherspoon, 43, died Friday June 24, 2011, at the home of his parents, Sarah and William Witherspoon Jr., in Fearrington Village.

Andy was born in Roanoke, Virginia on August 22, 1967. He lived in Charlotte, NC, Richmond, VA, Lake Oswego, OR before moving to Burnsville, MN where he spent most of his childhood.

He graduated from Burnsville High School in 1985. Andy attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduating in 1989 with a bachelor of arts in political science. He was a member of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity.

Upon graduation he was commissioned through NROTC as a midshipman in the United States Navy. He served as an aviator attaining the rank of Lt. Commander. He was stationed in Brunswick, ME, Sicily, Italy, and Tokyo, Japan, and various other assignments.

After serving in the Navy, Andy attended Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire and received his MBA in 2002. He spent the following year as a teaching fellow at Tuck.

In 2003 Andy began his career as a diplomat for the United States Department of State Foreign Service. He served in assignments in Iraq, Brazil, Nigeria, and Washington D.C. During his career he developed many close friendships around the world. Andy will be especially remembered for his devotion and generosity to the orphanage in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and to families in Nigeria.

Andy is survived by his parents, Bill and Sarah Witherspoon of Fearrington Village, NC, his sister, Elizabeth and her husband, Scott Vaughan, his nephew, Benjamin Vaughan, and his niece, Amelia Vaughan, all of Davidson, NC. He was preceded in death by his grandparents, Paul and Mary Long, and Joyce and William Witherspoon, Sr.

A memorial service will be held on Saturday, July 9, 2011, at 2:00pm at Chapel of the Cross, 304 East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC, followed by a reception at the church.

Donations in memory of Andy may be made to Johns Hopkins Pancreatic Cancer Research, attn: Michelle Cohen, 100 North Charles Street, Suite 422-A, Baltimore, MD, 21201; or to Fearrington Cares, 2020 Fearrington Post, Pittsboro, NC 27312.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/07/06/1324396/andrew-vaughn-witherspoon.html#storylink=cpy

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Geert Wilders Not Guily

The judges in the Court of Amsterdam delivered their verdict Thursday morning in the heresy trial of Dutch Freedom Party politician Geert Wilders. Wilders has been found not guilty of all charges of inciting hatred against Muslims. The judge, Marcel van Oosten, and the other Dutch authorities ended up doing the right thing, no matter how cowardly and compromised they may have been. They must have known how history would view them if Wilders had been found guilty: as troglodytes who ushered in the return of the Dark Ages.

When do the Islamic supremacists go on trial for inciting hatred against non-Muslims?



“I am delighted with this ruling,” Wilders said. “It is a victory, not only for me but for all the Dutch people. Today is a victory for freedom of speech. The Dutch are still allowed to speak critically about islam, and resistance against islamisation is not a crime. I have spoken, I speak and I shall continue to speak.”

The charges against Geert Wilders were that he had made statements that were intentionally offensive to Muslims; incited hatred against Muslims; incited discrimination against Muslims; and incited hatred of non-Western immigrants.

The Islamic supremacists who initiated the case told the Dutch dhimmi judges that the things Wilders said had led to a rise in discrimination and violence against Muslims. They had no proof, of course, of anyone committing any act of violence against any Muslim, or discriminating against any Muslim, because of anything Geert Wilders said. They just wanted to compel the Netherlands to enforce Islamic blasphemy laws.

This has been dragging on for a good while. The Wilders heresy trial began last October 4, but fell apart just a few weeks later after a special legal panel determined that the judges were biased against Wilders. No kidding. But they found more dhimmi judges and kept going.

The Islamic supremacist “plaintiffs” were seeking a one-euro fine. But it was of course never about a fine, symbolic or otherwise. The Wilders case has always been an attempt to win an Islamic supremacist triumph over the tenets of Western law and free speech. They said if they didn’t get their symbolic one-euro fine, they didn’t get it, but they said they were considering taking their case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Ah yes, take it to the anti-humans under the guise of human rights.

This was a seminal case. Last fall Wilders explained what was really at stake in Holland, and in the entire Western world, in his case: “I am standing trial,” he said, “because of my opinions on Islam … and because the Dutch establishment – most of them non-Muslims – wants to silence me. I have been dragged to court because in my country freedom can no longer be fully enjoyed. In Europe the national state, and increasingly the EU, prescribes how citizens – including democratically elected politicians such as myself – should think and what we are allowed to say.”

Wilders was our proxy — the West was on trial. And while this was a great victory, the fight isn’t over. Even as Geert Wilders is justly acquitted, the noose of the sharia grows ever tighter around neck of the West. Attempts to silence freedom fighters — by legal action as well as through threats – will continue. Let’s take a step back ourselves and understand the price that Wilders and others really are paying, and will continue to pay. Former Muslim and author Wafa Sultan, former Muslim and Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali, scholar Robert Spencer, former Muslim and scholar Ibn Warraq, scholar Bat Ye’or, former Muslim Nonie Darwish, cartoonist Lars Vilks, cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, Danish newspaper publisher Flemming Rose, South Park producers Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Salman Rushdie and countless others, myself included, receive horrible threats all the time. Wilders himself lives under round-the-clock tight security because of the hundreds of death threats he receives every year. And that will not end with his acquittal; if anything, he is in even more danger now.

In his closing remarks before the court a few weeks ago, Wilders said: “Mister President, members of the Court, you have a great responsibility. Do not cut freedom in the Netherlands from its roots, our freedom of expression. Acquit me. Choose freedom.”

They did. Thank Gd. And now we must keep on choosing freedom, and defending freedom, no matter what.

from: http://biggovernment.com/pgeller/2011/06/23/wilders-verdict-west-1-islam-0/

Obama - Weak CinC at Fort Drum

The President addressing the 10th Mountain Division today at Fort Drum:

"First time I saw 10th Mountain Division, you guys were in southern Iraq. When I went back to visit Afghanistan, you guys were the first ones there. I had the great honor of seeing some of you because a comrade of yours, Jared Monti, was the first person who I was able to award the Medal of Honor to who actually came back and wasn’t receiving it posthumously."

As we all know, SSG Sal Giunta, of the 173rd Airborne, was the first living recipient (2011) of the MOH who fought in Iraq/Afganistan. SFC Jared Monti, 10th Mountain Division, was KIA in Afghanistan in 2006. He was posthumously awarded the MOH by Obama in 2009.

How does the Commander-in-Chief mix these heroes up? He put that medal around Giunta's neck and he stood with Monti's parents as they grieved. These fallen heroes leave such a great legacy, and we should know all their names. The ironic part of the speech, and this comes after the announcement of the politically pressured drawdown of troops in Afghanistan, was Obama's closing remark, "Know that your Commander-in-Chief has your back."



Dumb. Insensitive. Stupid. Callous. Careless.

Arrogant.

Some are calling it a serious mistake. I consider it shameful.

This dude's gonna go down and hard in 2012. Or the country will if he's re-elected.

It's that damned simple.

from: http://www.brutallyhonest.org/brutally_honest/2011/06/this-is-ripping-through-the-military-community.html

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Father's Day - a Brief History

Father's Day or Fathers' Day celebrates fatherhood and male parenting. Its orgin has been traced back to the early twentieth century. This year, the date falls on June 19th, but worldwide the date can vary. Traditionally, Father's Day involves gift-giving and special dinners to honor thy father.

According to Wikipedia, the first observance of Father's Day took place in Fairmont, West Virginia 103-years ago on July 5, 1908. Grace Golden Clayton wanted to celebrate or memorialize the lives of the 210 fathers who had been lost in a Monongah mining disaster. Clayton chose the Sunday nearest to the birthday of her recently deceased father.

However, credit for Father's Day went to Sonora Dodd from Spokane, Washington for a long time. Dodd independently created the celebratory event two years later. Clayton's celebration was officially waylaid until 1972, when one of the attendants to the celebration saw Nixon's proclamation of Father's Day, and worked to recover its legacy. When the truth was uncovered, the emphasis returned to the day's genisis in Fairmont. The celebration is now held every year in the Central United Methodist Church, as the Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was torn down in 1922. Fairmont is now promoted as the official "Home of the First Father's Day Service".

It took some time and manuvering on Capitol Hill (like always) to get the day officially recognized. A bill to accord national recognition of the holiday was introduced in Congress in 1913. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson attended the Father's Day event in Spokane to make it official, but Congress resisted, fearing that it would become commercialized.

Another president met with the same resistance in the 20s. President Calvin Coolidge recommended in 1924 that the day be observed by the nation, but stopped short of issuing a national proclamation. Two subsequent attempts to formally recognize the holiday had been defeated by Congress.

It took a Senator from Maine to guilt Congress into form. In 1957, Senator Margaret Chase Smith wrote a proposal and accussed Congress of ignoring fathers for 40 years while honoring mothers, thus "[singling] out just one of our two parents". Finally in 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers, designating the third Sunday in June as Father's Day. Six years later, the day was made a permanent national holiday when President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972.

by Nathaniel Hines posted at: http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/9435465-history-about-fathers-day-in-the-us

Sunday, June 12, 2011

A Serious Argument Against the Ordination of Women

A Serious Argument Against the Ordination of Women to the Priesthood and Episcopate

by The Rt. Rev. John Rodgers
June 6, 2011

A Case for the Male-Only Priesthood

Woman Priest OrdainedGod, being a God of order and being all-wise, good, and gracious, has ordered all things in creation for our good. This order in the creation he has retained and renewed in redemption. As part of this good order God has appointed the man to be the head of the family and to be the elder (presbyter) or priest in the wider family of the Church. God’s good order does not envision nor permit women to exercise the ministry of “headship” in the family, nor the ministry of oversight involved in the offices of the priesthood and episcopate as they are understood and practiced by Anglicans. This is in no way detrimental to women for God has an equally significant, different, and complementary ministry for women in the family and in the Church. This godly order is to be enjoyed and respected. When men and women are thus united in partnership we walk in the path of freedom and fulfillment. Other paths may seem attractive and promise much but in the end they prove deceptive and full of contention.Galatians 3:28 is a master New Testament text about the relationship of men and women and that it removes male headship in family and Church. It is thought to do this when it states that in Christ there is “neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female.”

womenpriests2 03The reasons we hold these convictions are primarily drawn from Scripture. Attempts have been made to interpret the Scriptures to allow women to serve as co-heads of the family and as priests and bishops in the Church. Responsible exegesis simply will not support these interpretations nor does experience confirm them. Alongside Scripture there are other significant reasons found in the experience of God’s people in history and in God’s other book-the book of creation or nature-that corroborate the biblical reasons. We will mention only the most significant of them in this brief chapter.

The primary and chief factual point that we wish to make is this: nowhere in Scripture do we read of a woman being either a priest in the Old Testament or an elder in the New Testament. In the New Testament no woman was chosen by Jesus to be one of the twelve apostles. Jesus could have chosen one of the women who accompanied him, prepared her along with the other apostles-in-training, and after the resurrection appointed her an apostle had he felt that to be appropriate. He did not do so. The same is true of the apostles. Not once did they appoint a woman to be a presbyter or bishop. It was the unvarying practice of God’s people from beginning of Israel to the close of Scripture to call men to these official, stated positions in the people of God. Israel did this in sustained and self-conscious contrast to the practice of the surrounding nations and religions.

This exclusive pattern of male priesthood in designated leadership is all the more striking when we note the variety of ministries that women did exercise in Scripture, including the ministry of prophecy, which St. Paul refers to as one of the highest of the gifts of the Spirit. It is equally striking when we take note of the status, the freedom, and the call to learn and teach that Jesus and the apostles gave to women. In giving women such freedom and such an elevated place in their fellowship, they broke all of the customs of the day. Despite their boldness in breaking with custom, not once did they call women to these formal, official leadership ministries in the Church. This emphasis upon male eldership by Jesus and the apostles is of profound authority.

This uniform practice in all of the Scriptures is the fundamental point. The case for an exclusively male priesthood and episcopate does not rest on a few texts, several of which contain some phrases difficult to interpret. Rather, it rests on the overwhelming majority of the biblical texts related to governance and leadership in the family and Church; it rests upon a perspective that is pervasive and uniform in all of Scripture.

We can ask, “Why did God order things so?” Such a universal, sustained practice requires a profound and divine reason. The Bible tells us what this reason is. Male headship in the priesthood and eldership of God’s chosen people roots in the male headship in the family, which is part of God’s good ordering of the creation. And God’s ordering of the relations of male and female in the family ultimately reflects and rests upon God’s own Triune nature. Human life, made in the image and likeness of God, mirrors the mystery of God’s own Triune life.

This involves our understanding of God as Triune. God is One; God is Threefold. He is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit: three inter-penetrating persons of equal dignity and divinity united in a single life of love and mutual indwelling. He is one God in one nature eternally existing in three Persons. Since we are made in the image and likeness of God, we can expect to find (and do find) analogies of God’s Triune nature in creation and above all in our human nature.

In the Triune life of God, as Scripture teaches and the Eastern Orthodox tradition often reminds us, there is a hierarchy among equals. An eternal headship and an eternal submission are lived out in the divine life of love. God the Father is by nature Father in His Triune life. He is the eternal loving fountainhead of the Trinity. He is eternally the Father of the Son and the primary source of the being of the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Son is ever delighted to do the Father’s will. In a biblical view, submitting to one’s father is what a good son does, whether it be human sons of human fathers or the divine Son of the divine Father. The Spirit is always the Spirit of the Father and the Son and submissive to both.

The main point we want to note is that loving headship and submission are eternal in the life of God. They are therefore of the eternal order of things. This has consequences for God’s act of creation. God’s own nature and his attributes provide the pattern for his act of creation and particularly for the order and life of those made in his image and likeness-men and women. We can expect to find headship and submission in the way we have been created in relation to one another. At the same time, the Father’s act of creation is an authoritative act, a command. He speaks and it is done (through the Son, by the Spirit). He reigns over the creation that he has made. Here we have the significance of God’s revealing himself to us in male terms as “the Father,” “the Son,” and “the Spirit”. The male name of “the Father” points to his being distinct from the creation that he has made, ordered, and sustained, and it points also to his Lordship over it. Creation is not birthed from God’s own being as the religions of the world tend to teach.

Does God not have a more feminine aspect? Yes. God has attributes that are more fully exhibited by women than by men, but they are always “his” attributes. He is never called “her.” Even the more feminine attributes are his attributes, attributes of the one who with loving, divine initiative and authority called the world into being, not from his own nature but from nothing, ex nihilo, from beyond the world.

In the light of God’s Triune nature and his act of creation, we can consider more specifically his creation of us human beings, who are made in his image. When he created us he created us male and female and thereby set us in families in a specific order. In the family the man is to serve as husband of the wife in a unity of love between equals and as the head of the family as well as the representative of the family. The woman is given the complementary ministry of support and nurture. The headship of the man reflects God’s Fatherhood in the life of the Trinity and in the act of creation and serves as an instrument of God’s reign in human society. We read in Scripture that it is from God’s Fatherhood that all earthly fatherhood is named.
Male headship also finds expression in the larger family of his people, the Church. The designation of men to be priests or elders in the people of God is a wider expression of the headship the man is given first in the family. The family is the “little church in the Church” and the Church is the Family of the families of God.

The woman’s position is as important as the man’s, though different. She is the treasured, supportive partner in the family and Church. Her submission and ministry of support, nurture, and quite varied service reflects and expresses the indwelling, nurturing qualities of God’s being and attributes as he has revealed himself to us in creation and through the Son and the Spirit in the history of salvation.

It is important that we do not misunderstand the complementary ministries of headship and submission. In Scripture submission is a good thing, and it is by no means limited to women. Jesus as the Son is ever submissive to the Father. All people made in God’s image are to be submissive to God. The Church as the bride of Christ is by grace to be submissive to Christ who is Lord over all, the head of his body. Men and women are to be submissive to one another in a variety of structures. In the Church, the members are urged to submit to those whom the Lord has placed in authority over them. In the family, the wife is freely to submit or orient her ministry under the oversight of, and in support of, her husband. The children are to submit to their parents. In society, we all are to submit gladly to the magistrates in all things agreeable to the revealed will of God, for God has placed them over us. In addition we are to pray for them.

The terms “the ministries of headship and of submission” are more accurate than speaking of “male and female roles.” This is true for several reasons. First, “roles” is a word that, in our culture, tends to suggest particular tasks, ways and means, such as who will do the cooking, keep the books, etc.. In contrast to that, we are thinking of more general responsibilities of the man giving spiritual oversight to, and providing for, the family and the woman supporting the man and nurturing the family. Particular roles or tasks are related to the particular gifts and interests of the partners and to the opportunities they have in their specific cultural settings. We do not want to be understood to be restricting women or men to particular tasks, no matter how traditional they have become. For a biblical example of what we have in mind, we think of the responsibility and the variety of tasks being carried out by the “godly woman” in Proverbs 31, or the work of Lydia who was a “seller of purple”.

Second, in our culture when referred to as roles, these ministries of men and women are likely to be viewed in the terms of superior and inferior, of a dictatorial boss and of cowed subordinates. That is not how the scriptural ministries of headship and support are to be understood. These are complementary ministries of equal importance, carried out by equals united in love, exercised in mutual consultation and care in a common mission. And they are based on the created nature of the two partners. The partners together, united as one, reflect the attributes of God and the mystery of the Trinity. As we read in Scripture the man is to love the wife as Christ loves the Church. It is a sacrificial love that is intended in male headship, both in the family and in the Church.

That men and women have been “given” ministries does not mean that men or women are never to step outside the ministries to which, by creation, they are best suited. There are times in this fallen creation, when due to circumstances or the failure of men or women to do their part that the partner will need to do what must be done. This is evident in Scripture. Also it is true that while men and women differ considerably, they do not differ totally and that we do embody the traits of one another in varying degrees. Because of this it is possible, in emergency situations, for one partner to assume the responsibility that would normally belong to the other.

Since God by design has made us male and female, we are to understand and rejoice in our created nature as male and female. In the Bible the central and defining aspects of masculinity and femininity are found in the order and ministries of male headship and female support. Whenever this order of creation and these ministries are ignored or denied, equality is defined as interchangeability.

Competition replaces complementarity. This is evidenced dramatically by the society in which we live. Our culture generally and erroneously asserts a unisex interchangeability of men and women. It tends to deny the difference between men and women with the exception of the erotic sexual aspect and it depersonalizes, commercializes, and exaggerates that. This departure in principle and practice from traditional and biblical norms has proven to be a devastating error, as we can see in the state of things today.

While we cannot take the space to look at the various texts in the Bible that refer to our topic, we must consider one particular text because it is often cited as abolishing male headship for all who are in Christ. Some have suggested that Galatians 3:28 is a master New Testament text about the relationship of men and women and that it removes male headship in family and Church. It is thought to do this when it states that in Christ there is “neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female.”

The context of this text, however, makes it clear that the text refers to God’s gift of salvation. The gift of salvation received through faith and depicted in baptism rests upon grace and not works. In matters of salvation there is no distinction as Paul frequently points out. God is no respecter of persons because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” However, the Apostle Paul certainly did not mean this “neither male nor female” to obliterate all distinctions in male and female reality and relationships. Such a view erroneously extends the meaning of this text. Men remain men and women remain women, as Christians. Christians are husbands and wives as well as parents and children. These relationships do not cease to be such when we become Christians. The point is that Galatians 3:28 does not refer to headship and submission at all. It does not address the ministries of men and women in family or Church. It is therefore not a master text defining all New Testament teaching on the relations of men and women. It does not even define all of Paul’s teaching on the subject. It certainly does not cancel the order of creation to which the apostle Paul and other New Testament writers repeatedly turn to affirm male headship and female submission in family and Church. (See 1 Cor 11:3-4; Eph 5:22-33; 1 Pet 3:1-7).

Finally, in First Timothy and Titus, we find explicit and significant treatments of the place, the duties, and the character of those who are to be overseers or elders. These texts provide the primary basis in the New Testament for our developed offices of priest and bishop. In both sets of texts, the persons referenced are men. There is no hint of women serving as elders in the texts that discuss these ministries. Just the opposite is the case; it is clear that it is men who are to serve in these ministries. The conclusion regarding the teaching of Scripture is that the scriptures do not envision, or permit women to exercise the headship that is contemplated for those ordained to be priests or consecrated as bishops. It is contrary to the mystery of the Trinity, to the character of God’s act in creation, and to the created nature of men and women that mirrors the life of the Trinity in marriage, the family, and in the Church. The Scripture having said “No,” the Church has no right or authority to ordain women to these offices for, as the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion put it, the Church “ought not to decree anything against the same” (Article 20).

There is significant corroborative evidence for Scripture’s position found in the observation of nature, and, the experience of life in society and in Church history. One such is that the symbolic character of the offices of priest and bishop make them unsuitable for women. The ordination of women symbolically distorts the scriptural revelation of God due to the intimate connection between the nature of God and the symbolic character of the ministry of priests and bishops. Symbolism is powerful in effect and defies easy explanation.

The Christian worldview is theistic. The one and only God transcends the world that he has created while at the same time sustaining the world and acting within it. God has no female consort. His action is likened a few times in Scripture to the action of a mother, for he acts in motherly ways showing that he also has the attributes in himself that are mirrored more fully by women. However it is always clear in Scripture that his attributes adhere in him and are exercised by him who is beyond the world and not to be identified with it.

In contrast, some of the religions of the world are pantheistic not theistic. Feminine symbols and images of the divine-goddesses, female consorts, and the like giving birth to the universe-are widespread. So too are priestesses. When the feminine is given the same prominence and ministry as the masculine, pantheism is the result.

At almost every point, pantheism is a worldview and a religion in direct contradiction to God’s word in Scripture. Even when the ordained woman is orthodox in faith and not a theological feminist, by being a woman serving as a priest or bishop she has imported a contrary symbolism into the representative nature of the ordained ministry. Such symbolism will inevitably push matters in the wrong direction in the Church. We can already see it to be doing so.

Men and women differ biologically, psychologically, and relationally. Ministries are meant to reflect the differences. Biologically the male is physically more outwardly directed and the woman more inwardly. This is evidenced in a number of ways. The male bone structure is generally heavier and better shaped for addressing obstacles in the environment whereas the woman’s bone structure is weaker and shaped for the bearing of children.

The male hand is stronger and the male striated musculature is more capable of strong and sudden contraction. The arm and chest muscles are generally larger and more developed in the male. The bodily form of the male is more rugged than the female, with wider shoulders and narrower hips that are suitable for outward action. Whereas, the female form is more rounded and smoother with smaller, narrower shoulders and wider hips, suitable for the bearing of children. Recent studies have stressed the benefits of breast-feeding of the newly born and the measurable, beneficial impact upon the IQ of babies of being reared in the early years by the mother. Women are biologically oriented toward the family, and men are oriented toward the world.

Descriptive psychology studies the consciousness of human beings. Building upon the physical differences, different mental and emotional traits are found between men and women. Our sexuality or gender pervades our person. Men usually have more distance from their emotions and evidence a tendency to detach themselves from immediate reactions whereas women tend to be more immediate and spontaneous in their responses.

In patterns of thought, men tend to analyze, objectify, disassociate, classify, and synthesize whereas women are more prone to be intuitive, personally related, and to exercise empathy. Men tend to be more visual/spatial and women more verbal. Men are less aware of their bodies than women tend to be. Men are more goal-oriented, and women are more care-and-need-oriented. Women are more holistic in viewing a situation, and men tend to focus on some given aspect that will lead to a particular course of action. Women are more capable mentally of multi-tasking and nurture. Men are more inclined toward sequential planning, goal setting, and achieving. Women are more welcoming in orientation whereas men are more aggressive and competitive.

Societies differ in many respects; sociologists have discerned a number of trans-cultural or common traits that characterize every healthy society. These common traits reflect and build upon the biological and psychological factors listed above. They are as follows:

1. Sexual division of labor are found,

2. Complementary roles in the communal and domestic spheres are present. Men bear primary responsibility for the larger community. Women bear primary responsibility for domestic management and the rearing of young children.

3. Some form of female subordination to men exists. Men govern the larger communities while women exercise their responsibility for domestic management and the rearing of children under the oversight of the husband.

4. Cultural expressions of gender differences between men and women are evident. Sociologists have observed that in societies such as ours where these traits are significantly weak or obscured, the following consequences appear:

1. family life is weakened,
2. sexual relations become troubled,
3. women often lose a sense of value,
4. womanly roles are neglected,
5. manly roles are neglected, and
6. men and women develop psychological instabilities. The above data drawn from the observation of God’s creation, simply confirms what is clearly taught in Scripture. This should come as no surprise for the creator and the redeemer who authored both the book of nature and the book of Scripture is one and the same. He does not contradict himself. To place women in authority over the congregations is to violate the natural order of things as taught throughout the scriptures and observed in the sciences.

Thus, when considering a change as radical as the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate and in the Church’s practice with regard to the ordained ministry, the burden of proof lies with those who make such a proposal. And when this proposal arises from a secular society and amid a compromised Church, and when it is a request from but a tiny minority of the Church universal, the burden of proof required to legitimize the change becomes even more demanding. Such proof has not been forthcoming-quite the contrary.

The teaching of Scripture and evidence cited above from God’s book of creation are both contrary to the innovation of the ordination of women to these offices. In summary, there are compelling reasons to affirm a male priesthood and episcopate. First and last, Scripture does not allow for the ordination of women to these offices as these offices function within Anglicanism. Serious exegesis only serves to substantiate that statement.

In addition, we have indicated some of the important theological, ecclesiastical, social, and scientific reasons that corroborate the teaching of Scripture. We are very desirous that women exercise their full ministry in the gospel, in the Church, in the family and in society. We want the full flowering of womanhood and manhood in complimentary partnership to be modeled in our families and in the Church. To ordain women to the priesthood and episcopate can only hurt the family, the Church, and society. It will hurt, not help, women and it will do damage to all.


posted at: http://cyberbrethren.com/2011/06/10/a-serious-argument-against-the-ordination-of-women/#more-11973

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Christians -- "Forget Your Daughters"

Christians -- "Forget Your Daughters"

How long will decent folks continue pretending that this is not happening, or worse, sanctioning such savagery for the advancement of multi-culturalism? The West may be too loathe to engage in or call it a holy war, or a religious war, but Islamic supremacists revel in it.
"Forget Your Daughters" Zilla Blog
Two Christian girls were kidnapped, forced to convert to islam and marry their captor. When the girls' father tried to get help from the police, he was told by the cops to "forget his daughters. Via Pakistan Christian Post:
Rebbecca Masih and Saima Masih were kidnapped in Jhung the district of Faisalabad.

As explained by the two sisters` father, Rehmat Masih, a few days ago a wealthy local businessman, Muhammad Waseem, had previously warned that he wanted to marry the two girls, then threatened to kidnap them and convert them by force. Rehmat went to the police to file a complaint, but they did not take action. On Tuesday, May 24 the two girls were stopped while returning from the market, and some men kidnapped and threw them in a car owned by Waseem.

Rehmat rushed back to the police. The officers, after completing the investigation, said that "there are false accusations against Waseem," and that Rehmat, often gets drunk and starts assaulting his daughters, so they might have ran away unable to bear the torture. Other witnesses and neighbors instead swear that Rehmat is a respectable man and has never harmed his daughters.

On May 25, Muhammad Waseem forcefully married Saima Masih, in the presence of the leader Muhammad Zubair Qasim, an active member of the banned extremist group "Sip-e-Sahaba", often known for organizing kidnappings and forced conversions of Christian girls and Hindus. During the final interview, the police said to Rehmat to "forget his daughters."

Haroon Barkat Masih, Director of the Masihi Foundation, who is dealing with the case of Asia Bibi, condemns the incident and says to Fides: "Kidnapping Christian girls, conversion and forced marriages have become common practice in Punjab. The police have been bought, instead of serving the Punjab government they are servants of extremist groups. Punjab is becoming heaven for these groups: Muslim leaders openly call for violence in their sermons, without shame. Hundreds of cases like that of the Masih sisters do not come into existence. We have repeatedly appealed to the Punjab government, without receiving an answer: the government supports these groups. "

A Catholic nun in Faisalabad - who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons - is responsible to regain and hide the Christian girls who manage to flee the violence. The nun explains to Fides: "There are countless similar cases every year, that the Church of Pakistan has denounced many times, asking for respect for basic rights. The Masih sisters is a common fate of many girls and young Christian women in a society that tolerates discrimination on religious minorities, especially on women. "
Sadly, this is not unusual ANYWHERE that has a strong muslim presence, in fact it is quite common and it is even happening in the West now.

from: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/06/christians-forget-your-daughters.html

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Kosovo Serbs Butchered by Muslims for their Organs

EXPOSED: How Kosovo Serbs were butchered by Muslims for their organs

Posted: June 8, 2011 | Author: barenakedislam at http://barenakedislam.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/exposed-how-kosovo-serbs-were-butchered-by-muslims-for-their-organs/

Former Chief Prosecutor at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Carla Del Ponte, has given details of atrocities by ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1999. Kidnapped Serbs were given a medical test. Those who passed were treated well, fed and looked after until they were brought under the surgeon’s knife. From several concentration camps in Kosovo, they were then transferred to cities in the north of Albania. Their body parts were later flown to Europe.

Russia Today - General Mamir Stayanovich was head of the intelligence service of the Serbian army during the war. He has no doubt that the claims in Del Ponte’s book will sooner or later be proven. The places she mentions as hidden operation rooms are in exactly the same location as the camps Albanians used for training soldiers.

Serbian father and son, after the 1999 NATO invasion. NATO-backed KLA “freedom fighters” took the baby by the legs and smashed hin into a brick wall headfirst.
“In these hospitals they decided amongst themsemselves what each commander of the KLA would have after victory. They decided who would make his money from drug dealing, who from weapons, and who from selling body parts. Hashim Thaci, the prime minister, was among them,” General Stayanovich claims.
Kosovo, summer 1998: “The woman in the picture was five months pregnant; the Islamist Nazi Albanians (KLA-UCK) after raping her, literally cut the baby (fetus) out of her womb with a butcher-knife. The man in the right hand corner (her husband) had his legs chopped off with an axe at his knees, so before he died he was helplessly watching what the Albanian KLA Islamist Nazi savages were doing to his wife.”
There are more than 2,000 names on the list of missing Serbs. Sima Spasich is the leader of an organisation trying to discover their fate. He showed the pictures of body parts he filmed in 2003.

“Right after the war, when we understood that too many people had disappeared, I went to the K-For commanders and asked them where were the people, and they just shrugged their shoulders. Only after they saw Serbian people demonstrating and were afraid of their anger, they took me to some place,” Spasich said.

“After NATO forces entered Kosovo, this entire Serbian family was butchered, men were shot and decapitated. Women and children were raped and tortured. This ten-year-old girl (in the center) was raped by 20 Albanian Islamist Nazi KLA animals, her genitalia were mutilated with a wooden pole, then she was killed with an axe blow to the head.
I cannot explain what I saw there. It was a small mountain of pieces of bodies and the first thing I saw was a baby who’d been taken from his mother’s stomach, lying there. It was impossible to look. It was a massive grave they’d dug before. Today I know in this massive grave ”were 26 Serb bodies – also there was my brother Milosh,” Spasich added.

Families who once had a small glimmer of hope of finding their loved ones are now planning to sue Del Ponte. They claim she withheld this information for years – and in that way helped the criminals with their crime.

Julia Gorin - (H/T Branilo) - As we know, rape was a tool of war used openly by Kosovo Albanians against Serbs, the elders encouraging the younger generation to rape the province’s Serbian girls so that the Serbs would move out. As for a culture that doesn’t accept girls who aren’t virgins, what culture is that? It doesn’t sound Albanian per se, but Islamic. Yet again, weren’t we told that Albanian Muslims have nothing to do with Islam?

Young Serbian girl was raped and tortured (her breasts were cut off) - then she was beaten to death with a steel rod by the Albanian Islamist Nazi bandits in Kosovo. Her genitalia were mutilated beyond recognition
Raping in front of families is also something that the KLA engaged in, and this standardly confused Albanian is likely recirculating a KLA crime as a Serb crime. Here is a photo after the fact of such an atrocity by the KLA, which happened before the Yugoslav forces intervened in such goings-on in Kosovo.

Aside from the Albanian penchant for lying, and the advice of Albanian elders and politicians that rape of Serbs should be policy, what diminishes Albanian credibility on rape charges — at least widespread, systematic rape — is what a Yugoslav soldier told one of my sources speaking on behalf of himself and other soldiers he knew — namely that by the time of the Kosovo conflict, the Serbs were so disgusted by Muslims in general that the thought of having intercourse with one was the farthest thing from their minds.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Ann Coulter's Book "Demonic"

Ann Coulter’s books are never tame.

<strong>Ann Coulter</strong>
Her latest book, “Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America,” will start enraging liberals with its very title – which is par for the course for the author of such liberal-bashing classics as “Godless” and “Treason.”

The Daily Caller has put together the top 10 quotes and arguments from her latest tome that are most likely to make Chris Matthews’s head explode – and possibly even disturb some on the right.

10.) Democrats are anti-science

Reversing the Democratic mantra that Republicans are “anti-science,” Coulter says it is really the Democratic mob that abhors science and technological innovation.

“The Left’s abject terror of technological development is yet another mob attribute,” she writes.

Quoting Gustave Le Bon, whose theory on mobs is the main intellectual foundation of her book, Coulter writes, “Thus, according to Le Bon, if ‘democracies possessed the power they wield today at the time of the invention of mechanical looms or of the introduction of steam-power and of railways, the realization of these inventions would have been impossible.”

But, Coulter argues, “Our liberals are even worse than Le Bon imagined. Democrats don’t merely want to block scientific progress, they want to stop scientific progress, they want to role it back.”

She then cites, as examples, Al Gore’s call in his “global warming fantasy book Earth in the Balance” for the elimination of the internal combustion engine within 25 years, the Democrat’s 2007 bill to eliminate the incandescent light bulb by 2014, Obamacare, which she says will hamper medical innovation, and the Democrats’ incessant hectoring of the oil and pharmaceutical industries – industries, Coulter writes, that “are two of the most innovative.”

She goes on: “Indeed, the only way to get liberals interested in novel scientific research is to propose going after human embryos,” citing liberals love of embryonic stem cell research over adult stem cell research when the science on the latter is more promising according to her.

9.) Liberals are not apart of the American tradition

“The men behind the American Revolution – the militias, the Minutemen, and the signers of the Declaration of Independence, as well as the framers of the Constitution – were the very opposite of the mob. Today we would call them ‘Republicans,’” she writes at one point in the book

“Liberals’ history is not this country’s history – theirs is the history of the mob,” she writes in another.

8.) Liberal social consciousness manifests itself in the killing of American soldiers

Though a joke, this one will still enrage:

“If the Weatherman had succeeded in transporting their bombs to the Fort Dix dance, instead of blowing themselves up, they would have murdered lots of U.S. serviceman and their dates. For liberals, that’s social consciousness,” she writes.

7.) Republican “Southern Strategy” was not racist

“The entire basis of the liberals’ ‘Southern Strategy’ myth is the sophisticated belief that anyone who votes Republican must be a racist,” Coulter writes.

“If Nixon had planned to appeal to white racists, speeding up desegregation was not an effective strategy. But he turned around and won an even bigger landslide in 1972, running against George McGovern and the party of acid, abortion, and amnesty,” she argues.

6.) The left (and crazy people) are responsible for all political violence in the United States

“Somewhat astoundingly, in the entire nation’s history, there’s never been a presidential assassination attempt by a right-winger. There have been more than a dozen by left-wingers,” she writes.

“Conservatives, we’re endlessly told, create ‘an atmosphere of hatred and fear.’ This is as opposed to liberals who just go around shooting elected officials.”

After spending an entire chapter – entitled “Imaginary Violence From the Right Vs. Actual Violence From The Left” – documenting her case, Coulter concludes,

“What’s confusing is that liberal historians keep telling us that those angry, contorted faces screaming at black people are ‘Southerners’ – probably someone like Phyllis Schlafly. Only when you realize they are all Democrats – usually liberal, progressive Democrats, in the mold of Wilson, Faubus, and Ervin – do the pictures make sense.

“It’s always liberals: Like Robespierre, they commit violence for the greater good.”

5.) Democrats’ schemes are similar to the schemes of history’s worst regimes

In a chapter detailing the 20th century’s most brutal regimes, from Stalin’s Soviet Union to Hitler’s Germany to Mao’s China to Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Coulter writes, “You will note the similarities in all these totalitarian plans to many of the Democrats’ schemes.”

4.) The GOP has always been the party supporting civil rights, not the Democratic Party

“Angry violent mobs are always Democratic: Code Pink, SDS, The Weathermen, Earth First!, anti-war protesters, and union protesters in Wisconsin,” Coulter writes.

