Sunday, June 24, 2018

Why Globalists Want to Contain Iran


 
 
 

https://www.activistpost.com/2018/06/why-globalists-want-to-contain-iran.html

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Why Globalists Want to Contain Iran

TOPICS: Chris Kanthan Globalist Agenda Iran
JUNE 2, 2018
Forget the hullabaloo about Iran’s nuclear program—Netanyahu and the Neocons have been screaming about the imminent demise of the globe by Iran’s non-existent nukes for more than twenty years. The truth is that Iran is in the crosshairs of globalists for four main geopolitical reasons:
Oil competition
In terms of world’s proven reserves, Iran is #4 in oil and #2 in natural gas. Thus, a free Iran will endanger Saudi Arabia’s role as the leading oil producer.
To give some historical context, the only reason that Saudis are so rich now is that Iran has been virtually isolated by crippling US sanctions since 1979. For decades before that, Iran was #1 in oil production and refining, but everything changed when Saudis colluded with international financiers to create the oil-for-dollar (“petrodollar”) scheme in the 1970s during the dollar crisis. In return, globalists turned Iran into a global pariah. Thus, in 1970, Iran was producing more oil than Saudi Arabia; however, by 1980, the Saudis were producing six times more oil than the Iranians!
 
A resurgent Iran will also mean competition to US oil and shale companies which have been ramping up production since 2011 (when Libya was destroyed!).
Challenge to Israel
Israel wants weak Arab neighbors that it can kick around and grab oil/land from – a prime example being Golan Heights, that has huge oil reserves. There are Israelis who dream of a Greater Israel, which encompasses land from many neighboring countries. Iran is strong and independent; it helped defeat Al Qaeda and ISIS jihadists in Syria; it’s very likely helping anti-Saudi rebels in Yemen; and it arms Hezbollah who can punch Israel in the nose if the latter meddles in Lebanon.
Divide and Rule; Weapons Sales
If everyone in the Middle East got along with one another, there will be no need for US military bases, and Saudi Arabia won’t be binge-buying US/UK weapons. That would be terrible! For the military-industrial complex, the Middle East has been a cash cow for the last two decades. Perpetual wars mean enormous war-profiteering for private contractors and defense corporations.
Then there are geopolitical elites, for whom controlling nations and regions is imperative. For them, divide and rule is an essential strategy. Hence they fuel the Sunni-Shiite, Saudi-Iran, Arab-Persian conflict and keep it just short of a full-fledged war — after all, corporations don’t want their pipelines and refineries to get destroyed. In geopolitics, this playbook is called “controlled chaos.”
 
Eurasian Alliance of Iran-China-Russia
There’s a huge struggle for the control of Eurasia, and Iran is a key piece in that geopolitical chessboard. As long as Iran was isolated and weak, it didn’t matter. But now Iran is getting into all kinds of military and economic alliances with Russia & China — the two countries that have been labeled by the Trump administration as “rival powers” and “revisionist powers” that have heralded an era of “great power competition.”
Iran is also key component of China’s Silk Road (also called Belt and Road Initiative or One Belt, One Road) — freight trains from China have to go through Iran on their way to Africa and the Middle East. Destabilizing Iran means sabotaging China’s Silk Road, and that would be very desirable for globalists.
However, if the Iran-Russia-China coalition survives, it will mean the following for the West:
** Unable to conquer Syria & Lebanon.
** Possible loss of Iraq, since there’s a huge Shiite majority. ‪This, in turn, will lead to the formidable Shiite Crescent — four contiguous nations of Lebanon-Syria-Iraq-Iran. (*Lebanon = Hezbollah, in the minds of Israel/USA)
** Partial loss of Turkey, a pivotal NATO member. Erdogan-US relations are already on the rocks and Turkey is steadily moving into Russia’s orbit. Turkey is buying anti-missile systems (S-400) from Russia, partnering with Putin to build TurkStream pipelines that will bring Russian oil/gas to Europe, getting close to Iran, and planning on joining China’s One Belt, One Road.
** Partial Loss of Qatar as a vassal state. Qatar works hard to please the US/EU establishment and hosts a huge US military base. However, Qatar also shares the world’s largest natural gas field with Iran, which has become even more of a strategic and indispensable ally after the Saudi blockade last year.
** Possible eviction of US military bases from Afghanistan, a country that borders Iran and now wants to join CPEC  —  China-Pakistan Economic Corridor  —  that’s so promising that Pakistan is giving the diplomatic middle finger to Washington, DC.
Basically, the US is on the verge of losing its hegemony in a contiguous string of countries from the Middle East to China. The four leaders who’re actively working on this are the powerbrokers in Russia, Iran, Syria and Lebanon. China is quietly helping in the economic front, while being careful not to militarily challenge the US.
These are the reasons why globalists are fervently trying to topple the current Iranian regime. Neocons such as Bolton are partnering with MEK, a cult-terrorist group that was conveniently deemed innocuous by the US government in 2012, the same year when the US illegally seized $100 billion of Iranian assets and imposed devastating sanctions. Trump pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) gives the hawks one more chance to crush the Iranian economy through sanctions, which will also force EU companies to pull out of Iran.

