Photo, above: Pillars of Qohaito, pre-Axumite monolithic columns in Qohaito, Eritrea; nominated for UNESCO World Heritage List. The Kingdom of Aksum, covering much of modern-day Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, rose somewhere around the first or second centuries and adopted Christianity by the time Islam had conquered Egypt.  See Hour 4, Block A, Carolina Winter, Bloomberg, on  ERITREA: THE LEAST TECHNOLOGICALLY CONNECTED COUNTRY ON EARTH.

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Hour One

Tuesday  1 July 2014 / Hour 1, Block A: George Vescey, NYT & author, 8 World Cups, in re:    In the End, There Was No Saving U.S.  Americans Fall to Belgium as Late Rally Falls Short

Tuesday  1 July 2014 / Hour 1, Block B:    Bill Whalen, Hoover Institution / Advancing a Free Society, in re: Money Doesn’t Buy Love, Nor Does It Sell Memoirs You can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can judge an author by his or her book sales. In which case, Hillary Clinton has a problem on her pen-cramped hands.

According to published reports sales of Hard Choices, Mrs. Clinton’s first-hand account of her time as Secretary of State (and her second turn at writing political memoirs), declined 43.5% in its second week of availability for summertime reading. A little over 130,000 copies of the 656-page hardcover have flown off the shelves, meaning publisher Simon & Shuster may be hard-pressed to turn a profit after giving Hillary a $14 million advance.  How . . . [more]

Tuesday  1 July 2014 / Hour 1, Block C: Josh Rogin, Daily Beast, in re: THE NEW IRAQ WAR  Putin’s Pilots Set to Fly Over Iraq
 Russia may not have boots on the ground in Iraq—yet. But it will have them in the sky; Russian pilots could be flying over Iraq within days.

Tuesday  1 July 2014 / Hour 1, Block D: Monica Davey, NYT, in re:   Detroit Needs Residents, but Sends Some Packing  In a city that needs to keep its residents, there is a virtual pipeline out, with more than one in 10 homes subject to foreclosure because of back property taxes.

Hour Two

Left: flag of the Lukhansk Republic, using old Cyrillic letters, from Old Church Slavonic liturgical language.

Tuesday  1 July 2014 / Hour 2, Block A:  Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus;  author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin, in re: Atrocities being committed by Kiev – documented in The Nation article;  that is NOT being reported in American media, but is well known in academe.   The reason that southeastern Ukraine didn’t vote was that it was forbidden to put forth a candidate.  Right now several cities – Sloviansk, Lukhansk  and others – are under heavy shelling, no elect  . . . The US is taunting Russia to intervene. Perhaps a decision has been made to provoke Putin to move into Ukraine, which would be an excuse for the US to face Russia – war between US and Russia. 

Tuesday  1 July 2014 / Hour 2, Block B: Stephen F. Cohen (2 of 4), in re: US has no ambassador in Moscow. Sloviansk, Lukhansk, Donestk.  "The Silence of American Hawks,"* The Nation magazine.  Right Sector, ideologically associated with Svoboda Party, an ultranationaist group (whch the US helped brig t power). In  the Army another such group widely called neofascist; threw bombs at he police, may have been involved in unsavory deed. Called its actions in the eastern Ukraine "antiterrorist" -  so Kiev hastily formed a group called National Guard.  Back to Odessa, where pro- and anti-Kiev protestors were in the streets.  the former drove civilians into buildings, sealed the buildings, threw Molotov cocktails in so the building went into flames – at least forty, maybe many more, died; many others were in hospital seriously injured. Memories of WWII Fascists Kiev never acknowledged this nor did Washington.  Svoboda got 2% in the elections but was given five major portfolios in government. Note tat Lenin's Bolsheviks were a fringe group that came to power ten months late; similar with Hitler's group. Takes less than 10% of population to create chaos.  Yatseniuk, in Kiev, is calling half of Ukraine's population: "sub-humans."  We know what his language means.  

