• BBC coverage
• In pictures: Indonesia rescue effort

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.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman.  This is The World.  President Obama called the president of Indonesia today — to offer his condolences.  The Indonesian island of Sumatra was rocked by an earthquake on Wednesday.  The city of Padang was hit hard.  The United Nations says more than a thousand people were killed.  Rescuers — including some international teams — are still combing through the remains of collapsed buildings in Padang.  It’s feared that thousands of people may still be buried in the rubble.  The BBC’s Rachel Harvey is in Padang.  She walked around the city earlier today.

RACHEL HARVEY: I started out just by a row of shops that used to be three stories high, but they’re now only two stories high.  The whole of that first storey is just collapsed.  And there were some military officers and some rescue officials working   hard in there because they had heard that there were at least seven bodies.  And they were trying to extract those bodies.  Then I moved on to the hospitals, and that’s where a lot of the bodies are being collected. There’s an open air, makeshift morgue that’s been set up with rows and rows of yellow body bags.  The hospital itself has actually been quite badly affected by the earthquake, but there’s one part of it that’s still operational, another that’s been completely devastated and can’t be used at all.  So they’re struggling to cope with the number of causalities.

WERMAN: Padang is a modern city, with shopping malls.  Are there tall buildings?  What is, kind of, the building stock there?  Give us, kind of the before and after shot.

HARVEY: It’s not skyscrapers.  We’re not talking a kind of Chicago skyline.  It’s a mixture of traditional Padang structures, which have these sort of pointed ends to them on the roofs.  Very beautiful buildings.  And some more modern structures, maybe 6, 7, stories high, then a couple of old Dutch colonial buildings.  So it’s a mixture.  And it is quite an important port city, this Padang.  It has always known it’s on a very vulnerable fault line.  And scientists have been warning this is an area that was likely at some stage to be badly affected by an earthquake.  Of course the problem is it’s so hard to predict precisely when, and where, and how powerful such any earthquake’s going to be.

WERMAN: Sure.  The reports now are that people are still buried in the rubble of some of these collapsed buildings.  Do you have a sense of how progress is going on rescuing those people?

HARVEY: Yes, just this evening the Indonesian government has revised upwards, again, its view of how many people   may be buried under the rubble.  They’re now saying it could be as many as 3,000.  Once they’re saying that, if anything, the efforts to try and rescue any survivors that may still be alive under that debris are increasing.  Some international teams have arrived.  I saw a Swiss team here with sniffer dogs working into the night.  There is a kind of determination to make sure if there is anybody alive, they are absolutely going to be reached if at all possible.  And of course, in amongst that, there are stories of those who have already been freed. When I was in the hospital earlier, I spoke to a 13 year old, young girl, very, very brave.  She’s called [PH] “Nisrena.”  And she was telling me that she’d had a very lucky escape.

NISRENA: I tried to run and save myself, but the building got on my body.

HARVEY: So you were trapped underneath?

NISRENA: Yes.

HARVEY: How did you get out?

NISRENA: My father helped me.  After four hours.

HARVEY: For four hours, you were trapped underneath?

NISRENA: Yes.

HARVEY: You must have been really scared when you were trapped.

NISRENA: Yes, of course.  I cannot think about it.  My foot was broken and I got amputation.  It is…I can’t describe….

WERMAN: A very brave and lucky girl there, named Nisrena in Padang.  The BBC’s Rachel Harvey.  You’ve been speaking with aid workers and doctors, what are their big concerns?

HARVEY: Well, it’s interesting.  I was talking to one orthopedic surgeon who’s running the medical side of the relief effort here.  And I asked him what the priorities would be, and what outsiders may be able to do to help.  I was expecting him to say, “Look, we’re short of equipment, or maybe we need more medicine.”  What he actually said, was, “We’re really short of clean water, struggling to keep everything clean and sanitized and hygienic.”  And that is of course true in any disaster zone.  I think here also, we’re beginning to see a few other shortages, there are big queues at gas stations, partly perhaps people getting a bit of “panic buying” going.  But there are concerns that perhaps more needs to be brought in.  Having said that, though, the airport’s open, the roads are open.  Apart from, still, some rural roads that we believe may be blocked, there were some localized landslides in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. That blocked some roads. So, getting out to those rural roads has been difficult.  Once we have a clearer picture of what’s   going on there, I think we might be able to have a clearer assessment of the overall disaster zone.

WERMAN: The BBC’s Rachel Harvey in Padang, Indonesia.  Thank you very much, Rachel.

HARVEY: Thank you.

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.

To get what you want in foreign policy, according to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, you’ve got military force at one end of the spectrum. And at the other end are words of reason. Somewhere in the middle is diplomacy, economic sanctions, foreign aid, and…pins. Brooches. Madeleine Albright’s extensive collection of brooches. Some are delicate, some are gaudy. And the messages they carry are as terse as a State Department cable. You can hear what those pins have said in “Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat’s Jewel Box.” Secretary Albright stopped by our studios to chat with Marco Werman.

• More about the book
• New Yorker Magazine Slideshow

Madeleine Albright discusses a different piece of jewelry she owns:

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.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, and this is The World.  To get what you want in foreign policy, according to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, you’ve got military force at one end of the spectrum.  And at the other end are words of reason.  Somewhere in the middle is diplomacy, economic sanctions, foreign aid, and…pins.  Brooches.  Madeleine Albright’s extensive collection of brooches, in fact.  Some delicate, some gaudy.  And the messages they carry are as terse as a State Department cable.  You can hear what those pins have said in “Read My Pins:  Stories from a Diplomat’s Jewel Box.”  Madame Secretary, thank you for coming in.  They’re on display right now at the Museum of Arts and Design?

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: They are.  And Marco, it’s great to be with you.  And I have to say, the show is fabulous and surprised me a little bit….  Since I, at home, keep these things in hanging plastic bags.  It all started because Saddam Hussein, I was ambassador at the UN.  We had a lot of sanctions, resolutions after the Gulf War.  There was a poem in their controlled press in which he called me an “unparalleled serpent.”  And I happened to have a snake pin.  So I wore that.  And then I thought, ‘Well this is fun.’  So, I then bought a bunch of other mostly costume jewelry, just to declare what my mood was.

WERMAN: Right, and it’s about messages, sending messages out to the public and other diplomats.  Did people get the snake pin?  Did they understand what it meant?

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: I think they did.  And finally they all got it, to some extent or another.  And they would look to see what I was wearing.  And then of course, I think people remember the first President Bush said, “Read my lips, no new taxes.”  So that’s why, when they said, “What are we doing today?”  I’d say “Read my pins.”

WERMAN: [LAUGHS]  Men are relatively limited in what they can use, dress wise, to express themselves.  We’ve got a suit and tie.  You must have discovered pretty early on that you had a whole arsenal of tools that men didn’t.  Was that empowering?

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: I think it was.  You know, there was a whole question mark about whether a woman could be Secretary of State.  And as you’ve probably noticed, there are more comments about what women wear, their haircuts, or whatever, than ever happens to a man. So I decided, I love being a woman, and decided I would wear bright colors and get some good clothes.  And so the pins were just an addition to that.

WERMAN: You know, you point out in your book men do wear pins, too, and we see them all the time.  Generals:  their power is kind of encoded with silk color pins on their chests in North Korea, loyalty to the leader, and the Communist Party via pins.  And of course, here in the US, we can’t forget the little flag pins.  And this was brought to bear on President Obama during the campaign when he was pestered about not wearing a flag pin, then he put one on.  It seems like there’s almost a small amount of pressure to wear the flag pin. What are your thoughts?

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: Well, I think, I love to wear my Americana.  But I do it by choice.  And it’s really only in countries with dictatorships where people have to wear the face of the dictator, [PH] Kim Chanyo for instance, or Mao Zedong.  And I thought it was really silly.  I mean, President Obama was a patriotic candidate, he’s definitely a patriotic president.  And so to have that be some kind of a test of loyalty…. It’s one thing to wear things by choice, it’s another to force people to do it.

WERMAN: Let’s put you in the present, briefly.  If you had been in the room yesterday in Geneva with the Iranians, what pin would you have worn?

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: Well, I have a great pin.  It is a dove and an eagle. And it really would in fact…I think, symbolize what’s supposed to be going on there, which is incentives and disincentives.  Of really offering some way the Iranians can come into the system, but making very clear that there is the strength of international unity to push them on some of these issues.  So that’s what I would have worn.  But we don’t know where this is headed.  Yesterday was actually a pretty good day in terms of what the Iranians had agreed to…inspections, and the possibility of bringing fuel in from outside and shipping some of their fuel out.  But as President Obama said, this is the beginning of the long road.