“Like them, the Ku Klux Klan was, of course, another Democratic undertaking, originally formed to terrorize Republicans, but later switching to terrorize blacks. It was Democratic juries that acquitted Klansman after Klansman. It was Democratic politicians who supported segregation, Democratic governors who called out the National Guard to stop desegregation, Democratic commissioners of public safety who turned police dogs and water hoses on civil rights protesters.”

Also: “Democrats only came around on civil rights when blacks were voting in high enough numbers to make a difference at the ballot box – and then they claimed credit for everything their party had ferociously blocked since the Civil War.”

3.) Coulter stands up for the killings at Kent State

“On May 4, National Guard officers were trying to disperse thousands of violent protesters in the middle of the campus. According to the recent reporting of James Rosen, the guardsman were fired upon first, leading twenty-nine guardsman to shoot back at the protesters, killing four students in thirteen seconds,” Coulter writes.

“If Louis XVI had been that decisive, 600,000 Frenchmen might not have had to die. As his grandfather, Louis XIV, had said: When war is necessary, it is a ‘grave error to think that one can reach the same aims by weaker means.’ Though decried throughout the land – and in a Neil Young song! – the shooting at Kent State soon put an end to the student riots.”

This fits nicely with a major theme of Coulter’s book, which is encapsulated in its very last words.

“This nation’s heroes knew what Louis XVI did not: A mob cannot be calmly reasoned with: it can only be smashed,” Coulter writes. “When faced with a move, civilized society’s motto should be: Overreact!”

2.) Coulter takes on the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Martin Luther King Jr. was the heir to Rousseau. He used images in order to win publicity and goodwill for his cause, deploying children in the streets for a pointless, violent confrontation with a lame-duck lunatic: Theophilus Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor,” she writes.

In attacking King’s legacy, Coulter uses the words of liberal icon Thurgood Marshall, who became the first black justice of the Supreme Court, to aid her in tarnishing King’s reputation. “Thurgood Marshall had always disdained King’s methods, calling him an ‘opportunist’ and ‘first rate rabble-rouser,’” Coulter writes. “Indeed, when asked about King’s suggestion that street protests could help advance desegregation, Marshall replied that school desegregation was men’s work and should not be entrusted to children. King, he said, was ‘a boy on a man’s errand.’”

Coulter concludes, “The civil rights movement had made mobs respectable, to the great misfortune of the nation. In no time, liberals began engaging in what I believe Gandhi called ‘active resistance’ every time they didn’t get their way through legitimate legal processes.”

In a later chapter, she says, “If Nixon had been elected in 1960, instead of Kennedy, we could have skipped the bloodshed of the civil rights marches and today we’d be celebrating Thurgood Marshall Day, rather than Martin Luther King Day.”

1.) Expressing understanding of anti-abortion violence

“But more important, abortion clinic violence should not be filed under ‘Political Violence’ at all. It should be filed under ‘Things Liberals Won’t Let Americans Vote On.’…When there is no legal process for pro-lifers to pursue to outlaw abortion – unlike every policy liberals violently protest – some pro-lifers will inevitably respond to lawlessness with lawlessness,” Coulter writes. “In the first few years after [Planned Parenthood v. Casey], about six more people were killed in attacks on abortion clinics. Most of the abortionists were shot or, depending upon your point of view, had a procedure performed on them with a rifle.”

“There were no more constitutional options left to fight judicial tyranny on the little matter of mass murder,” she concludes. “Thus, abortion clinic violence is more akin to the Tiananmen Square protests in Communist China than any liberal riot in America. Want to stop violence at abortion clinics? Repeal Roe and let Americans vote.”

from: http://dailycaller.com/2011/06/06/top-10-shocking-things-in-ann-coulter%e2%80%99s-book-demonic-that-will-drive-liberals-crazy/3/ by Jamie Weinstein

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Distorting Serbian History

Distorting History

Why aren't the Bosnian Muslims held to the same standard as the Serb Christians? Why is this fabricated narrative protected so fiercely? The left is spitting bullets every time I post on Bosnia. They are so vested in establishing a militant Islamic state in the heart of Europe. Why?

The American people were fed an endless supply of distortions and deceptions in order to grease Clinton's war. It began with a lie. How long will these human rights activists and international law clowns ignore the Serbian people and their stories? Refuting the Bosnian Lies.

The international community jumped to manufacture a "genocide" of a couple of hundred people, when real genocides like the millions of Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians by the Muslims are systematically ignored, demied. Enough. When does the truth get a hearing? Scroll here.

This letter in the Edmunton Journal speaks truth to lie:
Mladic's record distorted
Edmonton Journal May 31, 2011
Re: "Mladic trial a time for Balkan truth," Opinion, May 28.
Thanks for the ambitious headline: "Mladic trial a time for Balkan truth."
We can only wish that truth were the goal of The Hague.
The Journal says that "Unquestionably, justice is the prime imperative behind the arrest and coming trial of the Balkans' dreadful Ratko Mladic."
Using the preface "unquestionably" doesn't make it unquestionable.
The Journal says that "It is true that in the most passionate of conflicts, nothing will shake some people from false or distorted versions of past events."
Serbians and the many reputable critics who have witnessed the reporting and trials that came out of these civil wars will firmly support that statement. What is a false version of past events? Could it be that changing the definition of genocide to fit the crime Mladic is accused of is a falsehood?
Thousands of Serbs around Srebrenica were slaughtered, tortured and beheaded by Muslims based in the Srebrenica "safe haven." There was no question about who did it: Naser Oric, the leader of the killers, photographed his victims and bragged to Western journalists. This man got a light sentence -a slap on the wrist.
Who would believe that Mladic will get a fair trial?
There was never a Serbian plan, much less a Mladic plan, for a greater Serbia, but sloppy reporters, including The Journal, in using those words.
Anybody can pick up a package of past articles written about the conflicts and spit it out again. The Journal coyly states that if Mladic is convicted it will be for specific, verifiable crimes, but he has been convicted again and again in the press until he is finally being sent to this kangaroo court to tie things up.
The Serbian people are a dignified, justice-loving people whose story is ignored.
N. Jakovac, Toronto, Ont.
What the media refuses to report on are the facts.
 Deutsche Presse-Agentur June 6, 1996
Senior official admits to secret U.N. report on Sarajevo massacre

For the first time, a senior U.N. official has admitted the existence of a secret U.N. report that blames the Bosnian Moslems for the February 1994 massacre of Moslems at a Sarajevo market.

