LyrArc Article Gist
The Arab League votes to impose sanctions on Syria with a vote of 18 of its 22 members.

LyrArc Article Gist
Abdulkader al-Saleh, a rebel commander in the Aleppo region of Syria, leads the military wing of Al Tawhid, which operates in this part of Syria. An effort is made by the Assad regime to assasinate him. Saleh survives and says he is focusing on the fight to end the regime.

LyrArc Article Gist
People of a new generation cannot imagine that India that they know today could not exist without the integration of 560 smaller kingdoms within overall British India that were allowed self rule under British conditions and law. They made up no less than one third of the British Empire in India. During India's 75th anniversary of independence and looking to India's 100th year a young generation born after 1947 growing up in post-British India cannot easily imagine the critical years after 1910, with Gandhi writing Hind Swaraj that year during a period when he negotiated for the rights of Indians in South Africa just to move freely. The years of the struggle for Swaraj between 1910 and 1931, the Satyagraha March to the Sea at Porbandar to protest the British Salt Tax, the elected assemblies that brought the first experience with self-rule in the thirties, and the "karenge o marenge" pledge to do or die with Quit India Movement in 1942 by Gandhi.  The dominant role of Jawaharlal Nehru after 1947, and that of daughter Indira Gandhi after him, wittingly or unwittingly had the intended or unintended effect of obscuring from view the role of many of the leaders around Gandhi of whom Jawaharlal Nehru was just one. No doubt about Jawaharlal who wore a prisoners badge number token around his neck and spent years in British jails. No doubt about his contribution. Lyrarc throws a spotlight on other leaders who made equally large contributions so that India's young people can get a better sense of what this struggle involved and how it was won by the  people of that time  under the most difficult conditions and trials. This includes Vallabhbhai Patel, Ambedkar, Subhas Chandra Bose, Rajendra Prasad, Rajagopalachari, Maulana Azad, and the young Lal Bahadur Shastri. Others Naoroji, Vidyasagar, Vivekananda, from an even earlier period, Gokhale and Tilak, are people on whose shoulders Mohandas Gandhi stood on and fully accepted as his mentors, as do today's Indian leaders. This BBC report looks at the role of Vallabhbhai Patel of Kheda district in Gujarat state and of his assistant VP Menon. Gandhi was born in 1869, Patel in 1875 and Nehru in 1889. In 1947 Gandhi made the decision to go with Jawaharlal Nehru who was 14 years younger than Vallabhbhai Patel as the younger leader and prime minister who could take India through this critical first decade after independence with Patel as deputy prime minister. Patel died of heart conditions in 1950. Patel's assistant during the crucial period of negotiations for independence after the war ended in 1945 with Viceroy Mountbatten was V.P. Menon.  Mohandas Gandhi always believed that with hundreds of millions of Indians gaining consciousness of their rights even under British concepts of free men and free people, and a sense of their own dignity under God, the British would simply have to leave. His faith in the Bhagavad Gita that affirmed this right under God was firm and indomitable. This was true by 1947. He needed other leaders around him to structure the form this independence would take in terms of administration of the country and the constitution of the new nation. He also needed to bring those parts of British India that were not absorbed into direct British rule during successive wars between 1756 and 1857. These small kingdoms were retained under princely rule after the British decided to halt the policy of integrating them into direct rule following a war in 1857 that almost led to the downfall of the British in India. How large was this area is hard to comprehend when one sees that this was one third of British India in land mass from the Himalayan mountains to the Indian Ocean. Harder still it is to grasp that it would involve bringing in about 560 different princely states or kingdoms into the new India of 1947. It was the task of Vallabhbhai Patel and of his assistant V P Menon to do this. Southik Biswas of the BBC tells the story of how this was done with pictures from that period- click on Original Article to see the BBC report. It also shows how much modern India owes to Vallabhbhai Patel, as it does to Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Atal Bihari Vajapayee, to Tilak and all the people in the jails of Andaman, to Naoroji and Gokhale. And how much it owes to today's leaders who have made it their task to bring Har Ghar Jal, cooking gas, and electricity to every family in every village in India, never losing sight of that last poorest of men and women in the land that Vivekananda and then Mohandas Gandhi never lost sight of.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Syria after the Houla massacres and the sharpening divide between Sunnis and Alawites in Syria. Pro government thugs called shabiha using small arms are said to be responsible. The Houla area is predominantly Sunni and villages near it Alawite. The army is predominantly Alawite in a largely Sunni country. This risks bringing in other Sunni Arab countries into the conflict. U.S. Secretary of State Clinton tells students at the Royal Library in Copenhagen that China and Russia, mainly Russia, were obstacles for the Security Council to taking strong action, and this could lead to civil war.

LyrArc Article Gist
Father Hesburgh became president of Notre Dame in 1952, at the age of 35, when Notre Dame was a small university known for football and theological studies. He greatly increased the size of the university, hiring new faculty, increasing the endowment fund from $9 million to $350 million, and changed polcies so that women were admitted in 1972. The endowment fund is now $9 billion. Father Hesburgh played a prominent role in the U.S. and was close to presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Reagan, Carter and Clinton. By the time he retired in 1986 after 35 years as president of Notre Dame, he was considered the most effective university president in the country, and the most influential priest in the U.S. He fought for civil rights, for peaceful protest on campus, and brought lay control through a secular board to run Notre Dame. In all these issues he stood up for his progressive views when faced by opposition from the Vatican and the U.S. government. Following the Second Vatican Council of the mid 1960's, Father Hesburgh initiated greater involvement of lay Catholics in the Mass and practices of the Church. At a meeting in Land O'Lakes, Wisconsin, 1967, a group of Catholic educators led by Hesburgh put forward the position that the pursuit of truth should be the ultimate aim of Catholic higher education in the U.S., not religious indoctrination. In this way Father Hesburgh created a new level of credibility and respect for Catholic based education in the U.S. Ironically Father Hesburgh was not a big football fan and refused to pose for a picture of him with a football, insisting that collegiate sports not influence higher education. His passion from his early years was to be a chaplain in the U.S. Navy. In fact he had to be dissuaded from going to the Navy as a chaplain in 1943, to stay on campus at Notre Dame to train naval officers during the war. Hesburgh was born in Syracuse in 1917 to an executive at Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, and studied at the seminary on Notre Dame campus and in Rome for advanced degrees in philosophy and theology. He died in 2015 at the age of 97, having placed a large imprint on the shape of American higher education in the twentieth century. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Ford shows originality at the March New York Auto Show by showing a crashed Taurus which was intentionally crashed into a barrier at 35 mph for this display. It has amonitor which shows how the crash happened and how the electonics work to protect the occupants in a crash. Ford learned from its bland ads of taurus as the safest car in America which did not boost sales as Taurus sales dropped 13% so far this year. VW had an ad of the Jetta in a crash but nothing this original has been tried. For Ford it helps draw the attention of car buyers who have defected to foreign makes.

LyrArc Article Gist
With the aggressive actions taken along the 1600 kilometre border in eastern Ladakh by China's People's Liberation Army, India needs a younger soldier to protect the border at high altitudes in below freezing temperatures. The entire 3500 kilometre border in the high Himalayan regions from east to west need technology driven surveillance with soldiers fit and ready for such duty. Agnipath's goal is to bring down the average age in the army from 32 years to 26 years to better reflect the youthful population in India. A tighter better disciplined force with high tech is needed. Bringing in more and new recruits is intended. Both the 25% of recruits retained after 4 years benefit and the 75% benefit. The 25% will have opportunities to move up the ranks. The 75% who come back out of the military will have the advanced technical training and courses, certification, that would make them attractive to the public and private sector companies in 2026 and beyond when India's economy will be 50% larger than today at growth rates of 10-12%. This is already seen in the way technologically trained military recruits from World War II in the US Army, Navy and Air Force were quickly absorbed at high salaries in the high growth period of America 1950-1970, with incentives like the GI Bill. Modifications that could be discussed- The 25% retained after 4 years. There is no magic number it could be raised to 30 or 40% during these post pandemic years and then lowered to 25% as the economy grows rapidly by 2025, or kept at 30% without changes, a number of options could be open.The financial aspect of the training can be modified where the 25% retained could have these 4 years added to their years for calculating pensions. The 75% are given 1.2 million rupees and even this can be adjusted upwards so that they could start businesses as entrepreneurs or have the time to pursue higher education before taking up for example with free education to enhance their education in areas of interest as was given by the GI bill to Americans in the armed services after World War II in 1946. Ideas from the GI Bill signed by president Franklin Roosvelt in 1944- Adding one year of unemployment payments, low interest loans to start a farm or business, full tution and living expenses for college. In 2008 the Veterans Act in the US continued support for education of servicement by making eduction free at a public college or university.  The Roosevelt GI bill benefited about 7.8 million servicemen in the US armed services. 2.2 million went to college, 7.6 million took training programs. It was an impressive achievement. No scheme is perfect there are budgetary constraints such as how to manage pensions to give the armed services the best possible funding including the training and course capabilities that also need good financing and the higher pensions for armed services. Every political party  government around the world without exception will have to face these budgetary constraints and the goal is to do right by the armed services providing the income and opportunities they deserve. Was a decent effort made with the right goals set? This is how these matters of national interest for India and the Free World that includes South East Asia, Africa and Latin America, should be discussed.    ...

LyrArc Article Gist
XI Jinping tells China's National People's Congress that "western nations- including the US- have implemented all round containment, encirclement and suppression against us, bringing unprecedentedly severe challenges to development." Addressing the private sector Chamber of Commerce representatives which create significant number of jobs in China he said the Communist Party "has always regarded private enterprises and private entrepreneurs as our own people, and will always support them whenever they run into difficulties." Job creation in China is a challenge with high youth unemployment estimated at about 20%. The pandemic worsened the situation for state finances and for unemployment for migrants, the construction slowdown has added to this. The burden of trillions of dollars of local government debt increased during the pandemic with the central government lacking the resources to help, creating problems in the local economies.  This WSJ report says Xi's speech seeks to present his government's performance in the light of these challenges and future challenges as growth slows in China. The trading relationship with US-EU added to employment and income problems for China's economy and people, yet it had one weakness an over concentration in manufacturing in one country that European and US business placed in one country. The building of a  new supply chain that creates manufacturing in other countries to reduce this concentration, and the limits placed on access to western technologies by China to protect US-EU in competition, places new development challenges for China, which Xi alludes to. In the past China was able to use huge stimulus to tackle its debt by creating more growth that supported this debt creation. The pandemic may finally have reversed this as trillions of dollars of debt have built up, and construction of homes and infrastructure has reached a saturation point. This is the kind of situation that Japan entered in the 1990's after three decades of torrid growth and development rates. History is being repeated as China like Japan is entering a new phase of an aging society. In this sense the challenges China is facing are very different from that of Russia. Creating jobs is a perennial problem in India and China with their large populations and rising aspirations of people after centuries of underdevelopment, something that Europe including Russia does not face in anywhere to a similar degree. in this sense there is more in common between the EU and Russia even when they are in a war, than Russia and China, and China has more in common with India. The struggle in Europe as Cambridge historian Brendan Simms has pointed out in his History of Europe, is more about the balance of power which is the story of European history since the 1450's where no one country has been allowed to act with impunity in invading its neighbors and other countries formed a concerted group to prevent this. Be it France, Austria, Britain or Russia that acted seemingly with impunity. China has little to do with it or Europe's history. President Biden is right to say that the US only competes with China in the economic and business fields, and seeks to find common ground on climate change and food insecurity. The US has supported China throughout the twentieth century since the time of Woodrow Wilson in 1913, around the period when Tsinghua University was established with US help. The US helped China during the Japanese invasion and the Cold War period ended with renewed relations.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Russians vote in 2021 parliamentary elections. With 30% of votes cast the United Russia party of Mr. Putin wins 45% of votes cast, followed by the Communist party of the Russian Federation with 22%, and the Liberal Democratic party getting 8%. Russia has mixed voting system with half the seats directly elected from party lists, and the other half assigned to individual candidates. United Russia had 334 seats out of total 450 seats in the outgoing parliament. Putin will need over 300 seats in the new parliament to get the two thirds majority to enact changes to the constitution. Putin needs this to extend his current term which ends in 2024.  Putin draws most of his support from the older part of the population that has seen the hardships imposed following the collapse of Communism around 1990. This led to collapse of the ruble currency, increase in poverty, an effort by oligarchs to capture state enterprises, and a chaotic period for law and order. Shockingly during that period even life spans of Russians declined as reported in the WSJ. Liberals who supported the shift to democracy had not anticipated all the ill effects of introducing capitalist free market systems in such a sudden and free fall way. Such sudden shifts to free markets are now better understood and seen as the wrong way, as western capital markets fail without inbuilt protections, safety net for workers and retired people, and are subject to serious distortions if no vigilant authority exists. This is in reality not a free market but a market captured by the few, in the interests of the few. Once this was clear retired people, pensioners, military, law enforcement, and liberals realizing what had happened shifted support to United Russia founded by Mr. Putin. Mr. Putin faces the typical situation faced by incumbents over long periods where there is a sense of the need for change. Yet the pandemic and other economic crises that could happen in the event of mismanaged economy are never really too distant for countries such as Russia, China, India that are developed but yet have not the strong industrial base of US, Germany, France. Such economic crises including the ruble currency and Russian energy companies were better managed under Putin than under the chaotic period following the collapse of communism and the introduction of so called "free markets" that were anything but. During the recentfree fall in oil prices Putin was able to manage a transition period with the help of president Trump who negotiated a price for oil with the Saudis to protect US shale oil workers and companies, as well as Russian workers and oil companies. As a result Russians particularly young people look for alternative places to vote for opposition parties such as Liberals, Communist party, and other parties. But the majority of Russians including those working for state energy and other state companies tend to stay with Putin's choices for state, regional and federal administration and for parliament. Nationalist spirit also provides additional support as Putin has restored Russia's status as one of the important nations in the world. Some missteps such as interference in US elections have led to a loss of some of this international influence, yet even president Biden understands the situation in Russia and is willing to work with Putin with new rules of conduct Under the Russian system about 70% of the laws are not made by parliament but are done by the government and the administration of the president and then go through parliament. In addition to parliamentary vote there are 6 governor races and three races for heads of regional republics. ...