Photo, left: Chinese media 13/2/2015  A faction of Kokang rebels fled to China after a four-day clash with government troops in 2009 sparked by drug-related problems and the issue of border guard forces. Later reports said that the former Kokang leader Phone Kya Shin fled to China or Wa Special Region (in Yunnan Province).
 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Hour One
Wednesday  18 March 2015 / Hour 1, Block A:   Scott Harold, political scientist and deputy director, Center for Asia-Pacific Policy at the Rand Corporation, in re: Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank:   China may hope to reverse Bretton Woods, but the total mount of funding is relatively small.  Some of our allies have joined; we can amiably disagree on  this. Brits move in to join immediately; France and Italy, as well as South Korea and __, look as though they may care to join as founders.  The optics have not been good – some of our European allies have a bit of explaining to do. From China's POV, makes China look good; a shot-term win; over the long term, based on substance, not clear what will work out best. Sustainable lending practices?  . ..    Some f China's current lending look [a tad shaky right now] – going to corrupt regimes and individual leaders's ban accounts.
http://www.nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/most-chinese-say-their-military-can-crush-america-battle-12414
Wednesday  18 March 2015 / Hour 1, Block B: Fraser Howie, co-author of Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China's Extraordinary Rise, in re: . . . misty ideas of the old Silk Road; as soon as intl shipping came in, its cost was much lower than overland.  For China to be hegemon and control resources:  doesn’t solve China's problem GC:  the number of shipping containers awaiting shipment is exceptionally small.  FH: China is the world's second-largest economy and it has problems  . . . as very patchy record of overseas dvpt – will partner with anyone in power, but when the govt changes, everything's on hold. The AIIB seems to be a short-term win for China.  JB:  Seems that everyone acknowledges that China has troubles, and we all engage in a therapy session Nothing  will solve China's economy because the issue is bad governance. FH:  Will be solved domestically. It's been on a huge debt binge – recall what the US had to go through, and see what Europe is still going through.   China hasn’t started that hard work.  . . .  The official target is [unrealistic] – tremendous overcapacity, debt burden. The days of 7,8, 9% growth are fantasy. Will recur only with major changes- open to private capital, for example Fundamental restructuring: political reform needed with economic reform – otherwise, corruption. arbitrary enforcement of laws, etc.    http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/03/11/us-china-economy-property-idINKBN0M70CQ20150311
http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-li-meeting-growth-target-wont-be-easy-1426391867
Wednesday  18 March 2015 / Hour 1, Block C: HOTAL MARS, episode n. Michael J Mumma, Founding Director, Goddard Center for Astrobiology & Senior Scientist, Solar System Exploration Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; in re: Mars oceans - how big they were, what are the best theories for what happened to the water, et al.  Water on many of the billions of exoplanets; oceans of Enceladus and Ganymede. Clearly, there's a lot of water underground on Mars; have to evaluate how much it's been lost over time.  In its atmosphere, was enriched as deuterium by a factor of five relative to Earth's ocean water. Much of the light hydrogen may have gone out the atmosphere.   . . .   Ceres:  regions on the planet look like car headlights: where water vapor and plumes are active?  . . .  Moons of Saturn and Jupiter – specuation that subsurface oceans are richand deep. Rethink conditions for life on other planets? Yes – may be not hostile but friendly to emergence of life. Europa has cracks, now we know that it has a subsurface ocean, as does its partner Ganymesde (saline).  Enceladus is ejecting plumes of material into space – methane, water, even silica particle.  Heat to unfreeze ice: the tidal friction.  No winds, so to speak; so no familiar waves, but the water does move around, rise and fall according to Jupiter's gravitational pull.  Minerals dissolve from rocks deep down, then ejected into space via plumes.   . . . The Grand Tack carried [ejecta?] to the inner Solar System, than carried other material outward.  Ergo, we all have a lot of traded material – the fundamentals of the mystery of life.  What prebiotic chemicals in comets? Amino acids and nucleide bases.  Mixing of mineral structures; water; organic chemicals; energy source; must be producing gasses that fuel life (molecular hydrogen).  Hydrothermal vents.  RNA. Mars  rocks arrive on Earth – we have a hundred today.  
