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A look at the Palestine conflict from 1947 to 2023. The British Mandate for Palestine gave Britain a role in administering this part of the Middle East after it took control of the region from the defeated Ottoman Empire in the First World War 1914-1918. The League of Nations set up the Mandate with intention to take the people in this territory to independence. The UN in 1947 gave about 56% of Palestine to the Jewish people and 44% to the Arab people. When the Arab people rejected this UN settlement and Arab neighbors Jordan, Egypt and Syria invaded in 1947 about 70% of the territory went to the new state of Israel. There have been repeated conflicts almost every 7 years since and there are factions within Israel and inside Palestine Arabs who have protracted the dispute, including over holy sites in Jerusalem, without seeking the kind of settlement that won peace for Ireland after hundreds of years of British rule and discrimination. The world with its billions of people in China and India who seek development and billions of people in Africa and Latin America who seek a way out of poverty, has no interest in prolonging small conflicts that distract from the importance of tackling climate change, infrastructure development and education, healthcare, ...

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This BBC Travel story about mindfulness, a sort of meditation with nature, and getting close to nature as a sort of healing inside, comes from the southern region of Western Australia, 360 kilometres southeast of Perth. It could have come from native peoples in America, Asia, Africa or other parts of the world. The author visits the Noorang people, part of the 750,000 native people who lived there when the first British settlers arrived there in 1788. Captain Cook had just landed there in 1770 as part of British Navy and Royal Society expedition on the ship HMS Endeavour. Today this is part of the Botany Bay National Park in the Sydney region of eastern Australia. The author visits the streams rivers and hills in the region near Perth as he undergoes a kind of spiritual reconnection with nature. The less the vibration man has the more the mindfulness and ability to connect with nature and the inner self, the author is shown as he lets things go soaking himself in a river. Many native people's rituals and are ways to respect nature and connect to it as to a mother.  In India modern people relate to ancient civilization through yoga and spiritual writings from an earlier period. There too the idea of nature or rivers and mountains as spiritual and healing, strengthening of body and spirit can be seen. The Narmada river flowing from east to west across mountain ranges in India is seen as a spiritual  mother just as rivers are in this story about native peoples in Australia's southern region south of Perth, western Australia. ...

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John Fritze gives this exceptional report in USA Today with a gallery of black and white pictures on the life and work of an American who truly embodied some of the best spirit of America. Born on a ranch in the Arizona-New Mexico region in America's southwest in the 1920's she built in herself a remarkable resilience to start work in the law when women were not hired for legal work, choosing to start work as an unpaid legal worker at the county attorney's office in San Mateo because he had hired a woman once. Her response -"I loved my work and it was great," shows a remarkable attitude and one that reflected some of the ethos of America in the nineteenth century, what makes America and wins the respect of the world in Asian, African and Latin American countries. Her response at 75 years when retiring was to engage in work she loved and brought value to the nation- creating iCivics website to teach civics knowledge to children. She also led the College of WIlliam and Mary and engaged with young people. ...

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The former Chief Election Commissioner of India, Mr. S.Y Quraishi, looks at the 2019 Nigerian elections. Nigeria has about 47% of the population of West Africa. Muslims and Christians are almost equal in numbers and there are 300 ethnic groups. About 82.3 million voters were registered to vote. Quraishi sees the 41% registered voters to be disproportionate to the total population. In India about 62% of the total population is registered to vote. The Independent National Election Commission (INEC) chairman, Mr. Mahmood Yakubu, says security, fake news, hate  speech, and expenditure control are the top issues. Postponement, delays and chaos at polling stations contributed to a historic low turnout, 35.6% compared to 44% in 2015. Police presence was discreet and needed for the elections. A coalition of 70 civic organizations monitored the elections and contributed to its credibility. In Lagos there were 1.1 million valid votes. India has strong interest in Nigeria's democracy. Over 135 Indian companies have operations in Nigeria, including  State Bank of India, Bharti Airtel, Tata, Bajaj, Birla, Kirloskar, Mahindra. The election commissions of the two countries have met yet there is need for more engagement. About 50,000 Indians live in Nigeria. By continuing the process established by the two earlier elections including a peaceful transition from Mr. Goodfellow to Mr. Buhari, Nigeria is strengthening the democratic process. In continuing the fight against corruption, building infrastructure, the difficult process of modernization and development is taking place even with difficult economic conditions. ...