Warmongers don’t care much about what happens after a regime change. If Iran is embroiled in a bitter civil war between Islamists & secularists for the next decade, it will just be splendid. The chaos can actually be used to chop up Iran into pieces — Baluchistan on the east, Khuzestan on the south and Kurdistan on the northwest. This will ensure that Iran will never be an influential regional power again. Of course, all this would also mean millions of refugees rushing into Europe and America, but geopolitical machinations are ruthless.

Chris Kanthan is the author of a new book, Deconstructing the Syrian War. Chris lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, has traveled to 35 countries, and writes about world affairs, politics, economy and health. His other book is Deconstructing Monsanto. Follow him on Twitter: @GMOChannel
 
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For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-*Tell Me Utah Phillips- Have You Seen Starlight On The Rails?

For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-*Tell Me Utah Phillips- Have You Seen Starlight On The Rails?


If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go Round At 83

By Music Critic Bart Webber

Back the day, back in the emerging folk minute of the 1960s that guys like Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, Josh Breslin, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square with the big names, some small too which one time I made the subject of a series, or rather two series entitled respectively Not Bob Dylan and Not Joan Baez about those who for whatever reason did not make the show over the long haul, passing through the Club 47 Mecca and later the Café Nana and Club Blue, the Village down in NYC, North Beach out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. Those are the places where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, Collins and a whole crew of younger folksingers, some who made it like Tom Rush and Joni Mitchell and others like Eric Saint Jean and Minnie Murphy who didn’t, like  who all sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger got their first taste of the fresh breeze of the folk minute, that expression courtesy of the late Markin, who was among the first around to sample the breeze.

(I should tell you here in parentheses so you will keep it to yourselves that the former three mentioned above never got over that folk minute since they will still tell a tale or two about the times, about how Dave Van Ronk came in all drunk one night at the Café Nana and still blew everybody away, about catching Paxton changing out of his Army uniform when he was stationed down at Fort Dix  right before a performance at the Gaslight, about walking down the street Cambridge with Tom Rush just after he put out No Regrets/Rockport Sunday, and about affairs with certain up and coming female folkies like the previously mentioned Minnie Murphy at the Club Nana when that was the spot of spots. Strictly aficionado stuff if you dare go anywhere within ten miles of the subject with any of them -I will take my chances here because this notice, this passing of legendary Rosalie Sorrels a decade after her dear friend Utah Phillips is important.)

Those urban locales were certainly the high white note spots but there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some of the other upstate colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s, run by the late Lena Spenser, a true folk legend and a folkie character in her own right, where some of those names played previously mentioned but also where some upstarts from the West got a chance to play the small crowds who gathered at that famed (and still existing) coffeehouse. Upstarts like the late Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about and rounded out his personality). And out of Idaho one Rosalie Sorrels who just joined her long-time friend Utah in that last go-round at the age of 83.

Yeah, came barreling like seven demons out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is a different proposition. The West I am talking about is where what the novelist Thomas Wolfe called the place where the states were square and you had better be as well if you didn’t want to starve or be found in some empty arroyo un-mourned and unloved. A tough life when the original pioneers drifted westward from Eastern nowhere looking for that pot of gold or at least some fresh air and a new start away from crowded cities and sweet breathe vices. A tough life worthy of song and homage. Tough going too for guys like Joe Hill who tried to organize the working people against the sweated robber barons of his day (they are still with us as we are all now very painfully and maybe more vicious than their in your face forbear). Struggles, fierce down at the bone struggles also worthy of song and homage. Tough too when your people landed in rugged beautiful two-hearted river Idaho, tried to make a go of it in Boise, maybe stopped short in Helena but you get the drift. A different place and a different type of subject matter for your themes than lost loves and longings.  

