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Topic: Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine"
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George Victor
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Babbler # 14683
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posted 10 November 2007 03:52 AM
From the perspective of this Ontarian who watched the Chicago School of economics coming up over the horizon in the mid-70s (while distributing literature for Naomi's father-in-law-to-be at election time)she has got the effect of the "Chicago boys" on the people and institutions of the developing world just right.But surely the political effects of the market buccaneers on the people who are salting away their earnings for some golden-aged future here at home, including New Democrats, cries out for attention. The Chicago School is all about freedom of movement of invested capital, and its tendency to dictate terms, everywhere. What does the democratic socialist do if his/her pension fund is helping to destroy environment and people, buy up public utilities in Timbuktu? What does the Ontario teacher say to the Ontario Teacher's Pension Plan administrator, for instance? George Victor
From: Cambridge, ON | Registered: Oct 2007
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DonnyBGood
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Babbler # 4850
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posted 10 November 2007 07:26 AM
Well it is extremely unrealistic to assume that teachers will all give their pensions to charity and go live in a new tent city somewhere.On the other hand many anarchists and socialists "played the market" taking advantage of their economic knowledge to extract profits from the ruling classes. What I think is really at issue here is if something like the "Shock Doctrine" is a new invention of the Chicago School as Klein suggests or simply a readjustment to an older way of dealing with the world that has been with us a long time. The big illusion has been that there has been a time when the big states were not manipulating the world for their own ends. As the facts become revealed with time it doesn't seem like anything has really changed and that the law of the jungle has always been the operating force in Western civilization. More importantly what can be done to change that behaviour? Very little it would seem. I think the general prospects for long term survival in any way consistent with ourt current belief systems is doomed. Thus we need books like Naiomo Klein's book to make us aware of the forces that operate. They are beyond democratic control, they affect every aspect of our existence, and they are indestructible ideologically and philosophically because they do not engage debate. It is quite the dilema...;-)
From: Toronto | Registered: Jan 2004
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George Victor
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 14683
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posted 11 November 2007 11:13 AM
It is one helluva conundrum isn't it. I've already lost a couple of friends by presenting it to them. They were rather dependent on their investments for the long haul, I guess. Who isn't though?But that is the heart of the difficulty in getting off our market dependency, not just to slay the neo-con, Chicago School dragons that Naomi describes so well, but the problem of environmentally destructive growth. In economic terms, no growth means recession or depression. Jimmy Carter had the answer back in 1979 - put our economy on a wartime footing. Wild Bill Clinton is perhaps ready to go that route, you never know. FDR had the late John Kenneth Galbraith introduce price controls even before the U.S. got into the act, back in 1940. I would really like to know what folks out there in "Canuckistan" think about all this. Or are lifestyle-endangering considerations something for the Gods to handle, something beyond the logical outcome to infinite growth, as the neo-con today seems to assume?
From: Cambridge, ON | Registered: Oct 2007
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Fidel
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Babbler # 5594
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posted 30 November 2007 07:27 PM
She said something else that I wasn't genuinely aware of. And that's that Richard Nixon described himself as a Keynesian in the 1970's at the same time Milton Friedman was supposed to be advising him on free market ideology in the vein of Chicago School of Economics theory. Nixon, however, refused to implement Friedman's ideas on the grounds that the American people would not accept the resultant shock and decline in labour rights and economic activity. Klein described how Nixon's reluctance to follow the neocon agenda was probably the first admittal, although shrouded by Washington secrecy, that Friedman's economic ideology and democracy are incompatible. And sure enough, after just twelve years of NeoLiberal genesis experimentation in Pinochet's Chile, the people there rejected what was laissez-faire capitalism made new again by los Chicago boys, or Friedman's Latino graduate students of his economic teachings. After twelve years of leave it to the market capitalism in Chile, a new record was set for the collapse of ultra right wing economic ideology. They broke the original record of 30 years which began at turn of the last century and ended in 1929-32 after a similar series of disasterous banking and financial crises ended badly. Both experiments were conducted under near-perfect laboratory conditions and in the absence of political and democratic opposition. I mention this because we've been taught for decades that Soviet communism collapsed all on its own. But I have questioned various people as to whether or not they think that was true, that it collapsed all on its own. And we are truthful with ourselves in that the Soviet system was far from perfect. I don't believe it did collapse on its own. But what if the perfect system did come along? Would the perfect system collapse on its own after seven decades of enormous cold war pressures, trade embargos, super-psychological competition for hearts and minds and resources, dirty wars and nuclear proliferation?
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004
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Farmpunk
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Babbler # 12955
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posted 29 December 2007 08:55 AM
You don't say. To me the writing is leaden. It clunks from one quote or bit of footnoted info to the next, using "shock doctrine" as a bridge. Her shorter pieces read better. I imagine she ran across the problem of needing to condense and document a massive amount of information. Structurally, for my tastes, maybe the book should have been cleared of footnotes and references, and had a well annotated bibilography, page by page, if need be. To me that's a journalistic style where she's writing a very long LSE essay. Or maybe she's just not a story teller. I criticized this book, and Klein, in a different Shock Doctrine thread. My main point before was that I didn't think she was going to be able to bring the subject matter down to a level where it was accessible to new readers. Reading the book hasn't changed my mind. It's not a book I'm going to recommend, partly because I doubt I'll be able to finish it, and partly because I don't think anyone I'd recommend it to will finish it either. Unless they want to be able to say they read Klein's latest.