The first rule of physics is: If it isn’t impossible, it happens. 
Michael Mumma is a Senior Scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and Director of the Goddard Center for Astrobiology (one of the NASA Astrobiology lead Teams).  Mumma is a spectroscopist who specializes in observations of comets, atomic and molecular physics, planetary atmospheres and the interstellar medium.  He is an active observer and team leader on the Hubble Space Telescope, IUE, FUSE, EUVE, ROSAT, Space Shuttle and many ground-based facilities, and in addition is involved in the development of advanced instruments for quantitative spectroscopy.
Wednesday  18 March 2015 / Hour 1, Block D:  Aaron Back, Wall Street Journal Asia
Hong Kong, Heard on the Street, in re: China's local govts were never allowed to borrow directly, but did workarounds vii=a special vehicles; this year, the central govt suddenly forbad that – worth 4 too 5% of the Chinese economy. Fiscal cliff.  LGFV (Local govt financing vehicles) borrow for short-term projects; how continue to finance short-term money but long-term commitments?  Can continue to borrow for an ongoing project.  Also, there's a plan to convert LGFV into local bonds,  so probably not default, but no new project.  How can you have 7% growth that way? Under XI, at least they’ve been acting on problems that have loomed for years.  It recognizes the problem, which no previous leader visibly did.  . .  . or maybe it had to recognize. But Wen Jiabao said, "too much debt " every year, did nothing.  "Muddle through": "We're stopping this! Can’t use this channel to borrow!" But economist are puzzled.  So they’ll probably give an exception here, an exception there.  That's probably muddling through. 
 
China Congress Muddles Through Budget Mess  China's 2015 budget is out, and it doesn't add up. It will take a great deal of creative accounting at the local-government level to avoid a recession-inducing fiscal squeeze.  At the start of the annual meeting of the National People's Congress on Thursday, Premier Li Keqiang, as widely expected, lowered Beijing's target for economic growth this year to about 7% from 7.5%. But he left unanswered key questions over one important driver of growth: government spending.       
     China is walking to the edge of a fiscal cliff. A new budget law that takes effect this year bans new borrowing by local-government financing vehicles, essentially off-balance-sheet platforms that allow provinces and cities to get around official restrictions on debt issuance. These vehicles borrowed around 1.4 trillion yuan ($223 billion) last year to fund infrastructure projects and other local government spending priorities, according to ANZ.  Cutting off this source of funds would mean an immediate fiscal contraction of around 4.5% of gross domestic product. That would make it nearly impossible to meet even the lowered growth target.  Mr. Li's speech on Thursday could have . . . 
Hour Two
Wednesday  18 March 2015 / Hour 2, Block A: Charles Burton, professor at Brock University, in re: Chinese historiography of WII is that the Communist fought the Japanese while the Nationalist lolled around fighting Communists. This is not accurate.  Both sides restrained themselves from actively fighting Japanese. In 1936, China was arrested by a warlord to force him to collaborate with Mao to fight Japanese, generating a united front, but hardly made a difference. Coming: the first military parade in China not on 1 May as it commemorates   , showing that the PRC wn the war. of course, the PRC didn't even exist then. Also, Beijing wants to humiliate Japan and shock and awe the regional nations.     The reason for the Japanese defeat was not Kim Il-sung or Mao; it was the US atomic bomb.  The seventieth anniversary of victory over Fascists in Europe and of Japan in the East:  only these two are dong it.  China and Russia are working together – Ukraine, and China's long-term needs.  / Taiwan's upcoming elections: law prohibits state-to-state contacts with China, as any visitor from Taiwan would cause Taiwan to be called a province of China – would be the end of the Kuo Min Tang.  Is this parade designed to insult the Japanese?  Yes.  China considers Japan to be a subsidiary Confucian culture. Doesn't bode well for China's achieving a strategic resolution with Japan in the region.
