The John Batchelor Show

Wednesday 11 December 2019

Air Date: 
December 11, 2019

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-hosts: Gordon Chang, @GordonGChang, Daily Beast, and David Livingston, The Space Show
 
Hour One
Wednesday 11 December  2019 / Hour 1, Block A:  Arthur Waldron, University of Pennsylvania, in re:  China is trying to get the World Bank to pay for facial recognition software; some members bought barbed wire and other horrors. China borrows money to persecute its minorities – Uyghurs, Kazakhs, everyone “lesser” than the Superior Han.  The World Bank depends on the honesty of those who run it – don't hold your breath.
American should control exactly where our money goes— it’s foolish to hand over capital to an organization we don't directly control. The World Bank is dreadful to the Uyghurs and Kazakhs; but China is corrupting international organizations; e.g.: Interpol.  China has put up a candidate for the head of the IPO, the Intl Property Organization. China simply doesn’t have the normal concept of joining a multilateral group; it looks at an organization and thinks, How much can I siphon off from it? It's like having a crooked judge, which is what they have in China.  They tell you how much money they want. You pay it, and you get your verdict. This is not endorsed by Chinese people culturally, but is perfectly the result of communism; excellent Leninism.
It’s like a germ in a hospital. I most emphatically do not believe that this is the human condition, Rather, there’s a range of human society that intentionally in a rich harvest exploits, distorts and generally undermines the workings of an organization.  I don't understand why we do business with them; why not say, “You have the best economic program in the world so play in your own sandbox; we’ll just suffer out here in a free market”?
Wednesday 11 December  2019 / Hour 1, Block B: Rick Fisher, senior Fellow on Asian Military Affairs at the International Assessment and Strategy Center; in re:  In 2004 in Taiwan, there were 700 missiles pointed at me from China. Update: many more, from 500 second-gen missiles today to 12,000. The TCO 191 is a multiple-launce rocket systems in the service of the PLA ground force, Can be armed with 8 missiles, or 2 larger SLBs.  This would be the first of the second-gen Chinese ballistic missile.  By 2025, the Taiwanese army may have a 500kW defensive laser.   All intended to Intimidate Taiwan; there’s “some” sentiment in the Pentagon to help Taiwan   We need to hasten to succeed.
Wednesday 11 December  2019 / Hour 1, Block C:  Captain Christopher Sharman, USN, and Natl Affairs Fellow at Hoover, speaking only for himself, not for the Navy; in re:  A Navy-owned research ship has visited Taiwan; lased to Washington State. Direct linkage for a Navy ship visiting Taiwan is somewhat tenuous, wd be a new step in our relations.  The USN will fly or sail anywhere intl law allows and at a sovereign country’s invitation. . . . 2018 NDAA, “Should consider re-establishing port relations with Taiwan.” Jan 11 elections; President Tsai Ing-wen wants the US Navy present.
Wednesday 11 December  2019 / Hour 1, Block D:  Michael Yon, Hong Kong reporter par excellence; in re: If a patriot or other citizen damages his foot and goes to hospital, is arrested immediately and thrown in jail. Patriots have had to set up secret medical apartments to prevent Mainland from doing this obscenity. Police put evil chemicals in the water cannon, create horrendous problems: not clear exactly what toxins are going in to the water. Anyone not wearing a mask starts to wheeze. Police call the liberators “cockroaches” and their evil chemicals, “insecticide.”  This is overtly chemical warfare.  At the least, what are the long-term effects of tear gas?  The authorities with their large soldiers, draft age, who look as though they’ve been trucked in from the Mainland.  Facebook: Michael_Yon
 
Hour Two
Wednesday 11 December  2019 / Hour 2, Block A:    Mark Clifford, former editor of the South China Morning Post, in re:   HK riots began when Mainland entered a bill to kidnap HK citizens.  Has turned into huge manifestations where citizens wave the US flag. There were well over half a million people peacefully in the streets on Sunday, with subdued but high morale; it's been 180-plus days since the extradition treaty was tried.  The mayor, in effect, Carie Lam, Beijing stooge, says she can do nothing, will fly to Beijing this weekend. Same ol’ same ol’,  No end in sight to these demonstrations. Worry about eventual frustration and perhaps violence.  They're zero for four in leadership in HK.  The Chinese Communist Party has become its own enemy.  Intransigence is setting up a catastrophe, Xi is the ever-harder-liner president for life.  Very very bad statecraft.   The 24 Nov local elections. 
Wednesday 11 December  2019 / Hour 2, Block B:  Captain James E. Fanell, U.S. Navy (Retired), served as a career naval intelligence officer whose positions included the senior intelligence officer for China at the Office of Naval Intelligence and the chief of intelligence for CTF-70, 7th Fleet, and the U.S. Pacific Fleet. He retired from the Navy in 2015 and currently is a government fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy in Geneva, Switzerland; in re:
Bougainville, part of Papua–New Guinea, after war and then 20 years of peace; referendum: 98% of voters want to be a free island nation. Results will go to the PNG parliament. China has already offered Bougainville an infrastructure package of road, airport, ports an bridges to help the people stand up a new nation.  Have just seen Solomons and Kiribati switch from Taiwan to Beijing.  The local Panguna gold and copper mine has been out of production for years; have some fishing and timber, but no economy.  Gen Sam Kahuna: “I’m not a communist, but Australia and the US haven't offered us anything, so when I become president what choice do a I have?”  Australia is slightly beginning to wake up to the fact that China is cutting off its first island chain.  Ben Bohane, years in Vanuatu.
Wednesday 11 December  2019 / Hour 2, Block C:  Brenda Shaffer, Georgetown University, in re; Conversation between Lavrov and Trump.  Parliamentary election in 2020 in Azerbaijan  under Pres Aliyev. Economic prosperity; diminish corruption.  After the collapse of the USSR, no plans in place, nor economic transformation sussed out, so what stayed in place was the Soviet apparatus.  Serge Sarkissian, Armenian toppled last year in the Velvet Revolution; Armenia is still a well-armed force with hostile intentions. If you indict all the former leaders, it also complicates democratic transition.  Same in Georgia.
Wednesday 11 December  2019 / Hour 2, Block D:  Dr Henry Miller, Hoover; microbiologist;  in re: US Economic and Security Review Commission. Chinese dominance in the majority of pharmaceuticals  (APIs: active pharmaceutical ingredients) in the US is shocking.  Chokehold on the vast majority of pharmaceuticals used in the US and around the world. Deeply dangerous to the US and perhaps almost everyone else. 
 
Hour Three
Wednesday 11 December  2019 / Hour 3, Block A:  Bill McGurn, WSJ, in re:  Bogus FISA warrants.  Comey coming out from testimony: “Nonsense to say anything is wrong with those warrants,.”  Ooops.   Willfully and possibly criminally involved, or else they're total fools.
Wednesday 11 December  2019 / Hour 3, Block B:  Larry C. Johnson,  former analyst at CIA and co-owner and CEO of BERG Associates, LLC (Business Exposure Reduction Group).; also:  Sic Semper Tyrannis, in re:  Horowitz report.  Two players: foreign nationals. One named, one unnamed. First, the Maltese academic Joseph Mifsud (Western intell agt for Brits and maybe Italians; also pix with CIA and FBI senior persons; also was at a dinner in Moscow for RT, seated next to Putin?!).  Mrs Clinton’s home-brewed server; Wikileaks.  
Second: FFG = Alexander Downer, Australian who was ambassador to Great Britain. 
Wednesday 11 December  2019 / Hour 3, Block C:  Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com, in re:  Rocket boosters: big space & commercial.
Wednesday 11 December  2019 / Hour 3, Block D:  Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com, in re: Sunspots missing.
 
