PRI's The World » 11/25/2009

How to succeed in Afghanistan

The World — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:18:35 +0000

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President Obama is to announce his long-awaited decision on Afghanistan on Tuesday. It’s still not clear what he’ll say in his prime-time speech to the nation, from the military academy at West Point. But yesterday the president said he will “finish the job” in Afghanistan. And today the White House indicated American troops would not be there in 8 or 9 years. We hear from Andrew Bacevich of Boston University, Monica Toft at Harvard University, Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Peter Bergen of the New America Foundation.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is the World. President Obama plans to announce his long-awaited decision on Afghanistan next Tuesday. It’s still not clear what he’ll say in his prime-time speech from the military academy at West Point. But yesterday President Obama did say he intended to “finish the job” in Afghanistan. And today the White House indicated that American troops would not be there in eight or nine years. So, what does it mean to finish the job? It’s a question we posed to four experts on war and security. We start with Peter Bergen of the New America Foundation.

PETER BERGEN: Depending on how you define what the job is done to mean, one definition is, bringing security to the Afghan people, securing the main roads, rolling back the Taliban from Kandahar. These are doable things that might take a year or two, are an also measurable, observable. For instance, if you can drive down the Kabul to Kandahar road without being kidnapped or attacked, which is the case right now, in a year from now that isn’t the case, that’s one measurable effect of having more security. After all, the Kabul to Kandahar road is the most important road in the country, both economically and politically. So that would be one indicator I’d be looking for, and the other indicator, which is also very measurable, is which districts do the Taliban control and which districts are at high risk for Taliban attack? The end state is the Taliban recognizing that they have no future in Afghanistan, and either laying down their arms and becoming part of the political solution, or being captured or killed. I mean, the point of all this is to make sure the Taliban don’t return.

STEPHEN BIDDLE: I’m Stephen Biddle from the Council on Foreign Relations. As far as how we’ll know when the job is done, the problem with counterinsurgency is that the endings to these things are ragged and usually unsatisfying. I think in many ways the best analogy is the situation we’re finding ourselves in in Iraq right now, where the violence is way down but not zero. The country is better off politically than it was in 2006 and 2007, but far from perfect. And what we have is a tentative, gradual draw down of US forces and influence which we hope doesn’t make things worse as we draw back from protecting the population. But it’s a slow, gradual process where there’s no moment at which everything turns off, we declare victory and we go home. And it’s not likely to be tremendously satisfying.

MONICA TOFT: I’m Monica Duffy Toft at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. I teach and research on civil wars, inner state conflict, religion and violence. I’m a little bit pessimistic about whether there is going to be a satisfactory end state in terms of western and American interests, and whether we’ll even know whether that end state has been achieved, assuming we can define one. The reasons that I’d like to raise for why I’m a bit pessimistic or skeptical, one is just basic topography. As a student of civil wars, I have actually worked on looking at this settlement pattern geography, where people live and how they live. The topography of Afghanistan is not amenable to a centralized state, which is one of the end points the United States and its allies would like, is a centralized state that has governance and control. The second issue is that the best counterinsurgency strategy is the hearts and mind strategy, and it requires at least three things: time, which we know is quite precious. It requires many troops, but not just many troops. Troops who are informed in the local culture, so that they can win over the hearts and minds. And then the one that we’ve been dealing with quite regularly lately is a less corrupt government. And without all those three, it’s very difficult to institute a hearts and minds strategy and we’re short on all three.

ANDREW BACEVICH: This is Andrew Bacevich. I teach at Boston University. It seems to me that President Obama is rather clearly lowering the bar as to what will define success in Afghanistan. All the talk about liberal democracy or defending the rights of Afghan women is pretty much gone by the board. I think the focus will be on trying to create an Afghan state that is able to hold its own against the Taliban, and that if the Obama administration can get there, it will be more than happy to declare victory and get out. My own view is that even that more modest objective will be exceedingly difficult for the United States and its allies to achieve for two reasons. The first is the clear weakness and inadequacy of the Afghan security forces. The second reason is the absence of an effective and legitimate Afghan government.

WERMAN: That was Andrew Bacevich of Boston University offering his view of what it means to “finish the job” in Afghanistan. Before him, we heard from Monica Toft of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Stephen Biddle for the Council on Foreign Relations, and we began with Peter Bergen of the New America Foundation.

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President Obama will go to Copenhagen

The World — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:17:41 +0000

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President Barack Obama is to pledge a cut in greenhouse gas emissions in the US in several stages, beginning with a 17% cut by 2020, the White House has said. The offer will be made at December’s UN climate talks in Copenhagen, which Mr Obama will attend. He does not plan to be there for the crucial last days. The talks will try to draw up a new global climate treaty to supplant the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. UN climate chief Yvo de Boer said his attendance could be vital for a deal. Anchor Marco Werman talks with our environment editor Peter Thomson about the President’s mission in Copenhagen.

MARCO WERMAN: So what’s going on with that big climate change summit next month in Copenhagen anyway? If you’re a little confused by now, you’re not alone. The meeting was supposed to produce a new global treaty to address the causes and impacts of climate change, but maneuvering by many of the major players in the past few weeks has made it hard to know what to expect from the conference. One thing we do know as of today is that President Obama will be among the world leaders in attendance. The White House announced this morning that Mr. Obama will visit Copenhagen on his way to Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. Here to help sort out what this all means is The World’s environment editor, Peter Thomson. What will the President be able to accomplish, Peter, in a quick stopover at the summit?

PETER THOMSON: Well, his appearance seems primarily an effort to restore basically world confidence in the US’s commitment to strong action on climate, which has certainly been lagging in recent weeks. I mean, he came into office ten months ago, promising swift action on climate and energy policy after years of stagnation really, going back to the Clinton administration. But just about everything on his legislative agenda has gotten bottled up in Congress behind the healthcare debate, so that leaves the US still as the only major industrial country without a strong national commitment to emissions reductions. And he really needs to demonstrate some leadership to restore confidence that the US is serious here.

WERMAN: And given the stalemate in Congress, what can President Obama bring to the table?

THOMSON: Well, basically, what he’s decided to do it seems is to work off the numbers that have passed the House and are pending in the Senate. And essentially, that’s somewhere between a 17 and 20 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions from the year 2005 to the year 2020 and perhaps 80 percent by 2050. Now that may sound significant and it actually is, but it’s still a good deal less than what other countries have already agreed to under the existing Kyoto protocol, which is to reach similar targets, but based on a 1990 base level.

WERMAN: It’s all about greenhouse gas emissions and creating a treaty to limit them. That’s the goal of this conference. So I guess no one’s expecting that now. What is the new goalpost?

THOMSON: Well, it was actually the Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, who proposed scaling back the hopes for Copenhagen to which Obama agreed last week. And he still wants to make sure that the Senate produces at least a basic framework for an agreement, and that would include at least specific pledges for emissions reductions by all countries, developed and developing, but under the principle established under the Kyoto Treaty, which is that of common but differentiated responsibilities by developed and developing countries, which basically means the developed countries have a responsibility to do more, because they created the problem and they are richer. And they do want to set a deadline for next year, maybe at a Mexico City conference next winter, to finalize all the details.

WERMAN: Obviously a lot of expectations dialed back for the Copenhagen summit. Peter, you’re going to be there in December. What are your gauges for success?

THOMSON: I guess for me as a journalist and a citizen, it really comes down to how close the agreement at this conference comes to meeting the challenge that scientists are telling us that we’re now facing, which essentially is that the problem is getting worse faster than we ever expected. There’s new repots coming out every few months that summarize the latest science and they keep telling us that. There’s a new one out just this week called “The Copenhagen Diagnosis.” Essentially it’s telling us that sea levels are rising faster than we thought, ice packs are melting faster than we thought, and that we really risk permanent, irreversible damage if we don’t act radically and act soon.

WERMAN: Peter Thomson, The World’s environment editor, thanks very much.

THOMSON: Thank you, Marco.

India’s Muslim community – part 3

The World — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:16:40 +0000

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This week Mumbai is marking the first anniversary of coordinated terrorist attacks on the Indian city. On Thursday, a few big-name movie stars will join an inter-faith ceremony commemorating the dead. Mumbai dominated by Bollywood, and there are many Muslims both behind and in front of the camera. But the film industry rarely depicts their lives – or anything to do with real life, for that matter. In the third and final part of her series on India’s Muslim minority, Miranda Kennedy reports from Bollywood.

Miranda Kennedy’s stories from India were funded by a grant from the International Reporting Project.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH Boston. India is marking the one-year anniversary of the Mumbai terrorist attacks. An Islamic militant group based in Pakistan is believed to have planned and executed the attacks. That’s raised religious tensions in India. Tomorrow, an interfaith ceremony is planned in Mumbai to memorialize the 166 people killed a year ago. The ceremony will include Bollywood movie stars. There are many Muslims working in Bollywood, but India’s film industry rarely depicts the lives of Muslims, as Miranda Kennedy reports from Mumbai.

MIRANDA KENNEDY: A decade ago, director Mahesh Bhatt broke the unspoken and inflexible rules of Bollywood with this film, “Zakhm.” The movie’s very first scene is of Hindu-Muslim riots on the streets of Mumbai, a no-no in an industry in which successful films ignore ugly reality in favor of romantic plot lines. And the love story here is between a Hindu man and a Muslim woman, which also breaks a taboo. Bhatt says he made the movie as a way to come to terms with his own experience as the product of a secretive inter-religious relationship.

MAHESH BHATT: Portions of my childhood are there: why my mother was not allowed the status of a wife, how she was a closet Muslim, how she hid her faith and prayed behind closed doors, how she gave us Hindu names and sent us to Christian schools. According to her instinct, her motherly instinct, that don’t let them tell the world that their mother is a Muslim.

KENNEDY: A generation ago, it was completely unacceptable for a Muslim to marry a Hindu in most sections of society. It may be a little easier in today’s India, but it’s still not considered okay in the movies. Mahesh Bhatt couldn’t get any big-time backing for his film, and it didn’t do well at the box office. Indu Mirani covers Bollywood for the Mumbai Mirror.

INDU MIRANI: Films here are largely about entertainment. “I’d much rather go and see a song and dance routine.” That’s the way people think here. “Take me into another world, make me happy.”

KENNEDY: Mahesh Bhatt says the big studios steer clear of films that examine religious tensions, because such films can easily lead to protests or riots, shut down movie theatres, and cause millions of dollars of losses.

BHATT: It’s a very important thing to understand this: I can’t make an entire film which talks about the Muslims being discriminated. You can’t make a film on Malcolm X. Not ready yet.

KENNEDY: While many top Bollywood stars are Muslim and keep their names, they still can’t make movies about their own religious identity. And if commercial Bollywood films do feature Muslim characters, they tend to be stereotypes. That’s according to Kabir Khan, a director with one of Bollywood’s biggest studios.

KABIR KHAN: They’re either die hard nationalists and patriotics and will give up life for the country, or they’re these sort of monsters who come in from this terrorist factory, and nothing is in the middle.

KENNEDY: Khan tried to move away from Muslim stereotyping in this film, called “New York,” that he directed earlier this year. It cost around $5 million dollars, which makes it a big release by Bollywood standards, and it’s about an issue usually only addressed in small-budget art films and documentaries.

[Film clip plays]

KENNEDY: The main character is a Muslim. He’s profiled, detained, and tortured in custody, and then eventually turns to terrorism out of a desire for revenge. Pretty political for Bollywood. But then, it’s not a film about India. It’s about post-9/11 America. Film critic Indu Mirani says that neutralizes its impact in India and makes it acceptable for Bollywood.

MIRANI: When you make a film that is about the Muslim identity in America, you’re not really setting yourself up to get into trouble, because that is not something that most of us have faced. But if you talk of Hindu-Muslim riots, that is subject that really very, very few people would touch, because that would be a film that is too close to heart.

KENNEDY: Still, the film “New York” was a lot more political than Bollywood is used to. When it drew big crowds, it was a surprise for everyone, including Khan, its director.

KHAN: I do believe that in the next three, four, five years, we are going to see big budget films which would look at Indian politics. All studios are trying to push boundaries a bit because they realize that the taste of the Indian audience is definitely changing.

KENNEDY: Most Bollywood insiders agree that Indian tastes are shifting ever so slightly away from the age-old formula of boy meets girl, sings her six songs, and marries her at the end. There’s no sign of big budget films about Indian politics on the horizon yet. But Bollywood audiences are already anticipating a second film about Muslims being mistreated in America after 9/11. The next one, called “My Name is Khan,” features Shah Rukh Khan, the biggest superstar of Indian cinema.

ANNOUNCER: Shah Rukh Khan has suffered deep humiliation at the hands of agents at a United States airport. In fact…

KENNEDY: This isn’t a movie clip. It’s real-life news coverage of an event which strangely mirrors the upcoming film. Earlier this summer, Shah Rukh Khan was detained for a couple hours at Newark airport as he came into the US. The Indian media responded with outrage. But some suggested the incident might not be so bad. It was free advertising for Shah Rukh Khan’s film, which, in spite of its unsexy subject matter, is expected to be a blockbuster when it comes out early next year. For the World, this is Miranda Kennedy, Mumbai.

