While we yield to no one when it comes to disdain for Fidel Castro and contempt for Bill Clinton, we also believe in the rule of law and in the right of parents to take care of their children. From the notion that parents’ rights depend on a child’s “best interest” as determined by a government agency, it is but a short step to mandatory foster homes for the children of homeschoolers, evangelical Christians, and social and cultural traditionalists. A New York Press editorial (April 27) provided an important postscript to the Elian Gonzalez affair:

what’s more notable at this point is the orgy of shamelessness and dishonesty that the administration’s actions . . . have generated among politicians. Rudolph Giuliani . . . opined that the government should have stayed its hand and exhausted all legal options before launching a raid. Here . . . is a mayor whose police force has been authorized to search and harass citizens at will—a mayor who’s reflexively hostile to civil liberties and almost neurotically enamored of state power-criticizing Federal agents.

The so-called left has been just as mendacious. Jesse Jackson and other “civil rights” activists who scream bloody murder every time a New York police officer so much as looks cross-eyed at a thug of color have suddenly become supporters of law enforcement and militant defenders of family values:

For the “left,” violence isn’t violence when it fulfills the agenda of its yuppie-authoritarian friends in power. And for the right, government savagery’s to be denounced for gain in the short-term, even as conservatives’ punitive law-and-order agenda foments that violence the rest of the year. Maybe, under the circumstances, Elian . . . would be better off in Cuba after all.

The same hypocrisy evident in domestic issues extends to this administration’s foreign policy, particularly on nuclear weapons. The Hindustan Times (April 29) expressed dismay at the U.S. desire to upgrade its own nuclear weapons while violating treaties by setting up a National Missile Defense (NMD) system, even as the administration lectures other nations about the dangers of these weapons:

It passes comprehension why the US, with two oceans on either side, should feel the need to have a defence shield to protect it from unnamed rogue states when it cannot see the threat which India faces with two collaborating nuclear powers on its borders. . . . The US may disingenuously claim that it is frustrated at the lack of progress towards a nuclear-free world . . . but its contribution towards legitimising these doomsday weapons by giving them an aura of power and prestige is enormous.

The price tag for NMD is likely to reach some $60 billion by 2015, four times the original estimate, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Their report also warned that any country capable of developing long-range missiles could use simple countermeasures to render NMD useless.

There’s a juicy story here for an investigative journalist—exposing the many technical and legal flaws in the NMD, exploring the links between the arms procurement lobby, the White House, and some key congressmen . . . But journalists know that they win Pulitzers by pandering to the received wisdom of the ruling elite, while really interesting news remains unfit to print. Take the story of the mines in Kosovo, worth many billions of dollars, which the “international community“ wants to steal from the Serbs. According to a KFOR press release (March 25):

KFOR was allowed to play a part in the reconstruction of the Stari Trg Mine just east of Mitrovica. KFOR Polish soldiers were able to provide mining uniforms with hard hats and other safety equipment . . . to the director of the Stari Trg Mine, Mr. Burhan Kavaja[, who] has 250 men working for him . . . At the moment, UNMIK has the administrative responsibility [for] all the mining resources in Kosovo, and when there is profit from the mines, the profit will stay in Kosovo to be a valuable asset to the reconstruction of the region.

What the press release does not say is that Kavaja is an ethnic Albanian who illegally took over the mine after his 250 men killed or cleansed every last Serb from the Stari Trg area. Nor does it say that the mine is owned by the Serbs, who have a joint venture agreement with a Greek mining firm to develop the mine.

Almost two years ago, Chris Hedges published an article in the New York Times in which he pointed out that the real issue in Kosovo was control of the Trepca/Stari Trg mining complex. Hedges quoted “Burhan Kavaja, an Albanian,“ as declaring that the Kosovo conflict would only end “with [Albanian] independence.“

“There is over 30 percent lead and zinc in the ore,” said Novak Bjelic, the mine’s beefy director. “The war in Kosovo is about the mines, nothing else. This is Serbia’s Kuwait—the heart of Kosovo. . . . And in addition to all this Kosovo has 17 billion tons of coal reserves. Naturally, the Albanians want all this for themselves . . . ”

