The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism | 
| Author: Naomi Klein
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Category: Book
List Price: $28.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  208 reviews
Sales Rank: 307
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 576
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 0805079831
Dewey Decimal Number: 330.122
EAN: 9780805079838
ASIN: 0805079831
Publication Date: September 18, 2007
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Amazon.ca
Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine advances a truly unnerving argument: historically, while people were reeling from natural disasters, wars and economic upheavals, savvy politicians and industry leaders nefariously implemented policies that would never have passed during less muddled times. As Klein demonstrates, this reprehensible game of bait-and-switch isn't just some relic from the bad old days. It's alive and well in contemporary society, and coming soon to a disaster area near you. "At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq'' civil war, a new law is unveiled that will allow Shell and BP to claim the country's vast oil reserves… Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly outsources the running of the 'War on Terror' to Halliburton and Blackwater… After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts… New Orleans residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be re-opened." Klein not only kicks butt, she names names, notably economist Milton Friedman and his radical Chicago School of the 1950s and 60s which she notes "produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today." Stand up and take a bow, Donald Rumsfeld. There's little doubt Klein's book--which arrived to enormous attention and fanfare thanks to her previous missive, the best-selling No Logo, will stir the ire of the right and corporate America. It's also true that Klein's assertions are coherent, comprehensively researched and footnoted, and she makes a very credible case. Even if the world isn't going to hell in a hand-basket just yet, it's nice to know a sharp customer like Klein is bearing witness to the backroom machinations of government and industry in times of turmoil. --Kim Hughes
Product Description
The bestselling author of No Logo shows how the global free market has exploited crises and shock for three decades, from Chile to Iraq
In her groundbreaking reporting over the past few years, Naomi Klein introduced the term disaster capitalism. Whether covering Baghdad after the U.S. occupation, Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami, or New Orleans post-Katrina, she witnessed something remarkably similar. People still reeling from catastrophe were being hit again, this time with economic shock treatment, losing their land and homes to rapid-fire corporate makeovers.
The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman s free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement s peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq.
At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. Klein argues that by capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 203 more reviews...
 Most informative book I have read all year May 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Naomi Klein has done brilliant research as a journalist. With firsthand accounts and the use of primary resources she unveils the truth of the so-called "free market," and it's devastating effects on the world. She connects how intrinsically tied corporations and political players use coercive and sometimes brutally violent tactics to privatize public spheres and are in fact de-constructing democracy in all its forms. A must read.
How the Washington Consensus was rammed down unwilling throats May 12, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is important, excellent and deeply moving. I think it's best read as an account of the origins of neoliberalism plus an inventory of the ways that neoliberal governments have undemocratically imposed unpopular, harmful economic "reforms" over the angry objections of their populations. Since almost all our politicians are neoliberals now, and since most Americans don't know what neoliberalism is (amazon.com's spell checker claims it's not even a word), this book should be widely read, though it may not be. It tells the story of the rise of the world's reigning economic ideology, and Klein zeroes in on what is perhaps that ideology's greatest contradiction: while neoliberals extol freedom of choice, populations that are free to choose reject neoliberalism. Thus, in a succinct, poignant and accurate formulation of Eduardo Galeano's that Klein repeatedly quotes, "People were in prison so that prices could be free." However, I found Klein's thesis-type thing, the parallels she draws between electroshock therapy and economic shock therapy, shocks to the body and shocks to the body politic, to be shallow and unconvincing. It's an analogy, not an analysis. With that said, Klein gave me a clearer understanding of the ANC's sellout than I had after studying abroad in South Africa, and her first 128 pages is the most powerful and moving passage of political writing I've ever read. So get it, read it and think about it: this is the history of the present.
 Modern Capitalism: The Religion Of War, Misery, Shock And Disaster May 11, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Like the bullet hole on the cover of The Shock Doctrine the latest book by Naomi Klein, the author of 2000's No Logo, capitalism is a deadly rupture to our respective societies and economies. The book details how the best tool employed by modern practitioners of corporatism are natural or unnatural disasters that momentarily divert the population's focus and concentration. With deliberate and pre-arranged strategy the architects of what the author terms 'disaster capitalism' step into everywhere from Chile to New Orleans and Sri Lanka to South Africa to degrade and humiliate local populations through a series of shock therapies, which include enriching multi-national corporations, privatization and the suspension of freedoms and human rights. It is this last point - which capitalism is incompatible with a free and informed citizenry - that is dealt with in detail and is heavily explained in a far-reaching manner. The lines connecting capitalism instilled only when the population was looking the other way and the death of both political and economic control are staggering.
Naomi Klein retells the story of country after country in contemporary settings where right-wing policies of the infamous Chicago School translate into methodical torture (with a literal Canadian background no less), war and betrayal just as disaster and calamity visits a disoriented populace. Taking the last forty years into context and correlating Milton Friedman's economic theories, Klein manages to show a direct link between death and the dollar, coups and corporations and war and wage freezes for you and wage increase for the henchmen. The neo-liberals/conservatives/Reaganomists or fanatics of globalization advance the dangerous notions of the elimination of the public sector and freedom for corporations through "the full force of the US military machine." Quoting an oft openly sadistic Milton Friedman, Klein exposes the Shock Doctrine as a Machiavellian philosophy disdainful of government, communities and the grassroots in open warfare with a democratic state. A market opportunity, based on this model, is predicated on a disaster.
