by: Chris Hedges, Truthdig | Op-Ed Occupy Wall Street protesters react and wave copies of the court order allowing them back into Zuccotti Park as police block them from re-entering, in New York, November 15, 2011. Hundreds of police officers arrested about 200 demonstrators early Tuesday in an operation to clear the nearly two-month-old camp. [...]

When did it happen? How? A small gathering in Zuccotti Park? Ten sleeping bags? Or was it Cairo? A different language. Same problem. Even worse. Was it the 2008 Crash? Or the hope of Obama, dashed as the Geithners and Summers swept in after the swearing in? Or was it Reagan sworn in, followed by [...]

I finished shooting a TV show late Friday night in NYC. Early Saturday morning I went up to Hartford to show my new film, Grassroots, passing the Occupy Hartford tents on my way from the train station to Trinity College where we were showing the film to students to urge them to run for local [...]

Why not? Why can’t I ask that? This graceful phrase has rung in my head ever since the dazzling JFK spoke it (I remember he did it with the white-haired poet Robert Frost by his side). Who could argue with those elegiac words? Except, what about those other words? “…a government of the people, by [...]

I find it hard to start writing about stuff here again. First, I’m pretty tired, yeah, finishing directing the movie, Grassroots. Followed by a couple of days in LA and then on to NY, where I’m now starting to shoot the TV show Blue Bloods, about to premier on CBS. Again, I find myself drifting [...]

Obama may have entered the White House with the intention of assembling a Lincolnesque “team of rivals,” but Summers subverted that notion by making himself chief packager and gatekeeper for any dissenting arguments about economic policy—all, he claimed, to spare the President from meeting with “long-winded people.” Lincoln’s “team of rivals” reported directly to Lincoln, [...]

July 4th. A day off from work. It’s been a packed stretch of time for me and I feel like I haven’t been here on my site enough (a site I love). I’ve been almost nowhere enough, except on the set where I’ve really gotten to play and do what I believe in most. I’m [...]

Just a quick thought re Goldman (let them eat cake) Sachs who are very clear that they are innocent of all charges being leveled against them. I have often made films and TV shows in real prisons (sadly). Every warden I have ever spoken to says the same thing: prisoners, nearly to a person, believe [...]

I completely understood (pretty much) all my friends when they explained to me (around the Wall Street and Banking bailout led by the Goldman Sachs people running the government under the newly elected Obama) that Obama had no choice but to spend those taxpayer’s trillions. They made it clear that it was because the financial [...]

I flew into NYC this morning – the “red eye” – waking up just as the plane was at a 45 degree angle coming in over the city. It was a beautiful thing, all those lights spread out from Jersey to the sea, a hint of dawn color in the sky. I can’t help but [...]