that's why we are providing lower income students access to affordable internet so homework can just be homework. connect to compete. >> along with of these television companies supporting c-span2 as a public service. >> you right brace yourself the american empire is over and the dissent is going to be horrifying. how did you come to that conclusion? >> first of all i spend 20 years on thehe outer reaches as a

foreign correspondent, so i've seen the aspect that most people have not unless you are in the military or perhaps the foreign service. and i think all of the red assigns the sort of red warning signs are there. we have the largest deficits in history which of the bottom line is we can't repay it. we have done so at the cost of our infrastructure, public education, our working class and we are hollowing the country out from the inside and the physical evidence is all around us. plunging roughly one third of americans into poverty or near poverty in the latest statistics the bridges, roads are collapsing, libraries are being closed, fire stations are being closed. these are the signs of a nation or let's call it an empire that is reaching a kind of terminal point. >> that was 11 years ago today.

do you still feel the same way about the dissent? >> yes, i think it is more pronounced. i think it is expressed in political dysfunction and the polarization within the society whereio you have a divided natin that can noe longer communicate the situation and all the school bridges, 300,000sc schools are short. 300 staff and teachers crumbling so if anything, it is more pronounced. it's beginning to be felt in terms of the rise of these right-wing populists, neofascists, neo- confederates. the epidemics of mass shootings. all of these things are symptoms of a society that is in serious trouble. >> why do you think we haven't

found a road to redemption in your view? >> because the corporate forces have seized complete control not only of the economy. we don't control the economy ourselves, but of the political system as well. and those forces have essentially seized up. we watched in washington a kind of political stagnation between the twosh parties for various reasons unable to get anything through except for and of course massive military budgets $850 billion i think $45 billion more than the biden administration even requested and we just went through the covid crisis of all of the industrialized nations, we were probably least able to cope with the pandemic i think we were 16% of the world's mortality was in the united states we were less than 5% of the population and that is because we have a privatized healthcare service

it's all based on profited diminishing of hospital beds, hospital care do not serve the health of the public but to serve the bottom line. >> in those 11 years since we last saw you at the table you've put out another six books. the moral in paragraph of the revolt if you write that t last days of any civilation when populations are aerting their noise from the unpleasant realities before them become carnivalsco of hedonism becomesn the end a narcotic revelry. >> that kind of sums up the

culture. i've written quite strongly against on a many levels. the objectification is a sort of eroticism. in that i'm kind of with the christian right i think as i've said in my last interview. it's not about honesty. >> if anyone would read the first chapter of wages of rebellion and they didn't know wrote it, you could say somebody that was a populist

wrote that chapter. >> and that is what is interesting because i think that some of the critique of the society by forces let's call them the old ride, radical right can a christian right and i've written quite strongly against the movement of some of thehe critique is correct. they are not always wrong. what i would disagree with the mom is the solution. >> and the solution being? >> i'm the old-style swedish socialist back in the 70s when having control of capitalism and taxation and power of unions and social inequality you reach the point where you eradicated poverty.ca i had to come out of that old socialist tradition of john dewey and these kind of figures with a big influence and remains the new theologians.

the solution was to address the dislocation, the disenfranchisement because that comes out in his grade book it was written in 1988 on suicide. that's where you get the word anomie that he said it's about the rupturing of the social bond. they are inadvertently of social control and when the bonds aread eradicated then social control becomes much more coercive.

it's how you get the explosion of the mas' incarceration. it doesn't even ask the question of how do we get there because i've done that in other books but it looks at the pathologies and the opioid gambling as somebody that went to the school and as an ordained presbyterian minister what about the failure of christianity failing at this

point is that correct? >> and those bonds as well i think too much of the culture including infected the church. that is a form of narcissism fundamental question about how is it with me and then of course i've been very critical of the christian right. i consider them a radical. that was a very unpopular stance when i wrote american fascist, but i think if we look for instance january 6th the connecting tissue what i would call christi fascism was a term used by great professor at harvard was in but he'd been in

germanybu in 1935 and 1936 at te university of heidelberg watching him begin his lectures with the nazi salute. he dropped out and he joined the underground church until he was expelled or arrested by the gestapo. and i think that this is one of the failings of the liberal churches that they didn't stand up t. they didn't come to blast the empire or the white race or the

american race above other races soe part of the failing i think they reflected the culture and withdrew from the kind of social concerns that my father as a presbyterian minister was in north africa in world war ii and army veteran. he came back and became an all but name pacifist and was involved in the civil rights movement and antiwar movement against vietnam but that did create fiction. but i think that kind of social commitment actually is the lifeblood of what it means to bear christian witness which is of course why i've been teaching in prison for 13 years now. >> 's of the prosperity gospel is not one that you agree on?

>> no, i think it is heresy. and i think again it is what we have seen is the worst aspects of the cold of the self and the consumer culture in imperialism that have been centralized by the christian right. that is not uncommon. the catholic church didn't, at the end of the war and the church bears responsibility for so it isn't uncommon. i saw it when i covered the board and the former slovenia and again embracing the ethnic nationalism of slobodan milosevic but we have to draw the distinction between the institution and paul tillich writes that all institutions including the church and of course my father was pretty much

pushed out of the church for his stance on lgbtq rights in the 70s. it's just a matter of going before the committee and telling thattt committee i said i'm goig to go to el salvador and be a freelance journalist silenced in the head of the commission we don't ordaineda journalists. he had been a paris minister and

there must have been disappointment but he said you are ordained to write and i came back after 20 years overseas covering conflicts around the globe. i began teaching in the prison system brought in by wonderful professors at the college of new jersey. of the course done on american history and preparations and wonderful program read by rutgers. i began working with my friend

who'd gone to harvard who has a church in elizabeth new jersey. resurrected at all and took all five exams and passed to them and then we had a very moving service and we invited all the families. my wife that is an actor absolutely stole the show. >> in the book unspeakable, and i will let you describe what the book is jt a second, david talbot says that hedges who is e son of a presbyterian mist and a graduate of the rvard divinity school has the temperament of a biblical

prophet as he rails against the evils of the capitalists. >> i think that is probably right and i will sometimes look back at my own and maybe wish that i'd toned them down a little bit but let's not forget that most were considered at best eccentric if not insane. i think it is called the prophets the great jewish theologian. i think that is the role of a good writer and good minister or pastor. it's that commitment to truth, eventm unpleasant truth and my career was spent within the newspaper industry. what we really do as journalists is we manipulate facts. we select facts and then we manipulate those to tell a

particular story. you can take all those facts and a spike into it and spin it one way or another and there are journalists who will spend the stories so that it's good for their careers if they don't upset the centersho of power. they will make sure they marshaled those facts to tell the truth and i think that that is of course someone great to this day, hugely influenced by george orwell but i think that commitment to the truth defines a good creature and journalist. >> i want to go to a farewell to her. how do you organize that book? >> i selectedha what i thought s the most prominent pathologies within that we were suffering. the opioid crisis, one of 100,000 people a year die from opioid overdoses so i spent time with heroin addicts but of course like a lot of heroin addict as they begin on

prescription drugs then it becomes expensive and they switched to heroin which unfortunately isiv pretty cheap. so that was really drawn from my reading and i wanted to look at how they were tearing apart the country and that these pathologies are the natural consequence of a society. >> i'm going to read two quotes from america the farewell tour. one is about gambling and the first is about prostitution. it is difficult to challenge the lies disseminated just as it is to challenge the lies about military virtue and the second quote is slot machines cater to the longing to flee from the oppressive world of dead-end jobs, crippling debt, social

stagnation and a dysfunctional political system. so, prostitution. >> the prostitution industry which is very wealthy will put forward people who will speak on behalf of quote on quote, sex work. and those who i think speak more honestly, rachel has written a good book on this, their voices are quite actively pushed aside. so prostitution, and i don't even like the word prostitution. i would say the fact that people are being prostitutes because they are pushed. marcia ely i was covering the war. the only thing that's produced in greater numbers than prostituted women in a war zone

aree corpses. i remember the war in salvador there was a area that was decimated. many women now living without spouses or brothers or they had to flee their homes into the city into the capital, the giant red light district and it wasn't a choice. they had no other choice. i also saw this in the war in the former yugoslavia. so maybe for a small percentage of women it's a choice but my experienceho especially having been in war zones in the developing world's people are being prostituted don't have any other choice in order to feed their children and we know there's all sorts of studies that the trauma and sexually transmitted diseases, those women and girls who are being prostituted are appallingly short and i would like to see a

world where if people want that as a choice that's fine but certainly with my experience, the vast majority they are cornered and have no choice and i would like to create a world where especially women and girls haveci choices in a choice not o do that. >> gambling. >> gambling, so i don't gamble. i mean, it was really new to me. it is quite scientific. they've done all sorts of studies. they know exactly what they are doing and that was fascinating for me because you would think from an outside perspective people go to slot machines or whatever they are the bigg. things. to win, to make money. but no because if they win anything, it kind of disrupts the fact that they are thrown into a kind of cocoon where they don't marcia ely there are no clocks on the wall.

it's a kind of labyrinth as soon you go innt you never know where the exit door is so what they iseek is not so much winning bt they seek removing themselves from the struggles and despair of daily life and of course these casinos play quite effectively on it and once you get into the habit and i interview people in the book their lives are destroyed not just financially but their marriages and their jobs because they start in order to feed the addiction they started doing very foolish things financially including stealing. >> so when it comes to these two pathologies as you've called them, is there a legislative cure, is there a societal or a moral cure? >> there's a societal but there isn't a legislative and that is reintegrating people back into society. when i did my book on the ichristian right, i went in wih

a liberal bias of a liberal presbyterian and in fact, listening to the stories of the people within these churches you would have to be heartless not to feel for what they've gone through. evictions,gh domestic abuse, substance abuse, prolonged or chronic unemployment or on underemployment. the first title in the book is called despair and at the end i said the only way to break the back of this movement is to reintegrate these people to the society and i think when i write america the farewell tour, what i'm saying is do these people have to be reintegrated back into the society given a sense of dignity and meaning, a kind of income where it's beyond

subsistence level, some signs of meritocracy. all of that. we are not going to do it legislatively by outlawing gambling. >> in america the farewell tour you write that we live in a two-tiered legal system. >> i know about that because i teach in the prison so if you work for goldman sachs or lehman brothers or orchestrate the largest financial fraud in decades you don't go to jail and if you walk into a bodega and grabbed a couple cases of beer and run out the door you're going to end up in jail so ishmael reed had that great lion i heard him give a talk at the miami book festival months which c-span filmed and he said black people shouldn't even try to

steal. leave that to the white people and it's completely, the book called divide where he followed the people who carried out financial fraud and what happened to them in the courtroom and then he went to these civil courts where poor peoplele were just getting a lot of it because a lot of the counties now depend on up to 30 to 40% of their income from fines, st. louis county so they invent crime, my favorite is obstructing pedestrian traffic. taillights. these things to her next to the poor p in order to generate income. it is a two-tiered legal system and we must not forget although everyone has the right to a jury trial, 95 or 96% of those people in our prison system never get a

jury trial because they are not coerced to. they stack all sorts of charges against you. you have the adequate legal representation in all charges stand.

there are two books that to be honests i can't read through without getting quite emotional. one is our class and the next is my book meaning about the cultural war. i went into the system not knowing. i'd come back from being overseas. there's a six-month lab where you finished your book tour and it's kind of dead time you might write a proposal but it's hard to start another book until that book tour is over and on a whim i went into a new correctional facility thatin meant 18 to 28 n new jersey wegner there was no college program. we began teaching and what i

found is there is this percentage of p witn the prison system who are dedicated scholars that have turned themselves into librarians and are academically very gifted but they grew up in communities where the schools were dysfunctional, where there was no stability and i found such remarkable students that i stayed with it and in this particular book i helped a class write a play a their lives that bng called ca >> what is the picture that we are showing their? that is the class.