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Baden-Powell was founder of the Boy Scouts which has given millions of boy scouts throughout Asia, Australia, Africa, Latin America and North America a sense of purpose when they were attending elementary and secondary school throughout the twentieth century. For girl scouts it added confidence to girls and enabled them to grow in many ways.  So it comes as a surprise that Baden-Powell is seen in this way. Gandhi never questioned British rule directly during the period when he fought for human rights in South Africa during the period 1893-1915. During the Boer War in 1900 Gandhi volunteered to form the Natal Ambulance Corps that as stretcher bearers helped treat British soldiers in the Boer War. He was given the Queens South Africa medal. In the Zulu war he repeated this by being part of the ambulance corps supporting British troops, but also treated Zulu wounded. Gandhi acted as a loyal part of the British Empire and throughout most of the period into the 1920's acted with loyalty to the British Empire. Few questioned British rule at the time, and Gandhi followed Gokhale's advice in 1915 as he returned to India at the age of 45. Gokhale was a moderate who accepted the British rule in India and sought provincial assemblies and self-rule under the British Empire. Gandhi's whole thinking was shaped by British traditions, British laws, British democracy, having attended a British school in Rajkot, Saurashtra province of Gujarat state. The letter helping him make his move for education as a barrister in England came through the British political agent in Rajkot, who was a friend of his father, the Diwan of the princely state of Porbander, Gujarat. Even Swami Vivekananda was helped by leaders of princely states in Saurashtra who pledged loyalty to the British Empire in India, one of whom was a close friend who helped Vivekananda come to America. It may be too easy to look back and make everything look good, when in reality it is complex, but yet ordinary human beings are in search for the right path. As Vivekananda's guru said you will still get there but "it is good to travel by a clean path." I visited the Gandhi home and museum in Porbander in September 2019. Driving in along the Saurashtra, Gujarat coastline we hit a rainstorm and when we reached the home it was in heavy rain. After visiting the home I went to a small bookshop in the museum and came across a copy of a small book Gandhi wrote in 1910 on a steamship back to South Africa from London, with the title- "Hind Swaraj or Home Rule." That little book written in the form of a dialogue between the reader and the editor by Gandhi amazes me as it was the basis of the movement after 1915 all the way into the 1930's. His clarity of thinking and his sincerity and steadfast purpose was such that it stood the test of time. Gandhi even goes as far as to say the English did not take India, India was given to them, given to English traders as Indian princes vied with each other for the favor of Company Bahadur, British forces designed to protect the East India Company's warehouses. That they remained in India for the purpose of trade and Indians helped them to do so. To blame them was for Gandhi to perpetuate their power. For him British arms and ammuniton were perfectly useless.  Gandhi writes this dialogue about Gokhale in the book which is worth reading at this time, as it was in 1910. Reader: Gokhale has constituted himself a great friend of the English, he says we have to learn a great deal from them, that we have to learn their political wisdom before we can talk of Home Rule. I am tired of reading his speeches. Editor: If you are tired it only betrays your impatience. We believe that those who are discontented with the slowness of their parents and are angry because the parents would not run with their children, are considered disrespectful to their parents. Professor Gokhale occupies the place of a parent. What does it matter if he cannot run with us? A nation that is desirous of home rule cannot afford to despise its ancestors. We shall become useless if we lack respect for our elders. only men with mature thoughts are capable of ruling themselves and not the hasty-tempered. Moreover how many Indian were there like Professor Gokhale, when he gave himself to Indian education? I verily believe that whatever Professor Gokhale does, he does with pure motives, and with a view of serving India... our chief purpose is not to decry his work , but to believe that he is infinitely greater than we are, and to feel assured that with his work for India, ours is infinitesmial."   ...

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Steve Bannon is described in this indepth report by Scott Shane as a workaholic, born to working class family with his father a telephone line operator, who went to Virginia Tech and joined the Navy in the hope of advancing a career in politics. At Virginia Tech he won a leadership position of the student organization. He was described by another student who knew him well as passionate but not likely to get much done. The period at Virginia Tech and in the Navy were the Carter years followed by election of Ronald Reagan. The election of Reagan had a huge influence on Bannon- the same overtones of that campaign of Reagan are seen today in the forgotten men and women, white working class families that Conservatives then and Tea Party Conservatives in the Obama years felt ignored. The downward drift of the lower middle class families that saw incomes drop as manufacturing hollowed out in the U.S. with foreign competition, the failure of establishment politicians of both parties to protect American manufacturing and working class families, added to the sense of angst for Bannon. Bannon just like politicians in the Obama camp such as Emmanuel, found the way to politics through finance and gains made as the banking sector and financial institutions made huge financial gains by 2008. This was a stepping stone for their political ambitions. Emmanuel who is also a workaholic and passionate about his views worked to elect a black president, Bannon choosing to do the opposite and push for bringing back the Reagan era. Most on the liberal side see him as part of a racist movement. Reagan was none of those things. How does one reconcile the two? It is possible that seeing the fight against the established politics as an impossible task, Bannon in his passionate temperament did not object to the support of right wing extremists, in the same way that Trump did. As both Trump and Bannon have people of Jewish origin and black people in their circle of friends or family. What incensed Bannon as described here by Scott Shane of the NYT, was that after the financial crisis of 2008, hardly any bank executives who had committed wrongdoing went to jail, his father's line operator retirement savings were devastated by the financial crisis, and working class families struggled harder than ever, that his daughter at West Point was with mostly children of working class families who were the ones fighting America's wars. Many ironies abound in the story. Bannon got his business start in the same financial institutions that were involved in the financial crisis of 2008, Bannon & Co was acquired by Societe Generale. He is from an Irish Catholic working class family in Richmond and attended Benedictine High School, with a mother Doris that worked on the campaign to elect Douglas Wilder, a Democrat, as the first African American governor of Virgina.  The other ironies are in that Bannon sees Trump as "an imperfect vessel" but still good enough, and Trump sees himself as "making all the decisions" when asked about Bannon, as a range of interests struggle to form a coherent movement on the right in American politics- an unlikely combination of a telephone operator's son and real estate magnate's son who built his own real estate business in luxury real estate towers far removed from ordinary men and women they represent. ...

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The full text of the letter is given here. In this letter the U.S. sets out some important facts about events that happened during the coronavirus crisis during the crucial 4 month period from December 2019 to March 2020. Every week lost in this time due to reasons of a lack of transparency, openness meant hundreds of thousands of people more infected and tens of thousands of deaths worldwide. There are questions of transparency, of openness and this raises questions about the manner in which the World Health Assembly operates with hundreds of small countries in Africa and Asia having votes equal to that of the U.S., India, Brazil, Mexico with votes taken of over 200 countries. The entire election process can now be seen as questionable, when over a billion people in one country alone such as India or hundreds of millions in Brazil and Mexico would have to bear the consequences of poor decisions made by small countries that can be swayed in one direction or another based on political bias and other considerations that have nothing to do with global health.  At the conclusion of the letter by the U.S. to the current WHO shaped by a controversial election in 2017 the following is stated about the standards set by Gro Harlem Brundtland and which helped the world prevent the SARS crisis which originated in China in 2003 from spreading to the large countries of the world India, Brazil, Mexico, and other such countries in Asia and Africa, Latin America, and the U.S. European Union. "In 2003, in response to the outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in China, Director-General Harlem Brundtland boldly declared the World Health Organization’s first emergency travel advisory in 55 years, recommending against travel to and from the disease epicenter in southern China. She also did not hesitate to criticize China for endangering global health by attempting to cover up the outbreak through its usual playbook of arresting whistleblowers and censoring media. Many lives could have been saved had you followed Dr. Brundtland’s example." Even this does not come to grips with the flawed way in which the election of WHO head is done. It can no longer be relied on when there is the danger that lack of transparency can emerge in the WHO leadership itself because of a flawed process. It risks endangering the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions in countries such as India, Brazil, Mexico, as well as in the relatively small countries of Africa and Latin America where even basic water supplies are at risk but which could tilt elections at the World Health Assembly. Consider that a cyclone just hit the Indian state of West Bengal and Bangladesh on May 20 just as the coronavirus pandemic is spreading. That this region of 1.5 billion people had just 2 votes out of over 200 cast at the World Health Assembly in 2017 shocking. And even these votes cast based on old geopolitical considerations not how good the candidate is, and how good the country he is coming from is in terms of its record  on public health. The irony here is that private foundations in the advanced countries in the U.S. and Europe some of whom are major donors to WHO did not think that more experienced candidates in their own countries with a better record of public health such as in France or Germany are better qualified, in a flawed NGO support mentality left from the Clinton years. Basically the people in these large countries such as India, Brazil, Mexico were disenfranchised, when the austerity policies were consuming the European Union, and the U.S. had just elected a new administration itself groping for ways to reverse years of neglect of public services and infrastructure priorities. They would trust good leaders no matter where they come from, who have a record of transparency, leadership, and all the values we cherish together no matter where we come from. ...

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The long and bruising process of exiting the European Union for Britain is being seen across EUrope as a lesson. Marie Le Pen in France and Salvini in Italy have dropped ideas of France or Italy leaving the EU. Nationalist politicians are now shifting to a new agenda of reforming the European Union from within. Voters are being reassured by politicians that it is best to remain inside the European Union. Chancellor Merkel has carefully guided the European Union through this crisis, first through the eurozone financial crisis, then through a period of migration to Europe from war torn Middle Easter and African countries, and more recently with president Macron of France facing the effort to get Britain to leave the EU. After Boris Johnson's win in British elections with 44% of the vote Britain now faces the difficult choice especially for hard line Brexiters such as Mr. Jacob-Lees Moog and Johnson, to either accept European rules, regulations and standards over which it has little control or lose market access to the EU. There is also the issue of Scotland which favors being inside the EU and a Scottish independence referendum. ...

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DW.com's Science section provides this report that shows detailed graphs, and information on the dangerous use of pesticides that lead to poisoning  for 385 million people in agriculture every year. Farm workers in countries like India are particularly affected. The Heinrich Boll Foundation of The Friends of the Earth, Le Monde, and Pesticide Action Network Germany, supported this 50 page report presented in Berlin recently. The business of pesticides is worth $35 billion for large companies, yet brings with it many dangers for food contamination, water pollution, environmental damage.  Prime minister Modi in India has shown foresight and vision in tackling the problems from plastics pollution in cities and from pesticides pollution in agricultural areas. He has warned farmers about its dangers and the need to use some of the traditional methods for agriculture that avoid extensive chemical fertilizer and pesticide use. The alarming use of pesticides leads to the highest pesticide contamination of water, soil and air in the world happening in Latin America. In Nepal and India alternatives to pesticides are found in a mixture of herbs and cow urine put on the plants. Pesticide prevention in organic agriculture is also done by banning synthetic pesticides, and crops rotated in a way to prevent monocultures while encouraging insects and birds to thrive. French farmers promote organic farming with many methods they have pioneered that also promote biodiversity, which can be copied in India and rest of Asia, Latin America, Africa. ...

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India's Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar said at an Atlantic Council event in Washington D.C. that estimates have been made of what the British took out of India over two centuries and this has come to $45 trillion in today's value. India suffered humiliation for two centuries from 1756 to 1947 with British rule. The country was "bled" and this was first documented by a member of parliament Dadabhai Naoroji in 1901 in London in his book explaining the causes of India's deep poverty in his book with the title- Poverty and Un-British Rule in India. For the first time detailed financial figures were put together on what Britain took out of India and India's Mohandas Gandhi says this was how he learned about how much India suffered economically under British rule with the neglect of agriculture, the peasants and landless laborers making up the vast population of India. Taxation was burdensome on a poor population during most of the period. Railways and mass communication only helped keep the vast region together under British rule and most of the budget went into security and policing for the Empire. Investment in industry or agriculture was neglected for most of the nineteenth century and half of the twentieth. Strangely the first Indian edition of Naoroji's book was only in 1962 with most Indians unaware of what had happened and where this was first documented. Even Cambridge educated Nehru looked at the railways and mass communication as British contributions to india when in actual fact this was of a strategic security aspect for the British in a vast region, and little was done to improve the standard of living of the people in the villages who worked in subsistence agriculture. Gandhi's task was to increase awareness at the grassroots level of the condition of the country. Something he never hesitated to do even writing to the Viceroy who was in charge directly showing how the budget in the 1920's was entirely lacking in any funds for India's development. This letter can be seen today in the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, the museum for Gandhi in his home state of Gujarat. One of the lesser known facts about the independence struggle is that Gandhi wrote a little book in 1910 with title "Hind Swaraj" on a steamship making its way back to South Africa from Britain where Gandhi led a deputation for rights of Indian coolie laborers in South Africa. I picked up this book at the original home of Gandhi and his parents in Porbandar, India, recently. In this book "Hind Swaraj" written in 1910 we find astonishingly all the details of the planned struggle for independence that were to happen over the next 20 years. In 1930 with a new edition Gandhi wrote that he had followed this unchanged for 20 years and would change nothing except one line in the book. The book in 1910 was promptly banned by the government of Bombay, yet Indian editions appeared soon afterward. It is written in question and answer format with Gandhi himself posing the questions which he answers, some challenging his view of India, Britain, Indians and the British. He did not blame the British, and called for Indians to take responsibility for letting the British rule in India happen and what was the best way out.  ...

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The difficulties of unwinding war stimulus that has increased jobs and wages in poorer regions of Russia, and the problems with unwinding a war economy, are discussed here by experts from Russia, the US and Germany. Other aspects include what to do with hundreds of thousands of new recruited soldiers who would be unemployed during a period when the economy's growth has slowed and wage growth is slowing. In 2024 new recruits were given 1 years bonus and were being attracted in large numbers. JD Vance mentioned this to the new Pope in discussions, and this report says even Putin does not know how best to unwind this war economy. Vance told Pope Leo XIV -“I’m not sure that Vladimir Putin himself has a strategy for how to unwind the war.” This is the view also from an expert at the Free University of Berlin, as rapidly demobilizing a large army poses its own problems. Russia could export the arms from new arms factories and keep people employed. This option is difficult as many African countries buy on credit and Asian other buyers may seek the latest technologies, others face financial difficulties or like India are diversifying and shifting to local manufacturing. ...

