Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Playing Chess in Eurasia

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Playing Chess in Eurasia

Click here to access article by Pepe Escobar from OpEd News.

This perceptive journalist and commentator has a unique style, a kind of detached cynicism laced with sardonic humor ("a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down"), in dealing with the complexities and the power plays of various elites across the world. He borrows Brzezinski's chess game metaphor (The Grand Chessboard) because that is the way ruling classes relate to the world. Other people such as John Bellamy Foster identify these events as “a dangerous new era of energy imperialism.”

The games of the ruling classes often result in disasters for us in the form of wars, holocausts, oppression, exploitation, etc. As long as we, the people, tolerate ruling classes, we will continue to "suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" and will continue to be mere pawns in their dangerous games. This current potentially catastrophic chess game is centered on the energy resources in Eurasia where so many moves and counter-moves are being made by the elites.