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The Shock Doctrine


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#1 duke_Qa

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Posted 27 September 2007 - 10:00 PM

I just found a book which really has a few good answers about whats wrong with the western world these days.

"Infomercial" from youtube for the book, covers the basics:

main site's overview of reviews for the book:http://www.naomiklei...octrine/reviews

Quote from the daily telegraph :

In its most primitive form, this "doctrine" refers to the practice of seeking out wars and natural disasters and, then, while the locals are too shellshocked to protest, clearing a route for multinational companies. Today, however, the doctrine is more refined: its adherents engineer catastrophes.

This she terms "disaster capitalism"; she argues that it has led to the rise of a new kind of multinational that covers all the security, intelligence and war-fighting roles that were once the monopoly of the state. In short, we are seeing the rise of an international gangster class, intent on making cash from chaos.

Iraq is not a flop: it is what it is supposed to be. As Klein says: "When the same mistakes are repeated over and over again, it's time to consider the possibility that they are not mistakes at all."


So yeah, this is what we will get with a totally free market, corporations acting like kings and emperors. Dancing around rules by shocking the people and distracting them from noticing that hard-won rights are being re-written so that they can get more money than they deserve by forcing you into poverty and chaos.

the problem in society today is that the ones with power are the ones with money, and the ones with money are the ones who likes this kinda thing. where lobbying is king and money is the way of life, how are you supposed to be able to get such a topic up into the rings of power, and how can you trust them to do something about it? how can you change a global system that allows the ones with money to get less money? theres practically no way of doing it without uprooting everything, which might be very painful.

"I give you private information on corporations for free and I'm a villain. Mark Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money and he's 'Man of the Year.'" - Assange


#2 Soul

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Posted 28 September 2007 - 12:02 AM

Holy shit, I never thought of things like this before.

Nice find duke and thanks for sharing.
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#3 partyzanPaulZy

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Posted 28 September 2007 - 08:16 AM

I've known it. Simply: The real power isn't in hands of governments, but in hands of corporations, who want get more money and more influence. :D
Cyberpunk/Verne's* world vision is getting real pretty fast.

*mean that novel where some medial magnate is the real master of the world.

Edited by partyzanPaulZy, 28 September 2007 - 08:19 AM.

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"Soviet Union was a superpower and each superpower needs at least 1 war at 5 years to keep army in a good condition." ... my grandpa. USA create wars more frequently.

#4 Hostile

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Posted 30 September 2007 - 07:46 AM

I fixed your 2nd non-working link.

I've never read anything like this before, but I guess it sounds logical. I'd hate to think that human beings are that evil. But never under estimate the evil of men.

I suppose I'd have to read the book to trully make a consensus on the topic.

#5 duke_Qa

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Posted 10 October 2007 - 08:10 PM

i read the book and i have to say, this really should be in every thinking man's bookcase.

man, it even made sense of the Iraq war. really sums up how corporations and people with political power have been looting the world the last 30 years.

its hard to explain, but basically, whenever a country has been put into a shocking situation, major political change or whatever, and they need cash, IMF/others demands that if they are to give funds to help them out, they need to open up their country for a free market. now in such situations where countries are in such distress, things that usually are expensive gets cheap fast, and foreign corps come in and takes over national businesses and sucks the money straight back to themselves.

this has proved widely effective, and has caused the privatization of a majority of the US government and the mix of political personnel with corporation leaders that pretty much seems to think about one thing: how to give their corporation a new disaster to sell their goods to.


Chile: american-sponsored rightist dictatorship(Pinochet), socialistic people killed by the thousands to suppress and terrorize the people while selling out a majority of the country's money-producing resources(which was made possible because the people were worrying about surviving).

Argentina, pretty much the same.

Bolivia, also alot of the same.

China, 1989, when they went over to market economy, the students/people demanded democracy, blown to bits because democracy usually means that the people stops reforms that takes away their rights.

Russia, Jeltsin's takeover after Gorbatchev initially started off democratically, IMF demanded free-market economies for funding, Jeltsin complied. russian senate got angry because it was taking away the people's rights, Jeltsin besieged the russian senate and continued down towards "free-market". Chechnya war used as a decoy to distract the people with nationalism.

Iraq, neocons personal dream of killing two birds with one stone. make a free-market "democracy" in the middle of the middle-east to spread their ideology in a area of the world where oil-money has kept them away from the IMF and the World Bank. at the same time as using the politicians corporations like Halliburton and Lockheed to support both military and rebuilding of the nation with expensive goods that could have been built by locals at 5% of the cost.
one of the major reasons that Iraq destabilized after the invasion was because the US government refused to pay local entrepreneurs to help out rebuilding, removing thousands if not tens of thousands of jobs that could have helped people make a living and get away from desperate situations. instead they got expensive standardized building blocks and sub-sub-sub-subcontractors from neighboring countries in to "rebuild" a country that more than anything needed support by giving the people jobs.


but what i'm saying here is second-hand retelling of a book that really should be read, not read about. it sounds completely partial when i am typing this, but its a great and relatively well-sourced and informative book that anyone really should read. it goes extremely deep into alot of the flaws of western society, and i believe that this book really has helped me understand alot more about things that i couldnt find any logic in before.

Edited by duke_Qa, 10 October 2007 - 08:11 PM.

"I give you private information on corporations for free and I'm a villain. Mark Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money and he's 'Man of the Year.'" - Assange


#6 duke_Qa

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Posted 26 February 2009 - 09:50 PM

Somehow managed to post this ressurection in the wrong thread. think i need a cat scan.



a bit of an resurrection but there was an article in TO that interviews Naomi Klein about current situations.

[url="http://&quot/;%20%3Ca%20href=%22http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article5798580.ece"%22%20target=%22_blank%22%3Ehttp://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_an...98580.ece"%3C/a%3E"]Naomi Klein: The government needs more control, not less[/url]



The 38-year-old Canadian is wary of gloating ("I don't feel any sense of gratification about a financial crisis which is proving to be an epic disaster"), but after some clarification ("the thesis of the book isn't simply 'capitalism is bad'; it's about how catastrophes such as natural disasters and economic crises are exploited to push through unpopular free-market policies") and numerous caveats ("the current economic crisis presents complications to my thesis in that it is deeply understood to be a result of free-market logic"), she admits to feeling some vindication. "When the book came out the analysis was seen as extreme, certainly by financial writers, but if the book came out right now, perhaps the reception would be different."

[...]
Banking bailouts, for instance, are not illustrations of "Marxism" or "socialism", as many have made out, but of "a new, cruder form of privatisation" in which vast sums of public wealth are being handed over to banks without the State having any say in what happens to it. And she defies the cliché that all leftwingers must worship at the altar of Barack Obama. Although she celebrated his election victory, with the exception of a handful of US talk-radio hosts, you would struggle to find a more vociferous critic of the new President, whom she condemns for, among other things, suggesting that "everything went wrong only eight years ago with the election of George W.Bush". It was, she argues, Bill Clinton who removed Depression-era restrictions that prevented investment banks from also being commercial banks



a very well-rounded person this naomi. politically left but not a fan of Obama, how can it be? ;)

"I give you private information on corporations for free and I'm a villain. Mark Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money and he's 'Man of the Year.'" - Assange





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