with 2,000 serbian shells at day. constant sniper fire fortified at the end of the day by original 2,000 women today including 2,000 children killed in that city. 45 foreign correspondents were killed there. dozens were wounded. we understood, those of us in that besieged city, completely surrounded that if the serbs broke through the trenches defended by world war i style trenches, a third of the city would be massacred and the rest would be driven into displacement. .. camps and we've seen it in the areas. we knew what the pattern was. we knew what the modus operandi was and one understands when you are faced with the very real possibility of not only your own annihilation but the annihilation of your family, your children, your community, how you pick up a weapon. now, unfortunately, once you do that, you cross a line.

you are not free from the poison of violence. and initially, those who organized the defenses were the gangsters. they came from the criminal class and when they weren't shooting at serbs across the barricades, they were raiding the apartments of ethnic serbs in the city, looting them and sometimes executing them. and, you know, one of the reasons that i am such a strong and vocal supporter of the occupy movement is because it is nonviolent. and the corporate corporations know only one word is more. and they will push and push and push until there is a reaction and i want that reaction not to disend into violence because i know what violence does. that violence even when it is employed in a just cause,s is nichi said, you are your monsters against their monsters and it always becomes tragic. i don't believe in just war. i think sometimes human beings

are pushed to such an extent that violence is inevitable. but the consequences for those who employ violence on both sides is catastrophic. >> host: next call for chris hedges comes from lexington, kentucky, joe, thanks for holdings. you're on booktv on c-span2. >> caller: hey, c-span, happy new year to you guys. >> host: you too. >> caller: happy new year, chris hedges. i like your stuff. >> guest: thank you. >> caller: i just wanted your opinion on the -- just your personal opinion on who actually controls our world. who controls the world, chris. tell us. i know you know. itice

by 100 percent. i saw the human consequences of that, the children who werencesf malnourished, and indeed in somt cases dined because it could not afford to eat. the rich ores in both iraq and afghanistan have the willlitt popular support, and for aof cot handful of corporations will keep martin, whole burden, there are immensely profitable or is for a certain type of settlement and always has been. war is a racket. so i think that we unfortunatele have created a world where power has become central in the handsh

of a select group of corporations that are morenst powerful than self.sel it is within the americanthi th political system impossible tosm gote against the interests to cut interest of goldman sacks, and unless we fourth that powerw we are doomed becausecorporion "rations, and federal capitalismgr , it turnsansf everything into a commodity. unfettered capitalism is aalisma revolutionary force.re. in human beings become commodities.m the natural world becomes a commodity they you exploit until exhaustion or collapse, and that's why the infirm to crisisv is intimately 20 economic crisis, and we don't some hon find a mechanism more way to find a way to break the power of those corporations that will d trash the assistant to the poino at which life or huge segmentssg

of the human species will behuma unsustainable. >> in to you from the york city. see you see economic and political climate of somewhat resembling that which existed i germany during the 1950's? >> well, chomsky has made that o comparison. i think in some ways, yes, it'ss always difficult to make those historical analogies because one has to be very cognizant of the major differences, including thn massive war reparations, the of fact that germany had no realth tradition of liberal democracy l under its marquee, but i thinkn that there are some frighteningm similarities, the most importand being the american working class, the disenfranchisement of working men and women.we you know, used to be in this e

country going back to thebackth fifties into the 60's they youte could work in an auto plant orud steel mill and make a salaryd that would actually supportive family and allow you to buy ad small house and send your kids to college. o you have medical benefits and the pension planal. all that has vanished.at we yeah threshed are working class and to the service sector tervio economy. low wagre economy, household.no not only the people tend to worg with the working class more thao one job, but almost everyone is working.asn that has been a devastating change, and that think one of those price or the rise of the christian right, as i argued in american fascist is directly linked to thisr despair. because these economic dislocations bring withincatns r destructions of communities,onf families, substance abuse, domestic abuse, all the problems

l of commons committees per countd command people retreat from thio reality based world whichrl, frankly almost destroys them.lie also totalitarian systems. a world of magic, historical inevitability, god intervenes od your behalf, and i think the beh only way to bring these people back into a rally based world is serbian franchise that within the economy, and i think this is something of wea soften it was spare, and all the great writers on totalitarianism used to spara as the starting point to drive people into these verye frightening movements, and i i think that despair is very prevalent within american society into very dangerous.ciev >> it is 2005.ay" mr. hedges, walking -- watching

passively as the huge corporations watch us, defraudla consumers and taxpayers toree create an exclusive americanxc oligarchy that fuses wealth and political power. watch passively because they believe it can enter the club.ps suzie in l.a.susie .a good afternoon.hrnt >> of want to thank you for youu thoughts and your books. very deep, and they're really open many of our minds to a very important concepts. and you really trying, at leastr from my observation to present a lot of dee p thought and de objective reality.oje i was troubled in the area when you talk about the middle eastew because he talked of what your history in terms h of the people there. but i was wondering also if you

have an equal knowledge of the people on the inside. iv >> well, i lived in jerusalemar. for two years and i don't speak hebrew.a that was a conscious decision.ms or no work to the middle east to speak arabic and have in the hebrew word it's creeping could immediately land you in prison,u although i have to say eventually in both iraq and iran i was thrown in prison are jailed. i have a great admiration andadi affection for his role, and iisl think that the parameters of the debate about the middle east ane about the israeli-palestinian conflict and israel are far more brought them they are in the united states. my opinions are not particularl. controversial in jerusalem among my friends to go on.

they are in the and states. the newspaper, for instance, ha probably the best coverage of of the palestinians of any paper in the country. all of these articles are h written by israelis use. these are really great, great journalists.t. they do is throw credit. so i think that the frustrationf for many of us old nataliemany u end iss that we saw possibilities in oslo and then the relationship between king hussein. i knew him.kig i covered him. and with the assassination of h and we watched that hope essentially vanished. israel, as the united states has

essentially became captive to ay really rampageous right wing.wi the israeli foreign minister whr has openly called for the ethnic cleansing and the israeli arabsd and palestinians. this was unthinkable. and for me it is really a debate about the health of the middleal east and the health of tthhe isa reversed itself. the i don't thing they're responding to historical and justicestoric through the use of force ande occupation is in the long term productive for the state ofe st israel itself. get at the same time, of courseo i am adamantly opposed -- and there are those within the arabe world to call for therl who ca destruction of the state oflltht israele .tates,luding most chased away including our own -- are spend allot of time, founded on historical injustice thbut we have to work out an accommodation whereby

both people can live in dignitya >> what is pine ridge and when will this new book comeis out.ut >> i have been working for twowr years with the common artist on a book called days of destruction that will be out inf june. we have gone to the sacrifice,sr pockets of the united statesof toward camden, newst jersey. pine ridge south dakota.t the reservation. the average life expectancy is x 48, the lowest in the western hemisphere. we worked a lot in the coaln he fields of seven was a prisoner.a and, i mean, the destruction of the abolition mountains is a truly destructive. sor as to the borrowing for coal ors

blasting, the destroyer the water in the air. none of this will come back. this is cannibalism. finally in the to the battlefields and the arab cultural fields in florida prerelease undocumented, o although not exclusively ofwo documents andr workers.l will we began the book we did give it the title days of destruction, but the revolt was conjecture. in toward the end of it this movement which became a kind ofe expression of love we felt woulw be a response.ha we didn't know what the response would look like.r and it's a look at, you know,hat what happens when union before the marketplace. when human lives, the course ofc human lives and the humanad community are determined by the dictates of the marketplace and there are no impediments todimes corporate control because the

sacrifice zones are expandingw outward.eth roughly one-third of this country already lives in prettye extreme poverty, and that will only grow if the corporate state is not stop because their goal is to reconfigure,. already very far down the road,y into a kind of oligarchic yieldi feudalism where you have ever pitches -- rapacious money mn internally which control thec economy, systems a vacation -- education as well as political power, a sort of them manageriai class and in two-thirds of thew country of much scrambling tounr survive.n >> you are watching book tv on c-span2, in that program. author, journalist, killed surprise winner.th good afternoon.

they understand that the americans would not havenot invaded.ospeak i'm not pretending to speak for the iranian regime, but this ise my assessment. s pakistan is probably in terms oe the proliferation of nuclear technology or dangers. frankly, pakistan is more unstable and friends more. so will they eventually get aen weapon?get a i suspect it will. i think attacking them would be deeply counterproductive.terod first of all, there are roughly 1,000 sites that have been picked out, many in highlyese populated areas.popu the loss of civilian life of the catastrophic. remember that iraq is primarilyy shia, and i think that an attacn

would be interpreted throughout the moslem world as an attack on the she is of itself. minorities in countries likelike pakistan itself. and then you have a kind of conflict regional. is my understanding that the iranians, even if americans aret not directly involved, primarily an israeli attack, although it'e impossible, they will obliterate in the american bases. so i don't want to defend theana iranian regime. in at the same time i think thak attacking iran would really be a

disaster.ow >> how did you learn the honorof of being handcuffed and escortet from ron?anif people wanted to read one of your books and hear a story, which books to the reid? be >> i don't know that i put theps story in a book. the most personal accounts. a meditation on more. it's not chronological, but anou meditation on what more does tod individuals societies. i i draw for many of the conflicti are covered, roughly a half dozen from sarajevo and because of low to the first bill foruay where was captured and takene i patient. and, you know, i have never gone back and reread it. such is such a painful but to write, but in short it's just a silly foreign correspondents story.ifw

what happened was i was supposed to interview the president's, and i went to get a visa. i was supposed to get a visa.raa at the embassy, a camera where was, they give me a multiple entry visa by mistake. and so the iranian official took way out and waited out thend multiple and wrote one visit. o i got there very late at nightnw and these customs police accusee me of forging a it. and so i did precisely where yow were not supposed to do which was for a fed index with brokers against the wall.

they escorted me on to theight. turkish airlines, and by thisih time had been 24 hours withoutso sleep. my hours are read and i wast unshaven. i have to go on in handcuffs. all the passengers thought ofthe selling chargers something. they give my passport to the m captain of the plane and said that i was not allowed to have my american passport back. >> did he give it back? >> he did. i was also picked up in the caspian sea where did not havecd permission.missn they have people that capturedia me and listen to put me on tria in the morning, but that one ofl the weight. it was sort of a fun event. they put me in a jail cell there, and i read 107 pages ined

an iranian jail cell.l. my chance there was out there frantically sort of a jarringly trying to get this out.s ou about 2:00 a.m. an iranianicera police officer came, opened my cell door, said he was escorted us to the limits of the province and when we got to the limits o the province and out of the car and tried to give him money. moy he said, no, no. skynyrd car and drive to tehrany in nonstop. i was paired the people strong, which are sure would have been found guilty. >> richard maryland.maryla good afternoon. >> i've had a question ever since september 11th.1 it never has really been -- it has been addressed.di,

pat buchanan, an ongoing to paraphrase what he said, we nee, to realize that with ther occupation of religious sites or sacred areas by the head isth states, these are reasons why september 11th occurred. and until we address this issue we will continue down the sameon path. s >> a kiffin to -- peculiar formu illustrator and a fallen.u

when robert mcnamara began bombing north vietnam, bombingb attacks that would leavet hundreds of thousands of civilians dead, he said it was, and i quote : a means ofcommati communication. and what happened was that thoss means of communication were brought home. one of the great tragedies, historical tragedies of our tras country. because the only way to fightigh terrorism, terrorism has been with us since the road about ite and the wars.slat isolate terrorism and terroristd groups within their own society. you do that by carter and empathy of those people in those countries.st g i covered up carnet for the newq

york times based in paris. we had gone, not only the world, what the muslims were appalledse at what had been done in the net of their religion. you had senior islamic clerics in cairo denouncinging / september 11th as a crimehunit against humanity, and then going on to denounce osama bin laden as of fraud, someone with noolog theological training or the lg legitimacy and therefore no right toef issue.sue and if we had the courage, if wt had built on that empathy wey would be far safer and more and secure today than we are. instead we responded just as as these terrorist groups wanted us to respond, and that was to begin by dropping iron fragmentation bombs all over the middle east.e

the search for all card is not h war.a you can't have a war on terror. terror is a tactic.a ctic it should have been handled byve the intelligence community in the same way the black september was handled by the mossad, andnp even then innocent people died.a but certainly not byn. conventional military forces, ot and so we played right into the hands of the very forces that we have been trying to defeat.a w u used as excuses to curtail democracy, celebrity at home. he openly began to employ torture, not only in places liki guantanamo, but are blocked sites around the globe as wells as against dissidents like bradley manning, and there hasa been a frightening erosion oft h everything that we value and ala the air and that we considerarnt sacred. and, you know, the people who perpetrated these crimesetrad

probably could not be happier. >> steve in uniontown, pennsylvania. please go ahead with your questions or comments. c >> it was only a few months ago i called and and got through. michael moore was there, and ihs suggested getting chris hedges on. here he is. give you the credit.>> h i chris, question about corporate person had.person. they have used corporations thas have exploited the 14tht amendment. like m get more power. i was wondering if it is possible, and this isn'td th is facetious facetiousness, the 13th amendment outlaw slavery, right? so if these legal persons are owned by private people or shareholders, wouldn't it be possible to free them, free the corporations from this ownership

through the 13th amendment, in somemehoto somehow the disempowered them.cr of like to see cornell was on some times. thanks. if >> i'll be right. itot us, i think the power of the occupyh movement is that if realize thas so many segments of ourny government as the only hope we have left. i think of affecting any kind oy fundamental and real changede appealing to the systems ofth power including the judiciary. >> this is it book tv in-depth,

our monthly author felt --e program. this month is chris hedges for the last caller.cal you can watch that in itstv in entirety.n the producer of this program. fargo north dakota.'r dhahran. >> suspected of question, what might mr. blank fine, a recent n chairman of goldman sacks have meant when he responded to ant question about goldman sacks market activities by saying i think i'll be doing god's work.k >> thank you. self delusion.elusn wo color pro we be the first word that would come to mind. for me figures like palin klein and others should be put on trial for the activities theyesa

carried out, and i think the failure of a functioning it judiciary to prosecute what artj here acts of fraud andlea manipulation of market, the, ability of these corporations to not only with the treasury but essentially borrow money withour interest while the rest of us are shackled in a kind of -- iis mean, this is just indefensible in a functioning democracy. you know, it's an odd situation to be dissident or critic andic, call for the roll call.law. the political spectrumrum traditionally, those who call a for the rule of law and thend he restoration of the rule of law are considered conservative.cose yet that is essentially what people such as myself for doing. is the radicals who have takendw power because that iswer becau essentially what we're asking for, the application of law to f

be applied against all peoplepld impartial, and it's not being-pn done. >> interested in hearing your opinions.wikiles, a antagonism with the new york times. >> well, the new york times, time would not call it antagonism because they printed much of th documents. what you had was they took the information and there was bothot on the editorial pages andiage within the newspaper kind of k character assassinationi.as i think it was, you know, whoever leaked it, whetherear broadly mattingly did or not, i don't know. exposed to nuclear war crisis including the killing of the journalist in cold blood. helicopters are attackingcopte

civilian hands.an. i think that there is a moral imperative for those who see war crimes.urembela report them, even when they aree in -- they contravene securityce requirements.quir this is what he did when he leaked the pentagon papers.hi i think there are probably far more destructives in terms of e release of the reformation to the wider public. a lot of the stuff, is just gossip. cables and foreign leaders we don't like and things thatsin ambassador said. hillary clinton calling anditon diplomats to spy on people in the u.n. within it was some significantan information that i think should

be made public, should have been made public so that we can begin to understand what has been happening in the conflict in iraq in afghanistanh.an >> we have an hour and a half left.lef nonfauthor of nine nonfiction books. war is a force.ng what every person should knowery about war. 2005.in 2 american fascists. i don't believe in a this, which is no imprint called with atheism becomes religion.that the came out in 2008.we empire of allusion in 2009 to o lend his most recent book, the world as it is came out in 2011. well, every month when we have,r the authory on we always ask ts about what they're reading, somm of their favorite books andteir influences.ok

as we continue our program wanto to assure you that out.

