Dispatches from Vilnius

Cruise ships have zero appeal and this latest outbreak of hantavirus aboard the MV Hondius confirms my negative view. These ships have grown to gargantuan proportions since the days of The Love Boat , although the Hondius is relatively small for a cruise liner these days. I guess sailing across the Atlantic requires a more nimble ship than the typical floating casino hotel. What pleasure can you have on a ship this size of the Bellagio? The Royal Caribbean Icon of the Seas can house up to 7600 guests with a crew of over 2000. By comparison an aircraft carrier hosts between 4500 to 6000 military personnel. You put that many persons in such close quarters you have a contagion waiting to happen. The passengers were quarantined on Cape Verde as three deathly ill persons were evacuated from the ship, along with three bodies. All others were tested for the virus before the ship sailed onto Gran Canaria. Normally a hantavirus can only be passed from rodent to human but there is a special ...

It was nice to get away from Trumplandia for a while. I've been back less than two weeks and my mind has already become cluttered with him again. No way to escape the Orange Menace on television and social media.  I spent three weeks with my family in Japan. Our oldest daughter flew up from Sydney to meet us in Tokyo and from there we toured the country, taking in the bottom half of Hokkaido, the Kyoto area and back to Tokyo. Of course you can only catch a glimpse of a country like Japan in that short a time, like glimpsing Mt. Fuji first on the right side and then on the left as the Shinkansen bullet train sped past Hakone on our return from Kyoto. I had always thought Mt. Fuji was to the east of Tokyo. If nothing else I got a better sense of geography. So what stuck out to me on this trip? The first was that Tokyo didn't seem like a big city at all despite having nearly 15 million inhabitants. At street level the city seems like any other city, densely packed to be sure, but ...

Just when you thought it was safe to renew your passport, Herr Trump comes out with a special edition passport for 2026 bearing his likeness on the front page. Not even Hitler went this far in making Germany into his own likeness. The Fascist eagle and swastika were enough to symbolize his imperial reign. Not Trump, he wants the world to know he owns the United States.  Apparently, this special edition passport is elective and being offered at no additional charge. Maybe it is a way to get his MAGA cult to get a passport, as the majority of them don't have one, and with tougher ID laws due out for the November midterm elections, they may need one , but given Trump's ever-decreasing popularity this may prove an embarrassing venture with many of the Trump passports getting burned. It never ceases to amaze me how this man is so intent to get his name on things. He cancelled Biden's prescription drugs reduction program on his first day of office only to rebrand it his own, Tr...

The Fat Fuhrer and Melanoma just before shots rang out So much for Trump's glorious debut at the White House Press dinner. Karoline Leavitt did say " shots will be fired " and indeed they were, although not the shots anyone imagined. Too bad, Trump was going to do his own stand-up routine in lieu of a comedian. Better luck next year. Trump is feeling most of the heat from within his own MAGA base these days. There are a lot of unhappy campers that thought His Trumpness would bring down prices across the board. Instead, things have gotten worse under his reign leaving many with "liar's remorse" as the crew of " The View " described Tucker Carlson's mea culpa . Who knew Tucker had a younger brother named Buckley. I assume named after the great William F. Buckley, like his son. While Tucker may believe he is speaking for the disenfranchised, many within the MAGA base are giving their elected Congresspersons  an earful . Just ask Susan Collins at a...

After three weeks in Japan (more later) I would have thought Operation Epic Farce over by now, but the war lingers on without Dotardly Don having achieved a single one of his administration's goals. Whatever they were? It has gotten so bad that the Angry Orange is no longer allowed in the Situation Room after venting on his generals for not having located the downed pilots over Iran, or so the story goes. Hard to know what is fact or fiction anymore as the loudmouth has vented so many lies and misleading statements that no one seems to know what is going on inside the White House at this point. Chairman Pooh has stepped into the breach to proclaim China the only reliable alternative among the global hegemons, and sadly he is correct. Trump has squandered any capital the US had in terms of being the arbiter of peace and stability. The White House couldn't look more chaotic if it tried. He's lost all support from European leaders after their attempt to coddle him last yea...

I suppose if there is one good thing to come out of this war it is that the Gulf States are no longer considered a safe space for investors. The world of sports has been hit hard , as Saudi Arabia and other countries were working hard to lure boxing, F1 racing, football, tennis and golf to their sun-drenched borders, only to see that dry up over night. What were these sheiks to do with all their oil money? Now they watch their oil fields and refineries go up in smoke. Not that they won't rebound from these losses, but until then no more world heavyweight matches at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh. It's been something to watch the sports world taken over by Saudi money. Not just the sports world but television and movie studios as well, as the Saudis had been putting up big bucks to get a share of the massive entertainment pie. They are major investors in the Paramount Sundance takeover of Warner Brothers, as the Ellisons had to do something to counter the Netflix offer of $84 billi...

Day 18 and we are no closer to an end to this war than we were on Day 1, even if the Donald believes he holds all the chips. The press conferences, if you can call them that, look like something out of a bad reality show. Here's one of him flanked by Susie Wiles and Mike Johnson as he rambles on about her breast cancer. Probably would be best to have him stick to the teleprompter.  The biggest revelation to this point was counterterrorism expert Joe Kent saying there was no imminent threat from Iran and that the Trump administration started this war due to pressure from Israel and AIPAC. Kent immediately resigned in the wake of this pronouncement, which caught the administration totally off guard, resulting in Trump addressing the media in his own unique way. Yes, Donald, Iran was not a threat before you decided to bomb them, but now they are as it is clear neither you nor anyone else in your administration, save maybe Joe Kent, had any idea what would come afterward.  The U...

Day 8 of the joint US-Israeli War on Iran with no immediate end in sight. Far from buckling, the Iran military is getting intelligence from Russia and launching a steady stream of drones at targets all over the Gulf Region in retaliation to the joint missile strikes. The US and Israel are now contemplating putting boots on the ground that would seriously escalate the number of casualties in this war. So far 6 US service personnel have been killed in Kuwait, a number Donald Trump casually swats away as growing anger from his base mounts on talk shows. He also denies the US is responsible for the deaths of over 100 girls when the US accidentally bombed a school, blaming it on Iran . Things aren't looking too good for our cocky Commander-in-Chief. A weird skin rash on his neck also revealed that his ear mysteriously healed completely after the shooting during the summer of 2024 when he claimed part of his ear was blown off . That's either amazing plastic surgery or he lied. I ...

The president who spent all last year telling us how many wars he stopped has launched his biggest conflagration yet. For a moment it looked like it was just going to be a fireworks show to let Iran know that the US meant business when it came to a new nuclear arms deal. Unfortunately, the fireworks show escalated quickly as Iran was none too happy about having their Ayatollah taken out. It's one thing to kill a high-ranking general . It is quite another to kill a supreme leader .  It really made no sense as just last week our roving goodwill ambassadors, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner,  met with Iran's foreign minister Albusaidi  and announced "significant progress" had been made on a nuclear deal. And then this! It looked eerily similar to the air strikes on Venezuela. The initial aim was to take out the supreme leader and hope that Iran's vaunted Revolutionary Guard rolled over and play dead. You knew that wasn't going to happen. Iran played nice the first...

Four years ago, my wife and I joined a gathering in front of the Russian embassy in Vilnius to protest the war Moscow started in Ukraine. It was a bitter cold night but there was enough heat rising up from the many people to keep us warm as speakers and performers spoke out against the war loud enough for Russian officials to hear. In the years since the street to the embassy has been renamed Ukrainian Heroes Street , much to the chagrin of embassy officials. I'm surprised we still have official contact with Russia as the Kremlin has labeled Lithuania and Poland as their greatest enemies . They seem to still regard Ukraine as a wayward brother they can bring back into the fold. It's a long history that dates back to the 1795 partitions when Russia under Catherine the Not-So-Great divided Poland and claimed Lithuania as their own. Poland and Lithuania had formed a joint kingdom in the 16th century that had survived for many years despite Russia ceaselessly pecking away at its bo...