Every week on Monday, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's Question: What's The Future Of Marriage?
Dave Schuler : It's too early to tell. In the latest development of the great experiment we've been conducting over the period of the last couple of generations in redefining the fundamental building block of our society, the family, it has been decided that the interests of liberty and equality demand that we be unable to extend civil subsidies to traditional social arrangements without extending them to arrangements that fly in the face of tradition.
It may all work out. It may not.
Rob Miller: Same sex marriage is by no means something new. Same sex marriage and similar arrangements were common in ancient Greece and Rome. There's a cogent argument that this had a negative effect on their societies, but that's irrelevant perhaps to the topic at hand which concerns our present day.
I would draw a line between what I call traditional marriage, most of which has a religious background and secular civil marriage. Traditional marriage will likely not change too much. Secular civil marriage is likely to have major changes, as well as making changes in our societies, many of them detrimental.
As I pointed out here, same sex marriage was what I call a spear point issue, meaning that it paved the way for a lot of other things that were part of the agenda that it's proponents either weren't aware of, could care less about or simply wanted to hide. It's no coincidence, for instance, that the majority of law professors who specialized in family law were avid supporters of same sex marriage. Many of them even support the idea of replacing traditional life time marriage with short term renewable contracts as well as polygamy as called by its new name, polyamory. And why not? Imagine the fat fees lawyers stand to make for negotiating these contracts and their subsequent renewals or dissolutions!
We will undoubtedly see these kind of contracts, given the outsize influence predatory lawyers have when it comes to legislation.
It's also no coincidence that none of the major Muslim Brotherhood front groups like CAIR had little public criticism on same sex marriage, in spite of what the Qur'an says about homosexuals. Can you think of a better way to ultimately get Sharia compliant polygamy,child marriages and temporary 'bought' marriages (we generally refer to them as prostitution or one night stands in America) legal and on the books?
After all, once you legally change the definition of marriage, it can pretty much consist of anything people can dream up. Imagine two businessmen in partnership deciding to 'marry' in order to take advantage of certain tax laws, even if they already married to women. Why not? What legal grounds would there be to deny them? How dare we discriminate!
And as AI and robotics become more and more sophisticated, does anyone doubt that if present trends continue (and they may not), there could eventually be civil marriages between human and machine?
Laura Rambeau Lee : For centuries Western civilization had defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman. This is no longer the case. While several states passed laws with overwhelming majorities attempting to keep the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman, in 2015 the Supreme Court overturned our votes and ruled that we must allow same sex marriages. Many of us embraced the idea of civil unions for gay couples affording them all of the rights and obligations of a heterosexual married couple but wished to keep the term marriage confined to what we have understood it to be and represent. I was against same sex marriages, not because of their wish to be recognized as a couple but because marriage is now undefined rather than redefined. Will this progression stop at same sex marriages or will bigamy and polygamy be allowed in the future?
Now that same sex couples have legally married we will see how this plays out as some will inevitably attempt to divorce. Marriage laws are primarily to protect property and children. It is not so easy once the bond of marriage has been legally established and recognized by the state to dissolve the relationship. That which has been sanctioned by the state must also be dissolved by the state.
While all this redefinition of marriage is happening at the urging of progressives in an attempt to undermine Western culture and civilization, the good news is marriage will continue to be the foundation upon which families are built. Human beings understand the intrinsic value of one man and one woman coming together and committing themselves to each other, to declare their love for one another publicly, and to raise their families. It is the natural order of things and will continue to be in spite of those who seek to destroy it.
Well, there it is! Make sure to drop by every Monday for the WoW! Magazine Forum. And enjoy WoW! Magazine 24-7 with some of the best stuff written in the 'net. Take from me, you won't want to miss it.
President Trump and Jared Kushner have actually made some progress towards achieving a Mideast peace agreement between Israel and the PLO. The progress mainly consists of shifting the entire context around. I still ultimately doubt it will be successful as long as The PLO/Fatah and Hamas are involved, but just doing that much is significant achievement..and it may just actually yield some results.
If you’ve been following the latest developments in the Mideast peace process, you know that Jared Kushner just met again yesterday with the Palestinian Authority’s leader Mahmoud Abbas. Unlike their last meeting, when Kushner insisted that the PA had to give up inciting and financing terrorist attacks on Israel, this one didn’t end in a shouting match between them.
Abbas and the other PA functionaries made polite noises this time.
“We highly appreciate President Trump’s efforts to strike a historical peace deal, a statement he repeated more than one time during our meetings in Washington, Riyadh and Bethlehem,” Abbas said at the start of his meeting with Kushner, according to the PA’s official Wafa news agency.
“We know that this delegation is working for peace, and we are working with it to achieve what President Trump has called a peace deal. We know that things are difficult and complicated, but there is nothing impossible with good efforts,” he added.
Well, except for this. The Palestinians, as they wish to be called are very frustrated by one thing.
When it comes to the peace process, they’re used to being catered to, and being offered what they demand while giving little or nothing in return as concessions. They’re also used to it being a fait accompli, an established fact that there is going to be a two state solution that gives them all or most of Judea and Samaria with their capitol in Jerusalem.
The Trump administration has backed away from guaranteeing that no matter what, an important shift in the context.
“We have clearly emphasized to the Americans the importance of having
a public statement that has a commitment to the two-state solution,”
Ashraf Khatib, a spokesman for the negotiation affairs department of the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), told the Washington Post on
Friday. “There hasn’t been any.”
Nor will there be for now, as State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert explained
earlier this week. The always unworkable two state solution has been
sidelined for now and won’t be automatically put back on the table
without significant concessions by the PLO. Or as Ms. Nauert politely
put it, “Committing to a two-state solution would “bias” the outcome of a
peace agreement between Israel and the PA.”
“We want to work toward a peace that both sides can agree to and that
both sides find sustainable. We believe that both parties should be
able to find a workable solution that works for both of them.”
“We are not going to state what the outcome has to be. It has to be
workable to both sides. And I think, really, that’s the best view as to
not really bias one side over the other, to make sure that they can work
through it. It’s been many, many decades, as you well know, that the
parties have not been able to come to any kind of good agreement and
sustainable solution to this. So we leave it up to them to be able to
work that through.”
Or to put it more bluntly, President Trump isn’t going to make Israel
‘negotiate’ with a loaded gun to its head and a preconceived outcome.