From: SW Ontario | Registered: Jul 2006
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Geneva
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Babbler # 3808
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posted 29 December 2007 10:47 AM
too much log-rolling above (like her, don't like her, etc); how about some ideological fireworks?the attached link (yea, yea, from a taboo publication) rejects some Klein assertions that could be challenged as factual or not: http://tinyurl.com/yqncdz A few weeks back, I wrote a National Post column critiquing Naomi Klein's new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. My critique was largely based on Klein's insistence on bending every world event into her left-wing world-view. But I am wondering now whether the flaws in The Shock Doctrine don't go deeper. To wit, at least two of the book's chapters — the one on Russia, and another one on Sri Lanka — seem to be based on pure fantasy. [ 29 December 2007: Message edited by: Geneva ]
From: um, well | Registered: Feb 2003
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Stephen Gordon
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Babbler # 4600
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posted 29 December 2007 11:05 AM
We can do better than that. Here is Brad Delong:--------------------------------------- Tyler Cowen thinks Naomi Klein believes her own bull---- He reads her book. He doesn't think it meets minimum intellectual standards. I think he is right: now I can borrow Tyler's ideas and have an informed view:
quote: Rarely are the simplest facts, many of which complicate Ms. Klein's presentation, given their proper due. First, the reach of government has been growing in virtually every developed nation.... [T]he reach of government has been shrinking in India and China, to the indisputable benefit of billions.... [I]t is the New Deal — the greatest restriction on capitalism in 20th century America and presumably beloved by Ms. Klein — that was imposed in a time of crisis.... China was falling apart because of the murderous and tyrannical policies of Chairman Mao, which then led to bottom-up demands for capitalistic reforms.... [T]he reader will search in vain for an intelligent discussion of any of these points. What the reader will find is a series of fabricated claims, such as the suggestion that Margaret Thatcher created the Falkland Islands crisis to crush the unions and foist unfettered capitalism upon an unwilling British public.The simplest response to Ms. Klein's polemic is to invoke old school conservatism... reject[ing] the idea of throwing out or revising all social institutions at once. Indeed the long history of conservative thought stands behind moderation.... That tradition does advise a scaling down of free-market ambitions, no matter how good they may sound in theory, and is probably our best hedge against disasters of our own making. Such a simple — indeed sensible — point would not have produced a best-selling screed.... The clash between democratic preferences and policy prescriptions is, if anything, a problem for Ms. Klein herself. Ms. Klein's previous book, "No Logo" (2000), called for rebellion against advertising and multinational corporations, two institutions which have proved remarkably popular with ordinary democratic citizens. Starbucks is ubiquitous because of pressure from the bottom, not because of a top-down decision to force capitalism upon the suffering workers in a time of crisis. If nothing else, Ms. Klein's book provides an interesting litmus test as to who is willing to condemn its shoddy reasoning. In the New York Times, Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz defended the book: "Klein is not an academic and cannot be judged as one." So nonacademics get a pass on sloppy thinking, false "facts," and emotional appeals? In making economic claims, Ms. Klein demands to be judged by economists' standards — or at the very least, standards of simple truth or falsehood. Mr. Stiglitz continued: "There are many places in her book where she oversimplifies. But Friedman and the other shock therapists were also guilty of oversimplification." Have we come to citing the failures of one point of view to excuse the mistakes of another? With "The Shock Doctrine," Ms. Klein has become the kind of brand she lamented in "No Logo." Brands offer a simplification of image and presentation, rather than stressing the complexity, the details, and the inevitable trade-offs of a particular product.... Klein... admitted that brands were never her real target, rather they were a convenient means of attacking the capitalist system more generally. In the same interview, Ms. Klein also tellingly remarked, "I believe people believe their own bulls---. Ideology can be a great enabler for greed." When it comes to the best-selling "Shock Doctrine," that is perhaps the bottom line on what Klein herself has been up to.
Five points: 1.) Margaret Thatcher did not create the Falklands War in order to crush unions and implement the rest of a domestic program that could barely get 40% of the vote, but she did take advantage of it--of the popularity generated by a short victorious war--to do so. There is only a very small amount of moral fault there: had she provoked the war for domestic political purposes there would be a great deal of fault, but she did not. 2.) Tyler is right: Stiglitz ought to know better, for degrading the level of the debate is in your long-run interest only if you are one of the bad guys. And we are not. 3.) Some governments can be trusted to run mixed-economy social democracies: those of Western Europe, of the British Dominions, of the islands and peninsulas off the coast of East Asia, and of California, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York, and New England come to mind.
4.) Other governments cannot be trusted to run mixed-economy social democracies: Ghana and Zimbabwe and Egypt and Cuba and China and Mississippi come to mind. We do not know even much about how to predict which governments will fall into which category. We do not know how to change governments from one category to another. We do not have alternatives to recommend to governments that cannot run effictive mixed-economy social democracies.
5.) And so the best advice really is Keynes's response to Trotsky: "Granted his assumptions, much of Trotsky's argument is, I think, unanswerable.... But what are his assumptions? He assumes that the moral and intellectual problems of the transformation of Society have been already solved--that a plan exists, and that nothing remains except to put it into operation.... An understanding of the historical process, to which Trotsky is so fond of appealing, declares not for, but against, Force at this juncture of things.... All the political parties alike have their origins in past ideas and not in new ideas and none more conspicuously so than the Marxists. It is not necessary to debate the subtleties of what justifies a man in promoting his gospel by force; for no one has a gospel. The next move is with the head, and fists must wait..."
From: . | Registered: Oct 2003
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Coyote
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Babbler # 4881
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posted 29 December 2007 11:39 AM
I'm not done yet, but Keynes gets a lot of play in Shock Doctrine. In fact, Klein's repetitive style (which Farmpunk so dislikes)makes for numerous paragraphs linking Marxist and Neo-Con orthodoxy, and suggesting instead that a mixed economic system would be the most viable, even desirable, end.Stephen, I am much closer to your perspective than most people on this board. But I cannot believe you can nod with approval at the "degrading the debate" meme. Politics, history, economics, and philosophy are not gnostic rites to be known and spoken of only by the initiated; they are subjects that have to be a part of the general popular debate or they are nothing. Instead of picking even a single substantive point and refuting it, your favoured reviewer picks on her academic background? Nice.
From: O’ for a good life, we just might have to weaken. | Registered: Jan 2004
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Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594
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posted 29 December 2007 11:42 AM
quote: Originally posted by Geneva:
http://tinyurl.com/yqncdz
And I almost read the blog before a script error crashed the page. But Fred Kaplan said he doubts Boris Yeltsin was ever a Friedmanite. I think it's difficult to know what Yeltsin was. But politically, Yeltsin and several Soviet bureaucrats had been planning the demise of Soviet state socialism since at least the early 1980's. Gorbachev and his political allies realized that the west, and particularly the U.S. were reinvesting heavily in public research due to technological stagnation of the 1970's as was Germany and Japan. It didn't happen in Russia, and Yeltsin and several other aspiring state capitalists in Russia were behind those decisions. They saw enormous potential for personal gain with privatizing the oil, gas, mineral reserves and financial services in Russia. Boris Yeltsin may not have been an economist, no. But economists hired by the Russians, like economic shock therapy specialist Jeffrey Sachs, was. We were in recession ourselves in the 1980's-90's, and there were plenty of graduates of economics looking for work here in the west, and in places like Africa and Russia. Friedmanite economic shock therapy and other western prescriptions for capitalism performed so badly in Africa that economists with African experience didn't include that on their CV's when applying for jobs in Yeltsin's Russia. And there was good reason for not bragging up that experience on their Russian resumes.
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004
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Stephen Gordon
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Babbler # 4600
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posted 29 December 2007 11:44 AM
quote: Originally posted by Coyote: Instead of picking even a single substantive point and refuting it, your favoured reviewer picks on her academic background? Nice.
Cowen and DeLong are critical of Stiglitz for using Klein's background as a criterion in evaluating the book. [ 29 December 2007: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]
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Frustrated Mess
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8312
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posted 29 December 2007 11:53 AM
What is so painfully and boringly typical is that both Geneva and Stephen resort to ideological attacks and bullshit rather than any actual argument.Worse, and depressingly but not at all surprisingly so, is that it would appear Stephen Gordon (and probably Geneva) has not even bothered to read the book. So Gordon relies on the blogs of ideologues to form his own opinion. Now that should be shocking. quote: Margaret Thatcher did not create the Falklands War in order to crush unions and implement the rest of a domestic program that could barely get 40% of the vote, but she did take advantage of it
That is exactly Klein's point. So your intellectually challenged right wing bloggers are attacking Klein's arguments by repeating them? That is hilarious.The rest is all bullshit particularly the points with regard to what governments can be trusted. I smell a hint of bigotry in those statements. First and foremost, governments are not entrusted to manage "mixed-economy social democracies". Mixed-economy social democracies are forms of government. They displace other forms of government. It is the form of government most hated by both tyrants of the political ideological slant and tyrants of the so-called free market -- another failed religion that believes only deep human suffering before the unbridled comfort and wealth of the high-priests can bring salvation.
From: doom without the gloom | Registered: Feb 2005
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Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594
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posted 29 December 2007 12:06 PM
Harvard's Best and Brightest "Do Russia"from an online Monthly Review essay The Necessity of Gangster Capitalism: Primitive Accumulation in Russia and China by Nancy Holmstrom and Richard Smith
quote: Russia's descent into gangster capitalism began in the early 1990s when Russian market reformers attempted to introduce capitalism in one fell swoop—on the advice of Western advisors, particularly Harvard University "shock therapist," Professor Jeffrey Sachs and his capitalist provocateurs at the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID). In 1990 and 1991, as Gorbachev's reform program stalled and his government was collapsing, Sachs and his Institute colleagues advised Yegor Gaidar, Yeltsin's first economic czar, to dismantle quickly most of the controls and subsidies that had structured life for Soviet citizens for most of the century. Sachs predicted a more or less smooth transition to a normal western-style capitalism, once the initial shock of price decontrol was over. In the early nineties, Dr. Sachs bragged about how his prescriptive shock therapy had cured Bolivia's hyperinflation in nine days. Eastern Europe's and Russia's reform, he allowed, might take longer. Sachs could think this because, like most mainstream economists, he has a completely ahistorical understanding of economics.
When advising the Russians on economic shock therapy, Jeffrey Sachs was concerned that Russians might still have some morsels of economic independence from the new capitalist setup. He referred to the life savings of Russians as "pesky overhang." Sachs, Yeltsin, Chubais, the USAID and NED crooks who propped up Yeltsin, and the Houston oil magnates and European gangsters should have all been lined up at dawn without cigarettes or blindfolds. The 1990's were the greatest tragedy for Russia since Hitler's blitzkrieg.
