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Part 16 – The United Nations
NB: Please note this is not a word for word transcript of the audio programme
Abigail: In this series, we’re considering the major themes of BBC World Service
news programmes. Giving you the background facts and key language you
need. Today’s “big story” is the United Nations. Its central role in
international politics means the organisation is mentioned in news reports
daily and images of the UN are familiar to many of us - from the blue berets
of its peacekeeping forces, to the logo of the UN itself: a picture of the world
held in the 'olive branches of peace'.
But how many of us really understand how the UN works? Our reporter
Colin Babb went to meet BBC World Service reporter Pam O’Toole. Pam is
a former UN correspondent for the BBC and she’s also worked for the UN
in Geneva. She explained to Colin how it all began:
Clip Pam O'Toole
The United Nations was born in 1945 after the horrors of the Second World War, it developed
in a way from the League of Nations that had been formed after the First World War, but
collapsed. The aim was to preserve security through international cooperation.
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Colin: Why does a country join?
Pam: It started out with 51, now 190 members - so massive increase. People join because if
they haven't joined, they're not part of the international club. Most countries belong to it
because it gives them a voice in international affairs. Members have missions to the UN, they
meet other diplomats and bargain on resolutions.
Abigail: As we’ve mentioned, the UN is often in the news and there’s a whole UN
vocabulary that goes with it. Terms like veto, Security Council, General
Assembly - and perhaps the most frequent, ‘resolution’ and ‘draft
resolution’:
Clip Pam O'Toole
A resolution is a document which states ‘The UN resolves to do this or that’. It takes note of
the situation in a country, it believes that this step should follow and sometimes it lays down a
deadline that by this date such and such a country should have taken this step.
If it’s a General Assembly resolution, it doesn’t have any binding power over member states.
The General Assembly - which is kind of a parliamentary body almost, one country one vote -
can consider a draft resolution, adopt a draft resolution either by voting on it or by consensus -
but that won’t have any binding power. Any resolution adopted by the Security Council has
binding power on a member state so it should actually take action on what the Security
Council says.
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Abigail: The Security Council and the General Assembly are just two parts of the UN
- a massive organisation, which is made up of many smaller organisations.
Other important parts of the UN are the International Court of Justice and
the Secretariat, as well as 15 agencies and several other programmes and
bodies. The UN carries out scientific research, promotes health, distributes
aid, has a peacekeeping force. You might have heard of UNHCR, which is
the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, or UNICEF - the United
Nations Children's Fund.
The General Assembly is the main parliament of the UN, and the Secretariat
administers the UN, it carries out the day-to-day work of the organisation.
Altogether thousands of people work for the UN all round the world - with
its headquarters in New York and offices in Addis Ababa, Bangkok, Beirut,
and Santiago among others. The Security Council is made up of 15 member
states. 5 of those are permanent members, and the ways those members were
chosen very much reflects the politics of the time the UN was formed - the
war in Europe had just ended and the Cold War between communist and
capitalist countries was just emerging:
Clip Pam O'Toole
The Security Council has 15 member states on it, 5 of those are permanent - US, Russia,
China, France and the UK - the other ten are rotating members, so as they change, every year 5
countries will leave and 5 more will join.
Colin: How would you define the Security Council?
Pam: Its role is to maintain international peace and security. And it does that by convening at
any time - a member state can ask them to convene for an emergency session if it feels peace is
threatened. E.g. one country invades another, or Israel bombing Syria - or in late 80s Iran,
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which till then had not been keen on the Security Council, decided to call for convening when
the US shot down a civilian airliner. It’s the ultimate back-up for a country when they feel their
security is threatened by a particular event.
Clip News reports about resolutions and vetoing
Barnaby Mason
In Moscow, the Russians confirmed this co-ordination by announcing that their Foreign
Minister, Igor Ivanov, had discussed the resolution with his French and German
counterparts…
Greg Barrow
The Syrian ambassador to the United Nations, Faisal Mekdad, said his government was
preparing a draft resolution that council members would be asked to consider…
Clip Pam O'Toole
Colin: Can you give us an example of the way the Security Council voting works on a
resolution?
Pam: A resolution can be tabled before the Security Council - a country or a group of
countries will draw up what they think should happen. If you've just tabled a resolution, you
don’t want one of the permanent members to use their veto power. There might be
amendments if one of the permanent 5 threatens to veto. Or sometimes they refuse to make
amendments.
Colin: Which countries tend to veto the most?
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Pam: It depends - during the Cold War you’d get either the US or the Soviet Union ready to
veto at the drop of a hat. In recent years you've seen the US willing to veto on certain
resolution put forward on Israel. It depends on the times - who vetoes the most and why.
Abigail: The United Nations is central to so many news stories that journalists like
Pam O’Toole have to be able to explain UN processes clearly. But we’ve
seen how complex the United Nations is, and finding the language to
describe it is difficult, as she explained to our reporter Colin Babb:
Clip Pam O'Toole
Colin: As a journalist, what are the difficulties in trying to explain that to an audience or to
people who are not too sure about what the UN does?
Pam: Yes, I think who does what and when is always a matter of great confusion. The
Secretary General might come out and say, 'I think such and such should happen'. He might
prefer a particular course of action, but if the Security Council decides to go in a different
direction, it’s the Security Council vote that carries the weight. The Secretary General is the
human face of the United Nations. He's recognised around the world. But he's also a contact
point… advises… steers UN policy… and helps deciding how UN will develop and evolve.
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Abigail: What happens the UN in the coming years is still open to question. Pam
O'Toole:
Clip Pam O'Toole
The world has changed - now we're going to a decade where security seems to be the big
preoccupation. For instance if a terrorist group became armed with weapons of mass
destruction, should the UN consider a different approach than in the past? The UN is trying to
stay relevant and keep its position as a guarantor of international security in an ever changing
world.
Thứ Năm, 11 tháng 6, 2009
Part 16 – The United Nations
Part 10 – Information society
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Part 10 – Information society
Gary: [from Covent Garden in London] I’ve chosen one of the hottest days of the
year to take a short stroll from our BBC studios to nearby Covent Garden. I’m
visiting Hakim Kahtan, who’s manager of Global Tele-Call. This part of
London’s always popular with local office workers and with tourists. And
whether you’re in central London or Hong Kong (that’s where I first visited an
internet café), telephone and internet centres like this one are always busy.
They’re a powerful symbol of a revolution that’s taken place in the world of
technology.
Hakim, what facilities do you have here?
Clip
We have computers with a hard drive, we have scanners, we have international phone calls…
[full transcript is not available]
Gary: Who comes here - and why? What do they do?
Clip
Well, being in the city, we have different kind of visitors … [full transcript is not available]
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Gary: You say people come from all over the world and they come to you to
communicate with their families. How do they do that?
Clip
Through the internet … [full transcript is not available]
Gary: Thank you very much.
[studio] In this series, we’re considering the major themes that appear in BBC
World Service news programmes. Today’s “big story” is the Information
Society. We’ll focus on some of the issues and, of course, the language behind
the topic. “Information and communications technology”, the “information
society”, the “digital divide” – these terms have become buzz words in the
modern world. But what do they all mean? Alf Hermida is technology editor
for BBC News Online, and I asked him for some definitions -- starting with the
“information society” itself.
Clip Alf Hermida, BBC News Online, Technology Editor
This is a way of looking how society has changed. If we look back to a hundred years ago, we
were talking about the Industrial Revolution – countries becoming economic powers,
developing their businesses through the use of machines. Now the emphasis has shifted to
information, and technology is a tool by which people can gain that information - be it through
computers, on the Internet, or maybe over a mobile phone. And that’s what we’re talking
about here: using technology as a tool to get access to information, to find out what’s
happening in the world.
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Gary: And why is this such an important area? Why does it feature in the list of WS Big
stories, do you think?
Alf: In industrialised countries, we have well-stocked libraries, we have computers in most
offices, we have access to the Internet. So a lot of the information we need to do business, to
better ourselves through improving our careers is relatively available. In developing countries,
that’s much more of a problem. Say you are a farmer in Senegal, and you want to find out
what the price is for the mangos or the pineapples that you’re growing. When you come to
sell them to the trader, you don’t know what the price of that pineapple is in the capital. You
have to take, at face value, what you’re offered for it. But say you had a mobile phone, and
that on that mobile phone, you could find out what the price of pineapples was in the capital,
that would put you in a much stronger position when it came to selling your goods, and you
would get a much better price for your crops. That would make a very big difference to how
much money you earned every month.
Gary: So let’s say we’re talking about telephones and computers as you’ve suggested, what
do we mean when we say there’s a “digital divide”?
Alf: This all comes down to having access to information – being able to find information
about crop prices, about the latest research, even news about what’s happening in your country
or in your part of the world easily. In industrialised countries it’s all around us. Apart from
newspapers and radio stations, we now have the internet, or you can even get this sort of
information on your mobile phone. The problem for developing countries is that they don’t
have access to that information. If we look at, say, school pupils – people at school, in
industrialised countries, you could have a wealth of information at your finger tips, using the
internet and most schools will have computers and have access to the web. If you’re living in
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Bangladesh, your school might not have any computers, might not have access to the internet,
and that puts it at a big disadvantage when it comes to your education, when it comes to your
future prospects, and your chances of getting a good career and a good job.
Gary: Success in the modern world depends on having access to up-to-date
information – whether for business, farming, education, healthcare – for every
aspect of life. And in this so-called “information society”, there’s a digital
divide between the haves and the have-nots – those who are able to access
information and those who aren’t.
But, as Alf Hermida explains, the ability to access information depends on more
than just having the right technological equipment.
Clip Alf Hermida, BBC News Online, Technology Editor
There are several big problems when it comes to internet access. One of the big ones is that a
lot of the material on the internet is in English, and that instantly puts a barrier up to a lot of
people in the world because they have to speak at least some English to understand the
information there. The other thing is just the connection. To connect to the internet, you need
to connect either through cables or you can do it through radio waves. But in many parts of
the developing world, what you have is a very slow connection over a telephone line.
Telephone lines in a lot of these parts of the world are quite unreliable, they’re a bit crackly,
they might have some interference on the line. So what you then have is an internet connection
that, not only is slow, but could break at any moment. That is a huge problem for the
developing countries.
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Gary: We’ve talked a bit about the internet, then, the difference that that can make to people’s
lives. What about the phone? And particularly the mobile phone?
Alf: This is almost more revolutionary than the internet itself. Because what you’re finding
now is that in countries like Nigeria, almost everybody will have a mobile phone. In the past
they would have had to rely on trying to get a normal landline, something connected with wires
to the local exchange, and the problem is there wouldn’t be many of these telephones, they
would be expensive. But now mobile phones are opening the world of communication to just
about everybody. So, selling goods is easier; sharing ideas is much more possible now than in
the past; or even just giving advice to colleagues or friends.
Gary: As a journalist working for the BBC, do you find that there are any language issues that
you have to bear in mind when you’re preparing reports about this subject?
Alf: One of the big temptations with technology is always to lapse into jargon. Because what
you find when you talk to people who work in this area, researchers who have come up with
new and interesting ideas, is that they use jargon all the time. It’s a shorthand way of
describing what they’re doing. And your role as a journalist is almost to translate that, to
translate their technical jargon into words that you and I will understand so that when you read
a story, when you listen to a story, it makes sense to you. And not only does it make sense,
but you can see why it matters, why it’s important, and why it could make a difference to your
way of life.
Gary: Slowly but surely, the new information and communication technologies are
reaching even the remotest corners of the globe. A BBC radio series called E-
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Villages visited a group of imaginative projects that are bringing the internet to
rural communities in the Indian sub-continent. In one programme, Mukti Jain
Campion travelled to a community radio station in Sri Lanka.
Clip E-villages
[full transcript is not available]
Part 12 – International security
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Part 12 – International security
Clip
News stories [full transcript is not available]
Gary: In this series, we’re considering the major themes that appear in BBC World
Service news programmes. Today’s “big story” is international security. We’ll
focus on some of the issues and, of course, the language behind the topic.
Rupert Pengelley is technical editor for Jane’s Information Group – an
organisation that publishes information about defence operation, technologies
and transport. The group produces publications such as: “Jane’s Defence
Weekly”, “Jane’s Fighting Ships”, “Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft” … and one
of its newer titles is “Jane’s School Safety Handbook”.
Rupert Pengelley lives in South-West London, and I took a short train journey
to meet him to get some expert advice.
Clip
Train
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Clip Rupert Pengelley
Gary: Now as part of my preparation for our interview today, I did a search on the BBC
News website. I typed in the word “weapon” and got some 2,071 search results. Is there any
way, first of all, that we can categorise the kinds of weapons that appear in the world, and are
reflected in news stories?
Rupert: I think the … obviously … the kinds of weapon that immediately come to mind are
rifles, and you know artillery pieces … if you like, the conventional weapons. But what you
see mostly are so-called small arms. These are the type of weapon you can carry in your
hands. But weapons, of course, take many different forms, information itself is regarded as a
weapon to the extent if you can influence somebody to do what you want them to do by
bombarding them with either threats or with information that would lead them to the
conclusion that it would be silly to resist, then that war of words has done the fighting for you.
But at the other extreme, of course, you get so-called weapons of mass destruction, which are
loosely taken to mean nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, which are those which are not
readily aimed at particular points. Their effect is rather too wide-ranging, much more widely
ranged, ranging than an artillery shell, for example.
Gary: You referred earlier to “conventional” weapons, and another term I’ve heard is “non-
conventional” or “unconventional” weapons – what exactly do we mean by those? Is it to do
with nuclear and chemical and biological weapons?
Rupert: That’s a very difficult one. Conventional weapons are those which have existed down
the ages – meaning rifles or machine guns or canon of one kind or another. It's extended to
include aircraft with their bombs and so on. But, unconventional weapons, ironically, tend to
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mean, terrorist weapons … or can mean terrorist weapons … those which are made up of
everyday items from the High Street. You could describe that as an unconventional weapon.
But it can also mean, as you’ve suggested, chemical or biological weapons.
Gary: Rupert Pengelley from Jane’s Information Group. More from him later.
The area of definitions was a good starting point when I spoke to our Defence
Correspondent, Jonathan Marcus. My first question for him was about the
phrase “international security”. In the context of our World Service news
bulletins, what does “international security” mean?
Clip Jonathan Marcus, BBC World Service Defence Correspondent
I think people listening to our news are clearly going to hear a lot of stories that deal with, for
example, fighting in Iraq. They’re going to hear stories about the spread of so-called weapons
of mass proliferation – that’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and of course the very
long range missiles that are used to carry those weapons. They’re going to hear a lot of stories
about what people refer to as international terrorism.
Clip
George W. Bush [full transcript is not available]
Clip Jonathan Marcus, BBC World Service Defence Correspondent
Gary: Well, let’s look at this issue of international terrorism, if you like. And we sometimes
hear the phrase “war against terrorism”. Who’s involved in that war? Who’s the enemy?
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Jonathan: I think it’s a controversial term. I mean, clearly the idea of a war against terrorism
is very much the position of the Bush Administration in the US. They affectively declared a
war against terror in the wake of the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon
in New York and Washington respectively. It’s quite clear that there is a growing
phenomenon of a form of terrorism which sees simply large casualty tolls as one of its goals. It
tends to be a form of activity that is very much directed against the West and particularly
against the US and its allies. It’s a little difficult because, clearly, if you have the war, one
assumes there’s a set of targets you can attack. And, of course, that is much more difficult
because people who are branded as terrorists often tend to be distributed in a host society.
They’re very difficult to track down – very difficult to pinpoint.
Gary: As you’ve said, it’s very hard to identify where this war is taking place. Will we ever
know when it’s over?
Jonathan: Well, I think that is another of the … I think you’re right to ask that question …
because that is another one of the areas where, perhaps, using this word war is not perhaps
terribly appropriate. In a normal war, if you want to call it that, there are military
engagements, there are battles, there are clashes. Sadly, people die. Usually there is some
form of conclusion. I think the so-called war against terrorism is very difficult and very
different. I think this is something a little like crime. You might as well say there is a war
against crime. The question is how you best go about minimising it, fighting it, and dealing
with it when it erupts.
Gary: A comfortable sitting room in South-West London seems an odd place to find
oneself talking about acts of war and terrorism. And in my conversation with
Rupert Pengelley of Jane’s Information Group, we moved on to a discussion of
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the weapons that are frequently mentioned in news bulletins.
