Re: VIDEO: Robert Scheer to Chris Hedges: 'I Will Not Blame' the American Masses for Imperialism (7/7)

Perhaps Scheer and Hedges quibble over whether the current system can
be salvaged, or not, but the bottom line is that both men agree that
the system is broken. I began about where Scheer is, and have come to
be more in the camp of Hedges. The system was established to protect
and further the prosperity of the wealthy land owners, and any
inclusion of persons of color, women, and working class has been
forced on the Founding Fathers and their descendents.
But always and forever, this Land of the Free and Home of the Brave is
the Land of the Forefathers and their descendants.
Some of the "outsiders" have wiggled into positions of limited power,
bringing a measure of wealth and security to themselves and their
families, but they can be tossed aside when their usefulness is at an
end. The military is the property of the descendants, too. So is the
police system. Although there is always the potential of the
military assuming control in the name of the Establishment.
But the disenfranchised have no place, no wiggle room in this nation,
as it now is governed.
While the Forefather's descendents, today's Ruling Class, may have
reluctantly given some privileges to women, non-landholders and former
slaves, they continue to exercise control over how much freedom these
people are allowed. When it suits their purposes those privileges can
be tightened or even taken away. Look at the plight of the former
slaves. Our prisons are full of them, working for The Man at wages
below even those in poverty Third World countries. And the former
slaves who are not serving time at the moment, live in ghettos and
slums and in poverty stricken rural areas. Notice the very few who do
rise out of their rags. These are mostly people whom the Masters see
as sports and arts entertainers. We tend to forget that the vast
number of these former slaves continue to have no hope of ever
becoming free, in the same way that their White neighbors can become.
An even smaller number manage to rise through education or military
service. Mostly these are people who have learned to kiss the asses
of their Masters. They parade about believing that they are equal to
the Rulers. But even one such as Barak Obama is held at arms length.
And the very people he strives to serve trash him.
We've already talked about the plight of women in this nation of the
free. And the Landless are always being shoved back down into poverty
or near poverty life. No, this is not a system that can be fixed. It
was broken, so far as most Americans are concerned, from the very
beginning. Yes, this great experience has served its creators well.
But they have become the King George the Third's of today, seeing
their subjects as personal resources rather than equal human beings.
Carl Jarvis

On 6/7/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Chris Hedges believes that the current system provides no possibility of
> change within it. He believes that it has to be completely demolished and
> replaced. Robert Sheer believes that there's room to work for change within
> the current system if we can force politicians to follow the constitution.
> Hedges' responsse is that the way in which our laws have been applied, was
> flawed from the start and that at this point, our laws have been so changed
> and corrupted, that there's no point in attempting to get politicians to
> abide by them.
>
> Miriam
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Carl Jarvis [mailto:carjar82@gmail.com]
> Sent: Saturday, June 06, 2015 11:08 PM
> To: Miriam Vieni
> Subject: Re: VIDEO: Robert Scheer to Chris Hedges: 'I Will Not Blame' the
> American Masses for Imperialism (7/7)
>
> After a quick read, I still think these two are closer together than
> they claim. But I'll need to go back through this, and read some of
> the other transcripts that I saved.
>
> Carl Jarvis
>
> On 6/5/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>> Again, here's the transcript, not the video.
>> VIDEO: Robert Scheer to Chris Hedges: 'I Will Not Blame' the American
>> Masses
>> for Imperialism (7/7)
>>
> http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/video_robert_scheer_to_chris_hedges_abo
>> ut_the_american_public_20150604/
>> Posted on Jun 4, 2015
>> In the final installment of the seven-part interview on The Real News
>> Network, Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer and columnist Chris
>> Hedges
>> continue their discussion about violence, this time with a focus on
> whether
>> the American masses benefited from imperialism. Drawing on personal
>> experience as well as ideology, the two get into an illuminating
>> conversation that highlights how, though as journalists and activists
>> they
>> ultimately work toward the same ends, their fundamental understanding of
>> American society is in many ways at odds.
>> After Hedges tells Scheer that he thinks the American public has been
>> "far
>> more complicit [in the culture of violence] than you give allowance for,"
>> Scheer, author of "They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting
>> Corporations and Snooping Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy,"
>> gives an impassioned response about his own experience with manipulation
> of
>> the working class by elites.
>> Take a look at the beginning of their exchange:
>> HEDGES: I would disagree with you in saying that I think most segments of
>> the population did not ask the hard questions about slavery or about the
>> genocidal campaign-roughly 2 million Native Americans (by 1900 there's
> less
>> than 250,000 left) who were slaughtered-because it was in their
>> interests.So
>> I think it's a bit like Nazi Germany, the idea that somehow people are
>> manipulated. Yes, of course propaganda; the elites always manipulate. But
> I
>> think it was in their interest to be manipulated in many cases, and
>> therefore they didn't ask the kinds of questions they should have asked.
>> I
>> think they're far more complicit than you give allowance for.
>> SCHEER: This is a fundamental disagreement we have. I just think, you
> know,
>> my own parents.going to work and the kinds of jobs-my father was.running
>> knitting machines and my uncle was a welder and so forth. I'm just
> thinking
>> of those jobs and how much discretionary time you had.I see that in Los
>> Angeles right now.I've experienced immigrant culture. And we are
>> increasingly in California-and in the nation-we have a major influx of
>> immigrants. They're mostly interested in survival, in family, in caring
> for
>> others, and so forth. And the daily routine is a nightmare. If you
>> get-right
>> now in Los Angeles, and you get a ticket because that's going to support
>> municipal government and it ends up being a $100 ticket or something,
> boom,
>> there goes the budget.my view is these people have-I will not blame them.
> I
>> blame-even when they are so-called populist movements, there's a Father
>> Coughlin, there's the Koch brothers, there's people manipulating them,
>> there's money pouring in. We saw it with Occupy. They're agents of the
>> state
>> coming in. They're the false divide-and-conquer.Oh, there are terrorists
>> out
>> there and there are communists out there, there's foreign enemy, national
>> security. And then we buy people off-go into the military, be cannon
>> fodder.
>> And I just come from a very strong sense that throughout the world-and
> I've
>> seen it everywhere that I've been-the masses of people are manipulated.
>> And while the two continue to disagree on many subjects throughout, they
>> finally converge at the end of the interview on the very reason they
>> write
>> in the first place: to encourage our society to organize against an
>> increasingly oppressive surveillance state, against all odds and all
>> fear.
