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This exceptional account by WSJ's Shira Ovide on Microsoft Windows 10 looks at ways CEO Satya Nadella is changing Microsoft's culture and old way of doing business. Microsoft is changing its culture and strategy of charging for all its products. It will let businesses and individual buyers upgrade for free to the new Windows 10 product. This means $500 million less in sales revenues in 2015, but opens up new oppoortunities in sale of add-on apps and services on more devices, such as health sensors and smartphones. The failure to penetrate the smartphone business- with a meager 3% penetration for Windows in smartphones - is a problem facing Microsoft as it competes with Apple, Google and other companies. Terry Myerson describing the thinking behind this change at Microsoft puts it in a cultural perspective, saying that it should result in a more engaged user base. There is a sense that the space Microsoft is in stretches way beyond PC's to all the new computing devices now in place, including smartphones and other devices, with Windows taking up only 15% of these devices. Founder Bill Gates calls this "exciting" and is excited to see the reaction in the market....

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Isaacson's new book on Musk says Musk's story is a cautionary tale. The compulsion to be drama magnet or mean are not prized traits, say others.  More sinister (the hell) is celebrating a culture that does not respect the need for worklife balance, of respect for nutrition and exercize for good health. Musk's methods which he calls "algorithm", a word known more for obscurity than meaning, are nothing new. For years as the US, Japan and China, now India have innovated there is a focus on simplifying things, and to do this questioning the existing way of doing things by breaking down the existing method into pieces and reorganizing the pieces of the puzzle leaving out unneeded pieces. What is the key to his success as it was for Jobs at Apple is creating a culture in which people would invest in and take risks for innovation at the high end of the price spectrum. Jobs used design and new stuff like the iPod and iPad, iPhone to do this. Musk does this through playing the role of a social media icon but a dangerous one that does not respect worklife balance and good health habits of nutrition, exercize and mindfulness. In processes this can give you a process that takes less time and money- how India's moon mission and rover Chandrayan 3 was done for $78 million showing these work practices of Musk are nothing new, and universally adopted by successful companies and nations. Newer ask your employees to do what you would not do, is also adopted by the best managers. By turning it into a mantra it obscures the fact that America today is a country of massive inequalities where two thirds of 4th graders cannot pass ACT reading test and half of retirees have zero savings, working people and families face a cost of living and health crisis and are badly neglected. How does it help to role model as an icon and popularize a culture that tolerates and accepts such conditions that would leave men deeply troubled, including America's leaders Washington, Lincoln and FDR if they were alive today. ...

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David Uberti looks back at a time when this part of Massachusetts between Rhode Island and Cape Cod witnessed a coal power boom with the Brayton Point Plant. How this helped build the local economy with coal. It used ten thousand tons of coal and one billion gallons of water from the Taunton river every day. It shows the kind of economic transformation that is happening in China and India with coal even as the switch to renewables is happening. In Massachsetts this was followed by the switch to wind power farms in Somerset started under Biden in 2022. This has stalled under DJT and facilities remain idle all along the New York and Massachusetts coast. What it says is that to switch to renewable one has to have some coal for economic transition to communities hit by deindustrialization. That bringing back America's industrial base, ending culture wars, and getting a bipartisan understanding of the transition from workers, communities all over the country are all part of the effort to put renewable energy on a sound basis. ...

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The story of a company and its founder in Seattle who realized that $40,000 a year is not much to make a decent living in Seattle- that people had to work 2 jobs. In the process hurting the productivity at the company, with employees putting in less of the kind of energy and motivated work that helps companies grow. The founder decides to cut back on his own expenses and extravagant lifestyle to make sure his employees are paid a decent wage. He did the math and decided on $70,000 Five years later sales of the company have doubled. It is a payments company and the payments processed at Gravity doubled from $3.8 billion a year to $10.2 billion. The number employees have doubled. For employee productivity it mattered that they were not doing 2 jobs and worrying about credit card debt. Now 70% of employees have paid off debt. The amount of money they put into pension funds has doubled. And instead of 1% about 10% own their own homes. This suggests the old culture was bad for the economy as well as employees. More housing demand, more homes built, more cars sold, more money for pension funds to manage, all translate into a better performing economy and economic growth. Simply stated the old culture has put an artificial ceiling on economic growth and worse set a low bar fro productivity in companies. Healthier employees who could spend the time doing second jobs doing exercize instead and staying fit would also bring down the money spent on healthcare.  Ultimately it us about good common sense, and honest thinking about what works and does not work. The old culture simply fails good common sense. ...

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India's GST tax collections - which finance infrastructure -reach the 1.40 lakh crore mark  (about $20 billion) for 3 months in a row in 2022. Increase in tax compliance culture, audit analytics, and actions against tax evaders, helped increase GST revenue collections. Revenues from import of goods and revenues from domestic transactions were 44% higher than the same month in the prior year. The increased economic activity and creating tax compliance culture are good indicators for economic growth in addition to the GDP numbers showing about 8% growth in 2021, the highest in the world surpassing China by a wide margin.  The growth slowed to about 4% increase in GDP in the 1st quarter yet the events of the first quarter such as the war in Ukraine increasing food and oil prices, depressing economic activity, have some other indicators unique to India that are entirely positive and hold promise for a surge in economic growth in this decade to 2030. With the pandemic years 2020-2021 pointing to shift in supply chains of US and Germany away from China towards India and other Asian nations, the Russian invasion of Ukraine with support of China will only make this shift move faster. At a time when Indian logistics and infrastructure improvements under the PM's Gati Shakti Master Plan will create the right conditions for massive foreign investment in the Indian economy. ...

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Maps of the region of Kashmir in the Himalayas shown here show how close Pakistan cities of Lahore and Islamabad are to Jammu and Kashmir and how close the Punjab is to Kashmir. It gives recent history of Kashmir since colonial rule of British ended in 1948, and no mention of the history of Kashmir from 100 BC to the 15th century when for 1500 years Vedic and Buddhist cultures, Shiva culture prevailed in the region. For only 200 years between 1500 and 1700 were Muslim invasions prevalent in the region after 1750 the British gradually took control of the region when Kashmir was a British protectorate under British law and non-religious rule.  Much of the present situation is a result of the abrupt end to British rule after World War II by 1948-1950 with Communist China, a new state of Punjab and Sind called Pakistan, and most of South Asia as India emerging from the conflicts and contesting control. India now leads an effort since 2016 for modernization of the region, to provide the education and healthcare levels of modern states of Europe and America to Himalayan region that is missing because of a lack of the technological resources, and resources India is now able to use to build infrastructure and invest.  ...

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Daniel Howes of the Detroit News thinks there are cultural clashes inherent in a threeway Fiat-Opel-Chrysler combination. His view is that Fiat may be biting into more than it can handle, considering the failure of the GM-Fiat alliance, and the Daimler- Chrysler combination. And the Germans at Opel are not happy with the way they see GM has treated them, so how would it help for Fiat to come into the picture? The Germans love the Italians, says one German Howe talked to, but don't respect them. And the Italians he says, respect the Germans but don't love them. Howe refers to the Renault-Nissan combination as successful, but one that took years to build to deliver commonly engineered cars. But the car industry has been poorly run, without vision and with complacent management, unwilling to try new things and recreate and renew. In other industries efforts are made to build transnational combinations with differing degrees of success. Take the work of the French, Germans and the Spanish in Airbus, in overcoming different cultural factors and pulling together to learn from each other, when given good leaders, on the Airbus 380 project. See the link to this. On Fiat's Marchionne's behalf it could be said that this is a new Fiat, run by a younger generation of Italians, who have a lot of youthful energies and freedom to innovate and improvise. Marchionne himself is more Canadian and European, places where he has spent most of his life, than Italian. And he has take a decidedly different view of things from what the old view holds as being Italian, in building the new Fiat he has done things very differently. In fact there may be less of a country view here, than a management culture view. All nationalities aspire to a good management culture of innovation, and freedom to improvise and respect for one's ideas and thinking, good places to work in. People of all nationalities, Italian, German and American, for the first time, especially the younger people, may see that the one thing they value most and share is the desire to start fresh and take initiative, improvise and work together to do the impossible. The common enemy of Germans, Italians, Americans,French, and other nationalities, may be simply the artheroschelorisis of complacent management, that freezes initiative, does not delegate more responsibility to the young and give the freedom to try new things, bureacratizes the corporation into rigid hierarchies that lack speed, and take no risks to achieve the impossible. See the link to Marchionne and Fiat's transformation. Which is why old prejudices like the one Howe states from one German he talks to, that the Italians "will steal the milk out of the coffee," may be just that - prejudice from another period, that is best left behind to build something new that has no nationality to it. ...

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Writing about the Michael Cohen testimony to the U.S. COngress NYT columnist David Brooks says there is moral distancing every time House Republicans support Trump. He says there are the worst elements of our culture, of using people and being used.

Brooks cites John Steinbeck's classic book East of Eden."Humans are caught in their lives and in their thoughts, in their hungers and in their ambitions- in a net of good and evil.  A man after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life will ask only the hard clean questions, was it good or was it evil? Have I done well or have I done ill?" And here he finds president Trump and Cohen coming out short of where they should be.

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Experts say experience can be a serious handicap if one does not have ahealthy skepticism about ones assumptions and habits that tend to reinforce what one is thinking and not question old ways and old habits. This leads to costly mistakes at the level of project management and costlier mistakes at senior management levels. Experience proved to be a serious handicap at General Motors because management did not question its old assumptions about what sales would look like in future years and old habits went so deep that no effrts were made to change with changing demands for fuel efificency that made their impact even earlier in Europe. This is true of what happened at the central bank with Greenspan and at Treasury with Rubin, and Summers, and at the highly leveraged investment banks like Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Morgan Stanley. In both cases their was an additional handicap of the culture, with Detroit having its own culture and ways, and New York banking havings its own culture and ways. ...

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As David Calhoun steps down from Boeing following the stepping down of the previous CEO Muilenberg, both for quality issues at Boeing this report in Yahoo Finance by Allan Sloan shows the effects of the accounting training and lack of awareness and conviction to put Quality uppermost. Calhoun joined GE at the time when Jack Welch was running the company. The book by David Gelles looked at Welch's period at GE with concern because of the use of accounting methods and finance businesses to make results look better- "How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland, and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America." Over the decades in which one sees American manufacturing neglected one also sees the rise of executives in finance who ran companies in America that showed little interest in the hard work of manufacturing and surrendered leadership to first Japan and then China. Boeing CEO Calhoun is shown as another of the CEO's from GE who trained  under Welch who joined Boeing and other companies.The adjoining video in WSJ points this out after the Alaska Airlines incident and other incidents of flawed plane design and manufacturing- the basic problem being a lack of Quality and Worker and Quality practices Friendly Culture at Boeing. WSJ says three layers of quality checks are essentially worthless without a emphasis on worker training, on quality culture, cost cutting to get planes out the door, and lack of investment in Quality Control and Inspection. ...

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A survey of 10,000 knowledge workers by Future Forum cited in WSJ shows 78% of workers care about and want location flexibility. And 95% of workers want flexible hours. This survey also found that 72% of workers in knowledge industries who are not happy with their level of flexibility are likely to seek out new opportunities in the next year. 

This happens as employers are finding it hard to get workers. The new hybrid arrangements during the pandemic have created a new workplace culture with hybrid arrangements, flexible work, going into the office only some of the time. More than two thirds of employees say they the hybrid setup was their preferred way of working.

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The transformation of Fiat Auto. Marchionne relying on "my kids", getting good people throughout the Fiat global operations and outside of a younger generation, who were open to doing things in a new way. He had the courage to unassumingly go about the business of remaking Fiat, by removing middle and upper managers who produced a kind of paralysis or sclerosis in Fiat, making change impossible after years of a failed culture embedding itself. And in their place he brought in an energetic courageous bunch of younger managers and designers. It would be fair to say that he tore up the old plans, tore up the old organization charts, tore up the car plans and designs in the pipeline, tore up the failed models and put in place new ones- the Bravo for the Stilo, and tore up the old management, put in new people and tasks and wedded them in an informal way, with their own culture developing along the way. The were teams and their tasks, all wedded together in an informal arrangement, in close proximity, with informal communication. Marchionne saw his role as helping people reach decisions, setting stretch goals, and encouraging levels below him to take responsibility and make courageous decisions. He saw the Cinquicento as his version of the Apple iPod, and benchmarked Fiat against Apple, so he was looking outside the auto industry for people to emulate and for new ideas. He himself was from outside the auto industry. ...

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Days after firing Henderson, and leaving Lutz with an advisory role with no reports, Whitacre who is now the CEO has moved to bring younger managers in important positions. Mark Reuss assumes the role of head of the North American operations. One year ago he was running the Australian operations. He was only recently in charge of engineering at GM. The Board is pushing for these changes. Whitacre says the GM culture and tendency for top managers not to bring in younger managers to run things has stifled talented younger people at the company. Susan Docherty was given additional responsibilities of marketing. Some of these moves were long overdue. The old echelons simply stayed on for too long risking the jobs of tens of thousands of GM workers and taking the company to the brink of disaster.

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Friedrich Drumpf left Germany at the age of 16, coming to the U.S. in 1885. He came back to Germany to find a wife after running restaurants in California during the time of the Gold Rush. When he tried to return to hsi home town because of his wife was homesick he was expelled a s a draft dodger for missing military service. Kallstadt is a wine producing region. Drumpf was tenacious and keen on getting ahead, a trait that marked his son Fred Trump who built state financed housing in the FDR period in New York, and his on Donald Trump who went into luxury housing. Biographer Gwenda Blair says all members of the family were good at finding loopholes, saving money, and shared the family culture of knowing who the audience is that they are targeting. This is why says Bair that Trump is at ease in being a onetime Democrat, now Republican, sometime liberal and sometimes conservative, and can appeal to people in different ways that would be impossible for most politicians, even people on opposite sides for different reasons. Gwenda Blair is author of two books on the Trump family. "Trumps- Three Generations That Built an Empire," and "Donald Trump: Master Apprentice."     ...

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The problems for Chrysler may not be as much the culture gap between nationalities, as Daniel Howe of the Detroit News points out, as in other areas. It is not going to be in the union area as the President's auto task force has studied the other risks facing Chrysler, and is aware of the failed effort of United airlines unions to run that airline. In the agreements by which 55% ownership of Chrysler is given to the UAW union, the government leaves the union entirely out of the management of the company, which is left to Fiat. And the UAW seeks to sell off its ownership share at the earliest favorable opportunity. The risk lies in the fact that the new models such as the 40 miles per gallon car Fiat is required to build as one of 3 milestones, each worth an additional 5% stake above the inital 20% stake, will not be built till 2012. Meantime as the President said, Chrysler will have to find ways of staying afloat in a market where it is seeing a 40-50% drop in sales each month this year over 2008, with cars that are "less reliable, less popular, and less fuel efficient than foreign competitors." ...

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The Stimson Center looks at the closing of an era of Conservative politics in Japan which ended in 2025 after the death of Shinzo Abe and the 2 year premiership of Kishida. Interview is conducted by the Stimson Center of a senior Japanese political figure with 30 years of experience in the Foreign Service, and the author of the only English language book on Shinzo Abe, reflecting the paucity of research on Japan. Shinzo Abe was premier for a short time in 2005-2006 and for a full term in 2012. He made changes to Japan's SDF, its partnership with India, Australia in the Quad, and his economic policy which increased women's participation in the economy. For the first time in post war Japan there was a new sensde of confidence under Abe and he is missed sorely in Japan today. Yet as this senior Japanese politician says, Japan has changed the way the US and Europe have changed, and nationalist politics are replacing old Conservative politics of the LDP. In a way also how the deindustrialization of US, Europe and Japan has also taken place discrediting that era. Takaichi Sanae is itself a representative of the new era, as she did not hesitate to say Japan would get involved if China attacked Taiwan. Her popularity is at 62% and she has called a snap election, as she came in to replace Shigeru Ishiba in October 2025 and was not directly elected PM. Yet in the long view this is also a misconception because neither the Stimson Center or the interview participants had a keen sense of who Abe really was and Abe's grasp of the history of the Kamakura period of Buddhist Japan and China, India, of the 12th century before the foreign invasions from the north. One of Shinzo Abe's biggest legacies is the relationship that was close to his heart, the relationship with India and prime minister Modi. This week chancellor Merz of the Federal Republic of Germany was at the kite festival with PM Modi in Ahmedabad and at the Sabarmati Ashram of Gandhiji. The same degree of warmth shown by the German leader and Modi reflecting Vivekananda's time in Germany, was seen long time back between Modi and Abe. The bullet train project Mumbai to Ahmedabad and the ones that follow across India are a testimony to the warmth shown by Abe for India, and his knowledge of history from the Buddhist period in India when by the 12th century in Japan in Dogen's time Tenjiku (India) was the sacred homeland of Buddhism. Today India has revived the Buddhist traditions and centers of Buddhism, the universities and research centers for Buddhism from that period in Indian history. Buddhism started in India near Nepal in what is now Bihar state at Sarnath and Kushinagar, and spread through China to Japan and Korea. The whole continent of Asia would reflect Buddhist ideals and ideas without the intervening period of Vedic culture in India and China's Mongolian and Manchurian northern invasions, and the periods of European colonialism. Today Buddhism and The Bhagavad Gita are itself strung like pearls on a string as the Gita itself says, part of the long spiritual traditions of three nations- India, China and Japan, and of the many others Vietnam and Korea. ("All these worlds have their rest in me as many pearls on a string." -Mascaro tr. of Bhagavad Gita, Penguin). As Asian nations and peoples come to their own inner selves, find their inmost self, this is the culture that really pervades all of Asia. ...

