Steve Skrovan: Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. My title is Steve Skrovan, together with my co-host, David Feldman. Hi there, David, how are you?
David Feldman: Superb. Hi there.
Steve Skrovan: And naturally, the person of the hour, Ralph Nader, is with us. Hi there, Ralph.
Ralph Nader: Hi there, everyone.
Steve Skrovan: All proper, we’ve got one other nice present for you at the moment, and we’re going to begin with one among my favourite friends who’s been on the present earlier than. Many journalists and pundits cowl struggle from a secure distance in a clear studio. Few have skilled the gritty actuality of struggle like Chris Hedges. He spent almost 20 years abroad as a correspondent for the New York Occasions attending to know struggle up shut and private. He wrote eloquently about it in his award-winning Struggle Is a Pressure that Offers Us Which means the place he states, “The push of battle is a potent and infrequently deadly habit, for struggle is a drug, one I ingested for a few years.”
At present, the struggle in Ukraine is raging. Institution information retailers supply of generals and State Division officers to inform us the partisan, political and strategic story of struggle that appears solely to gas that habit and maintain us rooting for “our staff.” In distinction, Hedges has written one other ebook concerning the topic titled Struggle is the Biggest Evil. On this new ebook, Hedges attracts on his firsthand expertise to inform us the story of the hidden prices of struggle and what it does to people, households, communities, and nations. We stay up for speaking to Chris about how we, as a society and as people, can presumably overcome this finally harmful habit.
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David Feldman: Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, who spent almost 20 years as a international correspondent in Central America, the Center East, Africa and the Balkans. He’s the host of The Chris Hedges Report, and he’s a prolific creator— his newest ebook is out now from Seven Tales Press, The Biggest Evil Is Struggle. Welcome again to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, Chris Hedges.
Chris Hedges: Thanks.
Ralph Nader: Welcome again certainly, Chris. I see this ebook of yours as a sequel–an replace and enlargement when it comes to its impression of Marine Basic Smedley Butler’s ebook within the late Thirties known as Struggle is a Racket, which persons are nonetheless studying. And he received the Congressional Medal of Honor twice. And he principally stated he was a instrument for Citibank, for the oil corporations within the Caribbean, Central America, East Asia. It’s one of many biggest confessions. And he had some pictures on the finish of the ebook on the grizzly results of struggle, so he didn’t spare both phrases or visuals. And your ebook is an enlargement of that theme.
And as I stated to you earlier, earlier than this system, Chris, and I would like our listeners to know that there’s no technique to paraphrase what Chris has written. So I’ve requested Chris to learn two and a half pages initially of his ebook, The Biggest Evil is Struggle, after which we will talk about the ebook and its impression. And I’ve some fascinating comparisons for you, listeners, to point out that finally the issue is that the folks of this nation are usually not making use of their worth programs into the realm of politics and economics. Go forward, Chris.
Chris Hedges: Thanks, Ralph. Preemptive struggle, whether or not in Iraq or Ukraine, is a struggle crime. It doesn’t matter if the struggle is launched on the idea of lies and fabrications, as was the case in Iraq, or due to the breaking of a collection of agreements with Russia, together with the promise by Washington to not prolong NATO past the borders of a unified Germany, to not deploy hundreds of NATO troops in Central and Japanese Europe, and to not meddle within the inner affairs of countries on the Russia’s border, in addition to the refusal to implement the Minsk peace settlement. The invasion of Ukraine would, I anticipate, by no means have occurred if these guarantees had been stored. Russia has each proper to really feel threatened, betrayed, and indignant. However to grasp is to not condone. The invasion of Ukraine, underneath post-Nuremberg legal guidelines, is a legal struggle of aggression.
I do know the instrument of struggle. Struggle isn’t politics by different means. It’s demonic. I spent 20 years as a struggle correspondent in Central America, the Center East, Africa, and the Balkans, the place I lined the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. I carry inside me the ghosts of dozens of these swallowed up within the violence, together with my shut buddy, Reuters correspondent Kurt Schork, who was killed in an ambush in Sierra Leone with one other buddy, Miguel Gil Moreno de Mora.