Clip Rupert Pengelley
Well, let’s take missiles in themselves, as a generic category, as a general grouping. A missile
is deemed to be a rocket which is guided. A missile is a more discriminatory weapon than a
rocket. One has guidance in and the other doesn’t. Now, an air-to-air missile is simply that
which is fired from one aircraft against another. An air-to-ground missile or air-to-surface
missile is one which is fired from the air against something which is on the land, or against
something which is at sea?
Gary: So can you have a surface-to-surface missile as well?
Rupert: Exactly right. And that’s precisely what a Scud missile is. A Scud is, of course, a
particularly well-known one, which is closely related to the V2 rocket … so-called in WW2 …
but it’s one to which a rudimentary form of guidance has been put – such that it will come
down within a few kilometres of the target against which it’s fired.
Gary: And what about a Cruise missile then? What’s a Cruise missile?
Rupert: A Cruise missile is generally one which is … flies in the atmosphere, and therefore
takes a flatter trajectory and goes more slowly than a ballistic missile. A ballistic missile has a
great looping trajectory … possibly all the way up into space, and then it comes down in a sort
of vertical trajectory onto the top of its target. A Cruise missile will fly following the contours
of the earth towards its target, and will do lots of turns and so on to confuse people on the
ground as to where it’s heading. And it is very accurate – much more accurate than Scud
missile, for example.
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Gary: The next category of words I’ve picked out are all to do with bombs, I think: Smart
bombs, dirty bombs. Maybe we could talk about those. What’s a Smart bomb?
Rupert: Smart was the word which was invented about 15-20 years ago to describe a bomb
… which is a cylinder full of explosives with fins on the end which you dropped from a great
height. And they attached the word Smart to it to signify that it had some form of guidance.
And in some cases, the guidance was clever than others. So it went from being a guided bomb
to a Smart bomb, which usually means it has two or three types of guidance in it.
Gary: Now it strikes me that any kind of bomb is not something you’d want landing anywhere
near where you are … but what do we mean by a dirty bomb?
Rupert: A dirty bomb is a version of a nuclear weapon. It’s normally considered to be an
improvised device, in which someone has taken a mass of radioactive material and put
explosive, conventional high explosive inside that lump. And then triggers the high explosive
to blow the radioactive material over a wide area. And that sits there radiating for years, and
the effect is that you have to evacuate that area.
Gary: And so, in that case, the dirty element is the radioactive material?
Rupert: Yes I mean it’s metaphorically dirty – it’s dirty in the sense that it leaves radiation
everywhere, and it’s dirty in the sense that it is an underhand, disallowed category of weapon.
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Gary: Rupert Pengelley.
As we’ve heard, there’s a great deal of specialist, technical vocabulary
associated with stories about war and international security. How does this
affect those who work as journalists and news reporters? I asked Defence
Correspondent, Jonathan Marcus.
Clip Jonathan Marcus, BBC World Service Defence Correspondent
If you start speaking as if you are a soldier, or an arms salesman, or a minister of defence in a
government, you are going to lose your audience pretty quickly. People don’t necessarily have
the same vocabulary, the same terms and so on. So I think in a sense you have to do a little bit
of a translation, you have to translate some of these things into terms and phrases that ordinary
people will understand.
Gary: Our defence correspondent, Jonathan Marcus, one of a number of BBC
journalists who have the difficult task of reporting on acts of violence
throughout the world.
Part 11 – Pros and cons of globalisation
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Part 11 – Pros and cons of globalisation
Clip
Anti-globalisation protest (actuality)
Gary: “Anti-globalisation” protestors take to the streets to make their feelings known.
Clip
News story
Gary: “Globalisation” is a buzzword in our news bulletins, though according to some
commentators, it’s by no means a new phenomenon. Mark Gregory is the BBC
World Service Business Correspondent. I’ve been speaking to him about
globalisation, and I asked him first for his definition of the term.
Clip Mark Gregory, BBC World Service Business Correspondent
Well, “globalisation” has become a kind of catch-all phrase that’s used to describe a process of
seemingly ever-greater economic integration – a process in which economic events in one
place pretty soon have huge implications almost everywhere else. So there’s lots of different
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aspects to it. From the consumers’ point of view, increasingly people think in terms of global
brands: NIKE sells its “Sneakers” throughout the world, Coca-cola is bought in many different
countries of the world. That’s one aspect of it. Then, of course, there’s the sort of … the
economists are focused on things like the enormously increased volumes of international trade.
And many commentators associate that with this nebulous process of globalisation. And then,
of course, there’s just the increasing pace of technological change – the fact that using modern
communications via the internet you have instant communications everywhere; and, of course,
using jet travel, you can travel from one place to another all over the world. So, increasingly,
what happens in one place seems to affect almost everywhere else … and that’s what’s clubbed
together as “globalisation”.
Gary: Technological developments have made communication and travel much easier,
so that the world seems to be a smaller place. This has resulted, for example, in
greater international trade and foreign investment, both of which are signs, or
manifestations of what the experts call “globalisation”.
There are also cultural aspects of the globalisation process – such as the
increasing use of English and the appearance of similar (often American)
products in different parts of the world.
Mark Gregory again.
Clip Mark Gregory, BBC World Service Business Correspondent
The manifestations include global companies, the names that everybody’s heard of: Sony,
Microsoft, IBM. And also the fact that you’ve got common brands that are on sale in many
different parts of the world. You’ve got global financial institutions: the IMF, the World Bank
and so forth. You have global financial markets.
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Gary: So if we look at all those things which you’re lumping together and calling
“globalisation”, can we start to unpick, perhaps, the reasons, the causes, for those things
happening?
Mark: Well, it’s partly technology … the fact that transport is so much quicker than it used to
be, the fact that we have the internet, that kind of thing. There’s also the growth of global
financial institutions – the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the growth of global
financial markets, the growth of global companies – huge, enormous companies. So,
increasingly, it makes sense to talk in terms of … well, it’s ridiculous to say that everything is
“globalised”, but that the boundaries, the economic barriers between countries have broken
down. And so … many companies and much of the economy works on a … has a global
perspective.
Gary: So, we’re saying that technology is one of the reasons behind globalisation. What about
trade agreements, what role have they played?
Mark: Well, a lot of people have placed enormous emphasis on the move towards the
liberalisation of trade. And this is through institutional things in the last half a century or so,
since the first of the General Agreements on Tariff and Trade, we’ve had the bringing down of
tariff barriers between countries.
Gary: So what are some of the benefits of this new world we’re living in?
Mark: Well, the theoretical benefits are that, if you have globalisation with all those things that
we’ve been talking about, you have greater efficiency and thus greater wealth - and that in
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some cases, some poor countries have lifted themselves out of poverty because of their access
to global markets. And those people would say that people are a lot better off and a lot better
educated in China than they were fifteen years ago, because of that country’s phenomenal
economic growth. And that’s been tied in to the fact that China’s involved in international
trade. And countries like South Korea and Japan grew in the same way before it. So, there
have been some definite winners and it’s, if you like, globalisation provides a forum in which
opportunities for many people and many countries are greatly increased.
Gary: But if there are winners, are there losers as well?
Mark: Of course, a lot of people would say that these impacts have not only been positive,
some have been negative; and that the process of globalisation is a process in which, if you
like, some countries win and others lose. So that, for example, if you’ve got very cheap labour
like China, you expand enormously in areas that involve cheap labour, to the detriment of other
countries which have got quite cheap labour. And yet if you’ve got very good technology like
Japan, say, you do very well, which means that there are also losers: other people who don’t
have quite such good technology as Japan who’ve lost out. And a lot of people say, well,
that’s actually negative. And, of course, globalisation is often is associated with the growth of
Global Corporations, in which there are fewer restrictions on what they can do. Some people
say this is good, and others say well, there are many problems with it.
Gary: Finally then, Mark, as a journalist, when you’re reporting news stories about
globalisation, are there any particular language issues to bear in mind?
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Mark: Yes, the war against multi-syllable words, I think. “Globalisation” that in itself has got
quite a few little syllables – my maths isn’t good enough to work out how many it is. And
then, of course, you’ve got “multi-lateralism” – that’s the process in which lots of countries are
involved, as opposed to “bi-lateralism” – the process in which just two countries are involved.
