Photo, left: 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Gordon Chang, Forbes.com.
 
Hour One
Wednesday   5 August  2015  / Hour 1, Block A: Anne Stevenson-Yang, co-founder of J Capital Research in Beijing and author of China Alone: The Emergence from, and Potential Return to Isolation, in re:  research notes on the Chinese economy. Chinese economic growth is always at 7%, yes?  . ..  We've passed a pivot point: the trend is critical. Using debt to fuel your growth is like using a slingshot – short-term debt to fund long-tern projects.  Asset values get bloated; lending on collateral gets bigger and bigger – looks great on the way up, then a turning point, when you short down. You wind up having to borrow 110% to keep up, and eventually you can’t issue money quickly enough to keep up.  It topples.  Australia, Canada, Brazil, will be hit the worst.   The statistics nonetheless are audited by intl professionals, so the govt fibbing eventually gets revealed. In the last month, confidence has now broken; the narrative is not so easily accepted any more.
 Wednesday   5 August  2015  / Hour 1, Block B: Alan Tonelson, independent economic policy analyst who blogs at RealityChek and tweets at @AlanTonelson, in re:  "Alan – how did you manage to get the TPP [deep-sixed?]"  "I'm reluctant to take a victory lap yet – the longer the round-voting takes, the deeper into the US election we get, and TPP is still very unpopular with the American public. There are so many problems with it I don't know where to begin, but start with breaking down trade barriers in countries where that's really difficult – the barriers they maintain vs US goods and svcs are nonconventional – not mainly tariffs or taxes or quotas, but ht e most important barriers are "non-tariff barriers": a wide array of unwritten laws and regs maintained by powerful foreign bureaucracies in Malaysia, Japan Vietnam , et al. These are not Western-style, rule-of-law countries so you can’t even identify them, let alone [end ] them.  Japan, New Zealand, Mexico, Australia. All these individual trade disputes barely matter in the bigger picture; when dealing with nontariff barriers, can’t monitor or enforce in practical reality. We can get anything we want on paper, but it's all unenforceable.   GC: After the 2016 elections, we can start again.
Wednesday   5 August  2015  / Hour 1, Block C: Ty Rogoway, FoxtrotAlpha, in re:  MI28s: . . .  a beautiful display; at apogee, the [Russian] helicopter lost a tail rotor and [other stuff] . . . goes into a death spiral, no way out for the guys, and it hit hard. One of the crewmen walked away.  One of the most heavily-armored helos ever built, can absorb tremendous G-force one time.  One of the evilest helos ever made; begun as a foil to the US Army's Apache; took decades of dvpt.  They have about a hundred.  Usually, the upper cabin is pilot, lower is weapons-system officer -  looking for T72 tanks, fire Hellfire missiles, return to refuel. Today, it can be used for counterinsurgency, can survey the battlefield, can take out armor. The view into Russia on these is muddy; they’re flying more, leading inevitably leading to more crashes, but they've had seven crashes in six months, probably a systemic problem; Russia is having growing pains.  It's a cocktail of issues. Russian Defense Minister said he's continuing over Europe, Asia, et al.   Remember The Doors?  Jim Morrison's music used in back of a Ukrainian vid using a highway to navigate – not at 400 feet or 1500 feet, but there at 20 feet. Mashup of Doors and Snoop Dog.  Looks like a video game. Looks like driving west on Route 80.
Wednesday   5 August  2015  / Hour 1, Block D:  Devin Nunes, CA-22, in re: Lajes in the Canaries: . . . Continental Europe is three to six times more expensive for the DoD, and then staff will have to rent housing just outside London [most expensive in the world]. The Pentagon and Obama Adm have basically been caught by the Congress, so have begun to change their story.
Hour Two
Wednesday   5 August  2015  / Hour 2, Block A: Stephen Yates, chairman of the Idaho Republican Party, CEO of D.C. International Advisory, and former advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, in re:  the foreign policy issues to be discussed in the Republican debate in Cleveland (where he is).  Asian topics will surface at some point in the debates; some of the candidates have spoke n a bit on China, and less on TPP and trade. From Rubio to Trump to Walker all call China a challenge, competitor, need recommitment to US alliances and concern about cyberattacks, Chinese mil dvpt and the like/.  Some governors's foreign-policy credentials can be questioned  - recall Bush and Reagan -  but what voters want to know is what kind of negotiator will he be? Does he stand by his word?  Some of our governors at least have experience in trade negotiations.  . . .  I've  heard speeches from Rubio, Walker , and others, on these matters.  We also need to learn more what their advisors think.  In June: "When was the last time we saw our side beating China in a trade deal?" – D Trump.  There's a lot of anxiety in the country – jobs and he economy; ad one country seen as taking advantage of the US is China. A sense that the president has gone around the world and accommodated rising challenges, leaving people worried. "Things are rolling back on us. What Chjna usu does is have its proxies in the US demand the US "be more mature." Doesn’t work too well here.
Wednesday   5 August  2015  / Hour 2, Block B: Jenny Wang, co-founder of Outreach for Taiwan (http://outreachfortaiwan.org/about/), in re: Turmoil in anticipation of the Taiwanese elections. Last Friday, students occupied govt offices, demanding that the govt change textbooks that have been rewritten to be China-centric, as in, saying that Taiwan is part of China- which it emphatically is not On Thursday, a student leader committed suicide in protest against this depredation.  Last year's Sunflower Movement held to the same principles.  "Mainland is an aggressor, threatens Taiwan and Hong Kong routinely," etc.,  is part of adult conversation. Taiwanese-American students . . .  The upcoming vote is a clash between visions, which is why the textbook revisions are critical – looking at history and seeing the future.  These textbook changes are major. As for the elections: yes this is a crossroads. I think if Dr Tsai  [Tsai Ing-wen, DPP] is elected, it means that Taiwanese people are awakened and alert.
OutreachforTaiwan.org    and   facebook.com/outreach for Taiwan    and outreachforTaiwan@gmail.com
http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-taiwan-students-protest-20150731-story.html ; http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/taiwan-student-protest/2028348.html
Wednesday   5 August  2015  / Hour 2, Block C: 
ONE Charles Pellegrino, author and explorer, in re: August sixth is the seventieth commemoration of Hiroshima Day.   Seventieth year to the minute; an astounding rendition of Ave Maria.  Very little animosity against the US in Japan; the survivors all seem to have in common  that they've devoted their lives to the service of others – omoiyari principle; trying to create ripple effects of human kindness.  Keeps the young than their years.  Enola Gay dropped at 7:___ AM; in "War time" – 7:15 PM in New York was the moment of the Hiroshima bombing. Casualties:  from 100,00 to 140,000.
TWO  David Feith, WSJ, in re:  What Pres Obama may or may not say to Xi Jin-ping is puzzling, But China has built artificial islands in disputed territory or in someone else's ocean and claims the as Chinese territory with multi-miles surrounding zones.  If the US and its allies don't push back, China will continue expanding into waters that have been international waters ab initio. China challenges this by small, step-by-step moves.   Appear to intend to close the Luzon Straits if it builds [?] on Scarborough Shoal. At the very least, a Chinese mil base there would allow Chinese to operate more freely through the Luzon Straits
China’s Next Sea Fortress  A triangle of outposts in the South China Sea could give Beijing control over major shipping lanes and a military launchpad into the Pacific.   Subic Bay, the Philippines  To understand China’s bid to dominate the Western Pacific, and America’s role in answering it, there are few better vantage points than  . . .
Wednesday   5 August  2015  / Hour 2, Block D:  Chris Buckley, NYT, in re: Rohingya Women Flee Only to Be Sold into Marriage.  The young woman had been penned in a camp in the sweltering jungle of southern Thailand for two months when she was offered a deal. She fled Myanmar this year hoping to reach safety in Malaysia, after anti-Muslim rioters burned her village. But her family could not afford the $1,260 the smugglers demanded to complete the journey.
A stranger was willing to pay for her freedom, the smugglers said, if she agreed to marry him. “I was allowed to call my parents, and they said that if I was willing, it would be better for all the family,” said the woman, Shahidah Yunus, 22. “I understood what I must do.” She joined the hundreds of young Rohingya women from Myanmar sold into marriage to Rohingya men already in Malaysia as the price of escaping violence and poverty in their homeland. 
While some Rohingya women agree to such marriages to escape imprisonment or worse at the hands of smugglers, others are tricked or coerced. Some are only teenagers. [more]
Hour Three
Wednesday   5 August  2015  / Hour 3, Block A: Monica Crowley, Fox, & Washington Times Online opinion editor; in re: Clinton Burning   Biden Teasing.  Trump Soaring   The Republicans on Parade: I think we can deal with Bush, Walker, Rubio, Cruz, Kasich, Christie, Paul as the leading flavors. (1 of 4)
Wednesday   5 August  2015  / Hour 3, Block B: Monica Crowley, Fox, & Washington Times Online opinion editor; in re: Jeb Bush as the Republican Adlai Stevenson.   . . .  The GOP has driven the Republican brand into the mud.  (2 of 4)
Wednesday   5 August  2015  / Hour 3, Block C: Monica Crowley, Fox, & Washington Times Online opinion editor; in re: The Democratic Left, broken-hearted by Hillary, turn their angry stares at Walker  . . .   (3 of 4)
Wednesday   5 August  2015  / Hour 3, Block D: Monica Crowley, Fox, & Washington Times Online opinion editor; in re:  (4 of 4)
Hour Four
Wednesday   5 August  2015  / Hour 4, Block A:  John Bolton*, AEI, in re: Congress and Republican presidential candidates should insist that these broader, potentially deadly implications of the Vienna deal be subjected to strict scrutiny and wide-ranging debate. These threats may not be written into the agreement, but they are nonetheless inherent in it.  article online.   /  • John R. Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Wednesday   5 August  2015  / Hour 4, Block B:  Paul Vigna, WSJ, in re: http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/08/05/bitbeat-smart-contracts-land-on-wall-street/
Wednesday   5 August  2015  / Hour 4, Block C: Josh Rogin , BloombergView, in re: Iran Already Sanitizing Nuclear Site, Intel Warns  The U.S. intelligence community has informed Congress of evidence that Iran was sanitizing its suspected nuclear military site at Parchin, in broad daylight, days after agreeing to a nuclear deal with world powers.
Wednesday   5 August  2015  / Hour 4, Block D:   Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: TMT protesters gather outside IAU conference in Hawaii Two quotes from the article I think clarify what is going on here. First, one of the protester signs illustrated very clearly the level of ignorance and foolishness of the protesters; “We don’t want your big toy telescopes on our sacred mountain.”
Then there was this significant point noted in the article:  The demonstrators are a diverse group but are generally led by men and women in their twenties who were educated in modern Hawaiian-language immersion schools. Decades ago, children were beaten for speaking the language; today it is a source of cultural pride and a touchstone for Hawaii’s burgeoning sovereignty movement.
In other words, for the past few decades the public schools in Hawaii have been focused on teaching young Hawaiians to hate American culture and whites [sic]. Instead, race and ethnicity come before concepts of freedom and individual rights. How nice. (If you don’t believe me spend just a little time studying what these native peoples courses teach. I’ve seen it here in Arizona as well as in New York. They really do teach anti-Americanism and a hatred of whites.)  However, considering that Hawaii has been controlled exclusively by leftwing Democrats for decades, no one should be surprised.