Chris Hedges

Christopher L. Hedges (born 18 September 1956 in St. Johnsbury, Vermont) is a journalist and author, specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and society. is the 261st day of the year (262nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1956 (MCMLVI) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... St. ... A map showing countries commonly considered to be part of the Middle East The Middle East is a region comprising the lands around the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory that extends from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. ...

Hedges is currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City and a Lecturer in the Council of the Humanities and the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University. He spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than fifty countries, and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, where he spent fifteen years. Princeton University is a private coeducational research university located in Princeton, New Jersey. ... The Christian Science Monitor (CSM) is an international newspaper published daily, Monday through Friday. ... “NPR” redirects here. ... The Dallas Morning News is the major daily newspaper serving the Dallas, Texas area. ... The New York Times is a daily newspaper published in New York City by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. ...

Hedges was part of The New York Times team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for the paper's coverage of global terrorism. He received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. The Pulitzer Prize is an American award regarded as the highest national honor in print journalism, literary achievements, and musical composition. ... Amnesty International (commonly known as Amnesty or AI) is a pressure group that promotes human rights. ...

Biography

Christopher Lynn Hedges was born in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, the son of a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Thomas Hedges. He graduated from the Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, Connecticut in 1975. He has a B.A. in English Literature from Colgate University and a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, where he studied under James Luther Adams. St. ... Presbyterianism is part of the Reformed churches family of denominations of Christian Protestantism based on the teachings of John Calvin which traces its institutional roots to the Scottish Reformation, especially as led by John Knox. ... The Loomis Chaffee School is a college preparatory school located in Windsor, Connecticut. ... Colgate in fall. ... ‹ The template below is being considered for deletion. ... Harvard Divinity School is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States. ... James Luther Adams (November 12, 1901 – July 26, 1994), a professor at Meadville Lombard Theological School and Unitarian parish minister, was the most influential theologian among American Unitarian Universalists in the 20th century. ...

In 1983, Hedges began his career reporting on the conflict in El Salvador. Following six years in Latin America, he took time off to study Arabic and then went to Jerusalem and later Cairo. He spent seven years in the Middle East, most of them as the Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times. He left the Middle East in 1995 for Sarajevo to cover the war in Bosnia followed by the war in Kosovo. Later, he joined the investigative team of The New York Times, based in Paris, and covered terrorism. For other uses, see Jerusalem (disambiguation). ... Nickname: Egypt: Site of Cairo (top center) Coordinates: , Government  - Governor Dr. Abdul Azim Wazir Area  - City 214 km²  (82. ... Map of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Sarajevo) Coordinates: , Country Bosnia and Herzegovina Entity Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina Canton Sarajevo Canton Government  - Mayor Semiha Borovac (SDA) Area [1]  - City 141. ... Motto None Anthem Intermeco Bosnia and Herzegovina() on the European continent()  —  [] Capital (and largest city) Sarajevo Official languages Bosnian Croatian Serbian Government Parliamentary democracy  -  Presidency members Željko KomÅ¡ić1 NebojÅ¡a Radmanović2 Haris Silajdžić3  -  Chairman of the Council of Ministers Nikola Å pirić  -  High Representative 4 Independence... Kosovo (Albanian: Kosova or Kosovë, Serbian: , transliterated ; also , transliterated ) is a region in southern Serbia which has been under United Nations administration since 1999. ... This article is about the capital of France. ...

He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University during the academic year of 1998-1999, and spent a year studying classics. He speaks Arabic, French and Spanish and knows Latin and ancient Greek. He has written for numerous publications including The Nation, Foreign Affairs, Harper's Magazine, The New York Review of Books, Granta, Mother Jones, New Humanist and Truthdig where he currently writes a bi-weekly column. Nieman Fellowship is an award given to mid-career journalists by The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. ... Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League. ... The Nation (ISSN 0027-8378) is a weekly [1] U.S. periodical devoted to politics and culture, self-described as the flagship of the left. [2] Founded on July 6, 1865 as an Abolitionist publication, it is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. ... This article is about a journal. ... An issue of Harpers from 1905 November 2004 issue Harpers Magazine (or simply Harpers) is a monthly general-interest magazine covering literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts from a progressive, left perspective. ... This article is about the literary magazine. ... This article is about the literary magazine and publisher. ... Mary Harris Jones (August 1, 1837 – November 30, 1930), better known as Mother Jones, was a prominent American labor and community organizer, and Wobbly. ... New Humanist is the leading journal of atheism, secularism and freethought in the UK. It has been published for 120 years, starting out as Wattss Literary Guide in November 1885. ... Truthdig is an online Web magazine that provides a mix of long-form articles, interviews, and blog-like commentary on current events, delivered from a progressive point-of-view. ...

Hedges was an early and vocal critic of the plan to invade and occupy Iraq. He questioned the rationale for war by the Bush administration and was critical of the early press coverage, calling it "shameful cheerleading."

On 2003-05-17, just 2 weeks after president G.W. Bush's famous "Mission Accomplished" speech, Hedges delivered a Commencement address at Rockford College in Rockford, Illinois, saying: "We are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige and power and security." Several hundred members of the audience booed and jeered his talk, although some applauded. Hedges' microphone was cut twice and two young men rushed the stage to try and prevent him from speaking. Hedges had to cut short his address and was escorted off campus by security officials before the ceremony was over. An editorial in The Wall Street Journal denounced Hedges for his anti-war stance. The New York Times issued Hedges a formal reprimand after the address for "public remarks that could undermine public trust in the paper's impartiality." Hedges left the paper not long after this incident to write books and teach. Year 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 137th day of the year (138th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician and the 43rd and current President of the United States. ... President George W. Bush addresses sailors during the Mission Accomplished speech, May 1, 2003. ... Rockford College is a private American liberal arts college in Rockford, Illinois. ... The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is an international daily newspaper published by Dow Jones & Company in New York City, New York, USA, with Asian and European editions, and a worldwide daily circulation of more than 2 million as of 2006, with 931,000 paying online subscribers. ... The New York Times is a daily newspaper published in New York City by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. ...

Hedges has stated that he is not a pacifist and supports humanitarian interventions, such as those in Bosnia and Kosovo, designed to stop campaigns of genocide. He nevertheless describes war as "the most potent narcotic invented by humankind." Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of an ethnic or national group. ...

Hedges states that his outlook is influenced by moral writers and ethicists such as George Orwell, Samuel Johnson, Karl Popper, Hannah Arendt, Elias Canetti and theologians such as William Stringfellow, Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Abraham Heschel, and Reinhold Niebuhr. Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903[1][2] – 21 January 1950), better known by the pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist. ... For other persons named Samuel Johnson, see Samuel Johnson (disambiguation). ... Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH, FRS, FBA, (July 28, 1902 – September 17, 1994), was an Austrian and British[1] philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics. ... Hannah Arendt (October 14, 1906 – December 4, 1975) was a German Jewish political theorist. ... Elias Canetti, Nobel Laureate in Literature Elias Canetti (25 July 1905, Ruse, Bulgaria – 13 August 1994, Zurich) was a Bulgaria-born British-Austrian novelist, who wrote in German and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981. ... William Stringfellow (Johnston, Rhode Island, 1929 – 1985) was a renowned theologian and human rights activist. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Paul Johannes Tillich (August 20, 1886 – October 22, 1965) was a German-American theologian and Christian existentialist philosopher. ... Abraham Joshua Heschel Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (January 11, 1907, Warsaw, Poland - December 23, 1972) was considered by many to be one of the most significant Jewish theologians of the 20th century. ... Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr (June 21, 1892 – June 1, 1971) was a Protestant theologian best known for his study of the task of relating the Christian faith to the reality of modern politics and diplomacy. ...

Hedges is married and has two children, Thomas and Noëlle. He lives in New Jersey.

Books

War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002)

Hedges' bestselling War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning draws on his experiences in various conflicts to describe the patterns and behavior of nations and individuals in wartime. The book was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning is a 2002 nonfiction book by Chris Hedges. ... The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) is an American association of approximately seven hundred book reviewers. ...

"War and conflict have marked most of adult life. I began covering insurgencies in El Salvador, where I spent five years, then on to Guatemala and Nicaragua and Colombia, through the first intifada in the West Bank and Gaza, the civil war in the Sudan and Yemen, the uprisings in Algeria and the Punjab, the fall of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, the Gulf War, the Kurdish rebellion in southeast Turkey and northern Iraq, the war in Bosnia, and finally Kosovo. I have been in ambushes on desolate stretches of Central American roads, shot at in the marshes of southern Iraq, imprisoned in the Sudan, beaten by Saudi military police, deported from Libya and Iran, captured and held for a week by the Iraqi Republican Guard during the Shiite rebellion following the Gulf War, strafed by Russian MIG-21s in Bosnia, fired upon by Serb snipers, and shelled for days in Sarajevo with deafening rounds of heavy artillery that threw out thousands of deadly bits of iron fragments. I have seen too much of violent death. I have tasted too much of my own fear. I have painful memories that lie buried and untouched most of the time. It is never easy when they surface."

What Every Person Should Know About War (2003)

Hedges is also the author of What Every Person Should Know About War, a book he worked on with several combat veterans.

