From: "Emperor's Clothes" <emperorsclothes @ tenc.net>

Date: November 3, 2007 8:56:33 AM GMT+01:00

Subject: [TENC Newsletter] Oppose Fascist Rock Star's US Tour with the Truth - Part 1

TENC Newsletter * 3 November 2007 The Emperor's New Clothes (TENC) * www.tenc.net 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@... Then, just reply to the confirmation email. Our readers make TENC possible. Please donate! ============================================= 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] ============================================= 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 [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 [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@... Then, just reply to the confirmation email. Our readers make TENC possible. Please donate! The Emperor's New Clothes (TENC) * www.tenc.net