RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21855/persecution-of-christians-july

Muslim extremists now forbid Christians from farming, and punish defiance with shootings, kidnappings, and threats against families. Thousands remain displaced, living in overcrowded shelters with no food or medical care….. Despite military presence, extremist Muslim militias continue to terrorize rural Christian communities with near total impunity. — persecution.org, July 1, 2025 — Nigeria.

Entire families were found burned alive in their homes. “They came from all sides, shooting and setting houses on fire. Anyone who ran was shot.”…. “The fact that this community… reported the imminent attack to the STF military officers at that military checkpoint makes it more worrisome, suspicious and raises many questions.” — Farmer Ezekiel Dung, persecution.org, July 22, 2025 — Nigeria.

“[K]illings, kidnappings and robberies persist without real measures being implemented to curb them,” highlighting the Syrian government’s failure to protect Christian and other non-Muslim communities. — syriacpress.com, July 10, 2025 — Syria.

The situation in Syria’s Christian Valley remains dire. Locals who once defended their communities now face persecution despite promises that Christians would be spared. One resident… explained that his home was “destroyed” and “looted,” and that authorities had “placed an arrest on his piece of land so he could not sell it.” Similar measures were taken against his colleague…. [T]hose who resisted the jihadist forces are now being targeted. — dzen.ru, July 6, 2025 — Syria.

According to a July 6 report, the situation in Syria’s Christian Valley remains dire. Locals who once defended their communities now face persecution despite promises that Christians would be spared. One resident, Zhoryk, former head of a self-defense unit in the valley, explained that his home was “destroyed” and “looted,” and that authorities had “placed an arrest on his piece of land so he could not sell it.” Similar measures were taken against his colleague… [T]hose who resisted the jihadist forces are now being targeted….. The report illustrates the systematic targeting of Christians who defended their communities: despite prior promises of protection, those who opposed Muslim militants are being punished under the new regime, their homes and property seized, and their leadership removed. — dzen.ru, July 6, 2025 — Syria.

According to a July 15 report, jihadists and other terrorists loyal to the nation’s new “president,” Ahmed al-Sharaa, attacked the Church of San Michel, a Greek Orthodox church. Militants looted it before setting the church on fire. Local sources described the assault as part of the new regime’s ongoing campaign against non-Sunni populations. — greekcitytimes.com, July 15, 2025 — Syria.

Turkey announced that the Armenian Cathedral of Ani — a UNESCO-listed site and “once the crown jewel of medieval Armenian architecture” — will reopen not as a church but as a mosque…. — zartonkmeda.com, July 4, 2025 — Turkey.

World Heritage Watch called on UNESCO to place the Saint Catherine Area in Egypt on the List of World Heritage Sites in Danger due to Egypt’s continued failure to uphold its World Heritage obligations. — orthodoxtimes.com, July 7, 2025 — Egypt.

[T]he church in Arudy was desecrated with excrement (an old jihadist tactic). Feces were smeared on the inside and outside of the church, and on its altar. Parish priest Father Armand Paillé called it “deliberate and symbolic,” saying vandals sought to “reduce the church and the faithful to what they left behind.” — intoleranceagainstchristians.edu, July 13, 2025 — France.

[T]hrongs of Muslims surrounding the Helsinki Cathedral, while waving Islamic State flags and engaging in provocative behavior. — x.com, July 9, 2025 — Finland.

[H]undreds if not thousands of Muslims encircle[ed] Melbourne’s cathedral while waving Islamic flags and engaging in militant behavior. The X account of Christian Emergency Alliance adds that “These are acts of intimidation and insulting attempts at domination. Christians must not tolerate these disrespectful acts of intolerance.” — x.com, July 8, 2025 — Australia.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21850/support-the-iranian-people

How can the West, particularly European states, which never hesitate to lecture others on democracy and human rights, stay silent when one of the most oppressed peoples in the world was risking everything for those very ideals?

It is high time for an approach that does not cower behind diplomatic fears or economic loss.

