HuffPost Exclusive: My Interview with Naomi Klein
I sat down with Naomi Klein to talk about her new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. This revelatory work belongs in that rarefied air with A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn and Witness to a Century by George Seldes.
Videography by HMS Media.
Here is some of the advance praise Naomi and The Shock Doctrine:
"Naomi Klein is an investigative reporter like no other. She roams the continents with eyes wide open and her brain operating at full speed, finding connections we never thought of, and patterns which eluded us. She shows us, in clear and elegant language, how catastrophes -- natural ones like Katrina, unnatural ones like war -- become opportunities for a savage capitalism, calling itself 'the free market,' to privatize everything in sight, bringing huge profits to some, misery for others. To ensure the safety of such a system, it becomes necessary to constrict freedom, to assault human rights. The torture chambers for some then match the torturing of the larger society. This is a brilliant book, one of the most important I have read in a long time." -- Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States.
"Naomi Klein is one of the most important new voices in American journalism today, as this book make clear. She has turned globalism inside out, and in so doing given all of us a new way of looking at our seemingly unending disaster in Iraq, and a new way of understanding why we got there. And she does it in a lucid, reader-friendly style that almost makes it fun to read." -- Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer prize winning investigative journalist
"Naomi Klein has written a brilliant, brave and terrifying book. It's nothing less than the secret history of what we call the 'Free Market..' It should be compulsory reading." -- Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things
And this was my take on the book:
"This masterful book is a measured but furious call to arms. Naomi Klein is Antigone before the King, the antidote to the feeling of inevitability that says that we must accept murder as a legitimate economic policy. She has the audacity and the courage to chronicle the human costs of an ideology in which worshiping the markets is not enough; you must actually kill to feed them. Klein is the vanguard, the fire, the resistance and she challenges us not to join the suicide club that enables corporate cannibalism. A spectacular triumph."
So, what to do? Arundhati Roy points us home:
"Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness - and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling - their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them."
To read Arianna's take on Naomi's book, click here.
To see an exclusive clip from my upcoming film, War Inc., click here
To see the trailer for War Inc, click here.
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Two major issues in the 2008 Presidential election are Health Care and the Iraq war. Both illustrate the influence of Milton Friedman. We cannot discuss Health Care without involving private insurance companies. Why should Health Care be run on a "for profit basis"? This is Friedman's influence, who argued for privatizing most government functions, including schools, the post office, health care.
The other issue is Iraq. Bush proclaimed "Mission accomplished" -- so why didn't we leave? Obviously there was a subplot to the Iraq war. Recall that the immediate response to the attacks of 9-11 were to invade Iraq. We have never had a real explanation of our involvment in Iraq; the only one that makes sense is that the attacks of 911 were a Shock, and the neocons used it to roll out their theories, such as privatizing the military. Rumsfeld pushed for a smaller military because he wanted to privatize many of the functions of the military. That is why we have Blackwater.
The REAL issue of the 2008 election is the economic doctrines of Milton Friedman, who advocates privatizing all government functions, cutting taxes, and reducing government to a hollow shell. That is the issue, and that is what the Democrats SHOULD be discussing. But the discussion is only going on sotto voce.
Hillary Clinton is a "centrist", meaning that she has partially bought into Friedman's doctrines, and that she is willing to work with the corporations. After all, we heard Sir Cuts-a-Lot say that Bill Clinton is a Republican.
Her strategy seems to be working. The Main Stream Media seems to prefer her, because she has telegraphed that she is willing to go along and not rock the boat. John Edwards, on the other hand, has taken the more traditional Democratic tack, and is arguing for universal health care run by the government. He is trailing in the polls.
In the months following 911, there were a couple of news stories (NPR) about a group of 'investors' with ties to the Bush Administration. They blatantly proposed starting a company specializing in 'disaster evacuations' on a mass scale by contracting commercial airlines and cruiseships. The story went on to say that the 'investors' were planning on taking the company public. The report noted it would do so without regard to the ethical problem such a company would pose: profitting from disaster. Consequently, the 'investors' - whose idea was met with interest - were silenced and the plans were scrapped.
Does anyone out there remember this story?
Haliburton took them over.
quoveritas
I saw Naomi Klein on Democracy Now a week of so after her book came out and I was sitting at the edge of my seat the whole time. It's defiantly a book in my soon to read list.
http://www
Frightening stuff.
I've believed all along that this Administration is anything but inept. Their "failures", particularly in Iraq, have all been part of a plan. The more the neocons mess things up (both over there and here at home), drag things out, and gut the treasury, the more money and power goes to them and their agenda. And, the less the odds that we, as a country and as a people, will recover and return to life as we knew it.
Example: If social security was really so financially strapped, as Bush tried to convince us it was, why would he continue to allow all of the misjudgements and miscalculations of this war that have thrown away so much? Wouldn't you think that he'd be especially careful with our treasury? In fact, he has borrowed from Social Security to pay for his abortion that is Iraq.
Another example is the Katrina disaster. For four days we watched our fellow Americans in terrible distress and wondered, day after day, when relief would appear. With all the modern communications and transportation, is there any doubt that the long delay was anything but deliberate?
Terrorism is Bush's free ride to gutting this country, as the neocons have so desperately wanted for so long. Both 9/11 and Katrina were a gift from their god. They have continually "shock doctrined" the American people and the people's Congress. By the time we really awaken to all that has happened to us and to our country, they will send in Blackwater to keep us in our place.
As Naomi Klein asserts, in the shock aftermath Americans became very childlike and dependent. Most Americans lost their senses and worshipped Bush. He was their god. Nationalism was at a peak. It was the neocon perfect storm to set their goals in motion. We have willingly given him our children, our treasure, and our liberties.
Bush is well on his way to bankrupting the United States of America, for the benefit of new state system of Corporate controllers, who will set their own agenda, as to what the laws of the land must be. Already we see Bush gutting the Constitution, and the laws as they presently stand. Their hope is to have such an all pervasive control, by the time a new President comes into office, that they can stick-handle he or she around anyway they want. The public, being so disenfranchised and discouraged, they give in to just stop the rhythmic beat of the overbearing message, brainlessly and mindlessly numbing all reason. With the end result, no will power left on the part of the populace for dissension, only a pleading for it all to go away, or just disappear. It's a disheartening spiritless endeavor, on the part of the public, to live under the tantamount pressure of these huge monolithic Corporate structures. What the public fails to realize, as it is being blinded by the onslaught is, that by taking the blinders off, and revolting against this institutionalized new doctrine, as advanced by the Bush doctrine, will they have a chance to succeed in keeping the repression, under the publics control instead, eliminating its root cause, by cutting the snake off at its head. The whole issue right now as it stands, is to catch the snake, and smoke him out, and this is a two headed hydra, in the form of the President and the Vice President of the United States. Until then, all else is loss, on their watch, and lost time, for preparation for real dissent.
Be aware of the Martial Law, Police State, Country Wide power hired new Tazor Terrorists that our slowly filling the American landscape, while the protective armed forces of the country, are away, and sent off duty for questionable cause.
The link to the invu (Klein/Cusack) is not to be missed.
naomi klein is a modern day rachel carson.
the intelligentsia will handle this either with silence, if the book doesnt sell well, or an attack on her reputation & academic qualifications, if it "catches fire".
(isnt it amusing that "catching fire" as shorthand for "success" is a sort of disaster capitalism term?)
what very few have pointed out is that our basic money system, the federal reserve, was instigated during a nationwide economic panic.
I think klein is brilliant, but I suspect even she doesnt know the full extent of "disaster capitalism". the reality is "economic warfare".
more gory details can be found in the following free paper:
"fractional reserve banking as economic parasitism"
endorsed by two phd economists. printed in nexus
magazine, 60k world circulation. #1 top downloaded
economics paper. used by economics
teacher in australia as standard classroom material.
more info on request.
recent supporting material:
The Shock Doctrine: Naomi Klein on the Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions
John Perkins on "The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption"
Video, senator/pres candidate Dennis Kucinich at last years 2005 Monetary Reform Conference
money as debt video by Grignon
We need this planet more than this planet needs us. The consistent degradation and pillaging of our only home in the universe in order to make toys for children who already have too much, to fish the oceans empty and kill every bush animal in Africa or polar bear in the Arctic, to chop down every tree in the rain forests around the world to make tables will result in our own demise (basically from planet lung failure and a soaring temperature) sooner rather than later. Then we will really know what disaster capitalism is really like. This is home folks, sustain it or it will stop supporting us.
Naomi Klein has it right. Ayn Rand was such a heartless freak, and the greedy and selfish naturally feel an affinity for her.
Unfettered captialism always results in the most ruthless people amassing riches while everyone else's standard of living drops, and millions starve. Welcome to the new "Flat Earth."
Ms. Klein is a talented journalist with a brilliant mind.
Glad to see her getting the recognition she deserves.
America NEEDS her insight!!
The best article EVER on the runup to the war in Iraq:
Baghdad Year Zero: Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neo-con utopia
By Naomi Klein - September 1st, 2004
http://www
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
All sound levels on high on my computer but still couldn't hear Cusack. A couple clip-on microphones would help.
I'm wondering if this "Chicago School" of
economic policy is in some way related to
the many neocon students of Leo Strauss, also
out of the University of Chicago? Seems to be
more of a coincidence there in the same
theory's of politics, etc.
lb.
It is my impression that she was referring to exactly that.
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Next time Ms. Klien needs to be interviewed, I will be available.
She is smart, witty and hot. The interview should be smart and witty too.
Greenspan on DemocracyNow was the old fuddy- duddy lying thru his teeth to Ms. Klein's questions.
Extra points Ms. Klein!
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I bet you're a real winner. Macking on Ms Klein and spelling her name wrong in the first sentence. Bet she can't wait to meet you.
This shock capitalism makes sense. I've never heard the theory articulated before.
these neocons, fronted by bush are not leaders, or anything special really. They are just small people with the power of controlling this countries governmental decisions, planning their own very self-interested agenda.
I just bought the book, and I intend sharing it with as many people as I'm able.
Funny thing about truth - it's usually right at the end of one's nose.
funny how it parallels the "last days" of the Bible, the Shock Capitalism of Naomi Klein. And that has been "right at the end of one's nose," unseen or misinterpreted, Litu.
This is a seminal book, however, and I too am recommending it to everyone. Hope I can get a copy. I don't have a book budget but I will get it somehow.
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