The John Batchelor Show

Wednesday 29 August 2018

Air Date: 
August 29, 2018

Engraving:  "A View of the Taking of Quebec", 13 September 1759, on the Plains of Abraham – that is, Abraham Martin, who was given some land on the northeast corner.  Here occurred a pivotal battle in the Seven Years' War (referred to as the French and Indian War in the United States). The battle, which began on 13 September 1759, was fought by the British Army and Navy against the French Army on a plateau just outside the walls of Quebec City,
    This 1797 engraving is based on a sketch made by Hervey Smyth, General Wolfe's aide-de-camp during the siege of Quebec.  From the Library of the Canadian Department of National Defence.
 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-hosts: Gordon Chang, Daily Beast, and David Livingston, The Space Show
 
Hour One
Wednesday 29 August 2018/ Hour 1, Block A: Bruce Klingner, senior research Fellow Northeast Asia at the Heritage Foundation, in re:  Commerce Dept tracking economics. Secretary of State Pompeo did not go to DPK on the weekend because of Kim’s [truculence].  Pres Trump gave him one shot at keeping his word.  Trump's statement today on North Korea: inaccurate; Kim’s failure was not due to China.  Trump also undercut Mattis, and again extolled his relationship with Xi. . . . Whose side is Moon on? Growing rift between South Korea and US.  China and Russia openly violate sanctions, leading South Korea to think that it can, too. Congress sent a list of  twelve Chinese banks to sanctions (laundering funds), incl the Big Fur; why is DC allowing the Chinese to do this with no sanction and no cost?  Crimes going through the US financial system on US soil by foreign criminals. 
Wednesday 29 August 2018/ Hour 1, Block B: Sadanand Dhume, WSJ, in re: India. The giant of Eurasia is India, not China.  Modi:  Higher tariffs, giveaways to rural population, free medicine; not everyone has electricity, a functioning toilet, or training to get a job, Problem is, this rhetoric has not worked for seventy years.  Now he’s guarding his left flank.  . . .  He reduced 90% of India’s currency by value – worked badly.  The problem resides in the Hindi heartland: most of the votes are in the oorest parts of the country, creating incentives to populism for pols. The coastal states of the West ad the South would occasion a very different campaign, Uttar Pradesh, Modi won 73 out of 80 ___ in the Hindi heartland.  He’s been fiscally responsible.  Not entirely clear that he favors free trade.  Coming: a manned space program.  Obviously, has dual use.
Wednesday 29 August 2018/ Hour 1, Block C: Peter Huessy, president of GeoStrategic Analysis and director of strategic deterrent studies at the Mitchell Institute; columnist, Gatestone Institute;  in re: Space is already militarized.  Antisatellite weapons; the protection of our space assets from Chinese interference and attack. The extant treaty forbidding militarization of space is Utopian.  After China shot down its own satellite in 2007 and caused vast debris, China promised not to do this again, but it does.  “The gravest threat we face in space.” China’s goal is to take down US targetting, ___, ____,  
In April 2000, Putin threated to use nukes early in a crisis. China will: eliminate our missile defense, to see missiles coming, and to target.  Esp in the island chain, where it has ___.  Key is to protect your assets.  We have nothing up there to protect our assets; we’re behind the eight-ball. I do space seminars on Capitol Hill; have done maybe sixty. All Congressmen say: we lack ability to protect ourselves in space.  “Good space”: NASA. “Bad space”: all those other guys.  At the end of the Cod War we took a holiday from history!  We’re ‘way ‘way behind.  The 1930battleship [deficit].  We tend to start late and catch up, and overbuild.  WWII, Pearl, by Victor Davis Hanson: We produced so much mil eqpt in 1.5 years that we basically buried our enemies.  One ship every thirty days. What we have now: till 2020!
Wednesday 29 August 2018/ Hour 1, Block D: Nury Turkel, former president of the Uyghur American Association and now a lawyer in D.C, in re:  Uyghurs in East Turkestan. Internal ethnic genocide of native peoples by Beijing: millions detained for long periods; Chinese agents internationally to persecute the Uyghurs who’ve fled to Central Asia and elsewhere.  China bribes security services elsewhere to extradite Uyghur refugees, take them back and torture or kill them.  Today 17 Congressmen, led by Rubio (FL), sent a letter to Secy of State asking it to implement the Global ___ Act concerning the [genocide ] of Uyghurs.  Ben Carden, aso some wh;ve  been showing goodwill to the Chinese govt.  Crime against humanity. 
https://www.wsj.com/articles/lawmakers-push-to-sanction-chinese-officials-over-xinjiang-camps-1535554800
 
