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This report in WSJ by Thomas, Hughes and Wise says despite the concerns about Biden he is tied with Trump at 46% in a recent Ipsos Wash Post survey of voters. Lyrarc.com's Analysis of readers comments of WSJ, NYT and Wash Post reports on Biden for the last week show that most readers support Biden and see the media overreaching and lacking balance and good judgement in reporting. This report also shows 42% of Democrats support Biden continuing his candidacy. There is clearly misinformation with 4 specific examples of gross distortion of images of the president spread online, cited in reports. A true grass roots assessment would show a large majority of Democrats support the president once the dust has cleared. Lyrarc's assessment of the President at the NATO press conference Q and A gives the president a 9 out of 10 for the sharpness and ability to handle a huge number of details and complex policy issues, and for his delivery and viewer comprehension. Biden explained complex issues in simple plain English which also stands out. On the same day India's Modi said he was glad to be welcomed by Australia when he was in Vienna, Austria, with its chancellor, correcting it immediately. No one mentioned it even though it happened twice for Modi. Media made it their headline for Biden for similar mixing up and immediate correction. Going over complex issues for 60 minutes with 9 reporters in A+ fashion- no mention at all by the Media. In Movement for Global Literacy we cited the low degree of confidence and trust in media- only 20% of the American people trust the media such as the TV news shows and the newspapers. To know the true picture go directly to the grassroots and find out in every part of the Union. Lincoln,TR, FSR and Truman all in their own way faced the twisted rhetoric of politicians and the media in their time, yet retained the confidence of Ameica. ...

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Russian ambassador to Kabul Mr Kabulov talks about his experience in the Russian Afghan war when was the top KGB person in Kabul. He describes what he learned from the war, which he is telling Americans there and Nato forces leaders there. He makes a couple of important points. First, he says the Soviet record is largely unknown or unpresented, when it comes to helping modernize Afghan society in the cities like Kabul. This modernizing mission led to billions of rubles being spent on education, advancing the role of women, and building roads, dams and an industrial infrastructure. Of the mistakes Americans are making, he lists them one by one. "Because we deployed very easily into the major cities, we did'nt give much thought to what was happening in the countryside." He says there is an "irritative allergy" in the countryside, which is hard to control in a vast mountainous region, has historical basis which the British experienced, and is easy to stir up by sending large number of troops from European or Western powers. When these troops have to take retailatory steps such as destroying villages where insurgents are found along with the civilians there. That is why he thinks increasing American troop levels to double troop strength from current Nato levels of 65,000, can only stir up this"irritative allergy." The Soviets had 140,000 troops and this did not help. What he thinks would have beeen better was to let the Afghan army do the job, and for the Russians to say goodbye. America may be about to do just that, but in the meantime there may be an effort to create a respected Afghan government and army which inspires confidence and support in the meantime. What is clearly different here is that America is not fighting a proxy war with a superpower, and it is fighting awar for the soul of Pakistan now, so that at some point the wholehearted support of the people of Pakistan may be marshalled, especially if the Taliban alienate moderate Islamic Pakistanis and America can wean away Afghan Islamic moderates and get rural support from tribes and other sources....

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UN sponsored talks taking place to let shipments of Ukraine grain to leave Black Sea ports. The way this would be done is by arranging a safe passage along a pathway that would be cleared of mines for ships to get from Black Sea ports to safer waters. This would still take weeks for the work needed to make this happen. Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia and other Middle Eastern countries are heavily dependent on Ukrainian grain and warehouses in Ukraine need to be cleared for the coming harvest. The head of the UN Antonio Gutierrez and president Widodo of Indonesia had talks earlier with Mr. Putin and Mr. Zelensky to arrange this safe passage for ships in the Black Sea from Ukraine. This would also reduce tensions between Ukraine and Russia and start the process for an end to the war.

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The 7 Priorities listed in India's Budget for April 2023 to March 2024 provide a roadmap for the next 25 years to 2047 when India marks 100 years as an independent nation. These are-Inclusive Development Reaching the last mile, Infrastructure and investment, Unleashing the potential Green growth, Youth power, Financial sector

Reaching the last mile- Gandhi's idea- "Ask yourself if the step you contemplate is of any use to him or her (the poorest and weakest man or woman you have seen), will he or she gain anything by it? Will it restore to him (or her) control of their life and destiny."

