Le Show; 2018-04-15

From deep inside your audio device of choice. This is La Show. There are numerous news stories this week about what appear to be horrifying incidents in Syria one more time. There are not numerous news stories about what we have good reason to believe are a continuation of horrifying incidents in Yemen and in other parts of the world. And so to widen the focus of what we think is worth paying attention to, I have a special guest here on the program today. He's Dr. Homer Ventures, he's a physician and he's also Director of Programs for Physicians for Human Rights. And he came to my attention because I happen to be on a list that receives updates on some of what PHR is doing and witnessing in various parts of the world. Dr. Ventures, welcome to the program.

Thank you so much. I'm really thrilled to be here. Enjoying you. Thanks. The proximate cause of my paying attention to you in this way is you're reporting, your organizations reporting on the plight. I'm sure no community of people wants to be understood as having a plight. But these people do, the plight of the Rohingya people who used to be in Myanmar, what we used to call Burma, and are now located most of them in refugee camps across the border in Bangladesh, I believe. Tell me a little about, first of all, what physicians for human rights is and then we'll get to what you know. Sure, physicians for human rights or PHR is an international human rights organization. And so we use the power of science and medicine to tell the truth about what's happened in human rights abuses.

So we leverage the skills of doctors, forensic scientists, and we also train doctors and others around the world to use evidence to document the truth of what's happened. So, you know, we were very active 30 years ago when we were just getting going in documenting the horrible impact of landmines in Cambodia really led to a really important treaty to band landmines there have been since then quite a few other places really in Iraq, a documenting serenetacks by Saddam Hussein up through Bosnia, the Balkans, I should say, and Rwanda and other places using forensic medicine and the power of this type of documentation to tell the truth of mass atrocities and also to train other people around the world to do the same thing. So, when you referred to Saddam Hussein and the serenetacks, those were attacks on the Kurds? Yes, that's right. And Habjala is a one particular town where about 5,000 Kurds were gassed and it was actually

I think artillery shells with a combination of three different agents. But the PHR forensic scientists were able to come in four years later, I believe it was after the attacks and it was the first time actually that anybody had been able to document the presence of the byproducts of mustard gas and of serenet in the soil and the other areas around a village, we didn't have ready access to any of these places obviously as the attacks unfolded. Obviously, Saddam Hussein is smarter than that, but it does speak to the point that chemical weapons don't just go away. They leave residues and markers that can be identified some time later. Yeah, that's right. But I think that the most effective documentation that we've, so for instance, the attacks last April in Syria by the Syrian government, their samples were collected by UN and other inspectors pretty quickly.

And that actually led to not only identification that serenet had been used, but what was really impressive was that the best evidence we have that's been reported in the press is that there is actual internal documentation showing that the actual seren used and identified through laboratory analysis had already been catalogued as one of the Syrian government stockpiles back in 2013 when they were forced into joining this convention against the use of chemical weapons. So that was part of the stockpile that supposedly they gave up or destroyed? Exactly. So let's go now, let's whip around the world and go to the border between Burma or Myanmar and Bangladesh and the Rohingya people. Just a little background, what I know is that the Rohingya are a Muslim minority in a majority Buddhist country that they are regarded at least by a segment of the population in Myanmar as interlopers.

They I believe have not been granted citizenship even though they've been residing in Myanmar for decades if not more. And that recently in the last few years, there have been some demonstrations which have provoked or been used as pretext by the army depending on your interpretation to engage in old-sale movement of the Rohingya people out of their homes, out of their communities which have then been burned to the ground and that they have been basically pushed over the border into some fairly unpleasant and unequipped refugee camps on the other side. How close do I have it to what's been going on? That's pretty tight synopsis. I think that they are one of multiple ethnic minorities in Myanmar that's been subject to persecution for quite a long time. We at PHR, we're reporting maybe a year and a half ago that we thought there were the

precursors to genocide actually ongoing. Certainly in August, this wasn't the first time that thousands of Rohingya fled across the border to escape persecution and physical and sexual assault. But this obviously was a much larger and more coordinated campaign that was sold or at least messaged as an anti-terror campaign. But we've had three field missions, doctors going to the Cox's Pizarra area where these camps are, where you have about 650,000 Rohingya packed into a very small space and we've been doing forensic assessments that means hearing what people's account is but doing physical examination of injuries and scars among women, among very small children and men too. And we're putting together that evidence now, but it's very clear that in a particular

and a couple of villages we've really dug into that these were very coordinated campaigns that involved armed forces of the government of Myanmar acting in concert with local Rakhine civilians who were Buddhist, who were not Rohingya, to both lay out a campaign that is to plan a campaign to give ultimatums in the week or two before and to escalate over months, the baseline persecution, but then to lay out ultimatums about the acceptance of these identity cards that as you referenced would say, you know, would give up a citizenship claim and then to execute these attacks, these really vicious, horrible attacks that clearly have led to the deaths of thousands involved wide-scale sexual abuse as well. And then the pursuit of people across the border. Rakhine is the name of the state, the province of Myanmar in which the Rohingya have lived

for this period of time. When you say thousands of people, do you have any more precision of an estimate as to how many people may have been killed in this action so far? Yeah, I think that we have, you know, some preliminary numbers, so doctors about borders or MSF has done a preliminary analysis that's, you know, just south of 10,000 that through survey tools they've estimated the number of deaths. I think that we all think that that's conservative. We don't know. I think that there's a need for greater documentation. Not only of the number of people killed, but, you know, we have seen so many survivors that have physical injuries that also clearly have been our survivors of sexual abuse. And that was just like in Rwanda and just like in the Balkans. It's clear that the wide-scale use and planning of sexual assault was part of this campaign

to destroy and displace the Rohingya from Myanmar. And when you talk to the people, I imagine you're, I don't know if you imagine you mentioned your people have been in Cox's Bazaar, which is this fairly wretched refugee camp in Bangladesh. What do the Rohingyas say they're told about why this is happening to them? What do they say that they're told by the army or whoever, whatever officials are encountering them and pushing them out? Yeah, I've done a lot of these encounters myself. The forensic encounters with survivors and, you know, people, we ask a lot of questions about what, you know, this sounds very horrific, but what were people saying as they were shooting you, what were people saying as they were raping you, were setting your house on fire or killing your child?

Because those, actually that information is critical to establishing some of the criteria for these mass crimes and establishing these, these very important criteria for was this widespread at all. And so I think that the, and was it systematic, those are the two things we look for. And so people tell us that as these things were going on and in the run up to the attacks they're being told not only do not belong here, but you're not from here, you can't be here, you'll be killed if you're here. And it's, you know, because different military units and different groups of Rakhine Buddhist civilians were involved, we got a, you know, some comments being focused more on this land doesn't belong to you, you can't ever come back here. And another set of comments focused on, you will be eliminated, you, your people will not exist anymore. Does it, were they, did they include references to the fact that these people were of a different religion than the people who were talking to them?

Yeah, I think that the, the, the comments were often that we've collected, you know, we've done about 81, about 80 encounters with survivors and, and so most commonly it was about the, the otherness of the, of the Rohingya people. And part of it, sometimes there were comments about the religion, but I think that most commonly it was simply that they were viewed as foreigners that have, should have no rights and should have no place in their own homes. Who did the Rohingya begin living in Myanmar or Burma as it was in? You know, I am not the most, I'm not the best historian on the history of the Rohingya. I will say that my sense is that the Rohingya, like a lot of ethnic minorities, were actually living in the space before kind of the current borders are constituted. And so the Rohingya will almost, will say, we didn't come to Burma, Burma came to us and

I've heard more than one person, I've had more than one person survivor tell me that. Are they physically different in appearance from, from the people, other people in the community? I think that the, the thing that we, that I notice is a, you know, a lay person in terms of not being an expert in the culture is the language and also the, the dress. So you know, as many of the, the women were, were a different and more conservative attire. And then also, you know, we see that, to your question about religion, we see that some of the targeting of killings and sexual assault did revolve around religion. So like, I can think of multiple survivors who told me that one of the first people to be killed in their village would be the Imam. They have been sitting, sitting is probably the inappropriate verb in that camp now. Many of them for close to a year, if not more.

Is that right? Yeah. The, the violence really erupted August of 2017 and most of the exodus happened between the end of August and let's say the beginning of the middle or end of October. The coxes bizarre as the town, but then it's about 45 minutes outside of that town where you have this network of camps where they used to be kind of discreet camps that's, that kind of stretched along this, this finger that dangles down along the Bangladesh, me and my border. And that little strip of land now, you really can't tell one camp from the other. So the names of these camps that a lot of people have seen in press reports, like Kudipalong, Balancale, Thayankale, those camps all now just are one large mass of people having gone from, you know, maybe 50, 60,000 people in all these areas in July of last year to 650,000

people now. A good size city. Yes. Yes. And you have people there to attend to their medical needs, do you? So there are quite a few groups, a real, you know, Herculean assemblage of humanitarian organizations, doctors, the outboarders, Med Global, other organizations that are coming together to provide all the kind of essential services. But the, there are many challenges to that. One is that people are so packed together, much more tightly packed when you measure how much space, personal space a person has in a refugee camp, by square meters, you know, they have about half as much space or a third as much space as you would in a normal refugee camp. So people are very tight.

The other thing is that it's very hilly and it's about to rain there. The monsoon season is coming and so what we saw just at the tail of last year's monsoons when people were coming over is, you know, these camps are very hilly. There will be mudslides. There's really a concern for widespread outbreak of cholera, other communicable diseases that, you know, it's almost impossible, even with real dedication by the government of Bangladesh and the coalition of NGOs to stave off real, very dire health consequences. Just physically, are they residing in huts or tents or... Yeah, I know because probably two-thirds of my forensic evaluations have been done in these little living quarters and as like a kind of like chunky white guy who's six three, it's tough to fit in. It's actually incredible to watch people put these together. They take very thin slivers of bamboo, weave them together in a structure that could

be, you know, a four feet high and then they will lace plastic, like just plastic that you would have wrapped, wrapping plastic into these structures and then they'll have some bigger pieces of bamboo for the main parts of the structure. And so these, when you look at the camps, when you really look closely at just the unending horizon of structures, what these structures are, are these small, flimsy bamboo and plastic huts? So obviously, no heating, no cooling, they're there in the whatever weather there is and a bit of shelter from the monsoon at best, right? That's right. We'll take a break and then continue our conversation with Dr. Homer Ventures, physicians for Human Rights here on La Show. I can't believe the things I'm seeing, I wonder about some things I've heard.

Everybody's crying mercy and don't know the meaning of the word. A bad enough situation is sure enough getting worse. Everybody's crying justice, just as long as it's been, it's first. Toad and Toad, touch and go, give a cheer, give your souvenirs. People running round in circles don't know what they're headed for. Everybody's crying peace on earth, just as soon as we were in this corner. I can't believe the things I'm seeing, I wonder about some things I've heard.

Everybody's crying mercy and don't know the meaning of the word. A bad enough situation is sure enough getting worse. Everybody's crying justice, just as long as it's been, it's first. Straight ahead, knock them dead. I could get to your hypocrite, oh. You don't have to go on Broadway to see something plain absurd. Everybody's crying mercy and don't know the meaning of the word. Everybody's crying mercy and don't know the meaning of the word. This is Lucho and we continue now our conversation with Dr. Homer Ventors of Physicians for Human Rights.

The Bangladesh government finds itself now with the job of attending to the needs of a city of 650,000 people. What little I know about Bangladesh suggests that they're not swimming in resources to handle a job like this. That's very true. One of the poorest nations and also I think one of the most densely populated nations on the earth now has an even more densely populated and even more poor cohort of people to care for. I will say that I just recently was at an event where I was on a panel with a representative of the government of Bangladesh and they have very publicly said, you know, we are a nation that does not have a lot of resources, but we will take care of the people that are here. And so there has been real up to this point, generally very good interaction, I think, between the Rohingya.

Certainly I've talked to Imams and village headmen and others who have told me it's very important to them to make sure that their colleagues, the Rohingya, understand and express how much of a strain this is on the government of Bangladesh. And because the risk of return is that they be killed or raped and killed, the Rohingya are at great, they take great pains to express appreciation for the safe haven, even in spite of some very difficult circumstances. Just to give people a more rounded view, the country of Bangladesh is majority Muslim? Yes. So is it correct to say that the anti-Rohingya forces in Myanmar regard Bangladesh as their proper, quote unquote, home, or that's where they, in the Myanmar version of events, that's where they came from, that's where they should be going back to. Yeah, I can think of a man I saw who had both of his legs broken with a rifle, but by me and my soldiers.

And as he was being beaten with his hands tied behind his back, the soldier was yelling at him, you're Bengali, you're Bengali, you have to go to Bangladesh. And he wasn't the only person that told me that, that he heard that as either one was being shot or killed or raped. How many times have you been over there? Twice. And how many people does your organization have available to be there from time to time? You know, so we, the way PHR works is we have a relatively small staff of permanent employees like myself as the director of the programs, but we have a network of probably 2,000 doctors around the world. And so when I have led trips to Bangladesh, we have been able to mobilize primarily South Asian female physicians to come with us, emergency medicine doctors, doctors who have skills that I don't as an internist. And who are going to have a better, I think, quicker cultural connection with people on the ground.

So we have taken, I think, so far seven or eight different doctors to the area. And our plan is to continue to grow this cadre so that we can do more of this documentation, both for the advocacy that we need to do right now, but also for ultimate accountability. The word accountability brings up, I think, what most Americans know about this situation, which is that Myanmar is supposedly being run now, although this is open to question, the military still retains a lot of power. But run now by a civilian, by the name of An Song Su Chi, who famously won a Nobel Peace Prize for her work over there. I think what people who have paid just a passing attention to this story are struck by is that particular irony. It's really a terribly upside down part of this tragedy that someone who was recognized as a champion of human rights has, you know, through her own voice or the voice of her office and her spokespeople called into question the veracity of women who say they were sexually assaulted by the,

by the military. So it is a horrible feature of this, but it does also support what we think is ultimately the needed step in accountability, which is prosecutions in the International Criminal Court. Who, who, who is empowered to bring those? Well, that is an interesting question. I should say I'm not a lawyer, so neither am I. So we were even doctors love to talk about the law incorrectly. I think that the basic understanding is that governments that are hardy to what's called the Rome statute, who buy into the idea of the International Criminal Court can refer also when they can't or won't do it, then the Security Council can do this. And that brings quickly to mind the horrible events we've seen in Syria for seven years where there is no doubt that there have been war crimes or mass crimes committed by the government of Syria, but that Russia has vetoed these ICC referrals and investigations ten or eleven times.

And so the question to Myanmar is, is it possible for the International Criminal Court to be activated or to jump in in a way that doesn't require the support of Myanmar or risk of veto by China? So comparing this to other places, it's early days in the process. So right now what we're focused on is really digging in, collecting the forensic evidence that we know how to collect so that when there is a prosecution, we can contribute to the process. China is allied with Myanmar. I think that China has made statements in general questioning the need for any kind of international accountability mechanism. So to that extent, yes. Let me just shift because what I said at the beginning is the attempt to try to widen the focus of our concerns about what's going on in the world, has PHR had people on the ground in Yemen in the recent past?

So we are doing program work in Yemen. What we've been doing most recently is putting out reports about and tracking attacks on healthcare facilities. And that's something that we have been doing in Syria for a couple of years. We have a big map where we document attacks on healthcare facilities, hospitals in Syria. And we started to do the same thing in Yemen by cultivating ground sources. And so we, because we had some success in generating data that's reliable in Syria, we're trying to, we're working to establish a similar foothold in Yemen, which is a different campaign, but it's obviously a very horrible public health and human rights disaster. And since your organization seems to specialize in forensics, it just occurs to me to ask, have you been called in in any way to assist with the investigation into the apparent poisoning of the two individuals in London recently?

We have not. We generally are involved in documentation and also advocacy when they're when, you know, not to say that these aren't violations, but they fall more closely into the realm of a crime than a human rights violation that is to stay. But, and personally, as, you know, like you and probably many, I've been following it with great interest because it really is astounding. Yeah, it's astounding. And particularly the recent day in Yemen, where at least one of them has walked out the door of a hospital, seemingly not fully recovered, but not what you normally think of as a victim of a serious nerve gas attack. Yeah, that is a very happy development. I know that the perpetrators of this event will also have induced the eye of pet lovers everywhere because I saw that the cat and guinea pigs in their house did not make it.

How common is it in your knowledge as a physician for somebody to be dosed with a nerve gas substance? I don't know if you're familiar with this particular one and survive it. I think that the use of sarin in particular or VX or other nerve agents, I think that it actually is quite an infreakent recurrence that it's used and that it's often fatal when it is used. So I think that's a rare event. I think where I've seen some similar poisonings where people do recover is the kind of active ingredient in a lot of these agents is an organophosphate that's a chemical that's involved. That causes the sweating that changes to the pupils and some respiratory stress and actually I've originally having trained in the Midwest. I saw this in especially undocumented farm workers who get pesticide poisoning. Those pesticides have the same organophosphate base that sometimes will lead them and they with atropine can survive.

American who's listening and gets overwhelmed, you know, I think one of the reasons why the media don't aside from lack of resources one of the reasons why immediate only focuses on one set of horrific events at a time is well people get overwhelmed and sort of paralyzed and not know what to do or what. And American who who hears about the again here's that word the plate of the Rohingya what would you like what would you like them to do. You know, I think there are a couple of things. I think the first is there are many organizations that are working so valiantly to provide humanitarian assistance. So the MSF, Med Global, the other medical organizations that are there providing this care, the UN organizations are doing a great job so that's an important set of efforts. I think that you know what's critical is that if we ever want to prevent effectively prevent these mass atrocities, these mass crimes, then we have to become honest about the accountability.

The reason that Syria has prevailed on Russia for these 10 or 11 vetoes is because they're terrified of accountability. The reason that you know we're worried about accountability in with for the Rohingya is because we're you know everybody's wondering what we'll try to do if there's any international criminal court discussion. We have to be honest about our own role as a nation and think about what are we doing. Do we buy into this idea of accountability because on the day that one arm of our foreign policy apparatus was condemning Russia. And Syria for their roles in these attacks in Duma, it was the first day for John Bolton on the job and that's somebody who runs our national security apparatus and he expressed glee in his prior iteration at withdrawing from the Rome statute, which is the treaty that establishes the international criminal court. So we can't get upset about these atrocities and seek to bang our fists on the table if we can't ourselves make a commitment to accountability.

Are you planning another trip back to the border lands between Myanmar and Bangladesh in the near future? I think we'll have several more trips in the near future. I think that now that we have a great network of physicians that I've gone with and I think you know there are many of them more expert than I am. I'm eager in the coming months to turn our eye both towards sharing the evidence with the UN bodies and others and also I'm eager for us at PHR to really dig in deeply to a domestic agenda that includes documentation and human rights abuses by our own that involve our own immigration policies that involve correctional settings, jails and prisons, which was my background before I started with PHR. And just to wrap it up about the Rohingya, they don't feel like and go back to Burma but they can't stay in refugee camps forever or can they?

Well, I think the horrible reality of refugee camps is people do stay for years and years and years. I think that what's untenable is how close the quarters are and the fact that it's going to rain and there will be these mudslides. So like a small group of people, the biggest camp Kudipalong, there's been an effort to move some people out of that, the most dense area into another area. But I will say that people who you know are far more wise than I am in management of these situations are scratching their heads about what will happen because the it's quite clear that people will be killed if they go back. And it's also quite clear that the place they are in cannot sustain them. And so it's a very difficult quandary. And I think that what's already happened is that the people on the ground feel like this as you reference slipped off the front page. And you know, the resources that Bangladesh needs to provide humanitarian assistance and a humane and safe setting is becoming more and more difficult.

Dr. Homer Ventors of Physicians for Human Rights. Thank you very much for sharing your information and your insight with us today. Thank you. Thank you very much. You can wander in one hand and spit in the other because baby, you don't really want to know. I come, there's always plenty of money for some bullets and some bombs, but there's never enough for some nurses or some teachers or some moms.

And you don't really want to know. Watch the world through the wind ship of a cosmobile. Only stop to scrape away the bugs that down it. You don't know or care what's changing hands. You don't need the table. Just as long as it's got play, I'm falling. I come terrorists and Texas T-boys share the same last name. Power brokers play with politics like some petty private game. No matter who you vote for, who you get is just the same.

Baby, you don't really want to know. You don't really want to know. Get your news from the TV, but they got to sell commercials. So they terrified and tease you, then they tell you to stay tuned.

You don't know or care what's changing hands. Everything that I have not so, will treat your comforts so long when content says hello. You know I hate to be the one to say I don't deserve. But baby, you don't really want to know. This is Lesho and now ladies and gentlemen, the apologies of the week.

Making up in quality, but it lacks in quantity, the apologies of the week, because you start with the Pope. How many weeks can you do that? Dayline Vatican City. Pope Francis acknowledged this week he had made grave mistakes in the handling of a sexual abuse crisis in Chile saying he felt shame and inviting victims he'd once doubted to roam to seek their forgiveness personally. The letter followed a visit to Chile by one of the Vatican's most experienced sexual abuse investigators, like they have a core of them, and this is the best archbishop, Charles Scugiana of Malton. Quote, I've made grave mistakes in the assessment and my perception of the situation due in particular to a lack of truthful and balanced information, the Pope wrote in an extraordinary letter to Chilean bishops. Sculuna was investigating claims surrounding bishops, Juan Barros, appointed by the Pope in 2015 despite accusations that Barros had covered up the sexual abuse of minors by his mentor, Father Fernando Caledema, in the three-page letter written in Espanol.

The head of the Roman Catholic Church said he wanted to, quote, reestablish trust in the church, trust that was broken by our errors and sins, and heal the wounds that continued to bleed in Chilean society, reading the report from his emissary, called him Pope Pain and Shame. I apologize to all those I have offended and I hope to be able to do it personally in the coming weeks in the meetings I will have with victims, the Pope said in the letter. The letter gave no clue about Barros' future. It said in January, the day I see proof against Bishop Barros, then I will talk. There is no single piece of evidence against him, it is all a slander, is that clear? Unquote the Pope in January. Significance through, quote, victimhood remarks a true severe backlash from people, including the founder of Amitou Movement. Robbins made the controversial comments last month in San Jose, where he was hosting one of his multi-day self-help seminars. Still, really?

Robbins best known for self-help books and massive seminars that promise to help people, quote, get the life you desire and deserve. The exchange on YouTube from this, so one event, last of more than 10 minutes included, 10th moments in which Robbins got a woman's face and towered over her. At one point, he engaged the woman in an exercise where he physically pushed her backward by her fist in an effort to demonstrate that her pushing back against his physical actions didn't make her any safer. Now, he's posting an apology in San Jose to his Facebook page, saying he was committed to being part of the solution. I apologize for suggesting anything other than my profound admiration for the MeToo Movement. Let me clearly say, I agree with the goals of the MeToo Movement and its founding message of empowerment through empathy, which makes it a beautiful force for good. But I've realized it's while I've been dedicated my life to working with victims, abuse all over the world. I need to get connected to the brave women of MeToo.

So I was looking for a date. I probably misunderstood that. Jimmy Kimmel, TV host in the United States, apologized this week for his part in a feud with TV host, Sean Hannity, quote, while I admit I did have fun with our back and forth. After some thought, I realized the level of vitriol from all sides. Does nothing good for anyone and is in fact harmful to society. I apologize. I will take Sean Hannity as word that he was genuinely offended by what I believed and still believed to be a harmless and silly aside, referencing our first ladies accent. Accent. I have no accent. Deadline Berlin, a deputy leader of the Nationalist Alternative for Germany party. Apologize this week for falsely blaming a fatal van attack in Munster on Islamic extremists. Beatrix von Storch said on her Facebook page, quote, I made a mistake with my tweet about Munster and I'm sorry. The apology comes after widespread criticism of her tweet, suggesting Chancellor Angela Merkel's open door refugee policy was to blame after a van drove into a crowd last Saturday. When authorities revealed the van's driver to be a German with no known extremist links, von Storch initially doubled down tweeting the suspect was, quote, an imitator of Islamist terror.

And the second largest telecom company in Australia, optus has apologized for a job advertisement seeking, quote, Anglo-Saxon candidates, unquote, optus said in the ad that it was looking for a retail assistant to work at one of its stores near Sydney company said it preferred Anglo-Saxon candidates who lived close to the store. Fantastic opportunity for those seeking a career in retail, optus took down the ad and apologized the next day after facing a storm of criticism. The apologies of the week later, German, a copyrighted feature of this broadcast. You probably know by now that President Trump has pardoned Scooter Libby who was chief of staffer, former vice president, Cheney during the Bush administration, Libby had been found guilty of leaking the name of a undercover CIA official operator, operator, Valerie Plame, Libby supposedly did that at the behest of his boss, although there's no proof of that. President Bush commuted Libby's 30-month prison sentence, he was found guilty, but didn't issue a pardon despite intense pressure from Cheney.

That decision by Bush is widely reported to have created a rift in the relationship between Bush and Cheney, even though Cheney was reportedly vastly relieved that Libby would not have to spend time in prison. He was the soul of loyalty when he looked at a drink. Now, it's the reward of royalty. Scooter's skating past the clink. He was my personal dick Cheney, more secret than he'd think. How broughty was his brainy. Scooter's scooted by the clink. Scooter's sliding by the clink.

Irvin's whiffing by the huskow parade in past the Poke. Libby almost ended up like Libby, moral clarity, almost joking. No clue for the Scooter. In a way, that was the point. He's still free to bend over. Scooter was rescued from the joint. Scooter was rescued from the joint. He was the pooper of discretion. His pee wouldn't make a blink. He'll create his best impression. He walks straight by the clink.

He wasn't an agent's outer, just tasked to make a stink. He was a groomer's router, but he won't be leaking in the clink. No, leaking in the clink. Irvin could have ended up a rapper, trousers, getting a loser, surfing within the crapper, maybe even. Go win, bruiser. Go cool. For the Scooter, the fall guy didn't disappoint. Thank God we were let it catch him. Scooter's sliding by the joint. Scooter's skating by the chains. Scooter's rescued from the joint.

Now ladies and gentlemen, news of the warm, won't you? Hoodward winning, news of the warm, not good news, unfortunately. The extreme current, the warm Atlantic current linked to severe and abrupt changes in the climate in the past, is now at its weakest in at least 1600 years according to new research based on multiple lines of scientific evidence. Collapse of the Gulf Stream would take centuries to occur, or contraire mine frair. Such collapse would see Western Europe suffer from far more extreme winters, sea levels rise fast on the eastern seaboard of the United States, and would disrupt vital tropical rains. The current is now 15% weaker than around 400 AD and exceptionally large deviation. Human-caused global warming is responsible for at least a significant part of the weakening.

Serious disruption to the Gulf Stream, ocean currents must be avoided at all costs, according to senior scientists who've spoken of the Guardian newspaper. As I say, with Western Europe particularly vulnerable to a descent into freezing winters, it's also likely to cause more severe storms in Europe, faster sea level rise in the east coast of the US, increasing drought in the Sahel. The new research worry scientists because of the huge impact global warming has already had on the currents and the unpredictability of a future tipping point. The Gulf Stream is the most significant control on northern hemisphere climate outside of the atmosphere, but the system has weakened, as we say, by 15% thanks to melting green land, ice, and ocean warming. That makes the seawater dent less dense and more buoyant. This represents a massive slowdown equivalent to halting all the world's rivers three times over or stopping the Amazon 15 times.

Such weakening hasn't been seen in at least the last 1600 years, as far back as researchers have analyzed so far, and the weakening is accelerating. We're dealing with a system that in some aspect is highly non-linear, so fiddling with it is very dangerous because you may well trigger some surprises, as Professor Steven Ramstorf at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, one of the world's leading oceanographers, he led some of the new research. I wish I knew where this critical tipping point is, but that's unfortunately just what we don't know. We should avoid disrupting the current at all costs. It is one more reason why we should stop global warming as soon as possible. And more bad news for the bees. Bees and other critical pollinators in the food chain face new threats as plants produce fewer flowers during droughts, which are made more frequent and intense by climate change according to new research. Researchers from the University of Exeter in England studied the impact of droughts on flower producing plants in areas with prolonged periods of drought.

They produced about half as many flowers as usual. The plants we examined responded to drought in various ways from producing fewer flowers to producing flowers that contain no nectar. As a researcher at Exeter, the production of flowers as you may know, if you remember your biology, is critical to bees and other pollinators. They visit for the nectar and pollen that they need, you know, to live. The gradual decline of pollinator food sources will impact not only bees, but other insects and animals in their habitats, not only are these insects vital as pollinators of crops and wild plants, but they also provide food for many birds and mammals, said in Exeter researcher. With climate change, droughts are expected to become more common and more intense in many parts of the world according to the study. Bees are already under pressure from a variety of threats, including habitat loss, synthetic pesticides, your new uniques, the spread of various diseases, the introduction of invasive species in their habitats, and Facebook trolls. News of the warm ladies and gentlemen, a copyrighted feature of this broadcast.

And just one note about microplastics. Many organic fertilizers being applied to gardens and farms contain those tiny fragments of plastic according to a new study widely considered a problem affecting the oceans.

These works suggest microplastics may actually be far more pervasive. On the other thing in the world, land having entered the soil of scientists behind the study have warned these tiny fragments could end up in our food. Ladies and gentlemen, that's going to conclude this week's edition of the Show the Programme Turns Next. Next week at the same time, over the audio device of your choice, your time of listening. And it'd be just like not eating, if you did read it, join with me then. We do already. Thank you very much. A typical of the show, shout-out to the San Diego Pittsburgh Chicago and eggshell and Hawaii desks. Thanks to Paul Roost at Argo Studios in New York and John Vogel at Apex Post, here are New Orleans for help with the day's broadcast. The email, oh, and thanks as always, to Pam Hallstead and to Jenny Lawson at WWI New Orleans for their help. The email address for this program, playlist of the music heard here on, and your chance to purchase some cars I talk t-shirts for your entire extended family all at harryshirror.com. And I'm on Twitter at the harryshirror.

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