The John Batchelor Show

Friday 5 February 2016

Air Date: 
February 05, 2016

Photo, left: Megaladapis edwardsi, a large arboreal lemur, being one of the many of the diverse assemblage of megafauna recently wiped out by human activity on Madagascar.
The Holocene extinction, otherwise referred to as the Sixth extinction or Anthropocene extinction, is a name proposed to describe the ongoing extinction event of species during the present Holocene epoch (since around 10,000 BCE) mainly due to human activity. The large number of extinctions span numerous families of plants and animals including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and arthropods. Although 875 extinctions occurring between 1500 and 2009 have been documented by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources,[1] with widespread degradation of highly biodiverse habitats such as coral reefs and rainforest, as well as other areas, the vast majority are thought to be undocumented. According to the species-area theory and based on upper-bound estimating, the present rate of extinction may be up to 140,000 species per year, making it the greatest loss of biodiversity since the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.
The Holocene extinction includes the disappearance of large land animals known as megafauna, starting between 9,000 and 13,000 years ago, the end of the last Ice Age. Megafauna outside of the African continent, that did not evolve alongside humans, proved highly sensitive to the introduction of new predation, and many died out shortly after early humans began spreading and hunting across the Earth (additionally, many African species have also gone extinct in the Holocene). The extinction of the mammoths, whose habits had maintained grasslands became birch forests without them. The new forest and the resulting forest fires may have induced climate change.[3] Such disappearances might be the result of the proliferation of modern humans. These extinctions, occurring near the PleistoceneHolocene boundary, are sometimes referred to as the Quaternary extinction event.
 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
 
Hour One
Friday  5 February 2016 / Hour 1, Block A: Liz Peek, Fiscal Times and Fox, in re: Bernie Sanders.   From their exuberant victory speeches Monday night, one would never know that the Democrats lost big time in Iowa. First, the presumed standard-bearer Hillary Clinton failed to beat a 74-year-old socialist from Vermont spouting fairy tale economics, despite having almost unlimited resources and an excellent organization. Second, the strong showing by Marco Rubio helps the Florida senator emerge from the pack of moderate Republicans angling to win the nomination, strengthening his chances of beating Clinton in November.
Six months ago, Senator Sanders polled at only 26 percent of the Iowa vote to Hillary’s 54 percent; word is that the former first lady’s entourage was shell-shocked by her close brush with (another) defeat in Iowa. Clinton’s margin over Sanders was only a handful of delegates; apparently 6 delegates ended up in Hillary’s column by virtue of fortuitous coin tosses. Related: How Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders Both Won the Iowa Caucuses
Friday  5 February 2016 / Hour 1, Block B: Jim McTague, Barron’s, in re: LinkedIn stock plunge.  http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/05/but-whats-the-real-unemployment-rate.html  ; http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/LNKD?siteid=bulletrss  ; Tech Stocks Swoon as Growth Disappoints   A sharp dive in technology shares underscored investor worries about uneven U.S. economic growth, as the latest lackluster corporate outlook, this time from LinkedIn, fueled a rush out of stocks
http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2016/02/03/ny-ag-schneiderman-not-done-with-hft-crackdown.html
Friday  5 February 2016 / Hour 1, Block C: Harry Siegel, New York Daily News, in re: Tammany Hall in Albany.  New York City's through-the-looking-glass lawmakers swear that a raises-for-reform deal is an act of principled progressivism — that their stuff doesn’t stink, that their bribes don’t corrupt. http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/harry-siegel-council-clowns-modest-pay-proposal-article-1.2519489  "If your goal is a tabloid version of Swift-ian satire, to demonize politicians, poke fun at the dark side of democracy, confirm people’s sense that we are all bums-at-best, crooks-at-worst, and make elected officials throw up their hands and say, ‘There’s no way we could ever satisfy them, why even bother trying?’ . . . then this is a great editorial.”
Friday  5 February 2016 / Hour 1, Block D: David Beckworth, Mercatus Center, in re:  The housing crash of aught-eight.   The Federal Reserve’s role in the prolonged recovery from the 2008 financial crisis.  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/27/opinion/subprime-reasoning-on-housing.html
 
Hour Two
Friday  5 February 2016 / Hour 2, Block A:  Michael E Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, in re; Global conflict (1 of 2)
Friday  5 February 2016 / Hour 2, Block B:  Michael E Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, in re: Global conflict (2 of 2)
Friday  5 February 2016 / Hour 2, Block C:   John Bolton, AEI & Weekly Standard, in re:  The email saga The more you know about the State Department, the worse Hillary's actions look.
For alumni of U.S. national-security departments and agencies, Hillary Clinton’s email saga is mind-numbing. The publicly available information makes clear she and her aides violated so many elementary security prohibitions that alumni are speechless. They wonder, had they done what she did, how quickly they would have lost their clearances and jobs and how extensive the criminal indictments against them would be.
By contrast, many who have never served in government or dealt with classified information see the affair as opaque, even overblown. Certainly Clinton has worked hard to foster that impression. Leaving political spin aside, and without delving into arcane legal analysis, which is it? What did Clinton and her entourage actually do day-to-day, and what does it mean? In hopes of making things a little clearer, herewith the observations of one State Department alumnus, who has pondered how he would look in an orange jumpsuit were he in Clinton’s shoes.
State, like other national-security agencies, has both classified and unclassified ways for its employees, especially the most senior, to communicate. Clinton erred in two separate but often confused ways. First, she used private channels for official government business, and second, she used unclassified channels to send and receive classified information.
Her first error violates basic common sense, familiar to any private business: Business channels should be used for business purposes and personal channels for personal purposes. Obviously, there can be ambiguity between business and personal communications, such as one spouse asking another, “When will you be home for dinner?” But in Clinton’s case, there seems to be no ambiguity: She simply did not use government channels for her electronic communications. Her motive was almost certainly to put information she alone deemed personal beyond government access, which is impermissible even for the most junior clerk, let alone the secretary of state. Clinton’s private email system by definition undercuts her defense that she complied with government record-keeping requirements because all her emails went to unclassified government accounts (such as her aides’). Without full access to her server, why should we believe Clinton didn’t send emails to aides’ private email addresses, thereby shielding them entirely from potential government retrieval?
Clinton’s second error, using unclassified email systems—whether her private accounts or State’s unclassified email system (through her aides)—to transmit material that should have remained in classified channels, is the nub of the email issue. Clinton has asserted that what she did with her private channels was “allowed.” Yet she has produced no evidence whatever of who did this “allowing” that was contrary to applicable statutes and express State Department regulations involving official business and information security.
Clinton clearly did not vigorously pursue normal State procedures to have her private email server legitimized. Had she somehow gotten the necessary signoffs from the bureaucracy, she would have at least had cover from the current firestorm, and we would have heard about it long ago. Far more likely, she realized that, had she asked plainly, she would have been told plainly that her scheme was way out of bounds.
How should she have pursued standard approval procedures from department officials responsible for legal compliance and security requirements? She could have solicited an opinion from State’s legal adviser, the department’s general counsel. Either verbally or in writing, she could have described what she proposed to do and asked if it was acceptable. There is as yet no evidence that anyone contacted the legal adviser’s office on this subject. Perhaps Harold Koh, legal adviser under Clinton (now back at Yale Law School), can inform the public debate by telling us whether he was ever aware of what Clinton was doing. Or the FBI could ask him directly. (There is no attorney-client privilege issue here; Koh’s client was the U.S. government, not Clinton personally.)
Similarly, State’s executive secretariat (charged with the critical bureaucratic task of managing paper flows and records of decisions by Clinton and other key officials) would have been utterly remiss if it were blind to Clinton’s ignoring government communications channels, let alone security requirements. And other State offices like the Bureau of Diplomatic Security (charged among other things with the secretary’s safety) and the Bureau of Information Resource Management had important equities at stake. Were they, or their boss, under secretary for management Patrick Kennedy, ever consulted or informed about Clinton’s practices in whole or in part? And has the FBI talked with any of these people yet?
Clinton’s next line of defense, as she stated January 31: “There is absolutely no evidence that I sent or received any email marked classified.” Of course, using a private email account or even State’s unclassified email system and marking emails classified would be an immediate, incontrovertible admission that security requirements had been violated. The way to avoid creating such evidence is not typing “Secret” or the like in the emails. That gambit, however, cannot declassify information already classified or classifiable.
What exactly were Clinton’s aides doing that resulted in classified material being exchanged among them? Here, it helps to understand how classified information, especially highly sensitive material, is distributed within State. Some particularly sensitive intelligence is available only in hard copy. Scanning it into an unclassified email system would mean retaining the original classification markings, an exceedingly incriminating action, as explained above. Considerably more classified information is available electronically, but it cannot be transmitted from the classified to the unclassified system except by State Department technicians in very limited circumstances. For example, you cannot attach a classified document to an email on the classified system and send it to an AOL or Gmail account. One of the most fundamental protections for secure IT systems is that they are not connected to the Internet. When I was at State, for example, I had two computers behind my desk connected to completely separate classified and unclassified systems.
Given these obstacles to readily transferring classified materials into unclassified emails, what almost certainly happened is this: Clinton aides would read classified documents, either hard or electronic copies, and type the information, paraphrased or verbatim, they wanted to transmit into unclassified emails. They would then send them to Clinton, unflagged in any way as containing classified material. She could forward an email to someone else, or send it back in reply. That’s why so many emails are now redacted. If the FBI is doing its job, it will interview the senders of those emails, asking them how they obtained the information they transmitted.
Most emails released to date were exchanged among Clinton’s close political circle at State, but some originated from career personnel. This is a particularly pernicious, if little-noticed, consequence of her disdain for proper security: dumbing-down security protections department-wide. State’s bureaucracy knows no higher career goal than getting face time with the secretary or otherwise getting their names before her. No Washington bureaucracy is cleverer in figuring out how to reach that objective. Very likely, some number of senior State careerists knew of Clinton’s private email and accordingly communicated much of what they wanted her to see in unclassified form, thereby breaching security. More fodder for the FBI.
But, Clinton pleads, she did not originate any emails with classified information. Even if true, Clinton, the queen bee of this scheme, unarguably understood the game. In one known instance, proving the point clearly, she instructed an aide to delete classification markings and send classified material on an unclassified fax. If this isn’t evidence of “specific intent” for prosecutors, nothing is. It is delusional to say that an experienced, well-briefed official wouldn’t have had a good and growing sense of what should be classified, whether the material originated with her or not. Clinton served for six years on the Senate Armed Services Committee, where she saw significant amounts of classified information. She was no babe in the woods when she came to State. Once there, moreover, she signed a standard non-disclosure agreement that by its express terms defines classified information as “marked or unmarked .  .  . including oral communications.”
Clinton tries to minimize the seriousness of her error by arguing, as she did during the January 31 interview, that having hundreds of her emails wholly or partly redacted before release is nothing but “classification in retrospect.” This dodge is either deceitful or utterly uneducated. To argue, as Clinton does, that information properly unclassified at the time she received it can grow more sensitive as time passes is so breathtaking it almost defies physical reality.
For the vast bulk of classified government documents, the potential damage from being leaked diminishes over time, largely for two reasons. First, time sensitivity is a significant factor in classification decisions. When, for example, a U.S. diplomat receives intelligence about negotiations in real time, the need to shield the information as highly classified may be very transitory. Even just days later, its value may have largely dissipated. Second, the passage of time almost invariably reduces the damage to the United States if the information gets into the wrong hands. Thus, immediately leaking sensitive information can be highly damaging, but leaking it a year later may only be embarrassing, while in five years there may be essentially no harm at all.
The situation is different, and much worse for Clinton, regarding intelligence gathered through sensitive sources and methods. While the significance of the content itself likely diminishes over time, the sensitivity of sources and methods can last decades or longer. Compromising these sources could put lives at risk and ruin billion-dollar collection systems. This is certainly true for “Special Access Program” (SAP) reports, recently prominent because even the State Department withheld 22 Clinton emails in their entirety because they contained SAP material.
State’s current leadership, however, is clearly trying to provide cover for Clinton by disputing classification decisions of other agencies. Bureaucrats often engage in such internecine warfare, but the operating principle has long been that the classifier of information retains control over its distribution and release. This principle rests on the common-sense notion that the agency originating or acquiring the information is best-positioned to decide how much protection it requires. State would feel the same way the intelligence community feels today about Clinton’s callous disregard for its judgments if, for instance, the Defense Department decided to declassify State reporting cables. Significantly, as Fox News’s Catherine Herridge has reported, the FBI is asking the originating agencies for their judgments, rather than relying on State’s post facto obstructionism.
Finally, Clinton is calling for all of her emails to be disclosed publicly. This is the most hollow, hypocritical ploy of all. She knows with certainty that the administration will not release them. The classification protections are not Clinton’s to waive, any more than she could waive executive privilege on her emails with President Obama if he determined to keep them privileged. And we now know, despite earlier denials all around, that Obama and Clinton did indeed communicate through her private channels.
Clinton has many other points of vulnerability that have barely been noticed. For example, hostile intelligence services can remotely capture control of cell phones and other electronic devices with microphones and have them transmit back everything the microphones pick up, even when the devices are apparently turned off. This is why, on entering a secure classified information facility, people must leave their electronic devices outside the room. This is also why senior U.S. officials are asked not to bring cell phones and laptops when they visit countries like Russia and China, because of the severe risk the equipment could be compromised during their trips. Yet for four years, Clinton and her top political staff apparently traveled worldwide with personal electronic gear such as cell phones and iPads, ignoring specific recommendations from State IT personnel not to do so.
We have just scratched the surface here of the irregularity of Clinton’s practices while at State. And that could be the FBI’s hardest job: how to find sufficient resources to investigate properly before the suspect becomes their boss. The race is on.
John R. Bolton, a senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 2005-06.
Friday  5 February 2016 / Hour 2, Block D:  Paul R Gregory, Hoover via Forbes, in re:  British Court: Putin Is a Likely Accessory to Litvinenko's Murder  A British court has concluded, using civil standards of proof, that Vladimir Putin approved the murder of a Russian whistleblower, Alexander Litvinenko, in London. The Litvinenko case comes as close as possible to proving Putin’s guilt.
 
Hour Three
Friday  5 February 2016 / Hour 3, Block A:  Brian Blaze, Mercatus Center Senior Research Fellow  & Forbes,, in re: Medicaid.    The costs of expanding Medicaid; they often exceed expectations.   “ . . . The decision states face of whether to expand Medicaid to non-disabled, working-age, childless adults—the Affordable Care Act (ACA) primary expansion population— involves tradeoffs. These tradeoffs include higher taxes, reduced spending on items like education, transportation, or infrastructure, or reduced spending on other Medicaid populations such as the disabled, children, or the elderly. 
“The ACA funding formula allows states to pass a much greater share of the costs of covering non-disabled childless adults to federal taxpayers, but the tradeoffs still exist.” (1 of 2)
Friday  5 February 2016 / Hour 3, Block B:  Brian Blaze, Mercatus, in re: Medicaid (2 of 2)
Friday  5 February 2016 / Hour 3, Block C:  Colin Waters, Science magazine, in re: the Anthropocene.  The Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene [Colin N. Waters, British Geological Survey, Keyworth, Nottingham NG12 5GG, UK]
Structured Abstract  BACKGROUND   Humans are altering the planet, including long-term global geologic processes, at an increasing rate. Any formal recognition of an Anthropocene epoch in the geological time scale hinges on whether humans have changed the Earth system sufficiently to produce a stratigraphic signature in sediments and ice that is distinct from that of the Holocene epoch. Proposals for marking the start of the Anthropocene include an “early Anthropocene” beginning with the spread of agriculture and deforestation; the Columbian Exchange of Old World and New World species; the Industrial Revolution at ~1800 CE; and the mid-20th century “Great Acceleration” of population growth and industrialization.
ADVANCES  Recent anthropogenic deposits contain new minerals and rock types, reflecting rapid global dissemination of novel materials including elemental aluminum, concrete, and plastics that form abundant, rapidly evolving “technofossils.” Fossil fuel combustion has disseminated black carbon, inorganic ash spheres, and spherical carbonaceous particles worldwide, with a near-synchronous global increase around 1950. Anthropogenic sedimentary fluxes have intensified, including enhanced erosion caused by deforestation and road construction. Widespread sediment retention behind dams has amplified delta subsidence.
      v  Geochemical signatures include elevated levels of polyaromatic hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyls, and pesticide residues, as well as increased 207/206Pb ratios from leaded gasoline, starting between ~1945 and 1950. Soil nitrogen and phosphorus inventories have doubled in the past century because of increased fertilizer use, generating widespread signatures in lake strata and nitrate levels in Greenland ice that are higher than at any time during the previous 100,000 years.
         Detonation of the Trinity atomic device at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on 16 July 1945 initiated local nuclear fallout from 1945 to 1951, whereas thermonuclear weapons tests generated a clear global signal from 1952 to 1980, the so-called “bomb spike” of excess 14C, 239Pu, and other artificial radionuclides that peaks in 1964.
        Atmospheric CO2 and CH4 concentrations depart from Holocene and even Quaternary patterns starting at ~1850, and more markedly at ~1950, with an associated steep fall in δ13C that is captured by tree rings and calcareous fossils. An average global temperature increase of 0.6o to 0.9oC from 1900 to the present, occurring predominantly in the past 50 years, is now rising beyond the Holocene variation of the past 14,000 years, accompanied by a modest enrichment of δ18O in Greenland ice starting at ~1900. Global sea levels increased at 3.2 ± 0.4 mm/year from 1993 to 2010 and are now rising above Late Holocene rates. Depending on the trajectory of future anthropogenic forcing, these trends may reach or exceed the envelope of Quaternary interglacial conditions.
        Biologic changes also have been pronounced. Extinction rates have been far above background rates since 1500 and increased further in the 19th century and later; in addition, species assemblages have been altered worldwide by geologically unprecedented transglobal species invasions and changes associated (1 of 2)
Friday  5 February 2016 / Hour 3, Block D:  Colin Waters, Science magazine, in re: the Anthropocene (2 of 2)
 
Hour Four
Friday  5 February 2016 / Hour 4, Block A:  City on a Grid: How New York Became New York, by Gerard Koeppel (1 of 4)
Friday  5 February 2016 / Hour 4, Block B:  City on a Grid: How New York Became New York, by Gerard Koeppel (2 of 4)
Friday  5 February 2016 / Hour 4, Block C:  City on a Grid: How New York Became New York, by Gerard Koeppel (3 of 4)
Friday  5 February 2016 / Hour 4, Block D: City on a Grid: How New York Became New York, by Gerard Koeppel (4 of 4) 
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