Latest G7 move interesting
US President Joe Biden (left) talks with France's President Emmanuel Macron during a plenary session at the G7 summit in Carbis Bay, Cornwall on June 13, 2021.
A Talmudic tale recounts how, on the way to the slaughterhouse, a calf escaped and sought refuge with Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi, one of the founders of rabbinical Judaism. It tucked its head under his flowing robes and started crying.
But the rabbi pushed the calf away, saying: “Go, that’s the purpose for which you were created.” Since, as historian Yuval Harari points out in Homo Deus, the rabbi showed no mercy, God punished him: He suffered a painful illness for 13 years.
“One day, a servant cleaning the rabbi’s house found some newborn rats and began sweeping them out. Rabbi Yehuda rushed to save the helpless creatures, instructing the servant to leave them in peace, because God is good to all and has compassion on all he has made,” writes Harari. God showed compassion to the rabbi: He was cured of his illness.
On June 11-13, leaders of G7 — the US, UK, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and France — converged on Cornwall, UK, for the 47th summit, aimed at helping the world to ‘build back better’ from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Among the resolutions was addressing issues such as vaccine inequality and investigating the origin of Sars-COV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19), as well as climate change.
But it was China’s growing economic influence that mirrored the Talmudic tale: The bloc will challenge China’s “non-market economic practices” through the inchoate Clean Green Initiative (CGI).
The aggressive infrastructure investment plan is designed to challenge China’s revolutionary Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The G7 accused China of saddling poor countries with huge loans to exploit them economically, which “undermines the fair and transparent operation of the global economy”.
Since its inception in 2013, BRI has financed ambitious projects in at least 68 countries in the Global South, Kenya included. Euro-American imperialism nipped the African dream in the bud during colonialism and still does. By positioning itself as a defender of the Global South against “economic repression” by China, G7 is becoming a Rabbi Yehuda.