 
Taiwan has declined China’s pitch for joint participation in activities to mark the 70th anniversary of World War II’s final year. Japan was forced to withdraw from both territories in 1945. But today China and Taiwan are separately ruled, and many Taiwanese now see modern Japan as a model, while distrusting Beijing. Taiwan has politely rebuffed Beijing’s suggestion for joining in activities to mark the end of World War II, 70 years ago this year. Chinese leaders said earlier in the week they will hold a military parade and a reception to mark the occasion, possibly inviting leaders from other countries affected by the war. On Wednesday, China’s Taiwan policymaking body said it welcomed Taiwan’s participation to share memories and band together.
     But rules in Taiwan bar public servants from attending state events in China, which claims sovereignty over the self-ruled island and hopes to unify with it eventually despite opposition among Taiwanese people. Wu Mei-hung, deputy minister of the Taiwan government’s China policymaking body, the Mainland Affairs Council, said her government will follow the rules.
     She said there are definite, relevant management guidelines as to what public servants can and cannot do. If public servants want to go on their own to an exchange activity, they would need to respect the related rules, Wu added, and the Mainland Affairs Council believes the rules don't allow currently employed public servants to attend activities organized by mainland China or reviews of their troops.
China hopes to bring Taiwan closer by finding common causes, including shared memories of the battle against Japan before 1945. Japan ruled Taiwan as a colony for five decades and met resistance in the early years. Japan also took over parts of China from 1931, slaughtering civilians in some regions, despite resistance from the then Nationalist Chinese government.
    The Nationalists were at that time also fighting the Communists for control of China. When they lost, the Nationalists fled to Taiwan and started a rival government. Since then, China's Communist Party has sworn to bring Taiwan into its fold. Taiwan and Japan are now close informal allies, sharing cultural ties that stem from the later years of Tokyo's colonization. China and Japan have struggled to get along for the past 20 years.
     Since President Ma Ying-jeou took office in Taiwan in 2008, his government has eased tensions with Beijing, leading to 21 economic agreements. But Ma's government faced mass protests and local election losses last year in part for expanding relations with Beijing. His Nationalist Party hopes to garner more popular support ahead of the 2016 presidential race, making any formal appearance in China a risky move.
Wu said ordinary Taiwanese may go to Beijing's war memorial events but advises caution.
She said that if retired staff members and common people go, the government urges them to consider all points of view among Taiwanese people and, on a principle of mutual dignity, protect exchanges with mainland China and the country's safety.
     Taiwan's cabinet will direct the defense ministry to hold the island's own series of events to remember the end of World War II.
http://www.voanews.com/content/taiwan-rebuffs-china-suggestion-joint-world-war-ii-commemoration/2678581.html
http://www.wsj.com/articles/will-japan-get-invite-to-chinas-wwii-parade-1425382984
Wednesday  18 March 2015 / Hour 2, Block B: Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, in re: Anti-dwarf measure: all human under 120 cm are corralled and put in one farming village, which sounds a lot like a concentration camp.; egregious human right violations vs people with disabilities – sterilized, abused and murdered. In 2006 a Thai national focused attention on this issue.  The regime insists in "purity."  Extremely difficult to see people with disabilities in Pyongyang.  ICRC suggests a drop of progress may have been made; forced sterilization. If a woman is pregnant after being repatriated from China, she's sterilized to avoid having Chinese blood in Korea.  Much to well documented from many reports. In sync with the regime's chauvinistic discourse.  Most ecapees left after the Great Famine of the 1990s, giving us more info.  Disabled people isolated and sterilized.  This is early-Twentieth-Century criminality. The notion that you can destroy humans because of what they look like. Unspeakable. 
http://freebeacon.com/issues/north-korea-dwarf-village-is-latest-human-rights-abuse/
Wednesday  18 March 2015 / Hour 2, Block C: Steven L Herman, Southeast Asia Bureau Chief/Correspondent, Voice of America, in re: Lee Kwan-Yu is 91, in critical condition in ICU, the father of modern Singapore. His son is currently the PM.