Rosalie Sorrels could write those songs as well, as well as anybody but she was as interested in the social struggles of her time (one of the links that united her with Utah) and gave no quarter when she turned the screw on a lyric. The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at the majestic Saunders Theater at Harvard University out in Cambridge America at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. (That theater complex contained within the Memorial Hall dedicated to the memory of the gallants from the college who laid down their heads in that great civil war that sundered the country. The Harvards did themselves proud at collectively laying down their heads at seemingly every key battle that I am aware of when I look up at the names and places. A deep pride runs through me at those moments)

Rosalie Sorrels as one would expect on such an occasion was on fire that night except the then recent death of another folk legend, Dave Von Ronk, who was supposed to be on the bill (and who was replaced by David Bromberg who did a great job banging out the blues unto the heavens) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember the crystal clarity and irony of her cover of her classic Old Devil Time that night -yeah, give me one more chance, one more breathe. But I will always think of If I Could Be The Rain and thoughst of washing herself down to the sea whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels 



Commentary

 I have been on a something of a Utah Phillips/Rosalie Sorrels musical tear lately but I want to pay separate attention to one song, Phillips’ “Starlight On The Rails", that hits home on some many levels- the memories of bumming around the country in my youth, riding and living free (or trying to), my on and off love affair with trains as a mode of transportation, and, of course the political struggle to fix what ails this country. And as Utah acknowledges below in introducing the song (from the Utah Phillips Songbook version) we get a little Thomas Wolfe as a literary bonus. Utah and I, in the end, had very different appreciations of what it takes to do this political fixin' mentioned above but we can agree on the sentiments expressed in his commentary and song.

 Utah, aside from his love of trains as a form of personal transportation when he was “on the bum”, also was a vocal advocate for their use as mass transportation. He originally argued this proposition at a time when the railroads were losing passengers in droves to the great automobile explosion. Utah wrote a song for one of his sons “Daddy, What’s A Train?” on the demise of this more people-friendly form of getting around. Since then there has been, due to the mercurial economics of oil and some conscious social and environmental policy planning, something of a resurgence of the train as a means of transportation.

 Nevertheless the saga of the train in this writer’s imagination remains more of a boyhood memory than an actuality today. I can still see those historic old names: Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, B&O, and Boston & Maine. I can still hear the whistle blow as the train comes into the station. The conductor’s yell of “All, aboard” or the station’s name. Those rattling sounds of wheels hitting the metal of the rails. But, mainly, I think of the slower times, the time to look at the scenery as the train ambles along and to understand the how, if not the why, of the contours of the way America sprouted up as it out moved in all directions from its Eastern shores.

 I noted in a review of a PBS American Experience documentary, “Riding The Rails” (see archives, “Starlight On The Rails, Indeed”, November 4, 2008) growing up in the 1950’s I had a somewhat tenuous connection with trains. My grandparents lived close to a commuter rail that before my teenage years went out of service, due to the decline of ridership as the goal of two (or three) car garages gripped the American imagination in an age when gas was cheap and plentiful. In my teens though, many a time I walked those then abandoned tracks to take the short route to the center of town. I can still picture that scene now trying to hit my stride on each tie. As an adult I have frequently ridden the rails, including a cross-country trip that actually converted me to the virtues of air travel on longer trips.

 Of course, my ‘adventures’ riding the rails is quite different than that the one looked at in the American Experience documentary about a very, very common way for the youth of America to travel in the Depression-ridden 1930’s, the youth of my parents’ generation. My own experiences were usually merely as a paying passenger, although when down on my luck I rolled onto a couple of moving trains. An experience not for the faint-hearted, for sure. But this was mainly slumming. Their experiences were anything but. The only common thread between them and me was the desire expressed by many interviewees to not be HERE but to be THERE. I spent a whole youth running to THERE. But enough of this- let Utah tell his story about the realities, not the romance of the rails.

 Guest Commentary

 Starlight On The Rails- Utah Phillips

 This comes from reading Thomas Wolfe. He had a very deep understanding of the music in language. Every now and then he wrote something that stuck in my ear and would practically demand to be made into a song.

