The Worst GOP Candidate In History
by Srdja Trifkovic
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“Conservative” Joseph DioGuardi’s “sensational” election as the GOP Senate candidate in New York has shaken up the Republican Party, gloats the Tropoja-based Albanian Minerals President M. Mujaj in the Wall Street Journal Blog. “The American people have spoken,” this self-styled compatriot of ours is telling us. “The American way of life needs to be rebalanced. Households need to stop spending what they don’t have. Local and state governments need to slash their budgets to live off whatever tax revenues they generate [...] The American people voted for change.”
What Mr. Mujaj does not mention is that former Congressman DioGuardi is the founder and well-endowed president of the Albanian American Civic League, a lobby group for the KLA-run “independent” province of “Kosova.” This is a significant fact, crucial to the funding of his candidacy, which he curiously does not mention on his campaign website. Even more curiously, the League’s aacl.com site—full of information on DioGuardi’s KLA connections—has been mysteriously dormant for weeks. There is, nevertheless, ample evidence out there that DioGuardi and his wife have been, for years, key fundraisers and apologists for the terrorist KLA in this country. It is unsurprising that he omits this aspect of his career from his pitch to the voters of New York, but it is curious that no one has called attention to the fact thus far.
As for Tropoja, it is a town in northern Albania best known not as a hub of mining in general, or as the HQ of DioGuardi’s friend Mr. Mujaj’s Albanian Minerals in particular, but as the gruesome site of a “clinic” known as The Yellow House in which hundreds of Serb civilians kidnapped in Kosovo by the KLA in 1999 were brought to be murdered for organ harvesting. As my friend Julia Gorin wrote two and a half years ago,
For perhaps the first time in history, the mainstream media have deemed the dismemberment of Serbs newsworthy. More accurately, they have deemed newsworthy the dismemberment of the Serb and non-Serb victims of our friends, and almost all living Albanians’ great heroes, the KLA … The new information is revealed in the forthcoming book The Hunt by Carla Del Ponte, former chief prosecutor for the Hague Tribunal. A few reports, starting with—gasp—the AP (which both the International Herald Tribune and Fox News deigned to carry), Albanian trafficking in organs of killed Kosovo Serbs investigated… Del Ponte said her investigators had been informed that some 300 Serbs were killed for organ trafficking.
Del Ponte—not known as a friend of the Serbs by any token—was the first to reveal that the imprisoned Serbs were taken to a camp in Tropoja where the younger ones were picked out, and their organs were later sold abroad. Even high KLA members were involved in the operation of smuggling of organs, Del Ponte explained. She attested that her investigators and UNMIK officials were made aware that in mid-1999 the KLA moved some 300 abducted non-Albanians to Tropoja’s “yellow house” where in one room that was used as an operating theater, the surgeons were removing organs from the victims. The organs were transported by air from Tirana to clinics abroad for clients and medical institutions that paid for them. The victims left with one kidney were kept locked, and later on killed for other organs. “Other prisoners in the barrack knew what was to happen to them,” Del Ponte added.
The horrors of Tropoja and the KLA are light years away from DioGuardi’s New York State audiences and his usual sales pitch … standard fiscal conservatism, family values. No mention of the KLA anywhere, of course.
Had another Joseph, Dr. Mengele, decided to run for the U.S. Senate sixty years ago, he too would have kept quiet about certain medical pursuits, and certain political affiliations, similar in kind and moral depravity to DioGuardi’s. But he did not, wisely preferring to stay in Brasil. DioGuardi’s ability to do so today is a sad testimony on the decrepitude of the GOP and on the state of this country’s politics.
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1 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 20 September 2010:
Wherever there is strife, the unscrupulous will move in to profit. Organ harvesting is also quite popular in Darfur. Round up the usual suspects. Those organ are being sold to doctors and hospitals. I wonder if they have brokerages and on-line auctions …
2 Comment by Prateek Sanjay on 21 September 2010:
What a monstrous, monstrous thing.
3 Comment by Rob on 21 September 2010:
So DioGuardi is Mengle?
Really?
