Entries Tagged 'U.S. State Department' ↓

Above, a section of a Thompson concert photo. The full picture was too large for this page, but can be viewed at http://tinyurl.com/2jqj8v Photo credits and links here.

Contact Information – Where to Complain:

• US State Department: Contact Data and Email Form
  (The email form for the US State Department doesn’t always work, but you can use the phone and mail contact information.)
• Canada Citizenship and Immigration: Contact Minister Diane Finley
  • Email The Honourable Diane Finley
  • Mailing Address:
    The Honourable Diane Finley, P.C., M.P.
    Citizenship and Immigration Canada
    Ottawa, Ontario
    K1A 1L1

Also See:

• Neo-Nazi Concerts Continue Down Under, Despite Complaints
• Nazi Rock Band Thompson Touring Melbourne, Sidney, Adelaide, Perth
• TENC: Oppose Fascist Rock Star’s US Tour with the Truth – Part 1
• Neil Clark: A Nazi Rocker in New York
• ‘Slightly Fascist’? The New York Times Prods Croatia – Gently
• Nazis: Coming Soon to a Concert Venue near YOU!

Oppose Fascist Rock Star’s US Tour with the Truth – Part 2

by Jared Israel
Member, International Commission on Jasenovac
Editor, Emperor’s Clothes

[Nov. 6, 2007]

In Part 1 of this series, I charged that in 1991, the New York Times, blazing a trail for the rest of the Western media, completely revised its account of the Holocaust in Croatia.

Before 1991, the Times reported that the Croatian Ustashe (clerical-fascists) murdered some 800,000 people, Serbs, Jews, and Roma, as well as antifascists of all backgrounds, in the Jasenovac death camp complex.

After 1991, the Times and other media reported that some “tens of thousands” (or sometimes 80,000, or 85,000) were killed. A 90% cut. Enough to make a Holocaust denier green with envy.

At the same time, the Times radically altered its perspective.

Before 1991, the murders were described as being caused by fascism. After 1991, they were described as being caused by fascism and ‘ethnic enmity,’ as if genocidal hatred of Serbs, Jews, and Roma was the fault of both sides – the Serbs, Jews and Roma, as well as those that hated them. This supposed ‘ethnic enmity,’ along with a supposed desire of Yugoslav Communist leaders to (as the Times put it) “demonize” fascism, was now presented as explaining a supposedly long-term dispute over the victim count.

Thus the Times not only drastically minimized the extent of Ustasha crimes, but it also lied about the numbers dispute. Lied because prior to 1991 it was the Times itself that had publicized the figure of 800,000 victims, which the Times itself was now denying.

I have made a most serious accusation. Here is the evidence.

Before 1991: The Times reports 800,000 victims

First, here are the relevant parts of New York Times articles that mentioned Jasenovac before 1991.

July 12, 1948: The Times referred to Jasenovac for the first time while describing Yugoslavia’s arrest of some agents of the defeated Croatian Ustashe:

“A third [arrested Ustasha - J.I.] was Ljubo Milosh, described as commander of the Ustashi concentration camp at Jasenica [Jasenovac - J.I.], where more than 800,000 persons perished during the war.”

(My emphasis – J.I.) [10]

May 20, 1961: Covering the trial of Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann, the Times reported the testimony of Alexander Arnon, described as “wartime secretary of the Jewish Community in Zagreb”:

“Mr. Arnon said Croatian Fascists ran most of the concentration camps in Croatia and killed ‘hundreds of thousands’ of Serbian gentiles. In Jasenovac alone, 600,000 persons, including 2,000 Jews, were killed, he said.”

(My emphasis – J.I.)[11]

Mr. Arnon’s reported use of the phrase “Jasenovac alone” makes sense because Jasenovac was the name of a complex of Croatian death camps and also of the biggest site in the complex. So, Arnon was indicating that significantly more than 600,000 people were murdered in Croatian death camps as a whole.

October 1, 1972: In an article on the Yugoslav government’s response to terrorist attacks by Croatian Ustasha exiles, the Times again stated that 800,000 people were murdered in Jasenovac. This article is most helpful in understanding the Holocaust in Croatia, how it was dealt with in Communist Yugoslavia, and how the Times has, since 1991, misinformed readers.

Emperor’s Clothes has transcribed the first six paragraphs and three later paragraphs from the article. Here are the first six:

[Excerpt from 1972 New York Times starts here]

“Amid the dismal swamplands at Jasenovac, a small town southeast of the Croatian city of Zagreb a graceful concrete monument suggestive of hands raised in an appeal for mercy looks out over grass-covered mounds that neatly conceal the remains of one of the death camps of World War II.

The Jasenovac camp was operated by the Ustashi, the Fascist movement that gained power in Croatia in 1941 through collaboration with German and Italian invaders of Yugoslavia.

As many as 800,000 people – mainly Serbs, Jews and gypsies but also Croatian and other opponents of the Ustashi - are believed to have been shot, hanged clubbed to death or drowned in the nearby Sava River during the war years before the Ustashi fled from advancing Yugoslav and Soviet troops.

The transformation of the Jasenovac death camp into a memorial park, with only a small museum to give visitors some insight into the camp’s grim history, seems to symbolize an effort by the postwar Yugoslav authorities to let the wounds of wartime fratricide and atrocities heal for the sake of a united country.

Over the years, the Ustasha terrorism began to fade from memory. To avoid stirring up old resentments, the Yugoslav authorities discouraged publication of explicit writings and photographs about the atrocities. Only a few weeks ago, a court ban was imposed on a book that dealt with the Jasenovac camp.

Although the Ustashi are in exile and their young recruits have carried out occasional acts of terrorism against Yugoslav diplomats and officials abroad, the Belgrade authorities have refrained from all-out counter-attack, for they are apprehensive of offending the four and a half million people of Croatia and reluctant to risk opening old wounds between the Serbs and Croats.”

(My emphasis – J.I.) [12]

[Excerpt from 1972 New York Times ends here]

To summarize the key points:

a – The Ustashe murdered 800,000 at Jasenovac;

b – Yugoslav Communist leaders tried to suppress discussion of Jasenovac, “discourag[ing] publication of… photographs about the atrocities” and banning books;

c – Why the repression? The leaders feared discussion might “reopen old wounds”; also they feared a violent reaction from Croats, who were pro-Ustashe;

d – Even when the Ustashe, working from outside Yugoslavia, escalated their terrorist attacks, the Yugoslav government continued its policy of preventing a political counter-attack. For example, they continued banning books on Jasenovac.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when:

“three Croatian émigrés hijacked a Scandinavian Airlines System plan Sept 15 [1972 - J.I.] and forced Sweden to release six Croatians imprisoned for terrorist attacks on Yugoslav diplomats.”[13]

In response, the Communists finally began publicly attacking the Ustashe.

What line did they take? The Times quotes the following from an editorial piece, written by a New York-based Yugoslav reporter and published in Politika, the leading Yugoslav daily, criticizing U.S. coverage of the Ustasha terror:

“For American readers and listeners, there was not a word that the Ustashi were on the side of Hitler and Mussolini, that they formally declared war against the United States, that they murdered Jews – an acute issue here [i.e., in New York City - J.I.] – and that they are sworn enemies of the concept of Western democracy.” [14]

Notice that in describing what the America media was leaving out, Politika left out the Serbian victims of genocide (and the Roma/Sinti victims as well).

This was quite an omission. To give you a sense of the scale of the genocide in fascist Croatia, here is an excerpt from a piece the New York Times published in Oct. 1941, five months after the invading Nazis installed the Ustashe clerical-fascists in power:

[Excerpt from "Massacres Laid to Croat[ian] Ustashi” starts here]

“The Croatian revolutionary Ustashi have killed between 300,000 and 340,000 Serbs and pro-Yugoslav Croats since last May [i.e., tens of thousands a month! - J.I.], according to figures compiled by intelligence experts from agents operating in Croatia and Bosnia and released to this correspondent here today.