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The World Trade Organization is about to choose a new director-general to succeed Mr. Azevedo, a career diplomat from Brazil. The two candidates are a former finance minister from Nigeria,  Ms. Okonjo-Iweala supported by the European Union and the trade minister of South Korea, Ms. Yoo Myung-hee, supported by the U.S. Japan supports the Nigerian candidate because of its trade disputes with South Korea. The role of head of WTO is important today because of trade issues between countries particularly the trade issues between China and the U.S., U.S. and other countries. And the sense that the WTO arrangement is not working for many countries in recent years without a level playing field in many industries from improper subsidies. Before the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization not much attention was given by the U.S. to how it had changed after new elections. As a result non profit foundations like the Gates Foundation from the U.S. played a leading part in representation of American interests and China played a leading role leading to the crisis facing WHO today. During the coronavirus pandemic the WHO lacking adequate influence of U.S. or European Union countries was not able to act in a way that met the needs and concerns of these countries with advanced health systems. In the past pandemics were better addressed worldwide when the U.S. and EU played a major role from the beginning because of long experience and technological resources,  a role that was missing in the current pandemic. Ebola and other virus were tackled in Africa only when the U.S. or European countries played a leading and critical role. This role was sorely missed in the current crisis. This is why changes at the World Trade Organization matter. World trade is important for the world economy and can best operate when the concerns of U.S. and European Union about a level playing field and fair competition are met. This level playing field and fair competition also meet the interests of developing countries such as India which are industrializing rapidly and need to protect their own markets from unfair dumping, as well as Indonesia and other parts of Asia, Latin America and Africa that are part of the supply chain for the world economy. ...

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Even with the best US effort heroin production increased to 9000 tons in Afghanistan says this report in The Economic Times. Indian coast guard and Gujarat anti-terrorist squad size large amounts of heroin at Mundra port and along the Porbandar coast.  Afghanistan has a 2000 kilometer border with Iran and another 2000 kilometer border with Pakistan. There is now increased risk of this activity along India and Sri Lanka's coastlines and borders, says the Economic Times. Much of the colonial period was marked by British traders use of opium from Bengal and other parts of India in illegal activities in China through Chinese ports for sale of opium -leading to the Opium wars in 1850 with China's feudal monarchy and eventually to China turning to the CCP. This was conducted under the British East India Company and condoned under the British Empire- making it one of the worst activities of colonial powers in history. Some of the same activities are being conducted and condoned by countries in the region. A multinational allied task force Combined Force 150 keeps track of the oceans in the North Arabian Sea and in the Horn of Africa. More naval forces are needed from India, the US, UK, Australia, Japan and other countries to keep the oceans safe and clear, and protect people in the region. ...

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The meeting planned between Xi and Biden is important for stable US China relations after the Trump administration angry rhetoric, the Covid pandemic, and when imbalances in the poorly managed trade relationship with the entire supply chain shifted to China with millions of its American jobs has shaken working class communities in the US. China's and Xi's views on Hong Kong and Taiwan have also affected the relations. After the Ukraine war this will be the first meeting between the two leaders, and follows a visit by German chancellor Scholz to Beijing. Under Bush America appeared to be distracted by middle east wars, under Obama and Trump America appeared weak or angry but not resolute. Under Biden America appears resolute and sure of itself. This makes a difference for US China relations. Following the Ukraine war both the US and Germany, and China, appear to have grasped the dangers of nuclear threats such as were made in recent weeks. India has also shown its serious concerns about wars for territorial gains, and the world community of nations has expressed this through the words and actions of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres speaking for Europe, and the rest of the world.  Under Biden America seeks decent Competition with China and not conflict, and this is in the interest of both countries and of all the countries in the world. Neither China or America represent the largest share of the world's peoples, and in a world of advanced technologies other regions such as India, Europe, South East Asia and Japan, have just as great a determination and influence to seek a mutually beneficial peaceful coexistence in the interests of all the peoples of the world including the continents of Africa and Latin America. ...

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Addressing the UN General Assembly in a virtual setting Mr. Trump tells delegates that China should be held accountable for certain actions in letting the coronavirus pandemic spread. He included the denial by China of human to human transmission very early before Feb-March, and its allowing Chinese flights to go overseas when it had completely banned flights domestically. He said flights were allowed to leave China after the virus spread from Wuhan even after Mr. Trump banned flights from China to the U.S. This spread the virus from China to Europe and to America.  Mr. Trump says the WHO is controlled by China. And this happened after foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and other foundations partly replaced the strong role played by the U.S. government at the world health agency during the post war period maintaining strong U.S. and European oversight in the earlier period. The lack of cooperation by China to let American experts into Wuhan immediately in January played a role in delaying the U.S. getting a first hand look at the coronavirus at the epicentre. Instead a 2-3 week delay left the U.S. Europe and India unprepared for the speed and havoc caused.  The only way to tackle the coronavirus was with speed and that speedy response was doubly needed because Europe and the U.S. had no recent experience with epidemics. Even India and rest of Asia, Latin America, Africa have no experience with this type of transmission and spread making time absolutely critical.  This speed was affected because China and the WHO acted as stumbling blocks in this view of what happened. The result was that in past pandemics were fought together, this pandemic was fought on a country by country basis, a bad precedent. ...

