← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Nov 05, 2011
00:28:07
America has the Wild West, Russia has its Wild East. And Reggie Nadelson's there, in...
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Narrator/Host
Hello.
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Correspondent/Reporter
This is from our own correspondent, a
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BBC Correspondent
download from the BBC. For a sneak preview of our programme,
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Correspondent
you can join our feed on Twitter.
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BBC Correspondent
And there's a daily airing of from
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Correspondent
our own correspondent on the BBC World Service. But now the latest edition as broadcast
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BBC Correspondent
on BBC Radio 4.
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Correspondent/Reporter
And it's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Narrator/Host
The people of Greece take stock at the end of a momentous week for their own beleaguered economy and for the whole future of the European Union. Also today, the pizza man who wants to be president of the USA tries to sing his way out of scandal. We take a tram ride through the complex political geography of Jerusalem and hear plans to transform a Port City 8 time zones east of Moscow into the San Francisco of Russia's Far East. A Greek tragedy. Perhaps it won't be. Last night's vote of confidence in the government of George Papandreou came at the end of a week of uncertainty and high political drama. Can a deal to rescue the Greek economy now be implemented? Or will the Greeks have to leave the eurozone? And might that mean an exit from the European Union itself? These were all matters debated exhaustively, but hardly conclusively at the G20 meeting of World leaders in Cannes. Paul Moss has been canvassing opinion in Greece itself. In the capital Athens, the joke I
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BBC Correspondent
made was not in good taste. One of those things you say and then instantly regret it. I was standing in the queue for a train ticket at Athens airport and asked the man next to me if the ticket machine was working. Yes, he said, but it only takes euros. Well, I replied, if I wait in this queue for long enough, you'll soon be using drachmars. His face fell and in that crestfallen look, you could read the dilemma facing all Greek people, because, on the one hand, they really don't like the EU's rescue plan, particularly the austerity measures that go with it. That's clear from every opinion poll. And if you don't trust opinion polls, well, just look at the violent protests that have broken out here ever since the austerity measures were unveiled. But what's often missed is just how painful a thought the alternative is the idea of Greece falling out of the single currency, so that train ticket machines do once again take drachmars rather than euros. That fallen face of the man in the queue was an exact mirror image of the delighted smile I once saw on the face of an Athens shopkeeper when I talked to him about joining the euro. The year was 2001, and I come to Greece to report on the country's forthcoming eurozone membership. Everyone I met seemed to be not just in favour of joining the euro, but positively ecstatic. Let's be honest, currency reform is not exactly the sexiest subject, but it's. Here was an entire country apparently overcome with emotion at the thought that they would soon be using new notes and new coins. People like my Athens shopkeeper could barely contain themselves. Now we are accepted, he told me. Now we will be treated just like you. Greece will be a normal country. He was an old man, a man who had lived through the Second World War, the Greek Civil War and the and the appalling poverty that followed it. He had seen his country run by a military junta and then struggled to recover, even after the colonels were sent packing for him the idea that Greece would apparently be in the same economic league as France or Germany. It was everything he could ever have wished for. I put to him a common objection to the single currency, one often made in Britain, that people wanted economic decisions to be taken by their own elected politicians and not by some anonymous banker in Frankfurt. The shopkeeper looked at me like I was crazy. To have decisions made by a banker in Frankfurt, he said, and not by our useless MPs. What a fantastic idea. And his eyes glazed over in reverie. Well, for a while it seemed my shopkeeper and his compatriots did have much to smile about. Greek living standards rose as people bought and people borrowed. Yachts got bigger, but so too did the cars driven by some of the middle income families. And it was no longer assumed that to be a success you had to emigrate. Now sharp suited Greek yuppies could make a life in their own country's financial world. Greece became a country people immigrated to. Of course, not everyone was paying proper taxes. Plenty of cash still went under the counter the traditional way. But who was going to carp about that? Well, now the bills come in and like an unpleasant scene in a Greek restaurant, everyone's arguing about who should pay. The conflict has been focused on urban hotspots like Athens Syntacma Square. Once it was famous for summertime music and city center sunbathing. Now it's more known for its regular dousing in tear gas. What to do? No one knows. No one even knows who will have the job of answering that question. Because Greek politics is currently so unstable. It's an open question question. Who's going to be in charge from day to day? Ask people in the street and they'll launch a broadside at just about every politician of every ideological hue. But then ask who they want instead. The faces are blank and it really isn't funny coming back here. And I really should not have made a joke about the crisis. Even at the airport station, you can already see the changes. A large information stall with nobody working there. Only one person selling tickets at the train station so that those without change had to queue and queue just to get into town. I'm sitting on the train into town now as I write these words, tapping away at my laptop computer. To my left is a teenager looking sullen as teenagers the world over are supposed to. But then everyone in the carriage looks equally miserable. And I'm having this fantasy that if I could only retrace my steps, find that shop and find that cheerful shopkeeper from 10 years ago, at least he might still be smiling. But then, given the situation here, that seems, on reflection, extremely unlikely.
