Photo, above:  . . . But this week, after weeks of inquiries by The Times about photos it received, the State Department released a trove of photographs showing buildings and vehicles ablaze during the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack that . . . [more]   Judicial Watch was incredulous over the sudden release of never-before-published photographs and criticized the State Department for withholding requested videos of the attack and its aftermath.                                                        

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Co-hosts: Gordon Chang, Forbes.com.   Dr. David M. Livingston, The Space Show.

Hour One

Wednesday  20 November  2013  / Hour 1, Block A: Susan Yoshihara, Senior Vice President for Research / Director of International Organizations Research Group at Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, in re: Merrill Newman, 85 yrs old, Korean War veteran,  took tour of North Korea with his wife and was kidnapped there. China: looks as though the one-child policy may be slightly alleviated.  "China will get old before it gets rich" – demographics comment; accelerated demo decline. Family Planning Commission based in Beijing, but enforced in your town: she can knock on your door any time, drag you in for an ultrasound; women enceinte for eight months have been violently forced to have an abortion.  There are 32 to 60 million missing Chinese women: female infanticide, which now is illegal, but to no use.  Sex-selected abortion: preference for boys; pension system; ultrasound technology is cheap so infanticide is easy.

China expecting a modest baby boom under revised one-child policy  About 10 million couples stand to benefit from the change allowing a second child in some families. Demographers, however, do not expect a major baby boom.

Wednesday  20 November  2013  / Hour 1, Block B: Frasier Howie, co-author of Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China's Extraordinary Rise, in re: Jefferson said: "No bond market! It’s like manufacturing tulips!"  However, China loves bitcoin – to avoid sanctions, buy Iranian oil?  People love to buy things that are going up in price: bitcoin now is at $750 or greater.  Chinese probably use it to expatriate funds.   Money as a store of value? Not a deep enough worldwide mkt for this currency; will see wide fluctuations in value. Money gets circulated widely, where as bitcoin seems to be a speculative mechanism.   General fear of govt irresponsibility and a possible crash. Plenty of people armed in their bunkers awaiting the end of the republic. Beijing once squashed a virtual currency; today, suddenly favors bitcoin. Curious why.

Wednesday  20 November  2013  / Hour 1, Block C: Dr. David M. Livingston, The Space Show; Dr David Brain, University of Colorado, Boulder, Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences, in re: the MAVEN: 850,000 lbs of thrust to lift off to Mars. David bBrain watched lift-off – after all the work of the last years, finally departure of Atlas-5 for Mars. Time after time, always thrilling and a bit nerve-wracking. Magnetometer, eight instruments and nine sensors: all together, can answer the questions about water on Mars, and where did the rest of atmosphere go to have made it warm enough for water to have been there?   . . .  Abundant evidence that water was plentiful on the surface long ago.  . . .  Argon in the atmosphere  - what escaped to space and what went subsurface.  . . . Methane: can be produced by biology, or through natural chemical reactions with rocks; shd be destroyed by sunlight in 300 years or less. Indian spacecraft is also looking.

Wednesday  20 November  2013  / Hour 1, Block D:  Gordon Chang, Forbes.com, in re: Typhoon in Philippines.  Leyte: 600,000 homeless people without water or food.    USS George Washington has been there turning out 100,000 gallons of fresh water a day, sending out Osprey helos on rescue missions.  China, meanwhile, offered $100,000  The whole world screamed, so it upped it to $1.64 million; initial rudeness to show the back of their hand.    Spratley Islands, Scarborough Shoals: "a man with a big belly pushing closer and closer to others's territory."   (Recall the 2004 tsunami, when the US sent a great deal of time and money to provide assistance – democracies do this.)  The UK sent its carrier; Israel sent field hospitals and doctors; China sent zip.  China's conduct is less culturally Chinese than the product of authoritarianism.    China seized Scarborough Shoal last year and the US did naught; now China intends to steal another island. 

