RUTHFULLY YOURS

The UN Security Council and the Quartet – Russia, America, the United Nations and the European Union – have ended any expectations they had of successfully negotiating a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, after failing to categorically reject UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s highly offensive remarks before the Security Council and in the New York Times.

Ban told the Security Council on January 26:

“Palestinian frustration is growing under the weight of a half century of occupation and the paralysis of the peace process.

Some have taken me to task for pointing out this indisputable truth.

Yet, as oppressed peoples have demonstrated throughout the ages, it is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as a potent incubator of hate and extremism.”

Reacting to “occupation” can never justify the murder of Israeli civilians in their own homes, shopping in supermarkets, meeting in bars, or waiting at bus stops.

Such acts of murder are despicable and inhumane – and the Security Council and the Quartet should have said so clearly and unequivocally.

Following Israel’s trenchant criticism of these statements a clearly piqued Ban ran off to the New York Times on 31 January claiming he had been misrepresented:

“Some sought to shoot the messenger — twisting my words into a misguided justification for violence. The stabbings, vehicle rammings and other attacks by Palestinians targeting Israeli civilians are reprehensible. So, too, are the incitement of violence and the glorification of killers.”

It is too much to hope that those who wear their hearts on their sleeves for illegal arrivals, especially when news cameras are nearby, will ever grasp the wisdom of silence. Their yen to bask in the limelight makes a practical, low-key solution very nearly impossible
Courtesy of Fairfax Media’s Michael Gordon, another of those pseudo-thoughtful, reasonable-in-a-parallel-universe “analyses” of illegal immigration and the recent decision by the High Court to uphold the government’s right to detail and process illegal arrivalss in offshore locations. Apparently, if you follow Gordon’s logic, this adjudication is confronting Malcolm Turnbull with some big decisions. That would be, on the one hand, (a) to continue the successful policies instituted by Tony Abbott, as our latest Prime Minister solemnly promised to do or, on the other hand, (b) to repudiate his pledge and abandon them.

I’m guessing Gordon was expecting the government to be rebuffed by the High Court; if so, no surprise there. When you exist and work in a milieu where everyone you know — or everyone of whom you approve, in any case — thinks the same way and trades in the same pieties, it can be hard coming to grips with the concept that the law might see things in a different light.

Presumably, Gordon believes that, had the High Court gone the other way, Turnbull would have had an easy decision, one to which the Prime Minister would have been much more amenable. An adverse High Court ruling decision would have given him easy cover to break his solemn assurance to conservatives that, on offshore detention and other matters, he intended to cleave to the party line. Specifically, according to Gordon, Turnbull’s immediate ‘hard decision’ is:

whether he moves quickly to send around 100 children, including 37 babies, to the tiny, sweltering island with their mothers to face a precarious life in limbo.

The EU-Turkey agreement of 25 November, which provided Turkey with 3 billion euros over two years in order to stop the flow of refugees to Europe, has not achieved that goal. Speaking privately, EU officials complain that Turkey has not taken any concrete measures to reduce the flow of refugees. In our assessment, Turkey will continue to prevaricate on steps to stem the flow of refugees as pressure on the EU to give more concessions.

During the coming year there will certainly be further terrorist attacks that will push European public opinion further to the right.

We assess that Iran will continue in indirect channels with a parallel nuclear program, realized long before the 10-year target of the JCPOA.

The demand for unification of Kurdistan — Iraqi and Syrian — will also begin to be heard. It is highly likely that Russia will take advantage of the trend and support the Kurds, effectively turning an American ally into a Russian one.

The announcement by the IAEA that Iran has fulfilled its obligations according to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has triggered “Implementation Day” and the removal of the nuclear-related sanctions on Iran. The JCPOA, however, did not deal with Iran’s ballistic missile program, and the sanctions related to it are still nominally in force. These sanctions are minor and will not have any real effect on the Iranian missile program. The missile program will mature during this period and will include Ghadr missiles with ranges of 1,650-1,950 km, which may be capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

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!