Dispatches from Vilnius

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...

The United States set a different tone at the Munich Security Conference this past week but the message was the same - it's my way or the highway. Of course that's been the US theme for decades but it was never more bluntly presented than it was last year when VP Vance was given the honor to deliver the administration's position. This year Trump sent a kinder, friendlier Marco Rubio to give Europe a  Valentine's Day message . Marco had to wait until Ukrainian President Zelenskyy gave his call  for European unity in its perpetual war against Russia, noting that there would be no peace by accommodating the Kremlin, which the US seems intent on doing. Zelenskyy noted that Russia is currently losing more soldiers on the front line than it is able to replace. The massive casualties are not stopping Putin, whom the Ukrainian President called a "slave to war." There was a whole lot of talk about PURL , which is a special fund set up last year to deliver military, ec...

It didn't take long to cast a sour note on these Olympics. I'm not talking about the protests  in Milan last night. I'm talking about the appearance of VP Vance and his wife Usha at the Opening ceremony. Wherever this guy goes he gets booed but don't tell Donald that. He thinks VP is a swell guy but when in a foreign country, you know things can kind of get out of hand. I don't even know how VP can show his face in Europe after all the things he has said over the past year, but then he probably thought he had a sympathetic audience in Italy where the Far Right parties represent the ruling coalition in Parliament. I don't know if Giorgia Meloni was laughing at him or some joke he tried to crack. A big part of the White House National Security Strategy is to get more Far Right governments in power. When in Munich last year , VP was actively courting the AfD in Germany, which subsequently lost in the parliamentary elections that month. Meloni and her coalition ha...

Is it just me or did Donald Trump actually walk back his hostile takeover of Minneapolis? For weeks now, he's been telling us how badly he needs to clean the streets of liberal American cities, exerting a force of over 2500 ICE agents on Minneapolis, most of them poorly trained, raiding houses, apartment complexes with an " absolute immunity ," to use VP Vance's words. Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis has left 3 persons dead and countless others injured, some severely.  This unprecedented "raid" has been going on since early December, based on a social media "tip" that Somali immigrants were gaming the social welfare system. Turns out this was a fraud scheme that dated back to 2022 and the perpetrators had all been indicted under the Biden administration. No matter, Trump was looking to stick it to the libs, especially given his fierce hatred of Ilhan Omar, the US Representative from Minneapolis. She was recently assaulted at a town hall mee...

 If ever there was a reason to invoke the 25th amendment , this was it: But here was Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent defending his sulking Commander-in-Chief. Not surprisingly, the Dow took a nose dive as the letter followed a rant on Truth Social that DJT would be levying 10% tariffs on European countries that sent troops to Greenland in defense of its sovereignty, and that he would up the tariffs to 25% if Norway, I mean Denmark didn't sell the island nation to him by June. The letter and the rant were both filled with crazy assertions that would make any reasonable person's head spin. Even Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy called the idea of invading Greenland " weapons-grade stupid ." Yet, Trump and his minions continue to insist that the acquisition of the icy domain is of vital interest to American national security. They all made the rounds on news programs defending this view much to the chagrin of Senate Republicans who have been trying to assure Danish and ...

If nothing else His Trumpness has taken most everyone's attention off Putin. Donald's invasion of Venezuela, his territorial imperative of Greenland and his general disdain for a peaceful world order has led just about every world leader to voice his or her condemnation, except Putin of course. Russia had already abandoned Venezuela, said Felix Riefer , a German political scientist, as it saw no viable way to protect its interests on the other side of the globe with its ongoing struggle to gain territory in Ukraine. However, Trump's territorial ambitions pretty much close the door on a peace deal, meaning Russia will have to continue fighting for the square meters of land they pick up here and there.  Analysts have determined that it would take 90 years for Russia to reclaim Ukraine at its current pace. Unless Count Vlad finds the fountain of youth among the rubble in Mariupol, he will be long dead at that point and mercifully so will Donald Trump. I suppose things can spe...

Plaza Venezuela y Paseo Colon, Caracas, 1950 Is it oil or development that the US seeks in the Western hemisphere? I remember my mother telling me of her time in Caracas back in the 1950s when she followed my father down to Venezuela. He was a geologist, principally interested in copper. He had spent a great portion of his life in Southern Africa but here he was back in the Americas. I don't recall how long they spent in Venezuela but my mother said she really enjoyed Caracas. It was such a beautiful city. It was run by a conservative government that catered to American interests including the development of oil reserves, but my father had no part in that.  There were big plans for Caracas. Venezuela was seen as an emerging giant in the Caribbean that would challenge Brazil and Mexico for hegemony in the region. Its GDP per capita was on par with the United States, which was also enjoying a huge economic boom at the time. This new prosperity was thanks to autocratic leader Marcos ...

Donald Trump ushers in the New Year with a fireworks show in Caracas, Venezuela. It seems this administration has made a resolution to overthrow the "presidential republic" and install a more oil friendly government in its place.  They even have a president-in-waiting, Maria Corina Machado, most recent Nobel Laureate and firm supporter of Trump, who is itching to take over the seat the US hopes to soon make vacant.  Nicolas Maduro and Hugo Chavez have long been seen as a thorn in the side of American hegemony in the combined Gulf of America (nee Mexico)/Caribbean Sea region. The Trump admin. wants nothing that goes in or out of this combined waterway to escape its watch and has beefed up naval military presence in an effort to more tightly patrol this region, much to the chagrin of the countries that border or are engulfed by these two bodies of water.  It seems that the US has taken its cue from Russia, which similarly wants to control the Sea of Azov and Black Sea on th...

I'm not quite sure if this massive Epstein photo dump is a good thing as it sure is implicating a lot of people, not just Donald J Trump. Chomsky was a real surprise to me. He was apparently BFF with Epstein, believing him to be an intellectual worthy of reform as Noam continued to correspond with Jeffrey right up to the time he mysteriously died in prison. Chomsky supposedly got financial advice from Epstein and enjoyed the contacts he made at the infamous soirees. All these new faces serve to take the focus off Trump, who has his boys assiduously scrubbing the Epstein files clean of himself before releasing them in full. What the DOJ has given us so far largely implicates Bill Clinton . Epstein reminds me of Hugh Hefner, who was able to draw a who's who of celebrities, politicians and intellectuals into his orbit thanks to his pleasure palaces, first in Chicago then New York and LA. His television show  Playboy After Dark was considered quite radical in its day, bringing to...

Senate Leader John Thune with House Speaker Mike Johnson discussing healthcare. The Little Leprechaun from Louisiana has done it again. After being told by the 8 Democrats who voted for the funding bill in November that Republicans would put forward a health care funding bill before Christmas, Mike Johnson said no . Gee, why didn't I see this coming? You'd think by this point that Dems would realize that their GOP counterparts don't play fair, yet here was Sen. Fudderman of Pennsylvania telling Chrissy Cuomo that he can still deliver it . Good luck with that Johnny. Republican leaders are banking on this being a non-issue in the midterms despite rumblings within their own party that this could kill them in the upcoming Congressional elections. Yet, Johnson and Thune just see this as a way to kill "Obamacare" once and for all. Don't forget their party voted more than 70 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act between 2010 and 2017. For more than a decade they...

George Bush with Lithuanian Pres. Adamkus in Vilnius, 2002 The reaction to Trump has become decidedly more fierce in recent days with German Chancellor Merz lashing out at the new American National Security Strategy and publicly stating that Pax Americana is over . Europe can no longer rely on the US for support.  Far from it, the new security strategy is explicitly aimed at undermining current European governments by actively supporting alternative nationalist parties throughout Europe. Over 70 years of a mutually beneficial relationship thrown out the window just like that. It doesn't stop there.  The Trump administration on its own has worked out deals with Belarus to free alleged political prisoners in exchange for easing sanctions. John Coale, another mysterious special envoy, was in Minsk this past week formalizing the latest deal with a friendly handshake with President-for-life Lukashenko much to the chagrin of Lithuania, which was forced to receive many of these 123...