Flash!
    Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have just bought a manmade island of the coast of Dubai in the shape of Ethiopia. News accounts tell us they plan to use the reclaimed piece of land to showcase....Guess what?
    The Dubai boycott of all things Israeli?
    The quaint effects of sharia law?
    The homey haunts of what Rep. Pete King once memorably called "Al Qaeda heartland"?
    Or, perchance, solidarity for the forces of Ehiopia, where their daughter was born, still fighting jihadist forces in Somalia? Or the abuse of de facto child slaves forced into camel jockey servitude to entertain the oil-rich and jet-fuel-burning set?
     Hah! And nope. Breitbart reports: "The Hollywood couple intend to to use the reclaimed piece of land to showcase enviromental issues and encourage people to live a greener life, the Emirates Today newspaper said."
    The mind reels from a poison cocktail equal parts loathesomeness and  pretensiousness. Of course, Dubai, whose princelings have a history with Osama bin Laden, and Brangelina are a perfect fit: Pitt and  Jolie both  have made cinematic sops to jihad--Pitt starring in "Babel," Jolie starring in "A Mighty Heart"--so they might as well, er, submit to Dubai's allure as the emerging "global leisure and finance hub."
    And so they have. "The couple's purchase is part of a cluster of 300 islands, shaped like a world map, that is gradually surfacing off the booming Gulf emirate...Billionaire businessman Richard Branson and musician Rod Stewart are also reported to have bought plots on the development. Prices for the islands range from six million to 36 million dollars."
    No words on what "shape" island--Saudi Arabia? Iran?--the men chose.
    Do we have a precedent for this sort of behavior? I can't think of one. But I also don't think that we, as a PC society, even have a way to process this sort of behavior. For example, I'd say Brangelina's multi-million dollar purchase in Dubai to call attention to "green issues" is in its way as outrageous as if Gable and Lombard had decided in 1938 to purchase acreage near Berchtesgaden to draw attention to alpine sports. That's because the institutions of Islam that affect non-Muslims--namely, jihad and dhimmitude--pose a threat to our liberties as much as National Socialism.