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The Current Transcript for May 21, 2021

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Children at this age start to ask, and they have a dream, my son says I want to be an engineer. My daughter says, I want to be a doctor. They have dreams. They have dream in Gaza and outside Gaza. They are not allowing anyoneto dream in Gaza.

MATT GALLOWAY: As cease fire is underway in the fighting between Israel and Hamas. But the effects of the last two weeks, in the weeks and months and years before will endure, especially for children in 30 minutes the cost of this conflict on young people. Also this morning, in his 90 years, the legendary American journalist Marvin Kalb has covered some of the pivotal moments of our time from the Cold War to his start with the then new fangled medium of television. In the decade since, he's kept focussed on the world around him and he's worried.

SOUNDCLIP

There is a slippery slope that we are all in the United States. We may be able to get off it. I don't see how at the moment the people up in Canada can do something about it. Please help us.

MG: In an hour. Marvin Kalb on Trump, Russia then and now and the role of journalism in complicated times. But first, the high cost of lumber and the poachers who are stealing trees from the forest to cash in. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Someone’s stealing trees in B.C. as lumber prices soar

Guests: Keta Kosman, Janette Bulkan

SOUNDCLIP

LARRY PYNN: It's a warm, sunny day here, the sunlight filtering down through the upper canopy. It was a hoot of a barred owl in the distance, very small birds and small aircraft flying by and to see what else we can pick up.

MG: This is home for the environmental journalist Larry Pynn, who runs a blog called Six Mountains, most of the trees and trails of the forest around North Crouching on Vancouver Island are as familiar to him as old friends, which is why he immediately noticed when some of those trees started going missing on the municipal forest reserve.

SOUNDCLIP

LARRY PYNN: Very recently, I went for a walk and about a hundred metres from the main road, Stony Hill Road, I encountered to Cedars Western red Cedars, that had been cut down. I'm just heading there now just for a second look. It's a bit of a bushwack to get to the site, so sidestepping some healthy patches of stinging nettles. I've now arrived at the site where I found the poaching of these two large Western red cedars, the largest of these trees I measured to be about three rings, about 87 years, which is several years before the start of the Second World War. It's a beautiful tree. It's really a shame and it's shocking to you to see it cut down like this. The municipal forest reserve falls within the coastal Douglas fir zone, and that is one of the two most endangered forest zones in Canada. One report for the municipality said 141 species are estimated to be at risk here in the forest reserve. There's also been poaching of those smaller Douglas firs on Stony Hill where they took the cedars here. It's kind of as you said, it's a bit of a depression. And even though there are residents, you know, but, you know, they are kind of around here and it's the location of this probably absorb the sound, you know, quite likely the came in and got the wood in the evening after dark. You know, I don't think it's a coincidence that this is happening at a time when wood and lumber prices are so high in Canada. There was some indication early on that maybe some of these smaller Douglas firs were taken for firewood, and that could very well be true. But that's not the case with these big Western red cedars. There is no old growth left in the forest reserve. That's how heavily it's been logged over the decades. And we're trying to change that. We're trying to bring back these old trees and to see one like this 87 years old chop down hurts because it is one of the larger cities left. And no matter what you're what you feel should be done with it, with the forest, whether you just look at them and see dollar signs or whether you see the other values in them, you know, for conservation, for biodiversity and recreation and view scapes, all of those and more. You know, whatever you take, everyone agrees that this is wrong. It has to stop. These trees belong to the people of North Cowicahan.

MG: It's estimated that at least 100 trees have been poached on Vancouver Island this year, likely because the value of those trees has been skyrocketing. Keta Kosman is publisher for Madisons Lumber Reporter. It is an industry price guide for lumber. Keta, good morning.

KETA KOSMAN: Good morning.

MG: What do you make of this? People going into the forest, chopping these trees down, poaching trees because of the high cost of lumber? This is happening, I mean, in forests, but we're also hearing about lumber being stolen from construction sites as well. What do you make of all of that?

KETA KOSMAN: Well, I mean, I guess I can understand a little bit more the fact that the retailers or at the construction site, the finished lumber, it's a little puzzling to me. What does that person think they're going to do with it? I mean, I can't imagine how they would sell that. But the trees, I don't understand how a person could monetise. They steal a tree. Do they have a sawmill in their backyard? Like it doesn't make sense. And normal operators are going to buy two trees from someone. They buy truckloads. Right. So it sounds like not [unintelligible] and I understand that lumber prices are up, but this kind of thing seems very like not rational in terms of like, I don't know how they're going to make money on it.

MG: Let's run the numbers here. I mean, when we say that lumber prices are up, what does that actually mean?

KETA KOSMAN: What it means is compared to two years ago, you know, everybody can understand that last year was was not normal in terms of the economy and business, but compared to two years ago, the price of lumber is up by more than the price of lumber used to be. So last week, we printed 1640 dollars on Western series two by fours, which is up by 1330 dollars from 310 dollars per 1000 board feet.

MG: So, that's for a thousand board feet that's gone up, as you say, more than the lower cost before.

KETA KOSMAN: Yeah, it's 429 percent increase. When you say a thousand board feet, that's what I mean. Like a builder or somebody in business does not buy like two pieces of wood and trees. Right. So a thousand board feet is a normal amount. It's bundled, strapped, wrapped and goes on a truck. And that's like the wholesaler or the sawmill price.

MG: What is driving this increase in price?

KETA KOSMAN: It's demand, it's by far the largest consumer of North American lumber in U.S. housing and and U.S. housing has just been really, really high since more than one year ago. And that happened at the same time that production was slower. And in response, it takes a while. You know, a saw mill is not an easy thing to both to curtail and to start back up. So the housing demand is just non-stop and the steel mills are just doing all they can to get that wood to supply that market.

MG: And because of the pandemic, is that the reason why the steel mills were perhaps idle or operating at a reduced capacity over the last year and a half or so?

KETA KOSMAN: Yeah, that didn't help, so so the cycle of housing usually follows about six quarters or a year and a half, and 2019 was not a good year. 2013 was pretty good. Lumber prices at that time hit what we what was an all time high of six hundred dollars, four thousand square feet, but it only lasts for a couple of weeks. So 209 was not a good year. Mills that were marginal in terms of profitability were closing or curtailing. And just at the end of that year, things started to look better. By February of last year, we were noticing that housing was getting better and demand was increasing. So it probably was going to be a pretty good year then, you know, March and April, when the pandemic it was the requirement for the social distancing, the lock down the border was closed even for free for about a week and a half. That caused a huge problem with supply chain. And at that same time, people were finishing out outdoor spaces, putting in offices, all kinds of remodelling and reconstruction activity and looking for new homes where they didn't have to stay in the city. They could because they were working from home. They could go out to the suburbs and it just took off completely unexpected.

MG: What does this mean for people who are, you know, doing home renovations, building a deck, or maybe they're building an entire home or having a home built? I mean, if the prices are up by three, four, five hundred percent to me, what does that mean for the lumber that they need for those for those projects?

KETA KOSMAN: Right, and so the remodelling, they do not need the market and the retailers, you know, when you go to your local lumber yard to get a few pieces of wood, they're not the leaders are the leaders of demand and lumber prices are the large home builders. So they are not delaying. The large home builders are continuing to work. But the small contractors, the small builders at this point are beginning to delay their projects. They really got hit badly when this happened because they quote on their projects, you know, like in three months. Right. And then when they got to the site and started doing the work, in the meantime, the price of the wood had gone up so much, but they couldn't put it in. They couldn't, you know, increase the price of the customer. So at this point, those price increases are getting passed on literally on a weekly basis. And for home buying, for new home buying, the customer is not safe, but for remodelling and for smaller projects. The customers are starting to say, well, maybe I will delay or hold off. And we're noticing that because this week is the first time that we're like we do our market survey on Thursday. So we just finished that last night. And prices are flat. So for next week, when people look, they will see the prices did not change. So it looks like it's beginning to trickle through the market that this might start slowing down now.

MG: Just before I let you go, and just very briefly, I mean, how sustainable is this? How long can can these prices remain this high?

KETA KOSMAN: Well, that's unknown. I mean, what I can say is that prices can't go higher, like there's no blue skies. Prices can't just stay high forever because there are replacement materials or like I said, people would delay projects normally in the seasonal cycle, August and definitely Labour Day, prices start to go down. And unless there are dramatic situations like wildfires or really bad storms in the U.S. and people need to rebuild. So prices would start going down around midsummer. But there's so many unknowns. It's such an unprecedented situation that we'll just have to wait and see what will happen.

MG: Keta, good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

KETA KOSMAN: OK, thanks.

MG: Keta Kosman, publisher for Madisons Lumber reporter Janette Bulkan is an associate professor in the Department of Forest Resource Management at the University of British Columbia. Janet, good morning to you.

JANETTE BULKAN: Good morning.

MG: Surprised that people are stealing trees, particularly on Vancouver Island in the midst of a spike in lumber prices.

JANETTE BULKAN: No, I wouldn't be I'm not surprised because, as your previous commentator noted, there is supply follows demand, but I think that this is a bit of a distraction from the main story, even if 100 trees are mentioned, or 200 trees are stolen. That's a very small number when you compare it to the 50 million, let's say, telephone poles, the equivalent of 50 million telephone poles that are logged in British Columbia every year. So it is a bit of a distraction.

MG: How does somebody - I want to get to the larger issue. How does somebody go doing this? I mean, just help me understand how somebody would get into a forest and chop a tree down without anybody knowing.

JANETTE BULKAN: Well, British Columbia is a vast province and Canada is vast, so there are forest roads, there's equipment that's probably, you know, a truck that's lying around. There's a chain saw, someone with the requisite skills and local knowledge can simply cut a tree down. It doesn't need a very great technology.

MG: And nobody would notice or nobody would, you know, report something like that.

JANETTE BULKAN: If they're cutting the tree. It's quite far from the homestead or from homes, there would be, you know, chances are you would get away with it. And clearly, people have been getting away with it and it only takes a few minutes to cut the tree down and a skilled small crew will be able to load it on quickly, turned it into boards with a chainsaw. And also, if the local community, the people if let's say that there were homes around, they were never consulted when licence holders come and go, forest contractors come and go, they would not necessarily have a tradition of reporting or monitoring the forest because it isn't their forest licence holders have the legal right to go into those forests.

MG: What do you mean it isn't their forest? That's a really interesting turn of phrase.

JANETTE BULKAN: So the forests of British Columbia are Crown Forest, they are administered by the province of British Columbia and these forests are allocated to licence holders. Many British Columbia has about 14 different types of licences. And so the whoever holds the licence has the legal right to go into that forest and remove the agreed what's called the annual allowable cut from that area to which the company or individual holds the licence.

MG: What does that say? And it starts to speak to that larger issue, if people don't feel a community ownership over their local forest, I mean, we heard Larry PIN earlier speaking about the trees in his community around Northallerton, which he feels are, you know, like old friends. But if people don't have that relationship, what does that mean for the long term sustainability and health of the forest?

JANETTE BULKAN: Well, two things, one is that in many parts of where logging is taking place, there are no people maybe around to feel that these these forests of until 200 years ago were the traditional territory, of traditional home of the BC's First Nations, Two Hundred First Nations. And they felt very strongly about a relationship to those forest. Settler communities now, as well, feel of shorter generations, five, six generations here in BC they also feel, have grown to feel, a great love for their views, capes, their water supply, the recreation. And clearly there's a need for a paradigm shift to bring more of them to have a say decision making authority and say our collaboration with the legal owners, the province. To some extent that's happening. So four percent of the wood that's cut every year in BC in the last year was done by holders of what are called Community Forests Agreement CFX. But four percent is vanishingly small when you look at the other one percent is cut by woodlot holders and about three percent by First Nations woodland licence. So seven, eight percent that small scale. And the rest is licence holders who are not probably not local.

MG: How do you go about when you were speaking to the bigger issue of the thousands of trees that are cut every year? How do you go about creating a better balance between this resource, which is incredibly valuable and worth a lot of money and a lot of money is made from that resource and the conservation, the long term conservation of those forests?

JANETTE BULKAN: Well, the strategic the strategic review with would mean you would see, as you mentioned, BC has very high quality timber, but a great percentage of that and overwhelming is turned into two by fours. So these are not high quality or the highest quality products that could come from these very high quality trees. And so part of doing of changing needs a paradigm shift. So some countries, for example, Vietnam, incentivises the production and export of high quality furniture to other countries, incentivise production of high quality panelling, flooring. So to shift away from, you know, two by fours, turning these wonderful trees into two by fours needs, I think steepening the tax gradient by value and valuing as well all the other values of trees and forests, which are maybe not immediately commercial like one.

MG: I mean, part of it is I guess the forest is more than the trees in some ways.

JANETTE BULKAN: Absolutely more than the trees. So we live in a time and, you know, we're all in lockdown because of covid-19. We know what we understand that the conversion of too many of the vast majority of the world's natural ecosystems has meant that those viruses that lived on, you know, other critters have nowhere to live. So they really know their hosts. And that should be a wake up call for human societies. And clearly, we need to think to have a more circular economy where we never waste what we never waste anything. We have to put a market or a monetary value or our watersheds of value to the health of the ecosystems. We depend on humans as well as every all the web of life we depend on and therefore, you know, not continue the current paradigm of turning wonderful trees into two by fours.

MG: Janette, good to speak with you about this. Thank you very much.

JANETTE BULKAN: You're welcome.

MG: Janette Bulkan is an associate professor in the Department of Forest Resources Management at the University of British Columbia. Your thoughts on this. Welcome again. People who are involved in the homebuilding industry and all the way down to small renovation projects will have felt this. But there's the larger issue as well, a forest management and what we were hearing earlier about the relationship that people have with the forests around them. You can email us thecurrent@cbc.ca. Your CBC News is next. And then.

SOUNDCLIP

I'm a mom for two lovely children, a son and my daughter, three years. I love them more than anything in this world. With these attacks on Gaza, I feel very worried because you don't know when it's your turn.

MG: A doctor and mother is here in six minutes to talk about what it's like living in Gaza. I Matt Galloway you're listening to The Current. We're back in six minutes. Stay with us.

'We hug them almost all the time': How a mother in Gaza feared for her children during recent fighting

Guests: Dr. Rasha, Dr. Esti Galili Weisstub

Speaker 1: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway, and you're listening to the current. Still to come back to the USSR with American journalist and former CBS Moscow correspondent Marvin Marvin Kalb from working with Edward R. Murrow to why he believes the United States today has an uncomfortable amount in common with communist Russia for many years ago. That conversation coming up in 30 minutes. But first, on the ground in Gaza. Late yesterday, a cease fire deal was reached between Israel and Hamas, but the bombs have already taken a toll. Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes that it says have targeted Hamas infrastructure and militants. Hamas has fired thousands of rockets at Israeli cities. 12 people in Israel have been killed, including two children. More than 230 Palestinians have been killed, including 65 children. And for those left behind. A possible end to the current violence does not undo the trauma. Russia is a doctor of internal medicine in Gaza. We are only using her first name as she fears professional consequences for speaking out. I spoke with Dr. Russia yesterday, just before the news of a cease fire. How are things today in Gaza?

Speaker 2: Actually, it's almost the same since more than 10 days. Airstrikes and also battleships attacks are ongoing from the north to the south.

Speaker 1: How are you doing?

Speaker 2: It's very difficult. You cannot anticipate what's going in the next hour. So there is a lot of rumours nowadays about ceasefires today, tomorrow, a lot of rumours. And this also causes more stress. All the people here, including me, are so anxious and we are sorry about what's next in Gaza.

Speaker 1: Tell me about the work that you're doing. I mean, as a doctor, what is the state of medical care for residents in Gaza right now?

Speaker 2: The health care system in Gaza is already overwhelmed and is always in crisis since the siege on Gaza for more than 15 years. And with covid-19 started, the health care system is already overwhelmed. And for me as a physician, it's very difficult times to work. I have around seven to eight years of experience, and with this increased number of casualties and injuries, increased number of people displaced from their home to nearby shelters, which are school, by the way, it's not actual shelters. There is a concern about increased covid transmission amongst these people in these schools because it's not really prepared. And also increased risk of infectious disease can be transmitted amongst this highly high density of people without enough water supply, vaccination, health care services. So the health care system from this point is already overwhelmed. And I see there would be crisis. And for me and also my colleague, it's difficult to reach for this area because of the strikes. As you know in the news, my colleague, my friends who are doctors has been attacked and killed by this attack. So it's a very difficult situation.

Speaker 1: If your clinic were to close, what would happen to people who require treatment

Speaker 2: as the ongoing attacks on Gaza? There is a lot of health care facility has been attacked, including one of the clinics where I'm working. And this has impact on the health care we provide for this patient. We did not manage to see our patient to provide them with their care, like dressing for their wound, antibiotics, supplies, follow up visits, and this patient already in bad condition before. And with lack of follow up, I anticipate that the infection would be worse. There is clinical condition would be worse. We were trying nowadays to start some some improvement or some rehabilitation of the partially destroyed clinic in order to bring patients again to see how they progressed. And we start today to bring some patients, but not to the destroyed the clinic, to another clinic, but also that the air strikes are ongoing and it's not safe. One hundred percent. But we are trying to do our best.

