In the Bush Administration, Klein writes, "the war profiteers aren't just clamoring to get access to government, they are the government; there is no distinction between the two." (p. 314)
PRIVATIZING GOVERNMENT ITSELF
As we have seen time and time again in the Bush Administration, virtually every possible government function is outsourced to corporate contractors, often with no bidding for those contracts. The middle-class and poor get stomped on and squeezed, but the corporate behemoths and multinationals -- the Bechtels and Halliburtons and Blackwaters and KPMGs -- make out like bandits. Graft and corruption are built into the system, with billions simply disappearing into corporate black holes, with the Administration conveniently looking the other way. And the general public, of course, winds up paying for all this transfer of wealth and is left holding the bag in the form of lack of spending on public needs and infrastructure upkeep and a huge debt burdening future generations.
"A more accurate term for a system that erases the boundaries between Big Government and Big Business is not liberal, conservative or capitalist but corporatist," writes Klein. (p. 87) (Mussolini described this amalgam of government and business as fascism.)
>> "Its main characteristics are huge transfers of public wealth to private hands, often accompanied by exploding debt, an ever-widening chasm between the dazzling rich and the disposable poor, and an aggressive nationalism that justifies bottomless spending on security. ... Other features of the corporatist state tend to include aggressive surveillance (once again, with government and large corporations trading favors and contracts), mass incarceration, shrinking civil liberties and often, though not always, torture." (p. 15)
At times, Klein seems to be suggesting that such behaviors are but unfortunate and accidental by-products of over-zealous free-marketeers, but mostly she leans in the direction of a conscious conspiracy on the part of the corporatist manipulators of the economy and body politic. For example, she says, "the extreme tactics on display in Iraq and New Orleans are often mistaken for the unique incompetence or cronyism of the Bush White House. In fact, Bush's exploits merely represent the monstrously violent and creative culmination of a fifty-year campaign for total corporate liberation." (p.19)
LATIN AMERICA AS CHICAGO LAB
Milton Friedman's economic model, engineered by his former students (Klein calls them the "Chicago Boys") placed in key countries around the world, rested upon, to use Friedman's words, inflicting "painful shocks: only 'bitter medicine' could clear those distortions and bad patterns out of the way." (p. 50) But time after time when economic shock therapies were tried out in the real world -- downsizing government, eliminating millions of jobs, deregulation of industries, etc. -- the resulting social chaos and dislocation were so horrific that the experiments had to be trimmed back or reconfigured, often using the very Keynesian mixed-economy approaches that are anathema to the Friedmanites.
The first public laboratory for Friedman's drastic economic model was Latin America in the '50s and '60s and then beyond: Iran, Indonesia, former colonies in Afria, etc. But, says Klein, rather than encourage and bring democracy to Guatamala, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, et al., the result was the CIA-engineered "overthrow of democracy in country after country. And it did not bring peace but required the systematic murder of tens of thousands and the torture of between 100,000 and 150,000 people." (p. 102)
Iraq, she indicates, is merely the latest manifestation of what happens when private profit and private power are the be-alls and end-alls of government policy, complemented by imperial hegemony resting on a belief in American "exceptionalism."
>> "As proto-disaster capitalists, the architects of the War on Terror are part of a different breed of corporate-politicians from their predecesors, one for whom wars and other disasters are indeed ends in themselves. ... That's because what is unquestionably good for the bottom line of these companies is cataclysm -- wars, epidemics, natural disasters and resource shortages. ... Public service is reduced to little more than a reconnaissance mission for future work in the disaster capitalism complex." (p. 311)
SHOCKING & AWING IN IRAQ
Nowhere is this more evident that in Iraq, which contains all four of those calamities (war, epidemics, natural disasters and resource shortages) in one convenient location:
>> "After the crusade had conquered Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia, the Arab world called out as its final frontier...The architects of this invasion were firm believers in the shock doctrine -- they knew that while Iraqis were consumed with daily emergencies, the country could be discreetly auctioned off and the results announced as a done deal."
>> "The architects of the war surveyed the global aresenal of shock tactics and decided to go with all of them -- blitzkrieg military bombardment supplemented with elaborate psychological operations, followed up with the fastest and most sweeping political and economic shock therapy program attempted anywhere, backed up, if there was any resistance, by rounding up those who resisted and subjecting them to 'gloves-off' abuse...[an] experiment in mass torture for months." (p. 331)
Torture and the other dislocations usually occur early as a demonstration model; the extreme maltreatment is not aimed solely or sometimes even mainly at those persons tortured or killed, but are designed to stimulate a general sense of chaos and fright and to "destroy the parts of society that those people represent," such as resisters, political activists, or labor organizers. (p. 101)
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).
