Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, author of several books including the amazing-looking Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, and a man who, briefly anyway, won a lawsuit against U.S. president Barack Obama. And holy shit, he’s speaking tonight at the University of Regina (Education Auditorium, 7:00). It’s free and you should go. Here’s an excerpt from Special Agent Norton’s interview with Hedges, which you can read in full here.
Canada has recently changed its environmental legislation and has accelerated the review process for new projects. What’s your take on this shift?
Well Canada, particularly under Harper, is reconfiguring itself pretty rapidly into a corporate state. It has walked away from Kyoto; it has lifted environmental controls; it has militarized its police as we saw at the G20 in Toronto; it has been impinging on traditional civil liberties. It’s always sort of remarkable because we do it first, we make all the mistakes, and then 10 years later Canada copies us. I’ve never really figured it out.
Your well-known interview with Kevin O’Leary is a scar on CBC’s journalistic record. During the interview you compared the experience to being on FOX News. Canadians tend to chastise the American media for being superficial and hyper-partisan, yet we’re seeing the same patterns emerging in Canada. Why do you think we’re seeing this widespread decline in journalism?
Because corporate forces are an enemy of journalism, which is about verifiable fact, truth, exposing corruption. They have been quite successful at replacing it with celebrity gossip and emotional rants by idiots like Kevin O’Leary.
Chris Hedges is smart, honest, observant, compassionate and he calls it like it is. This will be amazing, and it’s fantastic that the University of Regina’s Social Policy Research Unit was able to bring in a speaker of this calibre. Hope to see you there.
