| The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism | 
 enlarge | Author: Naomi Klein
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Category: Book
List Price: CDN$ 22.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 39
Media: Paperback
Pages: 672
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6 x 1.4
ISBN: 0676978010
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.342
EAN: 9780676978018
ASIN: 0676978010
Publication Date: July 29, 2008
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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
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| Customer Reviews: Read 24 more reviews...
 Wow - now all the pieces of the puzzle fit October 21, 2008
Probably the most important book of our times. I was already aware of many of the events written in the book, but did not realize to what extent they are all related. Clear and well-written. Everyone can understand this. Although some free-market ideologues may not like it, they cannot refute it - too many verified and confirmed FACTS. Klein has linked the policies of the last 30 years together...put the pieces of the puzzle together. Now it is up to us to do something about it, or watch while our countries and our lives are hijacked. Since only an elite few profit by free-market policies ( while the rest of us will suffer in poverty ), we all have high stakes in stopping them.
Could it be... a novel and interesting thesis? September 15, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I've enjoyed Naomi Klein's writing ever since No Logo, but I must admit that I find that she can be hit and miss. In this book, she scores a straight-out hit. What I enjoy so thoroughly is that she manages to do so with a fascinating thesis: comparing the effects of electric shock on the human mind and body with the effects of disasters upon the collective social psyche, and how the unscrupulous attempt to use this vulnerability to their advantage. Indeed, in some cases, as Klein points out, the people doing the electroshocking are the same people trying to massively alter economic structures.
Reading this book has its own shock value; the section on how tsunami relief money was used to force the victimized fishing villagers out of their homes so that beachfront resorts could be built was particularly hard to take. I can see how some readers can interpret what I see as moral outrage as provocative vitriol. Personally, I see this as true big picture journalism.
The second colonial pillage and the essence of dehumanization August 31, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Naomi Klein unveils in this hard-hitting book (naming names) extremely clearly the economic utopia and the shameful realities resulting from the neo-liberal policies of the Chicago School of Economics, also called `The Washington Consensus'.
What
Its defenders claim that the free market is a perfect scientific system, in which individuals acting on their own self-interested desire, create the maximum benefit for all.
But, as no country or city wanted to implement deliberately their policies, its powerful fundamentalist defenders, together with their long arm, the IMF, used and created shocks (wars, military coups, political upheavals, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, epidemics, energy and resource shortages) to force a second shock of radical social and economic engineering on traumatized populations.
Where
Naomi Klein analyzes brilliantly a long list of victims of the shock doctrine of which the most important are: Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Iraq, Russia, Indonesia, Poland, South-Africa, former Yugoslavia and its republics, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Thailand, New Or leans and the US as a whole.
How
This radical economic cure consisted intentionally in eliminating the public sphere, in giving total freedom to private interests and in providing only skeletal social spending. Sometimes with the help of the IMF as their obedient mediator, State and corporate wealth was cut into pieces and sold of for a trifle in debased currencies to private, mostly foreign, interests: airlines, phone and water systems, oilfields, all kind of corporations and factories (sometimes direct competitors), mineral deposits or farmlands.
Private bonanza, public hell
Those policies created a formidable bonanza for transnational corporations, oligarchs and investment banks.
For the majority of the population, the results were less than bleak, rather hellish:
Not democracy, but dictatorship
Not peace, but war, tortures or simply assassinations (the essence of dehumanizing)
Not freedom for the populations, but for the corporations
Not hiring, but mass unemployment (putting people in a starvation position)
Not civil liberties, but aggressive surveillance
Not clean commerce, but rampant corruption
Not broadly based wealth, but turning 25 to 60 % of the population into a permanent underclass
Not clean air and water, but environmental degradation
US
In the US, the core of the governmental tasks (the military, the police, fire departments, power, covert intelligence, disease control, public schools) was subcontracted to private interests.
Future
But the tide is turning against disaster capitalism. The IMF is nearly out of business.
Democratic socialism, always regarded by those in power as a greater threat than totalitarian communism, is clearly on the march, especially in South-America.
Naomi Klein's formidable book is a must read for all those who want to understand the world we live in.
Washington Consensus Exposed August 9, 2008
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
The shock therapy advocated by neoliberal conservatives in the US is well-documented in most academic circles but Naomi Klein expands the criticisms to a wider much more general audience in "The Shock Doctrine".
The book is long by most popular non-fiction standards and certainly she stretches her argument in a few cases to make her point, but overall the book is well-researched with the sections on Iraq and New Orleans being the most effective.
The backlash against Milton Friedman and his Chicago School of Economics is perhaps the greatest where it's effects were felt the most, namely in Latin America. Almost every single country has not rejected neoliberalism led by leftists such as Chavez in Venezuala.
If you are unaware of Milton Friedman, the Washington Concensus and the Chicago School of Economics, this book will be an eye-opener for sure.
An uproarious wake up call! June 22, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
It's the economy, stupid.
Do you have any idea of how much terror represents as a business?. Well, I didn't. After the economic "e-bubble" ended some years ago, the option at hand to push the economy was terror...
In this latest, well documented N. Klein's book, beginning in Montreal with the CIA's mind experiments back in the 50's, you'll be taken by the hand in tour from the University of Chicago campus to Buenos Aires, Santiago, La Paz, Caracas, New Orleans, New York, Beirut, Tel Aviv, etc. and to practically every place on Earth, that from those days, has represented an opportunity to put into practice what the author calls the "destruction capitalism" practices or M. Friedman's ideas on how to end (once and for all) with keynisian economics in the world, thanks to natural or man's created catastrophes.
An interesting interpretation to the most significant economic, political, social, cultural, etc. events in our world for the past 50 or 60 years... and a brilliant analogy between 1950's CIA's attempts to "erase" the mind of individuals to "recreate it" and attempts to "shock" economic systems to profit out of them...
Also shocking is Klein's disclosure of Latin America as an "economic shocking therapy" laboratory beginning with Chile's coup / Allende's killing back in '73.
Then, I found particularly fascinating Klein's explanation on the consequences (political and economic) of the Berlin's wall fall back in '89 (trust me, it's nothing to do with what thought you knew).
The upcoming described world, is to say the least, scary as hell. A kind of "Big Brother" world divided by walls, monitored by state of the art devices, and most of all, composed of very rich and very poor people... being only the first the ones who can pay for efficient healthcare, security, decent food, etc.
You cannot miss this book.
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