Photo, left:  A view of Kansai International Airport, as an example of an artificial island in intense use  An artificial island or man-made island is one constructed by people rather than formed by natural means; these are normally created by expanding existing islets, constructing on existing reefs, or amalgamating several natural islets into a bigger island. It's important to distinguish between entirely man-made islands and those that are formed of actually reclaimed land.  The militarized islands currently being constructed by China in the South China Sea are in no way reclaimed; they're purpose-built apparently with the intention of allowing China to claim de subito vast swaths of ocean and establish military installations within what’s considered sovereign Filipino and Vietnamese territory.
Early artificial islands included floating structures in still waters, or wooden or megalithic structures erected in shallow waters (e.g., crannógs and Nan Madol discussed below). In modern times, artificial islands are usually formed by land reclamation, but some are formed by the incidental isolation of an existing piece of land during canal construction (e.g., Donauinsel and Dithmarschen), or the flooding of valleys resulting in the tops of former knolls getting isolated by water (e.g., Barro Colorado Island). The largest artificial island, René-Levasseur Island, was formed by flooding two adjacent, crescent-shaped reservoirs.
Some recent developments have been made more in the manner of oil platforms (e.g., Sealand and Republic of Rose Island). Artificial islands may vary in size from small islets formed solely to support a single pillar of a building or structure, to those that support entire communities and cities.  China’s new, bogus islands carry major airstrips and military development.
Despite a popular image of modernity, artificial islands actually have a long history in many parts of the world, dating back to the purpose-built islands of Ancient Egyptian civilization, the Stilt crannogs of prehistoric Scotland and Ireland, the ceremonial centers of Nan Madol in Micronesia and the still extant floating islands of Lake Titicaca. The city of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec predecessor of Mexico City that was home to 500,000 people when the Spaniards arrived, stood on a small natural island in Lake Texcoco that was surrounded by countless artificial chinamitl islands.
The people of Langa Langa Lagoon and Lau Lagoon in Malaita, Solomon Islands built about 60 artificial islands on the reef including Funaafou, Sulufou and Adaege.  The people of Lau Lagoon build islands on the reef as these provided protection against attack from the people who lived in the centre of Malaita. These islands were formed literally one rock at a time. A family would take their canoe out to the reef which protects the lagoon and then dive for rocks, bring them to the surface and then return to the selected site and drop the rocks into the water. Living on the reef was also healthier as the mosquitoes, which infested the coastal swamps, were not found on the reef islands. The Lau people continue to live on the reef islands.
Many artificial islands have been built in urban harbors to provide either a site deliberately isolated from the city or just spare real estate otherwise unobtainable in a crowded metropolis. An example of the first case is Dejima, created in the bay of Nagasaki in Japan's Edo period as a contained center for European merchants. During the isolationist era, Dutch people were generally banned from Nagasaki and Japanese from Dejima. Similarly, Ellis Island, in Upper New York Bay beside New York City, a former tiny islet greatly expanded by land reclamation, served as an isolated immigration center for the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century, preventing an escape to the city of those refused entry for disease or other perceived flaws, who might otherwise be tempted toward illegal immigration. One of the bet-known artificial islands is the Île Notre-Dame in Montreal, built for Expo 67.
“While China conducts innocent passage around real U.S. islands of Alaska, the U.S. is apparently unable to do so around China’s fake islands in the South China Sea. The transit by Chinese warships in innocent passage through the territorial sea of Attu Island in the Aleutian chain has added an additional wrinkle to U.S. policy in the South China Sea.”
 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-hosts: Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents.
 
Hour One
Thursday  3 March 2016 / Hour 1, Block A: Jo Becker, NYTimes, in re:  The Libya Gamble. Part One: Hillary Clinton, "Smart Power" and a Dictator's Fall
The president was wary about intervening, but Mrs. Clinton was persuasive. In the end, the ouster of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi left Libya a failed state and a haven for terrorists.

Part Two: A New Libya, with "Very Little Time Left"
The fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi seemed to vindicate Hillary Clinton. Then militias refused to disarm, neighbors fanned a civil war, and the Islamic State found refuge. Video: Hillary Clinton's Legacy in Libya     http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/libya-isis-hillary-clinton...
