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A Liberal Democrat, Lord Alderdice, praises the courage of Prince Philip when he stood alongside Queen Elizabeth as she shook hands with Martin McGuiness- the handshake that ended the war in Northern Ireland. Martin McGuiness led the IRA at the time when Lord Mountbatten, a father figure for Prince Philip and his mentor, was killed in the conflict of Northern Ireland.

The Duke of Cambridge describes his grandfather as "an extraordinary man and part of an extraordinary generation."

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Fundamentals such as private inventories buildup, are about 10% higher than last year according to EIA, suggesting prices $3 to $15 lower than they are now. Prices are higher because of uncertainties in the VIIN countries (Venezuela, Iran, Iraq and Nigeria) which combined produce just as much as the Saudis. And the VIIN component is there for the long haul. OPEC does not need to cut output, output is cut by the VIIN countries with their political and geopolitical issues.

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The first farmer in recent history to become president of the US, 1977-1981, Jimmy Carter ran a peanut farm in the southern state of Georgia. He also served in the US Navy under Admiral Rickover. Rickover hired Jimmy Carter for the US early submarine program in 1949. It was Jimmy Carter's loss to Ronald Reagan that made the Democrat a rare one term president. The Iran hostage crisis happened during the election year 1980 which may have shifted the election in the Republican Reagan's favor. The economy also suffered from high inflation and lower growth during this period leading to the loss of the presidency for Carter. The incidents leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall happened during the Reagan presidency. This led to the period of three decades when the free market, less regulation period led to the 2009 economic crisis and the earlier breakup of the Soviet Union leading to the economic crisis in the early period in Russia. It was during this period that 2 Democrats president Clinton and Obama tacitly accepted the Reagan era policies of free markets and less regulation. This period is now coming to a close with the pandemic and a reassessment of what has happened. During that period Clinton paved the way for China's admission into the World Trade Organization. The lack of regulation has led to Section 230 leading to a proliferation of undesirable content on the internet, with support for regulation in the Us Congress. US policy is also moving to support its own industries something the Reagan policies saw negatively, particularly chip manufacturing where the US has lost its leadership role. The period that ended the Carter presidency is thus an inflection point that is now reversing itself decades later with the sense that government staying away from the economy is not a desirable thing. ...

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Leon Panetta, former Defense Secretary in Obama's first term, and president Clinton's chief of staff, says president Obama made a series of poor decisions for Iraq and Syria. Not following up on the "red line" of use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime has damaged U.S. credibility, says Panetta. The failure to lead in budget fights, on health care, is seen in foreign policy for Iraq. There Panetta points out Obama failed to lead to ensure that Maliki had to agree to a residual troop presence in Iraq, for without this the hard won gains under the previous Republican administration could easily be allowed to slip away. Sectarian tensions, and rise of ISIS could have been controlled by having U.S. troop presence, according to Panetta. White House centralized power under Tom Donilon, chief of staff, and John Brennan, counter terrorism advisor, to th detriment of input from the Defense Secretary and the Secretary of State, says Panetta. Panetta says Obama lacks fire and too often does not take the lead as a president should. A similiar complaint is made by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, who covered Nixon and Watergate, after observing Obama's dealings with the Republicans and Congress up close in the first term....

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The hope that the pomengranate grown for export can become a major cash crop for Afghan farmers, replacing the poppy fields that finance the Taliban, and support high rates of addiction in both the US and Iran.

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The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by one estimate have already cost 1 trillion dollars. By comparison World War II cost 4 trillion dollars in inflation adjusted dollars. The figures are from the Congressional Research Service, and show the pressures to control spending. The reason that civil society is not very disturbed even as these wars cost so much, is that so far these costs in 2008 for example were 1.2% of GDP, creating the danger that these wars can be carried out by a political leadership without the nation feeling the strains of the war. This may change with higher unemployment, and the feeling that not much is gained, that this money can be used in better ways to rebuild the US economy and infrastructure.

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American journalist, John Foley, beheaded by ISIS Islamic State insurgents in Iraq following American bombings near Mosul dam and Erbil to push back the militants attack on Kurdish Northern Iraq. John Foley survived a 44 day ordeal after being captured in Libya in 2011. He went back to cover the Syrian conflict and was captured by ISIS in 2012. He is shown with a helmet covering the war in Aleppo, Syria, in November 2012. His father John Foley in Rochester, New Hampshire, says Foley was as much a humanitarian as a journalist. He graduated from the Medill School at Northwestern and saw the covering of the Middle East as bringing a voice to the powerless and the helpless in the region.

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Obama's Cairo speech to the Muslim world on June 4, 2009. He tried to reach out to the Muslim world. Did not use the term terrorism but used instead "violent extremism." He emphasized that most of the differences between the Muslims and the West can be eased by "a sustained effort to listen to each other, to learn from each other, to respect one another, and to seek common ground. " As one Arab leader put it, its a fresh voice only a short while after some were talking about the "clash of civilizations." He also avoided the idea of us vs they of the Bush administration, of moderates allied with the USA and the extremists gouped together with Iran. He called the denial of the Holocaust as "baseless, ignorant and hateful." And touched on the problems facing the people of the Middle East who were trying to find a voice in their own countries. See the link to Iran's election debate between Moussavi and Ahmadinejad in which Moussavi described Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust as underminig Iran's dignity and harming its standing with the rest of the world. Obama's reference to his own personal encounter with Islam in his life, and being the American President, has to have created a climate in which Moussavi could engage in the intense debate with Ahmadinejad and win conservatives over to his side. Moussavi said Ahmadinejad had "exhibitionist, extremist, superficial, adventurist, foreigh policies," based on "illusional perceptions" that the US, Israel, France and the West were collapsing....

