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JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-hosts: Gordon Chang, Forbes.com and David Livingston, The Space Show
 
Hour One
Wednesday 21 March 2018/ Hour 1, Block A:  Fraser Howie, co-author of Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China's Extraordinary Rise, in re: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-18/china-is-said-to-name-yi-gang-as-new-pboc-governor-wsj-reports
Wednesday 21 March 2018/ Hour 1, Block B: William Murphy, associate professor of Political Science, New England Institute of Technology in East Greenwich, in re: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-politics/most-japanese-think-pm-abe-bears-responsibility-for-scandal-polls-idUSKCN1GU098
Wednesday 21 March 2018/ Hour 1, Block C:  Bruce Thornton, Hoover, in re:  North Korea (writing in Front Page)
Wednesday 21 March 2018/ Hour 1, Block D:  Michael Ledeen, FDD, in re: North Korea.
 
Hour Two
Wednesday 21 March 2018/ Hour 2, Block A:   Bruce Bechtol, professor at Angelo State University and author of North Korea and Regional Security in the Kim Jong-un Era, in re: , in re:   South Korean troops’s motto: Fight tonight!  And they’re ready. Yes, Moon’s wish is to appease Kim.  The twice-annual exercises of US and South Korea are [inobtrusive]. 
Does North Korea have enough fuel to run a war for more than a week? No: it has food and fuel to run a large-scale-war for about two weeks. 
Meanwhile, South Korea and the US have fuel forever. For North Korea to win, it’d have to win early.   The ferocious DPRK artillery flattened Seoul in 1954; would they use it again?  If so, it wouldn’t last more than a few hours. However, t has 13,000 artillery pieces on the border and would kill 200,000 civilians in the first hours.  US forces are mostly stationed in Guam and at a distance.    No doubt the DPRK plan is to move very quickly and hard.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-43482051   ;  https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/20/us-south-korea-war-games-that-freak-out-north-korea-coming-soon.html
Wednesday 21 March 2018/ Hour 2, Block B:  Alan Tonelson, independent economic policy analyst who blogs at RealityChek and tweets at @AlanTonelson, in re:  Washington is negotiating tariffs with multiple countries, but not with the predatory China.  It’d be smart for a coalition of nations that have been [abused] by China to put pressure on China to quit stealing intellectual property (for which US loses perhaps $600 billion a year) and gov’t sponsored undercutting of world prices. However, we hear of retaliatory tariffs valued at maybe $60 billion a year.   Union voters have been listening for two years and responded very, very favorably; union leaders have been reluctant.  Exports constitute about a one-third of US ag exports.   There are a lot of other suppliers out there; probably have somewhat higher prices.  China’s ground water is bad – it’s wrecked its environment, and needs good food from the US.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/13/trump-blocks-broadcoms-qualcomm-takeover...
Wednesday 21 March 2018/ Hour 2, Block C:  Gordon Chang, in re:  CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States).  Chinese threat not to buy US food is a hollow threat.  BTW, if China doesn't buy soybeans or sorghum from the US, the US can easily sell to other countries.  What's Xi Jinping’s Plan B? How does he tell Chinese people that they’ll bad food and not enough of it?  He has no Plan B; I think he thinks he can bluff Trump. 
China is planning to use small satellites to flood the world market at prices less than production cost. US mfrs of small sats are not waiting for the Trump Adm to deal with this; they’ve assembled into a group and intend to fight it directly.
Wednesday 21 March 2018/ Hour 2, Block D:   Monica Crowley,  London Center for Policy Research,  in re: Obama Adm preached that the era of US economic and military supremacy was over; we’d never see a wholly-revived America again. Fundamental transformation of the nation – end of rule of law, military strength, economic health in favor of collectivism, economic stagnation.   Trump is putting the lie to all that, which is why you see an endless assault on him – not only on Trump, but on policies of the last many decades.  Trump comes in and says, I’m gonna put America first; and it's working – which is why you see his enemies with smoke coming out of their ears. Trying to shift the focus from the economy, which is doing well.   GOP candidates would do well to speak continually of the booming economy; can add victory over ISIS and other accomplishments
 
