Photo, above: Narendra Modi, Indian PM, with Anandiben Patel at a meeting of BJP MLAs, after being elected as Prime Minister. Patel succeeded Modi as the Chief Minister of Gujarat.

Narendra Damodardas Modi (born 17 September 1950) is the fifteenth and current prime minister of India. Modi, a leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), also served as the Chief Minister of Gujarat from 2001–14.

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Co-hosts: Gordon Chang, Forbes.com.  Dr. David M. Livingston, The Space Show.

Hour One

Wednesday  25 June 2014 / Hour 1, Block A: Afshin Molavi, senior advisor at Oxford Analytica, in re: China and the Middle East, esp Iraq.   Iraq has a proven reserve of   billion Bbl of oil; currently sells about 3.6 million Bbl/day.   Who won the Iraq war? China – Chinese companies landed the hugest concessions. China depends on Iraq, Saudi – in a decade or so, China will get 70% of its oil from that region. As the US ploughs across the ocean to keep the sea lanes open – we're doing it for China.  ISIS is meeting resistance from the Iraqi regular forces and Shi'a militias – but ISIS could send in suicide bombers and blow up wells.   80% of Iran's oil is _________; it would draw the line at ISIS taking over the Baghdad govt – would then send in more al Quds fighters.  Africa: Nigeria, Libya, Angola: also Kazakhstan; also US production:  imagine writing off Iraq – can the US make up for it? Not 3.5 million Bbl/day, but new oil is coming form West Africa and the Gulf of Guinea.  The only one who can bring 3. 5 mill bbl/day is Saudi Arabia, and prices would certainly arise.  Our single largest oil source is: Canada.  Nonetheless, we police the global commons and it looks as though China is a free rider – but in fact that tranquility keeps the price of oil steady, which the US needs.

Wednesday  25 June 2014 / Hour 1, Block B: Julia Famularo, Project 2049, in re:  The attack in Kunming.  Xinjiang/East Turkestan.  What's not adding up in the Kunming (Yunnan province) attack--there may be official complicity in the deadly incident--and radiation contamination in East Turkestan.  The flag that the Chinese govt said it found wasn't the flag of al Qaeda or of the East Turkestan independence movement, and the knives used were entirely nonstandard among Uyghurs, and the said-to-be-Arabic script was poorly done.  After the  attack, the police refused to respond until Chinese citizens begged them repeatedly to do so.  Within seconds after the attack, Beijing had a news release prepared.  Looks a whole lot like a false-flag attack.  It's very hard for even moderate intellectuals to express any dissatisfaction with society

China shows graphic footage of Xinjiang militant attacks. Chinese state television on Tuesday showed dramatic footage of what the government calls terror attacks by Islamist militants from the far western region of Xinjiang, as it steps up its propaganda campaign to counter an upsurge in violence. The images, shown on CCTV's English-language channel as part of a programme on the threat China says it faces in Xinjiang, include surveillance camera footage of an attack at the north end of Beijing's Tiananmen Square last October.

Five people were killed and 40 hurt when a car ploughed into a crowd and burst into flames. The dead included three people in the car identified by authorities as Islamists from Xinjiang. In the colour footage, not shown before in such detail, the car speeds through the crowd, smashing into pedestrians, as a black flag with what looks like Arabic lettering flies out the left-hand side. The back of the vehicle is then shown on fire. "The tourists didn't stand a chance," the narrator says. The footage was also . . .

Wednesday  25 June 2014 / Hour 1, Block C: Hotel Mars, episode n.  Gwynne Shotwell, president, SpaceX, in re: Falcon 9 (called "Falcon nine-er"), being tested in Texas among cattle, who are unbothered.  Has 3 engines, most recent test went up a kilometer.  Testing new technologies and software.  Four little fins balance the rocket. Cows have seen almost a dozen tests and are used to it.  I still get excited but the cows are bored.  . . .  We'll stop webcasting launches, will livestream soon. . . . Yes, my job is to ensure that we're a money-making organization; but I need to mention the philanthropic intentions Elon had when he founded SpaceX:  based on doing something tremendous for humanity – develop a reliable transport system to explore the solar system and ultimately land humans on another planet to inhabit it.  Roscosmos, Angara, and all the other competitors. SpaceX is the number-one exciting space story of the year – everyone's thrilled about your work.  You've got everybody excited about this.  Grasshopper was 1.0; Falcon 9 is 2.0. 

