Today on The World: The Obama administration plans to develop a new elite team for interrogating terrorism suspects; also, Haitian ex-pats get advice from another diaspora: the American Jewish community; and, the songs of Israeli President Shimon Peres.

The Obama administration is creating a new system for conducting interrogation of terrorism suspects. It’s supposed to be a way to look forward, and avoid mistakes of the past, as The World’s Matthew Bell reports.

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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp, this is The World. Previously classified details of the CI-’s treatment of terrorism suspects were made public this afternoon. They are not pretty. One interrogator apparently told a suspect that, if any attacks happened in the U-S, quote, “We’re going to kill your children.” Another interrogator allegedly tried to convince a suspect that his mother would be sexually assaulted in front of him. We’ll have more on the implications of the report in a moment. First, The World’s Matthew Bell tells us about a related announcement from the Obama administration, on how it plans to revamp the system of interrogating detainees.

MATTHEW BELL: The White House says President Obama will create a new multi-agency unit for interrogating so-called high value terrorism suspects. The unit will be based at FBI headquarters in Washington, led by an FBI official, and it will include US intelligence officials. The team will be overseen by the White House. It will also follow the rules for interrogations laid out in the US Army Field Manual. Those rules prohibit torture, along with some of the harsh interrogation techniques used in the past, such as water boarding. White House spokesman, Bill Burton, made the announcement today.

BILL BURTON: The President’s view is that intelligence gathering is best left to the intelligence community, and this is a way that the intelligence community can best operate, especially in these high volume instances.

MATTHEW BELL: Former CIA official, Robert Baer, says the Obama administration has been slow to end bad intelligence practices from the Bush era. But he says this is a step in the right direction, because it would take the main responsibility for interrogations and give it to the FBI.

ROBERT BAER: You can count on FBI agents going into an interrogation, and following the rule of law. That’s what they do, that’s what they get hired for. There would also be closer supervision, direct supervision from the department of justice. So, any tendency to resort to torture, were morel likely not, that not to happen.

MATTHEW BELL: The White House said the new interrogation’s unit does not mean that the CIA is being cut out of the interrogations process. But Baer, who served in the CIA for 21 years, says the agency has no business being involved in the questioning of suspects.

ROBERT BAER: It’s not what the CIA does, is interrogations, police forces do that, foreign intelligence services do that. The CIA runs what we call Clandestine Sources, informants overseas, and that’s its core business, and that’s what it should’ve been doing all along. When you the CIA into some sort of pera-military organization that interrogates prisoners of war. So it was just a dumb idea in the first place.

MATTHEW BELL: According to former vice president Dick Cheney, however, the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program disrupted terrorist plots and saved American lives. President Obama has said he would rather look forward than go back and examine whether or not harsh interrogation techniques during the Bush years amounted to torture. But that might be unavoidable, as new details of alleged CIA abuses are coming out. Today, the justice department announcement the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into those allegations. Political science professor, Michael Desch, at the University of Notre Dame says it’s understandable why the Obama administration would prefer to look forward, but Desch says, these issues should not be swept under the rug.

MICHAEL DESCH: Without making a version of the Nuremberg defense, you know it does seem to me that lower level people that were following orders, should not be the primary focus in our assessment to these abuses. I would focus at a much higher level, or at least prefer that the focus be there.

MATTHEW BELL: And when you say, higher level, what are you talking about?

MICHAEL DESCH: I’m, you know, talking about senior policy makers at the department of justice, and in the white house.

MATTHEW BELL: CIA director, Leon Panetta, today sent an email message to agency personnel to help relieve concerns they might have. Panetta said the latest allegations of CIA abuses are part of an old story, and that he intends to quote, “Stand up for those officers who did what their country asked and who followed the legal guidance they were given.” Panetta said “That is the president’s position, too.” For The World, I’m Matthew Bell.

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Anchor Jeb Sharp speaks with Columbia law school professor Scott Horton about the Attorney General’s reported plans to recommend re-opening nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases.

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JEB SHARP: As we just heard, the Attorney General is recommending the re-opening of nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases, a reversal of Bush administration policy. Scott Horton is a Professor at Columbia University Law School. He says at this point, there aren’t too many details on those prisoner-abuse cases.

SCOTT HORTON: The best known, by far, comes out of Abu Ghraib, and it relates to a prisoner named Manadel al-Jamadi, who was also known as the Iceman. He’s someone who was delivered Abu Ghraib, [INDISCERNIBLE] was stored in ice. We know that he was handled by a group of navy seals, but that he died in CIA custody, and there was a military inquiry involving the fields that resulted in some disciplinary action, but certainly no homicide prosecution. And we know there are roughly a dozen other cases that involve people dying while they were in custody.

JEB SHARP: So, what are the implications of these cases being re-opened? And does it mean talking about only CIA interrogators being investigated, or could the investigation go further up the food chain?

SCOTT HORTON: Yeah, well those are the two major questions. First of all, why is a decision being taken now on the investigations? Well, we know that the CIA inspector general Henderson identified each of these cases, and insisted that they go to the justice department for proper criminal investigation. So, the CIA inspector general effectively did his work. What happened to the justice department? All these cases were sent to the eastern district of Virginia, which has a long special track record of dealing with CIA cases. And what happened there? Not much evidently. In fact, here we had one member of the staff there referring to their function as a dead leather office, that is, they received these complaints, but really didn’t take any action on them. And now, the justice department, after reviewing what happened, has decided that, you know, that’s really not acceptable. There does have to be a proper homicide investigation.

JEB SHARP: What do you think is at stake here in reopening these cases?

SCOTT HORTON: Well, I think the attorney general wants to put blinders on the special prosecutor, to vary narrowly circumscribe it. But can he do that? No, he can’t. A special prosecutor whose worth [INDISCERNIBLE], is going to go fully investigate these cases, and follow the factual leads wherever they take him. And that my very well wind up implicating senior officials, the administration indeed, even people in the White House. So, I think all of these questions will wind up being examined by the special prosecutor, which is not to say, necessarily, that charges are gonna be brought in the end of the day, but I think certainly there’s at least an outside chance that we’ll see prosecution of administration officials, based on advice they gave, or actions they took.

JEB SHARP: So, why is this change happening now? You know, is it simply a case of new administration, new people in positions making fresh decisions? I mean, how arbitrary is this?

SCOTT HORTON: I really don’t think it’s arbitrary at all, in fact it’s almost the other way around. It’s in the last administration, basically a stick was put in the wheel, to stop the wheel of justice from turning. Basically, political decisions were made to stop criminal investigations from happening. The ethics office at the justice department has looked into what happened, they’ve pretty clearly have made that call right now. And I think what Holder is saying, you really can’t do that, we have to take the stick out, and now the investigation has to occur.

JEB SHARP: And what about the new CIA Chief, Leon Pinneta? How’s he reacting to all of this?

SCOTT HORTON: Well, it’s clear that he didn’t wanna see a criminal investigation occur, but in fact today, he’s just issued a statement to his staff, in which he’s telling them that this report’s being issued, and he’s really preparing them to expect that there’s gonna be a criminal investigation coming out of this. So, while he’s working hard to build report within the organization, he’s also trying to reconcile them to a new regime, and a new way of doing things, and on much higher degree of accountability.

JEB SHARP: Scott Horton is a contributing editor at Harpers Magazine, and a law professor at Columbia University. Thanks so much for talking to us.

SCOTT HORTON: Great to be with you.

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Scotland’s parliament is holding an emergency session to debate the fallout following Scotland’s decision to release the Lockerbie bomber last week. The World’s Laura Lynch has the story.

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JEB SHARP: A prisoner release is continuing to make waves. Today, the Scottish parliament held an emergency session to deal with the fallout from Scotland’s decision to release the Lockerbie bomber last week. The only man convicted in the 1998 bombing of Pan Am flight 103, was met by jubilant crowds when he arrived home in Tripoli. Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi was also given a very warm public welcome by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi .The scenes have infuriated many in the U-S and Britain, and Scotland is feeling that fury. The World’s Laura Lynch reports.

