by Scott Humor
In the last days of 2016, one couldn’t do enough to avoid announcements of 35 Russian diplomats being expelled from the US and Russian government-owned property being seized.
Every five minutes on every channel, there was footage of people burdened with children and suitcases waiting on wet tarmac for a plane to pick them up, because they weren’t allowed to remain inside the airport building.
Also, there was the same, it seemed, footage of a modest red three-story turn of the century waterfront house with a simple garden bench near water, that was inevitably referred to by every US and EU channels as a “Russian secret services center” despite the notable absence of any satellite antennas so prevalent around the American Embassies all over the world, in Ukraine, for example, or in Venezuela.