Photo, left: Shohret Hoshur, a Uyghur now based in Washington, has been subjected to threats from Chinese authorities seeking to silence his straightforward reporting on events in western China.    China denies retaliation against Uighur journalist's family  Beijing on Friday denied seeking to retaliate against relatives of a US-based journalist from the mostly-Muslim Uighur minority, one day after Washington voiced alarm about the case.  US-funded Radio Free Asia (RFA) said that since 2009, Chinese authorities have targeted one of its ethnic Uighur reporters, Shohret Hoshur, who left China in 1994 after authorities deemed two of his articles to be "separatist".
His work for the broadcaster has focused on the minority's far-western Chinese homeland Xinjiang, where violence has intensified since early 2013 in a series of bloody clashes and attacks. RFA said, in a statement posted online this week by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, that Hoshur believes three of his brothers "have been wrongly arrested as a means to intimidate and even silence him as a journalist reporting on sensitive issues in China".
One brother was sentenced last year to five years in prison for "violating state security laws", and the two others were being detained for "leaking state secrets" after discussing the trial by phone with Hoshur, according to RFA. Hoshur "has even received phone calls from his family members asking him to leave his job at RFA, [more]  Photo and text by courtesy of and with thanks to the Daily Mail.
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-hosts:  Gordon Chang, Forbes.com.  Dr. David M. Livingston, The Space Show.
Hour One
Wednesday  14 January  2015 / Hour 1, Block A: Harry Kazianis, managing editor of the National Interest and a non-resident senior fellow at the China Policy Institute, in re:  PLA Naval predation pushing Japan to arm; all costs included may come to $220 billion.  Eke China: submarine, hypersonic weapons, things Japan isn’t even looking at yet; ought to partner with other nations, perhaps best Australia. Where shd Japan put its money?  Probably cyber: experts wh bld the code and the malware says that's the game-changer in the XXI Century – need to tie everything together by computer, satellites, servers, to have a military. Japan needs to make an extremely strong effort to be cyber-Samurais. If Japan could knock out command and Control systems, they'd be doing well.   If the US reliable as an ally to back up Japan?  I think so but, were there an incident where people were killed in the Senkakus, for example, Japan might go it alone.   Cyber is as valuable as missiles; and Japan might need five to seven years to develop missiles. Their subs are excellent, have 22, need 30-plus.  Japan has long-tern challenges in military – can it [afford to do so?]   Japan boosts defense spending to counter China's island claims
Wednesday  14 January  2015 / Hour 1, Block B: Jennifer Chou of Radio Free Asia, in re:  Uyghurs, a Turkic nation in China's Westernmost province Xinjiang, are routinely hectored and even sometimes beaten by Beijing's thugs.   A US-based reporter at Radio Free Asia, Shohret Hoshur, is told that his brothers have been jailed and tortured by Beijing; the brothers were told that if Shohret Hoshur quit his job, the brothers would be released.  After an "incident," hundreds of Uyghur men went completely missing; Shorhet found the names of forty of them, and he was given a major US award for his work. He focuses on events among Uyghurs; his family's wretched treatment is past of a larger pattern, incl a 70-year-old woman  journalist who’s been imprisoned.
According to China's new guidelines, a reporter is forbidden to report on anything not officially approved in advance (even on blogs).
Sarah Cook in Freedom House reports issued yesterday that under Xi Jinping, things are getting worse.  Theresa noticeable increase of consciousness of civil and human rights in China, almost surely because of the work of a small number of human-rights lawyers in China.  The state is alarmed because  China has had several Strike Hard campaigns in Xinjiang
China uses long-range intimidation of reporter to suppress Xinjiang coverage.  The Chinese government has imprisoned the three brothers of a Washington-based reporter for Radio Free Asia, apparently intensifying its suppression of free speech and coverage of the troubled province of Xinjiang.  Ethnic Uighur journalist Shohret Hoshur left China in 1994, after he ran into trouble with the authorities for his reporting. He has since become a U.S. citizen and a mainstay of Radio Free Asia’s coverage of Xinjiang, offering one of the only independent sources of information about events in the province.  According to a statement from RFA supplied to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the harassment of Hoshur’s family started in 2009 after he reported on a Uighur torture victim, but threats from officials had accelerated in recent months. Last year, one of his brothers was sentenced to five years in prison for violating state security laws, while the two other brothers have been detained for allegedly leaking state secrets after discussing the trial in a phone call with Hoshur. RFA said the men were targeted because of Hoshur’s “breaking news coverage” of events in Xinjiang, where the brothers live. “All three of my brothers are hard-working, upstanding members of their community, with little if any interest in politics or social issues,” the reporter said in the statement. “As farmers and merchants, they have been dedicated to supporting and providing for their families.”
Hoshur said the harassment had become so intense that he had even received phone calls from family members asking him to leave his job at RFA, an organization set up by Congress in 1994 to broadcast news that would otherwise not be reported in Asian countries where governments do not allow a free press. RFA continues to be funded by an annual grant from the U.S. government’s Broadcasting Board of Governors.  Hoshur dismissed the charges against his brothers.  “The conversation between my two brothers and me about our third brother’s trial was a private conversation about a serious matter that deeply concerns my family,” he said. “I find it very difficult to believe that . . .   [more]
Wednesday  14 January  2015 / Hour 1, Block C: Dr. David M. Livingston, The Space Show, & Jeff Foust, thespacereview, in re:  4 AM emergency on the ISS: poison air, evacuate evacuate! Astronauts rush up, don face masks and leave – to the Russian side of the module.  Turned out to be an ammonia leak – no, it was a computer malfunction that was not an ammonia leak.  US uses ammonia for cooling – water inside the station and ammonia on the outside, with an exchanger between the water loops and the outside; Russia uses a different system. SpaceX: experimented with returning the first stage back to the Earth, but on a 300 x 75 foot barge in the ocean so the stage could be refurbished and re-used.  It ran out of hydraulic fluid a bit early, but it looks highly promising for the next test in a few weeks.  Nine engines in first stage of Falcon 9; how many times can the engines last – if ten or a dozen, that'll mean huge cost savings.  Dragon capsule for cargo: NASA contract to convert it to a vehicle that can carry people to and from the space station, starting in 2017. Could a Dragon be a lifeboat?  Boeing's CST100 can.
Fear of Ammonia Leak Leads to Partial Space Station Evacuation The crew of  the International Space Station evacuated the U.S. section on Wednesday as a . . . / http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/12/5200-days-in-space/383510/
Wednesday  14 January  2015 / Hour 1, Block D:  Lee Smith, The Tablet & Hudson Institute, in re: Why Obama Wasn’t in Paris / The largest protest in French history conspicuously lacked one person. Yesterday, President Barack Obama’s spokesman Josh Earnest admitted that the United States might have sent “someone with a higher profile” to Paris. What he failed to explain was why the leader of the free world chose not to stand with other world leaders, 44 heads of state, to protest against extremism and commemorate the 17 French people murdered during the course of last week’s Islamist killing spree. Earnest’s admission also neatly elided the fact that the administration’s decision to stiff the French in their hour of national mourning was no accident—no move of that import, at that level of global affairs, is made without serious consideration by many, including the president himself. So it is worth pondering what, precisely, influenced this call.
Some observers followed the lead of James Fallows of the Atlantic, who insisted that the “security footprint for outdoor showing by POTUS” made it impossible for the president to show. But that didn’t keep away 44 other world leaders. Nor does it explain why the White House didn’t send the vice president, or even a cabinet member, like Secretary of State John Kerry, a noted Francophile. Kerry said it was “quibbling” to criticize the administration for sending only the U.S. ambassador to France—an Obama campaign bundler named Jane Hartley.  Obviously, the administration’s decision to stiff the French in their hour of national mourning was no accident. But again, why? Maybe President Obama thought it was hypocritical to . . .   [more]
Hour Two
Wednesday  14 January  2015 / Hour 2, Block A: Mike Davis, professor at Hong Kong University Law School, in re:  [The imprudence of the incomprehending Beijing political thugs as the contemplate how to wrestle liberty in  Hong Kong to the ground, missing the point that this is not likely feasible.]   Key Hong Kong Protesters Summoned to Police Station, Face Arrest   http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-30808735
Wednesday  14 January  2015 / Hour 2, Block B: Cleo Paskal, associate fellow, Energy, Environment and Resources at Chatham House and author of Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map, in re:    Recent Sri Lanka elections; the Pope's visit; an aborted coup plot; China's effort to horn in will be rebuffed for cultural reasons.  Tamils  ask for genocide trials?  US was vocal in wanting to bring up president on intl war crimes charges.  Historically, excessive corruption and nepotism.   Sri Lanka and Modi.  Current Sri Lankan amb to the US saying that Sri Lanka wants a security agreement with India, Myanmar, Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladesh. Note that missing are Pakistan and China.
The former Sri Lankan Ambassador to India (currently Sri Lanka's Ambassador to Washington) Prasad Kariyawasam echoed the analysis, saying India and Sri Lanka's "destinies are intertwined". Noting that Pakistan would block any proposed South Asia economic union, he proposed following Modi's "let's move at a pace everyone is comfortable with" policy, and begin with an eastern economic union including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka.    Wooing Sri Lanka from China's Embrace
Wednesday  14 January  2015 / Hour 2, Block C:  Abheek Bhattacharya, Wall Street Journal, Heard on the Street, in re:  Oil might conceivably go as far down as $35; it’s a battle between Saudi Arabia and US shale producers.  Saudis have a lot of spare capacity, but is it willing to take that much pain unto itself?  Meanwhile such oil-guzzlers as China are guzzling less these days.   Saudi and OPEC have tried to control the price for thirty years, now have lost control: it was in the triple-digit price for so log that consumers began real conservation, and a lot of new suppliers came in because the numbers were so good.   China does, indeed, have a strategic reserve; no one knows how much.  It’s a real secret.  Its wherewithal in sucking up extra oil is limited; it still has to build out its capacity and is still doing so: we have to wait while China builds more storage tanks in order to buy.   Further, China's oil demand in slowing down – used to have huge demand for diesel, which is now down. Also, it built so many refineries, but they can't sell all their refined goods domestically so it's flooding Asian neighbors with diesel.   LNG:  price also declining.  Chinese leaders are afraid of the populace, which hates the killer smogs.  Iron ore price also going down. Why?  It goes into making steel, of which China isn’t making as much any more.
Wednesday  14 January  2015 / Hour 2, Block D: :  Abheek Bhattacharya, Wall Street Journal, Heard on the Street, in re:  . . .  The last Chinese emperor was driven around in a Buick.  It bought Volvo, has sold too few vehicles domestically, now announces it'll sell Chinese-made Volvos in the US.   . . . Chinese people probably don’t drive as much as Americans do.   BYD, electric-car producer in which Warren Buffet has invested, has done not as well as Buffet hoped. 
Hour Three
Wednesday  14 January  2015 / Hour 3, Block A:   Bret Stephens, WSJ editorial board & GLOBAL VIEW, in re: The Scandal of Free Speech.   Oxford University warns authors not to write about bacon, pork to avoid offending Muslims / Oxford University Press bans sausages and pigs from children's books to avoid offending Jews and Muslims. All this is dispiriting and craven.  The White House now refuses to use the words "Islamic extremism" or "radical Islam" - and Heaven forbid "Islamicism" (verboten); it mandates:  "Violent extremism based on a warped view of Islam" – veboawvoi.   http://www.wsj.com/articles/bret-stephens-the-scandal-of-free-speech-142...
Wednesday  14 January  2015 / Hour 3, Block B:  John Fund, National Review Online, in re:  'We Have a Brand!' - National Review Online   Selma still works because the filmmaker Ava DuVernay was able to . . .  He then dared King family lawyers to sue the man who helped write “I have a dream" . . .   The King family charged $2.7 million for use of Dr King's words at the memorial honoring him. King Incorporated.   . . .  The King Center in Atlanta: "We cannot allow our brand to be abused."  Fair use allows widespread use of expressions of ideas. Here, Steven Spielberg paid a prince's ransom to gain rights to use the I Have a Dream speech.   The fellow responsible for the memorial is gobsmacked by all this. Julian Bond wanted to include four excerpts from Dr King's speeches in his textbooks, would have been charged an impossible amount. Hosea Williams also offended.
Wednesday  14 January  2015 / Hour 3, Block C: Anatoly Zak, RussianSpaceWeb.com & author, Russians in Space, and Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: ISS crew locks down inside Russian sector after cooling system glitch "At this time the team does not believe we leaked ammonia," ISS program manager Mike . . .
Wednesday  14 January  2015 / Hour 3, Block D:   Pete Hoekstra, The Hill, in re: The Hill - covering Congress, Politics, Political Campaigns ...  ;  . . . schools, not Pete Hoekstra, contributor - No Child Left Behind might finally be sent to the trash heap of legislative history.
Hour Four
Wednesday  14 January  2015 / Hour 4, Block A:  Richard A Epstein, Hoover Institution Defining Ideas, & Chicago Law, in re: The Elusive Two-State Solution (1 of 2)
Wednesday  14 January  2015 / Hour 4, Block B: Richard A Epstein, Hoover Institution Defining Ideas, & Chicago Law, in re: The Elusive Two-State Solution (2 of 2)
Wednesday  14 January  2015 / Hour 4, Block C:  Jo Becker, NYT, in re:  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/31/world/europe/how-putin-forged-a-pipeline-deal-that-derailed-.html?mabReward=RI%3A10&module=WelcomeBackModal&contentCollection=N.Y.%20%2F%20Region&region=FixedCenter&action=click&src=recg&pgtype=article
Wednesday  14 January  2015 / Hour 4, Block D: Philip Henry Terzian, journalist and past Literary Editor of The Weekly Standard, in re: Only very rich liberals can live in American cities; the middle class cannot.
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