While cities all over the world are growing in a tremendous speed, leaving the countryside emptier than ever before in history, we cannot afford to forget the villages. Some say that only mega cities will survive in the future because medium sized cities like Amsterdam and Stockholm are too expensive to run. It is either huge or nothing. Let the urbanists focus on this problem. I suggest that the rest of us worry about a simple yet fundamental question: how will we, urban dwellers, be fed if the...

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan loves women, but he doesn't consider them equal to men. The main reason is that they get pregnant and that pregnancy is 'an obstacle to equal opportunity in the workplace.' Mr. Erdogan said this during a conference on justice and rights for women in Istanbul, last Monday. I imagine him walking through his brand new presidential palace with its 1000 rooms (yes, 1000!) and dreaming of the harem this place could become. A thousand women, all pregnant, all unequal or at least unable...

Blaise Compaoré is not family of mine, but in Burkina Faso most people who looked at my passport thought so. They believed I was a cousin of the president and that helped me find a seat in an overbooked airplane or get the best table near the window in one of the French restaurants in Burkina's capital Ouagadougou. Those days are gone. Blaise Compaoré had been kicked out of office by angry mobs, was forced into exile and now lives in Ivory Coast. Some general or other is...

We zeggen het met z'n allen steeds weer: de twee 'Turkse' Kamerleden van de PvdA. Ja, Turkse namen, maar hier geboren, dus Nederlanders, Kamerleden van alle Nederlanders. En ja, zij nemen het op voor degenen die zich niet geïntegreerd voelen, of is het wensen? Zij zijn het niet eens met de strategie van hun partij en krijgen als antwoord dat het buigen is of breken. Of zij even een loyaliteitsverklaring willen tekenen. Zo niet, gaan ze eruit. En verdomd het gebeurt: twee trouwe leden van de PvdA fractie...

The Dutch soccer team played against Mexico yesterday. In front of the stadium demonstrators tried to attract attention for the murder of 43 students in Mexico. They had been kidnapped by the police and turned over to gangsters who killed them in cold blood. Striped naked they were found in a mass grave. The responsible politicians will be tried, the gangsters probably will not. Gangsters in Mexico have taken over half of the state. They disrupt the country and are creating enough chaos for a nation to collapse....

When Croatia became a member of the EU, the Croatians living in Bosnia Herzegovina or elsewhere in former Yugoslavia received a passport enabling them to travel freely within the Union. Overnight, they became first class citizens compared to their second class neighbors with whom they had huge differences anyway. Political and religious tensions were aggravated by new economic discrimination. Not only do Bosnians have to wait in line for a visa to visit Dubrovnik, they may be refused entrance to the beach resort they could drive to in...

It is just a two hour flight from Paris, London or Amsterdam, but visiting Bosnia and Herzegovina will make you realize two very important things: first that while we like to complain about the crisis, quite a lot of people living very near to us are living an a few dollars a day -in the cold, grey, streets of Mostar for instance- and second that we so easily forget to care when the media attention fades. The parts of former Yugoslavia that are not a member yet...

Dear reader, This is an urgent message I received from friends working for a civil society NGO in Hungary, where democracy is being stabbed in the back. Brussels seems unmoved, just like individual members of the EU, although Hungary is a full member. This is unacceptable. We must support all those who care for a free country and who fight Hungarian nationalism and isolation. Please spread the information where you can. ""We would like to inform you about the latest developments in Hungary - it is not yet covered in the...

Elke 9/11 lijkt erger dan die van het jaar ervoor. Hoe meer het Westen terreur aanpakt, hoe harder de terreur terugslaat. Het ultieme doel van Osama Bin Laden is dus bereikt: de uitgelokte woede van het Westen na de aanslagen in New York en Washington heeft de islamitische fundamentalisten alleen maar versterkt. Zij zijn beter georganiseerd, professioneler in hun planning, handiger in het binnenhalen van geld en efficiënter in het stichten van chaos. De beloofde wraak van George Bush heeft bovendien van het Westen de agressor gemaakt, exact...

Ik ben zeker niet de enige die steeds meer moeite heeft met het verwerken van slecht nieuws in de kranten. Vanochtend in Trouw was het verslag van de onthoofding van een Amerikaanse journalist door ISIS weer zo'n druppel in de overvolle emmer. We zijn weer in 1914 wordt er gezegd, oftewel we staan voor een totale crisis bij gebrek aan houvast, richting, wijsheid en beheersing. Dit constateren is één ding, maar zoeken naar de oorzaak lijkt mij beter. Laten wij het even houden bij het Midden Oosten, waar...