The Shock Doctrine

The Must-Read Book of the Year

--maybe even the decade. THE SHOCK DOCTRINE : The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" by Naomi Klein has just been published in Canada, which means I can finally talk about it. I've been reading the galleys for weeks--which brings up a second ethical problem, because I've just turned in my review to the SF Chronicle, and I shouldn't scoop that. But my review won't be out for a few weeks, and I know I'm going to be blogging from the content of this book well before then.

Though THE SHOCK DOCTRINE will be officially published in the U.S. and Europe later in September, it may be in some bookstores soon. Naomi Klein is traveling and talking about it, starting today. And there's a short film about it, by Klein and "Children of Men" director Alfonso Cuaron, at the Toronto Film Festival this Friday, and she's showing it at some of her appearances.

Before I say a little more about the book, my disclaimers: I have no personal or business relationship with the author (I've never met her) or the publisher. I just think this is a very important book, and one that people should be aware of--and consider getting behind, in case corporte media ignores it (a good bet.)

Some of you (especially in Canada and Europe) probably know Naomi Klein as an activist, journalist and filmmaker, who writes for The Nation and The Guardian, often about globalization issues, and who wrote the book, No Logo as well as a collection of columns, Fences and Windows. Her writing career started in Canada, and here in the U.S. especially, she's not generally well known, and that's one reason I'm blogging on this book right now. Her interview in Publisher's Weekly said she didn't at that point have any firm media bookings in the U.S. I'd like to see that change. She deserves a hearing more than a whole lot of people we hear too much from.

As for the book, it puts together a lot of what you might know and suspect (and a lot most people missed or don't know) into a powerful framework based on a central idea that she believes has governed American foreign policy for decades, but particularly now: THE SHOCK DOCTRINE.

She relates neocon (also known as "neoliberal" outside the U.S.) economic theories of "free market fundamentalism" and the resulting economic "shock therapy" many nations endured, to the actual (and horrific) theories and practice of early actual electroshock therapy, and shows how they relate to torture, and the "shock and awe" bombing of Iraq, and an overall pattern of taking advantage of disaster or creating it, for corporate profit.

She shows for example that Iraq and New Orleans were not the result of incompetence, but examples of disaster capitalism, which requires the destruction and privatization of the public and non-profit sectors, replaced by crony capitalism. She shows that torture is not an accident, but a tool of economic and political shock therapy.

The book's web site has more information, including access to many of her sources. But the book is the thing--it's very well written, and very important. It begins with Milton Friedman and Pinochet in Chile in the 70s, and brings together most of what has happened since (in South America, Russia, Asia,etc.), culminating in Iraq and, in the U.S., the homeland security state and post-Katrina New Orleans.

This book has the potential to be Very Big. The Guardian has named it one of the ten must-reads of the fall. But it could also be overlooked--intentionally, because of its content.

Every book arrives with blurbs, but not necessarily like the ones for this book from Arundhati Roy, John Le Carre, Howard Zinn and Sy Hersh. I join them in urging you to read and support this book. It could be one of those rare books that everyone reads and talks about, and that focuses the debate, and promotes needed change.

Now that I've said all that, I'll feel much more comfortable about blogging on topics within the book, and I hope to do that--several times--soon.

UPDATE: The Shock Doctrine short film is now viewable online. On its first day of publication, the book hit #1 on Amazon Canada.

Truth Decay

Update: A version of this is in the European Tribune rec list--worth the trip for some outstanding and articulate comments. Meanwhile, "Campaign Memo: the Katrina Spot" remains the top rated submission at Political Cortex and has some folks at E Pluribus Media (where it was frontpage Tuesday) trying to figure out how to make a version of this spot.


The imagery of decadence may suggest Roman orgies or American idols, but those are the more florrid and less important signs. What decadence means is decay, and we've got lots of that in the USA.

Decay may be a natural process of organisms but civilization is built on the ability to repair, renew and replace infrastructure, institutions and even ideas. The easiest of these is infrastructure, because mostly what that takes is maintenance and repair, the kind of attention that is the basic responsibility of government and the community as a whole. It's not exactly rocket science, it's supposed to be almost automatic. Guess what. We're failing at it and have been for years. It's decay. It's decadence.

The Seattle Times this week put it bluntly: Experts warn U.S. is coming apart at the seams.

The American Society of Civil Engineers last year graded the nation "D" for its overall infrastructure conditions, estimating that it would take $1.6 trillion over five years to fix the problem."I thought [Hurricane] Katrina was a hell of a wake-up call, but people are missing the alarm," said Casey Dinges, the society's managing director of external affairs.

The decay includes corporate failures like the shutting down of the Alaska pipeline. But it's a private and public problem that affects us all: The Commission on Public Infrastructure at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said in a recent report that facilities are deteriorating "at an alarming rate." It noted that half the 257 locks operated by the Army Corps of Engineers on inland waterways are functionally obsolete, more than one-quarter of the nation's bridges are structurally deficient or obsolete, and $11 billion is needed annually to replace aging drinking-water facilities.

But it's not just a decay of attention. It's a decay in the moral center of civilization, which is to meet present needs and provide for the future. Corporations have always been tempted to let maintenance slide to save money in the present; a stock-driven business climate with a quarterly report morality and mentality has lavishly rewarded those who give in to that temptation. Masked by a partly sincere, mostly cynical pre-civilization view of public responsibility, reactionary Republican control of government has diverted money to the already wealthy rather than to people who get the job done, and the motive is mostly greed.

Joyce Marcel summarizes what else has been happening while we've been pouring immense assets down the bottomless pit of Iraq, and enriching the wealthiest people in the history of the world at the expense of everyone else now alive, or who will be alive in the foreseeable future:

Meanwhile, the Euro has surpassed the dollar in value; it's been this way almost from the day it was founded. China, which holds the paper on America, is now the world's fastest-growing economy. India's is the second-fastest. Moribund America, however, slides deeper and deeper into debt. We have no jobs. We make no things. We make no capital investments in our future. Our housing bubble, which has sustained the economy for years, is bursting as I write.

The only analogy - and I'm not the first person to make it - is that we are behaving like drug addicts and oil is our drug. We live in constant denial. We've cashed in all our assets, borrowed from everyone who will let us, robbed our parents' wallets, and now we're breaking and entering to get our daily fix. While we head for the gutter, the future has galloped past.

But real societial decadence is confirmed by attitudes towards such failures. If the response is denial and apathy, it is certain to go on until joined by ignorance. Today we have all three in interlocked array. All three are indicated by some of the more typical imagery of decadence--the amusements which absorb a civilization while its infrastructure and institutions fall apart around it. As the self-destruction gets more obvious, the amusements get more excessive and frenzied.

Our particular decadence is evidenced as much in, say, the surreal frenzy of the news media in covering every second of a plane ride by an addled man accused of a 10 year old crime, who anyone with sense had to suspect was not going to be charged, while completely neglecting actual news stories of far greater importance. And while the excesses of sexual predators may also be evidence, so is the reactionary fundamentalism and the extent to which frenzied attention on stem cells and creationism not to mention phony prophecies concocted out of misread lines from a mistranslated black book can be taken beyond absurdity into insanity.

As for ignorance, we're pursuing it with demented zeal. We're practically insisting on it. Here's Marcel again:

While people in other countries learn to speak two or three languages, America still has vigilantes on its borders trying to keep out anyone who doesn't speak English. Instead of welcoming the immigrants who are already here, it tries to demonize them. Artists, students and intellectuals find it difficult to get visas. They go to other, more welcoming countries instead.

Many of us have been living with pain during the past few years. We love this country, both the greatness and the promise of it. We love the way every new wave of immigrants has come here to make a better life and has made everyone else's life better as a result. But it seems that now openness and opportunity are gone. America is becoming a moral, cultural, religious and intellectual backwater, a banana republic without a hope or a prayer of catching up to the fascinating new world which is flourishing without us.

Of course we've got some very smart people here, and they could take us places we need to go. But mostly we marginalize and ignore them. We are going in so many opposite directions that standing still can make you dizzy. Coming apart at the seams may be an apt analogy of the final effect.

We've already seen our basic sense of the truth has decayed and been replaced by denial, apathy and ignorance, throughout the entire Bush administration. The Bushites have given lying a bad name: public relations manipulation that is as crude as it has been effective so far. Now smarting under the all-too apt analogies of Bush to Hitler (recall Kurt Vonnegut's immortal line: "The only difference between Bush and Hitler is that Hitler was elected") and the Bush government (with its hyper-nationalism and "unitary executive") as fascistic, the Bushites have appropriated the old playground taunt, "That's what you are--what am I?" After comparing Al Gore and lefty bloggers to Hitler and fascists, they're now systematically redefining the Evildoers (aka Terrorists) as Islamic fascists. What's next--the Climate Crisis revealed as a plot by the criminal mastermind, Mr. Tooth Decay?

Well, that's what you are, Bushites: Mr. Truth Decay.

New Orleans 2005

Ernesto Calling, Katrina Remembered

According to Jeff Masters at Weather Underground, the sometimes tropical storm, sometimes hurricane Ernesto is a kind of hurricane season calling card---not terribly nasty, but affecting a lot of people over a long time, telling them that: we're back.

Ernesto won't be at sea long enough to crank up to the ferocious storm it could be, Masters says. But it's already bringing thunderstorms to the Florida Keys and will come ashore with wind and rain, and make its way up the state. It may then go back out to sea and energize again for forays into the Carolinas and up through the Middle Atlantic states.

It may tell the meteorologists something about the relative ocean temps all up the coast and how they interact with these storms this year. And it may remind people that hurricane season is here. But it is likely to be a pretty mild reminder, a nice nudge to get prepared. But not an indication of how severe things could get. Another twelve to 24 hours in the Caribbean, Masters suggests, and Ernesto could have been real trouble.

On this anniversary of Katrina, moveon. said: One year ago today Hurricane Katrina made landfall. For many of us, it was a moment of clarity: "this is what government looks like when it's run by people who don't believe in it." (Hat tip to Margaret for that quote.)

It's also a nice lead-in to the post which follows...

Campaign Memo: The Katrina Spot

The media is full of Katrina recollections and evaluations right now, and by Labor Day, they’ll be gone. Democrats can’t let America forget Katrina.

I say this because those responsible for the unnecessary tragedies in the Gulf, and the sickening fact that they continue, must be held accountable, and must be prevented from endangering more lives. This is a dangerous situation, for the American present and future, and just about all the nation can do at this point is to break the Republican rule of the federal government by electing Democrats to Congress.

So I am going to be unapologetically political here. Each congressional race is different, but there are themes and storylines that unite the Democratic quest to regain Congress. These stories should be part of all campaigns, but they can also be told nationally, as a national effort that supports local candidates.

Those major storylines are Katrina and Iraq, and Democrats demanding accountability. As I wrote last time, the main message is that Republicans control Congress: Republican One Party Rule.

The storylines are that Republican rule is responsible for the ongoing tragedies of Iraq and Katrina. These catastrophes are characterized by lies and corruption, and it is the responsibility of Congress to get explanations, to get facts on what should be done and what will work, and take action.

But with Republican One-Party Rule we haven’t gotten the facts and we won’t. No one is asking questions and demanding answers. Government is broken. It’s time to end Republican rule.

Some pols believe it isn’t advantageous to sound a Democrats v. Republican theme. National polls may not tell us how local races will turn out, but they sure show one thing: the generic Republican candidate is a loser. I believe it is precisely the Democrats v. Republican theme that will work, because voters don’t like how things are going, they can register that disapproval and try to improve things in a fairly low-risk way by electing Democrats to Congress. (It’s low risk because it will mean a divided government, so they aren’t turning over the country entirely to the Democrats, yet.)

Anyway, I illustrate one storyline, Katrina, with this first draft for a TV spot. The writing isn’t polished, I didn’t time it or anything, but I think it’s useful.

KATRINA SPOT

IMAGES: hurricane winds and water; computer weather maps of approaching hurricane

VOICEOVER:
A terrible storm was bearing down on the Gulf Coast. The National Weather Service issued a public warning:

IMAGE: teletype of this warning:

VO: If the storm hits the city, “Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks, perhaps longer,” the Weather Service said. They warned that homes would be severly damage or destroyed.”Power outages will last for weeks. … Water shortages will make human suffering incredible by modern standards.”

IMAGE: Bush being briefed via video

VO: The Weather Service warned President Bush that New Orleans levees could fail. It was Hurricane Katrina.

IMAGES: levees, Superdome, etc.

Mayor Nagin ordered New Orleans to be evacuated, but hundreds of thousands who couldn’t get out were stranded when levees broke and much of the city flooded. Tens of thousands of people—including elderly and families with children-- were abandoned in the Superdome for days, with no food and water, while a shocked nation watched.

IMAGES: Bush with guitar, Rumsfeld at Padres baseball game, Condi Rice on Broadway.

VO: While the pleas of the Democratic governor of Louisina went unheeded by the Republican administration in Washington, President Bush attended political events, and members of his cabinet went to baseball games and Broadway shows.

IMAGE: Bush and FEMA director

VO:Not for hours but for days and weeks, the federal government was failing to avert one of the greatest tragedies ever on American soil. And President Bush’s response was to pat the director of FEMA on the back and tell him, “You’re doing a heckava job, Brownie.”

IMAGES: Gore, Waters at airport, Kerry

VO: Still the disaster grew, and as FEMA failed and actually refused help that poured in from around the country and the world, citizens tried their best to respond, [continued as captions]