Wednesday 10 December 2014
Photo, above: Ilham Tohti, Uyghur professor who advocated modest ethnic liberty and normal, world-standard human rights. Has been maltreated by Beijing and imprisoned for life for his statements. See Hour 1, Block B: Elliot Sperling, Indiana University.
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-hosts: Gordon Chang of Forbes.com; David Livingston of The Space Show; & Patrick Chovanec, chief strategist at Silvercrest Asset Management.
Hour One
Wednesday 10 December 2014 / Hour 1, Block A: Charles Burton, professor at Brock University, in re: Xi Jinping was described by Pres Obama as "dangerous" in a Washington conference: "The quick consolidation of power [in China] could be dangerous." Beijing says, "We'll study the remark." The arrests of Zhou Yongkang and the deputy head of the Central Military Commission suggest a major attack by Mr Xi on the true basis of stability. He's put himself at the helm of agencies and arrogating power similarly to Stalin and Mao. He's increased h=the stakes for anyone who wants to win or lose. A Politburo member who, e.g., controls telecommunications, will feel potentially threatened by the crackdown - bribes, star secrets and adultery charges - could be leveled against most party big shots. Looks a lot like the early Cultural Revolution (in which many tens of millions of Chinese people died. this mans that any criticism will have to be suppressed swiftly and harshly; potential for a repressive and violent regime. Ergo, the entire govt will remain paralyzed for half a year. As for Mr Obama's calling Xi "dangerous" – pejorative and quite irregular for diplospeak – that'll occasion a reaction. The whole regime is now so anti-American that it may not be worse than what's occurring already.
Wednesday 10 December 2014 / Hour 1, Block B: Elliot Sperling, Indiana University, in re: Tibetans aren’t a minority – they’re a conquered state. The Uyghurs are a minority. A Tibetan served six years in jail, was released, died several days after release. Clearly he'd been mistreated and tortured. Had been arrested in 2008 after going to India for education; moved to Lhasa and worked with NGOs. He was so badly tortured that he was about to die, so they let him out in order not to have him die in custody. This story has been played out hundreds, maybe thousands, of times in Tibet, yet Tibetans continue to demonstrate and protest. Most familiar mode is self-immolation, usu including support of HH the Dalai Lama, calling for freedom.
Picture of Ilham Tohti: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/21/chinese-court-rejects-ilham...
Ilham Tohti was accused of fomenting unrest in the far western region of Xinjiang during a closed-door trial in September in the regional capital of Urumqi. His supporters have portrayed him as a moderate intent on mediating conflicts between Xinjiang’s native Uighurs and China’s ethnic Han majority.
The Xinjiang high court on rejected the scholar’s appeal against the conviction, and the verdict was delivered on Friday at a hearing held inside the Urumqi detention centre, in violation of normal judicial procedure, his two lawyers said. The hearing was set at short notice on a date in which both lawyers were unable to attend, Liu Xiayuan and Li Fangping said.
Seven of the Uyghur teacher Ilham Tohti's students have been arrested and tortured – a very Stalinist air: they were in jail in order to provide evidence against Ilham, who then was sentenced to life in jail. Se "Chinese Characters" book, incl a student who wandered into Xinjiang and found Ilham to be brilliant. He never advocate separatism, merely a few more civil rights. Began UyghurOnline website, covered a broad and deep range of philosophy – was a threat to Beijing, who reacted violently again. The threat is to the ideological legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party, what it means to be Chinese. Similar to the transition fro Russian Empire to USSG+R; here from Manchu to CCP. "Chinese" has become an ethno-national term. The Uyghurs and Tibetans and Mongols have their own histories, do not at all want to be "Chinese."
Wednesday 10 December 2014 / Hour 1, Block C: Hotel Mars, episde n. Laurence A Price, Deputy Orion Program Manager, Lockheed Martin, in re: Orion is America's spacecraft to take for people to deep space. Launched successfully the other day – much data telemetered down. The big issue is his largest heat shield ever made and 84% speed of a lunar return. Avionics performed flawlessly; tremendous video. Launch 705 AM on 5 December 2014. Designed to go for months into deep space. In stage 2 we separated farings, then penetrated the Van Allen radiation belts on the way up and the way down. Cis-lunar space: to neutral gravity points beyond the Moon. We’re 30% larger than Apollo. Coming in at 20,000 mph. Eleven critical events: Deploy chutes, then open them up to the size of a US football field. Air Force and Navy lent us an unmanned vehicle from Edwards AFB, cold image the vehicle's reentry and telemetered it to us in control room Also, Blackhawk helos picked us up at 60K feet at 10K mph. Twelve hundred channels of data. [many] cameras. We were 1,500 ponds lighter and so could land on water. We process 400K computations/second. "Fault detection, isolation and recovery " lets us monitor all systems, and via diagnostics bring the system up again. We had a million lines of software code. perfect!
