about the slave markets of the 30s, but had certainly heard those stories and those stories became part of their organizing tool box. >> you can watch this and other programs online at book tv.org. .. how columnists and cartoonist and the one is an award winning rapid novelist and author of nonfiction books about domestic

and international affairs. and from 2008 to 2009 was president of the association, has won several awards for his work including two awards, at st. our journalism award and american library. joining an onstage is chris hedges who has spent two decades as foreign correspondent in the middle east, africa and the baltics. and has worked for the christian science monitor, national public radio, dallas morning news and the new york times. and a pulitzer prize in 2002 for global terrorism. he is author of several best-selling books including wars of force which gives this meeting and his new book wages of rebellion, the moral imperative. we are here tonight to celebrate the release of ted's newest book "snowden". without further ado please

welcome ted rall and chris hedges. [applause] >> thanks for coming. and i will talk about my book. and we will talk about whatever he is going to talk about and we will have a little discussion and throw it out to the audience for q&a. if you have any questions or comments or insults, keep them and we will absolutely field of them. and and grab a copy of the book and look at it. before you buy numerous copies

of. and closer -- i will -- so anyway this book was not my idea. my publisher is here tonight. just as we might want to do a graphic novel by -- biography of edward snowden. i was immediately intrigued. was really into it. i was concerned someone else would do a biography in some format in prose or otherwise and one of the things i wanted to do was make the book discreet and its own thing that would be

different from snowden autobiography, and the hardest thing was for matt, how do you get into this topic. we know that ed snowden is a controversial land fascinating figure and what he did involved lot of strong opinions on all sides of the political spectrum but the question for me was how do i get -- what is the book? when asking people, what is in this project, i am working on a graphic biography of ed snowden and i was shocked how many people told me they didn't know who he was. including people who are well read, very aware of privacy issues, and what is it the most

important story of my lifetime, it has faded into obscurity. among people who knew who he was very vague on the particular. is a russian spy or isn't he the guy who says something, quote i heard over and over, something about nsa or cia, they were doing something wrong. it is laid out in very clear, concise way that could be easily digested by just about anybody. i realize part of the book would be about laying out these nsa program that were revealed in june of 2013 in the guardian, n.y. times and washington post and to lay from out because the only program that has been

discussed in congress or by president obama in the metadata program which is the nsa spying with the cooperation of telecoms like verizon and at&t and sprint, the information on your phone call, telephone metadata, what time you made a call, where the person was, what their phone number was, what your phone number was, that was it. you can get a lot of information from that if you are calling an oncologist, you might have cancer or someone close to you might have cancer, if you are calling mother jones magazine to call about your prescription lawyer magazine not arriving, you can tell a lot about people from telephone metadata and clusters of people and subsets of clusters and there have been a lot of articles about that. but then there has been a lot of misdirection purposely by the government and the press largely controlled by or allied with the government. for example they keep saying you

don't have to worry about it because that program doesn't actually intersect the voice content of your call. that is true. they are telling the truth about that because they have another program that does that. people who defend that program say you don't have to worry about that program because it doesn't store the calls, only intersects the calls and that is totally true because they have another program that stores the calls for five years or longer, part of the data farm in utah. to make it really frightening a lot of these documents snowden pool are years old. the technology has only improved since 2012, 11, 10, when those documents are dated. so is more efficient, search the ability is better no doubt. i knew lastly the third part

above the book, telling his story, explaining what the program is due, the third thing would be about the existential dilemma faced by this man, really two in the one.4 million. there are 1.4 million americans who had access to some or all of the classified documents that edward snowden put in the nsa, cia, and 1.4 million people who saw brazen violations of the fourth amendment here. let's be clear on this. no one on the political spectrum says these programs are legal. they are not legal. they say they are defensible but necessary. they don't see that they are legal because they are not authorized by the patriot act, they are not authorized, they are massive violations of the fourth amendment protection against unreasonable search and

seizure, no question about that. so the issue really is why did all of these -- i wondered about the kind of society we live in that over a million people could see this lawbreaking on a mass scale and only ed snowden and tom drake who did a similar thing but tried to work within the system 10 or 15 years ago, these two guys are the only ones who have stepped forward in the last 15 years since 9/11 at all to talk about these programs. bear in mind there have been previous whistle-blowers and the nsa's efforts to su but every bit of information possible has been something that dates back at least until the 1980s, bearing in mind also that the nsa charter from 1947 is only for an signal intelligence. what that means is nsa is not

legally under u.s. law to spy on foreigners and americans when they are talking to a foreigner but not allowed to talk to an american, intercept americans talking to americans or texting and american or whatever so they are doing this on a mass scale and they started doing it on a mass scale with a program called echelon in the 1980s that was not widely reported upon in the united states but was well-known in europe. in that program essentially made the effort to intercept every transmission, bank wire transfer, all these communications at the time and at the time general hayden who was head of the nsa brad that the u.s. did successfully intercept any communication in the united states back in the 80s, not talking about anything terribly new, goes back a long way. just much more efficient.

i opened the book, where people are followed by cameras through the streets, telephoned drones and planes and helicopters and memorably, the tv that is on the wall, you watch it but it watches you. whenever the government wants to they can see what you are doing in your remanded is positioned in a way that there's almost no privacy whatsoever in your room. the nsa has literally, opened in 1984, the others thing is smart tvs and ed snowden revealed the nsa can watch you through the camera on your computer or the camera on your smart tv. if you have a smart tv, it is kind of insane. a contract you through the

movement, the street since 1984. and the boston police tracked the brothers add to the boston marathon bombings and they sat in the control room to watch this. there's a question about efficacy. in this end was really nicotine addiction that caught him because the city was on lockdown and a guy hankering for a smoke went out in his backyard and found him hiding out in his boat full of bullet holes. if we ever could captured terrorists and probably save trillions of dollars on the nsa because there's no evidence whatsoever that the nsa has ever successfully post 9/11 intercepted a real terrorist plot against the united states of america. no evidence whatsoever. maybe it happened, nobody knows, no one on the senate intelligence committee can say it.

we have this just the the world that a society that has been so morally corrupted, the moral issue is huge here. is a matter of right and wrong. lawbreaking occurring at your job. if i can't go through the system, the problem with the system and the reason it is broken, and you have to report wrongdoing to people most responsible for it. if we make that sacrifice as whistle-blowers like chelsea manning and many others but not nearly enough, there is literally no liability whatsoever for this system which is sell off the rails in terms of militarism and being behold in to corporate interests and so

on. end in 1984, at 52 years old, seemed like a possible future and now the absolute -- it would not be a dystopian -- what we are living in today. and get to the discussion, that is a little bit -- [applause] >> thanks, ted. this book begins from that point, the dystopia that kid described, the greatest living political philosopher, inverted totalitarianism and by that it is not classical totalitarianism, doesn't find expression through a demagogue

or charismatic leader but the anonymity of the corporate state. you have a fascist communist revolutionary reactionary party and replaces it. inverted totalitarianism corporate forces that support field to a little politics, iconography and language of american patriotism and internally have seized all the levers of power to render this citizen important. we have as john ralston saw, as aptly pointed out, and undergone a corporate coup d'etat in slow motion and as ted explained, in this book that i wrote, really how does one resist? how does one rebel? against this dystopia? especially given the effects of climate change.

we just saw through the l.a. times this massive investigative project that came out today showing the exxon mobile was well aware, there scientists were well aware of climate change and global warming decades ago and yet like the tobacco industry denied that reality in the name of corporate profits. not only a criminal offense but an offense that may at this point, given the extent of the catastrophe, may mean the extinction of the human species itself. in this book i talk about the moral imperative of revolt which snowden exemplifies and i argue that given the incredible power of the security and surveillance say that is arrayed against us coupled with militarize police

forces coupled with the dissertation of our civil liberties, finally we have to rise up not so much for what we can achieve but who it allows us to become, that we can't use the word hope if we don't resist and that means physical resistance, civil disobedience, sustained civil disobedience and jail time. this is a passage from the book on "snowden". it was kind of act to talk tonight, ted rall's book. i have been to war. i have seen physical courage. but this courage is not moral courage. very few of even the bravest warrior have moral courage. for moral courage means to defied the crowd, stand up as a

solitary individual, to shun the intoxicating embrace of konradship, to be disobedient to authority even at the rest of your life for iron principle. and with moral courage comes persecution. the american army pilot hugh thompson had moral courage. he landed his helicopter between a platoon of u.s. soldiers, ten terrified vietnamese civilians. he ordered his gunner to fire his m-60 machine gun on the advancing u.s. soldiers if they began to shoot the villagers. for this act of moral courage thompson, like snowden, was

hounded and reviled. moral courage always looks like this. it is always defined by the state as treason, the army attempted to cover up the massacre and court martial of thompson. it is the courage to act and to speak the truth. thompson had it. daniel l. berg had it. martin luther king had it. what those in authority once said about them they say today about snowden. my country, right or wrong, is quote morally equivalent of my mother drunk or sober, chesterton reminded us. so let me speak to you about those drunks with power to suite

of all your e-mail correspondence, your tweets, your web searches, your phone records, your file transfers, your live chats, your financial data, your medical data, your criminal and civil court records and your movements. those who are awash in billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars. those who have banks of sophisticated computer systems along with biosensors, scanners, face recognition technologies and miniature drones, those who have obliterated your anonymity, your privacy, and yes, your liberty. there is no free press with out the possibility of the reporters

to protect the confidentiality of those who have the moral courage to make public the abuse of power. those few individuals inside government who dared to speak out about the system of mass surveillance have been charged as spies or hounded into exile. and omnipresent surveillance state, and i covered that east german stasi state, creates a climate of paranoia and fear. it makes democratic dissent impossible. any state that has the ability to inflicted full spectrum dominance on its citizens is not a free state. it does not matter if it does not use this capacity today. it will use it. history has shown, should it

feel threatened, or seek greater control. the goal of wholesale surveillance as hannah arendt wrote, is not in the end to discover crimes, but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population. the relationship between those who are constantly watched and tracked, and those who watch and track them is the relationship between masters and slaves. and those who wield this been checked power become delusional, general keith alexander, former director of the national security agency hired a hollywood set designer to turn his command center at fort meade into a replica of the bridge of

the starship enterprise so he could sit in the captain's share and pretend he was jean luc p a pica picard. james clapper, director of national intelligence had the audacity to lie under oath to congress, the spectacle was a rare glimpse into the absurdist theater that now characterizes american political life. a congressional oversight committee, public hearings, it is lied to. i know is being lied to and the person who lives, they know he is lying. to protect security clearances say and do nothing. these lawyers listen to everyone and everything.

they have a bunt the conclave that selected the new pope, they the german chancellor angela merkel, they but most of the leaders of europe, they intercepted the talking points of u n secretary-general bond imus --ban ki moon. what security threat was posed by the conclave of catholic cardinals, the german chancellor, the u.n. secretary general bj but did business like the brazilian oil company. and for shrimp and closed cigarettes. and the major eavesdroping effort focused on the united nations climate change

conference in 2007 they bugged their ex lovers, wives and girlfriends and the nsa stores data in perpetuity. i was a plaintiff before the supreme court in a case could challenge the warrantless wiretapping, the case dismissed because the court the assertion that our concern about wholesale surveillance was in the words of the government attorney speculation. no standing, no right to bring the case, we had no way to challenge this assertion which we now know to be a lie. until ed snowden. in the united states, the fourth amendment limits the state's ability to search and seize to a specific place, time and event approved by a magistrate.

and it is impossible to square the bluntness of the fourth amendment with the arbitrary search and seizure of all our personal communications. former vice president al gore said correctly that snowden disclosed evidence of crimes against the united states constitution. we have been fighting against mass surveillance made no head way by appealing to the traditional centers of power. was only after ed snowden methodically leaked documents that disclosed crimes committed by the state, the genuine public debate the band. but officials for the first time promised reform. suppressant who had previously dismissed our questions about the extent of state surveillance

by insisting strict congressional and judicial oversight panel to review intelligence, three judges since the ed snowden revelations, and nsa spying was unconstitutional and the third backing it, none of this would have happened, none of it without snowden. snowden access to the full roster of everyone working at the nsa. he could have made public the entire intelligence community, under cover assets worldwide. he could have exposed the locations of every clandestine station and their commissions, could have shut down the intelligence system as he had said in an afternoon. but this was never his intention. the want to lead to halt all

sales surveillance. was being carried out without our consent or knowledge. politicians including democratic candidate hillary clinton argue ed snowden could have turned internal mechanisms to have his grievances heard. i can tell you from personal experience that it is as cogent as the offer made by the march hare during the mad tea party in alice in wonderland. have some wine, markair said in an encouraging tone. alice looked all around the table but there was nothing on it betti. i don't see any wine, she remarked. there isn't any, said the march

hare. [applause] >> how should we do this? should we throw it out to the audience about what they have to say? >> i will let you lead. it is your book. >> any questions? is going to be all of us. >> your discussion of moral heroes. what is legal and which is a moral. and some examples, socrates the main moral hero at the

foundation of the discussion? >> i am a great admirers of the philosopher hannah arendt who writes about the dilemma one faces when they are confronted with what emanuel kant calls radical evil and when she finishes the university of heidelberg she writes the she had to unlearn everything she was taught at university in order to become a moral being. yourself joins although she was not a zionist, an underground zionist group that attempts to help german jews flee to what was then the british mandate of palestine until she was pickeh

totalitarianism, corporate state how what we desire is irrelevant to corporate power. constituent calls in 2008, across the political spectrum, against the bailouts in congress can get it passed anyway. nobody wants wholesale surveillance command and sued the president in federal court over section 1021 of the national defense authorization act which overturns over 150 years of domestic law and permits the u.s. military to carry out in essence acts of

extraordinary rendition against u.s. citizens on the streets of american cities, we won in the southern district court of new york and the obama administration appealed it and when these people are seized and did this section they are stripped of due process and held indefinitely. and during that two year legal battle after we won the appeal in the second circuit an opinion poll went out and that section, 1021, had 97% disapproval rating and what we obscene is the courts have in essence a ended our most important constitutional rights by judicial fiat is that is how you get this absurd idea that unlimited corporate cash is the right to petition the government or a form of free speech. in this case the second circuit desperately did not want to rule as ted pointed out on the issue of privacy.

