The John Batchelor Show

Monday 16 May 2016

Air Date: 
May 16, 2016

Photo, left:  The Sykes-Picot agreement was signed on 16 May 1916, and was exposed to the public in Izvestia and Pravda on 23 November 1917 and in the British Guardian on November 26, 1917.  
"George Curzon said the Great Powers were still committed to the Reglement Organique Agreement, which concerned governance and non-intervention in the affairs of the Maronite, Orthodox Christian, Druze, and Muslim communities, regarding the Beirut Vilayet of June 1861 and September 1864, and that the rights granted to France in the blue area under the Sykes–Picot Agreement were not compatible with that agreement.
"In May 1917, William Ormsby-Gore wrote,
" 'French intentions in Syria are surely incompatible with the war aims of the Allies as defined to the Russian Government. If the self-determination of nationalities is to be the principle, the interference of France in the selection of advisers by the Arab Government and the suggestion by France of the Emirs to be selected by the Arabs in Mosul, Aleppo, and Damascus would seem utterly incompatible with our ideas of liberating the Arab nation and of establishing a free and independent Arab State. The British Government, in authorising the letters despatched to King Hussein [Sharif of Mecca] before the outbreak of the revolt by Sir Henry McMahon, would seem to raise a doubt as to whether our pledges to King Hussein as head of the Arab nation are consistent with French intentions to make not only Syria but Upper Mesopotamia another Tunis. If our support of King Hussein and the other Arabian leaders of less distinguished origin and prestige means anything it means that we are prepared to recognise the full sovereign independence of the Arabs of Arabia and Syria. It would seem time to acquaint the French Government with our detailed pledges to King Hussein, and to make it clear to the latter whether he or someone else is to be the ruler of Damascus, which is the one possible capital for an Arab State, which could command the obedience of the other Arabian Emirs.'
"Many sources contend that this agreement conflicted with the Hussein–McMahon Correspondence of 1915–1916 and that the publication of the agreement in November 1917 caused the resignation of Sir Henry McMahon. However, the Sykes–Picot plan itself described how France and Great Britain were prepared to recognize and protect an independent Arab state, or confederation of Arab states, under the suzerainty of an Arab chief within the zones marked A and B on the map. Nothing in the plan precluded rule through an Arab suzerainty in the remaining areas. The conflicts were a consequence of the private, post-war, Anglo-French Settlement of 1–4 December 1918. It was negotiated between British Prime Minister Lloyd George and French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and rendered many of the guarantees in the Hussein–McMahon agreement invalid. That settlement was not part of the Sykes–Picot Agreement. Sykes was not affiliated with the Cairo office that had been corresponding with Sherif Hussein bin Ali, but Picot and Sykes visited the Hejaz in 1917 to discuss the agreement with Hussein. That same year he and a representative of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs delivered a public address to the Central Syrian Congress in Paris on the non-Turkish elements of the Ottoman Empire, including liberated Jerusalem. He stated that the accomplished fact of the independence of the Hejaz rendered it almost impossible that an effective and real autonomy should be refused to Syria.
"The greatest source of conflict was the 1917 Balfour Declaration, a letter from . . ."
At the same moments (courtesy of SKWirk): “Frustrated with his party's refusal to revolt, Lenin returned to Petrograd on 7 October. When he returned, he addressed the Bolsheviks and stiffened their resolve. By 10 October, the only question remaining for the revolution was the date.
“Alexander Kerensky, the leader of the provisional government, was aware that the Bolsheviks were planning a revolution. He began to prepare for the revolution, but his preparations ended in failure. Kerensky enlisted the assistance of the Cossacks in defending Petrograd but was refused. Increasing desertions in the military left the provisional government undefended.
Kerensky read an article in the Bolshevik newspapers Pravda and Izvestiya which convinced him that a date had been set for the revolution. He acted before he had further evidence. Kerensky's actions provided the catalyst for revolution.
“On 23 October, he ordered that Pravda and Izvestiya be shut down and Bolshevik leaders be arrested. Lenin responded by announcing the commencement of the revolution.
“Lenin had outlined the mission of the revolution, but not the tactics for overthrowing the provisional government. This he left to Leon Trotsky. . . . 
A nice, brief piece by Alula Berhe Kidani is at http://news.sudanvisiondaily.com/article.html?rsnpaid=3629
Extract: The Sykes–Picot Agreement, officially known as the Asia Minor Agreement, was a secret agreement between the United Kingdom and France with the assent of the Russian Empire, defining their proposed spheres of influence  and control in Southwestern Asia  should the Triple Entente  succeed in defeating the Ottoman Empire  during  World War I. The negotiation of the treaty occurred between November 1915 and March 1916, the agreement was signed on 16 May 1916, and was exposed to the public in  Izvestia and Pravada on 23 November 1917 after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and in the British Guardian on November 26, 1917.
The Agreement is considered to have shaped the region, defining the borders of Iraq and Syria and leading to the current conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
Britain was allocated control of areas roughly comprising the coastal strip between the Mediterranean Sea and River Jordon , Jordon, southern Iraq and a small area including the ports of  Haifa and Acre, to allow access to the Mediterranean. France was allocated control of southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Russia was to get Istanbul, the Turkish Straits and Armenia.  The controlling powers were left free to decide on state boundaries within these areas. Further negotiation was expected to determine international administration pending consultations with Russia and other powers, including Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca.
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Thaddeus McCotter, WJR, The Great Voice of the Great Lakes
 
Hour One
Monday 16 May 2016 / Hour 1, Block A: Tom Joscelyn, Long War Journal senior editor & FDD,  and Bill Roggio, Long War Journal senior editor  & FDD, in re: [Taliban offensive in north stresses Afghan military / http://www.longwarjournal.org] Bagram province, Afghanistan – Taliban taking over: took over the main road between Bagram and Mazar-i-Sharif. Attacks  in Balkh. Nowhere in Afgh is safe from Taliban, incl areas in the west and northwest. The national ring road is unsafe. The 12,000 NATO-type troops. . . unh. Nothing near as many men as in the surge 2011-12.  Taliban ergo controls the battlefield – dictate the pace of the fighting.  Inspire magazine’s new cover, Ibrahim al-Khosi (co-founder of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula).  Fifteenth issue, emerged on Saturday; goal is always to bring jihadis out the woodwork in the West. How to use bombs to attack economic targets (three types), etc.  Ibrahim: tales of his time with Osama bin Ladin for years, and also al-Khosi recounts certain events. He was released from Guantanamo.  Inspire also quotes Tom Joscelyn: Inspire has a blurb from him.  (Occasional misattributions.) It speaks of Obama’s assertions  that Guantanamo is a recruiting tool; Inspire laughs at that – “Nope, we aren't much interested in that”
Monday 16 May 2016 / Hour 1, Block B: Tom Joscelyn, Long War Journal senior editor & FDD,  and Bill Roggio, Long War Journal senior editor  & FDD, in re:  As Mustafa Badreddine walking through Damascus airport, hit entirely by accident in a “lucky shot” of an artillery shell. [Syrian rebels deny Hezbollah’s military commander killed in ‘artillery shelling’] He was the second-most-senior Hezbollah commander killed, after Imad Mughniya; killed 12 Israelis in an ambush and was in charge of the Marine Barracks attack.  Hezbollah calls it a random artillery shell – ha-ha.  Has probably been responsible for killing thousands – maybe a high multiple – of jihadis.   Israelis found th guy in the middle of Damascus and hit him, only, with a drone. Extraordinary technology; easily enough to terrify the living daylights out of the rest of Hezbollah  The Syria air defenses are down and they really don't want to poke that bear. / Rescued Yusef Gilani’s son Ali in Pahktika province in Afghanistan – was held by al Qaeda; specifically, Ayman al Zawahiri. Hostage-takers had demanded release of high-level al Q members in exchange for Ali.  /  US airstrikes in Yemen. 
Monday 16 May 2016 / Hour 1, Block C:  Gordon G. Chang, Daily Beast & Forbes.com, in re: . . . Mao unleashed students, the Red Guards, on May 16 fifty years ago; from that came mass murders – literally millions of Chinese people.  A Xi Jinping recrudescence of the Cultural Revolution? Everyone is afraid of that.  [The Twentieth Century: Hitler killed ~6 million people; Stalin killed ~20 million, mostly Russians; Mao caused to be killed ~70 million Chinese people.]
Monday 16 May 2016 / Hour 1, Block D: Francis Rose, NationalDefenseWeek.com and francisrose.com, in re: Congress looks to do the right thing about veterans’s affairs; the inability of the VA commissioner and the Obama Adm to turn round decades of abuse and depredations.  A bill is introduced outside the Senate: Johnny Isaacson is trying tot bass a bill to reform; taking for e from House (Jeff Miller) who objects to it as favoring unions.  People watching think Isaacson is trying to get A bill passed- something ; anything the president would sign Jeff Miller has a bill to put all VA employees in a pot where all could be fired.  If these guys can’t compromise, nothing’ll pass, anyway.  The Third Offensive:  estimate that Russia and China are gaining on US tech advantage; problem: the end of the Obama Adm – the DoD is carrying out the Third Offset but will the next Adm do that?  A sea-air-space conference in DC this week – Office of Naval Research robots on display.   They’re in the water – EMILY – have already used it to rescue 300 Syrian migrants off Greece. / US losing relative ground:  increasing gap because DoD  had been under budget constraints for five years ahs cut it’s own R&D, asked private sector to pick up on innovation but hasn’t assured any purchase, so there’s a game of chicken between DoD and the defense-industrial crew. / Oops: Ben Rhodes will not appear before Congress to explain his infelicitous statements to New York Times.  DoD-NSC discussions not always cordial: Thornberry proposed cutting NSC staff from 400 to 100. 
 
Hour Two
Monday 16 May 2016 / Hour 2, Block A:   David M Drucker, Washington Examiner Senior Congressional correspondent; John Fund, NRO, in re: . . . Manafort grated Trump’s nerves so Cory is back. Campaign is riven by inner conflicts that will render it acceptable but not effective.  “Not surprising that the campaign is riven with inner conflicts since the candidate seems to be.–Thaddeus McCotter. In 2012 the GOP started from nothing organizationally  vs Obama’s crew, who’d been well organized for four years.  How much will Trump be distracted by fights with RNC, NY Times. tweeters and twits, rather than sit down and build a real ground game?  . . . Kasich: not interested in VP and may not endorse Trump? What the heqq is he doing?  Nobody knows. Maybe he’s spent the last year thinking that something would turn up; Trump is so unpredictable that Kasich will just hang on and hang around. . . .  He’s a second-term governor running for president and wants it to last as long as he can make it do so.  Devolution of American culture into a cesspool of American television.
Trump past, present and future: "no one cares, doesn't matter" ; Trump as TV Reality Villain https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/05/13/donald-trump-is-running-for-president-as-the-reality-tv-villain-people-love-to-hate/ ; HRC relentless.
Monday 16 May 2016 / Hour 2, Block B: David M Drucker, Washington Examiner Senior Congressional correspondent; John Fund, NRO, in re: “Invincible ignorance.” Mr Trump’s words to Megyn Kelly and to Howard Stern.
Hillary campaign (has almost enough Electoral College votes to ensure her nomination) trawling for urban female swing voters and soft Republicans. Trump’s supporters say that ”95% of this [his verbal barbarisms] was said before his candidacy, it was all show biz.” . . . If Trump were broadly well thought-of, these attacks wouldn't amount to much; however, he’s already underwater with female voters, so this reinforces existing opinions.   . . . Clinton is horrible at running for president; she could have trouble with men such that she could lose some of her advantage in the gender gap/  Trump has tried bullying Kelly, Fiorina; didn't work.  Trump seems to be in a fact-free zone in debate; Clinton: Not only do I know something, but he just has sound bites. 
Monday 16 May 2016 / Hour 2, Block C:  Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re: Mustafa Badreddine killed while walking though the Damascus airport [looks like a CEP of 30 cm!] Hezbollah says it was a random artillery shell, or friendly fir.  He had so many friends, could have been that . . . He was accused of killing Pres Hariri of Lebanon; wanted by Intl Criminal Court; also the Bulgaria bus attack; and h US wanted him.  The Israelis never laid claim to having done it, stayed mum. Eke  the US. Done in such a surgical way, hard to believe it was an artillery shell. He’d developed a way of using gas to amplify the power of [explosives].  Mustafa Badreddine replaced Mughniya; nobody standing in line with his stature or capability Hezbollah has loft so many key people.  Shin Bet: rocket-making material going into Gaza; under intl pressure, Israel offered to extend fishing border for Gazan fishermen – who took advantage to go beyond and pick up weapons, incl missile parts.  New smuggling routes. Worrisome.  They float pods that the fishermen pick up and bring into Gaza Breaks controls initiated by both Egypt and Israel.  What would it take for the intl community to acknowledge this is a genuine problem?  Beats me.   Offer to divide territory along 1972 line: 72% of Palestinians rejected.  Secy Kerry was going to go to the French conference on the Middle East; France wants to be in the middle.  Israel has rejected th French colloquy because Netanyahu has invited Abbas to drive from Ramallah to Jerusalem to talk, but Palestinians refuse and refuse.  Would rather go to France and complain. Abbas is an 82-year-old man in the eleventh year of a four-year term. Has walked away from the best deal he’ll ever get. No intl conference has ever yielded results if not all are willing to enter into discussion – which PA is not.   France voted for a resolution that strips all the places of their own Christian historical identity
Monday 16 May 2016 / Hour 2, Block D: Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re: Ergdogan bldg. mosques in Europe – 17,00 Islamic prayer sites in Turkey plus mosques from Mali to Moscow, Ten being financed right now, incl one in Cambridge, and a huge one on Amsterdam (thousands of people worked on for 20 years), and in Tirana; a megamosque in Maryland; 30 in Switzerland; the Great Mosque of Bucharest – budget of €2 billion for this project, and a  20,00-person staff.
Ben Rhodes (WH NSC assistant) created the narrative to defeat foes of the Iran deal; White House won't let him speak to Congress . The strategy used during Iran deal. “No tone thing to correct in the NY Time article.”  The Ploughshares 2000 website by Gary Sick; other sites and media.  Democrats and GOP both much concerned.  Find Mr Rhodes’s handiwork in less-than-savory areas.  Obama Adm: to Iran: “If you launch missiles, just don't tell anyone.”  Stuart Levy (now HSBC) wrote in Wall St Journal (was Undersecy for Terrorism and Financial Intell) on why HSBC and other banks would not remove sanctions. Deutsche Bank also rejects dealing with Iran.  Pressure from Secy Kerry, who fights this. What?? / Iran’s annual anti-Holocaust cartoon contest: no change since Ahmadinejad.  Soleimani as “my partner.”          
 
Hour Three
Monday 16 May 2016 / Hour 3, Block A: Harry Siegel, New York Daily News and Daily Beast, in re:
Monday 16 May 2016 / Hour 3, Block B:   John Tamny, Forbes,com, in re: 
Monday 16 May 2016 / Hour 3, Block C:   Patrick O’Donnell, Washington’s Immortals; in re; Men fought and died in the Battle of Long Island to give Washington time for the next fight.  One of the greatest small-unit engagements in American history; charged a stone house in Brooklyn, where Cornwallis was, by bayonet, allowed much of the army to escape.  Retreat was through a shallow body of water – a mill pond – and the Gowanus Canal was part of it. The tall ones could wad through up to their necks, but many drowned.  Up to 256 men either killed or captured; location of their grave is still unknown — under a paved street near an American legion post?   Mass grave likely dug by prisoners of war: they were kept on ships; ten to eighteen thousand Americans died on floating concentration camps in New York harbor.  Horribly abused and not fed. Hellish – like the WWII hell ships.  The John Batchelor Show “has been tremendously helpful” in enlisting archaeologists to help find the grave.  Eighteenth-century maps one can overlay that suggest possible locations for the bodies of the brave Marylanders.
Monday 16 May 2016 / Hour 3, Block D:  Michael Ledeen, FDD, in re:
 
Hour Four
Monday 16 May 2016 / Hour 4, Block A:  A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln Vol. I, 1809 - 1849, by Sidney Blumenthal.  (1 of 8)  “A breathtaking new view of Abraham Lincoln." (The National Memo)
“Splendid . . . Blumenthal’s work of building the context for Lincoln’s political activism in the presidential elections of 1836 through 1848 is a miracle of detail and his six chapters on Lincoln as a congressman in antebellum Washington are worth the price of the book alone. . . . Never have we had such an exquisite warp of the ins and outs of political life in the 1830s and ’40s laid across the weft of Lincoln’s individual trajectory. Rarely has a Lincoln biographer come to his task with such elegance of style. . . . Here is a great book, on a theme that too many people disdain to regard as great. That they are wrong about the theme, and wrong about Lincoln, is the burden of Blumenthal’s labor, and no one can come away from reading A Self-Made Man without understanding that, or without eagerly anticipating the ensuing volumes.” (Allen Guelzo Washington Monthly)
“Engaging and informative . . . lively . . . full of thought-provoking observations about the factors that went into Lincoln's makeup.” (Christian Science Monitor)
“Terrific . . . The Lincoln of Blumenthal’s pen is a cunning Whig floor leader in Illinois, a brave progressive facing racist assaults on his religion, ethnicity, and very legitimacy that echo the anti-Obama birther movement. . . . Blumenthal takes the wily pol of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals and goes deeper, finding a Vulcan logic and House of Cards ruthlessness.” (The Washingtonian)
“Lincoln again? Not to worry. Just stand back and let this first volume of a planned four-volume treatment reveal its glowing qualities. . . . A fascinating perspective during a presidential election cycle.” (Booklist, starred review)
“Engrossing . . . Blumenthal takes the reader deep into Illinois and national politics to locate the character and content of Lincoln's ideas, interests, and identity, and to understand his driving ambition to succeed in law and politics. . . . [Blumenthal] effectively shows that the president's Illinois was a proving ground for the politics of expansion, economic development, nativism, anti-Mormonism, and slavery that both reflected and affected national concerns.” (Library Journal)
“[Blumenthal] delves deeply into the incremental building of Lincoln's anti-slavery views . . . A consummate political observer keenly dissects the machinations of Lincoln's incredible rise to power.” (Kirkus Reviews)
“In this compelling first volume of what will no doubt be a landmark biography of perhaps our greatest president, Sidney Blumenthal brings his formidable storytelling and analytical gifts to the task of creating a lasting portrait of Lincoln. In this Blumenthal succeeds wonderfully well, giving readers an engaging, clear-eyed, and insightful account of Lincoln's early years, clearly charting the sixteenth president's intellectual and political development. The book is at once timely and timeless.” (Jon Meacham, author of Destiny and Power and Thomas Jefferson)
http://www.amazon.com/Self-Made-Man-Political-Abraham-Lincoln/dp/1476777...
Monday 16 May 2016 / Hour 4, Block B:  A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln Vol. I, 1809 - 1849, by Sidney Blumenthal.  (2 of 8) 
Monday 16 May 2016 / Hour 4, Block C:  A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln Vol. I, 1809 - 1849, by Sidney Blumenthal.  (3 of 8) 
Monday 16 May 2016 / Hour 4, Block D:   A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln Vol. I, 1809 - 1849, by Sidney Blumenthal.  (4 of 8) 
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