Photo, above: where Hamas hides its rockets in Zeytoun, Gaza: 

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Monday 905P Eastern Time (605P Pacific Time):   . Eric Trager, Washington Institute, in re: About 500 Egyptian activists have crossed into Gaza to deliver medical supplies and show support for Palestinians, according to a report from the Associated Press.  Morsi facing a bundle of tribulations, from political pressures to economic disaster to his sister dying today.  Khaled Mashal benefits from an extended confrontation: it radicalize Cairo.  Mashal hasn’t lived among Palestinians for decades, having lived in Damascus; he favors lots of fighting because he, unlike his (alleged) compatriots, has never had to suffer from response to aggressive behavior. 

Monday 920P Eastern Time (620P Pacific Time):   . Mary Kissel, Wall Street Journal editorial board, in re: Bush's Burma policy, Obama's victory lap.  The president inherited an effective policy of sanctions, diplomatic pressure and human-rights advocacy. The challenge  is to get the Asia democracies to cooperate with each other. Compare: US and Japan – military hardware interoperable, close economic ties.

Monday 935P Eastern Time (635P Pacific Time):   .Larry Johnson, No Quarter, and Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, in re: the Rice nomination is the drama for Benghazi for now, and the Gaza crisis will no doubt distract everyone for a time. New Yorker, Larry Gopnik: Benghazi is a tragedy without a scandal; Petraeus is a scandal without a tragedy.  Congressional committees: all the testimony has led to ever more fog.  Note: Genl Ham of AFRICOM was relieved of command for no explanation.  Petraeus said that the Benghazi event was not about an obscure video but was a planned terrorist operation.  This was at odds with what Susan Rice and the NSC were saying.  What Petraeus and Clapper sent to the White House and interagency was ot what Rice used to speak on her five Sunday TV shows. Something is being hidden – what?  Thirty people were evacuated from Libya and sent to Italy  – who are they and what's this about?

The heart of what they’re covering up is a covert op run out of the White House using non-US assets to move weapons to Syria – and the weapons wound up in the hands of a bunch of Syrian rebels specifically called al Qaeda. 

Soldiers from Cyrenaica to Sinai?  Did Rice know that she was telling not the truth? Hard to guess.

Monday 950P Eastern Time (650P Pacific Time):   David M Drucker, Roll Call, in re: Driven by an unprecedented volume of polling that often proved unreliable and contradictory, even victorious Democrats lost sleep over the reliability of their data in the closing weeks of the 2012 campaign. Pollsters learned that their polls were more likely to be accurate among whites. Democratic pollsters had more success because they dealt better with the vagaries of demographics.

Guy Cecil, executive director of a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee that helped the party gain two Senate seats on a treacherous playing field, ultimately trusted his party’s numbers. But down the stretch of close races in Republican-leaning states, facing nearly complete opposite findings touted by competing GOP campaigns, he would hold private calls with his pollsters.

Monday 1005P (705P Pacific Time):   Jeff Bliss, The Bliss Index, and John Fund, National Review Online, in re: flight from higher taxes in the State of California and on the sad state of the GOP in Republican party in the failed State of California. Maybe 3,000 Republicans a week leave California: they go to Nevada - Lake Tahoe, mountains, paradise - and no income tax - or Arizona. 

 

Photo, below: Tibetan Buddhist monk (Vajrayana Buddhism, Gelugpa shcool), a Briton, self-immolates in France near Toulouse in protest of China's brutality against Tibetans.

Monday 1020P (720P Pacific Time):   Gordon Chang, Forbes.com, in re:  Buddhist monk, a  British citizen, pours petrol on himself and self-immolates – in France –  in protest of Chinese brutality in Tibet. China sees Burma, which eighteen months ago was in China's camp, now receiving Pres Obama. Unnerves Beijing foreign policy specialists. Cambodia: works entirely for China, pays tribute to Beijing, works to create chaos throughout SE Asia; Pres Obama goes there only for the ASEAN summit in Phnom Penh.

Jiang Zemin made sure that "liberals" were shut out of power in that less-hawkish members of Central Committee did not make it to the Standing Committee. Chinese stock market, Shanghai Composite, slid down in response to no good economic news.

Monday 1035P (735P Pacific Time):   Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re: An Israeli envoy late on Nov 18 received Hamas's conditions for a cease-fire before leaving Cairo, The Times of Israel reported on Nov. 19, citing the Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm. Meanwhile, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi said there are no guarantees that Israel will implement a cease-fire, but there are indicators that such an agreement has been reached. It will be difficult for the sides to avoid an Israeli ground operation, because Israel's and Hamas's goals are so far apart.   The amphibious warships Iwo Jima, New York and Gunston Hall were scheduled to return next week but instead will remain on standby; have been turned around to go to eastern Med to pick up US citizens in case of a major conflict. Four rockets landed in Negev in the last few hours.

