America: Who is driving good ship Lollipop?

16.08.2016

 

"You are going the wrong way. You are driving the wrong way. You are going to kill someone!"
Some of you may recognize the lines. You may even remember the movie scene. Those words are practically synonymous with the comedy, 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles." Moreover, that sentence introduced the film's near denouement. The joy ride of two unlikely travel mates, salesman Del Griffith (John Candy) and New York ad executive, Neil Page (Steve Martin) was about to end; and in tragedy. Thrown together by fate, the two men combine their wits and resources to journey home in time for the U.S.'s Thanksgiving. 
In their haste to make the traditional Thursday family celebration, they take a wrong turn. Their rental car is headed the wrong way on the Interstate. On the horizon two massive semi-trucks in either lane are barreling down on them. Hence, the two concerned motorists travelling the right way on an adjacent road sounded the alarm.

Fate intervened again

As expected from Hollywood, fate intervened again. Human tragedy was avoided. Other than frayed nerves and a compressed car whose scrapes and dents could be easily 'buffed out', the two inept travelers emerged unscathed. Such a good result only happens in the movies though. Can we apply that same 'lucked out' experience to real life? How about on an aggregate national scale? Does that kind of good fortune happen in the global sense? You know the answer.

World history is replete with examples of nationalistic military 'misadventures'. Since time immemorial, millions, if not hundreds of millions of innocent peoples were killed through incessant warfare; all because miscreant leaders ignored the caveats of earlier civilization's prior hubris and subsequent need for conquest of new territory in the aggressor's search of much needed scant resources.
A preponderance of evidence suggests that the same misguided thinking dominates our modern world. Take America, for example. The U.S. is on top of the wealth heap. Been that way for quite some time. Many Americans have enjoyed the 'good life' for at least a century. Homegrown pundits declare that the 21st Century is all America's. In it, life will be even better. Americans will have more of the same: cheap consumer goods and technology, plenty of raunchy entertainment, rising securities and housing markets and 'free credit (for the first six months) to be had up to their eyeballs.

The Koolaid message

That is the Koolaid message their MSM keeps harping on them. The U.S. government seconds the 'good news'. According to the Obama Administration, the economy and job creation have turned the corner. Both are on the up and up. Not so fast! Independent sources reveal that the rosy scenario that Obama spews is far from reality. For many citizens America's economy has tanked: sunk to the bottomless depths. Just ask anyone of the 9.4 million unemployed.
What about the rest of the world? What do they say? How do Europe, Asia and elsewhere view Washington's pronouncement of 'Trust us. You are all better off with American democracy'? For sure, Russia and Red China both take umbrage to America's assurances. Albeit the Chinese, thanks to 'capitalism' and its foreign investment approach is America's brand new supply-side toy factory. With a stack of U.S. treasuries when stretched out would reach the moon, the Chinese are not only well-heeled but wiser for their partnership; they use the U.S. government bond toilet paper roll as financial leverage. Today, Beijing's vast stash of Dollar holdings has also translated into military advantage. Chinese fire power now challenges for hegemony in the Asia Pacific region.

NATO, America's vassal stooge

Russia, a late comer to the Western capitalistic business party model is not so lucky. The Federation is surrounded. America's vassal stooge, NATO with its military buildup, is threatening Russia's very borders and national security. Add illegal economic sanctions to the mix and it should be clear why Russia distrusts anything that Washington proposes as a 'thaw'. Russia need only comply with Obama's dictates; and then the situation would change. It would be business as usual; but only for America. That last frontier with its vast expanse of natural resources is ripe for the taking. The spoils of conquest are immense; worth hundreds of billions in dollars.
Who is driving the good ship Lollipop? That is one question all Americans should ask. Better question: Which direction is the country headed? The fact that presidential hopeful Hillary 'Del' Clinton has vowed to continue the same failed policies as Barack 'Neil' Obama portends more trouble ahead. In re, America's bubble economy is much more likely headed off the fiscal cliff. More macabre, the specter of war looms larger; a nuclear WWW III is almost a certainty if Killery wins the general election. No wonder the silent majority shouts now ever louder: "America, you're going the wrong way! You will get us all killed!" Nothing to laugh about....
- See more at: http://www.pravdareport.com/opinion/columnists/16-08-2016/135336-america_who_driving-0/#sthash.ns5o6ceR.dpuf

 

 

The NY Times added: “Russia’s battlefield successes in Syria have given Moscow, isolated by the West after its annexation [sic] of Crimea and other incursions into Ukraine, new leverage in decisions about the future of the Middle East.”

This is why Washington’s reaction to Russia’s breakthrough military cooperation with Iran in the Syrian war was weirdly downcast.

The US State Department described the more effective deployment of Russian air power in Syria as “unfortunate”. And it decried the closer liaison between Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria as “doubling down” to prop up the Assad “regime”.

Russia had notified the US of its overflights from Iran through Iraq to Syria in accordance with their “deconfliction procedure”. But it was evident that Russia was not seeking consultation from Washington. Moscow had determined the plan and was going ahead with it regardless of Washington’s misgivings. 

American disquiet over the Russian-Iranian move was revealing. At first, Washington tried to quibble about legalities, claiming that the Russian military flights contravened a UN Security Council resolution barring “supply, sale or transfer of combat aircraft to Iran”. 

But as Russia’s Sergey Lavrov pointed out the arrangement involved none of these. 

“These military aircraft are used by air forces after Iran’s authorization for taking part in the anti-terrorist operation in Syria after a legitimate request from its government,” he said on Wednesday.

Then Washington objected with the threadbare trope that the Russian air raids on Deir ez-Zor, Aleppo and Idlib were striking “moderate rebels”. State Department spokesman Mark Toner assured reporters that the Russian targets were not extremists belonging to Islamic State or Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (rebranded from Al-Nusra), but rather were “predominantly moderate” rebels supported by the United States. 

Strangely though in his press conference response to the Russian operations, US military spokesman for Syria and Iraq, Colonel Chris Carver said that he did not know where the proscribed terror groups were located in the targeted areas.

So how come the State Department knows it was “moderates” that the Russians were hitting but the Pentagon can’t say where the “terrorists” are?

While Russia is winning the war in Syria on behalf of the sovereign authorities with the majority support of the Syrian people, Washington is seen doubling down on double talk and double think in its collusion with terrorist proxies. 

 

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/356454-russia-isis-iran-us-airbase/

 

The US wants the Sunnis (Salafist, Wahhabis, ISIS) to take over secular Syria (and part of Iraq) and turn that country into a caliphate dependence of Saudi Arabia. This political demand by the US is not acceptable for the majority of Syrians. 99 per cent of deaths and displacement of people in this region has been due to the US "friendship" with the Saudis. It's time for the US to stop the bullshit.

 

Evan McAllister was 23 years old when he fought in the Iraqi city of Ramadi in 2006. He killed men and buried friends. Eight years later, he watched the same city fall to the Islamic State.

To McAllister, a former Marine staff sergeant and scout sniper instructor, the war he fought was a harebrained mission planned by Republicans, rubber-stamped by Democrats and, in the end, lost to al-Qaeda’s brutal successor. The foreign policy establishment of both parties got his friends killed for no reason, he said, so come Election Day, he is voting for the man he believes answers to neither Democrats nor Republicans: Donald Trump.

“Most veterans . . . they see their country lost to the corrupt,” he said. “And Trump comes along all of a sudden and calls out the corrupt on both sides of the aisle.”

read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/08/22/trumpmilitary/

«You have attacked our democracy. Your well-worn gamblers’ denials do not interest us. If you continue with this attitude, we will consider it an act of war.» This is what Trump should have said to Putin at the Helsinki Summit, in the opinion of famous New York Times editorialist Thomas Friedman, published in La Repubblica. He went on to accuse the Russian President of having «attacked NATO, a fundamental pillar of international security, destabilised Europe, and bombed thousands of Syrian refugees, causing them to seek refuge in Europe.»

He then accused the President of the United States of having « repudiated his oath on the Constitution » and of being an « asset of Russian Intelligence » or at least playing at being one.

What Friedman expressed in these provocative terms corresponds to the position of a powerful internal and international front (of which the New York Times is an important mouthpiece) opposed to USA-Russia negotiations, which should continue with the invitation of Putin to the White House. But there is a substantial difference.

While the negotiations have not yet borne fruit, opposition to the negotiations has been expressed not only in words, but especially in facts.

Cancelling out the climate of détente at the Helsinki Summit, the planetary warmongering system of the United States is in the process of intensifying the preparations for a war reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific:

 After the landing of an US armoured brigade in Anvers, totalling a hundred tanks and a thousand military vehicles, a US aerial brigade landed in Rotterdam with sixty attack helicopters. These forces and others, all of them USA/NATO, are deployed along the borders of Russian territory, in the framework of operation Atlantic Resolve, launched in 2014 against « Russian aggression. » In its anti-Russian function, Poland asked for the permanent presence of an armoured US unit on its own territory, offering to pay between 1.5 - 2 billion dollars per year.

 At the same time, NATO is intensifying the training and armament of troops in Georgia and Ukraine, candidates for entry into membership of the Alliance on the frontiers with Russia.

 Meanwhile, the US Congress received with all honours Adriy Parubiy, founder of the National-Social Party (on the model of Adolf Hitler’s National-Socialist Party), head of the neo-Nazi paramilitary formations employed by NATO in the Maïdan Square putsch.

 NATO command in Lago Patria (JFC Naples) – under the orders of US Admiral James Foggo, who also commands the US naval forces in Europe and those in Africa – is working busily to organise the grand-scale exercise Trident Juncture 18, in which will participate 40,000 military personnel, 130 aircraft and 70 ships from more than 30 countries including Sweden and Finland, which are NATO partners. The exercise, which will take place in October in Norway and the adjacent seas, will simulate a scenario of « collective defence » - naturally enough, against « Russian aggression. »

 In the Pacific, the major naval exercise RIMPAC 2018(27 June to 2 August) is in full swing - organised and directed by USINDOPACOM, the US Command which covers the Indian and Pacific oceans – with the participation of 25,000 sailors and marines, more than 50 ships and 200 war-planes.

The exercise – in which France, Germany and the United Kingdom are also participating – is clearly directed against China, which Admiral Phil Davidson, commander of USINDOPACOM, defines as a «major rival power which is eroding the international order in order to reduce the access of the USA to the region and thus become hegemonic.»

When Trump meets Chinese President Xi Jinping, Friedman will no doubt accuse him of connivance not only with the Russian enemy, but also with the Chinese enemy.

Manlio Dinucci

Translation 
Pete Kimberley

Source 
Il Manifesto (Italy)

 

Read more:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article202168.html

 

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California, Russia, and the Future: A Special Event

Join Fort Ross Conservancy and the Kennan Institute for a discussion on how our shared history and the unique legacy of Fort Ross State Historic Park can be a platform for cooperation and exchange between Russians and Americans, even amid severe challenges in relations between Washington and Moscow.

Welcome, Dr. Gloria C. Duffy, Commonwealth Club President & CEO
Opening Remarks, Sarah Sweedler, Fort Ross Conservancy CEO

 

 

U.S. – Russia Relations

In a panel moderated by Matt Rojansky of the Kennan Institute, Edmund G. Brown Jr., the 34th and 39th governor of California; Anatoly Antonov, Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the United States of America; Herman Gref, CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board of Sberbank; and Dr. William Perry, the U.S. 19th Secretary of Defense will discuss the current state of U.S.- Russia relations and assess whether and how enhanced communication, better crisis management, and more fruitful cooperation between our countries may be possible.

 

Read more:

https://www.fortross.org/2019-dialogue.htm

 

Meanwhile the FBI...

 

On October 6, Russian MP Inga Youmasheva was arrested and interrogated by an FBI agent at the New York airport. After that, he offered to continue the dialogue in an "informal setting". The case scandalized the Russian political section.

On October 6, for an hour, an FBI officer interrogated Inga Ioumasheva, a former journalist now a Russian MP, at the New York airport. "She had arrived in the United States to go to the Fort Ross Dialogue Forum," Russia's ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, told reporters on October 6.

According to the diplomat, Inga Youmasheva was reportedly arrested at the airport and taken to a private room where an FBI officer was waiting for her. Anatoly Antonov added that the questions were "absolutely incomprehensible, vague and unacceptable".

"In addition, she was invited to continue this conversation with the FBI agent in a different, informal setting," said Anatoli Antonov.

Antonov also pointed out that this was a political stunt by the FBI, about a member of the State Duma who has contributed a lot in recent years to the development and stabilization of Russian-American relations.

 

Read more:

https://francais.rt.com/international/66604-quand-agent-fbi-interroge-de...

 

Translation by Jules Letambour.

 

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I believe you won't see this news in the Western main-stream media or Mediocre Media...

 

By Caitlin Johnstone, an independent journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her website is here and you can follow her on Twitter @caitoz

 

 

As the US-centralized empire hurtles headlong into increasing aggression with Russia and China, the word “detente” has been curiously absent from mainstream discourse. But that is insane and detente is absolutely an option. 

On a recent 60 Minutes interview with Norah O’Donnell which focused on the Biden administration’s China policy, US Secretary of State Tony Blinken talked about the United States as a defender of the rules-based international order and about the importance of bringing Beijing into compliance with it.

 

“Our purpose is not to contain China, to hold it back, to keep it down: it is to uphold this rules-based order that China is posing a challenge to,” Blinken said. “Anyone who poses a challenge to that order, we’re going to stand up and defend it.”

Now, had Blinken been speaking to an actual journalist, he would have been asked in what specific ways defending “the rules-based order” against China would differ from trying to contain China and keep it down. He would have also been asked what business a nation that has killed millions and displaced tens of millions in illegal wars just since the turn of this century while deliberately starving civilians to death with sanctions and blockades, has proclaiming itself the defender of any “rules-based order.”

