What A Lot Of People Don't Want To Hear

Graduation Speech By Chris Hedges at Rockford College, IL

"The censure and perhaps the rage of much of the world, certainly one-fifth of the world's population which is Muslim, most of whom I'll remind you are not Arab, is upon us. Look today at the 14 people killed last night in several explosions in Casablanca. And this rage in a world where almost 50 percent of the planet struggles on less than two dollars a day will see us targeted. Terrorism will become a way of life, and when we are attacked we will, like our allies Putin and Sharon, lash out with greater fury. The circle of violence is a death spiral; no one escapes. We are spinning at a speed that we may not be able to hold. As we revel in our military prowess -- the sophistication of our military hardware and technology, for this is what most of the press coverage consisted of in Iraq -- we lose sight of the fact that just because we have the capacity to wage war it does not give us the right to wage war. This capacity has doomed empires in the past.

"Modern western civilization may perish," the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr warned, "because it falsely worshiped technology as a final good."

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Walmart Nation

A few days before the Smith's grocery store in Billings Heights was closing, checkers were stunned at the behavior of three Wal-Mart employees.
Smith's closed May 3 and County Market closed in February, apparent victims of the retail gorilla, Wal-Mart. A Smith's employee, who asked not to be named because she is looking for another grocery job, said Wal-Mart male managers walked into the store. She said Smith's employees knew the men because they had been scouting Smith's operation since Wal-Mart opened in the Heights in January 2000.
"When they were going out the door they were high-fiving each other," she said. "They said it really loud, 'Two down and one to go.' "
She said 48 full- and part-time employees had just gotten pink slips, which made the Wal-Mart behavior even more boorish.

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