Speaker 1: Gaza has been under a blockade for the last 15 years. What has that blockade meant in terms of medical supplies? Can you get the supplies that you need?

DR. RASHA: Not all the supplies we need in some of the night shift, for me in the hospitals, there was lack of paracetamol tablet. They are not available. Sometimes the IV fluid is not available. Also, in addition to the electricity problem in Gaza since 15 years, it's affect the hospital work. You can imagine units highly dependent on ongoing and continuous electrical supply, like dialysis unit, paediatric ICU. These need continuous electrical supply, but it's interrupted many times. In addition, the seige prevent many of us from getting their training outside, including me. I has training outside Gaza. I did not manage to get any training outside Gaza.

MG: What happened with that? You were scheduled to leave Gaza for training. What happened in that situation?

DR. RASHA: I applied to to leave Gaza to have this training. I was rejected from the board. We have to two exit points from Gaza. One through Egypt and one through Israelian inside. And I have been rejected for unknown reasons. No reason, just rejected, so I continued my training online. It's not like attractive and exciting like when you travel and have it face to face and it's shorter, not the same quality, but at least I'm trying to get any training. I have dreams, actually, in medicine. I hope to do a lot of things. My dream usually locked by the sea and by that insecure situation in Gaza.

MG: You mentioned a colleague of yours, a doctor who was amongst those killed in the last two weeks. What impact does that have on Gaza's medical system when when the doctors who were there who are staffing that fragile system are amongst the casualties?

DR. RASHA: Yeah, if there is something that's heartbreaking and one of the the worst thing coming during this war is the loss of my mentor, my teacher, Dr. Ayman. He's a figure of internal medicine in Gaza. He was my teacher for around five years. He teaching me during my residency in the hospital. And he is the head of internal medicine department and he is a part of covid committee in Gaza. Last week during the night there was a news that the building where he is living has been targeted. It was a very, very bad day for me and my colleagues, who was a beloved one for all of us. He was very- he's 50 years old but you feel that he is. And the same is with us. He used to joke with us, eat together. He was very friendly. His family has been killed with him, his teenager, two teenager, son and daughter, his wife, his mother, his father. The building was destroyed over them. And the rescue men spend the whole day trying to get the bodies of them, of their family from under the rubble. There was one survivor from Dr. Ayman family, just one boy, a teenager, and all the family has been killed. You can imagine this figure in Gaza who was a corner in internal medicine, has been lost. And this this definitely will affect the education system in Gaza for the resident doctors, will affect the quality of care provided, because you will not- Gaza as a very small health health care staff is not that highly qualified because the training and education is not high quality because of the siege and restriction and movement. He cannot be replaced simply.

MG: Because we know that more than 60 children have been killed in Gaza. Why do you think children have been hit so disproportionately hard in this?

DR. RASHA: Actually, Gaza is one of the highest population density in the world. There is more than two million people and very limited space and that children represent a big part of the community. You can imagine that children losses is really something that heartbreaking. You cannot imagine that five year old five month children has been killed. And you see the photos and it's really horrible thing. And this will also affect the other children. In one of the awful stories when there was a home has been destroyed over the people who are living inside. Under their own bed, there is two sisters. One of them was calling the other and she called her my sister. My dear, wake up. I'm here with you. This before the rescue arriv to try to to take them from under the destroyed home. Then the survivor girl, said that after a few minutes, my sister did not respond. And when they get her body, she was killed. I spent the whole day crying for the survivor one, not for the killed one. I cannot imagine while I spent hours under the rubble, I call my sister and suddenly she did not respond and I alive and she's killed. This is psychic trauma. And all these children need mental health support. And this also will generate violence, a continuous cycle of violence.

MG: How are your children? You have a couple of children. In addition to being a doctor, you're a mom. How are your children?

DR. RASHA: Yeah, I'm a mom for two lovely children, a son, four years and my daughter, three years. I love them more than anything in this world. And with this ongoing attacks in Gaza, I feel very worried because you don't know when it's your turn. I'm trying with my husband to be protective as much as we can. We hug them almost all the time and we try to calm them down. This will end soon, we tell them. We tried to to make them busy with playing with toys, watching some movies together. We tell stories. We sleep together. Actually, we did not sleep in our bedroom since the start of the attack because we tried to sleep together and and in a place and my apartment close to the exit, we put our children between us. We hug them overnight and we with our precious things, documents. Just close to us, in case there is any attack on our home to leave the building as soon as possible.

MG: How worried are you about about the long term effects on children's mental health?

DR. RASHA: I'm very worried about this, actually, because children at this age start to ask and they have dreams. My son said I want to be engineer. My daughter said I want to be a doctor. They have dreams. I have tried to prevent them from watching the TV or or to see the awful photos. But this will not sustain forever. At one time they will see it. What I'm trying to support them and to say this will be end soon and we will live in peace. The situation in Gaza need a permanent solution because this will affect the future, the future of my children and also my future with my children.

MG: You were born and raised in Gaza, and I'm wondering if anything over the past two weeks feels different than in previous crises.

DR. RASHA: Actually, I would say that it's always the same situation. Every two years we have a war that destroy what we built in Gaza and kill the new people and their new children was being born in Gaza and destroy the dreams of people who dream in Gaza. They are not allowing anyone to dream in Gaza. What's different this time is that what Gaza is already overwhelmed with the seige, with covid pandemic, with the [unintelligilbe] people, with the poverty, with lack of electricity, with unemployment. This makes the situation much more complex and people suffer as much. And you see people here say, we have nothing to lose. We lost everything. There is too much targeting of the civilian as demonstrated by the attack on refugee camp last week. And the whole family. Can you imagine, Matt, 15 person from the same family has been killed. The only survivor is, what, five month child? Can you imagine this? Yesterday, a pregnant woman with her children and her husband has been killed. Whole families are killed and removed, removed from the civilian records and register.

