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The Hunter Biden investigation for non payment of taxes and illegally carrying a firearm was done under the US Attorney for Delaware David Weiss in 2018 appointed by Republicans, and extended into the Democratic Biden administration with Attorney General Merrick Garland. It ends in a plea deal. WSJ says this protects the Biden administration from any claims that it was helping the president's son.  He is the second son of Joe Biden and Neilia Biden. His mother and sister were killed in a car accident when he was a child. The only survivors Hunter and his brother Beau. Beau died of cancer in 2015. Hunter suffered a decline after that period leading to a divorce with Buhle in 2017, a troubling period for the whole Biden family she says. Hunter is a graduate of Georgetown and of Yale law school. 

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Five biking and hiking Trails that take you to- Vermont across Lake Champlain on the 3 mile Colchester Causeway that runs across the lake.

Colorado between Aspen and Glenwood Springs for 18 miles that takes you around Dillon Reservoir.

Austin, Texas right near the city on the Butler Hike and Bike Trail to Northshore Overlook. The long narrow reservoir is a dammed up section of the Colorado River.

Sacramento, California, go across the Sacramento River on the Sundial Bridge, all the way to Redding. Views of Trinity Alps to the west.

Around Seattle, take the Olympic Discovery Trail that stretches along the coast, and coastal wetland, fir tree forests, for 135 miles from Port Angeles. Near a US coast Guard Base past Edith Hook for a view of the Olympic Mountains.

 

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Anthropic's settlement for $1.5 billion at $3000 a book, and it's efforts in Education that conflict with the Nation's need to get 4th graders to Read and Learn. Anthropic's website shows it trying to get into Education and to measure the Economic Index from effects of AI. Yet the pretensions to goodwill for the public cause is not supported by facts, facts that the AI companies have nothing to show for the dismal situation for Global Literacy that is the case today. Literacy in the US that is dismal with about two thirds of 4th graders not able to read and comprehend the English language at a level of proficiency in American schools. These AI purveyors care only for the money they can make using vast amounts of electricity for these servers, and pretensions for public purpose are intended to smooth their access to public resources not some genuine interest in whether kids can read, which requires the hard work of the teachers in the public and private schools of this Nation and others in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa. The Movement for Global Literacy is Lyrarc's effort to support reading and learning and Lyrarc serves this purpose without such massive funding and without charging for the public service to the Nation and to other Nations in the world community. Anthropic settlement of $1.5 billion at $3000 a book for its AI bots use of copyrighted books, can lead to future litigation for OpenAI model that consumes vast amounts of data. Anthropic was founded by siblings Daniela and Dario Amodei after leaving OpenAI in 2021 in San Francisco. It hired Google Books Turvey to scan books for its large language models on a massive scale to train Claude its version of OpenAI's ChatGPT.  An investment of $4 billion by Amazon and additional $2 billion by Google provided funding. In this way it is a competitor to Microsoft funded OpenAI which made early advances in AI.  This article in WSJ says by making the settlement for $1.5 billion Anthropic is trying to make it harder for Open AI to scan material easily without paying for the access and thus blocking it's rival.   ...

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Two key appointments in international affairs are made by the Obama administration in Jan 2014. Nathan Sheets is appointed the new Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, and Mark Sobel is made the new U.S. representative to the IMF Board. Sheets served at the U.S. Fed since 1993 for about 2 decades, advising the Fed Open Market Committee on global financial developments, becoming the head of the Fed's international finance division in 2007. He received his doctorate in economics from MIT. Since 2011 he was Citigroup's head of global international economics. Sobel worked at the U.S. Treasury for 3 decades mostly in its international divisions, including 4 years as senior advisor to the U.S. representative at the IMF. The U.S. delegation to the Group of 20 meeting of ministers and central bankers in Sydney, Australia will include these 2 senior officials. The appointments come as the U.S. has not moved in the direction of greater power sharing with emerging nations at the IMF, and the emerging markets crisis in 2013-2014 with India, Brazil and other countries critical of U.S. Fed policy leading to capital outflows. Sheets works well with central bankers from other countries and is well received as a consensus builder. Sobel is seen as more direct in presenting U.S. positions. ...

