• From the BBC: How Iran is ruled
• Background Brief: Nuclear Standoff with Iran

Read the Transcript
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.

JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp and this is The World.  Iran says it views tomorrow’s talks in Geneva as an opportunity and a test.  Tehran’s chief nuclear negotiator is slated to meet with officials from the US and five other nations.  US officials are calling for Iran to come clean on its nuclear program or face tougher sanctions.  The pressure on Iran is building after last week’s revelations that Tehran has secretly been building a second uranium enrichment plant.  It’s next to a military compound run by the country’s revolutionary guard.  As The World’s Laura Lynch reports, that’s just another indication of the guard’s growing influence inside Iran.

LAURA LYNCH:  A missile roared high above the skies of Iran last weekend, a show of military might and defiance.  After all, the successful test of the country’s long range missiles came right after Iran was chastised fro hiding a second nuclear fuel plant.  The test came courtesy of the revolutionary guard’s air force, headed by a very proud general, Hussein Salemi.

HUSSEIN SALEMI:  The missiles that were launched today were advanced long range missiles that belonged to us and have been manufactured by the missile command of the Iran’s revolutionary guard air force.

LYNCH:  No surprise that the guard’s core, numbering more than one hundred and twenty five thousand, is involved in matters military.  But Mosenz Sazagara says it’s become so much more than a fighting force.

MOSENZ SAZAGARA:  Revolution we got is now a government inside the government of Iran. A regime inside the regime of Iran.

LYNCH:  He says Sazagara was a founding member of the revolutionary guard.  He researched other countries’ military make-up, including America’s, on his way to building the military and intelligence force, that’s charged with protecting the ideals of the Islamic revolution.

SAZAGARA:  You know the evolution we got that we establish at the first days of, which revolution was not [INDISCERNIBLE] at least were revolutionary guards.  In those days we thought that we were going to create a peaceful army and organization to mobilize people to descend the concrete.  That’s was the main idea.

LYNCH:  Alongside the military though, the guard created a voluntary force, the Bezique militia, well known as the shocks troops who battled protestors on the streets this summer.  But Sazagara, now a dissident living in the US, says over the years the guard has creeped into almost all corners of Iran’s society and economy.

SAZAGARA:  They are everywhere and not only in military but they are involved in security, economy, propaganda.  They are involved in TV, radio and everywhere.

LYNCH:  In the last few days, a firm tied to the guard has taken a controlling interest in a telecommunications company that controls the infrastructure of landlines, cell phone networks and data storage and exchange in Iran.  And that’s just the latest in a string of enterprises under its control from dentistry to engineering to charities.  It’s also developed political clout.  A string of former guard members are in top positions.  T hey include the president, Mahud Abdinijad.  But Iranian academic, Rasul Nafisi, says even with all that power, the military men miscalculated earlier this year when the elections descended into protests.  Nafisi says they let it happen in an effort to downplay their growing influence.

RASUL NAFISI:  They are interested in elections for two reasons.  Number one, to look legitimate in the eyes of the nation.  Number two, to look legitimate in the eyes of the world.

LYNCH:  The old struggle for military superiority has evolved into a battle for control over Iran’s economy and the wealth it brings.  Mosenz Sazagara hears from some of his old comrades who are unhappy about the way the guard has changed.  But Rasul Nafisi says those men have lost influence.

NAFISI:  I believe that as we go forward, we will have more and more of a uniform ideological group with tremendous interest in the economy.

LYNCH:  They may still put on a good show, displaying the latest military hardware for all the world to see, but it’s the guard’s ever growing economic power, ties to perhaps as many as a hundred companies with revenues of billions of dollars that may well make it the most powerful force in Iran.  For The World, I’m Laura Lynch.

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.

• BBC coverage of Esfandiari’s detention
• ‘My Prison, My Home’ by Haleh Esfandiari

Read the Transcript
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.

JEB SHARP: Haleh Esfandiari knows something about the way the Iranian government works.  The Iranian scholar and journalist has lived in the United States since 1979.  But in 2007, she endured four months in solitary confinement in Iran’s notorious Evin prison.  That’s where Iranian authorities hold many political dissidents.  Esfandiari had been in Tehran to visit her elderly mother when authorities began to interrogate her about her work at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.  She has a new book out about her experience called “My Prison, My Home.”  It chronicle the months of interrogation and subsequent incarceration she endured in 2007.

