Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1qee-bTZI
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Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1qee-bTZI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1tPHInrEk0
Народ, задавайте вопросы, если какое-то слово или выражение непонятно. Ссылка, от секунды а до секунды б?
Я не так много понял(без субтитров всё-таки сложновато), чтобы спрашивать секунды :oops: , да и посмотрел только первую запись(другие ниасилил), но всё-равно пиар книжек жжот))). В остальном довольно уныло :P
При чём здесь пиар? Что уныло? Мы об английском или о чём?Quote:
Originally Posted by Scrabus
Так, слушай несколько раз одно и то же место. Если различишь какое-то слово, посмотри его в словаре. После того, когда сделал всё, что мог, спрашивай по очереди каждое непонятное место.
Ну, там книжки пиарили зач0тно, о том и речь :lol: . "У студентов недостаток базовых знаний по математике бла-бла бла, а потом так хоп, и книжечки достаёт и т.д. и т.п. :D ". А уныла сама тема, ибо математика это boring. Слушал только 1 раз и то с трудом осилил, где-то треть промотал))). Хотя это может только я такой ленивый :lol:
Я до конца не смотрела. Мне сразу показалось, что её английский легко понимать начинающим, и тема простая. Если ты знаешь что-то интересное и разговорное на ютюбе, тащи это сюда для разбора.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scrabus
Дискуссии о России.
Stephen Cohen c 30.44: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0efwhtKbHsQ
http://youtube.com/watch?v=LWnHa5j18Ro
Интервью с Алексеем Ратманским, начиная с 41 минуты: http://youtube.com/watch?v=w8wQQtwlaO8
Лампада, спасибо! Я всегда хотел знать, что говорят в американских школах, когда перемножают в столбик... И вообще это очень интересно! Правда!Quote:
Originally Posted by Lampada
И деление в столбик тоже прикольное :-) Не такое как у нас.
Не такое, как у вас в учебном учреждении было, очевидно. Чуть-чуть отличается запись, способ с диагоналями для умножения не помню, но он вероятно тоже был. А так лично ничего нового не заметил, математика везде одна).Quote:
Originally Posted by astronomer
Ничего нового тётка не сказала, зато мужик против неё тему продвинул. Ему зачОт. :)
З.Ы. А как она страницы отвратительно перелистывает! Явно не филолог! :evil:
Первая сцылка - это ж про натуральнейший петерсон, с дополнениями и прибавками "до". Еще по теме -Quote:
Originally Posted by Lampada
http://www.mathematicallycorrect.com/ , где ровно с такими "учебникам" борятся.
пример задачки петерсоновской -
"У Тани в одной руке 8 орехов, а в другой руке на 2 меньше. Сформулируйте вопрос так, чтобы задача решалась в 2 действия. Решите задачу."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXqvMjlkVt4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7kbsN-qiPo
Мой племянник за камерой. Его голос вначале и в конце, он задаёт вопросы. Этот документальный фильм занял первое место в конкурсе: http://www.responsiblesexed.org/il/vc_winners.html
http://youtube.com/watch?v=N0qIeM80DGQ
March 23, 1993 Дискуссия. Владимир Познер. Чарлз Роз.
(Первые 17 минут)
Удивительная женщина Sarah Chayes
http://www.worldvision.org/worldvision/ ... enDocument
Full story - 6 минут
Bill Moyers Interviews Sarah Chayes on February 22, 2008
Part 1: http://youtube.com/watch?v=AX5rV3EaRrM
Part 2: http://youtube.com/watch?v=76h3P3vYZ5Q
Part 3: http://youtube.com/watch?v=SEqfT5JqPu8
"PBS MOYERS JOURNAL
FEBRUARY 22, 2008
BILL MOYERS:
No one has watched events on the ground in Afghanistan more closely than the American Sarah Chayes who was born in Washington D.C. She has lived in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, near the southern border with Pakistan, since the weeks following 9/11. Back then, she was an NPR reporter covering the Taliban. But she soon left an award-winning career in journalism to live and work as a private citizen in Afghanistan. For almost seven years she has been helping to rebuild that country's civil society.
FRONTLINE WORLD followed Chayes as she negotiated with Afghan bureaucrats and warlords to literally rebuild a village. Chayes later organized the Arghand Cooperative to offer Afghans an alternative to working in the poppy trade. Composed of men and women, her coop produces skin-care products from local herbs and botanicals in the region around Khandahar, where she lives. Along the way, Chayes wrote, THE PUNISHMENT OF VIRTUE, about the resurgence of the Taliban.
Even as Sarah prepares to return to Afghanistan, the bad news there keeps unfolding. The Red Cross says the humanitarian crisis is growing as civilians caught between security forces and the Taliban flee their homes. Last week severe winter weather and a shortage of food caused over 100 children to run away from an orphanage; they were trying to find warmth and something to eat. Angry Afghan men shouted anti-American slogans after nine policemen were killed in a raid conducted by U.S.-led forces looking for the Taliban. The commander of NATO forces there, General Dan McNeill said recently that to defeat the tribal resistance, the U.S. would need 400,000 soldiers. He retired from Congress and became a lobbyist for the defense industry. His firm also received $30,000 a month to represent Pakistan in Washington.
Sarah Chayes' Biography
After reporting for National Public Radio in the Balkans, North Africa, and the Middle East, as well as nearer her base in Paris, Sarah Chayes left journalism in 2002 to help rebuild Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban regime. She has launched a cooperative in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, producing fine skin-care products from local fruits, nuts, and botanicals. (www.arghand.org) The aim is to discourage opium production by helping farmers earn a living from licit crops, as well as to encourage collective decision-making. From this position, deeply embedded in Kandahar's everyday life, Ms. Chayes has gained unparalleled insights into a troubled region.
Beginning in 2002, Ms. Chayes served in Kandahar as Field Director for Afghans for Civil Society, a non-profit group founded by Qayum Karzai, President Hamid Karzai's older brother. Under Ms. Chayes's leadership, ACS rebuilt a village destroyed during the anti-Taliban conflict, launched a successful income-generation project for Kandahar women, launched the most popular radio station in southern Afghanistan, and conducted a number of policy studies. Later, she ran a dairy cooperative.
From 1996, Ms. Chayes was Paris reporter for NPR. Her work during the Kosovo crisis earned her the 1999 Foreign Press Club and Sigma Delta Chi awards, together with other members of the NPR team. She has also reported from Algeria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, Serbia and Bosnia, as well as covering the International War Crimes Tribunal and the European Union. Before that, Ms. Chayes free-lanced from Paris for a variety of radio and print outlets. She began her radio career in 1991 at Monitor Radio.
Ms. Chayes graduated in History from Harvard University in 1984, earning the Radcliffe College History Prize. She served in the Peace Corps in Morocco, then returned to Harvard to earn a master's degree in History and Middle Eastern Studies, specializing in the medieval Islamic period.
Ms. Chayes is recipient of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' inaugural Ruth Adams Award for writing on strategic issues. She has published articles in THE ATLANTIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, THE BOSTON GLOBE, THE MAIL ON SUNDAY, and the TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL. She is featured in the Sundance/Frontline World documentary "Life After War"/"A House for Haji Baba." She has lectured widely as well as participating in the training of incoming US and NATO military officers. Her book on post-Taliban Afghanistan, The PUNISHMENT OF VIRTUE: INSIDE AFGHANISTAN AFTER THE TALIBAN was published in 2006."
Video: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/02222008/watch2.html
Transcript
"February 22, 2008
BILL MOYERS: Hollywood last year gave us a record number of movies about war and terrorism but there's one film we'll see at the Oscar's this Sunday night that tells us more about the enemy we're fighting than it ever intended.
CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR was described by its star, Tom Hanks, as a "serious comedy". It portrays a fun-and-freedom loving communist-loathing Texas Congressman, who with the help of earmarks, slipped hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into a covert war against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan back in the 1980s.
While the movie has a happy Hollywood ending, the story wasn't over when the Afghans drove the Russians from their country. In 1988, CBS documented the real Congressman Wilson during a trip to Afghanistan where he was filmed presenting arms to the mujahideen. He even tried one on for size.Those mujahideen fighters did whip the Russians, thanks to the deadly weapons Wilson helped them acquire, especially stinger missiles that brought down Soviet helicopters. But in time those freedom fighters became the Al Qaeda and Taliban who ran Afghanistan as a theocracy and a training camp for Osama bin Laden's suicide bombers.
Now both the Taliban and Al Qaeda are back... And it's Americans, not Russians, they want to kill. The war is not going well for Americans and our NATO allies. This week was one of the deadliest yet. Suicide bombings in the country's largest cities — Kabul and Kandahar — killed over 130 Afghan civilians.
The attacks occurred soon after the frank assessment of an independent non-partisan study group that said, in its opening statement: "make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan." The report lays the blame for the lack of progress on "too few military forces and insufficient economic aid," and calls for "immediate action and attention in order to prevent a setback to regional and global security."
With conditions worsening Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice dropped in for a surprise visit earlier this month and as usual offered a cheery diagnosis:
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I think it is fair to say that if you look at the Afghanistan of 2001 and the Afghanistan of now there is a remarkable difference for the better.
BILL MOYERS: But the day before, her own State Department warned travelers against going to Afghanistan. With the growing power of the Taliban and Al Qaeda and widespread crime, violence is on the rise — an estimated 550 Afghan businessmen were kidnapped last year. President Bush is sending another 3200 marines to the country, with the first deployment this spring. And Secretary Robert Gates has been making the rounds in Europe pleading for NATO to send more combat troops to the international force. There were no takers. Gates had to admit:
ROBERT GATES: Many of them, I think, have a problem with our involvement in Iraq and project that to Afghanistan.
BILL MOYERS: Meanwhile, Afghanistan is back producing opium in a big way — the world's number one supplier of heroin, according to the United Nations. Half a million acres are dedicated to its poppy fields. With a cut of those profits reportedly going to the Taliban and other rebels, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says the West is facing "a classic growing insurgency".
No one has watched events on the ground in Afghanistan more closely than the American Sarah Chayes who was born in Washington D.C. She has lived in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, near the southern border with Pakistan, since the weeks following 9/11. Back then, she was an NPR reporter covering the Taliban. But she soon left an award-winning career in journalism to live and work as a private citizen in Afghanistan.
For almost seven years she has been helping to rebuild that country's civil society. FRONTLINE WORLD followed Chayes as she negotiated with Afghan bureaucrats and warlords to literally rebuild a village. Chayes later organized the Arghand Cooperative to offer Afghans an alternative to working in the poppy trade. Composed of men and women, her coop produces skin-care products from local herbs and botanicals in the region around Khandahar, where she lives. Along the way, Chayes wrote, THE PUNISHMENT OF VIRTUE, about the resurgence of the Taliban.
Welcome to the JOURNAL.
