Naomi Klein Warns Us to Brace Ourselves for the ‘First Shocks of Trump’s Disaster Capitalism’
An image from August 29, 2005, showing Hurricane Katrina’s Category 4 hurricane force winds just before she made landfall.NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
In a hard-hitting piece for “The Intercept,” the author of “The Shock Doctrine” uses the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe to paint a picture of the upcoming economic, security and weather calamities that Donald Trump and Mike Pence will like simultaneously cause and exploit.
From The Intercept:
We already know that the Trump administration plans to deregulate markets, wage all-out war on “radical Islamic terrorism,” trash climate science and unleash a fossil-fuel frenzy. It’s a vision that can be counted on to generate a tsunami of crises and shocks: economic shocks, as market bubbles burst; security shocks, as blowback from foreign belligerence comes home; weather shocks, as our climate is further destabilized; and industrial shocks, as oil pipelines spill and rigs collapse, which they tend to do, especially when enjoying light-touch regulation. … Speculation is unnecessary. All that’s required is a little knowledge of recent history. Ten years ago, I published “The Shock Doctrine,” a history of the ways in which crises have been systematically exploited over the last half century to further a radical pro-corporate agenda. The book begins and ends with the response to Hurricane Katrina, because it stands as such a harrowing blueprint for disaster capitalism.
That’s relevant because of the central, if little-recalled, role played by the man who is now the U.S. vice president, Mike Pence. At the time Katrina hit New Orleans, Pence was chairman of the powerful and highly ideological Republican Study Committee (RSC). On September 13, 2005 — just 14 days after the levees were breached and with parts of New Orleans still under water — the RSC convened a fateful meeting at the offices of the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.
Under Pence’s leadership, the group came up with a list of “Pro-Free-Market Ideas for Responding to Hurricane Katrina and High Gas Prices” — 32 policies in all, each one straight out of the disaster capitalism playbook. … What stands out in the package of pseudo “relief” policies is the commitment to wage all-out war on labor standards and on the public sphere — which is ironic because the failure of public infrastructure is what turned Katrina into a human catastrophe. Also notable is the determination to use any opportunity to strengthen the hand of the oil and gas industry.
— Posted by Natasha Hakimi Zapata
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Source: http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/naomi_klein_warns_us_brace_ourselves_first_shocks_trump_20170125/
notruthdung the leader of commie policies –and a big time liar/fool–go back to china where you belong
Trump is going to cause “weather shocks as our climate further destabilizes”…REALLY???? Trump not playing along with carbon taxes and carbon swamps (makes the rich richer -especially banks), and Trump not putting Americans on the hook to underwrite the entire UN bs program……that’s going to cause weather shocks as our climate further destabilizes………….really….we are supposed to be such a pathetic dumb downed herd of brainwashed sheep that we are to believe that Trump will actually cause our climate to further destabilize?
I think Naomi Klein is suffering from some sort of mental illness….Shock Doctrine is a great book – I read it and learned a lot from it…….but her Trump hysteria just proves she as succumbed to liberal mental illness….
America finally has a leader who wants to save America from Obama’s Third World Vision of America….a President who doesn’t want to fleece Americans for bogus carbon taxes (that will do absolutely nothing but make the ruling elite at the UN richer) .
It would make more sense if Klein had spoken out on the Horizon blowout and Obama’s response of blowing tens of millions of dollars worth of carcinogens (Corexit ) into the Gulf…poisoning everything and everyone for decades to come..now there was a President who was a real no shlt terrorist…..