Summer Encores 2004: Below are the programs between June 9 and September 1, 2004. The most recent program is on top. In June there were different programs on Wednesday and Saturday nights. In July and August, Dispatches encores were aired on Wednesdays only. To search for a name, location, subject or any key word, use <<Ctrl F>>. More past seasons are to the left.

September 01, 2004

Too Many Reasons To Die; the culture of death in rural Turkey. How ritual, honor and tradition conspire to kill women.

Our feature documentary is the story of murder, suicide, Mustafa Seven, and the stoning of Shamsiye Allack.

From Zimbabwe, a walk through a silent newsroom
with a lone voice of independent journalism.

Listen to the entire program in RealAudio
or scroll down to the dispatch you want to hear

Ritual, honor and tradition are killing women in Turkey. Some days it's suicide. But other days, it's murder.

It takes place in the rural areas of the country, where the old Kurdish ways are colliding with modern times.

And a civil war that's displaced three-and-a-half million people there hasn't helped.

Dispatches contributor Declan Hill has been to southeastern Turkey where he discovered a society that has too many reasons for women to die.

It's a documentary that won him Amnesty International Canada's Media Award for last year.

Listen to Part One of Too Many Reasons To Die

Listen to Part Two of Too Many Reasons To Die

Shamsiye Allack died in hospital, shortly after Too Many Reasons To Die first aired last season.

In Zimbabwe, as President Robert Mugabe clings to land and power, the country is in freefall.

It's a place where speech is not free and life is expensive. And journalism is not a life-enhancing endeavour.

Mugabe is not keen on those who care to report any of this. But Marian Botsford-Fraser managed to get into Zimbabwe and met up with one journalist who is.

Listen to Marian's dispatch

Marian Botsford Fraser in conversation with Zimbabwean journalist Precious Shumba.

Next week, we start a new season of original journalism. Rick will be reporting from Bosnia. Nine years after the war ended, the place is still a minefield. So are its politics -- and its memories for those who survived it.

Here's an excerpt.

That's from War By Other Means, our first documentary of the 2004-2005 season, next week on Dispatches.

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August 25, 2004

The whisper of water, the brush of tall reeds, and the strange gondoliers return; Iraq's ancient Marsh Arabs survived Saddam's attempts to wipe them out. Now they must decide whether to live in the past or the present.

And, in Italy, the mob now has a whole new meaning.

"Mobbing" is how bosses kiss off employees -- in a country where firing them is next to impossible.

Listen to the entire program in RealAudio
or scroll down to the dispatch you want to hear

When men first learned to make bronze, they were there.

When the first system of writing was created, the first pottery wheel, the first sailboat -- they were there.

Five-thousand years later along comes Saddam Hussein and very nearly wipes them out.

They are the Marsh Arabs, and they lived among the vast reedbeds of southern Iraq until Saddam decided to punish them by draining their swampy refuge. Some describe it as genocide.

Now Saddam is gone, the water is trickling back and so are the Marsh Arabs, but not quite as they were.

Reviving an ancient and unique way of life, doesn't mean they all want to return to it.

Listen to Margaret Evans's documentary, from southern Iraq.

In Italy, some companies with problem employees are turning to the mob.

No, not that mob.

In a country where it feels like no one can ever get fired, systematic harassment is the weapon of choice for a few.

They call it "mobbing." And it's so widespread now, there are mobbing clinics, mobbing hotlines -- and even a movie, as Dispatches contributor Megan Williams reports from Rome

Listen to Megan's dispatch

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August 18, 2004

Lessons in loathing:

So you thought education would be part of the solution to the war mongering in The Middle East.

In today's feature documentary, James Cullingham shows us that classrooms are still part of the problem.

In their segregated schools, Israeli and Palestinian students are learning enough fear and hatred to keep the whole thing going for a few more generations.

Listen to the entire program in RealAudio
or scroll down to the dispatch you want to hear

Back in the days after the Oslo Agreement, in the early 1990s, there were signs that peace might break out between Israel and the Palestinians.

Re-vamping the education systems was a big part of the plan: Peace Studies, integrated schools, Palestinian and Israeli teachers training together. Sharing lessons. Students sharing classrooms.

But a few years of suicide bombings and brutal occupation put all that to rest.

Canadian filmmaker James Cullingham recently went to the region to see if there's a chance the pieces might be put back together again.

The result is this full-edition documentary, Lessons In Loathing.

Listen to the first part of Lessons In Loathing

As the Israeli teacher Michal Erel just showed us, the education systems of the Israelis and Palestinians are heavily
segregated. Even in Israel itself, where about a quarter of the pupils are Arab, they too attend their own schools.

There are also religious schools with their own agendas. Hamas, for example, runs kindergartens and summer schools for Palestinian children. And many Israeli schools are run by the most conservative Jews.

In Part Two of Lessons In Loathing, James Cuillingham finds signs that things could be different -- but little reason to hope they will be.

Listen to the second part of Lessons In Loathing

Broadcaster and filmmaker James Cullingham is coordinator of the Journalism Broadcast program at Seneca College in Toronto.

He is currently producing a film documentary on education in the Middle East, in association with Seneca's School of Communication Arts.

This program is the work of Senior Producer Alan Guettel, with Nazim Baksh and technical producer Victor Johnston.

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August 11, 2004

Our documentary looks at the paradox of Mexico's migrants; the dollar lures them north, leaving no-one to address the
poverty they leave behind.

But first, Gods, men and monsters -- the fabled images of the Elgin marbles. The Greeks are playing an Olympian game of political hardball to try and recover the famous stone carvings from Britain.

Listen to the entire program in RealAudio
or scroll down to the dispatch you want to hear

The Olympic Games return to Greece this week.

And many Greeks are hoping the Elgin Marbles will soon follow.

Of course the Greeks call them The Parthenon Marbles -- those fabled stone carvings which once graced the Temple of Athena in Athens until they were -- how to put this -- exported by the British.

Or stolen, as they say in Greece.

Now, this fight's gone on for a couple hundred years.

But recently, with the clout that comes from hosting the Games -- and a vote on whether Britain gets them in future -- ...well. Dispatches isn't suggesting the Olympic ideal can be turned into crude power politics. No, sir.

The Greeks are saying that.

Here's the CBC's Christopher Grosskurth.

A report from Athens by the CBC's Christopher Grosskurth.

If Mexico was a fight, they'd stop it.

Much of the country's taking an economic beating, and membership in the North American Free Trade Agreement hasn't helped as much as some expected.

In fact NAFTA'S been "a wash", according to a Carnegie Endowment report.

Small farmers are getting clobbered by the U.S. competition. And jobs never did flow south for the lower Mexican wages.

Not everyone agrees of course. A World Bank draft report says ten years after NAFTA came into force, there've been "significant benefits" for Mexico.

But there's still that U.S. border up there, and the jobs on the other side.

The CBC's Connie Watson prepared this documentary about what that looks like from down there.

Listen to Connie's documentary

This program is the work of senior
producer Alan Guettel, with Nazim Baksh
and technical producer Victor Johnston.

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August 4, 2004

An Afghanistan notebook -- some of the scenes our reporters won't forget.

Like the prospects for a President who needs bodyguards to protect him from his bodyguards.

Building a better burka -- many women in Afghanistan are keen to wear the costume synonymous with the oppressive rule of the Taliban.

And the paradox of Bamiyan. The Taliban destroyed Afghanistan's fabled stone Buddhas. But in trying to protect the statues, has the UN destroyed the lives of those who lived around them?

But first, dogmeat, dogfights and the scene on Chicken street. A reporter's eye-view of what passes for normal these days in Kabul.

Listen to the entire program in RealAudio
or scroll down to the dispatch you want to hear

Well, the cratered roads of Kabul are once again clogged with cars, as life surges back into the ancient capital's arteries.

There's still a Taliban rump out there somewhere in Cave Country. But ignoring it is no longer a life-or-death deal inside city limits.

Journalist Irris Makler covered the war in Afghanistan in 2001, and recently returned to find locals back to the old ways of business and recreation, which includes the recently-revived dogfights.

Listen to the Irris's report

One of the stated goals of the coalition invasion of Afghanistan was to liberate women from the repression of the Taliban.

When the CBC's Connie Watson returned to Kabul last fall, she saw that if people took that to mean women would be throwing off those head-to-toe burkas the Taliban made them to wear, think again.

What's more, as a female reporter, Connie found the burka has its place right next to the flak jacket.

Listen to the Connie's dispatch

Like something out of Rudyard Kipling, the letter-writers ply their trade in the streets of Kabul.

Aging, educated men hire out their words and pens to the illiterate, and feel the pulse, first hand, of a recovering country.

It's a scene captured by Manon Globensky of the CBC's French network, Radio-Canada.

Listen to the Manon's essay

It's hard to say when life was more hazardous for Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai -- back during Afghanstan's many wars, or now; now that he has the job of trying to rule the fractured state.

It's made him a target for every ticked-off tribal chief and devotee of the Shoulder-Fired Missile Party (SFMP) who still has a leg to stand on.

And this is the guy The West is betting on to calm the place; a man whose life is at such risk, he needs bodyguards who're prepared to shoot his other bodyguards.

That's right. David Common of CBC Television News tells all in this dispatch from Kabul.

Listen to the David's dispatch

With its fierce extremism and opressive regime, the Taliban stole the future from many in Afghanistan.

But it also stole a part of their past.

In a demonstration of rage and religion, the fanatical regime blew up the enormous stone statues of Bamiyan, built by Buddhists more than 1500 years ago.

With the statues and Taliban both gone from Bamiyan, the UN's cultural agency known as UNESCO, has moved into the region to try and protect what's left.

But in the process, it appears to have done what not even the Taliban would do.

Nelofer Pazira is an Afghan journalist recently returned from Bamiyan.

You may remember her from the film Return To Kandahar, in which she played herself.

She remembers the Buddahs of Bamiyan the way they were, and the way it is now.

Listen to the Nelofer's talk with Rick

Nelofer Pazira is now working for CBC Television News.

This program is the work of senior producer Alan Guettel, with Nazim Baksh and technical producer Victor Johnston.

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July 28, 2004

Ten years after the fall of apartheid, a collection of stories from South Africa showing the way things were, and the way they are now.

A look into the country's gripped by a never-ending crime wave,
still fueled by race and politics.

The marketing of Mandela -- the fridge magnets and hero worship behind South Africa's most popular product.

But first, a few beers with the boys and an African fish story with a, cautionary tale.

Listen to the entire program in RealAudio
or scroll down to the dispatch you want to hear

It's been change or die in South Africa for the past ten years.

And much of the change has been economic, as the government tries to deal with widespread poverty.

But economics is not such a dismal science in South Africa when it involves lobster. Unless maybe you're a poacher.

Listen to Rick's visit to a lobster shack

The South African government is jumpy; crime is soaring and there's not much it can afford to do about it.

But private security companies say they can. And they're springing up faster than pickpockets at a parade.

But the whole situation is being aggravated now by questions of race and politics, as we hear from Dispatches contributor Franz Kruger.

Listen to Franz's report

You can't talk about South Africa without talking about Nelson
Mandela.

Wherever you go in the country, you see his name and his image.

He's the embodiment of a revolution that ended apartheid, and embraced racial reconciliation.

He's also an industry. And while few people are more deserving of adulation, does the world really need Mandela-dressed-as-Santa-Claus fridge magnets? Your call.

Our look at the Mandela industry begins in the former prison on
Robben Island off Cape Town, where he spent eighteen of his 27 years in jail.

Listen to Rick's documentary

This program is the work of Senior Producer Alan Guettel with
Nazim Baksh and technical producer Victor Johnston.

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July 21

Shots and screams on the answering machine; a part of everyday life for human rights advocates in Mexico. It wasn't supposed to be this way. We'll examine why the ambitious plans of President Fox went so wrong.

Some cruel satire from a cruel situation; the middle East provides fuel for a new Israeli TV show that takes offense from the ongoing conflict, and gives it right back.

And, journalist Robert Fisk on the fallout from those photographs of prisoners in Iraq.

Listen to the entire program in RealAudio
or scroll down to the dispatch you want to hear

President Vincente Fox came to power in Mexico four years ago, pledging human rights would be high on the political agenda for the very first time.

But today, many are asking if that agenda now lies buried alongside human rights lawyer Digna Ochoa.

Those trying now to carry on her life's work, following her mysterious death, find themselves living in a great big hell, according to Dispatches contributor Darrel Harvey.

Listen to Darrel's report

It's hard to say which is darker in Israel right now; everyday life, or the new TV show which satirizes it.

Base 22 is an animated cartoon that lances Israel the way South Park has been doing to the U.S. for the past few years.

But since the stakes are so much higher in the middle East, the satire is that much more over-the-top.

We could tell you there's crude imagery in this piece, which some will find offensive. But, CBC correspondent Michael McAuliffe in Tel Aviv reports that Base 22 is designed to offend just about everyone.

Listen to Michael's dispatch

Those harrowing photographs of Americans tormenting Iraqis in a Baghdad prison mean more than they show, and show much more than we in the West understand.

To a small group of fanatics, they're an excuse for the brutal murder of Americans and those who support America's occupation.

To journalist Robert Fisk, a long-time correspondent in the middle East, they are signs of an end to the American and British presence in Iraq.

Pictures of men degraded and mistreated are an affront to any culture, he says, but in an Arab culture they present even greater insult.

Listen to his interview with Rick

Robert Fisk is middle East correspondent for The Independent, a British newspaper based in London.

This program is the work of Senior Producer Alan Guettel, with Nazim Baksh, and technical producer Victor Johnston.

------------------------------------------

July 14, 2004

Castro versus the women in white; the daring protest by the wives of the journalists imprisoned for flirting with free speech in Cuba.

In Mexico, saints and angels return to parade in the streets each year, but rarely decide to stay. Our documentary looks at Mexican migration to the U.S. and how it changing the culture of an old country.

And, why the coming of winter means a season of loss in South Africa.

Listen to the entire program in RealAudio
or scroll down to the dispatch you want to hear

A year ago last March, as the world watched Saddam lose his grip in Iraq, Fidel Castro was tightening his own in Cuba.

He rounded up independent journalists and jailed them. Some for as long as twenty-seven years.

But this is a notable story for a couple of other reasons.

One is the blatant assistance they'd been getting from the U.S. and other democratic countries in the course of their struggle.

The other -- as Mike Laanela reports from Havana -- is how these jailings have triggered something daring and unusual for Cuba: the sounds of public protest.

Listen to Mike's documentary

In Mexico, generations have come of age in rural villages knowing the only way to survive their country, is to leave it.

In search of work they surge north to the U.S. -- which once invited the migration of men it used to call brasseros; the strong arms.

That program is long over, and so is the official welcome. But for many young Mexicans, the exodus has become a rite of passage.

Some of their money finds its way back to those villages but few migrants ever do, except to vacation in a Mexico of their memories.

Here's Franc Contreras now, with the story of how themigration came to pass, and how it's still changing Mexico.

Listen to Franc's documentary

Finally tonight, some thoughts from Rick on death, and life, in South Africa.

This program is the work of Senior Producer Alan Guettel, with Nazim Baksh, and technical producer Victor Johnston.

------------------------------------------

July 7, 2004

In Iraq, life in a hospital free of sanctions and Saddam; it turns out to be awfully similar to life with them.

Meanwhile in Morocco, "Speedy" Mohammed ends the business of more than one wife at a time. The reformer King is challenging polygamy and changing the life of every woman in the country.

And, Black Jesus -- with the low clear cry of an African culture. We climb a mountain with the Shembe people of South Africa.

Listen to the entire program in RealAudio
or scroll down to the dispatch you want to hear

In Iraq these days, hospital is a place you go to get sick.

A little odd, given how much things are supposed to be changing.

But the war that ended sanctions -- and crushed Saddam -- hadn't achieved much difference in some places. It certainly made no difference to the Baghdad Children's Hospital eight months after the official campaign ended.

Children were still more likely to leave the place worse off than when they arrived, as CBC correspondent Michael McAuliffe learned when he dropped by.

Listen to Michael's tour of the hospital

He might be the King of Morocco, but in the street, they call him "Speedy."

That's because Mohammed VI just seems to be in a hurry to reform the Islamic Kingdom he's ruled for the past five years.

Make no mistake, it's still a restrictive place to live, especially for dissenters.

But he's prodding his parliament to step up the pace of reform. The latest example is a sweeping change in family law, known as the mudawana.

It's going to have a profound effect on the lives of Moroccan women, because it ends to the historic practice of polygamy.

From now on it's one man, one wife. Not four, as condoned by the Koran.

It's welcomed by some. A threat to Islam say others,as Nicola Fell reports in this dispatch from Rabat.

Listen Nicola's documentary

January is a holy month for many Zulu in South Africa. It's mid-summer below the equator.

And to followers of the faith known as Shembe, it's a time for religious pilgrimage to a place where mysticism meets things modern.

And it was the time, this year, of a Dispatches essay from Canadian writer Marian Botsford Fraser, on a mountain near Durban.

Listen to Marian's report

This program is the work of Senior Producer Alan Guettel, with
Nazim Baksh and technical producer Victor Johnston.

------------------------------------

June 30, 2004

Citizen soldiers, coom-bye-ya, and lasers in the jungle; enter the world of U.S. military make-believe in the deep south.

The Army wants to sensitize its soldiers to culture and ambush in Iraq. So it's dressed up some Louisiana swampland to look like the villages they'll be patrolling.

Rick's documentary wonders whether the pretend world of Fort Polk is any match for the deadly one awaiting them in Iraq.

But first -- it's only rock and roll but Chinese kids like it. Beijing garage bands get their ya-ya's out, and their politics too.

Listen to the entire program in RealAudio
or scroll down to the dispatch you want to hear

"A group of pigs flew to heaven...I was forced to
become a good-for-nothing."

As lyrics go, it ain't Lennon and McCartney, but it is rock'n'roll in China.

The bourgeois business of rock bands has made real inroads in the People's Republic. There are more than 400 of them in Beijing alone.

One is called Second-Hand Rose, and it mixes irony, heavy metal and Chinese folk music in the form of a lead singer in drag.

Dispatches goes clubbing now with Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing.

Listen to Mary's rockumentary

In a stretch of swampland deep in the American south, the U.S. military is trying to replicate the culture and chaos of post-war Iraq.

Arabic signs and Arabic speakers hang around make-believe Iraqi villages, built to familiarize the next wave of Iraq-bound troops with a foreign culture.

But they're not just any troops. Under pressure to spell off many of its professional soldiers after a year in the field, the Army is calling up more and more part-timers; "Weekend Warriors" as they're known -- the U.S. National Guard.

Few expected to actually wind up in an Iraqi post-war zone. That's why the military is giving them special attention -- in a swamp known as "The Box", on an Army base named for a long-dead Confederate General.

We're off to Fort Polk, Louisiana. "Hoo-hah", as they like to say down there. "Hoo-hah."

Listen to Rick's adventure

This program is the work of Senior Producer Alan
Guettel with Nazim Baksh and technical producer Victor
Johnston.

-----------------------------------

June 26, 2004

Khmer Rouge Brother Number Seventeen finds religion among the landmines.

His new god may forgive him for genocide. But our documentary suggests his fellow citizens won't.

Santiago's open secret; secret no more. Chile confronts child prostitution and sixty-five thousand pedophile websites.

And the polluted backdrop to the caviar smugglers of Russia.

Listen to the entire program in RealAudio
or scroll down to the dispatch you want to hear

It's been over thirty years since the slaughter in Cambodia.

With its forced marches and concentration camps, the Communist regime of Pol Pot killed nearly two-million people -- almost a quarter of the population.

Most of those responsible got away with it.

But some former Khmer Rouge leaders may yet stand trial before an International War Crimes Tribunal as soon as this year.

Many key figures have died or disappeared, but many still live openly in Cambodia, and claim to live a surprisingly different kind of life than you might expect -- As CBC Radio's Stephen Puddicombe found.

Listen to Stephen's documentary

At the age of fifteen, nobody should be able to describe himself as "a former prostitute."

But Jonathan does, and he's a vision in turquoise crowned by pink barrettes.

He's just one of many kids who grew up wrong in Chile, with way too much help.

The capital city of Santiago has been rocked recently by high-level kiddie porn scandals.

As in many cities, there's an element there that views children as playthings for adults with money.

This story is ugly. But it's changing, says Dispatches contributor Jen Ross.

Listen to Jen's documentary

And finally, some thoughts from Rick, on casualties of the still-collapsing Soviet Empire.

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June 23, 2004

Human skull in one hand, a cellphone in the other: a way of life and death in Haiti.

If you're not making a killing, or doing the killing, you're at risk of being killed.

In the meantime, the living depend on help from abroad, or eat the very dirt they walk on. Then they hope the next life will be easier.

And, a story from Africa, where there's a man who wants to play Idi Amin on the silver screen. Hell of a career move.

Listen to the entire program in RealAudio
or scroll down to the dispatch you want to hear

In Haiti, you hear this a lot: "ba mwen kob." It's French creole, and it means "give me some money."

And you hear it because Haiti is a profoundly poor country.

One of the things keeping it alive is remittance. A family's very survival often depends on the money it receives from relatives living outside the country.

In Montreal's Haitian community, the CBC's David Gutnick found one woman who alone supports 47 people back in her former home.

And he followed the money she sends, from Montreal to Haiti, to see just how it trickles down to the poorest.

Listen to David's feature documentary

David's series of reports from Haiti is called A Country Never Dies. You can hear the other reports, and see pictures from his assignment there, on the web at cbc.ca/haiti.

Idi Amin is gone but not forgotten. Not by the families of his many victims. Not by the thousands of Asians he expelled while President of Uganda in the '70s.

So why would anybody want to play him on the big screen?

Fact is, in Kenya, Uganda's former strongman has a cinematic doppelganger.

Joseph Olita first played him in a 1980 film, The Life And Times Of Idi Amin.

And if Olita can just find somebody with a wallet as big as his own ego, he'll do it again, as we hear from Blake Lambert in Nairobi.

Listen to Blake's report

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June 19, 2004

In Turkey, you can get a beer. You just can't drink it in plain view of a mosque.

Turkey is a place where Islam and secular democracy have reached a surprising, but tense, accommodation.

Meanwhile, in Swaziland, it's good to be king. But His Majesty's eye for the ladies is fueling dissent in a country confronted by new hardships

Listen to the entire program in RealAudio
or scroll down to the dispatch you want to hear

Turkey has always lived with one foot in the east, and one in the west.

It recently marked its 80th anniversary, as a secular republic.

But for over a year now, Turks have been living under a government run by a religious political party known as the AK -- the Islamic Party.

Now, Turkey's generals used to say that would only happen over their dead bodies. And in the past they've seized power to make sure it didn't.

But not this time.

And in our documentary, the CBC's Evan Dyer discovers how the AK is reconciling Islam with a pro-western democracy, and where secularism conflicts, oddly, with freedom of religion.

Listen to Evan's documentary

The tiny country of Swaziland, wedged up against Mozambique and South Africa, is sometimes called one of the world's last absolute monarchies.

And that's been just fine by M'Swati III, the country's youthful king and husband to nine wives.

Some would like to see him relinquish a little of his sweeping authority, though recent elections did little to bring that about.

But there are new pressures for change in a tiny kingdom caught between tradition and present-day challenges, such as famine and AIDS.

More now in the Dispatches documentary by Franz Kruger in Swaziland's capital city.

Listen to Franz's documentary

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June 16, 2004

Incident at Khanabad; what's the value of 14 civilian lives lost to friendly American fire in Afghanistan? Here's a hint: you're not going to like the answer.

In Spain, cellular science provides the technology of terror. Our correspondent views the attacks on Madrid through the backlit screen of a cell phone.

And, a story about the World's Worst Neighbour reminds us why the Americans went into Iraq in the first place -- and why they're no longer welcome in Turk Sardar's little mud hut on the Tigres.

Listen to the entire program in RealAudio
or scroll down to the dispatch you want to hear

Despite the post-Taliban turmoil still wracking Afghanistan, Abdullah Said is getting on with his life.

But fourteen members of his family cannot.

They were among the more than three-thousand civilians accidentally killed by U.S. bombs that went astray in the course of the war, late in 2001.

CBC correspondent Bill Gillespie didn't know it at the time, but he may have witnessed some of the attacks which killed as many as 50 in the northern town of Khanabad.

Last fall he retraced his steps, into the Kola-Kola Hills, where Abdullah Said was waging a fruitless fight for compensation.

Listen to Bill's dispatch

Now, a story about the new detonation system for terrorist backpack bombers.

Where you see a cell phone., they see a trigger.

Those annoying little instruments have sinister new significance since their role in the Madrid bombings last spring.

In the chirp of the cell phone., CBC correspondent Laura Lynch heard the tribal drumbeat of the digital generation, as a beat being sampled by assassins.

Listen to Laura's report

Picture yourself settling into that swell new yurt on the Mongolian steppes, maybe a flute of horse blood in your hand, when suddenly Genghis Khan moves in across the road.

It was very like that for Turk Sardar, who woke up one day in northern Iraq to find the world's worst neighbour breaking ground next door.

At least, he thought it was the worst. Then came the invasion of Iraq

Dispatches contributor Declan Hill tells a story of silver spoons,
collateral damage -- and what that's cost.

Listen to Declan's documentary

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June 12, 2004

They're called "the garbage people of Cairo," but the Zabbeleen have built a social revolution from things most people throw away. Our award-winning documentary explains why modernization threatens to force them right back down the food chain.

And, the most dangerous job in Guatemala: forensic scientists uncovering a staggering number of deaths face death threats themselves, as they unearth the bones of civil-war atrocities.

Listen to the entire program in RealAudio
or scroll down to the dispatch you want to hear

Cairo; picture a dusty, teeming, shambling, horn-honking metropolis seven times the size of the biggest Canadian city.

And seven times more trash.

But in Egypt -- where everything is an opportunity for somebody -- the things most people throw out are gladly taken in by a scavenging group of Coptic Christians.

They turn trash into cash. That's changed the course of their lives, and vaulted many from poverty.

In the garbage game, the smell of success is not always sweet, but it is profitable -- as we hear in this story from Dispatches contributor Rhoda Metcalfe.The Garbage People Of Cairo won the award for Conflict Analysis from the Canadian Association of Journalists this spring.

Listen to The Garbage People Of Cairo

In Guatemala, the civil war is over, but the reckoning is not.

Forensic anthropologists are now trying to identify the bones of
those who mysteriously disappeared in that conflict.

But somebody doesn't want them to succeed.

So, for going about their grim business, the scientists are being threatened with similar fates.

Dispatches contributor Lorenda Redekopp, in Guatemala City, found that has led to extreme security measures.

Listen to Lorenda's report

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June 9, 2004

What happens when the Iraqis start running Iraq? A possible preview from Kirkuk, where a civil war is well under way -- and there are chocolates for the dead.

Then we start a season of encore Dispatches with a look back at the high price of dying in Zimbabwe, where most are too poor to afford it.

And....

"Lomeo; Lomeo where are you ah, Lomeo." If you don't recognize that version of the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, you just don't speak Manglish like a Malaysian.

But there's time. We'll teach you. There's time.

Listen to the entire program in RealAudio
or scroll down to the dispatch you want to hear

Assassinations in Kirkuk aren't big news any more. There are just so many of them.

But Kirkuk is the site of the northern Iraqi oil fields, and a home town to which many Kurds have returned.

Unfortunately, Saddam's regime gave their homes away, mostly to Arab Iraqis.

The result is a ghost war -- sirens in the night, assassinations and bombs by day. Nobody takes responsibility;nobody's taking prisoners.

But, as Declan Hill reports from Kirkuk, a lot of young men -- both fighters and victims -- are turning up at funerals.

Listen to Declan's documentary

Zimbabwe got a new currency this past year, and why not?

With President Mugabe busy bankrupting the place, nobody had any faith in the old one anyway.

He's replacing Zimbabwe's worthless dollars with what he calls "bearer's cheques."

But with the gallows humor of a country in freefall, people have already taken to calling them "burial orders."

The death analogy is no accident. Cathy Buckle, a writer living in Zimbabwe, says the cost of a simple funeral reveals the ghoulish truth about the country's decline under Mugabe.

Her letter is read for us by the CBC's Mary Wiens.

Listen to Cathy's letter

As everyone knows, the French can get a little sniffy when English words and phrases creep into the Mother tongue.

But in Singapore and Malaysia, they take a rather different view.

There, they've embraced the English language and woven it into their own, with dramatic effect.

From street slang to Shakespeare, everything gets turned into Singlish. Or Manglish.

Got meh? You will.

From Kuala Lumpur, a report from Jonathan Kent.

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