Posted November 28, 2002

Deplorable Toy is Still Online

Regarding "J.C. Penney Catalog: Toy Soldier Commandeers Barbie's Dream House" by Eric Garris:

Thanks for the heads-up on that deplorable "toy" JCPenney is advertising for this Christmas (traditionally the season of "peace on earth").

Your page said Penney's took the online listing down, but I found it today [here].

Just thought you would want to know.

~ Mary Hillebrand, publisher, Special Education News, www.specialednews.com

Transfer of Nuclear Technology

Regarding "A North Korea-Pakistan Connection?" by Praful Bidwai:

I read your article about a so-called tradeoff between Pakistan-North Korea with great interest. On one side you suggest that Pakistanis are shrewd in such deals and on the the other hand they were so stupid that they were running between Islamabad and Pyongyang with the whole world watching and making barter trade by selling nuclear technology and buying missiles. ...

Sir, you are either naive or a Pakistan-hater. You know very well that Pyongyang would sell missiles for rice let alone nuclear technology and that Pakistan had a friend in the form of China who has been giving them the missile technology for years. For god's sake, have a balanced view.... Write what makes common sense and ... don't use your mouth to spill words of Advani and other fundamentalists.

~ Farrukh P. Butt

E-Commerce

While I don't agree with everything Christopher Deliso said in his article "The Price of Paranoia: The Myriad Costs of Homeland Security," the thought crossed my mind that all this monitoring of what people buy, withdraw from their bank account, the air tickets purchases, etc. can only have a detrimental effect on electronic commerce (e-commerce), much-touted in the pre-September 11 days.

I'm an journalist writing on computers and information technology and not too long ago I was up to my gills with all the BS and ballyhoo about e-commerce but today the term "e-commerce" is rather conspicuous by its absence.

~ Charles F. Moreira, Journalist, In Tech, Star Publications, Malaysia

Clever, Heartless, Inhuman

Regarding "Sabotage!" by Justin Raimondo:

I'm once again surprised to find one of my favorite authors (Justin) making excuses for and desperately seeking evidence to suggest that GW isn't a moron.

Given that his henchmen are criminally insane people who believe they will get what they want by killing other people, the term "moron" isn't really all that pejorative, and it doesn't imply, really, that he isn't at least somewhat "clever."

But it's really been sad to watch as Americans have snatched at every scrap that might imply he has a heart when it's abundantly clear he hasn't one.

I understand, however, Justin's outrage over the lack of anything constructive coming from the "loyal opposition." My own, lone Democratic Senator (Max Baucus) repeatedly toes the party line and most recently has been defending the HSA as something that we must accept while somehow protecting "individual liberties." I find it instructive that he offers no ideas as to how those liberties might be protected.

But as Justin's said many times before, this issue is bigger than "left" and "right." Taking liberty with the words of our Fearless Leader (or is it "Mr. Big?") that "yor either for us or agin us," I think a person is either for killing or against it as a primary means of accomplishing whatever ends are being advertised. That's a difference that matters to me. It defines who's a human being and who isn't.

~ John McGill, East Glacier Park, Montana

Srebrenica

Regarding "Srebrenica" by Stella L. Jatras:

...I regularly look into your site for indeed good articles but I was surprised that you have brought to public such a text.... It is very hard to read it knowing the truth, knowing the victims, seeing their children and their mothers. I ask you one thing: did you ever try to look into the other side before bringing that poison to the public? I know you did not, ... Stella L. Jatras ... never visited Bosnia, she never saw thousands of orphans, widows, mothers praying for the truth which is everything they have left, she never saw thousands of dead bodies waiting to be identified by their DNA to finally rest in peace, perhaps she never read the thousands official documents and reports on Srebrenica. ...

Be sure that nothing you bring to public will ever justify the Serbian massacre that happened not only in Srebrenica but in Vukovar, Sarajevo, Tuzla, etc.

~ Jasmin Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Stella L. Jatras replies:

Everything written in my commentary "Srebrenica" is documented and the sources named. I find it ironic that the writer's last name is Zenica, where tens of thousands of Mujahedin (imported from the entire Islamic world gratis Iran) found their home. "We came here to die in the service of Islam. This is our duty. No infidel force will tell us how to live or what to do. This (Bosnia) is a Muslim country which must be defended." (Islamic fighter as quoted by the New York Times and reprinted in the Sunday Telegraph, 10 Dec. 1995.)

The Times of London (11 Dec. 1995), shows a photo of one of Bosnia's Army brigades marching through Zenica in a demonstration of strength. These Muslim warriors were merely carrying out the words of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who said in 1930, "Holy war means the conquest of all non-Moslem territories. It will be the duty of every able-bodied adult male to volunteer for this war of conquest, the final aim of which is to put Koranic law in power from one end of the earth to the other. Any man or woman who denies the existence of God, or believes in His partners (the Christian Trinity) or else does not believe in His Prophet Mohammed, is impure." (From the Atlantic Monthly, April/May 1995, The Lucifer Principle, book excerpt by Howard Bloom.)

Alija Izetbegovic, former president of Bosnia, is quoted as saying in his Islamic Declaration, "There can be no peace or coexistence between Islamic faith and non-Islamic faith political institutions. The Islamic movement must and can take place as soon as it is morally and numerically strong enough, not only to destroy the non-Islamic one, but to build up a new Islamic one. "

Renown author Yossef Bodansky writes in his 1995 book, Offensive in the Balkans, "As early as 1992, Izetbegovic outlined a very precise and uncompromising strategic political objective for the Sarajevo regime: To get the West to defeat the Serbs and establish a Muslim-dominated state for him." Bodansky further writes, "The UN concluded that a special group of Bosnia Muslim forces, many of whom had served with Islamic terrorist organizations, committed a series of atrocities, including 'some of the worst recent killings,' against Bosnian Muslim civilians in Sarajevo as a propaganda ploy to win world sympathy and military intervention. These attacks escalated into premeditated attacks and atrocities committed against Bosnian Serb civilians trying to flee contested areas."

I repeat what was in my commentary, that:

"A representative in the Bosnian and Federal Parliaments, Ibran Mustafic, gave an explosive interview on Aug. 15, 1996, to Slobodna Bosnia ('Free Bosnia,' a Sarajevo newspaper). Mustafic was quoted as saying that the betrayal of Srebrenica 'was consciously prepared and that the Bosnian president and the army command were involved in this business,' and that was to sacrifice Srebrenica in order to gain the sympathy of the West. Of his internment in a Serbian jail, he writes, 'I should have died. They [the Bosnian Muslim authorities] don't appreciate living people. They appreciate the dead because they cannot talk.'"

Why do I relate the above? Because it is obvious from the beginning that Bosnia was to be the spearhead for an Islamic Bosnia and Srebrenica was the sacrifice as stated by Ibran Mustafic. Bosnia has become Islam's corridor into Europe.

I sympathize with Miss Zenica over the needless loss of Bosnian Muslim lives at Srebrenica. However, I also sympathize over the loss of all lives lost at Srebrenica and throughout the Balkan war. It is apparent that Miss Zenica sees only what she wants to see and does not see the number of Serbian orphans, twice those of Bosnian and Croatian orphans put together – nor does she see the suffering of Serbian women and children, nor the massacres of Serbian men, women and children by heroic Islamic soldiers.

Afghanistan

...The so-called "war on terror" which the U.S. used to devastate Afghanistan must be the most senseless war anyone has fought for decades, and it's a real fiasco to boot! First, the US decided that Osama bin Laden was the chief villain and cause of the Sept. 11 bombings, so they went after him. And since he lived in Afghanistan, where the Taliban government was grateful for his help in getting rid of the Russians – and thankful for his wealth, which helped to prop up what meager economy they had – they became guilty by association, even though they had nothing to do with September 11! ...

They didn't get bin Laden, the one they blamed for the whole thing – he's gone. And they didn't get his organization, either – they just spread it far and wide to dozens of other countries, where it's causing all sorts of trouble for the US and other Western countries, much more than it was ever able to do in Afghanistan! (They say his organization operates in 59 countries now.) ...

Now, having messed up so badly in Afghanistan, they want to double or triple their troubles by attacking Iraq, of all things, in spite of opposition from almost every country in the world! You wonder about the sanity of those who run the US government!

~ Ted Rudow III, MA, Menlo Park, California