HALEH ESFANDIARI:  I stayed sane by not thinking about my family.  That was crucial for me.  I decided to have a very strict regimen in prison.  I insisted on being woken up at six.  I went to sleep at eleven o’clock at night and if I was not interrogated, I spent my time pacing up and down the cell and doing a lot of exercise.  After my interrogation, I would always go over what we discussed during the day because the interrogation took sometimes eight to nine hours so that was part of my daily exercise of thinking what we discussed and what are they going to ask me the next day.

SHARP:  How did you stay sane in terms of your interactions?  You were under extreme duress, you felt menace from your interrogator who’s named Javari, whether that’s his real name or not.

ESFANDIARI:  It was intimidating.  They were threatening.  They brought a lot of pressure on me.  They thought I was privy to a lot of information which I was not.  They thought I knew what the United States wanted to do in Iran.  But I always kept my calm except on one or two occasions.  I never showed my despair to them.  I never showed my fear to them and I never cried in front of them.

SHARP:  Why do you think you in particular were targeted by the authorities?

ESFANDIARI:  I was everything they disliked.  I was a woman, I was Iranian American working for the think tank in Washington.  I had written on Iran and I used to go to Iran a couple of times a year, visiting my ninety three year old mother.  So I think I was the perfect suspicious person for them because the majority of universities and research centers and think tanks in Iran are somehow connected to the government and they thought that if they arrest me, they will find out what the United States is planning to do in Iran, how to overthrow the regime.  Everything they suspected that might lead to a velvet revolution, I was the embodiment of all these things so they decided to go after me.

SHARP:  Now much has happened since you returned home after your ordeal, including this year’s contested elections and the amazing series of demonstrations that followed. There’s been a crackdown since then and many Iranians have been rounded up for interrogation and imprisonment and I just wonder what it’s been like for you to watch that drama play out from here in the US?

ESFANDIARI:  It has been terrible because I thought once I was released and the other Iranian American was taken in, Mikian Dajbach was released, that the file of the Velvet Revolution, which we were accused of being part of it, would be forever closed but now they have arrested the leaders of the Reformist Movement and are accusing them of working for foreign governments and fermenting self-revolution so it’s shocking to me.

SHARP:  The Iranian regime as you’ve said, tried to paint your academic work as a cover for a plot to overthrow the Iranian regime, something you say is a paranoid fantasy.  But after going through what you went through under the current regime, do you feel differently about regime change?  Are you radicalized?

ESFANDIARI:  I think if there is going to be a change in Iran, it’s going to happen from within.  Civil society, NGO’s, women’s organizations, the students were active way before the United States showed any interest in supporting a number of civil society and NGO’s so any change will come from within and any interference from abroad will just undermine the work of these civil society groups.  But, having said that, this doesn’t mean that one should not speak out against the rest, the mock trial, conditions in the prisons, the rape, killing that has taken place since the presidential election on June 12.

SHARP:  It’s been two years since you were able to return home to your husband and your daughter and your grandchildren and I just wonder what this time since has been like, how you’re changed, what you most feel today sitting here, thinking about it and watching everything that’s happening that’s still so dramatic.

ESFANDIARI:  I really appreciate being free.  I appreciate being home.  I appreciate being back at my job but I miss not going back to Iran.  My mother passed away three months ago.  I was not able to go and be with her so this is the feeling I have but I’m an optimist you know.  I still hope that Iran will get out of this current crisis it has gotten itself in and we will see a better times for Iran.

SHARP:  Well, scholar Haleh Esfandiari’s new memoir is “My Prison, My Home.”  Thank you so much for coming to speak to us.

ESFANDIARI:  Thank you for having me.

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.

• BBC coverage: Photos
• Radio DJ on air when tsunami hit

Read the Transcript
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.

JEB SHARP:  In other news, President Obama has declared a state of emergency in American Samoa, the US Pacific island territory and neighboring Samoa were hit by a tsunami yesterday.  Authorities say more than a hundred people were killed.  Samoans who lived through the tragedy are just starting to pick up the pieces.  Here are some of their voices.

SPEAKER:  Debris everywhere you know, wrecked cars on the side of the road, boats inland, also the side of the road.  Shops have been torn down.  It’s basically a mess.

