The Age of Disaster Capitalism
The following is excerpted from Naomi Klein’s recently published book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism:
As George Bush and his cabinet took up their posts in January 2001, the need for new sources of growth for US corporations was an urgent matter. With the tech bubble now officially popped and the DowJones tumbling 824 points in their first two and half months in office, they found themselves staring in the face of a serious economic downturn. John Maynard Keynes had argued that governments should spend their way out of recessions, providing economic stimulus with public works. Bush’s solution was for the government to deconstruct itself - hacking off great chunks of the public wealth and feeding them to corporate America, in the form of tax cuts on the one hand and lucrative contracts on the other. Bush’s budget director, the think-tank ideologue Mitch Daniels, pronounced: “The general idea - that the business of government is not to provide services, but to make sure that they are provided - seems self-evident to me.” That assessment included disaster response. Joseph Allbaugh, the Republican party operative whom Bush put in charge of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) - the body responsible for responding to disasters, including terrorist attacks - described his new place of work as “an oversized entitlement programme”.Then came 9/11, and all of a sudden having a government whose central mission was self-immolation did not seem like a very good idea. With a frightened population wanting protection from a strong, solid government, the attacks could well have put an end to Bush’s project of hollowing out government just as it was beginning.
For a while, that even seemed to be the case.”September 11 has changed everything,” said Ed Feulner, old friend of Milton Friedman, the guru of unfettered capitalism and president of the Heritage Foundation, 10 days after the attack, making him one of the first to utter the fateful phrase. Many naturally assumed that part of that change would be a re-evaluation of the radical anti-state agenda that Feulner and his ideological allies had been pushing for three decades, at home and around the world. After all, the nature of the September 11 security failures exposed the results of more than 20 years of chipping away at the public sector and outsourcing government functions to profit-driven corporations. Much as the flooding of New Orleans exposed the rotting condition of public infrastructure, the attacks pulled back the curtain on a state that had been allowed to grow dangerously weak: radio communications for the New York City police and firefighters broke down in the middle of the rescue operation, air-traffic controllers didn’t notice the off-course planes in time, and the attackers had passed through airport security checkpoints staffed by contract workers, some of whom earned less than their counterparts at the food court.
The first major victory of the Friedmanite counter-revolution in the United States had been Ronald Reagan’s attack on the air-traffic controllers’ union and his deregulation of the airlines. Twenty years later, the entire air transit system had been privatised, deregulated and downsized, with the vast majority of airport security work performed by underpaid, poorly trained, non-union contractors. After the attacks, the inspector general of the department of transportation testified that the airlines, which were responsible for security on their flights, had skimped significantly to keep costs down.
On September 10, as long as flights were cheap and plentiful, none of that seemed to matter. But on September 12, putting $6-an-hour contract workers in charge of airport security seemed reckless. Then, in October, envelopes with white powder were sent to lawmakers and journalists, spreading panic about the possibility of a major anthrax outbreak. Once again, 90s privatisation looked very different in this new light: why did a private lab have the exclusive right to produce the vaccine against anthrax? Had the federal government signed away its responsibility to protect the public from a major public health emergency? Furthermore, if it was true, as media reports kept claiming, that anthrax, smallpox and other deadly agents could be spread through the mail, the food supply or the water systems, was it really such a good idea to be pushing ahead with Bush’s plans to privatise the postal service? And what about all those laid-off food and water inspectors - could somebody bring them back?
The backlash against the pro-corporate consensus only deepened in the face of new scandals such as that of Enron. Three months after the 9/11 attacks, Enron declared bankruptcy, leading thousands of employees to lose their retirement savings while executives acting on insider knowledge cashed in. The crisis contributed to a general plummeting of faith in private industry to perform essential services, especially when it came out that it was Enron’s manipulation of energy prices that had led to the massive blackouts in California a few months earlier. Friedman, aged 90, was so concerned that the tides were shifting back toward Keynesianism that he complained that “businessmen are being presented in the public as second-class citizens”.
While CEOs were falling from their pedestals, unionised public sector workers - the villains of Friedman’s counter-revolution - were rapidly ascending in the public’s estimation. Within two months of the attacks, trust in government was higher than it had been since 1968 - and that, remarked Bush to a crowd of federal employees, is “because of how you’ve performed your jobs”. The uncontested heroes of September 11 were the blue-collar first responders - the New York firefighters, police and rescue workers, 403 of whom lost their lives as they tried to evacuate the towers and aid the victims. Suddenly, America was in love with its men and women in all kinds of uniforms, and its politicians - slapping on NYPD and FDNY baseball caps with unseemly speed - were struggling to keep up with the new mood.
When Bush stood with the firefighters and rescue workers at Ground Zero on September 14 he was embracing some of the very unionised civil servants that the modern conservative movement had devoted itself to destroying. Of course, he had to do it (even Dick Cheney put on a hard hat in those days), but he didn’t have to do it so convincingly. Through some combination of genuine feeling on Bush’s part and the public’s projected desire for a leader worthy of the moment, these were the most moving speeches of Bush’s political career.
For weeks after the attacks, the president went on a grand tour of the public sector - state schools, firehouses and memorials, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention - embracing and thanking civil servants for their contributions and humble patriotism. He praised not only emergency services personnel but teachers, postal employees and healthcare workers. At these events, he treated work done in the public interest with a level of respect and dignity that had not been seen in the US in four decades. Cost-cutting was suddenly off the agenda, and in every speech the president gave, he announced some ambitious new public programme.
But far from shaking their determination to weaken the public sphere, the security failures of 9/11 reaffirmed in Bush and his inner circle their deepest ideological (and self-interested) beliefs - that only private firms possessed the intelligence and innovation to meet the new security challenge. Although it was true that the White House was on the verge of spending huge amounts of taxpayer money to launch a new deal, it would be exclusively with corporate America, a straight-up transfer of hundreds of billions of public dollars a year into private hands. The deal would take the form of contracts, many offered secretively, with no competition and scarcely any oversight, to a sprawling network of industries: technology, media, communications, incarceration, engineering, education, healthcare.
What happened in the period of mass disorientation after the attacks was, in retrospect, a domestic form of economic shock therapy. The Bush team, Friedmanite to the core, quickly moved to exploit the shock that gripped the nation to push through its radical vision of a hollow government in which everything from war fighting to disaster response was a for-profit venture.
