• BBC coverage
• Global Economy podcast
• Global economic conditions: interactive map at Moody’s Economy.com
• Gross National Happiness American Project
• French Government’s Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress
  
• United Nations Human Development Report

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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.

KATY CLARK:  I’m Katy Clark, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  The great recession is technically over.  The US economy grew at an annual rate of 3.5 percent last quarter.  That’s measured by the gross domestic product, or GDP.  Here’s President Obama.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: This is obviously welcome news and affirmation that this recession is abating and the steps we’ve taken have made a difference but I also know that we’ve got a long way to go to fully restore our economy and recover from what’s been the longest and deepest downturn since the Great Depression

CLARK: The recession sure doesn’t feel over for the tens of millions of unemployed in the US and around the world.  That’s one reason why there’s a growing chorus of voices saying it’s time to ditch GDP as the leading indicator of economic health.   Here’s the World’s Jason Margolis.

JASON MARGOLIS: That’s the sound of GDP. It’s essentially a measure of the combined value of all economic transactions.  For decades, the health of a country has generally been tracked by growth in GDP.  But a growing number of people are taking issue with the measure, because GDP also includes things like this.

[sound of car crashing]

MARGOLIS: Under GDP, that’s also a sound of economic progress.

ERIC ZENCEY: One of the basic problems with GDP is it just measures economic activity. If, for instance you dent your car, GDP goes up.

MARGOLIS: That’s Eric Zencey, a professor of historical and political studies at Empire State

College in New York. When you take your car to the body shop and your insurance company pays off another driver, money is changing hands.  So, Zencey says, your car crash is spurring the economy.

ZENCEY: And it’s difficult to count that as progress. You’re just trying to restore the state you had.

MARGOLIS: Similarly, if a toxic spill pollutes a river, the cost of the clean-up counts towards GDP.  When Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast, the cost of rebuilding was a boon for GDP.  Bad for communities and the environment, but good for the economy.  This idea that GDP shouldn’t be the ultimate determinant of prosperity isn’t new: It’s spelled out in many economics text books.  Critics say a major problem with GDP is that it lumps all economic activity together.  Former World Bank economist Herman Daly says think of it this way: imagine using GDP to gauge how well your store is doing.

HERMAN DALEY: You wouldn’t expect a merchant or a business to add up its revenues and its expenditures. That wouldn’t make any sense at all. You compare revenues and expenditures.

MARGOLIS: GDP also ignores the value things that don’t involve market transactions. Things like clean water, healthy ecosystems or a low infant mortality rate aren’t taken into account.  So why then do we cling to GDP as the holy grail of prosperity? I put that question to Herman Daly.

DALEY: <laughing> That’s a good question.  There just seems to be an enormous resistance. Economists are just, well, how shall I say? I really don’t know the answer to your question.

MARGOLIS: Perhaps it’s because of inertia.  We’ve just been doing it this way for decades.  And we can only count what’s countable. GDP is good at that. Still, some countries are trying to move beyond GDP.  French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently gathered some Nobel laureate economists and social scientists in Paris to identify the limits of GDP and come up with an alternative measure.  Here’s Princeton economist Angus Deaton speaking at the Sorbonne.

ANGUS DEATON: We must measure well being broadly, including not only income but other measures such as health, education, democratic and social participation, as well as measures of well being as people themselves perceive them.”

MARGOLIS: That’s the tricky part: How do people measure well being? Or, put another way, how do we measure happiness?  It’s a question that’s vexed philosophers for centuries. Here’s Nobel economist Amartya Sen in Paris.

AMARTYA SEN: The remark of Protagoras from the 5th century BC, Greece, that, I quote, “man is the measure of all things” unquote, has been differently interpreted in history.

