DISASTER CAPITALISM: THE GUARDIAN 2017
I had to do several double takes when I read this article from the U.K.'s The Guardian from 2017, for just last week I did a two part blog about what former Housing and Urban Development Assistant Secretary, Catherine Austin Fitts, has dubbed "disaster capitalism." Well, it seems we're not alone in detecting a disturbing pattern, for the authoress of this article, Naomi Klein, has spotted it to, according to this artcile shared by T.M.:
Naomi Klein: how power profits from disaster
Ms. Klein observed the same pattern, beginning with Hurricane Katrina:
One of those moments arrived in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, as I watched hordes of private military contractors descend on the flooded city to find ways to profit from the disaster, even as thousands of the city’s residents, abandoned by their government, were treated like dangerous criminals just for trying to survive.
I started to notice the same tactics in disaster zones around the world. I used the term “shock doctrine” to describe the brutal tactic of using the public’s disorientation following a collective shock – wars, coups, terrorist attacks, market crashes or natural disasters – to push through radical pro-corporate measures, often called “shock therapy”. Though Trump breaks the mould in some ways, his shock tactics do follow a script, and one that is familiar from other countries that have had rapid changes imposed under the cover of crisis.
This strategy has been a silent partner to the imposition of neoliberalism for more than 40 years. Shock tactics follow a clear pattern: wait for a crisis (or even, in some instances, as in Chile or Russia, help foment one), declare a moment of what is sometimes called “extraordinary politics”, suspend some or all democratic norms – and then ram the corporate wishlist through as quickly as possible. The research showed that virtually any tumultuous situation, if framed with sufficient hysteria by political leaders, could serve this softening-up function. It could be an event as radical as a military coup, but the economic shock of a market or budget crisis would also do the trick. Amid hyperinflation or a banking collapse, for instance, the country’s governing elites were frequently able to sell a panicked population on the necessity for attacks on social protections, or enormous bailouts to prop up the financial private sector – because the alternative, they claimed, was outright economic apocalypse.
What Ms. Klein is calling "shock doctrine" is what Ms. Fitts and I have been calling "disaster capitalism". There's a catch, however, and that is that Ms. Klein does not discuss the data that indicate that Katrina was possibly steered to New Orleans. In my blogs last week about the subject, I pointed out that "disaster capitalism" comes in two kinds, and they often work in tandem: (1) deliberately engineered geophysical disasters, and (2) crises of opportunity which are seized upon for fun and profit. The catch, as I pointed out, was that geophysical engineering technologies allow one to create the very "crises of opportunity" and hide behind them as "acts of God" or "accidents of 'Mother Nature'". The difficulty with the technologies is an epistemological one: how does one distinguish between the two? Certainly actual "natural disasters" can occur, allowing one to practice "disaster capitalism" of the second sort. But so much the better if one can actually manufacture them (disaster capitalism type one) and then move in to profit from them (disaster capitalism type two).
In the case of Katrina, I strongly suspect one was looking at both types, for it will be recalled that Katrina was making a beeline west through the Gulf of Mexico, and had she continued on her course, would have made landfall somewhere in southern Texas, not New Orleans. Then, two amazing things happened: once directly south of New Orleans, the hurricane made for all intents and purposes a ninety-degree turn north, and slammed into the city. The second amazing thing - and I recall this vividly because I saw the jet stream tracks - once the hurricane started to head to New Orleans, the jet stream suddenly dropped south, as if someone were trying to steer the hurricane away from the city. It's these two factors - a sudden and abrupt change in the direction of the storm, plus what looked to have been an attempt to avert the disaster (or perhaps even to add more energy to the storm, take your pick), that make me think to this day that the disaster was "disaster capitalism" of both types.
With this as a backdrop, there was something that the article mentioned that caught my eye. Ms. Klein focused attention on the role of corporations in practicing disaster capitalism of the second type, and zeroed in on former Trump Administration Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. At that point, there came this short, but stunning and tought-provoking paragraph:
At a public event in 2012, Tillerson acknowledged that climate change was happening – but what he said next was revealing: “as a species”, humans have always adapted. “So we will adapt to this. Changes to weather patterns that move crop production areas around – we’ll adapt to that.” (Emphasis added)
Of course, Ms. Klein has written her entire article - in true Guardian fashion - as another hit piece on the Trump administration, refugees, and so on. Like many, it appears she accepts the "climate change" narrative and that it's "man made," a proposition which I accept, though for vastly different reasons than she: the technologies of geophysical engineering and weather manipulation do exist, and any discussion which purports to discuss the subject without reference to them is committing the material omission of a significant chunk of data which changes the narrative - and its promulgators' motivations - immensely.
It's that technology which places Mr. Tillerson's 2012 remarks into a very different and singularly disturbing context. If one can engineer the weather and weather patterns, one can indeed "move crop production areas around." And this, right now, is what is happening in the American plains states, which, beginning in the north and progressing southward, have been hit with a "pattern of weather" that appears to be stuck over the region, producing strange storms and dumping loads of rain, flooding out farms and businesses. Mr. Tillerson, in my high octane speculation of the day, may have in fact let "something slip," and that is precisely the "re-engineering" of food production areas.
