Transcripts For WHUT Worldfocus 20091016 : vimarsana.com

tonight on worldfocus on this world food day, we look at renewed efforts to care for the 1 billion people across the globe who do not g enough to eat. how the right approach is being taken. four more u.s. troops are killed as yet more violence sweeps pakistan. what should the obama administration do? it s part of our weekly roundtable. what is the right age to begin formal education for children? a new study just out in great britain suggests that we are starting kids too young. and if you think of africa as just a continent of suffering and poverty, then co with us tonight to the polo fields of lagos, nigeria. from the world s leading reporters and analysts, here s what s happening around the world. this is worldfocus. major support has been provided by rosalind p. walter, and the peter g. peterson foundation, dedicated to promoting fiscal responsibility and addressing key economic challenges facing america s future, and additional funding is provided by the following supporters. good evening, i m martin savidge. thank you for joining us. we ll start tonight with a look at the problem of hunger around the world ashe united nations mashed this world food day. pope benedict declared today that access to food is more than a basic need, it is a fundamental right of individuals and peoples. he ted the world must take determined and rey effective action against hunger after the global economic crisis pushed the number of hungry peopleround the world to more than 1 billion. that s a billion, according to the u.n. s food and agriculture program. as we take a broad look at the problem in tonight s lead focus, we want to start with a basic question raised in this report by one of our partners, deutsch welle is the current approach to feeding the hungry fundamentally wrong? reporter: hunger and misery still pervade in some of the world s poorest countries. like this woman in western africa. aid agencies said the situation today is the worst it has ever been despite record grain harvests, falling commodity prices and international aid efforts. every day, more than 1 billion the planet don t get enough to eat. critics say seed delivered from developed countries is to blame. translator: it looks like this is mainly a program to drum up business for seed and fertilizer producers from industrialized nations. what we should be doing is strengthening the agricultural sectors of developing countries. imports from developed countries simply drives poor countries deeper into debt. reporter: aid experts say seed and fertilizer should be produced where it needed and should be adapted to local conditions. translator: for example, climate change is causing more flooding, which increases salt accumulation in soil. that means seed should be developed that are more tolerant of salts and more resistant to drought and flooding. reporter: bernard valter also called for better cooperation between the world bank, the eu and independent foundations. translator: right now, one hand doesn t know what the other is doing. what we need is better coordination, especially in the definition of objectives. reporter: everyone agreed that swift action is needed. every dray means more misery for the poor. that story from deutsche welle. for many other people around the world, the struggle involves a daily battle against rising food prices and the possibility of going hungry as a result. in egypt, for example, prices have gone up dramatically this year, and we want to take you there for a look at how rising prices are affecting those trying to feed themselves and those trying to make a living selling food. here is what amir el kahky of al jazeera english found on the streets of egypt. reporter: outside the alexandria bakery, pushing, shoving, screaming and shouting, this is what an egyptian bread store looks like on a good day. egypt is the number one importer of wheat in the world. it s a commodity in great demand. egyptians call bre aish derived from the arabic word meaning that s how important it is to them. translator: i have a family of four and have to travel six kilometers and pay double what i pay for bread on transport just to get here. reporter: 21% of egyptians live below the poverty line and double that amount barely above it, which means the slightest rise in the price of basic commodities can have a huge impact on whether people have enough money to put food on their plates. governme figures show that food prices have risen more than 23% this year, resulting in markets like these, once bustling with customers, now almost deserted. for example, a kilogram of tomatoes used to cost the equivalent of 30 cents only last january. now, the price of a kilogram is 45.the cost of cooking oil and canned food has also shot up affecting not only consumers, but also small retailers. translator: there hasn t been a single customer for the past three or four hours. i ve barely made $5 and i ve been open since 7:00 in the morning. reporter: and it s not only the poorer classes that are being affected. fish, meat and powell tree a staple food for the middle class, would become out of reach for them, too, if prices continue to rise at this rate. the price of an average kilogram of fish has increased by at least $1 over the past year, making it even more harder for poor egyptians to get, while it is taken for granted by those who live in richer countries. but despite the hike in prices and ever increasing demand, the government insists it doing what it can. it spends $19 billion on food subsidies a year, mainly for bread, but many complain of poor regulation a corruption. translator: yes, the government subsidizes the bread, but the officials and those responsible give it to us bad and the bread keeps getting smaller. the taste keeps getting worse. reporter: the united nations food and agriculture organization says egypt is not suffering hunger, yet many say the widespread poverty and the constant battle of supply and demand means that people like this man will continue to face the daily struggle of feeding a family of four. amir el kahky, al jazeera in the egyptian city of alexandria. joining us now for a broader discussion of where the world stands on this