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The AIH Transcript for October 3, 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: It's in desperate need of repair, but he wasn't there to mend fences. On his visit to Puerto Rico. U.S. President Donald Trump downplays the effects of Hurricane Maria, complains about the cost of the relief effort and expresses strong approval of himself.

JD: Departure before arrival. After nearly a-year-and-a-half of paperwork and anxiety, a gay Syrian refugee’s application is finally approved. But after his sudden death a friend is wondering why the Canadian government didn't bring him sooner.

CO: Helping the inconsolable after the unthinkable. In the aftermath of the shooting in Las Vegas help for survivors in mourning and shock is desperately needed. And our guest was one of the many counsellors and therapists to respond.

JD: The cold at the end of the rainbow. At a concert in Cairo, fans unfurled the pride flag and are promptly rounded up and charged, horrifying the lead singer of the band.

CO: Into the great wide open. Anyone with a radio has spent hours with Tom Petty, but our guests time with the late rock star yielded a book, a friendship and a deeper understanding of the hard work that went into his dozens of hits.

JD: And…Skull’s out for summer. But the head of the late philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who died in 1832, is set to go on display this fall at University College London, just as he requested before his death. As It Happens the Tuesday edition. Radio that guesses he was a-head of his time, and a-head of ours too.

[Music: Theme]

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Part 1: Puerto Rico latest, Las Vegas counsellor, Bentham head

Puerto Rico latest

Guest: Frances Robles

JD: Two weeks after Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico the President of the United States has done the same. Donald Trump was touring the hurricane ravaged island today, and he continues to come under fire for his comments about the disaster and the U.S. territory's response. But at a press conference today he again praised his own government for its work and compared Hurricane Maria to a quote “real catastrophe Hurricane Katrina.”

SOUNDCLIP

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Now, I hate to tell you Puerto Rico, but you've thrown our budget a little out of whack. Because we spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico, and that's fine. We've saved a lot of lives. If you look at the — every death is a horror — but if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina and you look at what happened here with really, a storm that was just totally overpowering, nobody's ever seen anything like this. What is your death count as of this moment seven? Sixteen people certified sixteen people versus in the thousands.

JD: U.S. President Donald Trump speaking in Puerto Rico today. Frances Robles is a New York Times reporter who has been covering the aftermath of Hurricane Maria for the times. We reached her today in San Juan.

CO: Frances, what's your sense of how people are responding to President Trump's visit to Puerto Rico today?

FRANCES ROBLES: I think it's kind of an eye roll to be honest. I interviewed a few people in the last two days and it was really interesting. They all said the same thing, “Well I've heard what President Trump has to say about Hispanics. I haven't heard anything good. So what can I expect from him here?”

CO: And the statements he made today when he was visiting sounded, well for the most part, saying that he thinks that he and his team have done an amazing job. He said “we've gone all out for Puerto Rico, but I hate to tell you Puerto Rico but you're throwing our budget out of whack. We spent a lot of money in Puerto Rico.” Do people feel that that's true, that that's actually what they see on the ground?

FR: They definitely don't feel that that's what they see on the ground. It has taken several days, really only and until maybe yesterday and the day before that, for them to start seeing the actual aid — the food is starting to trickle in only now. So people are kind of scratching their heads as to what's taking so long.

CO: And what has taken so long?

FR: There's a lot of logistical nightmares that had to be dealt with in terms of clearing roads, and I also think there were other things that were kind of mission priority, such as getting electricity to the hospitals. There was a lot of problems at the port, there were a lot of problems at the airport. So I think that there was just too many things for the federal government to deal with at once.

CO: And do you think they were they were trying hard, they were doing what President Trump claims they were doing, which is an all-out effort.

FR: I'm only going to tell what I see on the ground.

CO: And that is that you've seen an all-out effort. I've been up and down the island. I went to the west, I went to the southeast. I have seen very little in terms of distribution of food. I saw one yesterday in Canóvanas in the east — what you mostly saw was Puerto Ricans helping other Puerto Ricans. They were clearing the roads. They were tying up power lines and getting them out so that people didn't get hurt.

CO: So you didn't see what President Trump has suggested that they want everything done for them?

FR: Oh not at all. You know, one thing that's really interesting is that even when you ask people like, “oh aren't you upset, you know or isn't this terrible?” They're really positive. I interviewed this lady last night, she's standing in a house that has no roof and only three walls. She says, “Some people really lost everything.” I said, “You lost everything. This house is soaked, and all the contents are ruined, and you have no roof and no walls.” She said, “Yeah but I still have that wall.”

CO: Wow, wow. And what else do they have? I mean, you've been out of San Juan you've seen what's going on in parts that few people are getting to, or we’re not getting their many stories out of — what are you seeing out there?

FR: I think the biggest problem that you hear from people over and over again right now, is the food stamp issue. Many people in Puerto Rico live off of that, about 40 per cent of the island. And so with the widespread telecommunications and electricity problems the supermarkets are not processing what's referred to as food stamps, and also many banks are closed and ATMs are closed. So they have neither the cash, nor the food stamp capabilities.

CO: What about water?

FR: I think about 40 per cent of Puerto Ricans right now have running water, the bottled water is starting to trickle out, but it's very few.

CO: And so and what about sort of other infrastructure besides running water — electricity, cell phone towers, roadways — any of that getting repaired?

FR: Ninety-five per cent of Puerto Rico has no electricity right now. I mean, if you look at it, you just look around and you say there's no way that anybody can pull this off in any fast amount of time. It's just staggering, staggering. You cannot find a street where there are not power lines on the ground or facing the wrong direction. I just don't even know how they're going to do this.

CO: You say people, for the most part, are taking this somewhat in stride, they're trying to figure out how to solve problems for themselves because they're not getting it from elsewhere. Is that your experience?

FR: Sure, absolutely. They are really having a positive spirit, they're trying to get ahead as best that they can. I met one man in the South, I asked him what's the hardest thing, and he said, “The hardest thing is when your kids tell you that they're hungry and you don't have anything to give them.” And I said, “Well what did you do?” He said well, I killed chickens,” and I'm thinking, “Oh so what, right, isn't that what a chicken is for? And he said, “No these are cockfighting chickens.” So he killed a $200 chicken because his kids didn't have anything to eat and he had no money to buy anything.

CO: So they're just at the very end then?

FR: Yeah, I would say that. I would say that, depending on where you are and how much food you stocked up on. Luckily some of the supermarkets are open. I went to Comerío, which is a rural town about an hour from here in San Juan, and the supermarket was open. I'm not going to say that there was huge amounts of supplies, but you weren't going to starve.

CO: One of the other things that President Trump said today in Puerto Rico, he said that he compared to Puerto Rico to what he called a “real catastrophe,” which would be Katrina where many people died hundreds of people died. And he said that only 16 had died, that’s the official death count in Puerto Rico, and that that they should be very proud of that death count, which shows that it wasn't as serious as other places have been. What can you tell us about the actual death count — about how many people have actually perished from this?

FR: There's no question that everyone is expecting that death count to rise especially if you start looking at indirect causes. So in the last two weeks they're more and more hospitals are starting to open up. But initially they had maybe 20 or 30 hospitals open, and they were running on generator power. And even the ones that are open they don't necessarily have the medicine that they need. The pharmacies can't process people's insurance. So, even if they have a person's medicine they say, OK but you have to pay cash. And the people don't have that because maybe ATM by their house is broken or they don't have the gasoline to get to the bank. So it's this real terrible, vicious circle causing so many problems.

CO: We will leave it there Frances, we'll be following your coverage. I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

FR: Thank you.

JD: Frances Robles is a New York Times reporter. She has been covering the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. We posted more on that story on the As It Happens website, that is: www.cbc.ca/aih. And tomorrow morning on the Current they’re are going to take a look at what the disaster means for efforts to make Puerto Rico an American state, or an independent country.

[Music: Various Woodwinds]

Las Vegas counsellor

Guest: Michelle Paul

JD: After the massacre in Las Vegas on Sunday, that killed at least fifty-nine people, thousands who witnessed it firsthand were left grieving and terrified and in shock. And early yesterday, a call went out for a volunteer crisis professionals. The mental health community responded within hours — and responded in droves. Michelle Paul is a Clinical Psychologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She spent hours speaking with concert goers and witnesses after they were moved to a stadium on the university campus. We reached Ms. Paul in Las Vegas.

CO: Ms. Paul, I know you got a text in the middle of the night on Sunday about the shooting, and soon after you were there providing counselling. What did you see when you arrived at the University of Nevada campus?

MICHELLE PAUL: Well, the first thing I saw was security, in a pretty orderly fashion, bringing folks in. Folks were coming off of buses and lined up, and there are escalators that lead up to the stadium, so folks were getting screened through security, including myself, and then kind of going up to the entrance and being just kind of welcomed in, and folks were able to sit wherever they felt comfortable.

CO: What kind of state were they in?

MP: It was oddly calm. Some people were in pretty good spirits, they had been part of the general evacuation off of the strip, and then there were other folks who were in a little tougher shape. They had been at the venue, they had run and run away, they had scrambled away, climbed fences, had felt and heard the bullets whizzing past their head, had seen people get shot and fall next to them. And I would say the entire group just felt, we were all sort of feeling like this is really surreal. What are we doing here on a Sunday night? This was not where we were supposed to be.

CO: You met several people from British Columbia. Can you share their stories with us?

MP: Sure. So, I met a group of women who had been at the concert, and there is a group of friends on a holiday who were clearly close to some folks who had been more seriously injured than them. They had run away, scrambled to get away. Folks said that there was, you know there was, there was chain link fence surrounding the venue so people had to climb over or break through that fencing to get out. And they had various scrapes and bruises and bumps and had lost shoes. So they were separated from other friends, so they were trying to figure out, with very limited battery, how are we going to get back.

CO: We spoke with a woman last night who stayed with a Canadian man who had died, and stayed with him for hours talking to his family, making sure that he wasn’t abandoned and she didn't know who he was. And I know you've probably heard a lot of stories about or seen strangers supporting each other in this situation.

MP: Yeah, that was another family I met from British Columbia. I had met a couple from Los Angeles that I met in the middle of a drugstore. The couple had been at the venue, the family had just been on the strip nearby, but everyone had to be evacuated and taken to a safe location. And that family had a young teenage girl with them, and they were sticking together as a group with the couple from L.A. and the family just kind of sharing snacks and sitting together in a shared experience. And it was a shame for this little one. Her grandma said, we’re from a small town surrounded by nature, and it was her first time on a plane, first time to a big urban place, and we wanted it to be an adventure and fun,” to have this happen, it was no upsetting to say the least. Obviously for them to know what they had hoped would be an adventure and an experience of a lifetime, turned out to be very scary and upsetting.

CO: You know I can hear the distress in your own voice. I'm sure you, speaking with all these people, that I'm sure you've picked up a lot of it, but how are you doing? How this shooting and what happened in Las Vegas affected you?

MP: I think it's an interesting question because I can answer it on a number of different levels. I’m having some trouble even finding the words. I'm incredibly proud of my colleagues in our city and our town, for having rallied in the way we have, hundreds of mental health professionals have pulled together to coordinate a mental health response in this time. I'm also sad for our community. I'm sad for my students who have been affected. People maybe don't realize, but we're a very small town in many, many ways. And I have not yet met one person who has not been personally affected by this. They knew someone at the venue, or they knew someone, who knew someone. No more than just a couple of degrees of freedom. My office manager was missing her friend yesterday, my daughter's friend was injured, and then yes, just holding stories of people's trauma. But I’ve had my tears here and there. And then there are times when you just got keep moving and keep busy because there's things to do.

CO: Ms. Paul, I know you have things to do, and I know you're helping a lot of others so we'll let you go, but I really appreciate you talking to us today. Thank you.

MP: Thank you. Thank you for listening. Bye, bye.

CO: Bye.

JD: Michelle Paul is a clinical psychologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. That's where we reached her.

[Music: Electric Guitar]

Bentham head

Guest: Subhadra Das

JD: Philosopher Jeremy Bentham led an unusual life. As well as being a fascinating radical thinker in the 18th and 19th centuries, he had a walking stick he named Dapple, a teapot he referred to as Dickie, and an elderly cat he named the Reverend Sir John Langborn. But in death Mr. Bentham was perhaps even more unusual. For example, he asked that his body be preserved so that he could be wheeled out at parties should his friends miss him. His wishes were followed, for the most part. His body was indeed preserved and displayed at the University College, London. Only problem is, because of an error his head was not preserved — at least not the way he intended. Now that is about to change. Subhadra Das is the curator of collections at University College London.

CO: Ms. Das, I'm sure you can appreciate this is a bizarre story.

SUBHADRA DAS: It rather depends on how you mean bizarre. I suppose I've been working with this for so long now that perhaps my view of it is a little different, but I will concede that yes putting the severed head of a 200-year-old utilitarian philosopher in an exhibition is bizarre.

CO: Now, Jeremy Bentham's body has been on display all this time right?

SD: It has indeed, yes.

CO: But the head was removed, so put us through that part of the story first.

SD: There are two aspects to the removal. The first is the physical removal of the head from his body when he died. Bentham had made a special request that his head be preserved in the style of the Māoris, the native New Zealanders, but his friend Dr. Southwood Smith, who was tasked with creating the auto-icon, wasn't necessarily as practiced with that as he probably would have liked to have been. And so the result was ahead that Southwood Smith said it was not suitable for display, which is why he had a wax model commissioned, and that's the one that is on display with the auto-icon, which is the skeleton in Bentham's own clothes. The second removal is when it was taken off display, and we're not exactly sure when that happened, but we think it was sometime in the 1990s. And that was because the head had been kidnapped by UCL’s rival university, King's College in London. And so because of the added security risk to the head, we think that was the reason why it was taken off display at that time.

CO: I'm looking at a photo which is Jeremy Bentham looking normal, but this is a wax head that he's got, but this is his real body and this photo isn't it?

SD: That's correct. Yes, in a box in the South Cloisters of the UCL building is the auto-icon of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, that is his own skeleton, dressed in his own clothes, but with a model head.

CO: And this grotesque head is at his feet, and that's the one that you're going to put back?

SD: That's correct. So we're not putting it on display in that box, as you see it there. It's on display in a special exhibition, which is called What Does It Mean to Be Human: Curating Heads that UCL.

CO: Now, since the head was recovered after it was kidnapped by the students, where has it been all these decades?

SD: Well, I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you. So, rest assured that it is in a secure and museum-standard, conservation-grade secure place.

CO: And how have you been preserving it —even in this grotesque state — how does it stay in that state?

SD: I mean, it is grotesque to look at, again I've been relatively conditioned, so I would suggest to you actually there is a replica model that was on display at Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum in London, and to my mind that is a much more grotesque version than the real head itself. But it is actually, relatively well-preserved, in terms of the skin — it was dehydrated by being suspended over sulphuric acid, so it's relatively stable. His hair gives us a little concern because his hair does tend to fall out. So our way of taking care of him is to treat it very carefully.

CO: That's his real hair that's on this?

SD: That is his real hair, exactly. Some of his hair was also taken to be put onto the wax head of the auto-icon as well.

CO: You're not just going to put this on display, this is part of a study, this is a larger kind of research that is being done because of the DNA. Can you tell us what you're going to attempt to do?

SD: Benton was one of the first people to think about how a dead body could be more useful to society in general if it was given to medical specialists to study and cut up, rather than simply being buried.

CO: Now, Jeremy Bentham insisted that his body be preserved in this way so that he said, that after his death he could be taken to parties and people wouldn't miss him because he'd still be around. How do you think he would feel about how are you going to display him and how he's going to be examined?

SD: There's t two ways to answer that, one is, that if he thought that his soul, his mind in any way survived him after death, then I think he would have approved of this course of action, and hopefully is in is enjoying a slightly different view now being in the octagon rather than just having the view of the inside of a storage box. But really the way to think about this and what Bentham's revolution was, is that when you're dead, you're dead — there's really nothing left. And so to kind of suppose what his wishes are in his absence is probably a bit of a spurious exercise. He enjoyed a joke, he did take it. There was a humorous aspect to the way that he approached this but also a very serious one. So, I would like to think that he approves, not only of the head being put on display, but also in terms of what we're trying to achieve with this exhibition in getting people to think about science and death and what we can learn from dead bodies.

CO: And why is it that one of the things the scientists will look at in his DNA is to see if he was autistic or had Asperger's —why are they thinking that that may be a possibility looking for that?

SD: So, autism is only is one of the things that a sequence in Bentham’s genome could potentially tell us, but it's a good example of how some people have made suppositions about Bentham based on historical material. This is taking a scientific approach to be able to prove that one way or the other.

CO: And what is it about Bentham that makes people suspect that he may have been on the spectrum?

SD: I think it's to do with the fact that he was quite — anti-social is not the best way to put it — but he didn't like to mix with large numbers of people. Now I'm fairly similar and I don't necessarily think that I'm autistic, so I think there are aspects to his behavior when he was a young man and also later on that have given people an indication that, that might be it.

CO: And then also he is pivotal, I understand, in the establishment of Britain's first police force and then he's also an advocate for the rights of women, for homosexuality to be legalized, so he was a progressive.

SD: Hugely progressive, in fact probably as we understand it, and in the traditional sense, one of the earliest liberals. They called him “the old radical” because his liberal views went against the authorities at the time, but yes, the more I learn about him the more sympathetic I am with his view of the world and how he saw it. Looking at the world as, as good or fair of a place for as many people as possible.

CO: Just fascinating. Ms. Das, I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

SD: Thank you.

JD: Subhadra Das is the Curator of Collections at University College, London. And that is where we reached her.

[Music: Waltz]

Paris birds

JD: When you are a tourist in Paris everything seems so exotic, the little bakeries, the coffee shops, the bars. Ordinary Parisians in their ordinary Parisian clothes doing their ordinary daily Parisian business. Even the pigeons seem slightly different. Of course to a visitor's eye part of that is just the glamorous context, although part of it is also the fact that the pigeons remaining feathers do glimmer becomingly in the European sunlight as they plummet to the earth with their heads torn off. Now that's not happening yet, but it is imminent. As of October 7^th, as humans enjoy squab stuffed with foie gras on ground, other visitors to the city will be enjoying squabs stuffed with squab organs, in the air. Paris you see doesn't just have pigeons, it has a pigeon problem. And Rémi Féraud, Mayor of the city's 10th arrondissement, is fed up with them. To him they are not remotely exotic, they are quote “a real health risk for local residents” unquote. Plus they locally paint the town white, coating the city's historic buildings with their guano. And so, Mayor Féraud plan is simple. Having exhausted all other pigeon discouragement tactics, he has hired assassins — two hawks and three falcons to aerially patrol the 10th arrondissement. According to the people in charge of the falcons quote “This technique, which is without danger for man, achieves optimal and lasting results” unquote. Well OK, if you say so, and sure it may work well, but the birds of prey are just going to persuade the pigeons to leave town. They're going to put this delicately they're going to rend the pigeons’ flesh with their razor-sharp beaks and litter the streets with their horribly mutilated half eaten bodies. That might reduce the bird population, but it may cause residents and tourists some serious problems in the city's downtown gore.

