Friday 14 March 2014
Photo, above: Maiduguri Monday market. Maiduguri, also called Yerwa by its locals, is the capital and the largest city of Borno State in northeastern Nigeria. It's popularly called "Home of Peace". The city sits along the seasonal Ngadda River which disappears into the Firki swamps in the areas around Lake Chad. Maiduguri was founded in 1907 as a military outpost by the British and has since grown rapidly with a population exceeding 1 million by 2007. The region was home to the Kanem-Bornu Empire for centuries. Maiduguri actually consists of two cities: Yerwa to the West and Old Maiduwuri to the east. Old Maiduwuri was selected by the British as their military headquarters, while Yerwa was selected at approximately the same time by Shehu Abubakar Garbai of Borno to replace Kukawa as the new traditional capital of the Kanuri people.
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Hour One
Friday 14 March 2014 / Hour 1, Block A: Michael E Vlahos, Naval War College, in re: Russia and the West fail in last minute Ukraine crisis talks. Lavrov says Russia would respect result of independence referendum in Crimea while Kerry says Americans will impose sanctions if they do (1 of 2)
Friday 14 March 2014 / Hour 1, Block B: Michael E Vlahos, Naval War College, in re: Pressure and Intimidation in Crimea Before Vote With the implicit threat of force, the Kremlin has succeeded in recreating the constrained conditions of Russia’s own civic sphere . . .
Early this month, Russian soldiers took up positions at the television transmission center here in the capital of the Ukrainian region of Crimea. Their arrival marked part of a broad effort to muffle dissent over the Kremlin-backed project to guide Crimea through a swift secession from Ukraine. Several days later, the soldiers handed over their post to a pro-secession militia. Some of these men carried whips. Technicians . . . (2 of 2)
Friday 14 March 2014 / Hour 1, Block C: . Harry Siegel, NY Daily News, in re: My friend Matthew Power got to live a boyhood dream, having amazing adventures hunting down stories that took him to the four corners of the globe to share what he saw with adult eyes.He was beside a former British Army officer on his insane quest to become the first man to walk the length of the Amazon, and got an American drone warrior in the Nevada desert to speak about his experience killing Afghans by remote control . He motorcycled across South America, reported on micro-economics from the top of a city-sized Philippine garbage dump and floated down the Mississippi with boat punks. He documented weird and important things hiding in plain sight, like the scene at last year’s Disaster Expo in New Orleans’ Morial Convention Center, which not long before had housed 14,000 Katrina refugees and when he arrived was stuffed with apocalypse-equipment vendors hawking $45,000 field toilets and heat-sealable body bags for mass-casualty events.
Matt died this week in Uganda , apparently of heatstroke, while reporting for Men’s Journal on another walker, this one trying to go the length of the Nile. He was a rare combination: both fearless and decent, writing articles about the marginalized and left-behind that truly gave them voice, and that readers in comfortable homes didn’t just flip past. His writing never gawked or preached. It only showed. And it did so with language that didn’t exhibit itself. So, after tearing through one of his pieces, I’d have to read it again to admire his craft.Although we lived near each other in Brooklyn, I first met him and his wife, the equally talented and adventurous Jessica Benko, in Michigan, where we spent the 2010-2011 academic year together in the Knight-Wallace Fellowship for mid-career journalists.
Matt was every wonderful storyteller you meet at a bar or a party — except his stories were true, he put in the hard work to set them on the page, not just talk them dead, and his company didn’t disappoint when you sobered up. A guy who’d been everywhere and seen everything, he was genuinely captivated by what other people had to tell him, lit up by their intelligence and passions even if those sometimes paled in comparison to his own. Maybe because he’d lived other lives before journalism — squatting in the South Bronx, living and working with activists and anarchists and adventuring for its own sake — he was generous enough to want to open and share the conversation, a rare trait in the field.
To be sure, Matt was a networker in the way a guy freelancing for a living — proudly and happily going a baker’s dozen years without clocking into an office — has to be. But here, too, he was kind and generous in a way freelancers rarely are, cheerfully sharing knowledge and contacts he’d worked long and hard to earn. “Journalists are like a bucket of crabs, except the crabs all went to fancy colleges,” he joked about how the dozen of us, professionally suspicious, viewed each other when we arrived in Ann Arbor. He spent much of his fellowship breaking the rule against reporting while we were there. He couldn’t help it — there were too many great stories around Michigan. Like his seamless craft, he made what he did sound easy. “Go find something incredible, and report on it,” he told me when I asked how, exactly, he did it.He had the sort of curiosity and intelligence and openness that seemed to exert a gravitational pull, drawing good stories and good storytellers to him.
That he’s dead at 39 is stupid and ugly and pointless.
At the end of our Michigan year, he delivered a funny, touching address to the group, the kind people pull off in movies. It ended: “Most importantly, this great long conversation is not going to end, because we are all journalists, and journalists never shut up.” I’ll keep talking, for sure, and do my best to find stories worth telling, Matt.
Friday 14 March 2014 / Hour 1, Block D: Leslie Picker, Bloomberg, in re: SILICON VALLEY HEARS ECHOES OF 1999 A string of hot tech IPOs is raising concerns about another bubble. Last year 208 companies went public in the U.S., raising more than $56 billion, data compiled by Bloomberg shows. Their stocks rose an average 21 percent on their first day of trading, the biggest annual average increase since 2000. While bankers and venture capitalists are confident about today’s IPO market, the shadow of the dot-com bust lingers. “Now in the Valley, the idea of a bubble is a practical conversation,” says Ted Tobiason, who worked at Robertson Stephens beginning in 2000 and now heads equity capital markets for the technology industry at Deutsche Bank. “It’s a healthy discussion, which gets people to think about risk and not just potential upside.”
Hour Two
Friday 14 March 2014 / Hour 2, Block A: Daniel Henninger, WSJ WONDER LAND, in re: Henninger: Republican Roulette
Friday 14 March 2014 / Hour 2, Block B: Josh Kraushaar, National Journal, in re: Time for Truth in Labeling: Obama Is Not Centrist New Pew Research analysis shows Obama is on the liberal side of the Democratic Party on most key issues. Pew Research Center Founding Director Andrew Kohut wrote an important Washington Post column last month highlighting the Democratic drift leftward during the Obama administration. Backed by decades of Pew data, Kohut concluded that Democrats have grown just as liberal as Republicans have become more conservative in recent years. "They are much more socially liberal than they were even a decade ago, more supportive of an activist government, more in favor of increased regulation of business," Kohut writes.
It's a useful corrective to the notion, fueled by the White House, that the Republican Party alone is responsible for gridlock in Washington. But Kohut downplays one significant factor that has expedited the Democratic polarization: President Obama himself. In the piece, Kohut instinctively labels the Obama administration as centrist. But on all five major issues that divide the Democratic Party's liberals and moderates—the budget deficit, income inequality, the environment, social issues, and America's role in the world—Obama is . . . [more]
Friday 14 March 2014 / Hour 2, Block C: Peter Waldman, Bloomberg Businesweek, in re: CAN THE MOJAVE DESERT SAVE CALIFORNIA ? California is very thirsty. The worst drought the state has seen in decades has left its reservoirs skeletal and half-naked. For the first time in its 54-year history, California’s State Water Project—the way by which millions of state residents get hundreds of billions of gallons of water, and the world's biggest plumbing network—is essentially shutting down. Scott Slater is convinced that the solution lies underneath the Mojave Desert. Slater's company, Cadiz Inc., wants to sell the water under its 34,000 acres in the eastern Mojave to desperate suburbs and subdivisions in the LA basin. The water will travel through a 43-mile pipeline that Cadiz wants to build along a railroad spur, then merge into the Colorado River Aqueduct into Los Angeles. Several politicians, ranchers, and environmentalists call Cadiz’s proposal ludicrous. Peter Waldman reviews the case.
Friday 14 March 2014 / Hour 2, Block D: Matt Flegenheimer, NYT, in re: Safety Is Lacking at Metro-North, U.S. Review Finds After a Fatal Crash The Metro-North Railroad has fallen prey to a “deficient safety culture” that prizes on-time performance at the expense of protecting riders and workers, according to a blistering federal review that was ordered after a spate of rail disasters. [more]
Hour Three
Friday 14 March 2014 / Hour 3, Block A: Chris Gadomski, Bloomberg, in re: Plans for New Nuclear Reactors Worldwide Over 60 power reactors are currently being constructed in 13 countries plus Taiwan (notably China, South Korea and Russia). Each year, the . . . World Nuclear Association [Is Taiwan not a country? – ed]
Friday 14 March 2014 / Hour 3, Block B: Rich Rubin, Bloomberg, in re: OFFSHORE TAXES. Cash Abroad Rises $206 Billion as Apple to IBM Avoid Tax. The largest U.S.-based companies added $206 billion to their stockpiles of offshore profits last year, parking earnings in low-tax countries until Congress gives them a reason not to. [more]
Friday 14 March 2014 / Hour 3, Block C: Gene Marks, NYT, in re: Obama wants to expand overtime pay (NOT popular with my clients)
Cool Small Business called Nomorobo - flawlessly blocks robocalls!
States investing heavily in tech to catch small business tax cheats
Small Business lending increased 9.7 percent over January
Google eyes its first retail store in NYC
Employees sue Austin restaurant over high-dollar tips
Many Tulsa Business Begin Using Virtual Currency
Starbucks' new app lets you tip the barista
Friday 14 March 2014 / Hour 3, Block D: Barbara Drury, Retroreport, in re: McMartin Preschool: Anatomy of a Panic The nightmare began in 1983 when a 39-year-old mother called the police department in Manhattan Beach, California and accused a teacher at the McMartin Preschool, Raymond Buckey, of molesting her two and a half-year old son.
The accusation soon led to reports that hundreds of children had been abused at the prominent preschool, and set in motion one of the longest and most expensive child molestation cases in U.S. history. It also fed a national panic about child sex abuse, satanic rituals and child pornography that enmeshed dozens of day care centers across the country.
This week’s Retro Report looks back at the McMartin case and the panic that followed. Using archival footage and interviews with investigators – including the lead prosecutor in the case and the agency that evaluated the alleged preschool victims — we examine how and why one accusation altered the lives of those caught in the eye of the storm forever.
Hour Four
Friday 14 March 2014 / Hour 4, Block A: David Davenport, Hoover, in re: The New Deal & Modern American Conservatism: A Defining Rivalry (1 of 2)
Friday 14 March 2014 / Hour 4, Block B: David Davenport, Hoover, in re: The New Deal & Modern American Conservatism: A Defining Rivalry (2 of 2)
Friday 14 March 2014 / Hour 4, Block C: Gregory Copley, StrategicStudies director & author, UnCivilization, in re: Nigeria attack: 'Hundreds of militants' target Maiduguri barracks Suspected Islamist militants from Boko Haram have attacked an army barracks in the Nigerian city of Maiduguri. The army said it had repelled . . .
Friday 14 March 2014 / Hour 4, Block D: Gary Libecap, Hoover Defining Ideas journal, in re: Americans should celebrate fracking. The technology has catapulted the United States from being a has-been producer of oil to the world’s largest total supplier in 2013 when we include natural gas liquids, biofuels, and crude oil. The U.S. produced around an average of 12.1 million barrels a day of these liquids—300,000 barrels a day more than Saudi Arabia and 1.6 million more than Russia, the previous leaders. This increase in U.S. output has not been matched since 1940 when the country was blessed with flush new primary production from oil fields in Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Oklahoma . . . [more]
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Music
Hour 1 - Invasion, Miles Davis, Hannah
Hour 2 - Stars & Stripes Forever, Hatfields & McCoys
Hour 3 - The Raid, Enemy of the State, Inside Man, The Recruit
Hour 4 - Cinderella Man, Baraka, Land of the Dead