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The Current Transcript for August 22, 2018

Host: Ioanna Roumeliotis

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: I think he's a wonderful man, obviously very loyal and very dedicated to Mr. Trump. I think he's going to be not just a good president, I think he's going to be a great president.

IOANNA ROUMELIOTIS: That was then lawyer, Michael Cohen back in 2017 on the eve of his client's inauguration as the U.S. president. Cohen would later tell a reporter that he'd take a bullet for Donald Trump, but after his guilty pleas yesterday implicating the president in illegal campaign violations, the opposite may be true. Cohen's pleas came on the same day that the president's former campaign manager Paul Manafort was found guilty on multiple charges. A double blow against two of the President's men. What it all means, first up today. Then, politics north of the border, increasingly being driven by tensions around asylum seekers flowing across the border.

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A woman heckles Prime Minister Trudeau in French at a corn-roast south of Montreal.

IR: A heckler, south of Montreal, questions Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about the mounting cost of asylum seekers entering her province. But according to the PM, it's a racist line of attack. Video of the encounter last week continues to spark discussion about diversity, identity and what it means to be Canadian. And as the 2019 election comes into focus, those sometimes thorny issues may be defining the debate. Our political panel takes that on in half an hour. Also when ISIS occupied his home city of Mosul, Iraq, he started blogging anonymously.

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VOICE: At that moment, I realized that if I don't try, the history of Mosul in this very critical time, I know that we will lose Mosul forever.

IR: A feature interview with the man known as the "Mosul Eye," in an hour. I'm Ioanna Roumeliotis and this is the summer edition of The Current.

Trump could face federal conspiracy charge, says law prof

Guests: Renae Merle, Mica Mosbacher, Jens David Ohlin

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VOICE: Fake news and the Russian witch hunt. We got a whole big combination. Where is the collusion? You know they're still looking for collusion. Where is the collusion? Find some collusion.

IR: It may have been a dark day for the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, but you wouldn't know it from his Make America Great Again rally in West Virginia last night. The names of Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort did not come up, but their guilty pleas and criminal convictions respectively, surely rocked Team Trump yesterday. Mr. Manafort, who is President Trump's former campaign manager, was found guilty on eight counts, including bank fraud and filing false tax returns. MR. Cohen A long time personal lawyer to Donald Trump, pleaded guilty to tax evasion, bank fraud and campaign finance violations and perhaps most damning, Cohen said he had acted "in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office." The reverberations from both cases are continuing today. Washington Post reporter Renae Merle was in the New York City courtroom when Michael Cohen pleaded guilty yesterday. And we've reached her in New York City. Hello.

RENAE MERLE: Hi, there. Thanks for having me.

IR: Renae, describe the reaction in the courtroom. Take us in there, when he entered his plea.

RM: Well the courtroom was largely silent and pretty tense. I feel like everybody was being as quiet as possible, so we couldn't, so nobody would miss a word. But as Cohen was going through all of the charges that he was pleading guilty to, when he got to the last two that involved campaign finance violations and he mentioned that he was doing these illegal things at the direction of a federal candidate, which we know to be Donald Trump. There was certainly like a rustle in the crowd. Not quite a gasp, but there was a reaction from the people in the audience that he was implicating directly the president in his illegal acts.

IR: Well take us back and give some context for our listeners. What did he say about counts seven and eight? And in what way was President Trump implicated in those charges?

RM: So count seven or eight and seven and eight are basically that he violated campaign finance laws and that he worked secretly to pay off two women who were accusing the president of having an affair and he worked to silence them in order to "not impact" or to "impact the election." That he was working in coordination with the president to silence these women so that their stories would not get out before the November election and impact the election.

IR: Well, Cohen will be sentenced in December, what sort of sentence is he facing?

RM: Well he's pled guilty and he has a plea arrangement for 46 to 72 months, three or five years, but the judge may clear to tell him that of course the judge doesn't have to abide by that. And in reality he could face the charges that he pled guilty to include a maximum of more than 60 years. So he could face more than a decade in prison, though his plea agreement calls for far less.

IR: Now his guilty plea as everyone knows, came on the heels of Paul Manafort's guilty verdict. Together, how significant are these cases in the wider investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller?

RM: And also interesting is these things were happening at about the same time, two or three hundred miles apart. I actually didn't know about the Manafort guilty verdicts initially because I was in the courtroom and didn't hear about it until I left. They take away your phones when you're in the courtroom. And they're pretty significant, obviously on the Cohen side, Cohen's attorney has made clear that he's willing to work with Mueller and that he has a story to tell to the Special Counsel. On the other side, the Manafort convictions are also significant. They're the real first victory for the Special Counsel, which identified the case against him and brought it to trial.

IR: OK. Thanks for your time.

RM: Thank you.

IR: Renae Merle is a reporter for The Washington Post. She's in New York City. Critics of the U.S. president have been describing yesterday's courtroom decisions in pretty dark terms, but not my next guest. Mica Mosbacher is an advisor to the Trump 2020 campaign and author of the upcoming book, The Hurricane Factor. We've reached her in Austin, Texas. Hello.

MICA MOSBACHER: Good morning.

IR: Mica what do you make of yesterday's developments? What do you think they mean for President Trump?

MM: Now I think, while these charges are serious for example in terms of Manafort, they actually have nothing to do with the president in terms of the tax issues and the fact that Manafort has been indicted for issues involving taxes going back prior to the presidential election of which he was there for just a short period of time to serve a specific task, which was to help with the delegate process during the GOP convention. In terms of Cohen, if this case involved ordinary citizens like John Smith and Mary Jones, it would probably never be the focus of international scrutiny because quite simply according to federal election laws in the U.S., if you exceed campaign contributions, which are $2700 to a federal candidate or $5000 in the general election cycle, you pay a fine or return the money that's donated. Secondly, there's a statute that reads that you must knowingly and willfully violate campaign election laws and I doubt that Cohen knew that a non-disclosure regarding his secret payment to Stormy Daniels also known as Stephanie Clifford, was in direct violation of the FEC laws. So you've got some holes in that process right there. Additionally, he said on a tape leaked to CNN that then candidate Trump had no knowledge of these payments. And Giuliani said in a statement yesterday that there is a pattern of lies regarding Cohen. So we have a credibility gap there. As far as the tax evasion, you cannot complete the two. It's highly unlikely that candidate Trump was aware or ever directed Cohen not to pay his taxes.

IR: Mr. Cohen, Ms. Mosbacher, Mr. Cohen is the one facing jail time and his.

MM: Absolutely. Not Trump. That's the important part and Trump by the way is not a defendant in this case and was only named a federal candidate.

IR: But he was directly implicated. He was directly implicated.