Wednesday  25 June 2014 / Hour 1, Block D: Charles Burton, Brock University, in re:  . . .  under Mao, if you lost a political struggle, you cold lose your life. Under his successor, Deng Xiaoping, the genius was that it as less dangerous so the Party was less likely to be riven.  Under the current fellow, Xi Jinping, it’s getting more dangerous; chuang-gwei: torture to make you submit to the superior leadership and ideology of he person who’s purging you.

Hour Two

Wednesday  25 June 2014 / Hour 2, Block A: Alan Tonelson, independent economic policy analyst, RealityChek blog & @AlanTonelson, in re: the status of trade in the world today, especially the failure of the WTO's Doha Round and what that means for trade agreements.  Smoot-Hawley: Wall Street did not se a recovery and trade barriers stood between the US and the world; thence the Great Depression and worse -the 1940s and sequitur. Doha: in 2001 a world trade deal, but today we're no closer than in 2001. This will lead to consequences worldwide.  The Doha Round: used to be that trade grew faster than did the world economy; the spread has dramatically narrows since the 2008 financial crisis.  In a non-Doha world: WTO puts out studies annually documenting trade barriers that have sprung up.  Most countries do not open their markets more widely; rather, a steady growth of barriers.  Few countries have been eager to buy American goods.  US is one of a small handful of countries that really practice free trade. Most of our major trading partners have strong mercantile tradition, favor boosting their own exports, not into reciprocity.  Transpacific Partnership (TPP)  failing.  The TPP is one consequence of the failure of the Doha Round: negotiating narrower agreements with each other.  The approach the US has been taking embodies all the mistakes we've made since WWII – except now in a bad economy it really matters.  Negative 2.9% US economic growth.

Wednesday  25 June 2014 / Hour 2, Block B:  Charles Ortel, Newport Value Partners,  & Alan Tonelson, in re: big global economic risks.  The mask has come off: enormous relentless downward pressure on US wages.  We've run out of bullets.  From 2009 forward, we entered purgatory; now we're seeing hat we didn’t take the needed touch moves: go to the most inefficient part of the economy, the govt, and make it work, Now neither Party is prepared to do what needs t to be done, esp on a time scale that can work Further, inc barriers worldwide to trade, failure of Doha Round, and result of a steadily rising US deficit. When the deficit goes up, growth goes down.  These are "real" numbers – corrected for inflation.  At a restaurant today, same price, smaller portions. The business model for govt used in the US, Europe and Japan is broken. Can’t take a society that ageing and   .  That –2.9% growth in the US economy:  It wasn't good news so it’s an "outlier."  US exports fell by 9% - this is enormous.  (There was no snow in Long Beach port.) At the same time, imports grew, so it wasn't a hard winter.  Wasn't an outlier at all. From '82-'99, bubble of young people spending grew; now the population of 55 and up has soared, will continue through 2060(?!).

Image, below: Tamil TV, critical of PM Modi, published this. 

Wednesday  25 June 2014 / Hour 2, Block C:   Sadanand Dume, AEI,  in re:   Mr Modi is doing well, invited neighbors to his installation ceremony, accepted an invitation to Washington from Mr Obama.   DC recalled the 2002 riots in Gujarat and were reluctant to invite Modi, but once he was exonerated by Indian courts, Obama Adm should have invited him much earlier.   Going back to Bush II, good relations between US and India, but now much deeper and broader.   However, need much closer alignment.  US has gone through the motions, but hasn’t grasped all that's going on in and around India.  Modi people see that Obama was unnecessarily standoffish and now wants it to look as though all is completely well.  Good to see that two members of Congress have invited him to address Congress. New Delhi and Tokyo: both threatened by China, able to work together His natural two best friend as Abe and Japan; in the Middle East Israel ad Netanyahu. We may have to wait till we have a president who "gets it." Modi's first foreign trip was to have been 3 July to Tokyo with Abe before he was to see Xi Jinping.  A clerical snafu cancelled it, but it's clear that Modi and Abe have special relations.  The sometimes-you-see-it, sometimes-you-don't American fleet.  Nitin Gokhole says the Indian military has had a bounce in its step since Modi was elected.  A first thing Modi did was visit an aircraft carrier.

