Recall that when President Donald Trump met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, he allowed Russian photographers to take pictures but not photographers from the American NLMSM.

Now the Washington Post is claiming that President Trump “revealed highly classified information to [the] Russian foreign minister and ambassador” in that Oval Office meeting.

What’s being ignored in the manufactured hysteria over this is that WaPo very carefully used only anonymous sources for their claims: current and former US officials and officials and a US official familiar with the matter and a former senior US official and an official with knowledge of the exchange and a former senior US counterterrorism official and [a] former intelligence official and on and on.

The WaPo didn’t offer a single named, on the record source.  Not one.

The only personnel present in the meeting, besides the two Russians, were Trump, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, NSA Director HR McMasters, and NSA Deputy Director Dina Powell.

What’s being downplayed by the NLMSM is McMaster’s statement after WaPo published its (to repeat: wholly unsubstantiated) claim:

A brief statement for the record. There is nothing that the president takes more seriously than the security of the American people. The story that came out tonight as reported is false. The president of the foreign minister reviewed a range of common threats to our two countries, including threats to civil aviation. At no time, at no time, where intelligent sources or methods discussed. The president did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known. Two other senior officials who were present, including the secretary of the state, remember the meeting the same way and have said so. Going on the record should outweigh the anonymous sources. I was in the room. It didn’t happen. Thanks, everybody.

Do WaPo‘s “sources” even exist?  Even if they exist, how would they know what was discussed when they were not present in the meeting?  Journalistic standards used to hold that anonymous sources were OK, but their claims had to be corroborated by two or more named, on the record sources.  No more, for the NLMSM.

This smacks of payback because the NLMSM was not included in the prior photo op.  Which demonstrates the uselessness of including the NLMSM in such opportunities.

More importantly, it illustrates the dishonesty and so uselessness of the NLMSM.

This piece will be, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali put it,

disturbing but it is crucial that we speak openly about what is taking place rather than shroud it in euphemism so as not to cause offence.

This piece is about female genital mutilation, the deliberate butchery of a woman’s—even a five-year-old little girl’s—genitalia for the woman’s, the child’s, own good.  And for the egos of the men of Islam who approve and perpetrate this atrocity.

This is, in Hirsi Ali’s plain language, what female mutilation truly is, in order from the “mildest” version to the outright butchery form:

1. The ‘nick’: The girl is held down, her legs pushed apart and a needle is used to prick her clitoris. The incision is similar to a finger prick test for diabetes, blood comes out and the girl is considered ‘cleansed’. Often there is a ritual with a little party to celebrate the procedure.
2. ‘Female circumcision’: The second method in terms of severity is often compared to male circumcision. The hood of the clitoris is cut off, in some cases the tip of the clitoris is cut off, known as clitoridectomy. In this form, an otherwise normally functioning body part is sliced off and thrown out. Disfiguring a little girl’s genitals in this way cannot rationally be considered anything but mutilation.
3. Intermediate infibulation: In the third form of FGM, as much of the clitoris as possible is dug out and removed. The inner labia are cut off and the outer labia are sewn together leaving two small holes for urination and menstruation. In places where this is done without ‘medical intervention’ girls have been known to bleed to death. After infibulation is done it is imperceptible what has taken place when the girl stands up with her legs together, but in the obstetrician’s position it is clearly visible that parts of her genitals have been removed and sewn up.
4. Total infibulation: In the fourth type of FGM the clitoris and inner labia are cut off and the outer labia are cut or scraped off too, then sewn up. When the girl stands, even with her legs closed, her genitals clearly look different.
5. Vaginal fusing: In the fifth type of FGM, which is rarely discussed, all of the fourth type is done and then the inner walls of the vagina are scratched to cause bleeding and the sewing is again done. The girl’s feet are tied together in an effort to fuse the two sides of the vagina with scar tissue to close it up. Children can die undergoing this.

This is what The New York Times insists is acceptable and that we in the West must be more sensitive to the “cultural” practices of others, including this one.  This isn’t, after all, mutilation; it’s “genital cutting.”  You may have to scroll down a bit in the second link, to get to Celia Dugger’s, NYT‘s Health and Science Editor, excuse for insisting on “genital cutting” as a less culturally loaded term than female genital mutilation.  Blunt facts are never to be allowed to intrude into sensitivities, after all.

No.

These important cultural practices, as The New York Times and Journal of Medical Ethics put it, are a clear demonstration that some cultures are inferior to others.

More importantly, this is a practice that must be stopped, that must not be allowed in the United States, and whose perpetrators must be prosecuted and given maximum sentences.  With confinement with the prison’s general population.

Also: support Hirsi Ali’s AHA Foundation.