Sophisticated Colonialism
When our systems are shocked…when there’s an intense shock to our physical world, or to our hearts and minds and psyche’s, we are vulnerable.
In her very important book, "The Shock Doctrine", Naomi Klein, Canada’s poliitical Diva sans pareil, shows how the powers that be – use natural and contrived shocks to mold the economic world after their own beliefs and self-interest.
What she explains so clearly in her book is that we must become more aware of what amounts to the "privatization of democracy", which leads to disenfranchisement.
Her book is a detailed examination of a new kind of colonialism. The classic example is Iraq. She describes the war in Iraq as an "act of armed robbery".
The fundamental point Klein makes is that western leaders don’t care about ordinary people. They care only about preserving, however desperately, the "trappings" of democracy, but focus mainly on the supremacy of a narrow form of capitalism that benefits only a select few.
There is nothing wrong with either capitalism or democracy, unless either or both are perverted and exploited by unscrupulous, power mad leaders who see profit potential as the result of tragic disasters.
Thanks, Jim and thanks, Naomi.
I feel vindicated.
For several years now I’ve been upsetting my friends by dissenting on the view that GWB is a dummy, a description we feel most comfortable with.
But it is wrong.
He is far more of an architect than any of my circle ever gave him credit for, and Naomoi Klein has provided the backdrop for this reality. It is no longer a matter of perception.
Even in disgrace and rejection he continues to deliver like a bandit to his base while cleverly (yes, cleverly) cloaking his comtempt for ordinary Americans and the civilised world.
To his backers he remains a jim-dandy little president who don’t talk too fancy, but shucks what’s wrong wit’ that.
It’a all an act!
It’s all an act. Yes. The NIE reports that Iran gave up its nuclear weapons effots years ago.
Bush doesn’t care about Iran’s nuclear capability. He care about Irans oil bourse, which says you don’t need U.S. dollars to buy oil. You can use yen, yuan, euros or rubles even…well mayb e not rubles. Whatever, the bottom line is that dollars are in the process of becoming irrelevant…and that spells bad news for the U.S. Central Bank.
“List of ‘Willing’ U.S. Allies Shrinks Steadily in Iraq….” Washington Post.
…Some officers here argue that the strength of the coalition cannot be measured simply by the number of boots on the ground. Canada, for example, has no contingent in Iraq but has committed up to $300 million in aid…..”
I think Canadians would be better served spending “up to $300 million” in humanitarian relief in Iraq….
Oops…. isn’t that what they’re doing, already?
But what’s missing here is political backbone, the courage to tell our big-brute neighbour to stop causing this Middle East havoc in the first place.
And of course the courage to give SNC Lavalin the boot out of Canada. We don’t need to be making bullets for gun-happy Americans.
On a re-read, I can’t agree with your closing thought….. there’s nothing wrong with capitalism.
If so, Wal-Mart has nothing to fear from public scrutiny, but many including myself consider it the toxic icon of New Millenium capitalism.
Harper’s Magazine reports that between 1993 and 1995 Walmart secretly took out life insurance policies on 350,000 of its employees and has since collected on at least 453 of them.
Think about it. When an applicant fills in all the forms, gets the job and is closely monitored from that point, the employer knows pretty well everything there is to know about the employee including health-history, habits and risk-proflile.
Some VP in there is playing fast and loose with this information.
In the case of Wal-Mart USA we wrongly assume this would be a position of sacred trust.
Perhaps we should be asking, are there Canadian laws to protect us from this sordid practice.
Perhaps we should also be insisting on clarification from Wal-Mart Canada.
Their PR is powerful. We should all be grateful for such a corporate nice-guy moving into town, but what’s going on behind closed doors?
I agree fully with your remarks on a rampant, unregulated capitalism, which permits a corporation to cash in on the deaths of employees…execrable. Now that fact needs to be spread far and wide in order to alert people to the Walmart employee death wish.
My own method of combatting the often mendacious self-promotion of organizations like Walmart is to compare prices. Often prices are lower at Canadian Tire and other stores – even smaller ones – than they are at the mighty Walmart. So their “lower prices” claim is a lie.
Perhaps I ought to have used the term “responsible” ca[italism. There may not be such animal…but nor is there “responisble” communism or socialism in our world.
“The price of wellbeing is eternal vigilance”
- reedski