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Anthony Faiola describes how Berlusconi gained political power in Italy, his television media enterprises that that upended social norms and built an audience through comedy shows and showing buxom women, the power base he built with the loyalty of housewives and pensioners and the use of special favors to the political class, the affability that helped him continue through several crises including corruption charges. Comparisons could be drawn with Rupert Murdoch of Britain, for the influence of media businessmen on politics. But there are several sharp differences. Murdoch used papers like News World that purveyed gossip and scandal to win large newspaper audiences with tawdry methods. He was influential in bringing politicians on both sides of the political spectrum- Margaret Thatcher of the Conservative party and Blair of the Labor party- to power. At the same time he was concerned about the national interest, was mindful of his responsibilities as a newspaperman, saw himself as the worthy successor to a father who started the newspaper enterprise he would run and was remembered as a distinguished journalist who exposed the problems of the British military in Gallipolli, Turkey, during the First World War. Murdoch's desire to be seen as a serious journalist as well as a businessman, led to his desire to acquire and run the Wall Street Journal. Even in his leaving Berlusconi shows a complete absence of any concerns for Italy, being more obsessed with himself. He tells the Italian newspaper La Stampa that his situation is similiar to that of Benito Mussolini when he wrote about his feeling of betrayal in a letter to a lover: "At a certain point he says: 'Don't you understand I don't count for anything anymore?' I have felt in the same situation." To the world outside Italy it is hard to comprehend that even as Murdoch was being skewered inside Britian for the News World episode and apologized and appeared shaken by the experience, Berlusconi would be treated passively by the public and Italy's political and ruling class. The editor of Italian magazine Il Foglio is quoted as saying Berlusconi was "a cultural reformer," and the leader of the opposition Democratic party, is quoted as saying that even after his resignation Berlusconi will remain in politics, behind the scenes, and "invent his successors." ...

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Like hundreds of thousands of other young migrant workers in China's factories, Yuan Yandong is from a rural area and lived on a farm. Better incomes have brought them to the factories in urban areas. In this case travelling long distance by train from Guangdong province to Shenzhen. As living standards improved across China and the government expressed a keen willingness to encourage workers to exercize their rights to fair wages and working conditons- especially by creating increased awareness of new labor laws in the state run media- migrant workers are becoming restless with conditions they accepted a few years ago. The growing use of cellphones and access to the internet have made news travel faster. A visit to a Foxconn factory shows a young worker, age 24, sitting on a stool 6 nights a week, 12 hours a night, with a quota to assemble 1600 hard drives for American computer storage company EMC, with the pressure to work continuously against the clock for each step in the manufacturing process. Foxconn is known for its highly disciplined nature of work, akin to a military style. Behind the scenes factories like Foxconn employ methods once used in the US at a similiar stage of industrialization, with 500 technical people continuously looking for the most efficient way to organize each step in the production process. Each movement and action of the worker is measured for time taken and process efficiency, according to experts at Tsinghua University in China. This means many factories can use less automation- and so less capital intensive manufacturing- and go to extremes where workers perform like machines. Yuan's ambition is to work only for another 2 years and then use his savings to get into hotel management. His wages are 75 cents an hour, and with the overtime premium about $235 a month. Foxconn announced a 33% raise in wages as a result of worker protests. The mind numbing monotony is becoming less acceptable in a changing China, and worker turnover in such factories is rising. After the initial burst of industrialization in which young migrant workers played a signifcant role in manufacturing, a new chapter in China's development is beginning- one less likely to create the large trade deficits with the US and Europe- which is moving in the direction of a larger domestic market with higher worker wages....

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In response to bellicose speeches by Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference on March 6, 2012, President Obama stated at a press conference: "This is not a game..The one thing we have not done is we have not launched a war.. If some of these folks think we should launch a war, let them say so, and explain to the American people." The U.S. president, advisors and intelligence officials believe that Iran has yet to acquire a nuclear weapon, that there is time for sanctions to work and make the Iranian government give up any weapons programs it is working on. Their view as stated by the U.S. President is that this time cannot be measured in two days or two months. Recent elections in Iran show divisions in the government between the Ayatollah Khamanei and premier Ahmadinejad, with the elections favoring candidates supporting Khamanei. There is also the dynamic of changing relations in the Middle East- between Iran and other countries such as Iraq, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, India- which have strong ties to the U.S., and Iran's relations with China and other countries which have close economic ties to the U.S. In addition in a country with a demographic skewed heavily towards younger people and a third of the people under 15, the democracy protests in 2011 about a flawed election in 2009 are supported largely by university and college students. That election may actually have been stolen by Ahmadinejad from Mr. Moussavi, who in an election eve television debate accused Ahmadinejad of "adventurism, illusionism, exhibitionism, extremism, and superficiality," (Nazila Fathi, NYT 6/4/2009). These factors are likely to be behind the Obama administration's sense of a "window of opportunity," to use Mr. Obama's words. Recent polls by the University of Maryland's Prof. Telhami show only 19% of Israelis favored a military strike without U.S. backing in Feb. 2012, and Israeli public opinion experts see Obama's position as reflecting a sound judgement. Research by Citigroup shows that at a price for Brent crude of $120 with an escalation in Iran, it would take 9% of the world's GDP to support the higher energy costs, hitting Europe especially hard (Liam Denning, WSJ 1/6/2012)....

