Poor President Bush. Hippias tried to betray Athens to Darius, but we Athenians took care of his plans in time. Bush failed to see the cancer on his presidency -- a severe case of hubris whose worst symptom is Iraq, a disease brought on by the Iagos with whom Bush surrounded himself. Hubris is an ancient illness, and Bush is not the first leader to suffer from ...

I must take my hat off to Tom Piatak and F.J. Sarto for the Christopher (social climber) Hitchens piece on my web site. Also the numerous readers who wrote in praising Tom for exposing probably the phoniest and most dishonest propagandist—which is very debatable in view of his catcher nights in Oxford—-around. Hitchens and I go back a long way. He used to have a nickname which some gays had given him, Robin, I ...

Speaking of terrible thoughts, I’d like to make souvlaki out of those towels who go around calling themselves princes and demand that we adhere to their primitive customs about women. The oil-rich emir of Qatar might not like his female relatives to fly next to European men who are strangers, but then he should provide them with a flying carpet, instead of holding up a plane in boiling Milano. The BA pilot was terrific in ...

Further west from Antibes and Cannes, St. Tropez has held out the longest against the invading hordes of Arabs and Russkies. The rest of the Riviera is now a sweaty, dangerous hellhole, its polluted waters matched only by the polluted kleptocrats who inhabit the place. St Tropez proper is clean and charming, its tiny cobbled streets unchanged, its bistros and places where the locals play Boule exactly the same as fifty years ...

We were about ten of us-- Nick Scott, Chantal Hanover, Tim Hoare, Richard Northcott, Bolle and Debbie Bismarck, Sir Bob Geldof and a couple of pretty young things. All sorts of loose and chesty broads were table-hopping trying to catch Saint Bob's eye. That is when I had my brainstorm. "Hello AGAIN," I would shout, and the line worked as if by magic. As everyone is more or less always stoned in St Tropez, the word again meant ...

In a city scarred forever by terror, New Yorkers could be forgiven for fearing the worst. I am referring to last Thursday’s Lexington Avenue explosion which had everyone experiencing 9/11 deja vu. Shoppers ran for cover, dodging flying rubble, while a truck was swallowed when the tarmac opened up into a giant crater. But not to worry. As everyone knows,  it was an explosion caused in an underground steam pipe. The ...

The civilisations that rose and fell on the lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea were the makers of the history I’m interested in. Screw Tahiti or the Straits of Malacca. The two great countries of the Med are Greece and Italy, and without those two countries you’d have squat today. And, I suppose, I have to bring in Egypt. Which brings me to the last point. Jihad. Post-Christian European secular elites are avoiding the ...

The extravaganza was made possible by the city which turned over some of its most historic sights to Valentino and the Oscar winning film designer Dante Ferretti, who proceeded to put up 40 classical columns illuminated from within in the ruins of the Temple of Venus, adjacent to the Coliseum. We were driven up by electric carts and then walked on red carpets into this vast space, where more than two thousand years ago ...

I rang my friend Elizabeth Stauffenberg Roberti -- her father was Claus’s brother and was also put to death after the July 20 plot -- and she did not seem too perturbed that Tom Cruise would play her uncle. “He is a foot shorter but what the hell…” My problem with Cruise is not his religion, far from it, but his mannerisms. I don’t think he is capable of playing an upper class Wehrmacht officer of noble background. It ...

One thing my grandfather taught me very long ago, when as Prime Minister of Greece he talked with the communist rebels in the mountains. Better to talk with your enemies than your friends. It is a long haul but it’s worth it. Sixty years of refusing to talk has made Israel and the United States the two most hated states in the world. Time to start ...

What I find incredible is that there are still people around who wonder why the Middle East is up in flames. Andrew Alexander explained it very well last Friday. 90 years ago Britain initiated a policy of providing a Jewish homeland in Palestine — on predominantly Arab lands. Then Israel was created on land that supposedly belonged half to the Arabs and half to the Jews. But not for the first time, the Jews took a bigger ...

My very own piece de resistance came when I danced with Naomi Campbell, a beautiful, carnal, dangerous temptress, smouldering in her skin and luring me to pretend I’m Fred Astaire, however arthritic a Fred. This was taking place downstairs, where an impromptu nightclub had been set up on top of the swimming pool. Red coloured smoke, or my imagination, made me think of a Woody Allen type of ...

The Middle East now faces a disaster that goes far wider than Gaza. Above it all stands the disaster of Iraq. The real significance of the Gaza debacle is that America and Britain have lost all influence in the Middle East and both the American and British leaders are totally discredited. Now the West’s worst fears are about to be realized. A militant Islamic mini-state will emerge from the chaos in the Gaza Strip. ...

Her vulgarity and crassness aside, Paris Hilton is butt ugly, tout court. With her, it was go from the very minute her white trash parents began to exhibit her in New York nightclubs. She has neither charm nor looks, lives in a drug and alcohol-induced haze and disguises her emptiness with impudence and nudity. The media love it. Murdoch millions await ...

Kissinger has had a lousy rap about the greatest foreign policy disaster of American history. For starters, he had nothing to do with it. Wolfowitz and Feith convinced Cheney who convinced W. When Kissinger was brought in for advice, it was already much too late. All the good Dr Hank says now is that America cannot suddenly pull out because there will be a regional crisis. In this he's in agreement with Gates and Rice and the ...

On June, 5 Israeli fighter jets launched a strike which caught the Egyptian air force on the ground, effectively destroying it. Exploiting its dominance of the skies, Israel won its greatest victory. One thing is for sure: The Arabs had done their worst as usual to provoke the Israelis, but there was never the slightest chance that they would have attacked Israel. Nasser had closed the Straits of Tiran in an act of folly and ...