The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer; March 23, 2007

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to your PBS station from viewers like you, thank you. The U.S. House passed a war-funding bill today with a deadline for combat troops to leave Iraq. They'd have to be out before September of 2008. The vote was 218 to 212, mostly along party lines. Democrats claim victory in the face of a veto threat. Majority leaders, Steny Hoyer insisted the political fight will not hurt the troops. We know they need the money, and we're going to work to get the money. Unlike previous Congresses, however, we have a responsibility to as well give them a policy for success. Give them, as the chairman of the caucus has said, a leverage to get the Iraqis involved and get our men and women off the front lines of fighting a civil war.

An hour later, President Bush warned of significant disruptions if the funds aren't available by April 15. But he said again he will not accept pull-out deadlines just to get the funding. On the Senate side, opponents of a deadline also condemn the House vote. Republican John McCain said it will never get through the Senate. We're not prepared to tell the enemy, hang on. We give you a date when we're leaving. We're not prepared to micromanage this new strategy and surge that's succeeding in Iraq. We're not ready to hamstring our military leaders and not let them carry out their responsibilities as delegated to them by the Commander-in-Chief are the armed forces. The Senate will take up its own war funding bill next week. For now, it includes a goal of pulling combat troops by next April. I'm on the story right after the new summary. In Baghdad today, one of Iraq's deputy prime ministers was wounded in a suicide bombing.

Salam al-Zubai, a Sunni, was in stable but serious condition. At least nine people were killed in the attack, you know, the heavily guarded green zone 14 others were wounded. Also today, the U.S. military reported two more Americans were killed on Thursday. An entire unit of U.S. Marines has been ordered out of Afghanistan over charges of killing civilians. The Special Operations Command confirmed today the 120 Marines in the unit are under investigation. They're accused of shooting unarmed Afghans after a suicide bombing in an eastern province. U.S. officials said militants caused some of the casualties. Iranian forces seized 15 British sailors and Marines today from a merchant ship in the Persian Gulf. It set off a diplomatic flurry between the two countries. We have a report narrated by Nick Peyton Walsh of Independent Television News. Some and but unable to give an explanation, Iran's ambassador camera shy at the Foreign Office.

The arrest of 15 British troops in Iraqi waters, Iran's most provocative move in months. But one official told Channel Four News, he couldn't give any substantive answers. We've sought a full explanation of what happened and left the Iranian authorities in no doubt that we expect the immediate and safe return of our service personnel and boats. I understand the meeting with my permanent secretary was brisk but polite. Iranian TV announcing the arrest during their new year holiday, adding the British ambassador was summoned to explain the illegal entry into Iranian waters. The seized British ships patrolling these waters under a UN mandate to curb smuggling. One UK official saying they surrendered to overwhelming Iranian force. The incident was just outside the shat al-Arab waterway in the northern Gulf.

Britain says its troops were in Iraqi waters but this border has previously been disputed by Iran. At 10-30 local time, two British inflatable boats stopped a merchant ship. They boarded it but were surrounded by Iranian ships and then escorted into Iranian waters. Commanders on their base ship, the heavily armed HMS Cornwall seen here could only look on. We know that there was no fighting, there was no engagement with weapons and that was entirely peaceful and we've been insured from the stand communication we've had with the Iranians at the tactical level that the 15 people are safely in their hands. Precious calm on increasingly tense waters, Iran staging a week of war games nearby, flexing their muscles after Washington's charge their arming the Shia militia who are killing US troops in Iraq. A similar incident took place in 2004 when Iran held eight British troops for three days.

This latest seizure occurred as the UN Security Council debates new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, a vote could come tomorrow. There was word today defense secretary Gates wanted to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay Cuba. In New York Times reported he repeatedly urged that step during his first weeks in office. It said he argued legal proceedings at Guantanamo would be viewed as illegitimate. The Times said Vice President Cheney and Attorney General Gonzalez opposed the move. A White House spokesman said today, Gates's legal concerns were resolved and never reached the level of the president. The former Deputy Interior Secretary pleaded guilty today in Washington to obstruction of justice. Stephen Grouse admitted he lied to the Senate about his ties with convicted lobbyists Jack Abramoff. Abramoff persuaded his Indian clients to pay millions of dollars for influence in Congress

and at the Interior Department. The Grouse plea was part of a deal for a lighter sentence. The Senate narrowly approved a Democratic budget plan today worth $2.9 trillion. It calls for balancing the budget in five years and renewing a number of tax cuts set to expire at the end of the decade. A Republican bid for deeper cuts in the state taxes was rejected. The budget is nonbinding. It sets guidelines for actual spending bills later this year. From Wall Street today, the Dow Jones industrial average gained nearly 20 points to close at 12,481. The Nasdaq lost more than two points to close under 24.49. For the week, the Dow gained more than 3 percent. The Nasdaq rose three and a half percent. And that's it for the news summary tonight. Now, the Iraq war vote in the House on the front lines in Baghdad. News and Brooks, fighting globalization, and religion and politics in Europe.

