On Contact (February 2019 - February 2021): Recent Episodes
RT
Author and social critic Chris Hedges hosts a weekly interview show called ‘On Contact,’ which will air “dissident voices” currently missing from the mainstream media. Hedges interviews the black sheep of the establishment, leading discussions that can’t be heard anywhere else.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to filmmaker and journalist, Eleanor Goldfield about her documentary, "Hard Road of Hope".
Goldfield’s documentary, "Hard Road of Hope", revisits West Virginia’s long tradition of radicalism and militant unionism, including the famed 1921 armed uprising, the largest since the Civil War, by some 10,000 coal miners at Blair Mountain who fought the repressive coal owners and their hired coal company gun thugs and militias. In 2018, the state’s 20,000 public school teachers and employees carried out a strike over low pay and high health-care costs, shutting down every public school in West Virginia until their demands were met. The strike inspired similar teacher strikes in Oklahoma, Colorado and Arizona. These contradictions, and what they mean for a nation fragmenting into antagonistic tribes, are explored in the documentary.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Michael Smith about civil rights attorney Michael Ratner's recently published memoir, "Moving the Bar – My Life as A Radical Lawyer". Smith was a close friend and collaborator of Ratner's for over three decades.
Michael Ratner was one of the most important civil rights attorneys in our era. He spent his life fighting on behalf of those who state and empire sought to crush, from the leaders of the prison uprising at Attica to Muslim prisoners held in Guantanamo, to Julian Assange.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Professor Noam Chomsky, the pioneering linguist and prolific author of numerous seminal political works, about the state of the American Empire.
Professor Chomsky is the author of over 100 books, including ‘The Fateful Triangle’, ‘Manufacturing Consent’, ‘Failed States’ and ‘Requiem for the American Dream’, and America’s most important intellectual. His new book, with Marv Waterstone, professor emeritus at the University of Arizona, is ‘Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance’.
On this show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald about the incoming Biden administration and what it will mean for a country in crisis, ravaged by a pandemic it cannot control, hostage to corporate power and bifurcated into warring factions.
Glenn Greenwald is the author of several bestsellers, including ‘How Would a Patriot Act?’ and ‘With Liberty and Justice for Some’. His most recent book is ‘No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State’. Greenwald is a former constitutional law and civil rights litigator. He was a columnist for the Guardian until October 2013 and was the founding editor of media outlet the Intercept. He is a frequent guest on Fox News, Rolling Stone, and various other television and radio outlets. He has won numerous awards for his NSA reporting, including the 2013 Polk Award for national security reporting, the top 2013 investigative journalism award from the Online News Association, the Esso Award for Excellence in Reporting (the Brazilian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize), and the 2013 Pioneer Award from Electronic Frontier Foundation. He also received the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism in 2009 and a 2010 Online Journalism Award for his investigative work on the arrest and detention of Chelsea Manning. In 2013, Greenwald led the Guardian reporting that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for public service.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses with moral philosopher Dr. Cornel West what we can learn about America's existential crisis after witnessing enraged supporters of Donald Trump storming the Capitol to try and halt Congress's counting of the electoral votes to confirm the victory of President-elect Joe Biden. Dr. Cornel West, professor of the practice of public philosophy at Harvard University, and the author of numerous books, including ‘Race Matters’.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to author Naomi Wolf about the bitter legacy of the British and Western colonialism of rampant homophobia, so virulent that people to this day are murdered for being gay in countries such as Egypt or Uganda.
Naomi Wolf in her new book, 'Outrages, Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love', examines through the life of the British poet and gay activist John Addington Symonds how imperial power used, and uses, rigid sexual stereotypes as tools for repression and social control.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to journalist Diana Johnstone about the betrayal of the left with its historical role as the champion of social justice and peace now replaced with the boutique activism of identity politics, political correctness and what has become known as humanitarian intervention, the justification of US and NATO adventurism and wars on the specious belief it would liberate the women of Afghanistan or the peoples of Iraq.
Diana Johnstone’s memoir is ‘Circle in the Darkness: Memoir of a World Watcher’. Johnstone was the European editor of In The Times from 1979 to 1990, and her work has appeared in New Left Review, Counterpunch and Covert Action Quarterly.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Fabian Scheidler about how the global economic machine came to dominate our lives, and with looming social upheavals caused by predatory capitalism, what can be done to blunt its destructive power.
Fabian Scheidler is author of The End of the Megamachine: A Brief History of a Failing Civilization, and co-founder of Kontext TV. www.end-of-the-megamachine.com www.fabianscheidler.com
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Gabriel Rockhill about the undercurrents of fascism in America’s DNA, and the US role in internationalizing fascism after World War II through clandestine activities such Operation Paperclip and Operation Gladio.
Rockhill is a Franco-American philosopher and the founding Director of the Critical Theory Workshop and Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University. His books include Counter-History of the Present: Untimely Interrogations into Globalization, Technology, Democracy, Interventions in Contemporary Thought: History, Politics, Aesthetics, Radical History & the Politics of Art and Logique de l’histoire.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Dr. Margaret Flowers about the Covid-19 pandemic and the catastrophic response to the public health crisis under America's for-profit healthcare system. Without national coordination, or universal and free national health care, Americans are faced with uneven or absent care due to hospital closures, reductions in hospital beds and services. Lawmakers and hospital administrators compete to purchase basic supplies leading manufacturers to hike prices. The mercenary nature of the for-profit health care system also means many Americans are distrustful of health guidelines and refuse to get tested. Dr. Margaret Flowers is a retired pediatrician and advocate for public universal health care, and advisor to the board of Physicians for a National Health Program.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to the Rev. Dr. Mel White about the Christian Right, which Hedges describes as “a homegrown fascist movement.” It has been organizing to take political power for decades, he says. During the Trump administration, it seized senior positions in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government – a move violating US Constitutional powers of separation of Church and State. In his book ‘American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America’, Hedges states that there are 70 million evangelical Christians in the United States, representing about 25 percent of the population, and that, between them, they attend more than 200,000 Evangelical churches. Polls indicate that about 40 percent of respondents believe in the Bible as the “actual word of God,” and that it is “to be taken literally, word for word.”
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Professor Paul Street about the outcome of the US presidential election, and how despite likely losing, Donald Trump has solidified an angry, dispossessed working class that cuts across racial lines and has embraced a right-wing populism.
What does this portend for the two ruling parties? Will the Democrats continue to be captive to big donors and Wall Street, or will they embrace the anti-corporate message and promises of Medicare for all, free higher education, higher corporate taxes and regulation of big banks and Silicon Valley that drew such broad and enthusiastic support for Bernie Sanders? And will the Republicans capitalize on this grassroots discontent, much of it rural, where Trump took 60 percent of the vote, or go back to its abject subservience to big business?
On the show this week, Chris Hedges and Matt Taibbi examine how the media and the major tech platforms function as a propaganda and censorship bureau on behalf of the Democratic Party and the Biden campaign.
Author and journalist, Matt Taibbi, has been following developments since Twitter and Facebook blocked a New York Post story about a cache of emails reportedly belonging to Democratic nominee Joe Biden's son Hunter, with Twitter locking the New York Post out of its account for over a week. The overt censorship is emblematic of the widening and dangerous partisan divide into information that hurts or promotes one political faction over another, and is now infecting nearly all news organizations.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Christian Parenti about Alexander Hamilton, the first treasury secretary of the United States, who has been called the founding father of US capitalism and imperialism.
In his new book ‘Radical Hamilton; Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder,’ Parenti argues that his ideas for the US economy were distorted or ignored by the capitalist elites.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to former Baltimore Black Panther leader Eddie Conway about the nature of resistance, white supremacy and the rise of the a new black militancy.
The book, The Brother You Choose, is a conversation between Eddie Conway and Paul Coates. Conway reflects on state repression and the hard road of resistance in a state that stops at nothing to crush resistance movements.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses what happened three decades ago in Yugoslavia when the country broke into brutal warring factions, and the parallels in the US today, with Croatian author and journalist, Slavenka Drakulić.
Drakulić’s book ‘They Would Never Hurt a Fly’ is about the war criminals from the former Yugoslavia who were put on trial in the Hague. She explores not only the motivations of these killers and their sense of themselves, but also how such crimes were allowed to be perpetrated in her country.
