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The Current Transcript for January 24, 2019

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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Venezuelans have spoken, but which leader will their military choose?

Guests: Daniel Alvarez, George Ciccariello-Maher, Phil Gunson

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WIFE: I was convinced that the children were my husband's. I saw him in them all the time.

HUSBAND: I had a fear that they were genetically mine.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Their children were into their teens when they realized they needed to start asking questions. They were a regular couple who wanted to start a family and sought help from a prominent Ottawa doctor to conceive. Years later they learned on the news that the fertility doctor had at times used his own sperm, or the sperm of other random donors. But when this couple began asking questions looking for records and proof of who the biological father actually was, they ran up against a system that couldn't help them much. And that made them more determined to hunt down the truth. In half an hour, Alison Motluck followed their journey. Also today, if you build it they find a way to get around it.

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ELISABBETH VALLET: You will see ramps where you can drive over the US Mexican wall. There is that one catapult to send drugs on the other side. They found a tunnel last week.

ATM: There are 75 border wars in existence around the world and Elisabeth Vallet says not one of them fulfills its intended purpose. With American citizens in the throes of a partial government shutdown, in a political fight over the funding of President Donald Trump's border wall, we're looking at this very long history and the lasting consequences of border wolves. Hear that, in an hour. But we're starting with Venezuela where the opposition leader has sworn himself in as interim leader.

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[Spanish speech]

[Cheers]

ATM: And now two men claim to run the country. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti this is The Current.

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[Street noise]

VOICE 1: Nicolas Maduro is a dictator with no legitimate claim to power. Let me express the unwavering support of the United States, as you, the people of Venezuela raise your voices in a call for freedom.

[Protesters chanting in background]

VOICE 2: Anyone who contends to be a friend of Venezuela should be very clear in standing up and condemning the Maduro government that has been responsible for terrible oppression, for terrible marginalization, for a humanitarian crisis the likes of which South America has not seen in a long time, all because of an illegitimate dictator named Maduro.

ATM: From Washington, Ottawa, and most loudly of all the streets of Caracas, it's the chorus of voices denouncing the embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has been growing louder. Just weeks after beginning his second term under a cloud of controversy, Mr. Maduro's days as leader appeared to be coming to an end. You heard the US vice president, Mike Pence, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau there. Both governments and many South and Central American governments as well, have quickly recognized Juan Guaido as the country's new interim president, after the opposition leader dramatically took an oath before God and before throngs of supporters yesterday, calling for new elections. Notably Russia, China and Iran are critical of this move and backing Mr. Maduro. It was a day of massive street protests yesterday. Anti Maduro protesters - and they're tens of thousands - clashed with national guard police in some neighbourhoods. Maduro supporters - though fewer - also filled the streets. At least seven people died in the clashes. Daniel Alvarez is a political activist who was one of those in the streets calling for Mr. Maduro`s ouster. We've reached him in Caracas. Hello.

DANIEL ALVAREZ: Good morning. Good to be here.

ATM: What has it been like overnight after all that happened yesterday?

DANIEL ALVAREZ: It's been a tense night. There were reports scattered reports of different manifestations across the country. There were violent fights between what they called 'the barrios', the slums and the police forces. And so far there is no clear answer to what happened during the night. We have to wait until it sets up to see what happens.

ATM: And so you're telling me that there is stuff going on the streets even through the night. What was it like yesterday?

DANIEL ALVAREZ: Across the nation there were are violent episodes, especially on Maracaibo especially on[unintelligible]. We had thousands of people. Across the nation we may even get to the medium who marched for Juan Guaido, but in Caracas, the bigger one, the one whose pictures are shown across the world, it was a peaceful manifestation. And we could perform without [unintelligible]. In the afternoon we have some fights between the police and some protestors, ut besides that nothing special happens.

ATM: Where were you?

DANIEL ALVAREZ: I was in the main manifestation on the forefront. I go the chance to be, and to witness the historic moments with some people from my former political party, and from my university. It was a historic and incredible moment. I don't have the words to describe the energy and the hope that people had during the moment that Juan Guaido assumed the compromise that article 233, 333, and 350 are gave him to carry on the presidency until the democratic election is performed.

ATM: So you were pretty pleased to be there. How was the crowd reacting around you when he saw himself in it in?

DANIEL ALVAREZ: Joy. There was this wave of joy across the whole gathering. We had to endure - andI want to say this - we are talking about maybe 100,000 people were gathered at that point. There were people who were way behind like to three, four to five blocks away, into different avenues, because we were in this [unintelligible] Avenue and [unintelligible] Avenue. So we were talking about a huge amount of energy, a huge amount of force when Guaido acknowledged that he was going to swear into the presidency because he was expected to do so.

ATM: And how important was it for you to be there?

DANIEL ALVAREZ: I got to be honest. I am planning to leave the country in a couple of months because the situation has become unbearable, but the scenario may change that. I have lost or lost all my friends. I have lost almost all my family. My mother and grandmother are what remain here.

ATM: And let me clarify. You said you've lost your friends and family. You mean they've left.

DANIEL ALVAREZ: They left. Yes. Most of them have left to some to Chile, Argentina, PEru, Spain, the US. You can count any country you want, I'll have a friend there.

ATM: Daniel Alvarez, stay with me I want to bring someone else into this conversation. George Ciccariello-Maher has been watching these fast moving events in Venezuela with alarm. He's a visiting scholar at the hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics which is based in New York. And he's also the author of several books including We Created Chávez: The People's History of the Venezuelan Revolution. George Ciccariello-Maher joins us from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Hello.

GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER: Hello. Good morning.

ATM: So as you're watching this unfold, what are you thinking? What do you think Mr. Guadio`s swearing himself in as interim president?

GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER: Well I mean that's really quite frightening to think, not only about the fact that this sort of relatively unknown - you know people have called him a benchwarmer of the Venezuelan opposition from one of the smaller parties who was never elected president of course - has simply declared himself president on the basis of happening to be the head of the National Assembly at this moment. But even more worrying is the fact that you've seen leaders across the western hemisphere, of right wing governments in particular, in Latin America, people like Jair Bolsonaro, a quasi fascist was elected in Brazil, stepping out of the head and saying that they recognize this is a legitimate constitutional process and it's far from that. And yet of course you have Mike Pence. You have Donald Trump. You have the U.S. government that has been meeting actively with Venezuelan opposition elements to foment a coup, stepping in to throw their weight behind this.

