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Iraq is an artifical entity, an artificial state created by the British out of the defeated and disintegrated Ottoman Empire. Created from 3 Ottoman Arab provinces- provinces or vilayets of Mosul province which was mostly Sunni, Baghdad province, the city of Baghdad  mostly Sunni and rural areas Shia, and Basra in the south mostly Shia from tribes who converted to Shia Islam extending the reach of Shia religious sites such as Karbala. Note that the Sunni Arabs were closer to the power structures of the Ottoman Empire than Shia in the 18th and 19th century. As a result post war Iraq in 1950's was dominated by Sunni elites and the British imposed Faisal 1 monarchy of 1921 was thrown out by Sunni elites in the army in 1958 by Karim Kassem, followed by the emergence of Saddam Hussein from Pan Arab Baath socialist ideologies of that period.  After the US wars in Iraq and Iraq- Iran war, Iran mobilized Shia into popular militias. In 2026 Iraq is essentially several ministates pulled together in Baghdad, with Shia, Sunni and Kurdish ministates formed into the governing structure, and everyone praying for no outside interference to pull it all apart and maintain a fragile peace. While the British got Iraq Mandate from League of Nations in 1921 French got Syria provinces of the Ottoman Empire. In fact Sykes and Picot are the British and French diplomats who created artificial states of Iraq and Syria to suit their interests in the region for oil and for controlling Suez and territories in India, Indochina, Hong Kong, parts of coastal China (Shanghai). Why is this important? It is important because at the time Britian dealt with weak Sunni populations that were controlled through monarchs they put in place, and the British and French industrial power had no rivals. Today the Sunnis are mobilized and the Shia have with Iranian support mobilized also, and sectarian wars have torn the place apart for 40 years. America's founding fathers and first president George Washington, would if here today consider this the one place US would have nothing to do with in terms of wars and bases. On oil George Washington would advise America to find alternative sources than get dragged into useless sectarian wars and lose the battle for reindustrialization, after America's elites and their economists have essentially deindustrialized America. It is appropriate for the US president to take action only on grounds of not letting the place fall into regimes with ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons that could reach US and Europe. And for that China and Russia, India and Brazil, Germany and France should also do their part and fulfill responsibilities. As for Britain and France it is appropriate for the US president to say to the posturing in Europe and ambivalent posiions, "Go, get you own oil in the Hormuz," as the US is self sufficient in oil and does not need Iranian or Iraqi oil. It is also appropriate knowing that this Iraq and Syria were created by Sykes and Picot and the British and French to build and sustain their Empires that no longer exist because Turkey and India, and China, through the effort of Gandhi and Ataturk, Sun-Yat Sen and Mao, Brazil also, are now strong independent nations. The message is- if Germany can do it to get only 6% of energy imports from Hormuz straits, so can China and Japan. China and Japan get 90% of their imports from the Hormuz straits and there is no reason why China and Japan, Britain, India need to be so dependent on a region where disruptions have happened again and again for 40 years. If they do not want to change they can assume the responsibilities of keeping Hormuz Straits on their own. ...

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Supply chains are unraveling in many industries with the tariffs imposed by president Trump on imports from China, and renegotiated trade deals with South Korea and other countries. The growth in the value of foreign value added was possible with cuts in tariffs in the period after 1990 and the emergence of China as a low cost manufacturer with cheap labor. Foreign value added increased from 20% in 1990 to 30% in 2011. The impact on factory towns and communities in the U.S. of trade in which the U.S. manufacturing declined as it shifted to China resulted in the surge in support for president Trump. The tariffs war with China is an effort to correct this imbalance. The result is a shift in supply chains away from China in some industries and gradual shift in others. Rising wages in China had already resulted in early shifts and the the environmental costs adding to this trend. President Trump temporarily suspended a threatened imposition of duties of 25% on $325 billion of Chinese imports. A renegotiated Nafta agreement with Mexico for automobile production and determination of U.S. based content and wages was designed to reset the relationship with Mexico and the auto supply chain for production in Mexico. A threat of tariffs on European auto imports to the U.S. is set for a decision in November. The trade dispute between Japan and South Korea and threat of tariffs also shows the effect this is having in other countries. With the U.S. looking at its own interest in the global supply chain and its advantage or disadvantage, industries and companies are not free to make decisions based on which country offers the best arrangement and deal for manufacturing. Notions of competitive advantage in the tech race with China are affecting the way the U.S. and European nations are acting. ...