MM: No he was indirectly implicated. That is the point and additionally, you have Cohen stating originally that President Trump, then candidate Trump, did not know about these payments. So there are some holes in the theory and I have to say that in the United States right now there is a deep distrust of the judicial system. It's evident after spending over $17 million of taxpayer's money that Mueller still has not been able to prove collusion, which is not a crime. Secondly, there is the other issue here that Hillary Clinton, despite overwhelming evidence was cleared by then director, Comey of the FBI, of any wrongdoing. You have five plus agents, FBI agents, McCabe, Strzok, Lisa Page that have now either been removed or demoted in the Department of Justice. So there's deep distrust in this country. Deep distrust.

IR: Can I just in there for a second. I have to jump in here. I have to jump in here and I'd like you to address what is making headlines, the fact that Michael Cohen's lawyer Lanny Davis tweeted two hours after the guilty plea he said, "Today he stood up," he's referring to Mr. Cohen, "and testified under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election. If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn't they be a crime for Donald Trump." Can you address that?

MM: Yes. First of all, Lanny Davis has direct ties to Hillary Clinton. He's been on the case for about a month. There was 1.3 million documents. I doubt that Lanny Davis has had time to review all of those documents, it would take a huge team and months to do so. Secondly, this does appear to be politically motivated in terms of tying now President Trump to the charges. His name was never listed in any document. He is not a defendant in this case.

IR: What do the cases say though in your perception, what do they say about Mr. Trump, if these top level people he chose to have in his close circle have admitted to crimes or have been convicted of them?

MM: It absolutely is not a reflection of Donald Trump. I'm sure that he would be the first person to say that he is disappointed that these individuals obviously did not pay taxes. That is not something that is within Donald Trump's control. Secondly, I know Paul Manafort. He actually worked with my husband when my husband was finance director for George Bush senior and ultimately Secretary of Commerce. I have to say that going back to President Ford, Paul Manafort had an excellent reputation in terms of his political savvy and also his skill in directing delegate processes and wooing delegates during GOP conventions. I would be the first person to say that, while I did not know him socially and certainly he had no idea of the fact that he obviously was not paying taxes, among other things, I was as shocked as anyone else. He's a good person. So I'm kind of reeling from this knowledge as well. It was well hidden.

IR: You know there are many observers who see the conviction and guilty pleas yesterday as very significant. And now here I'd like you to listen to a clip and respond to it. This is Alan J. Lichtman, he's a distinguished professor of history at American University in Washington D.C. and the author of The Case for Impeachment.

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VOICE: The conviction of Paul Manafort also puts the lie to President Trump's claims that the Mueller investigation is nothing more than a rigged witch hunt. If it's a witch hunt, they've caught a mighty large number of witches. Mueller keeps scoring success after success in getting guilty pleas and now getting a major conviction in his first serious trial.

IR: Mica Mosbacher we only have a few seconds left, but how do you respond to that?

MM: I agree with President Trump, it's a witch hunt. We've gone on for months and months and months. They have yet to prove collusion with the Trump campaign and the scope of this investigation has widened and is pulling in other individuals that are feeling I probably believe that they are being squeezed, but again, it has nothing to do with the campaign.

IR: OK. We're going to have to leave it there. Thank you very much for your time. Mica Mosbacher is an advisor to the Trump 2020 campaign and author of the upcoming book, The Hurricane Factor. She's in Austin, Texas. So when they write the history of the Trump White House, will the Cohen-Manafort Decision Day be a turning point? For another point of view, we've reached Jens David Ohlin. He is vice dean and a professor of law at Cornell Law School. We've reached him in Ithaca, New York. Hello.

JENS DAVID OHLIN: Hello.

IR: Hi. Can you give me your reaction to what you just heard from Mica Mosbacher?

JDO: It's kind of hard to react to that because it was a kind of a word solid defense of Trump. I think it was a disaster of a day for Trump. Of the two, I think the Cohen developments are the most significant and contrary to what we've just heard, I think that Cohen is placing Trump in really serious legal jeopardy. And I say that because we're going to have a one-two punch here of Cohen's audio recordings, which have already been provided to the government, which include recordings of Trump and Cohen discussing the payments. And then on top of that, Cohen is probably going to be willing to testify and he'll be able to authenticate those recordings and he'll also be able to put the recordings in context and talk about what preceded the recording and then what happened after the recording. And I think the combination of those two things will make it very difficult for Trump to escape criminal liability. And I think Trump's criminal exposure here is not just for campaign finance violations, but also for a federal conspiracy charge because he was clearly working with Cohen to effectuate this campaign finance violation. And so because it's two people involved, that turns into a conspiracy charge and that's a very serious criminal liability.

IR: You know his lawyer is saying that he will not accept a pardon, that he is all about telling the truth now. How do you think that will affect Trump in the coming days?

JDO: Well I think Trump has got a very difficult decision in terms of wielding his pardon power. He's very enamored with the fact that he has this unreviewable power to pardon people, at least if they've been accused or convicted of a federal crime and he may end up pardoning Manafort. That's a possibility, but I'd be surprised if he pardons Cohen.

IR: Well he doesn't want one. Cohen's lawyer is saying he doesn't want a pardon, that he wants to tell the truth. And the question is, how do you think that will affect Trump?

JDO: Well that's my point is that you could pardon Cohen and Cohen could still testify against Trump. Right? Receiving a pardon, doesn't require you to stay silent. And so by Trump giving Cohen a pardon, it wouldn't in any way silence Cohen or prevent him from testifying. And I think the relationship between Cohen and Trump is so poisoned at this point because Cohen is very bitter about the fact that he gave so much to Trump and then received so little in return that I think Cohen now is very invested in the idea that he wants to tell the truth. That he wants to expose what Trump did and he also wants to explain to people hey, if I did anything, I did it because Trump directed me to do it and I was acting as his attorney. And as you know the fault lies with Trump on many of these matters.

IR: You know people will grab onto the fact that Cohen's plea directly implicates Trump in criminal activity. What are the chances President Trump himself could face prosecution?

JDO: Well I think he could face prosecution after he leaves office. He won't be indicted.

IR: Why can't you face it now?

JDO: Well there's a big legal debate in the United States about whether or not a sitting president can be indicted. Whatever one's views are about that legal matter, it's clear that the Justice Department's policy on the matter, which has been in place for several decades is that a sitting president can't be indicted and Mueller is a employee of the Justice Department. He's a special prosecutor, but he's housed within the Justice Department. And so he's bound not only by the laws of the United States, but also by current Justice Department regulations. And so I think the smart money is on the idea that Mueller would not you know, he would feel constrained by those regulations and so he won't try and indict the president. But as soon as the president is removed from office through impeachment, as soon as the president is voted out of office in 2020, if that's the result of the next presidential election, he could be indicted at that point. And I'd also say it's possible for Trump to be named as an unindicted co-conspirator in legal filings in the Cohen case and I'd be very watchful of whether or not that occurs. That was something that happened during the Watergate grand jury indictments. Nixon was named as an unindicted co-conspirator along with all of his aides who were indicted for the Watergate cover up and I'd be very interested to see whether or not the same thing happens here.

