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Croatia President, Prime Minister Condemn Violence At Gay Pride Parade

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Croatia’s President and Prime Minister condemned violence at a gay pride parade on Saturday, while a party leader pointed fingers at Roman Catholic priests’ messaging during the Pope’s recent visit as a catalyst for the violence against gays and lesbians and their allies.

 

Just one day after the European Commission green lighted Croatia for European Union admission in 2013, violence marred Split, Croatia’s first LGBT Pride March, instigated by at least 4,000 to include as many as 10,000 violent protesters, who pounced upon 200 LGBT marchers by throwing fists, firecrackers, bottles and rocks, some wielded cigarette lighters, threw tomatoes and tear gas by a virulently anti-gay opposition, who came prepared to disrupt the first gay event in the notorious nationalist right-wing stronghold of 1,700-year old Split, Croatia.

Croatia’s President Ivo Josipovic condemned the violence and was joined by Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor, reports Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty this morning, Josipovic, the first Croatian president to formally endorse nationanl gay pride and LGBT rights last year, said that Split protesters have “shown that there are some non-European parts of our society and that the violence in Split was “not Croatia’s real face.”

Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor warned that violence and hatred were “something that cannot be tolerated in Croatia.”

Last year, Josipovic  became the first president in Croatian history to endorse and express his support for the national LGBT Pride celebration.

The Split-Dalmacia police department announced in a press conference following the Pride event that 137 persons were arrested, including 25 minors, and eight people required medical attention for injuries sustained, mostly members of the working, press, including a RTL cameraman, who suffered a concussion when hit with a brick and called a “Jew”.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IyxbrPqqmg&version=3&hl=en_US]

News organizations are also reporting this morning in Croatia Green Party leader AljoÅ¡a Babic is calling for the resignation of Tomislav Karamarko, the Minister of Internal Affairs, “because of the shameful conduct of police and security during Split Gay Pride.”

Babic added, “The Croatian tax payers do not pay the police to witness the scenes we’ve seen today in Split. [These] events are the result of  recent homophobic statements which were communicated by priests during the recent visit of the Pope.”

UK Gay News reports several “Croatian bishops have condemned what they call “unnatural families,” their term for same-sex headed households.

Babic also criticized President Ivo Josipović and Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor for not condemning the Vatican’s homophobic messages which were reported by the media, according to Babic.

Croatia, a deeply devout Roman Catholic country has historically had a nearly symbiotic relationship with with the Church that dates back to its darkest chapter during World War II while under occupation by the German Third Reich. Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac, a known collaborator and supporter of the  “Ustashe,” a Croatian nationalist movement that served as brutal proxies for the Nazis. Despite his conviction for war crimes in 1946,  Stepanac was beatified by Pope John Paul II, putting him on th p ath to “sainthood” (more on the Ustashe later).

Aloysius Stepanac was convicted of war crimes in 1946 and served 16 years in prison at hard labor.

Also condeming the violence was Amnesty International, who was the first international human rights organization,who said the violence was unacceptable. “The Croatian authorities need to act to stop this happening in future,” said Nicola Duckworth, the human right group’s director for Europe and Central Asia, urging an immediate investigation and punishment for the attackers.

According to Pride organizers, the parade participants totalled 200 people, mostly from Split, who were supported by 30 marchers from Belgrade, Serbia; Ljubljana, Slovenia; the Netherlands, among other European cities.

With extensive police barricades in place along the parade route, police reportedly deployed 400 uniformed officers and unknown numbers of officers in plain clothes, although Croatian LGBT activists criticized the government agencies who were responsible for maintaining public safety.

Police in full-riot gear, were outmatched by thousands of full-throated opposition, many of whom screamed “kill the gays,” “kill the Serbs,” and “kill the gypsies,” repeatedly. Signs carried by LGBT activists said “Lesbians are okay,” Lesbians Against Fascism,” and “My Partner, My Lover,” among others were defiantly displayed by the small minority.

In a report by Croatian Nacional newspaper, Sanja Juras, of the Croatian Lesbian group, Kontra, addressed the audience from the rally stage near the Split waterfront and accused police of not adequately protecting the protesters, consequently people were injured.

“State institutions have not done their job properly, and today’s rally in Split reflects that LGBT rights are not  guaranteed legal rights in Croatia,” Juras said.