Hour Two
Wednesday 29 August 2018/ Hour 2, Block A:  Stephen Yates, CEO of D.C. International Advisory and former advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, in re: Recent Trump statements on China’s not cooperating on North Korea because of the "trade war."  Taiwan. . . . If, after a number of  years, an organization has failed to produce any meaningful result, time for the US to move on out.   WTO.  Multilateral institutions have failed, incl the UN – not met the expectations of their founders.  JB: I blame the Powers (US, UK, France, Russia, et al.) – who created these organization presumed that  mater how the world change over seventy years, they’d still have the upper hand.  . . . China has maliciously gamed the WTO. 
Also: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/29/world/asia/china-navy-aircraft-carrier-pacific.html#click=https://t.co/xz58nevKbU
Wednesday 29 August 2018/ Hour 2, Block B:  Robert Collins, 37-year veteran advisor to the Department of Defense and author of Pyongyang Republic: North Korea’s Capital of Human Rights Denial, in re: Trump's tweets today on the joint military exercises with South Korea.  . . . Planning for next year’s exercises have already begun.  . . . US has a number of smaller exercises with South Korea.  Ulchi Freedom Guardian is commanded by a four-star & ROK chief f staff practice together; cannot be replicated in smaller activities, which are important for lower end; but this year there’s been a loss of preparedness.  Four-star still ahs to maintain the readiness of his staff.  . . . Blue House discussing “no need to coordinate with the US.”  There’s always some daylight ‘twixt ROK and the US, but usually the military alliance is a stabilizing matter.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1034914371099676674
Wednesday 29 August 2018/ Hour 2, Block C:  Aaron Klein, Breitbart Middle East Bureau Chief, in re:  Russiagate. New dramatis personae.
Wednesday 29 August 2018/ Hour 2, Block D:  Monica Crowley , London Center for Security Studies; in re:  Trump strategies
 
Hour Three
Wednesday 29 August 2018/ Hour 3, Block A:  Salena Zito , CNN and New York Post, in re:  Abuse by Roman Catholic priests in Pittsburgh
Wednesday 29 August 2018/ Hour 3, Block B:  David T. Beito is a historian and professor of history at the University of Alabama; author of Taxpayers in Revolt: Tax Resistance during the Great Depression; in re:   Emmett Till,
Why It's Unlikely the Emmett Till Murder Mystery Will Ever Be Solved   Nearly fifty years ago, one of the most sensational murders in American history took place. In August 1955, two white half brothers, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, kidnapped Emmett Till, a fourteen year old black boy, from his great uncle’s home. Several days later, his brutally beaten and horribly disfigured body was fished out of the Tallahatchie River. What had Till done to merit such treatment? Witnesses said that he wolf-whistled, and perhaps made suggestive remarks, to Bryant’s pretty young wife while buying bubblegum at Bryant’s store in the hamlet of Money, Mississippi. 
Like countless black males before him, Till had received the ultimate punishment for threatening Mississippi’s rigid code of racial etiquette. In the past, the press would have ignored such a killing. But this time it was different. The Till case was a media sensation as journalists from all over the world flocked to the small town of Sumner for the trial. When a Mississippi jury acquitted Milam and Bryant in September, protests erupted in Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and many other cities. Some historians contend that the fall-out from these events sparked the beginning of the modern civil rights movement. Only three months after the trial, in December 1955, the Montgomery bus boycott was underway because Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man. 
Today the Till case is once again in the news. Although Milam and Bryant are long dead, some have argued that the murder was part of a broader conspiracy. The recent trials of Byron De La Beckwith and Bobby Frank Cherry have fueled the calls from the New York Times and others to reopen the case and to prosecute possible accomplices. These calls are understandable but our investigation (which includes conversations with key witnesses) has led us to be skeptical that the mystery behind the murder can ever be solved. 
Until recently, few of those familiar with the case considered it worthwhile to even ask how many people killed Emmett Till. For decades, most took their cues from journalist William Bradford Huie, who revealed in an article for Look in 1956 how Milam and Bryant, safely acquitted after their trial in September, had proudly confessed to the murder. Huie strongly implied that they were the only perpetrators. The effect of the article, appropriately titled, “The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi,” was so profound that it pushed aside any serious discussion of accomplices for decades to come. 
It had not always been so. During the last months of 1955, many journalists, civil rights activists, and law enforcement officials seriously pondered whether Milam and Bryant had help. Even the prosecutors belonged to the ranks of the conspiracy theorists. They had based much of their case on the testimony of Willie Reed, an eighteen-year old high school student. Reed described how he had observed Till, along with three whites (including Milam) and two blacks, in a pickup truck shortly after the kidnapping. The truck pulled into an equipment shed near Drew, Mississippi and he heard “licks and hollers” that sounded like a beating. The prosecutors never asked Reed to identify the other men in the truck. The press, law enforcement, and civil rights leaders, however, focused on three black employees of Milam: Levi “Too Tight” Collins, Henry Lee Loggins, and Willie Hubbard. Black journalist James Hicks alleged that the sheriff had locked up Collins and Loggins in jail during the trial under false names as part of a cover up. In November 1955, Hicks wrote an open letter to Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr., which urged the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate. The FBI briefly considered the matter but decided not to enter the case stating that it did not have jurisdiction because state lines had not been crossed. 
Initially, Huie agreed that others had helped Milam and Bryant in their crime. In October 1955, he declared matter-of-factly that the “torture-and-murder party” included two other men but also warned that it was essential to “have their releases -- or no publisher will touch it. I know who these men are: they are important to the story, but I have to pay them because of their 'risks.'" Unfortunately, he never indicated their identity or race. Although Huie considered the securing of four releases as possibly “too heavy a handicap,” he suggested that “we can if necessary, omit the names of the other two. We can even avoid all reference to them.” He cautioned, however, that he would urge “any publisher to state that they were present.” 
Huie abruptly shifted gears after his first meeting with Milam and Bryant on October 23. Without elaboration, he reported to his publisher that he now believed that the two had acted alone. Perhaps not coincidentally, Huie emphasized how this new development simplified the otherwise laborious and expensive process of getting releases. This was the last time he openly acknowledged, or even hinted, at a broader conspiracy. 
Huie’s article did not explicitly address whether others took part but it left the strong impression that the kidnapping/murder was an exclusively Milam and Bryant affair. If he thought the pair acted alone, why was he so reticent to refute alternative theories, including those of the prosecution, about accomplices? Possibly, despite his statement that Milam and Bryant were the only perpetrators, he still had doubts and did not want to give his editors a pretext to veto publication. 
The closest Huie came to addressing the issue is when he turned to the question of why Till did not try to escape though he was alone in the back of the truck and not tied up. For Huie, this was “the remarkable part of the story.” Till did not flee because he “wasn’t afraid of them! He was as tough as they were. He didn’t think they had the guts to kill him.” 
Huie’s failure to raise the possibility of co-conspirators does not mean that he ignored the issue in other contexts. It is almost certain that he was the anonymous “informant” for an overlooked, but fascinating, story in the Tri-State Defender of Memphis on January 14, 1956. Huie’s probable intention was to launch a preemptive strike against any counterattack by advocates of a conspiracy theory. The informant dismissed claims that others helped Milam and Bryant as “a myth, shear nonsense” because the two men “would hardly take a Negro along on such a mission.” While a pickup truck with four whites and three blacks had indeed pulled into the equipment shed, it was for an innocent fishing trip. The noise Reed heard was not from a beating but “the sound of persons playing around as the boat was being loaded.” 
An item in Huie’s correspondence provides the best evidence that he was the informant. It is an unsigned  . . .   https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/4853
Wednesday 29 August 2018/ Hour 3, Block C:  Hotel Mars, episode n, with Jeff Plaut, JPL, in re: Geological features on Mars. Ex[;portion. The cold southern pole and internal heat.
Wednesday 29 August 2018/ Hour 3, Block D:  Patrick Tucker, technology editor for Defense One;  author, The Naked Future: What Happens in a World That Anticipates Your Every Move?; in re:   Weapons, defense
 
Hour Four
Wednesday 29 August 2018/ Hour 4, Block A:  Northern Armageddon: The Battle of the Plains of Abraham and the Making of the American Revolution, by D. Peter MacLeod
Wednesday 29 August 2018/ Hour 4, Block B: Northern Armageddon: The Battle of the Plains of Abraham and the Making of the American Revolution, by D. Peter MacLeod
Wednesday 29 August 2018/ Hour 4, Block C:  Flight of the Eagle: The Grand Strategies That Brought America from Colonial Dependence to World Leadership, by Conrad Black
Wednesday 29 August 2018/ Hour 4, Block D:  Flight of the Eagle: The Grand Strategies That Brought America from Colonial Dependence to World Leadership, by Conrad Black