IR: Beyond doing that, what other action could Robert Mueller and his team take against Trump?

JDO: Not much. I think that they're going to issue a report and the report is going to deal with you know everything from you know as we know the Russian troll farm activity, the hacking into the e-mail servers. There's going to be an entire part of the report on obstruction of justice and I think we're also now going to see a major section of the Mueller report sent to the Justice Department and ultimately to Congress that's going to outline a conspiracy to violate campaign finance regulations. And so there's now going to be a conspiracy section of the Mueller report that's going to be released to the public and it's going to be released to Congress. And I think those allegations are very much different from the rest of the allegations because the rest of the allegations very much touch on Trump's inner circle, but this one for the first time is one that's going to Trump, is going to touch Trump personally because of Cohen's audio recordings and because of Cohen's testimony.

IR: What does it do you think to the credibility of Robert Mueller's investigation? The fact that Trump has been dismissing it as a witch hunt. How do you see this affecting that dialogue?

JDO: Well first of all, as an objective matter, I would say that Mueller I think is very effectively countered the idea that this is a rigged witch hunt because he's now not only secured indictments against many individuals and organizations. He now has a guilty plea from Cohen and the convictions in the Manafort case, which involved convincing a jury of his peers in federal court, an objective group of U.S. citizens who are you know hearing the evidence and deliberating in secret and they decided that Manafort was guilty. And now Cohen has also pleaded guilty to several charges as well. So it's clear there's criminality here. These aren't just allegations. They've now been accepted by the legal system. So he's doing, Mueller is doing important work and he's uncovering crimes and he's prosecuting them. As a political matter, I would say that Trump is going to keep on saying this is a witch hunt and I think there's a certain percentage of the U.S. population that's inclined to believe that, regardless of what the objective circumstances are on the ground. We're in a kind of very odd political state right now where Trump has quite effectively defined his political reality by making statements on Twitter and in rallies and people simply accept that as as truth. And it doesn't matter whether or not his kind of self-created reality accords with anything that's going on in the real world.

IR: OK. We're out of time. Thank you so much. Jens David Ohlin is vice dean and professor of law at Cornell Law School. We reached him in Ithaca, New York. I'm Ioanna Roumeliotis and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

Conservatives are coddling far-right in multiculturalism debate, says Liberal advisor

Guests: Althia Raj, John Duffy, Natalie Pon

IR: Hello. I'm Ioanna Roumeliotis and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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IR: Still to come, when ISIS rolled into the Iraqi city of Mosul, it was a major coup for their so-called caliphate and foreign fighters started streaming in. For the regular citizens of the northern Iraq city, life was unimaginably altered. One voice from inside Mosul spoke out from the darkness, an anonymous blogger who became known as "Mosul Eye." That story in half an hour. But first, diverse opinions on diversity and identity.

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A woman heckles Prime Minister Trudeau in French at a corn roast south of Montreal.

IR: That confrontation recorded at a corn roast south of Montreal last week may just be a preview of what's to come in the political year ahead, as the federal parties prepare for the 2019 election campaign. Speaking in French, a Quebec woman heckled Mr. Trudeau about the millions of dollars Quebec has spent to deal with, which she called his illegal immigrants. The PM called that racist and he's since doubled down.

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VOICE: And I will not flinch from highlighting when the politics of division of fear of spreading misinformation is actually harming the fabric of this country.

IR: Meanwhile across the aisle, the Conservative Party is set to meet tomorrow for a policy convention is beset with its own internal squabbles, also over the politics of immigration identity and what it means to be Canadian. That's thanks to MP Maxime Bernier's tweets last week saying, "More diversity will not be our strength. It will destroy what has made us such a great country" and yesterday adding, "Instead of spending millions of dollars on multiculturalism programs, we should focus on integration." Here's party leader Andrew Scheer.

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VOICE 1: He's an individual Member of Parliament. He doesn't speak for the party. I think Canadians know where we stand.

VOICE 2: Who does he speak if he doesn't speak for the party? He speaks for himself?

VOICE 1: He speaks for himself.

IR: So how are the parties handling the sensitive issues of identity politics as a possible election issue. We have three guests standing by to share their thoughts. Althia Raj is Ottawa Bureau Chief for HuffPost Canada. She's in our Ottawa studio. John Duffy is a founding principle at Strategy Corp. He is a long-time advisor to Liberal campaigns. He's in Stratford, Ontario today. And Natalie Pon is a Conservative party member and delegate attending this week's policy convention. She's in Edmonton. Hello to all of you.

ALTHIA RAJ: Good morning.

NATALIE PON: Morning.

JOHN DUFFY: Good morning.

IR: Let's start with the controversy that's been dominating headlines these last couple of days. I'd like to get each of your thoughts on the Prime Minister's comments to the heckler. Natalie Pon, what do you make of their exchange?

NP: You know, while I'm certainly not taking the side of the woman who heckled the PM, I think what she said was completely unacceptable. The first thing that came to mind for me was why the Prime Minister chose to engage with this woman in the first place. You know he was walking through a crowd. He didn't have to acknowledge her. I think personally I think it's below the office he holds to be engaging in that kind of name calling and heckling regardless of the content that she is saying and I know it's come out after the fact that she belongs to a number of organizations that are against immigration, but in the moment I don't think calling her racist achieved anything. We should absolutely be calling out racism when we see it, but I don't think he actually engaged in any kind of meaningful conversation with her. He didn't explain why what she was saying wasn't okay. Educate her on the policy. Attempt to bring any facts into the debate. At the end of the day someone was, although poorly trying to question his policies and he shouted her down as racist instead.

IR: John Duffy, how well do you think Justin Trudeau handled the situation?

JD: I thought he handled it entirely appropriately. If you look at the clips, you know the heckling started when he was speaking to that crowd and this leather lung protester who is a dedicated anti-immigration political activist starts going at him. There's repeat exchange as he moves through the crowd. I don't think there's any question that the Prime Minister conducted himself with dignity and comportment when you know confronted with an unfriendly heckler, which happens all the time. The issue here has nothing to do with prime ministerial judgment. This has to do with a fundamental conversation that's going to dominate the Conservative convention in Halifax and that is dominating the discussion around the world of what the Conservative movement is. The question is, is the Conservative movement, fundamentally, a movement of anti-immigration, bordering on xenophobia, or is it the honourable tradition of conservatism that's about free markets and the free movement of peoples. It's tearing the Conservative movement apart in my estimation. Although it's helping them win the odd election by pushing these buttons. But it's endangered defining the Conservative movement around the world. And the prime minister called this out and I think that's entirely consistent with the government that he's delivered for Canadians over the past three and a half years.

