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The AIH Transcript for September 10, 2019

Hosts: Carol Off and Ali Hassan

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello I'm Carol Off.

ALI HASSAN: Good evening. I'm Ali Hassan. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

AH: Tonight...

CO: The public unraveling of private talks. U.S. President Donald Trump surprises everyone by announcing that a landmark deal with the Taliban to end the war in Afghanistan is dead before anyone knew it even existed in the first place.

AH: Clearing the air. New data suggests BCs greenhouse gas emissions didn't dip much during the first decade of its carbon tax but the province's Environment Minister suggests things would be worse without that tax.

CO: Moment after moment of truth. The late photographer Robert Frank didn't use his camera to show us a fantasy version of the world, he used it to show us the world he saw.

AH: A meaninglessness to an end. In his book reporting from the frontlines of "the war on truth" Peter Pomerantsev says reality itself has become a slippery concept and some slippery customers are responsible.

CO: That's fighting talk. A new project by the BBC shows how the public broadcaster actively work to spread good cheer and propaganda during the Second World War.

AH: And do you know how hard it is to find a decent hairdresser? Of course you do. But do you know how hard it is to find one who also turns out to be -- to your mutual shock -- your half-brother. You don't. But our guest does. As It Happens. The Tuesday Edition. Radio that knows she thought the guy doing her hair was just a good stylist and a friend, but she had another thing combing.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: Trump cancels peace talks with Taliban, but Afghan analyst says deal is 'not dead'

Taliban talks dead

Guest: Intizar Khadim

AH: Donald Trump's peace plan for Afghanistan is dead on arrival -- before arrival, actually. After months of negotiation with the Taliban, the U.S. president was deep in last minute preparations for a triumphant meeting at Camp David to announce the end of the war in Afghanistan. The centerpiece was the withdrawal of 14,000 American troops and assurances from the Taliban. But weariness from the Taliban about the Camp David meeting and a suicide attack, that killed an American soldier and 11 others, dismantled that deal before it could be made. Intizar Khadim is an analyst and former chief of staff of Afghanistan's local governance directorate. We reached him in Kabul.

CO: Intizar how are people in Kabul reacting to the news that this secret peace deal was going on and now it's dead?

INTIZAR KHADIM: Well it's not dead. People in Kabul are having mixed feeling about the current status of peace dialogue between the United State and Taliban leadership. So the nine months communication between Taliban leadership and the American leadership has been a sign of optimism for the Afghan people.

CO: But the thing is that the deal was leading to this summit or meeting in Camp David in the United States. This was going on unbeknownst to many people until Mr. Trump began to tweet about it. And this was going to be the final moment in signing this deal or maybe they would come with the deal. Does it surprise you that Mr. Trump is saying that it is now dead -- that's gone?

IK: No -- I was not taken aback by the cancellation of the deal by the Donald Trump tweet. But when Donald Trump called it a dead-end program -- still I don't call it. I say it is suspended and it will resume again -- a little bit of a cost that we have to pay -- all the sides pay.

CO: So you think this is a hiccup -- this is just something temporarily because of events that came to pass, one of them being this suicide bomb that killed an American serviceman and Mr. Trump felt he couldn't proceed given that news. You think this is just a brief interruption in something that's going to continue between Taliban and the United States?

IK: In negotiations sometime on side of the negotiation are trying an unprecedented trick. Some analysts in Afghanistan are thinking that Donald Trump is just trying to squeeze Taliban leadership to give incentive to the American side. And I think it's only a diplomatic interposition trick. And I think it will not be a very big site toward the peace deal.

CO: But it's a reminder to many parties -- all parties involved -- that the Taliban is volatile, it's violent, it's not entirely controlled by the Taliban negotiators in Dohan and that they have no interest in having any kind of agreement with the government that already exists in Afghanistan.

IK: Well who deny that Taliban has not been violent and Taliban leadership is calling them volatile as well and they're trying that they would just give a listen to the Americans and all the international forces fighting in Afghanistan. But let me remind you also Donald Trump some weeks ago called Taliban leadership people who can be reconciled. Let me remind you the former senator from California Jackie Speier who said the Taliban should be giving a bigger power clout because they were leading Afghanistan from 1990s and 2001. And I still remember the White House spokesperson who were calling that the Taliban have been reconcilable -- and al-Qaida and ISIS are not. So these are the mixed messages still we see. We have heard from the American side as well. So if they are volatile -- yes they are volatile. But we have to sit with them. There's two recipe right now on table: either you have to mop up the Taliban from the face of Earth as Donald Trump just mentioned days ago that he doesn't want to kill 10 million people in Afghanistan -- or either you have to sit on table use logic and make a political settlement which is a desirable outcome for all sides. So now choose among two: either you fight for another five years or either you reconcile and sit and use logic to end the conflict in Afghanistan.

CO: How can they negotiate this in good faith and exclude President Ghani and the Afghan administration that said that the Taliban says they will never talk to them? They say it is a stooge government that has no legitimacy. So how can you actually -- when you talk about this reconciliation and all this potential -- how can that happen if you're not going to include the government of Afghanistan?

IK: In a war situation you cannot call your enemy a sweetheart or other kind of words. But you can call them enemy. You can call them stooge. You can call them puppets. That's likely when President Ghani went to the United Nations General Assembly and he was just giving a speech he called Taliban that they are just a soldier -- paid soldier of Pakistan. So it's a type of war of words going on between two sides. So we should not be taking that so seriously. But we have to come to the mechanism, sit actually on table, shared logics, and finally come with the desirable outcome. I mean it's hard but it's possible. And we cannot call it insurmountable. It's challenging.

CO: You know far more than I do what it's been like for people in Afghanistan over these decades of war how much they've suffered from that. At the same time there are a lot of people in Afghanistan remember what it was like to have a Taliban government and surely there are many who do not want to see a return to having Taliban in power. Is that not the case?

IK: At the daily bases all the Afghans including me are just suffering huge. We're paying a big price. It is just like an apocalypse. So this is how we suffer based on the continuation of war. Bringing them back to 1990s and imposing draconians on them -- I think that would be an illogical move. Taliban leadership are exposed to the world. They understand that if they would like to engage with countries in the region and in the world they have to share all these managerial challenges with new generation which is who we are. Some people from Taliban and some people from new generation who will be sharing -- shouldering this big burden and will be carrying Afghanistan forward to ensure Afghanistan is safe, stable, and developed.

CO: Intizar we'll leave it there. Thank you for catching us up on what's going on and have a good evening.

IK: Thank you very much.

AH: Intizar Khadim is an analyst and former chief of staff of Afghanistan's local governance directorate. We reached him in Kabul. There's more on that story on the As It Happens website: cbc.ca/aih. And tonight there was a stark signal that peace is likely a long way off for the country. Just a few minutes after midnight Afghanistan time, a large blast rocked Kabul reportedly close to the U.S. embassy. As of air time there were no reports on the number of casualties.