MARGOLIS: The academics in the Sorbonne freely admitted,  coming up with a quantifiable, alternative measure to GDP won’t be easy.   Still, the idea is gaining traction worldwide.  The United Nations has developed what it calls the Human Development Index, a combination of GDP along with life expectancy and literacy.  In Bhutan, the government already measures what it calls “gross national happiness.”   But not everybody is excited about finding a new economic metric. Brian Dimitrovic is an economic historian at Sam Houston State University in Texas.

BRIAN DIMITROVIC: If economists want to talk about happiness, they should understand that most people won’t listen to them, because economists are statisticians and mathematicians. And the people who tell us about happiness are literary types and spiritual leaders. It is simply beyond the competence of the kind of, dare I say, social misfits that are economists. They should really stick to what they’re best at, which is simply counting things.

MARGOLIS: Dimitrovic concedes that GDP is not a perfect measure.  But he says it’s an important tool to gauge production and progress.  Critics agree, but say the importance of GDP has become over-inflated.  And Eric Zencey at Empire State College says countries with strong GDP cling to it for the wrong reasons.

ZENCEY: And so it’s a little bit like we’re winning at this game, and now you want to change the rules? I think that’s part of the resistance to moving beyond GDP.  That resistance to moving beyond GDP probably got stronger today.  That’s because in the US and many other nations, GDP is once again up.  And that means elected officials can point to one simple yardstick to show that their economic policies are succeeding.  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.

• BBC coverage
• Carl Levin’s Senate page

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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.

KATY CLARK: As we heard a minute ago, the US paid insurgents in Iraq to stop fighting American troops, and it worked.  Some 90,000 Sunni militants joined the Awakening Councils in exchange for about $300 a month.  Now Congress wants to use that strategy in Afghanistan. The defense spending bill that President Obama signed yesterday includes a provision allowing the Pentagon to reward Taliban fighters who renounce the insurgency.  Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin was behind that provision.   Senator Levin, how exactly is this going to work.  I mean, given an Afghan government and society that’s so rife with corruption, don’t you start getting into trouble when you offer money for allegiance?

CARL LEVIN:  Well, you sure have to be cautious, but there was plenty of corruption in Iraq as well, but they worked out a plan to provide this very small stipend to about 90,000 Iraqis to switch sides, and instead of fighting us, to protect their communities.  That’s what most of them are doing. They’re involved in security protection work to see if they can’t make their villages and towns safer.  About 10,000 of the 100,000 young Iraqis are actually in the Iraqi government now.  But we authorized the use of these commander funds, these emergency funds, for this purpose.  But it’s also essential that there be a plan.  We don’t have a plan yet.  One of the generals, NATO generals, is working on a plan.  We should have had this in place some time ago in my judgment.  It can’t just be throwing money at the problem, but we have to have that money ready to go if and when, and hopefully it’s soon, the plan to do this is put in place.

CLARK:  And who would be handing out the money?  Would it be US forces or the Afghan government?

LEVIN:  That’s part of the decision that could be made in the plan.  We haven’t written the plan.  What we’ve authorized the funds is to help fund a plan which would be written by NATO.

CLARK:  Well, some US commanders refer to the $10 Taliban, meaning that fighters are getting about $10 a day to take on the US troops.  Is that what Washington might be paying?

LEVIN:  It would be a modest amount.  We don’t set the amount.  We know it will be very little, because we know that the Taliban doesn’t pay much, but they pay.  It’s better than nothing for these young, desperate men.  We’re only talking here about the low level folks.  We’re not talking about Taliban commanders or those who are religious fanatics. You’re not going to be able to get them to switch sides.

CLARK:  It seemed as if many of these guys who are fighting US forces over there think that they’re actually winning, so why would they take $10 or $20 to stop fighting US forces if they think they’re really going to win the whole war there?

LEVIN:  Well, the Taliban commanders aren’t going to stop.  The question is, whether or not the large number of local fighters would stop.  Those people who are making bombs, attacking our vehicles, because we’re there and because they’re paid to do that, the amount of pay they’re getting is very small, and we can quite easily compete with that.  Also, there’s some real risk that they’re taking.  A lot of these young fighters are getting killed.  They’re also on the outs, in many cases, with their own communities.  You know, the Taliban is hated in Afghanistan.

