Posted February 18, 2002

Olympics

Excellent take on the stupid olympics. Waylon Jennings would have agreed with you, had not he just died. He's the country singer who refused to recognize awards ceremonies, even when he won, because he felt that entertainers shouldn't compete against one another.

~ Tony B.

Uncivil War

[Regarding "Diary of an Uncivil War" by Scott Taylor]

Great job! Now, how to get any one of the mass media in the U.S. to publish and/or replicate this balanced reporting and astonishing exposé of recent history; or getting any of our so-called fair and objective commentators on CNN, FOX, even the PBS channels to report this subject in kind?

~ Pyotr K.

Revolutionaries

[Regarding Justin Raimondo's column of May 31, 1999:]

Isn't your glib put-down of revolutionaries in step with the beat of our imperialist masters? I'm not going to go on about how Bush is crazy but I will say that America is crazy and bloodthirsty. Too many people are clueless about what Vietnam was all about and too many people don't realize that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes, not military necessities.

~ Jesse N., California

Yugoslavia

Thanks for your fair and objective coverage of events in former Yugoslavia. The media has been excessively already lynching Slobo (guilty till proven innocent) for something any leader of the country would do, and that is to defend its county and sovereignty. Clinton would never gave Miami to Castro and Cuba.

Please continue doing the awsome job and keeping the world informed of truth especially on Slobodan Milosevic's trial (I like the Radio/TV version), KLA, ANA and other Albanian thugs and drug dealers....

Links to Makedonija as well as Balkan Express are superb. Adding Kosovo.com would be of greater importance because people could see the photos of thousands of Serbs killed as well as over 100 of their churches destroyed by the KLA....

Do you have an address where I can send a small donation?

~ John J.

Reward

Now that former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's trial for alleged war crimes has begun in The Hague, Jared Israel of the ICDSM (International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic) has offered a $500 reward "if you can find any place where this man demeaned any ethnic group or espoused Serbian racial superiority." During my reading over the past 10 years (of both major and minor media outlets), I have read many pieces accusing Milosevic of "instigating ethnic hatred," etc. but never have I read a direct verifiable quote of a public statement that would substantiate the accusation. Conversely, I have read direct quotes from Presidents Tudjman of Croatia and Izetbegovic of Bosnia that are undoubtedly motivated by ethnic chauvinism and/or religious intolerance. I have also read the transcript of Milosevic's most famous speech, delivered in 1989 at Kosovo Field and in it I can find nothing to support charges of "instigating ethnic hatred," etc.

Professor Francisco Gil-White (Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and a Fellow at the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict) has described similar feelings of skepticism when confronted with a lack of evidence and dozens of gross errors, writing in his piece "How the Media and Scholars Write about Slobodan Milosevic" the following conclusion: "I have difficulty explaining this as a result of ignorance, or chance, or confusion. It appears to be a conscious effort to misinform."

~ Vincent Rozyczko, Ithaca, New York

Justice System

Isn't it ironic that Milosevic is standing trial for war crimes while Sharon's trial has been cancelled after they blew up the central witness for the prosecution. Moreover, Sharon already had a history of public responsibility for war atrocities, unlike Milosevic. It appears that international justice is based upon a system of "dead witnesses can tell no tales." This epitomizes the immoral and twisted logic of The New World Order's justice system. Look for this system to become even more perverted over time in the international arena.

~ PJC (I am not Harriet Nelson!)

Libertarian Muslim

Unlike most libertarian writers (particularly ones online) I actually enjoy and await each of ... [Justin Raimondo's] pieces. While I have disagreements with some of your analysis (particularly in regards to some aspects of the Kosova debacle) you seem very level-headed, honest and forthright, a moral man.

...That I am a Muslim and a Libertarian confuses some folks to even greater degrees, however as far as political ideologies go I find the Libertarian Right closer to the ethos of pure Islam than the moralistic and somewhat silly neo-conservatism that dominates today's political conservative discourse. Classical Islam had very much an ethos of "let be," for example, it is illegal for a Caliph or Sultan to spy on his citizens, especially to spy on them in their homes.... There is much to criticize we Muslims for, but I hold, and others hold, that many of the ideals of Islam occupy, very much, a Libertarian spirit though corrupted in the decline and growing decadence of the Muslims. Take the Taliban for example, their schools teach the "Nizami Curriculum." However it has been dumbed down considerably. The original Nizami curriculum had more books on logic "called mantiq in Arabic" than even on Islamic law! Today, Madressas in India and Pakistan teach only a fraction of this, much of the dumbing down done in the name of "purifying." The fault for the Taliban's excesses lie not in Islam, many Muslims believe, but in the woeful under-education of many Muslim clerics. A situation not amenable by the State taking over education, which is what many are pushing for, this will only inspire more resentment in Muslim clerics; can one imagine the US Education Dept. taking over the nation's Catholic and yeshiva schools?

~ Kamal S.