>> Watch the two respected journalists challenge one another in the video
>> above, and read The Real News Network's transcript of the discussion
> below.
>> You can also watch the first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth
>> parts
>> of the interview by clicking on the links provided.
>> -Posted by Natasha Hakimi Zapata
>>
>>
>> CHRIS HEDGES, JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR: Hi. I'm Chris Hedges for The Real
>> News.
>> This is our seventh segment with Robert Scheer, the author of They Know
>> Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations and Snooping
>> Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy.
>> Welcome, Bob.
>> So we were talking about violence. And I just want to say that up until,
>> let's say, the '60s within this country-and this goes all the way back to
>> westward expansion, and even the colonization of New England-most
>> segments
>> of this population had a vested interest in the tools of subjugation of
>> Native Americans and African Americans because it made them wealthier.
>> And
>> we watched that growing capacity of wealth. This was something that
>> Tocqueville noticed when he made his travels across the United States.
>> And
>> therefore I would disagree with you in saying that I think most segments
> of
>> the population did not ask the hard questions about slavery or about the
>> genocidal campaign-roughly 2 million Native Americans (by 1900 there's
> less
>> than 250,000 left) who were slaughtered-because it was in their
>> interests.
>> As soon as gold is found in California, they're racing through Indian
>> territory, or gold is found in the Black Hills. The press, most of these
>> campaigns that were carried out, like Covington out of Denver, these
>> were-they weren't even soldiers. They were private militias who went in
> and
>> carried out indiscriminate slaughter against Native Americans. So I think
>> it's a bit like Nazi Germany, the idea that somehow people are
> manipulated.
>> Yes, of course propaganda; the elites always manipulate. But I think it
> was
>> in their interest to be manipulated in many cases, and therefore they
>> didn't
>> ask the kinds of questions they should have asked. I think they're far
> more
>> complicit than you give allowance for.
>> PROF. ROBERT SCHEER, JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR: Yeah, this is a fundamental
>> disagreement we have. I just think, you know, my own parents and, you
> know,
>> going to work and the kinds of jobs-my father was, you know, running
>> knitting machines and my uncle was a welder and so forth. I'm just
> thinking
>> of those jobs and how much discretionary time you had or how-. You know,
>> you
>> go and it's early in the morning, five or six o'clock, and you get on
>> that
>> subway train. And I'm sure there's a comparable farmland experience I
>> didn't
>> grow up in. But my father was a German farmer who came here at the time
>> of
>> the First World War and so forth. But, you know, you go to work and
>> you're
>> running this machine, and then maybe you get a half hour for lunch or
>> something, and then after-and then maybe you want to do something nice.
>> If
>> you're younger, you go hear some music or do something. But then you've
> got
>> to get back on that train and you work, and then you've got to get up and
>> do
>> it the next day, and maybe on the weekend you can go a little fishing or
>> have a picnic or something.
>> I see that in Los Angeles right now. You know, my son is married to a
> woman
>> from Oaxaca. I've experienced immigrant culture. And we are increasingly
> in
>> California-and in the nation-we have a major influx of immigrants.
>> They're
>> mostly interested in survival, in family, in caring for others, and so
>> forth. And the daily routine is a nightmare. If you get-right now in Los
>> Angeles, and you get a ticket because that's going to support municipal
>> government and it ends up being a $100 ticket or something, boom, there
>> goes
>> the budget.
>> HEDGES: Well, that's how the system's designed. It's designed like that.
>> SCHEER: Yeah, I understand that. But my view is these people have-I will
>> not
>> blame them. I blame-even when they are so-called populist movements,
>> there's
>> a Father Coughlin, there's the Koch brothers, there's people manipulating
>> them, there's money pouring in. We saw it with Occupy. They're agents of
>> the
>> state coming in. They're the false divide-and-conquer. You know, oh,
>> there
>> are terrorists out there and there are communists out there, there's
>> foreign
>> enemy, national security. And then we buy people off-you know, go into
>> the
>> military, be cannon fodder. And I just come from a very strong sense that
>> throughout the world-and I've seen it everywhere, you know, that I've
>> been-the masses of people are manipulated.
>> HEDGES: Well, I don't disagree.
>> SCHEER: Okay. And their ability-so I put the onus on the manipulators,
>> because I see-and just in my own case, even myself, going to school, I
>> remember the first time I wrote a letter to The New York Times, and they
>> had
>> a whole thing about, you know, the Cold War started because the Russians
>> grabbed southern Sakhalin, and I happened to go to the 42nd Street
>> library
>> 'cause I could do it. I had some job working in a store, /kla?nz/, on
> Union
>> Square, and I went and checked this out. And then I found the wartime
>> agreements. No! They were supposed to go get southern Sakhalin. And I
> wrote
>> a letter to New York Times. The New York Times didn't print it.
>> Fast-forward, I'm the editor of Ramparts. Martin Luther King gives that
>> great speech at Riverside Church and he [incompr.] The New York Times
>> doesn't print his speech (we printed it at Ramparts), and they condemn
>> him
>> editorially for dividing the civil rights movement.
>> So what I have seen in my life as a journalist, as a young person, and
>> everything was a pattern. And this is why I wrote this bloody book,
> because
>> I think now, with the new tools of surveillance, you know, being able to
>> compare our biometrics and with Facebook being able to move the
>> discussion
>> from pessimistic to optimistic, with somebody like Barack Obama coming
> into
>> power because he was able to use all of this data to target advertising,
>> I
>> see a lessening of the ability of most people to be able to know what's
>> going on, to challenge it.
>> HEDGES: Well, all of that's true. And yet I think we as an imperial power
>> are infected with the disease of imperialism. And imperial power is
>> primarily about the violent subjugation of others, abroad and at home.
>> And
>> we have become the richest nation on the planet through the suffering of
>> the
>> wretched of the Earth. And it is not in our interest economically, you
>> know,
>> however hard we may work, whatever, to look at the wretched of the earth.
>> SCHEER: See, I disagree. I think it's the interest of American workers to
>> look at the exploitation of Chinese workers now, because if they would-in
>> these trade agreements-and you've written about this-in these trade
>> agreements, if they would support these agreements, including the right
>> of
>> people to organize unions and have basic human rights and so forth, you
>> wouldn't be able to keep wages as suppressed as they are in China.