Tuesday  1 July 2014 / Hour 2, Block C: Stephen F. Cohen (3 of 4), in re: Seventy years ago, Ukrainians fought in the Second War against Fascists. In the US, we’ve never been invaded so this is all out of books for us; for Ukrainians and Russians today, many of their parents and grandparents were in that war - the meanings are not abstract but are visceral, specters from a very-present swamp. Putin was wrong when, until two weeks ago, he said that the whole Kievan govt was neofascist; in fact, there are many genuinely good people there.  . . .  Lvov was the site of many of the worst Hitler massacres of Jews; a lot of the killers's progeny are in Western Ukraine.  In WWII, the extermination of gypsies, Ukrainians, Jews is very much remembered. Putin's father was in the war and devastated; his brother died in the war   The US has turned WWII into a  sag of American victory.  Russia lost 25 million citizens; when they see a burning bldg it reminds them of pogroms; when they hear a prominent American (Hillary Clinton, e.g.) equates Putin with Hitler, they see that as a sort of sacrilege against Russia, itself.  Putin: "Northstream & Southstream; free-trade zones, esp with the European Union. Stability in the entire Eurasian market & sustainable economic dvpt will take into account mutual [common] interest."  he's convinced that all of this has come from Washington – we may argue, but neither NATO nor the EU – certainly not the Poles – can do anything significant without Washington's being on board.

Народний Рух України

Tuesday  1 July 2014 / Hour 2, Block D: Stephen F. Cohen (4 of 4), in re: The loud silence of American media and political class – no conversation about current events in Ukraine.   Vremya nightly fills Russian TV screens with pictures of Ukrainian cities being destroyed by Kievan activists; people fleeing homes.  Russians see Ukrainians as sort of cousins, are now demanding to know what Putin is doing to defend the cousins.  The Russian Communist Party gets 17% at max – might be cheated out f 0% - and issued a statement demanding that Putin act. Demand 1: Lavrov – humanitarian corridor from eastern Ukraine to Russia, mostly women and children in rickety busses being fired on; and humanitarian supplies being sent in – food and medicine.  US vetoed this in the UN.  Russia is opening  humanitarian corridor unilaterally.  Russian citizens ask for a no-fly-zone over eastern Ukraine, and if needed have Russian lanes shoot down violators, incl tanks and planes. (Recall Libya.)

Hour Three

Tuesday  1 July 2014 / Hour 3, Block A: Justin Elliot, ProPublica, in re:    ·  The Red Cross releases few details about how it spends money after big disasters, making it difficult to figure out whether or not donor dollars are well spent.

·  The "trade secret" argument has convinced the state to redact some material from the response to ProPublica's information request, although it's not clear yet how much.

·  The Red Cross argues in its appeal to the attorney general that if its "trade secrets" were released, "competitors would be able to mimic the American Red Cross's business model for an increased competitive advantage." The letter doesn't specify who the "competitors" are.  [more]

Tuesday  1 July 2014 / Hour 3, Block B: Tim Teeman, Daily Beast, U.S. NEWS, in re: Sting & Hillary: They’re Just Like You
 Sting says his kids shouldn’t think they’ll inherit his wealth. Hillary and Chelsea Clinton are playing down their family’s money. But these "just like you" famous figures can afford to be "real" when they have so much. 

Tuesday  1 July 2014 / Hour 3, Block C:   Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re:

Tuesday  1 July 2014 / Hour 3, Block D:  Ken Croswell, Science Magazine, in re: Trio of big black holes spotted in galaxy smashup   Astronomers staring across the universe have spotted a startling scene: three supermassive black holes orbiting close to one another, two of them just a few hundred light-years apart. The trio, housed in a pair of colliding galaxies, may help scientists hunting for ripples in spacetime known as gravitational waves.

Most giant galaxies harbor at their centers a supermassive black hole millions or billions of times as massive as the sun. If gas falls into the object, it can heat up and glow, turning the region just outside the black hole into a quasar—a brilliant galactic nucleus that can outshine the entire Milky Way. The astronomer Roger Deane of the University of Cape Town and his colleagues have been watching a particular quasar, known as SDSS J1502+1115, in the constellation Boötes. Other astronomers had found that the object, located 4.3 billion light-years from Earth, possessed two supermassive black holes, each the center of a large galaxy smashing into another. The black holes are at least 24,000 light-years apart. Deane wanted to confirm their existence, so he used an intercontinental array of radio dishes that yields even sharper views than the Hubble Space Telescope. Lo and behold, one of the black holes turned out to be two. "We were incredibly surprised," says Deane, whose team reports its findings online today in Nature.

If the two black holes composing the newfound pair are equally distant from Earth, they're just 450 light-years apart and orbit each other every 4 million years. Triple black holes are rare, and the others discovered so far all feature black holes that are much farther apart. The new pair is the second "tightest" binary black hole known; a decade ago, other astronomers found two supermassive black holes separated by about 24 light-years. "It's very good to see another object," says . . . [more]

Hour Four

Tuesday  1 July 2014 / Hour 4, Block A: Carolina Winter, Bloomberg, in re:  ERITREA: THE LEAST TECHNOLOGICALLY CONNECTED COUNTRY ON EARTH (by Caroline Winter, with Bealfan Haile) -  Eritrea, a Pennsylvania-size nation of 6 million in Africa, is the least connected country on earth, according to data compiled by the United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Only 1 percent of Eritrea’s population have a landline, according to ITU data, and only 5.6 percent have a mobile phone—the lowest share in the world. Given the country's minimal phone and Internet access, it’s hard to draw internal or external attention to problems there.

