The famous war historian Martin van Creveld held a lecture yesterday in Amsterdam about the future of war and peace in the Middle East from an Isareli point of view. He was invited by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whose spokesman told the guests that Van Creveld's opinions are not necessarily those of the Dutch government. Good for him, because the historian's  opinions were not only radical -which is nice- but especially biased -not to say racist in tone- and over simplified. For him every Arab is an...

Mr. & Mrs. Barack Obama walked around in Buckingham Palace yesterday and wondered why it is so much bigger than the White House. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (William & Kate) showed them around. They are convinced that an older nation, the cradle of democracy, has the right to have more extravagant palaces than the young democracy on the other side of the Atlantic. Kate feels at home. From the house of her toy producing parents to the real Toy is only a small step. She smiles and can hardly hide her excitement.  Lord, did she...

OK, I am wrong. He did it. At least he did something a man in his position shouldn't have done. Oh, I am sorry, in any position there are things you just cannot do. In whatever position.  Well, you get it. I have been reading all these articles by renown and less known scandalized women about the ugliness of men who abuse women because they are in power. Who the hell do they think they are, these super macho's with their jobs, money, cars, planes and what have...

In our country a suspect is not guilty unless proven otherwise. In the United States it is the other way around. Another left over from the good old Western days, when a sheriff could put any cowboy in prison as long as he was a suspect. No hard proof needed. Shoot first and ask later...

1) The cute version Knock, knock! No answer. The maid wants to close the curtains of this $ 3.000.- a night suite in this New York City Sofitel. She hesitates. Inside is the boss of the IMF, a sturdy French guy by the name of Strauss or Kahn, or something foreign. She knocks again. Then she decides to just walk in. He might be in the bar or in a meeting downstairs. She closes the heavy curtains and turns around and stands face to face with a naked, dripping man. He just came out of...

Het goede nieuws heeft ons bereikt: Carla Bruni, alias Madame Sarkozy, gaat bevallen van een tweeling. Het is de dekselse Sarko toch gelukt! Vermoedelijk met enige medische hulp, maar toch. Chapeau! Ten eerste omdat hij hiermee tante Carla voor enige tijd aan zich zal binden (al weet je het nooit met deze star minnares) en ten tweede omdat hij zijn vriend Berlusconi een beetje te kijk zet. De Itaaliaanse premier mag dan vrijwel constant omringd zijn door mooie vrouwen en daarmee zijn mannelijkheid bevestigd zien -evenals zijn populariteit bij macho-minnend...

De auteur van "The End of History and the last man", Francis Fukuyama, sprak gisteren in Amsterdam over zijn nieuwste boek ("De oorsprong van de politiek", Contact). Het was een perfect Amerikaans optreden: alles uit het hoofd, geen aarzeling, geen verspreking, hier en daar humor, permanent veel bewijs van kennis. Moderator Frans Timmermans (PvdA, Tweede Kamer) had geen moeite hem bij te houden (evenmin als de zaal, daar zorgde de professor met zijn versimpelingen wel voor) maar wel met het ingetogen blijven. Hoe vaak liet hij, Timmermans, niet blijken...

Journalist Willem Oltmans zou volgens het VPRO radioprogramma Argos hebben geprobeerd te handelen in zware wapens. Hij zou deze samen met zakenman Theodor Cranendonk aan de Surinaamse (leger)leider Desi Bouterse  hebben willen verkopen.  Daarbij heeft Oltmans de hulp ingeroepen van het Oostenrijkse bedrijf  Steyer-Daimler-Puch. (Pikant detail: de joodse fanilie Kahane die daar aan het hoofd staat verkocht ook  wapens aan Iran...

Last Saturday we celebrated the 300th birthday of David Hume, the British philosopher who had such a big impact on epistemology, aesthetics, historiography, political theory and religion. His was the world of books, study, morality and causality. We know little about the man Hume, who seems to have been rather shy and not all too good looking. But he had an appetite for women as he proved with his long lasting and complicated relation with Parisian Hyppolite de Saujon, the estranged wife of the Comte de Boufflers and...

In 2002 Ben Langlands & Nikki Bell spent two weeks in Afghanistan as 'war artists' , commissioned by the Imperial War Museum in London to design the house of Osama bin Laden. They visited a former dwelling of the jihadist at Daruntah and developped a design in which the public can stroll with the help of a joy stick. Osama's house as a computer game called Quake, developed by ID Software. The house they found stands on a promontory over looking a lake in the mountains east of Kabul. It consists of several structures set...