no one here in this great state, or in the united states, should have to work three jobs at minimum wage and still suffer. ..

that's a failing grade from the national rifle association and again if anybody to did they do that, they can go to the record.com and see how he got that great or good for the national rifle association themselves. it will settle the debate pretty quick. however, he also voted for a national gun registry. he wanted to ban handguns back in the 70s and then he gets back to washington, d.c. and goes on the talkshow circuit and starts talking about banning semi automatic rifles, the ones that look scary to him and to have the government tell us how many bullets we can have in our guns. you know what kind representative has more than earned his failing grades in washington, d.c. i will stand up

for your second amendment rights. think you >> moderator: >> i support as a veteran david trained to use guns but there needs to be some tweaking at the registration in the background checks to keep the psychopaths and from getting their hands on that. so we need to dig deeper into the background checks and not allow the school shootings to have been. guns don't kill people, people kill people, so that the system is failing. we need to look at the process of registration and background checks for anybody, any type of gun and that is a start but i do support your right to bear arms.

but we need to do more background checks. thank you. >> moderator: congressman? nolan: i said i don't need an assault rifle to shoot a duck. perhaps you do. maybe you should spend more time at your shooting range, but the fact is right now you can only have three shells in your gun when you're shooting ducks. the fact is there've been numerous safety measures that have been passed over the years but have not in any way abridged the right of our right to bear arms. that's the hard cold fact of

life. that was outlawed along time ago but that doesn't take away our right to bear arms. the right to bear arms is fundamental. many of us have taken the oath to safeguard and protect that rate and with regards to the nra and going to repeat it again it's made up rarely a washington lobbyist and thousand dollar suits lobbying for gun manufacturers and the people that sell guns. i showed that three out of four of them support background checks. do you want the right to sell guns and arms to people that are convicted violent criminals and terrorists and people that have

been found with serious mental illness? do you want the right to sell guns to those people? gun safety is one thing and protecting our second amendment rights is another and i support the right and i love to hunt and fish and i love to shoot and my wife quite frankly we live in a rather remote location and i'm glad to have guns around for personal protection. >> moderator: i would like to remind numbers of the audience to control themselves. mr. mills and a speed into sandman and congressmen have one minute rebuttals and we can touch on the reasonable gun control we hear about. mr. mills? mills: it is me over the line to accuse me of wanting to sell guns to criminals and terrorists. we have the background check right now and again we should follow the law we have rather than create new ones. i believe the exact quote that you use is i don't need an assault rifle to shoot a duck

and i think they should be banned. or semi automatic rifles that we are talking about they work exactly the same way regardless of how they look. and i don't want the government to tell me i can only have three bullets in my gun. succumb if you want to find out how rick nolan earned his national rifle association you can go to the website or nolanrecord.com. >> moderator: do you have anything you would like to answer the sandman: i just want to reiterate that we need the background checks. everybody in this great country of ours has the right to bear arms but we need to do something to keep the crazies, the psychopaths and the mentally ill from getting their hands on an assault weapon walking into the school because they had a bad day. we need to do better background

checks. the congressman has one more minute. nolan: i want to agree with mr. sandman: . you know they can walk across the street, the people that mr. sandman: is talking about they can walk across the street from your story and go to a gun show and buy all of those guns and as mr. speed levin said, and i agree something needs to be done about that and i'm sorry that you have those bad but many of us feel that background checks are important to keep the guns out of the hands of murderers and traitors and people who are violently and criminally insane and threatening violence on other people. there is no reasonable simple rationale for not putting together a complete system of background checks to keep guns out of the hands of people with those histories and those kind of inclinations.

>> let's turn our attention overseas. we are confronting a threat and isis and the us-led coalition air strikes strikes but they say the strikes will not win the battle. the administration says we will not commit ground troops. how do you propose we deal with this issue of a growing terrorist threat? he will start with you mr. speed levin. sandman: . the first statement i would like to make, america should not be the world's policeman. our coalition forces need to step up and put their troops on the ground. i've been in the war and and i've seen before and i think the damage that it has done to our young men and women both from the past and from the future. i served two tours in the found,

so i know what the enemy is like. but to risk our young men and women, i don't belief the united states needs to send our ground troops in. but they are doing right now, i agree with that but that but we need to have saudi arabia stepped up. they have the biggest airports in the region. let them step up and start putting their troops in the grounds, with their troops face danger. i'm sick and tired of the united states being called in to see the world's policeman. we need to step back and bring our girls and boys home and let them fight it out over there because they have the resources and the funding in the united

states to do that and by god they should step up and save our young men and women, not put their lives in danger. so you know where i stand on that. thank you. >> moderator: congressman? nolan: i've lived in the middle east studied the language, studied the culture, i've done business throughout the region, got a pretty good deal for the people over there and a couple things. number one from its very complex. things are never quite as good as they appeared. but i will tell you what some of the facts are. we've spent trillions of dollars in this conflict and either directly or indirectly we have supplied arms and munitions to just about every single element

in that fight. we started giving arms to the mujahedin and if they morphed into al qaeda. they are the people that attacked the world trade center and we supported saddam hussein and used chemical weapons because we gave them to them than we decided to overthrow him and we decided to support the shiites and maliki. we then after they persecuted the catholics and the christians and jews and the jews and shuts down the churches and synagogues and told them to get out of there or they would kill them, then we gave the money to the sunnis. they called it to the awakening so they could protect themselves. then we sent arms interactively and overtly to our allies into syria, who privately are actually the muslim brotherhood. then we were going to attack

al-assad and now we are going to attack the people who are opposing command the alliance with hezbollah and iran and the other radical elements. the point is no matter how well-intentioned we are to have given money and arms to everybody on every side of the fight. we cannot afford it. these are money that are needed here in america for deficit reduction and for rebuilding america. bring our troops home, get out of this conflict. it is not our fight. it is theirs. they've been in it for thousands of years and we cannot afford to spend any more money in this conflict. >> moderator: thank you, congressman. mr. mills? mills: it starts with our failure to get the agreement with the iraqi government.

we very well could have gotten it. the fact that the prematurely withdrew the troops from iraq and created a vacuum into the vacuum that was filled by bad people doing bad things. al qaeda is not on the run. they've both been decimated. what we have done is we have given him a country. we don't have a choice in this one. they had a direct stated intention of attacking americans, attacking america and american interests abroad. the current track that we are on is the right track because we need to leverage our power, we need to work with our allies in the region whether it is saudi arabia, turkey it looks like they are getting interested interested and it's right in their interest to make sure that we threat to veto crush the threat of isis or properly vet the words are properly vetted moderates making sure that we are able to give them the training and the arms of the logistical support and the intelligence that they need so

that this particular coalition can be successful at undoing our mistakes of creating the vacuum. thank you. >> moderator: thank you. mr. speed levin, would you care to respond? sandman: i agree with mr. nolan we need to stop selling arms to all of those people over there. we need to bring our people home. we've been fighting for how many thousands of years and i don't believe that we are doing them any favors by supplying arms. we need our boys and our young women home. we need to stay up and quit trying to be the world's policeman. we need to take care of what is happening here in the united states. >> moderator: thank you. congressman? nolan: i want to reiterate we have no friends in this conflict. inevitably it's the arms that we send that are used against us and even if you think it's a

good idea, we can ill afford it. it's bankrupting the country and the nation. those are money that we need to not only rebuild america those are money that we need to take care of the veterans when they come home. we have a sacred obligation to take care of the veterans who served and protected us to serve and protect them when they come home and i've been committed to that end of this is why we expect the end to our involvement in the conflict. all that it does is make us a target and prolongs conflict and exacerbates the violence ended the conflict that only the people in the middle east can result among themselves. everyone has said if we are going to result if we have to put boots on the ground for another 25, 30, 40 years while america will not be around in another 25 to 30 years if we keep spending these billions and billions of dollars and nationbuilding abroad at the time when america's bridges are falling down. our veterans are not being taken care of. and we need to use that money

and energy for the deficit reduction and rebuilding america. >> moderator: thank you. mr. mills? mills: we have to take care of our veterans. we haven't done a good job of it in the past but we have to do a better job. you know, everybody gave some, some gave all and it's something that is a country we have to make that a priority that if we are going to send men and women abroad to fight a war we have to take care of them when they come home. but we don't have a choice in this. we cannot very our heads in the sand. we have all hit on this issue of taxation so let's talk a little bit about the taxation. the tech specs to the corporations that send jobs

overseas the approach in the taxation us to benefit everyday minnesotans and which approach more quickly fueled economic upswing cracks representative, can we start with you please? nolan: i spent the last 32 years in my business and i build my own business. i know what it's like to build a business from the bottom-up and create jobs and i know what it's like to have to meet a table and to have to comply with a wide range in of the government rules and regulations. what i like to not have to be obligated to do any of that, yes of course but it's necessary.

there was nobody that could count to 1025 or 30 years older life is over for the want of a little ventilation because their lungs were full of fiberglass. and now with osha they are still making fiberglass boats and kids are able to retire. so when it comes to taxes, things like investment tax credits for investing the new equipment and the new machinery and fully supportive of the government programs to facilitate the new business starts and the entrepreneurship and new business activities. the small business administration for example something that we were able to take advantage of increasing our business which i believe my

children know that business today and they are doing very nicely with it and supplying the parts and they are doing quite well. but if we want to rebuild this middle class, we have to get away from this trickle-down theory and to give more money to the superrich and the billionaires and we need to build it from the bottom-up and that's why i disagree so vehemently that he won the even the need to provide more tax cuts for the superrich and your opposition to increase the minimum wage. beyond that, we need tax incentives to stop sending manufacturing overseas and headquarters overseas to escape the taxation. it's time that the rich and powerful who benefit so much from the greatness of the country step up and start paying their fair share in the way that the working men and women are paying more than their fair share. >> moderator: we would've a minute and a half here.

mr. mills? mills: our tax code is way too complicated. it is powerful and they've been weaponize for the american people. we need a flat and fair tax code that benefits the middle class. we are talking about one deduction automatic about the poverty line. and then we are talking one or two lower rates and bend deductions starting for the charitable giving and the mortgage interest and also expenses for education not limited to those that has to be flat, care and budget neutral and it has to be simple you can fill it out on the back of the postcard and fill it in because we need a smaller irs and less competitive tax code that but we have to understand the economic engine of our park in minnesota. over 80% of all employers are small and medium-sized

businesses that are taxed at a personal level. they are subchapter s. and some proprietorships and partnerships. they pay the taxes as individuals and when they are taking the high tax rate, 39.6% and corporate america and wall street is paying 35% and they have armies of accountants and voyeurs and a cpa is that is the reason why we have disproportionately -- one of the reasons the disproportionately high unemployment in our part of minnesota. you know the numbers for the state look good but when we look at what is happening in the iron district, it has 64% higher unemployment than the rest of the state. in grand rapids rapids in the last several months they talked out of the 10% unemployment. and yes at the outskirts they are a part of this district and they have topped out at the last several months 10% but that is

not the real number there. we had a much higher rates of employment, presentation and the employment market about six years ago. thousands, thousands of our friends and neighbors have given up looking for work altogether and we have underemployment. we have people that are working two or three or four part-time jobs and we talked about that because they cannot find a good paying or higher paying job that fits their skill levels and that is an economy that is sputtering in 15 starts and if we want to nick sure that our part in minnesota has a great economy, we have to look at reigniting the main street business from again not washington, d.c. or wall street on down and we need to look at giving the projects like the sandpiper going. we know how to do it. we just have to go and do it. >> moderator: thank you mr. mills. mr. sandman your philosophical

approach? sandman: the irs is a big monster lurking in the dark and we need to strike. where i would start with that is making sure that we get the money out of the corporations, stop subsidies. i could be wrong but the last i heard it was like $500 million a year. with the corporations to start paying their taxes for over $5 billion by the league and a strong tax base but it doesn't need to come from the back of the middle class. it doesn't need to come that way. we need to start looking at the top and see the trickle-down effect it doesn't trickle-down at all. it only goes so far.

>> we need a flat tax break that is fair for everyone not just the ones at the top then we can have some money and do things in minnesota. we can redirect that money. if i'm elected i will do the best i can to redirect that point. we need to get the money out of the government and put it in the pockets of the people. that's you my friends, that's you. >> moderator: one more minute of the taxation. nolan: a couple things. it would've people like to talk about the tax rate of 38% and 35%. let's talk about reality. the recent tax study in minnesota found that the average person making a million dollars or more is paying a rate of 13%,

not 35 or 38% and the average person making 30 to $50,000 a year is paying 31% of the one that regularly and only got $870,000 to get by on for that year and the person making 30,000 only has 20,000 left to get by. you made more money with the salary that your family pays you sitting here in an hour and a half than the minimum wage earner will make in a week. none of your fellow employees came up to me and said the math would show he would have to work for your company 33 years to make what your family pays a year. the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and the tax policies are exacerbating an accelerating that and in no small part responsible for that and nobody is for penalizing the rich. we just want the rich and the powerful to pay their fair share and we reject this theory of

economics and support increasing the minimum minimum wage is aimed at rebuilding the middle class because that's how you read out the promise of america. mills: the representative is making a great case for tax reform but then he started talking about the business and yes we have been successful. we make a profit and that is the purpose of the business and whether it is through profit or through your paycheck, anybody that is in business knows that as an opportunity to reinvest back into business to sustain the jobs you currently have and create new ones and that is our business model. we work hard, sometimes we have calluses on our hands and they make it a little bit lucky at times but then at the end of the day we hope to make a profit and pay ourselves good wages but that is an opportunity to reinvest back into business and that's the entire business

model. we are not publicly traded. there is no private equity money. what we have been able to do is make sure that we are able to grow the business off of our own profits and wages and reinvesting them and we make no apologies for it. >> moderator: any final thoughts on taxation? sandman: we need to do the right thing. we need to do the right thing we need to do the survival of the middle class. we need to get the money out of the corporations then we can look at funding some of the social programs that are out there. we need to start with the rich and to bring it down. we pay enough taxes already we don't need to burden ourselves with anymore, just have it be

fair for everyone. >> moderator: with our time this morning i think the time for one more question and then we will go to the closing comments. let's talk about social security, medicare and medicaid designed for the social safety net if you will. but most would agree that is met with each action by congress. what would you propose be done to address the problems that we know are coming? mills: used if the question up perfectly. the promise made is a promise kept and we have to keep the promises to our seniors but also we have to be cognizant of the programs that will reach in solvency and circa 2034 that is in about 20 years. and after identifying the problem, we have to come together on a bipartisan solution because we don't need to do with social security and medicaid did to the democratic party to america with obamacare.

it has to be both houses of congress, both sides of the i/o the aisle putting all options on the table to make sure that we are able to make good on the promises to our seniors and as far as medicare is concerned, we have to look at the underlining medical economy. the increase inflation in the medical economy is killing the care not only that but we've taken 716 ilion dollars out of medicare and if anybody thinks that is a phony accounting number or that somehow the 20 benefit medicare, you can talk to people in the home healthcare industry. they've had about $50 billion taken out of the medicare home health care and we have seniors depending on that. we need to do the $716 billion back into medicare because those are real cuts regardless of what anybody tells you.

