Chris Hedges' Unabashedly One-sided Stand.
Chris Hedges sees terrorism--pointing to the recent Charlie Hebdo tragedy--as something that could easily be avoided if Muslims were not economically disadvantaged. This is my critique of his stand with my comments in orange. The original appears here. Begin: The terrorist attack in France that took place at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo was not about free speech. It was not about radical Islam. It did not illustrate the fictitious clash of civilizations. It was a harbinger of an emerging dystopia where the wretched of the earth, deprived of resources to survive, devoid of hope, brutally controlled, belittled and mocked by the privileged who live in the splendor and indolence of the industrial West, lash out in nihilistic fury. Normally, I would agree that disparities are to blame for most of our problems and, certainly, the average Muslim in the Middle East and Africa are afflicted by it but the coin that he casts has a hidden side he refuses to acknowledge. We have eng...