United States

A Cold War-era storage facility in the Netherlands has been reopened and about to be restocked with tanks by the US military, as part of a drive to demonstrate NATO’s power amid rising ‘Russian aggression’. 1,600 vehicles are due to be stored at a six-warehouse complex in the southeastern village of Eygelshoven, near the Belgian and German borders. RT reports: The facility was originally opened in 1985 during the Cold War, when it was used by US troops to practice drills in case of a possible Soviet attack.

Update: moments after the original post, Trump has corrected his spelling error in a follow up tweet which, correctly, accuses China of engaging in an "unprecedented act" by seizing the US naval drone.

China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters - rips it out of water and takes it to China in unprecedented act.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 17, 2016

The U.S. army has deployed tanks and military personnel to Europe amid mounting fears of a war with Russia following accusations that they influenced the U.S. election.  Following Obama’s announcement that he would take “action” against Russia for interfering in the election, the U.S. army were ordered to send tanks to a Cold War site in the Netherlands in preparation for a potential conflict. Theantimedia.org reports: The U.S. and Dutch military reopened the Eygelshoven site on Thursday.

As Nick Colas writes, one thing is certain: 2016 was a truly historic year. 

From Donald Trump’s unorthodox but successful campaign for President to the Brexit vote, popular votes shifted the course of global politics in ways very few could have imagined a year ago. Here is a brief quiz that highlights the year’s politics, developments in technology, and changes in the U.S. labor market/economic policy. 

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

We’re shut out now. There hasn’t been an op-ed in The New York Times or Washington Post editorial pages arguing that the United States is at least equally to blame for this new Cold War crisis. They simply will not accept those articles…So this is the problem. In a democracy we fight through discourse. If you can’t get to the mainstream media  and make the argument, then there’s no way of slowing the drift toward catastrophe.