RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18606/putin-nationalism-disease

Putin would have been wiser to focus on his strategy of using Russian culture and the post-Soviet economic boom as means of strengthening the cohesion of the federation. By embarking on an adventure that offers no obvious gain, he may have awakened the very nationalism, and mini-nationalisms, that he labeled “a disease.”

“I am not Russian!” This is the message on a new T-shirt that it is reportedly selling like hot cakes in Kazan, capital of the autonomous Republic of Tatarstan. A different version, bearing the slogan “I am not Russian, Love me!” is doing well in Ufa, capital of Bashkortostan, another autonomous republic within the Russian Federation.

The message the makers and wearers of the T-shirts wish to pass is that Vladimir Putin’s war may have the support of the Russian majority but should not lead to universal dislike of “other nations” within the sprawling federation.

The same message is relayed through social media and by a growing number of ethnic Russian citizens of the federation now seeking shelter, at least temporarily, in Turkey, Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

No one knows how the Ukraine adventure might end for Putin. But, no matter how it ends, it could affect the delicate, not to say fragile, modus vivendi forged in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Empire among the “nations” of the federation.

A clear victory could rekindle the smoldering ashes of Russian nationalism, or “the Great Russian Chauvinism” as Lenin described it. Putin himself has warned against the return of that “monster” on a number of occasions, depicting nationalism as “a disease.”

According to Putin, the fall of the USSR pushed the country “to the edge of civil war,” something that President Boris Yeltsin managed to deal with through a series of compromises with the “nations” that remained in the newly minted federation.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18605/pakistan-blasphemy-death-sentence

They were accused of posting blasphemous contents on the internet… Judge Javed Iqbal Bosal sentenced them to death, with a 100,000 rupee (USD $719) fine.

The brothers have maintained their innocence, and say the allegations came after a fight had broken out between Qaiser Ayub’s Muslim friends over one of the friend’s sisters.

“This will be the 3rd case of blasphemy which will be heard by the supreme court. We still believe that the brothers are innocent and it has not been proved that they had published any blasphemous contents.” — Nasir Saeed, director of CLAAS-UK.

Lynching and vigilante justice have become everyday phenomena in Pakistan. Because of the government’s inaction and support from hardline religious groups, criminals are encouraged and continue killing innocent people with impunity.

Those who take the law into their own hands are considered heroes, as we have seen in the case of Punjab Province Governor Salman Taseer, who was murdered by his own bodyguard, Malik Mumtaz Qadri. Every time Qadri attended a court hearing, people would shower rose petals on him…

The Pakistani government is aware of its misuse but has unfortunately failed to bring any changes to the law or stop its misuse.

On June 8, the Lahore High Court in Pakistan upheld the death sentence of two Christian brothers, Qaiser Ayub and Amoon Ayub, in a blasphemy case.

They were accused of posting blasphemous contents on the internet; in June 2011, the complainant, Muhammad Saeed, submitted an application at the police station in Talagang to register a case against the Ayub brothers.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18607/christians-murdered-in-church

Where is the outcry? When an Australian, Brenton Tarrant, attacked two mosques and killed 51 Muslims in 2019 in New Zealand, the world stood in condemnation; the hand-wringing has not stopped since. The United Nations responded to that lone and aberrant attack by inaugurating a “combat Islamophobia” initiative. Where, after years and decades of being attacked, are the UN initiatives to “combat anti-Semitism” and to “combat Christian genocide”?

Ignoring the murder of Christians is, of course, only one piece of the puzzle; covering up the religious identity of their murderers is the other. In describing last Sunday’s massacre of more than 50 Christians, the words “Muslim,” “Islam,” or even “Islamist” never appeared in the AP report. Rather, we are told that “It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack on the church.”

To maintain this ambiguity, the AP failed to point out that Islamic terrorists have routinely stormed churches and slaughtered many Christians over the years in Nigeria — a fact that might just offer a hint as to “who was behind the attack.”

All the UN seems interested in doing is sitting by and watching its members violate its regulations… The UN ignores unspeakable crimes against humanity such as slavery or China’s lies about the human-to-human transmissibility of COVID-19, while instead wrongfully persecuting Israel, a democracy that actually upholds human rights for all its citizens — whether Muslim, Jewish or Christian.

So, what will the UN and other large governmental bodies do now in response to the shooting up of yet another church and murder of more than 50 Christians? Probably nothing — apart from trying to silence whoever tries to expose the ideology that many of the murderers say drives them. We know this because the UN and many members of the clergy have done absolutely nothing in response to the countless other Muslim attacks on churches that have claimed thousands of Christian lives over the years — except for trying to cover up the motivation of the murderers, as in “high on cannabis” or the “mental illness defense.”

Worse, the Biden administration’s response to the jihadist onslaught against Christians in Nigeria — where 13 Christians are slaughtered every day — has been to remove Nigeria from the State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern: nations which engage in, or tolerate violations of, religious freedom.

Where is the outrage? Where are the “hashtags” in support of Christian Nigerians? Why don’t these black lives matter?

Last Sunday, June 5, 2022, Islamic terrorists stormed St. Francis Catholic Church in Ondo State, Nigeria, and massacred more than 50 Christians who were peacefully worshipping their God. Videos, according to one report, “showed church worshippers lying in pools of blood while people around them wailed.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18599/turkey-targeting-iraq-syria-cyprus-greece

This means that Turkey will once again attack Kurds in Syria in an attempt to push them out of the region and claim their lands. These Kurdish groups that Erdogan labels “terrorists,” however, just so happen to be US allies who fought ISIS.

Erdogan has publicly claimed parts of northern Syria, and Sinjar and Kirkuk in Iraq as part of Turkey in his dream for a new Ottoman Empire. In 2016, for instance, he referred to Misak-ı Milli (“the National Pact”), which contains six decisions about the borders of the Ottoman Empire made by the last term of the Ottoman Parliament in 1920. The National Pact includes claims to parts of Iraq and Syria. “We have responsibilities in accordance with Misak-ı Milli,” Erdogan said. “Concerning ourselves with Iraq, Syria, Libya, Crimea, Karabakh, Bosnia and other brother regions is both a duty and a right of Turkey.”

Meanwhile, Erdogan’s expansionist policies keep targeting Iraq, Greek islands in the Aegean Sea and the Turkish-occupied northern part of the Republic of Cyprus, among other places.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s latest military offensive, named “Operation Claw Lock,” against northern Iraq (including the majority Kurdish-populated regions) is still ongoing.

Turkey, under Erdogan, has become an increasingly destabilizing force in the region, and will presumably keep on destabilizing it until it is stopped.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is at it, disrupting the region again. This time, he is threatening aggression not only against Greek islands, but also actually attacking the Kurds in northern Syria and Iraq as well as the Yazidis in their homeland of Sinjar, Iraq.