school and one of the students near the end of the day said he doesn't want to see a woman as president. neither does his mother. he's african-american, and it's so hard to deconstruct when what you are saying about when they are 11 and they're starting to be bored. it's hard to deconstruct what i have the academic lens but i'm not talking like counter can read it occupied objectificati objectification, misogyny, the fact the adolescents, their mind is not even fully developed yet. so when you talk about juvenile justice, we tal talked about why there are more people of color in prison, you know, and you try to give them this historical context when there would about what they're going to do on

friday night and they don't understand the lynchings in mississippi and brown v. board of education. so on top of that when we as teachers are exhausted and we don't have the time to get out in the streets and from about how we're being -- about how i worked out of contract after years of seniority because our superintendent is a guy who could put his funds towards evaluation systems and, you know, sort of this attack on teachers instead of supporting me with lower class size. i mean, there's so many complexities and nuances, and when you throw in 72% of my school is at poverty level. i transferred from 95%, when you're reporting child abuse speakers i'm so sorry, we are

getting -- >> no, no. >> no note we're over our time and thank you. >> my voice will live on. spent thank you all so much for being here, and please if you want to continue this conversation, and i sense many of you would like to, come to signing area five where they will be with her books. thank you so much [inaudible conversations] >> you are watching booktv, nonfiction authors and books every weekend on c-span2. >> bruce bechtol is next on booktv. he discusses the challenges posed by north korea today and the differences between the rule

of kim jong own and his father kim jong-il. this is about one hour. >> how is everybody doing? can you hear me? good. i apologize for my loud voice. i'm half deaf. i wore a set up headquarters in the marine corps, signals intelligence, morse code and augusta. before get started i would like to thank some people for bringing me here. first of all think you very much to the world affairs council for bringing me here. bringing me here i've always been treated like a king. and a special thanks to linda for organizing this event. my lovely bride of 24 years is here, and i'd like to thank her for putting up with all my rhetoric over the past 24 years. and i'll be seeing my youngest daughter next week am so that would be my most fun trip or i'm going out to iowa which is all

you know is the cultural center of the universe. but i would also like to thank my colleagues and friends at angelo state university who have encouraged my scholarship at its angelo state university by the way, and i really appreciate the fact that for four years they have encouraged me to study what to me is a very interesting subject matter and i intended it for as long as i can. and, finally, i would like to thank all of you for coming. it is always a great pleasure to speak to the world affairs council of using this as a great place to speak. and i'm really happy to be here and away from the always is in the desert of san angelo. so let me talk about what i'm going to try to do, hopefully successfully today, is i'm going to talk about key events that have occurred really since february. i take that back, really since

november of 2013 which was when the uncle of kim jong owned by marriage and when his purging occurred. i'm going to tie the events that i talk about to this book, "north korea and regional security in the kim jong-un era" and for c-span viewers there is a double on amazon as well. so let's talk about what kim jong-un has actually done since he took over. i do, before he took over, people who studied, north korean a study specialist like myself, actually predict this guy growth and berne, switzerland, for most of his life to get a picture of michael jordan on his wall, you know, he understands western democracies and economics. so he will change, right? we will see. i'll address what's taking place in the first two and half years of kim jong-un's rule, the third again. and my assessment is that he's

quite simply carried out his father's military policies. so we will look at military things first. people ask me, bruce, were you in a military? no, i was in the marine corps. several things that kim jong-un has done come first of all been conducted and a nuclear test since his father died. within three months after his father died which was the largest most contained test that the north koreans have conducted, and the iranians were there. wonder what that means? number two, missile test. and srbm, short range ballistic missile, long range ballistic missile obvious it is longer. the taepodong missiles series that the north koreans have is a three stage missile, and experts in our nations capital and in many, an unclassified report at

our nation's intelligence agencies release, et cetera, were saying that north korea simply was using to primitive materials and technology to successfully launch a three stage missile. guess what? on december 12, 2012, the north koreans successfully launched a three stage missile and put a satellite into orbit. what does that mean? it means they can hit alaska or hawaii at least but not texas. in addition to that they have the wassail and 13, also called decade in eight under development. the reason i would like to express to folks why this is so important is because this missile just has the same types of ranges that the taepodong series has, but it comes on a mobile launcher. so instead of having to put it on a big pad and take it on --

down on a train and children they put on a transporter and basically a long tractor-trailer that lives out like this and images file the missile but what does that mean? it means warning time is drastically cut short for american vitamins it's hard for us to get ships and position in ballistic missile defense systems imposition because all they got to do is let the thing up and fired. how far along is that missile system? i don't know. but under kim jong-un it continues to be developed. as if things aren't bright enough because i'm here to cheer you people up, the north koreans are developing a new and it looks like of our redevelopment based on the test launches that they did in recent months, a new, for them, 300-millimeter multiple rocket launcher system. this system when put on the dmz between the two koreas can hit not just sal but south of seoul. why is that important? what we're just south of seoul?

an air base. camp humphreys army base. so very important stuff. they already have multiple rocket launchers and long range guns that can target parts of seoul. they're just increasing the capability. much of this has come to the floor after kim jong-il's death. most of what i just talked about after kim jong-il's death. so it's good to know, i guess, that kim jong-un is carrying on his father's legacy. what about conventional forces? i mean, i think the biggest problem guys like me have with conveying the north korean threat is folks like yourself, well educated folks who care about international affairs often watch shows like frontline. and i do, do, when the cable is down, but that's a joke, but frontline recently did an expoée on north korea where they had hidden cameras but i do know

common of you have seen that. it was very compelling because it wasn't pyongyang where most tourists ago. these were villages and towns outside of pyongyang. it was horrible. showed crumbling infrastructure, no electricity, no fuel, no food, starving people, beggars in the street. so it's hard to look against that backdrop and then say, below, they are a big military threat. they are, and the fact of the matter is the reason north korea is 1.1 million man military is a threat, the reason they're still able to maintain that threat is because they take the resources away from those people that are struggling just to survive, and give them to the mentor. something to keep in mind. let me give you some examples. 900 new tanks. the north koreans have built 900 new tanks in the past seven years. we have some military guys in the background. i did a presentation at

georgetown about three weeks ago, and it was an army colonel in the audience and i said, how many tanks is 900 tanks? and he goes, a lot. so we get really technical and, you know. the north koreans have also in the past seven years, they reorganized the other units are long the frontcourt, along the front line. they now have seven new special operation forces divisions along dmz. interesting stuff in that forward area. so what does this mean? what does this thing, this military part of it? what is their actual capability? right now today their conventional forces are capable of inflicting hundreds of thousands of casualties within the first few days of any conflict. that makes a war not option for us. just something to think about. there are other things going on,

however, in north korea. there's a lot of recent events -- not just the recent purging of trinity which is very significant and i'm glad linda brought that up. beginning in late february, this new multiple rocket launcher that i was talking about started because it off the east coast. why were they testing it? what was the american military doing in favor of 2014? does anybody know? no? they were conducting a joint and combined exercise with the south korean military. so essentially what they were telling us was, you guys go ahead and practice for war. we are ready. they testfired multiple rocket launchers and three rockets overprint which are also called frogs but look, nothing like an amphibian, and scud missiles. and eventually at the end of all of this the united states, such a state, japanese foreign

minister, iraq's foreign minister were meeting in japan. when it happened the north koreans fired nodong missiles but why would they fire nodong missiles? obviously when we're doing our joint exercises they were showing us that they could combat us anytime they wanted to. when we met with the japanese they were showing us they could hit japan with a missile because a nodong has arranged it tokyu which has a range of 1500 columbus. but wait, there's more. also immediately after this whole test firing of these weapons took place on the east coast, on the west coast a long what is basically a maritime dmz known as the northern limit line, the north koreans fired probably about 500 shells, some of them actually about a quarter of them, 25% or so, actually over the line into south korean waters. what do the south koreans do?

the south koreans the marines actually scrambled their self-propelled 155 howitzers and fired back at them into north korean waters. they scrambled the best get a they have, the f-15 k., and they moved south korean citizen on those islands to improved shelters. shelters that had been approved since the artillery attack of 2010 on the island. what's interesting about all of that is, after all of this was done in north korea had splashed shows and south korea's water and south grits splashed shells in north korea's waters, and so they have a splashing contest

also likely to do a long range ballistic missile test soon, and so if you're going to ask bruce, what do you think about the future? i would see in the near future we can probably expect a violent provocation, another long range missile test, and a nuclear test. so we've got to look forward to. and let me discuss what my definition of a provocation is. provocation is a violent act meant to inflict casualties on the south. so north korea is likely to conduct a violent act meant to inflict casualties on the south sometime within the next few months, or within the next year or two. i've got a bad cold. my wife says it's because i smoke cigars too much, but what does she no? let's talk about, going to talk about, or i'm going to talk about and then will play a question and answer time, let's

talk about stability in the north korea because i think that's very important. let me talk about stability in the military first. does anybody know what kim jong-un did, what his first act was? his first act in 2011, the day his father died was military order number one. no kidding, his first order, they called it his first order, and that was to bring all of the north korean troops training in the field back on. they came back home for the three-month mourning period that they had for his father. there were anecdotal signs to stay within the military even then, and the security services within the country, think gestapo, because that's literally what they are. there are several of them. rations and discipline were reportedly quite an issue in late 2013, including during a civil exercise to explain that,

