harmonicminer

In yet another case of life imitating satire, we have the US warning of airline plot to implant bombs in people (what a clumsy headline…. sounds like the airlines are implanting bombs in passengers)

The White House said Wednesday there was no danger of an imminent attack on airplanes after reports that terror groups were mulling implanting bombs into the bodies of passengers.

The assurances came after news that the US administration warned airlines that extremist groups were considering surgically implanting explosives into people to try to beat tight airport security measures.

Passengers flying to the United States could now face even tougher screening measures, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, Nicholas Kimball, told the Los Angeles Times.

“These measures are designed to be unpredictable, so passengers should not expect to see the same activity at every international airport,” Kimball said, adding existing methods could not detect plastic explosives under the skin.

“Measures may include interaction with passengers, in addition to the use of other screening methods such as pat-downs and the use of enhanced tools and technologies.”

I warned about this possibility here around 18 months ago.  The salient points:

In the meantime, ever more restrictive airport boarding regulations seem a certainty, and ever more intrusive searches, until we figure out that we have no choice but to identify who is more likely to have evil intent, and give them more scrutiny, because we surely don’t have the resources or the time to give the necessary scrutiny to everyone, including your grandmother in a wheelchair from Peoria, or Trenton, who may choose not to visit you next Christmas due to a distaste for body cavity searches and x-ray glasses (like the ones they used to sell in D.C. Comics, except these will work) in the hands of prurient security types.

Sooner or later, someone is going to figure out how to make high-explosive dentures and hip/knee replacements.  While Christian “fundamentalists” will be getting only fluoride treatments, young adult male Islamic fanatics will be lining up to have all their teeth pulled and get dental implants made of enamel coated plastique.   I predict an influx of wealthy foreign nationals, of Islamic extraction, into European schools of orthopedic surgery, particularly focusing on lower extremity joint replacements.  Our too-faithful recent oral surgery patients, who will not have flossed much, will enter airplanes with a slight limp.  It’s tough to recover from double knee/double hip transplants, especially when it hurts to eat.

The other passengers will feel sorry for them, briefly.

Eventually, the only people on airplanes will be strip-searched people with no scars, who just endured body cavity searches and had their stomachs pumped.  But they will be very, very safe, wearing their airline-issued flying uniforms.  When they land at their destinations, they will report to the changing room/luggage area, where they’ll get their clothing back, which was sent in a transport plane.   Cost of a ticket from L.A. to Phoenix?  About $1,000.

Coming up next:  explosive hair.

There has already been at least one other report of terrorist plans to implant bombs.

We’re moving way past having to look for bombs in your Nikes and Fruits of the Loom. 

So what can we do about this?  Will we carry the no-profiling policy to such a ludicrous extreme that random strip searches are going to be made to look for recent surgical scars, and then require CT Scans in the indicated area (and if that isn’t revealing, we can always have a team standing by for exploratory surgery, just to be sure….  brought to you by Obamacare, of course)? 

Should we just reject anyone with recent surgical scars?  That’ll be tough on the envirobabe groupies with recently acquired, uh, enhancements to the gifts of nature.  Instead of flying first class to the next climate change seminar so they can mingle with rich Goreaphiles (in search of suitable husband material among the ecopagan intelligentsia, of course), they’ll have to stay home and watch it all on Skype…  or worse yet, on Youtube.  But hey…. that’s better for the environment anyway.  And who knows what the nice Egyptian surgeon with the funny name inserted besides a little silicon…  Maybe there’s a reason something felt a bit lumpy (did he show you the photos from his relaxing summer vacation in the mountains of Pakistan?).  We’d better keep all well-endowed ladies off the planes, just in case…  unless, of course, some self-sacrificing TSA official wants to check them all, one at a time.

I think I have an idea.  We can’t profile for ethnicity/nationality/religious background, so says the great Ozbama from behind the curtain (he’s just clandestinely checking up on those TSA officers, his version of Undercover Boss).  But here’s what we can do, and indeed there is a tie-in with Obamacare’s plan to computerize all medical records for “efficiency.”  Let’s just have everyone fill out a questionaire at the airport on all recent medical procedures.  Let’s get a new generation of scanners going that can detect surgical scars.  And let’s have computer software that compares the results of the questionaire, the scan, and the complete medical/surgical record that will be online for everyone (obviously, this will give the Obama administration the pretext it needs to extend Obamacare into the entire middle east, parts of Africa, Indonesia, and other Islamic regions.  Hope and change.).  If there is a scar or a mention of a procedure that isn’t on the “universal medical record” for each individual, we yank the offender out of the queue for “special processing.”  Allah alone knows what that might entail.  I think I don’t want to know.

I was intrigued by this line from the news report above: 

“Measures may include interaction with passengers, in addition to the use of other screening methods such as pat-downs and the use of enhanced tools and technologies.”

“Interaction with passengers,” eh?  How will a “pat down” locate a surgically implanted bomb?   I’m guessing the terrorists have already done dry runs by inserting passengers with recent surgical work (maybe even something benign implanted internally), just to see how well it works.

“Enhanced tools and technologies”?  Hmm….  maybe TSA has developed the tricorder.

Staying home is looking better and better.  With Skype, Youtube, Netflix and satellite TV, what else do you need?  International travel is over-rated, anyway.  You can only tolerate being referred to as the “ugly American” so many times, and everyone knows the world hates America….  that’s why they all want to come here.

Watch it.  It will be time well spent.

Lessons learned from the mildly idiotic plans of one Rev. Jones to publicly burn a Koran, regardless of the eventual shakeout (he’s been changing his mind a lot lately), the plan to build a mosque at Ground Zero, and remaining unanswered questions:

1)  Muslims expressing deep outrage over this have no sense of proportion.  Death threats?  Insinuations that US national security is at stake?  Compare to the reaction of Christians to the “Piss Christ” “artwork”.

2)  Virtually everyone seems to be afraid of making Muslims angry.   Could that be because they know this represents a real danger?  Why is no one afraid of making Christians angry?

3)  Americans have largely forgotten 9/11, despite the many reminders in the press and news coverage recently.  They have forgotten how they felt on 9/12.  Sadly.

4)  Christianity and Islam are not on equal footing as “religions of peace.”  Not even close.  Not by a country mile.  They don’t inhabit the same galaxy.

5)  Where is the “moderate” Muslim outrage AT the Muslims who expressed such virulent outrage and threatened violence against Rev. Jones?

6)  Why does the mainstream media stress the great patience and understanding that Americans should have for the Muslim ambition to build a Mosque at Ground Zero (!), without also suggesting that Muslims should really just ignore nitwits like Rev. Terry Jones, and not get so excited about his loony plans?

7)  Why doesn’t our president make the same connection?  Where does he get off telling Rev. Jones how destructive his plan is, but still telling Americans they should be accepting of the Ground Zero mosque, as if that plan represents some great sensitivity to American feelings?

8)  Obama’s great political insight and wisdom, his deep connection to the American people, his smooth way with an audience….  all of this is a crock, a media made-up just-so story, which the media got away with in order to get their Annointed One elected, but which the American people have largely seen through.

The biggest loser over the Ground Zero Mosque and Terry Jones stories?

Obama, I think.

I have mentioned Dr. Jasser in other posts, leader of a movement of Muslims in favor of American democracy, and I’ve linked to his website in the blog roll on the lower right of this page.  If Islam is to free itself of an dangerous radicals who want to set the tone (sometimes all too successfully) for all of Islam, the reform must come from within, in the person of spokesmen like Dr. Jasser, who prizes liberty above Sharia.

Why the media keeps going to CAIR as a representative of “moderate Islam” instead of AIFD is beyond me…  or maybe it isn’t.  After all, most of the media are hostile to Israel, and so is CAIR.  Listen to Dr. Jasser, and hope there are many more who will follow him.

Not having anything brilliant to say today (why should today be different than any other day?), I defer to George Will, in his piece titled Israel’s Netanyahu Poised to Take Out Iran’s Nuclear Sites

When Israel declared independence in 1948, it had to use mostly small arms to repel attacks by six Arab armies. Today, however, Israel feels, and is, more menaced than it was then, or has been since. Hence the potentially world-shaking decision that will be made here, probably within two years.

To understand the man who will make it, begin with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s belief that stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program is integral to stopping the worldwide campaign to reverse 1948. It is, he says, a campaign to “put the Jew back to the status of a being that couldn’t defend himself — a perfect victim.”

Today’s Middle East, he says, reflects two developments. One is the rise of Iran and militant Islam since the 1979 revolution, which led to al-Qaida, Hamas, and Hezbollah. The other development is the multiplying threat of missile warfare.

Now Israel faces a third threat, the campaign to delegitimize it in order to extinguish its capacity for self-defense.

After two uniquely perilous millennia for Jews, the creation of Israel meant, Netanyahu says, “the capacity for self-defense restored to the Jewish people.” But note, he says, the reflexive worldwide chorus of condemnation when Israel responded with force to rocket barrages from Gaza and from southern Lebanon. There is, he believes, a crystallizing consensus that “Israel is not allowed to exercise self-defense.”

From 1948 through 1973, he says, enemies tried to “eliminate Israel by conventional warfare.” Having failed, they tried to demoralize and paralyze Israel with suicide bombers and other terrorism. “We put up a fence,” Netanyahu says. “Now they have rockets that go over the fence.” Israel’s military, which has stressed offense as a solution to the nation’s lack of strategic depth, now stresses missile defense.

That, however, cannot cope with Hamas’ tens of thousands of rockets in Gaza and Hezbollah’s 60,000 in southern Lebanon. There, U.N. resolution 1701, promulgated after the 2006 war, has been predictably farcical. This was supposed to inhibit the arming of Hezbollah and prevent its operations south of the Litani River.

Since 2006, Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal has tripled and its operations mock resolution 1701. Hezbollah, learning from Hamas, now places rockets near schools and hospitals, certain that Israel’s next response to indiscriminate aggression will turn the world media into a force multiplier for the aggressors.

Any Israeli self-defense anywhere is automatically judged “disproportionate.” Israel knows this as it watches Iran.

Last year was Barack Obama’s wasted year of “engaging” Iran. This led to sanctions that are unlikely to ever become sufficiently potent. With Russia, China, and Turkey being uncooperative, Iran is hardly “isolated.” The Iranian democracy movement probably cannot quickly achieve regime change. It took Solidarity 10 years to do so against a Polish regime less brutally repressive than Iran’s.

Hillary Clinton’s words about extending a “defense umbrella over the region” imply, to Israelis, fatalism about a nuclear Iran. As for deterrence working against a nuclear-armed regime steeped in an ideology of martyrdom, remember: In 1980, Ayatollah Khomeini said: “We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”

You say, that was long ago? Israel says, this is now:

Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, says Israel is the “enemy of God.” Tehran, proclaiming that the Holocaust never happened and vowing to complete it, sent an ambassador to Poland who in 2006 wanted to measure the ovens at Auschwitz to prove them inadequate for genocide. Iran’s former president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is considered a “moderate” by people for whom believing is seeing, calls Israel a “one-bomb country.”

If Iran were to “wipe the Zionist entity off the map,” as it vows to do, it would, Netanyahu believes, achieve a regional “dominance not seen since Alexander.” Netanyahu does not say Israel will, if necessary, act alone to prevent this. Or does he?

He says CIA Director Leon Panetta is “about right” in saying Iran can be a nuclear power in two years. He says 1948 meant this: “For the first time in 2,000 years, a sovereign Jewish people could defend itself against attack.” And he says: “The tragic history of the powerlessness of our people explains why the Jewish people need a sovereign power of self-defense.” If Israel strikes Iran, the world will not be able to say it was not warned.

You really need to check out this Powerline post, and watch the videos they linked here (don’t be impatient, the ad is short) and here.

Entertaining.  And educational.

Fareed Sakaria thinks he knows why Turkey is siding against Israel in the Gaza blockade. You guessed it: it’s Bush’s fault.

On the other hand, people who actually understand a bit more about the facts on the ground in Turkey see that the shift in Turkish foreign policy is a matter of demographics, as pointed out by Mark Steyn in Israel, Turkey, and the End of Stability

Foreign policy “realists,” back in the saddle since the Texan cowboy left town, are extremely fond of the concept of “stability”: America needs a stable Middle East, so we should learn to live with Mubarak and the mullahs and the House of Saud, etc. You can see the appeal of “stability” to your big-time geopolitical analyst: You don’t have to update your Rolodex too often, never mind rethink your assumptions. “Stability” is a fancy term to upgrade inertia and complacency into strategy. No wonder the fetishization of stability is one of the most stable features of foreign-policy analysis.

Unfortunately, back in what passes for the real world, there is no stability. History is always on the march, and, if it’s not moving in your direction, it’s generally moving in the other fellow’s. Take this “humanitarian” “aid” flotilla. Much of what went on — the dissembling of the Palestinian propagandists, the hysteria of the U.N. and the Euro-ninnies — was just business as usual. But what was most striking was the behavior of the Turks. In the wake of the Israeli raid, Ankara promised to provide Turkish naval protection for the next “aid” convoy to Gaza. This would be, in effect, an act of war — more to the point, an act of war by a NATO member against the State of Israel.

Ten years ago, Turkey’s behavior would have been unthinkable. Ankara was Israel’s best friend in a region where every other neighbor wishes, to one degree or another, the Jewish state’s destruction. Even when Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP was elected to power eight years ago, the experts assured us there was no need to worry. I remember sitting in a plush bar late one night with a former Turkish foreign minister, who told me, in between passing round the cigars and chugging back the Scotch, that, yes, the new crowd weren’t quite so convivial in the wee small hours but, other than that, they knew where their interests lay. Like many Turkish movers and shakers of his generation, my drinking companion loved the Israelis. “They’re tough hombres,” he said admiringly. “You have to be in this part of the world.” If you had suggested to him that in six years’ time the Turkish prime minister would be telling the Israeli president to his face that “I know well how you kill children on beaches,” he would have dismissed it as a fantasy concoction for some alternative universe.

Yet it happened. Erdogan said those words to Shimon Peres at Davos last year and then flounced off stage. Day by day what was formerly the Zionist entity’s staunchest pal talks more and more like just another cookie-cutter death-to-the-Great-Satan stan-of-the-month.

As the think-tankers like to say: “Who lost Turkey?” In a nutshell: Kemal Ataturk. Since he founded post-Ottoman Turkey in his own image nearly nine decades ago, the population has increased from 14 million to over 70 million. But that five-fold increase is not evenly distributed. The short version of Turkish demographics in the 20th century is that Rumelian Turkey — i.e., western, European, secular, Kemalist Turkey — has been outbred by Anatolian Turkey — i.e., eastern, rural, traditionalist, Islamic Turkey. Ataturk and most of his supporters were from Rumelia, and they imposed the modern Turkish republic on a reluctant Anatolia, where Ataturk’s distinction between the state and Islam was never accepted. Now they don’t have to accept it. The swelling population has spilled out of its rural hinterland and into the once solidly Kemalist cities.

As is often the case, Mark Steyn makes an elegant argument from demographics that the days of a western looking Turkey are probably over. We should have known when Turkey would not allow us to stage troops into Iraq in 2003. But it is now clear that Turkey is rapidly become just another Islamist state, and the demographic forces at work seem likely to continue its motion in that direction.

Don’t get me wrong:  I don’t think Fareed Zakaria is ignorant of the demographic changes in Turkey.  He surely knows.   Your speculations are as good as mine about why he doesn’t find that knowledge worthy of mention in his conjectures about what has led to changes in the Turkish political situation.

