The next talk is the untold story of Edward Snowden's escape from Hong Kong and how you can help the refugees who saved his life. And we have three speakers today. This talk, Lena Rohrbach, is for Amnesty International Germany's expert on human rights and the digital age and a moral philosopher by training. Then we have Söhnke Iversen, he's head of the investigative research unit at Handelsblatt, his specialty uncovering corruption, fraud and gross mismanagement. And finally Robert Thibault, he is a human rights lawyer in Hong Kong and incidentally one of Edward Snowden's lawyers and is still in contact with him today. And this is your stage and please give a warm round of applause to all three of those. Thank you. Hi everyone. Can you hear me? Very good. Hi, my name is Lena and I work for Amnesty International in Germany where I cover human rights in the digital age, we're still figuring out what exactly that means, but it includes issues of freedom of speech and information online and the human right to privacy, which is being undermined by mass and targeted surveillance and lots of other human rights which are threatened or strengthened by the increasing use of ICT, usually it's both at the same time. At Amnesty we're also part of the campaign to pardon Snowden, which I'm going to tell you about today. Tonight you're first going to hear about Snowden and his current situation in Russia and then about his escape from Hong Kong and how to help the refugees who saved him. And I'm really happy to see many people here interested in this talk because I think there's a fascinating story to be told later, unfortunately not my part of the talk, but theirs. And I believe it is an important story to tell, especially in these times with the ongoing debate on refugees and asylum, where refugees are often portrayed as an anonymous mass, more the object of political decisions than actors of change, which themselves of course they also are. But before we come to that, let's start with the Snowden situation first. As you all know, Snowden shared US intelligence documents with journalists in summer 2016 and Hong Kong, which revealed the shocking extent of global mass surveillance. Snowden claimed that their sole motive for this was, and I quote his own words, to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them. But the US government branded him a traitor, who as they say, has significantly harmed US national security interests. So here's his current situation. After fleeing Hong Kong, he was stuck in transit at the Moscow airport until he was granted a temporary right to remain in Russia. US authorities revoked his passport, which interferes with his ability to travel to other countries and to apply for asylum in a country of his choosing. There have been several offers among them Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua. He's been granted residency in Russia until August 2017. After that it could be extended or not there's no way to know yet. So why doesn't he just return to the US? At least President Obama seems to think that this is what he should do. Sorry, this is not true. OK, so we don't have phone and electricity. I'm very sorry about that. Can someone help me with that? I was going to show you a video and I believe that for environmental reasons you shouldn't give up on your old computers too early. So I'm still using my eight year old MacBook and its batteries broken because as you all know, they have a problem with the batteries. That's a short intermission. Nice, isn't it? Oh, yeah. Very good. Thanks for giving me such a great cue. Why stop now? So the computer is rebooting now. I'm sorry, the computer is rebooting as I said. It's a pretty old one. There's something you can do while I'm waiting for it to reboot besides singing, which is great and very good. There are pants and papers next to the microphones one to six and you can just hand them out if you're sitting next to it. Just share them with others around you. So one has a pen and paper. It's just one paper. I see the spreading is commencing. That is nice. I hope you all are familiar with the six to one rule. Yes? Yes? No, six hours of sleep, two meals and one shower? Not every day. Every day. Of all three days. Who followed that? Hands in the air, please. And everybody who did not follow that knows why he's not or she's not raising the hands, right? Some people joked about this. Six hours a day. That is quite a lot. One meal and only two hours of sleep. I'm exhausted already. Oh, there's lights flashing. And I hope now this is going well. We'll take a few moments. You're doing a great job. He's doing a really great job. Thank you very much. That is actually quite nice when such thing is happening. I like your... So this is a picture I took in South Africa at a memorial for apartheid and the fight against apartheid. I thought it was a pretty war. South Africa, definitely. That was my first thought also. Sorry. I don't want to make fun of your really, really... That's really your doing great job. Sorry, guys. No, there's no stress. I think we have... No, we will keep a tight schedule. I know when I make loose comments about this is the last talk and then there's a big break, I will be slaughtered afterwards or at least beaten into a dark corner or something or drowned in chunk or something. Which would not be that bad, actually. Not drowning. But... Well, the... I could show resistance at the first... Don't go there, I think. Right? Another thing is I think we have not only those three around here. So far I can give you hints who's also maybe attending the thing. Some of you maybe have recognized that there's a little bit more going on at this corner where we have set up all the technical stuff and that there's some new equipment arrived from another room. But that is enough hints, I think. For the most of you. I'm hypnotized by these pieces of wood or is it actually rock? Another joke. So when somebody is able to articulate then you have way too much processing power in your brain left, so let's do teaser. So everybody silently in your head think of a number between one and ten. Not telling that the other guy silently. And then multiply it by nine, please. And when you have the result add up the single digit so when you have 23 you add 2 plus 3 is 5 like that, okay? Then you divide 5. You got that? Okay, when you... No, not divide 5, subtract 5. I'm sorry, subtract 5. Not divide by 5, subtract 5. I'm sorry. And now you count through the alphabet. When you have a 1, you take a 2B, 3C, 4D, 5E and so on and so forth. And now this letter you have with your result in your head silently search for a country starting with that letter which has a border with Germany and a fruit. Denmark and dates or Dutch and dragon fruit. No? Maybe I give away the secret about this. I think Obama wants to talk, yes? Yeah, possibly he doesn't want to talk. He just wants to look a little grumpy and I think that's because he knows that what he's going to say is not going to resonate well with you. For good reasons. I'm sorry. We had this copy wrongs 2.0 just about two hours ago in this hall.  Yeah, probably. When we can't pursue him to speak up or on. Yeah, the problem is that I have more videos on here. So I'm terribly sorry about that. If I had a worst case scenario how this would go it would be my computer without electricity for a few seconds. And I guess we should just change and I'll do my part later. And you do your parts first. I'm so sorry about that. Okay. Okay, that works. Sorry. Nice. Uh, Julian? That thing does. No, the... No, the... The trigger to flip it. What's that on? No, it's not working. You have to adjust it. It doesn't start? It doesn't start. Don't you really like to adjust it? Oh, now it starts. Okay. Good evening. Thank you for coming. My name is Zönke Iversen and I'm an investigative journalist at Handelsblatt, which is for those who are not from here. I'm from here. I was born in Hamburg. Spent most of my life here. And then I went out into the world. Now I'm at Handelsblatt, which is like the German Financial Times. The Wall Street Journal. We founded at Handelsblatt an investigative research unit which is like the spotlight team of Germany, of my paper at least. And so we cover mismanagement, fraud, corruption. Sometimes when we do well, people go to jail. And about a year ago, I came across the story of Edward Snowden that nobody had heard before. And I was surprised because I thought Edward Snowden, everything is told. The whole world media has covered it. But actually, there was a big part missing. And I would like to tell you today about that part and about the people who saved Edward Snowden's life and who have for three years remained completely silent on that. Many people have taken credit in the Snowden story. I will not name any names now. But those who actually saved his life when he came out and told the world about the mass surveillance, they have remained silent and they're in big trouble. So most of you, I assume, have seen this movie, Citizen 4. It's a very good movie and again, you would assume that the documentary about Snowden, how Snowden came who he was and told the world about it would also tell everything there is to know about him. But again, there's a scene missing. And two weeks are missing. If you remember, there's a scene right after the morning after he gave his interview with the Guardian. You see him in his hotel room, room 1014 and he's kind of walking around. There's a scene, he's looking in the mirror thinking of how can I reshape my face or dye my hair cut my hair, put on sunglasses. He's holding a mirror at one point an umbrella and then the phone rings and he's talking to somebody and he's saying, okay, all right, are you sure?  