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This report in the WSJ  shows that president Xi is pulling back from his signature economic policy to reduce wide gaps in wealth and opportunities in China. In 2021 this was a policy that Xi pushed to reduce inequalities that have built up over decades of hypergrowth. One tenth of the population owns 68% of the wealth in China creating an highly unequal society. Concerned about the future of the Communist party as disparities kept widening and 40% of the population was left behind, Xi early on in his first and second terms made tackling corruption and inequality part of his policy.  Yet the way China's economy is structured, its dependence on the construction industry for growth, and on local governments for investment, it is easier to tackle infrastructure projects than address widening gaps in society. Xi's efforts have led to slowdown in growth to 5% or less. With the US and Europe moving to shorter supply chains and moving supply chains to less integration with China, slowing growth to less than 4-5% presents a major challenge for China. Leading to a pull back from the Common Prosperity policies that Xi initiated and which are part of Communist party policy in its early period after 1949. A major problem for China says WSJ is that social security contributions revenue is 6.5% of GDP compared to 9% for advanced countries in the OECD, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Personal income taxes are 1.2% of GDP compared to 10% in UK and US. This prevents the better funding of programs for maintaining a better safety net and social support for the less well off in society. The pandemic followed by Ukraine war have added new urgency to the acceleration of the effort to build new supply chains, leading to new manufacturing innovation and manufacturing leadership in the US and European Union, and in countries such as Japan, India, and other parts of Asia. This too has made the goals of reducing inequalities and addressing the wide disparities in Chinese society more difficult with sharply slowing growth in China. This was also the experience of Japan and South Korea with decades of fast growth followed by sharp slowdown with unanticipated problems. ...

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Winfried Vahland, the VW executive chosen to head the U.S. and Mexico operations by new VW CEO Muller, turns down the position. Vahland is one of the most experienced executives at VW, heading the China operations, and since 2010 in charge of the Skoda operations based in the Czech Republic. This is a setback for VW as it looks for ways to improve the management at all of its operations and make organizational changes.

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U.S. Congressional investigation shows the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) missed two opportunities, one in 2007 and another in 2010, to launch formal probes into whether the 2003-2006 Chevrolet Cobalt and the Saturn Ion had a defect leading to non deployment of airbags. In 2007 the head of the NHTSA's defect assessments division emailed other officials in the Office of Defects Investigation recommending an investigation be launched. Yet no action was taken.

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The India China border clashes in the Tawang area of Arunachal are covered in this discussion by experts in United States Institute of Peace. The Tawang area it says is unique because of connections with the Dalai Lama of Tibet and China has special concerns about this area that go back to its invasion of Tibet in the 1950's soon after the British left India and the civil war in China ended with Mao and Communist China in 1949 taking control with the defeat of the Japanese. That chaotic period and Indian unpreparedness along a border that stretches for as long as the US border with Mexico. The lack of Indian infrastructure and roads and military modernization from that period to the last decade is now being corrected on the Indian side in an accelerated effort. Global trade and the economic needs of China in relation to the US, and India's efforts to focus on modernization, common challenges of climate change and pandemics, are leading to a new dimension that is being recognized by all sides. This limits the extent of the clashes and the swift return to normalcy of sorts. ...

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US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says president Biden's $2 trillion plan for workers and families is aform of modern supply side economics. Where the old supply side economics failed with deregulation causing environmental damage and tax cuts on capital did not achieve promised gains, she says the new "modern supply side economics seeks to increase economic growth by boosting labor supply and raising productivity, while reducing economic inequality and environmental damage." Biden plan seeks to use common sense ideas that are more likely to work by investing in education, healthcare, child care, helping more women be productive in the workplace and tapping into their skills, investing in social cohesion essential for democracy by giving all sections of the people better opportunity for a better life, and creating a ground for fairness in taxes to finance the public infrastructure that will make the US a leading economy in the world that serves all its people. In that sense it is even wider and deeper in both intent and purpose than any term such as supply side economics that economists and politicians use. ...

