Photo, left: In October and November of 2005, a series of riots occurred in the suburbs of Paris and other French cities, involving the burning of cars and public buildings at night.
The unrest started on 27 October at Clichy-sous-Bois, where police were investigating a reported break-in at a building site, and a group of local youths scattered in order to avoid interrogation. Three of them hid in a power-station where two died from electrocution, resulting in a power blackout. (It was not established whether police had suspected these individuals or a different group, wanted on separate charges.) The incident ignited rising tensions about youth unemployment and police harassment in the poorer housing estates, and there followed three weeks of rioting throughout France. According to Spiegel the rioters were the children of immigrants from North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa for whom Islam was an inseparable component of their self-identity which strengthened their sense of solidarity, gave them the appearance of legitimacy and drew a line between them and the French. A state of emergency was declared on 8 November, later extended for three weeks, and the government announced a crackdown on immigration and fraudulent marriages. 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
 
Hour One
Friday 13 November 2015 / Hour 1, Block A: Sebastian v Gorka, Marine Corps University; Bill Roggio, Long War Journal and FDD; Thomas Joscelyn, Long War Journal senior editor, in re: Paris: ISIS tweeting "Paris is burning."  Three young men entered the theater, shot wildly at young people.   Pres Francois Hollande visits the site of the massacre, declares, "We will have no mercy." 
Massive intelligence failure:  got past a network built over fifteen years. More than seven locations attacked simultaneously: need weapons, safe house, coordination, vast planning, How did all of it get past France's generally good intell svcs? Shocking.    Was this planned overseas? Did executors get graining in camps in Somalia, Yemen, Syria, etc?   Parallel to Mumbai in that it paralyzed an entire city, chose soft targets where many would be congregated to allow enormous body counts.  Not a surprise to those who've analyzed jihadi tactics and procedure s in the last fifteen years – Beslan, Kenya, others –all the same techniques, and he intent is the same: synchronized attacks, low-tech, creates a mass panic. The Paris govt has shut down every public institution tomorrow, and the national borders are closed,  Exactly what they wanted to achieve. Have consolidated power in Syria Iraq,; now expanding the caliphate.  We the mujahedin will take the fight to you on [haram] soil.   . . . all the groups have comparable goals.  ISIS has been good at publicizing; "the shiny object ins the room " for several years.  /  Successful attack in the heart of Western Europe.   Intell officers often say, "We didn't have any info on this coming so it wasn't an intell failure>"  What? Specious – an across-the board intell failure. If ISIS did do this then in invalidates much of what the [talkers] have said – "ISIS doesn't want to  . . ." At least, this will demolish the notion of  lone wolf actor - they're all linked: by the ideology of jihadism. A global threat. 
- Attack was planned in advance. I personally dismiss the facile reports that this was revenge for "Jihadi John" until evidence to the contrary. Attack was too sophisticated for a rushed revenge attack.
- Attacks at at least 7 locations. This is Mumbai all over.
- Unclear who conducted attack. al Qaeda or islamic State? Someone will eventually claim credit. Given the sophistication, I suspect al Qaeda, but I merely speculating.
- Massive, massive intel failure. This is the danger of playing defense with terrorist groups. A matter of time before one attack gets thru.
[Addendum: Le Bataclan - where hostage-taking occurred - had been signalled many times by jihadi groups because it once housed a support concert for Magav Israeli units.]
Friday 13 November 2015 / Hour 1, Block B: Sebastian v Gorka, Marine Corps University; Bill Roggio, Long War Journal and FDD; Thomas Joscelyn, Long War Journal senior editor, in re: France, multiple attacks.  We don't know who did it, how many shooters, how many dead. However, tit is a massive intell failure. The US mainland has long been target Number One, Are we ready for this?  Got though French intell – what about ours?  Hard to tell – it's based on humint. US have  amazing sigint, satellites, etc., but ability to melt into the diaspora is central. The NYPD has done brilliantly at humint, depends on penetration of radicalized elements, getting the signals early enough to arrest the individuals, In the last 12 mos, 80 personas have been arrested on US soil representing ISIS; had no intention of leaving but wished to serve ISIS by killing Americans here. / The drone attacks in Afghanistan did nicely tactically but were wholly ineffectually as strategy – the Administration's mode failed spectacularly.  Cannot deny the group's ability to recruit, raise money – drone program failed.  Will strike in the heart of Crusader countries.  Manichaean war vs the Crusaders.  Paris, UK, Italy, Germany – all the same to them.  Today will claim victory for their ideology.  