To the European Union: stop delivering lectures on human rights while turning your back on those who fight and die for them.

The shift from empowering a regime to empowering its people would mark the first time in more than four decades that Western policy truly aligned with democratic values.

It is also worth asking why is it considered acceptable for Iran’s rulers to openly call for the assassination of a U.S. president and attempt to assassinate Western officials, yet somehow unacceptable for Western leaders to plainly say, “we support the Iranian people’s right to freedom”?

The choice facing the West, particularly European governments and the Trump administration, is simple. Continue down the path of quiet complicity, driven by fear and greed, or choose to be remembered as champions of freedom.

History does not remember as heroes those who stayed silent in the face of tyranny…. This is the moment to choose which side you will be on.

For more than 40 years, the people of Iran have lived under a suffocating dictatorship that has stripped them of their freedoms, denied them basic human rights, and crushed any glimmer of hope for a better future. Yet despite the unrelenting repression, the Iranian people have never stopped dreaming of liberty. They have taken to the streets again and again, often at unimaginable personal risk, demanding the right to live in dignity and determine their own future. Each time, they have been met with the full force of a ruthless regime that treats dissent as treason and humanity as an afterthought. This struggle for freedom is not a fleeting political cause — it is the very heartbeat of a nation that refuses to surrender its spirit.

Iran’s brave uprisings have united students, workers, women and ordinary citizens, demanding change. They rose up in 1999, 2009, 2017, 2019, 2022 and beyond — each time with breathtaking courage. Sadly, every one of these movements was crushed brutally. Security forces flooded the streets, firing on unarmed crowds, arresting thousands and torturing detainees. Families have been left with no answers, their loved ones disappearing into the nightmare of the regime’s prisons. Many who are arrested never return. Some who do return are permanently scarred, physically and emotionally. The message from Iran’s rulers has been consistent: dissent will be extinguished by any means necessary.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/08/21/is-the-u-k-on-the-verge-of-civil-war/

It might be easy to dismiss the growing unrest in Britain, where crowds of fed-up and violently angry citizens are suddenly taking to the streets to end what they see as the tyranny of woke multiculturalism and horribly failed immigration policies. But right now, it looks as if the country could be nearing some kind of national breakdown or split, one with major global ramifications.

Are we going a little too far in seeing a possible breakup or civil war? Not at all. The social pressures from a near non-stop influx of immigrants, legal and illegal, have been building for decades in Britain, long one of the most generous nations in taking in immigrants from its former colonies abroad.

But that generosity came with a high price: Large numbers of unassimilated immigrants in most cities who share neither the culture nor religion of their hosts, and commit serious crimes in their neighborhoods. They form “rape gangs” that groom young victims and “share” underage British girls as if it were a sport.

The response by Britain’s establishment elites, and even its police, has largely been to ignore the offenses – and accuse those who point out the problems of being racist.

But recent remarks from prominent retired British Col. Richard Kemp can’t be ignored. He warned that Britain and the rest of the West face a “primary threat” from the “hard left and Islamist extremists who have, together with other causes, come together to threaten the cohesion and the culture, the entire culture and political existence of the West.”

Kemp, who served in the Gulf War, Bosnia and Afghanistan, and also held senior intelligence and security positions in government, noted: “I don’t know what the timeframe is, but I would go so far as to not just predict civil unrest, but civil war in the U.K. in the coming years if this situation continues, which I believe it will.”

In recent days and weeks, thousands of protesters and counter-protesters have gathered outside “asylum hotels” around the country. The hotels are used to temporarily house newly arrived illegals.

Britain’s silent majority wants its nation back, but it knows it won’t get it without a fight. The left is used to intimidating its foes into silence through online campaigns, threats of violence, and loud demonstrations in the street organized by groups such as “Stand Up To Racism” carrying signs like “Defend Refugees, Stop the Far Right.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/pakistan-the-horrifying-plight-of-minority-children/

According to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), there are 51 Muslim-majority countries. Yet, none of them treats non-Muslim communities with respect and dignity. The brutality that Muslim regimes and societies inflict on non-Muslims is extreme — and children are often the target.

When it comes to discrimination against non-Muslim children, including Hindus and Christians, Pakistan is one of the most radical and alarming cases.

Minority children in Pakistan face systematic abuse and discrimination. This includes barriers to education, abductions, incidents of child “marriages,” child labor, discrimination in public services, and forced conversions to Islam.

A new report by Pakistan’s National Commission on the Rights of the Child (NCRC) highlights the severe challenges faced by children who belong to religious minority groups. It calls for immediate action by the government to curb the high levels of discrimination emanating from systemic bias, social exclusion, and institutional neglect.

The report, titled “Situation Analysis of Children from Minority Religions in Pakistan,” also raises the crucial issues of forced conversion, child marriages, and child labor faced by minority children:

The worrying trend of systemic discrimination affects every part of the minority population’s daily life, especially their children. Minority children frequently face discrimination from classmates and educators in schools. They also have to deal with curricula that could reinforce negative preconceptions about their religion. Isolation, below-average academic achievement, and, in many cases, school dropout are the expected outcomes of such an educational setting.

Minority households’ financial situation presents an equally alarming image. Many individuals are caught up in cycles of bonded labor, especially in brick kilns and the agricultural sector, where entire families, including their children, work in cruel conditions.

The introduction of a “Single National Curriculum” in Pakistani schools in 2020 denigrates religious minorities. It enforces the teaching of the Quran and subjects like Mathematics and Science in an Islamized manner. Many schoolbooks also incite hatred against religious minorities, including Christians.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21825/eu-technocrats-against-democracy

This is technospeak for censorship, but you already knew that because this is what the “fact-checkers” at Facebook and Twitter did on behalf of the Biden administration and the FBI until Elon Musk bought Twitter and President Donald Trump was re-elected.

Of the EU institutions, the unelected European Commission wields the most power over the EU’s 400 million citizens, with its exclusive right to propose laws (the elected MEPs, bizarrely, have no such right), implement policies… The European Commission employs no fewer than 32,000 bureaucrats to help it do all that.

This is a closed-door technocratic and elitist coterie — the rule of the unelected few over almost an entire continent of 400 million people — meaning that EU initiatives with huge implications for Europeans get decided without a single ordinary European having a say in the matter.

Arguably one of the most damaging of the European Commission’s initiatives that no European citizen has asked for is the European Green Deal, which is leading EU citizens to financial ruin, and transforming the EU into an economic backwater, in the quest to transform the EU into a “net-zero” region by 2050.

Trillions of EU taxpayer euros are compelled to finance this self-destructive climate madness while Europeans continue to deal with skyrocketing energy prices — themselves the result of the climate madness — a housing crisis, sky-high prices on consumer goods and unvetted mass migration from third-world countries.

Another catastrophic EU initiative about which no European citizen was consulted, is the EU’s new Migration Pact, which will see the further deterioration of national sovereignty and the continued influx of migrants into the European Union. The pact, instead of simply closing the EU’s external open borders, requires EU member states to distribute migrants between themselves under penalty of financial sanctions. There has been no public discussion about this.

A third EU regulation with disastrous impacts on EU citizens is the Digital Security Act (DSA), which under the pretext of creating a “safer and more accountable digital space” strangles the pitiful remains of European free speech even further.

The DSA, now the law of the land throughout the member states of the EU, is being weaponized against Elon Musk — whom European elites despise — and his X platform. The European Commission is reportedly preparing to impose huge fines on Musk for breaching the DSA by, among other things, refusing to allow external “fact-checkers” on his platform to flag “disinformation”. Who, of course, would be checking the EU’s “fact-checkers”?

The European Union member states have finally arrived – while never asking the Europeans involved – at their own dystopian future.

The European Commission’s unelected president, Ursula von der Leyen, has come up with a nifty new idea in the European Union’s quest to snuff out democracy on the continent: The “European Democracy Shield.”