I know he is, because Burkina Faso and its leader Blaise Compaoré (not family) love him. Blaise has a palace on newly constructed Avenue Moammar Gaddafi in the capital Ouagadougou. The best hotel in the city is Hotel Libya. You will find a portrait of the colonel in the hall. And in the restaurant. The shadow of the colonel is everywhere. You will find Libyans drinking and smoking havana's and driving Range Rovers in this poorest country of the world. You will see that Libyans are show time and fun thanks...

When news becomes unbearable, when men prove over and over again to be beasts in disguise, when greed leads to famine and lust leads to rape, the answer is poetry. Try Allen Ginsberg's " Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems" (Penguin Classics, 2009) as a starter. So much power, energy, vomit, hate, fear, sex, death and above all life in just a few unforgetable pages. Each of the poems will make you think for days. Think and become conscious without any drug or cocktail. Just read and you'll understand how lucky and happy...

Mind maping ideas for 2011 -- with the help of the Atlantic Monthly -- I came to the following tentative list: Ideas that should be self evident and are: - the infrastructure of the web is gossip; there is an ' I ' in the word ' Team'; camouflage only works if it can be seen; electronnic networks contain the seeds of their own destruction  (to be extended) Ideas that should be self evident but aren't: -your kid is not so special; banks are still too big to fall; the next war...

OK, I know Dominique Strauss-Kahn has millions of enemies, not only women. Despite of all facts, stories, implications, affairs and sick attitude, he is a free man now. Free to go back to France and to pick up his life. I predict as 'an important person' in French politics (if only to show how awful America has treated the presidential candidate of a proud country hosting the last of machos) . Social injustice? Good lawyers? Not a very trustworthy victim? All possible. But there is another side of the story as well....

Libyan rebels have finally conquered colonel Gaddafi's stronghold in Tripoli. They have destroyed golden statues of the leader and stolen his bed sheets, golden trays and precious glass ware. They have been waving the new flag over the symbols of Gaddafi's power, with the famous tents, torn and burned, as highlight. Ah, Gaddafi's tent! He took it during m,ost of his international travels. To Paris, not long ago, where it was set up as his headquarters with the timid approval of president Sarkozy. He was planning to bring it to Equatorial Guinea's capital Malabo during...

Just read that Jane Fonda (73) thinks it is more important to be interested than to be interesting. It took some 60 years + 3 husbands + a Vietnam bloop + being a chameleon + fighting with almost all her friends and family, but finally wisdom prevails. Fonda is not any longer interested in being interesting but realizing that becoming interesting through being interested is the thing to do. She also said that her ex-husband Ted Turner lives horizontally, while she prefers to live vertically. Horizontally not as 'in...

Great Britain has decided to intervene in the free flow of Twitter as soon as messages invite people to become violent. From now on it will become difficult to organize the masses when stealing and demolishing other people's goods are involved. The authorities want to stop being fooled by the speed of information that they obviously are unable to copy. Is this an undemocratic violation of the freedom of expression? Or is this the only right thing to do if you want to prevent organized rioting? How cynical that the People's...

The decision made by the Fed to keep interest rates low until at least 2013 means a blow to the sovereignty of governments. National politics have this week been taken over by independent intitutions. Mr. Sarkozy and Mrs. Merkel don't have to be on a picture together anymore, giving the impression that Europe will do what the two of them think is best. Sarkozy and Merkel and all other European and American leaders are in fact out of a job. Major decisions about their economies are being taken by...

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Picture one: Hosni Mubarak laying on a hospital bed, behind bars, being interviewed by a judge. Picture two: two of his sons in front of the judge, behind bars. Picture three: smiling people in the streets of Cairo. The rulers, responsible for more than 800 deaths during the uprisings, and for thirty years of corruption and dictatorial behavior, are finally being punished. Most Egyptians cannot believe what they see.  They knew that the Mubarak family owned half of the national economy, including construction companies, car imports, banks and tourist facilities -...