I do know the chaos and disorientation of struggle, the fixed uncertainty and confusion. In a firefight you might be solely conscious of what’s taking place a couple of ft round you. You desperately, and never all the time efficiently, battle to determine the place the firing is coming from to keep away from being hit.
I’ve felt the helplessness and paralyzing concern, which, years later, descend on me like a freight practice in the midst of the night time, leaving me wrapped in coils of terror, my coronary heart racing, my physique dripping with sweat.
I’ve heard the wails of these convulsed by grief as they clutch the our bodies of family and friends, together with kids. I hear them nonetheless. It doesn’t matter the language—Spanish, Arabic, Hebrew, Dinka, Serbo-Croatian, Albanian, Ukrainian, Russian—loss of life cuts by the linguistic boundaries.
I do know what wounds appear to be—legs blown off, heads imploded right into a bloody, pulpy mass, gaping holes in stomachs, swimming pools of blood, cries of the dying, generally for his or her moms. And the scent. The scent of loss of life. The supreme sacrifice made for flies and maggots.
I used to be crushed by Iraqi and Saudi secret police. I used to be taken prisoner by the Contras in Nicaragua, who radioed again to their base in Honduras to see if they need to kill me, and once more in Basra after the primary Gulf Struggle in Iraq, by no means figuring out if I’d be executed, underneath fixed guard and infrequently with out meals, ingesting out of mud puddles.
The first lesson in struggle is that we as distinct people don’t matter. We grow to be numbers, fodder, objects. Life, as soon as treasured and sacred, turns into meaningless, sacrificed to the insatiable urge for food of Mars. Nobody in wartime is exempt.
The panorama of struggle is hallucinogenic. Eugene Sledge calls it “the kaleidoscope of the unreal.” It defies comprehension. Struggle, just like the Holocaust, as Barbara Foley wrote, is “unknowable.” “Its full dimensions are inaccessible to the ideological framework that we’ve got inherited from the liberal period.”
You don’t have any idea of time in a firefight—a couple of minutes a couple of hours. Struggle, straight away, obliterates houses and communities, all that was as soon as acquainted, and leaves behind smoldering ruins and a trauma that you just carry for the remainder of your life. I’ve tasted sufficient of struggle, sufficient of my very own concern, my physique turned to jelly, to know that struggle is all the time evil, the purest expression of loss of life, dressed up in patriotic cant about liberty and democracy and offered to the naïve as a ticket to glory, honor, and braveness. It’s a poisonous and seductive elixir. “Those that survive, as Kurt Vonnegut wrote, “battle afterwards to reinvent themselves and their universe, which, on some stage, won’t ever make sense once more.”
Walt Whitman, who tended wounded troopers in hospitals throughout the Civil Struggle, wrote in a heading in his pocket book: “The actual struggle won’t ever get within the books.” “Its inside historical past won’t solely by no means be written,” Whitman argues, “its practicality, trivia of deeds and passions, won’t ever be even advised.”
Ralph Nader: Listeners, I simply wish to offer you some comparisons right here. This ebook got here out Seven Tales Press, however they do use Random Home as a distributor, to allow them to get into all of the bookstores if there are orders they usually can get into all the web distributors as nicely. A ebook that got here out in 2012 and 2013 known as American Sniper, which is a ebook by an knowledgeable sniper for the US navy in Iraq, and was changed into a film; ten years later, on Amazon, it ranks forward of Chris Hedges’s ebook. That is simply an instance that bloodthirsty navy motion books promote excess of books that problem the grizzly evil and crimes of struggle. It’s books of aggression, violence, navy prowess that gained the bestseller record. You’ve analyzed the general public attitudes on this and thought of it. Why do you suppose that is so? It’s so opposite to the survival intuition of human beings.
Chris Hedges: As a result of these books are a celebration of us as a folks, as a nation. And difficult that self-exaltation, which books like mine do, is disagreeable as a result of it forces us to ask questions on ourselves and our nation which can be deeply troubling and uncomfortable. And folks want the self-adulation, the self-adulatory myths. That is what each struggle film that Hollywood makes – Saving Non-public Ryan, and doesn’t matter what it’s–they like that self-adulation, as a result of in the long run, it’s actually a celebration of us. I feel that’s why.