The book illustrates an inherent connection between repression and market economics through case studies of Chile (Pinochet's US-sponsored coup and his connections to Friedmanites), Brazil's dictatorships (disappearing thousands), Chinese 'reforms' (in the face of public protests and entailing the lifting of price controls and other impoverishing tactics), South Asia's tsunami (and the subsequent removal of indigenous villages and businesses to be replaced by tourist centres on the oceanfront), ANC's betrayal of South Africans (in response to the demands of the crashing local stock market and mining giants like DeBeers which moved its headquarters to Switzerland upon Nelson Mandela's release), the US invasion of Iraq (no-bid contracts and cost-plus darling deals) and ultimately hurricane Katrina (the closure of public schools in favour of Charter schools which quickly hired the former school system's teachers, albeit at a lower wage) and the events of 9/11 in the USA. Quoting from a Brazilian report on human rights violations called Brasil: Nunca Mais, "Since the economic policy was extremely unpopular among the most numerous sectors of the population, it had to be implemented by force."
Capitalism and improvements for the vast majority of peoples are incompatible. Unfortunately, as shock therapist economist Anders Aslund would say, "the miraculous temptations of capitalism conquer more or less anything." Absent from this rant is the qualification that miracles and temptations are illusory and everything, by definition, necessitates a population.
Shock And Awe, which was initially articulated by a US Navy strategist as a warfare manual would go on to better describe America and the Western world's larger declaration of war on all things not under its control.
The book is finally another widely circulated success for the Canadian author, albeit with its own flaws. Decrying the fanaticism of the market should have given the author pause to not quote from the bible. The book has shaped much of modern thought and been the ultimate enabler for the elite to rule over the population. On page 396, Klein commits a mistake better associated with the ignorant sectors of the market place by placing Iran on the list as "an Arab country." Moreover, Klein (very much like No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs) cannot help herself and has given credence to business-as-usual multi-national monopolim by publishing the book through just such a firm. That type of fallacy is more troubling than single instance geographical mistakes.
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism is modern history in motion and the perfect repudiation and retort to the apostles of liberalism, conservatism, capitalism and the unfettered arrogance of the so-called market. If only right-wingers could and would read it without prejudice. Implicated in the web of disaster capitalism are many lesser-known persons in The World bank, International Monetary Fund, military dictators and industry captains, as well as public personalities like Reagan, Bush, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Kissinger. Not so odd then that every cataclysmic event would be utilized by the aforenamed as a market opportunity to be exploited with the might of US' dollar and firepower.
The book quotes political scientist Alan Wolfe (calling him mistakenly Michael Wolfe) as written in Washington Monthly as saying: "Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are unlikely to do it very well." Conservatism in government, politics and economics is a disaster as he so accurately explains. The Shock Doctrine explains how and why.
the shock doctrine May 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
the most relevent book in our modern economic and political history. read this and you will understand everything in yesterday, today and tomorrows headlines.
Simply the most important book to read and best research May 4, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Naomi Klein's frightening and dead honest and impecible researched explains the past and the current of the incredible unethical and immoral behavior of those in power in the Administration today and linking it with the situations, that I have first hand knowledge of in Chile, where the engineered kidnapping, slaughter, torturer of Chilean citizens was done by Kissinger and Nixon, following the outlandishly immoral and unethical and always failed, sick thoughts of Milton Freidman. The scariest part is the Bush/Cheney and his band of Anti-American, Pro-terrorist actions are doing to the U.S. what they aer doing to Iraq and have to do many countries in South America. Fortunately Chile through out Pinochet and Chicago boys and restored a democracy with the last two remarkable Presidents were people who were tortured by the U.S. trained Chilian military of Pinochet.
Thr torture and bombing with "shock and awe" in Iraq, is the same thing that was done in Chile and in Argentina, Brazil and for the first time, in t he U.S. by ouor own administration. The intention economy rotting deficit spending, offshoring of all of ouor manufacturing, the expanding gap between the haves and have nots, destruction of the middle class, 20 bilion a month on Iraq and privitizing the military (180,000 mercenaries), the recovery effort for profit by Haliburton (who still have Cheney on its payroll). They did NOT expect Iraquis to fight back.
We are getting the same "shock and awe" treatment by destroying the economy, the illegal spying on U.S. citizen, BY THE U.S, itself, the creation of a fascist Corpocracy. Destruction of public education. Listen to the neo com/neoliberal mombling of old man McCain about cutting social prograns, which we need more of, BUT to never cut feeding of our taxpayer money to war contractors. The worthlessness of the dollar.
Same, same, same. It has failed horrible every place else, and will keep failing as pure unadulterated evil should fail.
Incredible book. Heck, you can just look at the declassified documents at the library of Congress to see about Nixon/Kissinger's intent for the Corporate takeover of a long time democracy in Chile.
Jon
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