15 May 2006
AMSTERDAM — Liberal party MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali is leaving the Dutch parliament in September and moving to the United States.
Insiders confirmed a report on the website of Dutch newspaper 'De Volkskrant' on Monday about the move. Hirsi Ali has been on a speaking tour in the US and is due to make an official announcement on Tuesday.
She is going to work for the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative Washington think tank. The institute was founded in 1943 and is seen as one of the most important advisors to the government of George Bush.
Somali-born Hirsi Ali has been an outspoken critic of aspects of Islam and she became a campaigner for freedom of speech after the murder of film director Theo van Gogh in November 2004.
Hirsi Ali and Van Gogh collaborated on the short film ‘Submission’ which featured women in see-through veils discussing ill-treatment of women in Muslim societies. Hirsi Ali’s life has been threatened several times and she is under armed guard.
She is currently embroiled in a controversy about lies she told the immigration service in 1992 to get asylum in the Netherlands. She became a naturalised Dutch citizen five years later.
The film's title is a direct translation of the word "Islam". The film suggests the mistreatment of women born to Muslim families. The film was shown on the Dutch public broadcasting network (VPRO) on August 29, 2004. It portrays a Muslim woman (dressed with a transparent black clothing) as having been beaten and raped by a relative. The bodies are used in the film as a canvas for verses from the Qur'an.
The other day I hoped aloud that the US would, once again, act as that beacon for freedom, and send a message to the rest of the world: we shall not, as a nation, cave to the demands of the Islamists (even if our “tolerant” press and academic elite argue that it is our multicultural duty to do so if our offense is to give offense—a message that became evident during the Mohammed cartoon controversy, when the Boston Globe took the unusual position that the lesson of the Enlightenment is that everyone’s opinion is equal).
And we have not.
Today is a good day for America. Unless, that is, Congress—catching wind of this—rises up and demands that the President keep Ms Ali away from our ports.
The Cassini spacecraft delivers this stunning vista showing small, battered Epimetheus and smog-enshrouded Titan, with Saturn's A and F rings stretching across the scene.
The prominent dark region visible in the A ring is the Encke Gap, in which the moon Pan and several narrow ringlets reside. Moon-driven features that mark the A ring are easily seen to the left and right of the Encke Gap. The Encke Gap is 325 kilometers (200 miles) wide. Pan is 26 kilometers (16 miles) across.
In an optical illusion, the narrow F ring, outside the A ring, appears to fade across the disk of Titan. A couple of bright clumps can be seen in the F ring.
Epimetheus is 116 kilometers (72 miles) across and giant Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 28, 2006, at a distance of approximately 667,000 kilometers (415,000 miles) from Epimetheus and 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Titan. The image captures the illuminated side of the rings. The image scale is 4 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel on Epimetheus and 11 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel on Titan.
For those not familiar with the issue let me simply state the entry assumptions for this talk which, should they seem questionable to you, I invite you to speak with me about afterward.
The givens are that 1) the Earth is infrequently hit by asteroids which cross our orbit while circling the Sun, 2) the consequence of such impacts ranges from the equivalent of a 15 megaton (TNT) explosion to a civilization ending gigaton event, and 3) for the first time in the history of humankind we have the technology which, if we are properly prepared, we can use to prevent such occurrences from happening in the future.
Given those three assumptions I am going to give an update on the development status of the key elements which will enable us to avoid these devastating cosmic collisions.
The three prerequisite capabilities which will enable us to avoid the fate of the dinosaurs, and many smaller disasters as well, are 1) early warning, 2) a demonstrated deflection capability, and 3) an established international decision making process. I’ll address each of these three elements in turn giving a status report on each and pointing out some of the implications of current trends.
for the first time in the history of humankind we have the technology which, if we are properly prepared, we can use to prevent such occurrences from happening in the future.
to:The French Consulate
re: Your request to have Moussaoui sent home to serve out his prison sentence.
Dear France,
Recently we received your offer to take back this lovely fellow Zacarias Moussaoui. Apparently it is your contention that since we decided he should not be executed, but instead serve a life sentence, that he should be allowed to return to France to serve out his punishment. This has something to do with the consular protection you say he deserves as a French national.
Allow us to respond to you in the clearest, most unambiguous terms possible.
Ahem.
Suck it.
Sincerely
The US of A.
Which is not to say that the country as a whole is not prepared to execute terrorists: it’s just that, well, not everybody can be as white as Timothy McVeigh. He apparently should have know better.
“I would have preferred to see the death penalty, but I kind of stand in awe of how our legal system works that it can come to a result like this,” Giuliani told “Hardball” minutes after the verdict was announced outside the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Va.
“It has to say something about us to the rest of the world.”
I sympathize with those who believe that it would have been enormously satisfying to put this man to death. But I think we have to have some sympathy for the jurors as well. Talk about executing a human being is cheap. Unless it is actually your responsibility, I daresay one’s outlook on the death penalty then would become very personal. Whether the jurors were looking for an “out” in order to avoid mandating another person’s death is beside the point. They followed the law, their consciences, and in the end, common sense. As our representatives, we couldn’t have asked for anything more from them.
One aspect that was not brought out in the verdict but which very well may have played a role in the jury’s deliberations was their decision to deny martyrdom to someone who so obviously wanted it. From a practical standpoint, Moussaoui will now fade into history even among those who admire what he stands for. His incarceration in a very deep and very black hole (it’s almost a guarantee he will not be placed into the general prison population and instead will be kept in solitary confinement) will mean that his name will eventually die even if he himself remains alive. That is a victory against our enemies of sorts.
A close call, but a correct one. And I don’t think that even those among us who support the death penalty but agree with this decision would have been terribly upset if the verdict had gone the other way. As it is, I’m glad that justice triumphed over revenge.
