Intolerance of, and Persecution of Christians

"If you don't know what is going on in Nigeria, your media sources suck. You are in a bubble. I'm not a Christian, but they are systematically killing the Christians in Nigeria. they have killed over 100,000 since 2009. They have burnt 18,000 churches."

"This is so much more of a genocide attempt than what is going on in Gaza. They are literally trying to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country. Where are the kids protesting this?"

Commentator Bill Maher

 

"In North Korea, it's illegal to be a Christian. It's illegal to own a Bible. There's an estimated 60,000 Christians imprisoned or in Labour camps in North Korea. There's no way to openly express your faith in North Korea."

"It's not only you who will be punished: North Korean authorities are likely to round up your extended family and punish them too, even if  your family members aren't Christians."

"Persecution is growing around the world, both in global spread, but also in intensity. We recognize now that more than 380 million Christians face high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith in Jesus Christ." 

Andrew Croft, communications and relations manager, Open Doors Canada 

 

"You could face house arrest, forced marriage, forced Islamic rituals or even threats to  your life [as punishment for those who convert to Christianity]."

"[In Sudan], More than 100 churches have been damaged so far, and Christians have been abducted and killed."

"[In Pakistan], the number of Christian girls [and those from other minority religions are] abducted, abused and forcefully converted to Islam [frequently backed by lower courts] is growing."

"In recent years the [Chinese] government has aggressively tried to ensure all religious expression is brought into line with official Chinese Communist philosophy." 

Open Doors Canada 

The governments of Kenya and the US announced a US$10 million reward for information on terror suspect Mohamoud Abdi Aden in 2023. Yasuyoshi Chiba/ AFP via Getty Images

 

An estimated 62,000 Christians, since 2000, have been murdered in Nigeria. People found to be Christian in North Korea risk death by government forces, alternately being sent off to labour camps. Blasphemy laws in Pakistan carry the death penalty, with a quarter of all blasphemy cases (blaspheming against Islam or the Prophet) representing charges against fewer than two percent of the population: Pakistani Christians.

 

The reality is that Christians across the world have become an endangered species. And while in the West there is no end of commiseration with alleged charges of 'genocide' being committed by Israel in Gaza resulting from Palestinian terrorist groups -- led by the infamous Hamas having committed a mass atrocity of savage proportions in Israel, owing to the Israel Defense Forces' response in counter-attacking the various Palestinian terrorist groups like Islamic Jihad, Fatah and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine alongside Hamas all of which took part in slaughtering 1,200 Jews on October 7, 2023 -- the plight of Christians worldwide appears to be studiously ignored.

 

In the West itself there appears an increasing intolerance for Christianity, despite that democracies have always been Judeo-Christian-inspired in their human rights laws and systems of justice in general. In the past several years as a result of a false report out of Canada that spun around the world, that Indigenous children housed and educated in mostly Catholic but government-sponsored Residential Schools suffered abuse and died in numbers over 160 years, greater than those of the general population, an aboriginal-led cataclysm of rage saw 100 churches being burned, with no one held to account.

 

According to the International Committee on Nigeria (ICON) which promotes human rights and religious freedom, "the silent slaughter" of Christians over the past two decades saw 43,000 Christians murdered by the Boko Haram Islamist terror group. Muslim nomadic cattle herders -- extremist Fulanis -- killed another 19,000 who were pastoralists, farmers resisting the arable land they farmed being overrun by cattle, while the herders -- as in Sudan's similar conflict in Darfur against (Muslim) farmers followed a similar trajectory.

 

Brookings

 

Of the 276 Christian schoolgirls kidnapped in 2014 by Boko Haram from the town of Chibok in Nigeria, 82 of the girls have never been recovered. "Both of these groups (Islamic State West Africa and Boko Haram) and other groups like them have radicalized ideologies to build a Sharia state", charged Andrew Croft of Open Doors Canada. Nigeria, wrote U.S. Rep. Riley Moore, is now "the deadliest place in the world to be a Christian", addressing U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as he called for Nigeria to be re-designated a "country of particular concern".

 

Open Doors published a list of countries in 2025, where Christians are most persecuted. North Korea is top on the list at No.1. Somalia is No. 2 on the list where Christians are the targets of Al-Shabab, the violent Islamist group whose goal is to eradicate Christianity as a curse against Islam. No.3 is Yemen, followed in succession by Libya, Sudan, Eritrea and Nigeria. Some 97 million Christians in China face stern government regulations. 

