The Trump kleptocrats are political arsonists. They are carting cans of gasoline into government agencies and Congress to burn down any structure or program that promotes the common good and impedes corporate profit. They ineptly have set themselves on fire over Obamacare, but this misstep will do little to halt
Continue readingAuthor: Chris Hedges
Canadian Dimension: James Baldwin and the Meaning of Whiteness
Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro is one of the finest documentaries I have ever seen—I would have stayed in the theater in New York to see the film again if the next showing had not been sold out. The newly released film powerfully illustrates, through James Baldwin’s prophetic
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: It’s Worse Than You Think
Photo by Richard Drew/AP Widespread social unrest will ignite when Donald Trump’s base realizes it has been betrayed. I do not know when this will happen. But that it will happen is certain. Investments in the stocks of the war industry, internal security and the prison-industrial complex have skyrocketed since
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: The 1 Percent’s Useful Idiots
Photo by Gage Skidmore
PHILADELPHIA—The parade of useful idiots, the bankrupt liberal class that long ago sold its soul to corporate power, is now led by Sen. Bernie Sanders. His final capitulation, symbolized…
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Bernie Sanders’ Phantom Movement
Photo by Gage Skidmore
Bernie Sanders, who has attracted numerous young, white, college-educated supporters in his bid for the presidency, says he is creating a movement and promises a political revolution. This…
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Why I Support the BDS Movement Against Israel
Illustration by Mataparda (Adapted from an original photo by Ashraf Amra) The Palestinians are poor. They are powerless. They have no voice or influence in the halls of power. They are demonized. They do not have well-heeled lobbyists doling out campaign contributions and pushing through pro-Palestinian legislation. No presidential candidate
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: The Lonely American
“Time Square Caught Napping” • Photo by Nana B Agyei Michael P. Printup, president of Watkins Glen International, one of the country’s largest racetracks, stood with a group of about a dozen race fans at 8:30 a.m. Saturday. Next to him were boxes of free doughnuts and coffee. A line
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: A Nation of Snitches
Graphic created by EFF Senior Designer Hugh D’Andrade. A totalitarian state is only as strong as its informants. And the United States has a lot of them. They read our emails. They listen to, download and store our phone calls. They photograph us on street corners, on subway platforms, in
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Make the Rich Panic
Photo by Dorret It does not matter to the corporate rich who wins the presidential election. It does not matter who is elected to Congress. The rich have the power. They throw money at their favorites the way a gambler puts cash on his favorite horse. Money has replaced the
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: No One Is Free Until All Are Free
Illustration by Denitza Tchacarova This column is adapted from a talk Chris Hedges gave Friday night at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. VANCOUVER, British Columbia—The scourge of male violence against women will not end if we dismantle the forces of global capitalism. The scourge of male violence exists independently of
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: The Most Dangerous Woman in America
Photo by Shannon Kringen SEATTLE—Kshama Sawant, the socialist on the City Council, is up for re-election this year. Since joining the council in January of 2014 she has helped push through a gradual raising of the minimum wage to $15 an hour in Seattle. She has expanded funding for social
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Tariq Ali: The Time Is Right for a Palace Revolution
Photo by Rafael Tovar PRINCETON, N.J.—Tariq Ali is part of the royalty of the left. His more than 20 books on politics and history, his seven novels, his screenplays and plays and his journalism in the Black Dwarf newspaper, the New Left Review and other publications have made him one
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: We Kill Our Revolutionaries
The State Penitentiary for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Lithograph by P.S: Duval and Co., 1855. YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio—Siddique Hasan, his legs shackled to a chair, sat in the fourth-floor visiting room of the Ohio State Penitentiary, a supermax prison. The room, surrounded by thick glass windows, had a guard booth
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: ‘Pornography Is What the End of the World Looks Like’
Bacchanal with a wine vat (c. 1475) by Andrea Mantegna BOSTON—Fifty Shades of Grey, the book and the movie, is a celebration of the sadism that dominates nearly every aspect of American culture and lies at the core of pornography and global capitalism. It glorifies our dehumanization of women. It
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: The Terror We Give Is the Terror We Get
Photo by U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Daniel St. Pierre We fire missiles from the sky that incinerate families huddled in their houses. They incinerate a pilot cowering in a cage. We torture hostages in our black sites and choke them to death by stuffing rags down their throats. They torture
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Malcolm X Was Right About America
Photo from Public Domain NEW YORK—Malcolm X, unlike Martin Luther King Jr., did not believe America had a conscience. For him there was no great tension between the lofty ideals of the nation—which he said were a sham—and the failure to deliver justice to blacks. He, perhaps better than King,
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Killing Ragheads for Jesus
A combat operation in Fallujah on the 9th of Nov 2004 • Photo by SFC Johancharles Van Boers “American Sniper” lionizes the most despicable aspects of U.S. society—the gun culture, the blind adoration of the military, the belief that we have an innate right as a “Christian” nation to exterminate
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: A Message From the Dispossessed
28 Millimeters Portraits of a Generation, Braquage, Ladj Ly by JR, Les Bosquets, Montfermeil, 2004 The terrorist attack in France that took place at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo was not about free speech. It was not about radical Islam. It did not illustrate the fictitious clash of civilizations. It
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Why We Need Professional Revolutionists
Photo by David Berkowitz No revolt can succeed without professional revolutionists. These revolutionists live outside the formal structures of society. They are financially insecure—Vladimir Lenin spent considerable time in exile appealing for money from disenchanted aristocrats he would later dispossess. They dedicate their lives to fomenting radical change. They do
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: A Society of Captives
Photo by Tony Webster Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plans to launch a pilot program in New York City to place body cameras on police officers and conduct training seminars to help them reduce their adrenaline rushes and abusive language, along with the establishment of a less stringent marijuana policy, are
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