Promo Box

Thursday May 24, 2012

Dutch recession restaurant: bring your own food!

Owner Michiel Zwart takes an order for drinks from some regular customers, who've come with their own food, at Basis Restaurant in Amsterdam (Photo: Anik See)

A recessionary repast

We already have restaurants where you bring your own wine. But your own food? With a little help from the recession it's beginning to happen, and Anik See takes us to one in Amsterdam.

Listen to Anik's dispatch

 

Click here to listen to the rest of this week's Dispaches!

Categories: Promo Box

Sunday May 20, 2012

Ukraine feminists use sexuality as weapons to fight for equality

Inna Shevchenko (R) and Sasha (L) are the most prominent members of FEMEN, which uses female sexuality, including nudity, to demand women's rights in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe.   (REUTERS/Gleb Garanich)

Feminism laid bare in Ukraine

Well, the spark that ignited the Orange Revolution in Ukraine just a few years ago is more like a damp squib. Seems the days of political protest are mostly over.

Except for a small and controversial group trying to revive them in the name of women's rights. Controversial, because they use their sexuality to gain attention.

They went topless at KGB headquarters. And the Vatican. This week one of them peeled off and grabbed the Euro 2012 soccer trophy. Anything to advance the cause. They put their half-naked bodies on the line, occasionally with brutal result.

But Dispatches contributor Saroja Coelho says some wonder just what their cause is, and went to see whether their tactics help or hurt it.

Listen to Saroja's dispatch         Listen to the rest of this week's program.

Categories: Promo Box

Friday May 18, 2012

Romancing music from the rubbish in Brazil

David Rocha finds wood for his instruments in vacant lots like this one in Villa Nova. (Photo: Lisa Hale)

From trash to musical treasure in Brazil

A story now, about making the best of what you've got. You know the old adage about life givng you lemons, so make lemonade. As Lisa Hale reports from Brazil, life gave David Rocha garbage. You won't believe what he makes of it.

Listen to Lisa's documentary

Categories: Promo Box

Friday May 18, 2012

The Pull of Germany's economic engine

A mechanic works on a new Audi A4 car on the production line of the German car manufacturer's plant in the Bavarian city of Ingolstadt. (Photo: REUTERS/Michaela Rehle)

The pull of Germany's economic engine

Over the years, several countries have taken turns wearing the humiliating label of 'the Sick Man' of Europe.

Lately, there's more than one.

But Germany is robustly and resolutely not among them. It's better known as the economic engine of Europe.

Especially now, as it oversees and underwrites bailouts from Ireland to Greece, with Portugal, Spain and Italy in the rearview mirror.

While some endure austerity, Germany enjoys stability that's attracting the less fortunate. But they'll have to overcome corrosive mutual resentments if they're to prevent the economic insecurity turning into social conflict.

Our Radio-Canada colleague Sylvain Desjardins is in the German industrial heartland to see it.

Listen to Sylvain's dispatch

Categories: Promo Box

Monday April 30, 2012

Dispatches correspondent honored for Human Rights reporting

The Canadian Association of Journalists has awarded the CBC's Alison Crawford its 2011 award for Human Rights Reporting.

Her Dispatch, aired last October, is entitled "The Eyes of Rosa and Antonio". You can hear it here.

 

Rosa Gomez and Antonio Savone suffered at the hands of the same torturers. They reunited to try to jail their tormentors. Photo/Alison Crawford

Still cleaning up after Argentina's dirty war

Some guilty verdicts were handed down this week (October 2011) in a case that began many years ago in a very dark place in 1970s Argentina.

They called it "the Singing Room." And sometimes, "the Barbeque," which is closer to what it really was; a torture chamber in the basement of a Mendoza police station.

And it was bad, what they did to Antonio Savone. Much worse for Rosa Gomez, the woman whose eyes he could see -- and whose cries he could hear -- coming from the cell facing his.

Argentina was in the grip of a murderous dictatorship, and last March, Antonio headed back to meet Rosa face-to-face, and confront their captors.

The CBC's Alison Crawford begans our story in Antonio's Toronto home, as he packed to testify in Mendoza.

