Calling Things What They Are: More From My Conversation with Naomi Klein

I hope you've checked out the video of my conversation with Naomi Klein. If you haven't, click here.

But after the camera crew stopped rolling, Naomi and I kept talking. Here's a transcript of part of that conversation...

Cusack: One of my favorite quotes is from Arthur Miller, who said: "An era can be considered over when its basic illusions have been exhausted." And with The Shock Doctrine, you are basically trying to shatter and obliterate the illusion of the neo-liberal or neo-con fundamentalist free market -- this official narrative wherein we not only are supposed to worship free markets that really aren't free, we must actually kill to feed them.

What the book rightly asks is what many have felt for a very long time: shouldn't we make a moral choice that you either make defense policy or you profit from it? I think that kind of transparency would be very important to have in the public sphere. Those people who go on CNN and are treated as impartial statesmen when, in reality, the book -- which is triple footnoted and sourced -- suggests otherwise. They did hold their former jobs...I guess by defintion they are statesmen....but if we are compelled to be honest we know they are other things as well... I'm speaking of people like George Shultz or Richard Perle.

Klein: Right. If we look at who the real intellectual engines of this war are, we'd see a web of people who are not simply the statesmen they appear to me but card-carrying members of the disaster capitalism complex -- shareholders, board-members and directors of companies that profit directly and enormously from war and other disasters --

Cusack: Who would these people be..?

Klein: Well, for instance, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq was a propaganda arm of the Bush administration, publicly making the case for the invasion of Iraq. And it was founded by Bruce Jackson, a vice president of Lockheed Martin who had been out of his job for just three months. Jackson stacked the committee with old colleagues from Lockheed -- Charles Kupperman, Lockheed Martin's vice president for space and strategic missiles was on it, and so was Douglas Graham, Lockheed's director of defense systems. And even though the committee was formed at the explicit request of the White House to make the case for war in the public mind, no one had to step down from Lockheed or sell his shares. Which was certainly good for committee members, since Lockheed's share price jumped 145 percent thanks to the war they helped engineer -- from $41 in March 2003 to $102 in February 2007. The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq was chaired by George Shultz, who wrote op-eds and went on TV beating the drums, and was presented just as this respected statesman. But Shultz hasn't been in office for decades. And in the meantime, he'd been working for Bechtel -- at the time he was calling for the invasion, he was still on its board, and since Bechtel is a privately held company, we don't know anything about his holdings. We do know that Bechtel was one of the biggest winners of the reconstruction game in Iraq, landing $2.3-billion in contracts.

Cusack: How about James Baker and the $1 billion kickback that the Carlyle Group used him to try to get from the government of Kuwait, which you wrote about in The Nation?

Klein: Right. I talk about the incredible power of the "formers." One of the distinguishing features of the Bush administration has been its reliance on outside advisers and freelance envoys to perform key functions: James Baker, Paul Bremer, Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Richard Perle, Bruce Jackson, and so on. So you have Congress playing a rubber-stamp role during the pivotal decision-making years, and Supreme Court rulings treated as little more than gentle suggestions, while these mostly volunteer advisers have wielded enormous influence, especially when it comes to Iraq. Their power stems from the fact that they used to perform key roles in government -- they are former secretaries of state, former ambassadors and former undersecretaries of defense. All have been out of government for years and, in the meantime, have set up lucrative careers in the disaster capitalism complex. And because they are freelance government contractors, they aren't subject to the same conflict-of-interest rules as elected or appointed politicians. The effect has been to eliminate the so-called revolving door between government and industry and allow the disaster industries to simply set up shop inside the government, using the reputations of these supposedly illustrious ex-politicians as cover.

As you say, in the press, they maintain their credibility as statesmen -- their current, far more relevant work in the corporate world is almost never mentioned. You brought up Baker. He was Bush's debt envoy to Iraq while he was still a partner in the Carlyle Group, which is a major arms trader whose fortunes have exploded since the war. He was also still a partner at Baker Botts, which represents some of the largest oil companies in the world, as well as Halliburton. Kissinger is another classic example of the power of the formers because he's primarily been a businessman, not a statesman, now for some 25 years. He met with Bush and Cheney regularly making Iraq policy -- according to Bob Woodward, more than any other advisor. But who was he representing in those meetings? Kissinger has repeatedly put his business interests ahead of the public interest, most dramatically when he resigned as chair of the 9/11 Commission rather than disclose his list of corporate clients at Kissinger Associates.

Another example is Richard Perle. Richard Perle headed the Defense Policy Board. Just two months after 9/11 he launched a venture capital firm called Trireme Partners that exists to invest in the homeland security and defense sectors. One of his first investors was Boeing -- it sunk $20 million in Trireme. Meanwhile, Perle is using the Defense Policy Board to make the case for war. And of course Boeing was another one of the huge winners from the invasion of Iraq.

So I asked the question, "Why is it that we refer to Richard Perle merely as an ideologue -- rather than, say, as an arms dealer with an impressive vocabulary?"

Cusack: The question becomes one of intellectual honesty and basic morality. I wanted to talk about the players or the heirs of the Friedman legacy who are in the public sector today... The Grover Norquists and Bill Kristols of the world come to mind ...You also talk about the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute as pursuing the goal of the elimination of the public sphere and the total liberation of corporations.

Klein: I refer to the people in those think tanks as "the people who are paid to think by the makers of tanks" because a huge amount of the funding for these think tanks is coming directly from the weapons and homeland security industry. They are funded by some of the wealthiest families and the wealthiest corporations in this country so the question of intellectual honesty really has to come up. They exist in a strange intellectual gray zone where they get money in order to think. And besides, I'm not sure thinking really belongs in tanks.

Cusack: So you're saying that the Shultzes and the Perles and the Kissingers and the Jim Bakers of the world are embedded in the homeland security/privatized war economy?

Klein: More than embedded. I mean, they are it.

Cusack: I was trying to --

[laughter ]

Klein: Why are you trying to be polite?

Cusack: I don't know. I don't know. That's part of the problem, too: being polite with this immorality and not having the courage to call something what it is...The refusal of the Congress to challenge Bush in a meaningful way is proof of the Democratic complicity in the new economy. To name only right wing people is to ignore the central thesis of intellectual honesty as the first step in a long corrective march... So we'll have to talk about what Democrats are in on this game and name them, too...we'll have to get into that later.

Comments

[bookish]

I'm buying Klein's book for myself and for my public library.

[sedalia066]

Great book, tough to put down once you start. This one should be on every bookshelf and in every library in the country IMHO.

[Simplicio]

Good for you, Mr. Cusack and Ms. Klein for further exposing this demonic Bush government.
By the way, I don't think Richard Perle has an "impressive vocabulary." (He reminds me of Jabba the Hut for some reason.) He's overblown.

[paixa3]

The resident in the white house is absolutely an EVIL entity.

[Driver125]

An earlier poster posed this question:

" How much money and power do these people need? They are already rich beyond belief why do they need endless strife and the killing of innocents to make even more?"

How much is not the question. As they themselves are fond of saying, the amount of money is only a way of keeping score. What is much more important to them is to job the system.... to in effect get the system set up in such a way as to guarantee that these riches and power will always flow towards them, their class, and their class alone, for as long as possible (barring any unforeseen social upheavals). They are not even bothering with the lip service and the camouflaging of their intentions that they were prone to in the past. Hence you have BushCo brazenly passing tax cuts for their friends and openly threatening to veto health insurance for poor children with excuses that wouldn't have stood up for 10 minutes back when we had a semblance of a free press. And to keep us occupied (and make them very rich) there is the endless war.

[racetoinfinity]

See Ken Wilber's "The Atman Project" - wealth and treasure in this world is a substitute for true spirititual awakening to always already immortality (which releases compassion and love and an awareness of oneness of all of us.

