The John Batchelor Show

Monday 9 November 2020

Air Date: 
November 09, 2020

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Colleague: Thaddeus McCotter, American Greatness
National Security Report, by WalkBase.com
Hour One
Monday 9 November 2020 / Hour 1, Block A: Tom Joscelyn, @thomasjoscelyn, Long War Journal and FDD; and Bill Roggio, @billroggio, Long War Journal and FDD; in re:
 Afghanistan in transition to standalone if the Trump Adm empties it of combat troops. Biden says he wants to leave a counterterrorism force behind. Taliban are gaining ground, have been for five years. Without US special forces, it’ll continue expansion.  Al Qaeda benefits when Taliban do. People trying to cook the books, claim that al Q is a spent force—which it is not.  Mr Biden probably will only keep a rump force there.  US never had a clear picture of what al Q looks like in Afghanistan. Christopher Miller, SecDef in the last two months: filled with inaccurate statements.    Al Q in East Africa, Kenya.   They not only don’t want to understand after nineteen years in Afghanistan, they refuse to.  Tom Joscelyn, @thomasjoscelyn, Long War Journal and FDD; and Bill Roggio, @billroggio, Long War Journal and FDD; in re:
Monday 9 November 2020 / Hour 1, Block B: Tom Joscelyn, @thomasjoscelyn, Long War Journal and FDD; and Bill Roggio, @billroggio, Long War Journal and FDD; in re:
 Austrian policy’s “deradicalization” program.  Attacker’s vid: swearing allegiance to al Baghdadi & ISIS; and he‘d actually gone through the program.  AMAQ News Agency. Looks like a lone-wolf attacker.  US has been trying to throw in the towel in Afghanistan for years.  Will Biden maintain any of the small wars? Done strikes now are down significantly except in Somalia.
Monday 9 November 2020 / Hour 1, Block C: Charles Burton, senior Fellow at the Centre for Advancing Canada's Interests Abroad at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and
Gordon Chang, @GordonGChang, Daily Beast, in re:  Asia's and Canada's reactions to the election. China’s president for life, Xi Jinping; and Joseph Biden, very familiar with China and Xi.
The China Democracy Foundation, chinadem.org, was founded to help scholars who've been targeted by China:  need to raise money to support Anne-Marie Brady’s legal costs* as she submitted a paper that the university claimed was a violati0n of its free-speech policy!  Agents of the Chinese state operating with impunity.  Biden might negotiate a trade of [quashing] intellectual freedom in these matters in exchange for other favors from China.  Trudeau’s attitude toward Beijing may shift with Biden. Strengthen the appeaser group in Canada? Huawei’s agent in Vancouver, Mèng Wănzhōu.
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-virus-outbreak-tokyo-china-df5633b08ccf9ad845568de26e2f89e9
* Our first campaign is to support the New Zealand Professor Anne-Marie Brady, who has suffered multiple rounds of harassment due to her ground breaking and evidence based scholarship on global Chinese influence operations.
Professor Brady’s university recently instituted a campaign against her, and they are not letting her speak publicly about it. China Democracy Foundation is crowd-sourcing at least $20,000 NZD (about $17,400 CAD) to help pay for her legal defense. Excess funds will be used to assist similar, fact-based China scholarship and journalism that has been subjected to legal attacks, and other defenders of freedom and human rights for the Chinese people.
Monday 9 November 2020 / Hour 1, Block D:  Alan Tonelson, independent economic policy analyst who blogs at RealityChek and tweets at @AlanTonelson, and @GordonGChang, in re:  China tech and trade policies in a Biden administration. . . .  Why does President-elect Biden think the Chinese will be more reliable now than in the past? He’ll shower tech companies with major subsidies to help them keep up with China—but they rely on doing business with China and have no desire to decouple from China. The World Trade Organization is highly political; Trump has defanged it to a large degree. Biden will want to reduce tariffs against China, will be tempted by Chinese promises to cut back on emissions in exchange for reduction of tariffs, although the promises will be bogus and unenforceable.  Some GOP have seen [what China is doing], but others are stuck in old ways.  Expect steel and aluminum tariffs on US allies to be lifted. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Business-trends/Tech-after-Trump-What-a-Biden-win-will-mean-for-Asia
 