It was a bold evolution of shock therapy. Rather than the 90s approach of selling off existing public companies, the Bush team created a whole new framework for its actions - the war on terror - built to be private from the start. This feat required two stages. First, the White House used the omnipresent sense of peril in the aftermath of 9/11 to dramatically increase the policing, surveillance, detention and war-waging powers of the executive branch - a power-grab that the military historian Andrew Bacevich has termed “a rolling coup”. Then those newly enhanced and richly funded functions of security, invasion, occupation and reconstruction were immediately outsourced, handed over to the private sector to perform at a profit.
Although the stated goal was fighting terrorism, the effect was the creation of the disaster capitalism complex - a fully fledged new economy in homeland security, privatised war and disaster reconstruction tasked with nothing less than building and running a privatised security state, both at home and abroad. The economic stimulus of this sweeping initiative proved enough to pick up the slack where globalisation and the dotcom booms had left off. Just as the internet had launched the dotcom bubble, 9/11 launched the disaster capitalism bubble. “When the IT industry shut down, post-bubble, guess who had all the money? The government,” said Roger Novak of Novak Biddle Venture Partners, a venture capitalism firm that invests in homeland security companies. Now, he says, “Every fund is seeing how big the trough is and asking, ‘How do I get a piece of that action?’”
It was the pinnacle of the counter-revolution launched by Friedman. For decades, the market had been feeding off the appendages of the state; now it would devour the core.
Bizarrely, the most effective ideological tool in this process was the claim that economic ideology was no longer a primary motivator of US foreign or domestic policy. The mantra “September 11 changed everything” neatly disguised the fact that for free-market ideologues and the corporations whose interests they serve, the only thing that changed was the ease with which they could pursue their ambitious agenda. Now the Bush White House could use the patriotic alignment behind the president and the free pass handed out by the press to stop talking and start doing. As the New York Times observed in February 2007, “Without a public debate or formal policy decision, contractors have become a virtual fourth branch of government.”
And so, in November 2001, just two months after the attacks, the department of defence brought together what it described as “a small group of venture capitalist consultants” with experience in the dotcom sector. The mission was to identify “emerging technology solutions that directly assist in the US efforts in the global war on terrorism”. By early 2006, this informal exchange had become an official arm of the Pentagon: the Defence Venture Catalyst Initiative (DeVenCI), a “fully operational office” that continually feeds security information to politically connected venture capitalists, who, in turn, scour the private sector for start-ups that can produce new surveillance and related products. “We’re a search engine,” explains Bob Pohanka, director of DeVenCI. According to the Bush vision, the role of government is merely to raise the money necessary to launch the new war market, then buy the best products that emerge out of that creative cauldron, encouraging industry to even greater innovation. In other words, the politicians create the demand, and the private sector supplies all manner of solutions.
The department of homeland security, as a brand-new arm of the state created by the Bush regime, is the clearest expression of this wholly outsourced mode of government. As Jane Alexander, deputy director of the research wing of the department of homeland security, explained, “We don’t make things. If it doesn’t come from industry, we are not going to be able to get it.”
Another is Counterintelligence Field Activity (Cifa), a new intelligence agency created under Donald Rumsfeld that is independent of the CIA. This parallel spy agency outsources 70% of its budget to private contractors; like the department of homeland security, it was built as a hollow shell. As Ken Minihan, former director of the National Security Agency, explained, “Homeland security is too important to be left to the government.” Minihan, like hundreds of other Bush administration staffers, has already left his government post to work in the burgeoning homeland security industry, which, as a top spy, he helped create.
Every aspect of the way the Bush administration has defined the parameters of the war on terror has served to maximise its profitability and sustainability as a market - from the definition of the enemy to the rules of engagement to the ever-expanding scale of the battle. The document that launched the department of homeland security declares, “Today’s terrorists can strike at any place, at any time, and with virtually any weapon,” which conveniently means that the security services required must protect against every imaginable risk in every conceivable place at every possible time. And it’s not necessary to prove that a threat is real for it to merit a full-scale response - not with Cheney’s famous “1% doctrine”, which justified the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that if there is a 1% chance that something is a threat, it requires that the US respond as if the threat is a 100% certainty. This logic has been a particular boon for the makers of various hi-tech detection devices: for instance, because we can conceive of a smallpox attack, the department of homeland security has handed out half a billion dollars to private companies to develop and install detection equipment.
Through all its various name changes - the war on terror, the war on radical Islam, the war against Islamofascism, the third world war, the long war, the generational war - the basic shape of the conflict has remained unchanged. It is limited by neither time nor space nor target. From a military perspective, these sprawling and amorphous traits make the war on terror an unwinnable proposition. But from an economic perspective, they make it an unbeatable one: not a flash-in-the-pan war that could potentially be won but a new and permanent fixture in the global economic architecture.
That was the business prospectus that the Bush administration put before corporate America after September 11. The revenue stream was a seemingly bottomless supply of tax dollars to be funnelled from the Pentagon ($270bn in 2005 to private contractors, a $137bn increase since Bush took office), US intelligence agencies and the newest arrival, the department of homeland security. Between September 11 2001 and 2006, the Department of Homeland Security handed out $130bn to contractors - money that was not in the private sector before and that is more than the GDP of Chile or the Czech Republic.
In a remarkably short time, the suburbs ringing Washington, DC became dotted with grey buildings housing security “start-ups” and “incubator” companies, hastily thrown together operations where, as in late-90s Silicon Valley, the money came in faster than the furniture could be assembled. Whereas in the 90s the goal was to develop the killer application, the “next new new thing”, and sell it to Microsoft or Oracle, now it was to come up with a new “search and nail” terrorist-catching technology and sell it to the department of homeland security or the Pentagon. That is why, in addition to the start-ups and investment funds, the disaster industry also gave birth to an army of new lobby firms promising to hook up new companies with the right people on Capitol Hill - in 2001, there were two such security-oriented lobby firms, but by mid-2006 there were 543. “I’ve been in private equity since the early 90s,” Michael Steed, managing director of the homeland security firm Paladin told Wired, “and I’ve never seen a sustained deal flow like this.”
Like the dotcom bubble, the disaster bubble is inflating in an ad-hoc and chaotic fashion. One of the first booms for the homeland security industry was surveillance cameras, 30m of which have been installed in the US, shooting about 4bn hours of footage a year. That created a problem: who’s going to watch 4bn hours of footage? So a new market emerged for “analytic software” that scans the tapes and creates matches with images already on file.
This development created another problem, because facial recognition software can really make positive IDs only if people present themselves front and centre to the cameras, which they rarely do while rushing to and from work. So another market was created for digital image enhancement. Salient Stills, a company that sells software to isolate and enhance video images, started by pitching its technology to media companies, but it turned out that there was more potential revenue from the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies. And with all the snooping going on - phone logs, wire-tapping, financial records, mail, surveillance cameras, web surfing - the government is drowning in data, which has opened up yet another massive market in information management and data mining, as well as software that claims to be able to “connect the dots” in this ocean of words and numbers and pinpoint suspicious activity.
In the 90s, tech companies endlessly trumpeted the wonders of the borderless world and the power of information technology to topple authoritarian regimes and bring down walls. Today, inside the disaster capitalism complex, the tools of the information revolution have been flipped to serve the opposite purpose. In the process, mobile phones and web surfing have been turned into powerful tools of mass state surveillance by increasingly authoritarian regimes, with the cooperation of privatised phone companies and search engines, whether it’s Yahoo assisting the Chinese government to pinpoint the location of dissidents or AT&T helping the US National Security Agency to wiretap its customers without a warrant (a practice that the Bush administration claims it has discontinued). The dismantling of borders, the great symbol and promise of globalisation, has been replaced with the exploding industry of border surveillance, from optical scanning and biometric IDs to the planned hi-tech fence on the border between Mexico and the US, worth up to $2.5bn for Boeing and a consortium of other companies.
As hi-tech firms have jumped from one bubble to another, the result has been a bizarre merger of security and shopping cultures. Many technologies in use today as part of the war on terror - biometric identification, video surveillance, web tracking, data mining - had been developed by the private sector before September 11 as a way to build detailed customer profiles, opening up new vistas for micromarketing. When widespread discomfort about big-brother technologies stalled many of these initiatives, it caused dismay to both marketers and retailers. September 11 loosened this log jam in the market: suddenly the fear of terror was greater than the fear of living in a surveillance society. So now, the same information collected from cash cards or “loyalty” cards can be sold not only to a travel agency or the Gap as marketing data but also to the FBI as security data, flagging a “suspicious” interest in pay-as-you-go mobile phones and Middle Eastern travel.
As an exuberant article in the business magazine Red Herring explained, one such program “tracks terrorists by figuring out if a name spelled a hundred different ways matches a name in a homeland security database. Take the name Mohammad. The software contains hundreds of possible spellings for the name, and it can search terabytes of data in a second.” Impressive, unless they nail the wrong Mohammad, which often seems to happen, from Iraq to Afghanistan to the suburbs of Toronto.
This potential for error is where the incompetence and greed that have been the hallmark of the Bush years, from Iraq to New Orleans, becomes harrowing. One false identification coming out of any of these electronic fishing expeditions is enough for an apolitical family man, who sort of looks like someone whose name sort of sounds like his (at least to someone with no knowledge of Arabic or Muslim culture), to be flagged as a potential terrorist. And the process of putting names and organisations on watch lists is also now handled by private companies, as are the programs to crosscheck the names of travellers with the names in the data bank. As of June 2007, there were half a million names on a list of suspected terrorists kept by the National Counterterrorism Centre. Another program, the Automated Targeting System (ATS), made public in November 2006, has already assigned a “risk assessment” rating to tens of millions of travellers passing through the US. The rating, never disclosed to passengers, is based on suspicious patterns revealed through commercial data mining - for instance, information provided by airlines about “the passenger’s history of one-way ticket purchase, seat preferences, frequent-flyer records, number of bags, how they pay for tickets and even what meals they order”. Incidents of supposedly suspicious behaviour are tallied up to generate each passenger’s risk rating.
Anyone can be blocked from flying, denied an entry visa to the US or even arrested and named as an “enemy combatant” based on evidence from these dubious technologies - a blurry image identified through facial recognition software, a misspelled name, a misunderstood snippet of a conversation. If “enemy combatants” are not US citizens, they will probably never even know what it was that convicted them, because the Bush administration has stripped them of habeas corpus, the right to see the evidence in court, as well as the right to a fair trial and a vigorous defence.
If the suspect is taken, as a result, to Guantánamo, he may well end up in the new 200-person maximum-security prison constructed by Halliburton. If he is a victim of the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” programme, kidnapped off the streets of Milan or while changing planes at a US airport, then whisked to a so-called black site somewhere in the CIA’s archipelago of secret prisons, the hooded prisoner will likely fly in a Boeing 737, designed as a deluxe executive jet, retrofitted for this purpose. According to the New Yorker, Boeing has been acting as the “CIA’s travel agent” - blocking out flightplans for as many as 1,245 rendition voyages, arranging ground crews and even booking hotels. A Spanish police report explains that the work was done by Jeppesen International Trip Planning, a Boeing subsidiary in San Jose. In May 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union launched a lawsuit against the Boeing subsidiary; the company has refused to confirm or deny the allegations.
Once the prisoners arrive at the destination, they face interrogators, some of whom will not be employed by the CIA or the military but by private contractors. According to Bill Golden, who runs the job website IntelligenceCareers.com, “Over half of the qualified counter-intelligence experts in the field work for contractors.” If these freelance interrogators are to keep landing lucrative contracts, they must extract from prisoners the kind of “actionable intelligence” their employers in Washington are looking for. It’s a dynamic ripe for abuse: just as prisoners under torture will usually say anything to make the pain stop, contractors have a powerful economic incentive to use whatever techniques are necessary to produce the sought-after information, regardless of its reliability.
Then there is the low-tech version of this application of market “solutions” to the war on terror - the willingness to pay top dollar to pretty much anyone for information about alleged terrorists. During the invasion of Afghanistan, US intelligence agents let it be known that they would pay anywhere from $3,000 to $25,000 for al-Qaida or Taliban fighters handed over to them. “Get wealth and power beyond your dreams,” stated a typical flyer handed out by the US in Afghanistan, introduced as evidence in a 2002 US federal court filing on behalf of several Guantánamo prisoners. “You can receive millions of dollars helping the anti-Taliban forces…This is enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life.”
Soon enough, the cells of Bagram and Guantánamo were overflowing with goat herders, cab drivers, cooks and shopkeepers - all lethally dangerous, according to the men who turned them over and collected the rewards.
According to the Pentagon’s own figures, 86% of the prisoners at Guantánamo were handed over by Afghan and Pakistani fighters or agents after the bounties were announced. As of December 2006, the Pentagon had released 360 prisoners from Guantánamo (out of 759 held between 2001 and the end of 2006). The Associated Press was able to track down 245 of them; 205 had been freed or cleared of all charges when they returned to their home countries. It is a track record that is a grave indictment of the quality of intelligence produced by the administration’s market-based approach to terrorist identification.
In just a few years, the homeland security industry, which barely existed before 9/11, has exploded to a size that is now significantly larger than either Hollywood or the music business. Yet what is most striking is how little the security boom is analysed and discussed as an economy, as an unprecedented convergence of unchecked police powers and unchecked capitalism, a merger of the shopping mall and the secret prison. When information about who is or is not a security threat is a product to be sold as readily as information about who buys Harry Potter books on Amazon or who has taken a Caribbean cruise and might enjoy one in Alaska, it changes the values of a culture. Not only does it create an incentive to spy, torture and generate false information, but it creates a powerful impetus to perpetuate the fear and sense of peril that created the industry in the first place.
When new economies emerged in the past, from the Fordist revolution to the IT boom, they sparked a flood of analysis and debate about how such seismic shifts in the production of wealth were also altering the way we as a culture worked, the way we travelled, even the way our brains process information. The new disaster economy has been subject to none of this kind of far-reaching discussion. There have been and are debates, of course - about the constitutionality of the Patriot Act, about indefinite detention, about torture and extraordinary rendition - but discussion of what it means to have these functions performed as commercial transactions has been almost completely avoided. What passes for debate is restricted to individual cases of war profiteering and corruption scandals, as well as the usual hand-wringing about the failure of government to adequately oversee private contractors - rarely about the much broader and deeper phenomenon of what it means to be engaged in a fully privatised war built to have no end.
Part of the problem is that the disaster economy sneaked up on us. In the 80s and 90s, new economies announced themselves with great pride and fanfare. The tech bubble in particular set a precedent for a new ownership class inspiring deafening levels of hype - endless media lifestyle profiles of dashing young CEOs beside their private jets, their remote-controlled yachts, their idyllic Seattle mountain homes. That kind of wealth is being generated by the disaster complex today, though we rarely hear about it. While the CEOs of the top 34 defence contractors saw their incomes go up an average of 108% between 2001 and 2005, chief executives at other large American companies averaged only 6% over the same period.
Peter Swire, who served as the US government’s privacy counsellor during the Clinton administration, describes the convergence of forces behind the war on terror bubble like this: “You have government on a holy mission to ramp up information gathering and you have an information technology industry desperate for new markets.” In other words, you have corporatism: big business and big government combining their formidable powers to regulate and control the citizenry.
Naomi Klein’s new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, is now available. Visit her website at www.naomiklein.org
© 2007 The Guardian
Another word for a capitalist economy based on war and internal suppression of dissent is “fascism.”
maybe time to recirculate Dany Rodrik’s globalization trilema idea. This link to UNESCO referencing it
www.unrisd.org
“Reclaiming the Right to Development” by Kari POLANYI LEVITT
at a UNRISD meeting in 2001 “The Need to Rethink Development Economics”
“With a frightened population wanting protection from a strong, solid government…”
I would sure like to be protected from this government.
read john perkins, ‘confessions of an economic hit man”. disaster capitalism is a new name on an old face. the neo cons use the strong arm of the military, the neo liberals use the strong arm of economy to reshape the world to their ideas. take a look at george lakoff’s book ‘who’s freedom?’ for that answer. both perkins and lakoff layout how disaster capitalism is being pulled off.
‘the shoulders of a giant’ - needed for deconstruction of the monster. Thank you Naomi Klein
I’m not sure if the book is available in the States yet, but I think you can preorder it from Amazon.com. It’s been available here in Canada since Saturday. If you can’t afford it, bookmark this *Guardian* link, as they’ll be posting an extract from each chapter. So far, two excerpts are posted. The above is Extract 2. Also, read the background material provided at the site.
Nobody is more opposed to corporatization of our nation than I. To be sure, significant problems have arisen with the privatizing of public assets.
But I think Ms. Klein’s fundamental argument that September 11 happened because of privatizing and deregulation is seriously off the mark. If you accept, as I do, that the U.S. Government perpetrated 9/11 precisely in order to implement the Patriot Act and give the government a pretext with which to attack Iraq and Iran, then the changes Ms. Klein refers to would not have mattered at all. 9/11 would have happened regardless of who was in charge of airport security.
Moreover, the anthrax mailings, too, were perpetrated by the U.S. Government. Isn’t it interesting how anthrax was mailed only to the members of congress who were most resistant to the Patriot Act? Isn’t it interesting that the anthrax was so highly refined, so concentrated, that it could have only come from one source: the U.S. Government’s bioweapons laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland? Isn’t it interesting that the party or parties responsible for the anthrax attacks were never found? Isn’t it interesting that there were no more such attacks once the Patriot Act was signed into law?
Everything Ms. Klein refers to: 9/11, the anthrax attacks, the Patriot Act, the war in Iraq, the formation of the Department of Homeland Security are part of a plan that’s being deliberately and methodically implemented. The plan is to subjugate the U.S. and world population under the power of the elite, for the express purpose of enriching the elite at the expense of everyone else.
To chalk everything that’s happened since Reagan’s days as incompetent happenstance, ensuing from a misplaced faith in privatization, is naive.
Dave
I like Naomi Klein, and she has some useful things to contribute, but still I don’t think this is anything new. She’s describing the same old capitalism that has been exploiting billions of people, destroying the environment, causing wars and slaughtering millions of people since its birth in Europe in the 1700’s.
There is an enormous problem in this analysis. It assumes that the basic cause of the current economic collapse is capitalist greeed. Wrong. This a classic capitalist collapse, in which the real economy is gobbled by the financial system. The poor babies are forced to loot the production of basic necessities in order to maintain the value of stocks and other speculative instruments, upon which the ’stability’ of the system depends. Check out http://larouchepub.com. Larouche, for all his faults, is correct in his economic analysis.
Great article Naomi. Brilliant young people like yourself are our best hope.
It’s not all bad, you might get lucky and glom on to a lower level position with Lockheed, CACI or General Dynamics. Not only are they in the Death Industry, EDS might be running your local Government too. The MSM alerts are on full klaxon: bad jobs reports, world impact of housing debacle, recessions and protect the rich first.
Noami writes a sharp entry, well thought out and compelling. Appreciated are articles that are less boisterous then saying 9/11 was just business planning.
I’m not sure what “current economic collapse” kloro is refering to- the world economy is doing better than ever before in history, and yes that includes many, though far from enough, third world economies as well:
fact-. In the developing world, the proportion of the population suffering from chronic hunger declined from 37 percent to 17 percent between 1970 and 2001 despite a 83 percent increase in population.
fact- The proportion of the planet’s developing-world population living in absolute poverty has halved since 1981, from 40 percent to 20 percent (this during the Friedman era!).
fact- India’s and China’s infant mortalities exceeded 190 per 1,000 births in the early 1950s; today they are 62 and 26, respectively.
fact- despite all this progress we in the developed world must do far far more to alleviate the suffering of countries which continue to suffer
Facts are stubborn things and making up an alternative universe so our neat, comfortable little narratives fit ever so nicely will never help institute real lasting change.
Dave Eriqat writes: “But I think Ms. Klein’s fundamental argument that September 11 happened because of privatizing and deregulation is seriously off the mark.”
She says no such thing. Geez, can’t you Amerricans even read?
A lot of Klein’s thesis may tap into the past couple centuries of a general economic formula: get the people off the land (particularly if it has resources) -> speculate wildly -> capitalize on some resource (sugar, cotton, tobacco, rubber, gold, lumber, iron, technology, etc.) during the boom period -> go bust while the going is good and you control a sufficient percentage of government/regulators -> obtain government bailouts/pardons/etc. as the case may be -> onto the next industry/scheme.
The boom-bust cycle offers cyclic rides for which the ueber-elite can exploit both ways. They get rich on both ends of the roller-coaster. Here’s something from game theory called Parrondo’s Paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrondo’s_paradox.
They’re gaming the system. Indeed, the system IS the game.
nickhart,
I do think Klein is trying to alert people to a dangerous trend in the evolution of the US corporate capitalist system. All systems evolve over time and the development of computer and communications technologies have allowed the development of informational systems that create the possibility a far greater amount of control by the few over the many than at any time in human history.
Most likely Bush is just a market fairy true believer while Cheney is following in the traditional mold of self-serving mendacious ruthless capitalist predators, but they are inadvertently creating something far more sinister than they had imagined possible. They are setting up the preconditions for the development of totalitarian fascist state that could resemble an Orwellian Treblinka on a worldwide scale.
Not being a US citizen, I’m not completely familiar with the US Constitution. However, it does mention somewhere the necessity for a well-regulated militia. Does it mention anywhere the necessity for a well-regulated market economy? If not, I’m sure getting the necessary amendment passed will be a cakewalk.
clarity
You seem to have cribbed your poverty level stats from the notoriously right wing Frasier Institute.
Like most right wing “think” tanks, most of their info production toward propagation of the “free market” faith rather than expanding the frontiers of knowledge.
Facts are stubborn things. That is why huge corporation invest in think tanks…in order to cook the books, cherry pick info, apply questionable measurement instruments, compare apples and oranges, etc.
They expect a certain product in return for their investments. As does the tobacco or energy industry relative to cancer or global warming.
So much for faith-based mush based on defending the divine right of the so-called free market (i.e., corporate dominance).
For corporate sponsered think tanks, facts are only hurdles to get around.
Why does capitalism work for banks and corporations and not for We the People?
Zoya:
Kiss my amerrican ass.
This is a great introduction to her book, which I can’t wait to read in full.
Naomi Klein is the most economistic writer I’ve ever read. The Bush administration is much more about trying to suppress dissent and role back the cultural revolutions of the sixties than put forward a coherent economic doctrine. This is why most neoliberals have bailed on them. That they let their friends slurp at the trough of ‘homeland security’ is, I think, trivial. For me to think otherwise I would need to see some actual economic figures, which this article lacks.
Two thirds of the worlds population lives in abject poverty (less than $1/day). 25,000 people die DAILY of starvation. This is progress? Wake up Clarity, the system is NOT working!
…and in supposedly one of the richest countries, the majority haven’t owned so little equity since perhaps the Great Depression.
One would almost be led to conclude that a cadre of filthy rich bankers are screwing the whole world over, First, Second, and so-called Third World.
I agree that much more has to be done and the problem is we really don’t have much of a system to deal with extreme poverty- however if you google up less than $1 per day you will see that the UN, World Bank and many other sources put the percent at about 20%, at the most 25%- not even close to the 66.6% mentioned above. This is still 1 out of every 5, maybe even people in the world on the brink mere exhistence and I by no means think it is even close to being good enough. Of all the many things future generations will look back on us and condemn our inaction I think this is at the top- How can we let so many die when we have the resources we do?
Still it does not change the Fact that things have gotten better for so many. I have traveled to the Far East on business and study for over 25 years and it is a different world than the one that existed when I first went there- a much better one for the great majority of people living there. The truth is there are increbidle economic success stories in any number of countries, and yes many other horror stories as well- but overall there is no debate in the UN or any other International food agency that the percent of people living in that object poverty level is way down. See UN, Nationmaster, World Bank, etc.
NAOMI KLEIN: With a frightened population wanting protection from a strong, solid government, the attacks could well have put an end to Bush’s project of hollowing out government just as it was beginning.
