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The Current Transcript for March 19, 2018

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

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They took my photos, they posted my ad, they took the phone calls, they decided what service I would provide, they decided how many people I would see, they decided how much money I would charge

LAURA LYNCH: It happens in the shadows in cities across the country. Vulnerable young women flattered by the attentions of an older man, gradually find themselves trapped. They're sold for sex, often abused and unable to find a way out. This week members of parliament are travelling across Canada to hear what government needs to do to crack down on the traffickers. And perhaps more importantly to help victims escape and rebuild their lives. After that a wild tale from the wilds of Borneo

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He was arrested twice, escaped twice under gunfire and finally he was bitten by a pit viper and he almost died and he was unconscious essentially for three weeks.

LL: Bruno Monser was more than an adventurer. He became so enamoured of the people who lived in the ports of Borneo that he in essence became one of them wearing a loincloth, cutting his hair, carrying a spear and then risking his life to fight against commercial logging there. He wasn't the only Westerner drawn to the people in the culture of the island. Michael Palmiero went into the Forest of Borneo as well but for a much different reason. Carl Hoffman tells their stories in a new book The Last Wild Man of Borneo and he'll be talking to us in half an hour. And then Star Wars for real

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Space as a war fighting domain, just like the land, air and sea. We may even have a space force

LL: President Donald Trump recently proclaiming it's past time for the United States to develop - what space storm troopers - not since the presidency of Ronald Reagan and his strategic defence initiative has just a spot light been thrown on the possibility of war well outside our atmosphere. Today we'll look at the very real issues surrounding the potential for conflict on a battlefield none of us can see what it might mean for the future of war. I'm Laura Lynch sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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'They don't know they're victims': She was trafficked at 17, but didn't recognize the signs

Guests: Jade Brooks, Nicole Barrett

LL: When it comes to human trafficking it can be all too easy to think of it as a tragic crime that happens someplace else. But as police forces and survivors across this country will tell you human trafficking is a hidden epidemic in Canada. That's how the Nova Scotia RCMP recently referred to the crime in their province. And it's in Halifax today that a cross country series of public consultations on human trafficking are taking place held by a committee of members of parliament. In a few minutes we're going to focus on what can be done here in Canada to help put an end to the practice that forces so many into the sex trade or other forced labor. But first I'm joined by Jade Brooks. Like some who will be speaking at the House of Commons justice and human rights forums, she is a human trafficking survivor. She's also the author of The Teen Sex Trade: My Story. Jade Brooks is with us from Calgary. Hello

JADE BROOKS: Hello. Good morning.

LL: How did your relationship begin with the man that you now call your trafficker?

JADE BROOKS: Really it began as ordinary as any other relationship I would say. We began dating, he was taking me on dates, very much like the honeymoon phase when your first getting to know someone

LL: And how old are you and how old was he when this relationship started?

JADE BROOKS: We were both actually 15.

LL: And so you began dating. How was he treating you?

JADE BROOKS: He treated me good in the beginning but that didn't last for very long.

LL: Tell me what happened.

JADE BROOKS: And he quickly became like verbally abusive. Just kind of getting me to experience different things I would normally experience.

LL: So tell me what happened in in Montreal and then in Toronto.

JADE BROOKS: So eventually he basically gave me an answer made on whether I was going to stay with them or not and that was to go into the sex trade. So he brought me to Montreal and I started to work in the strip club there. And eventually we moved to Toronto where I worked in a massage parlor

LL: And what was his role in all of this while you were doing this work?

JADE BROOKS: Well the misconception is that there kind of like protecting you and getting your clients and everything. But he was basically just there. He sent me to work with another girl that he knows. Like he knew that girl's boyfriend which was in reality her pimp and she kind of took me under her wing and showed me the steps. But he was just - I don't know - home or out with his friends or whatever he was doing. So he wasn't really doing anything

LL: Well, while all of this was happening what was going through your mind?

JADE BROOKS: Mostly I felt like I was kind like the sacrifice I had made to have the terrible life that I wanted to have, which was mostly like more stability in my life coming from a place of not having my parents around. And just feeling 'othered', feeling like that outsider I guess in my friend group. So it was mostly just the sacrifice it was never really about the money from me personally.

LL: It was about having some kind of stability as you say. Did you still consider him your boyfriend at that point?

JADE BROOKS: Yes it wasn't until years after I got out of the situation that I was able to realize that he actually wasn't my boyfriend.

LL: It's kind of ironic because the one thing you were craving was stability and yet you were living this very unstable life. So why did you stay with him?

JADE BROOKS: I was in love. Like that is the honest answer. I wasn't able to see outside of the situation when I was in it. Because at the same time that he's doing this tell me he's also you know still calling me his girlfriend, still treating me like his girlfriend but it was kind of like you know living a double life if I could say.

LL: Did you go to the police? Did you try to get help?

JADE BROOKS: No. I did it and only because I did it look at the situation like 'Okay I need help'. There is definitely times when it was uncomfortable, where I felt unsafe but in reality it wasn't like 'okay I need to go to the police'. I didn't even know that I could go to the police at the time.

LL: Really. Why did that do you think that? You just thought here was nothing wrong with what you were doing?

JADE BROOKS: No there was nothing wrong. I was 17 when I went to the sex show. I wasn't legally allowed to be in the sex trade. In Montreal you have to be 18 to work in the strip club. So I didn't know. Like if it really occurred to me, I'd thought that I would have gotten in trouble for being there in the first place. But also though I don't have a relationship with the police to have felt comfortable doing that.

LL: Do you remember whether there was anyone around you - friends, anyone - who suspected anything was wrong?

JADE BROOKS: No I kept one or two of my girlfriends around me but they'd look at it in that way because we grew up with the sex trade and pimping and that kind of stuff being the norm. But again I always looked at it like he was my boyfriend.

LL: So how did you mentally get out of it?

JADE BROOKS: Eventually I was fortunate enough he just let me go. He said he didn't want to deal with me anymore which is not the case for most people.

LL: Why didn't he want to deal with you anymore? Were you starting to sort of act up and say you didn't want to do things?

JADE BROOKS: Yes. We were arguing a up around it and I started to ask more questions, like 'How can you get a hold of the money and how can you get to just go do whatever you like and I have to go to work every day?' And then yeah he eventually kind of got fed up with answering those questions I guess

LL: And how old were you when you got out?

JADE BROOKS: I was 18.

LL: Knowing what you know now what do you think would have helped you get out earlier?

JADE BROOKS: I don't think there's anything anyone on the outside could have done but it was just a matter of time before I realized like how bad the situation really was or how bad it could get that I would start to figure out a way to get out. I think once you're at rock-bottom you will find a way out as a as a human we're very resilient.

LL: What would you like to tell a young woman or anyone who's in the position that you were in?k

JADE BROOKS: Just to know yourself and to love yourself because I think it's starts not only at home but within ourselves to understand our worth and to understand that we deserve better we deserve the best and definitely it to be treated the way they're being treated or whether it's verbal abuse or physical abuse.

LL: I wonder then because you've got the politicians who are trying to grapple with this, what would you like to see change in how Canada deals with human trafficking?

JADE BROOKS: Probably the first thing is to have a victim have to testify, that's completely traumatizing, retraumatizing to the survivor. I would hope to see that change in the sense that they don't need a testimony in order to take it to a conviction.

LL: Well we'll be talking some more about this but I thank you very much for coming on and talking to us today.

JADE BROOKS: No problem. Thank you so much for having me.

LL: Jade Brooks is a human trafficking survivor and the author of The Teen Sex Trade: My Story. She joined us from Calgary. Well human trafficking is a complex problem. It can involve multiple jurisdictions and agencies. And as we just heard the whole traffickers hand on their victims is often as much psychological as physical. But the people who study human trafficking say there is more Canada could be doing to help. Nicole Barrett is the director of the International Justice and Human Rights Clinic at the Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia. She's worked with the National Task Force on the Trafficking of Women and Girls in Canada and written reports on how Canada ought to respond. Nicole Barrett joins me now from Vancouver. Hello

NICOLE BARRETT: Hello.

LL: What went through your mind just now hearing Jade's story?

NICOLE BARRETT: Well I actually think her story is a very typical one. So it is the sort of boyfriend trafficker is a story that happens all over the world. And is I think one of the lesser known aspects of trafficking. At first people thought that you know the image of what a trafficked person was someone who was kidnapped by somebody they didn't know, maybe you know kept in a dark closet somewhere. But more frequently both in Europe and in the United States and in Canada the traffickers often someone that the victim knows well and occasionally it's even family members in some circumstances. So her story was very typical of someone that she trusted someone that she thought was a part of her life. And another aspect that was very common is to hear that she didn't have parents with her that her parents had passed. Because many times the victims of human trafficking are people who are isolated, people who are poor, people who can be mentally ill, can be addicted to drugs. There are many aspects of what victims look like that make them more vulnerable than normal people. So this desire to have some stability or to have love in the trafficker also isn't an uncommon story.

LL: So you heard Jade also say that she just thought that she couldn't go to the police. She couldn't go to anyone. What kinds of social services supports would you like to see for victims of human trafficking that not only helped them get out but help them rebuild?

NICOLE BARRETT: So it would be wonderful to increase specialized services and shelter available to all trafficking victims. And I think one of the difficulties is finding the victims in the first place. It's difficult for people to come forward for many different reasons. Oftentimes they don't know they're victims as Jade herself said. She didn't really realize that something was wrong. So one of the best ways for government or for law enforcement to find trafficking victims is to work in partnership with nongovernmental organizations and then they often have more contact with people in the line of work that they are in. And what's really needed in these situations is you know 24/7 wraparound supports in major urban centres. Right now there's a shortage of beds for example in for sex trafficking victims so sometimes they'll even be- once more aware that they need help, there won't be beds for them. They'll have to be sent even to other provinces. So really there needs to be expanded services for the victims in trafficking situations.

LL: So we have this committee of MPs travelling across the country. The government has tabled a bill C38 about combating human trafficking but it's only at the introductory stage. So the consultation is aimed at developing laws. What can we learn from international law that would make Canadian laws more effective?

NICOLE BARRETT: Well the Canadian law follows international law fairly well. So the Palermo protocol which is the international protocol that covers human trafficking and the Canadian law follows the protocol.

LL: But what could we learn from international laws that we could apply in Canada that would help us combat human trafficking?

NICOLE BARRETT: One thing that would be helpful in terms of changing the law in Canada is that there's a provision in the law right now that requires the fear of safety for yourself or a loved one be shown in order to convict for human trafficking, and that's not actually required by international law and it's something that I think has been difficult for prosecutors to actually work with. And so that's one of the reasons convictions have been harder to gain. So I would change that provision of the law.

LL: We will leave it there. Nicole Barrett, thank you.

NICOLE BARRETT: Thank you.

LL: Nicole Barrett is the director of the International Justice and Human Rights Clinic at the Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia. She was in our Vancouver studio

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The bruises that I saw on her, the way her demeanor, her appearance, the way she would not answer me, the way she would always look at him, I knew something was just not right.

LL: Shelia Fedrick had been working as a flight attendant for 10 years when she spotted the teenager on her plane in 2011. The girl was sitting beside an older man on an Alaska Airlines flight from Seattle to San Francisco. And Shelia Fedrick decided to do something. She encouraged the girl to use the restroom where a note and a pen were waiting.

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I said 'if you need help, write on this note', then I left my phone number at the bottom and she wrote on the note 'I need help'.

LL: The captain alerted San Francisco police and the man was taken into custody. Well my next guest Nancy Rivard trains flight attendants to identify possible victims of human trafficking. In the United States, this type of training is mandatory. In Canada, it's encouraged by Transport Canada and some airlines do offer training but it's less left to the discretion of the airlines. Nancy Rivard is president of Airline Ambassadors International and she is in Washington. Hello.

NANCY RIVARD: Hello.

LL: How common are stories like the one we just heard from flight attendant Sheila Fedrick?

NANCY RIVARD: Sadly very common, every day. As soon as we learned about human trafficking, our team discussed it and we correctly identified trafficking of four different airlines that month. It's happening all over the world and on every airline. This is why we know it's so important to train flight attendants.

LL: So how do you train a flight attendant? How they identify someone who might be at risk?

NANCY RIVARD: Right. Will you look for- Basically you notice people who are passengers on flights, who are they traveling with if they are a child? Is that person under their complete control? Sometimes a trafficker will hold their passports et cetera, the person might be frightened ashamed or nervous, less well dressed than their companion, a companion speaks for them. They might have the branding of a tatoo with a man's name or a bar code. They may have wounds and bruises, or eat as if ravenously hungry. That's pretty strange if you're on an airline.

LL: I gather you got into the field after you met a Cambodian girl in 2009. Tell me that story, what happened?

NANCY RIVARD: Yes. So we didn't know any. We were at a humanitarian organization where flight attendants travelled every month to help children in need, Airline Ambassadors. And in Cambodia we came upon a little girl that was abandoned by her mother who was trafficked - we later learned - but she was completely naked and trying to draw close on her own body with the red marking pen. She had no name, no hair and again no clothes. So we ended up saving that little girl, taking her to a safe house and just visited her recently and learned about the issue of human trafficking and that this is a dark reality in our world.

LL: And do you know what's happened to her?

NANCY RIVARD: Yes. We were just there a couple of weeks ago. We got her into a safe house with her mother and she's been well taken care of. She's 7 years old right now and in school and doing very well.

LL: So do you have a sense then for how much success your group has had with this kind of intervention because it must be quite delicate?

NANCY RIVARD: It's very delicate, yes. We know of 14 specific cases where we've had and correctly identified trafficking. In the first case, we were able to intercept a pornography ring in Boston saving 86 children. But in those 14 cases we've now provided 62 airports trainings at airports across the world and are unfortunately law enforcement is unable to give us the exact numbers of how much trafficking tips increased. But we have created a tip line app that's free on Google and iTunes where people can download. We've had over a thousand trafficking tips reported on that tip line app that we've been teaching.

LL: I wouldn't ask you in Canada as some airlines do after this type of training for the staff but why think it's important for it to be mandatory across all airlines?

NANCY RIVARD: Yes we were successful in getting the FAA Re-authorization Act in the United States where training is mandated for flight attendants. We're expanding on it now pilots are and all front-line personnel agents. In 2013 I met Joyce Smith, who was a member of parliament at the time in Canada and flew up to meet her in I think I was in Montreal or Toronto. And unfortunately we never got a training planned for Toronto or Montreal. I really would like to do that and we're looking for sponsors, either usually the airport commissions us or a Club or a Foundation in the country would fund this training. Every flight attendant sees 500 people a week, 24,000 a year.

LL: We are going to have to leave it there. Nancy Rivard, thank you very much.

NANCY RIVARD: Thank you.

LL: Nancy Rivard is president of Airline Ambassadors International. She's in Washington. We did request interviews with Minister of Justice Jody Wilson-Raybould and Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale. Minister Wilson-Raybould office sent us a statement which reads in part: "Our government is committed to combating human trafficking and to better protecting victims who are among society's most vulnerable. I was pleased to introduce Bill C38 which proposes to give law enforcement and prosecutors new tools to investigate and prosecute certain human trafficking offenses that can be particularly difficult to prove. The proposed legislation will strengthen human trafficking laws in our country." And that again is from Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould. Well the CBC News is coming up next. Then the last of wild men of Borneo are there Carl Hoffman joins me with his stranger than fiction true life adventure story right after the news coming up next. I'm Laura Lynch in for Anna Maria Tremonti and you are listening to The Current.

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Why a Swiss adventurer left the Western world to join a nomadic Indigenous community

Guest: Carl Hoffman

LL: Hello I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current

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LL: Still to come. Churchill fired up the allies with a famous speech saying 'We shall fight them on the beaches' in the fields and in the streets'. Now Donald Trump would seem to want to add a few lines. We shall fight on the asteroids' the moon and in the space station too. Last week the U.S. president said he's mulling the creation of a new military branch , the space force. More on just what that might mean in about half an hour from now. But first the last wild man of Borneo

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[Sound: Rain forest soundscape]

LL: Sounds from the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. It's long held a special mystique. It's a wild and remote place where orangutans roamed through ancient rain forests and bats the size of foxes with wing spans as wide as a man is tall soar through the air. Borneo's human inhabitants are no less fascinating adorned with dramatic swirling tattoos, living in longhouses and hunting with blowpipe in a world that still wild and seemingly isolated from modernity. It's a place my next guest was drawn to as a young man much like the subjects of his latest book The Last Wild Man of Borneo. It's an adventure story, a real life mystery and a meditation on the fascination that Borneo still holds in our cultural imagination. Carl Hoffman joins me from Portland, Maine. Hello.

CARL HOFFMAN: Hi. Thanks so much.

LL: You tell a story about the fate of Borneo through two men who were also drawn there. Let's start with Bruno Manser. What was it about his story that captured your imagination?

CARL HOFFMAN: Well I think it all began for me I mean when I was a small kid. But then in 2012 I ended up living in a very remote village in what's now Indonesian, New Guinea. And while I was living there it confused me and it sort of changed all my perceptions about indigenous people and in particular how we view them. And I came to see that we kind of fetishized them and exoticized them. And it's part of that you know I was I was like at two and I had long this desire while I was there to stay forever and to sort of become adopted by the people if you will and that's a long western fantasy. But I also had this desire to flee. Life is difficult there and it's difficult for someone like me to pierce the culture and I had long been aware of Bruno's story and been fascinated by it.

LL: Why did Bruno Manser originally go to Borneo?

CARL HOFFMAN: Bruno was a Swiss man who went to Borneo for the first time in 1984. He was living in the Alps kind of trying to remove himself from Western society and culture, live without money and he'd seen a photo of the Penan in a library and the Penan looked exotic and lived in a in a world without money and were pure hunter gatherers. And he just decided he wanted to go there and live with them and kind of escape from the world, live in the belly of the mother as he put it.

LL: And who are the Penan people?

CARL HOFFMAN: Borneo is filled with the wide variety of indigenous people mostly known by the general term Dayaks. And then in the very deepest part of the forest lived the Penans who were pure hunter-gatherers, nomads, lived in small bands, shared everything communally, hunted with blow pipes, avoided the sun, were completely non-violent and that was all attractive to Bruno.

LL: Now the other story that you tell is about a man named Michael Palmieri who is he?

CARL HOFFMAN: Michael was an American from Southern California who got the call from the U.S. military in the 60s and headed first to Mexico and then to Europe and had this sort of wild 10 year sojourn in Europe before ending up going into Borneo. And he was drawn, like Bruno, to the place itself and the people but also he was particularly drawn to the art of the Dayaks. They were beautiful carvers in particular and he began buying and selling the art of the Dayaks.

LL: Tell me a little more about the Dayaks.

CARL HOFFMAN: The Dayaks is sort of a general term for the indigenous people of Borneo. Really we're talking about a lot of different groups with many different languages but the essential are that they lived in great long long houses. They tended to often tattoo themselves both men and women, great ornamentation, stretch their ear lobes down to their shoulders with heavy brass rings and wear beautiful clothing. And they were warriors and headhunters. But they were sedentary rice growers versus the nomadic Penan deeper into the forest.

LL: So you have these two men Bruno Monser and Michael Palmieri. What links the stories of these two very different men for you?

CARL HOFFMAN: Well there are two things. One on the surface they seem very very different. But the more I thought about them and looked at them the more I felt that they were both kind of motivated by the same thing, really fuelled by the same fire. They were both in pursuit of this perceived wisdom power of indigenous people that the West kind of fetishizes and fantasizes about and that's so there's a long long history of that. And that you know they were both Westerners from wealthy rich countries. So baby boomers who fled their militaries and sought you know a certain solace in the east. And that they were both in a way two sides of the same coin and then it turns out that they had met that their paths had crossed in Borneo once. And that's what really suddenly you know it seemed like ultimately kind of an inevitable crossing of paths of these two men. And that brought the stories together for me.

LL: And you learn that in talking to Michael Palmeri. What did he say about that encounter?

CARL HOFFMAN: It's a relatively small encounter on the one hand but it also it felt to me as I said inevitable that these two men in their pursuit of this kind of treasure and this hunger for this idea and this ideal, that even though they were so different that their paths should cross. They were really representative of their time and their culture I mean all over the world, all over the West I guess I should say, not just in America or Canada but throughout Europe too. You had people wanting something more something different I mean they went further and deeper perhaps than most people and that's what makes them good kind of avatars to explore all this.

LL: Do you envy them?

CARL HOFFMAN: Of course. Absolutely. You know I envy both of them mean because they represent you know these two twin impulses in a way. I mean Michael went in and out in and out. He would go in for one month, two months ,three months at a time and then he would always come back to Bali. He was based in Bali. And Bruno was the guy who went in and kind of he became so Penan that the Penan themselves called him Penan man, at a time when the Penan themselves were undergoing change starting to wear t-shirts and gym shorts, and Bruno was wearing loincloths and cutting his hair in this sort of unusual almost a mullet style like a Penan. I mean he was even experimenting with banging out barkcloth to make barkcloth loincloths. And most Penan weren't even wearing loincloths then. So you know he did this sort of fantastic thing. His life was so crazy I mean we haven't even talked touched upon what he would eventually happen when he was there.

LL: We're coming to that.

CARL HOFFMAN: So course I envy them. I mean absolutely.

LL: The big turning point in Bruno's story is when the logging industry comes to Borneo. What did that mean for Bruno and the Penan?

CARL HOFFMAN: Well Bruno looked at living in with the Penan as sort of living - as he put it - in the belly of the mother which is kind of a reference to Eden in a way, a perceived Eden. And he had been there just about a year when logging in Malaysia accelerated in a in a powerful way and the logging came directly into the traditional lands of the Penan. And the Penan as nomads you know they didn't live in houses. They didn't live in villages. So the whole forest was their home and that home was just being mowed down. And the Penan had traditionally been these shy illiterate, the least powerful people really in all of Malaysian. Bruno organized them to begin blockading logging roads and in doing so he brought this billion dollar industry to a halt and threw a huge wrench into the system and became famous overnight really both in the West and in Malaysia. He became the most wanted man in the country.

LL: So he became famous and infamous at the same time.

CARL HOFFMAN: Both for sure and you know the fascinating thing about Bruno which is important to all of this is the way Bruno kind of got caught up in all these tropes, that he would have been the last one to think that that would happen to him. To him the Penan were sort of these ahistorical people who were living in a purer way, untouched by time or the modern world and he wanted to save that. And the West suddenly Bruno you know all these reporters started flooding into Sarawak to see Bruno. People from German magazine Stern or German Geo. These were big magazines Wall Street Journal, I mean the New York Times. And you know what they were really fascinated by wasn't even the Penan or the logging blockade, so much it was Bruno. It was this Westerner who had sort of become this like Tarzan figure and that's like the old Western fantasy around. And then to the Malaysians he was this sort of it was a return to colonialism. And the Malaysians felt incredibly threatened by this guy from one of the wealthiest countries on earth. And so all of those tropes start to mix and make things complicated.

LL: It's a bit of an aside but I just want to ask you within that context of what you're talking about Western tropes, the book it makes me think about National Geographic admitting that its content over the years had been racist and I'm wondering what were you hoping to avoid as you wrote about the Penan and Dayak?

CARL HOFFMAN: Well I think that on the one hand it's a kind of supposed to be a ripping yarn, just an adventure story, a sort of high paced adventure story. But I think that really ultimately the book is about much deeper themes and it is about examining all of those things and asking a lot of hard questions. So what National Geographic just said is long time coming. I would say they didn't even really go far enough. They kind of admitted to racism in the long distant past. But I would say there's evidence of it in the more recent past as well.

LL: Let's get back to Bruno's story. He eventually leaves Borneo after suffering a horrible injury. Tell me about that.

CARL HOFFMAN: Well Bruno was there for six years and he didn't want to come out but he had become- It became very difficult for him to move around because he was under so much pressure from the government. He was arrested twice, escaped twice under gunfire. He was obsessed with snakes and he was always catching them and finally he was bitten by a pit viper and he almost died. I mean he was unconscious essentially for three weeks and couldn't walk for three months or so and was really hobbling even at six months. And you know his parents were getting old and he was talking about sort of doing more and wilder and wilder things handing himself over to the government and being arrested and his family was worried about him. So it's a crazy wild story. But he escaped with a false passport and various disguises and left after six years and then started all this activism that went on for ten years and ultimately led to the sort of tragedy of the book.

LL: But he did leave and started this activism. His fame continued to grow and in fact Wade Davis who is a Canadian ethno botanist anthropologist became one of his champions in a way. Tell us about that.

CARL HOFFMAN: Well Bruno you know as he generated so much fame when he was in Borneo. But then when he came home of course I mean even you know the escape even added to his mystique in a way. He had these very close friends in Switzerland who were also working on trying to halt logging in Sarawak. And one of them, one of the most important to him told me that after Bruno came back he said to me 'Well if Greenpeace wanted to hold an action, they had to do all this work to build it and talk to the press. And if we wanted to have an action all we had to do is produce Bruno. Bruno was the action'. And you know people told me that he smelled like a shepherd. Another person said 'he was like Jesus Christ'. Another person said 'you would follow Bruno anywhere'. He had this magnetism, a purity, an authenticity. And he had done things that people only dream about. You know he was he spoke to 20,000 people at a Grateful Dead concert in Wembley Stadium. He met with Vice President Gore. He went traveled all over the world. He did 60 day hunger strike, almost died. I mean he his actions became more and more reckless but also you know his heart was so in it that people were so attracted to him. But I mean the sad thing is that for all the fame that he gained he really was incredibly ineffective ultimately in stopping logging and preserving the Penan lands which is the thing that he wanted to do.

LL: After a while though as you mentioned he does start sneaking back into Borneo illegally. What was it? Why did the place have such a hold on him?

CARL HOFFMAN: Well I mean I think he found himself in a very difficult place I mean and he you know he couldn't really live in in Switzerland anymore. I think it wasn't a place that - or the West - it wasn't a place that really held his heart. So he would keep going in and out of Borneo which was crazy and incredibly dangerous. I mean he was a wanted man. There were reports that there was a price on his head. And as he would go in he had friends, the Penan people he loved in Borneo but at the same time a lot of those people were also starting to settle and to stop fighting the government. And of course the government was exerting so much pressure. So he was sort of caught in this vice. He would say that he really gave his life to the piano and that's everything that he wanted and there was no kind of painted himself into a corner. I mean there was nowhere for him to go and that's really the tragedy

LL: Then one day he just disappears. Have you been able to learn about what happened to him?

CARL HOFFMAN: Well his friends, the people to whom he was closest are pretty sure what happened to them and it makes sense to me. I won't say exactly what I think it is. I'll leave a little mystery for the book, for readers. But you know it's pretty clear that Bruno was suffering by the time he made a sojourn to Sarawak in 2000 and all of his friends got a bad feeling from his communications. His girlfriend refused to drive him to the airport. Everybody just felt uneasy and he wouldn't say when he would be back. And he did unusual things.

LL: And are you suggesting he was mentally ill?

CARL HOFFMAN: I wouldn't say he was mentally ill but I would say he was depressed for sure. One of his best friends said to me something that was really moving to me him which I think applies to both Bruno and Michael in two very different ways. He said you know the secret to getting older is to maintain your beliefs and if you lose them you know to find new beliefs and a new way of living. And he said Bruno failed to do that. And Bruno went into Borneo and he vanished. He was never seen again.

LL: How do the Penan people remember Bruno?

CARL HOFFMAN: Ask Penans about Bruno and they all say that they love him. They'll say we hunted with them. We walked through the forest with him. You know we love Bruno. But it's kind of a in a mythical- it's like he's been gone so long. The Penan don't like to use real names and they give people names and their name for Bruno was lucky Penan, the Penan man and now they call him like the man who disappeared.

LL: Let's switch our focus now to Michael Palmieri. Where is he now?

CARL HOFFMAN: Michael moved to Bali in 1974 and he's been there ever since other than his sojourns into Borneo.

LL: So he's had his stories turned out very differently than Bruno Manser's. Why do you think things turned out so differently for him?

CARL HOFFMAN: Well I mean because they pursued very different paths. To me what's really interesting about these two stories is the way that Bruno was such a saint. I mean he wanted no fame. He wanted no riches. And yet that led to this incredible tragedy. As I said he just found himself in this corner from which he couldn't extricate himself. And he was also very selfish often and did things like he was supposed to be a speaker at an event and you know thousands of people would gather and then he just wouldn't show up. And he would disappear and days later he would reappear and they would say 'Bruno where were you?' He'd say 'well I found some caves. I stumbled upon some caves and I just wanted to go explore them'. And Michael on the other hand is somebody who is much more in some ways like a regular guy, much more mercantile and much more of a buccaneer. And Michael was always trying to trade and wheel and deal. And in end the forest that Bruno wanted to save so much is gone. I mean it's sad. And you know the impact he had is fairly small and Michael who is on the surface this much less saintly figure, there are Dayak works of art, great works of art, very old ones that are all over the world in museums for people to view and scholars to look at. And Michael is living as he puts it in his little grass shack in Bali and sort of navigating old age more successfully.

LL: What do what do both of their stories say to you about the fate of Borneo indigenous cultures?

CARL HOFFMAN: Well ultimately the fate is, it's a sad one. I mean in most ways I mean the forest is gone the Penan are settled. The great longhouse culture is of Kalimantan of Indonesian Borneo are no more. You know the world's changed. That's said, you got to be careful about your own kind of tropes. I'm in a place like Kapit a town in Sarawak and I'm standing there and there's traffic all around and construction going up everywhere. People are walking around in blue jeans and cell phones and relatively affluent and you say gosh you know where are all the Dayaks. And yet most of those people around you quite a few of them are Dayaks and they don't fit my own Western fantasy, exotic fantasies of people living in old longhouses and loincloths anymore. But they are people with ed now getting educations and having a lot more opportunity. And for me, I have a different idea of what's good but that doesn't mean that that works for them and people need to have their own, to be in control of their own lives and make their own choices whatever those are.

LL: Let's bring it back to these two men finally and you've alluded to this already that it would be easy to paint Bruno Manser as an idealist and Michael Palmieri as an opportunist. But as you tell the story it's not quite that simple. At the end of all of this, how do you see these two men?

CARL HOFFMAN: Yes I think that that's sort of one of the most interesting thing. I mean for me even as a as a writer working on that book was this sort of evolution of my feelings of these two men and how they kind of negotiated life and how everything turned out. I mean I guess I would say that the world isn't black and white and that the world is much more and life is much more complicated and nuanced and grey and that hopefully you read this book and you ask all those questions and you ponder it. You know for me I think I see Bruno - both Bruno and Michael as people who've led remarkable lives but also lives that that you want to ask a lot of questions about.

LL: Fascinating stuff. Carl Hoffman thank you so much for your time.

CARL HOFFMAN: Thank you.

LL: Bye bye.

CARL HOFFMAN: Bye bye.

LL: Carl Hoffman is the author of The Last Wild Man of Borneo. And we reached him in Portland, Maine. Well coming up in our next half hour.

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[Sound: Light sabre SFX]

LL: Join the space forces and see the galaxy. Just what does U.S. President Donald Trump have in mind when he talks about a new military branch for outer space? We'll find out right after the break. I'm Laura Lynch and you are listening to The Current.

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Trump's 'space force' isn't a new idea. We've been doing that for decades, say experts

Guests: Brian Weeden, Laura Grego

LL: I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current

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[Music: Star Wars theme]

In space the United States is going to do Colonel Glenn proud. We are finally going to leave again. You see what's happening, you see the rockets going up left and the right. You haven't seen that for a long time. [Applause] My new national strategy for space recognizes that space is a war fighting domain, just like the land, air and sea. We may even have a space force - develop another one - a space force. We have the air force. We'll have a space force. We have the army, the navy, You know I was saying it the other day because we're doing a tremendous amount of work in space. Maybe we need a new force, a space force. And I was not really serious. And then I said what a great idea. Maybe we will have to do it. It could happen

LL: Could a space force happen? What would it look like. You heard us President Donald Trump there addressing Marines in California last week. And though the idea was met with a good amount of online mockery, an assistant defense secretary told a congressional panel last week that the idea of a new military service for space was getting close attention. And all Death star jokes aside President Trump isn't the first American leader to envision a battlefield beyond our atmosphere. In 1983 President Ronald Reagan famously launched his Strategic Defense Initiative dubbed Star Wars back then as a way to defend against Soviet missiles. And the former Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld warned about Pearl Harbor in space targeting American space systems. Still it can be hard to imagine what a Space Force might look like or how far away it might be from reality. Brian Weeden is the Director of Program Planning for the Secure World Foundation a space policy think tank. He specializes in space security. And Brian Weeden joins us from Washington D.C. Hello.

BRIAN WEEDEN: Good morning Laura.

LL: What do you think President Trump meant when he said he was interested in a space force?l

BRIAN WEEDEN: As he said in his remarks, he was briefed on a policy directive that actually been under way ever since the end of the Obama administration. And that's an update to the U.S. strategy for how to deal with [unintelligible] space issues. And part of that is a reorganization of the parts the military involved in space and they are discussing whether to have a separate organization a corps or force that deals with space.

LL: Okay so what does this base force look like? Are we talking about storm troopers in space suits? Who are these people?

BRIAN WEEDEN: Well there have been parts of the U.S. military that have been involved in space ever since the beginning the space age back in the early 1950s. Today they are mainly the people the military that fly satellites, like the GPS satellites that we all use, communications satellites or imaging reconnaissance satellites and they're also the people that make use of those on the ground. So there are other people in military that integrate all those space capabilities into military operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world. So that's really what we're talking about. It's not necessarily people in space - the military decided that was not a great idea quite a while ago - but mostly how we how the military uses space capabilities to enhance its capabilities and use them operations here on earth.

LL: So give me an example from Afghanistan or from Iraq. What are we talking about?

BRIAN WEEDEN: Sure. So I think everybody kind of is familiar with the use of UAVs, that are coming home as drones. Those are a great example of something that is enabled by space. So they have these UAVs that are orbiting let's say over an area they want to watch in Afghanistan. Those UAVs are oftentimes being flown back here from the United States or Canada or remotely over satellite links. And they're taking data, video, camera feeds and those are being routed around to different places using satellite links. And then if there's a decision to use one of those UAVs to launch an airstrike, the missiles that they fire are guided by GPS which again comes from satellites. And once the operation is over they use satellites, imagery satellites. So what happened and collected by the intelligence kind of what comes next.

LL: So Trump also said that that space is a war fighting domain just like land, air and sea. Is that a view that's shared by other countries?

BRIAN WEEDEN: I think increasingly the answer is probably yes. And that's not because they're envisioning wars taking place in space but rather space is linked to conflict and wars here on Earth. So as I mentioned space has played this increasing role ever since the first Gulf War the early 1990s in supporting operations on her on the earth. What that means is that as more countries rely on space for military operations. There is an increasing chance that space will then become part of those operations in terms of other countries looking to take those capabilities away.

LL: Okay so you're talking about shooting down satellites.

BRIAN WEEDEN: That could be part of it. Thankfully to date there have not been any kinetic attacks that destroyed satellites but that is certainly a possibility. More likely what they called non kinetic attacks; things like jamming, interference, cyber-attacks those we actually see quite a bit today because they're easier to do. Now thankfully those don't destroy the satellites and create lots of space debris

LL: Yes, I was going to ask you about that next bit but when you talk about the jamming that's going on today, is this state to state or are these individuals?

BRIAN WEEDEN: Both. There have been cases of individuals. You know there was a famous case in the U.S. of Dr. Midnite back in the 80s who had managed to jam a satellite broadcaster of HBO. But there is more examples of state to state. There have been credible reports from Ukraine and from Syria of Russians deploying GPS jamming for use on the battlefield and satellite communications jamming. There have been reports of jamming along the North Korean DMZ and there's also been multiple cases of Iran jamming satellite TV broadcasts that it didn't want coming into the country.

LL: All right let's go back to the not yet happened shooting down a satellite. If that happened what would the effect of that kind of fighting be down here on Earth?

BRIAN WEEDEN: Well immediately, not a whole lot because as I mentioned a lot of these satellites are used for kind of support services but there could be dramatic long term effects. So a lot of these satellites not only do they provide capabilities to the militaries but they also provide capabilities to the rest of us. So GPS is a great example of something we all use every single day. And if something were to happen to that that be a pretty huge loss. It would have massive repercussions for transportation, other industries. Just think of weather monitoring a lot of the data we use to predict weather and serious natural disasters comes from satellites. The loss of those satellites would be huge. And if you're talking about you know kinetically destroying a satellite that's going to create hundreds of thousands of piece of debris most of which is going to stay up there in orbit and could pose risks to other satellites.

LL: That raises the question of an accidental contact because, if there is so much debris around there, and that could be construed as a deliberate provocation.

BRIAN WEEDEN: That's absolutely true and that's something that you know we watch out for right now. So U.S. military works with the Canadian military and the British and several other countries to try and monitor all the satellites in space and roughly 23,000 pieces of space debris bigger than about 10 centimeters and tries to predict if there might be a close approach or a collision, precisely for what you said. Because that sort of thing that happens to an important satellite at a period of tensions here on earth that could escalate things. It could spark conflict and that's something you don't want to have.

LL: Okay. Just briefly Brian, the space exploration race has always been competitive. What does space domination represent to the main players like the U.S., Russia or China?

BRIAN WEEDEN: Well I think when people hear that language that they need to think about it in kind of a military context. The military often uses the word dominate in terms of air, land, sea, other domains. What they mean there is that when the military is doing operations in those areas they need to be able to dominate it in terms of being able to do what they need to be able to do without an adversary attacking them. It does not necessarily mean in the case of space seizing control of things. That's sort of impossible to do. So what they're really trying to get at is how can they basically make sure that the bad guys can't take away their ability to use space.

LL: Interesting stuff. Brian Weeden, thank you.

BRIAN WEEDEN: My pleasure.

LL: Brian Weeden is the Director of Program Planning for the Secure World Foundation. He is in Washington D.C. If war did break out in space then would the Geneva Convention apply or do the rules of war simply float away in zero gravity. Well my next guest is working to ensure any future conflict in space has a legal framework that would ensure protections for humans on earth and in space. Laura Grego is a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists and the lead technical expert of the MILAMOS project. That is a joint international effort of leading space and legal experts who want to create the Manual on International Law Applicable to the Military Uses about Airspace. That's a mouthful and we have reached her in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hello.

LL: Good morning. What are the existing rules or regulations that keep countries in check in space. Well the foundational legal documents for space is the Outer Space Treaty which was concluded negotiations in 1967.

LAURA GREGO: So it just had its fiftieth birthday and it was a Cold War document that reflected some of the viewpoint of the Cold War. But what it did is lay out essentially the principles by which how we think about space. So that Exploration and Use of Outer Space should be carried out for the benefit and interests of all humankind. We shouldn't put weapons of mass destruction in space etc.. So I had laid out those basic principles. It also said that international law applies to space. So what the process of this manual that we're working on is to look in detail to existing international law and see how that plays out in the space environment.

LL: Right because it's 50 years old as you say is it keeping up with the times?

LAURA GREGO: Well I think that the people who wrote it might not have anticipated all of the technological changes that would have come and would have taken a lot of vision. You know today there are more than 60 countries who own satellites or a large share in them and anywhere on the globe people are using satellite based services. Dr. Weeden mentioned global positioning system not only provides navigation but a timing signal that underpins lots of our cell phone traffic and banking transactions. So there's many more people in space and we use it for many more purposes. Around half of what goes on up there is commercial activity. So people make a lot of money up there and provides you know a lot of the ways we live our modern life. But also back in the 1960s a lot of that National Security uses of space were really essentially more stabilizing things like early warning of ballistic missile launch and secure communications. And today, as Dr. Weeden mentioned, they really direct modern warfare. So they're connected to modern warfare in a way that I think that certainly wasn't the case 50 years ago.

LL: And I want to ask you something that was talking about with Dr. Weeden. What would happen if one country deliberately took out another satellite?

LAURA GREGO: Right. Actually that is it's a tricky question. So there's of course what happens physically. As we mentioned if you physically destroyed a satellite by rupturing it like blowing it up or running into it it would break up into pieces.

LL: But what would happen legally, though.

LAURA GREGO: Okay. So legally so every activity in space is a national activity. So whether or not it's a commercial satellite or not it has a national character. And then the question is what's the appropriate response. I think because we don't have experience in space we don't necessarily know what the proportional response is. So certainly we're not in peacetime meant to do that. There are specific laws that govern when military force can be used. International laws do that. The United Nations charter lays out very specific conditions and those have to be respected in space.

LL: So would there be differently. You mentioned how many commercial interests are up in space with satellites would there be different laws governing commercial interests versus military?

LAURA GREGO: So again I'm actually a technical expert not the legal expert. So that's something that we would look at. So some of the question is do some commercial satellites provide significant military capacity? So lots of satellites aren't purely commercial in nature or they are sometimes but then might in a surge take military traffic for example, or you know a commercial satellite might provide something that's essential to people on the ground. And we try in times of armed conflict to minimize the effects of a non-combatant. You know that's this whole body of international humanitarian law to make sure that there are rules when violence breaks out that there's really specific rules to limit how that happens. You don't want it to happen but you want it to have boundaries if it does. And so one of the questions is what are the effects on the people on the ground and to make sure that whatever happens isn't out of proportion. It discriminates between combatants and non-combatants. So a satellite is not a combatant but it might - a non-combatant - but it might provide something essential to someone on the ground that you want to protect.

LL: Are you ever concerned that you're going to run out of time in drafting or drafting before a conflict breaks out in space?

LAURA GREGO: [Chuckles] Yes that's a great question. So wonderfully we've been in space for a long time and it has not been the locus of war fighting or conflict. And I think that history speaks to a great restraint by even through the Cold War in those dark days, and lots of mistrust. I think actors recognized that because of the nature of space it's intertwined with the nuclear posture because it's difficult to ascertain why something happened if it was intentional, unintentional has kind of shied away from really from outright hostility from space. And so we hope that at the same time is elaborating what law already exists. There are also efforts to to draft new rules that are even better and more comprehensive.

LL: And when you're hoping to have all of this done by, what is the predicted time?

LAURA GREGO: We finish in 2019.

LL: Okay well good luck.

LAURA GREGO: Yes. Thank you very much

LL: Laura Grego is a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists and she was in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Well my next guest could give a master class in imagining the future of space. Mississauga Ontario based Robert J Sawyer is one of Canada's most celebrated science fiction writers and futurists and we reached him on the line now. Hello.

ROBERT SAWYER: Good morning. How are you?

LL: I'm fine thank you. Our previous guest gave us a good understanding of what a war might look like in space right now, a lot of action with satellites. What do you think Donald Trump meant when he said he wants a space for us?

ROBERT SAWYER: Well he said he wanted the space for that was analogous to the Air Force, the Navy. You know and those are boots on the ground forces. He's talking about an armed force of soldiers. There's no question that that's what he meant. And when you can't put boots on the ground in space because you float away, but you can certainly have people in space doing things. This is not a new notion to Trump. The problem with Trump is every idea that enters his brain he thinks (a) is original to him and (b) is a good idea. In both cases, this is wrong in this circumstance. There's been talk going right back to the beginning of the Space Age. Space age began in 1957. October 4th was Sputnik going out. And ever since everybody in the United States involved with space has been aware of the fact that it has been a proxy conflict between what was then the Soviet Union and the United States. Kennedy found a way to divert that to kind of almost like an Olympic Games spectacle; who will go to the moon first? But behind all that there has been the definite reality that the militarization of space is something that all super powers are working towards preparing for. Of the four space shuttles the shuttle known as a Atlantis was principally at large and often used for secret military missions that weren't covered by the CBC or any other news [unintelligible].

LL: So how would a Space Force be assembled?

ROBERT SAWYER: Well this is an interesting issue right now because the Americans at the moment are depending on the Russians to get their astronauts up to the National Space Station. So the United States will have to invest into the ability to actually get people on their own back into orbit. And they lost that when they shuttered the space shuttle program. So Trump was talking about a major military force that would have to have vehicles. Now nuclear air crafts cost a lot of money. Nuclear submarines cost a lot of money. Well space ships cost a lot of money too. But that clearly is what he has in mind. Shooting down satellites we've been talking about that and occasionally there have been accidents where we've accidentally damaged somebody else's satellite and it's not escalated. But the ability to take out observational satellites, reconnaissance satellites, is one of the first things you would do if a conflict escalated. You don't want the other side to be able to peer down with that resolution these cameras have - it's been known since the 70s that we've had cameras that can read current license plates from orbit. What's the quality of the resolution you've got.

LL: Why are we continually fascinated by this idea of war in space?

ROBERT SAWYER: You know you played at the opening, the opening march from Star Wars at opening of this segment here. You watch Star Wars and it's fun. It's fun because it's not bloody. It looks like a video game. You never see in our pop culture conceptions of this all the disease, horror, [unintelligible] that goes with groundbase war. It sanitizes it and there's a part of the human spirit which is very competitive. We just had the [unintelligble] very competitive human undertaking and we love them when we can say we're doing them with our darker natures suppressed. And the way we have sanitized the view of space battle makes it seem like a videogame rather than it be yet another place where young men and women will die, usually in pursuit of ends that are not at all good for anybody.

LL: So is there no underpinning in science for this idea then?

ROBERT SAWYER: Oh there's a lot of underpinning that we're going to do this. Absolutely. I think it's clear you know the Soviets had their first military space waiver program Mir. Mir, by the way, ironically this is the Russian word for peace. But before that they had a space station that was essentially armed with a gatling gun - with a high speed machine gun - in chase any foreign power target toward their space station. The Soviets have always sent their cosmonauts up with pistols. Ostensibly in case of the Soviets Russians they had their astronauts on land and they could have a hostile farmer or somebody come out to them, ostensibly. Armed astronauts and space is not a new idea. It has been done for decades.

LL: And what about this idea of putting a giant laser on some sort of a satellite or a spacecraft and using that to shoot down of enemy forces is that beyond…

ROBERT SAWYER: No it is not. You use that word Star Wars as the shorthand for Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative and a big part of that was you don't use a laser to vaporize or dematerialize the way you would see it in Star Wars or Star Trek. You use it to fry your electronics. A satellite that has its electronics disrupted, disabled is just a piece orbiting junk. So you don't use that in the way we're used to seeing it in pop culture sci fi movies. But absolutely space born laser or other particle beam weaponry - directed energy weapons - absolutely not only are they on the drawing board, they are an integral part of American space poles and Chinese space policy.

LL: Well then you're making it sound like actually if there was this kind of space based war platform that there wouldn't be any impact on people living on earth.

ROBERT SAWYER: You know I mean the United States and the Soviet Union famously bought the sense of the Vietnam War a proxy war. So when you're killing your soldiers, wherever you're killing them, it is an affront to the nation. We sent the soldiers there. I think yes they would have an impact. I mean you know there was a big question when we had American astronauts aboard the International Space Station during the last presidential election. Whether they were able to vote, of course they were able to vote because it's you know U.S. territory. It's international territory. But it absolutely affects us on the ground. Can you imagine the outrage of Canada Chris Hadfield had been shot out in the sky? We would very much consider that an act of war against Canada. Not just [unintelligible] have gone up and normally you get what you get.

LL: I'm old enough to remember when men landed on the moon for the first time and I was fascinated by it. Where did we go from this idea of being fascinated by exploring space to the idea of owning space?

ROBERT SAWYER: You can't actually own it. It was very interesting. You know you mentioned the first landing on the moon and the plaque on the side of the lunar module, Eagle, said: 'Here men from the planet Earth first set upon the moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind'. Not 'we claim this territory for the United States of America'. They didn't plant an American flag. They didn't claim the territory and the Outer Space Treaty that was alluded to by [unintelligible] in the previous statement says you cannot claim supreme control of any part of the universe outside of Earth's surface. We've lived by that rule so far. But when we start finding valuable resources and things on Mars, on the moon and the asteroid belt people will very much want to state claims.

LL: We're going to have to leave it there, really interesting. Thank you.

ROBERT SAWYER: My pleasure.

LL: Robert J. Sawyer is an award winning and best-selling science fiction writer. He's based in Mississauga, Ontario. That is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Today comedian Bill Hader of SNL fame joins Tom Power to talk about his new HBO series, Barry. And remember you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. It lets you browse through past episodes of our show and start listening in a few seconds. And you can also search for stories you missed, find the day's top stories or listen live to your local CBC station on your smartphone or tablet. It's free from the App Store or Google Play. Well finally today President Donald Trump seems to believe that space is the place. So let's end things today with a little music by a legendary jazz musician who claimed to be from Saturn himself. From 1978, this is Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra with Space is the Place. I'm Laura Lynch. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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