i stumbled into it. it was ain drama class with gret playwrights and i realized when i asked they had very little experience they had never seen theater. they didn't have the money to go into new york. on a whim i said why don't you write scenes so you begin to understand dramatic dialogue because in a play almost everything has the interpretation of the actor but everything is through dialogue. what i didn'' know is one of my students, his nickname in arabic it means big guy but he listened to, he'd heard wbii and recruited the best riders in the prison so i had 28 students and i'm reading through them and i

get to one of them and it's unbelievable. maybe half a dozen gifted riders. this happened after a couple of weeks and i showed them to my wife who's a professional actor and i said i think i'm going to help them write a play but i was working on a book and it's one of those moments when you can tell your publisher. i added another class. i can add another class if they need remedial help so i signedth up all 28 students for remedial help. there was a little grumbling but they all came. [laughter] i had two classes two nights a week. it was fascinating because when you go in there they are very weary. i'm wide, i've not gone throu their experience at all and you don't express emotion in a prison.

in fact you don't even tell your story. you don't say why you're there. you often don't even use your real name so they all have prison names. and people started writing scenes and they were just heartbreaking. some of them they get up and their hands would start to shake. their voice, they would break down. some of them they couldn't even read. and it was the first time that they had expressed these experiences publicly to anyone. and it just broke the walls. it became, unintentionally and that's probably why it worked it became this amazing form of therapy. when i began i said who wants the part we will write a play. seven people wanted the park. weeks later all 28 students want to be part and they use to complain because we were reading like these great plays and they keep saying we are going to run out of time we've got to read

the scenes and then i would take all these scenes home and edit them and sometimes mold them and we had a rough narrative that was based on an actual experience. somebody had been incarcerated then we would go back and i had a kind of three or four really good riders when there was a whole they would be sent down the hall to the library to write something and bring it back and it was an amazing process. but it exposed so much not only about mass incarceration but about where they came from and what they had endured so i wrote the book as a kind of vehicle to look at that whole system of poverty, police violence, courts and of course the prison system itself and then the play was eventually performed at the

theater in trenton new jersey and it was sold out every night because of course trenton is a city where most families have experience with mass incarceration. we had one nightn. for the families.ig it was very moving after three or four minutes i hear someone starting to sob. they wept through the whole play then it was published so this book my heart is on every page in this book in a way that was a force. i think it gives a window into a segment of the population that has been demonized and explains where they are, where they came from and with her hopes and dreams. there are parts of it that can be very role humor. very funny especially marcia

it's a book i spent two years on. >> a couple of follow-ups. what was the process like to get into the prison to teach these classes? >> you have to be cleared by the department of corrections that is a two-month process, so of course i do it and i have since 2013 done this through rutgers university. you need at least a masters degree, which i have. i have to i think like all the professors i have to express my gratitude to the department of corrections because for them to run this program it's a lot more work. it's a lot of work and i would say there is a hesitancy when we began but now of course i've been there so long i know all theee correction officers names and how their families are nadoing. they've been great especially

and i think part of it is in order to get into the program we have about 140 students with a college degree program but there are hundreds that apply about 2,000 people in prison and you can't get in unless your disciplinary record is clean so you have a significant portion working very hard to not create problems. then we have the recidivism statistics we've run 3,000 people through the college program. some have only taken one course, but 3,000, of that 3,000, 5% have gone back to prison. of the 184 people that have finished their ba has gone back to prison. that's less than 1% and it's a sacred moment in the classroom because they are not a number, they are a student. what they feel and think is

important.im i once taught an insight and int outclassed through princeton university where you bring the princeton kids into the prison and i taught at the women's prison. i didn't like it only because those princeton kids didn't get how sacred this was, how important that moment in the day is to the students and also it mocks half of my class you have a class of 30 it means i've only got 15 there's no shortage of great professors at princeton so it's very powerful. we had as you know finished teaching all three volumes not the abridged and it can be really emotional. >> could ease to jersey prison related?

>> of course it is far more extreme. i am not equating the u.s. prison system with the gulags. you might be able to equate them with guantánamo, but they don't suffer the way stalin's victims did but there's a lot of commonality. arrest, experience of arrest. the trial, interrogation. dealing with corrections officers who are all powerful. one of the things you must do in prison is you can't even if you onwere disrespected, for you to respond even verbally means you get a charge and lose every privilege you have and go into isolation so there's a lot of contained. i think it's one of the great works of nonfiction in the 20th century. it's not just a history but a meditation on morality. there's a chapter at the end of

volume two where he writes god bless prison because he learned his own humility. he had been a captain in the red army and comes in without arrogance. he's highly educated and he has to decide what kind of person is he going to be. is he going to live at the expense of someone else or is he going to accept work detail rather than a job that would protect him from the death rate that was quite high given the working conditions in the area. so he becomes a moral being a christian. he says the two groups who are best able to endure the gulags where theth chechens.

that chapter is set as the kind of distillation of that achievement of becoming a moral being. nelson mandela writes this. i mean, i'm not romantic about suffering. i saw a lot of it as a war correspondent. itsu can destroy you but for others itpo can elevate and that is how i would describe my students. and in fact that is sent chapter i have the students do a summary of every chapter before the class, so we have we read roughly three chapters of class, so each student will do one chapter and the student did the this chapter had been in prison at the age of 16. that was the other thing, imprisoning children. and i write about that in the book lawrenceville was in prison at the age of 14 and got a sentence where sentenced to the age of 14 he wasn't eligible to go before the parole board until he was 70.

