The John Batchelor Show

Wednesday 27 March 2019

Air Date: 
March 27, 2019

Photo: 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-hosts: Gordon Chang, Daily Beast
 
Hour One
Wednesday 27 March 2019 / Hour 1, Block A:  Bob Collins, former senior Pentagon analyst now based in South Korea, in re: The latest on the Korean peninsula. US president has made military concessions to Kim, who has not reciprocated.   The exercise not occurring now had as its purposes: HQ, designed for senior officers training together in decision-making; and smaller field operations, which have been significantly reduced.   US personnel there: 28,500 active-duty soldiers, with about twice that in dependents, plus civilian employees and their dependents, being about 15,000. If all left, that would affect the South Korean economy. Currently, the economy is flat and the housing market is low.  Koreans are more interested in bread-and-butter issues than in security.  A third of US, and of Korean, officers are new each summer.
Wednesday 27 March 2019 / Hour 1, Block B: Mehmet Volkan, Atajurt human rights organization, researcher who’s spent years in Kazakhstan, in re:  The leading movement there that’s exposing Chinese abuse of the Mountain Kazakhs in northern Xinjiang. It happens that the Kazakhs’s testimony on Chinese concentration camps is most important now —  we’ve translated it into Kazakh, Russian, English, Chinese, and Turkish languages —  because Uyghurs, the most populous in camps, are silenced more than are Kazakh, Tatar, and others.  The victims largely have mental problems, are forced to take unknown medicines which they think are generating memory problems.  Many tortured; those not are still obliged to sit in the rain and bad weather for many hours, including elders in their seventies and eighties. 
 Many have dies outside the cams: when children are detained by police and taken to camps, their parents and grandparents have heart attacks; we have records of at least dozens.
We have YouTube channels — Atajurt Human Rights Organization —with thousands of testimonies; Anglophone press worldwide has begun to follow. 
Wednesday 27 March 2019 / Hour 1, Block C: China's Maritime Gray Zone Operations (Studies in Chinese Maritime Development), by Andrew S. Erickson, China Maritime Studies Institute; and Ryan D. Martinson.  Naval Institute Press.  Aggression by the PLA navy and other units of the Chinese military; predators toward their neighbors in Southeast Asia. Gray hull (China’s navy, largest in the world), white hull (China’s coast guard), and blue hull (maritime militia, a subcomponent of the navy).  The gray zone: a Chinese effort to advance in maritime space over contested features – islands, rocks, reefs – ideally without firing a shot. The little blue men:  it uses its maritime militia operates under a military chain of command up to Xi Jinping; trained and supported by the PLA, a very large pyramid with many basic personnel and vessel at bottom.  A small elite at he tops, units trained for and empowered to be involved in intl sea incidents. The harass US vessels, seize disputed features, advance China’s presence, esp in South China Sea. Usu professionals who had day jobs in fishing; select ones are recruited into this work.  In the Paracels, very well compensated.   US Ofc of Naval Intell has published much info on their ships (hulls) and personnel.  We could do a lot to render them ineffective, but we have a lot to do.  White hulls: dwarfs US, Japanese and ___ forces together ,  Cabbage tactics:  China envelops disputed features with rings of different types of vessels, typically: Coast Guard, then maritime militia vessel in the outer ring engaging with Vietnamese counterparts n disputed waters.   “Cabbage” envelops.  Other Chinese vessels are nearby to cast an intimidating shadow.  In the 2012 Scarborough Reef incident, fishing vessels both inside and outside [correct] range.  When the Philippines tried to board and search the offending vessel, other Chinese vessels raced in and created an intimidating stand-off.
Wednesday 27 March 2019 / Hour 1, Block D:  China's Maritime Gray Zone Operations (Studies in Chinese Maritime Development), by Andrew S. Erickson, and Ryan D. Martinson.  Freedom of Navigation operations: US conducts FON operations, must not let itself be Gulliverized by [countless] Lilliputian vessels. [Is it true that it’s innocent passage unless the radar is turned on?]
The Hai Yang Shi You 98 1incident off Vietnam, also known as the 2014 China-Vietnam oil rig crisis: China has very significant gray-zone capabilities in numbers and competence. China had twice and many vessels, although Vietnam imposed and economic and political cost on China; China later moved the oil rig away. China lashes its vessels together to challenge South Koreans, who’ve suffered fatalities.   . . .  We advocate ability to disable, incl disrupt comms.  We have multiple options.  I advocate we not let a US govt vessel be interfered with, stymied, stopped, by any type of Chinese vessel.  March 2009:  Chinese vessels interfere with the USS Impeccable, unarmed.  Also, USS Victorious.  A tremendous mistake by the US. Also: we need good public relations 
 
Hour Two
Wednesday 27 March 2019 / Hour 2, Block A:  Scott Harold, associate director of the Center for Asia Pacific Policy at the Rand Corporation, in re: https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2019/03/26/japanese-jets-intercept-chinese-anti-submarine-aircraft-says-tokyo/; and the death of RAND's Andy Marshall
Wednesday 27 March 2019 / Hour 2, Block B:  Mark Clifford, former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post and a Hong Kong resident since 1992, in re: In 1997, China promised Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy for fifty years; many concerns about that, esp extradition of HK people into Mainland.  Deep concern. Extradition treaty: we have our own Customs, currency, and legal system – all radically different from Mainland. Extradition of criminals between mainland and HK hitherto not allowed, but it seems to be under attack.  Hong Kong’s legal system is perhaps the last vestige of [the profound differentiation].  Reduction in the number of extraditable crimes, but it's well known that Chinese agents operate on HK soil, kidnapped book sellers, and the businessman grabbed from the Four Seasons hotel wrapped in blankets, in a wheelchair, drugged.  The protests of five years ago that were so successful, but since then Beijing  has tightened things harshly.  Our Chief Executive was replaced by a Mainland-leaning career bureaucrat.  Well over half of HK people support democracy and direct elections, but things aren't working that direction  now.  Seventy million people, most dynamic [city] in the world. 
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3002953/hong-kong-lawmakers-and-former-no-2-hit-us-capital-report
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-26/hong-kong-scales-back-extradition-law-that-spooked-businesses
Wednesday 27 March 2019 / Hour 2, Block C:  Paul Gregory, Hoover, in re: Russian perceptions after the Mueller report
Wednesday 27 March 2019 / Hour 2, Block D:  Monica Crowley, Fox News, in re: US politics
 
Hour Three
Wednesday 27 March 2019 / Hour 3, Block A: Dr Lara M Brown, Georgetown University, in re:  Democrats’s choices
Wednesday 27 March 2019 / Hour 3, Block B:  Terrence Norchi, Arch Therapeutics board chairman, in re: Transforming the landscape of advanced interventional wound care.
Wednesday 27 March 2019 / Hour 3, Block C:  Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com, in re:  Pence: hints, as in a murder mystery, of the SLS – the Space-Launched System, the giant NASA boondoggle, in 20 years for $60 billion.  No previous Administration has tried to [push this forward}, but two weeks ago the NASA Administrator said he’s considering using commercial space. Congressmen love this boondoggle as it spreads pork widely. At the Natl Space Council this week Pence spoke in favor of commercial American rockets. This battle to save or [obliterate] SLS will be unfolding for three years.   Want US on the Moon by 2024, and a circumlunar mission by November 2020 (election year).  Would need commercial launchers to do that.
Space Force in the military.
Kazakhstan, Dmitri Rogozin of Roscosmos:  Russia will cut the price for its Proton Rocket to match that if Space X, will reorganize some ground facilities to do theat. But he Proton Rocket has become unreliable.  Need guarantees.  A hole was drilled in a Soyuz spacecraft (the equivalent of an ISS life craft); still unsolved! Clear that it was drilled on the ground, as someone tried to patch it.  Russians are trying to shift the blame away from Russia.  They imply that Americans snuck over to Russia and drilled the hole. 
 Space Counsel oppo.  Lava tubes. Council 67.
Wednesday 27 March 2019 / Hour 3, Block D:  Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com, in re:  To the surface of the planet Texas: Boca Chica housing development; near the area bldg Star Hopper, where tests are occurring. The Star Hopper mgt has forbidden residents to come and go without ID, and to bring in guests, at all.  Legally questionable.
Mars 2020 rover, unnamed.  A gigantic delta flow down in the crater’s rim.  A delta of mud; then drive up the delta to see a lot of geology.  Near the shore of the ancient ocean.
Hundreds of miles of lava tubes radiating down from the volcano. 
 
Hour Four
Wednesday 27 March 2019 / Hour 4, Block A: Hunting Che: How a U.S. Special Forces Team Helped Capture the World's Most Famous Revolutionary, by Kevin Maurer; narrator: Robertson Dean; Mitch Weiss (1 of 4)
Wednesday 27 March 2019 / Hour 4, Block B: Hunting Che: How a U.S. Special Forces Team Helped Capture the World's Most Famous Revolutionary, by Kevin Maurer; narrator: Robertson Dean; Mitch Weiss  (2 of 4)
Wednesday 27 March 2019 / Hour 4, Block C: Hunting Che: How a U.S. Special Forces Team Helped Capture the World's Most Famous Revolutionary, by Kevin Maurer; narrator: Robertson Dean; Mitch Weiss  (3 of 4)
Wednesday 27 March 2019 / Hour 4, Block D: Hunting Che: How a U.S. Special Forces Team Helped Capture the World's Most Famous Revolutionary, by Kevin Maurer; narrator: Robertson Dean; Mitch Weiss  (4 of 4)
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