October 4, 2009: The Ghost Recruiters (Doc) - Sarah Dunant and The Hidden History of Nuns - Revisiting the King of Swing

Michael Enright's Essay

Roman Polanski was arrested in Zurich last week on an outstanding US warrant for fleeing US jurisdiction. Mr. Polanski skipped town after pleading guilty to the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl, but left before he was sentenced. Hollywood recoiled in horror, as did Michael Enright in his weekly essay. In this days show, you'll hear what he had to say.


The Ghost Recruiters - Documentary

Four years ago, a man named George was living and working in Shanghai. He spent his days dying fabric in a large factory. George wanted a little more out of life. Today George lives in Brandon, Manitoba. He spends his days gutting pigs and he makes a lot more money than he ever did in China.

The story of how George got from Shanghai to Brandon changed the law in Manitoba and exposed another layer in the privatization of immigration in Canada. George came to Canada as a temporary foreign worker. Less than a decade ago Canada brought in 9,000 temporary foreign workers every year. Last year it was 200,000. First came the agricultural workers - fruit pickers in for the season; then came the skilled laborers - pipefitters for the oil fields; now we're bringing in hundreds of thousands of men and women to work at hotels, fast food restaurants and construction sites. Low skilled workers. Come work for 2 years and go home. That's how it works.

But Manitoba is a province that wants more immigrants. A temporary foreign worker can become a full fledged immigrant very easily in Manitoba. It all starts with a job. And people who find the workers to fill them. A brand new group of unlicensed international head hunters has sprung up in Canada. They are recruiters, who sell Canadian jobs for thousands of dollars, all over the world.

It is against the law to ask someone to pay for a job in Canada but we've turned a blind eye when it comes to foreign workers. And up till now no one has been prepared to do anything about it.

But this year in Manitoba, two very brave bricklayers - one from Georgia one from Israel - took their immigration consultant to court and won. And the province of Manitoba passed legislation designed to shut these guys down.

Here is Karin Wells documentary, The Ghost Recruiters.

Listen to Hour One:

Sarah Dunant and The Hidden History of Nuns

During the renaissance, some of the most beautiful music in Europe could be heard in convents as performed by highly skilled choirs of nuns. It was the music of caged songbirds.

Musica Secreta and Celestial Sirens - are an eight women vocal ensemble who record music written for the sixteenth and seventeenth century female singers. Until now, much of this music has been lost to history, even though this music of convent choirs would have been a powerful musical force in their day. Thanks to the work of these singers, and the British novelist Sarah Dunant, their music, and their stories, have been given new life.

This hidden history of nuns-- in fact, of all women in the Renaissance-- has been a passion of Sarah Dunant's for almost a decade. In 2000, she began to write a trilogy of historical novels including, The Birth of Venus and In the Company of the Courtesan. The final book in that trilogy is her new novel, Sacred Hearts.

Sacred Hearts is set in Italy in 1570 in the Santa Caterina convent in Ferrara. Life inside a convent was sacred and secret and - for some women - a living hell. In the late 16th century, teenage girls in Italy were being "sold" into convents. Wedding dowries had become so expensive that noble families could only afford to marry off one daughter - and the rest were sent, for a a price, to live inside the cloistered world of religious orders - whether they liked it or not. Historians estimate that more than half of the daughters of noblemen of Italy found themselves married to Christ thanks to a shortage of affordable husbands.

Sarah is a long time friend of this show and her earlier earlier novels include three Hannah Wolfe crime thrillers, as well as Snowstorms in a Hot Climate, Transgressions, and Mapping the Edge.

She lives in London and Florence.

Yugoslavia: Twenty Years After the Fall

It's been twenty years since the Berlin Wall was smashed to rubble by East Germans with sledgehammers, determined to break through the Iron Curtain with their own hands. Those of us in the West could only sit back and watch as the unexpected and exhilarating events unfolded. But there was much more to come. In a matter of months, East Germany was effectively gone. And soon, the entire Soviet Empire would crumble to dust.

The sudden death of Soviet Communism threw the satellite states of the East Bloc into chaos.

But Yugoslavia was different. It had always been different. It was never under Soviet control. Its iron-fisted leader, Marshal Tito, had been dead for years. Its citizens had already been free to come and go. And yet Yugoslavia became the site of the bloodiest and most deadly conflict in all of post-Communist Europe.

Two decades later, the so-called Former Yugoslavia is seven independent states - more or less. But as fractured as the region now appears on a map, the broken pieces of the Yugosphere seem to be slowly coming back together - in different forms.

Misha Glenny covered the Balkans as correspondent for both the Guardian and the BBC.

The award-winning journalist is also the author of The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, 1804-1999. His latest book is called McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld. It's published by Anansi Press.

Misha Glenny is in a studio in London, England for the show.

Revisiting the King of Swing

This hour we paid tribute to the man who made swing sing.

Jazz writer Gary Giddins joined Michael Enright from New York to talk about Benny Goodman, the king of swing was born 100 hundred years ago this year and we will mark his centenary with a look at his legacy as both musician and cultural icon.

Listen to Hour Three: