i say if you live your life correctly, someday you can have this job as well. in all seriousness, it's a wonderful joy to spend your time, you know, reading 20th century literature and poetry and watching films and listening to music, and i've always been profoundly interested in the period, really started out interested in the early part of the period, the 20s, and then the 30s, and leap frogged into the 60s and 70s. >> professor hale, what do you want your students to take away from your classes and what do you want people to take away from your book? >> well, i want the students to take away the ability to think historically and critically about the categories they use to make meaning in their every day lives, to think about ideas and

concepts as having a history, and not just a people or nations. .. >> this is a book published by oxford, a nation of outsiders. grace elizabeth hale's mexican book, subtitled how the white middle class middle-class fell in love with rebellion in post-war america. >> up next wayne pacelle

president and ceo of the humane society of the united states talks about the mistreatment of animals and what needs to be done to stop it. this lasts about an hour. >> i am john balzar. i used to be a journalist for 30 years, and then i got right with myself and my family and now i work for animals and for wayne pacelle. i want to reduce you to him tonight in the briefest possible way. i want to say that 20 years ago when i met him, some of the ideas he had were on the edge of our society and he has led those ideas into the mainstream. there was a time when i met wayne where there were people who comfortably held the middle ground in american society and wayne has moved them off the middle ground and now those of us in this room, those that know wayne now represent the middle of america and animals counts more now than they ever have in our hearts, our minds and our public policy and i say this

sincerely. wayne doesn't pay me enough to say this. i say this for my heart. he is the guy more than anybody on the planet who has led us to that view so with that, wayne pacelle we are starting tonight. [applause] >> there are some seats appear. why don't some of you who are in the back -- i'm going to speak for three to four hour so you really do want to be seated if you can. a few brave souls, come on up. there we go, good. well, all of you and john thank you very much for that very generous introduction and thanks to each one of you for being here for the launch of "the bond". i have thought about writing a book for an awfully long time and i was waiting for a moment when i wasn't that busy and that moment didn't come so i figured i would just shoehorn it into my

life. these books, you know, and the year of him for communication these things have a long gestation period so this has been coming for a wild. and i just want to say a few things tonight, a few things about the book and a few things about the cause for animal protection. i had a passion for animals ever since i was a little kid and i'm sure that so many of you have that same passion for animals. i am the youngest of four and my three siblings are fabulous human beings. my parents are fabulous. they however were just not that attuned to just like most americans are not attuned to this issue and they did nothing hostile to animals and they always had kind instincts but they were not activists in the sense of being involved in animal rescue or other forms of animal advocacy. for me this issue just burned my

heart from the youngest age. i had all the encyclopedias at our home dog-ear to the animal entries and i had everything memorized about the polar bears and pronghorn antelope and they ordered all sorts of books from "national geographic" but i didn't even know that there were groups organize to fight for animals, and it is a constant reminder to me, constant reminder that there are so many people who do care but who are not actively involved in the cause of animal protection. but i also think about some of the choices that we made as a family. some of these choices are chronicled in the book. i grew up with dogs and i am sure many of you did. unfortunately we didn't have any cats growing up. it was later in life that i acquired some cats. but i think about the dogs that we acquired and i think about one in particular, randy, who was a beautiful west highland terrier and the love be loved randy so much.

one of our other dogs was named brandy and we were thoroughly confused, randy, brandy and then my aunt and uncle's named other dogs candy and mandy so it was very confusing. but my uncle actually thought westhill interiors were fantastic. he got randy from a pet store and delivered randy to us and we were so thrilled to have brandy because she came from kansas. we thought wow how exotic this is that she came from kansas. it was only later as i got older that i learned at the time in the 1980s or late 1970s, actually mid-1970s, that kansas was the number one puppy mill state in america and most of the dogs on the puppy mills are small breeds. they are chihuahuas and westies in and yorkie send others. what was unbelievable about it was there was this city animal shelter that you could literally

see from my front doorstep. you can go to the doorstep and look across this little pond. there was a small college right across the street in new haven and you could see this animal shelter. so we got a dog from kansas, a thousand or 1200 miles away when there was one of my new best friend who was just waiting to be adopted less than a quarter-mile away. and i think for so many of us, it was about choices and it is about awareness. i just was not aware of what the issues were with dog reading and certainly not puppy mills and i wasn't aware that there were animals euthanized in shelters every day of the year because we were not aware enough as individuals and as a society to make the right choices, and not only to acquire an animal which is a joyous thing but also to save the life which is an even

more joyous and celebratory thing. and you know it reminds me that none of us can ever get too smug about these issues. for those of us who are involved and get frustrated at the pace of change is not faster we have got to remember that there are people out there who don't know the full range of options. and of course by writing this book i am trying to spread some awareness and to push people toward better choices. and i think of how easy it is to be an animal activist in this day and age. you know there is a guy that i talk about in the last chapter of the book called the humane economy. for me this is another great symbol and a great person who has a lot to teach each one of us. his name is chuck anderson, and chuck was swimming in the gulf of mexico off of the coast of alabama and he was attacked by of a shark. the first attack from the bull

shark resulted in four of his fingers being severed. this chart came back again and try to bite him and he was able to ward off the shark. the shark made a third attempt and this time hit him most severely and hit his other limb and cut off his arm below the elbow. you would think that anybody who went through an experience like that and whose life was changed in whatever way it was changed for him as a consequence of an animal attack, you would think okay here is a guide he would understand if he had animus feelings toward an individual animal or a species that he wouldn't think he would have very favorable feelings but chuck came here a couple of years ago and went to capitol hill and he lobbied along with eight other victims of shark attacks for legislation to stop the practice of shark fin and where the animal has

their dorsal fins severed. the animals are caught, the fitness finn is severed and the rest of the carcasses thrown into the ocean in order to make shark fin soup. killing an animal for a bowl of soup? i mean, to me that is the height of gratuitous killing. but part of this message for me is if chuck anderson can exhibit this level of all tourism, this level of other centered thinking, how easy is it for us to be active and involved and engaged in issues where we have no complex of animals or animals have done nothing to harm us and frankly they have done things to make our life more rich, more wonderful in every single way. and i think that you know, when we think about animals and we think about humans i don't think of than a quibble and say. i think that we are an

incredible and unique species. i think we have this incredible intelligence and creativity, and i think we need to use that to think about the most vulnerable in society. i mean if someone says an animal is not as intelligent as a person i say well that is no reason not to care for the animal even though the animals are intelligent in their own ways. this is a reason all the more to be concerned about other creatures. and you know i talk about animals, i talked more about human responsibility than i do about animal rights. and part of the thesis in this book is that we have always had a connection to animals. we have always felt a kinship with other creatures. that sort of kinship that i felt before anyone gave me any instruction on how to treat an animal i knew that i should be good to these other creatures. they were different. they had beautiful brown eyes. they had beautiful for and they were athletic.

their differences did make me think well i want to cause them harm. their differences augmented their stature in my eyes and in my mind. more and more we really see that we are connected to animals not just because of some personal unusual characteristic of those of us who are very passionate, but all of us have some connection to animals. wilson calls it by ophelia and he says that we are lovers of other life, that we are drawn to other animals just like a mob is drawn to a flame. meg omert talks about the biochemical explanation for this bond and the biochemical explanation she says is the hormone called oxytocin. oxytocin is thought to be a social bonding drug and when a mother bears a child, the oxytocin level spikes in the mother of a child and the reason

that mother considers -- can care for the child more than 10 hours a day. this is an incredible connection, and some of it appears to be biochemical. well, more and more history shows when we interact with animals oxytocin level spike within us and also spiked with an animals and it is a level of mutualism that occurs. i not surprised when we hear about iraq war veterans and afghanistan war veteran to come back and they have post-traumatic stress disorder and they get a therapy dog and they get a companion and they get off their medication. they are able to leave their home and go grocery shopping and they are able to get their health back, their mental health back in a better state. i think animals have an incredible rehabilitative quality. i think this bond gives us a headstart in terms of doing the right thing for animals. now that can be trumped by culture and economics. if you are selfish, if you want

to exploit animals because you have the opportunity, historically there have and then lost to constrain that. really what we are trying to do it at h.s. u.s. is to set some standards in society, to see that animals are properly cared for. and i look at our western tradition and i look at this instinctive bond and i also look at our declaration of independence and our constitution and the founding documents of our country, the founding documents of western democracy and and and icy infused in these documents, i see talk of the rights of the individual and i see talk of justice, fairness and it was those principles that led us to a attack human-to-human problems like slavery and women's suffrage or the denial of women's suffrage. we have seen through the arc of history that we have dealt with

these forms of injustice over time because the precepts of a civil society demands that, and now i think one of the great important causes is about animals. we can't just suspend these principles of fairness and justice when it comes to these other creatures, these creatures who are innocent and full marble and helpless. they need us all the more. and when we think about what is going on, you know most social movements were born out of crisis and the humane movement was born in the middle part of the 19th century because of a crisis. there were newly formed cities in america and people were killing animals to supply meat and fur and feathers for the people in the city's. in the span of three decades, we nearly wiped out the bison in america once we develop the transcontinental railroad and the repeating firearm and markets developed for their hides in their tongues. to think of that millions of animals 40 to 60 million animals

