Transcripts For CSPAN2 In Depth 20240622

Climate crisis and during our lunch break we started talking about the 9 11 attack, the u. S. Invaded afghanistan and we were talking about how horrible it was that the u. S. Was about to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9 11, and we started laughing about the color coated. It was really to keep people in a state of fare fear and that we needed another colorcoated alerto that theres another way of dealing with this. Thats when we came up with the idea of code pink. We wanted to be hot pink because we were fivesy women but it was already it was taken by a foreignut group. We game pink. How do you pickos your issues . We started out not wanting to be an ongoing organization. And so we did that, we got involved. We had tremendous support around theme country without without really trying we had hundreds of groups that formed in places around the country and we were part of a much Larger Movement that did things that come out to protest on days like february 15, 2003 which is recorded as the largest demonstrations around the world ever in the history of human kind. So our issue was to stop the war in iraq, unfortunately we werent able to do that, but in the process we realized that there was a need for our voices to continue to try to bring our troops home, to try to stop future wars and to really address the issues of violence, and we have continued to do that. We pick our issues, peter mostly by what is our government int the u. S. Involved in. We do have supporters around the world, most of us are from the u. S. How can we as american citizens fulfill our responsibility to try to make our Foreign Policy as positives in the world as possible, so we look to where our government is not doing well in those respects and try to move government policies. So the war in afghanistan justice we did not think it was the right think to do. We thought that we should go after individuals that attacked us and not invade and occupy other countries. We have just commissioned a report tot come out in the fall that will look at the results of all of the years of the u. S. Being in afghanistan the number of u. S. Soldiers that have died, the number of civilians that have died. Mainly we want to look has life improved for women in afghanistan. With the research that we have been doing theres no changes despite the fact that we spent dollars in iran. Your most recent book is of drone warfare. Any justification to use drone in the warfare . Unfortunately the u. S. Has been involved in all too many wars and in those situations drones become just another piece of technology that is used in warfare, but we see some special things that are happening with the use of drones that u. S. Are using them in places where were not even at war like pakistan, yemen, the Drone Technology itself has been making it easier for the u. S. To get involved in place where were not at war and making i ut easier for the u. S. To get voled in involved in military affair without conversation in congress as to whether or not we need to be involved in thosefl conflicts. The only danger they face is mental. Er it it has been shown that drone pilotsim face ptet like soldiers in the battlefield. Its not easy for a soldier to sit as a desk and be watching a screen for 1012 hours a day getting toer know people on the ground, because sometimes they are hovering over a particular house and might watch the father playing with his children or see the mother going out to watch wash the laundry and kids going to school and then one day theyrere told to kill that person so theres a lot of problems that the drone pilots are facing. Thats why theres actually a shortage of drone pilots now. You write about u. S. Born son of alima. 16yearold american citizen born and raised in denver. His family moved back to yemen his father was killed by a u. S. Drone strike, and then he himself the 16yearold in a separate drone strike while he was having dinner with a bunch of other teenagers was killed in theil u. S. Drone strike. This is just an amazing example of the u. S. Killing an american citizen,n killing a child and doing it without any kind of attempt to explain to the family or to us why it was done, was it a mistake, on purpose what did he w ever do, was he ever charged with anything, no, was he ever tried did the u. S. Ever try to capturetu him no. Was he ever given a trial. No. It was one of the most blatant examples of illegal use of drone ware far. Here is the president at the washington correspondents dinner. Do jonahs brothers are here. Theyre some where. Sasha and ma will recollect are fans. I have two words for you drones. [laughs] its not funny at all. T not funny to the people that live under the fear of drones. One thing that i learned that just the people that are killed, whether innocent civilians highvalued targets its the entire population in the area that is being punished collectively. Imagine that you were out w in your home or wherefore you wherever you live and there was a buzzing of drones. You knew that the drones had missiles on it that was going to kill somebody, you didnt know who, when where and why, and what i found is that in these areas where the drones are flying overhead, parents are afraid to send their children to school, theyre afraid to go to any Community Events whether its even weddings or fun funerals. So its a terrifying thing to live under drones. I dont think its anything that the president should be joking about. January 30th, 2015 code pink isry pretty well known in capitol hill for interrupting hearings. Lets watch this video. [screams] in the name of the people we dont want to hear from you. In the name of the people in vietnam. You know ive been a member for many years and ive never seen as despicable about the demonstration that took place. If we cant get the policed police get out of here you lowlife scum. [applause] so henry i hope on behalf of all of the members on both sides of the aisle in fact from all of my colleagues, i would like to apologize for allowing such disgraceful towards a man whoou served his country with the greatestti distinction. I apologize profusely. Lowlife scum. Reasoned and yes, this is coming from john mccain somebody who pushed us to the war in iraq. I could name many many. Unfortunately people in this country rarely are held accountable for their acts. I have lived in latin america, i have seen the kind of responses to henry responsible chile that lead to so much death and destruction in the country. He gave a green light for the death and destruction there. Im, remember henry and all the lies that we were told, so henry to me is a war criminal and should bel treated as such. John mccain has is mb who somebody who is responsible who lead us to deaths of thousands of u. S. Solders. Why arent people held responsible . Perhaps because this is the superpower, this is the country that has been all powerful and the powerful countries are usually not held accountable. Look at the International Criminal court. Its not the powerful that go there for war crimes. I think its important that there be voices out there that say that we we remember and we do not hold some of these people in high regards as statemen that we should listen to. These are people that have taken down a path that has made such mayhem around the world. Lets have a Foreign Policy based on diplomacy. From our Facebook Page this question from steven, i would understand if you chose not to answer, he writes, how do you and other activities gain admittance to the conference and hearings, i would think they would know you right now but maybe its open to the public. Theres a very good question. When i went to my first hearing i was living in San Francisco at the sameea at the time. I read that ronald was going to testify about why we should go to the war in iraq. I was so opposed of the war in iraq that in asked another friend from texas if she would fly to washingtonet d. C. And get into this hearing, he said if somebody help me pay for me ticket, then i would do it. We dressed up in pan suits. We got steno pads. We tucked the Washington Post and we put our banners down our pants because we thought we better pretend we were journalists. Anybody was allowed in there if you got up early. These public hearings means the public is invited. We tend to be the first ones on line we get up very early. There have been times when people were trying to get in the hearings we slept outside to be the first ones to get in. Techtechnically we have to be allowed inside. Now, sometimes when we have gotten arrested we might have a stay away order that said we cant go to the buildings for x amount of time. Sometimes peoplee that run the hearing they bring in all their staff, they take up all the seats so theres no seating for the public, but in general pun lick hearings, and i would say towe your viewers more public should attend. Look up online the hear that is are happening. Its fascinating to go to those hearings, its important for peoples who dont live inside the beltway and feel how Government Works in action, and actually its not pretty oftentimes. You see very narrow viewpoints by democrats and republicans asking the questions and by the witnesses who tend to be people that think alike. Iea find remarkable to go to the hearings and feel frustrating that the questions as citizens were not being asked. He was being asked some softball questions by the Congress People abou bt why he was advocating that we go to war. And so i felt like i had to stand up and say, i have some questions as the public, how many lives are going to be lost in this, how many civilians are going to die in this, how Many Companies are going to make a lot of money from this what is the exit strategy in this plan, have you exhausted all Nonviolent Solutions why are the u. N. Inspectors saying that there are no weapons of mass destruction, and so i was asking all these questions and holding up a banner. I realized that i feel an obligation as a u. S. Citizen to expand the conversation. I think, for example that public hearings should have a time 1015 minutes at the end of the hearing where the public gets a chance to say something. I think before the gavel goes downth the public should be able to express their views in these hearings. Unfortunately because of code pink being out there and holding up signs and doing this nonviolent protest the police have been told to be harder on us even before a hearing start if were there holding a sign, we can be arrested for that. I should ask that the Capital Police are not too happy about that. They too believe in free expression, we should have a chance to express ourselves. Unfortunately there are people who run these committees like johntt mccain who opposed to any expression coming from the public. What happens to you after youre escorted out after most of the time were arrested. It depends how many times youve been arrested. If if its your first arrest you get a fine, a second arrest you get a fine. If its your third you get assigned a date to come back, youre either taken to trial or might be given plea bargain you might have to do a certain number of hours of community service. You might have a certain financial amounts of money that you have to pay. Sometimes people refuse to pay these fines and say that this is moral position that weso have. How many times have you been arrested, how many of those penalties that youve encountered . Ive been arrested dozens of time. Many of those arrests were involvedol before 9 11, trying to fight thing like sweat shops corporate abuses. Ive spent ive spent time in jail. Unfortunately i would say that this comes with the territory. Its not like were try to go trying too get arrested. There have been a number of times where weve done protest at the white house and we know that if you dont keep moving at the white house and youre over 25 people that thats arrestable and weve had hundreds of people for just standing around the white house. There were times when people were getting arrested. But when were speaking out in the hearings specially before or after it started we dont plan to get arrested we dont want to get arrested and we dont think we should get arrested. Do thehe Capitol Hill Police know you when you come in . Do they plan for that . Theres actually big smiles on their faces because they come to like us a lot. We have a friendship with the Capital Police. They g give us big hugs when we come inside, sometimes were standing in line and one of the police theyll come in and give us a highfive or a hug. They know that we are nonviolent. Absolutely nonviolent, they know we wouldnt touch anyone or hurt anyone. They know that we are passionate about these issues and they appreciate that just asia appreciate people who might be on the totally opposite side of thehi issue but we have something in common, we believe in getting involve. The Capital Police were trying to have a party for a lieutenant that retired because we enjoyed having conversations with them about these issues. They oftentimes dont agree with us on a lot of the things, they appreciate our passion involvement and other the years have com he to understand that we feel this responsibility as citizens to try to steer our government on a better path. Many of the Capital Police have been on the military or their sons or daughters are in the military. They att this point dont want to see them sent off abroad on what they consider a full admission. So over the years they have come to recognize that we have been o right on these issues. We shouldnt have invaded iraq. We shouldnt have always seen as problems overseas that military ca n solve. May 23rd, 2013. Lets watch. We went we went can you tell the muslim people their lives are as precious as our lives can you take