Time to take the plunge right in the thick of the sleazo-den! Hope you can stick the pong.....
GOP Right, Belgrade Lobby, and Neo-Confederacy -- Multiple Connections
Michael Sells
June 14, 1999, updated July 6, 1999
In the Italian sector of Kosovo, the bodies of the Lipay family were discovered thrown down the family well, including 4 children and 1 woman. All were female and all had been raped and tortured. Some of the girls and women and been thrown into the well while still alive. A grenade was thrown on the top bodies, apparently in an attempt to eliminate the evidence. Turin La Stampa (30 JUNE).
lastampa.it
In the French sector, " In 3 wells in the village of Qirez, the bodies of 8 women, who had been raped over a 53-day period and then thrown alive into the water, according to French forensic experts, were recovered. The departing paramilitaries were said to have left with the locals' tractors loaded with booty and to have torched all but 20 of the 232 houses." Paris LIBERATION (5 July) as paraphrased on the July 6, 1999 Justwatch Newsgroup.
The above reports are just two of many thousands of incidents of mass-murder, torture, organized rape, and systematic annihilation of cultural and sacral heritage reported committed by the Serbian army, Serbian Special Police, and Serbian Paramilitaries in Bosnia from 1992-1995 and in Kosovo from 1996-1999. The true extent and nature of this organized campaign of extermination and terror leveled against Bosnian Muslims and Albanians by the Belgrade regime of Slobodan Milosevic is beyond human imagination. After reading hundreds of confirmed reports such as the above, one loses the ability to imagine the extent and methodical nature of the "ethnic cleansing" campaign.
Yet the GOP congressional leadership, and especially the extreme right-wing, has been adamantly opposed to confronting the Milosevic regime's ten year campaign of "ethnic cleansing," and has proposed legislation that would in effect strengthen the ability of the Belgrade regime to carry out its atrocities with impunity. When one looks closely at the words and acts of the GOP congressional leaders and their allies in relationship to the genocide in the Balkans, even more disturbing questions arise.
Since the NATO campaign began on March 24, the GOP congressional leadership and especially a group of extreme right-wingers have been calling the NATO operation "Clinton's War" and was openly hoping it would fail and end up in disaster. The House refused to endorse the operation by a 213-213 vote. Reps. Dan Burton,Tom Campbell, and Bob Barr [Yes: your closet pro-choice Bobby --LOL!] filed a lawsuit attempting to stop U.S. participation cold, a suit that had it won, would have destroyed the NATO effort and led to a complete victory by Milosevic and a final blood bath against Kosovars, along with the destruction of NATO. And despite the principled and knowledgable position of some GOP senators, included John McCain, John Warner, and Richard Lugar, the Senate leadership was continually sniping at the effort and openly chagrined when it succeeded.
The lawsuit co-signed by Cambpell, Burton, and Barr was filled by Rep. RON PAUL (R-Texas). See Rep. Paul's May 1, 1999 Press Release: house.gov. Rep. Paul has portrayed the organized annihilation of the Kosovar Albanian communities as a civil war in which "both sides think they are right," and has attacked any efforts to confront the Belgrade regime's ten year policy of "ethnic cleansing." Among his many speeches and writings on the subject, see house.gov
The lawsuit extends an effort that began with Rep. Paul's introduction of legislation (HR 447) on Feb. 9, 1999 to stop President Clinton's proposal to send US troops into Kosovo as part of a NATO-led peacekeeping force, legislation that, had it passed, would have given a blank check for the Milosevic regime to carry out its long-prepared plan to destroy the Kosovar Albanian community. Senator GORDON SMITH (R-New Hampshire) introduced a similar measure in the Senate. See the Feb. 24 press release of Represenative Paul at house.gov
This behavior has been attributed to the personalized hatred of Clinton that would lead many in the GOP to sell their own mothers if they thought it would hurt Clinton. But there are also ideological affinities between the GOP right and the Belgrade lobby, as well as strong financial and political connections. Much of the opposition has been focused in Texas and Oklahoma. There are now clear links between this opposition and Neo-Confederate groups angry at Hispanic immigration in Texas who see the Yugoslav army and police action against alleged Albanian immigrants as eminently understandable and, they imply, perhaps a model.