WERMAN: Miranda’s reports from Mumbai were funded by the International Reporting Project. Her three-part series is available at The World dot org.

American artists and Iceland

The World — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:15:25 +0000

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Iceland has been one of the countries hardest hit by the economic crisis. One thing it still has going for it is its draw for American artists, writers and musicians. Writer Alissa Quart has the story.

I went to Iceland three months ago because I knew it was a country of paradoxes. For starters, there are only about 300,000 Icelanders. Yet most of them are really literate. Much of the small island is covered in ice. Yet their homes are heated by scalding water that literally runs under the ground.

I bought into Brand Iceland. I visited the art spots Reykjavik, Stykkiholmur, and Budir. I swam in a hot river and slept in a hotel where the walls were painted lichen-green. When I came back to New York, I was still seeing traces of Iceland everywhere. There was even a new Iceland-themed exhibit by the American artist Roni Horn. It’s going on at the Whitney Museum right now.

Icelandic singer Olof Arnalds played at the opening. Horn’s show starts right in the elevator, with aquatic sound art.

Horn’s show is full of pictures of Iceland: geothermal water, taxidermist birds, faces floating on the surface of hot springs. She’s drawn to the isolation, the communal atmosphere, and above all, the landscape.

Donna De Salvo curated Horn’s show. She sees the draw of Iceland like this:

“You know the extremes, where you have volcanic activity marching right down to the sea, and this collapse in a sense for us at when you live in an urban environment like NY to see this extreme range of terrain is just magical.

Iceland has long attracted other American artists. Call it Artland. Yoko Ono, Richard Serra, and the poet Anne Carson all came here looking for a muse. Same with Eileen Myles. She just wrote The Importance of Being Iceland.

“Iceland is really interesting because it just happened to be to the side in a way so certain things could continue to exist and certain people could have a self-effacing way of looking at their own culture.”

I love that Icelandic self-effacement. There’s that appeal of their music and literature. It’s all about stubborn iconoclasm. An experimental writer like Myles could seem odd in the world of American letters. But in Iceland, odd is perfectly normal.

Eileen Myles: “Icelandic artists are really proud of how many odd strange people who’ve lived in odd strange ways were part of their history American artist wouldn’t go for a folkish approach to who we are and really claim lineage to these oddballs, there’s a kind of funky pride.”

While Iceland was a dreamscape for artists, it was also floating by on a wildly inflated economy of credit. Iceland’s fishing culture had migrated into banking and boutique hotels. Then it all crashed. Now crushed by debt, their currency devalued; do the newly poor Icelanders still see themselves in the portraits American artists make of them? Philosopher Oddny Eir Evarsdottir says in a way they do. Icelanders depend on American artists’ view of their country. Just like American artists depend on Iceland.

“We are living inside it like inside the crisis situation we are like really hoping that inside Iceland’s economy we are heading toward this metaphor of an Iceland as a health and beautiful place where you can go way like an asylum and I really hope we will go there so at this moment, the guest’s eye, the metaphors of others, it’s so helpful.”

These metaphors may not help much in the end. But Iceland will still have its amazing, strange indie music to keep Artland alive. All those heated, water-logged dreams. For The World, this is Alissa Quart.

Britain’s inquiry into Iraq war

The World — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:14:51 +0000

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On Day Two of a British inquiry into the Iraq War is generating fresh questions as to why Tony Blair pushed ahead with the invasion. The World’s Laura Lynch reports from London.

MARCO WERMAN: How another US-led war began is making headlines in Britain today. A commission there is holding public hearings into Britain’s involvement in the war in Iraq. Today, in the second day of testimony, former high-level officials revealed that less than two weeks before the 2003 invasion, the British government was told that Iraq’s chemical weapons might not even be usable. The World’s Laura Lynch reports.

LAURA LYNCH: Day two and the focus was on weapons of mass destruction, WMD, Saddam’s alleged stockpile of chemical warheads, was at the heart of the British government’s argument for invading Iraq. And one of the arguments being made in Washington in the run up to war was that those weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists, suggesting Al Qaida was working with Saddam. Today, two men who played key roles in Britain’s foreign office, Sir William Ehrman and Tim Dowse, testified there simply was no link.

SIR WILLIAM EHRMAN: Our view was that there was no evidence to suggest collaboration, serious collaboration of any sort, between al Qaida and Saddam Hussein’s regime.

TIM DOWSE: After 9/11 we concluded that the Iraqis actually stepped further back. They didn’t want to be associated with al Qaida.

LYNCH: In fact, at the time Britain was more concerned about Libya, Iran and North Korea. And Ehrman said government ministers were told repeatedly that it wasn’t easy to get any reliable intelligence on the state of Iraq’s weapons program.

EHRMAN: April 2000, the picture was limited on chemical weapons. May 2001, the knowledge of WMD and ballistic missile programs was patchy. The assessment of the 9th of September 2002, intelligence remains limited.

LYNCH: And yet, former Prime Minister Blair was assuring parliament that the evidence was extensive and authoritative. But Blair never spoke publicly about another intelligence report, one that Ehrman revealed today. Ten days before the war, a claim that even if Saddam had weapons, he might not have been able to use them.

EHRMAN: We did at the very end, I think on the 10th of March, get a report that chemical weapons might have remained disassembled and Saddam hadn’t yet ordered their assembly, and there was also a suggestion that Iraq might lack the warheads capable of the effective dispersal of agents.

LYNCH: So, asked one member of the inquiry, why didn’t someone step back and reassess the need to go to war? Ehrman defended the decision to go ahead, saying Saddam was ignoring UN resolutions and that the reports from Iraq were contradictory. Opposition Member of Parliament Ed Davey said that’s not good enough.

ED DAVEY: If the prime minister didn’t really have the evidence to think that there was a danger of an imminent attack against another country by Saddam Hussein, if this intelligence was in his possession when he ordered war, there must be serious question marks about whether he actually broke international law.

LYNCH: Blair is expected to testify at the inquiry early next year. He’ll probably also face questions about the now infamous government claim that Iraq could launch a chemical or biological weapon attack within 45 minutes. Tim Dowse told the inquiry he didn’t consider the claim significant or even surprising, and he was puzzled it was given so much weight.

DOWSE: When I saw the 45 minutes report, I did not give it particular significance because it didn’t seem out of line with what we generally assessed– it didn’t seem– it wasn’t surprising.

LYNCH: What did surprise both officials was what they found or more to the point, didn’t find, after the invasion. They were confident inspectors would uncover weapons of mass destruction.

Months later, nothing was found. For The World, I’m Laura Lynch in London.

Israeli settlement freeze in West Bank

The World — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:14:16 +0000

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Anchor Marco Werman speaks with former Middle East negotiator Aaron David Miller about the announcement today by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he will freeze Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank for ten months.

MARCO WERMAN: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today announced a ten-month freeze on new settlement construction in the West Bank. He said the gesture could help re-start peace talks with the Palestinians. But his announcement did not include settlements in East Jerusalem, and Palestinian leaders say that’s unacceptable. US officials reacted with guarded optimism. Aaron David Miller has advised six US Secretaries of State on negotiating an Arab- Israeli peace. He’s says today’s announcement is significant yet problematic.

AARON DAVID MILLER: Without going overboard, I think for a Likud Prime Minister, particularly Benjamin Netanyahu, to formally, particularly under pressure from the United States, articulate an official freeze on settlement activity, even though it isn’t perfect, is actually quite consequential. I think it probably could have even been more so had the Obama administration not articulated an objective, that is to say, a comprehensive freeze, including natural growth, which was unattainable and which is now going to make whatever the Israelis do insufficient in the eyes of the Palestinians.

WERMAN: So maybe the bar was set too high from the get go. But do you think a ten-month freeze could prompt the Palestinians to re-engage at least?

MILLER: I don’t. I think that the Palestinians have now articulated their own bottom lines and red lines. Jerusalem is not covered by this freeze. This freeze of course does not cover those units that were already authorized for construction. If you look at the activity that the Israelis will engage in, in terms of new units over the course of the next year or so, it’s going to appear to be not a freeze at all, but a construction boom. So settlements is not the issue on which the administration should have been focused from the beginning, because in the end, it’s a no-win issue. Rather, it’s how to get negotiations going on the core issues, Jerusalem, borders, security and refugees.

WERMAN: But for years, all we’ve heard is that the settlements are the consequential issue. Now it sounds like you’re saying they’re not really the main issue.

MILLER: Well, they are a consequential issue, and of all the things the Israelis do, they are clearly designed to prejudge and predetermine the outcome of negotiations. They humiliate the Palestinians. But in the end, if you address the borders issue, if you could actually set the borders of a Palestinian state, you would ultimately get through the settlement issue and you would do so in the process of advancing toward an actual agreement. By going after settlements piecemeal, you’re going to end up negotiating with the Israelis and the Palestinians twice. It seems to me, the last ten months, the administration, as their first year, basically Obama has gotten three no’s. A no from the Israeli on comprehensive settlements freeze, including natural growth, a no from the Palestinians, “We’re not going back to the negotiating table,” and a no from the Arab states, “We’re not going to normalize till you produce something truly significant from the Israelis.”