Hour Four
Wednesday 11 December  2019 / Hour 4, Block A:   Svetlana Lokhova, Cambridge University, author of The Spy Who Changed History; in re: The facts from Feb 2014 in Cambridge to July 2016 in Cambridge. The origins of Russiagate, of Spygate.  Feb 2014: The lodge of the Master of Pembroke College; celebratory dinner included Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6 and now Master of the lodge (there have been Masters since the Fourteenth Century).  Head of CIA had just given a presentation, joined the dinner, as did Michael Flynn.  British & US security services checked names a month in advance.  Document on iPad: history of Tsarist secret police and then Stalin’s . . .
Wednesday 11 December  2019 / Hour 4, Block B: Svetlana Lokhova,  Cambridge University, author of The Spy Who Changed History; in re: In April 2014 Gen Flynn was fired. Then in 2015, Stefan Halper: member of the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar establ by a historian of intell.  Met to show docs every Fri at five o’clock. I never exchanged two words with Halper, which was odd , because it was a small group. Whenever I showed a doc, he was ostentatiously asleep. No one much liked him; rumored he was rich and the son-in-law of someone important at CIA.  Office of Net Assessment is in Pentagon to assess ___ to the US and they allocate people to write research An unusual contract given to Halper for a lot of money—a very large payment, $200K-plus to do a Russia-China security study, but it wasn't really done.   That together with other info, they’re trying to get/create? Bad info on Gen Flynn.  Looks as though  . .  .  In Dec 2015 the now-civilian Flynn is at a luncheon table in Moscow, seated next to Putin.
Wednesday 11 December  2019 / Hour 4, Block C: Svetlana Lokhova, Cambridge University, author of The Spy Who Changed History; in re: Head of GRU, Gen Sirkin?, dies in early Jan 2016; Flynn was head of US mil intell, so had been in contact with his counterpart. Flynn called the Russian ambassador to Washington to express condolences around 3 Jan 2016. On 7 Jan, Halper is in the field, invites Svetlana to dinner in Feb of 2016 and used Svetlana’s mentor, Christopher Andrew, as a go-between.  For five years, Halper had been in the same room and consistenly vulgarly rude rude to Svetlana.  He’s a cartoon of a nasty American.  Purportedly wanted to see Svetlana’s research. Too weird.  We now know that a year later this dinner that didn't happen (as Svetlana declined) turned out to have been for this: US press descends on me and accuses me of having an affair with Gen Flynn for the benefit of Russian intelligence; I was said to be a Russian agent! All based on the Feb 2014 dinner. Halper wanted me to be in the same room with him. Bill Foster was at university, had been at Feb dinner and was in the intell seminar. Foster said he’d been sent by Halper to spy on me.  “She must be working for Russian intell. She couldn’t have got her info — she’s not smart enough—unless Putin had given it to her.”  Here’s how the NKVD and the CIA work.
Wednesday 11 December  2019 / Hour 4, Block D:  Svetlana Lokhova, Cambridge University, author of The Spy Who Changed History; in re: Mifsud contacts Papadopoulos, meets him in London; discussion of emails?  Both deny.   In May 2016, Alexander Downer meets Papadopoulos in London; on to July 2016 meeting in Cambridge, Carter Page is invited to that meeting after his lecture in Moscow.  Dearlove; Shroge (actually his biographer, and Asst Secy of State); introduces Cofer Black, Halper’s representative— now his payoff is $500K.  Invitation in June 2016. Halper is at the mtg. Also, Madeleine Albright. Shroge turns up later at the GOP convention. In Sept 2016, Halper records Papadopoulos.  Brennan sent an eyes-only letter to the president: the Trump campaign has been penetrated. Vyacheslav Trubnikov: SVR (Russian foreign intell svc) became ambassador to India. Halper invited Vyacheslav Trubnikov to Cambridge.  Halper takes a fact, such as a mtg that did take place, and builds whatever he wants.  Trubnikov turns out to be the source of the notorious dossier.  Says that Putin launched campaign to prevent Clinton from winning in order to undermine democracy.