Listen to Alison's dispatch

This week (October 2011), five of the six defendants in the D-2 case were convicted of crimes ranging from kidnap to torture and murder.  The judge called them all "crimes against humanity."  Four were given life sentences, including the man who killed Rosa's husband. A fifth got twelve years and another was acquitted, but is already convicted of crimes in another detention centre. All will go to prison; they had been under house arrest. Report in El Sol (the Mendoza Sun)

And Antonio was in court to hear the verdict. He'll return in 2012 to testify against those accused of sexually assaulting Rosa Gomez.

Meanwhile, two judges have been suspended as a result of the investigation into human rights violations, though the prosecutor, that signed off on the "confession" Antonio was unaware of until his trial, has skipped the country and is claiming refugee status in Chile.

Antonio has also been contacted by a novelist and a filmmaker interested in documenting his story.  And an artist who wants to draw his eyes. 

Finally, he tells us by email that he speaks with Rosa all the time. "I feel very close to (her)" he writes. She is now, "a part of my life."

Dispatches thanks CBC producer Mariel Borelli for performing the voice over translation for Rosa Gomez.

 

Categories: Promo Box

Thursday April 26, 2012

Yemen: A lesson in insecurity

The Romans called it "Arabia Felix".  Happy Arabia.

But Yemen, as it's known today, is anything but. Buffeted by rebellion and its own Arab Spring, political instability is on vivid display now that miltants have seized an entire province and sent its residents packing.

Today many live with the legacy of unrest that's driven them from their homes to refuge in distant schools where Canadian journalist Lindsay Mackenzie says the only lessons they learn, are the hard ones.

Listen to Lindsay's documentary

Categories: Middle East, News Promo, Promo Box

• May 2012
  • Thu., 24 – Dutch recession restaurant: bring your own food!
     
  • Sun., 20 – Ukraine feminists use sexuality as weapons to fight for equality
     
  • Fri., 18 – Romancing music from the rubbish in Brazil
     
  • Fri., 18 – The Pull of Germany's economic engine
     
• April 2012
  • Mon., 30 – Dispatches correspondent honored for Human Rights reporting
     
  • Thu., 26 – Yemen: A lesson in insecurity
     
  • Thu., 19 – Peace without justice in Liberia
     
  • Thu., 19 – Connie Watson's Fixer: the face of a new kind of Cuba
     
  • Thu., 5 – Turkish minorities tread carefully in opening doors to multi-culturalism
     
• March 2012
  • Fri., 30 – Cape Town "car guards" offer "protection"
     
  • Thu., 29 – Mexican tabloids: Black & White -- and dead all over
     
  • Thu., 22 – The trials of Tweeting in China
     
  • Thu., 22 – Help for kids of India sex workers
     
  • Wed., 21 – In Italy, a long drink of yesterday's wine
     
  • Thu., 15 – China's painful healing, with bee-stings
     
  • Thu., 15 – Rwandans find new uses for malaria nets
     
  • Thu., 15 – Verbal autopsies shed light on death
     
  • Thu., 8 – Mexico's vigilante mayor
     
  • Wed., 7 – Lanse kòd animate Jacmel Carnival
     
  • Fri., 2 – Plus ça change, in Change Square
     
  • Thu., 1 – Self immolation: Tibet Buddhists debate non-violence
     
• February 2012
  • Wed., 29 – A box full of light saves lives
     
  • Tue., 28 – They die so we might know
     
  • Mon., 27 – Oscar winner on Dispatches
     
  • Fri., 24 – Kennedy's very bad day in South Sudan
     
  • Wed., 22 – A special court for post-trauma vets
     
  • Fri., 17 – Baad justice haunts Afghanistan
     
  • Fri., 17 – Inside Egyptian military's business web
     
  • Tue., 14 – Justice served in Haiti
     
  • Mon., 13 – Syrian refugees' defiance and division
     
  • Thu., 9 – Sri Lanka tourism vs. the fisherfolk
     
  • Tue., 7 – Colombia's no-name dead
     
• January 2012
  • Tue., 31 – Costa Rican government responds to cane-cutter investigation
     
  • Fri., 27 – Surfing with the crocs in a Borneo river
     
  • Thu., 26 – Jamaicans say "we should have remained a British colony"
     
  • Fri., 20 – India's surprise link to the heyday of jazz
     
  • Wed., 11 – Dutch pot cafes take heat
     
• December 2011
  • Thu., 29 – Deadly larceny over land in Haiti
     
  • Mon., 19 – Marriage and divorce: Peruvian style
     
  • Sun., 18 – Fast food in the land of slow cooking
     
  • Thu., 15 – Rio's Maracana makeover
     
  • Sun., 4 – Old pop bottles light up lives of Manila's poor
     
  • Thu., 1 – Amsterdam "Santa's" helpers in blackface
     
• November 2011
  • Wed., 30 – Guyana: jungle tourism and Jonestown
     
  • Fri., 25 – Santa, Peru buries death-squad victims
     
  • Thu., 17 – Surviving is winning in Afghan politics
     
  • Mon., 14 – Ben Hur Live? More like Ben hurt.
     
  • Fri., 4 – Rebel town overrun in Sudan's Blue Nile
     
  • Wed., 2 – Centuries-old baroque music survives in Bolivian jungle
     
• October 2011
  • Thu., 27 – Pro-Gadhafi Africans confront Canadian reporter
     
  • Thu., 27 – Otsego County, NY: The fracas over fracking
     
  • Thu., 20 – Sudan's "next" civil war in progress in Blue Nile
     
  • Thu., 13 – Bailing out the Greeks' devalued psyche
     
  • Sat., 8 – Famine aid: giving cash instead of food
     
  • Fri., 7 – Rick and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
     
  • Wed., 5 – China's surfer girl goes global
     
  • Sat., 1 – Congo's pygmies: from the forest to the suburbs
     
• September 2011
  • Tue., 27 – Al Qaeda: up close with the bosses
     
  • Thu., 22 – In Haiti, Connie Watson and the army next door
     
  • Thu., 15 – Peace and death on Tripoli Street
     
  • Thu., 8 – Asian carp approach Great Lakes
     
• August 2011
  • Fri., 26 – Berlin's anti-Nazi cleaning lady
     
  • Thu., 25 – Sleeper cells and secret deal took Tripoli
     
  • Thu., 18 – Sudan's Machine Gun Preacher
     
  • Wed., 10 – For Haitian women, credit buys confidence
     
  • Wed., 3 – Thorium: safe nuclear fuel of the future?
     
  • Mon., 1 – U.S. Ramadan Road Trip
     
• July 2011
  • Wed., 27 – Whoonga! What's in the killer street drug of Durban?
     
  • Thu., 14 – From Spain via Israel -- Ladino music revival
     
  • Wed., 6 – Ex-con released same day as his hit record
     
• June 2011
  • Fri., 24 – Haiti's disabled: can it be cruel to be kind?
     
  • Mon., 13 – Jerusalem...covering the never-ending story
     
  • Fri., 3 – Law catches up to El Salvador military men
     
  • Wed., 1 – Hainan Island, China...surfer girl catches waves here
     
• May 2011
  • Fri., 27 – Montebaducco, Italy...what you don't know about donkey milk
     
  • Wed., 25 – Radio's eyes, The Human Kind Of Eye
     
  • Thu., 12 – Ivory Coast... refugees look for hope in Liberia
     
  • Wed., 4 – Glasgow...Rangers/Celtic matches - no hate songs here!
     
  • Mon., 2 – War brides return to Britain on QM2
     
• April 2011
  • Tue., 19 – Kampala...home of Gadhafi's fan club?
     
  • Thu., 14 – Tokyo...in the shadow of Fukushima
     
  • Mon., 11 – Dakar's wrestling sandbox millionaires
     
  • Mon., 4 – Beijing: One dissident released, another detained
     
  • Fri., 1 – Benghazi...training the rebels Gadhafi vows to crush
     
• March 2011
  • Thu., 31 – Grand Forks, ND: misinformation on the menu
     
  • Wed., 30 – Tunis...joining the queues of complainers here
     
  • Mon., 28 – Mexico: fear of narco-censorship here
     
  • Thu., 24 – Berlin...military brass and Smoke On The Water
     
  • Tue., 22 – The screwy Saudi security syndrome
     
  • Thu., 17 – Kabul... Ormiston on Afghanistanization
     
  • Mon., 14 – Addis Ababa...renting the news of revolution
     
  • Thu., 10 – China rolls back reforms
     
• February 2011
  • Thu., 24 – Whoonga -- what's in the killer street drug of Durban?
     
• December 2010
  • Tue., 7 – Jacmel and Sabonette, Haiti...overtaken by the ladies here, and the little guy