Mereja.Forum

[Zmeselo]

[Temt]

Yes, gave a middle finger all right. But it would "calcia il culo" if they could.

[Za-Ilmaknun]

"the day the USA loses control of the strategically critical Red Sea/Baab Al Mandeb marks the beginning of the end of Pax Americana’s dominance of the world. With this blunder against Ethiopia, the USA has shot itself in the foot, leaving itself increasingly weakened and no longer viewed by the people of Africa as an omnipotent force that can do what it pleases.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/12/10 ... s-of-iran/

[Zmeselo]

Statement by H.E. Osman Saleh at the 8th Ministerial Conference of FOCAC

https://shabait.com/2021/12/01/statemen ... -of-focac/

GENERAL

Dec 1, 2021



Your Excellency Aisata Tall Sall, Foreign Minister of Senegal and Chair of this Conference;

Your Excellency Wang Yi, State Councilor of the PRC and co-chair of this Conference;

Your Excellencies Heads of Delegation and Honorable Ministers

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Allow me first to join previous speakers to express the profound appreciation of my delegation to the Governments of Senegal and China, for organizing the 8th FOCAC Ministerial Conference and for the warm hospitality accorded to us.

This Conference could not have taken place at a more auspicious time. In these turbulent times, our global community continues to be afflicted by a vicious pandemic, climate change and a polarized international order fraught with dangerous consequences to global peace and stability. These colossal challenges, require joint efforts. We need to consolidate robust frameworks of international cooperation, as embodied in FOCAC and similar regional/international frameworks.

In this respect, let me focus and highlight two aspects from the speech of the Rapporteur of the East Africa Region.



My first comment is on the imperative of common endeavours and aligned Africa-China positions within the UN family, on international and regional issues of paramount importance. This is critical at this point in time to counter a regressive trend by powers who cannot countenance the reality of a more balanced, mutually beneficial, multi-polar international order.

In this lopsided worldview, Africa is seen as a mere pawn. It is seen as a captive backyard, without any right or latitude to interact with its international partners to advance common interests. As a result, accepted norms and rules of international law continue to be trampled, and, flagrant breaches of the sovereignty of nations and peoples committed with impunity. Indeed, the positions taken by certain powers in the conflict in Ethiopia and the imposition of unilateral sanctions on Eritrea, are manifestation of this misguided approach. In the event, Africa and China can work together to ensure the integrity of international law. The task includes bolstering the role and mandate of the UN, and, the strengthening of multilateralism based on legality and symmetry.



The second comment I wish to make is in regard to sustainability and proper balance of Africa-China trade. China’s multi-faceted support to Africa, remains substantial and commendable. But as we shift towards greater two-way trade in the period ahead, optimal trade balance both at the continental and individual country level will be achieved when and if Chinese investment enhances value addition in Africa. This will require China’s involvement not only in the primary, but also in the secondary and tertiary levels of manufacturing. Africa has invested substantially in its human capital, in the past decades. As a result, its young and dynamic labor force has the latent potential, vision, and ambition to venture into the high-end manufacturing subsector.

I thank you!

[Naga Tuma]

I find the statement by the Chinese Foreign Minister, Mr. Wang Yi, that "democracy is not Coca-Cola where the US produces the original syrup and the whole world has one flavour" hilarious. It came across as saying the American brand of democracy doesn't befit the rising China, which is now competing with the former.

I am not a soda consumer but I would happily read about democracy even if it can come in different flavors.

I am no one to lecture a Chinese foreign minister about anything. I don't know if I can see political fireworks the moment I walk into a room.

However, based on my limited reading about democracy, even though Coca-Cola may be an original US product, I do not think that democracy is organic and original to the US.

Its founders were the students of European history who borrowed the idea of democracy from ancient Greece's Classical Civilization, declared independence from the British monarchy while keeping in the constitution that they wrote some of its relics that befit them, and devised checks and balances through three branches of government in order to keep the Roman Ceasars at bay. If there is any grain of truth in this reading, this is a cocktail of a social experiment that has gone through 25 or so amendments in less than two and a half centuries and evidently imploded on January 6, 2021.

Two and a half centuries is a very small fraction of the long history of China, right?

I posit that if democracy were organic and original to the US, its implosion of January 6, 2021, would not have happened. My intuition suggests that the resume of Mark Meadows alone supports this position. He was a cross-over from the legislative branch to the executive branch. His service in the former branch was much longer compared to that in the latter.

Did he have an organic and original intuitive reaction to the attack on the legislative branch, his former Homebase, on January 6, 2021? Obviously, he did not. An intuitive organic and original reaction would have dictated that he would either go out and condemn it at a moment's notice of seeing the riot or come out to quit his job in protest against the riot. That is one sample, which is quite telling in and of itself.

Second, did Mitch McConnell, as one of the top leaders of his party, go out and condemn it at a moment's notice of seeing the riot? I haven't heard it.

So, while not disagreeing in principle with the Chinese Foreign Minister that democracy is not what the US produces and tries to serve the rest of the world, I do not think that it is an original product of the U.S. Maybe now is about time when we all need to rewatch Harrison Ford's movies of treasure hunting from around the world and see which of their treasures are in the mix of the democracy branded in the U.S. as its original product.

In the meantime, I would imagine that a future reflection by people like Congresswoman Liz Cheney's effort to maintain a democratic order would be born as organic, if not original.