But actually the man on the other side of that telephone we will very soon hear from him and then you see him hanging up the phone and he's just standing there and you see him saying and I thought to myself why is he just standing there? This man is now sought after, the police is chasing him, the NSA is chasing him, the CIA everybody's chasing my colleagues, hundreds of journalists at that time and he's flooding into Kowloon in Hong Kong to search for Edward Snowden and he's just standing there not moving and then the next thing you see is the door opens he's getting out of the hotel and the next scene in Citizen 4 is actually two weeks later Citizen 4 does not show Edward Snowden hit in Hong Kong for two weeks before he bought an airplane to Moscow where he still is today so how did he do that? and I would like to welcome now to the stage the man who hit Edward Snowden for two weeks when the whole world was chasing him so obviously the most the easiest question for me is where were you on that Monday morning 10th 2013 when Edward Snowden became the most wanted man alive that was on June the 10th and for a period of time as everyone knows there was an unknown employee of the US government who was leaking information about the US government's spy it was about 6am and my phone rang and I was tired on Monday morning and I answered the phone and on the other side of the phone was a request for help and it was explained to me it was Mr. Snowden and that he had a video of him in an interview with the Guardian Glenn Greenwald had been televised so at that point I jumped out of bed showered put my suit on, grabbed my briefcase and got in my car and drove to the ferry pier I live on an outer island and that was the fastest way to get to Hong Kong Island on a high speed ferry so you can see Lantau Island and there's a high speed ferry that goes across to Hong Kong Island so time was of the essence as a lawyer the approach I took was there was a man who was in immediate distress and I also understood that he was the most wanted man on the planet at that point so it was crucial that I had access to him as soon as possible yeah so my job was very easy how do you hide the most wanted man alive where do you hide it what was going through your mind at that time the first thing I needed to do was gain access to Ed and in Hong Kong I had a solicitor with me so the first thing we had to do is because what he had done in my view was an act of political opinion expression so we had to get him to the UNHCR office in Hong Kong immediately so he could raise his asylum claim and this was the first line of defense if Mr Snowden was arrested at any time it was his refugee claim that would protect him from being removed from Hong Kong we did that we walked him into the UNHCR so in the film Citizen Four you see my colleague Jonathan Mann a solicitor and I'm on the phone with Mr Snowden basically and I told him don't worry Jonathan Mann knows where to take you and we're going to the UNHCR so once we Mr Snowden raised his claim at the UNHCR for refugee status determination then the next step was we had to bring Mr Snowden underground put him underground and take him off the radar and we were concerned that the media would find Mr Snowden and if the media found Mr Snowden then the Hong Kong authorities would find Mr Snowden there's a US consulate in Hong Kong they would know where he was so one of our biggest fears was the US government or third government would grab Mr Snowden and unlawfully rendition him Mr Snowden would disappear the approach I took was Mr Snowden was an asylum seeker at that point a refugee and I have many many clients who are refugees so it just made sense to place him within the refugee community he was part of that community the second reason is Hong Kong asylum seekers are so marginalized they're considered Hong Kong's version of untouchables they're the most reviled social group in Hong Kong so to place Mr Snowden a man of his intelligence, status his experience with the US government and to place him in with the refugee community in Hong Kong mainly people from South Asia or Southeast Asia the last place the world would look so immediately after the UNHCR we took Mr Snowden to stay with one of three refugee families the second crucial reason aspect of this is we wanted I wanted Mr Snowden to be placed in the middle of the city no one would expect Mr Snowden to be hidden and played in sight and the third reason was we wanted Mr Snowden to have access to wireless communications where he could crack into any modem within the area so we placed him with a group of asylum seekers three families and through that process Mr Snowden was sheltered and he was taken care of so now we will introduce the people in Hong Kong the refugees who hate Snowden and we have pictures of them who is this? now this is one of my clients this is Mr Ajith Pushpa Kamara and he's a former soldier in the Sri Lankan Army he's Ethnics in Leeds it's about a former life in Ajith's life this is 20 years ago and Ajith is an extraordinary individual he was tortured there was an attempt to extra judicially kill him and in the end he fled Sri Lanka and I chose Ajith to help Mr Snowden Ajith has an extraordinary ability to move around undetected and to move people around he has an extraordinary skill set and you don't know when he's there you don't know when he's not there just an extraordinary man so he was the one individual that I trusted to help us move Mr Snowden around so now you know while the NSA and everybody else in the world was looking for him this was the man who protected him the sad part of this story is Ajith has been an asylum seeker for 12 years now he fled after being tortured in Sri Lanka tortured by the military he fled and his asylum is still in progress so to speak and I think we have another picture this is where Ajith lives at this time it's about 50 square feet there's no windows and one thing I'd like to stress is that in Hong Kong asylum seekers are not allowed to work the government does not meet their basic needs and if they're caught working they face two years prison so Mr Ajith has been in Hong Kong and the Hong Kong government has left him destitute and the way they've treated this man as with the other two families amounts to a violation of article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights treating him in an inhumane and degrading manner nevertheless Ajith has survived in Hong Kong and the other aspect another reason why I reached out to my asylum seeker clients is the asylum seekers all fled their home countries running for their lives and when they met Mr. Snowden they saw Mr. Snowden as one of their own when they fled they had to rely and trust and put their hands into other people's lives who helped them escape their home countries the asylum seekers have the highest propensity to protect others and that was the foundation upon which I knew I could trust my clients and when asked they stepped forward and they said yes we recognize him we want to help him it's an amazing experience I met Ajith six months ago and when I asked him why did you help Edward Snowden I mean you had enough problems on your own and this was a man who was sought after by the most powerful nation and military and intelligence service on earth and the only thing he said of course I helped him he was a refugee I was a refugee of course I helped him and this is the next set of hosts for Mr. Snowden now this is the second family the gentleman here is Sopun Kelapata and that's his partner Nadeeka Sopun is Sri Lankan and he fled Sri Lanka based on political persecution and his partner Nadeeka she fled Sri Lanka based on gender persecution and very typical in a country like Sri Lanka gender persecution involves unfortunately rape and human trafficking and at times servitude and slavery so these two extraordinary individuals fled to Hong Kong Sopun more than 10 years ago Nadeeka more than 7 years ago and both of their children were born in Hong Kong and one thing I would stress is the two children are stateless they have no nationality and the Hong Kong government by law refuses to give them any status in Hong Kong this is the place where they live and right now the Hong Kong government has not provided the support for the young girl Sopun B and she's not receiving an education in Hong Kong but I'll move on to another subject later on what we've been doing as lawyers to help these families to make sure they're not destitute at this time we have another picture when this is where they live so they live in literally one of the poorest areas of Hong Kong and they live in a flat that's about 150 square feet the other thing I would like to mention is that the screening system for asylum seekers in Hong Kong is so grossly unfair that the acceptance rate since 1992 in Hong Kong for asylum seekers is 0.36% so effectively all asylum seekers who seek refuge in Hong Kong are rejected and the three families I'm representing they're looking at their cases being rejected simply because the system is so grossly unfair yeah so that's them and this is the fourth refugee who sheltered Edward Snowden and incidentally baked him a birthday cake for his 30th birthday and her daughter which you will see in a moment sang a happy birthday song to Edward Snowden this is Vanessa she's from the Philippines she was a victim of gender persecution and she fled to Hong Kong and she's the fourth adult or the third family that provided shelter to Mr. Snowden yeah that's her daughter this is her daughter Kiana and one thing I would mention is that since their identities were revealed to the public the Hong Kong government has targeted Vanessa and her child and has asked her questions about Mr. Snowden and when she refused to answer those questions the government cut off all assistance to her so she gets no assistance for food or rent or education for her daughter they cut her off completely simply because she refused to answer questions about Mr. Snowden yes that's you and her it's me so I visited these families in summer and shortly before the movie Oliver Stone came out we published the full story in my paper at Handelsblatt and well good and bad things happened there was an outpouring of helpfulness I got a lot of calls and emails from around the world to donate to these families and there's a movie and of course I wasn't set up for that because journalists don't usually get calls for donations so we set up we have that that is also in summer this was in July this year I traveled to see Mr. Snowden in Moscow shortly