The John Batchelor Show

Friday 20 February 2015

Air Date: 
February 20, 2015

Photo: Tuvia Tenenbom's bestseller in Israel, "Catch the Jew" in Hebrew as well as German and now in English.  See Third Hour interview.
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
 
Hour One
Friday  20  February 2015  / Hour 1, Block A: Aaron Task, Yahoo Finance, in re: Dow sets first record close for 2015, S&P at high on Greece deal 

Eurozone to provide Greece four-month bailout extension 

 ; Wrong Health Tax Credit Forms Sent to 800,000  The Obama administration said it would allow people to sign up for plans on HealthCare.gov through April, and at the same time acknowledged it had sent some 800,000 people incorrect tax statements about their coverage in 2014.     Sign-Up Window to Shift Ahead for 2016 Coverage
Friday  20  February 2015  / Hour 1, Block B:  Harry Siegel, New York Daily News, in re: Americans and our enemies  Let's not repeat old mistakes, and treat new arrivals here as some existential threat to our national character [more]  /  As it happens, President Obama’s remarks Thursday at his global summit on countering violent extremism will fall on the anniversary of President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1942 signing of Executive Order 9066.  [more]
Friday  20  February 2015  / Hour 1, Block C: Liz Peek, The Fiscal Times & Fox, in re: Obama's Immigration Setback a Gift to GOP President Obama has just suffered a double hit. First, his executive action granting temporary amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants was put on ice by a judge in Texas. Second, Republicans who opposed the measure no longer look so unreasonable. 
Late Monday US District Judge Andrew Hanen blocked Mr. Obama’s executive action on immigration, which was due to take effect today. The judge did not rule on the merits of the case. Rather, he determined that the state of Texas (and some 24 other states) has standing to sue the federal government over the so-called “amnesty” measure, since it “stands to suffer direct damages from the implementation of DAPA”, as the deferred action program is called.   Related: Public to Blame Republicans If DHS Shuts Down
Friday  20  February 2015  / Hour 1, Block D:  Geoff Dyer, FT.com, in re: Pentagon reveals plans to retake Mosul from Isis.   The Pentagon took the unusual step on Thursday of disclosing plans for an Iraqi-led attempt to retake Mosul, Iraq’s . . .      "Isis is not about Islam," says Obama    Violent extremists in Syria and Iraq have nothing to do with Islam, President Barack Obama said on Thursday, as he tried to . . .   Medieval, apocalyptic Muslim tradition. 
Hour Two
Friday  20  February 2015  / Hour 2, Block A:  Michael Vlahos, Naval War College, in re: The rise of the Anglosphere: how the right dreamed up a new conservative world order  The Anglosphere has its roots in the Commonwealth tradition. But today's global world has forged a powerful unofficial alliance. During what has been an unusually turbulent period in British politics, one of the most important and potentially enduring shifts in the mindset of those at the apex of the political system has received far less attention than it merits. This concerns the striking re-emergence on the political right of the dream of an entirely different geo­political and economic future for the United Kingdom, one that claims to relocate it in the historical trajectory and distinctive values that once made Britain great.
Among a growing number of conservative-inclined Eurosceptics, the long-standing ambition of an alliance made up of some of the leading English-speaking countries spread across the world has quietly moved from marginal curiosity to a position of respectability. The idea of the “Anglosphere” – and the policies and strategies pursued by some of the political leaders of its constituent countries – has become a source of increasing, almost magnetic influence on British conservatives. And it may well provide the governing intellectual framework for the Eurosceptic campaign to quit the European Union in a post-election referendum. The concept of an Anglosphere reflects the long-held belief . . .  [more] (1 of 2)
Friday  20  February 2015  / Hour 2, Block B: Michael Vlahos, Naval War College, in re: The rise of the Anglosphere: how the right dreamed up a new conservative world order  The Anglosphere has its roots in the Commonwealth tradition. But today's global world has . . .  (2 of 2)
Friday  20  February 2015  / Hour 2, Block C:  Gene Marks, Washington Post, in re: http://www.inc.com/gene-marks/kanye-west-was-right-and-12-other-signs-the-economy-could-be-faltering.html   GOP eyes tax increases on low-income workers     / Some Congressional Democrats are seeking relief from the health law's penalties for individuals.   Overhaul-Penalties/id-b1c64dfc3f7946adba5dcd09c2ec5ff4  /  State forecasters are expecting revenue growth to remain sluggish through fiscal year 2016 according to an Urban Institute analysis.Some folks were not happy with their 1-800-Flowers purchases for this Valentine's Day.  /  Etsy IPO stokes fierce debate as some say artisan craft site is selling its soul
Friday  20  February 2015  / Hour 2, Block D:  Katharine Gorka, Breitbart.com, in re: THE QUIET CHRISTIAN INSURGENCY IN THE MIDDLE EAST . While the U.S. government continues to search for an information campaign that can effectively weaken ISIS and other radical groups, Christians have been waging a surprisingly successful war of ideas against radical Islam. The New York Times recently published an article on an initiative by Maj. Gen. Michael K. Nagata, commander of American Special Operations forces in the Middle East, which brought together a group of experts to figure out a strategy for weakening the Islamic State’s appeal. But according to the article, General Nagata expressed a dismay that has become a common theme of the Obama administration: “We have not defeated the idea. We do not even understand the idea.”
The State Department’s counter-terrorism messaging initiative equally fails to inspire confidence. The Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC) was created in 2011. With a budget of about $5 million and a team of 50 as of 2014, it works to counter the tweets and Facebook posts of jihadists. It is best known for its campaign, Think Again Turn Away. Its current Facebook page, which has 10,455 likes, features the question, “ISIS: Why is Your ‘Caliph’ Hiding?” It maintains a count of the days since Baghdadi was last seen (220 as of February 9, 2015). But the campaign has about as much subtlety as the “Just Say No” campaign against drugs. As Jacob Silverman, an author who writes about social media, noted, “State’s messages usually arrive with all the grace of someone’s dad showing up at a college party.”   A third key component of the . . .   [more]
Hour Three
Friday  20  February 2015  / Hour 3, Block A: Catch The Jew!  by Tuvia Tenenbom, published Feb 1, 2015 (1 of 4)
Friday  20  February 2015  / Hour 3, Block B: Catch The Jew!  by Tuvia Tenenbom, published Feb 1, 2015 (2 of 4)
Friday  20  February 2015  / Hour 3, Block C: Catch The Jew!  by Tuvia Tenenbom, published Feb 1, 2015 (3 of 4)
Friday  20  February 2015  / Hour 3, Block D: Catch The Jew!  by Tuvia Tenenbom, published Feb 1, 2015 (4 of 4)
Hour Four
Friday  20  February 2015  / Hour 4, Block A:  Gregory Copley, StrategicStudies director; GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs; & author, UnCivilization, in re: Early Warning. Wars Are Rarely Won with the Wrong Tools.  Wealth is the great opiate. It creates a sense of invincibility, even when battles are lost, and wars fail to sustain or expand victory. The syndrome is exemplified by the credo: “I am rich, therefore I am omnipotent.” It is the beginning of downfall. 
Modern societies — East and West, North and South — today find themselves beset by challenges to the legitimacy of their governance and their states. This persists to the point where the challenged societies themselves exhibit the seeds of self-doubt.  Much of this phenomenon is attributable to the great shifts in population groups over the past century, particularly the concurrent transnational movements and urbanization trends which have changed the nature, thinking, and shape of many societies. Certainly it has changed the centers of gravity in many societies. This I investigated in the book UnCivilization: Urban Geopolitics in a Time of Chaos1. Wealth (and dreams of wealth) motivate much of this population movement, and, concurrently, urbanization itself has helped to create wealth. 
But in that book I also remarked that the rise of the city-states would come to be challenged by exercises of crude power, just as it was when Philip II of Macedon rolled up the sophists of the Hellenic city-states in a careful series of maneuvers in which he rarely sought a direct confrontation in conventional terms. Today, the rise of geopolitical movements such as the Islamic Caliphate has already begun to confuse the defense and intelligence apparatus of the states confronting it. Have we even begun to understand that the amorphous nature of the opponents faced by the International Coalition in Iraq and Afghanistan was, like the Caliphate, not quite the usual insurgency threat which the conventional powers had traditionally faced? 
What is clear is that the present tools — political, military, and doctrinal — are ill-suited to face the threat of primitive warfare, and, indeed, often abet it through foolish missteps. The West gave these, its lavishly-bought tools, free rein to take up the gauntlet thrown down by al-Qaida in 2001, and by the precursors to that group in the years building up to the 9/11 attacks. The West’s only response to the ongoing inability to stem the building tide of opposition was to re-double the kinetic response, regardless of the diminishing cost-benefit ratio. 
