Photo: Massive refugee camp at Tempelhof airport in Berlin. See: Tuvia Tenenbom, Hello, Refugees!
 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
 
Hour One
Friday  9 March 2018 / Hour 1, Block A:  Dan Henninger, WSJ editorial board, and Wonder Land column; in re: Pres Trump’s proposals to put tariffs on steel and aluminum imports; now, with exclusions of Canada, Mexico, and most allies and trading partners.
Friday  9 March 2018 / Hour 1, Block B:  Jim McTague, Barron’s Washington, in re: The stellar jobs number released this morning —313,000 —and the US economy.
Friday  9 March 2018 / Hour 1, Block C:   Gordon Chang, Daily Beast, in re:  Pres Trump’s announcement that he’ll soon meet Kim Jong-eun.  Will Moon Jae-in like this? Yes, a lot: it’s consonant with h is long-established appeasement sentiments and will add luster to his political life.   China?  Expressing warm approval publicly but must be pretty nervous in face of two [quirky] and strong-minded leaders.  Japan?   Still very much aligned with the US. Russia?     Putin favors chaos everywhere but for him.  
Friday  9 March 2018 / Hour 1, Block D:  Jeff Bliss, Pacific Watch, in re: Homelessness throughout California. Brobdingnagian rental costs.  Taxing everyone in San Francisco on whom rain falls!  Outlawing plastic straws and utensils. Rental bikes thrown in the ocean. Humans attacking driverless cars: when one is involved in accident, the human driver sometimes goes nuts and beats the driverless car.
 
Hour Two
Friday  9 March 2018 / Hour 2, Block A:  Michael Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, in re: Civil war.  Two sharply different visions of America.  Perhaps big cities vs. rural America. Not finding a way to talk with each other.  The Oakland mayor replied to AG Jeff Sessions, who said that the sanctuary movement, illegal protection of illegal immigrants, is unacceptable behavior. The mayor spoke back sharply.  .  . . . To what extent are the states sovereign, and to what extent the federal government?  Constitution was unclear about slavery, leading almost inexorably to civil war.  Although the Civil War solved the question of slavery and seemed to resolve the questions of federal-vs-state sovereignties, we're still likely to see situations such as today’s erupt with passion. California, as a prime example, considers itself to be virtually an independent jurisdiction. Arrest the mayor of Oakland?  At what point does Sacramento decide it has the military means to defend sanctuary movements?  The feds can arrest one mayor once, but thereafter the available police and SWAT teams (of which there are 30,00 or so) may be deployed by the state to resist the central government.
Friday  9 March 2018 / Hour 2, Block B:  Michael Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, in re:  . . .  Existential choices obviate compromise.  Here, both sides, red and blue, feel that that’s what they're facing.  Constitution, immigration law, Second Amendment.  The Constitution is scriptural, canonical. When you're reduced to fighting over the [nature]  of scripture, you're already in a civil war.
Friday  9 March 2018 / Hour 2, Block C:  Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack, in re:  Big Space is still in the game: a Cabinet meeting in which the rockets of Big Space were displayed to Cabinet members, all in models.  Why?  Right now there are great fear and terror in Boeing (SLS) and Lockheed because of the success of SpaceX’s returnable rocket. The assumed that that bailiwick was theirs.  The Lunar-Orbiting Platform (acronym: LOP-G).  But the Trump Adm is thinking of spending a small amount of money to have private space to step in.   The mega-corporations are filling newspapers with charges of “crony capitalism” against the tiny, successful firms (Blue Origin, SpaceX, et al.) — while Boeing and Lockheed are precisely the manifestations of crony capitalism.  Note costs: $15 Bil per launch from mega-corporations, but $90 mil from SpaceX.  Astoundingly, the huge firms actually spent months trying to squelch the publication of my book.
Chinese Long March rocket. Skylab.  Band through the middle of the US, Europe, China, and across Japan where ______ may fall.  . . .  New Zealand.  Small sats.
 
 
Friday  9 March 2018 / Hour 2, Block D:  Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack, in re:   In the Solar System, everything we’ve looked at has been quite different from everything else we’ve observed. Jupiter’s giant cyclones.  Gas giant at some point must go solid at some depth, now we think it's about 1,900 miles. Equatorial latitudes extend that deep, incl the jet streams. Below that, it rotates nearly as a rigid body, Is it a solid? A gas?   I predict that the next fifty gas giants we investigate among the stars will all be different from each other; it’ll be centuries before we gat a handle on planetary formation. 
The UN infantilizes the climate change debate: Michael Bloomberg and a movie star, Leonard di Caprio, will persuade young people of the verity of global warming. Is either a science expert? Not. But the topper is that the UN chose as its third climate change envoy a cartoon character, Red, from Angry Birds, to propagandize our children.  What??  It's a joke. 
 
Hour Three
Friday  9 March 2018 / Hour 3, Block A:  Mary Anastasia O’Grady, WSJ editorial board and Americas columnist, in re:   Argentina: Kirchners  and Mauricio Macri, who's still pretty popular.  His small party goes up against he enormous Peronist party.  He speaks mildly and in a conciliatory way, but inherited a huge deficit.. Has brought the inflation rate from 40% down to 25% — very good but not enough.   She’s trying to to do this with “gradualism” but probably not fast enough.  Big Labor in Argentina:  established using Mussolini’s ideas.  Reform unlikely until there are reforms of labor laws — which are functionally untouchable.  Also, his balancing act is highly dependent on favorable conditions in the intl capital markets.  If the Trump Adm grows not too strong, or the Fed jams on the brakes – the effects in Argentina would be exacerbated.   Since 1928, no non-Peronist president has completed his/her term due to one or another variety of ungovernable chaos.  Macri must stabilize against a possible exogenous shock.  The narrative there is that anyone who makes profits is evil, and the role of the government is to seize profits and redistribute them.
Friday  9 March 2018 / Hour 3, Block B:  Mary Anastasia O’Grady, WSJ editorial board and Americas columnist, in re:   
Friday  9 March 2018 / Hour 3, Block C:  Patrick Tucker, DefenseOne technology editor and authors, The Naked Future; in re: Russian (and other) cyberatttacks and the consequences.  Cuba: some sort of attack was launched against US diplomatic workers in Cuba, starting in August 2016.  University of Pennsylvania research on the matter (chronic headaches, dizziness, sleeplessness. PTSD-like symptoms, all seemingly engendered by piercing, shrill sounds, grinding metal sounds.  Psychological and physical attack.
North Korea:  a failed and backward state practicing predatory deeds among its neighbors, but [sophisticated] in cyber. Its capabilities have dramatically increased, perhaps to the leagues of Russia and Iran.  Uses wiper malware: wipes out data after exfiltrating.
Friday  9 March 2018 / Hour 3, Block D:   Patrick Tucker, DefenseOne technology editor and authors, The Naked Future; in re: Russian anti-satellite plane-based chemical laser (ground-control station). Pentagon has been warning of Chinese and Russian advances in ability to take out US satellites. 
Russia and China are smuggling coal and oil  into North Korea. US is trying to create an embargo, esp by China [good luck on that]; both China and Russia have flouted sanctions and been openly deceitful by turning off requisite comms on ships and normal generations of safety signals in the air. 
 
Hour Four
Friday  9 March 2018 / Hour 4, Block A: Tuvia Tenenbom, author, Hello, Refugees!, in re: Perhaps a million refugees fled into Germany.  Tuvia at Tempelhof (airport in Berlin) in 2016.  Wanders into a barnlike structure there, was blocked by security: no journo may walk in to a refugee camp.  My wife and I thus waited outside, befriended emerging refugees since we both speak Arabic; and later they brought us inside the camp as their relatives. Seven thousand people living in horribly crowded shipping containers – in some cases, no doors, windows, roof; just plastic.   No air conditioning, of course.  Imagine that you sleep next to a guy who raped your sister.  The food is so bad it wouldn't be fed to animals. 
Friday  9 March 2018 / Hour 4, Block B: Tuvia Tenenbom, author, Hello, Refugees!, in re:
Gertz [?], Neue Recht, Antaeus publisher: I love my country and culture, don’t want it [contaminated]; from Schwebia; is banished from German polite society. In Leipzig:  meet an amazing mother who doesn't complain despite many tribulations, incl suffering from a horrid bacterial or viral malady infusing the camps. Why has Germany accepted to many refugees yet won't provide them with anything like adequate housing, or decent survival food, or any sort of acceptance — yet it brags about its generosity.   . . . Germans plan out every single thing down to the last scintilla, so all this is not accidental.
Friday  9 March 2018 / Hour 4, Block C:  Tuvia Tenenbom, author, Hello, Refugees!, in re:
A stand-up comedian, Christian Springer, kept his audience rapt for several hours as he basically preached.  There’s ne way to accept refugees, and anyone who dissents should leave.  A Turkish-German writer who considers the present method of immigration to be organized in appropriately was radically misinterpreted (intentionally?) by German media and suddenly ostracized as a pariah.  His books were removed from bookstores and Amazon refused to sell them. It’s frightening.  Yassir: He tells the story of a man who tries to kill himself as he has no real food and is forbidden to do anything, esp forbidden to work or build his own life.. The police talk him out of suicide and nothing changes.  Germans try so hard to look good, to be loved; when I wrote this book and showed them what they're doing, it was a shock to them.
Friday  9 March 2018 / Hour 4, Block D:   Tuvia Tenenbom, author, Hello, Refugees!, in re: The Koeln/Cologne event on Sylvestre (New Year’s Eve) where apparently refugees widely attacked hundreds of females. Tuvia finally was able to interview the mayor, who can’t remember anything of the event, couldn't bring herself to speak of it at all.  Then Tuvia is granted a meeting with the Interior Minister, who’s in charge of immigration; Tuvia arrives, is refused even a word with the Minister.   All filmed.  Sweden has proportionally accepted more refugees than has Germany (proportionally) — but no Israeli.  “We are not like the Jews.”
Germans are extremely well educated, can see the irony of Israelis’ being the product of massive German abuse.  Oops, they do not see irony there.  Instead, they say, “We are responsible for the suffering of the Palestinians”!