Part I is here, Part II Café version; the caucuc99% version.
First, the Geopolitics of Mackinder’s Heartland Sort, reminding us why Obama initiated his ‘Pivot to Asia’ policy that Beijing knew meant ‘China Containment’ policy, shrewd devils that they are: ‘Iran’s Role in New Silk Road Emphasized’, May 17, 2017, financialtribune.com
“China’s Finance Minister Xiao Jie underscored Iran’s strategic role in China’s New Silk Road plan, noting that Iran can be a party for fulfilling the ‘”One Road, One Belt” vision initiated by the Chinese government.
“Iran not only could participate in carrying out the plan within their borders, but they could also be a force to execute the New Silk Road vision in other countries,” Xiao said during a meeting with his Iranian counterpart, Ali Tayyebnia, at a key event promoting the New Silk Road trade project in Beijing.
Iran’s Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Ali Tayyebnia arrived in the Chinese capital on Saturday to represent Iran in the New Silk Road summit, formally known as the “Belt and Road Initiative” and sign the communiqué to revive the Silk Road along with [20]other countries’ representatives , IRNA reported.”
Tayyebnia had met with the President of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), of which Iran was a founding member.
From Pepe Escobar’s April 18 ‘Syria, Iran and ‘chaos in international relations’; Any meaningful political resolution to the turmoil in the Middle East now seems more elusive than ever, asiatimes.com:
(the aforementioned heavy oil sanctions making small nuclear power plants built by China more necessary, etc.)
“All that points, once again, to the ongoing, massive Eurasia integration project – the cross-pollination of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Eurasia Economic Union (EEU) – featuring, not by accident, the three key nodes: China, Russia and Iran.
And to add it all up, in this case the European arm of NATO even turned off the “aggression” rhetoric; the dogs of war (“Real Men Go to Tehran”) may bark again, but even that won’t force the EU caravan to desist from doing business with Persia.”
For more recent reading on the BRI, ‘Belt, Road Initiative and China-Iran cooperation’, March 24, 2018, theiranproject.com
‘Iran in the crosshairs as the Empire enters its mad dog days’, John Wight via RT, May 22, 2018, some outtakes, although it’s all worth reading, including his references to the true nature of the US an EU being akin to European satellites before the fall of the Roman Empire:
“The Empire enters its mad dog days
Thus the dire consequences of the untrammelled power of what is an imperial hegemon in Washington have never been more manifest, with its drive to dominate and dictate on pain of war reflective of an empire desperate to arrest a decline, entering its mad dog days in the process.
Let us be clear: the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the JCPOA has nothing to do with Iran’s compliance, which has been impeccable, and everything to do with Washington’s hegemonic agenda towards the region – a hegemonic agenda which precedes Trump.
In the way of this agenda are Iran, Syria and Hezbollah – along with Russia – which, if not on a formal basis certainly on a de facto basis, comprise an axis of anti-hegemony that needs to be broken. It is for this and no other reason that Trump, Netanyahu, and bin Salman are intent on forcing the issue with Iran, regardless of the likely catastrophic results.
They have lost in Syria, where the drive to topple the Assad government has been thwarted thanks in no small part to Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah – standing with the Syrian people and Syrian Arab Army – and in response they are intent on settling accounts.” [long snip]
“Europe’s choice – unipolarity or multipolarity
Crisis is opportunity, they tell us, and this particular crisis presents the opportunity for a new alignment in Europe, forged on the understanding that the destabilizing factor in Europe is not and has never been Russia; that it is and has always been the United States. Economically, culturally, and politically, Europe’s identity has been progressively subsumed into a US identity, with its regressive and shallow paean to the cult of the individual, unfettered capitalism, and might is right.
Therefore the choice Europe faces is clear. It can either remain tethered to the mast of the sinking ship of unipolarity, or it can join Russia, China and the rest of the world in shaping a multipolar alternative, rooted not in the caprice of a president in Washington but instead in the principles set out in the UN Charter – specifically respect for national sovereignty and international law.
Returning to Iran, which now finds itself firmly in the crosshairs of regime change for no other reason that it refuses to bow to the writ of Washington, there is no longer any hiding place when it comes to taking sides. If those countries threatened by this eruption of US aggression do not hang together they will hang separately.
Hegemony demands its response in the shape of anti-hegemony. The future of generations as yet unborn depends on nothing less.”
This is Café coverage of John Pilger’s ‘The Coming War on China’ with the trailer. Pilger has been adamant about getting out this historical information, especially as the MSM cover none of it.
Bonus, of the tragic sort: ‘When 43% of Americans Can’t Pay for Food and Rent, We Can Safely Say the Economic Collapse Is HERE’, Daisy Luther, strategic-culture.org, May 5, 2018
(cross-posted at caucus99percent.com)
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
Meanwhile the currency wars continue behind the shooting.
“The Iranian currency was trading at 40,000 to the US dollar in 2017, but has just plunged to 60,000 rials to the dollar. Tehran hastily announced a plan to introduce a currency peg at 42,000 rials.”
And by some strange coincidence, on the same page as Pepe Escobar’s article, I see a little news from our financial future.
“Billionaire Thiel backs big-sum Bitcoin trading platform!”
http://www.atimes.com/article/billionaire-thiel-backs-big-sum-bitcoin-trading-platform/
yeah, economic sanctions come under ‘war by other means’, don’t they? as in VZ for years, and now that maduro just won another six years, the western hegemonic media is out to get him removed from power. and of course, gummints allied w/ amerika ‘won’t recognize him as prez’. can’t have no leftist gummints remaining in ‘our backyard, can we? the US puppets brought by the spooks’ leading insurrections have toppled most of them. evo morales is the only one standing, but then…bolivia doesn’t have Rexxon’s oil.
i really have no clue how cryptocurrencies work, but thiel seems to want to control it all.
“The whole funeral of our thirty-seventh president was barely endurable,” Murray says. After the performing of all the patriotic songs “designed to shut down people’s thinking and produce a trance state,” he continues: “Then the realists take command, the connoisseurs of deal making and deal breaking, masters of the most shameless ways of undoing an opponent, those for whom moral concerns must always come last, uttering all the well-known, unreal, sham-ridden cant about everything but the dead man’s real passions. [Bill] Clinton exalting Nixon for his ‘remarkable journey’ and, under the spell of his own sincerity, expressing hushed gratitude for all the ‘wise counsel’ Nixon had given him. Governor Pete Wilson assuring everyone that when most people think of Richard Nixon, they think of his ‘towering intellect.’ [Robert] Dole and his flood of lachrymose clichés. ‘Doctor’ [Henry] Kissinger, high-minded, profound, speaking in his most puffed-up unegoistical mode—and with all the cold authority of that voice dipped in sludge—quotes no less prestigious a tribute than Hamlet’s for his murdered father to describe ‘our gallant friend.’ ‘He was a man, take him for all, I shall not look upon his like again.’”
oh lord, I lost part of my comment! that was from wsws obit today of Philip Roth.
gotcher back below, darlin’ dear. dementia rules!
file under: dementia. i’d even scanned it at wsws this morning…and still had to backward-bingle to make sure. and hopefully we’ll never have to look upon his likes again: oh, wait, we still do. and the mad, mad all-dark as well.
how fitting a comment, and thank you.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/24/roth-m24.html