Iraqi Refugees Audio & Video

[description] Patrick Cockburn's account of the Iraqi Army's flight from battle is that the US is trying to foment a civil war among the Shia majority that the Baghdad government cannot win.

[description] (NECN) - This week we mark the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq with our ongoing interview series. We have heard from doctors, experts, veterans and families who have been affected by the war in Iraq which is now entering its sixth year. ...

[description] The president is asking Congress for the additional funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[description] A school committee in Portland, Maine approved handing out prescription contraception, like the birth control pill, to children at a middle school. Parents have the right to prevent their children from going to the health center at the school, but opponents say the school is encouraging 11 to 15 year- old students to have sex. We speak to Joel Elliott, who covered the story for the New York Times. Kirk Johnson is a 27-year-old who used to work in Iraq for the US Agency for International Development. Now he's the keeper of a list of names of Iraqis who he says need to get out of Iraq because their lives are in danger. Only a fraction of gotten to the US. We'll speak to Kirk and to one of the Iraqis he managed to help get into the US. Turkey's parliament has voted overwhelmingly to give its prime minister permission to send troops into northern Iraq to do battle with the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, a nationalist group fighting for a separate state for the Kurdish populati

[description] Al Gore and a UN Panel on climate change win the the Nobel Peace Prize today for their efforts in putting the issue of global warming on the world's agenda. Our guests are Bill Turque, author of "Inventing Al Gore: A Biography," and Michael McElroy professor of environmental studies at Harvard University. McElroy has known Gore for 25 years. The United States took in 1,608 Iraqi refugees last year. Four and a half million Iraqis have fled their homes since 2003. We speak with a United Nations refugee agency official about what can be done about the situation. Democratic presidential candidates are taking a page from Massachusetts' book when it comes to health care reform. Massachusetts was the first in the nation to require that everyone sign up for a health care plan. We look at how the Massachusetts plan is working, and how it might be transformed at the national level. We also review health care plans of the main democratic and republican presidential candidates.

[description] Ahead of next week's progress report on the war, President Bush makes a surprise trip to Iraq to meet with US officials and military leaders and also with top Iraqi politicians. We speak with Larry Kaplow, Newsweek Magazine correspondent in Bagdad. Several large American cities, including New York, Chicago, Seattle and Boston are experiencing what's called "Family Flight." Couples who were drawn to the cities in their 20s are fleeing for the suburbs after they have kids. We speak with writer Michael Blanding, who looked at what some cities are doing to lure these families back. His article, "The Departing," appeared in yesterday's Boston Sunday Globe Magazine. On Labor Day we profile a number of New York City workers who labor while most of the city sleeps, on the night shift. Our profiles where produced by public radio station WFUV in the New York city borough called the Bronx. Here and Now's Nancy Cook reports on why those "green" fluorescent light bulbs may not such a brig

[description] It's JW and Lori's Celebrity Closeup from Wednesday, August 29th!

[description] A new report from the International Energy Agency in Paris predicts an unprecedented global energy crunch, as strong economies fuel an appetite for oil and natural gas, and producers struggle to keep up. This is expected to create an energy crisis by 2012. We talk to Financial Times reporter Javier Blas, in London, who is covering the story. Millions of Iraqis have fled their country since the war started in 2003. Most of them are living now in the Middle East, especially Syria and Jordan, but thousands are also headed to the United States. We speak to Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group about the strain the refugees are placing on host countries and the challenges the refugees face in those countries. With both House and Senate Judiciary committees set to hear testimony this week from former White House aides over the firing of US Attorneys by the Justice Department, The White House invoked executive privilege to deny Congress documents and prevent open, on-the-r

[description] While Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain try and set themselves apart, they eye one thing in common: the 2008 presidential race. Barack Obama receives overwhelming support as he tests the waters in New Hampshire, but has not said whether he will run. Hillary Clinton, who has not yet declared whether she will run, is viewed as the election's frontrunner.

