WHILE TRUMP WAS IN RIYADH DANCING AND SELLING ARMS, THIS WAS HAPPENING ...
Normally I do not use or go to this source, but in this case I make an exception, since it highlights the fundamental problem with the US Empire's foreign policy: it is ossified, and completely backward looking. Indeed, by tying it to a regressive and backward looking country like Suadi Arabia, Mr. Trump may have committed a strategic error that will affect Americans, Saudis, and for that matter, Arabs elsewhere, for generations to come. My thoughts about the implications of his trip, and the ambiguous long term rationale behind it, were expressed, albeit somewhat clumsily, in last Thursday's News and Views from the Nefarium.
This piece, however, which was shared by Mr. H.B., highlights the problem: while Mr. Trump was dancing with a few backward Saudi tribesmen, Mr. Xi was hosting a large gathering of nations in Beijing to expand the economic cooperation of the BRICSA bloc, and to work out details of building out China's New Silk Road project:
Note, the following:
Even countries that are cool on the Chinese initiative, including India and Japan, sent representatives to the summit that carried a bit more clout than the pathetic representation of the United States, Matt Pottinger, a little-known special assistant to Trump and the senior director for East Asia of National Security Council. In fact, the only reason Trump sent anyone to represent the United States at the Beijing gathering was because of a special request made by President Xi during his recent meeting with Trump at the president’s private Mar-a-Lago Club resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
South Korea, which saw relations with China sour over America’s placement of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system in South Korea, sent a delegation to Beijing after a phone call between South Korea’s new liberal president, Moon Jae-in, and President Xi. Moon responded to the phone call by sending a delegation led by his Democratic Party’s veteran legislator to Beijing.
Even North Korea, which rankled South Korea, Japan, and the United States by firing a ballistic missile into waters near Russia, sent a delegation to the Beijing meeting headed by Kim Yong Jae, the North’s Minister of External Economic Relations. The Trump administration, which sent a virtual unknown to Beijing, complained loudly about North Korea’s representation at the Silk Road summit. But Washington’s complaint was conveyed by someone as unknown as Mr. Pottinger, Anna Richey-Allen, a low-level spokesperson for the U.S. State Department’s East Asia Bureau. The reason why the United States is being spoken for by middle-grade bureaucrats is that the nation that still believes it is the world’s only remaining «superpower» is now governed by an administration rife with top-level vacancies, inter-agency squabbling, and amateur league players.
Yes, that's right: Japan, India, North and South Korea, all sent high level delegations.
So did eastern Europe:
These EU member state leaders included Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, Czech President Milos Zeman, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Moreover, had British Prime Minister Theresa May not been in the middle of a general election campaign, she would have been in Beijing. Nevertheless, she sent British Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond in her place.
As did the following institutions and other countries:
The United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, was there, along with the President of the World Bank Jim Yong Kim and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde. Also present in Beijing were the presidents of Turkey, Philippines, Argentina, Chile, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Switzerland, Kenya, Uzbekistan, and Laos, as well as the prime ministers of Vietnam, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Serbia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Fiji, Ethiopia, Cambodia, and Myanmar.
Ministerial delegations from Afghanistan, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, Finland, Iran, Kuwait, Lebanon, Maldives, Romania, Nepal, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Uganda, and the United Arab Emirates were at the Beijing summit. Japan was represented by the senior adviser to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Secretary General of the Liberal Democratic Party, Toshihiro Nikai. France, which was experiencing a change of presidents, sent former Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin.
The Silk Road initiative has projects planned in all the nations whose governments were represented in Beijing, except for the United States and Israel. In addition to the nations represented by their government heads of state and ministers, Silk Road agreements were signed between China and Palestine, Georgia, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Tajikistan, Brunei, Croatia, and East Timor.
But, hey, according to former House Speaker Newt Gangrene...er... Gingrich, the USA can herald the new foreign policy triumph of Mr. Trump selling one hundred billion plus dollars to the (out)house of Saud as a major foreign policy shift and breakthrough.
Have we really lost our collective minds to this degree? Granted the regime of China leaves much much to be desired, as do the regimes of many of the countries represented in Beijing. But they are agreed, it seems - even the Japanese and North and South Koreans, heck, even the Saudis smelled the coffee and sent a delegation - on one thing, and that's getting something done that will benefit everyone, like building railroads and highways and so on.
While the USSA is selling arms, and the means to manufacture them.
I don't think for a moment that Mr. Xi is so naive to believe that all of these countries get along with each other, or don't have competing interests.Nor do I think Mr. Xi is so naive as to believe that a conference this large, with this many in attendance, will really accomplish anything, much less bring everyone together in a group hug and kumbaya moment. We've all been to those "required meetings". They do nothing but waste time, solve or settle little, and accomplish even less. But they do do one thing, and that is they simply get people talking about and thinking about certain things, and then, when enough of a critical mass of thought congeals, about doing and accomplishing them. That, it seems, is part of his - and China's - cultural and economic strategy: simply generate excitement about accomplishing something and getting it done. Already in the past few months we've seen the first freight train from China arrive in London, and return to China. Turn the clock back just ten years, and this would have been unthinkable. Now translate that into highways running from, say, Beijing to Berlin(dwarfing the Kaiser's old Berlin-to-Baghdad railway), and you get the idea.
Meanwhile, we're concerned about the peanuts of a mere one hundred billion of arms sales to the Saudis.
And that's the point: Mr. Xi is offering the world a vision. We may not like Mr. Xi. We may not even like (I certainly don't) Communism in any form, even the modern "benign" Chinese form(benign if one compares it to Mao, or Stalin). But Mr. Xi is offering a vision nonetheless. (Heck, being a [much out of practice] organist, I find it very interesting that China seems to be on a pipe-organ-building spree and the Chinese appear to be enjoying what, for them, is an [increasingly less] rare instrument. Translation: China is also trying to become a bridge or unifying culture.)
Now compare that to what the USSA is offering (which is what, exactly? Drones? Surveillance? Tanks? Bombs? bad refrigerators? shoddy computer software operating systems? pay for play bottomlessly corrupt politicians? pedophilia?) and you get the idea. We're fast becoming as irrelevant and unwanted as the Yugo, the latest in Serbo-Croatian technology.
See you on the flip side...
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America is long-overdue for a restructuring. When the USSR fell and fell-apart, the Cold War ended. Russia went through a long and traumatic restructuring, ending-up as a much-different nation than in 1990.
Similarly, America should have shrugged, looked-within, and started-about restructuring for a life without the Cold War. Instead, various ‘forces’ have kept America in a Cold War posture for another thirty years. While the world changed about it, the deep state forced America NOT to restructure. Now, the ossification is so bad, it will be painful when America is ‘forced’ by the rest of the world to look-around and see what IS, and not what WAS…
I think China studied Boeing. When a new project starts to materialize, Boeing always insists on being the “Systems Integrator.” It doesn’t matter if Boeing then sub-contracts-out 98% of the work to other firms. As long as they are Top Dog, they are happy. They are at the center of the web. President Xi seems to have taken that stance to heart. China will be at the center of the web. Other countries will essentially be sub-contractors, making their own ‘profits’. But China will be the “Systems Integrator” with the control and prestige that comes-along with the territory…
An interesting article here:
newyorker dot com/magazine/2016/10/24/the-failure-of-the-euro
“Jean Monnet, a Frenchman who had one of those extraordinary twentieth-century lives, not as an artist or a warrior or a leader or a mystic, but as that less celebrated but equally distinctive human type: the fixer. Monnet, who was born in 1888, spent his whole life in behind-the-scenes advocacy and deal-making, mainly in the sphere of international coöperation.
…
Europe as a whole needed the German economy to recover [from WWII], but everyone, especially the French, feared a recrudescence of German power. This was not an abstract issue: Germany required coal and steel, and France didn’t want it to have them. The resource heartlands in question were, as Monnet put it, ‘distributed unevenly but in complementary fashion over a triangular area artificially divided by historical frontiers.’ Wars had been fought over these resources for centuries.
Monnet’s idea was simple: the countries should share. If France and Germany pooled the production of coal and steel, two things would happen: the level of production would go up, because economies of scale would bring efficiency; and, more important, it would be impossible for the two countries to go to war. Neither country could get a jump on the other if their essential industries were inseparably interlinked.”
I wonder if President Xi is a ‘fixer’…
The word “goyim” has surfaced as a contemporary meme. Allegorically speaking, it seems to be explained, as “nations” coming out of the womb of a patriarch’s wife, the mother of Europe.
There are many theories about brotherly behavior between nations. Yet, the unifying respect towards common ancestry is the ultimate peacekeeper. False history is the father of all lies.
The 2002 BBC documentary “The Century of the Self” explains how Americans have been used as guinea pigs, to become slave consumers around a golden calf, against the rules of Exodus 20.
Requiem. It is a wake over the petrodollar the night before the funeral. The way forward is InterBering.
Christianity shows the way, the truth and the life. No one can access an analogue computer without a password. John 14:6
When a nation spends a majority of it treasure in gold & blood; somethings got to give. First went the gold in 1971. They pulled a Kissinger OPEC alchemical move and changed it to Black Gold through the Out House of Saud. They then stopped building an industrial based capitalism society and literally went for broke: financial capitalism. But, as Max Keiser id found of saying: W/O capital; There is no Capitalism.
So on the American Century’s road to destruction; along comes an Eurasian Silk Road to infrastructure road to prosperity for all. Not the privatized USA’s tool booth infrastructure’s road to austerity for a few at the expense of the 99%ers. Well, at least the USA has an outhouse now for every American instead of a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.
Now, lest we get excited that the world id moving to a better horizon. It’s more like an event horizon. For, though technology has its rewards; it also has its drawbacks. Don’t want these bots[and you all know how I simply adore the bots[in moderation, of course]. But, the down side is pretty …
damn steep.
tollbooth
Lately, I’ve been focusing on how these fascist transnational corporate bots have become integrated into our cherished bureaucracies. There doing this because democratic accountability is just too…
damn inefficient.
Now China, no doubt is definitely headed[robotic heads?] toward this autocratic bureaucracy in algorithmic spades. Now, when these automated infrastructures connect into a one world autocratic, bureaucratic, algorithmic order? Well, that’s a road to…
hell and back, my friends.
I would hate to think, that should this occur, the force field boundaries of our solar system would auto-initiate-bureaucratically and open that road…
the intergalactic-interstellar gates of hell.
insert tooth
after road
for a better bite.
[above for moderated bots]
What did you expect ????? from the wombats in Washington………eh…..sound thinking perhaps !
It might be that this is an isolationist hiatus on the part of the United States or simply a retreat to the Western Hemisphere. There are many authors and commentators who, while not endorsing Trump, have also made calls for the withdrawal of the United States from the international limelight.
thethehistorian.com
It might be that the United States is simply not up to the task of marshalling the international order anymore and the baton will pass to a consortium of nations willing to manage some kind of workable geopolitical compact.
As Lyndon LaRouche has noted, The New Silk Road and “One Belt” initiatives, spell the end of “Globalism” as we know it, for what we have is an end to the “Great Game” of the British Empire, through this strategic plan that makes war between nation’s unnecessary as mutual development fostered through the opportunity.
Why LaRouche? Because he and his wife, Helga, whom the Chinese have called the “Silk Road Lady” are most responsible for reviving this strategic idea now coming into fruition.
Before one speaks of Trump in this regard, one must first understand that Obama rejected President Xi’s offer, as the houseboy of the British Empire he is…. One must also understand that this whole attack upon Trump, per Russia, etc, is precisely aimed at preventing the real “Deal” from being made.
The issue is that it is not over. Trump can still make the deal and should be encouraged in this direction, despite dumb deals with the Saudi’s and the suicidal intransigence of the Israeli’s, the train has not left the station.
Pretty crazy considering that during his campaign, Trump actually accused the Saudi government of 911 and said that when he got elected he was going to expose them for it.
110 billion in arms sales to the government that he accused of 911? We’re going to form a new Arab NATO with the government that Trump accused of 911?
He said that they were funding the terrorists.
He called them a money machine and said that they never pay us back, and then they fund terrorism, and go and do 911 to us.