>> and we're back with our in-depth guest.is hed you are currently reading thetr cross and the lynching tree. >> one of the most important books and theology of the last few decades. an amazing feeling did, and thib book, which he spent ten years writing is a look at the uttert failure on the part of whature o theologians. a reign of terror.. thd he argues correctly that the failure on the part of the white church to understand the the crucifixion.i

it could not see the power of the crucifixion andcrucion fundamentally the message of thy gospel itself.. and it is a really stunning,lly stemming mark.ning it is just filled with intellectual and a militant -- emotional depth charges.charthat whether you are believe or not.s >> can chris talk about the issues?h a black man might face saying the same things you're saying ty a wide audience? >> well, look at what happened ppen to cornell west when he has gotten up and criticize barack obama.back o he has been attacked roundly and including within the blackcludi

mainstream media to get up and speak an uncomfortable truth. have a lot of people turn away from him, turn their backs. i spent over two decades of myo life living among people who are non-white. i speak spanish as well as arabic, french, and it has been a long process. as of white privilege smell to begin to understand the reality of white supremacy, both as ah manifest itself within the heart of the empire and on the outer reaches of the empire.mpire. there are all sorts of sorts of as assumptions that i can make the people who live in communities i and people of color cannot. and it is important, i think, for those of us to come out ofh

positions of privilegeositions of privilege, and we spoke about the two and half years i lived in roxbury, to put ourselves in the environments, because we are forced to confront our own linus. and when you develop close relationship with people who suffer, whether palestinian or whether they're african-american, inner-city, when they become people you love and care about, then you see how entire systems conspire against them. it becomes painful for you, but i think more importantly you begin to see all the things that up until then you're unable to see. and that blindness, there'll always be a kind of gulf between you and those who are oppressed. there will always be an inability to understand. you get as close as you can come to work as hard as you can, and

then you except your own deficiencies. and i think that very, very few people, one of the books you put up there was the story is really remarkable historian, wrote a trilogy of books. i teach in a prison, i'm about to start a couple of weeks and in teaching those those three books. it's the aftermath of the civil war, reconstruction, jim crow. then he wrote a beautiful thin essay called when is free free? but a very few -- howard zinn had come but i think very few people managed to cross those lines but it really takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of work and a lot of self reflection and self-criticism. >> host: (202) 737-0001 for those of you in the east and time zones. to mountain and pacific time zones.

booktv@c-span.org is her e-mail address. at booktv is our twitter handle. angel in farmington california you're on with chris hedges. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. can you hear me? >> host: we are listing. please go ahead. >> caller: good show, mr. hedges did you and others like you, -- [inaudible] can you be so kind? who is constitutional attorney is disheartening that -- [inaudible] can you lend an opinion please? it is very, very disheartening. thank you. >> guest: well, i think one of the tragedies of the obama administration is that you have a chief executive who is clearly intelligent. he is trained as a constitutional lawyer, and yet he's done so little to not only defend our constitutional

rights, but reversed the assaults against constitutional rights that were put into place by the previous administration. obama clearly understands where the centers of power line. he knows that in order to remain in office he must serve the centers of power, but sadly it's opportunism. it's careerism. he has decided to betray the majority of the citizenry in order to accrue for himself. on many levels, most of us are probably clueless. i don't think obama is clueless. and in some ways that makes an even more guilty. >> host: mr. hedges writes in "the death of the liberal class," election obama was more one more trial of illusion of substance but it was a skillful

manipulation and betrayal of the public by corporate power elite. we mistook style and ethnicity, and advertising tactic pioneered by calvin klein for progressive politics in genuine change. john is in chicago. john, you're on booktv. >> caller: mr. hedges, so nice to listen to you. i do feel that you disparage the democracy in the united states. i've been working on a southside chicago for about 15 years and i think the promise that has been made, in my area, is substantial and been done in a democracy. i feel that obama has all sorts of problems. yet at the same time i think he is a leader, of significance. and i'm sorry that you seem to be against democracy being

practiced in the united states. >> guest: well, i wish democracy was practice, and should become in the united states. and i certainly feel that i, as a writer any citizen, am fighting as hard as i can to reinstate democratic prerogatives, and democratic rights that have been taken from us. not simply by obama. this up in something that has been going on for a while. but i think we have to restore power to the citizenry by wresting it away from corporations began to do believe obama has been complicitous in the diminishing of our rights and of our political power. >> host: next call comes from anchorage, alaska. you're on booktv with chris hedges. it helps if i push the button. sorry about that. >> callertransit am ion now? post that you are. >> caller: good afternoon. i want to go back to your book,