WERMAN: Do you believe that at some point President Obama should insert himself directly into negotiations to move this thing along?

MILLER: If he’s prepared to risk the very real possibility of failure. I suspect that it may well be that sometime next year, once the Afghanistan decision-making process is completed, once healthcare is done, the President may well consider putting out his own ideas in an effort to bridge the gaps between Israelis and Palestinians. And if there are no takers, then at least demonstrate that America still has hope and is prepared to invest in the end game. I would not rule that out. It’s just that he’s got to understand that this is going to be an excruciatingly long and messy process. And in the end, you’re quite right, he’s going to have to invest himself, certainly the Secretary of State for sure, but the President’s going to have to invest himself and he’s going to have to put himself in the middle of the mix, which for a President on this issue, can be a very difficult and tricky situation.

WERMAN: Aaron David Miller with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, thanks very much for speaking with us.

MILLER: It’s a pleasure and thanks for calling.

Political killings in the Philippines

The World — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:13:41 +0000

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Correspondent Sunshine De Leon reports from Manila on a massacre that’s raising questions about the state of democracy in the Philippines.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. Authorities in the Philippines say they’ve discovered 11 more bodies in a mass grave on the island of Mindanao. That brings the death toll to 57 in what’s thought to be a politically motivated massacre. The victims were driving in a convoy to register a local candidate for next year’s elections when they were ambushed and shot. At least 18 journalists were among those killed. As Sunshine De Leon reports from Manila, the mass killings are raising questions about the state of democracy in the Philippines.

MAN: [speaking Tagalog].

SUNSHINE DE LEON: Every hour seems to bring news of another body being pulled from a shallow grave in Mindanao. It’s being described as one of the worst massacres ever in the Philippines. Police, known as the PNP, say the investigation centers on a member of a powerful family that has long dominated politics in Maguindanao Province. The alleged suspect has ties to the government of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, but Gregorio Larazebal, an election commissioner, says it’s too early to draw conclusions about who was responsible.

GREGORIO LARAZEBAL: We don’t want to preempt the investigation and we don’t want to prejudge any individual or group, so we’re just monitoring the reports by the Philippine National Police on the status of their investigation. And as soon as they come up with a report, we will then take appropriate action.

DE LEON: But many here, especially journalists, are skeptical justice will be done. Luis Teodoro is deputy director of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility.

LUIS TEODORO: The people who have been accused of perpetrating this bloodbath are allies of the administration.

DE LEON: Among the victims were 18 journalists. Teodoro says their deaths will have a chilling effect on the way that journalists cover future elections.

TEODORO: We’re getting reports from Mindanao that a lot of journalists are already fearful, because this is now beyond much posturing, you know. A lot of journalists before this used to say, “Nah,” but this is now real. What this shows is that the fact that you’re a journalist doesn’t give you any protection, not in this country.

DE LEON: Political violence in the Philippines is not uncommon, but even veteran elections commissioner Larazebal says he has never seen anything like this. There are reports that some of the victims were raped; others mutilated or shot at close range. He stresses that in the past, women and journalists were spared from political violence in this area.

LARAZEBAL: Candidates may shoot at each other, but it’s usually limited to the male. And even the lawyers accompanied the group were women lawyers, specifically because everybody assumed that women wouldn’t be harmed. Even members of media they went, because precisely, members of media are not harmed in those areas.

DE LEON: Still, Commissioner Larazebal says he is optimistic that fair elections can take place. He says the government is now working with the armed forces to institute a gun ban during the campaign. But Luis Teodoro says that this massacre shows that democracy itself is at risk.

TEODORO: We don’t look at this as just an attack on journalists. It’s an attack on what remains of Philippine democracy and on the electoral process and so on, because obviously the purpose was to prevent the filing of a certificate of candidacy and to retain power in Maguindanao. That’s an attack on democracy.

DE LEON: Meanwhile, President Gloria Arroyo has imposed a state of emergency in two violence wracked southern provinces, and she’s ordered more troops to the area ahead of next year’s elections. Police say they will continue their investigation into the massacre, but few here believe that will resolve the crisis, or that those responsible will be brought to justice. For the world, I’m Sunshine De Leon in Manila.

