RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/18/calls-for-charges-over-lord-balfour-portrait-vandalism/

Campaigners could push for a private prosecution of the pro-Palestinian activist who vandalised a portrait of Lord Balfour at Cambridge University.

The portrait of the former British foreign secretary, who famously supported a homeland for the Jewish people, was spray-painted red and slashed with a knife by a protester last year.

Trinity College said at the time: “[We] regret the damage caused to a portrait of Arthur James Balfour during public opening hours. The police have been informed. Support is available for any member of the college community affected.”

Roderick Balfour, the fifth Earl of Balfour and the great-nephew of Lord Balfour, told The Telegraph last year: “It’s very alarming that we have people who feel entitled to attack the totems of our culture and history.

“There appears to be no respect for the country that has educated them, that has allowed them the lives they have.”

The Telegraph has approached Trinity College for comment.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/07/17/the-world-woke-up/

In less than six months, the entire world has been turned upside down. There is no longer such a thing as conventional wisdom or the status quo.

The unthinkable has become the banal.

Take illegal immigration—remember the 10,000 daily illegal entries under Biden?

Recall the only solution was supposedly “comprehensive immigration reform”—a euphemism for mass amnesties.

Now, there is no such thing as daily new illegal immigration.

It simply disappeared with common-sense enforcement of existing immigration laws—and a new president.

How about the 40,000-50,000 shortfall in military recruitment?

Remember all the causes that the generals cited for their inability to enlist soldiers: generational gangs, obesity, drugs, and stiff competition with private industry?

And now?

In just six months, recruitment targets are already met; the issue is mostly moot.

Why? The new Pentagon flipped the old, canceling its racist DEI programs and assuring the rural, middle-class Americans—especially white males—that they were not systemically racist after all.

Instead, they were reinvited to enlist as the critical combat cohort who died at twice their demographic share in Iraq and Afghanistan.

How about the “end of the NATO crisis,” supposedly brought on by a bullying U.S.?

Now the vast majority of NATO members have met their pledges to spend two percent of GDP on defense, which will soon increase to five percent.

Iconic neutrals like Sweden and Finland have become frontline NATO nations, arming to the teeth. The smiling NATO Secretary-General even called Trump the “daddy” of the alliance.

What about indomitable, all-powerful, theocratic Iran, the scourge of the Middle East for nearly fifty years?

Although it had never won a war in the last half-century, its terrorist surrogates—Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis—were supposedly too dangerous to provoke.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/mullahs-reign-of-terror/

Iran has always stood apart from the rest of the Muslim world. Far more than the Arab countries that stretch from Marrakech to Muscat, Iran has proudly, even fiercely, protected its pre-Islamic cultural heritage. If other people from Muslim lands have relocated to the West in search of money – often in the form of generous government handouts – Iranians fled the Islamic Revolution in search of freedom. While other Muslims in the West tend to have come from remote villages and to have brought with them some of the most primitive of Islamic social practices, Iranians in the West tend to be urban, freedom-loving, and well-educated (no ethnic group in the U.S. holds more master’s or doctoral degrees per capita), with high levels of integration and intermarriage. If Dearborn has America’s largest Arab population, Minneapolis its greatest concentration of Somalis, and Hamtramck the first Muslim-majority city in the U.S. (with particularly large numbers of Yemenis and Bangladeshis), Iranians tend to be concentrated in posh places like Beverly Hills, which has the highest proportion of Iranians – 20.8% – of any municipality in California.

And while other immigrants from the Muslim world bring with them mosques and madrassas by the score, many Iranian-Americans are not believing Muslims, having been raised as Christians, Jews, Baha’is, or Zoroastrians, or having quit Islam at the same time that they quit the ayatollah’s Iran. In the aftermath of the spectacular Israeli and U.S. assaults on Iranian nuclear targets, it has been remarkable to observe groups of white young Americans waving Iranian flags at protest rallies – shouting fatuous slogans about a religion, a culture, and a part of the world they know virtually nothing about – even as Iranian-Americans cheer the U.S. and Israeli strikes and call for the fall of the odious Tehran regime that transformed a once extremely Westernized country into an Islamic autocracy.

