RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.”

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/08/16/london-is-in-trouble-and-theres-no-point-denying-it/

A new high-status opinion just dropped: London is fine. From their converted Edwardian houses in the leafy suburbs where you won’t get a burger for less than 15 quid, London’s preening opinion-shapers have taken to X to say all is well in the capital. Ignore the ‘Trumpist’ talking points about London going down the swanny, they cry between glugs of pinot noir – life’s never been better! One envisions the grimaces of people on the other side of town when they see such hot takes pop up on their mobile phones that they cling to for dear life lest some wanker on a stolen Lime bike should snatch them.

The internet is fizzing with this big question: ‘Is London a shithole?’ What’s funny is that proper Londoners have this discussion all the time. Sometimes we say it is, if we’ve had a rotten day, and other times we’ll be squaring up to any funny-accented outsider who talks shit about our city. But now the London question, like everything else, has fallen into the doom-loop churn of the culture war. It’s become fodder for digital posturing. ‘It’s a crime-ridden hellhole’, says the Very Online right. ‘It’s fine’, say rich liberals in airy flats. Not for the first time, both are wrong.

The most wrong – or certainly the most annoying – are the ‘London is fine’ lot. There’s a Marie Antoinette vibe to their digital missives. ‘Let them eat sourdough bread!’, they might as well cry. It’s typified by Lewis Goodall of The News Agents, the podcast for rich, glum liberals still not over Brexit. London, he said, is being falsely talked down as a dreadful place where ‘crime is completely out of control… fare evasion is completely rampant… [and] the Tube is looking like Gotham City’. It’s all ‘exaggerated’, he says.

I’m going to put my neck on the line and propose that Mr Goodall’s London life is rather more plush and cossested than most others’. A couple of years back he told the Evening Standard he lives in Norbury, a very middle-class and – sorry, Lewis – soulless suburb in the south-east where crime is low and deprivation virtually non-existent. Apparently he feasts on ‘Gallic fare at Pique-Nique’ – no, me neither – and loves tucking into ‘pelmeni’ in Soho with his equally starry media pals. Thankfully, for thickos like me, the Standard explained what pelmeni is: Russian dumplings.

He does boxercise in East Dulwich. He loves gardening because ‘it’s the opposite of modern life’. He wants to ban cars. Right, so he’s that London. The other London. The London I didn’t even know existed until I hit my 20s. The London where you’re unlikely to encounter a crackhead on a night bus – mainly because you can afford Ubers – or a mumbling masked prick saying, ‘Gimme your phone’. Goodall’s co-host, Jon Sopel, agreed with him that London-bashing is a ‘Trump import’. That’ll be the Jon Sopel who lives in Belsize Park, gets to work via a ‘beautiful walk across Primrose Hill’, buys his suits from Richard James on Savile Row and tells anyone who’ll listen that ‘Duke’s has the best Martini’s in London’. I wonder where he skis?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21833/iran-wants-negotiations-to-survive

This is the same regime that has built its entire political identity around hatred for America, branding the U.S. the “Great Satan” and chanting “Death to America” at every major gathering.

Some of Iran’s leading scientists and engineers, who were driving its nuclear weapons effort, have been eliminated. This is not the position of strength from which Iran prefers to negotiate. This is the position of a regime struggling to keep its most prized military project afloat.

In such a position, the leadership in Tehran is willing to agree to almost any terms if it means securing breathing space, lifting sanctions and accessing funds to rebuild. They know that negotiations can give them exactly what they need: relief from “maximum pressure” without actually abandoning their nuclear ambitions.

The culmination of America’s empowerment of Iran was the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre of Israelis. When you give the Iranian regime financial relief, you are funding terrorism.

The worst mistake the West could make right now is to relieve the pressure at the very moment it has started to work. Just as in 2015, a deal will not defang this regime — it will recharge it.

The Iranian regime has another game in mind, and that game ends with Iran as a stronger, more dangerous enemy. This is not the moment to sit at the table. It is the moment to stand unbudgeably firm.

The Iranian regime, long marked by hostility and defiance toward the United States and its allies, is suddenly portraying itself as eager to talk.

Reports confirm that Tehran is now negotiating with the EU3 — France, the United Kingdom and Germany — and has even stated that it is open to discussions with the United States. This is the same regime that has built its entire political identity around hatred for America, branding the U.S. the “Great Satan” and chanting “Death to America” at every major gathering. It is the same ruling elite that has repeatedly vowed to export its Islamist revolution far beyond the Middle East, aiming especially to destabilize and infiltrate Western nations. The question then becomes: why would such a fanatical and ideologically rigid regime suddenly want to sit at the table with its sworn enemies?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/kidnap-rape-convert-to-islam-and-marry-underage-christian-girls/

The harrowing cases of Mahak Siddique and Alshaba Adnan expose a deeply disturbing pattern of violence, exploitation, and systemic failure in addressing crimes against underage girls from minority communities in Pakistan. Babar son of Mukhtar, operating under aliases such as Ghulam Rasool and Muhammad Babar Ali, emerges as a serial predator who manipulates religious institutions to perpetrate kidnapping, forced conversion, rape, and child marriage. These acts, committed with impunity and aided by accomplices including Muhammad Aftab, Shan Masih, and Khurram Masih, reveal a chilling disregard for human dignity and legal accountability.

The incidents underscore a broader societal and institutional crisis. The coercion of vulnerable girls like Mahak and Alshaba into forced conversions and marriages, under the guise of religious legitimacy, highlights the misuse of religious authority to justify heinous crimes. The failure of local law enforcement to act swiftly and decisively—evidenced by the delayed FIR in Alshaba’s case and the lack of immediate action in Mahak’s—points to systemic negligence, if not complicity, within the justice system. This is compounded by the absence of robust mechanisms to protect minority girls, who face intersecting vulnerabilities due to their age, gender, and religious identity.

From a legal perspective, the invocation of the Child Marriage Restraint Act 1929 and Pakistan Penal Code sections (365-B, 376, 498-B, 295-A) is a necessary step, but the enforcement of these laws remains inconsistent. The trauma inflicted on Mahak and Alshaba, coupled with the displacement of their families due to threats, demands urgent and comprehensive intervention. The call for a dedicated task force to safeguard minority girls is not just warranted but essential to prevent further atrocities.