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House Speaker Paul Ryan endorses Donald Trump after a long period of reflection.

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"In the spring of 1971, I met a girl," with that beginning Bill Clinton gave one of the most memorable speeches at a Democratic Convention in history, to introduce the very human, Hillary- sometimes frail, but always looking for new mountains to climb, new barriers to break, new injustices to be righted. Of the long courtship at Yale and the years at Arkansas, buying that house in Little Rock Hillary liked before proposing marraige,  the time when they cried while leaving their daughter Chelsea at college dorm in Stanford; and all the private moments of a political couple one gregarious and outward looking, the other serious and inward looking. An introduction to someone you have heard too much about but you never knew. Never saw too close because of her intense longing for privacy- possibly coming from her own mother- Methodist upbringing that you were never the one to focus on, and family experience. Bill had seen this Methodist up close, and shared his experience with his countrymen who had not known her so well as he had.  ...

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Thomas Grove of the WSJ describes the underground defense system prepared by the government in Helsinki, Finland, in the event of an advance into Finnish territory by Russia. Russia is holding a large military exercize at the Finnish border called Zapad 2017. All 600,000 residents of Helsinki can go underground and the country can function in the event of a Russian advance. Finland faced a Russian advance for 3 months in 1940, leading to a loss of 10% of territory but leaving the government and country intact. Lessons from this experience are kept alive today. Finland is also working closely with NATO of which it is not a member. NATO is also expanding its presence in the Baltic region.

 

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No country benefited more than first Japan and then South Korea till 2000, and now China till 2022 from the trade and sharing of industrial technology enabled by the American backed system of trade and industry. Walter Russell Mead says in WSJ that China has chosen to challenge the system through which it developed into an industrialized nation with the US running huge trade deficits, sharing its technology and letting Chinese manufacturing displace American local manufacturing. China is seen as challenging the system. Yet what has happened is that this process of displacing American manufacturing and industry was not sustainable anyway and continued for a decade longer than it would otherwise have lasted because American industry could not easily reverse a course it had set of setting up manufacturing in China, once that manufacturing base had already been transferred from the US to China and American companies had grown accustomed to a new state of affairs of making overseas in China. Not much thought was given to how American workers would react to that situation as companies and industries making that transfer made independent decisions. This led to the election of Trump with wins in midwestern states that had suffered from loss of manufacturing communities.  The Trump tariffs on Chinese goods and the Biden administration lining up completely behind American workers and families for the first time for Democrats has sent the signal to China that it finds the situation of China's dominance in the trade system unacceptable. The document of "China 2030" of the Chinese Government with planned dominance in key sectors and industries was met with alarm across America in all parties. The paradox of Apple as a key sector in Chinese manufacturing and the largest American company is the result of policies pursued by America without realizing the true cost of shipping manufacturing out of the country. That process is now being reversed with change of management starting at Intel Corp. and other companies to bring the manufacturing base back to the US. This policy is being resolutely pursued by the US and will speed up following the pandemic which has further demonstrated how much of a mistake the policy of sending out manufacturing in critical areas such as health could be. This is the reality behind the rhetoric and verbal exchange between China and the US. With the rapid growth of Chinese manufacturing countries such as India were put in a difficult situation  as this was preventing the local industrial base developing in India with Chinese imports in the same way as it had damaged that of the US and the EU. Worse it led to the use of US and European technology in China's defense industrial base including aviation and other sectors that threatened India's borders with repeated Chinese incursions in the Himalayas, from the Pakistan western Himalayas to Ladakh and the eastern Himalayan mountains. That situation existed long before the Trump and Biden administration and the Modi administration called for a return to America of its industrial manufacturing base and its technological leadership. Both the Bush and Obama administrations and the Indian Congress administrations failed to realize the dangers of letting the US, European and Indian industrial base wither. India is not just a country but a culture that extends from the Himalayas all the way across Bangladesh to the Indonesian islands which shares a common cultural history of Buddhism and the Vedanta. This is a region that has a population of about 2 billion people. In a larger sense the cultural history extends to  Vietnam and Japan with its Buddhist culture whose origins go back to India, and also of China itself. In the larger sense this is a population of close to 3 billion people. The economic development of this region and learning from the parliamentary traditions and scientific discoveries of the modern period since 1700 is a task for both the US, Europe and the people of the region.   ...

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The domestic German public opinion has shifted against further bailouts to the point where a poll conducted July 1-5 before the referendum shows only 10% of German supporting further concessions in negotiations with Greece. This reduces even further the room domestic public opinion gives German chancellor Merkel for flexibility in talks following the Greece referendum "no" vote to earlier proposals from Germany and France. The multi year program planned for Greece following the referendum involves reforms such as making firing workers easier, changes to product markets and privatization of state assets, which were left out in the June 2 proposal from Merkel and Hollande, which was rejected at the time by Greece.

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Many of the towns with manufacturing plants in 1992 have switched sides from Democratic in 1992 to Republican in 2016. This explains Donald Trump's success - he tapped into discontent with Democrats who supported trade agreements such as TPP and did little to take up the cause of workers in areas hit hard by foreign manufacturing and imports. It also explains why Republicans are now favoring protectionism and Democrats supporting free trade, traditionally the opposite was true.   As the U.S. manufacturing workforce diminished in size from 15% of the U.S. workforce in 1992 to 8% in 2017, it shifted from cities with unions to blue collar suburbs. Factories in traditional Democratic places were closed down and these cities ceased to be manufacturing centres. Pittsburgh ceased to be a major manufacturing centre as manufacturing jobs declined by 37000, and service industries increased by 168,000. This resulted in the manufacturing heartland going through Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, through Ohio and the Carolinas and into the deep South. In these places whites without college education took up manufacturing jobs and identified with the Republican party's focus on social issues and abortion restrictions. So big is the shift that labor unions that represented 20% of manufacturing workers in 1992 represented only 9% of workers in 2017, according to economists at Georgia State University. Bill Clinton won 49% of working class counties where workers were at least 25% of the workforce. By 2016 the 860 such counties were down to 320 about two thirds now gone, and Mr. Trump took 95% of these counties. The change is dramatic. Voters that identify Democrat are now from cities, more educated, and less likely to be identified as blue collar. As the economies of these cities has shifted to finance and service industries, these residents have not accomodated the conservative cultural views. and have shifted to embracing more immigration, LGBT, gay rights on social issues. Before there was one mention in the 1992 Democratic platform of LGBT says the Journal, now there is 19 mention of rights for LGBT. Republicans have now shifted from privatizing Social Security, and now support some infrastructure spending. Republican platform now calls for free trade that is fair trade. And this has support from the left and the right. Factory owners and factory workers are united in their opposition to free trade rules that hit American factories. Union leaders say the Democratic Party left us. The Democratic Party gets more support and identifies more with Silicon Valley- Mr. Obama's TPP trade agreement benefitted Silicon Valley more than it did auto plants. The change happened over many years and Mr Trump capitalized on this. ...

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On the 100th anniversary of 1947 and 1949 the Republics of China and India in about 25 years will have become fully developed modern states with science and technology by 2050, leaving behind memories of the colonial period. As the mother of Asian Buddhist civilization this region of northern India would be seen by a new generation of Chinese as part of ancient Chinese Buddhist culture from the days of Lord Buddha and Bodhidharma, and a gradual shift will lead to China leaving Tibet and the border regions of India in Kashmir, Arunachal and Ladakh of its own decision. China's entry into border regions- Kashmir region, Ladakh and Arunachal are a result of China under Mao and the Communist party decision to occupy Tibet and Indian border areas. A result of the memory of occupation of China starting from the border regions in the north Manchuria by the Japanese, and the Kwantung peninsula by western powers Russia, Britain, Germany. And the need to protect its frontiers in the border regions used as buffers by the British Empire, after the Communist Party under Mao created the People's Republic in Beijing. New technology in the 20th century made the high plateau's of Tibet accessible after 2500 years by construction of roads rail transport in high mountain terrain.  What this occupation of Tibet as a border region has done is to put China within a short distance, just days from the plains of India- a situation that has no precedent in the entire history of the world dating from Lord Buddha. Compared to the desolate regions of Manchuria in the north this has an Indian population in the plains of India of as much as a billion people. Just as China sought protection from its own memory of occupation by the Japanese and colonial powers, India seeks protection from colonial powers and the Chinese now in Tibet similar to the Japanese in Manchuria just days away from the plains of the Chang Jiang (Yangste) and  Huang He (Yellow River) of China, China just days away in 2025 from the Ganges/ Brahmaputra , and the Indus river regions. The British Empire no longer exists. British names such as McMahon for McMahon Line frowned upon by anti-colonialist China, no longer exist. India also an anti-colonial power frowns upon such names and the arbitrary way the British (also the Portuguese, the Spanish, Dutch and the French) decided what belonged to whom, including whole nations. As early as 1505 Portuguese occupied Sri Lanka (Ceylon), occupied by the Dutch as part of cinnamon supply zone by 1700, and transferred by treaty to British in 1802, the memories of colonialism date back on the shores of India to 1505.    ...