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The As It Happens Podcast

Hello, I'm Carol Off.

Good evening. I'm Barbara Budd. Tonight:

Dear international community: shut up. A Sri Lankan army spokesperson says the Western media is pro-Tamil -- and that's why the military is ignoring calls for a ceasefire.

Lost and foundering. Thousands of Pakistani civilians are caught between the Taliban and the military -- and a general defends the army's swift action.

No seabed of roses. A new claim by the French means that la mer around St. Pierre and Miquelon may become a Canadian night-mer.

Killed for chasing the truth. A feature interview with the author of Murder Without Borders, a book about journalists cut down for doing their jobs.

Morsel code. Archaeologists in Germany piece together some fragments in a state of decrepitude -- and create an ancient statue of considerable pulchritude.

And...passing gas...tropods. New research shows that snails are evolving to become even more sluggish.

As It Happens, the Wednesday edition. Radio that's dedicated to taking the wind out of your snails.

Today U.S. President Barack Obama added his voice to the chorus asking the Sri Lankan government and Tamil tiger rebels for a ceasefire. And although those calls from the international community appear to be at a crescendo, Sri Lanka continues to say, "Hands off."

Yesterday and today, reports have emerged from the Tamil Tiger-controlled no-fire zone that more than a hundred people were killed when a make-shift field hospital was shelled.

Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara is the Sri Lankan army's spokesperson. We reached him in the capital, Colombo.

It is a photo album that is best left closed.

That's the message coming from Washington today, after President Barack Obama reversed his decision to release hundreds of photographs depicting detainee abuse. The pictures allegedly show U.S. military personnel abusing Iraqi and Afghan prisoners in the wake of the September 11th attacks. He says the release of the photos could lead to more attacks.

So, while the world waits, today in Washington, lawmakers got another disturbing snapshot of abuse: the first Congressional panel convened to address allegations of torture during George W. Bush's administration. And one of today's accounts came from a former FBI agent named Ali Soufan.

He was one of the first people to interrogate al Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah. Using what he calls a "mental poker game", Mr. Soufan says he was able to gain critical intelligence about future attacks. But, when CIA contractors came knocking at the interrogation door, that's when Mr. Soufan and his team were forced to step aside.

Because of his infiltration of al Qaeda, today, Mr. Soufan testified from behind a screen which protected his identity.

For the record, here is part of his opening statement.

When Nicholas Conard found six small, dirty fragments of ivory in a cave in southern Germany a few months ago, the last thing he probably thought was, "Ooooh, how sexy."

But now that the archeologist and his colleagues have pieced the bits together, the whole turns out to be much hotter than the parts.

They came together to form a busty female figure -- and the oldest known sculpture of the human form.

We reached Nicholas Conard in Tuebingen, Germany.

Julia Dales is seventeen, and she's in high school. But in her other life, she kicks it old school.

You may not have expected me to say that, but it's true: Ms. Dales can drop some world-class beats. In fact, last Friday, she was named beatboxing's Online World Champion, in a YouTube contest. That victory has earned her a spot at the international beatboxing competition in Berlin, Germany.

We reached Julia in Ottawa.

BB:

That's Ottawa's Julia Dales, with her world-champion beatbox performance -- recorded in her friend's car.

It took a while. But now, the Pakistani military is involved in a major offensive against Taliban insurgents in the north-western region of the country.

The latest figures suggest that more than million people have been displaced from their homes, fleeing to neighbouring areas to seek refuge. And tens of thousands of those who weren't able to find safety are being caught in the violence between Islamic militants and Pakistani troops. The dire situation has led to criticism that the military hasn't done enough to protect ordinary Pakistanis during the offensive.

Major General Athar Abbas is the spokesperson for the Pakistani military. We've reached him in Rawalpindi

There are a lot of nagging questions that are finally getting an airing at the Oliphant Inquiry. And one of the naggingest questions about the money Karlheinz Schreiber gave Brian Mulroney back in 1993 and 1994 is why the former prime minister didn't tell the tax department about it until some years later.

Today, Mr. Mulroney offered his explanation.

For the record, here's what he had to say in response to a question from his own lawyer:

The letter is in. Let the dispute begin.

Today marked the deadline for nations to submit claims to seabed territory with the United Nations Commission. And France didn't miss its opportunity. The government has declared that it will seek extended rights to petroleum and fishing resources on the continental shelf off Eastern Canada.

Xavier Bowring is a member of a citizens' group on St-Pierre and Miquelon that has been fighting for a new economic arrangement with Canada. We reached him in Saint Pierre.

DALET: ST. PIERRE & MIQUELON

BB:

We reached Xavier Bowring in Saint Pierre.

Her seemingly extemporaneous poetry has seared itself into our consciousness like the afterimage of a lightning strike -- where it lingers like a vivid tapestry of shimmering beauty. Do I mix my metaphors? Well, I humbly acknowledge her influence.

Now, Alaska's governor, Sarah Palin, is about to take the next step as an artist, and a politician -- she's going to publish a book of prose. She's signed a deal with HarperCollins to write a memoir -- and while no one's specified what she'll be paid, the rumours are anywhere from seven to eleven million dollars.

During a recent interview, the auteuse said, "There's been so much written about and spoken about in the mainstream media and in the anonymous blogosphere world, that this will be a wonderful, refreshing chance for me to get to tell my story, that a lot of people have asked about, unfiltered."

Some are arguing that it's against the state's Ethics Act for the governor to take money for doing anything other than governing. Some others argue that her speaking style would, if it's replicated on the page, be, for people hung up on syntax, disastrous. But you can't stop a creative mind from creating -- or from collaborating with a ghost-writer on creating.

If you've forgotten some of her forays into spontaneous beat poetry, let me refresh your memory. Last October, Slate Magazine writer Hart Seely attempted to capture some of her work in print. He took some of her answers in interviews, verbatim, and put them in black and white -- where, admittedly, they lose some of the fire of her delivery.

Here, first, is a work Mr. Seely calls "Challenge to a Cynic":

You are a cynic.

Because show me where

I have ever said

That there's absolute proof

That nothing that man

Has ever conducted

Or engaged in,

Has had any effect,

Or no effect,

On climate change.

And next, a poem Mr. Seely has entitled "Befoulers of the Verbiage" -- a verse-work originally delivered in answer to a question about John McCain's statement that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong". Ahem.

It was an unfair attack on the verbiage

That Senator McCain chose to use,

Because the fundamentals,

As he was having to explain afterwards,

He means our workforce.

He means the ingenuity of the American.

And of course that is strong,

And that is the foundation of our economy.

So that was an unfair attack there,

Again based on verbiage.

Can the governor's natural tendency to versify be tamed, to produce the usually pedestrian prose of the political memoir? One hopes not. Because, as Julian Gough, writing for Prospect Magazine put it: "The talent of a woman who can improvise a perfect seventeen-syllable haiku live, in front of thirty thousand people, must not be wasted!" Here is the haiku of which he speaks:

What's the difference

Between a hockey mom and

A pit bull? Lipstick.

(From their 1998 album Phantom Power, we played The Tragically Hip, with "Poets".)

R BRAIDWOOD PSYCH

TV

MAY 13/09

PRONOUNCER:

DZIEKANSKI = jee-KAHN-skee

BB:

(/noweb> What were they thinking?

That was one of the questions asked in Canada, and around the world, after a tragedy at Vancouver International Airport in 2007. Four Mounties tried to subdue a Polish immigrant named Robert Dziekanski, and he ended up dead.

Today, things got testy at the Braidwood Inquiry into that event. It happened during an exchange between two men: David Butcher, the lawyer for Bill Bentley, one of Mounties on the scene, and Dr. Mike Webster, a police psychologist.

Here's part of that testimony, for the record.

The voices you heard belong to Dr. Mike Webster, a police psychologist, and David Butcher, a lawyer for one of the RCMP officers on the scene when Robert Dziekanski died at Vancouver International Airport.

April 28th, 2003. Guillermo Bravo Vega is shot and killed while working at his home in Colombia.

March 24th, 2005. Marlene Garcia-Esperat is shot dead in front of her children in her Philippine home.

October 7th, 2006. Anna Politkovskaya is gunned down in the lobby of her Moscow apartment building.

All three were journalists. All three were killed because of the stories they had told.

But what about their own stories? What is it that compels some journalists to pursue the truth even at the risk of their own lives? Journalist Terry Gould wanted to find out. In his new book, Murder Without Borders, he brings us the personal stories of seven journalists -- all of whom were murdered.

Terry Gould joined us earlier today in our Toronto studio.

Murder Without Borders is published by Random House Canada.