fahrenheit451:115

Even as 2016 was drawing to its conclusion, there was one final footnote to be added to it by of all people, the outgoing president of the USA.In the wake of the joint announcement by the governments of Russia and Turkey on their joint initiative to bring about a cessation of hostilities in the Syrian crisis /civil war, Obama's response is to expel 35 Russian diplomats from the USA on the charge of involvement in cyberhacking. That's it.How utterly bizarre; probably more bizarre that Secretary of State Kerry's denunciation of Israel which made the headlines just the other day.  On the allegations of Russian involvement in the hacking of Clinton's emails and other parts of the Democratic Party's failed presidential campaign, the response of Russia's President Putin has been steadfastly rational and measured; there will be no anticipated tit for tat expulsions of US diplomats from Russia. Sidelined in Syria, made to look amateurish by Clinton's own ludicrously hostile anti Russian rhetoric in her failed White House bid and now a grandiose Cold war style diplomatic slap across another Country's face which yields precisely zilch by return. America isn't well is she? NATO has lost its venal strutting posture and the EU is sinking slowly slowly beneath the waves of history. I don't think the Yanks get Schadenfreude.If they did they'd be really upset.