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Last week Josephine Baker was taken up in the Panthéon, that typically French gallery of national heroes. Baker was born in the US as a poor black girl but emigrated to France (her birth-place St Louis, Missouri was then still partly French-speaking) where she achieved enormous success as a dancer, singer and actor. In the…

The last few weeks we wrote about the dénouement of the Formula-1 battle for the championship between Max Verstappen en Lewis Hamilton and now we will make a prediction. Will “our’’ Max win, and this “’our” is a problem. As a Dutchman I want to see him win and this does not make it easier…

Last week we discussed Max Verstappen’s lunar return, he is the Fomula-1 driver who is still in the lead in the World Championship. This lunar return was unfavorable for him because Lord 7 of opponents was very strong in it and indeed the difference between Verstappen and his competitor Lewis Hamilton, who is on his…

It is still very exciting in Formula-1 racing, Max Verstappen is in the lead but Lewis Hamilton is coming up right behind him. Last Sunday Hamilton won the Grand Prix and came closer to Verstappen. In a post several months ago we wrote about this: “the lunar mansion the Moon is moving through now is…

A few hours after the announcement by the previous pope Benedict of his abdication in March 2013 lightning struck Saint Peter’s dome. Some people then saw this as a sign of divine Wrath, and this is very understandable as there was every reason for this. Not only was Pope Benedict forced to resign, what followed…

Tuesday it was all Soul’s Day, on which the church celebrates the Requiem Mass for the deceased. In Mexico this is one of the most important festivals as the Day of the Dead, the Dia de Los Muertos. This country suffers from a death obsession and this is not strange, the Aztec culture before the…

Next year presidential elections will be held in France and the country has become mesmerized  over the past two months by a new political star, who has not even announced his candidacy officially yet, the radical right-winger and columnist Eric Zemmour. His nationalistic anti-migration, anti-Islam and anti-EU rhetoric is appreciated by many French, especially by…

Last week the chart of Haiti was discussed, which was based on the Great Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter that took place before the independence of the country (see last week’s post for the mundane radix). Haiti is the only country in the world in which slaves successfully rebelled against their suppressors and were able…

While all attention was focused on Afghanistan and the victory of the Taliban, on the other side of the world an earth-quake took place in Haiti. This made the chaos there complete because the president of the extremely poor and instable country had been murdered just before that. Haiti is an heroic country, once it…

Next week film director Paul Verhoeven’s most recent production Benedetta will be released. Verhoeven is one of few Dutch directors that have enjoyed international success with films like Robocop, Basic Instinct and Total Recall. Verhoeven always does it his way and he knows how to effectively catch the spirit of the times with his slick…