 Okay, so welcome everyone. My name is Allen Thompson. I teach journalism here at Carlton and I'm the director of something called the Center for Media and Transitional Societies, which is a research center in the School of Journalism. Syria is very much a transitional society. It's probably in the wrong place in that transition, but it's in transition. And for journalists, it's a pretty interesting place to observe. I think for journalism students, we can probably learn a lot of bad lessons about journalism. I would argue in the way Syria is being covered right now. It's not being covered very well at all, but I guess there's the usual excuse that it's a very difficult environment in which to work. The regime doesn't exactly make it easy, I guess, for journalists to cover this story. But I do worry a bit, but are we interested enough? Are we trying hard enough? Are we paying enough attention? We don't very often hear from people who practice journalism in Syria. We hear, I think, mostly from European journalists who have managed to go to Syria. So tonight we are very lucky to have kind of a double feature. A couple of weeks ago, Paul Watson from the Toronto Star was here speaking about his work primarily in Afghanistan, but Paul had also mentioned to me that he had recently been in Aleppo reporting for the Toronto Star and had the chance to meet this very interesting journalist who was working on the ground in Syria in Aleppo, Yasser El-Haji, who had worked for a state-run media and then found himself in this position where he couldn't do that any longer and is now involved with the opposition to the Assad regime, but is also still a journalist, is still a witness to the conflict, is tweeting frantically covering events, but also finds himself in a position where he is facilitating other journalists. He's helping others to try and understand what's going on in Syria. So I wanted to ask Paul, who really introduced me to Yasser, if he could introduce Yasser to you, and explain a little bit about who he is and the kind of work that he sees him doing, and then we'll ask Yasser to talk to us about his work. I guess some media find it hard to define whether you're a journalist or an activist these days. Media outlet in town was interested in talking to Yasser and then changed their minds. They thought, well, he's an activist, not a journalist. So even more reason for us to hear from him and talk about that interesting transitional place for journalism in an environment like Syria. So I'll ask Paul Watson, who is one of Canada's most celebrated work correspondence writers of a conflict, who is himself in a bit of a transition in terms of how we should be doing journalism, how we should be covering environments like Syria. So I'll ask Paul if he can give Yasser a proper introduction and then we'll turn it over to Yasser, and then we should have lots of time for questions and answers. And just so you know, we're recording this event. We now record these occasions in the School of Journalism. We have a team that does that on the record, and then we post them to YouTube later on. So you can check the Faculty of Public Affairs YouTube channel later on for a record of this event. So Paul. Okay. If you don't mind, I'll remain seated. I'm not going to speak long anyway. Or should I go there? Maybe roll a bit closer. I'll go here. Because this question came up in a previous session, I'll begin my introduction with this point. I was asked by journalism students, how do you find so-called fixers, the term that we use for people like Yasser, that is foreign people like me who don't speak the local language or know how to move around safely. We reach out to local experts, who we call fixers, who interpret for us and try to keep us alive. In Yasser's case, I met him because I had spent months lobbying my bosses for permission to go to Syria. They were against it for a number of reasons, part of which is cost because of insurance costs and that sort of thing. They didn't want me to get kidnapped or killed. I finally persuaded them that we should do this because their number one question was, who's your fixer going to be? They wanted to be assured as best they could that we could trust that I'd be in the hands of someone who would keep me from getting kidnapped. That's impossible to assure, but that's how they think. In order to get the best person I could possibly get, I reached out to a colleague who I knew had done excellent work in Syria, a photographer named Moises Samman who works with the legendary Magnum Photo Agency on contract with the New York Times. I think when he met you, he was working for the New Yorker. I just emailed him and I said, Moises, you did great stuff in Syria, who did you work with? He said, Yasser Ahaji, here's his email address. So I emailed Yasser and I said, I work for the Toronto Star, I'd like to do what you did with Moises. Can you help me? He said, sure, I can help you. So I got a bunch of more questions from my boss saying, well, why should we trust this guy and how do we know? So I answered all their questions, I asked Yasser questions, he answered nicely and they were eventually convinced. Yasser is unique in the world of fixers because he is a real journalist. Oftentimes fixers are taxi drivers or English majors or things other than journalists. Yasser worked for a state-run newspaper under the Assad regime, was a UN correspondent for how many years? Seven years, based in New York, reporting in the UN for the regime and then ended up in Cyprus, I believe. And then, come the revolution, he, like many good-minded Syrians, thought, I have to make a choice. He went with the opposition. Once you join the opposition in what is now a civil war, you by definition have a point of view. So yes, he's a journalist, but he is also a member of the opposition. I don't see any contradiction in that and we can discuss the nuts and bolts of that because I happen to think that the way the world has changed, we need more activist journalists in Canada. I think that there's a great tradition of that in the West and that we lost it for reasons of economics and finances and that we should regain it, but we can have that discussion. Before I head you over to the real expert, I want to put this in your mind. As I left Syria on this week-long visit and was back in southern Turkey, I bumped into a couple of old colleagues and I was lamenting the fact that this nightmare was going on 24 hours a day and was getting worse and there didn't seem to be any public pressure in the West, especially in Canada, among Western countries, to do anything to stop it, apart from platitudes and sending some aid here, you know, food and medical supplies here and there. These journalists said, well, yeah, no one wants to get kidnapped because recently, just a short time before this, Richard Engel, the chief foreign correspondent for NBC, had been kidnapped but was then released rescued, in fact, by the Free Syrian Army. It was enough to say, yes, no one wants to be kidnapped, but then they said, besides, it's all on YouTube anyway. So this struck me as something that I don't think most journalists in the West understand and certainly not the broader public. The social media that we're all trumpeting so much these days has now become an excuse for Western reporters to stop taking the risks that we need to take in order to write the stories, do the coverage that mobilizes our governments to stop this kind of stuff and for all of my life as a journalist, that's what journalists did. That's why I got interested in foreign reporting in the first place. You could make a difference, but we are retreating faster than anybody knows and I think Syria is in the misfortunate position of being at the peak of the journalistic retreat. So now everyone says we'll let the public watch it on YouTube and meanwhile our governments did it. And I'll hand you over to Yasser. I'd like to say salam alaikum in Arabic. Salam alaikum. That means peace are upon you and cannot be better than this. Peace are upon you all of you and peace are on Syria and the Syrian people. Being a journalist in Syria, it's really a very challenging job. In the beginning we used to demonstrate, we would go to demonstrate 5-10 people. The only way we could show our demonstration is peaceful, using cellular phone, mobile phone to videotape the demonstration and after that upload it on YouTube. Doing these simple things for you here in the West or in Canada, very simple things for us was very challenging and it's not only that, it could be prison, tortured and even killed because you're using cellular phone to videotape the demonstration. Informers they can report you to the government, government come to your house 3 o'clock in the morning, they will arrest you, they will torture you and nobody knows what happened to you later. After that things become more difficult. If you go on demonstration the government has snipers. Anyone has a video, mobile phone in his hand, they could shoot his hand or shoot his head and kill him and that happened to too many people inside Aleppo got killed or in Syria got killed because they were videotaping demonstrations. That's it. I mean simple things. In the West it's very complicated that you killed when you work with dictatorship or when you deal with dictatorship. The Syrian information it's about freedom and democracy to get rid of dictatorship. Unfortunately the rest of the world stand still and watching the Syrian people get killed every day and doing nothing. So far in Syria around 70-80 thousand people get killed and around 200 thousand being in jail. Most of them we don't know what will happen to them or they're still alive or not. And if we talk to any average guys in Syria in the beginning, okay we like for no problem to talk to foreign journalists. After a while they get upset. You cannot take journalists to them anymore. Why say okay we talk to journalists all the time. For two years being killed no one asked about us. Why we should talk to journalists? And some of journalists are spies. That's true. Some journalists are spies they make it this complicated in a certain way. For example when you put up a video or put a picture on an iPhone and you transmit that picture back to your newspaper. The signal to be tracked by the government and know where the picture has been taken. They will hit that house that night or in the morning by a big bomb and kill from inside. This is a small thing. This is what we talked about how you can be an activist and journalist. It's two different things. You can be a journalist being honest, reporting, criticizing everyone, criticizing whatever you see wrong. That's been your job as being a journalist. When the Christian army made mistakes we reported that. We criticized that. That's been part of being a journalist. Being an activist that you're supporting the people that are fighting for their freedom and democracy. You cannot see someone fighting for his freedom not to support him. And if you're talking about the truth of journalism that's what it's all about. You report the truth what's going on on the ground. You talk about moral things. And when you demonstrate for freedom and democracy that's moral. That's a very valid moral point. You cannot stand still and not support them. So being an activist and journalist sometimes does not affect you or does not affect you in a bad way. That's very simple things. Anyone who wants to ask questions I'm hoping to hear from you. Since Paul spent a lot of time with you and I don't know if anyone else in the room has been in Syria recently. Maybe you can start us off and guide us through a few questions. Things that you know, yes or no. And that we should talk about and then we can open it up to anyone in the room. I'll throw you a hard one first. Because I'm of the opinion that even the reporting that is done by foreigners in Syria. Focuses on the conflict but leaves out the dark sort of background. And by that I mean foreign intelligence agencies. And how they are meddling in Syria and doing things which prolong the conflict. Or making promises and not delivering on those promises. Such as for instance the CIA promising that weapons were coming last summer and they never came. What can you tell people about what goes on in those sort of dirty dealing that they may not be seeing in the newspaper? Unfortunately it's not really everyone care about freedom and democracy. Especially when it comes to the relationship between countries. Everyone care about their interests. They don't care about their people. So when this country for example like the United States CIA or another intelligence. They will care about their back home what they were supposed to do. Their rating or their job back home. So when things really got tough in Syria like the CIA or other intelligence agencies. They came and said okay I'm going to deliver weapons to you. Help us with some information. We will find that information and help them come. They will come 10 days later or one month later say the same thing. And the same things will keep us promises. It's not only CIA. It's other intelligence agencies. For example we have one airport in Aleppo, north of Aleppo. Which is the only base controlled by the government and still controlled by the government in north of Aleppo. The Turkish intelligence came and said okay give us specific details about the airport. We're going to help you and we're going to use our artillery to destroy that airport. We did provide them with the help they need. But they never helped us to target that airport or for us to be able to liberate it. So what I want to stress here. The intelligence they don't have moral really. They care about their position and their job back home. They don't care that much about the people who get killed. Maybe sometimes people get killed. That's for your own interest. It's good. That's what I'm saying. Any questions that arise out of that? There must be one question that arises out of that. The cynicism of foreign intelligence agencies? The same thing. I don't think that if I was a CIA agent from close to my country. I care about first what my country will do. So how could you actually go forward and make sure or tell those CIA agents that for example if weapons went into Syria they would not be misused. Or if they actually helped and attacked against the airport. We talked about what are they going to do. How are you going to assure them that those weapons are not going to happen. The same thing happened against the whole Soviet Union situation. So they get the money and they get the weapons that the weapons were used against them. Especially the patriots. And I'm serious by the way. So I'm not really against it. I'm just a brutal illusion. I just want to have your opinion on it. If they want to help, they will help you. If they want to find excuses, they always find excuses not to help you. Regarding the bettered muscle for example the anti-aircraft. What we ask sometimes for anti-aircraft muscles. Anti-aircraft muscles could very easy control through technology. How long was in one month could be used after one month could be for the password being changed. A lot of things can do to control who has an open one will be fired. But they choose not to do so just to keep us promises. And they say excuse me we will go to Jabhat al-Nusra to extremist. This is not true. They are a way to control these things. But simply they don't want to help. When the conflict starts, after a few months we went everywhere to say okay guys the conflict will go down. We'll have more extremists. We'll have four fighters in our land because we're getting no help. We will get killed every day. And when you get killed every day and no one helps you. You will accept anyone else offer you help. It doesn't matter who he is. Because he was your enemy and you are in so desperate need. You can accept his help. So okay they keep silence and they did nothing. Four fighters came into Syria. We accept them. You cannot say no. Extremists become in Syria because they push to the corner. When you isolate people or people get killed every day they become more extreme. It's no question about that and you cannot tell them why. They lost hope and they become extreme. And now we have four fighters. We have extremists now. It's not too much. We still can deal with it. But there are issues now. All of you have four fighters. You have extremists. You create. And now you blame us for it. How you can justify that. We told you okay this is what's going to happen. We know it. We are on the ground. We see every day how it's happening. We did nothing. This is what we got the result. This conflict in Syria goes on for a long time. For one more year. We'll have a lot more extremists. Maybe you see me extreme. I'm honest. I have one guy who used to work for me. The army attacked our town on April 2012. They went inside his house with a tank. He used to work with me. When he came back and he saw his house destroyed he joined the FSC. He joined the FSC now. And a lot of people have the same things happen to them. You use violence against people you don't know. It's their reaction. They will go to the other side. They will go to more extreme to get back at you. That's normal things to do. And this is what's happening in Syria. We're talking about Liwat Tawheed. This is what I was talking about. This is what I was talking about. Let's go to the side. In Aleppo it's less than 500 fighters. In Aleppo it's less than 300 fighters. How many fighters in Aleppo? 30,000 soldiers. So 500 from Jabhat al-Nusra. We put it together to next to 30,000. Nothing. It's less than 2% 3%. But the foreign media does not go to report about the Syrian army. We go to report about Jabhat al-Nusra unfortunately. And everyone has a beard. They call him Jabhat al-Nusra or Jabhat al-Nusra. That's it. Be the journalist. Talk to this guy. See what he's all about. Ask him about his views. Not see his long beard and see about him. That's his Jabhat al-Nusra. This is not journalism. Do your job. You have to do it right. And most journalists they don't. I just want to ask you about the journalism. The work that you're doing. How do you do it? The nuts and bolts. What are you using? Are you using Twitter? Are you using YouTube? How are you documenting what you're seeing and getting that information to the wider audience? We used to go to Aleppo. Aleppo is 30 kilometers from my town. 30 kilometers we need 2 hours to get to Aleppo was controlled by the government. So we need 2 hours to get to Aleppo. After that we use a video camera or mobile phone. We go back to the Turkish side to upload it because we have no internet. After that it takes us 2 hours to upload 5 minutes video. So this is how we used to do it. It's not easy but a lot of people also get killed but it's having cameras. This is the most of the time I used to do it. Now it's become a little bit easier because the area north of Aleppo to the Turkish side is liberated. So we have Turkish internet. We can use that. Some people help us with satellite internet. So we use it now. It becomes more easy. And the government does not have the manpower to control everything. For example in the beginning I used to open a journalist who was not allowing them to use Beacon. So now we are allowed to use Beacon because the government does not control that much anymore. It does not have resources to track these things. And I see you on Twitter. Are you using Twitter? We use Twitter and we use Facebook a lot. But how are you actually, what's the connection that you're getting? Internet. Are you doing it from your phone? Your phone. From a cafe? Your phone. Your phone. And the reason you don't do it from cafes in the beginning was a lot of informants. So you don't go to a coffee shop and start doing that. You go to your own house or you go out in the field and you do that. If it's some more news, you have to secretly report the news. Because a lot of people, the report the government government will attack your house at three o'clock in the morning. Bit up your wife or bit up your kids if they don't find it. So using Twitter is not too much. Facebook and YouTube all the time. That sounds like journalism to me. Any other questions? Most people, in Syria, they don't want intervention. They want to be able to protect themselves. For example, the worst things we now get are fighter jets bombing us using cluster bombs. I want to bring to your attention cluster bombs. What is cluster bombs? Cluster bombs, it's a bubble full filled with 48 small bombs. And 48 small bombs has a lot of bombs inside each one. So when cluster bombs being used from here, we'll go two kilometers wide and we'll affect everyone within two kilometers. So this is a fact. We want something to use fighter jets so we cannot use, sorry, cluster bombs against us. Other things, it's scud missiles. I want to just also say to you, scud missiles, some pictures may be here or not. Scud missiles, it's 11 meters long missiles. If we'll hit one block, we'll destroy the total block, kill everyone inside and reduce the trouble. The government been using that. And thanks to the NATO allies or the NATO or the Western world, they used battery missiles. They didn't put it on the side of Turkey on the border between Turkey and Syria. They put it 60 kilometers inside so they cannot use it inside Syria because the limit for battery is 60 kilometers. So if they put it on the Turkish-Syrian side, they can reach Aleppo and protect Aleppo. They didn't do that. They put it inside Turkish border, 60 kilometers, so they can protect the Turkish side. And so the government, of course they knew that and they used scud missiles to kill people at that time. The whole of one scud missile was six, seven meters deep and 20 meters long. The whole they made. And according to the government, they used scud missiles to fight tourist armed group. So I will leave it to you to believe that the government fighting tourist armed groups by using scud missiles and cluster bombs inside the city. You see here one side cluster bombs that was in Aleppo one day it was Friday. Friday people, they don't go to work. They stay home. They used cluster bombs inside the city to kill as much people as they can because they know the people are not going to work. They ran straight to the plane. They killed a lot of kids. Government criminal, they do criminal act of killing civilians. They don't care who they care, who they kill. Just as you're watching this, you'll see an image of one of your images of just nothing but destruction on both sides of the road. As far as you can see, that's a scud missile. Sorry. I met one guy, sorry. I don't know if you have his pictures. He was standing there and one scud shot. And he told me he lost 11 of his family including his wife, his kids and his wife was pregnant in one bomb. And they pulled him from underneath the rubble and his head had struck all over him. This is how the government fighting tourist armed group. The Syrian conflict is the most reported and most reported at the same time. There are so many images. In human rights, we launch office in Beirut and they just flooded with images and videos. So there's a lot of that happening. So what do you think about citizen journalism versus other kind of journalism? What's the impact of citizen journalism on knowledge about Syria and kind of the state of reporting? Citizen journalism, I think it's very good. But the problem with citizen journalists they are not very accurate. For example, we say, if I want to listen to citizen journalist our question is accuracy numbers, what's being moved how many being killed. So there are reports, one fighter jet attacked Mara. I am from Mara for example. Sometimes it didn't attack Mara. I'm flying by over Mara to go somewhere else. So, very good intention but it really has to be more professional. The problem with citizen journalists is not very accurate. It's my own opinion. Otherwise, very good. This is my current obsession. So, pardon me if this sounds slightly cynical, it's not. To me, the best thing you can learn in professional journalism training in a school like this is not how to gather the information. Pretty much anyone can do that. You ask a lot of questions. And you tape it so you've got it accurate. The real challenge is to mark it. To get people to care. Right? All the citizen journalists in Syria are doing absolutely incredible work. If you haven't seen this ask me afterwards and I'll give you the link to it. There's a YouTube thing that was posted on the New York Times and they're watching the war web blog of all you see is a camera that's obviously on a tripod of some sort and it's pointing through a hole from a shell blast or something in a wall. And you hear two people softly talking in the background. They're obviously citizen journalists and they're not shooting or doing anything else. Then you hear a single gunshot and a bird flies up and a couple more gunshots and then out of nowhere a .54 tank is directly in front of that hole and the barrel is pointing great at it and then kaboom, kaboom, kaboom and nothing. People like that are dying every day shooting videos like that and tweeting and doing all that but all the western governments can just ignore it because it's not packaged. There's no as I've said earlier there's no Christian on my poor to use the Bosnian Bariable example to stand up live on TV in a town hall meeting with the president of the United States and say, Mr. President when are you going to do something? That's the difference to me. We have one accident about one month ago one guy from the AFP, the French news agency the report was child soldiers being trained in one town I heard the news from different sources so I went to that town to look for this training camp as he came I found nothing in front of that town I spoke to the civilians in that town said we don't have any training camp yet I looked further down further more for this and I found an accident happened in the next village one one father he lost his kids by a fighter jet attack he got so upset he has another kid 18 years old he took him to training camp the journalist went there and photographed that father with his son and later he bought in his news agency that was training camp for children and some newspaper Lebanese newspaper the Daily Star of Lebanon they took that story from that agency and put it on their news and after that Syrian newspaper took it out and the Lebanese newspaper why are you doing that did you make sure this story is credible they said no we don't care it's not our problem talk to AFP I talked to the AFP why are you doing like this give me evidence he said no you have to talk to our reporter so there are some people they do this intentionally to misreport things or to overlook something and this is a fact that's very bad and as an example I told you most of the Free Syrian Army now have beard they don't care anyone about their look or what they eat or what they wear because you could die you could die any minute when you are inside they are snipers they are shelling randomly they are fighter jet anything any time in Libya you could get killed who will care about his beard or whatever he wears some journalists they will go and take some pictures some guys with beard and they have black flag here that's it this is not Jabhat al-Nusra we liberated the town of Azaz in 19th of July 2011 I was there half an hour after I got liberated and I saw black flag on the roof and the journalist was next to me he said ok this is Jabhat al-Nusra Jabhat al-Nusra wasn't even there some kids 12, 10, 12 years old they climbed up the roof and they put this flag that comes with things in Arabic to say in Islam and the airport Jabhat al-Nusra liberated that town so there are a lot of people they really they don't care they won't just put sensation to their story maybe they get more money and sometimes we some we discuss with journalists I worked with old kind of journalist for some New York Times some people say ok we have good day for us we say you have a good day for us he has good stay or else people got killed you look at him and say no sorry you had bad day you had good day as a Syrian had bad day a lot of people got killed for him as a journalist he has good day he has something to report about so sometimes things happen in German I have to tell you one story one day I was one guy named Richard Spencer from the district of