CLARK:  Well, we had a survey that came out this week by the Asia Foundation that polled a number of Afghans.  It was more than 6,000 over the course of the summer.  And they found actually a large amount of sympathy for those who are fighting US forces there.

LEVIN:  Well, I haven’t seen that poll, but I have seen other polls, and I don’t remember who took them, that showed the support for the Taliban was in literally single digits.

CLARK:  So I’m just wondering what is being proposed here, offering money to people fighting US forces in Afghanistan to stop fighting.  Isn’t this just in a sense a few degrees away from talking to al Qaida?  I mean, where does al Qaida fit into this?

LEVIN:  Well, al Qaida’s very different from the Taliban, and there may be a temporary relationship of convenience, but al Qaida has very, very little support.  Al Qaida, for the most part, are foreign fighters and the Taliban leaders work with al Qaida in Pakistan and whenever they can in Afghanistan, but it’s not because there’s any philosophical connection between them.  It’s just a matter of people who are insurgents working together against a common enemy, which is us.

CLARK:  Well, this is a program based on what worked in Iraq, but we’ve been hearing over and over again from General Petraeus and others that what worked in Iraq won’t necessarily work in Afghanistan.  The dynamics are very different.  Are you worried that this might not work?

LEVIN:  There’s always this risk.  You can’t guarantee anything’s going to work in Afghanistan.

CLARK:  Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat, chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee. Thanks for your time, Senator.

LEVIN:  Sure.  Good being with you, Katy.

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.

• Video: La Sosta Culturale
• La Sosta Culturale on facebook

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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.

KATY CLARK:  Egypt is becoming an increasingly repressive society, but one Egyptian comedian is using his TV show to shake things up.   Along the way, he’s earning a reputation as “the Egyptian Ali G.”  Correspondent Julia Simon sat down to watch the show with a friend in Cairo and she sent this report.

JULIA SIMON: Kareem Nasser and I are at sitting in an apartment in downtown Cairo, watching scenes from an Egyptian television show that debuted this past August.  It’s called “La Sosta Culturale” and it isn’t your typical Egyptian interview show.

[Audio clip of Egyptian show]

KAREEM NASSER: [(Laughing] Did you ever make out with a woman. And he says, “No you cannot tell me this! You cannot ask me in this way.”

SIMON: This may be relatively tame for an American audience, but for Egyptians, this kind of sexual talk isn’t something you hear on TV every day and it comes from the show’s host.   Does he have a name?

AKRAM AL-SHARKAWY: Yeah, he has a name.  He’s called Martello Rufiano. Martello actually is a hammer, Rufiano is a pimp in Italian. [laughing] But nobody knows about this, huh?

SIMON: That’s Akram al-Sharkawy, talking about his character, Martello Rufiano, the flamboyant Italian host of “La Sosta Culturale.” Rufiano’s a little like Sasha Baron-Cohen’s alter ego, Ali G.  Most of his guests don’t know he is playing a fictional character.  Al-Sharkawy says that playing an Italian makes it easier for him to ask his guests the provocative and sexually charged questions that are normally so taboo in Egyptian society.

AL-SHARKAWY: It helps a little with the guests. You know, they would be shocked but, “Okay, he’s a foreigner. We go with them, yeah?”

SIMON: But while al-Sharkawy jokes about sex, he steers clear of politics.  He shelved an episode that featured an interview with Talaat Sadat, the nephew of the former Egyptian president.  Al-Sharkawy says that Sadat’s harsh attacks on Egypt’s current president, Hosni Mubarak, were too negative for air.   When it comes to attacking the Egyptian government on TV, the repercussions aren’t a joke. Another comedy, the “Hokuma Show,” or “the government show,” was also supposed to debut in August.  That show poked fun at high government officials, including the prime minister, but before it could premiere, the Egyptian Ministry of Information pulled the plug. In Egypt, the political elite are largely untouchable. Sociologist Said Sadek calls it the deification of leaders, turning them into gods like the ancient Egyptian pharaohs.

