Photo, left:  La bataille des plaines d’Abraham, à Québec, en 1759; with boats ferrying British reinforcements across the St. Lawrence river.
 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Thaddeus McCotter, WJR, The Great Voice of the Great Lakes
 
Hour One
Monday 8 August 2016 / Hour 1, Block A: Tom Joscelyn, Long War Journal senior editor & FDD,  and Bill Roggio, Long War Journal senior editor  & FDD, in re: Jamaat al-Arar? – pressing advantage: suicide homicide attack at a Pakistani hospital in the chaos of an emergency room. With suicide  vests holding ball bearings; while many mourners were at the hospital.  Pakistani Taliban faction, broke away in 2014, then reunited; leaders re closely linked to Afghan Taliban; and al Q (Zawahiri); wants Pakistan’s nukes.  On Easter Day, blew up a Lahore Christian park killing 90 people (mostly women and children). Cross-claim by Khorasan Province IS, perhaps in conjunction with Uzbeks.    The tragic news of the siege of Aleppo. Key battlefields: Aleppo, where insurgents have the most manpower.  Important for the rebranded al Nusrah.  “We're not really al Qaeda anymore.”  “If we unite, we can overcome the Assad regime.”  Libya: IS (Baghdadi) and the Durna-based al Qaeda: not likely to join forces in Libya.  Baghdadi would most most love to kill Jilani; and reciprocally. TOW missiles being fired: from which arsenals?  Advocates of TOW missile program say they've only fired a few – but then release them to other groups and fire to knock out Assad’s tanks; then Nusrah rushes in and takes control of the territory.
Monday 8 August 2016 / Hour 1, Block B: Tom Joscelyn, Long War Journal senior editor & FDD,  and Bill Roggio, Long War Journal senior editor  & FDD, in re:  US drone airstrikes in Yemen in July. Bizarre – like the French foreign legion attacking a local pasha because he may have stolen their horses. CENTCOM claims -  well, Yemen is total chaos: Houthis (Iran), and Yemeni govt, and al Q in Arabian Peninsula (AQAP is working to attack the US in all ways), all at cross purposes.  In July, the NSC claimed US will retaliate .  . . so we kill a few guys in cars, but who? Mid-level leaders? Fighters?   Pres Obama: We’ll degrade and destroy al Q – but we’re whacking sand dunes. Abubakar Shekau* (Kanuri; has been described as possessing a photographic memory; speaks Hausa, Arabic, and English.): too psycho even for ISIS! A new bar for cruelty, was a longtime leader of Boko Haram in Nigeria, sidelined as a leader there.  He pledged allegiance to Baghdadi last year, and Boko Haram was designated an IS province; but IS replaced him with the son of the original founder of Boko Haram.  Rumor is that he treated Baghdadi’s rep very badly.
* State Department has had a standing reward of US$7 million for information leading to Shekau's capture through its Rewards for Justice program.
Monday 8 August 2016 / Hour 1, Block C:  Gordon G. Chang, Daily Beast & Forbes.com, in re: Chinese govt ships escort 230 Chinese vessels to the East China Sea (Between China and Japan; disputed islands are the Senkakus [Diaoyutai]).  Japanese coast guards vessels there; China claimed “indisputable sovereignty over islands; Japan summoned Chinese ministers, Nothing in the Japanese constitution prevents  e Japan from using nukes. Japan says China is stationing mil radar on oil-drilling rigs in the East China Sea.  US tries to get South Korea and Japan to work together to deal with these provocations.  US sent emissaries to try to calm the waters, but China sees not much US resolve so ignores it. New Japanese Foreign Minister woman: very tough.  PM Abe is, too.  Note that North Korea is trying to break up alliances: US-South Korea, and blossoming friendship of ROK- Japan. China’s provocations against Australia are simply annoying Aussies In Olympics, an Aussie swimmer said that a Chinese swimmer was “a doper.”  China is conducting itself more or less insanely, provoking open fire; Beijing doesn't seem to see what it's creating, esp a situation where a ghastly accident occurs, The US is deeply remiss in failing to rally the region; have open, tough discussions with China.  Need a serious containment policy! Swarm of armed Chinese vessels challenging Japan right now, 
Monday 8 August 2016 / Hour 1, Block D: Charles Pellegrino, explorer, writer, lecturer, in re: Hiroshima bomb struck two miles off-target, almost directly over a Catholic cathedra; took out automobile plants. Was plutonium, twice as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. Why did the US do it?  Because we were getting utter silence form the imperial palace.  US didn’t know that the emperor had recorded three copies of a surrender announcement, but  a palace coup was under way by rogue military and actually holding the emperor captive in his own palace
Hiroshima gets all the attention, but Nagasaki teaches the more important lesson. The need to destroy Hiroshima will be forever debated, but the counterarguments were unpersuasive to President Harry Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson. A world war had taken the lives of tens of millions. Noncombatants were not spared. When a war-ending weapon was finally available — too late to make unnecessary the Normandy landing, but just in time to substitute for the invasion of Japan’s home islands — Truman and Stimson chose to end the carnage as soon as possible.
