The John Batchelor Show

Wednesday 29 March 2017

Air Date: 
March 29, 2017

Photo, left: Silicon Valley
 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
 
Co-hosts: Gordon Chang, Forbes.com & Daily Beast. Dr. David M. Livingston, The Space Show.
 
Hour One
Wednesday   29 March 2017  /Hour 1, Block A: Dean Cheng, senior research Fellow of the Asia Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation; in re: China enters the US market in force; owns AMC, the largest theater chain in North America, and is buying its way into R&D firms working on military inventions.  Where’s Washington?   http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/26/china-gets-cutting-edge-military-tech-from-us-startups.html
Wednesday   29 March 2017  /Hour 1, Block B:  Evan Ellis, professor of Latin American Studies at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, in re:  China is buying and developing land (1,200 hectares) right around the Panama Canal, “a critical chokepoint.”  Note in Bahamas , Hutchison Port Holdings. Chinese operate in clusters: construction companies, banks, eqpt firms, all enter together.  Also Greek, Pakistan, Sri Lanka (the Gardar?? Port). And shipping is only a piece of it: in 2015, a white paper acknowledging a purpose of PLA is to protect China’s economic interests abroad.  Note also Dominica (pron: doh-mee-NEE-ka), as well as in the Dominican Republic, Nassau, Jamaica, Caribbean investment seems to have strategic direction.  China State Construction and Engineering; eke Punta Cane in DR (although a Spanish co-investor absconded with the funds and is being sought by Interpol); the new Nicaragua Canal: land is sitting there as a cow pasture.  Investor got Beijing’s approval but n financial backing; Western money unavailable because of no transparency, and lacking Chinese govt funds, it stopped. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-panama-canal-land-idUSKBN16Y13J?il=0
Wednesday   29 March 2017  /Hour 1, Block C:  Paul Giarra, president of Global Strategies & Transformation; in re: China’s purpose-built “islands” in the Spratleys are now being specifically militarized: hangars for 24 high-performance aircraft plus carriers.  “These are not islands, they're garrisons.”  “In the Asiatic Mediterranean.”  Very difficult to dislodge China from these garrisons, augment Chinese claims and reinforce its ability to defend or offend. Establishing a new status quo: declare ownership, bld up garrisons and ignore the rule of law.  Making new territorial claims, also in air (ADIZ).  China challenged a US B-1 in international air space; the Chinese voice said, “You're in Chinese territory; get out!”  These are not shallow endeavors.  Normally US can maintain maybe 20 good shops in East Asia, and Japan maybe 40. and Australia, a few.  China is bldg a navy of 500 ships, cd bring 180 to 200 good warships to the theater. 
Soviet warships had maintenance problems but had very good offensive systems. Wishful thinking to guess that Chinese ships are anything but good and getting better. See Orbis, Tosh Yoshihara and Jim Holmes’s current article.  China working on a long timeline to become predominant power is the Asian Pacific. 
I have he greatest confidence on Americans. Third offset*.  Recall WWII: from 250 ships in 1940(?) to 6,600 ships in 1945.  Worrisome that the Navy budget has been flat. Our submarine force is too small but good-quality.  http://www.news.com.au/world/asia/south-china-sea-controversy-heats-up-a...
Wednesday   29 March 2017  /Hour 1, Block D:  Gordon Chang, Forbes.com & Daily Beast; in re:  US policy anent China? Not known or visible.  AnBang dines with Jared Kushner.  Trump withdraws from TPP.  Agenda for Mar-a-Lago visit by Xi Jinping?  Not yet published; normally should have been by now. 
 
Hour Two
Wednesday   29 March 2017  /Hour 2, Block A:  Bruce Klingner, senior research fellow, Northeast Asia at The Heritage Foundation, on these: DPRK racing toward bldg a miniaturized warhead to launch at the US.  Sometimes just to reach another technological milestone.  Rumors of meeting between Xi and Trump on April 6 and 7.  Pres Obama talked about sanctions vs DPRK; in fact, US barely did, and not even as strong as sanctions against Zimbabwe.  US esp puls punches n the who violate US laws and abuse the US financial system, of whom many are in China. Which is more important:  happy relations with Beijing, or the very existence of Seattle and Los Angeles?   https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonchang/2017/03/26/did-china-just-help-north-korea-steal-81m-from-the-fed/#10f1a20e50c6
www.cnn.com/2017/03/24/us/north-korea-nuclear-test/
Wednesday   29 March 2017  /Hour 2, Block B:  Paul Mooney, freelance journalist reporting from China for 18 years, in re:  Australian resident travelling on his Chinese passport is being held in China, in Tienjin, and forbidden to speak on his detention. Canberra legislature was irked.   Chinese security agencies don't care a fig about political considerations.  Man has been doing research on human rights in China, and recently criticized Xi.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/mar/27/chongyi-feng-australian-academic-banned-from-leaving-china-told-not-to-talk
Wednesday   29 March 2017  /Hour 2, Block C:  David Feith, Editorial Page Writer, The Wall Street Journal, Hong Kong; in re:  Editorial: Hong Kong’s New Boss  More trouble is ahead if Carrie Lam won’t defend local autonomy.  https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-north-korea-sanctions-myth-1490642563
The North Korea Sanctions Myth   The U.S. hasn’t nearly maxed out its options—assuming it’s willing to target offenders in China. To hear some in Washington tell it, the Trump administration’s plans to intensify sanctions on North Korea are more of the same—the continuation of a decades-old effort that hasn’t stopped Pyongyang’s nuclear program. This criticism is ill-informed. The U.S. has never stuck . . . 
Wednesday   29 March 2017  /Hour 2, Block D:  Paul Gregory, Hoover; @PaulR_Gregory @HooverInst; in re:  Occupy Russia.  March 26 marks the seventeenth anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s election to the presidency of Russia. This date could go down in history as the day the Russian people declared: “We have had enough.”  With Putin expected to coast to a fourth term in less than a year with no opposition, his Russian police state seemed to be under control. Draconian punishments for unauthorized demonstrations and “extremist” speech were keeping people off the streets. Opposition leaders were either dead (Boris Nemtsov) or muzzled (Aleksei Navalny).
Defying these expectations, the Russian people responded to Navalny’s twitter call to demonstrate against corruption.
The Kremlin’s riot police (OMON) have no problem dealing with isolated demonstrations in one or two cities, but they can be overwhelmed by nationwide protests spread throughout Russia’s cities large and small. With small and isolated demonstrations, demonstrators understand they will suffer punishment, but as they see growing numbers and hear accounts of nationwide strikes, they feel safety in numbers and join.
Demonstrations of this magnitude require a spark. In this case, the spark was information published by Navalny on his  anti-corruption site about the enormous wealth, some of it in the form of palatial residence, accumulated by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Revelations that the “possible liberal” Medvedev was as crooked as Putin’s cronies provided a rallying cry “against corruption” that seemed to unite a whole nation.
 
Hour Three
Wednesday   29 March 2017  /Hour 3, Block A: Dr Lara M Brown, Associate Professor & Interim Director, Graduate School of Political Management, George Washington University, in re:
Wednesday   29 March 2017  /Hour 3, Block B:  Dan Griswold, Mercatus Center; in re:
Wednesday   29 March 2017  /Hour 3, Block C:   Stalin's Englishman: Guy Burgess, the Cold War, and the Cambridge Spy Ring; by Andrew Lownie. Part II of II; segment 3 of 4
Guy Burgess was the most important, complex, and fascinating of "The Cambridge Spies"―Maclean, Philby, Blunt―brilliant young men recruited in the 1930s to betray their country to the Soviet Union. An engaging and charming companion to many, an unappealing, utterly ruthless manipulator to others, Burgess rose through academia, the BBC, the Foreign Office, MI5 and MI6, gaining access to thousands of highly sensitive secret documents which he passed to his Russian handlers.
     In this first full biography, Andrew Lownie shows us how even Burgess's chaotic personal life of drunken philandering did nothing to stop his penetration and betrayal of the British Intelligence Service. Even when he was under suspicion, the fabled charm which had enabled many close personal relationships with influential Establishment figures (including Winston Churchill) prevented his exposure as a spy for many years.
     Through interviews with more than a hundred people who knew Burgess personally, many of whom have never spoken about him before, and the discovery of hitherto secret files, Stalin's Englishman brilliantly unravels the many lives of Guy Burgess in all their intriguing, chilling, colorful, tragi-comic wonder.     https://www.amazon.com/Stalins-Englishman-Burgess-Cold-
Wednesday   29 March 2017  /Hour 3, Block D:  Stalin's Englishman: Guy Burgess, the Cold War, and the Cambridge Spy Ring; by Andrew Lownie. Part II of II; segment 4 of 4
 
Hour Four
Wednesday   29 March 2017  /Hour 4, Block A:  Mary Anastasia O’Grady, WSJ editorial board; in re:  By the 1980s, Mexico looked more like Egypt—poor, backward and undemocratic—than like a member of Western civilization. Democratic capitalists on both sides of the border wanted change. But as the “Arab Spring” demonstrated, the transformation from tyranny to liberty requires more than desire.
Political reform was not on the agenda when PRI President Carlos Salinas de Gortari took office in 1988. But the economy was in bad shape, and renewed growth depended on opening trade. The U.S. already had a free-trade pact with Canada. President George H. W. Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney agreed to pursue a continental trade and investment treaty with Mexico.
Nafta went into effect on Jan. 1, 1994, and brought commitments to competition, privatization and foreign capital. Cross-border commercial relationships required improvements in civil law. For the first time in more than six decades, Mexico had the fundamentals of a market economy.
As the Mexican economist Luis de la Calle and the political scientist Luis Rubio show in their 2010 book, Mexico: A Middle Class Society, today’s consumption patterns indicate that the nation is no longer “poor.” But this is about more than an increase in creature comforts for a wider number of Mexicans. It is also about the spread of middle-class values in education, civil rights and culture. (1 of 2)
Wednesday   29 March 2017  /Hour 4, Block B:  Mary Anastasia O’Grady, WSJ editorial board; in re:  By the 1980s, Mexico looked more like Egypt (2 of 2)
Wednesday   29 March 2017  /Hour 4, Block C: Hotel Mars, episode n
Wednesday   29 March 2017  /Hour 4, Block D: Hotel Mars, episode n
 
..  ..  ..