The John Batchelor Show

Friday 20 September 2019

Air Date: 
September 20, 2019

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Hour One
Friday 20 September 2019/ Hour 1, Block A: Dan Henninger, WSJ, in re:
Friday 20 September 2019/ Hour 1, Block B: Jeff Bliss, Pacific Watch, in re:
Friday 20 September 2019/ Hour 1, Block C: Catherine Semcer of the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), in re: Trophy animal-hunting in Africa (1 of 2)
Friday 20 September 2019/ Hour 1, Block D: Catherine Semcer of the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), in re: Trophy animal-hunting in Africa (2 of 2)
 
Hour Two
Friday 20 September 2019/ Hour 2, Block A:  Michael Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, in re: The New American Civil War: Strength of the Blue Millennarians, 1 of 2
Friday 20 September 2019/ Hour 2, Block B:  Michael Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, in re: The New American Civil War: Strength of the Blue Millennarians, 2 of 2
Friday 20 September 2019/ Hour 2, Block C:  Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack,com, in re:   Capitol Hill:  the 2024 mission to the Moon – is there money from Congress requested by the Trump Administration to go to the Moon by 2024?  Unlikely, as the Democratically-controlled House released a draft resolution that doesn't include a dime for it. 
       House Science Space and Technology Committee: a lot of skepticism of SLS Gateway. Even the NASA official ’splained that the intended landing may not be achieved. The hope for manned space in the US is private space.
       Who manually drilled a hole in the Russian spacecraft, the orbital module of SpaceX, then patched it up? Dmitri Rogozin now knows and announced that he won't tell anyone.
       Roscosmos:  Russia was supposed to split ISS modules work 50/50 – Russians have not; are bankrupt; have an endlessly-delayed module (since 2013) – this time, with contamination in fuel tanks.  In a little while, ISS will be decommissioned. 
       SpaceX on a buying binge: Boca Chica is too physically close to the rocket launches and therefore in danger. Starhopper.  SpaceX has offered 3X the value of the hundred-odd homes, but that won't be enough for homeowners to buy new homes.  ‘
Friday 20 September 2019/ Hour 2, Block D: Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack,com, in re:  Fifty years ago, Moon landing.  Now, we’re all going to die in 11-1/2 year according to Democratic politicians. . . . None of the old predictions has been right. Temperatures and water levels have been more or less static for twenty years. Greenland’s glaciers are not shrinking – have been recovering for about five years. The science is not “settled” – science is never settled.
       Vikram, India’s first attempt to land on the Moon, but lost contact near the surface. 
       Bouncing boulders on Comet 67P.
       Io, moon of Jupiter, has volcanoes that erupt; one is scheduled to erupt soon.  Snowstorm on Saturn, Enceledus.  Eclipse on Saturn.
       The fire that debilitated China’s launches for the next two years: Chinese regularly steal initial designs then upgrade them.  It’s possible that someone fed them inaccurate information: they may have stolen designs that were purposely intended not to work.
 
Hour Three
Friday 20 September 2019/ Hour 3, Block A:  Gregory R Copley, Defense and Foreign Affairs, in re: How Long Can South Africa Survive as a Cohesive State?
       Insecure borders.  Could break up into constituent parts.  Few South Africans are aware of how the state was formed: there were many small countries there; as Bantu started to move south and Europeans move in to the Cape.  The Swazis (Zulu) (Eswatini - land of Zulus) asked the British to protect them.  In fact, Brits administered Swaziland from the Cape, leased parts to the Portuguese (Mozambique), took others, and then simply left, without solving any of the structural problem they had created. South Africa now contains huge portions of Swazi territory and parts of other countries the Brits arrogated to their control in the Cape Province.
      Swaziland actually contains all the gold and diamond fields, and much of the good agricultural land, Meanwhile, South Africa is breaking down along ethnic lines; at the same time, the white population is under threat, but is fairly well established having been there since the Seventeenth Century.
       What used to be Zululand now is KwaZulu Natal.  Is moderately independent. 
       The three main regions might be
n  KwaZulu Natal (Bantu)
n  Khoisan (Bushmen); the king declared independence of Western Cape in 2018, sent a msg tot h national government, hoisted its flag, and announced that it had seceded. It's been the most successful area since Nelson.
n  The rump of South Africa – everything else.
Friday 20 September 2019/ Hour 3, Block B:  Gregory R Copley, Defense and Foreign Affairs, in re: How Long Can South Africa Survive as a Cohesive State?The plunder under Pres Zuma: estimates that money transferred from the government could have amounted to $100 billion under his second term.
       Pres Cyril Ramaphosa, worth from one half a billion dollars to a billion at the start, continues his deeds.
       The wealth of the country derives primarily from agriculture and mines. Current legislation: expropriation without compensation. Obviously, this deters foreign direct investment.  ANC xenophobia against whites and Coloreds – persons who've been there for generations, esp from India; and other Africans.  As evil as Apartheid was, that system kept the nation prosperous. Now, even prosperity is highly threatened.
       The African Union, based in Addis Ababa, has been unable to resist the domination of the ANC, which is still the darling of Western elites.
       The Obama Adm did the ANC’s bidding and damaged Swaziland.
Friday 20 September 2019/ Hour 3, Block C: Jim McTague, long of Barron’s Washington, now author; in re: The economy: housing starts are up.  Where’s the recession? “It was aspirational, in order to weaken president Trump.”  Trump used the Fed as an annex of the Department of Defense.  I theorize that if Iran forces the US to engage militarily, that might affect the market . . . Gasoline prices haven't reacted at all because there’s so much oil in the world.   The OECD says global growth will be slowest since 2009; but the US will do better than other by grace of the tax cut and the roll-back of red tape cannot be overestimated.
Friday 20 September 2019/ Hour 3, Block D:  Dana Wheeler, Plymouth Rock Technologies, in re:   Plymouth Rock Technologies (OTC in New York: PLRTF). In response to the shoe bomber: we make a shoe scanner, a simple, low-power, harmless, scanner that images the bottom of your shoes. Instantly detects if there’s been any alteration; we can see plastics, metals.  It's either green or red; marks here the contraband or explosive is.  The Myriad: a drone, lightweight, a transport vehicle to carry sensors to detect explosives, weapons, suicide bombers – from above, looking down on unstructured crowds. Con ops = concepts of operations. Dual use application: civil and military applications, and it also penetrates layers of paint, of skin, to see corrosion on pipelines or bridges.  AI at Grand Central Terminal! 
 
Hour Four
Friday 20 September 2019/ Hour 4, Block A: Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives, by Dean Buonomano  1 of 2
Friday 20 September 2019/ Hour 4, Block B: Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives, by Dean Buonomano  2 of 2
Friday 20 September 2019/ Hour 4, Block C:  Larry C. Johnson is a former analyst at the CIA; is co-owner and CEO of BERG Associates, LLC (Business Exposure Reduction Group), in re:
Friday 20 September 2019/ Hour 4, Block D:  Larry C. Johnson is a former analyst at the CIA; is co-owner and CEO of BERG Associates, LLC (Business Exposure Reduction Group), in re:
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