Wednesday 15 March 2017
Photo, left: Warm and happy relationship of Shinzo Abe and Xi Jinping
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Gordon Chang, Forbes.com & Daily Beast.
Hour One
Wednesday 15 March 2017 /Hour 1, Block A: Cleo Paskal, visiting Trudeau Fellow, University of Montreal, and associate Fellow, Chatham House, in re: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/14/indian-stocks-hit-record-high-rupee-rallies-on-modi-state-election-win.html ; http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/11/asia/uttar-pradesh-elections/
Wednesday 15 March 2017 /Hour 1, Block B: Andrew Collier, managing director of Orient Capital Research in Hong Kong, in re: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-parliament-economy-idUSKBN16M0B7?il=0 ; http://www.scmp.com/news/china/economy/article/2078643/china-posts-strong-industrial-output-figures-economy-gathers
Wednesday 15 March 2017 /Hour 1, Block C: Richard A Epstein, Hoover Institution, Chicago Law, NYU Law, in re: It is hard to believe that less than a week has passed since Donald Trump made his presidential address to the joint houses of Congress. The success or failure of his administration will depend largely on the policies it adopts—and his speech is a good window into his administration’s plans. Trump articulated pro-market views domestically, but deeply flawed protectionist views internationally. It’s possible that genuine economic growth will result from the former. But it is equally plausible that implementing his protectionist trade policies will lead to economic disaster. How he resolves this tension may well determine whether he succeeds or fails as president… (1 of 2) http://www.hoover.org/research/trump-vs-free-trade
Wednesday 15 March 2017 /Hour 1, Block D: Richard A Epstein, Hoover Institution, Chicago Law, NYU Law (2 of 2)
Hour Two
Wednesday 15 March 2017 /Hour 2, Block A: Bob Collins, 37-year veteran advisor to the Department of Defense and author of the just-released Pyongyang Republic: North Korea's Capital of Human Rights Denial, in re: The likely shoo-in, Moon Jae-in, to replace Pres Pak: closer ties with North Korea, removal of THAAD, closer relations with China.
http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-south-korea-election-20170314-story.html
Wednesday 15 March 2017 /Hour 2, Block B: Stephen Yates, chairman of the Idaho Republican Party, CEO of D.C. International Advisory, and former advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, in re: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-asia-tillerson-idUSKBN16L2SZ
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/03/14/north-korea-threat-lingers-at-start-tillersons-first-asia-trip.html
Wednesday 15 March 2017 /Hour 2, Block C: Claudia Rosett, author, in re: What to Do About the U.N. (Encounter Broadsides) The United Nations is failing abysmally, and dangerously, in its mission. Founded in 1945 as a vehicle to avert war and promote human dignity and freedom, the U.N. has instead become a self-serving and ever-expanding haven of privilege for the world’s worst regimes, rife with bigotry, fraud, abuse, and corruption, both financial and moral. Yet the American foreign policy community treats it as taboo to speak seriously about sidelining, supplanting, or leaving the U.N. The usual argument is that the U.N. may be imperfect, but it’s all we’ve got.
In this Broadside, Claudia Rosett explains why the U.N.’s basic design means it cannot really be reformed and why it is becoming ever more urgent to seek alternatives. Rosett argues that it’s time to break the taboo, and to bring fully into America’s foreign policy debates the question of how to dispense with the U.N. altogether. (1 of 2) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XKX8RP6/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1489518564&sr=8-2&keywords=claudia+rosett
Wednesday 15 March 2017 /Hour 2, Block D: Claudia Rosett, author, in re: What to Do About the U.N. (2 of 2)
Hour Three
Wednesday 15 March 2017 /Hour 3, Block A: Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBack,com, in re: Capitalism Goes to Mars. With David Livingston, SpaceShow.com
5. Expand Competition The striking competition in the private launch market, spurred by SpaceX’s innovation and lower costs, illuminates a path for invigorating the aerospace industry, both for the private sector and the government.
SpaceX entered the aerospace market with one goal: lower the price so that it could compete aggressively for market share. That effort has succeeded. In response, the older, already established companies have become more competitive, or have indicated by non-action that they will fall by the wayside. The result is a revitalized launch industry. A tertiary effect has been the creation of additional new launch companies, able to gain investment capital and enter the market, thus completing the economic cycle and increasing the competition and further lowering prices.
NASA encouraged this process with its second round of commercial cargo contracts, awarding contracts to three companies – SpaceX, Orbital ATK, and Sierra Nevada – but left itself the freedom to decide later how many cargo launches from each company the agency would buy. If any company has problems or delays, NASA simply will send its business to the other two. The result: a heightened sense of competition, encouraging faster schedules and lower costs.
