[Peace-discuss] Corporate coup d'état

[C. G. Estabrook]

"American workers, as they are repeatedly told, will have to become competitive 
with prison labor in China. That's where we're headed, and all the pillars of 
the liberal establishment are complicit in this. At least if you get sick in the 
UK, you don't go bankrupt or die."

    Hedges: "US empire could collapse at any time"
    By Nathan Diebenow
    Friday, December 17th, 2010

  America's military and economic empire could collapse at any time, but 
predicting the precise day, week or month of its potential demise is 
unattainable, according to a former New York Times war correspondent who spoke 
with Raw Story.

"The when and how is very dangerous to predict because there's always some 
factor that blindsides you that you didn't expect," Pulitzer-winning journalist 
Chris Hedges said in an exclusive interview. "It doesn't look good. But exactly 
how it plays out and when it plays out, having covered disintegrating societies, 
it's impossible to tell."

He explained that he learned this lesson as events unfolded around him in the 
fall of 1989. Then, members of the opposition to the Soviet Empire told him that 
they predicted travel across the Berlin Wall separating East from West Germany 
would open within the year.

"Within a few hours, the wall didn't exist," he said.

Hedges was one of roughly 135 activists who participated in an act of civil 
disobedience that resulted in their arrests outside the White House yesterday, 
even as Obama was unveiling a new report on progress of the war in Afghanistan.

Speaking to Raw Story on Wednesday night, he said the signs of US collapse are 
plain to see and compared the country's course through Afghanistan to Soviet 
Russia's.

"We're losing [the war in Afghanistan] in the same way the Red Army lost it," he 
said. "It's exactly the same configuration where we sort of control the urban 
centers where 20 percent of the population lives. The rest of the country where 
80 percent of the Afghans live is either in the hands of the Taliban or disputed."

One day after this interview was conducted, reports hit the global media noting 
the CIA's warning to President Obama, that the Pakistan-supported Taliban could 
still regain control of the country.

Hedges predicted that President Obama's war report released Thursday would 
"contradict not only [US] intelligence reports but everything else that is 
coming out of Afghanistan."

His prediction came startlingly true: the CIA's own assessment was said to stand 
in striking contrast with President Obama's report. Defense Secretary Robert 
Gates, however, insisted that the US controlled more territory in Afghanistan 
than it did a year ago.

"Foreigners will not walk the streets of Kabul because of kidnapping, and 
journalists regularly meet Taliban officials in Kabul because the whole 
apparatus is so porous and corrupt," he said.

'A corporate coup d'état in slow motion'

Hedges said he attended the protest and planned to get arrested because he is 
against the corporate powers that have enveloped the nation.

"We've undergone a corporate coup d'état in slow motion," he said. "Our public 
education system has been gutted. Our infrastructure is corroding and 
collapsing. Unless we begin to physically resist, they are going to solidify 
neo-feudalism in this country."

"If we think that Obama is bad, watch the next two years because these corporate 
forces have turned their back on him," Hedges warned.

Hedges, author of "Death of the Liberal Class," said that his vision of America 
is one with a functioning social democracy, which stands in stark contrast to 
the nihilism of the corporate state.

"American workers, as they are repeatedly told, will have to become competitive 
with prison labor in China," he said. "That's where we're headed, and all the 
pillars of the liberal establishment are complicit in this."

"At least if you get sick in the UK, you don't go bankrupt or die," he added.

Hedges said that another pressure point is the US dollar, which he pointed out 
had been dropped by Russia and China in favor of modified ruble/renminbi exchanges.

"A few more deals like that, and our currency becomes junk," he said.

Hedges continued, "As long as we have relative stability, these lunatic fringe 
movements can be held at bay, but if we don't undertake serious structural 
reform, which we're not doing, then it is inevitable that we will come to a 
tremendous crisis - economic and political as well as environmental."

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/untitled-chris-hedges-interview/