ENTERIK: The importance of the effect described by this sentence should not be underestimated. It is what made most of the bad stuffthat followed possible. What happened to many of the American people in the years following 9/11 is described by a field of psychology called “terror management theory”. The ideas are simple. Humans are aware of their certain death and that awareness causes them great discomfort. To reduce the disconfort we have developed culture where people strive for symbolic immortality (children, reputation, arts, legacies) or literal immortality (a promise of an afterlife).
There are two main ideas in this theory. The first idea is mortality salience and it goes like this…if your culture and self-esteem provide you protection from fear, then reminding people of that fear (9/11) increases their need to value their culture and self-esteem. The second idea is that self-esteem is an anxiety buffer as mental protection against thoughts of mortality.
Research show that if remid people of heir death they cling to their own culture and are more attracted to strong leaders who express traditional, pro-establishment, authoritarian viewpoints. They are hyper-vigilant to external threats and are more hostile to those that theaten them. Research also shows that those raised by authoritarian parents or socialized to authority (like military personell) are more susceptible to conforming to authority when threatened.
I conclude we need to change the future today, we need less James Dobson and more Alfie Kohn if the newest generation is to respond to the world a little less self-destructively.
It’s hyperbolic nonsense — and demeaning — to paint people as extraordinarily frightened little sheep who need protection. Bullshit.
We need emperors, warlords, etc. and their modern ilk — whatever hat they wear — to simply leave us alone. Ordinary Joe Sixpacks isn’t worried about Joe Sixpacks from some other country. We’ve been spoonfed a series of lies about who we’re supposed to hate, based on a geopolitical deal brokered — or broken — between elites of one country or another.
Now that I’ve read Klein’s article more carefully, I’ve come to conclude that it’s new boss same as old boss sort of argument. Out with the corporo-fascists, in with the government-facists. I say let’s just put the psychotic fascists of any sort, who feel the need to control others, out to pasture.
DaveEriqat (September 10th, 2007 1:20 pm) writes:
But I think Ms. Klein’s fundamental argument that September 11 happened because of privatizing and deregulation is seriously off the mark. If you accept, as I do, that the U.S. Government perpetrated 9/11 precisely in order to implement the Patriot Act and give the government a pretext with which to attack Iraq and Iran, then the changes Ms. Klein refers to would not have mattered at all. 9/11 would have happened regardless of who was in charge of airport security…
As zoya (September 10th, 2007 3:02 pm) has already accurately noted, Naomi Klein said nothing of the sort. However, Mr Eriqat’s comment also demonstrates several other common & disturbing tendencies among “9-11 Truth” zealots. For instance, Eriqat’s conclusion doesn’t follow from his assumption. Even if 9-11 was an “inside job,” Klein’s discussion would still “matter.” It would still be plenty relevant to understanding why we are where we are, today.
Further, like many 9-11 Truth zealots, Mr Eriqat demonstrates the 9-11 Truthers’ tendency to believe that there’s nothing else to talk about except 9-11 Truth; that any discussion not centered on this one thing should be denounced & dismissed for its failure to conform to this single-issue obsession.
As it happens, Ms Klein’s analysis can stand on its own without a single word being said about 9-11 Truth. That’s partly because it’s a very sound analysis, and partly because 9-11 Truth is not the conceptual center of the universe, as many of its overly-enthusiastic proponents wrongly imagine. Capitalism would still have manifold sociopathic & destructive qualities, even if 9-11 was actually planned by Osama.
Capitalism is the system of inequity, especially capitalism without sensible regulation. Once you deregulate everything and privatize it, the exploitation of one class by another cannot help but increase exponentially, which is exactly what it happening in the US today.
Ms Klein’s point is that this is another level of Capitalist ripoff and greed than we have seen in the past and a bigger threat to our Constitutional liberties.
In the past, it was usually only big well established companies that could get government contracts. Now the government is practically begging anyone with a hair brianed security scheme and a Repub. connection to take our tax money. At least in the case of companies like Wal-mart, they must please their customers even if they exploit their workers. In the case of the so called security industry we are the raw material to be exploited and their customers are the same government agencies who paid them to begin with, another words we are paying our government to expoit and abuse us.
New Orleans is a perfect example of the security industry at its “finest” First, the local, state and Fed. government intentionally ignored all the warnings of the imminent collapse of the levees. They intentionally ignore an evacuation plan which would provide for the evacuation of everyone and go with one that will only allow for evacuation of those with cars. During the crises Gov. Blanco gives the police carte blanc “to shoot to kill looters” who just happen to be the poor and helpless who have purposely been left without food or water. Many are jailed, mostly blackmen who are later exploided along with slave immigrant labor in the rebuilding of the core city. All three governments make sure that donations and funds do not reach the poor that their homes are boarded and destroyed so that they can not return. The teachers are all fired, their union busted, the schools privatized or ignored. Most hospitals are not rebuilt. Since there are no jobs and homes, for blue collar people, violent crime increases, more arrests, more police power, more prisoners and more profits for the privatized jails.
The more the security industry can create fear, push for continual war and undermine our Constitutional rights, the more they profit.
As to the world economic situation, it is important to look deeper at the stats and ask what does this really mean? Just because the per capita of a nation has gone up, it does not mean the population as a whole is living better. A small percentage of the population may have become immensely wealthy while the rest stayed the same or went down, all these incomes are averaged together. In many countries, the people have industrial jobs which pay a bit better than farming or herding did, but it is at the price of the destruction of their environment and social dislocation, so how long will this new found “prosperity” last?
clarity:
“I have traveled to the Far East on business and study for over 25 years and it is a different world than the one that existed when I first went there- a much better one for the great majority of people living there. ”
I also traveled to the far east and lived there. You wanna name the countries? by definition, there are only 3 counties: China, Japan and Korea ( North and South) in the far east excluding Russia.
I saw the ugliest faces of capitalism.
I believe we can do better than capitalism.
Karl_Marx: I believe you are right. We need to be aware of such tactics. The establishment succeeded in twarting social progress during seventies with moles, agents, drugs, mind-control (MK-Ultra), etc. We are not as innocent today.
The Masters recommended a mixture of systems, 30% Capitalism and 70% Socialism for the greatest benefit to all.
Clarity
I have lived in the Philippines, Honduras and I’ve seen other parts of Latin America. Most of the Third World economies are like their larger cities…Potemkin villages.
Of course, the rural areas is where hell really breaks loose. For example, China has experienced more than 10,000 peasant uprisings recently. This reality doesn’t even bring into account China’s floating impoverished labor force which is almost the same number as the US workforce as a whole.
In India, relatively well paid high tech jobs employ approximately one million workers. That’s a drop in the bucket. This is a country in which farmer suicides are epidemic.
In most of Latin America, the last 20 years have been an economic and social disaster.
In Russia, as in many other Eastern European countries, the life span of the average male has dropped by 5 to 10 years in many places.
Let us not even discuss the economic, social and health horrors of Africa.
The Middle East and Central Asia: war, deadly social conflicts and very uneven economic development.
Last, in the U.S., the average worker has seen his or her earning and political power drop rapidly. Remember, about 25 to 30 years in the past, many heavy industry workers earned a “family” living wage: home, wife-at-home, affordable college, great benefits, etc.
The U.S. used to possess a good public school system, a working healthcare system, cheap higher education, a decent train system,a great infrastructure and a government that was employer of last resort. Gone!
At present, most of the higher paid blue collar and white collar jobs are being shipped to impoverished Third World countries.
And because independent unions and actually implimented environmental protections are not allowed in these Third World countries, average wages tend to not keep up with the increasing cost of living while the level of toxic pollutants is rapidly rising.
Last, every poverty study has to be funded by a foundation, agency or government depts. All of which have an agenda. And many of their measurements are usually based on very inadequate definitions and resulting standards of measurement.
For example, how is poverty is defined in the U.S.? I believe it is defined as 24,000.00 annual earnings for a family of four. Into the mix is thrown the average food basket relative to total earnings which, today, is totally unrealistic.
In Honduras, I believe, poverty is defined as earning less than 2.00 or 3.00 a day. Where did that arbitrary and ridiculous number come from?
Another example of questionalbe stats: in the US, unemployment is measured by how many people file for unemployment benefits. Unemployment benefits run out and they are difficult to get. In fact, a new study recently came out finding only 50% if eligible people actually file for unemployment.
Let us next discuss healthcare coverage, rising copayments, etc.
Alas, the world,as a whole, is not doing as well as 25 to 30 years ago. And most indicators describe a global situation that is rapidly deteriorating economically, environmentally, socially, and culturally.
More and more people are becoming disposable.
The simple truth is that government turned over to business interests is no government at all. It is slavery.
Technology and computer bullshit is the new religion because it is so-called “scientific” and the philosopically illiterate worship the supposed certainty of science.
We are creating the nightmare that George Orwell warned us about. Fear is a primal motivator and is used by the most cowardly and ignorant among us.
We should respond with the simple phrase “That’s pure Bullshit!” every time someone uses the word terror.
Disaster capitalism? Seems redundant to me.
Yet if this excerpt is any indication, her book is an important read.
I disagree with the person who said it was an “evolution” she is alerting us to. New technologies and tactics that come from those technologies, yes, but the same vision and goals. This is where the neocons and neolibs come together. It’s a Good cop, bad cop kinda thing. I guess you want the good cop, but you’re still in jail.
Her hyperbole, I suppose, only provokes discussion. So…it’s all good.
I hope her book discusses it’s use as a tactic/strategy to win elections in the third world, and the corporate media’s interest in the economy she describes.
I also hope there’s a connection to folks in the US. The cycle of neglect, violence, ‘revitalization,’ displacement, and back around again in our communities is one example that comes to mind.
Exactly, chessgames56,
What we now have in America is not normal Capitalism, IMHO, but rather “Predatory Capitalism” replete with monopolies and oligopolies which have wiped out all significant government oversight and protection. Now that congress critters blatantly ignore the letters we write them, it’s clear that they take their marching orders from the Fortune-500. There’s only one way to describe this collusion with government: “Corporate Communism”, and we’re all prisoners of this nightmare.
The only way to reform this mess, imho, is to shut down the monster at it’s source. Boycott everything. Default on everything.
Suddenly, CEO’s will know who’s working for who.
pacplyer
If you want living proof - just examine the mortgage mess and its ongoing nightmare.
We are all wage slaves. Capitalism needs an ever expanding economy. Corporations would not increase wages. Came upon solution. Convince those semi-indepndant folks who had equity the easy use of it to buy things to increase corporate profits. This was so successful, it was expanded into those who could not afford a house, so equity could be generated for them to spend on things, therby helping line the pockets of capitalistic greed.
All it took to collapse this, was one chicken little who finally panicked. But guess who gets bailed out. The greedy capitalists who pushed the envelope. The ones who gave everyone free mortgages then sold them.
When I say the American people are suckers, you get indignant. Look, big brother is watching you, which means you’re getting the bad parts of communism, minus its good parts.
The article makes the war with Iran look inevitable. What next is in the target of the military-industrial-church-media-government-sheeple complex, Venezuela, Syria …?
An ever expanding economy requires an ever expanding planet.
As for the poor, let them eat statistics.
Ms. Klein calls it “disaster capitalism.” There is another expression, however, that’s been around for the last sixty years - “the military/industrial complex.” Where’s she been anyway?
millercopter September 10th, 2007 5:12 pm:
It’s nice to be polite and courteous when posting messages. However, here’s an appropriate response to your cravings:
I tried to do it for zoya, but couldn’t tell the difference between your ass and your mouth.
In addition to your manners, you also need to improve your spelling. “American”, not “amerrican.” But, your choice of website here is good.
One wonders how much longer this planet can sustain the current rate of rape in the name of growth and progress and continue to support our existence. The primary problem is that we have no clue how to live simply, much less the inclination to do so. We get bored so easily without our favorite toys, don’t we? When it comes down to making the hard decisions, who will really make them? Perhaps, then, it is better to look into the mirror before throwing stones. It’s funny because I have both an older car and newer one. When I go out driving, I rarely see any other older cars, even when passing a trailer park where the trailers are falling apart; there are new expensive vehicles parked next to them. What does this tell me? People would rather put on a show (or are ashamed not to) rather than live responsibly. How sad. How many say to themselves: I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing or drivng that?
