The John Batchelor Show

Friday 6 February 2015

Air Date: 
February 06, 2015

Caligraphy, left: "Where are the moderate Imams? Their silence is deafening." See Hour One, Block C, Liz Peek. 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
 
Hour One
Friday  6 February 2015  / Hour 1, Block A: Daniel Henninger, WSJ WONDER LAND, in re: An Empire of Taxation
Friday  6 February 2015  / Hour 1, Block B:  Jon Hilsenrath, in re: Hilsenrath: Report Increases Odds Fed Will Alter Language   The strong employment report keeps open the possibility the Federal Reserve could start raising short-term interest rates in June.
Friday  6 February 2015  / Hour 1, Block C: Liz Peek, The Fiscal Times & Fox, in re: ISIS Burns Jordanian Pilot: Mr. Obama, when will you get angry about radical Islam?  America wants to know, when is President Obama going to get angry? When is he going to slam his fist on the desk, demand vengeance, put aside his incessant campaigning and call out the Islamic radicals of ISIS as the animals they are?
Interrupted in the course of yet another photo-op on the benefits of ObamaCare, the president looked almost irritated Tuesday to be asked his reaction to the murder of the Jordanian pilot, shown on an Internet video being burned alive by ISIS.  He talked calmly about the “bankrupt ideology” of this “organization,” like he was addressing unhealthy menu choices at a fast food company. Where’s his outrage?
At the least, we would expect Mr. Obama to be angry that his relentless pursuit of legacy goals is yet again likely to be sidetracked by pesky questions about his anti-terrorism strategy. Faced with yet another House vote to repeal ObamaCare, the president thought fit to host several families who apparently consider themselves beneficiaries of his legacy health care bill. Too bad; happy talk about health care probably won’t be tomorrow’s headlines. He doesn’t get it. No one doubts that many Americans are happy to be receiving free health care. It’s the rest of the country – still the majority – who are unhappy that our policies cost more than they once did, that those same policies are not as generous as in the past, that we may no longer visit our favorite doctors or hospitals, that we may be fined if we don’t sign up for insurance, that health care costs are still going up, that none of the supposed experiments in tort reform have surfaced – in short that we are now paying for those lucky enough to be on the receiving end of the country’s largesse.
Meanwhile, most Americans think the most serious threat facing the country is Islamic terrorism – not climate change, not income inequality – Islamic terrorism.  A recent poll shows more Americans saying the United States is less safe from terrorists now than at any point since 9/11. We are concerned that our president does not share our alarm.  Rather, he appears desperate to sign a deal with Iran, he pretends that withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan and Iraq has made us safer, he proposes in his budget to actually cut back spending on our overseas anti-terrorism effort, he spurns Israel, and can’t be bothered to show up in Paris when the world gathers to protest the savage murders at Charlie Hedbo.
Once again this past weekend, in an interview with Fareed Zakaria, President Obama said he doesn’t “quibble with labels,” suggesting that the denouncement of Islamic terrorists was not an important declaration, but rather unnecessary nitpicking.  He made the case, once again, that we need to acknowledge that though ISIS is a “particular problem that has roots in Muslim communities,” we harm our cause if we fail to recognize that most Muslims “reject this ideology.”  Fair enough, but a case could be made that Muslims around the world are doing far too little to “reject” extremism, a point recently made by New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan. As he pointed out, during the “troubles” in Northern Ireland, the Catholic Church would routinely condemn acts of IRA violence. 
Where are the moderate Imams? Their silence is deafening.
Mr. President, these savages of ISIS have taken your measure, and are not impressed. They know we do not have the resolve to put aside politics and devote the country’s energies towards coming after them full-bore. They know you are obsessed with you infernal “legacy” which, as luck would have it, will include some of the worst foreign policy blunders of modern times.
Robert Gates, Leon Panetta – even Chuck Hagel – they have all blasted your inept foreign policy. Just wait until Hillary Clinton hits the campaign trail in earnest; my guess is she will not be a supporter. The world is a dangerous place, and unhappily you have been in the crosshairs as a new, malignant threat has emerged – the group you once derided as the "JV team." They turned out to be savages, varsity level, as the most recent ISIS video makes clear.  Presumably the ISIS strategists (unlike your administration it appears they do have a strategy) decided we were becoming inured to beheadings; they took it up a notch. Their most recent video does just that, signaling a new and more gruesome barbarism. President Obama, you need to address the nation, and condemn Islamic radicalism – something you have been unwilling to do. The time is now.
Friday  6 February 2015  / Hour 1, Block D:   Gregory Copley, StrategicStudies director; GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs; & author, UnCivilization, in re: Australia May See Leadership Challenge to Prime Minister by Early March 2015
Analysis from GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs, Canberra. Highly-placed sources in Canberra have indicated that the mounting unrest within the governing Liberal Party — the dominant party in the Liberal-National Party coalition — could result in a leadership challenge to Prime Minister Tony Abbott as early as March 5, 2015, the day before the Federal Parliament is due to rise from its second sitting of 2015 (the first session of 2015, during the week of February 8, 2015, will be only four days, insufficient to gather the votes, leaving the gap until the second session as the time to build consensus and gather support).
Because so much of the internal debate within the Parliamentary Liberal Party (comprised of sitting members of the House of Representatives and Senate, the only ones entitled to vote for their parliamentary leader) has now become public, and a number of potential challengers have been identified, that each of the possible candidates has to determine as quickly as possible whether he or she has the voting strength to challenge the Prime Minister.
See:  “Australian Prime Minister Faces Mounting Leadership Challenge; Defense Moves Under Way”, in Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, January 30, 2015.   &   “Australian Leader Averts Leadership Challenge, but Faces Watershed in National Security Strategy”, in Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, December 23, 2014.
Hour Two
Friday  6 February 2015  / Hour 2, Block A:  Michael Vlahos, Naval War College, in re: http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/05/white-house-to-unveil-call-for-strat... (1 of 2)
Friday  6 February 2015  / Hour 2, Block B: Michael Vlahos, Naval War College, in re: http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/05/white-house-to-unveil-call-for-strat... (2 of 2)
Friday  6 February 2015  / Hour 2, Block C: Sohrab Ahmari, WSJ London, in re: here, and the full text is pasted below.  British Justice Versus Kremlin Impunity. The Litvinenko inquiry offers the public airing of facts a trial would have
Friday  6 February 2015  / Hour 2, Block D:  Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: OSIRIS-REx to get more fuel for its asteroid mission  In what might be a first for the planetary science/engineering community, an unmanned probe, being built to bring samples back from the asteroid Bennu, is turning out to be lighter than expected, thus allowing engineers to stuff its tanks with extra fuel to extend its mission.  The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, being built at a Lockheed Martin facility in Denver, is coming in lighter than the lift capability of the Atlas 5 rocket, which will lift off in its “411” configuration with a four-meter payload fairing, a single-engine Centaur upper stage, and one strap-on solid rocket booster.
The proposal — described as a “heavy launch option” — would add an extra 341 pounds of fuel to the spacecraft’s fuel tank.  Planetary probes never end up lighter than planned, at least until now. During construction scientists have always found it impossible to resist adding more instruments or capabilities, and thus engineers always struggle to get the spacecraft built within its weight budget. For OSIRIS-REx to have this wonderful problem is surely astonishing.    Five years later a second attempt to put a Japanese spacecraft into Venus orbit
If at first: After failing to place its Akatsuki spacecraft into orbit around Venus in 2010 because of a cracked engine nozzle, Japan has announced its plans for a new attempt later this year.  The attempt will be made on December 7. If successful, the spacecraft will begin studying Venus’s climate and atmosphere only a short time after the end of Europe’s very success Venus Express mission.
Hour Three
Friday  6 February 2015  / Hour 3, Block A:  The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order by Paul Vigna and  Michael J. Casey (1 of 4)
Friday  6 February 2015  / Hour 3, Block B: The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order by Paul Vigna and  Michael J. Casey (2 of 4)
Friday  6 February 2015  / Hour 3, Block C: The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order by Paul Vigna and  Michael J. Casey (3 of 4)
Friday  6 February 2015  / Hour 3, Block D: The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order by Paul Vigna and  Michael J. Casey (4 of 4)
Hour Four
Friday  6 February 2015  / Hour 4, Block A: The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan, by Jenny Nordberg  (1 of 4)
Friday  6 February 2015  / Hour 4, Block B: The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan, by Jenny Nordberg  (2 of 4)
Friday  6 February 2015  / Hour 4, Block C: The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan, by Jenny Nordberg  (3 of 4)
Friday  6 February 2015  / Hour 4, Block D: The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan, by Jenny Nordberg  (4 of 4)
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