The John Batchelor Show

Wednesday 26 September 2012

Air Date: 
September 26, 2012

 

Photo, above:  Cosmic radiation background: from the earliest universe, called "the flash of the Big Bang"  at 3 degrees above absolute zero. 

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Wednesday 905P Eastern Time (605P Pacific Time): John Bolton, AEI, in re: Susan Rice on six Sunday-morning talk shows suggests that she was sent by the White House. She almost surely had only talking points, no independent info.  Where was the Secretary of State?  Rice was inappropriate as a spokesman.  Benghazi: both the ideology and underlying politics of this administration are seen to  be in failure.  Senkakus: The US position has been de facto for a long time that those islands are part of Japanese territory. We should not welcome strategic ambiguity lest it increase the risk of clash between China and Japan.  Leon Panetta went to China in the height of the crisis, but said merely: "We need more mil-to-mil ties to avoid misunderstandings."  Astounding. There are no misunderstanding at present, china's aggressive position is pellucid, ASEAN nations are appalled. Eastern predators meet Middle Eastern predators. Iranian shore-to-ship missile test – updated Chinese Silkworm; US doesn’t hold either China or Russia responsible for selling arms to Iran. Obama Administration refuses to challenge the sales – lack of any policy with respect to China's and his belief that he can yet negotiate his way into Iran becoming peaceful. Delusional.  Chinese Russians, Turks, Venezuelans, Iraqis – all helping Iran elude the sanctions. Not worried abt US policy because we have none.

Wednesday 920P Eastern Time (620P Pacific Time): Phelim Kine, Human Rights Watch, Asia director, in re:  vegetables thrown at US amb in Beijing over Diaoytai/Senkakus.  Bo Xilai. On streets, pix of Mao Tse-tung. The traditional social compact the CCP had with the people is starting to fray.  In Diaoyutai protests, govt directs a lot of large unhappiness toward Japan; it may soon be redirected to all foreigners. Orchestrated & useful by govt, but  can get a little out of control – pp shouts out other objections.  Mao's picture: he was a mass murderer of the Twentieth Century – probably responsible for more deaths than any other human in history -  but today, in nostalgia, a huge percentage of the younger population have no idea of the deaths he inflicted so see Mao as a simpler stronger, more predictable time.  During revelations of the gulag in USSR . . .  taxi driver kept a photo of Stalin because he represented order. Mao: order, but also power.   Xi Jinping is the un-Mao, is about to become the most powerful person in China without the support of anyone in China except the Communist Party.  Red Guards, anti-Rightist movement, TienAnMen, Cultural Revolution,  murder squads still cannot be discussed. Chinese people are denied their history. Danger.

Wednesday 935P Eastern Time (635P Pacific Time): Dr. David M. Livingston, The Space Show; Dr Robert Anderson, geologist and research supervisor, JPL,  in re: plans for Curiosity and Martian geology. First want he first scoop: a drill and a scoop on board; for the last fifty days we've been in effect kicking the tires, now we're going to [have a closer look].    We have SAM, looking for organics in parts per billion. Geology of the central mound. No Martian plate tectonics; why is the mound there?  We have 400-plus scientists each with a point of view.   "Sniper in the woods" – we had ninety days on a mission and did as much as we could as fast as possible, Here, a complex rover the size of a Mini-Cooper; we're moving slowly to be sure everything is working. When the first pix came down, thought it looked like the Mojave Desert. Haven’t yet been able to get in to the sample in the X-ray diffractor. Curiosity is also a meteorologist: nothing new or unexpected yet, although the bottom of the crater is a bit warmer than we thought.   Need high-res wind data to ace the rover the right direction.  Curiosity can read methane – SAM has a vent open that we can open and then bring in air. Shd be able to check in a few weeks. Ventofact – a rock that's [been worn down by wind?], basaltic in composition on Mars. We have no way to date rocks off the Earth. Rocks maybe less than a million years old. When we get to the mound, we'll be able to speak of old layers – Hesperian, maybe even Noachian [?] periods.  Did Curiosity touch down in an alluvial fan? Seems to be yes. Mojave: Barn-swell topography. This rover is doing exactly what we want it to do. Kind of fun. 

Liaoning, PLA Navy first aircraft carrier.