Hour Two

Wednesday  20 November  2013  / Hour 2, Block A: Stephen Yates, CEO at DC International Advisory and former advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, re: Chinese PLA [Peoples Liberation Army] tells Gideon Rachman of the FT: "We won't make the same mistake as the Japanese did in the Thirties."  Then he goes to Japan, where he's told, "The Japanese are making exactly the mistakes we made in the Thirties: allowing the military to break loose and now challenge the Americans."  The PLA is a state within the state; makes grand territorial claims and speaks of "rebalancing"  power in Asia.

China and Japan are heading for a collision  It is hard to believe either side wants war – but posturing could spark accidental conflict.

Amid all the noise about the economic reforms launched last week by China, it was easy to overlook another important change. The Chinese government is setting up a National Security Council, co-ordinating its military, intelligence and domestic security structures. The model is said to be America’s NSC. But China’s move also parallels developments in Japan, where Shinzo Abe’s government is also setting up a National Security Council.

Under ordinary circumstances, this modernisation of military and security structures would not be cause for concern. But these are not ordinary times. For the past year, China and Japan have been engaged in dangerous military jostling, as they push their rival territorial claims to some uninhabited islands, known as the Senkaku to the Japanese and the Diaoyu to the Chinese. In one recent week, Japan scrambled fighter jets three times in response to Chinese overflights. China, meanwhile, complains that Japanese ships came provocatively close to a recent live-fire exercise carried out by its navy. With tensions high, the revamping of the two countries’ security structures takes on a more . . .  [more]

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Chinese fear a new KGB as Beijing sets up powerful national security body

Bloggers in the past few days have voiced their concerns by posting texts and pictures detailing atrocities carried out by the KGB and its predecessor the Cheka.  China’s decision to set up a powerful national security committee has spurred deep fears in the country of society slipping further into a police state.

Bloggers in the past few days have voiced their concerns by posting texts and pictures detailing atrocities carried out by the KGB and its predecessor, the Cheka, the former Soviet Union security agencies known for suppressing dissent and practising torture. Many said they dreaded the KGB would be the model for the new security committee.

Beijing announced at the end of the Communist Party Central Committee’s four-day third plenum that ended on Tuesday that, “A national security committee will be established to perfect the national security system and national security strategy and safeguard national security.” Without offering details, the communiqué caused worry among citizens who said “national security” might be used as an excuse for leaders to persecute dissidents in order to preserve their rule.

“This worry is not unfounded, since China’s rulers have always managed to blur the line between ‘national security’ and the security for them to govern,” wrote Jin Manlou, a Shanghai-based writer on weibo. “Often in China, the army is used in domestic situations instead of in international conflicts.”  Others speculated about the high status granted to the new agency, comparing it with that of the KGB.

“KGB – Soviet Union’s National Security Committee, [was] a super agency that only [answered] to the party,” wrote Yuan Tengfei, a history teacher and author of several bestselling history books. “Its predecessor the Cheka persecuted millions of people under Stalin’s orders.”

The Cheka, the first of a succession of Soviet state security agencies, was created in 1917 by Vladimir Lenin. It is believed that approximately 500,000 Red Army deserters were arrested and tortured by the Cheka in 1919 and 1920. Though estimates of Cheka executions vary widely, historians also believe thousands of deserters were shot during the 1917-1922 Russian Civil War.

Bloggers also posted shocking images from the 1992 movie Checkist. The film, directed by Russian director Aleksandr Rogozhkin, explores the secret police’s history of torturing and executing intellectuals, aristocrats and Jews.

“This is terrorism committed in the name of the country,” claimed one blogger.

While anxiety and anger increased in cyberspace, scholars and experts offered justifications for the new national security body in newspapers, calling it a “standard configuration” for “powerful countries”.

In a Beijing News report, Xu Hui, a professor at the PLA National Defence University, said he wasn’t surprised at all by the decision.

“At least, it’s going to be a consultation agency higher than regular think-tanks,” Xu said. “It will be in charge of charting national security strategies and dealing with security threats and crises.”