For perhaps the first time in the history of the Mideast peace process,
the PLO is being told that if they want a state, they’re going to have
to convince the Israelis to go along with it. That’s going to mean
significant concessions. And even then, it might not mean statehood. it
might just end up being an autonomous enclave.
This is a major change. Obstruction and stonewalling
by Abbas and company is not going to work any longer. They will have to
deal to get what they want.
At a time when the only Arab leader who seems to have any time for
‘Palestine’ is Jordan’s King Abdullah and most of the Sunni states are
far more concerned with putting together a coalition against Iran that
will of necessity include Israel, Mahmoud Abbas and ‘Palestine’ aren’t
even attracting rhetoric, let alone cash. The Arab states have slashed the aid
they were giving the PA by 50%, and bi-partisan legislation is already moving forward in the US to severely limit aid to the PA because of
their financing of terrorism.
Will being squeezed and marginalized give the Palestinians an
incentive to actually bargain in good faith for once and come up with a
reasonable proposal for Israel to mull over? I’d say no, but I’d be
happy to be pleasantly surprised.
As President trump once said, the biggest asset in making a deal is
the willingness to walk away. Applied to the Mideast peace process, it
just might work.
President Trump, whatever else he accomplishes during his term deserves major credit for unmasking our dishonest, partisan media. He's totally correct when he says, as he does here in Phoenix, that the biased media is feeding hate and division here in America. And it's hard not to believe, as President Trump says that they really don't want America to be great again, and lack love of country. And that's been evident long before Donald Trump became president.
What really happened here, as most of us know is that the biased media really thought Hillary Clinton was a shoe in. Their biased polls showed it. The Left controls most of academia, Hollywood, the publishing industry, most of the legacy media, most of pop culture, and most of the tech/Social media industry and its billions.
Much of the media actually worked for either the Clintons, Obama or both before they eased into their present sinecures.
Mrs. Clinton had the big money behind her.She had an army of the best consultants money could buy to plan strategy and carpet bomb the American people with vicious attack ads. She had the corrupt DNC in her pocket to grease the primaries so she would win easily. She had the media working fo her to provide partisan hosts and slant the debates. She even had a large contingent of #neverTrump conservatives on her side.
And against her was Donald Trump, running his first campaign ever, with a small campaign team, his plane, and not much else except well, himself.
The Left, especially the media were so convinced that they could destroy him easily, so confident of their own power that they went all out...and got careless. A lot of had already known how biased they were for sometime, but the waythey conducted themselves in 2016 pulled the Wizard of Oz's curtain away for America at large.
The media bet everything on one throw of the dice, and got snake eyes. Because against all expectations Donald Trump won the election in the biggest upset in American political history.
And the Left had a collective nervous breakdown. What happened on camera was hilarious enough, but I've heard that what happened when the cameras were off was even funnier.
Mrs. Clinton was so angry and distraught she threw a major tantrum backstage and wasn't even able to speak to her followers who were waiting to hear from her. Her campaign manager, John Podesta had to speak to them and tell them to go home. And once Mrs. Clinton calmed down, they came up with the fairy tale of 'Russian collusion' to alibi why they lost so badly.
Oddly enough it was Donald Trump who caught the heat before the election for saying that he would respect the results 'if it was an honest election.'
Remember this?
Did you ever see or hear former President Obama addressing the nation to decry the Left's disrespect for the 2016 election results? Did you see any of the legacy media excoriating Mrs. Clinton,the Obama Administration and the 'resistance' for disrespecting our democracy? Of course not, because the media was intimately involved in that disrespect and they still are complicit in it. And if that's not de facto hatred of our country, what is?
The bogus 'Russia story has been off the front pages for almost two weeks now. Instead, it's 'trump the racist,' 'Trump's insane,' and 'Trumps unfit for office' repeated over and over and over again in the classic cadence of the Big Lie.
The huge crowd of over 8,000 (put a few thousand outside who couldn't get in and braved the heat to listen on monitors) in Phoenix cheering the president on and the tiny contingent of 500 or so 'protestors' that showed up after all the hype shows us two things. That Trump hasn't lost his base and that the only place the Left's brown shirts can act out is in the solid blue enclaves sympahthetic politicans control...like Charlottesville, Chicago, Berkeley or Los Angeles. Anywhere else, the police are going to be allowed to do their jobs.
Which is of course what happened in Phoenix, which has a Democrat Mayor but one who wasn't going to let the Left run amuck in his city. Unlike Mayor Signer in Charlottesville, he ordered the police to keep the two groups separated. That angered the Left's thugs so much that as soon as Trump's crowd departed, they attacked the police...and got exactly what they deserved.
Phoenix ain't Chicago,Baltimore or Charlottesville. Not by a long shot.
President Trump addressed the nation last night to outline his strategy in Afghanistan. Of course he didn't go into details,being smarter than his twp predecessors. There were no deadlines or grandiose claims, merely that America would start winning this war and that our eventual withdrawal would be based on conditions on the ground rather than any arbitrary dates.
He announced five “core pillars” to the approach: getting rid of any timelines for how long U.S. troops would remain in Afghanistan; using all elements of power, including diplomatic and economic; getting tougher on Pakistan; getting India to help more with economic development; and expanding authorities for U.S. forces to fight terrorists.
He said it was up to the people of Afghanistan to “take ownership of their future” and to “achieve an everlasting peace.”
“We are not nation-building again, we are killing terrorists.”
Here's what the president had to say, in his own words. And it's obvious he's thought about this quite a bit:
Needless to say, the President received quite a bit of criticism, especially from the Left.
So let's look at what the president actually had to say.
AfPak is a war we should never have gotten involved with in the first place. I never went to West Point, but I also understand that it was crazy to send an army and billions of dollars worth of equipment to a landlocked country surrounded by hostile territory - and I include Pakistan in that. Most of the equipment needs to be unloaded at Karachi and sent overland to Afghanistan via the Torkum Pass, and aside from us needing to bribe the Pakistanis with billions every year, they've cut the road and kept us from supplying our troops on various occasions.
OTOH, both commanders in chief involved in this handcuffed our troops with ridiculous rules of engagement and various other things designed to appease 'hearts and minds' of the locals.Which of course, didn't work. The Brits kept the Afghans at bay for some time by paying the chiefs 'subsidies' to keep them from raiding India. The Afghan Wars only started when the Brits stopped paying.
The president isn't talking about arbitray deadlines and 'nation building' but victory If Trump lets our troops do what's needed and especially if he brings back great combat generals like McCrystal and starts fighting the war strategically, he has a chance. it also helps that by all accounts, the Afghani government has a lot more respect for Trump than they ever did for Barack Hussein Obama.
I have a feeling Trump and Mattis are going to fight a very different war than Bush and especially Obama, who actually appeared to be aiding and abetting the Taliban on numerous occasions... like giving up 5 top Taliban commanders and a cash ransom for Bowie Bergdahl, a deserter.
I also fully agree with his statement on getting a lot tougher with Pakistan. They have no interest in a stable Afghanistan, which was heading that way in the 1950's and 1960's.
What changed things was the Soviet invasion and Jimmy Carter's well intentioned funding of the muhadajeen, many of whom were Islamists and became the breeding ground for al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other terrorist groups. Since Afghanistan is landlocked, it was Pakistan who decided who get the money and arms, and they made sure it was the Islamists. That and Bill Clinton's failure to support the pro-Western Northern Alliance is what delivered Afghanistan to the Taliban. And as I mentioned, Pakistan has still given tacit support to the Taliban by periodically cutting off supplies to our troops and allowing the Taliban to have havens in their country except for periodic raids when the Taliban or allied groups have carried out terrorist activities in Pakistan itself.
One thing that could be especially effective is forgetting Afghanistan as a country to an extent and dealing with the local chiefs directly. They make most of their money selling opium, and they are forced to pay 'taxes' to the Taliban in order to be able to sell their crops at whatever price they can get...with most of the processing done in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier.
Imagine what would happen if the U.S made them an offer they couldn't refuse?
"We want to be your friends, and as our friends, they will be able to sell their crops directly to us for a fair market price, and without any more taxes.to the Taliban. And we will help our friends defend their territory from the Taliban. of course, those who are not our friends will see their fields burned, much as we'd hate to do that."
Many of these Pashtun chiefs have territories that overlap the AfPak borders, Give them some help defending their territories and the bennie no longer having to settle for whatever price they can get and with Taliban taxation and this war could take on an entirely different complexion. Especially if we took a hard line with the Pakistanis about any obstructions and the consequences.
Yes, we could also simply leave, and part of me says 'why not?' . But there are inherent and obvious problems with that. With the right leadership, this could end up being a major graveyard for jihadis.
This was a mess Trump inherited from two dysfunctional commanders-in-chiefs. Let's withhold judgement and see how he does.
This is a breaking news item. It apparently happened a week ago, and unfortunately fits in with the media meme about violent right wing Trump supporters.
According to ABC channel 6 news in Chester County Pennsylvania, Clayton Carter allegedly shot his neighbor, George Jennings, both 51, twice in the head outside his home in Pennsylvania in the early hours of August 8 and murdered him.
Carter was reportedly a huge Trump supporter with pro Trump signs on his lawn and a MAGA hat he frequently wore. Jennings was a prominent Democrat and actually a member of the Chester County Democratic Party Committee, and the two neighbors argued frequently. There was actually a previous gun incident where Clayon had pulled a loaded gun on Jennings, but it was diffused when police arrived.
Many people in the neighborhood spoke to the media about Carter's volatile nature and that they were very apprehensive of what appeared to be frequent fits of rage.
On August 8th Carter accused Jennings of shining a light into his eyes as he was returning home, and went inside to fetch a .380-caliber Ruger semi-automatic handgun. (otherwise know as a revolver).
Carter reportedly went back outside and parked his car up on Jennings’ lawn with his lights on full beam, according to a criminal complaint.
When Jennings came outside, they had words and Carter shot him at close range, knocking him to the ground. He then shot Jennings in the head a second time while standing over his body, as his distraught wife watched from inside the house.
This is exactly the sort of hideous violence on the Right the media has been warning us about. It's exactly what happened in Charlottesville. When will we learn?
Oh wait a minute! Actually, Clayton Carter is a left wing Democrat and Trump Hater with loads of 'resistance ' signs on his lawn And the late George Jennings was a member of the Chester County Republican committee. The rest of the story is as written.
But of course you knew that, right? If my headline was accurate, it would be the lead story on CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, and CBS, and tomorrow's front page headline in the WAPO, New York Times, Politico, the L.A. Times...and you know the rest of the list.
Of course, since Clayton Carter is a Democrat and a violent man of the left, the story will be buried quicker than yesterday's dog turds. And the reporters who put this story out will be sent to the Gulag for some re-education, Da?
Every week on Monday, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's Question: What Do you think of Trump's handling Of North Korea ?
Don Surber: The United Nations (at our urging) has been at war with North Korea since 1950. This is a sign of failure by the politicians. Enter the amateur, Trump, to cut a deal.
China is using North Korea as a cudgel to beat us with over trade. China will rein in North Korea for a price. China - through North Korea -- is aiding Iran in building its bomb.
The American elite are cool with this. But the American people are not.
Trump had Chairman Xi in for a meal at Mar a Lago in April. Between courses of the meal, he matter of factly bombed Syria.
Thus, China knows he's no pushover. Look for Trump to prevail where the politicians could not.
Rob Miller: President Trump was left to deal with a great many problems created by his predecessor, especially when it comes to foreign policy and national security. North Korea is only one of them.One of the things about this that makes me really angry is the way the press, particularly the WAPO has exploited this situation, misrepresenting it as a brand new development (perhaps to get the bogus Trump Russia story off the front opages for awhile). The intelligence showing that the Norks had warheads small enough to fit on their ICBMs was first received by the White House in 2013, when a certain Barack Hussein Obama was president. He ignored it in favor of cranking out a few more vacations, improving his golf game, giving Iran a clear path to nuclear weapons on the American people's dime and weaponizing US intel against his political enemies.
The rhetoric that has the press wetting their footy pajamas as well as Rex Tillerson and General Mattis's more measured language aren't addressed to Kim Jong-un. They're addressed to China, and are classic 'good cop/bad cop.
China created the Kim regime with the idea of having an aggressive pitbull on its borders they would control as a border guard and most importantly, as a distraction for the US when needed. They probably laughed and shook their heads in disbelief when Bill Clinton actually ended up financing North Korea's nuclear program with money that was supposed to bribe them to end it! And the Russians, seeing how well it worked with China decided to do it themselves with Iran. Especially since Iran and North Korea were already trading illegal nuclear technology.
What the Chinese want is quiet and a return to the status quo. That's exactly why they voted for the increased sanctions in the UN instead of vetoing them as a gesture, especially since they could always violate the sanctions anyway later if they need to.