Lots of syllables, and lots of jargon floating around. So to try and avoid some of that is, if you
like, a kind of constant war. On the one hand, people have to know … to understand the
jargon; but where possible, you have to avoid it. Also, jargon changes over time. We used to
have “multinational companies”. Now the buzzword is “transnational companies”. And the
reason for that is, of course, is that now people think of companies as so multinational that
they don’t belong in lots of different countries, they kind of belong across – hence the word
“trans”. We live in a world in which events in one place have enormous ramifications for
almost everywhere else. So, if you like, you’ve got to be able to tease out what those are.
And the fact that we now live in such a complicated place, there’s a lot, if you like, of
reporting required just to explain: well, how has the world changed? and to explain it in such a
way that it makes sense.
Gary: One manifestation of globalisation is the spread of similar products around the
world. These include well-known brands such as Coca-Cola and Nike … and -
with a slogan “One World: One Taste” - the American fast-food chain
McDonald’s. There are 30, 000 restaurants in more than 120 countries, and
McDonald’s has become a symbol of the American way of life. But it seems
that food tastes in the United States may be beginning to change … Research
shows that people are eating fewer burgers and hot dogs and trying to eat
healthier food. Our reporter Rob Watson has been finding out more, and we
meet him first at a drive-thru burger restaurant in Washington DC.
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Clip - Rob Watson's recording in Washington
[full transcript is not available]
Gary: In the United States millions of hamburgers are sold every day. For many
Americans this is the national dish.
Clip - Rob Watson's recording in Washington
[full transcript is not available]
Gary: But there are new rivals on the scene.
Clip - Rob Watson's recording in Washington
[full transcript is not available]
Gary: At Chipotle’s in downtown Washington, for example, they’re selling fresh
Mexican food – burritos stuffed with beans and rice. Actually, this chain is
owned by McDonalds as well. Perhaps it’s part of their response to the
growing demand for a healthy diet.
Clip - Rob Watson's recording in Washington
[full transcript is not available]
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Gary: If one of the features of globalisation is that what happens today in America
happens in the rest of the world tomorrow, then there may soon be a new chain
of restaurants alongside your local McDonalds. But are eating habits really
changing? Here’s a final word from Michael Sansolo, senior vice president of
education and research for the Food Marketing Institute.
Clip - Michael Sansolo
[full transcript is not available]
Part 14 – Free trade
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Part 14 – Free trade
NB: Please note this is not a word for word transcript of the audio programme
Abigail: Discussions about free trade are often in the news, and they bring with them
talk of summits and conferences, of tariffs and subsidies...
Earlier in the series we touched on trade agreements when we looked at the
language of globalisation. That was before the World Trade Organisation
talks in Cancun collapsed - we’ll look at the reasons why later.
But first - what is free trade - and does it actually exist anywhere? Andrew
Walker is Economics and Business Correspondent at the BBC World
Service, and if anyone knows it should be him:
Clip Andrew Walker
Well I suppose what people mean by free trade is the situation in which there is no government
imposed obstacle to trade between two or more countries. There is something like it in the
European Union - tariffs have been abolished for decades now and there are no quota
restrictions.
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Abigail: So the European Union is an example of a group of countries where free
trade exists. But that free movement of goods between countries - without
government restrictions, or trade barriers - is very difficult to negotiate.
Which is why we most often come across issues of free trade, when two
countries are locked in dispute about it. The WTO seems to function as a
kind of free-trade ‘court’, where member countries can take their complaints
about trade with other member countries. Andrew Walker explains the
WTO’s relationship with free trade:
Clip Andrew Walker
It's not right to say the WTO is about free trade but its big vision is freer trade. It’s more about
managed, slightly restricted trade. If new barriers are imposed in way which breaches WTO
rules, member countries can make a complaint to WTO - it’s a bit like a court and they come
up with a ruling either dismissing or upholding the complaint. They might make them remove
tariffs e.g. US steel: Bush put new higher tariffs on steel and EU complained to WTO - WTO
said tariffs were inconsistent and US ought to remove them.
Abigail: So members can complain if other members break WTO rules. And those
rules have been agreed on over a series of WTO conferences, like the one in
Cancun in September. But the Cancun talks collapsed because of
disagreements over what are known as the Singapore Issues - Andrew
Walker explains why:
Clip Andrew Walker
Four issues. They're called that because they were discussed in Singapore in 1996. Most
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contentious is foreign investment - should WTO have rules allowing governments to limit
foreign investment. EU is keen on rules constraining what govt can do and developing
countries against it. I can’t see how they’ll resolve it.
Clip Nick Ravenscroft
It actually costs only half as much to produce cotton here as in, say, America. But these
African farmers simply can't match the artificially low Western prices and still turn a profit. So
along with three neighbours, Mali has complained to the World Trade Organisation.
Abigail: BBC reporter Nick Ravenscroft reporting from Mali, which has brought a
complaint before the WTO about US subsidies for cotton farmers.
Economics and Business Correspondent Andrew Walker explains why
subsidies and surpluses matter:
Clip Andrew Walker
EU has a system in which farmers are given EU subsidies for what they produce - makes up
diff between agreed price and the price people are willing to pay - tops up farmers' incomes.
One consequence has long been farmer have incentive to produce more. How does EU deal
with surpluses? One technique which enrages many other countries is practice of selling
surplus on international market which drives down prices and makes difficult for farmers e.g. in
Nigeria - they face lower price than they would have been able to get were it not for EU
subsidies.
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Abigail: And just as Mali has complained to the WTO about US agricultural
subsidies, the US itself has made a complaint - against the European Union.
This time the obstacle to free trade is a ban on imports. Andrew Walker
explains:
Clip Andrew Walker
In addition to tariffs and quotas, other policies governments have that restrict imports; most
obvious are environment and health - one example EU ban on imports of beef where cattle
have been treated with growth promo hormones. They argue they can cause cancer. US say -
not true and complained to WTO. WTO rules say you can ban if you have scientific evidence.
WTO found EU didn’t have evidence, and ordered EU to remove ban. EU consumers feel
strongly so EU politicians decided to keep ban. EU has recently said it does have new evidence
and offered it to US and we’ll see how they respond.
Abigail: And if the WTO decides that a trade barrier is against WTO rules - what
happens next? Well the WTO allows members to retaliate - to put up their
own trade barriers. In the case we’ve just heard between the US and the EU
- the US has retaliated with a series of import tariffs on goods from Europe:
Clip Andrew Walker
WTO allows countries to take retaliatory measures if they don't get what they want. In the case
of EU against US beef EU refused to comply with WTO ruling so US was given permission to
impose tariffs on range of EU goods into US. US banned: cashmere sweaters, pecorino cheese.
Countries do it when they can but their own consumers pay.
Part 13 – Migration
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Part 13 – Migration
NB: Please note this is not a word for word transcript of the audio programme
Gary: Today’s “big story” is migration. We’ll focus on some of the issues and, of
course, the language behind the topic, and we’ll look at how migration is
reported in the news.
The International Organisation for Migration is based in Geneva. It has
members from more than a hundred countries, and works with migrants and
governments to set up policies to ‘manage migration flows for the benefit of
all’.
I spoke on the telephone to the IOM’s spokesperson Jean-Philippe Chauzy, and
I wondered first of all if he could provide us with a working definition of the
term “migrant”.
Clip Jean-Philippe Chauzy
Well, yes. The general definition is for someone who will leave his or her own country to
work abroad for a period of time – several months, years. Now, if looking for broader
definition, also looking at people who decide to circulate, in other words migrate from one
country to another, following opportunities on global labour market. Or, at other end of
spectrum, people smuggled across borders in clandestine fashion and will end up in exploitative
networks – enforced labour or sexual exploitation.
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Gary: Migration itself isn’t a new phenomenon. In fact, during the 19th
-century,
roughly one in ten people could be classed as an international migrant. But how
does this compare with the situation today? I asked Jean-Philippe Chauzy why
people choose to leave their country of birth, and how many people are doing
this.
Clip Jean-Philippe Chauzy
Well, first, I think fair to say no country in world unaffected by international migration flows.
Today, most countries are countries of origin/transit/destination for migrants – or all three.
The numbers we have: stock number for international migrants today worldwide, hovering
around 175 migrants, roughly one person in 35. In more developed regions of world,
percentage is higher: 1 in 10.
Gary: Well, as you say, those are quite staggering figures. And I guess people are moving for
different reasons?
Jean-Philippe: Yes absolutely. If you’re looking at economic migration, mostly it’s the lack
of socio-economic prospects at home that will push people to leave, to migrate in search of
better opportunities. And that’s one of main “push” factors. But you could also look at issue
of bad governance; and also fact you have people who flee conflict, civil strife, ecological
degradation. All these are push factors.
Gary: And if there are these push factors that lead people to migrate, I guess you might refer
as well to “pull factors”, what are these pull factors? What might these pull factors be?
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Jean-Philippe: Amongst the pull factors, the fact that migrants know will find better paid
employment in the country of destination – most of the time in informal sector. There’s also
fact that in many countries, large Diasporas will facilitate the arrival of the migrants. Also fair
to say now highly sophisticated criminal networks, that are operating, smuggling or trafficking
networks operation worldwide, and that are making huge amounts of money, billions of dollars
every year, helping migrants to cross borders illegally – these are smugglers; or helping
migrants cross borders illegally, to keep those migrants in exploitative networks – we’re
looking now at trafficking networks.
Gary: Could we look at another couple of terms that often appear in news stories, one is
remittances and the other is to do with the brain drain. Maybe let’s start with the brain drain?
Jean-Philippe: Well, the brain drain, this expression has been around for decades, it qualifies,
the fact that skilled human resources are leaving developing countries and are benefiting
developed countries, in other words a doctor or nurse might be trained in a developing country
and then person will find employment in more developed country and leave country of origin.
Of course, a great loss for the country of origin.
Gary: Is there anything we can do about this brain drain?
Jean-Philippe: Well, we’re saying at IOM migration can be and should be associated to
development of countries of origin. You can ask qualified migrants to go back to countries of
origin for short periods of time, so they can transfer their knowledge and skills. The other
thing is, migration can be assoc to development if looking at issue of remittances – money sent
back by Diaspora to country of origin. The figures are quite staggering. World Bank figures
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for Africa hover around 80 billion dollars a year. In other words, amount of remittances in
Africa is higher than development aid. So has to be way to capitalise on these remittances, to
make sure they contribute to economic development of the home country.
Gary: The benefits of migration can be substantial. The country of origin can benefit
economically when migrants send money back to their families at home.
Migrant workers can acquire skills and knowledge to take home to their own
communities. And the country of destination may be able to use migrant
workers to fill job vacancies, where they don’t have enough skilled labour of
their own. But not everyone is a winner: there can be problems as well as
benefits.
Clip Jean-Philippe Chauzy
A lot of people want to migrate but there are few channels to allow them to do so legally.
What most would-be migrants will do is look at ways of using smuggling and trafficking
networks. That has very serious impact – on well-being of migrant who might find self in
dangerous and exploitative situation. But also on host country because irregular migrants will
never be able to integrate. Won’t be able to send children to school, rights abused. One of the
other aspects, because fewer channels to migrate legally, and because turn to smuggling, this
benefits highly-organised criminal networks, making billion of dollars smuggling and trafficking
people – it’s become in a way the new slave trade.
Gary: Jean-Philippe Chauzy of the International Organisation for Migration.
In the final part of today’s programme, I’d like to play you part of a report I
saw on BBC television news. The report explains how Britain’s health service
has been hiring nurses from the Philippines because of a shortage of trained staff
in British hospitals. As we’ve discovered in The Big Story today, there can be
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winners and losers in this type of exchange. For example, you’ll hear about the
financial benefits for those who find work in Britain. But you’ll also hear about
a “brain drain” taking place in the Philippines as a result. The reporter is Clive
Myrie.
Clip Clive Myrie reporting from Manila
[Full transcript is not available]
Part 15 – Fundamentalism
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Part 15 – Fundamentalism
NB: Please note this is not a word for word transcript of the audio programme
Abigail: The term Fundamentalist has been discussed a lot in recent years and you will
probably have heard it in connection with terror attacks and it seems to be
linked with Islam rather than other religions. We’ll find out why those
connections have been made - and whether they're fair - later on.
But first what is a ‘fundamentalist’? For the answer I went to Ben Cohen, a
radio producer who’s been making religious programmes for the last ten
years.
Clip Ben Cohen
The word fundamentalist dates back 100 years - a group of Christians in America felt modern
ideas were edging out key beliefs, fundamentals in Christianity - they produced a series of
booklets called ‘the Fundamentals’ - things like the resurrection, also bible being absolutely
true - completely without error. So originally fundamentalist meant somebody believing what
they thought were fundamentals of religion. I think it's moved on from there. The thing with
the word is, people all use it differently - it can be used as a term of abuse. If somebody is very
religious and very intolerant of somebody who doesn’t believe the same thing as them, they can
be called fundamentalist - it’s a term of abuse.
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Abigail: So what does a Christian fundamentalist believe?
Ben: Some of the important things are that they hold to traditional ideas over modern ones.
They believe that the bible is accurate in everything it says so if the bible says that earth is
6,000 years old and Adam and Eve were real people - if they find science challenging that,
they’ll hold to the bible and say science is wrong. In the same way - if man is head of
household, not wife, then they’ll hold to that rather than modern ideas of equality.
Abigail: I’d like to come to the word secular. Can that be considered as a kind of opposite? Or
is that modern?
Ben: […] I don’t think one word is the opposite of fundamentalist but the modern world, the
secular world that looks at other ideas like science, changing opinions - those are the things
that make people define themselves as fundamentalists. Because they have ideas that are
challenging them, fundamentalism is a reaction against ideas like science and secular ideas.
Abigail: These days we're likely to hear the word fundamentalist attached to Islam - how did
that happen?
Ben: I think a lot of fundamentals that are true for Christians are true for believers of other
religions. You have a set of holy traditions, maybe holy books, and you hold to those very
passionately - so with Islamm, an Islamic fundamentalist […] In Islam they would think that
the holy Koran cant be contradicted by modern thinking.
Abigail: We’ve heard how ‘fundamentalism’ began with a group of American
Christians around 100 years ago, as a direct challenge to secular -
non-religious - ways of thinking.
But that battle between fundamentalism and secularism is still going on - and
as recent news reports have shown - it’s going on right at the heart of the
Anglican Church:
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Clip News Report on the Anglican row
Few would want to be in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s shoes as he attempts to hold together
a communion at war with itself over the issue of homosexuality. […] The crisis was sparked in
North America. In August the governing body of the American Church confirmed the election
of Gene Robinson as the Bishop of New Hampshire […]
Abigail: Gene Robinson was recently elected as Anglican Bishop of New Hampshire
In the United States. But Gene Robinson is an openly gay man, who lives
with his male partner. This has caused problems in the Anglican Church
between people who support the inclusion of gay men and women in the
church and those who do not.
How can there be a row between fundamentalists and modernisers within a
religious organisation? Producer of religious programmes Ben Cohen
explains:
Clip Ben Cohen
That’s a good example of fundamentalism versus modern secular thinking because on one hand
there's a group of Christians say the bible seems to say God isn't happy with homosexuality, on
the other hand there's a group of Christians who say bible is inspired by God, but we need to
look at it in fresh light with new knowledge we have about homosexuality. A fundamentalist
would say the bible has last word on this, and it had last word when it was written 2,000 years
ago or whenever that bit was written.
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Abigail: So fundamentalists are not only fighting against secularism - against a lack of
religion. They’re also in opposition to religious modernisers, people who
believe that religion can be re-thought, can adapt to modern life.
But in recent years the word fundamentalist seems to have become strongly
associated with Islam - and with terrorism - with for example the attack on
the World Trade Centre or the bombing in Bali.
Now that the word fundamentalist is so often used to link Islam with
violence and intolerance, I asked Ben Cohen whether he would ever use the
word himself:
Clip Ben Cohen
I would be careful because every person uses it differently, and it can mean slightly different
things depending on whether you’re a Hindu or a Christian and remember, you can be a
fundamentalist and not have extreme or intolerant opinions.
Abigail: Why do I feel that the word is linked with terrorism - is this something to do with Al
Q'aeda, bombings in Bali, what’s happened recently in Turkey?