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Current responses to China's different posture in international relations obscure the huge investments made by US and European Union business in China that lead to about $1 trillion in exports from China to US and EU in 2021. This could not happen without the hyper investment in China by business in the US and EU that not only neglected manufacturing technologies in the home country but did this on a immense scale that would end up shipping almost the whole of the manufacturing supply chains to China from the US and EU. Done as a carefully planned shift of some manufacturing operations it could have benefitted both China and the US and EU. In what way was this hyper move in pace and scale damaging? China's water, air and land was contaminated at a rapid pace never before seen in history, seen as early as 2005. And the hyper shift by 2015 and in 2020 is now showing the severe effects of climate change with droughts, floods and fires all over the world. The German Environment Ministry today counts the cost at 90 times in the use of coal and fossil fuels over time. On the scale that this massive and fast shift was done of manufacturing to China even more so- a hugely imprudent response of US and EU business management and executives. Instead of tackling and confronting head on the challenging problems of quality control and cost in the 1990's through 2000 and beyond at home, management at Apple and other companies simply shifted all manufacturing to China. The other ill effect of the imprudent response of American business was in the massive and wholesale shift of supply chain to China by offshoring practically the entire manufacturing base. It was to lead to the massive losses that workers, families  and communities in the US and EU that countries could not cope with as it moved on an accelerated hyper level and pace. The result was to lead to intense criticism of China and a level of rancor that has poisoned the relations with China. Some of this counsel to China was given to leaders of the Communist party who had little knowledge of American capitalism operating within constraints of social democracy in 1990. Some of that counsel was self interested given by investment banks to Chinese officials- investment bankers that have now disappeared from view- who themselves lacked an understanding of the social constraints of American and European democracies. It is that rancor that is now leading to China and the US disconnecting the supply chains leading to questions one is certain within China about how this will affect unemployment in China in the years to come. The pandemic simply accelerated this realization on both sides of this untenable situation. Still a trillion dollars in exports are taking place even as the political situation is now totally adrift -as the situation in Taiwan in August 2022 shows- the political and trading relationships at opposite ends and seemingly at war with each other. ...

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Bill Keller of the NYT points out that getting Syria right means getting over the obsession over what went wrong in Iraq and looking objectively at the situation in Syria. He points to the failure of president Obama in grasping what the Assad regime has done to Syria, the refugees in Jordan, the use of artillery and air raids on civilian population, and inviting the support by fundmentalist Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia in the absence of U.S. and European support, making delay after delay by president Obama leading to a paralysis in response. Leaving the question for the future which was a worse U.S. response- the hasty action in Iraq or the paralysis in Syria?

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Chancellor Merkel has shown exceptional leadership during the coronavirus health crisis in Germany, leading to increasing popularity for her government. Her approval ratings are the highest of any coalition government in the last 23 years. The government says this report in DW.com has appeared level headed in its actions, and Merkel has paid careful attention to advice from Germany's Robert Koch Institute, the German public health agency. Merkel also shared important facts for tackling coronavirus in an effective television address. By listening to the expertise of RKI public health agency the government has maintained calm and better handled the crisis. In the U.S. a similar process is taking place with the heads of the public health agencies, Dr. Fauci and Dr Birx playing a similar role, and president Trump paying careful attention to health experts. DW.com says doctors, nurses, police officers, and people working at supermarkets and pharmacies, are being applauded by the public, with people taking to the balconies to applaud. This is also happening in Spain. The hope expressed by DW.com is that going forward these professions will be better paid and public health become a top priority. ...

