The Chris Hedges Report: A Similar Song with a Better Band
A Similar Song with a Better Band
[Image: Hedges and Mr. Fish pay tribute to Bob Scheer]
Publication date: 2022-04-27
Update 2022-04-29: An update section notes the new financial blockade against some independent journalists and a publisher and puts that into a larger context.
Update 2022-05-03: added that ConsortiumNews has also be included in PayPal’s blocking of funds to independent publications.
Chris Hedges is one the great USA reporters and authors of our age. He had to resign from the New York Times due to his opposition to the 2003 Iraq war. As a then Arabic speaker and the 7 year Middle East Bureau Chief for the Times his opposition came from an informed perspective, not that this mattered to the Times' editors.
He attempted to unionize the writers at TruthDig to protect the editor, Bob Scheer (of Ramparts Magazine fame). Scheer then established Scheerpost on a shoestring budget for which Chris has been writing and the indomitable Mr. Fish has been providing his graphical talent.
Hedges recently joined a parade of many of today's best journalists in striking out into a reader funded model. His intention is to write and publish one written and one video piece per week.
His new written pieces are published both at his Substack site, and at Scheerpost. His new video work “The Chris Hedges Report” is published and produced by The Real News Network (TRNN). Chris Hedges' old show "Days of Revolt" was funded and published by teleSUR. The Real News Network provided the production team and also published the show.
In two published video pieces for the new “The Chris Hedges Report” (provided in Sources below) we see and hear a continuation of Hedges' earlier work for teleSUR/TRNN and his later show, "On Contact" via RT America. The video introduction sequence uses the same music as the "Days of Revolt" series. Hedges' guests are authors as per "On Contact".
Fittingly, Prof Cornel West joins Hedges for the inaugural interview. They are colleagues and friends. When Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning was being tried by the military, they got in a car and together and drove down to be at the trial, to hear, to see the proceedings, and lend moral support to Manning. Earlier Hedges and West had participated in Occupy Wall Street and many other civil protests.
While they are both intellectuals, they are not of the “armchair” variety. Its is a truism that "public intellectuals" need to be amongst the public. Hedges and West turn up. They act. They provide voice and witness. For this reason you will rarely either read or see them on any USA corporate media platform.
[Image: The title screen for “Days of Revolt”]
The "Days of Revolt" show helped this author to learn about structural oppression. The guest list is quite astounding: present are Cornel West (obviously), Allan Nairn, Vijay Prashad, Jill Stein, and Michael Hudson. There were many more who were active in causes of the time, who remain less well known.
Many of Hedges' speeches can be found on-line. He is a powerful and inspiring orator.
I hope that Hedges' new works in words and video are as inspiring for you as his previous works have been for this author.
Update
Following the death of just under 300 people aboard Malaysian Airlines flight 17 when it was attacked and crashed over the airspace of the Ukraine in 2014, the EU applied serious economic sanctions against Russia. The legal case examining responsibility is likely to conclude later this year. Thus, 8 years later the legal case remains incomplete, while the political sanctions war continues.
One of the consequences of the sanctions applied to Russia was to force Russia to establish her own industries to replace those which were impacted by the economic restrictions. A consequence of the "economic coercive measures" is to create further economic independence by the targeted nation. Short term damage is done. In the longer term, the target is strengthened. A horticultural analogy would be "pruning".
The parade of independent journalists moving to viewer/reader funded models can similarly be seen as a response to the shadow banning, de-listing, smearing, censoring and financial blocking of dissenting opinion. Just recently Mint Press News and journalist Alan MacLeod have been denied use of PayPal for unspecified reasons.
With sadness we must add ConsortiumNews to this blockade:
This progression of narrative control measures begins with the trial balloon of the coordinated removal of Alex Jones. Thereafter we see this constant escalation of efforts to remove non-approved narrative, with the current method being attacking payment delivery.
If you wont accept our money and editors, then we’ll block you receiving subscription fees!
The inaugural case for this was the financial blockade of Wikileaks. The result was Wikileaks turning to Bitcoin. This later yielded huge benefits to Wikileaks as the value of Bitcoin skyrocketed from around 30 to 38 000 USD per Bitcoin. There are no comprehensible numbers to express this in percentage terms.
[Image: from Tradingview]
Action creates reaction, noted Sir Isaac Newton in his colossal work of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (careful, 320 page PDF of the original work) of 1687.
Perhaps the control managers need to learn a little high school physics?
Sources
Ramparts Magazine Archives, The Unz Review, (14 Years, 131 Issues, 1,566 Articles, 9,250pp)
Note: one needs to choose a year and issue, and then an article. One can then download the document as PDF, which is far superior to using on-line PDF viewers. All articles will receive “document.pdf” as their name, which is unhelpful. Form a strategy for naming and add it yourself: year, issue, title, and author, perhaps.
The Chris Hedges Report, Chris Hedges, his new newsletter
Category: Chris Hedges, Chris Hedges, Scheerpost
The Chris Hedges Report, Chris Hedges (video work), TRNN
The Ballad of Bob & Tracy, Chris Hedges and Mr. Fish, Scheerpost, 2022-04-03
Pay attention to the video in “The Ballad of Bob and Tracy”. Watch it a second time and pause in places. What is the publication which Hedges holds in his first shot? Which album is Mr. Fish holding?
The Chris Hedges Report with Dr. Cornel West, Hedges and West, TRNN, 2022-04-15
The Chris Hedges Report: Ukraine and the ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ victims of war, Hedges interview Peter Oborne, TRNN, 2022-04-22
There would be a link here to a collection of the "On Contact" shows, but Youtube has deleted them all; a book burning for the modern age.
Chris Hedges - Days of Revolt (playlist), debyte, youtube channel last updated 2016-06-01
This effort by debyte to compile an archive of "Days of Revolt" is incomplete. Some of its videos are removed.
Days of Revolt, TeleSUR English, youtube playlist, last updated 2016-06-21
TeleSUR's playlist of the show does not have some elements which are contained in the upper playlist. It is nigh impossible to obtain a complete archive of "Days of Revolt".
PayPal Blocks Multiple Alternative Media Figures Critical Of US Empire Narratives, Caitlin Johnstone, her newsletter, 2022-04-29
Online Censorship of Ukraine Dissent Is Becoming the New Norm, Alan Macleod, Scheerpost, 2022-04-28
In A Corporatist System Of Government, Corporate Censorship Is State Censorship, Caitlin Johnstone, Consortium News, 2018-08-10
Wikileaks in Iceland court victory over payments blockade, BBC, 2013-04-25
RSS
For persons who employ RSS, here are RSS feeds for Hedges' new site, and TRNN. The TRNN feed is for all of its work, not just that of Hedges.
https://chrishedges.substack.com/feed/
https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCrmm_7RDZJeQzq2-wvmjueg
Culture
Inspired by and in honor of Prof. West, some blues are offered in a pair of couplets.
The self taught Robert Johnson invented many forms of the blues. To echo this masterful member of the prophetic black tradition, one of the greatest of modern guitar and blues players, a white man, pays tribute. In both of the paired pieces one hears the signatory “12 Bar Blues” as it was born and lives on.
Walkin’ Blues, by Robert Johnson then covered by Eric Clapton:
Ramblin’ on My Mind, by Robert Johnson then covered by Clapton:
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Copyright and Licensing
This work is copyright to the blog's author with CC BY-SA 4.0 licensing. Have fun, reuse, remix etc. but give credit and place no further restrictions. Lets build culture.