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This is a presentation given by Naomi Klein equating the financial meltdown of August/September/October 2008 with her general thesis of the Shock Doctrine of Disaster Capitalism. This thesis cuts to the heart of the reshaping of whole societies, using disasters as a means to justify enacting societal changes which would normally be untenable but under the influence of some kind of disaster societies are more agreeable to suggestions they would not normally accept. This idea is not new, other writers have discussed the same pattern. After a stunning disaster the society is in shock, and into that moment of widespread shock the leader steps in and says "I have a plan" and offers to save the day.
What's different in Naomi Klein's thesis is the agenda.. namely of using disasters, sometimes natural sometimes invented, to push an agenda of corporatization of everything and corporate control of everything.
This is a rebroadcast of a radio program produced for Free Radio Santa Cruz 101fm of Naomi Klein talking at the Rio Theater in Santa Cruz Ca. on Oct 17, 2008
FRSC coverage of the sold out event includes the short documentary "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein and Alfonso Cuarón Watch it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSF0e6oO_tw
The event was put on by the awesome folks at the Resource Center for Nonviolence and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Introduction by Bill Monning music by: Thievery Corporation.
Naomi's Book: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism: In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.
MoveOn sent me a letter about my blog and suggested something I could post to it.. basically they're sending out a list of points for us to ponder, so that we don't look at the news about Obama being ahead in the polls and get lazy. As they say anything can happen in the next couple of weeks. Anything.
The polls maybe be wrong? Were the polls wrong in 2004 or 2000? The guy who won both times was behind in the polls so something was amiss. Of course the poll that matters is the one on election day.
Dirty tricks? We're already seeing a ton of them aren't we? Of course those aren't the kind of people we want to have in office but on the other hand similar dirty tricks were pulled in prior elections and sometimes those tactics do work.
October surprise? Aren't we already having it? That is the financial meltdown. But maybe something else could come out.
...etc... It is important to keep up the work for Obama etc. But what's most important is that we not go back to sleep after election day. This is something that happens in election after election, that we the people seem to think our duty is only to vote and then once we've voted there's nothing to do until the next election. Sorry that's not going to work right now.
There are seriously powerful interests in Washington and for Obama to have a chance at actually sticking to his Change promise he's going to need the support of we the people. Further it may well be that Obama doesn't represent the change we want, and it's important for we the people to keep hammering at the change we do want rather than allowing the politicians to push their idea of what needs to be changed.
This is indicitave of something I've been suspecting. The Republicans have managed to turn off Conservatives by acting against Conservative ideals. I'll note in passing that in the late 90's my father, a life-long Conservative & Republican, was overwhelmingly outraged by the destructive politics being practiced by the Republicans. And ever since he had nothing good to say about world events such as the lies and deceit practiced by the Bush Administration.
In the case of Buckley... he wrote a speech for McCain, has known him for years and years, has written favorably about him for a long time. But he says the election process has changed McCain into inauthenticity, an irascible and snarly temperament, changing and incoherent positions, unrealistic promises, goofy tactics, and worst of all is the nomination of Gov. Palin.
Buckley describes himself as "a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets" and not one to adopt Obama's policy proposals. But one to see Obama as a thoughtful, first-class intelligence, first-class temperament, etc, and trusts that Obama will do the right thing and not the stereotypical actions Conservatives present as the potential horror story of what will happen of those hated liberals get into office. Of course Obama is just the President and he has to dance with Congress, and it appears likely the Democratic party will have a full majority in Congress. It's unknown whether Obama as President will be able to rein in a Democratic Congress if the other Democrats decide to veer into actions the Conservatives claim as the horror story.
In a followup column Buckley says "My father in his day endorsed a number of liberal Democrats for high office, including Allard K. Lowenstein and Joe Lieberman", that he was close friends with Liberals, and that he "held to rigorous standards, and if those were met by members of the other side rather than by his own camp, he said as much".
This speaks to an observation I've had for quite awhile.. The behavior of current Conservatives appears to be more like a sports team or an army in battle than it does about promoting a set of beliefs or ideals. The behavior I mean is the hateful spite associated with the word 'Liberal' and the outright shunning of anything associated with Liberalness. If Buckley is right he was shunned out of his job with the National Review in this way, that just because he dared to betray his camp then his camp immediately repudiates and shuns him. This isn't about ideology, this is about pitting one group of combatants against another group of combatants.
Or, as Buckley put it,
While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of “conservative” government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case.
So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.
Here's some more people who are taking the same sort of stand:-
I'm a lifelong conservative activist and I'm backing Barack Obama BY LARRY HUNTER -- "I'm a lifelong Republican - a supply-side conservative. I worked in the Reagan White House. I was the chief economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for five years. In 1994, I helped write the Republican Contract with America. I served on Bob Dole's presidential campaign team and was chief economist for Jack Kemp's Empower America. This November, I'm voting for Barack Obama. "
Growing parade of conservatives backing Obama ... from an article published July 7, indicates this has been going on for awhile. 'Among the reformed righties now hoping for an Obama victory are free-market economist David Friedman, former Reagan aide Douglas Kmiec, Contract With America co-author Larry Hunter and Susan Eisenhower, granddaughter of the former president....Bush's "view of the legitimate power of the executive branch, including the authority to deliberately violate federal law, I find frightening," Friedman..."The untold story of the Bush administration is the deliberate annihilation of the Reaganite, small-government wing of the Republican Party," said Michael Greve, director of the Federalism Project at the American Enterprise Institute...'
Tory MPs abandon Republicans to back Barack Obama Yup, MP means Member of Parliament, as in the British Parliament. "Almost a third of Tory MPs willing to publicly express their preferences in the US presidential election are prepared to jettison their party's historic links with the Republicans and back Democrat Senator Barack Obama. "
A Conservative for Obama "...today it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political programs when they clearly don't work. The Bush tax cuts--a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war--led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his "conservative"- credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy using conservatism as a mask....This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse...."
October 2, 2008, U.S. House of Representatives. Congressman Brad Sherman [D-CA] asks:
"But why are we bailing out the Bank of China? Why are we bailing out the Saudi royal family?...
The only way they can pass this bill is by creating and by sustaining a panic atmosphere...
A few Members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted ``no.''
TRANSCRIPT
I thank the Chair. I have got 30 minutes, and I will share some with the gentlelady from Ohio in just a second to describe the flaws with this bill. Believe it or not, 30 minutes is not long enough. But first I want to mention about the calls that are coming into our office.
The calls used to be from people around the country. Now Wall Street firms have their employees unplugging those headsets to call investors and instead calling Members of Congress. So now the calls coming in to at least my office have shifted from 20-1 against this bailout package for Wall Street, down to about 3-1 or 4-1 against this bailout.
I ask my colleagues not to be confused. Edit out some of those calls that are coming to you from folks who are being paid to make the call, and you will realize the country remains absolutely overwhelmingly opposed to this Wall Street bailout bill.
I thank again the gentleman from Ohio, and I will make a few more points.
We had a meeting of the Skeptics Caucus, which is now a bipartisan Skeptics Caucus, where we heard from Bill Isaac. Mr. Isaac was Chair of the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation), having first been appointed to that board by President Carter and then appointed by Reagan. You don't find very many people who have support on both sides of the aisle like that.
Bill Isaac led the FDIC in solving the 1981 crisis, which was probably worse than the crisis that we have now. He used the emergency powers of the FDIC. He was able to solve that credit crisis without significant cost to the taxpayer.
We ought to hear from Bill Isaac. And I look forward to us defeating this bill tomorrow so we can have hearings and all my colleagues, not just those who came to the Skeptics Caucus, can hear from Mr. Isaac and so many others, because the starting point is this testimony that we didn't hear before any hearing, because there have been no hearings on this bill, but rather a letter sent to Members of Congress by hundreds of eminent economists, including three Nobel Laureates. And they said, we ask Congress not to rush, to hold appropriate hearings, and to carefully consider the right course of action.
The only way they can pass this bill is by creating and by sustaining a panic atmosphere.
That atmosphere is not justified. Many of us were told in private conversations, if we voted against this bill, that, on Monday, the sky would fall and that the market would drop 2,000 or 3,000 points the first day and another 2,000 the second day.
A few Members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted ``no.''
Interview with Naomi Wolf author of "Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries" given October 4, 2008 on Mind Over Matters, KEXP 90.3 FM Seattle.
In The End of America Wolf takes a historical look at the rise of fascism, outlining the 10 steps necessary for a state to take control of individuals' lives:
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.
2. Create secret prisons where torture takes place.
3. Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to citizens.
4. Set up an internal surveillance system.
5. Harass citizens' groups.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release.
7. Target key individuals.
8. Control the press.
9. Treat all political dissidents as traitors.
10. Suspend the rule of law.
The book explains how this pattern was followed in Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy as well as elsewhere, and compares it to the current state of affairs in American Political power since September 11, 2001.
Dr Shann Turnbull - Principal - International Institute for Self-governance
Biography Shann Turnbull researches and teaches corporate governance in Australia on a part time basis for the Macquarie University Graduate School of Management where he obtained his PhD in 2001. His PhD thesis showed how the science of control and communication in the animal and the machine could be extended to organisations to create a science of governance as presented in his articles. His thesis built upon his education as an electrical engineer in Tasmania, BSc from the University of Melbourne and an MBA from Harvard.
From 1966 to 1974 he was a founding partner in a private group that gained control of over a dozen publicly traded corporations in Australia. This gave him experience as a controlling shareholder, company director, chairman of one company, and CEO of two others. As a serial entrepreneur founding new enterprises, some of which became publicly traded, he gained further experience as a Chairman and CEO. He also became joint CEO/owner of a mutual fund management company. In 1975 he founded the first educational course in the world to provide an educational qualification for company directors and published his first book on Democratising the Wealth of Nations. The novel ideas in his book led to consulting assignments for multi-national corporations, United Nations, World Bank, and governments, including in 1991 the Peoples Republic of China and Czechoslovakia.
Since 2001 he has been rating the governance of the largest 100 organisations in Australia by turnover and introduced an MBA elective at Macquarie University on evaluating and designing the governance architecture of organisations in the government, non-profit and private sectors. His latest book was commissioned by the New Economics Foundation in London and published in 2002 as A New Way to Govern; Organisations and society after Enron.
500 Nations is an eight part documentary on the Native Americans of North and Central America. It documents from pre-Columbian to the end of the 19th century. Much of the information comes from text, eyewitnesses, pictorials, and computer graphics. The series was hosted by Kevin Costner, and directed by Jack Leustig. It included the voice talents of narrator Gregory Harrison, Eric Schweig, Wes Studi, Edward James Olmos, and Patrick Stewart. "500 Nations tries to crystallize the sweeping events that reshaped North America- one of the largest and most pivotal stories in human history - a story we feel is widely unknown. Often painful, sometimes shocking, but in the end it is simply about understanding." Kevin Costner
500 Nations is an eight part documentary on the Native Americans of North and Central America. It documents from pre-Columbian to the end of the 19th century. Much of the information comes from text, eyewitnesses, pictorials, and computer graphics. The series was hosted by Kevin Costner, and directed by Jack Leustig. It included the voice talents of narrator Gregory Harrison, Eric Schweig, Wes Studi, Edward James Olmos, and Patrick Stewart. "500 Nations tries to crystallize the sweeping events that reshaped North America- one of the largest and most pivotal stories in human history - a story we feel is widely unknown. Often painful, sometimes shocking, but in the end it is simply about understanding." Kevin Costner
500 Nations is an eight part documentary on the Native Americans of North and Central America. It documents from pre-Columbian to the end of the 19th century. Much of the information comes from text, eyewitnesses, pictorials, and computer graphics. The series was hosted by Kevin Costner, and directed by Jack Leustig. It included the voice talents of narrator Gregory Harrison, Eric Schweig, Wes Studi, Edward James Olmos, and Patrick Stewart. "500 Nations tries to crystallize the sweeping events that reshaped North America- one of the largest and most pivotal stories in human history - a story we feel is widely unknown. Often painful, sometimes shocking, but in the end it is simply about understanding." Kevin Costne
500 Nations is an eight part documentary on the Native Americans of North and Central America. It documents from pre-Columbian to the end of the 19th century. Much of the information comes from text, eyewitnesses, pictorials, and computer graphics. The series was hosted by Kevin Costner, and directed by Jack Leustig. It included the voice talents of narrator Gregory Harrison, Eric Schweig, Wes Studi, Edward James Olmos, and Patrick Stewart. "500 Nations tries to crystallize the sweeping events that reshaped North America- one of the largest and most pivotal stories in human history - a story we feel is widely unknown. Often painful, sometimes shocking, but in the end it is simply about understanding." Kevin Costner
Make no doubt about it, Sarah Palin is a danger to the country. She is a theocracist born and raised within the Assembly of God, and desires to see this country redone as a Theocracy. Putting her into office would be the most horrible change in this country.
There are some who think that the anagram of ones name has a clue as to their character. Or maybe it's just a coincidental sort of thing. But...
Maybe the idea of anagram=destiny is bogus and it's just a coincidence. It is real curious though buried inside her name is 'Sharia Plan'. Sharia is the body of Islamic religious law, and supposedly the danger in the Middle East are fundamentalist Islamics who are attempting to impose Sharia as the law of governments across the Middle East. Meaning that buried inside her name is one of the major movements of fundamental religious types to impose fundamental religious law to interfere with individual freedom -- and at the same time she is an active participant in the other major movement of fundamental religion to impose fundamental religious law which would interfere with individual freedom.
