The John Batchelor Show

Monday 9 October 2017

Air Date: 
October 09, 2017

Photo:
 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-hosts: Thaddeus McCotter, WJR, the Great Voice of the Great Lakes, and David Livingston, The Space Show.  
 
Hour One
Monday   9 October 2017 / Hour 1, Block A: Tom Joscelyn, Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies; & Senior Editor for FDD's Long War Journal; and Bill Roggio, Long War Journal and FDD; in re: Taliban parades forces openly in Nimroz As with previous propaganda videos, the Taliban demonstrates that it can organize its forces for assaults on bases and district centers and execute attacks over extended periods of time, or parade its troops in the open, without fear of being targeted from the air by Afghan or Coalition forces.
Taliban have all the confidence in the world, run long and hugely celebratory parades of hundreds and hundred of fighters.  They mug for cameras, hold high their AK’s  No fear of American airstrike.  Not just in expected locales but across wide areas of Afghanistan.
Ayman al Zawahiri, seeking common ground with his competitors among Islamists.    Message: “We shall fight you till there is no more persecution, Allah willing.” 
Is the new al Q-style entity going to arise in Syria?  . . . There’s a lot of inside baseball here that we’re missing.    https://www.longwarjournal.org
Monday   9 October 2017 / Hour 1, Block B: Tim Joscelyn, Long War Journal and FDD; and Bill Roggio, Long War Journal and FDD; in re:  . . .  Islamic State attacks rival jihadists in Hama province  The Islamic State claims to have captured several villages from its jihadist rivals in Hay'at Tahrir al Sham (HTS) in Hama province. The Islamic State's assault on HTS came just days after HTS launched its own offensive against Assad regime positions in Hama.  https://www.longwarjournal.org
Not too far away, HTS had its own offensive; ergo, there are Sunni jihadists vs Sunni jihadists, and nearby Sunni jihadists against Assad regime. . . .  IS decided not to defend that town. Bugged out
Monday   9 October 2017 / Hour 1, Block C: Gordon Chang, Daily Beast and Forbes,com, in re:  Will Pres Trump decertify the Iran deal(Nuclear Act of 2015, Corker- Carden Act)?  This will ask Congress if it will impose anew the strictures.  Does that affect the business arrangement ‘twixt Iran and North Korea? GOP  head of Senate foreign relations c’ee is not on the same page as the president in this matter.  As  North Koreans look at the tiff in Washington, having a one-party system, they can’t conceive of a Senator arguing with the president and thus think the US govt will collapse.  Why Decertify? Iran's Nuke Program Looks Like It's Hiding in ... - Forbes
Xi Jinping: ChiComs are wonderfully silent in lead-up to the 18 October XIX Party Congress. 
One of the few predictable aspects is that they’ll be on their best behavior, Xi wants nothing to disrupt the situation, esp since he’s aiming at a massive power grab.  Highly possible that immed after the congress (15 Oct), Xi will become much more pugilistic and aggressive. 
Recall the chocolate cake event where during dinner Pres Trump sent out Tomahawk missiles. Xi left the US shaken.  Not easy to tame Pres Trump. 
Monday   9 October 2017 / Hour 1, Block D:  Claudia Rosett, Independent Women’s Forum, in re:  In 1992, Claudia in Vietnam in DaNang (air base to Cam Ranh Bay), has dinner with the morose Russian Consul in a restaurant with a thatched roof.  They go to the liquor cart where they were offered Remy, Johnny Walker, Chivas, and all the best hooch. He pointed to each bottle in turn, said “Fake!” about each. The final was a bottle of Bulgarian red wine: “That’s real. We’ll have that.”  Asia.  When Pres Trump says he won’t accept any more Nork missile tests, he means it.
At the WH dinner with the assembled might of the US military, he said, “This is the calm before the storm.”  America’s credibility was plundered under Pres Obama.
Watch the Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier recently stopped in HK and now steaming toward South Korea.  Any president trying to deal with the global problems would have to figure out how to respond and whether or not it becomes necessary to go to war. The basic problem is to establish that if you threaten the US with nuclear weapons or allow that to happen, there will be strong consequences. 
 
Hour Two
Monday   9 October 2017 / Hour 2, Block A:  John Fund, NRO, in re: Sen Corker and the GOP internecine tussle.
Monday   9 October 2017 / Hour 2, Block B:  John Fund, NRO, in re: Harvey Weinstein, disgraced promoter.  Weinstein has been a significant donor to the DNC; MSNBC refuses to cover the noxious flap.  Democrats have a selective morality: no matter who you are, if you give money to the right causes we won't criticize you. If you fail, a cone of silence descends.  Lorne Michaels: “We won't cover it because it's a New York story.”  What?  Lame.  For weeks, everything was the Billy Bush tape: disgusting but only speech. Here, it's definitively nasty deeds. GOP hypocrisy struggle included voices calling for Trump to leave the campaign.  Media pretend this mess with Weinstein all never happened.  US citizens think that there’s an insider and outsider class, inhabited by members of both parties.  (Phil Griffen is afraid people won’t come to his parties?) This is an internal battle between traditional Dems and progressives.
Monday   9 October 2017 / Hour 2, Block C:  Hotel Mars, episode n.  David Livingston, the Space Show, & Linda Spilker, Project Scientist and co-investigator on the Cassini Composite Infrared Spectrometer, in re: Cassini Huygens Mission after 13 years + 335 days; et al.  Toward Saturn: Huygens parachuted down to Titan surface, photographing river channels, liquid methane, on its Titan. First time humans landed on an outer planet moon and revealing its surface. A happy success. As it landed, it heated up the surface, gasses came out, and we were able to analyze those.  A fire hose of data came back.  Enceladus. 
Monday   9 October 2017 / Hour 2, Block D:  Hotel Mars, episode n.  David Livingston, the Space Show, & Linda Spilker, Project Scientist on the Cassini Composite Infrared Spectrometer, in re: Cassini Mission after 13 years + 335 days; et al. (continued)  Calypso. Rings of Saturn. 
 
Hour Three
Monday   9 October 2017 / Hour 3, Block A:   Jeff Bliss, Pacific Watch, in re: California wildfires.
Monday   9 October 2017 / Hour 3, Block B:  Lou Ann Hammond, DrivingtheNation.com, in re: Tesla.
Monday   9 October 2017 / Hour 3, Block C: Andrew C McCarthy, columnist for National Review; served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York; in re: the Trump dossier. 
Monday   9 October 2017 / Hour 3, Block D:  Paul Gregory, Hoover, in re:  Bolsheviks.
 
Hour Four
Monday   9 October 2017 / Hour 4, Block A: Douglas Niles, A Noble Cause: American Battlefield Victories In Vietnam
Monday   9 October 2017 / Hour 4, Block B: Douglas Niles, A Noble Cause: American Battlefield Victories In Vietnam
Monday   9 October 2017 / Hour 4, Block C: Francis Rose, host of Government Matters on Washington, D.C.'s WJLA/ABC7 and NewsChannel; in re: More tales of the VA.
Monday   9 October 2017 / Hour 4, Block D:  Jed Babbin, former United States Deputy Undersecretary of Defense during the first Bush administration; author, Inside the Asylum, Showdown, and In the Words of Our Enemies; in re: Members of Congress.
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