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The Current Transcript for May 3, 2019

Host: David Common

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Certainly some folks are emotional and I totally understand that. They're losing their homes. But I think we provide great comfort and we represent hope and reassurance and the support of all Canadians because we wear the uniform.

DAVID COMMON: Devastating floods once again mean the military is deployed inside Canada. But should the last line of defence always mean soldiers on our streets? Other countries have found a different and they think better approach. That's first up. And then Frank Zappa performs again.

SOUNDCLIP

I'm very happy to be here tonight.

[Cheers]

DC: That sound is from his last live performance, but death, well it isn't stopping touring. Zappa is back as a hologram. The latest celebrity to return from the great beyond. Is it right though? We're asking not in half an hour and after that:.

SOUNDCLIP

I used to be one of those people like I got nothing to hide but I was very wrong. They're targeting everyone. As long as you're going out of your house or being surveilled.

The incredible reach of Chinese surveillance everything they know how they get it and the detail. Even when you put gas in someone else's car. In an hour a report from Human Rights Watch with a warning about Uighurs being targeted. I'm David Common and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

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Military aid should only be a last resort for natural disaster relief, says expert

Guest: Josh Bowen, Christian Leuprecht, Serge Cormier

SOUNDCLIP

To just help people even if it's one person, two people. We actually just saved this house actually back here yesterday. We've been working tirelessly with the engineers and with all the other troops that are coming from all different parts of Ontario. As a team and we managed to build up a wall that is quite impressive and to kind of save this this one house and that's enough for me.

DC: That is Corporal Afton Maisonneuv, a Canadian Armed Forces reservist. She's been helping people save their homes in the rural Ottawa community of Cumberland which has been under a state of emergency. Even though the city of Ottawa says the waters may be finally starting to recede the work of dealing with the aftermath that's just beginning. More than 2000 military members have been helping communities across New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario where floodwaters have washed out streets, left people stranded and homes flooded. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan visited the flood zone near St. John, New Brunswick.

SOUNDCLIP

We have way more troops right now deployed inside of Canada than we do overseas. It is one of the reasons why we're growing the force to making sure that we have the numbers. We want to make sure that the Canadian Armed Forces are able to respond to any type of disasters because at the end of the day the Canadian Armed Forces belongs to citizens and they'll respond in the time of need.

DC: As minister Sajjan says there are now more soldiers sandbagging at home than there are deployed overseas in places like Mali, Ukraine and Iraq combined. Josh Bowen worked for the Canadian Armed Forces for 13 years responding to natural disasters right across the country including the Fort McMurray wildfires and the flooding and High River Alberta just to name a few. He is now the manager of the Centre for Applied Disaster and Emergency Management at the northern Alberta Institute of Technology, NAIT, and he joins us from Edmonton. Hello.

JOSH BOWEN: Hi David.

DC: We're here talking about why it should be the Canadian Forces. But let me ask you just what it's like at the ground level? Because you have been at the ground level. What is it like walking into a community that desperately needs help?

JOSH BOWEN: It's humbling to be completely honest. I am proud to have served Canadians at home in their time of need. Most people join the military planning and thinking that they're going to be going on expeditionary operations. I was directly involved on the ground in four different disaster responses. And really the ability to support Canadians and protect Canadians - which is entirely what everybody signs up to do - doing that at home is incredible.

DC: And what were the kinds of things you were doing?

JOSH BOWEN: Really depends on when we're talking about. In Manitoba flood relief in 2011 we were filling sandbags and reinforcing dikes and water diversion systems, and 2000 thirteen in southern Alberta we were supporting search and rescue efforts in the town of High River. At least that's where I was. In 2015 we were helping protect the First Nation from wildfire in northern Saskatchewan, and then in 2016 I was the military's liaison to the province coordinating all of our response and support efforts to the Fort McMurray wildfire response.

DC: You know when you think about wildfire and floods these are people who are living through the crisis who may be watching their homes being destroyed and all the memories that are attached to that home and inside that home in physical form be it photos or what have you. What kind of a toll does it take on soldiers who are doing this kind of work?

JOSH BOWEN: It's always hard in so many ways because that could be your home. And what we're seeing now is a major trend in terms of the soldiers that are deployed being reservists. So a lot of them are from the area. A lot of them will be from that province or from that region. So it very much could be their friends, their family, their neighbours, their house. Seeing people going through that trauma is always challenging. The flip side is that we know we can help and we're there to help them were able to tangibly see the results of our efforts.

DC: You've said the military is uniquely positioned in Canada to be able to respond to natural disasters which we're seeing more of now. In part because it's soldiers are taught and trained how to be adaptable to changing circumstances that you've got your own transportation your own command and control. There is of course the question and I think it is going to be the question of my next guest who is critical about how much we rely on the armed forces in times of disaster. And the question is do you think it is time to look at other ways of handling these crises using a group other than the military?

JOSH BOWEN: Right now in terms of what the capacity within Canada where we are at, the military is the only organization that has the resources, that has the funding and the capability to be able to respond in the short time that we need to. That's what the military is entirely there for. If we look at other jurisdictions like the United States the Federal Emergency Management Agency has incident management teams all across the country that are resourced, that are on very short notice.

DC: And Canada does not have something comparable.

JOSH BOWEN: Not yet but some of the provinces are working towards establishing these types of teams.

DC: All right Josh thank you very much. You continue to serve. You served in the Canadian Armed Forces you continue to serve today looking at these kinds of issues. Thank you very much.

JOSH BOWEN: Thank you.

DC: Josh Bowen is a former member of the Canadian Armed Forces and is now the manager of the Centre for Applied Disaster and Emergency Management at the northern Alberta Institute of Technology. That's NAIT. He is in Edmonton. Now the critic I was referring to is Christian Leuprecht, a professor of political science at the Royal Military College of Canada and Queen's University. He's also an Eisenhower fellow at the NATO Defence College in Rome. We've reached him in Hamburg, Germany. Hello.

CHRISTIAN LEUPRECHT: Hello.

DC: Do you think it is the role of the Canadian military to be responding to these crises which they are doing increasingly?

CHRISTIAN LEUPRECHT: Well I think we should rely on the Armed Forces what we have no other mechanism to help respond or stabilize this sort of situation. And I think there's opportunity to look at models from other countries that have found ways to build civilian capacity that can be deployed in expeditious fashion in support of large scale disasters. And so I think we need to ask ourselves whether this is the best allocation both of our tax dollar end of the extremely highly trained and skilled resources that the Canadian Armed Forces bring to bear. There will always be some support capacity that the Kenyan armed forces will likely need to play in the large scale natural disasters that we've been seeing. But I think there's perhaps opportunity to think about in an age where we're drawing more and more in that capacity whether we need to do more on the civilian side.

DC: You're saying that the Canadian armed forces ought to be the last place that we go for help, though it is increasingly becoming the obvious place that we go for help. Josh was speaking about the Federal Emergency Management Agency FEMA in the United States. Can you give us examples in other countries of what is being done to help build that civilian capacity to respond to these disasters?

CHRISTIAN LEUPRECHT: So two models are the State Emergency Services in Australia and the [unintelligible] in Germany. Both of which are set up, come out of a situation where the country may be at war and so the armed forces may not be available. And so to build a significantly robust civilian capacity to respond to local emergencies and local disasters. And so state emergency services exist in all six states, and Australia for instance have a very broad spectrum of specialized skill sets that they can mobilize in very short time, but they can also mobilize thousands of highly trained volunteers for instance to fight bushfires which is a regular occurrence. And if they weren't able to do that you would have serious problems in many of the larger [unintelligible] in Australia.

DC: But how does that work? I mean are these people not- they're not full time employed to do this they have other jobs. How does it work that you can pull them?

CHRISTIAN LEUPRECHT: So State Emergency Service in South Australia France has 60 full time employees and has 15000 volunteers and these volunteers bring to bear Engineering capacities and just bring to bear just broad capacity to fight wildfires. A couple of years ago there was a large scale wildfire that spread within 15 minutes to five suburbs of Adelaide and they were able to mobilize literally hundreds of people in a matter of hours, and the city would have sustained serious damage if they hadn't been able to do that. And so to say is that there are other ways to bring this search capacity to bear rather than simply having to rely on the Canadian Armed Forces.

DC: And these are trained people. This is not just people who are coming in to help at the last second.

CHRISTIAN LEUPRECHT: Correct. And it's because local communities and states as well as the [unintelligible] in Germany and local communities in Germany have a mentality of that. It is our responsibility first to look after ourselves. But in Canada we have a bit of a perverse constitutional consensus that we founded a confederation as a result of which because we don't have militias at the provincial level. And so that gave the opportunity to provinces to call upon the federal government to assist in time of need. That means that provinces have an incentive to under invest in mitigation measures because they know they can externalize the help to the federal government.

DC: We also know that the federal government can charge back, can charge the provinces for the help that the military offers but often that doesn't- the optics of it are very good to say give me money, to a province that's currently flooded. When you look at the number of soldiers who are now deployed inside Canada 2300 responding to flooding just this week. What do you think the impact is on what the military's role is, what it ought to be and on Canada's international involvement?

CHRISTIAN LEUPRECHT: The military has an ongoing operation Lentus to respond to requests by provinces for assistance of this sort and is able to mobilize reservists and has built specific capacity to mobilize reservists so as not to have these operations take away from other priorities. But it also means for instance that the Canadian Armed Forces has to make sure it keeps lifting capacity in reserve. For instance Rotary lift, that is to see helicopters, so in case they needed for these operations which means that that's capacity that can't be deployed elsewhere. So in some areas we can surge when it comes to manpower. But in areas like lift capacity it's not that easy just to surge with local resources and so that means that it becomes a zero sum game for these costly assets that the Canadian Armed Forces has.

DC: You know I just think about where Canadian soldiers are deployed right now. So a place like Mali which has Canadian helicopter detachment, a number of soldiers who were there, a whole series of things that are contributing to the conflict there. But climate change also plays a role in that part of the world as people have to move for opportunity, move away from certain areas where agriculture is becoming complicated. Climate change really is playing an effect in terms of geopolitical implications and people are migrating in unprecedented numbers. What do you think that means broadly for the demands on the Canadian Armed Forces internationally when they also have to balance that with what's happening at home?

CHRISTIAN LEUPRECHT: Well there's a number of reasons why in the 21st century we likely to go to see escalating demand for the Canadian Armed Forces internationally, while we are also seeing escalating demand at home for support missions such as Operation Lentus. And so Canadians have to then pick because on the one hand they want Canada be doing peace and stability operations such as the ones in Mali. But of course they also want their armed forces to be there for them when their house is flooded or being burned down by a large forest fire. And so this is essentially a zero sum game with some surge capacity from reservists. And so if we build two more competent and systematic civilian capacity - as some provinces are already doing because they are realizing they can't keep falling back on the Canadian Armed Forces - then we would not find ourselves in this sort of zero sum situation and we could be doing more of both with a better allocation of the assets that we have.

DC: Christian, thank you very much.

CHRISTIAN LEUPRECHT: Thank you.

DC: Cristian Leuprecht is a professor of political science at the Royal Military College of Canada and Queen's University. He's in Hamburg Germany. Now Serge Cormier has been listening in. He is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence and he's in Ottawa. Hello Serge.

SERGE CORMIER: Hi. How are you?

DC: I'm very well. I wonder if we could pick up where Christian left off and this idea that the optics of having Canadian soldiers in flooded streets and in forests that are on fire is great and helpful, without a doubt, but is it the right role for the long term?

SERGE CORMIER: Well I think first of all I think the safety of Canada as you probably know is our first priority as a government. And in all sorts of events like that, whether we talk about the natural disaster, I think Canadians expect that all the help they need that they have it. So when the Canadian Armed Force are asked to be on the ground, this is the responsibility of the Canadian Forces to be there. Like the minister said the Canadian Armed Forces we owe to the community. But like I said Canadian Armed Forces can be abroad, but at the same time can be here also well with those a natural disaster that as you can see that we have on more and more, year after year we see more of that. It's one of their role, of many role that they have. But I think people expected that when your houses are flooded and everything is not going quite nice that all they have the need that is up their way. So this is why the Canadian Armed Forces step in when the province asked to step in. And this is why we are on the ground right now helping in New Brunswick, in my own province, in Ontario and in Quebec.

DC: But if you say they're being called on more and more that means that they have to keep helicopters and people in country and on standby for things like flood and fire, which means if they're doing that more and more that something has to give. They can't be everywhere.

SERGE CORMIER: Yeah but there's two thing. First of all we have a capacity to be abroad, as I said, and also here. But at the same time I think people are realizing that climate change is real. Like every year we have floods. We have extreme heat. We have fire. We have everything that comes our way with this climate change that we expect. And so at the same time what we're trying to do as a government also is to trying to think about other measures that we can take. And this is why we have a two billion dollar disaster mitigation and adaptation fund. Whether it's for - let's say for example - maybe building some dams that can retain the water from the river that is going to be over capacity, or maybe like building houses somewhere else, or maybe like thinking of other ways of building our infrastructure. So this is not only a thing about the Canadian Armed Forces. It's also a thing of rethinking all of our infrastructure, of our work we're doing with our federal, provincial and municipal partner on the ground. And I experienced this myself in my writing in 2017 with this big ice storm that we have, going 20 days without powers. And yes the military came, but at the same time like all the community and all the leaders step out, and now we have a better plan and we're better prepared for these kind of events. But events are become more frequent and yes as a government as a community as a provincial government we have to think about new infrastructure and new way about dealing about those events that are there right now.

DC: And is one of the other things to think about, this idea that other countries have grasped on to, to have a civilian system, one that could be volunteer based but that can respond very very quickly whether it's like FEMA in the United States or the Australian example that Christian was speaking about.

SERGE CORMIER: Yes and I listened to that very carefully but as you know here we have also some emergency measures in place, some firefighters, some first responder, Coast Guard for example can help in these situations. And like I said in some community they have already adapt, if I can say, with some plan with some events that some are experiencing right now. But again I want to stress that I think climate change is real. We have to take some measure to prevent these flooding, fires and everything but we also have to think about do we rebuild our houses the same places? It's nice living by the river. I live by our river in New Brunswick but you know what I mean, we have to rethink I think about where we build our infrastructure, what we can do better as a community, as a government, to make sure that when those floodings or a fires occurs that we are very prepared and that the devastating or less house are damage and less far less is burned. So we have to think and our government will make sure that we will talk with all the partners on the ground, to make sure that we have some good measure going forward because I think it will be more and more frequent all those flooding.

DC: so if it's more and more frequent do you think what we have now where we rely more and more on the military for an increasing number of events, is it enough?

SERGE CORMIER: Well like I said I think the military come into effect like is the last resort, because the province are--

DC: Though they're coming in more and more as the last resort.

SERGE CORMIER: But they're coming more and more because we have more and more event like that. So that's why we have to rethink the plan, if I can say, that when event like that occurs that what we can do better. So I think rethinking where houses are being built, rethinking about our infrastructure along the river. Is there a way that we can retain the water more? And rethinking thinking about how we build some infrastructure. We have to think about that. But again the military will be there. The military will be there if it needs to be there. This is the role of the Canadian Armed Forces. The Canadian Armed Forces belongs to the community and nobody is thinking about building new [unintelligible] when their house are flooding or on fire or they want some help. So this is one of the role of the Canadian Armed Forces but it is also their role of provincial, municipal and community leaders and us all together to help when those event occur. So putting everything in perspective, we're going to have some talk with our colleagues, partners also, that when events like this happen and flooding or other thing that we are better prepared. And this, if we are better prepared, maybe we'll rely less on the Canadian Armed Forces. But I can rest assured that we have the capacity right now to be here and abroad and we want to increase our capacity in the military.

DC: Serge Cormier, thank you very much.

SERGE CORMIER: My pleasure. Thank you so much.

DC: Search Cormier is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence and he was in Ottawa. CBC News is coming up next. And then on tour from beyond the grave.

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[Music]

[Song by Frank Zappa]

DC: Frank Zappa becomes just the latest musician to get the hologram concert treatment. But is it something to cheer for? I'm David Coleman. You're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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As Frank Zappa is resurrected as a hologram, critics warn wishes of dead artists should be considered

Guests: Ahmet Zappa, Mark Foley, Liisa Ladouceur

DC: Hello I'm David Common. And you were listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

DC: Still to come mass surveillance by app. Human Rights Watch says it's reverse engineered a Chinese police app demonstrating that it's being used to spy on and apprehend members of that country's Uighur minority. In half an hour I'll speak with the organization's China director and a Uighur Canadian activist with family in the region. But first the ultimate encore performance.

SOUNDCLIP

Frank Zappa, back on stage. Playing his guitar. Singing his song. With his live band.

DC: It's not exactly Frank Zappa live onstage. I mean he's not alive. It's a hologram. More than 25 years after his death the experimental rocker is back on tour, the latest in a series of famous artists to get the virtual reality treatment. Remember when Tupac hologram played Coachella in 2012? Well since then there have been holograms of Michael Jackson, Opera singer Maria Callas and even Abba, though all four of the members of that band are still alive. And according to Frank Zappa son, Ahmet, his father would have loved the idea. Ahmet is an executive with Eyellusion. It's the company behind a number of hologram tours and we reached him in New Jersey. Hello.

AHMET ZAPPA: Hello.

DC: You're in New Jersey but you're on the road. You're touring right now.

AHMET ZAPPA: Yes. We've been playing our first shows with our old Frank Zappa and it's been really over overwhelming. It's been very emotional. I've been loving every minute of it. It's been great to connect with new faces and just spending time with the band. This has been a real labour of love.

DC: Now this is not a tour like most tours because of holograms. Walk me through that. How does that work?

AHMET ZAPPA: Well you know people like to focus on the word holograms, and for us at Eyellusion, I think the show is so much more than the word hologram. It's a totally immersive multimedia experience and it's a visual smorgasbord of awesome. But some of the moments that people were I think really appreciating are certainly the - let's call them - photo real moments where it appears like magic that Frank is back on stage playing is his guitar, singing and people have been going bananas-ish during those moments.

DC: What's that like for you, this is your dad?

AHMET ZAPPA: It's been a super emotional journey. Two years of a lot of hard work and the first time I saw Frank on stage reappearing I burst into tears, but he it's all kind of science fiction. It's a very technical complicated show that we've put together. But first and foremost it's all about the music that started with that material to be able to have frank be surrounded by the people he loved to play with. It's music being brought to life as so many people had to also take a leap of faith and believe that what we were trying to do was really possible. And I'm just really grateful that here we are. And we had people come into the shows and loving the shows and it's been a really remarkable journey.

DC: Those people who are coming to the shows, who are sitting in those seats, what are they seeing?

AHMET ZAPPA: They are seeing supernatural dental floss. They are seeing an orchestra.

DC: You've got to unpacked that. Supernatural dental floss we you. You've got to unpack that one.

AHMET ZAPPA: Well my father had a song about Montana where he sang about becoming a dental floss tycoon. And so we were able to bring that to life for people in a massive scale. You see a giant floating box of dental floss and you know the goal was to try to tell, to anthropomorphic size that song utilizing a single strand of dental floss. That kind of animates the lyrical content of the song and it's pretty cool moment in the show. So people get to experience what I like to call supernatural dental floss.

DC: They're also seeing your father. You're seeing Frank Zappa. Where does that material come from?

AHMET ZAPPA: Everything is handmade. So the photo real assets of my father were essentially being painted.

DC: So this doesn't originate from a video it's not from some original place where he performed and you're able to translate it into a hologram.

AHMET ZAPPA: Well I think what you're describing is there's been examples of I think what you're talking about where they- It's called retro scoping and they take an existing piece of media and they basically cut out the whatever the subject is. What we reference is the photo real version of my father was a completely computer generated image that started with his face and it's pretty complicated. I'm actually the one who's triggering his expressions. So they had to put markers on my face.

DC: You are. Really?

AHMET ZAPPA: Lip syncing the material [cross talking] his eyebrows and all of those things. So it really it's very time intensive to do this stuff and get it done right.

DC: There has been some controversy in the past about hologram performance says people may remember to pack at Coachella in 2012. There may be some people listening now who find it a bit unseemly to resurrect artists in this way. Why do you think it's ok?

AHMET ZAPPA: Why do I think it's okay? My opinions on that, I mean as it pertains to Frank, I'm actually finishing something that he started. He wrote about it in the real Frank Zappa Book wanting to start his own hologram company. So that for a few benefits for not just himself for other artists, is the ability to have a tour while Frank says he could be home working on your music. Or you have a world tour in a day if a bunch of people actually had the hardware to technically allow for that to be possible. And you know as a kid when he was talking to me about those things, I really made a huge impact on my life and the kinds of jobs I have had you know to get to this point in time where we're doing what he wanted to do is also kind of amazing to me. I feel like I have a much deeper connection to my father through the process.

DC: Do you think he'd be into it?

AHMET ZAPPA: Yes. Yes. Of course he'd be into it.

DC: He'd be cool with being a hologram on stage still performing even after his death?

AHMET ZAPPA: I mean I can't answer I can't answer that.

DC: That's a weird thing to say I know.

AHMET ZAPPA: I mean I don't think of it in those terms. I think of it like- it's not like we're necromancers, although that would be cool. We had those superpowers.

DC: That's your word man.

AHMET ZAPPA: You know in this in this situation you can forget about all the visual for a second. If you attend one of these shows if you close your eyes what you're hearing is it's Frank with his band. Think of it from the standpoint of he passed away many years ago. I've learned that he was sick when I was 15. And here we are many years later and if people want to be able to hear Frank and experience his music from him, what other kinds of oxen are there. I think what's unique is that Frank was contemplating doing this himself.

DC: What do you think it is about an artist like Frank Zappa that makes people want to see him in concert again?

AHMET ZAPPA: You know I don't really think about those folks. I mean for me personally, maybe my selfish answer is the ability to suspend this belief for a moment for me to have my dad back. I would do just about anything to make something like that happen. You know, to your question why are people really interested in Frank, I think just based on the reactions that we've been getting - I mean people are crying at the shows and coming up to me and I've never gotten so many hugs from strangers [unintelligible]. And it's been just totally touches my heart. It's been so awesome to have this because and I miss my dad so much and this again it just fills my soul with joy. It's been amazing.

DC: Ahmet, I hope the hugs from strangers continue and that you have a great time on the rest of your tour. Thanks very much for talking to us.

AHMET ZAPPA: Thank you very much.

DC: Ahmet Zappa is the son of Frank Zappa and he's also the director of the Bizarre World of Frank Zappa, a hologram concert that is now touring North America and Europe throughout the spring and summer. Now the company that Ahmet Zappa works for Eyellusion doesn't only make holograms of experimental rock artists. In fact one of its upcoming tours involves the late Canadian classical pianist Glenn Gould and we ask Brian Levine executive director of the Glenn Gould Foundation for his thoughts on the concept.

SOUNDCLIP

I like to think of it in terms of how Glenn Gould would have regarded it because in many respects it's an opportunity for audiences today to experience something that really hasn't been possible since before 1964 when Gould gave up giving live concerts. And you know he was absolutely fascinated by and loved technology and loved the freedom that technology would provide to artists and to audiences in the future. He talked about technology allowing the audience to become the artists and the artists to become closer to the audience. So I think this is something that he would have been absolutely fascinated by.

I think that the irony of this would not have been lost on him. You know Gould, in addition to having a personal dislike of the live concert experience as a performer, had some very strong opinions about the impact of sort of the crowd experience on the audience. And in fact he, in one famous interview, referred to the audience as a force of evil.

I suspect that the idea of him basically being able to send a computer generated surrogate to take his place would have been deliciously amusing to him. And I think that he would have found it fascinating to sort of fully complete the experience. I suspect what he would have suggested is a holographic performer performing to a holographic audience that would have been his ideal. But in the absence of that I think that he was enough of a kind of an artist to want to share his music with people. And if this provided a new vehicle for doing that I rather suspect that he would have been able to reconcile himself to the concept.

DC: That was Brian Levine executive director of the Glenn Gould Foundation. While the Mothers of Invention might be able to bring long dead artists back to the stage there are some who see definite drawbacks. Mark Foley is a professor of music and coordinator of contemporary media at the School of Music at Wichita State University. He is also the principal double bass with the Wichita Symphony Orchestra and Mark Foley joins me from Wichita, Kansas. Hi Mark.

MARK FOLEY: Hi David. Thanks so much for having me.

DC: Not at all. Tell us what do you think of this idea of having whether it's Glenn Gould or Frank Zappa performing back on stage long after their death?

MARK FOLEY: Well I have to say these people have to be congratulated. I think this technology is amazing and I'm going to be in the front row in the Frank Zappa show comes to my town. Congratulations on that for doing this. It's going to be great. So this is a new technology that's bringing copyright owners the ability to bring these images to the fans. And that's excellent. All I would like to add to this conversation is that I think the artist's wishes and the music itself should be considered when these images are being used.

DC: How do you do that if they aren't around anymore?

MARK FOLEY: Wow. Okay. That's the big question isn't it? You know these images these performances are part of our collective memory. And I think the public, the fans, have a right to have this memory be preserved.

DC: You have in the past called the idea of dead artists performing as holograms ghoulish and morbid. What are the conditions under which that happens for you?

MARK FOLEY: Yes. Now we're in the in the realm of taste. What is good taste. I don't think I should be the arbiter of that.

DC: But you say you're going to be in the front row of that concert when Frank Zappa comes to play.

MARK FOLEY: Right. I think the devil's in the details right. I think from the way Ahmet Zappa described this show I think it's going to be very artistic. I think it's going to be tasteful. But what would stop a copyright owner from using one of these images say to sell a product. Maybe- we could talk about you know Tupac performance at the 2012 Coachella. I thought that was a brilliant use. Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg should be congratulated for rapping with Tupac. But what's to stop somebody from putting a T-shirt on that image and having maybe a potato chip logo on there.

DC: So can you give me an example of something that you have seen where a hologram has been used that struck you as in poor taste or give me an example of where it may be?

MARK FOLEY: Well I'm talking about way in the future. Like what if our collective memory starts being changed. Yeah I thought the Tupac performance was really great. But as a strange little line got crossed because they had to have a voice actor putting words into Tupac's mouth so that it would fit into the context of the performance. They had Tupac saying 'What the f is up Coachella?' So they had the image of Tupac in essence endorsing the Coachella brand. So that's I mean- it was- I still think it was a great use of his but kind of scary, right.

DC: So you're a musician.

MARK FOLEY: Yes.

DC: What if someone brought you back after you've died as a hologram?

MARK FOLEY: I think it'd be kind of cool myself.

DC: You're into it but?

MARK FOLEY: Yes I think this technology- Well it's going to happen all right. Not just because the technology is so fantastic but also there's potential to make a lot of money. I mean we're talking billions of dollars. So now we're not just in the collective memory but we're also in the marketplace and so I just hope the marketplace doesn't blur the message of the original performance.

DC: But of course the devil as you say is in the details. How do you get that permission beforehand? Hey when you die, and you're going to, do you mind if we bring you back?

MARK FOLEY: Right. I don't know. I think people's recording contracts are going to be changed now. Yes. A lot of these performances are being appropriate- I don't want to use the word appropriation. They're being used at a time when the performers didn't know that they could be used for this purpose. Not in itself wrong but these images could be misappropriated.

DC: Mark thanks very much for chatting with us today.

MARK FOLEY: Absolutely. Thank you.

DC: Mark Foley is a professor of music and the coordinator of contemporary media at the School of Music at Wichita State University and also the principal double bass in the winter Utah Symphony Orchestra. And he was, after all those mentions of Wichita, in Wichita, Kansas. Now Glenn Gould and Frank Zappa are far from the only holograms currently doing concert tours. Promoters have recently announced hologram tours by Amy Winehouse.

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DC: There's also Ronnie James Dio.

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[Song

DC: And Roy Orbison.

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[Song]

DC: So why are so many concert promoters and fans turning to holograms. Well Liisa Ladouceur has been tracking the trend. She's a Canadian music and culture journalist and she's with us in our Toronto studio. Hi Liisa.

LIISA LADOUCEUR: Good morning.

DC: You actually went to the Roy Orbison hologram concert when it came through Toronto last fall. What did you think?

LIISA LADOUCEUR: Yes I absolutely did I. You know since I wasn't there at the advent of cinema I wanted to be there at the advent of something. This felt like something really new. It was a novelty gimmick. I didn't love it as a concert.

DC: Why?

LIISA LADOUCEUR: It takes about 10 minutes for the awe to diminish. You know when this projection first appears on stage it's incredibly lifelike and they do a lot to make the sound perfect. And so you're hearing this amazing voice and you're seeing this projection that looks exactly like Roy Orbison and moves and the fringes of his jacket move when he turns, and it's like wow this is really neat. And then you're kind of over it in a few minutes because nothing else really happens, and a concert is about thinking something interesting might happen at any moment. And you know that it's just going to be the same thing for the next 90 minutes.

DC: If other people end up seeing it the same way that you do that the novelty wears off after ten minutes, why do you think concert promoters are so pushing holograms now?

LIISA LADOUCEUR: Well there's a lot of money to be made, right. And that's the promoter’s job. I mean whether it's resurrecting the dead. And so you are - what's the kind word. I mean you're making money often of an asset that would you know otherwise not be there. But also you know with a performer who's still alive you can send them to perform in cities and countries that they wouldn't otherwise get to and it's quite economical once you've created the hologram.

DC: Yes, Ahmet Zappa was speaking about that the idea that you could do a you know a one day concert around the world, appearing in multiple places. So the possibilities sort of seem amazing and endless. But is there an ethical line? Where is the point at which this is not okay?

LIISA LADOUCEUR: Well I think there is a distinction to be made in the realm of a hologram concerts and I'll just throw out this side note for the science and technology listeners. We're kind of misusing the actual term hologram. A lot of these are other types of projections but I'm not a scientists I won't go into it, but if you're listening you know I hear you.

DC: If you've been yelling at your speaker right now then someone's got your back.

LIISA LADOUCEUR: Exactly. So there's a difference between a virtual concert by say the guerrillas an animated band you know with Madonna for a television show and someone who's dead. But you know we've had these ethical quandaries. Would Kurt Cobain want his music to be used in X advertising or this type of merchandising opportunity? Or you know would Jeff Buckley want his demo tapes to be on Earth from the vault? I mean that's up to the state to decide and the public to decide what they will accept. I don't think that's a new ethical quandary. I mean people become rock stars because they want to live forever. So I think most of them would probably be okay with it.

DC: Because this gives them that possibility.

LIISA LADOUCEUR: Sure.

DC: Grimes, a Canadian electro pop artist has said she'd be into this idea of a hologram tour or whatever you want to call it, coming back but not necessarily coming back after she's died, after death. The idea that she suffers from stage fright and hates touring right.

LIISA LADOUCEUR: So this is a young contemporary artist who's quite visionary actually and her use of technology in music. And I would go and see a Grimes concert because I think it would be incredibly creative and something new. And that was my other issue with the Roy Orbison concert. It was nice. It was very nostalgic. I would have been happy just hearing a couple of songs. But I think it reinforces this idea that only the old music from your youth is good. And you know the money you spend on a hologram concert you could be seeing and supporting life music.

DC: What does it say about the state of live music and the music industry that we're seeing the popularity of these hologram concerts?

LIISA LADOUCEUR: Well I think there's two factors one. You know with the decimation of the recording music industry, they have to monetize every opportunity and so it's just another way to-.

DC: The money's on the road not in the music.

LIISA LADOUCEUR: Exactly. And to Grimes's point that puts a lot of pressure on artists to tour. And so something I think about is women performers as they age. You know I could see them sending in an earlier younger version of themselves on the road to make a living instead of going out there, so they can preserve how people thought about them in their youth. I think the possibilities are endless.

DC: Liisa thanks so much.

LIISA LADOUCEUR: You're more than welcome.

DC: Liisa Ladouceur is a music and culture journalist in Toronto and she's in our Toronto studio. Coming up in our next half hour. Four members of the Uighur minority in Xinjiang region of China the prying eyes of the state may be no further away than an app on their phones. How this surprising new example of surveillance works. And just where it's leading. That's coming up next. I'm David Common and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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Chinese police app 'illegally' tracks ethnic Uighurs' everyday lives, says Human Rights Watch

Guests: Sophie Richardson, Lindsay Gorman, Mehmet Tohti

DC: I'm David Coleman and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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I used to be one of those people like I got nothing to hide. I'm just a student but I was very wrong. They're targeting everyone. As long as you're going out of your house you're being surveilled. Every 200 meters would have a police checkpoint and then on top of that there are all these checkpoints at public places wherever you go. If you're Uighur, they stop you.

DC: That is an actor voicing the words of a student named Alim who lives in the Chinese region of Xinjiang. It's from a video put out by Human Rights Watch this week. Alim is a Uighur Muslim, an ethnic minority in China, who say they're being subjected to arbitrary and extensive surveillance followed by detention. Now Human Rights Watch says it has more evidence of just how extensive that surveillance is. The group says it's managed to get its hand on an app that's being used by Chinese police to track the activities and whereabouts of individuals in Xinjiang in minute detail. According to Human Rights Watch that information feeds into a wider network of state surveillance designed to target the Uighur minority. Sophie Richardson is China Director for Human Rights Watch. We've reached her today in Washington. Hi Sophie.

SOPHIE RICHARDSON: Good morning.

DC: How does this app work exactly> how does it get on your phone and then what does it do?

SOPHIE RICHARDSON: Well the app is actually used by police in Xinjiang to gather information about people to aggregate that data with a larger system and then for police to receive orders about who they should do some follow up investigations of what behaviours have been deemed problematic.

DC: And at Human Rights Watch, you reverse engineered. You went backwards in through this app to try to figure out what its intent and what its process was. What did you find?

SOPHIE RICHARDSON: Well when we broke the app apart we downloaded it and reverse-engineered it to look at the source code, which is a pretty telling way of understanding what a state's intent is. And what we revealed were 36 different categories of behaviour which ranged anywhere from how much electricity you were using, to whether you were talking to your neighbours more or less than you had in the past, to whether you were raising money for your local mosque. So there were those categories.

DC: How do you know those things though?

SOPHIE RICHARDSON: Yeah it's amazing. You know this is information that gets either logged by individual police or is picked up through anything from facial recognition software to Wi-Fi sniffers to big data platforms. There are frequently data, what are called Data doors, attached to surveillance checkpoints. So literally as you walk through a checkpoint information that's on the individual's phone it is being scanned by other surveillance systems and that all feeds into this integrated joint operations platform.

DC: And once it gets into that central repository, once it's all aggregated and it's split into individuals, what do the Chinese authorities do with that information?

SOPHIE RICHARDSON: Well essentially what the algorithm does is say well you know you're using a lot more electricity you have in the past and you put gas in somebody else's car and your phone was turned off for several hours the other day. We, the algorithm, think that all constitutes abnormal behaviour. So we're going to flag police in your area to come and have a chat with you about that behaviour. And when the police then come and have that conversation they then log additional information that they're getting live from the person and the app will then tell them whether that person should be detained.

DC: Okay. And if they are detained what happens?

SOPHIE RICHARDSON: Well we have at least a couple of interviewees who have confirmed to us that these apps instructed the officials who are detaining them effectively to take them off either to a formal detention facility or to a political re-education centre. So there are real consequences to how this technology is being used. And many people are unaware of the volume or the nature of the data that's being collected. Let's be very clear. The overwhelming majority of the information that police are using to make determinations about detention are about perfectly legal protected behaviour. So information about legal behaviour is being gathered illegally and used to illegally detain people.

DC: Your own findings suggest that it's the Uighur minority, the Uighur Muslim minority in China that's being targeted primarily by all of this, and you talk about the camps, the re-education camps. Can you give me a sense of of how many people how many Uighur Muslims are there?

SOPHIE RICHARDSON: Yeah. We associate ourselves with estimates of a million Turkic Muslims, the majority of whom are almost certainly Uighur. We are aware of a few cases of ethnic Kazakhs or Hui who are a different ethnicity but are also Muslims in Xinjiang. And we started documenting this problem back in 2017 and the Chinese government originally denied that it was detaining people at all. It then, about six months ago as a result of fairly intense international pressure, shifted gears and tried to suggest that it was giving people an opportunity to avail themselves of vocational training and that it's just like going to boarding schools, that they can leave whenever they want that there's no ill treatment. And I think our and others research credibly shows that that is absolutely not true.

DC: We asked for a comment from the Chinese embassy here in Canada and got a statement from their press section in which they say: The so-called Human Rights Watch you mentioned with its entrenched political bias against China has been denigrating China's human rights situation its reports for many years it goes on to talk about its absurd claims. And then says that the kind of practices that you're looking at in terms of collecting citizens personal information are commonly used in the U.S., Britain and other Western countries to track terrorists. How does what is done in Western countries in terms of data collection differ from what you're finding Chinese authorities are doing?

SOPHIE RICHARDSON: A quick point on the embassy's response which is to say you know the day that any Chinese government official will actually engage with us on the facts of what we have written or, let's go out on a limb, respond to our correspondences asking them questions before we publish reports, I think when that happens we will know that we're in a different era. But it's absolutely true that other governments are flying too heavily, in our view, and inappropriately and in some cases illegally on surveillance technology and we write about that issue in the U.S. and Canada all over the world. But I think it's very important to understand the differences in China where there are effectively no privacy rights, where the legal system is the wholly owned property of the Chinese Communist Party, and where I think we can be quite confident that you and I would not be having this conversation live on national radio without fear of repercussions. You know people in these other jurisdictions can object to their elected officials. They can check governments out. They can take lawsuits against tech companies. None of those forms of recourse are available to people inside China.

DC: Okay let's talk a bit further about that because I guess the question really is what's to be done. The Chinese get criticized for their human rights situation. That's what you're doing here. Other countries sometimes talk about it to the Chinese very often don't and very little seems to change. In fact if anything changes it just gets a stronger position with the Chinese government with the Communist Party. What's the point of trying to get them to change?

SOPHIE RICHARDSON: Well I think Canada is having quite a visceral experience right at the moment about why it's imperative for China to change the way it does or doesn't respect human rights. I mean they're now arbitrarily detained Canadians and people who are being given death sentences in legal proceedings that clearly do not meet international standards. I recommend all of your listeners to read a piece written the other day by Canada's former ambassador to China David Mulroney that says, quite in a very thoroughgoing way, Canada needs to fundamentally rethink its relationship with China; what it can expect; where it's willing to concede; where it's not; and what it means to defend critical values and interests in what's arguably one of Canada's most important bilateral relationships. This is not just a debate about human rights anymore or just a debate about what happens inside China what happens to a few people. You know the Chinese government's reach is now such that it carries out violations in Canada. So the Canadian government and other likeminded governments really need to radically rethink how they're engaging in abusive powerful government.

DC: Certainly something for us to continue thinking about. Sophie thank you very much.

SOPHIE RICHARDSON: You're very welcome.

DC: Sophie Richardson is China Director for Human Rights Watch. She joined us from Washington. Now critics say that Chinese developers building domestic surveillance systems, like the one being used in the Xingjian region, are being helped along by U.S. based tech firms. Lindsey Gorman is a fellow for Emerging Technologies at the Alliance for securing democracy, a bipartisan national security initiative. And she joins us from our studio in Washington D.C. Hi Lindsay.

LINDSAY GORMAN: Hi David.

DC: What were you thinking as you listened to our last guest talk about this mobile app that Chinese authorities are using to track people in Xinjiang?

LINDSAY GORMAN: I was thinking that first of all kudos to the Human Rights Watch team. They really done some incredible investigative work and unpacking this this app and this platform that's collecting all this data and it's, you know, it sounds like a futuristic novel, but this is the reality in Xinjiang and this is the reality that's being exported to the rest of the world. So we're in frightening times to the extent that Western partnerships are wittingly or unwittingly enabling this surveillance and really mass detention is truly frightening.

DC: You also looked at the use of which we're talking about facial recognition software being used to target people. You looked at this thing called Sense net. What exactly is that?

LINDSAY GORMAN: So Nets is a Chinese company and about a couple of months ago it was revealed that, in this somewhat bizarre juxtaposition of surveillance supremacy and security incompetence, they had actually left this database of facial recognition, images, people coordinates, G.P.S. coordinates that tracking their movements. They'd left this massive database tracking over two and a half million people in China open completely unsecured on the Internet. So we took this and we looked into Sense Nets the company which provides facial recognition software for security contracts in China including in the Xinjiang region. And what we noticed about this particular company is that it was really emblematic of the larger issue of in meshing of these two technical ecosystems in the West and in China. And in fact Sense Nets, through its parent company, had partnerships throughout the West.

DC: Had partnerships through the West. So what role then are U.S. tech firms playing in in helping to develop and maintain surveillance systems in China?

LINDSAY GORMAN: Well it's somewhat multifaceted I would say. The roles are reputational, on the one hand, they're sometimes technology oriented and they're sometimes lending personnel and an expertise. In the particular case of Sense Nets their parent company Net Posa has investments in the United States and Start-Up companies in the United States some of which are competing for DARPA contracts and in DARPA's grand challenges.

DC: So these are for U.S. based research?

LINDSAY GORMAN: Exactly. U.S. based defence research is essentially being funded in part by the same parent company that funds surveillance companies such as Sense Nets in China.

DC: Well what do we make of that?

LINDSAY GORMAN: I think what we're to make of it is that really these ecosystems are intertwined. The idea of China as a threat as something other than an economic partner has only recently burst into the public consciousness, and work by Human Rights Watch and others analyzing these abuses and the detention of over a million people in Xinjiang has really brought this to light. But there are other other steps taken by China in the South China Sea that and the Belt and Road initiative that led to a more aggressive posture. And I think the problem is we're only just really becoming aware of this and the international technical community is also relatively unaware of these threats. And the way international scientific collaboration works is it doesn't really think about Country Origin and scientists, which I used to be one, we care about the facts and the research and doing good for humanity and these geopolitical considerations are often secondary. But I think as we see here, they're going to need to come to the forefront a little bit more.

DC: Okay so how do you make that happen? Because it does seem that U.S. tech firms, and U.S. based universities as well, have allowed their research and development to be potentially used for mass surveillance, for something that governments - their own governments - might otherwise condemn.

LINDSAY GORMAN: Absolutely and I think it's illustrative to take an example. There was recently a Yale University geneticist who was working on DNA samples as part of an academic collaboration with a researcher from China's Ministry of Public Security, one of their forensic labs there. And this researcher had spent the better part of a year in in the Yale lab of this one professor. They're, as part of a normal academic collaboration, they're sharing samples, sharing ideas and theories. And it was only revealed years later that these precise DNA samples were being used to track and validate models for tracking the Uighur population in Xinjiang. So when the Yale University researcher was asked he had no idea that this was happening.

DC: this is Kenneth Kidd you're talking about.

LINDSAY GORMAN: Exactly yes. Kenneth Kidd and there's also a company Thermo Fisher based out of Massachusetts that was implicated in this genetic surveillance. But I think on the first level I would say give the benefit of the doubt to the scientists that this is really unwitting. And I think we just need to apply a much greater scrutiny knowing who your partners are basic checks here on, are they affiliated with Chinese security services? If it's a company do they have contracts?

DC: And whose job is that? I mean is that the job of business? Is at the job of universities? Is the job of government? Who's the one that's supposed to be the gatekeeper?

LINDSAY GORMAN: I think it should be everyone there. We may need to look into the export control process to address this on a governmental level certainly on a business level and probably also in universities. I'm not sure I'd go so far to say that individual researchers should be doing this scrutiny, because we don't want to undermine the value, the true value, of scientific collaboration. And international scientific collaboration has led to the eradication of smallpox and many other wondrous achievements. We wouldn't want to undermine it. But I mean even in Canada for example it surprises me to learn that Huawei is actually invested with 13 of Canada's leading universities including the University of Waterloo, Toronto, McGill, University of British Columbia. And these are really strong research partnerships that may need to be re-evaluated in terms of how their IP is used.

DC: There is a Canadian connection to all of this.

LINDSAY GORMAN: Absolutely. And the connection is really global. I think the New York Times put it very well in their headline of a couple weeks ago when they said made in China exported to the world. And that's really what's happening through the Belt and Road initiative these facial recognition technologies that are developed and really tested in this proving ground of Shin Jang. They're popping up in Ecuador in the Philippines, in the Gulf, Malaysia, and Zimbabwe. So it's really a universal problem. And when we think about it from a values question as democracies we have to figure out what values do we want to embed our technologies with Lindsay.

DC: Lindsay, thank you very much for bringing some insight on all this.

LINDSAY GORMAN: You're very welcome. Thanks.

DC: That's Lindsay Gorman who is a fellow for emerging technologies at the Alliance for securing democracy it's a bipartisan national security initiative. She's in Washington D.C. Now we reached out to M.I.T. yesterday for a statement about their collaboration with sense time and clarification from two other groups AMD and Amax about their business relationships with the company. We have not yet received a response. My next guest has been fighting for years to bring attention to what's happening to people at home in Xinjiang. Mehmet Tohti is a Uighur Canadian with family still in the region and he's with me in our Toronto studio. Hello Mehmet.

MEHMET TOHTI: Hey David.

DC: What's going through your mind as you're listening to these guests speaking about the life and hardship of people in Xinjiang? It's something that your family lives with each and every day.

MEHMET TOHTI: Actually now the international community just realized a small piece of iceberg from the prospect of civilians. But the prosecution of Uighurs is going on since the occupation in 1949, and in the November 20th a report by Human Rights Subcommittee of Canadian parliament rightfully said the entire region turned it into open air prison. And what we discussed here is the piece of what the open air prison is. And so the system of surveillance there are a number of flags. One is digital surveillance. One is human surveillance. And the Chinese government installed more than one and a half million [unintelligible] Chinese or four shows to every Uighur family, just monitor their activities day and night 24/7.

DC: What is it that most concerns you about these efforts to watch, and then in many cases, ultimately detain in these camps Uighur Muslims?

MEHMET TOHTI: Now we are simply talking about the symptom or what appeared on the surface. The basic target of this program is a forceful denunciation of ethnic community from their religious belief and ethnic affinity. Just to control them, monitor them 24/7. Whether they have any religious content in there conversation at home or whether or not they are loyal to Communist Party. Do they secretly pray or do, in just social gathering with their neighbours, what kind of conversation do they have? It is total control of mind.

DC: Everything is watched.

MEHMET TOHTI: Everything. Just every single step. Every single breath and every single motion just it is controlled and forced people to adopt the way that Chinese government dictates them to act.

DC: You left Xinjiang, how and why?

MEHMET TOHTI: I left in 1991. It was a period as you remember the collapse of Soviet Union and it was the nightmare for a Chinese government, because they had great fear of what they were happened in the Soviet Union could be for some ethnic regions to spill out from China. Because China's government occupied East Turkistan that China called the Sinjar autonomous region, and the Tibet, and Southern Mongolia in 1949 just after the Second World War. And since then China's government has been carrying out a policy of assimilation and prosecution and mass detention. That was the regular part continuous policy of China's government. But after 1991 Chinese government has changed the entire policy to ethnic upon its region just there in fear that if we continue some sort of autonomous policy at the end we will end up what the Soviet Union has faced.

DC: Breakup, dissolution and division.

MEHMET TOHTI: And so they strengthen the control and crackdown and in that fear. I escaped China in 1991.

DC: Do you have a sense of what it's like? Your mother is still there. Your family, you have family there. What does daily life look like for them? Do you have any idea?

MEHMET TOHTI: I lost contact as many Canadian citizen of Uighur origin did. I lost contact with my family members and more than two and a half years. So I don't know whether they're alive or dead, because China's government completely sealed off the area and they restrict that any communication of people with their loved ones abroad or any friends or any business associates. So it is a completely sealed off area and so I don't know. And this is not the unique story for me. All the exiled Uighur community are facing the same problem. They don't know any information about their family members and the whereabouts of their family members. Even they don't know they're dead or alive because any simple text messaging or e-mail or a phone calling those simple things became very luxuries. So from the media and from the information leaked out from the Chinese people in China - and if you know that so many atrocities are taking place. More than three million Uighurs in concentration camps and the entire area that turn out to be open air prison. And it is really really impossible for people to live because there is like a war zone and the people cannot conduct the the normal daily life.

DC: Canada's in the middle of a dispute with China over the detention of Huawei executive, that there is effectively a trade war right now. In the context of all of that and everything else that's going on, do you think the Canadian government actually reasonably can have any effect in terms of its words to the Chinese government?

MEHMET TOHTI: Canada should because Canada - we have to remember - Canada has a lot of soft power to deploy. And unfortunately when it comes to specifically for Uighur issue and the child and human rights violation in China Canada somehow put the human rights issue at a sideline in fear of a business interruption or interruption for their business dealings with China. And this is the consequence. And when it comes to some individual case we remember that our government officials from the top level they treated and did they condemn that just like the case in Saudi Arabia. But when it comes to millions of mass incarceration then it comes to the harshest form of the violation of human rights. And there is no any single statement from Canada and this is kind of we are sending a double standard message. Our human rights concern somehow on the basis of conscious slack instead of adopting the universal standard value.

DC: Mehmet, we're going to have to leave it there but thank you very much for coming in today.

MEHMET TOHTI: You're welcome David.

DC: Mehmet Tohti is a weaker Canadian activist and he was with us in our Toronto studio.

SARAH-JOYCE BATTERSBY: Hi, I'm Sarah-Joyce Battersby, one of the producers here at The Current. This week the show was produced by: Idella Sturino, Alison Masemann, Howard Goldenthal, Samira Mohyeddin, John Chipman, Karin Marley, Julie Crysler, Ines Colabrese, Danielle Carr, Jessica Linzey, and Julianne Hazlewood. Our intern is Cinar Kiper. Special thanks to the CBC's Michael Dick in Thunder Bay and Sanjay Maru in Windsor. The Current's writer is Peter Mitton. Our web producers are Padraig Moran and Emilie Quesnel. Transcriptions are provided by Rasha Shehata and Shamhan Bhuiyan .Our technical producer is Gary Francis. Our documentary editor is Joan Webber, and our presentation producer is Liz Hoath. Our senior producers are Pacinthe Mattar in Toronto, and Cathy Simon and Geoff Turner in Vancouver. The executive producer of The Current is Willow Smith. And of course, the host of the Current, Anna Maria Tremonti.

DC: That is our program for today stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Ridley Scott's 1979 film Alien celebrates its fortieth anniversary to mark the occasion filmmaker Alexandra Phillipe has made a documentary called Memory the Origins of Alien. That is next on Q. Finally after our conversation about Frank Zappa going on tour is a sort of hologram, let's end the week with some memorable Frank Zappa. Here he is in concert in Chicago back in 1978 with Dancin Fool. I'm David Coleman. Thanks so much for listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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[Song: Danging Fool]

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