Back
to the two blocs, the question today is which one represents humankind and
which one walks in tandem with our hearts and minds...
If
we can take a board game as an analogy of the current geo-political setting,
what will we see? We will find two players sitting on opposite sides of the
board, "partners" only insofar as they are both playing the game. In
front of them, there is a large board with squares and plastic counters but no
dice, only two sets of situation cards in front of each player, one entitled
ATTACK and the other, DEFENSE. Covering the squares is a map showing
geo-political regions: Americas, divided into North, Central and South; Arctic,
Antarctic, Europe and Scandinavia; Middle East; Africa, divided into North,
Central and South; Oceania, Asia, divided into Central, South-East and Far East
and at the top, one word: Russia. One player sits to the left of the Americas,
facing eastwards, the other sits to the right of Asia, Far East, facing
westwards.
The
"Western" player uses black pieces, the "Eastern" one uses
white. There are white counters covering Russia, Asia: Far East, Asia: Central,
part of Asia: South-East, one or two in Africa, and several in Americas: South,
one in Americas: Central. The black pieces are massed around Russia at
the top, in the middle and at the bottom, stacked in Europe and evenly placed
around the other regions.
By
observing the two players and analyzing their way of playing we can predict the
way the game will develop. Let us take a look.
One
of the players has not used the cards from the ATTACK pack, not even once. This
is the player sitting in the East; his "partner" or opponent, has
used three-quarters of his ATTACK pack and has a full pack of DEFENSE. Let us
take a look through the cards the "Western" player has used and see
the corresponding card played by his "partner", or opponent.
The
cards are divided into three colors: Red for ACTION, yellow for PLAN and green
for ADVANTAGE. The players take it in turns to lay their card face-up on the
board and move their counters accordingly, large size for ATTACK, small for
PLAN and medium for ADVANTAGE. The other player then picks up the corresponding
color cards from the pack of choice (DEFENSE is the logical choice in answer to
ATTACK) and can choose one of the several options displayed on the cards
selected.
The
current game has been played for almost exactly one hundred years and by
several generations. It started when the player representing RUSSIA dared to
create a political, economic and social system which went against the grain of
that practised by his opponent, namely exploitation, imperialism and slavery,
implementing a model which educated people, favored literacy and culture,
provided free education, healthcare, housing, public utilities such as fuel and
communications, public transportation, respect for the person, zero
unemployment, zero homelessness and safety on the streets. Understanding that
there is no profit where there is no exploitation, the "Western"
player used the cards marked "sabotage" many times, spending
trillions of dollars (represented by chips) on subversion, murder, terrorist attacks,
sabotage and economic confrontation, often choosing the
"Communications" card, spreading lies and mistruths about the other
side, so the Public Opinion statistic would swing in his favor. This was
represented by a figure on the back of each card with the title IMPACT, the
figure changing every decade as societal moods swung. ATTACK was sexy in the
1930s, much less so in the 2010s.
A
figure which created a shrug of the shoulders in the 1920s, for instance, was
the one associated with the use of chemical weapons, something which Winston
Churchill advocated with zero emotion, today having a major impact on public
mood and acceptability.
Now
let us take a look at the recent moves in the game, which more or less mirror
those made during the previous decades. We may start with the end of the 1990s
and examine the last two decades more closely. The Western player turned over
an ATTACK card, which said: PLAN Find an ally of your opponent. They chose
Serbia. PLAN: Start a process of subversion in the allied country. They armed and
financed the Albanian KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army). ACTION: Initiate terrorist
activity. ADVANTAGE: Launch a media campaign showing child victims, old ladies
crying, dead bodies with a warning "This programme is going to show images
of dead bodies" and use the buzz words "Human rights",
"dictator", "compound", "killing his own people",
"torture", "must be stopped", "has to go", using
the surname of the leader without a title. Then get the message across "We
have to intervene to save lives. We cannot just sit back and do nothing".
"Anything is better than nothing"..
Other
cards played and used in other theaters were, for instance, "Create a lie
that the leader was producing Weapons of Mass Destruction which imposed an
immediate threat to our country and allies"; "Blame the dictator for
9/11", "Use forged documents linking the dictator to yellowcake
uranium supplies"; "Show a vial of milk powder at the UN building in
New York", "Speak of magnificent foreign intelligence",
"Sex up a dossier copied and pasted from the Net from a decade ago",
"State that the leader is bombing his own people", "Get chemical
weapons into the country, give them to the terrorists then blame the
dictator". "Find a friendly nation nearby, for instance, Azerbaijan
and ferry the weapons in from Baku Airport".
For
a while things started looking rosy for the player representing the Western
side. However, the cards are limited in number and in scope. What really makes
things difficult for the IMPACT factor is a new phenomenon called the Social
Media, a real revolution in democracy of information, or data democracy, and
one which is impossible to control because for every action, there appear
several reactions.
Today
the game has reached the stage in which ACTION creates negative impact, PLAN is
viewed with suspicion and ADVANTAGE, spreading lies in the media, is taken for
what it is, Bullshit and everyone knows it.
The
recent PLAN and ACTION moves blaming Russia for a chemical weapons attack in
England and blaming Russian ally His Excellency President Bashar al-Assad of
Syria for a chemical weapons attack have been received with howls of derision
and ridicule in the social media, which immediately disproved golden rule
number one, the motive.
After
Iraq, the IMPACT factor for claims made by the Western side started to decline,
more steeply after Libya, arriving at the point when their claims equaled zero
points, then negative points, which is the case today. Without IMPACT, western
policymakers have lost the public opinion advantage which outside a
dictatorship, calls the shots. The Western player has a few more ATTACK cards
left and so will continue to tell lies, create false flag events and blame the
other side but with every move he makes, he digs his own grave deeper and the
history of the game, when written, will be merciless.
Without
a TRUMP card, because it has no place in this game in this day and age, the
Western player has lost his way because his obtuseness, arrogance and decadence
belong to the playing style of yesteryear.
Photo:
By Q. Pisano - https://www.flickr.com/photos/147202588@N02/38536727085/, CC
BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65166271
Timothy
Bancroft-Hinchey
Pravda.Ru
Twitter:
@TimothyBHinchey
timothy.hinchey@gmail.com
*Timothy
Bancroft-Hinchey has worked as a correspondent, journalist, deputy editor,
editor, chief editor, director, project manager, executive director, partner
and owner of printed and online daily, weekly, monthly and yearly publications,
TV stations and media groups printed, aired and distributed in Angola, Brazil,
Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal, Mozambique and São Tomé and
Principe Isles; the Russian Foreign Ministry publication Dialog and the Cuban
Foreign Ministry Official Publications. He has spent the last two decades in
humanitarian projects, connecting communities, working to document and catalog
disappearing languages, cultures, traditions, working to network with the LGBT
communities helping to set up shelters for abused or frightened victims and as
Media Partner with UN Women, working to foster the UN Women project to fight
against gender violence and to strive for an end to sexism, racism and
homophobia. A Vegan, he is also a Media Partner of Humane Society
International, fighting for animal rights. He is Director and Chief Editor of
the Portuguese version of Pravda.Ru.
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