RUTHFULLY YOURS

North Korea used both the Agreed Framework and the NPT as camouflage to cheat and proceed with its covert nuclear weapons program. Nuclear weapons are apparently an integral part of North Korea’s strategy eventually to reunify the Korean peninsula under North Korean communist rule.

According to Hwang Jang-Yop, highest-ranking North Korean defector in history, North Korea’s goal is to remove American military forces from South Korea. Once that withdrawal is achieved, the North would use its nuclear arsenal to deter Japan and the U.S. and prevent these two key South Korean allies from coming to the defense of the South once the North invades it.

Arms control, since the height of the Cold War, has cut both the U.S. and Russian strategic deployed arsenals by nearly 90% and thus can hardly be described as part of any “arms race” that might have compelled North Korea to build nuclear weapons.

The idea that the U.S. deciding to replace aging nuclear systems, some half-century after the last modernization, is somehow perpetuating an “arms race” is without foundation.

“Military critics” are already anticipating how to disembowel critical elements of the U.S. military — especially its aging nuclear deterrent — when the defense budget will be unveiled by the administration and sent to Congress February 9, 2016. In two recent essays, for instance, Gordon Adams, previously at the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration, and Lawrence Korb, at the Center for American Progress, are both calling for dismantling the U.S. nuclear deterrent.

“Western societies have moved from being self-confident, to being remorseful, to being crippled by self-flagellation. Unfortunately, it has now gone so far throughout politics, the media, universities and schools that the position is almost certainly irredeemable. It will need some mighty kind of backlash to right the ship. More likely it is that the Islamists will take over and all those rights that women and LGBTIs thought they’d won will disappear overnight; and in very unpleasant ways. Oh golly gosh, if only we’d known.”

The West’s political and purported moral leaders have traded self-confidence for guilt-stricken contortions borne of the compulsion to apologise. As we debase ourselves and recast traditional virtues as vices, Islamists are laughing their heads off — and ours too, sooner or later
For Quadrant readers who do not pore over letters to the editor of The Australian, it really is a worthwhile endeavour. The views of the writers vary, of course, but nonetheless, on balance, they strike a commonsense conservative chord which one can only wish the editor(s) would consistently emulate. This is the best recent example, in my view, published on January 29 from Ewan McLean, who lives in Avalon in NSW. It makes me want to go visit.

“Here we have senior army officer prostrating himself to the PC brigade only to be beaten over the head with handbag of one of his transgender subordinates. Stop the world, I want to get off.”

I watch Foyle’s War on TV. In most of the episodes he is a senior police officer in Hastings in England during the Second World War. It doesn’t matter that I might have seen an episode two or three times before. If it is on, I generally watch. Foyle epitomises common decency and commonsense. He is also ahead of his time on social issues – being non-judgemental, for example, when his son’s friend and fellow pilot in the RAF is revealed to be more interested in his son than in his own girlfriend.

I wondered what Foyle would have made of the ‘Australian of the Year’ saga and decided that the character and his times are so far apart from the contemporary world that it is completely ridiculous to contemplate such a question. He could not have made head nor tail of it. He would have thought it was a music-hall skit, a bizarre one at that.

Here we go again. In violation of a stack of United Nations sanctions resolutions, North Korea has just launched a rocket into space. Pyongyang is describing this latest blast-off as a satellite launch. But the requisite technology is also useful for developing intercontinental ballistic missiles, which is almost certainly what’s really going on. This launch comes just a month after North Korea’s fourth nuclear test, which Pyongyang advertised as a hydrogen bomb — meaning a weapon of even greater destructive power than the atomic bombs North Koreas has been testing since 2006.

In plain English, what does this portend? North Korea is working on long-range missiles that could deliver a nuclear strike on the United States. At the very least, such weapons could greatly enhance North Korea’s leverage in its longtime racket of nuclear extortion. There is also the deeply unpleasant possibility that at some point North Korea might use such weapons. There is also the growing danger that other countries (Iran comes to mind), observing the relative impunity with which North Korea has been pursuing its missile and bomb projects, will be quite rationally inclined to follow suit — or perhaps purchase Pyongyang’s presumably advancing nuclear missile technology and wares.

What are President Obama and his team doing about this? Secretary of State John Kerry has denounced this weekend’s test launch as — you guessed it — “unacceptable,” calling it “a major provocation.”

“It was very difficult above all when they said, ‘Become Muslim or we’ll cut your head off.'” — Rev. Jacques Mourad, Syriac Catholic priest, Syria.

“The only reason they [Muslim authorities] let you go is when they torture you to death…. They don’t want you to die in prison, it’s not their responsibility, so they send you home to die.” — Helen Berhane, gospel singer, Eritrea.

“[I]f they fear that people are offended by being surrounded by Christian symbols, then perhaps those [Muslim] people applied for asylum in the wrong country.” — A speaker for the Progress Party, Norway, on being asked to remove crosses from Christian camp sites to accommodate Muslim asylum seekers.

Hostility for Christmas was on full display. On Christmas Day, Muslims in Bethlehem, as documented here, set a Christmas tree on fire and greeted the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem with a hail of stones; in Belgium, Muslim “refugees” set fire to a public Christmas tree; in Nigeria, Muslim jihadis attacked churches during Christmas mass and killed at least 16; in the Philippines, on Christmas Eve, Muslim jihadis slaughtered 10 Christians to “make a statement;” in Bangladesh, churches skipped Christmas mass, due to assassination attempts on pastors and death threats against Christians; in Indonesia, churches were on “high alert,” with 150,000 security personnel patrolling; in Iran, Christians celebrating Christmas in homes were arrested; and three Muslim countries — Somalia, Tajikistan, and Brunei — formally banned any Christmas celebrations.

Former English Defence League (EDL) leader Tommy Robinson joined 200 supporters of the controversial PEGIDA organisation today to protest against the ‘growing influence Islam has on society’.

The far-right anti-Islamic group conducted a silent march from Birmingham International train station to a remote business park outside the city centre.

EDL founder Tommy Robinson stood at the front of the group holding a banner which read: ‘Protect freedom. Reject hate’.

Speaking to reporters before he addressed around 200 supporters from a makeshift stage, he said: ‘PEGIDA is exactly what it says, patriotic European citizens opposed to the Islamisation of the England and the rest of the continent.

‘We are ordinary people, we are opposed to the Islamisation of not just our country but the rest of Europe.

‘We are part of the European Union so it affects us, what decision Angela Merkel makes they affect us here.

‘We have got many different races here today, I dont incite any hate, I oppose hate. I would like you to tell me what have I said that is hatred.

‘I have never been anti-immigration, my mum was an immigrant to the UK. I have never said I am either.

‘I am opposed to Islamisation. I don’t care who comes into the country as long as they are not coming in to cause us harm.

‘The growing influence Islam has on society is not good for society. The more Islam, the less freedom, that is a reality.

Protesters have clashed with immigration supporters and police forces during planned far-right demonstrations
Organised by anti-Islam group PEGIDA, cities across Europe and Australia saw thousands take to the streets
The confrontational rallies were held in cities that included Prague, Amsterdam, Dresden, Calais and Canberra
Former English Defence League (EDL) leader Tommy Robinson joined 200 supporters at a rally in Birmingham

Violent scuffles broke out across Europe today as thousands of people taking part in far-right anti-Islam protests clashed with pro-immigration groups and riot control police.

Police in Dresden, Germany, saw about 2,000 protesters at a rally organised by the group Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West, making it the biggest of a coordinated series of demonstrations across European cities.

Known by its German acronym PEGIDA, the group emerged in Dresden two years ago and has become a magnet for far-right and anti-immigrant sentiment.

Nationalist groups in Europe have been galvanized by the unprecedented influx of refugees from Africa, Asia and the Middle East last year. Today similar, smaller PEGIDA-style protests were planned in France, Britain, Poland, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands.

