18 Comments
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Mike Hampton's avatar

Oh, man, Chris Hedges! That's a big enough name to make some heads spin. The repression is directly proportional to growing protest. Tough times here, and worse ahead. Lot of pain before things get better.

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Mark Taylor's avatar

A message is being delivered to all journalists and independent podcasts. Pay attention to how the story is reported -- or more importantly not reported -- in the next day or so.

This is the equivalent of every journalist awakening to a horse head next to them in bed.

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Mike Hampton's avatar

Your analogy is appropriate. Some journalists will stand up, and I'm interested how that plays out. Most will say nothing because Chris 'doesn't exist and neither does the horse'. Cowardice must never be underestimated.

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MakerOfNoise's avatar

How sad and cowardly of the Real News Network. Courage really is the most rare attribute. People will continue to seek out Hedges’ work.

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Mark Taylor's avatar

Agreed. It's in times like these the true nature of people and organizations is exposed.

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Thomas Balistrieri, Ed.D.'s avatar

We are in it now up to our eyeballs. I simply cannot believe the Third Reich has been reborn here in America.

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Slightly Lucid's avatar

Mark, the fascist rope was already prepared. The COVID response was the dress rehearsal. Israel was simply the opportunity they’d been waiting for in order to codify repression into law. The US government has been at war against it’s own people for quite some time now - this is just the latest escalation.

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The Revolution Continues's avatar

All I can say at this point is, "Come and get me, you unpatriotic, First Amendment rights-denying bastards!!!"

Why don't they just start wearing Brown Shirts with swastikas on them already? We all know they want to. Welcome to Germany, 1936!

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Mark Taylor's avatar

Hey, give 'em time. Those damn labor organizers have tied things up at the Amazon warehouse.

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Patricia's avatar

Indeed Mike :

We are all time travelers now:

back where were in the bad old days if ‘68:

Which was but a harbinger of ‘24.

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Mark Taylor's avatar

I just added this to the post:

UPDATE -- As of today, May 3 at 7:07 a.m., CT, the Real News Network website has nothing on their website about dumping Hedges. They do still have a link to his recent broadcast on technofascism and there is link to his now censored podcast. It is tragic to see this site — which has done a lot of good work — behave this way.

Suddenly dropping Hedges because of pressure from the Democratic Party is bad enough, but to do so and not even acknowledge and explain (apologize) to their readers is a special breed of cowardice and journalistic betrayal one would expect from the New York Times but not a worker-themed news organization.

Scrolling through a variety of corporate and alternative news sites and podcasts, I see no mention of what has happened.

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Mark Taylor's avatar

“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.” -- Mario Savio

This such a time.

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Ohio Barbarian's avatar

I see you saw the same Glenn Greenwald clip I did, and probably at about the same time. He breaks it down well. They can probably get this monstrosity signed into law, unless 40 Senators filibuster it.

It won't last a day in Federal Court, though. Some federal judge somewhere will slap an injunction on it, and the Supremes will shoot it down 9-0. The only politicians who might be surprised by this live in Israel.

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Mark Taylor's avatar

One can hope, but at this point in the fall I have no confidence any branch of government will do what is right.

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Peter Shepherd's avatar

I hope everyone's watched that video.

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May 5, 2024
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Mark Taylor's avatar

Hmm, I just tried it and it worked for me.

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May 5, 2024
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Mark Taylor's avatar

Did it work for you there?

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May 5, 2024
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Mark Taylor's avatar

That kind of stuff happens with me all the time!

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