in my case the use of military as a domestic police force so what they did is denied my standing in the way they did it was referred to the case i mentioned in my brief talk which was -- to get to the supreme court, clapper versus amnesty international in which i was the klan challenging surveillance and they said chris hedges does not have standing, therefore he doesn't have a standing and they threw it out. we have seen it with activists, they organize communities in oklahoma, pennsylvania, colorado, educate those communities and the superstructure of the state bans the ban whether it is the texas senate or the high court in ohio so the government that is captive to corporate power becomes a weapon to criminalize and crush legitimate democratic dissent and that is where we are

and we have the wonderful smoke and mirrors and bread and circus and political vaudeville which is on track to cost us $7 billion, professional sports, all sorts of ways to distract us but the naked fist of the state is becoming more and more apparent especially for poor people of color where people lobbying gunned down daily in the streets and if they are not being gunned down and terrorized in the streets they are being locked in a cages. when you create omnipotent policeing, stripped a segment of your population of rights away we have stripped for people of color of their rights and rights become privileges and one's rights become privileges they can be taken away from everyone. you have also created a legal

and physical mechanism by which should there be unrest or should be wider population become rested those tools can instantly be applied to everyone else. >> it is almost like everything chris said is absolutely true. if you told me even 20 years ago that if i had heard someone saying these things i would have thought they were a crackpot. a net. what you are saying is absolutely true. it is amazing to me how the system of checks and balances turned out to be nothing of the sort so quickly. there is no one thing you can point to but for me a great example was the disputed florida election. the u.s. supreme court was never supposed to hear that case

because in the united states elections are decided by the state so when the florida state supreme court ruled for a recount, ordered a recount in certain counties that was supposed to be the last word. the u.s. supreme court even took pains in bush versus gore to point out this should not be relied upon in the future as a precedent and yet never the less they stepped in, they ruled, they installed bush who did not win the state of florida. would not have won if a full recount had occurred. one can obviously criticize al gore's strategy of not asking for a statewide recount which was foolish for statistical reasons as well as you could imagine there would be a bigger democratic undercount in republican counties than they would be in democratic counties so i wonder how gore's math skills are. the thing that is amazing to me is he was installed and i

remember when the decision came through, i lived on morningside drive overlooking harlem and expected to hear glass start breaking. i expected to hear people screaming in the streets. i expected what would have happened in any number of other countries around the world in terms of unrest, protests and so on. and nothing happened. i just wonder is there something about the american character? is there something about the place we are in as a society and stuck in this political structure or have we been propagandized through our schools and advertising and popular culture to not resist, not react, act like -- take it and keep going on. >> the problem is when they carry out an agreed just

violation of enormous it is not immediately apparent what they have done. there is a great book called the fine hitler, he was a lawyer, in the early 30s, 1933 when the nazis take power and he sees all the effort the party makes to subvert the law and on the surface things appear as if there is a continuity from what went before when in fact there is a kind of radical legal change that becomes the structure by which you impose a totalitarian system. that was true even in stalinist russia if you look at the early years up to the 20s, there was opposition. there was a decision rests the anarchist's and others were brutally repressed. and there was a moment where he

describes the fire which becomes the excuse by the nazis to impose martial law. the next morning everyone gets up and goes to work and takes the kids to school and he said actually there were people who congregated in lexington but he said the social democrats were so frightened they all fled to switzerland inert cars and he said people said what people say about donald trump, at least they have the courage of their convictions however repugnant those convictions are. what we have seen is a very similar kind of process. corporate totalitarianism is a different species from other forms but no less pernicious and in fact in terms of the technological capacity to monitor and control the government far more frightening

than past systems and i cover the stodgy state in east germany. what you are seeing and what you allude to is you are right that it was an incredibly radical moment and let us take a moment to defend ralph nader. he did not -- this was the way the democratic party sought to demonize ralph nader, terrify them and and they had to destroy a because he actually represented the interests of working men and women and the 5 corporate power and logger and harder and better than ralph but you are right, you are right to point that out as a kind of seismic moment, we are certainly the most delusion society on the planet and by all these electronic hallucinations that are in our hand-held devices, the crux of this issue is that

when this transformation takes place in a totalitarian system is largely imperceptible. when it is perceptible it is too late. >> want to just stretch on what chris said last time he spoke about his father and staying at the new york times, would have been be trying your father. i have always studied the family system all my life because it was the root of so many problems, we just don't have good leaders, people to give young coming into this world leverage and stand up for what is right. i tried to bring this out all my life and it was -- i was not popular. i could see the lack of fitness, lack of help, lack of high standards and standing up for what was right.

