Every Monday one of the first things I do is check the latest article by Chris Hedges on the web site Truthdig. Hedges, who writes a weekly column for Truthdig is one of the great contemporary American journalists. Hedges writes about corporate power and political power like no one else. I am also waiting to read his new book Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectaclewhich explores the mechanisms that divert us from confronting the economic, environmental, political and moral crises confronting us.
Here's an extract from his most recent piece http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090810_nader_was_right_liberals_are_going_nowhere_with_obama/
"The American empire has not altered under Barack Obama. It kills as brutally and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under George W. Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury to enrich the corporate elite as rapaciously. It will not give us universal health care, abolish the Bush secrecy laws, end torture or “extraordinary rendition,” restore habeas corpus or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of citizens. It will not push through significant environmental reform, regulate Wall Street or end our relationship with private contractors that provide mercenary armies to fight our imperial wars and produce useless and costly weapons systems.
...... It is the same old merry-go-round, only with Obama branding. And if we have not learned by now that the system is broken, that as citizens we do not matter to our political elite, that we live in a corporate state where our welfare and our interests are irrelevant, we are in serious trouble".
No comments:
Post a Comment