Putin’s fault
From wsws.org, some selections and NATO artwork:
“In remarks delivered from the US-Nordic Leaders’ Summit Friday in Washington, US President Barack Obama denounced the Russian government in belligerent tones, warning that members of the NATO alliance remain “united in our concern about Russia’s growing aggressive military presence and posture in the Baltic-Nordic region.”
The American president vowed to “continue to support Ukraine, and maintain sanctions against Russia.” Obama’s comments were closely echoed by the Swedish prime minister, Stefan Löfven, who declared: “We will not recognize the illegal annexation of Crimea, or accept Russian aggression in Ukraine.”
The US media presented Obama’s sharp remarks as a “response” to warnings issued by Putin earlier in the day, in which the Russian leader attacked the establishment of the new US-NATO Aegis Ashore missile base at Deveselu, in Romania.
US leaders have sought to defend the system by claiming that it is directed against Iran and other “rogue nations.”
The real purpose of the missile deployments, part of the preparation for an offensive and nuclear war against Russia, was made clear by US Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work, who said the system is geared for “the central and northern arc of NATO,” i.e., Russia’s western and Arctic flanks.
“They aren’t defensive systems, they are part of the US strategic nuclear potential deployed on the periphery, in eastern Europe,” Putin bluntly noted in his own remarks Friday. In an official statement, Russia’s foreign ministry condemned the new base for “gravely undermining the INF Treaty,” referring to the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty between Washington and Moscow.
The sharpness of Putin’s response to the NATO escalation is an index of the historic levels of geopolitical tensions building up under the impact of Washington’s relentless war drive.
Following this usual pattern, Putin moderated his criticisms with appeals for compromise, affirmed that Russia and NATO ultimately share common interests, and pleaded for rationality by Western leaders.
While Putin’s overtures are premised on the assumption that more rational Western leaders might choose to de-escalate in order to avoid an all-out war, the entire history of the imperialist epoch has proven that there can be no lasting peace with, or between, the major imperialist powers. Instead, the current standoff between NATO and Russia, coming after decades of intensifying world crisis, has brought geopolitical tensions to their highest pitch since the 1930s.
Russia, a vast and resource-rich territory with the largest land area of any state, once the core of the Soviet Union, represents the choicest of prizes in the eyes of the American and European elites. They see no way out from their own crisis apart from a mad scramble to dismember and subjugate the Russian Federation, along with China and the ex-colonial nations of Africa and Asia.
The predatory designs of the US and NATO powers are stated openly in policy documents. Official NATO doctrines promulgated earlier this year define Russia as a “resurgent and aggressive” power and call for a qualitative escalation of NATO’s military posture towards Moscow, in their jargon, from “assurance to deterrence.”
Recent months have seen NATO match deeds with words, deploying new forces and hardware throughout areas bordering Russia, including new intelligence and command outposts and large amounts of pre-positioned heavy weaponry in every major Baltic and East European country.
@NATO May 5 #Israel and #Jordan missions to open at #NATO http://bit.ly/26Wnetm #Mediterranean Dialogue
@NATO May #Bahrain, #Kuwait & #Qatar missions to open at NATO http://bit.ly/1SOPyrn Istanbul Cooperation Initiative
The announcements (of thousands of troops to the Baltic states and Poland) came amid large-scale war drills in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, still ongoing, including more than 1,000 US, British and Georgian soldiers, held provocatively in a geopolitical flashpoint that nearly brought Washington and Moscow to blows in 2008.
The drills, hailed by Georgian officials as “the biggest our country has ever hosted,” with “the biggest number of troops on the ground, and the largest concentration of military equipment,” include a full company of US mechanized combat troops, complete with M1A1 battle tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.
The growing momentum of NATO’s push against Russia is evident from the deepening ties between the Western powers and the fanatically anti-Russia regimes in the Baltic states, Eastern Europe and the Black Sea region, which are enthusiastically embracing the transformation of their territories into armed camps.
