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The Current Transcript for May 25, 2018

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

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SOUNDCLIP

With Donald Trump we're actually getting a president who cares about us and is paying attention to us. By the way I want to give a shout out to all the hard working men and women at the fort Sterling plant here in Sterling Heights Michigan.

LAURA LYNCH: Speaking on Fox News, that American auto worker didn't miss his chance to give his factory colleagues a shout out. And this week U.S. President Donald Trump appears to be doing the same. It was autoworkers votes that helped win the election for Trump and he's been telling auto workers this week they'll be very happy with his plans for the sector. But President Trumps new threat of import tariffs on cars and car parts is an idea many say would backfire for consumers, for the industry and yes for auto workers too. That's first up today. Then, he lost his son in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting massacre.

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You know to say that Sandy Hook was a hoax an outright lie. It's a total disrespect of myself, my son and he needs to stop.

LL: That's why he and other parents have banded together in lawsuits against conspiracy theorist broadcaster Alex Jones. In half an hour, I'll speak with another parent suing Jones and a BuzzFeed journalist who's profiled the unsettlingly popular broadcaster. After that: a new Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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We're now tracing more than 400 context of patients and they've spread out all over the region in northwest Congo. So they have to be followed up and the only way to reach them is motorcycle.

LL: We'll hear about the daunting challenges aid workers facing getting help to the people in need. And we'll speak with a Manitoba scientist behind an experimental made in Canada Vaccine that's being used to help contain the spread of the virus. I'm Laura Lynch in Vancouver and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

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'The supply chain is so tightly integrated': Auto sector reacts to proposed tariffs
LL: So Mostly Mexico that Trump is putting pressure on with this movement?

PHOEBE WALL HOWARD: Absolutely. Absolutely. Most people that I interview don't view Canada as a foreign country. They view Canada as a sister nation. And so in this entire debate there's concern that Canada could be dramatically impacted and it's unintended consequences of this discussion and debate.

LL: We've talked about the auto workers and there are more or less perceived general support for this. You talk to these people. How much support does Trump have among the rank and file for this hard line on NAFTA?

PHOEBE WALL HOWARD: What's Interesting is that, for example, in recent days you've got workers who are shocked that Harley Davidson has announced the plant closure despite the tax cut. So you have people who are hearing you put out a tax cut and jobs will be protected. The current message by President Trump is absolutely resonating. And the concern however is how it will actually translate in reality. People are concerned about their jobs. They see things are tenuous and the reality is you can do more in manufacturing with less. So the question from the industry standpoint and workers is what's being done to help us find new jobs and to support our families. This message is resonating primarily with workers because they will say we don't understand the detail. We don't know the consequences. We just want someone to talk to us and we want to be acknowledged. That was very effective during the campaign. Very powerful. And it worked because it should have worked. People want to be heard. Workers are very concerned, very concerned. We will leave it there. Ms. Howard thank you.

LL: Thank you so much. Phoebe Wall Howard is a reporter at The Detroit Free Press and we reached her in Detroit. My next guest appreciates President Trump's shifting his gears on the NAFTA negotiations and the automotive industry. Mat Seely is the CEO of Quality Bending and Threading. It's a manufacturing facility involved in the automotive military and material handling industries. He is in Detroit. Hello.

MATT SEELY: Good morning. How are you?

LL: I'm fine thank you. Can you tell me first of all what part you play in the auto industry?

MATT SEELY: The part of the supply chain. We don't make actual automotive components but we're involved in the manufacturing of parts and systems that handle material within the plants and also are involved in the ship men of new vehicles from the plants to whatever their destination.

LL: But the auto industry is an important part of your business.

MATT SEELY: Absolutely.

LL: So when you hear President Trump thinking about imposing 25 percent tariffs on foreign auto imports what could that mean to your business?

MATT SEELY: Well I think for me I don't take it seriously from the standpoint that I don't think that that's where we're going to end up. I think that you know historically Donald Trump has got a reputation as being someone that comes in with a big ask at the beginning, something that is put out on the table for shock value more than anything and to get a dialogue started. And I believe that he wants to end up somewhere closer to the lower end of that if anywhere and he's looking for negotiation to take place. And a lot of these cases the only way that you can motivate people to do what he would like is to start out with a really outrageous task. So I think it's a strategy more than a reality.

LL: But I gather that if this actual tariff came into place it could hurt your business.

MATT SEELY: Well I think it could hurt everyone's business if we ended up with a 25 percent tariff. But I don't believe that that's where we'll end up. I don't I don't think it will even be close to that. We've got a problem you know where the United States for decades basically where like the rich uncle [unintelligible] the nations around the world and we're in a position where we really have to kind of take care of our own house for the first time. And you know many decades and I think that his priority is to make sure. And you know his campaign was America First, basically to revisit a lot of these agreements and equal the playing field.

LL: Well how would you do that?

MATT SEELY: I think what he's doing is the right approach. I think the biggest problem with the NAFTA agreement is that, number one, we've lost a lot of jobs primarily to Mexico where the labor force and the lack of unions has made it very difficult for us to compete domestically. You know as far as products being sold or are products being manufactured, the reality of it is if you go across the border and the part comes back in the United States, for example in Michigan, I have to as a Michigan based company, have to charge my suppliers 6 percent sales tax if they're the end user where if it comes over from across the border there's no sales tax. So immediately I have a 6 percent price disadvantage.

LL: So what effect have you seen on your business? Have you had to lay off workers?

MATT SEELY: Well absolutely overtime. You know I think it's a great domino effect that took place. When NAFTA was signed into law by Bill Clinton, immediately I think a lot of the larger corporations saw the advantage from a corporate income tax level, from a wage standpoint, from an overall cost savings and started prospecting properties and locations offshore and across the border in order to build new plants.

LL: I understand that - sorry we're running out of time - you have had you have had a boom come back. You've hired more people back.

MATT SEELY: Yes absolutely. In the last 17 months our business has increased substantially.

LL: So what's the concern, then? Things are going better well.

MATT SEELY: The big concern is is that I think that right now there's a lot of the stimulus is being created is military based. It's not really automotive yet. There are some plants that have committed to coming back to the United States. But until we know equalized playing field with Mexico specifically and China and Japan and South Korea I don't really believe that this will be a long term solution.

LL: Mr. Seely I thank you for your time.

MATT SEELY: Okay thanks. Have a great day.

LL: Matt Seely is the CEO of Quality Bending and Threading. He was in Detroit. Now of course the city of Windsor Ontario is right across the river from the big three automakers headquarters in Michigan and the two economies are tightly intertwined. The Fiat Chrysler plant in Windsor is the largest employer there with around 6000 workers and the auto sector accounts for more than 70 billion dollars’ worth of vehicles, parts and other items traveling between Michigan and Ontario each year. Drew Dilkins is the mayor of Windsor and he joins us from our studio there. Hello. .

DREW DILKINS: Good morning Laura.

LL: What would a 25 percent tariff on vehicles imported to the U.S. mean for the city of Windsor?

DREW DILKINS: Well I think it would be very devastating not just for the city of Windsor but for Ontario and for Canada as a whole. And I have to agree with our last commenter, Mr. Seely, that really I think this is an element of political puffery in the conversation to get the negotiations on NAFTA progressing a little faster and to come to a conclusion. I think all three countries recognize that there is an opportunity to tweak an agreement that's more than 20 years old to update it to make it reflect a modern economy. And as Phoebe Howard had indicated, the economy here in Windsor Essex County is so tightly integrated. The supply chain is so tightly integrated with that in Michigan it's almost impossible to understand how one would unwind that or the amount of time it would take if one chose to add tariffs to a product and have those suppliers or make a different business decision in terms of where they locate their factories.

LL: OEMS?

DREW DILKINS: Well an OEM like Fiat Chrysler.

LL: What do you think of Donald Trump's comments that Canada has been spoiled by NAFTA?

DREW DILKINS: Well you know I think nothing that comes out of the President's mouth sort of shocks me anymore it's you know you turn the TV on or listen to CBC and what are the latest comments that he's making today and you know you become more and more desensitized to it. And so I understand his platform. I understand that you know just looking a mile away from me right now over in Detroit that you know they haven't elected a Republican president for god knows how long, probably my entire lifetime, but they did a little over a year ago. So he has a base that he's playing to. He has a base where there is some support at least politically. But I think at the end of the day you know a decision to implement 25 percent tariffs on auto parts and on vehicles crossing the border it's bad for [unintelligible], it's bad for the suppliers and absolutely it's going to be bad for U.S. consumers who are going to end up paying more for those products. And so you may appease a very small group but you're going to have a much larger piece of the population, or part of the population, that will be dissatisfied with the amount that they have to pay.

LL: What's your sense of how the NAFTA negotiations have been going particularly when it comes to auto issues?

DREW DILKINS: Well clearly that's been a central part of the negotiations and it's been a part that- there has been some back and forth. There's no doubt there has been negotiation and everyone has their starting point and each side understands where it is they'd like to end up. And from my perspective I have to agree with one of the last speakers that the real focus here is probably Mexico. It's just hard to understand how it would be n Canada because our standards of living are very similar to the United States. The costs of living are very similar but we all know that if you if you cross the southern U.S. border that things changed dramatically and that that economy is also tightly integrated and the supply chains are integrated. But the cost of living in the standards of living and the environmental regulation is certainly much different and there's a lower cost of doing business when you have less regulation. And so you know it's hard to know precisely what the president's trying to do here. Clearly he's trying to I would suggest get an agreement on NAFTA because he understands clearly, or he ought to understand clearly, that 35 of 50 U.S. states call Canada the number one customer of the goods they produce. And so anything that tips that scale anything that causes unbalance in this very sort of complex architecture of the economy will be bad for the majority of the states in the U.S. And that gives me some confidence that if there's any sort of very rash decision that's made that at some point Congress could step in and check that executive power from the President.

LL: I'm wondering though, as the mayor of a border city, how much broader are your concerns about the after negotiations beyond the auto issue?

DREW DILKINS: Well listen clearly our economy here is very integrated with the U.S. in many respects, more than just auto. I think of you know the number of people that cross the border each and every day to come to work. It's almost 80000 people that cross the border here every day going into the U.S. It could be engineers, there are professionals, lots of nurses and so we really have by geography, by history we really have a tight relationship with the state of Michigan, with the U.S. here and lots of history across the Detroit River. And so there are broad concerns that this could derail but I have to believe that the President, the Prime Ministers they understand that there's a lot at stake. There's a lot at stake for each side and that each side has to give a little to come to a compromise.

LL: When you talk about the people going back and forth across the border the work that they work under under the auspices of the visas that are offered through NAFTA?

DREW DILKINS: Yes the vast majority. The NAFTA program offers free trade visas for workers and those workers are in defined category. So an engineer, a lawyer, an accountant, nurses. But when we talk about tweaks that's the area where I think all countries are looking to have some updates because those job descriptions are classifications are so defined from 20 years ago that they don't contemplate something like a robotics technician. And that skill may be just two miles away on the U.S. side but that person may not have the ability to cross easily into Canada or vice versa because the current schedule does not allow that.

LL: We've got just about 30 seconds left. Earlier this year the Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland called the negotiations over the auto sector fiendishly complex. How optimistic are you feeling about the prospects for a favorable deal?

DREW DILKINS: I think it has to happen. I think the economy over the last two decades has become so tightly integrated where there's Canadian investment in the U.S. there's U.S. investment in Canada and these companies are investing where they think they can get the best return. But also where the talent is where the technology is and because of the integration of the economy I'm very confident that we will come to a resolution. But you know spending a few years in law school there's that one saying that says you know the best deal is the one where each side thinks they could have gotten just a little bit more came.

LL: Mayor Dilkins, thank you.

DREW DILKINS: Thank you.

LL: Drew Dilkins is the mayor of Windsor Ontario. Well the CBC News is next. Then he's known for making outrageous claims but Alex Jones may have gone too far in describing the Sandy Hook school shooting as a conspiracy theory. Lawsuits are piling up against the host and after the news I'll speak with one grieving parent whose part of the litigation. I'm Laura Lynch in Vancouver and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current. .

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Alex Jones faces lawsuits after calling Sandy Hook shooting a hoax

Guests: Charlie Warzel, Veronique de la Rosa

LL: Hello I'm Laura Lynch in Vancouver and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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LL: Still to come Ebola is back in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. An outbreak was declared there earlier this month and an episode this week of Ebola patients escaping and mixing with dozens of other people has the country and the world on edge. One of the best hopes for containing the outbreak today is an experimental Canadian made vaccine. More on that and the prospects for Congo coming up in about half an hour from now. But first a war on disinformation.

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I don't know what the moon landings reflect, but I don't put anything past these anti-gunners.

LL: The signature growl of Alex Jones proffering one of his signature conspiracy theories. Alex Jones is the host of Info Wars, a nationally syndicated American radio and TV show. An estimated audience of about 2 million people regularly tune into his bombastic, outrageous, conspiratorial rants. And while some say the talk show host persona is just a character he plays. Alex Jones is now facing three very real lawsuits. They center on comments he's repeatedly made about one of the darkest moments in recent American history, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting 20 children and six adults died in the 2012 massacre. But to Jones the tragedy has been fodder for yet another conspiracy.

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They have staged events before but then you learn the school have been closed and reopened, and you got video of the kids going in circles in and out of the building, and they don't call the rescue choppers for two hours and then they tear the building down and seal it, and they get caught using blows cranes. And Sandy Hook is a synthetic completely fake with actors, in my view manufactured I couldn't believe it at first. I knew they had actors there clearly but I thought they killed some real courage and it just shows how bold they are.

LL: The latest lawsuit targeting Alex Jones for his Sandy Hook comments was launched this week. Veronique De La Rosa's 6 year old son Noah was one of the victims of Sandy Hook and she's one of the many now suing Jones. Ms. De La Rosa what do you think of the news that there's yet another lawsuit filed against Alex Jones?

VERONIQUE DE LA ROSA: Well I would say that's hardly surprising given his blatant peddling of falsehoods around the Sandy Hook tragedy which really has occurred over a period of years. It's been five and a half years and it seems that he's not relenting on that topic.

LL: What was it that made you decide to take legal actions against him?

VERONIQUE DE LA ROSA: The multiple comments that he's made, his relentlessness, the cruelty of it all, denying the tragedy, denying our pain, making comments that my interview with Anderson Cooper was fabricated, that I was an actress, that my son did not really die. And he at some point used, as evidence of that, that his image was displayed among the images of the victim of the Peshawar massacre, the school massacre in Pakistan. You know why his image was displayed. I'm not sure probably because they wanted to honor other victims of other mass massacres. But he twisted it on its head and claimed that, made a very cruel comment that, basically Noah had died again you know and sarcastically. And his whole you know putting profit motive above the most basic common human decency.

LL: Tell me what impact his comments have had on you and your family?

VERONIQUE DE LA ROSA: They've been a constant pouring of salt on a gaping wound. They're infuriating in turn as well as devastating. They play to race specific base that buys into it. So he's obviously not just talking to himself and feeds into paranoia and makes them believe that they're under attack by vast government conspiracies. It's just unacceptable. When it comes to the murder of children especially, it's unacceptable.

LL: And I want to get into those two things a little bit more, the profit motive and who are the kind of people who buy into this, but I'm also wondering whether the it's had an impact on you and your family have there been threats? Have there been problems for you because of it?

VERONIQUE DE LA ROSA: Yes yes. There have been as a matter of fact my ex-husband was directly threatened by a woman by the name of Lucy Richards who ended up being convicted and served time in jail for that that blatant death threat that she made against term. We've had to move a couple of times. We're now in a gated community and there have been you know vicious retaliatory things done online and comments made, veiled threats, because they truly believe that were part of a vast - when I say they I mean the listeners of his program - that were part of a vast conspiracy to undermine the Second Amendment. And that it was a staged affair that we were paid and hired and that our loss is not real.

LL: Let's go back to Alex Jones. You talked about his profit motive. There have been analyses that have suggested he makes seven to 12 million dollars a year based on products he sells through his Web site. Do you think that it is just purely about money for him?

VERONIQUE DE LA ROSA: I have no doubt that it's purely motivated by profit, because he can't be as delusional as he is in what he peddles and be a functional human being who is bringing in above the average amount of money that you know the average person brings in. It's working for him he found a base that he can keep throwing red meat to. It's not driven by any higher principle. I really don't think he believes half of what he says.

LL: Well that's interesting because just after you filed your lawsuit he made a video saying that you and the other parents were used by the Democrats and he invited you to come on his show. What was your reaction to that?

VERONIQUE DE LA ROSA: My reaction to that is I have absolutely no response to it. He's burned every single bridge that he probably could have had maybe very early on. I have no interest in engaging in dialogue with him. I have no interest in contributing footage that he can go back to and twist and manufacture further lies out of it. And quite frankly, it's beneath my dignity to even engage with him.

LL: Is it any comfort to you at all that he believes the massacre happened?

VERONIQUE DE LA ROSA: No it's not. He is cleverly walking it back because he's confronted with a lawsuit now.

LL: So what do you want of the lawsuit? Is an apology what you're looking for? What will make it right for you?

VERONIQUE DE LA ROSA: A full retraction and compensation.

LL: Compensation in what way?

VERONIQUE DE LA ROSA: Monetary compensation but more importantly a full retraction.

LL: Why is that. The most important thing to you?

VERONIQUE DE LA ROSA: Because he has denied my reality long enough. And I'm not going to stay silent anymore. I'm going to insist, we are going to insist, that there be a full retraction and apology.

LL: What about issues of free speech?

VERONIQUE DE LA ROSA: Well free speech only goes so far. Free speech stops where you trample on other people's rights. I think that that there are limits to every right because they are not without boundaries, if you are violating others.

LL: Do you think you have any hope of shutting him down entirely with this lawsuit or will he go on, even if you're successful?

VERONIQUE DE LA ROSA: That's a good question. I mean hope springs eternal that yeah we know he could possibly have that that outcome. I really can't prognosticate as to that whether he'll no matter what happens, even if we are successful that he might still persist. I think he does have a following and it's not necessarily that we're going to shut him down. I think that he's at the nucleus of this form of terrorism, verbal terrorism.

LL: Strong phrase; verbal terrorism.

VERONIQUE DE LA ROSA: Well, it is but it is my belief that it is a form of inciting others to violence and to hatred.

LL: And I wanted to ask you what you've touched on this several times. The people who do follow him or take actions against you and others because of what they hear from him. Who are these people? What is he tapping into?

VERONIQUE DE LA ROSA: Well I couldn't speak as to you know the average psychological profile but my guess, my best guess, would be that they are themselves angry, marginalized, disenfranchised and are for whatever reason dissatisfied with their lives and are more than happy to project blame outward. So you know whether it's on the government, whether it's on immigrants, whatever it might be that it's a lot safer rather than to examine yourself to find a conduit for your anger and your rage. And so it's not about me it's about it's about this. It's about that. It just keeps stirring the pot to boiling point, these different theories that he peddles.

LL: Can we leave it with this Ms. De La Rosa. I wonder if you could tell our listeners what you want them to remember about your son Noah.

VERONIQUE DE LA ROSA: That he was a vibrant, inquisitive little boy who deserved to live out the rest of his life.

LL: Ms. De La Rosa I thank you very much for your time.

VERONIQUE DE LA ROSA: Thank you. Bye bye.

LL: Bye bye. That is Veronique De La Rosa. Her son Noah was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. Now we requested a response from Alex Jones but we didn't hear back. He did though make a statement on YouTube, two days ago. Here's a quote from that statement: "This is all out of context and it's not even what I said or my intent. I'm not going to get into the real defects of this. I'm going to wait until it's thrown out with prejudiced." Jones describes the lawsuit as an attack on him and the First Amendment the free speech amendment. And that is from The Alex Jones channel on YouTube and that was aired on May 23rd. Well for years many people wrote off Alex Jones as a fringe figure. And the theories he has promoted certainly seem wild and often difficult to believe.

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You don't just think they put that in the Matrix movies, you know 10 years ago, because they thought that up about a global plan to block out the sun. I knew they were going to announce global government with this European crisis years ago. It's now happened. I know all of this. I know they're spraying us every day, I know they are spraying my family. I know we're all filled with heavy metals. I know it's hurting us. I'm not saying people didn't naturally have homosexual feelings. I'm not even getting into it, quite frankly. I mean give me a break. You think I am shocked by it so I'm out here bashing it because I don't like gay people. I don't like putting chemicals in the water that the friggin frogs gay. Do you understand that?

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LL: Those are just a few of the claims Alex Jones has made on his program over the years, and what maybe is difficult to believe his claims as the amount of influence he has. The Info Wars Web site now racks up more than 25 million page views per month. And some credit Alex Jones and his followers with helping to put Donald Trump in the White House. My next guest has been looking deeply at Alex Jones and his media empire. Charlie Warzel is a reporter with Buzzfeed and he's with us from Missoula Montana hello.

CHARLIE WARZEL: Hey thanks for having me.

LL: When did you start getting interested in Alex Jones?

CHARLIE WARZEL: Alex's you know been a figure in a larger cultural sense for almost about two decades now but I really started paying attention to him right around the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland Ohio. And that was around last July 2016. I really noticed that among Trump supporters there was this real fervent interest in him and he was drawing really large crowds in Cleveland. And so I started to see him connected to the Trump movement and into the Republican Party in a really sort of interesting way. And that interest only grew as the campaign season went on. And I think after Donald Trump's win in November 2016 I my interest became trying to understand and really tease out how he was linked to that movement and what his support of the President did for the results of the 2016 election.

LL: Now we've been talking about Sandy Hook and the story around that. But tell me what are some of the other notable theories that you that he's promoted on his info wars program.

CHARLIE WARZEL: Well he's on the air for roughly four hours a day five days a week plus a series of videos that he that he puts out and all kinds of tweets and newsletters and he's a man who makes a lot of content. So his theories range from everything from Amazon and other technology companies spying on you with their tools, theories that also have some potential roots in reality. You know all the way to the idea of FEMA disaster camps. .

LL: Federal Emergency Management Agency.

CHARLIE WARZEL: Correct. Is that sort of you know modern day concentration camps, brainwashing. You heard sort of the most famous one that you guys just played putting chemicals in the water that turns the frogs gay. Again that's sort of changing our culture. So you know it ranges from sort of very plausible, impossible to prove things all the way out to the sort of more outrageous sort of carnival barker moments.

LL: Carnival barker [chuckles]. On the one hand Alice Jones does call himself a truth teller and a journalist but in court he called himself a performance artist and a political satirist. What's your sense? Does he really believe what he says?

