he will take your calls, e-mails and tweets on a variety of topics including his boorish wall bohemians. his books include bobos dr. and the latest the social animals. david brooks in that life sunday at noon eastern on book tv on c-span2. author fred wilcox' bouck waiting for an army to buy looked at the effect of agent orange on u.s. soldiers who served in vietnam. in his latest book turns attention to the impact of the agent orange on the vietnamese. next during the siege and from new york city he discusses his book with author and link west noam chomsky. this is about 40 minutes. welcome to the new store that opened in april.

her staff the great job making room for us all. >> i am the loose cannon, one of the people who set up this conspiracy to get us all together to think about agent orange and to do something about it. there are too great books published by seven story press. the first book originally came out in 1989. it was by fred wilcox of course and was about the impact agent orange had on american veterans. the second book was just knew, scorched earth, is about the vietnamese and the impact on vietnam. so the 07 stories press who does so many books nobody else what to and housing works and a few loose cannons all our thinks this is an important event to make a breakthrough on the

horrible tragedy of many decades agent orange what still persist. if you have ideas about doing something, please do. you would have a q&a, please wait until you get a microphone in hand. we all want to hear your questions. we all want to hear your answer. thank you so much for coming and it gives me great pleasure to introduce two very special people, norm chomsky who most of you know we and others will come to know has been telling truth to power without rhetoric and just the facts, all the dragnet fan for decades and it's still going, and fred wilcox who has been out on the vineyards writing these books feeling the pain of knowing people berkeley

affected by agent orange and seeing them if they survive suffer terribly. i'm going to leave it now to the two guests, and then your questions. thank you for coming. we hope you can all hear. when you step out of your please try to do something about people suffering from agent orange. thank you. [applause] >> hello. thank you all for coming this afternoon. my name is fred wilcox. dick hughes has helped people suffer through agent orange and arranged this whole thing with his family that worked very hard so i want to express my appreciation for them and express my appreciation for my family, my children, my friends from if the cut and the professor who's taken out of his busy schedule to come here.

thank you very much. >> i would just like to talk a little bit briefly in the open about what i've been trying to do the last 30 years and that is tell people about what i consider to be the many tragedies, many historical tragedies in the world but this is a great tragedy and let me begin by saying 3 million vietnamese are suffering from the effect of chemical warfare, that is the correlation campaign that the united states wages in the vietnam for the least ten years. 3 million adults and 500,000 children. so, one of the things i would like to do today is the decade this whole thing, the whole meeting today to the children, to the vietnamese children to the u.s. vets, caribbean vets, australian vets, all of these people who have faltered or women who have given birth so

seriously to legless children, blind serious defeat could children, as a result of having been exposed to the contaminant in agent orange and so i really don't think that you can overestimate the tragedy. i don't think you can add the treated. i don't try to excel to the tragedy because it is not necessary. it is ongoing. the tragedy just doesn't seem to have any and that is see if you go to vietnam today one of the things that frightens the people is they are seeing of the third and fourth and fifth generation of agent orange so a lot of people say in 1975 white you keep talking about it and writing it, why do you keep obsessing over it? because it hasn't tended. it hasn't ended for the children, it hasn't ended for the vietnamese people or american vets who are reaching the age of the late 50's and

early 60's and dying. many people don't know about this so michael continues to be to tell as many people as possible about this oncoming incredible tragedy that is a direct result of chemical warfare. >> this is the 50th anniversary almost to the day in fact some very significant decisions the were made in washington and in the kennedy administration. john f. kennedy and his advisers basically decided in 1961 to sharply escalate the war in south vietnam which has gone on for some time and turn it into a u.s. invasion and south vietnam

those meetings kennedy authorized the u.s. air force to start bombing south vietnam pretty soon they were apparently bombing carrying out the third and mission under the market couldn't fool anybody except those who wanted to be fool authorized napalm and what we are discussing here authorized what the to be called to local warfare. the bombing that as you all know expanded to have made american troops invading the south but within a couple of years, 1966, 67 the leading specialist on vietnam, the military historian and his last writing before he was killed in combat, but he

thought the vietnam might not surprise that the cultural and historical entity under the impact of the most severe attack ever launched against an area that size. it went on not only against south vietnam north vietnam and least where nobody was looking, the area around hanoi was scared because the foreign embassies in the southern part of north viet nam and string into a moonscape, self vietnam itself never recovered but it extended in northern laos which had nothing to do with the war in vietnam that it was because a lot of air force planes were idle during the bombing and here they

