As you know Bob, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Dutch member of parliament, the poster child of the anti-Muslim movement. She's from a Muslim background!
She came straight from the Somalian civil wars to find refuge in the Netherlands! She has seen the evil Islam is capable off! Well, it turns out,
not quite. Shockingly enough, it turned out Saint Hirsi actually lied when she applied for asylum in the Netherlands back in 1992,
giving up a false name and birth date in order to support the story she had constructed of how she fled Somalia, when in fact she had been living
in Kenyia with her family since before the Somalian civil wars and had even lived in Germany before coming to the Netherlands. These are all things
for which granted citizenship (as Ayaan Hirshi Ali has) can be taken away, even retroactively and it turned out her party, the right-liberal VVD,
knew much if not all of it when they made her a candidate back in 2003.
No surprise the past few days has seen a shitstorm of negative publicity for the VVD, eh?
Before I start the gloating, two things I'd like to make clear. First, many of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's traumatic experiences relating to her homeculture,
which includes female circumcision and an attempted arranged marriage, were and are still true and nobody is denying them. The person Ayaan Hirsi
Ali is it is now is not a lie. Second, I personally have no problems whatsoever with anybody who attempts to gain asylum by twisting the truth. Much of
the rules regarding asylum are after all only there to make sure not too many of those strange coloured people can get into the Netherlands, or even
Europe, not for some overriding moral reason. No human is illegal, not even Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Now on to the gloating and I'll freely admit I have been following the whole circus with a very enjoyable feeling of schadenfreude. Ayaan Hirshi Ali and
the VVD with her have been skewered on their own lies and hypocrisy. Especially when the Bitch Queen of the party, Frau Rita Verdonk, turned up to
"investigate" if all this meant that Ayaan Hirshi Ali should lose her citizenship. The answer came back in record time, two days: yes.
Which in turn lead a lot of people, even in her own party, to wonder whether this answer might just have been politically, motivated, another chance to
show her admirers how firm she is in upholding the law, as she did with Kalou. So Verdonk
got in hot water again, with her bid to become the leader of the VVD severely damaged. Honestly, if this ends with both Hirsi Ali and Verdonk knocked out
of Dutch politics, I couldn't be happier. The only thing that would make it better would be if
Geert wilders could be involved somehow...
Anyway, thanks to this furore Hirsi Ali made the classic 'winger move: "you won't have Richard NixonAyaan Hirsi Ali to kick around
anymore", as she announced her decision to move to the United States. she isn't leaving politics though, as she is going to work for the extreme
rightwing thinktank American Enterprise Institute.
So have no pity for Ayaan Hirsi. She was and is an enabler of bigots, she willingly let herself be used by the less savoury elements of the VVD as
cover for their bigotry. The country is much better of with her safely in Washington, yet another oneday wonder on wingnut welfare.
This is just a place for me to jot down some random thoughts and reactions to the news so I don't have to yell at the television or radio, or mutter to myself whilst reading the news.
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