Ayaan Hirsi Ali update: back to the Netherlands

i've added a link at the bottom of the page to a blogsite that looks like it's run by Ayaan...ayaanhirsiali.web-log.nl, and i've made the link go straight to the english version. it's an excellent blog.

the Dutch have decided that they can't afford the security that's required by Ms. Hirsi Ali to live in the U.S., so she's back in Holland now, where "some people" want to kill her (see my previous posts here and here).

she's been working for the past year or so for the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute, even though she insists she is NOT a conservative--here she explains it in an interview with Reason magazine:

...I balked at paying a visit to the American Enterprise Institute, though.

Reason: Why the initial aversion?

Hirsi Ali: Because I thought they would be religious, and I had become an atheist. And I don’t consider myself a conservative. I consider myself a classical liberal.

Anyway, the Brookings Institution did not react. Johns Hopkins said they didn’t have enough money. The RAND Corporation wants its people to spend their days and nights in libraries figuring out statistics, and I’m very bad at statistics. But at AEI they were enthusiastic. It turns out that I have complete freedom of thought, freedom of expression. No one here imposed their religion on me, and I don’t impose my atheism on them.

I really would've liked to have seen an effort by private American citizens to take over the security and keep her over here, but i guess no rich conservatives would pony up, or maybe it's against Dutch law or something...Christopher Hitchens discusses this same issue in Slate....