The John Batchelor Show

Thursday June 1, 2017

Air Date: 
June 01, 2017

 
Photo, left: Protest of the Surveillance State
 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
 
Co-hosts: Mary Kissel, Wall Street Journal; Thaddeus McCotter, WJR, the Great Voice of the Great Lakes; and Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents
 
Hour One
Thursday  1 June 2017 / Hour 1, Block A:
Devin Nunes
Three subpoenas  all related to unmasking.  – to CIA, NSC, and FBI, requesting of John Brennan, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power the unmasking they  did for all of 2016 up to January of 2017.  These are only the beginning; we have many more names.  
 
 
Intell agencies are leglly obliged to mask eth names of all AMericns found in intl intell.  In the rare event when the names need to be discovered, thre exists a procedure, In the inatance of ht  Adm, it appers htat that became excessive We've waited since 15 March for h info, intell agenices have been slow-rolling us, which led to the three subpoenas.
 
 
Thse programs protect US ciizens  from beingpicked yup n foreign intell collections. What seems to have happened here is at least and abuse of power; what is illegal _ we know that names were unmaksd in intel products  - from the WaPo and NYT, and leaked ot the media.  That leak consititutes a crime.
 
TO date that ;s the nly illegal activity we can see. I keep looking for Russians.  Mrs Clintn yesrday: “A thousadn Russian agentes were colluding with Donald Trump.”  Am looking.
 
 
Makes sense for Rice and Brenan to look at intell products, whereas Power is a diplo.  Why wld she ask for unmasking?  These progams are really important fo Amercan people,a d right now they're in jeoplardy.  We uwouldn;t have the votes today to extend th programs. At the end of the day, the US wll b e less safe .  Peope expect the House Itell Committee to verse these matter.s  
 
Thursday  1 June 2017 / Hour 1, Block B:  Devin Nunes
Three subpoenas  all related to unmasking.  – to CIA, NSC, and FBI, requesting of John Brennan, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power the unmasking they  did for all of 2016 up to January of 2017.  These are only the beginning; we have many more names.  
 
 
Intell agencies are leglly obliged to mask eth names of all AMericns found in intl intell.  In the rare event when the names need to be discovered, thre exists a procedure, In the inatance of ht  Adm, it appers htat that became excessive We've waited since 15 March for h info, intell agenices have been slow-rolling us, which led to the three subpoenas.
 
 
Thse programs protect US ciizens  from beingpicked yup n foreign intell collections. What seems to have happened here is at least and abuse of power; what is illegal _ we know that names were unmaksd in intel products  - from the WaPo and NYT, and leaked ot the media.  That leak consititutes a crime.
 
TO date that ;s the nly illegal activity we can see. I keep looking for Russians.  Mrs Clintn yesrday: “A thousadn Russian agentes were colluding with Donald Trump.”  Am looking.
 
 
Makes sense for Rice and Brenan to look at intell products, whereas Power is a diplo.  Why wld she ask for unmasking?  These progams are really important fo Amercan people,a d right now they're in jeoplardy.  We uwouldn;t have the votes today to extend th programs. At the end of the day, the US wll b e less safe .  Peope expect the House Itell Committee to verse these matter.s  
 
 
Thursday  1 June 2017 / Hour 1, Block C:  VDH, Hoover, in re:  why the Democrats ar always on cable squeaking about the US president is hat they follow along with the produers at CNN NBC, MSNBC, et al.?  Unh, I think their leadership is geriatric, out of touch with what moves the party now – Black Lives Matter, MoveOn, al the others; where some say, “Trump is so bad you have to be partisan.”  Always was incest with Ben Rhodes’s brother, and others.    Civil war on the right – G Will, David Fromm, etc - don’t like trump, whereas the Left is monolithic.  
 
Today Trump said he represented Pittsburgh, not Paris.  Most rural and central-US people aren’t interested in global warming, transgender rest rooms, what Angela Merkel said.  Russiagate:”? They’ve had every reporter on this thing for six months and haven't brought out one datum of evidence.  Nunes did not recuse himself (a legal designation), he just stepped aside,  We thgh Adam Shiff would charge ahead and  have a grand jury investigation. In fact, he did nothing, haven’t called even one witness. 
 
No German president shd ever give a speech from a beer hall n Munich – Merkel just did, gave a corruscating speech on Trump. Incoherent.  It was not clear about Germany welshing on its NATO payments.  The McGovern trajectory of 1972: this time it's much cruder and coarser.  “A thousand Russian agents and Macedonians” of Mrs Clinton -?    Trump seems ijke a fool and naïve but he seems to know how to draw out h worst from Democrats?   . . .  Why vulgarity and abusive language?  Pathologies   A lot of people are getting sick of it every day – Anderson Cooper talking about scatology on TV  
 
Thursday  1 June 2017 / Hour 1, Block D:945  Mary  spoke w Holman Jenkins of the WSJ, who immed said, the Paris climate agreement was “a bad deal.”  Even had the US doe all t was assigned under that deal, it wouldn’t have shifted anything in global climate.  Extremely complex models with lots of hypothetical assertions. Better to improve economies and encourage them to move toward cleaner technologies.  China was to get a fabulous deal where it promised to use less coal yet we know that it’s already planning to use ever more coal – and it produces lignite, the dirtiest.   . . . Democratic voters voted for Donald Trump because they believed they’d been abandoned by the Democrats. At midterms, voters wil also want to see health care reform and tax reforms.    The Chinese envt is so dirty that the citizenry is demanding clean-up even under the gravely repressive regime.
 
 
 
Hour Two
Thursday  1 June 2017 / Hour 2, Block A:  10 Thaddeus  McCotter
Politics; Russiagate; unmasking.    Seven subpoenas went out yesterday; esp interested in three: asking for a list of the names of US citizens asked to be unmasked by NSC (Susan Rice),  CIA (John Brennan), and the US  Amb to UN (Samantha Powers).  Of hts, why is a diplomat asking for unmasking? A driving obsession f the Obama Adm was the Iranian nuclear accord.  People focused on htat matter always wondered how the White House was a step ahead of them. Looks as though unmasking was a part of it.  Need to extend he FISA court (702) to observe Americans and unmask their names when needed; few Republicans and no Democrat will vote for that. A public policy matter: if hey did abuse the surveillance powers of the state for political advantage, then of course refusal to re-authorize.  This potentially endangers the security of the US.  They expected Hillary Clinton to win; never expected Trump to win. Obama vastly expanded number of people able to see raw intell; did they change the rules to make it easier for raw intell to be leaked for political utility? And the leaks are criminal.  Could be used to influence the decisions of Amercan policy-makers.  
Thursday  1 June 2017 / Hour 2, Block B:  
1015  Seb Gorka
Pop star to give a benefit concert f/b/o the people of Manchester damaged by the attackers.  Loaded the bomb up with nails and other things deliberately to be cruel to people wh didn’t die. The scale: eleven arrested, a widespread net of people sympathetic to the attacker or at least were aware of he cell.  I was contacted by a DHS member after our last conversation, When people came in from places like Libya were taken aside and asked about their trip and made aware that we have our eyes on them.  Two things: info of intell value, but not to be divulged in a court of law and then there’s the prosecution.   These eleven were clearly a threat to their fellow citizens. This suicide attack occurred outside the security measures used in this instance.  None of these attacks occur spontaneously or n a vacuum; the jihadis collect intelligence, surveille, calculate.  Someone was aware of this.  
Esp our Euro allies, just think of ISIS: it alone has recruited 85,000 jihadis in five years; at east 6,000 are Westerners – Brits Belgians, Americans. When they return after long sojourns in Libya, Iraq, Syria: what do we do with them? 
Thursday  1 June 2017 / Hour 2, Block C:  1030 Malcolm HOENLEIN
 
In Bethlehem, when Pres Trump went on a long-planned visit to the Church of the Nativity, Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority prevented him from entering the church, Now Abbas has admitted  that Trump yelled at him during the meeting; Abbas is renowned for coming  up with excuses, subterfuges, mendacity; Trump in Bethlehem didn’t fall for that. When Trump was  in Israel,  he saw film clips of Abbas openly lying, and as it turned out yelled at Abbas - :”You tricked me in Washington and lied to me!”    UN announces finally  that it's pulling funding from the PA; Denmark also, all because the PA uses Western money t build community centers and then names them after convicted terrorists and killers.  About a billion dollars in the last four yeas have been paid t terrorist and their families! The more they kill, the more money they get.  Measures are in Congress to cut US funding by the amount he spends on this - $300 million. In the past, Abbas didn’t care, all he cared about was staying in office. Meanwhile, Europeans refuse to join in bldg a major transnational railroad because it ‘s supposed ot pass through Palestinian teriroties, Lots of anti-Israel and anti—Jewish sympathy in Europe 
 
1045  malcolm  Pres Trump has decided at the US embassy will stay in Tel Aviv for anther six months; the waiver in 1995 Jerusalem law brings it back t be re-signed every six months. Pressure was brought by King Abdullah on the grounds that the Arab street would object.    Kind of bogus. The waiver is specifically to be based on national security considerations, not diplomatic ones   
 
Netanyahu en route ot Togo and Liberia, to attend the ECOWAS conference. Realtins between Israel and Areica were broken after 67 war under aArab pressure; now they’ve learned that they cgai a lot more from workig wit Israel than  the Arb worlds. ClLots of  economic and technical cooperation agreements n the table; Bibi taking Minsterial ddelegation, incl his enrgy Minister.  
Morocco has successfll developed good relations in frica; el Sisi has good relationsl Saudis are more distant. 
 
ISIS in Sinai: Bedouin turning again ISIS because it kidnapped four Bedu and beheaded hem and sent back the bodies! Bedouin have joned ht Egptian army.  Triabl Union of Sinai utied against ISIS.
Thursday  1 June 2017 / Hour 2, Block D: CONTINUED
 
Hour Three
Thursday  1 June 2017 / Hour 3, Block A: 
Thursday  1 June 2017 / Hour 3, Block B:
Thursday  1 June 2017 / Hour 3, Block C: 
Thursday  1 June 2017 / Hour 3, Block D:  
 
Hour Four
Thursday  1 June 2017 / Hour 4, Block A: 
Thursday  1 June 2017 / Hour 4, Block B: 
Thursday  1 June 2017 / Hour 4, Block C: 
Thursday  1 June 2017 / Hour 4, Block D:  
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