Replies

Aaaaah. Here we go. Found the smoking gun.

I SHOULD have expected that I was up against ranting neo-Confederates. Here's the connection.

I post this for the interest of everyone ELSE interested in this thread, since Mr. Destro (why would someone take the name of a GI Joe doll?) and Miz Joan seem to be impervious to reason. We're up against the Pat Buchanan Right, here, comrades. No wonder they don't make any sense.

"[S]everal influential factions in American politics adamantly opposed confronting the Milosevic regime's ten year campaign of "ethnic cleansing" and have proposed or supported legislation that would in effect strengthen the ability of the Belgrade regime to carry out its atrocities with impunity. These factions include both the right and left wing extremes. This article is focused upon the right wing opponents of efforts to confront Milosevic. This movement of the right wing, particularly in the GOP, toward a pro-Milosevic position accelerated with the retirement of former majority leader Bob Dole who had clearly and cogently criticized U.S. appeasement of the Milosevic and Karadzic regimes, and with the decision by the Clinton administration to stop appeasing genocide in the Balkans. Among the extreme Clinton haters, anything Clinton supported was opposed automatically. But when one looks closely at the words and acts of some of the GOP congressional leaders on the far right wing and their allies in relationship to the genocide in the Balkans, even more disturbing questions arise."
(snip)
"This behavior has been attributed to the personalized hatred of Clinton that would lead some to sell their own mothers if they thought it would hurt Clinton. But there are also ideological affinities between the GOP extreme 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."
(snip)
"Please note, this is not a conspiracy. It is just a multiply overlapping set of people and groups with common values and common sensitivities."

Source of the following: http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/reports/gopbelgrade.htm.Posted for information purposes only.

GOP Radical Right, Belgrade Lobby, and Neo-Confederacy -- Multiple Connections

Michael Sells

June 14, 1999, January 17, 2002

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). http://www.lastampa.it/LST/ESTERI/GRIGNETTI.htm

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 several influential factions in American politics adamantly opposed confronting the Milosevic regime's ten year campaign of "ethnic cleansing" and have proposed or supported legislation that would in effect strengthen the ability of the Belgrade regime to carry out its atrocities with impunity. These factions include both the right and left wing extremes. This article is focused upon the right wing opponents of efforts to confront Milosevic. This movement of the right wing, particularly in the GOP, toward a pro-Milosevic position accelerated with the retirement of former majority leader Bob Dole who had clearly and cogently criticized U.S. appeasement of the Milosevic and Karadzic regimes, and with the decision by the Clinton administration to stop appeasing genocide in the Balkans. Among the extreme Clinton haters, anything Clinton supported was opposed automatically. But when one looks closely at the words and acts of some of the GOP congressional leaders on the far right wing 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 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. It should be emphasized that, unlike McCain, Warner and Lugar, whose criticisms were directed at the way that the NATO campaign was conducted, the criticism of the Burton group was directed at any forceful effort by NATO to confront Milosevic.

The lawsuit co-signed by Cambpell, Burton, and Barr was filled by Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas). See Rep. Paul's May 1, 1999 Press Release: http://www.house.gov/paul/press/press99/pr050199.htm. 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 http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst99/tst032999.htm

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 Kosavar 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 http://www.house.gov/paul/press/press99/pr022499-smith.htm

This behavior has been attributed to the personalized hatred of Clinton that would lead some to sell their own mothers if they thought it would hurt Clinton. But there are also ideological affinities between the GOP extreme 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. [Note, since this article was written, Bodansky, who spent years warning that Bosnjaks and an alleged Bosnjak-Iran conspiracy were the key threats for terrorism morphed after Bin Laden's attacks into an "expert" on al-Qaeda, very profitably].

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 a Washington Post article, but the Post missed the SUC connection and other important connections to White-Supremacist and Neo-Confederate groups in Texas. See 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 atrocities at Racak were a hoax, to claims that Albanians in Kosovo were fleeing NATO bombs rather than Serb militias, that the Bosnian Muslims slaughtered themselves, and that Serbs were experiencing in Kosovo what white Americans are experiencing in the U.S. as the "browning of America."