Italy’s rock star of the year

The World — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:13:07 +0000

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Anchor Marco Werman speaks to the editor of the Italian edition of Rolling Stone magazine about its selection of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi as “rock star of the year.” The choice is seen as a not-so-subtle dig at Berlusconi’s lifestyle.

http://www.rollingstonemagazine.it/notizie/provocazioni-rockstar

MARCO WERMAN: I bet you can’t guess who Italy’s edition of Rolling Stone magazine picked as rock star of the year. The magazine has just published its choice. And it’s Italy’s Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. The magazine says the 73-year-old media mogul’s lifestyle is, quote, “worthy of the greatest rock star.” The editor of Italian Rolling Stone is Carlo Antonelli. He’s stuck in traffic in Rome, but he’s going to take a few minutes to speak with us. How did you and your colleagues come to this decision, Mr. Antonelli?

CARLO ANTONELLI: It was mid-summer. It was in the middle of the big scandal surrounding Prime Minister Berlusconi and his parties in Sardinia, including girls, naked girls, wine, apparently but not proved, drugs, blah-blah-blah, and he really reminds us of the legendary rock n’ roll lifestyle of our idol, like I don’t know, like Brian Jones or Rod Stewart or Keith Richards of the late ’60s. It’s clear.

WERMAN: So in case anyone is not up to date with their Berlusconi news, his wife has announced she was divorcing him, the prime minister, after new stories about his alleged relationship with an 18 year old model. It’s also been alleged that Berlusconi has hosted dozens of escort girls at his residences in Rome and Sardinia and allegedly he slept with them, although he says he never paid for sex and has admitted he’s no saint. These are not very distinguished things for a prime minister, Carlo, but it’s not exactly rock n’ roll, is it?

ANTONELLI: It’s exactly rock n’ roll, because rock n’ roll is a ’50s music genre. It’s not a music genre any more, not even rock. Rock is dead since 20 years and even the definition of rock stars, it’s been translated from the music world to the finance, to the art world, to the architectural stars, whatever, not musicians.

WERMAN: The magazine cover features an illustration of Berlusconi smiling in front of the Italian tricolore, the flag. In fact, he’s ripping a small version of the flag between his hands. Is this to suggest that Berlusconi is destroying Italy?

ANTONELLI: Berlusconi’s destroying the culture of authority, the culture of legal authority, that’s for sure. When we ask Shepard Farey to design the cover and Shepard is the guy who did that famous Obama “Hope” presidential poster. And Shepard decided to put this clear idea that the prime minister, Italian prime minister, was about to destroy in a way the image and the respect of the country abroad.

WERMAN: So when the editors, you and the writers at Rolling Stone Italy hear about Berlusconi doing yet another kind of crazy thing, are you thinking, “Yeah, right on! What a rock star,” or are you kind of disgusted by what he does, embarrassed?

ANTONELLI: No, we’re disgusted since ages, and then we have to admit that disgust doesn’t change anything here in our country. There is a clear bond between the inner psychic formula of the pure Italian guy and Berlusconi, a desire of freedom and in a way, excess and sex are politics.

WERMAN: Well, we’ll leave it there, Carlo. You can get back to deciding who’s going to be on the next cover of Rolling Stone there in Italy. Thanks very much for your time.

ANTONELLI: Thank you.

WERMAN: Carlo Antonelli there, the editor of Rolling Stone Italy, speaking to us from a traffic jam in Rome.

Geo Quiz

The World — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:12:27 +0000

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Our daily geography quiz.

Illegal letters in Turkey

The World — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:11:47 +0000

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In Turkey, a law dating back to the 1920′s bans the use of the letters Q, W and X. The law was created for Turkey’s transition from the Arabic alphabet to the Latin one. But today, it’s used against Turkey’s ethnic Kurds. Matthew Brunwasser reports from Istanbul.

MARCO WERMAN: In Turkey, using the letters Q, W and X can land you in jail.

They’re considered “non-Turkish letters” and article 222 of the Turkish penal code bans their use.

The measure is based on a law from the 1920s when Turkey switched its language from the Arabic alphabet to the Latin one. The law was meant to stop the use of the old Arabic script. But today, it’s being used against Turkey’s ethnic Kurdish minority. Matthew Brunwasser reports from Istanbul.

WOMAN: [reciting Turkish alphabet to music]

MATTHEW BRUNWASSER: This is the Turkish alphabet. It has a few letters English doesn’t have and it’s missing three that English does have: Q, W and X. Authorities in Turkey like it that way. If someone were to use one of the missing letters, they could be arrested. Just ask Kurdish political leader Mahmut Alinak. He wrote an angry letter to the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Kurdish. That letter got him an 18 month prison sentence because it contained Q, W and X.

