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We are living in Chile 1973 or more likely Bolivia of 1985 when Naomi Klein believes there was a backroom deal aka coup that solved the election crisis that had split the vote between the two candidates Victor Paz Estenssoro and their former dictator Hugo Banzer. It was to be their first democratic election after decades of dictatorships.
The election was so close that according to Bolivian law it was the Congress that had to decide who won. After all kinds of horsetrading behind the scenes just like here, Paz became president and a Senator, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada "Goni" got to run the country financially.
And…surprise…surprise. He was a rich businessman who had gone to…drum roll, please….the U of Chicago where "he was strongly influenced by Friedman’s ideas." So first thing they did was cut food subsidies, froze wages and opened up Bolivia to privatizing their state companies. Jeffrey Sachs had suggested to Banzer that “shock therapy” was the remedy for the country’s hyperinflation. That the hyperinflation was helped along big time by Reagan attacking the Bolivian coca farmers, doesn’t get mentioned a lot.
I believe what Sheldon Wolin believes in his book “Democracy Inc: Managed Democracy and Inverted Totalitarianism” that the coup here took place in 2000. The Friedman Shock Doctrine (Neo Feudalism) began in earnest. The plans for a Homeland Security Department was already in place waiting. And so began “disaster capitalism” with a vengeance. We have bad people making money from natural disasters from floods and tsunamis to manufactured wars to protect our “national interests” (big weasel phrase).
Naomi Klein warns us that
Economic shock works according to a similar theory [the military’s 1996 published doctrine "Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance" that overloaded and paralyzed the
peopleenemy): the premise is that people can develop responses to gradual change–a slashed health program here, a trade deal there–but if dozens of changes come from all directions at once, a feeling of futility sets in, and populations go limp.
Are we doing too many thing at once? On purpose?
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Give the paperback of “Shock Doctrine” for a very scary Christmas present. I’ve given away dozens.
Yes, Obama, Summers, and Geithner are applying the Shock Doctrine. They want to complete the destruction of the middle class and labor unions. They want to abolish entitlement programs and destroy what’s left of the safety net. They want to establish a free market economy on the backs of people who are so desperate to make a buck that they will work all day in an unsafe workplace to earn a buck.
People need to wake up and realize that Obama’s actions are not reactions to criticism from the right. He set out to dismantle the economy because he believes that’s the right thing to do.
Exactly right. I was very concerned during the primaries and wrote very critically of Obama and his dissing of the Boomers. His followers, especially on the big Orange Satan, would actually attack the idea of Social Security. “Why should I pay for the Boomers old age?” a young man would say. Obama was creating a generational divide that I felt was unhealthy, but would serve the purposes of the Friedman fundamentalists.
When he praised Reagan in his interview for the Reno paper in Feb? 2008, I knew the cat was out of the bag. This was buttressed by the fact that he had a peck of Chicago Boys surrounding him from Austan Goolsbee to Cass Sunstein to Robert Rubin to Larry Summers. Yes, you are right. He believes this flim flam.
We must sound the alarm. They are coming after the last vestiges of the New Deal. What sneakier way to do it than with someone perceived as a liberal.
See Paul Street’s “Obama as Predicted”
In other posts, FDL draws attention to the fact that Obama & corporate dems such as Feinstein are trying to get Pete Peterson’s “cat food commission” (an unelected body which would have the authority to make drastic cuts to medicare & Social Security) up and running.
This president is cut from the same cloth as Bush, Cheney, Leiberturd, etc.
Thanks, Pointus, for reminding us about that Peterson backroom deal we should be paying attention to. Do you have the links? I remember reading about this commission. All these little clues add up to Shock Therapy.
Besides Bolivia, there is Russia. Jeffrey Sachs did not want to talk to Klein about his part in bringing down Russia. Lawrence Summers did in Latvia. And proteges of his brought more grief there in the 1990s. “How Harvard Lost Russia”
If that link doesn’t work, just google “How Harvard Lost Russia”. IT’s a page turner. Right out of Robert Ludlum except for the sheer stupid greedy part.
not just Chicago boys, there is Penny Pritzger, a major early backer.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1014967.html
also revealing quote from that article:
some smart money backed him early on, and can be expected to be reaping enormous ROI.
anyone have any associations for Pritzger and Solomont, vis a vis Shock Doctrine stratagems?