One of the authors of this "browning of America" theme for Chronicles is another extreme supporter of Serb radicalism, Bob Djurdjevic. In a series of articles for Chronicles, The Washington Times, and on his out web site, Djudjevic glorifies as a victim the indicted war-criminal Simo Drljaca who was responsible for the region of the most gruesome atrocities in Bosnia, including the Omarska, Keraterm, and Trnopolje concentration camps, and he extols General Ratko Mladic, now indicted for genocide by the International Tribunal, and shows a picture of himself with his hero Mladic. He writes the New World Order (NWO) is out to destroy White, Christian America even as it is out to destroy the White, Christian purity of Europe. He even proudly publicizes a letter, sent to him by Ku Klux Klan leader Louis Beam in which Beam volunteers to fight in Kosovo to protect Serbia from the non-Christian hordes. Beam in turn, in an article called the Alamo of Kosovo, extols Prince Lazar and the Serb heroes of 1389 as the greatest defenders in history of Christian White culture and extols the effort by the Belgrade regime to continue this heroism in Kosovo in 1999. For full details, citations, and quotations of Djudjevic and Beam, see my full article, "'Mutt America', The Religio-Racist Right and the Balkan Genocide."

Key leaders of the Rockford Institute are its chairman, David Hartmann who is also Chairman and CEO of Hartland Bank in Austin and Dr. Thomas Fleming, who is President of the Institute and Editor of Chronicles.

Fleming is also a member and writer for the League of the South, an organization committed to Confederate causes, with a host of confederate flags and paraphenalia for sale. Here is a recent statement from the League of the South:

""League of the South Political Commentators condemn NATO Intervention in Yugoslavia

"Find out why your tax dollars are being squandered in an immoral and ill-advised act of aggression against Yugoslavia in a must-read op-ed piece in Chronicles magazine by Dr Fleming and Dr Serge [Srdja Trifkovic]. Dr Tom Fleming is a national board member of the League of the South and Editor-in-Chief of Chronicles, while Dr Trifokovic is a frequent contributor to Chronicles. Both Tom Fleming and Srdja Trifkovic are available for radio television, and print media interviews. In the past few days, Tom has appeared on WLS (Chicago), Wisconsin Public Radio, Chuck Harder's network show, the Catholic Family Radio Network, among others, while Srdja has appeared on CNN and WLS (among others). If you know of anyone who would be interested in interviewing either of them, please call Chris Check collect at (815) 964-5811"""

The League of the South can be found through its web site, DixieNet. In the same page cited just above, Thomas Fleming gives a long harangue against the NATO operation for "attacking a sovereign, Christian, European nation that we are not at war with."

Senator James Inhofe and Rep. Helen Chenoweth are featured in the current, June 14, 1999 issue of The New American, the Journal of the John Birch Society. Chenoweth claims that helping the Muslim Kosovars will lead to Islamic terrorism in Europe--almost as if her words had been given to her by Slobodan Milosevic or Youssef Bosansky. Of course, if Chenoweth and the GOP right had their way, and a million Kosovar refugees were left to rot in refugee camps without being allowed to return to Kosovo, then in two or three generations they certainly would become militant. That is the geopolitical reason that the Kosovars need to go home. It is abandoning them that would lead to radicalization, not helping them. The vast majority of Kosovars, like the Bosnian Muslims, are tolerant, open, largely secularized people who wish to be part of Europe, the continent on which they and their families have lived for centuries, and who wish to be integrated into Europe. For the John Birch Society's journal and its Inhofe and Chenoweth articles, see http://www.thenewamerican.com/

In her John Birch Society Journal article, Chenoweth also boasts of having made another virulently anti-Albanian article from the John Birch Society journall The New American available to her colleagues in Congress. The article, without any documentation, accuses the Albanian leadership of being "descendants of Nazis," as well as Maoists, Islamic Fundamentalists, and Narco-Terrorists. While the Albanian leadership in Kosovo and the armed group, the KLA, should be known and their political program examine, such unsubstatiated allegations, which have been continuously used by the Belgrade regime to justify its atrocities against Bosnian Muslims and Albanians, are just another form of hate speech.

Back to the energetic Thomas Fleming. Fleming is also on the staff of the Lord Byron Institute (along with Trifkovic, Alfred Sherman, and Ronald Hatchet, an institute set up to counter "anti-Serb propaganda" and which has supported the genocidal regimes in Pale (the Bosnian Serb Republic of Radovan Karadzic) and Belgrade throughout what has now been recognized internationally as the genocide in BiH and attempted genocide in Kosovo.

To find more about the Rockford Institute and its long-running anti-Muslim and anti-Hispanic themes, check out the website http://rockfordinstitute.org/about-tri.html

David Hartman, The Chairman of the Rockford Institute, is a former Texas Republican Candidate for Treasurer in 1994. He is also Director, Policy Group, Republican Party of Texas.

His Web site is at: http://www.tppf.org/assualt/author.htm

He is a major figure in The League of the South and DixieNET. See the League of the South webpage on 3/30/99 at http://www.dixienet.org. Here is an excerpt from a statement that appeared on Dixienet in March and April. A longer and more developed version of the same philosophy has been published in the Rockford Institute journal Chronicles:

"If there is any lesson to be taken from this sad and tragic war it is this one: it is perilous to allow one's ancestral lands to be occupied by a foreign and alien people. Kosovo was once inhabited only by Serbs. Today it is 90% inhabited by ethnic Albanians of the Moslem faith. Such an enormous demographic transformation virtually insured that one day the Albanian Kosovars would want to secede. (This is a lesson that Texans should pay heed to, lest they one day find out that they are going to lose the Alamo and the southern portion of the Lone Star State to hispanic seperatists who've been allowed to become a majority in what was once a predominately Anglo-Celtic State.)"

Meanwhile, back at the SUC annual convention, before James George Jatras, senior policy analyst for Senator Larry Craig, gave what the SUC called an "electrifying" speech to the group, the SUC honored his parents, Stella L. Jatras, and George Jatras for their contributions. See http://suc.suc.org/sucinfo/conventions/ninth/banquet.html

Stella Jatras has posted messages on the SRPSKA-MREZA electronic bulletin board. Srpska-Mreza is an organized of ardent Serbian nationalists that supported the regime of Radovan Karadzic who was indicted for genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and who support radical elements of Serb nationalism in Serbia proper. Among Stella Jatras's messages was a long attack on Captain Scott O'Brady, the American pilot who was rescued after days of hiding in Serbian-army controlled territory in Bosnia. Stella Jatras accused Captain O`Brady of being a buffoon and suggested the the entire incident was phony.

On the House side, Representative Dan Burton is the all time champion in Congress in taking contributions from the Serbian Unity Congress, a group that openly demanded the expulsion of Kosovar Albanians in its 1991,1992,1993,and 1994 resolutions. (For documentation, click on the hypertext of SUC campaign contributions and Dan Burton at http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/reports.html. Rep. Randy Duke Cunningham, another vitriolic critics of the NATO operation and Kosovar Albanians as well, also received SUC contributions. After 1994, the SUC began channeling its contributions through individuals so that they would be more difficult to trace.

The GOP HOUSE TASK FORCE ON TERRORISM has put out much of the Yossef Bodansky anti-Muslim Belgrade propaganda. The problem is that none of the GOP members of the task force will either acknowledge Bodansky or deny the connection. He was originally connected to Rep. McCollum of Florida, one of the House Impeachment managers, but other information connects him to the late Sonny Bono who may have financed his theories about the world-wide Islamic terrorist threat and how Bosnians and Kosovars are its instruments. (To anyone who has met the victims of Serb nationalist atrocities in Bosnia and Kosovo, these stereotypes are behind despicable).

