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Belgrade Gay Pride Banned By Serbian Government To Avoid “Major Chaos”

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The Serbian government bans the Belgrade Pride Parade for “security reasons,” but in the final analysis, President Boris Tadic is the biggest loser. By making this decision, Tadic limits his domestic political options at home while distancing himself from European supporters.

The Serbian government’s National Security Council announced Friday that it could not effectively protect LGBTI participants and their allies for Sunday’s planned Belgrade Gay Pride march and declared the march effectively banned.

Ivica Dacic, Serbia’s Minister of the Interior said that its crack police force was not capable of maintaining public order and that the Gay Pride march had been banned to avoid “major chaos” including property destruction and disturbance of public order and peace.”

 


“Serbia stood up to the Nazis, but they can’t stand up to the Neo-Nazis?”


 

The Ministry also prohibited planned protests opposing Belgrade Pride by Serbian ultra nationalist groups, including Obraz, Nasi 1389 and the Movement of 1389, all supported by the Serbian Orthodox Church and  all played a major role in last year’s violence that marred 2010 Belgrade Pride.

Obraz is committed to a struggle against those groups which it views as enemies of the Serbian people, which includes homosexuals.

President Boris Tadic said that the Pride parade was being prohibited to protect LGBT persons. The Belgrade Pride Committee reluctantly announced it would comply with the directive.

“We will not invite people to the streets because of the ban on holding the parade,” said Goran Miletić, an Organizing Committee member for Belgrade Pride, according to a B-92 News report.

Miletić responded to The New Civil Rights Movement request for an updated statement, offering, “We are still in shock and doing actions with our guests, but will try to give a new statement shortly.”

Dacic issued an official decision on Friday disallowing the Belgrade parade and rally permit that was posted to the official Pride Parade website without comment under the title of “Official Ban.”  The police directorate stated, “it was determined that conflicting circumstances from Article 11, Paragraph 1 of the Law on Gathering of citizens of RS [Republic of Serbia] i.e. that during the meeting [Pride] there may appear obstruction of public transport, endangering health, public moral or safety of individuals and properties.”

The decision was not posted to the Government of Serbia’s websites which are maintained in the Cyrillic Serbian and Latinic alphabets and an English language website.

The Serbian government’s decision to ban Belgrade Gay Pride was not welcomed by European Union (EU) officials in Brussels, especially EU officials who have been supporting Serbia’s application to become an EU accession candidate. In fact, Ambassador Vincent Degert, Head of the EU Delegation to Serbia, was reported to have urged the government to respect freedom of speech and assembly and to hold the march and rally, despite announced intentions by ultra nationalists, who marred last year’s Pride event with violence that resulted in nearly 200 police injured on Belgrade’s streets and more than 150 protesters were arrested.

READ:  Belgrade Gay Pride Marchers Attacked By Violent Anti-Gay Demonstrators In Historic Parade

Ulrike Lunacek, an Austrian MEP and  co-president of the European Parliament’s all-party LGBT ‘Intergroup’ and substitute member of the South Eastern Europe delegation, said the cancellation was “profoundly disturbing that Serbian citizens will not be able to  march for tolerance, acceptance and equality on Sunday.”

In a press statement Lunacek said, “I deeply regret that Serbian citizens will not be able to march for tolerance, acceptance and equality on Sunday. The Serbian authorities have a duty to care for everyone’s safety, but it is profoundly disturbing that the leadership of a country seeking EU candidate status and membership – supported by a majority in the European Parliament – feel incapable of providing such safety for all citizens.”

“The government has to be much, much stricter towards extremists whipping up violence in the country. A society that cannot express itself for fear of violence is not a free, democratic society,” she added.

Serbia dramatically advanced its potential candidacy for EU accession in May when it arrested Ratko Mladic, a former Bosnian Serb Army general, an indicted war criminal and 16-year fugitive, who had been wanted since July 1995 for the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

READ:  Bosnian Serb General Mladic To Stand Trial for  Crimes Against Humanity

But Serbia’s latest move in canceling Belgrade Gay Pride, follows consistently unhelpful actions in Bosnia and Kosovo and calls into question its political will and actual competence to carry through on EU requirements for accession, including protecting the lives of all its citizens, especially its national minorities and LGBTI persons.

Ivo Skoric, a Balkan expert and correspondent for H-Alter.com (Croatia Alternative) said that the banning of Belgrade Gay Pride was a “sign of weakness–not strength, by the Serbian government.”

“Either they [the police] are weak and incapable of doing their jobs, or they themselves are members or sympathetic to Obraz and 1389 Nasi,” he said.

Given Serbia’s storied historical past in fighting the  fascists and the Third Reich during World War II, Skoric sees the contemporary Serbian government’s inability to battle and control the ultra Neo-Nazi leaning nationalists as a curious failing.

“What happened to them since the 1940s?” Skoric asked. “They stood up to the Nazis, but they can’t stand up to the Neo-Nazis, who are a mere shadow of the past.”

Serbia’s “foreign policy” dalliances with Bosnia’s Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb entity and its overt support for guerilla type insurgencies by Kosovar Serbs in Kosovo, a recently declared independent country, underscores Serbia’s absurd first rail of contemporary Serbian politics–that it will never give up Kosovo , illustrated by a special graphic on the Serbian government website that states “Kosovo is Serbia”.  (Kosovo is a former autonomous province of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, dominated by a majority of Kosovar Albanians and is the geographical capital of Serbian Orthodox churches, monasteries and the location of Kosovo Polje, where Serbs were massacred by the Ottoman Turks in June 1389).

During the past year, violence has riddled Gay Pride events in Moscow and also in Split, Croatia. But in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, Gay Pride was held without incident in June and its organizers had a historical first face-t0-face supportive  meeting with President Ivo Josipovic.

 READ: Croatia President, Prime Minister Condemn Violence At Gay Pride Parade

On the eve of Belgrade’s Pride weekend, EU members of Parliament expressed their deep regret in Serbia’s actions prohibiting the march and rally.

In Belgrade, Slovene Jelko Kacin MEP and the European Parliament Rapporteur for Serbia’s accession and member of the LGBT Human Rights Intergroup, said, “The decision to ban Pride Parade is a sovereign decision of the Serbian Government and the National Security Council. I receive such a decision with deep regret; as a matter of fact, it deprives citizens of the constitutional and legal right to free expression and peaceful assembly. A state seeking to access the EU must guarantee the human rights of its citizens. I have come to Belgrade to give my full support the pride’s organisers.”

A press release indicated that the parliamentary members will take note of this weekend’s events in its upcoming accession report for Serbia, planned for early 2012. Those final words are an ominous ones for Tadic. In refusing to confront domestic radicals and subsequently embracing ultra nationalists, he has alienated his pro-Western Serbian voters at home and sent confusing, if not enraging signals to Europeans, who have been cheering him on from Brussels. Now, Tadic’s once thought to be golden halo has been exposed to sizzling hot air, producing a tarnished outcome.

 

Tanya L. Domi is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University who teaches about human rights in Eurasia and is a Harriman Institute affiliated faculty member. Prior to teaching at Columbia, Domi worked internationally for more than a decade on issues related to democratic transitional development, including political and media development, human rights, gender issues, sex trafficking, and media freedom.

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‘War Is Peace’: White House’s Navarro Mocked Over Claim Tariffs Are ‘Tax Cuts’

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Peter Navarro, Senior Counselor to the President for Trade and Manufacturing, says the White House likes “where we’re at” with tariffs—which he insists are “tax cuts,” despite broad disagreement from economists. Navarro also says President Trump’s tariffs have brought in $100 billion in six months, but he also insists that that money is paid by foreign countries. Ultimately, tariffs are generally paid—at least in part—by consumers, as higher prices for imported goods or for domestic products that rely on imported components.

Speaking to Fox News on Thursday (videos below), Navarro said, “when we put tariffs on the foreign countries, particularly the ones that depend on us the most, they have to eat the tariffs.”

“So tariffs, they’re not tax hikes, they’re tax cuts,” Navarro insisted.

“We’ve had $100 billion so far we raised in six months. We’re gonna have trillions over the ten years, and that’s going to pay for the big, beautiful bill. Tax cuts and debt reduction by the tune of about $2 trillion.”

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“We like where we’re at,” he claimed.

Navarro also insisted that “the reason why tariffs don’t cause negative impacts like inflation is because these countries, they depend so heavily on us. Europe, China, go around the world. They just live, they feast off us with unfair trade practices.”

“When we say, ‘No, you can’t come in unless you pay this tariff,’ they got to eat the tariff,” he again insisted, neglecting to state that the importer, and, ultimately, the consumer, pays most or all of the cost of the tariffs.

FactCheck.org, analyzing some of Navarro’s claims on tariffs back in April, reported that “tariffs, also known as customs duties, are a tax increase on the U.S. importers who pay the tariffs – not foreign countries. And because those importers often pass at least some of those costs on to U.S. consumers through price hikes, tariffs are considered to be regressive taxes that affect lower-income households more than others as a percentage of income.”

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Responding to Navarro’s claim that tariffs are tax cuts, journalist Aaron Rupar, founder of Public Notice, wrote: “War is peace.”

Professor of Law Joseph Mastrosimone wrote: “Good lord this man is insanely stupid. And he is a senior White House Counselor. Right on brand.”

Joe Walsh, the former GOP congressman turned political commentator and a Democrat, called Navarro’s claim: “Utter b——-.”

Watch the videos below or at this link.

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‘Trust in Trump’: White House Touts ‘Incredible’ Economy as Inflation Jumps

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White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is crediting President Donald Trump with what she described as an “incredible economic turnaround in just six months.” However, inflation continues to rise under his administration, and the data she cited highlighted only a selective set of favorable economic indicators.

Americans “saw prices for new and used vehicles and airfares dropped last month,” Leavitt enthusiastically declared on Thursday during a press briefing.

“In addition, prices for gas, fuel oil, energy commodities, hotels, airfare, public transportation, and fresh vegetables are all down over last year,” she claimed.

“As we said all along, trust in President Trump. The American dream is back and everyday families are already reaping the benefits of this incredible economic turnaround in just six months.”

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Her statements highlighted positive data while leaving out ongoing inflation concerns.

Prices for new and used vehicles did drop last month, but both are up over the past 12 months: 0.2% for new vehicles and a hefty 2.8% for used cars and trucks, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks all these items and publishes the monthly inflation rate.

Overall, inflation last month rose to an annual rate of 2.7%, the highest level in months.

The cost of food is up 3% over last year. Electricity is up 5.8% over last year, and utility (piped) gas service is up a massive 14.2% over last year.

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Shelter is up 3.8%, and medical and transportation services are both up 3.4% over last year.

Economists cite the President’s tariffs, now beginning to take effect, along with rising costs for food, energy, and rent as the reasons for the increase in inflation.

The White House appears to be attempting to head off public concern.

“Worsening inflation poses a political challenge for President Donald Trump, who promised during last year’s presidential campaign to immediately lower costs,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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‘Fear Is the Tool of the Tyrant’: Maurene Comey, Fired by Trump DOJ, Sounds Alarm

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Maurene Comey, the veteran federal prosecutor who led the cases against Jeffrey Epstein and his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, was fired Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Justice amid a sweeping Trump administration scandal over its refusal to release the so-called Epstein files. Now, she has a few words of advice for her former colleagues at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan.

“If a career prosecutor can be fired without reason, fear may seep into the decisions of those who remain,” wrote Comey, in a letter obtained by Politico. “Do not let that happen.”

Maurene Comey served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and is the daughter of the also-fired former FBI Director James Comey, who reportedly is under investigation by the Trump DOJ.

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“Fear is the tool of a tyrant, wielded to suppress independent thought. Instead of fear, let this moment fuel the fire that already burns at the heart of this place. A fire of righteous indignation at abuses of power. Of commitment to seek justice for victims. Of dedication to truth above all else.”

Also in her letter, which Politico’s Kyle Cheney posted (below), Comey wrote: “Yesterday was unexpectedly my last day in the Office. I was summarily fired via memo from Main Justice that did not give a reason for my termination. Every person lucky enough to work in this office constantly hears four words to describe our ethos: Without Fear or Favor. Do the right thing, the right way, for the right reasons without fear of retribution and without favor to the powerful.”

“For the majority of my nearly ten years in SDNY, the hard part seemed to be acting ‘without favor.’ That is, making sure people with access, money, and power were not treated differently than anyone else; and making sure this office remained separate from politics and focused only on the facts and the law,” she explained. “Fear was never really conceivable. We don’t fear bad press; we have the luxury of exceptional security keeping us physically safe; and, so long as we did our work with integrity, we would get to keep serving the public in this office.”

She lamented, “we have entered a new phase where ‘without fear’ may be the challenge.”

Read Comey’s letter below or at this link.

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Image via Reuters

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