Tag Archives: politics

Cold War Threats

Posted on by
Reply

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said the world was fighting a new Cold War, warning of grave consequences for the West if it didn’t cooperate with Russia in Syria and elsewhere.

Medvedev made it explicit in the context of his reminders about World War II:

Do we really need a third global shake-up to realize the importance of cooperation rather than confrontation?

This new Cold War is entirely of your construction, Mr Medvedev.

If you guys are serious about cooperation, if you’re serious about reducing confrontation, it’s easy enough to achieve. Just stop propping up Bashar al Assad in Syria, leave occupied Georgia, leave occupied Ukraine and its eastern rebelling oblasts, withdraw your tactical nuclear weapons to their start points instead of threatening central Europe with them, stop your cyber attacks against Ukraine and the Baltics, stop violating European nations’ airspace with your warplanes.

Easy peasy.

Iran’s Enriched Uranium

Posted on by
Reply

A State Department official told lawmakers Thursday he was unsure of the precise location of tons of low-enriched uranium shipped out of Iran on a Russian vessel as part of last summer’s nuclear agreement.

Ambassador Stephen Mull, the lead US official overseeing the deal’s implementation, said during testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the stockpile is a Russian custody issue.

Russia is every bit as trustworthy as Iran, though. Isn’t it?

Don’t know means don’t know. On what basis, now, do we conclude the enriched uranium has even left Iran? Or isn’t back in Iran, if we can believe the carefully unnamed “senior administration official” who, leaking speaking without authorization assured the AP that the stuff had made it to Russia.

Agency Regulation

Posted on by
Reply

On Thursday, the House Committee on Natural Resources released a damning report on the EPA and its handling of the Gold King Mine disaster last August. The report detailed how the EPA and the Department of the Interior were inaccurate and misleading in their conflicting accounts of the wastewater spill, which the EPA said last week released 880,000 pounds of toxic metals.

These are the Federal entities that think they know how to regulate our public lands and our pollutants and pseudo-pollutants.

Chairman Rob Bishop (R, UT):

This report peels back one more layer in what many increasingly view as a pattern of deception on the part of EPA and DOI.

Hmm….

State Department Foundation

Posted on by
Reply

Investigators with the State Department issued a subpoena to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation last fall seeking documents about the charity’s projects that may have required approval from the federal government during Hillary Clinton’s term as secretary of state, according to people familiar with the subpoena and written correspondence about it.

No word, yet, on whether or to what extent the subpoena was satisfied.

But contributions from Wall Street entities—no influence there. Mm, mm.

Syrian “Cessation”

Posted on by
Reply

Diplomats attempting to negotiate an end to Syria’s bloody civil war said Thursday that they had agreed to try and implement a temporary “cessation of hostilities” in a week’s time as Russia’s prime minister warned that the use of foreign ground troops in the conflict could result in world war.

Those “diplomats” include Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the guy who sits in the US State Department’s chair John Kerry, and an unidentified UN person.

Never mind that the Daesh and al Nusra don’t agree, or that Russia won’t stop its bombing campaign.

Don’t worry, either, about that Russian threat of world war should anyone come in on the ground and thwart Russian ambitions in Syria.

Only Kerry could think this is a good idea. And, of course, Lavrov.