Ralph Nader: Do you suppose it’s additionally that the warlike forces in our society have seized the symbols of patriotism. They’ve seized the flag; they’ve seized the anthems; they’ve seized the awards. There’s a Congressional Medal of Honor for troopers concerned in struggle. There’s not a Congressional Medal of Honor for the peacemakers/the battle avoiders. And as soon as they management that that means of patriotism, it turns into an intimidating issue. And individuals who in any other case would step up and communicate out are afraid to go in opposition to that image with all its holidays and all its marching bands, etcetera, for concern of being accused of unpatriotic conduct or worse, something to that?
Chris Hedges: Sure, I feel in any militaristic society that’s precisely what occurs. So even Robert E. Lee, who was a traitor combating for one of many worst causes that any struggle ever embraced, has full portrait in a Accomplice uniform that’s hanging within the library in West Level. And to not point out the truth that there are all types of components of West Level which can be named after him. So it’s a celebration of these Marshall qualities, which you’re proper, are fused with the thought of patriotism. I imply, what’s a patriot? A patriot, I’d argue, was somebody who works to make the nation a greater place, which might preclude a determine like Robert E. Lee. And doubtless all types of different navy figures as nicely. Martin Luther King could be, in my thoughts, a patriot, however that’s a distinct definition of patriotism. A lot of this hijacking of the iconography and symbols and language of the nation and the very best type of patriotism lies with the media and, in fact, with the leisure trade and it’s very exhausting to struggle in opposition to.
Ralph Nader: Yeah, nicely, there are Veterans for Peace in Iraq. Veterans which can be attempting to do their bit, nevertheless it begins within the faculties too. It begins proper within the first grade.
Chris Hedges: Sure, proper, precisely. That’s proper.
Ralph Nader: This ebook could be very exhausting to explain, listeners, as a result of it has a various impression in its contents. It’s not only a one-note kind ebook symbolized by its title, The Biggest Evil is Struggle. We’re talking with Chris Hedges. Chris, it’s true traditionally, is it not, that militaristic societies ultimately devour themselves like Sparta?
Chris Hedges: Nicely, or just like the Athenian Empire or the Roman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian empire. Each empire finally devours itself. And historians like Arnold Toynbee argued that the prime purpose that empires disembowel themselves is unchecked militarism. I studied classics. That was actually true in Rome, the a million man military and the Praetorian Guard was auctioning off the place of emperor to the very best bidder; we’re not too far-off from that ourselves. The Pentagon is completely uncontrolled, hasn’t been audited for I feel for a decade. Yearly it will get more cash, generally even unasked for, and it’s consuming, not solely great quantities of assets; technically it’s half of all discretionary spending. However if you add different applications, veteran affairs, nuclear and all the things else, it’s rather more than that. And naturally, it’s prosecuting one navy debacle after one other going all the way in which again to Vietnam, they usually’re by no means held accountable.
So that’s historically how empires are one of many main elements. Depletion of pure assets, in fact, is commonly one other. However that unchecked militarism is cancerous to a civilization. And it overreaches in the long run. So, because it decays, as we’ve got decayed, it engages in additional types of navy adventurism in an try to reclaim a misplaced hegemony and a misplaced glory and a misplaced energy. And this was actually true in Athens within the disastrous invasion of Sicily. I feel their complete fleet was sunk. So we’re following that very acquainted trajectory. This is the reason Karl Liebknecht, a Socialist German chief in World Struggle I, fairly astutely known as the German navy the enemy from inside. And I’d argue that that’s an acceptable technique to characterize the navy industrial institution in the USA.
Ralph Nader: It’s actually drawn trillions of {dollars} through the years – trillions and trillions of {dollars} from the requirements of our home society, from the general public works, the infrastructure, the colleges, the general public transit, the group well being clinics, the general public libraries, bridges, highways, soil conservation, the entire pollution-control funding. Now, local weather disruption and foreseen pandemics, which we’ve got starved the budgets of each the CDC and the World Well being Group. And I feel plenty of our listeners might not know that the principle purpose we didn’t get common medical insurance underneath Lyndon Johnson and received Medicare and restricted Medicaid was due to the cash we had been spending on the Vietnam Struggle, which was a legal struggle of aggression as nicely and by no means declared by the Congress.