>> HEDGES: You're exactly right. But I'm talking about now we're living in a
>> system that's supranational. These global corporations have no loyalty to
>> any sovereign state. So I'm talking about-and you're right. But in the
>> past-.
>> SCHEER: In the past, who paid the price for these wars? I think it
>> was-you
>> know, who were the ones who actually ended up dying in these wars?
>> HEDGES: Well, of course, as always it's the working class and poor.
>> SCHEER: Right. So I don't accept the idea that somehow we were living
>> high
>> off the hog, because we didn't get the goodies. I disagree with that.
>> HEDGES: Well, but look at the 1950s. The average American worker
>> within-anywhere on the planet was, in relative terms to other workers,
>> making more than any-I mean, you had-.
>> SCHEER: I was working in the post office the 1950s. That's how I went to
>> college. And, yes, I made $2.20 an hour. I was a temporary part-time sub,
>> but I worked 12 hours a day if I could get the hours. And, you know, I
>> wasn't starving or anything, but I certainly was not living high.
>> HEDGES: Well-yeah. Right. But, Bob-.
>> SCHEER: No. Wait. My mother was going to work in the-I remember this very
>> well. When I went to college, I was living with my mother in the Bronx.
> She
>> was going to the garment district and I was going down to work in the
>> post
>> office after school. And I worked my tail off with a lot of people who
>> had
>> been vets in the army and everything else. They thought they were middle
>> class or lower middle-class, but they were hanging on by a thread. And
>> the
>> only reason the post office job meant anything at all is we had the
>> beginnings of unions. You know. And the people, all-my family were
> working.
>> They weren't living high on the hog.
>> HEDGES: Right. Well, but, of course, unions created the middle class. And
>> my
>> grandfather worked in the post office and was a vet and was in a union
>> and
>> retired with a pension. And you're right, he didn't have much money. He
> was
>> probably lower working class, whatever.
>> SCHEER: Your father didn't have much money.
>> HEDGES: No, my father-this was my mother. My father came from money; my
>> mother didn't.
>> SCHEER: But as a minister he didn't make-.
>> HEDGES: No, he didn't make much. But you had a pension, you had a house.
>> Now, as Barbara Ehrenreich said, being working poor in this country is
>> one
>> long emergency. You're working three jobs, you're in debt. You know, in
>> real
>> terms your wages have declined or stagnated since the '70s. You can't
>> afford
>> a house. You're sleeping in your car.
>> SCHEER: Absolutely.
>> HEDGES: It's a completely different scenario.
>> SCHEER: No, not completely different.
>> HEDGES: It's very different.
>> SCHEER: No. No. See, this is where I disagree. It was never good to work
> in
>> a factory. You know. I mean, I did some of this. You know. I mean, it was
>> not. I was in the /?f?rl?s/ steel plant. I was working on the original
>> Levittown houses in Pennsylvania, 'cause as a kid you got those kind of
>> jobs, and even later. And my relatives worked in those jobs. No, it was
>> never great to climb in and out of cars on the assembly line, you know,
>> at
>> Ford or something.
>> But you're right: with unionization, with some labor protections before
>> they
>> were stripped away, you could have a decent life with public schools that
>> worked.
>> And I'll tell you something, and here I'm going to agree with you. Colin
>> Powell wrote an autobiography, and it happened that he grew up in a part
> of
>> the Bronx where I grew up, and his family was very similar and had
>> similar
>> jobs, and we both were in the same class at City College. Okay? We were
>> studying engineering. I wasn't a friend or anything, but I got to talk to
>> him about it later in life. He wrote an autobiography about this period.
>> And
>> where you're absolutely right: what was done for us as working class kids
>> is
>> not done for kids now. The schools-.
>> HEDGES: Well, and let me be clear.
>> SCHEER: Yes.
>> HEDGES: You talk about City College. Who destroyed City College?
>> Rockefeller.
>> SCHEER: Yes. Absolutely.
>> HEDGES: Destroyed it.
>> SCHEER: Yes.
>> HEDGES: And it was one of the great colleges in the country.
>> SCHEER: Yes. And, yeah, City College originally had free textbooks, no
>> tuition. Now, even if you go to any public university-.
>> HEDGES: Well, not only that. In terms of the quality of the education, it
>> equaled any college around the country.
>> SCHEER: Right. Well, it was superior, I would say.
>> HEDGES: Well, it was certainly a major university.
>> SCHEER: Yeah, we thought we were better than Harvard.
>> But, anyway-but if you look at the quality of public schools and the
>> enthusiasm, the optimism about certainly inner city schools schools in
>> America, that has been taken away. So here I will agree with you
>> emphatically that the opportunities, such as were-yes, they have been
>> stripped away.
>> HEDGES: Well, but that's the point.
>> SCHEER: Yeah, agreed. I agree. I agree.
>> HEDGES: I mean, that's the point. So I'm not-
>> SCHEER: But where I disagree-.
>> HEDGES:-I'm not pretending that working in a factory was any fun.
>> SCHEER: What I'm disagreeing [on] is that the amount that-we didn't
> benefit
>> from imperialism. I disagree. The rich benefited from imperialism.
>> HEDGES: Well, disproportionately the rich benefited from imperialism.
>> SCHEER: No. We benefited from labor unions. We benefited from our ability
>> to
>> organize. We benefited from the fact that our government was involved in
>> a
>> worldwide struggle to prove to-.
>> HEDGES: With communism, which meant they could-as soon as the Cold War's
>> over, it means we can treat the people any way we want.
>> SCHEER: Right. Agreed.
>> HEDGES: And the fact is, they had to be careful, they had to allow
>> unions,
>> they had to allow the working class to achieve a modicum where they could
>> buy a house and they could retire.
>> SCHEER: And they had to desegregate.
>> HEDGES: Right.
>> SCHEER: They had to desegregate. That was [crosstalk]
>> HEDGES: And once the Cold War was over, they didn't have to.
>> SCHEER: You're right.
>> HEDGES: And so they didn't.
>> SCHEER: You're right.
>> HEDGES: And so I think that we have to make that dividing line. I don't
>> want
>> to romanticize what it was like. And my mother's family was working class
>> and lower working class, so I know how they struggled. And yet,
>> compared-I
>> mean, my grandfather today would never have the economic security,
>> however
>> minimal that was,-
>> SCHEER: You're absolutely right.
>> HEDGES:-that he has now. And that's important distinction.
>> SCHEER: It's a very important distinction.
>> And let me say something by the way. This growing income inequality has
>> been
>> bipartisan.
>> HEDGES: Yeah.
>> SCHEER: Absolutely. And this is-what is so bizarre about the election
> we're
>> moving into is here the choice is between two groups that participated in
>> the destruction of that [crosstalk]
>> HEDGES: That's right. Well, Clinton did more to destroy the working class
>> in
>> this country than Ronald Reagan.
>> SCHEER: Yes. Yes. Reagan at the-because of the savings and loan crisis at
>> the end of his term-and this I document in the last book-did actually go
>> for
>> increased regulation.
>> And, look, I remember-and maybe this is a good point, and just so we
>> don't
>> have any illusions-I remember going down to Arkansas to interview Clinton
>> when he was running for president. And there was a program called Project
>> Success, which was his welfare reform. And it was a Potemkin village-it
>> never happened. And I remember-.
>> HEDGES: Yeah. And he destroyed welfare, Clinton.
>> SCHEER: He destroyed it. And so, yes, this is a question to ask for those
>> who are supporting Hillary Clinton now: why was the aid to families with
>> dependent children-70 percent were children in need-and that program was
>> destroyed when you folks were in the White House, and you never said a
> word
>> against it. Yes.
>> HEDGES: Well, and the whole prison population exploded under the 1994
>> omnibus crime bill under Clinton. And so I think those distinctions
> between
>> the working class then and now are important, and I think that you have
>> families that were kind of basically holding it together. But they were
>> able
>> to hold it together. They can't hold it together anymore. And what
>> happens
>> when you sink to that kind of despair-and I'll go back to Yugoslavia-is
>> that
>> you have a legitimate rage, which, as you point out, is then manipulated
> by
>> elites. But what it does is it rents the society apart, because a certain
>> segment-through propaganda, without question-that rage is then directed
>> against the vulnerable. That's how fascism works.
>> And, unfortunately, given the nature of our country and the kind of
>> undercurrent of racism which still exists in this country, very
>> deep-let's
>> look at undocumented workers. Undocumented-they are invisible people. We
>> walk by them every day. They have no rights. They're physically abused.
>> Their families are broken apart. And we just walk by them like they don't
>> exist. And we all see them. They're all around us. I mean, we're talking
>> about-they're not even second-class citizens. They're not citizens.
> They're
>> not even-within the rights of law, even human beings. In many states they
>> can't even get driver's license, they can't-.
>> SCHEER: And they feed us. [crosstalk]
>> HEDGES: [crosstalk] they do all of the labor. They work in construction
> and
>> they work in the hotel industry, they work in the-everywhere else. And so
>> the idea-we're not the country we were. We have become something really
>> frightening. And I blame the American public, because I think that
>> there's
>> a
>> willful kind of blindness.
>> And we can just take the case of-African-Americans in this country,
>> two-thirds, the bottom two-thirds or three-quarters are living worse than
>> when King marched in Selma. The civil rights was a legal victory, but it
>> was
>> never an economic victory, and King understood that if there was no
>> economic
>> justice, there was no racial justice.
>> SCHEER: Yeah. When King was killed, it was because he was in Memphis to
>> support the striking garbage workers-
>> HEDGES: That's right
>> SCHEER:-and the war on poverty [crosstalk]
>> HEDGES: And so I think that we have to acknowledge that we are not
>> working
>> within the same paradigm that we are-were working in before.
>> SCHEER: Okay. But you have to understand, getting at-we only have a
> minute.
>> Let's get back to my book, okay? The reason I write books and I assume
>> you
>> do is that I think there is sufficient space in this society to organize.
>> And I think it's a copout if people think the game is so rigged and is so
>> bad there's nothing you can do. I think the Occupy movement was an
>> incredibly successful movement,-
>> HEDGES: I do too.
>> SCHEER:-successful, and raising an issue that cannot be ignored, that you
>> cannot have a representative republic if the people do not have the means
>> to
>> have a decent life and survive and think. I agree with that.
>> My concern and the reason I wrote this book on surveillance is I think
> that
>> people with power in this country are afraid of most Americans.
>> HEDGES: Of course.
>> SCHEER: They're afraid of their organizing. They don't want them to be-.
>> HEDGES: Well, we're in total agreement.
>> SCHEER: Okay. And so I think my concern is that people will be more
>> intimidated than they are now when they're observed, when they're
>> watched.
>> HEDGES: You're right.
>> SCHEER: Okay.
>> HEDGES: That's why they built it.
>> SCHEER: That's right. And so I want to challenge it.
>> HEDGES: I do, too. But we're not going to challenge it by voting. We're
>> going to challenge it by building mass organizations with a radical
>> agenda
>> that disrupts the system to such an extent that we can begin to break it
>> down. But it's not, you know, voting for Hillary Clinton or some other
>> Democratic candidate. These people are, I think you would agree, as
>> complicit in building, supporting, and sustaining this system and, as you
>> said, I think, off-camera, correctly, that it isn't just Hillary Clinton
>> hates Snowden; they would like him to be killed, because he has exposed
>> their utter bankruptcy and given us a window into who these people really
>> are.
>> SCHEER: I don't think there's any question. But let me defend being
>> involved
>> with elections. I don't think it should become the be-all and end-all,
>> but
>> I
>> would like to see someone like a Bernie Sanders run. I forget her name,
> the
>> woman who's on the city council in Seattle.
>> HEDGES: Kshama Sawant. She is great.
>> SCHEER: Yeah, but I was on a show with her. If she would run against
>> Hillary
>> Clinton, I'd vote for her in a minute.
>> HEDGES: Of course.
>> SCHEER: And I think elections are a attempt to-at least can raise issues.
>> And I think there are some issues that are going to be raised in this
>> election which we-.
>> HEDGES: But I think elections without movements are futile.
>> SCHEER: Well, but you-.
>> HEDGES: Without movements.
>> SCHEER: It's not an either/or. Look, I can tell you. I ran for Congress.
>> And
>> I mentioned this on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, and I was shot down
> by
>> some people who said, well, that was 50-. Okay. But I ran in Oakland and
>> Berkeley, and I raised the question, I said, end the war in Vietnam, end
>> poverty in Oakland. And, obviously, we didn't succeed. But we did succeed
>> in
>> getting rid of a Democratic hack that wasn't addressing either of those
>> questions and electing Ron Dellums, 'cause I got 45 percent of the vote,
>> and
>> we were able to get him elected. And Ron Dellums ended up being the
>> conscience of the Congress.
