Far East Cynic

It’s like a foreign language

One thing that is truly depressing about our current era is that it is virtually impossible to have a conversation anymore about issues of national importance. To take a position on something is to invite immediate attack and its become just about impossible to hold a semi literate conversation in

Continue reading

Whistling past the graveyard….

After almost 24 hours of travel back from the Whining States of America, I am back in definitely not sunny Germany. A week in Shopping Mall and  then a week out west. The second week was very frustrating from a work standpoint and makes me very, very, uncertain as to

Continue reading

200 Dollars well spent

If there are only two news outlets you can subscribe to, I recommend the following: The Economist ($139.00/yr) and the products of STRATFOR ($99.00/yr). It is money well spent and when you think about it is just a years worth of Netflix and Hulu. STRATFOR recently published its 10 year

Continue reading

When is a crime just a crime?

Its been a month since I have posted. I have been busy. No excuse to be sure-but its the truth. During that time a lot has happened, much of it comment worthy-and if you are big reader like I am, you have probably read a lot of the commentary on

Continue reading

The Israeli election

I wanted to provide some commentary on the Israeli election. I think it’s needed-especially when you read the trash that passes for informed commentary in American outlets. Right wing outlets are crowing about the election as a “rebuke” for President Obama and they are calling it a “landslide” election for

Continue reading

Recent Reading

On the trip over to Normandy-I had forgotten to charge my I-Pad. So I grabbed a book from the shelf to read on the train. Boy am I glad I did. It was an honor to re-immerse myself in this book. Schlesinger, a life long liberal, was also an outstanding

Continue reading

The chance of precipitation just went up.

Not rain falling, but bombs. Dropped from Israeli planes. The western powers signed an interim agreement with Iran last night. As expected a certain, rather stubborn group of folks is not happy about that one bit: Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu characterized the agreement signed with Iran early Sunday morning as

Continue reading

Random thoughts.

When I think of yesterday's events. First of all, I hate it when someone prescribes, based on their own social conventions and biases, how exactly I am supposed to feel and react to such a horrific event. My values are not your values. So you will forgive me if I don't

Continue reading

Worth two hours of your time.

Contrary to popular belief in America, there is something more important in the world than whether Ben Affleck will play Batman or Miley Cyrus' performance at the video awards. This 2+ hour video from C-span is worth your time. Yesterday was a bad day for David Cameron-but it was a great

Continue reading

No upside-only down sides.

To attacking Syria. All the usual suspects are lining up telling us how we have to "do something" in Syria. I really don't understand why. Apparently a lot of other Americans don't understand why either, judging by polls that say a majority of Americans are opposed to any intervention in

Continue reading