http://web.archive.org/web/19990508131324/http://www.tca1.org/vol13/Muslim.html
(See comments at
http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9906&L=JUSTWATCH-L&P=R192111&D=1&H=0&O=D&T=0
)
James Jatras a speaker at SUC events and
advisor to Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and the GOP Senate Policy
Committe
who has written anti-Muslim hate literature categorizing Islam as a
"Christian Killing Machine," reviling the Qur'an, and speaking of Islam
as
the outgrowth of "Heathen Araby."
http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9907&L=JUSTWATCH-L&P=R39227&D=1&H=0&O=D&T=0
http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0307&L=JUSTWATCH-L&P=R78600&D=1&H=0&O=D&T=0
James George Jatras,
apparently an
Orthodox extremist, once called Michael Dukakis
a "pagan" for not following the Orthodox church on abortion
and attacked him for marrying a non-Christian, although he
insisted he was not being anti-Semitic. (His open letter is
on file at Northeastern University.) This former GOP Senate aide is
also the author of an anti-Muslim screed in Chronicles magazine and
The Christian Activist that calls
Islam a "gigantic Christian-killing machine" and says the
religion grew from "the darkness of heathen Araby." He was
also the keynote speaker at the 9th Serbian Unity Congress.
Chronicles magazine, which published Jatras' rantings, is
also cited by the film in support of its claim that Muslims
blew up their own people to arouse international sympathy,
and it is connected not only directly to the Bosnian Serbs
but also to white Southern neo-Confederacy groups. The
magazine is run by Thomas Fleming, who rose to prominence as
an opponent of school desegregation in Rockford, Ill., and
became a founding member of the right-wing neo-Confederacy
group League of the South. Its foreign-affairs editor is
Srdja Trifkovic, formerly the official spokesman for Radovan
Karadzic and the Bosnian Serb government and a source whom
Mr. Bogdanich interviewed for the film but apparently decided
not to use.
[See offoffoff review of YUGOSLAVIA, THE AVOIDABLE WAR]
Any experienced journalist should be able to recognize the
hack job that's being done here. These jokers weren't chosen
because they're the most authoritative sources on the subject
or because they represent two different sides of an argument.
They were chosen because they are the fringe — the only ones
going around exonerating the Serbs of responsibility for
their murderous campaigns. If the subject were the Nazi
Holocaust, we would easily recognize them as the deniers.
Jatras testified for Milosevic Sept 2004
http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0409&L=JUSTWATCH-L&P=R28020&D=1&H=0&O=D&T=0
http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0409&L=JUSTWATCH-L&P=R29535&D=1&H=0&O=D&T=0
- Judith A.
http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0409&L=JUSTWATCH-L&P=R32771&D=1&H=0&O=D&T=0
- IWPR
http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0710&L=JUSTWATCH-L&P=R10685&D=1&H=0&O=D&T=0
http://www.empoweredbuilder.net/aacl/330/13924/files/serbian_eng.htm:
The Venable Law Firm Contract with the Serbian National Council of
Kosovo and Metohija
On April 24, 2006, in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call and on May
1 in the “Full Disclosure: New and Notes from K Street” section of the Legal
Times, the first reports appeared that Venable, LLP, one of the premiere
law-lobbying firms in Washington, had "inked a deal in March with the Serbian
National Council of Kosovo and Metohija , a group representing displaced Serbs
whoremained in Kosovo after the 1999 NATO intervention.” Both papers said that
Venable would receive US$600,000 over a six-month period for providing the group
“with strategic tactical planning on foreign policy matters before the U.S.
government.” The announcement in Roll Call indicated that Venable would
receive an additional $100,000 per month if the contract were extended.
On inspection, the contract filed on March 22, 2006, with the U.S. Department
of Justice, under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, between Venable and the
Serbian National Council of Kosovo and Metohija, c/o Abbot Simeon (Vllovksi) at
the Banjska Monastery, is signed by James
Jatras, and
includes the following points: The arrangement encompasses “providing strategic
counsel and tactical planning on foreign policy matters before the U.S.
Government (Executive and Legislative branches) and related media work.”
Venable’s services to the Serbian National Council “will include those of the
media service, Global Strategic Communications Group (GSCG), acting at Venable’s
direction to include media preparation and outreach, assistance in crafting
policy statements, op-ed and editorial placements, electronic information
stream, media monitoring, formation and administration of an American policy
council, crafting and placement of paid media, and reporting and advice.”
