Photo, above: Typhoon in the Philippines, 2013.

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Hour One

Wednesday   29 January   2014     / Hour 1, Block A:  Arthur Waldron, Lauder Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania, in re: China is trying to hang the blame on Japan for discord; Washington pressures Japan to defer because it has no way to pressure China. Vietnam, Burma, North and South Korea.

Wise analysts are expressing much worry: chances for conflict between China and Japan are the highest in living memory.  I share very serious concerns: all you need is one Chinese and Japanese plane to get into a dogfight. Japanese are capable of becoming a formidable military power; China seems to base its thoughts on the notion that everything will work just fine.  One Chinese plane shot down by Korea would send huge tremors through Beijing. Little incidents start big wars

Across Asia, govts examine microscopically every comment out of the US, currently think they detect weakness.  When the US condemned the visit to the Yakasuni shrine, it should also have condemned China's massive anti-Japanese  propaganda. At present, it's the Chinese who've taken the military measures.  Escalations: either you stop it now or it's inevitable. 

Briefings point to conclusion of graft investigation into Zhou Yongkang   Briefings of top-level officials on investigation into former security tsar suggest scene could be set for one of China's most spectacular trials.    Central authorities have begun briefing officials on findings of the corruption case centred on former security tsar Zhou Yongkang, signalling the final stage of one of the country's most significant graft investigations in decades.  The briefings included new details about the possible origins of the case against the retired Politburo Standing Committee member, according to people who received the information.

For instance, the decision to investigate Zhou last summer was made after findings of an inquiry into his former top aide Guo Yongxiang were presented to the top leadership.  Guo - a former Sichuan deputy governor and Zhou secretary - was detained on suspicion of corruption in June. He was by then semi-retired in an honorary role as chairman of the Federation of Literary and Art Circles in Sichuan, a political power base of Zhou's.  The briefings were seen as a sign the case against Zhou, who was until late 2012 one of the nine most powerful officials in the Communist Party, could be announced soon, perhaps after the Lunar New Year holiday. Such briefings for top-level officials are customary at the culmination of highly sensitive cases.  Zhou would be first current or retired member of the Politburo Standing Committee to be charged with financial crimes. President Xi Jinping's decision to launch an unprecedented investigation against him was first reported by the South China Morning Post in August.

Surprisingly, another key Zhou aide facing graft allegations, former Sichuan deputy party secretary Li Chuncheng , was not mentioned in the recent briefings. Li's detention weeks after Xi became party chief was one of the first public signs Zhou's circle had been targeted.  "The information was delivered only verbally and it is very brief," one person with knowledge of the briefings said.  Zhou was made the country's police chief in 2003 and oversaw the entire legal and law enforcement system from 2007. He retired from his top positions in November 2012, just after the corruption case against a key political ally, former Politburo member Bo Xilai , was formally announced.  The corruption case against Zhou would overshadow that of Bo, who held a lower rank, and could prove the most spectacular since the "Gang of Four" show trial more than three decades ago after the Cultural Revolution.

In recent months, party investigators have rounded up numerous former Zhou aides and close associates. Dozens of officials have been detained, including Jiang Jiemin , the former head of the state-owned assets watchdog, and Li Dongsheng , the former deputy national police chief.

The nature of the potential allegations against Zhou is unclear, and has been the subject of much speculation.  Media reports have alleged his involvement in everything from attempts to thwart Xi's rise to party chief to a conspiracy to murder his own wife.  But the person familiar with the briefings said the investigation would deal exclusively with financial issues and corruption. It is also believed that the amount of money involved in the case would be far less than some reports have suggested.  The difficulty in tying money directly to Zhou has been seen as one of the reasons the case has taken so long to build.  Like Bo, Zhou is believed to have crafted an elaborate network to protect his family interests and cover the money trail. Most deals were said to have been done through third-party intermediates, the proxies holding most of the ill-gotten wealth.

Wednesday   29 January   2014     / Hour 1, Block B: Phelim Kine, Deputy Director, Asia Division, Human Rights Watch, on this:  Xu Zhiyong has been convicted to go to prison for four years for protesting outside a building asking for rights e already possesses.  One of his demands is to have made public the income of high govt officials.  Issue here isn’t human rights.

Chinese govt refuses even to renew visas for foreign correspondents.  If China treats its own people this awfully, how will it treat members of other, neighboring nations? Drip-drip of revelations of corruption at high levels, increasing restiveness among the populace; Communist Party doesn’t know what to do; default position is to increase repression. Thailand: chaos in Bangkok streets.  Can China mask its own problems by having state media focus on surrounding tumults?  Chinese citizens know they’re supposed to have rights, see neighbors expressing political views in a way forbidden in China.   