issue is anita sharma. she is north american coordinator of the united nations millennium campaign to end poverty and hunger. one goal of that campaign is to cut in half, by 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger from the level of 1990. welcome. hi, nice to be here. how has the global financial crisis affected food prices and the ability of people to buy food? today, the world food program and the food and agricultural organization released a study in which they said that 1 billion people are now suffering from hunger and that s a very troubling statistic. that is one-sixth of the world s population. what is happening, because of the financial crisis, poorer countries who did nothing to cause the crisis are feeling the effects because food prices themselves haven t really gone down. you know, there was a spike in food and commodity prices, 2006 to 2008. those levels are still 1 higher than they were in 2005, so that means food prices are still high. because of the financial crisis, poorer people have to spend more money on food and they have fewer resources now because of the financial crisis. they ve lost their jobs, remittances going home to them have decreased as well. foreign direct investment is down. overseas development assistance is down. so, it s really just kind of a double whammy. what about the issue of climate change? how has that impacted the problem? tremendously. climate change, like the financial crisis, was not caused by poor people and they re feeling the effects. so, climate change can affect the yields of crops because of drought or, in some cases, excessive rainfall or water, and so, a lot of those areas have now had decreased yields so that farmers might lose entire crop and not only have they lost their sustenance but they ve lost their livelihoods. one idea is trying to produce more food, genetic engineering and the use of chemicals. where do you stand on that? as a campaign, we wouldn t advocate for a particular kind of pesticide or chemical. what we re calling for is an increase in green technology and investment in agricultural productivity. through the green revolution of the 70s, for example, lifted many milons of people out of poverty because they were able to increase their crop yields. we need a new agricultural revolution. it doesn t necessarily have to rely on dirty technology, but can be done in such a way that the international community works together to find and develop better, better crops and more sustainable crops. we mentioned this is world food day. you also say there s an event coinciding over the weekend? yes, all throughout the weekend, if you go to standagainstpoverty.org, you ll see millions of people around the world. last year we broke a guinness book of records, 116 million people mobilized around the world saying they want to end extreme poverty. people from the slums of india to the streets of berkeley are coming together and we re working toward solutions to stand up and take action to end extreme poverty and to end hunger. anita sharma, thank you very much. thank you, nice to be here. the u.s. military said today that four more american troops have died in afghanistan. it happened yesterday in a bombing in the southern part of that country. two of the service members were killed instantly and two later died of eir wounds. soar this month, 25 americans have been killed in afghanistan. as president obama considers whether to commit more troops to that conflict with taliban insurgents. the power of the taliban in neighboring pakistan was underscored once more day by yet another deadly attack on a police station. it happened in the city of peshawar, the capital of northwest frontier province. three suicide bombers were ily fortified police k on the station. one drove a car filled with explosives while two others were on a motorcycle, including a woman. 13 people were killed in the attack. the escalating violence in pakistan and afghanistan, they are the first topics of our friday roundtable as we review some of the week s top stories. we re also going to look at iran s relations with china and russia, close relations that could make it difficult for the united states to enlist those countries in supporting possible new sanctions against iran. joining us once again is gideon rose, managing editor of foreign affairs magazine, and david david, former foreign correspondent for the new york times and cbs news and now editor of world policy journal. welcome to the two of you. thank you. let s start with afghanistan, the policy review, should we send more troops and if so, how many? we already know the general that charge has asked for 40,000 u.s. troops. the vice president doesn t like thathing far less, and then we have democratic senator carl levin who now, he s chairman of the senate foreign or senate armed services committee. he s proposing we send a lot more troops to train up the afghans. vietnamization, that s the word that comes back to me, and gideon, we talk about this contrasting and comparison of those two wars, but is this a good idea? well, training is absolutely a good idea and it s going to be part of the answer because this is an ongoing problem and at the end of the day, if there is an end of the day that s stable, the afghan government is going to be able to control its own territory with its own troops. do we have the time to do this? you need to do that alongside. i think it s a mistake to think of these as alternate options because there are jobs that we can do ourselves and that only the u.s. can do at this point while at the same time, we need to train the afghan forces and build them up so that they can eventually take over from us. so, you have to do what we need to do now while at the same time, training somebody else to do it so we can hand off to them later on. david, this is a compromise. essentially the obama administration saying we don t want to send a lot more troops. oh, it is certainly a compromise, there s no questioa. the problem is, it also takes the focus away fr the other key priority and that is building a civilian infrastructure that really works. what we really need to do is focus on the countryside, squeezing corruption of the countryside and government and