I’m thinking of giving up blogging. Maybe I’ve lived too long (there are many who would vote ‘yes’ on that question). Maybe the world has changed in ways that leaves me a stranger. I could handle homosexual marriage and the idea that some people think Obama is an “orator” and the notion that three lesbians could “marry” and do whatever it is they want to do in the privacy of their bedroom so long as it ends up on YouTube. What I’m having trouble dealing with is a culture that strips me on the one thing that gives me pleasure: over-the-top  satire.

Via The Interpreter

In her commentary, Kirillova does two things: First, she points to a recent article by Moscow commentator Rostislav Ishchenko calling for a “preventive” strike against the Baltic littoral in order to block what he sees as a threat from NATO; and second, she interviews former RISI analyst Aleksandr Sytin on why Ishchenko’s words are more than the ravings of one man.

According to Ishechenko, Moscow has a compelling interest in a preventive occupation of at least portions of the Baltic countries in order to counter NATO, an interest he says exists even if there is no such threat, because such a move would allow for “the preservation of the line of ‘the virtual front.’”

Specifically, he writes, “a preventive strike with the goal of liquidating the Baltic place d’armes could become necessary from a military point of view not because someone might expect an attack from this direction but in order to preserve the line of the front (even virtual), to extend a land corridor to the blockaded group of forces in Kaliningrad, and to free up forces for actions in other, more important directions.”

Meanwhile NATO foreign ministers were meeting in Turkey:

Via the New York Times:

In a scene captured on video by a Turkish news agency, a group of NATO foreign ministers and European officials performed a rousing, after-dinner version of “We Are the World,” the 1985 charity single, after a summit meeting in the resort town of Antalya on Wednesday.

Video taken from a report by Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency showed the foreign ministers of Turkey and Greece — Mevlut Cavusoglu and Nikos Kotzias — swaying arm in arm and singing the line, “There’s a choice we’re making — we’re saving our own lives.” Just to their left, a singer encouraged NATO’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, and the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, to join in.

I don’t know what to do. My wildest imagination can no longer compete with reality.