A fund will be setup for Agri-startups. A National Digital Library will be set up for children and adolescents and States will be encouraged to setup physical libraries at panchayat and ward levels.

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Li Yuan looks at the poor job prospects in China for young people over the age of 35 years whose work can be done by new university graduates at lower pay. Jobs in government are given before a person reaches 35 years. Employees laid off during the pandemic have difficulty finding work. This affects marraige prospects and starting a family, or buying a home. There is also hidden discrimination for job seekers over age 35. For women there are questions from employers about if and when they will have children.

Hidden discrimination takes place in the workplace in France where the protests against raising the pension age are fueled in addition to other reasons about its timing after the pandemic and inflation, by people over 40 years who cannot find jobs, with the burden falling harder on women. 

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Michael Heise, chief economist of Allianz SE, says the ECB needs to assure financial markets that the deflation risks in the first half of 2015 are not all negative, as the declining price of oil adds to purchasing power in the eurozone economies. He points out that ECB needs to define price stability not as inflation of "nearly 2%" but as inflation of "below 2%," to take into account the impact of declining oil prices on inflation. His concern is about financial markets expecting strong quantitative easing program from the ECB in 2015.

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Under the current bankruptcy settlement plan of Judge Rhodes bondholders would get $1 for every $5 and pension cuts for ununiformed workers would be about 30%. A library clerk for example could see a pension cut of $400 in a $1400 pension. Retired Detroit firefighters and police would see smaller cuts of 10%. The Detroit bankruptcy is being closely watched as other cities an local governments are facing similiar problems. As part of the plan $1.5 billion would be spent on reducing blight and improvements in the city. About 40% of Detroit streetlights are broken and police response time is about 1 hour. One reader says the unions sent companies to low cost regions and stuck Detroit with the bill. After the bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler the city shaw a sharp decline and many people left the city reducing its tax base and worsening urban blight. The events in Detroit are being watched around the country and had an impact in the vote at the VW plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where former mayor Corker cited the situation in Detroit as an issue....

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For the first time Ukrainian faces doing great work in wartime, staying calm in unbelievable stress, as part of Ukraine Rail, can now be seen. The amazing work done by Ukrainian Railways for helping get refugees to Poland from cities like Kharkiv and Kviv hard hit by shelling, is shown in this Guardian picture essay. On the return trip the trains bring back humanitarian aid from Poland sent by the US and European Union countries. The Ukrainian Railways has 230,000 workers and all of them have remained in the country to operate the trains and train stations in this war and refugee crisis. Many of the trains operate in darkness into stations that are dimly lit. "The soul is torn and the heart aches, as a train driver I see what is going on," says Chumak, 43, the train driver for the Kviv to Lviv trains for evacuation of women, children and other refugees. At the peak 200,000 people were travelling every day going west to Lviv, trains were free of charge for everyone with women and children having priority. In the first 2 weeks of the war 2 million passengers were taken to safety. Shown here also is the train driver Yaroshenko, 36, for Train No. 82  the Uzhorod to Kviv train going to the Slovakian border. During the journey the train lights are turned off near Kviv or anywhere that is dangerous, as he says who knows who might be lurking nearby. He sees himself as part of the Ukrainian war effort. Tetjana, 36, and her daughter Sofia, 5, are shown on a train to Przemysyl in Poland. She worked as a train conductor on evacuation trains till she decided to take the refugee train herself for the sake of her daughter. If tracks are damaged, they are quickly repaired. Territorial defense units protect the key places and bridges so that the risk is reduced, though shrapnel from missile attacks elsewhere can damage windows of trains.   ...

