with Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
February 24, 2013
Image by Shrieking Tree via Flickr
KontextTV·Feb 22, 2013
With Chris Hedges, Senior fellow at the Nation Institute, former foreign correspondent for the New York Times, Pulitzer Prize in 2002. His latest book is “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt” with illustrator Joe Sacco.
In his book “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt” Chris Hedges describes “sacrifice zones” in the U.S. which have been exposed to unlimited economic exploitation: former industrial centers like Camden, New Jersey which is one of the poorest and most violent cities in the country or the coal mines of West Virginia where nature and communities have been devastated. The liberal institutions such as the Democratic Party have betrayed the American people and sold their interests to corporate capital. The Clinton administration was responsible for the deregulation of financial markets, the hand over of public airwaves to private corporations and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) – “the hardest attack on workers’ interests since 1948”. Further revolts like the Occupy movement are to be expected.
The attack on civil rights under the Obama administration is even worse than under George W. Bush says Chris Hedges. With the escalation of drone attacks and the White House “kill list” American citizens can be killed without trial. The espionage act is used to silence whistleblowers as in the case of former CIA-employee Kiriakou who has been sentenced to 30 months in prison after exposing war crimes. Under the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) citizens can be detained without due process for an infinite time. As the law applies to journalists as well Hedges has sued the Obama administration – and was proven right by District Judge Katherine B. Forrest.
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.
see
Obey–Film Based on Chris Hedges’ Death of the Liberal Class
Profiting From Human Misery by Chris Hedges
NDAA: Hedges v. Obama: Did The Bill of Rights Die Today? by Jill Dalton
The NDAA and the Death of the Democratic State by Chris Hedges
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Excellent summary of the state of the “Union” evidently recorded on the occasion of the Judge Forrest ruling.
Canadian academic Margaret MacMillan (2008) wrote a superb book “The Uses and Abuses of History.” I highly recommend this for its pellucid analysis of how selective historiography influences and even determines our cultural narratives by supporting national myths, so often with dire consequences.