LyrArc Article Gist
The balloons detected over US airspace at 40,000 feet that stirred up tension are now seen as intended for surveillance over Guam and Hawaii and blown off course by winds into Alaska and then Montana. This report in the NYT says US State department officials told Chinese diplomats on Feb. 1 about the balloon - 24 hours later China's Foreign ministry officials told US diplomats at the US embassy privately that the balloon a harmless civilian machine had gone off course. On Friday Feb. 3 China issued a public statement expressing regret. What happened after wards showed a series of poor decisions by Chinese officials and the balloon's civilian run balloon company under contract with the PLA says the NYT.  At that point the balloon's operators tried to accelerate it out of American airspace before it was shot down over South Carolina. On Saturday NYT says China told the US this acceleration was intended to get it out of American airspace.This story may not be widely read or covered so that most of the people in the US may already believe that China had intentionally flown surveillance equipment over Montana and the continental US. The US flies hundreds of reconnaissance flights near the coast of China says one defense expert.  This NYT correction of the original story on the spy balloons did not get any front page coverage in the WSJ, BBC, The Guardian, DW.com, FR24, and the NYT story itself got only 5 comments, showing how important it is for governments and information communicators to get each story right. A similar situation of a lack of communication with poor decisions may have delayed a unified response to the covid pandemic in its earliest stages. It shows how gaps in perception and information can gradually affect a relationship which the US had once nurtured into a critical part of its supply chain manufacturing following wartime cooperation against the Japanese invasion, the civil war in China, and later the Korean,  Vietnam Wars during the Cold War.    ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The WSJ responds to president Biden ramping up renewable energy plans and linking Republicans with Senator Rick Scott's plan for sunset provisions on federal legislation every 5 years that Biden says would include Medicare and Social Security. WSJ is critical of Biden's renewable energy plans and calls for increasing production of oil and gas to meet energy shortages and price increases. It is also against a wealth tax, Biden's $2 trillion Workers and Families Plan, and Biden's plan for Medicare to negotiate drug prices. WSJ says real disposable personal income increased $4205 under the Trump presidency 2017-2020, and has since declined by $374 with high inflation depressing purchasing power. The impact of climate change requiring brave choices and strong action is missing in the Republican plan as Republicans focus on attacking Democrats controlling the presidency and Congress on the issue of inflation. The issue of remaking supply chains are on both the Republican and Democratic agendas with president Trump giving more rhetoric against China's role in dominance of supply chains and Mr. Biden taking stronger action in Theodore Roosevelt's style of carrying a big stick and quiet posture in restoring America as a manufacturing powerhouse. The impact of climate change is short term rather than long term as seen by the heat wave in South Asia today, the fires in North America and Europe. Republicans are losing sight of the importance of making the shift on renewable energy quickly with some short term pain, as they push for oil and gas solutions and a less effective program for renewable energy. Mr. Biden is taking on bigger risks in the short term in the midterms and beyond but following a sound policy of aggressively pushing renewable energy. This can also be seen in the importance renewable energy is being given even in countries with a need for coal and natural gas such as India. Modi's plans in India are to buildup renewable energy capacity with aggressive targets for 2030. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
David Brooks on the candidacy for U.S. President of Senator Rick Santorum. He says Santorum genuinely represents the working class- a grandson of a coal miner and the son of Italian immigrants who has represented workers of the steel manufacturing region of western Pennsylvania. Santorum has pushed hard in this campaign largely ignored by the media. He has visited 370 towns riding in a pickup truck trying to cover as much ground as possible and talking with great conviction about his positions distant from the corporate and financial wings of the Republican party, about family, and communities. Bring someone like Sherrod Brown of Ohio together with someone like Rick Santorum and you have good representation of the working class across the political spectrum to win this election for the working class of America, says Brooks, who sees this as a lot better alternative today than Harvard Law.

LyrArc Article Gist
China's state owned China National Nuclear Power is planning a Shanghai IPO that will help finance $27 billion in investments for 5 nuclear power projects. Chinese law states that only 20% of equity needs to be raised for power projects, which means China National Nuclear needs to raise $5.4 billion for the projects in Fujian, Zhejiang, Hainan, and Jiangsu provinces. China's State Council, the country's cabinet, has approved the 2020 nuclear-safety strategy and inspections have been completed on existing nuclear reactors. This gives the go ahead for the reactivation of nuclear power development after the Fukushima accident in Japan. With the move away from coal in China's electricity supplies, nuclear power is expected to play a bigger role. It has 14 nuclear power plants in operation, producing 11.8 gigawatts, with plans to expand this to 40 gigawatts by 2015 and 60-70 gigawatts by 2020.