Tuesday  1 July 2014 / Hour 4, Block B: Carter Dougherty, Bloomberg, in re: Ex-NSA Chief Pitches Banks Costly Advice on Cyber-Attacks   As the four-star general in charge of U.S. digital defenses, Keith Alexander warned repeatedly that the financial industry was among the likely targets of a major attack. Now he’s selling the message directly to the banks.

Joining a crowded field of cyber-consultants, the former National Security Agency chief is pitching his services for as much as $1 million a month. The audience is receptive: Under pressure from regulators, lawmakers and their customers, financial firms are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into barriers against digital assaults.  Alexander, who retired in March from his dual role as head of the NSA and the U.S. Cyber Command, has since met with the largest banking trade groups, stressing the threat from state-sponsored attacks bent on data destruction as well as hackers interested in stealing information or money.

“It would be devastating if one of our major banks was hit, because they’re so interconnected,” Alexander said in an interview.  A lesson in the vulnerabilities came yesterday, when it was disclosed that hackers had disrupted high-speed trading at a large hedge fund and rerouted data that might be . . . [more]

Tuesday  1 July 2014 / Hour 4, Block C: Del Quentin Wilbur,  Bloomberg Businessweek, in re:   THE BOMBMAKERS WAREHOUSE   The FBI’s Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center, or Tedac – the lab that studies explosives to catch terrorists - is the world’s largest such repository, holding more than 100,000 boxes of IEDs. Analysts have lifted some 6,000 fingerprints from explosives, helping US authorities identify more than 1,700 people with terrorist ties, according to the FBI. The lab’s experts have published hundreds of intelligence reports detailing the latest bombmaking trends, which commanders have used to keep up with enemy tactics. Next year it will move from its current hodgepodge of facilities in VA to a new $132 million facility in Huntsville, Ala.  [more]    Video here     

Tuesday  1 July 2014 / Hour 4, Block D: Peter Berkowitz, Real Clear Politics, in re:  An Open Letter to Swarthmore's Board of Managers

Dear Members of the Board:

I read with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation the unexpected announcement earlier this month that President Rebecca Chopp is departing Swarthmore to become the chancellor of the University of Denver.

Anticipation because, as a grateful graduate of Swarthmore, I can’t help but view the hiring of a new president as an opportunity for the school to rededicate itself to the true mission of liberal education, which is to prepare students for the rights and responsibilities of freedom by furnishing and refining their minds. Trepidation because I fear that Swarthmore’s next president will lead the college further down the path of politicized research and curriculum that has become the hallmark of our finest colleges and universities.

It is your responsibility to form a search committee and oversee the process by which the college chooses its next president. You would not be serving on the board if you were not men and woman of substantial accomplishments and if you did not love Swarthmore. But I worry that your fond memories of the liberal education you received will thwart your understanding of what liberal education has become. And I fear that you will give inordinate weight to the assessment of today’s professors and administrators in judging Swarthmore’s current condition.

Today’s educators cannot be counted on to provide an accurate evaluation. In February, I saw a dramatic illustration of their obliviousness while attending a Swarthmore symposium on the future of the liberal arts. It was as if I had entered a time warp.

In several rounds of panels, Swarthmore graduates who had gone on to positions of distinction in university teaching and administration spoke about the kind of liberal education that I cherished as an undergraduate. It encouraged questions, spurred students to see issues from a variety of angles, and fostered the mutually respectful exchange of opinions. It was an education for which I will be forever grateful.

The panelists, however, spoke as if this were the sort of education being delivered to today’s undergraduates. That, in large measure, is wishful thinking.

Much ink has been spilt over the last 25 years examining the crisis of liberal education: the hollowing out of the curriculum, the aggressive transmission of a uniformly progressive ideology, the promulgation of speech codes, and the violation of due process in campus disciplinary procedures. Although Swarthmore is not immune from these pathologies, not one speaker at the symposium mentioned them.  In January, a former Swarthmore student who had been expelled in 2013 . . .    [Anent a conversation between Cornel West and Robert George:] A significant number of students opposed the conversation because of Professor George’s public criticism of same-sex marriage. One undergraduate captured the crux of the objection to bringing George to campus. “What really bothered me,” she said, “is the whole idea that at a liberal arts college we need to be hearing a diversity of opinion.”  . . .  The repudiation of due process, the determination to recast opposing opinions and those who hold them as evil, the refusal to vigorously defend the free exchange of ideas -- these are signs that one of the nation’s great liberal arts colleges, like many of its peers, has lost sight of the aim and operation of liberal education.   . . .  [more]

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* The Nation magazine;  Stephen F. Cohen June 30, 2014  

The Silence of American Hawks about Kiev’s Atrocities The regime has repeatedly carried out artillery and air attacks on city centers, creating a humanitarian catastrophe—which is all but ignored by the US political-media establishment.  For weeks, the US-backed regime in Kiev has been committing atrocities against its own citizens in southeastern Ukraine, regions heavily populated by Russian-speaking Ukrainians and ethnic Russians. While victimizing a growing number of innocent people, including children, and degrading America’s reputation, these military assaults on cities, captured on video, are generating pressure in Russia on President Vladimir Putin to “save our compatriots.”

The reaction of the Obama administration—as well as the new cold-war hawks in Congress and in the establishment media—has been twofold: silence interrupted only by occasional statements excusing and thus encouraging more atrocities by Kiev. Very few Americans (notably, the independent scholar Gordon Hahn) have protested this shameful complicity. We may honorably disagree about the causes and resolution of the Ukrainian crisis, the worst US-Russian confrontation in decades, but not about deeds that are rising to the level of war crimes, if they have not already done so.

* * *

In mid-April, the new Kiev government, predominantly western Ukrainian in composition and outlook, declared an “anti-terrorist operation” against a growing political rebellion in the Southeast. At that time, the rebels were mostly mimicking the initial Maidan protests in Kiev in 2013—demonstrating, issuing defiant proclamations, occupying public buildings and erecting defensive barricades—before Maidan turned ragingly violent and, in February, overthrew Ukraine’s corrupt but legitimately elected president, Viktor Yanukovych. (The entire Maidan episode, it will be recalled, had Washington’s enthusiastic political, and perhaps more tangible, support.) Indeed, the precedent for seizing official buildings and demanding the allegiance of local authorities had been set even earlier, in January, in western Ukraine—by pro-Maidan, anti-Yanukovych protesters, some declaring “independence” from his government.

Considering those preceding events, but above all the country’s profound historical divisions, particularly between its western and eastern regions—ethnic, linguistic, religious, cultural, economic and political—the rebellion in the southeast, centered in the industrial Donbass, was not surprising. Nor were its protests against the unconstitutional way (in effect, a coup) the new government had come to power, the southeast’s sudden loss of effective political representation in the capital and the real prospect of official discrimination. But by declaring an “anti-terrorist operation” against the new protesters, Kiev signaled its intention to “destroy” them, not negotiate with them.

On May 2, in this incendiary atmosphere, a horrific event occurred in the southern city of Odessa, awakening memories of Nazi German extermination squads in Ukraine and other Soviet republics during World War II. An organized pro-Kiev mob chased protesters into a building, set it on fire and tried to block the exits. Some forty people, perhaps many more, perished in the flames or were murdered as they fled the inferno. A still unknown number of other victims were seriously injured.

Members of the infamous Right Sector, a far-right paramilitary organization ideologically aligned with the ultranationalist Svoboda party, itself a constituent part of Kiev’s coalition government, led the mob. Both are frequently characterized by knowledgeable observers as “neo-fascist” movements. (Hateful ethnic chants by the mob were audible, and swastika-like symbols were found on the scorched building.) Kiev alleged that the victims had themselves accidentally started the fire, but eyewitnesses, television footage and social media videos told the true story, as they have about subsequent atrocities.

Instead of interpreting the Odessa massacre as an imperative for restraint, Kiev intensified its “anti-terrorist operation.” Since May, the regime has sent a growing number of armored personnel carriers, tanks, artillery, helicopter gunships and warplanes to southeastern cities, among them, Slovyansk (Slavyansk in Russian), Mariupol, Krasnoarmeisk, Kramatorsk, Donetsk and Luhansk (Lugansk in Russian). When its regular military units and local police forces turned out to be less than effective, willing or loyal, Kiev hastily mobilized Right Sector and other radical nationalist militias responsible for much of the violence at Maidan into a National Guard to accompany regular detachments—partly to reinforce them, partly, it seems, to enforce Kiev’s commands. Zealous, barely trained and drawn mostly from central and western regions, Kiev’s new recruits have reportedly escalated the ethnic warfare and killing of innocent civilians. (Episodes described as “massacres” soon also occurred in Mariupol and Kramatorsk.)

Initially, the “anti-terrorist” campaign was limited primarily, though not only, to rebel checkpoints on the outskirts of cities. Since May, however, Kiev has repeatedly carried out artillery and air attacks on city centers that have struck residential buildings, shopping malls, parks, schools, kindergartens and hospitals, particularly in Slovyansk and Luhansk. More and more urban areas, neighboring towns and even villages now look and sound like war zones, with telltale rubble, destroyed and pockmarked buildings, mangled vehicles, the dead and wounded in streets, wailing mourners and crying children. Conflicting information from Kiev, local resistance leaders and Moscow make it impossible to estimate the number of dead and wounded noncombatants—certainly hundreds. The number continues to grow due also to Kiev’s blockade of cities where essential medicines, food, water, fuel and electricity are scarce, and where wages and pensions are often no longer being paid. The result is an emerging humanitarian catastrophe.

Another effect is clear. Kiev’s “anti-terrorist” tactics have created a reign of terror in the targeted cities. Panicked by shells and mortars exploding on the ground, menacing helicopters and planes flying above and fear of what may come next, families are seeking sanctuary in basements and other darkened shelters. Even The New York Times, which like the mainstream American media generally has deleted the atrocities from its coverage, described survivors in Slovyansk “as if living in the Middle Ages.” Meanwhile, an ever-growing number of refugees, disproportionately women and traumatized children, have been fleeing across the border into Russia. In late June, the UN estimated that as many as 110,000 Ukrainians had already fled to Russia and about half that many to other Ukrainian sanctuaries.

It is true, of course, that anti-Kiev rebels in these regions are increasingly well-armed (though lacking the government’s arsenal of heavy and airborne weapons), organized and aggressive, no doubt with some Russian assistance, whether officially sanctioned or not. But calling themselves “self-defense” fighters is not wrong. They did not begin the combat; their land is being invaded and assaulted by a government whose political legitimacy is arguably no greater than their own, two of their large regions having voted overwhelmingly for autonomy referenda; and, unlike actual terrorists, they have not committed acts of war outside their own communities. The French adage suggested by an American observer seems applicable: “This animal is very dangerous. If attacked, it defends itself.”

* * *

Among the crucial questions rarely discussed in the US political-media establishment: What is the role of the “neo-fascist” factor in Kiev’s “anti-terrorist” ideology and military operations? Putin’s position, at least until recently—that the entire Ukrainian government is a “neo-fascist junta”—is incorrect. Many members of the ruling coalition and its parliamentary majority are aspiring European-style democrats or moderate nationalists. This may also be true of Ukraine’s newly elected president, the oligarch Petro Poroshenko. Equally untrue, however, are claims by Kiev’s American apologists, including even some academics and liberal intellectuals, that Ukraine’s neo-fascists—or perhaps quasi-fascists—are merely agitated nationalists, “garden-variety Euro-populists,” a “distraction” or lack enough popular support to be significant.

Independent Western scholars have documented the fascist origins, contemporary ideology and declarative symbols of Svoboda and its fellow-traveling Right Sector. Both movements glorify Ukraine’s murderous Nazi collaborators in World War II as inspirational ancestors. Both, to quote Svoboda’s leader Oleh Tyahnybok, call for an ethnically pure nation purged of the “Moscow-Jewish mafia” and “other scum,” including homosexuals, feminists and political leftists. And both hailed the Odessa massacre. According to the website of Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh, it was “another bright day in our national history.” A Svoboda parliamentary deputy added, “Bravo, Odessa…. Let the Devils burn in hell.” If more evidence is needed, in December 2012, the European Parliament decried Svoboda’s “racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views [that] go against the EU’s fundamental values and principles.” In 2013, the World Jewish Congress denounced Svoboda as “neo-Nazi.” Still worse, observers agree that Right Sector is even more extremist.

Nor do electoral results tell the story. Tyahnybok and Yarosh together received less than 2 percent of the June presidential vote, but historians know that in traumatic times, when, to recall Yeats, “the center cannot hold,” small, determined movements can seize the moment, as did Lenin’s Bolsheviks and Hitler’s Nazis. Indeed, Svoboda and Right Sector already command power and influence far exceeding their popular vote. “Moderates” in the US-backed Kiev government, obliged to both movements for their violence-driven ascent to power, and perhaps for their personal safety, rewarded Svoboda and Right Sector with some five to eight (depending on shifting affiliations) top ministry positions, including ones overseeing national security, military, prosecutorial and educational affairs. Still more, according to . . .  [more]

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