From the publisher:

"Chris Hedges offers a critical -- and fascinating -- lesson in the dangerous realities of our age: a stark look at the effects of war on combatants. Utterly lacking in rhetoric or dogma, this manual relies instead on bare fact, frank description, and a spare question-and-answer format. Hedges allows U.S. military documentation of the brutalizing physical and psychological consequences of combat to speak for itself."

Losing Moses on the Freeway (2005)

Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America was published in June 2005. The book was inspired by the Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski and his ten-part film series The Decalogue. Hedges wrote about lives, including his own, which had been consumed by one of the violations or issues raised by a commandment. Krzysztof KieÅ›lowski   (June 27, 1941 Warsaw, Poland – March 13, 1996 Warsaw, Poland) was an influential Oscar-nominated Polish film director and screenwriter, known internationally for his film cycles Three Colors and The Decalogue. ... Dekalog (The Decalogue) (1988) is a Polish film series, originally made as a television miniseries, directed by Krzysztof KieÅ›lowski and co-written by KieÅ›lowski with Krzysztof Piesiewicz, with music by Zbigniew Preisner. ...

American Fascists (2007)

Hedges' most recent book, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, was published in January 2007. In this book, Hedges argues that the Christian fundamentalist movement emerging today in the United States resembles the early fascist movements in Italy and Germany at the beginning of the last century, and therefore constitutes a gathering threat to American democracy.

External links

• Chris Hedges' articles on Truthdig
• Chris Hedges' articles in "The Nation"
• Bush's Nuclear Apocalypse - An article written by Chris Hedges and published on the 8th of October 2006 on www.truthdig.com and on www.pravda.ru in Italian (L'Apocalisse Nucleare di Bush)
• Chris Hedges "On War" New York Review of Books Volume 51, Number 20 December 16, 2004
• Kurtz, Stanley. "Dominionist Domination", National Review Online, 2005-05-02. Retrieved on 2007-03-08. 
• Hedges, Chris. "Feeling the hate with the National Religious Broadcasters", Harper's, May 2005. Retrieved on 2007-04-11. 
• Hedges, Chris. "The Christian Right and the Rise of American Fascism", TheocracyWatch, 2004-11-15. Retrieved on 2007-01-31. 
• Hedges, Chris. "Text of the Rockford College graduation speech", Rockford Register Star, 2003-05-20. 
• Hedges, Chris. "Bill Moyers talks with Chris Hedges on the eve of the Iraq War", NOW, 2003-03-07. 

National Review (NR) is a biweekly magazine of political opinion, founded by author William F. Buckley, Jr. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... May 2 is the 122nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (123rd in leap years). ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 67th day of the year (68th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 101st day of the year (102nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... TheocracyWatch is a project run by the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy (CRESP), located at Cornell University. ... Year 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 319th day of the year (320th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 31st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Rockford College is a private American liberal arts college in Rockford, Illinois. ... Year 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 140th day of the year (141st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... NOW is a PBS newsmagazine especially covering social and political issues. ... Year 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 66th day of the year (67th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

Video links

•  (Feb 21, 2007). An evening at Maryknoll with Chris Hedges [Google video].1h10mn
•  (Feb 19, 2007). Chris Hedges on “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America”. Democracy Now!.46mn
•  (Feb 14, 2007). Who Are the American Fascists?. Cambridge Forum/WGBH.1h14
•  (Feb 6, 2007). The Hour. CBC.10mn
•  (Jan 18, 2007). BookTV talk. CSPAN.54mn
•  (Dec 4, 2006). Teach-In at G.W. University [Google video].33mn
•  (Nov 28, 2006). The Connection: Iraq and the Meaning of War with Chris Hedges [Google video]. Houston PBS.27mn
•  (Nov 1, 2004). War is a Force that Gives us Meaning with Chris Hedges. UCTV.1h
•  (May 17, 2003). Commencement address at Rockford College [YouTube video].21mn
•  (Jan 22, 2003). War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. WGBH Forum Network.1h18mn

Audio links

•  (Feb 21, 2007). Christo-Fascism?. The Dennis Prager Show.35mn
•  (Feb 16, 2007). American Fascists. Pacifica Radio.21mn
•  (Feb 8, 2007). The Religious Right. CBC Radio.28mn
•  (Jan 25, 2007). Author Argues Christian Right Hurts Democracy. NPR.30mn
•  (Jul 26, 2006). On David and Goliath. Open Source.1h
•  (Mar 11, 2006). Does God love war?.
•  (Nov 6, 2004). Reflections on War. AFSC.35mn
•  (Oct 11, 2003). War Is A Force that Gives Us Meaning. Altruists.org.49mn