by Carol Warner Christen
(Swans - March 24, 2008) An arrogation is an unjust claim or an unwarrantable assumption. It is part and parcel of arrogance itself. Take the game of chess, for example. Chess is played on a board with many pieces, especially kings, queens and pawns, bishops and castles (rooks), and knights. Each of these pieces moves in unique ways with the outcome being the defeat of one hierarchy over the other. It is a game of logic. It is also a game of power; it is not democratic in any way except in the taking of turns by each side. It is an intellectual pastime.
The question today is thus: is the United States of America one side of the chess game and Eurasia, which is, Europe and Asia, excluding Africa and South America, the other side? Of course, it goes without saying that there are at least 4,000,000,000 pawns involved. In this game, human beings are the pawns with little, if any, say in being on such a board. The United States will manipulate both sides of the game with the help of the various elite legal bodies set up to oversee the US government and its People.
The man who wrote The Grand Chessboard -- Zbigniew Brzezinski -- is a member of these elite extra-legal bodies and his book sets out the rules for the planet. I have only read excerpts, which I do not agree with in any way for one big reason: the planet is not a chessboard and its peoples are "not merely players" (1) to be moved, supplanted, or killed by the two players, who are, strangely enough, also mere human beings. Those two players would be the US president and whoever grabs the Eurasian area to play opposition to our need for resources.
This causes a strange tangle on the earth; i.e., a few humans are gods, as in the "old days" when they ascended to various thrones and enslaved their peoples to kowtow to them while they stole local wealth for varying periods of time. The most interesting thing is that the people vying for the United States presidency are all part and parcel of the new American empire which Brzezinski and his cohorts hope to birth before the planet perishes under the rape of its resources. The future is theirs, not ours as pawns.
Here are five telling paragraphs, quoted by Carolyn Baker, Ph.D. on her Web site, from Brzezinski's book:
In that context, how America "manages" Eurasia is critical...A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world's three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa's subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral (emphasis added) to the world's central continent. About 75 per cent of the world's people live in Eurasia, and most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soils. Eurasia accounts for 60 per sent of the world's GNP and about three-fourths of the world's known energy sources. (p. 31)
Two basic steps are required: first, to identify the geostrategically dynamic Eurasian states that have power to cause a potentially important shift in the international distribution of power and to decipher the central external goals of their respective political elites and the likely consequences of their seeking to attain them...second to formulate specific U.S. policies to offset, co-opt, and/or control the above... (p. 40)
To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together. (p. 40)
Henceforth, the United States may have to determine how to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push American out of Eurasia, thereby threatening America's status as a global power. (p. 55)
In the long run, global politics are bound to become increasingly uncongenial to the concentration of hegemonic power in the hands of a single state. Hence, America is not only the first, as well as the only truly global superpower, but it is likely to be the very last. (p. 209) (2)
We, the People, have become meaningless in this game for the planet's resources under the guise of an elitist chess game. In actuality, it is a game of great death and disaster for most people; riches for the rest. The leading contenders for the presidency appear charming and affable; but they are chess pieces, too, marketed to us for too long in a circus of news nightly foisted upon us without depth about the real situation of our planet, our peoples, our monetary crises, the housing debacle, our lack of jobs, the cost of everything rising beyond any hope of containing the costs for every person, every family.
The infrastructure appears to be failing with a lack of concern, care, and truth. For example, an article on Homeland Security complained of the demoralization of the original bureaus all brought together without real purpose for the professionals who manned the ranks before politicizing them since the changeover. Politics is not a good prerequisite for professional ideals, much less carrying out the best interests of our country. Politics is the art of persuasion to any cause: good, bad, or indifferent. It is becoming apparent that what is good for politicians is destroying the country slowly.
Is New Orleans healed? Who slovenly allowed those trailers to pass inspection? Why are the original citizens of New Orleans being kept out of their homes to make way for a more amenable and richer group? Did the Corps of Engineers ignore the dams to engineer part of the disaster? How often has this been happening since 9/11?
If the four or five news corporations heed the whispers of the elites behind them, is it any wonder our infrastructures are falling into disrepair, children are slowly de-educated, and credit games are played upon decent, but trusting, home buyers hoping for the best. The Federal Reserve Bank does not have the People's interests at heart as the current debacle in every kind of bogus money lending/laundering occurs. Of course, it never did; it has just wound down as a broken toy does over time because it is a corporate creature. The US Treasury Department is just another added expense of the executive branch instead of the regulator of the country's monies. Capitalists control the money supplies; capitalism is not sustainable without new resources and sources of money and profit.
Since this country has been played out in resources and over-consumes like a glutton, our corporate gods must look overseas to the richest part of the world to use it, conquer it, absorb it, before the whole business falls on its greedy sword before millions of humans who are sick to death -- in reality -- and have nothing more to lose. Their lives have been forfeited for a long time by these chess-playing gods.
With global warming, with the deaths of innumerable wild creatures, with the build-up of a huge war machine without regard for the future of our People, anyone else, even the whales' eardrums. It seems as if this is the dying gasp of it all except the ones who will attempt to survive amidst the poisoned rubble when it is all over. There is no lack of warning; there is a huge lack of will. The lack of attention to the environment is not quite apparent enough. We have allowed our attention spans to be stolen for the joy of consuming.
Life is for living; consuming is only a small part of the day as when we eat a nice meal. Do you consume your clothes, your shoes, your livelihood, or your children? No. Even stuffing your home with goods and foodstuffs is not consuming; that is gluttony. Not dusting those items or caring for them is sloth. The consumer mantra is just another word to promote the deadly sins. This is not living, and, definitely not enjoying life. Our expenses promote the lifestyle of the elites -- i.e., the top percent that garners all the world's profits. The ancients did not accumulate goods until force gave them the idea of empire. Do we believe the tiara is for each of us with the throne, the scepter, and the robe to allow this wanton disregard for our general welfare to continue?
Do we, or do we not, still own our own country? Can we effect any change in the juggernaut or is it too late? How far can you walk or ride to work, which may or may not be there, before the self-appointed gods pull your job off the chessboard? How long will your income last if the costs of food and gasoline go up as they have by 25 percent so far? Will you be lucky enough to find a clinic, much less a physician, who will or can treat you for illnesses, exotic and ordinary? In some places, needles are being used over and over again because the cost to an office is too high or it's too much trouble to buy new ones. Is this another way to decimate us? Is it hubris or ignorance, or both? We buy medicines from China, such as the blood thinner heparin. It is tainted and the FDA no longer checks these things because of politics and a lack of money.
The president danced with the Saudis recently, ostensibly to protect oil for us from higher prices and, today, they blamed him as they monitor their supplies. No one, except a few voices in the wilderness, urges anyone to change their ways. We need to reinvent our lives, our country, and our future, our children's future, from this slow death by poisons, corporate arrogance, and political malfeasance. Does anyone remember how to run an election the old-fashioned way and honestly? I remember the older women who took care of the voting. Diebold does not make me trust it as I did those women. Who got rid of them? Why? Was the grand chess game played in the wings even then making the voters into pawns?
What awaits us are new detention centers, the North American Union, Canadian soldiers on our soil as ours quell riots on theirs as we recently signed a new treaty to exchange armies. This "treaty" is another way of playing the game without our input. The highways of the NAU will cut our country into at least four big blocks. How will we cross highways as large as the proposed road beds? Are you ready for the stupendous changes planned for us without our input? Will you sacrifice your right to fly home to visit your mother to save the fuel for the elites?
I know I have made the elites the enemies of the People. On the other hand, the elites have decided that the People are not them and do not deserve the benefits of the country their forefathers stole from the Indians, even if the government is a constitutional republic. Maybe nothing lasts more than 200 years because the beliefs that sprout like weeds along the way, inevitably, change the path. No one wants to honor the old pathways while breaking new ground, especially if money is involved.
The question I really want answered is this: where and when did we lose our say over the subsidiary three branches of government, inasmuch as one branch is delegating its duties to another and that other is packing the courts with its cronies?
Each of the three presidential candidates belongs to the elite groups. Mr. Brzezinski advises Senator Barack Obama. Henry Kissinger advises Senator John McCain. Hillary Clinton is advised by Madeleine Albright and Brent Scowcroft, an associate of Kissinger. These people are behind the manipulation of the People of the United State of America. The primary groups are the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Affairs (both American), and, the Bilderberg group (international). Since we are not part of their process, we are simply pawns to convince in an unending year of political "news."
All of the above groups believe we must run the Eurasian area to our advantage with arms, warlords, and political manipulations, or war itself. "What's good for the U.S. is good for the world! And that 'world,' 'according to the rules of Anglo-American discourse,' Noam Chomsky observes, is limited to 'the political class in Washington and London (and whoever happens to agree with them on specific matters)' ('The Most-Wanted List')." (3)
For the past eight years, little or no attention has been paid to us here. Our infrastructure is failing; the Congress does not provide funds for anything except the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the hope for war in Iran. The entire attention span of the country moved to the Middle East. It remains there and in more than 700 military bases around the Eurasian area. The embassy in Iraq is poised to dominate by protecting our overseers there. Since over here is too far away for control, the "center" of our country has moved to Iraq. We have damaged that country in order to rebuild it to our satisfaction considering the amounts of tax dollars from here being shoveled over there.
Short trips or homes in Dubai for the elites are being built right now. Halliburton has moved there already. No doubt, the vice president will move there when the possibility of impeachment grows too strong here. Imagine global weapons manufacturers without any loyalty to this country except the money printing press at the Federal Reserve. Our taxes are not being spent for our needs anymore because we are no longer the center of their universe. We have diverted our attention to a consuming individualism at total odds with our natures, our needs, and our children's futures.
If we reorganized and took back our country, we would find out how poor we are now that most of our wealth has been moved elsewhere, along with our jobs. But, our inventive people are still here and not all of them are old. If we cared, we could restate our Preamble and our Constitution and begin without them before they sell us out as a conglomerate of Canada, Mexico, and a carved-up continent without any use to any of us.
Are there new Founders available? You see, the chessboard is in Eurasia; and, we are consigned to a puny status of unimportance in the world to be impoverished, neglected, and, finally, forgotten, buried. Our first duty might be to declare the current government and its corporate elites "emigrant aliens" and send the whole lot to Iraq early rather than later. It's just a thought because I feel betrayed by persons who have succumbed to godhood over us, instead of doing decent jobs for which we elected them.
The government is a wholly owned subsidiary of the People, not vice versa. If it isn't, then it's not America anymore. The rules the original Founders created have been broken. My life was not given to me to be anyone's pawn. Neither was yours. To whom and when did you agree to be moved about at will by a petty satrap playing a game with living people, such as you and me? What does citizenship mean now? Anything? Or, is it still our birthright?
Notes
2. http://carolynbaker.net/ (back)
3. Lenore Jean Daniels, Ph.D., BlackCommentator.com, Editorial Board member, 3/13/08 (back)
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