No 'quick fix' for what's driving spate of Winnipeg liquor store thefts, expert says

Guest: Suzanne Dufresne

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[Noises]

Call the cops.

LL: Now, that is a sound that is becoming all too familiar to people living in Winnipeg. Call the cops. It is the sound of someone trying to wrestle an alleged thief to the ground at a government run liquor store. It's just one of many videos that are making the rounds on social media these days as police and justice officials attempt to deal with a worrying trend, increasingly public brazen liquor store thefts. Our producer Suzanne Dufresne is with me from Winnipeg to fill us in on what's happening. Hi.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Hello there.

LL: Now, that sounds like a lot of bottles banging around. How did that end?

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Well, police did arrive eventually, but with the number of thefts that are happening, it's impossible for them to keep up, never mind answer every call.

LL: Okay. Well, then what kind of numbers are we talking about?

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: The Winnipeg Police Service estimates they're getting between 10 and 20 calls a day every day. The Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries Corporation pegs it at hundreds of thefts per week, mainly in Winnipeg. And keep in mind, there are fewer than 40 liquor stores in the city.

LL: Okay. All those numbers are absolutely shocking to me.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Shocking. Disturbing. Pick an adjective. According to the Retail Council of Canada. Shoplifting rates in downtown Winnipeg are among the worst in the country. And that's driven in part by thefts at liquor stores. So here in Winnipeg, police are now warning the public not to take out their phones and record these events while they're in progress because they could become an unintended target of the thieves. Police are also telling folks not to intervene and attempt a citizen's arrest. One reason is there could be legal complications, never mind putting your own safety at risk. Here's Winnipeg Police Constable Jay Murray speaking to reporters.

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Individuals have to be very careful when making the decision to intervene with it, with either a theft or a robbery that might be happening in front of their eyes. The first concern is safety. A lot of these individuals are carrying weapons. They can be unpredictable. They can be agitated. And especially if you're about to restrain them, they might become very desperate and use that weapon. You need to be really mindful of that and you have to weigh the balance between your own safety, your well-being. And that's probably the small amount of property that you think that you're going to be able to recover or stop the crime. So is your life really worth a bottle of alcohol? And that's what it comes down to.

LL: And the answer would be, no, your life isn't worth a bottle of booze. That's pretty clear. So explain to me what these thieves are doing.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Well, this is where the public part of it all comes in. And this is what's getting all the attention. In some cases, crews of people are coming in with duffel bags and backpacks and stealing as much liquor as they can carry. I've seen it firsthand. Five, six people came into the liquor store. One young woman was standing right beside me, filling up her tote bag. When I looked around, the people she had arrived with had targeted different sections of the store. Someone grabbing liqueur, someone else grabbing bottles of whisky, their heads down, filling up their bags. It felt pretty coordinated.

LL: So did the staff see what you were seeing?

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: They did. The manager said he was calling the police. But by the time I really understood what was happening, the thieves were already heading to the exit. Their bags clinking way beside them as they walked out the door to a waiting vehicle.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Honestly, I think the whole thing was over in two or three minutes.

LL: That's fast. And the staff just didn't do anything? They didn't intervene?

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Call it the response. And that's exactly what they're supposed to do. Just like the warning to customers, staff is not supposed to can. Front the thieves or do anything to stop them. After I witnessed that theft, I spoke to some of the employees. They were visibly shaken because, of course, as I learned, it had happened so many times before.

LL: So if I think about this in terms of my own workplace, I think about somebody coming into my office and maybe taking my purse or taking something else out of it and just walking away. To me, that that's just crazy.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: That's right. And it made me wonder, what would it be like going to work every day and facing that. So I went for a drive past a few different liquor stores with Leo Dame. He knows a lot about this. He's a former assistant manager at Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries who just retired a few weeks ago. He says he's happier for it.

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LEO DAME: This is my lorazepam. This is something that was suggested to me by my physician to help me cope with the very many situations that I've been dealing with. Deciding to take stuff like this for the rest of my life to deal with going to work wasn't a very good option for me.

LL: I imagine that some sort of a tranquilizer or something to calm him down from the stress. I guess he decided to retire rather than deal with all that stress.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: After 34 years on the job, I think it's fair to say there were a number of factors that led him to put in his papers. But these last few years dealing with the increase in shoplifting. It was certainly a tipping point for him.

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LEO DAME: The last time I was robbed, the gentleman was exiting the store in a bit of a hurry. He may have had 10 or 12 bottles inside of a basket that he was exiting the store with. I was coming around the corner, so I didn't quite realize instantly what was going on. And as he as he approached me at speed and I put my hand out to touch the basket, sort of to stop him from hitting me. He pulled a knife from his waist and had it up close to my throat within a fraction of a second. I literally didn't see this one coming that quick. It can happen that fast. So you really do have to pay attention to what's going on there. My fear and this from what I've seen in the liquor stores, it is going to be a guy coming around the corner that absolutely doesn't realize what's going on. He has his ear buds on. He's in a different world and he's about to get smocked with a bottle because if he thinks he's going to stop them. We've seen guns. We've seen knives. We've seen pipes. We've seen [unintelligible]. We've seen a lot of actual weapons that can be used. But in the store itself, there are thousands of glass bottles on the shelves. And many of times they have been picked up, thrown at us or picked up and used as a weapon against us. That's just another added factor. That's very scary to us.

LL: Very scary sounds like an understatement. Leo's painting quite a picture about what it's actually like to work in a liquor store in Winnipeg.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: And of course, he knows people who still work there. I think that's why he agreed to talk to me. He's worried about them for their safety. And also, he told me a number of times about how hard it is when a store is being robbed. Customers are looking at them, expecting them to do something. I mean, I did. I was watching the store manager who was just trying to keep everyone calm, saying he was going to call the police, which again, is exactly what he's supposed to do. Here's Leo.

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LEO DAME: A lot of people are confused as to what's going on. One of the first things that happens when this happens, people look at you. Sometimes within a fraction of a second, they'd be yelling at you. Why are you not doing nothing? Absolute chaos. The thieves have been told that we're not going to touch them, that they are not going to be manhandled or touched in any way, shape or form. To this day, I don't think you could ever fully explain to me why we had to see that or why any company or corporation would actually say that out loud. And now the cat's out of the bag and it's over. So we'll absolutely have to stop the customer from attempting to stop the thief. Sometimes it's is a few quick words. Sometimes you physically need to step between them. Sometimes you need to make a decision if he's more as aggressive as the thief. You move away. Customers have been in fights in liquor stores. Customers have been hurt. Some customers have won. It's really not the point. They're going to need to be as educated as the liquor store clerk is. Otherwise, some of them think they're doing good. Kids are running around liquor store. They meant to slow them down. They don't realize what's really going on. I have an elderly lady in there yelling at the young thief: You should be in school. I mean, that lady had good intentions, but she didn't root, doesn't realize that she's dealing with somebody who's probably worse than what she's ever met before.

LL: So, Suzanne, have people been hurt?

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: There have been reports of people getting stitches from attacks with broken bottles, sure. But for the number of thefts and reports of weapons, police say they're grateful there haven't been more injuries.

LL: Well, that police what are they doing? What is store management doing to deal with all of this?

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Google security or loss prevention officer and dozens and dozens of job openings come up in Winnipeg. Business is booming. And you are seeing more security in some stores, including hiring off duty police to act as a visible deterrent. Sometimes there are undercover cops. There's more video surveillance and they're also trying things like changing the layout of some stores. Everyone says they're working on it.

LL: Working on it. Are the efforts working, though?

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Well, they are making arrests in the past couple of weeks. Manitoba Liquor and Lottery says there were 50 arrests of liquor thieves, but the thefts keep happening. It frustrates Leo, who's pretty straightforward. Take a listen to his idea and then you'll hear Manitoba Liquor and lottery spokesperson Andrea Kowal.

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LEO DAME: Well, I believe we should just enforce a simple law that we have; to come in this door, you must be 18 years of age, you must have ID. Those are very simple things. You have the right to stop them from coming in here. It's what you're actually supposed to do. They're so open and not afraid as they're walking and they're opening up their duffel bag or picking their basket up and they're filling it at a rapid speed. And it is terribly obvious to me that that's not a shopper. Right. We have watched multiple people roam the shelves and filling baskets so full if you're ever looking at what they're putting in. You already have a great idea that they're certainly not going to pay for it. I'm not sure how the general public would like it if they're walking to the pot store and taking everything.

ANDREA KOWAL: If you think that we haven't thought about locking the stores, only letting certain people in. Going to consumers, distributing model. You'd be crazy to think that we haven't looked at every possible option. One of the risks we have is we have to keep our staff and our customers safe. And what's happening with some of these solutions is it's just shifting the risk away from our store and our product. That's right. Now we're trying to keep it at. They are stealing product as soon as customers intervene. We have or staff intervene, we have humans at risk. We have people at risk. And we can't let that happen. If we close our doors, then maybe they're going to start robbing people in the parking lots. So you can't get into the Liquor Mart, you can't buy liquor unless it's you with your I.D. But next thing you know, they're going to start robbing people at their cars because they can't get into our liquor marts anymore.

LL: This is what it's come to, robbing people in the parking lot. Who is this 'they' that Andrea Kowal is talking about? Who's robbing the stores?

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: I think it cuts a pretty wide demographic when you check out Instagram and Facebook. You see a lot of young faces with posts of their halls with hashtags like 'F Liquor Mart' or 'Liquor For Sale'. But interestingly, when I checked with Legal Aid in Winnipeg this week, the number of theft charges for people under 18 was actually down slightly from April of this year, while adult rates are up 22 percent in the same period.

LL: I just want to back up for a second. The liquor that you mentioned is on social media sold out in the open.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Some of it is. Police call it the new underground currency to buy drugs or weapons or just make money. And police are quick to point out that this stolen liquor could very well be leading to more crime caused by the people who drink it. Not to mention the fact that some of this booze is certainly ending up in the hands of minors.

LL: Does that mean, then, that this is gang related?

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Well, unlike in Edmonton, where there was a rash of liquor store thefts in the summer that authorities linked to organized gangs, Winnipeg police say that's not the case. Here's what they sent me. And I'm quoting: "We haven't identified a conclusive link between street gangs and the rise of liquor related thefts. We feel the rise of property crime as a whole can be partly attributed to the use of methamphetamine or other addictive substances such as alcohol. But there are also other social problems that may be driving the increase".

LL: They're saying then these thefts are a symptom of something bigger.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: They are big picture in Winnipeg. Property crime in general is up 44 percent over the five year average. Winnipeg is dealing with an escalating homicide rate. Eleven people in the last month, including the death of a three year old Hunter Straight Smith.

LL: I saw that. That is such a sad story. But there has been this big outpouring of support for the family.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: There has been. And the man accused in that case was caught after he allegedly robbed a liquor store and a nearby business owner called 911.

LEO DAME: That's a pretty stark example of how these liquor thefts are part of a bigger problem. So that begs the question, what are the politicians doing about it?

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Laura Winnipeg's mayor is calling the violence a crisis. He's written to the premier and the prime minister because he says we can't just keep doing the same things. The victims and their families need to get help. And I think many people in the community are looking for some action to stop the violence. People are posting on social media, talking about how vulnerable they feel. And these public liquor store thefts are only adding to that sense of insecurity.

LL: So I want to come back then to why it's so bad, Suzanne. The police statement mentioned addiction, social problems. That should point to some solutions, shouldn't it?

LL: It should. And there are lots of local organizations that say they could do more if they had more money. But these are deep rooted problems, too. I talked to Bronwyn Dobchuk Land. She's an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Winnipeg. She looks at the big picture and I'll add she herself has witnessed three liquor store thefts in the past year.

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BRONWYN DOBCHUK LAND: The question of why? Why people would decide to put themselves in the vulnerable position of engaging in a liquor store theft should also cause us to pause and think, because these are people who have decided that they have more to gain from taking something from the liquor store and potentially getting caught than they have to lose. There is clearly a particular expression of both frustration and thrill seeking happening in this moment, and it's clearly striking a chord with the public. So we've got this intense amount of outrage being directed at poor people. We're not as mad that poor people are so poor that they can't survive, that they're starving to death, that they're freezing to death, that they don't have homes, that they're being pushed out of public spaces. So while I recognize that it's a highly stressful situation, I would say that the stress isn't going to be resolved through the intensification of policing or the barricading of liquor marts. The truth of the matter is that there's not a quick fix to these types of problems.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: A thoughtful answer, I think, that sums up how many folks on the frontline feel.

LL: Suzanne, thanks so much for this.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Thank you.

LL: Suzanne, Ukraine is a CBC producer in Winnipeg.

[Music]

LL: The CBC News is coming up next, then in just over half an hour. The legacy of the Berlin Wall. For 28 years, it divided a city physically and ideologically.

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NEWSCASTER 1: The attention of an anxious world is focussed on East and West Germany and Berlin.

NEWSCASTER 2: The Wall, the final plug in an Iron Curtain running from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Twelve feet high and built of concrete blocks topped with barbed wire guarded by police.

VOICE: While the wall is the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the communist system for all the world to see, we take no satisfaction in it for it here. As your mayor has said, an offence not only against history, but an offence against humanity. All free man, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the word 'Ich bin ein Berliner'.

[Cheers]

VOICE 2: General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. [Cheers and applause] Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

[Cheers and applause]

PETER JENNINGS: I'm Peter Jennings in New York, just a short while ago, astonishing news from East Germany where the East German authorities have said, in essence, of the Berlin Wall doesn't mean anything anymore. The wall of the East Germans put up in 1961 to keep its people in will now be breached by anybody who wants to leave.

LL: Now, 30 years after that news, you'll meet two women who grew up in the east.

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VOICE: They had their informants all over the place. They left signs like a key on the kitchen table. They entered apartments actually just to scare people, to let them know we there. We watch you.

LL: You'll hear what it was like growing up in the shadow of the Stasi and their reflections on the invisible scars that remain in our documentary Wall in the Head. I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

Middle east

Guest: Robert Fisk

LL: Hello, I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

LL: Still to come, 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the barriers that remain. But first, a longtime Middle East correspondent gives his take on the current chaos.

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DONALD TRUMP: Turkey, Syria and all forms of the Kurds have been fighting for centuries. We have done them a great service and we've done a great job for all of them. And now we're getting out. Let someone else fight over this long blood stained sand.

LL: On October 23, President Donald Trump announced a permanent ceasefire in northern Syria and defended the decision to pull U.S. troops out of the region. It's a move that even members of his own party denounced as a betrayal of the Kurdish forces which fought beside U.S. troops. And it's just the latest in a series of actions the Trump administration has taken that have shaken the Middle East. For insight on the impact it's had. I'm joined by Robert Fisk. He's been covering the region since 1976 and is Middle East correspondent with the British news outlet, The Independent, based in Beirut. He's in Canada on a tense city speaking tour organized by the Palestinian advocacy group Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East. He's with me from our Montreal studio. Hello.

ROBERT FISK: Hi, Laura.

LL: When Donald Trump announced he was pulling the last of the U.S. troops out of northern Syria, what was your reaction?

ROBERT FISK: Typical. I thought, you know, because I live in the Middle East and I travelled to all these places and I talk mainly to the people who live there. They've long regarded Trump as being pretty insane, the sort of guy. I think the Kurds were the only people who didn't realize that he would betray them just as they were betrayed decades ago by Henry Kissinger.

LL: And before that, by others as well.

ROBERT FISK: Well, I think the British probably have some role in that as well. Look, I think in the Middle East, you have to realize that Arabs now think of the Trump administration as being insane, bizarre, weird crackpot. Whereas, you know, the choice seems to be between a mad guy in the White House or a sane tyrant in Moscow. And I think therefore, they prefer the Kremlin. And that is America's great loss. But I wasn't really surprised in the moment I read Trump's letter to Erdoğan on October the 9th. You know, don't be a fool. Don't be a tough guy. It was quite obvious that he didn't care about the Kurds. Remember, at one point he said the Kurds didn't participate in D-Day. I mean, what sort of a perverted mind works out that kind of history?

LL: And then forgetting the history of the Kurds actually participating in World War Two and defending the United States in wars past. But whether he is insane or not, he still is the president. And he has to be dealt with. Now, do you see a policy and what he is doing?

ROBERT FISK: No, there is no policy. I'm always annoyed when some of my colleagues talk about the Trump policy in the Middle East. You know, my colleagues in various Arab governments, journalists I'm talking about, they talk to American embassies all over the all over the Middle East and the American embassies tell them that when they ring the State Department, no one picks up the telephone. How can we talk about a policy? There isn't any. I mean, one, we have the Americans have a policy that the Kurds will defend them against ISIS and conquer ISIS. And they have a policy to hand the territory over to the Turks who then kill the Kurds. That isn't a policy. I mean, even if you go back in some of the most terrible foreign policies of modern European history and the most evil one is obviously Hitler. You know, it was infinitely evil than any other foreign policy since. But at least you could follow it. It made sense even if it was wicked. But Trump's policy doesn't really exist. It's impossible to follow because the idea of there being a foreign policy within the Trump administration is as weird as saying that, you know, Trump's tweets are literature.

LL: You've compared declining U.S. influence in the Middle East with the decline of Rome. I was reading about that. Can you tell me a bit about the similarities that you've noticed?

ROBERT FISK: Well, I mean, a lot of Roman emperors were bunkers, which is obviously what Trump is. And the other thing was that they used to constantly want to use legions abroad. And they didn't realize how the reputation of the Roman Empire was decaying, how the Goths Austria got some Visigoths who would have been the ISIS of their time as far as Rome was concerned. Immediately said, well, we're going to cross the Rhine and into the Roman Empire. This this thing won't last. And after a while, the enemies of Rome, instead of fearing the Roman Empire, they began to laugh at it, which is what many people do now towards the United States. And much more seriously than that, the Roman emperor sort the economy was going very well, but didn't realize that the Roman allies in North Africa in Bithynia, which would be modern day Turkey, were no longer able to survive as citizens of the empire, and they turned against it. They were constant rebellions against Roman Power and the legions were sent out and the Legion started fighting each other. If there are parallels, I think there are they're not very happy conclusions.

LL: But it's also something that you say didn't happen quickly. It happened step by step incrementally.

ROBERT FISK: Well American empire hasn't faded yet. I don't think it will. But if one was going to be a historian of the future, I think one will look back and if you want to see when the first cracks and fissures began, it would have been with the election of Donald Trump.

LL: Let's talk about the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Should it should people be concerned about ISIS filling the power vacuum by the fact that he was killed by American troops?

ROBERT FISK: I think the whole point is that killing leaders of guerrilla organizations is much more sort of propaganda than it is real. I notice Trump called him Abu Bakar al-Baghdadi, which would have pleased his ghost, no doubt. But immediately we had this pseudo al-Quraishi leader, allegedly prophet's lineage appointed. And what's much more important and again, has been totally missed by the Western media is that within a week of Baghdadi's death, by suicide, along with three of his children, there was a huge ISIS attack on a French built military base in the Grand Sahara in Mali. Remember, the French are fighting Daish ISIS in Mali. The French built this fortress for 100 soldiers of the Mali army. And in one hour, ISIS stormed it. This is within a week of the death of Baghdadi, killed or executed 46 of the 80 soldiers who were in there, the rest fled and ran away, and took it over. So a large area of the Mali Grand Sahara Desert has now fallen back into ISIS hands within a week of the death of Baghdadi. That's how you fill a vacuum, isn't it? But again, we ignored this. I haven't seen it reported hardly maybe a paragraph in the Canadian Press.

LL: But that shouldn't surprise anyone. I think that people had noticed in the past that just by cutting off the head of an organization, you don't actually kill the thing.

ROBERT FISK: No. You know, at the end of the day, ISIS was created by the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. And once these creatures are created, they're a bit like cancer. You can't get rid of it. I mean, you might get rid of it here or there or you might have, you know, a period of good health. But then back it comes again. And the only way to deal with creatures like ISIS or Daish or any organization which uses violence in this way is to try and create something called justice. Justice in the Middle East. And that means fairness. That means goodness, decency, helping people with education. Education is the great missing element in the Middle East. Secular education. But we won't talk about it. We're not interested in justice because that would raise serious questions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And no one wants to talk about that.

