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JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-Host: Thaddeus McCooter, WJR, The Great Voice of the Great Lakes
 
Hour One
Monday  2 November 2015   / Hour 1, Block A: Bill Roggio, LongWarJournal.org & FDD; Tom Joscelyn, Long War Journal senior editor; in re:  The Egyptian-born al Zawahiri, now head of al Qaeda, claimed that to win, need to fight the West and Jerusalem. This is part of the struggle between al Q and ISIS; note that l Qaeda does, indeed, have pretensions to arrogating and owning territory, to establishing the true caliphate.  Iraq: Samarra, just north of Baghdad; Shia militia, astride the road to Tikrit, Mosul.  Mookie's crew got beat by ISIS.  Heavy pickups wit machine gins, IEDs. heavy artillery captured from the Iraqi military and the militias.  / People – men, women, children - in cages on the backs of trucks, being transported around as human shields by Jaish al Islam, which cooperates with al Qaeda, run by an aspiring Damascus warlord (backed by Saudis, thuslinkd to the USA).  Confederate in Shenandoah Valley; the Union lashed captured Confederates on cow-catchers at the front of supply trains. 
Monday  2 November 2015   / Hour 1, Block B: Bill Roggio, LongWarJournal.org & FDD; Tom Joscelyn, Long War Journal senior editor; in re:  Al Qaeda leader killed in an air strike in Kunar province  Al Q ran camps in 2008, -9, -10.. In southern Afghanistan: the largest al Q training camp US military has found since 2001;  one of two was 30 sq mi.  Combined, required 63 air strikes plus 200 US commandos to "take them out." Facility was completely built in 1014; took nine months before he US discovered it.
Monday  2 November 2015   / Hour 1, Block C:   Gordon Chang, Forbes.com, in re: Adm Wu  Sheng-li: "If the US continues with such provocative acts . . . could spark war." He's the chief of the Chinese navy. In past, hothead comments came from people not in the hierarchy; this time, he is in the line of command, being at the top (under Xi Jin-ping) – can make good on any threat he utters.  Meaning: We're prepared to fight you, having ships laden with missiles.  How much latitude does Adm Wu have to take action under his own plan?  Xi depends on flag officers for support. US Adm Harry Harris, who coined "Great Wall of Sand," intends many more freedom of navigation sorties.   Enoch Powell: "History is littered with wars that everyone knew wouldn't happen." . . . Note rapid diminution of Chinese economy, added to other problems, in a toxic brew.   Mfrg in conrtraction for eight consecutive months. In the three mos of the third quarter, $460.6 billion in capital flight out of China – almost half a trillion, being almost two trillion a year.  No nation can survive that for long.   . . . Use draconian method of stopping all external transfers?  Peoples Daily and Global Times all play heavily on the conflict in thte South China Sea – they're painting themselves into a corner with no inch to spare. Highly dangeous.  What the US does is protect freedom of navigation and cannot back down. Western business, policy, academics – everybody hoped against hope that China would enmesh itself in the world community; it has not. We must all recalculate. Swiftly.
China’s Dangerous War Talk about the South China Sea The air and sea shadow boxing could lead to bloody brawl with the U.S., warns the head of China’s navy. And the warning itself is the scary part. Over the weekend, China’s military released photographs of its heavily armed fighter aircraft training, it said, over the South China Sea, and claimed they flew out of an unnamed airstrip in those contested waters. The Chinese did not give the specific site, but the runway is believed to be on Woody (Yongxing) Island, according to the South China Morning Post.  It was the latest reaction to last week’s freedom of navigation exercise conducted by the USS Lassen, one of the U.S. Navy’s guided-missile destroyers. The Lassen, watched by American reconnaissance aircraft off in the distance, sailed within 12 nautical miles of Subi and Mischief Reefs in the Spratly chain of rocks, reefs, and islets in the South China Sea—waters claimed by Beijing.  And it comes after a menacing statement by the chief of China’s navy, who raised the specter of open war with the United States in a way that can only be construed as a threat.   “If the United States continues with these kinds of dangerous, provocative acts, there could well be a seriously pressing situation between frontline forces from both sides on the sea and in the air, or even a minor incident that sparks war,” said Admiral Wu Shengli, according to Reuters.
Did the Chinese invent arrogance?  The chief of China's navy just threatened to launch a war over freedom of navigation exercises--after Chinese warships just sailed into American territorial water.   Capital is leaving China at an unprecedented rate.    Escalation Game.  South China Sea: Australia's live-fire exercise with China's navy could be 'PR disaster', expert warns   South China Sea Dispute 2015: Armed Chinese Fighter Jets Train over Controversial Spratly Islands
Monday  2 November 2015   / Hour 1, Block D:  Francis Rose, Federal News Radio, in re:  . . .  Sen Clinton said the VA situation may not be as good as it could be but that overall people are satisfied with treatment. Of course, there are frequent, horrifying incidents. "Don't roll over a rock, lest you find . . ."     Officials inside the VA set up jobs for themselves outside of Washington, moving out he leaders of those veterans's facilities and installing themselves. Also got staggeringly enormous bonuses to move: $200,000-plus to move from Washington to Baltimore.   . . .  Finally, subpoenas issued and testimony today; some took the Fifth. They thought they wouldn't get caught.  "This kind of misconduct goes on all the time inside the VA."  The pitch: An implicit admission by the VA that it can't take care of all the needs of the veterans it'll have to deal with in coming years, so it's  sending Congress a request to become specialist in the kinds of maladies evinced by vets, hen have those with more mundane illnesses to use a different system. 
 
Hour Two
Monday  2 November 2015   / Hour 2, Block A:  David M Drucker, Senior Congressional correspondent, John Fund, NRO: in re: New Speaker of the House: Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.  So good on TV, no material for Comedy Central.  Ability to set a far-reaching agenda and effectively convey that, even to people who don't speak Conservative. Can he command 218 Republican votes?  Boehner's failing was that he couldn't get them to do that. Ryan's always been this good on TV – he was on every single channel this past weekend; was he at the Mets game? – his talent is to sell his ideas.  . . .  The House was a particularly dysfunctional committee; will now be an increasingly rational voice of sanity.  Ryan has promised that there'll be more, democratic reforms to the House, and the Hasert Rule ("Nothing goes through till there's a majority") will be honored.  . . . Said the Party has been clever tactically but poor in vision;  will have to engage in actual ideas and put actual proposals on the table. Mrs Clinton has done that: more of everything from the government.  WSJ poll: Dr Ben Carson at the lead.   Sens Rubio & Cruz in Tier 1A, best-positioned to move ahead; then Govs Bush, Kasich, Christie, in Tiers 2 and 3.   Expect many more shifts.  . . . Mrs Fiorina - she's done very well but just isn't grabbing people.  Almost as though no more lightning left in the bottle.  The Evangelical vote is esp important in Iowa and South Carolina; and as good as Fiorina is, Carson's sincerity is not in doubt to them.  Huckabee is capturing the lion's share of Evangelical vote. 
Monday  2 November 2015   / Hour 2, Block B: David M Drucker, Senior Congressional correspondent, John Fund, NRO: in re: Jeb Bush: accomplishment and experience don't work here because people feel let down by experienced pols.  He accidentally has bad timing.  At the debate, he was badly instructed that he had to be aggressive against Rubio; never recovered, Jeb Bush is not an attack dog; Mike Murphy can do it as a surrogate, but the Bush family doesn't.   Jeb Bush's "internal dialogue"  needs to get out from between his ears and speak to the electorate and what t wants to hear.  Buzzfeed said today that politics have changed a lot in the twelve years since Bush last ran for office  He has more policy experience than anyone else in the field,, but  . . . 
Monday  2 November 2015   / Hour 2, Block C:  Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re: Knife intifada continues despite discussions and impending video cams everywhere, on Temple Mount. 80-year-old woman among 3 stabbed in Rishon Lezion terror attack – look for headline: 80-year-old woman walks into knife.  Stabbings incited by imams, call also for the new caliphate.    Attacks pop up widely, no central address. Even many Palestinians object to this.  Regional concern over an Iranian terror group operating out of Gaza.  PA has wrongly said that al Aqsa/the Temple Mount is under assault by Israel – there's no reality whatsoever to this. It's bizarre – an exercise in mass delusion.  Palestine is the only place in the world where murders are given stipends for their killings. / Erdogan's election, giving him a parliamentary majority and so rules without a coalition. Kurds were threatened and beaten before the elections; pix of dead Kurds's being dragged in the street – routine; check to see if the body is booby-trapped. Erdogan's proclivities, alliance with ISIS.    Erdogan's Islamicization even as he keeps Turkey in NATO Intent on replacing the modernizations of Ataturk.  He's at war with Assad but more so against the Kurds.  Used to have an alliance with Assad, which turned sour. Does a lot of business with Iran, enabled Iran to bypass sanctions. Have an alliance with Assad that turned sour; dangerous border with Syria.  Two seriously hurt, one lightly; attacker, a 19-year-old Palestinian from Hebron, is saved from angry passersby by police; 'If Rabin were alive, he would have made peace with the Palestinians'  Peres snarky: Netanyahu was never sincere about making peace
Monday  2 November 2015   / Hour 2, Block D: Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re:  European boycott,:  in the next few days, speaking of having products in hte West Bank be labeled as beginning a boycott, There are 23,000Palestinains employed in 330 factories in West Bank, an 20,000 more in transport and supply; all together, more than one-fourth of the Palestinian workforce will be affected, Europeans don't label Syria or Iranian goods  isolating and discriminatory.   ISIS attacks Syria.  MI5: highest threat level seen in many  years have stopped dozens of plots, many terrorists travelling from Syria to Europe, and plots against UK run out of Syria by Internet. French security is equally concerned.  The Iran deal thrashed about all summer, now nothing Khamenei threatens to block all US imports (and distributing "Death to America" T-shirts.) ; 200 Majlis members wrote to Khamenei – wants an economy of resistance, change terms of nuclear deals, suspend and remove the economic sanctions (no snap-backs), and removal of all sanctions relating to terrorism and human rights.
 
Hour Three
Monday  2 November 2015   / Hour 3, Block A:  Mary Kissel, Wall Street Journal Editorial Board & host of Opinion Journal on WSJ Video; in re:  . . .  [coverage of domestic and intl politics]; We have a US president who cares more about what the mullahs think than what the American electorate does.  Why are 50 Special Forces going into Syria?   A sop to the domestic audience – sending Americans  into combat in dangerous situations.  / Online charter schools: more than 2 million students use these.  Study from Credo (Center for Research on Education Outcomes) group in California.  http://www.wsj.com/video/opinion-journal-marco-rubios-momentum/DF028075-A391-426B-A69B-08407A04EB77.html  ; http://www.wsj.com/video/opinion-journal-strongmen-of-the-middle-east/2529C852-E14A-44B9-BC5E-B27E3B6BCBEE.html  ;  http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-syrian-illusions-1446511023
Monday  2 November 2015   / Hour 3, Block B:  Michael Ledeen, FDD, in re: Nimazi in Evin – he was associated with the stooges, now he's in jail – he's one of theirs, so his imprisonment is amazing to all. Does Trita Parsi have his cell number? He's a founder of the treasonous NIAC.  Iranian regime loves to take American hostages; they think it shows heir power since the US cant even get its guys out of prison.   A lot of signaling – backchannel letters between Obama Administration and the Iranian regime – and Khamenei won't sign the deal.  He demands inter al a total abolition of sanctions, and no new ones; and a hint of new sanctions (called snap-back), then the whole deal is off.  Intend to ban iPhones, Marlboros, Coca-Cola – but buying Boeing aircraft parts.   http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelledeen/2015/11/01/yet-another-american-hostage-in-tehran/
Monday  2 November 2015   / Hour 3, Block C: Robert Zimmerman, behind the black, in re: ISS celebrates 15 years of continuous occupation The International Space Station today celebrates the anniversary of the arrival of its first crew and the completion of fifteen years of continuous human activity in space.  The previous record of continuous human occupation, on Mir, was ten years. Hopefully, the record now is permanent and ongoing, and will never have an end.
Monday  2 November 2015   / Hour 3, Block D:  Sinam M0hammed, European Representative of Rojava Self-Ruled Administration in Syria, in re: What is Rojava – where is it, and what does it want?
Syrian Kurdistan or Western Kurdistan (Kurdish: ڕۆژاڤای کوردستان‎, Rojavayê Kurdistanê), commonly known in Kurdish as Rojava, is a de facto autonomous region in northern Syria. The region gained its autonomy in November 2013 as part of the ongoing Rojava Revolution, establishing a society based on principles of direct democracy, gender equality, and sustainability. Rojava consists of the three cantons of (from east to west) Jazira, Kobani and Afrin. Rojava is not officially recognized as autonomous by the government of Syria and is a participant in the Syrian Civil War.
Kurds generally consider Rojava to be one of the four parts of a greater Kurdistan, which also includes parts of southeastern Turkey (Northern Kurdistan), northern Iraq (Southern Kurdistan), and western Iran (Eastern Kurdistan). However, Rojavan government and society is polyethnic.
 
 
Hour Four
Monday  2 November 2015   / Hour 4, Block A: Mary Anastasia O'Grady, WSJ, Americas, in re:  Do Colombian Children Matter?
Monday  2 November 2015   / Hour 4, Block B:  Sebastian v Gorka, Marine Corps University, in re: http://www.businessinsider.sg/sweden-nato-finland-2015-10/#.VjfLKK6rSL9Monday  2 November 2015   / Hour 4, Block C: Richard A Epstein, Hoover & Chicago Law, and NYU Law, via Defining Ideas, in re: Is Obamacare Sustainable?
Monday  2 November 2015   / Hour 4, Block D: Richard A Epstein, Hoover & Chicago Law, and NYU Law, via Defining Ideas, in re:  The Decline of ObamaCare - Fewer enrollees and rising loss ratios will force a rewrite in 2017