SPEAKER #2:  The whole village has been wiped out.  We’re around the tropical [INDISCERNIBLE] I guess the whole southeast coast has been wiped out.  You know, there’s not a building standing.  We’ll claim it up [INDISCERNIBLE] and one of our party, one of them’s got a broken leg.  We don’t know about, the other party’s okay.  But we just need help.  There will be people in quite a lot of need around here.  It’s [INDISCERNIBLE], it’s just [INDISCERNIBLE].  It was very good and it [INDISCERNIBLE].

SPEAKER #3:  One lady rang up the radio station and said that she didn’t think of anything.  She went to prepare food and all she looked up and she saw the wave.  She ran to grab her young ones but on her way she was too late, the wave came.  What, she lost her kids and she only managed to grab onto the tree branch.

SHARP:  Residents of the Samoan islands describing yesterday’s tsunami and it’s aftermath.  Another undersea earthquake hit today, off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.  This time it was the quake itself that killed people.  It triggered a mudslide and caused some buildings to collapse.  Indonesian officials say the death toll in Sumatra may exceed the one in Samoa.

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.

• Illustrated transcript of part III
• ‘Created in China’ series page
• Mary Kay’s 2007 series on ‘Young China’

Read the Transcript
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.

JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WBGH in Boston.  Innovation doesn’t just come from infrastructure and investment; it comes from a culture that encourages originality and creativity.  One that rewards risk taking and tolerates failure.  That doesn’t describe China and that’s partly because of China’s educational system.  It teaches Chinese children to think what they’re told.  But some Chinese educators are trying to change that.  The World’s Mary Kay Magistad has part three of our series, Created in China.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD:  Walk into a Chinese classroom and you’re likely to hear this.  Students recite their lessons together.  They memorize them at home.  If they have questions, it’s to get the right answer, not to raise their own ideas.  Lushi Li was born in China and spent her early childhood here.  Li’s family moved to the United States when she was in grade school.  Lushi Li came back here to Beijing last year to take classes at one of China’s top universities, Tsinghua.  She also spent a month sitting in on tenth grade classes in a Beijing high school, for a thesis she’s doing at Harvard.  Lushi Li says one thing struck her about the students in the high school and at the university.

LUSHI LI:  They don’t have very much opportunity to voice their opinions.  The teachers do try to engage the students but mostly what they would do is they would ask yes or no questions or they would ask questions with a definite answer so there’s very little opportunity for the students to answer open ended question.

MAGISTAD:  Li says the students aren’t encouraged to learn how to analyze or argue or think for themselves.  They are taught to absorb vast amounts of material and prepare for the next exam.  In the case of the high school students, for the college entrance exam.  Li says this is how one teacher would get her students ready for the exam.

LI:  If you ever encounter a test question on this topic, this is how you should answer it and she would outline exactly how you should answer it, even to the point where at the end you know, she would say oh, if you’ve run out of things to say, that you could always just praise the Communist Party and you know, this is how you would praise them.

MAGISTAD:  Actor Nick Li says he had much the same experience growing up in China.  He says that experience wasn’t exactly fertile soil for the seed of innovation to grow.

NICK LI:  The seed is the instant willingness to want to create something that everybody had.  The soil is the education and your history of this nation or something and the temperature and the moisture or something probably is the opportunity so the bottom line, if the seed is healthy or not so through the years you just didn’t take good care of it and I think eventually they don’t even know how to think creative.

MAGISTAD:  Nick Li is one of many Chinese of his generation whose creativity thrived only when they transplanted themselves into more fertile soil.  Many such Chinese became Silicon Valley success stories.  Nick Li went into film.  He remembers his first experience at an American university being a bit of a shock.

NICK LI:  I don’t really remember what the topic was but the teacher just sitting there and listen and we have just all the different opinions and after class I just asked the teacher, are you going to give us some standard answer or something or final answer and he’s look at me and just like I am so weird.  He said so what do you think about the topic and I said each person have their own good part but ridiculous part and then he said yeah, that’s my answer, too.  You know, whatever you think and I just feel like wow, this is really a freedom to let you think instead of boom, give you the right answer.

MAGISTAD:  Nick Li believes that kind of approach encourages creative thinking and that’s one reason he and his American wife, decided to put their daughter into a new kind of school in Beijing.  It’s a bilingual school called Kinstar.  It has Chinese and Western teachers.  The school aims to combine the discipline and rigor of the Chinese approach to education, with the creativity of the Western approach.  Li’s daughter, Tea, a bubbly fourth grader, says it works for her.