thank you. >> your thoughts on social security, medicare and medicaid clinics >> we need to put the money back into the also need to change the default to consider social security and entitlements. by god just because they are sitting in washington, that is our money that belongs to us when we get older. medicare is the same way. they sound good but if they are an open door for a bank robber it is going to bankrupt all of us. so we need to do the right thing. we need to put the money back. social security is not an entitlement program. we need to let all the representatives in washington,

the senate say enough is enough. nolan: i want to re- emphasize something that mr. sandman said that his social security and medicare are not entitlements they are earned benefits if the people started paying for the first hour of the first day and the first month they ever went to work with the hope and expectation they would live long enough to enjoy the benefits. the fact is nothing has done more to lift people out of poverty may be in the history of the world than social security. nothing has done more to extend the likes of our senior citizens and having access for all through medicare. the single-payer system by the way. the fact is that social security has a 2 trillion-dollar surplus

and in the absolute worst case and that is based on projections we don't know what it will actually be that it's good for 20 or 30 years and experts actuaries say that if we just listed the cap on the amount that people have to pay the social security taxes and make millionaires and billionaires pay the same rate but the working men and women pay why we would make social security secure and you're talking about keeping all options on the table when your own political party that you choose to caucus with his call for the privatization and training social security over to wall street i will oppose that with all of my might and all of my strength and we are talking about the same case with medicare taking and turning back back over that back over to the insurance companies where one third of all of our health dollars go into a big insurance company propaganda centralist administration there are ways we

can reduce health care costs that there are ways that we can protect social security and medicare without turning social security over to wall street and without turning medicare over to the insurance industry. we have that once upon a time and if you think the costs are bad under the affordable care act, you ought to go back and read how accelerating the cost of insurance is under the so-called free market system that you and braced. they were much worse. we have to fix it and improve it and keep moving forward and protect social security and medicare. mills: there have been republicans that have advanced different ideas but that is not me. for the representative to attempt to put words into my mouth because somebody somewhere in the republican party advanced one idea i can only state with ipv band but i will stand for in

washington. nolan: you're the one that said all options are on the table. mills: that's quite alright. anyway, can i start over on the time? that was rude but it's understandable. anyway, basically i don't want anybody to put words in my mouth because i want to stand for what i stand for and i will stand for you in washington, d.c. and i deserve -- ibb than preserving and protecting social security and medicare. but we have to be cognizant of the fact that these programs have a date of insolvency and we can't just keep kicking the can down the road. sandman: i was kind of enjoying the argument here. you guys are good.

it's not an entitlement program and people need to realize we need to have that affordable in all the things we talk about here tonight come back to the middle class people. if i'm elected into the office i will do everything i can to keep those costs down, bring the money back and put it back where it belongs. thank you. >> thank you congressman. nolan: do i get another minute ? i will go back to what i said before. you have chosen to propose to go to washington and caucus with the people that want to privatize social security and privatize medicare. and it's one thing to say you want to protect that but the

devils are in the details and if your idea of protecting it is keeping all options open including the option of privatizing both which is what the people that you propose to caucus with canada should be disturbing for people that are realizing and counting on social security and medicare. and i would just submit once again no one has done more to lift more people out of poverty than social security. and nothing has done more to extend the lives and add more life to the lives of our seniors than medicare. they are wonderfully good programs, and i have no interest whatsoever in the privatizing either one of them and we will do whatever it takes to preserve them as they are. they've never failed to meet an obligation. there is never a year they haven't produced a profit and they have done so much good for

our seniors that i would do everything in my power to protect them as they are. >> moderator: thank you congressman. let's move to the opposing statements and i would ask each of you to limit your comments to two and a half minutes and i've asked the audience to please refrain from some final thoughts of mine. nolan: who is better to represent our ideas and priorities in washington, d.c.. somebody that voted with obama approximately 90% of the time if somebody that is x-rated and we didn't touch on it a whole lot somebody that actually voted for the energy tax with a carbon tax that would strangle the economy of our part of minnesota the number one cost of production and expense is energy. that energy tax would strangle

the iron range and the same for the timber industry for industry. in large part of their expense is energy. it ships about 40% of that goes through the port that carbon and energy that would strangle our part of minnesota causing us to pay more at the pump and causing us to be more in our home energy bills. somebody that supports the water in the u.s. rule that would cause the epa to be able to come in and regulate the ditches and ponds and family farms or somebody who thinks that obamacare isn't great first step to the health care. so hopefully you have listened carefully with open ears and open arms and open hearts. i look forward to your vote and representing you in washington, d.c. because i truly believe based on what we talked about

here i best represent the values and priorities of the district and i look forward to going to washington, d.c. to serve you. sandman: i am a common person and i use common sense. i am not stuck in the party mode whether it be republican or democrat i care about you and doing the right things, lowering taxes, student debt, jobs, environment. number one is environment. there is a lot of talk out there

that corporations don't care about the environment or the people. they don't care about you. i care about you and your grandchildren and your rights to life. i will make my voice heard and i will do the best i can for you the ones that put me in power and the ones that put me in office and your voice will not go unheard. so vote for me november 4.

thank you. >> thank you. congressman? nolan: i want to thank everybody for the opportunity and my opponents in the race for a spirited debate it should be clear by this point what the choice is and who you are for. one element i would like to add is the question of who can get things done in washington as well. independent groups like yours truly and the other 10% of people who are able to introduce legislation and effectively get it passed into law the leave me as a freshman in the tea party republican dominated house of representatives that is no easy task. "time" magazine cited the leadership for keeping us out of the war in the middle east. i sponsored the amendment to knock you $9 billion out of the

afghan reconstruction fund because we need that money back home for deficit reduction and rebuilding america. that is enough to finance the state of minnesota and still fund the schools and roads and bridges. i sponsored a bill to make it streamlined the regulations for manufacturers creating all kinds of good jobs. i passed legislation to prohibit republicans and democrats from the trust fund and i passed legislation protecting and from the species of fish and aquatic life. i secured 3,000 acres for the ban of the chippewa nation that had been stolen by the settlers

following 1854. my staff and i have worked with government private agencies. for the roads and bridges and airports and schools the point is there is a longer list. the executives and mine workers support my candidacy and energy executives as well as employees support my candidacy. you know where i stand on all these issues into wine for people just have to ask who they are for in the decision who to vote for should be easy. >> we will leave it there. thank you for your participation. we appreciate the opportunity to have store discussion on the issues and of the issues and think you and a partner thinks disability project and to the playhouse for the use of the facility. thanks again and enjoy the rest of your day. a costco

now we are going to be talkinggt about campaign 2014 with matt arbbe the president ceo of tea p freedom works as a role in this view it should cycle. let's begin with where you areoe playing this cycle and where you

have your eyes and resources.ato >> guest: it's the senate the other half of the public for us is is the makeup of the house and the senate particularly the republican caucus which is generally where we play. and i think one of the underreported stories in the cycle is what is happening in the house races, but i would call the liberty caucus is probably going to double in size after the 2014 election so we are at the market looking at places you can make a difference. one of my favorite candidate is running in washington state, the former redskins star. >> host: what is the liberty caucus? >> guest: they focused on economics and the size of the government but they also care about the civil liberties issues and someone like justin who is the leader of the house liberty

caucus as a representative of that perspective into the sort of grand -- rand paul. >> host: why aren't they called the tea party caucus? >> guest: it's a little bit broader and i think that since 2009 it has really morphed into something that is a little bit bigger and broader and more local. think about half of the ron paul movement, the tea party fiscal conservatives, constitutional conservatives have matched up into this beautiful thing. >> host: in 2010 you set out a goal in an article that had this quote the goal remains the same for freedom works and they wrote ahead of the freedom works keeps his eyes on that goal not a junior partnership with the republican party but a hostile takeover of it >> guest: both have been captured by the dc interest and i think that is true of the

so-called republican establishment. our job is to replace those goals with the young fiscal conservatives that are actually coming to washington to reform problems and if you look at the makeup of the senate even today, the makeup of the house it is historically unprecedented to have rand paul and mike lee and ted cruz. about a block of the fiscal conservatives in the senate is unprecedented in the same is true in the house. all politics and change have another margin and we are slowly repopulating the party and the conversation, the issue is, the things they focus on from that. >> host: are you trying to get rid of the party in the house and the senate? >> guest: that depends on who the alternative is. i've been very open but i think

that jeff would make a better speaker than john boehner and we also supported the majority leader. it is a numbers game. it's a question of seasoning. you have to have a replacement for whoever is the leader and obviously we haven't gotten there yet. >> host: if the republicans were able to take care of the senate, would you be behind senator mitch mcconnell as the majority leader? >> guest: i think it is a moot point if they take the senate, he will be the majority leader. >> majority leader. >> host: why is a moot point? do you see any other pics in the senate, the gop rank-and-file? >> guest: i think if mcconnell were to take the majority everything would be up for grabs and it would be chaos and you could see maybe like johnson or marco rubio it depends on the presidential aspirations. if you see someone like that emerge as an alternative none of

them would suggest they are even willing to do that today because the landscape today except for that mcconnell wins if republicans win. >> host: if the reverse happens, republicans do not capture the challenge to the leadership. >> guest: there would certainly be a challenge and i think that would be a logical follow-through on what has been a lackluster performance among republicans and that sounds counterintuitive because everybody says republicans are trending right now but the opportunity is so big. >> host: let's look at this headline from the fox news will the tea party gop establishment establishment to establishment of the mending distances to win the senate in november x. are you playing with the establishment republican party and where they put money into the senate races? >> guest: they decide for themselves where they want to fight and the goal was quite

similar today we had different goals in have different goals in the primary but now it is too replace the democrats in the red states that voted for obamacare with republicans if that's what's happening right now. the question that is most interesting is what was republicans do with the majority and what is the policy agenda, what is the alternative and how will they balance the budget? all those issues are still question marks and so in a great sense what happens after is more important. i would love to see someone going out to win the senate seat in nebraska to be a standardbearer for the alternative to obamacare and he is an exception in the cycle in that he has been willing to talk about specifics and he has been willing to acknowledge that it's not just enough to repeal obamacare is now so much chaos has been brought onto the individual market and the prices and forcing young people to buy

insurance they don't need, republicans need to come up with the alternative and put it on the president's desk and if they do that except the table for 2016. >> host: at the fiscal battles? >> guest: i don't know what the republicans will do they seem to wait until after the next election. you get to questions of balancing the budget and i do think that the next republican nominee meets the plan he's going to be asked about it because 17 trillion national debt is simply not acceptable particularly in the presidential year when it's not enough to turn out the republican base. you have to grow the community. someone like rand paul is reaching out to the new constituencies pulling them into the republican party. >> host: what about when he left washington to campaign and when they come back into lame

duck they run out. what do you want to see have been? asked how i would like to see them come up with spending cuts and stand up to the president. they broadcast far and wide of their unwillingness to fight over the budget and that gives a great deal of negotiating power. presumably if they take the senate they are not going to roll over for harry reid and you do have that opportunity. we will wait and see and we will be pushing for actual savings particularly as we add all of these emergency spending programs that they always add on >> host: sequestration. if you want to see that stay in the automatic cuts? >> guest: definitely. that's the only thing that they have accomplished and the fact is that it is a small haircut on total spending and it's a small reduction in the growth of spending if it is more accurately. and if they do not even do that,

the question is what is the goal how do you get to the balanced budget? it has to be a combination of growth and also fiscal restraint and this is the promise they made going all the way back to the 2010 election. >> host: you're talking >> host: we are talking of campaign 2014 and the role as well as the agenda after november. phone lines are open to start dialing in. (202)585-3881. 5880 and independent and others (585)285-3882 and you can send a pretax c-span wj or e-mail journal@c-span.org. let's talk about emergency funding. you brought that up. there is a story in the paper that senator vitter is holding up $1 billion the president wants to use to fight ebola. do you agree when you have a nurse in the country that seems

to have been contaminated by trying to deal with the patient in dallas? >> guest: writes frustrating about the process and i going to attack from a fiscal perspective because certainly we always face challenges on unexpected spending priorities that need to be funded that we didn't know about when the budget cycle started. why isn't isn't bundled into the process and why did he spend more money than we had and when there's a crisis we add on to that? i agree it should come from existing funds that i would also suggest a natural proclivity to simply gave the agency more money because they failed as a frustrating aspect of washington budgetary politics. >> host: so you're saying the cdc has failed? >> guest: they failed at the isolation and left the patients back into the country.

they dropped the ball on the day number one so the skepticism that funding more of the ailing agency exists and i think that we should take that seriously. >> host: if you go to open secrets.org you will find these numbers for the cycle. contributions made by freedom works over 365,000 is outside spending coming in at 1.6 million. you'd think 21 out of 121. what does that mean but are you doing with that? explain your outside spending. >> guest: that's for the super pack and that's one of the organizations that fits under the freedom works banner. our super pack is a little bit different because we typically don't do the tv ad that say karl rove and crossroads should do. it's to provide the tools and resources activists ask for to get out the vote on the ground. it's a typically that means yard

signs from a social, social media, connecting people with each other, door hangers, and also training on how to have an impact because remember they haven't been this easy and in the political pros so they are trying to find how to have a cycle ended and the treatment of the 501 c. for a leading up to 2012 this type of super pack might have an increased importance to the activists because they are afraid. they are trying to comply with the law and i think the system is designed that way. >> guest: the super pack is disclosed and we have close to 80,000 individual donors that have contributed to the cycle. >> host: an average donation box >> guest: i don't know what it is that it's about $25.

>> host: is that where you get most of your money from small individual donations? >> guest: certainly we have about 100,000 individual donors and there are some larger ones in there but it's becoming the average gift is declining every year because of the intermediation in the same reason that rand paul is a senator is the basis of the freedom works funding. >> host: escapes to phone calls in elizabeth new jersey. independent call. go ahead. >> caller: good morning. the question i would like to ask is when the team party came onto the scene they were about spending and fiscal issues. you wear phony hats but from that point you joined with second amendment groups and evangelical groups and moved into social issues. why did you move there and stick because once you moved on i

think you lost all credibility. >> guest: that is a great question. i personally think that is a bit of a mythology about the tea party. keep in mind we surveyed 6.5 million members on a regular basis the ones they motivate our very much fiscal and civil liberties. i was looking at the survey this morning actually and the questions like marriage and abortion barely show up on their radar screens of the activists. i think the reason that we are characterized as social conservatives is because that is the strawman the left can attack and you can't attack citizens that would actually like the government to stay out of their health care would like the government to balance its own books and would like to get that individual liberty back into the political vacation and the party really represents that.

that doesn't mean the social issues issues often often portend anything but politics is a horrible way to manage important social institutions, and it's pushing the poll and dependent on the social interest. i would suggest the social issues belong in church and synagogue and it is a question between you and your pastor coming off your congressman or senator. >> host: democratic caller. hello. this just amazes me how people come on the air and try to act like they are a grassroots organization. it's nothing more than -- >> host: i'm going to have matt be even responded to that. >> guest: we have never received a penny from the the cook further since the founding of freedom works in 2003.

this is one of those talking points the left is trying to use. i'm not sure that it's working but as i said earlier, and what support is very broad-based and it is primarily grassroots funded and that's the way we like it. >> host: do you agree with the brothers and the americans for prosperity? do you agree with their agenda? we do have an overflow room and if anybody is standing in the back and would like to have a little bit more of a comfortable space to sit down we would invite you to do that. thank you all for joining us today on indigenous people today i am the director here at the jerusalem fund and on the board of directors we would be happy to welcome me back you back to the palestine center events

today. just a couple of brief announcements before we get started. the event today is why it's streaming and for those of you following online, you can participate in the question and answer session and then in the commentary about this event over twitter we are using the hash tag esml 14. so you can send your questions by tagging that or of course send them to@palestine center which is ever handle. if you could silence or phone that would disturb the presentation, we would appreciate it. after today's event, we have a number of events coming up this fall and i would take a moment to highlight a couple. on thursday, the 23rd of october

, we had a talk by richard on the legitimacy of hope which is the title of his new book so we would encourage you to check that out and we also have the opening of a art exhibit feature in the 20th century watercolors of jerusalem on the 24th of october. information on those and many more are available on the information table outside and of course on the website. we are very happy to host on an annual basis memorial lecture commemorating the contributions and life of professor edward who we lost far too early as a guiding light and intellectuals not just in the palestinian cause but also the study is on

the post-colonialism and political theory and comparative literature and the like. this is one of the key events annually and we are happy to have judith butler as the lecturer this year. doctor butler is the professor in the department of rhetoric and comparative literature and the codirector of the program on critical theory at the university of california berkeley. she's the author of numerous books and the most recent is parting ways. she will discuss the differential value recorded to the palestinian lives and in light of the most recent israeli military campaign on the strip in which massacres and

violations of international law have occurred. please join me in welcoming the lecturer today is doctor. [applause] thank you very much. i'm very honored to be here to think his staff for making this possible for me. the title of my talk today is what is the value that palestinian lives. i know the lecture is a way to honor and remember the extraordinary work of the scholar edward including his literary accomplishments and his incisive public and political commentary. the question how to honor him has to be thought through since my task today.

after the gaza massacre is it the most recent and devastating gaza massacre is to try to think about the words he left us even though he was writing in a different political time. i do not want so much to return to his work but to bring that work for word in order to think about how it is that a certain question can emerge during the time what is the value of palestinian lives. if you ask the question is already rather terrible white as such the question has to be asked at all. are we also asking for whom they have value wax could it be the answer to the that question is no debut not have value? it shouldn't surprise us if we consider the political situation in which the palestinian lives

are considered expendable and we recognize that the international outcry against the bombardment of gaza wasn't censored and when we recognize that what i should call these crimes are very far from being a record eyes were adjudicated in the existing international courts. on the one hand, we shouldn't be surprised that the value of palestinian lives as once more come into question. on the other hand, we should always be surprised without the sense of being scandalized we would use the fully appropriate grief that is a crucial part of the vocal resistance. when asked the question what is the value of palestinian lives to show that there is no consensus on the matter and to expose this as a moral and a political scandal to ask the question is to show the horror

of the question. indeed one asks the question simply to show the question can be asked and that this shouldn't be the case. of course it is possible to respond quickly and that the matter aside. of course their lives like all have value and ought not to be threatened, trigger raised were destroyed. such an answer seeks recourse to what i would call the quick universalism that works by answering the abstract equality of all lives regardless of where they are from where the regional location, race, gender and all of the other possible social determinations of human rights. indeed it is possible to accept that the quality of all lives and yet to live and act in a world that does not reflect that quality in concrete terms. this produces a certain schism in the mind one defense of equal

value of all lives as human lives and abstracting them guess from their social and political location at the same time to cicely because one clings onto the abstraction of the place of the social reality one accepts the differential way the lives are valued in the social economic and political sphere. in that way the abstract equality that is asserted on all lives functions as an alibi for not recognizing him for opposing concrete and urgent inequalities although i mentioned that the inequality can serve as an alibi for actual inequality is ought to move towards a more complex understanding of what edward called universalizing and what he meant by such a term. his argument might already seem abstract as if i might be suggesting a theoretical model over another. but it will only work if it can

become increasingly concrete. it couldn't be that we answer the question that i pose at the outside posed at the outside of the talk by simply claiming that destiny and lives have value because they are palestinian and because the specific values are associated with the lives that have to be recognized in their specificity. to answer the question this way means bringing forth the specificity of the culture come in daily, daily life, artistic and cultural production yet all that work is quite necessary given the cultural appeasement of the palestinians have suffered in the popular media, given to slander into the stereotype that can such an approach into the question of why certain lines can be grieved and others are deemed to be on reasonable. can it answer the question why it is so difficult for there to be a powerful global consensus

on the palestinian lives? what do i mean and what effect if any do the palestinian lives have on the concrete social policy much less on an effective resistance movement backed by international consensus? when we speak about the life, we are talking about someone who is alive. indeed all of us are potentially feasible when the life is in the start regarded in every precaution would be taken to preserve the life and safeguard against harm and destruction. if we think all ought to be treated in that way safeguard from harm and destruction and in my view we embrace the principle of the radical a quality, concretely we can say very often the statistics that show the

overwhelming devastation of the population in gaza are compared with those in israel are not enough to affect certain rhetoric step for ground of the right to self-defense. we have to ask who has a self that can be defended and who is who isn't a political position to have a self that can and ought to be defended. is it possible in the discourse to talk about palestinian self-defense clinics can those that live under the separate rules defend themselves? what us review the statistics that we have about the losses that resulted in the operation protected edge. i do this not only to show the inequality of the losses but rather to show how that inequality is covered over when certain count as real and others are waved away for certain

gestures that yield political power within a situation of structural inequality. whether one takes the un numbers or those offered by the center for human rights warranty center for human rights in july and august of this year somewhere in between 2,131 and 2,168 palestinians were killed and 77 israelis were killed when we make a distinction between the combatants and civilians we are already on the tricky political territory or how is that distinction made in who makes it? the un claims 1,473 of the palestinian dead were civilians that they put the number higher at 1,662 zimbabweans into this includes between 501 children and 57 women or 519 children depending on your source.

the ministry of whole three parts 11,100 palestinians were needed and will suffer disability or illness. especially hard hit as you know of the populations living within the refugee camps that have the homes damage or destroyed during the bombardment and as many as 20,000 of the structures are no longer habitable. it's worth noting as well that the majority of gaza's 110,000 homeless people are children. there are many more statistics that are important including those that are traumatized including those that suffer those losses and survive in the world in which the losses were irreversible. and those that require social and psychological support, how do those get established and can we ever know them back so i give you these numbers realizing they are in the process of being

revised and they are added to the list every week. i do this not because i think the numbers talk in ways that other arguments do not in fact i think many people can glance at the numbers or year the numbers and not speak of it is by what they see or hear and not be moved to conclude what is happening is terrible or unjustified and they were unable to claim either the palestinians about this devastation on to themselves or to regard the loss of life within israel as a much greater concern. the numbers do not speak for themselves. they require interpretation even though you may think the horror of it is and ought to be clear. that means bringing forth the numbers and offering the numbers and names and images with an analysis and media persons.

it is always the same picture of the palestinian station and it continues and reoccurs as if it were some kind of an inevitable reality compounding the sense of political analysis rather than moving its viewers to judge and to act. of course it is a human shield argument to realize the cost and losses. it was made popular in the operation and was renewed in july and august of this year with roche us as evil and as you said he and others pointed out the human show argument is racist and reprehensible. it's important that this be said time and again since it hasn't been heard where it should be in saying it turns out to be not quite enough since it is a is no one told me a pernicious argument that it is a much more widely held than i would have thought. when i first came across the

argument that they put their children in the way of the bombs i thought that it was so ridiculous no one could possibly accept it. of course i was wrong and i now see that i was etched more wrong than i could have imagined. what gives such an argument its appeal and its credibility? the arguments takes different forms but the one that seems to circulate as often is that in particular it places its rocket launchers and a civilian areas and it draws the five years to the same areas putting at risk the civilians living there. such a claim should be brokered by determining where the rocket launchers are but israel does not publish any of the maps or documentation it claims to have to support this view. moreover the so-called handbook said to be discovered by the israelis in east jerusalem to choose and do as an choose and inherit ... civilian population turned out to be a forgery they

understand the civilians to be members of hamas were to have voted for hamas and that by voting as they have committed to themselves in themselves in the way of the bombs. they may not become veterans committee also according to this argument if it is an argument put themselves in harms way by voting as they are said to have voted. the children that do not devote to belong to families that have essentially voted and that means they would pay for their voting privileges with their lives. anyone can know whether those were targeted and voted for hamas and it didn't vote or remain loyal but the argument is clear that the status of civilian does not quite after. civilians are the ones that vote and if they voted for hamas they

are to pay for their lives. at this point it is clear that they are indeed quite deliberate since they were being published even though many of the mainstream accounts they are said to have taken over and in terms that likened the election to the two. i'm not in favor and i've never once supported hamas. i rejected that political party. its charter with its anti-semitism and its beheadings and rockets and hierarchy and its treatment of women to name a few. i understand the arguments for the resistance but i am myself in favor of the nonviolent forms of resistance. and i have one reason to say this out loud even though they should be clear on the basis of my broad political view any effort to study or understand of the aims were to see how it's figured in the political imagination is very often taken to be the sympathy for hamas is not a potential membership so

now that i've situated myself, okay sorry. now that i situated myself, i want to make two remarks. one is that the political party is very often made to function as a synonym for palestinians and from the israeli state perspective to majority support for the party justifies the assault on the civilians. in other words it is precisely because they have largely supported hamas. that isn't such a matter that there isn't a a party dedicated to the armed resistance and a part that takes care of social medical service irrigation and education. second, because it is an islamic party is very often caricatured as a culture of martyrdom that raises the terms and leads to the incredible generalization that they do not value in life

or the life of their children in the way that the israelis do the people of the so-called west are said to do. so to the extent that the argument relies on this growth stereotype the palestinians are figured out as the uncivilized and premodern do not value life as those that us in the west do we see that a fundamentally oriented tendency part of what makes this claim possible. the claim palestinians as a group sacrifice the children for the sake of the cause relies on the conception of palestinians is prepared and this broad view of the palestinians up to the more specific view that hamas is responsible for its own losses essentially the children. there's a great deal to be said about how women and children function in these kind of arguments. obviously there is a special kind of shock and horror as a reserve for the construction of the lives of women and children who are understood to be emblems

of innocence. i'm the one hand the accusation that they have sacrificed them makes them barbaric the same assumption applies that if they've deliberately targeted them for the description it is they are barbaric. so we see how the same premise operate. does that mean that at some level they know that they are engaged in the form of killing and it is utterly unacceptable. since it seems to be opposed to the civilization and the tennis that tends to work to distinguish among the cultures that are more or less civilized reproducing the scene of orientalism and indeed it is one reason i continue to have interest and faith in international calls that call the destruction of civilian populations criminal. but i suspect if the discourse

that charge the sacrifice from the children believe that the deliberate destruction of the populations of children is barbaric then at some level it knows and believes that its own actions are barbaric. if the accusation against hamas is than to cover into two externalize what it considers to be its own barbarism but it's a shocking about the shocking about the arguments is that they serve the purpose of selecting some and rationalizing the fact that the defense forces have targeted civilians in massacred populations and eastward the infrastructure conditions of light in large parts of gaza. the argument is made to twist the terms of the truth so that it is the palestinians have sacrificed their children into civilians and that have killed those vast numbers of people. indeed the evidence that they targeted civilians, that is unarmed people has been released

by the dissidents in the idf and by the palestinian testimony. we have to ask there is a destructiveness at work but doesn't care about the rationale for the destructiveness. it seems to come later and it can shift and it doesn't matter that the rationale remains consistent. after all at first it seems that the killing of the israelis itself quite hideous and horrible as the reason for the attack and the crackdown on the intentions throughout the west bank but then it didn't matter that they were not precisely hamas. they came to the occasion to attack and escalate into the full-scale war of bombardment. if as netanyahu claimed it should now see what would happen if it continues its support for

hamas, we might conclude that it was two days straight the political party and its hold on the majority. it was generated among the palestinians in the west bank and it had ever been recorded before as a result of the bombardment. so it seemed that in yahoo!'s aim was flailed but what if it was to claim all palestine is or potentially is hamas and to seek to establish the rocket throwing sacrifice sacrificing figure of the palestinian is the norm? his point was to destroy the unity government, then at one point in the process that seemed to be failing. if the point was to establish the palestinian authority in gaza as a dominant partner in the unity government but also seems to be failing. if the point was to confirm hamas as a terrorist organization, then i was shortly called into question by the fact that the representatives entered into negotiations with them and

so has begun to treat them than perhaps inadvertently as diplomatic players. the fact seems to be that there was no rationale for the bombardment and that the rationale was constantly shifting. we asked by the circumstance to think of the destructiveness that is relatively indifferent to the question of whether that destructiveness is justified and it takes on justifications after the fact and switches them quickly without any care or consistency accountability. the justification the state of israel had given mobilizes the language of self-defense and that is the rationale that president obama and others have used entitled to self-defense. given that they have not been recognized as a state although that seems to be happening in some interesting ways and that

gaza remains under the colonial rule in the sense that it is in occupation and in that sense remains occupied even precisely because it has no authority over its borders than the appropriate framework for the conflict continues to be colonial rule. and the resistance to israel is the resistance to colonial rule. again as i said earlier i would like to see the charter relinquished and repudiated as long as the language concerning the destruction of israel remains couched as it is as a rhetoric and israel itself would be able to invoke self-defense for whatever destruction it causes. that said, the way that israel invokes self-defense gives it permission for the unbridled and unlimited assaults. it's not only in relation to the rockets into the territory that israel invokes self-defense for some self-defense requires the transfer of the palestinian and israelis outside a 48 and for

more of the self-defense implies humiliation harassment detention and in prison and of the mass numbers is justified and self-defense also works to justify the massacre of the civilian populations and forms the destruction of some have called genocidal. indeed if and when the existence of another people on their land seems to be understood as a potential or an extent -- self-defense authorizes the total more. what i've laid out so far today i think you can see that there are at least two forms of logic. first is the massacre is made to appear as a deliberate choice and plan of the victim. the second is the principle of self-defense depending on how it is construed can authorize limitless aggression. i begin today with a discussion and asked whether we might be able to ask the question what is the value of palestinian lives and i suggested that the

systematic devaluation of the palestinian lives proceeds in the arguments of the kind that i sought to expose. they themselves are the ones that supposedly devalued their own lives into the and the lives of their children or the palestinians that seek to threaten so it ought to be understood which means that taking their lives is the same as eliminating the threats to life that matters. life in the last claim is always is really a life that is considered to be more worthy of grief however interesting than that the rabbi in new york sought to offer the palestinian losses by speaking in the names of those who have been killed in the latest bombardment was censored by her own community. how dare she stand for the principle that lies in up to the equally great double. the criminal character of the attack on the civilian

populations are properly to be considered and adjudicated by the international criminal court. and the arguments made for this by the national scope center for constitutional rights and the numerous other legal associations cannot be heard unless and until the palestinian authority agrees to become a signatory to the icc. there are those of you here today that no better than i do buy the by the petition was initiated and then withdrawn. my old navy on this matter is that as long as it cannot adjudicate these matters, then the realization of the palestinian losses continue. ..

>> value of palestinian lives to e, the icc is an important venue, one that ought not to be refused, especially for short-term strategic reasons. as you may know, i am a professor of the humanities and not a politician, not even a policy wonk. i read what i can, and i offer analyses that make use of whatever conceptual resources i have. i would like in the last section of this paper to return to edward saeed, although it is strange to talk about returning. although he is gone, his thought remains with us as both inspiration and guide. i wonder if any of us have really caught up with him.

i began today by asking whether we might be able to extend our ideas about political equality to the equality of the aggrieve bl, that is, the idea that all lives are equally grieveable and equally valuable. i cautioned against a quick solution to this problem, one that would abstract people from the concrete realities, including the concrete inequalities within which they live. although i do think international criminal courts rely importantly on a notion of humanity when they articulate crimes against humanity, i think as well that forms of equality emerge when people are able to make historical connections between conditions of suffering and demands for redress, conditions of subjugation and struggles for political self-determination. saeed give cans us some ways to -- gives us some ways to think about making connections among different sorts of suffering, suggesting that we have to be capable of juxtaposing one historical form

of suffering with another not to assert their concrete identity with one another, but to see how different forms of subjugation and ought to speak to one another. the demand to represent palestinians suffering in aspiration is important to make it legible to allow it to become griefable, the demand for emancipation from colonial rule, the demand for political self-determination. but how do we understand this demand to represent collective suffering? saeed's view is that palestinian suffering had to be detailed in its specificity, but it also had to be framed in terms of its connection with other subjugated peoples. his concern was those in exile, those hundreds of thousands who had been displaced from their lands in '48 or '67 or '83. so he wrote about those possibilities of connection among exiled peoples, and in that context he cited --

[inaudible] who wrote some years ago that the palestinian people with are those whose national experience -- and here i quote -- belongs with that of the armenians, the jews, the irish, the cypriots, the poles, the american indians at those terrifying frontiers where the existence and disappearance of peoples fade into each other, where resistance is a necessity but where there is also sometimes a growing realization of the need for an unusual and, to some degree, an unprecedented knowledge. at best, i feel about these various palestinian existences that they form a counterpoint of multiple, almost desperate dramas, each of which -- each of us is aware of as occurring simultaneously with his or her own. so then saeed, drawing inspiration from this remark, writes the following: and i quote, to this terribly

important task of representing the collective suffering of your own people, testifying to its travails, reasserting its enduring presence, reenforcing its memory, there must be added something else which only an intellectual, i believe, has the obligation to fulfill. for the intellectual the fashioning, i believe, is explicitly to universalize the crisis, to give scope to what a particular race or nation suffered, to associate that experience with the suffering of others. as much as the idea belonging to a common humanity seems crucial to the perspective of the international criminal court, there's another form of belonging that is also group versal or rather universalizing in saeed's view. when and how does this universalization happen? well, for saeed it happens precisely, and i quote again, in the practice of associating, not identifying, one's own experience of suffering to that

of others, end quote. he continues: it is inadequate only to affirm that a people dispossessed, oppressed or slaughtered denied its rights and its political existence without, at the same time, doing what was done during the algerian war, affiliating those horrors with the similar afflictions of other people. this does not mean a loss in historical specificity, he writes, but rather it guards against the possibility that a lesson learned about oppression in one place will be forgotten or violated in another place or time. it follows then that to represent the sufferings of one's own people does not relieve a person of the duty, and i quote again, of revealing that your own people now may be visiting related crimes on their victims, end quote. indeed, this was the view of the writer levy, the survivor of

auschwitz, who objected to the bombings of lebanon in '82 and objected to israeli complicity in the slaughters in two towns. he insisted that one form of suffering cannot be used as the retext for causing another form -- pretext for causing another form of suffering. it would mean generalizing the unacceptable character of that suffering so that, indeed, no one should suffer in that way or in an equally illegitimate way. that is not to say that all sufferings are the same, they are not, but that they can become the basis for widening circles of solidarity, especially when we are willing to undertake a comparative analysis, make the links and engage in a practice of cultural and political translation. saeed knew exceedingly well that these are distinctly different histories of displacement, the displacement of palestinians and the displacement of jews in the 20th century, and that there's

no absolute structural analogy to be drawn between them. after all, it is most often the case the displacement of the jews which led to the establishment of israel was the cause of the dispossession of the palestinians, quite brilliantly relayed. the claims of one group dispossessed cannot justify dispossessing another group. after all, the establishment of israel as a sanctuary for european jewish refugees produced a new refugee problem for the palestinians which means that a refugee problem continues to be reproduced in the 20th century up until the present. a comparative approach to the refugee problem -- let's remember, saeed was a professor of comparative literature, a field that fosters the recognition of uneasy or unexpected parallels between different texts and contexts or which regularly undergoes schefts in frame -- shifts in frame. okay, so a comparative approach to the refugee problem becomes

possible only when the vision is widened to include several instances of the refugee problem. and in drawing the analogy between jews and palestinians, which is distinct, i think, from an analogy between israelis and palestinians. saeed is seeking to widen the lens on the refugee problem, mobilizing the potential for an understanding between those in the diaspora or whose pasts continue to inform their ethical and political sensibility. diaspora or sometimes exile is not fore grounded as the aim or goal of politics, nor can it possibly describe a fixed location. it is rather proposed as a critical perspective on forms of political nationalism that have required the repeated expulsion of those perceived as nonnational. in the case of zionism, those who favor expulsion are understood as self-segregating, continuing a form of settler

colonialism that is bound up with the historical and ongoing dispossession of palestinians from their home ands the building of dwelling structures on those appropriated lands, the settlements, and the destruction of homes the expanding and debilitating practice of indefinite defission. detention. so as i said, it was no accident that saeed was a literary psychological around. -- scholar. he really thought that the work of bringing disparate cultural traditions into contact with one another could produce a more expansive solidarity as long as the translation of one cultural situation into another was not an act of assimilation or domination. his perspective was the one of someone who had lost his home. he used the term "exile," but we also now have to understand what it is to be in exile in one's own home or on the land across the wall from where one's home used to be or on the grounds of a devastated structure that used

to be called one's home where no one can live. saeed wrote that exile, the exile is one who sees things as they were and as they are and as they were there, as they are here and so sees double and cannot do otherwise. and yet there are possibilities of seeing that emerge from the condition that ought to be valued, and i quote: an ideal or experience is always counterposed with another making them both appear in an unpredictable light. he then suggests that this practice of juxtaposition brings us back to his ideas about universality or universalizing about what he calls human rights and matters of justice. he writes: from that idea of juxtaposition, one gets a better, perhaps even more universal idea of how to think, say about a human rights issue in one situation by comparison with another. end quote. of course, we do need abstract

principles to make the point that all lives are valuable, that they ought to be treated as potentially grieveable in the same way and that losses have to be marked, acknowledged and mourned. we need that universalizing moment when we say all live. but to make the point politically, we have to be able to communicate that palestinian lives are lives and ought to be treated as such. it is, of course, both astonishing and appalling that this case has to be made at all. but i think we've seen how effectively certain losses can be de-realized or how quickly populations are defined as targets, as shields, as attackers renamed and reimagined within a scenario of war. when a child is figured of a shield, he or she is turned into metal or an instrument. that means that that child, even the one playing on the street or hanging out on the playground,

the one who moves too close to the sea on a hot summer day, that child is somehow, somewhere hiding and shielding a bomb, a rocket, a rocket launcher. so if you see the photo of the child by the sea, what you should see is that there's a bomb right behind that child and that child is a function of the bomb. okay. at this point the human body is transfigured by those who are targeting that body into an instrument of war, and the destruction of that child is understood as the destruction of a war instrument. how do we stop or reverse this most nefarious of transfigurations? the simple photograph will help, but it does not suffice. the publishing of the statistics will help, but it doesn't do the job all on its own. i do not know the practical way, though i think that nothing will happen without building a global consensus. so why is it so difficult for

there to be a powerful global consensus on the grieve about of palestinian lives? i think it can be built through forms of solidarity with other struggles against colonialism not only to sew that the situation -- show that the situation in palestine continues to be that of colonial domination and to show as well that orientalist and racist figures of the palestinian continue to function as popular justification for the elimination of their lives. we and must say that palestinian lives are also lives, but to do that, we have to fight a colonial and racist legacy with all the resources from other anti-colonial struggle, and we have to do this as well by pursuing those juxtapositions between forms of suffering that are not always set against one another or lined up next to each other. i think i saeed tried to do this by claiming that jews and palestinians both suffered forms of dispossession and that this might become the basis for a

common commitment not only to the rights of all refugees, but for the right not to become a refugee in one's own land. perhaps that moment of hopefulness seems very unlikely at this moment. i can understand that. but there is some hope. there's jewish voice for peace, there's nonviolent palestinian resistance movement, there are legal associations and institutes such as this one, there are grass roots struggle on the ground for prisoners' rights, for stopping the wall, for saving the trees and the land, and there is -- despite the failure of many international institutions to condemn israeli aggression -- a growing sense that a terrible massacre has happened and that many ruses have gotten in the way of grieving those losses and demanding redress. we could say that all those lives killed, suffered human rights violations, but the framework of human rights cannot quite grasp the systematic character of this destruction, a destruction that has been going on periodically, repeatedly for

some time and which has to be understood as the violent character of militarization and colonial rule. i do think that there are shifts happening in the broader global understanding of what has happened, but they remain muted many some ways that have to be countered. one reason i'm in favor of pursuing justice through the icc is that i think there is a chance to make the analogies between what is happening in palestine and what has happened in other places where populations have suffered expulsion, destruction and statelessness. following saeed's view, it is only consistent for a people to affirm their own rights to be relieved of statelessness, their rights to sanctuary under conditions of persecution and to make that case by establishing the general and transposeable character of those rights. even if the historical positions of displacement differ, if one people or its emerging and continuing state apparatus is

responsible for the displacement of another, reparation begins precisely through a recognition of the transposeable character of the rights of the stateless, to the political conditions of belonging and to the rights of political self-determination. making that claim in the global arena allows for that process to begin the transposeability of rights accord one population to another in the name of equality and with the hope that translations and juxtapositions such as these lead to an institutional recognition of the equal value of lives now extended to palestinian lives. the task is to forge a world in which no one asks ever again what is the value of palestinian lives. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. thank you very much, professor butler.

we are -- thank you very much. we're going to move to a q&a and just want to remind those watching online, you can send your questions in by tagging @esml14. so we'll begin with questions in the room and, please, do wait for a microphone to get to you so that we can hear you up here, and the audience can hear you as well. we'll start in the front row here, just one moment. >> thank you for that profound lecture, appreciate it. i'm a palestinian journalist. my question to you, you're saying that this reduction of the value of palestinian life as far as israel's concerned is not distinctly -- [inaudible] but enheart in the aspect of -- inherent in the aspect of colonialism. that it is really -- and we can look this being indigenous day, we can look at examples in history. the british shot 5,000 rounds inflicting almost 5,000 casualties. so having said this, do you see

a point where the israelis can accept the quality of grief for palestinians so long as they continue to exist, basically, through a colonial project? thank you. >> um, the quick answer is, no. i think the colonial project has to be overcome altogether for the grieveability of palestinian lives to be established, because the slanderous, the slanderous stereotype, as it were, is mobilized precisely in order to maintain the occupation, to extend indefinite detention indefinitely and to take civilian lives when it proves strategic to do so. so i do think -- but, you know, there's a question what comes first, right? what comes first?

and my sense is that it would be interesting to see what would happen if -- and i know many people are involved in this struggle trying to ally the palestinian struggle with the struggles of the indigenous, ally the palestinian struggle with the struggles of the irish republican army, ally the palestinian struggles with the historical struggles of algeria. not necessarily ending up with the same outcomes of any of those struggles, but to suggest that that kind of alliance gives it a kind of broader framework, and is it reconceptualizes the political terrain so that we're not just concerned with this incident or that incident or this violation of human rights or that one, we have a framework. it's specific to palestine, but it has these really, really important comparative dimensions to other anti-colonial

struggles. and i do think that as people throw colonized power off, right? and this is on the point, i suppose, that greater humanness comes into folks. greater humanness gets produced and asserted and known. and that it may be in the very struggle of throwing it off, in the very struggle of overcoming it with international solidarity that that is a kind of coming into recognize about as a life worth valuing and a life worth honoring. >> we'll go to the lady in the third row here. ma'am? behind you. >> considering how important you thought icc is, i am wondering if it's only -- [inaudible] would apply to it, if there's any other group that could possibly apply for this. >> i don't know the specifics on that.

if somebody else does, it would be great to hear. but my understanding is that he is the designated authority who has the power to apply. and that he has been asked to apply, and then he decided not to apply. and even when people speculated that perhaps hamas put pressure on him not to apply because they don't want to be targeted, my understanding is that they did say, they did say, no, do it. do can it. we'll take that. we'll take the scrutiny. they can inquire into what we do as well, and we will stand by their judgment. so it's enigmatic why he took that back. but my understanding is that he's the only one who has the kind of legal designation to do it at this point. i don't know. >> we'll go right over here. try to get around the room, and we'll come back. >> thank you for your lecture. you mentioned that at some point

the presentation of the palestinian struggle by virtue which they bring onto themselves continues to be seen as an inevitable reality that fosters political paralysis, and when, when i've noticed people creating juxtapositions between the palestinian struggle and other indigenous peoples or, you know, other displaced peoples historically, it's used to have a risk of creating a greater sense of inevitability of the struggle because they are, you know, under colonial rule and as so many other people, they're going to suffer in the same way. how can we overcome that? >> well, i think as much as we need to give representation to collective suffering and do that within a comparative frame as saeed suggests we do, we also need to have a comparative analysis of resistance movements

and solidarity movements and movements for liberation or movements for political self-determination, some of which have worked. there has been massive decolonization. we can look at those, at those histories as well. and use them for semi-utopian purposes. >> gentleman right here has been waiting patiently. >> yes, thanks very much. i'm norman -- [inaudible] >> nice to meet you. >> yes, same here. at the 1944 trial of the prussian plotters against hitler, one of them was asked why he had revolted or why he had participated in the moot, and he said -- in the plot, and he said because of the many murders. and at that point the presiding judge, the brutal nazi judge

feisler lost his countenance, his cool and began to yell, what do you mean by using the term -- [inaudible] for the policies of the third reich? i'm thinking of this, one wonders about the normalization, so to speak, of israel behavior in the sense that the behavior of the israel state, of its executives, armies and so on and its supporters in the diaspora and other supporters who are by no means jewish represents a certain triumph of zionism, namely israel has become a normal, modern, brutal state using all the means at its disposal to protect itself threats against real, imagined, constructed or vicinitied. invented. there are plenty of other instances of this, not least in our own brief national history. but it seems to me that the --

your admirable request based on -- or demand or suggestion -- based on edward's work that we admit the suffering peoples to a kind of equality such that they can grieve ignores the fact to some degree that modern normalcy, at least for much of the 20th century and our century, consists precisely of the kinds of brew untilties -- brutalities the israel army exercised in gaza which were perfectly normal, recognized as such and, indeed, had a good deal of support in american opinion. >> uh-huh. well, i appreciate your comment, although a very despondent comment. >> [inaudible] >> i understand. [laughter] it makes me have to counter with more cheerfulness than i

actually have. [laughter] but i'm going to try to do my bit here. and i guess what i want to say is that of course you're right that massacres such as those we recently witnessed have become normalized over time and even a sign of military strength and even a sign of membership in certain militarized -- the community of militarized nation states that do this periodically or, indeed, sometimes systematically. at the same time, it seems to me that there's a counternormallization movement going on that seeks to expose the normalization, say, of civilian targeting. and to try to resist that. now, that's something that i think we were talking about earlier today, that it used to be that there was greater moral outrage when we recognized how

much civilian, how many civilian losses there were in military exercises such as these or when we realized that there were actually orders given. go ahead, you've had a hard day, take your shot at a civilian population, it's fine. or we will look the other way, you bomb where you need. and it's those reports that we're starting to see more of. so, you know, in a way i am asking the same question you are, where's the outrage, how can the outrage be martialed, how can it be, how can it produce a counter-normalization effort. and one reason, i mean, i know that the international criminal courts have limited power, and they don't have their own army, and they're not binding, and there's all kinds of problem, but they do have the power to name. this is criminal, right? let's remember this is criminal, right in and i think -- right? and i think, you know, as much

as there is that ethos of unbridled militarism that seeks to pump up its own status and standing in the world through its unbridled destructiveness, there's also some fear of being that far away from international consensus. and we can actually see it, we see a rift in europe itself, for instance, and we see a rift in the united states between those who understand, oh, yeah, that's what they have to do, and those who really don't understand and are not willing to allow this to become normalized. and, you know, that's what we used to call a hegemonic struggle. so maybe we need to keep, keep alive the idea that we're still in a hegemonic struggle, and we have to be part of counter-normalization. in the way that you've described. >> lady here that's been waiting for a little while. then we'll come across. >> thank you for a wonderful and stimulating talk. i'm a middle eastern

anthropologist. i want to take my question from this morning's headlines, and that is that a number of the international ngos, donor groups -- >> yes. >> -- have refused to engage in assisting the rebuilding of gaza on the basis it has already been destroyed three times, and why should we do it again because it's only going to happen again. so in light of what you have been speaking about, enlightened by your own remarks and those of our beloved edward saeed, you know, what can you add to this argument, level of argument that victimization is normalized and that there's nothing we can do about it, and so we just accept that it cannot be rebuilt? this morning's headlines. >> yes. well, i did -- you know, sometimes the washington papers don't say the same thing as "the new york times." that's very interesting to me. [laughter] >> [inaudible] >> i see. because i read "the new york times" article, and it seems to me that this is a brokering situation where the ngos say

no and then israel comes forward with either more money or temporary promises. and what i am, what i think we need to think about is, um, the way many which rebuilding -- the way many which rebuilding becomes an opportunity to renegotiate power relations if the state of israel and the u.s. are able to bring ngos in, there's a chance we could see the ngo-ization of gaza which would then allow for a parallel structure there with the west bank and as much as those ngos are terribly important for repairing infrastructure, they cannot stop the process of destruction. right? in fact, if anything, they're waiting in the wings to repair whenever destruction happens. and i see that some of them don't want to be complicitous with the process in that way, right? you're depending o