Tag Archives: responsibilities

FGM

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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.

A Necessary Bill

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A congressional bill named for Taylor, the Taylor Force Act, would cut off the US aid [to the Palestinian Authority] unless the Palestinian Authority stops the payments.

Taylor Force was an Afghan and Iraq war vet who was visiting Tel Aviv when he was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist—and the terrorist’s family is getting a PA annual pension in celebration of his crime.

This bill is necessary.  Money is fungible.  These transfers, these so-named “aid” transfers, must be cut off entirely; it would be insufficient merely to forbid the transfers’ use for payments to terrorists’ families.  The money’s existence would enable the PA to reallocate money from other sources to the “pensions” without reduction in overall PA income.

Obama-Iran Axis

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It sort of makes any Trump-Russia connection look awfully tenuous.  Politico has a long report out on what actually transpired during Obama’s “negotiation” of the Iran nuclear weapons deal, particularly with regard to the seven folks in American detention whom Obama released to Iran as a deal sweetener.

A couple of highlights (read the whole thing; it’s important):

In reality, some of them were accused by Obama’s own Justice Department of posing threats to national security. Three allegedly were part of an illegal procurement network supplying Iran with US-made microelectronics with applications in surface-to-air and cruise missiles like the kind Tehran test-fired recently, prompting a still-escalating exchange of threats with the Trump administration. Another was serving an eight-year sentence for conspiring to supply Iran with satellite technology and hardware.

And

[I]n a series of unpublicized court filings, the Justice Department dropped charges and international arrest warrants against 14 other men, all of them fugitives.

And

Three of the fugitives allegedly sought to lease Boeing aircraft for an Iranian airline that authorities say had supported Hezbollah, the US-designated terrorist organization.

As a probably unrelated aside, recall that Boeing has just concluded a deal to sell 100 passenger aircraft to “an Iranian airline.”

And this:

The biggest fish, though, was Seyed Abolfazl Shahab Jamili, who had been charged with being part of a conspiracy that from 2005 to 2012 procured thousands of parts with nuclear applications for Iran via China.

Even regarding others we were on the verge of capturing or were tracking, Obama got in the way so he could have his deal.

…Justice and State Department officials denied or delayed requests from prosecutors and agents to lure some key Iranian fugitives to friendly countries so they could be arrested. Similarly, Justice and State, at times in consultation with the White House, slowed down efforts to extradite some suspects already in custody overseas, according to current and former officials and others involved in the counterproliferation effort.

And as far back as the fall of 2014, Obama administration officials began slow-walking some significant investigations and prosecutions of Iranian procurement networks operating in the US

This is the sort of thing then-President Barack Obama (D) was covering up in his rush to get a deal—any deal—with Iran concerning the Iranian nuclear weapons program.

And not a peep about this out of the current Democrats in Congress.

Again, RTWT.

Timidity Is

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…as timidity does.  The Japan Times has it, too, as demonstrated in its editorial last Wednesday.  The editorial board is worried about Japan actually achieving an ability to defend proactively itself.  The board’s concern was triggered [sic] by a Liberal Democratic Party proposal that

Japan consider developing the ability to strike enemy missile bases.  …a response to North Korea’s repeated ballistic missile launches….

The board fretted that

an attempt by Japan to build up the capability to attack enemy bases could result in destabilizing the region’s security environment by giving an imagined enemy an excuse to carry out pre-emptive strikes on our country.

Never mind that the region’s security environment already is at risk from Japan’s current inability strike (back) at an “imagined” enemy who attacks (including a Japanese ally?  That’s the implication of the Times board’s term); Japan can only to receive such a strike, potentially without post hoc answer.

The editorialists did raise a legitimate Constitutional question on the matter:

In 1959, defense chief Shigejiro Ito stated that possessing offensive weapons on the grounds of potential danger of enemy attack as mentioned by Hatoyama runs counter to the Constitution.

However, Ito misunderstood the Japanese Constitution and the duty of any nation’s government.  No government may, legitimately, surrender its people, the government’s master, into slavery or destruction; government must mount the means to defend itself.  With today’s technologies, that of necessity includes the obligation (not merely the right) to act preemptively if the situation demands it.

Preemptive defensive actions thus still defensive actions, and so they are well within the bounds of Japan’s Constitutional limits on military activity.

The Times‘ board went on:

To equip the Self-Defense Forces with the ability to pound enemy bases would require advanced technologies and equipment…. Possessing these kinds of technologies and equipment could go beyond the principle of defense-only security that the nation has adopted under the postwar Constitution.

Aside from the board’s lack of understanding of the nature of self-defense and the government’s obligation to be able to act preemptively, there’s the question of the board’s limiting principle here.  Would, for instance, concluding a treaty with another nation that obligates that nation to defend (and so to conduct preemptive actions for the sake of) Japan be a close enough possession of such technologies to violate the Japanese Constitution?  Would concluding a treaty with another nation for that nation to use its technologies to advise Japan and guide Japanese systems to the enemy bases be a close enough possession of such technologies to violate the Constitution?  In both cases, after all, Japan would deliberately be making use of these apparently proscribed technologies, if only indirectly.

And:

Japan’s attempt to obtain capabilities to strike enemy bases could be reciprocated by potential enemies, including North Korea, potentially leading to an arms race between the two countries.

Stipulated.  Is that better or worse, though, than Japan leaving itself exposed to the enemy’s initiative and the enemy’s possibly nuclear initial attack?  Does the board think Japan could survive a nuclear attack, much less answer it successfully?

Does the board think northern Korea (for instance) can maintain such an arms race for a longer time than Japan before it must leave off?

The Times‘ position is just the potential hostage preemptively surrendering itself into hostage status.

And it’s shameful.

Foolishness

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James Capretta and Lanhee Chen of American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution, respectively, have a piece in a recent Wall Street Journal edition that talks about how to “nudge” uninsured Americans into getting health coverage plans.  It’s impressive in its…foolishness…(I’m being polite).

Congress can help these Americans and many others get insurance by enrolling them in no-premium, no-obligation plans from which they could withdraw if they wanted to.

No. Not only no, Hell no. No squared. We’ve enough Big Government intruding into our private lives, arrogantly presuming to make our private decisions for us, without adding this to the steaming pile.

But how to make sure people stay covered?

None of your business, and none of Big Government’s. This is an individual’s choice whether to stay.  Or even to get a plan in the first place.  Full stop.

But their [Republicans’] plan also must make sure most Americans have health insurance.

No it mustn’t. It need only ensure Americans (all, not just your “most”) have access to insurance. That access will come most broadly from a free market in which actual insurance policies are sold (not the currently available welfare coverage plans that Big Government is trying to force on us in ever diminishing variety and ever increasing cost). The decision to buy—the decision to participate at all—can only be the individual’s in a free nation.

And: keep your hands out of my pockets looking for money with which to pay for your “no-premium, no-obligation” schemes.  Of course you—and every American with two neurons to bump against each other to form a ganglion—know that your schemes won’t be free or without obligation: someone is going to pay for that stuff.

Talk about false premises.  Jeez.

Finally: when did these two AEI and Hoover Institution denizens join the Progressive-Democratic Party?