WCR Letters to the Editor

Zyp willing to risk persecution

Gingras makes the irrelevant assertion that Zyp should not voice opinions, nor point out injustices, while he himself lives in relative comfort and safety. If that were so, a good portion of what is written in today's magazines and newspapers would go unreported, and what is said from Sunday pulpits would go unsaid.

The fallacy of abusing the man (argumentum ad hominem) is committed when the presenter of an issue is attacked instead of the issue itself. Gingras, himself, does not bring forth any points why he disagrees with Zyp's articles.

What I've received from Zyp's many articles is that he has a keen understanding of how today's world operates, and yes, America plays an immense role.

Unfortunately, America all too often instigates and manipulates situations primarily for its own self-interest. It should not come as a surprise to us that this is the way much of the world works - even various U.S. presidents have said so.

Zyp's articles need not be your only source of information. The world we live in is so complicated that the truth about it is unlikely to be simple. Those who would seek truth wherever it is to be found must train for the task, study the best maps available, and examine the dangers involved in order to avoid them.

Bishop Butler once said, "Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be; why then should we desire to be deceived?"

Herd instinct is perhaps the most formidable of the unconscious impulses that influence our thought and behaviour. Nearly everybody finds it intolerable to entertain ideas that differ radically from those generally accepted.

I am appreciative that Zyp dares to state it as it is and to resist the persecution that nonconformity usually provokes.

If I may answer the question that Gingras asks of Zyp, "Is military intervention always wrong or only when the U.S. does it?"

While one could write a treatise on this, let it suffice to say that military intervention, when done for the purpose of subjugating a people, or whole nation, to live in dire conditions in order that one can greedily enrich themselves and to maintain a lifestyle, is always wrong regardless of who the perpetrator is.

I encourage Gingras to delve deeper into "why things are as they are." The information is out there. God bless you in your search.

Willem Hubben
Edmonton

Insight from the Book of Revelation

Jesus said in Luke Ch. 21: 34-35, "Watch yourselves, or your hearts will be coarsened with debauchery and drunkenness and the cares of life, and that day will be sprung on you suddenly like a trap. For it will come down on every living man on the face of the earth."

Even the singer, Phil Collins, seemed to wax prophetic in a song he wrote in 1989 called Another Day in Paradise. One line says, "Woe, think twice, it's another day for you and me in Paradise. Just think about it."

Chapter 17 and 18 of the book of Revelation refer specifically to New York and its downfall.

The city called "the famous prostitute" or "the whore of Babylon", that rides the back of the beast. This city refers unmistakably to New York.

Revelation Chapter 18:7-8 says "'I am the queen on my throne, she says to herself, and I am no widow and shall never be in mourning.' For that, within a single day, the plagues will fall on her: disease and mourning and famine. She will be burned right up."

I sent a paper to Archbishop Collins on Sept. 18, 1999, describing my interpretation of the Book of Revelation. I even mentioned the threat to New York. Needless to say, he paid it no mind.

Hank Zyp seems to be the only one around there whose head is partway screwed on.

Bernard Rioux
Edmonton

A Canadian who saved thousands at end of war

One among many examples is a Second World War Allied junior officer, Major P.H. Barre, from Quebec about whom I read in Nikolai Tolstoy's The Minister and the Massacres.

The book describes the repatriation operations by the British Fifth Corps in Austria that sent thousands of refuge-seeking Slovenian civilians and soldiers into the hands of Communists who slaughtered them.

It's important to note that the Slovenes, as a whole, were against Nazi Germany and never fought against the Allies; in fact, Slovenes rescued shot-down Allied pilots.

The repatriations took place in late May and early June 1945, shortly after the Allied forces moved into Austria from Italy. If it were not for Barre's compassion, a further 6,000 Slovene refugees - all civilians, including 3,550 women and children - would have met the same fate.

The Slovene soldiers and civilians who managed to flee Tito's communist Yugoslav forces, by crossing Slovenia's northern border into Austria, sought and received refuge with the British military in Viktring.

On May 19, 1945, the civilian refugee camp at Viktring was placed under the command of Major Barre from Allied Military Government (AMGOT). A 38-year-old Canadian officer, Barre quickly grew fond of the Slovene inhabitants of his camp.

On May 23, Allied Forces Headquarters told the Fifth Corps in Viktring that all Slovene soldiers were to be sent to Italy. With assurances of their safety, the unarmed soldiers initially went willingly - until the night of May 26 when a repatriated anti-Communist Serbian soldier returned to the camp with a horrifying first-hand account of the repatriates' true fate at the hands of Tito's Communist partisans.

The distressing report extremely concerned the Slovene refugees, not to mention the British officers responsible for transporting them.

Two days later, a group of Slovene soldiers resisting their transport were told by a British officer that further disobedience would bring about forced compliance. Forced compliance eventually took place on May 30.

It wasn't until the last day of May that a highly-respected Slovene camp doctor, Valentin Mersol, convinced that the civilian refugees were also going to end up in Communist hands, asked Barre to prevent their repatriation.

Unsuccessfully requesting a military camp commandant to intervene, Barre, becoming distraught, asked Mersol to accompany him to Klagenfurt to speak to an AMGOT major.

It was there that, after much merciful reasoning by Barre, it was agreed the Slovene civilians - all that was left of the Slovene refugees - would not be repatriated to communist Yugoslavia.

Because of Barre's willingness to act upon the deadly repatriations of the refugees, thousands of lives were saved.

Frank G. Sterle, Jr.
White Rock, B.C.

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