Thanks to the SOTT team for introducing me to this author.
Below are a few notes I've kept while reading the book. Overall
it's great book if you want to understand the mess we are in today,
and it's written in an easy to understand way.
Below are a few notes I've kept while reading the book. Overall
it's great book if you want to understand the mess we are in today,
and it's written in an easy to understand way.
GG1 - Great Game I was the classical imperialism as described by Marx and
Lenin, with competing empires vying for territory and resources, the
professed goal being to bring the benefits of western civilization—
especially Christianity—to the ‘backward’ peoples. The real goal was:
“Which side can capture the most land/ colonies?”
As the main victor of GGI, Britain
pursued a divide-and-rule strategy in the Middle East aimed at creating
a string of weak, subservient Arab states and a European imperial
outpost in a region now vital to the Anglo-American empire.
GG2 - the
Cold War between imperialism and communism, where the US united
its former imperial rivals, Britain, Germany, France, et al to fight the
anti-empire forces, though this game did not take center stage till the
end of WWII.
The imperial strategy in GGII was to cover up the real age-old imperial
objectives with both liberal and anticommunist cant, and, taking this
logic a step further, to ‘create the problem, provide the solution’.
GGII was really two games: one directed against the Soviet
Union and its European socialist allies, and the other against the nations
struggling for independence from imperial control.
GG3 - The playing field, the geopolitical context, as in GGI, once again
includes both the Middle East and Central Asia, with the fiercest
battle once again in Afghanistan.
As in GGI, there is geopolitical rivalry, but now the rivalry is not
only between major powers, but within the imperial team itself,
between the US and Israel.
The US has been the main protagonist in GGIII, its main objective to
unite under its hegemony the Middle East and Central Asia—the
strategic Eurasian heartland, the fabled Silk Road, with its trade routes
and energy resources. To ensure this, it has carried out unprecedented
invasions, transformed NATO into its world military extension, and
moved to surround Russia, China and Iran to prevent them from
challenging US power there. This has been justified with an ideology
of terror-as-the-enemy, leading to the endgame of permanent war, a
strategy crafted over the past two decades by it and Israel, its other
‘half’, sometimes in tandem, sometimes in conflict.
At present, the enemy so necessary to justify the empire is
defined as Islamic terrorism.
Leaving aside the fact that the US itself
fostered this problem, its response—a war on terror—is not intended to
end terror (an impossibility) but to use it as justification for ‘reforming’
Islam in the process, occupying strategic areas of the Eurasian heartland,
both to ensure access to its resources, but also to pursue containment
of the real rivals for US world hegemony—China and Russia.
After the battle with Islam, the battle to cow Russia and China would be
the main task of the US in GGIII. The prototype now is to provoke a civil
war, as in the case of Yugoslavia, which was dismembered and
incorporated into the new world order, or in the case of Serbia,
Afghanistan and Iraq to use fabricated charges to justify invasion, with
dismemberment, a long term goal in each case.
The 2008 financial crisis precipitated by the US which devastated
Europe, and the weakening of the euro were also orchestrated to keep
Europe in line. Euro-dominoes are still falling as governments meekly
cave in to banker demands.
Israel -
Every time we do something, you tell me Americans will do this and
will do that. I want to tell you something very clear, don’t worry about
American pressure on Israel; we, the Jewish people control America,
and the Americans know it.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon(2001)
Despite the continuation of its special relationship with the US,
Israelis playing an increasingly independent role in GGIII around the
world, with its government, corporations and Kosher Nostra working
with whatever states and non-state actors are willing to condone its
deadly games, selling arms (for example, to China, Russia, India, Sri
Lanka), smuggling drugs (to Europe and the US), buying blood diamonds
(from Africa), conducting covert operations to subvert governments (for
example, in Syria, Iraq, Iran), assassinating opponents, forging passports,
spying and eavesdropping, harboring ‘Jewish’ fugitives, sometimes in
support of the US in its game strategies and objectives, sometimes not,
depending on its own interests. Its diaspora community and Chabad
network, found in virtually every corner of the globe, facilitate its game
plan, keeping ahead of US plans and technology through its American
sayanim, operatives, spies and powerful lobby.
Hostility and war are more than just a strategy for Israel, but
its raison d’etre, along with Lebensraum, the underlying goal of the
Zionists in GGII&III.
Thus Israel incites, abets and possibly even perpetrates terrorism
attributed to Muslim fanatics, and then sells the world drones, full-body scanners and operates security at dozens of world airports, both
protecting against and at the same time facilitating terrorism and
collective punishment, encouraging the use of ever more sophisticated
security technology, in a vicious circle.
Remarkably, Israel has achieved so far something Nazi Germany
tried and failed to achieve: to occupy other people’s lands on dubious
historical grounds, and as a heartland, to enforce itself as a regional
hegemon through military superiority.
The GGIII wars cost Israel nothing; on the contrary, its sales of
weapons have increased dramatically. But they have burdened
the US with huge expenditures and troop commitments while
putting the US at the center of the fighting. As the US destroys
itself through overreach, fighting Israel’s wars (in the case of
Afghanistan, a neocon war inspired by Israeli strategy), Israel,
like the US in GGI&II, is free to expand its relations around the
world.
The ability to mobilize world Jewry and use both the Israel
lobby and the suffering of Jews in WWII to extract surplus from the
center is just as remarkable as the ability of Israel to carry out a Middle
Eastern version of the Nazi agenda of Lebensraum while securing itself
a prominent place among the world’s nations.
...it cannot hope to subdue the world directly, but rather
primarily by shaping or subverting its host empire’s aims and strategies,
to achieve its geopolitical “place in the sun” both through its diaspora
and through its own use of statecraft and subversion, untroubled by
world reaction.
Very simply, Israel cannot develop itself as
regional economic hegemon until it negotiates a meaningful peace
with its neighbors. As this runs counter to the entire strategic planning
of Zionists from even before the creation of Israel, Israel is effectively
besieged and will remain so in the foreseeable future.