WERMAN: You were critical of foreign policy under President George W. Bush.  President Obama had promised, basically, a 180 degree turn from that, vowing to engage with people described previously as enemies.  Presumably, you support him in that?

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: Very much so. Because I think the issue here is, you have to talk to your enemies.  And there’s this misconception that talking is just “happy talk.”  I mean, I was in a lot of tough meetings where you’d deliver a very hard message.  You can’t do that if you do not have some kind of a relationship.  And so I fully agree.

WERMAN: There’s also the perception that if President Obama does engage with “so called enemies,” he’d appear weak.

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: I so disagree.  I know there’s this thing that “talking is appeasement, if you take responsibility for some bad action you’re apologizing…” I think that’s ridiculous.  What President Obama has done is really restore credibility to the American word.  To American character.  And so I think that you have to show the desire to at least listen and never forget your own national interests.  And I think that’s been happening, very much so.

WERMAN: Let me ask you, briefly, about Afghanistan.  What does Mister Obama do about this?  Because it has been, and is still arguably a haven for terrorists.  And yet can Mister Obama afford to put in   more troops to shut down that haven, especially when Afghanistan doesn’t take well to foreign occupation.  When Al-Qaida can and is training in other places?

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: What is happening now, which I have to say is very good decision making, is President Obama is gathering his National Security advisors to go over the situation there and what General [PH] McCrystal has suggested.  And for me, he is the epitome of what I called for in my previous book, “A Memo to the President,” in which I said we needed a “confident” president rather than a “certain” president.  Because confidence allows him to hear all these different views.  And I think he will be looking at various parts.  But it is hard.  Because I think if we pull out, then I think there is that vacuum that was there before.  If we have a massive force, then as you point out, we become an occupation force.  And NATO has a very large role in this.  So there are a lot of questions.  And I think President Obama’s going about this in the right way.

WERMAN: As I look through certain pictures in this book, it seems like a more innocent time.  Here’s a picture of you with the Egyptian president, [PH] Hasseim Hubarrec at the signing of an interim agreement between Israeli Prime Minister [PH] Ahoud Bereck and Palestinian Chairman [PH] Yassir Arafat.  Now if we look at what’s happening in the Middle East today, President Obama lost round one, if you will, when he failed to get a freeze on settlements.  How big of a setback was this, do you think?

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: Well, I think that he, in many ways, had a good round by bringing Prime Minister [PH] Netanyahu and [PH] Malamud Abas, the President of the Palestinians together in New York.  But again, I think this is one of the most difficult issues out there.  Senator Mitchell, as the envoy, has been on the ground.  And I think it’s very important to have somebody that does it on a day to day basis…. There, I think, will be some forward movement and more talks.  But it is very, very hard.  And I do think that the US has to be in a position where we are the party, the only party, actually, that can bring the Palestinians and Israelis together.  But this is a long slog.

WERMAN: While we’re talking about the Middle East, tell us about the pins you’re wearing today.  You have matching earrings to go with it.  Were these the gifts from [PH] Laya Ravin?

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: Yes!  What happened was, [PH] Laya Ravin gave me a gift…the widow of [PH] Itzak Ravin…she gave me a dove pin in order to show, obviously, that peace was very important.  And I wore it whenever we had a Middle East speech.   I like it a lot, and it is on the cover of my book I wrote about God and religion in foreign police, “The Mighty and the Almighty.”  And Archbishop Tutu, really one of the remarkable people, said, “Religion is like a knife.  You can either shove it into somebody’s back, or cut bread with it.”  And religion is like that.  And so that’s why I wrote about it in terms of foreign policy and the dove seemed like an appropriate symbol for that.

WERMAN: Former Secretary of Sate, Madeleine Albright’s new book is called “Read My Pins:  Stories from a Diplomat’s Jewel Box.”  Madame Secretary, thank you so much for coming in.

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: Thanks, Marco.

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.

• ‘Created in China’ series page
• Mary Kay’s 2007 series on ‘Young China’
• Pictures of China’s anniversary celebration

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.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman.  And this is The World, a coproduction of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH Boston.  China’s Communist Party is celebrating 60 years in power this week.  The Party has shown an ability — through the years — to reinvent itself and adjust to changing conditions, without letting go of control.  That’s the general idea behind China opening up its economy — with limits — and under the watchful eye of the Party. But now Chinese leaders say they want to transform their country into a more innovative society.  The question is how can they innovate without allowing a freer flow of ideas, and more checks and balances on their power?  From Beijing, The World’s Mary Kay Magistad has the final report in our series, “Created in China.”

[SOUNDS OF A TV PROGRAM IN CHINESE]

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: This week, China’s state-run television has been trumpeting how much the Communist Party has achieved during its 60 years in power:  There have been impressive gains in health and literacy, in technology and prosperity…and openness.  But this week’s celebrations have skipped over the dark side of the history of Communist rule – the political movements and persecutions that destroyed or ended tens of millions of lives.  Try to find information about them online here in China…

[SOUND OF TYPING ON COMPUTER KEYPAD]

MAGISTAD: And you’ll find that many sites that mention these things are blocked.  So are Youtube, Facebook and other sites the government isn’t sure it can trust, sites with information the government doesn’t want Chinese people to see.  The government also tries to silence its critics.  Lawyer Li Heping has been detained and beaten up for taking on human rights cases:

LI HEPING: [In Chinese]

MAGISTAD: Li says there are a lot of problems in Chinese society, and government leaders should realize they can’t solve all the problems by themselves.  At the same time, he says, Chinese citizens have a growing awareness of their rights.  More than 300 million Chinese now use the Internet and twice that many have mobile phones.  So the government can’t easily control things anymore.  In fact, it’s paying more attention to public opinion.  It monitors chat sites and blogs, and even asks for public feedback.  That approach may help China’s leaders reach one of their goals.  They say they want China to become an innovative society, one that will come up with new inventions that those outside of China will be willing to pay for.  But Arthur Kroeber, the editor of The China Economic Quarterly, doubts all this can happen without political change…because you can’t have cutting edge innovation without a free flow of ideas:

ARTHUR KROEBER:  …Because essentially innovation is unbounded.  You can’t set up a system that says it is fine for you to innovate in areas A, B, C, but areas D and E, hands off. Because an awful lot of innovation is essentially about sticking different ideas together and making combinations of ideas from different fields that no one had previously thought of.  And this is something that people who are in the planning mindset never get, right?  You can’t plan innovation.  That’s a logical impossibility.

MAGISTAD: Filmmaker Chen Li has come up against the Chinese government’s ambivalent attitude toward the free flow of information.

[SOUNDS OF CHEN LI'S FILM PLAY IN BACKGROUND]

MAGISTAD: He recently made a film that explores some thorny issues of village life -such as coercion to enforce the one-child policy, and party manipulation of village elections.  Chen says the original script passed the censors – who must approve every film before it’s shot in China.  But the censors didn’t like the finished film:

CHEN LI: And they told me that there is no way to rectify it. They offer no suggestion for me to rectify the film.

MAGISTAD: So they said, “Just forget it?”

CHEN LI: Forget it and wait.  Wait for, I don’t know. Wait. They told me to wait.

MAGISTAD: Chen’s professional partner, actor Nick Li, says it’s not just the censors in China’s film world who resist controversial, politically-charged films:

NICK LI: Like sometimes, we deal with a bunch of artists and when I think about something, I think it is creative and original they will just question me and ask you know, “Why are you doing that?”  They have never done before.  So is that a risk or something, and is that weird or something?  And I said, you know, we are born to be weird.  Really, as a true artist, you have to be.

MAGISTAD: As an innovator, you sometimes have to be weird, too.  Internet entrepreneur Jin Xiaofeng says in her lifetime China has become far more open to new ideas.  But there’s still room for improvement, especially in a culture that shows little tolerance for failure:

JIN XIAOFENG: I think to certain degree, innovation requires the courage to make mistakes, the courage to break what the society said is right.  If you still have a strong a frame in your mind:   “This is something I don’t want to touch it, otherwise I will be in big trouble – not like small trouble,” that will have certain kind of limitation in terms of speed, how long it’s going to take for you, for the whole generation, for the whole society to become more innovative.

MAGISTAD: The good news for China’s leaders is that China’s economy can still grow for a decade or more, just by doing the kind of low-level innovation China does now – cutting costs, developing efficient supply chains and tweaking existing products for the Chinese market.  Economists say this will both drive China’s growth and pull Chinese innovators up to a higher level.  Dan Brody heads the Chinese social networking site 360-quan.  He says there’s also another dynamic at play that could help boost Chinese innovation in the future:

DAN BRODY: If you look at the annual list of richest Chinese businessmen, you know, the Internet sector probably accounts for a larger proportion than any other industry.  The average age is much younger.  So it’s cool to have these young, successful Silicon Valley types, many of whom are now funding the next generation of Chinese Internet entrepreneurs, because they are now so wealthy themselves.  So if we look at the founding teams of the big Chinese Internet companies, whether their Internet company itself was innovative or not might not be the most important thing, the most important thing is you have this young, very innovative person who now has enough wealth, they can begin investing in the next generation, in the next round.

MAGISTAD: China’s leaders hope that will happen before China’s baby boom generation starts to retire, and the working age population shrinks.  It’s then that China may have to start relying on innovation to drive economic growth.  Meanwhile, the Party has time to do a few things.  It could better protect intellectual property, and allow courts to become independent of Communist Party control.  It could – and is already starting to – strengthen the social safety net, so Chinese consumers feel confident spending more and saving less.  And it could take the brakes off of free speech, and the free flow of ideas – so Chinese innovators can access, discuss and debate ideas freely, like innovators anywhere else in the world.

DUNCAN CLARK: I think there is a debate going on about what the limits are, how far should China liberalize to allow innovation to happen.

MAGISTAD: Duncan Clark is the chairman of the hi-tech consulting group BDA, in Beijing:

DUNCAN CLARK: But the end goal is, the Communist Party in China knows they can only stay in power provided that it can deliver on the economy.   There is nervousness, certainly, with the Party about how far liberalization can go.  And if the Party can’t deliver, as a result of its own attempts to control, then I think there are many in the Party who realize that it’s “game up.”

MAGISTAD: So we’re back to an important question.  Can the Party keep delivering, without allowing more pluralism?  A study at Harvard University has found that in society after society, pressure for more pluralism grows once the average income hits about $13,000 a year.  China’s average income now is just $3,000 a year.  But it’s closer to $13,000 in China’s big cities, where many of the best minds are drawn, and where much of the innovation happens.  Premier Wen Jiabao has pledged repeatedly that China will allow more pluralism.  He said it at again at this year’s National People’s Congress in March:

PREMIER WEN JIABAO: [In Chinese] We will strengthen the development of democracy and legal system, carry out political restructuring in an active yet prudent manner, and develop socialist democratic politics.  We need to improve democratic institutions, enrich the forms of democracy, expand its channels, and carry out democratic elections, decision-making, administration and oversight in accordance with the law.

MAGISTAD: But censorship continues, the courts remain under the Party’s thumb, and intellectuals are still jailed for speaking their minds.  If China’s leaders really want to foster innovation, they’ll have to make a game-changing move.  It’s something previous Chinese leaders have done.  Mao Zedong saw he couldn’t follow the classic Marxist strategy of rallying the working class, because China didn’t have much of a working class.  The vast majority of Chinese were farmers.  So Mao innovated.  He rallied the farmers, and led the Communists to power.  Thirty years later, Deng Xiaoping saw the mess Mao’s policies had made, and he innovated.  He allowed capitalism back into China.  He just camouflaged it by calling it “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” and the Chinese economic miracle began.  China’s current leaders have yet to take so bold, so innovative a step.  They could.  They could take the chains off the curiosity and creativity of China’s best young minds, and unleash the true potential of Chinese innovation.  For The World, I’m Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing.

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.

MARCO WERMAN: Disaster also struck the Philippines this week, in the form of a typhoon.  Typhoon Ketsana caused unprecedented flooding in the capital Manila.  It took the lives of over 200 people and left thousands homeless.  Now another storm — dubbed a super-typhoon — is heading straight for the northern Philippines.  President Gloria Arroyo of the Philippines today declared a national “state of calamity.”  Glen Marboloc works for the relief group, Oxfam, in Manila and is helping prepare for the arrival of Typhoon Parma.  What’s it like there right now?  Are people anxious?

GLEN MARBOLOC: They are.  In fact, earlier this evening, people were rushing to their homes, because Manila was put on Signal Number One in anticipation of the super-typhoon hitting   its tail end by early Sunday morning.

WERMAN: And what distinguishes a super-typhoon from a typhoon?