 I think that if you talk to railroad bums, or any kind of bum, you'll see that what affects them the most is homelessness, not necessarily rootlessness. Traveling is all right if you have a place to go from and a place to go to. It's when you don't have any place that it becomes more difficult. There's nothing you can count on in the world, except yourself. And if you're an old blown bum, you can't even do that very well. I guess this is a home song as much as anything else.

 We walked along a road in Cumberland and stooped, because the sky hung down so low; and when we ran away from London, we went by little rivers in a land just big enough. And nowhere that we went was far: the earth and the sky were close and near. And the old hunger returned - the terrible and obscure hunger that haunts and hurts Americans, and makes us exiles at home and strangers wherever we go.

 Oh, I will go up and down the country and back and forth across the country. I will go out West where the states are square. I will go to Boise and Helena, Albuquerque and the two Dakotas and all the unknown places. Say brother, have you heard the roar of the fast express? Have you seen starlight on the rails?

 STARLIGHT ON THE RAILS
(Bruce Phillips)

 I can hear the whistle blowing
High and lonesome as can be
Outside the rain is softly falling
Tonight its falling just for me

 Looking back along the road I've traveled
The miles can tell a million tales
Each year is like some rolling freight train
And cold as starlight on the rails

 I think about a wife and family
My home and all the things it means
The black smoke trailing out behind me
Is like a string of broken dreams

 A man who lives out on the highway
Is like a clock that can't tell time
A man who spends his life just rambling
Is like a song without a rhyme
Daddy What's A Train

 Most everybody who knows me knows that I'm a train nut. In Dayton, Ohio, when I was 12 years old during the Second World War, there was a railroad that went close by Greenmont Village. A bunch of the kids and I built a fort out of old railroad ties, half dug in the ground and half above the ground. We let a bum sleep in there one night - I think he was the first railroad bum I remember meeting - came back the next day and it had been burned down. He'd evidently set it on fire or started it accidentally.

 Playing around in that fort we'd see the big steam engines run by. The engineers would wave, and the parlor shack back in the crummy - that's the brakeman who stays in the caboose - would wave, too. Put your ear down on the rail and you could hear the trains coming. We'd play games on the ties and swing ourselves on the rails. Also we'd pick up a lot of coal to take home. I understand that during the Depression a lot of families kept their homes warm by going out along the right of way and picking up coal that had fallen out of the coal tenders.
This song is written for my little boy Duncan. His grandfather, Raymond P. Jensen, was a railroad man for over 40 years on the Union Pacific, working as an inspector. There's a lot of railroading in Duncan's family, but he hasn't ridden trains very much.

(sung to chorus tune)
When I was just a boy living by the track
Us kids'd gather up the coal in a great big gunny sack,
And then we'd hear the warning sound as the train pulled into view
And the engineer would smile and wave as she went rolling through;

 (spoken)
She blew so loud and clear
That we covered up our ears
And counted cars as high as we could go.
I can almost hear the steam
And the big old drivers scream
With a sound my little boy will never know.

 I guess the times have changed and kids are different now;
Some don't even seem to know that milk comes from a cow.
My little boy can tell the names of all the baseball stars
And I remember how we memorized the names on railroad cars -
The Wabash and TP
Lackawanna and IC
Nickel Plate and the good old Santa Fe;
Names out of the past
And I know they're fading fast
Every time I hear my little boy say.

 Well, we climbed into the car and drove down into town
Right up to the depot house but no one was around.
We searched the yard together for something I could show
But I knew there hadn't been a train for a dozen years or so.

 All the things I did
When I was just a kid-
How far away the memories appear,
And it's plain enough to see
They mean a lot to me
'Cause my ambition was to be an engineer.

 Copyright ©1973, 2000 Bruce Phillips
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On The 60th Anniversary Of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road"(2017)-Poets’ Corner- The Zen Of The “Beats”- The Poetry Of Gary Snyder

On The 60th Anniversary Of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road"(2017)-Poets’ Corner- The Zen Of The “Beats”- The Poetry Of Gary Snyder

 http://www.english.illinois.edu/Maps/poets/s_z/snyder/life.htm

 Click on the title to link to an "American Modern Poetry" entry for the "beat" poet, Gary Snyder.

