According to news reports, the U.S. military is shipping “bunker-buster” bombs to the U.S. Air Force base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The Herald Scotland reports that experts say the bombs are being assembled for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The newspaper quotes Dan Piesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London: “They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran.” The next step will be a staged “terrorist attack,” a “false flag” operation as per Operation Northwoods, for which Iran will be blamed. As Iran and its leadership have … 
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Kate Winslet and Sam Mendes: Hollywood power couple marriage ends up on the trash heap. Does this come as a surprise to anyone? There are those of us who thought such was inevitable right from the start. The chance that two self-absorbed narcissists (as artists almost inevitably are) were going to be in it for the long term was slim. It’s such an obvious part of human nature—when the cats away, mice play. Even those of us happily married and intending to remain so think that weeks and months of working thousands of miles away from our inamorata might lead to … 
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F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote “that there are no second acts in American lives.” In his particular case poor Scott was right. He died broke and forgotten in his early forties, but at least he expired in his lover’s arms, the beautiful Miss Graham, who went on to become a powerful gossip columnist in Hollywood’s hay day. I thought of second acts the other day when reading an interview of Kimberly Quinn, the Spectator’s ex-publisher who scandalized London a few years ago when it was revealed that alongside selling ads for the most elegant and best British weekly, she was also … 
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In the 20th century, Detroit, Mich., symbolized American industrial might. Today it symbolizes the offshored economy. Detroit’s population has declined by half. A quarter of the city—35 square miles—is desolate with only a few houses still standing on largely abandoned streets. If the local government can get the money from Washington, urban planners are going to shrink the city and establish rural areas or green zones where neighborhoods used to be. President Obama and economists provide platitudes about recovery. But how does an economy recover when its economic leaders have spent more than a decade moving high productivity, high value-added middle … 
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Ladies, do yourself a favor, escape from New York. It is the worst possible place to find a man. The ones that are available have been spoiled rotten by the unequal distribution of women to men and even if you get one into a semi-normal relationship, he will cheat. Spend a few dates with a New York male however and you may not be so worried about infidelity. They are unbelievably boring and self-centered. I am addicted to eavesdropping on dates here in the Big Apple and it is always some turd talking about himself incessantly while his tolerant date suffers … 
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Actually, Joe set himself up. From the moment he set foot on Israeli soil, our vice president was in full pander mode. First, he headed to Yad Vashem memorial, where he put on a yarmulke and declared Israel “a central bolt in our existence.” “For world Jewry,” Joe went on, presumably including 5 million Americans, “Israel is the heart. ... Israel is the light. ... Israel is the hope.” Meeting Shimon Peres the next day, Joe confessed that when he first visited at age 29, “Israel captured my heart.” In Peres’ guestbook, he wrote, “The bond between our two nations has … 
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I certainly don’t know much about investing, but I can give you one solid tip: don’t bet in the movie box office futures market. Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald expects to get federal regulatory approval to begin trading movie pseudo-shares in April (and a start-up called Veriana Networks also hopes to get into the business). The rationalization is that movie-makers could unload some of the risk of a flop on investors, but the appeal is that it’s more fun than gambling on pork bellies. What could be a more perfect embodiment of our post-modern economy? While the Asians manufacture everything, Americans … 
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Like most butchers, Muhammad Bouyeri of the Hofstad Group is not a man of many doubts. When asked why he slaughtered the Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh, he was succinct: “I was motivated by the law that commands me to cut off the head of anyone who insults Allah and his prophet.”  Most likely, Bouyeri was inspired by Chapter 47, verse 4 of the Qur’an which advises: “When you encounter the unbelievers on the battlefield, strike off their heads until you have crushed them completely” or Chapter 8, verse 39, which commands war against unbelievers until ‘all chaos ceases and all … 
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Quaerite Prime Regnum Dei. When someone asks me where I’m from, usually after listening to me speak, then curiously cocking their head in a vain attempt to place my accent, I hesitate. I don’t hesitate because I’m not sure where I’m from. A few months off from high school trying my hand at door-to-door encyclopedia sales in the bitter Atlantic winter, meeting thousands of our hardworking men, women and children. An elderly mother in a small port village told me she had 22 girls, and then switched her fisherman husband’s diet from pork to chicken and finally bore a boy. Why … 
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      Zurich has a reputation for being stodgy, but it ain’t so, at least not after hours. On one of my first visits, I met a Dublin girl by the name of Mary O’Connell downstairs at the hotel bar, which was an Irish bar and a hot spot. She worked as an au pair for a rich family somewhere in the suburbs. Mary smoked incessantly, her working papers were undated, and I could barely comprehend a word of what Mary said. Her brogue was thick, her words were slurred on top of that, and she talked non-stop with a … 
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