MARBOLOC: It’s not on a scientific basis.  People have dubbed it super-typhoon because it seems like it’s going to affect a lot of people and be very strong.  So they dubbed it a super-typhoon.

WERMAN: And what does Signal Number One mean?  Is that a kind of an alarm system?

MARBOLOC: It’s based on the tail wind measurement, so that Signal Number Three and Four signifies a very strong tail wind.  And this one characterizing the tail wind that approaches northern [PH] Lesoin, which is 10 to 15 hours from the metro Manila.

WERMAN: And is it expected that that tail wind is going to increase in speed?

MARBOLOC: What is happening now is the super-typhoon is decreasing in speed.  Because that’s happening, it will increase the rainfall in northern [PH] Lesoin, which is actually more dangerous.

WERMAN: Now, the government in the Philippines is forcibly evacuating hundreds of thousands of people.  Where are those evacuations taking place, and how are they progressing?

MARBOLOC: The evacuation is taking place in [PH] northern Lesoin.  Some families live on the coastal areas, and some refuse to evacuate because they’re going to be leaving the only properties they have in life.  So they are very stubborn evacuees.  But the government has realized and learned its lesson from the previous typhoon earlier this week, and so has ordered forced evacuation.  In fact, the forced evacuation itself is being carried out in certain parts of metro Manila in anticipation of the super-typhoon hitting Manila by early morning of Sunday.

WERMAN: Have the people of Manila ever had anything like this before, do they know what to expect?

MARBOLOC: Actually, no.  This kind of flooding that was caused by rainfall has never been experienced by Manila in 80 to 100 years.

WERMAN: And Miss Marboloc, how worried are you personally?

MARBOLOC: Personally, I’m not as worried about it.  Because they’re projecting the super-typhoon to cross over to northern [PH] Lesoin without affecting a lot of rainfall on Manila.  So, I’m optimistic that we might not get hit.  If we do, people are more prepared for it.  We have provisions in the houses, we know which numbers to call, so we are more optimistic about how to deal with the disaster that may happen.

WERMAN: Glen Marboloc from Oxfam, in Manila.  Thank you very much, and the best of luck to you in the next 24 hours.

MARBOLOC: Thank you very much.

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.

MARCO WERMAN: Israelis got a glimpse of Gilad Shalit today.  He’s the Israeli soldier who was captured near the Gaza border in 2006.  Today, Hamas delivered a video of Shalit in exchange for the release of 19 Palestinian prisoners — all women.  Hamas called the exchange a “victory for the resistance.”  In the video, Shalit urges Israel to make a deal for his release.  Linda Gradstein has more from Jerusalem.

LINDA GRADSTEIN: In the more than three years since Palestinian militants captured him in a cross-border raid, Gilad Shalit has become a household name in Israel. Cars sport blue and white bumper stickers saying “Gilad is still alive” and all schools have devoted lessons to learning about the captured solider. A children’s book he wrote and illustrated when he was 11 has become a best seller.   Shalit’s family has set up a protest tent next to the prime minister’s home. Stuart Shoffman is a senior fellow at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.

STUART SHOFFMAN: Gilad Shalit has come to symbolize every Israeli parent’s nightmare.  You send your kid to the army, and you expect the state to take care of him and to do their utmost to make sure that harm does not come to him, even as you know that going to the army is not like going to summer camp.

GRADSTEIN: Shalit was 19 when he was captured. Israeli officials say they believe he was slightly wounded at the time.   He’s now 23.  The video, which is about two minutes and 40 seconds long, shows Shalit, speaking to the camera and holding up a copy of a Gaza newspaper dated September 14th.  In the video, Shalit, wearing dark green combat fatigues, looked thin but seemed relaxed.  He seemed to smile ironically as he said his captors were treating him, quote, “excellently.”  He also said he dreamed of the day when he will be able to come home.  Shalit’s cousin, Jonathan Shalit, said the family was thrilled to get the video.

JONATHAN SHALIT:  Clearly everyone’s delighted.  And the real hope now is to have him released because there is no reason to keep him kidnapped — he’s important enough to change the destination of the conflict in the Middle East, he’s a young innocent soldier doing his job. So, we’re delighted he’s alive and I’m hoping he’ll be released sooner rather than later.

GRADSTEIN: Menachem Fisch, a professor of history at Tel Aviv University, says Shalit has come to symbolize the value Israel places on every soldier.

MENACHEM FISCH: Solidarity, not leaving your wounded men on the field.  “Pidyon Shvuyim”  – the principle of redeeming one’s own captives, and so on.

GRADSTEIN: In exchange for the video, Israel released 19 Palestinian female prisoners. Most of them were convicted of attempted   attacks on Israelis, and all were due to be released within the next two years.  Another 50 Palestinian women, along with some 7,000 men, remain in Israeli jails.  Still, Hamas characterized today’s deal as a victory. Hamas is demanding the release of some 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Shalit’s freedom. Israeli President Shimon Peres cautioned that while today’s video-prisoner exchange is a good sign, Shalit’s freedom is not imminent.

PRESIDENT SHIMON PERES: It is an important step, but only a single step.  The road for his liberation is still a long one, and a complicated one.

GRADSTEIN: Hamas is insisting on the release of dozens of prisoners who were convicted of attacks. The negotiations have sparked a debate within Israel over whether the price is too high.  Stuart Shoffman says that most Israelis believe the trade is worth it.

SHOFFMAN: The assumption that a soldier makes that all measures will be taken if he is taken prisoner.  That assumption is critical, because without it, the soldier will be unwilling to take risks, unwilling to volunteer, so it’s terribly, terribly complicated.

GRADSTEIN: Egyptian and German mediators say they will meet soon with representatives of both Israel and Hamas to continue the negotiations. For the World, I’m Linda Gradstein in Jerusalem

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.

MARCO WERMAN: The US unemployment rate climbed to 9.8 percent last month.  Unemployment has been a big concern during the economic crisis, not least because job losses signal trouble throughout the economy.  In Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel just won re-election, unemployment is also a big worry.  Merkel promised in her victory speech to make jobs a top priority.  Germany’s unemployment rate is running about 8 percent.  That number might have been higher, if not for some private and public schemes to keep people working.  The World’s Gerry Hadden reports from Hamburg…starting in its port.

[CARGO LOADING SOUNDS]

GERRY HADDEN: When you’re floating among some of the world’s largest cargo ships….watching towering cranes load them up with thousands upon thousands of containers, you might be tempted to say, “What crisis?”  The port of Hamburg, the second largest in Europe, appears busy.  170,000 people work here.  Seagoing vessels unload, load and set sail around the clock.  But business here is actually down…way down.

[SOUNDS OF AN ENGINE]

BENGT VAN BEUNIGEN: We are hit through economic and financial crisis very hard in Hamburg because we are very much dependent on trade with China and Russia.

HADDEN: Bengt Van Beunigen heads up marketing for the Hamburg port.  On this afternoon he’s touring its many terminals and canals on a small boat.

VAN BEUNIGEN: So, on one side, we are the biggest port for China trade in Europe.  So every third container we handle here in our port is China cargo.  And China went down last year dramatically to around 25 percent in cargo trade.

HADDEN: Container shipments to Russia are off by 50 percent compared to last year.  Still, Van Beunigen says virtually no port jobs have been lost.  That’s because the private port companies keep a huge pool of workers on a collective payroll…whether they’re working or not.  Van Beunigen says workers keep their income, and shipping companies get the flexibility they need.  Such private initiatives have helped keep Hamburg’s – and the country’s – jobless rate down.  Back in town, the ripple effect is obvious.  Hamburg is not a city in crisis, says a pizzeria owner named Angel…it’s just in a slump.

[SOUNDS OF MUSIC IN PIZZERIA]

ANGEL: [In German]

HADDEN: He says, “The economic crisis is affecting us but only a little bit.  We’re more or less satisfied with business.”  The jobs scheme at the Hamburg port isn’t the only program keeping Angel’s pizza ovens on.  The German government has put up hundreds of millions of dollars – for workers who are working less, or not at all.  The largest plan is called “Short Work.”  Short Work lets struggling businesses reduce their workers’ hours…and pay.  The state then steps in and makes up the workers’ wage shortfall.  The government says it’s preserved more than a million jobs this way.  And there’s more.

OSAR: [In German]

HADDEN: At an unemployment office in downtown Hamburg, an out-of-work salesman named Osar says he has a wife and baby to take care of.  They can’t afford child care, so his wife took a leave from her job.  But they’re only surviving, he says, because of what’s called “parent pay.”  Beginning last winter, the government began subsidizing maternity or paternity leave at 70 percent of salary… for up to a year.  Also this year, Germany swung a 500 million dollar financial bailout for banks and businesses.  All of this spending has helped Germany pull out of recession.  But the strategy is risky.  A year ago, Germany was running a surplus.  Today the budget deficit is at 1.5 percent of GDP. Analysts and government officials warn it will likely surpass the European Union limit of 3 percent.  Germany, and Germans, generally shy away from over borrowing.  But Bremen-based economist Rudolf Hickel says if the current recovery is to continue, Germany must ignore its growing deficit.

RUDOLF HICKEL: [In German]

HADDEN: He asks, what’s the alternative?  If we try to save now so as not to go into debt, we’re just going to weigh down the economy.  And that means we’ll take in less taxes, making it harder to pay back our debts.  So we must keep up the support.  But just when can the government spending stop?  Hickel and others say only when the world economy gets fully back on its feet.  For example, when orders for German machine parts pick up again.  Germany exports 70 percent of the machinery it makes.  A rise in orders would reactivate German factories and get more of its container ships sailing, helping Chancellor Merkel keep her victory speech promise…to save jobs.  For The World, I’m Gerry Hadden in Hamburg.

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.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World.  And the winner is:

[SOUND OF AN ANNOUNCEMENT SAYING "RIO DE JANEIRO."  A CROWD CHEERS.]

WERMAN: And the cheers erupt in fine Brazilian fashion on Rio’s famed Copacabana Beach.  Rio was chosen today as the host city for the 2016 Summer Olympics.  Sorry Madrid…and Chicago…and Tokyo. Regina Zappa is a freelance journalist in Rio.  She’s just come back from Copacabana Beach.  .And what’s the scene there like, Regina?

REGINA ZAPPA: People were very nervous and the expectation was big waiting for the announcement.  When the announcement came, it was so happy, and people were celebrating, and singing and dancing, and you’d see all the green and yellow, the Brazilian flag colors all over.  People were dressed in green and yellow, and the flags, and people selling little flags, it was just like a holiday.

WERMAN: This is just a big deal for Brazil and a big deal for South America, since it will be the first time in history an Olympics will be held in South America.  What does it mean to Brazil to represent not just a country, but the whole continent?

REGINA ZAPPA: Well, it’s a big deal.  It really is.  I was just listening to [PH] De Lulla speaking on TV, and he said something like, “We finally are on our way to lose our inferiority complex.”  Because for the self esteem of people, of Brazilians, it’s a very big thing.  And also, it’s going to bring many opportunities for people to engage in sports, especially young people and children who live in the poor communities.  They will have a greater chance now to get involved in sports.  And somebody said, also, on TV, that one of the most important things is the Olympic values that will stay with us after…

WERMAN: …Yes, what do you mean by “Olympic values?”

REGINA ZAPPA: I think they meant the feeling that people can engage in sports, and some of them can get out of poverty through sports.  A value of harmony and how to play together…

WERMAN: …What you’re saying is pretty relevant, because there’s this article in the New Yorker this week about gang violence in Rio.  That’s something the city’s going to have to finally solve once and for all, isn’t it?

REGINA ZAPPA: Yes.  Security is something that worries everybody in Rio and Brazil, especially Rio and San Paulo, very big cities, we have this violence and security problem.  And we think that bringing the games here will help solve those problems.

WERMAN: You know, Brazil has recently discovered a huge oil claim, it’s flexing its muscles in an emerging global economy.  The World Cup is coming there in 2014.  Now, this news today about the Olympics in 2016.  You said earlier, this makes Brazil lose its inferiority complex.  But, do Brazilians really have an inferiority complex?

REGINA ZAPPA: They still do. I heard a lot of people say, “No, we’re not going to win this.”  It’s a low feeling among Brazilians, I guess.  I was very moved with the reaction in the streets.  People are very happy and cheering.  It’s nice to see all kinds of people, all classes, all colors, all races, everybody together and happy in one way.  So it was very moving.

WERMAN: Regina Zappa, a freelance journalist in Brazil.  She’s in Rio, which was selected today as the host of the 2016 Summer Olympics.  Thank you Regina, nice to talk to you.

REGINA ZAPPA: Thank you, it was a pleasure.  Bye bye.

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.

What’s on your ipod – let us know…

More Global Hits