Noted Journalist Chris Hedges Delivers the Real State of the Nation for 2013 (VIDEO)
Skippy Massey
Humboldt Sentinel
In only 10 minutes, author-activist-journalist and scholar Chris Hedges sums up nicely the true state of the nation for 2013.
During the panel discussion entitled “The Occupy Movement and Economic Inequality: Occupy the Future“ at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and carried nationally on C-Span on December 6, 2012, he discusses how problems with the current political system sparked the Occupy movement and the current assault happening on civil liberties, the economy, the environment, and the rise of corporate and judicial power over individuals.
His views and opinion are something the mainstream media won’t report on nor tell you about. Hear him out. Having an excellent command of history and facts, he may rock your world as to what’s really going on. You may not hear it anywhere else.
Who is Chris Hedges? That’s a good question.
He spent two decades as a foreign war correspondent and bureau chief in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans and has reported from more than 50 countries.
He’s worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. He was also captured and held prisoner by the Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a news correspondent.
Mr. Hedges was part of the team of reporters at The New York Times awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism. He received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002.
A senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City and having taught at Columbia University, New York University and Princeton University, he currently teaches inmates at a correctional facility in New Jersey.
Mr. Hedges began his career reporting the war in El Salvador. Following six years in Latin America, he took time off to study Arabic and then went to Jerusalem and later Cairo. He spent seven years in the Middle East, most of them as bureau chief for The New York Times. He left the Middle East in 1995 for Sarajevo to cover the war in Bosnia and later reported the war in Kosovo. Afterward, he joined the Times’ investigative team and was based in Paris to cover al-Qaida. He left the Times after being issued a formal reprimand for denouncing the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq.
He has written twelve books, including “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt” (2012), “Death of the Liberal Class” (2010), “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009), “I Don’t Believe in Atheists” (2008) and the best-selling “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America” (2008). His book “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” (2003) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.
Hedges holds a B.A. in English literature from Colgate University and a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Starr King School for the
Ministry in Berkeley, Calif.
Mr. Hedges is fluent in Arabic, French, Spanish, ancient Greek and Latin. In addition to writing a weekly original column for Truthdig, he has written for Harper’s Magazine, The New Statesman, The New York Review of Books, Adbusters, Granta, Foreign Affairs and other publications.
