Photo, left: Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, Top Targets at Partisan ‘Stop Iran’ Rally in NY Waving U.S. flags in one hand and holding up printed posters in the other, several thousands gathered to express opposition to the Iran nuclear deal on the sidelines of the streets cutting through Times Square Wednesday evening.  U.S. President Barack Obama and Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) were the most mentioned names repeatedly cited by some 24 speakers, as pro-Israel groups and Jewish community members seek to pressure the senior Jewish Senator to disapprove the agreement and vote to overdid the president’s expected veto. “Fact: Schumer – you control the votes to stop the deal,” one poster, distributed to the demonstrators, read.
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-hosts: Gordon Chang, Forbes.com. Dr. David M. Livingston, The Space Show.
 
Hour One
Wednesday   22 July 2015  / Hour 1, Block A: Walter Lohman, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center, in re: China's aggression naturally causes its neighbors to ally to protect themselves, yet when they do China reacts negatively, as though it hadn’t occurred to Beijing that this would happen.   Freedom of navigationin the south China Sea is of much interest regionally.  Japan as the best navy nearby except theUS, but have historical constaints.   Need a credible, ready, forward-deployed force, which is the US right now.  In Subic Bay, in the Philippines: so far, have only two coast guard cutters (gifts from the US), but are starting to aseembvle a navy. "Places, not bases" US Navy concept. Also at Camranh Bay in Vietnam. In Filipino policy circle, anticolonialist blame of US is eclipsed by fear of China.  Beijing's endeavor to disparage the US as  a coloniaist force is to say it has a "Cold War mentality."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/15/us-southchinasea-philippines-subic-idUSKCN0PP2NN20150715 ; http://thediplomat.com/2015/07/why-is-indonesia-building-a-new-south-china-sea-military-base/
Wednesday   22 July 2015  / Hour 1, Block B: Henry Sokolski, executive director of The Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, in re: China gt The Bomb from Russia, which began trainig then thought better of it, but too late.  China did its first test in 1957.  Deal will come into force at the end of July or later; Congressmen wondering if it shd be conditioned on one flaw in the negotiations: it allows China to extract ans much PN fromspent fuel as it likes. This is unlike the US nderstandin with Russia; it's ablanet approval, raises eyebrows from a  security standpoint. Cyber espionage. Mil nuckear secrets: a current event. A sudy requited by law every tim we do a nuke coop agreemnt: efforts (probably success) in China's directing civilian power reacotsrs to make Chinese subs quieter – canned? coolant technology.  China entered Westighouse private servers – used cybermethods to steal more info. China's record as a nuclear prolifertor to Pakistan and North Korea – "It used to be worse; we shd stay n the game to keep int on track"  (yikes).  Only Rubio and Cotton [paying attn]. Egregiously proliferated to Pakistan. Need certain chemicals to make plutonium – chemicals supplied by China. . . . China very concerned with its border with North Korea; thinks, "Hmm; DPRK protects us from  South Korea."  http://news.yahoo.com/chinas-record-criticized-congress-mulls-nuclear-pact-040145591.html
Wednesday   22 July 2015  / Hour 1, Block C: Hotel Mars, episode n.  Alan Stern, principal investigator of the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Chief Scientist at Moon Express; in re: the amazing and thrilling success last week – praise to Alan Stern. Image of Pluto.  Mountain ranges up to 14,000 feet high a billion miles away on this tiny planet. Has five known moons, all discoverdd before; we did not find more moons, which we did expect to do.  Geolofy is consistent with having been formed yesterday. Atmosphere extensds out mch farther than expected (5X as far out), and may even find that its large moon Charon has an atmosphere. A crater on Charon's surface, and a mountain range there: "a mountain on a moat."    We don't have a geological model for what we're finding there. Most exciting news from the flyby is the level of complexity – overwhelmed by the number of processes. Something like cryovulcanism deep inside the planet.   All seven instruments in the spacecraft functioned perfectly. The water-ice mtns were a surprise. Is there liquid water subsurface? Cd have melted nitrogen (under the pressure of dep glaciers) only a km under the surface. Water is harder to melt, might be hundreds of miles subsurface. Specatacular success. Now headed to the rest of the Kuyper Belt.  [Also, see: Hour 2, Block D, Dr. Ken Croswell, on Pluto.]
Wednesday   22 July 2015  / Hour 1, Block D:  Gordon Chang, Forbes.com, in re:  (see Bloombeg News pie ce by Eli Lake) – China wants to buy the base on Lajes in the Azores.  China sees Portugal as it's way into Europe and the eurozone The Pentagn is so dumb, it thinks that it'll be OK if the US has a plae in England.  Rep Devin Nunes was on TV saying that the Pentagon is shortsighted in letting China steal a march by placing a mil base in th e Atlantic. All oceans are lawless thes days, but the South China Sea is especially so, esp the poor people who work on reefers. Routine violence there.  Beijing has a long way to go before challenginf the South Chian Sea – major piracy; neither KL nor Manila can control Malacca Straits, where pirates are in control and have been for decades.  Bangladesh:  Bay of Bengal is a hole into which you can fall, although for the sake of Bengali sentiments, inside the 12-mi limit it's called "robbery."  China gave nukes to Pakistan both to keep India off balance and, more, it distributed the technology around the world using Pakistan to pass nues on to Iran (also from DPRK), and North Korea, Iran, Libya, and probably a few others.
 