this is a good example he just decided, i taught a class called conquest we read latin america and he was a stellar student and went on to graduate rutgers but at that point we didn't know he was going to get out. he waits until everyone leaves the classroom and moves quick. you have to be in the hall when they tell you to he said to me i know i'm going to die in this prison but i work as hard as i do because someday i'm going to be a teacher like you and he walked out. people asksk me about hope and that is where hope is. i can live off of that. it doesn't change the world, but really we'll need to change the world one person at a time but that is where hope lies. there's a kind of intangible quality to it which i think gets back to my own religious training. i asked the great radical priest

that baptized my youngest daughter how he defined faith and he said to the belief that the good drawls to it the good. the buddhists call it karma. we don't know, but that is what faith is and i think that is true and i think i saw that evidenced in my work overseas. i mean, i was in the square for the velvet revolution. i was in the magic land every night and half a million, it's snowing, december and the great singer comes out on the balcony and had summoned the prayer, the anthem of defiance when the soviets overthrew the check regime and put in place the pro- soviet regime.

that's the power of the good. >> you brought along some of your students writing. work. but did you bring? chris: i'm going to read two poems. one of the poems -- i -- they don't have a college program and the super max prison, so i teach noncredit courses. they get six professors to go in and teach summer courses i recruited my wife, who's a graduate of julliard and my son who is a graduate student at columbia. it was a family affair. this is a poem and it's about

waking up in fifth grade to find out his mother abandoned him and his siblings. i awaken on my own, strange. mommy -- my three brothers and baby sister, but not today. today, i awake on my own. why? where's mommy? i'm the only one awake. five children, one pullout bed in the living room. omi walked towards the bathroom cold, wooden floors squeaking with every step. nobody is in there. she's got to be in her room, must be. no place else she could be. no one. nothing but empty beer bottles and cigarette butts. party time is over but where is mommy. gone. not only is she gone, but where.

gone is her security, gone is my innocence. gone is my childhood ushering in responsibility prematurely. gone is a mother's love for her children. gone is her protection. gone but where. will she come back? i don't know but if she ever does, i will have already been gone. and i just got my papers that were brilliant marcia ely i know some are watching on c-span at prison. one of my remarkable students with his paper slipped in a bunch of poems that he wrote and this is just one of them called urgency. before the source of words grounds a sea of stone and

forgetfulness in life so easily threatened by the vertigo of narrow corridors closing down on me finally smothers the flame i must write. searching for images i am trying to fit my head through bars just to get stuck like a child playing on a veranda but these bars are wrapped in razor wire and the writing is in a child's game. >> host: chris is our guest andis this is his second appearance. it was 11 years ago today that he made his first appearance and pursues the time he's written six books. we've discussed several of them. now it's your turn to call in and talk to him, ask questions. the numbers are on the screen divided by geographical division. the (202)748-8200 for those in the eastern central time zones. (202)748-8201 in the mountain

and pacific time zones. or you can also send in a text to mr. hedges. (202)748-8903 for text messages only. please include your first name and city if you what to do so. we will cycle through our social media sites. you can make a comment that way as well. just remember@booktv is our handle. before we go to calls, describe the cover and theib names writt. >> this was written by the great political cartoonist known as mr. fish. it's his design and pencils with the names of great riders. michelle alexander, the new jim crow, the book that i taught and admire very much. wilson and baldwin. they are all riders.

but it's brilliant and he is hes brilliant. hepi did discover. >> the most recent book that just came out this year. just last year i guess i should say. and we will talk about that a little bit later in the program. let's hear from the viewers. michael and broward county florida you are f on with chris hedges. >> yes. hello. your work spans so much it's basically i think it is correct on this human condition and you describe a general sense of in balance. hear of af you frederick schiffer. i think that his work would help with your work in the prisons as well and what we are talking about his culture and biology and biology is culture and this external condition is a projection of an internal a good

dichotomy between self-interested group interest and you also bring this up in your book quite a bit and play t mean by self-interest and grop interest is that it's a balance. a constant battle within our brains and within our culture. if you are completely focused on self-interest, you eat others when you're hungry if you're completely focused on group interest, you help other peoples children and starve to death. it's about the balance. >> i think we got your point. let's see what chris has to say. >> i don'ted know those authors that i will look at them. i'm actually reading mike davis' book victorian holocaust and i think that point is well made. he is talking about through 19th 19th century india and china, africa and the response of colonial authorities which they were exporting weeddi out of ina

and millions of people were dying from starvation so i think there are some good moral philosophers written about that and an understanding that there are times when in order to make that moral stance and to defy an obsession with self-interest can be a kind of willing form of suicide. that is a difficult moral choice for many people to make. >> cornelius alexandria louisiana. good morning or good afternoon. >> good afternoon and happy new year to all the booktv and c-span2 listeners. chris, i'm really enjoying you. i was a former correctional officer at the federal correctional institute in louisiana and also a federal inmate because the fbi set me

up. my question to you working with these inmates and stuff in which like i said i worked at the federal institution i think you worded state institutions. i've been trying to get that book our class and everything. it seems like you really listened to the inmates to find out what was wrong with them in their past. a lot of them might have been sexually abused or emotionally abused her physically abused and everything like that. and i studied sociology at louisiana tech university. gary stokely was my professor at louisiana tech ands like i said you learned to listen to these inmates and they responded to you with love and affection. i would love to see that. is there any way i can contact you because i've got the fbi

that lied and set me up and put me in prison and put a piece of rope and my food to get me to plead guilty though i'm innocent and i can prove it. a >> sending e-mail to booktv and i will contact you after the show. you have to listen. prison, as you know is the subculture. subcultures are always fascinating to me with its own language, its own set of rules. its own, for instance you have to stand up for yourself in prison that often means physically. nobody is d going to fight for u although people might fight with you. the predatory nature, knowing who to trust. there is a chapter in the book our class called the antenna and i know having covered the war that you have to read people really well in a war zone knowing who to trust and who not to trust because if we trust the wrong person you may never come