Appears the Burma China border is disintegrating. The Chinese air force sent fighter jets to patrol the China-Myanmar border after four Chinese citizens were killed by a Myanmar bomb in southwestern Yunnan Province, Xinhua reported March 14. According to a Chinese military official, the air force has been on high alert recently in the area. Myanmar has accused China of supporting rebels on the border.  The border war: between a faction of the Kokang ethic Chinese (many of whom are fleeing into Yunnan province) and the Burmese military.  Large-scale offensive vs the rebel position. A bomb landed in a Chinese rice fields, killed five family members. Myanmar has offered $11,000 for blood money but not acknowledged responsibility.  China is enraged.  Yes, for may decades this area has been filled with criminal activity – used to be opium, now meth.  Some of the violence is Kokang vs Kokang. Beijing's concern is the bombing, anent territorial sovereignty.  Myanmar military des not control the whole country.  Jet aircraft being involved in a bit surprising.
Two strange movie-scripts stories: Thailand, Home of Fugitives?  woman and DUI sentence and Canadian wanted on fraud charges. We expect the Thai Supreme Court to approve the case vs Yingluck Shinowat for a bungled rice scheme; it's the coup-military trying to erase all political action by the Shinowat family. 
Wednesday  18 March 2015 / Hour 2, Block D: Gordon Chang, Forbes.com, in re:  Hillary Can’t Delete This   As Secretary of State, Clinton says she stopped at nothing to get a blind dissident out of China. That’s not what he remembers.  http://www.wsj.com/articles/book-review-the-barefoot-lawyer-by-chen-guangcheng-1426455899  China's economy: it's so politicized in an unwholesome way that this is a death-watch – could be some months or some years.  Lot of can-kicking – they don't have e tools to rescue the economy People foresee: a big depression or a Japanese-style downward drift for a decade or three.  However, Japanese was a much richer economy and a democracy – two luxuries Beijing doesn’t have. As for localities' issuing bonds: bad debt after bad debt?  This LGFV debt is unsustainable , so wd need a central govt guarantee, which Beijing doesn't want and probably can't afford. This manoeuver buys localities a year of time. 
Hour Three
Wednesday  18 March 2015 / Hour 3, Block A:  Monica Crowley, Fox, & Washington Times Online opinion editor; in re: Bibi and the GOP Boehner win big.  Washington frosty in remarks on Netanyahu's reelection | The Times of Israel US to ‘evaluate’ stance on peace after PM rejects Palestinian state; White House voices ‘deep concern’ over his comments on Arabs   [more]
http://www.timesofisrael.com/washington-offers-chilly-response-to-netanyahu-reelection/
 
HRC troubles with emails not going away soon. Benghazi committee and now Boehner want all the emails and the server. Benghazi committee gives Hillary Clinton more time to turn over emails  The committee's chairman had given Clinton until this past Friday to respond to a subpoena of documents held in her private e-mail server.  Psaki: Clinton didn't sign 'separation' form, but former secretaries ...  (1 of 2)
Wednesday  18 March 2015 / Hour 3, Block B: Monica Crowley, Fox, & Washington Times Online opinion editor.  (2 of 2)
Wednesday  18 March 2015 / Hour 3, Block C:  Peter Berkowitz, Hoover, in re: "Bibi Won, but Path Forward Won't Veer Right," Real Clear Politics, March 18   TEL AVIV—It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way—at least not according to the pollsters, Israeli progressives, and certain Democrats who offer political advice to the White House.  Yesterday’s election for Israel’s 20th Knesset was supposed to be a referendum on Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu that would produce a repudiation of the three-term prime minister. Bibi-haters got their referendum, but against the odds, it produced a decisive victory for Netanyahu, his Likud party, and the right wing nationalist camp in Israel.   The secular elites were in agreement: Bibi had to go, which in practice meant that Isaac “Bougie” Herzog, head of the center-left Zionist Union party, would become Israel’s next prime minister.  Substantial amounts of foreign money poured into Israel to oust Bibi. Some of it came from Qatar in support of the Arab party. Some came from Europe in the hopes of bringing to power a government that would end Israel’s control of the West Bank. And a considerable amount of money came from the United States on behalf of the V-15 campaign, which was run by former Obama presidential campaign operatives.  According to the final pre-election polls, Zionist Union was cruising to victory over Likud.  [more]
