One elderly and ailing Orthodox priest, Fr. Nikolai Kotelnikov, had his throat slit by the Muslims yelling "Allahu akbar" ["Allah is the greatest"]. – asianews.it, June 24, 2024, Russia.

ISIS militants, using machetes and rifles, slaughtered more than 80 Christians....ISIS emphasized the religious identity of its victims in a post, saying that "Caliphate soldiers" killed "Christians." According to one report, many of the slain were "very young" and were targeted for "refusing to convert into Islam".... some bodies were found "tied up" and "decapitated." – premierchristian.news, June 18, 2024, Democratic Republic of Congo.

In Lahore Pakistan, authorities arrested Jameela Khatoon, a 62-year-old mentally ill Christian woman, after a Muslim shopkeeper, Muhammad Asif, complained that she had committed blasphemy against his namesake, the prophet of Islam. Jameela is being charged under Section 295-C of Pakistan's Penal Code, which carries a mandatory death sentence for those who insult Muhammad. Earlier that day, after Jameela had entered Asif's shop, they argued about shampoo. – britishasianchristians.org, June 7, 2024, Pakistan.

[A]n "anti-terrorism" court, despite lack of evidence, handed out another death sentence to Ehsan Masih, a 27-year-old Christian man, for allegedly sharing a "blasphemous" video against Muhammad on a social media platform. – morningstarnews.org, June 7, 2024, Pakistan.

[A]n impoverished Christian rickshaw driver, [Dennis Albert], is facing a long prison sentence, possibly for life, for stepping out of his carriage onto some papers alleged to have been pages of the Koran. – morningstarnews.org, June 18, 2024, Pakistan.

"Dennis has studied till 10th grade, but he had no clue that the pages he was standing on had religious value. He's a simple rickshaw driver earning an honorable livelihood for himself. He did not have any intention of hurting religious sentiments of any person or community... He's losing hope for his freedom. He's being kept in a special barrack reserved for blasphemy accused..." – Imran Albert, the rickshaw driver's brother, morningstarnews.org, June 18, 2024, Pakistan.

"Typically kidnapped girls in Pakistan, some as young as 10, are abducted, forced to convert to Islam and raped under cover of such Islamic 'marriages' and are then pressured to record false statements in favor of the kidnappers, rights advocates say. Judges routinely ignore documentary evidence related to the children's ages, handing them back to kidnappers as their 'legal' wives." -- morningstarnews.org, July 9, 2024, Pakistan.

[A] Muslim factory owner tortured his Christian employee to death -- Waqas Salamat, age 18 -- for refusing to continue working for him.... Muhammad instantly sent some factory workers to collect him; they bound his hands and feet and carried him to Muhammad's factory. There, Muhammad, his son, and several Muslim employees began torturing Waqas for hours—beating him with pipes and administering electric shocks to him—until he died. He was the main breadwinner for his impoverished family. According to his mother, Rubina.

"Our financial condition is such that we didn't even have enough money to arrange for his burial... Waqas was my beloved son and my biggest support. He would often tell me that he'll work very hard to make life easier for us...." -- morningstarnews.org, June 11, 2024, Pakistan.

One of the dangers that democracies face is that of the machinery of government morphing into a political party with its own culture, traditions, methods and, needless to say, interests -- above all that of self-perpetuation. Thus, the US has a third, invisible party, besides the Republicans and Democrats.

That Mandarinate is especially well-entrenched in the State Department, the Pentagon, the Treasury and, more importantly, the judiciary.

It also has well-established, at times incestuous, relations with lobbyists, single-issue activist groups, universities with their tenured academics, and think tanks with rotating doors to government departments and the media.

The Mandarinate maintains close ties with those unmovable, effectively tenured members of the Senate and House of Representatives.

Conspiracy theorists refer to this Mandarinate as "the deep state".

However, what we are dealing with isn't the product of a conspiracy by a cabal in a black chamber. It is the organic product of a system in which democracy is reduced to elections, and elections reduced to a beauty contest, just as a set of rituals is often marketed as a religion.

Winning an election is an art; governing is quite a different one.

[T]he closer the decision-making process is to those affected, the stronger a democracy is.

Rebalancing power between Washington and the states has been an issue since the end of the Civil War.

While the two candidates fire abuse at one another, the voter isn't told what they actually mean to do about cracks in the structures of world order, the war in Ukraine, China as a threat or a rival, the exponential rise of anti-Semitic activities and the deepening of incivility in public life.