during the winter training exercise that north korea has every year, runs from december to march, they frankly duties civil defense exercises at pyongyang where people have to carry a round wooden rifles, fake wooden rifles, the living fossils and stuff, and reportedly during this last time people were actually ran out of rations to the point that people were passing out in the foxholes. interesting stuff. this all happened under kim jong-un but it doesn't tell you about kim the guy, that neato guy who's a big fan of michael jordan and other folks. and again, that guy that we thought was going to be this guy, not me, but some people that was going to be this modest guy and he's going to bring about westernize changes. well, during the three-month time frame when, in the mourning period for his father compete --

assistant chief of staff was caught drinking alcohol, because during the three-month time period treating alcohol was banned in all of north korea. kim jong-un ordered that the man be killed so not a hair was left on his head. they executed him by mortar round. and for those of you don't know what a mortar is, it's an artillery piece, and acidified it like this, they lower it like that and killed them. they literally blew him to pieces. so after that, the naysayers about him being a horrible human rights violator, like his father, kind of went by the wayside. by the end of 2013, two-thirds, two-thirds of senior generals have been either replaced, purged or moved to different jobs. are you starting to see the pattern? in april 2013 come anytime kim jong-un was visiting military

units, his bodyguard details increased. and very interesting, in 2013 reportedly -- emerged as a number two. there's an no such thing as a number two by the way in north korea. he has since come since i wrote this book has since been reassigned. so now he is one of those two-thirds generals as well. he was seen as a de facto number two but in order to i trust that please allow me to explain this. some of you already know this about north korea. north korea really consists of three institutions. the party, the military, the ccd services and then there's a fourth entity that is sort of blurry, and that's the kim family wishing. and in a family circle of the kim family. those people to work to relate to the kim's or who are the

sons, grandsons and the great grandsons of those who fought with him as a partisan against the japanese who later became generals who fought against the south koreans after 1950. that's the fourth institution. you must control all three of those key institutions, and there is no one guy who controls, for example, the party but there is the one guy who controls the movie. there are three chains of commit any north korean military. very interesting. so none of these guys has complete power even over one institution, and they all answer the kim jong-un, which means if he doesn't control those institutions, nobody is controlling those institutions. out of this whole process evolves? does anybody remember, see a show of hands, how many remember that scene in coverage of the funeral when kim jong-il a died, then hauling that car through

the snow in pyongyang? how many didn't see that? how may people have seen the three faces of these? [laughter] joanne woodward, academy award-winning performance in the movie. i thought it was good. when you look at that car there was the people that were actually, for on each side, that were escorting kim jong-il's body. so kim jong-un was one and there were seven out of those seven, six have now either been purged or reassigned. those were the guys. those were the main guys, and most of them are not there anymore, at least they are not there in key positions. so in 2013, the whole year of 2013, massive purge has occurred, but the big purge occurred in november 2013 when jang song-thaek, kim jong-un's uncle by marriage was purged. first purged and then executed.

i talk about his execution in a lovely way that happen in a couple of minutes. so let me remind you if i may of how horrible kim jong-un is, or is not. a good friend of mine who is a korean scholar in seoul county and i were talking in columbia pike at a restaurant there, i will say the name of the restaurant, with my wife, and he said to me, you know, bruce, kim jong-il is worker is weaker than his father but he said and this was 2009. he said the next kim will be weaker than kim jong-il. a wiki is will depend on whether the regime survives or not. and that's true. that's what's going on right now. he must control those key institutions. he must control the party. you must control the military and the security services. and t. for d. states in excess of some turmoil in the military.

what will happen if he can't control these institutions? the most likely thing that will happen is in pollution. we could have something like a civil war, but there is not any way for north korean government to survive and less they have one man rule, and that man controls the institutions. north korea, the dprk, simply has not existed as a government in any other way. so they don't not operate a system any other way. what do you do when you have this kind of thing going on? what do you do when your power is week? you purge. so we've seen a lot of purges lately. most of you probably heard about jang song-thaek spurge. jang song-thaek, his uncle, married to kim yong he looks a lot like kim jong-il. almost like taking a kim jong-il with a wig on but if you can imagine that.

i've had a picture if you want to see oliver of the happy to show it to you. in north korea, public purges are almost unheard of but it just doesn't happen. i talked a group of folks earlier and i use the example of a powerful guy between the organization in the party of north korea. he was having a feud with jang song-thaek before kim jong-il died. he was reported to have died in an auto accident at pyongyang. now, you can just do you guys know, traffic in pyongyang -- [laughter] -- it ain't like houston. so what do you think the chances are he really died in an auto accident? of the reason i gave that example is because that's normally what happens, some guy gets executed or sent off to a reeducation camp. they don't say that. they don't want to embarrass the party or embarrassed that

individual. .. >> for what she thought were crime against the state, and she divorced him conveniently on the day he was executed. kim jong un's brother actually led the guys with pistols that went down and arrested him, which was very interesting. there was even a rumor that was active in the chinese press that

the brother was executed, that he and his two key subordinates were executed by maddened dogs, that they were thrown naked into a cage and eaten to death. literally. yeah, pretty horrible. i don't think that's what happened. another rumor about the way he died that i think is probably more likely is that he was executed by anti-aircraft machine gun which is pretty grisly in itself, but at least it would go faster than being attacked by a dog. interesting stuff, a lot of rumors out there. what is all this a sign of? you know, that these horrific things that they're doing to keep their opponents down? it's a sign of fear. and that's what's going on right now in north korea. so you're probably saying to yourself, well, bruce, tell me what you think the real reason

was that the brother was purged. if it wasn't for corruption, then why was it? and i'll tell you. he was likely purged because of the fact that he was creating factionallization in the north korean government. he had moved himself into position where he had guys in the foreign ministry that were absolutely loyal to him, he had guys in the party who were absolutely loyal to him and the security services, particularly the ministry of people's security, and he had generals who were loyal to him. what does that mean? a separate faction forming within the north korean ruling infrastructure. and that hasn't happened since 1957. 1957 was when illinois ill sung -- kim ill sung told the chinese to leave his country, chinese troops left north korea, and there was two factions. there was the pro-soviet faction, and there was the pro-chinese faction, he purplinged both of -- he purged

both of 'em -- [laughter] because that's the way the kim family does it. we haven't seen that kind of turmoil since back then. and kim jong un's power base is much more tenuous than his grandfather's was in 19357. so if -- 95 -- 1957. what this was really all about was power. and the fact that kim is having a hard time holding on to his power. purging his uncle, executing his uncle, executing a bunch of his uncle's relatives, friends and cohorts, sending a whole bunch more off to reeducation camps is not a sign of strength. that is a sign of weakness. so something to keep in mind. something else that i would like to pass on to you and, again, this is in my book, i hope that now that i have talked about the security services, the military, the party and the kim family

inner circle, it should be apparent that there is no such thing as a number two. that's the first thing you need to keep in mind. there are lots of number two guys and lots of agencies. for example, there's a number two guy in the state security department. there's a number two guy in the ministry of people's security. there is a five-star general in the military, in the gpb and then in the state security corps and in military peoples armed forces, and they all answer to separate chains of command. this is done on purpose. this is the patrimonial politics system that north korea employs. divide and conquer, proficiency is not rewarded, loyalty is rewarded. so what you have to understand is even though it was a big blow when the brother was purged, it wasn't an overwhelming blow as some people might think because there were several other number twos. in fact, some of those number twos were probably advising kim

jung-il to actually execute his uncle. and by the way, the first chapter -- or, i should say the second chapper in my book -- chapter in my book details their nuclear program, including their ballistic missile program and where it's at right now. the second chapter after that deals with actual provocations and what they're planning to do and how we can avoid it, which i think very interesting since we're likely to see those within the next year or so. and now that i've been talking about -- sorry about that, folks -- now that i've been talking about the instability within the north korean government, it's important to el you that the next to last chapter in the book deals with what we do. that is to say us and our south korean allies and the international community if north korea collapses. and that's a chapter that goes in depth on how north korea could collapse, how the international community would

react and what impact it would have on our foreign policy. so if you read it, i hope you enjoy it. so what does the future hold for us? i think that -- and i'm very serious when i say this -- if we're talking about engaging north korea, i think it's very important to understand that north korea will never, ever, ever, ever, ever give up its nuclear weapons. it's not only a fact that they consider this important to their national security, this is a legacy. we're talking about a die nastic form of government -- die nastic form of government. kim ill sung was the one who dreamed of having nuclear weapons. he passed that on to his son. it's now part of his grandson's legacy. and as long as the kim family is ruling north korea, which is how long they'll be in north korea, they're going to keep their nuclear weapons. it doesn't matter what they tell us. we could also plan on seeing

north korea -- which has seen its aid from china and other important places go down -- continue to engage in proliferation and illicit activities. and when i say proliferation, one of the key countries of proliferating to is syria. for example, syria's chemical weapons? from north korea. syria's ballistic missiles? almost all of them from north korea. scud b, scud c, scud d, scud r, no dong and tapo dong all in iran's inventory, all purchased from north korea. conventional weapons, tanks, trucks, artillery, rpgs, etc., syria and iran are buying them from north korea, and much of it is also going to hezbollah. which, of course, is a terrorist organization. so when people ask me, well, why do you think that north korea should be on the state department's of list of nations who support terrorism, of course, my answer is, well, because they support terrorism. [laughter] pretty simple to me.

so we can expect to see a lot of proliferation, because that raises probably anywhere from $1-$3 billion for the regime every year, proliferation does. so interesting stuff. something else i'd like you to consider is that if something were to happen like what happened with chung sunk tech in november of 2013, it is likely that manager like that -- not likely, possible that something like that could actually bring down the regime. because this really rocked north korea. not only did it rock north korea internally, it rocked their foreign affairs, for example, and who's their most important ally? their only real ally? china. and does everybody know who the point man for china was? it was shun tech. we had that vacuum for a few months at least where north korea had difficulties dealing with china at least for a while

because they had purplinged today she can -- purged tie check. and i'm quite sure kim jong un was advised of this, so if something like that happened again within the near future, it could rock north korea even harder than it did this time. so i'm sure you're sitting on your seats rocking back and forth going, gee, bruce, can kim jong un survive? and the answer is, maybe. the leader of north korea, in order to keep the country from exploding, must have control of his database. his power base. and kim jong un does not have that. he does not yet have control of the party, the military, the security services and his own family. so if you want to talk about will he survive? the answer is, yes if. yes if he consolidates his power

base to the point his father did that he was able to control the country by controlling the key institutions this the country. no if he continues to have the troubles that he's having now. it has to end, because it can't keep going on like this. so let's say that kim jong un and the regime do collapse. what are the most likely scenarios? again, you're probably sitting in your seats going, well, wouldn't that be a military coup? or as my 20-year-old daughter, a coupe dethat? coup d'etat? [laughter] and my answer is, well, it's possible. how many people here saw hunt for red october? lot of us. we got a lot of old people here, huh? that was sean connery, 1990. that was one of the first dates i took my wife on. [laughter] do you remember the scene where sean connery kills a political officer? great scene. well, if you're a north korean

and you have to kill that guy, you've got to kill two guys. and let me explain why. because if you're a corps commander, a division commander, a brigade commander in north korea, you don't have one guy looking over your shoulder, you have two. a guy from the general political bureau who's looking over your shoulder and is the same rank that you are, and he's reporting back to the party. you have another guy over your right shoulder who belongs to the military security command which is the military version of the state security department, and he reports directly for the national defense commission. you have three separate chains of command. how in the world could you have a coup with that going on from corps all the way down to battalion? very difficult. everybody in north korea's being watched, so i'd say it's unlikely. how about a palace coup? i mean, kim jong un only has about a hundred palaces literally in north korea which he inherited there his father.

i'd say, again, that's unlikely. largely because, again, a dy nastic regime. what would somebody else use as their power base? even a military general? how about civil war? i think civil war's possible. in fact, the most likely if it, the country starts to completely splinter apart because none of the generals has absolute control over large portions of the military. but what's the most likely scenario if north korea goes down? i think the most likely scenario is we keep seeing events like we saw last fall and early winter, and the country starts to slowly collapse, and the kim family just can't hold it together anymore. i think that's about a 50/50 possibility. that could happen within the next few years. it could happen tomorrow. well, what if kim jong un consolidates his power over the next three years? if he's able to do that -- and that's a big if -- the

government will stabilize. that's the key. and if stability is to occur, it can only happen in the same model that his dad used and his grandfather used, the one that he uses. simple as that. he's got to use that, government set up as it is, to run the country successfully. it's the only way. now, the elite in the country, that 5-50,000 people that are, you know, related to the, what they call the jong class, you know, the guys who fought early in the korean war or fought with the partisans. those guys, their sons' grandsons and great grandsons, those people want this recream to succeed -- regime to succeed. they have every reason to want it to succeed. the question is, can it? the jury is still out. we don't know the answer to that yet. what does this mean for the korean peninsula, and what does this mean for the united states? it means that the south korean

or rok/u.s. alliance must plan for a two-headed monster. we must plan for this very large, dangerous, well-equipped despite what some people would tell you, army and its unpredictable behavior run by a guy who really doesn't know what he's doing. and that's kim jong un. and at the same time we have to plan for the collapse of that heavily-armed army. and that's going to be a nightmare, too; feeding people, getting rid of weapons of mass destruction, rebuilding the infrastructure, that will be a massive undertaking. and in the midst of this very real, very ominous threat, stability is needed in the rok and u.s. military alliance. so i'm here to tell you, i'm a big proponent, a huge proponent of maintaining a strong alliance with the republic of korea, our south korean allies. our seventh large trading partner. largest trading partner. we're almost at the end of this

thing. i don't know if you have any korean war veterans in here, but we're almost at the end of this thing. we can see the light at the end of tunnel. we just need to hang with it until this country implodes. and that will happen, i think, as long as we hang with it. the focus for the alliance and for the rok military as long as there is a north korean threat needs to be the north. so talk about we're going to give longer range to our aegis ships, and we're going to have refuelers, you know, great. (u thing for south korea to worry about is the sustain military. that -- north korean military. that's just the way it is. and i also believe downplaying this two-headed threat is not good policy. i think there's a lot of confusion out there. we'll see newspaper articles that talk about north korean army can't doç anything. it's just not true. they've shown they can do things. they did 'em in 2010, they'll do 'em again if they think they can get away with it. their ballistic missile and their nuclear programs continue

to grow, and i think we should take that seriously because it is a serious threat. so my assessment, if we're going to talk about where we're at -- oh, and by the way, in my book i have an entire chapter on the rok, south south korea u.s. alle and what it needs to prepare for the north korean threat and things they've done in the past five years including command and control. i've told you before i think we've got about a 50/50 shot at seeing this government implode in the next few years. why would i say 50/50 and not 60/40 or 20/10? it's unpredictable. it's a very unpredictable government, it's a very unpredictable system and an unstable system right now. something to keep in mind. but we do know this: if kim jong un fails, the dprk fails and, thus, explosion, implosion or civil war are the most likely scenarios when that happens. so seoul and washington and the

free world must plan accordingly. and i think i'll leave it there. [applause] >> okay. while members of the staff are picking up questions, i've got a few that were given to me. first question is where are they getting the material it is to build the missile? both the technical help and then just the metals, the physical materials? >> that's a good question. a lot of stuff that they've got, they've gotten dual use stuff. a lot of it they got from the japanese. some them gotten from the chinese. you're talking about missiles and things like that? yeah. in fact, for example, transporter erector launcher, that mobile thing that can go like this and launch a missile, there were eight of them seen in a parade about two years ago in by i don't -- pyongyang that cam

china. there was a lot of questions, apparently the united states directly questioned the chinese about it, and they said they thought they were selling them logging materials. [laughter] so there's a lot of dual use stuff out there. some of the things that the north koreans have they build themselves. but there's a lot of dual use stuff that's out there. yes, ma'am. >> russia forgave a lot of loans. how much can russia afford to prop up north korea? >> not much. and this is, the reason i think this question so important is because most of you realized that right up until 1990 the soviet union as it was called back then, they were providing oil, food stuffs, military equipment, training, everything, electricity or for their grid, everything for the north koreans. in 1990 the soviets told the north koreans from now on, from

this second forward anything that you get from us, foodstuffs, oil, electricity, military hardware, you're going to have to pay for it with hard currency. hard currency being u.s. dollars, japanese yen or german deutsche mark -- deutsche marks at the time. from that moment, north korea's economy started going down. and at one point it was operating, industry was operating at 10% of what they normally do. will russia ever get back to that level again? i don't think so. and so far at least, even though they forgave north korea's debt, they haven't actually started giving things to north korea like they did during the cold war. china gives north korea some stuff, but it's not nearly at the level that the soviets gave them during the cold war. but still i think it's very significant that russia's forgiven their debt, and some of that may be to put their finger in our eye because of what's going on with the ukraine.

>> in a society like korean society that respects age, what do you think the people themselves think of the young leader? >> well, you're asking great questions tonight. that is an issue. there are several issues with the kim boys. as you know, or three sons. kim jong un is the youngest. the old is kim jong nam who was caught trying to get into tokyo disney on a fake slovenia passport. [laughter] i just wish i could have been a fly on the wall. excuse me, sir, are you slow slovenian? yes, i'm a slovenian. [laughter] the second son is reported to be -- and this is according to kim jung-il's japanese chef -- very e effeminate, rumored to be xay, and in a communist -- gay, and in a communist society, unfortunately, that does not

allow him to lead. so he was out. the third son, obviously, is kim jong up. kim jong un. there's another problem with that. normally the first son takes over, not the third or second sop. there's another problem with that. all three of those sons are illegitimate. they were born to women, both of whom were dancers that kim jung-il met when they were young, and they were dancers, and he literally went i'll take that one. bad stuff. so they have a credibility problem based on the fact they're not even, you know, from one of his wives. he was married twice, but he had two daughters from his wives. and the fact that he is so young in a confucian society is a big deal. what makes that worse, what exacerbates that even more is the fact that he wasn't trained growing up in north korea. he grew up largely in switzerland. so he's got that problem too. and we talked about weakness of

of -- the weakness of his power base. i think that's part of that, the fact of his age and inexperience. it's gotta be. >> bruce, how do you get your information out of this secretive society, north korea, and what can you tell us about kim jong un's wife? >> i've got a com center in my house at zahn angelo -- san angelo. i get a direct feed from langley. [laughter] seriously, i do have a -- i'm kidding. i use a variety of sources. north korea is much easier to get information on now than it was 15 years ago. and one of the reasons why is we have a lot more defectors living in south korea and in the united states, some of them, or visiting the united states. they are a great source of information. cell phones now exist in north korea that bring information out that gets into the rok press and

gets into defector web sites. there are defectors running ngo groups in korea that put out a plethora of information every day that's accessible to anyone. and there's often government reports and briefings and studies that are done. and, of course, press reports. the south korean government tends to leak a lot of stuff out to the press, and if you're smart, you know how to play connect the dots. i would also say if you're going to, if you're going to examine north korea, if you're going to analyze north korea and the things about north korea that make it a threat, you can't just read korean-related materials. you also have to read materials related to the middle east. because north korea so heavily involved in proliferation and training of folks and all kinds of things, illicitactivities in the middle east, you have to be looking at both sides of that. >> the wife. the wife? >> oh, the wife. what about her?

