Remember the world scoop/poop of Sarajevo newspaper Dnevi Avaz, featuring what was said to be fascimile copy of a letter from Prime Minister John Major to FCO Minister of State Douglas Hogg, back in May 1993?

In the so-called letter Prime Minister Major says a number of nasty things about the Bosnian Muslims.

A tireless reader has posted a comment on the original posting, citing one source for the letter as “The MUSLIMS and the New World Order” (“Les Musulmans et le Nouvel Ordre Mondial”), p.181, MUSA SALEEM, ISD BOOKS, 1993.

Note: Reader Basheer now posted a further comment and apologised graciously

I also have been sent an email with a scanned copy of the supposed letter in English, as presented in the said book.

Alas, on Amazon this mighty tome is out of stock. But a copy seems to be available here.

The book unambiguously presents the Major letter as an original, and draws all sorts of disobliging conclusions therefrom:

"This letter sums up the thinking, the strategy and the policy of his government."

The technology of reproducing this letter here for you to see its gob-smacking ineptitude currently defeats me. But I’ll work on it.

Just for tasters as examples of its manifest rubbishness, even as a fake:

  • the font is wrong
  • the layout is wrong
  • the form of address is wrong
  • Slovenia is spelled Slovinia
  • the punctuation is all over the place
  • it ends Yours sincerely (sic – no comma) – not the in-house British government style
  • it’s signed John M. (sic – stupid full-stop)

I suppose that the technology for scanning, cutting and pasting back in 1993 was not as nifty as it is now. But it says a lot for the fantasy world of Islamist extremism that they did not even try to do a decent technical job, knowing that all sorts of crazy people would believe it anyway!

It has been a long-running hit. Others too somehow have been taken in by it.

Aaargh. It is a popular read among Muslim Swahilis in Kenya.

Lordy! Here is a transcript of evidence from the trial at ICTY of Jadranko Prlic, where (scroll down to Page 4407) a witness testifies that former Croatia President Tudjman read out a version of this letter in Croatian to senior advisers – note the bizarre exchanges over whether it is or is not a real letter!

And the letter as now rehashed yet again by Dnevni Avaz is still going strong in a Comment on the Economist website.

Sigh.

I recall having a fatuous row in 1997 or so with the egregious Fahrudin Radoncic, the ‘magnate’ behind Dnevni Avaz, after I visited Bihac.

The local Bihac edition of Dnevni Avaz simply made up and published a stupid quotation and ascribed it to me, no doubt assuming that we would read only the Sarajevo edition which left it out. Of course our eagle eyes were everywhere, and we spotted this crudely trivial pro-Bosniac propaganda trick.

Radoncic flatly refused to apologise.

So the question now is, how enormous and imposing can Stupid Balkan Lies and Stupid Balkan Newspapers be?

As tall and naff – and twisted – as this?