Wednesday 950P Eastern Time (650P Pacific Time): Toshi Yoshihara, John A. van Beuren Chairman of Asia-Pacific Studies at the Naval War College, and author, Red Star over the Pacific;  in re: the Senkaku dispute.  China's is pushing Japan just enough to rile them up but not to have serious consequences. The view from Tokyo.  F35 knockoff, a second Stealth, 11 drone bases coming, and several air wings based on the new carrier – but otherwise, a peaceful rise of China.  We're seeing he fruits of a multi-year investment in China's military. Japan had better be worried: will not be able to keep up.  Japan laboring under an artificial defense budget of 1% of DP (informal rule); have redistributed forces, fortified along islands and updated submarine force Not sustainable over the long term.  China seems to be bldg a deepwater naval in order to present an imperial face. Has adopted a most protective view – Yellow, East China, and South China Seas are considered their own nautical preserve.  Not conform to intl law, but China holds to it. The US is the ultimate guarantor of freedom of navigation.  A shit in the Japanese political landscape in part a result of Chinese actins [aggression].The new ruling party had been trying to steer a middle line between China and the US, but realized not possible. Their past assumptions abt China and engagement efforts – benefit of the doubt to China – is vanishing. SE Asia starting to look at China in a very different light, almost creating a consensus among those who are quite concerned. China is creating a countervailing force in the region and giving Japan a chance to hold an esteemed role, is a potential natural leader in helping the US .  Aircraft carrier: need at least three to keep one at sea.  Liaoning is a training carrier. Even if it's not the equal of a Nimitz-size carrier, it nonetheless packs a punch. 

 

Wednesday 1005P Eastern  (705P Pacific Time): Alan Tonelson, Research Fellow at the U.S. Business & Industrial Council Educational Foundation, in re: China trade in both campaigns. Illegal subsidies on exports. Akron-Beacon Journal online.  Ohio has 18 electoral votes; each candidate could win based on Ohio. "It’s not enough for you to focus on how many jobs Romney did or did not send to china; rather than defend your own massive trade deficits and job and reductions that they generated. Romney said that on Day One he'll call China a currency manipulator – but needs to note that the US has offshored too many jobs.  The US govt has helped in the dvpt of many new technologies; but, absent factories and jobs in this country, all the good domestic steps will go for naught. Twenty years  of reckless expansion of trade with a host of countries not interested in buying American.  All the president can point to now is drops in the bucket, purely reactive, no prospect of regaining US jobs lost to China's predatory trade practices.  I’d ban US govt procurement of anything from China. Would proclaim currency manipulation; would phase in he tariffs on all imports from China.

twitter address:  twitter.com/AlanTonelson

 

Wednesday 1020P Eastern (720P Pacific Time): Naomi Rovnick, journalist in Taichung, Taiwan, now at Quartz, a new business and politics digital-only news service by Atlantic Media; in re: US mfrg and trade and he conflict with China.  Mfrs have gone to China because wage rates were very low and there were no envtl regs, so foreigners could pollute all day.   Taiwan, which has a legitimate court system and is a capitalist economy, has hit a wall in China. Riots at Foxconn, wages rising in China, Taiwanese companies saying that they’ve had enough.  Thinking of moving to Hanoi, at $95/mo; whereas the cheapest place in China is $140/mo.   China steals intellectual property, we’re slaves to the whims of the Party bosses – thinking of moving to SE Asia, even Brazil. If the export sector becomes hollowed out, what will China replace it with?  China simply isn’t producing enough highly-educated people – university only for the rich or madly clever; can’t compete with the world's high-tech industries because Chinese education discourages creativity.  In Guangzhou, facing losing huge numbers of factories, are begging with the Taiwanese to stay.  The China Price: R.I.P.   Boston Consulting Group predicts that it'll all have left in five years. There's no real domestic economy: barter, and State-owned and  -funded operations. Inflation-producing.

Wednesday 1035P Eastern  (735P Pacific Time): Abheek Bhattacharya, WSJ, in re: Indian economy and censorship. Manmohan Singh's reforms: probably closer to being a result of anxiety and despair – have their back against the wall; growth a 5%; compared to China's 10% last decade, feels like a recession Singh has always had reformist impulses, but only now has a cabinet to back him up. M Singh is not a Deng Xioping at all, is weak. The new Indian finance minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram ("PC"), is a reformer; everyone knows the economy is in a shambles and want him running finance.  PM Singh The weirdest political opposition in Indian history: the BJP was laisser-faire; now, out of power, claim not to like international investment, claim WalMart will destroy mom-and-pop stores. The 600-mil–people electricity blackout: weighed on minds, but Congress Party is focused on growth numbers, fiscal deficit.  AS soon as the old Finance Minister, a socialist guy, left in June, Manmohan Singh began to reclaim his authority in this matter.  China's officials are extremely upset as they see India's workforce increasing to vastly more than China's in the near decades.  Worry what China might do if it grows panicked.  demography is on India's side, but demography is not destiny.  China had an enormous wave of youth and rode it; India is about to do the same.

India has revived hopes with a series of reforms a week ago, and we wrote about that on Monday. Much has happened since and more ought to in the coming days, since Manmohan Singh seems keen to leave some legacy before he retires.  Another big story this month is the flap over the 13-minute "Innocence of Muslims" video, which seems near-universally blamed for the violence in the Middle East. The calls to ban hate speech have hence hit fever-pitch in the West, but it's a good time to remember what India's experience has been like trying to restrict expression.  I've also written about a surprisingly positive story in India's electricity markets (yes, despite the blackouts), along with law and order in India, the end of anarchist politics with Anna Hazare, as well as continuing reform reversals in Indonesia. 

Wednesday 1050P Eastern (750P Pacific Time): Joseph Sternberg, Asia WSJ, in re: " . .  . Chinese boycotts could do some serious damage to Japanese [firms;] But time to panic about Beijing pulling the plug? Not exactly. It turns out China puts the 'co' in 'co-dependency'—a key topographical feature, as it were, of this economic battlefield."  Toyota dealership in China burning. Mainland turns its wrath about foreign affairs on manufacturing.  The fire intimidated people who work there; bad news for the people of China: self-defeating for China – Chinese employees on Chinese soil using Chinese components to make a product for Chinese consumers. Profits back to Japan and the intellectual property is Japanese [or was], but a great deal of the benefit redounds to China.  At least half the inputs from China. Mfrg sector contracting for eleven straight months, while China damages its positioning in global supply chains by becoming unreliable.

Protests of this scale don’t happen in China without approval and perhaps encouragement by Beijing officials.  Desperate leaders at the top of the Communist Party: Xi Jinping goes missing for weeks and propaganda ministry ramps up anti-Japanese sentiment.  Chinese mfrg at the low end becoming uncompetitive vs Vietnam, Bangladesh, and other places.   Toyota is taking a hit because it was selling successfully before the protests; Chinese consumers had already embraced Japanese products. How genuine is this sentiment?  We wouldn’t be seeing this if China's economy were growing at 10%.

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444180004578018001583385748.html

 

Staring Down the Paper Dragon

Asia can afford to worry (a little) less about economic reprisals from China.

By JOSEPH STERNBERG

China appears ever more willing to use its economic muscle to strategic ends. Japan is the most recent target, as tensions flare over a maritime territorial dispute. Customs processing has been delayed for some Japanese goods, and visas are somewhat less forthcoming. There are concerns about consumer boycotts, especially of Japanese cars. It's reasonable to view such economic aggression with concern. But for now, businesses can relax—a little.

The Japanese might be skeptical of that argument. China is now Japan's largest trading partner, destination for 24% of Japan's exports and home to $6.3 billion in Japanese investment as of 2011, according to Citi Research.

The relationship has evolved over time. A decade ago, Japanese companies' revenue from mainland subsidiaries was attributable in equal measure to sales on the mainland, exports from the China subsidiary back to Japan, and exports to third countries, research firm Capital Economics notes. But now, mainland sales have shot way up so that, in yen terms, they are three times as great as the value of Chinese subsidiaries' re-exports to Japan and six times as great as those subsidiaries' exports to third countries.

Numbers like those suggest that Chinese boycotts could do some serious damage to Japanese companies' bottom lines. Faced with anemic growth in the home market, those companies are ever more dependent on sales elsewhere in the world to provide repatriate-able cash for debt service, R&D and capital investment in Japan. Oh, and dividends, too—Japanese companies with operations in China paid a total of 498 billion yen ($6.4 billion) in dividends in 2010, economists at RBS note.

But time to panic about Beijing pulling the plug? Not exactly. It turns out China puts the "co" in "co-dependency"—a key topographical feature, as it were, of this economic battlefield.

As the China-Japan economic relationship has grown in scale over the past decade, it also has changed dramatically, according to RBS: Whereas Japanese firms used to ship inputs to China simply to exploit cheap manufacturing labor to produce goods for sale elsewhere, nowadays mainland subsidiaries of Japanese manufacturers buy two-thirds of their raw materials in China, and sell three-quarters of the goods they produce to China.

This raises the question of just how "Japanese" a Japanese factory or a Japanese retail outlet is anymore. The factories are staffed by Chinese employees who use Chinese inputs to make shirts, electronics and other products for Chinese consumers—at a more reliable quality standard than the indigenous competition.

Japanese manufacturers are thoroughly integrated into China's supply chains. Roughly one-third of Japan's sales in China are "wholesale trade," according to RBS. That broad category captures company-to-company sales involving components and the like. Another one-quarter are items such as chemicals, electrical machinery, information and communication electronics equipment, iron and steel, and the catch-all "other manufacturing industries."

Many of these goods are inputs or capital goods China needs for its development. This is especially true of high-tech machine parts and the like, which China simply can't manufacture on its own yet.

Oh, and although China remains an important market for Japan, it is hardly the only market. China ranks fourth in the league tables for sales by Japanese subsidiaries, in both manufactured and non-manufactured items. North America and Asia excluding China each account for nearly twice as much sales in yen terms, and Europe places third, according to Capital Economics.

A sustained dent in Japan's China business would be a problem for Japan. But it would be a problem for China, too. And Japan can probably afford a longer wait for China to come to its senses than some in Beijing might think.

Japan, of course, is the world's third-largest economy behind America and China, with a developed-world level of per-capita income and decades of industrialization under its belt. Surely that gives it an advantage in weathering Chinese hissy fits. But it's not the only country with certain advantages.

The Philippines became the object of China's ire this spring, when Manila responded forcefully to Chinese incursions on the Scarborough Shoal. Beijing blocked imports of Philippine bananas, and also discouraged Chinese tourists from visiting the archipelago. It seems like an uneven fight, given the relative sizes involved.

And yet, the Philippine economy grew at an annualized 5.9% in the most recent quarter, a figure which disappointed only due to weak agricultural production—not Chinese reprisals. Some industries have taken a hit from China's actions. But overall, the economy is thriving at the moment because a popular president is enacting a series of reforms that are spurring more foreign investment and domestic consumption. Gee, Beijing sure showed the Philippines.

Meanwhile, the Philippines sits atop significant reserves of the kind of natural resources Beijing craves. And Manila is increasingly eager to tap them. How long, then, could China really afford to ostracize the Philippines?

China can do a lot of damage, both to other economies and to its own, by venting its strategic spleen on foreign companies. But such weight-throwing is never cost-free. That's why mature great powers generally don't do it barring extenuating circumstances. China, which is not a great power in either a military or an economic sense, can ill afford this sort of petulance.

Mr. Sternberg edits the Business Asia column.

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Wednesday 1105P  Eastern (805PPacific Time): Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe by Roger Penrose (left); 1 of 4. Cosmic radiation background: from the earliest universe, called "the flash of the Big Bang"  at 3 degrees above absolute zero.  Nobel Prize twice: once for discovery, once for more details.  Comes from 300,000 years after the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago. Transformed cosmology from being a speculative pursuit to being a genuine science. Comes from all over he sky; uniformity of a (very low) temperature, but slight deviations which, in turn, contain a lot of information. Concentric circles . The collision of supermassive black holes – signals so huge that they can get through the Big Bang, the time before the beginning of this universe.  Second Law of Thermodynamics: randomness increases – the entropy of the universe is observed to increase.  Black holes represent by far the largest entropy in the universe; according to Beckenstein and Hawkins, the bigger the black hole, the more the entropy there is. In a massless universe, before the Higgs Boson, that describes the state of the Big Bang, and since then we’ve been ageing.  Except – there's a suggestion that it was high entropy but  gravity was very low entropy.

Wednesday 1120P Eastern (820P Pacific Time): Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe by Roger Penrose; 2 of 4. Cosmic constant (dark energy). Enormous black hole has abt 4 million times the mass of the Sun – but when the universe expands out, it gets colder than the black holes, at which time the black holes radiate away; after about a google of years, it disappears with a pop! – of the magnitude of an artillery shell.  Back holes swallow information. Thus one's notion of entropy changes: you have to redefine; hard idea to get across.  As long as there's massive material around, you still have a good notion of a clock, However, when the mass finally fades out, this is he un-Higgs moment. In the early universe, a mechanism that introduces mass (Higgs mechanism); I propose that at the very end of our aeon, there's an anti-Higgs mechanism. Never really violates the Second Law.  The crossover: end of our aeon going in to another aeon, involves dark energy and dark matter.  Dark matter is more like ordinary matter; it evaporates away eventually.

WMAP of the background radiation of the Big Bang.

Wednesday 1135P Eastern  (835P Pacific Time): Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe by Roger Penrose;  3 of 4. Max Planck - frequency/mass-/energy. The very precise clocks we have in Nature are because matter provide a precise clock.  When mass goes away, you have no notion of time or distance or momentum or energy. These important features of physics that get lost - but only a tiny proportion: the conformal structure. The null cone.  No distances or scales, but angles.  . . .  