TEA LI: Well, the Chinese teachers teach a good way.

MAGISTAD:  What’s good about it?

TEA LI:  They don’t like yell at you like that strict but it’s kind of like good strict.

MAGISTAD:  And how’s it different from how the English language teachers teach?

TEA LI:  The English teacher usually does like more fun stuff and the Chinese teacher’s kind of not as fun as the English teacher.

MAGISTAD:  Fun stuff isn’t all that common in most classrooms in China.  One of the Kinstar schools founders is Hui Jin.  She was raised in Shanghai and got her Ph.D. in neuroscience in the US.

HUI JIN:  So I was raised and educated in the Chinese system so of course I have a very firm foundation of skills and the knowledge of the basic knowledge but later when I find I was doing researching, graduate school and then doing researching workplace and one thing I find that was lack in my traditional education is the self-confidence.  It’s a very common of people educated in China then went overseas to studies.

MAGISTAD:  So at the Kinstar School, the English language teachers in particular, encourage students to give their ideas.  This teacher got his fourth grade class to come up with rules the class will abide by like be considerate and be neat.  The kids then divide into teams and compete to show who can do these things best.  The classes taught by the Chinese teachers are a little more orderly and at times, sound more like what you’d find in a Chinese school.  But the Chinese language teacher, Meng Qin Fen, also encourages the kids to express their thoughts here on the images in ancient poetry.  Meng says this is quite different from how she has taught in traditional Chinese schools.  She says in those schools, students sit in neat rows.  They listen to the teacher and they memorize what the teacher says.  Here it’s more casual and a little hard for her to get used to.  She worries that if a teacher teaches ten things here, the kids really only learn six but Meng likes the fact that here, there’s more interaction between teacher and student.  More getting students to think for themselves.  China’s Ministry of Education is trying to move more of China’s public schools in this direction.  Shen Baiyu heads the Ministry of Education’s Division of Curriculum Development for basic education.

SHEN BAIYU:  We need excellent teachers who interact with the students and we need to find a way to assess not just what students learn, but also whether they’ve learned how to learn.  We need to change the college entrance exam so it measures these other abilities and not just how well a student can memorize.

MAGISTAD:  That kind of exam has been part of the Chinese tradition for centuries.  The result is that Chinese schools are not yet graduating innovators such as scientists and engineers at a pace the government would like.  Bill Kirby heads the Fairbanks Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University.  He’s been working with Chinese educators who would like to make the transition to a more innovative curriculum.

BILL KIRBY:  Chinese engineers, the critique is, are too often trained in the last best technology.  They’re not trained to be critical thinkers, not trained to have the capacity to solve the problems that have not yet been posed.  It’s one of the reasons perhaps that they have a much higher unemployment rate than some who have graduated in other disciplines in China.

MAGISTAD:  Kirby says that’s one reason an increasing number of Chinese universities are moving away from having students concentrate on one narrow field.  Instead, they’re starting to require students to take a broader range of classes, including history, philosophy and the arts.  Kirby says Chinese universities used to be very strong in those areas before the Communist Party took over.

KIRBY:  The gearing of higher education over time, particularly after 1950 toward the interests of the state, the diminution of the humanities, really the near extermination of it, the humanities in higher education, took place in the Maoist period and really it is only in the last decade that one sees a belief that the study of philosophy, the study of literature, the study of history and the successes and failures of human beings in different times and places, is as essential to one’s long term education as the study of mathematics, of technology, of engineering.

MAGISTAD:  Do you think the Party’s really ready to have a nation of independent critical thinkers who would be coming out of this kind of general liberal arts education?

KIRBY:  That’s the key question of course.  The party understands and the leadership of higher education from the Minister of Education on down, understand that China does need a new generation of critical thinkers.  The question to be posed is whether a liberal education at the end of the day, a truly liberal education, is possible in a political liberal society.

