finally finished reading ‘Denken in een tijd van sociale hypochondrie‘ (‘thinking in times of social hypochondria’) by the dutch sociologist Willem Schinkel a couple of weeks ago. By the standards of dutch sociologists, Schinkel is fairly young (31) and relatively famous (he was one of the 6 summer guests appearing on VPRO’s zomergasten in 2008 […]

A storm washed away part of a wall designed to keep out illegal immigrants crossing into Spain’s North African enclave of Melilla on Sunday and heavy rains flooded many of the city’s streets. [via reuters] update from bbc news [27/10/2008]: As many as 30 African migrants have taken advantage of flood damage to cross into […]

deportee boarding a ICE air flight to Guatemala city at Mesa, AZ airport. (photo Michael Schennum/Wall Street Journal) so we have had the deportation class and the deportation alliance but we never really had a proper deportation airline. Seems they have one in the US (land of the free?) though: The Wall Street Journal has […]

so the Atlantic has another well written article (‘The Things He Carried‘ by Jeffrey Goldberg) that shows the absurdity of the security theater that we endure at the airports (note: that the situation in europe is a bit different, as they do check your boarding pass against ID at the boarding gate), which among other […]

Excellent collumn by Matt Taibbi over at smirkingchimp.com on what the candidacy of Sarah Palin says about the state of american politics [read the whole thing is is worth it!]: Here’s the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no […]