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The Current Transcript for June 10, 2019

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: It was difficult to leave my country because I was born there, my family's there, my home's there, but I had to flee because of the need.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: How is it even possible that the number of people who have left Venezuela because of economic hardship is now at four million. That not conventional war but the consequences of a financial plummet on the availability of food, of medicine, of the necessities of life has sent so many people out of the country. That this rivals only Syria in the number of people on the move. Does Canada have an influential role to play in thi? We are on the story of Venezuela's deepening crisis in just a moment. And then you may know Eve Ensler as a groundbreaking playwright and a fierce advocate for victims of sexual violence. As one of those victims, there was always something beyond her grasp.

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VOICE: As a child I longed for my father to apologize to me and I thought well why don't I write my father's apology? Why don't I write the words I need to hear?

AMT: And so she has written The Apology in the voice of a now dead father to confront the sexual abuse that began when she was five-years-old. She hopes it sparks apologies for other victims. Eve Ensler joins me in half an hour. Also today, I don't know how much you know about herring. They travel in schools that can be as big as the island of Manhattan and most other creatures find them invaluable and tasty.

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VOICE: That's the power of these little fish they're the bread and butter of the marine ecosystem. When they do well, they do really well and everybody else is doing well on them.

AMT: Which is why fewer herring on both the east and west coasts of Canada have a lot of people worried and we'll tell you more in an hour. We're also revisiting my interview in the early days of The Current when Henry Kissinger reacted unexpectedly to an uncomfortable question. That's in just over an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Colombia, other Latin American countries strained by flow of Venezuelan refugees, says filmmaker

Guests: Femi Agbayewa, Kelly Clements, Nicolas Saldias

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VOICE: What I remember the most is seeing my dad through the window of the car crying a lot. It was the first time I'd ever seen my dad cry like that. I had never seen him like that. He wasn't just crying for me, but also for Jose and his granddaughter. His family was leaving and I cried the whole way until we got to Maracaibo and then the following day we decided to leave for here.

AMT: That is Farianny Sanchez, in translation, a 25-year-old psychologist from Maracaibo, Venezuela. She is describing what it felt like to say goodbye to her family as she made a 19 hour trek to Colombia with her baby. She's one of the millions of Venezuelans who have migrated to neighbouring South American countries and beyond in search of basic supplies.

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VOICE: Throughout the course of the trip I started to feel more relief. I felt a sense of hope that our situation was changing and we wouldn't no longer be in darkness. When I thought about it I imagined what it would be like to have our basic needs met again. I wanted to know what it was like to have water, to have food, to be able to sleep because I wasn't able to sleep. I had gone days without sleeping and my baby too.

AMT: Last week the United Nations said more than 4 million Venezuelans have fled the country, one million of them only in the last seven months. Those figures it says are staggering. The migrants are escaping political chaos, violence, unemployment and shortages of food and medical supplies. In Colombia alone there are more than 1.3 Million migrants from Venezuela, a number that is expected to swell now that the border between the two countries has been reopened. It had been closed for about four months. Femi Agbayewa is a Canadian. He is an independent filmmaker and he lives in Medellin, Colombia. He recorded the voice that you just heard and has been watching the migrant influx in that city. Hello.

FEMI AGBAYEWA: Hello.

AMT: How typical is what we just heard?

FA: What you just heard is becoming more and more typical. It's something that you're seeing a lot more and hearing a lot more. Just to give some context, I moved here over a year ago. My wife is Venezuelan and so when I first arrived, you could hear it, but you wouldn't be in contact as much, but now it's very obvious, very in your face.

AMT: And so over the last several months what changes have you noticed on the streets of Medellin?

FA: Well you're seeing more and more Venezuelans holding up signs. People are looking for money any type of help on food clothes, just to get by.

AMT: And where are they living?

FA: So in a variety of different places some are living on the streets and fortunately they haven't been able to find housing that's another situation the messaging has been going through. It's been a huge swell of people looking for housing. Others are living in areas that aren't so comfortable in mid-June that are typically violent and aggressive. It has been really hard.

AMT: And how are Colombians responding to the influx of Venezuelans coming in?

FA: It's really, it's an interesting dynamic before historically Colombia was the place where they're sending people, no refugees of their own. And so this is the first time in the history where they've basically been taking in people as the host country and They've been very welcoming. But there's also been a strain on the resources so you can kind of see some of the cracks that are occurring between not just Venezuelans, but in terms of immigration in general with other groups also.

AMT: And when you say cracks, what are you seeing?

FA: You see little comments here and there. You know I think there's been a question of are the people that are coming in, the Venezuelans coming in, taking away the resources from Colombians. So you see a little bit of fissures like that.

AMT: Because essentially anybody coming in, are they all destitute?

FA: It's really, really interesting just for the simple fact from every level people are leaving and basically being forced out of Venezuela only for example 30 and he is a psychologist and she just was you know she's sitting in the dark for five days with the baby without food. So at some point yeah I have to say they're at that level of destitution.

AMT: And some of them are just passing through Colombia. Where are they going to going?

FA: They're going Ecuador, Chile, Peru, Argentina, as far away as to Argentina. Peru just changed their immigration stance in terms of needing a visa so that will probably effect on the flow. Typically they don't need a visa or a passport to enter into Colombia. You can just come through.

AMT: And so when you talk to people what are they telling you about what they're thinking about their future, how they feel about being in the position they're in.

FA: What I've seen the most and what's probably touched me the most is just it's just an unbelievable burden were every single decision you have to make is a decision that is a life changing life altering decision should I state you stay all of a sudden there's five days without light no food should I go OK well I'm just taking last year money bet on the uncertainty. So what you see in the eyes and what you're hearing is just this you know it's a burden of uncertainty that is entering every single part of our lives on every decision.

AMT: They have no idea whether they can go back?

FA: A lot of people just don't want to go back. They're not sure what they're going back to. You know the Venezuela that they remember they do understand it doesn't exist. The Venezuela of the future they can't even think that far. It's just the present day to day.

AMT: So it really is a limbo.

FA: It really is. That's a great word.

AMT: Thank you for speaking with me today, Femi.

FA: No problem. Thanks for having Femi.

AMT: Femi Agbayewa is Canadian independent filmmaker. He is based in Medellin, Colombia. Now the U.N. says the flow of people out of Venezuela is the largest and fastest in recent Latin American history. Kelly Clements is the Deputy High Commissioner at the U.N. refugee agency. She's been travelling in Ecuador and Colombia talking to refugees about their experiences. We've reached her today in Bogota, Colombia. Hello.

KELLY CLEMENTS: Good morning.

AMT: How does what Femi is just telling us and what he's seeing in Medellin compare with what you've been seeing?

KC: I have to say it's very consistent with what certainly we've seen at the border up north. We were there the last couple of days in my Maceo and as well as in Riohacha. And this is it's both what he describes in terms of the increasingly desperate conditions of those that are leaving Venezuela. They're really coming with nothing. And the change in the characterization of the refugee flow. Earlier we saw either for the families or men coming trying to figure out whether or not they can make their way in the neighbouring countries and sending their families and that's what we're seeing now. So whereas the refugee flows earlier were were a little bit. People with means and the like. Now we really see refugees with very little so more desperation is what you're telling me. Much much more desperation. Yes. And he also talked a little bit about the you know the Colombians and certainly the Ecuadorians because that's where I was before coming here to this country have opened up their communities in ways that are just remarkable. It's huge generosity but of course the the the means that they have in terms of what to provide a little bit of income for example shelter. Some of the services that that already are lacking and the place that we were the last couple of days up north. One of the poorest parts of the country others very little for them to give to the Venezuelans that are coming across. He also described this very complex situation of basically overlapping crises. So we talked extensively not only with Venezuelans but also Colombian internally displaced and then Colombian returnees. These are people that during decades of conflict now they've come back to try to make to try to make their ways with a really complex situation.

AMT: It's worth remembering that so much has gone on in that country as well. Tell me more about what you're seeing in Ecuador, how it compares, how it's different.

KC: Oh it's interesting. So Ecuador obviously a smaller country. Having fewer flows in terms of the refugees and migrants coming across. Whereas Colombia I think has about 1.3 million now, Ecuador has been traditionally more of a transit country, rather than a destination country. So Femi talked about people on the move. Some have stayed obviously close to Venezuela and stayed in Colombia. But the vast majority have actually moved through Colombia and through Ecuador to go to points further south in Ecuador. There's somewhere in the neighbourhood of 270,000, 300,000 that have remained in Ecuador and I think there is great concern that with some changes and visa regulations and the like that people will be stuck. So it's been there's there's a lot of uncertainty and a lot of concern on that on the part of families in terms of are they safe? Are they going to be able to continue to travel? Will they be able to stay where they are and be able to make a make a living? Or will they be at some risk of deportation or otherwise?

AMT: Kelly, how are they living like? What are the conditions like?

KC: It really varies. You know when we were in my Maicao this is a couple of days ago now. This is an integrated centre that actually was just opened a couple of months ago which was intended to try to take people off of the street. This is a border town of about 8 kilometres or so from Venezuela. And we just saw you know thousands of families and very young children and single mothers or female headed households people just sleeping on the street and extremely vulnerable and unsafe. So we worked very closely with the government to open this integrated centre working with other partners now trying to get people off the street giving them a little you know obviously some safety shelter for a short period of time. The idea is that this is a way for people to get a bit of assistance and be able to find a way to either remain in Maicao or continue to move.

AMT: You made the point that the countries are strapped in helping them. The UNHCR says the regional refugee and migrant response plan that was launched last December to help Venezuelan refugees has received only about 20 percent of the money it needs to help. Why is that?

KC: This is it's a complicated set of circumstances. There has been support certainly in terms of the international financial institutions World Bank IDB. This is extremely important. But but we really need a mix of both the humanitarian immediate short term protection assistance but we also need the longer term because this is not we don't see this situation going away soon. We I don't see people returning soon. People are obviously staying close. Hoping that they can. But we need to be looking at that not just the immediate lifesaving measures but also how can we support these host communities that are doing so much for so many.

AMT: Kelly Clements, thanks for your time today.

KC: Thank you very much.

AMT: Kelly Clements is the Deputy High Commissioner at the U.N. refugee agency we reached her in Bogota, Colombia. Well while the migrant crisis intensifies there have been diplomatic efforts to find a political solution. In Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro is still firmly in control. That's despite an attempted coup early last month by the opposition leader, Juan Guido. Over the past month Norway has been hosting exploratory talks between representatives of the Venezuelan government and the opposition. Canada's Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland has been talking about the role Cuba could play in a negotiated solution. This past Friday Minister Freeland held a meeting in Toronto with the Cuban foreign minister. My next guest says this is exactly what Canada should be doing. Nicolas Saldias a researcher in the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars. He's a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Toronto and he is in our Washington studio. Hi.

NICOLAS SALDIAS: Hi. How are you?

AMT: I'm wondering what you can tell us about the Canada Cuba relationship, but first remind us what Cuba's relationship with the Maduro government and Venezuela in general has been.

NS: So the Cubans have been a longtime ally of Chavismo, which is the political movement associated with Hugo Chávez and Nicolas Maduro. They've been underground since at least 2002 offering the regime military and intelligence support and in return the regime has been giving the Cubans subsidized oil so that they can subsist as they have been with a relatively inefficient economy. This relationship still continues. What's notable is that even though Venezuela's economy continues to struggle they're still sending subsidized oil to Cuba. So this is clearly a relationship of co-dependency between the two countries.

AMT: And why is Canada particularly well placed to broker something?

NS: Well Canada is in a unique position because Canada has, unlike the United States, relatively warm relations with Cuba to begin with, which goes back to you know a Pierre Trudeau in 1976 was leading the country and the other reason is that Canada has outsized economic influence over Cuba. 1.1 million Canadians go to Cuba which is the largest contingent of foreigners to go to Cuba in terms of tourism, which provides billions of dollars for the Cuban regime to subsist and to import basic necessities. Canada also has a lot of investments in the country and so Canada has the ability to leverage some tools that other countries may not be able to do.

AMT: And of course Canada's own relations with Cuba are delicate right now because of the ill health of Canadian diplomats who were based in Havana. There's it's in the news today that because there are fewer diplomats it's affecting our consular duties there. Will that have an impact on what we're talking about?

NS: So unlike the United States from my recollection the Canadians are not claiming that the illness is related to some kind of purposeful attack on them. So it's not at the same level as the United States which claims something more serious. What that does is it does hurt Canada's ability to be on the ground and to have deeper ties with the Cuban regime but nevertheless on Friday the Cuban foreign minister in a rare move went to Toronto to me Chrystia Freeland to discuss the Venezuela situation which I think is actually quite unprecedented and quite interesting because it does reveal that the Cuban regime is beginning to have doubts about the ability of the Venezuelans to support them in the long run and sees Canada maybe as a way of getting out of this situation. And so what came out of that meeting so according to Chrystia Freeland she says that quote There's an international convergence around the need for a peaceful transition in the country. And importantly she says Cuba will have a role to play in this. To me that's not a benign statement that suggests that she's been able to get the Cubans to at least agree to the idea that a democratic transition in Venezuela is necessary. We'll see how far that goes. You know talk is cheap but hopefully the Cubans will actually become a positive actor. And Canada has the capacity to actually get the Cubans onboard for a peaceful democratic transition in Venezuela.

AMT: And at the same time Norway has been hosting what it's called exploratory talks between both sides in Venezuela. Do we know how those have gone?

NS: Those are very secretive. We don't really know very much about them. What is important to note is that the Norwegians have been able to bring the opposition Juan away though his people as well as Maduro's people to same table which is important. Personally I think that the chances of something happening there are not very high. You know the Maduro regime has used negotiations in the past with the church for example that has gone nowhere. Basically Maduro uses the negotiations to buy time to split the opposition. And you know subsist in terms of allowing him to not deal with the crisis at home by giving him international legitimacy. But this may be different. Who knows the situation of Venezuela right now as your former guests have said are so severe U.S. sanctions are really beginning to bite the country and the sanctions against individuals inside Venezuela as well are very stringent. And now with Canada and the E.U. and Switzerland and all these other countries imposing these sanctions on individuals, they may start seeing that the writing's on the wall and they might want a way out. But still we'll have to see whether or not this will actually happen.

AMT: And at the same time the UN's human rights chief Michelle Bachelet has voiced concerns about the impact of those sanctions, whether they're really, they are biting and they are really hurting. What do you think?

NS: So the reality is that the regime even before the sanctions which started this year against Venezuela's oil industry people were leaving in droves already. The country was not importing food was not importing medicine at an level that it needed to anyway a great deal of Venezuela's resources are siphoned off in corruption. And so the sanctions certainly make the situation a bad situation worse. But it's certainly not the case that the sanctions have made the situation what it is. So the sanctions appear to be playing a role in getting the Maduro regime a bit uncomfortable. And from what I can tell the Cubans outreach to Canada suggests that there's something happening because the United States recently put sanctions on any company that does business between Venezuela and Cuba. So that further accentuates the crisis both in Cuba which is now facing shortages and in Venezuela as well. So we should watch Canada and Cuba and all of I think yes I think Canada's role will become increasingly more important because Canada has the goodwill that for example the United States simply doesn't have in Havana. So Canada could play a very important role.

AMT: Thanks for your insights into this. Thank you.

NS: No problem.

AMT: Nicolas Saldias is a researcher in the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars. He's a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Toronto and he was in our Washington studio. We did request an interview with the Venezuelan consulate in Toronto. We did not hear back. Let us know what you think about this story as it continues to unfold and this crisis continues. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link. Stay with us. The news is next and then she is a playwright and an author and you might even call her a feminist revolutionary. Eve Ensler joins me with the story behind her new book, The Apology. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One.

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Men need to stand up and apologize for sexual abuse, says Vagina Monologues playwright Eve Ensler

Guests: Eve Ensler

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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AMT: Still to come, we are revisiting some of my most memorable interviews from the past 17 seasons and in about half an hour, it's one I won't forget, but not for the usual reasons. It's my 2003 conversation with former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. But first, the apology she always wanted to hear.

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AMT: Well as the host of The Current I've spoken with many people who have dedicated their lives to fighting violence against women and one who has stood out for me is Eve Ensler. She's a U.S. writer of course and playwright. She's turned her ground breaking play The Vagina Monologues into a movement. The conversation her play launched led her to found V-Day and One Billion Rising to international campaigns aimed at ending violence against women and girls. She has also worked with local activists in the Democratic Republic of Congo to create City of Joy, a community that helps women who have suffered violence and trauma at the hands of combatants from all sides in a conflict that ravaged their country. With her latest work, Eve Ensler has taken a personal turn writing the words she says she has always needed to hear. Her new book is The Apology and it is written as an apology to her from her father who sexually and physically abused her as a child. It's an apology he never made before his death 31 years ago. Eve Ensler is with me in our Toronto studio. And just a warning this interview will deal with sexual and physical abuse. Hello Eve Ensler.

EVE ENSLER: Hi. I'm so happy to see you.

AMT: I'm really happy to have you in the studio and so we can talk about this. There's so much I want to ask you about this book. It's written in his voice, as if he's writing it to you. How did you do that?

EE: That's a very good question. And part of me knows and part of me doesn't know, right? Once I made the decision that I was going to essentially encourage him to write me the apology it kind of opened a portal into the father that lived inside me all these years and maybe the father that exists around me. One of the things I've known but it really became very clear writing this book is that when someone invades you or rapes you or molest you or harasses you they enter you they become embedded in you. And it takes years to get them out of you. My father has been inside me my whole life and I've been in conscious or unconscious dialogue with him my whole life. So in a way it was much easier than I imagined plugging into his voice because I've been carrying it my whole life and I seem to in some ways know it better than my own because it's so dominated my childhood. And why did you do it after years and years and years of work on myself there's part of me that was just like I want to be done with this. I want to be done with this story. I don't want to live in this narrative anymore. I don't want to be perpetual victim to my father's perpetrator. So as a child I longed for my father to apologize to me. I think it's why I was always writing apology letters to him to kind of maybe stimulate and suggest that this is something he could do. And he's been dead 31 years and I've always yearned for that simultaneously. I've been working with many women in this movement for many many years. We've told our stories we've broken the silence. We've called out men and the new iteration of me too has escalated that to a whole nother level in all that time and all those years I have never heard one man make a public throw authentic apology for sexual abuse and maybe not even in 16000 years of patriarchy. Have we heard that. And I've asked many people. No one seems to know of one. And I started to think maybe it's central to what is keeping patriarchy in its place. And I thought well why don't I write my father's apology? Why don't I write the words I need to hear? Why don't I see what an apology is?

AMT: And I suspect that this has tentacles well beyond you and we'll get to that in a minute. So your dad's name was Arthur S. Ensler. What would people have known about Arthur Ensler when you were growing up? People who weren't in your house.

EE: He was charming. He was the head of a corporation. He was a dapper dresser. He was a little intimidating, but people would have just chalk that up to you know business man successful. He had a gorgeous wife. They always joked about them being Cary Grant and Doris Day. They loved that idea. I think those that knew more about my father in a more intimate way knew that he drank too much. You know and he could have mood changes but I would say that the majority of the public he appeared to be everything you were supposed to be. You know I couldn't watch Mad Man for years because Jon Hamm was so he looked so much like my father and was so of that mindset. We lived in a house that literally had a white picket fence in front of it. We were living the dream inside, which was the nightmare.

AMT: There was another side to him and you found out when you were five-years-old.

EE: Well that's when the sexual abuse began. I think before that point my father loved me. He adored me. I was the apple of his eye. I was everything. And then one night it changed. You know he went over some line, some scary line. That sexual violation went on for five years and then when that ended he became physically horrifyingly violent to me until I left home when I was 18. So that story of him on the outside versus who he really was, I was thinking lately why do I always have to say these things? Why do I always have to write these things? And I think that split between what people think could be pretty true and what's really true was so maddening to me as a child that there was no expression for it. There was no way to talk about it. There was no way to say he is not who you think he is. I know who he really is and the lie of that absolutely made me insane.

AMT: You make the point that at some point he stopped sexually abusing you and the physical violence becomes very, very strong. What changed?

EE: Well I think what happened is the sexual abuse when it began, I was five years old. My father was my father. I adored him. He adored me. It was so confusing that this person who I adored was invading me, was touching me. It was horrifying. It was pleasurable. It was terrifying. It was wrong. It was all those things and I think as that went on I began to realize this is weird and this is wrong. And I was suddenly competing with my mother. I remember exactly. He went away on a trip with her and I was heartbroken that he would go with my mother and leave me when we had this relationship and when he came back I refused to talk to him. And that night when he came into my bedroom I turned away from him. I just was like no and I acted like I was dead which is something I developed as a technique. And that was the night it stopped and it was after that that my father began to really become violent because I think a couple of reasons. I think one I had rejected him. Two he had to destroy evidence of what he had already destroyed because by that point I was having regular infections. I was having nightmares every night. My personality was changing. Right after that I cut off all my hair. I didn't want to be a girl. And I think he basically wanted to rid the world of evidence. I mean it was like I was evidence.

AMT: Of what he had done.

EE: Of what he had done.

AMT: You say infections. You had chronic urinary tract infections because of his abuse coming to your room at night. Did your mother never suspect anything?

EE: Well that's a very good question because she was constantly taking me to the doctor and and when I years later confronted her at first she said, oh no. She said I know he beat you, I know he almost murdered you. Which she said that as if it were like normal and then she said but I don't know. And then the next morning she called me at 4:00 in the morning and she went, of course he did. All the signs were there. My mother had been very poor. She'd grown up in the midwest. My father was her ticket out of that. She had three kids. Where was she going with those three kids? She had no economic independence. She had no wherewithal to have a job. You know she said to me years later when I confronted her, I sacrificed you.

AMT: She understood that?

EE: She did.

AMT: Is she alive?

EE: No she died.

AMT: Did she apologize?

EE: She did. And we came to a beautiful place before she died we we spent years grappling and going deeper and deeper into this and we were in a beautiful place when she left this world.

AMT: But growing up I mean the physical abuse becomes at some point he's choking you and your mom is nearby. Is she in the room even like?

EE: I think my mother resented me deeply for his adoration of me. I think in those years when my father was sexually abusing me and adoring me and I was the only thing he thought about. I think it enraged my mother on some level. And I think unconsciously or not my mother did not like me. I think my mother on some level was kind of relieved when my father started to beat me because it was the ending of that obsession he had for me. Well I actually wasn't the ending. It just took a new form.

AMT: How did you cope with this growing up?

EE: I think imagination had a lot to do with it. I had an imaginary friend called Mr. Alligator who would I would call regularly and speak really loudly on the phone and ask him to come and pick me up and I would pack my little suitcase and put my crayons in my orange and I would go to the end of the block and I would wait for Mr. Alligator. And he never came. There were a couple people in my life. I had an amazing aunt. And there were nannies who took care of me who really loved me and cared for me. But to be honest with you I'm not sure I did cope that well. I was a mess. I was really depressed. I was very self-destructive. I had no friends. I was desperate to be popular. I was desperate to be liked. Nobody wants a desperate friend right. And I think it wasn't until I found drugs and alcohol that I began to be able to be at all social and functional. And then of course they turned on me because I was an addict and it all began to be self-destruction and insane promiscuity.

AMT: It was another reason for your father to berate you as well.

EE: Exactly. The thing about incest and the thing about childhood sexual abuse that nobody wants to talk about is what it does to your mind. It makes intimacy claustrophobic. It makes love impossible because it's already been betrayed. It kills your yearning sons are supposed to yearn for their mothers daughters is supposed to Europe. That's part of your sexual development. But when someone exploits that it kills your learning. But what it really did for me is that in attempting to forget what's happened you have to start forgetting a lot because all roads lead back to that one memory. So you start blocking passage ways that your memory out that lead you back and what happens is you begin to lose your memory. So at a young age if I was ever under stress I couldn't remember anything because it triggered my trauma. So you could say to me now to how much is to pass through and I would say for but put me in front of a test I could never remember. So I started doing very poorly in school that had a huge huge impact on my self-esteem because it actually confirmed what my father was always telling me was that I was stupid and bad and honestly I still feel like I'm a stupid person.

AMT: And here you are the celebrated playwright. That's so interesting, but that's not where you come from.

EE: Yeah but you know these are the things that get embedded right. The things we have to fight and fight and fight our way through.

AMT: You're very graphic in the detail. Why did you do that?

EE: Very specifically. I think we talk about gender violence and we talk about domestic violence we all these words but I don't think anybody has any idea what they mean. What I learned about an apology and I think this is really critical is deliberation is in the details. When somebody tells you I did this to you and it's very specific it is an actual releasing of what they did when someone says I'm sorry if I hurt you.

AMT: I if I did anything that maybe you took the wrong way, I'm sorry, it's not the same.

EE: Or even if someone says I'm sorry I sexually abused you. What does that mean? What did you do to me exactly? Where did you put your hands? Where did you put your fingers? Where did you put your body? What did you do? Because when you say that it's almost as if the tentacles of that memory of that poison get released. Look this book is really an anatomy of an apology. Like what would an apology look like? What are the ingredients or the tenets of an apology? And I think being specific, as hard as it is, when you read it you go oh this is an apology, but this is also what sexual abuse is. And I think we really need to be much more specific because I think people can remove themselves and talk about gender violence or rape in conflict zones. What does that mean?

AMT: You need to spell it out. Yeah. Well the person who is your father in the book tries to explain why he did this, how he was drawn to you as a child because he'd just never had a reaction to anyone the same way as he had to this child that was his. He also talked about the shadow man coming out and doing things and at times I was getting angry, I was thinking wait a minute, don't make an excuse.

EE: Well I think there's a big difference between justification and explanation. I did not feel my father was making excuses in the book. I thought my father was explaining to me what it was that drove him to do what he did. And I think unless we probe underneath what drives men to do sexual violence what drives mental rape what in their character and in their history has created them to be the kind of men they are, we're never going to get to ending it.

AMT: So it's almost like an exploration that you were doing as well to try to understand what would have driven him to behave this way to do this to.

EE: Absolutely because one of the things I think survivors are obsessed with is the why why would my father who in theory was supposed to love me want to kill me. Why would my best friend drugged me and raped me. Why why. It doesn't justify it or make excuses. But oh this led you to this and this is why and I think unless we look at that how are we going to go back and help that person really change or transform where they come from so looking at my father's history. What I realized is that my father was born late. You know his oldest brother sister was twelve years older than him. He was adored. He was the golden boy. The Divine Right of Kings adoration is incredibly destructive because it is not love. It doesn't allow for tenderness or vulnerability or wonder or curiosity or. And I think in my father's case my father was a very tender boy. My father was a person who had a huge heart and it was constantly being smashed out of him. So where does that go. Where does that go in boys. It gets pushed underground. All those feelings and eventually they metastasize into what my father called the shadow man and that shadow man was waiting and waiting and waiting which is in there. And then I was born and suddenly this wave tidal wave of tenderness enters my father. He has no capacity to feel it. And rather than sitting with that tenderness feeling it experiencing it he's got to get rid of it because it's causing so much anxiety in him that he has to exploit it rape bad habit, do it and I don't think that's uncommon. I don't think most boys are taught how to sit with tenderness.

AMT: And if we don't understand that, we don't know understand how to move forward with them.

EE: Absolutely.

AMT: Did your father ever apologize to you?

EE: No, never. My father says to me in the book to be an apologist is to be a traitor to men. When he said that it just went through me. You know it's like once one man admits that he knows what he did is wrong, it's like the whole story of patriarchy begins to crumble, right? I think there's a reason why there has been no public apology. It's keeping this story in its place. So we need the brave country of men who are going to come forward to begin to be traitors.

AMT: How has what he did to you shaped your adult life?

EE: Well I would say how has it not, right? I think up until I wrote this book I think my whole self was framed within the narrative of me being a perpetual victim to his perpetrator right. Okay, first of all, I never had children. I never even dreamed of having children. Why? Because what I saw happen to children was so unbearable because I didn't trust myself with children because I assume my father would be inside me. I had impossible times in relationships. I mean to me intimacy has always been claustrophobic because I think you always go back to that initial first moment where somebody invaded your body and your swallowed in a tsunami of their of their longing of their desire of their exploitation. You know I think I look at my body how long it took to get back in my body. I was so separated from my body and what I did to my body in the course of that how I didn't honour it how I didn't protect it how I didn't respect it and it's certainly affected my memory and my ability to learn. So those are just a few.

AMT: It affected your creativity. It's almost like you and I don't want to, I hesitate now because I don't want to say the wrong thing or assume, but it's almost like you took that pain and that's what I get in your work. I get that that depth that, am I right?

EE: Yes. Had I not become an artist, I would have died. I would have gone insane. Just being able to work with that pain, work with that rage and try to turn it into something was my salvation. I know that.

AMT: You know as I read this book, the further I got into it I couldn't shake the memory of something I saw you do a couple of years ago. You were on stage in Toronto the Stephen Lewis Foundation and the grandmothers working in Africa and a doctor working in Congo and you did a piece of performance art. It's a girl, she's talking about being with her girlfriend. She's a teenager and she's on a ferry in Goma and they're going to buy shoes and she gets picked up by a warlord who turns her into his sex slave. And I'm getting chills, I'm looking at you right now and that look on your face. I've never felt, it was so powerful. You took over that character and it was so powerful and I read this and I went, oh my God. I connected the dots to why you could write that story and I felt so bad.

EE: But you know what, there's the bad and there's the good. The good is that I could connect with that story.

AMT: And you made others of us understand.

EE: And I look at my life and I feel you know I wish maybe on some level I didn't know that pain I didn't know. On another level it's made an incredible life. I've travelled the world. I've been able to sit and hear stories that a lot of people wouldn't be able to hear. And I've been able to be there for a lot of women who other people can't tolerate their pain. You know what I mean. And I know we're in a solidarity across this world of sisters who have suffered insane sexual and physical violence and I can see how it all connects to the personal, to the political. And I've been able to see that since I was a young girl that connection. And so as hard as my childhood was and as terrible as it was, it's afforded me in an amazing life of privilege in terms of being honoured to know women in here women in sit with women and be privy to their innermost secrets and to be trusted as somebody who can be their friend, you know. And so that thing about what doesn't kill you, right, I feel what didn't kill me made me a sister and for that I'm incredibly grateful.

AMT: And this book, this book is something you want to see move forward with other people's stories.

EE: I do. And you know we've started this website called theapologybook.net, where we're encouraging people to write like what is an apology and why is it important. And we're also encouraging people to send in their anonymous apologies both to their victims but also if they want to write one from their perpetrator to themselves. And we got our first apology a few days ago and I was really struck by the power of it. It was a boy who was apologizing to when he was 21 he molested a 15-year-old boy and he was actually convicted for it but he goes through a retching thorough no apology to this boy. And I was thinking we've done all the work women we've called men out. We've set our stories. If we don't go to the next level now if it is now not about apologizing reckoning and accountability right we will not survive as a human species. We're done. We've already been given 12 years or 11 years with climate crisis right. I think we're in a very similar place with the human crisis. But what I do know is if there is now a time we move into where people begin to be accountable and apologize we have the possibility of dismantling patriarchy, racist patriarchy and I think that is fundamental to how we treat the Earth.

AMT: It sounds as if you have learned, discovered, figured out that there are a lot of people out there who want to apologize. They don't know how or they haven't had the space to do it, but if you give them the space they actually want to move forward.

EE: It definitely is what I'm experiencing on this book tour. How many men have come and said I'm terrified to do this. I don't know how to do this, but I would like to do this and I believe there are many people out there and I think what we need to do is start creating pathways for that. Like what are the pathways for that. And also understanding what is an apology. It's a practice it's a journey. It's a humbling. It's making yourself vulnerable. It's an equalizer. And I think until we are able to do it in our personal lives in our political lives we will keep circling back punishment violence punishment violence punishment violence. And I think one other thing about an apology is that it is it is incumbent upon the person apologizing to feel what their victim felt to go inside that victim to feel what was the long term impact the short term impact the impact on their family the impact on their ancestors the impact on their history their future. What are all those impacts so that you begin to see that you are one terrible gesture or ten terrible gestures towards that person impacted their family impacted a community impacted a history of future a story and being highly imperfect people as human beings our greatest imperfection the lack of recognition of our imperfections. Apologies are a medicine. They're the sav. They're the way through, but if we don't know how to do it there is no way through.

AMT: So what began as a book about you becomes a story about all of us.

EE: I hope so. I hope so. I think each one of our lives if we go into the centre of it is always about all of us.

AMT: Thanks for what you do.

EE: Thank you.

AMT: Thanks for coming in.

EE: Thank you.

AMT: Eve Ensler's latest book is The Apology and she was in our Toronto studio. Coming up, what's happening to the herring and what does it mean for the rest of the ecosystem, including us. We're fishing for answers in our next half hour. Plus the best of The Current. We've got my interview with Henry Kissinger from several years ago. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, online on cbc.ca/thecurrent, on podcast and on your radio app.

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Little fish, big impact: How the loss of herring hurts more than our oceans

Guest: Boris Worm

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Don't mind the mess.

[Sound of waves hitting boat]

VOICE: My name is Greg Egilsson. I'm a fisherman from the Pictou area and I'm the chairman of the Gulf of Nova Scotia Herring Federation. I'm concerned about their population because it seemed stable for 20 odd years or 25 years and in the last five years, it seems to have gone down horribly.

AMT: That's fisherman Greg Egilsson aboard his boat, the Jenny Ce, in Pictou, Nova Scotia and that decline in herring is not a blip. Three herring fisheries in Atlantic Canada had what's called a sustainability certification suspended this spring. That's a checkmark that tells consumers that the fish they buy is sustainably managed. They had it suspended after auditors found that stocks had declined to the edge of depletion. They're also worried about herring on the west coast. In B.C. some environmental and indigenous groups have called for an end to the harvest of herring eggs or roe, out of fear that the fish population will collapse. For such a small fish the herring is a very big deal. It plays a major role in the ecosystem and Greg Egilsson is so worried about what he's seeing that last fall he took a dramatic step. After 30 years of fishing herring, he sat the season out.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I didn't think we should be fishing anymore. We're torturing the last remaining fish. There used to be schools miles long and now there's rarely schools more than a few hundred yards long. It's shrunken quite a bit and it's alarming. It's discouraging. It's like we're trying to catch the last one. I'd like to know what's going on it, if it's feed or or what it is, I think we've got to give them a break. Hopefully it's not too late.

AMT: Well to find out what is going on and why the decline of this little fish could have big implications, we've reached Boris Worm. He teaches marine conservation biology at Dalhousie University in Halifax. Today he's in Bad Segeberg, Germany. Hello.

BORIS WORM: Hi Anna Maria.

AMT: What do you make of what you're hearing from Greg Eagleson?

BW: Well simply speaking out to share his concerns and I think a lot of people do right now from a scientific side, from an industry side, from a conservation side. I think few people realize that herring by species is the largest fishery we have in Canada 125,000 tons. So other fisheries like lobsters or so or hake come close to 100,000 tons, but not above that. So it's the only one that exceeds that threshold. So it's a big deal. It's a lot of fish we're taking on the ocean and I think particular on the east coast where about 80 percent of our herring comes from the sustainability concerns are just getting more pressing every year and maybe we've breached the thresholds, but we really have to reconsider what we're doing with these fish.

AMT: And he talks about the size of the herring schools diminishing when it one it's healthy. How big is a school of herring?

BW: With new survey techniques, people have documented schools that were the size of Manhattan. So very very large, very impressive, billions of fish and that's the power of these little fish. They're the bread and butter of the marine ecosystem. When they do well, they do really well and everybody else is doing well on them. That includes other fish such as bluefin tuna or sharks or cod or seabirds and marine mammals. I've been out on the Scotian shelf just off Halifax when the herring are running and it's like a zoo out there it's unbelievable. Unlike anything I've seen in our region when the herring are there everything else is there you see fin males there you see sharks you see tons of seabirds seals everybody's feeding on these schools and so are we and I think that's fine. It's just that we have to keep it in balance because they are so critical they are a keystone species in the marine ecosystem.

AMT: You go out and tag sharks sometimes. Was that in the midst of that?

BW: Exactly. That's when that happened and all of a sudden we were above these massive herring schools and you know you see it on the depth sounder and these schools are tends to 100 meters thick and and stretch for a long while. I was out on the West Coast with the First Nation, which call themselves the herring people because the herring is so critical to their survival has been for for centuries and millennia. And we flew in a float plane over Herring spawning aggregations and you see whole bays that are turning milky white from all the spawn in the water. It's really one of the great spectacles of nature and and it's beautiful to see but also you really appreciate just how critical these fish are to to the people living there but also to everything else in the ecosystem you see even wolves kind of crawling into the intertidal and feeding on herring and every other predator that you can think of tries to feed and feast on these eggs and and the fish and it's something we absolutely need to preserve.

AMT: It sounds like we don't appreciate the little herring enough.

BW: I thought that you know I'm in Europe right now. I actually had the herring for lunch here. It's very much appreciated here as a food fish, not so much in mainstream culture in North America. I mean they do eat it. They've eaten it for for millennia, as I said. But our society less so we're using them for bait. We're grinding them up into fish meal. They're considered a low value, high volume fish, meaning we have to fish a lot of it to make it worthwhile and that's part of the problem I think. They're maybe not appreciated enough for what they are and what they can give to us. They're packed with omega fatty acids. They're very very healthy food, but we don't particularly appreciate them as such.

AMT: Just remind us when we talk about a little fish, what's the size of the average herring?

BW: Well it depends on when you fish them. And this is part of the problem. The average size for a given given age has been decreasing precipitously for several decades or also at a given age say when they spawn at around four years of age or so they would be around maybe 15 or 20 centimetres but they used to be larger than that and fatter. So so so their weight has been decreasing which is one of the indicators we have for the clerk declining health of that population along with their lower numbers as the fishermen you interviewed said.

AMT: So the Department of Fisheries and Oceans considers most of the herring stock in Atlantic waters to be in the critical or cautious zone. How depleted is the stock?

BW: That's actually part of the problem. We don't know because we've been changing the methodology to assess and survey them along the way. In the early 2000s acoustic service introduced what we're using as a limit as a reference points of where enough is enough is actually just an average biomass of those years of service. That's fine only that we can really say where that is relative to where Herring was say in the 1960s or 70s. But the recent analysis just out a couple of months ago showed that the decline in herring and their health as a as a stock has been ongoing since the 1960s. So when we started to assess them they were already depleted and we're still at that low state and getting lower as the fisherman was was indicating. So I think we have to take a step back and say Where are we relative to where we need to be in on the West Coast. I. I've seen that those steps have already been taken as an analytical assessment that actually gives you a level of abundance relative to what would be there if there was no fishing at all. But when we don't really know where we are on the scale of depletion we're really managing a little bit in the dark.

AMT: Well I want to talk more about the west coast because there are concerns about the population there and the fishing of the herring eggs or the roe on the west coast. I've got a clip of Judith Sayers. She's the president of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council in British Columbia, representing 14 nations on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Listen to her.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: For all of our communities, herring and herring eggs has been a staple of our diets as long as the mind can remember. My mother used to get very excited every time we got herring eggs in our home every spring and you know she'd cook it no matter what time of the day she got it. People really miss it. I think that's why so many First Nations are fighting against the openings that DFO has made and you know like in the Nuu-chah-nulth, working with DFO, we've been able to get them to close down the fishery last year and this year and we're hoping until 2022. The great hope is that the stocks will come back again the way they used to.

AMT: Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council president Judith Sayers is interested in having commercial fishing off herring of Vancouver island remain closed. What's the situation there?

BW: Well the coast of Vancouver Island is one of five major management districts there and four of those are currently closed. That tells you something about the legacy of past overfishing. One of those five is still open. It's the Strait of Georgia, which is apparently is doing quite well. It's the outlier among the five. And when I was at the Central Coast which is one of the other districts that is currently closed. Actually this year probably due to the closure there were some signs of some recovery in the stock. The good thing about Herring is if you give them half a chance they do bounce back because they are fast growing and relatively fast food producing fish meaning you only have to wait a few years. If you want to conserve them for them to actually come back. In most cases if you do. If you break them beyond the point of no return if you destroy some of the stock components then that may take a lot longer. Like decades or may never occur. So there is a threshold here. And if I felt that on the West Coast some really decisive steps have been taken. And when I was out in how sick territory actually it was very joyful because for the first time in a long time they got their entire quota on herring eggs, which they harvest without harming a single fish. That's the difference there. They're not killing the fish to get at the eggs. They let the fish lay the eggs naturally on substrates that they provide, particularly kelp. They hang in the water column. The traditional way of fishing that doesn't harm the fish, so it's understandable that they were upset at the kill fisheries that were taking the whole fish and taking the eggs out, but then the fish would die and they wouldn't have an opportunity to come back and spawn again.

AMT: Herring have made a surprising comeback in False Creek in downtown Vancouver of all places. Is there promise there?

BW: Oh definitely. As I said there's there's many examples of herring stocks recovering ones that have been protected. I just learned that here in Europe the total allowable catch for herring actually the recommendation for next year to go up not not down because the stock starts to recovery due to cautious management. So I think you know when you do the right thing this is a is it is a good fish to protect because the dividends that that action will pay are typically fairly swift. If you haven't depleted it beyond the critical state that they're in now and that's the real concern for example in the Gulf of St. Lawrence where the stock has been in critical conditions for many years that by further fishing it we're not allowing it to to really build on this resilient that it inherently has. But that may not be realized if we keep beating it down.

AMT: Why has there been a decline in herring populations on both coasts?

BW: Well that's again a loaded question because something that's really on my mind these days increasingly is climate change because we are seeing the state of the Atlantic report just out couple a month ago from DFO, clearly showing that the productivity of the total marine environment on the East Coast is declining give less nutrients less plankton fewer large juicy Sue plankton that are then feeding fish like herring, fewer herring, fewer seabirds in some cases and I think that's what fishermen are seeing and saying. They say you know there's something wrong here there's something changing and I think it is the climate and the effect it has on the whole marine food web. Fortunately there is something we can do about this. I mean we can address climate change in the medium and long run but in the very short term we can harvest and manage these populations more carefully and maybe invest a little bit more into knowing about them and and really pinning down where we are on this sliding scale of depletion and where we should and can recover them too.

AMT: And so what would you like to see happen to help the stocks rebound?

BW: Well first of all I would like to see a conversation in that we're starting here today about these fish in Atlantic Canada and the West Coast. That conversation is very much ongoing. I saw it when I was there this spring. A lot of voices a lot of concern a lot of conservation action being taken. I would like to see a lot more effort invested into assessing and conserving these these populations and having a solid recovery strategy to some point where they're less vulnerable to depletion and also to the effects of climate change.

AMT: So I go back to the first fishermen we heard who's decided to just you know step away. Does something need to be more formalized? Do the quotas need to be scaled back?

BW: Well the quota has been fairly constant over the last number of years and we have these concerns that the stock is not withstanding even that amount of fishing. Clearly something has to change at a larger scale and can be left to individual fishermen to do the right thing. We all need to collectively decide to give those fish a break and and bring them back. And it's not just herring, it's also mackerel, which is in critical state in several regions, it's capelin, which is of huge concern in Newfoundland because capelin is feeding cod and if capelin is not doing well cod is not recovering and it's all of these forage fishes. These tiny you know unseemly fish that we don't see on our dinner plates very often and that are still so important in the ecosystem. So I believe we need to take steps urgent and decisive steps into that direction.

AMT: Scale it back by how much maybe?

BW: An analysis a few years old showed that if you want believe enough of these valuable fish for whales and for seabirds and for cod and tuna and all the other species to feed on, we have to scale back by about half. You have to reduce the exploitation rate about half below where you think it can be just based on our own needs, but if we consider the rest of the ecosystem, it's about half.

AMT: Boris Worm, thanks for your time today. Thanks for taking us through this issue.

BW: Always a pleasure to talk with you, Anna Maria.

AMT: Boris Worm, marine ecologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax. We reached him in Bad Segeberg, Germany. We did ask the Department of Fisheries and Oceans about the idea of reducing the fishing quotas for herring and in a statement the department says its decisions are based on the best available science, extensive discussions among various stakeholders and impacts on coastal communities. Let us know what you think. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent.

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Anna Maria Tremonti's most memorable interviews: When Henry Kissinger walked out

Guest: Henry Kissinger

AMT: You are listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Several years ago I had the opportunity to interview Henry Kissinger. It ended up being a little shorter of a conversation that I thought. As we revisit some of my most memorable interviews on The Current, we thought this conversation would be worth another listen. We've edited it. There's just part of it now. Henry Kissinger of course was Secretary of State under the U.S. Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He won the Nobel Peace prize for ending the Vietnam War. He engineered the American rapprochement with China. In his later years however, his critics mounted a campaign calling for him to be charged with war crimes for his role in the secret bombing of Cambodia by the U.S. and the coup that led to the ouster of the Chilean president Salvador Allende. I spoke with Henry Kissinger in 2003 in the lead up to the U.S. led Iraq war at a time when NATO allies were openly questioning the legitimacy of the U.S. invasion and others were musing about how U.S. soldiers might be put in positions that could leave them legally vulnerable for the actions that they would take in Iraq. If you have not heard this interview, have a listen. You'll hear why it remains memorable.

SOUNDCLIP

AMT: Dr. Kissinger, thank you for joining us today.

HENRY KISSINGER: Pleasure to be on.

AMT: Why are you concerned about losing some of America's former allies?

HENRY KISSINGER: Well I think that the diplomacy preceding the Iraq war was one of unprecedented discord within the alliance and some of it was really incompatible with the nature of the alliance. It's one thing to vote against the United States, but that in itself is unprecedented in the Security Council, but to agitate around the world against the United States, as some of our allies did, especially France and Germany and then finally to make it public come in front with Russia six months after NATO expansion, which was sort of a kick in the teeth for the Europeans, in addition to us, that went in my view too far.

AMT: Well let's just follow the scenarios that you have written about. What would happen if some of America's former allies decided to form any kind of a counterweight with other countries opposed to the U.S. and its foreign policies?

HENRY KISSINGER: That could set if by definition the end of the Atlantic alliance. You cannot have an alliance that is a la carte, where you have an alliance with the United States on the one hand and then an alliance against the United States on the other. I think the Atlantic alliance, the nations of the North Atlantic have to decide whether the fact that they have a parallel history, that they have comparable values, comparable institutions and a linked economy whether this creates the basis for common political action and then they have to answer the question of what the purpose of the common effort is and what special obligations in alliance places on the various members. And I would apply that to the United States as well as to America's allies. That is the fundamental decision that has to be made. If it isn't made the alliance will erode and become a vestige.

AMT: And what will take its place? What will fill that vacuum?

HENRY KISSINGER: Well what will probably then happen is a coalition, what's called a coalition of the willing prior to the Iraq war in which the United States organized those nations that support us on long or short term issues, but in which the special obligations of the Atlantic alliance would gradually disappear.

AMT: And what's the danger in the U.S. having to create a new coalition and organize one?

HENRY KISSINGER: The danger is that the Western world which has made great contributions to civilization has also had one fatal flaw. It has torn itself apart for centuries and has expanded its treasure and its blood in internal manoeuvring. If you look at the two world wars, especially World War One and a whole series of wars in which Europe and the Western civilization has specialized and I would hate to see that the national rivalries again reach a momentum that would never go to war, but still in which the competition between countries of such comparable institutions and values tears apart the international system.

AMT: Well if there could be a group of countries that would unite separately then, what would they coalesce around?

HENRY KISSINGER: Well what the French and to a lesser extent the Germans are thinking is that they can coalesce around the proposition that the United States is a hyper power as they call it in the French intellectual circles and that they want to create an equilibrium against the United States, but I don't think that anti-Americanism is enough to organize an international system. These Europeans will never go along with it and if you actually add up the countries that would join this on anything except individual issues, they would not be very. But on any one issue, it can be organized.

AMT: What you seem to be saying is that that there are countries who because of what's happened with it with a lead up to the war in Iraq and the divisions that that created in these institutions, that might want to it for lack of a better word, clump together on certain issues.

HENRY KISSINGER: No I'm not saying it. You're saying it.

AMT: Well isn't that, isn't that your concern? Isn't that why you're saying there needs to be repair work done?

HENRY KISSINGER: No I'm saying that the Atlantic alliance as of this moment is severely divided and that we had countries that were conducting a policy aimed at what had been until then the leading country of the Atlantic alliance, not just by voting against it on one issue, but by agitating against it around the world on philosophical grounds. So this is what created the problem but the problem it was a symptom of a deeper issue, namely it's a basis for a multilateral politics and that is a question that both sides of the Atlantic ought to address.

AMT: You know there's an international criminal court that's just getting its start. What if the countries that have expressed their displeasure at this war and want to curb so-called U.S. aggression try to actually try the current Bush administration for war crimes?

HENRY KISSINGER: Well of course I think the International Criminal Court as it is constituted is not a good idea and I think to try to turn political problems into legal problems is a disaster and will undermine the very concept of justice in the world. It is one thing to have international jurisdiction as say in the Yugoslav case against matters that can be clearly defined as historical war crimes, it's another to take political decisions and attempt to criminalize them. And I can think of nothing that would tear apart the possibility of having international justice more than such an attempt.

AMT: Couldn't you also be vulnerable to those kinds of charges?

HENRY KISSINGER: Who?

AMT: You.

HENRY KISSINGER: I personally?

AMT: Mmhmm.

HENRY KISSINGER: You know that's one of those questions on which one ends the interview, but just for your information, if you read the provisions of the International Criminal Court, it does not have retrospective jurisdiction and on this, will end the interview.

AMT: Well can I talk to you sir. Hello.

AMT: Henry Kissinger walked away from the microphone at that point. Henry Kissinger was secretary of state under U.S. Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. I spoke to him in 2003. That is our program for today. Stay with Radio One for Q. Elizabeth Gilbert celebrated for Eat, Pray, Love joins Tom to talk about her new novel, City of Girls. Now after listening back to that interview with Henry Kissinger, we're going to leave you with a little music about the man courtesy of Monty Python. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

["Henry Kissinger" by Monty Python]

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June 10, 2019 episode transcript

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