the answer korean book associates is the foundation, or rep from our third sponsor of the fellowship of american philips society would like to add anything. sarah, come on up to the mike. >> i just wanted to add an additional sank due to the library's at the various institutions from which our students come.

they were sponsors, they were all in a contest themselves which allowed is one of zero contestants to come to us now and i would just like to emphasize that all libraries are living active vibrant organizations. i think our library of congress represents an as each of us are a wonderful student collectors represents. thank you. [applause] >> well, thank you all very much. it's been one of location. i think in particular carroll, gene, an hour for winners. i think the other sponsors. i look forward to moving ahead with this partnership and let us conclude actually by giving a round of applause to our four winners and, please, meet with

them and talk with some of the reception which will be held outside immediately following. it was give them another hand. [applause] >> the national collegiate book collective contest is hosted by the center for the book and their rare book and special collections division of the library of congress. the fellowship of american bollea willet societies and antiquarian book association of america. for more information about the contest here's a portion of on our programs. >> who do saint would be the best choice for our next republican candidate for president?

[laughter] with a real chance to win and even though i think john mccain is a good american would make the best candidate. >> i have this thing on my show called the doctor of the day and a number of producers and rolling on c-span and will get me with this. i don't know who the best person is right now, but here's my answer -- i'm not worried about that yet. i know everyone wants the next reagan to walk in the room, the next figure who will lead us out of the darkness. i am not worried about it, i truly believe and i've been in how many cities -- 15 cities now in a little over a week and a half. i am thrilled about what i'm seeing from the ground. it's going to happen the way it's supposed to happen. i have great faith, i have this cross on everybody knows i wear.

[applause] i have great faith. that we are not an accident that, this country. this whole thing didn't happen because of some series of coincidences that we had these brilliant men who came together, at the constitutional convention, did this magic. it is not magic. we have a destiny to fulfill. i believe again if the citizens are engaged and it means more than going to speeches. i'm glad you all came, it would of been embarrassing if it were just raymond and randy here and a few other people. [laughter] but i am excited you're here, but what to do when you leave here is what matters. what i'm saying is it's happening. people are organizing in ways they haven't and let me say, mr. president, i'm i-5 a new on the organization and because we are doing it now.

>> to watch this program in its entirety go to booktv.org, simply type in the title or author's name at the top left of the screen and click search. >> ingrid betancourt it was at the 2010 texas book festival in austin to talk about her book, "even silence has an end". it's about the six and half years the former colombian senator and presidential candidate was held captive in the jungles of columbia.rnoo >> good afternoon, we are going to begin our panel with ingrid betancourt.en "even silence has an end". the title of her book. my six years in captivity as the colombian jungle. as many of you may know, ingrid betancourt was a sanitary and colombia when she announced her candidacy for the presidency and it was during that campaign and

a time when she was attempting to go to an area of the country that was controlled by the guerrilla forces, the farc, she was apprehended. her book is a memoir about that experience and is really a delight to have the opportunitya to have a conversationti with yu about it. i wonder if you could start as telling us about that fateful day in february 22nd come in 2002. >> thank you.ke i'm very appreciative. thank you for being with us. well, it was such a day, ages ago.d i i was in a presidential campaign. i had to go to the place where the peace talks with the farc

and the government had been held. it this trip was planned in many weeks before, but two days before that trip this peacetr talks abruptly ended. there was a crisis and the peacl talks this came to an end. well, i had to figure out if in, was going to go.d mayor who was a person from my party told me not to cancel the trip because it was important that there were very concerned the end of the peace talks the population could be threateneden by paramilitary back to takege o revenge on them. so he insisted so i incited to go with the condition and of the security scheme would be

confirmed. so that morning this was confirmed. t i had an armored car, waiting for me and valencia where we c were going to land and then from that point on to the hundred kilometers apart and had to take their road. that same day the president of colombia at the time decided to go at the same time to the same place. it was important for him to gogo because he wanted to tell the people of columbia that the place was safe. the problem was that he had given to the farc a big space as big as switzerland, what theyd had called the demilitarized zone where the guerrillas had control. the army was not there, theol police was not there, the farc had control of his own.

