The John Batchelor Show

Monday 23 February 2015

Air Date: 
February 23, 2015

Photo, left: The East–West pipeline is a natural gas pipeline under construction in Turkmenistan. It will carry natural gas from gas fields in eastern Turkmenistan to the coast of Caspian Sea across the southern part of the country. The pipeline starts from the Shatlyk compressor station at the eastern branch of the Central Asia – Center gas pipeline in Mary Province and runs to the Belek-1 compressor station at the western branch of the Central Asia – Center gas pipeline in Balkan Province.   From there, gas could be transported to Russia or, when constructed, through the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline to Azerbaijan and further to Europe. In addition to export, the pipeline will supply the central and Caspian region of Turkmenistan. The pipeline largely follows the route of existing pipelines. It would create a system connecting all the major gas fields of Turkmenistan. See Hour 3, Block D,  Robert M Cutler, Carleton University & Eurasian Security.com.
 
JOHN BATCHELOR
 
Co-host: Thaddeus McCotter, WJR, The Great Voice of the Great Lakes; and author, Liberty Risen.
Hour One
Monday  23 February 2015   / Hour 1, Block A: Bill Roggio, Long War Journal and FDD, in re:  Yemen. Al Anbar Governorate.  Rising death tolls, Yemeni forces. 
Monday  23 February 2015   / Hour 1, Block B:  Tim Higgins, Bloomberg Businessweek, in re: iCAR: Apple Wants to Start Producing Cars as Soon as 2020 – Apple Inc., which has been working secretly on a car, is pushing its team to begin production of an electric vehicle as early as 2020, people with knowledge of the matter said. [more]
Monday  23 February 2015   / Hour 1, Block C: Mona Charen, NRO, in re:  . . . FDR saw the threat of Fascism, and Truman saw the threat of Communism.  What’s happened such that the current left cannot see the barbarism and threat today?   That party's gone. The last major figure in the Democratic party who saw reality with clear eyes was Scoop Jackson. Since then, the party is filled with soft-headed leftists raised on moral equivalence who were told during the Cold War that the US and USSR were like two scorpions in a bottle, that there was a convergence.  Still holds sway on out r university campuses.  Barack Obama is unique in our lifetime: he strode full-grown from that envt into national politics without spending time doing what pols usually do, all the experience that educates you into what politics is and how it works. This one has no experience working with the other side has complete contempt for anyone who disagrees with him. A recipe for lack of political success an for being out of touch with the citizenry. When he said that the Islamic State is not Islamic– has he drifted into Alice's Wonderland? Yes, looks that way. And his spokespersons . . .  He believes that he's saying something important when it’s nonsense. Note: after you defeat the enemy – then you debate. 
Islam as a Victim Civilization   “Let’s not get up on our high horse,” Obama says. President Obama’s scolding of Western civilization at the National Prayer Breakfast (“Let’s not get up on our high horse”) may go down in history as the emblematic moment of his presidency. It was atrociously ill-timed and characteristically sophomoric. My colleague Jay Nordlinger observed that Obama sounded just like the students in the 1980s who, when presented with evidence of the Soviet gulag, would respond with the tu quoque rejoinder: “Well, what about racism?” During the Cold War, we called this the “moral equivalence” fallacy, because however grave our flaws were (and some were serious), they didn’t exist on the same plane as those of the Soviet Union or China or Cambodia or North Korea or the other Communist nations that amassed a body count of more than 90 million souls in their seven decades of tyranny. There were other reasons the moral equivalence argument was fallacious (we had independent courts, a free press, and other mechanisms for fighting injustice; they had none of those), but that didn’t prevent it from issuing from the mouths of nominally educated people until the Berlin Wall was hacked to pieces. And even after. Yet what we have in the Obama administration isn’t moral equivalence; it seems to border on self-hatred. Jihadist barbarians are burning captives in cages, beheading Christians, gunning down French cartoonists, blowing up Buddhist statues, attacking Hindu businessmen in Mumbai, targeting Jews for execution, starving Yazidis, and taking eight-year-old girls into sex slavery, yet President Obama cannot express simple outrage and determination to stop them. Apparently, that’s not the way his mind works. He seems to say to himself, “I don’t want my people to feel superior to the ‘other.’ After all, which civilization is the guiltiest on planet Earth? Ours! If the Muslims are committing some atrocities these days, it’s only because we drove them to it by the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition and colonialism and supporting dictatorships and creating the State of Israel.” That is exactly the kind of reductive, ahistorical, shallow, tendentious drivel a student could easily imbibe at Columbia and Harvard unless he tried hard to avoid it. Obama sought it out, as he confirms in his (first) autobiography. Though he has come to power in an era when everyone except the village idiot understands that radical Islam is a worldwide menace claiming (mostly Muslim) victims on every continent, and that it has gained serious footholds even in formerly moderate nations like Turkey, this president and his party are so solipsistic that they cannot even see the Islamic world in its own terms. He and they can see it only as a victim of the West. In the universities, they . . .  [more]