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Changes that president Biden is making to make certain that students who took out a loan of $30,000 for college do not end up paying for two decades, and be still owing $60,000. WSJ explains that the original student loan law written decades ago does not take into account the realities of today as young people are forced into long repayment plans and still cannot complete payment. President Biden has stated that no student loan borrower would be expected to pay more than 5% of his or her income for student loan payments each month. This helps student borrowers across the country and makes college education affordable. Most Americans have failed to realize the importance of higher education and its affordability for the US economy, the US ability to compete with China, India and the EU, and the damage done to US education by outdated laws. The general failure to support education and its affordability has come at a great cost to the US economy and its strength in the world, similar to the damage done by the neglect of manufacturing and communities across America that depend on good manufacturing jobs. The failures of laissez faire theory under Reagan and it becoming part of exiting culture leading to lack of government support for education, manufacturing, and infrastructure has weakened America and neglected communities across the country. ...

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Defense experts in Britain say the part of the Russian army that is modern is not large, and the part that is large is not modern. The Russian advance attack in Ukraine has floundered, says this report in the WSJ. About 25% of the Russian army is made up of conscripts. The hundreds of billions of dollars spent on modernization of the Russian armed forces have been spread thinly, and dissipated also because of corruption and poor management.  The Russian encrypted communications did not work as expected leading to relying on open communications that could be intercepted or jammed. The Russian government and president Putin were still stuck on 2014 and did not realize the determined resistance and the desire for independence of the Ukrainian people. Ukraine is a technologically advanced European country the size of Germany with a population of 40 million, and Russia has an economy the size of Italy, factors that also played a part. The corruption and poor economic conditions in the border Ukrainian republics setup by Russia led many Ukrainians in the eastern border region to question any advantages from Russian rule. The user of poorly motivated conscript soldiers led to many generals and other officers to have to be present on the front lines leading to Russian officer level casualties. The use of antitank weapons supplied quickly from the European Union and the US, and use of small mobile units of Ukrainian volunteer and army forces to tactically destroy the front and rear of miles long convoys of tanks and armored vehicles - leaving the rest of the convoys trapped in between. Logistics also failed to resupply deep inside Ukraine as Russian forces depend on rail based resupply which could not happen without control of cities on the rail lines. The volunteer forces in Ukraine after 8 years of war since 2014 and the immediate assistance with antitank and other military assistance from US, and EU, played a part in the western response to the Ukraine crisis and president Putin's actions.   ...

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This report by David Sanger of the NYT shows how the Russia sanctions that president Putin hoped to remove are likely to remain in place and somewhat expanded. Russia's economy has seen slow growth of 1% as a result of a fall in foreign investment. This is likely to continue, says Sanger. American investment in privatization will be restricted to not more than $10 million, and the investments in Nord Stream pipeline are affected. Russia needs foreign investment in its economy, and this is affected. Sanger points out that even if president Trump and Secretary of State Tillerson preferred the option of having presidential authority to lift sanctions to improve relations with Russia, this now runs into Congressional opposition. At the Aspen Security Forum in mid July, Dan Coats and Mike Pompeo, senior intelligence officials in the administration, said that there was an effort to influence the U.S. election. The problems started with the opposition movement in Ukraine, leading to the collapse of the government in 2014. Before this Russia- U.S. relations followed the trajectory set early in the Putin first  and second term of improving the economy by forging better relations with the EU and the U.S. This resulted in a stronger economy and more foreign investment. Things deteriorated after the Ukraine issue came into prominence. For the U.S., the EU and Russia, an inability to come to a better understanding and resolve differences on Ukraine has created a downward trajectory, that has not benefited any of the countries involved.   ...

