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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, and this is The World.  First we’ll tell you the news out of Afghanistan; then we’ll tell you why it may be useless information.  The news is that Incumbent President, Hamid Karzai, has more than 54 percent of the votes cast in last month’s election.  Karzai’s nearest rival, Abdullah Abdullah, has 23 percent.  The question is, “What do these numbers mean?”  The answer may be, “Not much.”  Compelling evidence of fraud continues to surface in Afghanistan.  Dexter Filkins is a correspondent for the New York Times.  He’s been writing about the allegations of fraud in the balloting.  Dexter, what do we know with certainty about how pervasive the fraud has been?

DEXTER FILKINS: Well, we know there was a lot of fraud, and we know that it was pervasive in a pretty huge swatch of the country in the southern part and in the eastern part.  And just to give your listeners one example, I think the conclusion that was reached by some senior Western diplomats, let’s say–looking at the records here, and if you just take Kandahar Province, where 350,000 people were reported to have voted, and 350,000 ballots were turned in (or roughly that), and the overwhelming majority was for President Karzai.  The estimate is that really only 25,000 went to the poles.  Just “stand back and take a look at that.”  I mean, there’s 325,000 ballots that just kind of “came out of thin air.”

WERMAN: Do we know who was behind those 225,000 ballots “out of thin air?”

FILKINS: Well, not those in particular, but there’s a Panel in Afghanistan which is staffed by non-Afghans.  It’s staffed by people who have been appointed by the United Nations called, “The Election Complaint Commission,” and they’ve been absolutely deluged with more than 2,000 complaints.  I think 700, of which, are serious enough that they could turn the outcome of the election.  And most of those complaints are directed at President Karzai’s campaign.  So, the interesting thing now is going to be that this Complaint Commission is going to have to try to figure out what’s true and what’s not, and that could take a very long time.

WERMAN: Right.  This Election Complaints Commission has actually ordered a re-count, but does it make sense to re-count a “stuffed” ballot box?

FILKINS: That’s a very good question.  The people on the Complaint Commission are pretty savvy, and I think they know what the “score” is; and, they can disqualify ballots if they believe that those ballots were fraudulently cast.  And, I think that’s what you’re going to see.  I think the really big question for them (the election will turn on this question)—the question is going to be, “if they see a pattern of fraud”—if the same thing was done in every district in Kandahar Province and every province in the south and east, what do you then, you know?  Do you throw out all the ballots, or do you just throw out the ones that you can determine are fraudulent?  That’s going to be the tricky decision for them.  But I think one likely outcome—Karzai has 54 percent of the votes—if they disqualify not so many, you could have Karzai, then, coming in with less than 50 percent of the vote, and that would necessitate a run-off election.

WERMAN: To what extent are all these charges of fraud undermining the legitimacy of Afghanistan’s government under Hamid Karzai?

FILKINS: Yeah, I think the answer is they’re undermining it quite a bit.  The Afghans know there’s been fraud.  I mean, this is their country, and they know how it works; and they know what they saw, and people have family around the country.  They’re convinced that this was a … I mean the people, at least, that I’ve spoken to, are pretty convinced this was a fraudulent election.  That presents a dilemma, you know.  Of course, it presents a dilemma for the Afghan government, but it presents a dilemma for the American government.  The danger here; I mean, at least the risk is, that the United States gets stuck trying to prop-up an illegitimate government for the next five years.  I don’t know that that’s the case, but I think that’s the risk here, if these allegations aren’t sorted-out.  I think the Americans know that.

WERMAN: Right.  I mean, Karl Eikenberry, the U. S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, actually met with President Karzai last night.  What is the message Washington is currently sending to Hamid Karzai, do you think?

FILKINS: The United States, and the diplomats here, and Ambassador Eikenberry—they don’t want to be seen as tampering with the outcome of this election.  They want to be seen as the “neutral brokers;” and so, they’ve been trying to stand back (the Americans have), and let the Complaint Commission and these other people sort these things out.  But I didn’t go to that meeting between Ambassador Eikenberry and President Karzai, but I certainly would have liked to have been; but, because my guess is that Ambassador Eikenberry probably had some pretty sharp words for President Karzai–I’m just speculating here, but to the effect of, “you know, we know there’s fraud, and we’re going to back up the people who are looking into it”—something like that.

WERMAN: The people being the Election Complaints Commission, I suppose?

