The late president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, was shot to death exactly thirty years ago today. He was visiting a parade of his own troops, when a young officer ran to the podium and emptied his weapon in the chest of a totally surprised president. Sadat had not realized in time how distant from his people he lived and ruled. He wasn't aware of his impopularity or of the irritation his attitude as Rais, Egyptian pharao in modern times, provoked. His family owned every important company, from construction...

The US government has declared war on terrorism after 9/11. For George Bush this litterally meant war, including the right to kill anyone suspected of terrorist activities anywhere in the world and so it does for Barack Obama. Terrorists or supposed terrorists have been killed as recently as last Friday on the Arabian Peninsula. From a distance. In cold blood. Without trial. By a democracy. My question is: how can democracies convince authoritarian states to become more transparent and fair if they behave like dictatorships themselves? Even if terror is to be...

Wilders is een merk. Wilders werkt er hard aan om dat merk te laten opvallen. Sommigen zullen zeggen dat het merk steeds negatiever opvalt. Merkdeskundigen zullen applaudisseren bij zoveel vernuft en zoveel gratis publiciteit. Want wat kost het om het merk Wilders op de kaart te zetten? Niets. Men ergert zich links en rechts aan de taal, de attitude, de brutaliteit, het gebrek aan fatsoen, het fundamentalisme. Maar dat verhindert niet een toenemend bewustzijn van het merk onder het publiek, zowel binnen als buiten ons land. Wilders lacht zich...

En dat punt is het zompige Nederland. Meer dan 10.000 miljard Euro is er heen gevloeid, aldus het onderzoek dat Het Financieele Dagblad heden publiceert. Zeventien keer het bruto binnnlands product. Nederland is volgens het IMF de grootste investeerder in de wereld. Tachtig van de honderd grootste bedrijven op aarde maken van de fiscale voordelen gebruik door hier rechtspersonen neer te zetten, zeg mensen die namens de concerns, veelal Bijzondere Financiele Instellingen, de zaakjes gunstig regelen. Ja, u leest het goed: binnen het krakkemikkige Europa doet Nederland het meer dan...

Na tien jaar kan ik er wel op terugkomen. Op 11 september 2001, rond drie uur 's middags, stond ik aan een balie van een fitness club in Amsterdam naar de televisie te kijken. Het tweede toestel boorde zich op dat moment in de WTC toren in New York. Een man sprong in dediepte en leek onderweg naar zijn dood achterover te leunen. Er stond iemand naast me mee  te kijken, handoekje om zijn schouders. We hadden alleen oog voor het scherm en schreeuwden het uit van verbijstering. Niet te geloven,...

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...