My name is Harry Rankin. I spent five and a half years of my life in the Canadian Army during WW2. I served over two years of that time as an infantryman in the Canadian contingent of the Eighth Army (British), from the landing in Sicily to the north of Italy in what may in truth be called the "Last Just War" . I was wounded twice. I oppose all war. Out of war comes the impoverishment of millions of people crippled, maimed and tormented for the rest of their lives. 

I have struggled for the last several weeks to comprehend some rationale for NATO's war in Serbia. My conclusion is, it is Fascism revisited. 

War is the worst catastrophe of the human race. In war, everyone is expendable except the leading generals and politicians. There can be no war without the genocide of women, children and old men, not to mention the young (mostly male) who serve and die or are maimed for life. War is always an atrocity. 

History is full of these integral losses. In the Boer War, the English set up concentration camps for the Boer women and children to let them die of plague, and lack of food and sustenance. In the Italian campaign for the colonization of North Africa, General Grazioni set up huge fences in Africa against which he drove the native peoples to slaughter them. In the Ethiopian war, Count Ciano, the son -in -law of Il Duce, (the man who made the trains run on time in Italy) recounts bombing Ethiopian tribesmen on horseback watching them explode 'like the unfolding petals on a rose". In the Spanish Civil War, Hitler and Mussolini tried out their new weapons at Guronica devastating a whole city as a prelude to that monster Franco. Franco slaughtered half of the Spanish civil population while the shabby diplomacy of the West practiced "non intervention". At the time of the Second World War, after a year of the "Phony War", I recall England's Prime Minister Churchill finally deciding which side he was on. I remember the cynicism of U.S. President Truman who said, "Let the Russians and Germans kill each other off. We 'll look after ourselves." He did this very well by dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki testing the bombs against a country already defeated. 

The US Clinton administration says the U.S. will take 25,000 Albanian refugees on a "temporary basis". Does anyone in his or her right minds think the Albanians can go back to Kosovo after being used as pawns by the NATO beasts? NATO now is nothing more than a cover for US industrial- military might in the takeover of the world. The chance of the U.S citizens willingly risking American soldiers to put that theme in place is pretty slim. And good for the U.S. people. They should not risk a single life to this NATO Fascist army. They should go further to destroy economically that New World Order structure in process which attempts to fulfill Hitler's dream. 

At the end of WW2 we thought we had won by destroying Fascism, only now to discover that the Fascists never really went away, but have re-emerged in a new guise. I remember Hitler's slogan: A Thousand Years of National Socialism! This was Hitler's language for conquering the world, running roughshod over national sovereignty and the people of the world. I was in England in 1940, only 19 years old. Five year later, Hitler, the animal, died in a bunker after taking poison. In my naivete I thought a great new world loomed on the horizon. Instead, we have descended to an alliance of the lickspittle Tony Blair and the Social Democrats of the world grovelling and slobbering before that great "Statesman" Clinton, all in a mad subservience to the New World Order euphemistically named "Globalization". It is a submission to the money men, the new fascist elite, who are imposing their will on the people of the world. 

It was always the case that the people of the world have a long hard struggle ahead of them. All I know is that the dream epitomized by Hitler rings as false in my ears today at my age of 78 as it did in England in 1939-40 . Fifty two million people died for that charade. 

WITH PEACE, EVERYTHING GOOD FOR PEOPLE IS POSSIBLE. WAR ONLY DESTROYS.
LET US PUT AN END TO WAR!

Harry Rankin, Q.C., lifetime Bencher of The Law Society of British Columbia, Former Treasurer of The Law Society of British Columbia, practicing Barrister and Solicitor. 

Harry Rankin can be reached at (604) 682 2781 (w) or (604) 872 2128 (h) or through e mail: conniefogal@home.com