Recommendation: Expand competition. Assuming the government accepts the above recommendations, it then should award the work to multiple companies in order to increase competition as well as provide redundancy to the government. The history of those cargo contracts showed that it can actually cost the government less to award contracts for the same service to more than one company, as long as those contracts are streamlined, fixed-price, and leave the design to the private company….” (1 of 2) https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/capitalism-in-space
Wednesday 15 March 2017 /Hour 3, Block B: Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBack,com, in re: Capitalism Goes to Mars. With David Livingston, SpaceShow.com (2 of 2)
Wednesday 15 March 2017 /Hour 3, Block C: Larry M Johnson, NoQuarter, in re: Russian spies are the new new. @LarryMJohnson “…Wow. Those Russians are busy creatures. But then I took a look at the actual indictment. Let me share a key passage with you and you tell me what is wrong?
DMITRY ALEKSANDROVICH DOKUCHAEV, also known as “Patrick Nagel,” was a Russian national and resident. DOKUCHAEV was an FSB officer assigned to Second Division of FSB Center 18, also known as the FSB Center for Information Security. He was an associate of FSB officer IGOR SUSHCHIN; another, supervisory FSB officer known to the Grand Jury (“FSB Officer 3”), who was the senior FSB official assigned to Center 18; and other FSB officers known and DOKUCHAEV’s photograph is attached as Exhibit A.
What does the word, “was” mean? Last I checked that means something in the past, not the present. Looks to me like Dokuchaev and Sustain left the FSB and got into business with some computer hackers. If you read thru the indictment you will discover they also targeted high level Russian officials (see page 14 of the indictment):
DOKUCHAEV and SUSHCHIN were directing BARATOV to access individual accounts provided by Google, the Russian Webmail Provider, and other webmail providers. For example, the conspirators sought unauthorized access to the accounts of:
• An assistant to the Deputy Chairman of the Russian Federation;
• A managing director, a former sales officer, and a researcher, all of whom worked for a major Russian cyber security firm;
• An officer of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs assigned to that Ministry’s “Department K,” its “Bureau of Special Technical Projects,” which investigates cyber, high technology, and child pornography crimes;
• A physical training expert working in the Ministry of Sports of a Russian republic; and
• A Russian official who was both Chairman of a Russian Federation Council committee and a senior official at a major Russian transport
Perhaps these guys really were active FSB officers. But the language in this suggests that they were engaged in their own capitalist, albeit nefarious, scheme. Why portray this as something carried out at the direction of the Russian Government?...” https://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/79647/anti-russian-disinformation/
Wednesday 15 March 2017 /Hour 3, Block D: Vivek Wadhwa, Carnegie Mellon University, in re:
Hour Four
Wednesday 15 March 2017 /Hour 4, Block A: Sol Stern, The Daily Beast, in re: From Ramparts Magazine to the Ramparts for Trump. Sol Stern, @TheDailyBeast
David and I first met as graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley in 1962. We were both radical New York Jews whose parents were part of the old, pro-Soviet left who’d found our separate ways to the Berkeley campus in part because of its reputation as a seedbed of student protest. With our friend Robert Scheer, a third New York Jewish radical and Berkeley grad student, we founded one of the first New Left student magazines. We called it Root and Branch (the name taken from the writings of the 18th century English revolutionary thinker Gerrard Winstanly) and put the first issue together with a stapler and a mimeograph machine in the home of one of our editors.
Our little magazine survived for all of three issues, but it briefly captured the youthful idealism and naiveté of the early ’60s New Left. In the first issue, I wrote an article critical of George F. Kennan’s Cold War “containment” policy and David wrote a precocious philosophical essay about the theme of alienation in the works of Martin Buber and Karl Marx. Scheer wrote about San Francisco’s beat poets. This was not the street fighting New Left that would soon emerge on the campuses.
In our first editorial statement we promised to steer an ideological course rejecting both free world capitalism and repressive Soviet communism. We were well schooled in the influential anti-totalitarian works produced by the great writers of the 1930s and ’40s who had tragically been lured to Stalinism by the false dream of world revolution. Among our favorite texts were The Captive Mind, by the dissident Czech philosopher Czeslaw Milosz and The God That Failed, containing essays about the corruptions of communism by writers such as Arthur Koestler, Richard Wright, and Stephen Spender. We pledged that our new generation of radical intellectuals would never succumb to the totalitarian temptation. (1 of 2) http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/02/25/the-captive-mind-of-trump-true-believer-david-horowitz.html
Wednesday 15 March 2017 /Hour 4, Block B: Sol Stern, The Daily Beast, in re: From Ramparts Magazine to the Ramparts for Trump. Sol Stern, @TheDailyBeast (2 of 2)
Wednesday 15 March 2017 /Hour 4, Block C: Gregory Copley, StrategicStudies director; GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs; & author, UnCivilization, in re: (1 of 2)
Wednesday 15 March 2017 /Hour 4, Block D: Gregory Copley, StrategicStudies director; GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs; & author, UnCivilization, in re: (2 of 2)