amounted to northern laos littered with unexploded ordnance people still buying and living in caves for several years trying to survive and interviewed a lot of the 1970 then expanded to cambodia which was the most intense bombing in history following henry kissinger's immortal phrase anything that flies against anything that moves, those were the orders handed down by kissinger from his books in their force and the bombing in a brief period just a couple of years. we now know it reached the level of bombing in the pacific region, the entire pacific

region during world war ii with the two atom bombs all on a remote society a lot of consequences to that more or less but it didn't end as fred pointed out. the effects of the chemical warfare continued and will continue turned up to the crop destruction major war crimes can't go on with it just add one more word about. there were serious consequences, too knocked paying attention to what was done in the past. one of them is just moral of we were incapable of facing up to our own history we were in

trouble morley and serious problem but it's also quite practical because if you don't face up to it you can continue doing it and that's happening. people are dying right now from american kunkel warfare. to isolate and endangered peasant villages sometimes when i go down it's too dangerous even to go to the countryside bringing people into the local town to give testimony what's happening to them. these are people that have been subjected to some of the worst terror anywhere columbia now has displaced the second largest displaced persons population in the world i think after afghanistan millions of people

driven off their land. these are isolated poor villages the last time i went about a year ago july thing with capital deutsch dhaka given to us by the ombudsman's office of the region travels around the road there is a tiny clearing on the side to stop and go out there is just a bureau of simple crosses and it's a place where not long before it had been stopped by the paramilitary who were pretty close to the military and everybody was shot. that's life the worst part of life in many ways is the chemical warfare. we don't call it that now we call it the fumigation. but same thing. the substances from the sky most

of the contractors and the effects are striking. it destroys the crops, not just opium it destroys everything. it poisons the land. there are people being a coffee farmer isn't easy these days but there are people that manage to kind of developed a niche market for organic high-quality organic coffee in germany and so on its finished because the land is poison, you can't grow anything more. people with horrible scars all over their arms and children dying, the kind of things that you see in vietnam and that is today just in the last couple of years according to the attorney general's office about 140,000 people have been killed by the paramilitary and other things, too.

but this is going on before we regard it as our right -- [inaudible] >> sorry. you should have said that earlier. we regard it as our right it's not a question to carry out -- stillwater? >> i don't know if i can manage anything louder. we regarded it as our were right we don't question it to carry out chemical warfare in another country because they are producing something the government doesn't like as the president of bolivia asked pertinent question how would we feel if we were to carry out chemical warfare in north carolina and kentucky to destroy crops that's far more lethal than cocaine and just look at the death toll.

this goes on before as a failure to pay attention to the similar atrocities in past and this is not the end buy any means just yesterday i got a letter from an ex-marine who fought in iraq and i've known him for some years. he was part of the military force that invaded in fallujah november, 2004. there was a horrible massacre accept worse in many respects but one of the respects in which it is worse is the kind of weaponry use and there have been studies now by epidemiologists and other scientists in the

fallujah area, and it turns out that the level of radiation in that area is actually higher than hiroshima. this young man after he got out has been devoting his life to trying to compensate. this was a scientific article that just appeared in the study hair samples of people that were there and the hair samples have extremely high evidence of radiation and it again has the usual affects you describe, and unless we face up to these things it's going to continue. there is no barrier except internally to the united states. these are two examples and you can add others.

the effect heavy metals and completed uranium and others has plenty of the effects on american veterans but of course there's always the major legal effect on the victim's and as fred said this can go on indefinitely even when the war is technically over and even more so when we carry out similar operations more so as we are doing right now. >> thank you. i'd just like to say a couple things and open up to questions and that is like the when you brought it now because people, someone asked me why you talk about something that happened so long ago we left there theoretically at least in 1975. the reason why i keep talking about this is because the cancer epidemic in this country many other parts of the world and a cancer epidemic is directly