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Dilip Hiro's new book on the emergence of two states India and Pakistan in 1947 presents the story in terms of the two founding leaders Mohandas Gandhi and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. The division of the region into conflicting states is shown as a result of the divergent views and politics of the two leaders. Jinnah who was skeptical of the mass civil disobedience movement of Gandhi and preferred a legislative approach, and Gandhi who appealed to the masses and oppressed millions in British India. Jinnah and Gandhi's style and approach were fundamentally different. Seven decades later Pakistan has failed to build a genuine participatory democracy for most of this period with military actively involved in government, and India in the manner of Gandhi built institutions of participatory democracy under different political parties. Jinnah was an assistant to Dadabhai Naoroji, India's first nationalist leader at the turn of the century, when the two were in London. Naoroji passionately argued against the British policies that entrenched the poverty of millions of Indians in the countryside. Ironically it was Gandhi, not Jinnah, who took up Naoroji's call for bringing hope to the hundreds of millions of people on the subcontinent in "Poverty and Un-British Rule in India," first published in 1901, and showing how the draining of the country by the British was leaving India weak and oppressed. In 2015 that struggle of Naoroji for bringing hope and economic opportunity to millions of people is the task taken up by India's new government and the new government in Pakistan. Naoroji, the first Asian to be elected as a member of the British parliament, established the East India Association in 1867, the predecessor organization to the Indian National Congress which he founded with Hume, and is the leader Gandhi and Jinnah most respected in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Naoroji was elected to the British parliament for the Liberal party from Finsbury Central in 1892, and was assisted in his campaign and duties as a member of parliament by Mohammed Ali Jinnah. In the light of this common upbringing for Gandhi and Jinnah, the nineteen forties and their aftermath could be seen as a detour, not the substance of political life on the subcontinent- just as Mao and Chiang Kai Shek are a sort of detour for today's China. Particularly in a globalized world where technology continues to open up unbelievable economic opportunity, interchange and communication. ...

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Pipes describes the failure of the opposition to offer constructive ideas and frame itself as an alternative to the AKP and prime minister Erdogan. Turkey's moves towards its historic role in the Middle East under the Ottoman Empire 1300-1923 championing Muslim interests, as opposed to the secular position taken by Ataturk and the modernizing of Turkey under post Ataturk governments.

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The gradual bridging of differences between prime minister Nawaz Sharif and army chief Raheel Sharif in Pakistan, following the Imran Khan street protests.

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Content Links 1. BASRA BASED SOUTH OIL COMPANY RESUMES NORMAL PRODUCTION FROM THE SOUTHERN OIL WELLS OF IRAQ. Officials from South Oil Company say they have boosted production from 1.65 barrels a day to 2 million barrels a day. The production gains came after older nonproducing wells were repaired and reopened and from drilling new oil wells. Jabar Leaby, managing director of South Oil Company in Basra has plans to raise output to 2.25 million barrels a day by end of 2006. He is negotiating for more administrative and financial help from the Oil Ministry. U.S. military engineers working with South Oil engineers are expected to finish a number of big projects that will boost production. One of these projects is hooking up some 60 wells that were never completed because of a lack of parts and some that were abandoned prematurely. This according to Capt. Michael Sherbak, chief of oil projects for the U.S.Army Corps of Engineers in Baghdad.

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Content Links 1. THE MISSILE ASPECTS OF THE LEBANESE CONFLICT OF 2006. The missiles have a reach of 10-20 upto a 100 miles. Most of the missiles are portable and can be moved from place to place and stored in wooden crates that can be easily transported. And the missiles are stored deep inside Shiite villages and towns, where the Shiite parties run the local government and provide social services and medical services, so that the resistance is kind of embedded in these areas. Considering that Lebanon is 40% Shiite and the backkground of oil rich Shiite Iran and its economic support of the Shiites here this becomes a difficult problem for Israel as it involves a door to door search to prevent the missiles from being launched. A senior Israeli military official: "Its a big problem for us, the launchers pop up for only a few minutes before the rocket goes... We just can't get them all."

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NATO airstrikes played abig role in defeating Gaddafi's army. NATO has so far flown 7,459 strike missions, covering thousands of targets. The result has been the destruction of the Gaddafi regime's infrastructure and fighting capabilities of his forces. With every passing week the coordination betwen the rebel units and NATO for pinpoint strikes has improved. And in the final assault towards Tripoli NATO strikes destroyed any attempts by Gaddafi forces to launch an attack to retake Zawiyah. On the ground special British and French units have helped train rebel forces and improve their coordination and capabilities.