Much of our problem today is the poor accounting for risk. The emphasis on performance devoid of measuring the risks taken to acheive it rewards gamblers at the expense of good risk management.
The true costs are not measured. Risk management incorporates process. Should we reward somebody who ran unaceptable risks such as sprinting across a busy road without looking just because he/she got to the finish first?
Also risk management is about future profits, our current accounting techniques generates dangerous short-termism as it treats good risk management as an expense thereby reducing profits which presents as bad performance.
The economic costs of increased risk of social disruption and climate change are irrelevant if your only interested in this years profits.
by
kwalsh (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 183 comments)
on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 3:07:09 AM
I cannot say how many articles I have written here and letters to editors elsewhere in major news Media wherein I have spelled out THE EVILS OF PROFITEERING ON HUMAN TRAGEDY. Prime among them are profiting by Medical and drug compamnies or any necessity of life.
I blame the current horrors, though I am a deist on Organized Religion. The segment of the New Testament Matt. 4:1-11 The Temptation in The Wilderness, maps out the way in which men of honor and common sense should live and isolates selfish, Blind Ambition and self-serving behavior. The church choose to ignore it because without it they could pander for the donations of those with great wealth which they knew was, except in great rarity, gained through selfish and criminal enterprises. Instead they focused on the one thing by which they could effectively grasp all humans, especially women, who could control their men with it, as soon as they wiped away polygamy-sexual behavior. The day they did that, they separated themselves from honesty and God.
As a result Avaristic men feel justified in damaging others, even eliminating them to serve their own purposes. They will never turn away from that now. Behold the pope of my born into religion, who twice wrote to bishops, once as Cardinal Ratzinger, more than once as pope, certifying a threat of virtual de facto excommuication of those who voted for anyone who advocated abortion. I am as much against abortion as he is, but I would not vote for Bush because I knew what followed closely behind him-Hell, in the form of the New World Order "Crazies." I was among the first back in 2001 to call them fascists, and later followers of Mein Kampf, of which the new world order papers are a thinly disguised version. If I were given to know not to vote for the beast, why if the pope is of God, was he not so enlightened? because he heads one of the largest corporations on the planet. True some good is done by the dedicated priests which take the vow of poverty, but much harm is also done by alliances with corporate and political evils. he could have condemned in strong measures, as did his predecessor this war, but he offered too little and too late, only now speaking against it.
Constantine, refused baptism until he was on his death bed so he go one with his evils and could confess and wipe away his sins at the very last moment-hypocrisy! And now we see it renewed as the Barn door is closed after the horses have left to plunder the world.
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Professor Emeritus Peter Bagnolo (144 articles, 1 quicklinks, 95 diaries, 1313 comments)
on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 7:04:00 AM
Naomi's book is one of four recommend in: see below:
Hats off to Colleage Weiner - fine article. Disaster Capitalism is one in the four book course suggested in:
Sunday, December 2, 2007 HOPING TO REFORM CAPITALISM MAKES YOU COMPLICIT IN ITS INIQUITIES/4 Books (4 comments) Whatever one wants to call whatever takes its place, it is the inhumanity, murderous criminal insanity, of totally materialist, mindless capitalism that we are living through right now. Those of us who merely try to make it a bit less monstrous, are more acquiescent to its continuance, than to its being replaced with something more intelligently human. Extricate mind from complicity in Capitalist Crime with a four book course!
Might like to check out our OpEdNews Discussion Group and the article below
Wednesday, January 30, 2008 "Capitalism - a threat to life on Earth" OpEdNews Discussion Group 1 of 3 Lead Articles" (15 comments) Capitalism Presents Itself as Unreformable, by Definition Marginalizing Ethics and Social Well-being. This article completes the four lead-in articles for the OpEdNews Disscussion Group, "Capitalism – a threat to life on Earth", following Richard Mynich's, "Capitalism as the Engine of Global Crisis", Cameron James' Why I Say Capitalism is the Problem, & JJ's HOPING TO REFORM CAPITALISM MAKES YOU COMPLICIT IN ITS INIQUITIES
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Jay Janson (70 articles, 0 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 86 comments)
on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 12:12:53 AM
Prof. Weiner's in depth synopsis recommended for posting in
OEN Discussion Group "Capitalism - a threat to life on Earth"
as basic research book review of Naomi Kein's "Shock Doctrine" Corporatism in Extremis
Thanking Prof. Weiner, There are now so many excellent expose and explanatory works, a fine concise synopsis one can file and refer to for those in a personal time bind is so helpful.
servidor, jay janson
by
Jay Janson (70 articles, 0 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 86 comments)
on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 2:44:47 PM
