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...
Taken 20 minutes before the shooting Today is the death anniversary of Tupac also known as Makaveli. Most rap and hip-hop fans will recall this day 15 years ago when 2Pac was fatally wounded by gun shots. Succumbing in a hospital on Sep 13, 1996. 2Pac may have gone but is not forgotten. Rolling Stones magazine named him the 86th greatest artist of all time. In addition to being a singer and rapper he was also an actor. Rest in peace Tupac Amaru Shakur. An original post by Sociolatte