The Chris Hedges Report

Any technology created by the US military industrial complex and adopted by the general public was always bound to come with a caveat. To most, the internet, GPS, touch screen and other ubiquitous technologies are ordinary tools of the modern world. Yet in reality, these technologies serve “dual-uses”; while they convenience typical people, they also enable the mass coercion, surveillance and control of those very same people at the hands of the corporate and military state.

Nolan Higdon and Allison Butler, authors of “Surveillance Education: Navigating the Conspicuous Absence of Privacy in Schools,” join host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report. They explore the software and technology systems employed in K-12 schools and higher education institutions that surveil students, erode minors’ privacy rights and, in the process, discriminate against students of color.

The use of this technology, Higdon explains, is predicated on treating humans as products through surveillance capitalism. “You extract data and information about humans from all these smart technologies, and then you're able to make determinations about their behavior, how they might react to something. And there's a lot of industries that are interested in this,” Higdon tells Hedges.

Butler explains that students, often with no choice in the matter, are subjected to the use of this technology that inherently exploits their data. Because there is an implied consent for it to be used, “The very limited amount of protections that there are to keep minors’ data secure is gone once you have a technology that is put into their classroom,” Butler says. “There's a passive acceptance of this technology.”

Higdon points to changes made by the Obama administration in 2012 to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) as a key factor. These changes allowed for student data to be shared with private companies that serve as educational partners. “Effectively, all of that data that the students rights movement worked to make sure was private was allowed to be distributed to these companies,” Higdon says.

The authors stress the deep impact these technologies have on the fundamental processes of learning in the classroom. “It curtails curiosity, which is essential to the education process,” Higdon says. “The mental trauma and difficulty of closing one of the few spaces where they're able to explore, I think it just speaks to the problem with surveillance and the education process.”

Reporting from Israel in the aftermath of October 7th demands guts and courage. Censorship, rouge military personnel and an entire state hellbent on their goals of national security and ethnic cleansing spells a nightmare for journalists seeking to expose the truth. This nightmare became a reality for Grayzone reporter Jeremy Loffredo, who was detained in Israel in solitary confinement for three days after reporting on the Iranian missile attacks on October 1.

Loffredo joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to review his reporting covering Israel in the U.S., the Occupied Territories and Israel itself—as well as his frightening detainment by the occupying forces. 

From covering Israeli counter protests in New York City to witnessing Israeli settlers obstructing humanitarian aid to Gaza, Loffredo was consistently shocked by the attitude and drive of Israelis. The widespread nature of extreme rhetoric isn’t just isolated to a handful of individuals, Loffredo learned. “It was the first time I heard anyone be so candidly racist and genocidal, and truly, I didn't know the face of fanatical Zionism,” he tells Hedges.

During his time in Israel, Loffredo documented not only more of the genocidal rhetoric and actions from Israelis but also the suffering and bravery of Palestinians. One particular instance involved a woman who, out of a list of 50 previously detained people, was the only one willing to speak to him on record. The others were too frightened of the consequences that telling the truth might bring them. 

Beyond revealing the utterly authoritarian and censorious climate of Israel, Loffredo’s detention and treatment by the IDF and Israeli police also expose the U.S. government’s corrupt devotion to the Jewish State, and how it abandons its purported democratic values when they interfere with the goals of their most “reliable partner” in the Middle East. When an Israeli social worker was sent by the American embassy to do a “wellness check” on Loffredo while he was in solitary confinement, the journalist hoped she would get him food and water, which he had been deprived of for days. Instead, she berated Loffredo because he “hurt Israel” and told him that he’d likely remain in prison for a long time. “That is the only help that the American Embassy afforded me… was giving me this Zionist social worker to berate me because of my reporting and give me no help at all,” Loffredo recounts.

A truly representative and honest voice for the working class—one that takes part in the struggle, resists cozying up to the centers of power, makes tangible, material commitments rather than settling for empty rhetoric—is hard to find in the United States. Kshama Sawant, the socialist and former Seattle City Council member who won the battle for a $15 minimum wage, introduced the Amazon tax and championed unprecedented renter’s rights joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss the 2024 election.

Sawant frames the election as an opportunity to build a worker-led movement, explaining her support for Jill Stein’s campaign and introducing Workers Strike Back, a nationwide organization she co-founded to advance the cause for working people.