So give them 110 billion in arms, do a sword dance with them, and ask them if they would like to head up NATO 2, after he said that they did 911?
It really gets to the point where it’s all so stupid, you don’t even know how to respond to it anymore.
Voltairenet.org
The Pentagon is following through on arms agreements that Obama made with Jihadists
http://www.voltairenet.org/article196518.html
I t’s ironic given a the beginning of the USSA Barbary Pirates War had some diplomat who knew of Arabic culture and the area of conflict. Now it’s the ignorance is strength crowd that rules the roost in the corridors of power in the emerald city all bow down to the great all powerful wizards of OZ.
Agreed. Money talks. Xi has to create 25,000,000 new jobs a year. He would be happy to build the highway; eighteen lane preferably.
Memo from the Whitehouse to the Silk Road gathering:
The US is fully committed to the Greater Israel Project at this time and can not be a participant in the Silk Road Project. We look forward to spoiling your little Eurasian development scheme sometime in the future.
Truth be told, the USA is fully invested in the Kali Yuga while the rest of the world is trying to embrace the onsetting Dwpara Yuga. Guess who wins? Time stops for no one… not even DARPA scientists, as hard as they try.
I seriously doubt the $110 billion from the Saudis adds up to the revenue lost from Iran sanctions/blackballing. Thank you Greater Israel Project.
The irony is that the northern Asian countries like China will probably be what saves the fruits of western civilization– classical music, the pipe organs,etc. while the western world continues to pursue the multicultural experiment with its emphasis on bodily waste and waist level sense gratification, while always steering clear of thoughts of the Divine and avoidance of the lofty thoughts which blossom in the head and heart.
The Trumpkinhead thinks his betrothed is satisfied with a solid gold grand piano. Xi knows to give his wife an upright organ. The difference between a materially generous man, and a wise man, is as far as the West is from the East.
I think the US has a very exportable commodity — the ability to wreak havoc and lay waste to their sorry little country in a long slow parasitic bleed of a “limited conflict” often lasting decades, or paying tribute via “alliances” to forestall that end.
Works like a charm so far; for example, pretty much the whole Middle East has bought into it, one way or another. Whether it’s a growth industry remains to be seen; I doubt not, ultimately.
Now this one is brilliant! Thank you, Dr. Farrell.
Luckily Mrs. May did NOT send Boris Johnson…
This is what happens when you back the wrong horse. The cancer that is eating this nation originates in a recently formed nation of imposters.
Oh dear, you spit on that little Yugo car.
I kid you not but for some, it is a collector item.
Well, it still tops the Trabant, also a collector item.
Can you imagine Chanselorin A Merkel in such a tiny Trabant!?
Yes, she and the entire set of EU commissioners could pop out of it one after another, all of them wearing big shoes, white face and clown noses.
I bought a trabant for $50 not long after the Berlin wall came down. I did a tour of the eastern bloc with it then left it on a street in Budapest. Fond memories. A fun little car.
Eats cake whilst bombing, dances with the natives whilst selling them WMD, is there any doubt anymore that Trump isnt anything more than Kissinger’s hand puppet..?
They might have asked him not to go, so he didnt push through to the front.. It might pass for european countries, but the asians would have gutted him for his lack of respect and etiquette..
I’ve thought the US was dying for some years now. It’s the flailing about, the bombings, the massive loss of human life and destruction of their countries while they fight for their unipolar dream that terrifies me.
And interestingly, I heard that when Rome was dying they were discussing whether angels were male or female (on the Greg Hunter show ),. We have decided to be more earthly minded and discuss the many genders it appears we have.
Will we ever learn?
America will officially be dead when African-American college students are allowed campus culture zones where they are allowed to chop up beneficiaries of white privilege with machetes and eat them. When they run out of liberal college professors to eat, they can start eating pretty blonde-haired girls, who may or may not offer themselves up for sacrifice willingly (depending on their level of cultural marxist indoctrination). When these girls run out, snowflake safe spaces can be raided for food and sacrifice victims. Now there is a place where you can be certain no one will fight back when an entitled mob comes to get them.