 

Countries on the record as among those where Christians are persecuted are generally authoritarian where the rising growth of Islamist extremism is a driver.

 

Last year, in an address to the United Nations, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the secretary for relations with states with the Holy See, stated that "The data show that Christians are the most persecuted  religious group worldwide, and yet the international community seems to be turning a blind eye to the plight". Adding to that plaint from the Vatican, is the peculiarity of the Vatican itself doing little to indicate it is determined to campaign against the oppression of Christians in lands where totalitarian Islamism is the source of that persecution. 

 

"The dignity of the individual and the nature of the quest for the  ultimate truth require that everyone should be free from constraints regarding religion. Society and the state must not force someone to act against his or her conscience, nor prevent anyone from acting in accordance with it", urged the Archbishop. Fine words, but the followup action absent in large part. The Center for Religious Liberty released a report last year: "Free to Believe? The Intensifying Intolerance Toward Christians in the West":

 

"As the mainstream culture moves further and further away from a Christian world view, Christian beliefs that contradict progressive secular values are increasingly denounced by the culture and wrongly portrayed as being hateful or bigoted." As an example, a Finish member of Parliament was prosecuted for 'ethnic agitation' resulting from "a tweet containing a Bible verse in which she indicated disapproval of her church's sponsorship of a Pride event, for discussing her beliefs on a radio show and for publishing a pamphlet promoting a biblical understanding of marriage through her church". 

 

Abuja National Mosque, Shiraz

 

"Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russian Christians have faced increased scrutiny and punishment."

"For Christians, there is no escape from the extremist policies of a government [Islamic Republic of Iran] fuelled by an extremist interpretation of Shia Islam that leaves no room even for Sunni Islam, much less religious minorities like Christianity."

International Christian Concern (ICC)

 

"It is shocking to see western countries -- the same ones we think of as free and open societies -- take authoritarian measures against Christians simply trying to live out their faith."

"Hostility toward Bible-believing Christians is clearly and steadily rising in the west."

Tony Perkins, president, Family Research Council 

 

Liberal Gov't of Canada Where Freedom of Speech and Protests are Protected -- Just Not Against the Gov't

"It is Mr. Barber's position that he followed the instruction of the police as to where to park Big Red and that he moved Big Red at the request of the police when it was safely feasible for him to do so; as such Big Red was not used in the commission of the offence of mischief."

Defence documents filed in Gov't suit

 

"It would amount to, in my opinion, cruel and  unusual punishment. [If the judge sentences Barber to prison time and he loses his truck], that would be a really harsh financial hardship for him and his family."

"[Taking his truck would be] totally out of proportion [to the mischief caused]."

"Now his son is also driving, and he has a couple of employees that sometimes drive it too, so it's a legitimate source of business for himself, his family and his employees. [Taking away Barber's truck would cause his family] extreme financial difficulties."

"That truck's been part of his family for over 20 years. His children grew up in that truck. One of his dogs died in the truck. He had wedding pictures by the side of the truck. So, that truck is part of the family. It was named Big Red by his children when they were younger." 

Lawyer Diane Magas  

Government of Canada

The Government of Canada’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic prioritizes the health and safety of Canadians. We are committed to keeping our transportation sector, including employees and travellers, safe and secure.

Transport Canada has taken action in all modes to protect passengers and essential transportation workers while continuing to support the flow of critical goods and services during this unprecedented global crisis. 

Vaccination plays an important role in keeping each other and our transportation system safe and secure. That is why we are ensuring travellers and workers in the transportation sector are vaccinated against COVID-19.

Since October 30, employers in the federally-regulated air, rail and marine transportation sectors have been required to have vaccination policies in place for their employees.

The vaccine mandate that came into effect in October has helped to protect transportation workers from the impacts of Omicron by reducing the frequency and severity of the COVID-19 illness.

With vaccination rates at home and around the world increasing, and the epidemiological situation continuing to evolve, it is important that Canada’s border and travel related measures reflect the current global and domestic context.

 

During the height of the COVID pandemic, Canada's federal lockdown strategies and inoculation mandates infuriated many Canadians. In particular a mandate that all truckers, including long-haul be vaccinated in line with government orders. Non-compliance would result in the nullification of truckers' licenses; they would effectively be put out of commission, jobless. It might have made sense for drivers of buses or any other vehicles where the drivers came in contact with other people, but truckers sit alone in their rigs, delivering goods, seeing few other people other than at delivery ramps.

