re: #799 Thanos

Yes but with the Bircher resurgence I want people to open their eyes to how much of this comes from out of country and how counter it is to US principles. The Serbian alliance was recently crowing about how they are the “fifth” most influential foreign lobby group in the US. Everything they accuse the current administration of they are guilty of in other words. Pam and Robert care more for the future of populist new right candidates in Europe than they do the Republican party.

The Serbian lobby has been remarkably successful at infiltrating U.S. political circles because its strategists know how to lard up their rhetoric with themes that appeal, either consciously or subconsciously, to loony disaffected right-wing America. Bosnia and Kosovo are seen as “Clinton’s wars,” so they know which buttons to push with those political factions nurturing deep animosity for Clinton. They flame up the anti-Muslim and clash-of-civilizations rhetoric to paint their cause as part of America’s struggle to the followers of Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and their likes. They speak in racist metaphors: “Albanians were to Serbia like the illegal Mexican immigrants are to the native U.S. population” and garbage like that.

They just embed their goals into the general current of populist craziness in this country. That’s what they do. It’s how they gain sympathy; how they get to spread and perpetuate their ideas.

Those Americans who get erections over Serbia’s good fight in the Balkans solely based on their own anti-Muslim bigotry, have no idea they’re being had. Serbians could give a damn about religion: english.sina.com

BELGRADE, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) — Several hundred people on Monday rallied in the Serbian capital Belgrade to protest the Israeli military strikes on the Gaza Strip.

The rally, organized by an association named the Palestinian Diaspora in Serbia, was joined by Serbian parliament members, supporters of the Serbian Radical Party, and representatives of the Serbian labor, anarchist and nationalist associations.

The protesters voiced their support for Palestinians, carried anti-Israeli posters and chanted anti-Israeli slogans. They also carried flags of Serbia and Palestine and photographs of killed civilians from Gaza.

Belgrade Mufti Muhamed Jusufspahic, who attended the protest in downtown Belgrade’s Republic Square, told reporters that the purpose of the rally was not to express support for any of the parties in the Middle East conflict, but to call for peace and for ending the conflict in a civilized manner.

Mohammed Nabhan, Palestinian ambassador to Serbia, also participated in the rally and said that raids against civilians would not solve the problem, but constituted a war crime.

That’s right. Serbia has a grand Mufti; they have Muslims too, admittedly in small numbers. They don’t have a beef with their own Muslims who are equally jingoistic/chauvinistic and match the Orthodox majority in their overall anti-Semitism. Culture trumps religion.

By the way, I was in Tirana, Albania for the holidays at the time of the Gaza offensive. No protests in any cities of Albania, the supposed Muslim country. I mean, zilch, nothing… not even a symbolic rally of a handful of creeps. Meanwhile both Greece and Serbia, our “Christian” neighbors were seething with anti-Israeli rallies.

In the Balkans, nothing is the way it seems.