The House sets a timetable. News are a congressional correspondent, Kwame Holman reports. All week long, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she needed only 218 votes for the House to approve restrictions on the President's conduct of the Iraq war. Today, in the closest of votes, she got 218. I stand here with great pride on this historic day in the Congress of the United States. Proudly, this new Congress voted to bring an end to the war in Iraq. But securing passage of the $124 billion emergency spending bill, which ties war funding to the withdrawal of U.S. troops, took substantial arm-twisting, much of it by Pelosi herself. Pelosi personally lobbied the four leaders of the Democrats' anti-war faction to convince some of their colleagues to support her.

Ten agreed. One was freshman Yvette Clark of New York. It was a very emotional vote for me. I mean, I took a lot of soul search and I prayed, I kind of, you know, just really dug in deep on this vote. You know, I come from a district in Brooklyn where it's the epicenter of the anti-war movement. And again, just thinking about the number of funerals I've attended dealing with the families in the community that is grieving over this loss, I want to see our troops come home. I want to see them come home yesterday. And so this vote, again, I had to really make sure that what I was doing was moving us to that end. And I do believe this is the beginning of the end of the Iraq war. Texas Democrat Lloyd Doggett said he was one of the final members to go from undecided to yes. In 13 years, I don't know of more difficult vote for me personally. I'm very dissatisfied with the bill that passed. But in the, after the debate, it's clear that it was a vote between a modest step to end the war and joining the Republicans for endless war.

Republicans, however, argued that Democrats had bought additional votes by adding $24 billion in spending unrelated to the Iraq war. Several cited today's Washington Post editorial, which lambasted Democrats for proposing $75 million for peanut storage in Georgia, $25 million for California spinach farmers, and $120 million for shrimpers. You know, what does throwing money at bubblegum pop by the sailor man and Mr. Peanut have to do with winning a war? Nothing. But appropriations committee chairman David Obie, who wrote the bill, argued vehemently that the fish and agriculture industries legitimately need relief and that Republicans were missing the overall point. What matters in the end is not what the specific language is. What matters is whether or not we produce a product today that puts pressure on this administration and sends a message to Iraq, to the Iraqi politicians, that we're going to end the permanent long-term

dead-end babysitting service. That's what we're trying to do. And if the Washington Post is offended about the way we do it, that's just too bad. But we're in the arena. They're not. And this is the best we can do given the tools we have that I make absolutely no apology for it. But Republicans countered warning that pressuring the administration and by extension the military into a timetable for troop withdrawal by September 2008 would signal retreat to the enemy and that forcing the Iraqi government to meet political and security benchmarks would hinder military leader's ability to make essential battlefield decisions. Louisiana Republican Jim McCreary reminded Democrats that many of them voted for this war and should not put limits on it now. Some of us, it seems, have changed our minds and wish we hadn't cast that vote. But the fact is we did cast that vote. We voted in the majority to start this war. I believe

based on my reading of history, my studies of past engagements, military engagements, it would be a tremendous mistake for the Congress of the United States to attempt to micromanage this war and bring it to a conclusion through artificially constraining decisions on the battlefield. But majority leader, Steny Hoyer, claimed this was a new Iraq resolution and that a vote for the war in 2002 was not a vote for civil war in 2007. None of us who voted for the original authorization voted to put our troops in the middle of a civil war. Not one of us. The Iraq government has failed to meet political goals. It is our responsibility to ask them to do so. Because we want to support our troops. This is a 15-minute vote.

When the vote finally was called for, anti-war protesters made one last plea from the gallery of us. The Sergeant-Ams will remove those persons responsible for the Scrivance and restore order to the gallery. And once they had been removed, the vote went on. Democrats reacted when they realized victory was at hand. They had won despite 14 defections and virtually unanimous Republican dissent. Shortly afterward, President Bush, flanked by military families, repeated his pledge to veto the bill, noting the narrow margin of passage shows there aren't enough votes in the House to override him. But the vote in the House was so close, it is clear that my veto would be sustained. Today's action in the House does only one thing. It delays the delivery of vital resources for our troops.