Wednesday  25 June 2014 / Hour 2, Block D:  Joseph Sternberg, WSJ Asia editorial board, in re: The Waning Beijing Consensus Lately democracy seems to be benefiting firms more than 'efficient' alternatives.   In Hong Kong, political leaders are telling businesses to worry about local citizens' demands for greater democracy. In Thailand, in contrast, there are signs that businesses are starting to wish they had democracy back after a military coup unseated an elected government last month. Meanwhile, businesses in Japan and India have some reason to cheer cautiously as voters have brought to office politicians of more or less reformist stripes.

Hour Three

Wednesday  25 June 2014 / Hour 3, Block A:  Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review & Pirates fan, in re: Kasich's temper has gone away but his temper has not. His parents, both postal workers, were killed by a drunk driver one morning. He was deeply unhappy for a decade.

John Kasich sits, legs crossed and arms waving expressively, at the table where Abraham Lincoln sat with another Ohio governor and received a telegram informing him that certified election results made him president-elect of the United States.
  He is bantering with the iconic architect Daniel Libeskind; the two unlikely friends have just unveiled Ohio's Holocaust and Liberators Memorial, a stirring, striking monument that rattles the conscience.
  He beams, not with pride, but with accomplishment — something most politicians never master.
  “As with all things in life, you get excited about something and there is always something that comes along and reduces it in some capacity or interferes with the day,” he says. “Today was perfection.”
  Earlier, he explained the significance of placing the graceful Holocaust and Liberators tribute outside Ohio's Statehouse, a limestone landmark completed in 1861: “Today is not about politics, today is about doing the right thing.”
  “Kasich proposed and committed to the privately funded monument despite heavy political controversy,” said Bernard Hirsch, a Korean War veteran sitting in the front row of the Ohio Theatre for the dedication ceremony.
  “Those bastards killed my grandmother,” he said, referring to the Nazis, and “Kasich saw fit that she and all of the others are never forgotten.”
  Kasich is nobody’s guy — not Tea Party, establishment, conservative, moderate, or any other brand placed on political figures; he is tough, prickly, skeptical, deeply spiritual, bull-headed, intuitive and, above all, a doer.
  He is Ohio’s version of New Jersey’s Chris Christie, without the star power or the bridge scandal.
  Up for reelection this year, Kasich is . . . [more]

Wednesday  25 June 2014 / Hour 3, Block B:  Francis Rose, Federal News Radio, in re: VA Announces Personnel Actions.   Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) today announced several personnel actions aimed at accelerating Veterans’ access to quality health care and rebuilding the trust of America’s Veterans.  At the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Leadership Summit this week in Washington, Acting Secretary of Veterans Affairs Sloan D. Gibson announced that, effective July 2, Dr. Carolyn Clancy will be named interim Under Secretary for Health in the Department of Veterans Affairs.  Dr. Clancy will spearhead the Department’s immediate efforts to accelerate Veterans’ access to care. 

“Dr. Carolyn Clancy is a leader and a real innovator when it comes to Veterans’ health care quality and safety.  As we conduct our search for an Under Secretary for Health, there’s no one better to take on the issues we face,” said Acting Secretary Gibson.  “Dr. Clancy will be charged with the Department’s top priority – getting Veterans . . .

Wednesday  25 June 2014 / Hour 3, Block C: Lou Ann Hammond and David Cabella, in re:  Why Tesla Motors Inc.'s "Open Source" Offer Is Not What . . . Is Tesla Motors making a move for the good of humanity, or does the company have other ideas in mind? Maybe it's a little of . . .   [more]

Wednesday  25 June 2014 / Hour 3, Block D:  Ruben Navarrette Jr, in re:  Hillary Clinton’s Latino Problem
 What’s up with Clinton saying that kids crossing the border should be sent home? Believe me, Latino voters noticed.

Hour Four

Wednesday  25 June 2014 / Hour 4, Block A: Wilson by A. Scott Berg (1 of 12)

Wednesday  25 June 2014 / Hour 4, Block B: Wilson by A. Scott Berg (2 of 12)

Wednesday  25 June 2014 / Hour 4, Block C: Wilson by A. Scott Berg (3 of 12)

Wednesday  25 June 2014 / Hour 4, Block D: Wilson by A. Scott Berg (4 of 12)