Look, I enjoy Dr. Trifkovic’s work and generally agree with him but that is a bit too far a comparison.
4 Comment by Srdja Trifkovic on 21 September 2010:
OK, I stand corrected: DioGuardi is no Mengele, DioGuardi merely lobbies for, and is financed by, the organ-harvesting (and dope-dealing, church-burning, human-trafficking) KLA murderers.
5 Comment by Rob on 21 September 2010:
I don’t disagree with any of your points and your–and to a lesser extent Justin Raimando’s take on DioGuardi turned me off when he ran for the US Senate back in 2000. But I do not think Nazi comparisons ever help anyone’s case. He is undoubtedly a backer of the KLA–and led the fight for America to finance them and arm them.
6 Comment by Srdja Trifkovic on 21 September 2010:
I dislike such comparisons too, yet reductio ad Mengeleum seems uniquely apt with the Tropoja Connection.
7 Comment by George on 21 September 2010:
I wonder if anyone in DioGuardi’s circle has benefited from transplant surgery in recent years? Just asking…
8 Comment by Ron Holt on 21 September 2010:
No, ST, the worst Republican candidates in history were John McCain, 2) Bob Dole, and 3) W H Taft. This unholy troika makes Wendell Wilkie look like Machiavelli on steroids.
9 Comment by Srdja Trifkovic on 21 September 2010:
DioGuardi has helped, lavishly, his buddy McCain’s campaign in 2000 and in 2008:
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=57678
Group tied to al-Qaida backs McCain for prez
By Jerome R. Corsi © 2010 WorldNetDaily
10 Comment by Srdja Trifkovic on 21 September 2010:
As for Bob Dole’s multiple and murky ties to DioGuardi pls check out
http://balkanblog.org/2007/11/03/1563/
They date back to the early nineties:
http://blog.aacl.com/the-agony-of-kosova/sen-bob-dole-letter-to-foreign-minister-of-portugal/
Nothing on DioGuardi and W H Taft, I’m afraid. He’s clean on that one…
11 Comment by James Kabala on 21 September 2010:
Why do Christian (I mean self-described Christian or of Christian background; I am not evaluating anyone’s theological beliefs) Albanian-Americans tend to favor Kosovo independence? DioGuardi is not the only example with which I am familiar. I assume part of the reason they came to the U.S. to begin with was dislike of Muslim rule, so it seems strange.
12 Comment by robert on 21 September 2010:
“Why do Albanian Americans tend to favor Kosovo independence”
Every thousand years or so, God raises two or three Albanians to sanctity to demonstrate to the world that with His grace, anything is possible. The rest of the time they suffer the just punishment of being an uncivilized, godless, race and people. Other than that, I can’t think of a good reason the Albanians would favor Kosovo independence.
13 Comment by Tom Piatak on 21 September 2010:
Robert @ 11:
Here is an article from Zenit on the beginning of the beatification process for Albanian martyrs from the 20th century: http://www.zenit.org/article-5815?l=english
There were more than two or three of them.
Of course, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta was also an Albanian.
14 Comment by robert on 21 September 2010:
Mr. Piatak,
Thank you so much for the article about the holy martyrs which both refutes and demonstrates my point about Albanians. Albanians were the perpetrators of the following acts.
1)bishops, priests, nuns and a whole host of lay people, including the very feeble, were massacred,”….and this happened not centuries ago, but only a few years ago
2)died of torture and tetanus at the Franciscan monastery which had become a prison for 700 men.
3)drowned their victims with their heads immersed in a sewer.
4)shot them.
5)buried them alive in a swamp at Maliq.
6)killed and through the human corpse to the dogs.
7)The police stabbed them with screwdrivers and allowed their victims to linger in untold misery until shot a few days later.
8)the Shkodër Cathedral was made into a sports hall.
9)Franciscan church at Gjuhadol was made into a cinema
10)Shrine of Our Lady of Good Counsel near the Rozafa castle in Shkodër was destroyed.
11)The Sacred Heart of Jesus church in Tirana became a cinema.
12)Lezha church was closed on Easter Sunday 1967.