>> HEDGES: Because there were movements, Bob.
>> SCHEER: Yes.
>> HEDGES: There was antiwar movement.
>> SCHEER: Well, that's why I write a book. That's why you write. So I'm
>> trying
>> to help a movement get going here.
>> HEDGES: Well, that's-we are total agreement.
>> SCHEER: Yeah.
>> HEDGES: And I think that every totalitarian country I've covered from
> Syria
>> to-they've all had elections. And I'm not saying don't vote. I mean, I
>> voted
>> for Jill Stein. As you know, I worked for Nader; I wrote his speeches for
>> him in 2008. But if we don't build radical movements to push back, mass
>> movements that defy the system and understand how dark that system has
>> become, we're finished.
>> SCHEER: I agree with that.
>> HEDGES: Thank you very much. I'm Chris Hedges for The Real News. I've
>> been
>> speaking with the great journalist Robert Scheer, the author of a
>> tremendous
>> book, They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations
>> and
>> Snooping Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy.
>> Thank you, Bob.
>> SCHEER: Thank you.
>> HEDGES: And thank you for joining us on The Real News.
>>
>>
>>
>> http://www.truthdig.com/ http://www.truthdig.com/
>> VIDEO: Robert Scheer to Chris Hedges: 'I Will Not Blame' the American
>> Masses
>> for Imperialism (7/7)
>>
> http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/video_robert_scheer_to_chris_hedges_abo
>> ut_the_american_public_20150604/
>> Posted on Jun 4, 2015
>> In the final installment of the seven-part interview on The Real News
>> Network, Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer and columnist Chris
>> Hedges
>> continue their discussion about violence, this time with a focus on
> whether
>> the American masses benefited from imperialism. Drawing on personal
>> experience as well as ideology, the two get into an illuminating
>> conversation that highlights how, though as journalists and activists
>> they
>> ultimately work toward the same ends, their fundamental understanding of
>> American society is in many ways at odds.
>> After Hedges tells Scheer that he thinks the American public has been
>> "far
>> more complicit [in the culture of violence] than you give allowance for,"
>> Scheer, author of "They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting
>> Corporations and Snooping Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy,"
>> gives an impassioned response about his own experience with manipulation
> of
>> the working class by elites.
>> Take a look at the beginning of their exchange:
>> HEDGES: I would disagree with you in saying that I think most segments of
>> the population did not ask the hard questions about slavery or about the
>> genocidal campaign-roughly 2 million Native Americans (by 1900 there's
> less
>> than 250,000 left) who were slaughtered-because it was in their
>> interests.So
>> I think it's a bit like Nazi Germany, the idea that somehow people are
>> manipulated. Yes, of course propaganda; the elites always manipulate. But
> I
>> think it was in their interest to be manipulated in many cases, and
>> therefore they didn't ask the kinds of questions they should have asked.
>> I
>> think they're far more complicit than you give allowance for.
>> SCHEER: This is a fundamental disagreement we have. I just think, you
> know,
>> my own parents.going to work and the kinds of jobs-my father was.running
>> knitting machines and my uncle was a welder and so forth. I'm just
> thinking
>> of those jobs and how much discretionary time you had.I see that in Los
>> Angeles right now.I've experienced immigrant culture. And we are
>> increasingly in California-and in the nation-we have a major influx of
>> immigrants. They're mostly interested in survival, in family, in caring
> for
>> others, and so forth. And the daily routine is a nightmare. If you
>> get-right
>> now in Los Angeles, and you get a ticket because that's going to support
>> municipal government and it ends up being a $100 ticket or something,
> boom,
>> there goes the budget.my view is these people have-I will not blame them.
> I
>> blame-even when they are so-called populist movements, there's a Father
>> Coughlin, there's the Koch brothers, there's people manipulating them,
>> there's money pouring in. We saw it with Occupy. They're agents of the
>> state
>> coming in. They're the false divide-and-conquer.Oh, there are terrorists
>> out
>> there and there are communists out there, there's foreign enemy, national
>> security. And then we buy people off-go into the military, be cannon
>> fodder.
>> And I just come from a very strong sense that throughout the world-and
> I've
>> seen it everywhere that I've been-the masses of people are manipulated.
>> And while the two continue to disagree on many subjects throughout, they
>> finally converge at the end of the interview on the very reason they
>> write
>> in the first place: to encourage our society to organize against an
>> increasingly oppressive surveillance state, against all odds and all
>> fear.
>> Watch the two respected journalists challenge one another in the video
>> above, and read The Real News Network's transcript of the discussion
> below.
>> You can also watch the first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth
>> parts
>> of the interview by clicking on the links provided.
>> -Posted by Natasha Hakimi Zapata
>> http://www.truthdig.com/theyknoweverythingaboutyou
>> http://www.truthdig.com/theyknoweverythingaboutyou
>> CHRIS HEDGES, JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR: Hi. I'm Chris Hedges for The Real
>> News.
>> This is our seventh segment with Robert Scheer, the author of They Know
>> Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations and Snooping
>> Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy.
>> Welcome, Bob.
>> So we were talking about violence. And I just want to say that up until,
>> let's say, the '60s within this country-and this goes all the way back to
>> westward expansion, and even the colonization of New England-most
>> segments
>> of this population had a vested interest in the tools of subjugation of
>> Native Americans and African Americans because it made them wealthier.
>> And
>> we watched that growing capacity of wealth. This was something that
>> Tocqueville noticed when he made his travels across the United States.
>> And
>> therefore I would disagree with you in saying that I think most segments
> of
>> the population did not ask the hard questions about slavery or about the
>> genocidal campaign-roughly 2 million Native Americans (by 1900 there's
> less
>> than 250,000 left) who were slaughtered-because it was in their
>> interests.
>> As soon as gold is found in California, they're racing through Indian
>> territory, or gold is found in the Black Hills. The press, most of these
>> campaigns that were carried out, like Covington out of Denver, these
>> were-they weren't even soldiers. They were private militias who went in
> and
>> carried out indiscriminate slaughter against Native Americans. So I think
>> it's a bit like Nazi Germany, the idea that somehow people are
> manipulated.