MG: So when you hear the Israeli government say that it is trying to avoid civilian casualties, that it's working to avoid civilian casualties, what do you say in response?

DR. RASHA: It's not true because I'm here, I am witness about what's happening. And I have thousands of a story for the civilian people who has been targeted without any reasons. And this makes me scared, actually, because I'm a physician, I'm not a politician, but I feel not safe because I might be targeted for no reasons. And this has caused me to be scared. I cannot move from home, actually. All the day we are at home, close the door. And this also affects our mental health, by the way. We did not move from home since ten days.

MG: As somebody who has been through this a number of times, who do you blame for the cycle of violence? Because the cycle seems to repeat itself.

DR. RASHA: In generally I'm not a politician and I'm not aware about the fine details in policy. But what I'm aware of is that Palestine is occupied and Palestinians are suffering. They want some solutions because Gaza people is not the only one who's responsible, but who making this seige Gaza and restrict people in Gaza life. You cannot imagine how is people life here is difficult. It's impossible. You cannot imagine that you are just in big prison. All the world thery should visit Gaza and try to live in Gaza and to see how it's impossible to to sustain life in such bad circumstance.

MG: What do you hope for Gaza?

DR. RASHA: The first hope is this attack ends soon. The consequence of this attack will not will not end by the same day of cease fire; 50000 displaced people, loss of health care, damage of laboratories, infrastructure. The consequence will be years. So the first of all, I hope this stop now to avoid more damage and destruction in Gaza. The other point, I hope that civilian community and the international community, the United Nation, to feel of the Palestinians suffer over the years. And imagine that you have a war every two years. How is your life? I hope they feel of us, how we are human and how we are feel here. We have a high education rate. We have talented people, but we have no opportunities. The future is very limited and it's dark. I hope they feel of us how's Gaza feel and try to to stop the suffering of Gaza people and end this occupation, because this is the cause for all this suffering.

MG: Rasha, stay safe, and I'm glad to have the chance to talk to you. Thank you very much and take care.

DR. RASHA: Thank you so much.

MG: Bye bye. Rasha is a doctor of internal medicine in Gaza. We have reached out to the Israeli government for an interview and are hoping to speak with him next week. Earlier this week, as it happens, host Carol Off spoke with Michael Freeman, advisor to Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and he said these are his words: The death of any children or civilians is an absolute tragedy. And we are doing everything we can to avoid civilian casualties. Hamas fires their missiles from civilian centres. They are carrying out a war crime. You can hear that entire interview at cbc.ca/aih. Of course, on every side of every conflict, it is the civilians and children who suffer most. Dr Esti Galili Weisstub is director of Children and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem and co leader of the Binational School of Psychotherapy, Doctor, hello to you.

DR. ESTI GALILI WEISSTUB: Hello.

How traumatic is this violence on children across the region?

DR. ESTI GALILI WEISSTUB: I think Rasha described it extremely clearly that traumatic reality. Years ago, I spoke with a colleague, Eyad Elsaraj, who was the head of the psychiatric services in Gaza. We spoke to in Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. And in his words, unfortunately, we're living in a kind of mirror image reality. It's not equalising anything. But the truth is that we have decades of conflicts that affect generations, time and time again, that grow under a shadow of war and terror.

MG: As you say, well, as you say, it's not equalising anything, but where you are in Israel. I mean, what impact does the violence have on children there?

DR. ESTI GALILI WEISSTUB: So I just want to say one sentence before I go to that, because you have two nations and two nations that are have a history of victimisation, both Jews and Palestinians, and we're kind of locked in this situation. The Israeli children have suffered north and south. It's now the children in the south, around the Gaza area have been, of course, in shelters. There's no question that there's better equipment to protect themself, but they are a whole generation of children that are suffering from post-trauma. And again, I think that the realisation that the ongoing trauma, basically, that you live in a reality that you know might explode, it might explode with war, it might explode with terror events. And you're helpless. And that ongoing trauma affects the developing brain, affects your emotional capability, and unfortunately we know it diminishes one ability for creativity, for flexibility, et cetera. And the prices of ongoing aggression, that you basically become more aggressive yourself. And more vulnerable, and I would ideally like to think that you're more sensitive, but usually victims to protect themselves. I'm not always more sensitive, and I think our future lies in the new generation and our future here lies in trying to stop the violent conflict.

MG: And that's what you do. I mean, in the binational school of psychotherapy, you're bringing together Jews and Palestinians. When people get together and they get to know each other, what are the changes that you can see in front of you?

DR. ESTI GALILI WEISSTUB: I this school of binational psychotherapy started as an idea in the intifada of 2000 that started the second intifada in 2000, where there were terrorist explosions all over Israel and then army action in the West Bank and Gaza. And then colleagues we met in the conference in Europe and we thought we should do something together. The idea is to train Palestinian mental health providers, Arab-Israeli mental health providers and Jewish-Israelis together and trying to achieve two goals. One is to improve the level of mental health services that are actually being offered to the children and adolescents in the area, because that's our main concern, that we give them the best treatment. I mean, I can't obviously affect politics as much as I would like to, but I can certainly treat the victims. So we try to improve those abilities as best we can and at the same time building some real, genuine bridge that grows through getting to know each other on a regular basis. The first group of 15 students all have MA degree in psychology, social work, or [unintelligible] we were supposed to study for two years, but they actually to extend it for third year years. And now we are with the second group of 30 students. We doubled the numbers and I can say- whatever I would say would not represented strongly enough how meaningful it is for the members of the group to realise the reality on the other side. To have a religious woman, a Jewish woman, that I'm assuming, I'm assuming her politics are right wing, to see her cooking holiday dinner because we had an ad-hoc meeting - via Zoom, the whole course this year, obviously, via Zoom because of corona - and saying that through this course she got to know a psychologist in Gaza, and she's in daily conversation with her. And her own children, again, religious Jewish children that have never met the other or the enemy, ask her daily, did you already speak to her? Is she safe? What is she telling you today? It's very meaningful.

MG: Does that give you that hope that despite the cycle that Russia was talking about, that there is some sort of optimism?

DR. ESTI GALILI WEISSTUB: Of course, because. In spite of all the aggression, there is historical and genuine closeness between the Palestinians and the Jews. We do live here together and I think we both realise that it's our home. So I think that given a chance, there is, and I'm not illusiona,l given the chance, there is a real need for cooperation and hope. Jews and Arabs do have a real ability. I know that the past two weeks are certainly, attest to the opposite, but it's not true. We all can be violent, but we all can be also very positive, creative and sensitive. And I just think it depends what you encourage within your society.

MG: And what you can model for your children as well.

DR. ESTI GALILI WEISSTUB: There's no question about that. Yes, I think it's very, very hard to convince children to be open minded and sensitive when they feel attacked, when they feel threatened, when they fear for their life, but once you manage to take that immediate threat away. It's much easier they have a curiosity and they have empathy, and I think from knowing one's own children, their interests in the other is as big as any kind of other driver that they have.

MG: Doctor, it's good to speak with you. Thank you very much. And I hope we have the chance to talk again.

DR. ESTI GALILI WEISSTUB: Yes. And I do hope that we'll have a better future in the Middle East.

MG: Dr. Esti Galili Weisstub is director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem and co leader of the Binational School of Psychotherapy. She was in Jerusalem. Well, coming up after your regional update, Marvin Kalb says authoritarianism has put down roots in the United States and he should know he spent the Cold War years reporting from Moscow. Marvin Kalb is here in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway The Current.

Veteran journalist Marvin Kalb on covering Cold War Russia

Guests: Marvin Kalb

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway, you're listening to The Current,

SOUNDCLIP

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate, yes, and even it can inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise, it's nothing but wires and lights in a box.

MG: The legendary CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow in 1958, speaking about this new thing called television. Murrow was a pioneer in broadcast news, both on radio and on TV. He assembled around him a group of journalists who would become known as the Murrow Boys. Marvin Kalb was part of that exclusive club. He became the CBS Moscow bureau chief in the 1960s and now at 90, has published a retrospective of his life as a journalist covering the Soviet Union during some of the chilliest most dangerous days of the Cold War. The new book is called Assignment Russia Becoming a Foreign Correspondent in the Crucible of the Cold War. Marvin Kalb, good morning.

MARVIN KALB: Good morning. Nice to be with you.

MG: Great to have you here. Edward R. Murrow made those comments 63 years ago. What do you think he would make of the television landscape today?

MARVIN KALB: Oh, I think he would repeat the same thing. I think Murrow had a very unusual - now, when we look back upon it - point of view about the value of what it is that he was doing. The value of journalism. There were a group of correspondents who were, in effect, formed. Their attitudes were formed during World War Two. They were totally emotionally, professionally opposed to the rise of fascism. And they saw what fascism could do and did do in Germany. And they wanted to get the news out to the American people so that they would do on their own what they had to do to make sure their society would never succumb to authoritarian or dictatorial tendencies.

MG: And now television and television news and cable news in particular in many ways, has become weaponized in that fight.

MARVIN KALB: Well, you know, in a funny kind of way, in my judgement, anyway, the media has become part of the political warfare in the United States. They didn't want to, but they have become part of this warfare. And therefore, some aspects of the media and I focus on Fox News almost immediately are regarded as spokespeople for an extreme right wing point of view in the United States. And then MSNBC, for example, is regarded by adherents to FOX as the opposite side, the enemy. And as someone who was once silent, as you pointed out, Nixon's enemies list, I am very well aware of the dangers of categorising journalists. We're not supposed to be in either camp. We are there, forgive me, above it all, looking down, trying as best we can to understand what is happening and to convey what is happening to the people as best we can without any kind of bias. Now, people can argue today that everybody has a bias and as opposed to to a certain extent, that's right. But we are also professionals and we know how to put the bias aside while we convey the news.

MG: Let me just ask you just one more thing about Murrow. He hired you. What was he like to work with? I mean, there's a scene that you describe in the book and he walks through the newsroom and it's like the crowd's part, like he's Moses walking through the sea. There's something. What was that like?

MARVIN KALB: Well, I had a different kind of relationship with Murrow than most of the guys in the newsroom did, simply because it was Murrow who invited me to join CBS. I had been a teacher of Russian history up at Harvard. I knew the language because I had lived in Russia for 13 months in 1956-7 and I had written an article for the New York Times Magazine on Soviet youth. Murrow read it, apparently liked it a lot and called me on Monday morning, invited me to come down to see him. There was supposed to be a half hour meeting. It lasted three hours. Murrow was intensely curious about every aspect of Soviet life, and Murrow wanted me - if I could make it through this very talented field of CBS reporters - he wanted me to be the CBS Moscow correspondent. He wanted somebody there who knew about the country and spoke the language. So he kind of looked after me and I pray that I did not disappoint him. I don't think I did. Everyone else looked upon him as what he did was. He was a kind of idol for everybody. He was a pioneer. He started this whole idea about reporting live from all over the world. The World News Roundup is still on at eight o'clock in the morning at CBS. And that concept that you use the technology of the moment to convey the news to the people, he was associated with that because he started it and everybody knew that. And he was the kind of guy who was, for the most part, rather quiet when he walked into a newsroom. He didn't easily engage in conversation with people. He was very pleasant. And I don't want to convey the impression that he felt above that he did. He felt one of them, but he was not the type who easily patted someone on the back and how are you doing and how is the family. He didn't talk that way. He talked about the substance of the news as it was breaking. It seemed that was were totally absorbed him. He looked like a man carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. He really did

MG: you arrive as a reporter in Moscow in 1960 and just days after it's revealed that the Soviet Union has shot down an American U2 spy plane, describe what it was like as a reporter to step into that country?

MARVIN KALB: Well, first, it must be stressed that we were probably in one of the chilliest moments of the Cold War. The U2 spy plane was shot down right over the Soviet city of Sverdlov on May 1st, 1960. There was to be a full powers summit meeting on Berlin starting on May 16th, 1960 in Paris. And everyone, particularly Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union, for whom Berlin, the division of Berlin, was a bone in my throat, as he called it. He was intent first on trying what he called peaceful coexistence, that you would work with the West, cooperate with the West in order to achieve your ends. There were a lot of people in the Kremlin who didn't go along with that, but that was Khrushchev decided the problem was that the intensity of the distrust of the suspicion, one for the other was so obvious that when you walked in the streets in Moscow in those days, people looked at you and they knew immediately, well, first, because I'm very tall. But aside from that, your clothing, your manner, the way you walk, where you talked, literally, you were different. You were the enemy. And I spoke the language. It was not an easy thing to establish contact with Russians. They were afraid of you. They were concerned that they could be locked up if it seemed to a communist official that they were being, quote, "friendly" to a Western correspondent. So I did not have many Russian friends at that time. I had a couple, but they were very precious to me. And I never, ever tried to talk to them in a public setting. It was all always private, the best we could do anyway.

MG: What was your fascination with Russia? Because as you mentioned, I mean, you'd studied it, you'd studied the language. You're fascinated with the politics, but it's also the culture. What was what was so interesting to you about what was happening?

MARVIN KALB: I mean, bear in mind that that Russia, for all of its history and all of our history, we have never fought the Russians as enemies. We had never, ever, up to this point fought the Russians. Therefore, one could argue that the national interest of both sides was such that neither wanted to engage in any kind of hostile activity against the other. The Cold War was a period when we drifted closer to actual translation of hostility into combat during the Cuban missile crisis. Toward the end of nineteen sixty two, we were literally a blink away from the opening of a nuclear war. Khrushchev at the time said the living would envy the dead. He didn't want anything. Kennedy didn't want it. So both leaders were wise enough to withdraw from the field of battle and engage much, much more in their fear of nuclear war, engage much more in a negotiated manner to try to resolve differences between the two sides. But those were very rough times. And one of the reasons that I did a memoir about that time was that I wanted very much for readers to understand what journalism was like back then and to understand what the world was like back then.

MG: Who was the Khrushchev that you came to know? Because he was looked at from many Americans is as a bit of a buffoon in some ways. And you came to know him. He called you Peter the Great.

MARVIN KALB: Yeah, well, that was a funny story and it was very helpful to me as a reporter. But in 1956, when I served at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow as a translator and an interpreter, I was able to have access because I had a diplomatic passport. I had access to Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union, to the extent that any person speaking Russian at the U.S. embassy and there were four of us, then one of us at an embassy function would almost inevitably get into a conversation with him because he was a very talkative guy. He was a very unusual communist leader. On this particular July 4th reception at the spousal house residence of the United States ambassador Charles Bohlen, Khrushchev was invited and he showed up with the entire Politburo, and because I was one of four people at the embassy who spoke Russian, the ambassador assigned me to deal with Marshal Zhukov, who was the minister of defence. He drank eight. But as I drank a waters, they looked the same. So he did know. And at the end of this experience, he was kind of tipsy and walked over to Khrushchev and said, I have finally found a young American who can drink like a Russian Khrushchev love that burst into laughter, looked up at me. I stood then at six, three and probably six to now. And you said, How tall are you? I can't tell you exactly why I said this, but I did. I said, I'm three centimetres shorter. And Peter the great Khrushchev loved that line. And forever thereafter, whenever he saw me, you referred to me as Peter the Great. And there's a wonderful story if we have the time, that in May when the Paris summit opened up, I got an exclusive with Khrushchev because I joined him very, very early in front of the Russian ambassador's residence where he was staying. I always knew that when he travelled, Khrushchev loved to get up early in the morning and take a walk. So we got a crew, Khrushchev at 7:00 a.m., the Russian doors open. You walked out, you looked at me. I looked at him and he said, Oh, yeah, we have Peter the Great. And we started a conversation. We passed a boulangerie and the magnificent aroma of freshly baked croissant came on out into the street to greet us. And we both stopped sniffed and a wonderful smile came over Khrushchev space. And he said, What is that? I said, It's a croissant. Have you ever had one, sir? You said, no. I said, Would you like one? He said, yes. I ran in and bought a couple of croissants. He bit into his. And honestly, it was such a rapturous expression on his face. He said, [Russian speech]. This is really tasty. He loved it. And I knew I had my moment. And I began to ask him about Berlin, about the U2 spy plane, about whether they would actually be a summit meeting opening on Monday morning. It turned out Khrushchev bombarded that and there was no summit meeting, but there was the possibility of one because they were all gathered in Paris. And the accidental exclusive that I had for CBS and it was my first I was very excited about it, of course. But having the that interview sort of set off once it was reported, set off a great deal of speculation that day about whether they would even be a summit meeting. And it turned out that there would not be. And Khrushchev went home in a fury. Eisenhower left feeling very disappointed, but there was nothing more he could do. And it really set back U.S. Soviet relations and deep in the Cold War. And anyway, I hope people read about it and remember where we were because truly we could be in the same place tomorrow morning.

MG: Well, what about where we're at right now? I mean, there are pundits who have said that there's very little difference in many ways between past Russian leaders and Vladimir Putin.

MARVIN KALB: That is true. Of course, to an extent, all leaders of a country bears similarities to one another. And Putin certainly has spoken reluctantly but positively about Joseph Stalin. And he really feels that the Soviet period of Russian history was a great period. Most people would disagree, including, by the way, most of the Russian people. Nevertheless, that is his grip on power. And to the extent that Putin does represent former dictators of Russia, the Russian people have been coerced with a horrible political leadership for hundreds of years. Putin feels by associating himself with these former dictators, he becomes himself more of a nationalist figure. And he believes, and there's some merit to this, that the Russian people want require almost a strong and a strong leader. And Putin has fashioned himself as this kind of strong leader who knows how to lead the Russian people to greatness. What's interesting to me is that in recent years. According to polling data done by the Levada Group, and they're the only major group inside Russia you could give some credence to, the numbers there have been going down, Putin's popularity has been going down. Even somebody like Navalny has not been able to to dent into that kind of strength because Putin represents our our he represents old fashioned Soviet style power. And you don't mess with that unless you want to go to war with it. And most countries around the world today don't really want an open war between Russia and the United States. So I think where we are now is a dangerous period. It's not the Cold War and Putin is not Stalin. And the Russian people today are much more advanced than they were 50, 80 years ago. But the times are incredibly difficult and therefore dangerous. And a miscalculation on either side could produce danger of a sort that we're not used to. We're now in a cyber warfare environment. And I fear that when you don't know the technology all that well, you might end up stumbling into something truly dangerous and unpredictable.

MG: Let me enlist in the remaining minutes that we have. Talk about a different interpretation in many ways of the dangerous period that people might see themselves in right now. And this is about in the United States. This goes back to Edward R. Murrow. This is one of the most famous moments in television history on see it now at the end of an exposé on Senator Joseph McCarthy.

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But we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies. Whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create the situation of fear. He merely exploited it. And rather successfully. Cassuis was right. The fault there, Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. Good night and good luck.

MG: President Trump referred to journalists as enemies of the people. That's an old Stalinist phrase. There are a lot of people who see and it's not just in Russia, but see in the United States, echoes of the past unfolding in recent years in your country. Were you worried that that the United States was turning towards authoritarianism under Trump?

MARVIN KALB: Yes. And very early on, I wrote a short book called Enemy of the People because I was shocked, truly shocked by the fact that an American president would use terminology such as enemy of the people to describe the American press. You can disagree with an editorial position, but the editorial writer has the right to write it and he cannot be classified as an enemy. And when an American president used expressions like that to describe the American press corps, that reminded me as a student of the Soviet Union and Russia in general, that was Joseph Stalin's favourite line when it came to the press that they were enemies of the people. Mao Tse tung in China spoke about enemies of the people, meaning the press. Mussolini spoke about that in Italy. In other words, it was in the 20th century the namesake of extremists, of fascists, of communist rulers. How could an American president say something like that? I was shocked and therefore wrote that book. But I can tell you one thing. The problem is now deeper than a president attacking the press. The United States right now - and here I agree with President Biden completely - the American political system today has broken into two parts. One, in my judgement, is a mainstay of continuing the essence of democratic rule. The other is beginning to take on the characteristics of an authoritarian governorship. And that is unbelievably dangerous. And I think that people in America, in the United States ought to be mindful of this division happening before our eyes and we've got to do something about this. And yet, what is it that we can do? And there is a slippery slope that we are on, in the United States, now. We may be able to get off it. I don't see how at the moment and almost every single day, certain steps and certain votes taken by the Republican Party in the United States demonstrate a continuing slippage in the standards of democracy. And we've got to be mindful of that. And the people up in Canada can do something about it. Please help us.

MG: What should the role of the journalist be in that polarised environment, do you think?

MARVIN KALB: Well, that's the problem. I was saying earlier that the journalist has become part of the warfare. Yeah, the journalists are now split themselves and that is the danger. If you do not have a force above it all and look down and say, hey, that's not right and right about that broadcast, about that we're in serious trouble, who is going to be the person who stands up and says enough is enough? It's very interesting that in Murrow's time he had this belief that because of Hitler, the journalist had to be incredibly mindful of a slippage toward authoritarianism. I have that same feeling today.

MG: You're 90 years old. You are still turning out those books. You're still tweeting, you're still speaking about current affairs. You could put your feet up and you could take it easy. What is it that you know, he says...

MARVIN KALB: You know, you do that you can never do that. It doesn't matter whether you've been a journalist or not. I have. But as I said before, one of the reasons for this newest book, the assignment, rushed to book, I wanted very much to tell a personal story. It's a memoir, but I wanted to put it in terms that people could understand and associate with and perhaps in that association, come to a closer relationship to the dangers they currently face, The United States, and because of our leadership capacity in the world up to this point. I don't think that we've got it now. But we did have it. And because we had it, maybe it's recoverable, maybe. And if it is, it's hard to those other countries around the world that have always looked to the United States as the leader in an effort to secure freedom and democracy for as many people in the world as choose to experiment with.

MG: You've had an extraordinary life and it continues. And I look forward to the next book. In the meantime, it's a great pleasure to talk to you about this one. Thank you very much.

MARVIN KALB: Thank you.

MG: My pleasure. Marvin Kalb is the former Moscow bureau chief for CBS News. His new book is called Assignment Russia: Becoming a Foreign Correspondent in the Crucible of the Cold War. Well, that is The Current for this Friday. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's Q. Andrew McCarthy speaking with guest host Ali Hassan. Andrew McCarthy was in some of the biggest Hollywood hits of the 1980s saying Almost Fire, Less than Zero, Pretty in Pink. Just as he was getting really famous, though, he kind of stepped back from life in the spotlight. He has written a new memoir about that time in his life. And you will hear all about it coming up in just a few moments on CBC Radio One. Pretty in Pink. It was a story of, I mean, in many ways was like a high school story. Andrew McCarthy played the preppy kid, Molly Ringwald, was a love interest. And of course, there was Ducky who a lot of us kind of really associate ourselves with. Does the film stand up now? I'm not entirely sure about that, but the soundtrack certainly does. It had a great soundtrack and this is from that soundtrack, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. And if you leave, I'm Matt Galloway thanks for listening to The Current have a great weekend and we'll talk to you on Monday.

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[Song]

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