Jan 12 & 14, 2012: from East Jerusalem - Dublin - India - Democratic Republic of Congo - Beijing

Whose history is it? 

They say the winner writes the history books.  Israel is trying to write it in East Jerusalem, and the Palestinians don't like it.

Some of their key actors and events have disappeared from school texts, triggering a backlash among parents and students alike.  CBC Correspondent Derek Stoffel went to a study session.

 listen to Derek's dispatch

Carlton Kitto (l) rehearses with fellow musicians in Calcutta, India, where Kitto continues his lifelong career as a Jazz musician. Photo/ courtesy of "Finding Carlton".

India's spicy import: jazz

Jazz! Since birth in the early 19-hundreds in the southern U.S., it's gone on to find a home in many other countries.

Soho Blues is thought to be the first jazz ever recorded...in India, way back in 1926 in Calcutta, led by Canadian trumpeter Jimmy Lequime.

It was all a long time ago, but some wonder who were these players?

And how did jazz wind up in India?

Filmmaker Susheel Kurien traced it from the twenties to a man in Calcutta today, one of the few jazz musicians left in India, custodian of a fading culture.

His documentary is called Finding Carlton; the story of jazz in India. 

Rick's interview with Kurien          Find more on Finding Carlton here 

You sent mail!

After last week's interview about the treatment of theRoma in Romania, we heard from several of you. In her documentary "Our School," filmmaker Mona Nicoara shows how the school system segregates Roma kids from the wider population. From listener Michelle Drew:

"In my neighbourhood in Hamilton (Ontario)...there are many Roma refugee claimants from central and eastern Europe with looming deportation notices.

"In August, despite our advocacy attempts, a family that had grown close to many in my neighbourhood was deported back to...Slovakia, home to Lunik IX - one of Europe's largest Roma ghettos.

"This Christmas, (we) went to...visit the family, bring them some supplies...we found a city made up of beautiful people -- both Roma and non-Roma -- who had decades of deeply-rooted fear that separated them from one another.

"...it is the young people that will change the racial boundaries between (them.) They are eroding the ethnic barriers..."

From John C. Kennedy in North River, Nova Scotia:

"The educational and broader socio-economic conditions of the Roma are indeed deplorable, and remain that in most countries where Roma reside.

"The fact that much of the world either knows little about -- or chooses to ignore -- the rights of Roma, says to me that we really have not progressed much beyond Hitler's treatment of these people"

 And Duncan Goetze of Guelph, Ontario writes to say:

"I think it funny that here in Canada, we act so surprised when we see education systems as decrepit as the one mentioned involving the Roma, while Native American communities across the country are basically ignored and put into the same level of living, or lower.

"...how can we criticize other countries while we have a community living in our third-world-standard backyard?"

Your letters. Our thanks. Read more listener letters at Your Dispatches. 

 

Some of the villagers in Congo who claim they are being abused by former rebels who have been integrated into the national army. Photo/Stephen Puddicombe

A different kind of conflict in Congo 

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the state has been bringing former rebels into the national army, in an attempt to pacify them.

It claims thousands have been successfully integrated into the armed forces in recent years.

But last February some were telling another story to the CBC's Stephen Puddicombe.

A story of men in uniform, terrorizing the countryside.

Hear Stephen's dispatch now

 

Michael Keogh as a young soldier (left) and years later as an older man. (photo courtesy With Casements Irish Brigade)

Did Hitler have a guardian angel?

In 1919, a soldier in the German army changed the course of history when he stopped an angry crowd from beating a politician to death.

If you believe that soldier's recently recovered journals, the man whose life he saved that day in Munich, was 30-year-old Adolf Hitler.

But that's not all there is to this story.

The soldier himself fought for and against both Germany and Britain during the first World War, and was loyal to neither.

Michael Keogh was Irish and his goal was the creation of an Irish republic. The whole double-agent act was his way of trying to make it happen.

But along the way, if his journals are true, he did something with far greater ramifications.

Irish broadcaster Joe Kearney produced a radio documentary on Keough for RTE Radio One in Ireland and he spoke to us last spring from Dublin.

Hear Rick's conversation with Joe Kearney now

 

Breaking the ice in Beijing

Well, will you look at the time? March break'll soon be upon us. Lot of folks fixing to pack the bathing suit and get someplace warm. But last March, we heard about a defiant, frozen few from Canadian journalist Allie Jaynes.

Taking the cold plunge  

 

This program is the work of producers Dawna Dingwall, Alison Masemann and Steve McNally. With technical producer Victor Johnston. Our senior producer is Alan Guettel.

 

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