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Joe Biden will hit the campaign trial in key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin starting Labor Day. This is the Joe Biden who stood on a picket line in Detroit. Across these states white working class voters see Biden as having their interests at heart. The United Auto Workers endorsed Biden and Harris. And Kamala Harris says this of Biden in interview with CNN Dana Bash- "History is going to show, not only has Joe Biden led an administration that has achieved those extraordinary successes, but the character of the man is one that he has been in his life and career, including as a president, quite selfless and puts the American people first.” The extraordinary successes are the bipartisan legislation only Biden with 50 years in Congress could have achieved in this century- trillions of dollars going to fight the pandemic, fight inflation, fight the battle for bringing manufacturing home to America. And instead of Trump doing nothing for infrastructure after talking for years about it Biden has launched the biggest infrastructure effort in the US in 50 years. Never in recent history has so much been done in so short a time, with so much to follow, and never has it been so little reported or discussed. Yet history will show what Biden has set out to do and given the opportunity for his vice president to do in her turn.  ...

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Showing how much the Social Democratic party in Germany needed to show progress on key issues Martin Schulz of the SPD was ordered by the party to bring up contentious issues in negotiations relating to social cohesion. One was the two tier system in healthcare where some are able to pay for more privileges in the nation's health care system with private insurance and others are in the public health system. The other issue is the ability under current German law for companies to issue 2 year temporary contracts. The SPD party did badly in the last elections because working class voters do not see it fighting hard enough for worker rights and ensuring an equitable system.On the health issue a commission will look into how the system can equalize medical fees between people privately and publicly insured. On the employment issue companies can only terminate without cause in 1.5 years instead of the 2 years. Small compromises, yet in long negotiations with a 24 hour session for a breakthrough and everyone exhausted, the snail's progress over 13 days and one night worked to set up a new coalition after all. Still one hurdle remains- getting the SPD membership to vote yes even though its youth wing is opposed. ...

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Travelers landing at Schipol airport in Amsterdam book their flights at the airport to fly right back to the U.S. after president Trump announces a ban on flights from 26 European countries. President Trump did not wait to coordinate with other European countries. Only Britain and Ireland flights are allowed at this time. The ban restricts European travelers from 26 countries for 30 days beginning March 13 at 11.59 pm. U.S. citizens coming from these 26 countries will be required to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival in the U.S.

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At the G-7 meetings in Alberta, Canada DJT said the 2014 exclusion of Russian president Vladimir Putin, from the G8 after Moscow's unilateral annexation of Crimea, was a serious mistake leading to the war in Ukraine. "He [Putin] was insulted (...) Barack Obama and a person named [Justin] Trudeau didn't want to have Russia in. And I would say that was a mistake because you wouldn’t have a war right now" in Ukraine, Trump said in a discussion with journalists on the sidelines of the G-7 meeting with the Canadian PM Carney. This is a significant observation by DJT who understood better than Bush and Obama, Trudeau, what has preserved the peace in the world and the importance of US-Russia relations even after the end of the Cold War. This is true for DJT interaction with China also because DJT also maintains that despite China's assertion of rights in Hong Kong, despite the outsourcing of industry to China and Make In America, US-China relations are important for peace in the world. ...