Wednesday 10 December 2014 / Hour 1, Block D: Rick Fisher, Intl Strategy and Assessment Center, in re: JIN class boomers. China will aim for 20 nuclear attack subs; if the US bases 30 in the Pacific, we can park only ten in situ; bad for us, both to pursue boomers and to protect our Pacific coast. Our amiable had to the democracy in Taiwan and help out SE as Asian allies cause much fear in Beijing. Chinese road-mobile ICBMs hard to find in their huge tunnel system, However, it was Mao who wanted the first SSBM just to match the US; now they're near the third generation. "Do they sit around and have hate sessions?" Yes – news articles n how nuclear tipped missile can destroy multiple US cities – and named them. Boomers are still a bit too noisy; next gen may have Russian attribute of quietude.
Hour Two
Wednesday 10 December 2014 / Hour 2, Block A: Fraser Howie, co-author of Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China's Extraordinary Rise, in re: China's imports dropped 6.7% - Imports were suppose to show domestic consumption in China, and it ain't working out. We'll find oil-stocking recently, suggesting that the numbers are even worse. Is this the new normal? Mmm – not a surprise to anyone following all the numbers the Chinese economy, I do think that consumption can remain modestly resilient IF they embrace the adjustment they need to, They have he capacity run trade deficits; but they resist the adjustment kicking and screaming. In China deflation, falling imports, problems in consumer sector. China can make a lot of internal changes, but as for other countries, they think, "What’s in it for me?" That is, China is the Germany of the world: want to export but don’t do their fair share of importing. Growth models are predicated on producing more than they can consume. Ann Stevenson Yang; Through the 3d quarter, retailers held 600 days of inventory, gross receipts down hugely, sales fell. Frankly, not even stable consumption. Lots of overcapacity in housing, infrastructure, mrfg. Property as collateral underwrites the bulk of credit in the system; as housing goes down, affects everything. Can’t we just print money forever? Sure, and it'll be worth zilch. Is there a cure to cheap money? Without real reform, it’ll go into property, malinvestments and the stock market. (oops- that's where it’s already going.") http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/08/us-china-economy-trade-idUSKBN0JM04U20141208
Wednesday 10 December 2014 / Hour 2, Block B: Andrew Collier, Managing Director of Orient Capital Research in Hong Kong, in re: recent findings on local government financing vehicles in China. The Asia realists's club. The US economy is an oasis in the Solar System compared to the rest of the planet LGFC – local govt financing vehicle; in 2009 China said, We’ve got to spend a ton of money, Spent $400 bil via dummy companies (state-owned); spent money as though it was water, with lots and lots of debt. Nanching and Kunming, there's variety between provinces In the south, roads and bridges to 9nohere). In Nanching, a lot of phony projects, incl an ecotourism site that was a field of grass. John Anderson, former World Bank economist, thinks a trillion dollars was stolen from the govt and is sitting in personal bank accounts. Potentially the GDP is less than thought. Look at cement production and actual bldg of houses: massive discrepancy. Yesterday in he Hump Hostel in Nanching (a pretty hostel) was the only job a girl from the provinces could find. In 2011, two years after the $400 bil stimulus, they tried to throttle back credit - the in 20012 credit booms again, now via state firms's buying a lot of property. There are 10,000 LGFCs and 40,000 local govts depending on credit. Oops. Note $5 trillion local debt in the US – but that's mitigated by the fact that most of it is in bonds.
Wednesday 10 December 2014 / Hour 2, Block C: Aaron Back, Heard on the Street, WSJ, in re: The bare minimum is deposit insurance. Thereafter, they can start to test the limits of allowing bank failures. China Lays Down Deposit on Banking Reform. In protecting bank depositors, China is setting itself up for failure--in a good way. China is close to announcing a deposit insurance plan for the country's banks, which could be in place as soon as January, according to The Wall Street Journal. It would be the biggest signal yet that Beijing is serious about reforming the financial system.
Under the status quo, all Chinese banks enjoy an implicit state guarantee. In a country where even the dodgiest investments are routinely bailed out, it has been inconceivable that any bank could be allowed to fail. Perversely, the lack of deposit insurance has made it even less likely that a bank could go under, as this would leave its depositors in the lurch, threatening social stability.
If deposits were insured, the risk equation would become more rational for both lenders and savers, at least in theory. Banks, conscious of the possibility they may be allowed to fail, will have an incentive to be more discerning where they loan out funds. For Chinese savers, deposit insurance establishes a bright line between ordinary bank deposits that are protected, and risky forms of savings such as trust and wealth management products, which wouldn't be covered. For these risk-clarifying effects to hit home, Beijing will have to start allowing more genuine failures. China might first permit . . .
Wednesday 10 December 2014 / Hour 2, Block D: Patrick Chovanec, chief strategist at Silvercrest Asset Management; Gordon Chang, Forbes.com; in re: Economies of India (Modi aiming toward federalism) and Philippines – where the Manila airport urgently needs more runways; it’s currently "a disaster." You can’t unlock a nation's economic potential without investing in needed matters. Different approaches to the same problem. China has a nightmare overhang and doesn’t take the solution that's offered – it can't politically endure a recession. Running chronic surpluses, such as China, may look good; whereas deficits sooner or later bump flat into reality, can’t borrow more. In Q3 we saw $100 billion drain of investments out of China. The rebalancing will happen – whether through current account/trade, which would be good, or else by capital flight. Growing global awareness of China's situation.
Hour Three
Wednesday 10 December 2014 / Hour 3, Block A: Monica Crowley, Fox, & Washington Times Online opinion editor; in re: Jeb Bush tops Florida 2016 poll, only one to beat Hillary Clinton | WashingtonExaminer.com The latest proof that Jeb Bush is Hillary Clinton's top foe in the 2016 presidential fight arrived Wednesday in a new Florida poll that . . .
Wednesday 10 December 2014 / Hour 3, Block B: Monica Crowley, Fox, & Washington Times Online opinion editor; in re: The taming of Ted Cruz What will Cruz do?
Wednesday 10 December 2014 / Hour 3, Block C: Dr. David H Grinspoon, Astrobiology chair, Library of Congress; astrobiology curator, Denver Museum of Nature & Science, in re: Mars' Gale Crater once held massive lake, NASA says Gale Crater, the landing site of the Mars Curiosity rover, has long been hypothesized to have . . .
Wednesday 10 December 2014 / Hour 3, Block D: Jed Babbin, Washington Times, in re: JED BABBIN: Dianne Feinstein's tortured torture report - Washington Times The report yesterday by Feinstein's Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is political hackery aimed at preventing effective terrorist interrogations. It's wrong on the law in a very big way.
Hour Four
Wednesday 10 December 2014 / Hour 4, Block A: Matt Kaminski, WSJ,
http://online.wsj.com/articles/matthew-kaminski-the-revival-of-the-gop-internationalists-1417123383
Wednesday 10 December 2014 / Hour 4, Block B: Robert M Cutler, Carleton University, in re: Russia confirms decision to abandon South Stream The Commission has warned Bulgaria not to build South Stream, as it considers the project . . . . Putin Killing Pipeline Leaves East Europe Scrambling for Gas
Wednesday 10 December 2014 / Hour 4, Block C: Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: Inside the January 2015 Issue | Sky & Telescope Challenges; astronomy equipment. Keck Observatory | W. M. Keck Observatory Their instruments are the twin Keck telescopes—the world's largest optical and infrared telescopes. Each telescope stands eight stories tall, weighs 300 tons and . . . (1 of 2)
Wednesday 10 December 2014 / Hour 4, Block D: Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: Inside the January 2015 Issue | Sky & Telescope Challenges; astronomy equipment. Keck Observatory | W. M. Keck Observatory Their instruments are the twin Keck telescopes—the world's largest optical and infrared telescopes. Each telescope stands eight stories tall, weighs 300 tons and . . . (2 of 2)