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Germany faces serious problems in its vaccination drive and efforts to control the pandemic in November 2021. The rate at which people are getting vaccinated has slowed to 150,000 a day and the percentage of the population that is vaccinated is stuck at 67%. This percentage of 67% fully vaccinated in Germany as of November 3 is much lower than that in Spain, France and Italy.  Spain is at 78%, France at 69% and Italy at 72%. (Data from NYT) This report in the Guardian points out that most of the remaining one third of the population is not eager to get vaccinated as surveys show that the those who have refused to get a jab are unlikely to change their minds.There is also the problem of booster shots. Germany's 16 regions conduct the vaccination drives and with many of the vaccination centers not active since September staff has to be retrained or rehired. This makes it harder to give booster shots to everyone that was vaccinated early by the start of winter. Why is it that Germany lags behind Spain in vaccination? There is a great deal of trust in Spain and Portugal in the health service and people are 100% behind their health system. The other countries that have a low rate of fully vaccinated are the US at 58%, Brazil 57%, Russia at 33%. Even the UK with its well respected National Health Service remains at 68% fully vaccinated. Today the US, Russia, Brazil, European Union countries and India have many of the 5 million deaths from coronavirus. India's vaccination drive is approaching 1100 million vaccinated, yet there is along way to go in getting most of the population fully vaccinated because of the large population of 1.3 billion. This is why the Indian prime minister on the first day of returning from the COP26 climate summit devoted his time to meeting with leaders of different states and heads of districts with low vaccination rates to press home the idea that the effort had to be taken up vigorously in the coming months. ...

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Education Department to delay forced collection on student loans starting Jan 2026. Tax refunds would not be used towards repayment of student loans. The thinking is that the student loan payment system is so much in need of overhaul that student borrowers should not have to suffer from high cost of living on smaller wages. 

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This report shows how the H1-B visa system as it operated for many years till 2025 undercut wages of American workers in the computer and software engineering fields. Changes are being made to accomplish the original aims of such a program. More critical is the number of jobs over a span of years that are lost to US born citizens- in just 5 years 300,000 US born talented engineers and the 3 million workers they could train would simply not be there to power America's reindustrialization and re-modernization 2025-2030. The same is true for India as 300,000 India's talented engineers and the 3 million workers they could train would simply not be there to power India's industrialization and modernization 2025-2030. This hurts the modernization of the two of the most important economies of the world to the year 2030, which would be profoundly felt by 2035. As part of many actions taken by both the US and India this could lead to shrinking the development speed and development gap with China for the US and India to 2035. ...

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The WSJ editorial supporting the former WSJ Detroit Bureau chief's position on the editorial pages on November 10, 2008, asking the Bush administration to turn down any request from Congress or the president elect to turn over TARP funds to the automakers. The automakers have problems of not being competitive and making the cars that people want for decades, handing out taxpayer billions will not solve this, and will only postpone the day of reckoning says the WSJ editorial. The union goldplated contracts and things like the Jobs Bank never made sense and neither the union or management acted responsibly. The best thing now it says is to let the shareholders lose whatever value is left, cancell the contracts, and put the companies in government receivership, letting go the old management and the boards that let these companies get to this sorry situation. This is not a time for politics as usual, and if the new administration wants to do it let it do it on its own political dime says the WSJ. ...

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Inflation is eating into wages, says Mick Lynch, the head of Britain's Rail Maritime and Transport Workers Union. He is gaining support in the UK as the union stages a rail strike after rejecting a 3% wage increase offer in the middle of 9% inflation in Britain. This report in WSJ says he is a media star after appearing on TV shows and responding to interviewer questions. There is a similar interest in the US labor movement as workers get support for wage increases in Britain, France, Germany and the US to tackle high inflation, and after years of depressed wages in which labor had lost the power to negotiate higher wages.

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Building the large LNG terminals to get gas in its liquid form from Canada, the US and Qatar, is essential for Europe as it is expected that Russia will cut off gas supplies this winter. Germany needs three large LNG terminals on the Baltic Sea.  About 1.6 million tons of weapons and explosives were dumped into the North Sea and Baltic Sea after World War II. The problem is most acute near Germany as Allied Commanders ordered the destruction of German explosives after the war. All this debris has to be removed before LNG terminals or offshore windfarms can be built as shown in this report in WSJ.

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The takeaway from Calgary to go big and go bold applies to American cities. Calgary's downtown like many downtowns in large cities in the US had about 30% vacant office space. The 2014 oil price crash had already hit the city before the pandemic hit. Calgary responded with a plan to convert 6 million square feet of vacant office space into apartments. Developers were to be given $75 per square foot as an incentive out of a $200 million fund setup by the city. Calgary is now a fourth of the way through this transformation after getting broad community buy-in and support. Permitting process is less than 2 months.

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President Richard Nixon was named by a grand jury in 1974 but was never charged with a crime says WSJ. By the time he left office Nixon's reputation had suffered severe damage. NYT reports that this is different with Mr. Trump who seeks the nomination of the Republican party in 2024, raising a whole new set of issues of what is and is not appropriate behaviour for the office of the president of the US or for that matter any high office in the United States of America. Ultimately new standards will be set and the past few years make be looked back on as an anomaly in the history of the US.

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India's foreign minister S. Jaishankar says a lot has been done at the G-20 meetings in India. He says 95% of the countries agree on the communique put out by the G-20. The idea that peace in Europe can be achieved at G-20 meetings in India is not realistic he says as the G-20 was not designed for this purpose of tackling troublespots like Ukraine. What the G-20 has done is bring countries in Europe and North America together with India to understand the problems stemming from the conflict in Ukraine on food security and from the debt crises in some parts of Asia. 

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President Trump has decided to go big with a second aid package for $1.8 trillion in aid. With the second wave of the pandemic here the Trump administration has decided to go ahead with a second major aid effort in October 2020 to help small business, airlines and direct aid of $1200 in checks to families across the U.S.

The increasing number of layoffs and a stalling in further improvements in reducing unemployment in October is showing the need for a second major effort to aid families and small. business.  This will be needed before a vaccine and drug treatment is found by the end of the year.

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Kamala Harris stands by her values in her positions on fracking which she says can be combined for transition with a clear timely pursued climate change strategy Biden-Harris has pursued. The investments in climate change action are being made in a way that will protect us from climate change. On immigration she repeated her pledge that she will get the Biden Lankford immigration legislation that closes the Border to her desk and will sign it into law. She pointed out that Biden has served the interests of the American people with the large investments in manufacturing, in climate change action, and in infrastructure, child care, that will be remembered by the American people.

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In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, the commander in Afghanistan, General McChrystal, responds to a question about Vice President Biden, and says, "who is that?" An aide jumps in saying, is that "Bite Me?" These and other words of disdain for the Vice President and other policy advisors, are seen as the kind of frustration facing commanders from the slow progress in the enlarged effort in Afghanistan. It also brings to the fore the serious questions that have always remained, some raised by Biden, Reidel and others, of how any kind of success could be achieved without a reliable partner in the Afghan government, with the complicated situation in Pakistan where the Intelligence Services pursued a different agenda from that of the government, and with little interest from the people in the rural areas in a vast rural mountainous country, Kabul a little urban dot in a huge landscape of deserts and mountains. See the groups and links for Afghanistan and Pakistan for background.

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India will allow automobile imports at 10% duty instead of 110%, allowing 250,000 EU automobiles into the Indian market, as part of the deal that benefits Germany. Tariff on European wines will go down from 150% to 20-40%. Duties on olive oil and processed food such as pasta and chocolates will go down to zero, which will benefit Italy, and Switzerland. A labor mobility agreement will let professional workers and seasonal workers from India into EU and EU to India. New talks will bring India into the EU's Horizon Research Programme.

It will double EU exports to India by 2032 over 6 years when it is implemented starting in 2027. An astonishing 97% of traded goods are included for cutting or eliminating tariffs. It will save EU 4 billion euros in duties, says the EU. Tariffs are cut on a vast arrayof industrial products- iron and steel (India benefits) chemicals, plastics, pharmaceuticals (India benefits) and machinery (Germany benefits).

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DJT MAGA factions in general support action in Venezuela and in Western Hemisphere for Monroe Doctrine, this includes J.D. Vance, Steve Bannon and Hispanic supporters from Cuba and Latin America in Florida. They support action to bring drug traffickers to justice in the Western Hemisphere. Essentially supporting the Monroe Doctrine that no colonial European or other foreign powers should interfere in the running of Latin America in the western democratic tradition set by Britain and the United States, and now popular throughout Asia and Latin America and Africa. The government in Venezuela say Canada and Britain is illegitimate and lost the 2024 election by a huge margin 30% or lower to 67% for the opposition under Machado and Gonzalez. And the drug trafficking by Maduro and his associates against the US is an offence that can be tried in US courts, is something Republicans support, and has general support in America. Worse drug trafficking to the European Union constitutes something the Europeans should be worried about because of its growing scale and damage to Europe. ...

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The CEO of the New York Times and the former director general of the BBC, takes a look at the public discourse in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and in the Brexit campaign, and finds some troubling changes. The use of words that can eaily be picked up by Twitter and social media to attack opponents, the complete disregard for facts, and outright attempts to denigrate and destroy using rhetorical tactics, and a section of the public that has turned away from the facts or is disinterested in facts, is deeply troubling for Mark Thompson. When the public discourse fails, then the politics as a whole starts to collapse, says Thompson. We are children of the enlightenment, says Thompson, and were taught to look underneath statements to discern the truth. This is a crisis in public discourse. Worse it is one in which truth telling by people who say they are outsiders and tell it like it is, is not about telling the truth. Which is what makes it so dangerous. Thompson cites the statement by Michael Gove that "people in this country have had enough of experts," as another dangerous sign. He says it is time that experts make themselves understandable and talk in a way the public can understand. The media needs to explain issues in clear ways, and professional policymakers language of discourse needs to be conveyed in better ways that the public can grasp, in which the Brexit Remain campaign failed, says Thompson. Its important to acknowledge the problem, as the health of our democracies depends on finding solutions to what has happened in 2015-2016 to change the public discourse and let it deteriorate to unimaginable levels.  ...

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President George Bush said in 2005, that if someone wanted to get a glimpse of how he thinks on foreign policy, he should read Nathan Sharansky's book "The Case for Democracy." Sharansky was an aide to soviet physicist and human rights advocate Andrei Sakharov. Here he is interviewed by David Feith of the Wall Street Journal. His outspoken activism in favor of the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate got him 9 years in the Soviet Gulag. He was released from prison in 1986, with the strong support of President Reagan. He emigrated to Israel and served in ministerial posts and in the Israeli parliament. Sharansky says the recent protests in Egypt prove his fundamental points. That there are limits to how much you can control people through the use of fear, and that all people, regardless of religion and culture, desire and want freedom. This is a very human message, it showed its power when the Berlin Wall fell, and it is true today in the Arab world. He says the fear that this endangers the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty is not well founded. Over the last 30 years the border with Syria has been quiet, because it is really Israeli deterrance that is responsible for this and the quiet border with Egypt. He adds there is no justification for Mubarak remaining, as it only creates hostility in the Arab world against the US and Israel. And he says that Mubarak was no friend of the Jewish people, because even as he made peace with Israel, he continued to let anti-Semitism thrive and used Jews as the enemy to enhance his control. Sharansky says Gaza and Hamas control after the election was an unusual situation because of the corruption of the people around Arafat, so that even Christian villages supported Hamas. And he says the longer a dictatorship is in place the worse the situation becomes in creating more hostility to all those who support the dictatorship, including the US and Israel. For Sharansky, the Obama adminstration's response to the Iranian protests after what is seen as a stolen election in Iran, were one of the greatest betrayals of freedom in modern history. To prevent a one time, one person, one vote, Sharansky says the democratic institutions have to take root and this will take more than 8 months, so guarantees need to be put in place that this is not allowed to happen. Safeguards put in place to ensure that whoever is elected cannot survive if democratic institutions and reforms and democracy building does not occur. Dissidents like Mr Ibrahim and others should enjoy the ability to build trade unions and women's organizations. Sharansky says this is a real chance, a chance for the US and the free world to become a partner in change. In change that will help Egypt pass the town square test. Can people freely protest and express their grievances in the town square. And move from this fundamental change to establishing democratic processes and institutions. ...

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Speaking at the Davos forum, economist Nouriel Roubini, who correctly predicted the global economic crisis, says this recovery is likely to peter out by the end of of 2009 with a long period of "sub-par gowth" ahead. His optimism for the emerging market economies is tempered by what he sees as an "asset price bubble" developing in China, Russia's aging population and political obstacles to structural overhauls in Brazil and India. In the U.S. and Europe other economists also generally agreed that the recovery will be "U-shaped" or "W-shaped" implying this recovery in late 2009 will not last beyond 2010.