in order to be safe and to the b peace talks. but once it was over the government give a 20 hours to the farc to leave the place so u the president was going there te confirm that the police was safh under military control. when i arrived to the airport the place was completely under military control. there were i would say 20 black caucus, uniforms all over the place, and it wants i was getting ready to get to the road and began the trip, my escort, my bodyguards received an orderr from bogota not to come with me. so at that moment i had to think if i would pursue going course i would cancel.d free the problem was a problem of principles. because i thought if i just

accepted and canceled, then thee colombian government every time a they would want me not to go somewhere they would just take my security act and the would control my campaign, so what is the point of a democracy, what's the point of doing a campaign? well, just a point -- appoint a successor and it is over. so i decided to go mainly m because they did want to be manipulated by the government, i wanted to build free to do the campaign and what i wanted to do. this aroused all kinds of speculation because once i goti to the road and after a military checkpoint, i stumbled in athe u blockade in done by the guerrillas and i arrived i did not know there were military or guerrilla. but they had told me those, things they tell you as

candidates that i always had tot check with boots. exhibits were leather there were military but if they were rubber boots i had to be very careful because those were guerrillas and at that moment those guys, the uniformed with the guns, they had rubber boots.l in so i fell into the trap. >> but that was the beginning of a six plus year ordeal. your expectation in the early weeks, what did you think was going to happen? >> well, i thought it was going to be something -- for me itee three weeks was like a very long time and i thought, my god, you'll -- i'm going to stay here three weeks, that's fine to be t awful. and then three weeks passed ands i thought perhaps they are going

to liberate me when the m presidential campaign is over because after that what's the point of having me. so once the presidential campaign, the elections came in the new president was elected,el they did not dream. so that is one i thought, thist' might be lager. but i never thought it was going to be so long. >> can you talk about the conditions? i'm really struck in reading the book about the number of different places where you were and how different people or with you, but really the conditions which sometimes were really quite desperate and difficult.e, >> well, we changed places all the time. i remember in the 31st months of my abduction i counted more than 20 camps when we were just changing, after i lost count.

but we were always trying to escape from the military that were after us so what we were getting deeper and deeper and deeper into the jungle.we sometimes we would walk ande other times it could be by boat. of course, it was impossible for me to know where we were because the jungle is a maze.ngle it is the jungle, so there is no way you make the difference froi one place to the other, it is always the same trees and vegetation sometimes you have big rivers an enormous riversig but mostly you have little creeks. the camp that day bills arenear always built near a creek, so you have of the supply of water, but that is all all thed ge civilization you could get because there is nothing. the camps are built with what

they have it in sight, they chop trees end it with that they put the tents, the hammocks. they build the bridges, they built pass, dams, and it is like getting to an historical time. >> the specific conditions inndt which you were living and sleeping and eating? >> when we were at a camp if wee were lucky if we could sleep in hammocks or we could sleep inds beds that we would make with logs. of course, imagine what that would be to sleep on a mattress of logs, but you got used to it. if not, we would to sleep on tht

floor on top of plastic sheets and that was all. the problem is, of course, of the surroundings because of the jungle is the johnboat so you have all kinds of bugs, very nasty things, animals and snakes and tarantulas. that is the common thing. sometimes you would see jaguarsi they call them tigers.s yo sometimes you'd see monsters, really huge -- i remember once i was invited -- i was in the camp where you are at end of thee commander gave the order to take is to the river. they wanted to show something. so we went and they had taken out from the river a humongous anaconda i never have thought something like this could exist and i have seen a lot in mcginnis books and every time i

see that i said the one i saw was bigger. [laughter] it was really big. y you could walk eight big steps but the thing that amazed me was how big it was because i realized that it was bigger than me and so i thought it could have swallowed me without any problem. because of that i had nightmares for the long time. >> and yet in one of your many attempts to escape, you have the courage to plunge into those rivers and into those waters with that image, having seen what lurks. i was really -- it was a compelling your description of your need to escape, your need to not allow yourself to be submitting to the power and the authority of these people. could you talk about that and

tell us about some of your escape attempts. they are very dramatic andth power: >> well, i think the first tout just put in context, you are peo with people that are armed and that the behavior like the authority. they do a very simple buter effective brainwashed in the sense is that they tried to convince you that you are guilty of something and then they have the right to take you, to havee as a prisoner. so they don't say that you are a kidnapped person. they say you are a prisoner andd they put you in prisons in the jungle. barbwire francis -- fence. and this can just change your mind in this sense that after a while i could see some of my fellow hostages like admitting that those guys were the

authority and that we had to itn just obey without question in. and for me from the moment i just understood that this was me happening to all of us, i just wanted to do not be brainwashed. the way i tried to confront theo situation was always to keep in mind that i wanted to escape and it was my obsession. it was really my obsession. every time, every single day i would plan how to escape.aged i managed to do it a couple of times and the biggest escape we succeeded to do was one that ran for seven days. and michael is we were recaptured. that escape was a dramatic escape. i have a friend and that was a hostage with me and he was me pushing it need to escape with him because he knew i had done it before and he wanted to doe

with me and he just wanted to escape so for six months weape prepared this escape but he was very ill, he was diabetic. food was an issue. we knew that we would have us some day is that we could just u go with some provisions and escape with something, but once the provisions were about the problem was for him to stay fit and live with what we could find in the jungle. i remember the day we escaped it was -- we are arrived to a new site. they began to open ditches all of iran at the site where rework and then we realized that theytr were going to construct another prison with barbwire and fences. they brought the logs to close

the site and we knew that the ta next day it was going to be closed. so if we didn't run that day it was over. i think that one of the guerrillas guards that were tha guarding has had a suspicion because it never happened butt that day in happened, they put a garrison in front of my hammock all night. m so i thought we are not going tt be able to make it and i wasand desperate because i knew that after that how many more yearsee we were going to stay there. so what happened is that it rained a lot that night, tropical storms, and the guy was there under the rain pouring on him and i think he just got tired. he thought we were sleeping and he just laughed. at the moment he left i went to

wake up my companion. we took boots from the otherst hostages and we put them in front of our hammock because we knew that the first thing they would check was the boots. if we had run away the boots were not going to be in front of the hammock. so we put our boots, we left thw other boats of our companions in front, and we ran. we ran to the river. the moment when we got to the m river i will tell you all of the -- we were so frightened because really we were running away, how frightened we were. we have arrived to this huge, huge river.st the tropical storm had ended and the sky had opened up. there was this enormousor beautiful full moon and we could see daylight.

well, we had some chords, we put them around us because, of u course, with the current of the river we were afraid that wee were going to be a part in a jump in the river. the current was very, veryoo strong and it just took us. i remember the impression of having this current taking as in that river and looking back and beginning to see all the things of the guerrillas, the boats ani things they had, and every time they were smaller and smaller until the moment we took a curb and there was no morewere guerrillas. free.e were we were free for seven days, it was amazing.s a >> that's a beautiful description. very moving. i am going to ask you to indulge me in a reading if you well.thor and author traveling without her book.

[laughter] she must have memorized it. the pros in this book is beautiful. if you would not mind reading wu this because i think it also speaks to this issue about the urge to escape and the need tott escape and what's that about. >> at night another kind of nature emerged. sounds resonated deeply, revealing the immensity of this on . the cacophony of the furnacee cocaine reached a painful william perry did it exhausted our brains with his vibrations. this was also the hour of a major surge of feet as if the i earth were discharging one in have stored up during the day, expanding each into the atmosphere and giving us a sensation of having succumbed to a fever.

but it passed quickly and an hour later the temperatureture dropped steeply. we had to protect ourselves against a shield that left of this yearning for the swelterinh heat of desk. azcona said in, and the night birds left their nests breaking up of the air with the drivelaug letter of their wages and acrose the sky screeching eerily like solitary souls. i followed them and my imagination. joining them as they dodged the trees, flying at high speed beyond the forest, higher thangr the clouds to where the constellations were where ie i dreamed of happiness from the past. >> that is beautiful prose. [applause]

the power of that imagination seems to have sustained tosi during this six year ordeal. can you talk more about the things that sustains you, the things that kept you from breaking under the pressures ofo your isolation and the brutality which you were being treated,de and the desperate conditions? >> i think there is a word thath explains everything in humanty l condition and is loved. i think that the only explanation for being able to just places the situation we had to cope with love., from the first the love of my children, the love of my parents, that love that i had l known before the abduction because i wanted to get back there in that life that i had loved. then i believe in god so for me the love of god made things

different and i could see the difference with my fellow hostages that did not believe in god. for them surviving at any cost was what was important. for me surviving was not the important thing, for me the important thing was how to survive. because i did not want to livegt without dignity. i did not want to except to be treated like a number or an object or an animal. and i had many confrontationsch because of that. i remember once they were having us in a prison with barbwire, very small space, on top of each other. seven people living in a very small space and then for in the morning to guards came and shouted the account yourselves.

i did not know what he was talking about. so i did not know what to do and then i realized that my companions were responding to the role call. the nearest to the gates had one, too, third one said three, and when it came to me i had toe say whatever number and i didy h not say that number. i couldn't. i just sent my name. there was this kind of a horrible silence and i felt i had to explain and i said, look, if you want to know if i am here, if i have not escaped, you just call me about my name and saying gritted and i will answer. there was a huge amount of discovered in my group because i was addressed by some of my companions saint, who do you thank you are, you thank you are better, you thank you cannotn a

answer like everybody saying a number? what is the difference aboutwh you? i just told them, i don't do this, i did not react like this because i'm feeling better than anyone. not because i inhofe your arrogant but because i can love. i cannot. i cannot. i am not going to make thisake h easier for them. they have an order which is to kill us of the army comes. it is easier to kill a number,it it is easier to kill an object or an animal -- i'm not an animal, object or number. now when i think about those days i think it was because i thought there was something morn important than life. .. and that it was a loving god. now, i had an also huge amount

of love in my companions. my companions were -- i mean, my force. they were my role models in so many things. and the example of sacrifice and of love kept me going. so i would say definitely love is the answer. >> that's very powerful. there are many powerful moments in this book and one of the ones that really i suppose was quite >> was the story of the, i'm going to call it the cabbage wrapping, and i wonder if you could tell us what happened because it's really very moving. >> yeah. that's a very painful moment for me. we normally never had any kind of vegetables coming in the

camps. we only ate rice and beans.. but one day there were an arrival of cabbages, and theyari were wrapped in a newspaper. so because we were bored and we had nothing to read, we asked the commander if we could take those newspapers and just, you know, read them.th they were old, but, you know, it was the best we could have. so they accepted, and they brought the newspapers to us. and i had this piece of newspaper in front of me, and there was a picture of a priest surrounded by photographers wity big lenses and things, and the expression of the priest was very strange, so i just look and read the caption. and it said this priest is veryt concerned and very annoyed at

the amount of photographers around the coffin of -- i'm sorry. [applause] well, it was my father's name. i'm sorry. i'm being helped. don't worry, i'll get over it. it just takes time. >> where well, speaking of being helped, i thought often in reading it that the book must have been a kind of aught

therapeutic process. >> yes. >> for you.lk there's a lot of commentary about discovering things about yourself that you didn't know and that were unanticipated.an >> well, theti saying is that wn i arrived from captivity to freedom, i just couldn't talk about it. my children, my mother, my family, i knew they were waiting for me to just tell them what happened, and i couldn't. and i still cannot. i mean, every time i speak about things, i have this surge ofth emotion even though i'm better.g i'm just much better. but then i realize that the only way to just, you know, share what had happened was byow writing., and i thought it was important to do it because i think i had

to give testimony of what we just saw in those camps. and there were so many things that were important just to, you know, share. so it was very difficult for me to write this book because i was always, you know, many this fight with my emotion, and at the end of a day of writing, i was just exhausted. o takeght it was going t me six months, it took me a month and a half. it was long. i'm so glad i'm done. [laughter] and when i was writing, i didn't think it was therapeutic. i could see my fellow hostages, i would talk to them day-to-day, and i could see that they had just moved on in their lives and they were just, you know, doing fine, and i thoughts this is masochism. i shouldn't, you know?

this but now that i did it, i think it was very important for me.for and i think that i could, i could just clean some wounds that were very deep. and even if i'm still a little emotional, i think i achieved things that were very important like forgiving. forgiving was very important. forgiving, first forgiving me. and then forgiving the others. you cannot forgive the others if you don't forgive yourself. so i'm glad i did it. the, your book has had, has been met with some controversy in colombia, and i wonder if you could talk about that.u co what are the issues, and what

are people understanding or misunderstanding about what you are trying to do?ut w >> well, i think that before i wrote the book other hostages wrote their book, and i think it was very important that they just said what they thought.ry but i think, also, perhaps because -- i don't know the real reason, but it came up as if book they had wrote were targeting me. which is not the case, actually. i think it was like, you know, one of the things that happened with the media, you know, they like to make controversial things. so they tried to pinpoint the t

criticisms or opinion of the books. i'm very, you know, okay with that in the sense that i think that nobody's perfect and none of us were perfect, but even though if we were not the heros we wanted to be, i think we all were in a way the best we could be. and even if that best wasn't sufficient, i think that -- well, you see, for me it's like we were living in a huge mud. i mean, huge mud. h everything was made to put us against each other, and it was also the strategy of the farc. they needed to divide us because they were afraid that because we were together we could attempt w escape together if we wereso

united. so it was very important for them to just fill us with wrong information about each other. and even though we knew we were being manipulated in a way because we knew that the farc was, you know, saying things about one or the other that wern not accurate, the thick is that -- thing is that even by knowing that whenever there was a problem that arose because we were human beings packed in a very small space, and imagine what it is. you need your space, a little space, you know, to be, and wheb you don't have that, you fight for space. and that was happening to us. and when it would happen, we would just forget that we were w also under stress. and even though we knew that we were, you know, in this situation by being addressed by

the other, we would just be in pain. and we just would have very strong feelings against our fellow hostages when thoseible complications came by. and the incredible thing is iiv could see that we could forgive the guards that were veryry humiliating and very cruel towards us because there werethe the enemies and we department -- because they were the enemies and we didn't expect anything from the enemy, but it is very difficultth to forgive the ones who were our companions because we wanted them to be, you know, loving us. and we didn't get that love. so when that happened, theco confrontation was sometimes very harsh.rsh, and that's one way of seeing things. and you can talk about those things and talk about the confrontation and the problems you have between hostages, but you can see the other thingh which i thinki is incrediblebl

because in that mud there are also diamonds. and you can just pick up mud, but you also can pick up diamonds, and i prefer the diamonds, and the diamonds were the moments when we were the heros we wanted to be, when we would sacrifice ourselves to save the lives of another, or ww would just be solidarity with the other, we'd fight for the others. and that happened too. not always, not as often as ween would have liked, but it happened. so that's human nature. and i think we have to be very humble and see what happened with, you know, with humility and just know that sometimes itd was good and sometimes it wasn't as good.>> g >> go ahead. >> we've got a few minutes left, and we'd like to invite you to ask questions. ingrid betancourt. and, please, step up to the microphone, and while we wait

for people to come, i'll ask a question here and that is, i wa just struckth by the paradox, te great paradox in your book between the beauty of these surroundings that you describe in riveting terms and then the horror within which you found yourself. and it seems such a contradictory universe. can you -- >> yes. y because the world is beautiful but sometimes we humans make it not as beautiful as it shouldau be. the problem in the jungle wasn't the jungle, it's the humans in the jungle. >> it wasn't the anacondas, it was the people. well, thank you, ingrid, very much. [applause]

>> we have about ten minutes, if you'll keep your questions short, we'll try to get to as many as we can. >> can you hea>>r me? >> yeah. >> ingrid, first of all, a lot of respect for the endeavor and the suffering you had to go -- undergo. i have not read your book, but e will, okay? >> thank you. >> iou have some very quick questions, and i know i can onl ask-- a few. hugo chavez, venezuelanhugo president hugo chavez was very instrumental in the deliverance of these hostages. what do you think of them, and are they as despicable as the u.s. and colombian media portra, them to be?he number two, why do the farc exist? i understand the young people who join them are in a impoverished areas. i don't think you ever had to face that issue, whether to join the insurgency or not. number three -- >> can we, can we --

[laughter] because i will forget. >> what do you feel when -- >> okay. >> i think we're going to have to -- [laughter] >> okay. hugo chavez and pierre calderon. they were very effective in bringing to freedom eight of my fellow hostages, and for that we only can say thank you. the second question about -- >> [inaudible] >> well, okay. well, you see, the easy answer would be there is guerrillas in colombia. that's not the truth. the farc exists because -- note because they defend the poor,oor but because they use the poor. and they use it as the

paramilitary does and as the drug trafficker does, do. so it's not a war between rich and poor, it's a war about money. and the guerrilla, the farc, that at the beginning was, you know, communist, guerrilla, very much like we would think of a -- [inaudible]ink is not that anymore if it was once. it's not. today it's a drug cartel. and you see, what happens is that sometimes there is thisis saying that the end justifiesat the mean. well, the truth is is that the means shape the end. i mean, whatever you do, that's what you are. it's not the opposite. and because the guerrillas are drug trafficking today,s what is important for them is to continue drug trafficking. it's not to save the world or to fight for poor people in colombia, it's not that.

it's just to be able to protecto a way of life which is the way of life where they have lots of power because they have money, they can buy weapons, and they have control overe the territory where they are. so, yes, they have humble peasants joining into the guerrilla because for them it's an upgrade in the conditions ofn life. but they don't fight for, for th the poor people. they use, they use them to just, you know, kill and get killed. but the hire around ri in the -- hierarchy in the farc shows the ideology that they predict, that know, speak about is not the way they live. i saw a hierarchy of privileges, not of sharing. i saw people wanting to be a commander because they would have money, because they would have better conditions, more food. the luxury of the jungle, theung

luxury of the jungle is not a nt maserati. the luxury of the jungle is chicken. but that's the luxury. and for a chicken you could diel because that's the way you will live better, and that's whatd they will have. guys willilve the have thel most beautiful womeni the jungle.e. that's power.er. that's how they use their power. so i'm sorry whoever thinks that is the farc is leftist, romantic revolutionary organization,olut wrong. wrong. they're doing a business. they're running a business, a very criminal business.very >> okay, let's go to the next -- >> thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you. why did it take so long? was a ransom demanded and nobody wanted to pay it? this what took so long? why were you there so long? >> yeah, very good question.as actually, there was no ransom, there was no economic ransom

asked for. we were a group of people that the farc had abducted to f exchange us for guerrillas in colombian jails. and at first that was what they wanted, but then they realized that we were better than a trade good because we were like ae we trophy.rop i mean, by having us abducted, a the whole world was talking about them, and they would be addressed by heads of state, and they would have this huge th importance because they had us. so it was clear for us after some years that there were, there was not going to be any negotiation for our freedom. chavez obtained from the farc the liberation of some of us, but let's say the big push -- and we were a couple of those big fish -- we were not going to be out ever. so for us the rescue operation,

the colombian military rescueato operation was not only a miracle, but it was the only wa. out for us. >> thank you.e t i think we may have time for one last question. s >> hi, ingrid, i'm so proud to be in front of you.w, w i have a personal question. you know, when you became kidnapped, you became the mother, the sister, an aunt, a daughter, a friend for all colombia. we all cried for you, we prayedr for you, the day you were liberated, we were so happy, wee were crying again.. so i know that you felt thathat love from all your beautiful country, and i -- now that lover is not there from your colombia. how does it make you feel? >> well, it's very hard, and it's very painful. we'll explain what happened.d. i think it's important to explain. some months ago i did a procedure in colombia to claim

for compensation for my my abduction. this is a law that exists in colombia and that protects the victims of terrorism. it was a new law, and some of my fellow hostages had presented their claim, and it was, you know, perfect.perf but when i presented mine, it was a huge scandal. and i believe that this was political manipulation becausepi what they told the people was that i was attacking injustice,, the soldiers that had rescued me which, of course, is, i mean, me it's insane. but by doing so they just broke the love relationship i had wite my country, and today i feel very wounded. it has been very, very difficult for me to just cope with the the pressure. there were horrible things said about me, horrible things. for example, saying that i wanted to get money from my b a

duction -- abduction. the thing is that whatever the amount by the lawyers was, they could give me that or 100 timess more, it wouldn't give me back the six years i lost in the l jungle. so it's, it's very hard but at the same time it opened for me my eyes into what's happening ip colombia because i think it's,ha it always happens in a way in colombia that the victims are turned into criminals. i was treated like a criminal. they forgot the farc had ha abducted me. i was a criminal after that. and i think it's the kind of protection that societies that have lived in violence have like to say it will never happen to me because i don't do this or i don't do that. o and i think it's a lack of solidarity, and i think it's wrong. and i really deeply think that my country and my society, all

of us, we're sick. we're sick of violence. we cannot see the suffering of others. we're just, we have a frame of mind which gives us a verytude stone-hearted attitude where we don't care about the sufferingrs of others because we don't want to see it because we are in ourz comfort zone, and whatever happens out there, for example,, to those four million colombians that are displaced in colombia,o no one wants to see that. well, i think that it all goes h together to the same situation where we're just, we have to change our hearts. just be able to understand the others. we and we don't do it, so -- >> i think that's the note uponi which wenk will end this panel. thanks you very much, ingrid. thank you for a courageous story. [applause] and thank you for coming today.

>> this event was part of the texas book festival held annually in austin. visit texasbookfestival.org. this weekend on "after words," nigel hamilton profiles the 12 u.s. presidents elected since world war ii. he's interviewed by presidential his story richard norton smith this weekend on booktv on c-span2. >> every weekend booktv brings you 48 hours of history, biography and public affairs. here's a portion of one of our programs. >> in addition to a questionnaire that covered a wide variety of background items, the member were asked to

imagine the nation's history from 1966 to the end of the century. in other words, the year 2000. and so they were looking ahead for 34 years and imagining what they perceived or what they were viewing as what would happen to our country for the remainder of the century. and the graduate student who was doing this study, richard bromguard, was surprised by what he described as the belief of yaf members that a continued rift to socialism and moral decay would be reversed in the near future by an awakening of the american people resulting and moving the train of events back to common sense. he also surveyed members of students for a democratic society which was the leading new left or left i

organization -- leftist organization on campuses of the '60s and the young democrats and the college republicans. and he reported on his results in an article that he co-wrote and was published in an academic journal. it's interesting to view some of the projections of these yaf members in 1966. one yaf member predicted a redirection of american society towards freedom and conservative principles. remember again he's writing in 1966, and here's what he said. the united states led by hypocritical and unprincipled leaders becomes very bureaucratic and increasingly socialistic. the united states generally loses the battles in foreign affairs because it does not present its philosophy of free

enterprise, libertarian beliefs, etc., as well as it should. sounds almost familiar to the current day, doesn't it? finally, as he predicted, in the 1960s -- excuse me, in the 1980s or thereabouts, the american people realize that economic security is not necessarily freedom. they realize their freedoms are being abridged. they realize the economy is becoming too regimented, and the government too bureaucratic. the people will then change the trend of events back to common sense conservative principles of government. remember his prediction was 1980, and if you recall from history, 1980 as it turned out was, indeed, the year in which the american people voted for a conservative president, ronald reagan, who did, indeed -- [applause]

who did, indeed, change the trend of events back to common sense conservative principles of government. he cited another yafer as predicting the following events from 1966 to 2000. his predictions were as follows: 1968, republican victory. 1972, reagan elected president. 1976, reagan reelected. 1978, fall of soviet russia. 1980, fall of red china. 1985, end of welfare, social security and medicare. 2000, end of unions. now, as he and his co-author noted, compared with their sds counterparts on the left, yafers seemed to have a mountain of naive faith. well, let's look back nearly 45

years later, and we can see that this naive faith seems to have been rather accurate in its prediction of future events. change a few of the dates, modify a few of the conclusions and these yaf members who were then only high school and college students have laid out the political history of the last third of the 20th century. because consider, nixon's victory in 1968 brought both a realignment of american politics as well as, admittedly, the disgrace of watergate, impeachment and resignation. reagan's victory came eight years after the yafer had predicted but was, indeed, followed by a landslide re-election. it took nine more years for the berlin wall to fall closely followed by the demise of the soviet union.

then in his 1993 state of the union message, a new democratic president promised to, quote, end welfare as we know it. and the reforms of our welfare system were enacted a short while later when republicans gained the majority in congress in 1994. two years after that original state of the union message, that same president declared, quote, the error of big -- era of big government is over in his state of the union message. >> to watch this program in its entirety, go to booktv.org. simply type the title or the author's name at the top left of the careen and click search. screen and click search. >> next, peter laufer looks at the network of hunters, traders and customers who constitute the nefarious business of international animal smuggling. he spoke at village books in

bellingham, washington. >> it's great to be here in bellingham on this gorgeous indian summer day and to be back here in village books, because village books and c-span changed my career. and i want to tell that story quickly here before i talk with you about this latest book, "forbidden creatures," which comes directly out of this bookstore. there's absolutely no question about it. i was here, and i don't know, chuck, was it two or three years ago now, i was here for a book called "mission rejected." and this week was much more along the lines of the kinds of books that i have been doing throughout my career dealing with relatively difficult social and political circumstances. and "mission rejected" dealt specifically with soldiers who

came back from the iraq war opposed to the war or decided that they were not going to deploy and refused their orders, some of them going up to canada. and i was here talking about that book to a packed audience, and it was a hot summer day, and just as i am tonight, i was wired up with the c-span microphones, and as the evening progressed, the questions were difficult, the subject matter dealt with the war in iraq and its effect on these soldiers and the soldiers who made these very difficult decisions not to go to the war or came back facing the reality that they were now opposed to the war and, hence, were in conflict with their service in the military. and after about an hour of this it seemed like it was enough. it was difficult conversation, and we had achieved