LAURA LYNCH: People in Scotland may be divided about their own government, but it’s taken just a few words from the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, to help them find a point of unity. over the weekend, Mueller wrote to the Scottish justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill. He accused MacAskill of making a mockery of the rule of law, as well as giving comfort to terrorists. That had them buzzing on the call-in shows today.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think in conclusion, we have batted well against these arrogant Americans, and I think we stood up to America well. And I think we really should appreciate the man who made the decision.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE 2: He should have been allowed to die in this country, put him into the hospital, but he should not have been return home on compassionate grounds.  That is a dirty word here, that’s the key word.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I can’t believe the audacity of the Americans to come on Scottish radio and call into question our understanding of the word compassion, especially when we see day in and day out the goings on of Guantanamo Bay.

LAURA LYNCH: But later in the day it became obvious, Scotland is not speaking with one voice.

[SOUND CLIP]

LAURA LYNCH: Scottish politicians gathered in an emergency session in Edinburgh, one topic and one man at the center of the turmoil. Kenny MacAskill repeated his reasons for granting freedom to al-Megrahi, who is terminally ill. MacAskill said he stands by his decision. In fact, he admitted only one problem, Libya, he said, failed to deliver on promises to keep al-Megrahi’s homecoming low-key.

KENNY MACASKILL: It is a matter of great regret that Mr. al-Megrahi was received in such an inappropriate manner. It showed no compassion or sensitivity to the families of the 270 victims of Lockerbie.

LAURA LYNCH: Then, for more than an hour, opposition politicians fired questions at him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE 3: But does he understand how much that decision has angered the silent majority in Scotland? Does he understand how ashamed we were to see our flag flying to welcome a convicted bomber home?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE 4: What the first minister and his government have done is to split Scotland, split our country within itself, and split our nation from many international friends.  Next week Colonel Gadaffi can parade al-Megrahi as part of his 40th anniversary celebrations.

LAURA LYNCH: MacAskill never strayed far from his by now familiar line, this was about compassion, about mercy. And whatever some may suspect, he insists it wasn’t about smoothing the way for British business interests inside Libya. But amidst the cascade of criticism raining down on the Scottish government, there were one or two jabs at another parliament and another leader.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE 2: Presiding officer, equally disturbing is the extraordinary and incomprehensible silence of the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

LAURA LYNCH: The British prime minister hasn’t said a word about al-Megrahi since the release. A spokesman did say today that Brown disagrees with the FBI chief’s comments. But Brown is staying away from either endorsing or condemning Scotland’s decision. It’s not that he doesn’t have time. This afternoon, Brown released a written statement congratulating England’s cricket team for winning a top prize. Granted, that’s a lot easier than navigating a tricky international issue that’s already exposed both Brown and Scotland to a torrent of anger. For The World, I’m Laura Lynch, in London.

JEB SHARP: Some in the US are so angry at Scotland, they’ve launched a “Boycott Scotland” campaign. A New Jersey town is trying to block Libya’s leader as well. Officials in Englewood are upset about reports that Moammar Ghadafi may put up a Bedouin tent in their town when he visits the US next month. Libya owns some property in the northern New Jersey suburb.

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Health problems the afflict the world’s poor have received unprecedented attention in recent years. But medical workers who focus on lesser known diseases say their efforts remain as difficult as ever. Reporter Odette Yousef of Station WABE followed the struggles of one American organization that’s fighting a leading cause of blindness in Africa.

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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp, and this is The World. Health problems that afflict the world’s poor have received unprecedented attention in recent years. Governments and foundations are pouring billions of dollars into the fights against AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. But medical workers who focus on lesser known diseases say their efforts remain as difficult as ever. Reporter Odette Yousef, followed the struggles of one American organization that’s fighting a leading cause of blindness in Africa.

[SOUND CLIP]

ODETTE YOUSEF: A bony, old woman sits in a rural health clinic in northwest Ethiopia, her name is Asnaku Hussein. She squints in the dim light of a window.

ASNAKU HUSSEIN: [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] The pain in my eye is something as if I have foreign bodies in my eyes, and then severe tearing, and that will be followed with severe headache.

ODETTE YOUSEF: Asnaku Hussein suffers from trachoma. It’s a bacterial disease that irritates the underside of the eyelid. Over the years, repeated infections have caused her left eyelid to curl inward. Now her eyelashes scrape against the cornea. Her eye is extremely sensitive to light, to dust, and to smoke from cooking over a fire, which makes it hard to do household chores.

ASNAKU HUSSEIN: [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] Yes, I do cook, I do washing, I’m not going to bring water from river nowadays because of my eyes, but I do everything I can at home because I’m taking care of my grandchildren.

ODETTE YOUSEF: But Asnaku Hussein may not be able to care for her grandchildren much longer. She’s going blind. In this part of Ethiopia, one in twenty adults suffers from the same, debilitating condition. Ethiopia has the greatest number of people in the world who’ve gone blind from trachoma, but until a few years ago, the disease was low among the Health Ministry’s priorities. The priorities at the top of that list, here and elsewhere, are the so-called Big Three killer diseases, malaria, HIV, and tuberculosis. And that’s been frustrating for people who focus on so-called neglected tropical diseases like trachoma.

PAUL EMERSON: What we find is, for every hundred dollars that goes into HIV, there’s about one dollar that goes into the neglected tropical diseases. There’s this huge inequity.

ODETTE YOUSEF: Paul Emerson is director of The Carter Center’s Trachoma Control Program. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter launched it in 1998. It’s a shoestring operation funded largely by the Lions Clubs International Foundation. Emerson says the tight budget forces the organization to be efficient.

PAUL EMERSON: The trachoma program, and Neglected Tropical Disease in general offer much greater returns than the big three, although I could get in trouble for saying that. It’s not very popular.

ODETTE YOUSEF: The trachoma program benefits from free antibiotics, donated by the drug company Pfizer. And at a cost of 20 dollars per patient, it gives free surgery for severe cases of trachoma. They’re mostly done at bare bones, rural health clinics like this one, where Asnaku Hussein has come. She lies on an examination table. The only other furniture in the room is a wooden desk. A nurse covers her face with a sheet of paper. A hole goes over the affected eye, the nurse injects anesthetic into the eyelid.

ASNAKU HUSSEIN: [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] She said she’s not feeling the pain, but she’s just naturally scared.

ODETTE YOUSEF: The nurse makes an incision in Asnaku Hussein’s upper eyelid. She pulls the skin up so that the eyelashes once again face outward. Then she stitches it up and covers the eye with a patch of gauze. It takes just 15 minutes, and in a week, it will be fully healed. But for The Carter Center, merely offering the surgery isn’t enough. Convincing patients to undergo it can be a challenge.

[SOUND CLIP]

ODETTE YOUSEF: In one village, The Carter Center’s Paul Emerson found an elderly man suffering from advanced trachoma. The man said he knew about the free surgery, but wouldn’t get it. He said it would mean looking for someone to walk him to and from the clinic, and another person to tend to his livestock, too much trouble. For Emerson, it was a moment of disheartening reality.

PAUL EMERSON: We never seem to exhaust the problem. So no matter how much we do, it’s never enough.

ODETTE YOUSEF: Ideally, Emerson and his team would like to keep people from getting trachoma in the first place. The disease is spread by flies that land on people’s faces. So health workers encourage villagers to wash frequently. The flies breed in human waste, in areas where people relieve themselves in open fields. So The Carter Center and other development groups have built hundreds of thousands of outhouses in Ethiopia. But even this simple intervention can be hard to sustain.

[SOUND CLIP]

ODETTE YOUSEF: In a small village called Kalchaka, a cluster of three mud huts stands on a hill. The ruins of a fourth structure sit nearby. The circular straw roof has collapsed on top of branches that once supported it. This is the outhouse. A man who lives here says it’s been like that for months:

[SOUND CLIP]

ODETTE YOUSEF: He claims his family still uses the outhouse, but that’s clearly impossible. The roof is basically on the ground. Teshome Gebre, head of The Carter Center’s field office in Ethiopia, lost patience.

TESHOME GEBRE: I said you are lying, you are not using this because I can see there is no access for you. He said yes, nowadays, these days we are not making use of it. For now we are using the open field, he said. Back to square one.

ODETTE YOUSEF: It’s slow progress, but there are successes. Last month three nations joined the list of countries that have eliminated blinding trachoma. Mexico, Ghana and Saudi Arabia used the same approach that the Carter Center is using in Ethiopia. But Ethiopia faces a much bigger challenge than those countries did. More than one million people need immediate surgery to keep from going blind. The small victories are people like Asnaku Hussein. For her, the surgery is not just about her vision, it gives her hope that perhaps she can start to climb out of poverty.