ATM: Canada has also endorsed what happened.

GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER: Absolutely. And they've done so in the name of so-called democracy which is just really astonishing.

ATM: Mr. Maduro Says the opposition is trying to stage a coup.

GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER: I mean the definition of a coup has to do with this sort of regime change, unconstitutional regime change. Of course we were lucky enough to not have seen the military act in support of this year. But this is the objective. The point is to create fractures in society so that other elements may feel as if they can act, it will be supported and rewarded by foreign governments if they do. So this is an incredibly dangerous situation, especially because a lot of people and that's where they have been struggling to a very difficult economic times. The country is incredibly polarized. And there are elements that do not want this government to go because they also don't want to return to their old style neo-liberalism that existed in the past.

ATM: George Ciccariello-Maher Venezuela is in economic chaos. The lack of food, the medicine, we all know that. Why shouldn't the people of Venezuela throw out President Maduro who has overseen that decline?

GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER: Sure the economy's been a terrible situation. You know I would argue back since 2014-2015 when things really started to to you know to get difficult. And they've only gotten progressively worse. What we've seen you know, I think in the past year or two years, under Trump has been an even stricter sanctions regime that has caused damage to the Venezuelan economy that's number in the billions of dollars. So it's been incredibly devastating to the oil industry, to the economy. But at no point I think do we thinking as sober you know-- citizens think to ourselves that while the economy is really difficult, let's encourage foreign governments to foment a crude overthrow our government.

ATM: Okay well let me ask you, both of you, what kind of response do you expect from then as well as military in the coming days? Daniel.

DANIEL ALVAREZ: There is the military, the top brass, the head of the military are firmly with Maduro. Because most of them are involved in drug trafficking, human rights violations and so on corruption. But the officials, the colonels, the tenants, and the cardinals they're under heavy pressure from the people, from the families, from the troops to take action. And what's going to happen the next few days is key to understand if the armed forces are capable of holding up that pressure, or if it's going to break. And no one wants to have a violent outcome. That has to be clear. We want to be in a, we are a transition which is the most constitutional path that we can take.

ATM: George Ciccariello-Maher, what kind of response do you expect from Venezuela's military in the coming days?

GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER: Well I certainly hope that the military will stay in the constitutional path. You know I think you're hearing from Daniel the idea that were participating in the overthrow of the democratic government, but if any violence happens that will be only the fault of the government. No that's absurd. You know hopefully the military will remain united behind the constitutional path, and some economic solution to this crisis will be it will be reached. Because simply having to do elections it also isn't going to fix the macroeconomic situation. This is not the situation. Especially when you have very different policies being offered from both sides. You cannot simply sit down and have a discussion and come to an easy policy solution that will stabilize the macro economy. You really need good economic and political solutions to move forward for Venezuela, regardless of what's going on or what debates are going on in Venezuela, the United States should not have its hands in this process. [Over talking] Trump's hands are all over this coup.

ATM: Gentlemen we have to leave it there. Thank you both of you for your perspectives.

DANIEL ALVAREZ: Thank you so much.

GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER: Thank you so much.

ATM: George Ciccariello-MAher is a visiting scholar at the hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics which is based in New York. He is the author of We Created Chavez: The People's History of the Venezuelan Revolution. He joined us from Philadelphia. Daniel Alvarez is a political activist. We reached him in Caracas, Venezuela. The Venezuelan Embassy in Ottawa declined our request for an interview for today. Well the world is watching Venezuela. And two leaders, Mr. Maduro and now Juan Guaido, who is not well known internationally. Not known outside the country. He is the leader of Venezuela's opposition controlled national assembly. He is 35 years old. He was detained by Venezuelan intelligence services earlier this month, after signaling a willingness to challenge Mr. Maduro. Phil Gunson is the senior analyst in Venezuela for the International Crisis Group. He is in Bogota today and that's where we've reached him. Hello.

PHIL GUNSON: Hello there. How are you?

ATM: Well I'm wondering what you're thinking as you're watching what unfolded yesterday in Caracas.

PHIL GUNSON: Well this is a scenario which we anticipated. In fact we'd been rather worried that it might happen in the sense that, being Crisis Group we felt that to proclaim Juan Guaido as provisional president, as soon as this, might be premature and that it might lead to negative consequences, so we continue to be worried. We're continuing obviously to watch the situation very closely and the key issue here is going to be which side the military of Venezuela ends up.

ATM: And have you seen any indications at this point? Has anyone in the military been saying anything or are they deliberately keeping it quiet?

PHIL GUNSON: Well it was very noticeable that when President Maduro went out onto the balcony of the presidential palace yesterday to give his reaction to Guaido proclaiming himself president, he wasn't accompanied by anybody in uniform. The defense minister wasn't there for example. And the absence of the military at that point seemed possibly to be significant. The high command, including the defense minister, have since said that they are on the side of the Maduro government, but the support seems to be less than overwhelming. And, at the moment, it's a fair bet that there are still intense talks going on in the barracks across the country as to whether or not this is the moment to jump ship.

ATM: And what do you make of the division internationally of the countries that have very quickly supported this versus those who have died or whoever denounced it?

PHIL GUNSON: Phil: Well the principal division is between most of the countries in the Western Hemisphere who've been supporting the opposition, and indeed most important countries in the western hemisphere including obviously the United States, Canada, Brazil, Colombia, Peru between them and the European Union which has taken a much more cautious position, on the basis that it's not their policy to recognize governments but to recognize states. In other words they're not happy with the idea of recognizing a government that right now doesn't control anything. And that I think is the key the vision that a lot of these countries that declare that came out in support of Guaido yesterday, they had already taken this decision beforehand it seems. They were all lining up ready. In fact the United States was signaling well before the actual proclamation that they were about to recognize Guado. So I think there's a sense in which some of them were actually pushing the opposition into taking a position, which as I say we think may possibly prove premature.

ATM: Well you know there is that an uncomfortable history of the U.S. government involvement in South American countries. So the very fact that Mike Pence made that very public statement in support of the protesters getting out in the streets the other day, how should we interpret that?