Israel wants to have a cease-fire; Hamas says that all weapons have to be removed first – but Hamas launched the initial attack, No progress via Turkey; Ban Kyi-moon en route. Israel considering a formula for a cease-fire. Will Israeli troops go in to Gaza?  More than 20K troops on border now; a southern area called Eshkol may be staging area.   Israel took out Fajrs on first day, medium-range rockets on the second day.  Hamas still has thousands of rockets.

All of Gaza is less densely populated than is Manhattan. Many huge new villas being built by Hamas honchos.  Rafah.  Test of Morsi: will Egypt stop the flow of weapons? Sinai is Egyptian territory, so Israel has avoided it to protect Morsi from having to make too problematic a decision.  In Sinai are thousands of radicals of multiple varieties: Salafists, al Q, Islamist Bedouin. Iran is deep in here to continue alarums and divert attention from its thousands of centrifuges. Also, it challenges the Morsi-Erdogan relationship, intends to replace it with Shia organization. The Arab revolution and the Hamas battle have nothing to do with Palestinians – Hamas won’t even speak to the Palestinian Authority. One rocket into an apt bldg with many casualties will leave Netanyahu with no choice but to move strongly.

 

Monday 1050P (750P Pacific Time):   Natalie Angier, NYT, in re: Storm named Sandy and the migrating birds of the East Coast: how do they allow for the storm, what of the whimbrel, what of the birds blown from the sea into the canyons of New York, what of the marauding peregrine falcon of Manhattan?  

Monday 1105P (805P Pacific Time):   Mary Anastasia O'Grady, Wall Street Journal, in re: Argentina Runs Out of Other People's Money The demonstration in Buenos Aires this month was the largest since Argentines restored democracy in 1983. What’s wrong with Argentina and what's to be done? What’s wrong with Cristina Fernández de Kirchner?

Monday 1120P (820P Pacific Time):   Tom Henriksen, Hoover, in re: what's wrong with Afghanistan - is the Indirect Force method working? Troubles ahead?

http://arirusila.blogactiv.eu/2012/11/16/hamas-miscalculated-israel-star...

Monday 1135P (835P Pacific Time):   Aaron Klein, WABC, from Tel Aviv, in re: the truce, the rockets, Cairo, and Hamas.  Iranian ship bound for port near Israel with 50 Fajr-5s and 220 SuperGrads. "Ian has been frantically resupplying Hamas."

Monday 1150P (850P Pacific Time):   Aaron Klein, WABC, from Tel Aviv, continued. 

Monday/Tues 1205A (905 Pacific Time):   Salil Tripathi, WSJ, in re: the death of Bal Thackeray and the divisions in India over language. Why Bombay is Mumbai.

Monday/Tues  1220A (920 Pacific Time):   Reza Kahlili, author, A Time to Betray, in re:  Iran is triumphant at the Gaza fighting. What Iran wants. Iranian cyberattacks on Israel.

Monday/Tues  1235A (935P Pacific Time):   Larry Johnson, No Quarter, and Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, in re: the Rice nomination is the drama for Benghazi for now, and the Gaza crisis will no doubt distract everyone for a time. New Yorker, Larry Gopnik: Benghazi is a tragedy without a scandal; Petraeus is a scandal without a tragedy.  Congressional committees: all the testimony has led to ever more fog.  Note: Genl Ham of AFRICOM was relieved of command for no explanation.  Petraeus said that the Benghazi event was not about an obscure video but was a planned terrorist operation.  This was at odds with what Susan Rice and the NSC were saying.  What Petraeus and Clapper sent to the White House and interagency was ot what Rice used to speak on her five Sunday TV shows. Something is being hidden – what?  Thirty people were evacuated from Libya and sent to Italy  – who are they and what's this about?

The heart of what they’re covering up is a covert op run out of the White House using non-US assets to move weapons to Syria – and the weapons wound up in the hands of a bunch of Syrian rebels specifically called al Qaeda. 

Monday/Tues  1250A  (950P Pacific Time): Dan Blumenthal, AEI, in re: the pivot word "Asia" for the Obama administration. Why and how, and what does this mean for the new Chinese leadership?   

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Music (using New York City broadcast times)  

9:00 hour:    Infamous; Call of Duty; The Sentinel.

10:00 hour:   Frost/Nixon; Crysis; Pained Veil.

11:00 hour:    Brake; Land of the Dead; Syriana.

midnight hour:    Infamous; 

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