While some of the executions have been carried out by German Elite Guard units, the Gestapo and regular German Army officers and by Italians in Western Croatia, the bulk of the killings have been done by the Ustashi, according to this report.” [15]

[Excerpt from "Massacres Laid to Croat[ian] Ustashi” ends here]

300,000 to 340,000 Serbs (and pro-Yugoslav Croats) killed between May and October of 1941. 60,000 to 68,000 Serbs a month.

Here is a final excerpt from the 1972 Times article. It is most revealing:

“One result of the anti-Ustashi campaign here [in Yugoslavia - J.I.] since the hijacking is that even schoolchildren in Belgrade, who had not heard of the Ustashi, are beginning to raise questions and are learning of the torments inflicted by Yugoslavs on Yugoslavs during the war.”

(My emphasis – J.I.) [16]

So, while Belgrade school children were learning for the first time that the Ustashe had existed, it was only if and when they “[began] to raise questions” that they also learned what the Ustashe had done during the war.

The Communists were (finally) publicly attacking the Ustashe for supporting Nazi Germany, for opposing democracy, for killing Jews, and for current acts of terror – but not for their genocide against Serbs and Roma, hence the children’s need to “raise questions.”

Consider the effect of this policy of suppressing discussion, both on Croats and on the main surviving victim population, the Serbs.

Communist Yugoslavia declared that most Croats had opposed the Ustashe. But this was manifestly untrue. How could the Ustashe, a tiny group of exiles, have returned to Croatia in April, 1941, and immediately launched a campaign of mass murder against ‘foreign elements,’ meaning Serbs, Jews and Roma – how could they have done this in the face of opposition from both ‘foreign elements’ and most ethnic Croats? They needed massive support from Croats from the start, which in turn required that ordinary Croats were already indoctrinated in the basics of Ustasha ideology: hatred of ‘foreign elements’ and Catholic fanaticism.

Looked at in one way, the Communist-perpetrated myth of Croatian antifascism was of great practical use to Croatia, since it allowed Croats to hold onto the vast properties stolen from murdered Serbs, Jews and Roma, rather than losing it and paying restitution to boot.[17] It allowed the perhaps tens of thousand of Croats who had committed overt fascist-criminal acts, and the much larger number who had in various ways supported those acts, to escape unscathed. It allowed the Catholic church, “many” of whose priests had, as the Encyclopedia of the Holocauststates, directly participated in the killing, to mainly escape punishment.

Looked at in another way, this was a terrible abuse of Croatian children, who were therefore raised in a double-talk fascist society, whose pro-Ustasha sub-culture thrived beneath a veneer of Communist rhetoric. There were things you did not – could not – for now – say in public, but you were of course to believe them and act on them as soon and as much as possible, things about the need to purify Croatia from ‘foreign elements,’whose presence polluted the Croatian national being.

This policy rewarded the behavior of the chameleon, as exemplified by current Croatian Stjepan Mesic, who boasted in a videotaped speech, delivered around 1992, apparently to the Croatian community in Australia, that the great strength of Croatia was its ability to deceive:

“‘You see, in the Second World War, the Croats won twice and we have no reason to apologise to anyone. What they ask of the Croats the whole time, ‘Go kneel in Jasenovac, kneel here…’ We don’t have to kneel in front of anyone for anything! We won twice and all the others only once. We won on 10 April [1941 - J.I.] when the Axis Powers recognized Croatia as a state and we won because we sat after the war, again with the winners, at the winning table.’” [18]

This same glib doubletalk is manifested today in the claim, made in tones of outraged dignity, by Croatian organizations in the US and Canada, and by Marko Perkovic Thompson himself, that the Thompson band is not fascist. How dare anyone say such a thing!

And consider the effect on the surviving victims – mainly Serbs, since all but a few Roma and Jews had been killed. If they wanted a Yugoslavia, which they did, they had to pay with a terrible silence, a silence enforced by the state. Even their children must not be told what had happened to perhaps a million of their relatives.

It is a grim irony that, during most of the existence of Communist Yugoslavia – with the exception of a few years immediately after World War II, when there were some trials of prominent Ustashe – the officially approved slogan of ‘brotherhood and unity’ meant in practice toleration of clerical-fascist beliefs and freedom for many clerical-fascists criminals in the republics of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

October 7, 1984: There was no mention of Jasenovac from 1972 until 1984, when, in a piece discussing a proposed but much-postponed trip to Croatia by the pope, the Times wrote:

“Another question is whether the Pope will visit the site of the Jasenovac concentration camp, 60 miles southeast of Zagreb. Among the displays at a museum on the site is a photograph of Cardinal Stepinac being received by leaders of the Ustachi, the Croatian collaborators of the Nazis and Italian Fascists.” [19]

Now we come to the watershed year: 1991.

1991: The Times invents a kinder Jasenovac

March 4, 1991: With Croatia on the verge of secession, the Times wrote about Jasenovac for the first time in seven years:

“The enmity between Serbs and Croats, who make up the largest of Yugoslavia’s six republics, has deep roots. About 30 miles from Pakrac, at the Jasenovac concentration camp, tens of thousands of Serbs, gypsies and Jews were killed when it was run by the fascist puppet government of Croatia during World War II.”

(My emphasis – J.I.) [20]

From a Ustasha death machine that killed “as many as 800,000 people” (see N.Y. Times, 1972), Jasenovac was now, somehow, a consequence of ethnic “enmity” (suggesting fault on both sides) where “tens of thousands…were killed.” An ugly place, but not part of the organized and systematic machinery of genocide, known as the Holocaust.

With few exceptions, throughout the 1990s and until now, Times articles have either bluntly stated that “tens of thousands” (or 80-85,000) died; or, alternatively, they have stated that the casualty figures are disputed, with the correct figures being somewhere in the “tens of thousands” (or 80-85,000).

May 19, 1996: Chris Hedges of the Times reported that:

“[Croatia's then-reigning] President Tudjman, seeking to defuse criticism of the wartime [Ustasha] government, says 28,000 people were killed at Jasenovac. [Late Yugoslav Communist president] Tito, eager to demonize his fascist rivals, said 700,000 people died. Both figures are dismissed as unrealistic by independent scholars in the United States, who estimate that about 80,000 people were killed here.”

(Bracketed text is mine – J.I.) [21]

A few points.

First, the above is an early example of the ‘disputed-figures’ approach. As you can see, it renders the Times‘ desired figure – 80,000 – both more believable and also easier for readers to remember by associating it in our minds with a supposed dispute. (We pay more attention when there is a dispute.) So the ‘disputed figures’ approach is a learning aid.

It also enhances the Times‘ already-existing aura of impartiality, since the writer is championing supposedly honest mediation against supposed eternally feuding Balkans factions.

For Hedges, the honest mediators are some “independent scholars in the United States.”

It is a great story line, but here’s the rub: In order to mediate a real struggle, the mediators must exist. Searching in both the Lexis-Nexis and the New York Times archives, I found that no New York Times article ever identified Hedges’ “independent scholars.” Are they so independent they have no names? Are they living incognito, perhaps wanted for a felony? Did the Times interview them in the realm of Pure Spirit?

Since I can see no reason for not identifying American scholars – we are not talking about Salman Rushdie here – and since, given the importance of the question of whether some hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Roma were or were not murdered, I can see every reason for identifying the supposed scholars – I can only conclude that said scholars were imaginary.

Second, this made me wonder, apropos the claim that imaginary scholars had rejected both sides in the supposed dispute over numbers, ‘Do imaginary scholars have the right to reject things?’ But then I answered myself: ‘Why not, just as long as the things they are rejecting are also nonexistent.’

Which was definitely the case in this instance. Because there never was a dispute over numbers between Franjo Tudjman, on the one side, and former Yugoslav communist leader Tito, on the other.