[SOUND CLIP]

ODETTE YOUSEF: She says once her eye heals, her grandchildren won’t need to help her with household chores. Instead, she says, they’ll go back to their schoolwork, and looking to their own futures. With a tube of antibiotics in hand, she leaves the health clinic, and begins the tired trudge home. For The World, I’m Odette Yousef, Amhara, Ethiopia.

JEB SHARP: Odette Yousef is a reporter for WABE, Atlanta. She received funding for her trip to Ethiopia from the Kilimanjaro Center for Community Ophthalmology. You can see pictures of Asnaku Hussein, and some of the other people we met in that report at the-world-dot-org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

President Obama has put Afghanistan at the top of his foreign policy agenda. But polls suggest that many Americans don’t share the President’s view on that. Anchor Jeb Sharp speaks with Andrew Exum, a fellow at the Washington think-tank, the Center for a New American Security.

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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp. And this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, P-R-I, and W-G-B-H, Boston. President Obama has put Afghanistan at the top of his foreign policy agenda, but his top military man, Admiral Mike Mullen, said yesterday that public support here is flagging. Polls back that up. The goal of stabilizing Afghanistan is ambitious enough. It becomes nearly impossible without solid support from the public, and a clear vision from the President. Andrew Exum highlights the issue in his latest blog postings. Exum is a fellow at the think-tank, the Center for a New American Security, in Washington. He’s also an army veteran, with multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq under his belt. Andrew Exum, what is missing here? Is it a vision of a desirable end state, the strategy to get there? Give us a sense of what you’ve been writing about.

ANDREW EXUM: Well, I think you’ve got a couple things. First off, the American people haven’t really paid attention to Afghanistan for most of the past five years because of the war in Iraq. And not only have the American people not paid attention to it, but policy makers have not as well. And so we’ve arrived to the point where we’re almost in our ninth year of combat in Afghanistan, and it suffered from neglect in several different ways, and it shows. First off, the American people, and including actually a lot of senior policy makers I’ve spoken to, and the departments and agencies and the government, don’t feel like anybody’s explained what we’re trying to do in Afghanistan. And then second, I, you know, I just returned from a long trip to Afghanistan, and there is a belief that we have not done an effective job communicating what exactly is going on in Afghanistan, and why we need to shift strategy there.

JEB SHARP: And so, who’s at fault? Whose job is it to articulate and sell division, and how do you do it?

ANDREW EXUM: Sure. I think that two people are really responsible for articulating what’s going on. First off, President Obama has to defend his stra-, his policy rather. He’s the one that has to explain why we’re in Afghanistan, and what we’re doing there. Second thing, Generals Petraeus, and General McChrystal, who really have [INDISCERNIBLE] their responsibility for the effort in Afghanistan. They’re the ones that have to explain to the American people how we’re going to realize the President strategy, in other words, what we’re doing. Afghanistan is never gonna be a popular war, I don’t think any wars are going to be popular, but I think that people would understand it a little bit better if policy makers, and our operational commanders took the time out to explain what we’re doing in Afghanistan, and how we’re going to get to where we want to be. Keep in mind, General McChrystal is a new commander in Afghanistan, he has just completed his own 60-day review. And I suspect that as part of that 60-day review, and this is something that we talked a lot about, is that he needs to take the message to both policy makers in congress, as well as to the American people, and explain what we’re trying to do.

JEB SHARP: So, given that that train is moving along on one track, what are the practical real world consequences of the confusion that you refer to, and the lack of clarity?

ANDREW EXUM: Well, I think you’ve got several problems. First off, this is a NATO war, and it’s very difficult to manage a coalition, and to get every partner in the cohabitation working along the same lines. And for everybody to understand what resources are needed, what type of strategic changes are needed, and it’s very difficult to do that if you, the American government, are all not on the same page about what needs to happen.

JEB SHARP: And Andrew, you are an infantry platoon commander in Afghanistan. Can you give a sense of how and whether this big picture policy stuff affects the men and women on the ground?

