Far East Cynic

The land of no smiles…….

There is an interesting photo essay at Foreign Policy about life inside Kita Chosen ( North Korea). It is worth going to see.  Renowned documentary photographer Tomas van Houtryve entered North Korea by posing as a businessman looking to open a chocolate factory. Despite 24-hour surveillance by North Korean minders,

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This ought to be fun to watch….

You are popular with most of the country, but 30% thinks you are the spawn of Satan himself. You are trying to drag an economy out of recession-but the economy and Wall Street in particular just don’t want to cooperate. You’ve got two wars underway-and some very noisy people among

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Swine flu hits home…..

As I drove to work this morning, something seemed out of place. Glasses? -Got 'em. Whew! School crossing lady? Missing in action as I came round the bend expecting to have to slam on the brakes. HMMMM. That's odd. Oh well-lets see what the BMW can do………….(Six cylinders of German

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Worth repeating….

Because it makes so much sense: The iron-girder he-men of the conservative blogosphere have greeted former Republican Senator from Pennsylvania Arlen Specter’s defection to the Democrats with whiskery hoots of “good riddance/get lost/don’t let the door hit your withered buttocks on the way out” and similar pleasantries. Many of them

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The digital mascot…….

A couple of weeks ago, SMAP band member  Tsuyoshi Kusanagi was arrested for being drunk and naked in a Tokyo park. As a result he as dropped as the spokesman for Digital TV in Japan and replaced by a deer: This is Chidejika. Over at Japan Probe they have been

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Houston-we have a problem.

Requesting reader feedback: Are you having problems viewing this site under IE? Under Firefox and Chrome it seems to be working. Under IE the browser seems to be truncating the page. Anybody got any ideas what causes that? UPDATE!: I think I fixed it! It still does not look 100%

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Why they just won't get it…….

The party I was a proud member of and still claim as my political home. When Lieberman abandons the principles of his party-because of his beliefs-somehow that is OK. When a moderate Republican says I can’t stand what the party I served has morphed into-that is an act of treason.

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Why they just won’t get it…….

The party I was a proud member of and still claim as my political home. When Lieberman abandons the principles of his party-because of his beliefs-somehow that is OK. When a moderate Republican says I can’t stand what the party I served has morphed into-that is an act of treason.

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Permission to go ashore……

In style. Another contemporary of mine has retired. Only he did it in the style that only he can do. ….he passes through the “side-boys” down the “after-brow” and “ashore” where he “doffs” his uniform blouse, dons a Hawaiian shirt, his wife cuts off his uniform trousers into shorts, then

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Beating the wrong horse…….

I’ve been following with considerable interest, the ongoing war debate between Thomas Ricks and the service academies. It all started with this article in the Washington Post: After covering the U.S. military for nearly two decades, I’ve concluded that graduates of the service academies don’t stand out compared to other

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