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Liz Goodwin and Riley Beggin report from Hillard Ohio where Amazon is building a large data center using land adjoining a school and a park for children. Parents are collecting signatures for a ban. About 70% of Americans are opposed to the data centers building in their local area, after an aggressive push with tax breaks and incentives provided by some states. Virginia, Georgia, Texas, and Ohio most aggressive data center builders in the US by 2026- construction jobs, and investment, as pros, electricity usage and use of farmland cons. Ohio's governor DeWine paused tax breaks after realizing that it cost the state $1 billion in lost revenue. Amazon says it has invested $70 billion in the state since 2016. Democrat politicians are not taking up the bans because of some unions supporting the data centers for jobs created in construction. Another reason is that politicians in general face attacks from the tech companies donating to campaigns against them if they call for a ban. Sherrod Brown Democrat in Ohio asks data centers to pay for their electricity but has not supported a ban-  “With data centers, we make sure the investors pay for electricity. Not the people who live in Zanesville or Coshocton or in Cambridge.” The big reason to support it from the jobs perspective is stated by the unions. Tim Burga of the AFL-CIO in Ohio says-  “These are creating good union jobs, both in the construction, but also in the keeping them secure and maintaining them."  Now you have a public frustrated particularly in quiet suburbs of America who see this as an intrusion into their lives, which means Republican and Democrat, Red State and Blue State, makes little difference. Construction workers and unions excited about the prospects for decent jobs after the Obama and Bush elites shipped 5 million jobs (Lighthizer USTR estimate) to China over 2000-2016, and transferred $20 trillion in American wealth to foreign countries by blindly accepting unfair trade with China, EU, Canada, Mexico. And see this as part of the MAGA effort to bring back the supply chains to America for all manufactured products in the interests of reliable supply, national security, and the promise of good paying jobs for the communities across America that depended on these jobs since the industrial revolution inthe US at the turn of the century in 1900. It took only 2 decades to wipe them out under what Lighthizer and Jamieson call "shortsighted leadership" of  Republican Bush and Democrat Obama and their corresponding elites. These communities were hit more than once, twice, thrice, four times in fact- in 2009 by the banker's aided and abetted financial crisis, by Bush starting and Obama continuing the Afghan Iraq wars on different pretexts (diverting trillions of dollars that otherwise go to job creation and manufacturing, new technologies), and then by Covid in 2019. This is the America in which the data center building spree is taking place- a plus if done right and with some carefully thought out plan for water/electricity usage costs and for AI guardrails, protection for farmland and areas near parks and schools, and residential suburbs.   ...

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On the Matterhorn mountain at night the messages "Stay at Home,"  "Hope," and the Swiss flag are beamed on snowy slopes, as Switzerland enters the 11th day of quarantine. It is about working hard at following simple rules and staying at home, an appeal to Swiss people who believe in working hard and being sensible.

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DW.com reporter Sean Goodwin goes from Germany to Australia and finds a very different attitude to coronavirus, kind of laid back. Australians he says have a sense that it is a lucky country, and that "she'll be right." The government and Sydney have been slow to adjust to the reality. A stay at home order is now in place in Sydney and New South Wales state.  Australians seem to think they are somehow far away and isolated from the world's problems. It is a cruisy optimistic mentality, says this report.

 

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Experience the serenity of nature on a wintry night at Kokofuji temple and the early hours of dawn this time of the year in this unforgettable NHK Japan Nature video.It is on the Seasons of Yamato with the piano in the background.  

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Fed chairman Jerome Powell answered questions at a press conference yesterday and made it clear that America's central bank will not slacken its resolve in the fight against inflation saying "pausing has a ways to go." He said the level of interest rates is what will now be the focus of the Fed as it seeks a much higher level in 2023.

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Trench candles are keeping Ukraine soldiers warm this winter on the front and in trenches. A can tightly filled with cardboard is what a trench candle is. If it is lit 1-2 hours before going to sleep at night it can generate a surprising amount of warmth. Warm clothing is being sent from many countries including Canada and the US to Ukraine soldiers.

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A church choir that is secular and performs in the cultural centre where Munich Philharmonic performs brings about 500 people together, amateur singers who perform together for 1-2 hours and get filmed. It is now in the centre of controversy about performing Madonna's 1989 hit Like a Prayer. Jens Junker puts these performances together for Go Sing Choir says- "we were taken completely out of context and used as evidence that the reactionary conservative right are so stupid." About 1500 reaction video expressing outrage appeared on social media on Tik Tok. For Junker who is doing this for the Euros and for people getting together for some fun without resentments or quarrels, it shows the urge to fight the other side is so strong that it blinds one to the very human side of life we all share. “I’m staying out of that because polarising is the opposite of what we’re about. If anything, all this encourages me in what we’re doing because it shows the need to create places where people can meet, beyond attitudes, opinions and any resentments against each other, and concentrate on what unites us."   ...