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This self portrait by Vladimir Putin about his growing up years in Leningrad and the life of his father and mother during the siege of Leningrad by Germans may offer a better sense of the mind and thinking of the Russian president than the Dresden years when he was a junior Russian official in Communist East Germany (the GDR). It is an interview of the Russian president in 2000 by Nataliya Gevorkyan, Natalya Timakova, and Andrei Kolesnikov over twenty years back. Putin's father suffered severe injuries during the war in the fighting around Leningrad, twice being given up for dead and being dragged wounded across the frozen Neva river to a hospital by a neighbor. His mother was half dead from starvation and his father passed on his food given to him at the hospital. Having gone through the memories of this period affected Vladimir Putin's view of the world and no amount of US or German assurance about NATO's intentions may have erased these memories from childhood. The long period in power and the Covid isolation may have led to  perceptions that were less likely to change so that Putin did his own research and wrote a long paper on Ukraine in 2021 that reflected Russia and Ukraine's long history but did not reflect the changing national aspirations of Ukraine's people in 2022. This may have led to the miscalculation and the errors by both Putin and the leaders Merkel-Bush-Obama that the detailed WSJ report of 20 years of events show to have happened. The WSJ report of April 1, 2022, was titled "Vladimir Putin's 20 Year March to War in Ukraine and How the West Mishandled It." The Social Democrats in Germany under Schroeder and Steinmeier mishandled it by deepening economic integration with Russia as a way to make up for what had happened in the German invasion of Russia, and the Christian Democrats under Merkel with business interests never really grasped the different thinking of the Russian president relying solely on deep economic integration of the EU and Germany with Russia as well as China as an answer. Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama from a distance even less so.  This has led to the miscalculation by Russia under Putin leading to invasion of Ukraine, and the US and Germany being unprepared about taking action to prevent it.  Beyond the key participants and the war damage, there is the enormous damage that is taking place in the mental health around the world after Covid with constant barrage of images of war and refugees streaming into Poland. There is the problem of food imports, of food scarcity in the Middle East, and inflation in food prices for Africa and the Middle East. As Brendan Simms, a Cambridge historian has shown in his book "Europe The Struggle of Supremacy 1453 to the Present," which is now being read by German chancellor Scholz, this has happened before with the UK, Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Russia engaging in these conflicts that led to prolonged wars and eventually to only small shifts in power. Yet with huge effects for ordinary people caught in the wars such as today's refugees and people struggling to feed their families in Africa and Asia after the effects of Covid on income. Food prices have gone up by 50% to almost double in these countries.   ...

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Reporters in this report from the Brussels Bureau chief and the White House reporter, also include bureau reporters from Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. They all say that Kamala Harris has a firm grip on international affairs. Harris goes beyond this in 2024- a unique and special understanding of the role of women in the renewal of Western and Asian societies. Society does best when women have a large role and make significant contributions is lost on Europeans and Americans yet a core belief in Asia and in India, where it is is seen as part of the reason for collapse of Asian civilizations to Europeans in the 18th and 19th century. From Europe Chancellor Scholz of Germany says of Harris whom he knows from her attending 3 consecutive Munich Security Conferences as Biden's representative. “She is a competent and experienced politician who knows exactly what she is doing and has a very clear idea of her country’s role, of developments in the world, and of the challenges we face." France's Macron has spent hours with Harris on her 5 day visit to France to soothe French feelings as reassure them following the US deal with Australia for nuclear submarines that excluded the French. During this trip she spent time at the Pasteur Institute where her mother Shyamala Gopalan once worked. From Mexico and South Korea one has another side of Harris where she has used official trips to hold discussions with women's groups to take notes and ask questions to understand women's issues around the world. This makes her exceptional as a choice for women in 2024, not just for reproductive rights but for a person who will listen with profound interest to what they say and relate to them. There is a saying in India that prime minister Modi also cites which says society does well only when it gives women the best place to make their own unique contribution. Lost on Europeans and Americans is this idea that Asians and particularly in India, see the failure to do this as part of the collapse of Asian civilizations to European advance in the 18th and 19th century. From Seoul, South Korea-"I was most impressed when she said that a society that helps its women fulfill their dreams and pursue their professional careers without discrimination is an advanced society,” said Baik Hyun Wook, head of the Korean Medical Women’s Association. ...