Chris Hedges discusses with former British ambassador Craig Murray the hearing that just adjourned in London to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States. Murray’s exhaustive reporting, which can be found at craigmurray.org.uk, has become one of the few sources of reliable information about the hearing, which has become notoriously difficult to cover due to court restrictions imposed on the press, and is being ignored by most mainstream news organizations.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses the origin of white supremacy and how it plays out in contemporary society with historian Gerald Horne. Horne is the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston, Texas. Horne’s new book is ‘The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century’.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses the rise of the new black militancy with film director and producer Mobolaji Olambiwonnu.
Olambiwonnu's new documentary is called ‘Ferguson Rises’. https://www.gofundme.com/f/ferguson-rises-racial-healing-documentary
On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses the economic and political collapse of the American empire with economist Professor Rick D. Wolff. Wolff’s new book, ‘The Sickness is the System – When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself,’ is available on September 15.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Steven Donziger about the reach of corporate power. Donziger battled corporate oil giant Chevron over environmental pollution and destruction in Ecuador and won a settlement of $9.5 billion for indigenous communities. Since then, Chevron has waged a campaign against Donziger to try and destroy him economically, professionally and personally. He is on trial in federal court in New York on September 9 for contempt charges, which could send him to jail for six months.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges, in his second interview with Professor James W Loewen, discusses public monuments and statues, who puts them up and why, and what may replace them. Prof Loewen is the author of ‘Lies Across America: What Our Historical Markers and Monuments Get Wrong’.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses the teaching of history as a form of indoctrination with Professor James W. Loewen. Loewen’s book is: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. His new book, a memoir, is: Up a Creek, with a Paddle: Tales of Canoeing and Life
On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses ‘Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge’ with Danny Sjursen, a combat veteran and West Point graduate.
Chris Hedges discusses the potential for voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election with investigative journalist Greg Palast.
Chris Hedges discusses resistance with Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion and author of ‘Common Sense for the 21st Century: Only Nonviolent Rebellion Can Now Stop Climate Breakdown and Social Collapse’.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to comics journalist Joe Sacco about his new book, ‘Paying the Land’. In the book Sacco travels to the frozen Canadian Northwest Territories to reveal the Dene people in conflict over the costs and benefits of the resource extraction industry and development.
The Dene have lived in the vast Mackenzie River Valley since time immemorial, by their account. To the Dene, the land owns them, not the other way around, and it is central to their livelihood and very way of being.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to activist, writer and PhD Candidate at Yale University, Philip McHarris, about the latest calls for police reform in the US.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to journalist, Dean Yates, who, 13 years ago, was the head of Reuters’ Baghdad bureau. On July 12, 2007, Yates learned two of his employees, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen, had been fired on and killed by the US Army. Their deaths, and those of others, were the focus of the now-infamous video Collateral Murder, leaked by Chelsea Manning and released by Wikileaks.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses the nature of patriotism with West Point graduate and US Army combat veteran, Danny Sjursen.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses the extradition hearing of Julian Assange with lawyer, author and professor, Marjorie Cohn.
Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, where she taught from 1991 to 2016, and a former president of the National Lawyers Guild.
Professor Cohn is the editor of and a contributor to ‘The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration and Abuse’, and ‘Drones and Targeted Killings: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues’.
In this week’s episode of On Contact, Chris Hedges discusses the criticism and censorship of Michael Moore's film Planet of the Humans with the director, Jeff Gibbs.
On the show today, Chris Hedges discusses the George Floyd protests erupting in over 140 American cities with Glen Ford, executive editor of Black Agenda Report.
Chris Hedges talks to Mark Green, former New York City Consumer Affairs Commissioner and Public Advocate, about the "permanent lie" used by US President Donald Trump to cancel out reality. Mark Green is co-author, with Ralph Nader, of "Fake President: Decoding Trump's gaslighting, corruption, and general bullsh*t."
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to John Ralston Saul, author and president emeritus of Pen International, about how the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the weakness of American society, and accelerated the decline of the American Empire.
Among Saul's many books are: The Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World, and Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to writer, teacher and activist Victor Wallis about the prospect and need for ecosocialism. Wallis’ book is entitled ‘Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism’.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to author and translator, Mitch Abidor, about the student uprising in Paris in May 1968.
