|
|||||||||
Note: Backtalk will resume on Saturday, May 11.
If you're attending the FEE national convention and/or the Money Show, stop by Ken Kam's Stock Pick Panel Discussion, featuring Backtalk editor Sam Koritz – Bally's Resort, Las Vegas, Monday, 3 PM.
Posted May 7, 2002
Old Adage
On looking at the picture on your May Day issue, it is obvious that those rallying against LePen are not adults -- probably don't know what a fascist is -- but are able to call people names which they don't really understand.
The picture just confirms that old adage that "if you're a 'conservative' when you're twenty years old, you're hardhearted and if you're a 'socialist' when you're forty, you're soft-headed".
Dr. Ranta
Re: "Lessons of Forgotten Wars / Fatal Balkans Policies":
I forward an excerpt from a friend's book concerning the findings of Dr. Ranta. Her conclusion was that there had not been a massacre. However, the report was suppressed by Kofi Annan on the instructions of his keepers. I think that if she is doing the present job there is every chance that the result will be valid.
I look forward to reading ... [Nebojsa Malic's] columns every Thursday. Please keep up the good work. I have learnt a lot from your analysis.
Nebojsa Malic replies:
From what I have read and seen, Dr. Ranta indeed suggested the possibility, but she characterized it as unlikely. It was one contradictory statement amidst the sea of accusations. Whether she was pressured into doing so, and thus supporting the official line, I cannot tell -- or prove. Until Dr. Ranta herself tells the world exactly what she thinks, and on what basis, I have to assume she did it on purpose. I appreciate your comments, though, as they remind us all that things in the Balkans are usually much more complicated than meets the eye.
Veiled Women
Regarding the report: "Saudi Women To Train For Civil Defense."
Gee, I wonder if that means they will finally let them drive, too?
During the Gulf War, there was a demonstration in Riyadh by 50 Saudi women who got into their cars to demand that they be allowed to drive just like the women in Kuwait in order to escape with their families to safety if the situation arose.
As a result, all the women had their passports taken away from them for two years, many of them lost their jobs (they are permitted to work in all female banks and in some hospitals), and in one case, one of the women was beaten to death by her father because she had dishonored him.
Even some of the women's husbands were punished for allowing their wives to drive. However, the picture of seeing veiled women behind the wheel of a car is somewhat scary.
And didn't I recently hear that Prince Abdullah in his visit to see President Bush demand that there be no female air traffic controllers? Or was that just a rumor?
Anonymized
I sent you my letter on April 29th, which appeared on "Backtalk".... Thank you. However, I signed my letter with my full address, as opposed to many people who sign with their initials. It is your business how you publish letters, but if you decided to censor my message and remove my address, please, be professional and put something like "full address and town removed by editors for whatever reasons."
It is disgusting how much of an auditorium can an anonymous writer get today, like the RI on the same page, and how decent people who are willing to take responsibility for their words and actions are "anonymized" against their will.
~ Alex Chaihorsky, 5774 Tappan Dr., Reno, Nevada
Oil
I just wanted to clear up RI's assertion that oil was $8.00 during the Clinton years. Here is a link to a 25 year historical chart (http://www.barchart.com/sample/mr0mcl.htm) which clearly shows oil never dipped to 8 bucks from 92-00, in fact the lowest price in the last 25 years was $9.75. Oil regularly hovered around $20 a barrel during most of the Clinton administration.
Troubling Possibility
I have come to the conclusion that we need to consider a troubling possibility.
Part 1: The public in the US is introduced to the idea:
Last night
on Chris Matthews show, Dick Army came right out and said to Chris that
he feels the solution in the Middle east is for Israel to drive the Palestinians
out of the West Bank and Gaza, and maybe provide a homeland somewhere
else, (where he did not say -- maybe Jordan).
Chris stared at him, open mouthed, and asked him if he has thought this through. He was advocating mass relocation of over a million Arabs, and the conquest by the settlers of the land from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. This idea is introduced to the west now, beyond its popularity in Israel.
Part 2: our own Ran HaCohen has reminded us that, at least until very recently, there was not even a security fence on the green line between Israel and the West Bank. The suicide bombers walked into Israel.
Part 3:
Is it possible that that Sharon and his crew cynically , in an attempt
to justify this ethnic cleansing to come, has engineered the environment
that lead to the suicide bombers?
Like FDR with Pearl Harbor, and Israel in '67, if the enemy can be provoked to strike first, or at least perceived to do so, you can act in self righteous anger.
Can it be that Sharon has cynically planned, not as a reaction, but as a premeditated plan, to sacrifice a relative handful of civilians to achieve the full glory of the kingdom of Israel from the Jordan to the Sea.
Certainly If FDR could have arranged for the Japanese to bomb Honolulu rather than Pearl, it would have been even better to gin up a good self-righteous head of war steam.
Churchill would sacrifice Coventry to keep Ultra secret. Maybe we need to consider this possibility that the world public opinion is being manipulated to view the events as a reaction, rather than as part of a cynical plot to justify conquest and their version of manifest destiny.
As the character in Dr Strangelove admonishes his less visionary companions that they do not have the capacity for "strategic thought".
Maybe Sharon
does have this cynical capacity.
Sheldon Richman helps with the case: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-159.html.
No Traces
I'm writing in response to the BBC article ["FBI Fails to Find Terror Trail"] about how the FBI has concluded nothing after their 9/11 investigation.
They found no evidence, not a trace of 9/11 preparations, no laptops, no phone calls (maybe it means that those people are not terrorists?!) yet the only thing they know is that the terrorists have been planning it for five years, and it's 'very-very possible' that they are planning another attack now! I just wonder how this can be the only thing they know if they had found no traces.
Now this just seems like a big cover-up to me!
~ Anastasia Naishul