Amy Li chunxiao.li@scmp.com

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Wednesday  20 November  2013  / Hour 2, Block B: Alim Seytoff, Director at Washington-based Uyghur Human Rights Project, in re: "China says Xinjiang police station attacked by axe, knife-wielding mob, 11 dead  Eleven people were killed and two injured in China's troubled far-west region of Xinjiang when a group of people armed with axes and knifes attacked a police station on Saturday, state media reported on Sunday."  --this is Xinhua government agitprop, "news" that's demonstrably lies.    The cycle goes: the Chinese government oppresses increasingly; finally the villagers protest; the troops

Wednesday  20 November  2013  / Hour 2, Block C: David Feith, WSJ Asia, in re: The US Navy. Leyte: October 1944, US won an important victory. Ospreys have tilt-rotor propellers, can do VTOL but fly like a plane. The scale of the devastation: 600,000 homeless, water & sewage all broken; poverty all around and infrastructure negligible.  Tsunami waves up to 12 feet, wiped away towns.   The jungles are still thick.  Getting people out (esp Tacloban airport) and relief in is an appalling logistical challenge.  The Philippine govt unable to provide aid. The only way in and out right now is mostly the US military, plus some painfully difficult overland travel.

Guiuan, the Philippines (fishing town, one of the farthest southeastern parts of the Philippines, where the storm first made landfall.)  "I have an uncle there in the U.S. Can you help me to contact him?"

Trudoro Dado Tan is yelling this plea at the top of his voice, but it's nearly impossible to hear over the roar of the two MV-22 Osprey aircraft on the grass behind us. U.S. Marines have just arrived with large boxes marked "USAID" and "From the American People." Inside are woven plastic tarps to serve as temporary shelters—the first relief supplies seen in this remote fishing town since Super Typhoon Haiyan made landfall here six days ago, bringing rain, rushing water and winds three times as strong as Hurricane Katrina's.

Wednesday  20 November  2013  / Hour 2, Block D: Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director, Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, in re: Exclusive: Palo Alto man, 85, removed from plane, detained in North Korea North Korean authorities detained Merrill E. Newman on Oct. 26 as he and a neighbor wrapped up a vacation booked through a Beijing-based tour business to North Korea. . . . "He's always wanted to go to North Korea, it's been a lifelong thing," the younger Newman said. "Like the guys who go back to Normandy, the World War II veterans. These places had profound, powerful impacts on them as young men, and he wanted to see it again."  . . . Jeffrey Newman said the Swedish ambassador delivered his father's heart medication to the North Korean foreign affairs ministry "but we don't know what happened to it after that. . . . North Korea hasn't formally acknowledged it is holding Newman, much less given a reason why. 

Travelling to North Korea is reckless: subject to arbitrary arrest; tours to North Korea provide  the hard currency the regime needs to produce long-range ballistic missiles.   Kim Jong-eun playing by his father's playbook. Mindset – the viciousness – of the North Korean regime.  At present, the US isn’t paying any ransom to DPRK and no US presidents are visiting these days, so they just up the sakes for blackmail.  We need to get both men (Merrill Newman and the imprisoned missionary Kenneth Bay) but not set another dangerous precedent.

Hour Three

Wednesday  20 November  2013  / Hour 3, Block A:  Francis Rose, Federal News Radio,  in re:  ACA.  Henry Chao, Deputy CIO, isn't a techie, isn’t a project manager – none of these exists!  The role of the Chief Information Ofcr is to develop strategy, explain how IT is to be deployed to meet the agency's mission.  He seems not have been appointed because of Medicare work under Bush, but that was not successful.  He has no more skill at bldg complex systems than I do!  He's an assistant pol.   There exists not project manager, no chief architect, a director of quality assurance – none of this has happened. Nope; these guys sit in the C-suites and look at how they can use the technology across he general operation, but not hands-on.  Next: If you like your hospital, you can keep it  - IF you’re well connected.  The best hospitals  in the country aren't in the ACA system. The Haves and Won’t-haves.  Commercials in Washington are putting up radio ads: If you want to use our hospital, you can do so on X plans but not on Y plans.   In New Hampshire, a hospital that's been excluded is taking legal action.  Community-based hospitals are in; academic medical centers are out. 