..  ..  .. 
THE LIBYA GAMBLE   AN EXAMINATION OF THE AMERICAN INTERVENTION IN LIBYA AND HILLARY CLINTON’S ROLE IN IT. 
IT WAS A GRISLY START to the new era for Libya, broadcast around the world. The dictator was dragged from the sewer pipe where he was hiding, tossed around by frenzied rebel soldiers, beaten bloody and sodomized with a bayonet. A shaky cellphone video showed the pocked face of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, “the Leader” who had terrified Libyans for four decades, looking frightened and bewildered. He would soon be dead.  The first news reports of Colonel Qaddafi’s capture and killing in October 2011 reached the secretary of state in Kabul, Afghanistan, where she had just sat down for a televised interview. “Wow!” she said, looking at an aide’s BlackBerry before cautiously noting that the report had not yet been confirmed. But Hillary Clinton seemed impatient for a conclusion to the multinational military intervention she had done so much to organize, and in a rare unguarded moment, she dropped her reserve.
“We came, we saw, he died!” she exclaimed.
Two days before, Mrs. Clinton had taken a triumphal tour of the Libyan capital, Tripoli, and for weeks top aides had been circulating a “ticktock” that described her starring role in the events that had led to this moment. The timeline, her top policy aide, Jake Sullivan, wrote, demonstrated Mrs. Clinton’s “leadership/ownership/stewardship of this country’s Libya policy from start to finish.” The memo’s languageput her at the center of everything: “HRC announces … HRC directs … HRC travels … HRC engages,” it read.
It was a brag sheet for a cabinet member eyeing a presidential race, and the Clinton team’s eagerness to claim credit for her prompted eye-rolling at the White House and the Pentagon. Some joked that to hear her aides tell it, she had practically called in the airstrikes herself.
But there were plenty of signs that the triumph would be short-lived, that the vacuum left by Colonel Qaddafi’s death invited violence and division.
In fact, on the same August day that Mr. Sullivan had compiled his laudatory memo, the State Department’s top Middle East hand, Jeffrey D. Feltman, had sent a lengthy email with an utterly different tone about what he had seen on his own visit to Libya.  
The country’s interim leaders seemed shockingly disengaged, he wrote. Mahmoud Jibril, the acting prime minister, who had helped persuade Mrs. Clinton to back the opposition, was commuting from Qatar, making only “cameo” appearances. A leading rebel general had been assassinated, underscoring the hazard of “revenge killings.” Islamists were moving aggressively to seize power, and members of the anti-Qaddafi coalition, notably Qatar, were financing them.
On a task of the utmost urgency, disarming the militia fighters who had dethroned the dictator but now threatened the nation’s unity, Mr. Feltman reported an alarming lassitude. Mr. Jibril and his associates, he wrote, “tried to avert their eyes” from the problem that militias could pose on “the Day After.” . . . 
Thursday  3 March 2016 / Hour 1, Block B:  Jo Becker, NYTimes, in re:  The Libya Gamble. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/libya-isis-hillary-clinton.html?_r=0  (segment 2 of 4)
Thursday  3 March 2016 / Hour 1, Block C:  Jo Becker, NYTimes, in re:  The Libya Gamble.  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/libya-isis-hillary-clinton...  (segment 3 of 4)
Thursday  3 March 2016 / Hour 1, Block D:  Jo Becker, NYTimes, in re:  The Libya Gamble. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/libya-isis-hillary-clinton...  (segment 4 of 4)
 
Hour Two
Thursday  3 March 2016 / Hour 2, Block A:  Ambassador Dennis Ross, counselor a& William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy; in re:
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/russias-grim-pat...
http://in.reuters.com/article/gulf-hezbollah-idINKCN0W412F
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/07/a-troubled-truce-in-syria
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/syrias-cease-fire-frays-as-russia-r...
http://www.pmo.gov.il/English/MediaCenter/Spokesman/Pages/spokeStart2802...