Book Review

Riprap And Cold Mountain Poems, Gary Snyder, Counterpoint, 2009

As circumstances would have it I recently have been going through a reading, or in most cases a re-reading, of many of the classics of the 1950's "beat" literary scene as a result of getting caught up in marking the 40th anniversary of the death of Jack Kerouac. Thus, I have re-read Kerouac's classic "On The Road", Allen Ginsberg's great modernist poem, "Howl", and the madman of them all, William Burroughs' "Naked Lunch". And along the way, after a 40 year hiatus, Kerouac's "Dharma Bums".

That is where the connection to this recent release of poetry by one of the key West Coast figures in the "beat' movement, Gary Snyder, an early American devotee to Zen Buddhism comes in full force. "Dharma Bums" is a novelistic treatment of Jack Kerouac's bout with Zen enlightenment, with Buddha and with his own inner demons. And central to guiding old Jack through the Zen experience was the aficionado, Gary Snyder, posing under the name Japhy Ryder. I noted in a review of that novel that while I could appreciate the struggle to find one's inner self that dominated that novel I was more in tune with Dean Moriarty's more adrenaline- formed material world adventure quest than Ryder's.

This characterization, however, never encapsulated Gary Snyder's poetry that, while not as to my liking as Allen Ginsberg's rants against the post-industrial world , nevertheless was superior to his when comparisons between their poetic understanding of Buddhism were in play. Snyder was, and I presume off of the reading here still is, serious about the Zen of existence. Ginsberg was all over the place, and I think what really influenced him came from the cabalistic tradition in Jewish life, despite his very OM-saturated period in the 1960s. Read the "Han Shan" poems in this collection first, and then Snyder's and you will see what I mean.

Four Poems for Robin
by Gary Snyder

Siwashing It Out Once in Suislaw Forest

I slept under rhododendron
All night blossoms fell
Shivering on a sheet of cardboard
Feet stuck in my pack
Hands deep in my pockets
Barely able to sleep.
I remembered when we were in school
Sleeping together in a big warm bed
We were the youngest lovers
When we broke up we were still nineteen
Now our friends are married
You teach school back east
I dont mind living this way
Green hills the long blue beach
But sometimes sleeping in the open
I think back when I had you.

A Spring Night in Shokoku-ji

Eight years ago this May
We walked under cherry blossoms
At night in an orchard in Oregon.
All that I wanted then
Is forgotten now, but you.
Here in the night
In a garden of the old capital
I feel the trembling ghost of Yugao
I remember your cool body
Naked under a summer cotton dress.

An Autumn Morning in Shokoku-ji

Last night watching the Pleiades,
Breath smoking in the moonlight,
Bitter memory like vomit
Choked my throat.
I unrolled a sleeping bag
On mats on the porch
Under thick autumn stars.
In dream you appeared
(Three times in nine years)
Wild, cold, and accusing.
I woke shamed and angry:
The pointless wars of the heart.
Almost dawn. Venus and Jupiter.
The first time I have
Ever seen them close.

December at Yase

You said, that October,
In the tall dry grass by the orchard
When you chose to be free,
"Again someday, maybe ten years."

After college I saw you
One time. You were strange.
And I was obsessed with a plan.

Now ten years and more have
Gone by: I've always known
where you were--
I might have gone to you
Hoping to win your love back.
You still are single.

I didn't.
I thought I must make it alone. I
Have done that.

Only in dream, like this dawn,
Does the grave, awed intensity
Of our young love
Return to my mind, to my flesh.

We had what the others
All crave and seek for;
We left it behind at nineteen.

I feel ancient, as though I had
Lived many lives.
And may never now know
If I am a fool
Or have done what my
karma demands.

Hay for the Horses
by Gary Snyder

He had driven half the night
From far down San Joaquin
Through Mariposa, up the
Dangerous Mountain roads,
And pulled in at eight a.m.
With his big truckload of hay
behind the barn.
With winch and ropes and hooks
We stacked the bales up clean
To splintery redwood rafters
High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,
Itch of haydust in the
sweaty shirt and shoes.
At lunchtime under Black oak
Out in the hot corral,
---The old mare nosing lunchpails,
Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds---
"I'm sixty-eight" he said,
"I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that's just what
I've gone and done."
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