:-) ;-) :-)
Recent weeks have seen the Ukrainian government and NATO members Romania and Turkey demand NATO escalation in the Black Sea, including formation of a multinational naval force which would patrol the waters surrounding Russia’s only warm-water port, Sevastopol in Crimea, on a permanent basis. NATO officials told the Wall Street Journal last week that plans for such a fleet are already well advanced.
and last but not least:
Also from wsws.org: ‘Barack Obama and a quarter-century of US wars’:
“The dissolution of the Soviet Union, combined with the unrestrained restoration of capitalism in China following the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 1989, was seen by the American ruling class as an opportunity to carry out a massive restructuring of global geopolitics with the aim of establishing the hegemony of the United States. The overwhelming support for this operation within the elites arose from the belief that the United States could reverse the protracted erosion of its global economic position through the ruthless utilization of its overwhelming military power.
The Defense Policy Guidance drafted by the Department of Defense in February 1992 unambiguously asserted the hegemonic ambitions of US imperialism: “There are other potential nations or coalitions that could, in the further future, develop strategic aims and a defense posture of region-wide or global domination. Our strategy must now refocus on precluding the emergence of any potential future global competitor.”
The events of September 11, 2001 provided the opportunity for the launching of the “War on Terror,” a propaganda slogan that provided an all-purpose justification for military operations throughout the Middle East, Central Asia and, with increasing frequency, Africa. The military strategy of the United States was revised in line with the new doctrine of “preventive warfare,” adopted by the US in 2002. This doctrine, which violated existing international law, decreed that the United States could attack any country in the world that was judged to pose a potential threat—not only of a military, but also an economic character—to American interests.”
Bonus: “Yesterday, Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), joined by Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA), introduced legislation that creates a comprehensive U.S. strategy to counter disinformation and propaganda around the world. The bill, H.R. 5181, the ‘Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016’ would incorporate a whole-of-government approach without the bureaucratic restrictions, as well as innovative partnerships to combat foreign disinformation and manipulation that have a negative impact on stability and security around the world.
“As Russia continues to spew its disinformation and false narratives, they undermine the United States and its interests in places like Ukraine, while also breeding further instability in these countries,” Kinzinger said. “The United States has a role to play in countering these destabilizing actions of propaganda, which is why I’m proud to introduce the ‘Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016.’ This important legislation develops a comprehensive U.S. strategy to counter disinformation campaigns through interagency cooperation and on-the-ground partnerships with outside organizations that have experience in countering foreign propaganda. At a time when countries like Russia and China are engaging in hybrid warfare campaigns, the United States has a unique opportunity to respond to foreign manipulation by encouraging the free flow of truthful information. This can further prevent conflict and ensure future stability.”
Related, and how kewl!:
“Anne Applebaum, a Post columnist, and Edward Lucas, a senior editor at the Economist, are this week launching a counter-disinformation initiative at the Center for European Policy Analysis, where they are, respectively, senior vice president and senior adjunct fellow.”, WaPo, more there. Russia! China!
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
oh, piffle; i can’t get some of the tweets to embed, the stubborn rascals. i’ll try later, got chore’s a-callin’ my name….
I don’t have much to add to this concise appraisal of the military confrontations Washington has been engaged in since the coup in Ukraine, vis-a-vis Russia – only an addendum to the effect that imperial power is one aspect, but not to be forgotten is the financial aspect. As I’ve said many times, I’m no economist but there’s something to be said about what drives the war machine, and that is that there’s a lot of money to be made from it – and we have put all our eggs in that one basket. (I say ‘we’ but you know I don’t ever consider that to mean ‘you and I’.)
It must also be sheer desperation to have some vestige left of economical stability on the world scene that is driving this – I would say maniacal – impulse to flood the world with weapons, fossil fuels, reasons to ramp up confrontational missile silos and troop deployments ‘protecting’ this or that Baltic border – presumably there’s rent extraction that makes that profitable for our ‘allies’. Just lots and lots of moolah floating around hither and yon. Because surely they, we, they know there is no threat but the one they, we, they! themselves pose.
It’s like badmouthing your old refrigerator because ‘we’ need to sell you the new one, never mind if the old one still works fine.
Only we got out of the refrigerator business way back.
And meanwhile Russia consolidates its needs internally thanks to the sanctions, doing just the opposite. You don’t want to sell ‘us’ refrigerators? Fine, we’ll build our own. Whilst engaging in defensive countermoves and arms industry renovations, both slices of the pie. Meanwhile continuing to arrange truces and ceasefires and co-operative effort with these schmucks.
Too bad there’s not a United Planetary Federation that could promulgate across the board weapons sanctions – UPF (has a nice ring to it doesn’t it?)
Maybe I’ll start one.
actually, you added a lot, juliania, and thank you. sure selling weapons and weapons systems is gloriously profitable, and again: USA is No.1! That little sentence in the ‘preventative warfare doctrine’ cuts a pretty wide furrow, doesn’t it?
“This doctrine, which violated existing international law, decreed that the United States could attack any country in the world that was judged to pose a potential threat—not only of a military, but also an economic character—to American interests.”
heh, apparently there are still planes laden with pallets of baled hundreds landing in afghanistan, all the while a headline said that at least 40% of the ‘afghan security forces’ are…er…ghosts. dead peoples’ names. srsly, i almost brought that headline with a nato twit-pic of those brave isaf or whatever soldiers ‘committed to security in afghanistan’. just fooking unbelievable, all of it, from the cost of massive war implements, especially ships, the shadow ‘defense’ budget, the potential for nuclear war, as cover for resource grabs almost globally… oh, the hypocrisy!
yes, desperate, but altogether stupid to not only create enemies on purpose, but as you indicate, create the conditions of an unstable economy here in ‘the homeland’. it didn’t have to be this way; i hope we can help change it…somehow.
as ever, i got in a rush and forgot to ask about your paragraph on russia consolidating internalyl, building its own metaphorical fridges. i hadn’t known this.
and oh, yes: please start a UPF! but do make it more effective than the usually- US-subservient UN!
‘missile silos’: libruls were elated that O went to hiroshima, not that he apologized, of course because: totally necessary! but as an object lesson, i reckon to remind the world, e.g. china and the bear, that he’d just issued orders to upgrade the US nuclear arsenal to the tune of $3 trillion over thirty years. of course, old nukes are dangerous, as the US reminds the russians and pakistanis so often, but of course: another object lesson: ‘see how serious i yam?’
or is japan about to come under the nato umbrella? they are indeed increasing their military…
i’ll add shay lafontaine’s ‘NATO & the Humanitarian Dismemberment of Yugoslavia’ on spec, since i totally missed all of that in the now, haven’t had time to read it… ‘humanitarian war of rescue’. oh, dear; the opening paragraph is grisly.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/17/nato-the-humanitarian-dismemberment-of-yugoslavia/
MoA has a piece up on the fun goings-on in Libya. in addition to its on-going Russia/NATO coverage, wsws has a piece up on other fun happenings on the African continent. what do the the syria/nigeria/libya/e. europe/et al. policies have in common? throwing tons & tons of weapons into conflict zones, where the conflict is largely of US manufacture. i think it’s at the wsws piece on africom up today one person notes that the weaponization of (some of) these areas is an attempt to prevent any success from China’s massive business investments. to the degree that madness can be defined, that makes some effed up sense. (maybe some of that going on in the “soft coup” in Brazil?) create uncontrollable chaos & throw in billions in weapons
and all that Chinese money will have been wasted. see? capitalism works!
the guys at MoA are at a loss to explain how this works in Libya. with artificially-deflated oil prices, maybe Libya’s oil isn’t really needed & so the old boys’ club of colonialist powers can have some attrition vs. forces like the Libyan National Army? hard to say. can we expect renewed attempts at a coup in Venezuela, if it’s not already fully in the works? you betcha!
it is amazing that the US & Britain, in a matter of a couple of years, got the entirety of Europe’s leadership on board w/war against Russia, ie, their own self-destruction. capitalist over-production of quislings? inner party members recognize that imperialist conflict abroad=suppression of class conflict at home. so they are just following their class interests? not a very enlightened self-interest, that’s for sure.
Hmmm; i’d grabbed b’s ‘Obomba’s tired of afghanistan’ link, but i’ll try to scope out the others and be back, thank you. I was half considering putting that link on a new Open Menu, as i’m crammed with chore trying to get a bit read for a visit from our son and his family in ten days or so. yes, i’m slow. ;-) but doggone it, i need my toast right now!
yeah, i scoped that article out too. some of the commenters on that Afghanistan piece are like, no way bro. there’s no way the US is just going to “let A. go.” too much at stake, too much involved (minerals, heroin, geo-strategic blah blah re Russia, India, Pakistan and China.) but the massively fraudulent nature of the *military* aid, much less the ngo/development stuff…things are outta control? time for a lull in direct intervention to let some of the conflicts there fight themselves out or simmer down?
anyway, good luck w/things. unfortunately, the libyan/af-pak/etc. conflicts will be here when you get back ;(
i did mange to read the trotskyite piece ‘US forces in combat in Somalia as AFRICOM plans for war across continent’
grabbed a quote from it, binged it, and found (ahem) a bit of a different take here, esp. re: goodluck jonathan’s administration. wish i could remember why i remember him as at least quite an iffy sort of leader. well, never mind; the Empire knows what it’s all about.
ooof, i didn’t read any of the afghan essay comments. maybe later; be back in a bit, and thanks for understanding RL stuff.
added on edit: i checked with africom for hints, alas, too many acroyms to grok, but this is great! #AfricanHorizons! peek in, if ya dare, lol.
i couldn’t find the link, may not be up yet, but the odious little NPR/PBS blurb that foams up hourly from those news cesspools here on the classical station just reported that per HRW (thank you HRW!) ISIS is “crucifying” people in Libya. Can another NATO intervention be far behind?
and just why is it everywhere Uncle Sam goes ISIS/AQ is sure to follow? trying to undo all the good work Sammy’s up to?
anyway, the story is up on HRW. the other source that immediately comes up from google is something called “israelnationalnews”. i didn’t bother to check who was sourcing who.
national propaganda radio noted that, eh? but aw, crikey. sad truth is that sometimes roth and co. get it right. i hate when that happens, don’t you? but” yeppers.
as far as comments at moa about GIs protecting opium fields in afghanistan: ooof, have you seen the photos? as far as i’m concerned, it s’truth.
old geezerette gimpus needs siesta now…. er…what’s the purpose of life again? i allus forget, dang me.
i had little doubt that the ISIS story was true and has been true. it’s being trotted out NOW so we won’t ask if our bombs are killing fewer than the crucifiers. when that ramps up here shortly. i’ll check out the photos at MoA re Afghanistan & heroin. it’s the golden triangle all over again right?
no questions: look forward.ISIS!!!!
dunno that b or any commenters had them; try this, can’t stay live enuff to read the captions.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/10/14066.html
I don’t really know if Russia is building its own fridges yet, but definitely they have prioritized (and surprised the West) their revamping of military manufacture with quite surprising (to me) speed, given that factory infrastructure had mainly been situated in East Ukraine and got rapidly tanked. And much as I decry what happened there to civilian populations, and is still happening, at least Poroshenko got his loot making chocolates. (Which I think the Russians are quite likely targeting with their own sanctions these days.)
Wheat production (non GM, yay!) in Russia promises to outpace Monsanto’s American/TPP/NATO product, and apparently Central Banks are rapidly unloading US debt, Cayman Islands and Ireland being big holders of same, along with China and UK (probably one other I’ve forgotten as the main patsies – err, participants.) I’m sticking sprouting potatoes every empty space in my postage stamp garden. The methane clouds of northern NM seem to be bringing on potato growing weather here – those and leeks. (Shaping up to be the year before the year without a summer here.) :~(
And here’s a thought on the conventions fast approaching. No worries for the ptb – whoever gets in can ‘easily’ be Dilma’d, as per ‘when in Rome, do as the Romans do everywhere else.’ It all might just be political war games to get ready for whatever happens here.
********
“The Lord said to Satan, ‘Whence have you come?’ Satan answered the Lord, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.'”
********
As Satan remarked to God in the Book of Job, ‘Skin for skin! All that a man has, he will give for his life.’ ptb are counting on that. Meanwhile, practise, practise, practise – elsewhere. Up and down; to and fro.
My base for UPF operations is already determined; it shall be the planet of the Little Prince. Here it is:
*
(Point of clarification: the sheep has not yet eaten the rose.) Delegates, please!
it seems you’re right as rain about russia diversifying its economy so well. i just saw a link at RT a bit ago saying much the same, linking to a bloomberg piece that was…somewhere else, i forget, of course. ;-) didn’t the Chocolate King have to sell his interests or something? anyway, i expect his days are numbered, given that organization leaking his parts of the panama papers. gonna be yanukovitched soon, i’d imagine, unless the ptb nato/EU/imf change their minds.
yes, i like the utter rigor of russia’s rejection of GE crops, and i remember well that once climate change was noticed as a true thing, some wonderful souls were seeing it as a possibility for planetary cooperation, for instance since russia might become the new breadbasket of the world, corn, as well.