Wednesday  20 November  2013  / Hour 3, Block B: Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-27), in re: US aid to Philippines after Supertyphoon Haiyan. Our assets are not only for defeating enemies - whenever disaster strikes, there's the US military. The amount of materials they’ve supplied is miraculous – working with the UN, Catholic Relief Services, US Red Cross and IRCR, and a dozen relief agencies, which have been able to deliver only because of our airborne. this is going to take a full generation to get past: 13 million people with damaged homes,, businesses, agricultural land – 41 provinces affected; no water or food, and potential public health hazards.  Sadly, I had to call for a GAO report on wasted and pilfered dollars in Haiti, which is not a model.

International humanitarian officials say there is a noticeable improvement in getting aid to central Philippine communities, even if some are being reached for the first time since the typhoon struck 12 days ago. The international aid has been flowing in, exposing some of the government’s vulnerabilities. More than 4,000 people were killed and millions displaced when Typhoon Haiyan tore through the central Philippines. Hundreds of thousands have yet to be reached with emergency aid. [more]

Wednesday  20 November  2013  / Hour 3, Block C: Fred Burton, Stratfor's vice president for intelligence, in re: Within 90 seconds of the beginning of the attack, the US embassy knew that it was a terrorist attack.  Rolled from annex at 22:05 to find a firefight.  22:42.  It took about 30 minutes from the time of the call for help from the gents at the villa till the CIA GRF shooters responded deform the annex bldg 1.25 mi away: had to put together the response team.  Persistent attack and fire – predominantly small-arms fire – toward the CIA annex throughout the night, a continued range of fire that pretty much never stopped.  Mike Rogers on TV spoke of an event at 2:30 AM – new news. 

Pleading' distress calls made from US consulate on night of Benghazi attack
 
State Department employees at the Benghazi compound knew they were in a death trap and made a series of radio distress calls to the CIA ... New Benghazi photographs raise questions on whether State Department withheld evidence  The State Department has belatedly released dozens of photos of the aftermath of last year’s terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi after The Washington Times inquired about the authenticity of photographs it received from a Welsh security contractor assigned to the doomed American outpost in eastern Libya.

Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, had requested all photos and videos of the besieged diplomatic mission under the Freedom of Information Act in December and February, and the State Department released only seven photographs in June.

But this week, after weeks of inquiries by The Times about photos it received, the State Department released a trove of photographs showing buildings and vehicles ablaze during the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack that . . . [more]  Judicial Watch was incredulous over the sudden release of never-before-published photographs and criticized the State Department for withholding requested videos of the attack and its aftermath.

“The new photos reveal a level of total devastation thoroughly belying Obama’s original cover story that the carnage was perpetrated by a bunch of random malcontents upset over an unpleasant video,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said Wednesday on the group’s website. “The fact that we’ve had to wait nearly a year and file a federal lawsuit for basic documentary material of the attack shows that this administration is still in cover-up mode. And now . . .[more]

Wednesday  20 November  2013  / Hour 3, Block D: Fred Burton, Stratfor's vice president for intelligence, in re: New photos of Benghazi attack, aftermath show widespread destruction, graffiti

Hour Four

Wednesday  20 November  2013  / Hour 4, Block A: Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor: The Forging of American Independence, 1774-1776 byRichard R Beeman (1 of 4)

Wednesday  20 November  2013  / Hour 4, Block B: Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor: The Forging of American Independence, 1774-1776 byRichard R Beeman (2 of 4)

Wednesday  20 November  2013  / Hour 4, Block C: Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor: The Forging of American Independence, 1774-1776 byRichard R Beeman (3 of 4)

Wednesday  20 November  2013  / Hour 4, Block D: Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor: The Forging of American Independence, 1774-1776 byRichard R Beeman (4 of 4)

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Music

Hour 1:  Last of the Mohicans.   Battlestar Galactica. Breaking Bad.

Hour 2:  Last Samurai.

Hour 3:  Hatfields and McCoys.  Pirates of the Caribbean. Centurion. 

Hour 4: The Patriot.