Gauging the Xi-Trump summit and its geopolitical implications

After summit meetings of the kind we just had with Trump and Xi Jinping, sometimes there is a joint communique and signing ceremony outlining what the two sides agreed upon. That did not happen, leaving observers scratching their heads as to what the point of the meeting was. Immediately afterwards, Russian president Vladimir Putin also went to China and the contrast between that and the barrenness of the Xi-Trump meeting was quite stark. They not only issued a joint communique, they also had a joint signing ceremony of all the agreements arrived at.

Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin issued a joint condemnation of “irresponsible” US foreign policy on Wednesday, warning of “a drift back to the law of the jungle”.
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The exchanges between Xi and Putin were notably warm and Wednesday’s summit appeared to be more substantive than Xi’s meetings with the US president.

In their joint statement, Xi and Putin said they looked forward to further bilateral cooperation ranging from artificial intelligence to the protection of rare tigers, leopards and pandas. 
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The spectacle of the leaders of the cold war superpowers – each weakened by conflicts of their own making – flying thousands of miles to sit down with Xi in the Great Hall of the People underlined the Chinese president’s status on the global stage.

Xi and Putin went into their summit with a long record of close cooperation. They had already met more than 40 times, and Xi has described the bilateral relation as “without limits”.

The two leaders scolded the US for undermining global stability, in particular for seeking to develop a “golden dome” missile defence system, and for allowing a nuclear arms treaty to lapse in February.
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Xi and Putin then attended a signing ceremony for numerous documents spanning technology, trade, scientific research and intellectual property.

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Trump is the Republican party

Even as his poll numbers nationally sink to historically low values, Trump’s grip on the Republican base seems to be as strong as ever. We can see this in the way that he was able to have his acolytes defeat well-established incumbents in primaries. He had done this on Sunday in Louisiana where incumbent senator Bill Cassidy lost his primary and yesterday we saw seven-term incumbent congressman Thomas Massie lose his race in Kentucky. In addition to Trump, the Israel lobby also poured money into the race against Massie. Trump’s next target is incumbent senator John Cornyn in Texas, where Trump has endorsed scandal-plagued Ken Paxton in the May 26th primary.

Trump has undoubtedly been successful in getting loyal cult members to win their primary races against anyone who displeases him, even if that displeasure is caused by the perception that the person is insufficiently servile to him or their rival is more servile. This was the case with Cassidy and Cornyn who were hardly rebels. In fact Cassidy was the deciding vote that enabled nut job Robert Kennedy Jr to become secretary of health and human services, arguably the worst person to ever serve in that important position.
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Is mathematics invented or discovered?

The above question has been a long-standing source of debate. ‘Discovered’ means that the structures of mathematics exist objectively and independently while ‘invented’ implies that mathematics is the free creation of the human mind. The same debate exists in science.

An article profiles a mathematician Sergiu Klainerman who is convinced that it is discovered.

The equations that govern black holes were true before there were black holes. That claim is hotly contested, and cuts through one of the deepest fault lines in the philosophy of mathematics. On one side are those who hold that mathematical structures, including well-established principles and basic geometric shapes like the tetrahedron, exist independently of human thought – not as a language we invented to describe reality, but rather as the substrate of reality itself. On the other side of the debate are those who argue that mathematics is the product of human labours, imposed on a world that would be wholly indifferent to it were we not here.

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Immigrants abused by DHS seek millions in damages

The abuse of immigrants by agents working for government agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and the Department of Homeland security (DHS) has been occurring on such a scale and over such a long time that we can easily become numb, especially since other horrors on an international scale like Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its expropriation of Palestinian land, its bombing of Lebanon and, of course, the wars in Iran and Ukraine compete for attention.

But we cannot ignore these local horrors and ProPublica reports on how one group of abused immigrants are fighting back, suing the government for damages. In the suit, we learn of the terrible abuses they suffered at the hands of these government thugs, who seem to act like they are members of the military attacking an enemy.
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Xi-Trump summit stalemate

To no one’s surprise, the summit meeting between Trump and Chinese premier Xi Jinping did not produce any major agreements. Although Trump claimed to have settled a lot of issues, nothing was detailed about the main issues of Iran, Taiwan, trade, tariffs and rare earth supplies.

Trump took along with him a whole slew of business leaders and oligarchs from the US, but that did not seem to have produced any tangible benefit. It is not clear how they could personally contribute to such talks anyway. It seems like they were taken along because of Trump’s belief that having wealthy people along with him might somehow sway the Chinese to give concessions on technology and trade. That did not happen, as far as we know, and indeed despite the Boeing CEO being there, the deal on planes that was announced was for just 200 planes, a big drop from the 500 that had been expected before the summit.

Trump likes to play power games with foreign leaders such as with handshakes but this time it was Xi who came out on top. His mention of the ‘Thucydides trap’ seemed like a twofer. One was to show his intellectual superiority since it is certain that he knew that Trump would have no clue as to who Thucydides was, let alone what the trap was about. But his use of that trap also implies that it is China that is the rising power and the US the one in decline, and that the US should tread warily, especially on the issue of Taiwan.
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How ProPublica works to address important local and national issues

In the US, local media has been on a steady decline over decades, with local newspapers either closing or being bought up by giant national chains and their local reporting gutted and replaced with general stories that are written for all their newspapers across the country. This means that important local issues do not get covered and local politicians and institutions do not get the close scrutiny they deserve because local media do not have the resources needed to do investigative reporting.

ProPublica has tried to combat this news vacuum by collaborating with local journalists to cover important stories and then using their national networks to provide these stories with greater publicity by having them appear in major media, thus increasing the impact. ProPublica can provide the local allies with the kind of resources needed for on-depth work. This approach has garnered them various awards, including the prestigious Pulitzer and Polk awards that are shared with the local collaborator, giving them recognition that they would not have otherwise had.

In a recent article, they discussed the various successes they have had, such as the one where they joined forces with The Connecticut Mirror to expose how Connecticut’s unique towing laws enabled towing companies to ripping off low-income people by quickly selling the cars they they towed.
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What is the point of this summit?

Trump, currently in China for a summit meeting with the Chinese president Xi Jinping, is definitely in an inferior position.

Donald Trump has landed in Beijing, the first visit to China by a US president in nearly a decade, as he seeks to mend power and prestige weakened by the war in Iran.
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The war has entered its third month, with Tehran tightening its grip over the strait of Hormuz and Washington struggling to turn a fragile ceasefire into a lasting settlement.

Behind the scenes, US officials have spent weeks urging China – Iran’s biggest oil customer and one of the few powers with leverage in Tehran – to pressure the Islamic Republic into reopening the strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply ordinarily passes, while accepting US terms for peace.

The US recently sanctioned several Chinese firms accused of assisting Iranian oil shipments and supplying satellite imagery allegedly used in Iranian military operations. China condemned the measures as “illegal unilateral sanctions” and invoked a rarely used blocking statute prohibiting Chinese entities from complying with them.
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Is agnosticism a viable stance on the existence of God?

I am busy today and in lieu of an original post, thought that I would post an old article of mine that was published in the UK magazine New Humanist in July 2011. I moved my blog to FtB in 2012 from my earlier platform where it started in 2005, so the article appeared before many current readers would have started reading the blog and they may find it of interest.

The topic was whether being agnostic on the question of the existence of God was a viable position to take. I argue that the answer is no, hence the title of No Doubt that I gave the piece.

That magazine used to have a more playful, irreverent style that you can see just below the header. It later became more staid.