A country is in ruins. Months of war. Not to worry, business opportunities abound. Let a thousand disaster capitalist flowers bloom. Libya, you are about to be mauled: The starting pistol for British firms to pursue contracts in Libya has been fired by the new defence secretary, Philip Hammond, who urged companies to “pack their…
Showing all posts tagged Naomi Klein
Naomi Klein unleashes at #OccupyWallStreet
A beautiful articulation of this moment: I love you. And I didn’t just say that so that hundreds of you would shout “I love you” back, though that is obviously a bonus feature of the human microphone. Say unto others what you would have them say unto you, only way louder. Yesterday, one of the…
Naomi Klein on blindly ignoring the Shock Doctrine in Britain
She’s right: Argentina’s mass looting was called El Saqueo—the sacking. That was politically significant because it was the very same word used to describe what that country’s elites had done by selling off the country’s national assets in flagrantly corrupt privatization deals, hiding their money offshore, then passing on the bill to the people with…
Palestine’s Gandhi: Omar Barghouti, BDS and international law
My following article is published today in Overland journal and was co-written with John Docker and Ned Curthoys: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. – Mahatma Gandhi Israel is creating a kind of moral schizophrenia in world Jewry. In the outside world, the welfare of…
Disaster capitalism never sleeps
Because who is stopping it? The Shock Doctrine is alive and well, ideologues pushing through privatisation policies with little or no resistance from the Left or mainstream media. Daily Kos knows it: The events in the midwest these past few months have caused me, along with, I’d hope, any thinking progressive who had not already,…
Shock Doctrine alive and well
Naomi Klein on how her thesis is morphing into something even deadlier (via Democracy Now!): AMY GOODMAN: We only have 30 seconds. You published Shock Doctrine in 2007. So much of what you’ve predicted has come to pass. Final words? NAOMI KLEIN: Look, my fear is that climate change is the crisis, the biggest crisis…
The shock doctrine is alive and well in the world’s super-power
I’m currently working on a book about disaster capitalism and rampant privatisation, diseases that seemingly sweep all before it. The idea that selling everything into private hands will solve our economic problems is ludicrous and yet both major sides of politics in many Western states back the idea. Resistance is key, so here’s Paul Krugman…
Naomi Klein on think-tank logic
Wonderful and accurate quote from 2007: By think tanks I mean the people who are paid to think by the makers of tanks.
Where is the necessary progressive movement?
Naomi Klein: We have to build that independent left. It has to be so strong and so radical and so militant and so powerful that it becomes irresistible.
Bolivia has more climate answers than the US of A
Naomi Klein on an event that received virtually no Western media coverage (except Democracy Now!): Cochabamba, Bolivia It was 11 am and Evo Morales had turned a football stadium into a giant classroom, marshaling an array of props: paper plates, plastic cups, disposable raincoats, handcrafted gourds, wooden plates and multicolored ponchos. All came into play…