before the film Snowden came out but it was at that time I had discussed with Mr. Snowden the situation of the three families because they were portrayed in the Snowden film and the decision was taken and the clients were advised to protect them it would be better to introduce them to the public before the film came out so that the public would have a very clear idea and clear understanding of who they are what they did for Mr. Snowden basically to make sure the public understood and they understood them as human beings and Mr. Snowden was in full support of that and Mr. Snowden was very concerned for my clients and he's also assisted them financially but what we've done is we've set up a GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign you will have the site that's that's the website to collect even Snowden that the thing is why did we print this article well first it was a story untold for three years these people have remained quiet because that's what they all agreed on Snowden and the refugees and then the movie comes out if you see the Snowden movie of Oliver Stone it's an exciting movie but the people who actually saved his life have about 60 seconds of screen time if you see the movie it's just a brown mass of helpful people and then they are gone again so I thought it would be really good to tell the full story and Snowden himself actually was surprised when you told him he had no idea that these people who saved his life were still in the same place where they were three years ago he was asking why are they still refugees and actually that's a good question the answer is the Hong Kong government will not let them leave they will not let them stay they will not let them work they are just staying in this miserable presence and so this website GoFundMe was set up because so many people wanted to help and you can see somewhere on this site it's like on this website seven or eight hundred people have donated and well that's a good thing that happened the bad thing was that the Hong Kong government actually cut these donations they cut off the service the money to the families that they received and so this is actually almost the only thing they have donations and well now there's new hope there's a second website and it's like this is a fundraiser page maybe you want to talk about the lawyers to get these people to a better place well with the GoFundMe page we've been able to take those financial resources and distribute them to the three families in Hong Kong so that their basic needs are met and this has provided them with a lot of emotional security and certainty in their lives at this time three lawyers I'm from Montreal, Quebec originally and I've been working with three lawyers that I know the three lawyers in Montreal have set up a fundraiser campaign and they're also making efforts to communicate with the Canadian government to advocate for Canada to take in the three families these are seven people and it's not a big stretch for the Canadian government to take them in the Canadian GoFundMe the fundraiser site has recently raised more money and again this is the second channel which is Canadian based and Canadian focused where we're trying to raise more funds for the families so we can sustain them in Hong Kong but we do have a view that the Canadian government should take steps to bring them into Canada not to set a precedent seven extraordinary people protected a whistleblower some of the difficulties we're facing are that a lot of people don't want to donate for fear that the US government would see that they've made donations to these three families these three families are innocent they've done nothing wrong when they helped Mr. Snowden they did it in good faith and they never broke any laws one thing I want to stress is when Mr. Snowden was in Hong Kong at no time was he a fugitive under Hong Kong law the US government never sent through a legally effective request for his arrest and extradition so these people need they need support they need moral support, they need public support and they need some financial support for help and I would ask everybody here to communicate to whoever you know to have the public become aware of who these people are and no matter how small the donation every euro every dollar counts yes, thank you so if everybody in here not donate immediately but I know you all if you have phones in your pockets if you have Twitter and Facebook and all that that would be really nice and we're going to try now to connect to Skype with one of the refugees she's still at home awake now it's as well past midnight but we're going to try to Skype her in so you also may ask some questions hopefully this will work it'll be my client Vanessa from the Philippines so while yeah just kidding here we go no that's not her we don't know who that is no can we try again yes so while we are waiting this all took a little longer than expected and due to my computer problems we just had a discussion I could either do my part of the talk and I would have told you about her current situation how to help him about legal cruelties like the Espionage Act World War I he's being charged under and so on I hope it would have been interesting but I thought that with a little time remaining it would be more important to give the people who helped him and her refugees in Hong Kong a voice than Amnesty International and me so I'm going to skip that part so you can have an Q&A with her and thank you anyway sorry about that yeah well I think we can have a question in between maybe if there's a I don't know how that works is there somebody going around with a microphone or should we start with a Q&A yeah so we try the technical difficulties never end this should have a name is there a Murphy or something yeah okay so I think we can start with a Q&A for three speakers so please when you have a question start to line up at the microphones we have here throughout the room four on the left side and four on the right side on the balcony we have also one and I start with the single signal angel not single angel sorry okay just hold it maybe we have a connection please signal angel give me the question we had some discussion in IRC about your fundraising platform because the pricing they keep quite a big share of 20% why is choosing this platform question the end of the question was yes fundraiser go find me there's really really not much option for us the the one thing I have to stress is the only the only groups taking any money from donations are the fundraising I guess the platform or PayPal and the banks but as for those who are actually administering this and the three lawyers who formed an NGO in Montreal and myself in Hong Kong 100% of the money we receive is distributed to the clients we don't take one penny for legal fees we don't take one penny for administrative fees and actually ourselves we pay for the banking fees so sorry well that's what we've I think what you can see here that not everyone involved in human rights work is as tech savvy as everyone here so if you want to talk to us later about that I guess I'll be very welcome just just as a previous chemical engineer I'm a little bit tech savvy and the second thing is the three lawyers in Montreal have set up a Bitcoin account so you can donate to fundraiser go on to the site and there's information on how to donate through Bitcoin so my apologies for not raising that what we did is Mr. Snowden tweeted the fundraiser account on Christmas Eve and it was at that time people were commenting saying hey can we do by Bitcoin so we did that immediately so I hope that answers the question so I think we switch over to welcome our new guest now on the stage you can look directly at her at the camera when you look at that direction you look at her actually virtually can you hear me yes hi good evening so Vanessa you see you have a lot of fans in Hamburg thank you maybe if you would just describe say your first five minutes when you met Edward Snowden how was that I think everybody would like to hear that from you now when the first time I met Mr. Snowden I don't know who is Mr. Snowden I'm very he's very upset and the time he needs help to stay my home and my lawyer Mr. Tebow and Jonathan Mann knocked on my door so I didn't think twice to let him in my house and I'm very happy and I help Edward Snowden and I'm very thankful to my lawyer Mr. Robert Tebow and because he have 60 clients asylum seekers and he trusted me to let Mr. Snowden stay in my house and I'm very also thankful for Edward Snowden because he appreciated what I did for him thank you okay yes now your turn who would like to ask a question to Snowden's guardian angel in Hong Kong we have the great opportunity to take questions from the audience or from the signal angel so when you have any question please step up to the microphone or do we have something from the signal angel hello signal angel didn't want to ask a question maybe then when there is not yet a question or not the courage to ask one I would like to ask you a question how is your situation now when you look back on meeting Edward Snowden and what your experience and how do you feel now how is your situation changed maybe by that to get involved with this thing that hit you out of nowhere situation okay my situation right now is I have a difficult in the Hong Kong government and about my assistance in ISS Hong Kong and ISS already stopped my assistance so I don't have any assistance right now I only have from donations and in my case in touch reclaim the Hong Kong government they opened my case just last month and now is activated and I know they want to reject my case and I'm very worried they want me to send back to Philippines and it's not really good for me I'm safe to go back to Philippines so I'm very disappointed and because Hong Kong government is very cruel about me situations they're not understanding about me and my family so I am today I'm very worried thank you thank you so I think we have a question from microphone number seven please go ahead hello I was wondering when did it dawn on you what you had gotten involved in and when did you realize the