The John Batchelor Show

Wednesday 4 March 2020

Air Date: 
March 04, 2020

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-hosts: Sebastian Gorka, Fox; and Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents
 
Hour One
Wednesday 4 March 2020  / Hour 1, Block A: Arthur Waldron, Lauder Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania, in re:   Beijing's handling of the coronavirus epidemic.  “China is trying to trace the origins.” For decades, the US has ben trying to be friends with China, has poured cash, training, education, information, almost every level of amity, in to China; and now China, desperate to exculpate itself of the disgrace of filthy markets and a broken healthcare system, blames the US for the Covid-19 virus.
Check the Wuhan virology lab, which for four years has been doing exactly this research, as published repeatedly in Nature, et al. A cookbook for how to make a supervirus. Eventually, someone who was there will tell us. We hear that the woman in charge swears the lab didn't do it; a staffer says he’ll go public and say she’s lying.
American leadership says: in a crisis like this, the leader goes to the front lines.  No Chinese top guy has gone anywhere near Wuhan. They’re hiding in their homes. Meanwhile, their researchers and scholars are top-notch, as good as any such group in the world.
They need doctors and medical eqpt, of which they're short.  Leaders apparently don't know the difference between a virus and a bacterium.  Beijing leadership, feeling extremely sensitive, turns and blames the Americans.
Wednesday 4 March 2020  / Hour 1, Block B: Brendan Carr, FCC commissioner, in re:  Virtualization of 5G networks. Background: https://www.sdxcentral.com/5g/definitions/5g-virtualization/.  Chinese surveillance of the planet. Huawei is trying to wire the world. How can we stop them?   Virtualization.
China no longer as a rising power; it’s the stumblebum power.
5G will be vastly faster than your current phone, is the economic platform of the future.  Huawei, Ericsson, and Nokia are the current 5G providers.   None is American. How’d we lose the lead?
Huawei is the digital equivalent of the Belt and Road. It’s a threat to our collective security: it’ll collect banking, telehealth and connected-car information, among a thousand other varieties.  We propose to forbid Huawei’s entry to the US; to remove it where it is, and _________.   If you have an Ericsson box, you can't just transfer smoothly to Nokia; but we’re proposing open-source networks.  By this, Americans can win. 
Huawei is not secure. A virtualized network made by trusted vendors can be secure.  Huawei, ZTE. and other firms that are the PLA, will not be part of that.   Huawei will send engineers to rural America to wire everything up—and we have no idea what they’ll be doing.  It’ll all be connected to your refrigerator and your locked front door, and can drive your car over a cliff.
We’ve already seen traffic going from LA to Washington, DC, and it was re-routed via Guangzhou.
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"Network virtualization is a method of combining the available resources in a network to consolidate multiple physical networks, divide a network into segments or create software networks between virtual machines (VMs). IT managers who use network virtualization can administer their environment as a single, software-based network. Network virtualization is intended to optimize network speed, reliability, flexibility, scalability and security. It is said to be especially useful in networks that experience sudden, large and unforeseen surges in usage."
Wednesday 4 March 2020  / Hour 1, Block C: Claudia Rosett, Independent Women’s  Forum, in re: Taiwan is getting cyberblitzed – and Beijing says it’s from the CIA!
How to do disinformation: don't go small, go very big!
Global Times: The conspiracy theory that blames the US for coronavirus. “Japanese TV reports speculation in China that Covid-19 may have originated in the US.” Imputes it to a military game last October [although the Wuhan virus emerged at least four months earlier]. Masterful, and dangerous.
By this article, Japan, the US, and the US military are all smeared.  This is just one instance where the regime has pointed to the US. 
“The bigger the lie, the better.”—1930s Germany.
Xi Jinping has declared “a people’s war on the virus.” What they do best is deflect anger to a military or economic “enemy.”
A most respected Chinese epidemiologist was intimidated into saying that “We don't really know if this virus originated in China.”
What to do? Focus on the lie, call them out. So far, we’ve been focussing on the suffering of the people and been sending resources to help – although China spends so much on its military it easily could apply those funds to healthcare.  The WHO is in China’s pocket, and it renamed the virus “Covid-19” instead of what it is:  Wuhan virus.
China won’t allow foreign virologists in; one person from the CDC was permitted to enter in a WHO group that was rushed around the country and did zero actual research.
Wednesday 4 March 2020  / Hour 1, Block D: Michael Yon, The Truth behind Historical Fictions, just published in Japan in Japanese; in re: Behind the News in China, 1930s book, on how Chinese constantly lift an shift to blame others.  An insecure one-party state—economically, technically.  The CCP of December 2019 is already dead in that form as the economy has collapsed and their prestige is collapsed. The Jan 11 Taiwan election: people standing up to the CCP.
In Hong Kong much self-quarantining; impossible to buy masks; schools postponed till mid-April at earliest (more likely June), and I’d strongly guess that the Olympics will be cancelled. All this has created even more anti-Mainland sentiment. Carrie Lam has forced the borders between HK and Mainland to stay open – extremely dangerous and enraging Hong Kong citizens.
 
Hour Two
Wednesday 4 March 2020  / Hour 2, Block A:  Charles Burton, senior Fellow at the Centre for Advancing Canada's Interests Abroad at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, in re:   For the coronavirus, China blames others for the epidemic, and esp blames the United States. The Great Power Victory over the Epidemic, to be published in five languages: under the leadership of Xi Jinping, the people have averred that China’s mode of dealing with the virus has been the world’s most effective and other nations should follow China.  Proposing that the virus may not have originated in China.  Because China has saved he world, it should develop an alternative to the WHO to coordinate a global response to disease; an across-the-board effort to replace all intl institutions with Chinese-controlled organizations.
 Canada still has no travel restrictions on incoming travellers from China. People in Canada had their WeChat postings shut down for suggesting that China somehow was responsible for the virus. In South Korea, with the same policy the country is crippled by the epidemic.  Expect infection rates such as we’ve seen in Iran, Italy, and affected nations.
In China, nobody trusts anything they see in newspapers or on TV; assume that the situation is much worse than the govt depicts it, so are too afraid to go outside much.
Huang Huning, Politburo publicity chief.    Huang Kunming (Chinese: 黄坤明; born November 1956) is a Chinese politician, currently serving as the head of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China and a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China.
Wednesday 4 March 2020  / Hour 2, Block B:  Jonathan Bass, CEO of PTM Images, in re:   Supply chain disruptions caused by the coronavirus epidemic.
Wednesday 4 March 2020  / Hour 2, Block C:  Joseph Humire, exec dir, Secure Free Society; and Senator Maria Fernanda Cabal of Colombia; in re: Pres Duque visited Washington, where Pres Trump announced:  “Colombia will have to resume spraying to destroy coca crops”; Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine.
 A hundred thousand hectares were destroyed last year, yet they’re still struggling.
Venezuela:  Pres Trump looking for more options to pressure Venezuela.
Senadora  Cabal: The news came out that the following day the meeting between presidents would occur.
“Socialism del sieglo XXI” — stupid expression of Twenty-first Century socialism.
Today we have 2.5 million illegal Venezuelan migrants; much of Colombia is poor and this is very hard for us.
Today we face “strategic litigation,” where minority groups try to manipulate the law.  The Constitutional Court has forbidden the destruction of coca crops on the grounds that some fisherman saw heir livelihood as being threatened. Meanwhile, in our constitution, it's mandatory for the president to protect the safety of all citizens.
Colombia is a complex country, and the worst is our long border with Venezuela, from where cocaine is distributed worldwide, incl Europe, Africa, and Asia.
The Theology of Liberation:  Jesus was a guerrillero.   ELN: around 6,000 ELN guerrilleros. The FARC became a political entity without ever stopping its illicit activities in drugs, money-laundering, at al.  The ELN has a presence in at least 15 states in Venezuela. Involved inter al.  gold mining. 
Wednesday 4 March 2020  / Hour 2, Block D: Joseph Humire, exec dir, Secure Free Society; and Senator Maria Fernanda Cabal of Colombia; in re: Two million refugees from Venezuela and Maduro are in Colombia.  Venezuela was recently the richest Latin American country, now is reduced to paupers under Maduro. Today Colombia is receiving communist fifth-columnists entering to destroy Colombia; and in contact with Hezbollah.
So far, Duque’s policy is open borders; so the nation could be utterly swamped within two years with, say, five million refugees. That could perhaps be the end of democracy n Colombia. Neighbors, Peru and Brazil, accepted refugees till they no longer dared. First to close borders w Venezuela was Panama; then Peru. Many had no identification; went to Chile, which was comparatively rich, but that, too, was stopped.  Trying to share info with Interpol.
Proxy elements in Colombia and Ecuador: a Bolivarian _____.   We US citizens tend to see nations as sovereign, whereas Bolivarians do not, but see themselves as a network.  The Bolivarians are pushing northward, will be heading to the US. At which point the US will probably panic.   The region is being destabilized by gangsters.
 
Hour Three
Wednesday 4 March 2020  / Hour 3, Block A: Bill McGurn, WSJ editorial board & Main Street column; in re:  The typical pro-Israel Democrat is getting older and more isolated in the Party.  The Squad, Rep Omar, and the like, are all [heading a different direction].
Bernie Sanders is feverishly anti-Israel. He lived on a kibbutz as a youth, when then-recent Soviet expats were much in control of the country.  As Israel has moved from kibbutzim to free and open health care, he seems to have moved toward Castro’s Cuba. He’s now at odds with the average Israeli’s concerns about security.
In a crunch, would Joe Biden be any help at all to Israel?  Biden keeps invoking Obama, who aggressively disdained Israel and Netanyahu. 
When asked, not one Dem candidate said s/he’d have been willing to order the demise of Soleimani —who had the blood of many Americans on his hands.
Wednesday 4 March 2020  / Hour 3, Block B:  Gunnar Gregory, founder and CEO of Vancery, in re:  “Vancery’s members connect anytime, anywhere, and on their own terms. We give our community the tools they need to have a productive conversation, and we facilitate opportunities for knowledge and discovery. Vancery is where the world’s business leaders come to learn from one another.”  This provides a global communication medium for, inter al., significant communications on the virus.   [A sort of crowd-solving medium; also a vast and sophisticated global information device.]   . . .  Eighty per cent of the people so far with the virus experience very mild symptoms. If you’re healthy, this is not a crisis. If you’re senior and/or have a compromised immune system, you can be in trouble.
Wednesday 4 March 2020  / Hour 3, Block C: Niall Ferguson, Hoover Institution, in re:  Capitalism, socialism, over the last two centuries.  Where did they come from, and how does Joseph Schumpeter inform the current debate? Schumpeter, a Harvard professor of Austrian origins, wrote, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy.  A. Can socialism survive?  B. Can it work?  A. No.  B.  Yes it can work. Neither of these pleased Professor Schumpeter.
(See: Niall Ferguson: “Socialism and Free-Market Capitalism: the Human Prosperity Project,”  at Defining Ideas on the Hoover Institution website.)
“Capitalism” was invented in 1833 as a product of the Industrial Revolution, and was disdained. “Socialism” was first used in 1822 and considered to be meritorious.  Both concepts trace back to industrial Britain. Thomas Carlyle, Scottish conservative philosopher and writer: “The industrial economy comes to the cash nexus.”  That is, everything in the capitalist economy and industrial world was essentially becoming boiled down to and based on the relationships between people in the market economy —not those of the feudal order, for example, but all related to prices and wages; relationships thus reduced to “the cash nexus.”  Marx stole this when he started writing and theorizing; also stole from David Ricardo, who argued there was a kind of  iron law of wages that would drive wages down to a subsistence level. Marx was a great burglar of ideas.
. . .  Hypertrophic nationalism.  Marx and Engels did not expect that wages actually went up. . . .  Capitalism needs workers also to be consumers; won't work otherwise.  . . .  
Wednesday 4 March 2020  / Hour 3, Block D:   Niall Ferguson, Hoover Institution, in re:   . . .  The rise of the Soviet state—which not only doesn't do what communism promised, but makes people into slaves and at the end of the Twentieth Century simply fails.   . . . Productivity ceased; pathologies of corruption, Soviet industry was value-subtracting!   Seemed to be all over till quite recently when we see a revival of socialism as an ideal: young voters find socialism more attractive than capitalism.  It's not that they've read a word of Marx, much less Lenin. Instead, self-styled democratic socialists in the US and Europe say that it means the European welfare state. They think it's Sweden not one like Venezuela or North Korea or any of those prior to 1989 that actually practiced socialism. A trap. They’ve never been to Scandinavia, either, as the major economies there are definitively capitalist.  . . .  Sweden does the rule of law better than the US, and that’s critical for  . . .
See: Niall Ferguson: “Socialism and Free-Market Capitalism: the Human Prosperity Project,” at Defining Ideas on the Hoover Institution website.
Hour Four
Wednesday 4 March 2020  / Hour 4, Block A: Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe, by George Dyson
Wednesday 4 March 2020  / Hour 4, Block B: Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe, by George Dyson
Wednesday 4 March 2020  / Hour 4, Block C: Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe, by George Dyson
Wednesday 4 March 2020  / Hour 4, Block D: Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe, by George Dyson
 
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