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A seven month long negotiation for the government of Greece with representatives of the EU, the IMF and the ECB is completed in March 2014. A series of structural growth oriented reforms are part of the agreement. Part of the agreement focusses on returning some of the 2.9 billion euro surplus to the Greek people hit hardest in the crisis, a top priority for the government of premier Samaras. This includes homeless with 20 million euros, paying 2.8 billion in debts to suppliers in the private sector, 1 billion euros more than budgeted. 1 billion euros will be used to reduce Greece's debt. In total 500 million euros will go to relief for ordinary Greeks, including members of the police and security forces on low salaries. Social security contributions paid by employers and workers will be reduced by 3.9 percentage points, a step taken to boost wages. The agreement will lead to release of 10 billion euros in funds from the troika of EU,IMF and ECB. European parliament and local elections are in May and this has given the Samaras government a better position to state its case for helping austerity weary Greek citizens....

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A Joint Editorial by U.S. president Barack Obama and India's prime minister Narendra Modi in the Washington Post on September 30, 2014. Strobe Talbot, a former deputy Secretary of State says he does not remember a situation in which this type of joint editorial was put out by two heads of government. Speaking on Indian television "Times Now" with Arnab Goswami, Talbot says this is a result of intense advance preparation on both sides that he is personally aware of from his contacts in the two governments. The editorial says the two countries are "natural allies" using the words of former BJP Indian prime minister Vajpayee. It emphasizes the fact recognized by both sides that the true potential of the relationship has not been realized. It sees the election of a new government in India (with a decisive mandate) as a natural opportunity to move the relationship in line with India's rapid development agenda, and the U.S. own need to generate economic growth. Specifically Modi and Obama plan to discuss building up Indian manufacturing, and expanding affordable renewable energy including nuclear. The "Clean India" program is received with particular enthusiasm and an area of collaboration for improving sanitation and hygiene throughout the country. The relationship is viewed as bigger than projects and investment, in that it can add to helping build a more peaceful future for the global community- with the two countries tradition of interest in peaceful development that benefits all nations....

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The biography of Lula da Silva on the Brazil government site gov.br 2025. It shows Lula as one of 8 children from deep in rural Pernambuco state in northeastern Brazil. His mother brought the family to the outskirts of Sao Paulo Guaruja 60 kilometres away on a 13 day trip in an old pickup truck to leave the poor conditions in rural Brazil in 1952. By 1956 the had moved to Sao Paulo in the iparanga neighborhood. He worked at ascrew factory before joining a trade school Brazil's National School for Industrial Learning, studying to become a mechanical lathe worker, making him a metallurgist in 3 years. He then joined Industrial Villares, a large metallurgical company, in Sao Bernardo do Campo, ABC region of Sao Paulo.  This started his career as trade unionist in 1969 elected to the Board, 1972 elected First Secretary, and 1975 elected president of the Union of Workers of Sao Bernardo do Campo and Diadema, representing 100,000 workers. This was aperiod when the military dicatorship was beginning the proces of redemocratization of Brazil. Lula led strikes in 1980, formed the CUT Central Unica de Trabajodores in 1982, ran for Governor of Sao Paulo that year and in 1983 was elected to the Constituent Assembly. The Workers Party was founded on Feb. 10, 1980 during this period of redemocratization. Lular ran for elections as president losing to Cardozo twice in 1994, 1998 and wiining at ae 57 years in 2002.     ...

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Young people in India express their rising expectations for the next government- for better infrastructure, for jobs and better incomes and a better vision for the future. Narendra Modi, leader of the BJP party and chief minister of Gujarat state, gives the development and high growth rates in his state as an example for what can be achieved in the the rest of India.

