Screen shot from CCP TV on the day of: A world hero during the tragedy of Tian An Men
 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Thaddeus McCotter, WJR, the Great Voice of the Great Lakes
 
Hour One
Monday  4 June 2018 / Hour 1, Block A: Tom Joscelyn, Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies; & Senior Editor for FDD's Long War Journal; in re:  Unusual Taliban raid in Kabul, perhaps w Haqqani Network. But Khorasan (ISIS or ISIS-allied) group was quick to claim the attack, and that tends to be accurate; and soon thereafter they released photos that appeared to confirm. Meanwhile, the US mil was clueless about who did it.   Taliban attack imams of clerics opposed to either their theology or their political platform.   State Dept has just released a report on attacks on religious; in that respect, Afghanistan [is doing poorly].  The collection of Afgh scholars and clerics have just ruled that [the jihadist agenda is illegitimate and anti-Muslim]; immed thereafter they were attacked and many killed.  The US has thrown everything against ISIS and yet it continues and grown. Taliban challenges the Afgh govt across the board. Al Qaeda is deeply allied with Taliban.  See: LongWarJournal.com
Monday  4 June 2018 / Hour 1, Block B: Simon Constable,  in Scotland; writes for Barron’s, PJ Media, et al.; in re:  With excellent economic reports, why is Jeremy Corbyn lamenting income inequality; Gini Ratio runs from 0 to 1.  “It is often used as a gauge of economic inequality, measuring income . . . with 0 representing perfect equality and 1 representing perfect inequality.”]  Jobs are here for everyone who wants one. Brexit: a lot of complaining in London and blaming of Theresa May – so why is the economy so good?  Cassandras predicted that we’d all starve and wear sackcloth; but not. A club that punishes you for leaving is not a very nice club. People are attracted by the British [mode of operation].  Scottish Nationalists tend to be more left-wing than does the rest of the country, and want to stay in the EU. However, if you look at Italy and Spain today, it’s not clear that the EU will continue to exist in anything like its current form. Recall the PIIGS – Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Spain?  Same thing today except Ireland has left it and Italy joined.
Monday  4 June 2018 / Hour 1, Block C: Gordon G Chang, author, The Coming Collapse of China; in Hong Kong; in re: the memorial to the Tien An Men massacre of 29 years ago.   Then, tens of thousands gathered in the square to demand democracy; on the night of  3 June 1989, under Deng Xiao Ping, the army, the PLA, marched in and slaughtered between hundreds and thousands of citizens. Beijing still refuses to acknowledge. Because Deng wanted to prove to the people that the Communist Party was absolutely in control and would massacre to maintain that, later leaders were embarrassed by that stand, including the current leader-for-life, Xi Jinping.  Note that George H W Bush sent a message, apparently via Brent Scowcroft, that the CCP needn’t worry, as the US was still China’s friend.  Faugh! Why did the US choose to [elevate] China and North Korea?  History will judge that coldly. China has been clear all along that it intends to undermine democracy — China actually means this. It’s an existential struggle for the USA. 
ZTE: Pres Trump tweeted that it was unfortunate that all those Chinese people were losing jobs, so Trump took steps to protect ZTE.  Disturbing implications! The distressing lack of American political will proves to China that the US is weak.  . . . In this thing, no deal is a good deal. We should have no deal on ZTE.  We’re still buying the rope to hang ourselves.  Recall how the Brits and French dealt with the Third Reich.
Monday  4 June 2018 / Hour 1, Block D: Claudia Rosett, Foreign Policy Fellow in the Independent Women’s Forum; in re: Strange doings in North Korea – three national defense lieutenants to Kim have been relieved — better than execution, but not cheery.  Probably were unseated so that in his absence while he’s in Singapore no one leads a coup against him. Don't make the mistake of thinking that Kim is bringing in more “moderate” associates.    Pres Trump & Mike Pompeo now say we’ll need thee or four summits before we make much progress.  Sounds like the same ol’ game we’ve seen from DPRK forever – running out the clock of the Trump Adm. Keep looking for some concession of substance, but not.  . . . Kim is a prisoner of grandiosity – he’s projecting power to himself. Lavrov visited; Kim looks like a weakling, a little puppet wandering around in those empty chambers.  The insane perversion of a totalitarian system. He’s a prisoner and a dictator at the same time. His survival, mission, and legacy all make him motivated more powerfully than we are.  Ergo, he may win this round.
..  ..  .. 
 
PJMedia: The Rosett Report / https://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/the-long-wait-for-china-to-honor-the-heroes-of-tiananmen-1989/   June 4, 2018
The Long Wait for China to Honor the Heroes of Tiananmen, 1989   By Claudia Rosett
Someday, China will build a monument in Beijing's Tiananmen Square to honor its citizens who took part in the 1989 uprising we remember under the name of Tiananmen. Perhaps that monument will look like the statue of the Goddess of Democracy, built by demonstrators in Beijing's Tiananmen Square to hold high in both hands a torch of liberty -- facing off against the huge portrait of Mao. Perhaps it will look very different. Whatever the monument might look like, and whenever that day comes, we will at long last be able to read in the free press of a free country the thoughts of a free people on what happened in China during that sleepless spring in Beijing, and why it matters.
But that day remains far off. It is 29 years since the Tiananmen uprising. The Goddess of Democracy has been reduced to souvenir desktop replicas, still sold with admirable daring in Hong Kong. The lone Chinese man facing down a column of tanks in Beijing has become an iconic figure around much of the globe, but in China the man himself has disappeared. China has no free speech; no free and open political process with which to chart a worthy course into the 21st century as a truly great world power. Instead, it now has a president for life, a communist party that continues to maintain its monopoly grip on power, and -- along with its economic rise -- a strategic and despotic blueprint for growing dominance abroad that could lead to war.
Inside China, the Communist Party has labored for more than a generation to erase the memory of Tiananmen. Officially, the anniversary of June 4, 1989, when the Chinese army shot its way into the square, is marked chiefly by even tighter security measures than usual. It's been decades since China's regime paved over the ruts left by tank treads in the streets of Beijing, and repaired the stone steps of Tiananmen's Monument to the People's Heroes, which were cracked and crushed by armored personnel carriers when the army evicted the demonstrators who during the pre-dawn hours of June 4 chose that monument as the place to make their last stand.
Outside China, in places where people are free to speak about Tiananmen, we must remember and honor that 1989 uprising. Among the reporters who were there -- and I was, working at the time for the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal -- I think there is a compelling urge every year, on this June 4 anniversary, to say something. The instinct is to find something new, something as yet unreported after all these years. And, in dredging through old notebooks, poring over stories that have stacked up over almost three decades, and surveying the current rise of China as an increasingly militarized and predatory state, there is plenty to say -- especially regarding Beijing's growing threat to the genuine democracy of the Republic of China, on Taiwan.
But I will default today to the bottom-line reason the Tiananmen uprising was so important. It was haunting for the courage displayed by millions of oppressed people -- not only students in Beijing, but the many others who joined and supported the massive demonstrations in such cities across China as Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Guangzhou -- who knew all too well what kind of brutal regime they were defying, but did it anyway. They put their livelihoods, their own security and in some cases their lives on the line to demand a say in their own government, and the liberty that is the right of all people. It was inspiring in its sweep, and heartbreaking in its denouement.
Except it is not over. Above all, since the founding in 1949 of China's "People's Republic," those fleeting weeks of the Tiananmen uprising brought China's people the only serious chance they have had to speak freely, with each other and to the world. They seized it. They asked for democracy. They built a statue of liberty. And, as I have written so many times over the past 29 years, in that doomed sprint for freeedom, in the spring of 1989, they called out to world, over and over: "Tell the world what we want. Tell the truth about China."
And that was the last time, in 29 years, that China's people have had any serious chance to tell each other, and the world, what they really want. Today, China's 1.4 billion people are instructed by their dictator, Xi Jinping, and by the long-ruling Chinese Communist Party, in what they are supposed to want, and regard as truth. In the name of making China a great nation, they are supposed to eagerly study "Xi Jinping thought," which, as this Wall Street Journal report describes, is a 14-point theory that emphasizes the party's "supreme leadership over everything in China."
Yesterday the U.S. State Department released a statement by Secretary Mike Pompeo, remembering "the violent suppression of peaceful demonstrations in and around Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989," urging the Chinese government "to make a full public accounting of those killed, detained or missing" and calling for the release of those "jailed for striving to keep the memory of Tiananmen Square alive." Pompeo further urged China's government to "respect the universal rights and fundamental freedoms of all citizens."
This is an excellent message, as far as it goes. But there's an implied subtext that could use some spelling out:
Until China's government respects its own people enough to allow them to speak and debate freely, and choose their own leaders, China simply cannot become a great, modern nation. Xi and his ruling party can pour resources into China's military buildup, bully their neighbors, hack, spy, subvert and plot global dominance. They will still preside over a hollow house, ruling without the free consent of their own citizens.
The only decent resolution to this lies in the direction of fulfilling that basic human desire for freedom which in 1989 erupted in peaceful mass protests centered in Tiananmen Square. How long any such transformation might take, or what agonies both China and the world at large might suffer before Beijing finally arrives at government of, by and for the people, is a tough and increasingly troubling question. But that day must come, and in the meantime, along with the U.S. and its cohorts urging China's government to respect human rights, it would be fitting to ask Beijing the question, again and again, with every year that ticks by:
When -- please tell us when -- will China at long last dignifiy itself, and honor its own people, by building a monument in Tiananmen Square to the heroes who died for freedom in 1989?
Claudia Rosett is Foreign Policy Fellow with the Independent Women’s Forum, and author of the Encounter Books Broadside, What To Do About the UN.
 
Hour Two
Monday  4 June 2018 / Hour 2, Block A:  Jeff  Deal, GOP candidate for Senate from Massachusetts, in re: we’re $900 mil over [budget], but Democrats can't take credit for it because that might redound to the benefit of Pres Trump; Elizabeth Warren has been at the lead of comprehensive opposition. . .  . New Bedford and the fishing industry: our Sector Nine fleet has been grounded for nine month by NOAA and the Feds. Eliz Warren could have eased this, but instead has not. Pres Obama designated tens of thousands[?] of square miles of ocean were not to be fished in.  Foreigners put their boats a few miles offshore and clean up while our fishermen are forbidden to fish there and we’re losing many millions of dollars’ worth of income. In Mass, our fishermen have to take a federal agent out on the boat to watch, costs $700 to $800 a day to no utility. My goal is to go to Washington and make sure that our Mass citizens are [favorably represented, and the country is, as well].
Monday  4 June 2018 / Hour 2, Block B:  Harry Siegel, Daily News, in re: What on Earth has happened to the subways? 
 
Monday  4 June 2018 / Hour 2, Block C: Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re: Tractor rammings, firekites, attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians. Yes, the UN is paying attention; is trying to figure out how to blame Israel.   Warn against Qatari or other intervention to bring peace!  Now, 3,000 acres set afire by firekites and fire-balloons laden with Molotov cocktails, Israeli farmers are now going to the Intl Criminal Court with evidence that this is terrorism.    Hamas yesterday caught setting fire to farm eqpt ; and a film of five-year-olds dressed as jihadis training to kill a child dressed as a Jewish child while their adoring parents watch. Note that Hamas receives donated supplies for the populace and sells them to the people!
Nisman was a special prosecutor in Argentine investigating collaboration between Kirchner and Iran anent the bombing of AMIA; he was killed the night before his testimony and the govt labeled it a suicide, which it patently was not. Now, finally, a new prosecutor has named it a murder, opening a new investigation
Mauritania: relations with Iran have been deteriorating under pressure from Saudis; Iranian  ambassador was summoned to explain how 50,000 Mauritanians have converted from Sunni to Shi’a and now are acting against the state. Note that Morocco closed relations with Iran because the latter was supporting the Polisario.   Turkey’s lira: Turks have turned to anti-Jewish caricatures, blaming Jews for their sinking currency. If we see this in the run-up to the elections, what will Erdogan do after the election?  Polls are running against him, so he’ll take ever-more-extreme measures to be sure of winning.
Monday  4 June 2018 / Hour 2, Block D: Indiana Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re: A 4,700-year-old donkey sacrificed; dental isotopes say it was Egyptian; near Goth, where David fought Goliath.  Earliest evidence of an animal mouth bit.  Buried under a home for good luck.
Cracked skull: also severed right hand, apparently sign of a blood vengeance.  Late, under Bedouin conflicts, right hands were severed; this dated to Tenth or Eleventh Century AD.  Potsherds from late Medieval times. A glazed ceramic head from the late Iron Age, found in an area described in the Bible, with an elaborate Phoenician vessel; and this mysterious head, extremely detailed, has been presented at a major archaeological symposium: King __ of Israel, or one of two other kings?  Two by two inches; black hair, manicured beard.
 
Hour Three
Monday 4 June 2018/ Hour 3, Block A:  Veronique de Rugy, Mercatus Center, in re: . . . China carries on with preposterous theft of intellectual property and completely inequitable tariffs. Do you still oppose all US-place tariffs? 
Yes, well, the world expects more of the US, expects it to hold a higher standard, to negotiate, to make demands through multilateral trade agreement as we have done in the past [to zero avail over decades –ed.].
Monday 4 June 2018/ Hour 3, Block B: Bud Weinstein, McGuire energy Institute, SMU Oil & Gas; in re:  Wasn’t natgas supposed to replace coal?  King Coal: the obituary was probably premature. We’ve seen more than 200 coal-fired power plants in the US close over recent decades – natgas, envtl concerns, etc; but in most of the rest of the world it continues to grow. Many more jobs in coal as the US sells internationally. Powder River Basin increased. Most trains – Appalachian coal,, metallurgical coal.  Sailing out of East and West Coasts and the Gulf.  Demand will grow for he next 23 or more years.  Trump announces that China intends to increase its purchases [China has only very dirty lignite—ed]. SW of Houston, the Parrish Coal-Fired Generator Plant – shipping 2 million tons to Texas; also in Mississippi; other experiments . . .
Monday 4 June 2018/ Hour 3, Block C: Richard Epstein Chicago Law, NYU Law, Hoover Institution, in re:   Supreme Court 5-4. Five side: Neil Gorsuch; four side: Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Ruth Ginsburg now regards herself as the carrier for the Liberal banner; takes direct shots at someone like Gorsuch, who wrote a very careful, considered opinion. Was a Wunderkind in private life.  The battle we see in Congress and the Executive now seems be running in the Supreme Court.    . . .
Monday 4 June 2018/ Hour 3, Block D:  Richard Epstein Chicago Law, NYU Law, Hoover Institution, in re:   . . . more on Yale Law, yellow-dog contracts, and Justice Bader’s surprisingly harsh language. 
 
Hour Four
Monday 4 June 2018/ Hour 4, Block A: First to Jump: How the Band of Brothers Was Aided by the Brave Paratroopers of Pathfinders Company, by Jerome Preisler
Monday 4 June 2018/ Hour 4, Block B: First to Jump: How the Band of Brothers Was Aided by the Brave Paratroopers of Pathfinders Company, by Jerome Preisler.  Ste-Mere Eglise
Monday 4 June 2018/ Hour 4, Block C: 
Monday 4 June 2018/ Hour 4, Block D:  
..  ..  ..