Disaster Capitalism and its Shock Doctrine-- making Nazism seem tame
By Rob Kall
Naomi Klein's book SHOCK DOCTRINE describes perhaps the most horrific, monstrous movements in the history of the world-- Disaster Capitalism's Shock Doctrine. It has caused the deaths, maiming and torturing of millions throughout the world. It's supporters and promoters should be tried, convicted and imprisoned in the deepest, nastiest prisons.
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Naomi Klein's book SHOCK DOCTRINE describes perhaps the most horrific, monstrous movements in the history of the world-- Disaster Capitalism's Shock Doctrine. It has caused the deaths, maiming and torturing of millions throughout the world. It's supporters and promoters should be tried, convicted and imprisoned in the deepest, nastiest prisons.
Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, should be required reading by every American. This book has really shook me up. It's done a major surgical restructuring of my brain-- the way I look at the world, at politics. That's because it puts things together, adds things up, explains patterns-- malignant patterns, the way the US, the CIA, corporations and monstrous totalitarian dictators have operated. It ties these despicable creatures and crimes to neocon globalist, free trade philosophies.
One other book that really reached me was Sinclair Lewis's IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE, which describes how the US is taken over by fascists. I keep a 1935 copy of it in view on my computer workspace. When I saw the book SHOCK DOCTRINE, the cover looked familiar. But I let it go. Then, I glanced, while holding SHOCK DOCTRINE in my hand, at my copy of IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE. I realized how similar the covers are. I'm dying to find out if this was intentional or simply a serendipitous visual accident.
I'm not finished reading the book yet. But already, it has touched me so deeply-- I have to write about it.
The MATRIX movie series suggested that once you can "see" the way the system works, once you are fully aware of how you function within the system, you have far greater power to make a difference, to fight the system.
The SHOCK DOCTRINE shows you the "grids of power" within the "matrix" that corporate monsters have been operating within for decades, applying the neocon wetdreams of war criminal Milton Friedman, who took his economic theories and encouraged dictators and thugs to apply them fully, with the use of mass murders, tortures and disappearings. He made a science of it-- a science he was proud of, that the US and even major foundations funded and supported.
The world has been subjected to these ideas, and they have been promoted as brilliant, necessary ideas for the evolution of commerce. Instead, they are monstrous, horrific, terrible ideas that serve not humans, but corporations.
As I've said before, since the beginnings of the genre of science fiction, since Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, writers have described the creation of monsters by humans-- monsters that turn on humans and kill. Some go beyond killing a person to killing whole groups, towns, cultures. Some literally terraform the earth, changing it so it supports the monster, at the price of human life. Some of these monsters enslave humans. Some destroy the earth or lay it to waste, so humans can no longer survive on it. Arnold Schwarzenegger played a terminator, then a rebel terminator, from a computer/robotic group that was attacking and attempting to destroy humanity.
I believe that this monster-- this terminator invention has been prowling the earth, destroying cultures, killing and enslaving millions. It came into existence several centuries ago, and now it has reached it's most powerful form ever.
I'm talking about the corporation. Small businesses can be quite benign. But the biggest transnational companies can be dangerous inhuman behemoths, capable of the most horrible atrocities.
The most powerful nations have signed on the the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and other similar globalist organizations that pave the way for these corporate behemoths. These organizations are run by un-elected, often anonymous people who can make decisions and decrees that are forced down the throats of people who think they live in democracies.
Klein's book is a huge best-seller, printed, off-the-bat, in seven languages. It lays out and documents massive crimes by Americans, by the CIA and by foreign subsidiaries of US-based corporations, including General Motors, Ford, ITT. Yet we see so little coverage of the book in the mainstream media. That's no suprise. They are part of the problem, and why I've morphed my language from calling them the lamestream media, which suggested failure to report and do the job, to corpstream media, which suggests intentional killing of the truth, in collusion with the massive corporations that control the mainstream media message.
The main story Klein tells is that the US has helped dictators, in dozens of nations, to create chaos and confusion using military coups, torture, mass killings and horrific repression of free speech and protest. They use these criminal actions to: -take over a country, -drastically reduce government services, -reduce or eliminate laws and regulations that regulate corporations, -take national resources that belong to the people and sell them off, privatizing them, to corporations-- things like water, forests, schools, roads, armies -destroy the middle class to take away their power.
They do these things to implement Milton Friedman's free trade, globalist theories as taught and promoted by the University of Chicago School of Economics. Friedman and his acolytes would consult with the worst of the torturing, murdering dictators, encouraging them to go ever further in destroying the middle class, in eliminating protections against corporate abuse. These University of Chicago economists are heinous criminals. They deserve nothing less than imprisonment in the darkest places, like Guantanamo. And with them, the heads of the corporations that have helped support these dictators, that have informed on union leaders-- they too belong in prisons for aiding and abetting torture, murder and, how would you describe destruction of nations, "nationocide?"
Naomi Klein calls this "disaster capitalism." The USA, often through the CIA, aided, even initiated, by support and advising and encouraging the dictators, some of the worst anti-democratic administrations. The USA engineered some of the stupidest coups that ended up creating some of our worst enemies. They do this without congressional support without "we the people" voting on these incredibly important decisions. And they lie and lie and lie to us, through the media through false testimony, false reports, totally fabricated news... that the corpstream media sells and flogs the public with until the dictators are seen as being the good guys and the democratically elected progressives are seen as dangerous socialists or communists who hate America.
They're doing it now with Chavez in Venezuela and the drums will start banging louder for the progressive leaders in Bolivia and Brazil as well. The right wingers, the fascists in the CIA, the corporatists-- they really hate the idea of the spread of democracy by the people. What Bush has sold and pushed has not been the development and birth and natural emergence of democracy. He has been selling the "shock doctrine" version of "disaster capitalism" forced "democracy" that is not at all real democracy.
In Iraq, after the shock was implemented, one of the first things that the US did was set up laws that applied the theories of Friedman. These Milton Friedman, University of Chicago School of Economics theories of free trade and globalism should be treated by the world as failed theories, theories that have had their successes hyped and distorted, propagandized and lied about. These theories should be seen as dangerous,as routinely used to excuse crimes against humanity. The people who espouse and advocate them are not simply egghead academicians. They are criminals who advocate, a few steps removed from the blood, the torture chambers, the assassinations and mass murders, all the ugly, horrible actions that the dictatorship take to implement their precious ivory tower theories. Let's be clear. These theories don't work. They are delusional fantasies, masturbatory fascinations of ugly, cowardly intellectual fools who have been willing to allow thousands to be killed and tens of thousands to be tortured for the sake of the purity of their ideas. Yes, that sounds like Nazi thinking. They are just as bad.
Naomi Klein has done a fabulous job of listing many of these criminals who have perpetrated crimes against humanity. She makes it clear that much of the policies of the G8 nations are in alignment with these despicable theories. That has to change.
The challenge is, Friedman's economic model, with the actions it has inspired is monstrous and evil. But we are not talking about a person who can be vilified and portrayed as evil, like Hitler or Mussolini. We're not talking about a party, like fascists or nazis.
We are talking about a theory which has led to a model of attacking nations and democracies. It's much more difficult to make this a simple concept that can be attacked, which the people of this planet will be able to easily understand as a horrible monster run rampant. And that's what we need to have to fully attack and destroy, to kill and bury forever the ideas that Friedman and the University of Chicago School of Economics have perpetrated upon this planet.
There are some readers of Shock Doctrine who consider the whole University of Chicago to be guilty of the crimes of the School of Economics. At first, since I know good people who have taught, done research or graduated from the University of Chicago, I defended the University. But perhaps, one step in attacking the economic model-- "Disaster Capitalism"-- that Friedman so successfully promoted, should be to push the University of Chicago to terminate the School of Economics-- to disown it. The many graduates, professors, researchers who have had nothing to do with Friedman's horror school of Economics, should revile it. They should, en mass, demand that the University cut off all association with the school.
Congress should start investigating the CIA ties to the school and to Friedman and to the students and satellite universities around that world that helped to virally infect the planet with this concept of economics based upon violent coup de etats, torture, mass murder, destruction of the middle class and repression of human rights and freedoms.
And don't expect the corpstream media to do any kind of acceptable job of covering it. The mainstream media are servants of the corporations that are guilty of the crimes I am discussing. The sell-out stenographic mainstream media reporters will happily report whatever they can to marginalize any serious attempts to cover disaster capitalism. They will mock legislators who advocate investigations, attack individuals as conspiracy theorists and fail to report on facts that emerge. They will unquestioningly accept reports, statistics and findings submitted by right wing government appointees who were appointed to spin reality.
In summary, the planet and humanity have been under assault by a man made monster, invented several hundred years ago. The monster has insinuated itself into the CIA and much of government and grabbed power, often illegally so it now controls much of the world, much of the weapons, much of the decision making. Humans will have a hard time confronting this monster, in its current, ever more powerful, many tentacled, hydra headed iteration. It will take long term planning, brilliant use of language and media and the price will be high. This monster-- Disaster Capitalism and its Shock Doctrine-- does not hesitate to torture and kill, let alone lie, deceive and break all the rules.
But at least now, with the help of Naomi Klein, we have the name and the number of the beast. The long road of challenges and battles has begun. Humanity, democracy, freedom and justice have been called to begin a heroic journey that could end in slavery for mankind and despoiling of the planet or the rising of a new civilization that casts out such evils and rises to new levels of greatness through justice, fairness and kindness. This is not a journey for the faint of heart.
I must add that Naomi Klein is a genius for putting the concept together, and should be awarded the highest honors-- pulitzers, Nobels-- for researching and so thoroughly documenting the rise of this monster-- Disaster Capitalism and its shock doctrine. She is a true hero for humanity. That also puts her at some risk. It is ironic that she is probably not at GREAT risk because the message is not getting out far enough for her to be deemed a serious threat. We all need to do what we can to get the word out further.
Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com
more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.
To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.