backck and i found that among my students that had the remarkable ability. that probably comes off of the streets or that quality was important to survive, but that quality is central within the prison itself. so the reporter in me is fascinated. i will say and i've told this to my students many times having been overseas for 20 years and having lived in countries where they were different in yugoslavia but i spent a lot of time in gaza for instance and i speak arabic but however hard you try to understand, privilege is a form of blindness. that's why in the prison taught when he's stripped of power and status it's our job for people such as myself to come out of

positions of privilege to listen and learn as much as we can but understand that we can never cross the divide. that privilege will always inhibit us from fully seeing the way. there are two things that provoke wisdom, poverty, and i think that as my relationship with my students and thankfully many of them are getting out and i just was having lunch the other day with one of my students i think if we honor that divide or ifhi i honor the divide we can help with people that have endured oppression understanding that we don't fully understand. >> two things. i'm going to guess that there were people in theng audience wo rolled their eyes when cornelius said he was set up by the fbi

and i want to ask you how do you know after 38 years your student did not commit that crime? >> because the chief of the public defenders office in the state of new jersey has taken the case and a wrongful conviction case and told me she is 100% certain. they didn't have dna back then and this was murder where i didn't know anything about this but you have people who study the decay of the body and the various bugs and begin to feast on a corpse and that is the way they determine the time of death because it's been there a certain number of days and they've already traced it back. he wasn't even in the state once

you look back. i have other students i'm pretty certain. >> and what about cornelius when you say he was set up by the fbi? >> given your experience with your book our class and the work you've been doing, you hear i'm not sure if that's quite true. >> the fbi marcia ely i think many of them from somalia or something couldn't have handled logistics or the money but for the fbi plants inside the organization. when malcolm x was assassinated the first to get to them was a police informant and then there

were nine fbi informants and no police protection so unfortunately this is. >> next call for chris hedges. good afternoon your own booktv. >> the most dangerous made and ignored by the cdc and declared a pandemic by the world health organization. under the pcr testing that was used to determine if you have covid, that could never be determined because the test couldn't determine whether you had covid or not.

but still pushing this vaccine and the design to reduce symptoms this is the only proof for human use and can cause antibody -dependent enhancement which means once you get the of course you're going to be exposed to the virus this could possibly kill you and most of the deaths that we see from covid is probably from those that have been vaccinated so wondering ifci you are aware of the situation and why they are still promoting the vaccine. >> i am not but i did get the vaccine. i have not investigated. i don't believe anything until i've looked at it in-depth and reported it.

kelly, salt lake city. >> would you speak a little bit about cynicism? you deal with the reality so well but i don't see a lot of that. is that something you actively work against or is that a just a part of your normal nature to be anonymous and nicole?

>> as a former student i come out with an understanding of human nature and responding i've been very critical of the democratic party. i think the problem is when we don't have a full understanding of power or human nature then we can makeke responses that are based on illusion rather than reality and reality can be very bleak. that was true in the war that i covered. my job was to make an assessment as a reporter of what weapons system at the end of the road was w the chance the systems wee of taking me out and then responding. people that had a very pollyanna's view of the world

didn't live very long for instance when i covered the war i had an armored car and it just made a normal car and he used to taunt the snipers and spray-painted on the side of the cars save your bullets and he would drive across the airport and drive back which was foolish so i don't consider myself cynic. the problem with cynics they become passive and complicit. it's been 11 years since he sat at this table and in that time he's hosted aas couple different

programs. i want to read a quote why he did aassociation of the ukraine watreated very differently by my public denunciation of the iraq war. that's because after i denounced they probably wouldn't have responded differently if they had the chance. i think all people forget that within the state department

using this clause by unofficial i was booed off of a commencement stage for denouncing the war shortly after the invasion and then the right wing media picks it up into dedicated four days to the editorial. the times and was forced. i wasn't a columnist and in the 15 years i was given a reprimand. with the impartiality no longer allowed to speak about before

and at that point i wasn't going to be silent. >> another quote. >> that is run by the former editor that used to run until the publisher decided to fire them and then we went on strike and we all got fired. >> one headache after another. so he started shear post that he has from the social security check as far as i can tell. that is a subscriber service which is great. some peoplevi pay like six dolls a month. but what it does is i don't charge bob for my stories and then we fund this program on the

news with a certain amount of a who loved his weekly show because he read the books like you do. so it's what bob set up. he is legendary. >> this is something you wrote at the end of last year. the democrats especially the presidency of bill clinton not only for corporate america but for thweapons manufacturers and the pentan. no weapon system is too costly. no more disastrous goes unfunded, no military budget is too big including the 858 billion in military spding allocated for the current fiscal

year and an increase of $45 billion above the biden administration requests. >> as anyone that has read the history of past empires understands, it is unchecked and meanwhile the country is being disemboweled. the democrats under clinton and the congressman from california decided they would take the corporate money. they abolished welfare and 70% of the original recipients under the welfare system deregulated the fcc and consolidated the media with roughly half a dozen huge corporations. they destroyed a glass-steagall firewall between investments and commercial banks.

canada didn't, about 250 banks failed in 2008. they didn't have that because they didn't tear down that wall and it was the greatest betrayal in the american working class since 1947. they got fundraising with the republicans, but essentially became one duopoly, one corporate duopoly and unfortunately, that is the problem. sopr on the cultural issues, the democrats tend to be liberal but on all the major issues, trade deals, wholesale surveillance and as you mentioned "the new york times" ran a story the largest military budget but for one since world war ii with ukraine i think all told we've

given $100 billion. the russian military and potentially to overthrow putin. as all proxy wars are they are partners as they have been for a long time and the german socialist and german military of the enemy from within they are unaccounted for. they can't even be audited. anybody that has looked at past empires the ottoman empire, german employer and anything else will recognize the classes. at the end of this malnutrition in the streets of rome and you of course have this elite army

the guard, the elite and roman military auctioning off the emperor to the highest bidder so we are following that trajectory and that is what is so dangerous and the democrats, there's more opposition to ukraine from the republican party.

>> . >> and me have seen the constant estimation we are about to send mr. and putin feelsut cornered and he also said we don't want putin to be humiliated so that will be negotiated settlements but the longer it goes on more volatile and unstable it becomes and thero more ukraine

is destroyed will reveal that it is ukrainian blood. i don't want to minimize suffering just horrific and real but i do think the policy out of washington because europe is paying theec economic price. energy bills are under inflation and i think the last 20 years debacle in the middle east is reversible stand up and that is dangerous. > and having trouble with the

phones any line number five new jersey. >>caller: it is a joy to the program i would like to pivot back to what many people that i work with i bear witness is a human rights advocate on behalf of imprisoned people and they call this the war at home mass imprisonment is called the war at home of course of a of some of your thoughts on the causes of this war at home and that conditions in alternatives to the mass imprisonment that you are seeing and you talk about

the loss to society or the talent that lies behind the walls. >> yes it is worth home without question why? we have d industry dies the pockets in order to make a living and set an intern all army of occupation to retain control because as i mentioned earlier the social bond because it is cyclical on the importance of work and the role within society and why denying meaningful work to people is against religious teaching so the war on home is

visceral we have 25 percent of the world's prison population and as we mentioned before less than 5 percent of the worlds population therefore they are nonviolent crimes they the government charged at physically harming as another person it is social control not only removes men and boys and women from the streets of the cities that when they get out because of parole and they are felons they are thrown into a criminal cast system where they cannot get work in tonight public assistance and during the covid crisis getting a job in whole foods

and the background check came a few months late because the court system was behind and they saw he was imprisoned and fired him. he was a model employee there at 6:00 a.m., i visited him in whole foods he was very proud of the white jacket and it was heartbreaking and i went to the manager i made as well have been talking to a stone walls everything was conspired against these people which is why we have to try the recidivism really think 76 percent the correct the figure within five years we have criminalized poverty. and if you are a poor person of color there is almost no way out. what you have raised for what is so moving to each within the system is the level of talent but also the level of integrity they are note there

crime and i have seen transformation and redemption i have 11 of my students who graduated all with college degrees from rutgers and they are working in the industrial area foundation as community organizers around the country and is one of the leaders told me these are the model community organizers and may have been through the prison system they are brilliant and not people you mess with they are very effective at what they do. but unfortunately so many my students get out the matter how well-educated they are and it's hard to break out of that criminal cast system.

host: what is he doing today and did he have any chance of getting back into whole foods? >> no. they would not take him. he is struggling because he did not have family support. he was in a homeless shelter. he got seasonal work for christmas but that was in pennsylvania and had an old car that would break down. that economically at such a precarious level that if one thing goes down like you broke your car breaks then you lose your job and it is a cascading effect that creates tremendous anxiety and stress. he is struggling and through noth fault of his own. host: aurora colorado please go ahead.

>>caller: thanks for taking my call twice i have heard you use the term cold of self so could you provide an explanation or definition and i'm wondering if that term would apply to someone like me i am the dues paying member of the libertarian party but i put maximum effort into the pursuit of truth. >> i'm not a libertarian although with civil liberties libertarians are great and i said president barack obama over section 1021 of the national defense authorization act which overturned the act

which prevents using the military as a police force and everyone that also filed amicus briefs and did that with their support so no i would not call libertarians the colts but it is driven by celebrity culture consumer society where people say creating me the life movie but had many version of the kardashians so that is what i am referring to. but also with the societal

disease. >> speaking of honest self-criticism what is the format quick. >> this is a great journalist and author. there was many hours of interviewing. so theie quality of the interview depends on the interviewer. and he just asked a lot of smart questions so a lot of stuff that he was smart to pick up on that perhaps other people who have interviewed me have not always picked up on.

i don't wear it on my sleeve that i remain grounded with that christian realism and the social gospel and i also wrote my thesis of ideology i'm not marxist and i do not embrace violence as social change. violence builds nothing and creates nothing and it destroys the people who use it. f >> in wages a 3 billion you describe him as a brilliant scholar. >> in the critique. so that first volume of capital that the marxist solution is utopian which in

the original definition means no place i'm not a marxist of the withering away of the state and he holds up the proletariat so in that sense we have to read marx and of course he was trying on frederick engels so you have to actually have a calculator to read marx right but they had the statistics understood atthe predatory nature that capitalist are about reducing cost of production so if i was running on wall street for my would have my own. and without restraint they

will reform the society in those goals. because they are driven by motives by a wealth of self-advancement you don't want them to take over your society and turn the entire society into a predatory enterprise that's where you see utility and jacking up the prices of the healthcare system living in a country where it is legal for corporations to bankrupt parents while they try to save their sons or daughters this is an excusable. so that comes again from the

dark side of human nature and on the other side so it doesn't deform and destroy. host: sonoma county california text message what is your assessment on the new atheism and its proponents and are there criticisms relevant? >> i wrote a book on it the hardcover is i don't believe an atheistut which is too cute i do not like the new atheist. i did not pay a lot of attention to them until i debated christopher hitchens inin berkeley and i also debated harris at ucla.

and i was stunned. why did anybody take these people on? i find the binary view of the world politically they embrace because they substitutedau the glory of western civilization for god for god and it fits that view of the world and chomsky call them fundamentalist for the state religion and i think that is right. i did write a book about it which i've been told this is my best book he says it should be about[l theologians i like. [laughter] but it was called the best critique of the new atheist book.

and that's what i i wrote after doing the debates because then i had to read harris and hitchens and all the others which i had not paid close attention to before. >> i love that you mentioned chomsky i love your interviews with him but what about president zelensky's speech to congress and how it seems it was written by us officials of anyone in the united states government of military or state department? >> i don't know that for a fact that i would not be surprised i know they were

helping her write her speeches. so i have no evidence that is the case but probably forgot the very least they read it i would suspect. host: camden new jersey. >>caller: hello professor i am one of your students. i wantt to thank you for all of the wonderful work you are doing and the work we are currently doing the liberation theology and that cornell west brought in is monumental you are doing in the world today and we thank you and we love you thank you for believing in

us in the darkest time in our life. host: tell us about yourself and then we will let him answery . >> i served 100 percent of the 30 year life sentence i met him when wee started the program inside the state prison have the adult male facility i'm currently a graduate student working on my masters in criminal justice like most students and i graduated with my degree and justice studies from rutgers university and graduated with honors from mercer county community college with a degree in the brawlers and chris hedges was influential to shape a wonderful book with

politics and vision and it was hard and tough but we are manifesting a lot of the things that he told us currently i have a for-profit business llc that helps formerly incarcerated men and women coming home and their families and communities stakeholders and legislators to understand what is the process of coming out and what is needed so unlike the reentry models and rework all weover the state we welcome people home and go to the prisons we just welcomed one brother home that is a student like me after 38 years for a crime he did not commit and

it's wonderful me have been working i've only been home for years but we have not stopped working and it was because of the materials in the education to open our lives and minds to not accept the current condition of poverty of where we came from. host: what was the process for you to apply for the class and what was the first day with a professor like? >> let me interject because there would not be the class without him. >> i am one of the founding members. when i first went to prison in 1988 that telegram from the crime bill ended by the time i got my ged and we fought for 28 years to get higher education back in prison and we did and that's we met chris. it was a long battle i presented a white paper to

make education mandatory and it was signed it wasn't funded but then we got our organizers on the ground got funding and then we started in 2012 until now and made the biggest impact in new jersey but to educateut what they need to be successful in their life and community and in the world. host: thank you, star. >> that's the power of the students. they not only get out very few of us could go through what they went t through. imagine earning a college degree sitting in a jail cell. host: he said 1988 he went in

and has been out for four yearsar. >> these are long sentences. even after you do your 30 years they call it the two-man panel just to political appointees who decide whether or not you can go before the parole board. there is no reason given you cannot even meet with the parole board and if you do one of the reasons jean spent 38 years in prison you have to express remorse as a condition andid he said i'm not expressing remorse for a crime he did not commit. so he decided his integrity was more important and he would die in prison rather than admit to a crime he did not carry out. and only when the head of the public defender's office intervened and said that cannot be a precondition for

parole. it's not written and no law says you have to express remorse only then was he release but he was prepared to die in prison. host: grand junction colorado please go ahead. >>caller: hello, professor. i am a retired teacher and just retired this year i taught high school english and some drama and it worked internationally and i really enjoyed your comments and the various effects i taught at a center in colorado that was coordinated so we actually gave out real high school diplomas and i did that for

five years and teaching those kids who had not been in prison or in jail that had fallen through the cracks so they were at risk students generally speaking coming from disadvantage d background and here they were in the center and over the years we discover how similar the talents were all these kids that came from the disadvantaged backgrounds compared to internationally who had literate backgrounds culturally rich. but they had more talent and they demonstrate those in interactions. and we evolve that theory i'm

not the hard-working scholarly qr but part of the job as teachers is to better identify and knowledge that exists need to remarkable things but there's nothing in the background but then you observed that with prison. host: yes. we believe that there. >> that's a very good point those are those calls me call organic intellectual. and he saw the amount family with myr grandfather was a very gifted student and then the

sisters brother died and there were farmers. and that was it an individual education and i see that with my students. i will add the caveat they are more acute understanding of social control that i find often teaching in schools like columbia or princeton or nyu that is privilege so often times i teach w ev do boys and talk about the talented head and i had just given us sermon at a wealthy suburban church in new jersey when i said that

we had decapitated and killed far more people in children through isis to the aerial dronene and said later by the way he backed away from this and that level of discussion because of the oppressed community begins at a higher level and with those elite institutions when they are yearning to be part of the 1 percent but thei tragedy is sought in my own family of scholarship rice saw the kids of the rich and the rich given chance after chance to go back to maine where my family was fromin.

host: thank you for being a tv starting 2023 with a a discussion of forgotten people in america's prisons. i am curious about the claim you are not a pacifist quick. >> i was in sarajevo during the war being hit with hundreds of shells a day 45 journalist it only been killed we were under constant fire couple of dozen people were dying every day they were surrounded by a trench system and if the serbs broke through a world war i everyone smiling muslim commander would fire up a starburst to get the men to

charge over with the expected result. we understood if they broke through one third of the city would be soldered amend the rest to. go into a refuge it is an existential crisis where there are forces spent on not only yourti annihilation but if your family and community and pick up a weapon we did not sit in the basement have discussions about that that doesn'tt save you from the place and that's why it has the greatest evil is war. trying to make a move he fires these automatic weapon was a few

seconds delay in a combat situation and pushes open the door for which he never recovered and then we are pushed to moments and you become it was really a response of what he would consider question not that he understood violence with his evil that there were moments for human beings were pushed to that place. host: how many times have you been arrested? >> in the states are outside? [laughter] host: i don't know why was

asking a difficult question. [laughter] i have been arrested a few times the white house it was very moving protesting and several times i was a prisoner and captured by the iraqi prisoner guard and i was imprisoned for a reading in jail and i always carry a book i was outcast the anthony and cleopatra which is my favorite shakespeare play. that he b got cold-blooded. if wf

shakespeare's plays, the one i would save is nc and cleopatra because it is the highest level of poetry, but it is a play that i love because showing human compassion in the face of cold-blooded miss -- the soothsayer says, your spirit desserts you. octavio becomes a gustus. so i had those, but i was taken prisoner by the contra in nicaragua. they were very angry. they marched us off into a cornfield and then radioed back to honduras to see whether they should shoot us. we were sitting with these guys with guns on us and they radioed back and said, let them go. they sent -- they said, tell

them that they better never come back and if they do, we will kill them and earn their car. i thought, if you kill me, i do not really care if you burn my car or not but numerous times, have been held and beaten. i was turned over to the secret police. i think that is kind of what happens. i do not like it. host: what is your connection to princeton? chris: right now, nothing. i have taught there three times. host: you live in that area. chris: yes, because of that wonderful library, but that is my connection. like any writer, any to be by a great research library.

that is huge. host: anterior friendship with cornell west? chris: i love cornell. it has been my privilege or my curse and i think i am very well read until i sit down with any of them, and i have to admit -- she buried me and admitted that after she finished her budget work at columbia -- he taught religion at columbia and then -- remember, i was a bureau chief. he is reeling off beats that i do not even remember. and then i had dinner with

cornell one night. i did a lot of english lit. and after 50 minutes, i was taking notes under the table, but they are all -- i think we are all such indent to numb chomsky. i said, should have put your name on it as a co-author. everything i understand comes out of what you wrote. and cornell -- what i loved about them is that these are intellectuals who could have skewed the political debate, the controversy, and build monuments to themselves within academia. but they have such a conscience. i brought cornell into the prison.

he came back and she was not paid for it. there were no cameras. he taught a wonderful philosophy class. they are three people that i admire deeply. they teach a class together. he is from the madison society. he is so charming. i did the oxford union be. here of any statement is seven minute, so i was trying down and timing it. i said, how did you manage seven minute? >> -- seven minutes?

i do not have his charm. but they are amazing people. i love susan. i members saying thing. i met susan in bosnia because she had mounted a production and a theater. people would visit when there was a cease-fire. it was very dangerous. a lot of respect for her forgiving. she was about my age. she was in her six these. i know that both day that she, but i had a good relationship with her. host: we always ask authors what they are currently reading some

of their favorite books. here are some of o favorites given to us by chris hedges. in search of lost time, moby ck, and life nc. the gulag archipelago, the origin of totalitarianism, moral man and moral society, the collective essays of james baldwi, the collected essays, journalism and letters of george orwell, and the brothers care matzoh by. sky -- and the brothers karazamov. chris: that last one is about a

mining strike. he is a great reporter. it is a very powerful word. and when he was taking to the street of paris, the crowd chanted. an amazing writer. a book that i read before, i just finished reading gulag archipelago and three quarters of the way through another work, which is a stunning piece of scholarship. host: i have not read the first three of your favorite books. i have them on my bookshelf and always wanted to. in search of lost time, mother -- i just it was a real boy. ulysses, i have heard it is just very difficult. chris: i do not think it is not

difficult. in search of lost time, i've read a during the war in bosnia. they take the bridge out and you had to bear. i do not think ulysses -- i think of edict is the greatest amic novel. its about -- i forget who said it was about the death of civilization, which it is. everything is encapsulated. it is about the obsessive hunt for the white male. melville thought the deity was malevolent. you know who also believe that? the deputy commander of the ghetto uprising, the only one who arrived. there is a brilliant book. he wrote a history of the ghetto, but the great journalist

gets back to the interviewer and vote a book called shielding, which is amazing. she interviews him, but it is about moral consequence, and he talks about how in uprising, they all knew that they were doomed, it was just about how they were going to die. he said, both my role is to shield the flame, to protect life as long as i can. but that is melvin. that is my -- host: what is the first thing that you made to people who are not familiar with the language and the pros? chris: when i taught key leaders, we vetted line by line because you are dealing with these -- elizabethan language. you not allowed to have wedding

devices in the prison. i wish i had written it down. they would summarize it in street slang, so they say, he showed up with his posse, but they got. but you have to go through a, line, byline, in order to become a millionaire with the language. but once you become familiar, it opens up the door. the power of shakespeare is that deep understanding. almost unrivaled. i know people i reading shakespeare less and less. my wife is just about to appear in, and reunions the in the

play, his son died, and then after the death of his son, people who you thought were lost are coming to be found again. in pericles, he finds his daughter marina. my wife had played in julliard. and when she was born, i was cited that the, right after she was born, by memory. i was terrified i would forget it. my wife said, i thought you were praying. host: liz, thank you for holding on. you are on with chris hedges. caller: i was a teacher at a new jersey state prison for about 15 years and our coursework was

geared toward getting a student his high school diploma. he was going to be capable of it and had enough time to get there. but i think the college program predates earlier than the gentleman from camden, who talked about getting in 1948. i started working at i started working at the state prison in 1985 and remained there through 1999. at that point there are times due to the state layoff it was perceptible it was teachers and we had a small faculty at

our prison to begin with and a smaller one after a few budget crisis and we got some of that reversed with the help with the senator. host: what diddi you think of your time those 15 years you are teaching there? what was that experience like for you? >> i had taught in public school prior to that then i took this position. was adult male inmates at my setting. host: i apologize. i have to let you go unless you can give us something you want him to respond to. we are running out of time. >>caller: what does he think about the need to invest were heavily in education?

host: thank you we appreciate it. >> 40 percent of people come into the prison system meaning at a fourth or fifth grade level and there is study after study that shows the higher the level of education in the prison system the less likely we see recidivism. there is just the very practical effort if wee put people into prison it should be about reform and equipping them as solid citizens within the society there is that

moral element outlined them to ask questions andnd struggle with her own dignity which is a component of any good educational system. i am a huge proponent the governor of new york that read all the studies to say he would provide education todu all the prisoners and then he dropped it but that is the only option if we are serious. host: caldwell idaho you have 30 seconds. >>caller: please speak to the media of inevitable coming of conflict with china? >> stoking the conflict with

china over taiwan in the south china sea you cannot keep the massive military budgets unless you have an enemy. i cover the fall of eastern europe with strategic and economic and then determined to make russia an enemy if they wanted to or not. i see the same thing with china and it worries me. host: early on you said our classes a book that came from your heart does that make it harder or easier to write? > harder. i would never want to write that again i was dealing with trauma. even now it is so heartbreaking. everything that has been stacked against them when you

are emotionally involved it's harder. host: thank you forou coming back we appreciate it