Photo, left: Nepal, before the earthquake.
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-hosts:  Gordon Chang, Forbes.com. Dr. David M. Livingston, The Space Show.
 
Hour One
Wednesday  29 April 2015  / Hour 1, Block A: Arthur Waldron, Lauder Professor of International Relations in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania, in re: Beijing has been trying to divide the US and Japan; s dismayed by the amity of Shinzo Abe's visit to Washington.  They seem to have expected their claiming East Asian hegemony would be a cakewalk.  We need to be clear that they may not [take over others's sovereign space].    Mr Abe has also charmed Mr Modi; China has mistakenly made friends with weak states while Mr Abe has made friends with powerful ones.   Mr Abe gave the main address at the Shangri-La Dialogue.  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-26/abe-s-congress-speech-to-rivet-asian-audience-7-000-miles-away
Wednesday  29 April 2015  / Hour 1, Block B: Reggie Littlejohn, founder and president of Women's Rights Without Frontiers, in re:  her upcoming testimony.  The one-child policy is creating a demographic disaster but will be maintained as long as the Communist Party exists because it's an excellent mode of maintaining power:  it terrifies the population and exercises control over every womb in China.  The core of the policy is the continued forced abortion. If one member of a couple is an only child, then the couple may have two children if and only if they get government permissions.  http://www.cecc.gov/events/hearings/population-control-in-china-state-sponsored-violence-against-women-and-children
Wednesday  29 April 2015  / Hour 1, Block C: Hotel Mars, episode n.  Nancy Atkinson,
senior editor,
Universe Today, in re: Gimbal Lock and Lovell, Apollo 13 – 56  hours into the mission, 6.5 minutes after a live broadcast to Earth, the astronauts are stowing gear, waiting for the long ride to the Moon. All of a sudden, a loud bang, electricity off. Turns out the second oxygen tank blew up.  Pitch, roll and yaw: in a gimbel lock, put spacecraft into an unstable position and thereby lock up the capacity of the spacecraft to rectify itself.  Command module shut down, astronauts had to fly the craft by hand with no back-up propulsion or navigation functions.   Had to evacuate the __ module into the lunar module. The "rotisserie" or barbecue roll to have the sides of the craft "baked" evenly – by hand, and every our to avoid burning up one side.  Jim Lovell wasn't originally to go on this mission but Lovell and his crew got bumped forward one mission.
Wednesday  29 April 2015  / Hour 1, Block D: Joshua Green, Bloomberg, in re: Clinton Foundation Failed to Disclose 1,100 Foreign Donors.  "We're not trying to hide anything," says Foundation board member . . .  [more]  . . . The co-founder of the Clinton Foundation's Canadian affiliate is revealing new details about the charity's donors in an effort to counter allegations in the New York Times and the new book Clinton Cash.   
        Hillary Clinton’s presidential run is prompting new scrutiny of the Clintons’ financial and charitable affairs—something that’s already proved problematic for the Democratic frontrunner, given how closely these two worlds overlap. Last week, the New York Times examined Bill Clinton’s relationship with a Canadian mining financier, Frank Giustra, who has donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation and sits on its board. Clinton, the story suggests, helped Giustra’s company secure a lucrative uranium-mining deal in Kazakhstan and in return received “a flow of cash” to the Clinton Foundation, including previously undisclosed donations from the company’s chairman totaling $2.35 million.
Giustra strenuously objects to how he was portrayed. “It’s frustrating,” he says. And because the donations came in through the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (CGEP)—a Canadian affiliate of the Clinton Foundation he established with the former president—he feels doubly implicated by the insinuation of a dark alliance.
“We’re not trying to hide anything,” he says. There are in fact 1,100 undisclosed donors to the Clinton Foundation, Giustra says, most of them non-U.S. residents who donated to CGEP.  “All of the money that was raised by CGEP flowed through to the Clinton Foundation—every penny—and went to the [charitable] initiatives we identified,” he says.
 
Hour Two
Wednesday  29 April 2015  / Hour 2, Block A:   Steven L Herman, Southeast Asia Bureau Chief / Correspondent, Voice of America, in Kathmandu, in re: Nepali 7.9 earthquake. . . .  People living in the open, without food or water. We’re in Kathmandu, headed today for the town Sindhupalchok, believed to have suffered the most human casualties. Yesterday, in a village of 10,000 people, Sanku,  with most buildings destroyed. Population survived because everyone was working in the fields and he children were playing. Sikhs from New Delhi came in with a kitchen; fights over drinking water, Aid is still scant.  Found a volunteer, privately-funded group from China (no governmental); the scope of the disaster is so enormous that al the teams together constitute a drop in the bucket.  New bldgs held up much better than the told ones. but shops are closed, people at home with families, afraid of more aftershocks.  Govt is overwhelmed, has been a mess for years.  Petty politics currently in the midst of this national catastrophe, much to the disgust of the people.  . . .  We are all the product of a geologically-active planet.  Nepalis have been talking about "the earthquake that was coming."  Temples, the brick-built ones, have collapsed with people buried under them.  Food distress, water distress, but panic: rumor of a volcano coming there's no volcano anywhere nearby. China is sending a 62-person rescue team to Nepal; Nepal has refused the excellent search-and-rescue team from Taiwan. People will die because of Katmandu's fear of offending China. 
Wednesday  29 April 2015  / Hour 2, Block B: Bruce Bechtol, professor at Angelo State University and author of North Korea and Regional Security in the Kim Jong-un Era, in re: . . . KN08  - range of 5,600 miles - will soon be proliferated to Iran.  North Korean reactor in the Syrian desert, probably paid for by Iran, destroyed by Israel.  There must be something else – engine tests, or deployment of he missile; something that the US govt has seen, that convinces the US that the missile is about to be [operational].  http://www.stripes.com/news/norad-commander-north-korean-kn-08-missile-operational-1.338909  ;   http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-warns-north-korean-nuclear-threat-is-rising-1429745706
Wednesday  29 April 2015  / Hour 2, Block C: Evan Ellis, Professor of Latin American studies with the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, in re:  InterAmerican Dialogue: loans made by China to South American nations. Top four: Venezuela ($56.3 million), Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador.  A range of explanations.  Three in the Bolivarian Alliance need alternative financing, plus Brazil. Sustains those most opposed to US interests, incl democracy and free trade. Does China think it'll get its money back?  China is not a sophisticated investor there, not a good feeling for political risk there, puts good money after bad. Have drunk there own Kool-Aid. . . .  See no/hear no/know no evil.  Hugo Chavez: putting Venezuelan oil at the service of the great Chinese state in opposition to the Evil Empire of the US; China hastily said, no bad feelings anywhere.   http://www.thedialogue.org/map_list
Wednesday  29 April 2015  / Hour 2, Block D: Julia Famularo, research affiliate at Project 2049 Institute, in re: Beijing's brutality against national minorities, especially Uyghurs.  Death at the hands of the police.  National propaganda portrays all Uyghurs as disloyal, antipatriotic, dangerous, terrorists. Are the local authorities committing this? Provincial? National?  Clear that all levels of govt are afraid of "infiltration" of Uyghur population from National Endowment for Democracy and ISIS. Ban beards, make it hard for Uyghur-language websites to exist.  So many different regulations – Internet, religious, everything traditional that doesn't force assimilation into Han society.  For the moment, it's probably more dangerous to be Uyghur than Tibetan right now. Best website is Radio Free Asia; look for East Turkestan tab.  ;  http://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/canadian-04242015121248.html  ;  http://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/uyghur-shot-by-police-deemed-innocent-04242015130833.html
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Uyghur-Canadian Interrogated, Pressured to Spy for Chinese Authorities
A Canadian national of Uyghur ethnicity says he was harshly interrogated and pressured to spy on the Uyghur community back home during a recent trip to meet with relatives in northwest China’s Xinjiang region.

Erkin Qurban, who in 1999 moved to Canada, where he lives in Montreal working as a truck driver, told RFA’s Uyghur Service that the public security bureau in the Xinjiang capital Urumqi called him in to speak with them only three days after his arrival to the region in April last year.

“Four people interrogated me for about 10 hours the first time—there was on Uyghur and three [ethnic] Han Chinese, all of whom spoke fluent Uyghur,” he said.

“Their questions were really harsh and non-stop—mostly to do with my leading some political activities and joining in anti-China demonstrations.”

Qurban told authorities that he had helped to organize a reception for the exile World Uyghur Congress in 2008, but maintained that they had no right to detain him as a Canadian national—having recently received his citizenship—and that he had traveled to China on a legal visa to visit his relatives.

“I also reminded them that it was illegal, according to their own laws, to pressure people and harshly interrogate them—that is why they prolonged the session,” he said.

About one week later, the public security bureau ordered him to return to their office, asking him the same questions over a three-hour period.

“I asked them what they planned to do with me and they threatened to deport me back to Canada,” he said.

“I said if they wanted to deport me, they could go ahead, but if my life or my safety came under threat, the Canadian government would hold them responsible.”

Qurban said his interrogators then began to pressure him to send reports on the Uyghur community back in Canada to Chinese handlers based there.

“They said, ‘People like you are our enemies. We will wipe you out for sure.’ They pressured me to send information on Uyghur activities to them and to spy for them after I returned home,” he said.

“They said, ‘We have special people there. All you have to do is give the information to them.’ At the end of the interrogation, for the safety of my relatives and in order to be released from the police office, I gave them a fake list of seven Uyghur community leaders.”

Widespread pressure

A report by The Globe and Mail said it had spoken with five other Uyghur-Canadians, in addition to Qurban, who had reported similar stories of detention, blackmail and even bribing by Chinese enforcement officials over the past three years to spy in their adopted country.

When asked about the allegations of interference, Wang Wentian, minister counselor at the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa, told The Globe: “I do not believe this groundless story at all.”

Exiled Uyghur sources in the U.S. have also told RFA of being contacted by Chinese authorities and pressured to spy on the Uyghur community there, adding that such phone calls have become increasingly common since China declared its own “war on terror” against Uyghur separatists in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

Exiles in several countries from different cities have been targeted, with special pressure put on those whose families remain in Xinjiang, the sources said.

In recent years, China has launched a series of “strike hard” campaigns in Xinjiang in the name of fighting separatism, religious extremism and terrorism.

The targets of these campaigns, the minority Turkic-speaking, Muslim Uyghurs, complain of pervasive ethnic discrimination, religious repression and cultural suppression by China’s communist government.

Uyghurs say they chafe under strict police scrutiny and controls on their movements, and that violent clashes with authorities are not uncommon in the region.

Reported by RFA’s Uyghur Service. Translated by Mamatjan Juma. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
..  ..  ..
Hour Three
Wednesday  29 April 2015  / Hour 3, Block A:  Monica Crowley, Fox, & Washington Times Online opinion editor; in re: 1  The GOP and Baltimore - the lessons of Baltimore turmoil for GOP candidates.   ;  Obama calls for social policy changes in wake of Baltimore riots In a Rose Garden speech, he said he wished lawmakers would expand early-childhood education and criminal-justice reform.   ;  Spiro Agnew and 1968, en route the to Nixon ticket: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Baltimore_riots ; http://www.nathanielturner.com/agnewspeakstoblackbaltimoreleaders1968.htm
Mrs. Clinton vs the Left of the Left
Wednesday  29 April 2015  / Hour 3, Block B:  Monica Crowley, Fox, & Washington Times Online opinion editor; in re: Sanders plans to launch presidential bid   Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a blunt self-described socialist who has become a favorite of progressive activists for his denunciations of big banks and the financial elite, will provide a challenge from the left to Hillary Rodham Clinton. ;  Back in Baltimore, Martin O’Malley is heckled, and could face political fallout.    Mayhem in hometown poses new challenge for the former mayor and likely White House hopeful.
Wednesday  29 April 2015  / Hour 3, Block C:  Paul Vigna,   WSJ Live, in re:   Slowing Growth Muddles Fed Plans.  The Fed pointed to cooling economic activity and reduced job-market gains in its latest policy statement, underscoring uncertainty about when the economy will rebound and clouding the timing interest-rate increases. Highlights of Fed Statement   U.S. Growth Nearly Stalls Out   Another Year, Another Weak First Quarter
Wednesday  29 April 2015  / Hour 3, Block D:   Francis Rose, Federal News Radio, in re: This embattled VA regional office now under investigation for an alleged paranormal party   Emily Wax-Thibodeaux APR 28 A Philadelphia veterans benefits official may have encouraged employees to attend a supernatural soiree     http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/04/27/whistleblower-says-san-ant...  
But a year after national calls for a VA culture overhaul, Turner says little has changed in San Antonio, where officials deny Turner's allegations. "They are doing everything they can to make the numbers look good," said Turner, 40, in an interview with the American-Statesman. "They don't care about the law or a national mandate." It's a complaint echoed by veteran advocacy groups and lawmakers, who say the VA hasn't acted quickly enough to root out data manipulation in the department.
 
Hour Four
Wednesday  29 April 2015  / Hour 4, Block A: The Death of Caesar: The Story of History's Most Famous Assassination, by Barry Strauss; PART 1 (1 of 4)
Wednesday  29 April 2015  / Hour 4, Block B: The Death of Caesar: The Story of History's Most Famous Assassination, by Barry Strauss; PART 1 (2 of 4)
Wednesday  29 April 2015  / Hour 4, Block C: The Death of Caesar: The Story of History's Most Famous Assassination, by Barry Strauss; PART 1 (3 of 4)
Wednesday  29 April 2015  / Hour 4, Block D: The Death of Caesar: The Story of History's Most Famous Assassination, by Barry Strauss; PART 1 (4 of 4)