Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2016

The AIH Transcript for March 16, 2017

Hosts: Carol Off and Jeff Douglas

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello, I'm Carol Off.

JEFF DOUGLAS: Good evening, I'm Jeff Douglas. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

JD: Tonight:

CO: The glory is still there, but the power is iffy. Hydro bills in Ontario have got so high that people are appealing to local churches because they can’t make ends meet. And now, neither can the churches.

JD: Pre-emptive spike. After a white rhino at a French zoo is brutally killed for its horns, a Chezch zoo decides to de-horn all of its rhinos before poachers even try.

CO: A step in the right direction. In the Netherlands, the center-right VVD Party defeats the far-right party of Geert Wilders. But not before Mr. Wilders forced it to harden its positions on immigration and integration.

JD: Holding for dear life. Hundreds of residents of Dallas are affected by a glitch in the city’s 911 service. Including our guest, whose husband died while he waited on hold for 20 minutes.

CO: The lowest coma denominator. You may dismiss the Oxford coma as superfluous and stupid. But in a complicated lawsuit the omission that punctuation mark proved salient, serious and significant.

JD: And… he won’t just jog your memory, he’ll sprint it. Do you want to improve your ability to remember stuff? Did I ask you that already? Well our guest is a memory athlete who will help turn your brain, currently a memory hut, into what he calls a “memory palace”. As It Happens the Thursday edition, radio that places the recollect call.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: Electricity bills pastor, Dutch election follow, memory study

Electricity bills pastor

Guest: Brian Horrobin

JD: If you live in Ontario, then you know that hydro can get expensive. It can get extremely expensive. Over the past decade, electricity rates have nearly doubled in this province. And in rural areas, where the cost of delivery is higher, the situation can be even worse. It's driven some people to their local churches to ask for help. Now, the churches themselves are having a hard time keeping up. We reached Pastor Brian Horrobin at the First Baptist Church in Wallaceburg, Ontario, near Chatham.

Carol Off: Pastor Brian, just how bad are the hydro bills for people in Wallaceburg? Brian Horrobin: Well, I think people have been facing increasing hydro bills for the last couple of years, but more pronounced here in 2016 and 2017. I've met people who've told me what they were paying a few years ago and what they're paying now — it's ridiculously out of reach to what it was.

CO: Tell me some of the stories people are coming and giving you.

BH: I have people come to my door, people I don't know, just people from the community, saying "someone told me I could come here and ask you if you could help me with some of my groceries." I`ll say to them, “Have you been to the Salvation Army? They’ll help with that.” “Yes, I’ve been to the Salvation Army, but I’m only allowed one visit a month there and I don’t have any more money for food. The reason I don’t have any money for food is because I took money I had and I applied it to my Hydro bill.

CO: Good heavens! And what are they asking you to do?

BH: Most of the time they'll ask, "Can you help me with some groceries?" I think they figure a church would fall in line more with that. Although I do have people that come out and say, "Llisten, is there any way you can possibly help me with my hydro bill?" We have a fund at our church, as many churches do, called a benevolent fund. It's just an offering we take up once a month. Some people contribute throughout the month. Basically, that money goes entirely to help people in this situation. Who need groceries, who need help with their bills, put gas in their car, this kind of thing.

CO: And how tapped out is that benevolent fund at this point?

BH: It's always been a good fund and it's always been a good level. But in the last couple of years, I have over-drafted the fund two or three times, I can't remember how many. Just because the need is so great.

CO: What does it tell you that people are having to choose between being able to pay their hydro bills and buying food for their families?

BH: Awful decision to make, you know, because especially families with children, you don't want your kid to be hungry. But how do you go to bed at night when you're trying to turn your thermostat down, you're doing everything you can, you do laundry at off-peak times, following all the rules and still not able to pay the bill off? It's really a terrible decision to put people in that they're forced to make.

CO: Do you know people who have had their power disconnected?

BH: Absolutely. They will call a friend, sometimes they’re adult people who have contacted their parents and said, “Look, I am behind on my bills and until I pay it, I can’t get my hydro back on. Can I crash at your place for a while?” A lot of people are doing that.

CO: And this is because, If I understand it, they can cut back all their usage of electricity all that they can. But if you live in a rural community, the cost of having that electricity delivered to those houses is what you are paying. And that is astronomically higher that it used to be. So that is what is really killing people isn’t it?

BH: Absolutely. And you are correct in that. They can be as vigilant as possible to cut down on usage: turning lights off and doing laundry at off-peak hours. But the delivery is still the same price, so you didn’t save anything on that.

CO: Can you give us a sense of what the bills are like? What's the cost of a hydro bill for a typical family now in Wallaceburg?

BH: I'll give you an example of a family I know. They live in a small three-bedroom, two-level house. They have six children, younger children. They are all under the age of 10. Their bills, three or four years ago were maybe $125, $130 per month, and his recent bill is approaching $400 a month.

CO: Good heavens!

BH: This is a man that's also laid off from his job. He is on EI, but he says it's been tight. So they are just kind of hanging in there, with the EI, and hoping winter is done and bills start to come down.

CO: You’re also dealing with Southern Ontario where there is a lot of jobs that have been lost in the manufacturing sector, so there are people struggling with the income as well?

BH: Definitely. Unemployment has been a big issue in our community. Here in Wallaceburg, we’ve had a lot of plant closures. I moved into the community in 1993 and there were a lot more factories up and running at the time and a lot of them have closed. In recent years, there was so redevelopment and new factories have opened, but still not near what this town was 20-25 years ago.

Are other colleges and other churches in Wallaceburg and in the region experiencing the same thing? Where they are being approached to help people with their hydro?

BH: Absolutely. This is very standard across the board.

CO: The Premier of Ontario has said that she is taking the responsibility for this. We know that people in Ontario are paying way above market rate for electricity. We have too much of it, we are selling it to the States at cost. So If this is all that’s happening what are people trying to get across to politicians about what they’ve done here?

BH: Well, I’ll give credit where credit is due. I am grateful that Premier Wynne has admitted her failing there. I think that is the first step to solving the problem; however we need to go beyond that. I think she needs to really listen to the people of Ontario. These are real people living in real situations. The Premier needs to listen to these people and I don’t envy her job. She has a very difficult job in leading our province but poor decisions were made to get us in this situation. Aggressive action needs to be taken to get us out of this situation.

CO: And she is promising some reduction by the summer. An average of 17 per cent reduction of hydro bills, so do you think that will make enough of a difference?

BH: I believe that's a good step, it's a positive step, I don't know. The horses are out of the barn though and so whether it's going to be able to recoup what people already lost is hard to say.

CO: Pastor Brian, thank you

BH: Thank you for having me.

JD: Brian Horrobin is the pastor at the First Baptist Church in Wallaceburg, Ontario. And that is where we reached him. You can find more on that story on the As It Happens website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Folk rock]

Dutch election follow up

Guest: Hans van Baalen

JD: After last night's election results in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders should have perhaps been disappointed, But the far-right candidate, who was handed a solid defeat, was steadfast in his response: Mark Rutte has not seen the last of me. Mr. Rutte, the incumbent Prime Minister, was confirmed for a third term. his center-right People's Party for Freedom and Democracy also known as the VVD topped the results with thirty three seats and while Mr. Wilders’s Party for Freedom Came in second place with twenty seats it will most certainly not be welcome inside a new Dutch coalition government. Hans van Baalen is a member of the VVD party and also member of the European Parliament. We reached him in Strasbourg, France

CO: Mr. van Ballen, you were in the Netherlands last night for this victory. What do people in your party, in the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, why do they say they were successful yesterday?

HANS VAN BAALEN: Well it means that after seven years of austerity policies in and the Netherlands we had two cabinets led by Mark Rutte, our leader, so we were the biggest party and we had some flak to say. I mean the people didn't like austerity, so we lost votes. We had in a parliament of hundred and fifty, forty one seats, and we have now thirty three. But we are still the biggest party. We can build a stable government and the Populist of Wilders had no breakthrough. They wanted a few seats, but they're outside of power and the coalition and that's for Le Pen in France and for other extremist a bad example.

CO: The austerity was the issue you mentioned. But in fact, this election seemed to be far more about immigration, about national identity in the Netherlands. One of those the slogans that Mark Rutte ran on was he said, “be normal” was the slogan. So what was the message on the issue of immigration and refugees that the party was sending out?

HVB: Well, from VVD, my party, we have said of course for people in need we have to find solutions — people from Syria. But it's better to provide solutions in the region to support Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and other countries also in North Africa that we have this mass influx. A million for Germany last year and almost ninety thousand for the Netherlands. Those who come should integrate, should speak the language. Wilders, of course, wants to show everybody out. That's a different thing that we are not advocating

CO: I mean his the more extreme message that he would want to prevent Muslims from entering the country. That he would ban the Koran, he would ban mosques and that some of the remarks he made about your Moroccan minority people clearly rejected that. But at the same time has he not changed the conversation in your country? Has he not shifted it to be about integration of people who arrive in your country? Has he not changed the way you're talking about this?

HVB: I think that that's too much on honor. Twenty five years ago, the leader of the Dutch Liberals, of my party, said people have to integrate, you can keep religion because we're a free country, you can talk at home and on the streets your language. But you have to learn Dutch as well, so this has been a tradition for my party and also Wilders discriminates. And to ban the Koran is crazy, so I don't think that Wilders really has made a change. But he made problems more apparent. I mean the fact that there was a time of political correctness people didn't speak about it. Wilders has identified some of the problems, but has offered no normal or reasonable solutions.

CO: but we heard Mark Rutte, the leader of your party, use language that surprised people just last fall. He was he was picking up it seemed on what Wilders was doing when he reacted to Turks in Holland who took to the streets after there was a failed coup attempt in Turkey. And Mr. Rutte said, “You should get out of here, go back to Turkey.” Did you not see Mr. Rutte shift somewhat in the rhetoric he has been using?

HVB: No and I must say the mayor of Rotterdam, who was born in Morocco, who is a Muslim and has said if you don't like our liberal society with its freedoms, if you don't want to accept it, you have no place here.” That's a message I support and I don't support discrimination that's the message of Wilders.

CO: You're saying that the one thing Mr. Wilders did not do is offer any solutions to the problem. So what are you saying is the solution? Is it entirely up to the immigrants themselves to find a way to integrate? Has your society or government done enough to help them do so?

HVB: Absolutely. I mean if you look for years all the subsidies, it has not worked. So we now say if you come to the Netherlands and if you don't speak the language, you can’t get a job. So you have to do so otherwise we can cut your social security. If they come to my country, you do it with a purpose to be part of this society.

CO: What feeling is there in Holland now about the refugees, principally from Syria many from Afghanistan, are you open to taking a percentage of the people who are trying to get into Europe?

HVB: The Dutch have always done so that's not the problem. We also want that other European countries I mean Germany is very receptive and very helpful. Sweden and those countries, but Central European countries do not want to take people also that refugees don't want to go there. So we should have burden sharing, if you come to the European Union it's not up to you to say I want to be in Amsterdam or in Berlin you might also go to Warsaw. People want to be safe and they can be safe also Warsaw not only in Amsterdam or in Berlin.

CO: On the issue of elections to come in Europe and many are saying that this is a some sort of a message or a beacon of what might happen later in elections in France and in Germany that maybe the populous parties are going to meet this similar fate. What do you think? Is this is a trend? Or do you think that that Holland and Denmark have been something unusual?

HVB: if you look at here in the Netherlands, there is a clear objection of this extreme righ- wing populism of the Wilders. So it means that the Liberals can defeat populists. We have two parties: center right VVD and centre-left, we will be in the same government and I hope that this is a beacon of hope to the French that Mrs. Le Pen is not unavoidable. We can block these extreme right-wing populists

CO: Mr. van Baalen, I appreciate speaking with you tonight.

HVB: with pleasure thank you very much

JD: Hans van Baalen is a member of the VVD Party in the Netherlands and a member of European Parliament for the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe group. We reached him in Strasbourg, France.

[Music: Jazz]

Memory study

Guest: Boris Nikolai Konrad

JD: If you thought the brains of the world's most brilliant minds were wired differently than yours, good news. They are not, you are brilliant, or at least you could be. After all as the old saying goes... it's something about great minds — it doesn't matter. I'm not worried OK; I just have not activated my dormant — very dormant — brilliance yet. But I will because a new study has found that with practice you and even I can make significant improvements to our memory and it suggests that our brains have the ability to develop what is known as a “memory palace”. Boris Nikolai Konrad coauthored the study. He has also broken world records as a memory athlete. We reached him in Nijmegen, Netherlands.

CO: Mr. Konrad, how easy is it to actually improve your memory?

BORIS NIKOLAI KONRAD: With a little bit of work it's quite easy. It doesn't happen in a moment, but as our study shows in the work I'm allowed to do for a while you certainly can improve your memory.

CO: And what's key to being able to do that?

BNK: There is quite a few number of memory techniques, but they all have the same foundation. They all use the same concept of using your visual memory. By using techniques that make information that's normally hard to remember going into visual memory, suddenly it's possible and by that you can quite quickly and quite readily improve your memory by a big margin.

CO: How does that work?

BNK: So there's a number of techniques. For the training I've done with people in our study and what I'm also doing with all my clients all the time. I train a method called the method of loci. In this method you pre-memorize a set of locations around a place you maybe know well. For example, your home or your hometown and then you can visualize these places and put images on there. So you can later in recall go back to the places and you will remember what happened at these places and what kinds of scenes you made up. And this will allow you to remember them much more than if you just try to cram it into memories the so-called traditional way.

CO: How did you test this theory?

BNK So in our study we first looked into so-called memory champions, actually I'm one of them, so we are people who like to compete in memory competitions. And they are quite common all around the world by now. And in these competitions you see people do stuff like memorizing more than two hundred names in fifteen minutes or a list of three hundred words in fifteen minutes. And we first investigated these people's brains and did not find any changes in the brain structure, but in how the brain regions were connected. And in the second part I worked as a memory trainer for a group of participants who underwent a memory training with me. And we looked in their brains before and after a six week training period of six weeks of thirty minutes training, I is a bit but quite doable and their brains to like change into the direction of the brains of the memory champions. So we could really show also in the brain that the training is the main reason why these people can do that things and actually the training performance itself was quite remarkable. People more than doubled their performance for example in the work of this learning task.

CO: Well, what was the training that you did with them?

BNK I did with them the training that I really taught them this method of loci. So we went around, I showed them different locations and how to connect them to a memory journey. I also let them experience a bit more about how memory training works.

CO: Can you give me an example of a memory journey?

BNK: One in my home for example, so I would just start with the front door as the first location and next to it is a clothes rack where I put my jacket, that’s number two. Then there's a mirror at number three, the door to the bathroom number four, there’s a bathtub in there that we use as a location. These locations your brain remember super easily because it's made to remember locations. Our ancestors need to know where is protection and where is food, so that works really well. Then I use these locations to imagine things happening there. For example, if it's a random wordlist I would just take the first words, let's just say it's cake, and then I would remember the first location was a door maybe it rings at the door and there’s someone with a huge cake as a surprise for me. If that happens of course I would remember and so do I if I just make it up a mental image. So I make up these scenes — these images — that then tend to stick super well in memory.

CO: Is it possible to do that and to accomplish what these memory champions do like yourself? Where they're able to take in and memorize hundreds of words in a very short period time?

BNK: Exactly that you can do it fast is just a matter of training. It's exactly the method I use. I actually hold the record for memorizing words. It was 280 in fifteen minutes, so all I did was I had 140 locations and I put two words in each location. And then it was just my training that I came up with the images quickly enough to store so many in such a short period of time.

CO: And is that the trick? Is that the technique that of most memory champions? Is that what they're doing?

BNK: it's what all of them do. We asked everyone in our study without exception basis on performance on this and connected techniques. There was not a single person would say well I just can't do it and compete in it. Everyone learned it and everyone seems to be at least using quite similar techniques and actually always had this method of loci technique.

CO: In your study this this group of students who you used for to test this out. Did they do as well as the memory champs? They improved, but how much did they improve in their memory?

BNK They improved by more than doubling their performance. So in a word list learning task at the beginning there were a little over twenty words memorized. At the end they were over sixty, which might have been even higher if we had given them more words. But we only gave seventy two because we didn't really expect them to do that well.

CO: Has this anything to do with what in Sherlock Holmes he reference to a “memory palace” is it the same?

BNK: In things like Sherlock Holmes and other media it is described a little bit over the top. So even memory leaders cannot store as much as Sherlock can in his memory palace, but the idea is quite the same.

CO: So you did this with students who had reasonable memories before and now better ones, you looked at the memory champs, is there anything that you have done that you have found that would be useful to the people who are losing their memories?

BNK: So there is a small but quite interesting number of studies we use this technique also in the form of brain training. And when we talk about early forms what in science called MCI or Mild Cognitive Impairment and it seems to still be quite beneficial . However, if you face dementia or the onset of disease, this stuff probably is too complicated to still be useful. For just anyone who's just maybe let's say regularly aging and realizing memory works different at sixty from when you were twenty, so this can be super helpful. But when you talk about dementia and diseased brains then maybe this stuff is too complicated.

CO: All right, we've learned something. Maybe we can all try this out. Mr. Konrad, thank you.

BNK: You are very welcome.

CO: Bye bye

JD: That was Boris Nikolai Konrad, a memory athlete. We reached him via Skype in Nijmegen, Netherlands. Mr Konrad recently coauthored a study that found that you can make significant improvements to your memory with practice. The research was published in the journal Neuron.

Part 2: Chzech zoo rhino, Dallas 911

Chzech zoo rhino

Guest: Jan Stejskal

JD: Earlier this month, we brought you the story of Thoiry Zoo in France, where a white rhino was killed and de-horned by poachers in the middle of the night. Now, a zoo in the Czech Republic has decided to take precautions. It will remove the horns of its white rhino population to prevent poachers from doing the same there. Jan Stejskal is the director of international projects at the Dvur Kralove Zoo and we reached him in Dvur Kralove nad Labem, in the Czech Republic.

CO: Mr. Stejskal, this seems like an extreme measure for your zoo to take. How have you decided on this option to remove the horns and the rhinos?

JAN STEJSKAL: Well, I have to say that we've been considering all the options that we could take for years. Because already from 2013, we knew they might be attracted to rhinos in a zoo. At the time, police in Kent in the U.K. warned our colleagues in the foundation that the rhinos could be targeted by poachers. So actually from the time, we've been considering all the measures we have to take to protect the rhinos.

CO: And so what are the chances that that your rhinos would be attacked by poachers in the way they were in this zoo in France?

JSL: you know it's very difficult to say whatever would be the target of an attack. But just for the context, Czech Republic has become smuggling up for illegal trade in rhino horn. There are gangs that operate in our country and not only in our country but across other countries in Europe. And we know from the past that there are breaks into museums where they stole head with rhino horn. And actually it was I think already in 2011, we lent our rhino horns to one exhibition that was about Africa, so we didn't organize this exhibition, but we lent it to the organizers and unfortunately they were stolen. So we know for years that this could be done.

CO: And how do you go about doing it? How do you remove their horns?

JS: You have to sedate the animal. I think that other keepers will try with some animals to do it even without sedation, but it's very difficult and only a few animals could take this. So you need to slightly or lightly sedate the animal and then you do it with a chainsaw.

CO: Oh dear, and does it hurt them physically?

JS: No not at all, rhino horn is similar to other nails or to other hair. So it's similar like if you cut your hair or your nails. So from a help point of view, it means nothing to them so I would say that the procedure is pretty safe.

CO: how does it affect them in any other way? I mean they're in a zoo, so I guess they're not defending territory the way they would in the wild. But is there any other behavioral problem that they would have from losing their horn?

JS: This has to be really considerate because if you would de-horn a rhino and then you would put it into enclosure with a rhino that would have a horn, then you could cause a really serious behavioral problem. So this is one thing that you have to think about. On the other hand, if you have the rhino de-horned completely I mean you know the whole crest then it should not cause any problem.

CO: As shocking is this is to take a chainsaw to a rhino’s horn and it's something you say is necessary, but we don't we're not hearing about other zoos that are doing this. So are you maybe overreacting in any way?

JS: Well, I think it's fair to say that actually similar things we have done in past already and you do it because of security of rhinos for example during transport. So it's not something that would be completely new even to the animals that are in a zoo. The other thing is that you know that even other colleagues have been considering to de-horn the rhinos and I've heard about one zoo in Belgium that they decided to do the same. So I wouldn’t say that it is an overreaction and the reason is that you know if you if you take into account everything that could happen then really good measure is to let everybody know that if he would consider attacking of a zoo there is nothing that he could get here.

CO: Some people are suggesting that the problem is that conservation areas or zoos are trying to prevent these rhino horns are being stolen. The problem is that there's a market for it isn't there? And not enough is being done to deal with the poachers and to deal with the market that has this high demand. Do you think there's more that should be done at that end of things?

JS: Well definitely, and we actually take part even in this because you know it's not only that we try to breed rhinos. And we actually even work in Africa because we send rhinos back to Africa, to national parks, to help them to establish a new populations. But the real cause is demand for rhino horn, especially in eastern Asia. So two years ago, we actually burned all the rhino horn stockpile that we have in our zoo just to bring attention to this problem. And actually just in November of 2016, our example was followed in Vietnam. So it's not like that we would believe that the burning of rhino horn with will stop poachers from poaching. But we believe that every drop will raise awareness and inform people who consume a rhino horn that what they do is actually in the end killing the animals. So we believe that this awareness could help them to understand that they should abandon using the horns.

CO: Well, there is a lot of education necessary here I think.

JS: Definitely definitely, we've got to work on the education, especially in eastern Asia countries. And I think you know it's changing because just a few years ago, you wouldn't hear about any campaign for example in Vietnam. Now, it is definitely different.

CO: Mr. Stejskal, thank you for speaking with us.

JS: I thank you're very much for your questions and your interest in this issue.

JD: Jan Stejskal is the director of international projects at the Dvur Kralove Zoo. And we reached him in Dvur Kralove nad Labem, in the Czech Republic. For more on the story, go to our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Ambient]

Winnipeg bus driver

JD: Last month, a bus driver by the name of Irvine Jubal Fraser was stabbed to death by a passenger in Winnipeg. Now, his fellow drivers find that they are fearing for their own lives not knowing what might happen at every stop that they make. CBC News drove along with two transit drivers in Winnipeg on Monday night. They recounted what it has been like ever since the incident.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: A bus drives down a road and makes stops]

FAITH DIETRICH: My name is Faith Dietrich; I've been driving with transit for almost five years. Since the murder, I've had one in particular that has told me that all bus drivers need to die. The 160 is a route that just about everyone will sign— it's a safe route. And to have that happen on a safe route, it just blew up through our minds and we just didn't know how to cope with it. And I started getting dreams —like bad dreams — and not being able to sleep. There are ads out there saying that safety is a language that everyone can speak, well not the bus drivers. You just feel like you're totally alone out there.

AVIE ERDILE: My name is Avie Erdile and I've been driving with Winnipeg Transit for two-and-a-half years. You know I've had people attempt to be violent with me. I've had to witness people being beaten up. And not being able to do anything about it. People being aggressive you know the verbal abusive. You know I had an individual get on the bus, didn't have fair, I said OK, that's fine go and have a seat and they took a swing at me. There definitely is the sensation of having the target on my back. Makes me apprehensive about get me on the wheel every day. My wife and my brothers and sisters are very worried about me, you know they worry that I'm not going to come home at the end of the day. Or if I do come home that I'm going to come home broken or bruised. I asked myself you know if it was me could I have done anything different? Would my family be OK if something like that happened to me? And the answer to both those in no. You put on a brave face and you get behind the wheel and you drive. The only option is going forward.

JD: That was Avie Erdile, before him you heard Faith Dietrich. They are two transit drivers in Winnipeg, opening up about their fears behind the wheel, since a stabbing last month that left their colleague, Irvine Jubal Fraser, dead.

[Music: Electronic]

Dateline: Indonesian tiger

JD: Dateline: Cisewu, Indonesia

[Music: Dateline theme]

JD: “Tyger, tyger burning bright. In the forests of the night. What immortal hand or eye. Could frame thy fearful symmetry?” That, of course, or perhaps not of course, but that is the opening stands of William Blake's poem “The Tyger”, a series of questions about what powerful being could possibly have designed such a terrifying creature. And it kind of applies here because the story is about a statue of a tiger. And it could be considered terrifying, but Blake's whole Tigers are mass scary thing doesn't really work in this case. It be more like: “Tiger, tiger, goofy face at a military base. What buffoonish hand or eye. Could frame thy physiognomy? See the military base in question belongs to the Siliwangi Military Command in Cisewu. The SMC’s logo is a picture of a tiger with bared fangs and angry eyes. And it is menacing and so it made sense that the base would also have a life-size statue of a tiger in front of it. And the statues body was fine — it was good. But the face, it did not convey menace, it conveyed something else: dopiness maybe or drunkenness or a desire to roll around in a meadow and have you scratch. It's belly it's actually difficult to get across just how un-fearful that tiger’s symmetry was. We have put a photograph on Twitter, so you can see for yourself how it's bared fangs look more like a kind of like the grin that you would have after one too many hits on a water-bong. And recently, when someone shared a photograph of the statue on social media it became an international laughing stock. And no one seems to know who made it. A military commander in Siliwangi told the BBC quote, ``Every unit has their own decision on how the statue was made, but sometimes the artist was not that good.” Unquote. well regardless, now the statue has been unmade. Displeased by the publicity, the soldiers were dispatched to the front of the base on Monday with chisels

and they destroyed it. Well, so long, silly tiger. You did indeed burn bright, but you were too funny for this world and I guess hilariousity killed the cat.

[Music: Indie rock]

Dallas 911

Guest: David Taffet

JD: ‘911 Emergency, please hold.” Since November, that is the message that some Dallas residents have been hearing when they call the city's emergency line. One day this month, hundreds of callers were put on hold for up to forty minutes. The city is blaming a technical glitch by a cell phone company that is flooding the system with so-called ghost calls. Now, some people are saying that the delay may have been deadly. David Taffet is a news blogger who called 911 after his husband Brian stopped breathing we reached Mr. Taffet in Dallas.

CO: David, first of all, I'm sorry for your loss.

DAVID TAFFET: Thank you very much.

CO: Can you take us back to March 6^th, the day you called 911, and tell us what was happening to your husband Brian at the time?

DT: Well, when I got home from work, he was very disoriented, but I was able to rouse him and get him around. I asked him if he ate anything that day and he said he hadn't eaten much, so I made some dinner and we sat down at the table. And we actually talked a little bit and had some dinner together. After dinner, he started to get a little disoriented again, but he said he was tired and was going to lay down. And he was really snoring loud. And then it just suddenly stopped, so I went over to him and I it didn't seem like he was breathing. So I called 911 and I didn't get through.

CO: What do you mean you didn't get through? What happened when you dialed?

DT: What I got was a recording that just said, “your call IS very important to us, please stay on the line.”

CO: This is the emergency line?

DT: That is the emergency line that's supposed to go through instantly. And I just stayed on hold, but the call cut off after a couple of minutes. So I called back and I was put on hold again and this time hold lasted twenty minutes until I finally got through to somebody. During that time, the message just kept repeating so I knew that I hadn't been cut off. I was doing chest compressions, I was breathing into his mouth trying to get him to breathe, but you can't do C.P.R. for that long a period of time.

CO: And so you’re doing C.P.R. and every now and then you get some indication that you're still on hold, but no one picks up?

DT: Right, I kept getting that recording over and over again, so I stayed on hold.

CO: And what happened when you finally got through?

DT: when I finally got through, our emergency services here are fabulous. I got through I said I need an ambulance. She said let me put you through to medical. I got through to somebody immediately — I mean that phone switched instantly. And they were they sent the ambulance; it took three minutes for the ambulance to get to my house. And in the meantime, they stayed on the phone with me while I continued to do compressions. Once the paramedics were there, they worked on him for about forty five minutes and then they drove him over to the county hospital where they continued to work on him for another hour, but we never really got him breathing again.

CO: He didn't make it?

DT: No.

CO: Tragic story that you went through. On March 6th reports are now that there were 360 emergency calls on hold that day.

DT: And I believe that. You know we're a big city, but there shouldn't be that many calls on hold. Every single one of them should have been answered.

CO: And why not? What have you heard is the explanation at this point?

DT: What they're saying is that something was going on with the T-Mobile system that's been going on since November. And what T-Mobile is doing is making what they're calling phantom calls. Phantom calls are when just randomly from people's phones that use T-Mobile, they're calling into 911. The person whose phone is being called from has no idea that that call is being made and it registers as a hang up call and a hang up call can't be ignored, they have to call back. So that's what bottling up the whole system.

CO: And why can't they fix this glitch?

DT: That's what we're asking. We're not getting a straight answer on that.

CO: Do you have any idea if other people lost loved ones?

DT: We know on Saturday night, a six-month-old baby fell and it was with a babysitter. The babysitter tried to call 911 and the phone was on hold for half an hour. And we know the baby died during that period.

CO: You have confronted the mayor of Dallas…

DT: I mean one of the reasons I did that was he knows me; he knew Bryan and I wanted it to be personal to him. That this isn't just some random people who are dying this is somebody he knew.

CO: What did you say to him?

DT: Well, what I said to him was, “You're telling us not to hang up. I didn't hang up the phone system hung up on me. And I said then I had to call back and it was twenty minutes till we got through to anybody. And who knows if getting into the hospital twenty minutes sooner would have saved his life?”

CO: So what is the city of Dallas doing about T-Mobile?

DT: Right now they're working with T-Mobile. T-Mobile’s president was there yesterday at city hall and hopefully they're fixing it. But they don't really seem to know what's wrong I don't think because if they did, they would have fixed this long ago.

CO: Meanwhile, what are they telling people to do if they're going to call 911?

DT: Don't hang up.

CO: But you didn't hang up.

DT: I know I didn't hang up that was my point. That's why this has to be fixed, no excuses.

CO: David, again I'm sorry for your loss and for also putting you through an interview when you’ve got such a bad cold. But I appreciate that he spoke with us, thank you.

DT: Oh sure, thank you very much.

JD: David Taffet waited on hold with 911 for twenty minutes while his husband died. We reached him in Dallas.

Part 3: Border crossing video game, Homeland lawyer

QC storm

JD: Quebeckers are still digging out from this week's storm. And so is the Surete du Quebec. The provincial police are left struggling to explain how they could have left three hundred drivers stranded for nine hours at night, in blizzard conditions, in the middle of the island of Montreal. The local mayors are not pleased. Premier Couillard has launched an external investigation. And when SQ spokesman Guy Lapointe met with reporters today, he began by telling them that the officer responsible had been relieved of their duties.

SOUNDCLIP

GUY LAPOINTE: The global situation whether it was the weather itself, the state of the roads, the number of people present, the fact that the snow kept coming on and on we're talking about maybe two three centimeters an hour. That person should have taken a decision earlier to switch to intervention because initially the objective behind the intervention was to reopen the lanes and to allow people to for move on. At a point much earlier in time, we feel that that person should have taken that this into changing intervention and head towards evacuating the people that were stranded there.

REPORTER: And why did you only realize at 3:30 in the morning that there were people stuck in their cars when those people were calling into local radio station since 10 p.m. at night?

GL: I don't think anything was realized in the time frame that you're giving. I think everybody knew. I think the thing is the decision that was taken the officer that was in charge of the operation pursued in the in the in the idea of reopening the lanes in order to let people leave the area. So he was obviously where the people were stranded. What we feel is that given that it was obvious that it would not work out, it would not be possible to open the lanes in a reasonable delay. He should have switched the intervention and required the evacuation. So it's not about knowing or not knowing, it's about making the right call — that's what it's about.

REOPORTER: Is that the only person who has lost their job or are there other people? And did that person have the sole authority to make that decision?

GL: I’m just going to go back, nobody has lost their jobs. We're talking about administrative leave. The person has been relieved of their regular duty pending the investigation. We’re not talking about an internal investigation is three weeks old. This investigation is just starting, so obviously it's not excluded that other measures will be taken. But it's too early for me to say at this point. But one thing is for sure, the person that was in charge of making that call on that night is that person. For us that's clear.

REPORTER TWO: What do you say to the public that was sitting in their cars for all those hours?

GL: That it's absolutely unacceptable. That the part that we control didn't go the way it should of. Obviously we're very very preoccupied with this situation. We're taking this very seriously. But again some of the variables we couldn't control. Some of the elements we had no control over. But for the part that was our responsibility, we feel that the job wasn't done properly

JD: That was Surete du Quebec spokesman Guy Lapointe speaking to reporters earlier today in Montreal.

[Music: Violin]

Border Crossing Video Game

Guest: Gonzalo Alvarez

JD: You are not a plumber trying to rescue a princess, or a giant yellow moth trying to eat or evade ghosts in a new videogame called “Borders”. You're a guy in suspenders and a sombrero and you're just trying to get to the other side alive. Gonzalo Alvarez is the designer of “Borders”. He's a twenty three year old student. We reached him in Austin at a South by Southwest video game convention.

CO: Gonzalo, first of all, what's the objective of this game, “Borders””

GONZALO ALVAREZ: The objective of the game is literally just to movie character from point A to point B. you have to try to cross the border being point B. but along the way, you have obstacles such as the border patrol agents and dehydration. And so you have to pick up water bottles to keep your character hydrated and use bushes to avoid having the Border Patrol see you. But those are officially the obstacles along the way that simulate what it's like in real life.

CO: So if you download “Borders” onto your computer, what do you see on the screen?

GA: You're going to see a pixilated video game. It has a nice pastel colour palette that I chose kind of reflect some Mexican culture. I didn't want it to be dark and gritty. So it looks a lot like the retro games that you played a lot back in the ‘80s — pixilated, minimalistic Mario-type graphics.

CO: You didn’t want it to be dark and gritty, but the reality is pretty dark and gritty isn't?

GA: Correct yes, and the narrative carries that. Really it was to show video games of not only an art form, a way of communicating an idea, but also to kind of speak about the problems that we're having here in America with all the immigration politics and just a lot of fear and hate going around because of it. And I just wanted to give my side of the story or really my parents side of the story of just how difficult it really was to cross the border. It's not like everyone crossing over every second, in fact, a fraction of those people make it out alive. So getting further in the game, you start seeing dead bodies and I left a lot of objects along the ground. So you'll find clothing, you'll find teddy bears, dresses and there were items kind of give a narrative that you know there was someone there before and it says something without me having to say it.

CO: In the game, if you're not successful in crossing the border what happens? What happens when you die in this game?

GA: So when you die in the game via either dehydration or the Border Patrol catching you it actually drops a skeleton exactly where you died. So once you start the game over to try to play again, you'll see a skeleton exactly where you were the time you played before. The skeleton again adds to the message of just how many people die crossing the border and their unnamed, so you can't identify who they were.

CO: You're an American citizen. You didn't have to do this border crossing in reality, so where do your ideas come from?

GA: Growing up my parents they would always just tell me the stories of all the hardships they had to go through and basically kind of trying to push me to be like, “Hey, you know you gotta wake up to go to school and you can't complain about it if we did all this for you to be here.” And so they would just tell me other stories about you know the mosquito, which is a code name for the helicopter, which is also in the game. And then my dad fell upon a skeleton once in the desert. And I guess it was just a weird experience to find that and that's another thing that you know inspired me to put skeletons in the game. Luckily I didn’t have to do that, but my parents unfortunately did.

CO: so your father was able to get in at a time when you could get an amnesty and become an American. What about your mother she had more troubles didn't she?

AG: So my dad did do that and then he went back to Mexico, fell in love with my mother and it’s funny. Actually that was her honeymoon wish was she wanted to go to America and so my dad helped try to cross the border. And they failed about three times I believe and my mother got caught and just got sent back. And my mom had to you know just go through all the stuff that is in the game as well as things that aren't in the game. And I remember him telling me a story about her getting lost and him having to spend an entire day just trying to find her and it being one of the most frightful experiences of his life.

CO: What do your parents think of this game that you've created?

AG: They don't really know much about games or a lot of pop culture or anything, so that they almost kind of find it funny that you know their son made this game. But they're really just I guess proud to see and excited to see the stories that they told me visually represented in my video game and they're very proud to see that.

CO: And what are people saying who have played the game?

AG: Well, there's both positive and negative feedback. But a lot of people are just saying you know for your first game you know it was only made in seven days with two other developers. A lot of people are just impressed by I guess how fast we made it as well as they think it's a fun game, but they also like the narrative. But I also had a lot of negative feedback from I guess more xenophobic or for lack of better terms like racist people. And so it's been interesting to see the different feedback, especially from locals.

CO: You want people to play “Borders” and to understand the experience. Is that possible I mean in games do people have an empathy for the characters?

AG: Yes, I believe the video game medium is a very powerful medium. It combines all the other mediums into one. You have video and you have audio, but the difference is with videogames you have interactivity. And I feel like that interactivity allows a person to actively participate. In whatever they're doing. So I feel like video games are powerful in being able to simulate experiences.

CO: In “Borders” you can cross the border — you can win this game — but the stories we're hearing so often now is how difficult it is even after you've managed to come to the United States. People being sent back and being rounded up. Is there a part two to this game? Is there another second version of “Boarders”?

AG: You know there isn't actually at the moment and it's something that we tought about just because that's not the final step. So I'm not sure, it might happen and it might not. But it could be interesting.

CO: It’s happening in reality even if it's not happening in video game.

AG: Yeah, it is.

Gonzalo, I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

GA: No, thank you Carol.

CO: Good luck with your game.

GA: I appreciate it.

JD: Gonzalo Alvarez designed a video game called “Borders” wherein you are someone trying to cross the border between Mexico and the U.S. We reached Mr. Alvarez in Austin. And to play the game, or to learn more about it check out our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: hip-hop]

Newfoundland snow house

JD: The last time As It Happened spoke with Janice Gould, she told us about the excavator at her home in Port au Choix, Newfoundland. Crews were digging her house out of the snow after storms had buried it. This was in March of 2014. According to a CBC article at the time, snow was two-and-a-half meters over the roof of her house at one point. Well after a blizzard in the area last weekend, Ms. Gould and her husband found their home in a familiar state. Here's how she described it to the CBC's Bernice Hillier.

SOUNDCLIP

JANICE GOULD: Our house got buried again. Well, partially, it is not quite as bad as it was last time. But not good.

BERNICE HILLIER: How did you find out that this was happening? Were you inside the home?

JG: yeah we were, the storm started that evening and as it progressed into the night. We could see that snow was building up quite bad behind the house. We stayed up late kind of nervous you know. And about 4 a.m. we decided we better get some sleep because we are going to have a lot of work to do tomorrow. And we laid down and weren’t very long into bed just dozing off and then bang! Jumped up both of us and the snow had peaked on the hill behind the house and avalanched back down and hit the house.

BH: So that was the sound you heard?

JG: Yeah, it was scary. It scared both of us.

BH: How long did it take to dig out of this one?

JG: Three days maybe, but the roof was five hours or maybe a little longer.

BH: And you were up there, I don't know if you were up there now Janice…

JG: Yeah, I was.

BH: But there were snow blowers on your roof once again?

JG: yeah Rick, was up there and we had three guys that drop by to help us. Like two of our neighbors down the road and another guy that helped a couple of years ago. And they came and shoveled out the windows for us and helped shovel off the roof of the house while Rick was clearing it with the snow blower.

BH: Has it changed the way you feel about winter? I mean people who live in rural Newfoundland are pretty hardy bunch, but I'm just wondering if this changes how you feel about the winter weather?

JG: Yes, I love winter, but I dread it now.

JD: I bet! That was Janice Gould speaking with Bernice Hillier on “The Corner Brook Morning Show” earlier today — probably this morning.

[Music: Up tempo]

Homeland lawyer

Guest Ramzi Kassem

Ramzi Kassem relly never liked the television series “Homeland”, at all. He had problems with the show and he told people what his problems were. And when artists decorated the shows set with Arabic graffiti that read “Homeland is racist”, he agreed with that. Now though, Mr. Kassem is a paid consultant on “Homeland”. He's also a professor at the City University of New York's School of Law. And that is where we reach him.

CO: Ramzi, what's wrong with this series “Homeland” from your point of view?

RAMZI KASSEM: well, I watched parts of the first season and then I would sort of tune in and out in subsequent seasons. And what I noticed was that the Muslim characters portrayed on the show were almost invariably terrorists, or affiliated with terrorism, or sympathized with terrorist organizations. That was true across the board from you know the tailor, to the soldier, to the professor, to the reporter, to the imam in an American city. And I found that deeply problematic. I thought it reinforced very harmful stereotypes that you know legitimize the real world policies both here in the United States and overseas.

CO: And we saw that, in fact, this quite extraordinary story when some Arabic graffiti that was part of the set of one of the “Homeland” episodes and it said, “Homeland is racist”, and the show didn't know that it went to air as such. So obviously people agreed with you?

RK: yeah, and I was aware of that action and I thought it was a very clever protest action. I was actually also impressed with the reaction that the show's producers gave when that incident happened in their last season — the fifth season. I thought that was a very mature reaction on their part. They didn't set out to suit the graffiti consultants who had you know undertaken that action. They just said you know it's their right to express themselves and we aim to provoke thoughtful responses and left it at

That.

CO: And how did the show makers come to approach you to see if you would help them get it right?

RK: They contacted me about a year ago. I believe they had read some articles that I had written online. They had read about my work and the work of the two clinics that I direct “A clear Project” and “The Immigrant and Noncitizen Rights Clinic”. And I think that's the reason they got in touch with me initially and because of my familiarity with how the surveillance of Muslim communities domestically plays out here in New York City at the hands of the F.B.I. and the N.Y.P.D. My initial reaction was that they had the wrong guy because I really was not a fan of the show.

CO: So what did they say after you told them that?

RK: you know they insisted on at least having you know some preliminary phone conversations and you know I told them that I'd be open to it as long as they were open to hear what I had to say without any filters or without pulling any punches. And they were open to that and they said that, in fact, they were positively interested in and sort of hearing critical perspective. And you know our first couple of conversations were really focused on you know me airing my critique of the show as I understood it as I had experienced it. And then you know we got into the specifics of the direction that they wanted to take their next season and we started talking about that and I tried to shed light on the different questions that they were considering.

CO: So can you can you tell us a bit about the narrative? Whatever you can tell us without spoiling it for people who are going to watch it. What can you tell us about the lawyer and the client that is part of the series?

RK: This season — the sixth season of “Homeland” — is set in New York City and I think the main character, Carrie Mathison, is no longer with the CIA In fact she's partnering with an Arab-American, Muslim-American attorney who runs a clinic had a law school and a non-profit that serves predominantly Muslim communities here in New York City who are being targeted in various ways by the government and by the police. And so Carrie and her partner, the lawyer and professor, come to represent a young Muslim in New York or from Brooklyn who is accused of material support for terrorism?

CO: The lawyer that you mentioned is modeled on you. You are the person that they are trying to detect this they can. What’s it like to see yourself in that context?

RK: Obviously the writers are free to draw inspiration wherever they want to draw inspiration. I think there are some limits in terms of what names they can use, but basically as long as they don't use my name you know they're free to draw inspiration from my work. Just like they're free to draw inspiration from anyone else's work out there. You know, of course, on some level it's flattering that they found inspiration and in the work that my students and I do in our clinics at CUNY Law School. But there is you know so much work that goes on here in all of our clinics at the law school and you know the rights community generally that goes unrecognized. And, of course, you know the work has its own reward, but I think it's important to keep that in mind. you know the character I mean I really had no say in the inception of the idea and I'm not a writer, I'm not credited as a writer on the show. My job was to make sure that their portrayal of these investigations in the legal process was realistic of how and attorney-client conversation goes in a prison for example. And that I also saw it as my duty to point out to them when they were unfairly reinforcing negative stereotypes that you know result in real world harm because of the show's vast viewership. That was one of them most important things I wanted to get across to them that even though their mission is to create an entertainment. They actually had a fairly important social responsibility by virtue of the broad viewership that they — had how popular their show was — and the fact that you know many Americans and many decision makers and many people the world over get their information about you know Muslims and about certain regions of the world and about national security policies from that show.

CO: All right, well people who return to the show or continue to watch this show “Homeland”. We'll see if you made a difference at all. I appreciate speaking with you, thank you

RK: Carol, thank you, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

CO: Bye bye

RK: Bye

JD: Ramzi Kassem is a professor at the City University of New York's School of Law. He's also a paid consultant on the television series: "Homeland". We reached him in New York City.

[Music: Folk]

USA Gymnastics

JD: The image of USA Gymnastics began to crack last year. The Indianapolis Star published an investigation showing that over the past two decades, 386 gymnasts alleged they had been victims of some form of sexual abuse. And today, the Olympic organizations president, Steve Penny, resigned. The pressure had been mounting since last week, when the U.S. Olympic Committee called on him to resign over the way he was handling the allegations. Last December, Carol spoke with Indianapolis Star reporter Mark Alesia on As It Happens about these systemic problems he had found. Here's part of that conversation, from our archives.

SOUNDCLIP

CO: What puts you on the path of this investigation into sex abuse and domestic?

MARK ALESIA: There was a prominent Olympic coach from Indianapolis, he had coached two Olympians. And he was arrested on molestation charges and he ended up killing himself in jail well awaiting trial. So the issue has certainly been on our radar, but what really got us going is my colleague got a tip about a civil suit where a victim of sexual abuse was suing USA Gymnastics accusing it of negligence. She says that the USA Gymnastics received warnings about a coach who abused her, who's now in jail, and that they should have done something before she was harmed. Part of that case had 54 files from USA gymnastics of 54 separate coaches filled with sexual abuse complaints and these files had just literally been filed away and not reported to authorities.

JD: From December of 2016, that was Indianapolis Star reporter Mark Alesia telling Carroll about the systemic sexual abuse children experienced in centers affiliated with USA gymnastics. Today, the organization’s president resigned.

[Music: Rock]

Goldfish Canal

JD: There's an old Dutch game called "koekhappen" -- meaning "bite the cake." What you do is, you cut an ontbijtkoek -- that's Dutch breakfast cake -- into slices and then you hang the slices from a laundry line on pieces of string. The first person to eat a whole slice of ontbijtkoek off the string, without using their hands, is the winner. And now, there's a new Dutch game that we'll call "vangst goudvis" -- meaning "catch the goldfish." What you do is, you dump 280 orange fish into a canal in Veenendaal, in central Netherlands. Then, eight months later, go back to the canal and remove 80 of the fish -- but they have to be the 80 right ones. The cake-eating game is an old favourite. The goldfish game has never been played before. Its first-ever contestant will be a guy named Hans van Manen. Last year, Mr. van Manen and some local businesspeople in Veenendaal had an idea: to create a tourist attraction by populating the local canal with exotic fish. And so, in June, he dropped 280 of those fish -- two hundred golden orfes and eighty goldfish -- into the waterway. Some of you may already be wondering whether you can just do that. The answer is yes and no. Yes, you can -- but no, you shouldn't. Which Mr. van Manen has found out the hard way. The Netherlands Enterprise Agency has given him until April 8th to remove the invasive fish from the ecosystem where he so obliviously chucked them. But there's a catch to what they want him to catch: the goldfish are the ones that could mess things up. So he has to somehow pluck just those 80 goldfish -- and leave the two hundred almost identical golden orfes behind. It's going to be a long process for Hans van Manen. And we'll remind him, unnecessarily, not to cast his net too wide -- because all that glitters is not goldfish.

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

March 16, 2017 episode transcript

Social Sharing

More from this episode