If the bill is to make it to the President's desk, it first must pass the Senate, which takes up its own version of the legislation next week. Now to the real battlefields of Baghdad. Julian Mannion of Independent Television News has been embedded with U.S. Army units. He filed two reports this week. These are some of the most dangerous streets in the world. In an American armored humbly, we drove into the sunny stronghold of Ghazaliyah in West Baghdad. Here any car could contain a bomb. Inside a cordon of tanks, U.S. troops were rapidly building a new combat outpost. It's part of the surge to clear and hold violent areas. This Iraqi family had just been told to leave their home to make way for the new base.

What would you feel if you were suddenly told to get out of your house? Tell me what would you feel? Nearby fortifications were going out. American troops had cleared the houses they were taking over and looters were hard at work. What is the reaction of the local people? Because frankly, as we turned up, they didn't seem terribly happy. Well, probably not. We haven't received very much happiness from this sector the entire time we've been here. This is a place that's been brutally war torn. It's got quite a bit of insurgent elements here and the people are pretty brutalized to find quite a bit of tortured and dead bodies here all the time. This plan is to base troops among the Iraqi population to try to bring law and order, backing them up massive armored firepower. But some of the troops admit that their main aim is simply survival. I hope to get home alive. It's simple as that family, yeah. Are you worried that that might

not happen? I guess sometimes, yeah, I get nervous. The insurgent attack came without warning. A motor shell landed on a roof next to the new American command post. Take over! Soldiers ran for shelter and as I looked for cover, another motor ran, slammed in. There were no casualties, but one American soldier expressed anger at what he saw as Iraqi in gratitude. Sometimes it upsets me because we try to help him. We try to give him a help, give him a landing hand and they don't want it. What does that actually mean? Does that mean that maybe this operation is not going to succeed? It will succeed. It is going to succeed. We got everything. Everything that we need to

make to help their Iraqi people. In the sprawling American base, next to Baghdad airport, we mounted up. Our destination, one of the new joint security stations that are at the heart of the US Army's surge. Its name is Casino. In the days of Saddam Hussein, the journey we're making was a 15-minute taxi ride. Now the US Army can only do it in an armored convoy. Casino is a group of 45 houses where a hundred American soldiers live picked together. We live with them here for four days. Beyond the blast walls is hostile territory, which the Americans must try to pacify. I've planted my flag right here. I'm not going anywhere as an American. I'm not leaving anytime soon. 11 p.m. and first platoon gets ready for a night raid.

In total darkness, we join the main force for what's supposed to be a joint operation with the Iraqi Army. But the Americans haven't told the Iraqis the plan because they don't trust them and the result is confusion. Yeah, they kind of get out of their vehicles and stand around, but that's kind of luck of the draw. Some units are on their A-game, some units are still learning. Houses are broken into residents in this sunny area, woken up. But this time, they find nothing. One of the young soldiers at Casino is 20-year-old specialists Dustin Brockberg. The son of a well-off medical family, he told me that he joined up because he wanted to serve his country after the 9-11 terrorist attack. What do your parents feel about all this?

They don't like it. What have they said to you? I made a big mistake. That's fine. So, the Americans, the risk of injury or death is always in the background. Dustin Brockberg knows that his next patrol could just be his last. For the moments where you just don't want to go out through the door? No, because everyone's been training to do this and you guys just man up and do your go. Soon after we left, a massive bomb blasted another patrol. Private William Davis and three other soldiers were killed. And to the analysis of shields and Brooks syndicated columnist Mark Shields, New York Times

columnist David Brooks. Mark setting the deadline for the troops to withdraw from Iraq. I think it's significant, Jim. It'll be proved significant over the next several months. I think it's the first time that Congress has used its power to cut off its power of budget appropriations to express its opposition to the President's policies in Iraq, which have lost the confidence of two out of three Americans. And for the first time, the Congress has gone on record. And I think this is the high watermark you'll see, legislatively and politically, for the presidents in the Congress, for the President's policies. I think from here on in, the erosion will all be away from the President and toward those who oppose the war. Do you agree? The erosion has begun. This was the high watermark for the President? I don't know. This is the high watermark. It's ankle deep. It'd be totey. No, I don't think it was terribly significant. It was politically impressive that Nancy Pelosi was able to