the broans from the cia can you strike to the chile people . Can you apologize to the thousands of muslims that you have killed . Were addressing that, maam. I love my country. Drones are making us less safe. Thehe voice of that woman is worth paying attention. Obviously [applause] obviously i do not agree with much of what she said, and obviously she wasnt listening to me in much of what i said. I love my country and i love the rule of law. I think thats important for your viewers to understand. I dont do these things because i want to. My heart was pounding, it was coming out of my chest peter. Theret was a voice saying dont dof this, hes the president of the United States. Another voice was saying, you just got back from yemen who were absolutely innocent people and your government is lying saying we dont kill innocent people. You met with people who are asking the u. S. Government to explain why their loved ones were killed, to apologize for killing them to compensate for their loss. These two voices were wrestling in my head. I chose the voice of the victims, and i feel thats so important, peter because president obama drone warfare has been almost victimless. When have you seen the media . Its hard to show their bodies. Can we talk to their loved ones, mothers, fathers wives husbands and so American People havent been able to get the kindet of empathy that i have from going to these places and meeting these families, and so i feel my f government has been lying to me about the number of innocent people killed. My government has been using illegal practices of just dropping missiles on people because we think they might be bad people without ever having to prove it, without ever having tocc account for the innocent people killed. That was my chance to address the president and i addressed. I think for the muslim world its important to see a nonmuslim. And im also jewish. I think thats important to say. My children and i have two and i have a granddaughter who i just adore are so precious to me that i dont want other peoples children or grandchildren killed. And so i havei to stand up and say tota my government, stop lying, stop using killing, capture people, give them accuse them of something give them a trial and treat every life as if it were your own childs life. Youre watching book tv on cspan2. Once a month we invite an author. This time author and activist. Shes well known as cofounder of code pink. Hereut are her books. Dont be afraid gringo. Nore free lunch food and resolution, food and cuba today. The peace at war. Cuba talking about a revolution also in 1997. Shes a coeditor of that book 2002. How to stop the next war now . Coeditor, 2009 and finally drone warfare. What is it about the u. S. And latin americas relationship over the past 150 years . Its about the u. S. Try to go tell latin america how it should return its internal affair, the idea that its our backyard and we can make and break governments at our will. And its funny peter because i feel that my politics came from my first experiences of traveling to latin america. Going to guatemala and learn about the beautiful culture and what i learned about was my own history. I learned about the brothers and how they were imposing u. S. Policy on guatemala, i learned about the overthrow jacobo. I learned about chile and the overthrow of the democratic. People said, wait a minute, you should go back and learn about your own country your own history and work to change your governments policies so that you allow us to elect the governments that we want and dont interfere in our internal affairs, and that became a lesson to me and one that has stuck with me my entire life, which is that we should not try to dictate how other countries and people behave. Its a lesson that more of our leaders try to work, they try to engineer other countries, and one its not fair, and two it doesnt work. Were going to put the numbers on the screen. If you want to participate. Here are the numbers. And if you cant get through the phonelines you can get through via social media twitter at book tv is our twitter handle. You can make a comment on our Facebook Page facebook. Com book tv. When did you become ma dea . I was born susan, i was born in a suburban household in long island, new york, and i was growing up in the 60s. I look back at my youth and i realized that i was tremendously affected by several things, one was the war in vietnam and i started a peace group in my high school. Another was race issues that i had lived in a white suburb where black families started moving in and it brought out some really ugly racism among my neighbors i and i sided with the black families, and the other wass issues of materialism. Im thinking about Martin Luther king talking about the evils and i noticed in my own neighborhood and family always strie to go striving to get more material goods to keep up with the jones jones. When i went off to college it was in the middle of the vietnam war and i decided i would not stay in school because i wanted to be out learning about the real world and not stuck in some ivory tower. In my little time in ivory tower i started reading the greek plays, it was one of the courses that i was taking. I decided as i was going to change my i denty i den every month i would chose a different name from the greek plays and tell my friends that they now had to call me a different name. I thought it was a pretty name. I had read the play about being this powerful woman with magical powers that use them in a very bad way of killing her own children, and then i read another analysis saying she didnt do that, it was blamed on her because she was a powerful woman with magical powers. I said i like the name and i like the idea of a strong woman and using her strength for positive things, and so i stuck withan the name. Were your parents activists . No, they were not interested in politics. They were very typical to keep up with the joneses kind of family and its hard for me even to say whether theyre democrat or republican. I think they voted republican most of the time and they were quite conservative in their values. Io would also say they were racist in the way they looked at the world and were afraid of the blackballing families coming into the community afraid of quote, property values. Certainly i didnt get my politics from my parents. Has cuba been a positive influence as far as its policy and its system . I would say i have a love lovehate relationship with cuba. Peter i got all this i mentioned from antiwar but also want to go live in a world where all children had food on plates and a roof over their head. I went to school and studied nutrition an ad worked around the world, i was so distraught, whether it was latin america or africa or asia, ive seen so many hungry children, with ten can he cents. And then i met cubans that were working in africa, they had left their families. They volunteered as doctors, as nurses, as teachers to live in the poorest parts of africa and treat poor people, and they also were just fun people to hang out with, one they were really dedicated to trying to help people who were em poverished. They love to dance sing and have a good time. When i started hearing cuban music and dancing salsa i thought, oh, my god, this is just wonderful but more important to me they said that in cuba there were no malnourished kids. The cuban government was dedicated to children and i should go see for myself. Which i did, i ended up getting married in cuba, its true, the cuban government is dedicated to the children, thne children are so well taken care of in cuba, but im an outspoken person. Sincen. The time i was a child and i found that i really cared about free speech and i cared about free live assembly. I started butting heads in my workplace and whether it was coming up against a government sponsored union that i would fight with to try to get more changes in the workplace or whether it was speaking out against government policies. I ended up getting in trouble in cuba and in fact, so much trouble that i was given a military escort to the plane and i was deported with my husband and child. The years went by, i was not allowed back into cuba. After many years, i was asked to write a piece about cuba and the magazine that asked me to do it, actually negotiated to get me the right to go back into cuba, because the on the board of the magazine was a lawyer, michael, who to this day is a lawyer that works for the cuban government. He managed to get me back inside. Since then i have been going back and forth to cuba. I love the fact that education is free. I love the fact that they care about the children, but i do care about and want to live in a society where people are able to express themselves freely. In your book you talk about juan antonio blanco, who is that . It was one of those really interesting people who were very revolutionary. He took independent stands on a lot of things. Everything from the little restaurants from the selling of the peanuts on the corner everything became a government activity. People like juan antonio spoke out against that. So i did an interview with him that i thought was fascinating and we should keep the conversation going and turn it into a book, and so we did. Its a book called talking about revolution and its from the point of view of a revolutionary who is a has a critical eye on his own government but has the values of the revolution. Of all your books whats your favorite . I would say my favorite is the one called dont be afraid gringo. Its a book about a woman el delvia alvaro. The u. S. Was try toing to overthrow. The u. S. Was voled in bloody wars in Central America. The country not getting enough coverage was honduras. I decided to go to honduras. And i was interviewing lots of differenter people from different walks of lifeif and i came across this woman elvia and i fell in involve with this woman, peter and i thought im going to go back and do more interviews with her and turn it into a book. I love the book because we ended up doing from her point of view and telling the story of a woman who was a poor woman who grew up with her six children being malnourished strugtology try struggling to try to feed them. Then realizing that she wanted to organize to help neighbors to get access to land. I went out with her on what are called the land recoveries. They go in the middle of the night and the land owner would wake up in the morning to find 300 families nowre on that land starting to dig and plant seeds. And i was just amazed at their organizing capacity and standing up to powerful landlords who had guns. She had been captured and tortured in the u. S. , and yet with all of that she was fun we laughed, we became like sisters we had such a good time together. And the book was a wonderful introduction to a lot of people about the problems in Central America and why the u. S. Military involvement was not a good thing. We brought her to the u. S. To talk to audiences. We had a friend on the inside, we took her to speak to the graduating class in the u. S. Defense college the war college in california. These graduates were going to go to Central America and she was speaking before them, and this woman just charmed the hell out of them in the beginning. She got up, let me tell you what the life of a pesant is like. We start making the tortillas we go out and get our children off the school, we go out in the field, we come home and clean and our husbands come back, guess what, they want us to work again in bed and everybody in the audience start laughing. Shes charming them. I remember at one point she looks out in the audience, she jumps off the stage she doesnt speak english, this is all being translated. One of the soldiers had fallen asleep. Shecl said 50 pushups right here right now. She won them over. She talks about them coming to her community and the soldiers with theirhe guns targeting and arresting them and in the end they didnt want to go to central b america. It was read by people in the military. I was told that it the number one underground people book that people were reading. Host because of the kind of work you do do you get regular league advise . Guest well, i certainly get legal advice and have a lot of lawyers who are friends but i dont often listen to the legal advice. If i did i would never have done that first interruption of donald rums phil because the lawyer said could i get a year in jail, thousands of dollars fines, and we did it anyway. I have talked to lots of lawyers and i always weigh their opinion carefully, but usually dont take the advice. Host Medea Benjamin, you mixed you respect people on the other side who are passionate about the issue. Lets look at video from july 23rd of this year. So one of the things you said is if iran is trying to get Nuclear Weapons the nice thing is i think in debates proof matters and one entity, one person who about with whom there is no ambiguity in term owes whether iran wants weapons the ayatollah which men any. And president rouhani. Both who say theyre developing Nuclear Weapons theres no we saying here developing Nuclear Weapons. No doubt about it. Absolutely false. Absolutely false. Maam, i did not i did not interrupt you. I did not interrupt you. I ask you to show me the same courtesy. If you look at number one, i would note you did not respond the irrefutable point this deal will send over 100 million to iran and those billions of dollars will be used to murder americans. Host what was that about . Guest we went to a gathering, ted cruz was going to be speaking to a group of concerned women against the Iran Nuclear Deal. We were great enthusiasts of this Iran Nuclear Deal because it gets us out of another war, and ran over there and ted cruz was talking so got up front and was able to have a dialogue with ted cruz for about 25 joy minutes. It wasnt a fair debate i would say because he had all his people and he had control of the mic but it was a good example, very smart on his part, of inviting us to come up and talk about these issues but now the you brought this up i want to say while i have been a great critic of president obama and things like throw strikes and not closing guantanamo especially when he had control of the house and senate and many other e shoes i am very enthusiastic about the Iran Nuclear Deal, very enthusiastic about the normalization of relations with cuba. Very enthusiastic that finally started to use diplomacy and i think it is that very dangerous time when the congress is being lobbied by big money groups to convince congress to vote against this deal. This is a deal that is in the best interests of the United States, of iran, i would say in the best interest of israel and the world because this we need to be working cooperative with iran not only to make sure it does not have Nuclear Weapons which it says it does not want, ted cruz lied when he said the ayatollah said he wanted nuclearweapons but also need to work with iran and saudi arabia and all the countries in the region to deal with the issues of isil and extremism if we are going to find Diplomatic Solutions to the tremendous problems in the middle east, it has to be by talking to all the parties there. Host one more piece of video before we go to phone calls. Paying on for one more second, same day july 23rd, 2015 here is code pink. [applause] [applause] come to order. You got kicked out of a hearing for applauding . Guest we applauded before the gavel went down. I have been arrested protesting john kerry, so have my colleagues, but this is a time we were so proud of him, we think he and the iranians and other countries involved in this have done a tremendous job to come up with this deal and we wanted to show our appreciation, going to his house to bring flowers there. We think it is important when Government People do something good that we shall appreciation. Host Medea Benjamin is our guest, your turn to talk to her we begin with a phone call from rome in philadelphia. You are on booktv. Caller appreciate booktv and cspan choosing Medea Benjamin and try want to say i am learning sell much, Medea Benjamin has been a huge inspiration to me, a person responsible for getting me interested because she quote so much truth finding out why she protested she is a huge inspiration to me, two questions, thank you cspan for seeing the important, tradition of quality to re kwame ture in inspiring cspan, this makes america as beautiful as it is. Medea benjamin talk about the influence of eduardo who passed away earlier this year and cuba normalizing relationships with the unaided stays, as a positive thing but i have a concern what happened to the u. S. S. R. In 1999 will happen to cuba with a socialist character of cuba will die. Medea benjamin speak to that and Eduardo Galiano ads influence on her . Guest for those who dont know eduardo, run to the library and get the boat, open veins of when america, just one example of a writer who is just a beautiful literary writer but gets into an office full of latin america and also the way the u. S. Has historically tried to subvert the wishes of latin American People. Eduardo has had a tremendous influence on me as i was growing up and reading his books. You also talk about the character of the socialist revolution in cuba. I mention my love a relationship with cuba. One of the exciting things about cuba is it is different and we need societys the try Different Things because goodness knows we have got so many problems in our capitalist society, entire sectors of the population who dont benefit from this economy tremendous inequality the Climate Crisis trying different ways of living in society is a good thing. In the case of being concerned about what it means to normalize relations it is an example of trusting the cubans to decide what to let in from the u. S. And what they dont. What cubans have for economic reasons decided tourism is going to be a big sector of their economy and they would like to see a lot more american tourists being able to travel there. Obama has opened up embassies still the u. S. Has not lifted the travel ban, if you fit in 12 categories that include educational travel, a humanitarian, if you want to go on the beach like any canadian and law on a beautiful beach outside havana that is illegal. Cubans would like to see the travel ban lifted. The American People should protest that our government is telling us where we can or cannot go and that is one thing that should be lifted. In terms of lifting trade restrictions that still exists i think it would benefit the cubans tremendously to be able to buy the food they dont produce and are now buying from countries thousands of miles away from new zealand, getting chicken, rice in vietnam and to the above get 90 miles away from the United States. There are things that would be mutually beneficial. One of the exciting things cuba is experimenting with is the government of role castro has realized the state run topdown economy is not working and they want to divest the state of a lot of these different businesses and instead of turning them into private businesses they are turning them into worker coops and i think it is very exciting. We visit a lot of them when we go to cuba. Any of your listeners or viewers who are able to listen, check out our website for upcoming trips to cuba but i think an economy that has a strong worker crops sector could be very exciting could be a model in cuba, including our own. Host stewart is calling from new york city. Caller thank you very much and thanks to your guests. I want to echo what a terrific program you have got an your facility at asking questions and getting information conveyed is extraordinary. I have two questions for your guest. The first, it has been almost 14 years since 9 11. What contribute the lack of organized terrorism in this country over the interim . The second question hypothetically, a weapon of mass destruction were used in the United States lets assume we were not able to stop it, what changes in the rules of law might we want to consider . Thank you. Guest not sure i understood the first question. Host can you rephrase the first question . Caller i am on the line. I look at 14 years ago a couple thousand people were killed by islamic terrorists. That organized effort has not occurred in the intervening period and i am curious what your guest the tribute that lack of success on the part of the terrorists to and i held my second question was straight forward but i can respond to that as well. Host what is your answer to the first question . Caller i think there is up balance between the amount of information we gather and the observation we have on peoples behavior. We have to balance that against rights of privacy and potential for government intrusiveness. Is a practical constraint that requires judgment, awareness and alertness and i welcome the discussion. I dont presume to have definitive answers. Guest thank you i understand. I agree it is a balance. We are far from having found that balance. Intrusion on our privacy in terms of mass surveillance has been uncovered thanks to ed snowden but our government lied to us telling us they were not doing that and i dont think mass surveillance is a way to protect us. I think we need to be defended at home and the government should be checking on people who have a reason to harm us but that is one of the reasons i think our military should be here at home defending this instead of going in and invading other countries overseas but i dont think we have allowed ourselves as a nation to look at ways the we can prevent people from wanting to harm us. For example one of the reasons Osama Bin Laden said he hated the United States was that we had basis in the saudi lands, the holy lands in mecca, we should be closing those bases and not just bases there but many other countries that dont want our military bases that have been fighting to get those military bases out of their countries and we should closed down those bases. There are many people who hate the United States because we have been supporting dictators in their countries. I have travelled to many of these places like egypt where the u. S. Is supporting of various repressive regime. As we are doing this program john kerry why applauded very recently is now sitting down with general cc, an extremely regressive general who has made life miserable for the egyptian people. In fact according to humanrights watch and amnesty international, the human rights situation is worse than it was in the terrible days of hosni mubarak. And yet john kerry is there making nice with him and the u. S. Has released over a billion dollars in military aid to that country. The u. S. Has been 1sided in its support for israel giving israel free billion dollars a year in our tax dollars to the Israeli Military that has been used for repressing the Palestinian People so there are a number of u. S. Policy issues that make us disliked around the world. If we want to get at the root of the reasons for the u. S. Being the object of a tax, it would be to address some of these issues but i do agree we have to be protected from people who would do us harm. I dont think it should involve mass occupation of other countries or mass violation of our privacy. Host Medea Benjamin, what is your next book about . Guest as Organization Code paint we have done a lot in talking about what we dont like. We do applaud what we do like, diplomacy, but we want to move towards a broader look at the kind of world we want to live in. We are researching and i would like to do more writing about the concept of peace economy. What would a peace economy looks like to move us away from a country that is so entrenched in the military Industrial Complex, general eisenhower warned us about in the 1950s and move that into a peace economy what would it look like to have an economy based on more locally produced goods more participatory budgets where people are really involved in shaping how we spend our money, what would it look like to have the kind of diplomacy we want to see on the international level, because in our schools against things like bullying part of what children learn from the time they enter into publicschool, all these different ways that we can move ourselves as individuals away from the war economy and move ourselves as a nation into economy that protect the environment, will include the issues of getting off of the fossil fuel treadmill into an economy based on green sustainable and renewable sources of energy. So all those pieces coming to inspire people, both individually, young people, what they want to do with their lives as well as what kind of policies we want to see nationally and globally. Moving into that big picture of what does a peace economy looks like. Host when did writing become important to you . Guest i started writing when i was hired by an Organization Called food firs, also institute for food and development policy. When i left cuba i had been one of the few americans who had been living there and i was a nutritionist by training and this institute hired me to coauthor a book on what were the good and bad things cuba had done to address the food the issue and i realized as i started writing and really liked it and i enjoyed telling stories, i enjoy it remain the kinds of conversations i would have with people or i would have people here among themselves, i like being a vehicle for translating the ideas that i heard especially when i lived overseas. You see a lot of my books are taking those valises or those lessons. A book i wrote on first black for women to become a senator in brazil, Elvia Alvarado allied talkedabout. Or talking about revolution. I enjoy conveying our conversation i find so fascinating. Conversations i would never have had in the United States. In the United States i am considered radical sometimes fringe. When you go overseas i am kind of the centrist maybe liberal because the center of gravity in other places is so different. Id like conveying those polices to americans who usually dont get a chance to hear that. Host next call from Medea Benjamin is from daniel in west palm beach. Caller how you doing . Thanks for taking my call. I am so glad i hooked up with in debt today. I was never familiar with Medea Benjamin. I always thought they were a bunch of crazies. How wrong was side. Maybe i was crazy. I am 99 in her mind. When she speaks it is almost like the things i want to say but the point i dont have a question, just one point. I have been saying this. Wars are about one thing and one thing only and that is money. Unfortunately the people who benefit from those wars never sacrifice anything. The only time they heard is when the war ends. My heart goes out to all our people our men and women and people on the other side who are innocent. God bless you guys, Medea Benjamin, keep up the good work. Thank you. Guest what you said so resonates with me. As medley but there once said. War is a racket. There are people who make a lot of money from war. Northrop grumman makes a lot of money from war. All the contractors with the pentagon make a lot of money from war. Lobbyist make a lot of money for more. People who volunteer to protect our to to spend trillions of dollars. Invested in for highspeed rail systems and Good Transportation and infrastructure and all the things we need to rebuild the country here at home. And people speak out about that. Was lining up to crush this deal people benefit from more. And iran is about to attack us. It was bad for a policy makers and handful of billionaires is trying to persuade the American People that we should go down the path to another war in iran a country of 80 million people. I agree with you, i am glad you called in and as an ex military person, it is important that we get together and force our government not to listen to those who profit from war, and listen to the majority of americans who do not benefit. Host we dont want to make is too much of a loved in so lot to points of view so here are the comments coming in. Pink whack job, still says waste of time, andy says she is the leftist net. One more comment, Medea Benjamin, please do not forget you are calling in my Radio Program on august 3rd in florida. She wanted to remind you of that. Raymond is in kalamazoo, michigan. Caller how are you both . God bless you both. You are my hero too. The and lady is my newfound hero and i just wanted to say thank you, god bless you for your show. I wanted to know how can one become a member of code ping a member of your organization . And active members . We are activists in kalamazoo, michigan. Have protested against Police Brutality, racial profiling. Fifth Public Safety in kalamazoo Isis Nietzsche and fake bomb, because of all the going ons with the Police Brutality in baltimore, and more recently in cincinnati with the young man being shot in the face in the car and they hold these Neighborhood Police beatings to show they are on the side of the community which they are not. And protested in washington d. C. Against the invasion of iran or iraq where bush went in and gave a 48 hour to Saddam Hussein that he better get out of dodge. I am an africanamerican, i was told in the history of television of kalamazoo, kkk kalamazoos daughter describes it, kalamazoo, mich. I was told against Police Brutality, and racial profiling and that sort of thing in kalamazoo. Host a lot on the table. Lets hear from our guests and the one. Guest i am glad you asked how to joel in code pink because some people think it is only women. We will commanding courage to to join us. You can go on line and finance you are a member of code. We send weekly updates giving people ideas of things they can do. I am glad you brought up the issue of Police Brutality because that is an issue wheat care about very much at code pink. We have hosted for example mothers who lost their children to police violence, bringing them to washington to have meetings at the Justice Department and congress at the white house and i remember sitting around in the code in house with them and asking them, have any of the Police Officers who shot their children had they been in the military and one by one of the women raised their hand and said the policeman was in iraq, he had been in afghanistan many of these police came back people who came back from overseas tours of duty with pds the and that accounts for a lot of the killings happening by the police and the other thing is the military contractors, we talked about war and being a racket. The Defense Department is giving away hundreds of millions of dollars of military grade equipment to Police Departments things no Police Department should have tanks grenade launchers, silencers, assault weapons, we have to fight back against this. We dont want our police to have military equipment and we dont want police who are trigger happy so we do Work Together on the issues of showing the militarization of overseas and militarization on our streets are unfortunately connected peace economy coupled is toward the leading citizens in their own communities. Dirksen Senate Office building q contributed to the visited iraq is twilight in empire. Caller guest we went to iraq. And speak from firsthand experience so the first trip to iraq was incinerated 2003 at the time we thought the u. S. Was going to invade so imagine getting together a group of women and saying all right we may be there when the bombing starts but we are so committed to going there, what we find is our stereotypes blown away. I right in the introduction to how to stop the next war now effective responses to violence and terrorism, to jodie evans about the experience on the first trick when we flew into jordan, rented a car, drove across the desert, extremely nervous about what would happen when you get to the checkpoint to enter iraq under Saddam Hussein, the country about to invade from, customs guard takes the passports, looks at the other one, okay looks at mine and says benjamin, isnt that jewish . I thought oh my god, iraqis hate the jews, daniel crowe had just been be headed and i had these flashes of being pulled aside and my head chopped off and the guy disappeared so what does their standing in sweating out thinking what is going to happen to me, is back huffing and puffing and says i ran home to get my notebook i have been studying hebrew and i wonder if you could direct my grammar. I was like oh my goodness. I felt so bad telling him i didnt speak hebrew but why you studying hebrew . My government might go to war with israel and i want to communicate with those i am told are my enemies. When we went to war with iran i learned farsi. He said i dont consider any people my enemy. That is the first person i met going into iraq under Saddam Hussein and we get to baghdad, the first woman that i meet is a woman who speaks perfect english, never been out of iraq in her life studied in the iraqi school and her question to me wants to are the black women american poets that are your favorites . I like alice walker and she goes on telling me her favorites. A product of the Iraqi University system, i studied u. S. Literature, black literature in the university and you go to iraq and realize the women are very sophisticated, judges lawyers architects, businesswomen and they in their own way are fighting Saddam Hussein, let their government. They dont want us to bring liberation to them. That is not how it works. Travelling to iraq was a tremendous eyeopener as it had been a tremendous eye opener to travel to yemen to meet with victims of u. S. Drone strikes, travel to gaza where i have been seven times meeting with hamas, people im told im crazy because we meet with hamas. I wish my government would meet with hamas because it is a lot better to talk and it is to fight. I have been constantly educated and grow every time i am able to go overseas and to meet with people who think very differently than i do but i learn from them and they learn from me. Host alice walker did the forward to how to stop the next war now effective responses to violence and terrorism co edited by Medea Benjamin and jodie evans. Who is jodie evans . Guest the cofounder of code pink. She lives in los angeles although she is constantly all over the world. She just came back from brazil. There was an meeting of people who came from all over the world to look at how we can build the Global Movement for peace and justice. We worked mostly as volunteers in code pink. We are not a typical ngo where we have a lot of staff. Jodie evans and i volunteer with the organization, many of the people who work with code in our volunteers. Many of us are retired or. Head work on this side and volunteers. One of the beautiful things about code ping, i feel blessed being able to work with jodie evans all these years because she is an extraordinary colleague and extraordinary visionary just as alice walker is. I traveled to alice walker. We have been to gaza to get their, we went to International Womens day after one of the horrendous israeli invasions of gaza we went to see the results of that destruction with our own eyes and we went to honor the women in gaza. We call our friends and said maybe medicines, urgent things and for International Womens day brings things for women who make them feel like women. Pretty scarfs, nice smelling soap and shampoo a thousand pink gift baskets for women and spent International Womens day 13 womens organizations, distributed these beautiful baskets of Sweet Smelling soap and scarfs and beautiful candies. Next call for Medea Benjamin comes from time in washington d. C. Thank you to booktv. I have tears in the skies. End the it consider yourself more and activist, and other magazines, i am a budding actress myself. I like to ask you why isnt there more of a Peace Movement in the United States. Do you think the educational work and protest you have done about drones has had an impact in our country and around the world . And just bringing up gaza and hamas and different organizations, what are called extremist groups groups like this, how would you deal with isis and hamas and all these other groups out there, and i will take your answer offline but i want to thank you. I feel very proud to have been able to speak with you. Host start with the activist author with the balance. Guest acted as number one, author number 2 but i spend a lot of time writing. I write articles two times the week i have an article published in many places in alternate. A very nice group i work with called the other words, takes a column to small newspapers in the United States a great way to reach any different types of people. Writing is important, activism is my number one love because i want to change things and the caller asks has this activism had any impact. You look at drones, when we started doing work around drones the government wasnt even admitting we had a Drone Program. It was lying and saying we dont use drones. We will never talked about it. We force the government to talk about it. We forced them to admit theres civilian casualties. We manage to get compensation for innocent drone victims we have four start governments who stopped using drones in the way we reusing them, for example when they send in one round of missiles and sent in another round, and stopped them, from doing the drone killings that they new would kill the significant number of civilians in the process so there have been changes in the policy. Wed like to see an end to the use of drones killing this but at least modify the behavior. The caller said why isnt there more of a Peace Movement. And do some self criticism and reflection. People get on the streets to talk about, to try to stop the war in iraq. When obama came in, we have a piece president , many of them were democrats who thought, democrats and the white house, he will do a good job and the various were so exhausted from eight years of war fighting the Bush Administration they wanted to believe obama would solve the problem for us, it was a time of tremendous economic crisis. Tremendous debt, people having a hard time finding a job so they had to focus on Economic Issues keeping their Families Together and didnt have time to protest the war. For whatever reason the Peace Movement almost dissolved, a shadow of its former self and for that because of that i think we allowed the Obama Administration to have this Drone Program to invade and overthrow the government of libya, a disaster to do other military invasions that have not helped. The lesson is to people, it doesnt matter who was in the white house, what matters is having a movement that is independent of both political parties, that will protest democrats and republicans, and is a movement tied to other issues, Green Economy militarization, money and politics, portion of all of that that recognizes you have to tie these things together and we want to hold the government accountable no matter who is in office. And i think host you covered activists, the Peace Movement i think the last comment, more of a comment was taking the gift baskets to gaza. Guest how do you deal with these terrorist groups. Using hamas as an example. I am a secular feminist and shoe. I do not like what hamas stands for at all. Just like i do not like what the Muslim Brotherhood stands for and yet any chance to talk to hamas, when obama came into office we had a chance to talk to people in hamas and said his them up obama is coming to cairo to address the arab world. Why dont you send a message to him joel banning arms and saying lets talk . Talk. We took the letter from hamas from a man othman yousef, spent the whole night writing a letter to take to cairo to deliver to obama. I have a copy of the letter ended quite extraordinary. It says they want you to come here and see for yourself are grou. We want you to startinva discussions and we are willing to talk to anybody ie israel based on no preconditions and we want discussions that are based on International Law and we couldnt evenon get the Obama Administration to respond at all to that. But theres an example of reaching out and trying to promote discussions and our government refusing to do that. How would you do it today . I think i mentioned earlier that we have to involve iran, saudi arabia turkey, all of the countries in the region. We have to get back to the peace table. Let me add one other thing peter, because code pink worked with women around the world when the first talk happened in geneva about trying to find a solution on the war in syria. We worked with the Women International league with peace and freedom the oldest womens peace group. These were women who were involved in peaceful protest against assad people that were try to go find trying to find a way to deal. We could not convince john kerry or anybody. So, ofwo course, nothing happened. If you dont have any peacemakers at the table youre not going to have peace. And so we have been pushing that the u. S. And the world abide by the resolution at the United Nations called 13. 25. We would like to see our government treat that more seriously. From our twitter feed, vickie say the u. S. Shouldnt interfere in other countries internal affairs, question mark. What about Human Trafficking . We would work through international bodies, we should not take it upon ourselves. We have a lot of problems right here in the United States. Police brutality issues of proliferation of guns and people being killed by guns this country. Human trafficking inside this country that we have to deal with. We should clean up a lot of the problems we have here at home and we should work with International Organizations helping fund International Organizations, work on these very ivery difficult issues like Human Trafficking. John is calling in from oregon john youve been holding for a while thanks for your patience. When i hang up i will continue listening. I wish to echo the comments, the opening comments of the first caller and also the comments of the required military caller and that leaves only that i am humbld and honored to have this opportunity, and i would like to start withm i was watching cspan on the morning of september 11th, 2011, when the second plane hit the tower i thought it was time for the women to run the country because the men have done nothing but cause problem. Im not talking about Hillary Clinton or nancy pelosi. She could be more effective in her post. If hillary is nominee i will vote for her because the alternative will be more death and disruption. If it is a Sanders Administration however, i would like president sanders to nominate you as secretary of state so maybe [laughs] when all is due perhaps ralph is attorney general and then one final quick comment for both cspan and one for ms. Benjamin. Before the last survivor, i would hope that cspan could do a series or aubry them bring the survivors in and do interviews with them and perhaps maybe bring Johnson Robert carl and go through and bring out the entire troop surrounding the liberty and for ms. Benjamin, and all of the problems that israel has caused the government of israel. Not the people of israel, do you think it will ever be possible to hold the government of israel to account without being labeled thank you very much. Thank you so much john for calling up. Women rising up im totally there with you. Thats what weve been trying to do. I prefer to do it outside the government. I wanted to give you an example of something that i was involved recently which is a women on a koreanan woman who had a dream of women rising up. Im going to organize a group of women and were going to walk across the zone and thats exactly what we did. Wewe organized 30 women including Nobel Peace Prize winners we got the permission of both north korea, south korea to walk across the zone. Its an example of women rising up and bringing attention to an unresolved conflict that dates back to 1953 that still has not been turned into a peace treaty and needs to happen. So i am very anxious to see women rising up globally to demand that the guys put down the guns and i agree with you its not just about any women. I consider Hillary Clinton to been a hawk. We met with Hillary Clinton about iraq pleading with her to not vote for the iraq war. She knew better, she knew that there were not weapons of mass destruction, she made a choice and made a very bad choice. What did she do to bring peace in the world . Look at her record and now look at what kerry has done around iran. She has done nothing. In fact, she continued to u. S. Policy of total allegiance. I want to move toward your other comment as israel, as a jew i care much about israel, jewish people is israel people. I think that as the Jewish American i have a particular responsibility to try to make my government have an eventhanded policy that recognize that is we need to promote the human rights of all people in israel. I think our giving of of billion dollars a year to military to then be use today attack the poor people in the strip is a war crimes. Israel committed war crimes and the International Criminal is hopefully looking intos that. I think the u. S. Did too by allowing to continue to do that. I also think that the continued of building of settlements has been showne by the International Community to be illegal. The recent right wing settlers who burned the homes killing a 14month old baby is just despicable and the u. S. Has to stand up against those settlements as well. One things that i see happen that the Jewish Community is changing and is moving away from the israel lobby apac and we are seeing now around nuclear deal that the younger Jewish Population in the United States is for the deal, and that apac is having to used hassive amounts of money they started a new organization for 20 million into it to try to swayed the american public. So thank you for your call and im hoping that more Jewish Americans will join groups like jewish voice of peace which is a wonderful organization that has policy that are good for jewish people around the world. Host you ran for office and eduardo emails . Have you considered being a president ial candidate for the pink party . Guest i think its a position where you can constantly be moving forward to matter who is in office and i look the organizing and being part of a larger group. I found when i was running for office i felt very uncomfortable with the me me kind of thing that you do when you run for office. You have your name on t shirts and pins. And i like to work in a collective where it is our position and our this. I think it will be great to have a womens party. I think it would be great to have a multiparty system in the United States. The green party i have been supportive of but unfortunately the no father or nomination doesnt give to green party to grow. I would like to see major changes in the way the system works in the United States instead of the winner take all systems, have a proportional representation like they have in europe and so many democracy of the world. You get 5 of the positions in congress. That would really turn things around. E that way the tea party can have its people in congress and code pinkr could have its people. Host we like to ask them what are their influences, what are they currently reading. Stick with us and we are going to show you madea benjamins responses. Host madea one of the books youre reading guest why is it that theres all this talk about iran and bad regime. If you want to look at a bad regime look at saudi arabia. Thele country that is the largest buyer of u. S. Weapons country that is invading other countries and actually killing lots of innocent people it is saudi arabia. Look at yemen. Crushed the democratic uprising where i have been teary gassed. Most of the hijackers from 9 11. What about the internal repression of women in saudi arabia . Theyre not even allowed to drive, cant vote in national elections, cant allowed to go out without a guardian on and oh, let me go on and on in saudi arabia. I forgot to say weve been doing a lot of work, we take individual cases like amnesty of working on particular political prisoners. In saudi arabia, for example, we have been working on the case of the blogger, you might have heard of, because of his blogging about things that he was considering might be good to change and he was sentenced to ten years in jail and athousand lashes. So i was very interested in the saudis giving money to institutions in the United States. Its like buying their allegiance. One of the institutions they gives to is the clinton foundation. Thats why iu started reading that book, but i should also say thatat the saudi money is going to places like the carter foundation. I love jimmy carter and they have this Wonderful Program with helping women around the world. Why would the Carter Center be taking saudi money. They should refuse to take saudi money. They all take saudi money. So i would like to start a campaignl making it auditory thing to take saudi money and havingy universities and other groups refusing to take saudi money and i wanted to understand what the clintons were getting from saudi arabia. I think the book is a good example of the revolving door, corruption in politics and the saudi money isti a big part of that. If youud like to participate 7488200. 7488201. Madea benjaminc most recent book is on drone ware warfare. Hi martin. Caller hi, how are you doing . Thank you for being here. You do make a difference. First i want to write you and mobilization against Police Brutality. Everyone is welcome. I sm sure people will be dlad that you glad that you could make it. I want to say how difficult it is difficult to organize, beside the local police we deal with the fbi and n s a. Can you comment on recent developments that reflect a new consciousness in our nation regarding how people are forced to live in massive incarcerations and can you comment around mexico, the police and the ruling party of mexico, i appreciate your work and p i know that you will continue in your efforts and the thing i noticed is what you do now we used to do everyday spontaneously, and its so different now because theres a few people centered around that whereas the late 60s it was everywhere in every institution union, every workplace in every occupation you know, people were rising and demanding justice and equality. Host martin, lets leave it there. Guest that is during the 60s there was a draft. I certainly did became involved because my friends were being drafted and everyone in the United States had a stake in what was happening in vietnam. We werea forced to get involved. The way that the military has evolved these days is less than 1 of the population is actually directly involved in the military and thats why we can have things like hidden wars, drone wars where people dont even know that theyre happening and it makes it hard for people to recognize that they are wars going on. And lets look at it for young people these days, they were brought up under wars. Thats all they know. They feel it as part of the background knows that accompanies their lives not something that they have to protest against with. Imagine if we could take the dollars that we have been spending on wars and have Free College Education for all the young people in this country that deserve a Free College Education. The way the military has changed has made it more difficult. That being said, i am very inspired by the organizing thats going on by young people of color in their own communities to address the issues of Police Brutality. The black lives Matter Movement is not led by older civil rights people its not led by outsiders. Its led by the community themselves, and its the young people of color who have been out in the streets regularly they had meetings in cleveland. 1500 people around the country together about how they are going to address the issues in a more systematic way. We have been working with the mothers who have lost their children to police violence. Just about everyone of these mothers has their own organization or are involved in an organization. Theres a lot of amazing organizing goingg on that issue. Theres a lot of young people who are involved in the Climate Justice issue and we see that movement on camp campuses across the country. And we see in the immigrant community a lot of young people who are risking their own status here in the United States by comingow out as undocumented people, by challenging the system of mass deportationses. So there is a lot of good organizations thats going on. And was there anything else that he brought up . Host i think youve answered quite a few of his concerns. Kate, thank you for having the courage to speak true to power she grew up in a military family agrees with you 100 . Im a lawyer and would like to provide probonno legal services. We would love your services. We do need the help, we need help when people get arrested. Wep need probono attorneys. For example, we have the only active court case open in the United States on behalf of an iraqi women who is trying to sue the United States for what happened toe her and her family because of the u. S. Invasion. Theres lots of Creative Things that we would like to do and talk about. So kate just send us a note, you can write to or send us a tweet write something on our Facebook Page, any way that you like to communicate and we are looking forward to talking to you. Host how are you funded . Our annual is less than 400,000. Imagine the national and International Impact of a group that is such a tiny budget and that is because most of the people are not paid. Its funny because some of the detractors wow youre only doing this because youre getting paid for it, everybody here is doing this not only not being paid but on their own dime. They fly themselves to washington, d. C. Mostem of them do not have money they raise money they do crowd funding to raise money to come here. We have a code pink house where we put people up. We have interns, for example. We have wonderful interns that come from the university and stay with us for a semester. They are bragging about the amazing time that they with having and they get to live in the code pink house. At least they have the room, board covered in washington d. C. But we the money that we make is all from individuals and because we have several hundred thousand people on our list, if we put out to our group we want to send the delegation to meet with drone victims in yemen, we will get that money from our supporters, and its a wonder thing. Its one of the great things about the internet that youre able to raise money online and people who dont havet the time or the ability to actually go with us or come to washington with support people particularly young people who need the financial help. Host and oh so you dont take a salary from code pink as well . Guest no, i dont. Even though one caller said, thank you young lady. I am in my 60s. I s consider retired. I did have a salary from Global Exchange. I used to work for the u. N. I am in the privileged position of being able to work without a salary. Host do you live here in washington . Guest i live here in washington d. C. Host hi, mary. Caller thank you so much for the