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004
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Farmpunk
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 12955
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posted 29 December 2007 12:21 PM
The intellectual merits of SD aren't really my field, and I'd hate to tread on the sensitive toes of people with better credentials than myself.My problem with this book boils down to what Coyote calls her repetitive style. It's absurdly repetitive, and ends up being boring. This book may be like bad tasting but effective medicine - a little pain for the overall gain. It's not the depressing and violent evidence she's gathered that bothers me, or keeps me from reading, it's the presentation allied with her rock star of the left\progressive set that mystifies me. This can't be the best of the left's writers, can it? While reading, I get the feeling that she's frustrated herself, with the journalist's tone, that she has a lot more to say and could say it more forcefully. But she doesn't, for whatever reason. I'd like to see her drop the semblance of objectivity and tell me what she thinks, in a book half the size of SD. Instead the book is a compliation of research notes, stuck together, without any sense of style. I feel like she's hiding behind all this research. After she explains her thesis, or central theme, of The Shock Doctrine, then basically all she needed to do was write: It happened here, and here's some pieces of evidence I've complied. That Klein herself can't recognize this absurd pattern to her own work is a fact that I find disturbing. A lack of self awareness that keeps me from taking her seriously. All that said, I will probably, eventually, slog through the rest of the book.
From: SW Ontario | Registered: Jul 2006
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Stephen Gordon
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4600
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posted 29 December 2007 01:00 PM
quote: Originally posted by Coyote: Okay. I've not read Stiglitz's review, so I may stand to be corrected here. But the one quote provided by C&D has Stiglitz insert a caveat that merely desribes Klein's work as less academially rigorous than, say, a Ph.D. Thesis? I'm even more lost, now.Because if the argument is that Stiglitz is providing "special pleading" on Klein's behalf, it really has nothing to do with Klein. So it's a cheap shot at Stiglitz that still seems to me to carry the same overtone of disdain for the uninitiated - it's as if Stiglitz invited a orphan girl with red hair off the street and into his home. What will the neighbours say.
No, that's not it. it's as if Stiglitz is holding his nose.
From: . | Registered: Oct 2003
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Frustrated Mess
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8312
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posted 29 December 2007 01:47 PM
quote: My problem with this book boils down to what Coyote calls her repetitive style. It's absurdly repetitive, and ends up being boring.
That's your opinion and you are welcome to it. On the contrary, however, I found it an easy read and I tore through it. To accuse her of over using the word "shock" is like accusing an author on weather for over using the word "weather". quote: It's not the depressing and violent evidence she's gathered that bothers me
Well, there ya go because that is exactly what bothered me. quote: it's the presentation allied with her rock star of the left\progressive set that mystifies me.
Really? You see, that is fascinating as I was able to read the entire book without ever giving thought to her status, or lack thereof, among the left. quote: This can't be the best of the left's writers, can it?
Is your critique of the book really because she writes from the left?
From: doom without the gloom | Registered: Feb 2005
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Stephen Gordon
rabble-rouser
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posted 29 December 2007 02:55 PM
quote: Originally posted by Coyote: Stephen, I don't think that discounts my characterization. Again being fair, I haven't read Stiglitz's review.
Here it is. It would appear that Stiglitz had two choices: a) Apply the normal standards of our profession and trash the book. b) Hold his nose, say nice things, and hold onto his radical street cred. He chose b). Cowan and DeLong chose a).
From: . | Registered: Oct 2003
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Coyote
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4881
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posted 29 December 2007 03:18 PM
Cowan says: quote: What the reader will find is a series of fabricated claims, such as the suggestion that Margaret Thatcher created the Falkland Islands crisis to crush the unions and foist unfettered capitalism upon an unwilling British public.
What Klein says on the subject: quote: When news arrived that Argentina had laid claim to the Falklands, Thatcher recognized it as a last-ditch hope to turn around her political fortunes . . . (pg.162)
quote: When the coal miners went on strike in 1984, Thatcher cast the stand-off as a continuation of the war with Argentina, calling for similarly brutal resolve. (pg.164)
Cowan clearly mis-represents Klein's argument. He would have likely avoided this, however, had he simply read the first 10 pages of the book in which Klein's thesis is laid out very clearly: quote: I discovered that the idea of exploiting crisis and disaster has been the modus operundi of Milton's Friedman's movement from the very begininning . . . (pg. 10)
Exploiting. Not necessarily inciting.But what a radical that Klein is! Does this look familiar? quote: I am not arguing that all forms of market systems are inherently violent. It is eminently possible to have a market-based economy that requires no such brutality and demands no such ideological purity. a free market in consumer products can coexist with free public health care, with public schools, with a large segment of the economy - like a national oil company - held in state hands . . . Keynes proposed exactly that kind of mixed, regulated economy after the Great Depression . . . (pg.24)
From: O’ for a good life, we just might have to weaken. | Registered: Jan 2004
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melovesproles
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Babbler # 8868
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posted 29 December 2007 03:34 PM
quote: It would appear that Stiglitz had two choices:a) Apply the normal standards of our profession and trash the book. b) Hold his nose, say nice things, and hold onto his radical street cred. He chose b). Cowan and DeLong chose a).
So the normal standards of your profession are to trash books you haven't read if they question the profession's current prevailing ideology?
From: BC | Registered: Apr 2005
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Frustrated Mess
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8312
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posted 29 December 2007 06:50 PM
quote: Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
How do you know that Tyler Cowan didn't read the book?
