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More on how the partitioning of Iraq into Suni and Shiite is taking place contrary to what official announcements are saying. On the ground it looks quite different . Remember Iraq did not exist before the Treaty of Sevres in 1920 and is a post war creation of Britian and France who set new borders arbitrarily in the former Ottoman Empire and settled areas of influence.

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Consolidation of banks throughout the country with the takeover of Wachovia by Citigroup.

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Social and economic changes in American society have come down to an alarming statistic. There are three young women for every two young men in American colleges. At Tulane the freshman class has two thirds women students. At liberal arts colleges the class is usually 60% women. As noted in this report by Susan Dominus in NYT there is a devaluing of college education because men have choices that are higher paying, conservatives have not emphasized college education, and "male drift" is a serious problem leading to male enrolment declining. And once in college men are dropping out at afaster rate. All this adds up to a serious problem in America, one that the Biden administration has to take seriously as it looks at rebuilding not just the economy, but also the education system that supports the US economy in the world.

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Mogan McSweeney of Cork Ireland, son of an IRA courier with a politics and marketing degree from Middlesex University, joined the Labour Party in London fighting off Corbyn supporters during the Corbyn leadership till 2019. The Guardian says McSweeney settled on Keir Starmer as the candidate to replace Corbyn as a centrist on the right. It was says the Guardian McSweeney as an organizer against the Corbyn left that installed Keir Starmer in 10 Downing Street. And then by getting Starmer to appoint his mentor Mandelson led to Starmer becoming "the most unpopular prime minister in history." It says May local elections may sound the end of Starmer. McSweeney is blamed for some of Starmer's failure to project a image of firmness as he backtracked on issues on the advice of McSweeney, to the point that many in Labour party thought McSweeney made Labour driverless. As McSweeney ejected all Corbynites from the Labour Party he weakened the party and led to Labour bleeding its vote to the Greens and the Liberals. Labour's got a landslide with many Labour MP's winning by thin margins- its vote was slim only 34% of the vote, itself a warning that something was not right. On immigration the root causes were not addressed till early 2026- the ECHR human rights that needed to be put aside as written with serious flaws and which allowed asylum hotels. This led to a shift to Nigel Farage, called back from retirement to lead Reform UK in 2026 and way ahead of Labour and Conservatives in the polls. Worse 50% of Labour's vote disappeared in 2026 polls by February hardly 2 years after the win in 2024, as the support McSweeney helped organize had no depth of conviction- most of it to Liberals and Greens under Polanski. The result is that even the Guardian is disappointed and says McSweeney installed Starmer as PM and then made him "the most unpopular PM in history." Net favorability in Feb 2026 -57 similar to Sunak of Conservatives in June 2024. A 75% unfavorable rating in Jan 2026. And 14 points below the Labour party in "like" ratings. Only 18% are favorable for Starmer. It shows how a series of British prime ministers with mediocre backgrounds have failed in the country. ...

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  Tennis player Roger Federer's speech at Dartmouth College is useful advice - "its only one point" when you lose it, how to move on to the next one free of thought no negative energy, “When you lose every second point, on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot. You teach yourself to think, ‘OK, I double-faulted. It’s only a point.’ When you’re playing a point, it has to be the most important thing in the world, and it is. But when it’s behind you, it’s behind you. This mindset is really crucial, because it frees you to fully commit to the next point and the next point after that, with intensity, clarity and focus.” And how often does this happen? Every second point almost. Because he says he won at Wimbledon and US Open with only 54% of the points. He lost about half of the points and still made it, and this message is real life, it matters to most of us. When we focus, when we concentrate on the task at hand it is one minute at a time.  Mikaela Shiffrin is the ultimate example of concentration skill going downhill fast between poles requires utmost concentration and she did this for the US in the Olympics after many disappointments in previous Olympics, none of it mattered to her, as she practices and focused. And that takes one to Federer's next point it wasn't effortless. It was repeated practice, it was girt with practice that made a difference. Only today this was evident as Sanju Samson talked about talking with Sachin Tendulkar last night before today's World Cup cricket game Final with New Zealand in which he hit 89 runs and the third time he has done it in the last 2 weeks, in Ahmedabad's Modi Stadium, to become the Player of the Match, watched by nearly 1 billion fans around the world. And Federer's last message is to do this by having some fun, enjoying the experience, learning something new, exploring, and getting to one's potential. ...

