The Shock Doctrine: The Risa of Disaster Capitalism (new book by Naomi Klein)
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Review from Publishers Weekly:
"The neo-liberal economic policies—privatization, free trade, slashed social spending—that the Chicago School and the economist Milton Friedman have foisted on the world are catastrophic in two senses, argues this vigorous polemic. Because their results are disastrous—depressions, mass poverty, private corporations looting public wealth, by the author's accounting—their means must be cataclysmic, dependent on political upheavals and natural disasters as coercive pretexts for free-market reforms the public would normally reject. Journalist Klein (No Logo) chronicles decades of such disasters, including the Chicago School makeovers launched by South American coups; the corrupt sale of Russia's state economy to oligarchs following the collapse of the Soviet Union; the privatization of New Orleans's public schools after Katrina; and the seizure of wrecked fishing villages by resort developers after the Asian tsunami. Klein's economic and political analyses are not always meticulous. Likening free-market shock therapies to electroshock torture, she conflates every misdeed of right-wing dictatorships with their economic programs and paints a too simplistic picture of the Iraq conflict as a struggle over American-imposed neo-liberalism. Still, much of her critique hits home, as she demonstrates how free-market ideologues welcome, and provoke, the collapse of other people's economies. The result is a powerful populist indictment of economic orthodoxy. "
***
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/64198/
Interview with Klein and actor John Cusack.
He says about the book:
"This masterful book is a measured but furious call to arms. Naomi Klein is Antigone before the King, the antidote to the feeling of inevitability that says that we must accept murder as a legitimate economic policy. She has the audacity and the courage to chronicle the human costs of an ideology in which worshiping the markets is not enough; you must actually kill to feed them. Klein is the vanguard, the fire, the resistance and she challenges us not to join the suicide club that enables corporate cannibalism. A spectacular triumph."
Who knew John was such an intellectual?
Actually, I had an inkling. He's a smart guy who happens to be an actor, too. Good interview, and a book definitely on my list for this fall.
"The neo-liberal economic policies—privatization, free trade, slashed social spending—that the Chicago School and the economist Milton Friedman have foisted on the world are catastrophic in two senses, argues this vigorous polemic. Because their results are disastrous—depressions, mass poverty, private corporations looting public wealth, by the author's accounting—their means must be cataclysmic, dependent on political upheavals and natural disasters as coercive pretexts for free-market reforms the public would normally reject. Journalist Klein (No Logo) chronicles decades of such disasters, including the Chicago School makeovers launched by South American coups; the corrupt sale of Russia's state economy to oligarchs following the collapse of the Soviet Union; the privatization of New Orleans's public schools after Katrina; and the seizure of wrecked fishing villages by resort developers after the Asian tsunami. Klein's economic and political analyses are not always meticulous. Likening free-market shock therapies to electroshock torture, she conflates every misdeed of right-wing dictatorships with their economic programs and paints a too simplistic picture of the Iraq conflict as a struggle over American-imposed neo-liberalism. Still, much of her critique hits home, as she demonstrates how free-market ideologues welcome, and provoke, the collapse of other people's economies. The result is a powerful populist indictment of economic orthodoxy. "
***
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/64198/
Interview with Klein and actor John Cusack.
He says about the book:
"This masterful book is a measured but furious call to arms. Naomi Klein is Antigone before the King, the antidote to the feeling of inevitability that says that we must accept murder as a legitimate economic policy. She has the audacity and the courage to chronicle the human costs of an ideology in which worshiping the markets is not enough; you must actually kill to feed them. Klein is the vanguard, the fire, the resistance and she challenges us not to join the suicide club that enables corporate cannibalism. A spectacular triumph."
Who knew John was such an intellectual?
Actually, I had an inkling. He's a smart guy who happens to be an actor, too. Good interview, and a book definitely on my list for this fall. "Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, Barack Obama."
"Obama's main opponent in this election on November 4th (was) not John McCain, it (was) ignorance."~Michael Moore
"i'm feeling kinda righteous right now. with my badass motherfuckin' ukulele!"
~ed, 8/7
"Obama's main opponent in this election on November 4th (was) not John McCain, it (was) ignorance."~Michael Moore
"i'm feeling kinda righteous right now. with my badass motherfuckin' ukulele!"
~ed, 8/7
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Comments
thanks!
"Obama's main opponent in this election on November 4th (was) not John McCain, it (was) ignorance."~Michael Moore
"i'm feeling kinda righteous right now. with my badass motherfuckin' ukulele!"
~ed, 8/7
hypocrites
i love debating/talking with free market folks, they are usually full of shit and easy to defraud... not to mention they usually do not give much thought to their ideology and its real world application
they just cant grasp the concept that not everything has to have a profit motive to be effective
no bid contracts is not an example of a free market. so I don't see you point
that is good enough for me to know it doesnt work
exactly my point...
everything about katrina was free market, except the no bod contracts handed out to crony companies
the pre planning was free market: "fuck em, they should have left, every man for himself"... then the reaction and clean up was free market with the waving of union rights and wages, the waving of federal pay guidelines, the waving of citizenship worker laws, the privatization of many areas including schools...
basicly greasing the skids for crony companies to profit tremendously from the cleanup... but then the champion free market administration showed its true colors and handed out no bid contracts to its cronies during the choas and aftermath, after creating an atmosphere ripe for profiting off of a disaster
Jesus Christ! You've got to be fucking kidding. No bid contracts where the government is dictating where they provision something without any sort of free market involvement sounds pretty socialist to me. Maybe you've just figured out it is socialism you actually don't like.
He was speaking of cronyism. How you get that to mean "socialism" is beyond me.
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