London we went to meet one commander say commander as soon as we got to his office we got bound so all of us were on the ground the glasses flying all over and he told him Richard we didn't face a meeting and he looked at me and said yes we are glad we are alive he is thinking about the meeting now some people are a little bit different sometimes can I add just one practical problem and maybe you can solve this when you go back I was told that before the hospitals have been targeted Assad literally destroyed the biggest hospital on Aleppo so the hospitals that are left there is one that is much smaller it doesn't have enough supplies and they have to keep shipping people an hours plus drive away into Turkey we just happened to be there when there had been an attack in the city a whole bunch of people were brought in pickup trucks and taxons anything that would move literally was bringing in women, children, etc so of course since I was there I took my camera out and started videoing and taking pictures and within a minute to two minutes people started firing weapons in the air and shouting and everyone said don't take any more pictures and they explained to me later that because so many hospitals have been targeted people think that if you take photographs then Assad will use it to target that hospital so I said fair enough that's a very logical problem but in terms of me telling a story that will move people to action I need to get into that hospital and I need to film and photograph children who have been either killed or very severely wounded in what is effectively a war crime because if I don't have that I can describe it until my face turns blue but no one is going to be moved by it and there is a solution to this instead taking pictures outside the hospital and show the doors of the hospital so if the government agent sees that door he will know where this hospital is you get inside the hospital and take pictures from inside and this shows that trauma was going on inside but identifying where the hospital is because the government it's regarded for all kind of laws or humanitarian laws hospitals, bakeries every gathering could be possible schools where they find a lot of gathering they would buy them and this is the reason why sometimes we have difficult to deal with them being accused as a spy sometimes because when you take a picture of the hospital and you put on your newspaper the second day the government will hit that hospital this is why sometimes you object to that and do them in a certain way and you go inside they will allow to do that there will be no problem just one other point this leads to a larger debate and I don't want to be the one who sounds like he supports regulating journalists because it's a dangerous path but I know that there are being efforts undertaken now to try to screen people who say they're journalists to have some basis of a formal accreditation or something I don't know if it goes the wrong way but it could be used to great good if you had something that says I'm a journalist and everyone in the FSA recognizes it and then they can say okay you have access and go to the hospital no problem it's a very dangerous thing to start because it may go the wrong way and we start this discussion about two weeks ago I have discussion because I have some kind of moral responsibility to see to forbid someone 20 years old going inside Alibo claiming he's a freelancer journalist to let him go to Alibo and get kidnapped or killed or killed so we put out the word what we supposed to do is how we can protect him the question is do we have moral responsibility to see to forbid someone 20 years old going inside Alibo claiming he's a freelancer journalist to let him go to Alibo and get kidnapped or killed we do have moral responsibility not allowed to go because we have no situation the other things what Wal said are you controlling journalism? no we're not controlling journalism we're controlling a little bit the danger everyone will put themselves to a lot of young guys they want to go to war zone to report about war zone because they think it's exciting it's an adventure for them it's true but also you're self endangered and don't jeopardize our work our revolution if we hear one journalist get kidnapped or killed inside Syria or inside Alibo we'll have no journalist to come in in one month so that's also affecting us so what we did we asked every journalist want to go out to Syria or to Alibo to have a letter of recommendation plus ID card I think that's everyone can live with we're not controlling what everyone want to do but please give us a letter of recommendation and ID card so we know someone is responsible for you somehow and you are a really journalist you are an adventurer now there were two you got a question and there was someone behind you it was rather than a third so we'll have to just go one, two, three pretty sad because what happened is that you could see I was there and then the cluster bump went down it was just like I think four meters away from where I stood that guy was in a motorcycle took away his head and was 30 meters away from where where he was and the whole motorcycle was burned to ground and on the other hand there's another weapon that I think you know what you forgot to speak about is the barrel the barrel every single weapon that every single weapon or rocket or missile that's used against any person is you could just go on the ground or lie on the ground and if you're lucky all the missile would go outside the barrel is the only weapon that it hits, it hits and it kills it kills the radius within even if you're under anywhere if you didn't see the basement I just want to say that because a lot of journalists have been saying that the regime are actually targeting FSA or targeting Jameth Nussel or targeting a companion or whoever they're fighting against but the reality is that for this barrel there's nothing that you can target with in front of a helicopter opens and they throw it with their foot and where it goes it goes there's no targeting method for that to happen so it could kill anyone in any place at any time and it's so scary to a point that you cannot even describe it and like you said like I'm probably a big journalist like you said and I went there for that venture but it was not a good experience it was a bad experience I was almost killed like a million times I don't know how to deal with these situations I went out and like I felt that I went for nothing because when I went out who would listen I'm just a 20 years old person who's just trying to go out and tell people about it there's probably 2, 3 newspapers that talk to me and there are other but before going there CBC, CTV and everyone like yeah we're gonna support, we're gonna talk to you blah blah blah I was in there I was like okay when I went there you know me and you know that I was there I met you before I go but like oh sorry we can't do this I just want to mention just how how dangerous it is to be there and how bad it is there and how no one really cares unless you're actually a real journalist and if you're actually a real journalist and you go there there's a million things that goes through and a lot of people are afraid to go there you mentioned that story about the guy that got killed yeah 12, 12, 12, 12 that bomb that's my village that bomb was like they used a lot of bombs one and a half kilometers and all this year it was cluster bombs start from my house, sort of some part of my house and went to the middle of that town when this guy got hit when I got there there's so many cameras I looked wide so they thought I was actually a journalist so they start taking me to the place and I was like this is the first second I got to Aleppo I got to Madahand they start taking me to the place imagine seeing your head on the ground and you have they're expecting you to shoot a video and then taking you and then they took me to the hospital for me to see what's happening there and you see like 4 or 5 dead like or like I think 10 dead bad there like 30 injured and you look at it like how could you do this I went out and I was almost crying and the people in the car started talking about like something that happened just a normal thing for them and just this just makes me like really hard for those after this I want to mention one thing in Aleppo there's one area called Zarefa Zarefa is a small river run from beginning for Aleppo to the end for Aleppo every day people picking up bodies from Zarefa the government executes these people they dump them in Zarefa and the end where controlled by the FSA they will wait for their bodies and they will pick them up I went like 1 week ago to one area where they collect their bodies I saw like I have pictures with me I saw like 10 bodies lying down after 2 hours I left and I went back home the second day I woke up I'm really upset why I'm upset was myself when I was there pick up their bodies your loved one I never said to anyone I'm sorry for your loss for your loved one got killed and you saw his body it hit me not the first day hit me second day that's become normal to you you don't really make any don't make sense sometimes that's it it's part of your life you see everyday the people and this is very bad for everyone for us as adults affect us what about the children the women are pregnant and everything this is something we are going to pay for it for the next many years to come the Syrian generation we will pay for it for the future to come a quick defense of starting reporters in war having been one 25 some years ago the veteran combat reporter said to me the day you stop crying is the day you have to quit the point being that the passion that you had the visceral reaction you had to what you saw is exactly what the public needs to feel because when they are hearing it from people who are jaded or wear like the epaulets or like the flag vest and the helmet and all that phony stuff it starts to become unreal to them they need to hear exactly what you felt and they need to feel that so they stop it like I said I tried to email I believe more than 400 children I got replied before I got replied to over 50 supporting and loving yeah we'll do this coming back I was like okay so I'm here what can we do I got replies from three and one of them is the embassy newspaper and one of them is actually Jenna here don't get me wrong I'm a proud Canadian but I really think that's a problem with Canada don't be afraid to pitch to the US and Europe they'll take it in a second there's a lot of Canadians who do great work for American publications and European the voice of America I talked to them and they said yeah we'll be there but they have the same exact thing the thing is that they need to like people look at us as like okay I'm a fourth year communication look at me as someone who actually is able to explain what's happening and then but they don't hear they just see the email they don't listen to us they just see the email but what we've seen what we've seen like at that age and what people are seeing there at that age is just quiet like scarring for the rest of your life like it's just if you could just imagine with me I'm sorry I'm probably taking over your time but it's just if you can imagine with me like just have the helicopter or a village or pass over a city in an airport or in a village it's so freaky and scary to a point that you can't even live with it like I was here after and I heard a helicopter on top of like a helicopter just passing over Carlton I literally went under just the wing beside the car and that's how scary it is like it's just what's happening just wait I think you know the word that word if I hear it it means tilted and that tilted it means that it's going to throw something after you hear the whistle a lot of people say okay the whistle then you hear the explosion a lot of people say yeah the explosion is scary there's no explosions in the east if you hear the explosion you're alive you've got the top of a great story I would read that story believe me there are people will say no 100 times anyone who's ever got anything published will tell you this they got 100 rejections before they got one acceptance and the one acceptance started their career so I don't want to get you killed or badly injured but if you have a feel for it let's put you guys together afterwards to connect and make sure you can follow up I had two more and I see on the other hand a man in the corner is stretching or wants to ask a question but we'll do these two and then I'll come to you I think on the continent you'll be more protected the whole regime about sectarianism and we will be killed Christians that's total lies and propaganda they use it to be in the same bow as I say I went to Aleppo in August last year it's now eight months one Christian got killed by some idiot from the FSA how many Christians got killed in Aleppo? one so if this is about going to kill minorities or kill Christians how come nobody did that so far? that's one thing about the Kurds 40 years in power Bashar al-Assad and his father there are a lot of Kurds they have no right to vote they have no proper schools they cannot use their language so how come government cares so much about minorities they give no passport to the Kurds or they have no schools so the whole question about sectarianism is a thing that's total propaganda and if you talk to the Syrian people you will find by yourself this is not true couple weeks ago in Aleppo they cooked the food in church they took it to mosque they distributed it they cooked it in one area called Franziska it's Christian area they took it to Muslim mosque called Ashabi and they distribute to all people for Aleppo to eat that's happened in Aleppo during the war so the Syrian people are not sectarian and no one has to worry about minorities in the future unfortunately you listen to foreign media and that's what's happening I don't see any disadvantage I think Syria after we will succeed in the revolution we want to be open so it's good for us to have an idea about free journalism it's good for us we try to let journalists freely and write freely what they write so it's good for us there are some people okay who have a kind of exposure okay we'll get some hospital cut bond or whatever make shift hospital cut bond because of journalism sometimes happen but it's not really disadvantage of being out of journalism in Syria so I see it yes yes I do because different mentality mentality play big role in war and maybe you don't notice that for me I know how he feel how he work with his face with his body language so I know when he's upset it's time to leave for you maybe find it normal for that they come to use the journalism to help us we went one day me and one guy from the New Yorker his name is Jali Anderson he's a very modern journalist and we have an appointment with one Kurdish leader and he said okay I'm running a bit late please go to the school wait for us I said okay we went to school to wait for him and was two young guys at that school we start talk to him and was okay everything was okay suddenly he ask one guy he ask Jali Anderson where you come from and he told him from America from the United States and this guy he got upset he went inside the school he got a shot shot gun and came out at us and he told us to get a hell out of there Jali Anderson he got a bit paranoid or he start to ban I start talking to this guy I count him down after that we walked away after that he said Jali why you don't you leave when I told you to leave I said if we left at that time he will go after us but by staying there for two minutes talk to them that will make us better and that's what happened so because I know his mentality I can deal with him better this way is a big advantage we have the bath party now for 40 years for 40 years I'm in Syria if you if you ask roughly estimate from how many people died within 40 years we will say over 200,000 40,000 died in Hama uprising in 82 so if we let 40 years we have 200,000 or we rebel with military but we have to emphasize here we didn't pick up arms because we want to we force to pick up arms that's different and if we have made 100,000 to liberate Syria and we have no dictatorship in the future that's worth somehow somewhere you have to pay the price for your liberty and if you take 100,000 you have to pay the price if we did something like for example 20 years ago maybe the price would be less we have less people here or we did something 30 years ago but unfortunately no one helping us we get killed every day and no one cares I'm going to ask you another question all the time you're preaching about freedom and democracy what you're doing to support freedom and democracy you tell me you got killed 100,000 people fighting for freedom and democracy why don't you support them why don't you do something for them you're asking us because we are looking for our freedom of course it's up to you when you get your bush to make the United Nations irrelevant and do what they think about false intelligence and bait countries up to you to question that and not allow them to do that again or Tony Blair whatsoever by the way Tony Blair led the war in Iraq and against the Saddam Hussein regime he get baited now 5 million dollars a year from the Kuwaiti government to be work for the Kuwaiti government Tony Blair he get baited 5 yes 5 million dollars get baited from the Kuwaiti government to work as an advisor to Kuwaiti government he's the one main player for the war in Iraq as you know he's the one campaign for the war in Iraq so it's up to you not to have elected some politician like him or to hand to hold him accountable for his action security measure you have to have a lot of information most important things information words I say words divers are who could be risk to you to have connections with the people with the soldiers so the more information you know the better you are especially war like Syria for example we went to the old city a couple of days ago and the old city was one spot like around 50 meters if you go through that spot straight line 50 meters but across that on top of the castle a little castle you can overlook this 50 meters if you don't know you have no information you could easily cross that 50 meters and get shot and killed you have to go around like 500, 600 meters not to bus this 50 meters so what's important information and to know what's going on in that area after that you go I don't understand were you worried about security and the situation of people tracking you know signals in the beginning yes but lately I told them the government doesn't have manpower it doesn't have the technology or equipment to do so in the beginning we used to be careful about anything we say to each other we used to go to houses inside the houses put on small paper what we have to write on the sign someone also would drive motorbike to go to a different house from different house to different house in the beginning yes now we come a bit easier because area has been liberated and government has I want to tell you something that's it talking about businesses sometimes or science we confiscated some listening devices tracks where it's made in Sweden who made it? Sony Ericsson Sweden until now still has a Syrian ambassador in Sweden it's all European country why the Syrian government what military intelligence equipment from there other than that the foreign minister of Sweden has negotiated an oil deal with the Syrian government on behalf of Linden Oil and if you listen and you think about it Sweden's only European country they didn't report Syria to be reported to the ICC all European countries agree to report Syria to the ICC international criminal court except Sweden and this is a small example of how things work yes I request for international yeah citizen journalists really I think sometimes they are very good because they report things the way they see it they don't have anything behind before or they don't have anything in mind to put into the story when they do a table they will write what they see this is good because a lot of journalists they come inside the conflict they have something in their back head and they will report according to what they have in their mind citizen journalists this is when they are young when they become all those different stories I had a question about how you sort of see yourself so for example do you with the word rebel apply to you no for example I disagree with sales they don't criticize them a lot but as a rebel I have to differentiate between journalist and civilian revolution and military revolution it's connected to each other but it's not necessary to be rebel really a little bit different from each other would you ever have you ever carried a weapon or used a weapon I will never do this is why I am not a rebel I never bought a weapon I never carried a weapon but that doesn't mean I am not supporting the FCA I am supporting the FCA but I am not a rebel so I am a delegate I have to do it so 1, 2, 3 I have to say when the revolution started 18, 20 years ago they started to go on demonstrations like me we used to stay behind control things tell them to want to demonstrate what signs they put in and when it became militarized the revolution became militarized I did not accept that I don't want it to be militarized so it was a bit some kind of rift between us but we still have some moral authority for them what we don't like about them acting on their own for them it's different group they call it the grip way of operating what does that mean you see the grip so one leader got killed does not all of it fall apart you take that spot still the revolution hold but this has come some danger every group operate on their own they won't listen to higher command they will not have change of command there are some change of command and some other who they have seen you can put it this way the first question the first question if you work with the people with the kids they start the revolution and you have credibility with them you stay with them all the time and they know what you believe you are with them when we attacked our town we were there when the military attack last we were there we never left them out so if you have this kind of credibility with them and sometimes you criticize them okay they will accept it maybe they will okay but they will accept it and you still have some moral authority it comes from your credibility working with them for a long time so you can somehow mind that but if they trust you that's it you are not going to lose your trust they will find out for example I criticized in the beginning it was foreign media and one of the head brigade leader came to me and said you are with us why you criticize us I said well I criticize you for this reason he said well I will advise you not to criticize us and I told him no I will criticize you and do whatever you think so we got this argument two months later he found out what I did was correct there should be more organized so he came and said okay what we can do now how we help us somehow we can work this out the other thing with the state trying media I will tell you why I quit one day was the general assembly in September in the United Nations and our foreign minister used to be now our deputy president and they called me and said our foreign minister here please come to cover the general assembly things so I went to the general assembly meetings and then they have to send to my newspaper what I saw at the general assembly discussions the head of his office told me go to the foreign minister talk to him and write whatever he wants and after that send it to Syria I said no I won't do that so I went back to the mission I want to use their facts to send to my newspaper and he said no you cannot use our my facts you use your own facts so I told him this is a government thing it's everything controlled by government he said no I quit and he said well you get a lot of pay because when you work for government in such a position they pay you money you get access to everything you become like part of the system unless you woke up one day I said okay I'm not part of the system bullshit system anymore and he told me okay go and use your own facts I said okay that's it this is the end of it I quit sometimes we wake up and say okay I can't take this anymore and then do they try to punish your family or anything I didn't they banished me for example I used to go visit Syria I have to go to the secret service report the secret service every time and that caused me a couple of days of trouble until I get back up the top but my family, my father they banished him a long time ago they kicked him out of the force because of political issues but every time you go to Syria we are at the border you have to go to the secret service they will interrogate you for one day or two days after that you need to go oh sorry no you're on for years again most simply more is I grew up with the issues and that's what revolution is but on the other hand they should be called revolutionists or people who are fighting for freedom those kind of words although they sound a bit tied to one side but there are the reports they don't have real rebels they don't have people who are just fighting against civil war and there's a million paper that was written here and they call it civil war civil war they don't know why they do that because if they say revolution I'm not just supporting a revolution for democracy because you have to explain it so they call troubles they call the difference to them so they have no obligation to do something for that revolution it's a... in fairness I'm not defending because I see your point it should be called an armed uprising or a revolution that's true but the international committee of the Red Cross and the National Law of Determinant of these things has declared it a civil war so... once that story is reported then it sort of speaks to an earlier point you made about older journalists the... I'm guilty of this as the next guy journalists are always writing that generals founded the trap of fighting the last war journalists do the same thing when you... the people who I covered Kosovo quite extensively and most of the people who were covering Kosovo had come from Bosnia which is a totally different situation in Kosovo the West was supporting a fascist military organization called the Kosovo Liberation Organization which just happened to be a convenient weapon to hit Slovakia with but they were fascists and then they ended up committing ethnic cleansing and burning Orthodox churches and all those things which are horrible and paid no penalty for in the case of Syria a lot of the people who were there just came out of Libya so the template in their head is Libya or Egypt and then those ones came out of Iraq so a lot of the things you're complaining about are simply baggage that experienced journalists bring out of the last place and as people who may be considering going into this kind of stuff you should really try to cleanse your mind for each new one so you're not making the mistake of the generals in fighting the last war instead of concentrating on this one okay sorry we're talking about civil war civil war that means civil fighting each other but in Syria it's military against civilians how you can call a civil conflict it's civil war it's military against civilians it's not civilians against each other so it's definitely not civil war it's a symbol of that this is like even like this is a very small town and just the places around it and this place is the only area where actually those rebels exist or the people who came from Libya will get Iraq out of Afghanistan I just want to point out that those rebels or those people who are there are not the same people those generals are seen they have an agenda behind calling the rebels they have something behind those calling the rebels and that's true like just do this like I think 3-4 days ago CTP had a whole article written about calling it rebels are killing soldiers from other I don't really know the title but basically just pointing out that also Free Syrian army are doing a lot of mistakes and not even mentioning the other side and that's just repeatedly happening within the media itself and that is a very crucial thing and coming back to the Red Cross I'm so sorry the Red Cross is an association within Syria it's actually a union association with Nigeria and Syria that's dealing with the regime itself don't confuse the two the international committee of the Red Cross is recognized by international treaty there it's a fallible organization but we can get into that discussion I'm trying to manage war and to define it and to apply rules to it all of that's impossible too but everyone agreed at one point that the ICRC would be the ones that decide these issues and they've declared it a civil war so everyone sort of follows after that and we call it a civil war but I see a point even the Red Cross has been sent to as an association it actually deals with the people on the land of Syria and there's a great example the Canadian government actually said yes when two million dollars were sent to the Red Cross international and they were sent to Syria eventually and the Red Cross of Syria took the two million dollars that were associated with the regime and the Canadian government said sorry about that and you can go check out but no one writes about this you don't see papers written about that that's an important point the Canadian media is completely long coverage of Syria we were talking earlier Canada is an important member of NATO but you would be hard pressed to find a story in the mainstream media about what Canada's position is in NATO on the question of should we arm the rebels I find this astounding how can we claim to be one country in the world what our public is not even discussing what every nation in Europe is discussing right now should we arm the freedom fighters doesn't even come up here I just want to manage the time a bit so I know the question waiting here question here anyone else who thinks that I want to ask a question so I've got two or three questions left and then we'll probably come back to calling NASA to give us a closing comment so I guess I just wanted to kind of ask both of you because I think this is an interesting kind of in the sense that there's a moral responsibility that you repeatedly keep mentioning about being a journalist not only being a journalist but being an activist in that sense that you need to be able to criticize where you think something is going wrong but there's this larger overarching movement for democracy and for freedom to operate within each other and on the other hand while you're mentioning this first of all this call for more of an activist journalism here in Canada which I agree with but then you're juxtapositioning against this need for the most sensational imagery that you can find to get the base back home engaged and then to engage their morality so in the field you really need to go in with your heart in one hand and ignoring it in the other because you need the most brutal truths you can find and I'm wondering then with no access to the regime You've made an important point it's incredibly fraught and you don't want to put that power and it is a power in the hands of the wrong people but there are people who can manage that power responsibly and the way I always look at this because it's easier for me to visualize it is photographers I can stick a camera in your hands as I have one in my hand in Rwanda and there was a heap of dead children because someone had walked into a room where they were all hiding in a pile under a blanket and simply killed them all in an AK-47 but you could stand there and photograph it and it would be a heap of children with a bloody blanket over them but James Nogway or any number of really artistic combat photographers would maybe for instance focus on the little hand that was sticking out and they would make art out of the most horrific cruelty you can imagine and in the wrong company that would sound like I'm an idiot but his job is to make people care so he didn't want those kids killed but he has the talent and the humanity to make the most compelling picture out of that that nobody will turn away from and there's the key people are overloaded with information so they're turning away by the drones they're saying oh my god another Arab Spring problem I don't want to hear about it so it's incumbent on us to think how do I make people care and that doesn't mean you're going to distort the truth or impose an irresponsible bias or do anything evil you're simply going to make your choices and write or shoot or do whatever you do in such a talented human artistic way that you're going to get people standing up and saying I want to fix this and that applies to City Hall the Supreme Court, House of Commons everything journalists do to me the first question is how do I make people care it's comparable to what we were talking about earlier with no access to the other side then you have journalists who are coming in who were forward and who let me mention earlier are not citizen journalists but they're foreign and they're kind of cowboys they're coming in looking for adventure so I'm wondering on the ground working in your country you know this movement for freedom and democracy how do you then feel when there are these foreign reporters who are coming in and they're coming in and I think it's just a couple of points I think they're coming in number one looking for that big sensational story they're coming in looking for the adventure but they're also coming in saying if I can't get access to the regime I'm going to get some access where I can be objective this is my first one and that's the only objectivity when you can't access both sides is you try to show the worst but then also be objective by saying that the people who are suffering aren't perfect either I can tell you're absolutely right in the last point because it's always in the back of my head that people are going to say he's gone local he's like totally lost it and he can't be trusted so the quick antidote to that is criticize the good guys just to show a little objectivity so I'm wondering being on the ground because the introduction to tonight's topic was this phrase and the fixer but being a fixer on the ground how do you negotiate that process of saying okay I criticize these guys myself so I get that maybe you're going to criticize them a bit but there's a larger picture that we're really trying to fight for I don't know how you convey that to foreign like mediators who call like act as speaking to us you don't talk to him about it just let him see and write what he sees and if he write exactly what he sees that's it you are winning because we have nothing to hide we are at the right side we are fighting for our freedom and democracy so we have nothing to hide and we do make mistakes but everyone makes mistakes so if he saw an awful lot of things and there's some bad things with it there's no problem with that as long as he sees all the stories I worked with like over 200 journalists in the last 20 years the only guy, one guy we're not allowed to go back to Syria and I'm sorry to say that it's one guy from 200 journalists all what he cared about was one year ago and one year ago we don't have too much problem with this we don't have too much confighted every time he come to Syria talk to me, he cares about this this guy yes we forbid him but if one guy like Polo or other guys they come look at this Russian as a whole and see some small things whatever wrong with it and report it there's no problem with that that's healthy policy problem are there just journalists who you can't stand and you won't work with them I hope I'm not one of them some of them yes some of them like okay we went to one situation and the journalist was dangerous here and the journalist he keep asking the same question over and over again I told him we're not doing too good he looked at me like this he said okay go ask the questions and I might be happy I'll be happy to do that so there are some journalists really act different to danger and they lose it sometimes that's normal, it's not unusual some people they take like 5 minutes he's 22 years old he work for European news agency and he will take him 2 minutes to ask question and he will get one sentence answer he spent 2 minutes 3 minutes to ask the question go over around the questions and he will get an answer 1 or 2 words so after 10 minutes we got 5 answers and we got 10 minutes to talk sometimes things happen what are the problems participating in the construction of the city and first we have to talk about legitimacy legitimacy comes from the people if the people are allowed to to be their president you are not legitimate you are not legitimate leader anymore if we are costing the rebels or whatever if revolution costing any dams I will give you one story I have one friend of mine he used to work for military intelligence he used to be in Italy got killed by a bomb according to the government he got killed by terrorists so the president we have a law if you got killed you are fighting for your country the president will will promote you to higher rank because his father was broke government after he buried him he put a big sign on his door he said this is the house of Amin Najjar he got killed fighting for his country and the president will promote him to captain and he put a big sign on his door when the army came to our town they burned his house they burned his house so if you see the sign say this guy he was to work for the government and the president himself honored him and brought him and you come the minister comes in and burn this house you have an idea of what who is doing who so how come someone worked for you died for you and you go burn this house and who will go for example how are you going to destroy infrastructure with clashing or who is our BJ who will do that can you destroy schools buildings roads whatever by clashing until few months ago the officer has only clashing and some are BJs who has a fighter jet who has a bomb so that's another lies or propaganda from the government and I'm sorry a lot of journalists also listen to when they came to my town they burned 300 houses I have a video they put on the tanks washing machine and refrigerators and blankets and they took them with them on the tank they used the tank to move the things we have a video there another town was the government and they allowed that that town to videotape them with their tanks and refrigerators and washing machine and their tanks this is a government story it's very simple very obvious international law years ago so I shouldn't know these things but I don't but there is a checklist it has to do with the number of combatants the areas under their control and what the definition of control is that sort of thing but there is sort of a not terribly scientific but there is a checklist where you then determine that they've met enough of the criteria that this is now sort of important that's right show something, that's right and this speaks to the point you just made in a sense, the people you asked earlier should there be an armed uprising against the government unfortunately written into that same formula if I remember right is that once there is a full scale civil war then the people who are rising against the once accepted government internationally then have legitimacy they're allowed to negotiate before governments they're allowed to receive the armed aid all these sorts of things so written into our international system is actually an incentive to rise up with weapons because you get better rights you get more rights in the system there's not a great amount of international law that supports peaceful demonstrators I have to add to seven things a sentence for the Red Cross the Red Cross in Syria no, it's biased not objective at all I'm not really surprised to declare it's civil war they've never been objective or been even handed there was last question you comment on the state of the Syrian media generally is it generally media that has the standard as an equity deal and post-Assad if you are to be able to be looked at in the media sector what is the standard of journalism even though journalists cannot report politically on certain things but there are certain things that they can do well first, about the government media government media has a hundred percent lies including myself, I used to lie I've been honest to you long time ago we used to report about electing the president we used to go to people to take their people opinion people who are so afraid if they hear I'm journalists coming from newspaper belong to the government they will tell me what I want to hear that's it and I did that myself for some time so the government total lies and I will give you one example what happened in my town one time fighter jet came and attacked potatoes refrigerated potatoes refrigerated then people offloading potatoes and they killed 7 of them I was there with a group of journalists like 20 minutes later still blood on the walls of everything we saw the onion inside, the potatoes inside that evening the state TV reported fighter jet attacked home for women's storage area in Mara and destroyed that storage area that's regarding the government regarding us journalists and bringing along foreign journalists to come in and report freely that's part of what we want to do in the future and what we're doing now we're sending people in the 15th for example in February we're going to have group of people go out of Syria to Turkey have training seminars and we've been doing this for the last year training people outside to learn and to know how to report how to become reporters and to know about the western media to be free reporters so we're working on that we have a long time, a long way to go but we're trying to do that some people really believe in the media or in journalism I want to say something about Syria sometimes we have what's called town hall meeting you have it here or you have it in the state and we have some political discussion and we need to talk to the people about the future of Syria about politics, all of women all of minorities outside we will be amazed we will be amazed we will be amazed we will be amazed we will be amazed we will be amazed how people willing to talk they just want to get something out of their system talk about politics discuss the role of women role of Christians people they've been 40 years they cannot talk about anything except for food and water and something else so people of Syria they really want to look for their freedom and I think they won't lose the opportunity to build both Syria on the right track if they get the opportunity and success I want to invite both of you to just say something and close it I'll start, you can finish because my principle obsession with the subject is the role of activism in western journalism sometimes it's easier to look at these things with the distance of history so I offer as an example the pre-World War II to Spanish the Civil War and imagine yourself at this age embarking on a career as a journalist and there is the Civil War going on and it's a war against fascism and most of the European powers are doing nothing to help the resistors against fascism even though everyone knew it was evil and that if allowed to succeed in Spain it would spread and it would become a plague across the world and you would have to ask yourself at that time which side am I on am I on the side of the fascists or am I on the side of the resistance I can't see it any other way in Syria you have to ask yourself which side are you on are you on the side of a regime that fires scud missiles, probably chemical weapons et cetera et cetera into residential areas and is committing mass murder every day or are you on the side of the people who are trying to build a democratic country I think the answer is obvious and then you work from there you try to control yourself, control your emotions the objective gets as much facts as you can and criticize where necessary but you have to pick a side I think being a journalist it's the most interesting job you could possibly do but I stress you have to be morally responsible for what you write because it's what you write, it's weapons the same thing as a kind of weapons if you have no moral behind that what you write you could contribute to some mass killing or whatever if it's not now in the future so watch what you write and be morally responsible for what you write and for the people you write and for the future of your country too journalism it's very important weapons use it the right way I want to thank both of you for being here this has really been a privilege and I'm glad we're recording so that others will get a chance to look at this because I mean Paul was talking about history the advantage of distance and looking back on conflicts and I just think of, I've looked a lot at the way the media dealt with Rwanda and what's very striking is there were virtually no Rwandan journalists who were able to do anything, they were dead anyone who would try to document what was happening what government forces and the forces of genocide were doing was killed and others were too terrified or literally unable hardly anyone was able to actually practice independent journalism during that conflict so it's as if we have no no way of getting an accurate journalistic record on the ground so we look at what the foreign correspondents did and when we're studying journalism and conflict I think we're guilty of a bit of chauvinism of being drawn to the polls who've gone somewhere to report a conflict and we look at the way journalists go to report a conflict that they're not part of that it's somebody else's war so it's such a privilege to be able to hear from someone who is living and breathing this conflict and trying to perform the role of a journalist and help us have that record because who can document this better than someone who lives lives in this society understands it's going on with the actors and can maybe help the world figure out what's happening so I'm glad Paul suggested that we hold this event this evening and help to make it happen so I'm so glad that we were able to hear from you and to really hear from a Syrian journalist people can call you an activist if they want but a Syrian journalist who is documenting these events and helping to create a record that we can go back to and I want to thank both of you and Yasir especially for sharing this with us and let's keep in touch and Carlton has done some training activities we've done it in Rwanda, we've done it in Kenya and South Sudan and other places so maybe we should be like I need another project but maybe we should be trying to figure out how could we set up shop somewhere in Turkey for now and help to run some training all would be a wonderful Professor Emeritus this is not a myth that is the surest guarantee against extremism winning in Syria that I can think if there's an army of trained journalists they'll make sure that's a free democratic society so thank you very much this was great and look forward to continuing to talk to you and hear what's happening we have a seminar on the project