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As Kamala Harris offers $25,000 to home buyers to make it more affordable and sets up a $40 million Innovation fund to build more homes, sets a target of 3 million homes to be built, housing and cost of renting or owning is front and center of attention in 2024. Dougherty and Davis of NYT look at the US housing shortage and rising rents for apartments and homes. A look at Kalamazoo, Michigan, as a sort of microcosm of the US housing situation. Around the time of the 2009 financial crisis and aftermath when vacant homes on streets in many cities were being bulldozed and when there was more housing than people needed the seeds were being planted for today's shortage of homes. There was less interest from builders, there were restrictions on mortgages and higher down payments, capital was harder to get for builders, adding up to fewer homes being built. US demand was for 1.6 million units of housing, the supply was about 1.1 million over the next decade after 2009 leading to the buildup of a shortage of 5 million home supply. Covid changed some patters of housing behaviour. More people work from home with remote work. Then by 2022 mortgage rates were up making housing less affordable just when owners of apartments raised rents by 20-30 percent. In Kalamazoo up by 40%. ...

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Fuller cites the WSJ about the 40% of the 1.4 million jobs created in the first half of 2014 being in the lower wage retail, food service and temporary help sectors. The 6.1% unemployment rate does not count the people who are too discouraged to look for work, these people dropping out of the statistic just as much as the people who have found work. The U-6 which includes those who work part time because they cannot find full time work and people discouraged and stopped looking for work is at 12.6% in March 2014, giving a more accurate reading of the unemployment situation in the U.S. for 2014.

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Democrats lost 6 Congressional districts won by Biden in 2020. This is more than any other state in the US. Wolfson, a former deputy mayor of New York City says it may have cost the Democrats the House of Representatives in 2022. It all started with redrawing of districts by Democrats in the House that was thrown out by the courts, leading to it being done by someone appointed by the court, and redrawing that was unfavorable to the Democrats. Democrats also failed to grasp the effects of laws passed that change the way judge set bail for offenses which Republicans pointed to as creating a larger crime situation. A 30% rise in crime in New York City was made an issue by Republicans in the midterms, which Democrats failed to address. The Republican majority in the House is thin and there is a sense that New York state played apart in Democrats losing the House.

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DY Chandrachud and his father CY Chandrachud will soon be the first father son combination of Supreme Court Chief Justices in Indian history. This has not happened in Britain or US. CY Chandrachud was Chief Justice of the SupremeCourt of India from 1978 to 1985. DY Chandrachud was part of a three member bench of the Indian Supreme Court that looked at The Modi government vaccination policy in April 2021 and gave a ruling that formed the basis of Mr. Modi's action for a new and broader vaccination policy that ensured access to the entire Indian population of 1.2 billion people.

This report in The Times of India describes the son's record following in the footsteps of his father. DY Chandrachud studied at St Stephens College Delhi, Delhi University Law, and Harvard for his Masters degree in Law. His experience includes heading the Uttar Pradesh High Court in Allahabad and holding legal positions in Mumbai.

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What does a 5 day Joe Biden trip with landmark decisions on Asia Economic Corridor to Europe, discussions with G20 leaders at the New Delhi G20 Summit, and a new strategic partnership agreement with Vietnam signed by Biden in Hanoi, say about the president's sharp mind and healthy lifestyle at age 80 years? Biden was born November 20, 1942. He also shook hands with over 500 graduates at the graduation ceremony of the Air Force Academy. Katie Rogers who was with the president during his visit to New Delhi and Hanoi says this says a lot about the president's energy and stamina. In New Delhi he held informal discussions with 30 world leaders in a Summit that lays out a new path for future generations of the world's leading 20 countries and for Africa, Asia, Latin America, as well as Europe and the US.

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Florida Governor Bob Graham 1979-1987 work in investing in education boosting per pupil spending and investment in Flordia university system is similar to California Governor Pat Brown 1960-1968 who helped build the Cal State University system. Bo Graham covered the Kennedy-Johnson period of the sixties to the turn of the century, retiring in 2003 after serving in the US Senate for 18 years. His early upbringing was on a family farm in Florida. He is known for his effort to take on the roles of ordinary Americans for 100 days when he ran for public office. This period is a reminder of the changes in the democratic system, business and the economy since then with influence of lobbyists in Congress, tech monopolies, and the financial industry leading to crises since 2009, and wars in the Middle East that dissipated the Nation's resources that should have gone into replacing dilapidated infrastructure.