Below are a few examples. To trace the WEB, follow the names: Rep. Dan Burton, Senator Larry Craig, James George Jatras, Yossef Bodansky, The U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee, The Serbian Unity Congress, The Rockford Institute and its journal Chronicles, Pat Buchanan, Serge [Srjda]Trikovic (foreign policy editor of Chronicles), Thomas Fleming and David Hartman, leaders of the Rockford Institute, The League of the South with its web site Dixienet and its journal The Southern Patriot, The Policy Group of the Republican Party of Texas, The Lord Byron Institute, Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Senator James Inhoff, Representative Helen Chenoweth, The John Birch Society and its journal The New American, Srpska-Mreza, the House GOP Task Force on Terrorism.
Please note, this is not a conspiracy. It is just a multiply overlapping set of people and groups with common values and common sensitivities.
The GOP Senate Policy Committee has taken as its chief advisors for Balkan policy Yossef Bodansky and James Charles Jatras. The WEB site of the policy committee proudly proclaims Bodansky as an expert and cites his long association with the House Task Force on Terrorism. The key person in the link is Senator Larry Craig, third in the GOP senate leadership.
BODANSKY has been a major influence with the Serbian Unity Congress, which has long advocated the expulsion of Kosovars and supported the Karadzic regime during its worst genocidal policies. Bodansky has spoken at their meetings. He has protrayed all Muslims as a terrorist threat and has support the Belgrade regime's policy in Bosnia and in Kosovo with complete zealousness, and attacked Bosnians and Kosovars with the kind of stereotypes emanating directly from Milosevic propaganda.
JATRAS was the keynote speaker at the 1998 SUC convention. He has written a number of anti-Muslim hate articles, with medieval stereotypes about Islam as a barbarian product of "heathen Araby." His hate does not stop there. He has vilified the Islamic sacred text, the Qur'an. And he has dehumanized all Muslims by calling Islam a "Gigantic Christian-Killing Machine." These defamatory comments were published in The Christian Activist, but were originally given in a speech to the ROCKFORD INSTITUTE. Some of this information was given in the following Washington Post article, but the Post missed the SUC connection and other important connections to White-Supremacist and Neo-Confederate groups in Texas. The Washington Post June 11, 1999, Friday "GOP Aide's Islam Remarks Assailed; Sen. Craig Rejects Call to Fire Foreign Policy Staff Analyst By Caryle Murphy, Washington Post Staff Writer."
JATRAS is an aide to SENATOR LARRY CRAIG of Idaho. After Jatras's bigoted statements on Islam were uncovered and publicized in the Washington Post article, Craig refused to fire him. Thus a man who believes all Muslims are part of a "gigantic killing machine" is one of the major "experts" on Balkan policy for the GOP senator leadership and on the ethnic-cleansing carried out by the Milosevic regime, also on the premise that Muslims are by nature inhuman and cannot be leaved with in peace. No surprise then that Senator CRAIG, Mr. Jatras's protector and champion, has been another who has sniped at the NATO operation and belittled the importance of helping the Kosovars save themselves from extermination.
JATRAS has spoken and written for the ROCKFORD INSTITUTE, a Christian Right foundation. The Rockford Institute's agenda includes an attack on immigration from non-white and non-Christian countries, and includes articles by Rockford Institute member Tom Fleming on the parallel between Texas an inundated with hispanics and Kosovo as inundated with alleged illegal Albanian immigrants.
The Foreign Policy Editor of Chronicles, the Journal of the Rockford Institute is SERGE (SRDJA) TRIFKOVIC. Trifkovic, a proponent of extremist Serb nationalist causes and former advisor to the architects of ethnic-cleansing in Bosnia (see below) has appeared on CNN as an expert on the Balkans.
The Chronicles web page on Kosovo includes every possible Belgrade position, from the claim that the horrific atrocities at Racak were a hoax, to the claim that Albanians in Kosovo were fleeing NATO bombs, that the Bosnian Muslims slaughtered themselves, to the claim that Serbs were experiencing in Kosovo what white Americans are experiencing the U.S. as the "browning of America."
[...]
For the full muckraking:
haverford.edu |