But Blinken was not talking to a journalist. Blinken was talking to Norah O’Donnell.

O’Donnell’s interview with Blinken was a perfect illustration of the fact that modern mainstream reporters are only allowed to ask confrontational foreign policy questions of US officials when demanding to know why they aren’t being more hawkish and aggressive. Here are some of the questions Blinken was asked during the interview:

“I know you say the goal is not to contain China, but have you ever seen China be so assertive or aggressive militarily?”

“Do you think we’re heading toward some sort of military confrontation with China?”

“Let’s talk about human rights.  Describe what you see is happening in Xinjiang that maybe the rest of the world doesn’t.”

“If Xinjiang isn’t a red line with China, then what is?”

“The Chinese have stolen hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars of trade secrets and intellectual property from the United States.  That sounds like the actions of an enemy.”

“And so did President Biden tell President Xi to cut it out?”

“China thinks long term, strategically, decades in advance. Is America just caught up on the latest fires here and there, and we’re not thinking long term, strategically, and as a result, China will surpass us?”

“What is the administration going to do about Hong Kong?”

“Then why not boycott the 2022 Olympics in Beijing?”

 

At no point is Blinken ever confronted about the many glaring plot holes in the US government’s Xinjiang “genocide” narrative, or the many indications we are seeing that there is an immense propaganda campaign manufacturing that narrative to advance western geostrategic agendas. At no point is Blinken ever asked if China acting “so assertive or aggressive militarily” might have something to do with the fact that the US has been aggressively surrounding it with military forces for years. And at no point is Blinken ever asked by O’Donnell what measures can be taken to move away from this dangerous trajectory in pursuit of detente.

In fact, as the US-centralized empire hurtles headlong into increasingly hostile cold wars with both Russia and China, the word “detente”, which means the easing of hostilities between nations, has been curiously absent from mainstream discourse. During the last cold war it was a mainstream point of discussion embraced by prominent Democrats and Republicans alike, but in this dangerous new multifront cold war it’s gone missing.

You’ll see the word appear occasionally, but almost never with regard to the two powerful nuclear-armed nations, where it matters the most. A recent Guardian article talks of potential detente between Syria and Saudi Arabia, a Reuters piece three weeks ago referred to detente between the US and Iran, and a Wall Street Journal article last month spoke of detente between the US and North Korea, but recent use of that word in widely circulated western news media is hard to find or missing entirely.

It’s like the concept doesn’t even exist. Like it’s not even considered an option. Like people are being kept ignorant that it’s an option.

 

And I see this play out in the online conversations and debates I engage in from day to day: people who defend the reckless cold war escalations by the United States against Moscow and/or Beijing generally speak as though they haven’t even considered the possibility that detente could occur. Many don’t even know the word exists. They simply assume that the only option on the table is increasingly confrontational cold war escalations, and don’t even have a conceptual framework in place for considering any alternative. That’s how extensively the possibility of peace with Russia and China has been hidden from their attention.

And one gets the sense that this is entirely by design. The late Stephen Cohen, renowned scholar and expert on US-Russia relations, used the word “detente” constantly until his death last year, but in the preceding years as things began heating up with Russia he’d been finding his analysis less and less welcome on mainstream channels. For the same reason Norah O’Donnell only asked Blinken how he was going to escalate aggressions against China and never how he was going to de-escalate them, the mainstream media are keeping the general public ignorant of the possibility of, and dire necessity for, detente.

We are meant to take it as a given that the only option available is to continue increasing aggressions with these two nuclear powers. This is a lie, and it is insane. Detente absolutely is an option. We do not need to keep risking all life on earth with this psychotic game of nuclear Russian roulette every day just because a few powerful sociopaths have decided the US empire must retain supremacy at all cost.

There is no valid reason why we cannot all get along and spend our energy collaborating toward human thriving. The incredible shrinking Overton window of the mainstream discourse manufacturers not even permitting this as a topic of discussion tells you they are deliberately hiding it from our awareness in the interests of the powerful. It is being hidden because the only alternative to attacking and undermining the interests of China and Russia is for the US empire to relinquish its unipolar domination of the planet and allow other nations to thrive beyond its control.

I am often accused of having sinister loyalties to the Kremlin or to the Communist Party of China–which one depends on the day and what I happen to be writing about at the time. The reality, though, is that I simply do not consent to having my life, the life of everyone I love, and the life of everyone I share this planet with gambled on some idiotic American supremacist value that serves nobody but the powerful. There is no good reason we can’t lay down our arms and collaborate with other nations in friendship, and anyone who says otherwise is lying.

 

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This image is funny... It's from China daily. A kite display in China. In our stupid days when our moronic elite talk about "kinetic" (whatever this means) war, flying kites reminded me of the picture at top:

 

kites