Monday  23 February 2015   / Hour 1, Block D:  Gordon Chang, Forbes.com, in re:  Arunachal Pradesh:  China lodges an official protest over  Mr Modi's visiting his own territory.  Every time an Indian leader makes such a visit, China does this. This time, they know that Modi is a nationalist and has reached out to Japan, so Beijing is testing Modi's mettle. TGM: the Modi operandi.    China announced a new railroad from Lhasa east to close to the Arunachal border to carry troops and arms. Recall that in the Himalaya, China fights downhill and India fights uphill. Modi needs to show that he's unafraid; to say, This is India's century, not China's  China doesn’t like to hear about this – India's population is overtaking China's. Slim Pickens said, "Two big dogs gonna fight."  True – when Xi visited India in September, a battalion of Chinese troops crossed the lone of control into Ladakh, Indian territory, and stayed three weeks.  This is where the two big dogs will start their fight.  New Delhi is starting to ramp up its military.   With Japan and North Korea in the north, and India in the South, India can anchor southern Asia so China cannot easily break out.  India is the most successful and dynamic democracy on the planet; it must succeed for democracy to prosper.
China Protests India Leader's Visit to Disputed Border Area China summoned India's ambassador in Beijing to protest Prime Minister . . . /  China cries foul over Modi visit to disputed region -
China protests after India PM visits frontier region.   /  Last week's "hong bao war" suggests Tencent could pass Alibaba in mobile business. China lodged an official protest in response to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Arunachal Pradesh, India's disputed northeastern state that China calls South Tibet, on the Chinese Foreign Ministry's website Feb. 20, Channel News Asia reported. Modi visited the region for the opening of a railway and power station. 
China lodged an official protest against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to a disputed border region, China's vice foreign minister said on Feb. 21, Xinhuanet reported. During a meeting with the Indian ambassador, the vice foreign minister also said Modi's visit to the disputed area in the eastern part of China-India border on Feb. 20 undermined China's territorial sovereignty. However, the minister also emphasized that China still places importance on developing relations with India. The increase in tensions comes as India seeks to increase influence in its near abroad.
Hour Two
Monday  23 February 2015   / Hour 2, Block A:  John Fund, National Review Online, & David M Drucker, Washington Examiner Senior Congressional correspondent, in re:  Scott Walker; the Washington Post is exercised, pop-pop sounds of cap guns are deafening, sees that Walker is the anti-Christ.  What'd he do?  He shot to the top of the polls. Whenever a GOP candidate does that, the national media go after him with guns blazing.  It’s good that he doesn’t care to follow up on every question, but there are times you have to answer and move on.  First issue was what Rudy Giuliani said abut the president's loyalty; also a second matter.  He could say, I don't think your questions are of much interest to the voters – and so infuriate the media but endear him to the voters.  The issues are not the president, his person, what he likes or not; rather, it’s the administration's policy.  Policy, not personal. 
Monday  23 February 2015   / Hour 2, Block B: John Fund, National Review Online, & David M Drucker, Washington Examiner Senior Congressional correspondent, in re:   DHS.  . . . GOP isn’t used to having the courts agree with them. Courts clearly are frustrated by the president's aggrandisement of his powers. . . .  If you vent and vent and vent, and finally cave, you look terrible to your base.  If the Republicans do cave in to Democrats, that's a signal that you can cobble together anything and we'll take it.
Monday  23 February 2015   / Hour 2, Block C:  Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re:  . . .  the Palestinian Authority. Abu Ammar. The ICC.  The very recent US court ruling shows re PA that its entering the ICC could easily blow up and the PA comes under scrutiny.  Iran, Parchin, bilateral negotiations. Important deadline at the end of March. – both Pres Obama and Teheran have said they don't want to extend talks past that dates, Framework: Iran would be monitored for ten yeas then be allowed to resume nukes, No dismantlement of centrifuges. Breakout period could be very short.  No restriction on weaponization,  No restriction on R&D.   The IAEA would be charged with assuring transparency says it lacks the tools.  Coming Middle Eastern arms race; much anger among [former] US allies there.  Iran can gradually and clandestinely increase its nuclear program.  . . . Iran's increasing aggressiveness is pointed out by regional leaders. Iraqi army is powerless. Iran expanding through Yemen and Somalia.
Monday  23 February 2015   / Hour 2, Block D: Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re:  Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt: MB declared a terrorist organization, which has been upsetting to them, but the US alliance with MB has very much upset Egyptians.  MB active in Libya – got access to the chem weapons stored by Gaddafi (huge amounts of mustard gas and sarin; easily could be exported around the region) – Egyptians and regional powers want to know whey the White House has invited the MB to the Washington conference.  The Islamic State represents a murder cult that means to disrupt civilization – isn't seeking economic parity; it wants to mass-murder Muslims, chiefly – taqfiri – and Christians and Jews and anyone else in the way.  Need to commit major mass-murders.  Islamic State frightens even al Qaeda. Libya's WMD mans mass murder by ISIS, which today was parading Peshmerga in cages in the streets in Iraq.  [God help those poor men.]   The Prime Minister aid he can’t believe the talks continue despite the fact that Ian is wholly proven to be lying.  Why not just hear what Netanyahu has to say?  The American people want to hear what the Israeli M has to say since Israel is on the front line. 
Hour Three
Monday  23 February 2015   / Hour 3, Block A:  Ann Marlowe, Hudson Institute, in re: How Libya's Martyrs Are Witnessing to Egypt  Undaunted by the slaughter of 21 Christians in Libya, the director of the Bible Society of ...   Why Europe should worry about ISIS in LibyaIslamic State militants claim attacks on Iranian ambassador's residence in Libya
Monday  23 February 2015   / Hour 3, Block B:  Francis Rose, Federal News Radio, in re: http://watchdog.org/201236/tammy-baldwin-tomah-scandal/  ;  http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_VETERANS_HEALTH_CARE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT  ;   
http://www.militarytimes.com/story/veterans/2015/02/20/report-northern-california-va-office-lost-many-claims/23730025/
 
Monday  23 February 2015   / Hour 3, Block C:  Michael Kenny, New Statesman, in re: . . . In this climate, as Ben Wellings and Helen Baxendale have shown, the Anglosphere came back to life as an alternative ambition, advanced by a powerful alliance of global media moguls (Conrad Black, in particular), outspoken politicians, well-known commentators and intellectual outriders, who all shared an insurgent ideological agenda and a strong sense of disgruntlement with the direction and character of mainstream conservatism . . .
Michael Kenny is the director of the Mile End Institute at Queen Mary, University of London.
Nick Pearce is the director of the Institute for Public Policy Research. He writes in a personal capacity.
Monday  23 February 2015   / Hour 3, Block D:   Robert M Cutler, Carleton University & Eurasian Security.com, in re:   Turkmenistan pipeline from east to west to be completed this year  A source at Turkmenneftegazstroi is reported as saying the Turkmenistan pipeline from Dauletabad in the southeast to the Caspian Sea coast (East-West Pipeline, or EWP) for natural gas (see dotted line across south in the map) will be completed in December 2015. The report affirms, ascommented here four-and-a-half years ago, that construction on the 773-kilometer pipeline began in May 2010. As the headline in the secondary report by Silk Road Reporters notes, this is part of the unification of the Turkmenistan gas transport system.  [more]
Hour Four
Monday  23 February 2015   / Hour 4, Block A: Empire of Cotton: A Global History, by Sven Beckert  (1 of 4)
Monday  23 February 2015   / Hour 4, Block B: Empire of Cotton: A Global History, by Sven Beckert  (2 of 4)
Monday  23 February 2015   / Hour 4, Block C: Empire of Cotton: A Global History, by Sven Beckert  (3 of 4)
Monday  23 February 2015   / Hour 4, Block D: Empire of Cotton: A Global History, by Sven Beckert  (4 of 4)
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