Wednesday   29 January   2014     / Hour 1, Block C: Hotel Mars, episode n.  Dr. David M. Livingston, The Space Show, and Dr Humberto Campins, University of Central  Florida, in re: Liquid and frozen water on Ceres?  Formation of Solar System, origin of water on Earth. Water molecules escaping from Ceres – sublimating from surface ice or issued from a volcano?  This object has not been heated much since it was formed.  It's the largest object between Mars and Jupiter, first of the asteroids to be discovered – twice the diameter of Vesta.  Dawn spacecraft on its way there. Subsurface: large mantle of water ice.  This strengthens the theory that water on Earth was carried here by asteroids. Speculation that there's more water ice on Ceres than there is water on Earth.   Mars's moons are captures asteroids. 

The team that found water vapor on Ceres is located in Spain and the article was published in Nature.  They used ESA's Herschel telescope for the work.  The Nature article had commentary by two professors at the University of Central Florida. 

. . .  Another improbable venue for liquid water is the outer limits of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. There, using infrared telescopes, two teams of astronomers working separately in 2008 and 2009 found water ice on the surface of the asteroid 24 Themis, about 280 million miles from the Sun. Last year, the teams joined forces and found ice on a second asteroid, 65 Cybele, which, with a diameter of 180 miles, was about 1.5 times as large as 24 Themis and 45 million miles farther out.

For ice to endure on like objects with no atmosphere that close to the Sun, there must be a mechanism to replenish what is lost to sublimation. Humberto Campins, a University of Central Florida astrophysicist and leader of one of the discovery teams, suggested that the patchy ice was a thin coating of frost from a reservoir hidden below the asteroids’ topsoil regolith.

When the asteroid faced the Sun, heat penetrated the topsoil, causing subsurface ice to sublimate and migrate as water vapor to the surface, where it froze at night only to sublimate again during the day. In a variation on this theme, Dr. Campins said, meteorites could be churning up the asteroid topsoil, thus bringing ice closer to the surface. This process is called “impact gardening.”

“We suspect that something like this is happening,” Dr. Campins said, but acknowledged a third possibility: The asteroids could contain enough radioactive isotopes to melt ice deep below the surface, creating liquid water that seeps upward before vaporizing.

“You need sufficient pressure and temperature,” he said. “But conceptually it’s possible.” Pressure would come from the asteroids’ interior gravity, allowing water to exist once the isotopes melt the ice. Radioactivity is a widespread phenomenon and a likely source of heat energy elsewhere in the solar system. Another heat source is friction, caused most commonly by tidal pressure or wobbling of an object on its axis. .

Wednesday   29 January   2014     / Hour 1, Block D: :  David Feith, WSJ Asia, in re: Philippines hurricane: US Marines doing counterterrorism work in the south immediately flew up to where the storm hit, laid waste to the land.  In the flattened devastation, US military flew in and out with supplies, carried injured to hospitals; Filipino papers even had headlines, "God Bless America."  Beijing was puzzled and stung when it was condemned by all of Southeast Asia for having offered (late) $120,000.

Hour Two

Wednesday   29 January   2014     / Hour 2, Block A:  Fraser Howie, co-author of Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China's Extraordinary Rise, in re:  When the Sun becomes a Red Dwarf and burns Earth to  a crisp, everything ends except – the shadow banks of China.   This time, everyone expected to see a default – vast expansion of credit, much investment in bad business – but they've decided not to take the medicine intrinsic to a well-functioning system, so no one knows what risk is. In the shadow banking system maybe $1.8 million.  In this environment of state bailouts, the first bank failure may occur about 36 hours before the entire financial system collapses.   In Wealth Management Products, the minimum investment is often $500K – not walking-around cash for working stiffs; but whole families assemble money, so a default would have major political repercussions.  This one was a three-year product promising 10% return.  The shadow bank promised 10% because it was being paid 13% by a mining company in Xaansi Province that couldn’t get funding anywhere else – would have had to go to loan sharks.  All crooks..

Wednesday   29 January   2014     / Hour 2, Block B:  Bruce Bechtol, author of The Last Days of Kim Jong-il: The North Korean Threat in a Changing Era, in re: Is Kim Jong-eun the heavyweight who ordered his uncle fed to dogs, or is he a fall guy?  He was listening to his aunt, who’s sick in Switzerland, and to his uncle, who's now executed, so whom is he listening to these days?  Maybe military people, although many of the former mil stars are gone; now: a fellow named Hei, a commissar (commissars spy on military officers).  Eun is not yet in a secure position.  This level of purges hasn’t occurred since 1957, when Eun's grandfather purged both pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese persons.  DPRK ambassador to Cuba was executed this time; Cuba was caught shipping defensive air eqpt to DPRK under bags of sugar in a ship in the Panama Canal.  Possibility of mass defections in the coming weeks. 

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Wednesday   29 January   2014     / Hour 2, Block C:  Raksha Kumar, NYT, in re: Indian documentary, Miss Lovely, based on shocking horror movies made in the 1980s.  The film is anti-Bollywood: the narrative, the production.. The Journey of ‘Miss Lovely’ from Cannes to the Censors

Wednesday   29 January   2014     / Hour 2, Block D: Joseph Sternberg, WSJ Asia editorial board, in re: There's a lot of saber-rattling from China, but it’s starting to notice how dependent it is on Japanese investment. The garrulous type at Davos?  His threat of China opening an inevitable war against Japan, which shocked Davos, is not really that surprising.  China's political system is opaque, no one knows who's on which side with many internal disagreements.  The Chinese-Japanese antipathy is old, more than economic.  Still, this is a government in disarray.

There's No Accounting for China: U.S. regulators inadvertently raise a question about who's to blame for investor losses.  In a ruling last week, an administrative trial judge at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission suspended the Chinese branches of the Big Four accounting firms from practicing at the SEC for six months. As a consequence, these accountants will not be able to sign off on the books of Chinese companies listed in the U.S., which could force the Chinese firms to delist at least temporarily for lack of audited accounts. The Big Four are appealing the ruling.

Hour Three

Wednesday   29 January   2014     / Hour 3, Block A: Stephen F Cohen, NYU & Princeton Russian Studies prof Emeritus; author, Soviet Fates & Lost Alternatives, in re:  OBAMA: "In Ukraine, we stand for the principle that all people have the right to express themselves freely and peacefully and to have a say in their country's future."  Ukraine crisis.

Wednesday   29 January   2014     / Hour 3, Block B:  Stephen F Cohen, NYU & Princeton Russian Studies prof Emeritus; author, Soviet Fates & Lost Alternatives, in re: Sochi threat. .

Wednesday   29 January   2014     / Hour 3, Block C:  RICHARD EPSTEIN, HOOVER.

This past week in Verizon v. FCC, the Federal Circuit Court for the District of Columbia once again addressed the mysterious role that net neutrality plays in the Federal Communications Commission’s regulatory arsenal. The simplest definition of net neutrality stresses that a telecommunications company must treat all data on the internet equally, without allowing for any prioritization by content or price differentials among customers.

Wednesday   29 January   2014     / Hour 3, Block D:  RICHARD EPSTEIN, HOOVER

Hour Four

Wednesday   29 January   2014     / Hour 4, Block A: JOHN AVLON, DAILY BEAST

Rep. Michael Grimm went off on a reporter last night, but he’s certainly not the first politician to explode while the camera was on, and a quick review of the worst offenders makes the New York congressman look downright tame.

Wednesday   29 January   2014     / Hour 4, Block B: JILLIAN KAY MELCHIOR, NRO

At least 43 convicted criminals are working as Obamacare navigators in California, including three individuals with records of significant financial crimes.

Although some of the offenses are decades old, and although convicted criminals account for only 1 percent of the 3,729 certified enrollment counselors in the state, Californians still have good cause to be concerned about their privacy.

Even a single crooked navigator could do significant harm to the public. That’s because when navigators sign consumers up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, they have access to lots of private information, including Social Security numbers, home addresses, and financial data — basically, everything on the wish list of identity thieves and fraudsters. Navigators also are likely to work with a population that is more vulnerable than average.

Wednesday   29 January   2014     / Hour 4, Block C: MELIK KAYLAN, FORBES.COM

What is the single greatest cause of Ukraine’s tragic strife, the primary cause of so much grief in the region and beyond? Take a look back at the Euromaidan timeline. Think how it began, this latest round of deadly instability featuring tanks, live gunfire, kidnappings, deaths, the state tweeting sinister mass threats – with lots worse to come. This time it began because President Viktor Yanukovych pushed through laws to criminalize demonstrations, in order to prevent a repeat of the first round. What triggered the first round of demonstrations? The greatest Lord of Misrule in our time: Vladimir Putin.

Wednesday   29 January   2014     / Hour 4, Block D:  ANATOLY ZAK, RUSSIANSPACEWEB.COM

Construction in Vostochny to enter critical phase in 2014 Published: January 26 The development of the future space center in the Russian Far East should reach a major milestone this year with the completion of the concrete structure at the launch pad for Soyuz-2 rockets, clearing the way for the installation of the launch hardware. On (Sunday!) January 26, Spetsstroi announced that despite temperatures in Vostochny plunging to -40C degrees, the work continued on the erection of metal framework and concrete cell walls of the processing building for the Soyuz-2 rocket.

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Music

Hour 1:  House of Flying Daggers. Cowboys & Aliens.