13)St. Anthony’s shrine at La Kurbini was destroyed and a military camp built in its place.
14)The little 13th-century church at La Vau i Dejés was blown up.
15)On July 10, 1968, an atheist exhibition was opened in Shkodër entitled “The Retrograde Role of the Faith.”
16)Persecution reached its climax in 1967, when Albania was proclaimed an atheist state.
By the grace of God, the Albanians you mention became saints. I am sure it is true of all people and a heresy to state it otherrwise, but just as the Romans seemed more receptive to the Incarnation than India or China, Albania has always seemed to me like a good place to suffer for Christ and less of a place to cultivate a Christian culture. May the blood of these Holy martyrs be like a soft rain to modern Albania.
15 Comment by Derek Leaberry on 21 September 2010:
For different reasons, I would expect that neither Joseph DioGuardi nor Christine O’Donnell will be in the news by mid-November. That either of them has a chance for elective office is another indictment of the current American political system.
16 Comment by Zack on 21 September 2010:
It is interesting to me that this kind of a war terror and monstrosities have been largely ignored in the Western press…I have read about ” zuta kuca” and its workings at least 3-5 years ago in the Serbian press…I assume somebody in the West must have had good raisons to cover this up…Rememeber that the USA and its allies bombed Serbia to exhaustion for 78 days in order to free Albanians, that is Shqiptars, from Serbian rule…Most Americans are clueless about geography and history of Balkans and they are easily brainwashed and indoctrinated into thinking that the KLA are freedom fighters and that the government is there to protect them against enemies, that is Serbs.
17 Comment by Michael Shaskevich on 21 September 2010:
Did ever any qualified physician testified about “yellow house” (“zuta kuca”)?
Can such a surgery be done in a country house? For such an operation one needs a well equipped hospital. Maybe I am wrong, but I would like to hear a qualified physician.
Michael Shaskevich
(773) 238-7785
shaskevich@aol.com
18 Comment by robert on 21 September 2010:
“It is interesting to me that this kind of a war terror and monstrosities have been largely ignored in the Western press…”
What is even more interesting is that there are folks who believe we should use America’s soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines to stomp this and every other evil from the face of the earth, without a clue as to what a prolonged and debilitating stomp dance that would be for all.
19 Comment by Srdja Trifkovic on 21 September 2010:
While I do not dispute that “there are folks who believe we should use America’s soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines to stomp this and every other evil from the face of the earth,” I am not one of them, as my readers are well aware. I just wish America’s soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines were not used to PROMOTE and FACILITATE this, and countless other evils, in the Balkans and elsewhere, as they have been used over the years — and most flagrantly when they acted as the KLA auxilliaries in 1999.
20 Comment by S.B. on 21 September 2010:
@18, ST writes: “I just wish America’s soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines were not used to PROMOTE and FACILITATE this, and countless other evils, in the Balkans and elsewhere, as they have been used over the years”
On today’s front page of Vesti online: (bilingually challenged can cut/paste the link in Google translate)
http://www.vesti-online.com/Vesti/Svet/83413/Ubio-se-pilot-koji-je-bombardovao-SRJ
vs. the US version:
http://www.kcoy.com/global/story.asp?s=13144067
21 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 21 September 2010:
Oh Lord! Save Thy people and bless Thine inheritance. Grant victory to Orthodox Christians over their adversaries, and by virtue of Thy cross preserve Thy habitation.
Tone 1
22 Comment by Eugene Girin on 21 September 2010:
Here’s an article I wrote about Joe “KLA” DioGuardi for Dr. Trifkovic’s The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies.
http://www.balkanstudies.org/blog/joseph-dioguardi-terrorist-enabler
23 Comment by robert on 22 September 2010:
Dr. Trifkovic,
“While I do not dispute that “there are folks who believe we should use America’s soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines to stomp this and every other evil from the face of the earth,” I am not one of them…”
Yes, and I hope I did not imply that you were one of them. In fact if I were Hillary Clinton for a day, I would resign and encourage your nomination as Secretary of State.
