Yesterday President Obama made nuclear disarmament a central theme of his speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations. Today he chairs a Security Council meeting on the issue. For a look at what the president needs to say and do to convince the world that he means business, we turn to two men who are experts in the realms of diplomacy, foreign policy and nuclear proliferation. Hans Blix served as director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 1981 to 1997 before he was tapped to lead the U.N. committee charged with searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We also speak to Joe Cirincione, president of the anti-nuclear Ploughshares Fund. He also wrote the book "Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons
"On the Iranian issue, I think the focus in the Western world has been, perhaps, too much on the sanctions. All on the whips, and not so much on the carrots. If you want to get a country to act in a particular direction, the carrots are just as important. It's instructive to compare the attitude taken towards North Korea on the one hand and Iran on the other. North Korea, they [have been] offered diplomatic relations with both the U.S. and Japan if they scrap their nuclear program. They're also offered security guarantees. None of these elements have, so far, been raised publicly for Iran."
--Hans Blix
"Every president since Truman has called for the elimination of these weapons, including Ronald Reagan, who wanted to make them 'impotent and obsolete.' What's different is that Obama is calling for this vision and coupling it with a concrete program on how to get started, step-by-step. He's not doing it unilaterally; he's doing it with the Russians. He says, 'We have to start. The United States and Russia own 96% of all the weapons in the world. The U.S. has about 10,000, Russia has about 12,000 -- we have to take the first steps.' He's right about that, and he's acting on it."
--Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund
Here are highlights of President Obama's address to the United Nations yesterday:
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) had hoped that the Senate Finance Committee would be finished marking up his health care bill by Friday. As the deadline looms large, the committee appears to be slowing down, despite Democratic majorities in Congress urging quick action. The Takeaway's Washington correspondent, Todd Zwillich, explains why time is of the essence and why all eyes are on Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine).
New York Times finance reporter Louise Story joins us with a look at how the world's biggest economies will tackle banking regulation at the G20 summit in Pittspurgh. Top of the agenda? Capital requirements, an issue the international community has never been able to agree on.
Michael Vick has traded prison orange for the "midnight-green"-and-white jersey of the Philadelphia Eagles, and might even get up off the bench soon. The Takeaway's sports contributor, Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, joins us with a look at Michael Vick's first taste of regular season NFL game-play in more than two years—except he won't be starting as quarterback.
The G20 summit kicks off in Pittsburgh today. Leaders from the world's biggest economies are gathering in the Steel City to develop plans for repairing the wounded global economy, reforming bank-bonus structures and continuing the climate change conversation. Out on the streets of Pittsburgh, residents are battening the hatches while hoping their city avoids the wrath Seattle faced in 1999. (Seattle saw riots and chaos on the streets during the World Trade Organization meetings in 1999.) Joining us for a view from the ground in Pittsburgh is Cindy Skrzycki, a correspondent for GlobalPost. And for an international perspective, we speak with GlobalPost correspondent Michael Goldfarb in London.
The United Nations General Assembly convened in Manhattan this week, and everyone came! Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi wowed the crowd with a suggestion that the United Nations Security Council be renamed the "Terror Council," while Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad caused a walk-out by many delegations. John Hockenberry looks at the purpose of this global forum for world leaders in the 21st century. Is it reasonable to expect gravitas from the U.N., or is it just a just a way to bring together "the greatest show on earth?"
In case you missed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's speech, here it is:
Earlier this week, President Obama’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission may have picked his first big fight. And it wasn’t over a Janet Jackson-eque nipple-slip or a fleeting expletive: It was over your cell phone. We talk with Tim Wu, professor of law at Columbia University and co-author of the book "Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World
Now that the FCC may change how cell phone providers offer service, we're looking for your cell phone horror stories. When have you been frustrated with your phone plan? Leave a comment or call 1-877-8-MY-TAKE.
Today, global leaders descend on a small American town known as Pittsburgh, as the G-20 world summit gets underway. Local Pittsburgh residents are happy to have the attention (even if downtown security is a nightmare), but they are eager to note that even when world leaders aren't flocking to the city, there's a lot to do. We hunted down three Steel City locals for their hometown perspective: Justin Strong, Sabina Deitrick and Seán Sebastian.