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In the most recent Global Financial Stability Report out in Sept. 2011, the increase in the ratio of a country's outstanding credit to GDP is highlighted as a key warning light indicator for country economies. An increase in this ratio of over 5% signals a warning light according to the IMF. It tells us that borrowing is expanding at significantly faster rate than the growth of the economy. Using this indicator would have set a warning light up for the U.S. before the 2008 mortgage crisis, and a warning light well before the financial crises in Greece, Portugal and Ireland. The outstanding credit to GDP ratio went up for China by 24 percentage points in 2009, with 4% percentage point increase in 2010. The ratio was up 30 percentage points in Hong Kong for 2010. The warning light is also up for Turkey and Vietnam. Capital inflows into countries that can be suddenly reversed, and overvalued currencies are a danger for emerging market countries and act as supplemental indicator warning lights. Brazil and South Africa have overvalued currencies. Turkey has high capital inflows. Only a small portion of this is foreign direct investment, the rest helps support a high amount of lending and credit provided by the banks. That a significant portion of this is in short term borrowing poses additional risks, as evident in the 1997 Asian financal crisis for S. Korea, Thailand and Malaysia....

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Profits at international oil companies are lower for a number of reasons. At Exxon the refining margins dropped 27% in 2007 compared to 2006. Cost for drilling, oil rigs and oil personnel are up sharply, and the production sharing agreements for Exxon in West Africa mean that the higher the oil price the less oil Exxon gets. The govenments of oil producing countries are taking a larger share of dollar coming from oil in their countries, and Exxon recently pulled out of Venezuela- the production at Exxon actually declined by 2% and at BP and Royal Dutch Shell by 4%. This decline will continue as the reserve replacement ratios of these oil companies are in a big decline as oil prices go higher. Most of the countries producing oil are renegotaiting their contracts at the first opportunity. Nigeria is about to do this, and even Alberta and the US government are doing this.

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NIgeria needs $60 billion betwen 2008 to 2012 to fund oil development costs, its share of the funding of joint projects with international oil companies. But the Nigerian state oil company needs to borrow half that amount. And credit markes are tight and will remain so for a long time so where will it find the money to fund shortfalls. Nigerian foreign minister said last week that production was just 1.5 million barrels a day. Observers pegged production at 2 million barrels a day. Violence in the Niger Delta is raising production costs ant CEO of Amni Nigerian oil company says costs are 250 percent higher than offshore counting security costs and kidnapping insurance for employees. Other problems with west african production are the high costs of developing the offshore fields and their rapid depletion rates as international oil companies seek to recoup their costs quickly. So even as new drilling takes place in offshore fields in Angola and Guinea the outlook is not so good. Consultancy John Mckenzie sees production declining by 2013. And PFC Energy estimates sees production peak at 7.1 million barrels a day in 2014 from current 5.8 million barrels. In the past African production has made up for declines in places like Russia and Mexico, now this is less likely. ...

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Because India is still largely rural with about 65% of the population in the countryside rural poverty is a matter of huge importance. In a country of a billion people this is easily about 600-650 million people the vast majority of the world's poor. Though low inflation in agricultural produce and in agricultural wages have increased concern for rural poverty in India there are changes in multiple dimensions that have raised the quality of living in a big way. There is a major thrust in government programs directed at multiple levels for clean India, housing healthcare, cooking gas, electricity, banking, in the rural villages. About 4 million homes are built annually with government assistance and investment in rural programs has more than doubled in the last 7 years.  The National Food Security programs NFGSA guarantees purchases of rice and wheat at very low prices -set at 2 rupees per kilogram of wheat and  3 rupees per kilogram of rice or about $0.03 per kilogram.  This reduces the pressure on migration to cities making cities less inhabitable and finding it hard to cope as in countries like Indonesia, Philippines and in Africa. It gives more time for urbanization to take place in a better way as more resources and infrastructure is created for urbanization. Some states in India are about 50% urbanized with Tamilnadu (Madras or Chennai),  and Kerala (Cochin, Thiruvanathapuram) in the south and Maharashtra (Bombay or Mumbai) and Gujarat (Ahmedbad) in the north west, are at about 50% urbanization rate. The low inflation rate for agricultural wages affecting farm incomes combined with contributions by rural people to complement government contributions for housing, healthcare,  reduces the mount of money available for consumer spending in rural areas, affecting the economy. A problem in the short run, but with synergistic changes across multiple dimensions pushing the country forward across urban and rural areas. With the huge urban infrastructure spending increases creating more space for economic growth across the country. There is a general sense that for development a multi dimensional approach is needed, and a rising tide lift all boats as India urbanizes like China has done in the last 20 years. ...