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Joanna Stern of the WSJ uses the original iPhone that came out in 2007 for one day in June 2017 and sees how it felt to use the introductory version. The original one worked on a 2G cellular network. It took about a minute for the president's Twitter feed to fully load in the old phone's Safari browser, it now takes 5 seconds. A lot has changed with the smartphone revolution in ten years. Lunch spot search results, Stern points out, might take longer than the time to eat lunch in the Maps App with that old phone. No emojis, predictive text, no Siri, and no third party apps, no Apple Music or Spotify, all that came later. The 2 megapixel camera took decent shots but not without good light. What is useful in Joanna Stern's little experiment is that it makes one reflect on how quickly people forget, how so much is now taken for granted as smartphones change the way people live their lives and interact with technology on a daily basis. Not mentioned here is how common smartphones have become with the Android versions made in China offering so much more for the budgets of ordinary people. And how it has changed the lives of billions of people in China, India, other parts of Asia and Latin America, bringing them into contact with the outside world. What is also interesting in this sense is that what took a huge effort over many years and many disappointments- the idea of a touchscreen that works- shows what an idea and the courage to persist in the face of innumerable hurdles can accomplish. See the link to how  Steve Jobs accomplished this. Daisuke Wakabayashi talked with Apple engineer Greg Christie in his article-"Apple Engineer on iPhone's Birth," Wall Street Journal, March 26, 2014. Christie had worked on a digital personal assistant at Apple in 1996, one that had tried the first touch screen Apple made. The device failed in the market. In 2004, eight years later the touch screen is the idea Jobs had Christie work on again. Many frustrations and obstacles later the first smartphone was developed by 2007. It took 10 years and undaunted effort which is the Apple story under Jobs. ...

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What happens to the 70,000 residents of Anacostia, near the Capitol in Washington DC where a third of the people live in poverty and there is a 40% dropout rate, and only 8% of all students there attend college. Vacant homes, drug use and crime sap the neighborhood here. Obama said he would bring 20 cities an antipoverty program successful in Harlem, New York that would include parenting and infant care classes, as well as early childhopod education and free medical care for children. An investment of $1 billion for 5 years for a transitional jobs program, to place the unemployed in temporary jobs. The Obama transition team did not return requests seeking comment on the 20 city plan or the $1 billion for transitional jobs, says the WSJ on January 20, 2008, the day of the inauguration. Its incredible that right in the nation's capital there exists another Washington DC of such neighborhood decline within sight of the Capitol.

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Le Monde looks at falling living standards across the UK. It looks at Essex and Brentwood and other towns outside the metro region of London. The 2009 financial crisis caused by banks was followed in four blows of Cameron's decade of austerity and of not investing in Britain, the upheavals of Brexit, the once in a century pandemic, and now inflation, causing a depressing sight of all lower and middle social classes struggling to make a living. 

Since 2007 real wages in UK have fallen by 3.5%. Between 1970 and 2008 wages grew by 33% every 10 years.

The poorest 10% in Britain have 22% lower purchasing power than the poorest 10% in France, says Torsten Bell of Resolution Foundation, author of report "Stagnation Nation."

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The Irish far economy is vulnerable and the Irish farmer at risk following Brexit. Rivals to prime minister Varadkar in the coming election say he has the M50 mentality, referring to the beltway around Dublin, not thinking enough of the Irish farm economy. A hard Brexit would have cut the Irish growth to 0.7% under Theresa May and now to 3.7% under Boris Johnson from the 6% for 2019.  This is happening as the Irish farmer depends on Britain for exports as he has for seven centuries.  Britain is the biggest importer of agricultural products from Ireland. Sinn Fein is gaining ground in this urban-rural divide with 25%, and so is Centre right Fiana Fail at 24%, with 20% for the current prime minister's party, in recent polls. Irish economy also depends on imports from Britain for machinery and trade agreement with Britain is crucial for Ireland now that Brexit has happened. All along Ireland's coast on the Atlantic Ocean for farmers this is a worrisome situation. ...

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Bernie Sanders tells his supporters at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia that "immediately right now, we have got to defeat Donald Trump, and we have got to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine." He says this campaign was not about just electing a president but about transforming the country. And for this he was planning to back about 100 candidates with similiar thinking across the U.S. He called on supporters to continue the campaign for social, economic, racial and environmental justice. Voters for Sanders were offended by the information shown in DNC email leaks of the bias against Sanders shown by DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has since resigned.

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Coalition Against Climate Disinformation at the COP30 Belem Brazil Summit. CAAD says about the state of disinformation-

"Big Carbon's spending and Big Tech's algorithms are preventing us from seeing and hearing one another online. Instead, we're exposed to one lie after another."

The frequent fires and floods all over the world which happen suddenly and quickly show the effects and costs of climate change are real. Actions need to be taken on climate change even as the cost of living crisis and struggles of people in China,India and Africa and in the US and EU have to be considered for access to electricity and for cost of living concerns. Fossil only provides a short term transition to a long term plan for the future based on renewable energy, and the fight for climate change action to be renewed by EU, China, Brazil and India as the US sorts out its own problems with the transition.

 

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The use of cathedrals in Britain as vaccination centres is seen as a glorious way to bring people of all ages, particularly  the elderly in the community into a wonderful setting to preserve health. They came since the Middle Ages for a cure, and they come today for hope and care. The Archbishop of Canterbury thanks the cathedrals and the NHS for serving the community in such a beautiful way.

The famous cathedrals of England at Lichfield, Salisbury and Blackburn inviting people in for vaccination is the heart warming story of this month. Salisbury is one of the oldest and has copies of the Magna Carta, the historic document that put forward the rights of the people in a constitutional monarchy.

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It is important to recall Theodore Roosevelt's words in his Annual Message to Congress of 1904-

"The citizenship of this country should not be debased. It is vital that we kep hight he standard of living of our wage workers, and therefore we should not admit masses of men whose standards of living, customs and habits are such that thy tend to lower the level of the American wage worker, and above all we should not admit any man of an unworthy type, any man of whom we can say that he will be a bad citizen, or that his children will detract from instead of adding to the sum of the good citizenship of this country."

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The economy, wages and cost of living, the failures in infrastructure and at Deutsche Bahn, migration or remigration are issues in Germany. During periods when there are Christmas market attacks in recent years  remigration has emerged as an issue. Migration is no longer the issue in Germany as it was during high levels of migration under Merkel following the wars in Syria and Iraq, unrest in North African countries such as Tunisia with Arab Spring.  The policies of CDU's Merkel tapping into potential migrant labor to meet shortages of manpower in the economy have been reversed by CDU and SPD+ Greens since 2020. Musk wades into this issue only to find Christian Democrats, Free Democrats cautioning him that he lacks understanding of what is happening. Remigration is now essentially accepted by the Social Democrats, and Christian Demcorats, advocated by Wagenknect Left and AfD right parties alike, leaving little room for AfD to grow except from unease.  CDU Merz polls at 30-36% but lacks answers to the Ukraine war. AfD is at about 20%. Wagenkenecht has taken positions opposing immmigration and migrants similar to Socialist parties in Denmark, which means most of the European Union across all parties have reversed position on migration similar to Labor in Britain under Keir Starmer. ...

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French parliamentary election first round results show Macron's party neck and neck with the left parties bloc led by Jean Luc Melenchon. Melenchon is shown in polls to be slightly ahead. The second round of the election is on June 19. Macron is unlikely to have a majority and may need the support of the centre right Les Republicains. The voter demographic of the Macron party and the Les Republicains is older voters, centre right, who tend to vote in larger numbers than younger voters. Voter abstention is high with 48% of the voters having voted in the first round and shows deep voter dissatisfaction with the political elites in France. Before Macron two one term presidents led the government- Sarkozy of the Les Republicains and Hollande of the Socialist party. Macron was Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs minister in the Socialist party Hollande government before he formed his own party in April 2016 months before the election calling for a revitalization of French politics away from the two leading parties. His party was named Le Republique En Marche with younger people not connected to traditional parties.   Macron won a second term with the help of Mr. Melenchon's socialist supporters. Melenchon called for not a single vote for Marie Le Pen the far right candidate in the second round of the presidential election. Melenchon and Marie Le Pen were neck and neck in the first round.  Within Macron's party Louis Philippe a popular prime minister leads a faction that Macron will need to negotiate with in addition to Mr. Melenchon for parliamentary support. There is also a situation of cohabitation that would happen if Mr. Melenchon wins a majority in the National Assembly. Melenchon says the results in the first round "offer an extraordinary opportunity for the destiny of the common homeland to defeat the disastrous politics of the majority, of Macron." In 1997-2002 France went through cohabitation with the president and prime minister from different parties. Lionel Jospin was prime minister with Jacques Chirac as president. Yellow vest protests in 2018, gilets jaunes, were a result of increase in automobile fuel prices and the cost of living, and the general sense of dissatisfaction with policies of president Macron that were seen as not favoring workers and families finding it hard to make ends meet. The working class vote and vote of younger people is evenly split between the far right of Marie Le Pen which does well in rural areas, and the socialists under Melenchon in working class districts of larger cities. In providing support for the European Union and traditional French foreign policy, Macron and the socialist parties have common ground compared to the anti- EU policies of Le Pen resulting in votes cast for Macron that were really for melenchjon in the presidential election in which Macron secured a second term. Cohabitation then offers the popular alternative for a prime minister such as Melenchon for domestic policy and a president in the form of Macron for foreign policy at a critical time for Europe with the EU response to Russia including the embargo. ...

