China seems has been winning over the gulf states for a long time, this seems to materialise year over year with more trade deals and agreements. both China and the gulf states have gained this much power and stage prominence because of the USA ridiculous short termist foreign policies. Common sense be damned. Not helped by "western journalism" and their selective outrage. More on what's been happening recently between these countries can be found here:

5 key takeaways from Xi’s trip to Saudi Arabia 

During his visit, Xi urged his GCC counterparts to “make full use of the Shanghai Petrol and Gas Exchange as a platform to conduct oil and gas sales using Chinese currency.”

The move would bring China closer to its goal of internationally strengthening its currency, and would greatly weaken the US dollar and potentially impact the American economy.

China says it's moving to buy oil and gas in the yuan — a move that could threaten the dollar's global dominance in the long run

"The Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange platform will be fully utilized for RMB settlement in oil and gas trade," Xi said, according to a transcript of his speech published by the government-owned China Daily. He did not specify when the change would go into effect.

It's not clear if any of the Gulf nations are taking up the proposal, but Saudi Arabia — the world's top oil exporter — has been in talks to use the yuan to settle its energy sales to major consumer China.

Such a move would chip away at the US dollar's role as the world's reserve currency, spurring "de-dollarization."

"The Saudis have a lot to buy from China and China has a lot to buy from Saudi Arabia. Why should they transact in a third-party currency and incur all of these exchange-rate costs?" Gal Luft, a director at the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security think tank, told CNBC on Friday. China is already using the yuan to buy Russian energy.

The west is completely out of touch when it comes to how weak they are faced with the rising autocracies of the east. As it stands, the autocracy model may end up working better for those countries than our democracy if we continue to let lobbyists decide what the groundbreaking next short term policy is going to be.

Biden starts his campaign with promises to make Saudi a pariah state, ends up visiting Saudi Arabia, bumping fists with MBS, and gets shit flung in his face, also by MBS no less:

https://theintercept.com/2022/07/16/saudi-prince-taunts-biden-caring-khashoggi-shireen-abu-akleh/

Mohammed bin Salman reportedly accused President Joe Biden of hypocrisy during their meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Friday by asking why the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi seemed to matter more to him than the fatal shooting of Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh.

A Saudi official told him that Crown Prince Mohammed, known as MBS, denied that he had ordered the assassination, “the same way George Bush did not order the abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.” The crown prince then asked, according to Mohyeldin’s source, why, “with so many U.S. journalists killed, missing, or detained,” including Shireen Abu Akleh, “the murder of Jamal Khashoggi was being politicized.” 

Unfortunately, MBS is right on both instances, but this what you get with selective journalistic integrity. Back to Biden who asked the Saudis to "increase your oil output please" just so they can wave goodbye to Biden and decrease oil output to keep the prices high and hit the western economies harder. This is despite the fact  that MBS was given total immunity over Kashoggi Killing:

US judge dismisses case against Saudi crown prince over Khashoggi killing

Judge says Mohammed bin Salman entitled to sovereign immunity despite ‘credible allegations’ of involvement in journalist’s murder. A US judge has dismissed a lawsuit against Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman that claimed he conspired to kill journalist Jamal Khashoggi, saying the crown prince was entitled to sovereign immunity despite “credible allegations” that he was involved in the murder.

Judge John Bates, a US district court judge with a long history of presiding over cases involving national security, acknowledged “uneasiness” in making the decision, but said that his hands were in effect tied by the Biden administration’s recent recommendation that Prince Mohammed be given immunity. 

Biden and the west continue to live in la la land. Before he was finished with his Saudi visit, he promised he wouldn't "leave a vacuum in the gulf states for China and Russia to fill". Erm, have you not gotten it yet? you don't call the shots here, your obedient dogs are unleashed and they seem to taking major decision with total independency from the USA approval. 

Biden vows ‘consequences’ for Saudi Arabia after oil output cuts

“There’s going to be some consequences for what they’ve done with Russia,” Biden said in an interview with CNN. “I’m not going to get into what I’d consider and what I have in mind. But there will be, there will be consequences.”

These consequences were promised in October, nothing happened since then, just more concessions to the Saudis and protections to MBS. Not to mention, these so called consequences didn't stop Saudi from rolling the red-carpet to Jinping. So.out.of.touch. 

I'll finish with this excellent Zakaria's segment (a bit odd my fave independent commentators have not covered it):

I am glad he finally mentions the failure of the western sanctions by stating the Russian economy will contract by ONLY 3.4%. We have similar figures for multiple European countries...

While I have no love the American Empire, in true westerner fashion, I choose it over because it's the lesser evil. I can't imagine minorities like the LGBT community would go through if/when the scale tips in the great evil direction. I just don't see this unhappening if the west doesn't start thinking long-term and stop the selective outrage and start self-criticising and stand up for all evil, not just evil that scores political points... 

I wonder why it took so long for Trump to come out with his NFT collection. Its not like whoever the people that created these images spent years photoshopping those stock photos. The collection already sold out for a cool 4+ million for Trump and I hear he gets 10% on the resale of these items as well. I wonder if we are going to see like every other month a new collection coming out maybe he could even get a box set like baseball cards and sell to his base. I will know when his people are really hitting their stride is when he comes out with the Trump grill and start do paid for TV ads late at night to sell them. Forget high risk building projects, politics pays way better for much less the investment.

Crypto sellers are nothing more than cyber-huns, in the MLM sense.

Congressman Elect George Santos of NY 03 has admitted to fabricating large parts of his resume and biography during the election he just won. He only admitted it after the NY Times exposed him (good journalism but should have looked into it before the election). He has shown no signs that he will step down from his newly elected position.

Yeah his excuse about how people lie on resumes is total crap. Pretty sure if you were found to have lied on your resume after you accepted the offer you would quickly be fired. 

He should be expelled. There should be repercussions for such blatant disregard for the office he holds.

It's amazing how completely shameless he is about it too:

"If you can manage to stand out as a liar in an era where Donald Trump is still a major political figure, congratulations, you are a special level of sociopath unto yourself." 

Speaking of sociopaths:

The Superintendent-Elect of Oklahoma posted one of this awful woman's lies on Twitter during election season and got caught.