CHARLIE WARZEL: Well I spent about two and a half weeks inside that courtroom with him when he was on that trial. And I think what you saw was a person who sort of picks and chooses what's most convenient for him at the time.

LL: Can you just remind us what was the trial about? Why was he in court then?

CHARLIE WARZEL: It was a it was a family custody trial. He was divorced from his wife. And it was a grueling awful custody trial in which they decided to try to determine whether or not he was fit to have full custody of the children. And in doing so he had to sort of prove his character and his clips from Info Wars they tried to use them against him to show that he was a volatile figure. So it was in his best interest in that moment to show that he's a satirist, sort of putting on this bombastic character for other people. But at the same time he when confronted with that by the media he said 'oh no I'm a truth teller. Sometimes I do satirical cartoon type characters on my broadcast for fun' and he tries to have it both ways really. To the point of whether or not he believes all of it. I think it's very difficult to know exactly but I think that Alex Jones can't stop being Alex Jones, the sort of figure that needs attention that needs to have people visiting his site and sort of him as an icon of sorts. So I think he's willing to do whatever it takes to stay in the limelight.

LL: So In context, just to wrap it up a bit of that part of the story of the court case of child custody, what did happen? Was he able to come across reasonably well?

CHARLIE WARZEL: He there were a couple of times where he had some really large outbursts when he was having to testify himself. At one point he sort of yelled have you no decency, it was told and sort of admonished by the judge a couple of times and I think that that ended up hurting him. They ultimately ruled in favor of his wife although it's still an ongoing drawn out case. It's unclear whether or not the courts have fully given over custody. But what listeners can take away from that is that all he really had to do was sort of contain himself, show himself to be restrained and he was still unable to do that even with his family on the line.

LL: How did Alex Jones get his start?

CHARLIE WARZEL: Alex Jones started as a public access television host in Austin Texas where he still lives. There is this TV station where you could pay a couple hundred bucks and do your own show. You could hire one or two engineers and just rebroadcast whatever you want, any hour, at all hours of the day. And so he started with sort of a news talk punditry show. He then got on AM radio, when AM radio was just a big political animal out there. And used those two things to sort of do what he does now but in a less outrageous way. It was a little bit more rooted in facts and documenting things that were happening but always sort of taking the wild conspiratorial bent.

LL: When did his career start to take off then?

CHARLIE WARZEL: His career really started to take off after 9/11. A few weeks before the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, Alex Jones in one of his very long rants mentioned the World Trade Center as a potential target. And this is sort of an example of when you are taking hundreds and hundreds of shots every day and sort of making wild predictions across the board everywhere. Occasionally one or two of them sticks and the fact that he had mentioned the World Trade Center sort of obliquely in - I believe it was July 2001 - as a potential terrorist attack target, he was credited among that community as predicting the event. And it gave him this source of credibility that's still among some of his supporters really rings to the today.

LL: How does he make his money?

CHARLIE WARZEL: Well Alex Jones is largely independent from advertisers. If you watch his show which broadcasts five days a week for multiple hours, there are no advertisements all you see are ads that he makes for his own [unintelligible] products. These are diet supplements, water filtration systems a sort of survival tools, things like that. Lots of brain pills that are supposed to make you smarter and operate at a higher level. And those are produced along in-house essentially. And he makes a large cut off that that happens to be his major revenue source. And he's able to market himself. The identity he's created for himself as a truth teller and as a sort of journalistic antigovernment hero allows him to market those to people and people buy them in in droves. It's a very successful business for him that you know can raise millions and millions of dollars a year.

LL: And what do we know about his followers?

CHARLIE WARZEL: That's always very hard. You as a reporter you tend not to want to make generalizations about that. But I think we can see is that it's largely an antigovernment audience. It's a group of people who are extremely distrustful of anyone in proximity to power. And Alex has been sort of firmly antigovernment since the early 90s. He just hates George W. Bush as much as he hates Bill Clinton as much as he hates George Bush senior. And so what's very interesting is you know he's supportive of President Trump. And his antigovernment stance is sort of why I find that he might have had some influence in the 2016 election. I think he took a lot of his followers and extolled the virtues of Donald Trump and maybe you know got people who don't normally vote, because they're just so disdainful of government, to come out to the polls for this person because Alex Jones for the first time threw his hat behind somebody in a presidential campaign.

LL: Now we've got about a minute left. What does success say about politics in the United States today?

CHARLIE WARZEL: I think it says that the age of conspiracy is ascendant in politics especially in American politics right now. I think that if you look at sort of the broader operations in Washington D.C. and the way that sort of the partisan media operates, I think you'll see that the conspiracy theorizing is a great way to draw audiences. It's a great way to draw intrigue. It's a great way to take shots at your enemies. And I think that I think Alex has been doing that for you know two decades and it seems like a lot of partisan media has really caught up and that's why he's in the center of all of this.

CHARLIE WARZEL: We're going to have to leave it there. Charlie thank you. Charlie Warzel is a reporter with Buzzfeed. We reached him in Missoula Montana. Coming up in our next half hour: Ebola and the Canadian efforts to fight it. I'm Laura Lynch in Vancouver. This is The Current. .

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Ebola outbreak maps are riddled with errors. Volunteers are racing to fix them

Guests: Dr. Jim Strong, Pierre Beland

LL: I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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We're on the epidemiological knife edge of this response. The next few weeks who really tell if this outbreak is going to expand to urban areas or if we're going to be able to keep it under control.

LL: That's the World Health Organization's emergencies chief speaking this week about the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And the knife said she spoke about may have just gotten even sharper. On Monday two Ebola patients escaped from the hospital in the city of Mbandaka. They were found dead the next day but not before they attended a prayer meeting with 50 other people. According to Doctors Without Borders, the two patients were at the meeting just hours before they died. This presents a new challenge for containing the outbreak. It's one Canadian scientists are watching closely. With 58 confirmed or suspected cases of Ebola and 27 deaths since the outbreak was declared on May the 8th, the effort to stop the spread of the deadly incurable disease now rests in part on a Made in Canada vaccine. Authorities began distributing the still experimental vaccine on Monday. We spoke to WHL spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic about it.

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We still don't know exactly how many people will be vaccinated. It's very important to remember that this is not mass vaccination. This is targeted vaccination. It is being done using what is called ring method. Basically, whenever there is a person who's tested positive for Ebola we try to vaccinate those who are around this person. Basically, their contacts and contacts of contacts, making everything surrounding the positive case.

LL: Mbandaka is a city of over 1 million and it's on the Congo River about an hour's flight from Kinshasa. Tarik Jasarevic says distributing the vaccine represents a big logistical challenge.

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The Vaccine has to be kept at a very low temperature. So we need to have all the necessary freezer and we need to have generators so a vaccine can be delivered to those who will be identified as eligible and high risk persons to be vaccinated. We need to do quickly everything that needs to be done. So we try to do this window of opportunity in the next week to try to stem out and closed down all the transmission chains. It's very difficult to predict how the outbreak will evolve. We are preparing for all scenarios.

LL: So distributing the vaccine may be tricky in the Democratic Republic of Congo but getting it to market in the first place was a long journey. I'm joined now by one of the scientists involved in the development of the vaccine. Dr. Jim Strong is a medical officer with Public Health Agency of Canada and a researcher at the Department of Medical Microbiology at the University of Manitoba. His research focus is on the treatment of Ebola. And we have reached him in Winnipeg. Hello.

DR. JIM STRONG: Good morning.

LL: What are you thinking as you watch the experimental vaccine being rolled out this week?

DR. JIM STRONG: Well it's always been an interesting thing to watch anything going on with Ebola given our role here at the Public Health Agency. I think we're quite proud of the fact that the vaccine has utility at this time and certainly it was nice to see that it was utilized during the West African outbreak in 2014 as well. But hopefully this can have a big impact when it started earlier.

LL: So what are you watching for?

DR. JIM STRONG: Mostly we're watching to see whether it's going to have the same impact that it did on the West African outbreak, that by doing the wrong vaccination trial you may be able to nip this in the bud before it gets to a situation where it could spread beyond where it has already spread. .

LL: And when will you know that that's actually worked?

DR. JIM STRONG: Again it's fairly difficult to tell because really what happens on the ground is you often don't know exactly where all the people, when it becomes a very widespread geographic spread of the virus, it becomes difficult to tell how far and widespread this is. But with contact tracing and surveillance that the teams of the WHL and MSF are doing, they can often identify where the largest potential for these viruses to spread. And now they have actually since they're already identifying those contacts of potential cases, they can actually offer something that will help protect some of those populations that will be affected.

LL: Now for those of us who aren't scientists tell us how does the vaccine work?

DR. JIM STRONG: Well the vaccine is very similar to other vaccines in that it actually takes a small amount of the proteins specific for Ebola virus and, because it has that protein from the Ebola virus that it carries on its backbone, it will prime the immune system to generate some antibodies and it slows antibodies that will protect us from exposure to the Ebola virus. So in this particular case it's on VSV background, which is a vascular stomatitis virus, which is an animal virus that normally infects horses and pigs and cattle and they've taken it and modified it to take one of the Ebola virus proteins. And in fact the one that attaches the virus to the cell. And as a result it confers immunity against the one of the big proteins that orchestrates the insidious attacks that Ebola virus does, as a result, and makes it react against Ebola virus. So it works quite well in a pre-exposure.

LL: How quickly does it take effect?

DR. JIM STRONG: Well, if you can do it pre exposure by a number of weeks your immune system will be primed and ready so that if you get exposed then your immune system will be up and ready and not ready to attack the Ebola virus proteins. But it also has a you know a less efficacious if it's happened after exposure. But still in some of the animal models studies have shown that it actually still confers some protection.

LL: When the vaccine developed?

DR. JIM STRONG: A lot of the work that goes to this is kind of the beginning of the lab here in Winnipeg. It started in the early 2000s, about 2002, was when it was first tested. Subsequently it was used as a vaccine in animal studies and things did not worked quite well during those times. The intellectual property was developed and owned by the Canadian government. And since then it's been taken by a number of labs down in the States and further clarified including by the original developer which is Heinz Feldmann.

LL: Who paid for it, then? Who was interested in this?

DR. JIM STRONG: Well again it kind of followed the original 2001 anthrax letters. As a result of that, the Canadian government created the you know the Canadian safety and security program or CSSP and some of the money to develop it came from that, some of it came from Public Health Agency of Canada development. And then since it's been taken over by some licensees including the New Link Genetics.

LL: There must have been hiccups along the way. Can you tell me about those?

DR. JIM STRONG: [Laughs] There are always potential considerations that have to happen when developing a vaccine especially one against something like Ebola. You know I think one of the biggest issues is the fact that it's very difficult to test these in a real formal sense in humans. And so we certainly do a lot of the testing in animal models and it has worked quite well all the way through those tests. I think the next issue is the fact that it probably would not be to the development stage that it is right now without the West African outbreak in 2014, that really pushed it along into the human clinical trial stage.

LL: Because it had to be. Can you remind us how people contract Ebola?

DR. JIM STRONG: Well that's the big mystery with Ebola virus is where it comes from in between outbreaks. We know for sure that once it gets into humans that human to human spread is the major form of transmission and that happens from exposure to bodily fluids. So sweat, blood and other bodily fluids so if you're exposed to those of an active Ebola patient your chances of getting a bowler are much greater. The big mystery is where it hides in between outbreaks. There's been some considerations that it may be coming from fruit bats but of course the science is not fully worked out. So we do know that it is spread human to human once it's in the human transmission change.

LL: Now we heard from the H.O. spokesperson talking about the logistical challenges. I wonder what obstacles concern you about the rollout of the vaccine this time.

DR. JIM STRONG: Well there's certainly a lot of considerations when rolling out a vaccine anywhere and I think there are certain challenges that the WTO colleagues can certainly refer to. In particular in equatorial Africa a lot of the issues about cold chains and keeping refrigerators, freezers viable during a time, you know, without reliable power and things like that. Those are some of the major considerations. But really I think the biggest ones are who to give it to and they know that if you have definitive contacts those are the ones that we should give it to providing to health care workers certainly as frontline exposed people. This is something that's probably one of the best places to give it to. But it's really the question about- Ebola virus looks like a lot of other diseases that you would see in Ecuador real Africa like malaria and [unintelligible] and some of these are the things that are much more common. It's very difficult to tell which case, when on presentation, is an Ebola case and which one is something much more garden variety.

LL: Dr. Strong I'm wondering, doing this from Winnipeg, how would you judge the international community's reaction to this outbreak versus the 2014 West Africa outbreak?

DR. JIM STRONG: Well I think the biggest issue is that this DRC outbreak is ramping up much more quickly than some of the issues that happened in West Africa. I think the WHO MSF. They're all there and they're doing monumental effort and trying to nip it early. So I think that is one of the biggest things because certainly that West African outbreak brewed for a number of months before there was a really large international response, but I think this one they're definitely on board quicker.

LL: Dr. Strong thank you.

DR. JIM STRONG: Thank you very much.

LL: Dr. Jim strong as a medical officer with the public health agency of Canada and a researcher at the Department of Medical Microbiology at the University of Manitoba. And we reached him in Winnipeg. Now of course you can't vaccinate people if you don't know where they are. Last week the World Health Organization released a map showing parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo currently affected by Ebola. The only problem; the map was wrong. That's because a lot of maps of the DRC contain mistakes. But there's a team in the DRC and around the world working remotely from their computers racing to fix those maps right now. Volunteers use open source satellite imagery to create detailed and accurate maps of the Ebola affected areas to support organizations like the United Nations and Doctors Without Borders. Claire Halleux is one of those volunteers and a co-founder of Open Street Map DRC. And we spoke to her from Kinshasa.

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We've had hundreds of volunteers during the last two weeks mapping the area as their in time contribution to fighting the Ebola outbreak from where they are. Several of these organizations that have already told us that this data was already useful and will be even more useful in the coming days and weeks. That's actually what motivates most members. We hope it will [unintelligible] and restrict the spread of the disease.

LL: Our next guest is also one of the people helping to fix and improve these maps. Pierre Beland is a retired economist and a volunteer with the Open Street Map DRC initiative and he joins us from Montreal. Hello.

PIERRE BELAND: Hello.

LL: Why are the maps of the DRC so incorrect?

PIERRE BELAND: The maps, organizations like Google will take care of workers business. Montreal and Toronto are very well mapped. But if you go north of Canada or in Africa map is blank often, and when disaster comes then we start map it. People from around the world come and help to do it in detail as roads, buildings and other information.

LL: What are the consequences of inaccurate maps right now when it comes to fighting this outbreak?

PIERRE BELAND: The logistic when the UN agency MSF etc. comes and have to drive down the road to find all the small villages it's quite the problem. Logistic is always important. Also for [unintelligible] if you need to find people, to contact people you need a detail map. It's where we help.

LL: Now how do you know which areas in the Democratic Republic of Congo need updated maps during this outbreak?

PIERRE BELAND: We work closely. Kinshasa is in contact with the government and MSF we work to try to coordinate them. People are talking everyday what we can do. We should concentrate. And before they ask us we tried to add as much as possible in the area. Then when we tried to have as much flexibility we can have. When they say there was a problem in a specific area then we start to map more in detail. We asked people to come and help.

LL: This sounds like it must be a 24 hour a day effort.

PIERRE BELAND: It is. There are people from around the world when Claire go to bed I continues to work and I am ready to discuss with [unintelligible]. That's the way we work.

LL: I see so Claire takes one of the shifts and then you take her. Where do you get the data to update the incorrect maps?

PIERRE BELAND: First we can use satellite imagery. It's often not enough. Also negotiation is like a World Food Program WFP with their trucks they drive, they have camera and they take pictures. We can use sometimes information like that themselves they will the information about the condition of the road. And a lot of organization. MSF is adding information about the clinics but the information you need about the villages names. Things like that. So everyone is contributing. It's not only volunteers in Montreal or Toronto, it's also organizations that are helping.

LL: When you collaborate this way though with other people and people from all over the world, isn't there a risk that you will also be getting mistaken information?

PIERRE BELAND: Yes and there are people that look at that, people specializing in particular areas. They spot rapidly what what's wrong and they correct.

LL: What are the challenges for you as you try to correct and update these maps?

PIERRE BELAND: It's quite easy. I would say we it's easy to have a black and white map where we are map from satellites, but to add information from the area it's quite a challenge. Like if we went to all the street names. It's not easy to go around the city right now. things like that/ So we have some challenges like that and we tried to work on these gradually.

LL: Just practically. Can you tell me how these updated maps actually helped to contain the spread of the Ebola virus?

PIERRE BELAND: First people would use a huge print map, poster maps to plan their activity, maps on the phone. Open Street Map is free. It opens data and you have applications on phones. So MSF people or [unintelligible] they go with their phone and they navigate. All Kinds of tools and they GIS software to manage all this information. They can use the map as a background it help them a lot to work.

LL: So as they travel around they can find out exactly where they need to be and exactly where the people are just by looking at their phones.

PIERRE BELAND: The same the same way we do around here.

LL: How have these maps helped in other health crises.

PIERRE BELAND: In various ways like into 2015 in Nepal there were people in the mountains, small villages only have [unintelligible]. We did map in detail. And doctors were good to learn how to use tools on their phone to travel. And then you did trace where helicopters could land to help villagers. There are various ways you can help. The information can be used.

LL: Now you're a retired economist. Why did you start doing this work?

PIERRE BELAND: I like such challenges. I know a lot about computers. When I retired I thought it could be interesting to collaborate with these people. I started with IT in 2010 from there I did coordinate a lot of [unintelligible] response. In 2012 we already had a mission in the [unintelligible] North for DRC. After that we had Mali, we had Philippines. We had the Ebola for a year when we had Nepal.

LL: It doesn't sound like you're very retired.

[Laughter]

PIERRE BELAND: I did travel; I went South Africa, to Senegal, various places, to Haiti.

LL: But you do this film from your home in Montreal. I'm wondering how connected you feel to be on the ground situation that's unfolding in the Congo right now.

PIERRE BELAND: Yesterday afternoon, all the afternoon I did discuss with Claire and others on Skype. We are like a room discussing and working and we say to these people. Let the people take care of this business. We have enough, this one we can't take care of. So we find people and we do various jobs that needs to be done.

LL: And what sense of urgency do you feel as you do this task of mapping?

PIERRE BELAND: Right now we expect the vaccine to work. We expect it to be quite different as it was in West Africa. If it started to move faster than we we'll have to adjust, then we'll have to find solutions. Like the big cities and Mbandaka, 1 million people, we will have to much more. We will need a lot more people to help us. But now let's say it's quite.

LL: Mr. Beland, thank you.

PIERRE BELAND: You're welcome. .

PIERRE BELAND: Pierre Beland is a volunteer with the Open Street Map DRC Initiative and we reached him in Montreal. Now I have a moment to let you know about a story that's coming up next week on The Current. It's all about plastics. For Montreal's ban on single use plastic bags to Vancouver's plan to banish straws, towns cities and countries around the world are discussing prohibitions on plastics. Now nearly one year after Kenya introduced what's been called the planet's toughest plastic bag ban, will bring us special documentary on how the new law is affecting the lives of Kenyans. Freelance journalist Carol Rolando spoke with resident Atuti Okelo and the environmentalist James Wakibia who in this excerpt recalls his first reaction when he heard about the ban.

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VOICE 1: And I was like 'Wow! This is so good'. Now the question was will it be successful? Will it work?

CAROL ROLANDO: And less than a year after the government banned the production, manufacturing, sale, distribution and use of plastic bags, it's a question many are still asking: is the planet's most drastic plastic bag ban helping or hurting Kenyans?

ATUTI OKELO: Terrible. Terrible indeed. When it was a shock to most of us. My names are Atuti Okelo, an employee, a former employee of Packaging Industries Ltd.

CAROL ROLANDO: Atuti was the department head of PIL, a polythene bag manufacturing company based in Nairobi, producing bags for all kinds of products.

ATUTI OKELO: So we used to manufacture carrier bags, packing cake, one for bread. We had a vareity of products.

CAROL ROLANDO: Then in September of last year, less than a month after the ban came into effect, the company laid off hundreds of employees and Atuti was one of them. Losing his job was a big deal for Atuti. He'd worked at PIL for over 13 years. Now without that salary, he tells me his family has had to move to the slums.

ATUTI OKELO: We had to come down. That's automatic. We had to move to slums and that's where we cannot afford this standard of living.

VOICE 1: Some may argue that by banning plastic bags so many industries were shut down. Something bad for them and I fear for them. But it's one invironment. You cannot go urinating on one corner of a swimming pool and expect the other corner to be clean

LL: you can hear Carol Rolando's entire documentary from the frontlines The War on Plastics next week on The Current. And now a word from the team that put the show together this week.

[Music: Credits theme]

KRISTIAN JEBSEN: Hello I'm Kristian Jebsen, one of the producers here at The Current. This week the show was produced by: Alison Masemann, Howard Goldenthal, Pacinthe Mattar, Idella Sturino, Julie Crysler, Ines Colabrese, Kristin Nelson, Willow Smith, John Chipman, Karin Marley, and Danielle Carr. Thanks to our network producers Anne Penman in Vancouver, Susan McKenzie in Montreal, Suzanne Dufresne in Winnipeg. Mary-Catherine McIntosh in Halifax, and Michael O'Halloran in Calgary. The Current's writer is Peter Mitton. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso and our digital producer is Padraig Moran. Our documentary editor is Joan Webber. Transcriptions are provided by Rasha Shehata and Shamhan Bhuiyan. Our technical producer is Gary Francis. Our senior producers are Geoff Turner in Toronto and Cathy Simon in Vancouver. The acting executive producer of The Current is Liz Hoath.

LL: And that is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio 1 for Q. Today comedian Tig Notaro is on the show for a wide ranging conversation about everything from being in love to being in remission from cancer. And remember you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. It lets you browse through past episodes of our show and start listening in just a few seconds and you can search for any stories you missed or stories you want to hear again or listen live to your local CBC station. Lots of options right from your smartphone or tablet. It's free from the App Store or Google Play. Now finally we started off today's show talking about auto workers including Detroit auto workers. So let's end off with a Johnny Cash tune from the 1970s about one such auto worker with Cadillac dreams. This is One Piece at a Time. I'm Laura Lynch in Vancouver. Thank you for listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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[Song: One Piece at a Time by Johnny Cash]

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Friday May 25, 2018 Full Episode Transcript

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