MAGISTAD:  What the Communist Party seems to want is simply engineers who can come up with the next great idea.  Not a nation of critical thinkers who can challenge the party.  But it may be hard to have one without the other, to get people to innovate in the sciences without using the same habits of mind to rethink Chinese politics and history.  Already, there are signs that many Chinese are developing new habits of critical thinking.  The explosion of internet use in China has led to tens of millions of blogs and chat sites and some can be pretty edgy.  So can other writings in journalism and academia, literature and film.  The Party tries hard to silence the most critical voices.  It censors the websites and takes down critical messages from chat sites within seconds.  It shuts down offending publications and has jailed journalists, bloggers, lawyers and intellectuals.  The Party also tries to counter the critics with its own messages.  To celebrate sixty years in power, the Party brought many of China’s top actors and directors together to make a film called “The Founding of a Republic.”  It’s now playing in pretty much every major cinema.  Among the famous faces here are actress Zhang Ziyi from “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” and internationally recognized directors Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige.  Zhang Yimou has also choreographed the festivities that will mark tomorrow’s sixtieth anniversary of the rise to power of the Communist Party.  All this sends a message, not unlike what the kids get in school.  If you want to be creative and make money from it, it doesn’t hurt to do it in the Party’s embrace.  For The World, I’m Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing.

JEB SHARP:  Tomorrow, Mary Kay Magistad explores how innovation in China is coming and will have to come from the private sector.  One inventor says that’s where you can encourage the most creative thinkers in a group.  Say you identify two people from the group.

SPEAKER:  What you do is you take those two guys and you bring them in and you sit on a white board and you just talk about creative, whacked out ideas that would never happen anywhere else, right?

SHARP:  That’s part four of “Created in China,”  tomorrow on The World.

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.

• New York Times article on Juanito
• Los Angeles Times article on Juanito

Here’s a short video of Juanito in action (in Spanish):

Read the Transcript
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.

JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp and this is The World.  A political soap opera has transfixed Mexico for the past few months.  It’s the story of a street vendor from Mexico City who rose to political stardom.  He goes by the name of Juanito and his is a story worth of a telenovela.  The World’s William Troop explains.

WILLIAM TROOP:  I was so looking forward to tomorrow when Juanito is to be sworn in as president of one of Mexico City’s sixteen local districts.  Juanito, whose real name is Rafael la Costa, is not your typical politician.  He usually sports a tricolor headband with his name on it.  Many Mexicans regard him as a common man, although not everyone agrees on whether that’s a good thing.  But his down to earth quality did lend an error of authenticity to this month’s Independence Day celebrations in the Mexican capital.  Whatever his qualifications or lack thereof, all agree that Juanito got to this point in very unlikely fashion.  The job of president in the District of Iztapalapa, carries some real political power and control over a multi-million peso budget.  So much bigger politicians coveted the job of district boss.  Among them, a former Congresswoman.  She seemed a shoe in.  She has experience in big time politics and the support of Manuel Andres Lopez Obrador.  Remember him?  He’s the guy who claims he was the real winner of the 2006 presidential election and therefore he is Mexico’s legitimate president right now.  Well, he’s not president and so he’s left to focus on local races like the one in Iztapalapa.  But his hand picked candidate was barred from running.  No problem said Lopez Obrador, I’ll find someone else to run and he did.  That was Juanito, a local activist who sells umbrellas on street corners.  Juanito said sure, he’ll run and if he won, he would step down and name the Bard candidate to replace him.  Lopez Obrador told his supporters to vote for Juanito.  They did and guess what?  The umbrella salesman won.  But once elected, Juanito reneged on the promise and pulled a page from Lopez Obrador’s campaign playbook.  Juanito claimed that he is the legitimate president of Iztapalapa.  It was my name on the ballot said Juanito and the will of the people must be respected.  For three months, Juanito resisted the pressure to step down and he seemed to enjoy all of the attention.  Then came the protests from Iztapalapa voters, angry at Juanito for not keeping his word.  These people were upset because they had voted for one candidate but were expecting to get someone else?  Right.  Anyway, it was all too much in the end for Juanito.  Yesterday, he finally caved.  He will still get sworn in tomorrow but he’s announced that he will, after all, step down and let Lopez Obrador and his followers have their way.  He calls it medical leave.  All the stress gave him chest pains apparently and so Mexicans are left to wonder who the hero of this political telenovela really is.  For The World, I’m William Troop.

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.

Read the Transcript
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.

JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp and this is The World.  A long awaited draft climate bill was released in the Senate today in Washington.  The measure is sponsored by Senators Barbara Boxer of California and John Kerry of Massachusetts.  It comes three months after the House passed its own measure to cut greenhouse gas pollution and barely two months before the conclusion of talks on a new global climate treaty.  The bill faces a rocky path in the Senate where there’s strong disagreement on climate policy on both sides of the aisle.  And, as The World’s Jason Margolis reports, an international climate deal could hang in the balance.