For information on the SUC contributions see the Balkans war-crimes reports page at http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/reports.edu

Ed Sebesta, My thanks to Ed Sebesta, who helped break the story of GOP Rep. BOB BARR's links to the White Supremacist group the Coalition of Conservative Christians or CCC (to which Senator Lott gave a keynote address as well), for showing the key link between the Rockford Institute and The League of the South, a Confederacy-advocate group. For Sebesta's web page on the Rockford Institute, with reports on Thomas Fleming and David Hartmann and information leading to their links to The League of the South, see http://www.mindspring.com/~newtknight/Rockford.htm

QUOTE FROM AD FOR CHRONICLES IN THE BACK OUTSIDE MAILING COVER OF THE LEAGUE OF THE SOUTH JOURNAL SOUTHERN PATRIOT.

"Chronicles is the only national magazine whose editors are all League members: Thomas Fleming, Theodore Pappas, Scott Richert, and Chilton Williamson, Jr. That's why every month in our pages, you'll find articles by League Board members like Michael Hill, Jack Kershaw, Grady McWhiney, and Clyde Wilson; reviews of the latest pro-South books; and features like "The Good Kennedy's," a profile of Southern patriots James and Ronald Kennedy"

"You've watched Tom Fleming fire up the crowds at League Meetings. Now you can take advantage of this special offer to subscribe to his magazine. For only $19.00 ...."

______

Finally, here is an example just one recent event at the Rockford Institute. It featured Fleming along with Trifkovic, who is listed as a former advisor of Biljana Plavsic. Biljana Plavsic is one of the leaders of the "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia from 1992-1995. In 1994 she announced that it was impossible to negotiate with Muslims because the "genetic material" that converted to Islam in the fiftteenth century and after was "deformed" and that with each successive generation, the genes of Muslims became more deformed until now they lack basic capacity of human reason.

Below is an example of a Rockford Institute program:

Rockford Institute Local Lectures presents:

A Panel Discussion and Buffet Reception "The End of the American Century"

featuring Thomas Fleming, president, The Rockford Institute, "Make War, Not Love: The America of Albright and Reno"

Christopher Check, Executive Vice President, The Rockford Institute,"Ready for What?: America's Modern Military"

And special guest
Srdja Trifkovic
Foreign Affairs Editor, Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture
Executive Director of the Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies
Former BBC World Service Journalist and U.S. News and World
Report Correspondent from Southeast Europe
Former Advisor to Crown Prince Alexander Karadjordjevic
and President Biljana Plavsic, Republic of Srpska
"Defending the West Against Itself"
Thursday, 24 June 5:30 P.M.

Reserve a space by calling Aaron Wolf at The Rockford Institute (815) 964-5811

Michael A. Sells

For more information on FEC records of compaign contributions by the Serbian Unity Congress and on the crimes against humanity in Bosnia and Kosovo, International Criminal Tribunal indictments, and efforts to help survivors of the genocide, see Michael Sells, "Seven Misconceptions about the Organized Atrocities in Kosovo," which is article number 2 on The Bridge Betrayed Balkan War-Crimes and Human Rights Page.

For an excellent source on the Neoconfederate movement in the U.S., including the Rockford Institute and the journals Chronicles, The Southern Partisan, and The Southern Patriot, see The Temple of Democracy site.

See also Michael Sells, "'Mutt America', The Religio-Racist Right and the Balkan Genocide," also originally posted The Bridge Betrayed Balkan War-Crimes and Human Rights Page.

An article on the radical left wing support for the Milosevic regime is in progress. Here we have another classic case where the extremes of right and left wing find themselves supporting the same cause.

The claims and opinions on this page and all other pages linked to Sells represent the opinions of Michael A. Sells only, and do not reflect the position of Haverford College.