[Music]

Robert Frank obit

Guest: Jimmy Rankin

AH: "With that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand, he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film." That's how Jack Kerouac described the work of Robert Frank. Mr. Frank was born in Switzerland but he became a pioneer of street photography in the United States through his gritty black-and-white stills -- capturing a darker and often ignored side of America. Robert Frank one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century died yesterday. He was 94. In his final years he split his time between New York City and Canada's east coast in Inverness, Nova Scotia. In this 1977 interview with the CBC he explains how moving to Mabou Coal Mines changed him.

SOUNDCLIP

ROBERT FRANK: Well I came here not so much to change my professional -- to change my personal life, to get another outlook. So I have to turn around another corner and see something else in your head which doesn't mean what you see through the lens. You know? I mean the attempt to change professionally I made in New York before I came here which was the step from photography to filmmaking. But here I expected and I think it worked in some way a change in my head inside. You become calmer. I think you become a better person staying away from a big city like New York for a while.

AH: That's the late Robert Frank talking with Linden MacIntyre in 1977. For decades Mr. Frank and his wife the artist June Leaf spent their summers in Mabou, Nova Scotia. It's where he met musician Jimmy Rankin and where they became friends. We reached Mr. Rankin today in Halifax.

CO: Jimmy what is it like to hear Robert Frank talk about why he moved to Mabou Coal Mines back in the 1970s?

JIMMY RANKIN: It's interesting listening to that clip because I went to visit him in the hospital the other day -- it was last week -- I was talking to June and we went back to her place in Mabou and she started talking about why they moved to Nova Scotia and she said that they were living in New York -- according to her, out of the blue he just said I want you to go to Nova Scotia and find us a place. And she was like what? [Laughs] Where is Nova Scotia? And they eventually landed in Mabou Coal Mines. And according to her she didn't know why he chose Nova Scotia. I'm grateful that they did. I've known them for a long long time.

CO: Well he was always looking for the authentic, wasn't he? And couldn't think of a place more authentic and perhaps further away from the gritty streets of New York -- and the poets he was hanging around with. How did you become his friend?

JR: My first encounter with Robert was sometimes we would walk to school it was maybe a mile or so and I just remember walking to school on a cold miserable winter day or morning and this Landrover pulled up on the way to pass the church in Mabou where we would walk past to go to school and the door blew open and it was Robert and he said hop in and didn't say much. We were just these giggling young kids with this unique looking person giving us a ride to school so that was my first encounter. And then over the years in my early teens there were a few of us interested in art in the school and of course in the 70s all of those programs like art and music -- the things that I was mostly interested in -- they had discontinued them in the school so there are a lot of resident artists there so we would search out these people and go and visit them and just hang out with them. And that was our form of education. And Robert and his wife June were two of the people that we would go and see and I remember the first time going to see Robert, I don't think I'd ever really talked to him before maybe I did before that but going there and hanging out with June and Robert in their little loft upstairs and him taking out the book "The Americans" and I think it was his introduction to us to tell us you know what he had done and then leafing through "The Americans" with him and asking him questions about photographs and him answering them very candidly. Eventually I got a house it just so happens in that part of the world just basically across -- from them. And I would go over and visit them whenever I could and I would bring them Chanterelle mushrooms because he loved Chanterelle mushrooms.

CO: You mentioned "The Americans" which of course is this book of photography that was put together in the 1950s. He traveled 10000 miles all over the United States taking photographs of just the most honest and sometimes painful and shocking and exquisite images of America and sort of the dark side of the American dream and established him as New York Times said today, perhaps the most influential American photographer of the 20th century. Were you aware of how important he was when you were hanging out with him?

JR: I didn't really know about that book "The Americans" until he brought it out and we opened it up and leafing through it and then of course after that you know you realize his significance. I knew that he was a very successful artists and a famous artist. But I didn't know exactly for what. And then of course The Rolling Stones documentary and that whole thing that went down with that.

CO: We should remind people what happened was that he was commissioned by The Rolling Stones to do a documentary film about their concert tour. And he did. But wasn't the quite the film they wanted. Robert Frank is true to his name being frank. He got very very honest images of the crowds, the drug use, the naked groupies, and the Stones freaked out when they saw it, right? [Laughter]

JR: True to him you know he did a documentary and he showed them for what they actually were or what they were actually doing. It was very truthful and very honest. And I don't think it was glamorous. It was just very gritty and honest. You know it was rock and roll at its peak.

CO: And Keith Richards lawyers came after him because he wouldn't give up the film.

JR: 1988 I graduated from art school and I was at the Credit Union in Mabou one day and my girlfriend at the time -- who is now my wife -- was living in New York and working there. And I had planned to go down to New York in a few days and I had a plane ticket. And it was the summertime. And I happen to be at the Credit Union in Mabou and in walks Robert and we started chitchatting about just small talk. And he just said out of the blue in that thick kind of Swiss accent he had, you want to go to New York? And I said yeah sure. And just like that. I said when are you going? He said today. So I went home and packed a small bag and he picked me up a few hours later and we drove to New York through the night.

CO: You got pretty close to him. He died at 94. I know that some Robert Frank photos are on one of your albums on the front and back. So did he influence the way you worked as an artist?

JR: It was like an education that you -- it is through osmosis where you're just talking to people. And you know the fact that he was being -- he was so authentic and always looking for the truth and trying to capture something that was not the normal you know.

CO: And he had a great sense of humor people who got to know him. And there weren't many people he let into his life. When you're thinking about Robert Frank today -- any story that comes to mind?

JR: I did go see him shortly before he had his heart attack and he was getting kind of forgetful you know at the end of it but still very brilliant. You can tell there was a lot still going on behind his eyes. It's amazing. And so he was sitting on his porch. I just got out of the truck -- right at the doorstep. And I had a pair of flip flops on and he was sitting there and he said, Hey! And he was looking at my feet. And he said you have great toes! [Laughter] I just thought that was so funny. So it's probably the last thing he said to me.

CO: Always an eye for the details.

JR: No kidding. Yeah.

CO: Jimmy I'm sorry for your loss and what a great friendship you had with him you're very fortunate. Thank you for speaking with us.

JR: Yeah I am very fortunate. We're going to miss him. He is going to be greatly missed. Sincere condolences to June.

CO: Thank you so much.

JR: Thank you.

AH: We reached Jimmy Rankin in Halifax. His friend, the legendary photographer Robert Frank, died yesterday. He was 94 years old.

