A Dutch Expatriat’s Musing about Euro-Americans Life as a refugee, ex-pat, or immigrant shares one unmistakable trait: the audacity to plant roots in foreign soil. We’re all just transplants with different labels—though, isn’t it curious how some get to skip the “immigrant” designation entirely? Those who crossed the Atlantic centuries ago now simply call themselves…
Tag: politics
From Cold War to Code War
The Echoes of Progress: From Luftballons to Livestreams The 1980s in the Netherlands pulsated with a diverse music scenery – British Pop, Dutch Ska, Punk, Rock, and those haunting melodies that still cling to the Berlin Wall’s remnants. That infamous barrier, an embodiment of division, stood surrounded by an eerie soundscape of political tension and…
“Once Upon a Time”
Ah, the naivety of youth – when I was young, blonde, and thought I had the world figured out.Now I’m older, wiser, and still not hideous enough to scare small children. Progress, I suppose. Picture this: a Dutch ingénue in a land where “progress” was a fancy word people used when they wanted to sound…
The Phoenix’s Gilded Cage
The Serpent’s Own Scales: Women’s Complicated Dance with Patriarchy Oh, the delicious irony of systemic oppression—where the oppressed become unwitting architects of their own constraints! Women, those magnificent creatures simultaneously fighting and reinforcing patriarchal systems, have elevated self-contradiction to an art form. Consider the Spanish mother critiquing men with vigorous passion while mollycoddling her son’s…
Trump 2.0 and His Digital Brotherhood
The Digital Brotherhood: A Dark Comedy By Irena Phaedra Humour is the soul’s way of breathing, but with this digital brotherhood, we’re gonna need a whole lot more than gumption.As we watch our four horsemen of the digital apocalypse—Trump, Musk, Netanyahu, and Putin—play their global game, a delicious irony brewing in the shadows. Oh, lovely….
Patriarchy’s Oblivious Foundations
When “No” Becomes a Movement: A Study in Systematic Rejection It’s rather telling that in both South Korea and China, women have developed such precise taxonomies of things to refuse. The 4B movement in South Korea (no dating, no sex, no marriage, no children) and China’s 6B4T (which adds no buying products targeting women and…
Rethinking Peace in the Horn of Africa: Economic Integration and Women’s Voice
As someone who frequently travels between Europe and the Horn of Africa, I often find myself making observations that might raise eyebrows at diplomatic cocktail parties. Here’s the thing – we still make jokes about Nazis in Europe, yet Germany and France have built one of the most substantial economic partnerships in history. This isn’t…
Subject beings subjective under subjectivity
Dear D Today’s Tory tale goes about the agelessness of how our wonderful race condemns people who speak or act, on what the majority thinks and believes but does not dare to say. Where the ones in power, walk the moral high ground with no horizon in view, huddled up in a safe crowd of…
Dreamed up, visualissed and elaborated
Dear D, This time I want to entertain you without rattle and hum, about my findings concerning finesse, subtility and futility. Wonderful and sublime adjectives to give a manoeuvre sense. Now I have started to navigate the second part of my life, supposing a hundred springtimes will be in my resume. I am looking at…
Patio and Patria
Dear D As they say above so below or is it underneath…anyway they are referring to mother natures law of micro and macrocosm. Astral planes or plain conspicuous, no matter it functions the same. Also in the human world. So the meddling from our neighbour with the misplaced sense of righteousness is equivalent to and…
The C.O.M.C. Files 