President Donald Trump is not quite the fool or the subjective (or subliminal) genius that pundits make him out to be. However, if there is one trait that his recent pronouncements point to it is that of a quintessential real estate mogul.
In this sense, he is not much different from the erstwhile Philippines First Lady Imelda Marcos whom my Filipino friends described, during the Marcos Senior era, as being in the “mining” business. Asked what sorts of mining, they would point to everything of value saying “This is mine”, “This is mine” and “That is mine”!President Trump has just said that the Panama Canal rightly belongs to the US; that he would like Canada to be the 51st state of the US; and that the US will eventually ‘get’ Greenland”. Greenland could also be a “dual use” asset, a phrase that he had been using to accuse China of helping Russia in its war against Ukraine. The BBC says, “In recent years, there has been increased interest in Greenland’s natural resources, including mining for rare earth minerals, uranium and iron.” It is a vast piece of real estate where Trump could do some real mining for rare earths and even use as a base to point missiles at Russia and China. The same could be said of Ukraine which has Europe’s largest reserves in titanium, lithium and graphite. There are innumerable mainstream media articles about Trump wanting Ukrainian minerals in exchange for helping them fight the war with Russia.
The case that most violates ones sense of decency is Trump’s latest proposal for Gaza. With the support of his ally, Benjamin Netanyahu, he proposed that the Palestinians should be resettled in Jordan and Egypt (both countries that have received massive amounts of US aid over the years) and that the US “take over” and “own” Gaza. Expelling the Palestinians from their homeland reminds is a repeat of the Jewish Diaspora. It is unjust and inconceivably cruel. How much more can the powerful deprive the powerless of their human rights beyond killing them, depriving them of the basic essentials of food, water and shelter; and now expelling them from their homeland?
What frame of mind would one have to have to look beyond the daily television image of the carnage perpetrated on the hapless Palestinians; looking pass the death of days-old babies, children, innocent men and women; the surgical operations carried out on injured children without anaesthetics because there were none available; to the vision of a pristine real estate with beautiful shores abutting the Mediterranean Sea once the area is cleared of rubble and Palestinians. Once Gaza is cleared of Palestinians it becomes “terra nullius”, a prime piece of real estate on the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea that the “empire” or colonial power can occupy with abandon without having to worry about ownership or sovereignty (in a two state solution). With a bit of imagination, one could see a couple of Mar-a-lagos or a number of Trump Towers gleaming in the sun once the development promised by Donald Trump materialises.
In the face of this avaricious solution to Gaza, one could not resist the temptation of making a comparison with the Chinese practice on Xinjiang; even though it carries with it the risk of naivety, taking cognisance of the near impossibility of reading through the conundrum of pro- and anti-Chinese rhetoric in the media. This problem is beautifully described by scholar Phillip Cunningham in an article titled “Challenging Dominant Media Narrative on Xinjiang”. I cannot resist citing his masterful words below:
“The free media is itself complicit in the silencing and outright ridicule of views that don’t comport with the flavour-of-the-month trends coming out of the corridors of power, the pens of opinion leaders and think tanks that dominate political analysis today.
“Take Xinjiang for example. The dominant narrative at the moment is that China is committing genocide in Xinjiang. This is an extremely serious charge – one that harks back to the Holocaust, but is it true?”
Cunningham’s concludes astutely that: “There is only one acceptable American take on “Chy-na” and that is to accuse it of everything, give it credit for nothing and suspect it of the worst.”
With that in mind, what I understand of present day Xinjiang is that massive re-education and job training programs had been carried out in “camps” to combat terrorism. Once that was over, development plans were initiated with the help of successful “twin” cities in the eastern parts of China to create jobs and proper housing. The challenge posed here is whether the Xinjiang model is preferable to the present plight of the Palestinian people or the plan that Trump has for taking over Gaza. In order to avert misunderstanding, it is necessary here to iterate that China advocates a two-state solution in Palestine, recognising the fact that they are not a part of Israel or the United States.
In relative terms, I would moot the suggestion that it is preferable to be an Uyghur living in Xinjiang than a Palestinian living in Gaza today. I would also venture to say that the much vaunted values of freedom and equality, said to be shared by all liberal democracies, are merely rhetoric or at the best applied selectively to the less empowered.
What I really think of Trump’s proposal for Gaza is embedded in a very simple expression in my own Hokkein dialect: “Mushroom face”. It means that if the cuisine is rotten, cover it with a layer of mushrooms!
Teow Loon Ti was a researcher in aquaculture; and a teacher. Teow Loon Ti has a BSc.(Hon) in Zoology, an MA(Lit. & Comm.) and a PhD in Education.