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Kyodo News poll shows over half of voters under 40 years voted for Sanseito and Democratic Party of the  People, two nationalist parties started in the last 5 years. These parties base their appeal on "Japan first" and reject the idea that Japan should have to bring in so many foreign workers to run its industry and economy. They also oppose the country's quiet neighborhoods being overrun by the 40 million tourists in 2024 that the government wants to increase to 60 million to support small businesses that depend on tourists. Half of voters over 60 years vote for the LDP, and this is true also for the socialist party the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) which is the opposition party. This makes the nationalist parties a new voice in Japanese politics. Part of the resentment in Japan is that figures like Shigeru Ishiba. the leader of LDP, are from an older generation that has for the 75 years since 1950 excluded others from party politics. The DPJ was around for just 24 months in Japan in 2009-2010 when its young leader prime minister Yukio Hatoyama was ousted. American leaders and it's party politics establishment before 2016 also encouraged this, with Obama making Okinawa an issue over which Hatoyama was ousted rather than work with the young Japanese prime minister. ...

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A leader of the Republicains party Eric Ciotti is seen with derision when he suggests forming an alliance with National Rally. Many MP's of Republicains offer to resign in protest. The other senior leaders of Republicains say Ciotti will be ousted from the party. Republicains is the party of General Charles De Gaulle and this is seen as sullying the reputation of De Gaulle who fought the Nazis and built post war France from the ruins of the Occupation. De Gaulle, Pompidou, Giscard and Sarkozy all are French presdients from the Republicains party in postwar France since 1945.

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How to get smaller supply chain companies with less than investment grade ratings to shift to renewable energy contracts that last 5-10 years when banks have strict lending criteria. Walmart has a solution working with Schneider Electric. Consider that companies are tackling emissions across their entire supply chain. For Walmart this means cutting one billion metric tons of emissions by 2030. Under Gigaton PPA Walmart suppliers can form a group to buy energy. So that Amy's Kitchen, Great lakes Cheese, and Levi Strauss collectively purchased a12 year renewable energy purchase agreement  from a wind farm in Kansas operated by Danish energy company Orsted. Energize is a similar program funded by drug companies Pfizer, Biogen and others for their supply chain and delivered by Schneider Electric. Consider that for Microsoft's 13 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, 96% come from the supply chain. It needs to cut emissions by half by 2030, a big challenge. In the European Union the solution being considered is for the European Commission to offer state backed and market backed guarantees for deals. Guarantees would be offered by member states of the EU or banks and insurers to provide backing for purchase agreements buyers to overcome credit constraints. ...

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After the first round of elections Mauricio Macri threw his support to Milei. Macri was president from 2015 to 2019 when pro-market reforms led to unrestrained borrowing from overseas investors. It failed leading to high inflation and turning to the IMF for loan of $57 billion. Any time there is a drought or agriculture in Pampas fails reserves dry up as in 2016 and again recently. Macri was ousted in the next election and replaced by Peronist Fernandez. The problems persist with a return to Macri and Milei who was just elected president turning to dollarization when the country lacks the $9 billion needed to convert pesos to US dollars. Argentina has net reserves of $20 billion, borrowing from China of $17 billion and net reserves of  negative $10 billion. 

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Nawaz Sharif's wife Kulsoom is expected to win the parliamentary seat from which the former prime minister was ousted by a decision of the Supreme Court.

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WSJ on Intel CEO Lip Bu-Tan and ties to Chinese chip making since 2001 and as an investor through investment firm Walden. Senator Tom Cotton, chair of Intelligence Committee in Senate, questions ties of the new Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to China. DJT calls for a new CEO, saying there is no other solution that Tan should resign immediately. Under the Biden Administration and the previous CEO Pat Gelsinger the US government offered $8 billion in aid to Intel to maintain it's leadership in chip making technologies. Gelsinger was ousted by the Board last year after Intel's recovery effort was taking time and replaced with Lip-Bu Tan who was an early investor in Chinese chip makers. There are questions why the acting CEO Yeary is cited in WSJ reports to have considered offering Intel's chip making manufacturing for sale to TSMC to exit manufacturing, after the help Intel had gained of $8 billion from Biden to become the dominant maker of advanced chips in the US- recovering a position lost to TSMC when the US had invented the computer chip. Under DJT that is still the American goal under MAGA.   ...

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Kramer, McIntire, and Meier of the NYT, provides this indepth account of Trump top campaign aide Paul Manafort's consulting work in Ukraine for Ukraine's president Yakunovych, ousted after protests in Kiev. Ukraine's newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau is looking into corruption in Ukraine's system, including corruption in the Yakunovych years. It is this corruption that has hurt Ukraine and other Eastern European countries in their move towards becoming properly functioning democratic states inside the EU or neighboring the EU. Much aid has been sent to Ukraine by Germany and the EU to help Ukraine develop a democratic and economic framework free of cronyism and corruption. Manafort's involvement with interests in Ukraine and Russia during a period of long and persistent protests in Kiev, followed by the ouster of Yakunovych and the war with Russia, when the policy of the U.S. and Europe was to protect Eastern European  member states of the European Union including Poland and the Baltic States, and reach some form of settlement in Ukraine, are controversial. Andrew Kramer of the NYT describes Manafort's consulting company's activities in Ukraine during this tense period, and how it may have have been counterproductive to the constructive efforts of the U.S. and the European Union. ...

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The firing of Tata CEO Cyrus Mistry by Ratan Tata, former chairman of the Tata Group, leads to a prolonged crisis at the companies of the Tata Group. A vote is needed at Tata Motors and Tata Steel for Mistry to be ousted from these companies following a vote to oust him at TCS. The parent company's board of directors have voted to oust Mistry. The expert view is that the crisis will not last much longer as all Tata companies need the Tata name and will eventually fall in line with the wishes of Ratan Tata. Ratan Tata followed J.R.D. Tata, and Jamsetji Tata, both legendary leaders of the company. Though Mr. Mistry's family owns 18% of the company, much of the reputation of the company lies in the Tata name and the work of JRD and Jamsetji, so that the 660,000 employees of India's largest company are likely to see this as a temporary setback in the long term.

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Mr. Mugabe, 93 year old leader of the liberation struggle in what was then Southern Rhodesia, ruled over Zimbabwe for 4 decades. He was ousted in a coup and the era under Mugabe appears to be finally over. Negotiations are taking place between the vice president and the opposition parties for an interim government. This hopefully brings Zimbabwe back to a period of better governance and reintegration with the global community.

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Joe Kaeser is appointed new CEO of Siemens. The company's board ousted previous CEO Peter Loscher for poor performance. Siemens pursued fast growth in recent years and this led to missing profit margin goals and decline in share price. Mr. Kaeser, says Siemens tried to do too much too fast and will now "focus on projects, on execution, on quality and reliability."

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The first of many coastal wind turbine energy projects on America's coastline produces energy. The Vineyards Wind project in New Bedford harbour in Massachusetts sends 5MW of energy to the New England grid this week. The Operator says 5 850 feet tall turbines will be operational early this year. In all 62 turbines will generate wind energy, enough to power 400,000 homes. The White House's and president Biden's target is for 30 gigawatts of wind energy to power 10 million homes by 2030. Understand how Danish companies are leading the effort which is also why Danish companies were invited to India for its nascent wind energy industry. Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners is the developer with Avangrid of Spain. South Forks Wind is a smaller 12 turbine project off the New York coastline which s being developed by Orsted of Denmark. This Guardian report says some of the opposition to these projects in other parts of the country are coming from fossil fuel companies that seek to prolong the use of fossil fuels in the face of warnings of climate change by scientists and other leaders in government and industry. ...

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This Times editorial questions whether Mayor Bloomberg did the right thing in the manner in which he ousted protestors from Zucotti park in the financial district of New York city. Now that the protestors have been forcibly removed from the park, it is the responsibility of the Mayor to keep his promise to let the demonstrators continue their protest against income inequality, says the editorial. The concern is that the end of the protests at Zucotti park could end up quashing the entire protest movement, which serves to draw attention to serious issues in a democracy.