SAID SADEK: So if you have a comedy show that attacks this aura of glory and immunity around the leader, it is immediately a call for action by the censorship.

SIMON: Egyptians love comedy, and Abeer Solimon believes that comedy has an important role to play in Egypt’s social and political evolution.  She’s program director for the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information.

ABEER SOLIMON: For sure, comedy is one of the biggest channels to talk to the normal Egyptian human in the street because you can write articles, issue books, and release whatever you want but not everybody reads. But everybody watches TV and comedy is finally the easiest way to peoples’ hearts.

SIMON: I asked Solimon to tell me a typical Egyptian joke.

SOLIMON: I can’t!

[Laughter.]

SIMON: You can’t?  You can’t tell it on the air?

SOLIMON: Yeah.

SIMON: So the jokes are pretty political.

SOLIMON: Yeah, yeah, yeah, in a very cynical way.

SIMON:  As the ruling National Democratic Party gathers in Cairo this week, you can expect a lot of political jokes behind closed doors.  For comedians like al-Sharkawy, such political humor will have to stay in the green room.  But others hope that someday these jokes will reach the Egyptian airwaves and help promote the kind of political change only dreamed of in their punch lines.  For The World, I’m Julia Simon in Cairo.

CLARK: We have a link to Martello Rufiano’s show at The  World dot org.  This is PRI.

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.

A selection of Nouvelle Vague videos:

• Nouvelle Vague homepage

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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.

KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark.  This is The World.  A big question mark hangs over Iraq’s security forces today.  This after the Iraqi government arrested dozens of its own military and security personnel in relation to Sunday’s suicide bombings in Baghdad.  More than 150 people were killed in the blasts, which targeted three government buildings.  Those arrested today include high ranking officers in charge of security around the buildings.  The fact that the bombers slipped with ease through numerous checkpoints has raised questions about the effectiveness of Iraq’s security forces, just as the US military presence there decreases.  The BBC’s Gabriel Gatehouse is in Baghdad.  Gabriel, what do these arrests, some of them at a high level, tell us about what’s going on behind the scenes in Iraq right now?

GABRIEL GATEHOUSE:  Well, at the moment we don’t know exactly what these 61 security force personnel are suspected of.  We know they’re being held for questioning, but we don’t know whether they’re suspected of negligence or collusion, or what.  And until we know what exactly they’re suspected off, I suspect that this will fuel a suspicion that many in Iraq already had, which is really twofold about Iraqi security forces.  One is how competent they are, but secondly, and perhaps more worryingly, how open they are to pressure, or even infiltration by insurgents, by attackers.

CLARK:  And all this at a time when the US is very much decreasing its role in Iraq. But right now, what’s the feeling in Iraq about how much the US is still needed there?

GATEHOUSE:  Well, this is a very good question.  The thing is, the Americans want out.  They’ve made that perfectly clear.  The Iraqis in public also want the Americans out, but I think there is a worry about how competent the Iraqi security forces are and what will happen when more Americans leave.  Remember, the timetable as it stands is for all combat troops to be out of Iraq by the end of August, in preparation for a full military withdrawal by the end of 2011.  I’ve been speaking to the Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, and I asked him precisely that question.  In the light of these latest attacks, does he still want more help from the Americans?

HOSHYAR ZEBARI:  They need to be more engaged, actually. Americans cannot just wash of their hands to say, “Well, we are no longer engaged or interested, because we have our own timetable to withdraw.”  Yes, we have agreed, but from now until 2011, I think Iraq is going through some very, very serious challenges, and let’s be honest.  Iraq is not yesterday’s story.  It’s today’s story, for everybody.

