papa dead." thanks so much. : >> so i'm going to speak

briefly, and take some questions. but let me start out just by way of showing that i still am an old community organizer. before it became a presidential campaign qualification. i get around the country, i speak to audiences here and there, and i try to collect e-mail addresses and then stay in touch with those groups of people on issues of peace and justice, particularly afghanistan and pakistan. these are the hard core activists that exist in every town, everywhere. they are so similar. they should be a political party unto themselves, but they are characters to be extremely local. and they don't really belong to national organizations. they might support a barack obama campaign or a hillary clinton campaign, or a nuclear

disarmament campaign, or something. but generally their energy is givenm gl and returned to the communities in which they live and breathe and work and raise their families. and i'd be very honored if you would sign this. i'm going to ask somebody to keep their eye on it so that i think, the only other instruction i would give you is try to write your e-mail address accurately. i don't know about your system, but if i have 100 people and they are from miami, and there's one defect, it doesn't work. then i go through and i start eliminate the people whose handwriting seems questionable to me. and eventually, i get a group, but i lose 10 in order to get rid of one. now, who needs another book on the '60s? i worry about this.

the book has three parts though, and it may be misleading to say that it's just about the '60s. the three parts are these. number one, i try to make a case for what really happened in the 1960s as a historian and as afá participant. because quite often, you get an impression of the '60s that it was just all bedlam and zaniness, or violence and chaos. and people compartmentalize. they don't include -- some people don't include martin luther king in the same decade as the utes or the antiwar movement. so it's confusing. and when i teach, i teach sociology because it helps me understand the world. i teach sociology of the '60s, i typically -- i always interview my students on day one

about what they've learned from their parents or grandparents about the '60s. and the answer generally is zero. they say nothing, mr. hayden. that's why we're here to take the class. my dad said i should go take your class. [laughter] >> so we're not really transmitting a counter narrative to the narrative of chaos and confusion that's out there. and i think there is a counter narrative that we can go into, but the point of a counter narrative is that the '60s resulted in a huge range of reforms, and as these reforms were achieved, the '60s came to an end. because of the spirit and energy and the organizing resources faded with the success. this does not exclude repression and trials and assassinations and many other aspects of the

'60s. the core point is, the '60s might have been felt as radical or even revolutionary, or inspiring to revolution, the outcome i found in my attempt to get a grip on it, was again and again reform. now there might have been -- it might have been imperative that they were revolutionaries to help bring about reforms. but the problem with reform is that, it is quite often an orphan. because movements start with a minimal demand like the right to vote, right to eat at a lunch counter, and they will escalate to a point that by the time the demand is achieved five years later, many of the participants are disappointed. because they've lost careers, loved ones.÷

they become too radical for the reform. they don't like the idea of lyndon johnson signing a bill and saying we shall overcome. they feel like, lyndon johnson has taken our message. and we want more than just the right to vote. we want candidates who are better than johnson to vote for. and on the other side, the people who are against the reform, who i call theiéqz countermovement, or a machiavellian, the people who try to tinker with the status quo, they areh)7w not thrilled h the reform either. because they resisted it for so long. so they wage a kind of rearguard action. they accept the reform on paper, but they try to haul it out, defunded, make it as ineffectual as possible. and in the middle there3qc are people who were fence sitters in the '60s. they are not in the movement, not in the countermovement, but they have risen pragmatically to

positions of power, professors, pundits, media people, politicians. and they tend to want to claim the reform that they had nothing to do with achieving. it may be in the form of making a postage stamp out of malcolm x, or naming a street after sesser chavez, or including a book by noam chomsky in the reading list, usually optional, but the reading list. so i call them the manipulators of history, or the politicians of history who sort of take what they like and try to make it system, the greatest in the world, because we are so elastic and so able to achieve these reforms. right? that is something to there are

get that they have it backwards. but it is true, i think, from my study and my experience, and maybe yours, that the greatest things that we enjoy aboutu our country were initiated by people who were considered radicals and french people at the beginning, whether it's in music, culture, art, politics. and i'm talking about things very simple like, what would be a good example? you know, the curb ramps that allow disabled people in wheelchairs to move around, well, that came from the americans with disabilities act, which had to be funded by the government. but it originated with people i knew from brooklyn who are antiwar activists who happen to be in wheelchairs, and like the

