>> and in the comic book of your mommy kills animals it shows a woman leave it to like leave it to beaver's mom. she's wearing a dress and she's wearing an apron and she has a string of pearls. and it shows her maniac, you know, stabbing this rabbit that looks like thumper out of bambi and the rabbit is looking like this. and this is handed out to 6, 7, 8-year-old kids. tell your mommy that you know she paid men to hurt and kill animals. everyone knows and the sooner she stops wearing fur, the sooner the animals will be safe.

until then keep your doggy and kitty friends away from mommy. she's an animal-killer, closed quote. in the fish with daddy tearing apart a fish on the cover, until your daddy learns that it's not fun to kill, keep your doggies and kitties away from him. he's on hooked on killing defenseless animals they could be next. closed quote. imagine your kid came home crying thinking you're going to kill their beloved pet. but the zeal of animal rights is so strong and the emotionalism so fervent that they're willing to undermine the relationship between parents and children over these issues. so i think i'll stop there on this aspect of the book. the book is to show that animal rights is not about being nicer to animals. it is not a benign movement. it is actually in my view a dark movement. an antihuman movement and a

nillistic movement. [applause] >> the second part of the book deals -- i'll end soon here. i'm a lawyer, short-winded isn't what i do. the second part of the book i get into the uses of animals and how they benefit people. medical research -- i put the most focus on. and i also talk about what's called the three rs, refinement, reduction and replacement. that is the idea of trying to reduce our use of animals in medical research which would be a good thing. but i explain quite clearly why animals are still needed in research. and their proper place in research. animal rights activists take two attacks geneva convention animal research. -- against animal research.

the intellectually dishonest approach is to say that animal research does not benefit humans. and as we've already seen in this convention where it does but they will say well, a drug is not 100% applicable to a human so -- and we've had drugs that have been tested on animals and gone out and used on humans that had to be withdrawn so, therefore, animal testing bad. well, that would be true if you went right from the lab rat to your doctor's office. but, of course, that's not what thats. before it ever gets to the medical clinic you have to go through three stages of human testing. it takes several years. a lot of money. and i explain that in the book. finally, i defend human exceptionalism in the book. the last chapter is on that that the importance of being human. and i just want to read just a little bit of what i wrote in that regard and then i'll take questions. the idea that human beings stand

at the pinnacle of the moral hierarchy of life should be and once was uncontroversial. after all, what other species in the known history of life has aobtained the wonderful capacity of human beings. what other species has suspended the tooth and claw naked selection to the point of some degree we control nature instead of being controlled by it. what other species build civilizations? records history? creates art? makes music? thinks abstractly? communicates in language? envisions and fabricates machinery? improves life through science and engineering or explore the deeper truths of philosophy and religion? what other species has true freedom? we are exceptional. we are unique. we are different. than any other known species that is ever known in the i verse. a lot of times when i -- in fact, i was at the law school giving a speech on human exceptionalism. and the questions always were

raised, well, that's arrogant. you think you're better than a butterfly. yeah, frankly i do. beyond that, it is the cause of our spoiling the planet because we think we can do whatever we want. that is not true. human exceptionally as i said earlier forces upon us duties. and they are important and crucial duties. but then i turn it around and i say to students, well, if being human is not what give us the obligation to treat animals humanely, tell me what does. hear the crickets chirping. because there's no other answer. human rights is even a forceful advocacy for the most extreme form of human exceptionalism. that is to take our own interest, put it into a corner and not use it in order to benefit animals. that is a call to an extreme level of human duty.

in other words, animal rights activists seek to destroy human exceptionalism by engaging in the very thing they disagree with or denigrate. and i close the book with this conclusion. i hope it is now very clear that the animal rights movement is not simply about being nicer to animals. it's adherence while certainly not monolithic share a dangerous ideology that sometimes amounts to a quasi religion, the central dogma of which is that the domesticating any animal is evil. in this they are deeply wrong. human slavery was and is evil. keeping elephants and zebras in properly designed and maintained zoos is not. the rwandan genocides were evil and providing animals with tasty food is not.

the experimentation on identical twins at auschwitz was truly heinous. testing new drugs or surgical procedures on animals to save children's lives and promote human and animal thriving is both morally beneficent and ethically justified. for the rest of us who love animals, recognize the nobility and believe that as human beings we owe them respect and kindness but also understand that our obligation to humanity matters even more. let us strive continually to improve our treatment of animals as we also promote human prosperity and health. first and foremost, this means rejecting out of hand all moral equivalencies between human beings and animals as we embrace the humility and gratitude the intrinsic importance of human life. thank you very much. [applause] >> we have some questions here.

>> what similarities and contrasts do you have with the current endangered species act which seems to partake some similar impulses. the hubris on the part of people who say, well, we humans can control. and we can preserve species even though mother nature has been wiping them out throughout, you know, prerecorded history. >> environmentalism and animal rights are different. environmentalism looks at bigger systems. and animal rights looks at individual animals. so there's a distinction there. i think it is a human obligation to prevent extinction particularly if it's our activities that could be the cause of it. i do think, however, that there is a part of radical environmentalism, the very radical part. and i'm afraid it's going in the

mainstream. deep ecology comes to mind. deep ecology is also antihuman exceptionalest. that is -- we're not just not exceptional. we're the enemies of the story. so you will hear people like paul watson calling human beings the aides on the planet earth. and so when environmentalism and conservation, which i think are proper movements, begin to mutate and menastasize into a antihuman movement which i think much of radical animal -- i'm sorry, environmentalism is becoming -- even in the global warming fight, you are now hearing calls for reducing the human population to under a billion. you're hearing calls for mass abortion and perhaps and mass euthanasia and this kind of thing because we're the enemies and we're the cause of all the suffering on the planet. you're beginning to see a convergence.

now, it's very interesting -- i think a difference between human beings and other species -- you have a lot of seals up here in the seattle area. when a seal washes up on the beach and is injured, what happens? if you're not a human being you either eat the seal or you ignore the seal. if you're a human being, you rescue the seal. we've seen the seal rescues even they are eating all the salmon. i think there's convergence of radical radicalism. a terrorist organization works hand-in-hand with the animal liberation front. and as i recall, there was a near riot here in seattle several years ago involving anarchists who also work with those groups. so there is at that edge of the movement a deep nihilism that is

tear down and not build up. >> is there a connection with the movement for human personhood that's been on the ballot in certain states in the united states? and the proabortions who are fighting such an effort? would singer and others who are pushing for animal personhood -- i've heard that they're kind of critical of singer's effort because it might have a backlash and actually help the human personhood movement? >> there is a movement -- this is getting into bioethics more than animal rights. there is a movement that has begun to try to have unborn human lives declared persons to the point of becoming being at conception. certainly peter singer does not

think that fetuses or embryos are persons because he doesn't think babies are persons. he's not going to think fetuses and embryos are persons. that is based on the inability of a fetus or an embryo or an infant to be self-aware over time. peter singer doesn't think terri schiavo because that capacity once possessed has been lost. so under this idea of personhood theory as it is applied in bioethics, you have a two-tiered system of human life. some humans which are persons that have full rights and other humans that are not persons that do not have full rights. and, therefore, as i write in my book "culture of death," these nonpersons supposed can be used instrumentally in the same way we treat animals. so you see a lot of advocacy in the professional journalists to take somebody in a persistent vegetative state, redefine them

as dead, even though they're not, so that organs can be procured subject to consent and even engaged in medical experimentation upon them. i think the personhood idea that is being promoted by the pro-life movement is to try to bring attention and value to unborn life and that certainly would be resisted by utilitarian bio ethics. >> has peter singer made any comment on that gentleman who was in a persistent vegetative state for 23 years and recovered and whose experience tell us he was self-aware? during that long process? >> i haven't seen peter singer make a comment about it. ron was actually, it appears, in a locked-in state, when he was fully awake and aware but unable to communicate. that is a state that does exist. about 40% of persistent

vegetative state diagnosis are inaccurate. i don't want to get off in bioethicses there's many in oeics that's more of a reason to take away their food and water and euthanize them because they're suffering. that's actually a subject for a different speech. >> i agree fully with human exceptionalism but my rational basis for that is mankind created in the image of god. are there people who hold to human exceptionalism but reject the mankind made in the image of god and give some other rationale? >> yeah. in fact, i spend maybe a page and a half in my book on religion because religion would generally -- christian view made in the likeness and image of god.ò

buddhists don't take that view. but i don't think that they believe that animals have rights. they do believe we have duties towards animals. and they get into karma. but i think there's a wholly rational basis for human exceptionalism. our rationality and our abstract thinking and so forth. but for me it really boils down to we're moral agents. whether that happened because of neo-darwinisic, accidental coming together of this remarkable species through no purpose or intelligent design as some in this room would suggest. or creation, there's no question that we are moral beings. there is no human society on the face of the earth that does not have a morality. i don't think there are any human beings unless they're either injured or psychopathic that do not have the morality. and the idea that the -- the fact it's not an idea.

the fact that we are moral agents. and, in fact, we are the only species that are moral agents. now, a lot of -- there's a lot of desperate desire in some in biology and darwinisic theory and so forth to try to say, well, look at this monkey. that shows some altruism. and there's a lot of effort to try to show that animals have certain similarities to humans. notice whom they're always comparing to. they're always comparing to humans. but even if there's a rudimentary, moral sense among some animals like chimps or something, none of them can be held to account. none of them have duties. only humans have duties. and i quote some philosophers in the books. it seems rights and duties are on different sides of the coin. we have unique rights, whether it's god-given or natural rights or because we have conceived of the concept of rights.

that we then have a right to demand on others that they respect. i think that is a real crucial difference. a lot of times animal rights types will say or even neo-darwinists are often very fond of saying human exceptionalism is wrong because we just evolve. and beyond which species, membership is a fiction because we share so many genes, et cetera. and yet if you take a look about it and think about it, if animals had rights, we would have the duty to respect those rights. they would not have the duty to respect our rights. nor would they have the duty to respect each other's rights. they can't be held to account on duties. so again, it's just this one-way street. the unexceptional species with an exceptional obligation, not only to ourselves but to each other.

we are the only moral agents in the known universe. and so rather than that's the issue of giving rights, it is true moral agency that we might say gives rights. because when you have rights, you have responsibilities. now, eventually you can get animal rights activists and even bioethists who accept this idea of speciesism to accept that. and then they'll say a-ha this is the philosopher and the duke. a-ha. yes, we'll accept that but not every human being has moral agency. hence, those individuals do not have rights. and they think well -- oh, my gosh then we have to give the animal rights. no. these are species. these are in the intrinsic nature of our species. our species is incontinuescaltr

species. these issues must be looked at as species issues not as individual issues because otherwise we're back to the point if we're -- our rights come from our individual capacities, a, they can be lost and there go our rights. and, b, it's the end of universal rights. you can make an human basis on human rights based on moral agency. >> i saw the recent article that you mentioned about how pita is autorecognizing huge percentages of their dogs in the shelters. and what astonished most about that the most was that pita was receiving bad press. i feel like 9 out of 10 times i've seen an article about pita, it's completely positive. and, you know, some famous celebrity is making some funny ad for them. so my question is, why does peta

good so much good press and how do you feel it coming out and what would it take for them to get more bad press? [laughter] >> they are brilliant propagandists. people say you never say anything nice about peta. they are the most adept propagandaists in public advocacy today. because they are able to convince people that all they are interested in is being nicer to animals. they have a two-tiered system of advocacy. the beautiful naked models saying i'd rather wear nothing than fur. people think that's peta. they've got alicia -- they do nudity a lot. peta seeming to be obsessed with nudity. that's for the teenage boy crowd, i think. but they have alicia silverstone

saying i'm a vegetarian. look at what vegetarian can get you. on the other hand, you do have people, for example, paul mccartney. when paul mccartney's wife linda died of cancer. he gave a lot of money to cancer research. applause. he also gave a lot of money to peta, which impedes his original donation. and the ironically thing was linda was an avid horse woman which peta would think was evil. so what do we learn? paul mccartney doesn't what he's talking about and what he's doing. because peta have expertly convinced people they just want to end cruelty. that people will give them tons of money thinking they're helping the animals when they're really not. and they're tremendously potentially hurting people.

but it shows you the power of the emotional narrative. everything peta does is emotion, emotion, emotion. and the rant drives out reason and it drives out rationality. >> one more question. >> well, my question sort of gets to that a little bit. 'cause i was struck by the example you brought up of the comic book. >> mommy kills animals. >> i was actually probably -- i'm certainly the only one in the room who was at the city comic-con this weekend. i'm wondering is, you know, what impact might it have if instead of obviously you're getting those kids parents who are getting the book and reading the book, if there was a comic that those kids were given that presented the resisting the animal rights --

>> yeah. >> and my large -- >> before you get to the larger point. all the monies on the animal rights side -- hsus has over $200 million in assets. peta has tens of millions of dollars budgeted each year. bob barker of the price is right just gave them $2.5 million to build a building in california from which to do their thing. i've even had complaints from -- and i don't know the statistics. from normal animal welfare groups that they're either being subvert by animal rights types or their money is drying up. so a lot of money because of their power of their propaganda and their high visibility, a lot of money -- and it's also politically correct to like peta, so a lot of money in holy and celebrity money and this kind of thing goes into that movement where the resistance to it basically doesn't get that kind of assets. >> right. and i would entirely agree.

i guess my larger question is, have we exceeded the cultural ground, what i call professional movements, have we given that up around to those folks? in this particular instance the animal rights activists and human exceptionalism. instead of focusing on hollywood and new york and all the efforts focussing on washington, d.c.? >> i think you raise an interesting issue. i think the cultural purveyors of the most powerful communicators are on that side of the table. and an example i give -- this actually gets into more radical environmentalism than animal rights. but think of the movie "the day the earth stood still," the remake. the original version michael renny -- i love sci-fi. i still love sci-fi but as a kid

i would go to the science fiction movie theaters that have matinees and they would show three or four at a time and one of them is michael renny the day where the earth stood school where the alien came down from space and he had a big robot named gork. the point of the alien coming to earth was to save human beings from themselves. that's the original black and white version. kenau reeves remake he comes down to robots it's not to save human beings from themselves but to commit mass genocide. kill every man, woman and child on the planet because the aliens want to save the earth. there is even a noah's ark scene in the remake of "the day the earth stood still" where animals are taken two by two in the chaiseships which by the way looks like globes which implies

the earth is the living gia theory. so that once the full obliteration occurs, then the animals can be brought back to earth and paradise can again appreciate. all those dinosaurs that lived here for millions of years and we look like when you go through chicago o'hare and there's that incredible skeleton of the huge dinosaur -- i think it's b concourse. and you look at it and you go, wow! when that dinosaur was in the flesh, that was -- it might be odd saying well, that's dinner. but nobody said wow, that's magnificent because they didn't have the capacities. only humans can do that. but the day the earth stood still is hollywood promoting human exceptionalism and humans are the bad guys philosophy and cultural belief on young people.

the movie "the happening" is another example. in that movie the plants rebel against the human kind and offer pheromons to kill human kind. i keep opening the sixth sense was such a good movie. i keep hoping. the people who are running away from this mass suicide run by a billboard in which it says, "because you deserve it." i mean, that was not even subtle. so there is a huge cultural push, i think, i have to say among the empty-headed types of hollywood who think being against human beings is good box office and good culture. and based on the day the earth stood still and it's not good box office yet and good culture but i think that's a real

problem. thank you very much. [applause] >> wesley smith is a senior fellow at the discovery institute. for more information, visit discovery.org. >> this is the cover of a soon to be released biography of justice john paul stevens. and it's being produced by northern illinois press. we have a author representing the publisher who's exhibiting here at the organization of american historians because we just learned today that justice stevens as anticipated has announced his retirement. what does this mean for your book? >> yes. everyone in northern illinois university press is very excited about this book. it's really a coincidence with ideal timing. this book has been in production

and being researched and written for more than a decade. and so to have the publication of what was already a very good book coincide with the retirement is very timely. greatly appreciated by the press and we're thrilled to have such a terrific book coming out at such a timely fashion. >> will you tell me about the authors? >> yes. bill is a journalist with more than 30 years experience. microsoft of it with the "chicago tribune." so he's a terrific writer. and the book written in a wonderful journalistic style with a lot of clarity and a lot of punch. and jean is a former state legislator and lawyer in illinois. and so he had access to the very high profile people that were interviewed for this book. and they make a great team. >> an authorized biography, did justice stevens know about it and cooperate about it. >> i wouldn't put a big sticker saying authorized biography. he was aware of the project.

actually allowed us to take some photographs of some interesting trophys in his office. for example, he's got a hole in one golf trophy that will appear in the interior of the book. he gave his blessing of the authors interviewing people closer to him. the people close to stevens are incredibly loyal to him and so they never would have spoken to the authors without his say so -- and we were able to have access to his family members, friends, former clerks, a lot of people with stevens blessing. >> you suggested it was 10 years in the making. why so long? >> the authors have done simply astounding amount of research. the book starts with stevens family and his childhood growing up in chicago. and goes all the way through the current decision regarding campaign financing. and so the scope of the story they're telling is very in depth. and the number of sources and research they've done is really impressive.

they spoke with everyone from stevens brother and stevens children and people who worked with stevens when he was a lawyer and judge in chicago. donald rumsfeld, who was instrumental in having stevens appointed. former clerks and with bader ginsburg. scott -- and so the number of research has amounted to 10 years. >> what kind of competition do you have in this space? he is we should note for the audience probably knows at age 90 the longest-serving justice. he's got several decades of legacy on the court. have there been other big works on his career? >> there have been other books that have touched on stooefbz. -- stevens. there's a good part that talks about his judicial career but not a true biography. this book really personalized stevens who's a man who's beloved by the people who know him.

in addition to covering his very important work and his influential professional life it, also really presents really entertaining anecdotes about his personal life and stories from people who know him the best and love him the most. this is really the most complete look at stevens the man that there is right now. and i can't imagine anything that's rushed to print right now could match it in scope. >> and what's the on-sale date? >> the on-sale date is may 1st. >> it's call john paul stevens an independent life. and we are talking with the publisher of northern illinois press on this day about we learned as a nation that john paul stevens will, in fact, be stepping down from the court at the end of the term. thank you again. >> thank you. >> this weekend on c-span2's booktv.

>> arundahati roy talks about her new collection of essays on the u.s. war on terror democracy on i understand and india-pakistan relations. she reads from her book and from an essay she recently wrote titled "walking with the comrades." this is an hour and 35-minute talk. [applause] >> thank you. thank you very much for that reception.

i'm going to read a little bit from "field notes on democracy." it's really a kind of meditation about what democracy has become. and then i'm going to read from an essay i just wrote called "walking with the comrades" because i just came back from spending a few weeks -- a couple weeks in the jungle with the indigenous resistance to what's going on. in a war that's been announced by the indian government. so let me just start with reading from "democracy's failing light." while we're still arguing about whether there's life after death, can we add another question to the cart? is there life after democracy?

what sort of life will it be? by democracy i don't mean democracy as an ideal or an aspiration. i mean, the working model. western liberal democracy and its variance such as they are. so is there life after democracy? attempts to answer this question often turn into a comparison of different systems of governance. and end with the somewhat predictly defense of democracy. it's flawed, we say. it isn't perfect but it's better than everything else that's offered. inevitably someone in the room will say afghanistan, pakistan, saudi arabia, somalia, is that what you would prefer? whether democracy should be the utopia that all developing societies aspire to is a

separate question all together. i think it should. the early idealistic phase can be quite heavy. but the quest about life after democracy is addressed to those of us who already live in democracies or in countries that pretend to be democracies. it isn't meant to suggest that we lapse into older discredited models of totalitarianism or authoritarian governance. it's meant to suggest that the system of representative democracy, too much representation and too little democracy needs some structural adjustment. [laughter] >> the question here really is, what have we done to democracy? what have we turned it into. what happens once democracy has been used up? when it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning?

what happens when each of its institutions has metastasized into something dangerous. what happens now that democracy and the free market have fused into a single predatory organism with a thin constricted organism that resolves around entirely around maximizing profit? is it possible to reverse this -- process? has something that has mutated going back to what it used to be? what we need today for the sake of the survival of this planet is long-term vision. can governments whose very survival depends on immediate extractive short-term gain provide this? could it be that democracy, the sacred answer to our short-term hopes and prayers, the protector of our individual freedoms and nurturer of our dreams will turn out to be the endgame for the

human race. could it be the democracy is such a hit with modern humans. precisely because it mirrors our greatest folly. our nearsightedness. our inability to live entirely in the present like most animals do. combined with our inability to see very far into the future makes us strange in between creatures. either beast nor profit. our amazing intelligence seems to have outstripped our instinct for survival. we plunder the earth hoping accumulating materials surplus will make up for that profound unfathomable thing that we have lost. as a writer, a fiction writer, i've often wondered whether the attempt to always be precise to try and get it all factually

right somehow reduces the epic scale of what's really going on. does it eventually mask a larger truth? i worry that i'm allowing myself to be railroaded into offering prozaic and transition power and real precision of poetry. something about coming the intricate bureaucratic file-bound applied through proper channels, nature of governance and subrogation in india seems to have made a clock out of me. my only excuse is to say that it takes odd tools to uncover the maze of subterfuge and hypocrisy that clocks the calculated violence of the new superpower. repression through proper

channels, sometimes engenders resistance through proper channels. as resistance goes, this isn't enough, i know, but for now it's all i have. perhaps some day it will become the underpinning for poetry. listening to grasshoppers the essay from which this collection draws its subtitle was a lecture i gave in istanbul in january, 2008, on the first anniversary of the assassination of the armenian journalist. he was shot down on the street outside his office for daring to raise a subject that is forbidden in turkey. the 1915 genocide of armenians in which more than 1 million people were killed. my lecture was about the history of genocide and genocide denial and the old almost organic relationship between progress and genocide.

i've always been struck by the fact that the political party in turkey that carried out the armenian genocide was called the committee for union and progress. most of the essays in this collection are, in fact, about the contemporary correlation between union and progress. or in today's idiom between nationalism and development. those unimpeachable twin towers of modern free market democracy. both of these in their extreme form are as we know now encrypted with the potential of bringing about ultimate applicable destruction. nuclear war, or climate change. but the battle for land lies at the heart of the development debate in india. before he became india's finance

manager, he was enron's lawyer and part of a multinational mining corporation. perhaps his career graph informed his world view or maybe it's the other way around. but in an interview last year he said that his vision was to get 85% of india's population to live in cities. that would mean moving something like 500 million people off their lands. that proves well underway and turning india into a police state in which people who refuse to surrender their land are being made to do so at gunpoint. perhaps this is what makes it so easy for them to move so seamlessly from being finance minister to being home minister. the portfolios are separated only by an membrane. underlying this nights mare

masquerading or vision that move up land and all of india's natural resources leaving them ripe for corporate plunder. in effect, to reverse the post-independence policy of land reforms. already forests, mountains and water systems are being ravaged by multinational corporations backed by a state that has lost its moorings and is committing what can only be called ecocide. iron ore mine and destroying whole ecosystems turning fetteril land into deserts. in the somalias thousands of high dams being planned the consequences of which can only be catastrophic. in the plains embankment by rivers to control floods have led to rising river beds causing even more flooding, more water

logging, more sa-lynnizatiliniz land. most of the holy rivers have been been turned into unholy drains that carry more sewage than water. hardly a single river runs its course and meets the ocean. based on the absurd notion that a river flowing into the sea is a waste of water, the supreme court in an act of unbelievable hubris has arbitrarily ordered that india's rivers be interlinked like a mechanical water supply system. implementing this would mean tunneling through mountains and forests altering the national contours and drainage systems of river basins and destroying deltas and estuaries. in other words, wrecking the ecology of the entire subcontinent. the judge who passed this order

joined the environmental board of coca-cola after he retired. nice touch. [laughter] >> the regiment of economic free policies administered by people who are blissfully i go rent of the fate of civilizations that grew too dependent on artificial irrigation has led to a worrying shift in cropping patterns. sustainable food crops to soil conditions and microclimates have been replaced by water guzzling hybrid and genetically modified cash crops. which apart from being wholly dependant on the market with pesticides, canal irrigation and mining of groundwater has abused farm land, saturated with chemicals gradually becomes exhausted and put costs rise. ensnag small farmers in a debt trap.

over the last few years, more than 180,000 indian farmers have committed suicide by drinking pesticide. while they are bursting with food that eventually rots starvation and malnutrition stalk the land. it's beginning to look like a downward spiral. the higher this kind of -- the rate of this kind of growth, the worst the prognosis. any oncologist will tell you that. it says though an ancient society decaying under the weight of feudalism and caste was churned in a great machine. the churning has ripped through the mesh of old inequalities, recalibrating some. now it's curdled and separated into a thin layer of thick cream and a lot of water.

the cream is india's market of many million consumers of cars, cell phones, computers, valentine's day greeting cards. the envy of international business. the water is of little consequence. it can be sloshed around, stored in holding ponds and eventually drained away. or so they think the men in suits. they didn't bargain for the violent civil war that has broken out in india's heartland. so this -- this was written a few months ago. and then actually the government went ahead and formally announced a war. it's called operation green hunt. and it's a war where 70,000 paramilitary troops are closing in on the forests of central india to quash what the government calls a maoist rebellion.

there is a maoist rebellion but there's a whole spectrum of resistance. it's like a biodiversity of resistance from nonviolent to arms struggle and everything in between. everybody has been called a maoist. i mean, the atmosphere is so ugly that it's hard to explain here. the television channels -- many of them are like fox on coke. [laughter] >> they have -- they have -- many of them have mining interests. of course, 90% of their turnover comes from corporate advertising. so they're completely invested in this process. and recently -- basically the privatization of mining means that the government gets less than 10% of the royalties. if a ton of iron ore costs -- i

don't know how to say it in dollars. if the government gets something like 27 rubies the private corporation makes more than $100 or every -- on every ton. so the amount of money you're talking about, in a state like that is worth $2 trillion. so there's such a lot of money that these companies can buy whole governments. you know, they can buy the media they can buy judges. they can buy journalists. they can run newspaper channels. so it's a very, very bizarre situation. and the people in the forest -- the indigenous people are living in conditions which can only be described as close to famine. and these are the poorest people in the country against whom this

war has been declared. and, of course, the usual thing is happening, you know, anybody who tries to speak out is being labeled a terrorist or called of a maoist. in fact, in 2005, they started the peoples militia. and when burning villages and forcing villagers to move into police camps in this district, it was like the u.s. policy in vietnam. you know, where you try to empty villages and try to make them live on the road sides so that you can control them. and something like 50,000 villagers moved into police camps. but 300,000 just went off the government radar. they were hiding in the forest. or they migrated to other places. and, you know, the village is like 600 villages were emptied.

many of them were burned. many hundreds of people were killed. and then, you know, the maoist army became stronger and stronger because people started to join them. but then the government started calling anybody who spoke up a maoist. so even the peoples union for civil liberties, the people's union for democratic rights -- all of them have been named as front organizations. laws have been passed which makes even thinking an antigovernment port punishable by seven years in jail. it's the public security act special public security act. and the chief minister of this state actually announced that those who don't move into these camps are terrorists. it's the bush doctrine that if you're not with us, you're with the terrorists. so suddenly just staying at home and looking after your chickens

and planting -- sowing your fields became dangerous terrorist activity. which qualified you for summary execution. so this is the kind of terror that has been unleashed in these areas. so a few weeks ago, i'll read it to you. i got a note slipped under my door inviting me to go into the forest. the government has more or less thrown a cord around these forests. no one is allowed to go in. journalists are not allowed to go in. in fact, there's a recording that i have of the superintendent of police in that area who's instructing his men to burn villages that don't sur surrender and to shoot any journalist that comes in to cover it.vw-ñ sort of it's a ton of black hole where there's only this kind of -- there's a lot of noise. and the noise is actually providing a wall of silence, you know.

a noise -- a sort of wall of propaganda within which there's a well of silence. so a few weeks ago i was invited -- i got a message from the resistance asking me whether i would go in. so i did. and i spent 2 1/2 weeks in the forest with them and came out and wrote this very long piece. it's about 20,000 words. and i'll just read you the beginning of it before i actually, you know, reach the heart of it. it's published and you can read it on the net. it's called "walking with the comrades." the typewritten note slipped under my door in a sealed envelope confirmed my appointment with india's gravest internal security threat. that's what the indian prime minister said.

that this ragged army was the gravest internal security threat in india. and the stocks of the mining companies shot up because he said he was ready to do something about it. it confirmed my appointment with india's gravest internal security threat. i've been waiting for months to hear from them. i had to be at the temple at any of four given times on two given days. that was to take of bad weather, blockades, transport strikes and sheer bad luck. it said writer should have camera, tika, and a coconut. they will have hindi outlook magazine and bananas. the password -- i wondered

whether the meeter and greeter should be a man and fished get myself a mustache. [laughter] >> there are many ways to described them. it's an oxymoron. it's a border town smack in the heart of india. it's the epicenter of a war. it's an upside town, inside out town. the police wear plain cloths and the rebels wear urmz. -- uniform it is. the prisoners are free. 300 of them escaped from the oldtown jail two years ago. women who have been raped are in police custody. across the river, in the area controlled by the maoists is the place the police call pakistan. there the villages are empty but the forests are full of people.

children who ought to be in school run wild. the schools have been blown up and lie in a heap or they're full of policemen. the deadly war that's unfolding in the jungle is a war that the government of india is both proud and shy of. operation green hunt has been proclaimed as well as denied. a number of india home minister and ceo of the war says it doesn't exist. that it's a media creation. and yet substantial funds have been allocated to it. and tens of thousands of troops are being mobilized for it. the antagonists in the forest are disparate and unequal in almost every way. on one side is a massive paramilitary force armed with the money, the firepower, the media and the hubris of an emerging superpower. on the other, ordinary villagers

armed with traditional weapons backed by a superbly organized hugely motivated maoist guerrilla fighting force with an extraordinary and violent rebellion. the maoist and the paramilitary are old adversaries and have fought several times before. each time it seemed as though the maoist or their previous people have been defeated but physically exterminated. and actually the maoist party or its sort of precursor started sometime in 1967 in india. and since then the state has crushed them. i mean, i think, just in the '70s something like 18,000 people were killed. and earlier that would be in the '50s when it wasn't the maoist party. it was a communist party.

it's been a very, very violent legacy. but each time they reemerged more organized, more determined and influential than ever. today once again the insurrection has spread through the mineral rich forest areas. homeland to millions of india's tribal people. dream land to the corporate world. it's easier on the liberal conscience to believe that the war in the forest is a war between the government of india and the maoists who call elections a sham. parliament a big sty. and an openly declared the intention to overthrow the indian state. it's convenient to forget that the tribal people of central india have a history of resistance that predates mao by centuries. this legacy of rebellion has left behind people who have been deliberately isolated and

marginalized by the indian government. in 1950 the indian constitution ratified colonial policy. and made the state custodian of tribal homelands. overnight, it turned the entire tribal population into squatters on their own land and denied them their traditional rights of forest produced and criminalized a whole way of life. in exchange for the right to vote, it snatched away their right to lively hoods and dignity. more than 30 million by big dams alone. all refugees to india's progress. the great majority are tribal people. over the past five years or so, the governments have signed hundreds of memorandums of understanding with cooperate houses worth several billion do