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Turkey's recognition for Syria's national coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people.

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Liz Goodwin and Riley Beggin report from Hillard Ohio where Amazon is building a large data center using land adjoining a school and a park for children. Parents are collecting signatures for a ban. About 70% of Americans are opposed to the data centers building in their local area, after an aggressive push with tax breaks and incentives provided by some states. Virginia, Georgia, Texas, and Ohio most aggressive data center builders in the US by 2026- construction jobs, and investment, as pros, electricity usage and use of farmland cons. Ohio's governor DeWine paused tax breaks after realizing that it cost the state $1 billion in lost revenue. Amazon says it has invested $70 billion in the state since 2016. Democrat politicians are not taking up the bans because of some unions supporting the data centers for jobs created in construction. Another reason is that politicians in general face attacks from the tech companies donating to campaigns against them if they call for a ban. Sherrod Brown Democrat in Ohio asks data centers to pay for their electricity but has not supported a ban-  “With data centers, we make sure the investors pay for electricity. Not the people who live in Zanesville or Coshocton or in Cambridge.” The big reason to support it from the jobs perspective is stated by the unions. Tim Burga of the AFL-CIO in Ohio says-  “These are creating good union jobs, both in the construction, but also in the keeping them secure and maintaining them."  Now you have a public frustrated particularly in quiet suburbs of America who see this as an intrusion into their lives, which means Republican and Democrat, Red State and Blue State, makes little difference. Construction workers and unions excited about the prospects for decent jobs after the Obama and Bush elites shipped 5 million jobs (Lighthizer USTR estimate) to China over 2000-2016, and transferred $20 trillion in American wealth to foreign countries by blindly accepting unfair trade with China, EU, Canada, Mexico. And see this as part of the MAGA effort to bring back the supply chains to America for all manufactured products in the interests of reliable supply, national security, and the promise of good paying jobs for the communities across America that depended on these jobs since the industrial revolution inthe US at the turn of the century in 1900. It took only 2 decades to wipe them out under what Lighthizer and Jamieson call "shortsighted leadership" of  Republican Bush and Democrat Obama and their corresponding elites. These communities were hit more than once, twice, thrice, four times in fact- in 2009 by the banker's aided and abetted financial crisis, by Bush starting and Obama continuing the Afghan Iraq wars on different pretexts (diverting trillions of dollars that otherwise go to job creation and manufacturing, new technologies), and then by Covid in 2019. This is the America in which the data center building spree is taking place- a plus if done right and with some carefully thought out plan for water/electricity usage costs and for AI guardrails, protection for farmland and areas near parks and schools, and residential suburbs.   ...

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It will take some time for AI software firms (Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google)  to generate returns. Yet AI enabling goods, the AI chipmakers (the hardware) made by Taiwan, South Korea and the US's Nvidia are making large profits from the boom in AI investments worldwide. South Korea's Samsung SK Hynix, Taiwan's TSMC and Nvidia in the US are chip makers making huge sales revenue in AI enabling goods- $2.6 trillion for Asian makers including Japan, $1.4 trillion for all US chip makers. This report in the WSJ says whether and when the AI software makers (Google, Microsoft and Amazon)  turn a profit the AI boom is changing the habits of ordinary investors, surging the market capitalization of TSMC, Samsung, SK Hynix and Nvidia, and creating a big surge in stock markets in Asia and a bit smaller by comparison in the US. Total spending in 2026 for worldwide AI services, infrastructure and software was $2.6 trillion in 2026, going up to $3.5 trillion in 2027. The most astonishing aspect of this is how much the AI boom has increased the Asian stock market indexes- TAIEX index of Taiwan which has gone up 55% year to date Jan-June 2026 in value and South Korea's Kospi index which has increased 110% in value. Taiwan's TSMC shares doubled in value. Japan's stock market index Nikkei up year to date Jan-June 2026 32%.  Another aspect of this is that just one company TSMC makes up 42% - market capitalization as a percentage of the overall stock index- of TAIEX Taiwan's stock market index. And just 2 companies Samsung and SK Hynix make up 55% of South Korea's KOSPI Index. By comparison the US S&P up 11% in the same period year to date Jan-June 2026. This report looks at the speculative fever as ordinary investors in the middle and lower income classes in Asia in Taiwan and South Korea from cab drivers, insurance agents, software programmers and elementary school teaches, to high school students with parental sponsored accounts, are all engaged in speculative trading in AI related stocks. What all this means in terms of the cost of living issues, the price of oil and gas with Hormuz and the Memorandum with Iran to open it, the social fabric splintering, the cultural issues splitting electorates in the US and Europe, the migration issues, the issues on world trade is a separate question. It is similar to the railroads and steamship building in the 19th century and the construction of the interstate highway system in the 20th century (in the 1950's in US and in 2000's in China, 2020 in India) different aspects of the Industrial Revolution that overlap with the social and political changes of each period in history. Speculative booms in financial markets accompanied these changes till they returned to a degree of normalcy. It still required regulation, oversight, building the modern institutions of government that improved the economic life of nations and people during the FDR/Truman/Ike  period, and the period after the sixties that shaped the European Union and economic progress in Europe, similar changes in China and India, Brazil. And the many changes now needed in 2026 in the US, and Europe for reindustrialization, and modernization in India, continued development in China. ...