RUTHFULLY YOURS

A Look Back at this Croatia-News-Heavy Month…in Election Year 2008

Restaurant honours mass murderer (Herald Sun, April 13, 2008)

An acclaimed Melbourne restaurant has sparked multi-ethnic outrage for paying homage to a fascist warlord and mass murderer.

The plush Katarina Zrinski restaurant attached to Footscray’s Croatian Club has been branded “disgusting” for its celebration of genocidal World War II Croatian leader Ante Pavelic.

Pavelic, who historians say was responsible for the deaths of up to 500,000 Jews, Serbs, Muslims and gypsies, has been described as the Heinrich Himmler of the Croatian nation.

The popular restaurant during the week displayed a big portrait of Pavelic on its wall and T-shirts depicting Pavelic for sale at the bar.

The T-shirts also showed two commanders of the Ustashe’s notorious Black Legion, which murdered thousands of civilians, and Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, who was jailed for collaborating with the Ustashe.

Drinkers at the bar were also toasting “The Poglavnik” – the name fascists use for their Fuhrer – and on Thursday the restaurant commemorated Hitler’s establishment of the puppet state of Croatia on April 10, 1941.

On Tuesday the restaurant was reviewed in a Melbourne newspaper’s food section, with its “large, airy downstairs dining room perfect for large, extended family groups”.

Dr Bob Miller, a Balkans expert at the Australian National University, has hit out at the club’s feting of Pavelic.

“It’s disgusting. This would be the equivalent to the German community honouring Himmler,” he said.

“Even the Nazis found the Ustashe regime’s actions so brutal as to be counter-productive.”

Serbians in Victoria have also expressed their distress.

“How can they do this?” George Marinkovic, publisher of the Serb Voice, said.

“Can someone explain this? We are in one beautiful country and you are going back and promoting fascists from the Hitler era. I cannot understand it.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has granted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s demand for the criminal prosecution of comedian Jan Böhmermann, for a poem he wrote insulting Erdogan. Böhmermann is accused of violating a German law forbidding the “slander of institutions and officials of foreign states” — an offense carrying a penalty of up to five years in prison.

Erdogan once acquitted Sudanese President Omar al Bashir of genocide allegations: “Muslims cannot carry out genocide.” Erdogan was expressing an attitude widespread among German politicians and journalists: crimes are not crimes when Muslims commit them. Rarely is a Muslim despot or demagogue criticized in Germany; meanwhile no one has inhibitions about vilifying Christianity.

The signal that the German federal government has repeatedly sent to Turkey: We are totally dependent on and cannot live without Turkey. Is it really a surprise that Erdogan’s megalomania is increasing?

“The ‘cultural sensitivity’ practiced in liberal societies has nothing to do with sensitivity or thoughtfulness. It arises from the fear of violence.” — Henryk M. Broder, journalist and author.

Who would have thought that there is still a law in Germany that makes “lèse majesté” (offending the dignity of a monarch) a punishable crime? And that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is now benefiting from just that — and that it could plunge Germany into a (further) “national crisis.”

The terms “national crisis” and “governmental crisis” have been coming up again and again. In light of all the massive problems Germany has, this one is about a poem in which a cabaret performer and comedian, Jan Böhmermann, recently insulted the Turkish President. Erdogan has called for Böhmermann’s head and, as of last week, has Chancellor Merkel on his side.

The story began in March, when a German regional television station aired a music video during a satirical show, in which repression and human rights violations under Erdogan were pilloried in a humorous way. The Turkish government summoned the German ambassador and demanded that the video be removed from the internet and never be shown again. Germans thereby learned that the German ambassador is regularly summoned to Ankara — three times so far this year. According to reports, the Turkish government once complained about teaching material in Saxony’s schools that dealt with the Armenian genocide.

The Palestinian jubilation over yesterday’s terror bombing in Jerusalem, the first of its kind since the suicide bombings during the Second Intifada more than a decade ago, is yet another reminder of the growing radicalization among Palestinians.

The major obstacle to peace with Israel remains the absence of education for peace with Israel. In fact, it is safe to say that there never was a real attempt on the part of Palestinian leaders and factions to prepare their people for peace with Israel. On the contrary, the message they send to their people remains extremely anti-Israel.

This casts doubt on the Palestinian leadership’s and people’s willingness to move toward peace and coexistence with Israel.

Shortly after the Jerusalem bus terror explosion attack on April 18, a number of Palestinian factions rushed to issue statements applauding the “heroic operation” and urging Palestinians to pursue the path of armed struggle against Israel.

The Palestinian jubilation over the terror attack, the first of its kind since the suicide bombings during the Second Intifada more than a decade ago, is yet another reminder of the growing radicalization among Palestinians. This radicalization is mostly attributed to the ongoing anti-Israel incitement and indoctrination by various Palestinian factions and leaders.

Not surprisingly, the first Palestinian group to applaud the Jerusalem bus attack was Hamas.

Russia’s military has been much more aggressive and even reckless over the past few weeks, stunting over and around U.S. forces. Those stunts happened, almost simultaneously, with more dangerous Russian moves in supplying Iranian and Hezbollah terrorist forces with enormously capable anti-air and anti-missile systems.

Last Monday and Tuesday, two Russian Su-24 fighter-bombers made mock attacks against the USS Donald Cook, a destroyer in international waters in the Baltic Sea. On neither occasion were the aircraft visibly armed, nor did they answer radio calls from the ship. During the Tuesday incident, one made a pass that took it to within about fifty feet above the ship.

On Thursday, a Russian Su-27 fighter did a barrel roll around an Air Force RC-135 over the Baltic Sea, coming within fifty feet of the aircraft’s wingtip. (To perform a barrel roll the aircraft banks around a single turn of a spiral while rolling once around its longitudinal axis. It takes only a couple of seconds to do, and is a lot of fun if you’re the roller, not the rollee.)

An RC-135 is, to put it bluntly, a spy aircraft that is connected directly into the gizmocracies of the CIA and NSA. It flies seeking to gather whatever intelligence its antennae can scoop up. Flying over the Baltic is a natural place to snoop given the close proximity of both Russia and Kaliningrad which, though not connected by land, is nevertheless part of Russia.

If this were our Air Force or Navy fliers, the fighter jocks would be scolded and probably grounded for a while to sort out what really happened. The Russians are different. As we used to say in the Cold War days, a Russian won’t defecate without orders. In this case, the pilots were clearly acting on the orders of a senior military person and the fact that the incidents were carried out over several days indicates that Russian President Vladimir Putin either ordered the incidents or was at least told of the plans and approved them.

The only reaction to the USS Cook incidents came from Secretary of State John Kerry. On Thursday, Kerry said, “We condemn this kind of behavior. It is reckless. It is provocative. It is dangerous. And under the rules of engagement that could have been a shoot-down.” As we’ve come to expect from Kerry, the harrumphery of condemnation was matched by a comprehensively ignorant statement about the rules of engagement.

On Friday, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Executive Board in Paris adopted a resolution erasing Israel’s ties to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

The UNESCO resolution referred to the Temple Mount area solely as the Al-Aqsa Mosque or Al-Haram Al Sharif, ignoring the Jewish claim to the site.

The resolution called Israel “the occupying power” and the Western Wall as Al-Buraq Plaza. It demanded that Israel not restrict Muslim access to the Temple Mount, condemning Israel for “illegal measures against the freedom of worship” at the “Muslim holy site of worship”. It demanded a return to the “status quo”. The status quo since Israel conquered the Temple Mount in 1967 forbids non-Muslim prayer on the Temple Mount and has remained unchanged.

Blaming “Israel aggression” for the violence at the site, it had no mention of the role of Muslim rioters.

It also condemned the Israel’s plans to establish an egalitarian, non-Orthodox prayer section by Robinson’s Arch.

It accused Israel of “planting Jewish fake graves in other spaces of the Muslim cemeteries” located on Waqf property east and south of the Temple Mount, and of “the continued conversion of many Islamic and Byzantine remains into the so-called Jewish ritual baths or into Jewish prayer places.”.

It referred to Hebron and Bethlehem as solely “Palestinian sites”.

Restaurant honours mass murderer (Herald Sun, April 13, 2008)

An acclaimed Melbourne restaurant has sparked multi-ethnic outrage for paying homage to a fascist warlord and mass murderer.

The plush Katarina Zrinski restaurant attached to Footscray’s Croatian Club has been branded “disgusting” for its celebration of genocidal World War II Croatian leader Ante Pavelic.

Pavelic, who historians say was responsible for the deaths of up to 500,000 Jews, Serbs, Muslims and gypsies, has been described as the Heinrich Himmler of the Croatian nation.

The popular restaurant during the week displayed a big portrait of Pavelic on its wall and T-shirts depicting Pavelic for sale at the bar.

The T-shirts also showed two commanders of the Ustashe’s notorious Black Legion, which murdered thousands of civilians, and Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, who was jailed for collaborating with the Ustashe.

Drinkers at the bar were also toasting “The Poglavnik” – the name fascists use for their Fuhrer – and on Thursday the restaurant commemorated Hitler’s establishment of the puppet state of Croatia on April 10, 1941.

On Tuesday the restaurant was reviewed in a Melbourne newspaper’s food section, with its “large, airy downstairs dining room perfect for large, extended family groups”.

Dr Bob Miller, a Balkans expert at the Australian National University, has hit out at the club’s feting of Pavelic.

“It’s disgusting. This would be the equivalent to the German community honouring Himmler,” he said.

Some smart-ass Russian pilot decided to channel Tom Cruise in Top Gun and perform a barrel roll over a U.S. reconnaissance plane in international waters. The incident was the second such provocation against the American military in the last few days. On Thursday, Russian jets buzzed the USS Donald Cook destroyer, flying 30 feet above its deck.

CNN:

The incident Thursday occurred when a Russian jet “performed erratic and aggressive maneuvers” as it flew within 50 feet of the U.S. aircraft’s wing tip, Danny Hernandez, a spokesman for U.S. European Command, said in a response to a question from CNN.

The Russian Su-27 began the barrel roll from the left side of the U.S. RC-135 and went over the top of it to end on the right side of the aircraft, European Command said.

The RC-135 aircraft was “intercepted by a Russian SU-27 in an unsafe and unprofessional manner,” Hernandez said, adding that the U.S. plane never entered Russian territory.

“The unsafe and unprofessional actions of a single pilot have the potential to unnecessarily escalate tensions between countries,” said Hernandez, who added the United States is protesting with the Russian government.

But Russia’s Defense Ministry said that reports on Thursday’s incident were “not consistent with reality” and that the Russian aircraft’s maneuvers had been “performed strictly in accordance with the international regulations on the use of airspace.”

Ministry spokesman Gen. Igor Konashenkov said the Su-27 had been dispatched after Russian air defense facilities spotted an unknown target over the Baltic Sea, approaching the Russian border at high speed.

As yet another enormous mosque has opened in the U.S. (funded by the Turkish government), Christians in Turkey are waiting for the day when Turkish state authorities will allow them freely to build or use their churches and safely pray inside them.

In Turkey, some churches have been converted to stables or used as storehouses. Others have been completely destroyed. Sales of churches on the internet are a common practice.

Meanwhile, Turkish President Erdogan said during the opening ceremony of the Maryland mosque that the center was important at a time of an “unfortunate rise in intolerance towards Muslims in the United States and the world.”

How would Muslims feel if mosques in Mecca were put up for sale on the internet, turned into stables, or razed to the ground? How would they feel if a Muslim child were beaten in the classroom by his teacher for not saying “Jesus is my Lord and Savior?” How would they feel if they continually received violent threats or insults for just attempting peacefully to worship in their mosques?

Before Muslim political or religious leaders lecture the world about the non-existent threat of “Islamophobia” or “intolerance against Muslims” in the West, they should take moral responsibility and address the real abuses against Christians in their home countries, and the actual Christian genocide taking place across the Muslim world.

On April 2, a gigantic Ottoman style of mosque was opened in Lanham, Maryland by the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The mosque, according to Turkish officials, is “one of the largest Turkish mosques built outside Turkey.”

Funds to build it, as reported by the Turkish pro-government newspaper, Sabah, came from Turkey’s state-run Presidency of Religious Affairs, known as the Diyanet, as well as Turkish-American non-profit organizations.

The mosque is actually part of a larger complex, commonly referred to as “Maryland kulliye.” A kulliye, as such Islamic compounds were called in Ottoman times, is a complex of buildings, centered on a mosque and composed of various facilities including a madrassa (Islamic religious school).

Erdogan recited verses from the Quran inside the mosque after the mosque was opened.

Migrants take food and support from charity workers before insulting them in the next breath, he said.

Charity employees have seen first hand the desperation and devastation of the migrant crisis caused by record numbers of people displaced from the Middle East and Africa.

Since June 2015 the millions of asylum seekers fleeing Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa have had a huge impact on European member states who have opened their doors to them.

The humanitarian effort is huge with thousands of charities working across Europe to feed, help and direct them.

However, speaking frankly about integration and resettlement, one aid worker warned European nations, and Britain in particular, must handle immigration with a firm hand.

The aid worker from Serbia, who asked to remain anonymous and has worked on the crisis in the Balkans, speaks Arabic and is often mistaken for a Muslim.

Because of this he has been able to hear and understand scathing remarks made against aid workers providing help to refugees.

These include the charity workers being branded “filthy Christian kuffars” – a derogatory Arabic word meaning non-believer.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s administration recently seized six churches as state property in the volatile southeastern part of Turkey. As World Watch Monitor reports:

After 10 months of urban conflict in Turkey’s war-torn southeast, the government has expropriated huge sections of property, apparently to rebuild and restore the historical centre of the region’s largest city, Diyarbakir.

But to the dismay of the city’s handful of Christian congregations, this includes all its Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant churches. Unlike the state-funded mosques, Turkey’s ancient church buildings – some of which pre-date Islam – have been managed, historically, by church foundations.

Because of this move, the churches in Diyarbakir now factually belong to the state. This includes a church that was built 1,700 years ago, and a new one, built in 2003.