Yasushi Akashi, the Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and the former head of the U.N. mission in Bosnia, told the German Press Agency dpa that the secret report is "no secret."

An international outcry over the massacre, in which 68 civilians perished at Markale marketplace, led directly to a toughening of Western policy towards the Serbs, who were widely blamed for the incident.

But there have been persistent rumours at the United Nations ever since that a U.N. report clearly blamed the Moslems for firing on their own people in order to create international sympathy and get the West to fight on their side against the Serbs.

Until Thursday, U.N. officials strongly denied the report existed, even after it was quoted in press reports.

Akashi told dpa that not only did the first report exist, but that some journalists already had a copy. He said the details were in a 1995 story by U.S. journalist David Binder, who quoted from the confidential report.

According to Binder, the report said U.N. peacekeepers were prevented by Moslem police from entering the site in the aftermath of the explosion. No doctors were allowed on the scene and the 197 victims were carried away to hospital within 25 minutes.

After studying the crater left by the mortar shell and the distribution of the shrapnel, the report concluded that the shell was fired from behind Moslem lines. U.N. monitors reported no Serbian shelling that day from points near the marketplace.

The official U.N. report that was subsequently released said the evidence as to who fired the shell was inconclusive, since it originated from an area where Moslem and Serb lines were very close. The two reports represented divergent views, but the United Nations chose to publish the neutral report and keep the other secret.

The incident led to a NATO ultimatum to Bosnian Serbs to withdraw their heavy weapons from around Sarajevo.

At the time, Madeleine Albright, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said: "It's very hard to believe any country would do this to their own people, and therefore, although we do not exactly know what the facts are, it would seem to us that the Serbs are the ones that probably have a great deal of responsibility."

CORROBORATED IN THESE 3 CLOSING PARAGRAPHS OF THIS AKI REPORT from Dec. 2007 
Bosnian Serb leaders have claimed that the attack was engineered by Bosnian Muslim forces to lay blame on the Serbs and some UN officials in Bosnia have speculated that it may have been the case.

[Dragomir] Milosevic has argued that Muslim forces were entrenched in Sarajevo from where they shelled Serb positions, thus making the city a “legitimate target”.

Since its founding in 1993, the ICTY has indicted 161 individuals, mostly Serbs….
from: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/

Ratko Mladic on Trial

The Hague, Netherlands (CNN) -- Bosnian Serb genocide suspect Ratko Mladic dismissed as "obnoxious" charges against him Friday during his first appearance at a war crimes tribunal.

Mladic appeared in court dressed in a gray striped suit, a matching tie and a military cap, which he removed once he sat down. He listened impassively as a judge advised him he has the right to remain silent and then recited the charges to him. At times, he sipped water from a glass, his face showing no apparent emotion

"I would like to receive what you've read out just now, these obnoxious charges leveled against me," Mladic said. "I want to read this properly, to give it some proper thought together with my lawyers, because I need more than a month for these monstrous words, the ones that I've never heard before."

Mladic was the commander of Bosnian Serb forces during the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the bloodiest of the conflicts that accompanied Yugoslavia's breakup in the 1990s.



from: CNN.com
The 69-year-old is accused of leading a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" against Bosnia's Muslim and Croat populations that included the shelling of Sarajevo and the torture, abuse and rape of civilians.

More than 200,000 Muslims and Croats died in the 1992-95 conflict, including nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys slaughtered at Srebrenica in 1995. It was Europe's worst massacre since World War II.

His court appearance at The Hague occurred days after he was arrested after more than 15 years in hiding.

During the appearance, he asked for more time to a enter plea, saying he needs more than the 30 days required so he can understand the charges. He was "gravely ill," he said, and had not yet read the documents relating to the charges.

The judge, Alphons Orie, scheduled another appearance on July 4 at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Mladic was asked whether there was any issue relating to his arrest or detention, or any other issue that he wanted to raise.

Mladic -- who repeatedly said he stood up for his country -- said he didn't kill Croats.

"I do not fear any journalist or any people, any nation or ethnicity. I defended my country and people ... now I am defending myself," Mladic said.

"If you want the proceedings to proceed as they should ... I just have to say that I want to live to see that I am a free man. And such as I am, I am defending my country and my people and not Ratko Mladic."

Serge Brammertz, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), said on Wednesday that Mladic's arrest "confirms that no one can have impunity for the crimes they've committed."

"I hear many people commenting that his arrest ends an important chapter for international criminal justice. But the process of establishing Ratko Mladic's accountability has only just begun."

Mladic was taken to The Hague on Wednesday, a day earlier after losing his fight against extradition from Serbia. He was charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws of war.

An amended indictment against him was filed on Wednesday to make sure charges "reflect the most recent developments in the tribunal's case law."

Brammertz said the transfer brings the tribunal closer to completing its mandate to capture those responsible for the most serious crimes in the former Yugoslavia.

"As a result of the arrest, today only one of the 161 persons indicted by the tribunal remains at large," Brammertz said, referring to Goran Hadzic, a political leader of the Serbian entity in Croatia during the mid-90s.

His lawyer, Milos Saljic, argues that Mladic would not be able to participate in a trial at The Hague because of his ill health.

Saljic said he wants his client examined by specialists, including a gastroenterologist, a cardiologist, a psychiatrist and a neurologist.

But Serbia's chief prosecutor, Vladimir Vukcevic, said the suspect was "lively and joking," and had asked for Russian classics to read while being held in Belgrade.

The suspect gave himself up without a fight May 26, despite having two handguns, according to Rasim Ljajic, the government minister in charge of searching for fugitive suspected war criminals.

Officials located Mladic in a village north of the Serbian capital after culling information from his former comrades and close family members. It is unclear what source led investigators to the former military commander.

The arrest clears a major hurdle that once stood between Serbia and its long-awaited entrance into the European Union, but the move could also usher in political backlash from the country's electorate, some of whom consider Mladic a hero.

The other fugitive war criminal suspects previously captured are Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who died in jail in 2006 during his trial at The Hague.

Authorities say it's theoretically possible that the trials of Karadzic and Mladic could be merged.