Public Radio International

Photographer captures images of movie sets preserved in African desert sands

PRI's The World — Mon, 20 May 2013 10:30:00 -0500

If you’re a Star Wars fan, you might be looking at the photo at left and wondering — “Hey, isn’t that one of those moisture vaporators from the Skywalker farm there by that man who is begging?”

You’d be right.

Star Wars is only one of the many big budget films that have gone to various North African locations over the years to create a certain feel, a particular sense of place. In the case of Star Wars, parts of Tunisia and Morocco stood in for Tatooine, Luke Skywalker’s home world, a desert-swept planet with two suns. And swamp rats.

See more of di Martino's photos at TheWorld.org.

But here’s the thing. After the movie people packed up and left, the film sets stayed behind. And because of the dry, desert climate, they stayed and stayed, slowly rusting away or being swallowed by sand. Italian visual artist Ra di Martino wanted to photograph these sets. She’s not the first, but her goal was not necessarily to say something about them, but about the ways we remember them.

“Star Wars was one of the first films I watched. I must’ve been around four years old,” di Martino said. “I really loved it. And I watched it many times. You know, it was an eerie and well-shot film that actually left a lot in me. It was a fun film, but it had beautiful images.”

Particularly those desert shots.

They created an entirely new world. George Lucas went to locations across North Africa, to the very edge of the desert, to have the sets built.

And di Martino, a visual artist, was kicking around on Google Earth a few years back, when she spotted something that looked familiar in some tourist photos that had been uploaded.

It was the old Star Wars sets — well, parts of them — still there in the North African desert.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes, because obviously it seemed incredible that there was some actual, real materials left from such a big film that made a lot of my memories from childhood.”

Di Martino knew the sets have been photographed before, and fans know all about the Star Wars “ruins.”

“I just find it very poetic to see these trashy, cheap materials in the middle of nowhere, to see how these ruins decayed in such a fast way compared to our memory of them,” di Martino said.

So, a few years ago, she embarked on a series of trips to Tunisia and Morocco to photograph the old film sets.

She found the house Luke Skywalker lived in. It’s in Tunisia, and it was falling apart, just a few miles from Algerian border.

In Morocco, she shot the picture of the man begging in the ruins of one Star Wars set. The film grossed hundreds of millions of dollars.

Since she did her photo series, certain sands have shifted.

One set that had been covered, and then uncovered, in sand storms has, in fact, been almost covered again.

But, thanks to crowd-funding, Star Wars fans “refurbished” the Skywalker house.

Di Martino says it proves her point.

“These memories are so strong in us that we don’t really realize how much they formed us. And if you think adult people, as their main hobby, go and refurbish something like this, which is so useless, well," she said. "No, but I can understand it. They probably had lots of fun, you know?”

Meanwhile, she wryly notes, in her native Italy … the ruins of Pompeii are crumbling, and little effort is being made to save them.

Musician Dom La Nena's debut album fits her diminutive name

Studio 360 — Mon, 20 May 2013 09:00:00 -0500

Singer-songwriter Dominique Pinto goes by Dom La Nena, ‘Dom the Little Girl.’

Like Lil’ Wayne before her, the name refers unironically to her delicate stature. Unlike Lil’ Wayne, La Nena makes music that fits the pseudonym: delicate, very simple acoustic songs that could almost be lullabies.

Her debut album is Ela — she, in Portuguese.

Many of the songs have melancholic themes, which she attributes to her nomadic life.

“I’m always missing someone and missing somewhere,” she said.

All that missing works in her favor, though. Ela is rich with musical influences from Dom’s native Brazil, as well as Argentina, where she moved on her own, at 13, to study cello, and France, where she has now lived for much of her life.

It was in France that she made the transition from classical music to songwriting.

After a chance meeting with a producer, she began playing cello on pop recording sessions.

“It was the first time I was without score or without a teacher telling me what to do,” she said.

She quickly took to writing her own music, and especially to the possibilities of digital looping pedals, which allow her to play multiple parts in real time.

“When I discovered the loop it was like my dream — to do a little orchestra alone," she said.

Taking joy in the solitude of a looping pedal is natural for a musician who no longer has a country to call home.

That life has prepared her well for international touring.

“When you are a musician you are never at home. So you (become) yourself, your home," she explained.

Despite rough year, network TV still hanging on

Studio 360 — Mon, 20 May 2013 08:00:00 -0500

It’s commonly said now that we’re living in a golden age of television, but try telling that to executives at the Big Four networks.

The buzzy shows you love to talk about are typically on cable, while CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox are all wrapping up one of their worst seasons on record.

Many successful shows have lost steam, with no breakout hits to fill the void. The trickle of viewers that has been lost year over year became a sharp drop this season. Nearly 20 percent of viewers in the 18-to-49 demographic, according to the Wall Street Journal, have fled.

A media analyst for Bank of America Merrill Lynch was quoted in The New York Times saying “his year was the tipping point.”

“It was a really bad year, there’s no denying that,” said Joe Adalian, the West Coast editor for Vulture, New York Magazine’s culture website.

But he says it's still too early to ring the death knell.

“The network’s response to that is, ‘Let’s make a lot more shows.’ They’re taking a lot more chances,” he said.

This week in the upfronts, the networks unveiled ambitious fall lineups. According to Adelian, CBS, which typically launches two or three shows per season, has launched eight this year.

Some will have shorter runs than the typical 22-episode network model, taking a page out of cable’s playbook.

“Networks have lost the war for buzz and their stranglehold on pop culture,” Adelian said.

But when it comes to audience and advertising, network TV is still the biggest game in town. He cites FX’s The Americans, about Soviet spies undercover in the U.S.

“It was a great show that launched this year, a lot of strong buzz, and in the overnight ratings it was losing to repeats of Big Bang Theory," he said.

Barbie Berlin Dreamhouse draws protests, hand-wringing over opening

PRI's The World — Sat, 18 May 2013 10:30:00 -0500

Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel has been called the most powerful woman in the world.

But this week, another polarizing female figure has attracted attention in Berlin.

Global icon and plastic plaything Barbie is the star of a new life-size dollhouse that opened on Thursday, though it has provoked protests for weeks now. Among the protesters was a topless woman burning a Barbie strapped to a wooden cross — set inside in a giant, pink high-heeled shoe.

The flashy pink townhouse (and the shoe) look a bit out of place in gritty urban Berlin, with East German tower blocks rising up behind it.

But it’s the scene inside that prompted Michael Koschitzki and others from the youth organization of Germany’s political Left Party to form a protest group called Occupy Barbie-Dreamhouse.

“The first room I’ve seen is the kitchen, where children have to do cupcakes, they are doing them virtually,” Koschitzki said. “At the same time Ken is outside the virtual window cleaning the car.”

Since her debut in 1959, Barbie has always been a color-coordinated career girl — from computer engineer to aerobic instructor, astronaut to news anchor.

That’s not the case here, says Koschitzki.

“In this Dreamhouse, there’s really only a one-sided picture presented. You can only be a pop star, or a top model,”he said.

But Christoph Rahofer, of EMS Entertainment, is taking the protests in stride.