unite the Democrats behind the bill. But what's going to matter is what's going to happen in Iraq? And this bill will not have any effect in law because it will not turn into law. What will happen, what will matter is what's happening in the surge. And the surge will either be successful by mid-August, in which case Republicans and Democrats will probably want to stay or it'll be unsuccessful. And Republicans and Democrats will probably want to go. What was said in this debate, I think, was her medically sealed from what's actually happening in Iraq. I mean, the messages from the surge are very mixed. We saw how tough it is in that last report. There was a very fascinating piece in the front page of the New York Times today talking about now that it's much calmer and Baghdad flammies flowing in. In some cases, be able to go back to the neighborhood. In other cases, snipers actually killing the families that are trying to go back. So you get some optimistic messages but extremely preliminary. If you can reconstitute those neighborhoods and the surge does succeed in Baghdad, then it'll look very different in four months. If it doesn't succeed if we continue chaos, then this will vote. We'll matter. Is folks not going to matter? Do you agree? No, I don't agree. I don't agree. I don't know. You don't agree with David. What happens on the ground is a lot more than what the

house is. I think the time has passed, Jim. I think the American people have concluded it's a civil war. It's a tragic civil war. Everything that this administration told us about this war has been wrong. I mean, Paul Wolfowitz said it was going to be Paris 1944. That was his description, the liberation. We're going to be welcomed. Second, it was going to be a secular middle class, a rack that was accepting of democracy, that would set this democracy epidemic through Syria and Iran. Everything they've said has been wrong. Don Rumsfeld said that liberty is untidy. What if the surge works? What if the surge is right? How does the surge work? I mean, the fewer killings that the number of attacks on Americans goes back to where it was six months ago, where it was a year ago? I mean, there's been an acceleration of violence against Americans in the part of Iraq's economic

crisis. I mean, one of the things watching the debate in the house that was frustrating was that it was hermetically sealed from what's actually happening in Iraq. I didn't see a single mention. I didn't see a single mention of anything that's happened in the last six months or a year in Iraq. It was all Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, 2003. And one of the things I got wrong early in this war and supporting it was not paying my new attention to the facts that mistake. And what I saw in the debate was a complete replication of that mistake and a replication of the other error, which was not paying attention to history. The history has been clear that when you try to withdraw from Iraq, you end up making yourself irrelevant if you set a timetable. And then the facts on the ground, I think Michael Hanlon, the Brookings Institution, has for a long time put together the most honest account of how we should judge the facts on the ground. And I think his verdict now is that some promising results from the search, but very preliminary. So you got to keep an open mind about this. What bothered me about the debate was how detached it was from all that.

Is the Senate, now the Senate's going to take this thing up more. And if the Senate doesn't even have, as I understand it, their resolution needs an even as binding as a house, right? In other words, isn't there? No, they have a goal. They have a goal, not a binding date and all that sort of stuff. So what does all this mean? Well, what it means, Jim, is, I mean, for example, every freshman in the House of Representatives, the Democrat voted for it. Okay. That's significant. The election last week, the election last week had consequences. There are five freshmen who really played prominent role in this, all of whom were military veterans, including Patrick Murphy, who's the A-second airborne in Iraq. I mean, these were all Joe Sestak, a three star admiral freshman Democrat. I mean, all of them stood up. The highest rank, Tim Waltz, the highest ranking enlisted man in the Congress ever. I mean, a command sergeant major. I mean, they all stood up and made the case

that from the units with whom they've served, their colleagues, that they were doing the right thing. All right. Well, let's take it down the court. Let's take it down the road here. All right. The Senate passes something. And then, but the president said that he's going to veto, he's going to veto whatever is, whatever passes. It's right. Something does in fact pass the Senate, make it through the, I mean, through some kind of conference or whatever. The president said it was meaningless, meaningless, and a real threat at the same time. I mean, that's right to the country. I mean, that was, that was stupid. Where do you come down on that, on that issue, David, that I know you've bet you opposed to what the House is doing, is it hurtful? I don't think it does. I think I don't think this kind of debate is hurtful. And I think you go back 3,000 years that people have a debate due to democracy's fight wars poorly. And the bad thing about democracy is that it's tough to get consensus, and you can't get quick action because we have to have big debates. But over the long run, democracies fight better wars and tend to do very successful in wars because we do have this kind of debate and we can correct our mistakes. So I completely reject the idea that having this debate

undermines the troops. And what about the micromanaging accusation that was made against the government? No, that's, that's a, you're not making that, you're not making it. He is not. No, I wouldn't. You wouldn't. Give him a chance and he'll do it. No, I think Jim, everybody acknowledges the president is the commander in chief, and the president runs our foreign policy. When a president is just ignores and resists, and rejects not only expression of election results, but of opinion in the country, as this president has with his stubbornness, they have to take extraordinary measures. And I think that's what the budget, that's what it is. I mean, the question is, who funds the war? And this was a decision that they made, that they got to fund the war. And these conditions. But if the Democrats had really cared about that, they would have gotten Republicans. They would have had a debate which brought all the unhappy Republicans over their side, which really would have put pressure on the president. They didn't do

that. They chose a highly partisan position, which made it clear. It's us Democrats against them Republicans. And that made it very easy for the Republicans to hold together and a very, made it very easy for Bush to hold tough. New subject, but same kind of thing, a different confrontation between over subpoenas against possible subpoenas. They haven't been issued yet, but they've been authorized against Karl Rove and others having to do the Alberta Gonzales and the fired prosecutors. How serious a deal is this? It's happenatively. I don't think it's that serious. You know, the prosecutors are political. The founders made them part of the executive branch, political branch. Now, that word has three meanings. It can mean they have to follow the policy priorities of the elected president. That's fine. That's good politics. Then there's sleazy, but not illegal politics, which is, are they firing the prosecutors to help some cronies, or because some members of the party feel uncomfortable. That's sleazy, but not a scandal. And then there's a third meaning of political, which is their interfering with investigations.

From my look at the evidence, some were fired for reason number one. They weren't following the priorities. Some were followed for reason number two for crony reasons. And it's sleazy, but not a scandal. None so far were fired for reason number three, which is a scandal. So I think it's unseemly what happened to those people. It's unattractive, but not a huge crime so far. What about the subpoena confrontation? I think that, I don't argue with David, the president of three points. I do argue with this conclusion about nothing was wrong. I think the New Mexico case, there are serious questions, whether it was interference by Senator Medici, by Heather Wilson, the Congresswoman, and by in the Carol Lam case in San Diego, whether in fact the problem that is referred to in all the emails back and forth was her going after defense contractors, Republican Congressman, and the CIA agent who were later indicted. That may or may not come out in the wash, but I'm, I'm, I'm my question has to do about the subpoena's executive privilege. The president says they, they, they can talk, but they don't talk

under oath and there's no transcript, et cetera, the Senate, the Democrats in the House and Senate say no way, Jose, no way. Jose, the president is on, he's on ice. He's on water when it comes to no transcript. I mean, the, the secretary, the president has a transcript every day of his remarks. If two reasons, one, for the press so that they don't get anything wrong, it too. So the White House can't say he didn't say it. I mean, the idea that someone's going to come in and be, be an under oath hate to hurt my liberal friends, that isn't a big thing. Line to Congress is a serious thing. And the way you prove line to Congress is if you do have the transcript. What do you think about that? I actually agree with Mark. I mean, did we come to Washington? So we, I mean, the president says you can testify, but it can't be a transcript. This is what I came for. The sacred cause of no transcript. I mean, that's pathetic. It's ridiculous. And it's a politically unsustainable way to have an argument. But he's doing it because he wants to be seen tough on Democrats and they want to be seen tough on him. It's the old line I've

repeated on the show before. When two men have a fight over a woman, it's the fight they want, not the woman. And it's not, it's the underlying thing. It's not so big. They want to have a big fight for their own political reasons. Do you see this thing going to some huge head in the Supreme Court of the United States? Or do you see other heads getting together and result? I have some faith in the process and some, the rationality of Washington that somehow they'll, because who's walking around the country, worrying about this, they want to have some legislation. This is just somehow out of control. I think there will be a resolution, I think there will accept a transcript and, you know, I mean, the president has to confront the reality that 47 times Clinton people, and ten of them had the same position that Karl Rold does have, testified under Rold to the Congress, which was then controlled by Republicans. Okay. So you think, you know, you don't think we're, we're on the verge of a huge constitutional crisis. Not a part of a terrorist terrorist country apart. No, no, this is not the

Dred Scott decision in the making. No, yeah, and I have to fear in the Democrats too. They want to actually pass some things that people actually care about, which would never happen if this drag down. Okay. Thank you both very much. Now another in our series of conversations on the impact of globalization. Last month, our economics correspondent Paul Simon spoke with writer and free trade proponent PJ O'Rourke tonight. He speaks with an activist from India who has some very different views. For three decades, physicist Vandana Shiva has been a key activist in the fight against globalization, especially in her native India, where she says it threatens hundreds of millions of peasants still down on the farm. She's accused beverage companies of stealing the people's water in India. This footage from a new documentary by Swedish filmmakers,

Pia Homquist and Suzanne Cordale. Outside the European patent office, Shiva challenged corporate patents of seeds, what she calls the bio piracy of natural resources. She joined protests against the world trade organization in Cancun. At home at the foot of the Himalayan mountains, Shiva is trying to hold back the forces of globalization and return to what she says would be a more sustainable way of life, traditional agriculture. She's using the Indian farm she grew up on to preserve native crops by maintaining a seed bank, promoting the use of India's equally native fertilizer. This has led the likes of free market think tanker Barun Mitra to bestow a BS award on Shiva for sustaining global poverty. Everywhere she goes, Shiva fights globalization. We met up with her recently at the University of Oregon Law School and its 25th annual

public interest environmental law conference where Dr. Shiva was to give a keynote speech. Before which, she sat down to answer some questions. Among them, doesn't Barun Mitra have a point that small scale farming isn't viable. Farming on small plots of land is viable if it's done without generating super profits for agribusiness in the seed corporations. Our farmers in the organic movement are doubling their incomes in the production and are not in a desperate situation. Farming as a vacation is something the small farmer of India or the small farmer of Africa or the small farmer of Latin America is not voluntarily giving up. But we have a term of phrase in America. How are you going to keep them down on the farm after they've seen Perry? There's a draw to urban areas, to the excitement of the city, the idea that you can better yourself, you don't have to stay down on the farm. But one indicator, the new national sample survey of India, which is the official data collection, shows this absolutely no growth of

employment in urban areas at all. Slums are being cleared out earlier. You get flushed out of the rural areas, went and settled in the slam, somehow did some petty servicing and made a living. Today for the poor, either it is a dignified and free life as a peasant or nothing, because the options in the cities that used to be able to become the alternative are also closing down under globalization. If you have to now become investment centers for foreign direct investment, cities have to get cleaned up of people. Meanwhile, in the country side says Shiva, the government in the name of globalization clears out farmers to create corporate friendly tax-free enterprise zones to build their economies. No environmental law, no labor law, foreign territories within India. That's the way these corporations compete. They compete on a totally false economy. They have every advantage against any honest industry that is domestic,

against any honest farmer who works through hardware. But the history of economic progress and growth has been exactly the process that you're now trying to resist. In the last decade, one third of the world's hungry and malarished kids are now in India, in the India that is growing at 9%. And I think we need to recognize that globalization means that we get larger and larger sized middlemen, fewer and fewer of them, making bigger and bigger margins, and therefore leading to a growth figure when measured in terms of national economies this growth. But when measured in terms of the worker, the peasant, the farmer, the woman, there is a huge, huge disenfranchisement. If we didn't have this market system that you're condemning, would we have the bicycle, for example? Would we have penicillin? Well, the penicillin came out of the will to do public good,

the treatment for malaria, the most of the medicines, most of the antibiotics. The bicycle came out of somebody who's desire to do public good, was somebody trying to figure out how he or she could make more money? I think that's one of the biggest false assumptions that particularly in America is prevalent, that you don't think unless you can privately profit out of it. In fact, the entire intellectual property, if it's built on that. To achieve a bike contrast, intellectual property is often piracy by the rich from the rest of us. Take the neem tree, N-E-E-M. It's called the Village Pharmacy in India. You can be used for hundreds of things. We brush our teeth with it, we use it for skin treatment, it's even used as a contraceptive, oil, we use the oil for lighting, but we also use the oil for therapeutics. It's Ayurvedic medicine, it's core, it's wonderful to get rid of pimples, it's the magic treatment.

Wait a second, this is, I think you're selling me a bill of goods here. No, but it's a magic neem tree. It is, it is magic. Magic enough, anyway, to make an organic pesticide from neem seed oil. When the infamous Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, leak poison gas in 1984, killing thousands, Shiva asked herself a question. Why should people die for horrible toxic pesticides when we have wonderful trees like neem, which give us best control? And I started to plant trees, I started to distribute neem to farmers, trim them, and then in 1994 I find a patent of Hell by W.R. Grace, well Grace claims to have invented the name, invented the use of neem for biopesticide. So we challenge a patent held jointly by them and the United States Department of Agriculture, we fought that case 11 years, we won it. But this was a case of biopiracy. Biopiracy says Shiva, further encouraged by globalization's new trade regime,

since it's committed to protecting intellectual property. There's a case of Basmati, a company in Texas called Rice Tech, claims to have invented the Basmati that grows in our valley. So when I find Rice Tech in Texas, claims to have invented the height of the plant, the length of the grain, the aroma, and the methods of cooking, I said, that my grandmother taught me, and I was a six-year-old, took on that challenge, we fought that one for years. And then much later Monsanto, who claims to always invent new seeds, are the cheap, to steal an all-Indian wheat variety, and patent it as an invention that was struck down in a four-month legal battle in the European Patent Office. But you're not saying that a patent is necessarily a bad thing. I mean, don't you want companies and entrepreneurs to have the incentive? I'd like them to have an honest incentive for an honest innovation. More than that, she thinks, we need to rethink globalization,

so-called wealth creation at the expense of our common property, our natural resources, our environment. I think we are in a deep, deep mess in terms of providing well-being and satisfaction for people. And we can't use the assumption of today's industrialized society with huge pressure on the world's climate as the model. So a key part of your critique then is that there are all these hidden costs associated with the way we do things. Totally. And we're just not acknowledging them at our peril. That, to me, is the heart of the issue, that the so-called growth has defined in the indicators that have been evolved to suit those who control the wealth of the world and the political decision-making in the world, that that growth hides behind it huge amounts of destruction in the lives of people in the lives of the third world and in the

planet's life. Well, how would you measure economic growth? I would measure economic growth by seeing how much food are people eating, how much clean water do they have in their rivers and their wells? How much clothing do they have access to? How much education and health services can be provided as public systems? Your trained is a quantum mechanics nuclear physicist, right? How did you pick the leap from that to one of the world's most vocal? And in some sense, most extreme activists on environmental issues? If globalization had not been forced on us, I can imagine I have gone back to doing my puzzles with quantum theory. But now that we have A, the W2 and its massive destruction and I can't watch our farmers die as if they were flies that are being squatted in a global economy. And then you have climate change and I do feel

we need a massive shift in thinking, massive shift in the way we live. We could crash in the next 20 years, not just as a civilization, but as a species. Vandana Shiva, thank you very much. Thank you. In his next conversation, Paul will speak with students from other countries about globalization. Finally tonight, religion and politics on two continents and a Jeffrey Brown. In his book, The Holy Vote, our colleague Ray Suarez looked at religion and politics in America. This week, Ray has been exploring that issue in Europe on a trip sponsored by the German Marshall Fund. He's been talking with academics, policy analysts and others and France, Germany, Turkey and Belgium, and he joins us from Brussels. So, Ray, to what extent is the debate and the conversation about religion and politics in this country replicated in Europe today?

Well, in each country, Jeff, it takes on a personality that has to do with that country's history. Now that the European Union stretches all the way from Estonia and the northeast to Portugal and the southwest, they're trying to figure out whether there's a European approach to the role that religion plays in culture, in society, and in politics. This was a big debate around the time that the European Union members were trying to figure out whether to put a reference to Judaism and Christianity and the religious heritage of Europe in their own constitution. Eventually, they didn't, and the Constitution did not pass, but that conversation is continuing through to this day. So have you found curiosity, questions coming back at you vis-a-vis the American experience? I guess one of the biggest surprises of this week in Europe has been the intensity of the curiosity among people who follow American affairs in Europe about the religious component in American politics. You know, when the president puts a quote from scripture in a speech

when he makes a reference to the words of a hymn in an address to the country, that is immediately picked up by the European press, quoted, translated, and then mulled over on this side of the Atlantic. I think in general, there's an impression that religion plays a much bigger role in American politics, not only than it does in Europe, but that it does in actual fact. Sometimes an exaggeration of just how much religion influences American politics. Well, how common, in fact, is it for politicians there? Do you hear using religious language themselves or even talking about it in political campaigns? You're in Paris. They're in the midst of a campaign now. There is very little mention. To use specifically the French example, there's a long political tradition of Laissite, Laissism, the lay approach to politics, and none of the campaigns have made much reference to this, except when they talk about the problems of the Muslim minority inside

France. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, is the daughter of a Protestant minister, raised in the church, but never makes any references in her own political addresses to religion and the role religion plays in German life. The one big contrast on this trip was in Istanbul, where people watch American separation between church and state very closely for cues on how to model their own state, now that there's a traditionally Islamic party in power and a long tradition of secularism in their own government. Now, you just mentioned the question of Islam in France. If you think about stories that you and I and our colleagues have done on the news hour or the past years, think of headscarf controversy in France, the Pope making comments about Islam in Germany, you have the Danish cartoons a few years ago, there was the killing of Theo Van Gogh in Amsterdam,

the connecting issue here, the integration of Islam into Europe. Do you sense it there as a question of religion or of integration or of both somehow? Well, it challenges Europe in a way that I think these countries and the policy makers that I've been talking to all week freely admit, they haven't fully come to grips with how to integrate people not only from another religious tradition, but from other countries with very different political traditions who generally come in as poorer citizens, who generally are less educated than the populace at large. It's integrating a poor part of neighboring communities and neighboring continents into their own European system. And some of the people I've been talking to this week have said basically we haven't done a good

job of it and they're very curious about the state of Islam in the United States and who American Muslims are. And do you get the sense even if these things are not talked about explicitly so much in political campaigns or in political terms, do you get the sense that it is bubbling under the surface all the time with some sense of urgency? Well, I was talking to an assistant to Chancellor Merkel the other day in Berlin and he pointed out that the more religiously affiliated a German gets, if they go to church more and more often and become more tied to a congregation, they are likely to start moving left in their politics while one of the most reliable Republican voting coalitions in the United States has been people who go to church more than once a week. The more you go to church in the United States, the more likely you are to vote Republican, the more you go to church in Germany, the more likely you are to be left in your politics.

Well, Ray, you and I talked about this trip before you left. Let me just end by say asking any other surprises that hit you, any other curveballs that sort of made you think a new about these about these issues? Well, one of the most important stops on the trip for me was Turkey. This is a country that is struggling to find a role for itself that it's comfortable with and walk onto the European stage as a full member of the European Union and still remain what it is, a proudly Islamic country and it's easier to do that and easier to do it with great self-confidence if you're not the poor society you used to be. I was last in Turkey 25 years ago and the changes in that country in that span have just been breathtaking what you see on the street, what people tell you in the shops and in the cafes. It's just been a remarkable transformation. It's like not seeing an old friend for a long time and they've managed to change

their appearance a great deal and you can really see it when you haven't been seeing them regularly. Turkey is a very different country from the one I last reported from in the early 80s and they're wrestling with the link between religion and state, how to be a faithful and openly religious country and be a secular democracy is something that the whole world ought to be watching because as the Turks are watching Americans for a model, the rest of the Islamic world might be watching Turkey. All right, Ray Suarez, we'll see you back here next week. Have a good trip back. Thanks for talking to us. Thanks, Jeff. Bye-bye. And again, the major developments of this day. The U.S. House passed a war funding bill with a deadline for combat troops to leave Iraq. They'd have to be out before September of 2008. In response, President Bush vowed again he would veto the bill.

A similar measure comes up in the Senate next week. In Baghdad, one of Iraq's deputy prime ministers was wounded in a suicide bombing. And Iranian forces seized 15 British sailors and Marines from a merchant ship in the Persian Gulf. And once again to our honor role of American service personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. We add them as their deaths are made official and photographs become available. Here in silence are 12 more. Washington, we can be seen later this evening on most PBS stations. We'll see you online.

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Good evening, I'm Jim Lehrer. On the news hour tonight, the news of this Friday,

then 2 takes on Iraq, the House debate and vote that sets a deadline for US troops to leave, plus two ITN reports about US forces patrolling Baghdad. The weekly analysis of Mark Shields and David Brooks, a Paul Simon conversation with an activist from India, fighting globalization, and some thoughts from racewar as about religion and politics in Europe. Major funding for the news hour with Jim Lehrer is provided by the world's demand for energy will never stop, which is why a farmer is growing corn, and a farmer is growing soy, and why ADN is turning these crops into biofuels.

The world's demand for energy will never stop, which is why ADN will never stop. We're only getting started, ADM, resourceful by nature. And by Chevron, Pacific Life, the Atlantic Philanthropies, the National Science Foundation, and with the continuing support of these institutions and foundations. And this program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. The US House passed a war funding bill today with a deadline for combat troops to leave Iraq. They'd have to be out before September of 2008. The vote was 218 to 200.