PHIL GUNSON: Well you're right. And I think it's always unfortunate when the United States is be seen to take the lead. Among other things because it allows Maduro and his colleagues in government to present this as an imperialist plot. And it isn't that I mean this is really a struggle for democracy. It's the struggle in favor of a principle that the Western Hemisphere countries, that the Organization of American States, which is due I believe to meet later today on this issue. You know I committed to that there shouldn't be undemocratic dictatorial governments at the Western Hemisphere. The key issue here is tactical I suppose, it's how you proceed to isolate a government like this in such a way as to promote positive change.

ATM: And what do you make of Russia, China and Iran coming out on the side of Mr. Maduro?

PHIL GUNSON: We're not really not really surprising they've consistently supported the government. Although in the case of Russia and China we know that they're not happy with the way things are going. Then we know they're not happy with the way that Maduro is running the economy for example. And they would like to see a more stable country. I think it's again, it's hard for Russia and for China even if they want to see change in Venezuela for them to immediately come out in support of a position that is clearly being driven by the United States. They promote or at least say they support the principle of non-intervention. And they hide behind if you like that principle in order to avoid taking a pro-democracy stance, which would be unusual obviously to governments that are themselves very repressive.

ATM: Now this is entrained that you do have a man who is sworn in as interim president. You do have what appear to be the majority - if you look at the number of protesters one versus the other - that support in the streets. Where does it go from here? You say you’re watching the military. What else are you looking at?

PHIL GUNSON: Well the opposition - although I think has to be said that only part of the opposition was aware of what was going to happen yesterday - much of the rest of it was taken by surprise. So there was a threat to the unity the opposition. That seems for the time being to overcome everybody's on the same page as far as the domestic opposition is concerned. One of the key things I think is going to be how Maduro proceeds with his threat against the United States diplomats in Venezuela. Because he’s given them 72 hours to leave the country. And the United States so that they’re not going to do that because Maduro no longer has the authority to order them out. So there’s a standoff there which could prove dangerous. There's obviously the specter of potential military intervention if things go badly wrong, although I don't think that’s an imminent threat. You know we may see this evolve to a very unpleasant stalemate in which the outside world puts ever greater pressure, perhaps with oil sanctions for example, by the United States, on the regime, causing even greater economic social suffering in Venezuela. And that would be a really unfortunate outcome. If this isn't resolved very quickly in the next couple of days, then it may drag on with extremely unfortunate consequences.

ATM: Mr. Gunson thank you very much for your insights.

PHIL GUNSON: Thank you.

ATM: Phil Gunson is the senior analyst in Venezuela for the International Crisis Group. We reached him in Bogota, Columbia today. Let us know what you think of what's unfolding in Venezuela lots of different opinions. Lots of tension in that country often what's going on. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our Web site cbc.ca/thecurrent. And stay with us. The CBC News is next and then we're going to meet a couple who conceived with the help of a renowned armoire fertility doctor. Their lives, as well as many others, were turned upside down after news of is being mixed up and of the doctor using his own enough sperm to inseminate some patients. Alison Motluk brings us a documentary, How We Move Forward, looking at this with this couple in our next half hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One.

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‘The kids aren’t yours’: Barwin sperm mix-up sheds light on ‘broken’ fertility industry.

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Currents.

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AMT: Still to come. In the debate south of the border the Wall has become a symbol as much as an actual barrier between the U.S. and Mexico. In half an hour we're meditating on the nature of border walls whether and how they work, their history, the politics and the way they affect the culture and landscape around them. Listen for that. But first how we move forward.

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AMT: In 2016 news broke about a prominent Ottawa fertility doctor. Two women claimed they were his biological children, conceived when their mothers were patients at his clinic. The Current first brought you that story after a class action lawsuit was launched against the doctor Norman Barwin. That lawsuit has since grown to include many other families. Most of them were not people conceived using Dr. Barwin sperm, but people harmed in other ways. Women who had been inseminated with the wrong sperm, siblings who were supposed to be related through a common sperm donor but were not, and men who'd stored their sperm prior to cancer treatment who could no longer use that sperm. Today we bring you the story of one of those other families. We've agreed not to use names in order to protect the children involved. Here is freelance journalist Alison Motluk's documentary How We Move Forward.

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WIFE: I had researched him before we went to see him because I was concerned about this process. I researched him and all I saw was that he'd won the Order of Canada, that he was renowned, that patients revered him. So I never saw anything that would suggest that there was a problem with Dr. Barwin.

HUSBAND: He was very highly regarded as a doctor. They called him a Baby God and there were hundreds of pictures of babies in his office.

WIFE: We went to see Dr. Barwin because we wanted to have a child and there was an issue on my husband's side. So it was really just a matter of getting that fixed.

HUSBAND: Dr. Barwin was very confident that he could help.

ALISON MOTLUK: By the time this couple went to see Norman Barwin, in the early 2000s, there had already been problems at his clinic. There was a sperm mix up in 1995 for instance. But as part of the legal settlement the parties agreed not to speak further about the case. So many subsequent couples were unaware, had no inkling that anything was amiss.

HUSBAND: At first I had no doubts whatsoever. My children reminded me of my wife and sometimes parts of me. It's only they started getting older. In we heard rumors of Dr. Barwin being investigated for having made a mistake. And we started wondering 'could we be a victim?'

ALISON MOTLUK: That was in 2010 after two more mix-ups came to light. But once more, the patients settled and agreed not to speak further. Barwin was in the news yet again in 2013 when the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario held a disciplinary hearing. A fourth mix up, dating back to the 1980s, was mentioned during that hearing. The couple read about all these things in the papers.

ALISON MOTLUK: I wanted to go get the children tested. My husband was more reluctant.

HUSBAND: There was this part of me that just didn't really want to know, because once I knew he knew it would not be possible to un-know that.

ALISON MOTLUK: It was only when the stories emerged in 2016 about Barwin’s own sperm having been used to inseminate patients, but the couple decided they had to check things out.

WIFE: I said to my husband I just have to know.

HUSBAND: That's when my wife really pushed hard for us to get tested.

WIFE: I was convinced that the children were my husbands. I saw him in them all the time.

HUSBAND: I had a fear that they were genetically mine.

ALISON MOTLUK: By this time a class action lawsuit had been launched against Barwin. Norman Barwin declined to comment for this story. The couple got in touch with the Ottawa law firm handling the case. The lawyers arranged for the mother the father and the two children to have their DNA securely tested. Then the family waited for the results.

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WIFE: When the email came in we were getting ready to have dinner. And to receive something like that through email. I mean it's. You know...