Ben: Yes, the word fundamentalist has been used so much in connection with terrorist attacks
- not true of only Islam. You have to remember that not all fundamentalists would go to the
extremes of bombing - they're just people who happen to hold very traditional opinions, but are
peaceful. But it has been connected with the Islamic group Al Q'aeda. And that’s fair enough
because one of the things Al Q'aeda feels strongly about is that the Koran has made a set of
laws and they feel the west is bringing in secular fashions that are watering down Islam. That is
a very fundamentalist idea - that purity of teaching is being spoilt, and that is one thing that is
motivating Al Q'aeda in these attacks.
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Abigail: When journalists in western media talk about religion and fundamentalism - do they
really understand what they're talking about?
Ben: Not knocking the BBC because I do think they try very hard. But often I do hear the
term fundamentalism or extremist kicked about in a way that suggests to me that they're using
them lazily. Certainly in the West - religion is less and less an important part of people's lives
so there is this feeling that somebody can be looking at something very complicated from the
outside and not stepping into the shoes of somebody who believes something very
passionately, and it is hard to think yourself into mindset of somebody from a very different
culture for whom religion is vastly more important than somebody who is a journalist in, say,
London or Paris.
Abigail: Looking at the word fundamentalism - how does that misunderstanding affect the
language they might use?
Ben: The word fundamentalism is so complicated and can sometimes end up being used as a
dirty word - it’s a short hand for saying they take their religion far too seriously, they're
extremists, they quite possibly have a bomb in their bag and that can be unfair on people who
have very devout religious beliefs but wouldn't harm a fly.
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Abigail: Today we’ve heard how the word fundamentalist can be used as a term of
abuse about other people - implying that they're intolerant and even violent.
But it is still a word which can be used accurately to describe many people
round the world who believe that society should operate according to
traditional religious teachings.
And we’ve heard how in opposition to fundamentalists are modernisers and
secular thinkers - people who believe morality can change, be re-thought.
Ben Cohen explains:
Clip Ben Cohen
The situation in Iran is incredibly complicated. But I do think it comes down to this question of
fundamentalism again. Because one thing fundamentalists do feel quite strongly about is that
their teachings aren't just true for them - they're true for everybody. […] A lot of people
believe that the country should be governed jointly by religious leaders, to impose if you like
holy living, Islamic living on the whole country. […] At the moment you have a government
where Islamic teachers play the key role and some people aren't happy with the amount of
power they exert and they feel they should have more freedom to vote for who they like about
how they lead their life and they feel too much is being imposed by the religious nature of
government at the moment.
Part 9 – HIV / AIDS
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Part 9 – HIV / AIDS
Gary: HIV/AIDS features in news stories almost every day of the year. It’s a subject
that concerns us all – the politicians who lead our countries, health workers of
all kinds and at every level, and, of course, the people infected with HIV, those
who are living with AIDS – and their families.
Clip
VOX POPS Comments from people in the field
Gary: In this series, we’re considering the major topics that appear in BBC World
Service news programmes. Today’s “big story” has a medical theme – we focus
on HIV/AIDS.
I’ll be talking to the BBC World Service Science Correspondent and we’ll hear
from a project worker who’s helping fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Zambia.
We’ll focus on some of the issues and the language behind the topic, and we’ll
look at how the subject is reported in the news.
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Clip Richard Black, WS Science Correspondent
Richard: One term – HIV – refers to the virus, the thing that actually causes the disease.
Whereas the other term – AIDS – refers to the disease itself, the set of symptoms which the
patient has.
Gary: BBC World Service Science Correspondent Richard Black.
Clip Richard Black, WS Science Correspondent
Richard: Now, the disease was discovered first. It was then called a syndrome because what
happened was: patients were turning up with a certain collection of symptoms, and when
doctors see this but they don’t know what’s causing the symptoms, they call this a syndrome.
The people were obviously suffering from an immune system that was not working properly –
so hence “immune deficiency syndrome”. And it was obviously something that was not
inherited, they were picking it up, they were acquiring it – hence Acquired Immune Deficiency
Syndrome. Only later on did scientists find out what was actually causing this – and this is
HIV – Human Immunodeficiency Virus.
Gary: If someone has AIDS – what does that mean in practical terms?
Richard: What it means basically is that their immune systems, their bodies, cannot fight off
germs that come along – so any bacterium, any virus, any fungus which comes along which can
infect them, will infect them, and they will become sick with it. There are other things that
happen as well, for example, some infections which lead to certain types of cancer are much
more prevalent in people who have AIDS. But that’s basically the idea: the immune system
does not work properly, you cannot fight off infections.
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Gary: So what we’re saying here is that you can have HIV without actually having AIDS – is
that right?
Richard: That’s absolutely right. Many people are infected with HIV – sometimes for years
before they show the signs of AIDS.
Gary: What about the terms HIV positive and HIV negative?
Richard: HIV positive simply means that you are infected with HIV – you have the virus.
HIV negative simply means that you don’t.
Gary: HIV is a virus -- the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. A person infected with
HIV develops AIDS -- or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome – when their
immune system eventually becomes too weak – or deficient – to fight off
infections. It’s possible to be infected with the virus, to be HIV positive,
without developing the symptoms of AIDS for many years.
As we’ve heard HIV/AIDS has been described as devastating epidemic – its
impact is far reaching.
Clip Richard Black, WS Science Correspondent
Richard: It is quite simply the disease which is changing the face of many communities on
earth – particularly in sub-Saharan Africa but in the future, perhaps, in Asia as well. It is
having such a devastating effect on some communities that there are villages really where the
entire middle sector of the population – the young adults, the economically productive people,
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the parents – are being removed from the population. There are villages where there is
virtually no one left but old people and young people because of AIDS. And this is really
unparalleled –certainly in modern experience.
Gary: So we’ve said, then, that HIV/AIDS is an important issue in different parts of the
world. How does it appear in news stories?
Richard: There are several things which typically give rise to news stories about HIV and
AIDS. One is simply that there are a large number of international conferences looking at
either the science of HIV/AIDS or funding for efforts to combat it. And quite often some
prominent members of the international community are there, and they will make speeches and
this will get reported. There are studies which come out, for example, into the economic
consequences of HIV/AIDS. So that’s another time when people will report it. We have
scientific developments – not as many as one would like, but they do happen, and when they
happen, then we report those as well. And there are some individual countries where there are
particular political stories, which also put HIV/AIDS into the news.
Gary: Finally, Richard, when as a journalist you’re reporting news stories about HIV/AIDS, is
it difficult to find the sort of language to use to tell those stories?
Richard: I think it can be because when, for example, you’re talking about a scientific
development you can use language which is rather too dry, rather too impersonal. You can
almost forget, while you’re writing the story, that there are 40 odd million people out there in
the world who are infected with HIV. This is a real life situation for them, and for their
families, and for their communities. On the other hand, when you’re dealing with the people
side of it, when you’re talking about the communities which are very affected, then you can
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easily use words which many people would prefer you didn’t use – such as “sufferer”, such as
“victim” which really … you can paint a picture of people who are hopeless – who have no
hope in their daily lives. Whereas, in fact, they may be doing the best they can to live a normal
life, and have as decent a life as they can under the circumstances, and labelling people as a
“victim” where they may not feel they’re victims, is something that we always try not to do;
but it’s as very easy trap to fall into.
Gary: BBC World Service Science Correspondent Richard Black.
The international development charity VSO runs several projects in Southern
Africa in which volunteers from different countries around the world join forces
with local government institutions and organisations to strengthen their
response to HIV and AIDS.
Stuart Sutherland is currently their country director in Zambia, and I asked him
to describe the situation there – the scale of the epidemic and the impact it has
on people’s lives.
Clip Stuart Sutherland, VSO Zambia
The scale is immense … [the full transcript is not available]
Gary: Stuart Sutherland , working with the international development charity VSO in
Zambia.
Part 2 – Human Rights
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Talk about English
Insight Plus
Part 2 – Human Rights
Jackie: Welcome to bbclearningenglish.com and a second chance to hear
Insight Plus - a series first broadcast in 2001 that looks at the language
of issues you hear about in the news. Today’s topic is Human rights -
do we have a right to freedom, food and shelter? Here’s Lyse Doucet.