Click the link above and read Steyn’s article.

From the Drudge Report, headlines, May 31, 2010:

Israel faces int'l fury over flotilla...
Bloody raid...
Israel: Passengers were armed, 'no peace activists'...
Video...
Turkey warns of 'consequences'...
Israel in eye of storm...
Thousands protest, clashes in Athens...
Paris: Demonstrators tried to break into Israeli embassy...
Netanyahu defends...
Crisis...

From the Drudge Report, headlines, May 31, 2010, in an alternate universe:

Palestinians faces int'l fury over flotilla...
Bloody set-up...
Hamas: Passengers were armed, 'no peace activists'...
Video...
Turkey warns of 'consequences'...
Iran in eye of storm...
Thousands protest, clashes in Athens...
Paris: Demonstrators tried to break into Iranian embassy...
Amadinejad defends...
Crisis...

We have come to this – instant global condemnation of Israel every time an incident occurs.  Israel is now officially presumed guilty until proven innocent.  Not many facts are yet known about this incident, but in our world today facts are little more than an annoyance.  No, what seems to matter most is to lay the blame on Israel.

And a sitting U.S. President has become a part of the condemnation chorus virtually from the day he took office.  All the while the terror-sponsoring state of Iran, whose own President has sworn to wipe Israel from the face of the earth, rushes full tilt toward becoming a nuclear power. And when they do I imagine our president’s reaction will be to bow a little deeper to Amadinejad, and he’ll wag his finger a little longer at Netanyahu.  Madness.

Mr President, your words and actions have emboldened not only our enemies but the enemies of one of our closest allies.  And at least in part, the blood shed today is on your hands.  Words have meaning, Mr. President.  You know that.  And your obvious lack of support for the State of Israel coupled with your failed attempts at diplomacy towards our enemies has made this world in which we live a less safe place.  This incident is just a drop in the bucket compared to what I fear is is coming.  And the headlines do not bode well for the State of Israel.

I guess I must have missed reading the part of Eric Holder’s resume that discusses his credentials to make judgments about whether or not “radical Islam” is a true part of the Islamic tradition, and supported by the Koran and Hadith.  One wonders if he knows the names Daniel Pipes, or Robert Spencer, or for that matter Bernard Lewis.  I don’t think he has shown any such reticence in attributing (incredibly rare) violence against abortionists to “Christian fundamentalist right-wingers,” nor has Janet Napolitano, who is worried that pro-lifers are nascent terrorists.  I can only wonder why the phrase “radical right” escapes Holder’s lips so much more easily than “radical Islam.”

You see, there isn’t really such a thing as “radical Islam,” because as Attorney General Holder fumblingly explains, if it’s “radical” it isn’t really Islam.  That’s comforting.  Are you less dead because the terrorist who killed you is really a radical non-Muslim who just thinks he is practicing true Islam?

When you’re too tired to write something today, Mark Steyn is a reliable backup, a seemingly never empty well of trenchant observation. This is from National Review Online:

Nicking Our Public Discourse

What with the Fort Hood mass murderer, the Christmas Pantybomber, and now the Times Square bomber, you may have noticed a little uptick in attempted terrorist attacks on the U.S. mainland in the last few months.Rep. Lamar Smith did, and, at the House Judiciary Committee, he was interested to see if the attorney general of the United States thought there might be any factor in common between these perplexingly diverse incidents.

“In the case of all three attempts in the last year, the terrorist attempts, one of which was successful, those individuals have had ties to radical Islam,” said Representative Smith. “Do you feel that these individuals might have been incited to take the actions that they did because of radical Islam?”

“Because of . . . ?”

“Radical Islam,” repeated Smith.

“There are a variety of reasons why I think people have taken these actions,” replied Eric Holder noncommittally. “I think you have to look at each individual case.”

The congressman tried again. “Yes, but radical Islam could have been one of the reasons?”

“There are a variety of reasons why people . . . ”

“But was radical Islam one of them?”

“There are a variety of reasons why people do things,” the attorney general said again. “Some of them are potentially religious . . . ” Stuff happens. Hard to say why.

“Okay,” said Smith. “But all I’m asking is if you think, among those variety of reasons, radical Islam might have been one of the reasons that the individuals took the steps that they did.”

“You see, you say ‘radical Islam,’” objected Holder. “I mean, I think those people who espouse a — a version of Islam that is not . . . ”

“Are you uncomfortable attributing any actions to radical Islam?” asked Smith. “It sounds like it.”

And so on, and so forth. At Ford Hood, Major Hasan jumped on a table and gunned down his comrades while screaming “Allahu Akbar!” — which is Arabic for “Nothing to see here” and an early indicator of pre-post-traumatic stress disorder. The Times Square bomber, we are assured by the Washington Post, CNN, and Newsweek, was upset by foreclosure proceedings on his house. Mortgage-related issues. Nothing to do with months of training at a Taliban camp in Waziristan.

Listening to Attorney General Holder, one is tempted to modify Trotsky: You may not be interested in Islam, but Islam is interested in you. Islam smells weakness at the heart of the West. The post–World War II order is dying: The European Union’s decision to toss a trillion dollars to prop up a Greek economic model that guarantees terminal insolvency is merely the latest manifestation of the chronic combination of fiscal profligacy and demographic decline in the West at twilight. Islam is already the biggest supplier of new Europeans and new Canadians, and the fastest-growing demographic in the Western world. Therefore, it thinks it not unreasonable to shape the character of those societies — not by blowing up buildings and airplanes, but by determining the nature of their relationship to Islam.

For example, the very same day that Eric Holder was doing his “Islam? What Islam?” routine at the Capitol, the Organization of the Islamic Conference was tightening its hold on the U.N. Human Rights Council — actually, make that the U.N. “Human Rights” Council. The OIC is the biggest voting bloc at the U.N., and it succeeded in getting its slate of candidates elected to the so-called “human rights” body — among them the Maldives, Qatar, Malaysia, Mauritania, and Libya. The last, elected to the HRC by 80 percent of the U.N. membership, is, of course, a famous paragon of human rights, but the other, “moderate” Muslim nations share the view that Islam, in both its theological and political components, should be beyond discussion. And they will support the U.N.’s rapid progress toward, in effect, the imposition of a global apostasy law that removes Islam from public discourse.

Attorney General Holder seems to be operating an advance pilot program of his own, but he’s not alone. Also last week, the head of Canada’s intelligence service testified to the House of Commons about hundreds of “second- or third-generation Canadians” who are “relatively well integrated” “economically and socially” but who have become so “very, very disenchanted” with “the way we want to structure our society” that they have developed “strong links to homelands” that are “in distress.” Homelands such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

Hmm. If you’re wondering what those countries might have in common, keep wondering. No words beginning with “I-” and ending with “-slam” passed the director’s lips. If the head of the Crown’s intelligence service has narrowed his concerns about “disenchanted” “second- or third-generation Canadians” to any demographic group in particular, evidently it’s classified information and can’t be disclosed in public.

The U.N. elections are a big victory for the Organization of the Islamic Conference. By the way, to my liberal friends who say, “Hey, what’s the big deal about the Organization of the Islamic Conference? Lighten up, man”: Try rolling around your tongue the words “Organization of the Christian Conference.” Would you be quite so cool with that? Fifty-seven prime ministers and presidents who get together and vote as a bloc in international affairs? Or would that be a theocratic affront to secular sensibilities? The casual acceptance of the phrase “the Muslim world” (“Mr. Obama’s now-famous speech to the Muslim world” — the New York Times) implicitly defers to the political ambitions of Islam. And, if there is a “Muslim world,” what are its boundaries? Forty years ago, the OIC began with mainly Middle Eastern members plus Indonesia and a couple more. By the Nineties, former Soviet Central Asia had signed on, plus Albania, Mozambique, Guyana, and various others. In 2005, Russia was admitted to “observer” membership.