70 million more than previously thought. What is the common denominator?

A recent Telegraph report has confirmed that “Almost 70m more women than previously thought are estimated to have undergone FGM.” It indicated that the 30 countries where female genital mutilation is prevalent are “mainly in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.” Robert Spencer explains what these countries have in common HERE.

In response to this frightening and tragic report, The Glazov Gang is running its special episode with Dr. Mark Christian, a doctor from Egypt who gives a first-hand and harrowing account of his effort to heal Muslim girls who were victimized by FGM. As a former Muslim Imam, he discusses the Islamic texts that inspire and sanction FGM.

Don’t miss it!

North Korea launched a long-range rocket on Sunday carrying what it has said is a satellite, South Korea’s defense ministry said, in defiance of United Nations sanctions barring it from using ballistic missile technology.
North Korea had notified U.N. agencies that it planned to launch a rocket carrying an Earth observation satellite, triggering opposition from governments that see it as a long-range missile test. It initially gave a Feb. 8-25 time frame for the launch but changed that to Feb. 7-14 on Saturday.

The rocket was launched on a southward trajectory, as planned, passing over Japan’s southern Okinawa islands, Japan’s NHK reported, and appeared to have successfully separated its first stage booster, South Korea’s Yonhap reported.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called the launch “absolutely unacceptable.”

French socialist Christiane Taubira — the minister of justice, also known as the “keeper of the Seals” — formally resigned last week over what she called “a major political disagreement” with French socialist President François Hollande on anti-terror policies.

At stake was a constitutional amendment known as the Protection of the Nation Constitutional Act (Loi constitutionnelle de Protection de la Nation) that would strip persons who join ISIS or other jihadist networks, or who commit “grave crimes against the life of the Nation,” of their French citizenship.

The measure is largely symbolic. Still, it is immensely popular: according to an OpinionWay/Le Figaro poll, it is supported by 85% of the French as a whole, 80% of the socialist voters, and even 64% of the hard-left voters.

But Taubira, who was supposed to endorse and defend it as the minister of justice, claimed that it unfairly differentiated between the ethnic French and other groups of French citizens. Indeed, a first version targeted only binationals and had to be corrected. Taubira resigned nevertheless. Hollande and the socialist prime minister Manuel Valls may have preferred she stay.

Taubira, 63, can be described in some ways as the French Barack Obama.

BRUSSELS—The Belgian government, reacting to the major role terrorists from Brussels played in the Paris terror attacks, unveiled a program Friday to combat Islamist radicalization in and around the city.

The plans include the hiring of 1,000 new police officers across the country by 2019, with 300 of them added this year and deployed in eight municipalities in the Brussels region.

Interior Minister Jan Jambon said the additional police force in Brussels would focus on cutting off revenue sources for extremist groups by countering illicit trade in arms, drugs and false travel documents. Brussels police will also increase the monitoring of places of worship known for extremist preaching, he said.

The plans form part of a €298 million ($332 million) countrywide investment in counterterrorism that includes 110 more judiciary staff and the addition of 103 domestic intelligence service members.

The government also announced the recruitment of 70 additional Special Forces by 2019, as well as the installation of 260 extra surveillance cameras on highways and enhanced security checks at the country’s airports and train stations.

The Nov. 13 Paris attacks, which left 130 people dead, were partly perpetrated by Belgian nationals and plotted in Belgium, investigators have said. Belgian authorities have arrested 11 suspects, all originating from the Brussels region, in relation to the attacks.

The focal point of the Belgium’s much-anticipated move is the Canal Plan, named after the waterway linking Brussels with the adjacent town of Vilvoorde. It is meant to harmonize the de-radicalization strategies of seven of the 19 Brussels municipalities and Vilvoorde, all located along the canal and most touched by radicalized inhabitants departing to the Middle East to join Islamic State and other jihadist groups.

The plans of the center-right Belgian government have faced sharp public criticism from the mostly left-wing local Brussels mayors, who are in charge of implementing it.