Wednesday  18 March 2015 / Hour 3, Block D:   Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re:
Hour Four
Wednesday  18 March 2015 / Hour 4, Block A:  Mona Charen, NRO, in re: If their memoirs are to be believed, Clinton-administration officials would get depressed when conservatives won elections in Israel, and there are probably a lot of long faces among Obama-administration officials right now. But they should look at the bright side — at least they’ve proven that American presidents can influence Israeli elections. Clinton and Obama have done more than any two people alive to weaken the Labor party and push the entire Israeli electorate to the right. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/415570/how-much-does-netanyahus-big-win-really-matter-mario-loyola
Wednesday  18 March 2015 / Hour 4, Block B: Bret Stephens, WSJ GLOBAL VIEW, in re:   What Assad Knows He is a prime beneficiary of the U.S. outreach to Iran.
Wednesday  18 March 2015 / Hour 4, Block C: Francis Rose, Federal News Radio, in re: Chairman Miller Calls for Immediate Firings after Biggest Construction Failure in VA History
Rep. Jeff Miller, Chairman, House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, released the following statement today regarding the biggest construction failure in VA history: 
“VA’s entire construction program is a disaster and has been for years. Nearly every major VA hospital construction project is behind schedule and hundreds of millions over budget. In Colorado, a replacement VA hospital is more than $1 billion over budget and isn’t even close to completion. VA’s construction problems have been documented by the Government Accountability Office and at numerous congressional hearings. Every single member of VA’s top leadership is fully aware of these issues, yet the senior executives who presided over the mismanagement that led to them remain firmly entrenched at VA, where they collect generous taxpayer-funded salaries. No reasonable person could conclude that VA Office of Acquisition, Logistics, and Construction Principal Executive Director Glenn Haggstrom and VA Office of Construction and Facilities Management Executive Director Stella Fiotes are doing a good job. Therefore, I am calling upon VA’s leadership to fire them immediately. As part of the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act, Congress gave VA leaders the authority to immediately fire VA senior executives for poor performance. It’s well past time for the department to fire Haggstrom and Fiotes or explain to America’s veterans and American taxpayers why these individuals have earned the right to continued VA employment.”
Colorado VA Hospital Construction Is More than $1 Billion over Budget  VA Will Ask Congress for Additional $930 Million to Complete Project “Colorado VA Hospital Construction Is More Than $1 Billion Over Budget,”
     Every Major VA Construction Project Is Hundreds of Millions Over Budget  “VA CONSTRUCTION: Additional Actions Needed to Decrease Delays and Lower Costs of Major Medical-Facility Projects,” GAO
     Chairman Miller: VA Won’t Get Another Dime Until It Holds People Accountable, Fixes Construction Problems, “New cost estimate for VA hospital in Aurora: $1.73 billion,” Denver Business Journal
     VA Construction Bosses Still on the Job, Getting Huge Bonuses “VA leaders in charge of failed hospital projects take home bonuses,” Fox 31 Denver
Wednesday  18 March 2015 / Hour 4, Block D:   Dennis Berman, WSJ, in re:  My Sold Kentucky Home: A College Basketball Fan’s Disillusionment  The NCAA tournament is here, but for one observer, it now takes willful ignorance to get excited