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The AIH Transcript for January 1, 2018

Hosts: Helen Mann and Jeff Douglas

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

HELEN MANN: Hello, I'm Helen man sitting in for Carol Off.

JEFF DOUGLAS: Good evening, I'm Jeff Douglas. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

JD: Tonight…

HM: Two way streets. As protests erupt across Iran we hear from a journalist and former activist who says the unrest is running in a completely different direction from opposition movements of the past.

JD: In all bot name. Twitter bans and automated accounts but the guy behind it says it was exposing racists for masquerading as members of the minorities they hate.

HM: The stroke of the steel on the tense ice rang. Canada's favourite winter pastime jumps the boards to go gliding down a winter river as Jeff brings Charles G.D. Roberts poem The Skater to life.

JD: Mr. Bond he presumed. Our compilation of obituaries from the year passed includes a double-O-7- year-old fan whose encounter with the late Roger Moore left him confused between the actor and the For Your Eyes Only agent he portrayed.

HM: No mere child's play. A tribute to the late editor Judith Jones, who was the new kid at her publishing house when she came across a manuscript about Mastering the Art of French Cooking by someone named Julia Child.

JD: And…That ought to get their juices flowing. A countrywide cold snap forces Ontario polar bears swimmers to call quits on their numbing new year's plunge. But in Herring Cove, Nova Scotia they just smashed the sea ice and got ‘er done. As It Happens: The New Year's Day edition. Radio that is not afraid to take on the polarizing issues.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: Iran Protests, Imposter Bots, Nova Scotia Polar Bear Dip

Iran Protests

Guest: Bahman Kalbasi

JD: What began as a small protest over the rising cost of food in Iran has morphed into something much bigger. Cities, towns and villages across the country have seen mass unrest today and over the weekend. Here's what some of that sounded like.

SOUNDCLIP

CROWD CHANTING. WHISTLES BLOWING.

JD: At least 12 people have been killed. Hundreds have been arrested. Iranian state television reported today that armed protesters have tried to take over police stations and military bases. Bahman Kalbasi is in contact with protesters on the ground. He is himself a former Iranian student protester and currently a correspondent for BBC Persian. We reached him today in Los Angeles.

HM: Bahman, what sense are you getting from the protesters that you have spoken with about the mood in Iran right now?

BAHMAN KALBASI: Well, there is an explosion of dissatisfaction that has existed for a long while. What we are seeing is the nature of the protests, its roots in terms of the kind of parts of the country that it’s touching and the priorities are different from the ones that are sort of middle class urban crowd was involved with in 2009. That one probably much larger in numbers in big cities because I do remember that June 15th 2009, which is basically the biggest protest post Iranian revolution, drew something around two to three million people to the streets of Tehran. This one is very different, it's sporadic, in smaller cities spread across the country. And the demands are economic. People who are poorer than the centre or the urban population but quickly turned political. Because the slogans against the supreme leader and the entire system are more direct and challenging than the 2009, which was more defined political structure.

HM: But it didn't begin politically as you say it's about economic dissatisfaction. What are the conditions that people are upset about?

BK: Everything from inflation all the way to corruption, in terms of a system that is corrupt and easily manipulated by the rich and by the well-connected. And also their current situation economically is not good.

HM: The economy, generally though, is doing better since the nuclear deal, right? It's just that it's not it's not getting it to these people.

HM: Right, many do make the argument that under Ahmadinejad Iran was experiencing 30-25 per cent inflation and now it's less than nine or 10. But the reality is it hasn't trickled down to this part of the population who are living either on the poverty line or below it. It has also surprised the political opposition inside Iran because they never saw it coming. They always thought if there was a strategy to go back to the streets like 2009 it would have to come from them first.

HM: So the green movement that was driving reform before is actually also taken aback by this?

BK: Absolutely. I mean, both the leaders are confused about where this is going and how it could lead to things that are better or worse and don't know where and how it started, even though the moderate Rouhani government accuses the extremists that they started it, the hardliners. But the reality is the hardliners very quickly lost control of it.

HM: You mention President Rouhani, who is seen as a moderate. We have a clip that we want to play of what he said.

SOUNDCLIP

PRESIDENT ROUHANI: In recent days we have witnessed some protests. Everyone must be aware at this point that we are a free nation and according to the Constitution and human rights the people are absolutely free to criticize the government and even to protest. But the protest should be done in such a way as to aim at the improvement of the situation in the country. Yes people have problems in the economic and social spheres.

HM: So he says that on the one hand, on the other we've seen a number of people killed, hundreds arrested. They've shut down a messaging app called Telegram that's very popular in Iran. So given all of this arePresident Rouhani statements helping?

BK: He's trying to strike this balance now, we have actually a joke about it. We say you're free to express your opinion in Iran but you're not going to be free after you express it. He is now reacting to the reality that people have ignored the restrictions on protests have come out and he's worried about the basic project that he is the leading figure in and that is slow reform towards a better place. Most of these people have lost faith or patience that he can deliver anytime soon.

HM: What do those people that you're speaking to tell you about the tone of the demonstration over the last few days and where these protests might be heading?

BK: I spoke to a student just the other night who sent me images of a city centre of Iran named Kashon. He was saying how quickly the protests became violent when the police attacked. But there is still a level of restraint on both sides. We talk about 10-15 people dead but that's a far cry from the kind of damage that the Revolutionary Guards and the security services can do. I think they're also mindful of how dangerous it can get if they go any further and do what for instance Bashar al-Assad did protesters back in 2011.

HM: Do you think though that what's happened in Syria and what people have seen there is as keeping a cap on this to some degree?

BK: I am confident that a big portion of Iran is very worried about things getting out of hand. And in fact, looking at the example of Syria is one that gives everybody pause. So this dynamic and example of Syria very much plays in the mind of minds of those watching or participating or trying to suppress it.

HM: We have seen politicians, in this country and elsewhere, weigh in on what's happening in Iran. One of those, of course tweeting, is Donald Trump the U.S. president. His latest tweet says “The great Iranian people have been repressed for many years. They're hungry for food and freedom along with human rights. The wealth of Iran is being looted. Time for change.” Does that message mean anything to Iranians? Are they paying attention to what's happening outside the country by those who might be trying to shape what's happening inside?

BK: Pockets do and in fact, you know, what the President of the United States says nevertheless carries weight whether we like it or agree with his policies or not. The reality however, is that the Iranian hardliners when they want to suppress opposition or protest usually accuse these protesters to be incited or inspired or ordered by foreign agents, namely America or Israel. Of course Mr. Trump saying these things or Mr. Netanyahu issuing a video statement makes it much easier for them to make that argument. It definitely provides propaganda talking points for the government, especially the hardliners who say told you so, this is all directed from outside.

HM: As a former Iranian student protester yourself, one who was arrested, can you just share with us kind of the more visceral response you might be having to all of this? I mean, does it resonate for you in a personal way what you’re seeing?

BK: Absolutely. I mean, we've lived through one big, massive protest movement in 2009. It is hopeful to see so many millions of Iranians across the country are still looking for ways to express themselves and have not been deterred by this oppression. And at the same time very worrying whether or not that kind of clash that happened in Syria and resulted in catastrophe can be repeated in Iran.

HM: Bahman, it's good to get your take on all of this. Thank you.

BK: Thank you.

HM: Ok bye.

BK: Thank you.

JD: Bahman Kalbasi is a BBC Persian correspondent and a former Iranian student protester. We reached him today in Los Angeles. For more on this story go to our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Sombre Guitar Plucks]

Imposter Bots

Guest: Yair Rosenberg

JD: Twitter says the Imposter Buster is one of the platform's bad guys. It has shut the account down for breaking rules that are supposed to keep users safe from harassment and abuse. But Yair Rosenberg says that his bot was just doing its job — exposing bigots who were pretending to be members of the communities they hate. Mr. Rosenberg is a writer at the Jewish publication Tablet Magazine. He recently wrote an op-ed in The New York Times called Confessions of a Digital Nazi Hunter. We reached Rosenberg in New York.

HM: Yair Rosenberg, tell us about these impersonator trolls that you were trying to target? What exactly are they?

YAIR ROSENBERG: So you’ve probably heard about fake news, so these are fake Jews, and also fake Muslims and fake African-Americans — all sorts of minorities on Twitter where basically a racist troll goes online appropriates the image of the minority — someone who looks demonstrably religious, like a religious Muslim woman, or a religious Jewish man and puts that costume on, so to speak, and then inserts themselves into conversations on social media saying offensive, racist and otherwise off-putting things so that the unsuspecting person scrolling through their social media feed sees someone who looks like a minority being incredibly offensive and outlandish.

HM: You were personally a target of racists and anti-semites a lot during the 2016 election campaign. Were you particularly targeted as well by these imposter trolls?

YR: I've got a lot of this sort of abuse, like many other Jewish journalists, while covering the 2016 election campaign. You know, like some of them I did get know some of these impersonator people. Certainly once I started writing about the phenomenon and I created this bot that inspired certain people to create impostor accounts of me but also precisely because I was a bit high profile issue it was relatively easy to get them suspended. It's a lot harder to get sort of the random imposter trolls that are just using random images of Jews or others off the platform, because those are much harder for people to notice because they're not necessarily going after someone as big a fish as me.

HM: Why did you decide that you needed to go after these trolls with a bot?

YR: I'm a big believer in finding ways to solve problems on social media that are sort of bottom up. I think users should fight back against people who misuse the platforms, because most users want platforms to be you know healthy and honest. The idea with the bot was, we don’t to censor these accounts. They don't need to necessarily be shut down. I mean, if Twitter wants to that would be wonderful but that's their choice. But we can do is we can alert users that these trolls are trying to deceive and say you think this person is interacting with you isn't really a Jew or really a Muslim but they're not right. And maybe here’s a screenshot showing where they stole their picture from or something like that. So we created this bot that automatically interjected into any conversation where the troll tried to insinuate themselves and expose them.

HM: Yeah, how do you get it to insinuate itself? How does that actually work? Did you work with somebody to come up with a way to develop this thing?

YR: Exactly. So the way the story goes, is that I knew these particular trolls were out there because I often encounter them because I got all this abuse during the election campaign. And I saw this particular variety of troll and I tweeted to my own followers and said ‘Would it be possible to create a bot that would respond to a database of the sorts of accounts that we put together?’ And a developer in San Francisco named Neal Chandra — who I've never met and still haven't, but we're now friends — that said ‘Sure I can do that overnight.’ And I was like well that's pretty cool. And then we tested it for a week then we are listed on the Internet.

CO: And as you pointed out it’s been pretty effective in annoying these people to the point that Twitter has shut the bot down twice. Why?

YR: Basically what happened was is that these impostor trolls realized that they couldn't beat the bot no matter what they did. Some of them tried to change their usernames but we had thought this through and we made sure that you couldn't do that, so it spoiled all their fun. Some of them just started reporting the bot to Twitter and said, you know, ‘This bot is harassing me.’ Which looks like abuse if you take it out of context, but if you know these people are abusive users and this bot is simply exposing the abusers to people who are then saying ‘thank you,’ you'd see it in a totally different light. They took advantage of the fact that Twitter doesn't really understand this sort of stuff that's going on in their platform or isn't interested enough in figuring it out, and basically manipulated their own rules to get the ball taken down.

HM: After the first time Twitter shut down the bot you were able to get it restored again. Now, of course, it's been shut down permanently. In a statement to Mashable Twitter said “Everyone on Twitter must follow the Twitter rules, including our rules that prohibit hateful conduct as well as the rules that prohibit spammy behaviour and automated mentions of other people.” Do you think they had a point in shutting down what you were doing?

YR: So, as I said, if you look at it and you abstract it from the moral context and you don't say what are the users that the bot is responding to doing, versus what the bot’s doing. You can say the bot is harassing these random users. But once you realize those people are actually harassing and other people by impersonating minorities and then using it to spread hate on the platform, well then at minimum you have the tier one problem. And the tier two problem is you think the bot is not the best way to go after it. So then you should solve the tier one problem and say ‘well we don't need the bot.’ But instead they got rid of the bot. All those people that are bot was calling out and labeling and so on, now they're running free and no one is exposing them and no one is alerting users they are trolling that they're being misled and deceived by impersonator trolls.