[Music]

Eugene Tippett

AH: When Eugene Tippett was 15-years-old he was arrested and charged with theft. Instead of going to jail he was sent to the developing adolescent strengthening habits program or DASH. An initiative run by the B.C. Government and the Canadian Armed Forces. There Mr. Tippett says he endured months of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse at the hands of one of the officers who supervised the program. Eventually he ran away. But he says his abuser caught up with him while he was living on the streets and the abuse resumed. It's a horrifying story that Eugene Tippett says he told the RCMP back in 2015. But he says no charges were laid in the subsequent military investigation. Now nearly 40 years after the alleged abuse a federal court has authorized a class action lawsuit against the federal government. Eugene Tippett spoke with the CBC's Kathleen Harris about what made that lawsuit necessary and the stories that inspired him to come forward to the RCMP in the first place.

SOUNDCLIP

EUGENE TIPPETT: Well I read it so many cases over the years on the news and the Internet about like Sheldon Kennedy and other military base cases. And I just kept reading all these files and I just one day decided that I'd had enough. It was time to talk. So I just decided to go to the police and file charges and the prosecutors -- came back with a decision that too many people have died and too many files have been lost. And I don't understand that at all. It just doesn't make sense. I'm the one filing the charges. So I felt that they should have went forward but they never so.

KATHLEEN HARRIS: How has this affected your life?

EUGENE TIPPETT: I don't trust anyone. I have no friends. It affects me badly. I have anger issues. Amazing what they put you through like they made me write -- the military's investigative service made me write down all the -- anything I remember because they said you will remember the past that you forgot. It made me go back over everything that I basically didn't want to remember all my life and then they brought it all up again. And then to give me the decision that they weren't going to prosecute I still don't understand to this day.

AH: Eugene Tippett says he was sexually, physically, and emotionally abused by one of the officers running a program for so-called juvenile delinquents in the 1980s. Nearly 40 years later a federal court has certified a class action lawsuit against the federal government with Mr. Tippett as the lead plaintiff.

[Music]

Calgary half-siblings

Guest: Andrea Quint Fleck

AH: We all know how hard it is to find a hairdresser that you like. Not someone who seems to be listening when you say you only want a wee trim...and then takes six inches off. So when Andrea Quint Fleck moved to Calgary seven years ago she was lucky to find Troy Winget. Not only was he a good hairstylist -- the two connected and they became friends. And recently they learned they have even more in common than they imagined after they both use genealogy websites to track their family roots. We reached Andrea Quint Fleck in Calgary.

CO: Andrea what kind of relationship did you have with your hairdresser before you found out the true nature of your relationship?

ANDREA QUINT FLECK: Our relationship started out like most hairdresser-client relationships do. At first it's all about the hair. But as the relationship progressed and I saw Troy every six weeks we soon became easy friends. We got talking with anything and everything.

CO: You started talking about wanting to know more about your background and did you talk about your plan -- your interest -- in going on a genealogy site to find out more about your past?

ANDREA QUINT FLECK: Yes. We had a conversation about that in October when I was there to get my hair done. I had mentioned to Troy that my dad was adopted and I had some questions about my ethnic background and Troy said to me well it's quite a coincidence because he also had some questions about who he is and where he came from. At a young age he heard some things in his family that made him question whether or not the person he thought was his father was actually his father. So he was also thinking about submitting a DNA test.

CO: Okay you got some results back and what did you learn?

ANDREA QUINT FLECK: Initially what I learned -- what surprised me and what I thought would be the most amazing part of the story was that I was Asian. I wasn't expecting to be a quarter Chinese. And so that meant that my dad was half Chinese and that was a pretty big surprise. But ultimately the big surprise came a couple of months later when I was connected with a half uncle through our ancestry DNA or my ancestry DNA test. This half uncle was also in a different DNA database and he had been in contact with somebody in that database that was as related to him as I am. So this half uncle messaged me and told me that he had been talking to this man from Calgary that he was related to and he said I've got a picture of him and I'd love to send you the picture just -- you know he said it's okay just to see what you think. And he didn't at this point tell me the man's name or anything like that. He just told me he's a hairdresser from Calgary. And so of course I didn't think anything of it -- that someone has to draw a connection like that. But I got the text and with the photo and I almost dropped the phone because here on my screen was my hairstylist and friend Troy. And I just remember that moment like my blood draining from my face and I was actually at church when I received the text messages and having to get up and like leave the room and go to the car and get on a phone call with my half uncle right now and I said to him I know that man! I know him well! That's Troy! And he's like Oh my God! [Laughs] And the freaking out just kind of started from there. And we got in a three-way call. And Troy and I just had this moment of shock and awe as we listened to each other through this call and our half uncle was just ecstatic to watch it all play out but it was very very emotional -- very emotional.

CO: The half uncle was in California and he was talking to the two of you as you learn that you were brother and sister -- half brother and sister.

ANDREA QUINT FLECK: Well at that point we didn't even know we were half brother and sister but we knew that we would be closely related. Then it came time for us to confirm the nature of our relationships. Troy had also submitted his DNA to ancestry and a couple weeks after this other test results came in -- his ancestry results came in. And then that linked Troy and I genetically through ancestry's database and we were able to see that we were close relatives and through looking at time DNA charts we were able to determine that the amount of DNA we shared meant that we would likely be either first cousins -- if my dad had an identical twin which we weren't sure of because he was adopted -- or the other option would be for Troy to be my half sibling and be my dad's son as well. So we had to get looking into that. I called my dad and asked him you know did you have a twin and he didn't know for sure because he was adopted and I asked him if he knew Troy's mother or remembered her. And he said unfortunately you know he didn't know her or couldn't remember her. He said I just don't know -- it is so long ago. So we had my dad contact post-adoptions in Alberta and they were able to confirm that he did not have an identical twin or any twin when he was born -- that he was a single birth. And then that could only mean one thing that me and Troy were related. So my dad submitted an ancestry DNA test and then that further confirmed things because when those results came back it connected him and Troy as a parent-child relationship and it connected me and my dad as [laughs] me and our dad as a parent-child relationship as well.

CO: This is a crazy story. So this man Troy -- this was his dad. This is the dad he didn't know and it was your dad.

ANDREA QUINT FLECK: Yes. Yes. It is just insane because I mean what are the chances? I think about you know there being over a million people in Calgary but really it's so much bigger than that -- like is it a 1 in 30 million story or 1 in 35 million? I have no idea. But the odds are not in your favor for something like this to happen to you that's for sure. We never expected it. Never.

CO: Well people would say there's more destiny than chance perhaps in this.

ANDREA QUINT FLECK: I would agree. I would agree.

CO: What was it like when it was finally confirmed that well this was your brother -- when you first saw each other in person.