LL: Does that mean, then, that there should also be no no foreign soldiers in the Middle East? I mean, I think you said in the past they shouldn't be.

ROBERT FISK: And I think there should not be one foreign soldier. By all means, send agronomists, agricultural educators, you know, send everyone who- health doctors, surgeons, if they request them, which I'm sure why they always have and they probably will. And we should be happy to to honour that request. But I worked ten years ago now for one of the Sunday magazines that we had head for head. I mean, you know, by head of population, we now had more soldiers in the Middle East and the crusaders had in the 12th century. There are fewer now. Of course, Mr. Trump's made sure of that only, but still.

LL: But that's a good thing, isn't it? But there are fewer now.

ROBERT FISK: Well, no, because he hasn't made them fewer. He's taken them out of Syria, but he's put twice as many into Saudi Arabia, although admittedly the Saudis are supposed to pay them because the Americans are now turning in Saudi terms into a mercenary army. I don't think that's a very good sign at all.

DONALS TRUMP: So is there a reasonable, less chaotic weighing down of American involvement in Middle East conflicts?

ROBERT FISK: Yes, I've always thought that, you know, if you go back to the last period when the world had optimism, which was the years, despite the Cold War, the years that followed the Second World War. We set up the United Nations. You know, we had the International Committee of the Red Cross, which was turned into a serious humanitarian organization. Then we had people like Amnesty, Human Rights Watch. You know, we believed in the idea that the world would get better. And I think, you know, and we had the Marshall Plan. The billions of dollars which America poured into Europe to help it become a huge Democratic area, which it has. I mean, it seems that, you know, Boris Johnson doesn't want to be part of it anymore. But that's not the point. He's also bonkers. But the fact of the matter is that we do not have today people with the imagination that the Americans, and to some extent the Russians, but particularly the American side at the end of the Second World War. We need- I I'm a great believer in the UN myself. It is a donkey, but I still think it's the best we've got. But we need a new form of United Nations which can concentrate on helping to get the people of the Middle East, all of them Muslims, Christians, not the Jews are very educated inside Israel. But Jews in Iran, for example, need all the help they can get from us and anyone else to turn their countries into centres of education, centres of knowledge, which they used to be, you know, a thousand years ago, 600 years ago. And yet we don't care about helping to educate these people. I'm not saying they're uneducated. There is an elite, which is educated in all these societies, they're all capable of getting Pd.Ds. But the problem is that we are more interested in testing our weapons there and using drones there and killing them than we are in trying to tell these people, look, we want you to be part of our world and we want to be part of yours. And as long as that is the case, you're going to have an ISIS on your hands.

LL: Now, you label President Trump as bonkers as you've labelled Boris Johnson as bonkers. And yet I put to you that the drone program ramped up enormously under President Obama.

DONALS TRUMP: Yes, it did. I thought it was disgraceful.

LL: I guess what I'm asking you is, does the one person really matter that much?

LL: Yes, it does. I think you realize this more and more in the Middle East that the mere fact that Europe is now effectively searching for its own policies in the Middle East, because America doesn't have one, it affects the whole of international governance. I noticed that the first reaction of the French after that ridiculous letter that Trump sent to Erdogan, the first reaction of the French was we will look after our interests in that region. In other words, he didn't say, you know, Trump is out of his mind to do this. We've got to stand together. He said French interests. The moment you have the central part of the United States abrogating its duties as a superpower, you'll find that all the allies splinter up among themselves and look after themselves. And that is the great danger today that the big organizations that hold nations together. And I look at the European Union as a state of the art example of this Scott splinter.

LL: But let's look at one more leader who who's clearly involved in the region now. You talked about Russia earlier, but let's focus on Vladimir Putin. You wrote a column recently that the headline that Putin is Caesar now. Tell me more about that.

ROBERT FISK: Well, Caesar was very intelligent. And I think Putin is. I don't have any doubts about him from a moral point of view. I mean, the whole Ukraine issue, the reasons why he supports Assad. He doesn't believe the Assad regime is a nascent democracy, which will be good for the Arab world. But Putin's main object, apart from looking after Putin, is to make Russia great again. And one way or the other, he seems to do it. But when you see Putin go round the Middle East, where he can go and talk to the Saudis and discuss with them whether the Saudis might have a new relationship with the Syrians, he can go to Iran and be feted by how many? And by. All the Islamic leaders of Iran. When he goes to Cairo, Sisi takes him to a Verdi opera. This is a man who's married. And when he goes to Israel, he's treated very warmly. And Netanyahu comes to Moscow. I think he's been there three times very recently. Putin has managed to maintain a new form of relationship between what was the Soviet Union and the Arab world. Now, what has Trump done? Zero.

LL: But what difference has that made? What difference is Putin making in the Middle East?

ROBERT FISK: Well, he's the man who will eventually have to wind up the Syrian war. He will have to control the Turks. And he's doing it quite well. After a Turkish invasion, suddenly we s found that the Turks were not invading anymore and were going on joint patrols with the Russian military. I mean, I've been in Syria and seen the Russian military with the Turks. And Putin is effectively smothering wars he doesn't like. And I think it is Putin who will brings to bring to an end ultimately this stupid conflict between the Shiites and the Sunnis, which is being advocated primarily by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his some of his colleagues who are quite murderous, as we know.

LL: And what do you think Putin gets out of this?

ROBERT FISK: A tremendous ego, which is what Trump thinks he has.

LL: What else, though, I that does that allow--?

LL: Look, I think Putin will go down in Russian history as a man who turned the corner on the Soviet Union and managed to turn Russia into a great power again. It doesn't mean wonderful power, doesn't mean good. You know, and he is crushing his internal enemies, as we know. And maybe he'll get turfed out. I don't know. [Unintelligible] is a French expression, Russian. But there's no doubt that Putin at the moment is very shrewdly with the help of Lavrov, who is very much liked in the Middle East.

LL: His foreign minister. Yes.

ROBERT FISK: Yes. But the Syrians believe he's a poet. But I've never found a book of poetry by Lavrov. I'm still looking. But I think Arabs have respect for him simply because he's a leader. And when he says he's going to do something, he does it. And when he says, I'm your ally and I will back you. He doesn't come in for, you know, 40 days or four years to help the Syrians against Assad's enemies, like he helped the Kurds against ISIS and then run. He stays. And I think that Arab leaders, they admire this kind of person. And Putin realizes this.

LL: I just want to keep it Putin for a moment, because here he is, taking Russia into the midst of these conflicts in these countries and that. And yet you've heard from him over the last few years, what railing against any notion of foreign interference in Ukraine, in Crimea and in other satellite states of Russia, does that make him a hypocrite?