IR: Althia Raj, what do you think? Why do you think the Prime Minister took her on that way? Do you think he had that bigger picture in his mind when he did?

AR: I don't know if he knew that she was a member of the Front Patriotique du Quebec, which is to be quite frank like a white nationalist group, who wants Quebec to remain this quote unquote pure laine society, who wants to return to what that was. What your clip off the top didn't actually include the words that were I think that are the most controversial and what really led him to call her comments racist. He wasn't, when you look at the entirety of their exchange which lasts a couple of minutes. She initially starts asking him and shouting questions about how much money is being spent on his illegal immigrants and he tells her that her comments are intolerant and it is only after his kind of like speech is over and that discussion between them and the shouting and the crowds cheering him on is over that he kind of gets off the stage and he goes directly towards her, in a way that we've seen him do so many times. He seems to like to engage in people who have different opinions than he does when he can recall the conversations around C-51, the anti-terrorism bill, where he liked to engage protesters. He comes towards her, she beelines for him and she says are you intolerant to words Quebecois de souche. This term means basically ethnic white French Canadians who trace their heritage to the first arrivals. And he tells her, he looks her at her directly and he says madame, your racism is not welcomed here. This was not a public event. It was a liberal corn-roast, open to the public, but it wasn't on like the press galleries immediate events of what the Prime Minister's doing that day. It came out as like the leader of the Liberal Party is having this event. So we can see that, I think as the prime minister is saying, your comments are not welcomed at this gathering of Liberals. I think that regardless of kind of like I know John doesn't want to talk about the Prime Minister's judgment. I don't know that the Prime Minster should be calling anybody racist, but this narrative fits into the frame that both political parties are trying to get points on. The Conservatives want to talk about illegal immigration because the asylum seekers flooding across the border, they're not really flooding, but that's the term they're using and they're calling it a crisis. That fits into something that they think can help them win the next election and the Liberals think that they can also use this issue to call out intolerance, to call out racism. We saw that the clips about this exchange in the United States garnered so much positive media attention because they are trying to find an anti-Trump and they're pleased that Justin Trudeau is kind of acting in that stereotype that they're looking for. So both political parties have an advantage on this and this is why we're going to keep talking about it for the next months to come.

IR: Natalie Pon, some Conservative MPs have criticised the Prime Minister for what they call virtue signalling. What is that and do you see this as an example?

NP: You know I think overall we've lost the ability to debate without one side being called racist and the other side being called virtue signallers right now.

IR: What is that? How would you define virtue signalling?

NP: Well with the current government, if you don't agree with their views or your position, you're a racist and and by insulting people and saying they don't belong here with those views. I mean like I understand that you know she comes from a white nationalist organization and I absolutely don't condone that, but by insulting people and saying they don't belong here, he is saying his views are superior to your own. And I think the Prime Minister is feeding into that polarisation and division within Canadian society right now. So to answer your question I think virtue signalling is trying to score cheap political points right now without trying to get into the facts allowing for debate. Allowing one side to really push the narrative and define what they believe it should be.

IR: John Duffy, how do you respond to that?

JD: Well I'm a bit aghast actually. I mean I have a lot of respect for Natalie's political activism and I have a lot of respect for the honourable parts of the Conservative tradition. Calling white nationalists by saying oh we're being insulting to them, well I don't have a problem with calling white nationalist group members racists. White nationalism is racism and extreme populism borderers frequently on white nationalism. We've got here a prime minister calling out a professional activist in a white nationalist organization and saying your opinions amount to racism. Well they do. If the white nationalist views of the Front aren't racist, I don't know what racism is. And it's entirely appropriate for a Prime Minister to call that out. It is a battle going on all over the world and when decent conservatives say, oh, oh, oh, we're being stigmatized for these opinions, well then don't have the opinions. Don't coddle white nationalists. Don't truckle to them. Don't welcome them in your party and don't signal to them with positions like Maxime Bernier's that they are welcome in your political movement.

IR: Well speaking of Maxime Bernier's tweets.

JD: They should be no more welcome in the Conservative Party than they should be welcome in the Bloc Quebecois or the NDP or the Liberal Party or anywhere else. They are born views, white nationalist views.

IR: Speaking of Maxime Bernier's tweets, Natalie if you can address this quickly what. How did you feel about his tweets? What kind of message do you think he was trying to send?

NP: Well I was infuriated when I read his tweets. Canada was built by immigrants and we're all from somewhere else here, unless you are from an Indigenous population. So what I think is you know when we look at Canadian history, there's always been some kind of group that has been discriminated against or looked down upon or not welcomed through every immigration process, whether it's you know the Chinese Head Tax, Japanese internment, discrimination against Italians, just to name a few. When Maxime Bernier criticises more diversity, my first question personally was what does that mean? Is he implying that there is an identifiable ideal amount of diversity and who gets to be the judge of that? The first thing that comes to mind for me as a visible minority who is ancestors who immigrated to Canada, would be where do I fit on that pecking order? Where would I be in the scale of letting in more or less diversity? I think the Canadian identity itself is based on this understanding that we're all from somewhere else here and I think he completely missed the mark there with what he was saying in his tweets.

IR: Althia Raj, you heard the clip from Andrew Scheer earlier certainly distancing the party from Maxime Bernier's tweets. Given that some people in the party might agree with the points Maxime Bernier has raised, what are the political calculations here for Scheer and the Tories?

AR: For Scheer or for Maxime Bernier. So a few things. One, Maxime Bernier is in favour of basically lowering the amount of the number of immigrants that Canada welcomes every year. His platform when he ran for the leadership suggested going back to numbers that the Conservatives had under Stephen Harper. So around the 250,000 mark instead of the 340,000 the Liberals want to achieve by 2020. And I really think that part of Maxime Bernier's tweet threads from August because he just started tweeting about immigration this month, has been to position himself basically as the natural leader. I don't think that Mr. Bernier has really gotten over the fact that he lost the Conservative leadership race last year and I'm not sure if he's playing this like two-year long game because there is not going to be a leadership review this weekend. But if Mr. Scheer does not win the next election, then there will be a leadership review. I think it's more about seeming like the strongman. A lot of conservatives fear that Mr. Scheer, Andrew Scheer, has a natural tendency to look a little weak and indecisive and that Maxime Bernier is trying to play that strongman, a sort of Donald Trump, Doug Ford. I'm not talking about their policies here, but I just mean how they take policy positions and stick to them and are not afraid to defend their point of view. I think this is just basically about kind of shaming Andrew Scheer, frankly.

IR: I have a clip I'd like to play for all of you. This is Conservative strategist Alise Mills.

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VOICE: I think Mr. Bernier has started a very important conversation. Did he phrase it in a way that I felt would resonate with every Canadian and begin us on a conversation that I think was sorely needed and is probably past due by many, many months now. I also felt that Mr. Bernier probably should have done some media interviews because I felt it was a great opportunity for him to expand on this thought, but instead of any of that happening, before Mr. Bernier was even able to sort of get to those next steps, he was immediately accused of being a racist.

IR: Natalie Pon, what do you think about that?

NP: You know when I heard what Bernier was saying, my first thought beyond being disgusted with his tweets was, he needs to stop campaigning like he's still running for the leadership. The leadership was over last May. He lost. Political parties are a team. he needs to start being a team player here. He can't be going off message. He can't be undermining the leader and he can't go rogue and he's doing that right now. He's acting like he's still in that leadership race or campaigning to be the next leader right now. In terms of Andrew Scheer, I think he knows he's limited here in terms of what he can get away with in terms of punishment. Bernier is no longer in the shadow cabinet, he holds no formal role in the party and Scheer essentially said he doesn't speak for us. He doesn't represent us. And so Bernier really put Scheer in a tough spot right now. Scheer barely won the Conservative leadership race as it is. The margin of victory there was minuscule and so a year out from an election, I don't think Bernier should be saying what he's been saying. We can hardly handle internal divisions in our party right now. A year and a bit away from an election, we're only a year past the leadership race, we should be focusing right now on our common message and not be having MPs go off and champion their pet issues right now against the wishes of the leader.

AR: May I add something here. I think the other part of this Andrew Scheer dilemma with how to treat Maxime Bernier is that Mr. Scheer ran on a platform of free speech. So there's very, there would be very little that he can actually say to curb Maxime's tweets or public pronouncements because he's so, he's made this his like his, Andrew Scheer's made this his number one issue for months, years in fact. The other thing is that the caucus rules being adopted the way they were after the 2015 election, he needs a majority vote of caucus to throw out Maxime Bernier. So that's not going to happen until we come back to Ottawa.

IR: And taking a bit of a step back for all of you, how do you feel about the discourse around these issues from both the Liberals and the Conservatives? John Duffy, maybe you can take that on first.

JD: Well, yeah I wanted to get in on what's happening in the Conservative Party, I guess. And look, there's a continuum here. When Andrew Scheer says to conservatives in leadership, I'm in favour of free speech. He's saying, there's a place in this party for people with abhorrent views and I'll look after them. That's part of how he was able to win the leadership. Then you have Max Bernier saying there's too much diversity. And my first reaction was does that diversity include me. Does that diversity that's acceptable include members of my family. Does It include Natalie? It's abhorrent. The next step in the continuum is you see a Ford government minister come in and saying, oh yeah, yeah, it's terrible what's happening to these people in Quebec who are heckling the prime minister. We know we're going to see people from the UCP in Alberta weighing in. We know Republicans are interested in this. UK Conservatives are dealing with the same thing. The National Front in France, all over the world. This isn't a temporary moment of leadership tactics. It's not a temporary and tactical question of how it is that Scheer will try to straddle here. And that's part of it, but the larger issue is what is the Canadian Conservative movement? So far, conservative movement after conservative movement around the world has fallen into the hands of people and politicians who are advancing this xenophobic, borderline racist agenda, of white nationalism. And so far honourably the Conservative Party of Canada has resisted this tendency. What Max Bernier is doing is saying, nope let's join this tendency. On the eve of convention he's saying, let's go with Boris Johnson. Let's go with Marine Le Pen. Let's Go with Donald Trump.

IR: Do you think he's going that far by raising these issues?

JD: That's what he's doing. He wants to be the bearer of the right wing extreme populist tendency in Canadian conservatism and he thinks that's his path to power.

IR: Althia Raj what do you make of that?

AR: I think there is a legitimate discussion to be had about immigration in this country. And I wish that we could have it without you know we talk about virtue signalling earlier, I wish we could have it without political parties trying to co-opt the message for whatever groups that they want. When you look at Maxime Bernier's tweets, the original tweets from Sunday, August 12th. What's really controversial is that they include certain lines like extreme political correctness and you know radical multiculturalism and questions like where do we draw the line and accusing people of pushing for ever more diversity. But if you take away those kind of those key words that galvanise a lot of people on Twitter and in the commentary of the stories I write for example, who really I see that as like oh he's talking to me, he's talking to like I believe that we should have just a white Canada and I feel threatened by all these immigrants coming in and changing the look and feel of this country and this is not the country that I want and so I'm I feel at home with his message. And I think that you know John is a little bit right in terms of like that's kind of something that Max is trying to do, that Mr. Bernier is trying to do. But I think when you look at some of the questions that the conservatives are asking, I think they are legitimate questions. I think the concern is that facts seem to be omitted in the discussion. And I feel like Canadians maybe don't quite understand what the facts are and maybe the media has done a very good job of explaining what the facts are. There are actually fewer asylum seekers coming in this year than there were last year.

IR: You did mention that you talking about how it was characterized as a flood by media organizations and that might have affected public perception of the issue. Do you have a sense of how Canadians feel about asylum seekers right now?

AR: Public opinion polls suggest that a little bit more than a majority of Canadians feel that there are too many immigrants at the moment.

IR: And John Duffy could the Liberals do a better job talking about these concerns without reverting to labels like racist?

JD: I can't go with that formulation Ioanna. I'm sorry. This isn't an error in liberal judgment. This isn't some sort of indulgence. This is standing up for precisely what contemporary progressive liberalism means. What's amazing here is that the Conservative Party is actually lining up with the Trumps, the Marine Le Pens, the UKEPs of the world. And it is incredible development in Canadian politics. We haven't seen this kind of white nationalist coddling here. You have to go back into the 70s, when there were groups inside the Conservative Party who felt that the French were being too coddle because Canada was fundamentally a white British nation. This is a very troubling reversion in Canadian politics. I don't think there's any reason for the Liberals not to call this for what it is, which is white nationalism, that borders on racism, that is a disgrace and not what Canada is about and not and has no place in Canadian public discourse. Sure, happy to have a discussion with armed with facts and opinion research about the particulars of immigration policy, particularly this summer with regard to refugees on the borders. Always happy to have that conversation with Canadians, but you can't miss the forest for the trees and the forest that's on the move here is the Conservative Party. Perhaps, redefining itself as a white nationalist movement or at least a safe place for a white nationalist to hang their hat politically.

IR: Natalie. Natalie what do you make of that?

NP: Well I think the important part of this conversation right now is what Althia said. If the majority of Canadians right now are questioning the current government's decisions right now in terms of the number of asylum seekers they're letting in, I think that means that there is a miscommunication right now or there is a communication error on the part of the Liberal Party. They should be doing a better job getting their message across about why they are doing what they're doing and try to garner more support from Canadians for this. So you know I think we're at a point in politics where you need to get messages across in 240 characters or less. And I believe personally that's mistake. Twitter has destroyed our ability to have nuanced thoughtful debates because we need to simplify everything to fit in that small character field. I'm finding right now that details and facts don't seem to matter as much anymore. And that's what we're experiencing right now.

IR: Natalie though can you address or can you respond to John saying the Canadian Conservatives are coddling the far right.

NP: I wouldn't go so far as to say Canadian Conservatives are coddling the far right. Perhaps there are some people who identify themselves as you know Canadian conservatives who are far right or white nationals or white national adjacent at this point, but I don't think the movement as a whole in Canada has reached that point yet. We've certainly seen it in other conservative parties around the world, but to John's point, I think Canadian conservatism so far has managed to avoid getting to that point. I hope it doesn't get there and we'll see this weekend what the tone of the party delegates seems to be at convention. But I'd really like to see us move towards having a conversation again about about the economy, about free trade, about what we're going to do to make the lives of all Canadians better, rather than focusing on issues that seem to divide us and tear us apart as Canadians.

IR: OK. We're going to have to leave it there. Thank you all very much for your time.

NP: Thank you.

JD: Thank you.

AR: Thank you.

IR: Althia Raj is Ottawa bureau chief for HuffPost Canada. She was in our Ottawa studio. John Duffy is a founding principle at Strategy Corp and a long-time advisor to Liberal campaigns. We reached him in Stratford, Ontario and Natalie Pon is a Conservative Party member and delegate attending this week's policy convention. She was in Edmonton. Coming up in our next half hour, blogging from the heart of the so-called ISIS caliphate. Meet Omar Mohammed, the man known as the "Mosul Eye" in about 90 seconds. I'm Ioanna Roumeliotis and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

ISIS on your doorstep: Meet Mosul Eye, the man who defied the terrorists to save his city

Guests: Omar Mohammed

IR: I'm Ioanna Roumeliotis and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: A mass exodus.

[Car horn]

VOICE 1: Around half a million people have fled Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, according to the United Nations as it fell into the hands of an al-Qaeda offshoot.

VOICE 2: [Arabic speech]

VOICE 1: All the people have fled this man said. They have left their homes and the people are lying dead in the streets.

IR: The fall of Mosul in June of 2014. But not everyone had fled from Iraq's second largest city after it was captured by ISIS. A kind of life continued there and within a week or so the world was given a mysterious window into that life. An anonymous blogger emerged online, calling himself, "Mosul Eye." He promised at the outset to "trust no one and document everything." And for a year and a half he did just that, risking his life, Mosul Eye bore witness to horrific ISIS atrocities inside the fallen city and the world paid attention. His social media following grew to well over 300,000. Finally on December 15th, 2015, fearing for his life Mosul Eye fled with his hard drive and notebook carefully hidden away. His identity remained a mystery however, until late last year when he decided to reveal it. Anna Maria Tremonti spoke with Omar Mohammed, the Mosul Eye, from an undisclosed location in February. And just a warning that some of the violence he describes may be disturbing to some listeners.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Omar Mohammed, hello.

OMAR MOHAMMED: Hello Anna.

AMT: Let's start at the beginning. What do you remember about the day that ISIS or Daesh entered Mosul?

OMAR MOHAMMED: I still remember the first night of that attack. When they came with their [unintelligible] with their black uniform and the black flag—the flag of blood. This was the only moment that I will never forget because from that moment everything was changed. I also remember the face of my mother. How she was so afraid. But at the same time she was pretending to be strong enough to encourage me and my brothers and sisters to not be scared. It was the only time I saw my mother in such a situation. This I will never forget in my whole life.

AMT: Omar, when they came in, your neighbourhood was one of the first neighbourhoods they took. Am I right?

OMAR MOHAMMED: Yes. They came through my neighbourhood. They launched the offensive to occupy the city from that neighbourhood. They were also hiding in that neighbourhood two days before the attack.

AMT: Tell us how you saw the city begin to change under their control?

OMAR MOHAMMED: Simply they have changed and they replaced everything. The third day of the attack they were still fighting. But they issued what they called it "the constitution of the city" saying that 'from this moment we are going to rule Mosul by the law of God or the Sharia law. You have experienced the secularism. You have experienced all different kind of freedoms. Now is the time to be governed by the caliphate—by the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant’. We started to use their own vocabularies. They brought a dictionary with them. Police station they called it "hispa" which is the Arabic term of the Islamic police. For the Central Bank, they called it "the house money," which is bayt al-mal in Arabic. These are terms belongs to the medieval ages. They also deported the Christians from the city. They enslaved the Yazidis and they killed even the Sunnis who were considered against the word of God. The word of ISIS. And they re-organized the social classes.

AMT: How did they do that?

OMAR MOHAMMED: The first of the class or the high class was what they called them the supporters or the local members of ISIS. They benefited from ISIS and its system. The second class was the immigrants or they called them Mujahideen, they are the foreign fighters. The lowest class was commoners or the public. I and my family were from that class. We were just numbers. ISIS was ruling us. We were always considered not good people. We are against the Islamic State. We don't want to join the Islamic State. We don't support the Islamic State. So we were just numbers living in the city always suspected by ISIS. Their eye's always on these people because that will be a spy within them. There will be policemen, former policemen. ISIS destroyed the social structure of the city.

AMT: And imposed their own.

OMAR MOHAMMED: Yeah.

AMT: Can I ask you… so you would you have neighbours who would have joined ISIS then and you would not have. Like they would know who's who.

OMAR MOHAMMED: It wasn't only my neighbours. This is what really bothers me and I always think about this. One of my students joined ISIS. He was really a smart guy. He always wanted to finish his studies. But I don't know what happened to him. Why did he join ISIS? I remember I saw him once in the street and he was wearing the uniform of ISIS with his gun, all I wanted at that moment just to take him out of this. But I couldn't. There were also 14-year-olds and 15-year-olds. I mean they are kids. They also joined ISIS. This was really horrible

AMT: Yeah. Omar—one of your students. You were a teacher. What grades were you teaching? What were you teaching?

OMAR MOHAMMED: I was teaching at the university. Yeah. The college of history—the history department. I was teaching history of ancient civilizations. I had about 40 students recently, they sent me a video saying that 'we still want you to come back and teach us'. Unfortunately I will not be able to do this. We've talked about that student. I hope I could have done something to help him, but it was impossible. He would have killed me if I'd tried to convince him that he's walking in the wrong path.

AMT: He wouldn't have been the only student. ISIS wanted to change the education system as well, did it not? It actually gave orders on that front as well, did it not?

OMAR MOHAMMED: From the very beginning, one of the things that ISIS focused on was the university. I remember that I attended the meeting at the university where they appointed a new dean to the University of Mosul. During their meeting, he was ordering professors to change the education system. He was looking for an education that graduate fighters, not students. He said this clearly. He said, “we don't want unhealthy students and stupid students. We want students who know about their religion, and once they graduate they will join the fight to protect that word of God.” That's what he said at that moment.

AMT: How did you get away from that school then?

OMAR MOHAMMED: They closed the university and they cancelled the education. Also because of the airstrikes in the beginning of 2015, they used the university campus as a military camp.

AMT: So you end up without a job. At what point did you realize that you wanted to document what was happening around you, what they were doing to people?

OMAR MOHAMMED: When ISIS came to Mosul, ISIS didn't only have weapons with them. They had their version of the history, their dictionary of the vocabularies and the language, and they brought their system. How they are going rule this city to change its history. At that moment I realized that if I don't write the history of Mosul in this very critical time I know that we will lose Mosul forever because it's a conflict of historical narratives. If ISIS is only the one who is writing the history now, there will be someone after many years will start writing or talking about ISIS: 'they were ruling the city peacefully. But then the international powers came and attacked the Islamic State'. This is how they work with the history. One side of the truth.

AMT: So you decided to start documenting what was happening. Can you tell me about how you would do that?

OMAR MOHAMMED: In different ways. Every day I go out in the morning—sometimes I take my mother with me because we go to the old city because she loves the old city. She was born there. When I go out I only observe. I look at what's happening in the street, who is doing this, and who is in the checkpoint. I also talk to other people in the street. Sometimes I go to the hospital because I had a friend of mine who was a doctor working in the hospital. I remember that I pretended to be a doctor. He was a bit tired and I asked him to take his uniform. Then I walked around the rooms inside the hospital and talked to the people who was killed, who was injured, and who did this. Sometimes also I pretend like I am a taxi driver because I wanted to see everything myself. I wanted also to live it and to feel it because I am writing the history of this city in this time. I didn't only want to rely on the others to get what they say, what I hear. No, I want to see it myself. When I go back home, I start writing down all the things I have witnessed. Then I publish part of this on the blog. But I keep the other part a secret.

AMT: So in other words you were observing what was happening around you and you just looked like another citizen.

OMAR MOHAMMED: Yeah.

AMT: And in the process of doing that you saw some terrible things.

OMAR MOHAMMED: I witnessed women being stoned to death. I witnessed people where their hands were cut. I witnessed people who were beheaded. I witnessed people who were thrown down from high buildings. All I remember about what happened in that city, it's like the city was a huge grave with dozens of headless people. One of the events happened in the city was two women. They were accused of [unintelligible] by ISIS and they were stoned to death. According to ISIS law, if she didn't die after being stoned, she will be free. They were stoning her. The first one died, but the other one didn't. Then they should have let her go. But they didn't. One of the ISIS fighter's said "Let's play a game." He told her, "Run away. If you make it, you are free." She was dying. She was bleeding from every single part of her body. She was looking at them, but running out trying to make it to safety. But she was running in the same circle, she didn't realize this. Then she fell down and he shot her in her head. This is what I saw in Mosul, Anna. This is what the people of Mosul saw. And this is what the children of Mosul lived.

AMT: The children saw this too.

OMAR MOHAMMED: Yeah. This was this was a normal day in Mosul

AMT: They would hurt children as well, wouldn't they

OMAR MOHAMMED: They recruited children. One of the orphans who was kidnapped by ISIS from Sinjar—because I also visited that orphanage house in Mosul, secretly. I had a friend working there. I believe he was [unintelligible] child. After a few months I saw a video released by ISIS. There was a child executing a man. Then I realized that this child is the one who was kidnapped by ISIS. They brainwashed him and they used him as a killing machine. This is how ISIS dealt with children. ISIS was teaching the children how to kill, how to behead, and how to hit.

AMT: Omar, what did it do to you to see that kind of cruelty, to witness that?

OMAR MOHAMMED: I see this in my dreams every night. Every night I dream of how the people lived this and how I during that time couldn't tell anyone. I wanted to tell my feelings and to express my feelings to someone just to feel like I want to be normal again. But I couldn't. I even couldn't tell my mother. I wish I could have told someone at that time. At least I would feel rested. I would feel revealed. But thinking about this every night, thinking that this was my friend who was killed. This was from my neighbourhood, he's also killed. When I talk to the people from Mosul now—everyone I talked to him. He say, 'oh did you know that this guy was killed by ISIS. This guy was killed during the airstrikes. We have lost lots of people. Not to mention the destruction of the city.

AMT: Can I ask you… So you would see these things and then you would write about them. You would go back and you would put that out there for people to know what was going on.

OMAR MOHAMMED: This was the most hard part of the whole story. If I just witnessed this, I could at least convince myself to forget. But I had to write it down, which means I will witness it twice—have it in my mind. And also to publish it online because I thought that it's important because it's happening now and it's important to tell the people everywhere what's happening in the city.

AMT: Did you take pictures at times as well?

OMAR MOHAMMED: Yeah, some pictures and videos.

AMT: How did you do that without anyone noticing?

OMAR MOHAMMED: It was risky. One of my craziest moments. They’re called "public car for transportation." I was sitting inside this car with my mobile. I thought I have to record this. This is a unique moment because they were in the street. So I started recording. But then when we reached a place where many ISIS fighters were, they arrested someone there. So I stopped recording. I thought I don't know what I will do. Then I left the car. I told myself, 'OK let me not go back home now because it's not wise to do this. Let me check if there was someone watching me or someone found out what I was doing'. But fortunately nothing happened and I went back. And the second day I think I remember I published the video. And they said that the coalition destroyed the public library. And I saw in the media saying the library was destroyed. I was surprised. I just saw the building. Nothing happened. So in order to tell the people that the library is safe, I went there and I recorded the video. I also published this. If ISIS just found the records with me—not for Mosul Eye—but just to find the mobile phone with me, they would have killed me.

AMT: They must have been looking for you. They knew you were out there, right?

OMAR MOHAMMED: Yeah. But also they were confused, I would say. Because if you go back to the earliest paused and the blogs of Mosul Eye, you'll see that sometimes I pretended to be a woman, like to write in a woman style or to write about things only women could have witnessed. Sometimes they thought I am Christian because during Easter in 2015, I went to the Church of Mosul to celebrate the Easter on behalf of the Christians. I wanted to give them a message that even if you are not here in the city, but still I can celebrate on your behalf. So I took Bible and candles and lighted the candles inside the church. Even people from my city they thought that I am Christian. So this was confusing for them. And I like this actually.

AMT: That was actually very clever. I don't know how you would go through this time in knowing the danger in what they could do. I know you said you listened to a specific piece of music and we have it here. I am going to play a little bit and have you tell me a little bit about it.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Violin]

AMT: That is from the soundtrack of Schindler's List by composer Itzhak Perlman. What does that music mean to you?

OMAR MOHAMMED: This music. This piece music is what kept me alive and gave me the strength to continue my message. Every night I put this music on and start listening. When I listen to this music I feel like I was given a new life. It takes the fear out of me. It tells me that you are in danger, yes, but still you are as strong as your dreams.

AMT: And Omar why that piece of music? That music is from a movie about the persecution of the Jews—about the Holocaust. Why that music?

OMAR MOHAMMED: Because what happened in Mosul is also Holocaust. During the Holocaust of the Jews in Germany, people were burned. In Mosul people also were burned. The ideology that ISIS used is no less [unintelligible] than the Nazis. So I believe that when Itzhak Perlman was playing that music, he was also playing this music for Mosul.

AMT: And as you listened to that music, were you listening with headphones? Were you playing that music in the room?

OMAR MOHAMMED: I was listening loudly to the music.

AMT: Because that would have been illegal as well, wouldn't it have been? You are taking a risk just to listen to it.

OMAR MOHAMMED: I wanted to take my freedom moment. So I didn't care. This is my moment. This is the moment I listen to the music I love. To live the way I love. So I didn’t care about ISIS even if they came to kill me as they say they would find thousands of methods to kill me. But I won.

AMT: Were they threatening you online?

OMAR MOHAMMED: Many times. One of the threats they sent to me after they executed the Jordanian pilot—he was burned alive—they mentioned in the threat they say that, 'you would be killed like the Jordanian pilot. But we will not give you this. We will kill thousands of times but you will not die. We will bring you back to life and we would kill you again.

AMT: And yet you kept going.

OMAR MOHAMMED: Yeah.

AMT: Where did you find that courage?

OMAR MOHAMMED: My passion to my city. My love to my city. And my obligation as a historian.

AMT: What happened to make you realize that you did have to leave, that you had to get out?

OMAR MOHAMMED: They were so close to finding me. I realized that now it's not only about me. I have a family in the city. So ISIS wouldn't only kill me. They would also kill my family. I realized that it's time to leave and to protect my family. I couldn't take my family with me. It was impossible. At least if they want to kill me, let them kill me out of the city. Not in front of my mother's eyes. So I decided to leave. It was a reaction to protect my family.

AMT: And how did you get out?

OMAR MOHAMMED: With a smuggler. He took me through Syrian borders to Turkey. I paid $1,000 because he only deals with dollars. He said "I don't accept Iraqi dinners.” That's funny. Then I made it to Turkey. I would really like to mention something I never mentioned before. I applied with the Scholars At Risk organization. And thanks to Scholars At Risk for helping me to get the scholarship. And I am now doing my PhD on the history of Mosul in the 19th century. I made it to safety and I am enjoying the freedom now.

AMT: I want to go back to how you get out. When you got out you would have had your hard drive and your notebooks with you. If they had found them—did you hide them? What did you do?

OMAR MOHAMMED: In the car I found a place beneath my feet to hide them. It was a small bag I took with me a book, my stamp—my personal stamp—and the hard drive and some papers. On the whole way from Mosul to the border, every moment I say, ‘OK Omar this is the end. Just think about what do you want to write. I wanted to write something'. All I thought about was I wanted to write a piece of paper to write my last words. I didn't know how this will reach my family, but in any moment they could have found everything and everything will be done. ISIS will find who is Mosul Eye and Mosul Eye will be executive publicly. In the threat they mentioned that they will kill me, but they will walk me around the whole city so the people would see what happens to anyone who works against the Islamic State.

AMT: Yeah. They would have made an example of you.

OMAR MOHAMMED: Yeah.

AMT: Yeah. But you got out and they didn't find you. Now you have even revealed your identity. Why did you think that was OK now to say who you are?

OMAR MOHAMMED: There were many reasons. But the most important reason was because I lost my brother who was killed during the battle to retake Mosul. There was a bomb on his house. Because of this and because of my mother, my mother felt like she is so tired, she can't continue her life. I wanted to give her another reason to continue her life and to keep going in this life. To make her proud of me because my simply my mother didn't know what my activities until I revealed my identity. This was the first and the main reason. But the second was Mosul Eye as a news outlet is done. Now Mosul Eye working to revive the city and the culture of the city and the identity, to gain back the normal life of Mosul. And to give an example to the people inside Mosul that, 'yes one individual could do all of this against the extremist group like ISIS. That you need to believe in yourself and your individuality. You can do anything good if you just believe in it’.

AMT: And how did your mother react then when she realized you were Mosul Eye?

OMAR MOHAMMED: My mother said to me that "I always thought there was something happening with you boy." Then she said "I'm proud of you. And I want you to be safe and to continue your life.” She was always suspecting.

AMT: She was huh?

OMAR MOHAMMED: Yeah.

AMT: That's interesting. But she never said anything to you?

OMAR MOHAMMED: No.

AMT: You know I have to tell you I mean you just talked about you wanted to give a message that what one person can do. I am so struck by the stories we are hearing of the young men and women and maybe the older ones too, but the people in Syria and Iraq who have risked so much living under that kind of cruelty because they know it's not right and they want the world to know and they want to help individuals one at a time to escape. You teach us all something with that courage.

OMAR MOHAMMED: When we care about the future we will get this courage. In Mosul, in my city, I was born in a city during the war between Iraq and Iran. And I've grown up during the Gulf War in the 90s. Then when I just became an adult—17-years-old—the Americans arrived in 2003. When I became a teacher in university ISIS came and occupied the city. So I realized that if the last generation worked hard to protect the future, we wouldn't have ISIS. Sometimes we risk our lives. Yes I risked my life. I risked my family's life. But it's worth doing. It's the future—the next generation. And it's the history. History is not only about the past. History is about future. We are humans. We can do even more about this if we just believe that we can do it.

AMT: Omar Mohammed it's really important to hear your voice and your thoughts. Thank you for speaking with me today and thank you for your courage and for doing all you did so that we could understand what was happening in your city.

OMAR MOHAMMED: Thank you so much.

IR: Omar Mohammed, also known as Mosul Eye, was an undercover historian and blogger in ISIS-occupied Mosul, Iraq. He spoke with Anna Maria Tremonti in February from an undisclosed location. The interview received the 2018 New York Festivals Award for Best Human Interest Story. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Finally in Anna Maria's conversation with Omar Mohammed, we heard a bit of that music that was so special to him during the ISIS occupation. Music from the soundtrack to the film, Schindler's List. We'll end today's show with more of that music composed by John Williams. The violinist is Itzhak Perlman. I'm Ioanna Roumeliotis. Thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Themes from Schindler's List composed by John Williams]

Aug. 22, 2018 episode transcript

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