Mitch Abidor’s book is entitled ‘May Made Me – An Oral History of the 1968 Uprising in France.’
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Matthew Hoh, former US Marines company commander, about the high rates of veteran suicides. Hoh served two tours in Iraq as a Marine and also worked as an official within the State Department. He resigned his position as a State Department political officer in Afghanistan in 2009 in protest at the Obama administration’s escalation of the war.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses the long, disingenuous role the USA has played in the Israel-Palestine conflict with Professor Rashid Khalidi.
Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. His new book is ‘The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance.’
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to D. D. Guttenplan, the editor of the Nation, about the history of populism in America, its current rise and the problem of democracy. His new book, ‘The Next Republic: The Rise of a New Radical Majority’, focuses on nine progressive activists emerging during the Trump administration. Among them, new labor activist Jane McAlevey, racial justice campaigner and Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi Chokwe Antar Lumumba, and environmental activist Jane Kleep, all working to restore America’s democratic, political, and economic systems against the rise of proto-fascist forces and demagogues seeking power.
Chris Hedges talks to Cornell University Professor Noliwe Rooks about how America’s public education system, under successive administrations, continues to be segregated along racial lines, and what is taught is often shaped by business goals and ideas. With the rise of charter schools, a cover for privatization, steering public money towards corporate profits, the most disturbing trends are cyber charter schools where children only have to check-in with teachers three times a week, term papers outsourced and graded in India, and the advent of cyber classes for pre-K children. Rooks’ book, now in paperback, is entitled ‘Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation and the End of Public Education’.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to intelligence analyst and NSA whistleblower William Binney about the Washington Post’s revelations over the CIA and West German intelligence (BND) setting up a Swiss company, Crypto AG, to sell encrypted machines to more than 120 governments worldwide. From 1970 through to 2018, the CIA intercepted foreign government communications. Among the countries buying the machines were France, Iran, the Vatican, and Venezuela. “It was the intelligence coup of the century,” stated the CIA’s own report on the program. Russia and China did not buy the service.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to constitutional scholar Bruce Fein about the death of our US Constitution. Ralph Nader, with constitutional scholars Louis Fisher and Bruce Fein, wrote to the speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, on November 22 urging her to focus on 12 Articles of Impeachment President Donald Trump had allegedly violated during his administration. Among them: flouting the emoluments clause, expanding presidential wars, and spending billions of dollars on projects not appropriated by the US Congress.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to D.D. Guttenplan, editor of the Nation, about the great investigative journalist, I.F. Stone.
D. D. Guttenplan's biography is titled 'American Radical: The Life and Times of I.F. Stone.'
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to author and associate professor, Erik Nielson, about the criminalization of rap.
Erik Nielson and Andrea L. Dennis co-authored 'Rap on Trial – Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America.' The groundbreaking expose shows how for over three decades the criminal justice system has used rap lyrics to justify the arrest, prosecution and incarceration of increasing numbers of artistic young men of color.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses with Professor Rashid Khalidi the long, disingenuous role the United States has played in the Israel-Palestine conflict, including the latest so-called peace plan. Khalidi is the Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University and author of 'Brokers of Deceit: How the US has Undermined Peace in the Middle East.'
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Siddharth Varadarajan, editor of the Wire, about the rise of right-wing populism in India and its disturbing parallels to the right-wing rise of populism in the United States.
Varadarajan is an Indian-American journalist, who was previously editor of the English language national daily with two million readers, the Hindu, before co-founding the Wire, an independent news outlet which has 3.5 million visits a month. He has reported on the NATO war against Yugoslavia, the Iraq war, the civil war and peace process in Nepal, and the crisis In Kashmir.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Joe Lauria, editor of Consortium News, about his coverage of US prosecutors in London attempting to extradite Julian Assange to the United States to face trial for allegations of espionage.
Chris Hedges talks to Professor Benjamin Hett about the collapse of democracy in Germany’s Weimar Republic and its descent into fascism – and which features of the collapse may be applicable to the democratic experiment in America. Hett is professor of history at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York; his new book is ‘The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic’.
Chris Hedges talks to activist and author Lisa Fithian about fierce, loving resistance. Lisa has been at the center of some of the most important campaigns of the American resistance movement in the past four decades, including the March for Peace, Justice in Central America and South Africa, Justice for Janitors labor organizing campaign, the Battle of Seattle, Occupy Wall Street, Egypt’s Tahrir Square, Standing Rock, Ferguson, and most recently, the Extinction Rebellion climate justice protests.
Fithian’s new book is: Shut it Down: Stories from A Fierce, Loving Resistance.
Chris Hedges talks to economist Richard Wolff about his new book ‘Understanding Socialism’. Wolff explains how in the socialist dream, work is something that we should want to engage in, that means something to us, that brings us into relationships with other people that we value, that make us better people as we interact with them; “it’s a transformation of life.”
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to author Seth Siegel about his new book Troubled Water: What’s Wrong with What We Drink. Siegel explains how our drinking water got contaminated, what the US government does and doesn’t regulate, what the contaminants could be doing to us, and what we can do to make our drinking water safe.
Chris Hedges discusses the importance of historian Howard Zinn for a fuller understanding of American history, with journalist Ray Suarez, author of ‘Truth has a Power of its Own: A Conversation about A People’s History with Howard Zinn.’
Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of the United States’ has sold more than two million copies.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses the outsized influence of the writer, Ayn Rand, on America's business and financial elite with New York University professor and author, Lisa Duggan.
Duggan's new book is entitled 'Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed.'
Chris Hedges talks to Ron Purser, professor of management at San Francisco State University, about the growth of mindfulness meditation in the mainstream. As meditation makes its way into schools, prisons and government agencies, Purser argues the booming cottage industry with its promises of "Buddhist-inspired" techniques tries to offer a universal panacea for resolving almost every area of daily concern. While it can be helpful, compartmentalizing the practice away from asking why there is so much stress in daily life and away from making challenges to corporate and political practices could do more harm than good. Purser is the author of 'McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality.'
Chris Hedges talks to Spenser Rapone, former combat veteran and US Army officer, about the Washington Post’s series the ‘Afghanistan Papers’. Drawing on thousands of pages of international government documents about the war in Afghanistan, the series exposes the lies, deceit, mismanagement, waste, corruption, fraud, and failed schemes that both Democratic and Republican administrations pursed in Afghanistan, the longest conflict in US history (18 years and counting), which has claimed tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money.
Chris Hedges discusses with journalist Oscar Martinez the culture of violence in Central America. Martinez’s most recent book is ‘A History of Violence: Living and Dying in Central America’. His first book ‘The Beast’ followed the harsh journey of Central American immigrants on the ‘Death Train’ (El tren de la muerte) to the United States.
Chris Hedges talks to journalist Abby Martin and producer Mike Prysner about their new film Gaza Fights for Freedom which focuses on the Palestinian Great March of Return protests during which nearly 200 people were injured and 10,000 men, women and children were wounded. The film Gaza Fights for Freedom is available on Vimeo.
Chris Hedges talks to journalist Matt Taibbi about the police killing of Eric Garner, the criminalization of poverty, and institutional racism. Taibbi authored the 2017 book ‘I can’t breathe – A Killing on Bay Street.’
Chris Hedges talks to author Amitav Ghosh about the natural world and sacred forces that sustain life and the conflict when treated by the human species as an inert commodity to exploit. In his novel ‘Gun Island,’ Ghosh explores how these ecosystems have turned with a vengeance on the hubris and collective lunacy of modern industrialized society.
Chris Hedges talks to author Stephen Kinzer about the CIA’s quest for mind control through its experiments with drugs and torture during the 1950s and 1960s, both domestically and internationally. Kinzer’s new book is titled ‘Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control.’
Journalist Chris Hedges talks to author and political commentator Paul Street about the failure of the American left, new forms of resistance, democracy, and the deep roots of America’s ruling oligarchy.
Journalist Chris Hedges talks to Joshua Freeman, Professor History at City University of New York, about his book ‘Behemoth: The History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World’. While the US has deindustrialized its economy with skeletal remains of its manufacturing base, the factory continues to dominate the world economy, employing nearly 30 percent of the global workforce, nearly 43 percent in China. These factories make appliances, cars, laptops, and clothes, and the vast array of consumer products that define the modern age. Some of these factories employ as many as 200,000 or more workers. But what is the future of manufacturing when faced with diminishing resources, its legacy of land and air pollution, and environmental degradation?
Chris Hedges talks to New York Catholic Workers Martha Hennessy and Carmen Trotta about breaking into the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base to charge the US government with crimes against peace on April 4, 2018. The peace activists, known as the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, were arrested and went on trial this week in Georgia, following allegations of trespassing and damage to government property, among other things. Kings Bay is the largest nuclear submarine base in the world, with six ballistic missile subs and two guided missile subs. Over the past four decades, activists in the Plowshares movement have taken part in about 100 similar actions at nuclear arms facilities, beginning in 1980 at the General Electric nuclear missile plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.
Host Chris Hedges talks to Marion Nestle, New York University professor of nutrition, on how food companies distort the science and research into what we eat. In her book ‘Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew The Science Of What We Eat’, Nestle explains that the food industry follows the formula pioneered by the tobacco industry – cast doubt on the science, fund research to provide desired results, offer gifts and consulting arrangements to buy silence or loyalty, use front groups, promote self-regulation and personal responsibility, and use the courts to challenge critics and dismantle regulations.
Host Chris Hedges talks to activists Dr Margaret Flowers and attorney Kevin Zeese, who run Popular Resistance, about power and the effect of organized, sustained civil disobedience and forms of non-cooperation when it comes to issues of war, internal security and corporate domination.
Host Chris Hedges talks to activist Christine See and Rory Varrato of Extinction Rebellion about the upcoming non-violent, disruptive civil disobedience events during the week of October 7 in cities across the world. Protesters demand an end to the corporate control of the political and economic systems that they claim are leaving us all unprepared for a future of climate emergency.
Host Chris Hedges talks to journalist and author, Stephen Kinzer, on efforts by Saudi Arabia and Washington to cripple Iran’s economy, inevitably putting Saudi Arabia, its Gulf allies and Washington on a collision course with the Islamic Republic that could end with war. Kinzer is the author of ‘Reset: Iran, Turkey and America’s Future’ and ‘All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.’
Host Chris Hedges talks to Sonia Bone Guajajara, leader of 300 indigenous ethnic groups in Brazil, about the future of the Amazon rain forest, its people, climate change, and the competing goals of agrobusiness, multinational corporations, and the policies of conservative Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
Host Chris Hedges talks to Elizabeth Anderson, Professor of Philosophy, University of Michigan, about the tyranny of the corporate workplace from non-disclosure agreements to punitive, restrictive work conditions and censorship. Their discussion comes as California lawmakers pass landmark legislation challenging the business model of “gig-economy” companies, forcing companies to reclassify certain contract workers as employees. Anderson’s new book: ‘Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk about It)’, published by Princeton Press.
Host Chris Hedges talks to Dr. Charles Derber about how the capitalist state uses fear bolstered by racism as a tool to control the people, and through their efforts to abolish civil liberties, crush dissent, and extinguish democratic space. Derber is the author of the new book, ‘Moving Beyond Fear: Upending the Security Tales in Capitalism, Fascism and Democracy’, with Yale R. Magrass.
Host Chris Hedges talks with journalist Danny Haiphong about how the myths of American meritocracy and individualism are used to legitimize the accumulation of inherited wealth by the ruling elite class. Haiphong’s new book with Roberto Sirvent is called, ‘American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News – From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror’.
Host Chris Hedges talks to Israeli-American activist and author Miko Peled about the persecution of Muslims in America following 9/11, especially when they are supportive of Palestinian rights. Peled’s recent book 'Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five,' is published by Just World Books.
Host Chris Hedges talks to author and journalist Max Blumenthal about the intimate connection between the misguided support the United States has given to international Jihadism – starting with over $1billion Washington gave to the Afghan Mujahideen in the 1970s – and the rise of neo-fascists and ultra-nationalist movements in Europe and the US. Blumenthal’s new book ‘The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump’ was published in April by Verso Books.
On the show this week, On Contact host Chris Hedges talks to Roger Hallam, co-founder of the British-based group Extinction Rebellion.
The global grassroots movement uses non-violent acts of civil disobedience by occupying areas in the capitals of major industrial countries, in a protest aiming to reverse what they argue is a one-way track to global extinction. Activists are demanding that ruling elites state the truth about the climate emergency and implement radical measures to halve carbon emissions by 2025 and to terminate a 150-year human binge on fossil fuels.
On Contact host Chris Hedges and investigative journalist Mohamed Elmaazi discuss documents showing an alleged British government-financed propaganda mill, similar in nature to the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird psychological operations. Elmaazi’s work can be found at Theinterregnum.net.
In this week’s On Contact program, Chris Hedges talks to the rapper, Lowkey, about his artistic work and political activism.
Host Chris Hedges talks to Kerry-Anne Mendoza, editor-in-chief of the Canary. Created just five years ago, the alternative socialist website is financed by subscribers and advertisers with 3.5 million monthly viewers. It has been accused of being “hyper-partisan” due to its mainly pro-Labor Party content. The Daily Telegraph, an elitist newspaper, called it “the maddest left-wing website in the world.”
Chris Hedges discusses with former UK Member of Parliament George Galloway the state of politics in the UK and US, racism, and Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.
“Trump has taught us a lot about ourselves. He has taught us what happens when we don’t do our homework. He has taught us what happens when we don’t spend time on our civic duties back home.” In the second part of Chris Hedges’ interview with Ralph Nader, activist and attorney, on the importance of civic life.
Chris Hedges discusses with the lifetime achievement of activist and attorney, Ralph Nader, in his creation of government regulation and regulatory agencies to protect the rights and lives of the public.
Chris Hedges discusses the US extradition request for Julian Assange with WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson.
Chris Hedges discusses with Nils Melzer, UN special rapporteur on torture, the conditions of Julian Assange’s detention, his psychological and physical health, as well as the judicial proceedings against Assange.
Chris Hedges talks to Howie Hawkins, who has sought elected office through the Green Party, about the history of third parties in the US, whose platforms are often coopted by the two-party system while being denied participation in televised debates.
Chris Hedges discusses the potential of a war against Russia with Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and history at New York University.
Chris Hedges discusses the threat of war with Iran and the US' relationship with Saudi Arabia and Israel with anti-war activist Medea Benjamin of Codepink.
Chris Hedges continues his discussion with reporter, Matt Taibbi, about the deep rot in American journalism.
Chris Hedges discusses the deep rot that infects American journalism with reporter Matt Taibbi.
Chris Hedges discusses Venezuela with reporter Ben Norton, from the history of the Bolivarian revolution and legacy of Hugo Chavez to US sanctions and the overt attempt to overthrow the leadership in Caracas.
On this week’s show, Chris Hedges discusses with Nation reporter, Aaron Mate, how conspiracy theories in the national mainstream media show little sign of diminishing despite Robert Mueller’s categorical statement that Donald Trump and his campaign did not collude with Russia.
More than six million United States citizens are currently denied the right to vote due to state laws that disenfranchise citizens who have been convicted of a felony. More than 75 percent of these disenfranchised citizens are not in prison, and more than half have completed all terms of parole and probation. The US is unique in the civil consequences it applies to its criminal population, almost certainly the only country in the world that disenfranchises a significant number of people who are either no longer incarcerated or were never in prison at all. Activists and advocates, though, are fighting back by reforming state laws. Ron Pierce, a Democracy and Justice Fellow at the New Jersey Institute of Social Justice, who was formerly incarcerated, and Scott Novakowski, associate counsel at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, joined Chris Hedges to talk about the fight they are leading to repeal voting disenfranchisement in the state of New Jersey.
The Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), between China, France, Russia, UK and USA, represented a crowning moment of international diplomacy and stopped the US and its allies from going to war with Iran. Donald Trump's decision to break the deal threatens to return the world to that precipice. Scott Ritter, a former Marine intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector in Iraq, discusses the implications of the lost deal with On Contact host and journalist, Chris Hedges.
The glaciers in Alaska alone are losing an estimated 75 billion tons of ice every year. The oceans, which absorb over 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouses gases in the atmosphere, are warming and acidifying, melting the polar ice caps and resulting in rising sea-levels and oxygen-starved ocean dead zones. We await a 50-gigaton burp, or "pulse," of methane from thawing Arctic permafrost beneath the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, which will release the equivalent of around two-thirds of the total carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial era. Some 150 to 200 species of plants, insects, birds and mammals are becoming extinct every 24 hours – one thousand times the "natural" or "background" rate. This pace of extinction is greater than anything the world has experienced since the disappearance of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Chris Hedges speaks to journalist and author, Dahr Jamail, about his new book 'The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption,' which looks at the climate emergency.