CLARK:  Again, that’s Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. And Gabriel, is Zebari’s message reflective of government and popular opinion?

GATEHOUSE:  No, I don’t think it is, at least, not in public.  But privately, I think a lot of people feel nervous about the prospect of a decrease in the American presence here.  Some even saying that, “Look, we want the Americans to go, but we felt safer when they were around in the towns and cities.”  So I think there’s a bit of a disconnect going on between what’s being said publicly and what private fears really are when you talk behind closed doors.

CLARK:  A lot has been made about these Awakening Councils in Iraq, the former insurgents who are paid by the US to switch allegiances, and after that happened, there was a decrease in violence in Iraq.  With the US decreasing its presence there, how solid are these allegiances?

GATEHOUSE:  I think at the moment they’re pretty solid.  That said, not all of the Sunni tribal leaders agreed with the Awakening Councils.  You get some tribes that are split down the middle. I think one thing that’s important to make clear about Sunday’s attacks and the way it differed from the kind of violence that we were seeing a few years ago, very few people, if anyone that I spoke to, mentioned a sectarian angle in relation to Sunday’s bombings.  You didn’t get groups of Shiites blaming Sunnis, or groups of Sunnis blaming Shiites.  So the one ray of light, if you can put it like that, to come out of the aftermath of Sunday’s bombings  is possibly that perhaps Iraq is beginning to turn a corner in terms of those sectarian tensions.

CLARK:  The BBC’s Gabriel Gatehouse in Baghdad, thanks for speaking with us.

GATEHOUSE:  My pleasure.

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.

KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark and this is The World.  So it’s the last day of your vacation in a tropical resort.  You’re driving along with friends, when the cops pull you over.  They tell you you’re speeding.  And then they demand cash, or they’ll throw you in jail.  Well, that’s what happened to Scott Fischbach in Cancun, Mexico, earlier this year.   Scott’s wife Michelle was also in the car.  She’s on the phone now from her home in St Paul, Minnesota.  And Michelle, welcome.  How much money did they want from you?

MICHELLE FISCHBACH:  Well, they wanted $300 and actually, that’s what they ended up getting, US$300 in cash.

CLARK:  And just to clarify, this wasn’t one of those on the spot fines.  These cops wanted a bribe, right?

FISCHBACH:  Yes, they wanted a bribe.  They were trying very hard to get my husband on drunk driving.  They were actually what I think has been referred to now as the “Cancun breathalyzer test” where they were having him– they cupped their hands and had him blow into their hands, and then they would sniff at their hands to see if there was any kind of alcohol on his breath, and he had not been drinking.  So they couldn’t get him for that.  But then they wanted $300 and they wanted it in cash.  They were holding his driver’s license, and they said that they would take him to jail if he did not come up with the $300 cash.

CLARK:  And you paid them.  Why did you pay?  Why not protest and file a police report?

FISCHBACH:  Well, it was pretty intimidating.  I mean, it was three police officers.  It was dark, it was late.  We were in foreign country.  None of us in the car spoke Spanish, and it was rather intimidating and so we felt like we didn’t have a whole lot of choice.

CLARK:  Had you heard about things like this happening in parts of Mexico?

FISCHBACH:  You know, I had heard that there was a variety of things that went on, but I didn’t realize that you could be pulled over by the police and, you know, have $300 extorted from you on the spot.  I guess I had– you know, there’s a variety of things that you’d heard of, but nothing like this.

CLARK:  So none of this sat well with you, and when you got home to Paynesville, Minnesota, you decided to seek redress and now this is where we should mention that you are in fact a fourth term Minnesota state senator.  So tell us what you did.

FISCHBACH:  Well, you know, as time went on, after we paid the money, we started to get very angry.  And I’d actually talked to the concierge and it didn’t seem to bother him.  He goes, “Oh well, if they would have got you for drunk driving, it would have been $1,000.”

CLARK:  So you were lucky.

FISCHBACH:  Yes, we got off cheap, I guess.  But it just seemed plain old wrong.  It was just wrong.  And so I just decided, you know, what, I’m going to write a letter.  And we sent a letter off, explaining what had happened, and actually, my niece was in the car.  She’s a grown woman, so it wasn’t a child, but she was writing down everything that she could about the vehicle, about the officers.  They had on name tags that had their first names on them, things like that.  So we had a lot of information.  So we included all of that in the letter and sent it on down, and we didn’t hear anything for a while.  And then they called in and said they wanted to issue me a refund.

CLARK:  So you got all of your money back?  You got a check from the Cancun city government for the full $300?

FISCHBACH:  Yes.

CLARK:  And you cashed it, and it didn’t bounce.

FISCHBACH:  You know what, I haven’t cashed it yet.  It’s kind of a conversation piece at this point still.

CLARK:  Do you know what happened to the police officers who swindled you here?

FISCHBACH:  My understanding is that they were fired and from the press reports that I’ve seen, it’s that there’s going to be a further investigation also.

CLARK:  Do you feel like you got special treatment in this case because you are an elected official, or do you think regular people could go after the justice that you got here as well?

FISCHBACH:  I certainly hope that’s not the case, and that anybody who would write and tell them what happened to them would get the same kind of attention.

CLARK:  Well, sadly you are not the first American tourist overseas to be fleeced in this way, and you probably won’t be the last.  What advice do you give people who might find themselves in a similar position?

FISCHBACH:  Well, first, if you feel like you’re in any danger or anything, I’m not advocating they pay them, but I don’t want anyone to try to stand up to somebody that they would feel in danger of.  But most certainly, if anything happens, get any information you can, and make sure you send it to the folks in Cancun, or wherever it may be, and let the officials in the government know what’s going on.

CLARK:  Do you think you’ll be going back to Cancun any time soon?

FISCHBACH:  You know, it wasn’t our first trip to Mexico, so I don’t know if we’ll go back soon, but I’m certainly not counting it out.  It depends on if my husband will take me on a nice vacation.

CLARK:  Okay, Michelle Fischbach, Minnesota state senator, thanks for joining us.

FISCHBACH:  Thank you very much.  I really appreciate it.

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.

KATY CLARK:  Another news item out of Mexico caught our attention today.  It has to do with a popular music group called “Los Tigres del Norte.”  They sing about the daily realities of life in Mexico.  That includes touchy subjects like drug-related violence, immigration, and corruption.

Usually they tackle one such topic at a time.  But as The World’s William Troop explains, their newest single tackles them all at once.

WILLIAM TROOP: The song is called “La Granja,” which means, “The Farm.”  And it’s a seemingly comprehensive allegory about everything that’s wrong with Mexico , as portrayed by fictional characters on a farm.  It’s like Animal Farm, Mexico, and it’s not very subtle either.

[Los Tigres performing "La Granja.]

TROOP: The lyrics start with a description of a rabid dog that the farmer has tied up. “Don’t let her loose,” the singer says, “or we’ll regret it.”  It’s a clear reference to drug traffickers, and the mayhem they have brought to Mexico.  And that’s just the start.  The dog gets loose, thanks to some help from a wily fox.  Meanwhile the pigs, i.e. corrupt politicians, hang out in the barn all day eating all the farmer’s corn.  The farmer, who represents working class Mexicans, wants to leave, but the pigs– this time they’re the U-S government– build a fence to keep the farmer in his place.  This sort of simple and brutally honest ballad is exactly what Los Tigres del Norte have been belting out for decades, and it sells.  When La Granja was released, it went straight to the top of the music charts in Mexico,  and to the top of Latin music charts in the U-S.  But not everyone likes it.  Band members have complained that some radio stations in Mexico have refused to air the song.  And last night, Los Tigres pulled out of a music awards ceremony in Mexico City, after organizers asked them not to perform the song.  Band leader Jorge Hernandez told a press conference that censorship is not the way to solve the country’s problems.