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Stephens says the lack of swift military action to protect the U.S. consulate in Benghazi by all means available was not undertaken by President Obama from Wall Street Journal accounts of what happened. The reason given was not to violate Libya's sovereignty, instead an effort was made by the State Department to get the Libyan government to send reinforcements. This was the situation at 5 pm on Sept 11, in an Oval Office meeting, when news of the attack on the consulate reached President Obama. A suggestion was made according to WSJ reports for U.S. planes to fly in from the closest airbase to scare away the attackers but was not adopted. The Obama adminstration was slow to act decisively in the struggle for freedom from the Gaddafi dictatorship and agreed to support the French-British effort after the war was underway for some time. This is likely to have left the U.S. with a lack of sufficient intelligence on the ground about the movement of remnants of Gaddafi's army, mercenaries from Mali, and terrorist groups, which are suspected of involvement in the attack, and which had threatened Ambassador Stevens according to his diary. The U.S. consulate in Benghazi was burned down in a deliberately planned attack and one of America's finest diplomats Stevens lost his life in the attack. ...

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The Times looks at whether female leaders are better in handling situations like the pandemic. When it looks at all the information without cherry-picking this report says they are no better than male leaders. Sanna Marin of Finland and Angela Merkel are not better than a Biden or a Modi.

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President Trump says the terms set in the deal Boris Johnson negotiated with the European Union preclude any deal with the U.S. He says after looking at the agreement that "we can't make a trade deal with the UK."  Trump made similar comments for prime minister Theresa May when he said that May's strategy for Brexit would "kill" any chance of a trade deal with the U.S. Mr. Boris Johnson, UK prime minister, has promised to negotiate a free trade agreement with the U.S. after delivering Brexit. A separate report in DW.com showed that countries with large potential in trade for Britain such as India are also less likely to sign a deal with Britain because the EU is a much larger trading partner with India. This could have an effect on Mr. Johnson's election campaign.

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In Feb 2026 after Minnesota protests and Agent Bovino violated rules set by Border head Homan, this is what Democrats want ICE to do- wear ID badges, no masks, and rules on warrants, on where agents can operate. Homan found Bovino's actions under Homeland Security head Kristi Noem's leadership to be not necessary to fulfill the mission of the organization, counterproductive when the goal was to ensure safety of the streets it actually created disturbance in neighborhoods. Minnesota presented a special case as actions in Tennessee and other states did not meet opposition of the kind it met in Minnesota. It was also a place where Kamala Harris's running mate Walz is governor who encouraged the protests. Now that there is some reflection on all sides Democrats are changing their position on abolish ICE calls by protestors to working to ensure ICE operates in ways that win confidence of neighborhoods that it is only enforcing the law and doing it in ways that Americans can accept without masks and military uniforms. ...

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 Iranian drone attacks and French British interception efforts - a report from the French armed forces staff about shortages in munitions. Drone attacks by Iran in first 2 weeks of Iran war are as follows- 590 on Qatar and Kuwait, 500 and 550 on Saudi and Israel, 1700 on UAE. A flood of low cost Shahed drones intended to overwhelm defenses is used by Iran. Drones can be launched from all parts of Iran including from the countryside in a country 3 times the size of France. The drones also cost little to produce in large numbers in Iran. Munitions cost and cost of aircraft usage, other costs of Navy, run to $12.7 billion for the US and US asks for another $200 billion from Congress. France uses 24 Rafale jets Britain 8 Typhoon jets in this report from French armed forces and French munitions supplies are an issue as the war progresses. France uses MICA missiles for interception made at a factory in Bourges central France, with limited supply.

