| John Batchelor Show

China Troubles: Economy Slows, Bird Flu Spreads

Hour 1, Block A: Fraser Howie, co-author of Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China's Extraordinary Rise, in re: fresh threat from the PLA over joint exercises, US-Japan: "These exercises constitute a strategic threat to the PLA" – at a moment when the PLA has physically...
April 24, 2013 0

Terror Comes to Canada

Hour 1, Block A: Bill Roggio, Long War Journal and FDD, in re: Chiheb Esseghaier's Facebook page featured the black banner of al Qaeda until this morning; Bill Roggio has a screenshot of it. 'A senior police official said two suspects involved in a plot to blow up a train received "support...
April 23, 2013 0

Has Al Qaeda Been Defeated?

Hour 1, Block A: Bill Roggio, Long War Journal and FDD; Thomas Joscelyn, Long War Journal senior editor, in re: Vilayat Daghestan [roughly, Province of Daghestan; local agency of Islamic Caucus Emirate] , N Caucasus – "Our fight is with Russia, not the US"; Tamerlan posted one of their vids. ...
April 22, 2013 0

Chechen Jihad Meets American Republic

Hour 1, Block A: Michael Vlahos, Naval War College, in re: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, ethnically Chechnyan, born in Kyrgyzstan. Chechnya: 1.5 million people, tribal, Muslim, in north Caucasus. Declared independence from the just-dead Soviet Union; after two Chechen wars with Moscow, which refused to...
April 19, 2013 0

Boston: The Manhunt Is On

Hour 1, Block A: Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re: Hard to get a real feeling for this sort of event [terrorist attack] unless you see it. Once in Jerusalem, after a horrible explosion, a young colonel insisted I go see what happened; it was appalling: a bus exploded into pieces...
April 18, 2013 0

Chinese Threat?

Hour 2, Block A: Scott Harold, Associate Political Scientist at RAND Corporation, in re: China's defense white paper. Last one was 2007; come out every eight or nine years, review of the PLA. They do give a certain amt of detail, although 25 pages isn’t that much. Discrepancy between 2.3mil...
April 17, 2013 0

The Day After Boston

Hour 1, Block A: Larry Kudlow, in re: An envelope containing ricin was sent to the Capitol Hill office of Sen. Roger Wicker, lawmakers said on Tuesday. Ricin is a poison derived from the same bean that makes castor oil. According to a Homeland Security Department handbook, ricin is deadliest when...
April 16, 2013 0

Puppet and Puppet-master

CNBC's Brian Sullivan, "...there is just no let up from north korea this week. every day has brought a new threat or provocative move from that regime. well, today the governments of foreign embassies were told they should consider evacuating the country to avoid the threat of war. meantime a u.s....
April 6, 2013 0

Stalemate Spring Syria

When is a provocation not a provocation? In the last hours, the IDF returned fire on the Golan Heights against a Syrian military post that I am told is now under "rebel" control. Am told that there are so many Al Qaeda black flags in the "Yarmuk Martyrs Brigade" region that sorting out the...
March 24, 2013 0

Darkness Visible Chapter 2

There is a crazy quilt of reports from the Darkness Visible of the Syrian civil war, including the above video from Bill Roggio's and Tom Joscelyn's "Long War Journal" on the battlespace characters who participate gleefully and murderously in the so-called Syrian Rebel Camp: this time, an American...
March 13, 2013 0