I understand that Ms. Klein’s book is about the broader topic of capitalism. I am only discussing one argument of hers that 9/11 was a result of capitalism. She herself mentions 9/11 14 times in her essay above, so I think commenting on 9/11 is entirely appropriate.
Dave
ENTEREK & BALAKIREV: Enlightening postings.
I’ve put my prescient skills to work envisioning what a world would look like increasingly under surveillance and gutted privacy rights. It’s absolutely chilling the degree to which FEAR has taken over all dimensions of the American conversation as it fuels economic decisions. In the Bible’s story of JOB (Book of Job) he says, “That which I fear hath come upon me.” There is a power the human mind is given, that anything really dwelled upon tends to occur. When LOTS of people carry a common vision, it’s like sending out some kind of radar to the responsive etheric field around this planet that indeed grants a return on that mental investment. It’s also been said “Perfect loves casts out fear,” while The Course in Miracles defines the human dichotomy as that occuring between responses based either on love or fear. Guess which one is being fueled by this nemesis? The tragic part is it will bring about the worst of possibilities as negativity feeds upon negativity. Pockets of light are evolving all over the planet as a response to this DISEASE of mind. How much these prove of benefit given the actual crises we, as a humanity face, is yet to be determined.
balakirev,
I find it interesting to note that conservative foundations reporting on poverty reduction in China rarely mention the most important cause of the poverty reduction — the notorious one-child policy (actually it was one in the city and two in the countryside). So maybe the best way to economic prosperity is forced abortions? I believe William Bennett is ready to advocate that, but only for certain races.
The fundemental truth is that Capitalism is not compatible with democracy.
Great posts by all of you, in my opinion.
Grousefeathers short comment is the most chilling of all.
“The fundamental truth is that Capitalism is not compatible with democracy.”
Even if true, in the U.S. we got away with it for the better part of say, maybe 200 years….
I am a Libertarian, but I am troubled greatly by the melting of the poles and high temperatures in asia and the U.S. I know that to put a solution into effect on this planet will require mass human sterilization, which is strictly against every liberty I believe in.
That leads me to the uncomfortable conclusion that:
Libertarianism is incompatible with large populations, e.g. China’s government killed every female baby for years because, if they didn’t, they would have had mass famine of billions of citizens 30 years ago. Now, even if we shut off every internal combustion engine on the earth, we may still not stop the runaway meltdown because about half of the carbon buildup is do to peasants all over the world slashing and burning what’s left of the large green lungs we depend on; especially: the last two large rain forests on the globe: The Amazon and South Asia (particularly Indonesia) You should see it from altitude. Unbeleivable! Check Google Earth out and go to Indonesia. You can see the massive smoke trails they call “the haze” drifting up to Singapore.
BushCo’s solution is to start an offensive nuclear war…. so we know we have to get rid of him and all his Republicrat party.
Beyond that, we need a man. A real man who can broach the “unpopular subject.”
Know anybody?
Songs for our people at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_hQB3eYUOU (George Bush–Cocaine is Okay if You Have Connections)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cieRMvMaZp0 (Insurance Policy–Sicko)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUZzmxVa5U0 (Cheney Belongs in Jail)
“Disaster Capitalism”–some say fascism. Here is an account of fascism in America:
http://socialismmarxdeleonforarealunion.org/Fascism%20In%20America.html
Grousefeathers: The fundamental truth is that Capitalism is not compatible with democracy.”
pacplyer: Even if true, in the U.S. we got away with it for the better part of say, maybe 200 years….
I am a Libertarian, but I am troubled greatly by the melting of the poles and high temperatures in asia and the U.S. I know that to put a solution into effect on this planet will require mass human sterilization, which is strictly against every liberty I believe in.
ENTERIK: I think you’re both wrong because what you say is too extreme. I think well regulated capitalism is compatible with democracy. I also think mass human education will go a long way towards fixing out current and future problems. Finally, I think Libertarian “philosophy” has made everything worse by promoting nearsighted selfishness as a virtue.
pacplyer: Libertarianism is incompatible with large populations, e.g. China’s government killed every female baby for years because, if they didn’t, they would have had mass famine of billions of citizens 30 years ago.
ENTERIK: China didn’t kill every female baby, it didn’t ever have such a policy, although it is true that there is a thousand year old preference for male children, you a exaggerating wildly. The difference between the number of men and women is spread from birth to 100 years of age. And what does that have to do with being a libertarian? Am I to conclude that being a libertarian means reproducing as much as you want no matter what the consequences for humanity are?
pacplyer: Now, even if we shut off every internal combustion engine on the earth, we may still not stop the runaway meltdown because about half of the carbon buildup is do to peasants all over the world slashing and burning what’s left of the large green lungs we depend on; especially: the last two large rain forests on the globe: The Amazon and South Asia (particularly Indonesia) You should see it from altitude. Unbeleivable! Check Google Earth out and go to Indonesia. You can see the massive smoke trails they call “the haze” drifting up to Singapore.
ENTERIK: I agree that slash and burn subsistance farming or export farming are contributing significant ammounts of greenhouse gasses, I am surprised to see 50% quoted as the figure. Any citation to support that claim?
pacplyer: BushCo’s solution is to start an offensive nuclear war…. so we know we have to get rid of him and all his Republicrat party.
ENTERIK: All of the neoliberal solutions are designed to defend the dollars king of the hill dominance of the world currency markets, that is why Iraq and Iran are in the sights.
pacplyer: Beyond that, we need a man. A real man who can broach the “unpopular subject.” Know anybody?
ENTERIK: Does our society creat such men? That aside, I suggest the desire and reliance for aristocratic saviors is a cop out. If you want to change the world, get your own life in order and tend to your grass roots.
The nothing wrong with Capitalism that a firing squad can’t fix!
Enterik,
I guessing you’re young, to be so naive about China in the 1980’s. If you flew there for over twenty years as I did, and ate with the families as I did, you would know the aweful truth about what happens if you ignore the single male child party policy. Female infants were frequently clobbered by party officials during those years. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Simply Google attrocities, one child, china and you will see that those thing did indeed occur in the 1980’s. As well, do some research on carbon emmisions while your at it. Some calculations put slash and burn at above 70% of the type of particle that prevents heat energy from reflecting back into space. But you blase attitute to our impending catastrophy is why we are doomed as a species in my humble opinion.