JASON MARGOLIS:  It took months for the House to debate and pass its climate bill.  The Senate is under much greater time pressure.  Eldon Myer with the Union of Concerned Scientists, is at the capital today, monitoring the climate bill discussions.

ELDON MYER:  Well there’s obviously an international deadline in the sense of the Copenhagen Climate Summit in December and the leaders of the Senate and the White House are very aware of that.  It’s important that there be momentum and progress in the Senate going into Copenhagen.

MARGOLIS:  European leaders want the US to commit significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.  Developing nations want the US and Europe to put up money to help them adapt to climate change and green their economies without sacrificing growth.  The Boxer-Kerry bill would cut emissions by more than eighty percent by mid-century but it’s silent on many key questions which would be worked out in the coming months.  Jake Schmidt of the National Resources Defense Council, says the rest of the world will be watching.

JAKE SCHMIDT:  All eyes internationally are very focused on what the US can do.  Obviously the US is too big and too important of a player to have you know, not a clear signal about what they’re going to do and so people are paying very close attention to what’s happening in the Senate debate.

MARGOLIS:  Schmidt is in Bangkok this week.  He’s an observer at the UN sponsored climate negotiations leading up to Copenhagen.  He says if the US Senate doesn’t act, it’s unlikely that the talks will produce a strong new treaty to replace the current Kyoto protocol.

SCHMIDT:  People don’t want to you know, sort of trust the US.  We’ve been down that road internationally.  The US came in, created a protocol and promised some things internationally and didn’t have the domestic politics aligned to pass those global warming commitments and so you know, the world knows that lesson and doesn’t want to repeat it.

MARGOLIS:  With the healthcare debate snarling up traffic in Congress, a completed climate bill before December looks like a long shot.  Still, Eldon Myer says all won’t be lost, even if Congress can’t get something on the president’s desk before Copenhagen.

MYER:  As long as the committees are taking action, the leadership is crafting a comprehensive bill to bring to the floor, individual senators are committing themselves to support it, I think that can give the administration the momentum it needs going into Copenhagen, even if there’s not a final bill done by then.

MARGOLIS:  But Washington isn’t the only site of important pre-Copenhagen climate talks.  President Obama is scheduled to visit China in November.

JULIAN L. WONG:  President Obama’s visit could be as historic as Nixon’s visit was you know, in 1972.

MARGOLIS:  That’s Julian L. Wong, an energy analyst who specializes in China for the Center of American Progress in Washington.

WONG:  It’s a real opportunity for both countries to make a very firm statement.  You know, both countries together account for forty to fifty percent of the world’s emissions and if we can get both countries to state very clearly their commitment to the climate change issue and their commitment to be constructive players in Copenhagen, then I think it would go a long way.

MARGOLIS:  It’s unlikely though that there will be any grand bargain between the two nations.  And China will certainly be less willing to curb its greenhouse gas emissions until Congress sends a clear signal that it too, is willing to take action.  For The World, I’m Jason Margolis.

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.

Read the Transcript
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.

JEB SHARP:  A story of reconciliation today.  The story involves a former Nazi soldier named Heinrich Steinmeyer.  He’s eighty five years old now and he’s reaching out to a community in Scotland where he was held prisoner during World War II.  Steinmeyer says he wants to thank the village of Comrie in Scotland for the kindness he was shown during his time as a POW.  To show his appreciation, Steinmeyer is donating his life savings to the village.  Eighty year old George Carson lives in Comrie and is a World War II veteran himself.  He’s been in touch with Heinrich Steinmeyer for the past seven years.  Mr. Carson, it’s nice to speak with you, sir.

GEORGE CARSON:  Just call me George.

SHARP:  Alright, George.

CARSON:  Now how can I help you, my dear?

JEB SHARP:  How do you feel about Mr. Steinmeyer’s offer of reconciliation?

CARSON:  I feel it’s a wonderful example of how putting the past behind you and showing appreciation for the kindness he received.  When he came to Comrie as a prisoner of war, he was treated with kindness and that is him repaying that kindness.

SHARP:  Do you now consider this former enemy a friend?

CARSON:  Oh, he’s a very, very much, a close personal friend.  Very, very much so.

SHARP:  How did you get to know him?