Also speaking at the rally were European Parliament member Marije Coruielssen of the Netherlands,  a member of the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, Linda Frieman, co-chair of the European division of the International Lesbian and Gay Association, LGBT activists from Slovenia, the first and only Former Yugoslav republic to have joined the EU and, activists from Serbia, another Balkan country which has experienced at least a decade of violence against LGBT human rights activists who have yet to march, without significant violence occurring in Belgrade.

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

The violence against LGBT people in Split, Zagreb, Belgrade and Sarajevo did not manifest from a vacuum.  Wars were fought three times during the 20th century in the Balkans which have planted seeds of deep emnity, transmitted intergenerationally by members of ethnic groups and religious faiths–leaving scars all around that remain tangible in the body politic and  cultural memory.

Croatia fought two wars in the 1990s, led by extreme nationalist Franjo Tudjman, who merged his rule with an insurgent and nationalistic Roman Catholic Church, against former Yugoslavia, eventually securing independence from Belgrade, long imagined and sought for throughout the 20th century. Croatia fought a bloody war against Serbia, eventually repelling Serb forces who invaded Croatia in 1991.

Croatia later joined forces with the Bosnian Muslim-Croat Federation. who had declared independence from Belgrade  in March 1992.  Croatia and Bosnia jointly fought the Serbs who were pushed to stop the war by American diplomat Richard Holbrooke.  The parties signed a peace agreement in Dayton, Ohio in 1995 . Many horrible war crimes, including genocide and crimes against humanity, rape, torture and enslavement, occurred during the course of these wars, committed disproportionately by Serbian, Bosnian Serb and Croatian military and paramilitary members, many of whom have been prosecuted by the International Criminal Tribunal of the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

READ: Bosnian Serb General to Stand Trial for Crimes Against Humanity

But the recent wars are emotionally layered and political charged by unresolved events that occurred during World War II.  Croat nationalists established the Croat Revolutionary Movement, also known as the “Ustashe” who committed some of the worst excesses of World War II in its heinous and banal collaboration with Nazi Germany’s Third Reich.  These sordid events transpired during the Axis Powers occupation and annexation of Croatia (including the Split area) and of Bosnia and Herzegovina as far east as Banja Luka, the present capital the Bosnian Serb entity.

According to many historical accounts, Archbishop Stepanac was a partner and collaborator with  the Ustashe government.  He supported the Ustashi Government from the beginning until the end. Indeed, even after Ustashi Croatia collapsed following the disintegration of Nazi Germany.  Stepinac was not only the Head of the Council of Croatian Bishops and of the committee which carried out a policy of forcible conversions, he was none other than the Supreme Military Apostolic Vicar of the Ustashi Army, which is a major symbol of the Roman Catholic Church.

When Ustashi Croatia fell in 1945 as a result of the defeat of Nazi Germany and Ante Pavelic, the leader of the government ran for his life, Archbishop Stepinac, in a futile effort to save the regime, succeeded him as leader of the Ustashi Croatia. Stepinac ordered special ceremonies in all the Catholic churches on Pavelic’s birthday, and he frequently invoked prayers for the Ustashi.

Marshall Tito, who led the Partisan communisist in a civil war against the Croats and the Serb Chetniks, of the Serbian Renewal Movement, eventually defeating both parties and supported efforts by Allied Forces who invaded Italy and drove the Nazis from the Balkans. Tito formed the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia that he governed until his death in 1980.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yydmw-V3OxI&version=3&hl=en_US]

Since 1995, Croatia has been working its way toward achieving peace, interrupted at times on its path to Europe, which took a considerable leap when Tudjman died in 1999.  Through a series of good fortune and electing less nationalistic governments (although corruption remains an endemic problem for Croatia and throughout the region) that rid itself of the hardline political party Croatian Democratic Union and has worked assiduously during the past six years toward achieving required legal and financial reforms necessary for European Union accession.

EU accession requires the decriminalization of existing sodomy laws and adoption of anti-discrimination laws, including  employment anti-discrimination protection. This leverage over the accession process has advanced LGBT organizing throughout hte Balkans to mitigated success.

But it has always been two steps forward, one step back for Croatia, whose efforts to arrest war criminals has been resisted by many in the populace, who view some of these generals as “heroes”. In April two former Croatian generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac were sentenced for war crimes committed in 1995.  Gotovina had been a fugitive for many years when he was arrested in Spain in 2006, although thousands turned out in Split in protest over his extradition to ICTY.

Thus last Friday, the European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso announced that “today is a special day for Croatia and for the European Union.“  Barroso also said: “At this significant moment, I would like to applaud the Croatian authorities for their hard work over the last years. Even more importantly, I would like to congratulate the people of Croatia. Joining the EU family of nations is first and foremost your success!”

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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Senator Suggests Trump Engaging in ‘Stochastic Terrorism’ Amid Pet-Eating Immigrant Lies

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September 13, 2024

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Donald Trump is on his fourth day of promoting his false claim that 20,000 undocumented Haitian migrants were dumped on Springfield, Ohio and have destroyed the townsfolk’s way of life, including by stealing people’s pet cats and dogs and eating them. Now, one U.S. Senator is suggesting the Republican presidential nominee is using “stochastic terrorism” to help his flailing presidential campaign.

A bomb threat and another, unspecified threat forced several Springfield elementary schools and one middle school to evacuate or not open Thursday and Friday. On Thursday, the Springfield city hall was evacuated and shut down, as were some state motor vehicle offices.

The emailed bomb threat on Thursday echoed Donald Trump’s and U.S. Senator JD Vance’s racist lies.

“My hometown of Springfield is becoming a thirdworld (expletive) because you allowed the federal government to dump these (expletive) here,” the email stated, USA Today reports. “We have Haitians eating our animals and then you lie and claim this is not happening when we see this happening. I’m here to send a message, I placed a bomb in the following locations…”

RELATED: ‘Hell Isn’t Hot Enough’: Fury at Trump as More School Evacuations Follow ‘Pet-Eating’ Lies

During Tuesday’s presidential debate Trump had falsely said: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

On Thursday he used the lie to promote the candidacy of a Republican seeking to unseat Ohio Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown.

And on Friday, despite the bomb threat and other unspecified threat, Trump said in a press conference he would travel to Springfield and vowed to do “large deportations” from that city and send the legal immigrants he removes to Venezuela.

The “20,000 illegal Haitian migrants” are reported 12,000 to 15,000, ABC News reports, and they are not “illegal.” They are in the country legally, and the town as far back as a decade ago resolved to invite immigrants to help rebuild their failing economy and businesses.

Also on Friday, while reportedly not repeating the racist pet-eating lie, Trump dismissed the bomb threats as unimportant.

U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) is not dismissing them, but he is asking how anyone could function again under a Trump presidency, and suggesting Trump is engaging in stochastic terrorism.

RELATED: Loomer Invokes Hannibal Lecter as Trump Triples Down on Lies About Immigrants Eating Pets

“Think about what it would be like to have four years of a President engaging in overtly racist stochastic terrorism against people pursuing the American dream and then just ask yourself what your immigrant grandparents would want you to do. Kids deserve to go to school safely,” Senator Schatz wrote.

Wajahat Ali is a New York Times contributing op-ed writer, Daily Beast columnist, and author of “Go Back to Where You Came From.” Responding to the news Friday of more school evacuations, Ali wrote: “Stochastic terrorism thanks to Trump and Vance.”

Mother Jones’s D.C. bureau chief David Corn, an MSNBC analyst, also noted: “Trump and Vance incite. Look up stochastic terrorism.”

And Mother Jones on X posted: “Days after Trump went on a racist rant during the presidential debate, the city of Springfield, Ohio, received a bomb threat that was explicitly hostile to immigrants and Haitians. This further proves that Trump’s demonizing rhetoric portends violence.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump Faces Increasing Calls to Participate in Second Debate

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‘Hell Isn’t Hot Enough’: Fury at Trump as More School Evacuations Follow ‘Pet-Eating’ Lies

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September 13, 2024

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For the second day in a row, elementary school children in Springfield, Ohio, were forced to be evacuated due to threats: a bomb threat on Thursday and an unspecified threat on Friday. The threats come after Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio U.S. Senator JD Vance, have repeatedly spread lies about Haitian immigrants in Springfield this week, including that they are stealing residents’ cats and dogs and eating them.

Thursday’s bomb threat specifically mentioned the false claims about Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets, USA Today reported.

“Three schools in Springfield were evacuated or closed Friday, based on guidance from police, school officials said,” local NBC affiliate WLWT reports. “Officials with the Springfield City School District said that based on information they got from the Springfield Police Division, students at Perrin Woods and Snowhill Elementary were evacuated and moved to another district location.”

A Springfield middle school was also ordered closed Friday morning, before classes began, and “at least one Springfield location of the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles is closed.”

READ MORE: ‘Screaming About Eating Cats Is Not a Solution’: Walz Rallies Michigan Crowd, Slams Trump

On Thursday, a bomb threat targeting Springfield city hall and an elementary school forced evacuations of those buildings.

“Police Chief Allison Elliott said that due to the seriousness of the threat, officials evacuated multiple buildings in addition to City Hall, including BMV Springfield Driver’s Exam Station, Ohio License Bureau Southside, Springfield Academy of Excellence and Fulton Elementary School.”

Despite the reports of the bomb threat on Thursday, hours later Donald Trump used his Truth Social platform to promote the Republican nominee working to unseat Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, by spreading more anti-Haitian immigrant racism.

“Bernie Moreno has a very good chance of winning Ohio against a Radical Left Democrat, Sherrod Brown, with what is happening in Springfield, and other parts of the State,” Trump declared Thursday afternoon, referring to the far-right extremist Republican who is currently leading in the polls by low single digits.

Trump then invoked his racist Haitian immigrant lies.

“Ohio is being inundated with Illegal Migrants, mostly from Haiti, who are taking over Towns and Villages at a level and rate never seen before.”

On Truth Social, Trump on Thursday also posted memes of cats, including one with them holding a sign that says, “Don’t let them eat us, vote for Trump.”

RELATED: Loomer Invokes Hannibal Lecter as Trump Triples Down on Lies About Immigrants Eating Pets

During Tuesday’s presidential debate, Trump had falsely claimed, “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

USA Today also reported that the “false rumor that Haitian migrants were stealing and eating pets began to circulate in the days leading up to the debate and was further popularized through posts from running mate J.D. Vance about his own state and AI-generated images shared by Trump, Elon Musk and the Republican House Judiciary Committee.”

J.J. Abbott, former press secretary to then-Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, responded to ABC News immigration reporter Armando Tonatiuh Torres-García’s viral social media post reporting Friday’s threat and evacuations:

“In 2018, the GOP and Trump’s anti-immigrant conspiracies led to the deadliest mass shooting in recent PA history at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. The gunman took him seriously and literally. There’s nothing funny or intriguing about this dangerous racism.”

Many others responded to that reporter’s post.

“No sanitizing this. @jdvance and @realDonaldTrump bear full responsibility. They’re promoters of terrorism; and they did it intentionally,” wrote columnist, reporter, and former editor in chief of Crooked Media Brian Beutler.

“Ohio should look at this insanity and vote accordingly. Conspiracy peddling has real consequences. You can’t unring that bell. Donald Trump and JD Vance don’t care,” noted constitutional law professor and political scientist Anthony Michael Kreis.

“Donald Trump and JD Vance are terrorizing schoolchildren. They are unfit for any public office, let alone the highest,” responded attorney Andrew L. Seidel.

“JD Vance and MAGA influencers whipped up a blood libel panic and now children in Springfield are being traumatized by their lies. Hell isn’t hot enough,” commented the co-executive director of the progressive group Indivisible, Leah Greenberg.

“There’s a line from Charlottesville to Jan 6 to this. Trump speaks, his supporters act,” wrote political analyst and researcher Arieh Kovler.

“Trump could stop this but he won’t because he believes it serves his interests. It’s the same J6 behavior of spreading false conspiracy theories to inflame his supporters and then sitting back and watching instead of stopping it,” noted political science professor Michael McDonald.

READ MORE: Trump Faces Increasing Calls to Participate in Second Debate

 

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‘Screaming About Eating Cats Is Not a Solution’: Walz Rallies Michigan Crowd, Slams Trump

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September 13, 2024

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Minnesota Governor and Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz took aim at Donald Trump Thursday night at a rally in the battleground state of Michigan, where the Harris campaign is leading the ex-president by an average of less than two points.

