The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism [Anglais] [Broché]

 

 

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This awesome book was published in 2007, well before the 2008 banking crisis and the current (July 2011) USD and EUR crises. Having read its very well written 590 pages, with another 70 pp. of references, this reader is very worried and scared about what our rapacious, trans-Atlantic friends and its UK-based allies' current plans are with regard to Europe and its currency.

Naomi Klein, a Canadian journalist/activist provides an intellectual biography of Milton Friedman and how his ideas were put into practice by his followers, first in dictatorships like Chile, later in more democratic contexts, with its main tenets developed during the Cold War. MF called for "hollow" states worldwide, outsourcing as many tasks as possible to private companies deemed to be more effective and efficient than state agencies and companies.

The obvious examples of poor economic performance were countries behind the Iron Curtain and their satellites, where the State was the dominant but inefficient motor of the economy, stifling private enterprise. They could not be reformed from outside during the Cold War. Instead, developing countries under the sway of Keynesian ideas about mixed economies became targets for structural adjustment, liberalization and privatization. Efforts to change policy gradually were soon abandoned for the more effective shock doctrine', starting with Chile.
Crises, shock events came to be seen as helpful, nay, preconditions for swift adoption of economic shock therapy. Crises were anticipated, simulated, even provoked like in the Asian crisis in the late 90s. NK provides ample evidence of the methods to administer 'shock therapy' and of their immediate, sorry results in terms of job losses and sudden poverty.

Naomi Klein's message is disturbing: an intellectual history of applying shocks in psychiatry, economics, warfare and counter insurgency. Also, NK's convincing history of the application of economic shock therapy in dozens of countries over the past 40 years, and all the lies, subterfuges to explain the misery of the victims. Because NK convincingly presents in her case study about Iraq all the 1990's US big men in Iraq as liars with a big financial stake in a positive outcome. In what? In companies involved in warfare abroad and in homeland security...

NK explains a long series of American diplomatic and war adventures in terms of opening new markets for its own corporations. What worries this reader is that a concerted attack is underway against the EUR by hedge funds, banks, rating agencies, the IMF, picking on Greece one day, Italy the next, Spain tomorrow, France next week. Why? To scare and panic China into converting its massive Euro reserves back into USD? To shock and awe EU member states into more privatization and further downsizing of the state?

US-multinationals eye and would love to run for profit our prisons, social security systems, hospitals, old people's homes, etc., etc., relying on our tax payers and banks for loans, whilst downsizing and poorly paying the fewer remaining staff, and remitting a fortune in profits to the US.

Despite its great music, films, literature, its high standards of investigative journalism, its technology and science, this reader distrusts the US more than ever, thanks to this terribly worrying book about modern-day colonialism and financial terrorism. Highly, urgently recommended.

Je trouve ce livre passionnant et très dérangeant dans la mesure où il décrit clairement et de façon très documentée comment les instances internationales plus ou moins pilotées par les Etats-Unis ont soit profité des "crises" soit provoqué des "crises" afin d'obliger des états à mettre en place des politiques économiques neo-libérales: ouverture du marché, privatisation des services de l'état, élimination de la protection des salariés, élimination de l'encadrement des prix, etc..
Ca a commencé au Chile avec le coup d'état de Pinochet et ça continue aujourd'hui.
La FMI doit répondre de ses agissements! La stratégie du choc : La montée d'un capitalisme du désastre

The way I know whether theories are true or not is by testing them against my perception of the world and what I was suspecting already. Having been in this world for quite a number of years I often use my life experience in order to test all kinds of theories. This book gave me a lot of the answers I was looking for, showed me that what I suspected had been happening in the world for many years is true. I can't imagine how some people can say that Naomi Klein's theories are all rubbish.... but well, if you don't want to see the world as it really is (and it is scary..... I will give you that much) then denying what has been going on is the best way to protect your beliefs. I had never been able to understand how life seems to have become one disaster after the other, how misery never seems to end, even in developed, more well off countries, how many countries only talk about deficit, about hard measures, recessions, but things never seem to get better and if they do it is only temporary because the next disaster always seems to be around the corner. Don't people see that? If they don't they don't live in the same world I do! And Naomi Klein is right, people can take their destiny in their own hands, the Greeks are doing that right now but most people are just too afraid, too busy, too asleep, too depressive and don't take justice in their own hands. Governments are not God, most of them are there because we put them there but we seem to have forgotten that! We put this people there and they should be accountable to us, instead they are able to do with our lives and our money exactly what they feel like. It is oppression everywhere although we are told that we live in the free world, everything gets worse, be it health care, education, crime.... we live in a surveillance society but even that doesn't help. We are squeezed to the bone for everything we earn but the economies never seems to get better... and no one questions what is going on? Weird.... and when one comes with an explanation which is probably for at least 98% correct we call it rubbish. Then again, you surely don't live in the same world I do, lucky you! Things seem to be changing in South America but will they continue to do? I have little hope. The world is full of people, maybe even too many but we can't do anything against a handful of people who want to make sure life is as miserable as possible. Shouldn't life be about living, about fulfillment, about working hard but building a good life for yourself and all around you? There is where Friedman got it completely wrong.... the life he envisioned for all of us is a life without hope, a life based on money and on markets but.... he forgot that we are human beings, we are not only market tools and slaves of his theories.

Many of this people seem to have ended up in prison but not the big fish, I'm afraid, those no one will ever touch and that will have to happen if things are to get better and Milton should have been the first one!

Maybe a solution would be to dismantle big powers like it has already happened with the Soviet Union. The EU and the USA should follow. Then countries should start thinking and living for themselves. If everybody works towards the best life possible for their people we will all be better off! And those who don't? Too bad.... if life gets tough maybe they will rethink their policies! And work towards a lower world population, that should be a priority and will solve many, many problems! But at the end of the day who am I? If what people want is the kind of society we live in, based on money and power let's go on living like that!

I didn't give this book five stars because I was amazed that Naomi Klein, who saw through many of the scams that have been going on for decades couldn't see through the Global Warming /Climate Change scam. But then I read that she writes for the Guardian... maybe that explains it, I don't know, or it is maybe that the book came out in 2008. It is more than clear to me that this Global Warming thing is nothing more than another shock doctrine designed to get our money and to beat us into submission. One would think that a journalist of her caliber would have understood this from the start? Well, hopefully in the meanwhile she has had the time to follow all the scandals and will update that part in a future edition.

Next I am going to read Dambisa Moyo's book about foreign aid because that is a subject which will help me understand the world better and why the world is in the state it is in!

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3.0 étoiles sur 5 interesting but... interessant mais,
I think this book is very well documented and reads easily, it gets back to historical facts and tries to explain the rise of capitalism from about the 50th until today, what is... Lire la suite

Publié il y a 23 mois par bsfrombelgium

5.0 étoiles sur 5 Garder l'esprit ouvert/Keep being open-minded
Cet essai est un choc. Un choc pour l'esprit, le choc de la prise de conscience.

This essay is shock. It's a shock for our minds, the shock that awakes to consciousness.

Publié le 29 mars 2009 par Girard Brandon

5.0 étoiles sur 5 ESSENTIAL READING
This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how the world got into the mess it is in today. This is a scary book. Read it and get others to read it.

Publié le 11 février 2009 par Aran

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