>> Yes, of course propaganda; the elites always manipulate. But I think it
> was
>> in their interest to be manipulated in many cases, and therefore they
>> didn't
>> ask the kinds of questions they should have asked. I think they're far
> more
>> complicit than you give allowance for.
>> PROF. ROBERT SCHEER, JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR: Yeah, this is a fundamental
>> disagreement we have. I just think, you know, my own parents and, you
> know,
>> going to work and the kinds of jobs-my father was, you know, running
>> knitting machines and my uncle was a welder and so forth. I'm just
> thinking
>> of those jobs and how much discretionary time you had or how-. You know,
>> you
>> go and it's early in the morning, five or six o'clock, and you get on
>> that
>> subway train. And I'm sure there's a comparable farmland experience I
>> didn't
>> grow up in. But my father was a German farmer who came here at the time
>> of
>> the First World War and so forth. But, you know, you go to work and
>> you're
>> running this machine, and then maybe you get a half hour for lunch or
>> something, and then after-and then maybe you want to do something nice.
>> If
>> you're younger, you go hear some music or do something. But then you've
> got
>> to get back on that train and you work, and then you've got to get up and
>> do
>> it the next day, and maybe on the weekend you can go a little fishing or
>> have a picnic or something.
>> I see that in Los Angeles right now. You know, my son is married to a
> woman
>> from Oaxaca. I've experienced immigrant culture. And we are increasingly
> in
>> California-and in the nation-we have a major influx of immigrants.
>> They're
>> mostly interested in survival, in family, in caring for others, and so
>> forth. And the daily routine is a nightmare. If you get-right now in Los
>> Angeles, and you get a ticket because that's going to support municipal
>> government and it ends up being a $100 ticket or something, boom, there
>> goes
>> the budget.
>> HEDGES: Well, that's how the system's designed. It's designed like that.
>> SCHEER: Yeah, I understand that. But my view is these people have-I will
>> not
>> blame them. I blame-even when they are so-called populist movements,
>> there's
>> a Father Coughlin, there's the Koch brothers, there's people manipulating
>> them, there's money pouring in. We saw it with Occupy. They're agents of
>> the
>> state coming in. They're the false divide-and-conquer. You know, oh,
>> there
>> are terrorists out there and there are communists out there, there's
>> foreign
>> enemy, national security. And then we buy people off-you know, go into
>> the
>> military, be cannon fodder. And I just come from a very strong sense that
>> throughout the world-and I've seen it everywhere, you know, that I've
>> been-the masses of people are manipulated.
>> HEDGES: Well, I don't disagree.
>> SCHEER: Okay. And their ability-so I put the onus on the manipulators,
>> because I see-and just in my own case, even myself, going to school, I
>> remember the first time I wrote a letter to The New York Times, and they
>> had
>> a whole thing about, you know, the Cold War started because the Russians
>> grabbed southern Sakhalin, and I happened to go to the 42nd Street
>> library
>> 'cause I could do it. I had some job working in a store, /kla?nz/, on
> Union
>> Square, and I went and checked this out. And then I found the wartime
>> agreements. No! They were supposed to go get southern Sakhalin. And I
> wrote
>> a letter to New York Times. The New York Times didn't print it.
>> Fast-forward, I'm the editor of Ramparts. Martin Luther King gives that
>> great speech at Riverside Church and he [incompr.] The New York Times
>> doesn't print his speech (we printed it at Ramparts), and they condemn
>> him
>> editorially for dividing the civil rights movement.
>> So what I have seen in my life as a journalist, as a young person, and
>> everything was a pattern. And this is why I wrote this bloody book,
> because
>> I think now, with the new tools of surveillance, you know, being able to
>> compare our biometrics and with Facebook being able to move the
>> discussion
>> from pessimistic to optimistic, with somebody like Barack Obama coming
> into
>> power because he was able to use all of this data to target advertising,
>> I
>> see a lessening of the ability of most people to be able to know what's
>> going on, to challenge it.
>> HEDGES: Well, all of that's true. And yet I think we as an imperial power
>> are infected with the disease of imperialism. And imperial power is
>> primarily about the violent subjugation of others, abroad and at home.
>> And
>> we have become the richest nation on the planet through the suffering of
>> the
>> wretched of the Earth. And it is not in our interest economically, you
>> know,
>> however hard we may work, whatever, to look at the wretched of the earth.
>> SCHEER: See, I disagree. I think it's the interest of American workers to
>> look at the exploitation of Chinese workers now, because if they would-in
>> these trade agreements-and you've written about this-in these trade
>> agreements, if they would support these agreements, including the right
>> of
>> people to organize unions and have basic human rights and so forth, you
>> wouldn't be able to keep wages as suppressed as they are in China.
>> HEDGES: You're exactly right. But I'm talking about now we're living in a
>> system that's supranational. These global corporations have no loyalty to
>> any sovereign state. So I'm talking about-and you're right. But in the
>> past-.
>> SCHEER: In the past, who paid the price for these wars? I think it
>> was-you
>> know, who were the ones who actually ended up dying in these wars?
>> HEDGES: Well, of course, as always it's the working class and poor.
>> SCHEER: Right. So I don't accept the idea that somehow we were living
>> high
>> off the hog, because we didn't get the goodies. I disagree with that.
>> HEDGES: Well, but look at the 1950s. The average American worker
>> within-anywhere on the planet was, in relative terms to other workers,
>> making more than any-I mean, you had-.
>> SCHEER: I was working in the post office the 1950s. That's how I went to
>> college. And, yes, I made $2.20 an hour. I was a temporary part-time sub,
>> but I worked 12 hours a day if I could get the hours. And, you know, I
>> wasn't starving or anything, but I certainly was not living high.
>> HEDGES: Well-yeah. Right. But, Bob-.
>> SCHEER: No. Wait. My mother was going to work in the-I remember this very
>> well. When I went to college, I was living with my mother in the Bronx.
> She
>> was going to the garment district and I was going down to work in the
>> post
>> office after school. And I worked my tail off with a lot of people who
>> had
>> been vets in the army and everything else. They thought they were middle
>> class or lower middle-class, but they were hanging on by a thread. And
>> the
>> only reason the post office job meant anything at all is we had the
>> beginnings of unions. You know. And the people, all-my family were
> working.
>> They weren't living high on the hog.