ROBERT FISK: Well, I think his view of it would be that, well, since America has been into. Meaning in every country in the Middle East for decades, why shouldn't he step in to support his allies? It doesn't mean I agree with that point of view, but that was probably would be his reaction.

LL: And does it make it defensible for him then to say don't get messed up in--

ROBERT FISK: All great powers, commit war crimes and invade other people's countries under one pretext or another. And I think in that way, Putin is following the trail of history, terrible, and committing suffering as that trail of history does.

LL: Well, let let's go back to the Middle East. And you mentioned this already. Interesting to look at this moment. Now, in comparison to 2011 when we saw these revolutionary movements under way in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria. So much talk of a new reign of democracy in the region. Why didn't the early optimism of those movements bring the change that many seem to be hoping for?

ROBERT FISK: I think for two reasons. First of all, they had no leadership. They didn't want any leadership. I remember in 2011 taking in some of the demonstrators off for coffee and saying, look, you don't have any leaders. We don't want leaders. We just want to get rid of the regime. That's all it was. And unfortunately, that's what the Beirut protesters are saying now. They want an end to sectarianism, which is a brilliant idea. And they want to get rid of their government, but they don't have any leaders. And one of the problems you see is when you've been in opposition so long or you've got this permanent encrusted dictatorship, not perhaps Lebanon, but most of the Middle East. The dictatorship doesn't want you to learn how to have democracy. It doesn't want you to be educated. It doesn't want opposition people to live inside the country. And so the moment you have a protest movement for democracy within individual Middle Eastern nation it's hamstrung from the start. And the moment you announce your leaders, they're all going to be arrested. You know, dictators have very sharp claws and they're dug deep into the ground and they know where to go for help. At the end of the day Assad turned to Putin and he got help. And at the end of the day, the Egyptians turned to the Americans and the Americans support him, even though he's got 60000 political prisoners, torture and permanent hangman on duty.

LL: What about Lebanon? Doesn't sound like you think there will be any success there?

LL: Oh, poor old Lebanese are always going through the greatest crisis since the last, greatest crisis. They are brave. They are talented in the most literal sense of the word. They're highly educated. I know many Lebanese who speak five languages and they deserve a better country than they've got. But the French colonial power instituted a sectarian state in which the president has always got to be a Christian, the prime minister, that he's got to be a Sunni Muslim. And the speaker of parliament has always got to be a Shiite Muslim. Once you create a sectarian state, you can't take it to bits because it lives in this constant feeling of deep suspicion, fear and extraordinary love for the other sect, because you don't want to get invaded by them and you don't want them to think you're going to invade their village. But I don't see at the moment how they're going to deal with this huge problem, because Lebanon is like a Rolls Royce with, you know, green leather seats or cocktail in the back. But it's got square wheels. It doesn't move.

LL: Sounds like it's a place you never want to leave, I think.

ROBERT FISK: Well, that's probably the case with me at the moment.

LL: You've spent so long writing about the Middle East. The conflicts do all seem so intractable, Jim. Any hope that peace is possible?

ROBERT FISK: I have less hope that I did 43 years ago. Look, it all comes down to this. Is the West able to cooperate in setting up a system of billions of dollars’ worth of educational institutions, universities across the region, and encourage people of every faith to go there if they want to have a fine job helping their people, doctors, health services, agriculture, food production, whatever you like, then pour those millions into these new institutions rather than drones, M1-A1 Abrams tanks and what is it, 35, 35 million a year to the Egyptian army who run shopping malls and banks? I mean, the system is so corrupted it needs us in the West to try and help them out of it. But then again, the Trump administration is so corrupt it and we won't go into that now that in a sense it merely supports all these people. That is not the way for optimistic, happy future for the Middle East.

LL: Mr. Fisk, I thank you for your time.

ROBERT FISK: You're very welcome, Laura.

LL: Robert Fisk is a Middle East correspondent with The Independent. He was in Montreal. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One and Sirius XM. I'm Laura Lynch.

[Music]

Ok, Boomer

Guest: Julie Chrysler

LL: Ah, the baby boomers. They get no respect. Back when that song came out, it was the older generation that was trying to put them down and the ones who didn't die before they got old, now have the youngsters on their case and they have a new rhetorical weapon. Our producer, Julie Chrysler has been looking into it.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

VOICE 1: Okay boomer.

VOICE 2: Okay. Boomer, you just can't recover from 'Ok Boomer' this is the war of the Internet. Which side are you on?

JULIE CRYSLER: Hey, if you don't recognize that voice, you are probably a boomer because that video has more than four and a half million views on YouTube.

VOICE 1: You have to understand that when you say, okay, boomer, if they're really hurt, it's a really strong insult.

LL: In the past week, it seems baby boomers have woken up to the idea that the younger generation has been making fun of them online.

VOICE: One New York radio host is getting dumped on by the Internet after this tweet went viral for its great acasual racism. Boomer is the N-word of ageism. Being hip and flip does not make bigotry okay, nor is a derisive epithet acceptable because it is new.

VOICE 1: Okay, Boomer.

[Laughter]

JULIE CRYSLER: And it's not just on the internet anymore.

CLOE SWARBRICK: In the year 2050, I will be 56 years old. Yet right now, the average age of this 50 second parliaments is 49 years old. Okay Boomer.

JULIE CRYSLER: On Tuesday, Chloe Swarbrick, an MP who's just 25 years old, brought it to the floor of the House of Commons in New Zealand and used it to shut down a heckler.

NINA CASTLEMAN: I love the words of Kimberly Murray, because I think it's the perfect retort, perfect response to the things that the boomers have been doing. Partially because they've been calling us snowflakes for so long - I can't even remember how long - for forever. And they get really, really angry with just those two words.

JULIE CRYSLER: Nina Castleman likes the phrase so much, she's putting it on T-shirts, leggings and stickers she sells on her Instagram. She's 18 years old and lives in the suburbs of Chicago.

NINA CASTLEMAN: Well, boomers are not just people who are born within a certain time period. Boomers are usually those people, but they're people who have old fashioned views who don't want us to progress forward. You know, when we say, hey, maybe you shouldn't be super homophobic and super xenophobic. They were like, hahaha. Does that trigger you? Does that upset you? You're a snowflake.

PJ O'ROURKE: Boy, does my generation ever have it coming. Because my generation, the 60s generation, the boomer generation, was the generation that pulled the greatest generation to shut up.

JULIE CRYSLER: That is P.J. O'Rourke, journalist, baby boomer and former editor in chief of the National Lampoon.

PJ O'ROURKE: The people who'd survived the depression, who had won World War Two, who had caused the economic miracle that was the 50s and the 60s. And our response back in the 60s was [unintelligible], Old folks, get out here, you squares, tune in, turn on, drop out and ask for a check from mom and dad.

