Imaginary conversation on a plane in Sweden

This young student, Elin Ersson, became an instant celebrity because she took a stand against the deportation of an Afghan man from Sweden to Afghanistan: she boarded the passenger plane with which he was being sent out of the country and refused to sit down, protesting the deportation while recording the incident on a Facebook video. Teary eyed, she must have felt immensely proud for her bravery and humanitarian commitment while the sheepish Goteborg airport authorities caved in and disembarked the man. This is 2018: people her age have no memory of a world before 9/11. Nowadays air travel is subject to all sorts of security checks: you can be…

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What About The Netherlands? Wait. What about Islam?

women on a boat, contrasting attire: bikins, niqab

UPDATE ↓ Wilders can’t score Holland or Turkey?   Tomorrow, March 15, is election day in the Netherlands. Will Geert Wilders, the leader of the Dutch nationalist party PVV (Party For Freedom) win? I can’t pretend to know. I’m really not an expert. I may go out on a limb and predict that he will prevail, but only marginally, on the incumbent Mark Rutte. What you can put your money on is that Thursday’s newspapers across the western world will contain high howls from pundits lamenting the horrible risk for the stability of Europe and the survival of  democracy represented by the Ultra-Nationalist, xenophobic, Islamophobic far right movement led by Wilders.…

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More crowd counting lies, less common sense

CGIL rally. Rome, Circo Massimo, 2009

Women vs.Trump, NYT vs.Trump In my last article I discussed the crowd sizes for the Presidential Inauguration Ceremonies in Washington DC, offering my rough estimates: O 2009: 500;   O 2013: 350;   T 2017: 300 (in thousands)   while according to the mainstream media you’d have to believe the following baseless reconstruction: O 2009: 1800;   O 2013: 1000;   T 2017: 250 or some unspecified number in the low 100s (of thousands)   Most news outlets chose to contrast Trump’s crowd with the Women’s March against him, where a large number of people gathered to express their anger against the newly elected President, on the Sunday following the Inauguration. My…

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