LyrArc Article Gist
Contrasting Gurgaon in the capital region near New Delhi, with Bihar state in the northeast where much of the region is without electricity, as more Indians look for electricity and lighting in rural areas and the trend towards quadrupling of electricity demand in the next 25 years. Half of India's people have no access to the electricity grid and the government plans to extend electricity to rural India in the next 5 years. Transportation will add to energy demand as will construction. Per capita emissions for this reason, the large part of unlighted rural India, is low at 2 tons per capita compared to 20 tons in the USA, and yet India is already the fourth larges emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. With increasing use of abundant coal reserves for electricity production there will be more emissions in the years to come.

LyrArc Article Gist
India says China carefully prepared an attack on Indian soldiers in the Galwan Valley mountain ridges, at Ladakh's border with China. 20 Indian soldiers were killed and 76 injured. This report in the Guardian shows satellite images of the Galwan Valley taken by Planet Labs, an imaging company. The images show that days before the clash there was increased activity on the Chinese side, including the damming of a river and the movement of troops and machinery close to the disputed and poorly demarcated border. Australian Strategic Policy Institute says its analysis of satellite images shows PLA Chinese forces regularly crossing into Indian territory temporarily on routine patrol routes. Indian officials also say commanders from both sides met on 13 June and agreed to each retreat back 2 kilometres in the Galwan Valley and Pangong Lake area. For unknown reasons Chinese troops instead of retreating as agreed erected a tent on disputed territory close to Patrolling Point 14. India's 16 Bihar Regiment led by Col Santosh Babu, dismantled the structure in an attempt to push back the PLA troops. According to accounts given to the Hindu newspaper cited here in the Guardian, Babu and his troops later went to the Chinese side to challenge the refusal to retreat, they were ambushed by Chinese forces on the steep mountain precipice. Chinese PLA troops allegedly unblocked the dammed river, releasing a rush of water to destabilise Indian soldiers, and attacked with stones and makeshift spiked weapons. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Jenny Strasbourg of the WSJ provides this much needed report from London about the courageous decision by AstraZeneca and Oxford University to give vaccines away at no profit to the whole world, to billions of people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Without this brave decision by a British company and a British University the world would be a lot poorer, more variants could have happened, making us realize the great contribution Britain has made and how indispensable it is to the planet. Add to this the effort of Indian companies including Serum Institute that provided the manufacturing facilities and capabilities for making most of the British vaccine. AstraZeneca delivered 2.3 billion doses of the vaccine globally as of mid-December, according to the company. The International Monetary Fund estimates that low and middle income countries received 3.25 billion vaccines as of Dec. 11, About half of this or 1.6 billion doses were Astra Zeneca shots. This is a bigger share than any other vaccine by far and a life saver to the world. AstraZeneca stepped up early in a true to the best ideals in Britain to meet the needs of the world-  aiming to deliver 3 billion doses in 2022 and sell them at no profit as long as the pandemic continues. As the shot does not need cold storage it is ideal for India and other Asia, Africa and Latin America. "We are all very proud throughout the company of the impact we have had," says AstrZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot. By far the biggest manufacturing was done at Serum Institute of India which supplied 1.3 billion doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to 70 countries. Mr. Modi pushed forward the export of vaccine made in India to the world from the beginning in the same spirit of cooperation and the best ideals that Britain was living upto. Serum Institute can produce as much as 250 million doses of vaccine a month making it possible for India to tackle the vaccination population of 1.3 billion people.   None of this could have happened without Oxford University and AstraZeneca and Indian companies with Mr. Modi's active support living up to the best ideals of Britain and India for the world. "When you add up the benefits to humanity, I think you'll find the vaccine holds up pretty well in terms of the ill health it has prevented, and the deaths it has prevented," says John Bell, a senior Oxford academic who in 2020 guided the University through its vaccine-partnership talks with Astra Zeneca. Because in the real world AstraZeneca shot has held up so well it is also a choice for booster shots. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The India-Pakistan-Afghanistan issues are still framed in the old way in terms of communalism, cold war then and the war on terrorism now. These policies were a legacy of the colonial policies of an earlier empire designed to preserve foreign rule, with a policy of perpetuating divisions between communties on religious and other lines. Modernization, the spread of mass communications that makes possible the reduction of prejudice and division by assimilating different values and beliefs into acommon aspiration for progress and better living standards, and the spread of education, commerce, and technological progress, create the conditions that should put this behind us. Put behind us communalism, and the political and military structures of communal states. Pakistan needs to be transformed from a communal state with a military structure designed to preserve that state - resulting in conflicts with its neighbors- into a state that represents a community and a religion, but in all other ways seeks peaceful coexistence and economic integration with the rest of South Asia. A good example of this is Mexico with its own culture, language and religion (Spanish Catholicism), and Canada with its own bilingual French-English heritage and British political structures and allegiances, both arriving at an arrangement of peaceful coexistence and economic integration with the USA with its different political structures and culture and sporadic conflicts with Canada and Mexico. This has promoted the peaceful development of the North American region. The US involvement in the region can then be seen as a misguided effort that continued framing the region's differences in the old British way or in a cold war stereotyping, first with John Foster Dulles in the India-Pakistan conflicts, and then with Reagan in the Afghan anti-Soviet war. This has worked to exacerbate the conditions that led to slow progress in the drive for economic development, infrastructure building and modernization in all of South Asia. Just as in Europe, as in North America, the processes of economic development work best when a policy of inclusiveness and integration of different communities and people is followed. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Western nations including Europe, Canada, Japan and South Korea, are members of the International Enerrgy Agency, which has 1.5 billion barrels in reserve. The IEA will release oil from its reserves to support president Biden's plan to release 180 million barrels over the next 6 months. OPEC that includes Russia plans to increase production by only about 432,000 barrels a day.  During the Trump administration Saudi Arabia and Russia were at odds on production levels leading to Russia increasing production to higher levels than OPEC would allow. This led to a temporary collapse of oil prices to levels as low as $30. To help the US oil fracking industry which could not operate at these low prices president Trump brought the two sides together into what is now OPEC+. The Biden administration has ties with both Iran and Saudis, and aims to revive the Iran nuclear deal, withdrew support for Saudi air strikes on Yemeni Iran backed Huthi rebels. In this geopolitical situation Saudis are reluctant to respond to US calls to increase production as they have done in the past. With climate change and the COP26 agenda in Glasgow there is a plan to shift away from fossil fuels such as coal and oil that are supplied by OPEC and Australia. This means that a shift away from Russian or Saudi oil is also a shift towards renewable energy such as wind and solar which is needed to combat climate change. The Ukraine war and efforts to wean Europe away from Russia sourced energy will accelerate the changes needed to tackle climate change, even though the US fracking industry will step in to increase production at oil prices at $100+ in 2022. After 2023-2024 the push for conservation and renewable energy from today's crisis and Glasgow COP26 commitments, sharp slowdown in China and renewable focused India is likely to bring down oil prices to reasonable levels for a transition period to renewable energy. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Biden's very conservative choices for his cabinet which one British reader of The Times calls UK One Nation type choices. Many of the cabinet members could easily have served under a Republican administration before Trump or a Democratic administration in the tradition of Harry Truman in the 1950's. No members of the cabinet belong to the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party.  A look at the Truman administration after 1950 shows John Wesley Snyder, who headed a bank in St Louis and worked for the Reconstruction Finance Corporation under Franklin Roosevelt performing a key role for integrating 8 million GI soldiers into the economy, and implementing the Marshall Plan. A similar job awaits another banking official Janet Yellen in Biden's cabinet to keep people employed during the pandemic. Xavier Becerra, currently attorney general of California, and formerly Congressman for 24 years, who endorsed "medicare for all" is the new Health Secretary. He grew up in a one room apartment with his Mexican parents. Secretary of State goes to Anthony Blinken, Dean Acheson was in this role under Truman as the Cold War surged with the Berlin crisis and the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe. Today the challenges from Russia and China are taking the shape of a revival of tensions. George Marshall who led American forces in the war, was secretary of defense. This position is given to a soldier Gen. Lloyd Austin who led forces in the wars in the Middle East. This has the potential to deliver better results after the years when America veered off course under the administrations of Reagan, Clinton, Bush and Obama, following the Truman, Eisenhower administrations that setup the recovery after World War II. Today after the banking crisis of 2009, disastrous healthcare and infrastructure neglect in the U.S., followed by the pandemic, a recovery like the one after World War II is needed.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Juan Manuel Santos, former president of Colombia helped negotiate the peace with the FARC guerilla movement in Colombia. Here he points out the changes in South America that have led to the end of guerilla conflicts. This achievement comes after extended conflicts that affected Peru, Colombia, central American countries Nicaragua, San Salvador, Guatemala, following conflicts in Brazil and Argentina that led to the formation of military dictatorships that fought battles with guerilla movements. This goes back to the Castro movement in Cuba against the dictatorship of Batista, and the Cold War during the Krushchev days of the Soviet Union in the sixties. Much of this has ended, yet Santos draws a conclusion that the Western hemisphere is in peace that ignores the legacy of these conflicts. In many places the drug trade has simply moved to places further north, to destabilize governments in central America. The guerillas have become part of the drug trade as ways to integrate them into society have lagged behind or not worked. As a result life is difficult in central America leading to migration northward, similar to migration to Europe from war torn regions in North Africa. Mexico has continued as a key part of the drug trade affecting rural communities in places previously untouched by drugs such as New Hampshire and places in the northeastern U.S., even after a decade of war against drug trafficking gangs by Mexican president Calderon. It also destabilizes Mexican politics such as the murder of 42 students in Guerrero province for civil activism. It is also destabilizing a major democracy such as the U.S. as Donald Trump has sought support from communities devastated by drugs in the U.S., and sought support for a racist approach to politics. For these reasons the more visible conflicts of North and South America are now replaced with a less visible but no less insidious and dangerous mix in politics that has entered civil life and discourse across the region.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Melloan says President Bush is rightly offering Eisenhower's proposal for peaceful use of electrical energy as a friendly gesture to India. Ike made the "atoms-for-peace" proposal to the United Nations in Dec 1953, saying: "A special purpose would be to provide abundant electrical energy to power-starved areas of the world." This also helps in other ways- 1. Takes pressure off gas prices with rising demand in India met by nuclear energy. 2. Gives American exporters a big market for nuclear energy equipment (companies like GE). 3. Improves prospects for other American exporters and businesses in India as the economic relationship grows larger. India is not receiving anywhere near the foreign investment China is receiving, actually minscule in comparison. This gets the whole relationship rolling. 4. Nuclear energy is an attractive option for India as it has few oil resources, and reduces dependence on coal from the standpoint of global warming and greenhouse gas emissions.

