American President Joe Biden isn’t as stupid as many portray him to be, after all. Instead of going to Burgenstock in Switzerland to take part in Ukrainian clown-President Volodymyr Zelensky’s sham “peace summit,” he went to the G7 summit at Borgo Egnazia in Italy.
The crowd in Switzerland included such notables like the International Boxing Association, the minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme of Australia, and the minister of Correctional Services from New Zealand. It issued two statements, and not everybody would sign them, and there were several cases where people would add their John Henrys on the dotted line only to withdraw it on second thought.
It couldn’t have been much different. Negotiating a peace settlement to a military conflict under the absolute pre-condition that the winning side wouldn’t be allowed within shooting distance of the talks shows the entire setup is a charade to fool the innocent. It does not guarantee more than a lot of hot steam and empty nonsense emanating from the gathering that is getting closer to being irrelevant with every passing day.
No wonder then that the opening banquet was described as the real highlight of the Burgenstock gathering.
Little wonder, either, that peace treaties of the past have been replaced by something called “peace processes,” and that it would become an industry in and of itself.
The G7 summit has a different ring to it. Heads of states and governments and other such buffoons make sure they are not only in attendance but also close to the centre of attention in a family photo taken as the gathering is about to close. What they do is issue a set of proclamations and declarations about as empty as a dictionary of clichés.
Gathering of losers
Alas, this time around, the G7 summit looked more like a gathering of losers.
The European leaders flew in still licking their wounds from the very recent European parliamentary elections. Most of them represent the status-quo to their citizens, and the voters told them in no uncertain means they have serious issues with it.
In fact, it may very well happen that, come next G7 summit, we’ll be seeing a very different set of puffed-up clowns in the ring in Canada’s Kananaskis, close to the Rocky Mountains in Alberta, just west of Calgary.
The U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, and France are permanent members of the club, with the European Union joining them in Italy and with the Pope Francis I making an appearance, nobody but himself knows why.
Indeed: His Holiness, a Catholic who has no problems with being insupportably flexible about his church’s dogma, used a rather derogatory expression describing the modern gender boom. That shocked many around him. They would leak the story to Italian media within seconds, and the Rome Pride Parade had a field day.
The only strange twist: the G7 leaders all support the LBGT+ movement, no matter what their bosses (their citizens) think of the matter. Thus Pope Francis’s visit has become a bit of a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
Still, at least, the G7 crowd represented (officially, that is) existing nations, with powers vested (more or less) by their respective electorates.
Whom do the broken-nose fellows represent other than their International Boxing Association (IBA for short)? Here’s their raison d’être: they exist to sanction amateur boxing matches and award world and subordinate championship events.
But, so far as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is concerned, they exist no longer: the pugilists were stripped of their Olympian standing about a year ago. The IOC said that the IBA failed to complete (caution: diplomatese follows) reforms on governance, finance and ethical issues.
The vote went 69 to one, as close to unanimous as a vote can get.
The IBA called the ruling “a tremendous error,” trying have it blocked through an urgent appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, sport’s highest court, but that August body would have none of that.
The IBA tried to be a great politically correct citizen. It had a major sponsorship deal in place with Russia’s major oil and gas corporation, Gazprom, which it dropped like the proverbial hot potato as soon as Russian military crossed the border to enter Ukraine.
The fact that Russian businessman Umar Kremlev chairs the IBA and wouldn’t resign in shame didn’t help matters much, either.
A strange sequence of events, in any case: here’s an international sporting body that enthusiastically subscribes to Zelensky’s objectives, enough for the Burgenstock gathering to embrace them with passion, only to be kicked out from this world’s top sports gathering for not doing enough.
Summit of conceited swollen heads
Compared to the lightweights who had gathered in Switzerland to promote the so-called Zelensky’s peace plan, the G7 summit brings together relative heavyweights, if in their own eyes only.
That neither of the two gatherings, no matter how highly praised by some, are in no position to solve what ails our planet seems to have escaped most of their participants’ attention.
Some of the Swiss gathering’s delegates reminded Zelensky and his Western puppet-masters that their plan had backfired. How? The president of Kenya mentioned that appropriating Russian assets the way the West plans to is illegal. The East Timor prime minister of East Timor accused the West (and Ukraine) of hypocrisy.
Here’s the major issue: becoming buddy-buddy with the U.S. no longer guarantees support from the mightiest. The U.S. current administration itself took care of making sure that their country is no longer the power it used to be. In the fast-communication world of today, videos of the current White House incumbent’s embarrassing gaffes go viral within seconds, and they are no right-wing deep-fakes, as his press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre likes to call them.
These embarrassing video clips are but a symbol that the U.S. isn’t what it used to be. That its president decided to join a stronger social get-together than the swindle that took place in Switzerland and went to be among a more meaningful crowd in Italy shows that either he or his helpers haven’t lost all their marbles yet.
That they lost the war they had imposed on Russia and are planning to continue it till the last Ukrainian is one thing. By going to Borgo Egnazia instead of Burgenstock they showed that they have realised that not all public relations tricks are worth the same.
As progress it’s modest, but let’s be thankful for that, at least.
Questions, questions, questions ... 
Leave a comment