HM: So do you just assume that they've taken on another identity and are doing it all over again?

YR: In theory they can change their guise as many times as they want but we will eventually find out about it again, because we're based on user reports.

HM: But what are you going to do about it now that you're not allowed to use the bot?

YR: This is a great question. Now it's become entirely Twitter's problem, because they took away the one solution that existed on the platform itself. The only thing people have right now as a recourse is they can report it to Twitter and hope somebody at Twitter's desk is smart enough to figure out what they're looking at. But I don't have high confidence because even in the New York Times article itself we gave two examples of these just two — I have a database of dozens and dozens. Two examples of these impostor trolls. One of them, because of the bot, changed his avatar and everything and went back to being a normal racist account and no longer is dressed up as a rabbi. That was a success story. The other one was a more recent one and we had only just put the bot on it before he was suspended so it's still there on the platform doing the exact same things, and even though we were in the New York Times showing this guy who had been saying a horrific, abusive things so those should be suspended regardless, but Twitter hasn't done anything about it. I don't see them taking the steps because that's like the lowest of low hanging fruit, right. Just suspend the guy we identified in a New York Times article showed saying racist things but they didn't do that.

HM: Mr. Rosenberg, thank you very much for explaining this all to us.

YR: Thank you for having me.

HM: OK, bye, bye.

YR: Bye.

JD: Yair Rosenberg is a writer for tablet magazine. We reached him in New York City. And if you'd like to see more on this story, including some of the impersonator trolls that Mr. Rosenberg's bot did expose, head on over to our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Melodic Guitar Strums]

Reading: The Skater

HM: These chilly days are best spent by a fireplace or some other source of warmth. But there's something magical about bundling up, lacing up the skates and gliding across some freshly frozen ice. Charles G.D. Roberts was one of Canada's confederation poets. In 1981 he published this poem about that exhilarating feeling of skating on a river during a Canadian winter. Here's Jeff's reading of The Skater.

SOUNDCLIP

JD:

My glad feet shod with the glittering steel

I was the god of the winged heel.

The hills in the far white sky were lost;

The world lay still in the wide white frost;

And the woods hung hushed in their long white dream

By the ghostly, glimmering, ice-blue stream.

Here was a pathway, smooth like glass,

Where I and the wandering wind might pass

To the far-off palaces, drifted deep,

Where Winter's retinue rests in sleep.

I followed the lure, I fled like a bird,

Till the startled hollows awoke and heard

A spinning whisper, a sibilant twang,

As the stroke of the steel on the tense ice rang;

And the wandering wind was left behind

As faster, faster I followed my mind;

Till the blood sang high in my eager brain,

And the joy of my flight was almost pain.

Then I stayed the rush of my eager speed

And silently went as a drifting seed, —

Slowly, furtively, till my eyes

Grew big with the awe of a dim surmise,

And the hair of my neck began to creep

At hearing the wilderness talk in sleep.

Shapes in the fir-gloom drifted near.

In the deep of my heart I heard my fear.

And I turned and fled, like a soul pursued,

From the white, inviolate solitude.

HM: My cohost Jeff Douglas reading The Skater written by the late Canadian poet Charles G.D. Roberts. It was first published in 1901.

[Music: 90’s Hip-Hop]

Nova Scotia Polar Bear Dip

Guest: Robert Maclellan

JD: Polar Bear swimmers are a hardy lot. How else could they endure jumping into freezing waters every January 1^st? However, an extreme cold snap forced several clubs across the country to cancel their charity dips today. But the cold did not keep them out of the water and Herring Cove, Nova Scotia — neither did the frozen sea. Robert Maclellan is an organizer of their annual swim. We reached him in Herring Cove.

HM: Mr. Maclellan. How is the water today?

ROBERT MACLELLAN: Well, the official figure was three degrees but like it was a little bit cooler than that I would say.

HM: How cool? I mean, when you jumped in what was the temperature?

RM: It was three degrees but it felt like there's a bunch of little insects with little sharp knives digging at you, you know.

HM: Is that normal, I mean, you've done this before you jump in the water. I would expect it would hurt.

RM: It's like you hit it with your feet, that's if you jump in, and we encourage everybody to jump in, no diving. But you hit it with your feet, you're on your way down you're going ‘oh my god.’ And then it shoots you right back up to the top. But, you know, what since it's for a good cause it leaves you very quickly and you get out and you're feeling much better.

HM: The water temperature is one thing but the air temperature is also a factor. What's it like there today?

RM: Yeah it was probably - 15 with the wind chill and stuff. But there was just a little bit coming off the ocean that was a little bit cooling on you and if you had any heat at all in your body it was right in your internal organs, if you know what I mean.

HM: The weather’s so cold this time though, that you had to delay getting into the water. What happened?

RM: Yes, this was something a little beyond our control but you can appreciate this I suppose, if you're from a small community. And what happened was we were at the church hall we were getting all ready announcing the people. OK we're going to be going down at 11:30 and march down, and we sing O Canada. But our fire department at the wharf, the Volunteer Fire Department in Herring Cove, had said there’s ice around there and they were trying to poke it and break it and we expected that there was going to be a pilot boat or something come in and break that up for us. But there was just two or three of the boats that were most important had a problem or were not able to get here or had some work going on. So it happened that this guy in the boat called the General Sea and his name is Stephen Hadley. He's from Purcell's Cove, one cove over. They had come down just to watch it and we called on them or the fire department said ‘could you swing by break the ice up?’ And they broke the ice up, which was, you know, close to an inch thick or so, broke that all up and then that cleared the way.

HM: And that didn't give you pause having to break up the ice just before you took the leap?

RM: Well, we've had to break up the ice before like when we didn't even have the big organization that we have now. We had to, you know, actually break it up with axes and stuff but since we've become a bona fide organization we've looked at mitigating all of the public safety issues. But the ice yesterday, the breaker went through and broke it up. It's just that nobody came through this morning. So you don't think about that. But now it's on our list to say this is one more thing we're going to have to make sure we have backup in case some of the other boats that are called on to do that can’t do it.

HM: And we have heard this year about polar bear swims being canceled all over the country. Why was it so important for you to go ahead?

RM: Well, I guess we've got 24 years in a row. You know, I think anybody that cancelled it is the smart thing to do if they had any question about public safety or anything like that because it's not really worth going ahead. But here, where the community is able to come together and help you out, then it's purely up to the individual of just being able to follow through with their plan of just jumping off the warf to know that it's only a really small amount of time that they're going to be inconvenienced. And fortunately for us we were able to do that. But listen, I understand anybody that — because it almost happened to us, that we would have would not have been able to do it.

HM: Are you just made of heartier stuff in Nova Scotia?

RM: Oh I can't say that. I mean, you know, people out west are having much colder temperatures and in Toronto much, much colder at times, and I don't think anybody's really tougher than anybody else. But I wrote down here that we had people from Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Germany, France, Holland, Belgium, USA and a few other places — probably about 14 countries that because of the international students and things that showed up and came. And God love them for doing it, because you know this is the coldest ever on them. So I think if they can do it I think anybody can do it.

HM: You mentioned a charitable objective. Who do you raise money for and how much did you get this year?

RM: Well, this year we raised close to five thousand dollars. We normally partner with Feed Nova Scotia. But this year we're also including some of the local food banks.

HM: Well congratulations on the achievement, the fundraising, but especially on making that leap and getting out safely. Thanks for sharing this story with us.

RM: Well, you know, it's great. I want to say Happy New Year to all my fellow Canadians. And I really love As It Happens, so, you know, you go girl.

[LAUGHTER]

HM: Happy New Year to you from all of us too.

RM: OK thank you.

HM: Bye, bye.

RM: Bye, bye.

JD: We love you too Robert. Robert Maclellan is one of the organizers of the Herring Cove Polar Bear Dip. We reached him in Herring Cove, Nova Scotia.

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January 1, 2018 episode transcript

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