program. I am a proud volunteer Community Radio and organization activist san diego. I i want to ask about Community Radio. The fcc opened the spectrum that the communities can reflect their towns at a grossroots level, her personal level at that Grassroots Level hearing Something Different than politicians going in and coming back with stories is is just makeses such a difference. I wonder if she has worked with any Community Community communityo stations, do you have any advice that we dont hear from media so we can help people make informed decisions and get that Bigger Picture that you mentioned previously to other callers. And san diego loves book tv. Thank you. Guest thank you for calling and bringing up the issue of media. Its a critical issue and we havent talked about it. I think Community Radio is essential. I am constantly doing Community Radio stations, interviews, i love to have an opportunity to be on Community Radio because it compliance my love for education and activism. And thank you to activist san diego. I think its a terrible problem that we have in the United States that the Mainstream Media is controlled by corporations and that whether its fox news or frankly msnbc. I dontt enjoy watching mainstream television. I find it bipartisan. I do love cspan but i do go to places al jazerah. I have a lot of places that i go to for information like democracy now. I like a lot of online websites, i mentioned some of them before like common dreams. But i think its important for people tor seek out information in places that arent part of the Mainstream Media that give you points that are outside the twoparty t and Community Radio is one of the places to get that information. Madeay benjamin, if a charles cope came along and offered you a Million Dollars would you take it . Guest we would have to talk about an organization. I doubt that we would take it because if we took first we will never take it from the brothers because of the other things they do. If it was coming from a source thats doing other things that we appreciate, we might think about how the money might be used to build a Strong Coalition of groups. I dont think we would want to take any large amount of money as code pink. We like being an organization that doesnt have a heavy administrative role that has to be played because it sucks up so much energy and time. We like being an organization thats mainly opened to volunteers. So i would say that any big money if it was coming from a good source should be use today build up the coalitions that bring up the issues that i mentioned whether its immigration reform, Police Accountability demilitary ization. It would be nice to have a space, ongoing ways for people involved in a lot of those activities to talk together. I know you just had ralph nader on book tv. The notion is to get coalitions to deal with things. Maybe we want those two individuals to come together and give their money to Coalition Efforts that would bring together people on the left and the right that wanted to see things like audit of the pentagon. And so would code pink and the tea party. There could be interesting things c that would come out of the coalitions and i like thinking outside the box on the kinds of things we could do together that would actually get at the issues of too much money in politics, corrupt political systems. Breeching the global gap. Dont be afraid gringo, we talked about that a little bit no free lunch human revolution. Cuba talks about a revolution, also in 97. The grieving of the revolution. How to stop the next war now came out in 2005, her most recent bookil drone warfare killing by Remote Control 2015, and your next book is about again . I would like to do a book on peace economy. I have a publisher to do a memoir book. Its hard to go back into the eye mode. So im trying with that idea as well. En caller thank you so much for cspan and to you for being an at al ternative for media thats controlled and also madea thank you for being a light for the world. The beach is the prettiest beach ive ever seen in my life. The people there are fantastic. I hope the relations will normalize that it would be for everyone in the world. I want today ask if you ever heard of james proloff. You can put him on youtube. He documents what the elites have been doing for too long. The internet is mightier than the sword. I hope that your organization is really capitalizing on the ultimate strategies that can be achieved that way and i just want to get one quick little statement that i hope everybody listening will just put in their hearts anaid mind, a woman who said into a man theres two wars raging in a mans heart one is fare fear and the other is love. Which one wins, the one that gives more attention to. God bless everyone. Thank you for that sentiments and the last thing you mentioned, agree with i think that we are all good people at heart and good people do bad things and they feed the bad oftentimes. Our society feeds the bad. Our job as peaceloving people is to feed the good, and i do try in the stories that i tell through my writing to feed that good, to give people inspiration and examples. One of the biggest problems we have today and even in this country is people feeling powerless, feeling that they dont have agency over their lives and certainly not over bigger issues than themselves, and so when i give a story of peasant women in honduras who will never in her life have a cell phone much lest less a computer thats tremendous inspiration when i tell the story of silva who lost children to mall nutrition and starting organizing. Thats inspirational. When we see mothers that have lost their children to police vilence and violence. Thatsl. Inspirational. We have t io feed the good in people and we have to feed the idea that we do have power and that our power comes from our own determination but it also comes from working together, Building Community and thats what i have spent a lot of my life doing and look forward to doing it four years to come. Host if you cant get through in the phone line you can contact madea benjamin through social media. Facebook. Com book tv. Kelli in nueva york city. Caller yes, thank you. Like millions around the world my husband and i strongly protested the unnecessary invasion of iraq. My sympathies went out. I also support the agreement from u iran. Asat you said earlier 9 11 was carried out by mostly saudi. It gave saudi officials safe flight out of the United States. Also isis was funded earlier by the saudis. Israel and the saudis are in agreement against the iran negotiations. I find that very disturbing. Host its interesting that john kerry says that the saudi government is in favor of the deal and we Vice President havent heard directly from the saudi government. We know they want something from the u. S. In return and that usually tends to be more weapons or the u. S. Turning a blind eye to what the saudis are doing in other places around the world. The u. S. Is actually helping the saudis in their in their Bombing Campaign in yemen that is killing thousands of innocent people and creating a tremendous crisis in the entire country in yemen. I also wanted to thank you for bringing up the issue of woman who lost her son. But, yes ridiculed in the media. A grieved mother that her child should not have died and nobodys child should have died in a wrongful invasion in iraq. If you look at the case of iraq war, those of us including themselves we had so much hate now you couldnt believe it. We had bomb threats in our office we had people sending the most disgusting messages and threatening over the phone calling us traders to the United States. We were right and they were wrong. Unfortunately they still have power today they tend to be in our congress pushing for a war with iraq or their heads for iran. The same people who drove us into the war in iraq are trying to drive us in a war with iran. Lets not let them do it. I really appeal to the viewers of of this program if you want to see the u. S. Living in peace with the war get out during the reces period, go visit your congressperson. If you cant visit them call their office. We have to make our voices heard because its the money interest of those who have an interest. Host have you attended a Senators Committee after mccain called you scum . Guest yes. It came on your own, to hear the people like john mccain graduate school how terrible this deal with iran is. T iim hope youre listening and dont get tired of hearing. He was wrong onn iraq. He want today bomb iran back in 20062007. Bomb bomb, bomb iran. Wasnt funny then and wasnt fun funny now. When they are responsible for the destruction of iraq. Lets say it and say it clearly presence you with a choice. In your opinion which should be more preferable, bombs to destroy Missile Program or new york city being entirely by a single missile sent by irans dictators . Guest iran first of all does not have and are going to get a nuclear weapon, even if iran had a nuclear weapon, they are not try to go trying to bomb the United States. The question doesnt make any sense. Really what wesn should be saying is how do we move towards a nuclearfree world. Thats the question that should be uppermost on our mind when we look a at this iran deal. Yes, lets go with this iran deal and then lets say what about a Nuclear Free Middle east. They wont admit that it has much l less than a nonproliferation treaty or allow any kind of weapons inspectors to it nuclear facilities. Lets talk about the usa not abiding by the treaty. Were pouring money into modernizing our Nuclear Weapons. There is ant lot that we should be doing globally to move towards a nuclearfree world but this deal withhi iran is one positive step in that direction. Host next call comes from susan in burkely california. Caller hi, this is susan thank you so much for taking my call. Its an honor to speak with you. Thank you for cspan. Im an activist in my 50s. What im asking you is about a future looking, what you see in a peace economy. Im very interested in the study of human nature, violence is human nature, so i was struck by the comments that good people doing bad things and you want to see the good and not feed the bad, im wondering what is not a foreign issue but all of these issues that are in connect and im just wondering if as you look into a future of the world that youd want to live in does it include of a plan, i dont see how we can softer nonviolence given our present animal system. Host you call yourself a budding activist in the 50s what have you been doing up to this time . Caller psycho therapist. Host thank you maam. Guest i love the thing that is you things that you brought up. We tend to eat vegetarian. So we totally agree with you on that. We also think y its better for us health wise, better for the planet. We really believe in a locally based economy specially around food for what people have become the luxury of eating locally. Most people overseas are eating locally based food and organic food. We have a corporate based economy where the food is not with pesticides but also not very tasteful. So locally based food system we support people growing their own organic gardens. We support people lying locally we support c all are elements that we consider part of a peace economy, and as somebody you have who have dealt with people from the psychological issue im thinking you now how important it is to connect what we eat, how much we exercise, how we live in our own physical body to do way we behave mentally. People like Michelle Obama to have healthy diets and Healthy Lifestyles and thats part of the community that they are dealing with each other in a positive way. Host you didnt say you were. Guest for example when i was pregnant and living in cuba and vegetariani had spills, i was anemic. I started eating meat again. I dont eat read meat just fish and chicken. Host Global Exchange kevin who are they . Guest kevin is the person i was married to. It was part of the whole philosophy thats in the book bridging the global gap, which is that the American People because ourca country is so big and because people are very focused on the u. S. , we are number one kind of thing exceptionalism. Most americans dont have task force, most americans dont have an opportunity to see the u. S. From. S a different advantage point, and so when we started Global Exchange it was the idea, lets try to take people to other parts of the world to see what how people live, and how they think of the United States, and as we started organizing trips to south africa, Central America, to vietnam we also realized that people arent seeing a lot of whats happening in the United States. Trips to washington d. C. To see how the lobby system worked and why it was so corrupting of our government. So we Global Change still exists as is kevin and we continue to do things like these trips. We also help to bring the fair trade label to the United States. We had seen in europe how they were labels on tea, coffee and chocolate. So we helped create that system here so that people could choose to buy things where Coffee Producers were getting a fair wage a fair price for their product and we continued to think as part of this idea of a peace economy that, yes you buy local when you can but when you really want to have your chocolate or tea or your coffee or bananas, it should be through a fairtrade system where there is some Monitoring System set up that allows us to know that the producers are being paid fairly, the environment is being treated in a Sustainable Way and that part of the reason we create a globalng exchange. Host are your children activist . Guest i have two girls. One is a lawyer, immigration rights. My younger daughter is just entering law school as well, and they both have political views that are similar to mine but theyre not out there on the streets, theyre not organizing protests, theyre much more in the background or participating rather than in the front. Host aret you recognizable are you on the street on an airplane by name . Guest not really. Arent you the activist . Or i was just in congress the other day and somebody came up and said, arent you madea benjamin. Somebody who had flown in to the apac group against the iran deal maybe its going to hit me because actually ive been hit many times, hit in the face, shoved. I suffered fiscally oftentimes by larger men. I certainly got very defensive. No, i just want to tell you while i disagree with about 90 of what you say and do i appreciate how much you care about these issues and i was just relieved about that. So sometimes people recognize me but most of the time they dont know why they recognize me. Hostos ho youve been hit or pushed by larger men . On a regular basis. Itda is unfortunate. We would always be peaceful and we would be attacked by counterprotestors that would physically attack us including me petite small woman. They would hit us and spit on us. When we are outside the annual lobby meeting proisrael lobby is think its bad for israel, almost every year i would get hit usually by an elderly gentleman that would come up and shove me. I would get beat up in a different w country. I was held in an airport and in the morning pulled out of the cell that i was with and thrown through the ground, stomped on, my arm popped out of its socket and was dislocated. They would not even let me go to a hospital to have it reset and through me on a plane and deported me. Ive been suffering from dislocated shoulder and doing physical therapy. Sov yes ive been hit and beat up over a couple of years. Host how do you decide how to buy con consumer goods . How do d you view whole foods and stated commitment to whole trade sustainability environment . Guest one of my things didnt like was i never bought new clothes. Theres so many wonderful secondhand stores. I lof the love the whole idea of things being recycled. We can find things that people are throwing away and i think this kind of recycling of goods is a very positive thing. I like to bring people to my house. We have a wonderful colorful house and beautiful office and just about everything in the office is recycled. We just went yesterday and got four chairs and somebody down the block was getting rid of. We love colors and we love kind of taking old things and making them pretty. So i believe in a lot more of that. Were eating a lot of salads that we have grown locally. We arert starting to do tradekind of things. We put a free library take a book give a book. So were in residential area and people are constantly going by and taking books and putting things in. Now not just books but things they want to get rid of and its a wonderful kind of sharing. I think that kind of building up those kinds of ways to sharing what we have also is part of building a community. Host and cspan has been inside b the code pink house. We interview the pilot guest i forgot about that. I wasnt home. Host it had to be at the code pink house where he stays so you can see the inside of the house via that interview. Thanks for holding youre on with madea benjamin. Caller i want to thank you for having her on. She fights more humanity. Thats one thing thats striking about her. A woman who is fighting for everybody. I wish i wish i could hear more of this with other people. You know, when it comes to being hit by people political opponents does why doesnt she get body guards . Guest one of our best protection is singing we have found over the years. You play that clip of ted cruz. So we came up to that group of women and wen, were there with our signs, we were being there quiet, an older woman came and took my sign. Maam, thats not nice, thats my property. She said get out of here you stupid jerk. I took another sign. She grabbed the other sign and ripped it up. I started singing. Its a song by a wonderful ground in the revolution. The code pink people started joining in. It so diffused the situation. We do that a lot. We sing a lot. We find that it is actually our best protection. Host good afternoon. Caller good afternoon, i would like to say to madea that as a black man in america i find you very fascinating. Im based in the capital of california and i o met you. Im a social entrepreneur and wont say my business over the air but i will send you something to identify that. I find it troubling that you have been abused like that by people considering your size. But i wanted to say that the 60s which i was heavily influenced by, it is refreshing to see someone that still has that spirit, still does not want to join the system, still wants to put the light on it, and as a selfproclaimed jewish person i thought fascinating that you put the light on apac, okay. Thats a brilliant thing because theyre doing some terrible things over there. I just wanted to ask you one question. Do you think president obama handlednd correctly regarding the iran deal and when he was allowed to come speak to congress . And ill take your your response off the air. I just wanted to say god bless you. Ove people who want to create businesses and jobs who are socially responsible who understand the triple bottom line its not just about profits. Its about people and the planet. So, thank you for your work, and im looking forward to getting whatever it is in the mail. In terms of netanyahu and president obama i think that it is good that president obama has said, for example that he is against the building of the settlements. I think it is good that he is not listening to netanyahu as far as this iran deal goes. And i really thank those members of congress who refuseo go i thank those members of congress who refused to go hear knelt net when he was addressing the u. S. Congress as if it was his own country. So im glad that there is some light now between the u. S. Government the Obama Administration and the Israeli Government. On the other hand, when israel is killing thousands of palestinians and in the last invasion of gaza, killed 551 children. Imagine if the palestinians had guild 551 israeli jews . I mean, all hell would have broken out. And given that the what the israelis are doing on a regular basis, in terms of violating International Law the building of the settlements the apartheid system that exists there, i think that the president and the congress should be cutting off the u. S. Taxpayer money that is going to israel. Unfortunately in this system, aipac still has so much power that is actually a nonstarter. In fact if anybody took that position they would be so attacked by aipac, aipac would make sure that there was a primary challenge against that person and make sure they did everything they could to take that person out of congress. So we still have a long way to go to have the administration and our Congress Take a position that is a fair, nonbiased one towards israel, that i feel would be in the best interests of the israeli people, perhaps not the line that aipac wants but certainly would be better for israel in the long run. Host who is your favorite conserve tough or right winger . Guest conservative or right winger . Host or friend or yours. Guest i guess i would say my stepmother. Im not sure she is listening itch was debating whether to tell her about it because the more she hears about it, the more she hears my positions the most things she doesnt like, but we love each other. He has been very good to my father 0 who passed away. She is very good to my children. My granddaughter. And she is somebody who really has done a lot to bring our family together, and we laugh his stake chit at our defenses. I walk in her house and fox news is on all the time. She lives near bill oreilly. She loves bill oreilly, and thats been positive because ive been on pill oreillys show a couple of times and she is always telling me, call bill, get on bills show. So thanksgiving dinners as you can imagine and family occasions, we have a lot of interesting political discussions, but she makes me realize theres a lot of republicans and fox news lovers and people who hold values very different from mine who are lovely people, who are wonderful people, who are loving family members and im glad i have her and other very conservative people in my family to constantly remind me of that. Host next call from Medea Benjamin from hassan in Carmel Valley california. Hi hassan. Caller hi. Its an honor to see you and talk to you. You said you traveled in Different Countries you mentioned the saudi women. What about the iranian women who have been under the repression for the last 30some years like you said, 80 million people, 40 million of them are women. It seems that the left and the progressive appease governments like iranian government, or taliban, or the Israeli Government when it comes to their religious beliefs. Why dont you just come and sayer, are for the rights of all women regardless of the religion of the government theyre under. So thats like Christopher Hitchens said, if they would apply the plagiarism rules today, muhammad would probably end up in prison because he copied all the jewish rules and then he just created a new religion. So these governments they are suppressing their own populations under the judaism and under the islam and it seems the left somehow misses that point and i was wondering how you address supporting the iranian women and the iranian men actually during the election, when ahmadinejad actually stole the election his opponent, who has having a debate, his opponent, who ended up in house arrest, the official winner but ended up in house arrest, still is. Took out a letter from an israeli official and he said he read the letter. I dont know the name of the official. And he said, since the beginning since the birth of israel no person has ever helped us more than mahmoud ahmadinejad, and he was right. Theres a symbiotic relation between the clergy in iran and the clergy in israel. And the Iranian Regime uses the iranian population as collateral damage. Host thank you very much. Response for that call. Guest thank you for bringing that up so i can say clearly i support the rights of women anywhere in the world everywhere in the world no matter what regime they are living under and i think its also important you brought that up so i can state clearly i do not support the government of iran. That i do not support oppression of women anywhere. I resent personally when i go to iran or when i go to afghanistan or anywhere i go, that i have to be subject to local laws that define and constrict what im able to do. On the other hand, i do want to say to listeners who might not know that in iran, while women do have to wear head covering, women are involved in all aspects of society and there are very welleducated women who have their own businesses who are lawyers and doctors and the majority of the University Students are women. But that said, i also am against religious governments. I think there should be a separation between government and religion. So i dont support any kind of religious government. And then you ask how can we support the women in other countries . And the way we do that at codepink is to be looking to them and asking them, how can we support you . And when we talk to women overseas, one of the first things shay say is support the more liberal elements of our society. Recognize, rouhani is a more liberal element in iran than the faction that was with ahmadinejad. When you talk to people when the governments talk to each other, it strengthens the more liberal elements in society. If the u. S. Government would talk to hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood, that would alien nate the more ridge rigid members and strengthen the more moderate elements. The way we help women is by talking to them, by listening to them by helping them in their own organizing that theyre doing. Many organizations that codepink supports are women overseas, and by stopping our government from intervening militarily, because that only strengthens hardliners on all sides. Host you have talked quite a bit about your travels. This is from september 5 2004. Youll see what its about in just a minute. Let hoe this video. Lets show this video. Well, i was just in iraq in july and i dont get to go back until october because the security situation for both iraqi and foreigners is very tense. You leave your house in the morning to go and have a meeting, and theres a car bomb. So theres tremendous traffic and theres tremendous difficulties in trying to work. Many iraqis are very, very nervous. They dont want to send their children to school. They dont want to go into their work places because of ongoing violence and car bombs and the situation is very, very, very tense. Guest wow. Ive never seen that clip. Marla was like a daughter to me. She showed up in our offices at Global Exchange when she was 16, and said, put me to work. She ended up living with us. She got married. Her and her husband lived with us. She was just a precious, amazing, wonderful comp passionate passionate, young woman. She ended up being blown up by a car bomb in iraq. To this day i think of her all the time. My heart goes out to her mom and dad, who are good friends to her twin brother to her family. To this day we still miss her and love her. At an age of 25, she left an amazing legacy, including having gotten passed through congress a multimillion dollar fund for innocent victims of u. S. Military. We worked together for many years, and in afghanistan she worked with us to get the testimonies of people whose loved ones had been, quote accidentally killed by u. S. Bombs. And we were demanding they be compensated, and thanks to marlas tenacious work, they were. Host thomas, pennsylvania. Hi thomas. Caller hello. Thank you for taking my call, medea. I have a twopart question for you. Currently right now Hillary Clinton is the frontrunner on the Democratic Party for the president ial campaign. I was wondering if you felt she aligns codepink in your opinion and the second question is, if you are close with any of the republican candidates for presidency . Ill listen to your call on the tv. Thanks. Guest i feel that Hillary Clinton is a hawk. I would love to have a woman president. Wont wouldnt that be wonderful . So Many Americans thing the muslim countries are backward. So many muslim countries have women as president s i was in indonesia many years ago when they elected a woman president. Benazir bhutto, a president in pakistan. The u. S. Lags far behind and we havent had a woman president and its certainly past time that we should have. But my views dont align with Hillary Clintons on major issues. I think she is very tied to wall street. When she tries to talk like a populist it seems like she is reading from a teleprompter and its not coming from her heart because she is so tied in with wall street, and she is somebody who could have challenged the military Industrial Complex in her role as a senator and in her role as secretary of state and she didnt do that. She was really like an appendage to the pentagon, as a secretary of state. So i dont support Hillary Clinton as much as i would love to have a woman president. I love jill stein who is green party candidate. She has tremendous, wonderful views. She is a medical doctor. She is a very accomplished woman. But then we go back to this terrible system of ours that doesnt that discounts people who arent part of the twoparty system. Theres not any republican of the what it is 19 or 20 now that are in the lineup that i would like at one point i liked rand pauls Foreign Policy but he has moved far from the policies of his father, ron paul, who had a very good policy of nonintervention overseas and rand paul at one point was very much against the u. S. Military interventions. He even at one point said he would be for stopping u. S. Funding of the Israeli Military. He has gone back from that position and many others as he tries to position himself in this lineup of so Many Republican candidates. I like Bernie Sanders. I wish he would talk more about Foreign Policy issues. He has come out supporting the iran deal, but you barely hear him talking about it, and he could do so much good right now while hes out there on the campaign trail of telling people to call their senators and Congress People and tell them to support this deal. He doesnt do that at all. He is actually actually his policies towards israel and palestine are not very good, and he has not in his campaign talked about things that he has talk about as a senator like the bloated pentagon budget and all of the social programs that he supports, where is that money going to come from . It should come from the bloated military. Close 800 overseas bases and youd have many, many hundreds of billions of dollars to use for all kinds of social programs. So i wish he would talk more about Foreign Policy. And i certainly do love elizabeth warren. She is not running for president , but i think that her policies have already had an impact in the way that Bernie Sanders has been received, and in pushing Hillary Clinton to at least talk more like a populist. Host about ten minutes left with our guest. Medea benjamin, in this months in depth. Lynn cheney is our guest in september. Mark in Ocala Florida. Hi mark. Caller hey peter and hey met da, how are you guys . Guest good thanks. Caller i want to thank you both for working on sunday. Im a Union Carpenter so we Pay Attention to stuff like that. Im an 11 year veteran of the marine corps and is would like to thank you on behalf of all veterans that feel like i do that your courage as an american has a lot of physical courage to it and in addition to other types of courage and as a brave male i want to thank you for your brave physical courage. I would also like to thank you for your successful work of getting the truth out to americans, and when the call screener asked what question i would ask you have a thousand things i could talk to you about, but in my experience, medea, on a personal note issue voted for president carter and i served in the United States state department as a Marine Security guard in Central America in the 70s, and there i was also educated. When saw the difference between the haves and the havenots it was astounding to me as a kid who grew up in the midwest whose father came out of the projects because of organized labors ability to help all americans. Those are me values as a young marine and i felt when i joined the corps a 18 and at 19 i has godden a secret clearance and was promoted marine, and everybody felt like i did and a lot of the americans did at that time. But then along came another administration and as a marine, saw the tremendous difference between president carter and the reagan administration. I would just ask i had a question die have a question for you and then i want to make a comment to the person who made a comment about irans weapons capacity. My question to you is if you could please not leave the show today without rementioning the potential for war with iran and how catastrophic that would be for the American Armed forces. Its not just a few jets flying over. They have a very legitimate military army, air force navy and marines just like we do, and my observation to the young man who made the comment through social media that iranians had just gone off the internet with the Global Institute for peace the iranians hardly have a missile that will go over a thousand miles without a capacity to put a Nuclear Warhead on it. If the person would check their map, were 6500 miles away. But medea im looking just as an enlisted marine, im looking at easily 25,000 americans would be killed in a very short period of time if we put boots on the ground. Host mark in Ocala Florida well leave it there and get a response. Guest first, im just delight during this three hours to get so many military people calling in because i think theres a misconception among people that i and codepink are against the military, when the fact of the matter is our closest allies in this worker people in the military. We work very closely with veterans for peace iraq veterans against the war military families speak out mitchell favorite colleague is a retired colonel ann wright so we worked very closely with military people because who but the military is going to recognize how disastrous not only have the last 13 years of war been, but as you say articulation thin of a war with iraq that has a developed military exis a major force in the region, and could certainly lead to really even another world war. So, it is so important that we make sure this nuclear deal goes through and that we work towards peace with iran so that we can work towards peace in the entire region. I thank you for your call, and i thank you for having come to the same conclusions that we have, that we have to not only try to stop wars were already engaged in but we can really do now is prevent another one. Host laura in troy, michigan. Hi laura. Caller hi, medea i want to applaud you for your courage. I think what youre doing is a wonderful thing. Not only for our country but for the world. Bringing attention to things that really need to be said and done. Just recently came back from a trip to russia and the ukraine and also we stopped off in estona. I was absolutely appalled at the difference in what is going on there and what we hear in our country. The poroshenko, the president of the ukraine now has appointed a former president of georgia were he to go home he would be put in prison for his misdeeds, and im also went to estonia and i met a young man who worked in norway but his family lives in estonia and they are of russian background, although theyve lived there 40 years. In the stores, they do not have any of the signs or anything in russian. Even though in this particular town there are 40 of the people there that are russian. This young man became an activist because he started having signs put up, saying, we want russian. And estonia cut a train track that allowed people to go to st. Petersburg to visit their family and friends. Im so disappointed in our country getting involved in things that we have no business being involved in. Host all right laura, thank you. Medea benjamin, ukraine. Guest you see that somebody who gets a chance to go to the region comes back with a very, very different view. When i traveled to europe, and ive met with people who have been involved in peace issues, they say that nato is so aggressive that in the deal that was made with gorbachev mate to promised it wouldnt move its forces closer to the border with the former soviet union and it has done that in poland, in the former czech republic, and moving closer and that is seen as very aggressive by russia. So it goes back to the whole idea of we have to see things from other peoples points of view and when you see how russians in that region have been oppressed. How there are neonazis who have been involved in this movement, and fortunately we have had congress recently pass a legislation saying the u. S. Would not give weapons and support to neonazis. So it is important to recognize that we, too can do a lot to move back from the brink in terms of hostilities with russia by bringing nato back where from where its supposed to be, also we should open the conversation of do we need nato . Why do we have nato . Its a relic of the cold war and many of us think that its time to disband nato. Host susan in massachusetts. You may be the last word. Hi. Caller i have waited a long time. Im so grateful to be able to just commend miss benjamin for all she does, for democracy. Im an unlikely complimenter. Im actually come from a highly a very conservative family. Was raised on the altar of william f. Buckley and Milton Freedman but i was vehemently opposed to the iraq invasion. I knew what a debacle it would be i studied history as an undergraduate and i could have predicted the domino effect and the chaos that ensued from the illfated its offended me deeply. The whole Freedom Fries frenzy really insulted me. I do descend from colonial setters. My father was a world war ii veteran so i know what im talking about here. Southboundly, it would warm my heart if you could align yourself with the grow very nordquist on the pentagon budget. Thats an issue im passionate about. I cannot believe the lack of transparency and the other issue that i think you would support and i know you do, but i wish it were a top priority, is the low Voter Participation in this country, and i think you could find alliances on the conservative side. Our Voting Rights rarely exceed voting rates rarely exceed 30 . The stranglehold of the lobbyist culture, of wall street host suzanne i apologize. If we want to get a response we are almost out of time. Guest those are areas where the left and right have to come together. The corruption of money in politics. Getting big money out of politics. Term limits. Im all for term limits. I would love to see a leftrightcenter, whatever, coalition, because i think we all have this horrible view of our government. The view of congress, of throw the bumps out is something that crosses all ideologies. I say lets get together and change the regulations that allow the democrats and republicans to jerry maunder their own districts and keep themselves in office for lifetime and let get some fresh blood and fresh ideas in the government. Host and the Koch Brothers are active in prison reform. Guest yes, and then they do a lot of negative things to put the corporations above the needs of the environment and the workers. So im not sure id put them forward as the greatest example but theres a lot we can do left and right together. Medea benjamins books stop the next war now and drone ware far. I kelling by Remote Control. For the past three hours she has been booktvs guest on in depth. Thank you for being with us. Guest thank you so much for a wonderful three hours peter. Host lynn cheney next month. Book tv visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what theyre reading this summer. Well, this summer ive been kind of focused on history taking more or less a historical bent. I got started in the spring. I grew up in jones county, mississippi, better known as the free state of jones. There are a couple of books that are written about the free state of jones. The county never ceded from the union during the civil war and right now there is a movie being made Matthew Mcconaughey is playing the lead in it. So that kind of got the history going. I love the president ial their series at the library of congress. Im doing reading back to a couple of president ial profiles that are very helpful. Also im reading go set a watchman that on my list for august to read, and a fun project im doing im going back through some very hold cookbooks. I love to cook and garden so im reading through some old cookbooks with these great old helpful household hintses and recipes that can be adapted for today, and it is absolutely fascinating. Im loving it. Heres a look at some of the current best, selling nonfiction books according to the boston globe. Next on booktv, ralph peters receives the andrew j. Goodpasture award for soldier scholars. He talks about his dramatized history of the civil war and the research he does for his book. [inaudible conversations] ladies and gentlemen welcome to the army navy club. I am the chair of the special Events Committee and thank you very much for joining us for this very special book forum