gravity of the situation like I'm imagining that it would be difficult in the beginning but now with all the aftermath it's been a very big thing so okay like at what point did you realize how big this was I just I realized this is a very big point because now the Hong Kong government is they want especially to my lawyers that in one one of his one of I mean one of his he have one time that immigration want to deal his case for one time for 30 cases in one time so my case and two other families is including so I think it's very difficult to my lawyer and especially with me that because I very afraid they send me to Philippines and now I also don't have any assistance from the Hong Kong government so it's very hard for me to to it's very unfair to me that the Hong Kong government can't rely on my donations so it's very difficult for me right now maybe I can help a little bit with that Vanessa what the question was and of course I has the same thing the night when she met Edward Snowden she did not know who Edward Snowden was it was just a white man in front of a door so she let him in and let him sleep in her bed there's only one bed in the apartment she slept on the floor and the next morning Edward Snowden asked her to please bring a newspaper and well when you bought the newspaper maybe I think that's what the audience wanted to know that's the minute you found out you bought a newspaper and you see just tell that morning your experience when you were looking for the newspaper and what you experienced then Vanessa when was the first time you realized how big the Snowden case was what time did you know okay I just find out when the next morning Edward Snowden told me about the newspaper this is the newspaper this is in June 2013 correct yes in June 2013 and what happened in June 2013 when Edward Snowden stayed at my house he told the next morning he told me that he need the English newspaper so I bought the English newspaper with him and I'm really shocked that the guy who stayed in my home is the most wanted man in the world and because he's in the front page of the newspaper so I'm really shocked that the guy is in my house so what did you do after that what did you think after that I think that I need I need to be careful and my lawyer told me don't tell to anyone that's the first rule and don't let anyone come to my house so I need to be careful because Edward Snowden stayed in my house so I don't let anybody stay in my house and I'm not telling anybody that Edward Snowden stayed in my house did you still want to help Mr. Snowden at that time yes I still want to help Edward Snowden because he don't have place to stay and he needs my help and I think I can do that for him I think we have another question from the audience number 5 back there go ahead hello thank you for everything you've done to Edward Snowden it has been mentioned that you have celebrated his 30th birthday together with your family and something was mentioned about a birthday cake what happened there yeah I received a call and I get the cakes and I don't know at that time his birthday and he asked why I have that cake and he said that Edward Snowden's birthday so I bring the cakes at my house and I told Edward Snowden today is your birthday and he said yes so me and my daughter we sing a song for him and we blow the candles and I told him oh sorry yesterday but we can't take the photos yeah I think we have another question thank you Vanessa a question to you probably you are afraid for your own family after all would you do it again yes microphone to here in the front please ask your questions I'm just going to quickly break the rules that are only questions and there are only questions I want you to thank you not only for giving a home to Mr Snowden which we all did but also for being here tonight and giving a face to a lot of stories I guess that we don't see usually because we did a lot of the first part and this is great because Edward Snowden is of course important and did great stuff but also this other part and for being here tonight is great for us and for me at least thanks I can see your point please questions number four Noel thank you apart from expressing my utmost respect and gratitude I have a question dear Vanessa and to all the other hosts as well do I understand correctly that the government of Hong Kong will not allow you to travel anywhere else but back to your home country is there anything that can be done by governments of other countries individuals of other countries to take you to another place like you're being trapped in Hong Kong and there is no good way out either in Hong Kong or in your home countries definitely what's needed is public support and the public being vocal setting up Facebook social media groups communicating with your local governments there's no reason why for example the Canadian government the German government could not make the political decision seven people seven people out of millions of asylum seekers in the world and to offer them asylum that's all that's needed because they are stuck in limbo in Hong Kong with effectively a zero chance what I'll stress is the Sri Lankans if they're returned to Sri Lanka they will all be arrested at the airport at the prevention of terrorism act they'll be arbitrarily detained and it is certain that some of them will be tortured and the soldier faces a death penalty for Vanessa the new president of the Philippines Duterte has executed extrajudicially 6,000 people the last couple months and he's proposed to set up concentration camps to exterminate 3 million drug addicts in the Philippines these families have been left behind I'm not going to let that happen so it's so through your being aware of this through your capabilities to communicate through social networks, your communities this is really if we could create a groundswell this could put pressure on governments to possibly have them step forward to help those families the fundraiser page the fundraiser page it's written in English and French and it's set out there very clearly what can be done and what's being done in Canada and I have asked my clients where their second choice would be to seek asylum and all of them have talked about Germany the fundraiser page and there's an associated Facebook page with that whatever can be done would be most appreciated and again any funds that can be given to help the families would obviously ensure that they're not left destitute in Hong Kong, thank you very short on time but I think I have the authority to stretch that a little and I want to take understanding that there are quite a lot of long time so from microphone one please I basically wanted to hear from Vanessa because she helped him what kind of help would you appreciate what kind of help can the world or we do to you or give you if the people want to help us I hope and I wish that open your heart donate some money for our fund Razor and GoFundMe page it's a really big help for us and we are hoping to send two families to other countries to start our new life and have a good future in our children thank you I'm getting signs to cut my that they want to do something to me so thanks for your talks and thank you Vanessa for being here and making it it is a great honor for me and a big round of applause for Vanessa


I'd like to introduce to you our first guest. He's known as Mr. Alice Cooper's executioner. Let's give a nice round of applause for the fantabulous magician known as Mr. James Rendee. And before we introduce our next guest, I've been given permission, I've been given the greatest permission to read an excerpt from the upcoming book, A Magician in the Laboratory, as written by Mr. James. That's laboratory, not laboratory, and if you're wondering. Laboratory, how's that? Very good. All right. This is from his words. Years ago, I toured the USA in several foreign markets as part of the Alice Cooper rock show, The Billion Dollar Babies episode.  It worked for more than three months and during that period of time, I had the nightly opportunity of seeing a rather unique phenomenon. Coop and I were always the last to leave the dressing room to begin the show because I had to equip him with two handheld mechanisms that enabled him to throw long flames from his fingertips. These were semi-dangerous. Who ever heard of semi-dangerous? Semi-dangerous? These were a semi-dangerous devices which he'd only take it to his hands at the very last moment. When the stage manager would poke his head in the door and announce two minutes, I would watch Vincent Feniri. Funier. Funier. Well, close enough. Yeah, him too. Coop's original name rapidly and almost magically changed from a reasonably normal young man into the show biz monster that his audience expected him to be. He adopted the character by simply putting it on like a pullover. His walk, his facial expression, his entire demeanor changed. And a moment later, as he were totter up the stairs, Frankenstein monster-like into the spotlight, Vincent would become Alice Cooper. Two hours later, when he retired from the stage dressed in white satin tails and top hat, he again became Vincent as soon as he hit the lights of the dressing room. I always admired that in him, his ability to step into fantasy and then shed it so easily. It's a talent we might all try to acquire. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Feniri. Vincent de Mon-Fernier. And by the way, Randy actually looked like this in 1956. And I have pictures of him as a baby. He looked just like this. It's amazing. My apologies for bastardizing your last name. I never studied French. But it's a wonderful name nonetheless. Folks, as you know, like I said once before, this is our billion dollar babies tour 1973. So this discussion is gonna mainly focused on that. I'm sure many of you may have a few questions, but we're gonna listen to these gentlemen chat. And I have, I guess, the start of this question. Mr. Cooper, how in fact did you find this man? Well, you know, the idea was we had already basically decided that rock and roll needed another dimension. And rock and roll didn't have a villain. Rock and roll had was full of of heroes, but there was no villain. And I would gladly be Captain Hook to all the Peter Pan's out there. You know, I was I was born to be the villain. And so we decided that Alice Cooper, I mean, I would definitely be the Basil Rathbone of rock and rock and roll. And when we finally got that, we pretty much alienated every organization in America and thought, let's take it one step further and bring illusion into it now. The most dangerous thing in the world was to give Alice Cooper money, you know, because we were making our own props and we would find things backstage. And that would be the prop for the night. We actually had money now because schools out did very well. And then all of a sudden billion dollar babies was the number one record and we could afford the best guy in the business. So we said, well, let's get Randy and let's start adding illusion to the show. And that's when we came up with the, you know, the guillotine and things like that. And I really wasn't really wasn't willing to put my head in a guillotine without somebody that really knew what they were doing. Wise, wise decision. Yeah. I must tell you how I heard about it. I don't know whether you know this story, Coop. I was in the magic shop of all places on 34th Street one afternoon with some of the other magicians sitting around. We were telling one of their stories, some of them true. And the phone rang and the proprietor picked up the phone and said that he put his hand over the phone. He said a fellow connected with an Alice Cooper. I hadn't heard the name, frankly, I must admit, I had and he hadn't heard either. He said he wants to talk to a magician who will travel with a rock show. And I put up my hand. I said, I'll do it if he pays me $100 just to talk to him. He went back to the phone. He said he'll pay it. $100 at that time was a lot more than $100 today. I can assure you I got out of there. I burned the stairs as they went down. And I showed up at the Alive Enterprises office. You weren't there. No. And but chef was and several other people. I think Joe Gannon might have been there. Joe Gannon, yes. And I noticed something about the decor. This is great. They had potted plants all over the place, all dead. This is a live enterprises, remember? All the potted plants hadn't been watered. They were all dead. I thought that was a good touch. And I said, Oh, these are my kind of people, by the way. And they talked to me and we made a deal. And I ended up working for the billion dollar baby show. Yeah, he was the perfect. I think the perfect foil for Alice. It was a, you know, it was the first time anybody had seen this kind of show anyways. So when you're adding another dimension to it, all of a sudden you're doing, Alice would be over here and Randy would say, Now, when you go over there, we're going to switch this over here.  And it's all stuff that we wanted to do, but didn't know how to do. And that's when we brought Randy in. He was the guy that really knew how to do all that stuff. Which if I could interject, which was an amazing thing about that, because this was live. We were what back in 73, what Rosemary's baby, things of that nature kind of horror genre was, you know, movie, special effects, theatrics and that way, this was live, could not be messed up, could not be full, could not be tricked the whole nine yards you brought in the amazing Randy to chop your head off. And obviously it succeeded because you went on a few other locations after that to carry out those same tricks, I do believe every night, he would be back the next morning alive. And I couldn't figure it out.  Come on. He doesn't seem to take chopping very seriously. We did another bit called, it was Unfinished Suite. And the story behind this was we would, the guy would go to a dentist's office and he would get under gas and he would have this dream that he was a super spy. So one guitar would be playing the Man from Uncle theme. One guitar would be playing I spy. And the other thing, the James Bond theme, now if you put them all together, they actually all work together. But I would be in the dentist chair and Randy would come out as the mad dentist. And he had a drill that was bigger than him. And it came down, it was all lit up and he would start drilling my teeth. And then he would take it down to my crotch and start drilling my crotch. I don't remember rehearsing that part. I think that's very true. I made it up. You improvised that part. Yeah. And it was, you know, when you see film of this right now, it really, it's very Vaudevillian. But that was the charm of it, I think, was the fact that everything was trying to be high tech. And we went back to the Vaudevillian kind of attitude of rock and roll, which drew people like, you know, Groucho Marx and Mae West. Groucho Marx would come to the show and bring Mae West, Fred Astaire, Jack Benny, George Burns. They would be standing on the side watching the show. The audience was cringing in horror at what was going on. And they were standing there going, ah, 1923, Gracie and I did that. Toledo, we are in Toledo. And we accept the snake he had wasn't as big as that snake. But they were not in the least bit alarmed at anything we were doing, because it was Vaudeville to them. They grew up in Vaudeville. So our show had this Vaudevillian flavor to it. It was sort of also like that show that at the carnival that you didn't want to go to, but you really wanted to go to, you know, there's the big tent. And then there's that show on the right over here that that was the creepy kind of, really, do I want to go in there?  I was in charge of the lunatic fringe, which you, well, never mind. Did you know all about that? So we were we were in charge of all these sort of outcasts and people that didn't quite fit in. But there were millions of them, you know? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I remember Baltimore. Well, I remember Baltimore, it's still there, I think. Yes, I believe so. Yes. But I think this, if I'm wrong on this, this is the senility creeping in again. But at one point, I remember the chef called a meeting of us all in panic. He said, Oh, something really bad has happened. I thought, what now? And you were there. And I think you were a bit puzzled. And he made the announcement. He said that the mayor of Baltimore had given you the key to the city. Do you remember that? Oh, I remember that. Yes. And he said, we don't want that. We want the parents to absolutely despise Alice, you see, so that they'll forbid the kids to go, which means the kids have to go. This is a way of forcing the audience to be there. And we got over it somehow. Yeah, I don't, we had to insult somebody in order to not get the key to the city. Something like that. But we managed it. Yeah, we went out of our way to not try to get those accolades. They came later on, you know, when you're young and dangerous, now I'm sort of old and treacherous now. And lovable, though. And by doing what you did by wanting, you know, that type of audience to appreciate that, you know, well, here we are. Well, yes. And like I said, there are millions of you out there. And do you remember when you came to me and said that your mother was going to be in the audience? Yeah. Now this was in Phoenix, was it? No, my mother's probably the most dangerous person you'll ever meet. You have to understand that. You know, I mean, she is, she doesn't flinch at anything. She's just like, you know. Well, Coop came to me and he said he was he was a little worried about it. He said, would you mind sitting with my mother should be in the fourth row? We got reserved seats there. Because she's never really seen the act. She doesn't know what I do. And I thought, well, this is going to be a shock for this lady. I can assure everybody of that. And he was pretty sure of it too. I sat with her. And when Coop walked on stage in the torn costume, tearing up a doll or whatever he was doing at that moment, not a chicken, not a chicken, I swear. And his mother sat there and said, Oh, why is Vincent's costume torn? I can fix that. And I just patted her on the arm. I was trying to be very, very soft and gentle with it. And I said, no, this is all part of the act. Wait could you see? And then she started to warm up a little bit, but I had to leave and go and do another part backstage. And when I came back to see her, she was hooping on her, she was, she was with it at that point. She suddenly realized what the gag was and who you were and what you were doing and why. Yeah. And she was, you know, she was one of those ones that said, you know, not enough blood. You know, I was expecting a little more blood than that in the show. I don't think when the head comes off, the artery shoots out far enough in the audience. My mom and dad both got the show. My dad was a pastor. And, you know, he was one of those guys that as an example, he would, he'd be shaving, you know, and I would pick open the Bible up and I'd say Ezekiel 3, 17. He said, and the Lord says unto me, you know, and he would quote it. I said, okay, I'd open it up again. I'd say, okay, Matthew 5, 12.  You know, and I'd say, who plays bass for the animals? He was Chaz Chandler. See, the guy was really good. I mean, he, and he really liked the music. He liked what we were doing. He got the fact that I wasn't satanic. You know, he got the fact that was my sense of humor. And I was creating a character that I was going to play. Of course, which was misinterpreted by a lot of people, but you know, it was funny that my parents, I never had a problem with my parents. I wrote all these songs about parents being the problem, whereas my parents were never the problem. I had the same thing with Schools Out.   And, you know, it was one of those things where like, I had no problem in school. I had girlfriends doing my homework. I was in a band. I was on the cross-country team. And you know, I was Mr. Personality, you know. So, you know, it was funny. I wrote all these things about things that never happened to me. And I was invited to Coop's recent birthday party. Shall we name the number? Oh, sure, 60. I was 60. I earned all 64 years. Yes. And I was invited to the birthday party. And so many old faces were there. It was a wonderful get together of the old gang. And I met his mother. And I sat with her at her table and she said, you know, when you join me in the audience there, I didn't know who you were. And I didn't know what Vincent was doing up on stage. But you made it very much easier for me. I want to thank you for that. And she remembered the event very, very well. She's sharp as the tack.  