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Moyers and Company: Chris Hedges: Greed’s Path of Destruction

with Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
July 20, 2012

Mutant - Camden NJ

Image by Blake Bolinger via Flickr

http://billmoyers.com/
July 20, 2012

There are forgotten corners of this country where Americans are trapped in endless cycles of poverty, powerlessness, and despair as a direct result of capitalistic greed. Journalist Chris Hedges calls these places “sacrifice zones,” and joins Bill this week on Moyers & Company to explore how areas like Camden, New Jersey; Immokalee, Florida; and parts of West Virginia suffer while the corporations that plundered them thrive.

“These are areas that have been destroyed for quarterly profit. We’re talking about environmentally destroyed, communities destroyed, human beings destroyed, families destroyed,” Hedges tells Bill. “It’s the willingness on the part of people who seek personal enrichment to destroy other human beings… And because the mechanisms of governance can no longer control them, there is nothing now within the formal mechanisms of power to stop them from creating essentially a corporate oligarchic state.”

The broadcast includes images from Hedges’ collaboration with comics artist and journalist Joe Sacco, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which is an illustrated account of their travels through America’s sacrifice zones. Kirkus Reviews calls it an “unabashedly polemic, angry manifesto that is certain to open eyes, intensify outrage and incite argument about corporate greed.”

A columnist for Truthdig, Hedges also describes the difference between truth and news. “The really great reporters — and I’ve seen them in all sorts of news organizations — are management headaches because they care about truth at the expense of their own career,” Hedges says.

Moyers and Company: Chris Hedges: Capitalism’s ‘Sacrifice

Chris Hedges spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. His latest books are Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, Death of the Liberal Class, and The World as It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.

From the archives:

Chris Hedges: Corporate Capitalism Will Quite Literally Kill Us

Chris Hedges: It’s Not Our Job To Take Power, It’s Our Job To Fight Power!

Chris Hedges: All Energy Should Be Spent On Building Movements

“Everything is gone” by Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges: Public Libraries are the Heart of Any Functioning Civilized City