idea of civil rights, skipped across constituencies to them until they said, what about us? then they went to washington, and they sat in and took over buildings in the health department and so on, and locked themselves in like it was civil rights movement. and they refused to leave, and they were arrested and thrown out. a lot of them were injured badly that you don't know what it's like to be turned over by a horse or a policeman when you're in a wheelchair. but the one. now, who remembers? now they have a curb ramp. right? and we step over it or we'll update and are completely unaware that people took great risks and probably risks to their health, risks to their

career, may have shortened their allies in fighting for that ramp. and there are many, many examples of this. another favorite of mine is the idea of a vacation. now, this may be a disappearing dream in america. i understand that, but the idea of a vacation, the idea of a 40 hour week, no child labor, these were ideas that were promoted 150 years ago by people like karl marx, if i may utter the words. karl marx did not create the soviet union. karl marx was a 19th century radical who sat around trying to figure out how to help working people, and had this idea with many other people, that working people have to work less than an 80 hour week. so they could think, so they could enjoy life, so they could read books. and i guess him being karl marx, so that they could go to a lot of meetings. and eventually, form unions. and out of that effort, there

came the first transnational labor movement that led to labor unions in time, and lead to social democratic parties in europe, and lead to specific legislation, like vacations and the eight hour day. so who goes around thinking i'm on vacation, thank god for the labor movement? not many. i don't know where we think these things come from, but the book is an attempt to anchor them in causes. here's some of the things that were achieved in the '60s. voting rights for southern black people in the 18 to 20. 46 million people. the end of the indochina wars in which at least 2 million people, including 58000 americans, were killed. the end of the compulsory military draft. the fall of two presidents. new congressional checks on the imperial presidency, the cia and the fbi. amnesty for 50000 draft evaders

in canada. normalized diplomatic relations with vietnam. the freedom of information act. the media fairness doctrine. the 1973 roe v. wade decision. the toughest environmental consumer and health safety laws that have been passed since that time. reform of the presidential primary system and delegate selection rules. union rights for public sector employees. the first collective bargaining rights for farmworkers. fundamental reform of school and university curricula. freedom of sexual desire and a decline of censorship. expanded participatory rights for many marginalize minorities. from college students to disabled americans. that's a short list. and time does wear on reform. it's not that these reforms are all that we wanted, or all that that they were in their heyday.

it's a 50 year process that we have been through. but we shouldn't forget that our everyday lives have been changed in these fundamental ways. and i think that's probably why, if i can go to the second part of the book, why -- if you look back from barack obama's election, 50 years backwards, see how it all turned out, we had a presidential campaign with john mccain, who had been a pilot bombing and with vietnam and had served time in a very harsh prison can't. we had hillary clinton who had been an early feminist, an antiwar activist at yale, who was a legal assistant to black panthers, who were considered revolutionaries at the time. and we had barack obama, who couldn't say that he had their 60s expenses, but he didn't

say that he was a pure child of the '60s, and he wanted to distance himself to get away from the '60s and the considered on his own merits. a tricky thing, but i thought like most of his rhetoric, he is extremely brilliant person and sophisticated as a politician. and what he meant by that was this. you know, he got home with bill ayres, the weather underground, and he got home with reverend wright, right? and it's true. barack went to a fundraiser for his state senate race at the home of bill ayers and bernadine who were leaders of the revolutionary weather underground. that's true. and he was married under the blessing of reverend wright. he was in that church for 20 years. but if you look carefully at

what he said in his famous speech about, particularly reverend wright and the subject of race, it's quite explanatory. the explanation is this,=ñ that because barack came later, he was a kid growing up in the '60s, he didn't have to go through or chose not to or was not forced to goçó through the sort of scoring and embittering experience is that a bill in her or a reverend wright would have gone through. they were given voice to the anger of the '60s out of their experience of betrayals and crises in the '60s. and he was only five, right? i have a picture of him that i think i will release, but to me people would take it seriously. it's a photo of barack at age