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This election is seen as a turning point for Britain. The Liberal-Conservative coalition has come up with a radical plan to cut spending and decentralize services in the areas of education, policing and health care. The plan is to cut the deficit quickly from 11% of GDP in 2009-10, to 2.1% in 2014-15. By comparison the outgoing Labor government's plan was to balance the budget by 2016-17. And the fiscal impact of Labor's budgets would have been 4% by 2014-15, compared to the Cameron government's looking at 6.3%, with larger and accelerated cuts in spending. It is something of a gamble by the Tory-Liberal government. If the severity of the cuts in spending stifle growth, then Plan B will be needed. The size of the cuts are not seen as feasible. With growing interest payments with the large borrowing by the government, and no real cuts in healthcare spending, departments delivering public services in Britain face cuts of 25% by 2014-15. With defense and schools limited to cuts of 10%- other departments would face cuts of 33%. According to the Institute of Fiscal Studies one way to reduce the severity of these cuts in department budgets, would be to find additional savings in the welfare budget. In June, Mr Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced 11 billion pounds in savings in this area (with half coming from using a different measure for inflation in calculating benefits). Additional savings of 14 billion pounds in welfare budgets, can reduce the size of the cuts needed in departmental budgets to 20%. One example cited is means-testing payments that go to the affluent as well as to poor people, such as child benefits, and cutting winter-fuel payments. Tories and Liberals agree on the need to decentralize government and services in the areas of schools, policing and the NHS. In schooling the idea is to give more choices to parents and children. Current schools can apply for academy status and new "free schools" will be run be non-profits, charities, churches, and parents. These schools will have freedom to set pay, select curriculum, and still receive state funding. In policing, the idea is to have directly elected police and crime commissioners for every constabulary in England and Wales. The elected commissioners would appoint constables and determine budgets and priorities. For the National Health Service the move is to give groups of general practitioners a significant role in the delivery of health care. ...

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Boris Johnson, who heads a minority government in Britain following resignation of Theresa May, will do just about anything to push Britain out of the European Union by October 31st. He has said he would "rather be dead in a ditch" than ask for an extension of the October 31st deadline. The British parliament is dead set on preventing that and has passed legislation requiring a extension of the October 31st deadline to January 2020. Johnson is even willing to go to jail for breaking the law, on the grounds that he is simply supporting the people's referendum choice over an elected parliament. This is itself a strange situation because the elected representatives in parliament decide for the people, and views in a referendum can change over time. Johnson says the reports of Britain's economy taking a blow from simply falling out of the European Union without a negotiated deal are exaggerated. He even once said all it means is that there might be "a shortage of Mars chocolate bars." Before becoming prime minister with a one vote majority in parliament which he promptly lost on the first day parliament met, Boris was a journalist who was elected Mayor of London. His only other position was for a brief period with controversy as Foreign Secretary in Theresa May's government. By taking in as chief adviser the head of the Brexit referendum Leave campaign Mr. Cummings, Mr. Johnson shows he believes he could win a general election with a carefully orchestrated campaign like that of Leave that blames the Labour Party, and the Scottish National party for stopping Brexit and halting the people's mandate.  The question is whether Cummings has gone too far or Boris Johnson has gone too far using Cumming's methods and views. Many Conservative moderates were expelled from the Conservative Party by Johnson and Cummings leaving the Conservative Party in self-destructive mode and the worst shape it has been in its history. It is not clear that after 10 years of austerity and rule by the Conservative party, and the mess from the single minded pursuit of Brexit that has overshadowed Britain's other priorities, that the British public would simply give a broken Conservative Party another mandate without thinking carefully about all the consequences. More so amid the lack of trust that is a feature of the Boris Johnson minority government.  ...

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Bernie Sanders with 46% of the delegates, 13.4 million votes, 22 states, and many of the young people in the U.S. behind him, told a news reporter at his home in the final sprint two weeks before the election- he plans to see the major planks of the Democratic platform implemented. He said Clinton is progressive on a number of issues, but the platform is more progressive with upward mobility a critical concern. Sanders played a critical role in shaping the platform. He says he opposes someone from Wall Street in positions of Treasury Secretary, Trade Representative, and will make known his views who would be best in these positions, including Attorney General. Sanders is supported in the Senate by Senators Sherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley, and Elizabeth Warren. Warren has campaigned with Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, and both support minimum wage, women's rights. WIth a win for Democrats in the Senate Sanders will become either the chairman of the Budget Committee, or with his preference chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. His main goal now is to see key economic Cabinet positions that affect upward mobility, intergenerational mobility, which is damaged today for the middle and working class, go to persons who would do the most to improve it.  ...

