WGBH News: World News

The Economic Catastrophe That Germany Can't Forget

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 19:29:00 GMT

For troubled European countries, the European Central Bank could be like a giant ATM.

After all, the ECB has the unique ability to print unlimited amounts of euros. It could lend that money to the governments in need.

The problem with this idea? Europe's biggest economy hates it.

Cue inflation-fearing, deep-pocketed Germany. The thought of hitting up a central bank's ATM would send many Germans fleeing in panic.

To understand why Germany is so freaked out about a central bank lending money to troubled governments, you need to go back nearly 100 years — to when the German central bank did just that.

After World War I, Germany was deep in debt. Soldiers back from the war needed money for pensions. War widows needed compensation. Reparations to France and Britain were enormous. And no other country would lend it money.

So Germany's central bank printed a bunch of money and loaned it to the government. The result was possibly the most destructive case of inflation in history.

During the Weimar inflation, people carted money around in wheelbarrows to do their shopping. At one point, it cost a million marks to mail a letter. The currency was so worthless, it was used as wallpaper in German bathrooms. Money started losing value by the second:

"There's this famous example that somebody sits in a pub and orders a beer," says historian Carl Ludvig-Holtfrerich. "Immediately, when the waiter carries the beer to his table, he orders the second one. The waiter says, 'Well, you haven't finished!' And he says, 'Yes, but if I don't order now, prices will be double by the time I finish my first beer!' "

This is Weimar humor. But the result of the hyperinflation was an economic catastrophe.

Many Germans believe it helped lay the groundwork for the rise of the Nazi party — a belief that has left the nation with a profound fear of inflatoin.

"This historical experience tells every policy maker: You don't mess around with inflation," says Klaus Frankenberger, an editor in Frankfurt. "Never. You don't do this."

Fast forward 70 years from Germany's inflation nightmare to 1992. European countries are setting up the euro, and the new currency needs a new central bank.

In 1992, Germany was the biggest economy in Europe, and it had a lot of influence over the shape of the new European Central Bank.

So it's no surprise that the ECB wound with its headquarters in Frankfurt, and with a single mission: Keep inflation in check.

That's it.

The ECB is not supposed to be bailing out governments, according to many Germans. It's not supposed buy the bonds of troubled countries.

But for more than a year now — ever since Greece first put up its hand and said, "We need help" — that's exactly what the ECB been doing.

The ECB says it's not just printing money to buy the bonds of Greece and other troubled countries. When the bank buys the bonds of Germany and other troubled countries, it takes an equivalent of money out of circulation.

But Germans are not impressed.

Helmut Schlesingerran Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, back in the early 90s, when the euro was created.

"We must have the monetary process under control," he told us last week. "And not saying, well, let us buy 600 billion of government bonds by the Central Banks in half a year, and then we hope that everything is fine! As we can see, it's not so much fine!"

Schlesinger is not the only former central banker who's worried about this. Just last week, Jurgen Stark, the top ranking German at the ECB, resigned. The official line is that he resigned for personal reasons. But it's no secret that he, too, hated the bond buying program.

When Stark resigned, the markets freaked out. His resignation — and the market reaction — was a reminder that there's still deep opposition in Germany to the ECB's tactics in fighting the debt crisis. And in the long run, the ECB needs Germany's support. [Copyright 2011 National Public Radio]

Tweeting To Electoral Victory In China? Maybe Not

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 19:26:00 GMT

Liu Ping's phone is tapped. She's followed by men in black cars. Her electricity was cut off. And she was detained and held incommunicado in a hotel for four days.

Her crime? Trying to run for election to the local People's Congress in her hometown of Xinyu in China's southeastern Jiangxi province.

Her case has unleashed an electoral battle, which is being played out over Twitter — or, at least, its Chinese equivalent, Weibo. Today, 200 million Chinese are microblogging, and as local elections take place, a record number are using this platform to run campaigns as independent candidates. The official reaction has been swift and — in many cases — forceful.