great satan allusions, lol, and ‘dilma’d’ as well. but don’t let them talk you into a new refrigerator! (not you, all others considering ‘upgrades’.) we had to buy both one of those and a new over over the past five years, and both were/are expensive pieces of junk. can’t get the folks who sold us the extended warranties to even end repair people, so…we end up paying.
this week, i’m chiseling blocks of ice in the sink cuz the ice maker’s broken again. (my third favorite modern convenience…).
planet little prince. love it. delegates: dunno.
but my stars, it’s so cold here lately that the seedlings in the greenhouse just kinda…sit there. big storm comin’ in right now, somewhere between rain and snow. brrrr-d-brrrrr.
jason, i don’t remember where you put the NAS of science says gm crops are okey dokey, and this is the UN, but still hilarious, of course: ‘Conflict of interest? Members of UN panel on glyphosate have Monsanto ties’
one of the dude’s names is ‘Boobis’, swear to goddess!
In fact the US did establish the appearance of hegemony by the end of the century that Iraq was seen as just a little tidying up in the corner. What then happened was W’s great adventure showed the limits of actual US power even in “two regional wars” and that the superpower, or as the French coined it the “hyperpuissance” was in fact in the same state it was in 1969, a pitiful helpless giant.
What Obama in fact did over 7 years was rebuild the illusion that the US could be the hyperpuissance again. Key to that in Europe were the activities of Secretary of State Clinton and Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland (of the Kagan Klan). Recent cuteness in Europe, aside from the mess the banker continue to make, was the US provocation at Kaliningrad, drawing two buzzes of US warships, a contrived outrage that John Kerry could not deliver convincingly, and the notion that Europe’s eastern flank needed to be protected from Putin’s westward aggression. But hey, more arms sales (what else does the US manufacture anymore but guns domestically and military hardware for export).
And there is increasing evidence that exactly the same template is being set up against China, the same provocative drawing out of defensive action and the same arm sales to “allies”.
Meanwhile, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Brazil have been flipped to “center-right” governments.
Kinda of obvious that this direction is not some wild hare that hopped through the Oval Office but the national security establishment telling the President (it could have been McCain and Romney) what they wanted and Obama rubber stamping it. Kerry had a brief moment of influence in accepting the removal of chemical weapons from Syria and moving the Iran Nuclear Agreement through the negotiation process. The US is now in the business of siccing the termites on the implementation of that agreement in hopes the house will fall down in the next administration. Congress is a huge player in all of this; those military factories mean the only jobs some districts have of any consequence, except for enlistment in the military. This is more 70-year inertia.
So Obama was pitching the Norskis was he. Do we smell and Arctic Fleet coming to keep us safe from Canada and Russia? And secure all those oil platforms to come? Is the Law of the Sea about to become a reopened issue? Exactly how far are neoconservatives going to go now that they have their hooks into the duopoly duo?
NATO is now a hedge against the European Union falling apart after the Eurozone collapses. Brexit might not be the catalyst; it might be Italy, and only then Greece following. The Russian bear bogeyman is the glue that holds the European nations in NATO. That is, until nuclear armed UK and France start looking at going it on their own, or Germany starts hankering for nuclear weapons just in case. Or nationalist parties take power in one or more of those three countries on the basis of anti-immigrant platforms. (That is something that President Trump as the major player of NATO might himself encourage.) The march of folly continues onward.
China’s Silk Road transport development was a signal to NATO that blockading Chinese shipments through the Moluccas would not bottle up Chinese trade. The construction of bases on the Spratlys are to offset the possibility that a blockade of the Moluccas could succeed. Watch for Australia to become a major US base complex, unless it seeks to spend its own budget for military hardware and troops. Did I say the march of folly continues? Gah.
i feel better already.
oh, you brilliant mofo, you. i’ll sdly need to bingle a few locations to even try to grasp what you’re saying. sadly, after a long day, it’s not tonight. “hyperpuissance?” i love it on spec.
but i’d thought that the US hegemony began post WWII.
sleep well all, and remember: yahamba!
your reckoning that we’ll see a nato navy for arctic oil and other resources soon be proven so, sadly. too bad that god put so much of ‘our’ oil in such inconvenient places.
yes to kerry’s shining moments with iran and syria, then he cut the legs out fro under both, didn’t he? er…i’d had to look up ‘the moluccas’; thank you, how interesting it is that you could *see* this fact so well.
well, good for the goose, not the gander: chinese fighter jets intercepted spy plane over the south china sea, according to RT.
