Photo, above:  St Petersburg International Economic Forum 2014.  See Hour 2, Blocks C & D, Joe Pappolardo, Popular Mechanics, in Russia

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Hour One

Friday  23 May 2014 / Hour 1, Block A: Kevin O'Rourke, Actor, The City of Conversation, in re: LCT presents the world premiere of The City of Conversation by Anthony Giardina, directed by Doug Hughes (LCT's The House in Town; this season's Outside Mullingar; and Tony Award winner for Doubt).  (1 of 2)
In 1979, Washington, D.C., was a place where people actually talked to each other . . . where adversaries fought it out on the Senate floor and then smoothed it out over drinks and hors d'oeuvres. But it was all about to change.  In this play spanning 30 years and six presidential administrations, five-time Tony® nominee Jan Maxwell plays the savvy and elegant Hester Ferris, doyenne of Georgetown dinner parties whose influence in liberal politics is legendary. But when her beloved son suddenly turns up with an ambitious Reaganite girlfriend and a shocking new conservative world view, Hester must choose between preserving her family and defending the causes she's spent her whole life fighting for.   Cast John Aylward , Phillip James Brannon, Kristen Bush , Beth Dixon , Barbara Garrick , Jan Maxwell , Luke Niehaus , Kevin O'Rourke :

Friday  23 May 2014 / Hour 1, Block B: : Kevin O'Rourke, Actor, The City of Conversation, in re: LCT presents the world premiere of The City of Conversation (2 of 2)

Friday  23 May 2014 / Hour 1, Block C: Brendan Greeley, Bloomberg Businessweek, in re:  CAN NIKE BEAT ADIDAS AT SOCCER? Nike has been steadily eating at Adidas's once overwhelming lead in soccer for twenty years. While Nike is the largest sportswear company in the world, and Germany-based Adidas the second-largest, their soccer revenues are now very close. Together they account for about 70 percent of the global market for soccer. Bloomberg Businessweek examines how the 2014 World Cup in four weeks will determine whether Adidas' forty-year strategy of being the marquee sponsor of the event is still worth it, or if Nike’s slow and steady build-up of sponsored teams and players, and its unparalleled excellence at advertising and event promotion, will take it over the top to become the world's biggest soccer brand.  full story here ; video here: 

Friday  23 May 2014 / Hour 1, Block D: Clyde Haberman, NYT, Retro Report, in re:  "How DNA Changed the World of Forensics" film’s accompanying essay. Report ; Essay

Hour Two

Friday  23 May 2014 / Hour 2, Block A:  Michael Vlahos, Naval War College, in re: Putin gives mixed message on Ukraine as key vote ...  Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia would respect the will of the Ukrainian people when the country votes in the presidential ..

New clashes erupted in eastern Ukraine as the divided country prepared for presidential elections this weekend, raising the question of whether pro-Russian forces sought to disrupt the vote in a move that the United States and its European allies say would trigger tougher sanctions on Moscow.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that his government would respect the will of the Ukrainian people in Sunday's vote, but added Russia would closely monitor events. In a speech to an international economic forum in Saint Petersburg, Putin also warned of a "dangerous civil war" under way in Ukraine following what he called a "state coup" carried out "with support of the West, the United States" that ousted the country's pro-Russian leader earlier this year.

Friday  23 May 2014 / Hour 2, Block B: Esme Deprez, Bloomberg Businessweek, in re: Why starving artists still -- and more than ever -- prefer to starve in New York.  

Friday  23 May 2014 / Hour 2, Block C: Joe Pappolardo, Popular Mechanics, in Russia at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, in re: (1 of 2) Thousands of businessmen, policymakers, and economic experts will descend upon Russia's northern capital on May 22-24 for the 18th annual investment forum. Fewer foreigners will attend this year, as CEOs have bowed to political pressure to cancel. The theme of this year’s St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) is, “Sustaining Confidence in a World Undergoing Transformation,” and will focus on pursuing macroeconomic stability globally.

“Russia is willing to develop relations with all of its partners across a range of areas, based on genuine equality and respect for each other's interests,” Russian President Putin said in a letter addressing the participants. The Forum will kick off Thursday with the “Global CEO Summit” a panel of Russian and foreign economic and finance experts that will focus on international trade, investment, infrastructure, and financial regulation.

Big names in energy, finance, banking, retail, pharmaceuticals, and construction will be present.

Royal Dutch Shell’s Ben van Beurden, Total SA’s Christophe de Margerie, Statoil’s Helge Lund, E.ON Russia’s Maksim Shirokov, The Boston Consulting Group’s Hans-Paul Burkner, Deloitte’s David Owen, Deutsche Bank’s Pavel Teplukhin, Metro AG’s Olaf Koch, Glencore Xstrata’s Ivan Glasenberg, and Caterpillar’s Donald James Umpleby III all plan to be in St. Petersburg for the Russian Davos.  Bob Dudley, CEO of BP, will attend, but will not appear at the “Global CEO Summit” as previously scheduled, according to the newly updated program. On May 15 his name still appeared in the Global CEO Summit plan.  BP owns 19.75 percent of Russia’s state-owned Rosneft oil company. Previously Dudley told shareholders he remains positive about doing business with Russia.

. . . ‘Unprecedented’ pressure on American CEOs  Many US companies were pressured not to attend over the divisive issue of Ukraine. The pressure, according to Russian officials, is “unprecedented”.  The push on business heads to cancel their Forum plans came after the US imposed sanctions against Russsia, which blacklists politicians and businessmen from accessing any foreign assets. Russia understands why the US has chosen to ask delegates to skip the event in political solidarity.  "This is an attempt of the American government to influence the economy by its own convictions,” Prime Minister Medvedev told Bloomberg TV on Tuesday.   [more]

How Badly Can Russia Put the Squeeze on NASA?  Russian ministers threaten to stop cooperating with NASA on the space station and stop selling Russian-built rocket engines to the United States. The Obama Administration wants to play tough with the Russian government over its invasion of Crimea by imposing sanctions targeting the assets of key Russian officials. But Russia has struck back by squeezing the place where it has great leverage over the United States—the space program. 
Following his earlier suggestion that NASA astronauts use a trampoline to reach the International Space Station, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, one of the officials targeted by U.S. sanctions, upped the ante this week. He announced via his English-language Twitter feed that the Russian space agency has no plans to continue cooperating with NASA on the ISS after its current obligation expires in 2020. He also said Russia would stop shipments of its RD-180 rocket engines, and as we've noted before, the U.S. relies on these engines for military space launches. 
Some of this may be simple posturing. For one thing, NASA is only in the beginning stages of trying to talk its international partners into extending the life of the space station to 2024. "The Russians, frankly, they're not getting as much scientific return out of the station," says Jeffrey Hoffman, former NASA astronaut and current MIT professor, "and whether this is something that . . ."

Friday  23 May 2014 / Hour 2, Block D: Joe Pappolardo, Popular Mechanics, in Russia at St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, in re: (2 of 2)  . . .  Jeffrey Hoffman, former NASA astronaut and current MIT professor, "and whether this is something that they might have done anyway, or they're using this as a way of putting pressure on NASA, I don't really know." 
Still, the new threats could pack a punch if Russia follows through. Russia could put pressure on both manned and unmanned American spaceflight. 
On the manned spaceflight front, NASA is now completely reliant on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft and rockets to get its astronauts to the International Space Station. That's been the situation since the space shuttle fleet retired in 2011. Russia now flies American astronauts for a cost of about $62.7 million per seat through 2015. NASA announced last month that it had agreed to purchase six more Soyuz seats through 2016 at $70.7 million each. 
If Russia refuses to fly American astronauts, then there's not much the U.S. can do about it. NASA has been working according to Congressional mandate on a new vehicle, the Space Launch System, which is over budget and behind schedule. Although the new vehicle's first flight is set for 2017, it is not expected to actually carry crew until 2021—a year after the space station is currently scheduled to shut down. Commercial spaceflight providers such as SpaceX and Sierra Nevada may soon be able to fly humans into orbit, but they're not ready to do so yet. SpaceX is the closest, and it has delivered only cargo to the ISS. 
Hoffman says he thinks it's unlikely that the Russians would renege on the existing agreements to fly U.S. astronauts. In the meantime, he says he hopes current events "will encourage Congress to fully fund NASA's commercial crew project."  On the unmanned front, United Launch Alliance (ULA), the near-monopoly created by Boeing and Lockheed Martin for launching satellites for the Pentagon, depends on the Russian-built RD-180 to power the first stage of its Atlas V satellite launcher.  "This has been a long-standing issue," Hoffman says. "When Lockheed started operating the Atlas V with the Russian engines, the original idea was that . . ." [more]

Hour Three

Friday  23 May 2014 / Hour 3, Block A: Julia Turkewitz, NYT, in re:  How the police failed non-English speakers by not using translators for them.

Friday  23 May 2014 / Hour 3, Block B: Mona Charen, NRO EDUCATION, in re: Making College Affordable  Don’t forgive loans; lower tuition prices.

Friday  23 May 2014 / Hour 3, Block C:  Richard A Epstein, Hoover Institution, Chicago Law, in re:  In my first encounter with progressive thought in college and law school in the 1960s, I thought that the progressive agenda was unpersuasive, both for its cavalier disregard of specific constitutional texts and for its uncritical embrace of large government. I fancied myself a libertarian who insisted that the sole function of government was the control of force and fraud. Over years, my position evolved toward classical liberalism, which regards it as proper for government also to supply public goods like courts and infrastructure, to regulate monopoly, to tax to raise general revenues, and to use its eminent domain power to acquire specific assets needed for public use . . . [more] (1 of 2)

Friday  23 May 2014 / Hour 3, Block D: Richard A Epstein, Hoover Institution, Chicago Law, in re: encounter with progressive thought  (2 of 2)

Hour Four

Friday  23 May 2014 / Hour 4, Block A: Daniel Henninger, WSJ WONDER LAND, in re: #BokoHaram Doesn't Sing

Friday  23 May 2014 / Hour 4, Block B:  Seb Gorka, FDD, Natl Defense University, in re:  Recent announcements by the Kremlin of a withdrawal of Russian forces from along the Ukrainian border are part of a misinformation campaign in preparation for the next phase of subversive operations in Eastern Europe.

As the [large media have] reported, President Vladimir Putin has ordered the thousands of Russian troops and military fighting vehicles arrayed along the Russian-Ukrainian border to return to their bases. What has been reported far less is that this is the third time the former KGB Lieutenant Colonel has made such a statement and that in each previous instance the announcement led to no drawdown of forces. Despite this fact, Western leaders have already responded by assuring the Kremlin -- which used force earlier this year to annex the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine -- that the West would not provoke Moscow by stationing troops in Central European NATO states or deploy nuclear weapons onto their territory.

As a result the Kremlin has achieved exactly what it wanted to without making any concessions to either America, NATO, or the aggrieved party, Ukraine. During the Soviet era such techniques were termed dezinformatsia (disinformation) and maskirova (military deception) and part of larger strategy known as Reflexive Control, all terms that LTC Putin would have been meticulously drilled in by his trainers in the KGB.  Reflexive control, which is detailed in a fascinating report from the Latvian Defense Ministry published after the crisis began, and also discussed in a US Army monograph, exploits the enemy's strategic culture against themselves. Having studied the West incessantly for more than half a century, the Russian military and intelligence establishment knows what we want to hear and uses this against us.  Brussels and Washington want to hear about Russia's "deescalation" of the crisis. The Kremlin obliges. In the meantime preparations are made for the next phase of operations. Given that Ukraine is just days away from holding a general election and that Moldova -- long eyed with avarice by Moscow -- is on the cusp of signing an agreement of association with the EU (just as Ukraine was about to before the Kremlin took action), the next deployment of balaclava-clad special forces troops is imminent. More of Ukraine with be threatened, as will the Trandniester area of Moldova.

The essence of strategy is to have a clear idea of what you are fighting for and to know the enemy better than he knows himself. If you know these two things you can leverage the enemy's weaknesses and exploit surprise in order to achieve what the master strategist Sun Tsu called the ultimate victory: wining without having to fight.  Vladimir Putin clearly has read Sun Tsu's The Art of War. How many have done so in NATOHQ or the National Security Staff is another question entirely.

Sebastian Gorka PhD has recently been appointed the Major General Horner Chair of Military Theory at the Marine Corps University and is the editor of national security affairs for Breitbart.com.

Friday  23 May 2014 / Hour 4, Block C:   Eric Trager, Washington Institute, in re: The Muslim Brotherhood Thinks It's Winning Again   The dangerous delusions that . . .  [more]

Friday  23 May 2014 / Hour 4, Block D: Gregory Copley, Defense and Foreign Affairs, in re:  Nigeria's Boko Haram 'targets village vigilantes'  Militants in Nigeria have raided three villages and killed those they accused of being anti-Boko Haram vigilantes, residents have told the BBC.

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