 

A coalition of dissenting truckers began a cross-Canada journey in a convoy of like-minded people, all seeking to protest the government's mandates on COVID-19 infection prevention in a joint agreement that the government had gone too far, impacting the lives of tens of thousands unnecessarily and their plan was to confront the government directly, as they headed to Ottawa. Once there, the convoy parked their vehicles in the downtown area close to Parliament Hill, asking to speak to the prime minister who soon made his contempt for them and their mission a matter of public display.

 

In the central downtown area where the convoy was parked, friction between residents and convoy participants soon arose; commotion, blocking access to local businesses, noise emanating from the honking of the horns of the rigs, all conspired to arouse resentment and anger in locals. Justin Trudeau refused to meet with or speak to the organizers, one of whom was trucker Chris Barber. The upshot of a standoff where the convoy invoked their right to peaceful assembly and protest and freedom of speech, and the municipality of Ottawa dealing with neighbourhood complaints came to a head when the Trudeau government invoked the modern version of the War Measures Act (Emergencies Act) enabling government to put an end to the convoy's presence.

Protesters participating in a cross-country truck convoy walk near Parliament Hill on January 29, 2022. (Adrian Wyld/CP)

 

Part and parcel of the Emergencies Act implementation was to bring court cases against two of the more prominent convoy organizers, Chris Barber and Tamara Lich. As for citizens who supported the convoy with donations, they were identified and their bank accounts frozen. Draconian measures were imposed by government on any individual or group or company that had been involved in support of the convoy and its protests. Dramatic persecutory actions belying the democratic nature of the country. The Crown seeks a 7-year sentence for Lich, and eight years for Barber. 

"I’ve worked hard all my life as a trucker, and ‘Big Red’ is the heart of my business."

"Taking it away wouldn’t just be punishing me — it would take away my ability to provide for my family and employees." 

"The Crown is trying to forfeit this truck and then destroy it," Chris Barber says. Photo by Courtesy Chris Barber // JUSTIN TANG / The Canadian Press

 

More recently Canadian cities have been witness to thousands of keffiyeh and mask-clad supporters of a terrorist-proscribed Palestinian group, Hamas, assembling time and again to block intersections, interfere with traffic, threaten Jewish Canadians, picket synagogues and Jewish parochial schools, vandalize Jewish businesses, call for a global Intifada, chant slogans calling for the destruction of Israel, intimidate and threaten those who disagree with them, and no government or police action has ever been taken. 

 

In those protests it is not uncommon to see the flags of Palestinian and Yemeni terrorist groups flown, even though these are recognized terrorist groups and are present on Canada's terror list, including Samidoun, which continues to have its headquarters in Vancouver, and continues its agitation, with the federal government looking the other way. Palestinian supporters have protested in front of the offices of Members of Parliament, they have interfered with public events and shut down special events, yet no official action is taken, even when pedestrian and vehicular traffic is blocked off for mass Islamic street prayers.

 

The long-standing persecution since 2022 of the convoy principals continues with a Crown forfeiture application to take the 2004 Kenworth long-haul truck valued at over $150,000 from the ownership of Swift Current, Saskatchewan trucker Chris Barber. Should Ontario Court Justice Heather Perkins-McVey judge that the truck was used in the commission of mischief, the truck called Big Red would be seized. "The Crown is trying to forfeit this truck and then destroy it", states Mr. Barber, pointing out "It's been my home fore the better part of 22 years". Where the collar of his dog Buddy, hangs from the ceiling. "The dog travelled with me for the better part of 17 years".

 

Both Barber, 50, and Tamara Lich, both Freedom Convoy organizers, convicted of mischief under the argument that the protest was the cause of broad community harm, have had many court appearances during their prolonged trials. Any unaffected objective observer would come away from the charade of government upholding the law on civil disobedience with its determined persecution of these people bearing the indelible impression that this is a government bent on vengeance, not upholding the law, applied unevenly to suit the mood of the government apparatus. 

 

Convoy organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber outside the courthouse in Ottawa in a file photo. Photo by Justin Tang /The Canadian Press 

"There's a great divide between the two sides. There are citizens of Ottawa that really took it to heart and felt interfered with and still some have a hatred. He's got death threats."