[inaudible conversations] oh. i've never met her. i'm sure she's a nice -- [laughter] >> there any stories about her in. >> well, supposedly there was a rumor in south korea, and it spread like wildfire over the internet in south korea that she actually made a pornographic film before she actually was introduced to kim jong un. and does anybody know who introduced her to kim jong un? >> dennis rodman. >> no. [laughter] that would have been an l.a. lakers cheerleader probably. [laughter] no. again, this is a rumor mill. there was even rumors that tek had an affair with her before he introduced her to kim jong un. so if i could just make a side point about that, another interest thing about that is one of his previous girlfriends was in an acting troupe x they got -- and they got caught making a black market porno film

that was distributed in a lot of places in north korea. they were all executed. so he literally had his ex-girlfriend executed for making a porno. >> this question is from one of our members who took one of our trips to north korea. when we were in the, in dprk, we saw several military trucks powered by primitive wood-burning stoves. why would they let us see this, and it's hard to rationalize this wood-burning truck next to a nuclear weapon. how do they do it? >> okay, but you better start. because they got a nuclear weapon. in fact, they've got a two-track nuclear weapon program. and they've -- and we know for sure they have a plutonium weaponization program. it exists, it's there are. they probably have a highly enriched uranium program. and if it does exist, that means they probably have a warhead for a missile, the no dong, which can hit japan already.

that's what connecting the dots gets you right now. that's where they probably are. if you're going to talk about a wood-burning engine for a truck, i'm with ya. and why would they let you see that? well, maybe that's what they wanted you to see. >> [inaudible] >> okay. i can't speak to that. but, i mean, that doesn't take away -- another thick -- another thing i get from folks and it's a good question is how come north korea is proliferating their nuclear stuff to iran? isn't iran more advanced with their nuclear program? not really. north korea's more advance ared with their nuclear program. they got it first from the pakistanis. so if you're going to talk about equipment thatten works and -- that works and doesn't work, well, you know, maybe they have old trucks -- by the way, they still one t-34 tanks. they've still got those deployed, those are pre-korean war. they still have those. they don't throw anything away. so i would just keep that in

mind. >> there are a number of questions about china, where's china in all this, so i'm going to group them because we're running out of time. why do the chinese continue to support north korea? what's in it for them? do you think china's behind some of the recent aggression in north korea? but if north korea really fell apart or lost control of its population, isn't this something that would really impact china very badly in -- badly? >> yes. [laughter] >> mess you. >> thank you. yes, it would. although let me give you an example. i told you my wife is here with me tonight. her father lives 12 kilometers from the border. during the korean war, he rode a bike all the way down to south korea. not china. if north korea collapses, which i think is a matter of when, not if, there'll be a lot more people trying to get into south

korea than china be that border's -- if that border's not blocked and if the chinese border isn't blocked. i think that's something to think about. how much influence -- somebody asked me how much influence china has over north korea. i think china has more influence over north korea than anybody else. that is to say, not much. i don't think that north korea is heavily influenced by what the chinese tell them to do. i think there were individuals in the north korean government who were influenceed who would cut deals with the chinese, and that may even have had something to do with his execution. but typically -- and this goes all the way back to kim il-sung -- north korea has pretty much followed the policy that they wanted to. now, do i think china likes the activities that north korea's engaged in, this brinksmanship? i would call what they did with their nuclear program and their

missiles, i'd say the recent spate of stuff in the past year or so, no. i think china's very uncomfortable with that. i think the chinese would love for them to stop that. but that's not to say that china, as long as it is the prc, does not absolutely want to keep north korea alive as a nation-state, because they like that strategic and operational depth from american forces on the mainland of asia. and as hong as there is a prc, that's probably going to be condition. so they would not like to see north korea collapse. now, how far would they go to see that that doesn't happen? that's a good question. >> we have many, many really good questions. i can't get to them all, but i will are give them to bruce. just finally connecting these two thoughts. we occasionally hear about anti-americanism in south korea. in light of everything you're saying tonight, that's a little

surprising, but how likely is it that there would be a direct confrontation between the u.s. military and north korea or south korea? >> well, depending on how good the leadership is in north korea, how well kim is at decision making, you know, we could have a confrontation with north korea. you know, this anti-americanism in south korea really reached its peak in the 1980s. was there, although i think a lot of it was rather unfair. they were a middle class country with a burgeoning economy, and they didn't have their own government. and their own government was telling them it was because we were there. that's all gone away. the 1980s, you know, they had re-elections, thai -- it is probably, ark my, the most -- arguably, the most transparent democracy in all of asia. i would tend to call it that myself. young people in korea are very

different now than they were in the 1980s. so i'd say that anti-americanism, while there may be some in some people, it's certainly an extreme minority and has been for a while. and that was -- >> i think that that's it. >> okay. >> if your question, we'd like to close on time. if your question wasn't asked, join us at the back table. bruce will be around signing his book for a while, and there were a number of really good questions, so thank you for them. and thank you, bruce. ms. . [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> you're watching booktv on c spend 2 -- c-span2. beginning at 6:30 p.m. eastern,

caroline glick talks about the israeli solution. then at 3:30, kwame anthony -- [inaudible] details the life of j.e.b. duboise. -- w.e.b. dubois. , at 10 p.m. eastern, steven pressman tells the story of an american-jewish couple who travels to hats city-occupied i have yen that to rescue 50 children. and we wrap up with alex beam, author of "american crucifixion: the murder of joseph smith and the fate of the mormon church." that all happens tonight on c-span2's booktv. >> it's great to hear from my son. we went through a lot. being a father is, it's a hard thing in our culture because i don't think we remember what it's like. we don't know, we forget.

and i have to give him credit because he, he -- he says, well, i didn't give up on him, but he didn't give up on me either. you know, we were really having a rough time, and even when he was in prison i remember one time he called and was jumping on me for being such a terrible dad. and i told him, well, okay, son, but you weren't such a good son either. and i thought, you know what? why don't we just stop this nonsense? i admit i was a terrible dad. let's just love each other now. let's just change. that's not easy. and when you tell people to change, you can't make that, like a panacea, like a magic wand. but, you know, the struggle to change itself it's beautiful, it's healing. even on the hard days. and i see my son, i'm very proud of him because i see what he's gone through. i know the terrible things he's faced, the abuse he had from other guys. he had nor neglect -- more

neglect from me, even though i used to hit him when i shouldn't have hit him. his mother was -- his poor mom, too, and i want to give her credit because she stood by -- was another struggling young person. and she stepped up. so it's good to hear him. i think one of the things that helps a lot is we went on a trip last year. he got off parole, so he could finally come to california. and he bought this crazy truck he wanted, i bought with, i helped him with it, and we drove all the way from chicago to california. and, you know, it was one of the most beautiful trips. we came with our friend edward, puerto rican poet, and we had a great time. and i never argued with him once. we just had a great time talking, sharing.

and my son has become wise in his age. he's become a wounded healer. and that's partly what i'm saying. this is why it's important to point out we all -- but it's also important to point out this our wounds, we can make the change. and he's become one of these people x. be we were able to do poetry. now he's a poet, my son. anyway, i want to just thank him. he is sincere and honest this that. i think the issue that he was sip sere and issue -- sincere and honest, when he was this the gang, he was rough, he was angry, he was violent, but he's sincere and honest in his peace. and that's important. i had to go through it. to see my son, it's powerful. i don't want to apologize for the tears because i think it's part of what we forget. i never cried for a long time. i was told not to cry. a man shouldn't cry. but man tears are important. they're tears of your feminine aspect, they're tears of being

fully human. of being whole. it's important. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> for this month's booktv book club, join other readers to discuss "it calls you back: an odyssey through love, addiction, revolutions and healing," by former gang member turned candidate for governor of california, luis j. rodriguez. simply go to booktv.org and click on book club to somewhere the chat room. -- enter the chat room. you can log in as a guest or through your facebook or twitter account to post your thoughts on mr. rodriguez's book. >> host: kevin freeman, what do you do for a living? >> guest: i'm a money manager or, investment management. >> host: why are you writing books about security? >> guest: in 2008 when the stock market started to collapse, my clients were or losing money, and i wanted to understand why. so i started digging into it.

i found evidence of financial terrorism in the 2008 collapse. i shared it with friends who were connected to the pentagon and the fbi, and the next ing thing i knew i was a government contractor doing research which came out in 2009 found unequivocally there were evidence of foreign terrorism, financial terrorism as part of the stock market crash. >> host: and that resulted in your first book. >> guest: which came out in 2012 titled "secret weapon." >> host: and what's the thesis of book? >> guest: basically, when we were doing all sorts of crazy things in our housing bubble and so forth, enemies of the united states -- particularly radical islam, elements in the pla, elements in russia -- noticed our vulnerability economically, and they started using george soros-style techniques to target lehman brothers, aig, citibank, goldman sachs. and they actually started using

manipulative techniques in the markets with the intent of crashing our stock market. sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it's not. in fact, hank paulson, former treasury secretary, even came out and said in his memoirs, he said the russians approached the chinese and said if we dump all our holdings of american debt now, we can crater the american economy. and, in fact, the russians did, the chinese did not. but the russians did, and it worsened our economic situation substantially. >> host: you've got a follow-up, "game plan: how to protect yourself from the coming cyber economic effect." >> guest: well, as a part of my research i not only did what happened in 2008-2009, but i got into the chinese doctrine which was written in a book called unrestricted warfare, two senior colonels in the pla wrote this in 999. and they -- 1999. and they said the best way to to beat america is cyber attacks on

the infrastructure or ruining the current is i. so i -- currency. so i not only looked at what happened in 2008-2009, but i looked forward to what could happen. and what i found was the next type of war that we will face -- it's not going to be a shooting war, it's not going to be guns and tanks and aircraft carriers -- it will be cyber economic in nature. this is what all of our enemies have said because they don't want to take on the military head the head now. they've said we will crash the american economy be we get into a war. -- if we get into a war. that's what vladimir putin said just recently when he invaded the ukraine and we said we'll slap sanctions on you. his response was you don't want to do that, because i can crash your stock market. i can dump the dollar. the very things that i wrote about in 2008 and then covered in "game plan." "game plan" then says, okay, if that's what they intend to do, what would you as an individual american, how should you protect yourself? how do you -- where do you save?

do you fs invest? do you put everything in gold? do you buy silver? what do you do with your money in. >> host: as a money manager today, are you in the stock market? >> guest: i am. in fact, in a currency collapse, it performs pretty well. i have with me that i carry zimbabwe currency. that is from 1998, zimbabwe was producing $100 bills that you could exchange a thomas cook for a $20 u.s. now flip it over, that's what they were producing in 2008. their currency collapsed, those were $100 trillion bills not worth one penny. but despite the fact their currency collapsed, their stock market actually did pretty well. it was the best performing stock market in 2008. so i cover this in the book. if a currency collapse happens, you don't want to avoid stocks. if a deflation happens, you want bonds. so the question is, what kind of economic attack would we be

facing, what are they going to do and how should you respond? and that's why it's called "game plan." the plan is you look at the offense and say, well, they're going to pass. and if you want to pass, then you want a pass defense. if they're going to run, you want a run defense. so we cover all types of economic attacks and all types of investment and how you respond. >> host: right now what kind of defense do we have up against such an economic attack? >> guest: unfortunately, we don't have anything at the national level. general keith alexander, outgoing head of the nsa, has said recently -- in fact, he was on "60 minutes" -- and he said, basically, our enemies know how to crater our financial system, and there's nothing we can do to stop it at this point. we can't stop hackers from hacking target. we can't stop rogue employees from stealing secrets from the nsa. iran has hacked the navy web site. we can't totally prevent this. so it's a very complex topic.

it's the new form of warfare, and that's why putin was so confident in in saying if you do this, we can crater your market, we can attack your system. so there's very little we can do at the federal levelful we're trying, we're improving. i've been working with several groups in the government that are trying to figure out solutions to the problem. but in general, "game plan" tells the individual imagine you were living in honolulu in 1941 and somebody said, hey, by the way, if the japanese start bombing, here's what you should do. that's the nature of this book. if the russians, the iranians, the north koreans, the chinese start attacking us economically, "game plan" tells you how to respond. >> host: what's one piece of advice you have for individuals? >> guest: one piece, everyone in the financial system says go electronic. we'll give you $50 be you'll take electronic statements. don't do it. or if you do it, print out actual statements. give you a personal life experience example. in 2001 when the trade towers

were hit, i had a line of credit in one of the companies that was housed in those towers, and i accessed that to payroll because all the money dried up in 2001. the banks didn't know what to do. i had to go with my paper statement and convince jpmorgan chase -- at the time it was bank one -- to let me have access to that line of credit when all the records were down. if i hadn't had the paper statements, i couldn't have done it. that is one thing, keep copies of your stock brokage statements, your bank accounts because if the whole system is down for a week, ten days, how do you pay your mortgage? how do you bay pay your bills? that's one solid, individual piece of advice. another one is keep more than two days of food in your pantry and two days of water. if the electric grid were hacked and taken down, it might take a week, ten days, longer if it were a serious attack.

keep a little food on supply, on hand. we're the only nation that we live in a just-in-time society, but we're the only nation in the world that doesn't have access to food or water beyond just a day or two. if the pumps stop working, what do you -- i'm not talking about being crazy and moving into the basement and all of that. and, by the way, that seems less and less crazy to me all the time. but i'm not talking about that. i'm talking about keeping a week or ten days' worth of food supply on hand on a regular basis because if something really did go down, you need to eat. you need to have water. you need a gallon per person, per day in a household. and, you know, this could happen from hurricane sandy. it could happen from hurricane katrina. it could happen from flood or fire or a carrington event which i cover in the book which is a natural solar flare that could wipe out our electric grid for a short time at least and maybe a hong time. ..

showed all of the hackers that they are training and their intention is to attack the united states and the west. every day there are hacks that happen. the syrian electronic army in 2012013 had to "the associated press" twitter feed, sent out a false lead that the white house had been hit.

the trading programs of the nuke stock exchange picked up on it and immediately the stock exchange dropped 1%. it was totally fake. what if he did it in conjunction with a terror attack, what would happen? we could be down 10% instantly. the point is we will face a terror attack. it is inevitable and we need to prepare for it. >> kevin freeman's first book, his most recent book, brand-new, how to protect yourself. this is booktv on c-span2. >> c-span to provide live coverage of the senate floor proceedings in key public policy events. entity weekend booktv now for 15 years the only television network devoted to nonfiction books and authors. c-span2 created by the cable tv industry and brought to you as a public service by your local

cable or satellite provider. >> welcome to mobile, alabama, on booktv. located at the head of mobile bay in southern alabama, it's known for its rich french and spanish history as well as its harbor. today, mobile bay ranks first in the nation for woodpulp exports and is home to the retired battleship uss alabama. with help from our comcast cable partners for the next hour we will explore the history and literary life of this port city with local authors. >> the wonderful thing about the gulf coast is it it's i think so under appreciated and that's good because it gives us a lot to write about. if we were in new york or san francisco or chicago, those cities and places are also well known. so it's an extraordinarily rich subject. the attack of course launched the invasion of the confiscation

of all this land, 21 million acres which after the world was opened up for settlement. alabama and a good bit of southern georgia would not have been settled as early as it, if it hadn't been for this war. >> will begin with a conversation with novelist and nonfiction author winston groom best known for his work forrest gump. >> i enjoyed writing about things i don't know about. i mean, part of the problem sometimes with some books, some history books is the writer has been teaching the subject for 40 years and he doesn't come at it with a fresh guy. i grew up in mobile, alabama. i was actually born in washington, d.c. during the second world war. my father was a lawyer with the jack at the pentagon, judge advocate general's office. but i grew up. and i went to military school

they are and went to the university of alabama. then i went into the army in 1965 as an officer. that was at the height of the vietnam war and, of course, we all went over there, did that, and came back and went to work as a reporter for the washington star for 10 years and then i thought, well, if i don't get out of here and do this now i will never do it so i announced i resigned to write a book. i thought that was rather brave because i sort of burnt my bridges. i was too interested back to the newspaper. so anyway, i went and i wrote the book and it was a success. i was very pleased, and novel about the vietnam war, better time than these, and i've been

writing books ever since. you write what you know about. i was fairly fresh out of vietnam and i think the war was still -- i think it just about ended then, 1976 or seven. i've never do anything worth of food in my life except for that. something that was impressed on me to write about war. and this was a war that was of course very unpopular but i used the technique of actually a number of those -- gym, of course, thin red line. i'm not talking about plagiarism. they were quite pleased. they said -- [inaudible] in the near times, something to

the effect that i didn't think a conventional war novel is going to work for vietnam. it does. i had the girl and their. i tried to make it as interesting as i could. you know, that's the one they pick up from newspapers, right about the interesting thing. so anyway, i was fumbling around with the technique. now it would be easier, much easier to do it. i don't know if i could write the same novel. i don't think i would have the same intensity. after forrest gump, i started thinking that with novelists, if you're lucky you've got one good novel. if you're extremely lucky, you have to good novels. and if you're most fortunate you may have three, but rarely

exception to that, dickens. i'm looking at people not so much that a new but who i know of, and they sort of burned out. they wound up continuing to write novels. that they really didn't even want to write on the subject wasn't right for them, but the publisher was pushing them because they would make money off of them and so on. they got burned by the critics. i look at thomas wolfe who drank himself to death. hemingway blew his brains out. and i thought, that's not a road i want to go down. you know, i'm pretty good at nonfiction. let's try that. i tried a book about the civil war called shrouds of glory. data work.

again, reviewed by the towns come -- the times, a pretty good review. i like it and i enjoyed writing it. i wasn't sure of is going to enjoy writing -- i wrote one book called conversations with the enemy and i didn't enjoy it at all. it was nominated for a pulitzer prize. because the subject of it, that character, robert garwood was not a very respectable person to be with. it was difficult and when you have a subject come you don't like the subject but, you know, you're trying to get the truth here. you're not trying to worry about the subject is that you still have to go and do all that conversation that's just thinking, well, is this really -- can i really write this? i don't know. i've got to sort this out.

anyway, i didn't like writing that book but it came out to be a good book i think. i knew i had arrived. years ago after the academy awards when forrest gump won all those prices and i was invited out come and i was invited to the governors ball, not the state governor but the governors of the academy. i first met, receiving line, gregory peck. he's such a nice guy. he shot "to kill a mockingbird" right up the road. he knew alabama quite well. and he said something to the fact that, you, he said you have created one of the few heroes we have around here lately. and i said, well, what do you mean? he said, well, we don't have heroes anymore. we have antiheroes.