Fair question. Because I did. According to Cowan, as per your citation: quote: What the reader will find is a series of fabricated claims, such as the suggestion that Margaret Thatcher created the Falkland Islands crisis
Klein made no such claim. She wrote "Both sides in the conflict had good reasons to want a war," but she never made the claim that anyone, not even the Argentinians, "created" a crisis or engineered a war. Rather, she argues that Thatcher used her popularity resulting from the war to push through economic measures that just weeks earlier she had described as "impossible". To suggest Klein had claimed that Thatcher had "created the Falkland Islands crisis" is absurd and suggests, quite strongly to me, that the commentator hasn't actually read the book. As well, the comments on China are steeped in ideological hogwash rather than a fair reading of the book. At least, even as indicated by Farmpunk, Klein is meticulous at sourcing her material. According to Klein, Milton Friedman was first invited to China in 1980 as that country began a top-down reform of China's economy and the embracing of the free market. According to Klein, Friedman remarked that Hong Kong, despite having no democratic government, was freer than the US. She acknowledges that free market reform had its winners as well as losers. But by the end of the 80s, the losers were becoming sore and more numerous. Friedman was invited back to China in 1988. Upon return to the US, Friedman wrote, as cited by Klein, that "I gave precisely the same advise to Chile as China," and he added, sarcastically, according to Klein, "should I prepare for an avalanche of protests for having been willing to give advise to so evil a government?" A year later the world witnessed the massacre at Tiananmen Square.
From: doom without the gloom | Registered: Feb 2005
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Fidel
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posted 29 December 2007 08:07 PM
I think it's true that the those countries which were wired for Friedman's economic torture never voted for quack treatments in the first place.The Tiananmen Square protests were not about a desire for western capitalism. The Polish solidarity movement wanted socialism not a distorted version of it. And a majority of Russians, Bielorussians and Ukrainians polled in 1999 said they'd prefer a return to the way it was before 1985. In 1990, The Economist urged Gorbachev to adopt "strongman rule", and be another Augusto Pinochet even if it involved "blood-letting." The Washington Post supported the idea of a coup and thought Russia needed a "dictator like Pinochet." It's obvious that our own stooges have been reluctant to tape the highest voltage electrodes on Canadians and Americans and let'er rip. The ideologues have backed off certain deregulations of public services and health care in the U.S. and Canada out of fear for their political lives. Even the doctor and the madman knew that Friedman's economic shock therapy was incompatible with their hopes for re-election in the 1970's. So they foisted it on Chileans who didn't vote for it either. I think we need electoral reform in the last three most politically conservative, English-speaking western nations. We need to fight these bastards with democracy and everything left in the tank. It's time to bring down the evil empire with our own pro-democracy movements around the world. And it's time that ordinary people refuse to be spoken down to condescendingly by academics who don't know their asses from holes in the ground. It's time working poor North Americans began talking back to and speaking out against despotic leaders manouvering behind the scenes with phony baloney electoral majorities. We should dare to be like the French, and cause our stoogeocrats to fear the electorate instead of the other way around. There's no rule that says we have to be polite to politicians and respect every rule they put down infront of us like an imaginary line in the sand. Sometimes lines are nothing more than bullying tactics, and there is only one way to deal with autocratic paper dictators who take voters for granted. [ 30 December 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004
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Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594
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posted 30 December 2007 03:05 AM
Shock is the new Enabling Act for fascism MSNBC interviews Naomi Klein (YouTube)NeoFascism in three easy steps, or "PEE": 1. Shock Crisis(ten year-long medieval siege followed by bombs away over Baghdad, Fallujah etc) 2. Economic shock, price shocks etc And if that doesn't work ... 3. Electric shocks, torture Richard Armitage, former Secretary of State said about Shock and Awe: "The Iraqis would be so shocked that they will be easily marshalled" The problem was that Iraqis didn't perceive what they were supposed to. Iraqis were supposed to understand that their country was undergoing "economic restructuring" as some kind of improvement to the quality of their lives. Rather, the Iraqis saw shock for what it really is, which is a smokescreen for the looting and pillage of their country by transnational corporations seeking primitive accumulation of wealth beyond their wildest dreams and rawest of gangster ambitions.
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004
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Bubbles
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posted 30 December 2007 08:38 PM
Only having read half the book sofar (a Christmas present) it put a lot of past events in context for me.I am curious as to what she will have to say in the second half. How does one deal with these problems? Keep currency local? Rely on community rather then money? Is it self-destuctive? A lot of work and critical thought seems to have gone into putting this book together.
From: somewhere | Registered: Feb 2003
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N.Beltov
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posted 03 January 2008 11:31 AM
So far, so good. Here are my personal notes so far, recording some of Klein's terminology, some expressions she has quoted, and so on. - blank slate - scorched earth - "calm is a form of resistance" John Berger - neo-liberal (in Latin America) - neo-conservative (their self-description) - corporatist (similarity to Mussolini's idea) - capitalist fundamentalism - free market trinity: privatization, deregulation, and limb-severing cuts to social spending - Gail Kastner: Canadian victim/survivor - coexistence, or "inner harmony" (Orlando Letelier) of economic "freedom" with political terror "without touching each other". - plan of social extermination (Argentina) or genocide - planned attack upon trade union leadership, a common and practically universal aspect of the shock doctrine's enforcement - privatized torture squads inside the factories!! - "People were in prison so that prices could be free." Eduardo Galeano - "As a means of extracting information during interrogations, torture in notoriously unreliable, but as a means of terrorizing and controlling populations, nothing is quite as effective." Naomi Kline - and "Bravo" to her for saying so. Just as a side observation ... the steady stream of propaganda, drama, and "entertainment" on television designed to justify torture on the spurious grounds noted above is reaching the level of a river of vomit. Or blood. - crises as "democracy free' zones. These are also called "technified democracies" or "protected" democracies ... meaning protection from democracy. aka "insulation from politics" - lack of mandate to implement neo-liberal atrocities I've left out critical remarks and questions for Klein in my notes. For now. "... one day we will triumph. In the meantime, I know who the enemy is, and the enemy knows who I am, too." Sergio Tomasella [ 03 January 2008: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]
From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003
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TheIronist
recent-rabble-rouser
Babbler # 12833
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posted 03 January 2008 01:07 PM
The problem with Klein's book is this: Klein, an impressive enough investigative journalist, can't be content with publishing an espose of capitalist excesses over a certain period of time. She has some need, most likely acquired by reading too much critical theory while in university, to play the Great Thinker, a role for which she is not well suited. Having read too much Benjamin, too much early Sontag, too much Marcuse, she simply cannot resist the tempation to make sweeping mataphysical claims that seek to establish a kind of organic connection between such otherwise unconnected phenomena as CIA-funded psychological experiments at McGill University in the 50's--experiments which sought, through a variety of sensorial, chemical and shock therapies, to efface all personal history as well as, well, all personality, and replace it with a newly written narrative--with friedmanite economic experiments such as what Chileans underwent with Pinochet. In so doing, Klein does a disservice to her readers. Not only does she fail to establish this purported connection between the abovementioned phenomena, but she manages to draw attention away from the shamelessly opportunistic and ruthlessly exploitative ways in which foreign capital, usually but not exclusively American, actually manipulated events. One could just as easily construct a narrative purporting to establish a connection between, say, Kleinian disaster capitalism and the raptures of religious conversion. Or more to the point, between North Korean experiments in brainwashing (so deliciously parodized in the novel, The Manchurian Candidate), with the pretense, common to revolutionaries, that the regime that they would usher in somehow represents a wiping clean of the historical slate (insert palimpsest metaphor here). Klein's book is a classic example of the failures of otherwise gifted writers to resist the temptations to upper-case "T" Theorizing, when what is most needed is a solid, clear-headed analysis of events.
From: Toronto | Registered: Jul 2006
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Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594
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posted 03 January 2008 02:48 PM
quote: Originally posted by TheIronist: Not only does she fail to establish this purported connection between the abovementioned phenomena, but she manages to draw attention away from the shamelessly opportunistic and ruthlessly exploitative ways in which foreign capital, usually but not exclusively American, actually manipulated events.
Anglo-American countries were the one's following Milton Friedman's economic shock therapy, not just the U.S. and it's Latin American guinea pig nations. Naomi is fairly clear about this in her book. And the "psychological experiments" of Ewen Cameron carried out on Canadian citizens were part of a larger CIA mind control experiment known as MK Ultra said to have been conducted on a scale of the Manhatten Project. One American doctor doing similar experiments in West Germany returned to the States due to his having psychological and personal issues with his designated duties. He was one of dozens of scientists who "committed suicide"(thrown out of tenth floor windows) by the CIA. eta:A bit of background reading on these subjects is sometimes required. I'm afraid our largest trading partner has been accused of waging not just conventional but: economic, psychological, chemical, and biological warfare in Asia as well as Cuba during the cold war, and since Nagasaki and Hiroshima, through to the illegal bombing and military occupation of Iraq. [ 03 January 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004
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TheIronist
recent-rabble-rouser
Babbler # 12833
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posted 04 January 2008 06:19 AM
Clearly, you couldn't be bothered to read the book. In all truthfulness, I did not finish the book. After reading some 270 pages of it, and coming to the conclusion that she would never be able to establish her thesis convincingly, but would nevertheless progress as if she had, I put the book down, disappointed.
Again, I think that Klein is a first rate investigative journalist and critic. It's just too bad for us that she decided, for whatever reason, that she wanted to write more in line with, say, Negri/Benjamin/the Frankfurt School, when a nod in the direction of Orwell would have been more to the point. That's all.
From: Toronto | Registered: Jul 2006
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N.Beltov
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4140
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posted 04 January 2008 06:34 AM
quote: TheIronist: Klein's book is a classic example of the failures of otherwise gifted writers to resist the temptations to upper-case "T" Theorizing, when what is most needed is a solid, clear-headed analysis of events.
This is your most ridiculous claim. Klein's book, which I haven't yet finished, is broken into chapters detailing the specifics of the application of the shock doctrine in particular countries. The pattern that emerges is unmistakable. The free market trinity of deregulation, privatization, and limb-severing cuts to social spending emerges each and every time. So too, does the use of violence and, often, torture. It's like variations on a theme. The only person that's discussing the Frankfurt School is ... you. Perhaps you were reading too many books at once and got them mixed up. Try reading one book at a time. If you're actually antagonistic to Klein's claims and you wish to refute them then the first thing you've got to do is to honestly and properly recapitulate them. And you've done a miserable job of that. Supplemental: If you're going to give an approving nod in the direction of George Orwell then how about being truthful and acknowledging that Naomi Kline, despite the absence of a police or military background like that of the author of 1984, understood the whole issue of the purpose of torture (and the violence outlined in her book) better than Orwell did? Barbaric violence, senseless at first, suddenly makes sense in Klein's book ... as the component of enforcement of the shock doctrine. Many of the ideas in her book I've come across before. But I've not seen them brought together in quite the same cogent way. That's usually an indicator of the author having done an enormous amount of work and begun to see patterns emerging where once was disconnected factoids. [ 04 January 2008: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]
From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003
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Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594
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posted 05 January 2008 01:21 PM
Book reviewer Juan Santos and Zapatistas Subcomandante Marcos say that because the book is well written and researched, Shock Doctrine represents a danger to bourgeois Liberal democracies. quote: Book Reviews --------------------------------------------------------------------------------A review of The Shock Doctrine: The Face of Fascism in a Global System Heading for Collapse By Juan Santos Jan 1, 2008, 07:51 "The signs of war on the horizon are clear. The war, like fear, also has a smell. And now we can begin to breathe its stench in our lands. In the words of Naomi Klein, we need to prepare ourselves for the shock." - Subcomandante Marcos, EZLN -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas is a poet, but he is not just any poet: he’s a poet armed not only with words, but with bullets – and not only with words and bullets, but with the heart of the Mayan people of Chiapas. He is a poet and a revolutionary who abandoned the ivory tower for the jungle – for the Selva Lacandona - to live with, to fight with, and to die with los de ‘bajo – the people on the bottom, who lives are crushed beneath the weight of the pyramid of Empire. He has taken their part, their lot, their future as his own. Naomi Klein is a writer, one who sees with the eyes of her heart, one who backs the knowledge and vision of the heart with the most rigorous research - research she uses to build the sharpest and most aggressively articulated and documented of cases, a case developed as if our lives depended on it. They do. And Klein, like Subcomandante Marcos, has taken sides, the side of the poor. Marcos has said her latest book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, “is one of those books that is worth having in your hands. It is also a very dangerous book.” (continues below the film) The Film (less than 7 minutes) The Shock Doctrine by Alfonso Cuarón and Naomi Klein “Its danger,” he says, “resides in that it is possible to understand what it says.” In the clearest terms, The Shock Doctrine lays bare the vicious nature of capitalist globalization, and shows us how and why our world has been so radically transformed over the last half-century; Klein spills the blood of the lie that “free markets” mean free people. She builds and proves a solid - often breathtaking– case that the global “free market” has been imposed around the world through terror. She calls it “shock” – with all the graphic undercurrents of electric shock treatments, torture and deep trauma that the word implies – spelled out in exquisitely researched detail. Her tale is the tale of the rise of “corporatism” – a technical word for the economic and political system called fascism – on a global scale.
Hmm, the rise of fascism? That's a fairly significant event in world history, and I think billions of people struggling just to survive around the world will want to know why they are being displaced from the land, war and sometimes proxy wars waged on them, and even tortured to bloody death by a vicious empire. Political upheaval, war, and torture rein merrily while multinational profits are at all-time highs. If this isn't fascist aggression, I don't know what is.
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004
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N.Beltov
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4140
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posted 05 January 2008 01:54 PM
It is probably worthwhile to draw attention to the manner in which (liberal) Charlie Rose handled Naomi Kline on his show. When he finally ran out of right wing arguments, Rose tried another approach. Our own Professor Gordon hints at this bankrupt approach with some of his own remarks but not so barefaced as Charlie Rose. Unable to refute the detailed and factual elaboration of the application of the shock doctrine in country after country, example after example, Rose then tried to mock Klein's argument by asserting that she was, in effect, claiming that all the shock doctrine practitioners were evil. "How can you claim they're all evil?" said Rose, or something pathetic like that. His assertion was accompanied by a lot of finger wagging, disruptive and speech-making but that's just his bullying style. Klein stayed cool for a future invite although I must admit that I would have liked to see her tear him a new one (and I'm quite sure she could have). Of course, Kline made no such argument. Her book is on actual capitalism and economic history and not a philosophy text. People are quite entitled to form their own moral conclusions. But it's interesting to see this bankrupt approach in response to Klein's cool-headedness. In fact, I am struck by how much a lot of the criticism of Klein's book mimics the sort of criticism that was, and is, directed towards a writer such as Karl Marx. Bourgeois apologists just don't get it. It goes in one ear and out the other because it doesn't match their world view or weltanschaunng and therefore can't be absorbed. Furthermore, if you have a moral view that claims capitalism and all its "manifestations" are "goodness" incarnate and then come across a lengthy and detailed elaboration of horrific atrocities inextricably tied together with recent capitalist strategies on a global scale ... why then your "moral compass" will start spinning like a real compass at the magnetic North Pole. Spinning in circles, that is. I agree with the Subcomandante. Klein's book is a dangerous book. And the world needs more dangerous books just like this one.
From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003
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spillunk
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 14242
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posted 05 January 2008 05:28 PM
quote: Originally posted by Stephen Gordon: He reads her book. He doesn't think it meets minimum intellectual standards. I think he is right: now I can borrow Tyler's ideas and have an informed view: If nothing else, Ms. Klein's book provides an interesting litmus test as to who is willing to condemn its shoddy reasoning. In the New York Times, Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz defended the book: "Klein is not an academic and cannot be judged as one." So nonacademics get a pass on sloppy thinking, false "facts," and emotional appeals? In making economic claims, Ms. Klein demands to be judged by economists' standards — or at the very least, standards of simple truth or falsehood. Mr. Stiglitz continued: "There are many places in her book where she oversimplifies. But Friedman and the other shock therapists were also guilty of oversimplification." Have we come to citing the failures of one point of view to excuse the mistakes of another?
But Stephen, Cowan never attacked the heart of Stiglitz's argument in defense of Klein. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the rest of what Stiglitz had to say:
quote: There are many places in her book where [Klein] oversimplifies. But Friedman and the other shock therapists were also guilty of oversimplification, basing their belief in the perfection of market economies on models that assumed perfect information, perfect competition, perfect risk markets. Indeed, the case against these policies is even stronger than the one Klein makes. They were never based on solid empirical and theoretical foundations, and even as many of these policies were being pushed, academic economists were explaining the limitations of markets — for instance, whenever information is imperfect, which is to say always.
From: cavescavescaves! | Registered: Jun 2007
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Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594
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posted 08 January 2008 04:42 PM
quote: Here is why this book, angry as it is, deserves such a wide audience. It reminds us that the purpose of government is to serve the most people as best it can. Under the shock doctrine, Klein argues, the opposite occurs: One class of people comes up with the plan, another does the fighting, and a third, way at the bottom, deals with the fallout. If you accept this assessment, it's not hard to see why such policies earn what the CIA calls "blowback."
Naomi Klein will be on TVO's Allan Gregg in Conversation, Friday January 18th.
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004
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George Victor
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 14683
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posted 11 January 2008 02:59 PM
When I asked (way back when)about the meaning of the Chicago School for the average Canadian (or American), I meant to ask the individual babbler where they thought they stood in the great ethical scheme of modern capitalism. Naomi has accomplished wonders in showing us the effect of capitalism (using our pension funds, mutual funds, etc.) on the developing world. That was the huge threat that appeared out of Chicago in the early 1970s. It was clear that countries and regions would have to waltz to the tune of international capital (yours and mine), now circulating the world , currently more than $4trillion daily looking for the best place to land (exploit?). Corporations that don't meet dividend or growth expectations to the nickel are shed from portfolios the next day. For those who cast doubt on Naomi's empirical findings - or the nasty outcome of the "Chicago boys" involvement, I point to Robert Reich's "Supercapitalism",just out, which shows how we have all fared by adopting the economics of Milton Friedman and his followers.The middle class is disappearing, the poor are poorer, and the super wealthy somehow continue to get wealthier in a dumbed-down democracy. He shows how democracy has in fact "declined" in the process, a hardly adequate word when looking at the destruction of budding self-government in the developing world.But, then, Reich remains a Democrat in the Clinton mould and is not talking about the effect of U.S. capital (or Canadian, or Chinese)on those who don't have capital to invest. Anyway, there you have it - Reich supports Klein in showing us the existence of the Chicago School of economics. He says "We are all consumers and most of us are investors, and in those roles we try to get the best deals we possibly can." If we start acting as "citizens", not just consumers and taxpayers, we can have our cake and eat it too says Reich (in not quite those words). I don't believe we can,not for a minute, not without halting economic growth and population growth in defense of all life on a finite planet.But how do we get off the growth (investment) merry-go-round without cashing in our fine lifestyles?
From: Cambridge, ON | Registered: Oct 2007
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Bubbles
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3787
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posted 11 January 2008 07:07 PM
quote: What does the democratic socialist do if his/her pension fund is helping to destroy environment and people, buy up public utilities in Timbuktu?What does the Ontario teacher say to the Ontario Teacher's Pension Plan administrator, for instance? George Victor
By establishing a direct link between investment and consequence. For example the teachers from one highschool invest their pension contributions into the students they taught. How is that?
From: somewhere | Registered: Feb 2003
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Michelle
Moderator
Babbler # 560
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posted 07 July 2008 02:39 AM
Disaster capitalism, oil, and Iraq quote: Once oil passed $140 a barrel, even the most rabidly right-wing media hosts had to prove their populist cred by devoting a portion of every show to bashing Big Oil. Some have gone so far as to invite me on for a friendly chat about an insidious new phenomenon: "disaster capitalism." It usually goes well — until it doesn't.For instance, "independent conservative" radio host Jerry Doyle and I were having a perfectly amiable conversation about sleazy insurance companies and inept politicians when this happened: "I think I have a quick way to bring the prices down," Doyle announced. "We've invested $650 billion to liberate a nation of 25 million people. Shouldn't we just demand that they give us oil? There should be tankers after tankers backed up like a traffic jam getting into the Lincoln Tunnel, the Stinkin' Lincoln, at rush hour with thank-you notes from the Iraqi government.... Why don't we just take the oil? We've invested it liberating a country. I can have the problem solved of gas prices coming down in ten days, not ten years." There were a couple of problems with Doyle's plan, of course. The first was that he was describing the biggest stickup in world history. The second, that he was too late: "We" are already heisting Iraq's oil, or at least are on the cusp of doing so. It's been ten months since the publication of my book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, in which I argue that today's preferred method of reshaping the world in the interest of multinational corporations is to systematically exploit the state of fear and disorientation that accompanies moments of great shock and crisis. With the globe being rocked by multiple shocks, this seems like a good time to see how and where the strategy is being applied. And the disaster capitalists have been busy — from private firefighters already on the scene in Northern California's wildfires, to land grabs in cyclone-hit Burma, to the housing bill making its way through Congress. The bill contains little in the way of affordable housing, shifts the burden of mortgage default to taxpayers and makes sure that the banks that made bad loans get some payouts. No wonder it is known in the hallways of Congress as "The Credit Suisse Plan," after one of the banks that generously proposed it.
From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001
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