ebook img

The shock doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism PDF

575 Pages·2007·8.52 MB·english
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview The shock doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism

NAOMI KLEIN AUTHOR OF NO LOGO $28.00 "ONLY A CRISIS-ACTUAL OR PERCEIVED-PRODUCES REAL CHANGE. WHEN THAT CRISIS OCCURS, THE ACTIONS THAT ARE TAKEN DEPEND ON THE IDEAS THAT ARE LYING AROUND." AT THE MOST CHAOTIC JUNCTURE IN IRAQ'S 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 powerful tsunami devastates the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auc­ tioned off to tourist resorts. New Orleans's resi­ dents, still scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened. These events are examples of what Naomi Klein calls "the shock doctrine": the use of public disorientation following massive collective shocks- wars, terrorist attacks, natural disasters—to push through highly unpopular economic shock ther­ apy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don't succeed in wiping out all resistance, a third is employed: that of the electrode in the prison cell or of the Taser gun. Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in dis­ aster zones, The Shock Doctrine explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed dem­ ocratically. Disaster capitalism—the rapid-fire cor­ porate reengineering of societies that are reeling from shock—did not begin with September 11, 2001. In this courageous new book, Klein traces the intellectual origins of disaster capitalism back to the University of Chicago's economics depart­ ment under Milton Friedman, whose influence is still felt around the world. The Shock Doctrine draws new and surprising connections among economic policy, "shock and awe" warfare and the covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation that shaped the torture manuals used today in Guanténamo Bay. As Klein shows how the deliberate use of the shock doctrine produced world-changing events, from Pinochet's coup in Chile in 1973 to the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 and the col­ lapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, she tells a story radically different from the one we usually hear. Once again Naomi Klein has written a book that will reframe the debate. 0907 "Naomi Klein as a writer is an accusing angel. This life-saving book, packed with thinking dynamite, reveals a striking parallel between CIA prisoner Interrogation tech­ nique and the blackmailing technique of the World Bank and IMF for Imposing disaster capitalism across the world. A book to be read everywhere." "This masterful book Is a measured but furi­ ous call to arms. Naomi Klein Is Antigone before the king, the antidote to the feeling of inevitability that says that we must accept murder as a legitimate economic policy. A spectacular triumph." NAOMI KLEIN is an award-winning journal­ ist, author and film­ maker. Her first book, the international best­ seller No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bul­ lies, was translated into twenty-eight languages and called "a move­ ment bible" by The New York Times. She writes an Internationally syn­ dicated column for The Nation and The Guardian and reported from Iraq for Harper's magazine, in 2004, she released The Take, a feature documentary about Argentina's occupied factories, coproduced with director Avi Lewis. She is a former Miliband Fellow at the Lon­ don School of Economics and holds an honorary Doctor of Civil Laws degree from the University of King's College, Nova Scotia. JACKET DESIGN BY LISA FYFE WWW.HENRYHOLT.COM WWW.NA0MIKLEIN.ORG METROPOLITAN BOOKS HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 175 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK, HEW YORK 10010 PMINTID IN U.S.*. ADVANCE THE S H O CK DOCTRINE "Impassioned, hugely informative, wonderfully controversial, and scary as hell. -JOHN LE CARRÉ "Naomi Klein is an investigative reporter like no other. She roams the continents with eyes wide open and her brain operating at full speed, finding connections we never thought of, and patterns which eluded us. This is a brilliant book, one of the most impor­ tant I have read in a long time." -HOWARD ZINN "Naomi Klein has written a brilliant, brave and terrifying book. It's nothing less than the secret history of what we call the 'free market.' It should be compulsory reading." -ARUNDHATI ROY "Naomi Klein is one of the most important new voices in American journalism today. She has turned globalism inside out, and given all of us a new way of looking at our seemingly unending disaster in Iraq, and a new way of understanding why we got there." -SEYMOUR M. HERSH "A revelation! With unparalleled courage and clarity Naomi Klein has written the most important and necessary book of her generation ... so important and so revelatory a book that it could very well prove a catalyst, a watershed, a tipping point in the move­ ment for economic and social justice." —TIM ROBBINS "Naomi Klein's exposé of neoliberal economics is certain to be sensational. She rips away the 'free trade' and globalization ideologies that disguise a conspiracy to privatize war and disaster and grab public property for the rich few. Klein's is a long-needed analysis of our headlong flight back to feudalism under the guise of social science and 'freedom.' " -CHALMERS JOHNSON "The Shock Doctrine is, simply put, a book without peer, an epic and riveting work whose message must be heard. With the persistence of a journalist, in the best sense of the word, and the rigor of a scholar, in its truest incarnation, Naomi Klein offers noth­ ing short of a new paradigm for understanding politics. . . . Her book is honest, urgent and necessary to read. The Shock Doctrine is an essential book; only Klein could write it." -ANTHONY SHADID "The Shock Doctrine is the defining, covert history of our era, the work of a journalist embedded not with the militaries of the powerful, but with the poor, the tortured, and those who fight for justice against all odds." -JEREMY SCAHILL "Naomi Klein is in the best tradition of I. F. Stone and Upton Sinclair, a muckraker who digs in where others accept the surface. I love her stuff and as a twentieth-century man, I salute a twenty-first-century woman." -STUDS TERKEL CURRENT AFFAIRS ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-7983-8 ISBN-10: 0-8050-7983-1 ALSO BY NAOMI KLEIN No Logo Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate THE SHOCK DOCTRINE Metropolitan Books Henry Holt and Company, LLC Publishers since 1866 175 Fifth Avenue New York, New York 10010 www.henryholt.com DSH® Metropolitan Books® and are registered trademarks of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Copyright © 2007 by Naomi Klein All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Klein, Naomi, 1970- The shock doctrine : the rise of disaster capitalism / Naomi Klein. — 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-7983-8 ISBN-10: 0-8050-7983-1 1. Free enterprise. 2. Financial crises. 3. Capitalism. I. Title. HB95.K54 2007 330.12'2-dc22 2007018652 Henry Holt books are available for special promotions and premiums. For details contact: Director, Special Markets. First Edition 2007 Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.