RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14281/genocide-of-christians

Many of the world’s most persecuted Christians have nothing whatsoever to do with colonialism or missionaries. Those most faced with the threat of genocide — including Syria’s and Iraq’s Assyrians or Egypt’s Copts — were Christian several centuries before the ancestors of Europe’s colonizers became Christian and went missionizing

The BBC report highlights “political correctness” as being especially responsible for the West’s indifference….

Among the worst persecutors are those that rule according to Islamic law, or Sharia — which academics such as Georgetown University’s John Esposito insist is equitable and just. In Afghanistan (ranked #2), “Christianity is not permitted to exist.”

“Christian persecution ‘at near genocide levels,'” the title of a May 3 BBC report, cites a lengthy interim study ordered by British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and led by Rev. Philip Mounstephen, the Bishop of Truro.

According to the BBC report, one in three people around the world suffer from religious persecution, with Christians being “the most persecuted religious group”. “Religion ‘is at risk of disappearing’ in some parts of the world,” it noted, and “In some regions, the level and nature of persecution is arguably coming close to meeting the international definition of genocide, according to that adopted by the UN.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14269/iran-options-defiance

To start with, we must realize that the crisis in question isn’t caused by any of the traditional causes of conflict between nation-states…. In other words, the conflict isn’t a classical international one. The reason is that Iran no longer behaves as a nation-state but as a vehicle for an ideology.

The madness that is Khomeinism has always had its method, which includes abject surrender when pressed too hard and brazen aggression when pressure is eased.

Contrary to claims by the pro-mullah lobby in Washington, the choice isn’t between surrender to Khomeminist madness and full-scale invasion of Iran. Only when the threshold of tolerable pain is reached the “Supreme Guide” may well reconsider his options. We are not there yet.

According to an old adage, every crisis also contains an opportunity. And the current crisis between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States may be no exception. Intense sabre-rattling on both sides, combined with what one might call “diplomacy of gesticulations,” have reignited interest in what was a half-dormant conflict. That renewed interest could be used for persuading both sides, and others interested in the “Iran problem”, to re-visit the root causes of the conflict. And, having done so, try to find realistic ways of defusing the situation.

But before that could be done, a number of steps must be taken.

To start with, we must realize that the crisis in question isn’t caused by any of the traditional causes of conflict between nation-states. Iran and the US do not have a border problem, they are not fighting over access to natural resources and do not seek to snatch market share from one another. Nor are they in conflict over the oppression of one side’s kith-and-kin by the other. The two are not fighting over water resources, access to open seas or calculations about national security.

From the New York Times: https://intransit.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/a-wonderful-museum-of-terror-in-budapest/

It is a museum dedicated to remembering the terrible things done first by the Nazis and then later by the Soviet-backed Communist Party in this now vibrant democratic country. Housed in a former headquarters of the Communist Secret Police, in the very center of Budapest, it is a fitting site for such memorial.

The House of Terror is a brilliant amalgam of history museum, performance art and touching architectural memorial to all the people — Jews, liberals, intellectuals — who died or suffered under Hungary’s sequential reigns of terror. Their small framed portraits are discreetly displayed on the outside of the building, their names etched in its interior walls.

In a city now known for cafes, rock festivals and indulgent baths one might regard the House of Terror as an unnecessary downer — a reminder of the ugly things that happened in this now hedonistic capital. Why, my teenagers asked me last week, were we wallowing in this uncomfortable history when we could be taking in some of the world’s hippist bands at the Sziget Music Festival or luxuriating in the Gellert baths?

But to me the House of Terror more meditative than depressing: asking us to remember the lessons of history and to contemplate how is it that humans can sometimes be so blind and cruel.

Starting on the top floor you walk room-by-room through Hungary’s recent history, starting with the Nazi invasion of Hungary in the 1940s. The museum makes good use of old newsreels as well as oral histories of people who survived these two eras; the sound in Hungarian, but with English subtitles. (The entire museum has excellent explanations in both Hungarian and English.)