More than 2 million lawmakers are being chosen at local levels in elections now under way across the nation. These elections take place every five years, and non-Communist Party members are allowed to stand.

But in Liu's case, her record of labor activism, sparked by being laid off after three decades at a state-run steel factory, means the odds may have been stacked against her. At first, no one would even tell her where to pick up the nomination form for days. She did manage to submit one at the last minute, but in vain.

"When the preliminary candidates were announced, my name was illegally kicked off the list," she says ruefully. "They told me, 'It is an election under the leadership of the Communist Party, not an election in the United States.' "

When she went to the local election office in person to ask why she hadn't been allowed to stand, she says she was told, "You want to be a people's deputy? You should be a prostitute." She cried on the way home.

But she still wanted to stand, this time as a write-in candidate. All along, she had been using Weibo to publicize her candidacy and the tactics used against her.

Five days before the election, police turned off her electricity. Two days later, they raided her house. The next day, she says, security officials took her to a hotel, confiscated her phone and held her there until after the poll was over.

Despite failing to stand, she still hasn't given up hope.

"The power of a single person is insignificant because we have been deceived for so long. But if other people dare to stand up, a day will come when we will see hope," Liu says.

Independent Candidates' Uphill Struggle

Her experience unleashed a wave of candidacies, with more than 100 people announcing campaigns on Weibo. Xu Yan, a candidate from the eastern city of Hangzhou, is even uploading campaign videos online.

But he too, like many others, is using the relative freedom of Weibo to document the harassment he has suffered. In his case, he quit his job after his employer was put under pressure by the tax, commercial and labor bureaus. Each candidate needs 10 nominations to stand in these elections, and many report that their nominators have been placed under pressure.

Liu Ping is not the only unsuccessful candidate so far. In Panyu, in southern China's Guangdong province, the founder of a grass-roots foundation, Liang Shuxin, also failed to make it on the ballot sheets after local authorities announced new guidelines only permitting female, non-Communist Party members to stand for election.

He is male and a Communist Party member, and although the restriction was removed the following day, he was not on the preliminary candidate list.

There have been signals the government will not tolerate candidates outside its control. One unnamed official told the state mouthpiece, the People's Daily, that there was no such phenomenon as an "independent candidate," as these are not recognized by law.

Internet Provides Soapbox, Protection

Yao Bo, for one, is undeterred. He's a writer, better known by his Weibo handle, Wuyuesanren. He wants to change the system from within.

"The process of democratizing China needs to take one step forward," he says, arguing that China's system of local assemblies is, in essence, not that different from a Western parliamentary system. "We do not want a revolution again, so there must be something that can replace revolution."

Yao says he feels protected by the 237,000 followers of his microblog. He sees the microblog as a soapbox, and a way of sourcing campaign help.

"I can find people who will nominate me online. I can find lawyers, volunteers, people who will design my election material, people who will print it and people who will canvass for me," he says.

He's hoping to stand in Beijing, where he believes the authorities have to play by the rules, and so far, he hasn't been harassed. He's already warned what action he'll take if he is, writing on his microblog: "I am announcing here that if anybody gives trouble to my nominators, I'll ask them to make recordings of it and upload it. If they want to play dirty in the dark, I'll let them see ultraviolet rays."

'A Single Spark Can Start A Prairie Fire'

Elsewhere, several candidates have already been disqualified for various reasons, and others have pulled out before the polls, under pressure.

Sheng Hong, a liberal intellectual from the Unirule Institute of Economics, who has been involved in independent election campaigns since the 1980s, describes the electoral trend as "regressive." He fears that the way local authorities are disregarding their own electoral regulations to disqualify candidates is part of a larger trend, signaling that the central government has lost control of local authorities.

"This is an extremely serious problem now, which I call the collapse of constitutionalism," he says. "Local officials are increasingly lacking in restraint; they abuse their powers and violate citizens' rights, and the central government seems to do nothing to restrain them."

Nonetheless, the woman who sparked this, Liu Ping, believes that in her case, the strategy of crushing her candidacy has backfired.

"They failed, and they failed badly. Excluding me from the election worked in my favor. A single spark can start a prairie fire, and the more they persecute me, the more resistance there will be," she says.

Local election timetables vary around the country, with polls set to run until the end of the year. But as yet, none of the Weibo candidates has been elected. The experience of past independent candidates shows that even if they were to be elected, their real impact on policymaking would be limited.

But the fact that their fate is a hot topic online shows a growing thirst for public participation in politics, and any government suppression of that will come at its own peril. [Copyright 2011 National Public Radio]

How Do U.S. Solar Companies Compare To China's?

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 19:00:00 GMT

Investigating the Root Of The U.K. Riots

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 19:00:00 GMT

Libya's Bankers: Treasury Protected From Plunder

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 18:40:00 GMT

As a new Libyan leadership assesses the country's financial condition, there were fears that ousted leader Moammar Gadhafi, his family and his cronies had looted the treasury.

But it now appears much of that wealth remains frozen in foreign accounts, and Libyan bankers say the billions of dollars worth of gold and cash held by the Central Bank remained basically intact throughout the chaos of the revolution.

One of the many rumors and claims was that a convoy of more than 200 Libyan military vehicles had crossed the border into neighboring Niger.

For a brief time, there was talk of desperate men barreling across the Sahara Desert guarding a dictator's ransom in cash and gold.

That cinematic vision fizzled, though, when the government of Niger announced that only a few vehicles had entered the country, mostly with lower-level military men and officials, who are now being held under house arrest.

Instead, the new head of Libya's Central Bank, Gassem Azzuz, said the government's assets remained in its vaults, despite pressure from Gadhafi loyalists who tried to get their hands on it as the rebels moved closer to Tripoli.

"The banking sector has done quite well and is doing quite well, and is stable and sound, through the great efforts of the young people working in the Central Bank of Libya and the various banks," Azzuz said.

Azzuz told reporters that the Gadhafi regime had sold off about 20 percent of Libya's gold reserves — about 29 tons — in a last-ditch measure to pay the salaries of soldiers and government workers.

But he said the bankers don't believe that money was stolen.

Bankers' Resistance

Arif Alee Nayad, who is part of the Transitional National Council stabilization team, says Gadhafi supporters did put heavy pressure on the central bankers to release gold and cash for more dubious reasons.

He says the bank employees put up all sorts of resistance, "from not showing up, to actually delaying processes, from pretending not to have the keys, to pretending not to have the passports, in order to block transactions that were detrimental to the Libyan people."

The Libyan government's wealth overseas was frozen by international sanctions aimed at the Gadhafi regime, and that money is slowly beginning to trickle back into the country.

Mazin Ramadan is the director of the Temporary Financial Mechanism, a group set up to see that assets coming back to Libya are wisely spent during the transition to an elected government.

Right now, his group is trying to figure out how to spend about $400 million in Libyan government money that was unfrozen by the United States.

Funds Available, With Strings Attached

Ramadan says it must be spent on United Nations humanitarian programs to help Libyan recover from the war.

"Where the U.N. is concerned, it's always two things," he says. One is corruption, he says. He cites the oil-for-food scandal in Iraq, where U.N. officials were accused of taking bribes from Saddam Hussein's government to allow money to be siphoned off from the program.

"And the other part is the overhead," he adds. "It seems that the U.N. can't do anything without really large overhead."

Ramadan says he's negotiating with U.N. officials to assure that the money is really spent where the Libyans think it's most needed.

As to the billions of dollars worth of Libyan assets that are still frozen abroad, Ramadan thinks it could be years before that money is available.

He points out that money frozen during the regime of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos is tied up in litigation, 25 years after that strongman was ousted.

Meanwhile, there is still speculation that a significant amount of money from the Gadhafi regime was squirreled away where his cronies could get their hands on it.

"As a matter of fact," says Nayad of the Transitional National Council stabilization team, "they had vast amounts of wealth that didn't enter the banking system in the first place."

And where that wealth is now, is anyone's guess. [Copyright 2011 National Public Radio]

Mentally Ill In Indonesia Still Live In Chains

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 18:07:00 GMT

The harsh, tropical sunlight that dapples Bali's tourist-thronged beaches streams through the fingers of a palm leaf and lands on the shoulders of Nengah, who slumps like a rag doll amid a pile of tattered pillows in the island's far eastern reaches.

The poor village of Abang is remote, and Nengah spends her days in a heap, staring at hands that lie in her lap like dry leaves.

Today, Nengah is not alone. Neighbors have gathered in the mid-July heat to watch as her brother uses a stone to break a chain that has bound her to a concrete pit — her home — for nearly a decade.

Nengah, whose full name is confidential, suffers from schizophrenia. After the 35-year-old violently attacked her stepmother in a blind rage nine years ago, her family decided they had to restrain her.

Her situation improved after local psychiatrist Luh Ketut Suryani arrived in the village in June to find Nengah naked, caged and filthy. The doctor consulted the family and prescribed medication. Later, Suryani helped get Nengah's family to free her from bondage.

Nengah's situation is not unique in Indonesia, where the mentally ill are often locked in chicken coops or chained up in family yards to prevent them from disturbing the community.

A shortage of psychiatrists, limited mental health services, stigma and misinformation about mental illness are some of the reasons people here go without treatment. In a country of 240 million people, there are less than 600 psychiatrists, many of them based in urban centers.

Dr. Irmansyah, the director of mental health at Indonesia's Health Ministry, estimates that around 30,000 people are living in restraints, but gathering accurate information about them is difficult.

Last year the department of mental health announced "Meuju Bebas Pasung," a roadmap to free people in chains.

Officials say they are relying on community members to report cases like Nengah's. Then it will be up to local health officials to negotiate with the families for their release.

Since taking his position in April 2010, Irmansyah, who goes by one name, has worked hard to reach out to rural communities and create awareness about mental illness.

But he says mental health remains low on the government's priority list, particularly as it works toward meeting its Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, by 2015.

The United Nations-designated targets for development fall under eight categories, including reducing child mortality, fighting disease epidemics such as malaria and AIDS and improving maternal health.

The MDGs have become the universal gauge for development, and countries are judged by their ability to meet them. "But improving mental health services is not part of those goals," said Irmansyah, "so there is little incentive to spend on them."

The former Harvard University fellow knits his fingers over his government-issued khaki uniform and sighs through his stiff grey moustache when explaining the uphill battle to improve mental health care here.

"Awareness is rising that restraints are against human rights," said Irmansyah, but he worries that increasing depression among the elderly, behavioral disorders among teenagers and side effects of drug use will only increase the need for better care. "We need to be ready for these problems," he said.

For now, community outreach is limited, confined to a smattering of volunteers and concerned psychiatrists like Luh Ketut Suryani.

In 2005, she founded the Suryani Institute in Bali, which uses a combination of psychiatry, anti-psychotic medication and spiritualism to treat mental illness.

Many Indonesians still regard mental illness as a curse caused by black magic and best treated by a spiritualist rather than a medical doctor. Suryani believes doctors should draw on local beliefs and religious figures to instill trust, a key to helping mentally ill patients recover.

In 2009 the governor of Bali committed $115 million to a program led by her institute to identify and treat people with mental illness in Karangasem, one of Bali's poorest districts.

Suryani estimates that as many as 2,000 people in the district suffer from chronic mental illness.

With the government's support she was able to reach out to more than 320 patients, but a year later her funding was cut. She now works to raise her own funds, but it's slow going.

Indonesia's Health Minister, Dr. Endang Rahayu Sedyaningsih, says she understands the need for more resources, but her ministry has a limited amount of money to put toward tackling Indonesia's raft of health issues.

Still, while only 2.3 percent of the total national budget goes toward health care, less than 1 percent of that amount is put toward mental health.

More people came forward to request help for mental illness when Suryani first began seeing patients under the government-funded program. And despite budget cuts, she still sees as many patients as she can. She currently sees around 450 patients, but her limited time and resources make repeat visits difficult.

During a recent visit she checked on Made, a schizophrenic she has been treating since 2009.

Made's older brother and caretaker fielded the doctor's questions: How many hours a night does Made sleep, and where? What does he eat?

Made stood in the yard nearby, tugging at his shirt and looking down in what seemed a bashful pose.

Suryani, whose long silver hair gives her a warm, grandmotherly look, asked him how he was responding to the medication. He held out his arms to show they were steady — a side effect of anti-psychotic drugs is often tremors.

It took Suryani making visits to Nengah's family every week for a month before they agreed to negotiate her release. But in the future they will handle the majority of her treatment.

Komang Gede, one of Suryani's assistants, worries they may not be ready. "The family has suffered a trauma," he said.

Relapses are common in remote areas where people are unable to return to mental hospitals for regular treatment. "When families spend lots of money on assistance and people continue to relapse they give up and turn to restraints," said Irmansyah.

The lack of follow-up only entrenches the problem.

"If we stop treatment and people have not recovered then we must start again from the beginning, and that is not as effective," said Suryani, who tells patients that recovering from mental illness is a lifelong process.

Increasing access to services is essential, but so too is improving the quality of Indonesia's mental health hospitals, says Irmansyah, who tells stories of overcrowding and abusive staff.

Until the country gets serious about treating mental illness humanely, Irmansyah says freedom like Nengah's will only be symbolic.

Read more from the international news site GlobalPost. [Copyright 2011 GlobalPost]

As Wars Drag On, U.S. Interest Wanes

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 17:32:00 GMT

When U.S. forces launched the war in Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001, they were riding a wave of anger and a call for justice by a broad swath of the American public.

Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, says the initial support for the Afghan invasion was around 90 percent, and the war was closely followed by a large number of people. But since then, the public has been slowly disengaging, he says.

In 2001 and 2002, about 40 percent of the public said they were following news about Afghanistan very closely. From 2009 to 2011, that number had fallen to 25 percent, Kohut says, adding that the pattern in Iraq was the same.

Kohut says he's not surprised by these numbers. The public is typically more engaged at the start of a military operation. But he says the support and interest in the Iraq War started to tumble within months after it began in March 2003.

"The public soured on the decision to go to war in Iraq by 2004, when not only were there no weapons of mass destruction found, but all of a sudden, the cost of that war began to increase, [and] casualties began to be rather substantial," he says.

Army Col. Matthew Moten, a professor of history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, says it's unrealistic to sustain public interest on any issue year after year. Moten says the American public has obviously moved on from the two wars.

"I think that the public has other issues on its mind, collectively — namely the economy, jobs, the problems with the federal deficit and debt," he says. "And those seem to be trumping concerns about the war for most of the populace."

Worth The Cost?

Christopher Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, senses public frustration over the limited achievements after years of war, hundreds of billions of dollars spent, and the loss of more than 6,000 U.S. service personnel.

"There's a sense in both of these wars, the nature of these wars, you're not expecting a heroic victory of the sort we came to expect from wars like World War I and World War II," he says.

Moten says only a tiny fraction of the American public is actually involved in either war. He says people would likely be more interested if they had to shoulder some of the responsibility and make more sacrifices.

"I call that having skin in the game," he says. "If America had a draft at the moment, even a very small draft, if mothers and fathers knew that there was some real chance that their sons and daughters might be conscripted into the military, I think they would pay a great deal more attention to what's going on in Iraq and Afghanistan."

But it's not just the public that has lost focus on the wars. Many cash-strapped news organizations have scaled back or even eliminated their coverage. And the two conflicts barely cause a ripple on the campaign trail, especially among Republican presidential candidates, says Preble.

"Many Republicans don't want to call attention to Iraq," he says. "That would remind the American public that they were, in fact, the cheerleaders for this war that most Americans now think was a horrible mistake."

Preble says the war in Afghanistan is more complicated, because it's still seen as crucial to counterterrorism efforts. But that doesn't guarantee a greater interest in the conflict, even though 100,000 U.S. troops are still fighting there. [Copyright 2011 National Public Radio]

Release Of American Hikers Not Imminent, Iran's Judiciary Says

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 12:10:00 GMT

The limits of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's authority appear to be showing again with word from that country's official news outlet that:

"Iran's Judiciary has rejected recent media reports on the imminent release of the two American nationals that were convicted of spying on behalf of the United States."

As we reported Tuesday, Ahmadinejad told NBC News that Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal would be released "in two days." Also yesterday, a lawyer for the men said bail had been set at $500,000 each — the same amount paid when a third American, Sarah Shourd, was released last year. The three had been arrested in July 2009 when they crossed from Iraq into Iran. They were hiking and say they got lost. Iran accused and convicted them of spying.

But now, according to Iran's Press TV:

"The Public Relations Department of Iran's Judiciary announced on Wednesday that it is still examining pleas by lawyers of the two defendants for their release on bail. Information about the case will be released by the Judiciary and other reports on the issue are not considered reliable, the announcement read."

The Associated Press calls the judiciary's announcement "a potentially embarrassing rejection" of Ahmadinejad and "a swipe at [his] hopes of timing the release the Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal with his expected arrival in New York next week for the U.N. general assembly." [Copyright 2011 National Public Radio]

Inside Kabul Siege Site:Attackers' Bodies, Walls Riddled With Bullet Holes

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 11:30:00 GMT

An attack on the U.S. embassy and other buildings in the heart of Kabul's diplomatic district that lasted 20 hours is now over.

Reporting from the 10th floor of the unfinished building from which assailants fired rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons toward the embassy, NPR's Renee Montagne said on Morning Edition that "not too far from us are the bodies of four of the attackers; there [are] two more bodies on the staircase as it goes down. ... This was clearly the site of a huge fight. We're told this was where the fight was the fiercest; right here in this room. The walls are pockmarked with all kinds of holes from the incoming fire — from Afghan and international community forces."

"The target was the American embassy," Renee continued. "Looking out one of these big open windows, there's a clear line of sight to the embassy. It's a perfect target from this distance for something like a rocket-propelled grenade."

NPR's Quil Lawrence, who was with Renee, said there are two opinions being aired in Afghanistan about the operation by Afghan forces to bring the attack to an end. Some critics are saying the fact that it took 20 hours to stop the six attackers and that help was needed from international forces is a sign that Afghan forces still aren't up to the task of providing security, Quil said. But, he added, "according to police ... they said it was a meticulous clearing, floor-by-floor, and they'll also point to the fact that there were not that many casualities."

The assault on the embassy was the highest profile attack among several, apparently coordinated, operations carried out in Kabul by insurgents Tuesday. As The Associated Press writes, there were also attempted suicide bombings in different parts of the city. "At least six Afghans — four police officers and two civilians — died," AP adds. No Americans were hurt.

While a spokesman for the Taliban said its fighters were responsible for the attacks, Kabul's deputy police chief and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker pointed at the Haqqani network, which has ties to both the Taliban and al-Qaida, has been behind other attacks in Kabul and also is known for its kidnappings of foreigners. [Copyright 2011 National Public Radio]

Iranian Court Reviews Plan To Offer Hikers Bail

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 11:07:00 GMT