“Shock therapy” of the Friedman school is not bound by national or ethnic ties. Paul Street’s piece “Obama: As Predicted” is also valuable for its footnotes. One important article that chronicles the vetting and early money raising is in Ken Silverstein’s Harper’s piece of 2007, “Barack Obama, Inc.”
Sheldon Wolin in his book identifies the “elites” in his chapter “Elites Against Democracy”. And it is our education system that supplies a kind of circular manufacturing of them. You send kids to elite institutions. The gifted then work in think tanks and foundations and become policy experts. Or they become business elites. They all give money back to the institutions who churn out more elites.
Foreign policy was especially the domain of the elites because statescraft was supposed to be non-partisan “Politics stops at the water’s edge”), says Wolin. One of his most interesting theories is that the hatred of the elites for “the sixties” were those infernal “teach-ins” where many of us learned about foreign policy and military strategies. We learned we were being conned. We turned against the war and the government.
FYI: Wolin was Chalmers Johnson’s professor at Princeton.
And I had the good fortune of going to the U of Michigan in the good old days.
You can afford books? You certainly have a better job than I do.
Yes, I am fortunate to be able to buy books now. But I grew up with not much money, but a local library. As a youngster I lived for Saturdays when I could pick out my next books. When I was a poor student on scholarship, I lived in the “stacks” at the university library. When I was a struggling actor in NYC, I went to the library on Amsterdam Avenue. I never take being able to buy a book and filling it full of sticky notes for granted.
One thing I can say for Obama, he hasn’t disappointed me.
Good post, MM.
Get prepared from some real shock therapy-courtesy of Stanford,circa ’70′s.
The planned collapse of AmericaDec 7, 2007 … Their final report was released as the Changing Images of Man. … Changing Images of Man predicts an American economic collapse and a …
http://www.onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2715.shtml – Cached – Similar
Wow! The 1974 Stanford study is weird in its idea to change the nature of man rather than change the economic and political system.
So this study looks to the elites to be our saviors instead of some sort of more collective aka democratic approach. So we get the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and now the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. All of these do good rich people’s foundations have done the opposite of good. The first “Green Revolution” has devastated family farming all over the globe. And the Gates Foundation more recently commissioned a study for Congress that urges 7.7 Billion to go to Monsanto to “help” African farmers. This Senate bill (Lugar/Casey is called the “Global Food Security Act.” Ha! Ha! More terrific naming of evil bills.
I have posted the Online Journal link MANY times-usually on Jeff Kaye’s threads.If there is only ONE article I could recommend,this would be it. ESSENTIAL,imho.
THIS passage is prophetic-or should I say ,self-fulfilling prophecy?
The report authors… praise Freemasonry and the skills and disciplines inculcated within its members, speculating that their ways might be the key to shoring-up our free enterprise democratic society.
They developed a strategy to revitalize America’s motivational images, symbols and institutions, outlining five separate approaches to the problem, describing the pluses and the pitfalls of each, according to their effects upon society.
These approaches are defined as “restorative, simulative, manipulative, persuasive and facilitative.” Restoration of crumbling icons works best in the early stages of societal transformation (revitalization cycle). The simulative strategy introduces new ideas, whenever the collapse of the old order becomes apparent. The manipulative strategy seeks to limit individual freedoms. Persuasive propaganda phase is to be coupled with proven mind control techniques, to keep down the social upheaval and shape the emerging image.
“No doubt existing consciousness-changing, behavior-shaping, subliminal persuasion, and other conditioning techniques could be used to accomplish some sort of transformation of sobering proportions (we ought to be able to be more effective than Nazi Germany). After previously citing Nazi reinvigoration of the Germanic icons and ideals.”
The transforming revitalization process mirrors the psychiatric process of leading a patient through a psychotic break and the restructuring of his life, but on a national scale.
One of the best books of the decade, if not the best, hands down.