five, 1968, he's in the ocean in hawaii. you can tell it's him, just a little him. it's just the same person, just a little him. and his fist is like that. and i wanted to release it and say, new evidence that barack obama raised the black power fist in 1968. but you know what? glenn beck would believe it and suddenly it would be cycling around. very, very difficult. so i think -- people can please sit down. the point about 1968 was made in the introduction is this, grant park. no one remembers grant park. just a nice lovely field of green in chicago by delay. but it was the stage of the most

fierce confrontation between police and demonstrators at the height of the 1968 democratic convention. and that confrontation was symptomatic of a divide in our country, and a divide in the democratic party that led to the rise of reagan and nixon him and republican dominance in the expansion of the war, and you know, ambitions of some led to the watergate crisis and the collapse of the nixon administration for going too far. but grant park wasú÷ñ the place where people were gassed, where people were beaten very heavily, for no provocation, no reason whatsoever. and itñi was on the night of obama's election that he

returned to grant park and spoke to a huge, huge multiracial crowd of thousands and thousands of people. many of whom had a memory of grant park in 1968. some had no memory whatsoever. but i got a letter from somebody in the obama campaign. it was a message from david axelrod, the campaign manager, who saidñi that the plan wasçpd deliberate to choose grant park as the place for the victory celebration, as a way to sort of the race the memories of the past of a time when democracy and free speech had died in the

same place. so there is, on a very deep level here, and ongoing relationship between the '60s, the '90s, 2000s, 2008, and the future. one other thing that i want to say is that it could be that the '60s will repeat. i find that my worst inability many is the ability to predict. i didn't predict the fall of the soviet union. i don't know if many of you did, but i didn't really predict everything that happened after the '60s. i missed it. i faulted. but it does try to me that obama, now as president, could fall into some of the traps that were foreseen in the '60s. on the one hand, he is elected

in by social movements, particularly the cohorts represented by the millions of additional african-american votes, and additional under 30 votes, 18 to 30 year-old vote. that made the difference in florida, the difference in north carolina, the difference in virginia, and a very, very close race. very, very close race. so he depended on the one hand on the social movements that were flowing through the opportunity that his campaign presented. and on the other hand, to govern, to even seek to govern, one has to obey machiavellian's little books about the nature of power. so he's caught between social movements on the one hand, and the machiavellian's who are used to exercising power over the status quo, no matter who's been

elected president. they just want to know if the new president is tolerable, or whether he has to be somehow subverted or dumped. i'm talking about, you know, the permanent apparatus of the military, the intelligence agencies, wall street, and the legions of lobbyists who are there from one generation to the next in washington, d.c.. and you see the model proposed in the book played out where you have to getok some kind of concession to the machiavellian's in order to remain in office. but in doing so, you could do or rendered toothless, the promise of your own presidency. this is what happened in a strange case of lyndon johnson. who, according to all of the transcript now revealed, and i looked through them in the book, acts like a president who never

wanted to start the war infá vietnam. obviously, you can't rely on transcripts, but the man seemed delusional. you know, screaming who got me into this? because he said, i wanted to enact a great society. why am i in vietnam? i am reading it thinking you are you talking to? look in the mirror. you are doing this. but it does suggest that there is -- and i don't mean to sound like al gore here, shadowy forces, that it does suggest that there are powerful forces that exist beyond the powers of the president. i'll give you one example in closing, and that is, i met with jimmy carter once when he was president in the oval office, and i was interviewing him and i said, mr. president, do you feel that the unelected heads of

corporations of banks have more power than the elected president of the united states? and, honest, jimmy carter said wryly, i learned that my first year in office. and i think that's a president obama is learning at the end of his first year of office. in closing, the third part of the book is this, and it's very simple. the 50th anniversary of everything that happened in the '60s begins this january. did you know that? why am i here? it began -- i began to be kind of obsessed by the fact that nobody knew this. which must mean, as a statement about our collective memory. so i started the website and a research project to try to put in the book, and on a an

