Trumpeting and Misinformation at the NATO summit.

Fisherman's tales?

President Trump lands in Brussels for the NATO meeting and launches two broadsides. One, that the other NATO countries should up their contributions as at present the US was paying for their security. Two, that Germany was totally under Russian control due to a 60 to 70% dependency of its energy supplies from Russia.

The call for the other NATO members to spend more on their military budget (2% of their GDP) is an old one already made by President Obama, and NATO countries are responding. The number of countries spending 2% of their GDP on defence will increase from 3 to 8 in 2018. It should be noted that the large US spending on it's military in Europe is in part due to the convenience/necessity to have bases that are closer geographically to theatres where the US has a military influence.

The accusation of German total dependency on Russia for energy is just crass and inaccurate, as any fact checker will tell you. What's more, as Angela Merkel gently pointed out, she had the experience of what it had been like to live in East Germany, dependent on Russia, and knew that she was now enjoying living in a free united Germany that could make its own decisions.

The suspicion is that this confrontational approach is on the one hand primarily directed at the home voters, and on the other intended to push for a deal. Fortunately, this time the US remained committed to the principles of NATO and supporting it.

Other news of the day, England lost against Croatia in the semifinals - news coverage expected to return to normal in the next few days.

Today, we cleared out the garage and repaired the holes in the whiteboards to be used for our Cambridge Open Studios exhibition this weekend. I also completed the mounts for the first run of lino-prints and prepasred the 25+ individual units for my planned mobile, interactive sculpture.