Hour Two
Monday 9 November 2020 / Hour 2, Block A:  David Drucker: @DavidMDrucker, Washington Examiner;  & John Fund, @johnfund, NRO, in re: GOP did very well in downticket this year. In 2016, polling presaged Trump win, but in 2020, was inaccurate.  The Republican voters showed up.
Monday 9 November 2020 / Hour 2, Block B:  John Fund, @johnfund, NRO, & David Drucker: @DavidMDrucker, Washington Examiner; in re: GOP turnout was from the top to the bottom of the ticket: the Democratic party moved too far to the left—riots, defunding police, green new deal, scared the voters.  An astonishing recovery from the midterms to the national.  Kevin McCarthy, charming, didn’t expect to do this well on election night.  OH, NC, FL, GA: Republicans in a good position for redistricting.  Two camps of Democrats: one crew wished only to get rid of Trump; more seasoned observers see losing the Senate and a lot of House seats as a disaster.  Had they failed to beat Trump twice in a row, would have been stunned.
Monday 9 November 2020 / Hour 2, Block C:  Henry Miller, @henryimiller, Pacific Research Institute [HenryMillerMD.org],, in re: Pfizer develops a vaccine: said to be 90% effective, instead of the normal 60%.  Has to be transported within 48 hours and kept at -94 degrees Farenheit. Storage problems. Pfizer is producing special boxes to be filled with dry ice; two-day shelf life. Clinical trials involved 93,000 subjects? FDA still has to evaluate actual data.  Emergency use under FDA requirements: only reasonable effectiveness. Approval process has been under way for a long time; FDA is ready to roll, maybe within two weeks or so.  Moderna, J&J, Astrozeneca. 
Monday 9 November 2020 / Hour 2, Block D:  Henry Miller, @henryimiller, Pacific Research Institute [HenryMillerMD.org], in re: Biden-Harris plan to beat the coronavirus. Overwhelming evidence that masks reduce droplets that get through; as well as health-care professionals using better-quality masks and gowns had their frequency of infection drop meteorically. Contact tracing: how to do it? Biden expects to hire thousands – large govt organizations don't work, as they're fat and inefficient. Contact tracing should be done at state or  local level.   . . .  Pfizer is big enough and aggressive enough to have put $2 billion into dvpt of the vaccine; congratulations to it.   We may have another summer and winter behind Plexiglas.  Biden plan is to invest in testing to make it free and freely available.
 
Hour Three
Monday 9 November 2020 / Hour 3, Block A:  Malcolm Hoenlein, @conf_of_pres, Conference of President, and Thaddeus McC oter @ThadMcCotter, in re:  The Lessons of the Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht), November 9-10, 1938.
Monday 9 November 2020 / Hour 3, Block B:  Malcolm Hoenlein, @conf_of_pres, Conference of President, and Thaddeus McCotter @ThadMcCotter ,in re:  Indiana Hoenlein and the Lost Gold Coins of the Ninth Century in Jerusalem.
Monday 9 November 2020 / Hour 3, Block C:  Jed Babbin: @JedBabbin @WashingtonTimes ,  American Spectator, in re:  Biden promises to quit fossil fuels. Will he protect the US against China or Iran? Not that I can see. The Quad nations have joined together under Trump to counter China’s expansion; that’ll go by the boards under Biden.  The Abraham Accords:  will Biden join in, or revert to chatting with Mahmud Abbas? He’ll do both—Israel now has a bigger voice, which the US can't [really ] abandon. But Biden will try to make a deal with Khamenei; will damage what we’ve done. NATO?  Big relief because European nations won't have o pay what they’ve sworn to invest in their own defense.  Biden is a follower, not a leader. Nordstream pipelines from Russia to Europe—Germany is dependent on Russia for gas which, of course, can be cut off at any moment.  https://spectator.org/bidens-non-mandate/
Monday 9 November 2020 / Hour 3, Block D:  Elin Suleymanov,  @ElinSuleymanov, @azembassyus, ambassador of the Republic of Azerbaijan to Washington; in re: Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey, anent Nagorno-Karabakh. Shusha liberated by Azerbaijani forces; historically and spiritually an important city, and looks over the capital, Stepanakert. Shusha is the home of Azeri poetry and culture; its loss in 1992 was grave; enormous pride and celebration at its return.  It was the subject of horrific ethnic cleansing by Armenians.  A Jewish Azerbaijani was one of Shusha’s greatest defenders.  The Armenian PM has to make a decision to stop the war; Azerbaijan is ready to stop immediately. 
 
Hour Four
Monday 9 November 2020 / Hour 4, Block A: Andrew C McCarthy, @AndrewCMcCarthy, Ball of Collusion; and Thaddeus McCotter, @ThadMcCotter, American Greatness, in re: the litiigi0non fraud: I don't give this much likelihood of success. They need Pennsylvania. Have to approach it in three categories:  the way the election was carried out in PA, and elsewhere: not sufficient scrutiny of ballots, and poll watchers were kept at an excessive distance.   Hundreds of thousands of votes in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.  Also, in Wisconsin, about 6,000 votes were recorded for Trump although they were for Biden; seems to be either human error in application of software or else a basic software problem. Third:  Trump is down 30,000-plus in PA.
Monday 9 November 2020 / Hour 4, Block B: Andrew C McCarthy, @AndrewCMcCarthy, Ball of Collusion; and Thaddeus McCotter, @ThadMcCotter, American Greatness, in re:
Monday 9 November 2020 / Hour 4, Block C: Lorenzo Fiori: Direttore Generale Ansaldo Fondazione; in re: Italy retreats into a new lockdown by region.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/09/italy-faces-10000-covid-deaths-in-a-month-with-no-lockdown-medics
Monday 9 November 2020 / Hour 4, Block D: Ken Croswell  @sciam, @ScienceMagazine; in re: Dwarf spheroidal galaxies revolve ar0und the Milky Way. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/milky-way-little-dwarf-galaxies-gas-stars