In the US, right-wing groups such as the National Rifle Association interpret the Second Amendment of the US Constitution as permitting any individual to own weapons. In this week’s episode of On Contact, we talk to historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortriz. In her new book ‘Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment,’ and in her conversation with Chris Hedges, she argues that the amendment has more to do with white supremacy and the subjugation of indigenous people, African-Americans and immigrants than the individual right to have a gun.
Environmental activists argue the only way to stop the impending ecocide is to carry out nonviolent acts of civil disobedience to shut down the capitals of the major industrial countries, crippling commerce and transportation, until the ruling elites are forced to publicly state the truth about climate catastrophe, implement radical measure to halt carbon emissions by 2025, and empower an independent citizens committee to oversee the termination of our 150-year binge on fossil fuels. The British-based group, Extinction Rebellion, has called for nonviolent acts of civil disobedience on April 15 in capitals around the world to reverse our “one-way track to extinction.” Joining Chris Hedge in a two-part discussion from London is Roger Hallam, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion.
Some environmental activists argue the only way to stop the impending ecocide is to carry out nonviolent acts of civil disobedience to shut down the capitals of the major industrial countries, crippling commerce and transportation until the ruling elites are forced to publicly state the truth about climate catastrophe, implement radical measure to halt carbon emissions by 2025, and empower an independent citizens committee to oversee the termination of our 150-year binge on fossil fuels. UK-based group Extinction Rebellion has called for nonviolent acts of civil disobedience on April 15 in capitals around the world to reverse our “one-way track to extinction.” Joining Chris Hedges in the second part of a two-part discussion from London is Roger Hallam, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion.
The most notorious US detention site in the world, Guantanamo Bay, still holds 40 prisoners. Most of the 800 men shipped to Guantanamo Bay since it was opened under George W. Bush in 2002 were sold to US forces for bounty by Pakistani and Afghan officials, militia and warlords. They were stripped of their legal rights, held for years without being charged or given a fair and open trial. Not only is the detention center a recruiting dream for radical jihadists, it costs taxpayers half a billion dollars a year, roughly $11 million for each detainee. Joining Chris Hedges in the studio is British journalist Andy Worthington, who has covered these imprisoned men in Guantanamo since 2006.
The arrest of Julian Assange eviscerates all pretense of the rule of law and the rights of a free press. Joining Chris Hedges to discuss the arrest and pending extradition of Julian Assange is the historian Vijay Prashad.
The fertility rate in the United States has fallen for the seventh straight year, so much so that without immigration our population would be declining. Policymakers are acutely aware of the birth rate decline, using coded words such as “age structure,” “dependency ratio,” and “entitlement crisis” to express their concern over an aging population, the inevitable weakening of consumer demand, and a stagnant economy. Yet they refuse to acknowledge the reality of women’s reproductive labor by providing adequate child care, family leave, health care, sufficient male support, and remuneration for child rearing. US women, in response, have gone on a “birth strike.” Joining Chris Hedges to discuss this issue is Jenny Brown, author of ‘Birth Strike: The Hidden Fight over Women’s Work’ and organizer with the National Women’s Liberation.
This week Monsanto/Bayer AG was ordered by a California federal court to pay $80 million to Edwin Hardeman after a jury found its weed killer, Roundup, caused his cancer. The case is just one of thousands of lawsuits filed against the company over plaintiffs’ use of the glyphosate-based herbicide. In 2015, the World Health Organization classified glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans. The Food and Drug Administration has concluded the herbicide is not likely carcinogenic to humans. In August 2018, a jury in California state court awarded a school’s groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson, nearly $289 million in damages. The verdict was later reduced to $78 million and is on appeal. In this conversation with Chris Hedges, environmental activist and author, Vandana Shiva, talks about Monsanto/Bayer AG and other big AG players' interests in India and her fight to protect life forms, seed varieties and farmers.