“If genocide is not a red line, then there is no red line,” Sawant declares. She emphasizes that while a victory for Stein is not in the cards, Sawant argues that being honest is crucial, especially when the Stein campaign is capable of outlasting this election cycle and become a catalyst for an anti-war, pro-worker movement capable of taking on the big business-backing, warmongering parties.

Sawant says that even if Stein captures only 1% of the vote, it is still a powerful statement: over a million people  reject the two party system. In her experience running for Seattle City Council, she explains how numbers like this can energize and mobilize working people—only if the candidates are honest and upfront about the gains they stand to make. After telling her constituents that she expected to win 1% in her primary but ending up with 9%, “nobody walked home after primary election night feeling demoralized. People walked home thinking, I'm gonna get up tomorrow and fight like hell in the general election,” Sawant tells Hedges.

Sawant insists that the struggle is about changing the lives of working people. Evoking her political history, she describes what it means to be a Marxist: “it means you lead a fight back. It means you show actual examples of class struggle, meaning going up against the forces of capitalism and winning despite all their might and having the strategy of bending the balance of forces towards the working class.” 

“That is what it's all about,” Sawant asserts.

Sawant will continue these thoughts on an election night (November 5) stream on YouTube, analyzing the results and discussing what can happen next for working people.

Donald Trump will become the 47th president of the United States and given the host of global debacles the US has its hands in—ranging from the genocide in Gaza, to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Iran to the Ukraine war—nobody is quite certain what direction the country will take with the former president at the helm again.

Joining host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report is Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. With his extensive insights and expertise into the Middle East and American foreign policy, Wilkerson provides a valuable understanding into what a Trump presidency may look like outside of the borders of America.

Wilkerson predicts Trump will stay true to “his disdain for war,” emphasizing “it's genuine. I don't think he likes war. I don't think he likes starting wars.” Regarding Ukraine, Wilkerson thinks Trump will shut down the war effort. But when it comes to the Middle East, that commitment clashes with one of Trump’s long standing loyalties: unwavering support for Israel.

War with Iran seems increasingly likely by the day despite, according to Wilkerson, resistance from the Pentagon and prior administrations. In the case of Trump, however, “you wonder how long that resistance can hold up if the president of the United States is intent on—and this is the one place where Trump really worries me—doing everything in his power for Israel,” Wilkerson notes. He adds, “Trump has made it quite clear that that's his policy, that's his belief, and I think he's being honest about it.”

Citing war-game simulations, reports, personal sources as well as his own expertise, Wilkerson lays down the reality of potential war with Iran: sheer disaster. With sources saying that the IDF is already taking heavy casualties in Lebanon, any sort of escalation with Iran would compound the suffering of the US and Israel. “Iran will top $10 trillion, take 10 years to pacify, if it's even moderately pacified, and cost a fortune in blood and treasure,” Wilkerson warns.

“The crime of all crimes.” That is how the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda declared genocide in the final judgment of Prosecutor v. Akayesu, the case against the mayor of Taba, Rwanda for crimes against humanity. Today, that crime repeats itself as UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese painfully details in her latest report.

Albanese joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to breakdown her report and present the indisputable evidence that Israel is actively committing a genocide on the Palestinian people.

“The acts of killing, the mass killing, the infliction of psychological and physical torture, the devastation, the creation of conditions of life that would not allow the people in Gaza to live, from the destruction of hospitals, the mass force displacement and the mass homelessness while people were being bombed daily, and the starvation—how can we read these acts in isolation?” Albanese asks.

The UN Special Rapporteur clearly outlines the steps and conditions required to meet the classification of genocide, and in the case of Gaza, it’s undeniable. Albanese tells Hedges, “What is relevant in order to establish that there is genocide is not just the intent behind these crimes, enunciated in Article II of the Genocide Convention; it’s the overall intent, specific intent, to destroy the people—the group as a whole, or in part, as such. And what is the group here? It's the Palestinians.”

Throughout the rest of Albanese’s report are harrowing details of the death and destruction Palestinians endure on a daily basis in countless forms, alongside the horror suffered by non-Palestinians in Gaza. Albanese documents record-breaking numbers: The highest number of journalists killed, the highest number of UN officials killed, the highest number of hospitals targeted, the destruction of all universities, the fastest rate of population starvation. It’s clear, according to Albanese, the scale of devastation the Israelis are inflicting is one of scorched-earth catastrophe.

Decades of Islamophobia, relentless propaganda campaigns and heavily financed lobbying efforts have made it difficult to understand the political realities of the Middle East. John Mearsheimer, prominent political scientist, University of Chicago professor and self-proclaimed realist, has consistently demonstrated the courage and ability to bypass the noise, delivering honest and well-informed analysis on global affairs. He joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to lay out what’s happening in the Middle East, from Israel’s genocide in Gaza to its escalating attacks on Lebanon and Iran.

Netanyahu and his cabinet have resorted to violence and escalation every step of the way thus far and any prediction of what’s to come involves more of the same. “I see [Netanyahu] escalating at every turn,” Mearsheimer tells Hedges. “And I think if you look at what's happening in Lebanon, that fits the pattern that you were describing. They're just going up the escalation ladder, looking and hoping that they can find a solution.”

Israel’s decisions are transforming world politics, with alliances hardening in response to their aggression: Russia and Iran on one side, the U.S. and Israel on the other. Even long-standing religious divides between Shia and Sunnis are beginning to fade as they join forces against Israel’s brutality and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Sunni Hamas, Shia Hezbollah and the Houthis, even the Saudis and Iran are starting to find common ground. “I think what's going on here is that Israel's behavior is so horrible. It's so terrible what they're doing, and America's support of that behavior is so horrible, so terrible, that what's happening is that the divide between Shia and Sunnis is beginning to melt.”

Despite this shift in the region and rising tension with Iran, the U.S. continues to be drawn deeper into the turmoil, with every Israeli provocation pulling its leadership further in— regardless of popular opinion. Mearsheimer says that while the majority of Americans do not support U.S. involvement in Gaza, “that doesn't translate into policy, because the lobby is so deadly effective on Capitol Hill and in dealing with the executive branch.”

He has little hope in change, especially given the precedent of U.S. involvement in the Middle East and its complicity in the genocide thus far. “I think the lobby remains as powerful as ever, if not more powerful in terms of influencing the actual US policy,” Mearsheimer asserts.

Transcript and video available at: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-escalating-crisis-in-the-middle

It is rare to hear a United States presidential candidate clearly and eloquently spell out the realities of the country — whether it’s the genocide in Gaza, rising economic inequality or the horrors of mass incarceration. Dr. Cornel West, renowned political activist, philosopher, public intellectual, author and now independent presidential candidate, joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to give an update on his campaign and to highlight the critical issues that define his fight for justice and equality.

West argues that the duopoly in the U.S. today often represents two sides of the same coin. On one hand, Donald Trump and the Republicans are a much more blatant example of the push towards fascism while Kamala Harris provides the American people a friendly face who in reality will defend the interests of the country’s most powerful elites. These forces, West says, embody the core features of the American political class, which are “conformity, complacency and cowardliness and being well adjusted to injustice and well adapted to indifference, it wants people to only see your success and not the underside.”

While West’s campaign has tried to address the most pressing issues facing Americans, he explains the system is set up to disenfranchise movements like his. He states, “The lies are so thick, people are so gullible, and every empire we know undergoes, for the most part, implosion based on outreach, military outreach.”

West invites people to view themselves as part of this bigger picture of what America represents, both domestically and globally. When people view themselves as innocent or removed from the crimes of the American empire, West argues, they absolve themselves of the responsibility to confront and correct these injustices. The various forms of hatred that brew within the U.S. — racism, classism or any other type of discrimination — are, according to West, “ideological forms that hide and conceal the deeper crimes that are tied, in the end, to predatory capitalist processes that will do anything for short term profit.”

There is a careful art to good journalism. It involves not only seeing and writing what happens but also understanding the reason why, and the precedent that came before it. Empathy, combined with a cunning understanding of one’s environment and ability to talk to people are crucial instruments for a reporter hoping to get the whole story — not just the headline a paper may seek. Joining host Chris Hedges is Lara Marlowe, journalist and author, to talk about how her former husband and colleague Robert Fisk encapsulated all of that in his years as a journalist and writer and how his work, specifically his book "The Great War for Civilization,” serves as one of the West’s great tools in understanding the modern Middle East.

Marlowe details how Fisk meticulously reported on major stories, such as the US carrier Vincennes shooting down an Iranian civilian airplane or the massacre at Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon. She highlights what it was like to be a fly on the wall, observing his reporting methods, including often finding ways of reporting a story when official lines of communication were down. While in Iran reporting on the shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655, Marlowe tells Hedges, “Robert started sweet talking the Telex operator… and…started writing his front page story directly onto the Telex machine, which amazed me, it really did.”

When Fisk was subject to an almost fatal beating by an Afghan mob, Marlowe explains that even then, he was still understanding and empathetic to the anger of the people. “[Fisk] said that he didn't blame the people who'd beaten him, because he said if the Americans had just bombed my village and destroyed my house… and I saw a Westerner on a bus on the Afghan-Pakistan border, I'd want to kill him too,” Marlowe recounts.

It is this level of discernment and compassion that distinguished him from other reporters and what made him such an effective journalist. He would step where others wouldn’t and face controversy head on. One such instance involves Fisk’s reporting on the suicide bombing of a US Marine compound in Beirut in 1983, which killed 307 people, and how he interviewed parents and siblings of the bombers. Through this, Marlowe sums up his dedication to reporting: “He really made the effort to understand why they did it. And I think he came closer than anybody else in the West, any non-Muslim, to understanding.”

Video available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCBujuk6g48)

Transcript available: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/robert-fisk-and-the-great-war-for

Watch this interview at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=see5c5Sgi14

The current world order is designed to be complex and confusing. Its function enshrines the power of our rulers, who purposely obscure its origins and underlying philosophy. Politicians, the media, so-called intellectuals at think tanks — along with the inertia of systemic falsehoods — perpetuate this veiled system. Neoliberalism has maintained its dominance through exploiting the many to sustain the prosperity of the few.

The discussion, Hedges and Monbiot make clear, extends far beyond economics and policy decisions. Neoliberalism affects every aspect of people’s lives and for this reason, it remains an elusive topic of discussion amongst its victims and beneficiaries. “Neoliberalism has permitted a kind of full spectrum capitalism, which could be described as totalitarian capitalism in that it penetrates every aspect of our lives,” Monbiot tells Hedges. “Everything becomes monetized, everything becomes commoditized, even our relations with each other.”

Neoliberalism establishes a tollbooth over the essential systems necessary for human survival. With little regard for regulation (other than its diminishment), the law or the overall well-being of humans and the planet, this system enables “this tremendously rich class of oligarchs emerging out of the rentier economy [to use] their exclusive capture of assets, assets which the rest of us need, to ensure that we pay way over the odds to them in order to use those assets.”

Monbiot illustrates this dynamic through his own experiences in the United Kingdom, referencing the privatization of the water supply, which allows for private companies to charge outrageous fees, invest minimally in maintenance and use rivers as sewers. “We have no choice,” Monbiot says. “We have to use the water. There's only one supplier in each region of the UK, so we have to go with that supplier. So they can charge pretty well what they want. There is a regulator which is supposed to limit that, but the regulator, as so often happens with neoliberalism, has been completely captured by the industry it is supposed to regulate.”

The world has failed Palestine. The United States and European Union pay lip service to principles of human rights and democracy while providing limitless support to Israel’s genocidal project of ethnic cleansing and apartheid. Western media outlets censor reporting of Israeli atrocities, and international humanitarian organizations require that Palestinians prove their victimhood over and over again. Arab states, on the whole, remain silent and complicit. 

In the context of so much injustice, the new documentary Where the Olive Trees Weep offers a rare view into the everyday experience and psychological ramifications of occupation. Filmed in 2022 in the West Bank, the film follows Palestinian journalist and therapist Ashira Darwish, Israeli journalist Amira Haas, activist Ahed Tamimi, Dr. Gabor Maté, and others. On this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Chris Hedges speaks with Ashira Darwish and with the film’s directors and producers, Zaya Ralitza Benazzo and Maurizio Benazzo. 

Zaya & Maurizio’s intention for the project was to explore the cycles of trauma inflicted by the Zionist occupation. Since long before the present genocide, Israeli forces have been using violence with impunity to punish popular and nonviolent resistance, and to inflict terror on Palestinian men, women, and children going about everyday activities such as attending school. Consequently, the Palestinian experience is marked ubiquitously by violence and loss, and by the constant fear of further violence. 

Darwish, who herself has been detained and seriously injured by Israeli soldiers while participating in nonviolent protest, observes how the violence of everyday life shapes attitudes towards death. For children in Gaza and the West Bank, “being in the hands of the divine” becomes a safer, easier option than life under occupation. Amidst endless loss, “death is a celebration also because you’re going home to your beloveds.” 

As Palestinians embrace death, so do they embrace life. While filming in the West Bank, Maurizio and Zaya were moved by Palestinians’ joyful celebrations of life, deep sense of community, and fearless commitment to fighting for their freedom. Faith, community, and resistance are deeply intertwined, and integral to the process of healing collective trauma. As Darwish affirms, “the liberation of Palestine is our healing.”