Friday 13 November 2015 / Hour 1, Block C: Ann Marlowe, Hudson, in re:   . . . Bashir in Zoara on the Libyan coast; Joanna de Bono, often in Malta and wanted in Tunisia and perhaps elsewhere; contact with jihadists. Sells weapons around the larger region – gunrunner, smuggles diesel fuel, drugs widespread fraud, false visas from Algeria, Libya and Tunisia and human trafficking.  Fake passports.  Malta is in the Schengen Area.  Her bogus visas cost €3,000, going to Libyans.  DeBono also notorious for dating a Gadhaffi. Rubber boats that the human traffickers are using aren't even Chinese copies of zodiacs, but are copies being made in people's garages out of deeply unsafe materials. This is the state where the Obama Administration and Secy Clinton claimed success. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34157123  ; http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/07/europe/europe-migrants-mediterranean-operation-sophia/
Friday 13 November 2015 / Hour 1, Block D:  John Roskam, IPA Melbourne, in re: We had an attack in the middle of a café, with three deaths; we're a free and open society where we trust each other – and now all this is up for debate.  Only controversy is from the left. We need to have a free and open society and at the same time the police must protect the citizenry's safety. Foreign fighters returning from the Middle East, trained to murder.   . . .  Modcrnity versus Medievalism.
Police storm Sydney cafe to end hostage siege, three dead ...  - Heavily armed Australian police stormed a Sydney cafe early on ... was shot dead after attacking two anti-terrorism officers with a knife. http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/dec/20/sydney-siege-timeline-how-a-day-and-night-of-terror-unfolded-at-the-lindt-cafe   Just after the morning rush at the Lindt cafe on Monday, Man Haron Monis held up a gun and began a 16-hour hostage crisis. Here Guardian Australia reporters detail the key moments of the siege that ended in the death of two victims https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/29738998/police-raid-sydney-homes-fo...
 
Hour Two
Friday 13 November 2015 / Hour 2, Block A:  Michael E Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, & Naval War College, in re: Three, four, five, six young men trained to kill in Mesopotamia. French i9nteligence is very good, and they were beaten. Achilles killed Hector, was the all-powerful being whom everyone worshipped almost as a god – but Achilles is not welcome in the Twenty-first Century. The source of the Muslim revival warriors.  What the Iliad has to teach us about the Islamic State.  . . . We've contracted out or Achilles to contractors and to drones.  The warrior-hero is increasingly distasteful. It's in the sacrifice that the Muslim revival-warriors grow powerful.  The purification of an Islam degraded over centuries can be accomplished only through us and our sacrifice.  [There's no middle way:] it needs to be either fulfilled by the jihadists or obliterated. 
 -----They burst in and started spraying bullets'  More from Rory Mulholland who is on the streets of central Paris:  One young man who gave his name as Hervé spoke to The Telegraph in the street near the Bataclan rock venue said he had escaped through an emergency exit.  "Three men with Kalashnikovs and wearing flak jackets burst in in the middle of the concert. There were probably around 1,000 people there. They just started spraying bullets. I saw a girl hit right in front of me. There must have been quite a few dead."  He said the men were not wearing masks and that they were in their 20s or 30s.
Friday 13 November 2015 / Hour 2, Block B: Michael E Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, & Naval War College, in re: Why do they want us involved? To pull us in the way al Q did in 9/11 is to incite a greater urgency and commitment to the authority for the larger cause.  Adds legitimacy to the jihadists.  The US has been conducting air strakes over the Muslim world for over a year, to very little effect, but not at all a decisive weapon.  By inciting the West, no obvious risk of greater military enterprise.  . . . Achilles hates governance and modernity. The later-day Achilles, the Islamic State: Agamemnon is the US.  US guardianship for the last 30 or 40 years; will be overturned.  We honor heroes who save lives, not who honor Achilles.   . .  We'll have to march in and slaughter; last time we did that was in Vietnam, no stomach now.  We killed over a million Vietnamese. Toward robot warriors.  We're emotionally detached from killing, have no wrathful relish in killing mano-a-mano, which is what the enemy has. Americans have had en9ugh of war in the Middle East – but they won't stop coming from us.  We'd turn on a dime if that attacked us again as on 9/11. Paris in mourning, Eiffel Tower dark. We wait in New York. 
00:55  People escaped Bataclan masacre by climbing onto roof.  The Telegraph's Rory Mulholland reports:   Dozens of people escaped from the Bataclan rock venue by climbing onto its roof.  Frederic Nowak, who was at the Eagles Of Death concert with his 23-year-old son, told the Telegraph that he was one of them.  "It was about 30 minutes into the concert when I saw two men firing into the crowd with machine guns. I at first hid behind a speaker. The men were firing wildly into the crowd and even at people lying on the ground. 
Then I followed some people who were running out through a door to the right of the stage. It led to stairs but all the doors off the stairs were locked. We were stuck there for about ten minutes. There were thirty or forty people there.  Then we went further up the stairs and arrived at the roof. We got out through a window and we saw a man whose apartment was in the building next door waving to us.  We made out way over the rooftop and he let us in through his attic window. We stayed there until we heard the past police raiding the venue a while later."  Mr Kowak said he got a good look at just one of the shooters. He said he was young, probably in his 20s, and dressed casually. 
00:50 Bataclan witness - A young man who was inside the Bataclan has given a detailed account of what happened to Le Figaro. He said: It was chaos. I was on the right of the room in the Bataclan, an Eagles of Death Metal song was about to finish, when I heard the sound of explosions like fire crackers. 
I saw the guitarist take off his guitar, I turned around, and I saw a guy with an automatic weapon firing into the air.  Everyone got onto the ground. From that moment, instinct kicked in. With each volley you try to get as far away as possible from the gunmen - impossible to say how many, it all went by too quickly.  I tried, with some other people, to get onto the stage where there was an emergency exit on the right. 
And there it was chaos, people were terrified, pleading to survive, and others pushed and pulled at us to get behind the stage.  We hid in a room on the right, by the stage, thinking that it was an exit, but no.  A member of staff in the room said that the emergency exit was on the other side of the room. 
We still heard shooting. After a few more seconds or minutes, nothing, and we saw people edging towards the emergency exit - when I think about it, the gunmen must have been reloading at that point.  All of our group then decided to cross, passing behind the rear curtain. Then we found ourselves outside, and ran towards the boulevard.  We heard shooting in the street where we were but I didn’t look back. I ran, like all the world ran, towards Bastille. On the road there were already many police in cars and motorbikes heading towards the venue. 
I went home, I’m OK. Others can’t say the same thing.  I wasn’t frightened, and I’m not (yet) in shock. I’m writing this so I don’t forget.
Friday 13 November 2015 / Hour 2, Block C:  Gene Marks, Washington Post, in re: (1 of 2)   Main Street job growth stagnant  http://cnb.cx/1Sg5LCQ  ; Same store sales slowdown hints at soft Q4 http://m.nrn.com/black-box/report-same-store-sales-slowdown-hints-soft-4q?NL ; The top 20 global hot spots for start-ups"  http://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/12/the-top-20-global-hot-spots-for-start-ups.html" ;    USA TODAY's Small Business Innovator of The Year nominee: ClassPass http://usat.ly/1NH9FWj ;  This company is giving employees a $100K bonus http://www.monster.com/blog/b/hilcorp-100k-bonus  ;  California lost 9,000 business HQs and expansions, mostly to Texas, 7-year study says:  http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/blog/morning_call/2015/11/california-lost-9-000-business-hqs-and-expansions.html ; New York governor raises minimum wage for state employees   http://www.salemnews.com/region/new-york-governor-raising-minimum-wage-for-state-employees/article_ed54a82f-a975-5c9c-a68f-1f13ac3dbf39.html ;  Bank raises its minimum wage, sees immediate benefits   http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/11/11/3721170/amalgamated-bank-15-wage/ ;
Starbucks's new perk for employees who are veterans: Free tuition for spouse, kids http://go.q13fox.com/1HrWIhW  ;  Apple boss pushes business to help solve social problems   http://www.roanoke.com/news/wire_headlines/apple-boss-pushes-business-to-help-solve-social-problems/article_18704b6b-a01c-5f09-9612-4c663628b1f8.html  Bay Area condo madness results in glut: Record number of luxury condos now listed on the market. Is this a sign of the peak for the Bay Area?"  http://nalert.blogspot.com/2015/11/bay-area-condo-madness-results-in-glut.html"  ;   Airbnb Announces New “Business Travel Ready” Badge, Host Tools" http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/12/airbnb-announces-new-business-travel-ready-badge-host-tools/?ncid=rss";  Email Is the Best Way to Reach Millennials"  http://feeds.harvardbusiness.org/%7Er/harvardbusiness/%7E3/VvtcNyZe0Gw/email-is-the-best-way-to-reach-millennials" ; Finally, Some Good News for Newspapers: 60 to 82 Percent of Consumers Shop Circulars for Deals" http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/MobileMarketingWatch/%7E3/asMK6b2aSVM/" ; Hershey to offer healthier Kisses this holiday season" http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/businessNews/~3/-67hmBWhoC4/story01.htm" ; KFC Is Getting into the Delivery Game (but It Won’t Be Cheap)" http://consumerist.com/2015/11/12/kfc-is-getting-into-the-delivery-game-but-it-wont-be-cheap/".
Friday 13 November 2015 / Hour 2, Block D: Gene Marks, Washington Post, in re: (2 of 2)
 
Hour Three
Friday 13 November 2015 / Hour 3, Block A:  Peter Berkowitz, Hoover, in re: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/11/12/yales_scary_halloween_tale_128701.html
Friday 13 November 2015 / Hour 3, Block B: Ken Croswell, author, The Alchemy of the Heavens: Searching for Meaning in the Milky Way; in re: Now here's a report of a very iron-poor star in the Milky Way's central bulge, whose oldest stars are even older than those in the halo:  http://news.sciencemag.org/space/2015/11/pristine-star-near-milky-ways-heart-hails-dawn-time   Much closer to home, here's news about the unusual shape of one of Pluto's small moons, Kerberos:  http://news.sciencemag.org/space/2015/10/pluto-spacecraft-sends-back-pictures-bizarre-moon
Friday 13 November 2015 / Hour 3, Block C: Clyde Haberman, NYT, in re:  (1 of 2)   new Retro Report video on NYTimes.com, Retro Report takes a look back to 1982, when boxing fans tuned in for a fight the sport wouldn’t soon forget.  "After sports fans watched live on television as Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini delivered a knockout blow to Duk Koo Kim that ended the Korean fighter's life in 1982, boxing was never the same. The spectacle touched off a wave of negative publicity that included a push by the AMA to ban the sport. In the years to follow, boxing disappeared from network TV, relegated to the sidelines of American life. Today, as concerns about brain trauma are being raised in that most telegenic of American sports, football, Retro Reports looks at what similarities can be drawn between the two sports."
Friday 13 November 2015 / Hour 3, Block D: Clyde Haberman, NYT (2 of 2)
 
Hour Four
Friday 13 November 2015 / Hour 4, Block A:  The Heroic Heart: Greatness Ancient and Modern, by Tod Lindberg (1 of 4)
Friday 13 November 2015 / Hour 4, Block B: The Heroic Heart: Greatness Ancient and Modern, by Tod Lindberg (2 of 4)
Friday 13 November 2015 / Hour 4, Block C: The Heroic Heart: Greatness Ancient and Modern, by Tod Lindberg (3 of 4)
Friday 13 November 2015 / Hour 4, Block D: The Heroic Heart: Greatness Ancient and Modern, by Tod Lindberg (4 of 4)
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