HUSBAND: She kind of went pale. She said: "Oh my God".

WIFE: He said: "What?" I said: "The results came in. The kids aren't yours.".

HUSBAND: She said [unintelligible].

WIFE: Either one of them.

HUSBAND: I kind of felt like this huge cloud of gloom had just descended on us.

WIFE: And I said I can't believe it. It must be wrong.

HUSBAND: I could tell that she was very upset about it and I was kind of worried for her.

WIFE: I was shaking. I couldn't even open the test results.

HUSBAND: Well I didn't really want to think about it either.

WIFE: He just looked stoic.

HUSBAND: You know, I kind of suspected that that would be the case, but it was still a shock.

WIFE: He just looked at me and smiled and I think the smile kind of said that that's what he'd been expecting.

HUSBAND: How do we move forward? How do we deal with this for the children?

WIFE: I just needed to take action. I needed to do something.

ALISON MOTLUK: Like many of the 150 or so people involved in the class action, they were surprised to learn how little recordkeeping there is. There's no central registry of sperm donors for instance. And doctors on records of inseminations only have to be kept for 10 years.

WIFE: The lawyers told us that Dr. Barwin when was the largest storer of sperm of men who had suffered from cancer in the region. So it was possible that our children came from men who had cancer in his late teens, early twenties and had to stop his sperm there before undergoing treatment. So all I could think was, Oh my children are going to get cancer now. They told us that the children could come from another man who had stored his sperm with Barwin and didn't give permission for his sperm to be used by us. So he might have a claim to our kids and I thought the only way I am going to make this go away is if I find out. I told them I am going to find him. I don’t know if it'll take me a year. I don't know if it'll take me 10 years but I am going to find him.

HUSBAND: I'm not sure if I really wanted to put a face to him because I was afraid when I'd look at them, I'd see his face and I guess that's still the denial, again, a desire for it not to be true. Actually seeing another human being just makes him more concrete. So I didn't push for that.

WIFE: My children could have come from anywhere in the world. Barwin was importing sperm from other countries. They didn't have a donor number like many people who go to a sperm banks. I had nothing to work with. What I had at my disposal. I heard his DNA in my house.

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ALISON MOTLUK: She ordered an online genetic testing kit from 23 and Me hoping it would link her kids, through their paternal genes, to distant relatives, and that that might lead her to the donor himself. While she waited for those results she scoured the Internet for people who looked like her kids.

WIFE: I was also able to leverage image recognition tools because I had photos of my children throughout their lives. So I ran all of those. And what I was able to do is identify a child on the internet who was a very close doppelganger for both of my children. I reached out to the child's mother and she told me: "Oh funny you should say that because my child was conceived using a sperm donor." And I thought bingo.

ALISON MOTLUK: Further tests suggested that all three children had the same biological father, an anonymous donor from the Repro-Med sperm bank in Toronto. The couple's still didn't have his name but they did now have his donor number. They reached out to the sperm bank for help but they say their phone call wasn't returned. We did ask Repro-Med for their side of the story but the company didn't respond to numerous requests for comment.

WIFE: So then I wrote an email. I told them that I was a Barwin victim, told them the background and said I would like a paternity test to this particular sperm donor.

ALISON MOTLUK: She got a reply this time.

WIFE: He is not in the system anymore and we don't have a sample of his DNA, so you can get a paternity test. And I said, well, could you contact him tell them what happened and see if he'll give me a paternity test. And he wrote back and said we have very strict rules and policies under which we will contact a sperm donor. So, no. I was incredulous.

ALISON MOTLUK: When Repro-Med didn't get back to her, the mother decided to find out more about the donor on her own. She went to the donor sibling registry, an online meeting place for a donor conceived people and their parents. Using the donor number, she was able to connect with other parents of kids conceived with his sperm. One of the women had kept the profile of the donor which had his education and his profession. Two others had his photo. Meanwhile the children's results from 23 and me had come in. After loading the information into various databases, the mother found someone who was a cousin of one of the donor's parents.

WIFE: And I was able to go through birth records and death records, get a whole picture for father's family tree which I put together and I went through every mail of that family tree. I literally go down to the last family. I put this man's name in LinkedIn and I saw the photo staring back at me. I knew I'd found him.

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WIFE: I guess I thought when I see him I'll recognize him. He'll look like the kids. But there was nothing I was swearing at a stranger and I thought how could this be? How could this stranger be the father of my children?

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WIFE: I just it was driving me crazy I had a lot of anxiety again and I felt I needed to contact the sperm donor. I needed to know is he a good person? Did he know about this? Did he choose to ignore me? I just really wanted closure on that.

ALISON MOTLUK: She found out where he worked. She got his email address. She had his home address, cell phone number, everything.

WIFE: And I also had those scenarios going in my mind. Do I send him an email? What if he ignores me? Do I just show up at his place of work? Do I show up at his house? Do I call him on a cellphone? But I finally decided, well, I'll start with an email and see how that goes. I wrote many versions of that first email to the sperm donor. The first few were very, well, they were very large and very detailed and I thought, this sounds like an episode of Days of Our Lives. I don't even believe me. It is so crazy. I decided I'm better after just a short and sweet, be very factual. 'Here's the link to the court case. Call me. Email me. We need to talk'.

BIOLOGICAL FATHER: I was at work when I got, it came to my work email address. I was in my office all by my own. And I'd just returned from a lunch mean that was the first email I open because I didn't recognize the names. So I was curious. I'd always assume that I would be contacted one day by - probably Repro-Med - initially to say that a child or a parent of a child looking for information. That's why I assumed that I would be contacted. To be contacted in this way by a couple, that had had this done to them without their knowledge, was shocking.

WIFE: The donor hadn't realised that he could be found. He didn't know a lot about genetic tests. He didn't know about the donor sibling registry. He didn't even know for sure that he had a donor number, let alone what it was.

BIOLOGICAL FATHER: As I read this note, there was surprise, there was shock. There was fear in terms of wondering if that was true what would that mean, given that they had not asked for that to be done to them. And I had fears in terms of what could that possibly mean to me if that was true. I immediately contacted Repro-Med and their only advice was not to have any more correspondence with this individual which I ignored.

ALISON MOTLUK: Repro-Med didn't respond to requests for comment.

WIFE: We went back and forth a little bit and he was very distrustful. I think he thought it was a shakedown. And it didn't occur to me that he would think that. So I didn't really understand why he was so skittish. I mean is this you or not?

BIOLOGICAL FATHER: It took me a little while to get over the shock and the fear, but once they made contact with this mother I came to realize very quickly that it was genuine. And that I wanted to help.

ALISON MOTLUK: The mother asked for a paternity test.

BIOLOGICAL FATHER: I agreed right away to help them in any way I could. And I provided a DNA sample so that part of it at least provided them some closure so that they knew. They had asked for just any additional health information about my family. And I gave them that information.

ALISON MOTLUK: The couple now had what they needed to break the news to the children. I told them that the doctor had made a mistake and that he'd accidentally, inserted somebody else's sperm in their mother. Then they weren't biologically my children and my daughter was a bit more stoic. Just some of sat there and let it sink. My son is very-- He looks up to me a lot. And he just said no. I made a mistake, he said. It can be true. And then he said well maybe it was true for his sister but he says 'I am your son'. And then he started to cry.

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HUSBAND: I didn't know what to tell him, but I keep repeating that 'you are still my son. Even if he were alive biologically related, you'll always be my son'.

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HUSBAND: I always assumed-- like I suspect most of my fellow citizens do, that we are protected. There are systems in place to ensure quality, to ensure standards, to ensure the procedures were followed. I was shocked to find that there is so little in place when it comes to reproductive technology.

ALISON MOTLUK: Peter Cronyn is lead counsel on the class action lawsuit. He is baffled that there is so little regulation around reproductive technology, especially compared to other industries like the financial industry.

PETER CRONYN: If you look at one of the things that is fundamental to us: our money, our savings, our investments. And you look at how our society has responded with a regulatory framework to protect our investments, our banking practices. You know this is an incredibly robust regulatory environment. And yet I would have to say that our families, our children have to be at least as important as money is to us. And we have really a vacuum absolutely, no regulatory framework to protect that aspect of our society.

ALISON MOTLUK: Tom Hannam a Toronto fertility doctor says Canadians should have confidence in the fertility industry.

TOM HANNAM: I don’t mean to be speaking naively to this but there's enough regulatory structures around us and you know best practices that one would expect and anticipate, as a Canadian, to be able to go to a clinic and have a fully transparent experience. There's two other stories. How might a bad actor exploit loopholes in that system and how well may regulators discover those bad actors. I can't speak to that. I don't know enough. But I would say that Canadians interests are aligned with those of fertility contacts.

ALISON MOTLUK: Both the parents, and the donor in this case however, are concerned about the fact that donor anonymity is still the default. Offspring have no right to know about their donor. And donors have no right to know about their offspring. They think anonymity prevents light from shining into the darker corners of the industry. They are also concerned about the harm it can cause the children.

WIFE: As far as I am concerned, [unintelligible] donor whether an egg donor sperm donor, is an adult who makes a decision to donate. They had a choice. They chose to donate. The children aren't given a choice. So what we need to do is open that choice to them, allow them to find out who their donor was: a name and a photo. Doesn't mean they have the right to a relationship, but they have right health records, to Ancestry records, to data and to an identity.

ALISON MOTLUK: For years the donor in this case participated in the program knowing his identity would be kept confidential but now even he questions anonymity.

BIOLOGICAL FATHER: What I think the offspring have absolutely every right to is a name and information, background, heritage, medical information, the ability to contact that donor if they have questions. I think absolutely they should have that right.

WIFE: For some reason the government, the sperm clinics, the fertility industry are all against giving people that choice and you have to ask why is that.

TOM HANNAM: There are pressures on both potential donors and potential intended parents to let anonymity stand.

ALISON MOTLUK: Tom Hannam, the Toronto fertility doctor, says that the needs of offspring, donors and intended parents are sometimes at odds.

TOM HANNAM: Potential donors are working in a space that society is uncomfortable with, doesn't support what they're doing. With sperm donors, people make jokes about it to essentially express their discomfort. And let's talk about contented parents as well. So they're incomparable because they, we, none of us can predict what the future is going to bring. Their biggest fear is that at some level their child will be taken away from them. And if that doesn't sound fully rational to our listeners I can tell you it feels very real to that to the couples involved. Anonymity is seen as a way of protecting that opportunity. There are working from a position of deep anxiety, deep despair.

ALISON MOTLUK: Canada already imports most of its donated sperm and he's concerned that taking away anonymity would further reduce the number of donors.

TOM HANNAM: If and when donors find the process too complicated, they simply won't donate. That's been true in Canada. There's only 30 donors, approximately 30 donors for a country of over 35 million.

WIFE: I hear people say we take it really in anonymity because then people won't donate. If the only way we can get people to donate is to lie to them, to tell them that we can protect their anonymity, or to tell them that the children conceived by their donation won't mind that they're anonymous - that's the only way that we can get them to donate. Then maybe we shouldn't have an egg or sperm donor program at.

TOM HANNAM: Can fertility clinics or anybody promise a donor or a couple that anonymity will stand? Absolutely not. Are we in a position to be able to articulate that well to our clients? Yes. It's difficult conversation. I speak to the reality that even today it's possible for anybody to get a genetic test and reveal a lot more about themselves and their family than perhaps they'd intended. If that's how it is now what's going to look like 10 years from now or 20 years. We can't know. And so there's no doubt that I am and comics are adhering to best practices are doing our level best to remind intended parents that that anonymity is not actually a desirable endpoint. That revealing the biological source of eggs and sperm to their child and to their greater community is a desirable outcome. It's a worthy goal and arguably a necessary goal in this world that we live.

WIFE: I think my case shows that the era of the anonymous sperm donor is over. There is absolutely no way that anybody can guarantee a donor anonymity. So we should stop saying that we can.

BIOLOGICAL FATHER: I think about this decision I made many years ago. I think about it every day. And I think about it in terms of the wellbeing of these children of mine, in the context that they could have a really large number of half siblings. And I worry that, myself included, nobody was really looking out for their well-being to the extent that I think this industry should be. The most important thing is the rights of the children.

WIFE: Nobody seems to care about the children who are being produced this way. Everything I see is about the rights of the donors and the rights of the recipients. And no discussion of the rights of the children who are affected by this.

[Music]

AMT: We have been listening to the documentary How We Move Forward produced by freelance journalist Alison Motluk with The Current documentary editor Liz Hoath. Let us know what you think of what you've been listening to. You can tweet us @TheCurrenCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our Web site cbc.ca/thecurrent.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: And n our next half hour.