"I've got emails from people that were very hateful to me as a lawyer for him. I've been a criminal lawyer for over 30 years, defended a lot of different types of crimes much worse than this, and never got that type of attention and hatred from regular people."

"Mr. Barber has to cross into the United States for his work purposes. [A criminal record might see him turned away at the border]."

Lawyer Diane Magas 

Luminary Iconoclast Leaving Woke Canada

"The issue with the College [of psychologists of Ontario] ... is very annoying to say the least."

"And the new legislation that the [federal] Liberals are attempting to push through, Bill C-63 [Online Harms Act] -- we'd all be living in a totalitarian hellhole if it passes."

"The tax situation is out of  hand, the government in Canada at the federal level is incompetent beyond belief. And it's become uncomfortable for me in my neighbourhood in Toronto."

"[I lived in a] kind of champagne socialist neighbourhood [where I was] less popular in my own neihbourhood than I am anywhere else in the world, literally."

"[The Toronto District School Board is] probably the most woke institution in North America, which is really saying something."

"[Toronto is] run by the wife [Olivia Chow] of the last leader of the socialist party in Canada [Jack Layton], and so the goal in Toronto was to turn it into Portland or San Francisco. And that's happening."

"I didn't ever expect that to be something that happened in Canada. But under Justin [Trudeau] and the woke mob, that's definitely something that's happened."

Jordan Peterson, Canadian psychologist, author, iconoclast

That's it, he's had enough. His advice and outlook on life, how to make the most of it sensibly with the use of one's own commonsense in acknowledging opposing ideologies while selecting what comes naturally, trusting your own reaction to prevailing and ever-changing social mores with a little helpful  hints from a seasoned veteran from the academic world whose personal experience leavened with the insight of a professional  people-watcher, will no longer tolerate the bullying of woke academia, government and  readjusted social structures that stricture personal development.

His rise to prominence owed greatly to pushing back against that woke establishment, starting with his refusal to accede to the preferred pronoun use at University of Toronto where he was a professor emeritus. His instructional books on living a fulfilling life, taking advantage of all possibilities with a clear head untrammelled with the junk science of modern reversals of societal mores mandating that everyone fall into line or be named an outdated troglodyte of social stagnation became a sensation among the troubled minds that saw no value in DEI, Critical Race Theory and Wokeness.

Anonymous complaints of Professor Peterson's private conduct in the social media sphere brought the heavy hand of the College of Psychologists of Ontario down on the Professor's head. His posts characterizing a plus-size model as "not beautiful" hit a sour note with someone, and a single complaint was sufficient no doubt, to spur the College into action against a sinning son. Professor Peterson was ordered to present himself for a coaching program on professionalism in public statements. And when a panel of Superior Court justices ruled that to be reasonable, Professor Peterson prepared himself for the ordeal.

Did those coaching sessions result in correcting Professor Peterson's impulsive remarks that people found so denigrating when he was expressing his opinion of the absurdity of social interactions? Hardly; it appears that the College was unsuccessful in persuading anyone of even minimal standing in the field to take the coaching position, possibly intimidated by the thought of 'correcting' the vision and values of a man known to be very capable in the debating field of rational thought.

 

In any event, the man is fed up with everything he sees and hears around him, from the administration of the Toronto municipality, to the pathetic aura in academia at every level where it is left-wing 'progressive' politics that rule the day and ruin the educational opportunities owing to those whose aspiration it is to secure a sound education, not constant exposure to deranged social experiments in restructuring the social weal to accommodate the victimhood ideology that permeates society from marginal minority groups to imported terrorist heroization.

 

When Professor Peterson left his tenured position with University of Toronto, chief among the reasons he stated was the "appalling ideology currently demolishing the universities and, downstream, the general culture". At a public enquiry into foreign interference, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was testifying he seemed to refer to allegations out of the U.S. that RT, a media source linked to Moscow, had been bankrolling right-wing influencers, inferring that Professor Peterson was one of those. 

 

"I don't think it's reasonable for the prime minister of this country to basically label me a traitor and I don't find it amusing." 

Jordan Peterson has announced that he has moved to the U.S. from Canada. Attila KISBENEDEK / AFP/Getty Images

Unintended Consequences and its Victims

"It's unexplainable. Suddenly they said, 'Now you can't come'."
"Most of us cannot go back to Iran; we're in complete despair. We are afraid they will give us a sentence [the Iranian regime view them as traitors, sentence them accordingly]. They could put us in jail."
H. Avakian, 35, Armenian Christian, Iranian refugee, Austria

"[The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran engages in] systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom, including prolonged detention, torture and executions based primarily or entirely upon the religion of the accused."
United States Commission on International Religious Freedom

Terraces of the Baha'i Gardens in Haifa overlooking the Mediterranean Sea (Oren Fixler/Flash90)

Islam has a controversial and peculiarly polarized relationship with other religions. On one hand, it formally recognizes Judaism and Christianity as sharing some of Islam's precepts, even while reality is that Islam has lifted its sacred precepts from the religions it considers its predecessor 'try-outs' by a God dissatisfied with the earlier iterations, giving his final stamp of approval to the third, Islam, and on the other hand reserving the right to have a wholly negative view of their sacred legality, having spurned the Prophet's invitation to abandon Judaism and Christianity and submit to Islam as Allah has decreed.

So, even while Iran's Constitution proclaims Shiite Islam the official state religion, shunning Sunni Islam as an illegitimate version of true Islam, recognizing Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians as minority religions given Iranian protection, in point of fact the Republic goes out of its way to violate its own stated patronizing position on the protected status it so magnanimously offers religions with a connection to Islam, purporting to be separately quasi-divine, but in actual fact their presence an affront to Islam not taken lightly.

An Iranian woman prays as she attends Christmas Eve mass at the St Joseph Armenian Catholic church in Tehran on Dec. 24, 2016. (Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images)

According to the U.S. Commission, Iranian authorities have detained hundreds of Christians between the years 2010 and 2016. President Suhaib Nashi of the Mandaean Society of American states his fears for a number of Mandaean families who have temporarily established themselves as Iranians looking for asylum, hoping to be re-united with family members living in the United States. They have fled Iranian persecution in hopes of finding a place for themselves where their religion is treated with respect and equality among others.

And they felt so assured there would be a place for them in the United States that they liquidated all their holdings, left their professions and cut themselves away from their place of birth in Iran in a search for freedom for themselves and their families. They travelled to Austria as a safe transit site there to await the processing of their visas enabling them to arrive in the United States to begin their lives anew there. They are still waiting, some one hundred Iranian Christians a year later, their savings drained as they awaited applications for refugee status to be processed.

A return to Iran in recognition of U.S. failure to regard them as refugees, validating their requests and allowing them to emigrate to America, would result in their lives being endangered since the government of Iran regards them as enemies of the state. The 1989 U.S. law, the Lautenberg Amendment offers safe haven to persecuted religious minorities. Among those awaiting word from the U.S. that they may proceed as requested, are ethnic Armenian and Assyrian Christians, Mandaeans and Zoroastrians who have been mostly sponsored by relatives in the U.S.

Jewish Iranians casts their vote at a synagogue used as a polling station for the Jewish community in Tehran on February 26, 2016. AFP

Some 30,000 Iranians, members of the Jewish, Mandaean, Zoroastrian and Baha'i communities, all persecuted minorities in the Islamic Republic of Iran have received refugee status enabling them to settle in the United States since the Lautenberg Amendment saw expansion to include Iranians, in 2004. It is from among these families' relatives that those who see their futile applications being denied by U.S. authorities are being denied hope for the future.


One of the families already conditionally approved for refugee status later received a notice of ineligibility which stated their application "has been denied as a matter of discretion". Recent changes in the U.S. refugee admissions programs resulted, according to a State Department spokeswoman, in "a greater number of denials in the Vienna refugee program", leaving the U.S. Austria and others to work in tandem hoping to find alternatives for the anxiously waiting groups of Iranian Christians.

Image: Omar Marques / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images

Asylum seekers join 2016 protests in Vienna, Austria.