Don’t know how shocking THIS is, but a couple of years back, Goldman Sachs and Rob Walton(of WalMart infamy) invested $1 BILLION in the Hyatt chain(Pritzker family holding),and each got a seat on Hyatt Board.
Also the Pritzkers are in the coal business, AND own Tran-Union credit reporting agency.
Incidentally, the Walton’s have given millions to the charter school movement.
Way to bust the teacher’s unions,while using tax payer money to fund curriculum of the school’s own choosing-and have NO federal oversite.
Check out the info on the Imagination Charter schools sometimes,when googling.
Obama is REAL big on charter schools.
No can really believe this guy is liberal, even left center. How often has he met with the House Progressive Caucus? The commission to gut Social Security would have zero traction if he weren’t pulling for it.
Big Orange is a real danger there. They worship him over there, and are weeding out more and more any dissenting voices. They have the biggest, fortunately not the only, microphone in Left Blogistan (what else is new) and they are really over the top about this guy.
My particular bete noir is the guy who posts the adoring “Latest Greatest Obama Pix” diaries that consistently wind up on the wreckommended list there. Longtime poster ‘colorado is the shiznit’ was recently hounded off the site for posting a diary titled something like “Let’s stop praising him 24/7.” I can’t tell you the exact name, because it was taken down. What was the old Mothers of Invention song, “Who are the thought police?”
This was one of the main points in Wolin’s chapter on elites. He said it was the plan to privatize as much of public education as possible. Public funds would be used only for technical schools and community colleges to keep training the workforce. The best and the brightest of the middle class would be funneled into charter schools where they would learn to be good soldiers. Then they steer them into vocations like being an MBA. Some young whippersnapper came by last year to try to sell the idea of his company buying up natural gas rights from the ranchers here. He had an MBA from…drumroll…U of Chicago.
I believe Hyatt Hotels are anti=union.
So is WalMart.
Funny, I remember Obama saying he was intent on pushing through EFCA when he was campaigning for president…..
Sporkovat and I are BIG fans of the Chris Floyd’s website Empire Burlesque.
Here’s the intro to his latest piece.
Its a real doozy,and sure to rankle MANY for its unapologetic tone toward “progressive” politics.
Highly recommended.
Savvy to a Fault: Coming to Terms With Imperial Power
Written by Chris Floyd
Thursday, 03 December 2009 17:17
“How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.” — Henry David Thoreau
“To me, this quote from Thoreau expresses the only rational, moral and humane stance that a citizen can take toward the vast and brutal machinery of the American imperial state in our time.
The crimes of this state are monstrous, and mounting. But what is worse is that these crimes are not aberrations; they are the very essence of the system — they are its goal, its product, its lifeblood.”
Excerpt,Empire Burlesque (linky to follow)
Savvy to a Fault: Coming to Terms With Imperial PowerDec 3, 2009 … Savvy to a Fault: Coming to Terms With Imperial Power …. …
http://www.chris-floyd.com/…/1883-savvy-to-a-fault-coming-to-terms-with-imperial-power.html – Cached
chilling and profound diary, mm, and commentary! thanks.
Thanks for the tip; I have just visited, and will return.
There are two streams that I distinguish in the history of the American Imperium. FIrst is the Cold War, which, for reasons too complex to outline, I view as a shuck. Let’s just say say that IMHO Stalin’s occupation of Eastern Europe had nothing to do with the expansion of international Communism, and everything to do with Russian national aspiration, in the sense of desiring a buffer zone between itself and Western Europe, which it historically feared, and which it had ever more cause to fear after the German invasion of 1941.
The second stream is the advent of Reaganism — also complex — and its project for the dismantling of the post-Depression, post-War social contract between American Labor and American Management. Bill Clinton (although I am in many ways of fan of his) did essentially nothing to stop it, and in fact accelerated it through NAFTA and GATT. Obama continues as part the same trend. People talk about Naomi Klein and ‘shock doctrine’ as if there’s something new going on. In fact the current chapter is 30 years old and growing, and it begins with the election of Ronald Reagan — probably the grandest error in the history of our Republic, if indeed it may still be called as such.
What’s that they say about magnetic attraction?
I could not agree with you more,on BOTH counts…most particularly the election of Ronald Reagan.(I remember when he was still a Democrat and President of the Screen Actors Guild- a unionmember,in fact!)
And don’t get me started on NAFTA…or CAFTA…its ALL “SHAFTA” of the U.S. in reality.
Why do Republicans HATE the American working class….well do ANY thieves respect their robbery victims?
I remember reading about Wolin and his “inverted totalitarianism” theory last year, in an essay by Chalmers Johnston.
Here’s an excerpt from Johnston’s piece,courtesy truthout
Johnson,”The Military Industial Complex-It’s Later than You Think.” To wit:———
“Some critics were alarmed early on by the growing symbiotic relationship between government and corporate officials because each simultaneously sheltered and empowered the other, while greatly confusing the separation of powers. Since the activities of a corporation are less amenable to public or congressional scrutiny than those of a public institution, public-private collaborative relationships afford the private sector an added measure of security from such scrutiny. These concerns were ultimately swamped by enthusiasm for the war effort and the postwar era of prosperity that the war produced.
Beneath the surface, however, was a less well recognized movement by big business to replace democratic institutions with those representing the interests of capital. This movement is today ascendant.
Perhaps the country’s leading theorist of democracy, Sheldon S. Wolin, has written a new book, Democracy Incorporated, on what he calls “inverted totalitarianism” — the rise in the U.S. of totalitarian institutions of conformity and regimentation shorn of the police repression of the earlier German, Italian, and Soviet forms. He warns of “the expansion of private (i.e., mainly corporate) power and the selective abdication of governmental responsibility for the well-being of the citizenry.” He also decries the degree to which the so-called privatization of governmental activities has insidiously undercut our democracy, leaving us with the widespread belief that government is no longer needed and that, in any case, it is not capable of performing the functions we have entrusted to it.
Wolin writes:
“The privatization of public services and functions manifests the steady evolution of corporate power into a political form, into an integral, even dominant partner with the state. It marks the transformation of American politics and its political culture, from a system in which democratic practices and values were, if not defining, at least major contributory elements, to one where the remaining democratic elements of the state and its populist programs are being systematically dismantled.”
“The Military Industrial Complex-it’s later than you think”, linky to follow
r u t h o u t | The Military-Industrial Complex: It’s Much Later …Jul 28, 2008 … The Military-Industrial Complex: It’s Much Later Than You Think. Sunday 27 July 2008. by: Chalmers Johnson | TomDispatch.com …
http://www.truthout.org/…/the-military-industrial-complex-its-much-later-than-you-think – Cached – Similar
Note:I incorrectly used the name Johnston instead of Johnson,mea culpa.
Speaking of Chile:
Chilean judge rules ex-president was assassinated in 1982; 6 charged with murder, cover-up
EVA VERGARA
Associated Press Writer
4:46 p.m. EST, December 7, 2009
SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — A Chilean judge ruled Monday that former President Eduardo Frei Montalva was assassinated nearly 30 years ago and his killing covered up by people linked to the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Six people were charged in the case.
Frei, who preceded Salvador Allende as Chile’s president and later became a leading critic of the military dictatorship, died in 1982.An autopsy report blamed septic shock after stomach hernia surgery, but a new autopsy this year by University of Chile pathologists identified two chemicals in his body that attack the digestive system — one that is used in mustard gas and another found in rat poison.“He was injected with toxic substances, which produced other complications that deteriorated his immune system,” Judge Alejandro Madrid told reporters Monday. “That was the cause of death.”
At the time of his death, Frei, 71, was investigating human rights violations by the dictatorship of Pinochet, who toppled Allende in a 1973 coup.
“This goes to show that though it may take a while, justice in Chile always prevails,” President Michelle Bachelet said of the judge’s ruling.
Read more: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-lt-…
One of the reasons, but not only reason, I left the Big Orange Satan in Feb 2008 was to hopefully decrease its influence or relevance. I tried to convince my friends not to go there at all…but they stayed and were abused…but thought they could change it.