Prior to the U.S. strikes on Iran, as well as in their immediate aftermath, politicians, diplomats, and commentators all over the Western world predicted that this would prove to be just the first volley of World War III – that Iran would be quick to retaliate, perhaps with the help of Russia or China. Instead, the sheer level of devastation, and the assurance by Trump that there was a lot more where that came from, caused the mullahs to react wisely – to do, that is, virtually nothing, and retreat, out of sheer self-protectiveness, from their long position of aggressiveness on the world stage.

Then again, it’s not quite correct to say that the mullahs did virtually nothing. According to various reports, each more alarming than the next, Iran’s leaders have turned inward, doubling down – or more – on their repression in an obvious effort to prevent the popular uprising that many outside observers have predicted and prayed for. What does it mean to intensify repression in an already repressive country? How to describe such an occurrence? In an interview with Fox News Digital (FND), Kasra Aaraby of United against Nuclear Iran said that Iran’s regime “has always been totalitarian, but the level of suppression now is unprecedented,” with authorities introducing a “North Korea-style model of isolation and control.” It’s now common, Aaraby said, for people to “vanish without explanation.” An article put out by the Oslo-based association Iran Human Rights agreed, speaking of prisoners being “transferred to unknown locations,” of suspected spies “at risk of torture or execution,” of a new law that greatly expands the list of offenses subject to the death penalty, and of mass actions against Iranian Jews and Baha’i. Le Monde reported on “the establishment of special courts around the country to try ‘traitors and mercenaries.’”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21755/trump-help-ukraine

Trump’s change of heart on Ukraine is not only welcome, it could prove vital to improving Ukraine’s hopes of ultimately emerging victorious from the conflict, not least because Trump’s recent decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities has demonstrated America’s willingness to use its overwhelming military superiority when required.

At the same time, the ease with which US and Israeli warplanes were able to penetrate Iran’s Russian-made air defences has been a humiliating experience for the Kremlin and its claim to rival the US in terms of military capability.

At a time when Russia’s weakness has been graphically exposed on the world stage, there is a golden opportunity for the Trump administration to drive home its advantage.

It can do this by providing Ukraine with the sophisticated weaponry it needs to win the war in Ukraine, in the knowledge that Russian missiles and air defences are simply no match for America’s superior military might.

It would seem advisable for the future of Europe and the Free World to ensure that even a charming Putin – nonetheless a KGB graduate and serial mass-murderer in Grozny, Syria, Ukraine, not to mention his invasions of Georgia and Crimea — is not allowed to emerge from this conflict before being thoroughly defeated.

US President Donald Trump’s belated realisation that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not interested in a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine conflict could finally provide the breakthrough Kyiv desperately needs to win the war.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has persisted in his belief that, because of the strong personal relationship he enjoys with Putin, he could persuade the Russian despot to agree to a lasting ceasefire.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/is-turkey-the-new-iran/

Jihad Watch has been reporting on Turkey since this site began in 2003. See HERE. For years, the country, led by the despotic Islamic supremacist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has posed a developing danger to Israel, as well as to America and Western interests. Western culture tends to focus on appearance and mannerisms, and the warriors of jihad are well aware of this. That’s why the former al-Qaeda leader who is now president of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, now presents himself in a suit and tie. In the case of Turkey, the country should long ago have been thrown out of NATO, but Erdogan is likewise well-versed in how to manipulate Westerners. Erdogan and Trump appeared to be best buds at the NATO summit in The Hague on June 24. And U.S. ambassador to Turkey Thomas Barrack “expects Donald Trump and Tayyip Erdogan to resolve long-standing defence-related sanctions on Turkey by year end.” That would mean settling “the issue of sanctions, which the U.S. imposed in 2020 over Turkey’s purchase of Russian S-400 missile defence systems.”

Now comes a clever analysis from Shay Gal in the publication Israel Hayom. Gal is a senior strategic advisor and analyst specializing in international security, defense policy, geopolitical crisis management, and strategic communications. “Turkey is the new Iran,” by Shay Gal, Israel Hayom, July 8, 2025:

When Israel struck Iranian targets, Erdogan positioned Turkey as a “new Iran”, asserting military, political, and nuclear ambitions. For the first time since the Ottoman Empire’s collapse, Turkey openly seeks regional dominance.

Like Iran, Turkey provides political and logistical support to terror organizations, notably Hamas, further destabilizing regional security and threatening Israel. This strategic posture closely mirrors Iran’s longstanding pursuit of regional influence through military intimidation and nuclear brinkmanship.