SOUNDCLIP

Build that wall. Build that wall. Build that wall. Build that wall. Build that wall.

AMT: President Donald Trump has been stirring passions with his calls for a wall since before he became president. And now the call for the Wall is bringing his country to the brink. The bigger meaning of Trump's wall and walls around the world. Coming up next. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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'Always a way to go around': Border walls create insecurity, not remove it, says expert

Guests: Elisabeth Vallet, David Frye

AMT: Hello I am Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current. This is day 34 of the partial U.S. government shutdown. It is a partisan standoff over the issue of funding a southern border war with Mexico. The US Senate will take two key votes today on competing Republican and Democratic proposals to end that shut. It's interesting to note that pundits are already saying both are expected to fail. As this grinds on, the US President Donald Trump likes to make the argument that walls work.

SOUNDCLIP

Essential to border security is a powerful physical barrier. Walls work. Whether we like it or not, they work better than anything.

AMT: Last week President Trump tweeted some statistics that he claims bolster his case. He wrote - and I'm quoting here - "There are now 77 major or significant was built around the world with 45 countries planning or building walls". And then he continued: "The 800 miles of wars that have gone up in Europe since 2015 have been almost 100 percent successful." Well as is usually the case for Donald Trump's tweets some people took issue with those facts. What is true is that the United States is not the only country building walls and fences to protect its border.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

NEWSCASTER1: The race is on to get Hungary's border fence ready by the end of month. It's being built by prison inmates.

NEWSCASTER1: You're still on Norwegian soil. Just over there. And you are in Russia. And while this fence is just a few hundred meters long, campaigners for refugees say it's become something of a symbol of Norway's changing attitudes.

NEWSCASTER2: The IDF is constantly improving its defensive capabilities. One of those being a wall being built between Lebanon and the 20 some Israeli communities adjacent to the border.

NEWSCASTER3: The King and county town of [unintelligible] clan elders say the border barrier has helped. This is what is meant to keep out Al Shabab fighters based in Somalia, part of a larger government project to protect the porous border.

AMT: Well my next guest is someone who has studied many of the wars going up around the world right now. And Elisabeth Vallet fundamentally disagrees with Donald Trump. She says more walls are being built not because they work but in spite of the fact that they do not. Elisabeth Vallet is an adjunct professor and scientific director in geopolitics at the Raoul-Dandurand Chair at the University of Quebec at Montreal are and she joins us from Montreal. Hello.

ELISABETH VALLET: Hello Bonjour.

AMT: What was your reaction when you saw Donald Trump tweeting those statistics about walls?

ELISABETH VALLET: I had seen statistics quoted by extreme right groups before and marginal blogs. I thought I would leave them alone since they didn't need more exposure. But when the president did so, and argued that they were working, the fact that he was distorting my research really bothered me. And I thought that I had - not as an activist which I am not, but as a researcher - I had to set the record straight.

AMT: So you responded on Twitter. What kind of response did that generate?

ELISABETH VALLET: Actually pretty positive ones. So far I think it hasn't made it to the Trump base. But people actually reached out to me saying that there is clearly a need to state the facts, just as you journalists are doing right now. And I think we need to speak about it in true terms.

AMT: So can you break it down for me? How much of what Mr. Trump had to say was correct?

ELISABETH VALLET: So first of all he used the uproar that of our research. There are 77 walls that have been announced, are built so far credibly announced. And 70 of them have been built so far. And [unintelligible] countries have indeed built 70 border walls in the world. So that part was straight. The part about the 100 percent efficiency is that adequate, even in Europe. Because all those walls, some of them, are designed to prevent migration in Hungary are in Norway, but some of them are also designed to keep Russia at bay. This is in the Baltic states are Ukraine. So you've got different walls, different functions and in all cases what a wall does? Is a wall will redefine the geo-politics of the area and the geo-politics of the flows? So far while it may look like it is working, but actually it will just reroute and redefine the flows. Sometimes those flows that were taking place in the open will just be more underground, so more dangerous for the people that are trying to cross the border. But in the end they are not working. And this is why usually when you have a wall then you will have military deployed around the wall and technology and robots, drones and sensors. Because a wall per se doesn't achieve anything apart from scarifying at the borderlands and ruining the local economies.

AMT: So can you give us an overview of some of the more significant walls that exist and are being built around the world?

ELISABETH VALLET: Well we could speak about countries that are literally fencing themselves and India is one of them. India has a huge fence with Pakistan, but of course with Bangladesh. They are actually fencing Bangladesh out of the peninsula. Of course you have the U.S. Mexican border which is fenced, walled on a third of the border. The one between Israel and the West Bank is also an interesting one. Israel was among those countries that is trying to fence itself, fortify itself literally. And then you will find other walls. You spoke about the one between Kenya Somalia. There is one between Botswana and Zimbabwe. Those in the Fergana Valley in Central Asia between China and North Korea. So you have those border walls across the world. A lot of them, the majority of them, has been built after 9/11 and a lot of them has been built after the Arab Spring.

AMT: So what do you see is driving the construction of those what?

ELISABETH VALLET: There are three reasons why you Bill borrow walls. Few of them now are being built for peace keeping, border enforcing reasons. It's a way to end a conflict that has no end; between the two Koreas, between the Turkish and Greek part of Cyprus, in a way between India and Pakistan, Ukraine and Russia. Even between Israel and the West Bank it is a way to define a border that if we had a two state solution picking up that would be the final border. And then you have two reasons that dominates the discourse. One of them is smuggling and terrorism and the other one is migration. But those reasons sometimes alternate or overlap. So it's pretty hard to distinguish them. So two third of them are built for that purpose.

AMT: We all remember the Berlin Wall coming down. In fact it was 30 years ago this year. I've got a clip here that I'd like you to hear. These are two Germans talking about what it felt like to stand on top of the Berlin Wall after the crowds started streaming across the border.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I can't describe my feelings. It's something unreal for me.

VOICE 2: If there are someone who sleeps for eight weeks and you told him what happened here. He thinks you're crazy. It's unthinkable.

AMT: Elisabeth Vallet, how did the fall of that iconic wall affect our ideas around the usefulness or function of walls?

ELISABETH VALLET: Well actually if you remember in 1989 it opened a almost a hippie era of international relations, where we believed that it was the end of borders me. Maybe even the end of state sovereignty or even the fading sovereignty of the state. We believed that peace would be dominating and that conflicts would be solved by the international community. It actually showed the good the positive aspects of globalization. And we overlooked the negative aspects of globalization. And when 9/11 arrived, it's as if that negative aspect of globalization showed its face. And that's when the only solution to that, governments came up with the one only solution which was building border fences, because there is no way to retain globalization, to contain globalization.

AMT: Well you've visited many other was that you study. Are there particular incidents or images from your visits to walls that stand out in your mind?

ELISABETH VALLET: Along the U.S. Mexican border, I did a lot of my research with my baby which was kind of interesting because I was less of a threat being a white woman with a baby. And I've been able to enter places I think I would not have entered otherwise. And having that baby allowed me to speak to mothers and to children, as a mother and not as a researcher I must say. But some of those moments were really touching. And it's sometimes really difficult as a researcher on the ground to put aside your emotions and analyze the data. And that was really striking. My boy has been running around with his you know [unintelligible] all along those walls. And we've met many people living at the foot of the wall and experimenting also mental illnesses due to living it at the foot of the wall. And that has been documented by psychiatricians during the Cold War era at the foot of the Berlin Wall.

AMT: The mental illness triggered by what?

ELISABETH VALLET: By the presence of the wall. The sense of closeness of being almost jailed.

AMT: Is it possible to generalize about how the public feels in these various countries about construction of wars?

ELISABETH VALLET: The work has been done by some of my colleagues in Europe. And yes at least for democracies, because one of the things my colleague Reece Jones from Hawaii has as shown is that democracies are walling themselves in more and more. And that group from Europe has shown that there is a link to be made between populism and the erection of the wall. It's an identity crisis. Who are we in a globalized world, in a democratic country that sometimes will trigger - along certain borders - will trigger the erection of those walls.

AMT: So are you telling me that some people then feel that there is security in the idea of a wall but other people see it as something that's controlling them?

ELISABETH VALLET: Yes absolutely. Because the what is said to achieve a security and it is linked to a perceived sense of insecurity. The further you are from the border the more you are prone to think that there is insecurity, or there are insecurities at the border and there is a need to erect a fence. The closer to the border the least you are prone to think that. And a border wall will just change the economic and political ecosystem and in the end it will create more insecurities. If you have a wall on one side military will be deployed because it doesn't work. On the other side you will see more and more smuggling, more and more Mafias, criminal groups because you need help to cross the border if you wish, if you want to claim asylum. It will increase the violence and generate more insecurity.

AMT: Fascinating. In other words the very thing that's being erected to avoid, it attracts.

ELISABETH VALLET: Absolutely.

AMT: Donald Trump has talked about how he wants the border to be impenetrable. What do you think would happen if we had more rigid borders like that?

ELISABETH VALLET: Basically nothing because there is always a way to go around. You will see those pictures of ramps where you can drive cars to go over the U.S. Mexican wall which is huge. You will see drones going above. You will see even there is that one catapult that was actually fixed on the border wall to send drugs on the other side. They found a tunnel last week and through the city of Nogales. So there are always ways to go around. And one thing is, the wall doesn't change a thing in the U.S. case since most of the trucks are coming into the U.S. through their regular ports of entry. So the world doesn't help anything, doesn't change anything. A border cannot be impenetrable. I would even say that a border is not meant to be that way.

AMT: Elisabeth Vallet thank you for your insights into this.

ELISABETH VALLET: You're welcome.

AMT: Elisabeth Vallet is an adjunct professor and scientific director in geopolitics at the Raoul-Danduran chair at the University of Quebec at Montreal. Now the history of the U.S. Mexico wall did not start with Donald Trump. We know that in the past politicians of all stripes have supported building more physical structures along that border, mostly in an attempt to control migration and drug smuggling.

SOUNDCLIP

RONALD RAEL: The reality is that one third of the border between the United States and Mexico has some kind of physical barrier dividing the two countries. There are different types of walls. Some are very tall, some are made of concrete, some are made of steel, some you see through, some opaque.

AMT: That is Ronald Rael and for the past 20 years he's been visiting the walls and fences that are ready along theU.S. Mexico border. He's a professor of architecture at the University of California Berkeley. He's got a new book it's called Border Wall as Architecture. And it contemplates the way those physical structures affect the culture, society and landscapes around them.

SOUNDCLIP

RONALD RAEL: As a professor of architecture I was interested in studying the wall. Primarily because I wondered if it was architecture. There's a quote that's attributed to a very famous architect whose name is Hassan Fathi. He was an Egyptian architect. Had a quote that said architects do not design walls but the spaces between them. And so I wondered about those spaces that lie between the walls, adjacent to the walls, parallel to the walls and how they are transformed. And if they are in fact somehow being designed as a consequence of the wall. And it's the consequence of those walls that matters.

[Music]

RONALD RAEL: I think there are many striking effects as the wall cuts to the borderlands. There are humanitarian outcomes. There are ecological consequences and there is a kind of wall culture that exists in the borderlands. And what I mean by that is that there was intention is to divide people and keep people away and apart. But the wall has actually brought people together in some really remarkable and interesting ways. So for example, there have been horse races that have taken place along the. A horse wasn't allowed to come into Mexico to do a horse race. And so there would be horse races with one horse in Mexico and another horse and stage racing alongside the wall and audiences on both sides cheering for their favorite horse. There have been moments where people have played volley ball over the wall to celebrate bi-national identity and to come together. And so playing volleyball over a wall asks really interesting questions. Is this illegal trade? As throwing a ball over the wall, is that actually illegal?

[Music]

RONALD RAEL: There is an artistic expression that occurs along the wall on both sides in fact. In one section of my book I talk about the border wall as an enormous art gallery. It's the largest art gallery wall in the world, and where muralists are painting the wall in acts of defiance and resistance. In a more conceptual example, the artist Ana Teresa Fernandez actually paints the wall blue and so she paints the wall blue in order to erase it. So it looks like the sky. And it has a remarkable effect. I talk about kind of a performance art piece where we often talk about the ways that people cross over the border tunneling under or cutting through or climbing over. But there is one case where a human was Cannon balled from the beaches of Tijuana into the beaches near San Diego nearly 200 feet and he landed safely in a net. On the other side. And so again I think these kinds of acts of creativity are also acts of resistance. These are moments when art becomes activism along the border. I think I have to remain optimistic. It seems to me that given the debate that's going on that there is reason to be optimistic. There's I would say a large percentage of the people based on what I have read are opposed to the construction of the wall. They recognize that for example terrorism isn't coming across our southern border, that illegal trade is coming only through ports of entry, primarily that people who enter our country and overextend their visa are coming by plane, that there are lots of reasons that maybe we shouldn't build a wall. So what I'm hopeful about is that we can redirect that energy not towards a singular wall that's kind of a very medieval idea to make a wall that has one singular purpose but we can focus our energies on what are much more complex problems. I think immigration is a very complex problem that can't be solved with a very simple solution like a wall.

AMT: Ronald Rael's latest book is called Border Wall As Architecture. The music you're hearing was his sole action by a group called Nortec Collective considered pioneers in music, fusing electronic sounds with traditional Norteno music. Just one part of the vibrant cultural scene on the Mexican side of the border.

[Music]

AMT: As we've heard, the US Mexico border wall has a history longer than most of us realize. Globally border wars are not quite as old as time but they do go way way back to ancient Sumeria. David Frye has delved into the history of walls and the role they have played over millennia, shaping the societies where they have been dealt. He's an historian and the author of Walls: A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick. David Frye is in Hebron, Connecticut. Hello.

DAVID FRYE: Hi Anna Maria.

AMT: Ronald Rael referred to medieval walls. How has the function and purpose was changed since the earliest ones that you have documented?

DAVID FRYE: Ah well we'd been building walls for 12,000 years. So they go back even [unintelligible] earlier than the medieval period. But for most of that time period, in fact essentially all of that time period, walls were built to deter invading armies. So the sort of wars that Elisabeth was just talking about and Robert was just talking about those had it very different function than the type that I have for the most part studied myself.

AMT: In other words the very earliest walls were meant to keep people out in a different way. It was to surround them so that they were safe?

DAVID FRYE: That's right. The need for security is I think fundamental and it is fundamental to communities as it is to individuals. But historically speaking there are two basic strategies that a community could choose to achieve security. One of those was that it could turn its men into warriors. It could take young boys and start training them from the earliest age to endure pain, to know how to weld weapons. The other strategy was to build walls. And as a unified more and more of these communities over time, I found that those two strategies produced completely different results. And the results, the outcomes of those strategic choices were astonishing I think. And I think in many ways they explode this sort of mythology that exists around walls nowadays that are so tied to our politics. If I could just give you an example. If you look back at the great ancient Greek cities of Sparta and Athens, the Spartans repudiated walls. They ridiculed the other Greek cities that built walls and they were determined that they would be defended by walls of men. But in order to do that their men had to undergo constant military training. And what resulted was a homogenous militaristic culture that was devoid of science and art. And on the other hand you had the Athenians. The Athenians built walls and behind those walls they found that over time their men had been liberated from constant no preparation. And so they became artists and playwrights and scientists and mathematicians and historians and political scientists. They were able to achieve that level of creativity, even when they were under siege you know. It's not what we expect to find but that is what I found replicated again and again and again example after example.

AMT: That's fascinating. That's why your new book you say no invention in human history played a greater role in creating and shaping civilization.

DAVID FRYE: I think that's exactly it. You know there's a misconception you know that wars have always been built by the haves to keep the have nots. But the reality is that if you go back to very early history, there were no haves and have nots. People are unable to produce all those material treasures until they had achieved that kind of security behind the walls that we essentially define civilization.

AMT: You know I spoke with Elisabeth Vallet, you heard just a little earlier, about the Berlin Wall which was actually a while that encased all of West Berlin, and it's like encircled it. US President John F. Kennedy reportedly said at the time 'a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war'. How come it was that viewpoint at the time?

DAVID FRYE: Well I think that viewpoint was held for only a short period of time before it became politically untenable. What was happening was the U.S. and the Soviet Union were thought to be on the brink of thermonuclear war. So this was a period of high tension. And a lot of that tension centered around Berlin in particular or West Brillion, because it was the hole and the Eastern European fabric. There were still people commuting in and out between West Berlin and East Berlin and shopping across the two sides of the city. So no one really knew the extent to which that situation in Berlin would escalate. And so the solution there was adopted by the East Germans was to try to build a wall around West Berlin, which was done initially entirely in one night in 1961, when they rolled out miles of barbed wire. And they started hammering posts into the ground. It's funny though, the initial response to that was the one that you just quoted from Kennedy. You know, saying, well, you know walls is a hell of a lot better off than a war. I think the initial take was it's not pretty but maybe this will diffuse tensions, maybe this will de-escalate things. That turned round quickly and the optics weren't good about not doing anything or saying anything about this wall. And as a result, wow, it's the most famous well that was ever built.

AMT: So if you look through your historical lens what has struck you about the debate going on in the U.S. over the border wall?

DAVID FRYE: There hysteria and I guess there's the history of wars and then there is the history of politics. And if the history of politics has taught us anything, and it's been going on for more than 2000 years now. It's that politicians are always raising and recycling issues. They're always dividing people, making people angry and in the long run it doesn't matter. You know we don't look back and care very much about who won the election 300 years ago, 700years ago, 2000 years ago. It all washes out. And so right now everyone's arguing about whether there is going to be this wall. We may get this war and we may not get this war. But it's not going to be the end of the world either way. Now the history of walls on the other hand I think also has a lot to teach us. And I think the history of walls is particularly fascinating if we're able to divorce it from the politics. But look. You know what does it teach us about whether there's going to be a wall? I mean I think I think it teaches us that there will be walls. It doesn't tell us whether there will be one great long border at the south of the United States, but there may simply be tens of thousands of micro walls instead. Because I think that if people have grown accustomed to security over the years, that lowers the threshold required to trigger their security. So look we're living in a time in which humanity has never been less violent than we are right now. And yet at the same time we're spending billions of dollars on home security systems and micro walls, you know gated neighborhoods and walled states, and so forth for the very wealthy. To be honest I expect to see that to continue.

AMT: David Frye good to talk to you. Thank you for your time.

DAVID FRYE: Thank you.

AMT: David Frye is an historian and author of a new book called Walls: A History of Civilization in Blood and Bridk. He joins us from Hebron, Connecticut. That's our program for today. Stay with Radio One for Q. You have Piya Chattopadhyay in this chair tomorrow. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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