Photo: 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-hosts: Gordon Chang, Daily Beast, and David Livingston, The Space Show
 
Hour One
Wednesday 3 April 2019 / Hour 1, Block A:  Rick Fisher, senior Fellow on Asian Military Affairs at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, in re:  F16s built in South Carolina with multiple advanced systems to go to Taiwan.  By the early 2020s, we may have a new missile the F16 can carry. Beijing reaction was to send fighters down the Taiwanese side of the line between China and Taiwan. Crossing the midline, a tacit agreement enforced by air power since the 1950s, is a sign of China’s temperishness. 
Weird: Woman Chinese national with four smartphones, two Chinese passports and a malware stick tries to break in to Mar-a-Lago. Is thwarted by the Seekies.  Overall bizarro. The June 2017 enactment of China’s intelligence law: anyone of Chinese ethnicity is obliged to spy for China if demanded – have been using the diaspora for decades. Ergo, every Chinese person in the US is a potential spy! It in fact constitutes a genuine security risk to the US.  US universities have been a leaking hull of information and of sophisticated training for decades.  It’s the Communist Party system.  https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/01/asia/china-japan-taiwan-jets-intl/index.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/woman-arrested-after-entering-mar-a-lago-allegedly-with-malware-11554241458
Wednesday 3 April 2019 / Hour 1, Block B:  Suzanne Scholte, president of Defense Forum Foundation and chair of North Korea Freedom Coalition, in re:  Madrid operation may have been an effort by Liberty in North Korea to help a high-level defector, but apparently something went wrong. Scarlet Pimpernel!
    North Korean embassies are criminal hubs used to launder money, distribute counterfeit cash, sell narcotics, and the like. Everyone in the DPRK regime is faced with a terrible choice daily: abet Kim Jong-eun or see their own family killed in front of their eyes.  The recent summits have accomplished nothing.  https://www.wsj.com/articles/raid-on-north-koreas-madrid-embassy-a-grave-terrorist-attack-pyongyang-says-11554087051
Wednesday 3 April 2019 / Hour 1, Block C: David Maxwell, FDD, in re:  Feb 22 incident in Madrid. Whom does Kim fear more; the US, or the people of North Korea?  The latter.  Bob Collins: we’re in the fourth phase of collapse.   TK: fracture and breakdown, then some sort of new leadership. In Eastern Europe, the collapse started in the security services.  Kim’s main concern ought to be the generals and police forces around him.  Three chains of command: general to private, ______, then watchers watching the watched.  US should aggressively send useful info into North Korea.  Military and Party are too intertwined to separate them.  Theory that the Spanish embassy may have been skimming cash, so the action may have been a DPRK operation.  Recall Bo Shi-lai appealing to the Fourteenth Army.
Wednesday 3 April 2019 / Hour 1, Block D:  Gordon Chang, in re:   China trade talks:  The remedy is not a new agreement but to have Chinese hurt so much that they cease IP theft and general piracy, plus oceans of Fentanyl onto the US via its gangs.  Lighthizer and Navarro say, “We won’t put up with this rubbish.”  China just doesn’t seem to get it. Purchasing Managers’s Indices (PMI) of last month.  “Tariffs Take Center Stage in U.S.-China Trade Talks”   https://www.wsj.com/articles/tariffs-take-center-stage-in-u-s-china-trade-talks-11554328971?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1
 
Hour Two
Wednesday 3 April 2019 / Hour 2, Block A:  Alan Tonelson, independent economic policy analyst who blogs at RealityChek and tweets at @AlanTonelson, in re: the latest on the China trade talks.  . . .  Vice-premier Liu He, China trade envoy, . . . The thirty-year experiment in trying to get China to conduct trade in a civilized manner has failed.  Continued predatory practices.  Nutty:  US has continuously trained Chinese scientists to build military equipment to [destroy] the US.   Google’s kowtowing to China.   Europeans are sort of waking up.  Trump decided that Huawei has made such deep inroads into European economies that Washington will start planning for a world where Huawei’s material is everywhere. Intolerable national security threats.   Major European govts seem to assume that the US is merely bluffing. Astounding.
    Yike: “Chinese cloud-computing companies can operate in the U.S. without hindrance.” 
Wednesday 3 April 2019 / Hour 2, Block B:  Barry Strauss, professor of history at Cornell University, in re: The Foundation Trilogy?  See: Quartz piece, and Ten Caesars, Roman Emperors from Augustus to Constantine.    https://qz.com/1582066/the-us-china-trade-war-could-use-some-pointers-from-ancient-rome/
Wednesday 3 April 2019 / Hour 2, Block C:  Hotel Mars, episode n.  David Grinspoon, astrobiologist & Planetary Science Institute, in re: Ultima Thule, a contact binary. 
Wednesday 3 April 2019 / Hour 2, Block D: Lara M Brown, Georgetown University, in re: Joe Biden
 
Hour Three
Wednesday 3 April 2019 / Hour 3, Block A: Gregory R Copley, Defense and Foreign Affairs, in re:  Brexit. 
Wednesday 3 April 2019 / Hour 3, Block B: Gregory R Copley, Defense and Foreign Affairs, in re:  Brexit.  e
Wednesday 3 April 2019 / Hour 3, Block C:  Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com, in re: 
Wednesday 3 April 2019 / Hour 3, Block D:  Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com, in re: 
 
Hour Four
Wednesday 3 April 2019 / Hour 4, Block A: City on a Grid: How New York Became New York, by Gerard Koeppel  (1 of 4)
Wednesday 3 April 2019 / Hour 4, Block B: City on a Grid: How New York Became New York, by Gerard Koeppel  (2 of 4)
Wednesday 3 April 2019 / Hour 4, Block C: City on a Grid: How New York Became New York, by Gerard Koeppel  (3 of 4)
Wednesday 3 April 2019 / Hour 4, Block D: City on a Grid: How New York Became New York, by Gerard Koeppel  (4 of 4)
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