What the President is telling them in no uncertain terms is that this scenario is inadequate, and if the Chinese don't put this vicious junkyard dog to sleep, America will. An unsaid aside is that China's economy being as vulnerable an intertwined with America's as it is, both parties know that the China can't afford a war, especially over Kim Jong-on
The central issue here is quite a simple one. Kim Jong-on, is a rogue actor like the Iranian regime. Both have dangerous toys they only were able to obtain because of three weak and dysfunctional presidents who allowed this to metastasize on their watch. Both regimes would happily sell nuclear weaponry to terrorist groups and the world's bad actors without a qualm. Any solution that would allow them to hang on to nuclear weapons is no solution at all.
The short answer? President Trump, so far, is doing exactly what he should be doing in my opinion.
Patrick O'Hannigan: I don't have a standard against which to measure President Trump's handling of the situation in North Korea, but as a general rule, I think it's better and more effective than the breathless reporting of crisis might suggest. Trump has talked tougher than Deep State operatives prefer, as Don Surber alluded to in his own answer to this question. Most of the U.S. media seems bent on a reporting ethos that amounts to "Let's you and him fight," and one side effect of that attitude is that it makes both Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump seem like a pair of crazies who deserve each other. That clumsy attempt at moral equivalence won't withstand even a moment's worth of fair-minded scrutiny, not least because Donald Trump, despite his outsize ego, was not raised to believe in his own divinity, whereas Kim Jong-un was. It's also worth remembering that missile programs don't bear fruit overnight, and Kim Jong-un has run North Korea since 2011.
All I have to back my own opinion is anecdotal evidence. But a caller to a local talk show early this week mentioned that his wife and daughter are both in South Korea, and they've told him that the South Korean press is not sounding apocalyptic. A local (North Carolina) TV station also carried network footage of an interview with some residents of Guam, including its governor, and found that Guamanians allegedly in the crosshairs of North Korean missiles do not seem to blame President Trump for "escalating tensions." It's only hard-left ideologues and "Status Quovians" who fault our president for what's going on, deliberately forgetting what Barack Obama and Bill Clinton before him did to make the North Korean regime think it would only ever face sanctions from the United Nations. President Trump's words (and simultaneous outreach to China) have at least as good a chance of curbing "Nork" saber-rattling as anything we've tried before.
Mike McDaniel: In any discussion of North Korea we have to keep in mind we have been at war with them for the last 64 years. The Korean War never ended, and we’ve been proceeding, haphazardly, under an armistice ever since, an armistice the North Koreans declared nullified in 2013. During those 64 years, we have honored the terms of the armistice. North Korea has not.
Some would suggest the armistice has been a success in that it has deterred a hot--all-out hostilities, shooting--war. By that limited measure, deterrence has worked, but it was based on three legs of a very wobbly stool: (1) We have been willing to accept unlimited covert and overt acts of war by the Norks, including: kidnapping, espionage, the murder of our, and our allie’s, soldiers and citizens, ransom schemes, counterfeiting, drug dealing, arms sales to terrorists and terror states, cybercrime, sinking of ships and the more or less constant shelling by artillery of other military and civilian assets. (2) The idea that deterrence works as long as the Norks have only conventional weapons, and old and rapidly aging conventional weapons at that. (3) Our willingness to do anything to avoid a hot war, including: allowing all of the acts of war mentioned in #1 with no meaningful reprisals, giving the Norks diplomatic cover for their aggressions, allowing them to build a vast communist gulag where their citizens are reduced to eating grass and tree bark for mere survival, and providing the Nork regime with the food, fuel, and money necessary to survive.
But we’ve imposed sanctions! Not enough, not of sufficient ferocity, and we’ve consistently mitigated any effects of sanctions by giving North Korea the goods and cash it needed to laugh at our sanctions. And now, our decades of appeasement and handing over billions have produced nuclear weapons, weapons we paid for. The North Koreans have proved, for 64 years, they cannot be deterred. With nukes in hand, the idea of deterrence is a dangerous, sick joke.
In Donald Trump we have a canny negotiator, and a man utterly result oriented. He determines what he wants, and does what is necessary to get it. His rhetoric is a refreshing change from the mealy-mouthed platitudes of Barack Obama. However, the danger is greater than most realize.
Ballistic missiles and gravity bombs are not the only way to deliver a nuclear weapon. Even a large, clumsy, WWII-tech weapon can be easily, covertly transported in a truck or ship, a danger we are not remotely prepared to defend against. There is every reason to believe they also have EMP weapons and are equally willing to use them. They are no less dangerous than nuclear weapons. In addition, the North Koreans have close ties with Iran and other terrorist states and organizations. They will sell them weapons of mass destruction. I’m sure, particularly with General Mattis as an advisor, Mr. Trump is aware of this, and of far more blood-curdling intelligence than we know.
Appeasement never worked, and it is now profoundly dangerous and unacceptable. All of our kicking the can down the road has brought us to the status quo. We have a simple choice: take out North Korea, or be willing to allow them to use nuclear weapons at times and places of their choosing. President Trump is willing to make that kind of hard choice, and the American public is behind him. The AINO press, Democrats and self-imagined elites never will be. One should never make the mistake of thinking they speak for anyone but themselves.
War is terrible, but there are worse things. Peace is not merely the absence of overt military conflict. Donald Trump understands this too. I pray when the time comes, Barack Obama has not so enervated our military we’ll suffer far more casualties than necessary.
Laura Rambeau Lee : The American policy towards North Korea has been one of “strategic patience” for decades, which brings us to the threat we face today. Reports are that Kim Jong Un has up to sixty nuclear weapons and now has the capability to launch long range missiles possibly containing miniaturized nukes which could hit our allies and even our west coast. He is threatening to launch four missiles to hit within twenty miles off the coast of Guam this week. What we have been doing has not worked and has only emboldened Kim Jong Un. His bullying and saber rattling is escalating. President Trump is meeting Kim Jong Un’s words with the same tough language. He must understand this new administration will be tougher than previous ones. He has seen that President Trump is willing to strike if necessary to send a message as he did with Syria in April after Bashar al-Assad launched a nerve gas attack on the rebel held town of Khan Sheikhoun.
We know for sure our policies in the past have not worked. We will soon see what happens with President Trump’s approach and if Kim Jong Un backs down on his threats. Dear Leader is crazy but I doubt he is suicidal.
Well, there it is! Make sure to drop by every Monday for the WoW! Magazine Forum. And enjoy WoW! Magazine 24-7 with some of the best stuff written in the 'net. Take from me, you won't want to miss it.
Charlotttesville, Virginia is a small college city. It is the home of the University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819.
Over the weekend, it became the home of a violent melee that resulted in scores of injured and one death.
The story of the run up to these events reveals a great deal. Charlottesville, like many college towns is fairly blue. And the town council decided to take down a statue of Robert E. Lee that had stood in Emancipation Park (formerly known as Lee Park) for decades.
Led by a local blogger, Jason Kessler, a number of people decided to hold a rally protesting the removal of the statue. They were given a permit to do so. Kessler called the rally 'Unite The Right' and made the stupid mistake of allowing white supremacists David Duke and Richard Spencer to be part of the rally, which of course allowed the entire rally to be characterized as 'Nazis' and 'White Nationalists.'
This led to the recruitment of a large mob of Antifa, #Blacklivesmatter, and Black Blok 'counter protestors' to organize what amounted to an attack on the rally.
The city first tried to appease them by reneging on the permit, after which Kessler took the matter to court and won.
Over the weekend, the city was flooded with both Kessler's protestors and the 'counter protestors', with most of both groups being from outside the area. Contrary to what some of the media would have you believe, there were few college students involved. Most classes at the University don't start for a few weeks.
Instead, what you had was an attempt to 'punch some nazis.' The #blacklivesmatter, AntiFa, and the so-called Black Blok groups came there in force and armed with baseball bats, pepper spray, sticks, metal flagpoles, iron riser bars, urine bombs, knives and spray can bombs, which basically spurt fire at people at a nice distance with the aid of a handy Bic lighter.
In other words, the 'counter protestors' came to start something. It's inevitable that violence was going to occur. These 'counter protesters' as the media religiously refers to them are the very same thugs that have been burning, shutting down free speech and bashing heads for several years.
Let me be very clear. There were obviously neo Nazis and active KKK members among the protestors, and I have nothing but contempt for such people. If I had been a Democrat member of the Senate at a certain time and place, you would never have seen me voting for former Klan Kleagle Robert Byrd as my majority leader. But even Nazis are entitled to freedom of assembly and free speech within certain clearly defined limits.
And with the exception of one cretin who drove his car into a crowd, the protestors weren't the aggressors. If they had been the aggressors, there would have been a lot more casualties.
Here's a factoid that bears this out. A lot of the protestors the media labeled under the catchall of 'white nationalists' came strapped. Yet despite being attacked by these leftist thugs, guess what? No one was shot. NO ONE. That's a huge clue as to who came to peacefully protest and who came looking to perpetrate exactly what happened.
And what actually happened? Well, let's see.
A number of observers on both sides have commented on the lack of police presence. As the New York Times, of all places, reported:
“There was no police presence,” Ms.Brittany Caine-Conley (a minister in training at Sojourners United Church of Christ) said. “We were watching people punch each other; people were bleeding all the while police were inside of barricades at the park, watching. It was essentially just brawling on the street and community members trying to protect each other.”
Brian Moran, Virginia’s secretary of public safety and homeland security, was watching the events from a command post on the sixth floor of a Wells Fargo bank on the downtown mall. There were sporadic fights. “I compare it to hockey,” he said. “Often in hockey there are sporadic fights, and then they separate.”
Suddenly, people were throwing water bottles, some filled with urine. Some used pepper spray; from his perch on the sixth floor, Mr. Moran saw smoke bombs being thrown. People started clubbing one another. The clergy retreated to a “safe house” — a restaurant nearby.
But according to many witnesses, the police waited to intervene. Ms. Caine-Conley called it “fascinating and appalling.”
Mr. Kessler, too, complained.
In a statement, he said the authorities had “exacerbated the violence” by failing to separate his followers from counter protesters. He said his group had “networked with law enforcement officials” months ago on a plan for maintaining safety, which he said was not followed, and he called the police “under equipped for the situation.”
What the New York Times and most of the media didn't report was what the police did that exacerbated the violence.
Even a primary school teacher knows that when you have two kids fighting, the first thing you do is separate them. There are various ways police are trained to do exactly that. Instead, here's what happened and I have this from people who were actually at the scene in Charlottesville.
Under orders from Charlottesville's uber progressive Democrat mayor Mike Signer, the protestor's permit was illegally revoked in defiance of the court order. This happened at 11 AM, after the confrontations had already been going on for some time. At that point, the demonstrators, who were vastly outnumbered by the 'counter protestors' were in the park with crowds of 'counter protestors' on three sides.
Then the mayor ordered Charlotteville's police chief, Al Thomas to have the police form a shield wall on the one side of the park that was still open and tell the demonstrators (who still had a legal permit to be there reaffirmed by a federal judge) that they were an unlawful assembly. And that if they didn't disperse immediately they'd be arrested.
Since the police let few if any of the demonstrators through their line, the only ways out were through the counter protestors. It seems like the mayor decided the protestors were all 'nazis' who needed a lesson from the Left's own brownshirts. And let's not forget, the police are not to blame. Just as in Chicago, Baltimore, Berkeley and many other cities, they were ordered to stand down and let the Leftist thugs act out.
What's astonishing that so few people were injured, with the majority of serious injuries coming from the incident where one of the protestors drove his car into the crowd. The casualties could have been far worse.
Even faced with this carnage, the police pretty much let things go. As one observer mentioned, 'Yeah, it (the car incident) was intentional.About 40 miles an hour, hit about 15-20 people, crashed into the two cars in front of it, and then backed up and sped away while cops were standing on the side of the road and didn't do anything.'
The driver, James Alex Fields of Maumee, Ohio fled the scene is his car, a Dodge Charger, but was arrested several blocks away, jailed without bail and charged with suspicion of malicious wounding, failure to stop for an accident involving a death, second degree homicide and hit and run. I'd guess he's going to be in jail quite awhile and deservedly so. I'm sure many on the Left who ordinarily cringe at the thought of the death penalty for the most inhumane, vicious murderers would happily lynch Mr. Fields and burn his bare feet with lit cigarettes as he swings. Actually, the Left owes Alex Fields big time. He gave them something they have been desperately trying to get, a bloody flag to wave and a martyr for the cause in the form of Heather Heyer, the counter protestor he killed. She was certainly no Nazi, but she will now become the Left's Horst Wessel and put to exactly the same use Horst Wessel was.
