December 29, 2008

It's Monday, December 29th.

The 116 banks that received bailout funds from the US government paid their top 600 executives a total of 1.6 billion dollars in salaries, bonuses and other benefits last year.

Currently, the banks that return to solvency in the next year intend to reward their CEOs with a shovel, a U-Haul and 15 minutes in the U.S. treasury vaults - to just go freakin' nuts.

This is The Current.


Year-End Political Panel

It's been a year to remember, even if a lot of people would rather forget it ... elections and rumours of elections ... a tenuous coalition and an empty house of commons ... far-off wars and fears of financial Armageddon at home. There's still a couple of days left in it, but 2008 is marching into the history books, and so it's time for a post-mortem on a year that kept political watchers busy.

For their take on 2008, I'm joined by former Liberal strategist and author Warren Kinsella and Peggy Nash, a former Toronto NDP member of Parliament and now chief assistant to the President of the Canadian Auto Workers. They were both in Toronto for the show. And from Calgary, Harvie Andre a former member of parliament and Cabinet minister in Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservative government.


Listen to Part One:

Harvey Whitehouse - Feature


Have you ever been by all by yourself, yet had the distinct feeling that you're not alone? Or communicated - somehow - with a loved one who has passed away? Or knew in your gut that your favorite team would only win if you wore the right shirt?
If so, it's true -- you're not alone. A new breed of anthropologist - armed with research into cognition and neuroscience - thinks all human beings are predisposed to this kind of intuition. And that may help explain why disparate cultures from opposite ends of the earth seem to arrive at strikingly similar conclusions when it comes to religion and spiritual beliefs - from the prevalence of creation myths to ideas about life after death.

Harvey Whitehouse is an anthropologist at Oxford University who is studying what he calls the "cognitive foundations" of religion.

Listen to Part Two:

Out of Frame


The front page of the March 26, 2003 edition of USA Today featured a photo of US Army medic Joseph Dwyer carrying an injured Iraqi boy in his arms. The Iraq war was only a couple of weeks old at the time, and the photo was taken just over a hundred kilometers outside Baghdad. Within 24 hours of having his picture taken, Private Joseph Dwyer was getting calls from CNN, the New York Times, ABC News and Newsday. Everyone wanted to talk with the subject of that photo - a soldier who seemed to embody the war's promise in those early days. Warren Zinn, who was embedded with the US Cavalry at the time, was the photojournalist behind that picture. And in our documentary this morning, Mr. Zinn revisits the story behind that famous photo and traces the tragic trajectory Joseph Dwyer's life took after he stepped beyond the camera's frame. Here is producer Aaron Brindle's documentary Out of Frame. It first aired on The Current in November.


Last Word

Last week -- on Christmas Eve -- British playwright Harold Pinter died at the age of 78. Pinter penned 30 plays between 1957 and 2000, including "The Birthday Party," "The Caretaker," "The Homecoming" and "Betrayal". He was also an actor, essayist, poet and outspoken critic of repression, war and censorship.
In December 2005, Harold Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. We leave you today with an excerpt from his acceptance speech.

Listen to Part Three: