Year: 2017

Arrias on Politics: Europe Un-Unified

Editor’s Note: Barcelona- pronounced with a lisp- “Barth-alona”- is a delightful city with a vibrant street life, marvelous cafes, tasty tapas nd bold red wines. It is also the epicenter of a popular revolt against the nation-state in which it resides. This morning, Arrias examines what the implications might be for a united Europe. -Vic […]

Life & Island Times: Red Death Chapter Five

Our young Lt. was estimating how much he would have to fork out for the braid and expensive bespoke tailored dinner dress uniforms that he would need when he was subsequently invited to soirees in the salons of DC’s national security power brokers, when his division boss’s deputy, an ex-Army intel guy, stopped by. In […]

Life & Island Times: The Jokers

Author’s note: With the ever spiraling out of control war of words between the Americans and the NORKs and the upoming NORK commie party founding day and America’s discovery celebration of Columbus Day this week, I plodded a few more steps down the dark rabbit hole. The jokers graffiti doing their Dr Strangelove thing With […]

Life & Island Times: Porch Bath

With my attention consumed by the aftermath of the events in Las Vegas, I came to understand slowly how close our beautiful Victorian era neighborhood in the Coastal Empire is to chaos only in dribs and drabs. It was like retrospectively watching water dripping upwards up from the sink back into the faucet this week. […]

Japan-gazer Special

Unresolved Issues From WW-II Defeat = Brake On Revising Constitution? 22 October election for Japan’s powerful Diet Lower House —- Lots of attention on whether Japanese politics will thereafter be postured to amend the Constitution —- A key goal of PM Abe and the conservatives will be to amend Article 9 and allow the Japan […]

Life & Island Times: Red Death Chapter Four

Marlow was arc’ing and sparking in front of his large screen composing himself and his outline when his boss stuck his head in. “Listen, if you want, you can put together a one-liner on the ‘Red Death’ business. We’ll forward it up the chain by the end of the day.” Without waiting for an answer, […]

Life & Island Times: Red Death Chapter Two

Large Screen Display RAT CRAP! It was shaping up to be just another Mark 1 Mod 0 standard Navy day in the intelligence biz — the system went Tango Uniform, again, so Marlow went off on a hunt for a two day old pastry and the latest rumors on this year’s Commanding Officer reorganization in […]

Life & Island Times: Red Death Chapter Three

Perhaps more importantly, Lt Marlow’s career depended on it. His other analytical pieces had been in endless loops of internal editing. Mostly this consisted of quibbling as to who discovered what, when and so forth — credit for new ideas, no matter how inconsequential, had to be shared upward from the Suitland trenches with the […]

Life & Island Times: Red Death

Author’s note: It’s Red October time on the Korean peninsula and the observable realities look bad. In reaction, the Irish optimist inside me decided to dwell inside a fantasy about the outcome. So, with a tip of the combo cover to Tom Clancy, the CIA, and Jack Ryan here is a short, serialized, not-ready-for-prime time […]

Postcard From the Swamp #16

The world suffers from an acute case of attention deficit/obsessive compulsive disorder. When the Media is onto something- Russia, storms, crazed gunmen and mass murder, it is impossible to get them to focus on anything else. Goodness knows there is a lot to go around. The shooter himself- won’t use his name- remains an enigma. […]