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...
For those of you following the World Cup 2010 in earnest will know that there is constant din in the background. This noise never seems to die down and is always there. many players and broadcasters have complained about this din. The organizers however are not really ready to get rid of the Vuvuzela. Vuvuzela's represent the spirit of the African people and this is the host's nations way of bringing a carnival spirit and indeed the spirit of African Triumph to showcase to the whole world. As FIFA president Sepp Blatter has pointed out in defense of the incessant VUVUZELAS, those calling for the plastic horns to be banned do not understand African culture. The Vuvuzelas have become part of South African’s sporting culture, and banning it on their home soil would amount to intolerance of the host nation’s culture. Again, as Blatter has correctly observed, Africa has a different rhythm and a different sound, and indeed, the sound of the incessant Vuvuzelas is definitely unique, ...