The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress

The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress
Chris Hedges (Author)
(27)

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Democracy

Acclaimed journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges is one of the great moral voices of our age. He has the rare combination of decades of experience reporting from conflict zones in Central America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans, and the erudition one would expect from a student of Christian ethics and the classics at Harvard University. He prizes the truth over news and facts. And in the pursuit of truth he has risked his career; even his life.

AI never sought to be objective,” he writes. AHow can you be objective about death squads in El Salvador, massacres in Iraq, or Serbian sniper fire that gunned down unarmed civilians including children in Sarajevo? How can you be neutral about the masters and profiteers of war who lie and dissemble to hide the crimes they commit and the profits they make? How can you be objective about human pain? And finally, how can you be objective about those who are responsible for this suffering?”

The World As It Is is a collection of Hedges essays originally published by Truthdig, the Webby Award-winning progressive news website. Hedges lyrically and fearlessly dissects the most controversial issues of the day: America’s wars of self-destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, the decay of American empire (at home and abroad), Israel’s ghettoization of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and the failure of American liberalism. His essays draw on his extraordinary experiences as a journalist but also his conviction that the centers of power in America have been seized and hijacked by corporations, something the American media pays deference to.

ABecause the press is not concerned with distinguishing truth from news, because it lacks a moral compass, it has become nothing more than courtiers to the elite, shameless hedonists of power and absurd court propagandists.”

Chris Hedges insists that unless we begin to stand fast around moral imperatives, ones we cannot abandon and must be willing to fight the formal systems of power to advance, we will be complicit in our self-annihilation.

• Rank: #151321 in Books
• Published on: 2013-02-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .0 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Description #1 by TextbooksRus.com:

Drawing on two decades of experience as a war correspondent and based on his numerous columns for Truthdig, Chris Hedges presents The World As It Is, a panorama of the American empire at home and abroad, from the coarsening effect of America's War on Terror to the front lines in the Middle East and South Asia and the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Underlying his reportage is a constant struggle with the nature of war and its impact on human civilization. "War is always about betrayal," Hedges notes. "It is about betrayal of the young by the old, of cynics by idealists, and of soldiers and Marines by politicians. Society's institutions, including our religious institutions, which mold us into compliant citizens, are unmasked."

Description #2 by Powells.com:

Politics-United States Foreign Policy

Description #3 by shopoin.info:

"Many liberals are disappointed with Barack Obama. Some talk of betrayal, while others are writing abject letters to the White House asking the president to come back to his true self. Chris Hedges, however, is a progressive who doesn't feel betrayed. Obama was and is a brand, he argues. He is a product of the Chicago political machine. He has been skillfully packaged by the corporate state. In his newest book, Hedges argues that the conscious inertia of the left is destroying the progressive movement. Inaction and empty moral posturing leads not to change, but to an orgy of self-adulation and self-pity.Hedges argues that the gravest danger we face as a nation is not from the far right, although the right may well inherit power. Instead, the threat comes from a bankrupt liberal class that has lost the will to fight and the moral courage to stand up for what it espouses.File Size: 599 KBPrint Length: 370 pagesPage Numbers Source ISBN: 156858640X Publisher: Nation Books (April 12, 2011) Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.Language: EnglishASIN: B004OVEYOO"