… and don’t be so bigoted and intolerant as to call it mutilation.

It is purification for Allah’s sake.

Here’s a video clip of Tucker Carlson on Fox News interviewing a woman convert to Islam who defends the practice.

But in a column at Fox News Opinion, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was forced to suffer female genital mutilation herself, explains and deplores the rite, which is observed by Muslims (though not only by Muslims and not by all Muslims), in Africa (though not only in Africa). (See a list of countries here and religious groups here.)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes:

The recent news that a grand jury in Michigan has indicted three people, including two doctors, for female genital mutilation is a welcome development. As the first ever prosecutions of this crime in the United States, the case shines much needed light on an underground human rights abuse that has been going on for too long. Female genital mutilation has been deliberately covered up by those practicing it here or sending their daughters overseas during summer break to be mutilated outside of the law.

Yet, ham-fisted attempts to appear culturally sensitive by the likes of the New York Times reporting on this story will push these issues underground once more. The newspaper’s Health and Science Editor wrote that referring to female genital mutilation as ‘genital cutting’ is less ‘culturally loaded’ and will help to bridge a gap between those who practice FGM and those who campaign against it. In her eyes it’s a case of Africa vs. the West.

As an African who was subjected to FGM, now living in the West, allow me to help bridge that gap by explaining what we’re really talking about beneath the weasel words ‘genital cutting’.

There are five types of female genital mutilation performed on girls from as young as five years of age. Four of them are unarguably mutilation, and the other is designed to symbolize mutilation. I will start with the mildest.

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. Sadly, we are only just past half way and female genital mutilation gets worse. No doubt setting out these practices in detail is 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 offense.
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.

It is hard for people outside of communities practicing FGM to understand what is taking place. One example that has stayed with me over the years was a woman in the Netherlands that I translated for. I accompanied her to visit an obstetrician as she was having great difficulty with urination and menstruation. She showed the doctor her genitals after being subjected to the fifth and most severe type of FGM with her genitals completely removed. The stunned doctor asked if she had been burned. He could not believe that what had been done to her was deliberate, he assumed it must have been a horrific accident. But, it was no accident.

It’s for women like her that I started the AHA Foundation as a resource to help women and girls who are truly bridging the gap between worlds and cultures. They are living in the United States under the protection of our laws and Constitution but suffering human rights abuses imported from overseas.

The aim of FGM in all its forms is to control female sexuality. The clitoris is removed to take physical pleasure from sex and reduce the libido. In its more severe forms, involving sewing the genitals up, the aim is to ensure the girl is a virgin on her wedding night. Many women must be surgically re-opened (or simply with a pen knife or razor blade) in order to consummate their marriage.  The consequences of FGM are ongoing psychological and physical harms from infections to fistulas and even death.

Even in its most mild form, the ‘nick’ procedure involves a young girl being held down by her loved ones and a needle poked into one of her most sensitive body parts. The moment this is done the child becomes sexually aware, she can now be a temptation to men, she can destroy her family’s so-called ‘honor’ and must now behave in certain ways around boys to demonstrate her modesty.

The debate around nicking, which had been previously settled, was revived again last year by an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics. The authors argued that nicking the vulva or cutting out the hood of the clitoris (FGM forms 1 and 2 above) are less harmful and should be tolerated by liberal societies. These practices, they suggest, are ethically acceptable and not contraventions of girls’ human rights.

Indeed, like the New York Times, these academics argue that referring to modest forms of FGM ‘mutilation’ is culturally insensitive and demonizes ‘important cultural practices’. Yet the meaning of those ‘important cultural practices’ is not examined beneath their ‘ethical lens’. Notoriously academics and politically correct apologists like them assume any claim of ‘culture’ is by rights a good thing and trumps other considerations.

Seeing as they are so reluctant to critique cultural practices, other than those of ‘powerful, white men,’ I will do it for them. The ‘nick’ symbolizes and communicates to little girls that their natural state is unclean and that pain must be inflicted on their genitals to make them acceptable to their communities.

Will the two Muslim doctors due to be tried in Michigan for performing FGM procedures be given a severe enough sentence to deter others from ever doing it in the United States?

Or will “cultural sensitivity”, respect for religion, and above all fear of being labeled racist and “Islamophobic”, keep jury and judge from condemning them at all?

We wait to see.

POLITICO, usually partial to the Left and the Obama administration, has published a report by Josh Meyer that proves Obama wanted Iran to become a nuclear armed power.

It is further proof, if needed, that Obama wanted to get his “deal” with Iran at any cost, at all costs.

But why did he want to?

Because the “deal” allows Iran to become a nuclear power.  Ergo, wanting the deal that badly, was wanting a nuclear-armed Iran that badly.

Here’s Katie Pavlich’s summary of the story with selected quotations at Townhall:

Not only did the Obama administration negotiate the agreement without a guarantee Iran wouldn’t eventually build a nuclear bomb, President Obama and his State Department approved a number of secret side deals that have been exposed in the aftermath of negotiations. …

The “deal” or “agreement” does not merely lack “a guarantee Iran wouldn’t eventually build a nuclear bomb”, it positively permits Iran to build as many nuclear bombs as it likes after waiting a few years.

POLITICO is out with an astonishing report today [April 24, 2017] detailing the terms of a last minute prisoner swap deal made by the Obama administration just days before President Obama left the White House. It included the release of terrorists held by the United States and worse, the administration essentially gave immunity to an Iranian operative who had smuggled parts needed to build a nuclear bomb into Iran from China: 

When President Barack Obama announced the “one-time gesture” of releasing Iranian-born prisoners who “were not charged with terrorism or any violent offenses” last year, his administration presented the move as a modest trade-off for the greater good of the Iran nuclear agreement and Tehran’s pledge to free five Americans.

But Obama, the senior official and other administration representatives weren’t telling the whole story on Jan. 17, 2016, in their highly choreographed rollout of the prisoner swap and simultaneous implementation of the six-party nuclear deal, according to [the] POLITICO investigation.

In his Sunday morning address to the American people, Obama portrayed the seven men he freed as “civilians”. The senior official described them as businessmen convicted of or awaiting trial for mere “sanctions-related offenses, violations of the trade embargo”. 

In reality, some of them were accused by Obama’s own Justice Department of posing threats to national security. 

Yes, by Obama’s Justice Department.

Three allegedly were part of an illegal procurement network supplying Iran with U.S.-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.

It did not take long for the Justice Department to be brought to heel:

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

Three of the fugitives allegedly sought to lease Boeing aircraft for an Iranian airline that authorities say had supported Hezbollah, the U.S.-designated terrorist organization. A fourth, Behrouz Dolatzadeh, was charged with conspiring to buy thousands of U.S.-made assault rifles and illegally import them into Iran.

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. That included hundreds of U.S.-made sensors for the uranium enrichment centrifuges in Iran whose progress had prompted the nuclear deal talks in the first place.

It is a deeply shocking story that needs to be read here at POLITICO in full.

It ought to cause widespread public outrage. But we doubt that it will.

As Scott Whitlock writes at Media Research Center’s NewsBusters:

While ABC, CBS and NBC on Monday and Tuesday found time to celebrate the return of “easy-going”, rested Barack Obama to the public scene, none of them covered the release of a blockbuster expose that reveals the buried secrets of the ex-President’s Iran deal giveaway.

Politico senior investigative reporter Josh Meyer authored [a report] that Obama secretly released 21 Iranian prisoners (not the seven originally claimed), men who were deeply involved in Iran’s missile and nuclear program. On Tuesday morning, despite a combined eight hours of air time, ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS This Morning and NBC’s Today avoided the topic.

It was left to Fox News to cover the story. Meyer appeared on Happening Now and explained the real story behind the prisoner swap that propelled the nuclear deal:

The Obama administration when they rolled this out said there were seven people they were releasing as part of a deal for five Americans. But there were really 21 of them. There were seven people in the United States, either convicted or awaiting trial, on charges and then 14 fugitives. And besides downplaying the number, they also downplayed the severity of the charges … Many of these guys were high on the list of U.S. counter-proliferation effort to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

In his lengthy and well-sourced Politico story, Meyer detailed how the administration hid the identities of the Iranian prisoners who were being released …

The three evening shows on Monday ignored this blockbuster expose. Instead, journalists gushed about Obama’s return. CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley hailed, “Today, the man who never lost a presidential election made his first major appearance since leaving office.”

On Tuesday, CBS This Morning’s Dean Reynolds lauded, “Mr. Obama re-emerged yesterday with an easy-going manner that only a former president can appreciate.”

Nothing about the newest scandal of his administration.

So many journalists who cannot bear to face the truth!

But Tucker Carlson on his Fox News show last night (April 25, 2017) confronted a Democratic Congressman, Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), with the facts. [Watch it here.]

Carlson pointed out to him that he had been lied to, since the congressman had believed, and said, that  Obama administration officials had  briefed him fully on the contents of the deal.

But Mr. Swalwell was unmoved. He insisted to the last that the “deal” was good – because, he claimed, it stopped Iran getting nukes.

For such as he, the truth is what he wishes it to be.

Or perhaps he secretly shares Obama’s objective – a nuclear-armed Iran.