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Kristof of the NYT says the narrative about Hillary Clinton being dishonest is clearly overdone and inaccurate. He says the gaffes about the use of personal email server have unfairly created a distorted narrative. On changing positions on trade and minimum wage- this happens frequently with all the candidates. Some are glib enough for not being noticed, Clinton not a natural politician drawing attention. On Libya, and on Syria, Clinton is blamed for the President's errors and not given credit for pushback in league with Panetta, Gen. Kean and Gen. Jones, that has influenced changes made in 2016, and the president accepting blame for errors. In this instance Clinton has been far from shifty by publicly allying herself with Leon Panetta's position in "Worthy Fights," and Gen. Jones's remarks. Far from having erred on Libya and Syria policy, Hillary Clinton, like Chuck Hagel and others in the administration including Joe Biden, showed exceptional patience in dealing with the president, national security advisor, and McDonough in policy matters- when they were right but the country was weary of what were seen as futile global engagements in remote areas setting too high a bar for any action. Clinton rightly described this as a pendulum swinging too far in the opposite direction after the Bush/Cheney years. On young women and being "progressive" Hillary Clinton is from a older generation that experienced the kind of discrimination that young women fail to grasp, according to a recent analysis of University of Massachusetts polling survey results cited in the Washingon Post. A PolitiFact Pulitzer winning fact checking site shows 50% of the Clinton statments are either true or mostly true, compared to 49% for Bernie Sanders, 9 percent for Trump, 22% for Ted Cruz, and 52% for John Kasich. ...

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Strengthening labor rights in Mexico is part of the effort by Democrats in Congress to amend the Trump agreement with Mexico and Canada. Democrats say the lack of worker protections inside Mexico hurts U.S. workers wages and prospects. Democrats say the USMCA agreement negotiated by president Trump lacks enforcement provisions needed to ensure Mexico lives up to the agreement. Differences with the Trump administration which says these changes can be placed in followup legislation could hold up the agreement till after the 2020 elections in the U.S.