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The appreciation of the U.S. dollar and depreciating currencies in Africa in 2015 makes it costlier to import manufactured goods to African countries. Quality Supermarkets in Kampala, Uganda, struggles to fill its shelves with imported packaged foods and manufactured goods. The lack of financing for $30 million in crude supplies leads to the closure of a refinery in Lusaka, Zambia, and long lines at gas stations. The Zambian currency kwacha has depreciated by 17% against the U.S. dollar in 2015. Uganda's currency the shilling, Angola's currency the kwanza, and Nigeria's currency the Naira, all depreciated in 2015. This means larger trade deficits to finance consumer imports or upgrade infrastructure. In Uganda this means delays in upgrades to power lines and transformers. In oil producing countries such as Angola and Nigeria, and oil producers at the early stage such as Uganda and Ghana, there is a double whammy with lower oil prices leading to lower revenues to finance costlier imports. This is likely to slow growth in Africa from about 5% in recent years to 3.7%, according to Capital Economics forecast. Countries in Africa that import oil will see lower import bill for oil, but that benefit eroded by a depreciating currency. South Africa sees benefit of lower oil prices offset by lower revenues from commodity exports of iron ore, and the higher cost of imports with a depreciating currency. ...

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His full statement, which he posted on X, is below: "My Fellow Americans, over the past three-and-a-half years, we have made great progress as a nation. "Today, America has the strongest economy in the world. We've made historic investments in rebuilding our nation, in lowering prescription drug costs for seniors, and in expanding affordable health care to a record number of Americans. "We've provided critically needed care to a million veterans exposed to toxic substances. Passed the first gun safety law in 30 years. Appointed the first African American woman to the Supreme Court. And passed the most significant climate legislation in the history of the world. America has never been better positioned to lead than we are today. "I know none of this could have been done without you, the American people. Together, we overcame a once in a century pandemic and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We've protected and preserved our democracy. And we've revitalised and strengthened our alliances around the world. "It has been the greatest honour of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek re-election, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term. "I will speak to the nation later this week in more detail about my decision. ...

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Policy on China in the second year of the DJT Administration- shift from adversary positions to cooperation. A shift in policy after the meetings with Chinese leaders Xi and Wang Yi at Busan, South Korea in 2025. WSJ Analysis looks at what happened in the first term of DJT, the Biden Administration that followed and in 2025 in US-China relations and how the posture changed, how Xi and his team built rapport with DJT and his team over the tumultuous period in 2025. US turned to Xi in getting Iran to the table for negotiations in Islamabad meetings after the month long effort to take out Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile program infrastructure. This was arranged in the early hours of Tuesday April 7th 2026. Throughout the US air campaign in Iran China pursued the policy it had set at Busan of not letting it affect US- China relations and the DJT visit to Beijing believing it sets the basis for the future course of US- China that affects the whole world beyond regions such as the Middle East where little headway has been made in bringing about peace. China US, EU, India, Brazil, Latin America, Africa, Indonesia, make up most of the world's population and China remains focused on ensuring the US and China can through their cooperation maintain peace in the world overall. This is reflected in this statement of China's Foreign Ministry on Busan meeting as the beginning of something new and big for the world- "Over the past seven decades and more, we have been working from generation to generation on the same blueprint to make it a reality. We have no intention to challenge or supplant anyone. Our focus has always been on managing China’s own affairs well, improving ourselves, and sharing development opportunities with all countries across the world. And that is an important secret to our success. China will further deepen reform across the board, expand opening up, and promote higher-quality economic growth while achieving an appropriate increase in economic output, and advance well-rounded human development and common prosperity for all. This will also expand the space for cooperation between China and the United States." This relates to China's worst fear, worst nightmare - that before it can become a fully developed economy for 1.4 billion people it would find itself in the situation that faces Japan of an aging society and weak growth something Japan faces as a fully developed economy much smaller of 120 million people. Japan per capita GDP is at $36,000 2.5 times China's at $14,000 and about a fifth of Germany's at $64,000, about a seventh of the USA at $92,000. So that if China does not continue along the path of development it has followed since 1990 working with the US and EU it faces the prospect of losing forever the prospect of joining Japan and fall into lower than middle income status when large parts of the interior of China a third of its economy that is rural are still living in poor economy status with per capita GDP of $3500, which is 8% of the GDP per capita of the poorest state heavily rural state of Mississippi in the US. Even Shanghai and Beijing with about $32,000 per capita GDP are only about 58% of the per capita GDP of Louisiana in the bottom one third of US states. Xi Wang Yi, Lifeng are doing what China must do to compete with advanced US and European economies and Japan- continue to work with the US on the development model that has worked the best for China since 1990. It is not about supplanting anyone China is serious when it says here- "Over the past seven decades and more, we have been working from generation to generation on the same blueprint to make it a reality. We have no intention to challenge or supplant anyone. Our focus has always been on managing China’s own affairs well, improving ourselves, and sharing development opportunities with all countries across the world." ...