“I was told that no matter what you do in Berlin, there is a protest,” said Rahofer, who produced the attraction in conjunction with Mattel, the maker of Barbie.

Rahofer says he was surprised by the vitriolic reaction to what he considers family entertainment.

“This is the Barbie Dreamhouse, and we are not meant to be a career opportunity center. We are trying to have fun,” he said.

They’re also trying to make some money. Entering the Barbie Dreamhouse Experience costs 12 euros (about $15) and there’s an additional fee for costumes and makeup to walk the catwalk or sound stage. Naturally, you exit through a gift shop filled with Barbie paraphernalia.

“Ten years ago, we would have said things like that only happen in the U.S. and U.K.,” said gender researcher Stevie Schmiedel, who heads the group PinkStinks Germany.

She thinks the arrival of the Dreamhouse highlights some troubling questions about German society.

“Sexism that’s out there in advertising, in the toy industry," she said, "basically conditions women into accepting that they will enter the workplace and not earn as much as men.”

PinkStinks aims to stop what Schmiedel calls the "pinkification’ of girls’ culture," as a way to get at bigger issues. She points out that Germany has the largest gender pay gap in Europe, and German women are more likely than men to be in long-term unemployment, and less likely to hold high-level executive jobs — despite having a woman as head of state.

But should all that really be placed on the shoulders of an 11.5-inch American doll?

“Based on Barbie’s history, it’s fascinating that the Germans bristle so much about the message that the current incarnation of the Barbie doll is giving to young girls,” said M.G. Lord, author of the book, “Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll.”

In it, Lord wrote about Barbie’s little-known German origins. Mattel transformed a sexy, 1950s German cartoon figure, Lilli from the tabloid Bild, into a groundbreaking doll — one that allowed little girls to fantasize about single adulthood, not just motherhood.

Lord says neither the simplified choices offered in the Dreamhouse Experience, nor the protesters’ knee-jerk reactions do justice to Barbie’s history.

“I think it’s reductionist to assume that Barbie represents an ideal of womanhood, or that Barbie is wholly negative and represents some really damaging image of womanhood. I mean she’s just a plastic object. Children can play with her as they see fit,” Lord insisted.

And they do — Mattel says a Barbie is sold every three seconds somewhere in the world. As for the Barbie Dreamhouse Experience, another, permanent, version opened last week in Florida, to no protest at all.

Barbie’s controversial Berlin abode will remain in the city until Aug. 25 — then it will wend its pink way throughout Germany, and on to the rest of Europe.

Syria’s civil war ends long quiet in Israeli-controlled Golan Heights

PRI's The World — Fri, 17 May 2013 13:30:00 -0500

Incoming rockets from Syria landed in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights earlier this week.

A previously unknown group said the attack was meant to commemorate the anniversary of Nakba Day, when Palestinians mark the “catastrophe” of the founding of Israel is 1948. The rockets caused no damage, but they are another reminder to residents of the Israeli-controlled territory that decades of relative quiet along the frontier with Syria might now be coming to an end.

At a United Nations checkpoint near the Syrian town of al-Quneitra, a hulking white armored vehicle with “UN” written in big black letters passed from the Syrian to the Israeli side of the Golan Heights. The soldiers in camouflage uniforms and powder-blue helmets are part of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force.

UNDOF has been patrolling the ceasefire line between Syrian and Israeli forces, known as the “area of separation,” since 1974. And its mission has largely been a success.

About 1,200 peacekeepers are deployed to prevent Syria and Israel from going to war yet again. But Syria’s own civil war is putting the UN operation in jeopardy.

For the second time, Syrian rebels last week kidnapped a group of four UN observers from the Philippines. They were soon released. But the government back in the Philippines said it plans to bring its contingent of peacekeepers home. That's an ominous sign for some Israeli residents of the Golan Heights.

At the Israeli village of Alonei Habashan, they have been cleaning out the bomb shelters and updating emergency plans. Just in case. The community is home to a few hundred Israelis and it sits just a few hundred yards from Israel’s border fence along the Syrian frontier.

The fence was newly rebuilt in recent months. But that did not stop two stray Syrian rockets from landing inside the perimeter of the village.

“It’s extremely uncomfortable,” Israel Bar said.

He works as a manager at the village office of Alonei Habashan.

“We’ve had all these years of quiet here in the Golan and now, suddenly, there’s a lot to worry about,” he added.

Bar said the sounds of the fighting in Syria can be heard clearly and often from here. Residents are more careful about hiking in the area. They are sure to coordinate with the Israeli army when they go on long walks. They are also applying for permits to keep weapons in their homes.

Errant shells are one thing. But for many here, what is really alarming is the prospect of Syrian Army troops attacking Israelis.

This week, Israel Radio reported on a direct threat from Syria. The report included comments from Syria’s information minister, who said the Golan Heights — which Israel captured in the 1967 war — “still belong to Syria, from the sky above to the earth below.”

“Syria will do whatever it takes to liberate the territory from Israeli occupation,” the Syrian minister said.

That kind of rhetoric is nothing new. But there is a new reality. Israel is thought to have bombed Syria three times this year to stop weapons being transferred to Syria’s ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah. Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has warned that another Israeli strike would bring retaliation. Many Israelis consider Assad to be the devil they know.

But the raging civil war brings uncertainty. Assad’s threats have to be taken seriously right now, said Inbal Alon. She's an Israeli tourist from the center of the country, who was visiting the Golan Heights for the day with her husband, their two daughters and the family dog.

“Assad has a lot of power,” Alon said after lunch at a Druse Arab restaurant in the town of Mas’ade. “He could start a war with Israel and that could mean a lot of people getting killed.

“I don’t know what comes next in Syria,” she said. But at this point, “Assad is bad for Israel. I hope he falls.”

Still, “what will be in Syria” is a troublesome question for many Israelis living in the Golan Heights.

“Maybe it can be like in Gaza border, like terror situation,” said Elisha Yelin, a 66 year-old resident of a kibbutz near Mount Bental who has lived in the Golan for 45 years.

Yelin fought with the Israeli Army against Syrian troops during the 1973 war. He said people in this area might be in denial about how life could change along the ceasefire line.

Still, standing near the U.N. checkpoint and looking at the Israeli flag flying a few dozen yards from the Syrian flag on the other side, Yelin said, he respects it.

“I think this is the best situation,” Yellin said. “I have no problem with the Syrian flag, because this is a sign of government, of controlling, of something that you can trust.”

That flag, might be the flag of Israel’s enemy, Yelin said. But it’s also “a sign of stability.”

Yelin explained his real worry is about the UN peacekeeping force pulling out, Islamic extremist groups taking over the area along the old ceasefire line, and a failed state situation taking root right next door in Syria.

As climate changes, one species faces extinction by becoming exclusively female

Living on Earth — Fri, 17 May 2013 11:16:00 -0500

Climate change is impacting various animal species around the world, but Painted turtles may face a particularly strange and formidable challenge.

Scientists at the Iowa State University have discovered the species is at risk of becoming all females. Rory Telemeco, a biologist at ISU, says the problem stems from how sex is determined among the turtle species. It's not like how humans' gender is determined.

"In many of these reptiles, such as these turtles, the temperature during development, during a fairly short window of about a month, during the middle third of development, determines whether or not the offspring will be male or female," Telemeco said. "Cool nests producing males and warm nests producing females."

Warmer temperatures means more female turtles — and with this species that's become apparent quickly. But turtles, Telemeco added, have been around for some 200 million years, through temperatures warmer than what we have now. So clearly they're able to adapt.

"The question is, what avenues might work, and what avenues might not," he said.

Telemeco's group set out to study whether nesting earlier might help buffer these turtles against climate change. Already there are signs in the environment of plants and animals moving up their spring time activities. We see flowers blooming earlier. We see leaves bursting earlier on trees. Birds and butterflies are migrating earlier. Frogs are singing earlier.

And, it turns out, turtles are nesting earlier.

"It’s a really common response," he said. "We really wanted to know whether or not that was going to work."

Unfortunately, according to their research, it makes little difference.

"If it’s the only thing that the turtles have at their disposal, to sort of protect themselves from climate change," Telemeco said, "it would only buffer them to about a degree increase in temperature. Any more than that, it would have no buffering effect."

It would also likely lead to high rates of mortality in turtle nests, he said, in addition to a completely female species.

Telemeco said temperatures may rise by as much as four to eight degrees over the next hundred years — an incredibly rapid shift that could make it difficult, or impossible for turtles to evolve in time.

"These turtles are fairly long lived. It takes them five years to be reproductive, and they can continue to survive and be reproducing every year, for another 20 to 25 years, and that rate of generation time really slows the ability of populations to evolve," he said. "It means that you would need dramatic evolutionary changes within just a few generations for them to be able to cope with the types of environmental change we’re predicting."

In order to save the species, Telemeco said, we'll need to drastically reduce climate-changing emissions. But even that may not be enough. Short of that, this species — and others — will only survive with human intervention, to keep their nests cooler in the critical months of gender selection.

"But it’s going to be really difficult and sadly, I really don’t think we’re going to be able to save all of them," he said.

States consider reforms to help domestic workers move out of shadows

PRI's The World — Fri, 17 May 2013 09:00:00 -0500

Myrla Baldonado left the Philippines for Chicago six years ago.

Most of her time here, she cared for elderly people in their homes, attending to their round-the-clock needs. She made their beds, fixed meals and monitored them for symptoms of stroke or illness.

Baldonado worked like this for years — putting in 96-hour weeks — at $4 an hour.

“Like most immigrants, I tried not to pay attention to it,” Baldonado said.

She said that wage was standard, what other caregivers got, too. And she needed a job.

“But then when I started being shouted at and I felt being discriminated for not being an original English speaker, I felt so bad,” she said.

Baldonado recalls how the son of one client bullied her on the job. She asked her staffing agency for help. They told her to be more assertive, so she quit.

Now, Baldonado is an organizer pushing for legislation in Illinois to give other domestic workers in similar situations more firepower, especially newcomers to the U.S. who might not realize their basic rights. Baldonado says it’s hard because people don’t think of domestic workers as workers.

“It’s considered invisible, it’s not real work,” she said. “And it’s women’s work. So there’s so much cultural difficulty into asserting this kind of work.”

Many of the people involved in this movement use the word “invisible” when they describe domestic workers. One reason? Many of them are undocumented immigrants. A survey by the University of Illinois at Chicago found more than a third of domestic workers are here illegally. And of domestic workers, they are the most exploited and abused. Often, they earn less than their peers, are more likely to be injured on the job and less likely to quit or complain.

Ai-jen Poo says they do the work that Americans won’t do.

“We often call it the work that makes all other work possible,” said Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, an advocacy group based in New York.

The group helped New York and Hawaii adopt Domestic Workers Bills of Rights. The proposed legislation would give domestic workers the right to overtime pay, paid time off and freedom from sexual harassment.

The bills are designed to protect domestic workers, with or without papers. Poo says that's crucial because federal laws make it difficult for domestic workers to unionize. So those without legal status have the least leverage to negotiate their working conditions.

“Often times, people will get fired for asking for a sick day,” Poo said.

In New York, domestic workers can now file complaints about mistreatment with the state’s labor department.

Other states are considering similar measures. But there are new concerns now that Congress is debating new immigration laws.

So far, the proposals favor immigrants who can prove they have worked continuously in the U.S. They would also have employers tap into a verification system to check a worker’s status. That worries Maureen Purtill, an immigrant organizer with the Graton Day Labor Center in California. She says the proposal ignores cases where the employer’s just a family looking for a nanny. They might not be plugged into a verification system like a big business is.

“So women and families are especially vulnerable to being excluded from the immigration reform process,” she said.

The National Domestic Workers Alliance is lobbying to clarify language in an immigration bill now making its way through the Senate. They want to make sure it gives low-wage domestic workers the chance to achieve legal status.

Meanwhile, Baldonado says organizing her fellow domestic workers is tough. Many have battered self-esteem and fear being reported to immigration officials and deported, but she is noticing more are getting involved–for the same reason she did.

“I don’t want to live that way,” Baldonado said. “I don’t want to just live for the money and not get any respect, or, not get any dignity or respect for the work I’m doing.”

Baldonado is confident that domestic workers won’t be invisible much longer. And there’s good reason to believe that. Baby boomers are aging, and more immigrants are fulfilling the need for home caregivers — now projected to be among the fastest-growing occupations of the decade.

N.Y. senator leads call to reform sexual assault procedures in U.S. military

The Takeaway — Fri, 17 May 2013 08:00:00 -0500

A recent Pentagon report demonstrates the severity of the problem: based on anonymous surveys, the Defense Department estimates 26,000 members of the military were sexually assaulted in fiscal year 2012, up from 19,000 the year before.

Of these 26,000 victims, only a small fraction, 3,374 in 2012, reported the crime.

These grim statistics combined with recent sexual battery charges against the Air Force's sexual assault prevention chief and similar accusations against an Army coordinator at Fort Hood have Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) pushing for changes in the military's handling of sexual assault cases.

In the current system, these cases are reported and adjudicated within a victim's chain of command. Victims report to their commanding officer who oversee punishments.

"There is a fear that the commanding officer will not take them seriously, or punish them for reporting," Gillibrand said.

Gillibrand's proposed legislation would allow victims to file reports with JAG attorneys — the prosecutors who would prosecute the case, removing the case from the chain of command so that commanding officers with potential conflicts of interest would no longer be in charge of deciding whether a case should go to trial.

While she commends JAG attorneys for their work, because of the charges against sexual assault prevention specialists and the growing number of victims Gillibrand believes the overall system for prosecuting these crimes within the military needs to change.

"For one of the Air Force chiefs of staff to have testified...that part of the incident rate is because of the hook-up culture that's being held over from high school demonstrates how there is so little understanding," she said.

Gillibrand was referring to comments made by Air Force Gen. Mark Welsh in a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"Sexual assault and rape is a crime of violence, it's a crime of aggression, it's a crime of dominance. It may not even be related to sex in any way," she said. "These are violent crimes that are often committed by recidivists, people who have done it over and over again, where they target their victim and are really predators."

Ukraine’s Asgarda martial arts program recasts Amazon warrior women

PRI's The World — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:20:00 -0500

A few years ago, a series of photos by the French photographer Guillaume Herbaut were widely posted on blogs and feminist news-sites on the internet.