so on and i m not sure even adding, training troops, we tried that not only in cambodia and vietnam, we tried iraq and that didn t seem to work all that well. eventually we had to draw out of concern in iraq and we ll probably have to do the same in afghanistan. if we don t worry about the civilian base. let s talk about the civilian government. there s going to be a runoff election, the new york times is saying that seems pretty certain. isn t this just the united states has forced this issue so much that we re demanding there be a runoff to legitimize the karzai government? to a certain extent but that doesn t mean it s necessarily wrong because there s no question in most people s minds that karzai stole the lead so forcing a runoff is, even if it s done at our behest, is actually in the service of getting a more legitimate outcome and so, it will be interesting to see what happens. stole the lead, i like it. you re going way out there. it s true. there s no question. the election was stolen in so many ways. it s just an example of how corrupt this government is from top to bottom and we have to find a way to squeeze that out if we re going to make progress there. let s move to pakistan right next door, escalating violence this week and now reports you have the taliban, al qaeda and punjabi militants all coming together as a critical force against the government. n is, are they trying to change government policy in pakistan or are these groups wanting to take over? oh, certainly like in some fashion to take over. what they really want to take over, in my view, and that is why pakistan is the single most strategically critical part of the world right now, afghanistan, leave that aside, pakistan is really where we should be focusing our attention, that s the war now because they have nuclear weapons. taliban, al qaeda, if they get a hold of a nuclear weapon from the pakistani arsenal, it s game over. what they want is, they re looking at that nuclear arsenal, they re also looking at the aces like south waziristan in without government interference. notes are their top two priorities, in my view. you d guy-go out on a limb here and say i think these actual recent attacks are a good thing. you say, how can that possibly be? because they are a sign of the militants overplaying their hand. everybody i talked to who knows the most about the situation says the pakistani arm retains its ability to control these groups, is in control of the country and is callously and cynically using them for its own purposes, vis-a-vis indiana afghanistan and so forth, and the pakistani army has to be convinced to shut these guys down and by having the militants actually attack the army and the government and official headquarters, it basically is a step towards getting the army to recognize this is their problem, not just our problem, and it ties into this question about the civilian aid package we ve just given them and the conditions on which the army is resisting. it wants lots of money and support and absolutely no string attached. and we want them to actually do things that are in ourntert and their own interests and this actually these attacks could help convie them to do what we want. with all due respect, you could have said the same thing actually about the roadside bomb attacks in iraq and it didn t work that way. this is something that is very critical and we are going to have to convince the pakistanis to deal with it. speaking of nukes, i want to turn to iran because this is a nation obviously trying to acquire nuclear power. the united states wants to impose tougher sanctions. this week we had russia and we had china and both have come out and said they don t really see sanctions as the way to go. my question is, then, where does the u.s. effort to try to impose tougher sanctions stand if you don t have china and russia on board? well, what s very interesting this week, i think, is putin and the chinese leadership getting together and talking among themselves. remember, putin was on a visit to china, a very important visit, i think. it was right after that that all of a sudden, this so-called condominium the west thought, united states thought they d arranged kind of fell apart. i think what they got together and said was, look, we each have our stakes there. let s kind of slow things down a little bit and see what happens. i m not persuaded they won t ultimately, if the iranians move resolutely towards a bomb, won t ultimately come in and say, all right, we have to come in and do whatever we can. neither wants iran to have a nuclear weapon. go along with it? welcome to life in the post-america they have more autonomy to buck our wishes. we re able to do what we want to do, but if you want to bring other countries along and these days economically, for sanctions, you need to, we re going to have to basically got to have a really clear-cut case or be really ge up on other things they want. gideon rose, david andelman, a pleasure, thank you. thank you. any time there is a new set of guidelines on educating young children, there is certain to be controversy, and that s exactly what s going on in great britain, where a major study on primary education has concluded that formal teaching of children ould not begin until age 6. this may not go over too well with some parents who hope their children can read proficiently by then, but it s worth listening to the arguments, which we hear in this report from jenny wivell of itn. reporter: all work and no play can do more harm than good according to at report. in the most comprehensive review of primaryducation in england for 40 years, the cambridge primary review calls the less formal teaching interception classes. there s plenty of evidence that shows its children are put into too formal a setting before they re ready and they become frightened to experiment in case perhaps they fail and once there s a sense of failure in a primary in a young child, then it s very difficult for them to engage with more formal learning as they get older. reporr: the 608-page review makes numerous recommendations saying that children under 6 should be taht using play-based learning rather than formal study. national assessment tests, s.a. s.a.t., should