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Sara Ehrman describes the time when Hillary Clinton worked in Washington D.C. as a 26 year old lawyer working on the Watergate committee, and Bill Clinton was teaching law in Arkansas. In August 1974 Hillary was living for about 1 year with Mrs. Ehrman, a friend who was a congressional aide at the time. She is 97 today, and recalls that time when she tried to discourage Hillary from going to Arkansas to join her boyfriend. Ehrman felt not much would come out of Bill Clinton, though she thought him to be handsome, and later worked in his presidential campaign and Hillary's presidential campaign. Ehrman was 55 then, and describes Hillary Clinton as a bit sloppy in her habits, such as not making her bed and having a lot of stuff strewn about her room, but really intelligent and very hardworking. At the time both lived together. Ehrman describes a daily routine of seeing Hillary go to work with coffee in the morning and come back exhausted late at night, having yogurt and going to bed, day after day.  The two met for the first time in 1972 when Ehrman was co-director of issues and research in the McGovern campaign in Texas, and Hillary was helping with voter registration. This report describes in detail the road trip to Arkansas that the two made together, when Mrs. Ehrman drove Hillary to Arkansas in her old Buick. They stopped at small towns  in the 1200 mile journey, and this journey ends with Mrs Ehrman crying that she could not get Hillary to change her mind about Bill Clinton and Arkansas. About what she thought was a bright woman throwing her life away in the deep South of the seventies. Hillary she remembers insisted she loved Bill Clinton, and having passed the Arkansas Bar exam had firmly decided on settling in Arkansas. ...

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Walmart new CEO John Furner from the University of Arkansas with deep connections to Bentonville similar to retiring CEO McMillon. Mcmillon made a decision not to buckle under pressures of Wall Street/CNBC and NYSE in the fall of 2015 as he invested $2.7 billion to build cleaner better stores and to raise wages from $7.25 an hour to $9.00 an hour that year, even though share price dropped 10% and continued to drop. Wages are now $18 an hour in 2025 and parental leave, free college and technical education, planned promotions, other benefits made Walmart a good place to work. Walmart has grown every year since. Its sheer size with 2.1 millon employees means that it is a bellweather for the US economy. Other companies copied Walmart and this has raised wages across the board for lower income workers. With cost of living concerns in 2025 imagine where we would be as a nation without courage of the men who run the companies that run America's economy if wages had stagnated at levels below this for people who still live paycheck to paycheck. ...

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Next five year plan for China calls for more concentration on industry, dominance in key sectors identified by China such as rare earths, and more exports- not less in each of these areas. Chinese Communist Party is very conservative and once this has worked for China it is not going to change its reliance on exports even at the risk of leaving goods unsold in China or oversupply. The result is that the US effort to reduce the trade deficit, trying every tool in the book does not work, leading to an effort to resort to tariffs as a last resort to cut the unhealthy and risky $1 trillion trade deficit China has with the world. Has it worked? WSJ and other reports show that large companies are diversifying their supply channels, only smaller companies without the resources are sticking with China dependence for supplies. The tariffs themselves make headlines yet the US has made careful calculations not to upset relationships with key partners Britain, European Union, and Japan, keeping tariffs low at 10% with EU, and 15% with Japan which exports automobiles to the US to recover some of the years US made concessions to Japan. There are also loopholes on certain products where it is in the US interest to do so. As a result the effective tariff is 10-12.5% not 17-20% shown in reports. Of this 10% what is passed on to consumers is small- as in autos 80% of tariffs are not passed on by auto importers such as Toyota and Subaru because of the higher margins postpandemic. In retail only 30% is passed on again because of the post pandemic higher margins. The administration of DJT has also carefully worked with world oil suppliers to keep oil prices low, lower than in 2023-2024. The result is that inflation is at about 3% in September 2025. The idea that a capricious DJT is doing the tariffs is a myth as careful economic planners including Bessent, Jamieson, Lighthizer, and Luttnick, economic advisors in the Republican party, are carefully articulating the policy with room for DJT's political talk and appeal to public sentiment. ...

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Adjusted for inflation wages for automakers have fallen 19% since 2008 because of tiers new workers making about $17 an hour significantly less than the $32 an hour. UAW seeks an end to tiered hiring.  For GM it is about committing to a long term contract in an industry that is unpredictable and uncertain. GM wants to make substantial investments in the EV industry with president Biden's help even when not making profits from EV's. For the UAW Ms. Janis of Jobs to Move America says labor is a very small part of what it costs to make EV's, batteries are the most. None of the earlier difficulties are likely because much fewer workers are needed making labor cost a much smaller component. Toyota has been slow in its EV start, BYD in China is leading but US carmakers are supported by the US government for EV's. Auto workers want a fair contract . And GM working with partners can still build joint venture factories for batteries in the South just like Tesla where work is not unionized. In the competition in EV's R&D and quality of management will play a bigger role. Fairness for workers will motivate American carmakers, with worker training and quality+value of EV's important for success.   ...