PETER HITCHENS: What we should do to those who backed mass immigration

I have a very simple and just suggestion for solving the housing crisis. 

All those who have supported the recent policy of uncontrolled mass immigration should have a new house built in their back garden – or on top of their existing house if there is no room in the garden. 

This will also apply to their second homes. 

Those of us who opposed this foolish policy should be exempted. 

It won’t happen of course. It will be those who were against open borders who get concreted over, because in general they’re poor and powerless. But it is nice to think about it. 

Democracy’s been cancelled in Romania – and the Free West is as silent as the grave

It was about this time of year, 35 years ago, when I set off eastwards from Berlin, full of fear. I was seeking to get into Romania, then an iron Communist tyranny. I finally made it to the capital, Bucharest, as dusk fell on Christmas Eve. The city was by then gripped by a sort of madness.

I was warned to beware of snipers at the entrance to my hotel, and zigzagged ludicrously through the snow with a suitcase in one hand and a typewriter in the other. Nobody sniped, but later I sheltered under my bed while red tracer bullets flew by the window in the square outside.

It was more or less impossible to find out what was going on, though the city’s hospitals were full of sad, wounded people, under third-rate Communist healthcare.

I went because rumours had been spreading of severe discontent, which exploded on December 21, 1989. The country’s Communist leader, Nicolae Ceausescu, was heckled during a speech.

This unthinkable act of bravery by the hecklers started an avalanche that took only four days to sweep the despot to his death – an ugly kangaroo court followed by a so-called ‘execution’. This looked more like an assassination to me, when it was shown on Christmas Day on Bucharest TV.

The general reaction of Europe and the world was one of uncomplicated joy, as it always is when evil regimes fall (see Syria now).

But Romania has not been especially happy since. And I was shocked to learn last week that its latest presidential election had been cancelled. Yes, you read that right. Romania’s Supreme Court has simply cancelled the election, because of a danger that the wrong person would win. 

Let’s simplify this. Calin Georgescu, who has said nice things about Vladimir Putin and is definitely not politically correct, did very well in the first round on November 24. As a result he was to be one of two candidates in the decisive second round, which should have taken place on December 8. Now the first round has been wiped from the record and the second round will never happen. Full new elections are promised, but can they now be fair?

I can see why many in Romania do not want Georgescu to win. He’s not my kind of guy either. But that’s the problem with democracy. You have to accept the outcome, or it is not democracy. And producing thin ‘intelligence’ claims of ‘Russian intervention’ really isn’t enough, in a grown-up country, to halt a free poll.

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Two things have struck me about this event. The first is that it happened at all. The second, equally important, has been the absence of protest from bodies who endlessly condemn rigged elections elsewhere. The EU Commission has, as far as I can find, avoided saying anything. A search for Nato condemnation also yielded no results.

There has been no sign of one of those ‘Rose’ or ‘Orange’ or ‘Dignity’ revolutions that erupt so spontaneously where the West is contesting election results that favour Moscow. Though I should point out, as a former revolutionary, that organising a spontaneous uprising takes a lot of planning, money and hard work.

The whole thing looks to me like good-old fashioned humbug, and those who have been silent about it should be ignored when they protest, in future, about suppressions of democracy that don’t suit them.

In the meantime, it might be reasonable to worry about how Romanians might react to the cancellation of their democracy after only 35 years.

Evil Assad had his uses for our side 

I do get a bit tired of the emoting about Syria and its hideous prisons by Western media and politicians.

The West knew perfectly well about this, and took advantage of it, when it sought help from the then President Bashar Assad against Al Qaeda. That’s why Bashar met the Queen and Sir Anthony Blair.

In the same way the West knows just how cruel many of its current friends in the Middle East are, and does nothing about it. But the case of Maher Arar goes much further. Mr Arar, an innocent Canadian citizen, was kidnapped by the US authorities while changing planes in New York. They claimed he was a terrorist. He was then handed over to Syrian secret police demons in Damascus. Nobody would listen to Mr Arar’s pleas that he was innocent. But no expense was spared in despatching him by private plane to a Syrian cellar.

They tortured him for a year on behalf of the USA. I will spare you the full details, but Amnesty International summed it up like this: ‘He was beaten and interrogated for 18 hours a day for a couple of weeks. He was whipped on his back and hands with a 2in-thick electric cable. For over ten months he was held in an underground dark, damp grave-like cell – 3 x 6 x 7 feet – where he could hear others being tortured. After a year in Syria, Maher was released without any charges.’

The US government is still pretty shifty about this episode. But a Canadian commission publicly cleared Arar of any links to terrorism, and the government of Canada later settled out of court with Arar for several million dollars.

Logic turned on its head 

Strolling through the capital of the EU, near the Belgian Royal Palace, I encountered this enchanting street sign.

It was still there hours later, and the next day, so I think I am entitled to try to take it seriously. But I am too old to follow its advice. I’m reminded of Lewis Carroll’s verse:

'You are old, Father William,' the young man said, 'And your hair has become very white; 

 'And yet you incessantly stand on your head – Do you think, at your age, it is right?'

'In my youth,' Father William replied to his son, 'I feared it would injure the brain; 

'But now that I’m perfectly sure I have none, why, I do it again and again.'