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Chinese human rights advocate and author of Charter 08 Liu Xiaobo and the trial for attempting to overthrow the socialist system. Liu sentenced by Beijing's No 1 Intermediate People's Court to 11 years in prison, as an effort to keep out any agitation for political reform by the government in Beijing.

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The title about Indians in America as an Experiment is a misnomer, and reflects a loss of understanding of American and European civilization, the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions that created the Modern World starting in Britain and the US, and of India's aspirations for modernization. When both China and India aspire to the modern world that the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution have created.  India's Mohandas Gandhi read Emerson, had the support of FDR, of Christian missionary Charlie in the Bardoli Satyagraha, of a British Admiral's daughter at the Gandhi Ashram,  and Gandhi's prayer service included his favorite Christian hymns. This report shows no appreciation of this India and its relations with America. No country does that, what the US has done for 2 decades according to the National Science Foundation cited in this article, not the countries in the European Union, not France, Germany, Italy and Britain, not India, not China- provide tution and stipend and educate more foreign students than Americans or citizens of the home country in advanced engineering. It has never happened in the history of the world for the major nations that participated in the Renaissance in Europe and the Scientific Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, that have created the Modern World. It puts at risk what we know as the Modern World. It also puts at risk the countries such as China and India in addition to the US, as either these Indian or Chinese engineers stay in the US and take jobs and lower wages for Americans, or go back to their home country and help the development of their home country which has invested vital resouces for their previous education. Only if they return to their home country can 2.4 billion people of China and India gain from the investment made in these engineers education. This is particularly true for India, which is now emerging as the fastest growing country in the world with the access to pools of capital, labor and technology needed to match the US and China in modernization and development. For India these computer and other engineers can play a vital role in development for 1.4 billion people.  India like Germany, Italy and France in Europe and Japan, Indonesia Philippines, need the US and Britain as the leader of parliamentary democracies with a long history of parliament since 1600. Need Britain and the US as the cradle of the scientific and Industrial Revolutions, and see their vital interests in the making of a strong Nation in the American continent that can fulfill this role through it's religious values, scientific spirit, pioneering spirit, and generous impulses towards other nations. ...

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DW.com report by Mu Ciu shows a CATL(Contemporary Amperex Technology) plant in Arnstadt, Thuringia, in eastern Germany. It will not bridge Germany's technology gap. German and US consultants at the microeconomic level of the company and German and US economists at the macroeconomic level of the economy entirely fail to grasp the effectiveness of China's investment driven model. Of its joint partnering with European and American companies and China's single minded focus on technology access. This is why the DJT US administration has warned Europe that it is failing economically. China's macroeconomic and microeconomic model are run by the same authority by the state, and according to goals and plans (which in a socialist economy is weak at the microeconomic company level lacking the initiative and freedom of action). By combining its macreconomic framework run by the state with a micreconomic company level run by the state but on free market lines the Chinese investment driven model has dual advantages and operates at a speed that far surpasses the German and American model. It's society suffers as a consequence, but in few short decades 1990-2009/2020 this is all it could accomplish with a single focus on modernization for what was once a peasant agricultural economy. Where it lacks is in future technology access and as long as weak companies in the US and Germany partner with Chinese companies the technology access for Chinese companies give it the essential ingredient for its investment model to work, as American and European companies can waver in investment Chinese companies backed by the government will not waver in investment and have the clear advantage. DJT's approach is to give a big shock to the entire system of world trade now run by China, so that this is no longer going to work at the macroeconomic level and legislate huge investment incentives for one time depreciation and other moves to get American companies to invest. It wants Europe to do the same, including getting rid of the bureaucratic structures and regulations. German Chancellor Merz is getting the message and is acting quickly first with the trillion dollar investment plan, the meetings with Draghi and Meloni to get Italy and like minded nations on board, and internal efforts to get rid of regulations and bureaucratic structures, and building a new partnership with India to remove an error of Merkel/ Clinton+ Obama in excessive concentration and dependence on China. This requires a steady hand and steady governments, steady policy, and companies in America, Europe and India to work together for the long haul without wavering or delay, to rebuild the world economy along new lines and on a new path. ...

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Iraq as two states in one now dragged into Iran War by Iran sponsored Popular Mobilization Forces that are part of the two state government. It points to a never ending conflict in this region, even after Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. Finding alternative sources of oil and accelerating renewable energy are ways to stay away from the Middle East, easier to accomplish through innovation and rapid progress than sourcing oil from the region.  Irreconciliable differences between religious sects complicated further by the artificial countries created of Syria and Iraq created by the British and French Empires from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire by 1921 are enough reason to stay out of the Middle East conflicts for the US, Russia, India, China, the European Union.  The British and French colonial powers that drew up the map of Iraq and Syria created states with different populations that made no difference to them in 1921, but which create unmanageable and impossible to run states today. This is learning from the bitter experience of 50 years of conflict and wars that led through war distraction to deindustrialization of the US and European Union, and consequently to the tariff wars with China, a process that is still unwinding today. The US is better off developing new oil supplies as it considers another push in renewable energy, the EU, China and India have the resources to make a new push for renewable energy and efficient use of energy similar to Germany and Japan, using additional supplies from the US as a transition point. Imagine combining the energy technological innovation that is a bigger motivation combining the scientific minds and resources of China, Japan, India, the US and Europe, than the dislocation and internal strife inside these countries that is generated from the Middle East -that is itself the legacy of irrational decisions made by colonial powers of the 1920's,  1930's and 1940's that remain a hundred years later- impossible to resolve except by working with new solutions for energy outside of the region. ...

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As Iranian Foreign Minister left Pakistan before arrival of American negotiators showing lack of interest in negotiations on nuclear issue and navigation on which US has insisted, the talks are on pause. The US goal is only for the safety of the Iranian people and the peoples of the Gulf kingdoms, and the Arab world divided into unmanageable countries in some situations by colonial Empires of the British and French in 1921 (Syria, Iraq), the wider Arab world from Egyot to Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, to be free of nuclear weapons. Because these colonial policies not of the US but of the British and French and the counter response of Arab nationalism, have created 5 decades of wars in the world. It is then to remove these nuclear materials to another country such as Russia. The misperceptions created in the media appear in some parts to cast the US as a colonial power which it never was in the way of the Spanish, the British, the Dutch, the Portuguese, the French, the Danish. In fact exactly the opposite. One cannot think of an American who felt deeply for the situation the Chinese people were left in with the Japanese invasion than Gen. Joe Stilwell, as shown by Barbara Tuchman in her book Stilwell and the American Experience in China. Stilwell amazingly risked his life in railroad cars behind Imperial Japanese Army enemy lines in north eastern China in the 1930's because of his deep ly feelings for China at that time. Ever since the US differed with the British and the French on reparations during the Boxer rebellion of 1902, with Woodrow Wilson using the funds to create Tsinghua University in Peking (Beijing), the US has been benevolent in its intentions and as shown in its policy to Africa a partner for nations in Asia and Africa- with China, India, Indonesia, a large part of the Asian population, and now with Africa as shown in the investments in Angola, Congo, Zambia on this page. FDR made it clear in his letter of reply to Gandhi's letter from Wardha whose side America is on even in the middle of World War II. ...

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Mark Landler of NYT provides the background of the relationship with China and Taiwan during the Reagan administration. Reagan criticized the decision to abrogate recognition of Taiwan as a candidate and in 1982 pushed for Six Assurances, one of which was the assertion that the U.S. did not formally recognize Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan. Mr. Trump told a news channel that he doesn't see why the U.S. is bound by a One China policy, and that this would have to be part of a deal that included trade, and solving problems related to North Korea, and the South China Sea island fortifications. 

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This exceptional article in the NYT by Emily Feng and Carlos Tejada shows the social changes taking place in China as more women and men decide to postpone marraige. For the first time there are more women than men in master's degrees programs in China. Women in China are now increasingly better educated and prefer to be independent, not dependent on their spouses as in the previous generation. A typical Chinese household has 3.1 people in 2015 compared to 4.43 people in 1982, according to the China National Bureau of Statistics. Fewer children, more people living alone, women living independently, and seniors living alone are some of the reasons.

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Foreign policy of DJT Administration in 2025- asserting US interests, reviving the Monroe Doctrine for US policy in the western hemisphere, and rapprochement with Russia, China, Japan, EU, in international trade after tariffs against unfair trade. Mead says this has improved the US standing in world affairs and also has helped other nations in the world achieve their interests in their region. EU takes on a larger role in Ukraine freeing the US to assert itself in a much needed way to protect its borders and remove threat of drug and fentanyl trafficking from Venezuela and Mexico. Russia accepted as a Northern European power and NATO is pulled back as it should have been after the Soviet Union collapsed,  (it gets the "respect" it needs from the US so that it relinquishes efforts to disturb the peace in Latin America and the Middle East). It also frees up the US from other entanglements so that it can concentrate on both competition with China and negotiating win-win solutions on trade with China. US relations with Japan and South Korea are improved and both nations are taking a bigger role in their region with other partners India and Australia -so that the US frees up resources for tackling domestic and foreign problems that ensure US regains its position as a powerhouse for manufacturing, industry and world class infrastructure in the next decades to 2050. That is the surest way to a safer, better world for Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa. ...

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Prof. Patrice Geoffron of Universite Paris-Dauphine writes in Le Monde what is on everyone's minds- on how oil geopolitics and fossil fuel price volatility and price uncertainty what he calls fossil fuel chaos, is creating a new demand for renewable energy in Europe in 2027 to 2031. Business and industry in Europe see the value of renewable energy not in comparison with low fossil fuel prices anymore but with a fossil fuel price that can jump at any time to the $100 a barrel for some geopolitical event. Compared to this fossil chaos European business and industry can depend on a known price and known conditions for solar energy. The same thinking will be going on in business in Asia- in China and established leader in solar, in India an aspiring solar power, and in Japan. Modular nuclear reactors are also a new way to go. This means even under DJT with his skepticism for renewables the technology and production of renewables will continue and pick up pace. People will also ask whether its worth all the trouble to get fossil fuel supplies at levels that make no sense through waters of Hormuz straits- China and Jpan getting a makes no sense 90% of their imports from Hormuz, and India nearly 50%. Their are moral considerations also whether a morally conscious China, Japan and India, South Korea with much of the industrial base in the world can justify missile attacks on the scale of tens of thousands in the region and bombing just to clear Hormuz. ...

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China's breakneck growth was enabled by housing construction, and coal in a way that created problems of climate change. Now China's largest housing developers Evergrande and Country Garden together have a staggering $500 billion in debt and in serious financial trouble in or near default. How will China's government respond? It let Evergrande who had defaulted on debt payments build 300,000 apartments last year, just to protect home buyers. Now it's founder Mr. Xu is taken in for questioning and "illegal crimes." Making sure that the apartments on which people made deposits are built would cost another $72 billion, says Nomura. Yet suppliers, painters, builders and brokers are owed another $390 billion, in one estimate. And foreign creditors are getting together for complicated restructurings. Evergrande had entered wealth management promising 8 or 9% returns and has stopped making payments. All this is affecting public confidence in the future and China's growth story. For decades China depended on housing construction for high growth rates. Now the process is unwinding with both in financial difficulties. This NYT report says that after Evergrande's default, Country Garden failed to make a payment on $200 billion in debt last week and has 400,000 apartments that it sold but has not finished building. ...

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Canada's Carney gives up on USMCA renegotiated deal with US as he makes deal with China Jan 2026. No date is set for USMCA renegotiation. Carney stepped up the criticism of the US and suggested middle powers find their way by makiing deals of their own. This has drawn criticism from DJT, Luttnick and Scott Bessent, the Commerce Secretary and Treasury Secretary. Canada's economy has some fragile points in its dependence on the US and this may not be the wise course of action for Canada at this time. Germany, Italy, are meeting on February 12 and Europe may follow a different course of action of working with the US, India is close to a trade deal, so that Carney's and other remarks about going to partner with China at a gathering as isolated as Davos is from the real world may be very counterproductive.

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Most of the Address followed a familiar pathabout the economy, about the reasons for the Iran war being the nuclear threat most of all, and the way the president has sought to tackle the threat of ballistic missiles that could soon reach US and Europe. It was an update one month into the war with Iran. One part of it showed a focus on keeping the war short compared to other conflicts and limiting US losses by being very careful on that point. DJT cited the wars of the past 1 year 7 months for WW1, 3 years and 8 months for WWII, Korean War 3 years and 1 month, that soon stretched on for decades in the conflicts that followed. Vietnam 18 years, Iraq 8 years- wars that dragged on and led to US losing its economic position as the strongest nation economically. This one with limited goals nuclear threat removal and ballistic missile removal as the key goals on for 32 days, and right from the start clearly setting what US would not do and do- not take on role of opening Straits of Hormuz and asking China, Britain, countries that get the oil from Hormuz to take this on as China and Japan get 90% of their oil imports from Hormuz Straits. US is self sufficient and does not need that oil from Hormuz. It was the message to the MAGA base that does not want this war to become like the ones carried on for 8 years by Bush and Obama in Iraq which they clearly reject- the bigger goal is the US economy and reindustrialization not the deindustrialization that happened under  Bush and Obama destroying the US industrial base while fighting wars in remote places.  It was also meant to counter the idea of a president not conscious of responsibilities for limiting the duration of the conflict by removing goals such as opening Hormuz Straits which would involve the US in something it does not need and is the job of other nations who need that oil like China, Japan, Britain and India. ...

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Chinese flights near Taiwan or in Taiwan airspace have stopped for 10 days in March- to prepare for the visit by US president DJT to Beijing March 31-April 2, 2026. After US relations with Russian president Putin have improved, China may be seeking a similar kind of improvement in relations with the US.

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US strikes on Kharg Island as deadline nears on April 7 2026, on military targets on Kharg. A two week ceasefire is arranged with Pakistan (and China's indirect) mediation. DJT to meet Xi in Beijing May 14-16 could lead to an extension of that ceasefire and oil prices gradually coming down.

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The Guangzhou to Wuhan train high speed line covers the 664 mile trip in 3 hours. 42 such high speed rail lines are set to open by 2012. These trains run at 215 miles per hour. Original plans were to build these lines by 2020 but the global economic crisis led to state planners moving the date up to 2012 and allocating $100 billion for this purpose. Moving passenger traffic to high speed rail lines also frees up the existing lines for more freight. Plans are to build an additional 3000 miles of track for passenger and fast freight trains at 155 miles per hour. Practically every seat on the Guangzhou- Wuhan 14 car train was full on a typical day last week, filled with migrant workers going home. What makes building these lines affordable is construction workers who earn less than $100 a month, a national savings rate of 40%, and rising tax revenues.This particular line cost $17 billion to build because of the many tunnels needed for the line. The three hour train actually makes the journey faster than the 2 hour flight to Wuhan from Guangzhou because of faster check-in times. Train stations are built in industrial districts away from the city, in the case of Guangzhou, a 40 minute bus ride from the city....

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Reports that the family and relatives of China's prime minister Wen Jiabao have accumulated assets worth about $2.7 billion.