A month before the KFOR-supervised distribution of equipment to Kavaja’s Albanian squatters at the mine, Diana Johnstone predicted it all in an amply documented article (“Taking over the Trepca mines: plans and propaganda”). She examined a November 1999 International Crisis Group (ICG) paper on the Trepca mining complex and a February 23, 2000, article in the Toronto Star by ICG consultant Susan Blaustein. Both called on UNMIK, headed by Bernard Kouchner, to cut through legal disputes over the industry’s ownership and take over Trepca itself. The ICG is a think tank founded in 1995 and bankrolled by financier George Soros. It “provides policy guidance to governments” involved in the NATO-led reshaping of the Balkans. Its key figure is Morton Abramowitz, a proponent of NATO’s “humanitarian intervention” and a sponsor of Kosovo Albanian separatists. The human rights of ethnic Albanians would be assured by stealing property worth billions of dollars: “The return to work of even a few hundred Kosovar miners would represent, for all Kosovars, the reclaiming of their patrimony.” But as Johnstone notes, the ICG’s love for the Albanians may be less than perfect:

Simply handing Trepca over to the Kosovars is ruled out by the shortage of modern skills available locally, the need for internationally-verifiable standards to avoid corruption, as well as damage to the installations. “The social impact of the reduced work force would need to be balanced against the need for competitively based private investment,” the ICG observes. Fortunately, the ICG finds that the young leadership of the “Kosovo Liberation Army” is “somewhat impatient” with the older Kosovo Albanian leadership group’s interest in “a huge workforce” and prefers modernization that will require foreign investment capital.

Last year’s NATO war against the Serbs was not “all about the mines.” It was, above all, about the desire of the ruling elite to use the Balkans as a testing ground for the emerging post-national global empire of their dreams. But if a fast billion or two can be made in the process by Mr. Soros and his ilk, so much the better. They and their courtier press predictably remained quiet when Kosovo Albanians bombed a Serbian church on Orthodox Good Friday. That story was picked up by Mary Mostert (www.originalsources.com) on May 1:

It was almost exactly 4 years ago . . . that America was “stirred to action” because of a rash of arson attacks on black churches in the South. Although at least a couple of those churches turned out to be targeted by black people . . . just the thought of minority churches being burned to the ground . . . was enough for bipartisan House and Senate . . . resolutions condemning the church burnings . . . Clinton said at the time, “It’s hard to think of a more depraved act of violence than the destruction of a place of worship.”

Thus, Mary Mostert argues, one would have expected him to say something about the destruction of Serbian churches:

Some of those churches were historic landmarks that were more than 500 years old. On April 28th, Orthodox Good Friday, a time bomb set by Albanian terrorists blew up St. Petka Church in the village of Grncar in Kosovo. . . . It is in the region controlled by the American KFOR troops, whose main purpose should be protection of Serbs and their property . . . And all we hear from Bill Clinton is that the Albanians are merely “retaliating” against the Serbs.

The ultimate domestic consequence of Clinton’s Kosovo policy may be the rise of ethnic separatist movements seeking the disintegration of the United States. On April 25, the Albuquerque Tribune published a fascinating article with a simple message: “Southwest shall secede from U.S.” Charles Truxillo, a professor of “Chicano studies” at the University of New Mexico, suggests that Republica del Norte would be a good name for the new, sovereign “Hispanic” nation that he foresees straddling the current border between the United States and Mexico:

The Republic of the North—he predicts its creation as “an inevitability”—would include all of the present U.S. states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, plus southern Colorado. Stretching from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, it would also include the northern tier of several current Mexican states (Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas), and its capital would probably be Los Angeles.

But Professor Truxillo is not a simple analyst making an “objective” prediction. Although he does not repudiate violence, he regards a civil war as “unlikely;” the creation of the Republic of the North may be accomplished through the political process. The “electoral pressure“ of the future Hispanic population throughout the region will be sufficient “not within the next 20 years but within 80 years”:

“I may not live to see the Hispanic homeland, but by the end of the century my students’ kids will live in it, sovereign and free.” Truxillo sees his chief task in developing a “cadre of intellectuals” who will start thinking about the practicalities of how the Republic of the North can become a reality.” It’s not unfeasible as a premise—and a realistic possibility when you consider global geopolitical trends. It could happen with the support of the U.S. government . . . We will one day be a majority and reclaim our birth right by any means necessary—and we shouldn’t shy away.”

And so, while a wholesale migratory invasion proceeds unabated at home, Washingtonians drool over the emerging global empire of their dreams. By handing Kosovo over to the KLA, they have given the budding Latino separatist movement a strong argument that an ethnic group should be allowed to secede because of superior numbers. The Truxillos of this world sense—even if they don’t quite understand—that the final fruit of empire is the death of the very people that takes the imperial path.