The John Batchelor Show

Thursday 9 May 2013

Air Date: 
May 09, 2013

Photo, above: Coptic Easter.  See: Hour 2, Block D:  Khari Abaza, FDD, on  Coptic Christians in Egypt. Copts and the Future of Egypt

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Co-hosts: Mary Kissel, Wall Street Journal editorial board, and Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents

Hour One

Thursday  9 May  2013 / Hour 1, Block A: Michael Graham, The Natural Truth broadcaster, Massachusetts [iPhone, iPad & Net: michaelgraham dot com/radio], in re: the Mass senatorial and gubernatorial races.

Thursday  9 May  2013 / Hour 1, Block B:  Edward Hayes, criminal defense attorney par excellence, in re: Ohioan decade-long kidnapping and abuse of three young women. Cleveland: a decaying, industrial city. Timothy J McGuinty, Cuyahoga Co prosecutor.  Police were called about this home more than once(?).  "This guy deserves to die. I dunno if kidnapping is a capital crime in Ohio, but . . . " Reports of girls in the back yard being led around in dog collars. Posters put up searching for two of the three girls; how cd the police miss this? They gotta dig up the yard – the entire house. The criminal's code has traditionally been: no kids.  If you do something to kids, then anything goes.

Thursday  9 May  2013 / Hour 1, Block C:  Mary Kissel, Wall Street Journal editorial board, & Jeff Bliss, The Bliss Index, in re:  Capt Bliss reports on today's America's Cup tragedy in San Francisco Bay; Larry Ellison won the race a few years ago. British gold medalist, Andrew Simpson, a genuinely beloved sailor in the racing community, was trapped under his overturned boat (under a Swedish flag) for ten minutes, couldn’t be revived. The Oracle boat was under the Golden Gate Bridge and capsized some months ago, but the water was smooth. Today, there was a heavy chop and the water was cold.

 Mary Kissel explains the intricacies of regulatory programs gone awry.

Thursday  9 May  2013 / Hour 1, Block D: Larry Johnson, NoQuarter, in re: Benghazi. pat Kennedy in charge of security;  Jones admitted on the day after that it was an Ansar al-Shariah attack. Electronic tail makes it clear that form the outset, H Clinton & sr advisors, and Pres Obama and his sr advisors, all were aware the it was a terrorist attack – yet they all did nothing. Gregory Hicks was downgraded.  H Clinton needs to be put under oath.  Pat Kennedy – on issues like this in State, where Libya was among the top countries in the world for security concern . . .   Now it’s no longer a question if the talking points were altered – they were -  . . .  many month s later, we still haven’t apprehended the guys who did it. The president: he got exactly one phone call around five o'clock.  During such events: When the first phone call comes in, we don’t know when it'll end. We have a system in place.   Conference call with State, WH.

Republicans call for release of Benghazi email 
Republicans demand more information about an attack on the US mission in Benghazi, as Secretary of State John Kerry vows to leave no stone ...



Republicans look for cover-up as Benghazi debate revived

Boehner calls for release of Benghazi emails as pressure grows on ...

Pressure on the Obama administration to release more information about the Benghazi attack grew Thursday, as House Speaker John ...


Hour Two

Thursday  9 May  2013 / Hour 2, Block A:  .Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re:  "Syria will supply game-changing weapons to Hezbollah."  Assad and Russians agreeing for F300 to go to Syria, wd prevent Israel for taking defensive measures. Assad then says he'll give everything to Hezbollah; this is, indeed, a game-changer.  John Kerry & Vladimir Putin announce a Versailles-like conference on "peace" for Syria . . .

Thursday  9 May  2013 / Hour 2, Block B:  .Rachel Kleinfeld, president and co-founder of the Truman National Security Project, in re: arming Syrian rebels. The Case for Arming Syrian Rebels  The faster Bashar Assad falls, the faster Iran loses its main conduit for shipping weapons to terrorist groups that attack Israel and other U.S. allies. . Wars are ugly. They are deadly. They have unintended consequences and spillover effects. And yet, sometimes, putting a thumb on the scales of war is the lesser evil. Sometimes, dealing in arms is the right thing to do. Arming the rebels of Syria is such a cause. But don't take my word for it. As Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, revealed this month in Senate testimony, they backed a plan last year to arm carefully vetted Syrian rebels. The plan was also backed by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-CIA Director David Petraeus. They were vetoed by a White House that sees itself as tough and realistic—but is instead being myopic.  Why arm Syrian rebels? Let's start with Iran. The faster Syrian dictator Bashar Assad falls, the faster Iran loses its closest ally in the region and its main conduit for shipping weapons to terrorist groups that attack Israel and other U.S. allies. A Syria without Assad will further isolate Iran and could help force it to the nuclear negotiating table.  Second, the war in Syria is destabilizing an already volatile region. Armed conflict has spilled into Iraq and Turkey. Refugees are creating tension in Jordan, Lebanon and other neighboring states. Syria's chemical weapons are hard to track—and the longer the civil war rages, the greater the risk that Assad will use them on his own people, or that they end up in the hands of terrorists.  [more]

Thursday  9 May  2013 / Hour 2, Block C:  . Michael Rubin, former Pentagon official & author, the forthcoming Dancing with the Devil, in re: Iran, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Iran’s best known exports are oil, pistachios, caviar, and carpets, but over the past decade the Islamic Republic has quietly become a major force in dam construction. Iran today ranks third in dam building internationally, after China and Japan, and today it is building the world’s tallest concrete dam in Lorestan, in western Iran.  While Iran has been building dozens of dams across the country, it has increasingly looked to the external market. The Eini project announced in the excerpted article is part of Iran’s outreach to Tajikistan. It is not the first hydroelectric plant Iranian engineers have built in that Central Asian republic: in 2006 an Iranian firm began construction of . . .  [more]

Thursday  9 May  2013 / Hour 2, Block D:  Khari Abaza, FDD, in re:  Coptic Christians in Egypt. Copts and the Future of Egypt  The celebration of the Coptic Easter this week sheds light on a significant political problem awaiting Egypt. While Coptic Christians are in the midst of celebrating a major holiday, prominent Islamists are debating whether or not it is a sin to greet Copts on their holiday. This is a far cry from the Egyptian tradition of Muslims and Christians taking part in or commemorating each other’s high holidays. The controversy is yet another sign that the Islamists in power do not understand the nature of Egypt, a country whose existence as a functioning nation requires consensus among its various communities. And in the modern age, equality between Muslims and non-Muslims is one of the most important shared values.

Politicians and clerics behind the most recent divisive sectarian statements forget that the principle of complete equality was born out of necessity in 1919 as a concession that the Muslim majority had to make to the Copts for the nation to survive.

The intolerant and insensitive discourse comes less than a month after . . . [more]

Hour Three

Thursday  9 May  2013 / Hour 3, Block A:  Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re:

Thursday  9 May  2013 / Hour 3, Block B:  Benjamin Weinthal, FDD, in re: Hezbollah. Israel’s military strikes against Syrian weapons facilities and rockets over the last week (and in January) represent a kind of one-two punch against Hezbollah and its main weapons supplier, the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Israel’s aim was to destroy Iranian-manufactured Fateh 110 missiles, Syrian-made surface-to-surface M600 missiles (a replicated version of the Fateh 110), and an assortment of Russian-made surface-sea missiles, including the Russian-produced SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles.  In short, Hezbollah’s acquisition and deployment of this weaponry could alter the balance of aerial power between the Iran-sponsored terror entity Hezbollah and Israel. The transfer of weapons from Syria to Hezbollah’s base in Lebanon is now a central focus of Israel’s defense establishment. [more]

Thursday  9 May  2013 / Hour 3, Block C:  . On the Ropes: A Novel by James Vance and Dan E. Burr (1 of 2)

Thursday  9 May  2013 / Hour 3, Block D:   On the Ropes: A Novel by James Vance and Dan E. Burr (2 of 2)

Hour Four

Thursday  9 May  2013 / Hour 4, Block A:  Jed Babbin,  The American Spectator : Nobody Died in Watergate The whistleblowers' testimony was almost lost in the tidal wave of spin and lies coming out of the White House and its congressional cohorts.

Thursday  9 May  2013 / Hour 4, Block B:    Jonathan Salant, Bloombrg Businessweek, in re:  The whistleblowers' testimony was almost lost in the tidal wave of spin and lies coming out of the White House and its congressional cohorts.   The Dysfunctional FEC. To say the FEC is broken is a parody of understatement.  As of now, all the members of the Federal Election Commission, the agency that enforces the nation’s campaign laws, are serving on borrowed time. Their 6-year terms have expired but President Obama hasn’t nominated anyone to succeed them since Senate Republicans have said they’ll block anyone he does name. And the FEC’s internal disagreements about how to enforce campaign laws have emboldened some Super PACs to ignore the . . .  [more]

Thursday  9 May   2013 / Hour 4, Block C:  Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: The European Union’s program to reduce carbon emissions is in disarray. The article at the link is probably one of the worst written stories in the history of journalism. It is incoherent, disorganized, and confused. Moreover, the authors are so in favor of the regulations to limit fossil fuels that they are unable to even consider any reasons which might explain why Europe’s carbon credit market is collapsing and why the EU’s legislators rejected a rescue plan to save it.

In fact, because of their biases, the authors buried the real story, which is this:  Parliamentarians on April 16 voted 334 to 315 for blocking the carbon market rescue.  “This is the first time I can remember when parliament has put economic survival and jobs ahead of green orthodoxy,” said Roger Helmer, a member of the U.K. Independence Party who has been in the parliament for 14 years and opposes emissions trading. “It marks an absolute watershed.”  The bad economy and high debt in Europe is making the idea of raising taxes and adding more restrictions on fossil fuels very unappealing to politicians.

Thursday  9 May  2013 / Hour 4, Block D:   Nichols Wade NYT, in re:  Cannibalism. Girl’s Bones Bear Signs of Cannibalism by Starving Virginia Colonists

Archaeologists excavating the Jamestown colony site have found in the remains of a 14-year-old girl the first physical evidence of cannibalism by colonists during the harsh winter of 1609.

..  ..  ..

Music

Hour 1:  Gangs of New York, Road to Perdition, CSI

Hour 2:  Passion of the Christ, The Road, Centurion

Hour 3:  The Road to Perdition

Hour 4:  Sin City, X-Files