On the show, Chris Hedges discusses ‘War, News and Chaos in the Middle East’ with its author, foreign correspondent Patrick Cockburn.
When Patrick Cockburn, the Middle East correspondent for The Independent, first traveled to the region in 1975, and when Chris Hedges arrived a decade later, most of the states were ruled by dictators, usually army officers or hereditary monarchs, though the level of cruelty and repression varied widely. Today, they are mostly still dictatorships, but the cruelty, repression, and suffering has increased exponentially. Even in the handful of states where there is somewhat greater political freedom, such as Iraq, power has been seized by a kleptocratic elite that, as Cockburn notes, has siphoned off oil revenues for its own benefit, scarcely built any essential infrastructure, and, with the fall of oil prices, is unable to pay wages and salaries. Rather more countries – Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia – have collapsed into chaos and war. States that remain at peace, such as Turkey and Egypt, have seen freedom of speech crushed and opposition to the government criminalized. The disintegration of the Middle East is the result of two decades of US, NATO, and Israeli military intervention in the region, which has stoked sectarian wars and spawned numerous radical jihadist groups determined to rid the region of the foreign occupier. The morass in the region is compounded by our ignorance of what is happening – the result of the anemic state of journalism. Readers and viewers are largely unaware of the realities on the ground, and the consequences of Western policies both for those in the Middle East and those in the industrialized West who fall victim to acts of terrorism.
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