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What Tokyo looked like after it was rebuilt following the 1923 earthquake is shown in 100 prints from the Edo-Tokyo Museum. It is now exhibited at the Maison de la culture du Japon a Paris.

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Banks in the US are moving away from cryptocurrency and shunning connections with the cryptocurrency business after a regulatory crackdown by the SEC and public warnings about its future. Banks are reevaluating exposure to the crypto sector no matter how small, says this WSJ report. In early 2020 the regulatory agencies were not vigilant enough about this sector which is now seen as highly risky and not for the private sector- digital currencies being the province of central banks just like the US dollar which is issued with the backing of the US government. The Federal Reserve website says about CBDC, Central Bank Digital Currency in highlighted language.- "Like existing forms of money the CBDC would enable the general public to make digital payments. As a liability of the Federal Reserve, a CBDC would be the safest digital asset available to the general public, with no associated credit or liquidity risk." It is because the US Congress failed to act and a prevailing culture of laissez faire, failure of regulatory agencies to act quickly that allows this to happen, that the private sector was allowed to dabble in what is clearly the province of central banks. Laissez faire is originally a French word meaning "allow to do" which has been taken to extremes such as letting private sector issue digital currencies in the prevailing culture. The Fed's Lael Brainard, Jay Powell, Treasury's Janet Yellen did not come out saying what the Fed's website now says and highlights that the only safe digital asset is the central bank's digital currency. Compare this with the caution taken from the beginning about crypto sector by India's finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and the head of the central bank of India the RBI Mr. Shantikanta Das. ...

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What was established in Alaska meeting in Anchorage was the necessary rapport between two world powers. During the Bush, Obama, Biden administrations Russia was treated as a secondary economic power on Wall Street, with the focus shifted to China, which damaged relations with Russia which has always seen itself as a Northern European economic power. Some of the roots of the conflict go back to this period. In a nuclear world the size and historical relation in Northern Europe of Russia cannot be ignored purely on economic grounds about the size of it's economy in the way China could not be ignored in the 60's and 70's when it's economy was not what it is today. History and culture are not in Wall Street or Silicon Valley's understanding or grasp of international relations which go beyond economic and business considerations. On DJT and the first term, the survival of the US president- “When I came out of the plane and I said, ‘Good afternoon, dear neighbor. Good to see you in good health and to see you alive. I think that’s very neighborly and I think that’s some kind words that say to each other.” On Ukraine- “We have always considered and continue to consider the Ukrainian people our brothers and sisters. We share the same roots, and everything that is happening is a tragedy and a source of pain for us. Our country is interested in putting an end to this. But at the same time, we are convinced that for the settlement to be long-term, all the causes of the crisis must be eliminated." On DJT's assertion that if he was president there would have been no Ukraine war- Putin says "I can confirm that." “Today, we hear President Trump say that if he had been president, there would have been no war. I think that would have been the case. I can confirm that. Because, overall, President Trump and I had established a very good working relationship based on trust.”     ...

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Kylian Mbappe is from Bondy, one of the northern suburbs of Paris. Ayoub Simour and Angelique Chrisafis give this report from Bondy and the Banlieu immigrant communities of France that have been wrongly stigmatized. Mbappe grew up here, with a Cameroonian father who was a soccer coach and Algerian mother who was a professional handball player. This is one of the poorest areas of France and one of the youngest. Both parents were youth workers. Football has put a smile on every face here after the troubles of the pandemic. Mbappe says "our neighborhood is an incredible melting pot of different cultures." Mbappe tells Sports Illustrated that he learned "values" and "respect" in the banlieu.