related to the toxic chemical in the air, food and water supply. i have four children. i'm sure a lot of you have children. i don't want my children or anybody's children to develop cancer. i don't want to watch them lose their hair and i slowly and painfully from cancer. that could be prevented. it's not a matter of waiting the next 50 years until we come up with a pill or treatment for cancer. it's a matter of cleaning up the environment and stopping the companies that place in vietnam and place in cambodia and other parts of colombia, other parts of the world for profit. they do it for profit, they do it for money. they claim they were doing it in the way of patriotism the poisoned vietnam, they were destroying the force because they are doing a patriotic duty. the ringgit to make money. they sold it to the government and they knew what was in it and the and what was poisoned and they didn't tell the government. some of the things i hope i can accomplish through this book is to say look it's time to clean

up the world, the environment. it isn't about something that happened 20 or 30 years ago, 40 years ago, it's about what's happening right now and that is we are all being exposed to toxic chemicals and are all at risk. so the tragedy in the amount is the tragedy here in europe and many other places and it's a tragedy that i believe we can all get together and do something to prevent. people are always asking what should you do? well i would say one thing you can do would be to call dow cackle in montana and say we know when you did in vietnam, we know when you were doing here and we want you to stop it. stop saying for example there is no evidence that agent orange causes cancer. the scientific community knows they've done all the studies necessary and they know that dioxin is carcinogenic. they know that, we all know that. so, with that i just -- i would like to open the floor to questions and comments and whatever you want to say i would like to hear what everybody has

to say. >> can you hear me? there you go. >> we are going to have questions and answers and write until we get the microphone but i wanted to let you know we have several books appear which are $10 apiece, and he will sign them for you. we have one of the books, 9/11 and then there's also philip jones book, photography book which is on the six fielder $20. it's hard to beat those prices. ask your question and let's see if we can get as many and as we can. here's one.

>> yes thank you for your commentary. i recently found out about the matter for lacking which is what i'm going to talk about and i was thinking about now in your country that perhaps as the people in these countries as a victim that you mentioned were seeking revenge they would say we have found a way of doing ourselves in because as a friend of mine said, and few are not familiar with fracking i will mention it in a minute. it is not spelled f-r-a-c-k it is spelled [inaudible] we can wipe out the water supply and that isn't something that you can replace, repeat that's not something you can replace.

many people will understand that there's 13 inches of topsoil and the water supply that stand between us and what? oblivion. for those of you don't know what fracking is there are about to have some hearings in the delaware water gap and that is happening october 21st they are trying to get people on budget if you want to find out about that, senior -- si meen leader. the problem is people are not aware of where they stand and if you have any comment on the subject of fracking, i think the idea is really on the button. >> thank you. an honor to be here with both of

you. fred, you and plight unless i'm wrong to the end of your talk that the government was unaware of the consequences of seriousness agent orange. people start talking about this as far as i know the chemical companies didn't tell particularly the military commanders in vietnam what they know about the effect of the laboratory and in 1965, this is a memo that was in dow chemical said dioxin as potentially deadly to men beings and the corporate vision speaking lots went to the united states command and anybody else and say we are going to sell you this but we want you to know it is deftly to human beings that your troops our troops and vietnamese

people and the rest are going to be exposed to something. the chemical companies insist they did tell someone but exactly who that someone might have been, i don't know. and i don't think they did. i haven't uncovered any of the information to that effect. >> if i can add a word, there's a concept applies here in many of our cases it is called intentional ignorance. so yes, you can choose to be ignorant of something, which you do know about, that applies all over the place and there is no way the government could have known this. >> it just doesn't make sense in terms of the profit system. the companies are telling us, the gas companies telling people what is in the fracking in the water. they are not. >> the energy corporations apply c with oil do they put in a

notice saying we are going to destroy the world? so you know it and they know it and if we don't pay attention. >> are we on? can you hear? first of all thank you so much from ithaca to be used in a role model for me for so long and i think that when i first learned about your work we had something called the language acquisition device, and i'm wondering what the plan for the communication acquisition device is because i think we have language and we use it for intentional omission, the note that says we are killing ourselves quickly or

slowly is not included in any of our packaging right now. so how do we globally or locally communicate that to each other and how we might from today on? how do we help? how do we do this? >> it's particularly significant. in the united states you may have seen an article in "the new york times," i think maybe yesterday, which reported what's been an open secret for long time that the united states is simply off the planet on this issue, just about every country some fashion or another is trying to do something about the very serious problem of environmental global warming and environmental catastrophe. they are doing it in different ways. we should be perhaps ashamed of the fact that the country just isn't the lead on this, this is the poorest country in south america.

bolivia to the real what extent of passing legislation that nature has rights and we have to observe the rights going on sophisticated westerners can laugh about this but the last laugh is going to be on us. the poorest country in south america is taking the international wheat of the country's doing various things. we are not only taking the lead as we should but we are dragging it down. the united states alone is tearing apart and restricting the very limited devices that had been available to do something about the problem. that's pretty striking to look at the congress now and see that the congress is trying to dismantle that in the institutions that were instituted by the person that is in fact our last liberal

president, richard nixon. that's not a joke incidentally. if you take a look at the legislation they are tearing apart the epa trying to restrict other limited environmental restrictions and while the whole world is moving forward, we are racing backwards and with the united states does is of course of the enormous significance. far and away the richest and the most powerful country in history if we don't take the lead nothing much is going to happen. and if we are pulling the train backwards it's going to be bad news. so here's where the problem is. and there are a lot of reasons for it. this is the only country that i know of where at least major centers of power are tearing out quite openly they tell us

tearing out the large scale propaganda programs to convince the population that it's all a little. the chamber of commerce, the biggest business organization of the petroleum institute and others have made it quite public they are carrying out these programs. they've got a lot of people confused. if you take a look at the way the media handled it, it's kind of a he says she says things like on one side you've got 99% of the scientists, and on the other hand you have jim inhofe or someone else and we have to sort of work it out for ourselves for individuals work it out for themselves and there's a kind of background of trust for reason and science which is itself a very lethal.

you shouldn't worships sissons but study things careful the and it's a serious cultural and institutional problem here that has to be dealt with in a sort of fundamental way. how we study the language can plan and learn about that people have to be out there trying to get others to understand what is really happening to the society and a decent world to live and work better for the petroleum companies to make more profit today. those are real choices. fracking is the case in point. it is actually a dual problem but as the speaker over to mention that there is a short direct problem they've destroyed the water resources in the land and so on but this is a

longer-term problem of increasing the use of fossil fuel no matter how you get them which is going to have a the full effect on human society. >> i just want to solyndra mr. chomsky for coming and talk about all the economy is being affected and how the dictatorships or planned out in the united states so they can distribute democracy in a way. so, in a way it is all a part of a conspiracy to control countries. but i want to talk about what do you think about the international monetary fund? is it a fraud to control the economy of the southern american

countries? >> event get the last part. is it a fraud? it's certainly not a fraud, it's free effective. >> it is a scam, the international monetary fund. >> it's not a scam. do their work? in fact they are basically an offshoot of the u.s. treasury. it's not literally true that the u.s. treasury has an enormous amount of control in what they do, and there are the same programs that are kind of turning the united states into a kind of third world society for applied much more forcefully having terrible effects, so the international monetary fund has over the past several decades been a pressing very hard to so-called meal liberal programs

at which have been social and economic disaster almost everywhere. not for everyone. so to egypt which is on the front page as a part of the source of the uprising in the jet boat to peking is because the disastrous effects of the imf adjustment programs which have increased growth, what kind of the way they do here with wealth going into very few pockets and most of the population suffering. that has been true in place after place. latin america was almost accepting these programs and went through several decades of sharp economic decline. it's now cast out the programs and there's a lot of quite successful growth. we see the same thing here. it's not as rigid here as it is

in the poor countries, but the wealthy protect themselves, but it's part of the reason why over the past essentially 30 years the u.s. has been in kind of a vicious cycle of sharp concentration of wealth really in one-tenth of 1% of the population as hedge fund managers and ceos that don't do anything constructive for the society of harm where the economy gaining enormous wealth and with that comes political power and that makes it possible to accelerate the cycle so we have the situation in which we are in the richest country in the world with 30 years of stagnation or decline and in come for the majority of the population while a small group

is getting a fabulously wealthy and the country is seriously declining. so, that -- i should say about the imf more than the other global institutions they've recognized this and effect is quite striking that the imf chief economists have been criticizing europe for carrying out the kind of policies that they've dedicated. if you're not is in a recession and it's carrying out austerity which is the worst possible thing to do in the recession and the imf is counseling them not to do that and to turn towards trying to stimulate the economy which we should be doing, too so if it isn't a pretty story, but they are not just devils and the are coming out of the dhaka

round tradition which is rooted right here mostly in the economic planning and economic policies which have a pretty ugly consequences pulling them aside out of this and sometimes beginning to prosper that's one of the reasons latin america has had substantial improvements and moves towards independence but it's not a scam. >> if you haven't been down to the occupied wall street please go down. [applause] to me it is inspiring to get i was there the other day to provide think we should support them every way we can.