Russia’s richest man, Mikhail Prokhorov, signed a tentative $200 million deal on Wednesday to buy the New Jersey Nets. This would make the Nets the first foreign-owned team in the NBA (unless you consider Toronto's Raptors to be coming from a foreign country, of course). The Takeaway's sports contributor, Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, explains the deal.
The Takeaway's Washington correspondent, Todd Zwillich, joins us with a look at a deal the White House reached earler this year with drug companies. The deal stipulated that pharmaceutical companies would cut name-brand drug prices by 50% for seniors who aren't covered under Medicare's drug plan. In exchange, the White House promised no further cuts to the pharmaceutical industry. While both the White House and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) want to honor the deal, some Democrats are appalled by the seeming kowtowing to special interests.
The G-20 summit gets underway today in Pittsburgh, and world leaders are hoping this big economic pow-wow will help stabilize a global economy still struggling back to its feet. For an assessment of how the global financial system is faring — and to gauge if bankers have held off an even Greater Depression than the last one — we turn to Liaquat Ahamed, author of "Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World
The northern French town of Calais is known as a crossing point into England; hopeful immigrants to Britain have frequently created makeshift camps while waiting to cross the border into England. But this week French police cleared out one camp known as "the jungle," where hundreds of illegal migrants, mainly from Afghanistan, had been making their home in unsanitary conditions. Emma Jane Kirby, the BBC's Paris correspondent, was there and joins us with the story.
This week marks 25 years since "The Cosby Show" first hit the airwaves. The show documented the rich and often hilarious family life of the Huxtables, an upper-middle-class black family living in Brooklyn. The show starred Bill Cosby as Dr. Cliff Huxtable, an obstetrician, his wife Claire, an attorney played by Phylicia Rashad, and their four (and later, five) children and eventually, grandchildren. The show revolutionized television's portrayal of black families; our friend, Essence Magazine Senior Editor Patrik Henry Bass, has been looking back at the television phenomenon and thinking about how it has aged. We also get a perspective from Ta-Nehisi Coates, who profiled Bill Cosby for The Atlantic last year.
"In terms of American television, there had never been images of African-Americans the way we saw with the Huxtables. You have to remember that "Amos & Andy" was the first vision that white folks had of African-Americans when it debuted in the 1950s, and the images shown on that show were so stereotypical that the NAACP had it removed in 1966. We had "Julia," with Diahann Carroll in the late '60s -- she never had a husband. Her husband was conveniently killed in Vietnam. We had "Sanford & Son," who was a garbageman who had no wife. We had the Evans family in "Good Times" who lived in a housing project where the father was killed three years into the run of the show. We had "Webster," who was this magical negro child who had no family, who was adopted by white parents. And we had the Willises on "Diff'rent Strokes," who were taken in by a white man on Park Avenue, almost like a pedophile ... [laughter] ... so when the Huxtables came on in 1984, no one gave it a shot at surviving. The sitcom had been declared dead; NBC had been declared dead ... It saved NBC and it saved the sitcom. "
--Patrik Henry Bass, senior editor at Essence magazine
"As much as I loved the Cosby Show, I think it always bore the burden -- and any show in that time -- of representing all black people, which I think was always just a little too heavy to carry."
--Ta-Nehisi Coates
Donald G. McNeil Jr., a science reporter for The New York Times, joins us with a look at what could be a significant breakthrough in the fight against the spread of HIV. Researchers have announced the results of a six-year, 16,000-person study in Thailand, and it appears that an experimental HIV vaccine has cut the risk of infection by almost one-third when compared to a placebo. This is the first time a vaccine has cut the risk of infection at all.
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick is expected to appoint former Democratic National Committee Chairman Paul G. Kirk to fill Sen. Ted Kennedy's vacant Senate seat later this morning. Kirk has been a longtime Kennedy family friend, and Ted Kennedy's family reportedly lobbied the governor on Kirk's behalf. Kirk will hold the seat until a special election in January seats a replacement for the remainder of Kennedy's term. Frank Phillips, the state house bureau chief for the Boston Globe, joins us with the details of the nomination.
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Results from GOP Contests in Minnesota, Colorado, and Missouri
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