Free Republic

Editor’s Note: There are many ways in which I often disagree with Caitlin Johnstone. I absolutely respect her intellect and writing skill and most of the time I agree with her perspectives, but sometimes we diverge. On the issue of Ukraine, I agree with her wholeheartedly. Just as Americans woke up to the realities of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, opposing them eventually despite widely approving of them in the beginning, so too do I hope more Americans will realize we’re being sold a false narrative in order to get our dollars and potentially our troops over to one of...

In an interview with Chris Hedges in 2010, Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned linguist and dissident intellectual, remarked that he has “never seen anything like this.” By this, he meant the state of American society, relative to the time in which he was raised — the Depression years — and to the tumultuous state of Europe during that same period. “It is very similar to late Weimar Germany,” Chomsky said. “The parallels are striking. There was also tremendous disillusionment with the parliamentary system. The most striking fact about Weimar was not that the Nazis managed to destroy the Social Democrats and...

Former New York Times Middle East bureau chief Chris Hedges said he was disinvited to speak at a University of Pennsylvania conference following a column comparing Israel to ISIS. Hedges, now a columnist for the Truthdig.com website, was to speak at an April forum on prospects for peace in the Middle East sponsored by the university’s International Affairs Association. Zachary Michael Belnavis, a student leader of the association, wrote to the lecture agency that his group didn’t see Hedges as a “suitable fit” for the conference. …

Former New York Times Middle East bureau chief Chris Hedges was uninvited from speaking at a University of Pennsylvania conference following the publication of an incendiary column. That column, from December 15, closely compares Israel to the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist organization. Hedges, who now works as a columnist for Truthdig.com, was scheduled to speak April 3 at a forum on prospects for peace in the Middle East sponsored by the Philadelphia university's International Affairs Association. Zachary Michael Belnavis, a student leader of the association, complained to the lecture agency that his group felt Hedges was not a "suitable fit"...

Despite a mainstream media blackout on the topic, the alternative media is abuzz with this week’s hearing on the constitutionality of the clearly unconstitutional NDAA. In case you don’t remember, section 1021 of the NDAA, which Obama signed into law on December 31 of last year, allows the government to lock up U.S. citizens indefinitely without a trial. At the time of signing, Obama penned a pathetic letter to many of his outraged supporters where he basically said he signed it but he won’t use it. Thanks pal! In any event, the Administration is showing its true colors by appealing...

The United States, locked in the kind of twilight disconnect that grips dying empires, is a country entranced by illusions. It spends its emotional and intellectual energy on the trivial and the absurd. It is captivated by the hollow stagecraft of celebrity culture as the walls crumble. This celebrity culture giddily licenses a dark voyeurism into other people’s humiliation, pain, weakness and betrayal. Day after day, one lurid saga after another, whether it is Michael Jackson, Britney Spears or John Edwards, enthralls the country … despite bank collapses, wars, mounting poverty or the criminality of its financial class.

This week marks the end of the dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency. It marks the start of a terrible period of economic and political decline in the United States. And it signals the last gasp of the American imperium. That’s over. It is not coming back. And what is to come will be very, very painful. Barack Obama, and the criminal class on Wall Street, aided by a corporate media that continues to peddle fatuous gossip and trash talk as news while we endure the greatest economic crisis in our history, may have fooled us, but the rest...

Surprise! Surprise! Former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges has admitted what almost anyone familiar with his reality-challenged rantings already knew: he is a socialist. Hedges explains in Truthdig Why I Am a Socialist (emphasis mine): The corporate forces that are looting the Treasury and have plunged us into a depression will not be contained by the two main political parties. The Democratic and Republican parties have become little more than squalid clubs of privilege and wealth, whores to money and corporate interests, hostage to a massive arms industry, and so adept at deception and self-delusion they no longer know...

Surprise! Surprise! Former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges has admitted what almost anyone familiar with his reality-challenged rantings already knew: he is a socialist. Hedges explains in Truthdig Why I Am a Socialist (emphasis mine): The corporate forces that are looting the Treasury and have plunged us into a depression will not be contained by the two main political parties. The Democratic and Republican parties have become little more than squalid clubs of privilege and wealth, whores to money and corporate interests, hostage to a massive arms industry, and so adept at deception and self-delusion they no longer know...

"The nation’s elite universities disdain honest intellectual inquiry, which is by its nature distrustful of authority, fiercely independent and often subversive. They organize learning around minutely specialized disciplines, narrow answers and rigid structures that are designed to produce certain answers." ~ Chris Hedges This is an excellent piece about the state of higher education in America, the elites who run it, and what it's producing. Hedges, a self-proclaimed atheist who holds a seminary degree from Harvard, brilliantly diagnoses the elitist attitude in higher education and its rotten fruit. . .

Former NYT Bureau Chief: I Won't Pay Taxes If U.S. Battles Iran By Matthew Sheffield Created 2007-11-23 10:10 Considering how many hyperventilating media leftists broke their promises to leave the country if George W. Bush won reelection in 2004, I'm not exactly holding out hope we'll see the IRS arrest former New York Times bigwig Chris Hedges (file photo at right) anytime soon. Hedges, if you recall, was the paper's former Middle Eastern bureau chief who became more famous (infamous rather) for his lengthy anti-war diatribe during a 2003 speech [1] to graduates of Rockford College. The devoutly left-wing Hedges...

A new book that is climbing the New York Times Bestseller List warns Americans of a dedicated minority of religious fanatics who are hijacking a great religion and actively working to destroy the United States Constitution and set up a theocracy in America, in which nonbelievers will be discriminated against or even summarily killed. Nor is their nefarious vision confined to the United States alone: this small but influential and wealthy band of religious zealots is also trying to turn events in the Middle East to their own advantage, so as to advance their religious agenda there also. Osama bin...

Breezing through the bookstore at Reagan National Airport the other day, I came across a new volume with the intriguing yet subtle title, American Fascists – The Christian Right and The War on America by former New York Times' correspondent Chris Hedges. But, as the saying goes, tell us what you really think. No hyperbole here. In the introduction, Hedges makes it clear that he actually is comparing evangelical opponents of abortion and gay marriage to the monsters who burned books, ran death camps and plunged humanity into a world war that left 63 million dead. Except it’s Hedges who...

January 18, 2007, 7:30 a.m. Hedges Drops the F-BombPulitzer talent takes on the Right -- and comes up short. By Anthony Dick As a novice back in the 1960s, a professor I know made the rookie mistake of holding open a door for a female student. Seeing his attempt at chivalry, she froze with indignation — face reddening, fists clenching — and shrieked: “Fascist!” Then she wheeled around on her heel and stomped away. The reality behind this vignette persists even today: the shrill, quixotic paranoia of the activist in search of a grievance. It is evoked anew by...

American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America Chris Hedges reviewed by Prof. Jon Wiener Free Press / 256 pages / $25 American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America is a call to arms against what Hedges sees as the efforts of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and the operators of Trinity Broadcasting Network, among others, to turn the United States into a Christian nation. ...In American Fascists, Hedges reports in fascinating detail what goes on inside the churches, conventions and meeting halls of the Christian right. He attends a "Love Won Out" conference in Boston,...

Extremism: Radical preachers offer a magical world for battered believers.The engine that drives the radical Christian right in the United States - the most dangerous mass movement in American history - is not religiosity, but despair. It is a movement built on the growing personal and economic despair of tens of millions of Americans, who watched helplessly as their communities were plunged into poverty by the flight of manufacturing jobs, their families and neighborhoods torn apart by neglect and indifference, and who eventually lost hope that America was a place where they had a future. This despair crosses economic boundaries,...

When things get bad in the United States it is reassuring to turn to Canada, a country with a high standard of living, a small military and a national healthcare plan. Canada always seemed to be, if a bit duller than America, also a bit saner. But this is changing. The new Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, inspired by the neocons to the south, appears determined to visit the worst excesses of George Bush's Presidency on his own country. He plans to pull Canada out of the Kyoto Protocol and expand military spending. He defended Israel's massive bombing of southern...

DePaul University is rapidly becoming ground zero in the battle to reform academia’s corrupted political culture. For the third time in less than a year the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has publicly rebuked the university for its politically motivated abridgment of free speech, this time for shutting down an anti-affirmative action bake sale and threatening to punish one of the organizers for violation of a newly instituted anti-discrimination policy. The DePaul Conservative Alliance set up a table in the Student Center where they were selling cookies and suggesting differing prices based on race, ethnicity and gender. It...

The New York Times scandal seems to be deepening on a daily basis as the Rockford Register Star reports that a Times reporter was booed off the stage during a commencement address. This past Saturday, New York Times reporter Chris Hedges was literally unable to finish his speech at Rockford College's graduation, because the graduates and their families were unwilling to sit through an antiwar diatribe. His 18 minute speech denouncing the United States as a tyranny over the weak ended after only three minutes as his microphone was unplugged. Meanwhile, the audience reacted with loud boos and blaring foghorns....

By . Posted 7:28:00 AM The New York Times scandal seems to be deepening on a daily basis as the Rockford Register Star reports that a Times reporter was booed off the stage during a commencement address. This past Saturday, New York Times reporter Chris Hedges was literally unable to finish his speech at Rockford College's graduation, because the graduates and their families were unwilling to sit through an antiwar diatribe. His 18 minute speech denouncing the United States as a tyranny over the weak ended after only three minutes as his microphone was unplugged. Meanwhile, the audience reacted with...