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Anton Harder in this Wilson Center publication of research uses correspondence between Jawaharlal Nehru and his sister Vijaylakshmi Pandit ambassador to the US in 1950, to show that the US made an offer for India to take a permanent seat at the UN Security Council. India had supported two resolutions on June 25, and June 27, first condemning the invasion by North Korea and second the organizing of a UN force of 29 countries to push back the North Korean invasion. Even though the US is not seen as actively engaging with India during that period and seeing through British eyes the colonial policies of encouraging  different powers in South Asia, that may not be true.  Who was India's foreign minister in 1950? Jawaharlal Nehru was both prime minister and foreign minister till 1964, which means there was less discussion of foreign policy than happens today during the Ukraine invasion with Jaishankar a career diplomat with 30 years experience, Rajnath Singh, and Mr. Modi, in talks with president Biden recently, and in further discussions Modi had with EU's Von der Leyen and UK's Boris Johnson, Kishida of Japan. Who was India's defense minister in 1950? Baldev Singh, a Sikh independence struggle leader was Minister of Defense for 1947-52 and tackled partition of Punjab and Kashmir issues. The rest of the years to 1957 when India faced the Chinese invasion of Tibet India's defense minister was also for most of the period Mr. Nehru, except Ayynagar in 1953, and Kailash Katju in 1955 and 1956. The controversial V.K. Krishna Menon was Defense Minister from 1957 to 1962, when Indian defenses were further neglected leading to the Chinese invasion of India in 1962, and his replacement by Yashwantrao Chavan. The purpose of this is to look back at what happened in earlier periods to understand where India stands today- and what choices it makes today. Clearly the US was looking for allies then and now. Nehru saw things from his own reading of history seeing China and India as both suffering from western invasion, not realizing that China's experience under Mao was different- that of Japanese invasion and bombing of China's major cities not just colonization of Hong Kong and other ports for trade under British trade based policies in 1850-1900. Thus a Communist Chinese version of China's defense involved taking over border regions such as Tibet putting China in direct and open opposition to India. Nehru never really grasped what was happening in Tibet and the war China fought against the Nationalists. American general Stilwell loved China deeply and had an understanding of its people as shown in Tuchman's account in her book Stilwell and the American Experience in China 1911-1945. Stilwell during that war had a better understanding of China, the strengths and weaknesses of Mao's China and of the Nationalists under Chiang, than Nehru. Some of these errors post 1950's and a concentration of foreign, defense and embassy positions in the person of Mr. Nehru and of Nehru family member such as Mrs. Pandit led to the Indian failure to act on Tibet and see it as see it for what it was -facing a Communist Mao led China that had fought the Japanese invasion as different from Bodhidharma's China of the history books. Bodhidharma's China will outlast Mao's China, yet it is Mao's China that India faces today. This also tells us that India has to think in new ways- as Lincoln said during a period when America was also making its own progress as an industrial nation in the 1860's. "The dogmas of the quiet past are not adequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise to the occasion. As our case is new, we must think anew, we must act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and we shall save our country." India's values are values of democracy heightened not just by Mohandas Gandhi's ideas with Hind Swaraj written in 1910 just as powerful in 2022, but also by the heights of Ladakh where elections are held in remote regions of the Himalayas. India's values are values that are also shared in the best that America has in its values and culture and in the defense of freedom.    ...

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A poll by Reuters and the University of Michigan in mid 2012 shows U.S. voters by a large margin of about 10% feel they are worse off in 2012 than they were in 2008. The situation in working class towns such as Allentown, Pennsylvania, is likely to be critical for the outcome of the U.S. presidential election of 2012.

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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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Many of the young people joining terrorist groups come from Tunisia. A security expert tells DW.com that the radicalization of youth in Tunisia began with the overthrow of Ben Ali and his government in Tunisia at the beginning of the Arab Spring in 2011. Ben Ali's regime detained many of the people in opposition groups, leading to the release from prisons during the revolution. The radicalization of Tunisia's youth began during this period, according to this report. The Benghazi attacks on American embassy from Libyans opposing Gaddafi who had crossed the border into Mali, also followed a similar pattern after the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya. In Libya many radicalized people in opposition groups were released from detention following Gaddafi's overthrow. The current democratically elected government of Tunisian president Beji Essebsi is monitoring the situation. This report describes the experience of some Tunisians in terrorist groups who were brought back home from other countries by their families. EU countries and the U.S. supported the Arab Spring but the aftermath was not well managed leading to further upheaval, and now terrorism. Some of this happened as the governments changed in the U.S. with Obama replacing Bush in the U.S. and Hollande replacing Sarkozy in France, and showing little interest in managing the aftermath or helping the new governments in Libya, Tunisia and other countries make a smooth transition with aid, security assistance, and maintaining the basic services provided by government. A well formulated and conducted effort from the West could have prevented the worst effects that are seen in 2014-2016. The costs to contain the crisis that has ensued are far greater than what would have been needed in material resources and expert assistance from the developed countries of Europe and the U.S.- without military involvement as there was a general sense of being lifted from years of dictatorship in Arab North Africa, and general sense of goodwill towards the West during the Arab Spring.   ...

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The unemployment rate in the U.S. state of Ohio drops to 7.2% in June 2012 from 10.6% in the second half of 2009. But polls show two thirds of the respondents see the economy as being worse or the same as in 2011. Because of lower wages in some industries such as auto manufacturing which are reviving there appears to be a lowering of incomes and expectations.

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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. ...