Photo, left:  First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and candidate John Nicolson on the campaign trail in Kirkintilloch, before their successful 8 May election.  Today, the Right Honorable John Nicolson, MP, prepares to go to Westminster.
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
 
Hour One
Friday 8 May 2015 / Hour 1, Block A:   Jim McTague, Barron’s Washington, in re: ‘Flash Crash’ Overhaul Is Snarled in Red Tape  A giant data project at the center of the regulatory response to the 2010 “flash crash” that sent the Dow plummeting nearly 1,000 points is years behind schedule and mired in red tape.
Friday 8 May 2015 / Hour 1, Block B:  Robert Wright in Las Vegas, FT, in re: Daimler Freightliner keeps on truckin’ with driverless evolution
Friday 8 May 2015 / Hour 1, Block C: John Authers, FT, in re: Cameron’s one nation mission.  Vow to govern ‘for one UK’ as focus turns to threat of Brexit Osborne back as Cameron’s righthand man ; Cameron faces task to defuse nationalism ; EU demands clarity on UK’s referendum.   . . .  Scotland is where Labour was born; it’s a disaster that it now has only one MP in Scotland. People uncomfortable with Labor partly the Milliband effect, partly the economy.  Second, Labout is losing parts of its working-class base. Might be parallel to events under Reagan, whereby West Virginia is now the reddest of states.   The 4 million votes for UKIP drawn from Labour: 9.6% of the electorate.  The old protest party, the Lib Dems, has 8 MPs (was 50), and has effectively collapsed.  Scottish National Party is up 50 seats (from 6 in 2010); sit in opposition in Parliament, get two questions to the PM.   Irritated by, “If the Scots get more specificity and separately , then the Brits must, also.”  English often treat “English” as the same as “British” – which it is not, and the Scots are highly alert to that.
Friday 8 May 2015 / Hour 1, Block D:  Ken Croswell, Science News magazine, in re: Why there’s so little breathable oxygen in space.  Why is molecular oxygen (the kind we breathe) so hard to find in space?  O2 should be the third-commonest molecule interstellar space – so far, found in only two interstallar clouds, Orion Nebula and __.   A new experiment: scientists measured how readily atomic oxygen sticks to dust grains.  In fact, grains cling to atomic oxygen twice as strongly as thought.  “Molecular oxygen is water ice [out there].” . . . For the first half of Earth’s life, we had lots of water and almost no molecular oxygen.
 
Hour Two
Friday 8 May 2015 / Hour 2, Block A:  Michael Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, in re: In 1915, gas used in Ypres. Hohenzollern, Hapsburgs.  Cameron Basks in Victory, While Tests Await  U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron’s newfound standing will soon be tested as he prepares for a second five-year term loaded with thorny challenges, and with a slimmer majority than in his previous government.  (see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick). (1 of 2)
Friday 8 May 2015 / Hour 2, Block B:  Michael Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, in re: . . . The imperial cohesion of he British Isles has been the concept that held it together: the inner empire  –   Ireland, Wales, Scotland – all now slightly coming apart.  The distinct traditions in the US are amorphous; could separate by fissures.  The two political parties, deeply riven .. . . . oligolopolistic elite buying out interest groups.  Heavy law enforcement; minimal social welfare offering, Exclusion of any political competition: a bad dynamic. The rich elite is growing richer. . . . Gated communities: places doing well becoming vibrant, city-state communities while the rest of America becomes a hinterland. The real issue here is the failure of the state to command a sense of shared belief and commitment. The saddest thing is that sacrifice in war is the surest lightning rod for commitment.  City-states are entities that are easy to grasp and can command much allegiance, whereas a loose group of 300 million cannot do so as well.
 Cameron Basks in Victory, While Tests Await  U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron’s newfound standing will soon be tested as he prepares for a second five-year term loaded with thorny challenges, and with a slimmer majority than in his previous government.  (see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick). (2 of 2)
Friday 8 May 2015 / Hour 2, Block C:  Jonathan M Katz, in re:  The King and Queen of Haiti   There’s no country that more clearly illustrates the confusing nexus of Hillary Clinton’s State Department and Bill Clinton’s foundation than Haiti—America’s poorest neighbor.  It is easy to see how the Clintons’ influence in Haiti—where the power players are few and the vast majority of people live on less than $2 a day—can be misunderstood or raise suspicions. There is little transparency in Haiti. Almost every deal, even a legitimate one, gets made out of sight—and over the past five years, the Clintons have seemingly had a representative or friend in all the most important backrooms. That power discrepancy, along with the Clintons’ fondness for keeping their cards close to the vest, has led to wild rumors everywhere. Many center on the Clintons' supposedly buying land, the traditional source of wealth and power. “I’ve heard people say Bill Clinton was trying to buy the Citadelle!” laughs Michele Oriol, an expert on land rights with a Haitian government agency.
The complexity and limits of the Clinton model in Haiti can be summed up in a complex of 750 pastel-colored houses up the road from Caracol. The residents of Village La Difference are happy to have homes with electricity and water cisterns. But the settlement has been plagued by construction problems since the beginning. Two USAID contractors have been suspended for failures including using shoddy concrete blocks and failing to separate water and sewage pipes.  The village’s shining feature, however, and its most Clintonian innovation, is a school. Lekol S&H’s monthly $8,400 budget is funded by Sae-A. It’s a savvy public relations move that has yielded what is probably the most dynamic elementary school in the country. The principal, Jean V. Mirvil, was recruited from P.S. 73 in the Bronx. He and his teachers, many of whom have completed teaching school (a rarity), devised a cutting-edge curriculum that emphasizes instruction in Kreyòl, rather than French, the traditional language of education and the elites. Like many of the Clintons’ interventions in Haiti, it is not a direct . . . [more] (1 of 2)
Friday 8 May 2015 / Hour 2, Block D:  Jonathan M Katz, in re:  The King and Queen of Haiti   There’s no country that more clearly illustrates the confusing nexus of Hillary Clinton’s State Department and Bill Clinton’s foundation than Haiti—America’s poorest neighbor. It is easy to see how the Clintons’ influence in Haiti—where the power players are few and the vast majority of people live on less than $2 a day—can be misunderstood or raise suspicions. There is little transparency in Haiti. Almost every deal, even a legitimate one, gets made out of sight—and over the past five years, the Clintons have seemingly had a representative or friend in all the most important backrooms. That power discrepancy, along with the Clintons’ fondness for keeping their cards close to the vest, has led to wild rumors everywhere. Many center on the Clintons' supposedly buying land, the traditional source of wealth and power. “I’ve heard people say Bill Clinton was trying to buy the Citadelle!” laughs Michele Oriol, an expert on land rights with a Haitian government agency.
      The complexity and limits of the Clinton model in Haiti can be summed up in a complex of 750 pastel-colored houses up the road from Caracol. The residents of Village La Difference are happy to have homes with electricity and water cisterns. But the settlement has been plagued by construction problems since the beginning. Two USAID contractors have been suspended for failures including using shoddy concrete blocks and failing to separate water and sewage pipes.  The village’s shining feature, however, and its most Clintonian innovation, is a school. Lekol S&H’s monthly $8,400 budget is funded by Sae-A. It’s a savvy public relations move that has yielded what is probably the most dynamic elementary school in the country. The principal, Jean V. Mirvil, was recruited from P.S. 73 in the Bronx. He and his teachers, many of whom have completed teaching school (a rarity), devised a cutting-edge curriculum that emphasizes instruction in Kreyòl, rather than French, the traditional language of education and the elites. Like many of the Clintons’ interventions in Haiti, it is not a direct . . . [more] (2 of 2)
 
Hour Three
Friday 8 May 2015 / Hour 3, Block A:  Liz Peek, Fiscal Times, in re: If you wanted to undermine China’s growth, you would jack up labor rates. If you aim to slow the U.S., raise the cost of energy. That is exactly what President Obama wants to do.  The president recently repeated his pledge that the U.S. will cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, his opening gambit towards reaching  an international climate change deal this coming December. Not surprisingly, he didn’t mention the price tag. It takes an investor to cut to the chase on Mr. Obama’s legacy hunt.    Related: China Gambles on Its Own ‘Keystone Pipeline’
Friday 8 May 2015 / Hour 3, Block B:  Harry Siegel, New York Daily News, in re: "Fear is part of it.”   That’s how the Boston Phoenix explained its decision, back in 2006, not to run the Muhammad cartoons that had appeared the previous year in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, only to spark riots months later — cartoonists’ in hiding with bounties on their heads, mercenaries’ throwing grenades at Dutch embassies and 200 deaths.
That violence came months after the cartoons had run, to little notice. Danish clerics then went to Gulf States with far more offensive counterfeit cartoons (for instance, of a dog mounting the prophet) to raise funds to foment “spontaneous” violent protests.  I was editor of the alt-weekly New York Press then, and we’d assembled a package with new reporting about that fundraising tour and several of the cartoons. As a weekly, we figured every other paper in America would have run the images by the time we went to print. After all, how could you report on worldwide violence inspired by drawings without showing those drawings?
But it turned out the Phoenix wasn’t alone in its fear . Almost no American outlets printed the fairly banal images, easily found online. Nothing at all happened to the handful of places that did print them, but the fear was contagious.  Violence worked, self-censorship held and, insult to injury, almost every outlet hemmed and hawed about sensitivity and such, rather than admit their fear.  . . .
Friday 8 May 2015 / Hour 3, Block C:  Paul Vigna, WSJ and author, Cryptocurrency; in re:  Bitcoin Exchange Receives First License in New York State
Friday 8 May 2015 / Hour 3, Block D:   Sarah Lyall, NYT, in re:  Fire, Football and the Story of a Renowned Sports Photograph
 
Hour Four
Friday 8 May 2015 / Hour 4, Block A:  JBS BOOK PREVIEW:  Andrew Roberts, Napoleon preview
Friday 8 May 2015 / Hour 4, Block B:  JBS BOOK PREVIEW:  Alexander Witrze & Jeff Kanipe, Island on Fire preview
Friday 8 May 2015 / Hour 4, Block C: JBS BOOK PREVIEW:  Richard Rhodes, Hell and Good Company: The Spanish Civil War and the World it Made preview
Friday 8 May 2015 / Hour 4, Block D:   JBS BOOK PREVIEW: John C. McManus, The Dead and Those About to Die: D-Day: The Big Red One at Omaha Beach  preview