Someone older than I? I don't believe that. I know, I know. I'm only 84. You know, we were talking about how back then you were trying to alienate. When we lived in Los Angeles, we got to a point where we were pretty much going to be run out of LA. Because, you know, it was like, people would come to our show to leave. They would go to the show so they can say they left in the middle of the show. Which attracted Zappa. That's what attracted Frank Zappa to us, is that. But at one point, Shep says, I have this idea. We're going to go on stage in clear plastic suits with nothing on underneath.  Because it'll be great. It'll be great publicity that Alice Cooper gets arrested. So, of course, you know, we're on stage playing. He calls the police. The police show up. By the time we get there now, the clear plastic suits had heated up. And you couldn't see anything.  We couldn't get arrested. We literally understood at that point we could not get arrested in LA. So we moved to Detroit, you know. But we figured we could get arrested in Detroit. You should tell them the story about when the semis didn't arrive with the stage. What city was that in? Oh, man, I don't know. It was dead winter. The gas shortage, right? Did it happen during that time? It was the gas shortage during that time. Well, yeah, I don't know what it was, but the semis, the big trucks, didn't arrive at the stage. The stage was monstrous and beautiful. Made out of what, inch and a half for plexiglass? Yeah, everything you'd step on this, it would light up. I mean, it was really good. Yeah, it was a beautiful stage. I think one of the best stages I have ever, certainly seen in my life, it was so versatile and so electronified. I mean, really, it did react. It was like Busby Berkeley, you know, on Electros. Exactly. And it didn't arrive, and we had to go out in trucks and pick up used Christmas trees, you imagine, with some tinsel still hanging on them and arrange them. We only had to do that for one night. But everybody in the crew, myself, everybody, we all went out and picked up old Christmas trees and spray-painted them and put them around the stage. I don't think the kids knew the difference. No, it was, you know, I mean, in fact, that's the show I would have wanted to be at, because it would have been a one-off show. Exactly. Yeah, a lot of times you had to improvise. One night, you know, the snake was a very big part of the show. I mean, it was only on stage for maybe three minutes or so. But I go to get the snake, and I had it in the bathroom. I liked to swim at night in the bathtub, and it was gone. And I realized we were in a brand new hotel that didn't have lids on the toilets. So it went down into the toilet, into the plumbing of the hotel. This is a snake this big around. Yeah, yeah. Her name was Yvonne. That was our big snake. Yvonne the snake, yeah. We had Boa Derrick. We had Julia Squeezer.  We had, it was a small one. But this one was our biggest snake, and she's gone. So Randy, all of us are tearing the walls apart in this hotel trying to find the snake. It came up two weeks later in Charlie Pride's toilet. Now, I didn't ask Charlie. Charlie was chasing me at the time. The Grammys with an axe, I think he was, you know. And I didn't ask him if he was sitting on the toilet at the time, or if he was shaving and just kind of looked over and this snake comes up out of the toilet, you know, like in a horror movie. This snake wouldn't hurt anybody. It was like, you know, it was a gentle giant. But I could imagine if you were sitting on the toilet and this thing came up between your legs, it would get your attention. That would get your attention. It would get your attention. You'd say the least. Yes, indeed. Yeah.  That one was big. She was, she was really big, but she was, uh, uh, she was probably 12 feet long. Oh yeah, yeah. 60 pounds. I mean, I weighed 90. You know, so the snake weighed as much as I did. And all coiled around you. Yeah. Constantly fighting the snake off, not fiercely or anything like that. He was just sort of trying to arrange it so that he could move around and still move his mouth. Yeah. And that thing was huge. It was really, really a big snake. But, um, you know, the snake thing was always great. It was always one of those things that, uh, and everybody finally on the tour got so used to the snake that nobody, even if you had a fear of snakes, you didn't, it didn't bother you anymore. You know, uh, in fact, the one that I left in here was in the front row on the floor somewhere in there. I don't see it. Oh, here it is. Oh, never mind. Okay. Um, if I could ask a personal question here, and you told me it was pretty okay to, to touch into anything and everything, um, Mr. Randy, you were originally a Canadian citizen. And one time? Yes. From what I understand, because of this man sitting next to you, I'm, I'm assuming, I like to hear you part of it, you have an, are, now, or had been an American citizen due to an incident with the, well, that's the Mounties, the Canadian Mounties. Yeah, that's the trigger that set it off. We did Niagara Falls. You remember Niagara Falls? Yes. Oh, yes. Okay.  It was, I think, the football team's locker room or something, uh, where we could set up the props and so it was at a school. And, uh, I had several parts to play during the show. And, uh, I did the opening act and whatnot, went to the dressing room and tried to get in. And there was an RCMP, that's Royal Canadian Monter Police, that's the Canadian equivalent of the FBI, the federal police. And, uh, he wanted to know where I was going. I said, into the dressing room, I got to get my costume changed and I got to get some props. I was looking a little hesitant at this time, I guess. And, uh, he said, okay, and he opened the door. And I walked inside. The RCMP was trashing that locker room. They were very angry because they had come in looking for narcotics, didn't find any, and they decided that they would make a big fuss and they trashed the room. They were taking doors off lockers and, and taking stuff out of the lockers. They had clipped off a lot of the padlocks on the lockers that belonged to the students in the school, from the sports team. And, uh, I looked around and I saw that my props were pretty well destroyed and I'd have to improvise somehow. And when I left that room, that's the time when I made a decision saying, what the hell do I need Canada for? You've been very good to me, thank you, but no longer I'm going to become an American citizen and I set out to do it at that very moment. And I, I've never regretted the, uh, the decision. Well, the, the odd thing I guess at the time was the fact that we had a very good reputation for not being druggies. Exactly. You know, we were, we drank beer.  We, we kind of proved that you could live forever on beer if you were in your 20s. And so we had a very good reputation for never, ever having, and the reason was, was because the band that opened for us in 1971 was Cheech and Chong. You go over the border with Cheech and Chong in 71. They took everything in our possessions apart. I mean it was just like unbelievable and of course we never had anything, you know, uh, beer cans as well, the thing they could find and we did finally get a good reputation. Now I don't know if somebody decided that they were going to make an example of us in, in Niagara Falls or not, but I think after that we, we just went right through the border back and forth with ever, out, ever changing. Now it was, funny thing was bands like Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath and groups like that, we, we all drank beer. The Mamas and the Papas, James Taylor, the Monkeys, you know, all had heavy drug problems. I mean all the, all the, all the groups, you know, that were like the squeaky clean 16 magazine bands were the ones that were all into that stuff and we'd sit there going, I don't want to get involved in that, you know. And as, as a layman, as not a, a rock and roll person myself, into this, into this ambiance here that I was suddenly plunged into by being hired to chop the man's head off every night and a few other things, I was very sensitive to that. I thought, oh boy, I'm going to see a lot of doper. I didn't see any trace of it whatsoever. Pot, I could smell pot. Most of that was coming from the audience. Oh yeah. Yes.  Dian up here. All you had to do was breathe. I don't know what the big deal was at the border because once you got over there was everywhere, you know. Yeah, oh yeah. So, but, but anyways that was really that, that was the peak of our drug existence was that, you know.  And they can have us in earth. Yeah, hey, you want some of this? Yeah, this is really good stuff. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. But, you know, by the way, I don't think the monkeys were into hard drugs. Come to think of it, they were drinkers too. But, you know, a lot of the really squeaky clean bands that, that were, you know, above approach were all into the hard drugs and it was just the opposite of what you would think. Yeah, exactly. But Coop had a very good principle and I was very happy to hear this read at the very, very first performance. He would carry a can of beer around on the stage usually, but he never took more than one sip out of any open can of beer. It would come open. He would take a sip from it, put it down. A prop man would come and get it and replace it with a fresh can right away because he was deathly afraid and rightly so that somebody might drop something into that can of beer that could be harmful to him. That was a wise decision. Early in our career we did shows with the Grateful Dead.  I mean, that would be the, you're in the guillotine going, wait a minute, what am I doing? So anyways, we never got into psychedelics, you know, at least I didn't, you know, and our show was crazy enough where you didn't really want to be involved in anything like that and I never drank on stage. When I finally quit drinking, which was like 30 years ago, I went in and my psychiatrist said, well, he says now, he says, how much do you drink on stage? I went, I never drink on stage. He says, well, when you're doing a movie, how much do you drink when you, I said, I never drink when I'm acting on the movie. He says, let me get this straight, Alice doesn't drink. I said, yeah, and he says, but you do. He said, yeah. He goes, so Alice is not the alcoholic here, is he?   And do you remember when we hit, what was it? It wasn't Phoenix. No, it was, I'm sorry, you'll come up with the city in a moment for me when you realize what I'm about to say. I, we checked into a hotel and I went out on the balcony at the back, had a beautiful view of the parking lot and I looked over to the adjacent balcony and here's Coop standing there and Coop points down into the parking lot and says, what the hell is that? A big white bam with a jet motor on the top of it, yeah, like from an electroplane and it had written on the side of it, now there'll be some recognition here, I think, Domesticon was written down the side of it in big black letters and I said, I don't know what he said, I don't know either, what is it? It's a weird device anyway, so we retired, went to bed. The next morning I was supposed to be in Time Magazine, that was a Monday morning and Time Magazine comes out on the stands on a Monday morning and I was down at the newsstand and I said, is Time Magazine out yet? And the lady at the counter said, no, not yet, but this gentleman is waiting for it too and I looked over and here is Woody Allen standing there and I had met him before, I went over and reintroduced myself and he remembered me vaguely, I'm sure, and he said, what are you doing in the hotel there? And I said, well, I'm the Al Scooper group. He said, is Alice in the hotel? And I said, yeah, I took a piece of paper and I said, this is a secret and I wrote down your room number and gave it to him. Later on that night when I walked into the arena, he comes rushing over to me, he says, you sent Woody Allen to my room and I thought I'm going to get it now and he said, oh wonderful, he embraced me, wonderful, wonderful, I'm in his new movie. And he is in Sleeper. Yes, Sleeper, he's standing at the side of the highway, not in makeup or anything like that, and he's just standing hitching a ride from the domestic con. That was the big white van that contained the servants that had the thing plugged into their mouth and whatnot. You may remember, if you remember the movie Sleeper, they're all going to go order copies of it right now, of course. And that's where they had the McDonald's sign where it said, so many sold and the figure went all the way down along the desert, no, into infinity. It was 0000 all the way along it. And so you actually got into the movie. Yeah, Woody was actually, I was a reference in two or three movies in Annie Hall. Oh yeah, yeah. He had a joke about me in Annie Hall and there was another one in Celebrity where he was talking about this rock star that had snakes up in the room and everything like that. So there was a little bit of, I was a big Woody Allen fan, I thought I'll take the money and run some of the funny movies.  Actually it was, it was. But I, you know, living in New York, I seen him at Elaine's, you know, and bumped into him a few times. But it was, I didn't really realize that he was very, pretty much an Alice Cooper fan. Oh yes, he was. Yeah, so it was really nice. He did that when I said that. Yeah, it was, it was an easy, unique character, very, I just saw his new movie. It's actually very good to roam with love or whatever. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.  I thought those were really, really hysterically funny. He's in a different phase, I suppose now. Yeah. But the movies are very clever. They're very good. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.  And yet you've only. Not illegally, either. That's just legal chemistry. I know alcohol only. I got that with us already. But basically, Mr. Randy, you've only worked with Mr. Cooper on One Tour, which was Billion Dollar Babies, correct? One tour, and I say it was 90 days, but it went a bit longer than that because we went to Brazil. Right. And we, where did we go in Europe? I mean, in other countries. Yeah. Well, we went all over Europe now, but the Brazil trip wasn't, this was a good one. Oh yeah. Okay. So they'd never had a rock concert in Brazil. Ever. And we're talking about Rio de Janeiro, and a huge, huge city. Yeah. So we're playing, I saw Apollo, 38 million people. And Alice Cooper shows up down there. 158,000 people indoors. You set a record. It was the largest indoor attendance ever. Guinness Book of Records is, you know, they placed there was eight times the size of Madison Square Garden. You couldn't see the end of it, could you? You couldn't with binoculars. You couldn't see the end. Now, if you take 158,000 Brazilians, and they all go at once, it's deafening. 158,000 drunk, stoned Brazilians at the top of their lungs. And I'm standing this close to a wall of amps the size of this wall. I can't hear a thing. Yeah. And the thing that I remember most about it, the next morning I get up and there's the newspaper, front page, the whole picture. And it's a picture of me with a snake around, and a sword, and the blood, and everything. And it just says, macumba. Because you realize that 70 or 80 percent of people under the equator believe in macumba, which is a little bit of voodoo, Catholicism, this, that, and that.  It's kind of good, you know. I started going.  He enjoyed every minute of it. I was a macumba God, you know. It was really a great kind of feeling that people were like shunning like that. And I said, this, I love being the villain. This even fed my villainous appetite even better. But I'm sure you remember that the stage was very, very high. Yeah. Very high. And it was so high that we almost had a disaster there. The crowd, this mass of people, was all pushing in. They're all standing, you see. There are no chairs for them standing. And they were, we had to reach down and the roadies had to hold us by the ankles and march out when they could to haul the kids up because they were getting crushed by the crowd behind them. They could have died. Yeah. It was, well, the way there were three births during the concert. And you're not responsible for anyone. I'm not responsible for anyone who was. Okay. I think there were three people died of old age. It was a city. 158,000 people in a city. So it was like, you know, what would happen at a city? No, when you looked at that crowd, it was, it just went off to the horizon in this year. Yeah. It was a monstrous. And it was indoors. It wasn't the biggest outdoor, but it was the biggest indoor audience. Now kids came in after that and did 144. So we still have the record. We still have the record. Tell me the story. I don't have many of the details where Chef, Chef Curtin used some ingenious, we all know that. He used really ingenious ways in and out of problems of all kinds. And I think we were in Holland. I, my memory doesn't serve me well in this respect. And we knew that the count of heads was wrong. And there were some 8 by 10 cameras there that took pictures of the audience. And Chef held up the show until they had prints and could put pinholes through every head in the audience, every face that we could see there counting them up as we went and we had been short changed by something like 30 percent on the head count in the audience. But that's how Chef Curtin thought. He thought so well, so efficiently.  Chef and I are still together. We don't have a contract with each other. We've never had a, you know, it's all been on a handshake. So Chef is still blasting away, putting the new show together right now actually in Hawaii. And so one of the strangest things that happened early, early on in the career was the Toronto show with the chicken. Okay. Now, we had no idea. This was just going to be a big hundred and I think there was maybe 100,000 people in Toronto. I was going to go on between the doors and John Lennon and John and Yoko. And Chef put this whole thing together for these Canadian guys and they were going to pay him and he said, I don't want to be paid. I want Alice to go on between these two acts at the prime time. That was his payment. That's how managers think, you know. Good managers. Yeah. So we're up there on stage and at the very end of our show we used to open pillows up. Feather pillow. One feather pillow would fill this room with CO2 cartridges. It would look like a snowstorm. We had five feather pillows up there and they're like and Jim Morrison's over here in the doors and they're going, yeah, this is great. John Lennon is going, yes, this is wonderful and all of a sudden I looked down and there's a chicken on stage and I went, well, I didn't bring it.   So I picked it up nicely and just kind of chucked it into the audience. I figured, well, somebody's going to get a great souvenir. Now, they didn't, they don't fly as much as they plummet into the audience and the audience tears it to pieces. This was called the Toronto Peace Festival.  Now it's this mutilated chicken, you know, next day in the paper, of course, that Alice Cooper kills chicken and drinks blood and you know, and if you saw Alice, you would go, okay, I believe that, you know, because, I mean, you would see this character and think, well, that's what happened. The kicker to the story is the first five rows were all in wheelchairs. So, you know, it was the people in wheelchairs that killed the chicken. To this day, I'm thinking, just take it back to the basics. Let me see, I got my keys, I got my wall, I got my tickets, I got my chicken. Who brings a chicken to an Alice Cooper concert, you know? And then I thought the only person that could have brought the chicken is Shep, knowing this was going to happen.  I went, no. And he said, well, don't tell anybody, they love it.  I went, no, I don't want to talk about that, you know. And to this day, I go into a city and it's the ASPCA is there.   In the reality, I never would kill any animal ever, you know. But that was the reputation we got then. To this day of chicken, they never mentioned Colonel Sanders, who was like, killed billions of chickens, you know, one chicken.  And not a very smart chicken. Rest of your life.  Anyway, we can segue into more blood and guts and that kind of carnage. Mr. Randy, can you explain to me how you came up with the idea of the guillotine? And in fact, how did you set up Mr. Cooper to have his head removed every concert? Well, first of all, the guillotine was that's the French pronunciation, you see, the guillotine. Yes, the guillotine was invented by a man named guillotine. Figures, doesn't it? In France, many, many years ago, before the French Revolution, and it was used to decapitate the sheep and such, a very small one, of course, you see. And it was later adopted by the revolutionaries. It sounded a very good way to chop off the heads of aristocrats. But the guillotine trick that I used was not designed by me. I've never taken credit for that. It was designed by a fellow named Will Rock, R. O. C. K., an ancient magician who came up with an idea of how to do the thing in such a way that the head that fell into the basket was the head of the artist, actually, and that's what it was.  I'm not going to go into any more details on that. You'll just have to wonder about it. And you'll look it up on Google and you'll probably find it, but it'll probably be a lie I warn you in advance. Well, thank you very much. One, I've never seen a one. You know, can you imagine now I'm coming to rehearsal and I don't think everybody kind of just kept it from me, the whole idea, you know, and I get there and I look over at that and I went, what is that? You know, it's a guillotine. Funny you should ask.  My brain's going click, click, click.  You know, and it's so, yeah. In a previous year, you had been hanged. I'd been hanged, but I'd never been guillotined. You know, and of course, I'm looking at the blade and I go, well, it's foam rubber, you know. No, it's a 40 pound blade. And I take a piece of paper and I go, okay. So it's a real guillotine.  If it was going to cut my head off, it was going to be, you know, if you were at that concert, you got to see it. And he's explained to me how it works and I'm going, I'm not putting my head in there. Pretty soon they got me to put my head in. They showed me how the device worked, you know, and I went. So if I do this wrong, my head comes off. For real. Yeah, I went. Okay. I just said maybe. In every bit that we did, there was an element of danger. There was actually a moment if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time where you could be decapitated or you could be hung. If the device didn't work correctly, if this didn't work, the rope was going to go around my neck and I was, I was taught, my hands were tied. I liked the idea that that was part of it. I liked the idea that when I went to the circus, when the guy was on the trapeze up there and I looked down, I went, if he misses, he's going to die. I liked the element of that in it. I wanted the audience to be part of knowing that this is, it could be fatal. Well, I've got a wonderful souvenir at home. It's a picture of me dressed in a poncho, I'm trying to get this stuff out of the way. You're working for me, but no thanks. Something to show you. Addressed in the poncho, I was at the place where the artist made your head. And you had to have, what did they use? No, they had to do, I had to do the cast.  So all your senses are cut off for about 10 minutes. Yeah, and it feels, I've gone through the procedure and it's not a lot of fun, but I have a surprise for you, oh no. I have the original Alice Cooper head that was cast at that time and there it is, ladies and gentlemen. It's in plastic, we got a hole in the back of it. Yeah, let me get shot. We were having a fight over it, of course, yes. But this is the original Alice Cooper head and from this one, the other ones were emboldened. How many did you make? Oh, they had to make five or six of them and the one we use now is still from that cast. Is it? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So you hold on to that. But I'm going to ask you to autograph this. Oh, absolutely. When the time comes, we need a special autographing pen for this, of course. And this is the original, the very first one. I wasn't there when the thing was being cast on your face, but I was there when they were finishing it off afterwards and I still got a couple souvenir pictures of that that are mementos of my wasted youth. But that is the original, ladies and gentlemen. That is amazing. The makeup isn't too great. I didn't know you had that. That's great. No, I didn't put that makeup on someone else's. So there you go. That's really good. You know, I think I've got to tell you a great story about Randy. Uh-oh. Randy is carries a check in his wallet. He used to. Do you have it now? No, I don't carry the check anymore because we don't do business that way. That's old. You take credit now? That's what old folks would do. Okay. Yeah. To debunk anybody that could prove that Uri Geller could was psychic. Or any psychic is psychic. Any psychic of that matter, yeah. Uri Geller happened to be the guy, the hot guy at the time. At the time. Yeah. It was really a unique thing because everybody was into psychics. Everybody wanted to believe in this and here was Randy going against the flow going, no. He says, uh, you got to prove that to me. Well, I had a display table outside. We actually have million dollar checks signed by me, but it says right there in small type that this is not a valid check for, I don't know, et cetera, et cetera. But there was a time when you did have a check that was- Oh, yeah. I had $10,000. $10,000. A $10,000 check. And that was the initial, I would sacrifice that immediately if somebody did something really psychic. Yeah. That's an amazing thing, you know, that somebody would go against the flow of everybody wanting to believe in this to go the other way. Well, the thing is these so-called psychics are doing a lot of damage to a younger generation. They're getting them thinking in the wrong way. I don't deny that there are psychic phenomena, phenomena, pardon me, happening. I don't deny that because I can't prove a negative of that sort. But I offer the million dollars. It's not mine. It belongs to the foundation that I represent. A million dollars is a huge carrot to hang out. They're even in today's inflation. It still is a good sum of money to offer as a prize to anyone who can prove that they have psychic powers. They should be lined up outside this hotel right now waiting to claim the million dollars because there are tens of thousands of them all over the world. We get applications for it all the time. But the only applications that come in are not from Marie Geller or Sylvia Brown or other people like John Edward. None of these people don't apply for it. Oh, I'm not interested.  But the ones we get them from are from people who genuinely believe they have psychic powers. And we test them every year in Las Vegas and all the way through the year and around the world through other experts, other scientists who can handle that sort of thing for us. And I never sit in on it. You know why? Because the psychics have adopted an attitude not, no, if James Randi is there, he'll put out negative vibrations so I can't be psychic. So when I did a test with the BBC for a homeopathy, they said, well, we'll call you in.  And that's exactly what they do. And of course, homeopathy didn't work either. But that prize, that check, I did carry it around for $10,000. Yeah, for a long time. For a long time. Now, see, I went to claim the check because I thought he said psychos. And I said, well. And you would have won. I would have won that money. Certainly. So I had this great idea, and I was going to bring it to you for a reality show about, when they were trying to catch bin Laden, I said, why don't they put 10 psychics and a helicopter over Afghanistan? At Push the Monk. You know, and. No, he put them up over the. And they can find a little girl buried, you know, in Idaho behind a barn by looking at a dress or something. And I'm going, why can't they find this guy? So I said, put these guys on there, the 10 top psychics, put them over Afghanistan. Thank you. And the guy, the guy that comes up with the least each week gets voted off the helicopter. You know. He said, don't worry. You should have known this was coming. Number seven. Number seven, stand a step forward, please. Over to the door. So, and if you win, it's $25 million. I mean, you catch the guy. We're going to get $25 million. Well, they were going to pay $25 million to whoever caught bin Laden, right? So if they do win, it's win-win. Of course, of course, of course. We get the guy, right? Wow. So it never came to fruition. Nobody wanted to do it. But I was going to call you and say, I was going to put you in charge of this. Oh, thank you. Because you would have been perfect for that. Yeah, think of the mail I'd get. Oh, boy. All right, so. Ladies and gentlemen, we come to the close of our panel. I know it's only been, yeah, I know. We have to do this. I'm so sorry. But on a good note, immediately following this panel, Mr. Cooper will be doing autographs at 6 p.m. Not immediately following this panel, but at 6 p.m. in room 208 in the Hilton. Room 208. Wait, 208. 208. Yeah, you knew that was coming. Getting something there for a second. I'll make a note for you. Room 208 in the Hilton. Actually, all weekend long. Mr. Randy will be everywhere. I just don't know much of what to say about you two. You guys have been fantabulous. Incredible. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. You gel so well together. So without any further ado, this is only Friday. It's only the first day. You will see these gentlemen all weekend long. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr.