The John Batchelor Show

Thursday 1 December 2016

Air Date: 
December 01, 2016

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Photo, left: A Khakass shrine of prayer flags (here, Buddhist and shamanic, originally Bön [Tibetan: བོན་]) at https://galkarazin.wordpress.com/2014/07/17/things-i-wrote-during-my-wee...
Galka Razin visited Tuva, formerly Tannu Tuva (see: the physicist Richard Feynmann’s long, almost-trip there)  and has blogged about her trip:  https://galkarazin.wordpress.com/author/ceciliamarts/ ;  including: A trip to the mysterious Sunduki mountain ridge—Siberia’s Stonehenge  https://galkarazin.wordpress.com/author/ceciliamarts/page/2/
Here, Robert Zimmerman of BehindtheBlack.com points to Roscosmos’s having lost a rocket, “Progress MS-04 cargo craft . . .the automated spaceship was lost as it flew nearly 120 miles (190 kilometers) over the Tuva Republic in Southern Russia.”
In fact, Tuva is one of the least-publicly-known regions on Earth, being a formerly semi-independent area inhabited largely by Khakass people.  Who are these? A South Siberian indigenous people ancient in this region who reigned over empires on the steppe; a highly-devloped culture; excellent horsemen who raced over great distances.  Your editor had the privilege of visiting Khakassia, of travelling over the steppe to see the remnants of Khakass imperial palaces (whose contents had long earlier been stolen by Russian anthropologists and sent to St Petersburg) and being a guest in the mountains with a traditional family of elders in a local version of a yurta, an octagonal log house having no internal plumbing.   The Khakass Liberation Front (extant at that time) explained that two thousand years ago and before, their ancestors were tall and blond with blue eyes; then Chinghis Khan came through and the Khakass nation became short and dark-haired.  Archaeology tends to confirm this.
Post-Khan, the language became Turkic, at present whose closest cousin is Uzbek.  Editor almost but not quite got to Kyzyl.
 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-hosts: Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents.
 
Hour One
Thursday  1 December 2016 / Hour 1, Block A:   Michael Ledeen, FDD, in re:  Gen James Mattis to be nominated as Sec Def.   Mike Flynn & James Mattis, Trump’s Generals.  @MichaelLedeen, @FollowFDD.  / “Fixing Intel” is textbook Flynn, documenting both his ability to think outside the box, his willingness to ignore rank and give greater authority to men and women below traditional decision-making levels of the system, and take his case to a broader audience. Finally, it underscores Flynn’s rare willingness to bring bad news to his superiors. McChrystal welcomed it; top brass and the White House, not so much.
Finally, there’s the question of his view of Putin. He attended a conference in Moscow, and ended up sitting next to the Russian dictator. This led to accusations that the general was somehow soft on Russians. Yet Flynn publicly criticized Russian policies, and anyone who cares to read Field of Fight will find this, which is hardly generous to Putin:
Although I believe America and Russia could find mutual ground fighting Radical Islamists, there is no reason to believe Putin would welcome cooperation with us; quite the contrary in fact.
So the charges are false. Certainly Flynn has his shortcomings, but his strengths, as Gen. McAffrey says, are extraordinary. I think Donald Trump made an excellent choice, and I think we’re fortunate to have such a straightforward and unconventional man in the White House to advise the new president.  http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelledeen/2016/11/25/in-praise-of-flynn/#20ea9a3929c1  
Thursday  1 December 2016 / Hour 1, Block B:   Erica Goode, New York Times, in re:
Alaskan village  —   Final Defense of Shaktoolik Alaska as the Winter Storms Roll In.  @EGoode, @NYTimes.    /   In Shaktoolik, as in other villages around the state, residents say winter is arriving later than before and rushing prematurely into spring, a shift scientists tie to climate change. With rising ocean temperatures, the offshore ice and slush that normally buffer the village from storm surges and powerful ocean waves are decreasing. Last winter, for the first time elders here can remember, there was no offshore ice at all.
