>> rose: welelcome to the progr, tonight andrew sullivan of the daily dish joins us for a conversation about his work, his blogging, and his life. >> what was amazing as a resource were the readers. they came to me, told me stuff i didn't know. i was able to use that. >> rose: meaning in terms of information or opinion? both, fact, opinion, correction. you make the slightest error, the readership siff so amazing and smart and engaged and i know when someone comes up to me i don't know saying "andrew" they're a blog reader because there's an intimacy, a really miraculous intimacy between you-- even though there's now a million people a month reading this thing-- it's still one to one. >> rose: and queen noor and julia bacha the film director

talk about the new movie "budrus". >> it was the type of film that we at the king hussein foundation have been looking for for years. our partnership with tribeca film festival in screening films to highlight the human face, what is not available in the mainstream media face of the conflict on both sides. balanced films that highlight human social and economic realities on the ground and "budrus" is one of the most exceptional what we have screened it at tribeca. >> there's very little coverage of civil society and what palestinians and israelis are doing together. what's happening is that hundreds of israelis crossed into the green line and under the threat of losing their lives and certainly under the threat of losing the credibility and families and jobs many of them lost all of that. they decided to side with the struggle of this palestinian village and in that way forge the relationship that is still standing today. >> rose: andrew sullivan, julia

bacha and queen noor when we continue. maybe you want school kids to have more exposure to the arts. maybe you want to provide meals for the needy. or maybe you want to help when the unexpected happens. whatever you want to do, members project from american express can help you take the first step. vote, volunteer, or donate for the causes you believe in at membersproject.com. take charge of making a difference.

>> rose: andrew sullivan is here he is an author, editor and political commentator. in 2000, he became a pioneer in the world of online journalism with the launch of his blog "the dilley dish." in 2007, he moved the fwlog t at lap tick magazine's web site where he now writes "24/7." this month the tailly dish celebrates its 10th year anniversary. i'm pleased to have andrew sullivan back at this table. it's been much too long. welcome. >> thank you, charlie, it's great to be back. >> rose: now let me just say, you decided... that you weren't quite sure when you started the

daily dish so you thought 10/10/10 is a perfect time to mark a tenth aner have snare >> i remember i was writing about the gore and bush convention in 2000 but i knew if i put a date on it, somebody in the internet would tell me i was wrong so i decided to be fake and say why don't we celebrate 10/10/10 and be done with it. >> rose: you have been there writing... i would love to see a camera in your house. (laughs) see andrew running around, coming back to the computeer, going away, coming back. because you write 24/7. >> i was what's called a blog cave. my husband calls it that. we have it separated from the rest of the place by a curtain. >> rose: (laughs) >> it's like "the wizard of oz" and you don't want to see it. it's... i still start my say with the good old "new york times" on paper. i need it. i need a moment of calm to look at the world in what peace.

i like the serendipity of a foreign country about which you would never choose to read but which leaps out on you. >> rose: you can go to the bbc for that, too. >> yeah, and i have my ginger snaps and coffee. >> rose: ginger snaps? >> that's my ritual, i have ginger snaps. dunk it in. i'm still english. and then i dive in. and normally i will have written the first early part of the morning's post already the night before so they'll be sitting there ready to go. the secret of bloging is something called future publishing. i'm not literally writing until 11:00 p.m. up at 6:00. i can schedule posts so they appear later. so it's a bit of an illusion. now i have what i call four young people that have just gone from two to four who help me. when i started, one person could read everything that was on line and write it up. i could read maureen dowd's column and be mean about it

before anybody else. that was what was fun. and i worked from midnight to 2:00 a.m. because that was when the papers came on. they had a ney diggs every two or three hours. >> rose: i may not be doing justice to you but i remember every time i see a rajing you're among the top 25, maybe the top 5. wherever you are. you are one of the pioneers among bloggers. >> i was one of the first people to do it. me and nicky... >> rose: and now he's running for the senate-- or was god bless him and i'm still doing it. i don't know how one survives but i think by evolving in a way that i learned that in fact in order to produce this content what was amazing as a resource were the readers. they came to me, told me stuff i didn't know. i was able to use that. >> rose: meaning in terms of information or opinion? >> both. fact, opinion, correction. you make the slightest error, the readership i have is so

amazing and smart and engaged and... you know, i know when someone comes up to me on the street and says "andrew" they're a blog reader because there's an intimacy, a really miraculous intimacy between you-- even though there's now a million people a month reading this thing-- it's still one to one. it's still you. >> rose: and they all think you're talking to them? is that the idea? >> well, i am. and they're talking to me and i still read. we don't do comment sections. i still read the e-mails everyday. >> rose: and how many do you get everyday? >> hundreds. i now have, of course, four people who work for me who are all in their 20s and they help to do that. i call them leaf cutter ants because they go out on the internet and they find stuff and bring it back and i try and make sense of it and we create this alchemy of an ongoing conversation and the readers were part of that. like we have a view from your window everyday, it's a simple idea, it's like how do i convey to the readers all the other

readers out there and where they're from and how interesting they are and how smart they are. everybody has a digital camera, take a picture outside your window and send to it to me. just do it for a week. it's been going for three and a half years. simple little moment all across the world. >> rose: beyond what it's already done, where is it going and what's its potential? i >> i think there was a moment during the iran revolution when... iran was having blog give, always quite blog give because... >> rose: (laughs) yes. >> it was the only way they could communicate, these kids in iran was one of the most blog-friendly... so i knew that because i was always interested in iran. and i noticed this election was turning in weird ways. >> rose: what did you see? >> i saw the faces in the crowds for the most most rallies grow. i saw them doing things in the streets. >> rose: almost like hope in the eyes again. >> you could feel it. >> rose: because they had become

apathetic and given up on the political process. >> yes. and this younger generation who were collude in to this internet and we that were also clued in suddenly the distance between us evaporated. and the proudest moment... and as soon as it started breaking out, they started sending us immediately all over the earth all their twitter feeds, all their firsthand accounts and suddenly this thing banal something so much more than the sum of its parts. >> rose: but what's its potential? understanding it showed that kind of power. >> its potential i think is as follows. if the newspaper is dying-- it is dead-- and by that i mean not journalism or reporting, which i think is vital, i just think we're going to have to find a way for public and private philanthropy to report serious investigative journalism, serious people who know the countries they live in. >> rose: online? >> online.

absolutely. but the trouble is newspapers would bund that will with comics and cartoons and cross words and opinion and classified. >> rose: especially. especially classified. >> and department store ads and the rest of it. all of which has disappeared. so you need something to bring all this together again. and in the age of the internet the only thing that can do that is one person. the medium itself is so personal. it's why if you look at big sites there's always a person. it's the huffington post, arianna. the drudge report, drudge, of course, it was pioneer. you have to have a human being as a today in, just as a today in. so i think what i'm trying to do is to find the best writing and journalism and videos and citizen journalism as well as professional journalism and find the best of it and present it everyday through my frontal cortex with my personality with the help of some fellow editors. so that we recreate the magazine or newspaper into what i call a

blogozine in which you show up there everyday and you will get every major story out there. i think for me the value i'm trying to add to this experience is actually an editor saying this matters, this doesn't. you come to this page you see it still in linear form but i will edit it and you know it's me editing it and i will be responsible for it and answerable for it and you will be a part of it. so, for example, when the abortionist george tiller was assassinated, i wrote a post saying how awful this was but in an aside i said but i can't defend what he was doing in late-term abortion. and in that moment a woman who had a late-term abortion wrote in to me and explain what happened to her. how she discovered late in pregnancy the child she desperately wanted was terribly malformed and was going to die hours after birth and the agonizing and difficult choice

she had to make. and my glib sort of ideological... and suddenly i published that e-mail and the floodgates open. knew no reporter when we had dozens and dozens of these stories all different but all very much making the... not just change my heart but change my mind. i don't think if you're a general reporter you have to go out and find those people and get them to talk to you. at that raw moment in time when suddenly these emotions came to the surface. you couldn't do it. but they came to me. and all i have to do is facilitate it. >> rose: what do you think you representd? someone who would... you know? >> a safe space. they knew i wasn't going to edit them unfairly. i wasn't going to malign them or blame them or that i would publish them in their own words as an attempt to get at the truth. and i think about describing the

process here, and i'mvolved, too, i started bloging with a lot of certainty about what i believed about the world and i think i made the greatest error of my life as a journalist, which was the iraq war. >> rose: where were you there and where are you now? what's the difference in terms of the way you see the world? >> well,... >> rose: that's a huge question. >> it's a very big question. i think one obvious thing was that i got knocked sideways by a death sentence which turned out not to be a death sentence. >> rose: right. >> and i think what happened... >> rose: how long ago was it you discovered you had the aids virus? >> 1993. i was 29. and... >> rose: 17 years ago. >> yeah. and here i am. which is sort of... you learn, i think certain things from that which you don't know what's going to happen to you and you have to own it. you can't run away from it.

and that i think also the one thing... i was just thinking about tht. the one thing that i learned was ignore success, concentrate on excellence. that's the key thing. and to just focus on doing the best thing you can do knowing you may not have all these many days left. sat down and wrote a book about gay rights because i really thought i wanted to lead something behind which was a deadly serious book and turned out to be one of the better things i've written and dedicate yourself daily to being open to new experience and new truths. and then i think what's happened is that i don't think i've changed that much in my views actually over the last... i still regard myself as an english conservative in many ways. >> rose: what's really important here in a sense is that a death sentence at that time gave you... it was liberating from the standpoint that you said my life is not about success, my life is about excellence, my life is about... it's a bit like

people say sometimes if you can think about the end of your life, what is it you really want to do that makes a difference? then you ought to get about doing that. >> yes. now. while you can. >> rose: now. and if you don't know how many moments you have left, do it at this moment. >> and also tell the truth. as you see it. be not afraid. what are you going to be afraid of? you could be dead tomorrow. try and live as a journalist, as a writer, unafraid of talking about things that other people are not talking about. try and challenge people to get to the truth of stuff. so that... i really hope i'm not sounding pious here, or self-satisfied because i'm still also making mistakes, but somehow that attitude which stayed with me and the blogosphere, this fantastic new

medium in which so much could be challenged, everything could be said, you could say anything. you didn't have to run it by marty. you didn't have to run it... there were no editors or publishers or sensors. so this immense freedom was also an immense freedom to tell the truth and to ask the truth, ask the questions other people are scared to ask. so where are these weapons of mass destruction? are we torturing people? are we, the united states, torturing people? what do we know about the goings on really in our government? >> rose: it's almost like you have a family out there, isn't it? >> huge family. friendship... it's more friends than family. because it's all chosen but, yeah, and you'd be amazed. the other people that come out of the government to e-mail you. see, i have a policy of only anonymous e-mails, no one gets

any credit for anything. >> rose: (laughs) >> so it can't be about their success. it can't be about their ego, it has to be about what they're talking about and you get people from... the only reason we know anything about torture, for example, is because the people in the government telling other people about it. good americans who stood up against it and leaked the information and told us. and you can go out there as an investigative reporter-- and god knows they do amazing work and important work-- and sometimes people just being an honest broker, soldiers writing letters about what it was like to be in afghanistan. >> rose: so the biggest mistake of your life was the judgment about the iraq war which in part you say was influenced by what happened in the balkans? >> i think i let my emotions-- legitimate emotions-- about al qaeda and what they did to this country... i've always been a bit of a... almost a romantic about america. and i think that was an atrocious, evil crime. and i still do.

and i think one's sense of outrage and grief about that flooded my frontal cortex and i wanted to do something that would rectify it somehow, make it whole again. by, as i believed, preventing the worst happening-- weapons of mass destruction getting to the hands of terrorists-- and also trying to get the roots of it by democratizing a part of the middle east. now, i've been marinated in neoconservative thought for a long time so all of this made sense to me. but i did not... >> rose: marinated in neoconservative thought? >> i had. i edited "the new republic." i couldn't have been dunked in it for longer. although i was never fully a neocon. there were things that i... i was always more retorian in so many ways. i've always been a libertarian and a balanced budget conservative. >> rose: so all the austerity moves that david cameron is making and george osbourne you believe is necessary for that country to get back on course? >> yes. and i think it's necessary here.

and if i believed for a minute the tea party was serious about it i'd support them. but they're not. >> rose: what are they serious about? >> i don't know what they're serious about. >> rose: what do you think they're about? it's not big government. it's not the deficit? it's something else. >> well, when they won't tell you what they'll cut-- and we all know... in fact, they tell you they will not cut the things that are creating the debt. you have to ask yourself... >> rose: what? like national security? >> no, like entitlements. social security, medicare, and defense. the rest is nothing. that's everything. everybody knows that. i also think there is a... this is all i can call it. there's a kind of cultural panic that we want our country back is really... is a genuine sentiment there's a confusion amongst a lot of people who are suffering economically and have suffered economically. >> rose: do they want cultural warfare in your judgment, then? >> let me explain. i don't think so really. i think they just feel besieged.

if you're a white member of the working class in this country, you're now competing with china and india and your standard of living is stuck and going down and you don't see a future for your kids, you don't understand that. and you need to find a way to explain that. and to tell people it's the global economy doesn't work. when they also see illegal immigrants doing work that they think... and when they see a multicultural multifaith majority emerging that is not the country they remember when they were kids, and it isn't the country they remember when they were kids, it is a much more racially... and they see a president who represents in his very face and name white and black america together, fused i think there's something going on

subtly, psychologically which n which they don't want that to carry on. they want to end that. and it's an emotional thing. it's not a very rational thing. and i think they're right also that the government has gotten too big, the debt is big. but they haven't... no one's been honest with them about what it will take to do that. and i think... and i frankly think that fox news and a certain propaganda apparatus have systematically set out to whip these people into a frenzy. and it's called demagoguery and populism and it has nothing whatsoever to do with conservatism. >> rose: and what impact will it have on the midterm elections? >> i think if you look at the polling you'll see that the country's pretty evenly divided actually. if you look at registered voters. obama is doing better at this point in his term than clinton, carter, or reagan. reagan was going down to 37%. but this conscious attempt to

create a fury has generated a sort of enthusiasm gap to use a cliche that may well... and also to use religion... i mean. i think this whole conflation of obama with islam and islam with terrorism is subliminally and subconsciously making... is tapping into the same currents that mccarthyism tapped into. these aliens and elites have taken over and they're running it and they're for the enemy, actually. there's a sort of element of that. none of this is explicit. some of it is but a lot of it isn't. and it's a very potent force especially when people don't see the recovery in sight and they're frustrated and afraid. and because also secular america and liberal america has, in my view, been too contemptuous of religious faith. that the religious question, which is the central question of our times, i think, is... has

been abandoned by people of moderate faith and people of secular liberal convictions. there are too few of us in the public square saying "i'm a christian but i'm also a secularist and a moderate. my faith is strong but it is not that certain. i admit doubt. i don't want to impose it on anybody else." and instead we have this fundamentalist neurosis that is passing itself off as faith and liberals becoming... not all liberals, but a strident knew atheism that has alienated people even further. >> rose: has this affected your own sense of faith, all that you have gone through and all that you've lived through over the last 15 years? >> i feel in terms of faith as close to god as i've ever felt. >> rose: you're catholic. >> i'm a catholic.

but i am also... my estrangement from the institution i love and bought into is deeper than ever before. >> rose: is that because... of what? >> partly it's because of the way they have responded to the homosexual question, obviously. but also the revelation that they essentially-- and this is a huge revelation, this moral institution-- aided and abetted and committed the rape and abuse of countless thousands of innocent children. now, if any institution did that it would be beyond belief. that but that the church, the representative of jesus, would be doing that, has done that and hidden it and defended it no one has taken responsibility. if this were a secular institution, my friend christopher hitchens is correct, the police would have gone in and closed it down by now. and i think i'm not the only

catholic to feel they have lost any moral authority in the way they've conducted themselves and i'm still completely befuddled at how on earth they could have thought or behaved this way, including the current pope. how do you... carly, how do you know that someone has abused a child and reassign him to another parish where he goes on to abuse others? that's what this pope did personally in munich. i mean, i don't know how you do that! i just don't know how you do that. so here i am struggling to kind of find a way to... i have stopped going to mass because i... the anger and the frustration overwhelms me and those are things i don't want to feel when i'm there. but that's forced me, like a lot of other people, to develop my faith for myself in prayer, meditation, exploring citiestor

cal scholarship behind the scriptures. thinking about science and darwin and what that means for things like natural law. engaging in a dialogue in my own head with the church i wish existed. but, look, church is also a human institution and it's always been full of humans. so it will last. the truth will in the end come out but i think that's what happened to my and a lot of other people's faith. they haven't gone away, but we are... we are strangers in our own homes. >> rose: you referred to your husband in the beginning of this conversation. how long have you been married? >> it will be a little over three years. we've been together for six years. and that's another... and you remember because i would come on here back in the '90s and i was like, what? you're in favor of sgharj remember that? remember... i mean, we had these conversations where people would be like what on earth are you talking about? >> rose: (laughs) >> gay people, too!

