Sixty years ago this week all hell broke loose: Soviet tanks rumbled into Budapest and put down a nationalist uprising in a very bloody manner. Down south, Anglo-French paratroopers jumped into the Sinai and in cahoots with the Israelis took over the Suez Canal in a last gasp of colonialism by the ...

I was not on the winning side of the debate, despite giving it the old college try. Thank God for my South African friend Simon Reader, who coached me just before I went on. Mind you, my side felt a bit like Maxime Weygand, the French general who was happily smoking his exotic cheroot pipe back in ...

Antonio Cromartie is one of the numerous professional and amateur athletes in America who now refuse to stand during the playing of the national anthem. Cromartie plays for the Indianapolis Colts and makes over 10 million greenbacks per annum. He refuses to stand as a protest of white America’s ...

This is a good time to be in Manhattan. The weather’s perfect, the park and foliage are still green, and daylight saving time keeps the days long. New York used to be able to build these beautiful cities-within-a-city, like Rockefeller Center, but that’s all in the past. The developers got to ...

A bunch of charlatans and clowns met in Athens, Greece, at the end of September and, to use an old Greek expression, managed to make a hole in the water. In other words, they accomplished nada, but they stuffed themselves with feta and tasty Greek food, stayed at the best hotels, accepted ...

Back in the Big Bagel once again, preparing for the greatest debate ever, one that will decide the fate of the Western world once and for all. In the meantime the mother of my children is doing all the heavy lifting back in Gstaad, moving to my last address ever, that of my new farm. One of those ...

Although my birthday was in August, I chose the rather autumnal melancholy moment of September to celebrate it—mourn it, rather. There are no ifs or buts about it, turning 80 is like that final beautiful gleam of light just before you lose consciousness during a boxing bout. The beauty of ...

Sicily – Under the watchful eye of Mount Etna the storied past of the island lies parched and yellowish, but as one gets nearer to the fiery growling giant the air turns cool, the sun glistening against black volcanic rock. Sicily is of two minds. Orange groves and beaches galore, then dank ...

I’m jittery and fragile but free of plaster and in the dojo, slowly turning lean and muscular. Never listen to your doctor, is my message. Instead of two months in a cast I spent only five weeks, and I’ve just finished a brutal three-day course of karate with both the leg and elbow still ...

I have some questions for you, dear readers: Is it simply me, or is there no newspaper or network in America that tells it like it is anymore? Take, for example, the Anthony Weiner case. He is the pervert who keeps sending pictures of his penis to women over the internet, more often than not while ...