The comparison is spot on. The 'resistance' have been using the same tactics Hitler's brownshirts did for some time.
#Blacklives matter were directly responsible for the violence in Ferguson over the faux Micheal Brown Hands up don't shoot nonsense, and for helping to burn down and loot a large chunk of Baltimore after the city's dysfunctional mayor said they could because of some career drug dealer who was trying to injure himself so he could sue the city..
The AntiFa and Black Blok thugs have been responsible for all sorts of violence, especially in Seattle and in Berkeley where they first attacked people standing in line to buy tickets to hear Milo Yianopoulos speak, injured a number of them severely, and then proceeded to do thousands of dollars worth of damage before the police were allowed by the mayor to rein them in.That's exactly what happened here.
Ask yourself this. Has any politicians on the Left seriously condemned these groups and their vicious behavior? Heck no.Did the media wring their collective hands and condemn this sort of thing? Nope. In fact the media took joy in fanning the flames and absolving these miscreants of any blame. So we all know the answer to that one.
And just in case you still haven't gotten the message, a planned news conference by Jason Kessler, the organizer of what was in fact a perfectly legal rally, came to an abrupt end when a man wearing a plaid shirt punched him and a group of lefty protestors literally chased him off the podium.
You see, what happened in Charlottesville and the way the media is presenting it gives the Left the opportunity to shut up anyone who doesn't agree with them by any means necessary.
The Left applauds violence when it's some of their own doing it, especially if they're members of certain protected groups. Fascism is just fine and dandy then. Thanks to the ever helpful media, they've gotten away with this for quite some time. All one needs to do is see the Left's reaction to President Trump's call for both sides to take a good look at where this sort of thing is headed:
The president's attempt to to rein things is was unfortunately a failure, because that's not what the Left really wants. What happened in Charlottesville was merely the opening skirmish of a whole series of planned riots in places like Richmond, Va, Nashville, Atlanta, and Baltimore. And rest assured, there will be more.
And there's something a lot of these places have in common, with Charlottesville. They all have uber progressive Democrat mayors who can be relied on to reign in the police and allow the Left's brownshirts to act out, attack people and riot.
Charlottesville is the Left's excuse for open season on labeling anyone who doesn't follow the Left's totalitarian diktats as a 'Nazi', a white supremacist, a 'hater' or a white nationalist. And shutting them up either by denying them a platform or physically attacking them. And of course, to do their best to slime a sitting president as one of the 'Nazis.'
They're correct when they call for getting rid of domestic terrorism. What they don't realize is that it will likely not be defined by their terms if this nonsense keeps up.
You could probably put all of Richard Spencer and David Duke's followers in a 200 seat hall and have lots of seats left over. That isn't true of AntiFa, #blacklivesmatter, BlackBlokand other assorted Leftist groups engaged in this sort of activity. Nor do the neo Nazis have th epower, organization and financing the Leftist groups do.
Who the real threat to our liberties are and who the real Nazis are is becoming more and more obvious, isn't it? The irony is hilarious.
Every week on Monday, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's Question:What Do You Think Will Be The Major Tech And Science Breakthroughs In The Next 10 Years?
Mike McDaniel:Whooooo, as one of my favorite students used to say. I haven’t a clue, but no one has ever accused me of being unable to fill space with writing, so I’ll make some wild guesses, keeping firmly in mind that many such advancements come out of the blue. They’re usually things most of the public hasn’t been keeping in the “oh boy, wouldn’t be great if” mental file.
Firearms: Primarily because Donald Trump is in office, there may be money for basic upgrades that have been put off for far too long, particularly, our standard military rifle. Look for a new rifle in a slightly larger caliber, more on the order of .30 caliber, or something between that and the current 5.56 mm. I suspect the same basic rifle design will be used, as that would keep overall developmental and manufacturing costs low, but perhaps with the upgrades of the H&K version of the M4. We’d be smart to adapt the Israeli Tavor, but I doubt we’ll be able to ignore the “not invented here” syndrome. A civilian version of the same weapon would also be useful for hunting a much broader range of game than the current cartridge allows.
Science: We’ll be able to quantum teleport larger items over greater distances. The Star Trek transporter will remain fiction, but we’ll be able to do more. The commercial, and particularly military, applications are simply too lucrative for this not to be exploited.
Military: Our surface combatant warships will be equipped with multiple, powerful lasers, capable of not only shooting down drones, but missiles and aircraft, and of sinking at boats in the patrol boat class.
Our larger surface combatant warships will be equipped with electromagnetic railguns, capable of destroying virtually any ship at a very low cost per shot. Anything within 100 miles will be in grave danger from these weapons.
Our Air Force will be equipped with large, stealthy missile truck drones, capable of carrying far more missiles than our F22 or F35 fighters can manage. With the digital links of the F22, and particularly the F35, a few fighters could destroy a swarm of enemy fighters from safe distances, undetected. Such dedicated drones could theoretically carry a laser large and powerful enough to destroy enemy fighters. Our normal manned fighters aren’t large enough.
Computers: Moore’s law continues to hold. Computers will become smaller and far more powerful. An Apple Watch will have the features and capabilities of a contemporary laptop, limited only by holographic display technology. Sufficiently advanced models could eliminate the need for hand held cell phones entirely.
Look for true mental interfaces for computing. Sufficiently advanced display technology would eliminate the need for computer monitors.
Automotive: Self-driving cars will not become the future. The potential dangers, to say nothing of the legal liability for manufacturers and fleet operators, are simply too great. However, greatly enhanced safety features such as automatic braking (collision avoidance), back up danger detection, detectors for drivers nodding off, and a variety of other issues already in the tech pipeline will become commonplace.
Medicine: Effective treatments for Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, as well as genetic therapies for a variety of illnesses will become commonplace. Therapies for many forms of cancer will become more effective, greatly extending life.
All of this and more may be ours, if we’re not caught up in fighting a second civil war because the political elite would rather keep their perks and rule over the rubble than advance mankind and honor the Constitution. I’m not optimistic about our chances.
Rob Miller:There are several tech advances I think we'll see in the next ten years.
I think AI and robotics are going to be HUGE, simply because they will replace a number of human workers in some surprising places. We're already seeing that many companies are already automating many customer service and accounts receivable functions. It's quite plausible that we may even see AI lawyers for some functions. And many factory jobs will go the same way. Many corporate fast food restaurants will be almost entirely automated except for a couple of management staff. Supermarket checkers could also become largely extinct. So could home delivery of pizza and other foods by humans. Drones are already doing this in a few places.
There are already robot brothels in Europe and Asia, and there's no question that a number of working girls will soon be out of work as 'sex robots' get more and more advanced. And as prices come down, a realistic sex robot (of either sex) with changeable personas and/or a robot maid, housekeeper or butler could become quite common. Same with many secretarial duties.Robots and AI could even be used in war fighting instead of human personnel, perhaps controlled by humans behind the lines the way drones already are. And some people may even want to have robot, AI pets instead of dogs and cats.
I would predict there will also be a reaction of sorts to this, and certain restaurants, grocers, shops, brothels etc will also retain a place simply because many humans prefer to deal with humans. And a good many other jobs will open up, as they always do.
We will see vast improvements in medical technology. Micro surgery, organ transplants and even gene manipulation will be far more advanced and commonplace. I would predict that we will even see the development of 'farms' where organs for transplant are grown and stored as needed.And a cure for most kinds of cancer will likely be discovered.
Look for virtual entertainment to take a huge leap, aside from the oversized cumbersome headphones. Now YOU can be part of the action! I expect hologram technology to take a huge leap. Imagine a home theater where you could watch say, 'Sunset Boulevard' but give Bette Davis Gloria Swanson's role and sub Kirk Douglas for William Holden. And perhaps even create, to some degree, your own 'script?' Much of the tech (if not quite all of it) already exists for that.
There are other things we will likely see, some pleasant, some unpleasant. A lot will depend on how much global strife there is and what forms it takes.
Laura Rambeau Lee : In many ways technology has made our lives easier but I worry about our youth growing up not really understanding why or how things actually work. We are growing too dependent on technology. Something as simple to grasp as counting change back is a lost art as today all one has to do is put in the amount tendered and a machine calculates the amount the cashier gives back to the customer. If the register breaks I fear many would be at a loss to make change anymore. It seems a lot of jobs are this way today with people relying on technology without really understanding or being able to make the calculation on their own or even understand the process. Our schools are doing a great disservice not teaching the basics of how to do things on our own without benefit of technology.
Robotics will become more advanced and will be used much more in medicine, business and in our homes. We are already seeing autonomous cars being tested in some cities, something I hate to see being an avid car fan, but it seems to be inevitable.
As far as science and medicine we are really on the verge of some major breakthroughs. I saw firsthand when my mom was going through treatments for breast cancer that had metastasized to her liver what breakthroughs are on the horizon. She sought out and participated in experimental treatments. Both treatments had to do with delivery of chemotherapy directly into her tumors. In the first study at NIH she was treated with a chemotherapy drug coated with a lipid where they introduced the chemo directly into the tumors laparoscopically and then performed radio frequency ablation (high heat) on the chemo cells dissolving the lipid coating and leaving the chemotherapy drug directly in the tumors. The second set of treatments was similar but they used glass beads soaked with chemotherapy drugs which the doctor would place at the blood source that fed the tumors, blocking the blood flow to the tumors and again directing the chemo into the tumors. Both of these treatments killed the tumors, but being in her liver they would treat one lobe at a time and then six months later they would treat the other lobe. Unfortunately the liver regenerates, blood flows get restored and the tumors grow in other areas. By directly introducing chemo into the tumors it is much easier for a body to handle with less of the side effects of chemo infusions. She did this and fought the cancer in her liver for six years, something pretty much unheard of. Of all of the government agencies the National Institute of Heath is doing some amazing things and we should support their work. They are also creating vaccines from a patient’s own genetic material that is being used to kill cancer cells with promising results. I pray one day all cancers become curable. Many types already have high cure rates such as certain leukemias and Hodgkin’s disease.
Whatever the future advances in science and technology, we should focus on how it helps our lives and not allow it to replace how we teach and educate our children and grandchildren. We must not allow these advances to interfere with our personal relationships and communications with one another. They should always be considered as useful tools, nothing else.
Dave Schuler :It would be easier to predict what won't happen but the question is about what will happen. Within ten years we'll have small scale mass produced nuclear reactors. Additive manufacturing will wreak havoc on China, Inc.'s business plan because it will mean that transportation costs are more important than labor costs in determining an item's cost.
I guess that's all I've got...
Well, there it is! Make sure to drop by every Monday for the WoW! Magazine Forum. And enjoy WoW! Magazine 24-7 with some of the best stuff written in the 'net. Take from me, you won't want to miss it.
Recent events continue show exactly why the peace process in the Middle East is dead on arrival right now, at least where Israel and the Palestinian authority is concerned. The Jerusalem Temple Mount crisis is the latest example of Mahmoud Abbas's destructive tactics in attempting to sabotage it and stay relevant.
As I pointed out in an earlier article,the Mideast 'peace process' is currently DOA and President Trump is strongly considering simply pulling out of it as a bad job. Moreover, the entire effort was part of a much larger program, creating a strategic bloc between the most powerful Sunni States of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates (and possibly a newly formed, U.S. backed Kurdistan) with Israel to defeat ISIS and al-Qaeda, oppose Iran and reaffirm U.S. leadership in the region.
Mahmoud Abbas has essentially torpedoed that arrangement at least as far as Israel and the Palestinian Authority is concerned. Although the larger program of a strategic bloc composed of Israel and the Sunni states will probably survive.
Abbas did it with the same tactics he's always used. He refused, as he always has, to make any concessions to Israel, especially when it came to his using international donor funds to reward convicted terrorist murderers and their families, or to stop the incitement of the murder of Jews in the mosques, media and schools the PA controls. The meeting he had with U.S. special adviser Jared Kushner ended in a shouting match, with Abbas saying that continuing to pay terrorists and their families out of donor aid was 'my social responsibility.'
Next, Abbas went to one of the few places where he's taken seriously, the UN, and got UNESCO to pass a resolution that declared that all the Jewish holy sites, including the Western Wall were 'occupied Palestinian territory' and renaming them with Arabic names, something that had no practical effect except to inflame Israelis. And finally, he once again used the al-Aqsa Mosque to inflame tensions.
The first incident involved two Palestinians who smuggled weapons into the mosque itself, not just 'the compound' as is being reported. They sneaked out of the mosque and murdered two Israeli police in cold blood, literally shooting them in the back. The two killers were later killed in a shootout with Israeli police. Palestinians inside the mosque and in the compound responded with rocks, bottles, knives and sticks. One of them was blown up by his own Molotov cocktail. The riot that ensued was so violent that the police actually had to storm the mosque to restore order.
The police then searched the mosque. inside they found a number of weapons hidden, knives, axes, firearms, gas bombs and ammo.
After removing the weapons, the Israelis came up with the solution of installing metal detectors. The Vatican and the main mosque in Mecca have similar equipment installed. Abbas used that as an excuse to incite and actually fund more riots with financial incentives, and to involve Jordan's King Abdullah. Per an arrangement made with Jordan by Israel's Labor government after Jordan attacked Israel in 1967, a Jordanian religious administrative body known as the Waqf has custody of the al-Aqsa mosque at the top of the Temple Mount. The Waqf has allowed stones to be stockpiled for Arabs to throw down and attack Jews worshiping at the Kotel, the Western Wall on more than one occasion. Incendiary sermons at the mosque are common.
Israel's relationship with Jordan is said to be peaceful, but it's actually an extremely frigid armistice, a ceasefire. Anti-semitic rants are quite common in Jordan's parliament, and there is little if any tourism or security cooperation. The Jordanians recently gave early release just this last March to Ahmed al-Daqamseh, a Jordanian soldier whose heroic deed was gunning down and murdering 7 Israeli schoolgirls who were on a field trip on Israel's side of the border. He received a hero's welcome in Jordan upon his release. We could discuss what kind of society it is that celebrates a child murderer as a hero, but I digress. The point is that Jordan is no 'ally' of Israel and would definitely attack Israel if it had the military capacity to do so.
King Abdullah is not exactly popular in his own country, so he took advantage of Mahmoud Abbas's opening to bolster that approval by mouthing a number of incendiary remarks of his own. That led to a terrorist attack on Israel's embassy in Amman, which the Jordanian police were supposedly guarding. One of the attackers who entered the embassy attempted to stab an Israeli security guard and wound up being shot and killed in response. Jordan insisted on 'interrogating' the Israeli guard, and that word has a very different meaning in a country like Jordan than it does in say, America or other countries where what's considered the rule of law is quite different.
The Israeli staff inside the embassy refused give the Jordanians the security guard, and were essentially blockaded in their embassy. A couple of days later, an arrangement was apparently made to allow the embassy staff to return to Israel with the security guard. In exchange, Israeli PM Netanyahu agreed to remove the metal detectors from the entrance to al-Aqsa and investigate the incident at the embassy, which still remains empty as I write this.
As word from one of my notorious little birdies has it, the Trump Administration had a major part in resolving this.
Meanwhile, the embassy in Amman is still empty, and King Abdullah and Mahmoud Abbas are still mouthing incendiary remarks and threatening war. In the case of Abbas, this incitement resulted in the hideous murder of a Jewish family in the village of Neve Tsuf (Halamish) who were sitting down to a Friday night Sabbath meal and celebrating a Shalom Zachar (celebration of the birth of a boy). The killer, who climbed over the security fence knocked on the door and was admitted, since the family thought it was a neighbor. Instead, Omar al-Abed rushed through the door with a knife and murdered the grandfather, 70-year old Yosef Salomon, his daughter 46-year old Chaya Salomon, and his son, 36-year old Elad Salomon (HY"D.) The grandmother, 68-year old Tova Salomon, was seriously wounded. The carnage would have been even worse if not for some quick thinking by daughter-in-law Michal Salomon, who rushed her five children into a room, locked the door and called the police. An off-duty soldier neighbor shot the terrorist through a nearby window, wounding him.
Omar al-Abed will receive the equivalent of $3,000 per month from Abbas, courtesy of your tax dollars. That's a very hefty sum in 'Palestine.' No wonder Omar's mom is so proud of him!
Reflecting on this, we can come to a few unavoidable conclusions.
First, Israel's attempt to share holy sites with Muslims doesn't work. It hasn't worked on the Temple Mount. It hasn't worked at the The Me'arat HaMachpela, the Cave of the Patriarchs where the Jews returned during their Holy Days to find that the Muslims had urinated and defecated in the area used to store the Jew's Torah scrolls and decked out the designated Jewish area with Hamas flags and anti-Semitic grafitti. It hasn't worked with Rachel's Tomb, which the Arabs firebombed. It hasn't worked with Joshua's Tomb or Joseph's Tomb. It has always resulted in violence, murder and the most obscene desecration and destruction imaginable.
Second, Israel will never be able to live in peace with the Palestinian Authority, especially as long as Fatah is running things. And the best that can be expected of Jordan is a frigid ceasefire.
Third, both King Abdullah of Jordan and Mahmoud Abbas can be depended on to use the Temple Mount as a tool for incitement of violence at will. No matter what Israel does or doesn't do, they will always rant about 'changing the status quo' and 'trying to control the area' and 'disrespecting Muslim rights' whenever they need to use such rhetoric as a weapon against Israel.
And Fourth, Israel is never going to cede any part of Jerusalem to the Arabs. The last time Arabs controlled the area, in 1948, 28 historic synagogues were burned to the ground, Jewish tombstones from the Mount of Olives were used as pavement and the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism was used as a garbage dump.
But there's actually a simple solution for this situation. Israel is always being accused of changing the status quo on the Temple Mount, a status quo that really doesn't work anyway as far as keeping things peaceful goes.So it's better to just call Jordan and Abbas's bluff by doing just that.
First, the Jordanian Waqf should be sent packing. There's no question but that they were complicit in the recent violence as well as violence that has occurred in the past. Instead Israel needs to appoint a committee of Israeli Arabs or perhaps even a single commissioner as a liaison for matters regarding maintenance of the al-Aqsa mosque. And the authority of that committee or commissioner should be limited to just that, discussions of necessary maintenance.
And finally, the entire Temple Mount area should be closed to all, Jew and Muslim alike. No one goes up there except for needed maintenance or once in a while,a few carefully vetted scholars for scientific or historical research.
This solution would effectively neutralize the weapon King Abdullah and Abbas now hold. There would undoubtedly be some disturbances at first, and the usual hate-filled rhetoric. But that already exists now, at Abbas's whim. Since it's difficult to accuse Israel of 'Judaizing the Temple Mount' when Jews aren't allowed there either, eventually such things lose their impact. And there would certainly no need for metal detectors!
Unfortunately, Muslims have amply shown that to them, the al-Aqsa mosque is a political tool rather than a place of peaceful worship. And as far as I'm concerned, Jews shouldn't be treading on that holy ground either. So close it down to all prayer, and let it rest in peace...until there is true peace.