Wednesday 1150P Eastern  (850P Pacific Time): Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe by Roger Penrose; 4 of 4

 

Wednesday/Thurs 1205A  Eastern (905 Pacific Time): John Bolton, AEI, in re: Susan Rice on six Sunday-morning talk shows suggests that she was sent by the White House. She almost surely had only talking points, no independent info.  Where was the Secretary of State?  Rice was inappropriate as a spokesman.  Benghazi: both the ideology and underlying politics of this administration are seen to  be in failure.  Senkakus: The US position has been de facto for a long time that those islands are part of Japanese territory. We should not welcome strategic ambiguity lest it increase the risk of clash between China and Japan.  Leon Panetta went to China in the height of the crisis, but said merely: "We need more mil-to-mil ties to avoid misunderstandings."  Astounding. There are no misunderstanding at present, china's aggressive position is pellucid, ASEAN nations are appalled. Eastern predators meet Middle Eastern predators. Iranian shore-to-ship missile test – updated Chinese Silkworm; US doesn’t hold either China or Russia responsible for selling arms to Iran. Obama Administration refuses to challenge the sales – lack of any policy with respect to China's and his belief that he can yet negotiate his way into Iran becoming peaceful. Delusional.  Chinese Russians, Turks, Venezuelans, Iraqis – all helping Iran elude the sanctions. Not worried abt US policy because we have none.

Wednesday/Thurs  1220A Eastern (920 Pacific Time): Naomi Rovnick, journalist in Taichung, Taiwan, now at Quartz, a new business and politics digital-only news service by Atlantic Media; in re: US mfrg and trade and he conflict with China.  Mfrs have gone to China because wage rates were very low and there were no envtl regs, so foreigners could pollute all day.   Taiwan, which has a legitimate court system and is a capitalist economy, has hit a wall in China. Riots at Foxconn, wages rising in China, Taiwanese companies saying that they’ve had enough.  Thinking of moving to Hanoi, at $95/mo; whereas the cheapest place in China is $140/mo.   China steals intellectual property, we’re slaves to the whims of the Party bosses – thinking of moving to SE Asia, even Brazil. If the export sector becomes hollowed out, what will China replace it with?  China simply isn’t producing enough highly-educated people – university only for the rich or madly clever; can’t compete with the world's high-tech industries because Chinese education discourages creativity.  In Guangzhou, facing losing huge numbers of factories, are begging with the Taiwanese to stay.  The China Price: R.I.P.   Boston Consulting Group predicts that it'll all have left in five years. There's no real domestic economy: barter, and State-owned and  -funded operations. Inflation-producing.

Wednesday/Thurs  1235A  Eastern (935P Pacific Time): Dr. David M. Livingston, The Space Show; Dr Robert Anderson, geologist and research supervisor, JPL,  in re: plans for Curiosity and Martian geology. First want he first scoop: a drill and a scoop on board; for the last fifty days we've been in effect kicking the tires, now we're going to [have a closer look].    We have SAM, looking for organics in parts per billion. Geology of the central mound. No Martian plate tectonics; why is the mound there?  We have 400-plus scientists each with a point of view.   "Sniper in the woods" – we had ninety days on a mission and did as much as we could as fast as possible, Here, a complex rover the size of a Mini-Cooper; we're moving slowly to be sure everything is working. When the first pix came down, thought it looked like the Mojave Desert. Haven’t yet been able to get in to the sample in the X-ray diffractor. Curiosity is also a meteorologist: nothing new or unexpected yet, although the bottom of the crater is a bit warmer than we thought.   Need high-res wind data to ace the rover the right direction.  Curiosity can read methane – SAM has a vent open that we can open and then bring in air. Shd be able to check in a few weeks. Ventofact – a rock that's [been worn down by wind?], basaltic in composition on Mars. We have no way to date rocks off the Earth. Rocks maybe less than a million years old. When we get to the mound, we'll be able to speak of old layers – Hesperian, maybe even Noachian [?] periods.  Did Curiosity touch down in an alluvial fan? Seems to be yes. Mojave: Barn-swell topography. This rover is doing exactly what we want it to do. Kind of fun.

Wednesday/Thurs  1250A  Eastern (950P Pacific Time): Exeunt. Aaron Klein, author and WABC radio, in re: rocket from Syria into Israel.

 

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Music (using New York City broadcast times)  

9:00 hour:    Crysis; Skyline.

10:00 hour: Crysis; Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

11:00 hour:  Prometheus.   

midnight hour:  Crysis; Skyline.