JORGE HERNANDEZ:  [speaking Spanish]

TROOP:  He said that just as journalists need to report on the real Mexico, so do Los Tigres del Norte.  And many Mexicans agree, says Mexico City commentator Guadalupe Loaeza.

GUADALUPE LOAEZA: We are all agreed with the Tigres del Norte.  You can ask the rich, the middle class or the poor if they agree with that song and they will say it’s exactly the truth.  And it’s fantastic that someone sings it because it is our reality.

[Los Tigres singing.]

TROOP:  At the end of their song, Los Tigres del Norte dole out some advice for Mexicans.  “There’s a lack of security now,” say the lyrics, “because that dog got loose.”  Now it’s up to all of us farmers to tie up the dog again.  For The World, I’m William Troop.

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KATY CLARK: We’ve been reminded in recent days that Somali pirates are still out there.  The most recent victims taken hostage by the pirates are a British couple.  Paul Chandler and his wife Sarah ran into trouble while sailing between the Seychelles and Tanzania.  Paul Chandler told British network ITV about his plight last night.

PAUL CHANDLER:  They kept asking for money and took everything of value on the boat.

CLARK: Now it’s hard to understand him so we’ve asked The BBC’s Will Ross to tell us the latest.  Will is in Mombasa, Kenya covering the story.   Will, what did Paul Chandler tell ITV news anyway?

WILL ROSS:  He basically talked about the moment when the pirates came on board their 38 foot yacht.  He said it happened about 2:30 in the morning while he was asleep.  They then came on board and seized all of the valuable assets on board, kept asking for money, and then made them move the yacht, using its sails and at times using the motor, towards the Somali coast.  What we understand is that the interview was done at a time when he was being held on a container ship off the Somali coast, so it seems he’s been moved from that yacht, and in fact we know that the British Navy has actually picked up the empty yacht since then.  But it has been a kind of long period of rumor, where we’ve had all these claims from the pirates that they’re holding the Chandlers, but no real proof of where they were and what condition they were in.

CLARK:  And I suppose we should mention, they went missing, I believe it was last Friday, correct?

ROSS:  That’s right.  They set sail local time early on Thursday and within 24 hours, they’d sent out a distress signal, so that was Friday, middle of the night on Friday that the pirates came on board.  But worth noting that these pirates really are after money.  That’s what drives them, so on the whole, it’s fair to say that they look after their hostages pretty well, and then try and bargain to get as much ransom for them as possible.

CLARK:  And I understand they’re being held with some other hostages from previous pirate attacks, correct?

ROSS:  That’s right.  We understand they were moved from the yacht onto a larger container ship.  Now that could be for a number of reasons.  One of them probably is they were fearing perhaps one of the military forces, the naval forces, anti-piracy forces in the Indian Ocean, may have tried to rescue the Chandlers and that might have been fairly straightforward.  With a small yacht, they could have used say divers, frogmen and gone under the boat and come up, and that’s happened in the past, with the French forces have tried that in the past.  So by moving them onto this larger vessel, I think they feel that they’re more secure there and they can be sort of better protected.

CLARK:  In these kinds of situations, are there both government and private efforts underway to get the hostages released, or is this exclusively in the hands of the British government now?

ROSS: Well, it seems to be in the hands of the British government, although we don’t know who as yet.  We don’t know who the pirates are talking to.  They may put out calls to the relatives of the Chandlers and some of the other hostages to say, “Look, this is the money we want and you need to pay up in order to get your relatives back safely.”  Not clear if the British government are going to get directly involved.  I mean, they take a policy of not paying ransom, but we know that in the past, all of the hostages who have been released from a wide variety of countries, they’ve all been released after some money has been paid.

CLARK:  Will Ross has been covering the pirate story from Mombasa on the coast of Kenya.  Will, thanks for speaking with us.

ROSS:  It’s a pleasure.

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.