There's a powerful pathological need behind this greed.

[laocoon]

One of the false wisdoms we have come to accept is that it is absolute wealth that matters- i.e. that so long as the boats rise or can be said to it doesn't matter how much more of the pie a few receive. Beyond the level of starvation- relative wealth is the issue. No one is "rich" who lives alone on an island. Wealth is about status and controlling other people and I suggest- sex. therefore they can never have enough because what they want is all derived from relative wealth and not absolute wealth.

[ponderman]

I wonder how many American citizens, who are against the war, own stock in the corporations that make up the military/industrial complex.

[bookish]

Probably most of us.

[WIpatriot]

I own NO stocks.

[guajiro]

In my state, the retirement fund of teachers, policemen, firefighters, University employees, city workers, etc., are pooled into a fund consisting of billions of dollars. The governor of the state then appoints a manager of that fund who usually invests the money into companies preferred by the governor. Enron investment was a favorite when Bush was our governor. I believe most states have a similar setup. So in the aggregate, we have billions of our dollars being invested in companies whose agendas we may completely disagree with.

[Galvestonians for Dr. Ron Paul]

BINGO

[politicky]

ponderman,
my question is
How many people can figure out WHAT they are invested in?

Ten minutes of John Bogle and Bill Moyers attempting to find something moral in the financial labyrinth---

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09282007/profile.html

[warwick2005us]

John,

While I believe your conversation with Naomi covered several of the problems we face as a nation, both of you fail to fully "have the courage to call something what it is". More specifically, you fail to touch the subject of the "hijacking" of the control of major American jewish organizations by a combo of right-wing Republican Likudniks and the so-called "liberal hawks" (who might be Democrats and socially liberal, but who are nothing more than Likudniks when it comes to US foreign policy and issues related to Israel).

One of the main factors that led us into Iraq was the pressure from AIPAC and other American jewish organizations. Unless those who are truly liberal Jews start to offer an alternative to these views, and lobby the Congress in a more positive way, I am afraid our policy in that part of the world will not change...

[Galvestonians for Dr. Ron Paul]

very true.

[IsraelphobesSonPendejos]

Not true at all.

[CheGuevara1]

Wrong. Try Saudi Arabia. The USA let them pull off 9/11 with no consequences, yet the Ziophobes cry about Israel.

[neoconjob]

so we're supposed to choose one or the other?

[Neuromancer13]

Nice post. I think this really cuts to the heart of the matter: our government has been captured by criminals, and is being run for their enrichment and benefit. Seen from this point of view, the corporatists' ideological embrace of free market solutions for all problems is not a mistake, but the accomplishment of a goal. The long-term problem this presents for rational citizens with the best interests of the country in mind is that we might discard what is a very useful economic tool. Markets are appropriate in situations where there is an even balance of power between producer and consumer; the more power the producers have, the more that government (as an agent of the consumers) should regulate the market to prevent abuses. (The reverse would be true as well, but I don't expect to see that situation in this country in my lifetime). IMO there probably is no perfect system of government or economic management, but European social democracy seems reasonably good compared to other existing systems.

[Halsey]

grayrat...did you even read the interview?
are you seeking any forum to rant?...oh well..the internet is a free forum...have to take the good (Cusack) with the bad..(grayrat).

I'm almost afraid to read Naomi's book..wonder if a local library as it yet..

I mean..I knew Bechtel, Lockheed, Halliburton were co-conspirators in the invasion of Iraq..but the depth...and I soooo with more would be written about this nefarious Carlyle Group... and ...I WISH..some brave democratic candidate would start bringing this scary crap up front and center...hmm...bet it won't be Hilary...she's lose funding.

[Sidewhispers]

The issue of the Iraq atrocity and the related issue of corruption should be the two main topics on the platform of any moral candidate.

[rini]

I think that it's very simple. There is a sort of bullying going on. Anyone who criticizes the current system runs a high risk of being labeled, taunted and socially ostracized. I'm being serious. Among many circles discussions such as you had with Naomi Klein wouldn't be possible at all.

[sparafucilli]

I used to think that discussions such as this would come from the Universities. Obviously they've been co-opted as well.

[LightningJoe]

I also want to address the background against which this struggle takes place. We are seeing the beginnings of the final throes of the oil economy, and we don't have any ready replacement energy source that can sustain anywhere near the energy intensity we have become used to. Even nuclear energy can't let us continue as we have been. There is not enough fissible fuel to continue our way of life for even another fifty years.

I'm re-reading Jeremy Rifkin's book, "Entropy," subtitled in the Bantam second edition, "Into the Greenhouse World." Not always easy to follow for an introduction to the subject, but right-on in its analysis of cultural energy dynamics.

According to Rifkin, every energy base we've used has been overthrown out of necessity, when our populations, and their use of energy, outgrow the energy supply. We are now outgrowing the stored petroleum base, and we have nothing viable to replace it with, not even at vastly increased expense.

The other enduring lesson of this book (first edition 1981!) is that every use of energy creates waste (entropy) of some kind, and that trying to fix the drawbacks of waste, itself uses more energy, which creates more waste, etc. This means we get less actual benefit as we use more energy, in a diminishing-returns feedback cycle.

Put simply, we have no choice but to cut back our energy use. It could be done BY us, or it will be done TO us, when our energy sources become too energy-expensive to use. It won't be long before it takes more energy to find new oil, than that oil can produce.

This at once explains the desperation of the free-marketists to shake off government controls, since environmental protections make energy more expensive -- and underlines the desperation we ourselves should be feeling, to force change NOW, while we still have some few options.

Anyone who doesn't have children now should be thanked. Those who do, should know that taking no action on this front is not an option your grandchildren will thank you for.

[bookish]

I figure I will make it out of this vale of tears right about the time the whole thing implodes for the USA. I pity the generations who come immediately after us.

That's why I'm involved with my local community bicycle repair project. When I go, some tools for survival will still be there.

None of us can do everything, but all of us can do something.

[RebelNow]

Valid conclusions are based upon the facts we have to work with. A conclusion based on limited facts may be correct for that limit of facts. Hover another fact may exist that invalidates the conclusion, a new conclusion is needed. Something else is true.

Google "energy non-crisis". There is as much oil, if not more, on the North slope of Alaska as in Saudi Arabia. It is estimated it can supply the US oil demand for 200 years! The oil companies are keeping this very quiet.

The oil companies are far from their last throes...

Ron Paul Now!!

[LightningJoe]

RebelNow, how long do you think the North Slope oil will last, if populations keep growing as they are now? There were a third of a million people being born EVERY DAY in 1988. More now, of course.

America has six percent of the world's population, and uses one-third of the world's energy. Is this moral? Is it right? Do you care about such things?

Plus, developing the North Slope will just let us keep using more energy for longer, which is not the solution: It's the disease! The further we develop our dependence, the harder the fall.

I'm against North Slope production for this reason alone, let alone the blindness of using even more oil in light of the greenhouse crisis. I really don't care how much oil there is in the ground up there. Leave it there for the future, when it'll be worth a hundred times what it is now.

Thank you for keeping a relatively civil tone, instead of the usual free market jihadist rhetoric, but you need to look at all sides of the question. Isolating the arguments just doesn't cut in anymore.

[Guitarsandmore]

But Global Warming makes oil, coal, ethanol, or burning ANYTHING for energy less and less attractive. Tune in to the National Geographic TV channel to see your future (under water). Mega Disaster.

We need a Federal Mandate for a solar initiative and a moratorium on birth.

Hold your breath.

[itmaybetoolate]

Excellent piece! The issue of being too polite is right on point! You can't be polite when faced with psychopathology - these people have no conscience! They don't play by the rules of polite society. It is cut and burn, cut and burn, cut and burn. They used to do it with a bit more finesse, but now they don't seem to care - they seem proud of it!

[LightningJoe]

I haven't read the book, primarily because I'm poor. I'll order it in two weeks, I hope. I did watch the video of your interview, and it gives me hope for the very reason that heads your last paragraph. Naomi Klein has done us an incredible service, by looking the devil in the face and calling it what it is. This can give us the moral strength to do the same.

She points out that the philosophy driving the entire Bush agenda is a devotion to a fantasy free market, by adherents of the Chicago School, who hate government oversite of the economy, period. And she shows that this administration is far from a new thing under the sun, but a continuation of a growing economic fundamentalism we've been suffering under at least since Reagan.

The power she gives us, evident in your last exchange, is to see that there is no reason in the world to be polite in the face of such cynical piracy. Our own civil politeness, our hesitance to accuse or even to attribute bad actions to bad intentions, is being explicitly and knowingly used against us and against all of America, and now the world as well.

We are, most of us, a civil people. And liberals are more civil than most. But we need to understand that we are dealing with a jihad by economic fundamentalists. Their god is the "free" market, and just like other religionists we know, they will bend any rule, violate any stricture to pursue their jihad.

Politeness means nothing to a fundamentalist, and neither does fair play. They won't make their case and wait for us to make ours. A debate is not what they want. They want our hides on a frame. We have to be willing to do whatever it takes, because that's what they are doing as we speak. They aren't waiting for a good climate in which to tear our country apart. They're doing it now, and telling us whatever they think will keep us occupied while the job gets done.

[nickyboy1]

Calling them fundamentalists is polite - they are CRIMINALS.

[accountability]

LIGHTENINJOE
"Our own civil politeness, our hesitance to accuse or even to attribute bad actions to bad intentions, is being explicitly and knowingly used against us and against all of America, and now the world as well."

Used against us indeed. If you dare to bring these things up you are called a conspiracy nut. If you are angry as hell, outraged, your called hysterical conspiracy nut.
Even by the left.
A conspiracy theory does not mean that there is a written document or meetings held in high places to implement plans... though PNAC looks like a prime example of that to me.
The conspiracy is just a given in attitude the uber powerful rich have and use against the poor. The tools they use are media and advertising for brainwashing. Keep everyone wanting, wanting, wanting more, striving for more, desperately trying to get more. Whether it is a bigger house, a more expensive car, the coolest ever cell phone, a huge wide flat screen TV, the iPod with the biggest capacity, new clothes, better clothes, the best this, that, the other thing is a must have. That is the middle class... then there are the people struggling to get by, to keep their internet and electricity bills paid, who only buy used furniture and/or clothes... and cars... who consider it a splurge to purchase food or other necessities that aren't on sale... or that are name brands, who see a commercial for Applebees and wish they could go... but even the occasional McDonalds for the kids stretches it.
They are all being fed the lie that they don't have enough and that if they could just have more their lives would be better, easier. It is a matter of degrees. Some want to upgrade their iPod, some wish they could afford an MP3 player. Some want to get the biggest TV and satellite service. Some wish they could afford basic cable. Some really, really want that full length leather coat at Barney's, some hope they can get that leather (or faux leather) jacket at Wal Mart.

[accountability]

OOps, went over.
And nobody thinks about what it takes to keep all this going and who benefits. We don't get that there will never be enough.

Anyway, this is the conspiracy. If we are all running around trying to buy and have and get, and working our butts off to get it, or just to survive we aren't thinking about why we want it, who benefits from our wanting it... not directly, but up the chain... who benefits from our not thinking past it.
Really busy overworked people, tired people, lazy people don't question, they just sink down gratefully for a few minutes respite, turn on the big tv, snuggle into the overstuffed couch (neither of which is payed for yet) with the huge bowl of ice cream or popcorn, or 6 pack and say thanks God.
And they/we have no idea what that costs us. We are divorced from our food sources, we are estranged from any of the reality of production, how we get what we have.
It costs us far more than the goods, or the interest on the CC's. And it benefits the very small top tier of the ruling class.