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WSJ asks the question how are companies run in America by CEO's during the 9 month old pandemic? To answer that question it looks at Emerson Electric, based in Ferguson, Missouri, with its 90,000 employees in the U.S. and around the world. David Farr is CEO of American conglomerate Emerson Electric that makes products in a number of industries, for longer than most CEO's in America. At 65 years today, he has managed the company since he became CEO at the age of 45. It has 8000 employees in China and 10,000 in Mexico, and plants in the midwest, all hard hit by the pandemic. Add to this racial riots after killing of a black man in Ferguson, Missouri, and you have a challenging situation for any CEO.    As a son of a plant manager at a Corning plant in Corning, New York and growing up in a manufacturing environment in England, his instincts are that customers are what matter the most. That shrinking production could lead to some competitors making it and others shrinking if they did not act quickly to protect their supply chains. His goal is to keep factories running to have parts ready for their customers who made the finished product in the oil and gas industry and in factories where Emerson supplied the automated processes. As a first step he has 7 charter planes fly parts from a Nanjing factory to Shanghai when the trucks stopped moving. He campaigns with the Mexican ambassador to the U.S. to have the company listed as essential business to be kept open in a lockdown but fails. He gets up at 5.30 am and works till 8 pm and spends most nights reading, lounging with 2 spaniels, and going to bed early. He tells his son who works at Caterpillar company to get back to work as soon as he can as he believes being on the job is really really important. Yet he is worried up his daughter working as a pastry chef in New York and wants her to come back home to the midwest. He is a manager in the old style saying he wouldn't hire American workers because the Obama administration was out to destroy American manufacturing with its environmental rules forgetting that he was doing just that in the end-  and what had America and the concept of a free nation and a free people with opportunities for all have anything to do with like or dislike of any president or party. He also has his quirks, keeping 5 baseball bats and swinging a bat while he took walks and did some thinking. Passionate, hard working, and getting it done he keeps Emerson in the game as an industrial competitor from the U.S. ...

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What were the stories in the Economist magazine that were the most read stories of 2019? Not on president Trump. On Malaysia, China under Jinping, and exodus from San Francisco and Silicon Valley. The most read article was on the newly elected president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro. The mismanagement of the economy particularly extravagant state spending on the Olympics and soccer stadiums for the World Cup at the expense of basic sanitation services, bus and transport services, health services, led to the result of a majority of Brazilians rejecting the Workers Party and its leader former president Lula. Unfortunately most of the media including the Economist did not draw attention to this gap. During a period in which income from mining with export of iron ore, and soyabeans to China, enabled Brazil to live beyond its means, there was no effort to draw attention to glaring gaps in development of public services such as sanitation, bus services and transport, lack of building infrastructure other than to support mining. Glaring gaps in education and health services made the situation worse. The second most read piece in the Economist  was on March 10th- Malaysia's PM is about to steal an election. Here the Economist magazine joined the Wall Street Journal which originally broke the story on the 1MDB fund and irregularities in Malaysia where a development fund was misused by the government. Najib actually lost that election and the WSJ covered the story of the developments that followed in which Malaysia's new governemnt led by a returning former prime minister in his nineties Mahathir Mohammed, ousted his own protege Mr. Najib.  The third most read piece in the Economist magazine was - How the West got China Wrong.  Unfortunately the Economist magazine and most of the media covered China in the two decade long boom years without covering the other emerging story as well in which Mr. Lighthizer (now president Trump's top trade adviser) and others questioned the huge unsustainable trade surpluses in U.S. trade with China. With the economy facing huge downside risks and rising trade tensions with the U.S. Chinese president Jinping's move to remove the limit on terms in office in the Constitution was considered a shift from the notion that China was likely to turn into a democracy. Mr. Jinping had already completed his first term in office and the anti-corruption campaign, managing the economic boom for a soft landing, was carried out with the central leadership of the party, after the destabilization evident in the early part of Xi Jinping's first term. Much of China's path was predictable and rational behaviour in its national interest, what was not clearly defined or defended was the way the U.S. could sustain the trade deficits that had reached a billion dollars a day. Leading to Mr. Trump seizing on this as an election issue to form a bloc of voters separate from the two main parties, the Republicans and the Democrats. The fifth most read piece was on Oct 11, 2018- the next recession. It pointed out that with low interest rates central banks in the U.S. and Europe and America could not cope effectively with a recession. The sixth most read piece was on June 29, 2018- Bullshit jobs and the yoke of managerial feudalism. It cited Prof. David Graeber of the London School of Economics, who wrote a short essay that went viral on the prevalence of work that had no social or economic reason to exist, work he called "bullshit jobs". Graeber said people want to feel they are transforming the world around them in a way that is leading to a positive difference. No. 7, 8, 9, were on Bitcoin, Netflix and programming language Python. No. 10 most read was on Aug. 30, 2018- Why startups are leaving Silicon Valley. It showed that in 2017 more people left the county of San Francisco than entered. The main reason the cost of living was burdensome and out of control. As Amazon shifts attention to India and Brazil, and Apple pulls back from India, social media companies coming under fire for disinformation, this period of Tech is making way for a shift in a new direction. A direction that focuses on people's lives, wages, spending on much needed infrastructure and services. ...

