The Real Iraq: Amir Taheri reports back for Commentary, and it's not BBC-approved stuff I can assure you. Of the gloom and doom, he says

'It would be hard indeed for the average interested citizen to find out on his own just how grossly this image distorts the realities of present-day Iraq.'

And his conclusion:

'Is Iraq a quagmire, a disaster, a failure? Certainly not; none of the above. Of all the adjectives used by skeptics and critics to describe todays Iraq, the only one that has a ring of truth is messy. Yes, the situation in Iraq today is messy. Births always are. Since when is that a reason to declare a baby unworthy of life?'

(trying to make time to post more, but I'm pretty busy)


In the end, too much effort required.

That might not be the right interpretation of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's decision to leave Holland, since she has certainly been pursued by the idiot pols (and stoopid media) who govern there. However, as a non-native, why should she fight for a people who not only don't value her, but make her life more difficult and more frightening than it should be?

I was interested in her personal account of her flight from fate. She was forcibly married and taken from her home in Nairobi (she was a Somali refugee at the time it seems- which is one controversy, as she claimed in the immigration forms to have fled direct from Somalia). It was there, some years after she left for Canada and ended up in Holland via Germany, (late nineties) that I met many Somalians and heard how their lives were under threat from Islamism: mainly because they had renounced Islam and adopted Christianity under the influence of their host nation. I also encountered many stories of quite horrendous forced marriages, even among apparently respectable people (and Islam tended to allow for polygamy, as an added twist). Meanwhile there were accounts of armed Somali-Islamist gangs roaming the streets in trucks aiming to track down and kill apostates, and sometimes succeeding.

But isn't it ironic that Ayaan's critics accuse her of lying when in fact it is merely their cultural ignorance that prevents them from seeing that in recording her name as Ali she was just drawing on one of the many names with which her culture had endowed her? The multi-culti society knows little about traditional cultures. I wonder how many immigrants get into and stay in the West due to outright lies rather than artful half-truths? Surely Ali's main crime has been attempting to live truthfully and potently on the back of (at worst, in my view) a few paltry half-truths, rather than skulking and absorbing the benefits of an outright lie. Outright lies the pols can cope with as they're ok with that; as long as the immigrant keeps a low profile, only mugging the odd old lady or raping a young tart or, in the female case, goes on the game herself, that's ok.

Faced with such out-of-touchness and crass double-standards I'd be very willing to agree that Holland will never, by itself and under her influence, 'get it'. She is better casting her bread upon the waters.

Wikipedia's account is bang up to date and worth reading.

Oppose terror in principle and practise: DV sets the Ulster Unonist party straight.

And the link to the below is... this


Is it possible to have an immigration policy that stems abuse while allowing compassionate asylum and sensible population circulation?

I'd say so. I have a list of questions in my mind which I'd like to ask, including whether we prioritise our former colonies (which I should know but don't; I suspect not really any longer, which would be irrational if so), and exactly what questions are asked and what requirements made. Funny how we never really get the chance to find out. It's quite Yes Ministerish when you go to the Home Office site (caution: the "Directorate" loads slowly) and find out just how many amendments are being continually made to the rules. There's no sense of principle, only pettiness. Pretty much off the cuff I'd say that our problem lies in a system relying on the alien principle of 'rules' rather than the kind of evolutionary, flexible principles which make our common law work. I'd say why not allow for a branch of home grown law to grow up on the subject, giving access to courts where something like a CPS for immigrants considered a case uncertain and meriting legal examination? That's probably quite a silly idea but seems appealing to me rather than the bureaucratic morass and opaqueness of the current situation.

The US situation is different to the UK's, but if you're looking for an expert on the situation Michelle Malkin has some definite attributes. And she can vent on the subject, too. Fine rant indeed.

By a kind of serendipity, I read within the space of a half hour both this post about the necessity of being guided by laws rather than ruled by them, and news of calls made for Ayaan Hirsi Ali to be deported from Holland for lying in her asylum application.