RUTHFULLY YOURS

China and Russia rattle nuclear sabers at sea, while the US Navy’s newest ship breaks down.

For what appears to be the first time, Beijing has sent one of its nuclear missile subs on an actual deterrence patrol:

China has advanced its nuclear deterrent capabilities by sending a Type 094 (‘Jin’-class) nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) out on its first deterrent patrol and by conducting a fifth reported test of its mobile, solid-fuel, multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle (MIRV)-capable DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), according to US officials.

Although China’s first second-generation Type 094 was launched in 2004, according to IHS Jane’s Fighting Ships , US officials have not acknowledged that its premier deterrent patrol had occurred until this month.

“Given China’s known capabilities and their efforts to develop a sea-based deterrent, in absence of indicators to the contrary it is prudent to assume that patrols are occurring,” said US Strategic Command spokesperson US Navy captain Pamela Kunzein in a statement to The Washington Times published on 10 December.

Finland, a country sandwiched between Sweden and Russia, and which basically wants nothing more than to be left alone, is not happy to find itself suddenly on the front lines of Merkel’s Folly:

There is a sense of tension in the pretty, snow-covered Finnish town — an underlying fear which makes parents hold their children a little closer, and angry resentment towards the group of young men who arrived just a month ago. Kempele, almost 400 miles north of Helsinki, is usually a place where 17,000 unassuming townfolk while away the hours playing ice hockey. But that peaceful existence has been ripped apart by the rape of a 14-year-old girl as she walked home on a Monday night a fortnight ago.

The alleged culprit is one of the young men living at a migrant centre, which locals did not want in the first place.

But far from being an anomaly, Kempele – which saw hundreds take to the streets in an anti-immigration march last weekend — has become a snapshot of a country where people patrol the streets in vigilante mobs, block people crossing the border and even dress as the Ku Klux Klan at angry protests against the influx of refugees.

We still have not encountered one case — ever — where a terrorist complained about the absence of a two-state solution. Also, contrary to Abbas’s claim, none of the terrorists has ever complained about checkpoints or settlements. This latest wave of terrorism is not about “despair,” unemployment, poor living conditions or freedom of movement. Instead, it is another attempt by Palestinian “youths” to eliminate Israel, by again using the false excuse that Jew are “desecrating” and “destroying” Islamic holy sites.

A review of the Facebook accounts of most of the terrorists shows that their main intention was to murder as many Jews as possible in order to become “martyrs” — to impose a reign of terror Jews, to force them to leave Israel.

Abbas is well aware that the “youths” are not complaining about the “occupation.” The “occupation” these ” youths” have a problem with is the one that began with the creation of Israel in 1948.

A new generation of Palestinians has once again been deceived into believing that the Jews are plotting to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque. In the “Al-Aqsa Intifada” (2000-2005), the Palestinians knew — they saw — that the Jews had not destroyed the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas now wants us to believe that the Palestinian “youths,” who are sent out to murder Jewish soldiers and civilians, are acting out of “despair.” He wants us to believe that these “youths” decided to murder Jews because their dream of a two-state solution has not been realized. Abbas is also trying to convince us that these “youths” are upset about the Israeli checkpoints, continued construction in the settlements, and visits by Jews to the Noble Sanctuary (Temple Mount).

ISTANBUL—Thousands of Turkish security forces are converging on the country’s Kurdish heartland for what the government is calling a “decisive” military campaign against militants fighting for autonomy.

Nearly 200,000 people have fled their homes and hundreds have been killed in parts of southeastern Turkey, the epicenter of clashes since a two-year cease-fire between the government and Kurdish militants collapsed five months ago, according to humanitarian groups.

Turkish security forces in tanks and armored personnel carriers are now seeking to tighten their hold on strongholds of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party—the militant group better known as the PKK—in residential neighborhoods of seven Kurdish-majority cities, officials said.

“The Islamists are growing in numbers, in part through immigration, but they are still a minority within a minority. Yet they have succeeded in reducing freedom of speech throughout Europe, and in local areas where the Islamists dominate they impose rules such as “no alcohol” and a “modest” dress code for women through threats and beatings. By contrast liberal governments tell Muslim pupils that they need not sing the national anthem if it offends them, and neurotically avoid giving the slightest offence to supposed Muslim sensitivities.”
Malcolm Turnbull is fond of proclaiming that Australia is a multicultural society, but this is loose talk. A multicultural society is a contradiction in terms, since common cultural understandings are the glue that holds a society together. Just look at France and the way its very fabric is ripped asunder
We were about thirty hours from sending this issue of Quadrant to the printers when the news broke that terrorist attacks in Paris had killed more than a hundred people. It seemed an important enough event, throwing light on both European and Australian concerns, to justify commissioning serious commentaries on it. That in turn pushed us into re-shaping this Quadrant around the concept of France’s emerging civil war.

Chance favours the prepared mind, it is said, and that concept had been planted in our minds the previous week when we received an article from our perceptive cultural critic Michael Connor titled “Paris, at Five Minutes to Midnight”. On a visit to France, Michael was struck by the unstable jostling blend of joyful cultural entertainments, car-burnings in resentful anti-white suburbs, the smart bookshops running out of republished Occupation-era fascist novels, all within a few stops on the Metro. “Nowhere in Paris is far from possible danger,” he writes. “The theatres and museums operate under strict security. Armed soldiers punctuate the street outside the Shoah Memorial, as they do outside Sacré Cœur.”

THE MASS MURDERS in Paris took place following a summer that had seen a vast non-military invasion of Europe, mainly by young men from the Middle East and Africa sweeping over Europe’s external and internal borders under the guise, not false in all cases, of refugees from the Syrian civil war.

Even more than most other first-world nations modern Europe suffers from a potentially fatal cognitive dissonance. All the time we hold two wholly contradictory ideas in our heads.

The first idea is that our countries are multicultural paradises where anyone from anywhere in the world can come and deserves to settle if they so wish. We believe that those who come here will assimilate, but at the same time we do not especially mind if they do not, and offer no incentives for them to do so. Indeed if they do not wish to assimilate we respect them for holding on to their own culture. At the same time it is natural that we should decry as “racist” anyone who wants to hold on to what is left of our own culture. This part of our brain talks about “integration” and “radicalisation” and “violent extremism” and all the other weakly euphemisms of our time.

Yet all the time our brains hold another idea—ordinarily pushed to the very recess of our minds but always capable of breaking out. This holds the possibility that this is all nonsense. That integration if it does ever happen takes centuries to occur and has certainly not happened in present-day Europe. This part of the brain knows from observation and from an awareness of history that a strong religious culture when placed into a weak and relativistic culture will make itself felt long before it will significantly adapt. If there is a reason why we repress this instinct and favour the wilfully optimistic version of events it is because the consequences of accepting this truth are so utterly calamitous and damn the majority beliefs of a whole generation.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan fancies himself as the protector of Sunni Islam. As such, he has been known as a major supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and Hamas in Gaza. The recent accusation Putin’s Russia leveled at Erdogan that he is aiding and abetting the Sunni Islamic State (IS) is not far-fetched.

Saudi Arabian-based Arab News (December 7, 2015) reported that “Turkey was astonished by Iranian accusation that Ankara is supporting IS and involved in oil dealing with the terrorists in Iraq and Syria.” The Turkish Foreign Ministry responded by saying that “there was nothing in Tehran’s accusations to take seriously.”

In a statement Erdogan issued last Thursday, he warned his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani over media reports that alleged that he and his family were involved in oil trade with IS terrorists. Erdogan stated that he spoke to Rouhani on the telephone and told him, “You will pay a high price if it continues like that.” He was referring to the Iranian media reports that accused Erdogan of dealing with IS.

“This is a matter of life or death. I need you to be an intermediary with Argentina to get help for my country’s nuclear program. We need Argentina to share its nuclear technology with us. It will be impossible to advance with our program without Argentina’s cooperation.” – Iran’s former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

According to Venezuelan informants, whitewashing Iran’s accused from the AMIA attack was only a secondary objective in its outreach to Argentina. The primary objective was to gain access to Argentina’s nuclear technology and materials — a goal Iran has for more than three decades.

During the last 32 years, Iran has achieved a resounding success in promoting an anti-US and anti-Israel message in Latin America. Its state-owned television network, HispanTV, broadcasts in Spanish 24 hours a day, seven days a week in at least 16 countries throughout the region.

The lifting of sanctions and influx of billions of dollars as a result of Iran’s nuclear deal will undoubtedly help Iran in Latin America, where many countries face economic turmoil and can use an Iranian “stimulus.”

While Latin America is often regarded as a foreign policy backwater for the United States, it is the geopolitical prize for the Islamic Republic of Iran.

During the last couple months, Iran and Saudi Arabia have been playing a political tug of war over Latin America. On November 10, 2015, Iran’s deputy foreign minister held a private meeting with ambassadors from nine Latin American countries to reaffirm the Islamic Republic’s desire to “enhance and deepen ties” with the region. This was followed by similar statements from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) in Tehran later that month.

A nation ruled by an extremist Islamic sect known as the Wahhabis announced that it has formed a grand coalition of mostly Muslim countries to fight terrorism. Saudi Arabia and 33 other nations will coordinate their efforts to end terrorism – they say.

Presumably, the government of Saudi Arabia and the coalition won’t fight any of the Islamist militias the Saudis are currently supporting in Syria. And Pakistan, a member of the coalition, will somehow forget that it is supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The fact is, many members of this coalition are supporting their own pet terrorist outfits to advance their own interests.

Fox News:

The announcement published by the state-run Saudi Press Agency said the alliance will be Saudi-led and is being established because terrorism “should be fought by all means and collaboration should be made to eliminate it.” The statement said Islam forbids “corruption and destruction in the world” and that terrorism constitutes “a serious violation of human dignity and rights, especially the right to life and the right to security.”

Little Kim goes unchallenged in human rights abuses…after the dismal policies of Clinton and Dubya Bush which supposedly “reset” relations with the thugs of North Korea…..rsk
SEOUL—North Korea’s Supreme Court sentenced Korean-Canadian pastor Lim Hyeon-soo, who had been in detention since February, to life in prison with hard labor.

Mr. Lim, the pastor of Light Korean Presbyterian Church in Mississauga, Ontario, is the latest in a string of Christian missionaries who have been detained and sentenced to hard labor in North Korea, which worships its founder, Kim Il Sung, as a deity and views the spread of organized religion as a threat to the ruling family’s grip on power.

Mr. Lim was accused of committing “state subversive plots and activities,” according to North Korea’s official mouthpiece, the Korea Central News Agency.

The agency said Mr. Lim had “committed anti-DPRK religious activities” and acted with U.S. and South Korean authorities “to lure and abduct DPRK citizens,” using the acronym for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.