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Nvidia's Head of Engineering, Jonah Alben, is from Schenectady, upstate New York. Here he is credited with exporting the latest US advanced chips to China by reducing their effectiveness. US administrations Biden's and DJT's say this pushes the rules of export controls. It also undermines the US lead in advanced technologies needed for the US to keep the peace in the Pacific and in Europe as new tensions emerge over Taiwan and in Eastern Europe. For years the US egregiously restricted the flow of technologies to democracies such as India and allowed a concentration of semiconductor manufacture in Taiwan, over concentration of manufacturing in China, both of which led to supply chain issues in recent years and pose supply chain issues in the future. Ironically restrictions on technologies sale to India which with 1.4 billon people, and a similar culture in Indonesia forms homogenous culture of 1.7 billion people, is the only place of this size where parliamentary democracy has taken root. With an exercise of legislative assemblies through elections in all Indian states in the 1930's under the British with Mohandas Gandhi's leadership and example. Because of Gandhi and the leaders who preceded him Dadabhai Naoroji and Vivekananda in the 1890's India has older democratic forms than Germany, Japan, Italy, Spain and most of Europe, all of Asia, Latin America and Africa. It also has among the ordinary people a deep respect for Lincon, FDR and his fight to help Gandhi with Sukarno fight the British and Dutch Empires to bring freedom to 1.7 billion people.  ...

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A look at Israel at 70 by the Economist magazine shows a country that has combined early achievements of socialist governments such as free health care system and good education system with the addition of 1 million immigrants from the collapsing Soviet Union, to build a highly trained technically skilled workforce and international companies.  It says the Israeli Arabs are still poor and unable to integrate. With ultra Orthodox Jews they make up 30% of the population, and many of them who do not work. Infrastructure has suffered from lack of investment and public transport is in poor condition. About 4.5 million Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza remain a continuous source of tension with no settlement in sight. The shift of the capital to Jerusalem is recognized by the U.S. Trump administration, a win for Israel, but leaving the divisive politics of Mr. Netanyahu in place. So that with the growing economy, there are social problems and political division which need to be addressed as much as the economy. A problem left for another administration, another leader from possibly a revived Labor party and another day. ...

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Jeff Sommer in the NYT says no one could have predicted the pandemic or the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He says forecasts for the stock and bond markets over the short term for 2023 are useless. Most have missed by 12- 25% he says and compares this to forecasts that predict a cold day when it is going to be 60 degrees outside. Sommer's says in today's situation only long term horizons are relevant, looking and saving, investing over a ten year period. He cites Vanguard's approach of looking at the long term horizon in its investment outlook over 10 years on the Vanguard site as the right one based on the experience of the last 20-30 years and historical experience over long periods.

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Read the full speech of president Biden at an important time in the Nation's history, 76 days before a national election to decide the future of the Nation and the World. Excerpts from the speech selected by Lyrarc- "Look. Folks, how can we have the strongest economy in the world without the best infrastructure in the world? Donald Trump promised Infrastructure Week, every week for four years, and he never built a damn thing.  And now because of what Kamala and I have done—remember, we were told we couldn’t get it done? Remember, when we came into office, we couldn’t get anything passed?—but right now, we’re giving America an infrastructure decade not week. We’re modernizing our roads, our bridges, our ports, our airports, our trains, our buses, removing every lead pipe from schools and homes so every child could drink clean water. We’re providing affordable high speed internet for every American no matter where they live, unlike, not unlike what Roosevelt did with electricity. And so much more. We are uniting the country, we’re growing our economy, we’re improving our quality of life, and we’re building a better America. Because that’s who we are. How can we be the strongest nation in the world without leading the world in science and technology? After years of importing 90% of our semiconductor chips from abroad, which America invented those chips, our CHIPS and Science Act meant that private companies from around the world are now investing literally tens of billions of dollars to build new chip factories right here in America. And over that period, they’ll create tens of thousands of jobs. And many of those jobs in the so-called Fabs, the buildings that make the chips that are being constructed now. And guess what? The average salary in those fabs, size of a football field, will be over $100,000 a year, and you don’t need a college degree.  ...