Busy, exhausted and sated people don't question and don't rise up which is why it is important to have a middle class. If they could eliminate it that would be fine, but without the middle class there is no buffer between the poor and the rich, nothing for the poor to look at and think "if I only could get ahead..."
If there were no middle class we might all say wait a minute and storm the White House and demand an end to corruption and a changing of the way things are done and a rooting out of waste. But hey... even the poor live relatively well compared to say...Darfur, or Iraq and besides I need to put in a few hours of overtime so I can get my kid those new sneakers, or to the doctor.
Follow the money/power.
I think I have succeeded in scaring myself.

[sparafucilli]

Noam Chomsky has been around for some time and I don't think anybody can ascribe "politeness" to his utterings. Witness:
http://www.zmag.org/forums/chomforhayek.htm

I'll read Klein if only to see how much she's borrowed from Chomsky's efforts.

[LightningJoe]

No need to compare the two. They are not competing. Chomsky has a penetrant genius that delves deep into the convoluted machinations of power, especially the way they twist our language and our perceptions.

If you ask me, however, he's so intellectual and parenthetical that he's hard for the average joe (your's truly included) to follow for long. I've read him, but I can never finish his books.

Klein may indeed have read and followed Chomsky's arguments, but she seems able to lift those same arguments out of Chomsky's puzzle box, and show us the picture they make. In this sense she's a synthesist, which is exactly what we badly need right now.

She has no interest, I'm sure, in claiming Chomsky's mantle for her own. She follows her own skill. What drives her, evidenced by her excellent reporting, is a desire to lay bare the motives and methods of power. Which she does very well indeed.

[sparkandy]

PS John,

Some years ago I was in Toronto while you were making Serendipity. A group of us, Okie tourists that we are, accidentally walked through a scene you were doing. We felt really stupid when someone told us what we'd done, but everyone on the shoot was gracious.

[sparkandy]

Thank you so much. This is something we've all known about for a long time, but now we have the documentation that proves it. Unfortunately, I don't think it's going to make any difference. Most people will just go home from work and watch Big Brother and complain about how hard it is to make a living these days, but they're not going to risk anything to help put an end to government by plutocrats. It's like the bread and circuses at the end of the Roman Empire.

[linaya]

I wish I could have great conversations like this.

The truth is, we all have to stop being so polite and call these war profiteers what they are. There are a lot of names they deserve, none of them polite.

Is there an audio recording of this anywhere?

[LightningJoe]

I'm going out on a limb here, so someone yank me back if necessary, but I don't think either John or Naomi would mind the "pirate" distribution of audio from the interview. It's just too important an issue to keep this quiet.

I absolutely do not mind anyone spreading anything I say about it.

For what it's worth, my blog is:

www.lightningjoe.blog-city.com

I give anyone at all fair-use rights to use my own blog or comment material for any purpose whatsoever. Even free-market-fundamentalist Jihadists can use it. I ask only that it be used in context, and not to distort my intent. Attribution of sources is a good principle in discussions, but don't go out of your way.

[tomcatv1]

This warrior capitalism seems to me to be just a continuation of the capitalism of the Robber Barons during the Civil War and after with the railroads. The government was there to make it easy to build railroads by the use of eminant domain and the subjugaton of Native Americans to yes connect a country but also make just a few people amazingly wealthy.
Now it's government welfare for the defense industry with their unspeakably stupid war in Iraq. We can't afford to extend health insurance to cover kids because that might take away from the "war effort" and become an entitlement. Well let the government spend my tax dollars on entitlements that are good for it's citizens rather than the destructiveness of immoral wars.

[racetoinfinity]

Right-on.