>> HEDGES: Right. Well, but, of course, unions created the middle class. And
>> my
>> grandfather worked in the post office and was a vet and was in a union
>> and
>> retired with a pension. And you're right, he didn't have much money. He
> was
>> probably lower working class, whatever.
>> SCHEER: Your father didn't have much money.
>> HEDGES: No, my father-this was my mother. My father came from money; my
>> mother didn't.
>> SCHEER: But as a minister he didn't make-.
>> HEDGES: No, he didn't make much. But you had a pension, you had a house.
>> Now, as Barbara Ehrenreich said, being working poor in this country is
>> one
>> long emergency. You're working three jobs, you're in debt. You know, in
>> real
>> terms your wages have declined or stagnated since the '70s. You can't
>> afford
>> a house. You're sleeping in your car.
>> SCHEER: Absolutely.
>> HEDGES: It's a completely different scenario.
>> SCHEER: No, not completely different.
>> HEDGES: It's very different.
>> SCHEER: No. No. See, this is where I disagree. It was never good to work
> in
>> a factory. You know. I mean, I did some of this. You know. I mean, it was
>> not. I was in the /?f?rl?s/ steel plant. I was working on the original
>> Levittown houses in Pennsylvania, 'cause as a kid you got those kind of
>> jobs, and even later. And my relatives worked in those jobs. No, it was
>> never great to climb in and out of cars on the assembly line, you know,
>> at
>> Ford or something.
>> But you're right: with unionization, with some labor protections before
>> they
>> were stripped away, you could have a decent life with public schools that
>> worked.
>> And I'll tell you something, and here I'm going to agree with you. Colin
>> Powell wrote an autobiography, and it happened that he grew up in a part
> of
>> the Bronx where I grew up, and his family was very similar and had
>> similar
>> jobs, and we both were in the same class at City College. Okay? We were
>> studying engineering. I wasn't a friend or anything, but I got to talk to
>> him about it later in life. He wrote an autobiography about this period.
>> And
>> where you're absolutely right: what was done for us as working class kids
>> is
>> not done for kids now. The schools-.
>> HEDGES: Well, and let me be clear.
>> SCHEER: Yes.
>> HEDGES: You talk about City College. Who destroyed City College?
>> Rockefeller.
>> SCHEER: Yes. Absolutely.
>> HEDGES: Destroyed it.
>> SCHEER: Yes.
>> HEDGES: And it was one of the great colleges in the country.
>> SCHEER: Yes. And, yeah, City College originally had free textbooks, no
>> tuition. Now, even if you go to any public university-.
>> HEDGES: Well, not only that. In terms of the quality of the education, it
>> equaled any college around the country.
>> SCHEER: Right. Well, it was superior, I would say.
>> HEDGES: Well, it was certainly a major university.
>> SCHEER: Yeah, we thought we were better than Harvard.
>> But, anyway-but if you look at the quality of public schools and the
>> enthusiasm, the optimism about certainly inner city schools schools in
>> America, that has been taken away. So here I will agree with you
>> emphatically that the opportunities, such as were-yes, they have been
>> stripped away.
>> HEDGES: Well, but that's the point.
>> SCHEER: Yeah, agreed. I agree. I agree.
>> HEDGES: I mean, that's the point. So I'm not-
>> SCHEER: But where I disagree-.
>> HEDGES:-I'm not pretending that working in a factory was any fun.
>> SCHEER: What I'm disagreeing [on] is that the amount that-we didn't
> benefit
>> from imperialism. I disagree. The rich benefited from imperialism.
>> HEDGES: Well, disproportionately the rich benefited from imperialism.
>> SCHEER: No. We benefited from labor unions. We benefited from our ability
>> to
>> organize. We benefited from the fact that our government was involved in
>> a
>> worldwide struggle to prove to-.
>> HEDGES: With communism, which meant they could-as soon as the Cold War's
>> over, it means we can treat the people any way we want.
>> SCHEER: Right. Agreed.
>> HEDGES: And the fact is, they had to be careful, they had to allow
>> unions,
>> they had to allow the working class to achieve a modicum where they could
>> buy a house and they could retire.
>> SCHEER: And they had to desegregate.
>> HEDGES: Right.
>> SCHEER: They had to desegregate. That was [crosstalk]
>> HEDGES: And once the Cold War was over, they didn't have to.
>> SCHEER: You're right.
>> HEDGES: And so they didn't.
>> SCHEER: You're right.
>> HEDGES: And so I think that we have to make that dividing line. I don't
>> want
>> to romanticize what it was like. And my mother's family was working class
>> and lower working class, so I know how they struggled. And yet,
>> compared-I
>> mean, my grandfather today would never have the economic security,
>> however
>> minimal that was,-
>> SCHEER: You're absolutely right.
>> HEDGES:-that he has now. And that's important distinction.
>> SCHEER: It's a very important distinction.
>> And let me say something by the way. This growing income inequality has
>> been
>> bipartisan.
>> HEDGES: Yeah.
>> SCHEER: Absolutely. And this is-what is so bizarre about the election
> we're
>> moving into is here the choice is between two groups that participated in
>> the destruction of that [crosstalk]
>> HEDGES: That's right. Well, Clinton did more to destroy the working class
>> in
>> this country than Ronald Reagan.
>> SCHEER: Yes. Yes. Reagan at the-because of the savings and loan crisis at
>> the end of his term-and this I document in the last book-did actually go
>> for
>> increased regulation.
>> And, look, I remember-and maybe this is a good point, and just so we
>> don't
>> have any illusions-I remember going down to Arkansas to interview Clinton
>> when he was running for president. And there was a program called Project
>> Success, which was his welfare reform. And it was a Potemkin village-it
>> never happened. And I remember-.
>> HEDGES: Yeah. And he destroyed welfare, Clinton.
>> SCHEER: He destroyed it. And so, yes, this is a question to ask for those
>> who are supporting Hillary Clinton now: why was the aid to families with
>> dependent children-70 percent were children in need-and that program was
>> destroyed when you folks were in the White House, and you never said a
> word
>> against it. Yes.
>> HEDGES: Well, and the whole prison population exploded under the 1994
>> omnibus crime bill under Clinton. And so I think those distinctions
> between
>> the working class then and now are important, and I think that you have
>> families that were kind of basically holding it together. But they were
>> able
>> to hold it together. They can't hold it together anymore. And what
>> happens
>> when you sink to that kind of despair-and I'll go back to Yugoslavia-is
>> that
>> you have a legitimate rage, which, as you point out, is then manipulated
> by
>> elites. But what it does is it rents the society apart, because a certain
>> segment-through propaganda, without question-that rage is then directed
>> against the vulnerable. That's how fascism works.