Because just as before 1991 it was the New York Times that informed the world that “as many as 800,000 people” were murdered in Jasenovac, so the Times had also reported that Yugoslav Communist leaders banned books and discouraged pictures dealing with Jasenovac.

In other words, the two sides in this dispute were not Tudjman and Tito, they were the New York Times before and after 1991.

And finally, notice that Hedges made the remarkable claim that Tito tried to “demonize his fascist rivals.” Aside from the fact that Tito had no serious fascist rivals – the Partisans, with Soviet help, had thoroughly defeated the Ustashe – aside from that, the claim is remarkable because, while ‘demonize’ has the meaning of ‘portray as evil,’ it also has the connotation of deception – ‘falsely portray as evil.’ Is Hedges trying to plant the thought that fascism was unfairly maligned?

Nov 2, 1998: For reasons whose explanation lies beyond the scope of this essay, for a number of months before the start of Croatia’s 1999 trial of Jasenovac camp official Dinko Sakic, the Western media published some almost-accurate articles about Jasenovac.

Case in point: the Reuters dispatch below. To be sure, the Times buried it on page 13, but at least they published it.

[Excerpt from Reuters dispatch, as published in the New York Times, starts here]

“Thousands of Serbs, Gypsies, Jews and anti-fascist Croats died in the camps. It is estimated in Croatia that 85,000 people died in Jasenovac, though Jewish groups put the toll much higher.”

(My emphasis – J.I.) [22]

[Excerpt from Reuters dispatch, as published in the New York Times, ends here]

Two points about this.

First, notice that the Times has admitted that Jewish groups (not former Yugoslav leaders, and not only Serbs) were defending a “much higher” count than Croatia’s. The Times did not inform readers of the number being put forward by Jewish groups, which, according to the London-based Financial Times, was 600,000. [23]By withholding this information, the Times prevented people from seeing the stark contrast – 600,000 vs. 85,000 – which might have caused them to wonder if Croatia was engaged in Holocaust denial. Nevertheless, the Times had made a major admission. The “much higher” count was not a propaganda creation.

Second, notice that the Times admitted that the Croatian establishment, not some nameless “independent scholars,” was behind the 85,000 figure. Meaning, the Times‘ own previous coverage was a lie.

The Western media used the trial of Sakic, a Jasenovac commander, to create the spectacle of a Croatia that was supposedly struggling with the painful truth about its past and deserved to be welcomed into the family of nations. To reinforce that impression, after Sakic’s conviction, in October 1999, the media quoted a few people, perceived as representing Serbs and Jews, who said they approved the conduct of the trial and praised Croatia.

With Croatia now presented to the world as having transformed itself – a falsification, in my opinion – the Times and other media ended their brief flirtation with semi-accurate reporting.

Thus, the day the trial ended, the Times published another Reuters dispatch, the relevant part of which is posted below.

While the almost-accurate pre-trial dispatch was buried on page 13, the post-trial dispatch got top billing: column 1, page 3. The Times uses that space for leading foreign news.

“Mr. Sakic, 78, did not flinch as the seven-member panel of judges pronounced him guilty of war crimes against civilians for his role as commander of the Jasenovac camp, where up to 85,000 inmates died at the hands of the Nazi-allied Ustashi regime in 1941-45.” [24]

Before the start of the trial, the 85,000 figure was Croatia’s view, sharply disputed by Jewish groups. Now, along with Croatia, the 85,000 figure had been miraculously transformed: it was now the upper limit of the number of victims of clerical-fascist terror at Jasenovac.

The year was 1999, but it wasn’t really 1999. It was 1984 plus fifteen.

Jared Israel
Editor, Emperor’s Clothes

[continued in Part 3]

Footnotes and Further Reading

[10] “Yugoslav Officers Studying In Russia Back Tito Fully,” The New York Times, July 12, 1948, by M.S. Handler

[11] “Eichmann Trial Witness Shows How He Escaped Nazis’ Wrath,” The New York Times, May 20, 1961, by Homer Bigart

[12] “Yugoslavs Assail Croat Dissidents,” The New York Times, October 1, 1972, by Raymond H. Anderson.

Scanned image of entire article is at http://tenc.net/a/times72.htm

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.

[15] “Massacres Laid to Croat[ian] Ustashi,” The New York Times, October 11, 1941, Special Broadcast to THE NEW YORK TIMES, Page 3, 415 words

[16] “Yugoslavs Assail Croat Dissidents,” The New York Times, October 1, 1972, by Raymond H. Anderson

[17] As regards ‘only’ the “expropriation drive” against the Jewish citizens of NDH (Nezavisna Dr¾ava Hrvatska, or Independent State of Croatia), the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust writes:

“Overnight, a pseudolegal expropriation drive was launched, which before long turned into an unbridled countrywide campaign of plunder and pillage in which everyone who stood to profit took part – trade unions, youth organizations, sports clubs, the armed forces, and government officials of all ranks. Ordinary citizens also took part in this campaign wherever they could; indeed, the share of “private” elements in the plunder was enormous – at least half of the property of which the Jews were robbed apparently never reached the state treasury but remained in the hands of individual Croatians. According to an estimate by the Ministry of Finance published in 1944, the value of the Jewish property it acquired was 25 billion dinars ($50 million, according to the prewar rate of exchange). Presenting the state budget for the 1942-1943 fiscal year, the minister of finance, Vladimir Kosak, said that the deficit would be covered by proceeds from the sale of Jewish property.”

– From Menachem Shelah, “Croatia,” in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, published in Hebrew and English, by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, Jerusalem, 1990; English edition, New York/London, Macmillan, 1990, p. 324.

See http://emperors-clothes.com/croatia/encr.htm#base

To read the complete transcription of the article “Croatia” of the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, go to
http://emperors-clothes.com/croatia/encr.htm

To access the PDF file of the “Croatia” article scanned from the Encyclopedia, go to http://emperor.vwh.net/croatia/encr.pdf

[18] “Croatian leader’s alleged speech glorifying WW2 pro-Nazi state widely condemned,” Text of report in English by Croatian news agency HINA, BBC Monitoring Europe – Political Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring, December 10, 2006 Sunday, 498 words

A Windows Media Video of Mesic’s speech in the original Serbo-Croatian can be viewed at http://emperor.vwh.net/croatia/MesicVideo.wmv

[19] “Four Years Later, Croatia Still Awaits Papal Visit,” The New York Times, October 7, 1984, by Michael T. Kaufman, Marija Bistrica, Yugoslavia

[20] “Serb-Croat Showdown in One Village Square,” The New York Times, March 4, 1991, by Stephen Engelberg

[21] “Croatian War-Shrine Plan Revives Pain,” The New York Times, May 19, 1996, by Chris Hedges

[22] “Argentina Extradites War Crimes Suspect,” The New York Times, Nov 2, 1998, Byline: Reuters

[23] “Dinko Sakic History’s Shadow,” Financial Times (London, England), July 7, 1998, Tuesday, SURVEY EDITION 1, SURVEY – CROATIA 98, by Guy Dinmore

[24] “Croat Convicted of Crimes at World War II Camp,” The New York Times, October 5, 1999, Page 3; Column 1; Foreign Desk, BYLINE:: Reuters

Please send this link to a friend. You may post any TENC article on the internet as long as you credit TENC and the author(s).
http://emperors-clothes.com/croatia/tour.htm

Subscribe to the TENC Newsletter – Receive articles from Emperor’s Clothes. To join, send a blank email to:
join-emperorsclothes@pr2.netatlantic.com
Then, just reply to the confirmation email.

Technorati : Canada, Chicago, Croatia, Israel, NYC, Nazism, Serbia, US State Department, activism, anti-Semitism, hate, music
Del.icio.us : Canada, Chicago, Croatia, Israel, NYC, Nazism, Serbia, US State Department, activism, anti-Semitism, hate, music
Ice Rocket : Canada, Chicago, Croatia, Israel, NYC, Nazism, Serbia, US State Department, activism, anti-Semitism, hate, music

Powered by Zoundry

(Update 11/5/07) Where to Complain: US State Department: Contact Data and Email Form (The email form for the US State Department doesn’t always work, but you can use the phone and mail contact information.) Canada Citizenship and Immigration: Contact Minister Diane Finley Email The Honourable Diane Finley Mailing Address: The Honourable Diane Finley, P.C., M.P. Citizenship and Immigration Canada Ottawa, Ontario K1A 1L1 Also See: Neo-Nazi Concerts Continue Down Under, Despite Complaints Nazi Rock Band Thompson Touring Melbourne, Sidney, Adelaide, Perth TENC: Oppose Fascist Rock Star’s US Tour with the Truth – Part 2 Neil Clark: A Nazi Rocker in New York ‘Slightly Fascist’? The New York Times Prods Croatia – Gently Nazis: Coming Soon to a Concert Venue near YOU! Oppose Fascist Rock Star’s US Tour with the Truth – Part 1 by Jared Israel Member, International Commission on Jasenovac Editor, Emperor’s Clothes Nov. 3, 2007 This article is from the Emperor’s New Clothes (TENC) website, http://emperors-clothes.com/croatia/tour.htm Click here to send this link to a friend. Croatian rock star Marko Perkovic ‘Thompson’ has just begun a US-Canadian tour, with two concerts in New York (Nov. 2 and 3), followed by concerts in Toronto (Nov. 4, reportedly cancelled), Cleveland (Nov. 9), Chicago (Nov. 10), Los Angeles (Nov. 11), Vancouver (Nov. 16), and San Francisco (Nov. 18.) Full details are in footnote [1]. Emperor’s Clothes has proven that Thompson is a self-declared Ustasha – a Croatian clerical-fascist. (Clerical-fascist ideology indoctrinates with a mixture of Nazi-type racism and Catholic religious fanaticism.) The Ustasha movement murdered over a million people from 1941-1945. The overwhelming majority were Serbs (Slavs who are Orthodox Christian, i.e., non-Catholic), but they also killed most Jews and Roma (‘Gypsies’) in the greater Croatia that they ruled. It is chilling that one can find videos on Youtube, such as the one below, in which people at Thompson’s June 2007 concert in Zagreb, Croatia, are heard chanting “Ubij, Ubij, Ubij Serbina.” It means “Kill, kill, kill a Serb.” [If you have problems viewing video, go to Youtube, at http://tinyurl.com/yruy68 If you get a message that the video has been removed from Youtube, see footnote"FONT-SIZE: 0.75em"[2]for an alternative.] This tour by Thompson’s band, also called ‘Thompson’ (after the Thompson submachine gun), has produced justified outrage. It is an attempt to legitimize clerical-fascism. If Thompson – whose politics would logically lead to the murder of millions of North Americans, including African-Americans and other so-called ‘non-whites,’ Jews, people of Serbian descent and others of the Orthodox Christian faith, progressives, and anyone (teachers? trade unionists?) who dared to resist the clerical-fascists – if Thompson can carry out this tour successfully, it will be a victory for fascism. Harmful ideas in the anti-Thompson camp It is crucial that in opposing the tour, we explain the politics of clerical-fascism to the broadest possible audience. Those politics cannot survive scrutiny; in the end, they cannot survive without the use of terror. Unfortunately, among those organizing opposition to the tour, there is much unclarity about the issues. For example, in explaining why his group asked the management of a concert hall to cancel Thompson’s Toronto appearance (with apparent success), Leo Adler, national affairs director of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies (FSWC), said “Thompson has been singing for years in Croatia” and: “One of those songs – titled Jasanovic/Stara Gardinska [Correction; Jasenovac i Gradiška Stara. - J.I.], which Thompson sang live in Croatia in 2002 – venerated those two infamous concentration camps where at least 90,000 Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and anti-fascist Croatians were murdered by the Ustashe movement and its Nazi collaborators during World War II.” [All hyperlinks added by me - J.I] – Canada News Wire, Oct. 23, 2007 [3] The problem is, Mr. Adler has reduced the number of people the Ustashe murdered in the Jasenovac death camp complex by around 90% – one full order of magnitude – in complete contradiction to all non-Ustasha, Western estimates (such as in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust) published prior to the onset of Western support for the Ustashe’s return to power in Croatia in 1990. It is as if he had said that ‘at least 600,000 Jews were murdered in Europe during the 1940s.’ History is a battleground of politics in the present. As Simon Wiesenthal told the Washington Post in 1993, regarding the attempt by Croatia’s Ustasha-apologist leader, Franjo Tudjman, to cut the number of Jasenovac victims by one order of magnitude: “The long-term danger is that he is building a way for a new Ustashe.” [4] We are in Wiesenthal’s long-term, today. I charge that clerical-fascism now controls Croatia; that it is spreading, sponsored by Germany, the U.S., and the leadership of the Catholic Church. If I am wrong, then why, knowing what Thompson is – for example, knowing that, until 2002, when it became an embarrassment for Croatia’s Western sponsors, this top rock star sang two songs celebrating the Holocaust in which he boasted that the Ustashe had returned and that he was one of them – knowing all this, why does Croatia’s parliament-controlled TV continue to broadcast his concerts? [5] Why have the US and Canadian governments granted him visas? Why, when Thompson not only advocates fascist politics but presents himself as a super-militant Catholic, as indicated in the pictures below: The Thompson home page features images of the St. Benedict’s medal, most devout of Catholic medallions, which Thompson wears at concerts, and of a Catholic church that Thompson is raising money to build. At concerts, Marko Perkovic raises his trademark Catholic Crusader’s sword above his head and plunges it into the stage floor, staring ahead sternly… The Crusader’s sword forms a military cruciform, symbol of religious war. Just to make sure people know that his trademark sword is a religious symbol, not some dungeons and dragons-type iconography, on album covers Thompson adorns it with a rosary and cross, colored red to remind Catholics of “our savior’s blood.” Photo credits and links, see footnote [6] …why, given Thompson’s public self-definition as singer-prophet of the church militant, has the Catholic hierarchy not condemned his clerical-fascism and prohibited Catholics from attending his concerts? Why, instead, has the Croatian Catholic church sponsored him and championed him politically? Those organizing opposition to Thompson scrupulously avoid mentioning the role of the Catholic church. But the fact that the Catholic hierarchy promotes Thompson raises a basic question: to what extent is that hierarchy promoting clerical-fascist ideas among the vast Catholic population, worldwide? Look at the boys in the photo below. One sports the Thompson sword-cross, the other the Ustasha ‘U.’ In the Eastern Soviet Union, elsewhere in Eastern Europe, and in the Balkans, the Nazis’ local, clerical-fascist junior partners, such as the Croatian SS Crna Legija, or ‘Black Legion,’ were known for the pleasure they took in their work, massacring Jews, Orthodox Slavs, and ‘Gypsies.’ In the photo above, taken at the Thompson concert in the Maksimir stadium in Zagreb this past June, a boy of 12 or 13 wears a Ustasha ‘Black Legion’ SS T-shirt, complete with the Ustasha ‘U.’ Photo credits and links, see footnote [6] Who is teaching these children? In 1998, the Croatian news agency HINA quoted Croatian president Franjo Tudjman saying that Croatia is a place: “in which the Catholic Church has a full opportunity to work in the spirit of its principles and to the benefit of the people within which it lives.” – BBC Monitoring Europe, September 28, 1998 [7] “In the spirit of its principles and to the benefit of the people in which it lives.” The late Mr. Tudjman was a clerical-fascist; therefore, clerical-fascism determined his notion of “benefit.” However, regarding the specific question of the influence of the Catholic church, and not just in Croatia, he was speaking accurately. Since the Catholic church aggressively champions Thompson in public, the question is: what are they teaching children in the former Socialist states, and elsewhere, in private? New York Times spreads Croatian Holocaust revisionism To return to the matter of Mr. Adler’s erasure of 90% of the Jasenovac victims, perhaps he was misinformed. Perhaps by the New York Times. In a widely-circulated Times article analyzing Thompson’s huge June 17, 2007 concert in Zagreb’s Maksimir stadium, Nicholas Wood wrote: [Times article starts here] ZAGREB, Croatia, June 30 – On a hot Sunday evening in June, thousands of fans in a packed stadium here in the Croatian capital gave a Nazi salute as the rock star Marko Perkovic shouted a well-known slogan from World War II. Some of the fans were wearing the black caps of Croatia’s infamous Nazi puppet Ustashe government, which was responsible for sending tens of thousands of Serbs, Gypsies and Jews to their deaths in concentration camps.” [My emphasis; hyperlink added by me - J.I.] – New York Times, July 2, 2007 [8] [Times article ends here] There are two important falsehoods in the excerpt above. One has to do with the concert, the other with Croatian death camps. First, regarding Thompson’s Maksimir stadium concert, it isn’t true that “thousands” of fans gave the Nazi salute. It was tens of thousands. According to local news estimates, 50-60,000 people packed into the stadium. They were listening to music, but they were also expressing their clerical-fascist beliefs. The pictures below were taken at that concert. (All credits are in footnote [6].) As the pictures show, some people expressed their clerical-fascism individually: In the photo above, taken at Thompson’s June concert in the Maksimir stadium in Zagreb, the boy wears a t-shirt displaying Thompson’s trademark Crusader’s sword (also seen on the concert tour bus) and the Ustasha slogan “za dom spremni” (‘for home, ready’). What’s on the back of the shirt? On the back of the shirt, the words ‘Crna Legija,‘ or ‘Black Legion,’ the infamous Croatian SS military force that massacred hundreds of thousands of Serbs and other so-called “foreign elements,” wiping out entire villages. In the song Jasenovac i Gradiška Stara, which Thompson admitted singing from the early 1990s until 2002, he boasted that the ‘Black Legion’ had returned. The ‘U’ on the shirt stands for Hitler’s beloved Ustasha. The checkerboard motif in the center is from the Ustasha flag; it was resurrected along with the Croatian Ustashe, who have been back in power since 1990. Photo credits and links, see footnote [6] …and sometimes they expressed their clerical-fascism collectively: A Hitler salute and, on the upper right of the banner, a ‘U’ for ‘Ustasha.’ And everyone wears Thompson shirts. The women are wearing Ustasha caps. Perhaps the most chilling thing is how normal everything looks. These are not people on the fringe; they are the mainstream, with their fascist caps, fascist t-shirts and fascist slogans and salutes: …and they are organized. Including the children. There is something familiar here. At first, you cannot place it, but then, watching the concert video below, it dawns on you: this has the look and feel of one of the Nazis’ Nuremberg rallies, modern style: [If you have problems viewing video, try at Youtube, at http://tinyurl.com/yutgtw If you get a message that the video has been removed from Youtube, see footnote"FONT-SIZE: 0.75em"[2] for an alternative.] …and virtually everyone is involved: Above, a section of a Thompson concert photo. The full picture was too large for this page, but can be viewed at http://tinyurl.com/2jqj8v Photo credits and links at [6] The people in the picture above are giving the Nazi salute in response to Thompson’s chanting of what Mr. Wood called “a well-known slogan from World War II.” The slogan, Za Dom Spremni (“For Home, Ready”), was the favorite of Croatia’s clerical-fascist rulers. It meant: Ready to do anything to ‘purify’ Croatia from “foreign elements.” Serbs, Roma and Jews. Za dom spremni – For Home, Ready! The Order of the ‘Iron Trefoil,’ the military medal of Hitler’s favorites, the Croatian Ustashe. 10-IV-1941 (April 10, 1941) was the day on which the Nazi forces invading Yugoslavia reached Zagreb and installed the Ustashe as the clerical-fascist rulers of greater Croatia. It is tragic but true that Croats have been indoctrinated to view this as a great victory by and for Croats. Source: http://users.skynet.be/hendrik/eng/Cr-Trefoil.html Not having access to the pictures and videos above, most Times readers would have no way of knowing that Nicholas Wood minimized the number of people giving the Nazi salute, reporting that there were thousands when in fact there were tens of thousands. Was he trying to soften the horror? One wouldn’t think so; after all, he talks about “Croatia’s infamous Nazi puppet Ustashe government,” which makes him sound like an anti-fascist. Because he does sound anti-fascist, and because he is writing in the respected New York Times, people would be unlikely to suspect that, in claiming the Ustashe were - “responsible for sending tens of thousands of Serbs, Gypsies and Jews to their deaths in concentration camps” [9] [my emphasis - J.I.] - Wood was erasing most of the victims. How could readers know that, prior to Croatia’s 1991 secession from Yugoslavia, the New York Times had reported that the Ustashe murdered 800,000 people at the Jasenovac death camp? This apart from the toll at other Croatian death camps, and the hundreds of thousands of people the Ustasha SS military force, the Crna Legija (Black Legion), massacred in their villages. See poster below: A recruiting poster for the Croatian Ustasha SS force, known as the ‘Black Legion.’ Ustasha ideology was fanatically Catholic and targeted “foreign elements,” but the Ustashe defined local Muslims as ‘Croats,’ and worked closely with Muslim extremists. This poster, aimed partly at Muslims, shows one soldier wearing a fez, the hat of fanatical Islam, and includes a minaret (part of a mosque) in the background. Top line: “Croats of Herzeg-Bosna!” Underneath: the crooked double-S of the Nazi SS, plus a checkerboard, motif of the Ustasha flag, which was brought back when Croatia seceded from Yugoslavia in 1991 for the second time in 50 years. (The first time was on Apr. 10, 1941, the day German troops marched into Zagreb, Croatia.) The caption reads: “Great leaders Adolf Hitler and poglavnik [fuehrer] Dr. Ante Pavelic call you to defend your homes. Join volunteer units of Croatian SS.” Source: Pro-Ustasha website, http://zadom.page.tl/Galerija-slika/pic-33.htm From “800,000” to “tens of thousands” of Holocaust victims. And this not in a recognized revisionist rag, but in the New York Times. The Times routinely publishes corrections of errors. If the 800,000 figure had been an error, the editors would have published a correction, explaining the reason for the change. They did not. They never presented any justification for their 90% cut. They simply erased the old figure and brought in the new, telling readers nothing, repeatedly publishing their 90% cut, from 1991 to the present. An act of monumental duplicity? Yes. But why did they do it? The Times first published their new victim count in March of 1991, two months before Croatia launched its war of secession against Yugoslavia. I charge that in thus rewriting Yugoslav history, the leading newspaper of the US establishment was: A) Signaling the Establishments in other countries that the U.S. was supporting the rebirth of clerical-fascist movements in the former socialist states; B) Signaling other media worldwide to follow their lead in suppressing the important historical information that a) the Serbs had played a crucial role in the fight against fascism and b) the Serbs, along with Jews, Russians, and Roma/Sinti, had suffered the greatest losses from the Nazis and their allies (in the Serbs’ case, the Croatian Ustashe), precisely in punishment for Serbian opposition to fascism. By keeping this historical perspective from ordinary people, the media could prevent them from becoming suspicious of propaganda that portrayed Croatian secessionists using Ustasha symbols and chanting fascist slogans, as victims of genocide; Serbs expressing quite legitimate fear of returned Ustasha power, as ‘new Nazis’; and Yugoslavia, created to defend the Balkans against outside pressure (meaning, historically, Germany and the Vatican), as the cause of strife in that region. By surreptitiously and massively revising what had happened in World War II, the Times was, in Simon Wiesenthal’s words, “building a way for a new Ustashe.” I have made a most serious charge. Let me present the proof. [continued in part 2] Support Emperor’s Clothes with a much-needed donation! Footnotes and Further Reading [1] Thompson’s present tour schedule: Nov. 2 and 3, New York 7:30 PM Croatian Center in Manhattan (upstairs), 502 West 41 Street, New York Nov. 4, Toronto (Thompson denies reports this has been cancelled. What they may be planning is to bus people to an unannounced location.) Present (reportedly cancelled) location: Koolhaus, 132 Queen’s Quay East, Toronto Nov. 7, Cleveland Time unannounced, probably 7:30 Slovenian National Home, 6409 Saint Clair Ave, Cleveland Nov. 10, Chicago Croatia Cultural Center, 2845 West Devon Avenue, Chicago Nov. 11, Los Angeles St. Anthony Croatian Center, 712 North Grand Avenue, Los Angeles Nov. 16, Vancouver Croatian Community Center, 3250 Commercial Dr., Vancouver Nov. 18, San Francisco (area) ARC at Willowglen dvorana, 680 Minnesota Avenue, San Jose [2] When we put a Youtube video on Emperor’s Clothes – a process called ‘embedding’ – we also download a copy of that video and save it. If one of our ‘embedded’ Youtube videos is removed from Youtube, then and only then we will upload our copy to our own server and provide readers with a link. How will we get that link to our readers? We will put it on a page dedicated to links to embedded Youtube videos that no longer work on Youtube. That page will be www.tenc.net/a/yt.htm Right now (Nov. 2, 2007) there is nothing on that page because (knock on wood) all our embedded videos are working, so if you go to that page today, you will find a friendly greeting and nothing else. If you cannot access one of our embedded Youtube videos, try going to the Youtube link we provide under every embedded video. If you get a message “this video has been removed” then try our removed-videos page www.tenc.net/a/yt.htm If the video you want is not there, it means we don’t yet know the video was removed from Youtube. Please write us and we will upload it as quickly as possible. Sorry this is complicated; we are just trying to be helpful, which always gets one in trouble. [3] “Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies calls on Croatian Cultural Center to cancel ultranationalist Croatian singer’s Vancouver concert,” Toronto, Oct. 23, 2007, CNW – Canada NewsWire Group, at http://tinyurl.com/yntex6 [4] The Wiesenthal quote is discussed in a paper I wrote for the Fourth International Conference on Jasenovac, last May (2007). Here is the relevant excerpt: [Excerpt from "Reducing the Number of Jasenovac Victims Means: 'building a way for a new Ustashe'" starts here] Trying to create an appearance of balance in an article that was otherwise a glorification of Croatian secessionist leader Franjo Tudjman, the Washington Post solicited a dissenting opinion from the late Simon Wiesenthal. As quoted by the Post, Wiesenthal attacked Tudjman’s claim that some tens rather than hundreds of thousands were murdered at Jasenovac, which was, according to Tudjman, a harsh labor camp, not an extermination camp. Here are Wiesenthal’s comments, as published. (The bracketed text and the ellipse are from the original.) “‘Like the deniers [of the Holocaust], he reduced the number of victims,’ said Simon Wiesenthal, the well-known Nazi hunter, in a telephone interview. Wiesenthal said his research suggests ‘a few hundred thousand were murdered’ in Jasenovac alone during World War II. To Wiesenthal, the real danger in Tudjman’s work is not the specific numbers ‘but the diminution of the problem. … The long-term danger is that he is building a way for a new [fascist] Ustashe.’” –”Franjo Tudjman, at War with History; Croatia’s President And a Past That’s Shaping the Present,” Washington Post; March 1, 1993, Steve Coll, Washington Post Foreign Service; VELIKO TRGOVISCE, Croatia Notice that as quoted, Wiesenthal says “‘a few hundred thousand were murdered’ in Jasenovac alone.” Two points about this. First, since the term ‘few’ is ambiguous, it is worth noting the actual figure attributed to Wiesenthal’s Documentation Center in Vienna regarding deaths in the Jasenovac camp: “There is still dispute over the total number of those who died in Jasenovac camp. The Simon Wiesenthal Documentation center in Vienna, which researches Nazi war crimes, believes the figure is 500,000.” – “Victims of Croat camp remembered as camp commander is sought,” Agence France Presse — English, April 19, 1998, Second, the Post paraphrases Wiesenthal saying he was talking about “Jasenovac alone.” That is because Croatia had a death camp called ‘Jasenovac,’ which in turn was part of a complex of camps also called ‘Jasenovac,’ and then there were death camps outside this Jasenovac complex. It appears that Wiesenthal was speaking only of the individual site called ‘Jasenovac,’ meaning that in his estimate, the number of people murdered in all Croatian death camps together was greater than 500,000, and probably far greater. Wiesenthal issued his warning that cutting the number of Jasenovac victims meant “building a way for a new Ustashe” some two years before Croatia’s murderous eviction of almost the entire Serbian population of the Krajina region in 1995. This eviction put Tudjman and his associates in control of a virtually serbenrein greater Croatia, including Croatia proper, Dalmatia and Krajina. Smaller than the World War II ‘Independent’ State of Croatia only in that it did not include Bosnia-Herzegovina. Thus, two years after Wiesenthal’s warning, Croatia had gone a long way towards a) reasserting the boundaries of the former Ustasha state and b) fulfilling its goal of killing, driving out or converting all Serbs. (The Ustashe’s other “foreign elements” – Jews and Roma – were almost entirely eliminated in World War II.) [Excerpt from "Reducing the Number of Jasenovac Victims Means: 'building a way for a new Ustashe'" ends here] [5] In 2003, the Croatian parliament passed a law under which members of a Program Council in control of Croatian Radio-Television, HRT, were henceforth chosen by parliamentary vote. (See “Croatian Government Plans Reform of State-Owned Media,” World Markets Analysis, February 10, 2003, IN BRIEF, by Sarah Mitchell ) In protest, Vlatko Silobrcic, then head of the Croatian Television Council, resigned. Reported the Croatian news agency: “Silobrcic believes that the new law on HRT, which becomes effective next week, foresees a new way of electing members to the council according to which party policy directly participates in the election.” – “Croatian state radio-TV head resigns post,” BBC Monitoring World Media Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring, February 21, 2003, HINA news agency, Zagreb Since that time HRT has been subject to extreme pressure, including suspensions, threats to fire and firing of leading people for permitting some investigative reporting and weak criticisms of anti-Serb racism, with even threats of violence condoned by top government officials. This is the ‘independent’ station that broadcast Thompson’s June 17 Maksimir stadium concert on July 2, 2007. [6] Credits for photos, in order of appearance: The pictures of the St. Benedict’s medal and the church are from Thompson’s home page, http://www.thompson.hr/ The raised sword is from the website http://www.lupiga.com/ and is posted at http://tinyurl.com/3c83fx The sword plunged into the stage is from http://www.jutarnji.hr and is posted at http://tinyurl.com/32tff9 The military cruciform is from an http://index.hr slideshow posted at http://tinyurl.com/2jzbov The album cover is from a record shop at http://tinyurl.com/35dt7g The young boy wearing the Black Legion t-shirt is posted at http://www.net.hr/2007/06/18/0150007.28.jpg The two photographs of the boy with the Thompson t-shirt, front and back view, have been removed, but they can still be viewed as still shots in a video at the news website http://dnevnik.hr posted at http://tinyurl.com/2pu2ew The group with banner is from http://www.jutarnji.hr/ posted at http://tinyurl.com/339x6k The two young women with Ustasha caps are from an http://index.hr; slideshow posted at http://tinyurl.com/2jzbov The medium sized group giving Nazi salutes is from an http://index.hr slideshow posted at http://tinyurl.com/2jzbov The Nazi salute organizer is from an http://index.hr slideshow posted at http://tinyurl.com/2jzbov The huge group giving Nazi salutes is from an http://index.hr slideshow posted at http://tinyurl.com/2jzbov [7]BBC Monitoring Europe – Political, Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring, “Croatian President Assesses Importance of Pope’s Forthcoming Visit,” September 28, 1998. Source: HINA news agency, Zagreb [8] “Fascist Overtones from Blithely Oblivious Rock Fans,” New York Times, July 2, 2007, by Nicholas Wood [9] “Fascist Overtones from Blithely Oblivious Rock Fans,” New York Times, July 2, 2007, by Nicholas Wood Please send this link to a friend. You may post any TENC article on the internet as long as you credit TENC and the author(s). http://emperors-clothes.com/croatia/tour.htm Subscribe to the TENC Newsletter – Receive articles from Emperor’s Clothes. To join, send a blank email to: join-emperorsclothes@pr2.netatlantic.com Then, just reply to the confirmation email. The Emperor’s New Clothes (TENC) * www.tenc.net

Technorati : Canada, Chicago, Croatia, Israel, NYC, Nazism, Serbia, US State Department, activism, anti-Semitism, hate, music, video
Del.icio.us : Canada, Chicago, Croatia, Israel, NYC, Nazism, Serbia, US State Department, activism, anti-Semitism, hate, music, video
Ice Rocket : Canada, Chicago, Croatia, Israel, NYC, Nazism, Serbia, US State Department, activism, anti-Semitism, hate, music, video

Powered by Zoundry

Worried about neo-Nazism in Europe?

You should be worried about neo-Nazism everywhere!

Look very carefully at these articles, all from mainstream sources:

• CBS News Showbuzz: Jews, Serbs Protest Croatian Rocker’s Tour, Singer Marko Perkovic’s Song References Pro-Nazi Regime
• TheStar.com: Croatian rock star canned, Marko Perkovic was to perform in Toronto this weekend but controversy about Nazi references in his act has prompted Kool Haus to cancel show
• Globe and Mail: Singer plans secret concert, Croatian band fears demos after Wiesenthal Center denounces songs
• Herald Sun: A club for fascists and other crazies
• Herald Sun: Fascists in an ethnic swamp

Have a look at some scary pix!

• Croatia and Bosnia: Where Did Our Love Go?
• Fascist Croat Band On North American Tour
• Neil Clark: A Nazi Rocker in New York

Yes, complaints and protests ARE effective!

• MSNBC: Ire at concentration camp concert
• (Update 11/5/07):
  Kosheen concert at Belgrade WWII camp cancelled
• (Update 11/7/07): (Concert already had been cancelled)
  Wiesenthal Centre apologises over call for concert ban

What to do?

We all need to protest against these neo-Nazi concerts/hate-fests. Perkovic a/k/a “Thompson” incites rioting and violence. Other countries should not allow him visas to enter. These “concerts” have to STOP!

First of all, see:

• Neo-Nazi Concerts Continue Down Under, Despite Complaints
• Nazi Rock Band Thompson Touring Melbourne, Sidney, Adelaide, Perth
• TENC: Oppose Fascist Rock Star’s US Tour with the Truth – Part 1
  • Contact information for where to send a complaint is in the above articles. (By the way, the email form for the US State Department doesn’t always work, but you can use the phone and mail contact information.
  • Concert schedule information is in footnote 1 of the above article.
• TENC: Oppose Fascist Rock Star’s US Tour with the Truth – Part 2
• ‘Slightly Fascist’? The New York Times Prods Croatia – Gently

Also:

• Pass the links to these articles to your friends on Digg, Propeller, StumbleUpon, and other social news sites.
• Check the sources here to watch for any updates to Thompson’s schedule.
• If he is scheduled to appear in your country or region, write to, or call, your government’s State Department and ask that he be forbidden to enter. The U.S. has laws against allowing people to come in to incite or perpetrate acts of violence; other countries may have laws against entry of neo-Nazis and so forth.

Obligatory disclaimer:

I am blog admin 1389 and yes, I do have a personal interest in this matter. I am a US citizen, a Serbian-American, and an Orthodox Christian. I also have some Jewish relatives. My father and my uncles served in the US military during World War II. My relatives in Vojvodina (a part of Serbia) disappeared in the Holocaust.

No way am I putting up with any of this!

Also on FHK

Technorati : Australia, Canada, Croatia, Nazism, activism, hate, music
Del.icio.us : Australia, Canada, Croatia, Nazism, activism, hate, music
Ice Rocket : Australia, Canada, Croatia, Nazism, activism, hate, music

Powered by Zoundry

The latest major U.N. scandal is a real doozy, and it’s coming out at a very inconvenient time for George W. and the U.S. State Department:

BND: White Slaves and Millions of Heroin Dollars for Ahtisaari’s Plan

According to the June 21 article by the Banja Luka daily Fokus, titled “Albanian Mafia Bought Ahtisaari,” German Federal Intelligence Service BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst) has recently sent a report to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon revealing that Albanian separatists and terrorists in Serbian Kosovo-Metohija province have literally purchased Ahtisaari’s plan which suggests independence for the Serbian province and its severing from Serbia.

German Secret Service has found that 2 million Euros (2.68 million USD) have been transfered directly to Ahtisaari’s personal bank account, and that amounts of multi-million Euros were given to the UN envoy in cash on at least two occasions, totaling up to 40 million Euros (over 53 million U.S. dollars).

Oh, and by the way, KFOR NATO troops are involved:

On the last day of February, at 11:47 p.m., German Secret Service agents made a note about the arrival of the KFOR (NATO troops stationed in Serbian Kosovo province, Kosovo FORce) jeep which brought two young women over, followed by Boria’s bodyguard. The girls were in Ahtisaari’s quarters until 5:17 a.m., when they were driven away by the same vehicle.

This is particularly awkward now, because GWB has been making a big push to turn over control of Kosovo to Albanian Muslim narcoterrorists, which is not only insane, but also violates the treaty that the U.S. signed at the end of the Kosovo War. (See Updated: Was GWB’s wristwatch stolen while he was meeting a crowd in Albania? and How the U.S. and NATO were duped in the Balkans.) The only thing that can be said for GWB in this regard is that his Democrat opponents would have tried to do the same thing even sooner.

Okay, so I’m old. This huge UN Albanian-narcoterrorist bribery scandal reminded me of a long trail of other scandals: Libyagate (starring Billy Carter), Abscam, Iran arms-for-hostages, BCCI, UN oil-for-food, and now, Bill and Hillary cashing in from Qatar, and the Bush family’s close ties to the Bin Ladin Group. (Yes, THAT Bin Ladin Group; they’ve altered the English-language spelling, but yes, they are OBL’s relatives!) To put icing on the cake, there’s Venezuela, with Chavez’ ominously cozy relationship with Ahmadinejad, Iran’s nuclear neo-Nazi.

So what made me think of all these other scandals? What common thread has linked every major scandal of the western world in the late 20th and early 21st centuries?

They’re are all about foreign money from Muslim sources being used to corrupt politicians and bureaucrats in the U.S., Europe, Latin America, and the UN. It’s as simple as that.

In the U.S., this money has bought politicians wholesale on both sides of the aisle. The corruption is so pervasive that it’s not even about partisan politics; it’s about the blindly selfish, and in fact treasonous, pursuit of power and wealth. The funding is not only coming from Muslim petrodollars, but also from Albanian crime syndicate money (from drug-running, arms-smuggling, slave-trading, and wholesale looting), Taliban opium money, diverted foreign aid, you name it.

What to do? Many people won’t want to hear the answer, but that isn’t my problem. I calls ‘em as I sees ‘em, and I don’t care whether anybody likes it or not.