The arguments in favor of the first explosive use of an atomic bomb do not apply to the second. Japan’s War Cabinet was absorbing the dual shocks of Hiroshima and Russia’s declaration of war against Japan. At a minimum, Truman and Stimson should have waited more than three days before obliterating Nagasaki and killing its inhabitants. The argument used to justify the fate of Nagasaki was that Japan’s dead-enders needed to know that more atomic bombs would rain death and destruction unless they surrendered. This justification is not persuasive because everyone understood that the immense machinery of U.S. war production would be working overtime to make more atomic bombs, and that it was just a matter of time when they would rain more destruction over Japan.  http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/08/07/nagasaki-nuclear-anniversary-weapons-japan-obama-column/88065742/ ; https://www.amazon.com/Hell-Back-Hiroshima-Pacific-Perspectives/dp/14422...
 
Hour Two
Monday 8 August 2016 / Hour 2, Block A:   David M Drucker, Senior Congressional correspondent, Washington Examiner, and John Fund, NRO, in re:  50 intell & security analysts write a letter saying that Mr Trump is deeply unqualified to be resident.  Sen Susan Collins (of Maine; enormously popular there) also rejects Trump’s candidacy.  Significant not just because Trump is trying to get one of Maine’s electoral votes; but Collins is not a “Northeastern squish”; she’s a fiscal conservative, and no Olympia Snow (who was more moderate and a negotiator).  Johnson of Wisconsin and Portman of Ohio: may also be moving away from Trump.  What wd it take to have the House join this stampede?  If Trump is losing at polls,?  and check the districts that matter.  Why didn’t Trump endorse Ryan and McCain? Out of revenge.  When he finally did, looked as though he was reading a script from a hostage video. He doesn’t think much of what this is all worth, so conducts himself with disdain for the normal process.  He triumphed in primaries but no sign that he’s helped downticket candidates. Midwesterners saw Trump’s behavior as [immature] and Ryan as the adult in the room.  Oops—football season; time to worry about the Lions – and the Tigers  . . .
Monday 8 August 2016 / Hour 2, Block B: David M Drucker, Senior Congressional correspondent, Washington Examiner, and John Fund, NRO, in re: How will downticket candidates protect themselves?  Huge gender gap. How do  you distance yourself without alienating GOP who are voting for both you and Trump. A challenge. Am sceptical of putting to much weight n summer polls. We’ll see better in September where vulnerable senators are. / Clinton won’t get many votes from Phila collar c0unties; but many are turned off by the mud bath.  If they stay home, subtract a GOP vote.  Every day they wake up and wonder, “What did he say yesterday?”  Horrible for morale.  Toomey is already distancing himself from Trump in a big way; all he wants to do is win. Danger is that GOP enters Nov so demoralized that it may lose even its own State infrastructures and take a long time to recover. 
Monday 8 August 2016 / Hour 2, Block C:  Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re: World Vision – Australian has suspended funding via World Vision to Palestinian areas, as has Germany. Many intl govts funnel money therethrough to needy populations, but long suspect; 38-y-old head of Gaza branch has been in Hamas since childhood and so was his father.  Younger established fictitious humanitarian projects, even agricultural associations, to cover transfer of money to Hamas. Used a nonexistent greenhouse project to bld tunnels; for fishermen, to buy diving suit for Hama; warehouses unloaded goods for Hamas. $4 mil to tunnels, also for psychological support, education; salaries to terrorists and activists.  Huge sums of money mostly from Western countries.  Other figures in Gaza  did the same.  / Ahmedinejad has surfaced again: wrote to Pres Obama to plead for release of money ; had been held to pay families of victims of Iranian lethal violence.  Ahmadinejad wants to make a comeback and be president again (don't hold your breath). Shahram Amiri: nuclear physicist executed by Teheran yesterday.  Number of executions has skyrocketed under Rouhani; used to terrorize populace.  Was abducted? from Saudi Arabia while on hajj; US offered him $4 mil but left the US before receiving a dime. Went home to a big welcome.  It's said that he was mentioned in Clinton emails that were released by wikileaks, causing him to be killed. 
Monday 8 August 2016 / Hour 2, Block D: Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re:  Raoul Wallenberg: a Swedish dipl who risked his life to save thousands of Hungarian Jews from gas chambers. A momentous event of human heroism; is an honorary US citizen.    Then disappeared in 1945. Said that he died in a gulag prison. Ivan Serov, original head of KGB, wrote  in his diary that Wallenberg was executed in a Moscow prison in 1947.   Order came from Stalin and FM Molotov.  Sweden and US and others pressuring Putin to reveal the truth. Why won't he?   Because of shame over the lies.  Why did Stalin hold him that long, and why kill him in 1947.
Iran is moving into Lebanon.  OIC and others . . . Today, Iranian officials, a member of the majlis, said Iran would step in and fill the financial void, had weapons packed and ready to ship.  Can't afford to see the Lebanese army collapse, esp anent Syria. Recall that Iran killed Rafiq Hariri.  Today Hezbollah and the Lebanese army are one.  Visit to MKO; escalating rhetoric. Iran moving in to Central Asia: mtg in Baku: Putin, Aliev and Iranian on economic integration. US uninterest drives these closer; will bld a north-south pipeline and circumvent the east-west pipeline the US has agitated for. Pressure from Iran, from Putin, for region to knuckle under.  [Russia has ignored the intersets of Armenia in this ploy.]
 
Hour Three
Monday 8 August 2016 / Hour 3, Block A:   Mary Kissel, WSJ, in re: Paul Ryan, Venezuela, Russian doping Olympics. Paul Nehlen doesn’t represent the voters of Janesville, Wisconsin; his money comes from outsiders, incl Ann Coulter. Trump may have realized that he needs Ryan because Ryan’s policies have support across the spectrum of the [arty. Venezuela:  food shortages, plundering, theft of live chickens from trucks on the street. Food rationing; military dictatorship will send people to the countryside to do ag work. Supply doesn’t meet demand in top-down economies.  Chavez set the county on the road to ruin.    Finally, neighboring nations – Argentina and Chile — are starting to turn themselves around and speak about Maduro.  Olympics: a swimmer said on TV that her Russian colleague was caught doping twice. A bad mark against the dilettante (or turning-a-blind-eye) IOC. 
Monday 8 August 2016 / Hour 3, Block B:    Josh Rogin,Washington Post, in re: Clinton’s email server did not lead to an Iranian scientist’s death. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2016/08/08/clintons-email-server-did-not-lead-to-an-iranian-scientists-death/
Monday 8 August 2016 / Hour 3, Block C:   Daniel Griswold, Mercatus Center, in re: What has changed in recent decades is what our factories produce. Americans today make fewer shirts, shoes, toys and tables than we did 30 years ago. Instead, America’s 21st century manufacturing sector is dominated by petroleum refining, pharmaceuticals, plastics, fabricated metals, machinery, computers and other electronics, motor vehicles and other transportation equipment, and aircraft and aerospace equipment.
We produce more manufacturing value with fewer employees than in years past because today’s workers are so much more productive. They are better educated, equipped with more sophisticated capital machinery and turn out more valuable products than their parents’ generation. And as a result they are better paid, with total manufacturing payrolls rising during the last decade even as the number of workers declined.
The political anger about lost manufacturing jobs should be aimed at technology, not trade. According to a recent study by the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University, productivity growth caused 85% of the job losses in manufacturing from 2000 to 2010, a period that saw 5.6 million factory jobs disappear. In that same period, trade accounted for a mere 13% of job losses. http://mercatus.org/expert_commentary/globalization-isnt-killing-factory-jobs-trade-actually-why-manufacturing-40
Monday 8 August 2016 / Hour 3, Block D: Francis Rose, NationalDefenseWeek.com (WMAL) and francisrose.com, and now Channel 7 in Washington; and Channel 8: "Government matters";  in re: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-07-26/trump-releases-10-step-veterans-affairs-solution
 
Hour Four
Monday 8 August 2016 / Hour 4, Block A:  Northern Armageddon: The Battle of the Plains of Abraham and the Making of the American Revolution, by D. Peter MacLeod  Part I of II  (segment 1 of 8)
Monday 8 August 2016 / Hour 4, Block B:  Northern Armageddon: The Battle of the Plains of Abraham and the Making of the American Revolution, by D. Peter MacLeod Part I of II  (segment 2 of 8)
Monday 8 August 2016 / Hour 4, Block C:  Northern Armageddon: The Battle of the Plains of Abraham and the Making of the American Revolution, by D. Peter MacLeod Part I of II  (segment3 of 8)
Monday 8 August 2016 / Hour 4, Block D:  Northern Armageddon: The Battle of the Plains of Abraham and the Making of the American Revolution, by D. Peter MacLeod Part I of II  (segment 4 of 8)