 

UN Watch BriefingLatest from the United Nations  Vol. 511  |  October 29, 2014

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Nazareth Priest Tells U.N. in Arabic: "Israel is only country in Mideast where Christians live in safety" Must-See Video: Click here     Father Gabriel Naddaf testified on behalf of UN Watch Speaking in Arabic and on behalf of UN Watch, Father Gabriel Naddaf of Nazareth intervened during the recent 27th session of the UN Human Rights Council. Mr. President, I am speaking to you on behalf of UN Watch. Standing before you is Father Gabriel Naddaf, a Christian citizen from Nazareth, the city in which Christ was raised and where he proselytized. Dear Sirs, while I stand before you today, the earth of the Middle East is soaked with the blood of Christians being killed daily. Do you know that at the start of the 20th century, Christians comprised 20% of the population of the Middle East? Today they comprise only 4%. Do you know that over the past years some 100,000 Christians have been killed annually? And why? Not for a crime they’ve committed, but only for believing in Christ. In Iraq alone, more than 77% of the Christians have fled during the year 2000, in addition to thousands killed and expelled. Some 2 million Christians lived in Syria, but today, they are less than 250,000. Christians in these countries are treated as second-class citizens; facing racial, religious, economic and social discrimination. Why is this happening? Only due to their religion, a religion that advocates love and peace between mankind. Christians in the Middle East are marginalized, their rights denied, their property stolen, their honor violated, their men killed, and their children displaced. Where will they go? Who will defend them? And who will guard their property? If we look at the Middle East, Mr. President, we realize there’s only one safe place where Christians are not persecuted. One place where they are protected, enjoying freedom of worship and expression, living in peace and not subjected to killing and genocide. It is Israel, the country I live in. The Jewish state is the only place where the Christians of the Holy Land live in safety. Christians and Jews live in Israel not only because Christ was originally Jewish, born in Jewish Bethlehem, but because they share a common destiny, and a true hope to coexist in peace. Does the world acknowledge Israel for protecting its Christians? Many in the international community have chosen to criticize Israel. This, in my mind, is a double crime: because by doing so, the international community helps those striving to annihilate the Jews, the Christians, the Druze and the Yazidis for political ends. By doing so, the international community unfortunately contributes to exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East. It causes Christians to leave the land of Christ searching for a safe haven across the world. It is time for the world to awaken and realize the truth of those striving to destroy the Jewish state. They are hastening the death sentence of Christians in the Middle East and the Holy Land, the land which witnessed the birth and life of our Lord Jesus Christ. If they leave, who will remain in it? I, Father Gabrial Naddaf of Nazareth, stand before you and plead: O world leaders and supporters of peace, stop those who want to destroy the only free Jewish state in the region. It is the only refuge welcoming and protecting all of its citizens. It is the only place that does not attempt to push out Christians, forcing them to leave their land in search of security. I implore you from the bottom of my heart to hear the cry of the Christians of the Middle East before it is too late, and you may read about them only in the history books. Thank you, Mr. President. CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO

Impressing Strangers

Bullies tend to be braggarts. And sometimes being a bully who wants to impress others by recounting their exploits to a presumed appreciative audience can have repercussions that the brashly vicious moron who would conduct an unprovoked attack upon an entirely innocent person, feeling himself clever in the process could use some help in restoring a sense of reality to his conscience.

On November 24 in the town of Katy, in Texas, 27-year-old Conrad Barrett approached a 79-year-old black man with a greeting. "How's it going, man?" he asked. And then, while videoing the event, he engaged in what was termed a "knockout game" attack. He sucker-punched the unsuspecting elderly man. In the video a "loud smack" is heard, the victim falls, a laugh is heard and a voice says "knockout".

The elderly man by then may or may not have been aware that the young man who brutally assailed him had fled the scene, in a vehicle. He was left lying on the ground. In the attack the man lost three teeth. He required surgery to repair his jaw, broken in two places. The 79-year-old man who might never have imagined that he would be the butt of someone's racist amusement was hospitalized for over four days.

And the imbecile who attacked the old man went about shopping his video to what he assumed would be an appreciative audience. Twelve days after the attack, Conrad Barrett showed off his video to a couple he had met at a restaurant. He was trying to impress a man and a woman, with no idea that the man was an off-duty investigator. Did they know about the knockout game, he asked?

After viewing the video, the investigator flagged down a uniformed officer and escorted him to Conrad Barrett. While Barrett's face doesn't appear on the video his voice was matched to the one in the video. The couple informed investigators that Barrett was wearing the same shorts and shoes as the person shooting the video.

Conrad Barrett was arrested on federal hate-crimes charges. Conscience? Forget it!

This booking photo released by the Harris County Sheriff's Office shows Conrad Barrett after he was arrested for DWI in 2003.  
AP Photo/Harris County Sheriff's Office, via Houston Chronicle

Human Nature/The Lessons of History

"Silently, with no lights on, cars kept coming, one after the other, full to bursting with baggage and furniture, prams and birdcages, packing cases and baskets of clothes, each with a mattress tied firmly to the roof. They looked like mountains of fragile scaffolding and they seemed to move without the aid of a motor, propelled by their own weight down the sloping streets to the town square. Cars filled all the roads into the square. People were jammed together like fish caught in a net, and one good tug on that net would have picked them all up and thrown them down on to some terrifying river bank."

"They look so tired, so hot!" everyone kept saying, but not one of them thought to open their doors, to invite one of these wretches inside, to welcome them into the shady bits of heaven that the refugees could glimpse behind the houses, where wooden benches nestled in arbours amid currant bushes and roses. There were just to many of them, too many weary, pale faces, dripping with sweat, too many wailing children, too many trembling lips asking "D you know where we could get a room? A bed?"... "Would you tell us where we could find a restaurant, please Madame?" It prevented the townspeople from being charitable. There was nothing human left in this miserable mob; they were like a herd of frightened animals. Their crumpled clothes, crazed faces, hoarse voices, everything bout them made them look peculiarly alike, so you couldn't tell them apart. They all made the same gestures, said the same words."

"They hadn't yet been shelled. When it happened, they didn't know what was going on at first. They heard the sound of an explosion, then another, then shouting: "Run for it! Get down! Get down on the ground!" They immediately threw themselves face down."

"The people arriving off trains would ask, "Is it an air raid?" and be told, "No, it's over", only for the faint bell to be heard again five minutes later. There was laughter. Shops were open, little girls played hopscotch on the pavement and dogs ran through the dust near the old cathedral. The Italian and German planes were ignored as they glided calmly overhead. People were used to them. Suddenly, one broke loose and swooped down at the crowd. He's going to crash, no he's going to fire, he's firing, we're finished.. The bombs had fallen on the train station and, a bit further along, on the railway tracks. The glass roof shattered and exploded outwards, wounding and killing the people in the square. Panic-stricken, some of the women threw down their babies as if they were cumbersome packages and ran. Others grabbed their children and held them so tightly they seemed to want to force them back into the womb, as if that were the only truly safe place."
Irene Nemirovsky, Suite Francaise

Jewish refugees board the SS Mouzinho for the voyage to the United States. Among these refugees is a group of Jewish children recently rescued from internment camps in France. Lisbon, Portugal, ca. June 10, 1941.

An old manuscript, never published, was unearthed, its contents digested by a relative, then finally published seventy years after it was written painstakingly by hand, under a dire and constant threat, during the Second World War by an emigrant whose Jewish family from Ukraine had sought haven in France during the Russian Revolution, but whom the Nazi juggernaut caught up with, when the writer was deported to Auschwitz, where she died in 1942.

Irene Nemirovsky, a Sorbonne graduate, had attained some measure of fame as a novelist with her succession of novels in France. The world knows her now as the author of Suite Francaise, a moving account of the panic and fear that enveloped the French when they were forced to understand that the impossible had occurred; their defending French military had been defeated by the advance of the Axis military.

She described the suffering of ordinary civilians fleeing their fears of occupation and death, and meeting it when German and Italian warplanes flew over congested highways packed with terrified migrants, bombing and strafing, or awaiting the arrival of trains to take them further into the countryside and imagined safety, only to have them bombed, and they within the rail stations.

Reading her novelistic account of the history of the time during the Nazi invasion of France, turns the reader's mind to the dreadful suffering of the Syrian people at the present time, caught between an armed insurrection comprised of rebel forces contesting the legitimacy of the Alawite Baathist regime of President Bashar al-Assad whose war machine answers the challenge of those they describe as "terrorists" by aiming their deadly artillery at their own civilian populations.

That there are indeed within the forces of the rebels, jihadists whose deadly pursuit of extreme violence to be committed against all those whose brand of Islam does not match their own, and who victimize people indiscriminately for the sheer love of vicious bloodshed in the commission of their fanaticism to uphold the vision of pure Islam, is undeniable.

Humanitarian aid agencies and United Nations observers give testimony to the plight of fleeing men, women, children and the elderly and the injured from the deliberate fog of war. One million estimated to be internally displaced, and two million become refugees in bordering countries themselves fearing the overlap of hostilities that might succeed in sucking them into the vortex of war through tribal antipathies and sectarian reactions.

Syrian refugees arrive at the Turkish town of Yayladagi, where two camps have been set up   Picture: David Rose