>> And, unfortunately, given the nature of our country and the kind of
>> undercurrent of racism which still exists in this country, very
>> deep-let's
>> look at undocumented workers. Undocumented-they are invisible people. We
>> walk by them every day. They have no rights. They're physically abused.
>> Their families are broken apart. And we just walk by them like they don't
>> exist. And we all see them. They're all around us. I mean, we're talking
>> about-they're not even second-class citizens. They're not citizens.
> They're
>> not even-within the rights of law, even human beings. In many states they
>> can't even get driver's license, they can't-.
>> SCHEER: And they feed us. [crosstalk]
>> HEDGES: [crosstalk] they do all of the labor. They work in construction
> and
>> they work in the hotel industry, they work in the-everywhere else. And so
>> the idea-we're not the country we were. We have become something really
>> frightening. And I blame the American public, because I think that
>> there's
>> a
>> willful kind of blindness.
>> And we can just take the case of-African-Americans in this country,
>> two-thirds, the bottom two-thirds or three-quarters are living worse than
>> when King marched in Selma. The civil rights was a legal victory, but it
>> was
>> never an economic victory, and King understood that if there was no
>> economic
>> justice, there was no racial justice.
>> SCHEER: Yeah. When King was killed, it was because he was in Memphis to
>> support the striking garbage workers-
>> HEDGES: That's right
>> SCHEER:-and the war on poverty [crosstalk]
>> HEDGES: And so I think that we have to acknowledge that we are not
>> working
>> within the same paradigm that we are-were working in before.
>> SCHEER: Okay. But you have to understand, getting at-we only have a
> minute.
>> Let's get back to my book, okay? The reason I write books and I assume
>> you
>> do is that I think there is sufficient space in this society to organize.
>> And I think it's a copout if people think the game is so rigged and is so
>> bad there's nothing you can do. I think the Occupy movement was an
>> incredibly successful movement,-
>> HEDGES: I do too.
>> SCHEER:-successful, and raising an issue that cannot be ignored, that you
>> cannot have a representative republic if the people do not have the means
>> to
>> have a decent life and survive and think. I agree with that.
>> My concern and the reason I wrote this book on surveillance is I think
> that
>> people with power in this country are afraid of most Americans.
>> HEDGES: Of course.
>> SCHEER: They're afraid of their organizing. They don't want them to be-.
>> HEDGES: Well, we're in total agreement.
>> SCHEER: Okay. And so I think my concern is that people will be more
>> intimidated than they are now when they're observed, when they're
>> watched.
>> HEDGES: You're right.
>> SCHEER: Okay.
>> HEDGES: That's why they built it.
>> SCHEER: That's right. And so I want to challenge it.
>> HEDGES: I do, too. But we're not going to challenge it by voting. We're
>> going to challenge it by building mass organizations with a radical
>> agenda
>> that disrupts the system to such an extent that we can begin to break it
>> down. But it's not, you know, voting for Hillary Clinton or some other
>> Democratic candidate. These people are, I think you would agree, as
>> complicit in building, supporting, and sustaining this system and, as you
>> said, I think, off-camera, correctly, that it isn't just Hillary Clinton
>> hates Snowden; they would like him to be killed, because he has exposed
>> their utter bankruptcy and given us a window into who these people really
>> are.
>> SCHEER: I don't think there's any question. But let me defend being
>> involved
>> with elections. I don't think it should become the be-all and end-all,
>> but
>> I
>> would like to see someone like a Bernie Sanders run. I forget her name,
> the
>> woman who's on the city council in Seattle.
>> HEDGES: Kshama Sawant. She is great.
>> SCHEER: Yeah, but I was on a show with her. If she would run against
>> Hillary
>> Clinton, I'd vote for her in a minute.
>> HEDGES: Of course.
>> SCHEER: And I think elections are a attempt to-at least can raise issues.
>> And I think there are some issues that are going to be raised in this
>> election which we-.
>> HEDGES: But I think elections without movements are futile.
>> SCHEER: Well, but you-.
>> HEDGES: Without movements.
>> SCHEER: It's not an either/or. Look, I can tell you. I ran for Congress.
>> And
>> I mentioned this on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, and I was shot down
> by
>> some people who said, well, that was 50-. Okay. But I ran in Oakland and
>> Berkeley, and I raised the question, I said, end the war in Vietnam, end
>> poverty in Oakland. And, obviously, we didn't succeed. But we did succeed
>> in
>> getting rid of a Democratic hack that wasn't addressing either of those
>> questions and electing Ron Dellums, 'cause I got 45 percent of the vote,
>> and
>> we were able to get him elected. And Ron Dellums ended up being the
>> conscience of the Congress.
>> HEDGES: Because there were movements, Bob.
>> SCHEER: Yes.
>> HEDGES: There was antiwar movement.
>> SCHEER: Well, that's why I write a book. That's why you write. So I'm
>> trying
>> to help a movement get going here.
>> HEDGES: Well, that's-we are total agreement.
>> SCHEER: Yeah.
>> HEDGES: And I think that every totalitarian country I've covered from
> Syria
>> to-they've all had elections. And I'm not saying don't vote. I mean, I
>> voted
>> for Jill Stein. As you know, I worked for Nader; I wrote his speeches for
>> him in 2008. But if we don't build radical movements to push back, mass
>> movements that defy the system and understand how dark that system has
>> become, we're finished.
>> SCHEER: I agree with that.
>> HEDGES: Thank you very much. I'm Chris Hedges for The Real News. I've
>> been
>> speaking with the great journalist Robert Scheer, the author of a
>> tremendous
>> book, They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations
>> and
>> Snooping Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy.
>> Thank you, Bob.
>> SCHEER: Thank you.
>> HEDGES: And thank you for joining us on The Real News.
>>
> http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/john_cusack_barack_obama_is_as_bad
>> _or_worse_than_george_w_bush_20150605/
>>
> http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/john_cusack_barack_obama_is_as_bad
>> _or_worse_than_george_w_bush_20150605/
>>
> http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/john_cusack_barack_obama_is_as_bad
>> _or_worse_than_george_w_bush_20150605/
>>
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