[Hat-tip for the Tucker Carlson interview to our commenter liz]

In the United States now, university administrations are doing nothing to deter or stop the violent gangs of the Left who are imposing an orthodoxy of opinion in the academies. Intimidated by their own Leftist students, they would rather refuse a platform to any speaker that the bigoted intolerant students want to silence.

Tucker Carlson and Mark Steyn discuss this on Fox News:

Are any of the enemies of President Trump averagely nice, decent people?

The ones we read about, or see in action on television, are not nice or decent.

They accuse President Trump of taunting the disabled, which he does not do. And they say he is xenophobic, misogynistic, bigoted, racist, sexist, fascist, and anti-Semitic, none of which he is.

Those who really deserve moral condemnation are the very people who accuse the President of these moral failings – and malign his family, none of whom have done a thing to antagonize them.

Some made what they consider a moral decision to try wrecking the clothes and accessories business of the President’s daughter Ivanka, by persuading retailers – notably Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus – to stop selling her brand.

Haters  of Donald Trump would not sit next to his twenty-three year old daughter Tiffany at a fashion show. It was a spectacle of spitefulness, of which they were proud.

Some leftist comedians thought it amusing to speculate that ten-year-old Barron trump was an arsonist (!); and one of them, comic Stephen Spinola, tweeted that he looked like “a rapist with a small PP”, who, Spinola hoped, would rape his own mother. And a “television personality”, Rosie O’Donnell, considered it right and proper to declare that Barron Trump was autistic. He had done nothing of course to provoke her malice. By implying that it was an ugly truth about the Trump family, she was smearing sufferers from autism.

Now THAT’s taunting the disabled.

A woman named Chelsea Handler, said flatly that she would never have the First Lady on her Netflix talk show: “Melania? To talk about what? She can barely speak English.”

And THAT’s xenophobia. (Incidentally, Melania Trump speaks six languages fluently, including the English language which Chelsea Handler abuses to state a lie.)

Another woman said that the beautiful, impeccably well-behaved, morally upright, gentle Melania Trump had been a “hooker”.

A man named Webster G. Tarpley wrote in his blog that she was a “high-end escort’ – and the Daily Mail repeated the lie. Mrs. Trump sued the blogger for libel and was awarded $150 million in damages.

These lies were sucked out of the accusers’ thumbs. They knew they were lying, but passionately desired to bring Mrs. Trump’s reputation into contempt.

And THAT’S misogynistic, whether it comes from a man or a woman.

Following the same obscene line of thought, President Trump has “neurosyphilis”, say medicos who have NOT examined him.

And THAT’s bigotry.

A CNN panelist Symone Sanders said on TV that an attack on a mentally disabled white man in Chicago by black attackers who screamed “fuck Donald Trump” and “fuck white people” while they tortured him for some 48 hours, must be blamed on Donald Trump.

And THAT’s racism.

“In five cities around the country … an anarchist collective called INDECLINE erected sculptures resembling a lifesize, naked Donald Trump. His belly is exaggerated, and other features – those that traditionally signal masculine virility – are minimized.” – From a report in PressReader.

And THAT’s sexism.

A self-righteous woman named Yvette Felarca, who organizes violent attacks at universities and defended the attack at UC Berkeley on February 1, 2017, to prevent a supporter of Donald Trump from speaking publicly on the campus, told Tucker Carlson on Fox News that the attackers – dressed in black clothes and head-coverings, setting fires, smashing glass doors – were “fighting fascism”. The speaker, Milo Yiannopoulos, had been invited to speak by university Republicans. He had to be escorted off the campus for his own safety before he had even begun to address his audience. Ms. Felarca was plainly unaware that the fascist mobs of the 1930s in Italy and Germany did exactly what she (a school teacher, let it be noted) and her fellow rioters are doing.

And THAT’s fascism.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz was chair of the Democratic National Committee. She accused Donald Trump of anti-Semitism. The candidate who is at present most likely to succeed her is Keith Ellison. He has long associated with and defended extreme anti-Semites, including Louis Farrakhan, whose hatred of Jews is notorious. To choose just one of Farrakhan’s published anti-Jewish statements from a collection of them, there is this: “The Jews have been so bad at politics they lost half their population in the Holocaust. They thought they could trust in Hitler, and they helped him get the Third Reich on the road.”

And THAT’s anti-Semitism.

These are idealists of the Left. They claim that they are defenders and champions of the underdogs of the earth. On the contrary, they are snobs. They despise President Trump for what they consider his bad taste, his “vulgarity”. But it is their behavior that is vulgar and distasteful.

Let’s consider carefully what sort of people they are.

They are rude, low, mean, malicious, spiteful, cruel, destructive. They are nasty people.

The Left believes that not only Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential elections, but also Brexit was finagled by …

You guessed it! RUSSIA!

And via PowerLine:

Tucker Carlson performs an autopsy on a smear.