As the Senate voterama to repeal Obamacare continues, it is clear the intentions of the Trump administration for Obamacare. And despite tweets to the contrary, he likely will get behind the straight repeal of Obamacare, possibly before the Inauguration so that Obama has to endure the humiliation of vetoing the repeal of Obamacare and Trump can sign it first off after January 20. Whatever that is, that is far from a shadow play.
All of the focus on Russia and the signals of Trump’s appointments for foreign policy posts point to rapprochement with Putin and Xi early on. Pepe Escobar, this time in Asia Times, says that that is what is in fact likely and envisions a Trump-Xi-Putin summit that architects the global system in the same way that Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin architected the post-World War II system at Yalta. That structure worked fairly well for 55 years and only started coming apart with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. What would a reset of the relationships among the first, third, and eigthth most populous nations look like?
Escobar points out that the context would be Eurasian integration from Galway to Vladivostok and the role of China’s One Belt One Road infrastructure projects as being the physical form of continental integration.
Escobar uses sources in Eurasia, including Russia and China. Consider this the intentions of these people or the propaganda of these people, the fact remains that Russia and China are enrolling countries in their vicinity in tighter economic integration.
So right in the heart of Bali, spellbound after a serious conversation with a dukun – a spiritual master – it struck me: this should be the new Yalta, the perfect setting for a Trump-Xi-Putin summit setting the parameters ahead in the ever-evolving New Great Game in Eurasia.
Balinese culture makes no distinction between the secular and the supernatural – sekala and niskala. Sekala is what our senses may discern. Niskala is what cannot be sensed directly and can only be “suggested”. Massive geopolitical shifts ahead could not be more shrouded by niskala.
Captive of the vertiginous velocity of the here and now, the West still has much to learn from a highly evolved culture that prospered 5000 years ago along the banks or the river Sindhu – now Indus – in what is currently Pakistan, and then migrated from the Majapahit empire in Java to Bali in the 14th century under the pressure of advancing Islam.