be scrapped and staffing should be reviewed to ae specialist teachers. the government, which decided to bring forward the school starting age from 5 to 4 earlier this year following its own review of primary education, has dismissed many of these proposals. the conservatives agree with them, that some of the recommendations are out of date. the head teacher at brentside primary school in west london where the youngest pupils are taught using play, has used her own experience to advise the authors of the cambridge primary review. teaching is what we call multisensory. it s about meeting the child s needs in a developmental approachhere children, they talk, they feel, they look, they listen, so we re using all the senses so whatever the children s preference of learning style might be, we re going to meet that. reporter: the national union of teachers believes the review is too comprehensive to be ignored. if formal study were to be delayed until children reach the age of 6, it would bring england in line with the majority of other european countries, including france and germany. jenny wivell of itn. also from britain tonight, a right-wing dutch politician who has infuriated muslims was allowed to return to britain today. gert wilders was permitted to enter the country after successfully suing the british government for banning him because of his comments about islam. he has compared the quran, for example, to adolf hitler s mein kampf, and has called for an end to muslim immigration. today, he described his return to bvictory for free speech. in geneva, the u.n. human rights council voted today to endorse the findings of a report it had commissioned on the war in gaza. it sent the report to the security council, possibly setting the stage for prosecution of israelis and palestinians accused of war crimes. the resolution passed by a vote of 25 to 6 with the united states among those opposing it. the report found evidence that some actions by both israel and the palestinians in gaza amounted to war crimes, although it was more critical of israel. the resolution calls on both sides to conduct credible investigations of their own or face referral of the matter to the international criminal court. we also want to know what you think about this issue. our question tonht do you think israel and/or the palestinians should face prosecution for their actions in the gaza war? you can give us your opinion by going to the how you see it section of our website at worldfocus.org. and in case you missed it, the weather made news this week in europe. there was unusually heavy snow in germany, poland and other parts of eastern europe, catching many people off-guard, coming as it did in the middle of october. and as winter approaches, the mayor of moscow has his own idea for dealing with heavy snows that usually hit his city. he plans to marshal the russian air force and air defense systems to intercept advancing storm fronts and seed them with dry ice and silver iodine particles, so at least some of the snow falls before it hits mosc. he says doing all that will cheaper than clearing city streets of snow. it is his own cold war. during the year we ve been on the air, we ve brought you many stories about life in africa that you probably had not seen before about that continent s cell phone boom, the chinese influence there, and the rise of the middle class. but even we were surprised by another story we came across today from nigeria. it comes to us from our partners at africa 24. reporter: nigeria s commercial capital, lagos, is home to over 17 million people and it is growing. the city is probably most famous for its traffic jams, but lagos is also gaining a reputation for its polo team. every year, the city s pol hosts the biggest tournament in africa. this time around, 30 teams participated and over 3,000 people came to watch. polo was introduced here by british colonialists in the early 1900s. the sport isn t as popular as soccer but local interest is growing fast. several companies sponsored this year s event, which cost millions of dollars. polo is an expensive sport. ch team fields 24 horses during a match and each horse c. most of nigeria s players are young, successful businessmen. this man trades in oil and gas. he s been playing polo for three years now. the ultimate aim is actually to build a very strong, strong team so that in the future, to compete not just in nigeria, but africa and, who knows, even europe, around the world. reporter: this man also comes to the polo club every week to train with friends. he wants more people to encourage their children to play the sport from an early age. a lot of people are getting into it. people are starting to find out it s not as snobbish or as, as you say, is not as out of reach as a lot of people sort of think. an average man can play polo. actually, while they call it the game of the richest, the money involved in the game, buying horses, buying your mallets, definitely there s money there. reporter: as the polo tournament drew to a close, a match for the veteran players was held. a few minutes later, the team shows off their skills on the pitch. the match proved a bit difficult for the older players are tired, but they still put on a good show. the player is down. the player is down. you can see it oh, let s put ouhands together for the old man! [ applause ] reporter: not many nigerians will be trading in their love for popular sports like football to take up polo, but these players hope that those who are interested know that there s an opportunity for them to try. that is worldfocus for a friday night and for the week. please remember to visit our website at worldfocus.org and let us know what you think about that controversial u.n. finding today about israel and the palestinians. my colleague, daljit dhaliwal, returns monday. i ll see you back here toward the end of next month. have a good night and a great weekend. captions by vitac www.tac.com major support world focus has been brought by rosalind g. walter and the peter g. peterson foundation, dedicated to promoting fiscal responsibility and addressing key economic challenges facing america s future. and additional funding is provided by the following supporters.