The Detroit News’ Craig Mauger posted a photo of the overflow crowd at the Grand Rapids Public Museum:

Gov. Walz’s speech (full video here) was decidedly down-home and neighborly, but he had no trouble going on the attack as well.

He told the audience that their friends and neighbors had watched Tuesday night’s presidential debate, during which Trump had lied that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are “eating the dogs” and “eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

Walz did not denigrate Trump supporters. Instead, he said that after the debate, “I don’t hear them out there much. I don’t see them out there much. They’re a little bit – because they’re good people. They’re our neighbors. They’re like, ‘that didn’t look very presidential.’ Screaming about eating cats is not a solution. It’s not a solution.”

RELATED: Loomer Invokes Hannibal Lecter as Trump Triples Down on Lies About Immigrants Eating Pets

“Well,” Walz continued, “what Kamala Harris was talking about is things that you actually care about. They might not be sitting down at the bar talking about banning books, but they might down there be talking about, ‘how can I afford a house? I’m working hard. I’m working hard. I want to have a house,’ and because that house becomes a home to some of these folks. Your real estate mogul, venture capitalist, whatever, that’s just an asset to be traded and sold to whoever you want. For us, it’s a place we gather around the kitchen table to talk to our kids about what happened in school. That’s what Kamala Harris wants for you. That’s what she wants for you.”

The 60-year old governor who is the only one of the four candidates on either ticket with a positive net approval rating (Harris comes in second), focused on midwestern values.

“What I am most proud of is because of all the things Donald Trump has stolen and all the things he did, what is unforgivable, is him stealing our joy. So here’s the thing, Kamala Harris is bringing not only solutions that focus on you. She’s doing it with a smile and joy on her face.”

“This guy, this guy on purpose, and make no mistake, it’s on purpose. He broke our political system. He tried to break our faith in one another. He tried to break the thing that makes Midwesterners stick together. We’re positive people, for God’s sakes. We walk on water half the year, we have to be it’s cold as hell,” Walz said. “We don’t care. We dig our neighbors out. This guy is trying to tell you your neighbors the enemy. This guy’s trying to tell you that he knows best about what folks in Grand Rapids need. Well, trust me, nothing could be further from the truth.”

“So here’s the deal, we’re nice folks. We’ll dig you out after a snow storm. We’ll say ‘hi’ at the store. Some of us might even let you merge on the highway. Not all of us,” he joked. “We have a saying for that. It’s Minnesota Nice, is what we call it. I’m sure you have it too. But the one thing I’ll tell you about Midwesterners that stretches across that beautiful blue wall of Northern America here, the one thing about us is, don’t ever mistake our kindness for weakness.”

READ MORE: Multiple-Location Bomb Threat Follows Trump and Vance’s False Dog-Eating Immigrants Claims

Walz also went after school shootings while reassuring supporters Democrats support the Second Amendment.

“Leaves are changing,” Walz said, as The Detroit News reported. “Friday night football’s back. Our kids have a new start and they’re going in. It’s a time of excitement and hope. Everything we want. That’s what we want for our kids.”

“But too many of our kids, these first days of school, are a time of sheer terror. A time that is going to stick with them forever,” he said, referencing school shootings.

“I know guns, you know guns,” he said. “Kamala Harris is a gun owner, by the way, which you found out. I’m not going to take any crap (from Republicans) about the Second Amendment. We support the Second Amendment.”

“But our first responsibility,” Walz continued, “is keeping our children safe. And you can have both.”

He also referred to shootings as “that crap,” and reminded the crowd that it “does not happen in other places in the world.”

Walz, a former U.S. Congressman who served for 24 years in the U.S. Armed Forces, called Donald Trump a “criminal.” Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in New York for business fraud in an attempt to subvert the 2016 election.

He told the crowd Vice President Harris’s debate performance should have not been a surprise.

“She took on the predators. She took on the fraudsters,” Walz said. “She took down career criminals and powerful corporate interests, which, by the way, was on the stage the other night, all those things so, so this time, just to be clear, that criminal being on the stage got put in his place.”

“And this is what true leadership looks like. And she says this time and time again, and I love it. A mark of true leadership is not who beats people down, it’s who lifts people up, who lifts them up. So so when it’s a bully, and there’s a time she proved she can beat some people down if they need it.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump Faces Increasing Calls to Participate in Second Debate

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