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Narrator/Host
Paul Moss in Athens. They're trying to destroy me. That's the verdict of the Republicans presidential hopeful Herman Cain, as he tries to weather a deepening storm over a series of allegations of sexual harassment. Mr. Kane says it's all a dirty tricks campaign being waged by his rival Rick Perry, a claim hotly denied by the Perry team. Our man Mark Mardell says The accusations against Mr. Kane, which date back to the mid-1990s, have damaged if not destroyed his chances of becoming his party's choice as presidential candidate.
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Reporter
Amazing Grace is not the name of the woman at the centre of this scandal, but the ever resourceful Herman Cain's way of coping with it. He crooned at the assembled media in Washington's National Press Club, singing a gospel hymn set to the tune of Danny Boy. We weren't actually in any doubt about his talents in this direction. We'd all heard his 1991 rendition of John Lennon's Imagine with the lyrics imagine there's no pizza. I couldn't if I tried eating only tacos or Kentucky Fried. Herman is, as they say, herman, the black businessman who wants to become the next president, is a one off. He's funny, forceful and totally discounted by everybody in Washington as an oddball with weird policies, but he's no dummy. He ran a company called Godfather's Pizzas and then became a Washington lobbyist for the Restaurant association. Oh, and he's 7% ahead of his Republican rivals in the opinion polls. And he may be a sign that America really is entering the realm of post racial politics. Inside Washington, contempt. Outside admiration. A recent trip left me with one takeaway that doesn't mean a congealed Chinese meal by the way it's the local lingo for the main headline. The only politician people spontaneously mention is that pizza guy. I find the authentic voice of America in a car park. Now in Britain, having a picnic on asphalt is rather sad and brings to mind legs wrapped in tartan rugs. But in Charlotte, North Carolina outside the Panthers stadium, it's called tailgating and it's a full on party. Before a ball game through the Hague of tempting barbecue smoke, three burly white guys in baseball caps are tossing a ball around while sinking buds. They're contemptuous about their president. He sucks. But Herman Cain could out speechify him any day. In the North Carolina countryside, Chuck Costner and his dog Skunk are herding sheep. He's with a few friends, all members of the conservative Tea Party, and all of them have no doubt Herman Cain should be their candidate. I feel I have to ask Chuck who's white? An awkward question. He makes reference to his thick Southern accent. In reply the question Will Kane's race make any difference to anyone? No. But he I was called country in high school. Until my cousin recorded my voice, I didn't know why. He continues that when people hear him, they think he must have certain attitudes. They're wrong. No one he knows cares that Kane is black. It's the man that matters. If the majority of conservatives want a black man to lead their party, it does say something about America. It's important because many Democrats feel the Tea Party's vitriolic dislike of Obama is about race. I've never found any real evidence of this, but the Tea Party does feel a deep hostility to those who see themselves as victims and who want the government to redistribute wealth in their direction. That does mean some African Americans. So when conservatives talk about Kaine, they often say, I like his story. His dad was a chauffeur and his mum a maid. But through hard work and talent he became an executive at the company where his father was a driver and then made billions. It says the dream is for all. But Herman Cain's American dream is fast turning into a Washington nightmare. He hasn't got his story straight. At first he didn't remember allegations of sexual harassment. Then he did. Then he remembered more. He wasn't aware of a payout. Maybe there was one. And then it was about three months salary and the details bizarre. He claims he told a woman she was the same height as his wife, using his hand to gesture below his chin. It's a little less than lewd, but a lot less than impressive. The Story changed three times in one day. And it's especially damaging for Kaine, who's running as a straight talking businessperson. It sounds just a bit too much like those twisty, untrustworthy politicians he's always going on about. Then he shouted at the press during a visit to a hospital. My advice, if you're going to yell, don't do it while you're surrounded by men in white coats. Right wingers call these allegations against Kaine a high tech lynching, a deliberately loaded phrase. They say Democrats can't stand seeing a conservative black man succeed when both left and right play the race card. It may not exactly be post racial poker, it is at least equal opportunities snap. But is this more than Washington witterings? I phoned Chuck to see what he thinks. He distrusts the liberal media and quite rightly points out that until we have more detail, it's impossible to know if this is a big deal or not. But he adds, there's only ever been one person in this world who's perfect and he died on the cross. I still think Kane'd make a darn good president. The gospel song that Herman Cain sang to the assembled press was he overlooked my fault. He has to hope all his supporters are as forgiving as Chuck and his lord.