‘NATO exercises on Russian border: Are these people actually mad?’, john wright for RT.
p.s. on edit: how awesome it is that you’re able to perch above the planet and see not only the geopolitical map of the world, but extrapolate your knowledge of history and current events to create such a narrative.
p.s.s. ‘TRNN Replay: Discussing the tension in the South China Sea, former Bush administration official Larry Wilkerson says the US should ratify the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea treaty – but won’t because of big oil and mining interests‘
“Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being a president of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans.” MD, ch 2.
enough feasting from the alms-basket of words, here’s a bit of doggerel to raise the bile in antidote:
“Global Change”:
On the other side of the globe
A bus travels to Kipili
Arms, elbows, hips, cramped together
Those with seats guard them wearily:
Disparate voices on one theme: Obama
Bits of weather, family, too – all in Swahili
while the baby strapped to her mama,
Watches wide-eyed, silent.
————————-
seen on a Wash D.C. metrobus shortly after the 2008 election. apropos Africom, etc. Global change all right. i bet that “verse” was written by DeRay McKesson. the trees wept to be used for such waste.
oh, my; did you remember those lines from moby dick? thank you, and your stellar literary memory.
dunno if i should say, but as i was curiouser and couriouser about that poem, i discovered it on (seriously) commuterpage.com, and it was a prize-winning thing written by jennalawrence. poor sucker.
but deray was a good guess. wonder what he’s up to these days? wonder if he were at pierre and friends bigEDU themeark conference to save the world’s education? miz packyetti was.
i pop those lines out at cocktail parties every chance i get! aren’t they astounding? unfortunately, towing an iceberg to the Moluccas (which are where again? lol. geography?!? i’m an american!) doesn’t sound so far-fetched as 150 yrs ago. agua and all…
“commuterpage.com” is the main subset of wmata.com, washington metro area transit sub subs ( i mean authority; just sub subs to Congress, being in this area.) i’ve become more…cynical? astute? critical? in the last 8 yrs but give some of us a break w/the sycophancy. i’m sure the child barfed & diarrhead over the entire (purely fictional) bus at that drivel. just like I did when i read that poem!
the messianism around him in 2008/early 9, esp. here in (white) “chocolate city.” 2009 inauguration? thank gawd he’s not the fuhrer we were looking for!
betcha get a lot of dates that way, eh? can’t even remember how many time i’d read the book, but remembering any passages would be impossible for me. but i guess that’s true of most things these days. but really, it was just a decade ago that someone put forward that iceberg towing idea; mebbe it’ll come to me in the middle of the night.
well, the rubbish paean to obomba poem is arguably better than photos of aborted fetuses on buses i’ve seen pictured before.
i did check in with deray, and yeah, he’s still wild for der fuhrer. speaking of which, it looks like the germans are stepping out w/ the UN in africa. wsws.org
‘betcha get a lot of dates that way, eh?”
not nearly enuff. we are recapitulatin’ others’ ideas if we know it or not. i’m lucky to spout melville. and co. retardants to BS on buses. in a tiny way.
maybe you should add a corduroy jacket w/ elbow patches? in any event, i love that you can recapitulate.
iceberg towing int’l. ;-)
“NATO Foreign Ministers are meeting in Brussels on Thursday (19 May 2016) to begin two days of talks on key issues, setting the stage for the Warsaw Summit in July. Today, Ministers will take a historic step by signing the Accession Protocol with Montenegro. “As of today, Montenegro will have a seat at NATO’s table, taking part in all our meetings as an observer,” said Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. Ministers will also consider how best to project stability beyond NATO’s borders, relations with Russia, the future of the Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan, and stepping up cooperation with the European Union. [snip], libya, the mediteranean, ‘training supposrt for iraq…
““Our policy is clear. The two pillars of our engagement with Russia are defence and dialogue. Especially in times of tension, it is important to keep lines of dialogue open, and seek more transparency,” he said.”
dialogue.
‘getcher motors runnin’…head out on the highway…(5 hrs ago)
ah, it’s started! nulandia’s twt acct: