Naomi, Debbie, welcome to C&L! And thank you so much for taking the time to do this chat. It's a great honor to have you here.

As we wait for others to join us, let me get the conversation started:

As I said in the intro, The Shock Doctrine has truly colored how I filter the news now. One of the recent events that occurred to me is a perfect example of TSD being employed is this recent push by Pres. Bush for offshore drilling rights as well as in the ANWR. All of us are struggling with high gas prices and by hinting that the price of gas may be alleviated by expanding drilling (even though it won’t) and suddenly, we have people clamoring to defile these pristine and ecologically delicate areas to enrich oil companies. Am I far off in seeing this as just the latest in disaster capitalism?

i love Naomi.

Greetings from Nova Scotia Ms Klein!
I listen to your interviews on The Hour, Democracy Now, etc ... every chance I get.
I really admire how you are able to express concepts and ideas so clearly.
Please keep it up!

Jerry @ 4:

Nicole Belle @ 1:

.......As I said in the intro, The Shock Doctrine has truly colored how I filter the news now.........

What is passed off as news in the US in the first place is a bit of a shock, to see it in contrast with some real investigative journalism, you see what a mad circus it has become.

This is very true, Jerry. I have spent a lot of time abroad and the difference in news coverage is stunning. You truly do see how much propaganda passes for news.

Nicole Belle @ 1:

Naomi, Debbie, welcome to C&L! And thank you so much for taking the time to do this chat. It's a great honor to have you here.

As we wait for others to join us, let me get the conversation started:

As I said in the intro, The Shock Doctrine has truly colored how I filter the news now. One of the recent events that occurred to me is a perfect example of TSD being employed is this recent push by Pres. Bush for offshore drilling rights as well as in the ANWR. All of us are struggling with high gas prices and by hinting that the price of gas may be alleviated by expanding drilling (even though it won’t) and suddenly, we have people clamoring to defile these pristine and ecologically delicate areas to enrich oil companies. Am I far off in seeing this as just the latest in disaster capitalism?

Hi Nicole, thank you for that extremely generous introduction, the fandom is mutual. And everyone, please forgive me in advance for my rate of posting, I’m a terribly slow writer, it took me four years to write the Shock Doctrine…Please take advantage of having Debra with us, she is the research queen.

Nicole, of course you are right that we are currently in the midst of a classic example of disaster capitalism: using a very real crisis – in this case unaffordable energy costs – to push through a magic solution which will actually fix nothing but will enrich the already disgracefully wealthy oil and gas companies. If anything, giving the industry the ability to stockpile more leases only gives them greater control over supply and therefore greater ability to drive up prices. And this is an obvious point but it bears repeating: the oil industry has played the decisive role in landing us in the collective crisis of global warming, a process that is accelerating more rapidly than scientists had previously anticipated. Fouling delicate ecosystems in some of few protected wild places left is precisely the wrong direction for us to be going as a species: it’s suicidal, but for Big Oil it is extremely profitable.

Milton Friedman wrote about having the “ideas lying around” for when the moment of crisis hits. And of course the oil and gas industry had these drilling demands ready. But it was the so-called free market think tanks that have so effectively seized this moment to fire away on all cylinders, blasting all other ideas out of the way. Never has their role as paid propagandists for industry been more transparent.

It’s striking how quickly this strategy works. Just a few weeks ago, the public discussion was focused on alternative energy sources like wind and solar, obscene profits for Big Oil, and the real possibility of imposing a windfall profit tax. Today, thanks to the PR barrage from the oil industry, those ideas have virtually disappeared. Climate change is barely discussed as a crisis in its own right, it’s just the drug addict’s logic: where can we get more oil, regardless of the cost? There is a deeply cynical calculation going on that holds that people put their self-interest before our collective interest so even if they have real environmental concerns about ANWR and offshore and the idea of committing to more oil extraction, they will discard those if things get bad enough for themselves and their families. That’s the opportunity that is being seized, to quote Friedman again, “the politically impossible” has begun to seem “politically inevitable.” And don’t count on the Dems to hold the line here: the polls are shifting fast in favor of drilling and there is every reason to expect them to follow the polls.

What hope is there of getting to a situation where untainted investigative journalism is available to the masses?

Hi Nicole, Thank you for inviting me to join you today. I'll let Naomi discuss oil drilling in the context of disaster capitalism, but I just want to refer people to Naomi's website (www.shockdoctrine.com), where they can find extended resources that accompany The Shock Doctrine.

John Amato @ 14:

Naomi! I am on one knee, ring in hand. Will you marry me? :-)

and that was even before saying C&L was my favorite site!

Sounds a little Straussian to me. This story from 2003 still gives me the creeps. http://www.alternet.org/story/15935/

So?

Ms. Klein,

Thank you for shedding light on something I've wondered about the last few years: why aren't people storming the Bastille.

You suggest awareness of how shock doctrine works as a preventative to it. Is it also possible to stop or reduce shock doctrine's effect by turning its tactics on itself, basically to out-shock the manufactured shock? If so, who can best do this and how?

My thanks.

Naomi,

Please, please, please tell me that Michael Moore (or someone else in the truth-telling sector of the mass media) has bought the movie rights for The Doctrine. This HAS to go on the big screen where the non-readers can get the message.

What Friedman talked about isn't 'disaster capitalism' but using a crisis to advance as public policy a program whose real purpose is to fatten the wallets of the ones pushing 'their program' as 'the solution.'

We're seeing it right now with T. Boone Pickens. The crisis is high energy prices, made worse because it represents a transfer of payments between our country and others. Huge amounts of American dollars are going overseas instead of staying here.

And T. Boone has the solution to the crisis. And 'the solution' is one that benefits him (wind farms he's investing in, natural gas he owns) more than it benefits the public. He has literally hijacked the debate and if he gets the momentum going in his way he'll push the politicians to make his solution public policy. We will then have to live with the consequences of a decision that wasn't done with the public good in mind.

So why isn't Move On or some other organization like the Democratic Party spending the dollars, putting together a team composed of our best and brightest and presenting us with a solution to energy independence that is designed to benefit the public, not any one interest? And if you think T. Boone represents only himself I have some beach front property in Arizona to sell you.

T. Boone is the front man for the movers and shakers of the Republican Party (oil and gas men, large landowners). And if his plan is nonpartisan he wouldn't have reminded us he has always voted Republican. And if his plan becomes public policy, who benefits at election time, McCain or Obama?

The Shock Doctrine is one of the most important books I've ever read. Please grab one as soon as you can....
Now, back to our chat.,...

Naomi - I read your book and continue as a reference to figure out where someone might be coming from when I see them on C-Span or read an article. The entire book is outstanding. Could you touch on the part in your book about how Israel has completely changed their economy almost solely dependant on security and how their stock market has seen a rise everytime violence increases in their region?

Nicole Belle @ 22:

Naomi Klein @ 11:

And don’t count on the Dems to hold the line here: the polls are shifting fast in favor of drilling and there is every reason to expect them to follow the polls.

Actually, this brings me to something that I thought quite a bit about when reading the book. Congress collectively appears to me to be one of the most traumatized subset of the population, far more so than the general population. At least, that’s what I assume when I see them capitulating to the President’s agenda over and over with no regard to popular sentiment and their own approval ratings (9% last time I checked—ouch!). I don’t get the impression from your book that they are active participants in pushing these Friedman policies, but that they’re afraid to move against them. Is that your take?

They are certainly a fearful bunch, and I often wonder how many of them are worried about how warrantless wiretapping has been used against them… That said, the Democratic Party as a whole embraced the ideology of free-trade, privatization, deregulation, with great enthusiasm in the nineties under Clinton. There was always some ambivalence about labour standards, but it was Clinton who was president when shock therapy was being inflicted on Russia and during the Asian economic crisis, two horrific examples of disaster capitalism. It was the Clinton Admin that gave Halliburton its first big general service contract, when Cheney was CEO. In some ways, the Democrats has privatized and outsourced so much in the nineties that all that was left for the Bush team was to sell off the “core” of government – the army, first responders, the border. Sadly, I see these as very much a partnership between the parties and it would take real courage and vision for Obama to change course. It’s possible, but the drift is in the opposite direction.

FYI
If anyone cant get enough Naomi this interview is GREAT!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT4Fy-K8mWY

Dont go now tho ... :)

Ms Kline - Thanks for all you do.

Are you aware of the doctrine of "Creative Destruction" ?

From Joseph A. Schumpeter's "Creative Destruction" (1942):

This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.

And:

The week after the 9-11 attacks Michael Ledeen wrote an article in the National Review entitled Creative Destruction where he states:

.. we should have no misgivings about our ability to destroy tyrannies. It is what we do best. It comes naturally to us, for we are the one truly revolutionary country in the world, as we have been for more than 200 years. Creative destruction is our middle name. We do it automatically, and that is precisely why the tyrants hate us, and are driven to attack us.

Geo @ 32:

What is the blowback the United States can expect for its neoliberal foreign policy?

Blowback isn't something you can predict by definition. It won't be pretty.

Matthew @ 34:

Hello Ms. Klein:

Congratulations on writing one of the most important books of the past thirty years, up there with Zinn's People's History and Chomsky and Herman's Manufacturing Consent.

Can you speak to the issue of labor unions as it pertains to the Shock Doctrine? Such as some examples of how the doctrine is used specifically to weaken unions? Thanks!

Great question. The Shock Doctrine, as you know, is about using crises to push through a whole package of pro-corporate policies under cover of crises and key piece of that policy platform involves breaking unions and weakening their power. This of Thatcher's attack on the coal miner's or Reagan's attack on the air traffic controllers -- both shocks in and of themselves. Fear is the consistent weapon used to argue against fighting for better working standards: "don't like it? We'll move to Mexico" and the Mexicans in the U.S.: "Don't like it: we'll deport you back to Mexico."

Ms. Klein
Alan Greenspan has stated that he let the subprime crisis continue after he saw it coming, because he thought the effects would be widespread and dispersed, admitted he was wrong. Do you think he really is admitting a mistake, or passing off his real reasoning, that economic disaster would mean getting more control? What his successor is asking is essentially a centralization in one agency of the now somewhat scattered powers of regulation of the finance sphere.

Great question. The Shock Doctrine, as you know, is about using crises to push through a whole package of pro-corporate policies under cover of crises and key piece of that policy platform involves breaking unions and weakening their power. This of Thatcher's attack on the coal miner's or Reagan's attack on the air traffic controllers -- both shocks in and of themselves. Fear is the consistent weapon used to argue against fighting for better working standards: "don't like it? We'll move to Mexico" and the Mexicans in the U.S.: "Don't like it: we'll deport you back to Mexico."

I wondered if this was also part of the drive to eliminate public education in New Orleans after Katrina, teacher's unions being a crucial part of the progressive movement in the U.S.

Matthew @ 45:

Great question. The Shock Doctrine, as you know, is about using crises to push through a whole package of pro-corporate policies under cover of crises and key piece of that policy platform involves breaking unions and weakening their power. This of Thatcher's attack on the coal miner's or Reagan's attack on the air traffic controllers -- both shocks in and of themselves. Fear is the consistent weapon used to argue against fighting for better working standards: "don't like it? We'll move to Mexico" and the Mexicans in the U.S.: "Don't like it: we'll deport you back to Mexico."

I wondered if this was also part of the drive to eliminate public education in New Orleans after Katrina, teacher's unions being a crucial part of the progressive movement in the U.S.

Absolutely! New Orleans is one giant Shock Doctrine laboratory, and the residents can tell you how well that works for most.

Nicole Belle @ 47:

Matthew @ 45:

Great question. The Shock Doctrine, as you know, is about using crises to push through a whole package of pro-corporate policies under cover of crises and key piece of that policy platform involves breaking unions and weakening their power. This of Thatcher's attack on the coal miner's or Reagan's attack on the air traffic controllers -- both shocks in and of themselves. Fear is the consistent weapon used to argue against fighting for better working standards: "don't like it? We'll move to Mexico" and the Mexicans in the U.S.: "Don't like it: we'll deport you back to Mexico."

I wondered if this was also part of the drive to eliminate public education in New Orleans after Katrina, teacher's unions being a crucial part of the progressive movement in the U.S.

Absolutely! New Orleans is one giant Shock Doctrine laboratory, and the residents can tell you how well that works for most.

Perhaps merely the epicenter while including the nation as a whole.

Does anyone keep data on the supposed savings of privatization?

Matthew @ 45:

Great question. The Shock Doctrine, as you know, is about using crises to push through a whole package of pro-corporate policies under cover of crises and key piece of that policy platform involves breaking unions and weakening their power. This of Thatcher's attack on the coal miner's or Reagan's attack on the air traffic controllers -- both shocks in and of themselves. Fear is the consistent weapon used to argue against fighting for better working standards: "don't like it? We'll move to Mexico" and the Mexicans in the U.S.: "Don't like it: we'll deport you back to Mexico."

I wondered if this was also part of the drive to eliminate public education in New Orleans after Katrina, teacher's unions being a crucial part of the progressive movement in the U.S.

This is a good point. When the city of New Orleans fired over 4,500 teachers right after the hurricane, the teacher's union was decimated. I spoke with a union executive just a few months ago and he said the union is starting to rebuild its membership by working with teachers at charter schools. Charter schools are public institutions (though often run by for-profit corporations), but charter school teachers are rarely unionized. However, one charter school in New Orleans is now fully unionized and other charter school teachers are seeking out the union as they face lack of job security, insecure benefits and low pay.

Nicole Belle @ 48:

Ruth @ 43:

Ms. Klein
Alan Greenspan has stated that he let the subprime crisis continue after he saw it coming, because he thought the effects would be widespread and dispersed, admitted he was wrong. Do you think he really is admitting a mistake, or passing off his real reasoning, that economic disaster would mean getting more control? What his successor is asking is essentially a centralization in one agency of the now somewhat scattered powers of regulation of the finance sphere.

Good question, Ruth. The sub-prime mortgage crisis is another area I’d like to see you expand on the impact of disaster capitalism. It is a crisis that I think was actually created, if you look at how mortgage companies were encouraged to issue loans to people who might not have qualified in more cautious times.

I've been on this subject a few times at cabdrollery, and see another aspect as the diminution of salaries, disabling potential homeowners even more thoroughly, cutting into more homeowners who should have been capable of paying.

fate2x4 @ 51:

Does anyone keep data on the supposed savings of privatization?

Debbie, this might fall under your purview. I think I saw a study on the "savings" of using Blackwater in Iraq and it turned out that the privatization actually cost us six times more for less accountability. Do you have those stats available on shockdoctrine.com?

just wanted to chime in on how wonderful it is that this type of forum exists. Thank you very much!

Haven't read the book (yet), but quick question:

Can we turn it around? Can disasters be used to impliment positive, _populists_ efforts, if we keep such ideas "alive and waiting", or does disaster necessitate that only ideas that benefit an elite minority can come to fruition?

moonsha @ 31:

Naomi - I read your book and continue as a reference to figure out where someone might be coming from when I see them on C-Span or read an article. The entire book is outstanding. Could you touch on the part in your book about how Israel has completely changed their economy almost solely dependant on security and how their stock market has seen a rise everytime violence increases in their region?

It's pretty detailed stuff and I'm not sure a chat is the best place to expand. But I do hope people read that chapter. A large part of Israel's current boom comes from the success of the counter-terror industry inside Israel, which it has successfully marketed to the rest of the world. But it is not accurate to say that the economy is "almost solely dependent on security," there are many other industries. But a large part of Israel's economic GROWTH is linked to this.

Is there an overall intent in North America to as far as possible eliminate any kind of middle class, and have anyone who has a job so fearful, with no benefits, low salaries or job security that they divorce themselves from any political discourse?
"...Its hard to go to a protest rally when you HAVE to work that day"
...or is this to simplistic?

---thx, chris

mudlock @ 61:

Haven't read the book (yet), but quick question:

Can we turn it around? Can disasters be used to impliment positive, _populists_ efforts, if we keep such ideas "alive and waiting", or does disaster necessitate that only ideas that benefit an elite minority can come to fruition?

we've covered this a little but I can't stress it enough: YES. The crises are telling us that the system is broken and needs fixing and progressives have to have the courage to meet this moment

earl @ 65:

Is there an overall intent in North America to as far as possible eliminate any kind of middle class, and have anyone who has a job so fearful, with no benefits, low salaries or job security that they divorce themselves from any political discourse?
"...Its hard to go to a protest rally when you HAVE to work that day"
...or is this to simplistic?

---thx, chris

If results are the outcomes of intent, then I dare say it is being witnessed.

Naomi Klein @ 54:

Nicole Belle @ 48:

Ruth @ 43:

Ms. Klein
Alan Greenspan has stated that he let the subprime crisis continue after he saw it coming, because he thought the effects would be widespread and dispersed, admitted he was wrong. Do you think he really is admitting a mistake, or passing off his real reasoning, that economic disaster would mean getting more control? What his successor is asking is essentially a centralization in one agency of the now somewhat scattered powers of regulation of the finance sphere.

Good question, Ruth. The sub-prime mortgage crisis is another area I’d like to see you expand on the impact of disaster capitalism. It is a crisis that I think was actually created, if you look at how mortgage companies were encouraged to issue loans to people who might not have qualified in more cautious times.

Absolutely it was created, and the directions came from the very top. This was the centerpiece of Bush’s now discredited “ownership society” idea. Here is a quote from Oct 2004: “We're creating...an ownership society in this country, where more Americans than ever will be able to open up their door where they live and say, welcome to my house, welcome to my piece of property.” It was the president who told the lenders to give away mortgages and don’t worry about whether they can be paid, it was political strategy to try to win low-income and minority voters over the Republicans, plus it created a nice little bubble for speculators.

'Welcome to my piece of property', indeed. Of course, as I mentioned to Nicole, the diminution of salaries disables previously cautious buyers/consumers as well - and recent runups in price are taking the economic legs out from under huge portions of the previously stable, planned, public. So I hear rumblings of an "October surprise" to bring the election back into the GOP hands. Is that paranoid?