>> a thing to better meet for a microphone. >> the way that we continue to fight the war have a pretty devastating effects for the countries we are fighting with lots of times as well as on members of the military that are coming home so i'm wondering if you can speak about what lessons we should take away from what you know about the struggle for justice and agent orange both as military members and vietnam and what lessons can we take away from those of us that want to make sure there's justice for those that are returning in so many different ways or the people that are suffering. >> that's an important questions because of the problems talking with agent orange vietnam veterans is people assume that this new. it's the first time we've ever mistreated veterans, ignored

them or field to take them seriously when they are complaining of other ailments and that is a part of american history. we send people off to the war and then when they come home we say i don't recognize you. i really don't know you. so to say it's too bad about the vietnam veterans. they've got hurt or we didn't help them, but we are doing a better job. my own argument is -- and i come from a working-class family to join the military, yeah we join the military because it is the job and it's a way of getting out of poverty. but on the affair and i would encourage anyone to join the military until they decide to treat people with respect and decency after the come home from the killing. [applause] >> i'm jury sorry but the professor chomsky has an appointment that he is already a little bit late for at columbia so we have to get him up there.

i was going to mention that the books that are here for sale we donated them to housing works. so in the books to purchase even at this low price all proceeds will go to housing works, so we are serving to purposes. [applause] if you could afford to do what we would much more appreciated. our apologies for those who didn't get your questions in but thank you so much for coming and thanks again to noam chomsky and fred wilcox. [applause] >> you are watching book tv on c-span2. 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend. >> it is the centennial of the civil war and the library of congress is in on the action. this is a new book put out by

the library illustrated timeline of the civil war. margaret wagner is the author and the editor. >> i'm the author of the book. >> do you work for the library full-time? >> i'm a writer and editor on the publishing house of the library. >> what are we going to find in this book? are we going to find library of congress artifacts? >> you will find over 360 library of congress artifacts to read never of them have been to the light of day before. we've never published them before and you'll find a reality that kind of kind to the time line covering many aspects of the war which is one reason that we did this timeline many of the civil war books cover the battles with the politics or one aspect and with a time line approach to cover all sorts of events in putting those.

>> what are the things we will see that have not been seen before. >> we will see ministers we haven't published before. we have a new collection of civil war photographs that were just donated to the library. this past year and some of those were in the book. you will see this very sort of charming which is like a moving picture depiction of the civil war. you will find drawings by civil war special artists and maps and illustrated envelops with a lot of the civil war servers political messages and patriotic messages. you'll find this sort of leases of a lot of quotes in the book and that's one of the reasons that i loved working at the

library. because you get to know so many of the people and the people in the civil war era was very eloquent and very opinionated so i come to like many of them. >> is this divided between the north and south? >> it places among the north and south and the border states and also brings in the international aspects for all over the world, and especially in europe people are watching what happened in the united states with the union survives, what the government of by and for the people survive? this was a huge test that was important to other people besides us. >> writing a book for the library of congress. how is that a different experience perhaps just than in the independent? >> you have a great responsibility and all authors do but to represent the library

collections at the library standards and also it is a great privilege because you get to go through the collections and have the assistance of the curators and specialists at the library, so we learned a great deal with every single project of work on there. >> you get the proceeds of the author? >> no, the library gets the proceeds. we receive royalties and that goes back into a revolving fund so that we are able to publish other books. the library as you know is the largest library in the world that has more than 147 million items. about 20 million our online but that leaves 127 million that are not. so our mission is to introduce people to the materials they might not find online. and in this book at the end of the book there is a appendix

that introduces people to the civil war collections in the library and gives them information about them and web addresses, so this is our mission to let people know what we have. >> is the suitable for high school students, for middle school? >> absolutely. as a matter of fact i had some students drop by and they were telling us the civil war and social science and we had a nice chat about it so it is perfect for students as well as for civil war office. >> mabry margaret wagner is the author of the library of congress but the illustrated timeline of the civil war. ..