Port-au-Prince’s Territories
In effect the state is missing in action, as the people suffer overlapping crises...
Read MorePapasee by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei
The Pope is coming to Tirana and I won't be there. I am stationed for the semester in Singapore, but nevertheless I will attempt to continue to write about Albania even though my distance from the real events on the ground may impede a thorough understanding. But perhaps this...
Read MoreVincent W.J. van Gerven Oei: European Love
Albania is inching forward to the third attempt to gain EU candidate status in June. After the country was denied this status for the second time last December owing to a Dutch veto, it is making considerable efforts to meet the “standards” yet again. This is a slightly perverse...
Read MoreRad NGOs
I call myself an anarchist. You might not use that word. But if you are skeptical of hierarchies, and are used to organising politically in more autonomous or horizontal groups, you too may have struggled with one of the most glaring contradictions we face in a capitalist society: Jobs....
Read MoreHindu Nationalism’s Poster Boy
Photograph from Narendra Modi on Flickr. by Nikita Sub India’s Hindu Right is associated with the colour saffron. The saffron flag, or bhagwa dhwaj adorns the offices of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS or Sangh for short), which is at the core of the Hindu nationalist movement. The Sangh...
Read MorePartia Demokratike e Shqipërisë Can Has Cheezburger? by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei
A new government also brings new protests. Now that the "Democratic" Party is in the opposition, it has tried at several moments in the past few months to use the momentum of seemingly unorganized and seemingly spontaneous protests to fire up a large popular movement against the recently installed...
Read More‘Germany will one day yield a crop of wits’
Ewald Brandner by George Eliot “Nothing,” says Goethe, “is more significant of men’s character than what they find laughable.” The truth of this observation would perhaps have been more apparent if he had said culture instead of character. The last thing in which the cultivated man can have community...
Read MoreThe tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right...
Read MoreThe thing about new blooms is that they tend to bleed— / Those petals birthed / hugging close / that come warmer weather are tricked into jumping away...
Read MoreI spent a good part of my childhood at home staring outside my bedroom window, following the trail of planes approaching the nearby Paris airport in the sky from my banlieue. I envied the passengers...
Read MoreThe tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right...
Read MoreThe thing about new blooms is that they tend to bleed— / Those petals birthed / hugging close / that come warmer weather are tricked into jumping away...
Read MoreI spent a good part of my childhood at home staring outside my bedroom window, following the trail of planes approaching the nearby Paris airport in the sky from my banlieue. I envied the passengers...
Read More