Bluntly put, the modern world is fighting tomorrow’s wars with yesterday’s weapons, doctrine, and political organization. Neither is it merely a matter of looking solely to history to extract the lessons from earlier ages of counter-insurgency warfare, although such lessons are part of the clean-sheet analysis which will be critical to coping with the future. 
The fault, Dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves. 
And the first step toward understanding the threat lies in understanding ourselves. If we ask why modern, wealthy, industrialized societies are vulnerable, and why they do not seem to have the cohesiveness to respond to threats, then perhaps we are beginning the process. After all, terrorism and insurgency are the tools of the disenfranchised; of those with nothing to lose, or those who do not fear loss of the structures of civilization.   (1 of 2)
Friday  20  February 2015  / Hour 4, Block B: Gregory Copley, StrategicStudies director; GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs; & author, UnCivilization, in re: Early Warning. Wars Are Rarely Won with the Wrong Tools. (2 of 2)
Friday  20  February 2015  / Hour 4, Block C: Eli Lake, Bloomberg Politics, in re:  DECLASSIFIED  Can Iraq's Sunnis Awaken to Fight Islamic State?  As U.S. President Barack Obama wades deeper into the war in Iraq, Sheik Wissam al-Hardan would appear to be just the kind of man America needs. He is a Sunni Muslim. He is from Anbar Province, the western area of Iraq where a self-declared caliphate has already won over many tribes. Most important, he was one of the founders of the Awakening, a group of Sunni tribal leaders who in 2006-07 fought alongside American troops to take back their towns and villages from al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Islamic State's predecessor. 
Friday  20  February 2015  / Hour 4, Block D:   Natalie Angier, NYT, in re: No Time for Bats to Rest Easy
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Christians in Mosul Face Extinction    By Seraphim Danckaert in Orthodox News
Many news reports have described how Christians in Mosul (also known as Nineveh) are desperately fleeing their homes as the region is overtaken by the militant group ISIS. At the Orthodox Christian Network, we covered the crisis in our most recent online newscast, “The Christian Crisis in Iraq.”  A recent article by Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor University, describes the magnitude of this religious and humanitarian crisis by placing it into historical context. He writes:
"So much has been widely reported, but what has been missing in media accounts is just how crucially significant Mosul is to the whole Christian story over two milennia. Although the destruction of Christian Mosul has been drawn out over many years, the imminent end is still shocking. The best way to describe its implications is to imagine the annihilation of some great European center of the faith, such as Assisi, Cologne, or York. Once upon a time, Mosul was the heart of a landscape that was no less thoroughly Christ-haunted.
"Mosul itself was a truly ancient Assyrian center, which continued to flourish through the Middle Ages. No later than the second century AD, the city had a Christian presence. This was a vital base for the Church of the East, the so-called Nestorian Church, which made it a metropolitan see. Also present were the so-called Monophysites, today’s Syrian Orthodox Church. These churches used Syriac, a language close to that of the apostles, and Syriac-speaking villages still survive in the Mosul area.
"Mosul stood at the center of a network of monasteries, some of which were among the first and most influential in the whole monastic movement. Within thirty miles of the city, we find St. Elijah’s and St. Matthew (Mar Mattai) from the fourth century, Rabban Hormizd and Beth `Abhe from the sixth or seventh, and there are many others: Mar Bihnam, Mar Gewargis (St. George), Mar Mikhael (St. Michael). As in Western Europe, such houses were crucial to the vast tradition of Christian faith and learning, and the greatest yielded nothing to such legendary houses as Monte Cassino or Iona. At its height, Mar Mattai was one of the greatest houses in the Christian world, with thousands of monks."
Now, with almost all Christians fleeing Mosul and the surrounding region, this once-great center of Christian faith and learning may become little more than a memory.
Posted by the Orthodox Christian Network.
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