Hour Three
Wednesday 21 March 2018/ Hour 3, Block A: Dr Lara Brown, Graduate School of Political Management, George Washington University, and Washington Post; and Salena Zito, author of , The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics, also writing and broadcasting for Washington Examiner, CNN, and other media; in re:  PA 18 and IL 3.  Conor Lamb won in large part because of his campaign manager, Abby Murphy, a lifelong Democratic booster. She recognized the inadequacy of Mrs Clinton’s campaign and steered far from it.  Meanwhile, the national GOP, apparently in support of Rick Saccone, ran a cookie-cutter campaign of negative ads, nothing engaging.  Dan Lipinsky, IL 3.
Wednesday 21 March 2018/ Hour 3, Block B:  Dr Lara Brown, Graduate School of Political Management, George Washington University, and Washington Post; and Salena Zito, author of , The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics, also writing and broadcasting for Washington Examiner, CNN, and other media; in re:  Lessons from 2016, 2017, and now 2018. Outsiders (amateurs) vs. outsiders.   Since Jimmy Carter in 1976, candidates have argues about their being the only ones who could clean up Washington, being outsiders. The arrive in DC, tend to ail, get attacked fro being an insiders, and presto, anew candidate who claims to be a out siders. Bad cycle that’s made the public untrusting of politicians in general.  Most people who commit their life to politics usually intend to make things better.  We as a country need to wrestle with this. In politics, only, do we value no experience.  We do this in no other realm – being CEO of a major corporation, or piloting a plane, for example.   . . .  Poll: the one thing that would dislodge voters from Trump is if he became part of the swamp.
The villains are the Boomers-me.  I cannot trust Washington; it as imprinted on  me before I was eighteen. Maybe the solution is for us to go, let the Millennials and Gen X’ers take over. 
Millennials don’t even have the same relation to private property that we did – they share cars.  They re-shape and re-think the norms.  The Great Revolt, by Salena Zito
The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics, by Salena Zito and Brad Todd [publ May 8, 2018]

 
Wednesday 21 March 2018/ Hour 3, Block C:  Gregory Copley, editor and publisher of Defense and Foreign Affairs, in re:  Sergei Skripol and his daughter, Yulia, in the Salisbury nerve-agent attack.  Britain says that the two were poisoned by Russia; Moscow vigorously rejects this, now charging that the UK is “hiding facts.”  Skripol was a GRU agt caught and imprisoned in 2004.  He was charged with light reason and given only 13 years; he was a double agent – for triple?  In 2010 he was sent to the UK in a spy exchange. Give a British passport and pension. But he kept his Russian passport; has been in regular contact with the Russian consulate in London and his family regularly visited him from Moscow. 
The poison was Novochok, the A32 variety (there are half a dozen); all dvpd during the Cold War but then shelved.  This family of nerve agents was developed so they could easily be transported and used in another country: it’s binary – you carry the chemicals separated from each other, can later combine them for use.   Two women attacked Kim Jong-eun’s half brother, Kim Jong-nan, with a Novochok variant in the Singapore airport.  Britain’s claim that it could have come only from Russia is obviously inaccurate.  We happen to know that Iran has produced it. 
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.  UK has refused to provide evidence of the weapon, itself, to Russia.  
What motives might the Russians have had?  Cui bono?  Boris Johnson, Foreign Minister, said that the fact that it occurred just before the Russian election was prima facie evidence that Russia did it – which is in effect the opposite of the truth.
Wednesday 21 March 2018/ Hour 3, Block D:   Gregory Copley, editor and publisher of Defense and Foreign Affairs, in re:   When Skripol was a double agent, who was running him?  Mirabile dictu—Christopher Steele.  Steele had been head of the MI6 Russia desk at London headquarters, 2006-2009. Was in Russia, 1990-1993.  Subsequently, Steele and Skripol met and had dealings, as Skripol hired himself out to anyone who wanted input from a Russian intell source. He was the Russian source for the Steele dossier. He’d write whatever was wanted.  He was prepared to fold under pressure and publicly acknowledge that he’d written the Russia part of the Steele dossier and that what he’d written was merely fiction.  It's not illegal to write a fantasy, although he did create a document to be used in political warfare.  Recall that MI6 assumed that Hillary Clinton would be elected, that MI6 could used GCHQ to monitor US nationals and convey the data to American intelligence (which is not legally able to monitor US nationals).  
Russians have figured all this out and are threatening to reveal it.  Those who most wanted Skripol quieted were the DNC in Washington, Mrs Clinton, and people in that orbit.  
Russian gangsters? Some may have been involved, but we have no evidence in any form that any Russians were hostile to Skripol in any way; but we do have evidence of hostility from a [group] of Americans. 

 
Hour Four
Wednesday 21 March 2018/ Hour 4, Block A: Pax Romana, Adrian Goldsworthy
Wednesday 21 March 2018/ Hour 4, Block B: Pax Romana, Adrian Goldsworthy
Wednesday 21 March 2018/ Hour 4, Block C:  Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, by Steve Coll
Wednesday 21 March 2018/ Hour 4, Block D:  Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, by Steve Coll
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