ANDREA QUINT FLECK: A lot of laughter for sure. A lot of tears just because you know when you've been searching for something especially I think about Troy like not knowing who his dad is and having that question with him since he was a young boy -- that's a big question and a big burden to carry. So it was extremely extremely emotional. And I didn't know I was even missing anything so I discovered someone that I didn't even know that I was missing. And so for me it was incredibly emotional but it was overall the overarching theme to what we felt was just pure joy because not only are we related but we had this great relationship to start out with. And so it was like Troy became the big brother that I never had. But if I could have picked a big brother it would've been Troy.

CO: I mean this is such a good story and I'm so happy for you and for Troy. Take care.

ANDREA QUINT FLECK: You as well. It was great talking to you.

CO: You too.

AH: That was Andrea Quint Fleck in Calgary who learned her hairstylist is her half sibling.

[Music]

Part 2: 'High-stakes stuff': How the BBC aided the resistance during WW II using music

B.C. carbon tax

Guest: George Heyman

AH: British Columbia has had a carbon tax since 2008. But a decade later the province's annual greenhouse gas emissions aren't much smaller than they were back then. The provincial government released its latest numbers yesterday and they show the total in 2017 was just 1 percent less than it was in 2007. But George Heyman says those top line numbers failed to tell the true story. Mr. Heyman is British Columbia's NDP Environment Minister. We reached him in Victoria.

CO: Minister Heyman according to the numbers it seems your province's greenhouse gas emissions were almost the same in 2017 as they were before the carbon tax was brought in 10 years earlier. So what are we to make of that?

GEORGE HEYMAN: It's not surprising to me that that's the result. The carbon tax had a very significant impact between 2008 -- when it was introduced in 2012 we saw significant reductions in British Columbia as well as a growing economy. But when Premier Campbell was replaced by Premier Clark the carbon tax increases stopped. There was a de-emphasis on climate action or any programs to reduce emissions and this is the result. That's precisely why when we took office, a year after taking office we introduced a comprehensive plan called Clean B.C. to reduce emissions throughout all sectors of British Columbia whether it's transportation, whether it's housing, and whether it's industry. And we're working hard to implement that plan. But it's only a year old -- it's going to take a little bit of time to see some results and start to meet our legislated emission reduction targets.

CO: Okay so you're saying that it doesn't reflect the policies like Clean B.C. in these numbers. But it still looks as though -- in these numbers -- that the policy hasn't really worked.

GH: Well these numbers reflect 2017 which is a year in which we were only in office for five months and it's a full 12 months -- the end of 2017 -- before we actually developed and presented the Clean B.C. plan. So these numbers pre-date the Clean B.C. plan. They mostly pre-date our government. What they do reflect is what happens when governments don't take greenhouse gas emissions seriously or work with industry and the public to reduce those.

CO: But where has it worked? Where have you seen any change in consumer habits?

GH: Well we are seeing a tremendous uptake of electric vehicles in B.C. We had targets for this year that we exceeded very early. We have ambitious targets to have all new car and light duty vehicle sales by [inaudible] be zero emission vehicles and I think we will probably exceed that. We're seeing in B.C. a very environmentally conscious jurisdiction excitement about our plan. We're seeing uptake on our programs to help people have more energy efficient homes. And we are seeing generally when the carbon tax was rising between 08 and 2012 a reduction in emissions and we've been raising the carbon tax each of the last two years and five dollar increments. And I think when we get the figures for the years there's always a two year lag we will see results as we have seen in other jurisdictions and as we saw in B.C. from 2008 to 2012.

CO: Do you have any way of showing that had you not had a carbon tax that anything would have been different?

GH: Well I think I am not an economic modeller but what I rely on are the economic modellers who say that one of the important tools for reducing emissions is putting a price on carbon.

CO: If you know -- have you been able to measure? Can you actually show that without the carbon tax it would have been significantly different? Do you have any modelling -- anything you can point to show that that has actually had that effect?

GH: Well we have the experience in B.C. between 2008 and 2012 that emissions overall fell while the economy continued to grow. And in 2012 when the carbon tax increases leveled off so did the reduction in emissions. You know I hesitate to call that scientific but that's the evidence we have.

CO: You probably know that we're headed within probably within hours or a day into a federal election. A big factor is going to be climate policy and the carbon tax is going to play a large part in the campaign especially for the conservatives who are saying that it's a bad idea. Do you think that these numbers --a headline saying B.C. greenhouse gas emissions still near 2007 levels -- how do you think this is going to play in the federal election in these coming weeks?

GH: Well how it plays depends on how people play it. If people don't make the distinction that these numbers are from a period of time when the carbon tax had been flat and stagnant for several years, people may draw incorrect conclusions. But I think if people focus on not just the modest increases to the carbon tax but the fact that B.C. has one of the healthiest economies -- if not the healthiest economy -- in Canada that when we were raising our carbon tax steadily between 08 and 2012 we had a healthy economy and saw significant emission reductions. When people look at how we're working with industry to brand B.C.'s commodity export as low carbon much in demand around the world. When we look at investments and rebates and making life more affordable and more comfortable for people through energy efficiency in their homes and electric vehicles and accessible public transit, people can start to look at that as well as look at the costs of doing nothing.

CO: You're a politician how likely is it that the discussion about the carbon tax in British Columbia will be a nuanced one?

GH: Well I think British Columbians accept the carbon tax by and large because we've lived with it for 11 years now and we have a healthy economy, we have a very low unemployment rate, and people actually take climate change seriously. People want governments to responsibly take action. That's what we're trying to do at the same time as we're maintaining and building a healthy diversified economy. That's what British Columbians tell us they want. They want affordability. They want action to protect the environment. They want a healthy economy and we're trying to deliver on all those fronts. I think people are willing to listen to that kind of thoughtful story and that's how we're engaging them.

CO: All right we'll be watching in this election. Minister Heyman I appreciate speaking with you thank you.

GH: Thank you Carol.

AH: George Heyman is British Columbia's Environment Minister. We reached him in Victoria.

[Music]

BBC WWII resistance

Guest: David Hendy

SOUNDCLIP

[Music: Calling All Workers]

AH: If you were listening to the BBC in 1941, tunes like that one would have been familiar. It was from a radio program called "Calling All Workers" and it was used during the Second World War to lift the morale of factory workers. The British public broadcaster was a huge part of the war effort and now a new archive project has revealed how the BBC was actively aiding the resistance partly by sending coded messages in music. It is part of the 100 Voices project -- a collection of interviews the BBC did with staff during important periods in its nearly 100 year history. David Hendy is leading the project. He's a professor of media and cultural history at University of Sussex. We reached him in Lewes, Sussex.

CO: Professor Hendy as a historian what's it like to hear these stories of BBC journalists and other workers talking about experiences they had during the war?

DAVID HENDY: I mean it's extraordinary to hear them talking about these events so many years ago. I mean as a historian of the BBC I'm used to seeing the programme archive. I'm used to looking at the written documents. And the BBC is an extraordinary institution really. I mean it's this great creative institution but it's also a bit like the civil service it kind of stores everything in minutes everything. So we know a lot about its history but what these oral history interviews give us really is the human dimension.

CO: And this is the extraordinary role and the controversial one I suppose to some extent that BBC played -- world services played during the Second world War in the 1940s. And just some of the work that they were doing. I just want to play a clip recorded actually in the 1970s -- this is Alex Sutherland talking about his job during the war and it gives us an idea of what the BBC was up to. Here's Alex Sutherland.

SOUNDCLIP

ALEX SUTHERLAND: The news in Polish would under run 45 seconds and then I would start that and say if --the news in Polish under runs by more than 30 seconds play band seven on disc SB 678. What was happening apparently was that the recorded programmes assistants would look at these discs and being purists in their own sense would hold it up to the light, look and scratch it. And they would see a band of equivalent width that they thought would make a better broadcast and so they would play the other band and the wrong bridge would get blown up in Poland.

CO: This is extraordinary what he's describing there. Now what was these pieces of music. How were they given to the newscasters in order to actually send messages?

DH: Well I mean it was kind of quite a bizarre arrangement. So the BBC was broadcasting in lots of languages to various parts of occupied Europe. One of them was the Polish language service and they would broadcast the news in Polish but of course a lot of these -- there were lots of exiled governments based in London now while their countries were occupied. And so what the BBC had was that every day someone from the exiled Polish government would turn up at the BBC, they'd use a code name "Peter Kin" and they would handover a recording -- a piece of music -- and the understanding the arrangement was the news bulletin would run short and a piece of music would be played. This piece of music. Now this was a system that could go horribly wrong and that's one of the things that Alex Sutherland has kind of revealed to us in this oral history interview which is that well good old broadcasting professionalism kicks in, the studio engineers look at this record and they see a scratch or they don't like it or they think it's not the appropriate mood for the occasion. And they play a different recording. And so if the wrong piece of music gets played, quite possibly the wrong bridge gets blown up. So this is kind of high stakes stuff. And of course the poor old studio engineers had no idea because of course they weren't privy to this information and you know Alex Sutherland's job was therefore to sit in the studio and to shout at them and say I don't care if you think there's a scratch on it or it's not very good -- that is the track that has to be played.

CO: Did they not know what was going on because some of the messages being sent out were worth less covert it weren't they? I mean sending out the message on the eve of D-Day and sending out various messages with music and using Beethoven's Fifth -- things like that. These were a bit more obvious. Did people know that?

DH: Yeah I mean some of them were more obvious. The Beethoven -- I mean that part of the V for Victory Campaign which was really kind of you know very open. There were other messages that it's not at all clear what they were. It was obvious to anyone eavesdropping that they were sort of coded messages because the phrases would be a bit bizarre and they'd be dropped into programs. But it was really important of course that no one really knew exactly what those messages were except for those for whom they were intended. And a lot of these messages were literally just given to the BBC by government departments and the security services. And only a very very small number of people in the BBC would have any idea what they related to.

CO: At the same time though the BBC journalists pride themselves on being impartial. So how did people feel about being part of the war propaganda?

DH: Well it's not a straightforward kind of relationship. I mean technically -- officially -- the government has sort of taken over the BBC, departments like the Ministry of Information and the Foreign Office are entitled to and do try to direct overall propaganda policy because they want propaganda to be coordinated. Now the BBC -- there is an acceptance of this in principle partly because the BBC in one sense is not neutral. It knows which side it's fighting on here. It's in the fight against fascism. And so it shares that mission with the government. On the other hand it really knows that its independence -- its reputation for independence is really vital even if it's about propaganda. Why would hundreds of thousands of people in occupied Europe listen to the BBC, risk their lives to listen to the BBC? They'd only do that if it was reliable. If it was truthful. So it was really important even in propaganda terms that the BBC could build up a sense of trust. So there was a kind of constant negotiation really and constant kind of arguments and irritation with the BBC pushing hard to be able to kind of release as much news as possible. It was really important that it reported that the military defeats not just the military victories for instance. So there was a kind of niggling friction that was ongoing.

CO: Very interesting. Professor Hendy thank you.

DH: Thank you.

AH: David Hendy is a professor at the University of Sussex and the head of the 100 Voices project at the BBC. We reached him in Lewes, Sussex.

[Music]

Space Cement

AH: To become an astronaut in Canada you must have a bachelor's degree in engineering, physics, biology, geology, math, or computer science. And or/a doctorate. You need at least three years of experience in astronaut related work -- such as...I don't know developing a horse that can live on the moon. They don't specify. Also helpful flight training and multiple languages. So imagine you have that skill set. Imagine it actually gets you to the International Space Station. And imagine that once you're up there one of your major assignments is mixing cement. I'm not saying mixing cement is easy. I'm just saying your master's in astrophysics won't help you. It's hard work. And it's more complicated and more important than we lay people might think. And that includes the name of the recent experiment on the ISS -- microgravity investigation of cement solidification. Which means, make cement in space and look at it. Well for the first time they've done it. The astronauts mixed it and let it sit for 42 days. The result was it hardened -- which seems obvious but it wasn't. Furthermore they learned two other things about space cement. One, it has a more uniform density than Earth's cement which should make it stronger. And two, it develops more pockets of air than Earth cement which should make it weaker. Obviously more research is necessary but this does suggest that we'll be able to use it to build stuff in places with less gravity such as space colonies or a stable for the aforementioned moon horse. It's just that to reach more concrete conclusions they'll need more concrete.

[Music]

Part 3: World leaders enact 'censorship through noise' in the digital era, says author

Feature: "This is Not Propaganda" author Peter Pomerantsev

Guest: Peter Pomerantsev

AH: In the 1970s, Peter Pomerantsev's house father, Igor, was arrested by the KGB for distributing banned literature. Igor was a writer in Ukraine. And back then during the Cold War that was how the Soviet Union tried to crush dissent -- through censorship and by sending those who broke the rules to prison or into exile. Now as his son Peter has discovered reporting from what he calls the front lines of the war on truth, most states and leaders have realized that controlling information is nearly impossible. Instead we live in a world of, quote, "censorship through noise." Critics are silenced through social media mobs and cyber militias that harass, smear, and threaten them -- often with the covert or tacit approval of governments. Peter Pomerantsev's new book is called "This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality." He joined Carol via WhatsApp from London on the eve of a federal election campaign here in Canada for a feature interview.

CO: Peter first of all welcome to As It Happens.

PETER POMERANTSEV: Thank you for having me.

CO: You have traveled the globe collecting the evidence and the anecdotes for this book and I think most of the stories you've covered we have in some way looked at ourselves the events of the manipulation of media -- all of it, in isolation and all what scary stuff. But we have to say that the cumulative effect of what you write -- all these stories together and what you put together is absolutely hair raising. How do you expect or want people to respond to what you've collected here?

PETER POMERANTSEV: I suppose the mission is to frame the challenge in such a way that we can open up a conversation around solutions. You're quite right -- most of the stories have been mentioned either in detail or in passing in some way but it can feel very chaotic and part of the mission of the book was going okay we've got all this sort of like cascade of stories about different forms of manipulation and propaganda -- Russia, the Philippines, Latin America, Trump, ISIS. And you know it can feel very chaotic. Actually I was trying to bring some order to this chaos and show how things that seem very very distinct. So in one of the chapters I look at the 2016 Trump election and the destruction of Aleppo in Syria -- are actually part of a much deeper phenomenon either technological challenges or ideological challenges. So even if it's hair raising I do hope I bring order out of the chaos that was a huge mission for me.

CO: Well one of the things that you do which I think takes it to a different level -- another level -- is that you you frame it with your own family experiences. And so the reportage is excellent but it's also a memoir. And you contrast your parents' experiences with what's happened today. Your mom and dad Igor and Lina. Taking this back into 1970s you were born in Soviet Union in Ukraine. And your father, Igor, he paid the price didn't he for refusing to be censored, for demanding free speech. Just tell us first of all what happened to Igor after he was arrested?

PETER POMERANTSEV: Sure. So Igor -- my father -- was arrested for what now seems an absurd thing. He was arrested for giving friends his copies of Vladimir Nabokov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novels which even now that sounds crazy when you think about it. He was interrogated for over two years and all his friends and relatives brought in sort of get them to break and give evidence that he committed this heinous crime. And at the end he was exiled. So that was quite common in the late 1970s the politburo had sort of decided that it was easier to get rid of dissidents than to make them martyrs inside the country. And that's when poets like Joseph Brodsky left and a lot of musicians. My father was a poet. So he was from that kind of media. So he ended up in the west with me and my mother and he ended up working on the other side working for the BBC Russian service and then Radio Free Europe which was the American kind of -- depends how you want to frame it -- the American propaganda broadcaster back at the Soviet Union. And really getting very involved in the great kind of Cold War propaganda battles. I mean propaganda neutrally rather than a kind of jaundiced way. The book is modeled on the idea that the way we fought our media battles in the 20th century is kind of defunct now. So my father was fighting for freedom of expression and he was fighting for a kind of a way of writing and expressing yourself that's very impressionistic and very focused on the self and that now is pretty relevant. So I'm trying to understand today's challenges in media manipulation and public opinion manipulation by contrasting it with the 20th century.

CO: And one of the things -- one of the ways you do that is to show that at the time when the Soviet Union and dictatorships in general would limit the amount of information people can get. And now you look at a time when they flood people with information and muddy the waters and fill their senses and propagandize people with excesses almost of information. And you went to various places including to the Philippines to show how people like now President Rodrigo Duterte today ever been able to have an effect -- have the same kind of effect -- by filling people's senses with ideas. Can you describe that.

PETER POMERANTSEV: Sure. I mean like the 20th century was an age of what academics call information scarcity more or less. Yeah. And authoritarian regimes especially would control their societies by constricting speech through censorship. Now even China but certainly sort of like these populist authoritarian regimes like Russia or the Philippines or Turkey I mean there's only limited amounts they could ever achieve through that style of censorship. It's just very hard to censor the Internet and digital media in any effective way. But they've worked something else out. And this actually starts probably in Russia in 2010. Also there's some research on it. They've kind of realized that by using troll files by using bots by just churning out avalanches of nonsense and intimidation they can achieve similar effects -- a sort of censorship through noise. And they don't have to go all the way to kind of hate speech and death threats which are obviously illegal. They can still stick within the confines of legitimate political speech but they can undermine trust and critical voices. They can alienate them from society so effectively. The difference now is that they didn't have to have their fingerprints on it. I mean back in the Cold War whether it was the Soviets or the Marcos regime in the Philippines you know it was pretty clear who were the agents of censorship and intimidation. It was the military police or the Secret Service. Now it's some sort of troll file. You'll never prove that it's actually directly related to the government. The government can just go well look we have no control over this. These are just concerned citizens exercising their freedom of expression online. Go and prove that we have anything to do with this. And that's really hard for pro-democracy activists because we've always fought for freedom of expression. Now we're kind of being hoist by our own petard.

CO: And this is what you learned from Maria Ressa who is a journalist in the Philippines -- we've had her on this show -- she and her team put out the news website "Rappler" and she's been a victim of it and someone who is trying to expose what Duterte is up to. I just want to quote from a speech she gave saying, "Exponential lies on social media incite hate and stifle free speech. We battle impunity from the Philippine government and from Facebook. Why should you care? Our problems are fast becoming your problems. Boundaries around the world collapse and we can begin to see a kind of global playbook." What is that global playbook as far as you've been able to find out?

PETER POMERANTSEV: So the global playbook is for regimes -- actually democratic regimes as much as non-democratic ones to use different methods of drowning out their critics. They do this in different ways. They can just hire troll farms or they can insights online mobs or they can hire out cyber militias through proxy business interests. You know we see various forms of it from the U.S. through Latin America and now Europe and South Asia. And they appear to be learning from each other and we really don't have a kind of a conceptual framework let alone institutional framework to deal with this. Russia is very famous for this. There was this great moment when the Facebook started taking down some of the pages posted by Russian troll farms and the Russian troll farm sort of said well look we're going to sue you because you're subverting our freedom of speech. I don't know if they ever did it. They were just trolling. But still the argument was still there.

CO: You look at all the other populists who have successfully used this -- mentioning President Duterte in the Philippines, President Bolsonaro...you don't talk about him but he's doing the same thing all the populist who have successfully used the same strategy through YouTube, through Facebook, through social media. But how are people and why are people so gullible? Why do they take all the sort of conspiracy theories, the lies, the distortions that these very very successful populists have been able to put out -- why do people accept them?

PETER POMERANTSEV: There's been lots and lots of sort of social science research over many decades really showing that people will cleave or they will lean towards what they think is the dominant opinion. If there's a lot of something out there, people who will start taking it on. Information doesn't work by one bot or one troll convincing you. It's about creating the sense that a certain subject is important and then framing it in a certain way. And people just start adopting and sort of moving towards that. I think that is just part of human psychology. If you hear a thousand messages about you know Hillary Clinton is somehow corrupt. I mean you might not think she is in one or two instances, but at one point you just start building that association in your head and start parroting it. So I mean this is something that scholars have looked into for decades. I think the difference is that with TV our defenses are more up. We're more aware that there was a TV owner manipulating us somewhere. While with social media I think our defenses are down because the information is coming from our friends, it's an up kind of well what used to be thought of as our private space though. I think that idea is out the window of social media. So it's kind of our critical defenses are more down. But I don't think it's a question of gullibility. I think it's just a question of how the human mind works.