SARAH CHAYES: Thanks so much for having me.
BILL MOYERS: Are there any good tidings from Kandahar, where you lived?
SARAH CHAYES: You know, there's a sort of litany that public officials, when they do want to put a 'happy face' on things always run through. Like, there are schools, and there are people in schools, and there are kids in school. That's true. The roads in town are paved. The road to Kabul is paved. But there's almost always like a flip side to these stories. It's great to have paved roads in town. But the road to Kabul, I can't drive it anymore. I could drive up to Kabul before it was paved because it was safe enough to drive up there. But now, you're going run into Taliban check-points in two or three provinces, between Kandahar and Kabul. So I can't drive that road.
BILL MOYERS: You're at-risk there, right? Why do you keep going back?
SARAH CHAYES: I think it's really important. I think that where this world is going in the 21st century, is partly going be determined by what happens in Afghanistan. And I just can't imagine anything that would be more important to devote yourself to.
BILL MOYERS: Why is Afghanistan so important?
SARAH CHAYES: You know, there's a title of a book that's come into parlance now. CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS. There are a lot of people, I think, both in the West and in the Muslim world, who believe in clash of civilizations. Who want to see the world as a place dominated by two irrevocably hostile blocs. I don't want to live in that kind of world. I think that we live in an interconnected world full of rich, flawed, varied civilizations that are inextricably intertwined. And, so what I'm doing in Afghanistan, is working for that intertwined world. Working--
BILL MOYERS: You're going thread it.
SARAH CHAYES: Yeah.
BILL MOYERS: But, you know, some people do miss the 'Cold War.' They miss that two superpowers.
SARAH CHAYES: In that regard, I would say that Osama bin Laden and certain members of our government are actually on the same team. Because they're working toward, they want to split the world apart, into two poles that are enemies. I'm on that other team.
BILL MOYERS: When you left National Public Radio back in 2002, didn't Karzai's brother ask you to join in helping to build a civil society?
SARAH CHAYES: Yeah. Well, it was his uncle first, who just popped this question. "Wouldn't you come back and help us." Like, how do you say no to that one? And then I did work with president Karzai's older brother, who had founded a non-profit organization called Afghans for a Civil Society.
BILL MOYERS: Oh, yeah. You were there for the fall of the Taliban.
SARAH CHAYES: Just after.
BILL MOYERS: Just after.
SARAH CHAYES: Yeah.
BILL MOYERS: Just after the fall of the Taliban. And now, six years later, they're back?
SARAH CHAYES: Yeah. I mean, you know, these are districts that are in the hands of the Taliban. There's a district I used to go to frequently. We would gather herbs for our essential oil distilling up there. And now there was a deal between the district chief, the government and the Taliban saying, "so long as you don't kill the police, we'll let you go wherever you want."
Now couple of things have happened. One is people are just so disaffected with the government that we put in power.
BILL MOYERS: Ordinary people.
SARAH CHAYES: Ordinary people.
BILL MOYERS: Disaffected?
SARAH CHAYES: Yeah. Their government is shaking them down. I have people telling me, "We get shaking down by the government in the daytime, and shaken down by the Taliban at night. What are we supposed to do?"
BILL MOYERS: This is the Karzai government.
SARAH CHAYES: That's correct.
BILL MOYERS: This is the government the United States put in power.
SARAH CHAYES: That's correct. It's basically a criminal enterprise. And we haven't really asked it for any accounts in any serious way. And that's where the average person in Kandahar is totally perplexed. They assume that this degree of corruption, which is everywhere. You hear about it in the police department. It's not just the police department, it's in customs. It's in any adminis--You have-- you want to get a driver's license. You have to fork over money.
Teachers. Yeah, kids are in schools. Teachers aren't in schools. Because their salary is $50 a month. And so they can't afford to teach. They need to do something else. In order to make enough money, they'll teach in a private school. Or they'll raid the international development assistance that's provided to students through the schools. For example, you'll have-- let's say each student is supposed to get five kilos of rice. The principal of the school is going to skim off one of those kilos and then sell. So that's 2,000 kilos he gets, if there's 2,000 kids in school. Then he sells that on the market.
BILL MOYERS: Right.
SARAH CHAYES: And then he distributes, you know, some of it to teachers.
BILL MOYERS: Does the government look the other way? Or is the government participating in it?
SARAH CHAYES: Well, every government official that I know is participating. So, with the exception of President Karzai himself, personally. How can he possibly not know? If I know. But it's not just them, what about us? We put-- us, the international community, we put these people into power. They wouldn't last a day if we weren't backing them up and propping them up in a way. So my question is, why is it that we don't begin putting some pressure on them to treat their citizens with common decency?
BILL MOYERS: What is life like under this kind of circumstance for ordinary people?
SARAH CHAYES: Well, in our case, for example, we import two products to make our soap. Most of our ingredients are local. But we import coconut oil and palm oil. So I know the cross border tribes. I can run that stuff across the border.
BILL MOYERS: This is the Pakistan border.
SARAH CHAYES: Correct.
BILL MOYERS: Yes.
SARAH CHAYES: Any time I want to. I said, "No, I'm not going do that. I don't want to pay customs, you know." So we deliver the oil to the customs. And then, there's this whole rigmarole about how we have to have this agent who's going go to-- you know, he's going get our stuff out of customs. And we're going have to pay him. There's no list that says, "this much of the truckload is your goods, and, therefore, you owe this much customs on these goods." You just get a bill from this guy. Which is astronomical. He's going to kick back half of that to the customs agents. And if you refuse to go that route, then all of a sudden, your stuff is held up, and it needs to get sent to Kabul to be tested for health reasons and all this stuff.
BILL MOYERS: Are the basic needs of ordinary people being met?
SARAH CHAYES: Well, currently, there's enormous inflation. The price of wheat has doubled. Now this is a global problem. But the price of wheat has doubled in about the last six months. And that means, that a government salary, which is at, let's say, $50 a month. That buys you not one sack of wheat. And an extended family is going eat three sacks of wheat in a month. So that means you've got a whole system that obliges people to be corrupt.
BILL MOYERS: But as I listen to you, I keep thinking, we've given, the United States and the international community, has given over a billion dollars to the government of Afghanistan. What's happened to it?
SARAH CHAYES: Well, for example we have one machine that really needs decent electricity.
BILL MOYERS: In your co-op?
SARAH CHAYES: In my co-op. We're getting three, four hours of electricity every three days. It'll come on any time. You don't know when it's going come on. So it'll come on at 1:30 in the morning, and the guys stay the night on rotation. So whoever the poor fellow is who had to spend the night that night, it's like, I'm knocking on the door, and it's like, we have to get up because there's electricity. So then we'll run the machine until 6:00 in the morning when the electricity ends.
Now, okay, they're working on it, but it's six years after the fall of the Taliban. These are the things that people are wondering. If we're not there to provide reliable infrastructure, there's another real issue which is employment. And this is a kind of economic ideological problem. That when we talk about development aid, we talk about public facilities. And it's sort of against our religion to think about building a factory that would actually employ people. But Afghans don't understand that. They say, "Why aren't you people building any factories?" That's why I made my little soap factories. Because so many people were saying, "what are you foreigners doing here, if you're not employing people? Getting people off the streets."
BILL MOYERS: So what...
SARAH CHAYES: So, we're not doing those things. And we're not providing a government that they can you know, feel any pride in. So that's where you go starting to hear people say, "what are you people doing for us."
BILL MOYERS: So, put on your old reporters hat.
SARAH CHAYES: Right.
BILL MOYERS: Follow the money. Where has that billion dollars gone that we have been providing?
SARAH CHAYES: You know, you can drive around the streets of Kandahar. You can drive around the streets of Kabul, and you see some massive buildings. Massive buildings. You see the price of property in Kandahar is probably close to the price of property in New York City.
BILL MOYERS: So who's living in those buildings? Who's using those buildings?
SARAH CHAYES: Government officials and drug traffickers. So it's either the opium money, or it's the development money. And we're not following that money trail. The same problem in Iraq. I mean, there's just millions of dollars that are kind of leaking out of the system.
BILL MOYERS: So, has this become an opium economy?
SARAH CHAYES: Definitely, it's an opium economy. And it's totally integrated into the economy. It's a normal aspect of the economy. And you can feel it. For example, in opium harvesting season, we needed one of our herbs. We needed somebody to harvest herbs up in the hills. We couldn't get anybody because there were you know, buses at the Helmand, is the province right next door to us where most of the opium is growing. And there would be, you know, from the Helmand bus depot, they would just drive people straight out into the fields. Because, and the price of labor was going up. Normally, labor is unskilled labor is $4 a day. It was $20 to $25 a day in opium harvesting season. It totally absorbs all of the available manpower. Now, the clich
Charlie Rose
A discussion about Russia 2/20/2008
http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2008/0 ... out-russia
The New Yorker staff writer Seymour Hersh talks with the magazine's editor-in-chief, David Remnick. Octоber 2007
(1/7) http://youtube.com/watch?v=S8vD94ET_d4
(2/7) http://youtube.com/watch?v=MrjZjZK_P_k
(3/7) http://youtube.com/watch?v=kkfl13Dx_5Q
(4/7) http://youtube.com/watch?v=YFX-66W75dI
(5/7) http://youtube.com/watch?v=rz-uce2aJW4
(6/7) http://youtube.com/watch?v=vX3fog0lY7o
(7/7) http://youtube.com/watch?v=f6z6IQ8aA4Y
Seymour Hersh: We Pay Bush to Know These Things
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ri0jnZ2sGG0
Seymour Hersh *What did Israel bomb in Syria?*
http://youtube.com/watch?v=FZi2NaxjOjM
Stephen Fry & Hugh Laurie: The Subject of Language
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hHQ2756cyD8
(Примерно 40 процентов сказанного я не понимаю)
A Bit of Fry & Laurie - "I knew everyone & everyone knew me"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=5hYTLqyTn6U
From http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/8889/fl.htm :
" "The Burt"
(Special thanks to the man himself, Stephen Fry, for helping my with the names in the sketch below)
***************************
S: Did you actually know Richard Burton?
H: Oh yes, yes. I knew him, yes. Well, in as much as anyone really KNEW Burton. Aah, yes. I was very fond of 'the Burt'. He was an amazing character, amazing character.
S: Mmmm, now Elizabeth Taylor, of course...
H: Well now, Liz you see, was a joy... a dream... a treasure... marvelous. If you could have seen them together... wuh huh!
S: Did you ever...
H: Oh good lord yes, yes. As a matter of fact I was, uh, I was, uh, best man at their wedding.
S: Really?
H: Hmmm.
S: Which one?
H: All of them.
S: Now Geilguld and Richardson were...
H: Yes. They never married, of course.
S: No.
H: No.
S: Did you know them?
H: Oh good lord yes, yes I knew. Yes, yes. Amazing characters, yes. "The Geil" and "the Rich" used to ask me for advice. They used to call me their "guru". Huh huh huh huh.
S: Now, around this time you must have met...
H: Well, just about everyone, really.
S: Really?
H: Yes. I knew everyone, and everyone knew me.
S: You knew everyone?
H: I knew absolutely everyone, yes.
S: And everyone knew you.
H: And absolutely EVERYONE knew me. Yes, yes.
S: Right. What did you think of Simon Condywust?
H: Simon...?
S: Condywust. Didn't you know him?
H: Oh yes, yes, I knew him. Oh yes, yes. Well, everyone knew "the Condy". Yes, he was an amazing character, amazing.
S: Mmm hmmm. What about Maureen Limpwippypippydodo?
H: Oh well now, yes. She was a fascinating woman. Fascinating. I was fascinated by Maureen for, oh, many years.
S: Mmm hmmm. Was she an amazing character?
H: Well no. She was a woman. The men were amazing characters, the women were fascinating. Yes.
S: Colin FenchmosleythinkIhave?
H: Oh, oh lord, yes. What a charac... yes. What, "the Fench"? Yes, yes, knew him terribly well, terribly well. Yeah.
S: What did you think of Fenella HaHaHaHaHaHaHa-spuit?
H: Fascinating woman, fascinating... yeah, yeah.
S: And what about Peter Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee?
H: Well yes. Well, you see... ha ha ha ha. They broke the mold when they made Peter. Ha ha.
S: And Evelyn Brokethemoldwhentheymadepeter?
H: Delightful... woman?
S: Anthony Delightfulwoman?
H: Oh, splendid chap.
S: Dick van Dyke?
H: You just made that up! "
QI Series 4 Episode 13 (part 3)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=5W4N2XxG87U
From http://www.freewebs.com/qitranscripts/413.htm :
"Stephen
Well, I think they did a mile a day and they had a lovely time. Compared to the ones now, which as you say, live in these ghastly concentration camps.
Why are they called turkeys?
Alan
Because they're from Turkey.
Stephen
Do you think they're from Turkey? Is that where . . .
Alan [rolling his eyes]
No . . .
Stephen
No, exactly. No. The first merchants to sell them on in Europe--
Alan
Were Turkish.
Stephen
--were Turkish, yeah, so they were known as Turkey-cocks. But the weird thing is, everyone else calls them "Indian". The French call it d'Inde, which is from Inde, the Indies. The Polish call it the indyk; the Dutch call it kalkoen, the Calcutta hen. The Austrians call it an "Indian"; the Turks call it a "Hindi". In Hindi, they call it a "Peru Pakshi", a Peru bird. But the great original, in America, its land of origin, is "Fakit" [pronounced deliberately as "fuck it"]. Called "Fakit", er, in Choctaw.
Rich
Oh, right.
Stephen
And they've now changed it to akank chaaha, "tall chicken", to avoid embarrassment.
Anyway, that brings us carolling into the mad hurly-burly of General Ignorance. So fingers on bell buzzers, and appropriately for the season, all these will have a sacred theme. Now, name a saint who comes from Ireland?
Alan [quickly]
Patrick.
Forfeit: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the word "ST PATRICK", in gothic lettering.
Stephen
Ooh!
Alan
I don't know why I bother.
Stephen
He went to Ireland, but he didn't come from Ireland.
Alan
None of the patron saints of Britain are from where they're supposed to be from, are they?
Dara
George is Palestinian, St George.
Stephen
Yes.
Dara
And Patrick was Welsh.
Stephen
British, certainly. He came from around the River Severn area, apparently.
Rich
St Bernard was from a shelter.
Stephen
He was indeed! But you must be able to name some genuine saints.
Dara
Yes. St Columba, St Bridget, St Kevin.
Stephen
St Bridget. Do you know what her great miracle was?
Dara
Er, she laid down a cape, 'cause she had said, "I want some land to build a convent." They said, "Well, you can have whatever land your cape covers," and she laid it down, and the cape grew like ginger beer! [wafts his arms outwards] Until it had taken over an entire field.
Stephen
That is one of her great miracles. The other one, was that she could transform her used bath water into beer. A very Irish sort of miracle.
Dara
That one . . . That one wasn't taught to us in primary school in Ireland, actually.
Stephen
No. St Kevin?
Dara
Kevin lived half way up a mountain, in Glendalough, in Wicklow, and was like an Irish Francis of Assisi. Small animals would nest in his hands, and rather than crush the fecker and get on with his day, er, he would let the bird rest there--
Stephen [with a smile]
Yes. Brilliant.
Dara
--and heal or whatever, and he'd go, "Please, I've got stuff to do."
Do you want to bring up any more of these scars of my childhood, right?
Stephen
It is astonishing to imagine an education like that.
Dara
I will say this for it, though. I do remember once going out with a lady who was raised atheist, and an utter chore to walk around a gallery with. They go, "Who's the guy on the sticks?" And, er, "Is he the same guy who was in the shed earlier on?" [tilts his head backwards exasperatedly]
Alan
Who is Saint Bartholomew? Because I went in a museum in Venice, and there was a painting of him, and he's the spit of me.
Stephen
Really?
Alan
Or I was the spit of him. Anyway, it was a virtually full-size picture and it was uncanny and a little bit frightening, because he was only wearing a nappy, and he'd been shot with an arrow.
Stephen
I'm . . . His day is the 24th August; I know that. That's St Bartholomew's day and there's obviously a famous hospital in London, St Bartholomew's.
Dara
But he's probably the reason why they say "always wear clean underwear, er, in case you're in an accident," because he had to go to A & E with an arrow and a nappy on, and sit in the waiting room.
Alan
He waited so long they named the hospital after him.
Stephen
--after him, exactly! Lord! There you are.
But a lot of them had arrows. St Sebastian was the famous one to be shot with arrows, but there are lots of--
Alan
Well, maybe it was St Sebastian. Maybe it wasn't St Bartholomew.
Stephen
There is a Mantegna St Sebastian, that does look not unlike you, it has to be said.
Alan
Do you know what, I think it might be St Sebastian.
Stephen
I think it was St Sebastian.
St Bartholomew's death was that he was flayed alive, and most paintings of St Bartholomew have him with his skin draped over his arm, his own skin. [grimaces]
Alan [shaking his head]
No, that wasn't him.
Stephen
That wasn't him, no.
Jo
Because I've seen that statue in church and I always used to think when I was kid that he just had a sort of beige-coloured coat.
Alan
It was his own skin.
Stephen
His own skin. Anyway, the patron saint of Ireland went to Ireland, but didn't come from there. He was kidnapped as a child and sold into slavery to Ireland, and then when he went onto the continent and became a monk, he wanted to come back to Ireland to convert it to Christianity and cast out snakes.
But who painted this behind me? Talking of Italian art.
Alan
Oh, no, you're not going to get me now.
Jo
I'll have a go.
[presses buzzer, which plays "Ding, Dong, Merrily on High"]
Shall I have a go?
Stephen
Have a go, my dear.
Jo
Was it Jackson Pollock? No, all right, Michelangelo! Michelangelo.
Forfeit: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the word "MICHELANGELO", in gothic lettering.
Stephen
Oh! No no.
Alan
The fingers are wrong. They're wrong. Did he not do the fingers?
Stephen
We could show it wider.
Viewscreens: Picture of Michelangelo's Creation of Adam.
Stephen
It's The Creation of Adam. There it is.
Alan
I've got it on my phone and do you know what, you're not supposed to take pictures, but I took one like that. [looks up furtively and mimes snapping a photo] There's a bloke there going, [Italian accent] "No pictures! No pictures!"
Stephen [with Italian accent]
[points at Alan] "Sebastiano!"
Alan
[Italian accent] "You! In the nappy."
Stephen
[mimes shooting arrows at Alan]
The Sistine Chapel is what we're looking at, of course, and he painted it round about 1511, Michelangelo. Only about forty years later, God and Adam's fingers fell off, so the . . . new plaster was put in and an unknown papal restorer actually painted them, so those bits are not by Michelangelo.
Alan
He should have done them going like that. [makes the two-fingered salute]
Stephen
It's rather--[breaks off and laughs]. It is rather--
Alan
God and Adam. [raises his middle fingers and points them at each other] Oh, for a laugh; it's only undercoat. [Italian accent] "It's the undercoat. I having a laugh."
Stephen
Very good.
So, talking of great holy figures, when did Father Christmas die?
Alan
Oh, come on! He's not dead, he's still ali--
Forfeit: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the words "HE'S NOT DEAD", in gothic lettering.
Stephen
Well, we know he's dead--
Alan
Well, I hope . . . I hope all the children are in bed.
Stephen
It's all right.
Alan
There are going to be some tears now.
Stephen
We're talking about the Father Christmas who we know is dead because we've seen his entry in the register of the dead in the church where he lived and grew up in Dedham in Essex. We've actually seen it. He was an old man called Christmas.
Stephen
It was his surname, Father Christmas. There it's written; I hope you can see it there. And this--
Alan
I knew a girl from Essex called Laura Christmas.
Stephen
Exactly. Christmas is a common surname in Essex. So this poor Father Christmas here died on May 30th, 1564. There was a Roger Christmas of Sussex in 1200, the earliest Christmas found in British records. There's still about a thousand people in the phone books called Christmas, in Essex, Surrey, Cambridgeshire, London, and Sussex.
Jo
I remember when I was a kid there was someone in the phone book called Mr Bastard, right?
Stephen
Yes.
Jo
And we used to phone him and go, "Hello, is Dave there please?" And he'd go, "There isn't anyone here called Dave." And we'd go, "Oh, must be some other Bastard, then." Surely you could come up with a good Christmas one to do.
Stephen
Well, they used to ring up Jesus College; they would call it up on Christmas Day and say, "Is that Jesus? And the porter will go, "Yes." [in nasal sing-song voice] "Happy birthday to you . . . " Really annoying for him. Very silly.
But anyway, it was an old English habit to call people "Father" if you didn't know their name and they were an old man, like Father Smith and Father William, and he was known as Father Christmas, and that's how he's written in the book. And it was before, of course, Santa Claus was known as Father Christmas, so it didn't, obviously, seem like a joke to them.
Rich
'Dve been great if his wife had been named Mary.
Stephen
Mary Christmas. [realises and laughs] Merry Christmas! Very good. Lovely lovely lovely. And there you are.
Anyway. Do you know where Santa Claus came from, by the way?
Dara
Is it a German thing, or is it . . . ?
Stephen
Not Germany, no. Where St Nicholas, the saint . . .
Alan
Russia.
Stephen
No.
Dara
Catalonia, and he's actually having a dump. You've been a bad child this year. [mimes defecating]
Stephen
No, it's not there.