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Sara Korshid, a Egyptian journalist, laments the wasted last two and a half years in which the military was ousted only to have the Muslim Brotherhood take office under a flawed and rushed road map set by the then military leaders, without a clear allocation of powers between the judiciary, parliament and the executive branches of government. The failure of the Muslim Brotherhood led by older authoritarian leaders to reach out to accomodate liberals -who supported Morsi and helped him get elected with 51% of the vote- leading to the ouster of president Morsi brings the Egyptian people back to square one. Real misgivings about having the military intervene are shared by liberals like Korshid, who are yet determined to start the process over to get it right.

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France's foreign minister Michele Alliot-Marie is criticized for vacationing in Tunisia during Christmas, when demonstrations were taking place in the country. Ms. Alliot-Marie also took a flight on a private jet owned by a Tunisian businessmen connected to the family of the ousted President Ben Ali. Reports in the French press say France had approved the export of police equipment and crowd control devices to Tunisia as the demonstrations were taking place, and that the French ambassador in Tunis had no idea of the extent of anger of the Tunisian people. Sarkozy later replaced the French ambassador. Ms Alliot-Marie said that it was her intention to spare the lives of Tunisians by supporting better police tactics. The Socialist leader in Parliament, Jean-Marc Ayrault, asked Ms Marie to resign. French President Sarkozy supported Ms. Marie, who has held positions as minister of defense, interior and justice. French prime minister Fillon says that calls for her resignation were "a purely political polemic."...

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Thailand's prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra's intervew with foreign journalists on Dec. 11, 2013. She says no one listens to people in the northeast and northern region of Thailand around Chinag Mai where most of her support lies. She was only 18 when her mother died and her older brother, a former prime minister, is seen by her as more of a senior figure. Protesters in Bangkok see her brother Thaksin Shinawatra, a Thai businessman in London as the one who runs the government's policies. The country is badly split between urban Bangkok and the rural regions in the north. The military ousted Thaksin in 2006 and protesters where shot in 2010 in a crackdown. The latest episode of confrontation between the two parties reflecting the two regions is a followup to this, as an amnesty bill was introduced by Yingluck which would let her brother return to Thailand. The interview was setup at an airbase outside Bangkok, as the country remains deeply divided and protesters occupy most of Bangkok....

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Which European port is at the center of Europe's wind energy project. Answer: Esbjerg, Denmark. On May 18, 2022 the heads of state of Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, and Belgium came together to sign the Declaration of Esbjerg. Together the countries want to increase wind energy production in the North Sea to 65 gigawatts (GW) by 2030 and rising to 150 GW by 2050. Esbjerg is one of the few ports in Europe and the key port serving the offshore wind industry. Industry leaders Vestas and Siemens Gamesa ship wind turbines from here, and Orsted provides spare parts that weigh several tons.  German ports such as Bremerhaven lack the infrastructure and it is tied up in disputes ending up in court. Dutch port of Eemshaven is much smaller. The harbor was recently expanded in Esbjerg by 0.5 million square metres to 4.5 million square metres or 45 million square feet. Environment groups are also part of this and there is no dissent in the planning. Here are some useful facts on wind power- Environment cost is 70 times less than that of coal fired power according to Germany's Federal Environment Agency. Within 3  to 11 months wind turbines generate the energy required to build them. No CO2 is produced in the electricity generation process but they do alter the landscape. The future of wind power giants is in the sea where the wind is reliable and strong. One such modern turbine can have an output of 10 to 15 thousand kilowatts to provide electricity for 40,000 people. Pioneers in wind energy are Denmark and Germany. Denmark gets 50% of its energy from wind power, for Germany this is 25%. Jobs are generated installing and operating these wind energy turbines. 1.3 million people are employed in it today. With additional wind propulsion energy consumption of freighters carrying most of the world's freight would be reduced by 30%. Wind and photovoltaic solar can combine for providing most of India's energy because of its sea coastline and having a lot of sun. To get an idea of what is doable in India - in Germany 41% of electricity demand is met from renewables mostly solar and wind. German farmers get 25% of their income from solar energy. Where Germany lags is in use of renewables for transport which falls to about 9% and for heating and cooling where it is about 18%, and it is making great strides to correct this. A big change is technology and how people use transport (more train than airline or automobiles), which will change the entire picture of how energy is created and used in the future. Energiewende the  term for this change is only beginning to take place with urgency in Germany in 2022. India needs to work closely with Denmark and Germany to stay in front of these developments.   ...