Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Colonist and editorial cartoonist is an awardwinning graphic novelist and the author of nonfiction books about domestic and International Current affairs. His cartoons appear at approximately 100 newspapers around the United States and from 2008 to 2009 he was president of the association of the editorial cartoonist and hes won several awards for his work including the journalism awards and the National Journalism award and best book of the year award. Joining him on stage tonight is chris hedges who spent barely two decades as a correspondent in Central America the middle east, africa and the balkans. Hes reported for more than 50 countries and has worked for the Christian Science monitor and the National Public radio at the Dallas Morning News and New York Times. He was part of the team of reporters at the times and awarded a Pulitzer Prize for coverage about global terrorism. Hes also the author of several bestselling books including ward gives us meaning and his new book which is a rebellion to moreland. If of revolt to reappear here to celebrate the release of the newest book without any further ado please welcome ted and chris hedges. [applause] thanks for coming. Im going to talk a little bit about my book and then chris will talk about whatever hes going to talk about and then we will have a little discussion and throw it out to the audience for qanda. If you have any questions, comments, insults, keep them and like the government legally barred your insults. Can anyone hear me . Okay so i will talk a little bit about the buck. We dont have the ability to do a slideshow so its good to be pages from the books that you can grab a copy of the book and look at it before you buy numerous copies. But i will just go through the thinking here. So anyway, this book like all my best ideas by publisher [inaudible] suggested they might want to do a graphic novel biography of Edward Snowden. And i was intrigued by the idea that i was concerned that someone else might do a biography and so one of the things i wanted to do is to make the book discrete and in its own things that would be different from the autobiography or prose book but its the hardest thing this format helped you get into this topic we know that hes a controversial figure and what he did has invoked a lot of strong opinions on both sides of the political spectrum but the question is for me what is the buck. What is the next project. I say im working on a graphic biography of Edward Snowden and i was shocked by how many people told me that they didnt know who he was a and people that were well read and who were very aware of papacy issues and i was just amazed by and so i thought how is it we can live in a world where in 2013, two years ago what to me is the most important story of my lifetime more important than 9 11 how is it that it has faded into of security and the others were very vague on the particulars. Isnt he the guy that said something . That is a quote i heard literally over and over something about nsa and cia. They were doing something wrong. What they revealed had to be slated in some kind of a very clear concise way that could be easily digested by just about anybody. And so i realize it has to be laying out these programs that were revealed in june of 2013 to the guardian and New York Times and Washington Post and to lay them out so because the only program that has been discussed in congress or by president obama in any way has been that of the funny Metadata Program which is the cooperation of the telecom like verizon, at t and sprint and the information on your phone bill is the metadata switch the stuff with time you made the call, how long you talk to, but the phone number was. You can get a lot of information if you are calling an oncologist you might have cancer or someone close to you might have cancer. If you are calling mother jones magazine to complain about your subscription, youre probably not a republican so you can tell a lot about people from the cultures of people and subsets of cultures of people and theres been a lot of articles. Theres been a lot of misdirection by the government and by the press is largely controlled were allied in the government so for example they keep saying you dont have to worry about it because it doesnt actually intercept the voice concept of your called and thats true they are telling the truth about that because they have another program that does that and then the people say you dont have to worry about that program because it doesnt store the call and that is totally true in the program that stores the calls for five years or longer. Its all a form in utah and to make it a lot of these documents areyearsold so you know the technology has only improved and since 2012, 2011 and 2010 when the documented data so probably the Storage Capacity is more into the search ability is better, no doubt. And so, the ainu lastly the third part of the book besides telling the story explaining what the programs do, the third thing had to be at the excess dental dilemma and one of two there are 1. 4 million americans who have access to some or all of the classified documents that Edward Snowden took from the cia and booze allen hamilton. And the 1. 