Back To Top »

Part 2: Gay Syrian refugee, Tom Petty obit

Gay Syrian refugee

Guest: Danny Ramadan

JD: He was so close to getting a fresh start, but a 31-year-old gay Syrian refugee has died in Lebanon while awaiting transport to Canada. Ahmed, whose last name is being protected by his sponsors, had his application approved by the Canadian government in August. But over the weekend he needed urgent medical care for a heart condition. Hospitals in Beirut refused to treat him and he died on Sunday morning. Danny Ramadan is a gay Syrian refugee. He now lives in Vancouver and he helped connect Ahmed to his Canadian sponsors. We reached Mr. Hamadan in Vancouver.

CO: Danny, you knew that Ahmed was so close to starting a new life in Canada — you and others did all you could. How did you react when you learned that he had died this weekend?

DANNY RAMADAN: It was quite shocking to be honest. I woke up and I was checking Facebook, and I found a post from a friend of his that he passed away, and I just looked at my phone and I was like, “Is this a joke. Is this like some sort of a sick joke that somebody is pulling?” I didn't believe it for a second, and then I just picked up the phone and I called a friend of hers that I know, and I got this crying woman on the other side telling me that he passed away. And I think after I heard the details I just sat down there, looked at my phone, and I just couldn't believe it.

CO: What are what are the details? What did happen to Ahmed in —he was in Beirut, right?

DR: He was in Beirut. He has been going through some health issues for a while now. He was vomiting a lot of blood and he just had a fever, and he was at his rented apartment on his own. His friend, the one that I spoke to, told me that she called him and asked him to come over to her house and stay over at her house for the night. By 2:00 o'clock in the morning he continued to cough blood and hallucinate. He was quite out of it, so they started to try to get him into hospitals, but not many hospitals would accept a Syrian refugee in Lebanon, especially with how expensive hospitals are and the lack of insurance. So he ended up in one of the hospitals, they were accepted, and then they were told that he will be put in intensive care. The doctors informed them that actually passed away in his hospital bed. Apparently the friend started to cry and scream, and that's all I know.

CO: And you wrote on your Facebook posting, she had told you at least he passed away dreaming of coming to Canada. What was delaying his arrival in Canada? This group, this sponsorship group in Vancouver, had been put together a-year-and-a-half ago, so what was holding it up — his arrival here?

DR: It's quite disheartening to think that he was so close to come here, yet so far. It has been taking over a-year-and-a-half of filling out paperwork, and government channels that we had to go through, and then sending the application to some sort of location here in Winnipeg, they will give us an application number and then it will go to the embassy and the embassy is understaffed. It took months, and months for the application to be processed. We have written in the application that he has a heart condition, that he is suffering, and still we faced a lot of challenges for that the application to be submitted and for him to hear back from the embassy in Beirut.

CO: And you mentioned elsewhere that he is a gay man in the Middle East with a heart condition. He's coming from a war zone, he is traumatized by so many things, he is threatened by all kinds of issues, not least of all being gay, being a refugee, and his only hope was coming to Canada. And he's supposed to be — we're told that these are high priority cases —if this is high priority what's happening with everybody else?

DR: Well, that's the other thing. The story of Syrian refugees is not in the in the public eye anymore, it is becoming longer, and longer for occasions to be processed. I have an application for two women who are living outside of Syria, they are living in one of the Gulf countries, and they have been waiting for an application number for a year now — it used to take a month. They are lesbians, they are partners, they can’t find friends as easily as women in a very conservative society. They are treated quite badly by their employers, and they are forced to stay in the country and wait because there is no other way.

CO: You came to Canada as a gay Syrian refugee when Stephen Harper was still Prime Minister. The Harper government was highly criticized for delays and not processing applications. How much do you think things have really improved under the Liberals?

DR: Things initially improved quite a lot. We got a lot of applications processed in a very short period of time, but I think now the topic is not a priority anymore. We don't see applications being processed as soon as they were, specifically talking about very endangered minorities of people, the sexual and gender identity folks, who are facing multiple layers of challenges. And we still don't see a lot of push for that regard, it's quite disheartening really. We are a country that celebrates our diverse, and we are not pushing to support the folks who are on the other side, who are waiting to come here and join us, who are the most successful cases of integration to the Canadian community.

CO: In your Facebook post about Ahmed, you wrote that you told him, “It will be a long and hard road but everything will be fine.” And then you had to write, “I made him a promise that I won't be able to keep.” What do you want people in Canada to know about what people like Ahmed are going through?

DR: I was just telling him that you know what, this will happen. This will be possible, you are young, you are capable, there are people here who want to raise money for you, who want to help you with your applications. And when you arrive, they want to show you Canada, and show you the beauty of Vancouver, and they help you integrate into the Canadian community. And I'm heartbroken to be honest, I'm just, I'm just heartbroken. It's hard to see that someone so close, and someone who could have been among those right now, is not with us anymore. And I feel like there is so much that could have been done that would prevent this. If the application was processed faster, if the situation over there wasn't as difficult, if hospitals accepted him. This is an unnecessary death of somebody who was soft spoken, and beautiful in the hearts, and full of hope, and really just wanted to be here and feel appreciated and feel valued for his identity.

CO: And we’ll remind people he was 31 years old.

DR: Yes.

CO: Danny I'm so sorry to hear this story. And I appreciate all that you're doing to try and help people over there. And thanks for speaking with us.

DR: Thank you. Thank you Carol.

JD: Danny Ramadan is a gay Syrian refugee and activist living in Vancouver. That is where we reached him.

[Music: Piano Ballad]

Tom Petty obit

Guest: Paul Zollo

JD: Back in 1974 Tom Petty was a guy with a band, struggling to make a living in Gainesville, Florida. Sometimes digging graves to get by, but he knew that if he could just get the record company to hear his music he would have a chance. So he made a tape and he drove across the US to L.A., and he proved his theory — and he proved it over and over again for decades. He had hit, after hit with his band The Heartbreakers, with the super group he co-founded, the Traveling Wilburys, and as a solo artist, the guy from Gainesville became one of the best-selling musicians of all time. Tom Petty died last night. He was 66 years old. In 2014, he spoke to CBC Radio about finally getting someone to let him into a studio and make some sound.

SOUNDCLIP

TOM PETTY: We were put in that situation early on at Shelter Records by Denny Cordell, who was, God bless him he's passed on now, but he just put us in the studio — Shelter owned it’s studios — so he’d just put us in there and leave us, and then check in on us. But he'd say, “You need to learn that making a record and performing live are not necessarily related that much.” The record is a performance, but there's no one there, you're creating just like you would an oil painting, you're adding colour, you do your sketch and there's a lot that goes on. So bit by bit you learn how to make these noises that are attractive or interesting, and that's tremendous fun.

JD: Tom Petty speaking with the CBC back in the summer of 2014. Again, Tom Petty died last night at the age of 66. Paul Zollo is a musician and a music writer. He got to know Tom Petty pretty well during the process of writing his 2004 book Conversations with Tom Petty. We reached Paul Zollo in Los Angeles.

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

PAUL ZOLLO: Thank you.

CO: When was the last time you saw Tom Petty?

PZ: I saw him a week to the night he died, a week prior to the night he died which was September 25th. It was the final show in his tour, the 40th anniversary tour with his band The Heartbreakers, and he played the Hollywood Bowl and it was the last night. And I've seen him many times and known him for years, I don't think I've ever seen him more happy, he was so happy that night. They let me take photos right in front, and he smiled so openly and joyously at me several times, that it was really like a party that night and that was that was the last time I saw him.

CO: What a great memory.

PZ: Yes.

CO: And you got to know Tom Petty while you were writing your book, and this is back in I guess in 2004, you were doing the interviews for Conversations with Tom Petty.

PZ: That's right. I mean, in fact I had known Tom since 1994, but when we started the book that meant we could meet every Saturday for more than a year of Saturdays, and we worked at his home in Malibu on the book. So I already knew him, but I got to know him much better at that point.

CO: What did you talk about in those interviews?

PZ: Well, the idea of the book was going to be a series of conversations about music and songwriting and being a musician in the world and an artist — not about his life. So that was the original idea, but as we started doing it, it became really clear that his entire life led to his songs, and all his songs were inspired by different chapters in his life. So what started as a series of conversations about creativity and writing songs, turned into really the story of his entire life, and he told me everything. He told me about notorious stories about his grandfather “Pulpwood” Petty, about whom I'd heard a rumor, a notorious rumor that he had killed a man in Georgia and that's why the Pettys had move to Florida. I never knew if that was true, and Tom confirmed that indeed that was the story that he knew. And so he told me stuff like that, that had never been confirmed. But he also went into great and very poignant detail about the challenges and the joys of being Tom Petty, being an artist, being a songwriter, being an artist in this industry. As great as he was and is triumphant as he was, being in this industry, the music business, is very challenging, and people might not realize the various challenges he went through and how he faced them and triumphed over them.

CO: What he's best known for are the collaborations, the group work — The Heartbreakers principally —what is it that he liked about that? What inspiration did he draw for the idea that he wanted to have band members and to play in those collaboration?

PZ: He loved Elvis, he got to meet Elvis when he was a kid, when Elvis was doing a movie in Florida. But what really changed his life was seeing The Beatles when they performed on The Ed Sullivan Show when he was a kid, a teenager. And at that point realizing, ‘that looks like a pretty great job, that's what I want to do.’ He never had a vision of being a solo artist or being like Elvis, he wanted to be one of the Beatles. and he also loved The Byrds very much — and other bands. So he had a great love of bands and the great fortune of meeting truly phenomenal musicians there in his hometown of Gainesville. But the thing is when they came to L.A. to get a record deal, immediately as the industry will do, they tried to persuade Tom from this band idea and offered him a solo deal, and gave them a lot of money, and many artists at that point are very happy to step over their friends and accept the deal. Tom didn't do that. He said, “No I'm a band.” And he insisted on that and that, and that distinguished him. Not everyone would do that.

CO: I mean, besides the Heartbreakers, the most fascinating collaboration, if people can imagine this of course the Traveling Wilburys — Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne Roy Orbison and Tom Petty. What did he think of that? I mean those are all of them, very phenomenal musicians and artists. Did he feel competitive with them? How did he collaborate with them?

PZ: Well, that was a time of pure, pure joy in his life. When he would speak to me there were some very dark, sad chapters of his life and his sadness was palpable, I could always tell, and in the same way there was really infectious joy when he would talk about happy parts of his life, and nothing more joyful ever in his life that he discussed with me than the Wilburys. Because for him that was a chance to make music completely for passion, and joy and fun. It wasn't about writing a hit, it wasn't about making money, it was his chance to get to play with people that he truly idolized himself. They didn't get too precious about it, they had fun. They'd write a song first thing in the morning — all of them writing together with their acoustic guitars — have a great meal, they had a chef there, and then make the record of that song, that day. So it was immediate, and fun and just about the authentic passion of rock and roll.

CO: You mentioned the dark periods, and there certainly were those in Tom Petty's life, what did he tell you about those?

PZ: You know, he went through, like a lot of rock and rollers, some problems with drugs, and drugs, especially cocaine, really, really can mess someone up. And he was overdoing it and that exploded in a recording session at Capitol Records, when he was trying to get a mix, and he just could not get what he wanted, and he was so upset and so crazy on cocaine that he smashed his hand into the wall, and he smashed the wall, and he smashed his hand, as he said to powder, to the extent that the doctor said you'll never play guitar again. And that was maybe the lowest chapter of his life. But also a time when he could have gone under, but instead he used that as a way of redeeming himself and getting off of cocaine. And perhaps the other — there are other times in his life that he didn't want to talk — he didn’t want to talk about his first wife Jane and their divorce. So that's not in the book, and I think that was part of their agreement that that would be off the record, but I know that was really hard. And that period between Jane and when he met Dana, he moved out of his home, they were living in Encino where I first met him. That period was tough for him I know, I saw him once during that period and he seemed lost and really sad.

CO: What do you think will be Tom Petty's legacy — his contribution to American pop music?

PZ: I think Tom Petty will be considered one of the great, and may be the last, true rock & roll heroes, true rock & roll American heroes. He was authentic, that since the very beginning he plugged into the juice that started rock & roll, the juice that got Elvis going, and then the Beatles, and The Stones and the Byrds. That's where he came from, with an authentic love and passion for that. And he never let go of that. So I think his legacy will be that he was the real deal, that nothing he did was ever contrived. It was all authentic rock & roll with true love for the art of songwriting and the craft and for the for the energy of rock & roll.

CO: I want to thank you for sharing your memories of Tom Petty with us. I really appreciate that.

PZ: Thank you very much. It was nice to talk about my friend.

CO: Take care.

PZ: You too.

JD: Paul Zollo is the author of the book Conversations with Tom Petty. We reached Mr. Zollo in Los Angeles.

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Part 3: Egypt band, Nobel winner

Egypt band

Guest: Hamed Sinno

JD: They waved a flag and it cost a number of Egyptians their freedom. Last month in Cairo at a concert by the band Mashrou' Leila, a group of audience members brought out a rainbow flag. The response from government authorities was swift and brutal. Six people were arrested, and now dozens more have been rounded up and charged. The band itself is from Lebanon, its lead singer Hamed Sinno is gay. We reached Mr. Sinno in New York.

CO: Mr. Sinno, what are you hearing about the people who were arrested after raising the rainbow flag at your concert? What is happening with them now?

HAMED SINNO: To be honest it's been a little bit difficult to try and really figure out what's going on, not just for the people who did raise the rainbow flag, but with the people who've been arrested after the concert in general. Because the media coming out of Egypt is not very reliable at the moment, several human rights organizations have been blocked on the ground. This campaign is yet another instance where certain events going on in Egypt are being used to further the crackdown on human rights organizations.

CO: Can you tell us what have they been charged with — do you know?

HS: So in general in Egypt, because homosexuality isn’t explicitly criminalized, they end up being charged with either debauchery, or incitement of debauchery, or support of debauchery, which are pretty ridiculous charges of a sort of public morality. But it become becomes rather comical when you consider that all these people have done it basically raise a piece of fabric in the air out of support. Normally the maximum sentence for that is three years with a fine, but there has apparently been a person who has already been sentenced to six years, which is double the regular the regular sentencing time.

CO: I understand that they have been subjected to anal examinations, which has been proven to be something that can yield no evidence of anything, and also can be is often called torture. Do you know why the authorities are doing that to them?

HS: I mean, it's ridiculous pseudoscience. I mean, it really if you think about it, it sheds light on the kind of mindset that the state and certain parts of Egyptian society, and other Middle Eastern societies — the mindset in which homosexuality is framed, tends to be about looking at men's sexuality in particular. It tends to also be extremely misogynistic, in the sense that it is the idea of being of having the male body penetrated, which is obviously not the way in which we identify homosexuality. Anal examinations have been sort of proven to be completely, completely irrelevant, medically not sound, to be in no way determinant of whether or not someone actually is a homosexual, let alone whether or not someone is actually engaged in that kind of intercourse. But essentially it's just a version of the state allowing itself to violate the sanctity of people's bodies, which is kind of I mean, not kind of, it’s just a horrible, horrible thing.

CO: Can you take us back to the concert itself and what was it like the moment when you saw the rainbow flag raised in the audience?

HS: It was heart-warming, to be honest. To see that some people felt emboldened enough to actually be supportive, or to publicly express themselves and their political opinions regardless of their own identities, it was really heartwarming to see that happening. I know it would have been much more difficult for people from my generation to even entertain the idea of doing something like that, so it was really beautiful to see. It was also really beautiful to see that there wasn't any sort of immediate backlash at the concert, that you know 35,000 people saw that flag go up and no one no one got into fist fights, no one harassed anyone else.

CO: Now Egyptian authorities — first of all we should point out that it's not explicitly against the law to be homosexual in Egypt but it's highly taboo — and now 22 people have been arrested.

HS: Again, the numbers haven't been verified. We've heard it’s 22 people in the last seven days, in addition to the 11 people in the first three days, and that at this point it's upwards of 35.

CO: Why do you think this crackdown has happened? It first starts at your concert and then spread, so why do you think that's happening right now?

HS: I think cracking down on the LGBTQ+ community historically, has proven to be a way for political leaders to make it look like they're safeguarding some version of conservative national morality. Unfortunately there are a lot of political gains to be had by torturing a segment of the community. I think people do it for strategic reasons — they probably win a lot of votes.

CO: I know you put out a statement calling for others in the music industry culture, inside and outside Egypt, anywhere in the world, to express solidarity with those Egyptians who have been arrested. Is there anything more you can do — anything that you feel that you plan to try and do in order to help those who have been taken into custody?

HS: To be honest, historically the only thing that has worked with these situations is to rally as much international solidarity and pressure as possible. Repressive governments do always end up responding to public pressure. The more polemical this becomes, the more people talk about this, the more likely those people are to get out with less harm inflicted on them. The idea of them coming out completely unscathed seems to be completely impossible at this point. I mean, they're already in there and the security apparatus has a history of all sorts of violence and all sorts of abuse. But we can get them out faster, we can get them out safer if there's more talk about this.

CO: Well Mr. Sinno we're going to try and keep on top of this story and find out what we can about what’s happened to those people and who they are. I appreciate that you spoke with us today. Thank you.

HS: Thank you.

CO: Bye, bye.

JD: Hamed Sinno is the lead singer of the Lebanese band Mashrou' Leila. We reached him in New York City.

[Music: Guitar Strums]

Movie collector

Guest: Professor Kenneth Catania

JD: When Adam Malik was 11 years old he was given his very first movie as a gift. His love of film quickly became kind of an obsession. That took the form of just a massive collection of DVDs, and Blu rays, and laserdiscs, VHS’ — and even Betamax tapes — more than seventeen thousand titles in total. And now Adam Malik is hoping to sell his movie collection for a million bucks. He's posted his library on ebay, and he's hoping it will catch the eye of a cinephile with money — and with room to spare. Earlier this week he gave CBC Manitoba a tour of his collection.

SOUNDCLIP

ADAM MALIK: OK you're recording, right? So start at numbers, then letters starting with the letter ‘A,’ all the way through here. This here, I put my criterions under criterion alphabetically and they are all numbered. It started as a gift and then after that I started go after them myself, searching video stores, pawn shops, flea markets you name it. Collections abound here — Dragon Dynasty series, those are the Chop Suey collection. I have 23 copies of Jurassic Park, I bought all the different versions of it from England, Germany, all the different special editions over the years. I just keep buying new ones, and all the formats: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray and it just goes on. I like everything, and pretty much if it's a collectible it catches my interest, especially if they're very limited or just well put together — a nice box set with a bunch of swag, if you will, that's put in there it just makes it a nice collectible piece. They're typically very expensive and some of them go out of print, it makes them very hard to find and very expensive and valuable. So I have about 500, just over 500 of those. Those would be probably the crème-de-la-crème, if you will. This is just the video games, but over here, these are the guys that don't fit on standard shelves. It takes up about 500 square feet, so if you are looking to add it to your own collection you're gonna have to dedicate quite a bit of space in your house. I have had some offers. I've had as little as one dollar, I don't really want to say what the most is, but it still wasn't enough.

JD: Winnipeg’s Adam Malik giving us a tour of his movie collection. He recently posted that collection on eBay. He says he's hoping to make a million bucks from the sale of his library, which is 25 years in the making and contains more than 17,000 films and no fewer than 23 copies of Jurassic Park.

[Music: Upbeat Fiddle]

MH370 father

JD: Today the Australian Transport Safety Bureau delivered the final report on the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. In the report the investigators concede quote “It is almost inconceivable and certainly societal unacceptable, in the modern aviation era with ten million passengers boarding commercial aircraft every day, for a large commercial aircraft to be missing. And for the world not to know with certainty what became of the aircraft and those on board” unquote. But that is what happened with MH 370 on March 8th of 2014. The flight left Kuala Lumpur headed for Beijing, and it vanished along with all 239 people onboard. Among them Muktesh Mukherjee, a Canadian. Back in January we spoke with Mr. Mukerjee, Malay Mukerji. He had just found out authorities were suspending the search for the plane. Here's part of that conversation with guest host Helen Mann. This is from our archives.

SOUNDCLIP

MALAY MUKHERJEE: It does mean that the closure will never take place in the manner in which we would have liked the grandsons to have. What I didn't like was stating that it as a suspension. When we all are knowing that's what's behind it is the closure of the search.

HELEN MANN: So you don't believe they'll ever resume the search?

MM: It takes quite a bit of effort to resume something once it stops. And even with the experience which we have had over these last nearly three years, we do not feel that Malaysian Airlines will take the trouble of reopening and restarting the search.

HM: What have these three years of uncertainty been like for you?

MM: Well, as you know we had our grandsons to look after and that definitely gave us some solace. There were hardly two and seven years old. To that extent we have been kept busy looking after them. But when you're alone, at night the feeling never goes away. And the closure would have been if we had known what happened to them, if we had known where they were, and of course if he had recovered even a small bit of the remembrance of what they were carrying with them.

HM: The search, as you know, was the most expensive and complicated aviation search in history. We're told it cost a $160 million, they searched 120,000 square kilometres, involved three countries —given all of that, where do you think this investigation failed?

MM: In this world of ours, where we can track even if possible going from one country to another at different stages by the hour, that technology did not help even in finding a plane. That is what has been the saddest part of the whole incident.

JD: From our archives that was a Malay Mukherjee in January of this year. His son Muktesh Mukerjee was on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared in March of 2014. And today Australian authorities announced that the investigation into the disappearance of that aircraft is indeed, as Mr. Mukherjee feared, closed. The plane was never found.

[Music: Somber Banjo]

Nobel winner

JD: If you have ever been jet lagged or worked the night shift, then you know how important the biological clock is. It is the internal cycle that keeps us awake during the day and hopefully, asleep at night. And any disruption or change to that cycle can have a big effect on our well-being. The scientific term for that cycle is circadian rhythm. And thanks to three American biologists we now have a much better understanding of how that works. Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine yesterday for their work on that subject. And we reached Michael Young in New York.

CO: Mr. Young first of all big congratulations.

MICHAEL YOUNG: Well, thank you. Thank you very much.

CO: I understand the call came pretty early when you win the Nobel. What happened?

MY: Initially I didn't get the call from Stockholm because that came to our house on landline in our kitchen, which is several rooms away from where we're sleeping with the doors closed. So we never heard the phone ring. I did have my cell phone next to the bed, and that went off at 5:30, 5:40 in the morning, and that was the President as Rockefeller and a Communications Head at Rockefeller. That's what woke me up, and of course you know when you hear from them you know this all must be true.

CO: But you did believe it when you actually got the news that you had won — that were sharing the Nobel Prize.

MY: Yes, I certainly did, and things got chaotic very quickly. The first thing we did was run in a get the phone out of the kitchen and move it the room where we could hear future ringing, and the Nobel committee did call shortly after that.

CO: And I know you haven't been having much sleep since then, so what effect is that having on your circadian rhythms.

[LAUGHTER]

MY: I'm phase shifted, I feel like I've been in a transatlantic flight. I will be in December, but you know, I'll get back on track within a few days.

CO: Let’s talk about the research that one you this prize. This is the discovery of the circadian rhythm. Describe it for people who don't know what that is. What exactly is it that you've found?

MY: So for centuries people have written about sleep and cycles of sleep and wakefulness. And this is perhaps the most prominent aspect of our behavior, and it has been mysterious for just as long. Hundreds of years ago it was also appreciated that something that looked like this could be seen in many other organisms, even in plants you can see plant movements, flower movements that followed a daily cycle. There was a lot of speculation about what might cause these. Most of the speculations early on were these were just responses to changes in the environment — sunrise, sunset, night versus day temperature changes — and of course these are biological responses originally to those kinds of environmental changes. But we now realize that that has produced biological changes evolutionarily, and a set of created biological clocks that actually anticipate different hours of the day, and coordinate things like sleeping, like hunger and meal times, our ability to fight infections, — almost every area of human biology, animal biology is touched, is regulated by theese clock. I think one of the estimates presently is that about half of our genes are regulated, in some tissues in our bodies, by this clock. We’re oscillatory organisms, we are built to be rhythmic.

CO: And what's significance of that discovery? What did that understanding lead to in our abilities to, well, to understand more and to cope with changes.

MY: So, it gives us much better tools with which to understand how, when these clocks are not working properly, or when they're not working in synchrony, the kinds of ill effects that are produced. So for example, just to give you an example of a feeling of malaise that many of us have experienced, jetlag is a situation where — let's say I'm traveling from New York to Tokyo, crossing over many, many time zones, what we now realize, is when we when we travel distances like that across time zones, the clocks in different parts of our body, different organs, readjust to those new environmental signals at different rates. So, while our heads may readjust pretty quickly, we still feel terrible because our lungs, and our liver, even our skin, is trying to get to the new time zone at a very different pace. So, it's almost as if you left all of these vital organs at different locations on trip up and are reeling them in once you arrive over a course of several days. So, we know what that feels like, but there are conditions now that we appreciate both — sleep disorders for example, and disorders of works schedules, which we now have a large part of the society involved in shift work. There's a huge premium on bragging about how much work you do and how little sleep you do it with. And we're beginning to understand that these are things that have consequences, and we're understanding more importantly, why they have consequences, rather than just pointing to them and saying health is declining.

CO: What are you going to do with your prize money?

[LAUGHTER]

MY: Boy, I have no idea. Somebody asked me this yesterday and I said, “well how much is it?” I didn’t even know how much it was — it is quite substantial.

CO: How much is it?

MY: I think the total prize is 1.1 million or something like that, so it's split three ways. That a lot of will go a long way, so we'll put it to good use, I'm sure.

CO: Well, Mr. Young again, Congratulations. It's a very important, fascinating — we just take it for granted we understand circadian rhythm and it came from you and your colleagues, so we appreciate that and thank you for speaking with us.

MY: Well thank you very much for your interest and support.

CO: Bye, bye.

MY: Bye, bye.

JD: Michael Young is a biologist at Rockefeller University and a co-winner of 2017 Nobel Prize in the Physiology or Medicine category, for his group's work in circadian rhythms. We reached Mr. Young in New York City.

[Music: Jazz]

Backyard chickens

JD: They debated for hours into the evening, finally things devolved into a high stakes game of chicken — or chickens actually, because the issue was chickens. Last night members of Toronto city council spent a good amount of time arguing over a pilot project that would allow some residents in Toronto to raise chickens in their backyards. For the record here are Councillor David Shiner, city staff member Tracey Cook and Councillor Justin Di Ciano having it out on the issue.

SOUNDCLIP

COUNCILLOR DAVID SHINER: How would you measure the noise that was from a henhouse, to say it was difficult?

TRACY COOK: So through you Madam Speaker, we are actually undertaking a review of the noise bylaw and would have to consider how the keeping of backyard hens may or may not impact noise in communities. How would you measure the noise?

[CHICKENS CLUCKING]

DS: Would you call that a noise that you could possibly deal with if a neighbor was complaining — because it's not louder than the noise bylaw?

TRACEY COOK: Through you Madam Speaker, noise is subjective and that's why we're undertaking the noise bylaw. One man's music is another man's nuisance.

COUNCILLOR JUSTIN DI CIANO: Madam Speaker you know it gets to me sometimes when most people in this room publicly would say that they are not supporters of the Donald Trump-style politics that we're seeing in the United States. But it does become very apparent with some of my colleagues here tonight that fact and reason are out the window and that the politics of fear is what they prefer to practice. Almost every negative fact they've heard about backyard chickens is not true. The science doesn't support it, the facts don't support it. Chickens, believe it or not, are social animals. People like chickens as pets. There is no noise from chickens, they don't make noise. The argument that everybody's going to have chickens, and everybody is going to be ticked off, well of everybody's got chickens, that means we're making the right decision, because everybody wants chickens.

JD: Councillor David Shiner, city staff member Tracey Cook, and Councillor Justin Di Ciano, debating the merits of backyard chickens last night. Today council voted 23 to 14 to remove chickens from the city's list of prohibited animals — they’re going to let some residents set up backyard coops.

[Music: Pop]

Sinéad O’Connor

JD: It was 25 years ago today that Sinéad O'Connor gave an unforgettable performance on Saturday Night Live, and it almost ruined her career. It was 1992, the Irish singers breakthrough single ‘Nothing Compares To You’ had made her an international star. She just released her highly-anticipated third album, a collection of covers called ‘Am I Not Your Girl? But that night, standing next to a pillar of burning white candles, Ms. O'Connor sang a cover that was not on her latest album. It was an acapella version of Bob Marley's War. She made it her own, and Ms. O'Connor tweaked the lyrics. She called out the Catholic Church for covering up child abuse. That was a taboo subject, that really few U.S. audiences would have been aware of in 1992. And then at the end of the song she held up a photograph of Pope John Paul II to the camera. She tore it to pieces, and she told the stunned audience to quote “fight the real enemy.” Here's what that controversial performance sounded like.

SOUNDCLIP

SINEAD O’CONNOR:

Until the philosophy,

Which holds one race superior

And another inferior,

Is finally and permanently

Discredited and abandoned,

Everywhere is war.

Until there is no longer first class

Or second class citizens of any nation.

Until the color of a man's skin,

Is of no more significance than

The color of his eyes,

I've got to say "war".

That until the basic human rights,

Are equally guaranteed to all,

Without regard to race,

I'll say "war"

Until that day the dream of lasting peace,

World-citizenship and the rule of

International morality will remain

Just a fleeting illusion to be pursued,

But never obtained.

And everywhere is war.

Until the ignoble and unhappy regime

Which holds all of us through,

Child-abuse, yeah, child-abuse yeah,

Sub-human bondage has been toppled,

Utterly destroyed,

Everywhere is war.

War in the east,

War in the west,

War up north,

War down south,

There is war,

And the rumors of war.

Until that day,

There is no continent,

Which will know peace.

Children, children.

Fight!

We find it necessary.

We know we will win.

We have confidence in the victory

Of good over evil

Fight the real enemy!

JD: Sinead O'Connor with her controversial rendition of Bob Marley's war on Saturday Night Live. October 3^rd, 1992.

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October 3, 2017 transcript

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