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The Guardian gives this story of Khamanei's rule in Iran after 1989. He was made president in 1981 in a landslide win at that time just 2 years after the revolution in 1979 that toppled the Shah of Iran's monarchial regime. Khamanei comes from a the family of a modest cleric in the town of Mashaad who was immersed in the anticolonial writings coming out of Arab North Africa's liberation movements. His policy towards Israel and the US, difficult relations with Arab countries in the neighborhood, and pursuit of nuclear weapons technologies, led Iran to become isolated and face sanctions that hurt its economy and its oil industry for three decades. It created its own version of governing and in setting up proxy militias but this resulted in huge investments diverted from the economy of Iran, neglect of its oil industry and production under western sanctions, that led to economy collapsing and student protests every decade. This expanded in 2025 to broad sections of the population calling for a new direction. Protests were suppressed leading to a disconnect with the people by 2026. To truly understand Iran one has to step back to the 1900's ( as one must also do to understand China or India), as Iran was ruled by the Qajar dynasty at the time. The first Majlis parliament was set up in Iran in 1906 -with the help of "good" Britishers like the British agent in Rajkot who helped send Gandhi to London to study law- wished to see a constitutional setup similar to Britain and limit the powers of the monarchy so that reforms in agriculture and in the civil service could be made. It lasted until 1908. At the time other Britishers in the British Empire both in India and in London sought to maintain British influence and keep out Russian influence. It was not a coincidence that the Majlis lasted only till 1908. That year in 1908 the first discovery of oil in West Asia was made in Khozestan province by George Reynolds, with investor backing of William D'Arcy. The following year 1909 the Anglo-Persian Oil Company( later Anglo Iranian Oil Company and later British Petroleum) was formed. The oil concession was given by the Shah from Qajar dynasty. From that time on Iran became the scene of oil company interests, monarchial interests first under Qajar dynaasty and then under Pahlavis dynasty (which set itself up like Napoleon II in France from humble origins, after 1925 to replace the Qajar dynasty), and the emerging middle class lawyer and civil service, agricultural landowners class, all competing for power and influence in a Asian region with Shihite Islamic embedded in the fabric of the society. Power swung to different groups from 1925 onwards for 5 decades to the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Pahlavi temporary replacement monarchy that worked with British oil interests. West Asia became a meeting point for anticolonial writings emerging from Arab North Africa and other places that took the form of and led to a socialist style anticolonial Baathist influnce that overthrew a monarchy in Baghdad Iraq in the "Free Officers" coup of June 14, 1958 led by Karim Kassem. Out of that Pan Arabic Iraqi mood emerged S. Hussein who with weapons systems imported from the US and Europe initiated the war with Iran in 1980. The Iranian counterrevolutionary movement to Iraq began from that time with the leadership of Khomeni and Khameni from 1981. This is what one has seen swing back and forth in the West Asian region for about 5 decades to 2026, the regional Arab states mostly Sunni monarchies ranged against Iran with its Shiite and also modernizing population. US oil interests in Arab monarchies of the West Asian region from the time of FDR's meeting with Saudi's Faisal in the WWII period clashed with Iranian public interests competing with oil interests (US and British) allied to monarchial interests, and the emergence of Shiite Islamic authority in Iran in these clashes. Iranian public interests that started out with the Majlis and parliaments set up by the "good Britishers" never got a chance in Iran just as the modernizing effort of Sun Yat Sen in China in the 1900's never got a chance in the middle of the surviving monarchy in China by 1910, and the Japanese colonial interests in China from that time competing with the Nationalists Koumintang and the Communist Chinese workers movements emerging in the 1930's, all competing for influence during the Chinese civil war and in its aftermath the emergence of Mao and the CCP of China. This is the situation we in the world face today. ...

