I recently bought Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine. Reading it has informed me and infuriated me to the point of action. This is the first action I am taking. I am going to spread the word. I believe every American citizen has the obligation to read and thoroughly digest this wonderful work of art. (ALthough, I'll settle for every kossack)
To begin with, corporatism is a political system designed to support corporations. It has its beginnings in the laissez-faire economic theory of Milton Friedman. A better term for this whole system would be disaster capitalism. The reason being that corporatism requires a disaster to exist and/or sustain itself. For example, in the US 9/11. Indeed, the Neocons
here in the US are the party which most promote these ideas of disaster capitalism.
Disaster capitalism is the economic theory that is the true ideological opposite to marxist economic theory. There is a middle road called Keynesianism(pronounced: canezeeinism), named after John Keynes. Disaster capitalists relish in the fact that they have taken the place of keynesianism as the predominant economic theory among politicians
N.B.: this isn't gonna be technical or numerical!
Let me begin by truly identifying and defining the enemy: disaster capitalism or corporatism. I begin here because this is the heretofore unnamed rationale that corporations use to justify all sorts of unhuman, inhumane behavoir. In short it is our ideological enemy and must be understood in order to be fought against most effectively.
Here in the US disaster capitalism was put into effect in New Orleans after Katrina. As an economic policy disaster capitalism is defined by three major facets: privatization, deregulation of markets, and defunding of social programs. In other words the government is taken out of the market. These three tenets were on the minds of the business lobbyists who invaded Baton Rouge and began saying their refrain: this is a clean slate. This immediately implies that disaster capitalists view any sort of disaster as an opportunity to remake laws according to those basic three tenets. The quintessential circumstance of this is what happened to the education system of New Orleans and Louisiana. It was privatized through charter schools. Know that the charter school idea has been soundly rejected in vote after vote across the US. This is why they need disasters. In the aftermath of such tragedies people are stunned and generally politically paralyzed. These economists get to the ears of the politicians and tell them we have the solution to your problems. Our ideas will remake your city, state, country, etc.
Observe also New Orleans after katrina was a minor accomplishment for the DC's(disaster capitalists from now on). There first major accomplishment was Chile's forced entry into the globalized economy. As you may or may not, Chile has its own 9/11(erie coincidence) with the difference being that it is now undisputed that this whole episode was manufactured by Pinochet and his CAI backers.
This whole thing occurred in the early 70's. Let me set this up. In the late 40s and 50s, Keynesianism was being applied with great success in raising standards of living and spreading wealth in region of South America called the Southern Cone, consisting of CHile, Argentina, and Uruguay. Around this time Milton Friedman was becoming well established as the best economist in the US. He was based in the University of CHicago. He was a complete ideologue and he always railed against government intference in the economy. He gave lectures to many important people: rumsfeld, wolfowitz.
There's a lot of history that can be explained by DC, but let's skip that and get to the good part Iraq and the Bush regime. Since the beginning of the current Bush regime there has been a homeland security bubble. Now thi s did predate 9/11 but this disaster sure spurred on its growth. In fact, obvious DC in the US goes back to BUSH I, cheney had strong ties to Halliburton and rumsfeld had strong ties many defense contracting firms. Each stood to make money if the US were to go to war or even if just some natural disaster occurred anywhere in the US. It's crucial to point out the potential conflicts of interests because later on both rummy and cheney will act on behalf of there business contacts, or so the casual observer my notice. Indeed, the DCs the line between corporate interests and public interests are now all gone.
Geez, I could go on and on but I'll cut it off here and make another diary about other aspects of this including answers to the following questions:
Should Obama even mention DCs?
What do russia, poland, and indonesia all have in common?
What specifically should we the people do to protect ourselves against these assaults?
Remember my primary source for all this is Klein's book!!! Buy it, read it, pray to it!!