In the photos, a group of young women pose with swords, hatchets and nun-chucks in the woods of Ukraine. In some of the photos, they are wearing black T-shirts and loose karate-style pants. In other photos, they are wearing flowing white shirts embroidered with flowers, a traditional Ukrainian outfit. The captions described these women as new Amazons, as in the mythical tribe of warrior women.

The group is run by a woman named Katerina Tarnovska. By day, she is a preschool gym teacher, leading groups of wiggly four-year-olds in a circle around a gym.

In her spare time, the 34-year-old is the leader of Asgarda, a female martial arts group that claims to be a new tribe of Amazons.

Amazons are the mythical, all-female warriors said to have fought in the Trojan War and worked alongside Alexander the Great. They’re famously said to have cut off their left breasts so they could aim their arrows more accurately.

Tarnovska doesn’t believe that. But she does believe the Amazons are the direct ancestors of Ukrainian women.

“If you read the histories, you see that on the territory of the Ukraine lived a group of young women, who came together to support each other in war, it was like a women’s school, where women who liked to fight, they could learn and lead such a life,” Tarnovska said.

And it was high time, Tarnovska said, for Ukrainian women to reconnect with their warrior past.

So in 2002, Katerina began to develop an all-female martial art. It’s based on another recently-created form of fighting called “Fighting Hopak,” but with a special emphasis on self-defense. She pasted fliers all over Lviv, inviting girls to train in the Carpathian Mountains. Word spread and dozens of girls joined.

And they still come, a couple dozen every summer. It’s like camp, Katerina said. Girls do arts and crafts, sing songs around a campfire — and practice martial arts. Katerina gives lectures about Ukrainian history and women’s role in society.

“We talk about who are women and girl warriors, why do they exist? What kind of laws they should follow? How does one become a true warrior? And what kind of women and heroines have lived in the past, and what role they played in our history?” Tarnovska said.

But, Tarnovska stressed that Asgarda is not out to claim anything for women. It’s not a group of feminists. Ukrainian women, she said, have always been equals. Like in mythology, as Amazons, they fought alongside men.

Oksana Kis, an anthropologist and historian in Lviv, said she doesn’t believe in the Amazon myth, but can see the benefits for women.

“Whether or not there is proof of Amazons in Ukraine or matriarchs in Ukraine, if this helps these women to feel better, and develop their self esteem and confidence, why not do it?” she said.

Kis said when Ukraine was part of the USSR, Soviet propaganda instructed women that they were equal to men. In today’s Ukraine, the laws are progressive and in favor of women.

“What Ukrainians always try to do, they always try to find the unique Ukrainian way to do everything, you know, for women’s liberation, for martial arts, for whatever,” she said.

But policy and practice in Ukraine are different.

Kis said women make up only 10 percent of the Ukrainian parliament. They’re paid 30 percent less than men with the same jobs. And in some fields, like computers, while men and women study the subject at roughly the same rate, there are hardly any women working in IT.

And this is where Tarnovska thinks her warrior training can help.

In a church basement across town fat, blue gym mats pad the floor. A group of 13 guys and two girls practice hurling each other onto the mats. Tarnovska changes from gold-sparked jeans to thigh-length boxing shorts emblazoned with a hissing viper. She suits up in gloves.

Tarnovska is training in kickboxing and Muay Thai. She spars with her trainer in preparation for an upcoming match.

She’ll teach the moves she learns to her Amazons, she said. And that will help them be better, tougher people regardless of what they do in life.

“You can be a warrior businessman, you can be a warrior politician, a warrior trolleybus operator,” Tarnovska said.

Or, a preschool gym teacher.

Undocumented immigrant caregiver tells story from inside invisible workforce

PRI's The World — Thu, 16 May 2013 10:45:00 -0500

Nannies, housecleaners, caregivers — they're sometimes called the world’s most invisible workforce.

In the U.S. alone, it’s estimated more than 2 million people do this type of work. Most are women and many are immigrants. And pressure is growing to address their working conditions.

A few years ago, Florence Tratar fell down. In her 80s, it was enough of a spill to change her life drastically and leave her bound to a wheelchair. And with no family nearby, she needed someone to move in and care for her immediately.

See more photos at TheWorld.org.

But nobody she hired clicked, until she found Joesy Gerrish, a caregiver from Fiji.

“I liked her right away,” Tratar said.

So once Gerrish’s references checked out, she was hired and moved in to help Tratar full time. It’s easy to see why Tratar picked Gerrish. In her early 40s, she is energetic, has a quick laugh, and says she treats her employers like family.

Now, Gerrish gets up early every morning, makes Tratar’s meals, drives her to appointments.

“I do everything!” Gerrish said.

“Everything!” Tratar agreed. “I mean, whatever I have to do, Joesy does.”

Tratar and Gerrish had ventured out to Sebastopol, Calif., north of San Francisco to see a short documentary about Gerrish. The film, by San Francisco-based director Theo Rigby, shows how immigrant caregivers increasingly fill a demand in the United States to attend to the disabled and elderly.

The documentary shows Gerrish cooking and shopping for a previous employer, an ailing Japanese woman. She feeds her, turns her over so she won’t get bed sores. It’s non-stop work.

After the film, Tratar realized how little she knew about Gerrish’s life: How she misses Fiji — and how she’s in the U.S. without legal authorization.

“This is a shock to me because I just didn’t know,” Tratar said.

She’s against hiring people without papers, she says. But she also can’t say why she never asked Gerrish for documentation. Maybe because she didn’t want to know, she says, because Gerrish was a good fit.

Meanwhile, Gerrish says she doesn’t worry about stepping out of the shadows so publicly. She tells Tratar how she’s hoping immigration reform might grant her legal status.

“It’s getting there,” Gerrish told Tratar. “It’s a long journey, but we’ll get there.”

Gerrish also tells Tratar how, in her off time, she is working to improve labor conditions for other caregivers, nannies and housekeepers. In California, it’s estimated that some 200,000 people do this type of work, many without papers.

She talks about women from Mexico she knows, along with other immigrants from elsewhere, who live in the U.S. illegally and worry about getting deported on their way to work. Also, Gerrish says, she hears about women worried about getting paid, since they are off the books. If there is a dispute with an employer, wages can be held back and undocumented workers may be unaware they still have the right to claim those wages.

“Oh, there’s a lot of that, getting paid under the table. A lot!” Tratar said.

Gerrish agreed.

“But that’s the only kind of work that we can do. We would like to do other stuff. But we’re stuck with that,” she said.

Gerrish says she has felt mistreated by other employers.

“Oh, you’re like a slave,” she said. “Do this. Do that. Do that. I say, ‘Wait a minute, I only have two hands.’ But they want you right there, right there, right there. Otherwise, I’ll kick you out. But you have to do it. Otherwise what else can you do? You need to survive.”

Gerrish is working with labor advocate Maureen Purtill, who organizes immigrant women at the Graton Day Labor Center nearby, in Sonoma. Purtill remembers Gerrish’s reaction when she told her that, among other demands, like overtime and vacation, they’d push for workers to get uninterrupted sleep.

“She burst into laughter, in this uncomfortable laughter, like, ‘Oh, I would love that. That would be amazing. I’ve never had the right to sleep five hours in a row, or eight hours in a row,” Purtill said. “Caregiving requires sometimes, you know, care every two hours if you’re caring for elderly people.”

It’s the case with Gerrish, who wakes up with Tratar at 4 or 5 a.m. every day.

“Oh my goodness gracious, you need domestic help,” Tratar said. “I don’t know what I would do without Joesy. I couldn’t survive.”

Tratar hopes Gerrish will legalize her status in the U.S. soon. She understands now that deportation is a constant worry for her caretaker.

“Every day you live in fear, just looking behind your shoulder every day,” Gerrish said.

The question now is whether new legislation would let both women rest a little easier.

Federal report shows EPA regulations produce more economic benefits than costs

Living on Earth — Thu, 16 May 2013 09:00:00 -0500

Gina McCarthy’s nomination to head the Environmental Protection Agency was stalled late last week in the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, after a GOP boycott of a hearing.

But while McCarthy is expected to eventually win confirmation, the administration of President Barack Obama is fighting back. The latest annual review from the Office of Management and Budget shows the benefits of EPA rules far exceed their costs.

Joe Aldy, a former Obama White House staffer who now teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School, said the OMB review also revealed that the EPA has the largest share of both costs and benefits within the federal regulatory structure.

"They found that the estimated benefits are significantly larger than the estimated cost of the regulatory actions — both in the past year as well as over the past 10 years of the regulatory action," he said.

Specifically, he said, the federal government has between $50 and $115 billion in benefits from its regulations — with 60 to 80 percent coming from the EPA. The vast majority of benefits come in the form of reducing premature mortality, he explained.

On the cost side, the federal government spends about $15 to $20 billion, with roughly half attributable to the EPA.

"So they impose a cost on the economy but they're delivering, by about a factor of 10, additional benefits to the United States in terms of reducing air pollution and the associated mortality," Aldy explained.

To be sure, the EPA does impose costs on the economy. And those costs are typically concentrated in very specific industries, which can make life difficult for businesses in those fields.

"There are a lot of really old coal-fired power plants that have never done anything to the control emissions of mercury and other air pollutants. They all actually have to incur significant different cost to install scrubber technology to clean up the pollution," Aldy said.

And, those costs are easy to see on balance sheets and in SEC filings. It's much more theoretical to compute the value of better health or longer lives to people who are sensitive to pollution in the atmosphere. Big businesses also tend to have lobbyists participating in the political process — something the average asthma sufferer can't afford.

"It’s the difference between the balance sheet for a corporation, and the health of families around the country," Aldy said. "That fundamentally is the difference between the benefits and the cost of many of the EPA’s regulations."

McCarthy, he said, is pragmatic — and the driving force behind many of the EPA regulations the drive the most economic benefits to society. Her track record, he added, is that of a person who works to implement regulations that "deliver the biggest bang for the buck" for Americans.

Aldy says it's important to remember that the EPA, through its regulations, is making us a healthier society — something that gets lost in the discussion.

"And that’s the whole point of government regulation. What I teach at the Kennedy school, the government should intervene in the economy and implement new regulations if they can identify a market failure — certainly pollution is a sign that the market is not working — and do so in a way that increases the net benefits to society," he said.

American diplomat expelled from Russia for spying evokes memories of Cold War

The Takeaway — Thu, 16 May 2013 08:00:00 -0500

Russian authorities on Monday detained American Ryan Christopher Fogle, an employee of the U.S. embassy in Moscow.

They accused him of working for the CIA and trying to recruit Russian agents for espionage. Fogle is alleged to have been found wearing a wig, carrying millions of euros and instructions for divulging information to the U.S. via a fake email account. All the stuff of a great spy thriller.

The history of espionage between the West and Russia is long and complicated. But according to Gordon Corera, while the Cold War may be finished, espionage continues. Corera, a BBC correspondent and author of The Art of Betrayal: The Secret History of MI6, called this latest incident a very "retro" kind of spy case.

"This isn't the world of cyber spies we've come to expect," he said. "When Britain's MI6 got caught in Moscow a few years ago, at least they were using something high-tech like a spy rock, with a secret transmitter in it."

Corera called this incident strange and said, in fact, some of this evidence may actually have been planted on Fogle because they wanted to make a point — because they wanted something public to expose.

"It could be because they're annoyed that he was trying to recruit a Russian intelligence officer and they wanted to send a message. It could be because it serves their political narrative of saying 'foreign intelligence services are trying to subvert us,' and you see that in their campaign against NGOs," Corera said.

According to the Russian account, Fogle was trying to recruit someone who worked in counter-terrorism, which may be a U.S. effort, in the aftermath of Boston, to find out what more the U.S. knows about what's going on in the Caucus region.

All of this is to say there could be a number of motives behind both the U.S. behavior and the Russian behavior, made even more complicated by the Russian decision to make the whole matter public.

It remains to be seen how the American administration responds to Russia's move. In times past, a Russian who the U.S. believed was an undercover spy would be sent home in retaliation for the Russian decision.

It's all very Cold War. But it's been decades since the Cold War ended.

Hispanics going to college in record numbers, but graduation numbers still lag

WBUR's Here & Now — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:30:00 -0500

Hispanics in the United States are entering colleges and universities at higher rates than whites and blacks, but still lower than Asian Americans.

This is an all-time high for Hispanics, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, which released a report late last week. This is the result, in part, of a dramatic rise in the high school graduation rate among Hispanic high-school students.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that once in college, Latino students still lag when it comes to earning bachelor’s degrees.

Hansi Lo Wang, who covers race, ethnicity and culture for NPR’s Code Switch project, said Latinos, who currently make up about 17 percent of Americans, will represent about 33 percent of Americans by 2060. Sandra Martinez, a 30-year-old woman who works in a Maryland community center, said many Latinos feel like college isn't something that's available to them.

"For me, when I was younger, growing up, that was never mentioned. There was no more higher dream after high school," she said. "Now, the kids becoming more Americanized ... it's helping."

Martinez is going to college now, but the younger students she's working with now are thinking about college as the logical next step from high school, Wang said.

"This shows that there's a long-term rise in Hispanic students going into college," he said.

There are several theories for why more Hispanics are going to college, not the least of which is that it's becoming increasingly difficult for high school students to find jobs after graduating. But Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, dean of UCLA's graduate school of education, has another theory.

"I think the story here is really the story of the maturing of the second generation," he said. "These are U.S.-born kids. They're kids who have higher ambitions, they want to do better than their parents, and they're connecting with colleges."

But even as their rate of participation increases, Hispanic and Latino students are still having trouble completing their degrees.

Wang said these Latino college students are facing challenges that are familiar to all students, not the least of which is the high cost of a college degree.

But nonprofits, like the Maryland community center where Martinez works, are trying to address this issue through education.

"If I know that I did that and it was possible for me without the guidance of my parents, of anything, it's possible for them," she said.

Meat processing across the Midwest largely done by immigrants

PRI's The World — Wed, 15 May 2013 10:30:00 -0500

Butchering chicken and meat is dangerous, low-paying factory work — and it leans heavily on immigrant workers, sometimes illegally.

Just like farm work, immigration reform could change this industry dramatically, from granting workers legal status to offering temporary work visas. At the same time, some immigrants are deciding to move on from such tough work.

In a small apartment in Noel, Mo.,, seven roommates from Somalia get ready for the night shift. Siido Jama fries up meat and onion sambusas, a stuffed pastry. She'll head across the river to a poultry processing plant run by Tyson Foods and work until early morning.

Jama says America has been good to her. Tyson wages start at $9 an hour and English is not required. But the work is repetitive and

dangerous and employees cycle through plants quickly. If Jama becomes injured or finds another opportunity, another immigrant worker would likely step in to replace her.

“The poultry industry has been one of several industries that has had the clear experience that it needs foreign-born workers or access to foreign-born workers as part of its workforce,” explained Doris Meissner of the Migration Policy Institute.

Outside the Tyson plant, a sign reads, “Now hiring, call today.” Immigrants and refugees are the ones flocking to work here, not locals.

At 4:30 p.m., cars arrive at the plant to drop off night shift workers, who wear flowered skirts and hijabs. The approximately 1,500 employees come from around the world: Africa, the Pacific, Latin America and Asia.

At some meat plants, workers are hired illegally, prompting an increasing government crack down. In 2001, Tyson was charged with smuggling in workers from Mexico, but was later acquitted.

Now the food industry is lobbying Washington to make it easier to legally hire immigrants.

In February this year, National Chicken Council President Mike Brown testified on behalf of food manufacturers. “We seek workers who will stay on the job to become skilled and efficient,” he told Congressional representatives.

Legislation before Congress would grant millions of immigrants legal status, if it passes. It may grant visas to more guest workers and extend rights such as minimum wage levels and mobility like never before. New rules would allow workers to switch jobs instead of being tied to one employer.

That is a breakthrough and “gives workers leverage,” Meissner says.

While it is unclear how pending legislation would play out in the workforce, for now many immigrants say they’ll continue doing the tough work of cutting, deboning and packing poultry.

In her living room, Guatemalan migrant Irma Brown demonstrates her trimming job at the Tyson factory. First grab the carcass, flip it, hack off the wings — repeat. She does this for hours every day.

Brown is proud of her work, which has enabled her to house and support her children and grandchildren. But years of fast repetitive motion have worn down her wrists and arms.

Brown has had three surgeries for carpal and cubital tunnel syndrome, but her hands still cramp up in the night and prevent her from closing her fingers. The pain keeps her from sleeping. During the day she loses her grip and will suddenly drop plates of Chinese food or cooking pots on the floor.

Micronesian worker Merlina Manuel says she works in freezing temperatures packing chicken breast into foam trays at a rate of 60 to 70 per minute.

“If the order is really big and the time is really short then they make it fast,” Manuel said. “Sometimes we really shout and say, ‘What’s going on?’ But we do what we have to do.”

Processing line work could intensify under a new rules proposed by the Department of Agriculture aimed at containing harmful food-borne bacteria. The proposal would decrease food inspectors in factories, speed up processing lines and save food companies money. Advocates worry that already notorious worker injuries will increase.

Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson says the company’s policies prevent injuries.

“We care about our employees, we value them, we want to make sure their safe on the job ... The right to a safe workplace is part of our team member bill of rights,” he said.

But some immigrant workers want out.

Carina Vega worked illegally at chicken plants for years, after migrating from Mexico. Now she and other ex-poultry workers run a new Mexican restaurant across the street from the Tyson plant. Vega says she needs both hands to raise her kids, feed them and do their laundry, so she can’t afford to get hurt.

“We came to work,” she said in Spanish. “If they treated us a little bit better, a little more human, there wouldn’t be any problem.”

For now though, Tyson and other food companies will count on someone else, perhaps another immigrant, to fill Vega’s spot.

South African students face real danger in simply getting to school each day

PRI's The World — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:00:00 -0500

Editor's note: This story is part of a year-long series by Anders Kelto, School Year: Learning, Poverty, and Success in a South African Township.

At eight on a recent Wednesday morning, a student named Lephema arrived at the Centre of Science and Technology (COSAT) in bad shape. His right eye was swollen shut.

Lephema said, as he was walking to school, a young man approached him in a field and demanded his cell phone.

“I said I don’t have it,” Lephema explained, holding a bag of ice to his eye. “But (he) forced me.”

The man sprayed Lephema in the face with pepper spray and grabbed the phone from his jacket.

After Lephema arrived at school, he was rushed to the hospital. He was physically OK — but clearly shaken up.

This kind of incident is common at COSAT. The school’s principal, Phadiela Cooper, says students face serious problems during the commute to school.

“They deal with violence, they deal with crime, almost every day,” she said.

In fact, the school recently polled students and found that nearly half have been robbed or assaulted on the way to or from school.

Part of the problem is transportation. In South Africa, there are no public school buses. Some kids can afford to take a train or a shared van, but many are left to walk, often long distances, to get to school.

I wanted to see what hazards students face — and how they negotiate them. So I asked a junior named Lukhanyo if I could accompany him on his morning walk.

Lukhanyo’s Long Walk

Lukhanyo lives in a three-room metal shack. A single light bulb illuminates the family’s small house.

Lukhanyo wakes up at six each morning, puts on his blue school sweater and tie, and polishes his black dress shoes. After brushing his teeth, he grabs his backpack and steps out the door.

His neighborhood is a vast area of shacks and dirt roads, with stray dogs wandering past. It’s the kind of place many would feel unsafe, but Lukhanyo feels the opposite.

“I feel safe, because this is where I belong,” he said. “I know everyone who stays here.”

To get to school, Lukhanyo walks two and a quarter miles, through open fields and gang territories, and past areas where petty thieves hang out. He says he’s an easy target for robbers because of what he’s wearing — a school uniform.

“They know that children sometimes carry phones to schools, and they have money for lunch,” he said.

Lukhanyo exits his neighborhood, and links up with a paved road. Cars and trucks pass by, and school kids move along the sidewalk. He walks past a barbershop and a fruit market, both of which are closed at this early hour.

Then, a few hundred yards up the road, he approaches a large, open field. It’s littered with trash. On the right is a barbed wire fence. On the left, there are brick houses. To the side of the trail lies a dead dog. Lukhanyo is noticeably worried.

“This is where I feel scared. I don’t know many people (here),” he said.

In Khayelitsha, people rarely get attacked in their own neighborhoods. If they do, neighbors intervene. But in other areas, bystanders often do nothing. Lukhanyo says he doubts anyone here would help him.

“They will just remain indoors and watch by windows,” he said.

The Role of Police and Parents

Theoretically, the police should protect students as they walk to school. But in Khayelitsha, there are very few police officers — just a quarter of the national average — and many residents say the police don’t do their job.

Parents of COSAT students recently staged a protest at the local police station, demanding that something be done to protect their kids. But, so far, little has changed.

Parents have considered patrolling the streets themselves. But Nolundi Jikwana, whose daughter is a ninth-grader at COSAT, says that strategy is dangerous. She says it was tried at another school, and parents were targeted by gangs.

“They would come and attack their families,” Jikwana said.

So some parents have proposed another idea for keeping their kids safe, says Thembisa Xeketwana, who has a daughter at COSAT.

“We approached the taxi drivers,” Xeketwana said through a translator. “We said if they ever see gangs attacking students on the roads, they should give the gangsters a serious beating.”

Taxi drivers are a large and powerful group in Khayelitsha. Many come from tough backgrounds, and some carry guns. Several COSAT parents say taxi drivers are the only people that gangsters and robbers fear — and that’s why parents have asked them to act as vigilante law enforcers.

In fact, Lukhanyo, the junior at COSAT, was recently rescued by a pair of taxi drivers.

Close Call

On his walk to school, Lukhanyo shows me where the incident occurred.

He stops in front of a small store. On a cement wall, there’s a gang name sprayed in graffiti. Lukhanyo says a group of boys attacked him here a few weeks ago. They came at him with knives.

“So that’s when I started running,” Lukhanyo said.

He jumped into a taxi that had slowed down to help him. The driver and his assistant chased the gangsters away.

Now, whenever Lukhanyo passes through here, he keeps an eye out for the nearest taxi. And if he sees a group of boys, he crosses the street.

A half-mile beyond where his frightening encounter occurred, Lukhanyo enters a quiet neighborhood. He walks along the edge of a sandy field and bumps into a few classmates. He says that at this point in his walk, he feels relieved.

“Because I’m just near the gate of the school, which is where I’ll feel protected,” he said.

Lukhanyo could easily avoid this long and treacherous walk. He could attend a less prestigious high school much closer to his home. But he says he doesn’t feel he has a choice.

“Because I want to become something. I want something in (the) future,” Lukhanyo said.

So, every day, he weighs his hopes for the future against his safety in the present. And, every day, he chooses to walk to this school.

Activists see progress in convincing groups to divest from fossil fuels

Living on Earth — Wed, 15 May 2013 08:00:00 -0500

The movement to divest from fossil fuels is catching fire.

Four universities and 10 U.S. cities, including Seattle and San Francisco, have announced plans to divest their holdings in corporations that profit from the extraction of global warming fuels, especially oil and coal. But it appears most big environmental organizations have yet to follow suit. Groups including The Nature Conservancy, the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International invest part of their endowments in the very fossil fuel industries that are linked to climate change.

Dan Apfel, executive director of the Responsible Endowments Coalition, said endowments typically work with investment advisors to choose stocks and other investments that perform strongly in the market.

"They try and make returns in order that they have more money to implement their mission in the future," he said.

Fossil fuel stocks make up about 13 percent of the U.S. and global equity markets. Apfel estimates that green groups like have a similar portion of their assets in fossil fuels.

Some groups like The Nature Conservancy, with about $1 billion in assets, openly accept funds from companies like BP, Chevron, and Exxon. That, Apfel said, is a little different. It's one thing, he explained, to take money that's already been earned — but another to invest in the company and effectively bet on its future successes.

"All investors want their investments to perform well, but for these investments to perform well, that really means that more fossil fuels need to get burned, and that’s really inimical to the mission of the environmental organization," he said.

A typical person with investments in a mutual fund may be invested in fossil fuels and might not even be aware. But when it comes to groups with large endowments, it's extremely unlikely they don't know where their money is being invested, Apfel said.

"We really believe that once you know you have the obligation to do something — and I think most of these organizations already knew, but if they didn’t know before this divestment campaign, they definitely know now," he said.

Apfel said organizations and individuals should be sensitive to what they're invested in.

"You want to go out and find managers that don’t invest in fossil fuels and ideally are investing in the future. So, really are investing in the solutions to climate change, to mitigate climate change," Apfel explained. "It’s really the most powerful statement an investor can make with their money."

He said his coalition encourages colleges and universities to invest five percent of their endowments in solutions to climate change.

But Apfel says it just makes good business sense. Fossil fuel companies are largely valued based on their proven reserves — but burning them could lead to climate catastrophe. So either way, he said, investors in fossil fuels will lose.

"Either we’re going to burn those reserves and global temperatures are going to rise way more than two degrees, or we’re going to have to keep them in the ground, and that means that fossil fuel companies are overvalued," he said.

Rather, Apfel said, invest in the companies that will power tomorrow.

"If we can’t invest in our future, we really shouldn’t be investing at all," he added.

Tour guide recalls African river journey that included time in hippo's mouth

PRI's The World — Tue, 14 May 2013 15:19:00 -0500

Tour guide Paul Templer will never forget paddling down Africa's Zambezi River, 17 years ago.

"It started out as a beautiful day in Africa just above Victoria Falls," Templer said. "And I was leading a canoe safari and things had been going rather well until all of the sudden there was a huge whooosh behind me. I turned and there was a hippopotamus."

What happened next in that close encounter with a two-ton hippo is quite alarming. Templer told the BBC he was paddling along the river, which partly forms the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, with three other apprentice guides.

"I turned just in time to see one of the canoes in our armada getting attacked by a hippopotamus and unfortunately one of my guides got thrown into the river and so my job was to go and get him out," Templer said.

A rescue in this situation might seem like a courageous thing to attempt, but it was risky, because man versus hippo is not what you might call a good matchup.

"As I was leaning over to grab a hold of him, the hippo burst up out of the water and plucked me cleanly out of my canoe," he said.

So for a moment there on the Zambezi, Templer was in the mouth of the hippo, and remember ippopotamus jaws are strong enough to snap a human in half.

"It happened so fast the first thing I knew I was in this dank, dark place and there was this pressure crushing down on my lower back," Templer said. "I could feel the water around my legs. I'm about a six-foot man, so you can fit half a six-foot man, waist first, down a hippo's throat."

The attack lasted over three minutes and involved dozens of of puncture wounds, blood, and thrashing about in the water.

Templer says he remembers frantically freeing one of his arms and feeling the whiskers of the hippo's snout.

"In the midst of this, I guess, with the adrenalin coursing, everything slowed down so when we went under water I would hold my breath, and when we were on the surface I'd suck in air and all the while I figured out that if I held onto the tusks that were boring into me that my flesh wouldn't tear so much when he shook me about," he said. "At one point he did spit me out far enough that one of the chaps on our trip, a guide who I knew quite well, Mike, just showed exceptional bravery, and he paddled in, and I was able to grab onto his boat and he dragged me out."

Templer lived to tell the tale. He lost his mangled left arm in the hippo attack but somehow managed to survive the ordeal. In fact he was inspired by the experience to devote his energy to work on behalf of terminally ill children and amputees.

Syrian refugees find success, welcome in Egypt

PRI's The World — Tue, 14 May 2013 10:30:00 -0500

When you walk into the Al-Shami restaurant in Cairo, the first people you encounter are the 24-year-olds: Sameh, who’s manning the cash register and arranging the deliveries, and Ahmed, who’s cutting slabs of lamb shwarma onto sandwiches.

In the back you find the teenagers — Jihad shredding cucumbers, and a pair of identical twins with big grey eyes, packing up the food.

The young employees of Al-Shami are all Syrians who landed in Egypt in the past year. According to the United Nations, more than 100,000 Syrians have settled in Egypt since the Syrian uprising broke out in March 2011.

See more pictures from Egypt at TheWorld.org.

Ahmed, who’s making the shwarma sandwiches, says many of the employees at Al-Shami worked together at the same restaurant in Damascus.

“It’s not open anymore,” Ahmed said. “It closed. We needed work, we needed money, so we came here to Egypt.”

Sameh’s uncle opened this restaurant seven months ago. Most of the customers are also Syrian refugees. This neighborhood of Cairo has so many Syrian refugees that Egyptians have taken to calling it “Little Syria.”

About 3 p.m., the late lunch crowd starts to arrive. A short, red-headed Syrian guy orders a chicken shwarma. Then, a man with a long black beard, in a long white gown and white cap walks in.

He’s a sheikh, who came to Egypt from Damascus six months ago.

“I love Egypt,” he said. “It’s the land of blessings. It’s the land of the Prophet Moses.”

Then he proceeds to give the Koranic history of Egypt and Syria. When he leaves, Ahmed and Sameh joke about the sheikh going on so long about Islamic history.

“Seriously though,” Sameh said, “some people talk like that guy, as if everything’s perfect here, as if Egypt is so great. It’s just not.”

Ahmed points at a middle-aged man who just walked in. He’s from the city of Daraya outside Damascus. The man is tall, handsome, with green eyes. He moves gracefully, yet slowly — he seems distracted.

He orders chicken and rice, “the food of the people,” he says. The tall man won’t give his name but says to call him Tamim. He’s a civil engineer who came to Cairo seven months ago with his wife and three daughters. When they arrived, he didn’t know anyone here.

“I have seen a lot,” he said. “I was in the first massacre in Daraya, in August 2012. Hundreds were killed in Daraya in one day. I’ve seen so much death — children, babies, women, old men — all of them dead.”

When asked what he felt like when he was sitting on the plane with his family leaving Syria, he says he felt like his heart was outside of his body.

“Every day I feel like I have died 100 times. Everybody let us down: Arabs, Europeans and Americans, all of them let us down.”

At this point, he begins to cry. He says he feels lost.

“I feel ashamed and guilty that I am coming to buy things here now and there are people back home who can’t afford to buy food,” he said. “Every day we weep, my wife and the kids. Every day.”

Before leaving Al–Shamy restaurant Ahmed pulls out his cell phone. He wants to show a picture of his baby, Shady, who is three months old.

He’s part Egyptian, because he was born here in Cairo. Ahmed corrects: he’s 100 percent Syrian.

Farmers in Pennsylvania taking proceeds from fracking and investing in solar

Living on Earth — Tue, 14 May 2013 09:00:00 -0500

Editor's Note: This story comes by way of the Pennsylvania radio program, The Allegheny Front.

Supporters of hydraulic fracturing — or fracking — say the increasing availability of natural gas gives the U.S. a way to replace coal and oil and provides a bridge fuel to renewable energy sources.

In Marcellus shale country, some farmers with gas leases are using this bridge fuel to get right into solar.

Dwayne Bauknight drives onto his Washington County property in a golf cart. He pulls a U-turn to park between two rows of 15-foot tall solar panels and shows how they work.

"When it’s producing it’ll go through all those inverters, all those yellow things,

and then come out of that straight meter right there," he said, pointing to various components of his personal power sytem.

Bauknight and his family signed a gas lease with Range Resources in October and used the money to install a 38.4 kilowatt solar array on their farm, Shared Acres.

Seven years ago Bauknight decided to leave a job as a financial advisor and become a farmer. He says his two careers aren’t so different — now he grows food instead of money. He does a lot of the same kind of decision-making, he said, using the same math, analyzing risk.

Bauknight is conflicted about drilling for environmental reasons. But for his family’s sake, weighing the risks, he couldn’t not take the money. So he compromised with himself — and put the money toward building his solar array.

"There’s different ways to sustainability, and one of the ways to sustainability is to take our fossil fuels and invest them in renewable energy," he said. "I think that’s what we’ve been lacking for a long, long time."

Just two miles down the road is Duane Miller’s farm. His family has worked this land for five generations. Miller has no qualms about drilling for shale gas and sees it as a boon for farmers like him who were just getting by.

"If someone offered to give you a bunch of money, what would it mean to you?" he said with a laugh. "I got out of debt. I hadn’t been out of debt since I was 18 when I started farming."

Miller’s no environmentalist. He installed solar panels so he’d be free of energy bills. It also let him quit milking cows and raise beef cattle instead. It’s a lot less work, and he can still afford to farm.

Tim Kelsey, an agricultural economist at Penn State University, is unsurprised some farmers are taking gas money and investing it in solar. He's been looking at the choices farmers make, broadly.

"The nature of farming involves kind of long-term investments," he said.

Joe Morinville, who owns Energy Independent Solutions, a solar company near Pittsburgh, has done some research of his own. He estimates 25 percent of his customers are farmers and that of those number, many have turned to solar thanks to gas money.

Solar arrays can come with a six-figure price tag. So while investing in solar might be out of reach for a typical farmer, shale money makes it possible.

"There’s an awful lot of energy that we’re not using in this country that’s here. It’s just a matter of harnessing it, getting the technology to use it. It’s not free energy, but it comes close," Miller said.

Historic election marks transition in Pakistan

The Takeaway — Tue, 14 May 2013 08:00:00 -0500

This weekend saw historic elections in Pakistan. Despite the violence in the run-up to the elections, which saw regular bomb blasts and the kidnapping of the son of a former prime minister, Saturday's vote marked the first time the country has transitioned from one democratically elected government to another.

Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is expected to be the new prime minister, based on preliminary results.

Arif Rafiq, adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute and president of Vizier Consulting, LLC, which provides information on Middle East and South Asian political and security issues, said Pakistanis view this as representing continuity for the country — and an opportunity for Pakistan to have political stability.

The results, Rafiq said, came in better than expected for Sharif, giving him basically a majority of seats in the Pakistani assembly — meaning he will have a fairly strong government of his own party, perhaps with a few outside coalition partners.

"That will give him some space to engage in deep and meaningful reforms that Pakistan desperately needs," he said.

The Taliban was able to play a role in the days leading up to the election, with talk that Taliban fighters were trying to battle perceived secularism in the country.

There's no indication, however, that electoral violence had any role in influencing who people voted for, Rafiq said.

"The secular partiest that were the primary targets of these militant organizations were actually polling pretty low in public opinion polls," he added.

Those parties were actually part of the previous coalition government that failed to manifest reforms and manage the country's economy.

Pakistan has a history of anti-incumbency, which seems to have manifested itself in this election, with voters punishing the secular parties — likely for their previous role in government and not because of militant attacks.

"It's really unclear how impactful terrorist violence was in terms of voter choice," Rafiq said.

Sharif governed Pakistani in the 1990s, before being ousted by Pervez Musharraf. He has a track record of authoritarianism from that time, and didn't work well with other democratic parties, but he did pursue peace with India, Rafiq said.

"Now he's looking to be a force for peace and stability in the region and also work on the basis of consensus inside his own country," Rafiq added. "What we'll see if Nawaz Sharif will try to be something of a statesman inside Pakistan and in the region."