Alan
Turkey.
Stephen
"Turkey" is the right answer! He was a Turkish saint.
And on that happy note, ladies and gentlemen, it's time to go home. So let's see what's in your party bag, shall we? Oh, my goodness me. It's champagne for Dara, with two points! And it's Spanish brandy for Rich, with minus nine!
Rich [to the audience]
Why are you clapping?
Stephen
It's cooking sherry--
Rich [loudly]
I have minus nine and they're applauding!
Stephen
And it's cooking sherry for Jo Brand, with minus seventeen!
Stephen
And with minus fifty-three, it's a--
Alan
[laughs at his score]
Stephen
It's a can of Special Brew and a train home for Alan Davies!
Stephen
My very special spicy mulled thanks to Rich, Dara, Jo, and Alan, and I leave you with this seasonal mince pie from the great black American comic Dick Gregory. "I never believed in Santa Claus, because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark." Good night. "
http://youtube.com/watch?v=FXwxI9ixuDY
Author Dr. Bob Moorehead, former pastor of Seattle's Overlake Christian Church
"The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.
We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.
We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.
We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.
We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan m ore, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete...
Remember; spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever.
Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.
Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.
Remember, to say, "I love you" to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.
Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again.
Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.
AND ALWAYS REMEMBER:
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09282007/watch.html
September 28, 2007
Bill Moyers talks with John Bogle.
BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the JOURNAL.
Every week we hear of another publicly traded company being bought by a private equity firm. Some of those investment firms — like Blackstone, the Carlyle Group, and Cerebrus — have become almost as well known as the brand-name companies they've been snapping up, from Chrysler to Dunkin' Donuts to Toys R Us. But private equity firms have no real interest in toys, cars, or baked goods. What they are after is big and quick returns on their capital. To get it, they buy a company and cut the wages, pensions and health benefits of the employees who work there.
Take a look at this front page story in Sunday's NEW YORK TIMES for a glimpse of how this kind of capitalism works. Thousands of nursing homes have been bought up by private equity firms like Warburg Pincus and Carlyle. Profits were increased by reducing costs, then investors quickly resold the facilities for a big profit Р leaving and I quote- "residents at those nursing homes worse off, on average, than they were under previous owners."
Exhibit #1: Habana Health Care Center in Tampa, Florida, purchased by a group of private equity firms in 2002. "Within months, the number of clinical registered nurses at the home was half of what it had been a year earlier...budgets for nursing supplies, resident activities and other services also fell..." "When regulators visited, they found malfunctioning fire doors, unhygienic kitchens, and a resident using a leg brace that was broken..."
Basing its report on state government data, the TIMES says 15 at Habana died from what their families contend was negligent care. But when families sue, they often can't find out even who owns the nursing homes because of the complex corporate structures private equity firms have created to cover their tracks.
It's this kind of capitalism that drives John Bogle up the wall, as you're about to learn. John Bogle believes owners should be in charge — and accountable. He's known and respected world-wide as the father of index funds and the founder of The Vanguard Group, one of the largest mutual funds anywhere, with over a trillion dollars in assets.
FORTUNE magazine named him one of the four giants of the 20th century in the investment industry. TIME magazine called him one of the world's 100 most powerful and influential people. Among his six books is this one THE BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF CAPITALISM and more recently THE LITTLE BOOK OF COMMON SENSE INVESTING. In the current issue of DAEDALUS, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he has a blockbuster of an essay on democracy in corporate America. You'll find it on our Web site at pbs.org. I talked with John Bogle when he was in town earlier this week.
BILL MOYERS: Thanks for joining me.
JOHN BOGLE: My pleasure.
BILL MOYERS: This story in THE NEW YORK TIMES this week. What do you think when you read a story like that?
JOHN BOGLE: Well, first, it's a national disgrace. Simply put. And there are some things that must be entrusted to government and some things that must be entrusted to private enterprise. And what we see there, at least in my judgment, is that we've taken medical care, healthcare and going from making it a profession in which the patient is the object of the game — preserving the patient "first do no harm" as Hippocrates would say or would have said and turn that into a business. And so, it's a bottom line. I've often said we're in a bottom line society. We're measuring the wrong bottom line.
BILL MOYERS: What does it say to you that the real owners of the nursing home, the private investors have created this maze of smoke and mirrors that make it virtually impossible to find out who the owners really are?
JOHN BOGLE: Well, that's so typical of much that's going on in American finance, the way we structure these financial instruments, which are stock certificates or debt instruments. But it's the same thing of the removal of your friendly, local neighborhood bank holding the mortgage and being able to work with you when you fall on hard times to some unnamed, often unknown, financial institution who couldn't care less.
BILL MOYERS: These private equity firms that own these nursing homes wouldn't even talk to THE NEW YORK TIMES. They won't talk to reporters. I mean, there's no accountability to the public.
JOHN BOGLE: There's no accountability. And it's wrong. It's fundamentally a blight on our society.
BILL MOYERS: What does it say that big private money can operate so secretly, with so little accountability, that the people who are hurt by it, the residents in the nursing home have no recourse?
JOHN BOGLE: It says something very bad about American society. And you wonder — the first question anybody would have after reading the article — how in God's name do they get away with that? Well, we have all these attorneys that are capable of devising complex instruments, and money managers who are capable of devising highly complex financial schemes. And there's kind of no one to answer to the call of duty at the end of it.
BILL MOYERS: And we're talking about some of the most powerful names in the business. I mean, these are formidable forces, right?
JOHN BOGLE: They're formidable forces. But, I'm afraid--
BILL MOYERS: Respectable citizens, right?
JOHN BOGLE: Well, I mean, I don't know about that. But, it's certainly -- it's easy to say that greed is taking — playing a part — greed has a role in a capitalistic society. But, not the dominant role and--
BILL MOYERS: What should be the dominant? What is the job of capitalism?
JOHN BOGLE: Well, ultimately, the job of capitalism is to serve the consumer. Serve the citizenry. You're allowed to make a profit for that. But, you've got to provide good products and services at fair prices. And that's the long term, that's what businesses do in the long term. The businesses that have endured in America have done that and done that successfully.
But, in the short term, there's all these financial machinations in which people can get very rich in a very short period of time by creating highly complex financial instruments, providing services that can be cut back easily as in the hospital article, not measuring up to basically their duty.
We all know that in professions, the idea has been service to the client before service to self. That's what a profession is. That's what medicine was. That's what accountancy was. That's what attorneys used to be. That's what trusteeship used to be inside the mutual fund industry. But, we've moved from that to a big capital accumulation — self interest — creating wealth for the providers of these services when the providers of these services are in fact subtracting value from society. So, it doesn't work.
BILL MOYERS: So, the private equity nursing homes have added to their wealth. But, they've subtracted from society the care for people who need it.
JOHN BOGLE: That is exactly correct. Not good.
BILL MOYERS: THE WALL STREET JOURNAL editorial page celebrates what it called the animal spirits of business. And as if that's the heart of capitalism. What do you think about that?
JOHN BOGLE: Well, I like the animal spirits of business. I mean Lord Keynes told us about animal spirits. And it comes out of a part of his work that says, "You know, all the precise numbers and the perspectives mean nothing. What determines the future of a business is its animal spirits." You know, the desire for progress, the desire to create something new. That's all good. But, it's gotten misshapen. Badly--
BILL MOYERS: How so?
JOHN BOGLE: --misshapen.
BILL MOYERS: How so?
JOHN BOGLE: Well, it's gotten misshapen because the financial side of the economy is dominating the productive side of the economy
BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?
JOHN BOGLE: Well, let me say it very simply. The rewards of the growth in our economy comes from corporate, largely - from corporations who are a very important measure, from corporations that are providing goods and services at a fair price innovating and bringing in new technology — providing a higher quality of life for our society and they make money doing it. I mean, and the returns in business in the long run are 100 percent the dividends a corporation pays and the rate at which its earnings grow.
That still exists. But, it's been overwhelmed by a financial economy. The financial economy, which is the way you package all these ways of financing corporations, more and more complex, more and more expensive. The financial sector of our economy is the largest profit-making sector in America. Our financial services companies make more money than our energy companies — no mean profitable business in this day and age. Plus, our healthcare companies. They make almost twice as much as our technology companies, twice as much as our manufacturing companies. We've become a financial economy which has overwhelmed the productive economy to the detriment of investors and the detriment ultimately of our society.
BILL MOYERS: By the financial sector, you mean?
JOHN BOGLE: Banks, money managers, insurance companies, certainly annuity providers. They're all subtracting value from the economy. They have to subtract. To be clear on this now — I don't want to overstate it. To be clear on this, they have to subtract some value. But, the question is--
BILL MOYERS: What do you mean they subtract some value?
JOHN BOGLE: In other words, — you've go to pay somebody something to provide a service. It's just gotten totally out of hand. My estimate is that the financial sector takes $560 billion a year out of society. Five hundred and sixty billion.
BILL MOYERS: Where does it go?
JOHN BOGLE: It goes into the pockets of hedge fund managers, mutual fund managers, bankers, insurance companies. Let me give you this just one little example. If you didn't make a $129 million last year — I'm presuming that you didn't. You don't rank among the highest paid 25 hedge fund managers. A $129 million doesn't get you into the upper echelon.
BILL MOYERS: And on the way here this morning, I saw a story that now a $1 billion will not get you in the FORTUNE 400. A $1 billion!
JOHN BOGLE: Well, I spend a lot of time thinking about that. I mean, you kind of asked the question, which I've asked in some of my work. What is enough here? And the society is out of control. I mean, in THE BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF CAPITALISM, I talk about the frightening similarities between the American economy in America, our nation, at the beginning of the 21st century and Rome all those centuries ago around the 4th century.
BILL MOYERS: What are the comparisons?
JOHN BOGLE: We have an idea that we are the world's value creator and leader. And I'm talking not just about economic value, but, we like to think of America as having the best values of integrity and citizenship in the world. We're getting a little bit too much self interested. We have our own bread and circuses. And they're a little different than the bread and circuses they had in Rome. But, we surely have our circuses whether it's sports teams or casino gambling or the lottery in the states. And we see this not just in our economy, in our financial system. This very short-term focus on everything. You see it, sadly, in our government.
Everybody knows social security is going to run into crisis. We can't run these federal deficits forever. But, everybody looks out two years and says, "Will I be elected two years from now or a year and a half from now?" And, the short term focus ultimately betrays the very values that we have come to be used to in this great nation of ours.
BILL MOYERS: You said the other day to someone that we think we can fight the war in Iraq without paying for it.
JOHN BOGLE: Well, we borrow the money to fight the Iraq War by some estimates and they're not absurd estimates is running now towards a $1 trillion. We could be doing what the British empire did. We could be bankrupting ourselves in the long run. And--
BILL MOYERS: You see us as an empire?