http://jcpa.org/article/earthquakes-of-the-middle-east/
Thursday  3 March 2016 / Hour 2, Block B:  Patrick Clawson, Morningstar senior Fellow & Washington Institute research director, incl Iran Security Initiative; in re:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-miller-iran-elections-20160226-story.html ; http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/03/world/middleeast/iran-elections.html ; http://www.businessinsider.com/iran-elections-reformists-moderates-2016-2
Thursday  3 March 2016 / Hour 2, Block C:  Eugene Kontorovich, Northwestern University School of Law, and expert on constitutional & international law; in re:
Thursday  3 March 2016 / Hour 2, Block D:  Ilan Berman, American Foreign Policy Council VP,  in re:
 
Hour Three
Thursday  3 March 2016 / Hour 3, Block A:  David Larter, Navy Times, & Capt Jerry Hendrix, CAS, in re: The U.S. Navy has dispatched a small armada to the South China Sea.
The carrier John C. Stennis, two destroyers, two cruisers and the 7th Fleet flagship have sailed into the disputed waters in recent days, according to military officials. The carrier strike group is the latest show of force in the tense region, with the U.S. asserting that China is militarizing the region to guard its excessive territorial claims. i is joined in the region by the cruisers Antietam and Mobile Bay, and the destroyers Chung-Hoon and Stockdale. The command ship Blue Ridge, the floating headquarters of the Japan-based 7th Fleet, is also in the area, en route to a port visit in the Philippines, and Stennis deployed from Washington state on Jan. 15.
The Japan-based Antietam, officials said, was conducting a "routine patrol" separate from the Stennis, following up patrols conducted by the destroyer McCambell and the dock landing ship Ashland in late February. The stand-off has been heating up on both sides. After news in February that the Chinese had deployed an advanced surface-to-air missile battery to the Paracel Islands, U.S. Pacific Command head Adm. Harry Harris told lawmakers that China was militarizing the South China Sea.
"In my opinion China is clearly militarizing the South China Sea," Harris testified on Feb. 24. "You’d have to believe in a flat Earth to believe otherwise." A Pacific Fleet spokesman downplayed the heavy U.S. presence in the region. "Our ships and aircraft operate routinely throughout the Western Pacific — including the South China Sea — and have for decades," Cmdr. Clay Doss said in a statement. "In 2015 alone, Pacific Fleet ships sailed about 700 combined days in the South China Sea."
However, experts say sending Stennis and its air wing to the South China Sea is a clear signal to China and the region.
"Clearly the Navy and DoD are demonstrating their full commitment to presence and freedom of navigation in the region,” said Jerry Hendrix, a retired Navy captain and analyst with the Center for a New American Security in Washington, D.C. “With the full carrier strike group and the command ship, the Navy is showing the scope of its interests and ability to project presence and power around world.” The destroyer Lassen's vaunted October patrol within the 12-mile limit of China's man-made South China Sea islands was the first challenge of China's sovereignty over the Spratly Islands since Chinese land-reclamation projects began there. On Jan. 30, the destroyer Curtis Wilbur patrolled near Triton Island, part of the Paracel Islands chain China also claims.  
Six nations in the region lay claim to parts or all of the disputed islands chains. The Spratly Islands, a collection of reefs, rocks and other natural features, have been the site of extensive Chinese land reclamation projects. In the last two years, China has begun constructing islands on top of reefs and claiming territorial seas around them to gain exclusive fishing and resource rights to most of the South China Sea. These disputes have led to violence in the past. In 1974, a conflict between South Vietnam and China led to a shootout in the Paracel Islands, located between Vietnam and China's Hainan Island. That dispute continues.
Thursday  3 March 2016 / Hour 3, Block B: Salah Tarif, Druze Israeli politician who served as a member of the Knesset between 1988 and 2006; in re:
Thursday  3 March 2016 / Hour 3, Block C: David M Drucker , Washington Examiner, and Bill Whalen, Hoover, in re:  . . . US politics, the parlous state of things. Trump and transcripts; it's all about making deals.  Trump has always been the center of attention, but Rubio and Cruz did have Trump on his heels for a bit.   He did downright flip-flop: not “”I thought about it and changed my mind” – but not quite that gallant, and in any case many Republicans don’t like that. Kasich tried to be the angel in the crowd. The audience was rowdy, hooting and hollering; not pleasant. “In Kansas, 39% undecided.”  Trump has been averaging 34%.  . . . Kasich insists he’ll win Ohio. He talked about handling the federal budget; did respond to Chris Wallace’s gotcha query, is Trump too naïf to deal with Putin? Kasich: I won't take you up on that.   . . .
[In background, the staff wonder about the eventual GOP floor fight. Large spitballs?  M80 firecrackers in the corner?]
Thursday  3 March 2016 / Hour 3, Block D:  John Fund, NRO, and Thaddeus McCotter, WJR, in re:  The debate Detroit performance tonight:  subsumed by offensive trivia.   The general electorate is not pleased.  Mitt Romney grew up in Detroit, and gave a lecture this morning; he’s respected in Michigan, nut the candidates who attacked Trump were asked, “If he’s nominated would you support him?”  “Oh yes!” (oops.)  Trump had twice as much time as others – and too much time for him is not good for him.  Concerning the NYT, Trump said, “I’ll respect the off-the-record agreement and not release the tape” – hey – it's you who control of off-the-record agreement.
Romney today signalled the new GOP establishment strategy: Kasich takes Ohio, Rubio takes Florida, and that denies Trump nomination on the first ballot.  Trump has never done well with late deciders.
  
Hour Four
Thursday  3 March 2016 / Hour 4, Block A:  Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack, in re:  Astronauts return after 340 days on ISS   After 340 days in space astronauts Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko safely returned to Earth early today. Now the real research begins. Because Kelly has an identical twin, Mark Kelly, who is also a former astronaut, researchers will be able to gain a great deal of knowledge comparing the differences in how their bodies changed over the nearly full year, with one in weightlessness and the other on Earth. However, what I want is longer missions, two or three years long, thus far exceeding what it would take to travel to and from Mars. Only then can we find out if humans will be able to make the journey safely.
Thursday  3 March 2016 / Hour 4, Block B:  Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack, in re:  Mars’ giant volcanoes shifted planet’s axis  New computer models based on the geological data from Mars suggests that when the giant volcanoes spewed their lava out they upset the planet’s equilibrium, causing the axis to tilt 20 to 25 degrees.
Not surprisingly, there remain many uncertainties with this analysis.
Thursday  3 March 2016 / Hour 4, Block C:  Richard A Epstein, Hoover, Chicago Law, NYU Law, in re:  Judging from all the hype, the economic book of 2016 is Robert Gordon’s The Rise and Fall of American Growth. Gordon’s book offers the definitive account of how the many technological innovations between 1870 and 1940 dramatically improved life in the United States. But the book is utterly silent on why American society was capable of making such a radical transformation during that period. Gordon’s book has attracted much attention because of his warning that America is not likely to again see such dramatic improvements in the standard of living. The question is why. A big part of the answer is that these innovations coincided with a period of American history when laissez-faire capitalism was at its peak. Growth started to decline because of the massive expansion of the government occasioned by the New Deal, which put a strain on the free market . . .  http://www.hoover.org/research/real-cause-american-growth (1 of 2)
Thursday  3 March 2016 / Hour 4, Block D:   Richard A Epstein, Hoover, Chicago Law, NYU Law, in re:  Judging from all the hype, the economic book of 2016 is Robert Gordon’s The Rise and Fall of American Growth. Gordon’s book offers the definitive account of how the many technological innovations between 1870 and 1940 dramatically improved life in the United States. But the book is utterly silent on why American society was capable of making such a radical transformation during that period. Gordon’s book has attracted much attention because of his warning that America is not likely to again see such dramatic improvements in the standard of living. The question is why. A big part of the answer is that these innovations coincided with a period of American history when laissez-faire capitalism was at its peak. Growth started to decline because of the massive expansion of the government occasioned by the New Deal, which put a strain on the free market . . .  http://www.hoover.org/research/real-cause-american-growth (2 of 2)
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