Lyse: The world is all too full of injustice. People’s rights are not being
respected. And these violations are getting more and more coverage in
the media. Our rights are being denied despite international laws meant
to protect us – laws, conventions, charters on human rights have existed
for centuries but the abuses still exist. In today’s Insight Plus, we’ll look
at the language used to report on human rights and gain some insight
into how the rights of people around the world are not being respected.
First, let’s listen to part of a report by Richard Hamilton, featured in the
BBC World Service radio programme, Analysis. He focuses on the
European Convention on Human Rights. But the language in that
agreement - that convention, is universal, like the issue of human rights.
Clip
We start just after the 2nd
World War. In 1945 Europe was in a mess. Many European
cities were destroyed by the bombings, people had suffered greatly. And there were
troubling questions about the cruelty, the attrocities that had occurred during the war.
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The worst abuse of human rights was what came to be known as the holocaust, the
genocide of Jews in Nazi Germany. So much had been destroyed, but from the ruins,
or out of the ashes of post war Europe came a new determination.
After the Second World War, Europe lay in ruins - devastated by bombs, killings and
atrocities. But out of the ashes emerged a convention that lawmakers promised meant
citizens would never again suffer persecution, torture, slavery, or discrimination.
Lyse: Immediately after the war, 46 governments came together under the
title of The United Nations. The UN declared that the horrors of the
Second World War should never be allowed to happen again. Respect
for human rights and human dignity is, it said, “the foundation of
freedom, justice and peace in the world.”
In 1948, The UN created the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and shortly afterwards came the European convention. The spirit and
principles in both these documents can be found in similar works
throughout history - as long ago as 1215, in England’s Magna
Carta…in the Declaration of Independence in the United States of
America in 1776, and in the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of
Man and Citizen. Let’s return to our report on the European
Convention of Human Rights. We’ll hear from Keir Starmer, a leading
human rights lawyer, on the significance of this convention.
Clip
It’s meant common values across Europe and a common strategy to uphold human
rights and make them central in the protection given to individuals from their
governments.
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Lyse: Human rights are based on the idea that we have common values,
shared ideals such as “all human beings are born free and equal” and
“everyone has the right to life and liberty.” These common values are
stated clearly in the European Convention. Here’s Keir Starmer again
describing the protection the convention has given to citizens.
Clip
Individuals throughout Europe have relied on the right to liberty to challenge arrest
and detention on a widespread basis. They’ve relied on the convention to challenge
discrimination throughout Europe and they’ve widely relied on freedom of expression
to put forward views of minorities as well as majorities.
Lyse: Keir Starmer mentions some rights that are enshrined or permanently
protected in the European Convention. They include the right to
challenge, arrest and detention so we are not punished for things we
haven’t done. There’s also our right to freedom of expression – our
right to say what we think and feel whether its about religion, politics,
or personal matters. That can be especially important when we are part
of a minority, when our views are different from the views of the
majority of people.
In our next clip, we’ll hear some key articles - or points - from the
1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They’re read by Eleanor
Roosevelt, the wife of former American President Theodore Roosevelt,
She chaired the group that spent 3 years creating the historic
declaration.
Clip
(Universal Declaration of Human Rights)
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Lyse: Human rights are the subject of today’s Insight Plus from the BBC
World Service, your guide to the language and background to the
stories that stay in the news. Over the years, a large number of laws and
charters have been developed based on the United Nations Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. They’re meant to protect citizens, and to
confront human rights violations wherever they occur.
Around the world countries and regions have written their own
conventions. We’ve heard about the European Convention of Human
Rights. There’s also an American Convention and an African Charter.
But the report asks whether a global agreement could work.. Some
countries argue that certain cultures, for example Islamic nations, may
need their own human rights charter. But most experts agree that
human rights are universal and should be applied around the world. To
help achieve that, there have even been attempts to establish an
international guide such as The International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights, signed in 1966.
It’s a great goal. But the report reminds us that this lofty - or grand,
idealistic talk about people’s rights isn’t much much help to people
living in the poorest nations. If you’re hungry or don’t have a roof over
your head, it’s not much comfort to know you have a basic right to food
and shelter.
Clip
Lofty discussions about civil liberties might seem a long way off for people in many
parts of the world where their first concern is to get enough food to survive. The
human rights lawyer Kier Starmer says in these cases conventions give more priority to
economic rights rather than political ones.
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Kier Starmer
“These are of primary importance to developing nations who rightly see that civil and
political rights, for example, the right to vote the right to education, can only be
achieved if there’s a degree of economic prosperity and that ordinary people are
educated and have access to their civil and political rights. So that’s why there’s
different emphasis. In truth, both sets of rights are indivisible - you can’t have one
without the other. There are not many countries that say we need to be fed and
therefore we don’t care about freedom of expression, for example. There’s many
countries that say in addition to freedom of expression we need to be fed and until we
are fed we can’t have true freedom of expression and that’s a very valid position for
them to take.”
Lyse: As new conventions are prepared, there’s a growing understanding that
economic and social conditions must be emphasised if basic human
rights are to be respected worldwide. When we speak about human
rights, we also look at human wrongs - the abuse of these rights. We
often learn about these abuses through organisations which monitor the
behaviour of governments and other authorities. There are many
national and international human rights organisations. One of most well-
known is Amnesty International.
Let’s listen to a report on human rights abuses, by the BBC’s diplomatic
correspondent Barnaby Mason. It looks at the violent conflict in the
Middle East and at criticism by Amnesty International of the behaviour
of both sides - the Israelis and the Palestinians. This short extract
contains the kind of language that you often hear in broadcasts about
human rights violations.
You’ll hear the expressions - breaking rules, grave breach and gross
violations. They mean the same thing, that rights have been abused and
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conventions ignored. And words such as gross and grave tell us the
violations are very serious indeed.
Clip
Amnesty International criticises both sides but the weight of its condemnation bears
more heavily on Israel. It says the Israeli forces are breaking their own rules as well as
international standards laid down in the Geneva Conventions. That lethal force must
only be used to conter an immediate threat to life.
Mr Cordone said Amnesty International condemned what apppeared to be random
Palestinian firing at Jewish settlements, as well as punitive Israeli raids mounted after
the event to teach a lesson.. Asked whether "war crimes" was the phrase to decribe
Israeli actions over the past month, Mr Cordone said there was a pattern of gross
human rights violations that might well amount to war crimes. The Geneva
Conventions prohibited wilful killings, he said, that would be a grave breach and
therefore a war crime, though Amnesty could not say that any individual case fell into
this category - that was a matter for a tribunal to investigate.
Lyse: The report says the Geneva Convention has been ignored. Like other
human rights conventions, it outlines how people should be treated.
But the Geneva Convention applies to the specific circumstances of
war. It protects the rights of soldiers captured by the enemy and also
the rights of the sick and wounded. It’s there to remind warring groups
that even in the middle of a conflict, individuals must be treated fairly
and humanely.
You also heard the term tribunal. It’s a committee or group of people
with legal powers to establish whether serious abuses were committed
during wartime. For example, the International War Crimes Tribunal
investigates accusations such as genocide - or mass murder during the
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Balkans Conflict. Indicted individals charged with such war crimes are
put on trial. There’s also a similar tribunal for Rwanda based in East
Africa. These tribunals emphasise that individuals responsible for the
gravest crimes must be punished. Only then can the UN Declaration on
Human Rights achieve its goal – that atrocities must not be allowed to
happen again.
Today on Insight Plus we’ve heard about the importance of respecting
the basic human rights of every individual. We also heard how many
international and national conventions on human rights have been
established to try to safeguard our rights and prevent their abuse, even
in times of war.
But we have also been reminded that talk of basic human rights, such as
the right to food and shelter, provides little comfort to the poorest who
are hungry and homeless. To achieve universal respect for human rights,
there must also be attention to the different conditions in which people
live.
Part 4 –Financial News
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BBC Learning English
Talk about English
Insight Plus
Part 4 –Financial News
Jackie: Money is a powerful force. From the notes and coins in our pockets to the billions
that flow around the world each day –It drives business and the economy. Money
is the topic of this second chance to hear Insight Plus - your guide to the language
you hear every day in the news, first broadcast in 2001. For BBC Learning
English.com, here’s Lyse Doucet.
Lyse: Money and financial activity are essential to our world. Technology and
communication are now developing at such a fast pace, fortunes can be made and
lost in minutes. Our world is also becoming a smaller place. Contacts between
countries are growing and what happens in one place can have a profound effect
around the world. That’s especially true of money.
You can hear it when you listen to programmes on business and finance. They
usually include reports on what’s happening on the most important stock markets
or stock exchanges. These are places where companies can raise money, by selling
a share of their business.
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Investors try to buy shares in companies with the best prospects. The more
profitable the firm, the more the value of the shares will increase. Shareholders are
effectively buying a piece of the company, or equity
Most countries have their own equity or stock and they list their most important
companies, and the value of their shares, on a list or index. The names of the most
powerful indices are famous – you’ve probably heard about the Dow Jones in
New York, the FTSE in London, Hong Kong’s index is called the Hang Seng and
in Japan it’s the Nikkei.
This report from Russell Padmore of the BBC’s Business Unit mentions the Dow
Jones, and the Nasdaq.
Clip
It’s been a rollercoaster day for stocks in New York as the technology driven Nasdaq Index
again dropped in value. At one stage the Nasdaq fell around five per cent to reach its lowest
level for a year. The Dow Jones Index also fell but has steadied slightly.
Lyse: Stock exchanges have traditionally been buildings where traders buy and sell
shares on a trading floor. But now, so much trading is done electronically,
through computers, some exchanges don’t even need a physical space.
Nasdaq is the largest electronic stock market in the world. It’s based in New
York and specializes in high technology companies such as the makers of
electronics and internet software.
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The BBC’s World Service Business unit reports daily on the movements of the
world’s main stock markets. Here’s that report from Russell Padmore again. He
says it’s been a rollercoaster day – what does he mean by that?
Clip
It’s been a rollercoaster day for stocks in New York as the technology driven Nasdaq Index
again dropped in value. At one stage the Nasdaq fell around five per cent to reach its lowest
level for a year. The Dow Jones Index also fell but has steadied slightly.
Lyse: It was an exciting and nerve wracking day for Nasdaq. The value of shares in its
companies went up and down like a roller coaster. The value of shares traded -
bought and sold – on the Dow Jones Index was lower, but there was less dramatic
movement and the market eventually stopped its huge fluctuations, it steadied
slightly. What causes this movement? Here’s more of that report.
Clip
It’s been a rollercoaster day for stocks in New York as the technology driven Nasdaq Index
again dropped in value. At one stage the Nasdaq fell around five per cent to reach its lowest
level for a year. The Dow Jones Index also fell but has steadied slightly.
The markets were driven lower by news from Hewlett Packard admitting that its fourth quarter
earnings fall far short of forecasts, by as much as 20 percent. Hewlett surprised the markets by
releasing the news two days ahead of schedule. The computer and printer making company
also revealed that it has ended talks to buy the PriceWaterhouseCoopers consulting business.
Hewlett’s stock dropped around 15 per cent becoming the latest in a series of technology
groups to take a battering on Wall Street …which is already unsettled by political indecision,
from the presidential election.
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Lyse: We heard the phrase driven up or down. The value of the stocks and shares is
strongly affected by news or developments which have an impact on the company’s
financial position. For example, the company Hewlett Packard realised it would
make less money in its fourth quarter, the last part of the year, than it forecast, or
predicted.
Forecasts play a key role in the financial world. Investors decide where to put their
money based on expectations that companies will perform in a certain way. That
can be easier for older, more established companies such as banks - stock markets
call them blue chip stocks. But newer industries like computer software or the
internet which trade on the Nasdaq are less well-known, they attract investors
willing to take more risks.
In our last report we also heard how technology companies or groups took a
battering on Wall Street, the financial area of New York. It’s not just Hewlett
Packard, but the entire industry which is suffering from problems and that’s
reflected in the value of their shares on the markets.
Lyse: The world of business and finance is the subject of today’s Insight Plus from the
BBC World Service – your guide to the language and background to the stories
that stay in the news.
Markets are also affected by what’s happening in the world of politics…markets
get nervous when political activity is unstable, unpredictable, or in some countries
in a state of upheaval. When that happens, it affects not just one company, or
group of companies, but the economy of a country or even an entire region.
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Take a country like the Philippines. The business community there lost confidence
in the President Joseph Estrada when he was charged with taking millions of
dollars bribes. It reinforced the growing doubts over his management of the
economy. The Philippines is also still suffering from the effects of an economic
crisis that swept across Asia in the late 1990’s. Many countries are now recovering
but the Philippines’ economy is still struggling. This piece by World Service
Business Reporter Karen Hoggan shows how this is reflected in the stock market.
Clip
The financial figures are depressing. The Philippine stock exchange has fallen by around a third
so far this year and last month the currency - the Peso - hit an all time low against the dollar.
A leading credit rating agency has downgraded the outlook for the country from stable to
negative - an indication of how risky it thinks investing there could be.
Lyse: The Philippine’s financial position is described as depressing – that’s a very big
cause of concern. The value of the currency, the peso, has hit an all time low
against the American dollar, one of the world’s strongest and most stable
currencies. It means the peso has never been worth so little, on the markets it’s hit
an all-time low. And it’s not just the currency. Serious concern about the country’s
financial and political future means its credit rating has been downgraded, or
reduced. That sends a signal to the financial community that the Philippines is an
unsafe place to do business – you could lose your money if you invest, if you put
your money into stocks and shares there.
Compare the Philippines with some of its neighbours. The wealthiest, fastest
growing countries in this region used to be known as the Tiger Economies but
even strong economies like South Korea saw their currency collapse in the
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financial crisis of the late 90’s, their economic policies couldn’t sustain such rapid
growth. Some south Asian governments were also guilty of financial
mismanagement and in some cases corruption.
This next report from Manuela Saragoza looks at the progress made in South
Korea. She focuses on two of the country’s largest corporations, Hyundai
Engineering and Construction and Daewoo Motors. They’re both known as
chaebols – conglomerates, or groups of companies which have merged. They were
wallowing in debt, in other words, they owed more money than they actually had.
But the government tried to help them to raise more money, or to return to
liquidity. Let’s see what happened.
Clip
Hyundai Engineering and Construction is wallowing in debt to the tune of 4.4 billion dollars.
Creditor banks have agreed to freeze repayments while the mess is sorted out but the South
Korean government has resorted to some interesting tactics in returning liquidity to the
company
Hyundai was pulled back from the brink of bankruptcy last week, but another Chaebol,
Daewoo, was not so lucky. The motor company collapsed with more than 10 billion dollars in
debt was forced into liquidation by its creditors after labour unions refused to agree to
restructuring which would have involved 3500 job cuts. Daewoo is awaiting another court
decision on the receivership it applied for last week.
Lyse: The South Korean government saved Hyundai which was on the verge of
bankruptcy, the point of saying it couldn’t pay its bills. But Daewoo Motors
collapsed. It was forced into liquidation, of selling everything it owned to try to
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pay its debts. And it had to go into receivership, a court appointed someone to
take control of the bankrupt company.
Bankruptcy may be the worst fate a company can suffer, but a takeover can also be
unwelcome. That’s when one company wants to buy and own another. We’ll hear
the word takeover in this next extract about the London Stock Exchange and the
OM group, listen out for the word that’s used with takeover – a word that means
an offer.
Clip
The London Stock Exchange has beaten off an unwanted takeover bid from the OM group,
the operator of the financial market in Stockholm. OM’s failure had been expected as the
Swedish firm failed to get enough support from the main shareholders of the London
exchange, mostly investment banks and stockbrokers. They voted by nine to one against the
plan. The end of the hostile bid from the Swedish company cleared the way for the London
Stock Exchange to form an alliance with other financial markets, to create a pan European
share trading platform. After a failed attempt to merge with the Bourse in Frankfurt, London’s
future could be a closer link with the Nasdag in New York.
Lyse: The London stock Exchange defeated a takeover bid from the OM Group. The
bid was unwelcome or hostile. The offer was made without the agreement of
the target company. Today on Insight Plus business and finance have been in
the spotlight. Next time you listen to reports about the Dow Jones or the
Nikkei, in other words on stock markets, expect to hear language that’ll indicate
how well those companies listed on the index are doing. And stock markets
don’t just reflect performance of an individual company, they also tell us about
the health of whole sectors of business activity and countries too.