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Narrator/Host
And that's Marc Mardell. The French train builders Alstom are reported to have lost out on a lucrative opportunity to extend a light railway system. In Saudi Arabia, the company was criticized by Palestinian activists for its involvement in another railway project, the Jerusalem Light rail. The Saudis have now awarded their contract for a line linking Mecca and Medina to a Spanish consortium. The new rail line in Jerusalem, meanwhile, opened in August. And Matthew Teller's been finding out that while it provides new travel possibilities in and around the ancient city, it's also proving controversial.
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Correspondent
The borders in Jerusalem are invisible and to an outsider, barely perceptible. If you didn't know they were there, you might, on a fleeting visit, miss them altogether. But they are there. In the 30 odd years that I've been visiting Jerusalem, the city's political geography has changed dramatically. The latest development is the Jerusalem Light Rail, a newly opened tram line that has been dogged by controversy from the technical with faulty traffic light phasing and problems with ticketing to inevitably, the political. The western part of Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1948, is quite different in atmosphere, culture, language, facilities and ambience from most of the eastern part of the city, which was under Jordanian rule from 1948 until 1967, when it too was captured by Israel. Since then, Israel has greatly expanded Jerusalem's municipal boundaries, annexing large chunks of territory in a move that remains unrecognized internationally and unilaterally redefining Jerusalem as its eternal undivided capital. The new tram line passes uninterrupted from sovereign Israeli territory in West Jerusalem into the occupied Palestinian territory of East Jerusalem. I started my journey at the eastern terminus in Pisgat Zeev, a Jewish suburb, or rather, as international law defines it, an illegal settlement of villas, shops and apartment blocks. The matrix board at the tram stop told me I had eight minutes to wait, so I sauntered over to a sweet shop. Three men were sitting out at a single table on the pavement. Uri, the shop owner, popped inside to make me a coffee while I asked his friends about the tram. It's great, one said. I can get into the city in 20 minutes, do my shopping and be back home again without all the traffic. And the route? I asked. He replied, it's very nice that it crosses from west to east. Nodding as he carried on. Arabs that live in Jerusalem don't have proper public transport. They deserve it. He paused and added thoughtfully, I never spoke to an Arab before I rode this tram on board. As I swayed through East Jerusalem, it seemed I'd picked a quiet day. The tram was less than a quarter full, a wary mix of ultra Orthodox Jews, middle class Palestinians and a few tourists. The most prominent presence was security, a uniformed guard standing at one end of the carriage, another patrolling the aisle, and, if my instinct was accurate, more in plain clothes, dotted among the passengers. The station names were announced in Hebrew, Arabic and English, further evidence of the municipal authorities desire to define this tram as a project of unification. Yet most Palestinians I spoke to around the city had no intention of using it, many saying that they viewed the service as another illegal attempt by a military occupier to exert control. Further down the line, as we passed the 16th century walls of the Old City, built by the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, the tram crossed one of those invisible borders into West Jerusalem, and suddenly it was rush hour. Within a couple of stops the whole tram was full. And from where I stood, it was all Israelis, raucous teenagers, grandmothers with shopping bags, business people, students. The tram stayed packed and noisy till it reached the Bridge of Chords, an ethereally beautiful cable stayed bridge designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, which marks the edge of the city centre. After that it was all suburbia. Schoolboys spread themselves across several rows, squabbling loudly till they were hushed by a shocked matriarch in a flowery dress. Parents with baby buggies rode home from a shopping mall at the western terminus, as grandpas and Jewish seminary students disembarked beside forested hills at the city's edge, I noticed a Muslim mother in a headscarf shepherding two small children out into the sunshine. While I watched, they glanced around themselves as if in a foreign country, then hurried across the platform into a tram waiting on the other side for the return journey back into the city. Palestinian buses, of course, don't serve West Jerusalem, and anyway, boarding city buses means running the gauntlet of attention from the driver and the route regulars. But the tram is anonymous. It presents opportunities for both sides to glimpse how the other half lives. Israelis have long had the chance to explore East Jerusalem, though few dollars. Palestinian sightseers in West Jerusalem, however, that's new.
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Narrator/Host
Matthew Teller on the rails in Jerusalem the fabled city of Vladivostok on Russia's distant Pacific coast is in the middle of a makeover which its authorities say, maybe optimistically, will make it the Far East's answer to Istanbul or San Francisco. In Soviet times, this port was home to the country's Pacific fleet and closed to foreigners. The collapse of the USSR hit it hard. Buildings crumbled, the population dwindled, the amount of crime soared. But now there's to be a major international summit there next year. Ahead of it, millions are being spent on new infrastructure hotels, an airport terminal and much else besides. Reggie Nadelson's been to see how the work's going.
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Reporter
We often drive over to China to buy clothes. It's so much cheaper, says Vasilisa, the charming university student who is my guide to Vladivostok. She's also been to China, as have many of her contemporaries, to study the language. Other local women go for the man. There are perhaps 38% men to 62% women here, says Victoria, a translator who speaks exquisite English. Many girls go to China and Korea to look for husbands, and Chinese men come here, too, looking for wives. It's a kind of necessity, she adds. In Vladivostok, in so many ways, geography is destiny. Dasha, showing me the stunning views at the edge of town, says, how do you like our city? As everyone does, perhaps a little proud, a little nervous over a foreigner's reaction to this port town as the capital of the Russian Far East. It always had the stuff of myth for European Russians as well as foreigners. And for me, I had always wanted to see it. It had somehow lingered for a long time A fantasy on the margins of my imagination. Not surprising, perhaps, according to my old pal, the Moscow TV journalist Vladimir Posner, Russians and Americans had a certain feeling that each was the great other, if only because you had the Wild west and we had the Wild East. A city of water Vladivostok is on a peninsula with a setting as glorious as that of San Francisco. The streets run along old roller coaster hills, the Goldhorn Bay beyond the the great blue Pacific stretching out to Japan and then forever to the United States. It is closer to Alaska than to St. Petersburg, and wild it is, especially in the surrounding Primore region, where the last of the great Siberian tigers are now protected on a reservation not far from the city. Vladivostok is relatively new, a port city which until the turn of the 20th century had only one high school. In 1905, the Trans Siberian Railway arrived, its last stop at a pretty little Edwardian train station on the harbor. You could come all the way from Europe and then get the boat directly to Japan. It's the coastal location that has given the city its commerce and shipping, immigrants and fishing. One morning I meet Steve from Grimsby. He's a fish buyer from Findis in town to examine the catch. My hotel is the Hyundai, which testifies to the city's other big business, importing cars from Korea and Japan and immigrants. On a stone step near the harbor sits a Chinese man in in an ancient MAU jacket, smoking, face impassive, looking out to sea and perhaps home. Until 1991, as the headquarters of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, Vladivostok was a closed city. But now it's finally gearing up for the future. The 24th summit of the Asia Pacific Cooperative will be held next autumn on Russky Island, a few minutes off the coast. The university is to be moved to Russky island too, though everyone hates the idea. Critical to all this is a bridge intended to connect it and another island to the mainland. For the moment, the entire center span is missing. New roads are still unmade, the new airport unbuilt. And as your nose and mouth fill up with dust, the workers hang around in the cabs of their earthmoving equipment Soviet style, eating lunch most of the day. Still, there are plenty of signs that change really has come. Vera Glaskova reigns in a cool white art gallery she owns. At the Spiffy Film Complex Cafe, women roll out juicy dumplings. And at the Philharmonia Hall Cafe, my regular hangout there is fabulous cappuccino, not to mention a phalanx of drop dead gorgeous women Exquisitely dressed, and every morning one of them sits in the window, long legs crossed in her six inch heels, sipping her espresso and looking out to sea, perhaps waiting for her ship to come in.
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Narrator/Host
And that was Reggie Nadelsen in Vladivostok. The French fashion designer Pierre Cardin is the last survivor of the heyday of Parisian haute couture in the 50s and 60s. He's now aged 89 and still in control of a business empire that spans the globe. In the last few years, he's also become the owner of a chateau in southern France which used to belong to the aristocrat and libertine, the Marquis de Sade. It was here in the village of La Coste in the Liberon Valley, that Hugh Schofield met up with the great man.
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Correspondent/Reporter
Looking back, it occurs to me that I can't remember a time when there wasn't Pierre Cardin. When I became vaguely sentient in the late 1960s, he was already long established as a fashion designer and I probably first saw his name and photographs of his models in newspapers lying around at home. Today, a lot of his clothes seem utterly ludicrous. Futuristic creations inspired by the space age, which must have been a chore to wear. But back then, everyone loved Pierre Cardin. He put the Beatles in their collarless jackets, took high fashion to communist China, built a village of bubble pods on the Cote d'. Azur and here he is sitting across from me in the dining room of the sad cafe in the Provencal village of La Coste. I should make it clear that's not the sad cafe as in the Carson McCullough's story, but the Sa de Cafe, as in the sex mad Marquis. Pierre Carda has bought the chateau of la Coste, which 250 years ago was where the aristocratic father of sadism began his pre epic predations. Mr. Cardin is not particularly interested in de Sade. He, he just adored the spot, which is why he's also bought up much of the surrounding village, causing major ructions among the locals. But that's another story. So how does he look? Well, he's shorter than I expected, but hale. A slight stiffness in his movements. Nothing serious. But what I notice above all is that for a fashion designer, he's actually quite scruffy. He's unshaven, his collar and tie are wonky and he's got chalk or something on his blazer. At one point, his shirt pulls open to reveal a white grizzled chest. This isn't just age. Pierre Cardin's mind is bang on the button and his conversation is perfectly lucid. No, it occurs to me that this is the real him. It's the simple peasant stock re emerging. Because you have to remember that Cardin's origins are very humble. His father was an Italian labourer. His job was delivering ice who came to France in the twenties, fleeing Mussolini. Cardin was two at the time. He tells me that he was the last of 11 children and that his father was 60 when he was born. Which means that his father was born in the early 1860s, when there was still a kingdom of Savoy and Nice belonged to the Italians. Carter the Younger came to Paris in the Second World War. He was an exceptionally handsome young man. My physique was what the times regarded as desirable, he says, and he began his career making costumes for the filmmaker Jean Cocteau. Christian Dior took him under his wing and he launched his own label in 1950. Our conversation takes us back to the golden years. How did he get on with the other great names like Yves Saint Laurent? They looked down on me, you know, he says. I would invite them out, but they'd never invite me back. In 1959, Kardin courted their further contempt when he launched the first ever Pret A Porter show for the mass market. Later he went into merchandising in a major way, with hundreds of Cardiff franchises all over the world, many of them not exactly top of the range. But today he answers his critics with glee. Look at me now. I am patron, artisan, proprietaire, owner, manager and craftsman. Still, every day I work at my designs and I control every cent. All the others, even if they were alive, their names are now the property of the big multinationals. They've been taken over. And then they accuse me of degrading the brand because there are cheap Kardash shops in India and China. But I know how much a bottle of perfume costs to make. It's nothing. I have called their bluff. I am the one who's really brought fashion to the people. When you were identified with the swinging 60s and you hobnobbed with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, did you like their music? Not at all. I preferred Ravel and Debussy. Did you ever take drugs? No. I have never once even smoked a cigarette. Is it true that you've never borrowed money from a bank? Yes. I never wanted to and I never needed to. I've always paid for everything with my own money. And so I bid farewell to this remarkable old man with his flair and his passion and his fear of banks and his properties by the score. There are two cars waiting by the cafe. His assistant gets into one, a spanking new off roader, Pierre Cardin, shuffles into the other, a battered Renault 5. Somehow it's fitting.
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Narrator/Host
Hugh Schofield talking fashion with Pierre Cardin in the south of France and bringing this edition to a close. There'll be more from our own correspondence around the world next week on Thursday and on Saturday. Why don't you join us? Goodbye.