Map above: The illegal drug trade is a global black market dedicated to the cultivation, manufacturing, distribution and sale of drugs that are subject to drug prohibition laws. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs through the use of drug prohibition laws.  A UN report said, "the global drug trade generated an estimated US $321.6 billion in 2003." With a world GDP of US$36 trillion in the same year, the illegal drug trade may be estimated as nearly 1% of total global trade. See Hour 2, Block D,  Prof Louise I. Shelley, University Professor at the School of Public Policy, George Mason University; she founded and directs the Terrorism, Transnational Crime, and Corruption Center (TraCCC). She's the recipient of Guggenheim, National Endowment of the Humanities, IREX, Kennan Institute, and Fulbright Fellowships, and she's received MacArthur grants to establish the Russian Organized Crime Study Center and to study the role of illicit actors in nuclear smuggling;  her new book from Cambridge is, Dirty Entanglements; on how the cocaine routes almost replicate old slave routes in reverse.  

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Co-hosts:  Mary Kissel, Wall Street Journal editorial board & host of OpinionJournal.com.  Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents.

Hour One

Thursday  21 August  2014 / Hour 1, Block A: Mary Kissel, Wall Street Journal editorial board & host of OpinionJournal.com; in re: David Plouffe takes over defending Uber's antiregulatory trajectory.  Surprise!   Also, Kaplan; overextended student loans. Also, Hoover Institution: settlement anent mortgages; "the word 'shakedown' was used in there somewhere." Requirements for local bankers to open up a new branch.  BofA $17 bil "shakedown" related to Countrywide Financial. The persons damaged w3re sophisticated investors the retribution goes to the Feds, the pols, homeowners who wildly borrowed too much. 

Uber Picks David Plouffe to Wage Regulatory Fight  Uber wants your vote of support. And it has hired a campaign manager to win you over.  Uber, a fast-growing start-up that promotes private car sharing, announced on Tuesday that it had hired the political strategist David Plouffe to be its senior vice president of policy and strategy. The move further signaled the grand aspirations of companies like Uber, which are challenging entrenched industries and running into resistance from some local governments.  Mr. Plouffe, who ran President Obama’s 2008 campaign, said he planned to run Uber’s communication efforts much like a political race, pushing to woo consumers and regulators alike in the company’s fast-paced expansion across the world . . . 

Thursday  21 August  2014 / Hour 1, Block B:  Edward W Hayes, criminal defense attorney par excellence, in re: Large, peaceful demo on New York of Saturday in honor of Eric Garner in Staten Island.  . . . The elevation of the Rev Sharpton to be almost equal in importance in law enforcement to Commissioner Bratton "is a matter of concern." The problem occurs when Sharpton says, "I want you to do X, and the mayor is behind me and Schneiderman won’t do anything about it."  Recall Watts fifty years later.  In 1965, they found that of the 200 police patrolling Watts, exactly five were Black. In New York, Black people are underrepresented but Hispanics are very well represented. 

Thursday  21 August  2014 / Hour 1, Block C:  Mona Charen, NRO, in re:  Ferguson, Missouri.  Cameras ought to be ubiquitous in all interactions between police and citizens. Police have great power; most use it wisely, some do not.  Also absolutely need cameras in prison, where abuse can easily happen.  Chest cameras.  One does not have an expectation of privacy while on the street.  Healthy development; would restrain all parties: Smile, you’re on candid camera.  Some resistance by some police, but most are in favor.  JB: I appreciate seeing camera feeds directly from Ferguson rather than having the visuals edited by the cables.  MC: I demur in this respect: major media still determine what he narrative is.  From August 11, 1965, staggering numbers of events domestically and in VietNam.  The fact that we continue t have such blighted inner cities in Twenty-first Century America is horrible, I'm a conservative and hold that it’s both the history of slavery and current family structure; I wish we could all break out of our categories.    Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 1965: "tangle of pathology."

Thursday  21 August  2014 / Hour 1, Block D:  David Henderson, Hoover, in re: George Hilton, RIP.  A brilliant economist with a deadpan delivery.  He was a big fan of Gilbert and Sullivan. Impassioned about electric streetcars, beer and baseball. One of his few wrong predictions that

On August 4, while I was on my vacation, my beloved transportation economics professor, George Hilton, died. Co-blogger Art Carden has rightly singled out one of his best articles in a post earlier today.  Here are some of my reminiscences of that colorful character.

I arrived at UCLA in September 1972 to pursue a Ph.D. in economics. We were advised generally not to do an overload but to focus on taking the classes that would be tested in the core exam. My fellow Canadian, Harry Watson, and I were in a hurry and wanted to take not only the core exam the next May but also a field exam in a specialty. I chose Industrial Organization (IO) and had the benefit of taking Sam Peltzman's 2-course sequence in IO. Harry took monetary theory.

But somehow we had heard about George Hilton. We learned very quickly, from body language and comments by other faculty, that he was not thought of as a star, but he had impressed Harry and me. If I recall correctly, our first encounter with him was that fall when he gave a seminar to faculty and Ph.D. students on his work on what a waste government spending on subways, including the recently built BART in San Francisco, was. He had a lot of funny lines delivered in his deadpan style, and Harry and I laughed uproariously. At times, we seemed to be the only ones laughing, which bothered us not at all. On that basis, and moving even further against our advisors' advice not to overload, we decided to take his transportation economics course, taught one night a week in the winter quarter. I remember going to class a number of evenings (Tuesday, I believe) and learning the truth about whether it rains in southern California.

The course was pitched to grad students and undergrad economics majors. So there were a lot of words and numbers, but few graphs and no equations. This meant that Harry and I had a comparative disadvantage: the undergrads were as good at memorizing as we were. Indeed, it's possible that we had an absolute disadvantage. I remember coming to class for the midterm and proudly asking two young attractive co-eds how many pounds of manure and urine a horse in NYC dropped daily, figuring I would stump them. "10.5," they chanted in unison, and I knew I was in trouble.

But so what? We learned a ton. We learned that even the proponents of BART in San Francisco, MARTA in Atlanta, and the METRO in Washington, D.C. were claiming that their subways would divert only about two years of secular growth in commuter traffic. We learned that streetcars in New York City saved New York from a huge and growing pollution problem--check out the 10.5 pounds above and do some multiplication. We learned that the Interstate Commerce Commission cartelized trucking. We learned that the Civil Aeronautics Board cartelized airlines. It's also from George that we got a positive view of work by the left-wing historian Gabriel Kolko, who himself died recently.

And all with that hilarious style and his classic expressions. Old horses that hauled cars were "fully depreciated." His comment on the banking cartel in Canada (he alleged) and the over expansion it had led to: "They have banks like we have gas stations." The issue of the Journal of Law and Economics that Art refers to was months late because the editors were behind. So, while Hilton covered . . . 

Hour Two

Thursday  21 August  2014 / Hour 2, Block A: Gale A. Brewer, Manhattan Borough President, in re:   we drove out, up a steep hill, saw tents, incl an outlook tent looking over a valley, plus a few sleeping tents. Ship's containers, one as a command center for Iron Dome and another as unit HQ.  It was both invigorating to see the very bright young people – twenty years old - and  fascinating to see a rocket that came toward us from Gaza be blown up in the distance by Iron Dome.  Because both the rockets and the Iron Dome defense are very heavy, so great care had to be taken to ensure that nothing dangerous fell on land.  We met the mayor of Jerusalem; we stayed at he King David and had to go into the stairwell several times.  Met Daniel Kuttner, amb from the Foreign Ministry, remarkably knowledgable, a polyglot.  Met Amb Dore Gold and Uzi Dayan.  Also a rep from PM's office, and a fantastic women from the Bank of Israel. I ran into people in the hotel lobby; doesn’t actually feel that far from New York in some ways – the upper West West Side . . . I definitely would encourage others to go to Israel right now. 

Thursday  21 August  2014 / Hour 2, Block B: David Pollock, Kaufman Fellow at The Washington Institute; in re: Three Hamas warlords struck in one air strike in Rafaq, the smuggling den become an armed camp at the Egyptian border. Is anyone ratting on them?  Hamas is executing "collaborators" – perhaps merely anyone they don’t like, which could engender much resentment.  Likely that Israel got the targetting info from sigint or drones. 

Phone Call from Mashaal Exposed Deif's Location? Reports in Lebanon say Khaled Mashaal wanted Mohammmed Deif's opinion on ceasefire and called him, giving away his location. [Deif: was operational head of Hamas military] "We don’t know that he's not dead." As for the numerical report of numbers killed in Gaza, the numbers released by Hamas have turned out to be instead vastly inflated and ferociously wrong; Hamas admits (17 July and 10 August) that from two years ago about half of those killed were active combattents.  Recall that in Jenin, as Palestinians mournfully carried a body, they nearly dropped it so it sat up abruptly; they replaced it back supine but it as obviously unhappy with that. 

Thursday  21 August  2014 / Hour 2, Block C: Elliott Abrams, senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington and author, Tested by Zion: The Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict; in re: al Baghdadi, ISIS, the creation of a sizable threat to the US, the Middle East, Israel over an extended time.  More dangerous than al Qaeda: bigger, richer, better location; will be a major threat for years to come.  Looks like a runaway train because no one's trying to stop it – the time to do so was in Syria; this president rejected all advice from his Cabinet.  We need now to support both Kurds and Syrians who oppose ISIS (not Assad's crew). What we're doing now is nuts – making it all dependent on politics in Baghdad!  We need to back the Kurds militarily; the critical thing is to get on with this fight.  Whoever's in power in Baghdad will look to the US, Iran, Saudis, and ask, whom do I fear?  Now, it’s still Iran.  The president's fundamental view of the Middle East is still that he wants to do some kind of big deal with Iran.  Further this is not a president who ever admits to any kind of error. Gulf Arabs have been impressed by the determination and success with which Israel has fought Hamas; then they see the US reversing arms shipments and think, Gosh that could be me.  Indians have been knee-jerk supporters of Palestinians since 1948 – but not in this war! They're dealing with Islamic extremism; 20,000peopke supported Israel in a demo in Calcutta.  ISIS says it has US sleeper cells, but their claim is not thoroughly credible, Hezbollah likely does.  I worry about the 600 British passports that can walk in to JFK right now with no visa. 

Thursday  21 August  2014 / Hour 2, Block D:  Prof Louise I. Shelley, University Professor at the School of Public Policy, George Mason University; she founded and directs the Terrorism, Transnational Crime, and Corruption Center (TraCCC). She's the recipient of Guggenheim, National Endowment of the Humanities, IREX, Kennan Institute, and Fulbright Fellowships, and she's received MacArthur grants to establish the Russian Organized Crime Study Center and to study the role of illicit actors in nuclear smuggling;  her new book from Cambridge is, Dirty Entanglements; in re: the cocaine routes replicate old slave routes in reverse.  Strong connections among crime, corruption and terrorism. Illicit trade and tunnels for smuggling from Gaza; in Ukraine, Donestk was one of the centers of the Ukrainian maffiya – one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Dirty entanglements destabilize he world today. Narcoterrorism:  exists better in semifunctional states that still have some infrastructure, such as transport.  South America: humans smuggling as relatives pay thousands of dollars to have children moved to the US.  Cigarettes: hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Counterfeits, wildlife (rhino horn from South Africa is $500 mil PA).  As every country becomes more connected to the global economy, adds to fragility. Recall el Amina in Tunisia.  Mali. Instability spans many countries.

Cows in Israel: mixture of Guernseys and Holsteins are called "Goldsteins."

Hour Three

Thursday  21 August  2014 / Hour 3, Block A:  Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re: Hellfire missiles.  Rockets of Gaza: 3,700 = esitimated remainder of the initial 10,000: one-third fired at Israel, one-third destroyed; about one-third remain to be shot at Israeli civilians.  Costs $60 million per day to keep troops active and Iron Dome working.  Hamas executions of persons whom Hamas doesn’t like  - political quarrels and multiple other reasons to call someone a collaborator.  Iran: Rouhani is president Hangman's Noose.  Killed 17 people summarily in a prison today; 800 so far under Rouhani more than under Ahmadinejad.  Killing Christians; plus secret killings of prisoners, women.  ISIS has erased the border between Iraq and Syria.  The threat is to Jordan, a chiefly Palestinian state. ISIS has an agenda to destroy IIsrael as soon as it consolidates its position in Iraq. After it "cleanses the land," it intends to recover Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Mahgreb and Iberia (Spain) for its caliphate.  Sinai was on its way to being a rogue state; with Pres Sisi's intervention, it’s now quiet. 

Thursday  21 August  2014 / Hour 3, Block B: IDF Lt.-Col. (ret.) Michael [Mickey] Segall, senior analyst at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs & at Foresight Prudence; in re: Does Iran believe it can answer the threat from ISIS?  With the execution, ISIS is to Iran as Hamas is to Israel.  Common denominator: Iranians fighting ISIS on Lebanese and Syrian ground.  In 2003 Ian said it'd help the West in exchange for concessions.  There must be no connection whatsoever between nuclear discussions and Iran helping against ISIS.  Iran must be left out of the ISIS equation in this respect. Group derived of power by Maliki joined ISIS.  Nasrallah interview with al Akhbar paper. 

Thursday  21 August  2014 / Hour 3, Block C:  Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re:  space

Thursday  21 August  2014 / Hour 3, Block D:   Jim Robbins,  , in re:  sequoias Giant Sequoias face a real threat from climate change; that's one of the reasons Archangel Ancient Tree Archive has cloned some of the biggest.

Hour Four

Thursday  21 August  2014 / Hour 4, Block A:  Michael Balter, in re:  early hominids

Thursday  21 August  2014 / Hour 4, Block B:  Luke Malone, in re:  dead pets in space

Thursday  21 August  2014 / Hour 4, Block C: Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific by Robert D. Kaplan (1 of 2)

Thursday  21 August  2014 / Hour 4, Block D: Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific by Robert D. Kaplan (2 of 2)

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