data destruction, and ask you, do make any mention of the chinese in africa? i'm interested in your thoughts on this issue. >> guest: days of destruction, days of revolt has not come out yet but it is coming out in june and it is focused solely on the united states. so, we don't write anything about africa. joe socko and i are provided what's happening internally within the united states. >> host: mr. hedges, we are getting a lot of e-mails, tweets on this topic, so i want to have you address this. this is from "empire of illusion," 2009. universities have trained hundreds of thousands of graduates for jobs that soon will not exist. they have trained people to maintain a structure that cannot be maintained. the elite know how only to feed the beast until it dies.

once it is dead they will be helpless. don't expect them to save us. they don't know how. >> guest: there you go. that's the occupied movement. we are the people, we have been waiting for. i think the power of the occupied movement is that they understand that political truth. that the elites are not going to save us. the elites are through by the most sophisticated system of mass propaganda in human history, and they are causally taking our polls, focus group to find out what we think so they can parrot it back to us. that's what the public relations industry does and does very well. to manipulate our emotions. i think that those who have gravitated toward the occupy movement understand that the elites essentially served interests that are not our interests. and that it is incumbent upon those of us took it out and carry out acts of civil

disobedience if we're going to protect those interests. >> host: next call for chris hedges comes from new milford connecticut. george, you are on booktv. >> caller: hi, mr. hedges. i would like to ask you about, you mentioned smedley butler a little bit ago. could you talk of a more butler and his role in the 1930s, plot to seize the white house? and also if you could speculate on why we know so little about that plot and about general butler himself? thank you. >> guest: butter, and i think served 33 years and for much of something in the u.s. marine corps, after the war began to reflect, i think we had a current figure, a colonel in the military, also he engage in that kind of reflection after he left service, begin to look at why interventions were carried out on whose behalf they were carried out, and butler writes that he commanded units that invaded, you know, the dominican

republic to make it sure for -- make a safer sugar interests. cuba to make it safer banking interests. and wrote this pamphlet, which is a very long, calls wars abroad to which he lays out that it's also interesting as you point out, it's a kind of a historical footnote in a position to roosevelt and the new deal there were industrial us, powerful industrialists. henry ford and others, who wanted to carry out a coup d'état. i'm not 100% on henry ford thing, so i would go have to go back and check the history books. trying to recruit butler to carry out a coup, and he exposed them. >> host: chris hedges is our guest. gretchen from arlington, virginia, e-mails into you. i would like to thank you for helping me with your writing to navigate these last several bleak years. i met you during desert storm shield. you were interviewing my marine

corps husband, a battalion commander come in particular i thought you were clear eyed and unsentimental in seeing that the people in uniform were honorable, smart and savvy and often far more skeptical of the coming conflicts than their civilian masters. the beat goes on. iraq, afghanistan and so much more. how can our leaders continue to be so out of touch? gretchen, arlington, virginia,. >> guest: i'm a huge fan of her husband, carl, who commanded a marine corps battalion that i spent a lot of time in the first battalion first greens, and that went into kuwait, when the first battalions that went into kuwait. you know, when the military is good, it's really good. when they are bad they are really bad. and the marine corps is sort of the extreme example of that. when they come in like profiling, they were marked men,

and he, if i'm ever after the war, i remember to moment. colonels are sort of isolate figures in the time so we talked a lot. i'm at one time he asked me what because i never sort of like to interview above anybody the level of lance cooper. the hire of you in the food chain the more sort of spin you get. so i tend to, like ernie back, stay with the low rates. but he asked me what do women think of it. and i said, to be honest, they don't we like officers but i'll say colonel fallon cares about his men and the kind of choked up at the end of the war, he had seven wounded, one of the producers of the anatolian, you know, i haven't spent weeks and weeks with you. i think you're a really great commander. and a great leader. and he said, i got all my men home. and you know, on that level he is a vietnam vet. in some ways he go to people

like that and there's no one who hates more work than they do. the colonels. they want to take all of that home. and because of my relationship with the marine corps, i spoke to about 250 colonels, lieutenant colonels on the eve of the iraq war, and got up and gave his hour-long talk. still thought it was not a good idea. and all those people come because they were putting their men on the line, because of them, there was a disagreement. they understood this. they did their duty. but they knew it was insane. and you saw a few military leaders at fairly high level walk out of this program. so the idea that somehow the military is a monolith, or that you don't have figures like colonel fallon, and having spent

time in military, they have tremendous respect. i think we've done a terrible disservice to them. the idea somehow it's a volunteer force and, therefore, they ask for what they get. we have plunged thousands of families in this country into perpetual grief and loss. and for what? we don't have a right to do that but we don't have the right to do that to these men and women. as i said, i'm not a pacifist, but you only go to war as a last resort. as a final imperative because the costs are so grave. and so, that comment from gretchen means a lot to me because i'm a great admirer of her husband. >> host: why did you choose to make his speech at rockford college in 2003? why did you choose that college? why did you choose then? did you know what the reaction was going to be? >> guest: no, i didn't. i have been saying similar kinds of things for some time.

my book, had come out that fall. inevitably i would be asked about the impending invasion of iraq. now if there was a good careers i would've dodged the question, but i felt i was morally not permissible. the only thing i knew about rockford college, when my heroes jane addams had graduate from the. i did note that subsequent the trustee board have posthumously tried to revoke her diploma. so i thought oh, well, they are just all pacifist socialist like jane adams. no wonder they invited me. and got their and ran right into the bustle. so no, i wasn't at all prepared for what i had to do. was a uncomfortable. you can watch it on youtube, to be booed by the crowd. edu-con at one point of people actually climb up on a podium and try to push me away, and then be attacked over and over, you know, hour after hour.

and yet someone said to me, when my friend said maybe you should have given the average follow your dream speech, or maybe should've tried to moderate you. i got about five or six letter some students there who think me for what i was doing. i was really only talking to them. everyone else, i don't care about. i think i did the right thing. i paid a price for the recovery like to lose their job, and i lost my pension, medical benefits and no. i paid a price for that, of course, but, you know, war is not and abstraction to be. without being melodramatic, i've lost friends in these conflicts, and i will go back there and i want to at least go back from these zones of privilege and comfort that live in and be able to say that i did everything in my power, however futile it was, against these conflicts. and i hope that coming in, maybe

i will have earned the right to ask for the forgiveness. >> host: who is units? >> guest: my wife does make you dedicate several of your books to her. you take it to write it in latin, the dedication. why is that? >> guest: because i think it's beautiful. latin poetry. and it's a kind of, except for a supposed flatness, kind of a code the twin manner. she is almost a co-author. i have to admit, she's an actor but she's a great writer, and everything i write still filters through her hands. the our pages in there were basically should vote, several pages. >> host: minnesota, sam, go ahead with your question or comment for chris edwards -- chris hedges. >> caller: thank you for taking the call. i'm going to come do you have any opinion about what corporate america has to the native american and our culture, no, the fact that poverty-stricken

reservations, and an inside and his multimillion dollar casinos that they are running sometimes, some of the states as well. i was wondering what your opinion on that was? >> guest: it's the idea that camera, and this is just outside of reservations, but i think within the country at large that some of him is a form of development. you see, of course, a big push now to build casinos in philadelphia. i live in princeton, so i'm following that debate. it's about an hour away. and this has worked for a few indian tribes. there's an indian tribe in connecticut that, of course, is working very well. but like there's one casino that nobody goes into on high and ridge pine ridge is a desolate, bleak area. so if you look at the totality of indian casinos, they have actually not been particularly lucrative. you have a few sort of sterling examples where people actually

been able or tried to been able to make money. but heinrich is the port, second poorest county in the united states, at any one time 60% of people in pine ridge are living without electricity and running water. it is really, i mean, you almost have a hard time believing you're in america, frankly. >> host: chris hedges, mark peterson e-mails into you, i'm a great admirer of which are trying to do. as a historical liberal, i find myself perplexed the passion i feel for the ron paul candidacy. >> guest: ron paul for me is sort of a funny guy. i mean, he says a lot of good stuff, but for me libertarianism is sort of a pre- and dutch of ideology. the idea, that government should be so diminished, well, i mean, the problem is that government is in munich in the face of corporations like exxon mobil.