Hour Two
Wednesday   22 July 2015  / Hour 2, Block A: Charles Ortel, managing director of the research firm Newport Value Partners, in re: Reviewing the Iran deal.  Need all the details, and await Congress's decision.  In today's Stop Iran rally, the name theat came up repeatedly is Sen Charles Schumer.  The mandarins of Beijing have built ghost cities; human rights crimes; and gold.. China owns gold, has a hoard: how big?  Last Friday announced a change in holdngs: while most tock or bond mkts seem to be fragile, Chna's recent increase is unexpectedly low.  Incr by 57.3% in the last few years.  High estimates were that there are 1,850 tons of missing gold in China – a large part held by citizens, some by Chinese state banks, but most of it just missing. Govt has put a lot of reserves in euros (a mistake).  Govts worldwide are putting out bad statistics – US, Greece, Brazil, refuse to issue verifiable or sensible stats. Bond and ___ mkts are trading off rigged data. The bottom 80% of Americans  have no wealth at all.  Chian claimsit bought 33 mil oz of gold in a month  which is impossible . Now they look like liars.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonchang/2015/07/19/where-is-chinas-missing-1850-tons-of-gold/
Wednesday   22 July 2015  / Hour 2, Block B: Gordon Chang, Forbes.com,  in re:  Beijing has thrown staggering sums into ghost cities on the theory that if they build a city the entrepreneurs will fill them. It's the other way around.  . . . China's population will peak around 2020.  Look at China's plans for the rest of this century; can it grow without transparenc y, if the govt doesn’t trust the people?
Wednesday   22 July 2015  / Hour 2, Block C: Christian Whiton, Principal at DCIA (DC Intl Advisory), & Hamilton Fdn, in re:  . . .  if you run for the presidency, you won’t have your foreign poicy advisors organized immediately.  Jeb's preposterous "you have to lose the primary to win the  general."  His sense of privilege.  Ufa mtg and Shanghai Cooperation Organization.  Is the GOP wobbly on China? It won't have a unified policy till it has a nominee. Think of G W Bush: framework was to appease North Korea, but it took him two years to dismanthle it.  Jeb is proposing to wait a long time, talk a lot. Whom has he hired to advise?  A panda-hugger.  Really.    Most GOP candidates have little experience or discussion on foreign policy.  Would a wise voter have to vote for Hillary Clinton? Natl security will be the number-one or –two concern.  ISIS, et al.  Hillary has experience –but experience that it's easy to ciriticize. Also, Benghazi Libya; and, "We can’t let human right s interfere with budget consderations."  The Obama Adm has decided not to blame China for the OPM hack of millions and millions of personal records.    President has huge impetus to create a (favorable) legacy.  Forst, lies to the American people; DNI almost envied China for pulling off such an inforation coup.  Does China intmidate the WH?  China says, "You’re being belligrent."  The WH is so eager not to upset conventional wisdom that it just hangs on. The GOP needs a strong foreign policy.  Jeb Bush has no backbone in foreign policy. Father . . . . Brother sat in Beijing while China was invading Tibet.
 
