Dispatches from Vilnius

For weeks there have been war drones flying into Lithuanian air space. This is one of the drones we found in our back yard, figuratively speaking. None have exploded, but just their sheer presence is enough to bring the war home. Some are Ukrainian drones thrown off course by Russian radio signals. Others are unarmed Russian drones testing military response time. They all enter via Belarus, our malcontent neighbor forever anxious to stir something up. This despite all the overtures the US has shown Belarus in recent months in an effort to get Lukashenko to release political prisoners. Most of these " deals " require Lithuanian compliance in allowing the beleaguered republic to bring its potash to market. Surprisingly, Belarus controls over 20 percent of the global supply. However, on Wednesday it was different. A " red alert " flashed on both Daina's and my cellphone urging us to seek shelter immediately. There was an incoming drone from Belarus which the defen...

To hear Donald tell it, this was a trip of historic proportions. What other American president got to see where President Xi lived . Certainly not Joe Biden, who skipped on visiting China during his term of office. Trump was more than glad to tell everyone about it on Air Force One. Dotardly Don supposedly came back with all sorts of deals, or rather verbal agreements, for China to buy everything from Texas soybeans to Boeing planes  to light up the friendly skies between us. You may recall Donnie was none too happy with China last year, engaging in a trade war that left both sides fuming. All's good now. Trump thinks the world of Xi. He was particularly impressed with all the pageantry the Chinese authoritarian leader put on display especially for him, like those "happy and beautiful" children cheering Trump. It was " an honor like few have ever seen before. " See how easy it is to manipulate this manchild. Shortly afterward he was scolding Taiwan for overste...

"Victory" doesn't smell so sweet this time around as Vlad has not been able to deliver victory in Ukraine. You would think the autocrat would cut his losses, accept the fact that the Dnipro is his limit and amalgamate the "breakaway" provinces into the Russian federation, but no. Vlad wants all or nothing. He continues to demand Ukraine pull its forces from these embattled oblasts so that he can claim all of the Donbas and other disputed regions that straddle the Dnipro river. Well folks that ain't going to happen and why should it? This was never Vlad's land to begin with. He might have been able to make some claim to Crimea as Russia fought for and won it back in the 19th century (read Siege of Sevastopol by Tolstoy) only to include it as part of the Ukraine SSR during the Soviet Era. At the time the Soviet Union had no other means of providing state-run utilities except through Ukraine and so Stalin "gifted" this oblast to the Socialist Repu...

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 ...