“Media preparation and outreach”: Venable’s Principal Offering to
Belgrade
Associated Press:
On April 14, just a few weeks after the Serbian National Council signed its
contract with James
Jatras at Venable, David Hammer of the Associated Press released an
article on AP’s “Worldstream,” entitled “Serbia wants U.S. Congress to help put
brakes on Kosovo’s independence.” The article stated that Serbia was “urging the
U.S. House of Representatives to follow the Senate’s lead and say that the
breakaway province of Kosovo is not now ready for independence.” Albanian
journalists in the Balkans reacted negatively to the description of Kosova as a
“breakaway province,” in view of the fact that Kosova was annexed by Serbia
after World War I. Meanwhile, the Associated Press failed to comment on the fact
that the Congressional resolution introduced by Congressman Steve Chabot (R-OH)
in December 2005 (H.Res. 634), in support of S.R. 237, introduced by Senator
George Voinovich (D-OH), had been ignored by the House Committee on
International Relations, where the leaders, Congressmen Tom Lantos and Henry
Hyde, had earlier introduced H.Res. 24, which calls on the United States to
recognize Kosova’s independence now.
In the AP article, Vuc Jeremic, Serbian President Boris Tadic’s chief foreign
affairs adviser, was quoted as saying that, “Congress could provide important
political cover for Serbia’s centrist coalition leadership if it would
emphasize Kosovo’s failures to meet the requirements for independence [emphases
mine].” But this is not what has happened. In May 2006, the United Nations
Mission in Kosova publicly stated that the Kosovar government was meeting its
obligations under the plan of standards implementation. Meanwhile, the
international mediators in the Prishtina-Belgrade talks announced that they
would begin to lay the groundwork for final status talks later this summer.
...
James Jatras—Venable’s
Representative for the Serbian National Council
James Jatras,
a Greek American with a long history of pro-Eastern Orthodox and anti-Muslim
activism in the Balkans and formerly senior foreign policy analyst for the U.S.
Senate Republican Policy Committee (1998-2002), signed the agreement between
Venable and the Serbian National Council of Kosovo and Metohija (SNV) on March
22, 2006. Far from being a neutral observer of Balkan affairs,
Jatras is a paid
lobbyist for the SNV and an Orthodox extremist with deep connections to the
Serbian Unity Congress.
Jatras has written numerous articles aimed at warning Americans about the
threat of militant Islam in Southeast Europe, several of which appear in a
magazine connected to Bosnian Serb groups called Chronicles. (Srdja
Trifkovic, Chronicles’ foreign affairs editor, was formerly the official
spokesperson for indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic.)
Jatras was the
keynote speaker at the 9th Serbian Unity Congress and a principal in the
Serbian-American-made propaganda film, Yugoslavia: The Avoidable War”
produced and directed by George Bogdanich. And during the Kosova war, it was
Jatras, in his
capacity as senior foreign policy analyst for the U.S. Senate Republican Policy
Committee, who commissioned and circulated Yossef Bodansky’s outrageously
spurious report in the House and Senate, entitled “Kosovo: The U.S. and Iran’s
New Balkan Front,” in an effort to block Congressional support for intervention
in Serbia’s war against Kosova and to discredit the Kosova Liberation Army.
The Baltimore Sun—Misrepresenting the Kosovar Serbs
On May 10, an article by Christopher Deliso, entitled “Botched Kosovo
intervention dims hopes for peace,” appeared in The Baltimore Sun.
Whether Deliso, an American freelance journalist who runs Balkanalysis.com out
of Skopje, Macedonia, is connected with the
Jatras/Venable
contract is not known. Nevertheless, Deliso clearly identifies with the Serbian
lobby’s frenzy to undercut final status resolution in Kosova by painting Kosovar
Serbs as a community under siege who “will flee as nationalist militants
remobilize to purge Serbs and annex Albanian inhabited areas of Macedonia and
Montenegro,” as soon as Kosova becomes independent. The truth is that most of
Kosova’s Serbs, like Kosovar Albanians, simply want to live in peace. Walk
through the streets of Gjilan today, for example, and you will see Albanian
women purchasing goods from Serbian women in an outdoor market. As the
international community has made clear since the negotiations between Prishtina
and Belgrade commenced this winter, it is Serbia, not Kosovar Albanians, that is
obstructing the integration of Kosova’s Serbs into Kosovar society. The NATO
troops who will remain in Kosova after final status resolution to monitor
protection of minority rights will discover that independence is the key, not
the obstacle, to peaceful coexistence among ethnic groups.