The John Batchelor Show

Thursday 15 January 2015

Air Date: 
January 15, 2015

Photo, left: See Hour 2, Block D, Amb. Temuri Yakobashvili, former Deputy Prime Minister and State Minister for Reintegration in the Government of Georgia 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-hosts: Stephen Moore, chief economist, Heritage Foundation, and Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents.
Hour One
Thursday  15 January 2015  /  Hour 1, Block A: Stephen Moore, chief economist, Heritage Foundation, in re: Economic recovery is not what Washington decrees or academics proclaim; it; show you feel and what you see.  Wages are not keeping up with inflation. Lots of anxiety in the country.  Deflation – negative inflation: educated senior economists grow grave; inflation has been 2% for the last five or six years, whereas wage increases have been 1.5% at best.  Decreasing prices of oil & gas have mitigated this somewhat; and that's good for everyone but people in the oil patch.  A Forty-niner: a business that's capped its number of workers at 49 because of new regulations that oblige compliance at 50.  Also, Twenty-niner: a company that hires workers for 29 hours per week or less – also to circumvent Pres Obama's new regs.  Thirty-nine hours a week is not a fulltime job.  We still have 12 million unemployed or underemployed people.    Transfer payments and the sluggish recovery: SNAP (food stamps) – an acceleration of persons retiring, and those on disability. Very generous welfare, food stamps, unemployment benefits – all generated by this administration's new requirements. 
Thursday  15 January 2015  /  Hour 1, Block B:  Stephen Moore, chief economist, Heritage Foundation, in re: Keystone XL pipeline. Oil per Bbl is under $50, could reach $35; will return to $70-80 range.  Pipeline through Nebraska, Boehner passed it easily in the House; the Senate got 63 votes for debate, being bipartisan. Pres Obama prematurely proclaimed "I'll veto it as written now."  Two-thirds or more of Americans want this built.  Much safer to transport O&G by pipeline rather than truck or train.  Clean Air Act; EPA mandates plans from governors who refuse.   Methane.   Btw – Democrats get a lot of their donations from unions. which all want the pipeline.  Tom Steyer, who's said to have raised $100 million for the Democrats.  Why aren’t wages rising? Because we're no allowing excellent middle-class jobs at $100K PA to occur. 
Thursday  15 January 2015  /  Hour 1, Block C: Monica Crowley, Fox, & Washington Times Online opinion editor; in re:  Mitt Romney asserted for two years that he wouldn’t run again; now he seems to be running.  Broad themes: direction of the country and America's place in the world.  Sloppiness of his campaign: if he'd run his businesses the way he ran his campaign, he wouldn’t be prosperous. Nixon and Reagan had exceptional political characters; Mitt Romney is not quite cut of the same cloth politically. Romney campaign was not digitally alert, was not ___; he's not just a flip-flopper, he's a deceiver.  Both Bush and Romney are creatures of the Twentieth Century – don’t get digital. or the need for instant response, etc.
Thursday  15 January 2015  /  Hour 1, Block D: Monica Crowley, Fox, & Washington Times Online opinion editor; in re: the rest of the GOP: Jeb Bush, Scott Walker Bobby Jindal; and somebody younger.
Hour Two                    
Thursday  15 January 2015  /  Hour 2, Block A: Dr. Jamal Benomar, Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Yemen at the United Nations, in re:  Yemen's role in French attack.   Houthis [pron: hoo-thee] overran Sanaa, the capital, and generally control the north, al Qaeda generally controls the south.  Dramatic dvpts in recent months. In 2011 Yemen had its Arab Spring; resident as forced to resign; the only negotiates transition in the context of the Arab Spring; had a road map and ups and downs. Then the Houthis took over the capital, continues expanding, now control 1o out of 22 provinces. There's a govt of technocrats, but the de facto authority is the Houthis. Revolutionary committees to oversee all acts of state institutions, incl army; engaged operations in areas where they're fighting with al Qaeda. Caused many tribe to create deal with al Qaeda to fight Houthis.  Separatists in the south; Yemen in a crisis, prospects rare very bleak.  the it community all thought in 2011, 2012, that Yemen would make t tot a democratic transition, which was naïve, as the old regime still carried influence and struck deals and made alliances to let the Houthis enter the capital, Sanaa. AS everyone was watching Syria, something sinister was occurring in Yemen.  Everyone knows the Houthis couldn't do this by themselves; had support of Salah and Iran.  Houthis keep their militia as a separate army, very well equipped and trained; also have a strategy of capturing all the other state institutions, incl army and security forces. They're continually pressing for addtl appts  of Houthis in army and security forces.  Complicating the situation.  Another election in 2016; probably Salah will not run, but of course he wants someone to run as his façade. There's a drafted constitution with clauses making it difficult for him to run – but even to get to elections is complicated. Will need a minimum of peace and stability in the country. 
Thursday  15 January 2015  /  Hour 2, Block B:  Sadanand Dhume, AEI & South Asia columnist for the Wall Street Journal, in re: India; Pres Obama's visit to India, Israeli-Indian relations; India in the region. res Obama will visit India on 26 January, the first US president to visit India twice, and will inspect the Indian Freedom Day parade (a major event).  Modi in power is similar to a US governor of a mid-sized state becoming president.  Been good for India-US relations, but very good for India-Israel relations: "pulled itself up by its bootstraps and been productive."  We had an India that initially and for a  long time was blindly pro-Palestinian, then half-pro-Palestinian/half-pro-Israel, and now with Modi a pronounced and principled tilt toward Israel.  Sri Lanka: there was concern over how much that govt was in bed with China, the new regime is more even-handed and sees India as its most important neighbor. China was bldg naval bases ("string of peals" incl Myanmar, and Chiese subs kept showing up in Sri Lanka).
Thursday  15 January 2015  /  Hour 2, Block C: Simon Henderson, Baker Fellow and director of the Gulf and Energy Policy Program at The Washington Institute, in re: the Saudi Arabian Great Wall (ripple wall, guard towers, electronic monitoring, patrol vehicles) .  Saudi succession issues, Israeli natural gas.  ISIS is clear that its goal is to take over the Land of the Two Mosque  Saudi Arabia, which now will bld a 600-mi wall to protect itself.  Te project has been considered for a decade, began vs. al Qaeda (which the royal family was then supporting) within the kingdom, itself. In early January there was an attack on the wall (barbed-wire fences with high-tech( that successfully killed three Saudi border police, incl a general.  Nine neighbors with desert, coastline, and mountains at the edges. Immediate threats are ISIS pick-up trucks.   Saudis also have an incomplete wall with Yemen.  Saudis fear not only the Houthis but the whole Yemeni population.  In fact Yemen probably is more populous than Saud. Yemenis used to be laborers there, but were kicked out. Shiites in northern Yemen, Houthis, have moved into the capital, Sanaa, and massively influenced the govt there.  The Saudi succession struggle now is of much older candidates; won't rule for 15 years but will be too aged to bring stability. Succession so far is of sons of the original King Ibn Saud, but there are too few.  King Abdullah, ill with pneumonia; Crown Prince Salman at 79 ailing; and Mokrin, just turning 70 and not beloved of his brethren.  Many of the next generation have studies in the US or trained for Saudi military in the US; but not one stands out as an outstanding potential new king.  Experienced princes who've done govt jobs – nice guys but not king potential.
Thursday  15 January 2015  /  Hour 2, Block D: Amb Temuri Yakobashvili, former Deputy Prime Minister and State Minister for Reintegration in the Government of Georgia; in re: Georgia, Azerbaijan, regional geography, Russian relations. Russian-Georgian relations not yet stabilized; Russia's extending control to tit "Near Abroad" is stll quite problematic.  Russia never really let FSYU states become independent. Each state us is used by Russia to gain something, Even now, as Tbilisi tires to establish favorable relations, incl  lifting trade sanctions; but as Russia tries to normalize, it at the same time harms Georgia much more by annexing Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Big differences between what’s said and what happens n the ground. Russia continues as a predator state.  Abt 76 to 82 % of Georgians want to join NATO or European Union.  What some may call a geographic region is not at all a political region.  Armenia has joined Eurasian Union (Russian-formed);  Economics: Georgia has managed drastically to reduce trade w Russia, redirect to Europe, US, Turkey, Central Asia, more predictable mkts.  Same w Azerbaijan. Also many Azeris, Armenians and Georgians are leaving.   Georgia: security degradations – northern Caucasus – Pankisi Gorge, et al. We’re in aCatch-22 situations – when Russian got richer it used money to subjugate its neighbors, an d when that collapses, its neighbors have security considerations.  Right now we’re doomed to a terrorism sandwich: Caucasus on the north and Central Asia and ISIS on the south.
Hour Three
Thursday  15 January 2015  /  Hour 3, Block A:  Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re:  Attack on Toulouse under Sarkozy, still not dealt with by Hollande.  Not all Jew-killings in France are by Muslims.  The grenelle – the backward Nazi salute – the French govt barely deals wit it. Forty per cent of French attacks are on Jews, who constitute 1% of the population. Huge outflow of Jews' leaving France forever.  WWI"" Nancy Astor holding garden parties for the appeasers, along with Joe Kennedy – "We'll adjust to the future, not democracy but tyranny."  Growth of extremist parties; i=were there an election today, LePen would win.  Argentine: the federal prosecutor has named the president, Kirschner, and he foreign minister, Timerman, as being directly responsible for trying to remove Iran's name as having  been party to the terrorist operation in Buenos Aires. For money!  Turkey: Erdogan wants to associate himself with extreme violence in the Middle East, where he wants to be leader but has been thrown out of different countries, incl al Sisi of Egypt, who despises Erdogan – who's just built an $800 million palace.  The wife of the killer at the Parisian supermarket, Coulibaly, has got to Syria via Turkey.   In France little children are being guarded by heavily-armed military.  Ten yeas ago, I reported on this show that Muslims said, "We don't need nukes, we'll use demography." Jews' having to move three times in a year because of physical dangers.   Kerry [sigh] – Iran has two new nuclear reactors.     Laser enrichment - can enrich uranium in a secret pace, in a gym.  Hizbollah today has 150K missiles, are integrated into Sudan, elsewhere. 
Les Gelb in the Daily Beast: The US is not strong enough to survive the next two years with the Obama administration's national security team.
Thursday  15 January 2015  /  Hour 3, Block B: Effraim Inbar, Director of the BESA Center, in re: Nasrallah’s interview; Turkey; Israel's security challenges.  . . . We fear a change in their nuclear strategy because of combat experience in Syria & larger numbers of members.  Turkey:; Erdogan is a crypto-dictator and his displays of historicity this week would have been laughable were he not intent on [predation].  He's driven by neo-Ottomanist thinking and of course he and his coterie are overtly Islamists.  Credible rumors that Mashaal will move to Turkey.
Thursday  15 January 2015  /  Hour 3, Block C: Arif Rafiq, Middle East Institute &  PakistanRisk, in re: http://tribune.com.pk/story/822292/pakistan-condemns-waziristan-drone-strike/  ;  http://tribune.com.pk/story/821762/aps-student-recreates-heart-wrenching-photograph-taken-before-peshawar-school-attack/
Thursday  15 January 2015  /  Hour 3, Block D:   Seb Gorka, Marine Corps University & Breitbart, in re: http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/01/14/france-arrests-54-including-controversial-comic-for-sympathizing-with-terrorists/  ;  http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/01/10/gorka-spread-of-enclaves-enables-terrorists-not-just-a-threat-to-france/
Hour Four
Thursday  15 January 2015  /  Hour 4, Block A: The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, by Matt Taibbi and Molly Crabapple (1 of 4)
Thursday  15 January 2015  /  Hour 4, Block B: The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, by Matt Taibbi and Molly Crabapple (2 of 4)
Thursday  15 January 2015  /  Hour 4, Block C: The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, by Matt Taibbi and Molly Crabapple (3 of 4)
Thursday  15 January 2015  /  Hour 4, Block D: The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, by Matt Taibbi and Molly Crabapple (4 of 4)
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