Photo, above: ISIS terrorists kill 500 members of Iraq’s Yazidi minority   Takfiri Terrorists of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)  have killed at least 500 members of Iraq’s Yazidi ethnic minority during their offensive in the north, Iraq’s human rights minister told Reuters on Sunday.  Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said the Takfiri militants had also buried alive some of their victims, including women and children. Some 300 women were kidnapped as slaves, he added.

“We have striking evidence obtained from Yazidis fleeing Sinjar and some who escaped death, and also crime scene images that show indisputably that the gangs of the Islamic States have executed at least 500 Yazidis after seizing Sinjar,” Mr Sudani said.  Sinjar is the ancient home of the Yazidis, one of the towns captured by the Takfiri militants who view the community as “devil worshipers” and tell them to convert to Islam or face death.

A deadline passed at midday today for 300 Yazidi families to convert to Islam or face death at the hands of the militants. It was not immediately clear whether the Iraqi minister was talking about the fate of those families or others in the conflict.  “Some of the victims, including women and children were buried alive in scattered mass graves in and around Sinjar,” Mr Sudani said.  “In some of the images we have obtained there are lines of dead Yazidis who have been shot in the head while the Islamic State fighters cheer and wave their weapons over the corpses,” said Mr Sudani. “This is a vicious atrocity.”  [more]  See: Hour 2, Block D,  Katharine C Gorka, Council on Global Security and Breitbart - ISIS is winning overall.

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Hour One

Friday  31 October 2014 / Hour 1, Block A: Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: SpaceShipTwo crashes during test flight  During a powered flight test today SpaceShipTwo suffered an explosion, destroying the ship.  It's reported that the problem occurred after the ship fired its engines. It's also reported that parachutes were spotted after the explosion.  Update: One report says that one pilot was killed while the other was seriously injured. More info here.

Friday  31 October 2014 / Hour 1, Block B:  Jim McTague, Barron's Washington, in re: President Obama has spent the past few weeks reminding voters all over the country that the economy is on the mend. "By almost every economic measure, we are better off today than we were when I took office," he said last month, a tribute to President Reagan's famously effective campaign slogan.

Obama is right. Home prices are up, stock prices are 'way up, and businesses keep on hiring. The economy is in the longest period of uninterrupted job growth ever. You might think that Thursday's quarterly report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis would bolster his case further. Gross domestic product grew a reasonable 3.5 percent last quarter, and while there were some worrisome points in the data, things certainly could be much worse.

If you have to go around telling people that they're better off, though, then you have a problem. Obama's problem is that recent economic growth has largely benefited the very rich, while  median incomes and wages have hardly grown. That is, the middle class is actually worse off than when Obama took office. Only 42 percent of Americans approve of his handling of the economy, according to a new poll by The Washington Post-ABC News.

Friday  31 October 2014 / Hour 1, Block C: Mary Anastasia O'Grady, Wall Street Journal THE AMERICAS, in re: Brazil Sticks with Statism

Friday  31 October 2014 / Hour 1, Block D: Michael Ledeen, FDD, in re:  Everyone who is not an Arab who is a Muslim is a convert.  Islam is not simply a matter of conscience or belief.  It makes imperial demands.  A convert’s worldview alters.  His holy places are in Arab lands; his sacred language is Arabic.  His idea of history alters.  He rejects his own; he becomes  . . . a part of the Arab story.  . . .   People develop fantasies about who and what they are; and in the Islam of converted countries there is an element of neurosis and nihilism.  These countries are easily set on the boil.

To quote myself from a year and a half ago:  “Those people are boiling, too, perhaps more so in a non-Muslim land like ours than in countries that have gone over to Islam.  The same intense inner strife applies to those who join other totalitarian mass movements, whether Nazi, fascist, or Communist.”

Those boiling people are very dangerous, as we see most every day.  But they aren’t loners.  They’ve signed up to kill us.  (from Faster, Please!: http://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen)

Hour Two

Friday  31 October 2014 / Hour 2, Block A: Michael Vlahos, Naval War College, in re: One Sunday morning last December, China’s defense ministry summoned military attachés from several embassies to its monolithic Beijing headquarters. To the foreigners’ surprise, the Chinese said that one of their nuclear-powered submarines would soon pass through the Strait of Malacca, a passage between Malaysia and Indonesia that carries much of world trade, say people briefed on the meeting. http://online.wsj.com/articles/chinas-submarine-fleet-adds-nuclear-strike-capability-altering-strategic-balance-undersea-1414164738?tesla=y&mg=reno64-wsj

Friday  31 October 2014 / Hour 2, Block B: Michael Vlahos, Naval War College, in re: . . . Ballistic missile subs ("boomers"); Asian fleets.  Today we have three kinds of capital ships: nuclear-powered attack sub (preferred; can savage commerce and intercourse with the world,  our main war weapon); our symbolic capital ship, boomers – an existential restraint by threatening use of nukes, which no one wants; and the third is the aircraft carrier, the everyday capital ship, a vessel carrying aircraft that can present itself anywhere in the world.    Each of these functions is differentiated by its activities and its platform.  Six great powers having these mirror those of 1900: US Russia, Britain, France, India and China; could join quickly: Japan.  See WSJ map of Asian chokepoints.  China happens to face chokepoints, has its own strategic geography – surrounded by violence in the control of neighboring states, has to overcome this disadvantage.  Have taken a prudent course in dvpg alternative means of excluding US forces from near-sea areas: surface-to-surface ballistic missiles and cruise missiles – for terrestrial targets in Taiwan or moving targets at sea, such as a US aircraft carrier, which is much at risk.

Friday  31 October 2014 / Hour 2, Block C: Gene Marks, NYT, in re: TWO YEARS AFTER HURRICANE SANDY, NEW JERSEY’S RECOVERY TRUDGES ALONG.      Most entrepreneurs aren’t born that way     Small business divided over minimum wage votes   Most Microbusiness Owners Have Health Care Coverage but Benefits Have Not Yet Reached Employees, Sam’s Club Survey Reveals      Obamacare’s Success Has Small Business Dropping Coverage

Accenture Survey Shows 40 percent of North American Consumers Have Used Smartphones to Make a Merchant Payment, Up from 16 Percent in 2012

Friday  31 October 2014 / Hour 2, Block D:  Katharine C Gorka, Council on Global Security and Breitbart, in re: ISIS is winning overall. Turkey allowing troops through its border; ISIS is winning in Kobani, inter al.  Slick & polished ISIS magazine, excellent use of social media – and there exists nothing to stop them. The US does not respond ion micro or macro level; a growing sense of chaos in the world.   . . . Kerry said that Turkey and Qatar are our most important allies – while clearly they’re working against American interests. 

Hour Three

Friday  31 October 2014 / Hour 3, Block A:  Harry Siegel, New York Daily News, in re: the ebola tangle:  The New  York governor claims control, but he's not charting a steady course. And he says he may not tell the public about future quarantines.  http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/harry-siegel-cuomo-quarantine-contortions-article-1.1989439  When you get past Gov. Cuomo’s doublespeak and logical contortions, there may be a real case for the ebola quarantine he and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie debuted, half-formed, on Friday. But there’s no excuse for the shoddy way Cuomo rolled it out. Or for his credulity-defying insistence that he’s been right at every point over a four-day span — when he went from declaring things “under control,” to announcing a quarantine lacking the most basic details, to seeming to fill those in on the fly in response to a very public backlash.

“Today we are continuing to err on the side of caution in order to protect the public’s health and safety,” Governor Cuomo said. “In joining the eight other designated ebola treatment centers across the State, these two hospitals are further bolstering our level of preparedness here in New York. As we continuing to expand the list of designated treatment centers to ensure geographic diversity, New Yorkers should rest assured that we are doing everything necessary to safeguard against the risks of Ebola.”   The list of ten is as follows:

                  Bellevue in Manhattan

                  Erie County Medical Center

                  Montefiore in the Bronx

                  Mt. Sinai in Manhattan

                  New York Presbyterian in Manhattan

                  North Shore Health System in Nassau County

                  Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse

                  University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester

                  Stony Brook University Hospital on Long Island

                                 Women and Children’s Hospital of Buffalo

Friday  31 October 2014 / Hour 3, Block B: Olivier Guitta, London security analyst, in the Canada National Post:    Stopping the lone jihadi   The prospect of lone jihadists perpetrating regular terror attacks in the West — once merely the stuff of nightmare — is becoming all too real. After three recent attacks in North America (two in Canada and one in New York City) by radicalized converts to Islam, it has become clear that the equation has changed: This new wave of one-man attacks is emerging as the most immediate and serious terror threat to Western population centres.

The likelihood of home-grown attacks appears to have risen by an order of magnitude since Western powers began their air campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria in August. The group’s spokesman declared on September 21: “If you can kill a disbelieving American or European or an Australian, or a Canadian, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be. Do not ask for anyone’s advice and do not seek anyone’s verdict. Kill the disbeliever whether he is civilian or military, for they have the same ruling.”

So far, soldiers have been among the main targets of jihadists — from the murder of three soldiers by Mohamed Merah in France in 2012, to Lee Rigby in London in 2013, and now several more in North America.

Lone jihadists now can decide not to go through the ordeal of travelling to the Middle East to assist ISIS. Instead, they can do it in their own neighbourhood. While most of the focus among law enforcement has been on jihadists returning from foreign battlefields, they now have an entirely different threat to watch for.

Having missed the warning signs, Western governments are playing catch up. As early as 2007, the emergence of the lone jihadist, loosely linked to al-Qaeda but not formally trained or inducted by Osama bin Laden’s lieutenants, was keeping law enforcement awake at night. One of them was arrested in May of that year in Nancy, France: he was planning attacks against the U.S. Consulate in Luxemburg and a Mc Donald’s restaurant.

In 2014, the explosion of the use of social media warrants even more tools and resources to counter radicalization

Bernard Squarcini, then the head of the French domestic security services, stated that “An ideological transformation can be done in three months on the web. An individual can at night auto-radicalize himself via the [internet] and get in touch with leaders of terrorist organizations.” France’s then Interior minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, said that the use of the Web by terrorists was “one of my major concerns, and one of the priorities assigned to the [security] services. This requires additional material; forces specialized in fighting cyber-criminality, legal resources. I want us to be able to stop the terrorist propaganda, find the operational networks, track them down and prevent them from acting.”

That was then. In 2014, the explosion of the use of social media warrants even more tools and resources to counter radicalization.  Western security services are overwhelmed with workload on counterterrorism: from returning jihadists to the homegrown threat to established terror cells. Just one statistic summarizes the enormity of the task at hand: To properly track and follow a single jihadist, you need work from about 30 officers. The overstretching and pressure on the security services helps explain why even among the most experienced officers, the French for instance, there recently have been blunders.  In light of this, how can one comprehend why the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office Counter Terrorism Unit’s budget will be halved, and staff cut from 85 to 50? Western law enforcement agencies need and deserve a large increase in terms of both manpower and budget.

As Christophe Chaboud, the ex-French counterterrorism czar, put it in 2008: “An isolated individual can today inflict as much damage as an organization.” Imagine the following scenario: A suicide bomber blows himself up in a department store in Paris, another one in a club in London, another one in a restaurant in Rome. These individuals may have no links, and not be part of any cell. But they can paralyze cities of millions. How do you find them and prevent them from acting?

It is beyond difficult to track down radicalized individuals who fly totally under the radar. But in almost all cases, we typically find that there were clues that might have aroused suspicion. Using those clues to prevent tragedy is a huge undertaking indeed.  Olivier Guitta is a security and geopolitical risk consultant to corporations and governments. He tweets @OlivierGuitta.

Friday  31 October 2014 / Hour 3, Block C:  Kori Schake, Hoover and NYT, in re:  Reserve Soldiers’ Jobs for Soldiers, Not Contractors

Friday  31 October 2014 / Hour 3, Block D:   Francis Rose, Federal News Radio, in re: OIG Statement at House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee Field Hearing on “Rhetoric v. Reality:    Chairman Runyan and Ranking Member Titus, thank you for the opportunity to discuss the results of the Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) work related to the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA). We will focus on previously issued reports regarding the Philadelphia VA Regional Office (VARO), as well as recent situations that have come to our attention through the VA OIG Hotline and directly from current and former VARO employees. I am accompanied today by Nora Stokes, Director, OIG Bay Pines Benefits Inspection Division; Al Tate, Audit Manager, Atlanta Audit Division; and Jeffrey Myers, Benefits Inspector, San Diego Benefits Inspection Division."

Hour Four

Friday  31 October 2014 / Hour 4, Block A:  Henry I Miller, M.D., Hoover & Forbes.com, in re: "Ebola, Shmebola: Flu Is a Far Greater Menace"

Friday  31 October 2014 / Hour 4, Block B:  Henry I Miller, M.D., Hoover & Forbes.com, in re: http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/23/fdas-distorted-priorities-are-lethal/

Friday  31 October 2014 / Hour 4, Block C: Josh Rogin, Daily Beast, in re: Military Upset with White House 'Micromanagement' of ISIS War  The Pentagon brass placed in charge of implementing Obama’s war against ISIS are getting fed up with the short leash the White House put them on.

Friday  31 October 2014 / Hour 4, Block D: Philip Terzian, Weekly Standard, in re: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/brought-you_817066.html