accompanying website, as far as i could tell everything that occurred in social movements in the period of the 1960s beginning in the late '50s going to the '70s. in this hope that memory is the final battlefield, that we need to keep memory alive if you want to keep hope alive. and you can bet given the nature of the media, that they will cover every one of these events from their point of view that and if you want to be in the story you have to have a memorial event that you have to have a panel discussion. you have to have another picketline and the place where the picket line -- you have to observe these historic events in their 50th anniversary, or run the risk of oblivion. we've been there before. we came out of nowhere, and it would be sad for us to go back to nowhere. so there is a 50th anniversary ahead for those of you who've lived long enough, and then i

guess, the last living survivors of the decade will be dead, or dying. there will be no more primary sources, and it will be up to future generations to make sense of all that we went through. thank you very, very much. [applause] >> before you go running off to the next event, get in that line. is a madhouse.ñi >> thank you, mr. hayden, for ájt service and intellectual analysis. speaking of the airs and pitfalls of the obama administration is falling into, regarding the escalation of the afghan aggression, would you advise the obama group to study the facts of 9/11 and see where

the truths of that crime, where it leads them? and reopen the investigation into 9/11? and what do you personally think of the facts of 9/11 reqs for example, how the buildings were polarized by explosives in 10 seconds and so forth, thank you. >> that's a good question, and is asked by this gentleman or others everywhere i go. i'm trying to encourage you to take your case to the wider public as opposed to myself. obama has a lot on his plate, and i believe he's probably not going to come and shouldn't, spent a lot of time on personally delving into 9/11, until something grabs the attention of the public and the congress, and requires it. my 9/11 wasn÷ 11-22-63.

i personally have not gotten over the killing of john kennedy. and i had several similar experiences, and i found a pattern in which suspicions were immediately aroused. how could there be a single gunman who did this? commissions were immediately created in order to follow presidential direction to come to a preordained conclusion. that didn't stop to question any. questions went by. hundreds of articles, dozens of books were written, an extraordinary amountxd of attention was invested by many authors and trying to prove that the warren commission was right in its conclusion, even if they were wrong in their methods. and i still feel a sense of

suspicion about the entire episode. and i also feel the stakes are so great in these cases, and as such an effort to learn the truth, that for many generations the truth is not known on the theory that it might become less lethal. for example, there are two or 300 pages of classified documents that the cia has recently reported on by "the new york times," that have to do with the role of the cia in, not only the bay of pigs, but in the management of the kennedy assassination and its implications for the cia.

including one set of documents about how the cia, without telling the congress, said one of their operatives to become the federal -- the administration's advisor to the congressional investigation. there's 300 pages that are not released their could there be something so awful in their that we would like go mad as a nation? or is it just bureaucratic investment, will we ever know? so this is kind of the perspective i bring to 9/11. i'm not going to give you a long statement on 9/11, but i always thought that it was extremely bizarre that we engineered the formation and the funding and the arming of what became al qaeda. and then when there were documents from the national security council to condoleezza

rice and george bush, that al qaeda and bin laden were planning to hit buildings with airplanes, and that was shortly before, it was five weeks before. there should have been red alert, red alarms. now, i've been in government and i do know incompetence becomes the cause of many, many things that seems conspiratorial. so i'm not urging you to make to draw a conclusion, but i would think there should have been much more accountability. i also think the rush to judgment which surrounded the kennedy assassination was echoed in the rush to judgment around 9/11, without drawing any conclusion of my own. there obviously was an extremely powerful set of institutions that want to act in such a way

that there's no doubt no doubt that a lot of the facts would not get to the public for many years, for many, many years. and maybe they haveym some we w best approach. i know somebody who was there, who took their 12 year old kid up on the rooftop and saw the second plane hit the building. by the way, i do believe planes hit buildings. there are some who don't. i do. when the plane hit the building, this girl fell over backwards into her father's lap and went blind. the psychological blinders. there is such a syndrome. and she remained blind for a year. the inability to cope withqwei r process something that should seem obvious, but it's so shattering to your assumptions about the natural world, the country you live in, your family, your personal security.

she went blind. shiga nazi, but it took one year for the blindness to wear off. so you could generalize that to the state of the nation as a whole, i think. hi, judy. how you? >> good. known that i4÷ was going to see you again this year -- >> i didn't know that. i had no enough from you. >> but i went to your blog. >> a founder of the peace corps. [applause] >> and an old friend. i went to your blog and i really like the op-ed piece he wrote on november 10 about the afghan war. it really expressed a lot of the things that i'm thinking right now. we are all blind, and it seems like we're going to maybe continue to be blind for a while. i noticed you had a petition and some other names i surew3 knew n that petition, because they were from theñi past. but what my question is -- the question is now --

>> that would be a flash for. >> what do you really think is going to happen as americans are getting more disenchanted with this afghan war, will we have anything like a movement? what your suggestion of a congressional hearing at this point you much knew that would change in terms of perhaps public opinion in this country? is that why you're pushing the issue? so taking it to them. >> i spent most of my time in concrete issues in afghanistan, pakistan, and before the iraq. it could be that i feel there is an area where there is something i could contribute that it could be i have an obsession, you know, the immediate death and distraction, and wars that are not being funded by taxpayers, and not honestly portrayed by the military or the white house.

but it seems to be my destiny is to spend the rest of my life on afghanistan and pakistan. and there's a reason i say that. there's a pentagon doctrine, which is not a white house official policy, but is a doctrine called the long war, d()n 50 year war, we're in yeare eight, 50 year war, continual afghanistan, pakistan being proxies in the war between -- it's kind of the war between civilizations. but it's also about muslim lands and muslim oil and muslim pipelines. it's an arc of crisis as they describe it going from europe across the middle east to south asia. here's what i think. there's a legacy from the '60s of distrust, of the reasons given for goinglp to war.

it was compounded enormously during the past 10 years under bfo@ eric there were 10 or 11 occasions when over 100,000 people protested. there were antiwar sentiments that made their way very rapidly into the mainstream. michael moore's fahrenheit movie, the dixie chicks, bush couldn't even suppress the dixie chicks, a texas band. the gallup poll showed that americans turned against iraq as a mistake faster than they turned against vietnam. so i think there's been on a cultural level and a political level, a slow antiwar movement. and the reason it's not always in the streets is because we had to be in the streets. and now you can be online or you can vote.ltk4j4(p&c"p%so there . i still favor the streets, or inside and outside strategy at the same time.

and it's manifested itself around what i was saying about movements versus machiavellians in this way. the movement push public opinion. public opinion was reflected in congressional outcomes in 2006, and presidential outcomes in 2008. the republicans were turned out in the congress, and obama won. and there was no recognition of the antiwar forces in that process, but it's easily proven. but movements can only go so far because the machiavellians are impervious to movements, except if they are really, really threatening. they generally tried to think, what can we do to make the war more hidden, or how can we placates these people? but they don't, they don't change. you know, obama has this problem. does he want the nightmare of being faced by an antiwar movement? being the first president ever

elected in part by an antiwar movement, he must know on a verr deep level how these things go. and that people that love him, i love him, will still stand in front of the white house with picket signs in protest, and go out in congressional district and try to defeat people who are supporting this war. 70 percent of democrats are against this war, or against an escalation of the war. majority of americans are. it's a trillion dollar war. i won't get any details but it will be a trillion dollars if he serves eight years as president. americans are dying at a rate of 50 a month. after his escalation of march, 50 a month, up and down, but if you say 50 a month, that's 600 a year, that's 1200 by 2011, 2012. you're talking here about a thousand to 1300 american dead

under a president obama, on top of the 700 or 800 dead under president bush. and we may have some world war ii complex, you know, the liberating gis saving the few remaining jews from the concentration camps. that somehow will decimate and destroy the taliban and al qaeda and people will rush and thrill us flowers. we have to get over this mentality in our dna. this war is not a winnable war. we certainly could inflict more destruction and kill more people, killing a lot of our own in the process, but at some point there has to be an exit strategy. that was the point of my article. you're at a point now where he knows that we have a completely incompetent partner. how do you have counterinsurgency without a partner? right? he knows that. and you can't win the war from the air with drums that you can

kill people, but you win wars on the ground that he knows that. so i don't know what he's going to do. but i tell you, i think it's good that he's taking a long time to make up his mind. there's been a couple of turning point. first, a complete fí= of the afghan election. secondly, the unexplained conspiracy by the american ambassador, general eikenberry, to come out against the general that replaced him, general mcchrystal, giving obama a chance to say, well, the generals themselves don't agree. you know, he could make a bold move. do i think he will wax no, because he is a centrist. so he will borrow from the leftq and borrow from the right. he will come out forxçgb more troops. he will defend it as saving afghan women from the rape and pillage of the taliban. and then he will tell the right that this has to stop at some

point. there's got to be an exit strategy. this is not an open-ended war. we're going to do this for one yearok and you're not going to e coming back to the bar asking for another drink. that would be a typical obama formulation. i have no inside knowledge. that's how he thinks. and i don't understand how you can have a trillion dollar national health plan. 8 billion-dollar afghan war. a trillion dollar iraq war that was not paid for by taxes. secret war of unknown cost in pakistan. clean energy, let's not forget. i know politics is magical. i know how to do the magic, but as we learned -- as karl rove learned with the wall street collapse, even the republicans can't control with their magic the realities of an overextended

system. and what makes it most ironic and disturbing, is that this is what we say al qaeda wants us to do. not getting into what al qaeda means, but they want us to overextended our military forces and exhaust our economy. so why would we -- y. -- why would we take that option? that's the first thing you would reject that you don't want to ever -- i don't find, i went to other books on war. first, do what you're any recommend, that is not the rule. either i'm missing something, you can explain it, or it's what barbara, talking about in that book, the best of all books, historic tragedies, the march 2 fawley. you know, you're on the road to fawley, people advise you, sensible people say you are on the road to fold and there are alternative. you listen and you go ahead and

continue to fawley. that seems to be the way this is heading in that that's very hard to save. >> i think is going to send more troops but i think he is going to talk about an exit strategy. and i think it's important. i think it's important for those of us who are happy to get out of that war, even though we will not get out as a commitment to pakistan. that we support the existentially part of that. >> something for everyone. >> something for everyone. but at least not -- we should support getting out, and any movement of getting out of both iraq and afghanistan, there should be voices out there saying yes. and we can be quite. >> there is an exit shaggy, if it's enforceable, if it's defined, let's take a look. we should see. but i think he should back the general that he fired instead of the general that he hired.ym

yes. [applause] >> you've got a following. >> on the one hand he would put more troops in, but have an exit strategy. that seems consistent with what he seems to be brilliant at, which is trying to please everybody. and i guess what i'm wondering is, his brilliance in seeking consensus, i've heard some say, seems to lead to weak leadership because he wants consensus everyplace. and i think there are millions of people, like me, who, enthusiastically went out and volunteered, who are really frustrated and are wondering, isn't that he's not a good leader and better at pr, or so brilliant that in the fall, in a few months will be surprised? but the election results of a couple of weeks ago seemed to

indicate that his current course is going to lead conceivably even to a republican congress in a year. i mean, what do you make of his leadership style and to what extent do you think it's either that he's just another politician running towards the independent, or seeming lack of boldness? >> he's not just another politician, because the path to victory was unorthodox. send david to iowa that the clintons wouldn't go,u%q there. win iowa, 100% white state, use that to escalate the black support, and then eat clinton in the caucus states where your ground operation -- that was quite brilliant that you can say, he it was the only thing he could've done. of course they did that. but that's nonsense. it was quite good and. but it doesn't mean that you can be brilliant and governing.

for instance, could as we look back, that first day where he closed guantanamo was inexperienced in its peak form, right? remember, he's signing these documents, and when he would sign the doctor, he would say, there you go. and somebody would hand him another one. it was like his first presidential act. and anyone with experience would i predict to you that the republicans and the governors are going to say no way to any detainees being sent to our states. so let's figure out a plan that will work your. and not just an announcement that will embarrass us because you will not be able to deliver on it. it frightens me that no one was in the room to tell him, what i knew and many people knew, that the aspiration was correct, but

as president you cannot dictate where these detainees are located in federal prisons without the opposition or buy off of the state. so i think some of it is inexperienced. it's like bill clinton, why did he decide just before becoming president, that he would make the first priority gays in the military? who did he check with? usually you sit down with realistic people who say, good idea, good aspiration, let's run through the actual consequences, and then decide if you want to go ahead. let's figure out how we are going to do this. he just announced that, as if he was pleasing david mixner. and it haunted him and troubled him, because he couldn't implement the aspiration. it was an experience i think. but as for centrism, i think( it's brilliant and devilish.

i think it is definitely, you can tell in any occasion, you can predict where he's going to gog extremes, by the way, the extremes that he defines, and then you find a middle between i'm a useful case study, because he once said he's not a tom hayden democrat. [laughter] >> and he's not a cold war democrat like scoop jackson. and somehow, that's supposed to make sense. i still to this day have never found out what it meant, as far as i know there's only one tom hayden democrat. class next mac scoop jackson was bowling. senate seat in washington, but you could tellko it meant thatm hayden democrat as a person is always against every war. and he, barack obama, is not against every war. in fact, those are the opening

lines of his antiwar speech in chicago. he said i'm not against all wars. i'm just against dumb wars. shows you what intelligence will get you. the formula should tell you this. without pressure from the left, the center will move right. pay no attention, for the attention to the details of obama. pay attention to what does it take to wake us up, to put more progressive pressure on the government on health care regulation of wall street, clean energy, get out of afghanistan, if that's your agenda, and others. even if he agrees with you, he might encourage you covertly. he will not do anything if you're not there making him do it. i don't know if that is cynical, but makes me feel -- [applause]

>> makes me feel it's a practical guide, citizens guide, to the obama era. he needs a new left. just like john kennedy needed a new left. [inaudible] >> they will give him more time for a while, but i think the time is up. the polls are going the other way. is got to be alarmed. got to be alarmed. the hook is coming. i'm sorry, i have to leave. there are no books or. we made sure of that. so this is just an oral history, but then i have my yellow pad back? thanks a lot. [applause]

>> i'm here with vali nasr, and author of a new book, "forces of fortune: the rise of the new muslim middle class and what it will mean for our world." who are the new muslim middle-class? >> its people whose livelihood are connected to a private sector, whose integrated in the world economy that they are businessmen, financiers. they are also professionals. but they are people who are like middle classes in asia, latin america, people we identify as part of the new globalization forces. new economic forces, and we

often don't see them in the middle class but wei] always thk about extremists or fundamentalist. we don't think about social classes in the muslim world the way in which they connect to economics. and why do they matter in terms of all the things that we think about? >> you focus on iran in this book. how diverse are the social classes in iran? >> again, when we think about iran we don't realize that i'm on has a very vibrant middle-class. there's a privatization in iran in the 1980s and 1990s that it produced a middle-class in the private sector. even though most of iran's economy is dominated by the government, still there is a large part of middle-class that depends on private sector activity. it is that private sector and middle class in iran is responsible for iranian cinema, for cultural activity and four demand for palooka freedom and

reforms. when we see iranians take to the streets dementing better results for elections or demanding political freedom, these are people who also want integration into the world economy, better relations with the west. we want economic advancement, and so even the backbone of political change in iran is the middle-class. >> how large is this middle-class? >> in some countries they are larger and some are smaller, but in countries like turkey there are maybe 20 to 30 percent of the population. in pakistan, or parts of the arab world, about 10 to 15 percent of the population. typically they are not a large force but the ones that account for most of the amount of economic dynamism, and the specter of the economy that they are most active in, which is private sector activity, is the one that is ultimately going to hold the middle east in muslim world by bootstraps and integrate into the global

economy. is not añi issue of side is the issue of political role that they will play the. >> and yorba, you talk a lot about capitalism and business. can be discussed discussed a dichotomy between religion and cap wasn't in the middle is? >> religion and capitaliscapitalism can go exist the way they do in america. you have businessmen in america who are evangelical or fundamentalist or churchgoing. it's the same in the muslim world as well. what makes a difference is that capital is muslim who are integrated into global economy tend to favor interpretation of religion that supports their economic activities and serves their interest. in other words, they don't have an extremist because extremism is not good for business. because extremism does not interfere with their integration into global economic. so when we look at countries like turkey, dubai, malaysia and indonesia, we see middle classes that are getting enriched by global economy, that see their

future in global economy or religion. by the kind of religion they follow is in some ways globalization friendly. so it is conservative, but it supports capitalistic activities and living harmoniously with others in a global economy. >> what ramifications to the business class have on american foreign policy? >> well, we don't pay as much attention to them as we ought to. we don't think of the fact that what transformed china, transformed india, transform latin america, eastern europe and asia that created stable, prosperous democracies was the middle classes in those countries that were dependent on private sectors, that were integrated global economies. and we don't think in the muslim world, you're not going to get them to where brazil, argentina, taiwan, or korea are unless the same class that got those

countries to where they are also become empowered in the muslim world. so we are looking for a solution in the muslim world without looking at what is the force that's supposed to produce the solution. i think the change agent!"w ine muslim world ultimately will have to come from the middle-class and from the capitalist business sector associate with the. >> vali nasr, author of "forces of fortune." thank you so much. >> thank you. >> in his book, "obamanomics," timothy carney says that president obama presents himself as a chicken of the average american. but is more on the site of big corporations and wall street. it's about an hour. >> the book, "obamanomics," the thesis is different every time government gets bigger, somebody is getting rich.

and the main idea that i'm going up against is what i call the big myth, the notion that what big business wants is simply to be left alone. big business wants the regulation and taxes and regulation are the scourges of big business. this is true, maybe half the time. but when it is miffed, when people don't see it going on, they think this is something that will clamp down on the excesses of big business when it impacted the opposite. so free market advocates into supporting, siding with business, when business has the opposite legislative opposition. and people who distrust major power in the supporting greater regulations when it has the opposite effect. let me tell you one quick reading from "obamanomics." nike makes good use, but its leadership in the u.s. sneaker market is largely result of the company's image. michael jordan, tiger woods, i

wrote this book a couple months ago. michael jordan, tiger woods. the trademark swoosh for nike image may not be everything, but it's the biggest thing. so when i gave up its seat on the u.s. chamber of commerce in protest over the chamber's opposition to waxman-markey, it would have been easy to conclude the company was simply burnishing its green image. the firm had invested a small fortune to replace the sulfur hexafluoride, which is a very potent greenhouse gas, in its nike issues with nitrogen. but some inconvenient facts belie nike's green image. name, nike missions from its manufacturing and logistics, according to an annual report, went up 62 percent from 1998 to. that's because nike is making a vast majority of its apparel overseas, primarily in asia and shipping it and their plans don't have the sort of environmental controls that american plans to. conveniently, all these

factories will be unaffected by legislation currently before congress, the waxman-markey bill was one of them. in the name of global warming. in contrast nike competitor, new balance, makes its best running shoes in?s new england. so waxman-markey would regulate new balance in missions, but not nike's. in other words, waxman-markey, the global warming bill before congress, would drive up new balance cost but not nike's. nike may really want to save the planet, but it's support for climate change looks like what i call regulatory robbery. so this is where you see a company lobby for an environmental bill in a way that it won't affect its cost at all, but it affects its competitors cost, hurting its competitors, and getting good press for standing up for the environment. this point a lot of environmentalist might say why should i care if it's good for the planet and nike is making a profit off of it, how does that affect me? i will bring up another example.

alcoa. used to be called the aluminum company of america. the largest aluminum maker in the world that it is also lobbying for the environmental restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions in the name of global warming. alcoa happens to make aluminum car frames, aluminum car frames are just as strong but much lighter than steel carvings. high quality performance cars will have an aluminum frame as opposed to a steel frame. aldermen costs a lot more to make. so the effect on u.s. consumer or an automaker of environmental regulation, whether it isw3 to efficiency standards or global warming regulation, is to drive up the cost of buying a steel car which makes you more likely to bite and a aluminum framed if you're. alcoa makes most of its aluminum and manufactures most of the car frames down in australia. where it has just successfully lobbied to kill the global warming bill down there. and the