ANDREW EXUM: Yeah, it absolutely does. You know, one of the things that we often don’t talk about, but which is quite significant, was the psychological effect that the 2007 Baghdad security plan had on troops in Iraq. Soldiers, American soldiers, generally have high morale, they don’t mind fighting, they believe in their mission. But they have to believe that there’s a coherent strategy that surrounds their mission. And one of the things that the 2007 Baghdad security plan did, is that it provided, first off, a clear strategy for how we were going to go about our business in Iraq. And then second off, it provided sufficient resources for us to be able to go about that strategy. In Afghanistan, I believe the US soldiers on the ground are looking for the same thing. If they are lost in some random valley in Nuristan Province, and they’re not sure how exactly it connects to what we’re trying to do strategically in the country, that’s a big problem. It’s gonna really affect morale, it’s going to affect the way that troops do business on the ground. If however, we have a clear, coherent strategy that’s backed by sufficient resources, and that it’s made clear to not only the soldiers on the ground, but to the American people back home, that could have a tremendous psychological effect on the average guy fighting the war.

JEB SHARP: Andrew Exum is a fellow at the Center for New American Security, in Washington, and author of the blog, Abu Muqawama. There’s a link to his blog on our website, The-World-dot-org. And while you’re, there check out our weekly cartoon slideshow. Last week’s elections in Afghanistan inspired some poignant, and irreverent political cartooning.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

More than a quarter of the Haitian populations lives outside Haiti. Now there are growing efforts to unify and strengthen that diaspora. Haitian leaders in the US are getting some advice from another more established diaspora… The American Jewish community. Amy Bracken reports.

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JEB SHARP: Haiti isn’t exactly at the top of the US foreign policy agenda. Though former president Bill Clinton has been named as the UN’s special envoy to Haiti. Mr. Clinton’s planning to travel to the impoverished Caribbean nation in October to try to boost investment there. But the flow of Haitians continues to go in the opposite direction. It’s estimated that roughly a quarter of the Haitian population lives outside of Haiti. Now there’s an effort under way to unify and strengthen Haiti’s Diaspora, to try to help Haitians back home.  And as Amy Bracken reports, it’s getting advice from an unlikely place, the American Jewish community.

AMY BRACKEN: Eliott Kriegsman first developed an interest in Haiti as a nine-year-old boy growing up in Long Island when his parents hired a Haitian housekeeper.

ELIOTT KRIEGSMAN: She was the first non-American that I ever met who wasn’t from Eastern Europe, {LAUGHS] I guess, you know? And she was just fascinating, and I just promised myself that as soon as I became old enough to travel on my own, I was going to go to Haiti, and Haiti was the first trip I ever took outside the United States.

AMY BRACKEN: But it wasn’t until many years later, as a middle-aged journalism student at NYU, that he would find himself recruited to be a friend of the Haitian Diaspora. It happened when he went to interview a Haitian judge for a class project.

ELIOTT KRIEGSMAN: And then she said, “I want you to meet somebody who’s the head of the Haitian league.” And she called him up and she was saying, “I think he’s the kind of guy that we’re looking for.” And I went down, drove down to his place, went into his back office, and about ten seconds later he said, “You’re Jewish, aren’t you?”

AMY BRACKEN: He was Dr. Bernier Lauredan, a New Jersey-based pediatrician and the president of a Haitian-American association called the Haitian League.

ELIOTT KRIEGSMAN: He said “Well, I’ve long been connected with the Jewish community, and I think that there is a major bridge that the two heritages have.” And I said, “Well, I think there’s a big difference between the way Haitians have failed to consolidate their power in this country, and their money, and the way that the Jews have.” And he said, “Yes, and that’s exactly what we want to learn. How to do that.”

AMY BRACKEN: Recently, the Haitian League organized the second annual Haitian Unity Diaspora Congress in Miami. The conference drew more than 300 professionals from the US, Haiti and elsewhere, including Haitian Prime Minister Michel Pierre-Louis and, briefly, Bill Clinton, the new UN special envoy to Haiti. Haitians abroad send home about two billion dollars a year. Much of that money goes for basic goods like food. A persistent question among the Diaspora is how to join forces to invest in Haiti’s future. At last weekend’s conference, Kriegsman gave a presentation on the benefits of the kibbutz.

ELIOTT KRIEGSMAN: In reality the kibbutz model is no stranger to Haitians.

AMY BRACKEN: Comparing the Israeli kibbutz to a Haitian farming collective called the Kombit. Kriegsman suggested that Haiti can develop from within and shed its dependence on outside help. Also, he suggested that young Haitian Americans travel to Haiti to spend time working on the Kombit, the way Jewish youths work on the kibbutz, to strengthen the next generation’s ties to the homeland. After studying aquaculture at Auburn University in Alabama, Wilson Celestin moved back to Haiti to teach and develop an irrigation and fish-farming project. His children, though, are in school in Miami.

WILSON CELESTIN: The problem is especially with the children, that, you know, mostly educated here. We had an intervention from the Jewish community here, that shared with us how they happened to get their children involved in the Jewish tradition. And I think as an advice that the kind of things we’ll have to do here, do whatever it is possible to get them involved into the Haitian culture by learning the language, give them the opportunity, for example, to go as often as possible to Haiti, and I think this is something that can be worked out.

AMY BRACKEN: One person responsible for the Haitian and Jewish communities’ friendship in Florida is Henryka Manes. She’s a member of the Greater Miami Jewish Foundation and also directs a non-profit development program in a Haitian town.

HENRYKA MANES: When we pray in Judaism, what we do is we talk about our history. That’s the prayer, this and this happened then, and this, it’s passed from generation to generation. It’s the same thing that Haitians have to do. They have to have a narrative, a narrative that is both truthful, and at the same time visionary. That is what they will pass on to the next generation in the Diaspora, and keep the flame of Haiti alive.

AMY BRACKEN: For The World, I’m Amy Bracken

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Our daily geography puzzler.

High winds fanned huge wildfires to the north of Athens this past weekend. Many of those fires are now under control. But thousands there were forced to flee their homes, including the BBC’s Malcolm Brabant. He speaks with anchor Jeb Sharp.

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JEB SHARP: High winds fanned huge wildfires to the north of Athens this past weekend. Those winds died down today, and firefighters have now brought many of the fires under control. But they destroyed 58 square miles of forest and greenery around the Greek capital. Thousands of people were forced to flee their homes. One of them was the BBC’s Malcolm Brabant. Malcolm, you were forced to evacuate, what happened in your neighborhood?

MALCOLM BRABANT: This happened on Sunday, I had been watching the fires on Saturday and reporting on those, and went to bed exhausted about midnight, on Saturday. And there was this glow above the hill. I woke up at four o’clock in the morning when the power went, and the fans crashed out, and the smell of smoke was pretty intense. You looked through the windows and the fires were racing up the hills towards us. So, we packed our bags, took the things that kind of defined the family, the photos, the video, packed them in the car. We got out with about sort of five minutes to spare, I would say, before the fire reached right to the edge of the house. When we drove down the hill, we thought that the house would be consumed by the flames, but the fire had stopped at the back garden wall. And that’s an experience that’s being shared by many people in the northern suburbs here, because the construction of the houses is such that they don’t actually catch fire, unlike American houses, which are made of wood. These are made of concrete.

JEB SHARP: Do you know how that particular fire started?

MALCOLM BRABANT: Well, there’s great suspicion, actually, that there is arson. This is an accusation that’s been made by the communist party here, which is a fairly significant voice in Greece. The party leader here does believe that this is a coordinated campaign of arson,

designed to clear much of the land in eastern Attica, which is the province surrounding Athens, in order to have development. I mean, that’s the sort of thing that has been going on for year here, because there are places surrounding Athens, which just have such splendid views, in which people are desperate to build on.

JEB SHARP: So if the communist party is making these accusations, who exactly do they think are setting the fires?

MALCOLM BRABANT: Well, that’s the trouble really, I mean, arsonists very rarely get caught, and Greeks are great ones for conspiracy theory. But the thing is, you know, the fire that started this initially, was up at a place called Gramatico, north of Athens. This is a place where there’s a very controversial waste disposal landfill plant that’s being built, and the villages up there are very much opposed to it, and the authorities are very sort of keen to make sure that it happens. Now, apparently this fire started at around about midnight thirty. Now, that’s not the sort of fire that starts, you know, during the middle of the night naturally, because there was no thunderstorm. And so, you know, that’s why there’s a strong feeling out there that arson happened.

JEB SHARP: How would you rate the response by the Greek government in the efforts to control the blaze?

