i believe it’s god’s job to sit in judgment—my job is to defend america (12. 466)

Just returned from his first major foreign trip of his second term, treated with with imperial pomp and lavishing in the Regional Car Dealership Rococo lifestyle and gold-plate decor that he so admires, Trump’s agenda of deal-making—though overshadowed by a luxury jet offered by Qatar to replace Air Force One—was revealing about his priorities and “none of our business approach” to foreign policy. In parallel to multi-million dollar contracts favourable to American business interests secured without any of the bothersome talks of human rights issues, democracy, transparency, press freedoms or regional diplomacy—no mention of the suppression of dissent, sportswashing, the war in Gaza or even recent past postures to his hosts on supporting terrorist groups, Trump’s team of negotiators have been fronting at least the appearance of frenetic negotiations that included a ceasefire with the Houthis, lifting sanctions on Syria and renegotiating a nuclear deal with Iran, although the Persian Gulf will henceforth be known as the Arabian Gulf.  This collusion of contrasting, contradictory events, capitalism to paper over conflicts, may be coincidental and incidental to the administration’s penchant for flooding the zone but is very telling of what Trump wants and how he might be played.

i mean, i could be a stupid person saying—no, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane (12. 455)

Never a fan of Air Force One and bemoaning the delay that defence contractors like Boeing have presented since commissioning a new presidential fleet during his first term, Trump’s first major foreign trip, an itinerary that returns to the Persian Gulf—which America re-flags as the Arabian, retracing the agenda of his first-term, rife with business deals is overshadowed by coverage that the Qatari royals have offered Trump a deluxe airplane. An uncontested violation of the emoluments clause of the US constitution, Trump says that they four-hundred million dollar flying palace would be registered as a gift to the military—tasked with outfitting the aircraft up to standard, never mind the cost of these security upgrades or symbolism associated—and then donated to his Presidential Library and not for personal use after his presidency. Prompting assurances to the press that the president was unconcerned about what Qatar might ask for in return, Democrat lawmakers are threatening an embargo on any country that might further enrich the Trump family through their largess.

wort des jahres (10. 374)

The Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache in Wiesbaden (previously) has announced its Word of the Year for 2022, Zeitenwende—the end of an era and the beginning of a new one, for among other things real and feared declines in German leadership and influence economically, in industry, armaments and Fußball and for the return to war in Europe, and other terms and neologisms in the running. Rounding out the top ten were: Krieg um Frieden—war for peace, Gaspreisbremse—price controls for utilities, Inflations-schmerz—inflation pains, Klimakleber—for the Last Generation protesters glueing themselves to artwork, Doppel-Wumms—a double-boon for the electro-auto tax credit in the US “Inflation Reduction Act” that skews heavily in favour of American manufacturing at the expense of other markets, neue Normalität, das 9-Euro-Ticket, Glühwein-WM—for the fact that the Qatari World Cup wasn’t held in July but rather during Weihnachtszeit, and lastly Waschlappentipps—that is, government-issued suggestions on energy conservation in the shower.

drawbridge

Emboldened by geopolitics elsewhere, Saudi Arabia, we learn via Super Punch, is entertaining bids to terraform its escalating, long-standing tensions with neighbouring Qatar (previously) by turning the peninsula the country occupies into an island in the Gulf of Bahrain. The Saudi government plans to dig a two hundred metre wide moat along its sixty kilometre border, at an estimated cost of three-quarters of a billion dollars.

over a barrel

Arguably emboldened by Dear Leader’s strange and strained whistle-stop tour of the centres of faith of the Abrahamic religions that unanimously positioned US policy and patronage squarely behind regimes that he didn’t come to lecture—code for not wanting to address the hypocrisies of diplomacy based solely on business interest and drag down negotiations with more rarefied talk, Saudi Arabia led others in the region in suspending relations and closing borders with Qatar.
The top US diplomat and former swaggering oil-man himself, despite the fact Qatar is host to the largest US military installation in the Middle East, assesses that this action will have little to no impact on the global war on terror. Tensions already existed between the Saudis and the Qataris over their allegiance with rebellious elements and Iran, whose oil reserves are seen as a match for the kingdom’s, but the timing seems pretty suspect after Dear Leader stomped all over a sectarian hornets’ nest—praising those Sunni majority nations willing to be franchisees of his brand and condemning Shi’a countries, though most perpetrators of terror to include the Cosplay Caliphate have had Saudi associations and have been of the Sunni persuasion—and the simultaneous decision to sell stock to Western investors in the kingdom’s national oil-drilling operation for the first time. Though Dear Leader’s attempt to discredit the world’s commitment to not destroy itself is a fitting failure, one wonders if that too wasn’t decided in concert somehow—in his mind only, as conspirators are not dolts, with a bit of insider-knowledge, which has now been elevated to a crime against humanity.