The John Batchelor Show

Thursday 30 October

Air Date: 
October 30, 2014

Photo, above: Yazidi girl rests after fleeing ISIS. A Yazidi population of 10,000 is stranded atop a mountain in Iraq, under siege by ISIS. Worse:  Thousands of women and girls are being held in nearby villages as sex slaves to ISIS; the youngest child is nine years old or less. One woman with a mobile phone has said that several days ago she was raped 32 times before noon. ISIS uses these woman as bait to attract men from Arab countries to join ISIS.  Women are being sold for $200. Four busses filled with women were driven by ISIS into Syria three days ago.   When ISIS attacked Yazidis areas, they killed thousands and took 4,00 hostages of women and children.  Because ISIS calls Yazidis nonbelievers, ISIS says that it’s legal under Islam to rape them. The women are asking the US to bomb them so they can die now rather than continue to suffer incomprehensibly and be brutalized as slaves of ISIS.  Desperately need heavy weapons so Yazidis can clear a road so the 10,000 can escape northeast into non-ISIS territory.   A hundred thousand people are being subjected to the most horrifying treatment by ISIS.  See Hour 2, Block C, Pir Hadi and Murad Ismael; also:  yazda.org

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Hour One

Thursday  30 October  2014 / Hour 1, Block A: Mary Kissel, Wall Street Journal editorial board & host of OpinionJournal.com; in re: Charter schools and Hispanics in the US. 

Thursday  30 October  2014 / Hour 1, Block B:  Edward W Hayes, criminal defense attorney par excellence, in re:   . . . a crazed attacker willing to die immediately in a hail of fire can always have a fair chance of success.  People who need to be institutionalized need to be identified by the persons around them.

Thursday  30 October  2014 / Hour 1, Block C: Sean Trende, realclearpolitics.com, in re:  what's an "emerging Democratic majority" (EDM)? – and can you take a midterm off and still have a majority? The current theory is that those trendlines are unimportant; only presidential elections are . . .   Rothenberg uses ""blow-out" – is this too early? Is Karl Rove hesitant to use the word "wave"?

Thursday  30 October  2014 / Hour 1, Block D:  Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re:  the vulgarity from the Executive toward the Israeli PM.  Almost unbelievable what was said and how this White House approaches Israel.  . .  .  many Muslim ambassadors are deeply dissatisfied with Washington.

Hour Two

Thursday  30 October  2014 / Hour 2, Block A: David Schenker, Washington Institute, in re: Jordan/Israel relations. Lebanese civil war?  ISIL in Jordan.

Thursday  30 October  2014 / Hour 2, Block B: Steven A. Cook, senior Fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations; in re: Egypt. Sinai. Gaza border. Turkey. Trip to Abu Dhabi, Gulf States's relations with Egypt.

Thursday  30 October  2014 / Hour 2, Block C: Pir Hadi, a Yazidi activist based in Nebraska; working with this crisis since its beginning. He's a member of Sinjar Crisis Management Team and Vice President of Yazda Non-Profit Organization.  yazda.org

Murad Ismael is a Yazidi-American activist based in Houston; one the founders of Initiative for Yazidis around the World and Yazda Non-Profit. Murad is a graduate student at the University of Houston, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences; has been working with other Yazidi activists to advocate for the Yazidi cause. He also worked for the US military as an  interpreter for three years before coming to US; in re:

----A Yazidi population of 10,000 is stranded atop a mountain in Iraq, under siege by ISIS. Worse:  Thousands of women and girls are being held in nearby villages as sex slaves to ISIS; the youngest child is nine years old or less. One woman with a mobile phone has said that several days ago she was raped 32 times before noon. ISIS uses these woman as bait to attract men from Arab countries to join ISIS.  Women are being sold for $200. Four busses filled with women were driven by ISIS into Syria three days ago.   When ISIS attacked Yazidis areas, they killed thousands and took 4,00 hostages of women and children.  Because ISIS calls Yazidis nonbelievers, ISIS says that it’s legal under Islam to rape them. The women are asking the US to bomb them so they can die now rather than continue to suffer incomprehensibly and be brutalized as slaves of ISIS.  . 

Desperately need heavy weapons so Yazidis can clear a road so the 10,000 can escape northeast into non-ISIS territory.   A hundred thousand people are being subjected to the most horrifying treatment by ISIS 

Yazidi religion is over 4,000 years old; monotheist, with Melik Taus as head of seven angels.  (Most emphatically is not devil-worshipping.)

There are 40,000 Yazidis in Russia; not viable to contact Moscow, and the situation is very urgent. 

Thursday  30 October  2014 / Hour 2, Block D: Amin Ahmed, Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees, in re:  Syrian refugees in Jordan.  Six millions displaced Syrians inside Syria.  Yesterday 60 people were killed in refugee camps by Assad-sent barrel bombs; this happens often, so many Syrians flee across one or another border.  I was raised on Assad propaganda that Israelis and Jews hated and wanted to kill me.  Some months ago, I was approached by a group asking to help with medical aid – and thy turned out to be Israelis, to my shock. I had completely to reorganize my thinking; now I see Israelis as human beings offering to help other humans, in this case, Syrians.  All the attention goes to ISIS; in fact, ISIS did not exist until Assad encouraged radical elements who became ISIS.   

Hour Three

Thursday  30 October  2014 / Hour 3, Block A:  Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re: Temple Mount. Yemen.  Houthis, surrogates for Iran, have taken over Sanaa and are marching on the rest of the country; are making large claims of successes over al Qaeda.  The US was doing selective bombing in support of the Houthis and thus of Iran.  Velyati: The capture of Yemen is the road to Jerusalem; also all the straits and global oil shipments – how irrational of the West to turn a blind eye to this astounding military event.  Yemen is a tribal society, no countervailing force facing them. 

Thursday  30 October  2014 / Hour 3, Block B: Pinhas Inbari, veteran Arab affairs correspondent who formerly reported for Israel Radio and Al Hamishmar newspaper, and currently serves as an analyst for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs; in re: the disturbances in Jerusalem seem to be organized by Fatah and Hamas to utilize teenagers; most of the Arab population of East Jerusalem, the grown-ups, go to work and go home, as they have little interest in creating chaos right now.  Forming a caliphate: the Ikhwan – Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood -  needed a rallying call and so is the engine behind the Jerusalem riots, connected to the so-called Arab spring (Arab storm); think that focussing on al Aqsa is the best way to get support of Palestinians.  Ikhwan invested a lot of  money (they pay the youth) in incitement to "wake up" Jerusalem, and this is the result.  The intended rallying isn’t quite working out.  Qatar is behind he scenes: dangerous to Israel and __. The new emir is not experienced; Khaled Mashaal and ___, a fugitive from Israeli law. Both trying to get Qatari aid to [upset] Palestinians and collapse Israel, as they did Libya.   v

Thursday  30 October  2014 / Hour 3, Block C: Daniel Henninger, WSJ, in re:  Democrats Crash-Land the Planet

Thursday  30 October  2014 / Hour 3, Block D: Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: A further update on Antares failure   A close look at the damaged launchpad from Tuesday’s Antares launch failure has confirmed both that it avoided significant damage and that the rocket debris being recovered there will speed up and aid in the failure investigation.  Also, the Ukrainian company that built Antares first stage has opened its own investigation of the launch failure.

Hour Four

Thursday  30 October  2014 / Hour 4, Block A: American Neolithic by Terence Hawkins (1 of 2)

Thursday  30 October  2014 / Hour 4, Block B: American Neolithic by Terence Hawkins (2 of 2)

Thursday  30 October  2014 / Hour 4, Block C:  Thomas Lipscomb, author and playwright, in re: Last Man in Spandau (Rudolf Hess - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) (1 of 2)

Thursday  30 October  2014 / Hour 4, Block D: Thomas Lipscomb, author and playwright, in re: Last Man in Spandau (Rudolf Hess - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) (2 of 2).

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Burkina Faso, October  2014

Protesters angry at plans to allow Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaoré to extend his 27-year-rule have set fire to parliament. Correspondents say the city hall and ruling party headquarters are also in flames in the capital, Ouagadougou.

A huge crowd is surging towards the presidential palace and the main airport has been shut. MPs have suspended a vote on changing the constitution to allow Mr Compaore to stand for re-election next year. Five people have been killed in the protests, among the most serious against Mr Compaore's rule. The military fired live bullets as protesters stormed parliament, our correspondent says.

Journalists are now gathered outside the defence ministry awaiting a statement from the military, he says. Witnesses say dozens of soldiers have joined the protests, including a former defence minister, Gen Kouame Lougue. The main opposition leader, Zephirin Diabre, has called on the military to side with "the people" and has demanded the resignation of the president.

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Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara (December 21, 1949 – October 15, 1987) was a Burkinabé [adjective for someone from Burkina Faso] military captain, pan-Africanist theorist, and president of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987. Born into a Roman Catholic family, "Thom'Sank" was a Silmi-Mossi, an ethnic group that originated with marriage between Mossi men and women of the pastoralist Fulani people. The Silmi-Mossi are among the least advantaged in the Mossi caste system. He attended primary school in Gaoua and high school in Bobo-Dioulasso, the country's second city.

His father fought in the French army during World War II and was detained by the Nazis. Sankara's family wanted him to become a Catholic priest. Fittingly for a country with a large Muslim population, he was also familiar with the Qur'an. He was born in Yako.

After basic military training in secondary school in 1966, Sankara began his military career at the age of 19, and a year later was sent to Madagascar for officer training at Antsirabe where he witnessed popular uprisings in 1971 and 1972 against the government of Philibert Tsiranana and first read the works of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, profoundly influencing his political views for the rest of his life.[9] Returning to Upper Volta in 1972, by 1974 he fought in a border war between Upper Volta and Mali. He earned fame for his heroic performance in the border war with Mali, but years later would renounce the war as "useless and unjust", a reflection of his growing political consciousness.[10] He also became a popular figure in the capital of Ouagadougou. The fact that he was a decent guitarist (he played in a band named "Tout-à-Coup Jazz") and rode a motorcycle may have contributed to his charismatic public images.

