Satire

It's Thursday February 24th.

Tax cuts for conservatives, EI reforms for the Bloc, green spending for the NDP.

Billions for child care, billions for the military, billions for foreign aid.

Currently.... I'm just recovering from last night's "budget drinking game."

You know, one shot for every "spontaneous" bout of clapping that brings MPs to their feet. Another for every time Goodale says the word "billions."

Uhgh.. when this hangover wears off I'll probably realize we're not going to see any of that money for years. It's like they're just dangling a carrot in front of our noses.... just to help Paul Martin survive a confidence vote.

But you know, when that carrot's five years away it feels a lot more like a confidence game.

This is the Current.

Avian Flu – Overview

Amidst all the spending promises made in yesterday's federal budget - one sum of money in particular will have been noted by health experts. The Government has earmarked 34 million-dollars over five years to develop trial batches of a vaccine against avian flu.

This - in the same week that scientists from around the world are meeting in Vietnam wrestling with the danger posed by this emerging virus. The same week in which the World Health Organization is warning Avian Flu is on the verge of becoming a pandemic. Not only that - the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has come out saying Avian flu - or the H5N1 virus - now poses the single biggest health threat to the world today.

Given the current plea from officials to coordinate a defense against this virus, Ottawa's pledge will likely be welcomed by people like Dr. Steve Corber. Dr. Corber is the manager of disease prevention and control at the Pan-American Health Organization. That's a regional office of the World Health Organization. And he was in our Washington studio.

Avian Flu – Canada

The job of developing a vaccine against bird flu is being overseen in this country by Canada's Chief Medical Officer. And Dr. David Butler Jones joined us from Ottawa.

Listen to The Current: Part 1

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The Current: Part 2

Archives – Filmmakers

It is one of the most celebrated documentaries ever done on the American civil rights movement. Eyes on the Prize was a 14-part series broadcast on PBS in the United States in 1987 and 1990.

But today, you'll have a hard time finding it on television or in your local video store. That's because the rights to much of the archival material used in the series has expired meaning there could be lawsuits for copyright infringement if it's ever shown publicly.

And the Eyes on the Prize situation is not unique. Documentary producers warn that restrictive copyright laws and the rising cost of archival material are doing more than making their lives difficult - some claim it's slowly eroding public access to our own cultural record.

That's prompted producers to take a leading role in protest. In fact, a group of activists called Downhill Battle seem to have taken a cue from the civil rights movement staging a series of "guerrilla screenings" of Eyes on the Prize both to commemorate Black History Month and to draw attention to copyright issues. We aired some of the sounds from one of those screenings, in New York, earlier this month.

And while many people are troubled by the limbo Eyes on the Prize finds itself in, not all are comfortable with the tactics used by Downhill Battle. In fact, a lawyer representing the film's production company, Blackside Inc., has said flouting copyright law in this manner won't make the company's ongoing efforts to renegotiate copyright licenses any easier.

To discuss the significance of this problem – we were joined by Jon Else. He was one of the producers of Eyes on the Prize and he's also a professor of journalism at the University of California in Berkeley. We reached him at his home near San Francisco.

And we were also joined by Peter Raymont is the award-winning director of the documentary Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire. He was in Toronto.

Copyright Lawyer

We attempted to reach representatives from several different image banks but none was available to speak with us this morning. But Jamie Silverberg was. He is a copyright lawyer with the Intellectual Property Group, and we reached him at his office in Baltimore, Maryland.

Listen to The Current: Part 2

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The Current: Part 3

Letters

Our Friday host, Bob Carty joined Anna Maria in studio with mail in hand to help read your letters.

Canada – Iraq

Call it the great - Iraq - debate.

Over the past few years, Canadians have argued over the role our country should be playing in Iraq. Of course there are strong arguments on both sides of the issue. So its perhaps not surprising that the government's approach to this issue has been a very Canadian compromise. We are involved - but not deeply involved - in the re-building of Iraq.

For example, this week at the NATO meeting in Brussels, Paul Martin offered up to 30 military trainers and one million dollars to help pay for training of Iraqi security forces. But, there's a catch. The military trainers will be working outside of Iraq.

And, during the Iraqi elections last month Elections Canada sent monitors to observe the event from Jordan. And since the beginning of last year, RCMP officers have been helping train Iraqi soldiers deal with the insurgents again, from Jordan.

Ultimately the Canadian government doesn't have any direct role in the beleaguered nation but, some say the time has come for us to get more involved.

One person who thinks Canada has a unique and important role to play is Les Campbell. He is a former chief of staff to NDP leader Audrey McLaughlin. Today, he is the director of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs' programs in the Middle East and North Africa. Through that organization he spends a lot of time working on rebuilding Iraq. He was in Washington.

CIDA

To talk about what exactly Canada is doing in Iraq we were joined by Daniel Joly. He is the co-ordinator of the Iraq Task Force for Canadian International Development Agency. He was in Ottawa.

Last Word – People

Earlier in the show, we heard about the fate of Eyes on the Prize, the acclaimed documentary series about the Civil Rights Movement. The film can't be aired publicly because the rights to its extensive use of archival footage, images and music have expired.

Well, we closed the show with one of the classic songs of the era it was set in ... Curtis Mayfield's civil rights anthem, People Get Ready, sung by Lady Soul, Aretha Franklin.

Music

Artist: Aretha Franklin
CD: “Aretha: Lady Soul”
Cut: CD 3, “People Get Ready”
Label: Atlantic/Rhino (1968)

Listen to The Current: Part 3

(Due to streaming policies, some segments may be altered or not available)

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