Kermit Heartsong - Ukraine - ZBIG's Grand Chess Board & How The West Was Checkmated

Or more simply put, change is inevitable, constant, and part of the natural process of life. Rigid models and ideas are like stagnant, fetid pools of evaporating water. They are not long for the world.

Zbigniew Brzeziński’s Grand Chessboard is a stagnant, fetid pool, a scheme frozen in a time and place that no longer exists. Further, it has brought about that which the West has sought to deter with ungodly sums of treasure, countless lives, incessant geopolitical subterfuge, abject hypocrisy, and a universe of lies. And the zealots who now adhere to and execute its precepts are themselves incapable of grasping the horrors that their beliefs, convictions, and ignominious acts call forward.

How do empires fall? How do their fanatical high priests and priestesses exit the stage? Do they exit the stage gracefully, perhaps, as an athlete who knows that his/her time has come? Or do they thrash about causing inconceivable levels of destruction, suffering, and death (bordering on genocide) as they seek to remain imperial?

The US empire, less than three quarters of a century old, with its steroid-fed successor, US hyper-empire, a little more than two decades old, falters on all fronts. Most certainly, the idea of the US having genuine leaders who are principled, courageous, peaceable, pragmatic, and inclusive is the true conspiracy theory of our time, as no such creature now exists.

It appears that the “1 percent” has had quite the hand in fashioning this conspiracy theory — serial assassinations, some quite public, along with a host of other devices that have shorn genuine leaders and potential leaders from any and all positions of leadership.

On the other hand, ungodly amounts of fiat currency that have been dispensed for instigating indentured political servitude, morality-cleanses, and de facto thought control have brought about another creature altogether — the sociopath as political whore, bereft of intellect, integrity, morality, and above all, common sense.

As Peter Dale Scott, former diplomat, Berkeley Professor and author, suggests, there is an “Invisible Empire” that is the true power behind the government, which controls a large measure of the world’s resources, its “leaders” and its capital.

President Eisenhower alluded to the culprit, “The Military-Industrial Complex,” though he was advised to extract the “congressional” component from his speech. Perhaps, banking oligarchs were also extracted, with the historical record scrubbed clean of this reference altogether.

No doubt, one of the first things that signals the end of an empire is the complete absence of true leaders, the rise to power of the sociopath as “leader” and a congregation of “yes people” who steadily nod their heads, answer the call, and shout down non-believers while happily imbibing the poison-laced imperial Kool-Aid.

Imperial Wars & Planned Chaos — TILT!

The ability of the US to continually engage in de facto wars of imperial conquest, asset stripping/looting, and the purposeful creations of planned chaos is and has been underpinned by the dollar’s status as reserve currency. Should that status be disrupted via an alternative currency (ruble, Yuan, or a basket thereof), which is now being aggressively implemented by Russia and China, the gargantuan red chickens of US financial insolvency, estimated at $220 trillion (Lawler 2012), will come home to roost. And non-stop Qualitative Easing (printing money hand over fist) will no longer delay the inevitable — economic collapse.

The attendant consequences will, of course, be the metaphorical shot to the head of the various Western zombie banks, complete Western economic implosion, internal chaos, and a tragic though powerful awakening of the Western masses, long somnambulant via the narcotics of debt-consumerism, entertainment/media programming, hard drugs (legal and illegal), and lies. Perhaps this is one reason US Homeland Security has purchased millions of the illegal Dum-dum bullets (they expand and make big holes in human bodies) and why Posse Commitatus, along with the Bill of Rights, have been suspended or virtually suspended respectively.

If one were to envision an optimistic scenario as a result of Western implosions — the wars, launched by the West, the serial aggression, destabilizations, and resulting chaos — what would it be? It would be a multipolar world with a constructive approach to international relations, a win-win approach to trade, a respect for all life, and different approaches to living on this planet.

Pessimistically, however, should the US not wish to embrace the realization of its status as a zombie financial empire and thus seek to go out with guns blazing…

World War III

In desperation, dysfunctional Western capitalism is lashing out recklessly and irrationally, unwilling and unable to preclude the disastrous consequences of its myopic policies. And one possible consequence of current US/NATO policies is thermonuclear war.

— Carla Stea, “Pardon Us For Our Country’s Existence in the Middle of Your Military Bases,” Global Research 2014

I recall playing chess with a college friend, whom I had managed to checkmate over the course of several successive games. While moving towards victory in yet another game, my friend, unwilling to take another loss, upset the chessboard. Chess pieces went flying in all directions, as though a bomb had gone off in the middle of the chessboard. It appears that we may all face a similar situation.

As the West stands checkmated on their decades-long Grand Chessboard pilgrimage, with all semblance of intelligence, realpolitik, morality, diplomacy, and sanity in Western Capitals long extinct, will the West upset the chessboard? Will the West do so by titling it towards a nuclear confrontation with Russia and its new best friend for life and strategic partner China?

As Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies Stephen Cohen explains regarding the possibilities of a thermonuclear war between the US and Russia:

If the civil war in Ukraine begins again, the military aspect. If the cease fire fails. If Kiev attacks the Donbass again. If Russia feels the need to help the Donbass again militarily, it is being discussed in NATO, the possibility of NATO forces entering Western Ukraine. Now what would that mean? You would have the American led NATO forces in Western Ukraine, whether on the ground or in the air, it doesn’t matter. Russian forces in the air or on the ground and that would be a modern version of the Cuban Missile Crisis. (Cohen 2014)

During the Cuban Missile Crisis the world stood on the knife edge of thermonuclear war, but then there were leaders who understood the consequences and undertook diplomatic initiatives: realpolitik. They clearly understood that speaking to their adversary was critical in order to negotiate a cessation of hostilities. In contrast, today, presidents, prime ministers, and secretaries of state pout, demean, and continually undermine their supposed adversaries with slurs, ad hominem attacks, and marketing slogans straight from Madison Avenue—“He’s the devil, he’s Hitler, we don’t negotiate with the enemy, terrorists, people we don’t like.”

Professor Cohen laments that an open discussion with opposing points of view is entirely absent from debate in today’s US, while the mainstream US media happily toes the line.

There is no debate of public opposition in this country about this, unlike the situation 20—5 years ago, when we had real debates and public fights,” he said. “I don’t know if they [the mainstream media — [RT] know the truth and therefore are not telling the truth, or that they are just caught up in the myths that had been attached to Russia since the end of the Soviet Union. (Cohen 2014)

Where, indeed, are the voices of reason, sanity, and realpolitik? In light of an AWOL White House and a compliant/subservient media, they are nowhere to be found. And then, of course there is the US Congress and their latest bout of demonstrable insanity, Russian Aggression Prevention Act (RAPA), which states: