Japan has been speaking out recently on the matter of Israeli settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank Palestinian territory. At almost the same time, a senior official of the Palestinian Authority was in Tokyo seeking support from the Japanese government for a possible change in Palestinians tactics in their struggle for self-determination and statehood.

Nursultan Nazarbayev has a way of drawing lines in the sand. The president of Kazakhstan recently told global oil and metal majors that new laws would allow only those foreign investors that cooperate with his industrialization program to tap his nation's mineral resources.

An international discourse of China-in-Africa has emerged, particularly in Western countries with dense links to Africa: the US, UK and France. While China's presence in Africa should be critically examined, interest in it in the West is skewed by elite perceptions of China as a rival for resources and influence in Africa and as a rising power, with the tone of the discourse far more negative than that accorded the Western presence in Africa.