at such a young age. i was always trying to get people to reach for more, stand up for more, for more than having a job, paying your mortgage and having kids. i would always point out just the low standard that was set, you had to dig a hole in the floor the standards were so low and they would make excuses. if you point out something they would make excuses, going to town rather than up. >> at the liberal class talking about this process, you created a system of mass propaganda through the creel commissioner, that destroy our radical progressive movements and morphed, move to madison avenue working on behalf of

corporations which through propaganda overturned traditional american values of thrift, hard work, humanitarianism and replaced it with hedonism and cult of the self, profligate consumption. what we often times richer to your point, american values are corporate impose values. the anxiety we feel, how to identify, this is all in stilled and what is fascinating is you read walter lippmann and others they are quite open about it. that sense of individual preoccupation to the extent that it's been affected spirituality. it is not ended traditional religious sense how is it with the outcast or that demonized, how is it with the other but how

is it with me which is reflection of the narcissism of the culture and that has been a very disempowering and pernicious force. >> this brings us to one of the questions in my book about snowden. i was wondering why was snowden different? why was he willing to attend and even sacrifice his life? what was it about his upbringing or his background that brought in to that point? the bottom line is there is nothing. his parents are divorced. half of americans his age have divorced parents. he was in the boy scouts, so was i.. and traditional american values of trustworthiness and honesty, what he witnessed at nsa and booz allen hamilton was dishonest, to me was intriguing

that if there's any one incident that really turned him against the nsa and security state, he was stationed in geneva at the u.s. embassy, and a cia agent at the time. and his records you want access to and the way they compromised him, they got him drunk and call the local police and had him arrested for drunk driving, and showed up and miraculously rescued him and they were laughing about it and that compromise him to the point that he had to turn over the documents that he kept here to 4 from the cia and snowden thought

it was absolutely disgusting. he thought it was un-american, he thought was cheating, it was underhanded and gross and not the country he wanted to be from. is really a basic example of it is a standard bit of spy craft, not at all sophisticated. if you read frederick forsyth you have seen this and more. this is no big deal. what is it about snowden. i interviewed thomas drake, the other whistle-blower i talked about in washington whose career was completely destroyed. he was an upper level executive and when he tried to go through the system, reported his concerns not only about privacy violations but also wasting of billions of dollars of taxpayer money and inefficient programs, it was corruption, people, private contractors were connected to officials that were

approving these programs were benefiting. he went to the inspector general, did everything you are supposed to do as a whistle-blower. never the less they raided his house, set out to destroy his career, blackballed him, destroyed his marriage and is working at the genius bar at an apple store in maryland where he works and i talked to him about this, what is it about you? what about -- kept saying it was wrong. what i saw was wrong and i kept insisting yes, but what about your colleagues? they all saw the same stuff. they didn't say anything. they didn't think it was wrong or if they did think it was wrong the didn't think it rose to the level of something worth sacrificing or taking a risk over and idealized after a while he was just hard wired this way.

there was something out about him. he couldn't put his finger on it. closest he could get was he had been raised in vermont which has a local governments, town meetings, local democracy and feels very intimate and you feel like you are participating in your government more so than other places. there was nothing. something about to meet snowden is a role model. he is what i would aspire i want my son to be, someone who does the right thing even when it hurts. that is the definition of integrity. it is. where did we go wrong? chris's work talks about about morality and in this country morality is the province of a right in the political debate. it is always -- we are talking about is moralism, not morality.

moralism is where are you sticking your genitalia but morals are about what is right and what is wrong, trudy what is the bigger issue versus the smaller issue like for example edward snowden had to decide which of his hosts he was going to violate, his oath to protect the constitution or to protect classified data from being revealed? he couldn't do both. he had to choose one and john paul sartre wrote wrote something i have bookmark and always refer to, what he defined as the quintessential existence of a dilemma which is i am handed a gun. there's a gun to my head and i am told shoot that other guy or i will shoot you. what is the right choice? he says of course the right choice is to say get shot and died. point being the right choice isn't always any fun but it is still right choice.

>> socrates, better to suffer wrong then do wrong. when she writes about those extended to the 5 radical evil said it is not those who say we shouldn't do this or it should not be done but those who say i can't. there is something deep down -- in this book i spent a lot of time interviewing those who i believe are in doubt with it. jeremy hammond to release 5 million e-mails including e-mails that show the government and private security firms attempting to link non-violent occupy movements with al qaeda. we used it in our trial.

julian assange and others. one of the problems is we look back in history at these figures, these great resistance figures, malcolm x, sitting bull, we kind of hold them up, but we are unable to see those figures with an hour and midst because snowden would be one of them, the state so effectively demonizes them and makes us afraid to identify with them and stand up for them and that was true for all of our great resistance figures and profits and martyrs. people forget how hated a figure even martin luther king was while he was alive. history is important but we

don't learn the lessons of history. we don't understand what it means to take moral risk and the cost that always comes with taking more risks because if there are not any costs it is not much of a moral stance. >> it is interesting to me about snowden. this isn't history. it is right now. he is such a typical american diet. he looks ordinary, he is a white. he is a technocrat, he started out as a right winger. he is a right wing libertarian, voted for ron paul in 2008, donated money to ron paul, he is an american kid from south carolina, race in maryland, and he is more reliable to the average american and fact that

he is so young, i think somehow so much is different than rosa parks, how can i be rosa parks. i don't think i could be rosa parks. and hired by the nsa. and a jobs fair when i was 19 and the cia recruiting booth and went to talk to them because i had silly fantasies about kerri microfiche in the soul of my shoe and having dead drops in red square. i went to talk to them and they said we are never going to hire you and i said why not and they said you attended socialist meetings on campus. communists also. and they said we will be higher mormons from you saw which is why we do so wee do so well in

intelligence community. >> several questions. one is this unauthorized illegal government surveillance. >> a little later. >> the content of a phone conversation. the phone calls. they stored in a data farm some place. >> yes. it is storage in the data farm in bluffdale, utah. it is massive and being expanded all the time and has been built with hundreds of billions of dollars of your tax dollars. >> could government use this data against individuals? >> chris alluded to this earlier. the vast majority of this data as things stand will never be

looked. 99% of its its on those serverss, what happened is as chris eluded to earlier in the past in his reading he said whenever someone fell under suspicion of wrongdoing they could be searched for tracked for followed but that you needed a warrant from a judge, from a magistrate and in recent i would say since 9/11 in particular but before that too but certainly after 9/11 the new paradigm has been as the nsa says they want to collect everything so what they do is they collect every bit, every communication, they support them and search at their a leisure for clusters, patterns and individuals so the question is even if you believe right now president obama is the best president we will ever have and that our government is the best

government we will never have, and you believe in it, the fact is presidents change, regimes changed, do you want donald trump or president ted cruz to be a differently and use that information differently? possibly. i like to tell the story of when i became a french citizen. born in the united states, my mother was fringe and when i was 18 was 1981 and reagan had just become president and there was a lot of talk that there might be a war and a draft elijah the patriotic thing and ran to fifth avenue 74th street and got in line and declared my french citizenship and there was a line around the block of guys, 18, 19 years old waiting to get in and so when i finally got my citizenship papers i got a id card, passport, and they handed me a birth certificate and on the birth certificate it said

birthplace helping young -- i was born in cambridge, mass.. there was a mistake. no, and they explained to me that during -- at the beginning of world war ii when the nazi authorities, the gestapo and so on when they invaded france they captured the census and police data records mostly kept on postcards and filing cards that showed religious identification and whether someone was born overseas or not and when it came time to deport the deported jews, people who were born overseas, first. at the end of the war the french government passed a new law that stated they would no locker maintain those records so the french government does not know exactly how many arabs there are in france. they don't have a list of them

and there is no way to get it had for example they don't know how many people were born outside france because they destroy those records and in every file supposedly, i don't know if this is really true but supposedly in french archives i am listed as being from there. a few years later i was in paris driving the wrong way against six lanes of traffic when a cop pulled me over with his cute little kp, and he was like what you doing? i said -- i showed him my passport and he ran my information and was like really? i am like yes. he is like -- it is the mississippi of france on the spanish border, relief strange accent, no way could anyone who learned english in the united states have the right accent. it is impossible but he kept

insisting and there was nothing he could do about it. the point is there is some information that shouldn't be in any one's hands. i personally am an awesome, moral person but i had this information, a bunch of people i would really screw over if i get into those files. >> it is more than when a society breaks down, the reason all totalitarians systems keep files on all their citizens is the moment the power structure, the power elite feels friend they have the capacity to pull up those files and criminalize entire groups of people based on an early innocuous data, the data they interpret in such a way as to tart that individual with criminal or terrorist activity. that is why totalitarian states collect data, that is what

stalin did it, that is why the fascists did it. we have now ended that full, not really a matter necessarily of individuals, is about the corporate call that has seized power and that growing awareness on the part of the wider public that everything they have been told about globalization and neil liberalism is a lie. ..

>> remember, we got two great dystn thinkers, huxley and orwell. but we got huxley first. we got access to cheap, mass-produced goods and spectacle and entertainment and easy credit -- >> pharmaceuticals. >> -- pharmaceuticals, and now it's gone. and -- the pharmaceuticals are still there, but everything else. and as those forms of control are less officious, then we get the more naked forms and more brutal and violent forms of control of which the security and surveillance state is, you know, kind of first and foremost among that system. >> do you have a web site? >> they asked whether i have a web site. i do not have a web site, i don't tweet, i don't have a facebook page, and i don't own a

television. >> instagram? >> i don't have anything. i have a phone, and i have 5,000 books in my house. [laughter] >> anyone else? okay. yes. that will be the last one. >> [inaudible] >> well, you can ask the secretary of state, clinton, about that. >> she's asking, just to complete the question, why snowden is still living in russia, they evoked his -- revoked his passport, and he couldn't get to ecuador. >> it's one of the things in the book that corrects some of the misreporting that has occurred about this issue. so the u.s. government asserted, falsely, that the chinese allowed snowden to leave on an invalid passport in order to poke at the eye of the u.s. government. but that's false. that didn't happen. when he boarded his plane in hong kong, he had a valid passport. but if you have a passport, you

ever notice the new ones have a chip logo on the front? because there's a microchip inside. you might foolishly think that's for your convenience, to allow you to zip through jfk in a jiffy. really this is control to do exactly what secretary of state clinton did who, in my view, this action disqualifies her from the presidency as much as her vote to invade iraq. she said, i mean, she turned off his passport while he was in the air to moscow. he was only supposed to change planes in moscow. and when he appeared at short-term tivo, he went to the transfer desk, he was supposed to continue on to havana, cuba, but they told him he couldn't board because he didn't have a valid passport anymore. if you think about it, it's kind of insane that the state department can just flip a switch and turn you off like that.

and by the way, just parenthetically from a national security point of view, let's just assume they didn't know whether snowden still had those documents with him. so you're going to strand him in russia, of all places. pretty stupid. so the fsb could have just taken that stuff off him, there was nothing anyone could have done about it. it was a bone-headed move and completely immoral in so many ways. but he had been invited to go to ecuador, and he would have been able to. i think that optioning's no longer on the table. the -- option's no longer on the table. he's in russia, right? how does he get to another country that would host him without passing over air space that's either controlled directly or indirectly by the united states? you know, i don't know if you recall this episode, but the president of ecuador was visiting moscow at a trade function, a trade meeting, and then there was a rumor that the

u.s. got, that snowden was aboard his plane, and the austrians forced him -- >> the the bolivian president. >> sorry, the bolivian president. and then the austrians forced the bolivian president to land. he was really angry and there was, apparently, some risk to his life in this action. so risking the life of a foreign head of state to try to capture a guy who obama characterized as a 29-year-old hacker is kind of really over the top. but that's what would have happened to snowden. if he got on a plane, he can't get anywhere -- he can only go to countries that border russia and hope for the best. so, i mean, you know, he could go to kazahkstan, i guess. >> could you talk a little bit about what you think are the weak points or weak points in the culture of acquiescence that we're living in?

>> of american culture? >> sure. >> well, that's another program. [laughter] what's happening in the united states reminds me of what happened in yugoslavia, which i covered as a foreign correspondent, where in essence you have political paralysis. the inability on the part of the state to respond. and that political paralysis is carried out by self-identified liberal elite. it's not really a liberal elite. figures like clinton, you know, did as much damage to working men and women in this country as ronald reagan. obama has only carried on that trajectory. but what happens -- and i think we're seeing it within these elections -- is that when people rise up with a legitimate frustration, an anger and despair and hopelessness, is that they turn not only on the

self-identified liberal elite which has been ineffectual, which has served this cabal in this case of corporate oligarchs, but they turn on liberal values themselves. and that's why we have such powerful proto-fascist movements in the united states, whether they're nativist, whether they're tea party, you know, militias. and they've always been part of the virus of american society going all the way back to the slave patrols, pinkerton, the klan. but what happens is that you direct that rage towards the vulnerable, towards muslims, undocumented workers, african-americans, liberals, feminists, intellectuals. and that we are watching. you see it in trump rallies. and what we're -- that is just

part of the physical and moral disintegration of the society, the use of wholesale violence. we live in a city where one of our fellow citizens was choked to death, unarmed, never committed a crime. choked to death and killed on a city sidewalk, and none of the police went to jail. the danger of that is that, you know, the very kind of nihilistic violence that we're seeing right now between palestine and israel where the pal stints have been -- palestinians have been so crushed that they're kind of lashing out with this inchoate but understandable theory has also happened in the united states. we've had 26 or 27 assassinations of law enforcement officials, including two in new york city this year. now, these are not confrontations, these are assassinations. i hope this is not a pattern. but i think that there's so much

evidence now that the society has seized up, that the society really isn't functioning at all. i mean, we watch the arms industry hollow the nation out from the inside, officially 54% of discretionary spending, in fact, that doesn't count veterans affairs, that doesn't account for the nuclear weapons program, it doesn't account for all the black budgets like these intelligence streams that we're not allowed to see. by best estimates we're spending $1.6, $1.7 trillion a year on endless feudal wars which we've lost in countries like iraq and afghanistan. the taliban controls more of afghanistan than they did when we invaded 14 years ago. but, of course, you know, for a small, corporate cabal, northrop grumman and general dynamics, it's great. war is a business. it's profit. and so, you know, we are as american citizens being tasked

or forced through austerity, the collapse of our infrastructure, repressive measures, i mean, you drive through one american former industrial city after another is a wasteland. it's being taken out on us. and that's how empires, you know, all go down. we're no exception. joseph tainor and the complex societies chronicled all the characteristics that empires die. and unfortunately, you know, that pathology of death is one that, you know, unleashes some very dark, spectral forces. america's a very violent society unlike canada, for instance. we're a very, very violent culture. so, i mean, you know, the end of literacy, the rise of spectacle, you know, the way verifiable

fact now especially on the airwaves no longer matters, it's all, you know, whatever -- however you're made to feel, that's kind of what fox news is about. you know, there are just so many signs, the final sign being that the harsh forms of control that empire uses on the outer reaches of empire -- drones, militarized police, wholesale surveillance -- have now migrated back to the heart of empire. so a night raid in east new york looks no different than a night raid in fallujah, long-barreled weapons, kevlar vests. and that's not unusual: it finally imposed on itself. thank you very much. >> and just thank you, everyone, for coming tonight. the only thing i'd like to add to that is i'd like to answer that question. nothing's really settled in american politics. and i feel like that's a uniquely american thing. you know, it's -- in other

countries if there's a dispute over an issue, there's a battle. and eventually, one side prevails. and then it's over. and mostly, yes, the losing side goes home, licks its wounds and is sad. but it's over. but the united states, i mean, south doesn't admit that they were wrong during the civil war. they were never -- despite sherman's march, they were not crushed. this resistance is not gone. the confederate battle flag still flies above state capitols. they never got over it. and if you just look at all these, like, battles, it's so hard for liberalism or progressivism to triumph. even when it has the support of an overwhelming majority of americans, there's still -- the losers don't admit they've lost, and the winners don't make them admit that they've lost. so nothing ever gets settled.

it's like we never move forward. i find it just, as a political commentator, i find it just baffling. we're always, i mean, we could live a thousand years assuming this society would last that long, which it won't, it's like, you know, we could be having the same stupid arguments over the same shit forever and ever. but anyway, thanks everyone for coming. of course, chris and i will be happy to sign your numerous copies of your book, our books that you're buying, and you don't buy our books -- in which case you're foolish -- at least buy a book. thanks for coming. [applause] >> thank you.

[inaudible conversations] >> here's a look at some of the current best selling nonfiction books according to the los angeles times. topping the list, taan has city coats, winner of last year's national book award, looks at the current state of black america in "between the world and me." author and musician patty smith is on the list with m train, a collection of essays on her literary and musical career. up next, the notorious rbg, the at of the life and career of supreme court justice ruth bader ginsburg. and two-time pulitzer

prize-winning author david mccullough looks at the birth of flight in "the wright brothers." our look at the los angeles times' nonfiction bestsellers list continues with helen mcdonald's h is for hawk, followed by the new new yorker's william finnigan, "barbarian days." also on the list is a collection of essays from the late physician oliver saks. and mary beard explores the founding and history of ancient rome. that's a look at some of the current best-selling nonfiction books according to the los angeles times. many of these authors have or will be appearing on booktv. you can watch them on our web site, booktv.org. >> next, a conversation on reclaiming conversation. sherry terkel talks about how technology has changed in-person conversations and argues that children are losing the capacity to be alone without a