MAHMUT ALINAK: [speaking Kurdish]

BRUNWASSER: Alinak says that people should be able to use Q, W and X without the threat of criminal prosecution. Better yet, he says, the letters should be added to the Turkish alphabet. That way, Turks would understand the letters when Kurds use them. In Turkey, language laws are not simply a matter of linguistic debate. Twenty-five years ago, Kurdish separatists began fighting for an independent Kurdistan in southeast Turkey. The government crushed all expressions of Kurdish identity, especially the Kurdish language. But today, the government is promoting reconciliation including Kurdish language rights. Kurdish would be allowed in political campaigning and convicts could speak Kurdish while relatives visit them in prison. But “Kurdifying” the Turkish language may be a step too far for public opinion. Henri Barkey, with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says those three letters are unlikely to make it into the Turkish alphabet.

HENRI BARKEY: Formal inclusion is anathema to Turkish nationalists who for many years, and maybe to this day, still believe that Kurds do not exist and they do not have a right to have their language recognized.

BRUNWASSER: Like most important matters in Turkey, Q, W and X are discussed over glasses of strong black tea. We’re in the meeting place of the Grey Wolves, a far right Turkish nationalist group. The young men gathered here oppose what the government calls its Kurdish initiative. Mirach Karakalukchu [PH] is a soldier stationed in the restive southeast. He says Kurds who use their own alphabet should be prosecuted.

MIRACH KARAKALUKCHU: [speaking Turkish] Of course they deserve to be in jail. This is a type of separatism. We have letters from A to Z and if a Q or a W is used that’s not there, they should suffer the full consequences of that.

BRUNWASSER: Osman Baydemir, the Kurdish Mayor of the city of Diyarbakir, certainly did. He used a W in a greeting card for the Kurdish New Year, Nowruz. In Turkish, it’s Novruz. During the trial, Mayor Baydemir asked questions about the court’s staffers’ use of the internet, according to his lawyer Murharrem Erbey.

MUHARREM ERBEY: [speaking Turkish]

BRUNWASSER: Erbey said his client asked everyone, “Do you log onto the justice ministry’s website?” The judge and the prosecutors said yes. Then he asked “What do you type when you go there?” The answer was something like “www dot gov dot TR. Then the mayor said, “Aren’t you breaking the law? Every time you type W three times and you go to the site hundreds of times a day. But when W is used in the Kurdish context it’s a crime.” The case is still making its way through the courts, and while the mayor still faces some 60 other criminal charges in unrelated cases, big changes appear to be in store for what it means to be a Turkish citizen. With encouragement from the European Union, which Turkey wants to join, the government is only reluctantly backing language rights. Henri Barkey of the Carnegie Endowment says the government must maintain its resolve.

BARKEY: The danger for the government is not in following through, but in not following through, because the government has gone out on a limb now, saying they want to introduce a new package of reforms, and they have, as a result, created a huge set of expectations on the part of the Kurdish population. If they go back now on their promise, I think mayhem will ensue. It will be serious, serious divisions in society, and it will be felt at every level

BRUNWASSER: However, expanding the Turkish alphabet is not a solution, according to some grammar specialists here. Turkish and Kurdish, they say, are different languages and their differences cannot be bridged. It would be like adding Chinese characters to American English, they say, just because there are ethnic Chinese US citizens. Turkey doesn’t have a language problem, the experts say. It has a democracy problem.

MAN: [reciting Kurdish alphabet to music]

BRUNWASSER: Kurds are hoping that teaching aids like this one for the Kurdish alphabet will be more readily available in schools. And, that at the very least, using these letters won’t be a criminal offense. For The World, I’m Matthew Brunwasser in Istanbul.

WERMAN: For more items on language, check out our weekly podcast The World in Words. Just go to The World dot org slash language.

Geo answer — Norway’s new energy

The World — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:10:56 +0000

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Our Geo Quiz asked you to name a northern European country with lots of places where fresh and salt water mix, and where a prototype “osmotic power plant.” The answer is Norway, as The World’s Marina Giovannelli explains.

Entire program – November 25, 2009

The World — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:50:33 +0000

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Today on The World: A conversation with security experts about what it would mean to finish the job in Afghanistan, Bollywood’s version of Muslim life in India; and Italy’s Rolling Stone Magazine gives Prime Minister Berlusconi “rock star status.”