4 Million People who saw brazen violations of the Fourth Amendment. Lets be clear about this. No one on the political spectrum says that these programs are legal. They say they are defensible but they are necessary. They are expedient but they dont say that they are legal because they are not authorized under the patriot act. They are not authorized under the massive violations of the protections of unreasonable search and seizure. So, there is no question about that and so the issue really is why he did all of these for me i wondered about the society that we lived in over a Million People could see this on a massive scale and only Edward Snowden and a guy named tom drake who did a similar thing to work in the system about ten, 15 years ago, these two guys are the only ones that have stepped forward in the last 15 years, the last 14 years since 9 11 at all to talk about the programs. Keep in mind thereve been tedious whistleblowers and the nsa efforts to scoop up every bit of information possible has been something that has been dated back to the 1980s. The only foreign signals intelligence and what that means is nsa is allowed under the u. S. Law to spy on foreigners they can spy on foreigners and americans when they are talking to a foreigner but they are not allowed to intercept americans talking to an american or email or text in an american or whatever and so they are doing this on a massive scale and they started doing it on a mass scale with a program in the 1980s that was not widely reported upon in the United States but was well known in europe and so that program essentially made the effort to intercept every fact transaction, bank wire transfer, all these communications at the time and time, general hayden who is the head of the nsa bragged that the u. S. Did successfully intercept every bit of communications in the United States back in the 80s. So we are not talking about anything terrible. It goes back a long way. Its just much more efficient now and i open the book with the passages from the world depicted by George Orwell in 1984 and where people are followed by cameras as they move to the streets, telephone, drones, planes and helicopters track their movements and most i think member believes the telescreens which is the tv that is on the wall in your house and you can never turn it off and you watch it, but it watches you. Whatever the government watches they can see what youre doing in your room and they have it positioned in such a way that there is almost no privacy whatsoever in your room. [applause] this book wages a rebellion from that point from the back greatest living philosopher had not held. And bi dash he means it is not classical totalitarianism and does not find expression through the demagogue but to the anonymity of the corporate state in a classical totalitarian regime, a fascist communist revolutionary reactionary party. Inverted totalitarianism of corporate sources to electoral politics, language of the constitution but yet internally has seized all levers of power. We have as has been pointed out under a corporate coup detat to explain that it is over. And how does one resist . And how does one rebel . Especially given the effects of Climate Change we just saw from the l. A. Times this massive investigator project became a today showing exxonmobil was well aware of Climate Change and Global Warming decades ago but yet like the Tobacco Industry denied that reality in the name of corporate profit. Not only a criminal offense but given the extent of the catastrophe they need the extinction of the human species itself. So i talk about the moral imperative and i argue given the incredible power of the surveillance state coupled with militarized Police Forces and the evisceration of our civil liberties, finally we have to rise up not so much for what we can achieve but what it allows us to become we cannot use the word hope if we dont resist and that means physical resistance, a civil disobedience, and jail time. This is a passage from the book called snowden. I have been to war. I have seen physical courage. But this courage is not moral courage. Very few of even the bravest warriors have moral courage. It means to defy the crowd crowd, to stand up as a solitary individual, to shun the intoxicating embrace, to be disobedient to Authority Even at the risk of your life for a higher principle. With moral courage comes persecution. American army pilot had courage to land the helicopter between a platoon of u. S. Soldiers and 10 terrified Vietnamese Civilians during the massacre. He ordered his gunner to fire the machine gun on the advancing soldiers if they began to shoot the villagers and for this act of moral courage, thompson, like snowden was hounded and reviled. Moral courage always looked like this defined by the state as treason the army attempted to cover up the of massacre and Court Martial thompson. It is the courage to act a hand to speak the truth thompson had it Martin Luther king had it in with those in authority once said about them they say today about snowden. My country, right or wrong wrong, is the moral equivalent of another drought or sober. Or drug. So let me speak about those strunc drunk with power with your web searches and file transfers phone records your live chats, a Financial Data medical data Civil Court Records in your movements those were all washed with taxpayer dollars. Those who have banks of sophisticated Computer Systems along with the biosensors are scanners and Face Recognition Technology and those who had obliterated your anonymity your privacy and your liberty. There is no Free Press Without the ability to protect the confidentiality to make public the abuse of power. Inside the government who dare to speak out of the system of mass surveillance have been charged as a spy or hounded into exile. With the surveillance state to create a climate of paranoia to make democratic consent possible in eating and as full spectrum dominance is not a free state it will use it in history has seek greater control. It is not to discover crimes but to be on hand when the government decides to rest a certain category of the population. The relationship between those that are watched and tracked in those who watch and track them is a relationship between master and slave. In those that become delusional the former director of the National Security agency hired a hollywood set designer to turn the command center into a replica of the bridge of the Starship Enterprise and he could sit in the captains chair and pretend he was picard. James clapper the director of National Intelligence had the audacity to lie under oath to congress this was a rare glimpse into the theater that now characterize american political life. A Congressional Oversight CommitteeHolding Public hearings is lied to and knows it is being lied to and the person who lives knows that the Committee Members knows hes lying in the committee to protect security clearance say and do nothing. They listen to everyone and everything above the german chancellor, they but most of the leaders of europe. They have intercepted the talking points from the one search secretary general and head of a meeting with president obama. What Security Threat was posed of catholic cardinals the german chancellor and the un secretary general . Businesses like the Brazilian Oil company they carried out a major eavesdroping effort on the United NationsClimate Change conference in 2007. They bub to their ex lovers and wives and girlfriends and then nsa stores data in perpetuity. I was a plaintiff before the Supreme Court in the case that challenges the warrantless wiretapping dismissed because they believe the governments assertions and that our concern of surveillance was speculation. No standing and a right to bring the case we have no way to challenge the assertion that we didnt know was a lie and tell Edward Snowden. The Fourth Amendment limits the states abilities to raise specific place time in the event by a magistrate. And with the arbitrary search and seizure of all personal Communications FormerVice President al gore said correctly that snowden disclosed evidence of crimes against the United States constitution. We have been fighting have made no headway by a appealing to the Traditional Centers of power only after he documents the crimes committed by the state a genuine public debate began. In the president where previously dismissed from state surveillance by insisting of judicial oversight three judges have ruled on mass surveillance saying it was unconstitutional and the third to back it. None of this would have happened without snowden. He had access to the full roster of everyone working at the nsa and could have made public the entire Intelligence Community to undercover assets worldwide. He could have revealed their freedom station and mission in shutdown Intelligence System in one afternoon. But this was never his intention. He wanted only that until he documented to be carried out without our consent or knowledge. Our politicians including clinton argued that snowden could have turned internal mechanisms to have grievances heard. But i cant tell you for personally experience that this argument is as cogent as the authors offer made from the bad t party. From alice in wonderland. Have some wine. Alice looked all around but there was nothing on it. I dont see one. There isnt any. [applause] how should we do this . Any questions . Your discussion of moral heroes of what is legal or moral is some examples of saugerties is that the vague moral hero . And a great admirer of the philosopher who writes about the dilemma of one faces when confronted with a radical evil. And richie finishes the university of heidelberg she writes she had to of learned everything she was taught in order to become a moral being. She herself joined an underground Zionist Group that attempted to help german jews believe to their british mandate of palestine until she is picked up by the gestapo, almost killed expelled stripped of her citizenship and became stateless. I think this system of inverted totalitarianism, the corporate states is one where we as citizens have not lost our voice but our ability to make our most basic rights respected. We have example after example of how what it is we as citizens expect that is irrelevant to ruth Corporate Power to go across the political spectrum but a pass is anyway. From the Defense National authorization act overturns 150 years of domestic law to permit the military with those sacks of extraordinary rendition on the streets of American Cities we won the Southern District of the york and then to be stripped of due process and how old indefinitely. During bad legal battle an opinion poll went out and that section had 97 percent disapproval rating accords have appended our most constitutconstitut ional right that is the you get this right to petition the government and desperately it did not want to rule with the issue of privacy so they denied by standing which did get to the Supreme Cou