CARSON:  My late wife, when she was a girl, felt sorry for one of the young German prisoners of war named Fritz.  Now I don’t know where Fritz is now but he was only seventeen.  He had been Hitler Youth then recruited into the Army and he was allowed out on certain occasions, out of the camp and he wanted to go to the cinema in Kries, seven miles away.  So they put him in a school uniform, took him in a bus to the cinema.  They bought him fish and chips, took him back home, back to Comrie and they put a camp uniform on again and got back into the camp and nobody knew anything about it.

SHARP:  George Carson says that story was typical of the way locals treated some of the POW’s in 1945.  But he says his late wife never met Heinrich Steinmeyer, another of the four thousand POW’s who spent time in Coltie Bragen Camp.  Seven years ago, Steinmeyer came forward with an unusual favor to ask.

CARSON:  And Heinrich Steinmeyer asked me if I knew anyone who could scatter his ashes when he died in the hills beyond the camp where he was taken prisoner because that’s where he wanted his ashes scattered.  Although I am eighty, I’m a keen hill walker and I said I would do it and I’ve agreed to scatter his ashes on the hill.

SHARP:  Now when you go out walking, do you pass the Coltie Bragen POW camp?

CARSON:  Oh, very, very often, yes.

SHARP:  What was the camp like back in the day?  I mean if they could sneak somebody out to the movies and back, it must have been a more …

CARSON:  Well, it must have been, at the time, I’m sorry my late wife’s not here, she could answer it, but Heinrich must have been allowed out for a few hours on a Saturday afternoon but he would not be allowed to go beyond the boundaries of the village you know, to purchase a few things like soap and things from the local shops.  And some of these prisoners of war, they had very little money and some of the people in the village used to give them, they’d give them a few you know, a few schillings to buy a little extra for themselves.

SHARP:  It sounds remarkably friendly.  Does everyone feel warmly towards the former prisoners the way you do?

CARSON:  Well, I highly consider it to be.  I know two condone personally old folks club, a club for the elderly.  I mean it was very well received by them, including the Payne, an ex-Scottish prison guard and he got very friendly towards Heinrich as well.

SHARP:  So you don’t find people who have more trouble forgiving?

CARSON:  No, absolutely not and I’ll give you an example.  Another prisoner of war, and he had a pub and the soldier from the Army come, used to come to his pub and he said, I’m a soldier and you’re a soldier, although we fought on opposite sides, we were still soldiers doing duty for our country and people are very, very understanding. It’s all in the past.

SHARP:  George Carson speaking to us from Comrie in Scotland.  Thanks again.

CARSON:  It’s been a pleasure speaking to you, right.

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.

Read the Transcript
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.

JEB SHARP: Chinese creativity was on vivid display last year when China played proud host to the Beijing Olympics.  London will be the next summer Olympic host in 2012 but this week is the time to pick the host city for the 2016 summer Olympic Games.  The International Olympic Committee is due to announce its choice on Friday in Copenhagen.  The four finalists are Tokyo, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Chicago.  And they’re getting awfully creative in their last minute attempts to be selected. Tokyo appears to be taken the sweat and endurance approach.  Its Olympic ambassador is in Copenhagen after literally running and sailing around the world to promote his city’s bid.  And today, Tokyo’s bid chief stood on stage with nine former Japanese Olympians and Para Olympians to talk about their city’s safety record and the compactness of the proposed Olympic area.  Tomorrow, Japan’s new Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, shows up for the final push.  Rio de Janeiro has soccer legend, Pele, charming the deciders in Copenhagen. His strategy seems to be this isn’t just about Brazil, it’s geographic justice.

PELE:  To bring the game to South America not only for Brazil, for whole South America, to take the kids from the drugs, from the street, that is the reason I think that South America deserve to have the Olympic games.

SHARP:  Pele’s getting help from Brazilian president, Luis Ignacio Lula de Silva.  He arrived in Copenhagen today just after a dust up between Rio and another Olympic host city contender.  The Brazilians were upset after an official from rival Madrid called Rio the worst of the four bids. Just in time, Spain’s King Juan Carlos arrived today to smooth things over and finally there’s the Chicago charm offensive or charm assault.  First Lady Michelle Obama is already in Copenhagen to talk up her hometown, so are Chicago mayor Richard Daily and Oprah.  The ultimate Olympic pitchman for the windy city, President Obama, arrives on Friday.

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.