In 1976 he became commander of the Commando Training Centre in , France, an unusually distinguished position for a young, African officer. In the same year he met Blaise Compaoré in Morocco. On 4 August 1983, Sankara and Blaise Campaore led a bloodless coup against the then-dictatorial Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo, with the goal of eliminating corruption and the dominance of the former French colonial power.

His foreign policies were centered on anti-imperialism, with his government eschewing all foreign aid, pushing for odious debt reduction, nationalizing all land and mineral wealth, and averting the power and influence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. His domestic policies were focused on preventing famine with agrarian self-sufficiency and land reform, prioritizing education with a nation-wide literacy campaign, and promoting public health by vaccinating 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever and measles.[6] Other components of his national agenda included planting over ten million trees to halt the growing desertification of the Sahel, doubling wheat production by redistributing land from feudal landlords to peasants, suspending rural poll taxes and domestic rents, and establishing an ambitious road and rail construction program to "tie the nation together". On the localized level Sankara also called on every village to build a medical dispensary and had over 350 communities construct schools with their own labour. Moreover, his commitment to women's rights led him to outlaw female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy, while appointing women to high governmental positions and encouraging them to work outside the home and stay in school even if pregnant.

In 1984, Sankara's avowed:    "Our revolution in Burkina Faso draws on the totality of Man's experiences since the first breath of humanity. We wish to be the heirs of all the revolutions of the world, of all the liberation struggles of the peoples of the Third World. We draw the lessons of the American revolution. The French revolution taught us the rights of Man. The great October revolution brought victory to the proletariat and made possible the realization of the Paris Commune's dreams of justice."

His government suppressed many of the powers held by tribal chiefs such as their right to receive tribute payment and obligatory labour. The CDRs (Comités de Défense de la Révolution) were formed as mass organizations and armed. Sankara's government also initiated a form of military conscription with the SERNAPO (Service National et Populaire). Both were a counterweight to the power of the army.

In 1984, on the first anniversary of his accession, he renamed the country Burkina Faso, meaning "Land of Upright Gentlemen" in Moré and Djula, the two major languages of the country. He also gave it a new flag and wrote a new national anthem (Une Seule Nuit).

He sold off the government fleet of Mercedes cars and made the Renault 5 (the cheapest car sold in Burkina Faso at that time) the official service car of the ministers.

He reduced the salaries of well-off public servants, including his own, and forbade the use of government chauffeurs and 1st class airline tickets.

                 He redistributed land from the feudal landlords to the peasants. Wheat production increased from 1700 kg per hectare to 3800 kg per hectare, making the country food self-sufficient.

He opposed foreign aid, saying that "he who feeds you, controls you."

He spoke in forums like the Organization of African Unity against what he described as neo-colonialist penetration of Africa through Western trade and finance.

He called for a united front of African nations to repudiate their foreign debt. He argued that the poor and exploited did not have an obligation to repay money to the rich and exploiting.

•       In Ouagadougou, Sankara converted the army's provisioning store into a state-owned supermarket open to everyone (the first supermarket in the country).

•       He forced well-off civil servants to pay one month's salary to public projects.

•       He refused to use the air conditioning in his office on the grounds that such luxury was not available to anyone but a handful of Burkinabes.

As president, he lowered his salary to $450 a month and limited his possessions to a car, four bikes, three guitars, a fridge and a broken freezer.

On October 15, 1987 Sankara was killed by an armed group with twelve other officials in a coup d'état organized by his former colleague, Blaise Compaoré. Deterioration in relations with neighbouring countries was one of the reasons given, with Compaoré stating that Sankara jeopardised foreign relations with former colonial power France and neighbouring Ivory Coast. Prince Johnson, a former Liberian warlord allied to Charles Taylor, told Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that it was engineered by Charles Taylor. Strong evidence suggests that the coup was engineered by France, which did not appreciate Sankara's deeply independent temperament and his effective withdrawal from the notorious francophonie. Years earlier, Sankara had been placed under house arrest after a visit to then-Upper Volta by the French president's son and African affairs adviser Jean-Christophe Mitterrand.

After the coup and although Sankara was known to be dead, some CDRs mounted an armed resistance to the army for several days.

Sankara's body was dismembered and he was quickly buried in an unmarked grave, while his widow and two children fled the nation. Compaoré immediately reversed the nationalizations, overturned nearly all of Sankara's policies, rejoined the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to bring in "desperately needed" funds to restore the “shattered” economy, and ultimately spurned most of Sankara's legacy.

"Thomas knew how to show his people that they could become dignified and proud through will-power, courage, honesty and work. What remains above all of my husband is his integrity."  — Mariam Sankara, Thomas' widow