been nearest one i can think of, hero, to have a national hero in this country is forrest gump, and he's an idiot. and he said that to the newspapers afterwards somewhere out there, someone interviewed him and i got a little clip from the "los angeles times," i stayed out there for a while and i keep it in a little folder when i make a speech. sometimes i'll take it out and read it. but it was very profound that we don't. we look at heroes in movies and they are all fraud. it's something that drives us to have flawed heroes. i think we haven't had real heroes since the old westerns. they are we releasing a movie this fall, it will be interesting. but they came from actually, i was living in new york, and during the winters are come down and see my father.

hitting quite old and he just retired from his law practice. so i would come down and spend three or four weeks, a month, and one time i was having lunch with my father. he started to reminisce about when he was growing up in his neighborhood there was a young boy they called in those days. the kids would tease him and chase him and throw sticks at theamazon. and one day this young boy's mother bought a piano. they saw th them move into the home. we within two or three days dispute to music waited out over the hot dusty streets in downtown mobile in the early 1900s. and the other kids thought community, that's pretty neat. and so they took him under their wing and to quit chasing them and teasing, throwing takes -- sticks at them and protect them. i thought after i got driving back over here, you know, i'm

going to make some notes on this because i may use it as a scene somewhere, either the. i recognize what it was because "60 minutes" had just done a feature on a syndrome, which is basically that. a person who can do great mathematical things, remember all this stuff and the musical things but they can't tie their own shoes. and so i started making those notes, and that same night at some point i had the character force come. i'd written about -- forrest gump. that was remarkable thing, i wrote in about six weeks. it just everyday can it was like it was right itself. i remember joe heller telling me catch-22 wrote itself, i never believed it. but this thing the. i would sit there. i'm using my lizard brain. back at the back of your neck

and that's where it's coming from but it's going through your regular brain and i didn't have any notes, i can have any research. what he going to do today? it was fun. it was actually the most fun i've ever had right because i like the character. i liked his voice. as it turned out it was a big deal. that's the way it happened. i don't do this for a copy. so i had to be disciplined. but i had to approach it just like work. right now i'm writing another history called the soldiers and it's about general patton and general george marshall. it's called the aviators. what you do is you start off and i've done it i don't know how many times, the old cabin up there is full, will be jam packed with all sorts of

material. i work in the morning. i do authors work. you answered e-mails, talk on the phone, get somebody to come, whatever you have to do. and any afternoons i would refresh myself with whatever i'm working with communist, primary source, secondary source, maybe a book or whatever, i get in the frame of mind for an hour or two what i'm going to write about today. how far am i going to go, what do i know, whatever learned about his character and what materials do i need? i threw them all on this desk. this is a west point that list of world war i. i worked myself into a frenzy at about 3:00 i start to write, and i write in till seven. that usually produces so many words a day.

the last couple books of last couple books about with national geographic's because they asked me to do something. they don't operate quite like a regular publisher. they say okay, this looks good, will figure out when we're going to publish it. geographic want a deadline like a newspaper. it's pretty good for me to write like that. keeps me busy. that's the way it is, so they can set all up in the catalog and right. i guess also to have have all that money dangling out there for a long time. they want to get it done so they know what's going on. all publishers have different ways of doing things. i into writing about things i don't know, i mean, part of the problem sometimes with some

books that come out, history books, is that the right has been teaching the subject for 40 years and he doesn't come at it with a fresh eye. and, of course, history people, especially historians, they have -- i'm not saying anything against them at all, but i do it differently. i don't have to find something new, or i don't have defined -- be a revisionist. they've got to do that to further their professional standing. i'm not bound by those rules. i don't have to revise it. i don't have to do that kind of thing. and i haven't written about it for 40 years, or taught it for 40 years. so that's fascinating. i get excited about it that i get excited and i bring and --

obviously you don't make it factual but it's just all in the telling. it's all in the telling. >> what advice would you give me? >> get a day job. don't lose it. that's true, because everybody wants to be a writer. now everybody can be a writer. people publishing these books himself are all over the place. the publishers, they don't know what -- if you insist on doing it, you obviously need to read, read the very bust and steal shamelessly from ideas, not words but the technique of the devices i use and everything. learned from the best. and then go do it. i mean, i learned very early on when i would get writer's blocks, epstein, known as the

smiling cobra. if you didn't tell epstein, about a triple ax murder, if you didn't vote in and say i'm having a writer's block, i've got a triple ax murder here, i can't get anything to write, you wouldn't be able to do that. whatever you do put it down. you can fix it later. you can shape it, reshaped, probably change it 100 times, get something on paper that you can work with. but that's the technique. will peace the device but it's good advice. >> this weekend booktv is in mobile, alabama, with the help of our local cable partner comcast. next, we sit down with author greg waselkov to discuss the fort mims massacre and the red stick more of 1813-1814. >> we are at fort mims park,

it's a little five-acre park in the southern end of alabama and it's the location of a major battle between americans and creek indians in 1813. afford itself was full of all kinds of folks taking shelter from an impending indian attack include indians that were allied with the americans, local settlers, militia from mississippi terry torry and lots of slaves. about five people inside this afford. on august 301813, a faction of the creeks that were quite upset with the american policy towards indians attacked before and there was a long battle and that the and some 250 to 300 people inside the forts were killed. it started known as the fort mims massacre in most older history books. that so i first learned about it in fifth grade when i read about the fort mims massacre. but there was much more to the story. the creeks like most american

indians had to find a way to deal with the expanding american settlements throughout the late 18th, early 19th centuries. in this area the creeks were quite successful as were the cherokee, at least some portion of the assembly into american lifestyle. saw quite a few wealthy creeks from this area own slaves. they had big plantation. they raise domestic livestock, largely were a dominating their way of life to american norms of agriculture and other kinds of things. a large part of the creek nation didn't see the vantage of that. they wanted to maintain their traditional life. so those are real risks in the creeks in 1813, a civil war broke out and what happened there at fort mims was a continuation of that civil war but it did bring the americans then into the war against the red stick faction that was anti-america. there was a religious component to it.

the shawnee prophet and his brother tecumseh were prophesies in for a new kind of religious way of life for american indians during that period. tecumseh came and covered a lot of creeks to that religious, that religion. so those are political angle as well. most of the creek leaders at the time were in the day of the american government in one way or another, and so their families, their lineages were profiting while other lineages were out of power were suffering considerable from poverty by the early 1800s. a lot of reasons why individuals chose one side or the other, but in this area most of the local creeks were pro-american and decided to stay on that side of the civil war. a couple prominent people, william weatherford was from this area and he was the leader on foursomes. august 30, 1813 the folks inside

fort mims had been ordered out for about a month. there been a skirmish back in july not too far away that involve some of the militia from the tensaw area right around the fort mims. apparently the red stick attack was in response to that skirmish. actually the creeks have been in their own nation within their own territory and they were attacked by americans. they felt we were wrong to buy that and they decided to take revenge, particularly on the creeks in this area. the tensaw sided with the americans. in the morning the folks inside the fort had to go out and find food. there were 500 people within about an acre site sport. so very cramped conditions, and they had to go out and forage every day for food. people dispersed and went and tended the cattle, begin to harvest the crops in nearby fields, and so that went on throughout the morning. for various sightings of red stick warriors molded by african

slaves, and they reported this to their owners but were not believed for some reason but, in fact, one of the slaves is being whipped at the time of the attack for having spread false rumors. the attack was really quite a surprise. probably shouldn't have been by the garrison was not a formal military unit. they were all militia from local and territorial militia units. and so very badly lit. the fort itself was badly built. they kind of loopholes which should've been about five or six feet above the ground so that defenders could stare down at the attackers were a three-foot level so they were on level with the attacking force who ran up and took possession of the loopholes and began firing into the fort. the battle went on for quite a long time. or maybe seven or 50 or so breadsticks in the attacking force, and several hundred actively fighting inside amongst the many civilians and other people inside the fort. and by sometime around afternoon

to a 3:00 in the afternoon the battle qaeda stalemated so the red sticks with you, decide whether they should renew the attack and eventually the. at that time they set fire to a good portion of the southern part of the fort. that spread throughout the entire part of the fort at that point defense was impossible. quite a few were killed or captured but about 25 made out of afford. the battle made all the papers throughout the country. it was considered a huge disaster of military, american military might, and took quite a while for the local armies to reconstitute themselves and this would be territorial volunteers were really devastated by this. but eventually they organize a southern army to invade the creek nation from the mobile area. the georgians organized a couple different attacks from the east and the tennessee troops under several generals, was famously andrew jackson invaded from the

north. this actually was one of the major outcomes of the battle was this introduction of andrew jackson into the war of 1812. his successes throughout the creek will a special at horseshoe bend, they made him famous of the country but also convinced the leadership in washington that he could actually fight and win. soyuz given command of the army at new orleans and he defeated the british their in early 1815. andrew jackson of course is a controversial figure for many reasons. he had all sorts of radical new sort of policies and also aspects of government, but one outcome of his expenses during the creek war was his determination to see indian removal finally occur throughout the united states. a lot of people like george washington and thomas jefferson had tried to formulate a policy of assimilation where indians could essentially become

americans in their sense of the word and stay where they were located but on smaller parcels of land. the american indians of course had populations in the tens of thousands, millions of acres of land and the american government was under tremendous pressure by american settlers to take that land one way or another. answered jackson's action was quite excited when he heard the news of fort mims and saw this as a perfect opportunity to take land from the creeks. eventually negotiated the treaty at fort jackson at the end of the war that took 21 million acres from the creek nation. both from the creeks that he fought with as well as those who fought against. 20 years later that, of course, when he became president he was able to then pushed through the removal act of 1830 that did lead to wide scale forced removal of indiscriminate east, southeast as well as the northwest gold territories up in the ohio entry. the attack itself of course

launched the invasion of the creek nation and the confiscation of office land, which immediately after the war was opened up for settlement. alabama and a good bit of southern georgia would not have been settled as early as it had been if it weren't for thi this. there was a thing called alabama fear, big land rush in the years following the war. that was the most immediate impact. and, of course, the removal act, this sense of betrayal the americans felt at this sneak attack. the way they did it, stick attack and massacre. they felt very much the trade because in previous years able like benjamin hock come federal agent, had tried their best to assimilate the creeks and this was a very clear response that they didn't want to become americans. selected a lot of force to the removal proposed move indians out of this area permit.

a conference there is a phrase benjamin hawkins in use. he was a federal agent to the southern indians, and when he first got wind of the red stick movement, which is largely religious efforts but also very militaristic, he said the red sticks were possessed of a conquering spirit by the master of breath that the shawnee great spirit figure. and so i thought that was appropriate from that perspective but also of course when the americans are attacked at fort mims their response is to respond in kind, and basically go into an all-out war with the creeks. i thought a conquering spirit kind of capture the essence of what was going on on all sides of this conflict. we were initially part of a team of archaeologists was contracted by the alabama historical commission to look at the archaeology that adjoining here for the last 50 years. a lot of digging at the site of fort mims.

we have thousands of artifacts and no reports to speak of. so anyway we spent about a year back in 2003 analyzing the collections but it was in the process that i began to read up on the history and see that there was a lot of very old historical ideas that needed to be re-examined, more evidence that able now than had been back in the 1890s when the last major work had been done. i hope the people who read "a conquering spirit" see the american frontier life have lots of different perspectives, certainly the creek perspective has been underrepresented in history and indian perspectives in general, although that's clearly changing now so i hope people try to understand the point of view. they were not evil. they were portrayed back in the air of the war by the american press. at all kinds of legitimate grievances and the outcome of course is tragic from all

perspectives. it's a very instructive period to study. >> idea of fort mims as, i can do view it as similar to many other stories that are often fiction writers will take some kind of vessel like the titanic or a rowboat or lifeboat or space station, some kind of contained entity in which people interact and show their true selves. i thought that really is what was happening at fort mims. we see the cruelty of the commander here, daniel beasley who have been a sheriff, whipping the slaves were telling the truth about the approaches of the red stick creaks. all the different kinds of human stories that go on within that fort where most fascinating to me and really trying to delve into the genealogy of these individuals show in fact they're all quite closely related. these people were fighting on opposite sides but they all knew

each other. they would yell insults back and forth, very, very personal war played out here on kind of a small-scale really. but like the immigrants aboard crunched down into a little tight and in many ways. he said all the same kinds of stories here at fort mims as you'd see in a bigger picture like the american civil war. >> from booktv's recent trip to mobile, alabama, lonnie burnett recalls the work of confederate propagandist, journalist and editor henry hotze. >> very, very strange case. he lived 53 years but we know nothing about his first 20 years nor his last 20 years, but for a decade from 1855 to about 1865, tremendous record of confederate military foreign service, mobile politics into all kinds of different things basically. he has been studied a little bit in compartments as a military man and as a propagandist but i

wrote this book to connect the two. basically a journalist at heart but he is foreign born yet comes to the south where he is a very prominent speaker of racial issues, military issues. he uses his journalistic style during the war as a propagandist which we get into later but basically he's in europe trying to convince european powers to join the war effort against the union. he came to america at about age 15. we don't know if he is by himself but we don't know why. he's in alabama by the early 1850s. this man has a knack for meeting important people and using these people in his career as mentors later as contacts. in 1854, a mobile again has a strange request. he wants this young man, hotze, who is a tutor near montgomery to translate a famous work on

race in the english. this book was written by a man named arthur in france. hotze -- unser, he employs hotze to translate this book. it's a racial account that talks about how racists are inherently unequal and can never be equal. why is that important? because in the south people will love the idea to take hold and then they could just buy slavery. he's only 20 -- sorry, hotze is only 20, translates the book but basically hijacks the book. he writes an introduction of his own that is over 100 pages in which this young man put his own ideas about racial issues, and puts his own spin on racial issues which is odd for a young man like this, but that kind of introduces hotze to more people in mobile and he starts them in these more influential circles, if you will. this translation that's called

the moral and intellectual diversity of races, he comes to mobile in 1856. after the translation comes out, to mixed reviews, he then goes into local politics in mobile. for a while he works as a secretary to a foreign ministry, a mobility and his appointed minister to belgium. hotze to his connections lends a pretty good job as the secretary. he's there just a few months, no money to renew the appointment. he comes back to mobile where he starts to work about 1839, he works under john forsyth, another prominent mobile unit for a couple of years in the middle of the 1860 election. john forsyth, the editor, is gone so much that hotze fairly well takes over the paper for a while and does again for a young man does a wonderful job

apparently. is on for the south to mobile was fairly moderate location. mobile, for example, voted for stephen douglas, the more moderate person in the campaign, mainly because mobile was full of northerners at the time. it was the emergence and. that cotton is shipped from upstate, came through mobile, loss of northerners later so mobile was more moderate at least during the secession crisis. hotze, like forsyth, promoted stephen douglas, the more moderate of the four guys who ran for president in 1860. what because basically is carried a policy of forsyth. the editorial you're reading in the tiebreak a lot of folks thought forsyth wrote but it is hotze writing these in the 1860s. john forsyth was a mobile politician, and editor. he owned and operated the register for over 40 years. his father is the famous john forsyth senior, for south --

forsyth county, georgia, is named after. the forsyth name is prominent. john forsyth of mobile is a national democratic party leader. he's very big in the campaign of douglas. he is douglas' campaign manager in alabama. he's very big in 1860 conventions in alabama and nationally. he takes a role in national democratic party politics. when the war is over there will be a big reconstruction critic. at this time hotze is kind of his almost like a mentorship relationship. hotze realized in 1860, easily 24, 25, so forsyth is much older. hotze is a young protége. it seems like the alderman of town taken hotze. are impressed by his intellect, by his ability. he's very notable in that he stands out in the crowd.

i think forsyth, like you guys like, guys like nott, people like this, they see forsyth as a young protége who's bound for bigger pictures. win the war breaks out in 1861, hotze belongs to the mobile cadets. the mobile cadets for years were kind of a social organization of the affluent in a society in mobile. they would drill, have annual parades, picnics, kind of a social activity. when the war breaks out the next thing you to hotze and this fellow is sent to richmond, virginia, and then to norfolk to set up camp outside of hampton roads in that area. hotze in this case left us two very good firsthand accounts of what he did. he's only gone for three months but in these accounts, what is called the cadet letters. he sends a sense of letters back

home to mobile paper. in these literacy talks about monday and things. who from mobile came to visit, what gifts that god, how the guys are doing in drill, things like this. but a year later when he's in europe he rewrites the story. he writes a series called three months in the confederate army. this state you see a propaganda coming into play because it's the same story but he knows there's a new audience so he changes his focus. he starts to talk about big issues, like the justification of secession. he talks about the like a of what they are doing. he talks about how the alabama soldiers are aristocratic, try just tried britain, for example. so in his second series, it's the same events, the same place but you can see now he's talking to a broader audience with a much different purpose, it seems like. i tell my students we talked

about the civil war at the university of mobile, i tell my students that when the war starts, the best chance the south has had winning the war is an alliance with a european power. holtz realizes this as does the confederacy. his objective once he starts this new mission will talk about in a minute, once he started his new mission he's trying to secure some kind of recognition and interventintervent ion of european powers. so in these early writings he wants to convince the european the populist of the justice of the cause and he wants to convince these folks the south can when first of all, hoping to sway the political leaders to recognize the confederacy, and hopefully in that case join in the war effort. this becomes a fascinating part of the story to me. in about three months of the army life he gets bored. he's got connections to try to find some kind of other us on the. he learned his early on.

they to go to battle and is part of the war. the cadets later would serve with distinction but while he is there it's pretty much clearing of bush, setting up camp, digging ditches, looking to do whatever. it's not glamorous work. in about two or three months he gets tired of this, starts pulling those connections, guys like mcrae, big officials in ions, guys like mcrae, big officials in the confederate army now and political circles, he wants a new assignment. he gets appointed in 1861 in the fall to go to europe to try to speed up the purchasing of supplies. they send guys like william yancey, a guy named man to work of some kind of deal to buy weapons, maybe supplies, whatever. it's going slow. he is set to try to speed that up. when he gets there, being a journalist, he sees in the local papers all this anti-southern propaganda. it's going unchecked.

there is no confederate boys. he gets an idea. he comes back to america, goes to richmond. he goes to the davis administration with what i think is great call, tells the guys we need this parson to be a propaganda agent. and i've got just -- the perfect person to its me. they fall for it. in a consecutive disappointed to go back to europe as a quote commercial agent, but this task is to pretty much judge opinion and try to sway opinion in europe on the war. early on after the first battle of bull run, for example, there's this, in this outcome expectations because are about to jump in. early on the south believes it's a done do. they believe, for example, there's no way britain won't take a chance at weakening a rival but if they can weaken the northern u.s., that's a trading rival. the south is convinced that if

they threaten to shut off the supply of cotton, the british would come running in a heartbeat to come join the cause. it never happened in this way because the british leadership could never find it in their interest to do so. it was never worth risking war with america to help the south. it's a three-year story. it's an ingenious plan. the papers of the day have editorials they call leaders, and their unsigned. all these leaders are pretty much anti-southern. just like in america, every newspaper is a partisan paper. so the prime minister is on paper. well, hotze makes contact as it always does. there's a famous line about good he is at passing out cigars and whiskey to make contact. he makes contact with the writers of these papers. so he will write editorials as a pro-southern, give these guys

the british riders, they will in turn sell these to the london papers. they come out in the london papers pick it looks like to the british public these are londoners writing these things. it's a kid from mobile writing these things, i guy from mobile writing pro-southern editorials that are now being placed in british papers. the person reading that paper thinks my coachman's feel this way but it's the southern guy writing unsigned editorials with a southern point of view. in the papers he's got several basic themes. the paper by the way as essay runs for three years every week, but the things almost never change. first of all his first big theme is telling the british of the major advantage it would be to support president bush said about the contrary, other trade, weakening america as a trading rival, he wants to to the population that it's a great advantage to support confederacy.

he would also talk about the blockade. the blockade was a sore spot with many europeans because you're blocking in the south, that's where the concrete comes through. so hotze talked about the blockade, how illegal it is. and should the british put up with it. he would then talk about battles. surprisingly by the way, very accurate account which you couldn't find in mobile. in southern papers is always exaggerated and we toasted when you do more studies, never include newspapers because they are so biased. his were fairly accurate. he would talk about things like eventually race as the work and which is a good topic at the moment, but as the war became more hopeless, hotze becomes more racist in his writings. he realizes slavery is gone but these are stalking the okay, if slavery leaves, there's still this basis for separation based

on race. some very virulent, very, very desperate today we would view as disgusting racial things which goes back to his transition work from 20 years ago. >> how was it received? >> very badly. this is one of the reasons why by the way europe never got involved in the war. when lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation, that almost guarantees that britain will not join the war. don't forget in 1832, 33, britain has already abolished slavery. there's not much chance they're goingoing to help the south if g so promotes slavery. they are anti-slavery. so when hotze becomes more and more racial, i think it's a desperation move. and i think he loses the credibility had. he starts to lose ugly. in the book i conclude that there's a danger in what he

says. this is another strange story. hotze can win the war ends, he never comes back to america. for the next 20 years his life he vanishes once again. there's passionate when he married. we know he died in 1884. so not much is known about him. however, years later there's a guy named ludwig sherman. he writes a book. why is that important? this book was later lauded by the nazis as a primer on race. in netbook which the nazis saw was a good example so much so by the way that sugar is represented a medal by the nazis for his work on race. in this book he includes writing of hotze. so here's the connection. this guy from mobile writing on race is later referenced in german works that are later

praised by the nazis who of course are the all time infamous performance of racial inequality. so what we say in words, what we write, what we say can be dangerous. this sentiment is a dangerous sentiment. i do contend the south a little chance to win this war, if it's a long welcome unless they get an ally. so to that extent the work can when tragedy is, as far as gaining recognition is valuable. if i did work, there might've been different outcome of the war, at least early on. who knows? that speculation. the other thing is the racial part. as the war becomes hopeless, you see not just hotze but a lot of folks in the south thinking towards the postwar world. they believe in separation. slavery has been that legal separation for almost 200 years by this point. they realize that's going away. slavery is dead. they still believe there should

be some kind of separation. they could use works like hotze to justify that liberation. again very dangerous but that can is the impact of this book. it shows where that thought comes from and how dangerous the thought can be. >> up next, "southern bound." the author spoke with booktv during our recent visit to mobile, alabama, without offer cable partner comcast. spent it's a collection of my columns as books editor at the mobile press register over a 17 year period from the mid '90s up to 2012. it started when i begin a friendship with the managing editor of the newspaper of the time, and wonderful man named bailey thompson. he really wanted to sort of

build the local books page into something that would be a little more substantive than we had in the past and into i was interested in books. we talked about those things. he said why don't you take on this column, to about 700 words a week and just let's start a conversation with our local readers about books and writers, similar to what c-span's booktv does. and so that's how it began. my mandate was to cover local writers and regional writers, but beyond that anything i wanted to do. and i would've think about the gulf coast is its i think so underappreciated, and that's good because it gives us a lot to write about. if we were in new york or san francisco or chicago, though cities and places are also well known and, of course, new york is the literary capital but here on the gulf coast we tend to think of that say from texas to the florida panhandle. there really is a sensibility we have a similar environment,

similar types of trees, live oak, long leaf pine, palm trees, sandy soldier -- sandy so, the gulf of mexico of course nurtures and supplies us with wonderful seafood. estuaries and revels in places like mobile bay are wonderfully rich in tradition and culture. and there have been books and memoirs and so forth start in and around all these things for hundreds of years. so it's an extraordinarily rich subject to take. and, of course, along comes the oil spill in 20 were all of a sudden we are at center stage, and people are beginning to look at the gulf coast and think what's it like? what moves them are we know we got so much over oil and gas from there, good lord. so the nation became tuned in to how important the gulf is. but also found that setting was i will never will forget an interview with a kid in

louisiana right after this bill. he was a fisherman son and he was nine and hussein this is the end of our way of life. and i thought how many american kids talk about having a way of life quickly i get exactly what he meant. i knew it meant crawfish spoils and all of the stuff that goes so quickly with louisiana but also with florida and alabama and coastal mississippi as well. so that we on alabama gulf coast actually feel that we have more in common with new orleans and pensacola that perhaps we do with montgomery and birmingham. cybeso i would want to approacht as someone with a golf sensibility, someone who was from your but not necessarily, someone who can look at larger issues and write and talk about them but also appreciate what we have that special and the perspective that gives us. there's also a section called controversy and censorship, because frequently,

unfortunately, local school boards can be counted on to ban certain books. and as mark twain said, first god created idiots and then he created school boards. so when the georgia county mississippi school board bans stein backs of mice and men, i just had to say something about it in print. the best way for me to imagine tackling that was to have lynn and george on a dirt road in mississippi happening upon an old scrap of newspaper where they see that they have been banned. so that the children in this vicinity can read about their struggles during the depression. so those kinds of columns to me were personal because his way to defend literature from i thought were ridiculous attacks. i respect and recognize that not every book is appropriate for all ages, but i do feel that steinbeck's work is truly classic and for middle school kids out to be freely accessible. shamefully a decade since i wrote that column, the book is

still banned. so anyone from the school board is listening, please undo that in justice. one of the controversies i wrote about was there was a young in which professor at the university of alabama who wrote a short story collection called the bear bryant funeral train. and it turned out that he had actually plagiarized portions, an older book, a wonderful book written in 1930s. travel all of the state and wrote about it very eloquently. this young professor had actually i believe plagiarized in all innocence. he was sort of a postmodern typewriter who was borrowing from earlier writings and using them. to me his explanations were

somewhat garbled and modeled, and they said something about where modern english scholarship is. i but how can a ph.d in english make this grade a mistake? but despite his pleas that this was -- university georgia press was a publisher, the book was withdrawn by georgia. the copies were called and destroyed. this to me was the worst day for any author it's like the iconic scene in the 1960s television show branded where chuck connors is out there and they're stripping off his insignia breaking his sword and you are banished. so this young man unfortunately really did suffer that fate. he was fired from where he was teaching at the time in which i think was the university of mississippi at that time. he ultimately went abroad to teach english as a second language. to some people who really regretted the way that had

played out by the shed and perhaps leniency i think from george's perspective. they wanted to really protect themselves of any kind of a copyright violation. i wasn't out on the professor per se but i really saw it as an object lesson in the importance of giving credit where credit is due. we all know that artists and writers have always borrowed from one another, but this is such an egregious case i just thought how does a ph.d make that mistake? and is there something missing in terms of how these folks are educated today? but the color was just an opportunity to ruminate. and my conclusion was that the ivory tower is not without its dungeon for people who violate plagiarism and i really still is a crime i can get you booted out and is a very serious thing. somethings i could write easily in an hour, particularly if it's something i've been mulling over in my mind and thinking about different directions in which to

approach it. but the average time for a company was about an hour and a half. then i would turn over to my wife who is a wonderful editor. she had four years of latin in high school and does not spare my feelings. if it's nonsense she will quickly tell me so. so i've been very fortunate there. whatever time to take me to read the book or perhaps interview someone or research it, but the main thing was that i just really had to a strong enough sense of feeling about something to be able to write about it. and i think any columnist can relate to this. sometimes you struggle because you don't feel that strongly about a book or a particular issue, but you got to do when that week and you got to get it out. those tended to be more of a slog, but it was something i was really passionate about or that i found really engaging or interesting, for instance, the massachusetts prep school that got rid of all it's pretty books

and which was all digital format i thought wow, this is major. this is the first library that's done this to my knowledge, and it's a cultural marker. those kinds of topics were very easy to put down on paper. it was a secondary school in massachusetts, but it got a lot of press at the time because i think it was the first library to abandon books. and the headmaster said something over it like when i see books i see an outdated technology. but i went on to india to some people that were there and sort of read other stories about and the reaction of some citizens and bloggers, what was interesting though was that the kids better didn't open books. they were digital natives. they were all online for them, the kindle downloads, that sort of thing so these books went to less privileged schools which would be a good thing, or just give it away to faculty but i thought this is truly troubling because what if the power goes

out or what if the cappuccino machine breaks down or the big screens explode a wonderful over the corporate overlord of all of this data is suddenly decides, well, we think mice and men, to take an example, is not appropriate to we're not going to allow it to be viewed on our site. it just to me brought up all kinds of potentially troubling ramifications and it seemed so final. this print really does seem permanent even though we know it isn't still it is not a bad technology. you can get it wet, drop a, spill coffee on a. you can carry it anywhere. it's still a really good technology and i just thought we were throwing all that away because we're tousled by the latest bright toy that is perhaps going to be obsolete in the future. ..