MALCOLM BRABANT: The trouble is that the magnitude of the fires is such that, you know, any organization, I think, would struggle to cope with it. I mean, you have this experience in California where you get overwhelmed. And it happened in Australia earlier on this year, when the fire gets hold, it’s very difficult to fight because it creates a weather path of its own in the mountainous areas. It’s difficult to combat, especially at night when airplanes are grounded. The government insists that it has done the best it possibly can.

JEB SHARP: And describe the scene in and around Athens today.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Where I live, you know, I’ve come back here just to check on my house. I mean, it’s extremely bleak. What this fire has done has been to remove, you know, the last of the tree cover. And the trees really do play a very important part in cooling Athens, because they used to act us air-conditioning units, basically. Cooling the northern winds as they went down over the city. And so, the long-term impact on Athens is gonna be pretty severe.

JEB SHARP: The BBC’s Malcolm Brabant lives in the Greek village of Draphi. He and his wife were temporarily evacuated when wildfires spread to an area near their home. Thanks for your time.

MALCOLM BRABANT: You’re very welcome.

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For today’s Geo Quiz, we were looking for a Caribbean island that is part of the Netherlands Antilles. The answer is Curacao.

Matthew Wells reports from New Mexico on the building of a new “spaceport” intended as a launch site for future space tourism flights.

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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp, this is The World. You’ll soon be able to buy a ticket to space for a mere 200 thousand dollars. That’s if Richard Branson’s latest project goes according to plan. The British billionaire expects to start flying tourists into space within the next two years. His Virgin Galactic company has developed a special plane for the job. Take-offs are planned from a spaceport in New Mexico. Reporter Matthew Wells takes us to the site.

[SOUND CLIP]

MATTHEW WELLS: Well, it’s not long after sunrise, here in the southern New Mexico deserts, and a commercial test rocket’s just been fired up into the sky. Well, it’s a sign of things to come. Just the bulldozers and construction teams begin working earnest, and what’s known around here is Space Port America.

STEVE LANDENE: My name is Steve Landene [PH?], executive director for Space Port America. In early 2011, I think you’ll see those first passengers go to space. Of course Virgin’s already announced the roll out of their space ship to, which will be in December this year, and then they’re gonna continue their flight test program.

MATTHEW WELLS: Well, this beautiful spot where I am right now is pretty much exactly where the Virgin Galactic runway’s going to be. Steve Landene promises tourists quite a ride.

STEVE LANDENE: It’s like astronauts evolved. They’re gonna be filling this massive wave of energy through their body, and soon, then deafening silence. They will be staring back at the blue

planet. Once they’re up there, they’re gonna have probably three to five minutes. So they’re gonna be able to unbuckle out of their seats, and float through that cabin.

[SOUND CLIP]

MATTHEW WELLS: Locals are gonna have to get used to the eerie sound of atmospheric monitoring machines as this Space Port grows. Firefighter, Pete Schroeder, is looking forward to it.

PETE SCHROEDER: It’s gonna bring a lot of money in, a lot of jobs.

MATTHEW WELLS: And it looks like it’s really happening now, isn’t it?

PETE SCHROEDER: It is. A couple years ago we weren’t too sure, but now it’s definitely reality.

MATTHEW WELLS: Fancy taking a flight in space yourself?

PETE SCHROEDER: [LAUGHS] If I could afford it, maybe.

MATTHEW WELLS: Some New Mexicans think it’s all just pie in the sky. As part of their contribution to the state’s 200 million dollars, Space Port costs, the local sales tax is being raised. It was approved by a referendum, but scrap metal merchant, George Gandora [PH?], says it’s a big mistake.

GEORGE GANDORA: We’re in a recession, and to be spending on space ports, no, no. Lets spend it on healthy, education. We don’t need to be spending money in space, when our government, the wealthiest government in the world, can afford to do it.

MATTHEW WELLS: At the state’s space museum, there’s already an exhibit honoring Virgin Galactic, and its partners, with hundreds of millions of dollars poured into the company earlier this month by Arab investors. It looks increasingly likely that New Mexico will be hosting a new generation of space travelers for decades to come.

[SOUND CLIP]

JEB SHARP: That was Matthew Wells reporting from Southern New Mexico.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Israeli President Shimon Peres celebrated his 86th birthday a week ago. He’s been in Israeli politics for more than half a century. Turns out, that whole time, he’s also been writing poems. And some of those poems have now been set to music. Daniel Estrin has today’s Global Hit.