[description] Click to Listen to the Show (24 MB MP3) The hundreds of thousands of Iraqis fleeing carnage and chaos in their homeland each month aren't arguing about whether to call that situation a civil war. They're just leaving. According to reporter Nir Rosen, back in the U.S. after three months in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, the Iraqi refugee crisis is now among the worst refugee crises in the world: [These Iraqis] don't have the rights and privileges normally associated with refugees. They're stateless. They can't work. They're desperate. Each family has horrible stories of car bombs, of death threats, of violence and rapes. They have no protection and no future. Nir Rosen, in a conversation with Open Source , 11/28/06 What is life like for this refugee population, now numbering nearly two million? How are host countries like Jordan and Syria absorbing and coping with this population? Do these refugees threaten to destabilize these countries and the region even more? Are Sunnis and Shiites leaving in equal numbers? And what does the refugee crisis tell us about the situation on the ground in Iraq? Nir Rosen Fellow, The New America Foundation Author, In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq Author, Anatomy of a Civil War , Boston Review , Nov/Dec 2006 Open Source guest, Juan Cole: Iraq in 2006 and Nir Rosen on Iraq Faiza Al-Araji Iraqi refugee living in Amman, Jordan Blogger, A Family in Baghdad Sean Garcia Refugee Advocate, Refugees International Extra Credit Reading Michael Luo, Iraq’s Christians Flee as Extremist Threat Worsens , Middle East Transparent, October 16, 2006: "At the Church of the Virgin Mary, Father Khossaba showed a visitor the baptism forms for parishioners leaving the country who need proof of their religious affiliation for visas. Some weeks he has filled out 50 of the forms, he said, and some weeks more." Faiza Al-Arji, Return to Baghdad A Family in Baghdad, November 14th, 2006: "I know exactly the danger of the situation there, but my longing for Baghdad destroyed me. And I took the risk, I told some people: if I die there, bury me, for it would be the peak of my happiness to be buried in my homeland, Instead of the torment of expatriation away from my beloved country. What is the meaning of life without a country?" Salah Nasrawi, More Iraqi Refugees Escape to Syria , The Washington Post, November 29, 2006: "In Damascus, many Iraqis live a precarious existence, often without steady incomes. Many say they left Iraq after being threatened with abduction by criminal gangs or sectarian militias. 'We are living like homeless people. How long can we survive after we spent all the money we had?' asked Lutfi Kairallah, a civil engineer." Tom A. Peter, Iraqi refugees spill into Jordan, driving up prices , Christian Science Monitor, November 29, 2006: "'Everything in Jordan is expensive because of the Iraqis,' says Mohamed Arafha, a Jordanian barber. 'Groceries, apartments, haircuts, everything.'" Kenneth Pollack, Daniel Byman, Carriers of Conflict , The Atlantic Monthly , November 2006: "Refugees...can...corrode state power from the inside, fomenting radicalization of domestic populations and encouraging rebellion against host governments. The burden of caring for hundreds of thousands of refugees is heavy, straining government administrative capacity and possibly eroding public support for regimes shown to be weak, unresponsive, or callous. And the sudden presence of armed fighters with revolutionary aspirations can lead disaffected local clans or co-religionists to ally with the refugees against their own governments, especially when an influx of one ethnic or religious group upsets a delicate demographic balance, as would likely be case in some of Iraq's neighbors." Hugh Macleod, Despair of Baghdad turns into a life of shame in Damascus , The Guardian, October 24, 2006: "Mona had become another victim of the growing sex trade among an Iraqi refugee community in Syria that local NGOs now estimate at 800,000 people, and to whose plight aid agencies say the international community continues to turn a blind eye." Khalaf, Iraqi refugees in Jordan , What's up in Jordan? , November 28, 2006: "Not only is Human Rights Watch (HRW) asking to provide free services to the refugees already here, but it is also asking to let anybody who wants to enter to do so. Presumably, it we do this, the flood gates of funds from international donors will open and the financial burden created by this will be taken off our shoulders. HRW must think we are stupid."