"Putin’s overcoat: An act of chivalry toward China’s first lady" by William Wan | Washington Post November 12, 2014
BEIJING — In the race for manliest world leader, Vladmir Putin has been leaving all others in the dust for years.
Already famous for his iron-pumping, horse-riding, tiger-hunting ways and his affinity for being photographed sans shirt with buff pectorals prominently glistening, the Russian president proved at a world summit Monday night that his irrepressible masculinity also has a suave side.
Let us set the stage for the latest entry in the already long annals of Putin’s exploits:
I don't even want to know.
It’s Monday night — the opening dinner attended by a who’s who of world leaders to kick off the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing. The host, Chinese President Xi Jinping, is distracted chatting idly with President Obama on his right. To his left, Xi’s wife, Peng Liyuan, exchanges a few words with Putin.
Something to do, one guesses, with how cold it was.
Yeah, how can that be?
In China, too, huh?
US to pledge $3B to help poor nations cope with warming
Forget about food stamps or all the other needs of the American people. Let's get another $lu$h fund going -- in the name of saving the planet from a problem that does not even exist!
Meanwhile, on page A2.... won't find that on the Globe's website.
With zero hesitation, Putin stood up, grasped his tan coat with both hands and draped it over the Chinese first lady’s delicate shoulders.
It was move that oozed smooth, though skirting dangerously close to flirtatious. (Cue jokes about Russian aggressions.)
OMG! This is disgusting "journalism." The guy was a gentleman and he's being insulted by my pos propaganda pre$$titute!
Peng, faced with the awkward prospect of sitting through dinner beside her husband with another man’s coat around her shoulders, handled it quickly.
After five seconds — long enough perhaps to show appreciation for the chivalry, short enough not to call attention to the awkwardness of it all — she stood up, discreetly handed Putin’s coat to an attendant, and slipped on another jacket.
China’s main state broadcaster, CCTV, was televising the dinner and showed the entire exchange, with commentators noting, ‘‘I just saw President Putin attentively placing a coat onto Peng Liyuan’s body.’’
Unsurprisingly, the moment quickly went viral on Weibo and other Chinese social media.
‘‘Our first lady is a charming one indeed,’’ said one poster by the handle Li Shigong.
‘‘The foreign hostile forces just cannot stand it, and must have its hands on it,’’ joked another.
‘‘All Obama and Xi can do is watch.’’
China’s censors leaped into action.
The country’s authorities have been controlling, to the point of paranoia, all image aspects of APEC — detaining activists, banning cars, and shutting down factories in an attempt to clear smog (and when that failed, blocking pollution data about said smog).
Accordingly, the Putin-Peng video was quickly pulled from Sina Weibo and the website of Phoenix TV overnight.
It’s not the first time Putin has shown some token of affection for Peng Liyuan. Last year, he gave her a bouquet of flowers and a cheeky grin at a China-Russia summit.
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Something else caught my eye, and it's a much better read:
"China's silky road to glory" by Pepe Escobar
If there were any remaining doubts about the unlimited stupidity Western corporate media is capable of dishing out, the highlight of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing has been defined as Russian President Vladimir Putin supposedly "hitting" on Chinese President Xi Jinping's wife - and the subsequent Chinese censoring of the moment when Putin draped a shawl over her shoulders in the cold air where the leaders were assembled. What next? Putin and Xi denounced as a gay couple?
Let's dump the clowns and get down to the serious business. Right at the start, President Xi urged APEC to "add firewood to the fire of the Asia-Pacific and world economy". Two days later, China got what it wanted on all fronts.
1) Beijing had all 21 APEC member-nations endorsing the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) - the Chinese vision of an "all inclusive, all-win" trade deal capable of advancing Asia-Pacific cooperation - see South China Morning Post (paywall). The loser was the US-driven, corporate-redacted, fiercely opposed (especially by Japan and Malaysia) 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). [See also here.]
2) Beijing advanced its blueprint for "all-round connectivity" (in Xi's words) across Asia-Pacific - which implies a multi-pronged strategy. One of its key features is the implementation of the Beijing-based US$50 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. That's China's response to Washington refusing to give it a more representative voice at the International Monetary Fund than the current, paltry 3.8% of votes (a smaller percentage than the 4.5% held by stagnated France).
3) Beijing and Moscow committed to a second gas mega-deal - this one through the Altai pipeline in Western Siberia - after the initial "Power of Siberia" mega-deal clinched last May.
4) Beijing announced the funneling of no less than US$40 billion to start building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.
Predictably, once again, this vertiginous flurry of deals and investment had to converge towards the most spectacular, ambitious, wide-ranging plurinational infrastructure offensive ever attempted: the multiple New Silk Roads - that complex network of high-speed rail, pipelines, ports, fiber optic cables and state of the art telecom that China is already building across the Central Asian stans, linked to Russia, Iran, Turkey and the Indian Ocean, and branching out to Europe all the way to Venice, Rotterdam, Duisburg and Berlin.
Now imagine the paralyzed terror of the Washington/Wall Street elites as they stare at Beijing interlinking Xi's "Asia-Pacific Dream" way beyond East Asia towards all-out, pan-Eurasia trade - with the center being, what else, the Middle Kingdom; a near future Eurasia as a massive Chinese Silk Belt with, in selected latitudes, a sort of development condominium with Russia.
Vlad doesn't do stupid stuff
As for "Don Juan" Putin, everything one needs to know about Asia-Pacific
as a Russian strategic/economic priority was distilled in his
intervention at the APEC CEO summit.
This was in fact an economic update of his by now notorious speech at the Valdai Club meeting in Sochi in October, followed by a wide-ranging Q&A, which was also duly ignored by Western corporate media (or spun as yet more "aggression").
The Kremlin has conclusively established that Washington/Wall Street elites have absolutely no intention of allowing a minimum of multipolarity in international relations. What's left is chaos.
There's no question that Moscow pivoting away from the West and towards East Asia is a process directly influenced by President Barack Obama's self-described "Don't Do Stupid Stuff" foreign policy doctrine, a formula he came up with aboard Air Force One when coming back last April from a trip to - where else - Asia.
But the Russia-China symbiosis/strategic partnership is developing in multiple levels.
On energy, Russia is turning east because that's where top demand is. On finance, Moscow ended the pegging of the rouble to the US dollar and euro; not surprisingly the US dollar instantly - if only briefly - dropped against the rouble. Russian bank VTB announced it may leave the London Stock Exchange for Shanghai's - which is about to become directly linked to Hong Kong. And Hong Kong, for its part, is already attracting Russian energy giants.
Now mix all these key developments with the massive yuan-rouble energy double deal, and the picture is clear; Russia is actively protecting itself from speculative/politically motivated Western attacks against its currency.
The Russia-China symbiosis/strategic partnership visibly expands on energy, finance and, also inevitably, on the military technology front. That includes, crucially, Moscow selling Beijing the S-400 air defense system and, in the future, the S-500 - against which the Americans are sitting ducks; and this while Beijing develops surface-to-ship missiles that can take out everything the US Navy can muster.
Anyway, at APEC, Xi and Obama at least agreed to establish a mutual reporting mechanism on major military operations. That might - and the operative word is "might" - prevent an East Asia replica of relentless NATO-style whining of the "Russia has invaded Ukraine!" kind.
Freak out, neo-cons
When Little Dubya Bush came to power in early 2001, the neo-cons were
faced with a stark fact: it was just a matter of time before the US
would irreversibly lose its global geopolitical and economic hegemony.
So there were only two choices; either manage the decline, or bet the
whole farm to consolidate global hegemony using - what else - war.
We all know about the wishful thinking enveloping the "low-cost" war on Iraq - from Paul Wolfowitz's "We are the new OPEC" to the fantasy of Washington being able to decisively intimidate all potential challengers, the EU, Russia and China.
And we all know how it went spectacularly wrong. Even as that trillionaire adventure, as Minqi Li analyzed in The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy, "has squandered US imperialism's remaining space for strategic maneuver", the humanitarian imperialists of the Obama administration still have not given up, refusing to admit the US has lost any ability to provide any meaningful solution to the current, as Immanuel Wallerstein would define it, world-system.
There are sporadic signs of intelligent geopolitical life in US academia, such as this at the Wilson Center website (although Russia and China are not a "challenge" to a supposed world "order": their partnership is actually geared to create some order among the chaos.)
And yet this opinion piece at USNews is the kind of stuff passing for academic "analysis" in US media.
On top of it, Washington/Wall Street elites - through their myopic Think Tankland - still cling to mythical platitudes such as the "historical" US role as arbiter of modern Asia and key balancer of power.
So no wonder public opinion in the US - and Western Europe - cannot even imagine the earth-shattering impact the New Silk Roads will have in the geopolitics of the young 21st century.
Washington/Wall Street elites - talk about Cold War hubris - always took for granted that Beijing and Moscow would be totally apart. Now puzzlement prevails. Note how the Obama administration's "pivoting to Asia" has been completely erased from the narrative - after Beijing identified it for what it is: a warlike provocation. The new meme is "rebalance".
German businesses, for their part, are absolutely going bonkers with Xi's New Silk Roads uniting Beijing to Berlin - crucially via Moscow. German politicians sooner rather than later will have to get the message.
All this will be discussed behind closed doors this weekend at key meetings on the sidelines of the Group of 20 in Australia. The Russia-China-Germany alliance-in-the-making will be there. The BRICS, crisis or no crisis, will be there. All the players in the G-20 actively working for a multipolar world will be there.
APEC once again has shown that the more geopolitics change, the more it won't stay the same; as the exceptional dogs of war, inequality and divide and rule keep barking, the China-Russia pan-Eurasian caravan will keep going, going, going - further on down the (multipolar) road.
"Obama, Putin circle each other warily in China" by Josh Lederman | Associated Press November 12, 2014
BEIJING — On the surface, President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin were all niceties — a pat on the back here, a pleasantry there. But away from the cameras, the two leaders circled each other warily at a global summit in China, coming face to face while relations between their countries continue to deteriorate.
The White House said Obama and Putin spoke three times Tuesday on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific economic meeting, tackling some of the tough issues that have strained their relationship, including Russia’s provocations in Ukraine and support for Syria’s embattled government. They also discussed the fast-approaching deadline in nuclear talks with Iran, in which the United States and Russia find themselves on the same negotiating team.
Unlike at some of their past meetings, Obama and Putin kept their deep-seated policy disagreements behind the scenes. But their public encounters suggested their relationship remains tense.
Picturesque Yanqi Lake, just outside of Beijing, became the venue for an awkward pas de deux between two of the most powerful leaders in the world. Entering an ornate, wood-paneled room for the start of the summit, Obama and Putin looked a bit like sidekicks to Chinese President Xi Jinping. The summit’s host led the way, with the American on one side and the Russian on the other.
‘‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’’ Putin said in Obama’s direction. Yes, it is, concurred a reticent Obama, avoiding eye contact with Putin and addressing his response to no one in particular.
As the three presidents came to a stop at the head of the table, Putin reached out to give Obama a slap on the back. But Obama had turned in a different direction, and it didn’t appear that Putin’s hand landed on its intended target.
A few hours later, the two again found themselves in close quarters under an overcast sky as leaders planted trees in honor of their countries. Putin strode confidently up to his tree, ahead of Obama, who clasped his hands behind his back before picking up a shovel and greeting a Spanish TV crew with a wave.
Neither the White House nor the Kremlin offered much in the way of detail about the policy conversations Obama and Putin had on the sidelines of the summit. Putin’s spokesman said only that the two had spoken a few times, touching on ‘‘bilateral relations, the situation around Ukraine, Syria and Iran.’’
The United States is furious over Russia’s presumed role in fueling pro-Russian rebels in neighboring Ukraine. White House officials have accused Russia of sending heavy weapons to the separatists and shelling Ukrainian troops, and have denounced Russia’s buildup of forces along the border.
A truce reached in September between the rebels and Ukraine’s government is teetering, destabilized by what the White House calls a ‘‘blatant escalation’’ by Russia and rebel-organized elections in eastern Ukraine that the United States condemned as a ‘‘sham.’’
Like the kind we just had.
Vice President Joe Biden, in a phone call last week with Ukraine’s president, vowed further US sanctions against Moscow ‘‘if Russia continued to willfully violate the terms’’ of the cease-fire.
War all over the timing of elections?
Russia’s economy has taken a major hit following US and EU sanctions — the ruble has plunged by a third this year and hit an all-time low last week — but Putin has dismissed the notion that he’s hurting at the hands of the West. Addressing the Asia-Pacific economic summit here Monday, Putin said his government had the resources to stabilize its currency without taking any emergency measures.
‘‘We want Russia to play a different role,’’ Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said Tuesday. ‘‘We want Russia to be a stabilizing force on issues that we care about. But they’re not going to be able to do that . . . if they’re violating the sovereignty of a country next door.’’
Of course, it's all good when EUSrael does it to, say, Syria, for example.
The stench of hypocrisy oozing out of this man and the administration he fronts for is worse than excrement.
Rhodes said Obama would not be seeking out a meeting with Putin while in Beijing — nor in Brisbane, Australia, where the leaders will once again run into each other during a Group of 20 economic summit this weekend.
‘‘Putin knows where we stand,’’ Rhodes said, adding that Obama may discuss Russia’s actions with other G-20 leaders.
Whole world does.
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And look who he is cozying up too now:
North Korea to send senior envoy to Russia
UPDATE: Putin To Leave G20 Summit Early After Being Criticized Over Ukraine