JOHN BOGLE: Well, of course it's an empire. We reach all over the world. We thought of ourselves in many, many respects as the policemen of the world. God knows we know we're the policemen of the Middle East. And there are those say, even from Alan Greenspan on up or down, that oil is the root of that. I mean, these are great societal questions. Protecting oil, which is in turn polluting the atmosphere.
We have problems as a society. And we don't have to surrender to them. But, we have to have a little introspection about where we are in America today. We've go to think through these things. We've got to develop a political system that is not driven by money. I mean, these are societal problems for us that don't have any easy answers.
But you don't have to be an economist to know that a great deal of or a minimum in our economy is coming from borrowed money. People are spending at a higher rate than they're earning, and we're starting to pay a price for that now. Particularly in the mortgage side. But, eventually, that could easily spread and people won't be able to do that anymore. You can't keep spending money you don't have. It gets a lot of it, you know, and it wasn't that many years ago — maybe a couple of generations ago — that if you wanted something, you saved for it. And when you completed saving for it, you bought it. Imagine that. And that wasn't so bad. But, now, we know that we can have the instant gratification and pay for it with interest payments, of course, over time, which is not an unfair way to do it. We're going to pay a big price for the excessive debt we've accumulated in this society both in the public side and the private side.
And it's no secret that this lack of savings in our economy — just about zero — is putting us at the mercy of foreign countries. China owns — I don't know the exact number — but, let me say about 25 percent of our federal debt. China does. What happens when they start to buy our corporations with all those extra dollars they've got there? I mean, I think that's very-- these problems are long term, are very much worrisome and very much intractable.
BILL MOYERS: Your book is called THE SOUL OF CAPITALISM. Tell me what you mean by the soul of capitalism.
JOHN BOGLE: Well, I try in the book a little definition from Thomas Aquinas about the core of being — he's talking about the human soul, of course — but, the core of being,the elements that give you meaning, the values that you have-- the whole kind of wrap up of what makes a human being a human being.
And that happens in a much more, you know, a much less profound way in a corporation. There is in a good corporation and in capitalism a core of being of providing goods and services, at raising the standard living. And it's done a very good job at that. I don't want to demean that. You know, we went from the beginning of time, to around 1800, — the way people lived barely changed at all. And since 1800, the Industrial Revolution, and capitalism around that time has taken us to standards of living that are just — that would have been unimaginable to anybody of that day. We have all the perquisites and ease and freedom and safety of modern life. And so I salute capitalism for doing that. It's just we've taken it too far. Today's capitalists are different from yesterday's capitalists-
BILL MOYERS: How so? What's the big difference?
JOHN BOGLE: Well, I think much more they're operating on their own. Instead of for the interest of whose money has been entrusted to them. It's an element — it's what we call a bottom-line society, again. But I think it's the wrong bottom line. I want to come back to the difference between the financial system and the productive system. The productive system adds to the value of our economy. And, by and large, the financial system subtracts. And, yet, it's growing and growing and growing. And this short term thing where short term orientation in which trading pieces of paper is regarded as a social value. It is not a social value. Some of it has to happen, don't mistake me.
BILL MOYERS: Right.
JOHN BOGLE: But not as much as we have.
BILL MOYERS: What does it say to you that people seem so indifferent to the fact that one tenth of one percent of the population owns most of the wealth in this country?
JOHN BOGLE: Well, in the long run, I believe it's unsustainable. You know, this is not going to be, you know, a country like France, say, at the time of before the French Revolution. You know, the lords of France, the kings had probably the same kind of distribution of wealth we had today come by through long generations. Their own castles. We have those castles in America now. But it says to me that, in this society, it's not sustainable. There will be an outcry.
Even Allen Greenspan says in his book he's worried, new book-- he's worried about this division in the society. He's worried about dissatisfaction. He's worried about violence in our society. You can only have so much of an advantage to those at the top of the pyramid, and so much disadvantage that's at the bottom of the pyramid, before you start to get some very difficult things going on.
BILL MOYERS: This seems to me to be your great concern, that this self correcting faculty that is built into both democracy and capitalism is in jeopardy?
JOHN BOGLE: Actually, I think it's fair to say it's in jeopardy. But there's one sense that it's not in jeopardy. And that is, ultimately, the system will correct. The bigger the boom, I fear, the bigger the bust. In other words, you pay the price. It's not a self sustaining system at this kind of a level.
BILL MOYERS: Do we need new rules?
JOHN BOGLE: One thing is, I believe, to have a federal standard of fiduciary duty for money managers. They've come from eight percent ownership of American business to 74 percent ownership of American business. It's staggering, over unbelievable change. Without any rules as to how they're supposed to behave. We have state laws of proven investing and fiduciary duty and things of that nature. But they don't seem to be working. And our founding fathers actually thought about having a federal statute-- a federal corporate chartering statute. I think we probably need one because if some of the states step up and say improve their governance provisions, corporations will move to another state. So the state system I don't think can prevail.
So a federal standard of fiduciary duty which demands that our pension trustees and our mutual fund directors make sure that those pension funds and mutual funds are operated in the prime interest of those who have entrusted their money to them. And that includes responsibility for corporate governance. And it will ultimately turn to be focused more on long term investing.
When I came into this business in the 1950's, it was a business focused on the wisdom of long term investing. We changed in that period to a business that is focused on the folly of short term speculation. And think about this for a minute. If you're a true investor holding a company for the long term, you're well aware that the value in that company is company's earnings compounded over time, developing new products and services, developing efficiencies-- trying to size up the proper corporate strategy, you know, making the company more valuable. But, in the folly of short term speculation, you're just thinking will that stock be worth more or less six months from now or a year from now?
Give you a very specific example. In the first 15 years I was in this business, the average mutual fund held the average stock for seven years. Call that long term investing. Now, the average mutual fund holds the average stock for one year. That's short term speculation. So, if you're a speculator, you don't care much about ownership interest. You don't care so much about corporate governance. Why vote a proxy, for example, if you'll not even be holding a stock in three months?
The other part of it is,and this is really makes it a very difficult problem to solve. And that is a little about of — I guess it's Pogo — we have met the enemy and they are us. These mutual fund companies-- these management companies are now owned largely by corporate America. Or international corporations — Deutsche Bank — AXA, big international companies who have bought their way into the US financial system, which is-- don't mean to demean that. But, they own these public corporations-- giant public corporations like insurance companies, big banks-- foreign insurance companies and banks own 41 of the 50 largest mutual fund managers.
Now, what is the job of a corporation when they buy into a mutual fund management company? It's to earn a return on the capital they invest in that company. It's not to earn a return on the capital of the investors who invested with that mutual fund. Now, in fairness, they want to earn as much money as they can for the fund shareholders. But, not at their own expense.
What we've done is have you know, what I call in the book, a pathological mutation of capitalism from that old traditional owners' capitalism to a new form of capitalism, which is manager's capitalism. The evidence is quite compelling that today corporations are run in a very important way to maximize the returns of its managers at the expense of its stockholders.
BILL MOYERS: Its CEOs.
JOHN BOGLE: Its CEOs, well, the upper level of five or six top officers. And they get enormous amounts of pay for actually doing very little. I'm a businessman. Listen, we all-- we chief executives get an awful lot of credit that we don't deserve. Real work in companies is done by the people who are getting themselves together and doing the hard work of making companies grow--
BILL MOYERS: And, yet, these--
JOHN BOGLE: every day.
BILL MOYERS: These are the people who most often get laid off, right?
JOHN BOGLE: They get laid off. And, of course, the ironic part of that is they often get laid off — used to be called downsizing. But, of course, in today's America, it's called right sizing. They get laid off. That reduces expenses. That increases earnings and that means the CEO gets more.
Just think about the country for a minute. For an agricultural economy, 95 percent, 98 percent agricultural when this country came into existence. And even by 1850, half agricultural. Now it's about, they moved from agricultural economy, to a manufacturing economy, to a service economy. And now to a financial service economy. And the financial service economy is what troubles me. Because it's diverting resources from the investors to the capitalists. To the entrepreneurs. To Wall Street. To the investment bankers. The hedge fund managers. To mutual fund managers. And that is a negative to our societal values.
Where agriculture and manufacturing and services, I mean, I'm perfectly willing to give a high value, for example, to art and poetry and literature. They add value to society. It may not be easy to measure it in a society that measures too much of what's not important. And not enough of what is important. As the sign in Einstein's office says-- "There are some things that count that can't be counted. And some things that can be counted that don't count."
BILL MOYERS: John Bogle, thank you for joining me.
JOHN BOGLE: My pleasure.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04182008/watch.html
April 18, 2008
BILL MOYERS: Welcome to THE JOURNAL.
You knew it was going to be a dismal night this Wednesday when just a few minutes into the debate, ABC interrupted the candidates for a long commercial break -- the first of many. By the time it was over, the audience had had enough.
Makes you think that if Lincoln and Douglas were around, they'd be sandwiched between a Viagra ad and Victoria's secret. In a real debate the candidates would face each other on the stage with no one but a timekeeper to enforce the clock. As it is, these 'debates' are commercially-staged press conferences about as connected to reality as an Elvis Presley sighting.
THE WASHINGTON POST's Tom Shales called the affair "shoddy" and "despicable." Greg Mitchell of EDITOR AND PUBLISHER said it was "perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years." And the historian and writer Eric Alterman said: "I don't like to speculate on people's motives. Just why ABC thinks that a presidential 'debate' should entirely ignore health care, environmental issues, science policy, our over-stretched and under-resourced military, an epidemic of people losing their homes, the bailing out of mega-banks, and our disappearing civil liberties… is a mystery to me.
Sadly, as the fantasy-inducing commercials and journalistic narcissism built through the evening, the most damning indictment of all came from facts on the ground, otherwise known as reality.
Just this week Iraq was struck by a fresh wave of violence. At least 50 people died from a bombing at a funeral - a funeral! Sixty people were killed earlier in the week, and 120 wounded.
It's difficult … but gruesome news doesn't go away because we look away. So consider these photos taken in Baquba, Ramadi, and Mosul -- victims of car bombs and suicide attacks.
Such scenes are routine for the people in Iraq and the journalists who still cover them. One of those journalists is Leila Fadel - the Baghdad bureau chief for the McClatchy Newspaper Group. She was born in Saudi Arabia of a Lebanese father and a mother from Michigan. The fact that she speaks Arabic may have saved her life when she was covering the war between Hezbollah and Israel.
She's reported on everything from Iran's relationship with Iraq… to the impact of war on families in ethnically torn neighborhoods …to the constant stress on US troops. And she does it all so well that this week she received a George Polk award for foreign reporting - an honor bestowed for courage under fire.
This is footage Fadel shot last weekend in Sadr City where she was embedded with US troops…quite literally under fire, in a rat-infested building, surviving on military rations. She left Sadr City last Sunday for her flight to New York on Monday, arriving in time for the Polk Awards - and to join me on THE JOURNAL.
Just this week Iraq was struck by a fresh wave of violence. At least 50 people died from a bombing at a funeral - a funeral! Sixty people were killed earlier in the week, and 120 wounded.
It's difficult … but gruesome news doesn't go away because we look away. So consider these photos taken in Baquba, Ramadi, and Mosul -- victims of car bombs and suicide attacks.
Such scenes are routine for the people in Iraq and the journalists who still cover them. One of those journalists is Leila Fadel - the Baghdad bureau chief for the McClatchy Newspaper Group. She was born in Saudi Arabia of a Lebanese father and a mother from Michigan. The fact that she speaks Arabic may have saved her life when she was covering the war between Hezbollah and Israel.
She's reported on everything from Iran's relationship with Iraq… to the impact of war on families in ethnically torn neighborhoods …to the constant stress on US troops. And she does it all so well that this week she received a George Polk award for foreign reporting - an honor bestowed for courage under fire.
This is footage Fadel shot last weekend in Sadr City where she was embedded with US troops…quite literally under fire, in a rat-infested building, surviving on military rations. She left Sadr City last Sunday for her flight to New York on Monday, arriving in time for the Polk Awards - and to join me on THE JOURNAL.
BILL MOYERS: Leila Fadel, welcome.
LEILA FADEL: Thank you so much.
BILL MOYERS: Let's go back to some of that video that-- that you took when you were embedded with those troops in Sadr City.
LEILA FADEL: These are young guys from Tennessee and Texas, Illinois, Michigan. Young guys who joined the military because many of them didn't have other options and went from a semi-peaceful area north of Taji to a hostile environment in Sadr City, living in abandoned homes, abandoned buildings, where people view them as occupation forces, where people view them as the bad guys. And so they're holed up in these abandoned homes, told that they can't push further into Sadr City. And they have to wait to get shot at to shoot back. And so many of them said that they were playing a game of cat and mouse and they felt like the mice.
BILL MOYERS: So do these fellows know who they're shooting at when they're shooting there at in Sadr City?
LEILA FADEL: I asked them, "Who are you fighting?" And he said, "Anybody that shoots at us." "I don't know about the politics. All I know is I'm shooting at the people that shoot at me." And there were--
BILL MOYERS: Who is this talking to you?
LEILA FADEL: This is the platoon leader
BILL MOYERS: How old is he?
LEILA FADEL: He is 23. He was a chemical officer.
BILL MOYERS: He's younger than you.
LEILA FADEL: Yes, very young. Very young and expected to play this political game I mean, here they are in Sadr City. But they're not allowed to identify their enemy as this militia which they are fighting and is extremely organized in the way they're fighting. You know, they had a gaunt-- they went under an ambush in the end of March, March 31st, the height of the violence, the Shia violence. They were hit by two IEDs, a striker--
BILL MOYERS: An I-- which is a?
LEILA FADEL: An IED is a roadside bomb.
BILL MOYERS: Right.
LEILA FADEL: A striker was destroyed. They had to dismount and run to the other vehicles and have people come in to save them. And when they dismounted, there were men all over the rooftops shooting at them. They had sandbagged the windows. I mean, they were prepared to take on anybody who was trying to take back this area. And these guys said, "You know, in the movies when the bullets are flying and you're hitting around people's feet and you say, 'How do these people live?'" He said, "That's what happened to us and nobody died. It's a miracle."
BILL MOYERS: So what was it like for you to be there with him? You were under fire--
LEILA FADEL: Yeah. I had been in Sadr City five or six days earlier talking to the victims of air strikes, U.S. air strikes, who had so much anger towards what the U.S. military calls collateral damage. I mean, these people were angry. Angry, angry that their four year olds had shrapnel in their body, that there were soldiers shooting from abandoned buildings in their neighborhoods. They were extremely angry. And then to go into an embed and hang out with--
BILL MOYERS: An embed. That's your--
LEILA FADEL: An embed.
BILL MOYERS: --you're embedded with the troops.
LEILA FADEL: Yes, exactly, I mean, at one point I was walking into Sadr City covered, looking at the American--
BILL MOYERS: Covered in a?
LEILA FADEL: Covered in a scarf so that I wouldn't stand out in the neighborhood. I had to walk in 'cause there was a curfew. I had to take a taxi once I got inside with authorized vehicles. I had to go to the hospitals. And I was nervous. You know, I walked by one square at the entrance of Sadr City in the south. And the Iraqi residents in the area were telling me, "Oh, you gotta run through this area. There are American snipers on that roof."
And there were rumors that women and children were being killed. The U.S. military said that was not happening. Then I'm embedded with these guys. And they're in an abandoned house-- that they've never seen before. They're going through photo albums and trying to entertain themselves with air soft guns whenever they're not getting shot at. They were calling the little store that was this man's living, whoever lived there-- the Wal-Mart so that they could go in and get Lysol to try to clean the toilets that were no running water and no, you know, completely stopped up.
And I asked them what would you do if this guy comes home? What are you gonna do? And he said, "Oh, they won't come home." The platoon leader told me, "Oh, he won't come home. It's very dangerous." So a few hours later the man walks up to the door. And he says, "Excuse me, but, you know, I wanna move back into my house." They said, "No, not until it's safe here."
He said, "Well, can I have the books for my daughter so she can study?" And so they wouldn't let him in his house. And the translator, who they called Joe, a nickname and-- Joe, went around and got some books and handed it to him through a crack in the door of his own house. And he said, "Well, watch my cigarettes. I'm broke. I need to be able to sell those." And so it was telling. And I asked these men, you know, what would you do if there was a foreign army in your house?
BILL MOYERS: You asked the Americans?
LEILA FADEL: I asked the American soldiers. And one soldier told me he would blow up half the house to get back into it. And another said he would be a sniper on a rooftop and start taking people out. And I said, "Well, isn't that what this group is doing?" And one soldier told me-- he was from Athens, Tennessee, I think. And he said, "But we're trying to do something good for them."
BILL MOYERS: Are they frustrated?
LEILA FADEL: Very frustrated. I think they're very frustrated. I think they don't necessarily understand what they're fighting for anymore, what the exact cause is. I mean, right now they're in Sadr City, really caught in a political conflict between two Shia groups.
BILL MOYERS: What exactly is Sadr City?
LEILA FADEL: Sadr City is a district of Baghdad. It's a very poor Shia slum in northeast Baghdad. It was once known as Saddam City when Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq. Sewage runs through the streets. Extremely crowded and urban and poor. Sadr City is said to have 2.5 million people in this crowded area. And it is the stronghold of Moqtada al Sadr and his militia, the Mahdi Army.
BILL MOYERS: Why is it so hostile to these American troops?
LEILA FADEL: Well, the Mahdi Army was founded in the early days of the war as a resistance movement against the United States and their occupation.
Moqtada Sadr, at the time that I first arrived in Iraq in 2005, was a loved figure by both Sunnis and Shias at that time. He was seen as the only legitimate national resistance leader. He didn't leave Iraq when Saddam Hussein was in power. It's not like the rest of the government who fled to Syria or Iran or London and then came back to rule once everything was okay and Saddam Hussein was gone. But after 2005 the sectarian killings began, especially in 2006 following the bombing of a Shia shrine in Samarra, following intense bombings for two and a half years of Shia targets by Sunni insurgent groups.
LEILA FADEL: And in the early days of the war, the first two and a half years, the Shias were the American friends, the exiles who came back and took government positions. And the Sunnis were the resistance. They didn't wanna lose their power. And factories were disbanded. The Iraqi Army was disbanded. And they didn't have jobs. They didn't have anything to do. And so they became insurgents, what they call insurgents, and they saw themselves as resistance to a foreign army. And a lot of the attacks in the first two and a half years were on Shia-Iraqi targets. And so the Mahdi Army in late 2005 and especially in 2006 began to take revenge against Sunnis, all Sunnis.
BILL MOYERS: How do you know who the players are? You, as a reporter?
LEILA FADEL: Yeah. Well, you know who are the important people that you need to know and talk to and-- but it's so hard to tell when you're getting everybody has an agenda. And everything they tell you is going to go towards their cause, you know? The fact that the Maliki government is saying, "We're gonna disarm militias," I mean, that's a very empty thing to say because the Supreme Council has a militia which now is pretty much the national police.
The Kurdish parties have a militia, the Peshmerga. The head of the KDP, the Kurdish Democratic Party I think it stands for-- has a personal militia that was deployed when Turkey bombed the mountains of Kurdistan because of what they consider a terrorist organization, the PKK. A personal militia that has no--
BILL MOYERS: So every political faction has a militia.
LEILA FADEL: Has a militia.
BILL MOYERS: Like the Democrats have a militia here. The Republicans would have a militia here.
LEILA FADEL: That's right.
BILL MOYERS: The Secret Service would have a militia so when Maliki says he's gonna disband the militia, who's he talking to?
LEILA FADEL: Right, exactly. And that's what the Sadrists are saying. The Sadrists are saying, "Okay, fine, you're gonna disband our militia. What about the other militias? What about the illegal--" I mean, they often tell me that they are being detained illegally, that there are extra- judicial killings of their people. Now, the Mahdi Army is not an innocent group. They are--
BILL MOYERS: --anybody innocent?
LEILA FADEL: No. Nobody's innocent. And that's the difficult thing about this story is that, you know, right now the Mahdi Army is saying, "We're the victim of an offensive that is politically motivated" But they also have victimized so many people. I interviewed a commander in the Mahdi Army who was the most cold-blooded person I'd ever met.
I mean, I went to a neighborhood called Salaam, it means peace. And when I first went to Iraq I used to go there and do stories. I did a story there about just the beginnings of marriages falling apart because of the political situation and the Sunni and a Shia wife and a Sunni husband fighting over-- there used to be a show called Terrorism in the Grip of Justice. And they would put Sunni men on television.
Would put them on television visibly beaten. You would see, like, black eyes. And they would admit to everything. Like, "Oh, I bombed this. And I blew this up. And I blew this up." And they would fight over that, you know? The Shia wife would say, "Why are you killing Shias? And why are you killing people in the house of God, in mosques?" And the Sunni husband would say, "First of all, I'm not doing it. And why are they beating up these people and making them confess to things we don't know would happen?"
I went back in the summer of 2007. And I was very saddened. I had to sneak into the neighborhood with somebody who I knew in the neighborhood who brought me in. And we went to house after house after house to hear of the killings by the Mahdi Army. They had purged most Sunnis out of the neighborhood.
They had killed Shia women, Shia men who didn't agree with them. It was like Lord of the Flies. I mean, six really young guys, 17, 18, 19, 20, who were ruling with weapons. And if you didn't-- if you gave them a wrong look, they would shoot you. And we found one of the stories that we did was that I interviewed a woman about was-- her neighbor was shot in the back coming home from the bakery. And her son, he was seven, came out of the house and saw her bloody body on the ground.
And he went to her and he started hugging her. And nobody in the neighborhood would help him because they were scared that if they did then they would be seen as saying this was the wrong thing for the Mahdi Army to do. So this woman who I interviewed came home and saw him and took him. She was a Sunni woman across the street. And you could still see the blood on the pavement.
And she brought him in. And she said, "Let me clean you off. Let me put you in new clothes." And he said, "No. You'll see what I'm gonna do when I grow up. I need to stay with the blood of my mother." And you see that cycle of revenge that's plaguing Iraq. And I interviewed that man and he had no remorse. I mean, he talked about this woman who he said he killed. He talked about his brother who was killed in the Sunni neighborhood of Ahdamia and how the Sunnis need to be purged from Baghdad in order to keep it safe. And so that is the feeling of this constant revenge, constant violence.
BILL MOYERS: has the surge worked? We do read that the levels of violence are down. The President says the surge is working. General Petraeus said the surge is working, although he said it's very fragile. Is the surge working?
LEILA FADEL: Well, I don't think anybody can disagree that violence did drop in the last six months of 2007, that it did go back to levels of about 2005, that you could feel a change, that the bodies left in the street every day that are signs of sectarian assassinations did drop. But it's very reversible. And it's very-- a part of it also can be explained in other ways. I mean, when you have a capital, Baghdad, it's divided by sect.
And you've walled off certain neighborhoods to protect them. You know, the Sunnis sort of ghettos of Baghdad now that are walled off completely. No cars go in. And they have these U.S.-backed militias, U.S.-sponsored militias that are protecting the neighborhood. So now they can't--they're being protected from the outside world. And the outside world is being protected from them.
And so it's completely all these little fiefdoms, no central real power on any of them. And I think it's all extremely reversible. What happens to these 91,000 men who are on the U.S. payroll if they don't get absorbed into the government? What happens, as Basra and Sadr City have shown, if the militia decide, "I'm not standing down anymore. I'm not gonna get arrested," and in their eyes, "humiliated by the Iraqi government that's trying to take away my power"? What happens when-- people don't continue to be paid by the United States and maybe don't get absorbed into the Iraqi government? All these factors.
BILL MOYERS: That is so confusing. I mean, we read a lot about the thousand Iraqi soldiers who quit the fight in Basra, laid down their arms. And this week there were stories of more defectors in Sadr City. Are these people cowed? Are they afraid? What's happening?
LEILA FADEL: I think it's a combination of things. I think there are people who don't feel that they should be fighting the Mahdi Army, who don't feel that they should be killing their Shia brothers because most of the Iraqi security forces are Shia. And I think there is also threats. I mean, we had reports of the Mahdi Army going house to house in Sadr City and if they were Iraqi security forces, they would say, "We know where you live. We know where your family is. And if you fight us, we'll find you." And so I think it's a combination of the fear that their families will be killed and that they're being killed as well as a moral objection by some of them.
BILL MOYERS: Moral objection?
LEILA FADEL: I think so, yes.
BILL MOYERS: To?
LEILA FADEL: To fighting who the people they consider their brothers.
BILL MOYERS: You broke the story that it was an appeal to an Iranian source. You broke the story that the Iranians actually intervened to stop the fighting in Basra, right?
LEILA FADEL: That's right. Yeah, that's right.
BILL MOYERS: So there's real evidence on the ground that Iran is influential in Iraq.
LEILA FADEL: Yes. I mean, I don't think anybody questions that Iran is influential in Iraq. I don't know that all of Iran's influence in Iraq is bad influence. Iran has chips on every table, you know? They're betting on everybody. You'll talk to Iraqi officials who say that the Iranians are willing to give money to anybody. You have Sunni leaders going to meet with Iranian officials in Iran. The man who is the Iraqi affairs man is the head of the Qods force in Iraq in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, who the United States says is a terrorist.
He is the man that deals with Iraqi affairs. He is the man that deals with Iraqi officials. He is the man that was involved when an Iraqi delegation went to Iran in March to stop the fighting in Basra and apparently was the one that was helping get Moqtada Sadr to say stand down. Now maybe it's a bad thing that the Iranians have so much influence, but what do we expect when we put a Shia government into power? These men took refuge and had funding in Iran.
BILL MOYERS: Let's listen to what President Bush said recently about Iran's influence in Iraq.
PRESIDENT BUSH: The regime in Tehran also has a choice to make. It can live in peace with its neighbor, enjoy strong economic and cultural and religious ties. Or it can continue to arm and train and fund illegal militant groups, which are terrorizing the Iraqi people and turning them against Iran. If Iran makes the right choice, American will encourage a peaceful relationship between Iran and Iraq. Iran makes the wrong choice, America will act to protect our interests, and our troops and our Iraqi partners.
BILL MOYERS: What's your reaction hearing the President talk that way?
LEILA FADEL: First of all, just in the practical sense, the American Army's tired. They're on third and fourth rotations in Iraq. Can they really go after Iran at this point? And secondly, what are we going to do if we go into Iran, the United States? They say that the Iranian government is bringing weapons into Iraq and funding and training the Shia militias. I don't know if the Iranian government is doing that.
I know that they say that the rockets hitting the Green Zone are 107-millimeter rockets that are made in Iran. I know they say the deadliest weapon used against U.S. troops are the EFPs, and those are deadly. But do you really go and invade the neighboring country of the unstable nation that you're already in?
BILL MOYERS: But do you, as a reporter, find evidence of mischief on the part of Iran?
LEILA FADEL: Oh, definitely. I don't think Iran is not mischievous. I don't think the United States is not mischievous in Iraq. I think Iran has a vested interest in having a weak Iraq next to them because they did have an eight-years war with Iraq. They did have a hostile environment between the two nations. And I think it's in their interest to have some control over that neighbor. And that's what they have. I mean, they have groups, the parties that are in power are the parties that were created in their area, are the parties that thrived and fought Saddam from Iran. And so when the best friend in the government of the United States, which I explain the Islamist Supreme Council of Iraq, when Hakim is coming to the White House and speaking to President Bush but also going to Iran and speaking to Ahmadinejad and is very, very much influenced by Iran, it's really unclear what we're complaining about. I mean, we should have expected that this government would be Iran friendly.
BILL MOYERS: Here's Senator Joe Lieberman speaking on this when General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker were in town recently.
SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Let me ask you first, are the Iranians still training and equipping Iraqi extremists who are going back into Iraq and killing American soldiers?
GENERAL PETRAEUS: That is correct, Senator.
SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Is it fair to say that the Iranian-backed special groups in Iraq are responsible for the murder of hundreds of American soldiers and thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians?
GENERAL PETRAEUS: It certainly is. I do believe that is correct. Again some of that also is militia elements who have then subsequently been trained by these individuals.
BILL MOYERS: What about that?
LEILA FADEL: Well, I don't, you know, the U.S. military says that they have people in detention that say they were trained and supplied in Iran and apparently have killed U.S. soldiers. I don't know. That's what they say. I don't know that it's true. They have-- and they also, you know, they're calling these Iranian-backed special groups. The entire Iraqi government is Iranian backed. You know, all these-- they say that if the United States pulls out, Iran says they can fill the security vacuum in Iraq. That's what Iran says. And Iran says, on their side of the story when they've never admitted to being involved in these things publicly. And when you ask them about it, they say, "Well, actually the problem is the United States. They want unrest in Iraq so they'll never leave."
BILL MOYERS: So, on the one hand, Iraq is working behind the scenes to broker a cease fire in Sadr City. And yet we're, again, making Iran out to be the one behind the violence. I mean, there's a paradox there, right?
LEILA FADEL: Right. Right. I don't think Iran is nothing's black and white. I don't think Iran is the white knight or the evil villain either. I think that Iran is playing a political game in Iraq.
BILL MOYERS: Was the battle in Basra a defining moment in the war, as Washington has been saying it is?
LEILA FADEL: Well, Washington has been talking about Basra as the defining moment for the Maliki government taking on the Shia militias. But a lot of people think Maliki made a big mistake. The U.S. was backing away from that battle. They were saying, "We weren't informed, and we had to get military power in last minute." The United States also, I think, is very afraid-- the U.S. military in Iraq, very afraid that what happened in Basra is gonna bring back this, what I described as a sleeping bear, up again. Because part of the success of what they call the success of the surge, one of the major factors was the freeze that Moqtada Sadr put on his militia. And now that's unraveling.
Washington's suddenly been talking lately about special groups, a term that we've never heard before. But suddenly almost every official and anonymous high-level source in Washington is talking about this special group, that special group. Who are they talking about, as you see it?
LEILA FADEL: Well, yeah. I'd like to know that, too. They have started-- they've coined this term "special groups." And what they say is special groups are Iranian-backed Shia militias. Iran's a Shia nation. Iran is very, very influential in Iraq. There's no question. They're a very powerful neighbor and it's in their interest to be influential in their neighbor who was once hostile.
But anytime you see any attacks by militias, the American military will say it's the Iranian-backed special groups. It's not Moqtada Sadr, who is the leader of this militia that's being fought right now. I mean, they can talk about Sadr City for the generals can talk about Sadr City for an hour and never mention Moqtada Sadr or the Mahdi Army because they're saying it's Iranian-backed special groups. But it-
BILL MOYERS: So they say Iran is behind everybody, right?
LEILA FADEL: Right.
BILL MOYERS: In effect, that's the line now.
LEILA FADEL: Right, right.
BILL MOYERS: Is al-Qaeda still a factor?
LEILA FADEL: Yes. I mean, I think the last two days showed that.
BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?
LEILA FADEL: The last two days 120 people died.
BILL MOYERS: You think that's from al-Qaeda?
LEILA FADEL: Yes, I do.
BILL MOYERS: Is al-Qaeda in Iraq indigenous to the country? Or do you have evidence, as a journalist, that al-Qaeda gets its orders from Osama bin Laden and that network?
LEILA FADEL: Well, you know, al-Qaeda was not a force to be reckoned with before 2003.
BILL MOYERS: Yeah, we learned that.
LEILA FADEL: It was not. Okay, yes, exactly. And so al-Qaeda was a very foreign idea. I think the rank and file al-Qaeda is Iraqi. But the leadership is foreign. And it's a foreign idea, and it's a foreign group. And I think it's easier for Iraqis to reject. Now, when it comes to groups like the Mahdi Army or the Islamic Army, which was a Sunni insurgent group that very much are now part of these awakening groups, those groups are much more difficult to reject. These are people's neighbors and fathers and brothers. So al-Qaeda in Iraq had more of a foreign leadership and is more acceptable to reject.
The question everyone's asking is what will victory look like in Iraq? It was the big topic when General Petraeus testified recently.
LEILA FADEL: There something one of my staff members always says.
BILL MOYERS: Iraqi?
LEILA FADEL: Iraqi staff member. He's from Fallujah. And he says that every time there's one step forward, it feels like they're making one step back to square one. A lot of what's being done today is fixing years of mistakes that we've made. And so what is victory? Is victory dealing with a terrorist organization that didn't really exist in Iraq before we invaded? Is victory dealing with an Iranian influence on the government that we invaded to put in power?
It's a very confusing thing. I would ask the generals, they describe something called irreversible momentum, a point where you get to where that's it. It's no longer reversible and fragile. It's real success. When that is, I don't know. What is an acceptable level of violence? They talk about acceptable level of violence. I don't know.
And so to define victory I don't even know what that is. Is victory that people are everybody's returning and there's electricity and water? Well, that's not happening. I mean, there are some people returning, yes. But you don't have four million people coming back home from internally and abroad. There's thousands of people.
BILL MOYERS: Four million refugees.
LEILA FADEL: Four million between--
BILL MOYERS: Displaced within the country and--
LEILA FADEL: And outside.
BILL MOYERS: --and outside the country.
LEILA FADEL: Four million.
BILL MOYERS: Are there any positive signs to a reporter?
LEILA FADEL: You know, I have to say that the last six months of 2007, there were positive signs. You could move around a bit more. I've been able to move around a bit more, you know? And I can't deny that that's happening. The issue is, is you don't know what's lasting and what's real and what's going to backfire in ten days. And, you know, this Basra situation, it was the symbol or the quantification of how quickly things can change.
And suddenly, you know, a year, a year ago, it was the Sunni neighborhoods I couldn't go to. They were the most difficult. And I was very fearful to go into these neighborhoods. Now it's different. It's the Sunni neighborhoods where I feel comfortable going into because they have the whole U.S. military around there anyways and they're being paid by them.
And so going in as an American isn't that dangerous anymore. Although I don't announce it, of course, and I still go with a scarf and try to blend. But going to the Shia neighborhoods are more difficult now and more frightening because they're the ones in the limelight and they're the ones fighting right now with both the Iraqi security forces and the U.S. military. So-
BILL MOYERS: Talk a little bit about how you do your job you have a staff of how many Iraqis working for you there?
LEILA FADEL: Well, I have five Iraqi translator-slash-reporter-slash-- fixers, like fixing appointments and things like that, who work with me in the bureau. They have grown into really wonderful reporters in their own right, two women and three men. I also have a staff of five drivers because we travel in two cars at all times for protection. And then we have stringers around the country who will feed us-- information from the provinces that we're not in, whether it be in the southern, northern western provinces. So that we can give a full picture to our to our readers--
BILL MOYERS: How do you keep the sectarian rivalries out of your own newsroom?
LEILA FADEL: Yeah. Well, you know, first of all, I have just amazing people in our bureau, very human, very wonderful. But it is hard to keep that hate out of the bureau. I mean, their lives are not being lived separately from what's happening in Iraq. So, you know, when I hired-- when I arrived there, many of the people that I had worked with over the year and a half, about two years before I became bureau chief were leaving. They were fleeing the country. And So I had to hire so many people and re-staff the bureau. And the first question I had to ask, and it's a shameful question in Iraq, was, "Are you Sunni or Shia?" Because I need to know so that I don't take them to a neighborhood where they'll be killed for being Shia or Sunni. I can't-- put their life at risk that way. And so-- and also they're gonna have a different perspective-- if I only have Shia on staff or only have Sunni on staff, I'll have one perspective of this war.
BILL MOYERS: What's the distinction between a Sunni and a Shia, from-- in-- in the practical working world?
LEILA FADEL: In the practical world. Well, basically it was a dispute on who was the leader of Islam following the Prophet Mohammad's death.
BILL MOYERS: Hundreds of years ago.
LEILA FADEL: Hundreds of years ago. Basically the Shias believe that the proper, the rightful leader of Islam following Mohammad's death was his son-in-law and his cousin, Ali. And the Sunnis believe that the four calista following Mohammad were the rightful leaders of Islam. And the split came after the after Ali's death. And so the Shia and Sunni, I mean, this is just a religious disagreement or a, really, I guess it's a bureaucratic disagreement from hundreds of years ago. But-
BILL MOYERS: It's hard to believe that people still fight and die over this, right?
LEILA FADEL: I mean, there isn't especially in Iraq, there isn't a huge, huge difference. I mean, there most of the tribes in Iraq are intermarried. It's not unheard of for Shias and Sunnis to be married and have children. And, of course, the religious line in Islam comes from the father. So if the father is Sunni or Shia then the children will likely be Sunni or Shia.
But now because of the practical problems of being married to a Sunni or a Shia, it has stopped. So when I say "practical problems," I interviewed a family who-- the daughter-- their daughter-- married a Sunni man-- after very, very-- after a lot of resistance from her father. And-- she finally agreed 'cause he was a good man. And-- and so they got married. And a few months after they got married, they got run out of their neighborhood as Sunnis in a Shia neighborhood and went to Amara, which was Sunni, completely Sunni neighborhood.
And so suddenly they could barely see their daughter. The Shia family could not go the Amara to visit them. And the Sunni husband couldn't come to their neighborhood to visit his in-laws. So they would come to a neutral point. The brothers would come pick up the sister. And the husband would go home. She would go visit her family. And then they would come back to the neutral point and go home.
BILL MOYERS: How old are you?
LEILA FADEL: I'm 26.
BILL MOYERS: And you've been in Iraq how long?
LEILA FADEL: I became bureau chief at 25. And I started at 24. So I turned both 25 and 26 in Iraq.
BILL MOYERS: So you have a lot in common with these soldiers and with the Iraqis. I mean, so many of them are young.
LEILA FADEL: Yeah. I mean, I think covering the story-- you have to be an empathetic person. You have to be able to put yourself in so many different people's shoes. And I try to do that with whoever I'm with at the time.
BILL MOYERS: Are you afraid? Do you think something could happen?
LEILA FADEL: No, not really. I mean, you can't think like that. You can't-- I mean, think every time you return to Iraq you-- in the beginning, first week, you might be a little more scared than you were when you left the last week. But by the middle of the rotation you're telling your staff, "We have to go here, and we have to go there." And they're telling you, "Are you crazy? You're a foreigner. What are you thinking?"
But you can't be afraid all the time. There are cases where you're afraid. I remember in 2005 when our hotel got attacked and we had a double truck bombing. And it was the end of 2005. And I couldn't sleep for a week because it had happened in the morning. And I'd been asleep when glass started coming in. So I was afraid to close my eyes because if I would open them, maybe it would be shaking-- maybe our hotel would be shaking again and the bombing would happen again.
But that goes away. And you have to work. And life goes on and just like Iraqis, they've-- I was telling somebody the other day, life adapts to the situation. You can't move around at night 'cause it's too dangerous then you have your wedding at 1:00 p.m. instead of a night/evening party. Oh, you can't celebrate New Year's at midnight 'cause you can't get home at midnight? Your New Year's party finishes at 8:00.
You can't get to a certain neighborhood because it's Shia and you're Sunni? You open grocery stores in your gardens. I mean, you just adapt. And some of that is changing for the better. And some is not.
BILL MOYERS: Your colleagues at the bureau do a blog every day, right? They're allowed to write what they're seeing and thinking?
LEILA FADEL: That's right. They do a blog. It's called Inside Iraq. And it's one of my favorite parts of what we do because it's so telling. It's things that we can't capture in a story, in an article that's gonna go into a newspaper. It's life. It's the checkpoints that take them three hours to get to work in the morning. It's the curfews that stop their life. It's that fear of a sniper on campus when your daughter's at the dentist.
It's the sudden human invasion. We had a blogger in one of my staffers, who's just amazing, a single mother, so brave, who lost her son in this war, caught in a crossfire. She's so strong, so strong. And she wrote a blog and it was called "Square Windows." And it was about the U.S. military, U.S. soldiers coming down the street. And she looked through the square windows of the Humvee, and she realized they were the age of her son who was killed.
And she wondered if any other time those boys would have been friends, if at any other time they would have had the same interests. And it made me so sad because it just tells the human toll, when you're not looking at the policy and when you're not looking at whether the U.S. military's doing the right thing or whether the Iraqis are-- it's just basic human.
BILL MOYERS: Leila Fadel, thank you very much for being with us on THE JOURNAL. And thank you for agreeing to go online
Don Rickles on Jimmy Kimmel Live 3-27-08
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIW8S0v2gh0
The old discussions, 2006 and 2007. Dow was 11352.
Peter Schiff: "The party is over for the United States". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw
Peter Schiff on Neil Cavuto 03/2008 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1_Yo2BGdUk
Peter Schiff on Glenn Beck on 10/13/2008 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB9fuIvksLw
Martial Law? :o
Peter Schiff on BLOOMBERG October 28 2008
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP_aJ7LcAAA
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coaI3d89kuA
Peter Schiff CNBC - Fast Money 11/20/2008 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZUd2lMu5OQ
Peter Schiff On Campbell Brown 11/20/2008
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLq9B5_iFCo
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-qQDG0ChAY
Peter Schiff on Bloomberg TV 11/21/08
1. http://ru.youtube.com/watch?v=4JG9Fsh_KJY
2. http://ru.youtube.com/watch?v=dpfOgpSdAgM
Janeane Garofalo on Bill O'Reilly http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEzH1WzLVg4
Janeane Garofalo stand-up (1992) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=686POadlcvc
"The dynamic octogenarian duo review "MILK" the biopic of Harvey Milk starring Sean Penn. These two old-school movie veterans bring a fresh, funny and insightful perspective to film reviews."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU-xOFhBAtI
Pеter Schiff, Dec 02 2008 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knWz8ba2J80
:bad: :bad: :bad: :bad: :bad:
Peter Schiff radio clip from last night
1. Peter Schiff is Freaking! - Man is he Pissed!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beq3Mz2sDl8 "Get out of US dollar!"
2. Peter Schiff calls 4 Weimar Republic Hyperinflation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATgDXsxgRxQ
3. Peter Schiff says Stay Out of Cities - Riots, Anarchy, Looting, Mayhem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSqrbF8ql_0
PETER SCHIFF on ALEX JONES DEC 22 08
1/3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9r6uxKyKCw
2/3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsYvhL60vso
3/3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSqrbF8ql_0
Radio talk show 12/31/08
Questions and answers
1/6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm7KG7AxhOk (Peter is only here)
2/6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mehN3UUMmnA
3/6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8-qjBG_t9U
4/6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjJ7fe3cmcE
5/6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-wL17httOU
6/6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSrzc01_M90