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Klein is also the author of three books. Her first was "No Logo - Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies" (2000) that analyzes the destructive forces of globalization. Next came
"Fences and Windows - Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate" (2002) covering the global revolt against corporate power.
Her newest book just out is "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" which explodes the myth of "free market" democracy.
It
shows how neo-liberal Washington Consensus fundamentalism dominates the world
with America its lead exponent exploiting security threats, terror attacks,
economic meltdowns, competing ideologies, tectonic political or economic
shifts, and natural disasters to impose its will everywhere.
Wars are waged, social services cut, and freedom sacrificed when people are too distracted, cowed or bludgeoned to object. Klein
describes a worldwide process of social and economic engineering she calls
"disaster capitalism" with torture along for the ride to reinforce the message
- no "New World Order" alternatives are tolerated.( free market triumphalism)
.
"The Shock Doctrine" is a powerful tour de force,
four years of on-the-ground research in the making and well worth the wait.
In an age of corporatism partnered with corrupted political elites, it's
a must-read.
Introduction - Blank Is Beautiful: Three Decades of Erasing and Remaking the World (into Hell).
Meet the
"grand guru" of free-wheeling capitalism, the conservative/libertarian economist
Milton Friedman . He first articulated in his 1962 book "Capitalism and Freedom."
........... his thesis:
"only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When a crisis
occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around....our
basic function (is) to develop alternatives to existing policies [ones Friedman
rejects, and have them ready to roll out when] the impossible becomes politically
inevitable." Klein calls crises "democracy-free zones," and Friedman's thesis
"the shock doctrine."
An
example: New Orleans, post-Katrina, a metaphor for an American-style "New
World Order" with unfettered capitalism unleashed in its most savage form.
Klein quotes Republican congressman Richard Baker telling lobbyists: "We
finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it but God
did." And New Orleans developer Joseph Canizaro added: "I think we have a
clean sheet to start again (and take advantage of) big opportunities." Their
scheme is erasing communities and replacing them with upscale condos and
other high-profit projects on choice city real estate, at the expense of
the poor mother........ nature forced out and government won't allow back.
For Friedman, government's sole function is "to protect our freedom both from (outside) enemies....and from our fellow-citizens."
It's to "preserve law and order (as well as) enforce private contracts, (and)
foster competitive markets." In his view, anything else in public hands is
socialism .....that for "free market" fundamentalists like Friedman is blasphemy.
Following
General Augusto Pinochet's bloody ascent to power, he had a real life laboratory
as adviser to the new Chilean dictator. His prescription came to be known
as the "Chicago School" revolution of rapid-fire economic transformation
......... he called "shock treatment," now known as "shock therapy."
It's an economic version of "destroy(ing) the village (and country) to save
it" .
Its
central tenets are structurally adjusted mass-privatizations, government
deregulation, unrestricted free market access for foreign corporations, and
deep cuts in social spending with repressive laws, harsh crackdowns and torture
along for the ride to reinforce the core tenet Reaganites call "trickle down"
and Brits call "Thatcherism."
Its recipients call it hell, and Klein explains why
- in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Russia, the Falklands,
Poland, South Africa, Sri Lanka, New Orleans, Israel, and coming to a neocon-occupied
homeland neighborhood near you. It's "disaster capitalism"
unleashed, and business is booming. Klein cites insiders saying opportunities
are on a par with a thriving "emerging market...."the deals are even better
than the dot-com days, and the 'the security bubble' picked up the slack
when those earlier bubbles popped."
Reaganomics
adherents are today's neoconservatives with the "full force of the US military
machine (serving their unfettered) corporate agenda" of greed writ large.
Its holy policy trinity is: "elimination of the public sphere, total liberation
for corporations and skeletal social spending (if any at all)." But instead
of lifting all boats as promised, it's mirror opposite. It creates a powerful
ruling corporatist class partnered with corrupted political elites - "with
hazy and ever-shifting lines between the two groups." Russia got billionaire
"oligarchs," China "the princelings," Chile "the piranhas," and America the
Bush-Cheney "Pioneers."
Everywhere, the scheme is the same: huge public wealth transfers to private hands, exploding public debt most often, "an ever-widening chasm between the dazzling rich and disposable poor, and an aggressive
nationalism (like George Bush's permanent "war on terrorism" and the world) that justifies bottomless spending on security." "Inside
the bubble" is paradise. Outside, however, is hell with "aggressive surveillance,
mass incarceration, shrinking civil liberties," a declining standard of living,
and repression and torture reinforcing the message to non-believers.
Klein calls the harshness "a metaphor of the shock doctrine's underlying logic." When applied, it induces a state of "deep disorientation," and shock to force targets "to make concessions against their will."
The "shock doctrine" works the same way on a mass scale, and the 9/11 experience
proved it. It exploded the "familiar world" and created a period of disorientation
and regression the Bush administration jumped on abroad and at home.
It's
how the "shock doctrine" works: "the original disaster (terror attack, war,
hurricane, market meltdown) puts the entire population into a state of collective
shock" enabling policy manipulators to move in for the kill to remake the
world in their image and get it done before the shock wears off.