>> rose: (laughs) yes. >> and i actually never thought it would happen to me. >> rose: yeah? >> but i knew the argument was a really strong one. and to tell you the truth, to see ted olsen... >> rose: i know. >> make that argument. >> rose: david boies and ted olsen who had been on the opposite side of gore v. bush together. >> to me ted olsen... >> rose: because he's a conservative. >> because this shouldn't be a liberal/conservative matter. there are gay people on all sides of the political issue and i've always thought this argument was really a conservative one. and to have basically a republican-nominated judge come out with this very sober and sane ruling. >> rose: in california. >> in california. >> rose: right. >> wow does that feel... i mean, did that feel amazing to me. but then the actual spiritual and... experience of actually having it happen with my mom and dad there and my family there and all of aaron's family there

was... took my breath away. i wasn't expecting it to but in... in some ways. and at the time i was so suppressed out about things like... the things you get stressed out about at weddings. have we... the cake, the... >> rose: (laughs) >> all this stuff that you kind of like... but it happened. and, look it's not always easy. the one thing i found out about marriage is that the straight people are right, you know? this is tough. >> rose: this is not easy. (laughs) >> this is not easy. we're going to have bumps in the road. we're going to hate each other sometimes. it's not always going to be fun. we're going to hurt each other. but, you know, we are... in a strange kind of way i think when we said "till death us do part" we meant it. >> rose: what about children? >> we've never... neither of us has ever wanted children. >> rose: so that's not on the... >> not for me, no. i know it is for others and god bless them and i think they're doing amazing jobs bringing up

kids. but me, no. two dogs are enough. >> rose: (laughs) >> two dogs and a blog. >> rose: yes. >> my husband calls himself the blog widow. there are times he'll have "back away from the blog! put your hands up and move away!" >> rose: (laughs) >> because she has to share me with all that. >> rose: all right. so here we are with all that... and all that you have written about this and all that you have said about the church and then you look at these stories in the paper today. if. >> i don't believe that we will ever rid the world of hatred and fear. >> rose: it's fear, isn't it? >> i think it's more fear than hate, to be honest with you. i think hate is too simple a word. fear of the other. and when one can't control the other and one wishes to extinguish it. and i don't think even in the

most tolerant and liberal societies it will ever be easy for a gay kid. you're different at an age when the last thing you want is to be different. and you're different in a way that your hormones... at the moment when your hormones are racing through you in ways that turn boys into boys and girls into girls in a way they never were before. and this will always be lonely. which is way dan savage's campaign "it gets better" where people are going on the internet themselves and talking to gay kids and saying "don't worry, it will get better" is so important. look, politics is not the answer to the gay question. we deserve our rights and we will get them. but really this is about our lives and we do that through culture and society and helping one another. and the most powerful political act you can do as a gay person is to tell someone who doesn't know you're gay that you are. because suddenly this abstraction, this gay thing,

becomes a joe or mary or... and they have to... and people... >> rose: they're adding to their identity. >> yeah. and we now have majority support for marriage rights in this country. 52%, just past the 50% mark ever. we have 75% of public wanting gays to be able to serve openly in the military. we have over 80% saying they don't want them to be discriminated against in employment and still the democratic party and this president and the congress can't pass laws. so it shows you how we can politics is. >> rose: do you still have the kind of confidence in america that made you love it so much when you came here from oxford? >> yes. >> rose: ands where your faith on that coming from? >> i never felt more faith in this country when when it rallied around the candidacy of barack obama. and i will tell you, even though this may not be that fashionable i still believe in him. and i think the reason i do is

not because he's a crusader but because he is still the only adult in the room in that town. and he has not done anything crazy. and he has opened a dialogue. and he is still capable, i think of constructing and has tried to construct that dialogue. n a meaningful and respectful way. >> rose: you see a bit of that in bob woodward's book on the afghanistan war. >> he's trying to do the right thing. >> rose: even though you think he may be doing the wrong thing. >> he may. but that's not the question. the question is whether we can have a civil discussion as a country. and happily afghanistan has not been polarized as a war in the way that iraq was. but on the other issues, almost all the other issues, i will say this and i don't... i think it's the republican party's fault. >> rose: well, you think the republican party is killing itself. >> well, i think it's... it has taken a moment of great crisis in this country and seen nothing but short-term political advantage out of it. it has done nothing for the common good. it hasn't placed its own... the country's interest above its own

and the demonization of this opportunity that we had in obama who wasn't seeking some liberal utopia, he was inheriting two wars... >> rose: but... >> they did not rise to the occasion. in fact, they have sunk to the occasion. and, you know, i think they'll probably succeed short term. but i know that's not the answer. and i think motion americans know that's not the answer and they also know this guy in power... look, the democratic party is the democratic party. it's not a pretty sight. but as a human being and as a president, i... and i have differences with him in some issues, but he's... he still is able to talk reasonably. >> rose: okay. where do you differ with him? >> i differ with him on the afghan war, which i think he has ramped up in a way that is not going to work. and i differ with him on not taking the war crimes of the last administration seriously. >> rose: okay. why do you think he took the

decisions he did? given all the attributes you have given him. >> i think on the war... >> rose: or recognizing him. >> i think on the torture question precisely because he didn't want to divide the country anymore. he didn't want to polarize it. he did not want to alienate people who may have acted in good faith but nonetheless committed what are undeniable crimes. and so he decided to move forward rather than back. i think that... and i understand that. >> rose: and you think there the country needed to have a transparency... >> i just think the law the the law. unless the rule of law is upheld and if you're scapegoating people at the bottom while not holding people responsible at the top, for something as serious as torture, then i think something very deep has gone wrong in a country that you just can't walk by. but i think his motives in this were honorable ones. i think maybe in time this all will come out and we will get some justice. >> rose: and on the afghan war,

why do you think he came to the decisions he did? because he clearly says he thought it was in the national security interest of the united states to do what he did. >> because i think, in fact, in that sense-- and this is my best take on it, i can't read his mind, i've read woodward... i've read bits of woodward, not the whole book. i think he felt that al qaeda remains a threat, a real threat. and i do, too. >> rose: yeah, but al qaeda is not in afghanistan. >> i know, i know. and i think he thought that a counterinsurgency movement could... was the only long-term solution there. or that we should... if we... he could not afford to quit afghanistan and have a terror attack given what the opposition would do to him with that. >> rose: see, that's a very different kind of argument. that's an argument of he didn't see a way... i mean... >> i know. >> rose: that's not an argument of courage. that's an argument of... >> i know. >> rose: of political fear. >> i think there's... i'm sorry to say i think there is probably

an element there to that which is why i'm happy to see mr. emanuel leave the white house because i think they was chief advocate of that kind of fear. >> well, in this case, evidently according to woodward's book, mr. emanuel was an advocate of no surge of troops in afghanistan because the people the president is repeatedly saying "if i wanted to make rahm happy i would send nobody in." >> well, then i withdraw that remark. >> rose: (laughs) >> more generally speaking i think he's been too terrified of the republicans. i withdraw, that i'm sorry. >> rose: you believe what? >> i think nibble the american character in the end. >> rose: really? the character? >> i do. in the end i think americans are decent people and pragmatic people and they know their future is seriously in the balance and they are venting right now. not everybody. but when push comes to shove i think they will come around to this president and realize he's the best thing we've got going

for us. >> rose: that a triumph of hope over experience as somebody who once said about second marriages? >> isn't america a triumph of hope over experience? this is a country that had slavery. this is a country fought the most bloody and brutal civil war you can imagine. >> rose: but what you love most about the country and makes you believe most about the country is character? and the values that this particular democracy... >> i value the constitution as an amazing document of conservative governance. and i admire the industry and good faith of almost so many americans that i've met over my quarter century living here. there is a deep something about america that i still treasure and love and they elected barack

obama chrchlt european country has elected an african american or a black president? you tell me. and americans are also dealing with real issues. the english, you know, they'll never talk about whether abortion is murder or not. they'll just avoid the subject. they won't talk about gay marriage. they'll try some... americans are still fighting over the real issues about the truth and in ways that some europeans have forgotten how the do and even though that's a brutal and bloody process they're trying to get somewhere and i feel part of that. i feel like the blogosphere and online world is part of seeking out the truth and also i have to say just the experience of being a today in and receiving all that input from americans, i believe in hope winning over fear, i really do. but i think if i were to say why am i doing this after ten years everyday it's because i still have that in my belly because i care about the place and i think i'm... i'm also struck by how

many people still do. it's a dark time now, but i think those are times when people really start to engage again and they have to get off their back sides and talk to one another. >> rose: to know more about all of this read the daily dish celebrating its 10th anniversary. thank you. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: good to see you back. andrew sullivan. on the next charlie rose, secretary of the treasury tim geithner on the global economy. join us. >> rose: palestinians and israelis have been trying to make peace for nearly two decades now. the current u.s.-sponsored talks are enn danger of collapse over the issue of settlements. "budrus" is the story of how palestinians use non-violence to stop israel from building a security wall in their village. here's the trailer for the film.

>> a non-violent pro test not going to stop it.

>> rose: joining me now is julia bacha, the director of the film. her majesty queen noor of jordan, the wife of the late king hussein. an advocate for peace in the region, she saw the potential for this film early on to change the status quo. so i begin, how did you do this? >> part of a group of journalists, filmmakers and human rights advocates. and we have been researching what's happening on the ground for seven years now. when we were touring with our first film "in counterpoint" we got the question of where is the palestinian gandhi and why aren't palestinians using non-violence? >> rose: and what was the answer to that? >> the answer was there is things happening on the ground, you're just not getting it on

the mainstream media. so we wanted to go back and tell the story particularly of the village of budrus, though there are many villages struggling, we wanted to go back to the first one that inspired the movement growing today on the ground. >> rose: and your purpose was to what? other than to make a film that would touch people? >> i wanted to show that there is much more happeninging on the ground than we're getting. people watch the mainstream media and they often follow either negotiations like we're seeing today or violence. military incourages or suicide bombings. and there's very little coverage of actually civil society and what palestinians and israelis are doing together. because what's happened in this village is hundreds of israelis crossed into the green line and under the threat of losing their lives. and for certainly under the threat of losing their credibility and families and jobs. many of them lost all of that. they decided to side with the struggle of this palestinian village and in that way forge

the relationship that is still standing today. >> rose: does this give you hope belief, about the possibilities of a peaceful co-existence of two states living side by side? >> absolutely. i think that... i'm not hopeful on the negotiations and the political structure right now. i think politicians don't lead, they follow. and therefore what's happening on the ground has the potential to force the politicians. the next time they actually sit to feel like there's pressure from the bottom. and the grass-roots needs to participate and right now the grass-roots both in israel and in palestine are not participating in it. >> rose: how did this film get to you? and when you saw it, heard about it, what happened? >> well, i was involved in promoteing counter point on a day call pangaea day and i was told by julia and some of her colleagues and "budrus" and asked to see the first rough cut

possible which they did send me and i realized then all the things you've just been discussing and that also it was the type of film that we at the king hussein foundation have been looking for for years. a partnership with tribeca film festival in screening films to highlight the human face, what is not available in the mainstream media face of the conflict on both sides. balanced films that highlight human social and economic realities on the ground. and "budrus" is really one of the most exceptional of what we have screened at try beck kachlt >> rose: does this mean that you were that a non-violent approach is the only way to change the reality on the ground therefore change the minds of politicians? >> i do believe that the collaborative process that is evidenced in this film, "budrus", that is evidenced through a number of initiatives that i've been involved with over the years that are apolitical as well as on the

political level, all of these levels are absolutely critical. you must have a simultaneous grass-roots support for those politicians who have to with courage and a leap of faith in their own constituencies make some hard and difficult decisions and in "budrus" you see israelis, you meet israelis who are not only motivated by a sense of compassion for the suffering of palestinians but also by a realization that their future is in the hands of achieving a just peace. that it's in their interest to achieve a just peace. they don't want to live in an apartheid state, one that is undemocratic, that is continuing an occupation and illegal settlement building to the extent today where 40% of the west bank is dominated by settlements, roads, and restricted access to their own

lands for the palestinians. 40% of the west bank now is dominated by this process. >> rose: and you were saying you believe most israeli citizens don't want to see that? >> i'm saying israeli citizens have a stake in a peace treaty, one that is based on the arab peace initiative and the clinton parameters. one that will guarantee them collective security guarantees from all of the arab states, a collective peace treaty, of course, a solution to the refugee problem. and therefore a way of diminishing the appeal of extremists and the tools that are used by extremists to recruit people to attack the united states or to attack moderates in the region. to attack any peace process. that is how you achieve the antidote to the extremism. >> rose: but you also accept her notions that politicians will follow what the people do? that in fact if there is change to come, it will come on the ground first before politicians make some? because you come from a

firsthand observation because of all the negotiations that king hussein undertook. >> well, he always made the observation that no piece of paper is going to achieve real piece if it's not supported by people on the ground. that that's absolutely critical. the oslo process 17 years ago was to complete a treaty in five years time. instead, 7 years later we have doubled the number of settlers in the region and we have, as i said, 40% of the area of the west bank dominated by these settlements, roads and other restrictions on the palestinians. to the palestinians who were calling for a settlement freeze, it's in the context of that. it looks as if the israelis are just trying to buy time for more... for changing more facts on the ground which will prevent any kind of two-state solution. >> rose: roll tape, here it is.

>> we saw the men trying to push

the soldiers and none of them could doll that. but i think the girls could do it. >> rose: these are people who taking their own futures with courage, sacrifice. >> absolutely. they realize that they couldn't wait for the palestinian authority to take any action, which is a very important thing to mention. this is a small village of 1,500 people. >> rose: and the palestinian authority was doing nothing to stop? >> absolutely nothing. the separation barrier was being built, confiscating a large percentage of several villages and still is, especially now around jerusalem and the palestinian authority is not taking action so what's happening right now and what happened in budrus is that the communities are realizing they have to rely on themselves and on their israeli neighbors and what happened in these villages starting in budrus is that the

women are being powered through this civil disobedience process because there is a cultural... culturally they are more able to cross the lines formed by the israeli border police because there's a historically sort of tendency when you see young palestinians and young lizly border police officers. violence quickly can emerge when they meet. with the women it's harder for the israeli border police to react with violence. they're very smart and strategic and one moment in the film you see them jumping in front of the bulldozer and turning it around. and that's the key moment in the village when they realize they can do it. >> rose: that they have power. >> they have power. she actually says in the film "i couldn't believe that even if you're so small you can do all of this." >> rose: and you believe the film has power.

has it shown in palestinian communitys? >> yes. >> rose: it will do what? >> well, it's shown in bud ros to begin with and as you might expect the kind of reaction. it would have given them another sense of empowerment. i went to the premier in palestine not too long ago and the atmosphere in that room was absolutely extraordinary. the responses at different stages in the film and... because the film is balanced as well and what is not often available, as i was saying, on our struggle to find good films for media and humanity program with tribeca is balance. is where you see the human face on both sides of the conflict line. so the response in the theater was at times it was silent and wondering where is this film going, because it doesn't seem to be just taking my point of view. and then their point of view is represented by the end of it there was this feeling that... of transformation, i think, in people's attitudes. and i think one of the important

points about the story about the bulldozer is in a way, it saddam was... it semi-was recognizing there's a degree of humanity in her enemy. on the person on the other side of the conflict line. they were looking at each other as human beings because they were forced by-to-by this confrontation. and both sides are the... they're better angels, if you will, are coming out. >> rose: who is i yesterday morrar. >> i yesterday morrar was the leader of budrus. he was imprisoned for many years and he realized the first thing he needed to do in order for this to be successful was to make this unifying of all political parties locally. and i think that's the key difference today that you see between the grass-roots level and the political level where where there's a lot of division that we know between political parties. if you look in societies, those villages that are struggling, they have found a way to work

together across political factions. >> rose: one more clip here before we go. here it is.

>> rose: who wouldn't like this? why would you be opposed to this? >> i think there's a lot of fear what does that mean. i think for a very long time the sort of narrative has been very clear and obvious, there's the second intifada and the sort of very clear black and white is done where the palestinians are using violenceened and israelis are using military incursions but now the palestinians and israelis are working together. what does that mean? i think there's a moment of adjustment that we've seen people having lots of questions but overall i think the reaction in israel, in the palestinian territories included in europe, in the u.s. has been of why haven't we heard about budrus? this is such an important part of this story. >> rose: you suggested it will be shown in israeli schools? >> yes, there's been interest on the part of israelis i would imagine because we already know

it's traveling around the palestinian territories it's already serving as an educational tool for them. it's so important that people come out and see this film here in the united states. it open this is weekend in new york at the quad cinema. friday the eighth of october. and it will be here for two weeks... >> rose: i don't have to say anything. she's already said it. >> this weekend is critical to fill the theaters because that will give film the bounce it needs to be taken up by other theaters around the country. and it can have a transformative impact here as much as it has in palestine and israel. >> rose: well said. thank you, congratulations. >> thank you. >> rose: thank you. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: thank you for joining us. see you next time.