Wednesday   22 July 2015  / Hour 2, Block D:  Dr. Ken Croswell, Science Magazine and author, The Lives of the Stars; in re:  Pluto pix. http://news.sciencemag.org/scientific-community/2015/07/quiz-what-do-you-know-about-pluto . 
PLUTO:
0.  PLUTO IS THE LARGEST MEMBER OF THE EDGEWORTH-KUIPER BELT AND THE NINTH LARGEST OBJECT ORBITING THE SUN.  Pluto's diameter:  1,473 +/- 13 miles
Eris (correctly pronounced "EAR-iss"):  1,445 +/- 7 miles.  For comparison, Pluto is half Mercury's diameter (3,032 miles) and 2.5 times the diameter of the largest asteroid between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, Ceres (590 miles).
 
1.  PLUTO'S HEART WILL BE NAMED FOR THE PLANET'S DISCOVERER.  Not really a discovery, but it's a nice touch.  It will be named Tombaugh Regio.  I interviewed Clyde Tombaugh in 1996, a year before he died.  The heart is 1,000 miles across.  A region rich in carbon monoxide ice is on the western side of the heart.
 
2.  PLUTO'S HEART HAS MOUNTAINS OF WATER ICE TWO MILES HIGH.  Or so we deduce, since neither nitrogen nor methane ice is strong enough to build something that tall.  At Pluto's frigid temperature, water ice is as hard as rock.  These mountains are probably younger than 100 million years old.  Roughly as high as the Rocky Mountains.
 
3.  FROZEN CRATERLESS PLAINS NORTH OF THE MOUNTAINS.  Named Sputnik Planum, it lies in the "heart" of Pluto.  No impact craters seen, suggesting these plains are younger than 100 million years.  The plains contain polygons that are about 12 miles across; may be mud cracks or convection regions (as in oatmeal).  The polygons are bordered by troughs, some of which have dark material.  See http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Science-Photos/pics/pluto_heart_of_the_heart_03.jpg .
 
4.  DARK STREAKS DETECTED IN THE PLAINS.  May be wind streaks, as seen on Earth and Mars.  Or could possibly be due to geysers.  But no geysers have yet been seen.  Triton, Neptune's largest moon, has geysers, and Triton is nearly the same size, mass, density, and composition as Pluto.
 
5.   AN AMUSING CONTRAST:  Exactly 50 years ago, on July 14, 1965, the first spacecraft flew past Mars (Mariner 4), which shocked scientists by revealing lots of craters on the Martian surface.  Now scientists are surprised by the LACK of craters on many parts of Pluto!
 
CHARON (pronounced "Karon" or "Charon"):
1.  CHARON HAS A DARK POLE that may be a coating of methane and/or other hydrocarbons.  The dark pole is 200 miles across.  Charon's diameter is 750 miles, or half Pluto's.
 
2.  CHARON HAS A CANYON 4 to 6 miles deep.  That's deeper than Earth's Grand Canyon (about a mile deep) and comparable to the depth of the great canyon on Mars (6 miles deep at its deepest).  Unlike Earth's Grand Canyon, carved by a river, this canyon likely arose as the Martian one did, by fracturing of the crust.
 
3.  CHARON HAS TROUGHS AND CLIFFS that run 600 miles across the moon. 
 
4.  CHARON HAS FEW IMPACT CRATERS.  The largest seen so far is 60 miles across and seems fairly young; it has rays (like Tycho on the Moon) and is probably less than a billion years old.  It has a dark floor.
 
5.  NO WORD YET ON WHETHER CHARON HAS AN ATMOSPHERE.
 
STYX:  No news yet.
 
NIX:
1.  NIX IS NOT ROUND.  Like the moons of Mars, it's irregularly shaped, because unlike Earth and Pluto, Nix doesn't have enough gravity to squeeze itself into a round shape.
 
2.  NIX IS ABOUT 25 MILES ACROSS--somewhat larger than the moons of Mars.
 
KERBEROS:  No news yet.
 
HYDRA:
1.  HYDRA IS NOT ROUND.  Like the moons of Mars, it's irregularly shaped, because unlike Earth and Pluto, Hydra doesn't have enough gravity to squeeze itself into a round shape.
 
2.  HYDRA IS 27 X 20 MILES ACROSS--somewhat larger than the moons of Mars.  Phobos is 16.1 x 13.7 x 11.5 miles; Deimos is  9.7 x 7.5 x 6.3  miles.
 
3.  HYDRA'S SURFACE HAS WATER ICE, which is not surprising.
 
4.  NOTE:  Nix and Hydra were discovered in 2005, and their initials NH match those of New Horizons.  In mythology, Hydra was a monster that had nine heads, a sign that Pluto is the ninth planet.
 
Hour Three
Wednesday   22 July 2015  / Hour 3, Block A:  Monica Crowley, Fox, & Washington Times Online opinion editor; in re: http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Large-rally-in-NYCs-Times-Square-against-Iran-nuclear-deal-409817  . . . . Inspecitons and verifications are in the side deals – which makes the entre deal a fraud.  Known to have 2 secret codicils; probably  at least 5.  We have no idea what this Administration has promised Iran.
Wednesday   22 July 2015  / Hour 3, Block B: Monica Crowley, Fox, & Washington Times Online opinion editor; in re: Live Blog: Over 10000 at #StopIranRally in Times SquareBreitbart News is carrying the livestream of the Stop Iran Rally from Times Square in New . . .  (2 of 4)
Wednesday   22 July 2015  / Hour 3, Block C: Monica Crowley, Fox, & Washington Times Online opinion editor (3 of 4)
Wednesday   22 July 2015  / Hour 3, Block D: Monica Crowley, Fox, & Washington Times Online opinion editor (4 of 4)
 
Hour Four
Wednesday   22 July 2015  / Hour 4, Block A:  Angelo Codevilla, Hoover & Asia Times News & Features, Middle East, in re:  The fallacy behind the Iran deal’s ‘creative ambiguity.’ President Obama’s defense of the “Iran Deal” at his July 15 press conference, as well as Secretary of State John Kerry’s private remarks capping off the negotiations match those of the Iranians and of other interested parties in vehemence and emotion. But the substance of American officials’ understanding of the deal is diametrically opposite to that of the Iranians, of Iran’s clients, and of interested parties in the region who had sought to influence the negotiations.
Wednesday   22 July 2015  / Hour 4, Block B:   Shane Goldmacher, Natonal Journal, in re:  Paul Singer and Ken Griffin are among the early investors.    http://www.nationaljournal.com/2016-elections/top-gop-donors-form-new-mystery-pac-focused-on-2016-20150714
Wednesday   22 July 2015  / Hour 4, Block C: Henry I Miller, M.D., Hoover & Forbes.com, in re: "The Most Imbecilic and Pretentious Commentary Ever Written about Genetic Engineering": http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2015/07/16/the-dumbest-most-pretentious-article-ever-about-genetic-engineering/.
Wednesday   22 July 2015  / Hour 4, Block D:   Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: