The Current: Part 1

Satire

It's Wednesday, April the 23rd.
Nothing spells relief from bombing looting and general mayhem than a whopper with fries or a cheese lovers plus. Burger king and Pizza hut are set to open their first franchises in Iraq.
Currently interim administrator Jay Garner is preparing to cut the ribbon.
And Iraqis are lining up for 6 dinar a day jobs.

Walkerton

The country may be consumed with dealing with SARS, but today another public health disaster is also making headlines.
Charges are expected against the two brothers involved in the Walkerton water contamination case of three years ago.
Seven people died and close to 4,000 became sick after e-coli got into the town's water supply.
CBC reporter Dave Seglins has covered the Walkerton story from the beginning, including the public inquiry that wrapped up last year. He joins me now.

SARS – Politics

Ontario, as you know, is currently in the midst of coping with another public health scare. The SARS outbreak has hit the city of Toronto the hardest, with health-care workers, business owners and residents all living under its shadow.
Ontario Premier Ernie Eves spoke to reporters yesterday about the crisis, saying he has asked Ottawa to do more to help. Toronto's mayor also spoke out yesterday about the toll SARS is taking on the city, calling on both the province AND the federal government to provide financial aid.
Case Ootes is the Deputy Mayor of Toronto and he joins me now.

SARS - Caregiver

As politicians bicker back and forth about when to declare a SARS emergency and who's going to compensate for lost wages, thousands of people in Toronto are already being affected. Visitor restrictions and program cancellations at hospitals and long-term care facilities are all results of the SARS outbreak. One of the people affected is Marion Woods. She lives with and looks after her 92-year-old mother who has Alzheimer's. Her only respite was a day program twice a week...but now that SARS has cancelled that program, Marion gets no break at all. We've reached Ms. Woods at home in Scarborough.

Listen to The Current: Part 1

The Current: Part 2

Evangelical Aid

Among the many aid agencies headed to Iraq after the war are Christian evangelical groups. And while no one would see a conflict between Christianity and humanitarian aid, there are concerns some of those groups won't leave their religion, or their evangelism at the border.
Take the example of Franklin Graham ... son of Billy Graham, and leader of the aid group Samaritan's Purse. Soon after September eleventh, he called Islam a wicked and evil religion.
Last week, he was the honoured speaker at the Pentagon's Good Friday service - over the objections of the Muslim employees of the Pentagon and Muslim groups all over the US.
Samaritan's Purse has been active in providing humanitarian aid in many parts of the world, including Afghanistan.
Samaritan's Purse is not the only evangelical group readying to enter Iraq. The Southern Baptist Convention is the second largest Christian group in the US. And it's leaders have also been openly critical of Islam.
One of its spokesmen, Mark Kelly, recently spoke to The Current. Here's his take on Christian aid workers going to Iraq.

His defence, though, is leaving a lot of critics unconvinced. They're worried about what the evangelical aid workers have planned, and about the consequences of any attempts to spread the Christian word to Iraqi Muslims.
To give us more perspective, I'm joined by Reverend Charles Kimball. He's a professor of religion at Wakeforest University in North Carolina and author of "When Religion Becomes Evil". He's also a Baptist minister. He joins us from Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Music: “Spirit Runner”, by Ray Montford, from the album “Many Roads” (Softail Records, MR03CD, track 3)

Manifest Destiny Essay

Iraq may be in for attempts at more than just religious conversion. American businesses are already hanging out some very famous shingles ...presumably looking for their own kind of converts. And our producer Aaron Brindle wonders if it's all part of a bigger U.S. design to remake Iraq in its own image.

Listen to The Current: Part 2

The Current: Part 3

Gary Hart

Gary Hart is best remembered for a sex scandal back in the late 1980s. His extramarital fling with a young model named Donna Rice made the news, and ended his hopes for presidency. He was the Democrats' frontrunner when the story broke.
Now Gary Hart is back, thinking about taking another run at the White House in 2004. And he's getting a lot of attention for his warnings about the threat of terrorism against the US. He chaired a federal commission on national security. And he predicted the inevitability of terrorist attacks on America ... just days before the Twin Towers fell on September eleventh.
Mr. Hart joins me from Denver.

Music: “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”, by U2, from the album “The Joshua Tree” (Island Records, IS1135, track 2)

Listen to The Current: Part 3