What, Chris, would you want to focus on earlier than we conclude? And we actually would love one other program extra extensively as a result of I do know we’re going to get an incredible response from our listeners. What factors would you prefer to make briefly?
Chris Hedges: I’d spotlight the chapter of “The Pimps of Struggle” as a result of that is this coterie of teams and people, and I handled all of them the way in which again after I lined the struggle in El Salvador for 5 years. Elliott Abrams and Robert Kagan labored for Abrams within the State Division underneath the Reagan administration. And their job was actually to try to discredit all of our reporting on the bottom, as a result of the Salvadoran loss of life squads run out of three totally different navy items run by the federal government had been killing between 700 and a 1000 harmless, unarmed civilians a month. So the struggle trade has perpetuated these folks. It doesn’t matter what number of instances they’re unsuitable – they’re unsuitable about Iraq, unsuitable about Libya, unsuitable about Afghanistan, and their suppose tanks—the Challenge for the brand new American Century, American Enterprise Institute, Overseas Coverage Initiative, Institute for the Examine of Struggle, Atlantic Council, Brookings Establishment—
it’s form of like this mutant pressure of an antibiotic resistant micro organism we will’t do away with. And these persons are on the airwaves. They had been the individuals who offered us the struggle in Iraq, which alone ought to discredit something they need to say about Ukraine. They’re extremely cavalier about the potential for nuclear struggle, which all of them acknowledge. Former CIA director Brennan the opposite day stated there’s now one in 25% likelihood of nuclear battle that each one of those folks Supreme Court docket Justice Elana Kagan, right-wing conservative William Kristol and others… and what’s fascinating is that each events are struggle events.
Ralph Nader: What’s cruelly paradoxical is that you just had been an award-winning navy correspondent and reporter on different topics for the New York Occasions for over 20 years and you’ll’t get into the New York Occasions op-ed web page. And your ebook, The Biggest Evil is Struggle, wasn’t listed within the New York Occasions Ebook Evaluation. Then again, the consummate admitted warmonger John Bolton, who was, for a restricted period of time, the safety adviser on terrorism to Donald Trump, wrote a ebook which, stated that obstruction of justice was a lifestyle within the Trump White Home. Obstruction of justice is severe crime.
His ebook was reviewed within the New York Occasions. And he will get in op-eds within the New York Occasions and Washington Submit. And he simply admitted very just lately that he’s advocated coup d’état. He advocated the bombing of North Korea, the toppling of Iranian regime by navy means. A Yale Legislation graduate who doesn’t know concerning the constitutional restraints on wars that aren’t declared by the Congress, to not point out different worldwide legislation illegalities. How do you clarify that?
Chris Hedges: Nicely, having labored for the New York Occasions, it’s a newspaper that can cater obsequiously to the facilities of energy and is extraordinarily reticent about difficult these facilities that will critique the excesses of energy, however it would by no means critique the virtues of energy. And so if a author, reminiscent of myself, goes after the structural injustices and inequities, which embody the rise of the navy state, then you definitely crossed a line they’re very hesitant to embrace due to the blowback. So there’s no blowback for being good to John Bolton. There’s fairly a little bit of blowback for– I imply, you’re just about banned from the Occasions. After I labored with the Occasions, they wouldn’t even put Chomsky’s title within the newspapers. It was not written on a wall. It wasn’t rule, however everyone knew, even when it was about linguistics. So there’s a really insidious type of censorship, however the struggle trade is a big advertiser, particularly on the tv networks. And so who you see speaking about struggle is all the time former intelligence officers, Brennan, Clapper, former generals. And let’s not overlook these folks, though it’s not disclosed, are sitting on the boards of corporations like Raytheon raking in plenty of cash. So that they have an enormous form of private curiosity in perpetuating struggle as a result of they earn a living off of it as identified by (Smedley) Butler, in his speech “Struggle is a Racket.”
Ralph Nader: Yeah, one of many solely deviations from the blackout of Noam Chomsky by the New York Occasions was a current prolonged interview by Ezra Klein of the New York Occasions on his podcast. He had Noam Chomsky on for an hour. Final query is how do you get folks to impress upon their senators and representatives? As a result of the peace motion has received to start turning Congress round. That’s the place the appropriation funds and the neglect of claiming there’s going to be no struggle and not using a declaration from Congress, comes from. How do you get them to concentrate on their senators and representatives? They’re again residence now. They’re shaking palms. They’re going to occasions previous to the November election. It is a good time to get to them.
And we’ve got a Congress Membership with a number of hundred members who’re alleged to be much more eager on impressing the various points on this program on their two senators and representatives. How would you arouse them much more about specializing in these 535 members who symbolize and management the sovereign energy delegated to them by the folks, and who so usually have turned the sovereign energy in opposition to the very folks themselves. Let’s say you had been on the stump and also you had one or two minutes to convey a motivational expression.
Chris Hedges: Nicely, the Democrats need to be held accountable as a result of they’re culpable. And I feel we noticed great opposition to the Iraq struggle, tons of of hundreds of individuals within the streets, not significantly nicely lined, however they had been there. After which to elect Kerry, who form of out-Fallujahed George Bush. Keep in mind saluting and he wouldn’t have withdrawn; everyone stopped standing up in opposition to the struggle trade as a result of they thought electing Kerry would one way or the other make issues higher. Nevertheless, democratic administrations are wholly in lockstep with the Republicans on militarism, and in some instances even worse, as a result of they supply extra cowl. We’ve given $50 billion – I feel is the quantity now – to Ukraine. I imply, the entire State Division finances is simply $60 billion. And to not point out, that’s about 5 instances what we give to the EPA. So, we’ve got to carry those that prosecute everlasting struggle – Democrat or Republican— accountable. And I feel that by surrendering to a Democratic administration in the concept it’s “the least worst,” we weaken our energy and our credibility.
Ralph Nader: To not point out insufficient budgets to move off future pandemics and to take care of the current COVID-19 pandemic that Congress has sat on principally the Republican opposition, I would add. So nicely hear, we’ve been speaking with Chris Hedges, creator of this concise, pulsating fact-based ebook, The Biggest Evil is Struggle, Revealed by Seven Tales Press. Begin discussions round within the neighborhood, listeners. Ship copies to your library and faculties. It’s a readable ebook. It’s not enormous. It may be learn in a couple of hours and it’ll by no means put anyone to drowsiness. What’s the easiest way to achieve you?
Chris Hedges: chrishedges.substack.com.
Ralph Nader: That’s chrishedges.substack.com. And also you additionally go round and also you ship speeches to varied teams within the US and Canada, they usually’re all the time very, very nicely attended. So maintain doing what you’re doing, Chris, and to be continued.
Chris Hedges: Thanks, Ralph.
Ralph Nader: Thanks very a lot, Chris.
Chris Hedges: Thanks, Ralph.
Steve Skrovan: We’ve been talking with Chris Hedges. We are going to hyperlink to his ebook The Biggest Evil is Struggle at ralphnaderradiohour.com. Up subsequent, Mark Inexperienced joins Ralph to share profitable methods for Democrats. However first, let’s test in with our company crime reporter, Russell Mokhiber.
Russell Mokhiber: From the Nationwide Press Constructing in Washington, D.C., that is your Company Crime Reporter “Morning Minute” for Friday, October 28, 2022. I’m Russell Mokhiber.
Cosmetics firm, L’Oréal, is being sued over claims that its chemical hair straightening merchandise put girls at an elevated threat of uterine most cancers, that’s based on a report from CNN.
Civil rights Lawyer Ben Crump filed the lawsuit final week in Illinois on behalf of 32-year-old Missouri resident Jenny Mitchell, claiming that Mitchell’s uterine most cancers “was immediately and proximately brought on by her common and extended publicity to phthalates and different endocrine disrupting chemical compounds discovered within the defendant’s hair care merchandise.”
“As most younger African-American ladies, chemical relaxers, chemical straighteners had been launched to us at a younger age,” Mitchell stated. “Society has made it a norm to look a sure method, with a view to really feel a sure method. And I’m the primary voice of many voices to return that can stand as much as these corporations, and say, ‘No extra.’”
To listen to extra of this interview go to ralphnaderradiohour.com.