The battering delivered by the storms has eaten away at the land around the village, which occupies 1.1 square miles on a three-mile strip of land. According to one estimate, that strip is losing an average of 38,000 square feet — or almost an acre — a year. Flooding from the ocean and the swollen river waters has become so severe that the last big storm came close to turning Shaktoolik into an island.
“That was pretty scary,” said Agnes Takak, the administrative assistant for the village’s school. “It seemed like the waves would wash right over and cover us, but thankfully they didn’t.”
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/29/science/alaska-global-warming.html
Thursday  1 December 2016 / Hour 1, Block C:  Niall Ferguson,  Hoover and The American Interest, in re: Henry Kissinger says the world today is “flammable.”  Brought together ideas Dr Kissinger had expressed over decades; Chinese relations are deteriorating; between Russia and the West have got worse on Obama’s watch; Europe in disintegration conflict and conflagration in the Middle East.
Wants Trump to “seek comprehensive discussion.”   Since On China, Dr Kissinger argues that the US needs to seek co-evolution, avoid a rising power confronting a mature power, the Thucydides Trap.  Not just trade and currency; but S China Sea, North Korea; radical Islam, Middle East stability.  The “pivot to Asia” was essentially a containment of China which China saw right through and was a fiasco.
Russia becoming a Yugoslavia?  Argument: however much you dislike Putin, consider that tit could be greatly worse; moderately worse, relations deteriorate and we reenact the Cold War.
Dr K:Let's stop heaping opprobrium on Putin and try to see things from his eyes. 
History is to nations what character is to individuals. 
Ukraine will have to be a bridge.
Brexit: Euros endlessly debate tactics, never strategy! Brexit is s symbol. We've lived through a century of Euro decline beginning with WWI.  Absent the UK, Europe grows ever more introspective. Use this as an opportunity: 
Trump is quite right to say that the Europeans have been free-riding; you have to shape up or become irrelevant. The fiasco in Mahgreb and Middle East is not all a result of American policies and deeds; it's also very much a European creation. 
Thursday  1 December 2016 / Hour 1, Block D:  Niall Ferguson,  Hoover, and The American Interest, in re:  As the Trump administration opens, Dr Kissinger on the possibilities.   Proposes Theodore Roosevelt as a Trump role model – TR wasn’t patient with Wilson’s high-minded idealism; rather, the US had to learn important lessons from great European statesmen; “A milk-and-water righteous . . .”  --TR.  Ditch the high-falutin’ language and be practical with spheres of interest.  US cd conceivably have simultaneously improved relations with Russia and with China: a tripartite understanding among the three most important powers.  Post-Brexit UK can play a role. Trump is Anglophile, unlike Obama. 
US Mideast policy shifts radically and quite imagining Iranian good faith. 
Make it very clear that hyphenated-Americans aren't welcome; During recent campaign, debate on radical Islam and the status of Muslims in America.   Need to quit kidding ourselves that Islam is a religion of peace: the semi-nonviolent imams in the US,  teachers of hatred in our midst . . . A century ago it wasn’t Islam, it was: Could you be a German-American who felt grater loyalty to German? Many Americans were loyal to Berlin as WWI began.  Today, many Muslims are more loyal to a caliphate. To be welcome here, you must have your primary loyalty to the US.    Failing policy of the Obama administration anent international Islam; many Muslim citizens are very patriotic  American, but we need to attend to those whose first loyalty its to the Islamic state; they’re dangerous to us and must be addressed.
Kissinger & Nixon speaking of what was to be done in 1969. 
..  ..  .. 
Kissinger on Trump: the Flammables of Foreign Policy. Theodore Roosevelt & Trump. Niall Ferguson, @HooverInst @Nfergus   /  Given a weakened, traumatized, post-imperial Russia, the recognition Putin craves is that of “a great power, as an equal, and not as a supplicant in an American-designed system.” Kissinger’s message to Trump is well calibrated to appeal to his instincts: “It is not possible to bring Russia into the international system by conversion. It requires deal-making, but also understanding.” The central deal, Kissinger argues, would turn Ukraine into “a bridge between NATO and Russia rather than an outpost of either side,” like Finland or Austria in the Cold War, “free to conduct its own economic and political relationships, including with both Europe and Russia, but not party to any military or security alliance.” Such a non-aligned Ukraine would also need to be decentralized, increasing the autonomy of the contested eastern regions, where there has been intermittent conflict since separatist movements received Russian support in the wake of the Crimean annexation. The alternative to such a deal is that we may inadvertently over-use our financial and military superiority, turning a post-Putin Russia into a vast version of Yugoslavia, “wracked by conflict stretching from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok.”  http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/11/21/donald-trumps-new-world-order/
 
 
Hour Two
Thursday  1 December 2016 / Hour 2, Block A:  Ghaith Al-Omari, Washington Institute; in re: Palestinian General Conference (Fatah), supposed to have been held every five years (although rarely done), or at least at pivotal moments. Not so this time.   . Mahmoud Abbas surrounded by his lieutenants, all looking at least their eighty-five years old. Not a fresh crew.  Abbas using this conference to entrench his power, exclude opponents, and be able to say: l say, “I’ve been re-elected, quit bothering me.” Can Abbas gain enough members of the conference to support him? If to many of the  young cadre are bypassed, then the meeting might well increase instability.  Dahlan.  If he brings enough constituencies o bard, might be OK.  Dissatisfied persons/groups may turn to violence. The weakness of tyranny=y is succession   Does the PA have a Plan B?  Everyone talking – Egyptians Jordanians, UAE – everyone except Abbas, who fears becoming less relevant. 
Barghouti will win a seat, but will any of his supporters? Unlikely.   No need to scrap Oslo – that’d scrap the very PA. None of this helps Hamas, which has it's own problems., but might benefit from some Fatah weakness. Palestinians are weak, frightened, constrained by old men. Dangerous, a fuse. Had the Fatah conference been inclusive, it would have been stabilizing; as it is, it is not.  Old men make war when they’re weak.
·         http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/fatahs-general-conference-clarifying-succession-and-managing-dissent
·         http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/world/middleeast/mahmoud-abbas-fatah-palestinian-authority.html?_r=0
·         http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-fatah-conference-20161127-story.html
·         http://www.timesofisrael.com/military-intelligence-head-warns-of-instability-in-west-bank-possible-wave-of-terror/
·         http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Abbas-We-will-join-all-522-international-organizations-474121
·         http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Will-Mahmoud-Abbas-pay-salaries-to-the-arsonists-474102
Ghaith al-Omari, a senior Fellow at The Washington Institute, is the former executive director of the American Task Force on Palestine. Previously, he served in various positions within the Palestinian Authority, including advisor to the negotiating team during the 1999-2001 permanent-status talks.
Thursday  1 December 2016 / Hour 2, Block B:  Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, head intl spokesman for the IDF; anent:  Israel. ISIS-affiliated attackers at the Golan; four dead.  Attack appears not to have been much planned
They’d set up HQ at a very nearby abandoned Syrian fort; as soon as they crossed the in ether e was no going back.   A warning:  if you attack, you’ll pay a substantial price. Baghdadi said he’d go to Jerusalem; we have no intention to let that occur. 
Fires in Judea and Samaria: weather, plus we have in hand twenty suspects in arson attacks. 
Russia; Aoun.  Lebanese border calm but mist concerning: Hezbollah has a huge amt of weapons so we're constantly prepared.  The desert blooms in February; everyone must see this at east nce in a lifetime.
·         http://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-investigating-reports-of-shots-mortars-on-golan-heights/
·         http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4884827,00.html
·         http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Netanyahu-No-attacks-from-ISIS-will-be-tolerated-by-Israel-473885
·         http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4884637,00.html
·         http://www.timesofisrael.com/police-minister-nearly-half-of-fires-result-of-arson/
Peter Lerner is the lead spokesman for the IDF to the international media.
Thursday  1 December 2016 / Hour 2, Block C:  Elliott Abrams, CFR; in re: US policy under Trump. Will we see; Jerusalem, Israel?  Yes, this is our best chance. State will say, “It’s impossible.”  Trump will say, “Oh shut up.”
This eliminates the stupidity we saw from Obama as he spoke at Shimon Peres’s gravesite. Where did he think Peres was buried??  Relevant that Palestinian politics are a total mess; turn instead to “small ball” – institutions, schools, relevant ways of improving Palestinian life. Pres Carter’s plain hostility toward Israel in New York Times piece;  he’s a nonagenarian and is out of touch.  A hundred thirty-five nations recognize Palestine, and it's still not a state.  Israeli settlements are growing extremely slowly, Carter has o plan except to give useless, symbolic victory to Palestinians. Pres Obama make a final, last-ditch sweeping gesture? Probably.  Let cooler heads prevail: “Sir,  you’ve had your turn. Now go home.“   Gutteres at UN taking away the UN third-highest position from the US?  Let it clear that that would be expensive.
Gen Mattis as SecDef:  a man of strong opinions; will take a harder line against Iranian tomfoolery.  Also probably a stronger line on enforcing the Iranian nuclear dal which Iran has now often violates, IAEA reports show that we have less and less info! 
·         http://www.cfr.org/international-organizations-and-alliances/america-should-act-now-preserve-its-influence-united-nations/p38511
·         http://www.nationalreview.com/article/442549/jimmy-carter-israel-criticism-palestinian-recognition-call
·         http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/30/opinions/carter-call-recognizing-palestinian-statehood/index.html
·         https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/how-trump-could-surprise-the-world-on-israeli-palestinian-peace-making/2016/11/30/6e1f9c76-b5bc-11e6-959c-172c82123976_story.html?utm_term=.136a9a1bd18e
·         http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-officials-obama-has-nearly-ruled-out-un-action-on-israel/
Elliott Abrams is senior Fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in Washington, DC. He served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor in the administration of President George W. Bush, where he supervised U.S. policy in the Middle East for the White House. Abrams was also an assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration and received the secretary of state's Distinguished Service Award from Secretary George P. Shultz. In 2012, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy gave him its Scholar-Statesman Award.
Thursday  1 December 2016 / Hour 2, Block D:  Behnam Ben Taleblu, FDD; in re: Iran.   Gen Mattis as SecDef defines Iran as a rogue state.  Will the Iran deal survive scrutiny ad enforcement over the next year?? In it's current form it s of much re benefit to Iran than the US, and Teheran often brags of that.  Trump will either move to renegotiate or else be very scrupulous in enforcing requirements, History says diplomacy must be backed by force, of which none from Obama for eight years. Mattis: “It's the regime that engages in predation, not the people.” Am worried about Iran in the Bab al Mandaab, and a base in Yemen and Syria.  Iran doesn’t need a a base in either place to project power; low-intensity and asymmetrical warfare. Qassem Soleimani: “Iran unlike the US does not abandon its friends.”
Today, a 99-0 Senate vote on Iran Sanctions Act.   Coming, banking sanctions.  Iran’s predations in Yemen, in the Gulf, in Iraq,
·         http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/behnam-ben-taleblu-khamenei-threatens-reprisal-over-sanctions/
·         http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/behnam-ben-taleblu-iran-tightens-military-ties-with-china/
·         http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/behnam-ben-taleblu-will-donald-trump-fire-the-iran-nuclear-deal/
·         http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/behnam-ben-taleblu-the-eu-cozies-with-iran-at-its-peril/
·         http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/olli-heinonen1-concerns-about-a-reduction-of-transparency-in-iaea-reporting-on-irans-nucle/
·         http://freebeacon.com/national-security/iran-may-seek-naval-bases-yemen-syria/
·         http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/iranian-navy-to-escort-tankers-through-red-sea
Behnam Ben Taleblu is a Senior Iran Analyst at Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Previously, Behnam served as a Non-Resident Iran Research Fellow and Iran Research Analyst at FDD, where he leveraged his native Farsi skills in addition to subject-matter expertise. Behnam has provided FDD’s scholars, staff, and the wider foreign-policy community with open-source research and analysis on Iran-related issues including: nuclear non-proliferation, ballistic missiles, sanctions, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and the foreign policy debates within the Islamic Republic.
 
Will Donald Trump fire the Iran nuclear deal?  The election victory by Donald Trump, a billionaire businessman who has never held political office and is a neophyte on foreign policy, has left many observers wondering about the future direction of U.S. policy abroad. Against that backdrop, supporters of Israel are immediately focusing attention on Trump’s approach to the much-discussed Iran nuclear deal, which was approved by the Obama administration and five other Western governments in July 2015.
As a presidential candidate, Trump made a variety of comments regarding his opposition to the Iran nuclear deal, ranging from calls for stronger inspections to entirely nixing the Obama administration’s signing of the pact.
“You’d have to have onsite inspections anytime, anywhere, to start off with, which we don’t have at all. The whole deal is a terrible deal. There’s no way the Iranians are going to adhere to any deal we make,” Trump said in an interview with JNS.org in June 2015, shortly after he had announced his presidential candidacy and before the Iran deal was signed.
...
President-elect Trump “has cultivated a fair amount of ambiguity towards how he would approach the Iranian nuclear deal,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior Iran analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) think tank.
“Whether this was intentional or not cannot be deduced at this point,” Ben Taleblu told JNS.org. “This ambiguity is best exemplified by Trump's claims of both renegotiating and tearing up the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran deal’s formal name).”
FDD’s Ben Taleblu believes that Trump will likely resolve to keep the accord intact and instead prioritize cracking down on Iran’s other troubling behavior in the Middle East, such as the Islamic Republic’s sponsorship of terrorism, something for which the Obama administration has often been criticized for not addressing.
“I would say [Trump] will keep the accord but feel less restricted about using coercive financial measures to target the rest of Iran's bad behavior. Whether this is rolled into a larger attempt to renegotiate the accord remains to be seen, as that would involve coordination with the other P5+1 members,” Ben Taleblu told JNS.org.
As far as the Iran deal is concerned, there are inherent challenges with inspections and enforcement that may pose problems for a Trump administration, Ben Taleblu explained.
“The JCPOA set quite a low bar for Iranian compliance,” he told JNS.org.
For instance, said Ben Taleblu, “a violation of the deal requires something called ‘significant non-performance’ to occur, which is a vague term. But while the IAEA has offered less data about the Iranian program in the aftermath of the deal, it has routinely attested that Iran was fulfilling its deal related obligations.”
As such, Ben Taleblu believes that Iran has been “flouting the spirit of the deal,” and the issue of the Islamic Republic’s heavy water production indicates it is “engaging in incremental cheating.”
“This reflects poorly on the deal, as it has no mechanism to formerly punish this,” he said.
Regardless of what President-elect Trump will choose to do vis-à-vis the nuclear deal, Iran will also pose a threat to U.S. interests in the Middle East through its direct involvement in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere, as well as through its threats to Israel, America’s closest ally in the region.
“Given the broad range of issues that separate the U.S. and Iran, I think it is fair to say that Tehran will continue to pose a national security challenge to the next American administration,” Ben Taleblu said.
“It too soon to speculate how a different U.S. policy in Syria or other theaters of the Middle East would affect relations with Tehran,” he added, “but Iranian hardliners have so far been trying to recast this entire election to their advantage.”: http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/behnam-ben-taleblu-will-donald-trump-fire-the-iran-nuclear-deal/#sthash.tDeTSJXm.dpuf
 
 
Hour Three
Thursday  1 December 2016 / Hour 3, Block A:  Benny Weinthal, FDD; in re: Europe. Holande wil no run for the presidency after (conservative) Francois Fillon’s victory, when he pulverized Sarkozy. First time in post-War that a French resident doesn’t run. Hollande has a lousy track record in employment, a mixed record in Mali on jihadism; bad on Israel; and now out, Who will replace him? A race between the right and the far right – Fillon and Marine LePen. 
Fillon makes unsavory remarks on both Muslims and Jews, and is deeply anti-American: o longer a vassal state to the US – and admires Putin.  Manuel Carlos Valls.
Seventy-one years after WWI the EU experiment has failed; now the impending cantonization Europe; nobody in charge, and brutishness,
Adult supervision would be highly desirable  Shift right: in Netherlands, crackdown on burkas; also dangers of political Islam which is gaining traction, A dangerous, toxic situation,
Germany: Alternativ fur Deutschland; Merkel may prevail France is currently the main battleground.  If LePen wins, cd, change the whole European dynamic.
Merkel  or PM May, are center-right; others are extreme right.
If a succession of sustained terrorism in France that’d change things.  Stil  a state of emergency from Nice, and now extended. France’s Jewish institutions are protected by th army.
Hollande’s departure as  “a Brexit” seems modest.   
Benjamin Weinthal is a research Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. A widely published journalist based in Berlin, he serves as    eyes and ears in Europe. Benjamin’s investigative reporting has uncovered valuable information on Iran’s energy links to European firms, as well as Hamas and Hezbollah’s terror-finance operations in Europe. He has also examined the growth of the Islamic State in Europe, growing anti-Semitism on the Continent, and neo-Nazism.
·         http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/world/europe/francois-fillon-france-election.html
·         http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/benjamin-weinthal-exclusive-german-bank-pulls-plug-on-anti-israel-bds-bank-account/
·         http://jcpa.org/end-sarkozy-era-francois-fillons-return-gaullist-values/
·         http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38173350
Thursday  1 December 2016 / Hour 3, Block B: Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents; in re: Worrisome Arab report: 45% of the world’s terrorism (& 5% of the world’s population) is in the Arab world; inevitable explosion.   Half of Egyptians make lass than $2 a day; and consider women’s conditions.
Upcoming anniversary f Tunisian fruit-vendor’s self-immolation.
Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey, Sudan south Sudan, Mali, Sinai, Libya – eleven. 
Since 1995, the Congress’s law that Jerusalem is in Israel can be delayed for several reasons; simply delays implementation.  If Trump doesn't sign the waiver it’s accomplished.  With 48 days left, will Obama ambush?  Less and less likely. Micronesia, Pulau, et al., now stand with Israel.   NZ resolution in the works could speak of a Pal state, but Hollande’s departure puts a kibosh on any French activity.
Thursday  1 December 2016 / Hour 3, Block C: Mary Anastasia O’Grady, Wall Street Journal, The Americas; in re: Cuba.  Justin Trudeau’s gushing statement from Madagascar on Fidel  appalled many Canadians, who hooted and hollered; Trudeau was obliged to cancel his own trip to the memorial service, as have done an increasing number of world leaders.  . . .  In Cuba, the Red Cross isn’t even allowed in prisons to  inspect or survey.   (Few countries disallow the Red Cross.)
..  ..  .. 
Unattending Fidel’s Funeral. Santos Misrules Colombia. Mary Anastasia O’Grady, @WSJOpinion.    /  Obama and Theresa May have swerved it. Justin Trudeau and Boris Johnson will be no-shows and Jeremy Corbyn is sending Emily Thornberry. All in all, the list of western leaders who won’t be attending Fidel Castro’s funeral is looking more notable than those who will.
As with the tributes that poured in after the death of one of the world’s longest serving leaders, politicians across the world are split between praising Castro for his revolutionary zeal and excoriating his human rights record. François Hollande is sending Ségolène Royal, but Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras will be there, as will Gerry Adams, South African President Jacob Zuma and Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. Putin, is apparently busy working on his end-of-year statement for Russian lawmakers – the diplomatic equivalent of washing his hair. But Castro is far from the only world statesman to have a tricky guest list at his funeral …
https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2016/nov/29/fidel-castro-guest-list-world-leader-funerals-cuba
 
Thursday  1 December 2016 / Hour 3, Block D:
Pres Santos of Colombia, in negotiations with narcoterrorists, in Cuba. First such “peace” agreement with the FARC: Colombian people rejected it in a referendum.  Santos had said, “If they reject the agreement, that’ll be the end of any efforts I make that direction”; as soon as the referendum passed he jumped back to Cuba to “renegotiate” a substantially similar/identical deal; then refused to let that be voted on, so sent it to the Congress, which he controls, and got the rejected deal passed.  He lies [like a rug].   Legal opinion is that it'll still have to have a popular vote.
FARC has billions of dollars; have been running criminal networks for their entire live; when you have that kind of network and income flow you could turn in your guns today and be re-armed in a few days.  Unlikely that the FARC will disarm and remain so.  Citizenry is extremely worried: govt has just passed a law saying it's illegal for anyone to have a gun, so the citizens will be unarmed and the violent criminals will have oceans of excellent weaponry.
 
Hour Four
Thursday  1 December 2016 / Hour 4, Block A:   Sebastian v Gorka, VP & professor of Strategy and Irregular Warfare, Institute of World Politics, in re: Ohio State ISIS & Perils of Hyphenated Americans in 2016. @SebGorka, Institute for World Politics.   http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/29/us/ohio-state-university-attack/index.html
 “…In a speech he gave in St. Louis in May 1916, Roosevelt summed up his views on immigration in language that resonates today, a century later. ‘If the American has the right stuff in him, I care not a snap of my fingers whether he is Jew or Gentile, Catholic or Protestant,’ he declared. ‘But unless the immigrant becomes in good faith an American and nothing else, then he is out of place in this country, and the sooner he leaves the better.’ ” http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/11/21/donald-trumps-new-world-order/
Current estimates of the number of Somali immigrants living in the United States vary widely, ranging from 35,760 to 150,000 persons. 2010 American Community Survey data indicates that there are approximately 85,700 people with Somali ancestry in the US. Of those, around 25,000 or one third live in Minnesota; 21,000 of the latter were born in Somalia. Nationwide, 76,205 were Somalia-born. According to the Arab American Institute, Somalis are among the larger Arab American populations in the country.
California, Washington and Ohio have the next largest Somali communities. Arizona has seen notable Somali migration in recent years, mostly to Phoenix and Tucson. Other states with significant Somali communities include Georgia, Texas, Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland, Virginia, Illinois, Colorado, and Florida.
In cities, the heaviest concentrations of Somalis in the US are found in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and Saint Paul), followed by the Columbus, Ohio, Seattle, San Diego, Washington, D.C., New York City, Portland, Maine and San Francisco metro areas.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_Americans (1 of 2)
Thursday  1 December 2016 / Hour 4, Block B:  Sebastian v Gorka, VP & professor of Strategy and Irregular Warfare, Institute of World Politics (2 of 2)
Thursday  1 December 2016 / Hour 4, Block C:  Bob Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com; in re:  Soyuz Failures & the Risks of Manned Space to ISS.    Due to what appears to be the failure of the third stage of its Soyuz rocket, a Russian Progress freighter bringing supplies to ISS was lost.
The Russian space agency — Roscosmos — confirmed the demise of the Progress MS-04 cargo craft in a statement, saying the automated spaceship was lost as it flew nearly 120 miles (190 kilometers) over the Tuva Republic in Southern Russia. Engineers lost telemetry during the Soyuz rocket’s third stage engine burn, and most of the vehicle’s fragments burned up in the atmosphere, Roscosmos said.
The consequences of this failure are numerous:
The cargo failures to ISS have been a continuing problem. Despite significant redundancy, every single cargo freighter has had failures or delays in the past two years.
The failure of the Soyuz rocket is a major concern, since this is the rocket that we depend on to bring humans to ISS. Nor is this the first time this year that the third stage had issues. In May the third stage cut off prematurely.
This failure, combined with the other quality control problems Russia has experienced in the past few years with the Soyuz capsule and the Proton rocket, adds to the concerns.
It now becomes even more imperative for the U.S. to get its own manned spacecraft capability back.   http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/russia-progress-freighter-lost-during-launch/  (1 of 2)
Thursday  1 December 2016 / Hour 4, Block D:   Bob Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com; in re: Buzz Aldrin was visiting eastern Antarctica on a private visit; medivac’ed to McMurdo base, thence flown to Christchurch, New Zealand.  [much more discussion on space news] (2 of 2)
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