LyrArc Article Gist
The new price of the Leaf is $35,200 for the 2012 model year as more features were made standard by Nissan. The Leaf will now cost $27,700 after a $7,500 federal tax credit in the U.S. The higher price also reflects the stronger yen as the Leaf is made in Japan. Every Leaf is sold from a waiting list, with sales in only some states- including Arizona, California, Hawaii, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Washington. Nissan's marketing chief, Brian Carolin, says about 1000 vehicles a month will be sold for the remainder of 2011. The average customer of the Leaf drives the car with an all electric range of 75 miles, for 30 miles each day and charges it for 3 hours a day. Average household income is $140,000. The 2012 standard model comes with a cold weather package, heated seats, battery warmer and steering wheel, and a fast charging arrangement that gets it recharged in 30 minutes, instead of the 8 hours.

LyrArc Article Gist
Readers of the NYT reflect on the Syria-Iraq conflict and the experience in Vietnam. Stuart Gottlieb, who teaches American foreign policy and international security at Columbia University, describes Logevall and Goldstein's Vietnam analogy for Syria as a situation on how one can go wrong by relying on historical reference when new thinking is required based on existing challenges. Others point to the situation in Vietnam as Kennedy's war with 16,000 advisors already on the ground. Kennedy's words "let every country know whether it wishes us well or ill, that we will support any friend, oppose any foe...," were part of the Cold War in the early sixties that Kennedy inherited from Eisenhower and Truman starting with a Communist Iron Curtain falling over Eastern Europe and threatening Western Europe. The situation today is quite different in a Middle East with little to do with Russia and China, at the same time sectarian with Sunni and Shia, and aspirations of Arab people for freedom from dictatorships....

LyrArc Article Gist
McGurn reminds readers that LBJ's war on poverty started not from a inner city area but from a poor white home in Martin County, eastern Kentucky. This has fostered the same degree of dependency in Martin County, eastern Kentucky, as it has in inner cities in the U.S., says McGurn. He also compares South Korea in the sixties, emerging from years of neglect under Japanese occupation and following this with the devastation of the Korean War, and pulling itself up in the next three decades to the point where it is a modernized economy with high living standards. Strong families, education, a strong work ethic, are vitally needed ingredients for building strong communities. Economic opportunity is another ingredient. In Baltimore the loss of the steel industry, and in Martin County the loss of jobs in coal mining, have reduced economic opportunities. How to put all the ingredients together is the challenge for decisionmakers.

LyrArc Article Gist
The Environmental Protection Agency moved to assume authority over 14,000 coal burning plants, refineries and industrial complexes that emit more than 25,000 tons ( or emissions from burning 131 railcars) of of greenhouse gas emisssions, and are the source of 70% of the U.S.'s greenhouse gas emissions. The bill exempts the smaller facilities, "every cow and Dunkin Donuts," as Lisa Jackson EPA administrator put it. It exempts millions of other sources like bakeries, dry cleaners and hospitals, and focusses on the 400 largest facilities that do most of the environmental damage. These facilities will be required to obtain construction permits and prove that the best available technology has been applied. Lisa Jackson said we are not going to go ahead with business as usual, and it will give President Obama something to show at the Copenhagen talks. Senators Kerry and Boxer are introducing legislation that will be fought by the power plants, and this move by the EPA will be challenged by the power companies....

LyrArc Article Gist
Friedman draws attention to a very important thing that a perceptive eye like his has grasped, there is too much rhetoric on the democratic and Obama side about focussing on Afghanistan without knowledge of whats going on in the field and all the risks in haphazard involvement and expansion of the war, reminiscent of the small war that was going on in south east Asia when Kennedy assumed office. Another young and inexperienced President who needed to show that he could be tough and just as the cold war was taking shape with the Berlin airlift and other events in Europe. The early years of the Kennedy administration led to an haphazard expansion of the war without fully understanding the situation in the ground. Scweich and Rory's account and the cable by the British ambassador in Kabul and other links show that the war there has to be very carefully handled by the most capable people knowledgeable about what is happening in the ground.

LyrArc Article Gist
Costco's money saving strategies. Says Sinegal, son of a coal miner, "the biggest concern to me is that we lose our way and start thinkig it doesn't matter if you charge another dimeor another dollaar or another hundred dollars. Wihtout those disciplies, we don't have anything." Costco looks at every small saving, a penny here, a dime there. Savings in bananas, savings in pallets, savings in truckers time and trucks, on and on it goes. Costco gets three quarters of its operating profits from its membership fees of $50 to $100 from its 29 million members and it cannot afford to lose members who leave because bargains are not there or prices are not absolutely low for quality products. Sinegal is challenging Costco people to come up with new ways to save and pass on te savings to customers and where suppliers raise prices looking for alternative sources as with Bonita bananas fro Ecuador.

LyrArc Article Gist
Senator Manchin is elected from a state West Virginia, that is the second largest producer of coal in America after Wyoming. This matters with a 50-50 vote US Senate. Manchin is not in favor of a part of the Biden $3.5 trillion families and workers plan which calls for meeting challenge of climate change by speeding the conversion from fossil fuels to clean energy. The clean Energy Performance Program with $150 billion in spending would provide federal funds to energy companies to speed up the conversion. At the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow the US faces the problem of meeting its own commitments to address climate change as it seeks commitments from China, and India, two major coal users.

LyrArc Article Gist
The methane gas explosion at the Upper Big Branch coal mine in Montcoal, W. Virginia. The Massey Energy Company runs this mine, and there are questions about failure to ensure safety both by the Massey Energy Company, and the regulatory agency that oversees coal mines, the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MHSA).