24 Comment by Srdja Trifkovic on 22 September 2010:
The latest on the subject (Aug. 31):
http://www.emg.rs/en/news/serbia/131276.html
Asked about the fate of about 350 Serbs … killed in the neighboring Albania as victims of organ trafficking, [Head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Regional Delegation for the Balkans, Paul-Henri] Arni said that the case has not been forgotten.
The Yellow House case has not been forgotten at all, he responded and recalled that Dick Marty, the head of the Council of Europe’s team in charge of the case, should submit the report by the end of the year.
25 Comment by Dan on 22 September 2010:
In terms of the damage done to America’s interests, our rights, and the Republican Party, I’d probably have to vote for John McCain. How can the people of Arizona be so utterly ignorant as to re-elect this war coward and asset of a foreign government?
26 Comment by justine on 22 September 2010:
On Link-TV, there is a series of 60 minute travelogues by train called the “Future Express”. The series travels through countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia, Thailand. Its producers interview people traveling on the train, while showing the landscape from the train window. But it seems that the interviews are not random but staged, thus the series lacks credibility. Mind you, only wholesome, tolerant and intelligent Muslims get interviewed. The current one is on Serbia and Kosovo. The Germanic producer, who is on the train with his preteenage son for some reason, pronunces Yugoslavia as Yugoslaevia (rhymes with slave), states there were 8 republics in it and Kosovo was one, etc. Apart from a myriad of other inaccuracies, he does his best to present the interviewed Serbs and Serbia as if they were mental patients from a mental hospital, people who carry guslas on the train and babble irrationally and incoherently about the war or are in some other form of denial, while all the Albanians on the other side of the border are pretty, cultures and westernized. Girls with European outlook and fashions, giggling how they may never marry a Serb, but who knows. Or mild mannered intellectuals, with wire-rimmed glasses, straight out of the central casting, wistfuly explaining how they hope for a future of peace while expressing melancholy hope that Serbs will learn how to treat them as human beings. Of course, this is against all odds, considering fully debased Serb human nature! I hope someone at LB foundation finds some time to do a full review of this latest mockery hit-piece. And I wonder who funds this series on Link-TV and where else in the world does this travelogue get shown.
27 Comment by Djordje on 23 September 2010:
@ Justine
Here is a partial list funders. It reads like the usual suspects…
Anonymous
The Annenberg Foundation
Attar Supporting Organization
The Attias Family Foundation
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
Firedoll Foundation
The Ford Foundation
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Kalliopeia Foundation
The Kresge Foundation
Otto Haas Charitable Trusts
The Philanthropic Collaborative
Rockefeller Brothers Foundation
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Wallace Global Fund
28 Comment by pacific_waters on 24 September 2010:
This didn’t matter to the MSM until it could be used against the republican party. Obviously our vetting leaves much to be desired. Serbs for tears have tried to get the atrocities committed against them in the world’s view but we continue to ignore and insist on building a safe haven for terrorists in Kosovo.
29 Comment by 1389AD on 24 September 2010:
I hope you don’t mind my having taken the liberty of cross-posting this to my own blog and to http://www.theblogmocracy.com (a conservative group blog that supports the Serbs). It is vitally important that everyone sees this.
Dr. Trifkovic, I’d like to invite you to join The Blogmocracy. You’ll need to sign up in order to comment, but registration is open and takes just a moment. Guest bloggers are welcome. I’d like to see your articles get wider exposure.
30 Comment by Early Light on 24 September 2010:
Dr. Trifkovic, you barely scratched the surface of KLA atrocities here, or the extent of DioGuardi’s service as a front for what is essentially organized crime. Through him and his organization, illicit money has been channeled to buy political clout in the US for well over a decade. At least the Sibel Edmonds case has a kind of cult following in cyberspace; the influence of ethnic Albanian organized crime in American politics has received nowhere near the attention that the influence of Turkish organized crime has received, and considering how little that is, that’s quite a statement.
31 Comment by Lady Life on 29 September 2010:
Dr. Trifkovic,
In all fairness, did you contact DioGuardi to get his side of the story? I called his office and came away with the sense that he is a good man, who is unwise on this issue, and just wants to protect the people of his nationality.