CO: The effect of this -- the ability for populists to use media in the same way that President Duterte in the Philippines did, what we saw played out in the United States in the 2016 election was quite extraordinary. And President Trump has continued to produce well-documented lies and conspiracy theories or to re-tweet conspiracy theories and they've morphed into all kinds of other things. We're seeing even the United States and possibly Canada are not immune to this.

PETER POMERANTSEV: No not at all. I'd America is actually kind of one of the most problematic countries out there at the moment in terms of sort of a lot of the kind of pathologies in public opinion that I talk about also the sort of hyper polarization, the sort of like rampant spread of inaccurate information. So America is kind of a global leader. I don't think it's a citadel of of a healthy information space at all which just shows this is not about underdeveloped countries or stupidity or cleverness. These are kind of systemic things. You know there seems to be more of this in countries where there is a very very high Internet penetration so in Europe -- and Britain is one of the leading countries where these problems are coming through while countries where Internet penetration is lower there's a little bit less of it. In the Philippines of course Facebook is your Internet. So Philippines's got very high Internet penetration -- it's got one of the highest amounts of sort of social media use per capita in the world. So I think that's partly that deciding thing -- the levels of Internet penetration rather than the levels of democratic development.

CO: We are speaking with Peter Pomerantsev who is talking to us about his latest book called "This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality." And Peter what you also describe is how these ideas that we have -- these pillars of democracy like the idea of free speech that we have defended and your father defended, the ideas turned on its head that the Russians say that you're censoring free speech if we don't allow what they put out. We see President Trump who says that those who accuse him of lying are part of the fake media. How has this whole idea of what is free speech been turned on its head?

PETER POMERANTSEV: I mean that's an absolute brilliant question. I mean I do think free speech as we thought about it and the way it was sort of codified within the U.N. and international law and international human rights law was really kind of like came out of an era where you had authoritarian regimes stamping on people. So I think in the new information environment the rules will change. By no means by the way do I think that censorship is the answer. A) I think that's foolish. I don't think you can censor one's [inaudible] law having much one's wants to. But since it was never the answer it's even less the answer in the social media age where content is often user generated. I do think there is a way of approaching this though -- still thinking about within the paradigms of democratic ideals. So my sense is in the world where are at the moment online that we are surrounded by Internet campaigns that we can't even understand what there prominence is -- who's behind them, why they're being targeted at us. Now we can live in this world we don't understand how the information environment around us is being formed, we don't understand why algorithms sort of why Google or Facebook shows one piece of information not another. In a way I think that's a form of censorship itself. I think we need to radically make the Internet much much more transparent so that we do have oversight of algorithms and how they choose information. So we do understand that every piece of content we see online who is behind it, is it organic, is it a campaign. Anonymity can be allowed without a doubt that's a security issue often. But we should be able to understand whether somebody is using an avatar for a reason that's fine but should be able to know whether it's an avatar. And Internet campaigns will develop. But I think the principle has to change. And that brings us back to a language of rights. That's the rights of the user online to understand how and why what they see is there and how they're being influenced and how their own data is being used to influence them. That's still actually about freedom of expression. Freedom expression is just not the rights to speech it's also the right to receive information. So I think that's where we have a lack now. And that's somewhere where we're kind of the authoritarians who have packed into the language of freedom expression. That's why they're very vulnerable because Putin certainly doesn't want us to know that something that we see online is actually being created in St. Petersburg not in Ottawa or Tennessee. And Putin doesn't want his own population to understand how the KGB influence over Internet companies is making them change what information people see. So there is a way of fighting back, of taking the language of freedom of expression back but that's something that has to be done with a fair amount of coherence and craft by democracies which we're not quite there yet.

CO: But when we see the manipulation of the troll farms and what President Putin can or we believe he is associated -- the Kremlin is associated with the troll farms and the St. Petersburg campaigns is that we presume that they have direct connections to candidates they want to see elected, the outcomes they want, but it really appears to be that for the most part they just muddy the waters, they make it so that there is no truth, there is no reality. Everyone has their own version of what's true -- their own alternate facts as President Trump's say. And so I guess in Canada as we face a federal election, how do we figure out what is true? How do we know what is factual?

PETER POMERANTSEV: So I do look at fact checkers which have become a really you know a wonderful and moral and to be admired global movement. Now I actually go -- booked a conference that fact checkers now have where fact checkers from across the world gather to kind of define the future of fact checking and their very mission based. They are very like we are the avant garde return factual discourse. And I really like them and these are people who often actually do fact checking at great personal risk. However I don't think that is going to be the ultimate answer even though it's very very important. I think there's two things we have to look at. One is factuality -- you know I think it's less about that it's much more about being able to have a shared conversation where you have to be able to agree on a minimum facts to have that. So the question is how do we create a shared public sphere -- a shared public space? I mean in the old days it was far from perfect. But the idea was that a mix of media pluralism and kind of public service ethics balance objectivity all these things kind of brought different sides of society together and we had some sort of debates obviously in parliament but also through the media -- very troublingly that has been undermined. We've seen pluralism lead to such polarization that people are in separate bubbles and that's then reinforced by actors like the Kremlin. While kind of the virtues of public service broadcasting the idea that can have objectivity balance you know they've come under attack philosophically.

CO: And you attacked them too. You question the value of this objectivity where nobody calls what they see. They just fall back on this idea of being impartial and balanced.

PETER POMERANTSEV: Yeah. That you're accused straight away -- this is done now by everyone from the Kremlin -- and US. Oh that's just your opinion. There's no such thing as objectivity. Everybody's bias. There's no way of being above the fray. So I think there's two things One is I think is partly up to us in the media to construct a journalism that creates a conversation where facts matter again. Now what do I mean by that? I mean we don't have a post truth conversation when we talk about building a bridge for example suddenly then everyone agrees on the facts you know. And suddenly facts become very very necessary. So I think facts are very very linked to a discussion about a practical future. They're very very connected. And I don't think it's a coincidence that Putin, Trump, Duterte, Bolsonar, Boris Johnson are all nostalgists. Yeah when you're talking about dreamy pasts you really don't need the facts. It's up to us I think as journalists to drive the conversation away and really pin these politicians for a really practical pragmatic conversation about what they're going to do about very very specific things and hold them accountable to those words.

CO: You pointed to something very important which is that people -- the reason why this populism has an appeal is that people are themselves nostalgic for some other time and the populist are able convince people well I'll take you back to that time that you might vaguely remember when everything was okay though it probably never was. The public itself is inclined toward this kind of propaganda, is it not?

