On Thursday, Donald Trump will walk into the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, shake Xi Jinping's hand, and declare it a great meeting. There will be announcements. There will be numbers — billions of dollars in Chinese purchase commitments, a new bilateral mechanism with an important-sounding name, possibly a joint statement on Iran. Trump will post on Truth Social. Markets will rally briefly. Pundits will argue about who won. None of that will tell you what actually happened. What is actually happening in Beijing this week is something more consequential and more uncomfortable than the summit theatre will reveal: two leaders of two deeply mutually dependent superpowers, both of whom need this meeting to succeed for entirely different reasons, sitting across a table in a world that has already moved past the assumptions that defined their last nine months of negotiations. The Iran war changed the equations. The rare earth gambit changed the power balance. Taiwan is sitting in...
Occupy Wall Street has now officially gone global. Protesters in Rome took to the street to denounce corporate Greed. The protests started in New York and then hit many other parts of the world. Protests till now have been peaceful and the numbers not too large. Rome however had a different story, people turned up in tens of thousands and stretched for miles. A small group of protesters clad in black with their faces covered broke away from the main group and started thrashing ATMs and throwing rocks and bottles at banks. Police had to use tear gas and a water cannon to help contain the rioting. other people had to run into churches and hospitals for safety. As the protesters set cars ablaze and proceeded to break bank and shop windows.
The Mayor Of Rome said that the protesters who broke away and caused all the trouble must have been goons and thugs from all over Europe who came to cause trouble and shame. Other protesters also shouted 'Enough' and 'Shame' as violence has never been part of the demonstrations. Rome protesters called themselves 'The Indignant Ones'. Rioters need to be identified and punished, Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said.
Other Occupy Wall Street protests had been rather peaceful with some protesters and supporters of the movement preferring to stay home and watch it on TV and the web. The movement is driven by Social Media and there is no clear leader, making it something that is driven by people and belonging to them.
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