JULIE CRYSLER: It's easy to dismiss. OK, boomer as youthful rebellion or just memes and jokes and political one liners. But for Nina Castleman, there's a message behind. Ok, Boomer, that's serious.

NINA CASTLEMAN: There are older people who are fighting for climate change. There are older people who are supporting Gen Z kids who are trying to help us move towards a better future. But there are those boomers who tell Greta Thonberg that she should just go back to school and that she doesn't know what she's doing because she's a kid. And I would like for those people to re-evaluate what they're saying and the effect of their words and to try to move forward into the future with the rest of us. So that generation we can live past 40 years before climate change kills us all.

PJ O'ROURKE: They're gone through their little spasm of rebellion being woke. It doesn't even really compare to the sex, drugs, rock and roll and communism of my generation by way of rebellion. They'll get married, they'll have children, they'll get a mortgage. They'll snap out of it.

JULIE CRYSLER: And the millennials snowflake Gen Z response to that is probably.

VOICE 1: Ok, boomer.

VOICE 2: Ok, boomer.

VOICE 1: Oh, that stings.

LL: Julie Chrysler is a producer on the current and OK, I am a boomer, too. Coming up in our next half hour, 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. People who grew up in East Germany reflect on the barriers that remain. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

30 years after fall of Berlin Wall, 2 women born in its shadow wrestle with its legacy

Guests: Susanne Schaedlich, Vera Lengsfeld

LL: I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current. This Saturday will mark 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

SOUNDCLIP

[Crowds cheering]

LL: After the East German government accidentally announced the borders would be open, people gathered by the thousands at the barrier that had symbolized the separation of the two Germanys for decades. They sang. They cheered. They attacked the wall with pickaxes and hammers. If it was a stunning moment in the West, it was seismic for people who grew up in East Germany. This is the story of two women, both of whom were raised in East Berlin and how decades after the fall of that infamous wall, they believe there's still an invisible barrier there today. Here is the CBC is Kristin Nelson with her documentary The Wall in the Head.

SOUNDCLIP

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: They are parts of the city where you actually still feel East. It's East German and it's like you cross the border and there are different people. They look different. They have different clothing.

KRISTIN NELSON: Susanna Schaedlich is a writer who was born in the former East Germany. We're standing together outside Friedrichstrasse Station in central Berlin. These days, the public square in front of the train station is surrounded by shoe stores and cafes. But like so many places in Berlin, history runs deep here.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: People still say east and West.

KRISTIN NELSON: Schaedlich spent her teens and 20s in West Germany. I'll get to that story soon.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: So we are in the west in front of the so-called Trananpalast, which was the border crossing location for people who wanted to cross from west to the east for visit, of course by S-bahn.

KRISTIN NELSON: The building looks fairly innocuous with a bit of a 1960s mad man aesthetic. It's two stories high and painted baby blue and the entrance is embedded in a wall of curved windows. During the Cold War the building was a tiny hole in the Iron Curtain.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: I came through this building when we lived in the West because all of the rest of the family, Grandma, everybody was, of course, in East Berlin.

KRISTIN NELSON: And the way she describes it. It was an unnerving experience.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: There were two doors. One door, the door would close behind you. Then there's the guy who controlled you, and the other door wouldn't open until they were finished with you. Sometimes they would pick up the phone, and you never knew whether you would be able to go visit your family and friends or whether they would send you back or whether they actually would pick you up and put you into a cell.

KRISTIN NELSON: Born in 1965, just four years after the Berlin Wall was erected, the wall cast a shadow over much of her early life in East Berlin, even though it was mostly invisible.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: Actually, East Berliners never really got really close. You couldn't touch it. There was also still this area where they had the towers to watch. There was no man's land. The only time I saw the wall is when we went up the Fernsehturm once as a family. In East Berlin there's this big tower with the restaurant, people all the way up. And then I saw the wall.

KRISTIN NELSON: Schaedlich's perception of the city changed that day. Before then, her mental map of Berlin reflected the official maps of East Germany, the German Democratic Republic, or GDR.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: My father had a map of Berlin and the West German part was white. And when I was little, I was always wow. You know, we're living in East Berlin and around it is only Snow White. So when we went up to the tower, I saw, uh-oh, it isn't snow. There's actually also houses and is city. But the East Germans didn't map it,.

KRISTIN NELSON: Nor did they map the Stasi prisons. Susanne Schaedlich knew from an early age that her family wasn't typical. Her father was a writer who wrote critically about the state and her mother worked in publishing. Both of them were political and so were their friends. Schaedlich recalls being visited by the East German police, the Stasi, on nights that her parents were out.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: Just to scare us, me and my sister. And they would ring the bell and I would go to the to the window, looked down, and there they were, two men. Classic, also ridiculous, if you think about it, in the trench coat, you know, like in a bad James Bond movie. But that's a scary feeling. They didn't do much more than just ring the bell in the night and then go away.

KRISTIN NELSON: Well, Susanne Schaedlich was growing up. Another woman in a different neighbourhood of East Berlin was also living in the shadow cast by the Berlin Wall.

VERA LENGSFELD: My name is Vera Lengsfeld. I was born in 1952 in East Germany. The so-called German Democratic Republic into a family of supporters of socialism. My parents have been both party members, very active party members.

KRISTIN NELSON: Her mother was a schoolmaster, her father an officer in the army.

VERA LENGSFELD: And so I was brought up and educated like a real socialist.

KRISTIN NELSON: But it was a love story that changed the way she perceived East Germany.

VERA LENGSFELD: When I was 17 I met the most, nicest and beautiful boy in East Berlin.

KRISTIN NELSON: The boy was from Yugoslavia. His father, a diplomat in East Germany who had fought against the Nazi regime, but East German officers didn't approve of the way communism was practiced in Yugoslavia.

VERA LENGSFELD: And so my Yugoslav lover was regarded a Western enemy. And one day we were stopped by police. They took me to the police station.

KRISTIN NELSON: Eventually they realized that Lengfeld's father was a Stasi officer.

VERA LENGSFELD: The police drove me home. It was past midnight. They threw my father out of his bed. Yes. And they told my father that they would not inform my father's superiors about this this time. But if they ever saw me again with this western element, they would inform the superiors of my father. And so, of course, I was forbidden to meet my lover. Of course, I met him secretly, but this was the end of my love to the East German regime. And slowly I became an adversary of East German communist state.

KRISTIN NELSON: Today, Lengsfeld still lives in the neighbourhood where her activism began. Tourists come here to see where the Berlin Wall once stood and where it first began to crumble.

[Music]

KRISTIN NELSON: In the early 80s, Lengsfeld started a group called the Peace Circle. The state had granted citizens some freedom to organize, in part to appease international calls for reform. It was a time when the threat of nuclear war was top of mind.

VERA LENGSFELD: I was a mother of three then, with small children. At the beginning of the 80s, the NATO deployed atomic weapons along the mushroom and border, and then the Soviet Union started to deploy Soviet atomic weapons along the inner German border. And it was not a very good feeling to live in an area which was regarded as the future atomic battlefield.

KRISTIN NELSON: The group distributed pamphlets and inspired dozens of other so-called peace groups to form throughout the GDR.

VERA LENGSFELD: And we kept telling the authorities that we are no opposition, of course, because opposition was forbidden by law. We told the authorities said we are people who were concerned about the fate of socialism and who wanted to improve socialism.

LL: The Stasi was ubiquitous in the GDR. There were 90,000 workers on the payroll, plus thousands more official and occasional informants. Estimates vary widely, but anywhere from two to 10 percent of the population was involved in surveillance.

VERA LENGSFELD: Of course, we were well aware that we had spies in all groups. I was a trained philosopher. I was working at the Academy of Science and they threw me out due to my activities in our peace circle. And this was a very dangerous situation because there was also law in East Germany saying if a person had no job for longer than six weeks, this person could be thrown into prison.

KRISTIN NELSON: And if you lost your job for political reasons, it was very difficult to find new work. But Vera Lengsfeld had prepared for that possibility.

VERA LENGSFELD: I was well aware that such a thing could happen.

KRISTIN NELSON: She had acquired 120 beehives.

VERA LENGSFELD: And so I had a job; my new life as a beekeeper.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: My father wasn't allowed to publish in East Germany.

KRISTIN NELSON: Six years earlier. Susanne Schaeldlich's father was on the verge of losing his own academic job in East Berlin.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: He decided that he would publish his book in West Germany.

KRISTIN NELSON: The manuscript had been smuggled across the border by a West German journalist. It was a book of short stories about life in East Germany called Approximation. He lost all his work and then Schaedlich's mother received a visit from the Stasi.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: And they asked her to distance herself from her husband, our father, and also have her children in mind.

KRISTIN NELSON: That's when her parents realized that it was no longer safe to stay. Of course, leaving was forbidden. The Berlin Wall had been erected to keep people from doing just that. But her father's case became a political one. His exiled writer friends, including the famous Gunter Grass, advocated on his behalf. So did a Key West German diplomat. They'd been denied twice before, but this time, Susanne Schaedlich's parents were told that they had permission to leave.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: It was a Monday that they told me that we would leave East Germany five days later. So I had like five days to leave my whole life behind. It was tough, but it was also adventurous. Everybody wanted to see the West.

KRISTIN NELSON: The details of that winter day in 1977 when they left the GDR are still etched in her mind.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: I remember that it was cold December day and we were driving, driving, driving, driving. It was endless. Then we came to the crossing of the border. My father had to step out and leave and we actually thought he would never come back. There was still that scare in the last minute, and then they finally let us go and suddenly the whole border point lit like in the football stadium. It was like flashing white.

KRISTIN NELSON: And soon after, they would be driving into West Germany.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: And everybody in the car was just quiet. .Dead silence because I think we only realised then the door just closed behind us.

KRISTIN NELSON: Their life would have to begin anew. But for now, there was just the black road in front of them. It was 1977 when the Schaedlich family settled in Hamburg in West Germany. And yet the East German state was still part of their lives.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: They had their informants all over the place. They left science like a key on the kitchen table. They entered apartments actually just to scare people, to let them know we're there. We watch you.

KRISTIN NELSON: Life in exile was difficult for Shea Lake's parents, especially her dad, who suffered from a nervous breakdown after they left the GDR. After a couple years in Hamburg, they moved back to Berlin. But this time on the other side, the west side of the wall, it was closer to her old home. But even so, Susanne Schaedlich never felt settled. In 1987, when she was in her early 20s, she moved to Los Angeles.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: When I was far, far away, I could forget it all. Even '89, I was like, okay, the wall fell, you know, I saw it on TV.

KRISTIN NELSON: Vera Lengsfeld's experience of the wall coming down was very different. Schaedlich had left West Berlin two years before the wall fell. Lengsfeld had remained on the front lines of the divide. Her peace movement kept working away in church basements, but in the late 80s they decided to be bolder in their activism.

VERA LENGSFELD: We could not call for a demonstration. This was forbidden by law. So we decided to join a state rally with our own banners. On my banners, stood the first sentence of Article 27 of the East German Constitution: Every citizen of East Germany has a right to utter its opinion freely. I thought they might arrest me or they will arrest me short time, 48 hours this time. I was wrong.

KRISTIN NELSON: They did arrest her and 104 others. In the span of two hours, Lengsfeld was put on trial and accused of hooliganism, which could have meant eight years in prison. By this time, her father had been retired from the Stasi for a couple of years. When she was on trial, he publicly took her side.

VERA LENGSFELD: Because he no longer believed in the system. He said if the system calls my daughter a criminal, I call the system a criminal system.

KRISTIN NELSON: Eventually, the charges against lengths felt were downgraded, but she was still sentenced to six months in jail. Meanwhile, political pressure was growing instead of keeping all the activists in prison. The government expelled them and so she went to the United Kingdom. But as soon as it was possible, she made plans to return to the GDR. She had no idea that she was returning on the eve of history.

VERA LENGSFELD: By coincidence, I returned to East Germany in the morning of the 9th of November when the wall still stood.

KRISTIN NELSON: November 9th, 1989.

[Crowds cheering]

VERA LENGSFELD: Nobody expected that to come down in the evening.

KRISTIN NELSON: The way events unfolded that night was as dramatic as it was unusual. There had been large protests in East Berlin for weeks. The government was under pressure to give citizens greater freedom of movement.

VERA LENGSFELD: And at the evening of the 9th of November, a politburo member, Gunter Schabosdki, called for an international press conference here in Berlin to introduce the Seventh Amendment of the new travel law.

GUNTER SCHABOWSKI: [German speech]

VERA LENGSFELD: And then there was a question by an Italian journalist: When will this law come into effect? Schabowski, he was not accustomed to answer spontaneous questions.

GUNTER SCHABOWSKI: [German speech].

VERA LENGSFELD: 'I think immediately'. And as soon as he said immediately, thousands of people rose from their couches and went to the nearest border checkpoint.

NEWSCASTER: In total disbelief, Berliners began gathering on both sides of the wall at the famous checkpoint [unintelligible] and other crossing.

VERA LENGSFELD: When I came to the [unintelligible] bridge, already thousands of people stood before the barrier to West Berlin.

NEWSCASTER: From ABC, this is World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.

VERA LENGSFELD: And all the border guards stood with their back to the wall of the barracks. They were covered with bows, with flowers at their button holes. They had bottles in their hands; wine, beer. Schnapps. Champagne. Yes.

NEWSCASTER: Something as you can see, almost a party.

VERA LENGSFELD: I heard a huge shout because people had raised the barrier and the crowd spilled over the bridge into West Berlin. And I joined them.

NEWSCASTER: Just a short while ago, astonishing news from East Germany where the East German authorities have said that, in essence, that the Berlin Wall doesn't mean anything anymore.

KRISTIN NELSON: Lengsfeld describes the moment the crowd happened upon what normally would have been a quiet bus station. A coach had just pulled in.

VERA LENGSFELD: And the driver was very surprised. He stepped out of his bus and said, where do you guys are coming from? And we told him from East Berlin. The Wall came down and he said, Ohh! Is this so?? Is this so please come into my bus. Come into my bus. And he started to give us a spontaneous sightseeing tour through West Berlin. And you might imagine that this was one of the happiest moments of my life.

KRISTIN NELSON: Three years after the fall of the wall, Suzanne Schaedlich was still living in Los Angeles. She'd gone to America to escape the pain of her divided childhood. But when the Stasi files were opened a couple of years after Germany's reunification, her family's past came crashing into the present.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: We found that our uncle, my father's brother, was a Stasi informant, which for us was a total shock.

KRISTIN NELSON: For 15 years. Susanna Schaedlich, least beloved uncle, had spied on the whole family.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: He was very close to all of us.

KRISTIN NELSON: Karlheinz Schaedlich spied on others, too, but informing on his brother was her uncle's most intimate betrayal. The Stasi files also reveal that he was involved in a plot to repatriate her father back to East Berlin against his will in 1978.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: For the East, German officials probably would have been great to have a writer that once left back didn't work.

KRISTIN NELSON: The files also revealed that Susanne Schaedlich uncle attempted to lure her back to East Germany.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: So I ended up with the Stasi. I was interviewed by them and they had asked me. They actually wanted to recruit me. No, but I never connected it to my uncle. We always ask yourself, why did he do it? Why did he do it?

KRISTIN NELSON: Vera Lengsfeld also had to confront hard truths about her family after the Stasi files were opened. She refuses to discuss it publicly anymore. But when she read her own files, she discovered that her second husband had been a Stasi informant and that he had reported on her during their marriage. They divorced in 1992 after the information came to light.

KRISTIN NELSON: In 1999, Susanne Schaedlich believe that it was time to go back to Berlin. She started writing a book about what her uncle had done to her family.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: It became really, really public in 2006 when press reports came out that he also spied on Gunter Grass. It was a big name that he spied upon, saw the whole press talked.

KRISTIN NELSON: About a year later, in 2007, her uncle killed himself. He was in his 80s and sick.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: I guess the ghost of him is still there. Sometimes we talk about him. The pain doesn't go completely. You mistrust everyone. It's until today. Now. It's kind of like a joke. Like when the telephone crackles, you know, oh, somebody is listening. You know, you have to can really educate yourself or remind yourself that not everybody is a spy.

KRISTIN NELSON: On our walk, Susanne Schaedlich talks to me about the wall that still exists between East and West Berlin, an invisible one.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: Die mauer im kopf, the wall in the head.

KRISTIN NELSON: And she believes that the divisions go well beyond the superficial, saying the effects of the repressive East German regime linger.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: Of course, it does something to a society. It's a society of traitors towards your neighbours. And it's a society of people who are being traited upon. You have to construct a system like that in order to control people.

KRISTIN NELSON: Schaedlich believes that today there are still those who miss that control and order. And she's not alone in connecting eastern Germany's communist totalitarian past with the politics of the present.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: I mean, freedom can be, it's work. You know, you have to deal with it somehow. You have to make decisions. And before the state controlled, everything was controlled. But it's also safe.

KRISTIN NELSON: Germany's far right anti-immigration party, the alternative for Germany or a AFD, performs best in the east.

SUSANNE SCHAEDLICH: There are writers, poets, activists, all former East Germans, even people who went to prison in East Germany, who now turn into these right-wing nationalist neue rechte. They call them the new right wing people. I'm more scared by these people than the farmer in Saxonia, who votes for the RFD. Of course, it was hard for these Germans to come to terms with a system, which was totally different from the system they had grown up in.

KRISTIN NELSON: In the years after the wall came down, Vera Lengsfeld worked on a commission dedicated to the reunification of West and East Germany. She joined the Green Party and was elected after German reunification.

VERA LENGSFELD: But East Germany came like phoenix out of the ash.

KRISTIN NELSON: But while Vera Lengsfeld is proud of the progress that has been made, she's very aware of the sharp economic, cultural and political differences that remain between Germany's two halves. 30 after the Berlin Wall came down. Some surveys suggest that those cleavages are getting worse and not better. More than a third of Eastern Germans tell pollsters they consider themselves second class citizens.

VERA LENGSFELD: The political situation in Germany is very difficult again, and it became most difficult after the decision of Chancellor Merkel to open the border for mass migration of mostly young men from violent societies, from homophobic societies where women are regarded as inferior. This makes lots of problems.

KRISTIN NELSON: It's a common refrain in Germany today, but hard to fathom coming from a woman who used to work closely with Angela Merkel. Both Merkel and Lengsfeld grew up in the GDR and they were both there the night the wall came down. But.

VERA LENGSFELD: Merkel Germany is developing towards another kind of dictatorship as we had in East Germany.

KRISTIN NELSON: Vera Lengsfeld's politics have evolved significantly over the years, though she says she's still a member of Merkel's CDU.

VERA LENGSFELD: This is, again, the situation that people cannot speak freely because we have certain persons who try to tell people what they should say and what they should say not. We had a politician, a social Democrat. He said, well, I'm not against the free speech of people, but they should do it at home, at their couches. Oh, same situation at home at my couch in Germany. I could say what I wanted.

KRISTIN NELSON: Lengsfeld has no illusions about life in a dictatorship. But she says younger Germans don't necessarily appreciate how easily liberties can be taken away.

VERA LENGSFELD: They are not very much aware that you have to fight for freedom every day. Even in democracies.

KRISTIN NELSON: Susanna Schaedlich and Vera Lengsfeld both the politics of the past influence in Germany's present, their family histories and intimate lives were both directly touched by the same repressive state. And yet they see things in radically different ways today. While Schaedlich's early life in the shadow of the wall left her on guard against intolerance and opposed to borders and separation links, Lengsfeld's experiences have made her vigilant about perceived threats to her beloved country and willing to put up firmer borders to preserve the society she put her life on the line to defend.

LL: We've been listening to the documentary The Wall in the Head. It was produced by the CBC. Kristen Nelson and The Current's documentary editor, Joan Webber. That is our program for today, stay tuned to CBC Radio One for Q. Michael Palin is probably best known as one of the members of Monty Python, but he's also quite the travel writer. He's just written a book about his latest trip to one of the least accessible places on earth, North Korea. That is on Q after the news. I'm Laura Lynch. Thank you for listening to The Current.

The Current Transcript for November 7, 2019

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