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The U.S. is falling behind China in the race to setup 5G technology networks. This requires government collaboration with private industry that was missing in the U.S. China has taken the lead by prioritizing 5G global leadership through central planning, subsidies, university training, and recruitment of tech talent. 

In the U.S. a small group of activists made net neutrality an issue says the WSJ leading to extensive proceedings at the FCC and acting as a distraction from the task of setting up 5G capabilities. The U.S. now has to catchup in this field using its strong 4G network for upgrading to 5G and its innovative tech culture for the apps needed.

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Pierre Poilievre gained prominence when he supported the Canadian truckers strike in 2022.  That year he was elected leader of the of the Conservatives party of Canada. In March 2022 the Conservative party crossed the Liberals with popularity at 32%. The NDP coalition ally of the Liberals was at 17%. Starting March 2024 the Liberals took a huge slide in the polls to 25% with Conservatives gaining to reach 42%.  The issues about cost of living, the Border and transgender culture issues resonate in Canada in the same way that they do with Americans. Voters say they can't afford gas at the pump and groceries. Pierre Poilevre has emerged as a leader of Conservatives at a point when for the first time since the 1980's it has a 20% point margin over the Liberals and Trudeau. There is also the issue of who will be best at negotiating on the tariffs issue with the DJT administration in the US. DJT does not take Trudeau seriously calling Canada the 51st state. ...

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Putting 300,000 children in poverty, affecting 1.6 million families, that is the cost of the two child benefits cap of Tory finance minister under Cameron, Osborne. The cost 1.7 billion pounds when 18 billion pounds of debt was added to the debt of company running the British water utility Thames Water, with a chunk of it to to pay dividends, that was privatized in 1989, as shown in the Guardian. Leading to its inability to make the investment needed and to the water quality issues in the Thames river. Thames Water is near financial collapse with parent company defaulting on its debt in April, according to the Guardian. The misallocation of funds under the Tories is a warning about what happens under Reagan/Friedman economic theory that has become part of the existing culture and damaged the economy in the US and Europe. These are what the King's Speech called "the scars of 14 years where politics (and economic theory) was put above the national interest, and decline deep in the marrow of our institutions." It is a time for deep reflection on what has happened. ...

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President Biden removes one of the costly boondoggles thrust on the American people with Bush's Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003, which was anything but an improvement. .The following are the 10 pharmaceutical drugs that will be negotiated for Medicare prices under the Inflation Reduction Act- Eliquis and Jardiance (strokes), Jardiance, Xarelto (diabetes), Entresto (heart failure), Enbrel (arthritis). Laws passed under Republican president younger Bush incomprehensibly took away the right of the government to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies in one of the most egregious and costly decisions in postwar history by the government of the United States. It has only aggravated the problems and cots of healthcare for the American people. President Biden reversed this with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act during the pandemic. Strangely it is part of the real culture war in America in which about 80% of both Republicans and Democrats support this but the media allowed the Bush legislation to be passed without saying it made no sense to say this negotiation was a form of price controls by the US government. This is how low the US policymaking had fallen by 2003 with legislators and press unable to make a simple point. Bush's legislation was called even more incomprehensibly the Medicare Drug Improvement and Modernization Act, when it was one of the biggest financial disasters for the American people costing them hundreds of billions of dollars in their savings and incomes to pay inflated prices of pharmaceuticals that people in Europe and Asia (India and China) were not paying.  ...

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US president Biden gives a rousing and vigorous speech drawing a picture of his vision for the country and contrasting that with the chaos, prejudice and lack of action on key issues facing America of his predecessor. On defending democracy, on Ukraine and Europe, on the economy and jobs, on preschool and education, on pharmaceutical cost reduction, on fair taxes and cutting the deficit while investing in manufacturing and new jobs, on all these issues he drew a sharp contrast with the predecessor and former president. He also drew on the tradition of America for democracy and called on America to move forward in line with its values and decency and diversity, not go backwards in the way of his predecessor. He said it was not about being young or old as he was considered too young when he was the youngest senator of the US at 29 years of age, and now people talk of me being old. It was of not being old in the way that the oldest emotions are of hate and resentment reminding people of his predecessor's sharp language about other people and cultures. ...