But along with the big headline victories go smaller ones. These days, Islam doesn’t even have to show up. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has quietly pulled representations of Mohammed from its Islamic collection. With the Danish cartoons, violent mobs actually had to kill large numbers of people before Kurt Westegaard was sent into involuntary “retirement.” Even with South Park, the thugs still had to threaten murder. But the Metropolitan Museum caved preemptively — no murders, no threats, but best to crawl into a fetal position anyway.

Last week, the American Association of Pediatricians noted that certain, ahem, “immigrant communities” were shipping their daughters overseas to undergo “female genital mutilation.” So, in a spirit of multicultural compromise, they decided to amend their previous opposition to the practice: They’re not (for the moment) advocating full-scale clitoridectomies, but they are suggesting federal and state laws be changed to permit them to give a “ritual nick” to young girls.

A few years back, I thought even fainthearted Western liberals might draw the line at “FGM.” After all, it’s a key pillar of institutional misogyny in Islam: Its entire purpose is to deny women sexual pleasure. True, many of us hapless Western men find we deny women sexual pleasure without even trying, but we don’t demand genital mutilation to guarantee it. On such slender distinctions does civilization rest.

Der Spiegel, an impeccably liberal magazine, summed up the remorseless Islamization of Europe in a recent headline: “How Much Allah Can the Old Continent Bear?” Well, what’s wrong with a little Allah-lite? The AAP thinks you can hop on the sharia express and only ride a couple of stops. In such ostensibly minor concessions, the “ritual nick” we’re performing is on ourselves. Further cuts will follow.

If morals are all merely cultural, and any other culture is as good as yours, upon what ground do you stand to condemn “FGM”?  The multi-culturalists have no answer, because they have disarmed themselves of any of the benefit of either natural law or revealed truth in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

You can’t beat something with nothing.  The remorseless secularization of Europe has seriously weakened its defenses from Islam’s true believers who continue to pursue the “slow jihad.” (See the video below.)  How far behind is the USA?  Not as far as one might wish, if either the inability to utter the phrase “radical Islam” on the part of Attorney General Holder, or the AAP’s acceptance of “ritual nicks,” is any guide.

Netanyahu’s Hollow Victory? Pat Buchanan’s apparent hatred of Israel continues to masquerade as “conservative” foreign policy prescriptions.

“The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital.”

With this defiant declaration, to a thunderous ovation at AIPAC, Benjamin Netanyahu informed the United States that East Jerusalem, taken from Jordan in the Six Day War, is not occupied land. It is Israeli land and Israel’s forever, and no Palestinian state will share Jerusalem. Israel alone decides what is built, and where, in the Holy City.

With his declaration and refusal to walk back the decision to build 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem, which blew up the Biden mission, “Bibi” goes home a winner over Barack Obama.

But it is a temporary triumph and hollow victory — over Israel’s indispensable ally. For the clash revealed that the perceived vital interests of Israel now collide with vital U.S. interest in the Middle East.

Memo to Mr. Buchanan: land taken in wars of self-defense is legitimately kept. That is the time honored historical fact.  Live with it.  Jordan will certainly have to.  So will the “Palestinians,” who COULD easily have been resettled in Jordan, Syria, Egypt, et. al., after the failure of those nations to destroy Israel in war.  (Of course, those people have been denied the opportunity to live elsewhere, because each of those nations had something to gain from keeping the hatred of Israel alive…  or so they thought.   In any case, none of them wanted the war to be over until Israel was destroyed.)  If Jordan had not attacked Israel, along with many others, Israel would not be building settlements in Jerusalem today. Everyone will have to live with the consequences of their decisions, including those made decades ago by different governments.

But there is nothing illegitimate, nothing at all, about Israel keeping the land it won while defending itself (almost unsuccessfully so) in wars not of its making.

Memo to the rest of Israel’s neighbors: if you want to keep the land you have now, don’t attack again.

Memo to Obama:  Israel’s support in the USA is broad and deep.  You might want to remember that.  The honeymoon is over.  You might want to remember that, too.