PETER POMERANTSEV: Yeah completely. Especially now. The sort of the central thesis of my book is that during the Cold War and the period after, there was a clear ideological competition about the future. So it was communism vs. democratic capitalism. They both claimed that we will deliver the better future for you and they each had to show evidence that they were doing that, evidence was part of the conversation, part of the way you talked. I mean even when the Soviets lied which they did frequently -- it is a lie in a way that sounded factual. And the central thesis of my book is is you know after the Cold War the first communism falls away and then later you know a simplistic version of democratic capitalism kind of starts to come apart and probably finally does so in 2008 with the financial crash. And people have no idea of the future that they can build irrational facts driven conversation around so yes nostalgia becomes much much more appealing and kind of becomes the place where we all are. But I think that's already a step forward. If we move away from trying to catch out people on the facts and realize that actually what's at stake, what we have to do is try to foster a conversation about the future so that fact starts mattering again. That's already a big step forward than sort of you know whack-a-mole fact checking -- without understanding the deeper ideological crisis behind it. I'm not saying it's going to be easy by the way but I think with small practical things that we can do especially in the media to help foster that.

CO: You're listening to a feature conversation with Peter Pomerantsev. He's the author of "This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality." And Peter one of the characters -- one of the people you spend time with is really a fascinating man Srdja Popvic -- who was part of what they called the "Otpor" revolution in Serbia. He was part of a really extraordinary movement that ended in the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic in the late 1990s. And then he inspired and actually went and helped train people in a series of other revolutions the color revolutions Arab Spring. What do you take away from Srdja Popovic and how he was able to influence people?

PETER POMERANTSEV: Yes. So Srdja Popovic is kind of a really one of the great characters of our current world. But really the story that I tried to tell through him is how -- well there is two things. I mean the big thing is that he always felt and political scientists always felt that all these uprisings 89 obviously when the Soviet Union falls and apartheid falls and then the Arab Spring, the color revolutions they are all part of a greater story of really historical inevitability that we were all proceeding towards more democracy and a better world. And also that the language of street protests of lots of people out on the street together you know challenging authoritarians in their high towers was always a positive image you know it is that imagery of people out on the streets which was so powerful in 1989 and again in the square and in Belgrade and this larger sense that all of this is part of a greater story of more and more democracy everywhere. And in my chapter on Srdja I look at how authoritarian regimes have learned so something that Russia has managed to do is crawl inside the imagery of street protests and A) make them seem very very very dangerous by associating them with -- not with peace and prosperity and democracy but with violence. And it sort of started using a lot of these tactics itself. And by using them itself it sort of is almost parodying them by organizing street protests in Ukraine and Estonia. So it was parodying them to say look there is no a priori logic between people powered revolutions and democracy. There is no greater story here.

CO: I'm speaking with Peter Pomerantsev who is in London right now speaking to us about his book "This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality." And Peter among the many activists and people you spoke with a Mexican man -- Alberto Escorcia -- I am not sure I am saying that right -- who said to you I see the Internet and metaphysical terms a war between love and fear. Are you concerned that fear might be winning right now?

PETER POMERANTSEV: Yeah. That's Alberto Escorcia who interviewed in Mexico. And he meant something very specific by love and fear. By love he meant technological [inaudible] which is you can almost see that when you look at Internet maps of people building interaction and community and thoughts online. And by fear he meant polarization -- when all that breaks apart and people break apart into little groups which can be engineered through various forms of manipulation. What we're seeing at the moment is a period of often enforced polarization after the kind of initial romantic ideas of the Internet that will bring everyone together which is embedded in Facebook's language -- now -- in a period of vast polarization. As those who support a more interactive democracy. Get their heads around the challenge. Maybe we are going to turn a corner soon. But clearly you know we have elections approaching in the U.S. very little has been done to change the ground rules.

CO: I have to say the same would be true of Canada. And people are very concerned that the ground rules remain the same here. Some tweaks and some adjustments and some awareness. But as your Alberto said to you -- he said Peter dark days are coming, a new generation of bots and trolls are pushing us further and further into a world of pure simulation. And among the many things that is so alarming in your book I read this and wonder how we are going to approach the election in this country?

PETER POMERANTSEV: So it's probably far too late now isn't it? I mean the slight problem is the political elites who would have to pass regulation that would give us the possibility to communicate with each other as equals again and not in these kind of clouds of lack of clarity about who is behind what's and why they're doing things. I mean you do need regulation for that. But the political elites who would have to enact that regulation they're very reluctant to do it because they're all using these techniques. I mean whether on very very aggressive ways like Canadian alt-right or Trump in America. But actually everyone use them to a certain extent. And political elites tend to be very reluctant to saw off the twig that they're precariously sitting on. Sadly the historical experiences that we have to reach some sort of massive crisis before we do anything about anything. It's fantastic because actually Canada has some of the best researchers on the subjects in the world. I mean Citizen Lab which is a Canadian research centre has been at the forefront of researching this throughout the world for the last 10 years. So there's certainly not a lack of kind of expertise in Canada.

CO: We began and your book covers so well your family's experiences and your father and mother -- the stories are chilling and extraordinary. You now have children of your own. What hopes and fears do you have for them given this environment of information and propaganda?

PETER POMERANTSEV: The book is partly about what's the knowledge we pass on and what is the stories we pass on generation to generation. And so in the book I always try to do that through my family. I try to sort of see what it is there in my parents experience that is still relevant today given that a lot isn't relevant but what is still relevant in their battles against authoritarian regimes in the 20th century to today. And the book sort of ends with my parents talking to my kids -- to their grandkids. And there are huge similarities as well. Even though on the surface everything seems very different. When you go deep into what my parents were fighting against was a kind of totalitarian psychology of them and us where the other can be crushed very very easily because its humanity wasn't admitted. I mean that's a very old old problem. But that was there as well in the 20th century. That's coming out now today in very different forms so it ends with you know with the idea that my children will be able to learn a lot from their grandparents that actually continuity can be restored and there's lessons that they can control from them. So ends with that hope really. And I think it ends with the importance of that search. What exactly? That will have to be the next book. [Laughter] I mean this is basically a trilogy. My first book was about Russia and Russian propaganda. And my second book was about how Russian propaganda goes global and why Russia is so important in understanding our current propaganda wars.

CO: I'll mention the title of that first book: "Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible." And this one is "This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality." We look forward to the third part of this trilogy. Very very important work. Very very well written. Peter thank you.

PETER POMERANTSEV: Thank you so much.

AH: Peter Pomerantsev is a journalist and scholar and the author of the new book "This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality." He joined us on the line from London. You can find that interview and more about online manipulation as Canada heads to the polls this fall on our website: cbc.ca/aih.

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September 10, 2019 Episode Transcript

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