Satire

It's Monday, April 24th.

According to Martian soil samples collected from NASA's 6 wheel-drive Mars rover, the Red Planet underwent a sweeping climate shift billions of years ago as a warm, wet extraterrestrial environment -- perfect for biological life -- quickly turned into a sterile, uninhabitable wasteland.

Currently, the cause of the dramatic climate change on Mars? Millions and millions of 6 wheel-drive Mars rovers, driving all over the place, collecting soil samples willy-nilly without any regard for the delicate atmosphere.

For our Martian friends… it looks like high gas prices came 3 billion years too late.

This is The Current.

Six Nations – Who’s in Charge?

It was a move natives in southwestern Ontario were waiting for. This weekend, there was some hope for an agreement that would end a Six Nations standoff in Caledonia, near Hamilton. The barricades remain, but aboriginal leaders, and the Ontario and federal governments, have agreed to appoint negotiators to resolve a native land dispute.

Now there are reports that natives will be able to appoint who they want to speak for them in negotiations. Some natives say this is the first time in eighty-two years the government has recognized the Six Nations confederacy, as opposed to an elected band council. In the past, the confederacy was governed by hereditary chiefs, who were chosen by matriarchs, or clan mothers. That changed with the Indian Act of 1924 and the introduction of elected band councils.

So while this standoff is about land, it's also about who rightfully speaks for that land. To help us understand the debate around the legitimate leadership of the Six Nations, we were joined by Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux. She teaches Aboriginal studies at the University of Toronto, and she's worked on a number of land claims over the last two decades. We reached her at her home in Georgina Island First Nation on Lake Simcoe, Ontario.

Six Nations – Chief

The media spent much of last week making ominous comparisons between the Caledonia standoff and the 1995 confrontation between First Nations protesters and police at Ipperwash, Ontario, which resulted in the death of Dudley George. A judicial inquiry into that shooting is on-going, but is expected to wrap in June.

There were also echoes of Oka in 1990, especially last week, when some Mohawks from the Kahnawake Reserve near Montreal briefly blocked the Mercier bridge as a show of solidarity with the Six Nations protest.

Mike Delisle is the elected Grand Chief of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake near Montreal, and we reached him at his home there.

Listen to The Current: Part 1

(Due to various rights issues some segments may be edited for internet use)

The Current: Part 2

Hurricane Rita

The words Hurricane Katrina still conjure images of one of the worst weather disasters in U.S. history: the overflowing Superdome, people stranded on rooftops, bodies floating in the sludge. But Hurricane Rita might only stir a vague memory of a lesser storm, as though she was Katrina's forgotten younger sister.

By most weather measures, the force of Hurricane Rita was stronger than Katrina's. It slammed into the southwestern coast of Louisiana and Texas in late September last year, generating a media storm of its own. But because Rita caused few casualties, and much of the damage was done to farm and marshland, media attention quickly subsided.

For those whose lives were blown away by Rita, however, the name of the hurricane mattered less than the lack of relief that came after. The Current's producer Kathleen Goldhar recently visited the area in Louisiana hardest hit by Hurricane Rita and she joined Anna Maria in the studio this morning to tell us more.

Music Bridge

Artist: Elliott Kirk
CD: "Fiddler on the Rocks"
Cut: CD 6, "Moon in Broad Daylight"
Label: Custom/Elliott Kirk
Spine #: FOTR 05

Listen to The Current: Part 2

(Due to various rights issues some segments may be edited for internet use)

The Current: Part 3

The Box Feature

As the saying goes: most good ideas are simple ones. And if you visit any busy port in the world today, you'll see one of those most basic ideas in action...we’re talking about the shipping container.

For the next half hour we focused squarely on how those metal boxes have made globalization of our economies possible. And if this American innovation was actually a Canadian invention.

To transport us through the history and significance of the modern shipping container, we were joined by Marc Levinson. He's the author of: The Box: How the Shipping Container Made The World Smaller and The World Economy Bigger. He was in New York.

Waterfront

As Marc Levinson just mentioned, the work done today in container ports resembles highly automated 9 to 5 factory labour. And thanks to the advent of the shipping container, longshoremen are disappearing by the day.

If you're not familiar with the work they do, you may be familiar with the film On The Waterfront, starring Marlon Brando. He played a longshoreman who emptied the dank holds of massive ships by hoisting nets with pulleys, and using grappling hooks to move cargo by hand.

We played an excerpt of the classic scene from On The Waterfront. In it, Terry Malloy, played by Brando, reproaches his brother Charlie -- a corrupt waterfront union leader, for ruining his chances at a prize fighting career.

The film won seven Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for Marlon Brando. Many real longshoremen from Hoboken, New Jersey were used as extras.

Music Bridge

Artist: Steve Dawson
CD: “We Belong to the Gold Coast”
Cut: CD2, “Trouble on the Run”
Label: Black Hen Music
Spine #: BHCD 0030

Last Word: Rwanda

Today, Rwandan president Paul Kagame begins an unofficial three day trip to Canada - which includes a stop in Montreal - where thousands of Rwandans fled following the 1994 genocide.

About a dozen human rights, religious and African advocacy groups had written to Prime Minister Stephen Harper to demand Kagame be denied a Canadian visa.

It was twelve years ago that an estimated 800-thousand Rwandans were murdered - most of them minority Tutsis-- by the majority Hutus. The genocide was sparked in part by the death of the Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, when his plane was shot down above Kigali airport. Paul Kagame's critics say he and his Rwandan Patriotic Front were behind the president's death - a claim he has always vehemently denied.

Quebec singer Corneille grew up in Rwanda. He was 17 years old when soldiers broke into his home and shot and killed his family. He fled to Zaire, then Germany, and finally to Montreal where he eventually became a Canadian citizen. We leave you now with a track from Corneille's 2002 debut album. It's called "Terre."

Music

Artist: SOUL Corneille
CD: “Parce qu’on vient de loin”
Cut: CD 2, “Terre”
Label: Wagram, DKDD

Listen to The Current: Part 3

(Due to various rights issues some segments may be edited for internet use)

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