that were estimated the bison on the great plains. there were only 500 left by the 1870s. an incredible massive destruction. there were billions of passenger pigeons and they were entirely exterminated as a consequence of an attitude of domination and new technologies. so you think about that in the 1860s and 1870s. now we are in the 21st century and technology is even more lopsided in our favor. so we have all of this power over other creatures and how are we going to use this power? ultimately i think this cause of protecting animals is about the misuse of power. it is about people using that power not in their restraint limited way but it's licensed. it is taking advantage of animals because we can do it. and i think that there are some folks who give to the humane society and they think just dogs

and cats and that is the birthright of the organization but there is so much more to the work of the humane society that only dogs and cats. it is about wildlife and it is about farm animals and it is about horses. it is about animal abuse and research and experimentation. all of these animals matter and our mission at the humane society is celebrating animals and confronting cruelty. they want to celebrate the place of animals in our culture and our society. we want to confront cruelty wherever and whenever we see it. you know i'm just convinced that things are moving in our direction. there are folks who put roadblocks up all the time and you know the critics have animal protection have a static view of history. they want things to stay just the way they are because that is the most profitable, the most comfortable and they say well if you change factory farming we are not going to be able to have cheap food or you know if we can't use animals for testing we are not going to find ways to

test the safety of products. again i think that is such a static view of history. look at how things have changed just in my own professional lifetime, the internet was developed and e-mail and telecommunications look so different. transportation look so different. so many things look so different and now it is also a question of things looking differently in terms of human impacts on other creatures. and you know we have had some defining moments in our culture about animals, some breakout moment. i think of the michael vick case and i think of the cruelty of dogfighting and the awareness that rod and how we turned that terrible case of cruelty into an opportunity to change the laws around the country to have felony level penalties and to start community-based programs to reach young kids in urban communities who are drawn into this world of dogfighting and to prevent that from happening, so

then we don't have to have enforcement actions on the back and. i think of our hallmark case which i talk about in the book where one of our brave undercover investigators went into a slaughterhouse and he got a job and he watched what was going on with these animals and with a hidden camera he documented the abuse of these downer cows, the suspense dairy cows who were suffering terribly and grievously and they were dragged with chains into slaughterhouses and pushed with bulldozers and they had hoses put to their mouth to waterboard the animal and caused him such distress that they would get up off the ground and go into going to the slaughter area. i also think about the katrina case and the incredible moment in our country when people really began to understand the human animal bond. when so many people wouldn't leave their area, their home because the government responders would not take them with their animals and so many people said i'm not going to abandon my best friend during

his or her time of greatest need. and just to read you a quick little excerpt from the chapter on pets. i spent as so many of my colleagues did a few weeks down in new orleans in the wake of hurricane katrina. there was an incredible effort with many organizations and so many individuals who came to help, and it was just an incredible example of it charitable nature and the goodness of the american people. and just a couple of paragraphs from this chapter 5 which is called for the love of pets. in a lifetime of being around animals, i had seen some strange and interesting things that here was something completely different. i was standing in the front galley of the continental airline 727 that was soon to depart baton rouge airport surveying a plane packed with

passengers, all of them dogs. it was like something from a far side cartoon complete with chipper flight attendant serving dog biscuits and water. given the desperate circumstances everyone was quiet and well behaved and the sound of the captain's voice said it years up and heads tilted. not one of the 140 dogs on board was barking or whining, not even the ones stuck in the middle seats. [laughter] there was something comical in the same but also deeply touching. seeing all these frightened faces, wondering what was happening to them. yet however afraid they might have felt at the moment, every one of them was lucky to be leaving new orleans in the days after hurricane katrina. these guys had already been through a lot. they had been abandoned in the city was evacuated, left to fend for themselves at the waters road and their food ran out and they find themselves all alone in an empty house. finally they heard a friendly voice. it wasn't their owners but the hundreds of rescuers who had

come to help. and if they were bound for california where others would take them until one day soon if everything worked out their owners would find them and take them back home. what mattered most right now was to get them to safety inquiry about their reunion later. and you know, i was down there in new orleans as i said for sometime and i did a lot of interviews for the press, talking about the pet rescue. i expected the question to be asked, i mean this was a terrible calamity. no one was spared. more than 1000 people died and hundreds of thousands were displaced and it had to be a couple of hundred interviews that i did. i was expecting a question, why are you concerned about animals? there are so many people who are in distress. and for all those who were down on the ground, they knew that the circumstances of the people and the animals were intertwined and not one person asked that question. they saw suffering whether it was human or animal and they wanted to respond to it.

and i think it was such a teaching moment for our american culture that pain is pain and suffering is suffering. when we are kind to animals it spills out throughout society. kindness fosters more of it. the same is true with cruelty. when we are cruel to an animal that is a training ground for being course or callous toward people and it is absolutely no accident we see whether it is cruelty to animals we see people involved in other forms of cruelty. where we see cruelty to animals and household and 75% of cases there is domestic violence whether it is the dog one day, the child the next and espouse the next. all of these things are connected and all of these things i draw out in the book. i am going to wrap up. i want to just read a little bit from the press but i want to make a point that i do expand on the preface. you know, we live in the civil

society. we live in a society where there is an incredible social safety net for lots of the suffering. it is in the pluralism of our concerns that we see their needs met so there are people who care very passionately perhaps because of family members who have been afoot at about hearing disease. there people who care about the environment. there are people who care about the poor, and the dispossessed. there people who have a great passion for animals. when we follow our passions and when we are no longer bystanders to suffering that is when we have the bulwark established in civil society. it is truly in that pluralism of concern that we build a society like in the united states of america. when i see these -- for democracy in the middle east and we hope seeing the stirrings of the same principles of fairness and individual rights, i see the seeds being planted or concern

concerned about everyone including the animals. but i will close with this, was just a couple of paragraphs from the preface about my thoughts about the broader issue. as harsh as nature is for animals, cruelty comes only from human hands. we are the creature of conscience, aware of the wrongs we do and fully capable of making things right. our best instincts will always tend in that direction because a bond with animals is built into every one of us. that bond of kinship and fellow feeling has been with us through the entire arc of human experience from our first bare footsteps on the planet do they era of domestication of animals and into the modern age. for all that says humanity apart animals remain our companions in creation to borrow a phrase from pope benedict the 16th. bound up with us in the story of life on earth.

every act of callousness toward an animal is a betrayal of that bond. every act of kindness we keep pace with the bond and for broadly speaking the whole mission of the animal welfare causes to repair the bond for their sake and for our own. in our day there are stresses and fractures of the human animal bond and some forces at work with severed once and for all. they pull us in the wrong direction and away from the decent and honorable code that makes us care for creatures who are entirely at our mercy. especially within the last 200 years we have come to apply and industrial might do to the use of animals too often viewing them as if they were nothing but articles of commerce and the raw materials of science, agriculture and wildlife management. here as another pursuits human ingenuity has a way about running human consciousness and some things we do only because we can, forgetting to ask whether we should. so i am really grateful to have you here tonight.

i am hopeful that you will dig into the book and read it, and more than just reading it, i hope that it causes you to act, because we have got a lot a lot of crises for animals in this world. but we also have a lot of people like you who care, and they think the winds of history are blowing in our direction. but we have got to steer that vote and i think we can keep paddling and make it go faster so thank you all very much and i think we will take a couple of questions. [applause] thank you. so, questions? it is okay to take questions, right? okay, great. yeah? speeding this is a childhood -- is this all right?

>> i touched on a briefly. the question for those of you who might not have heard it is what is my childhood story? i mention very briefly that i didn't have, i didn't have one moment where i had kind of a crisis of conscience or had something that i saw the kind of jolted me. i've really do feel that i had this in me. it was almost a genetic sort of inclination to be sensitive to animals and to be apathetic. you know i think it is different from all of us. i am sure that was the case of many of you but i've heard a lot of stories that there was one moment the people had where they saw in a very poignant setting the suffering of an animal. but you know, i certainly have seen and all my gears weather was being out with the buffalo in yellowstone are being on the ice floes of canada, i have seen the worst of humanity but i've also seen the best of humanity.

i really want to focus on the best of humanity because that is our pathway for the future. questions? yes. >> wayne, so often we hear that science doesn't prove that animals feel and this and that. i know where you are coming from as far as the human bond with animals, but does your book discuss today's science findings and how it is inevitable that we must give animals they are due process and to be treated humanely and so on and so forth? >> i think -- did most of you here that? it is about science and do i explore in the bond the issues about the kind of capacities of animals and i do. the second chapter is devoted to animal intelligence and i open it up actually with a discussion about stephen j. gould. he wrote a book called the

mis-measure of man. at the turn of the last century the scientist who were doing cranny on the tree studying the brain and the skull, the basic lay posited a theory and tried to supported with signs that basic the reinforced their own prejudices saying there were certain groups that have smaller schools and smaller brains to justify their view of the superiority of certain races. i think that you know you can have science that is well done and rechristened you can have science that reinforces the existing paradigms of prejudices, and i think we saw this with animals for such a long time ago we were deniers of what was common sense in front of us. there was this view of the behaviorism, a theory of animals were animals were kind of mindlessly pursuing food and mating opportunities and they were almost devoid of emotional characteristics and qualities. this was the reigning doctrine in the school of behaviorism for

quite a long time. and they think in these last 20 years and especially the last 25 or 30 years, this whole notion i think it's been put to rest. we recognize in the scientific world now what our own common sense tells us that animals think, that they feel, they have a sense of past and future. they experience a range of emotions, joy and sadness, loneliness and excitement. this is what matters and if it is not exactly the same quotient that we have, that doesn't mean you should deny it. all the more, if animals do have a little bit more of a limitation in their emotional capabilities to me that as an argument to the care about what they have got more than not for sure. but, that part of the book i think was really challenging but it was really fun to write and stories about animals as moral

agents as well with dolphins saving people who were threatened by sharks and incredible acts of heroism of animals, not just that they are intelligent. a lot of the animals have moral capacities and to act upon them. in the back, any questions or thoughts? yes. >> wayne just a question. you touched on this very briefly in your opening remarks but i'm curious why this book now and what is the message you want people across the united states to take away from as they have a chance to meet with you? >> now i think one of the central messages that i want to convey is that we have largely reached an agreement on some of the basic precepts that animals can suffer and they can feel and that animal cruelty is wrong. if we accept those two basic principles, then a very important question for us and how we logically apply this

standard, and a society where animal abuses everywhere where we are eating animals, where we are wearing animals, where animal testing occurs to help market products that we purchase in our stores that we visit on a regular basis. there are moral problems everywhere when it comes to human treatment of animals. but that also means there are moral opportunities. we have these more opportunities every day in our life to make the right choices and you know, they passed necessities are today minor conveniences. there were things that we have to do way back when because that was part of our survival, but now with our state of human progress, we have alternatives. why would one wear a fur coat when you can have it even full cloth or synthetic fur coat that is just as warm, just as stylish

that is just an example in my opinion of someone not doing consistent moral thinking. if you say you are against cruelty then you have to square that with their conduct. i think even food questions. the largest use of animals in society is the use of animals for food. 10 billion animals raised and killed in the united states every year. and the vast majority now are raised in industrial style factory farms. we have had a tremendous, tremendous in terms of large, not in terms of good, transformation in agriculture for animals used to feel so much on their backs and soil beneath their feet. they were slaughtered for food and they were used for food that they had decent life in the run-up to the slaughter process. now the slaughter process which is arguably worse now than it ever was, is the merciful end to a life of private nation and misery were animals are confined in cages and creates barely larger than their bodies.

if we value the emotional characteristics of the quality of an animal and if we honor principles of goodness and decency to animals we cannot count -- countenance factory farming where animals are with wings and legs are effectively immobilized for their entire lives. in the case of field cabs and reading sows and laying hens. the egg industry, we need a transformation and i hope just to get back to your question, that all of us think through the logical consequence of our opposition to cruelty. it doesn't just mean the animals we know. it doesn't just mean random acts of cruelty in the community like a horrendous burning of a dog or the clothing of a cat. it also means looking at institutionalized, normalized settings where animal use is legal and permissible and

figuring out if that conduct holds up to our modern-day standards about the care of animals. one or two more questions. >> how do you stay positive in the light of the cruelty that you see handling that frustration and into positive actions. >> i think that is the key for us and look around you hear. the vast majority of the people here care deeply about animals. i am heartened by the fact that hsus has 11 million supporters, one of every 28 americans. i was talking to a couple of you here and that was said and these ideas sounded far-fetched and farcical, then i would really be concerned. but i think that when you talk about logic and you talk about science and you talk about american traditions, i mean we are the mainstream. we are exhibiting sensibilities

that reflect the mainstream of american culture and political thought. and now it is the question of making sure we have a strong enough political movement, cultural movement in order to effect the changes that are long overdue whether it is slowing down and stopping euthanasia of animals in shelters by making sure people adopt animals, shelters and rescue groups rather than patronizing pet stores that are full of dogs from puppy mills, looking at are eating choices and being conscious consumers, whether that leads you to be a vegetarian or not, we can all do something to ease our impact on these farm animals by not buying products that come from factory farms. in so many other settings we have choices that abound so i say unasur power as a consumer, use your voice as a citizen to change the equation. i started an animal protection group when i was a college student at yale and you know we were as john said we were on the

margin at that point but in the last 25 years, things have changed or medically. radically. that doesn't mean things are going to be easy. we had an incredible struggle in our society. we thought a war over slavery where 600,000 people died directly in the war. there are big social conflicts that occur that are right and entirely reasonable. you wonder how there was even a debate about it historically. they were tough and we are taking on an enormously challenging problem, the problem of human cruelty toward animals which has so many manifestations in our society. so i think it is an enormous challenge but i think there are enormous opportunities. how are we doing on time? great, couple more questions. >> i have a question about how many books you will be able to -- there is a limited number.

[laughter] >> i think we have got plenty of looks. i think we have plenty of books and i will sign until i drop. [laughter] i will stay with all of you here tonight if i must. i will maybe limit the words but this took a lot. >> do you talk in your book at all about environmental issues which are a serious threat to animal species around the world today? >> the question of bad talks about environmental issues and i certainly do. wild animals need a healthy environment if they are going to survive. it is not trapping and killing that is the number one threat to wild animals. it is the destruction of habitat, the maintenance of the ecosystems and you know we had hsus have the wildlife department, big international program and we are deeply concerned. i was really disturbed by this ceo of go daddy.com trying to

claim that he went to zimbabwe as a humanitarian enterprise to kill an elephant because the elephant was trampling some crops. i have heard this excuse making so much. i don't know if some of you i am sure heard about it that the ceo of go daddy went to zimbabwe and took a video of him with a bunch of backup shooters, shooting a bull elephant and then claimed it was done for the people. in the book i actually go through the case of a guy named ken barry. he was a trophy hunter from northern california, a very wealthy guy. he owned a sports team and he was traveling all over the world to shoot rare species. he actually shot two endangered take horn sheep in kazakhstan, former soviet republic. he couldn't get the trophies imported to the united states, and this current -- not the

current leadership of the smithsonian but current leaders of the smithsonian work to give him import permits through his scientific exemption after he gave $20 million to this facility. this was exposed and in the process of the exposure, what we learned is that ken behring shot with a couple of his cohorts, three bull elephants in mozambique andy at the same rationale as go daddy, that all these were problem elephants and he was doing something humanitarian. it turned out the wildlife official said these were not wild elephants. the killing of the offense was illegal and ousted him out the country but i have it heard this excuse making on this rationalization time and time again. i think that on the environment and on animal protection, i reconstruct those arguments. in the back, yes. >> i have an infant gurgling and i have a toddler who has an

affinity for animals. what role do we play in young children and giving them to be the leaders and --. >> i think as i said before, we have a headstart when it comes to helping animals because we have this bond. we have the right inclinations that send us in a good direction. the problem is economics and other interests made trump those concerns. so we are in a struggle for ideas and i think we do need to inculcate and the youngest generation these sensibilities of kindness toward animals. and i think as i said before, when we are good to animals it spills over into society. when we are back to animal's -- factory farming is not just an animal welfare problem. it is an problem of massive and waste that spoils the water and future buys the air. it is a problem, creates

problems of antibiotic and resistant bacteria because the animals are so overcrowded that the disease spreads and we pump the animals so full of antibiotics even the animals were not designed for that purpose. has had a terrible impact on rural communities. the number farmers has declined dramatically because the factory farms follow-up a lot of the farm producers. again when we are good to animals they are are often downstream good effects and i think we have got to make that argument plain to our kids because everything is connected when we think about these principles. yes. >> the what is the biggest issue and what would you recommend the average person here to do beyoncé volunteering at a social social -- local shelter. >> the question is in an urban setting like washington d.c. what can we do to help? obviously we don't have super

abundant wildlife populations here. rock creek is here and we have deer and other animals and protecting urban wildlife is very important. we actually have a humane wildlife services program that helps people resolve conflicts and squirrels and raccoons rather than just kind of casually and callously killing these animals. there ways to solve these problems. i think that in a community like this we have seen in most urban communities prominent dogfighting. it is a significant issue and it doesn't touch many of us here directly. but i think reaching young kids and having them get pets for the right reasons and not for the reason of having a fighting machine or a macho display. a lot of the shelters in urban communities have in an inordinately large number of pit bulls because they have been relinquished and they are discarded. i think that is an important issue for us but you know, we

live in a global economy and while we should be involved locally we also need to think about these mac or issues. i think supporting groups like hsus and others is important because they allow collective action to really reform these larger institutions and i think our own personal market choices whether it is food or clothing or products that you buy that are not tested on animals, those are important decisions that they make every single day where he were voting for cruelty or against it. but you know i think lots of great local organizations, the washington humane society is a great group, washington animal rescue league. there are rescue organizations and i think they are important to support as well. yes. >> i have always going to see the fireworks every fourth of july in the last time i went was a few years ago because when the first fireworks started i was along the potomac.

there were birds that were completely frantic that took off i actually was thinking what are we doing and i simply couldn't enjoy it after that. i don't know what the final answer was to that bird incident. it was around the first of the year with the fireworks and the noises that were completely destroying these birds. >> the question was, the questioner made an observation about the fireworks on july 4 and some of these ancillary consequences of our own celebration. of course, the anniversary of our founding as a republic is a great cause for celebration and it is one that i celebrate, but i can't help but feel deeply concerned about the animals when they fireworks are going on. the animals are frightened. i had one of my -- this is a terrible thing. my aunt and uncle who were great animal lovers had a german shepard.

when i was a kid we tethered our dog. we had to to a run at jane and i looked back and i said how did we do that? my aunt and uncle had their dog tethered and she got so frantic that she jumped over and hung herself because of the fireworks display and it always stuck in my mind and i see so many animals who are scared and frightened by these fireworks. it really makes me kind of shut the blinds and buffer so the animals can't hear what is going on and it is a concern. i think that these are close reads of the situation and again we want to celebrate a wonderful holiday like july 4 but i think if we are conscious about these things and minimize that sort of thing. the birds, there've been a number in arkansas and south dakota. there were cases where birds died and we don't have great explanations for why it has happened. some of the birds died, i think the group in south dakota because the federal government

was poisoning them. there's a federal program called wildlife services if you can believe that. it used to be called animal damage control but in the world of euphemism they change it to wildlife services. this federal program is a subsidy for ranchers and others that kill more than 1 million animals a year with our tax dollars and offer county funds and corporate headphones but a real problem, a real problem. >> when they are going to have a whole fireworks display that they could maybe have, start a week out and have you know one minute of fireworks just so that the animals sort of get it. and they can relax. >> we alert people to this problem every year. we issue press statements and releases to alert pet owners to some of the problems on this issue but it is one that we are conscious of and we will keep thinking about. yes, sir. >> we talk about a national

holiday and then he were talking about washington d.c. and this might the a silly question but who are our political allies on this issue? i mean since we have. >> the question is who are the political allies of animal protection, and in fact it is a good time to ask a question because we just had our humane congressional board where we recognize members of congress both a the house and the senate for leadership on animal issues and for consistent support of animal protection issues. the humane society legislative board which is a political arm of the humane society issues a scorecard for lawmakers and you can go to www.h.s. ellis.org arra funds.org and you can get the scorecard and see every lawmaker score on the issues of the day. we did issue to leadership awards, legislators of award congressman jim moran who was just over the line here in

virginia in the eighth congressional district congressional district and then in california a republican lawmaker, alton gallegly, i think the 24th congressional district in ventura county, santa barbara county. we gave out 144 words. there was one member who refused his award and we really air on arrow beside it being generous with these awards. we give awards to lawmakers who do -- they introduce a bill to help animals and congressman don young who is a licensed trapper and a hunter he did something about around mammal strandings which we wanted to encourage that he did not want to accept their award for that because he said that we are against trapping and that we are not good to animals. anyway, but we have got a great list of supporters on the h.s. l. s. web site. >> i saw that really cute video and they gave the puppy mill

puppy to senator grimm and he just loved that little puppy. >> he had a little ceremony. the questioner mentioned a video. we have got a fabulous video department at the humane society in the united states. we actually have an app that you can get from the humane society on your iphone and you can watch videos. we produce videos every single day and we did a video last week i gave a little puppy who had been rescued from a missouri puppy mill to congressman michael grimm and he is a freshman lawmaker from staten island, and ever since he got elected in november he has wanted to get a dog and he wanted a little dog so it can be an office dog. i can tell you how happy all the staff for. it was just such a fun thing to do and to see his excitement and the rest of the staff. it is what i was talking about before, animals give us so much joy and they give us so much and we should give a little back to

them. we need to raise our voices for them to stop what is going on in the broader context here. you had a question. >> first of all thank you so much for working on legislation and animal cruelty and for bringing farm animals into the picture and helping people be aware. kind of going along the line of the lady back here about children and childhood experiences. is there a way to tap into public education and help educate the next generation to think about animals? is there a way to sort of make it part of the curriculum? >> the question is about again on the issue of humane education and reaching kids at the age when they are really forming their values and beliefs. we have a program called humane society youth. hsus is actually a constellation of organizations. we have got a political arm and

a legislative on. we have a land trust in an international program. we have got a number of other programs and we do have a use division. we have a newsletter called kinds news that goes to about 40,000 classrooms in the country. the curricula in many schools are jampacked and add something to it that we do speak to classes and we have a lot of our supporters. >> to classes. it is something we want to do more of to reach young kids. i've been working to speak in a lot of the urban settings to kids at risk for dogfighting and those sorts of questions. i can't agree with you enough that it is important to reach them. but kids learn from a lot of other places now whether it is animal planet or the internet. there are so many portals of information that is way we work so hard to provide information through a lot of settings and of course we are very active in the social media, facebook and a lot of other forms to communicate our message.

the world is ever-changing in terms of communication. one more question and then we are going to wrap it up. seeing none, we are going to wrap it up. thank you very very much. [applause] thank you. i will sign books up here. >> you. >> were watching booktv on c-span2. 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend. >> we me first say that i view saudi arabia into a lesser degree its fellow air peninsula as a nation-state that is perhaps the most dangerous to the united states into the west generally. yes, russia and china are threats to the united states but they are threats washington openly acknowledges, closely watches and assesses and is fully capable of defending america against. saudi arabia however is a serious threat indeed one more

dangerous than iraq. toward which our governing elites in both parties turns a blind eye. are our elites deceitfully presents that it is a close ally. it keeps america's energy security dependent on its enemies by relying on the saudi's to play a pro-u.s. role in the world oil market. and it endangers our economy by allowing the saudi's to buy an ever larger share of our ever more out-of-control federal debt in addition, the saudi's over the past 30 years have built a highly effective lobby in the united states which is as pernicious, effective and corrupting as i attack but more quiet and subtle. this lobby employs former u.s. ambassadors, generals, and senior intelligence officers to argue its case in the white house, the congress and the media. and especially in "the wall street journal." and needless to say, this lobby's work is enthusiastically

assisted by our oil and arms making corporations whose concerns have less to do with u.s. security than in making sure they keep their seats on the saudi gravy train. that is even now hauling away another $60 billion worth of us-made arms. due to these factors u.s. leaders never tell americans the truth about the kingdom. which is that since the 1970s oil boom started an enormous transfer of western wealth to the peninsula, the saudi's have quietly exported a brand of sunni islam that has radicalized much of a historically defined sunni middle east region and which is now air arab icing muslim populations in places like indonesia, malaysia, pakistan, afghanistan, india, the balkans, the caucuses in sub-saharan africa. last year nigeria for example where saudi and gulf missionaries have long labored and spent large sums of money, it an islamist group known as

local harem admitted there thereto for local agenda to name the united states as its number one target for "america's oppression and aggression against muslim nations particularly in iraq and afghanistan and because of its blind support for israel." more immediately dangerous for the west however are the saudi funded regime funded activities of its circuit islamic clerics in the united states and europe especially in the united kingdom. for more than 30 years, the saudi's domestic religious establishment which controls education, social policy and missionary work has brought western muslims to the kingdom for theological training and its religious universities. these men returned to the west to preach what only can be described as a martial oriented islamist imperialism, edition of the world as holy islamic which for the west would mean that

christian and jewish populations could convert, accept subordination to islam or face elimination. the saudi trained preachers are prominent in mosques in the united states and in europe and have secure positions as chaplains in western universities, prison systems and militaries. this is not to say let me stress that all american or european muslim community community share of this this marshall and expansionist orientation but it is very much to say that the saudi trained clerics have attained enough positions in the west and have enough access to muslim youth through multiple media vehicles to have a growing impact. they are now influencing some young muslim males in the west and a pro jihadi direction in much the same way they have for years influenced them in the middle east, asia and africa. those who doubt this would be well served in reviewing the

escalating number of militant related activities that have been uncovered in stopped in the united states since 2007. to note the growing number of u.s., young u.s. canadian australian and british muslims who are going abroad to fight and train under al qaeda's banner in somalia, yemen and afghanistan, and also to note al qaeda's very successful recruitment of talented u.s. citizen muslims to run media operations targeting muslim communities in the english-speaking world. the saudi's too are the bridge from our second source of concern in the persian gulf, the saudi kingdom and his brother tierney's to the third, namely osama bin laden, al qaeda, their allies and increasing numbers of muslims inspired by each. when all is said and done, osama bin laden is not an anomaly in saudi arabia. rather he is the poster boy for