FILKINS: You know, there’s two commissions here.  One of them is counting the votes (that’s the Afghan Election Commission, and most of those people were appointed by President Karzai, or in his government); and then you have the Complaints Commission, and that’s basically five people—three of whom were appointed by the local representative for the United Nations.  So, I think one is from Canada; one is from the United States, and another is from Europe.  They are independent, and they are neutral brokers; and so, they are very cognizant of, you know, the various methods and means that have been used to try to manufacture ballots here.  So, they’re “on the case.”

WERMAN: Dexter Filkins with the New York Times.  Thank you.

FILKINS: Thank you so much.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: The war in Afghanistan is an election issue in Germany, and that intensified after last Friday’s NATO bombing of two tanker trucks hijacked by the Taliban.  The air strike was called-in by German forces stationed in Northern Afghanistan.  NATO officials now concede the bombing killed not only Taliban militants, but also Afghan civilians.  They are conducting an investigation into the incident.  The World’s Matthew Bell reports, now, on the repercussions for the NATO coalition fighting the war.

MATTEW BELL: Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, told Parliament today that she deeply regrets any loss of innocent life in Afghanistan—especially if it’s a result of German military action.

ANGELA MERKEL: (Angela Merkel speaking in German to Parliament, as per Matthew Bell.)

BELL: But Merkel went on to say that [OVERLAPPING] (Merkel continuing her speech to Parliament, in German, in the background) there’s no option but to stay-the-course.  She said the German Army’s mission in Afghanistan is necessary because it protects International security, world peace, and the lives of people in Germany from terrorism.  Merkel added that both the Afghan government and ordinary Afghans have asked Germany not to leave them alone in the fight against the Taliban.  The investigation into what might have gone wrong with last week’s NATO bombing in the northern Afghan province of Kundus has only just started, but some of the official reaction has already “pointed the finger” at the Germans.

JOSHUA FAUST: The Governor of Kundus has been most instructive in this, in that he’s not complaining about 125 [SOUNDS LIKE] looters getting killed in a bomb blast.  He’s complaining about Germany’s not doing its part to secure this province.

BELL: Joshua Faust is a military analyst who writes about Central Asian Affairs at the blog, Registan.net.

FAUST: Over the last three years, in the entire German area of operations, there’s been a steady increase in insurgent activity; and, it wasn’t until July of this year that the Germans were allowed to even go on offensive operations in their area.  So, what’s been happen is, the Germans has basically been “asleep on the job,” while lecturing everyone else about how superior their approach was.  And what we’re finding is, their approach has actually made things substantially worse.

BELL: About 4,000 German troops were stationed in Afghanistan.  They have mostly stayed away from engaging in direct combat.  That’s got a lot to do with politics in Germany, where pacifism has been popular since the end of the Second World War.  Now, with an election just a few weeks away, there’s a huge divide between the public and most German politicians.  Rainer Shtinner is with an opposition party in Germany that still backs Merkel’s view of the war.

RAINER SHTINNER: About 90 percent of all the Parliamentarians of all the different parties, except the left, support our engagement in Afghanistan; whereas, 60 percent of the German public is against it.  So, for us, it’s a hard time in explaining to our public why we are there, and why we have to remain there, at lest for the time being.

BELL: There’s some “irony at work” here, because the U. S. Commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McCrystal, is moving toward a strategy that would rely less on airstrikes and more on protecting civilians.  Last Friday’s call for an airstrike by German forces might be an exception rather than the rule in the future.  Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution:

MICHAEL O’HANLON: Most German military, and most German politicians and citizens favor the kind of restraint that McCrystal has now adopted into policy.  And let’s also not forget an important point, which is that our German allies (while they do have a lot of restrictions on their employment of forces in Afghanistan, and more than I would like) have, nonetheless shown some bravery; and, they have actually had 35 soldiers killed in this war.  That’s a lot.  That’s, you know, about the number we lost in Somalia in ’93 before we pulled out.

BELL: O’Hanlon says, “The true test of German staying-power might be yet to come.  The Taliban are taking the fight to parts of the country that have been relatively quiet for some time, and that might mean German troops, along with the rest of the U. S.-led Coalition, will find themselves engaged in more combat than ever—that’s as long as the German electorate doesn’t decide to oust the current government.”  For The World, I’m Matthew Bell.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: “Things might have been different in Afghanistan if there were International Monitors ‘on the ground’ during the voting.”  That’s the gist, at least, of an international pole released today.  We get details from The World’s Aaron Schacter.

AARON SCHACTER: Worldpublicopinion.org surveyed nearly 17,000 people in seventeen countries.  The results show that most people think their countries would benefit from International Election Observers.  Steven Kull is Director of Worldpublicopinion.org.

STEVEN KULL: In general, we have been finding that people look to the International community as a source of legitimacy.  They would like the United Nations to play a larger role in their domestic affairs, and this includes a substantial number of countries that you might not think would be eager to have election monitors in their country.

SCHACTER: And that includes the U. S.  Nearly half of Americans polled said having International Observers monitor elections would be a good thing.  Florida’s “hanging chads” in the 2000 presidential election might have something to do with that.  But Steven Kull says today’s study is prompted by election troubles in Iran and Afghanistan.  Neither country had a strong International monitoring presence.  Iran doesn’t welcome monitors, and the security situation in Afghanistan made it nearly impossible for foreigners to reach the most troubled spots.  And, the allegations of cheating there continue to mount.  Still, some who monitor worldwide elections actually consider Afghanistan something of a “success story.”  Pat Merlot heads electoral programs for the National Democratic Institute.

PAT MERLOT: There are a certain number of safeguards that are in place in the Afghan election process–the election administration, on the one hand; the political competitors gaining access and knowledge about the system, so they can create “checks and balances;” and, non-partisan election observers.  The last thing on the list, really, is the role of International Observers, because they play a smaller role.

SCHACTER: Merlot says International Monitors might have deterred fraudsters somewhat.  There were some 31,000 election observers keeping an eye on things, but almost all of them were Afghans who were loyal to one candidate or another.  If there had been more International Monitors, party loyalists might have been less apt to commit what appears to blatant fraud.  Election officials have so far thrown out votes from 447 polling stations (about 200,000 ballots) because of fraud.  For The World, I’m Aaron Schacter.

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.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, and this is The World.  A Russian newspaper published a story back in April about one of the many crimes of Joseph Stalin.  While the details were new, the dark impression the story gave of the late Russian dictator was not.  Still, at least one Russian citizen took offence.  He is Stalin’s grandson, and he’s suing the paper.  Jessica Golloher reports that the case provides an example of the rough environment that Russian journalists operate in.

JESSICA GOLLOHER: The article, in Novaya Gazeta was based on declassified Kremlin documents.  It stated that Joseph Stalin had personally ordered the killing of Soviet citizens.  Stalin’s grandson, Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, disputes that.  His lawsuit seeks nearly $300,000.00 in damages from the newspaper.  Dzhugashvili’s lawyer claims that the article smeared Stalin’s reputation as an outstanding leader.  Allison Gill with Human Right’s Watch in Moscow has a different perspective.

ALLISON GILL: To me, it smacks of harassment.  It smacks of harassing a newspaper for doing its job.

GOLLOHER: Gill says it’s unfair that journalists have to contend with such a lawsuit in a country that calls itself a democracy.

GILL: The claim of the complainant here is going to be very difficult to prove; and, it’s going to cost Novaya Gazeta time and money to defend itself when, in fact, we have a pretty well-established historical record here, that establishes what Stalin did as a leader.

GOLLOHER: Millions of people died during Stalin’s purges and “Campaign of Terror,” but that’s a part of the historical records some Russians prefer not to dwell on.  In a poll conducted last year, Russians voted Stalin, “one of their favorite historical figures.”  That means reporters digging-up Stalin’s record can expect to hear from critics.  But Allison Gill says the pressure goes well beyond criticisms.

GILL: It’s dangerous for reporters to work in Russia.  There have been many murders and attacks—physical attacks and threats against journalists, just for doing their jobs.  So, they face harassment at almost every level.

GOLLOHER: The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists ranks Russia as the third most dangerous country for reporters to work in behind only Iraq and Algeria.  Four journalists who reported for Novaya Gazeta have been murdered in the last eight years.  The newspaper claims that they were targeted for their investigative reporting.

CHRISTOPHER BOYAN: The local, the “homegrown” Russian journalists, who are really “on the inside”, that “know the score” – they know “who’s who” – that knows “what’s what” and that are really, you know, doing their business and practicing their profession, are running some real measurable risks.

GOLLOHER: Christopher Boyan is Bureau Chief for the news agency AFP in Moscow.  He says he’s not bothered that Stalin’s grandson is suing Novaya Gazeta, because he feels that everyone has the right to file a lawsuit.  The problem in his view is that Russian courts tend not to protect the press.

BOYAN: There is a problem with the judiciary, and there is a problem with the notion of being able to take cases to the court—cases where, you know, journalists are threatened, or where publications are suppressed, or information distorted.  There is something of a culture of impunity here.

GOLLOHER: The lawsuit brought by Stalin’s grandson was given a preliminary hearing last week.  No word yet on when it will go before a judge.  For The World, I’m Jessica Golloher, in Moscow.

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MARCO WERMAN: Here’s another bit of copyright news from our nonexistent Copyright Desk.  It concerns McDonald’s and its competition.  Remember that Eddie Murphy movie, “Coming to America?”  It featured a knock-off McDonald’s restaurant in New York City.  The imitator was called, “McDowells.”  The owner says, “See!  They’re McDonalds, I’m McDowells.  They’ve got the Golden Arches; mine is the “Golden Arcs.  They got the Big Mac; I’ve got the Big Mick,” and so on.  Well, for eight years, McDonalds has been fighting a “real life restaurant” in Malaysia called McCurry.  The American fast-food-giant tried to copyright the “Mc” prefix, but Malaysia’s federal court said, “Not so fast!”  It ruled, today, that other restaurants could use the “Mc,” so long as they serve different food from McDonalds.  McCurry serves Indian food in downtown Kuala Lumpur.  The name is an abbreviation for Malaysian Chicken Curry.  Here’s the owner, A.M.S.P. Suppiah.

A.M.S.P. SUPPIAH: We are very relieved that this eight-year-old legal saga is over.  It’s a big pressure off our backs.  So, it’s final now that we can use our name, McCurry.

WERMAN: McCurry’s logo, by the way, couldn’t possibly be confused with McDonald’s “Golden Arches.”  It’s a “smiling chicken, giving a double thumbs-up.”  What’s a chicken so “McHappy” about?

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH in Boston.  There are more details emerging today about the plot to blow-up at least seven airliners using liquid explosives.  That’s the planned attack that “changed the rules” about carrying liquids onto plains in 2006.  Yesterday, three men were convicted in a British court of plotting the attacks.  As The World’s Laura Lynch reports, the story behind the court case is one of both conflict and cooperation between American British authorities.

LAURA LYNCH: Three British-born Muslim men were close to carrying-out their mission, according to prosecutors.  They’d even made suicide videos.  Ringleader, Abdulla Ahmed Ali invoked the name of Osama bin Laden in his.

ABDULLA AHMED ALI: “Sheik Osama warned you many times to leave our land, or you will be destroyed.  And now the time has come for you to be destroyed.”

LYNCH: What the men didn’t know was that they were being watched by British police as they made the videos, created a bomb factory, and made contact with the man believed to be their link to al-Qaida in Pakistan, Rahid Rauf.  The police were waiting for their moment–gathering more and more evidence—but their painstaking investigation was thrown into disarray, and British investigators reportedly blamed the Bush Whitehouse.  They say, American officials were well-briefed on the case, but the Americans still decided to secretly dispatch an envoy of their own, Jose Rodriguez, to Pakistan, apparently believing Rashid Rauf was directing the planned attack from there.  Pakistani authorities soon arrested Rauf, now believed to be linked to several terror plots in Britain.  Fearing the arrest would alert the UK cell, British police had to move-in quickly—much sooner than they wanted to.  Andy Hayman was overseeing the operation for Scotland Yard at the time.

ANDY HAYMAN: The stakes are very high for all concerned—both U. S. and UK.  But to go from a “standing start,” which is what we had to do to secure the arrest of all these suspects was a difficult challenge in itself.  What you ideally would want to do is be much more in control.

LYNCH: But Defense Analyst, Michael Clark, of the Royal United Services Institute believes, at the time, British police weren’t nearly so diplomatic.

MICHAEL CLARK: The British wee “hopping mad” about that, because it meant on the 10^th of August, they had no alternative but to move-in on this, before the evidence was mature as possible.  And there is a general belief in British security circles that the dispatch of Rodriguez to Pakistan came straight from the Whitehouse.

LYNCH: The follow-up from the abrupt arrests rippled-through the prosecution’s case.  At the first trial, in 2008, a jury failed to reach a verdict on the charges that the men had planned to blow-up the planes.  They were tried again, and this time prosecutors went back to the United States to ask for help.  Media lawyer, Mark Stevens, says, “The crucial ingredient was a series of E-mails between the bombers and their contacts in Pakistan.”

MARK STEVENS: Unfortunately, in the first case, it appears that the British authorities either forgot or didn’t think it would be necessary to make that application.  They realized by the time of the second trial that it was necessary, and of course it became a crucial piece of evidence.

LYNCH: And that “crucial piece of evidence” came courtesy of Yahoo, the Internet services company was subpoenaed to turn over the E-mails.  The coded messages may have made all the difference for prosecutors, judge and jury the second-time-around; but, they may not matter at all to another audience.  [SOUNDS LIKE] Hanif Kadir works with young British Muslims, trying to steer them away from extremism.  He knew two of the young men who were convicted yesterday.  Kadir worries that many other British Muslims will believe the men were framed.

HANIF KADIR: I’m afraid it’s not going to go down too well, unfortunately.  I think, you know, it’s a good day for counterterrorism; it’s a good day, you know, for the police and military; but it’s a sad day for the Muslim community.  And locally, I know the concerns and the language that these young people are going to be speaking, “It’s took two trials.  Why did we have to have a re-trial?  Because they didn’t get the result that they wanted in the first time, so they got it at the second time.  So the guys didn’t stand a chance.”  So, it’s going to play on … You know, the conspiracy theory is going to play around.

LYNCH: And that is a worrying sentiment for police and politicians as they gauge the terror threat in Britain.  This may be described as the most serious plot ever devised in the country; but already, there are warnings that it certainly won’t be the last.  For The World, I’m Laura Lynch, in London.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: Britain had had experience with terrorism even before the rise of Islamic extremists.  Sectarian violence in Northern Ireland from the 1960’s to the 90’s left more than 3,000 dead, and tensions that persist.  Just today, security officials in the province diffused a bomb in South Armagh.  Also today, British officials met with lawyers of the families of victims of Irish Republican Army violence.  Those families are seeking compensation from Libya.  Manya Dickinson was 13 when her father was killed by the IRA in 1990.  And Manya Dickinson, first of all, sorry for your loss.  It’s obviously tragic to loose a parent, but it must be worse in such circumstances.  And as you’ve indicated in comments you’ve made in recent years, these wounds never heal, you just learn to live with them.  Tell us exactly what did happen.

MANYA DICKINSON: My dad was going to work at 7:00 in the morning, and he had been receiving threats for a number of years, and always checked under his car.  But this morning (the day before he had hurt his eye), and right in the building site, and obviously didn’t check underneath his car; was half way down the drive, and it blew up, leaving him outside the car, and he died on his way to hospital.

WERMAN: And the reason he was targeted is that he was supplying building materials to the British Army.

DICKENSON: That’s right.  He supplied building materials to the police and the army, and that is why, and they killed him.

WERMAN: Now it is known that Libya supplied the bomb-making material, Semtex, to the IRA in the 1980’s.  Do you know if it was, indeed, used to kill your own father?

DICKENSON: Yes it was.  It was, and tests were done on the car, and the remainder of the car, and it was tested as Semtex.

WERMAN: What do you exactly want from Libya as part of this suit?

DICKENSON: I think for them to admit that they have been supplying the IRA with arms and Semtex would be a major way forward for us over here, because there is absolutely no recognition what the IRA have done at all, and I think this would be a way forward.

WERMAN: How do you think that’s actually going to help?  How will this be a way forward?

DICKENSON: Well it’s the victims over here, and of IRA terrorism—they’re not recognized worldwide as having lost …  We’re not on level with other terrorist acts in the world, and it’s about time that we were thought of as equals.  I mean, the terror attacks that happened here over the years are just absolutely atrocious.  And the way the government sits over here at the minute, we’re just told to move forward, and Northern Ireland is moving forward; but we can’t move forward until the past is dealt with.

WERMAN: I thought the British government did compensate victims of terror attacks.  Have you never received anything from the British government?

DICKENSON: No, we haven’t.  No.  There’s an awful lot of families–never received anything.  So, … No.

WERMAN: Now, the British government has just supported your case, and the shift by Prime Minister Gordon Brown to support the lawsuit was rather unexpected.  I’m wondering if you are concerned that your case is being championed now due to political considerations–most notably, the pressure following the release of Abdul Basit al Magradi, the convicted Lockerby bomber, sending him back to Libya—and not the moral reasons you must have hoped for when you joined this lawsuit?

DICKENSON: Well that is true.  I mean, Gordon Brown, I think, he has done a “U-turn,” given the fact that he thought he had to.  And unfortunately, it’s probably not like his moral feelings towards the victims of IRA terrorism, it’s just because he’s being forced to do it.

WERMAN: As you must know, Manya Dickinson, Britain and the U. S. have also sold weapons and explosives to rogue regimes and questionable causes.  In fact, the American manufacturer, Armalite supplied a lot of rifles to Irish-Americans, who sent them over to Ireland.  I’m wondering, if you do win this case, whether you think this could open up a whole new “floodgate” of cases to come through?

DICKENSON: Well, that’s what we’re hoping.  The main point, really, is to try and stop the sale of weapons and ammunition between countries, because that is what’s causing absolutely everything.  The terrorist organizations are getting backup from all these countries, and we’re hoping if we make a positive move with Libya that it will threaten other countries, and everyone will see how well we’ve done in pursuing this.  But they will not be stopped, or at least, not supply as many.

WERMAN: So you see this as not just a cause for yourself and other victims of the IRA, you see it as a much wider kind of lawsuit?

DICKENSON: Oh definitely, yeah.  Definitely.  We wouldn’t be doing this if it was just for ourselves; because something needs to be done, and we’re hoping that if this case goes ahead and we’re successful with it, it will change the mindset of different countries.

WERMAN: Now your organization, the organization that’s heading up this lawsuit, is called Families Acting for Innocent Relatives.  The acronym is FAIR.  It’s headed-up by a man named Willy Frazer, who has openly said he does not work for victims of Protestant violence, and has said that Protestant paramilitaries do not belong in prison.  How worried are you that having someone so partisan in charge of this suit will damage the campaign?

DICKENSON: No, it won’t damage the campaign.  William Frazer is the only person I would trust to be with us.  He’s the only person who’s ever offered any help to my family and myself, and his life is continually threatened to this day.

WERMAN: So with, now, the support from the British government, are you fairly confident that you might actually win this lawsuit?

DICKENSON: Well, all we can do is move forward, and when we’re meeting with officials in a couple of weeks time in Tripoli, we’ll know more then.  But at the minute it’s looking very positive, so we just have to wait until the meeting in Libya to see what happens from there.

WERMAN: Manya Dickinson, very nice talk to you.  Thank you for your time.

DICKENSON: You’re very welcome.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, and this is The World.  China came late to Western-style pop music, but young Chinese are making up for lost time.  “American Idol” type shows have been the rage there in recent years.  Most have focused on individual pop singers.  Now comes the “Battle of the Bands,” a nationally-televised show that’s giving Chinese groups a chance to “show their stuff.”  The World’s Mary Kay Magistad had recently caught one of the final rounds of competition in Shanghai.  She sent us this report.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: The venue for Battle of the Bands is an old factory district on the outskirts of Shanghai.  Inside a cavernous shell where workers once toiled, fans of the young and tragically-hip are embracing everything their parents missed—and then some.  There are tattoos and body piercings; mini skirts and thigh-high boots; boy-bands with bleach blond hair, and even some real musical talent!

SWEET JOURNEY: [MUSIC-IN]

MAGISTAD: [MUSIC-OUT] This is Sweet Journey, a band from the central Chinese city of Xian.  It has a drummer from Inner Mongolia; a guitarist who looks like a Chinese version of Roy Orbison, and a waiflike singer, who sounds like she’s “channeling” Dolores O’Riordan of The Cranberries.  (Sweet Journey playing in background.)  This band is one of ten finalists in a competition that started with 6,000 bands six months ago.  The former head of MTV for North Asia, Harry Hui, was part of a team at Pepsi that first came up with the idea.

HARRY HUI: We do a lot of monitoring–a lot of research for young people around the country, and we realized that there were more than 20,000 bands, underground bands), in China that very few people knew about.  We started to notice that there were a lot of live concerts going on in China.  And then we started to talk to some folks in the guitar business, and they told us that China sells more than a million guitars a year.  And so, finally, we came to the conclusion that perhaps it was time for a big, national platform for young people to really get together and show their creative side in the form of a band.

MAGISTAD: The winner of the Pepsi-sponsored contest gets a recording contract with a label created by Pepsi, which might sound pretty commercial and self-serving, and some critics of the contest have dismissed it as such; but, at least it’s one way a local rock band can break on to the national scene and make some money touring.  Jay Caplan is an independent music blogger who’s been following the Battle of the Bands.

JAY CAPLAN: There’s no way for bands to tour right now.  Records sales aren’t even, like, a source of revenues.  Having like any labels behind you really does very little in terms of distribution and publicity.  So yeah, whichever band wins will probably be one of the first rock bands to have somewhat of a broad based national audience here in China.

MAGISTAD: Caplan says these aren’t necessarily the best bands in China, but some like the band, Focus 5, are serious musicians, even if they say they’re willing to “do what it takes” to appeal to the masses.

YEE SHING SCHUEN: (Lead singer for Focus 5, speaks in Chinese about his band.)

MAGISTAD: The lead singer, Ye Xing Xuan is a lean guy with shaggy, dyed-red hair and black, oblong glasses.  He’s studied opera.  He says it’s helped him in this competition.  (Focus 5’s Ye Xing Xuan is heard singing in the background with his band.)  Focus 5 is in the lead going into the last couple of weeks of the Battle of the Bands, but Sweet Journey is “hard on their heels.”  When I met the Sweet Journey band members the day before the competition, they were all in black and slumped on the couch, but they shed some of the attitude when they started talking about their music.

ZHENG LE: (Speaking in Chinese, Sweet Journey drummer, speaking about his band’s music.)

MAGISTAD: The drurmmer, Zheng Le, says the band got together because they liked the same music:  Pink Floyd, Oasis, RadioHead.  They started playing for fun, and soon began making a living at it.  Zheng Le says, “For this competition, we’ve added a few mainstream elements so we can win; and then, once we’ve hooked our audience, we’ll go back to doing what we really like.”

COMPETITION ANNOUNCER: (Female announcer, speaking in background in Chinese, and the sound of cheering fans.)

MAGISTAD: The competition itself is full of Pepsi promos, bubbly announcers, and a talking whale (the symbol of the local Zhejiang Satellite station that’s sponsoring the competition).  But the Battle of the Bands has also brought in guest artists that include some of the legends of Chinese Rock’s short history.  At the top of that is Cui Jian, known as the “Grandfather of Chinese Rock,” even though he’s just 48.  This past weekend, he ripped into his tune, “Rock ‘n Roll on the New Long March.”  [MUSIC-IN]  Songs like this made Cui Jian famous in the 1980’s.  One of his anthems was even taken-up by the pro-democracy Tienaminn student demonstrators in 1989.  That got him banned from giving public performances for most of the 1990’s.  That he was here, on a Pepsi-sponsored stage, on National Television, could be seen as ironic.  It may also say something about how he’s trying to encourage a new generation of serious musicians.  Harry Hui says China’s popular music scene could use more of them to use what he calls, “China’s predominant Karaoke Culture.”

HUI: Songwriters will say to you that the biggest hits that they can write are often the songs that you can easily sing in karaoke.  That means that they tend to write simpler, melodic, easy-to-sing … Because why?  When you sing a karaoke song, and you sing a famous karaoke song, you feel like a big star yourself; you love that song; you love that artist.  But I can’t imagine anybody doing a ColdPlay karaoke, or trying to do Elevation from U-2.  [MUSIC-IN]

MAGISTAD: [MUSIC-OUT] But Harry Hui says he is impressed with the originality of bands he’s seen here.  And he says the aim of the competition was always to find a “new sound” Pepsi can promote (band playing in background), which may be why he was smiling broadly last weekend in the judges booth when he heard Sweet Journey’s Yuan Man belt out this original song, and why he smiled again when this band won the latest round of competition.  It didn’t seem to matter that most of the studio audience had wandered away by the time the band was handed its victory and the glittering red, white and blue guitar.  The cameras could compensate for that.  For The World, I’m Mary Kay Magistad, Shanghai.

WERMAN: [MUSIC-IN] I’ve got my “Devil Horns” in the air.  Chinese Rock closes our program today.  The World is always online at Theworld.org.  From the Nan and Bill Harris Studios at WGBH, I’m Marco Werman.  We’ll be back tomorrow.  [MUSIC-OUT]

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.