Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent and author, had this to say about the “Occupy Wall Street” movement last week:
“The only word that these corporations know is ‘more’…There is no way within the American system to vote against Goldman Sachs...Speculation in the 17th century was a crime. Speculators were hanged. Today they run the state and the financial markets… And of course the working class and the poor, and increasingly the middle class, have to pay the price.”
On September 29th, Hedges also wrote on Truthdig.org:
There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.
...The only word these corporations know is more. They are disemboweling every last social service program funded by the taxpayers, from education to Social Security, because they want that money themselves. Let the sick die. Let the poor go hungry. Let families be tossed in the street. Let the unemployed rot. Let children in the inner city or rural wastelands learn nothing and live in misery and fear. Let the students finish school with no jobs and no prospects of jobs. Let the prison system, the largest in the industrial world, expand to swallow up all potential dissenters. Let torture continue. Let teachers, police, firefighters, postal employees and social workers join the ranks of the unemployed. Let the roads, bridges, dams, levees, power grids, rail lines, subways, bus services, schools and libraries crumble or close. Let the rising temperatures of the planet, the freak weather patterns, the hurricanes, the droughts, the flooding, the tornadoes, the melting polar ice caps, the poisoned water systems, the polluted air increase until the species dies.
Who the hell cares? If the stocks of ExxonMobil or the coal industry or Goldman Sachs are high, life is good. Profit. Profit. Profit. That is what they chant behind those metal barricades. Read full article, The Best Among Us, at Truthdig.org.
More links:
Claiming Joy & Healing Amidst the Climate Emergency 
6 responses to “Chris Hedges: At This Moment In History, Either You Are A Rebel Or A Slave”
Have you seen the video of Chris Hedges being interviewed on CBC? It’s pretty disgraceful of Canadian media. Kevin O’Leary comes off particularly dense, and the video ends with Hedges stating he’ll never come on the show again. (Partway through he compared the interview to something Fox News would conduct.) Here’s the link:
http://rabble.ca/rabbletv/program-guide/2011/10/best-net/cbcs-kevin-oleary-gets-schooled-occupy-movement-chris-hedges
Thanks for the link, Scott. O’Leary is an embarrassment to the rest of us Canadians. And how low the CBC has fallen, that he qualifies for a job in their newsroom!
I’m glad somebody gets it.
Really pretty easy to understand if you possess a little historical perspective.
I do believe that a(one of several) reason we “refuse to get it” is that, in general, Americans believe that they are both “right” and that their system is “better”.
In till WE (yes, I am an American) are able to admit to ourselves that we are not infallible, that we don’t have all the answers, that there might be a better way, nothing can or will change.
we must look within ourselves and ask hard question that we might not like the answer to.
This IS NOT an American problem. This is a world problem. The same mentality that drives the American corporate machine drives that of the rest of the worlds corporations.
The bottom line is the bottom line and the bottom line is MORE MORE MORE.
peace to our Northern Brothers.
clint
With Occupy Wall Street, Clint, you, our Southern neighbours, may hold the key to changing the future for everyone on this planet for the better. Peace and courage to you all!
Ask any botanist about how higher co2 produces quicker and larger yields in crops. Using logic and reasoning, one can deduce that increased co2 would increase the trees and other plant life and increasing oxygen. May help crop yields which in turn would help feed billions of starving people. Plants breathe co2 and expire oxygen.
Nonsense – feces performs an important role in our bodies and the ecosystem in general, but that doesn’t mean we want it piled up all over the room; the same holds true for unrestrained CO2 emissions.
Skeptical Science puts it slightly more scientifically:
A quick look at the science behind this argument demonstrates its inherent weaknesses. In closed, controlled environments, like greenhouses and plant nurseries, an increase in CO2 does indeed spur plant growth. However, the globe is not a controlled environment, and it’s incredible sensitivity to a variety of factors is something that is often taken for granted when such narrow arguments are proffered. A rise in CO2 levels is not the only consequence of climate change, and it is these other effects that have had and will have more abiding adverse effects on plant growth around the world.
While CO2 is an important element that stimulates plant growth, the planet’s flora requires a cocktail of elements to maintain its health. Arguably the most important of these elements is water. With the global increase in temperature caused by the various factors affecting our climate’s balance, increased evaporation means decreased soil moisture. Another effect of global climate change is erratic precipitation patterns. This causes extreme weather in certain geographic locations only sporadically, with overall, balanced rainfall drastically reduced.
[…]
[A]t its most basic level, the CO2 plant food argument rests on a simple logical fallacy–the fallacy of exclusion, which focuses on one cause-and-effect (in this case, more CO2 means more plants) to the exclusion of all other cause-and-effect chains. [Skeptical Science, 7/1/2010]