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U.S. president Obama invited NYT's columnist Thomas Friedman to the White House for an interview on Saturday afternoon April 4, 2015. Here Friedman gives president Obama's response to his questions, and Obama's concerns about the heated rhetoric in the U.S. and Israel on the negotiations with Iran detracting and distracting from his key goals of protecting U.S. interests and Israel. On the Sunni states, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Obama points out that there are some tough conversations needed about changes inside their societies which pose a greater threat to the governments than Iran. Obama says he understands perfectly that Israel and the Jewish people after their experience of the last hundred years are determined to not let Iran develop a nuclear weapon, and their right to be concerned that the agreement could let Iran clandestinely develop one. Obama says the verification is extensive and covers any facility in Iran, any suspicion about secret facilities, yet it leaves the subsequent decisions if Iran created difficulties, to a international body over which the U.S., UK, France, have no control. This is a principal issue for critics of the negotiated agreement. No mention is made of why Iran simply discarded the option of sending the atomic material to Russia to be processed into nuclear rods for the Bushehr nuclear plant built by Russia only a few days before the final outline was developed. And why the U.S., with allies Germany, France, UK and Japan, did not offer the Iranians an economic aid package if needed in return for the billions Iranians invested for that atomic material, to ensure that the atomic materials are shipped out of the country- to create a nuclear agreement that would be credible to all parties. The economic aid would benefit Iran modernize its oil industry, including refining operations, meet basic import needs, and provide tangible proof to the Iranian people of our best intentions for the future, that president Obama strongly espouses in the interview. The interview does show the quandary president Obama faces in Iran for strong action, that is a result of failed policies with Iran since the Eisenhower administration's intervention 1953 during the Cold War that displaced the elected government of Mosaddegh in Iran and setup the Shah's regime in 1956, the support of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in the war against Iran, which Obama mentions in this intervew. In the light of the repeated failures of the U.S. policies a Democratic party leader faces increasing reservations for taking strong action against Iran's development of nuclear weapons capabilities, preferring to exhaust every diplomatic channel, and take risks in the hope that time will give the Iranian people an opportunity to to reintegrate in the global community and pursue the peaceful development of nuclear energy. This strain in president Obama's thinking is evident throughout the interview with Friedman. Other aspects of president Obama's policy in the Middle East shared in the interview are about supporting the Sunni states in some areas, and Iran in some areas, at the same time as the nuclear issue is "put in a box" and separated from the regional conflicts. Friedman presents this as the Obama doctrine, yet it appears to be coming after a series of improvisations in foreign policy following a failure to act in 2011-2013, when the "once in a lifetime" opportunities presented by the Arab Spring were not taken up by the Obama administration, leading to the region's current disintegration....