We can’t afford to keep doing business with our enemies. Our enemies include every Islamist and every jihadist-sympathizer on the planet, and every government that openly or covertly promotes jihadism. Yes, that adds up to an awful lot of people. Our foes have already chosen that path. Our failure to acknowledge it will not make them go away. They see it as a war of extermination against us, and we have no choice but to defeat them.

What does “not doing business with the enemy” mean in practice?

This means we have to bite the bullet and achieve complete energy independence as soon as possible, and by every means available.

This means building clean-coal and nuclear power plants, wind farms, synfuel facilities, you name it. We need to stop putting roadblocks in the way of everyone who is trying to help achieve energy independence. For example, when a reputable electric power company wants to build a new clean-coal plant or a nuke plant, making use of resources that the U.S. has in abundance, the authorities should let them proceed as soon as a good plan is in place. And we should go ahead and drill for oil in uninhabitable wilderness regions.

This means we must finally debunk all of this propaganda that blames us – and our desire to maintain a standard of living compatible with civilized life – for “global warming.” Is Mars also warming up because we’ve been driving too many SUVs on the red planet? Claiming that there is a “scientific consensus” on behalf of one’s political agenda does not mean that there actually is one! The people who started up this propaganda evidently hate people in general, and modern civilization in particular. More to the point, their political manipulations play into the hands of our foreign enemies. The only way to deal with them is to refute them once and for all, and then never listen to any of them ever again.

This means we stop making alliances with, and stop giving aid to, any Muslim nation, entity, or faction. It means we never again use U.S. military power to fight a war on behalf of Muslims under any circumstances whatsoever – no matter how much they flood the airwaves with fauxtography and stage elaborate hoaxes to play themselves up as the victims of whomever they want the U.S. to punish – and no matter how much they are paying our politicians under the table.

This means that we must stop educating and hiring aliens, including de facto enemy aliens, in preference to our own citizens. That would be an inexcusable outrage during peacetime, and it’s criminally insane when we are at war. It’s time to stop bringing in any foreign nationals from predominantly Muslim countries or regions, particularly in the fields of engineering and IT. It’s time to drastically scale back the student visa program, and to eliminate the thoroughly corrupt H-1b program entirely. We’ve been shutting out loyal, qualified, experienced, and hard-working Americans from jobs, and turning over large portions of America’s technical infrastructure to foreign nationals whose loyalty is clearly elsewhere.

None of these things are impossible, or even all that difficult, to do. It’s all a matter of growing up, facing facts, and seeing the world and its inhabitants as they are, not as we wish they would be. If we refuse to face facts, that will not stop the facts from facing us.

Rolling updates on the Ahtisaari bribery allegations:

• The original post on Byzantine Sacred Art blog that brought this matter to my attention
  (posted in original article 6/25/07):
  BND: White Slaves and Millions of Heroin Dollars for Ahtisaari’s Plan
• Article in Serbian-language paper “Fokus”, Banja Luka, Republika Srpska, Bosnia
  (posted in original article 6/25/07):
  Albanska mafija kupila Ahtisarija
• Blog S@LE picked up this article (added 6/28/07):
  It’s good to be Marrti Ahtisaari
• Byzantine Sacred Art blog post about Ahtisaari’s previous racist remarks against Serbs
  (added 6/28/07):
  Serbian Jerusalem; a Ticket to Butt Clubs
• Article in Berlin Online providing some background on the Albanian crime syndicate
  (added 6/28/07):
  Von der Mafia beherrscht
• Crossfire War – UN Envoy Ahtisaari Accused of Taking Bribes
  (added 6/28/07):
  Crossfire War – UN Envoy Ahtisaari Accused of Taking Bribes

  Editor’s Note:

  Since publication of the Focus report and this opinon based on that report, new information suggests that the intelligence report the Bosnian Serb news agency Focus claims was filed at the UN apparently was never received by the UN.

  Since the alleged report is the only piece of evidence provided in support of the claims by Focus, the claims in the Focus story – and the opinion below based on that, may be false. Please check back later for an update.

  1389′s comment (added 6/28/07):

  I remain convinced that there is an extremely high probability that this story is true. To begin with, the story comports with everything that has been going on in Kosovo since 1999. Moreover, the UN has an interest in attempting to bury an embarrassing story by having some unnamed individual claim that the UN never received such a document.

  To the best of my knowledge, there have been no denials of culpability or involvement on the part of Ahtisaari, the Albanians, or anyone else. Nor has there been any official denial issued by any named individual or department at the UN.

  I must point out that the failure to deny wrongdoing is tantamount to an admission of culpability. As someone who has neither accepted nor offered bribes, if some newspaper had accused me of such a thing, not only would I have denied it loudly and without delay, but I would have immediately contacted an attorney to talk about filing a suit for defamation.

• Centre for Peace in the Balkans (added 6/28/07):
  Serbia’s Dulic calls for inquiry in Ahtisaari bribe allegations

  Neither the UN nor Mr Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president, has commented on the allegations.

Newest updates on the Ahtisaari bribery allegations:

• Global Information System (GIS) report confirms: Ahtisaari Bribed to Recommend Amputation of the Serbian Province
  

  The data collected by the GIS for South-Eastern Europe was published in the GIS Defense and Foreign Affairs section in the form of analysis which President of the American Council for Kosovo-Metohija Jim Jatras on Tuesday presented at a news conference in Belgrade. (added 7/10/07)

• Ahtisaari’s Collusion With Albanian Mafia Confirmed Beyond Doubt – U.S. State Department Unable to Deny Reports on Ahtisaari Corruption, Excerpt From July 13 Press Briefing (added 7/15/07)

Technorati tags:
1389
Ahtisaari
Bush
current events
electric power
fraud
fuel
immigration
jihadism
Kosovo
MSM corruption
politics
Serbia

Here is the story of the heroic service of Capt. Lance Peter Sijan, as recounted by the United States Air Force.

He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously for his heroism during the Vietnam War, where he died as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. He displayed this strength of character not just at one particular time of great danger, but consistently throughout a long ordeal.

The USAF website noted the Irish heritage of Capt. Sijan’s mother, but not the Serbian heritage of his father. Capt. Sijan’s Wikipedia biography does mention this.

Capt. Sijan was not the only Serbian-American awarded the Medal of Honor. Reportedly, a greater proportion of Serbian-Americans per capita have been awarded the Medal of Honor than any other ethnic group serving in the U.S. military.

Sadly, credit is not being given where credit is due. Not long ago, the U.S. was at war with Serbia, for reasons that did not prove justifiable in retrospect – which is why the mainstream media has so little to say about the Balkans at present. Even now, the U.S. State Department is still trying to detach Kosovo from Serbia to turn it over to jihadist rule, and to sell out the Bosnian Serbs as well, in defiance of all common sense. Encouraging the public to admire a Serbian-American hero would no doubt raise too many embarrassing questions about past and present foreign policy mistakes, and about those bureaucrats, journalists, and elected officials who are clearly to blame.

Beware of John McCain!

Kosovo: Foreign Policy Litmus Test for US Presidential Candidates

(R) Senator John McCain who made his name nationally known by advocating the 1999 NATO Bombing, and the empowerment of radical Islamofascists in the Balkans. Back in 1999, McCain even advocated the we send American troops into Kosovo on behalf of the secessionist drug-running KLA. McCain has consistently been on the Albanian American Civic League’s payroll and even marched with them a year after the NATO intervention. McCain doesn’t mention that while he was a POW he shared a cell with US Captain, Congressional Medal of Honor winner & proud Serb-American Lance Sijan for whom the Air Force created the Lance P. Sijan Award. If Sijan were alive today, he wouldn’t spit on the better part of John McCain. McCain receives 47% of his campaign donations from $2,300 or more contributors. McCain is a conservative Republican and aggressive interventionist.

Dump McCain Now!