Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges ~ ‘Last thing US wants in the world is democracy. It wants control’ [Video]

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RT  April 28 2014

he crisis in Ukraine and the steadily dropping temperature in relations between Moscow and Washington made many talk about a new Cold War; and many others are worried it may turn ‘hot’. But there’s another war going on right now: the information war. US Secretary of State Kerry has already attacked RT, calling it “Putin’s propaganda machine.”

[youtube=http://youtu.be/OZnKKMFL6no&w=500]

But Washington itself uses dubious evidence and fake facts. What is the information war? What methods is America using? Sophie talks to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and veteran correspondent Chris Hedges.

“We Are No Longer a Nation Ruled By Laws”

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WashingtonsBlog  May 5 2014

The U.S. Supreme Court Decision … Means the Nation Has Entered a Post-Constitutional Era

Pulitzer prize winning reporter Chris Hedges – along with journalist Naomi Wolf, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, activist Tangerine Bolen and others – sued the government to join the NDAA’s allowance of the indefinite detention of Americans.

The trial judge in the case asked the government attorneys 5 times whether journalists like Hedges could be indefinitely detained simply for interviewing and then writing about bad guys.

The government refused to promise that journalists like Hedges won’t be thrown in a dungeon for the rest of their lives without any right to talk to a judge.

The trial judge ruled that the indefinite detention bill was unconstitutional, holding:

This Court rejects the government’s suggestion that American citizens can be placed in military detention indefinitely, for acts they could not predict might subject them to detention.

But the court of appeal overturned that decision, based upon the assumption that limited the NDAA to non-U.S. citizens: Continue reading →

‘We Steal Secrets’: State Agitprop

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TruthDig June 2 2013

Alex GibneyAlex Gibney’s new film, “We Steal Secrets,” is about WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. It dutifully peddles the state’s contention that WikiLeaks is not a legitimate publisher and that Bradley Manning, who allegedly passed half a million classified Pentagon and State Department documents to WikiLeaks, is not a legitimate whistle-blower. It interprets acts of conscience and heroism by Assange and Manning as misguided or criminal. It holds up the powerful—who are responsible for the plethora of war crimes Manning and Assange exposed—as, by comparison, trustworthy and reasonable. Manning is portrayed as a pitiful, naive and sexually confused young man. Assange, who created the WikiLeaks site so whistle-blowers could post information without fear of being traced, is presented as a paranoid, vindictive megalomaniac and a sexual deviant. “We Steal Secrets” is agitprop for the security and surveillance state.

Rebels are typically a bundle of contradictions and incongruities. They are often difficult people whom the dominant systems of power abused at a young age. They have the intelligence needed to dissect the workings of power, and to devise mechanisms to fight back. German Jewish intellectuals in the Nazi era such as Hannah Arendt, writers such as James Baldwin, who was gay as well as black, and the revolutionary Frantz Fanon, a black writer and psychiatrist raised in the French colony of Martinique, all were outsiders, even outcasts. Like these three, Manning and Assange rose out of personal troubles to ask the questions traditional rebels ask, and they responded as traditional rebels respond.

“The initial presentation of the story was that Bradley Manning was a pure political figure, like a Daniel Ellsberg,” Gibney told The Daily Beast in an interview in January. “I don’t think that’s a sufficient explanation of why he did what he did. I think he was alienated; he was in agony personally over a number of issues. He was lonely and very needy. And I think he had an identity crisis. He had this idea that he was in the wrong body and wanted to become a woman, and these issues are not just prurient. I think it raises big issues about who whistleblowers are, because they are alienated people who don’t get along with people around them, which motivates them to do what they do.”

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Rob Kall ~ Book Review: Andrew Kreig’s Presidential Puppetry: Obama, Romney And Their Masters

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OpEd News | November 2 2012

Read “Presidential Puppetry: Obama, Romney and Their Masters,” a book just published this week by OpEd News contributor Andrew Kreig. and you’ll learn a lot more than you could have imagined, and you’ll start seeing the world, politics, and the justice system in a very different, clearer, smarter way.

This book exposes the puppet masters who pull the strings of leading officials in both major U.S. parties, including Obama and Romney.

Obama, for example, is reported to have worked for a CIA front company, Business International Corporation, in his early twenties. At the time, he was dating, in his first serious love affair, Genevieve Cook, the daughter of the head of Australia’s CIA.

Obama thus developed, like George Herbert Walker Bush and Bill Clinton, career-enhancing intelligence connections in his early 20s, according to the book, which draws on declassified CIA materials and other reports. Obama’s formative ties are just one of many examples of how the military-industrial complex and its Wall Street allies maintain a special relationship with presidents no matter which party prevails in any given election.

The reporting is entertaining and cutting-edge, and provides the kind of information we in the independent press believe vital to informed decision-making.

As a publisher of the author Andrew Kreig’s work, I confess to looking forward to publishing his postings because he combines investigative journalism with constitutional scholarship.

This book takes his investigations to the next level, connecting the dots to unveil a big picture that is startling, yet not surprising at all. At nearly 500 pages and 850 footnotes, the book goes into great depth to reveal the goals of those directing the candidates.

For example, I wrote last week that Mitt Romney should be regarded as “Bishop Romney” because his experience in that LDS post is longer and more relevant to voters than his single term as governor. Kreig’s book amplifies that theme into a full historical context regarding Bishop Romney and his ascendancy within the revamped, tea party-oriented GOP. From that background, Kreig portrays Romney as inspired by his sense of destiny to elevate his church and its flock in the tradition of its founder, who was assassinated during his 1844 campaign for the United States presidency.

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Chris Hedges Interview ~ The Template For Harvesting America, Sacrifice Zones And Blood (Part 2)

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SGTReport | October 27 2012 | Thanks, A.L.

This is part two of a two part transcript that’s over 5000 words.

In this interview, Chris Hedges talks about the template being used to harvest America– at the expense of the middle class, the sacrifice zones feeling the most pain, and the blood price we’ve paid for the rights they are trying to take away.

Thanks to ON volunteer Don Caldarazzo    for help with the transcription process.

Rob Kall: Okay, so there were definitely problems.  How do you see the big picture evolving then, with resistance, with civil disobedience?  What are the next steps?

Chris Hedges: Well, it’s the Ruling Class that determines the parameters of rebellion. And I’ve covered movements all over the world. I’ve covered the revolutions in Eastern Europe, I covered both of the Palestinian uprisings, the Intifadas, I covered the street demonstrations that brought down Slobodan Milosevic, I’ve of course covered the collapse of Yugoslavia itself. And when the ruling elite cannot respond rationally, i.e. institute mechanisms to mitigate the despair, and anger, and frustration that has been visited on the population, then there is always a backlash, but no one, not even the purported leaders of movements, have any idea, number one, what will set it off, and [two] what it will look like.  But that “something” is coming, I have no doubt, especially having spent the last two years in the poorest pockets of the United States. And I just want to throw in, that the reason I did it with Joe Sacco, and fifty pages of the book are illustrated with drawings and comic panels that outlined people’s lives, give them a kind of filmic quality, is because these people are invisible, and these Sacrifice Zones are invisible, the Corporate Media, especially the airwaves, just virtually don’t cover it at all.  You know, things are only getting worse. The fact that Congress refused to extend unemployment benefits means that hundreds of thousands of Americans are going to be thrust into destitution, and tens of thousands of those people are going to lose their homes.

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