If that thesis be true, the one can watch for certain future patterns to emerge: (1) the buying up of more family farms in the flooded regions by corporate interests; (2) the subsequent repair of infrastructure in the affected areas to serve the corporate interests; and (3) similar weather patterns to emerge in other major food production areas of the world, particularly in places perceived to be competitors to the West...
... Russia, for instance...
Weather warfare, and GMO geopolitics, may be set to go hot.
See you on the flip side...
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My favorite MO “hillbilly” is Mike Morales of Above Ground World News. He has figured out how to read what is going on with the weather making machines & lists the companies who sell their “wares”. Each night he details what he sees going on.
I’m afraid it will take a loooooong time for the ‘average person’ to wake up to what is going on with this Disaster Capitalism! We have been ‘programmed’ very well in our education system NOT to do any Critical Thinking….so we don’t!! 😉
all right. that was probably a waste of time. mz klein is neck deep in Omidyar’s money at the intercept. perhaps in 20 years she will be writing about climate change the way she has written about mkultra. with so much invested in this generation’s mockingbird media, even that’s doubtful.
one more try:
funny. I feel dumb now when I let myself get modded.
doc, you’re spot on here. almost certainly more than we can know. yet.
you might be able to give naomi klein more credit than this too. I read shock doctrine when she published it. I was stunned that she was onto and published a fairly decent history ewan Cameron and all. she outlined how the shock doctrine was experimented and studied on individuals and then applied to larger populations. if memory serves, she included more history on Sidney gotlieb and George white. I’m pretty sure she never made the connection of mkultra and all the sub-projects down through Jonestown’s massacre. but she’s very well versed and researched. it would not surprise me for her to read your blogs and update herself. I will try to make that happen.
meanwhile, here’s a sample of one of many increasingly excellent and comprehensive histories of those times. if anything we should probably extrapolate that what we suspect to be true now is the tip of continental ice floes just as it was back then.
www dot counterpunch dot org/2017/11/17/the-c ias-house-of-horrors-the-abominable-dr-gott lieb/
in fact, I think klein is familiar with and used alexander Co ckburn’s work.
doc, you’re spot on here. almost certainly more than we can know. yet.
you might be able to give naomi klein more credit than this too. I read shock doctrine when she published it. I was stunned that she was onto and published a fairly decent history ewan Cameron and all. she outlined how the shock doctrine was experimented and studied on individuals and then applied to larger populations. if memory serves, she included more history on Sidney gotlieb and George white. I’m pretty sure she never made the connection of mkultra and all the sub-projects down through Jonestown’s massacre. but she’s very well versed and researched. it would not surprise me for her to read your blogs and update herself. I will try to make that happen.
meanwhile, here’s a sample of one of many increasingly excellent and comprehensive histories of those times. if anything we should probably extrapolate that what we suspect to be true now is the tip of continental ice floes just as it was back then.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/17/the-cias-house-of-horrors-the-abominable-dr-gottlieb/
in fact, I think klein is familiar with and used Cockburn’s work.
funny. I feel dumb now when I let myself get modded.
doc, you’re spot on here. almost certainly more than we can know. yet.
you might be able to give naomi klein more credit than this too. I read shock doctrine when she published it. I was stunned that she was onto and published a fairly decent history ewan Cameron and all. she outlined how the shock doctrine was experimented and studied on individuals and then applied to larger populations. if memory serves, she included more history on Sidney gotlieb and George white. I’m pretty sure she never made the connection of mkultra and all the sub-projects down through Jonestown’s massacre. but she’s very well versed and researched. it would not surprise me for her to read your blogs and update herself. I will try to make that happen.
meanwhile, here’s a sample of one of many increasingly excellent and comprehensive histories of those times. if anything we should probably extrapolate that what we suspect to be true now is the tip of continental ice floes just as it was back then.
www dot counterpunch dot org/2017/11/17/the-cias-house-of-horrors-the-abominable-dr-gottlieb/
in fact, I think klein is familiar with and used Cockburn’s work.
Whether it’s called “disaster capitalism,” “shock doctrine,” or an earlier term loosely used to refer to similar tactics to promote the interests of a corporatocracy, “economic hit,” (granted, a little more vulgar than the previous two), yet they’re all related and evolving as they adapt to subtle and overt changes to the demography’s of world’s inhabited land masses and possibly low orbital platforms, nearby planets, moons, and asteroids. They (these schemes) are as old as the Ferengi of Ferenginar – did I say, Ferengi of Ferenginar? Sorry! Nearly every time greed, commerce, and exploitation enter the news one almost always considers which Rules of Acquisition have been violated with impending threats of counter rules, regulations, and litigation. A game to some as old as empire. Even older than Hounds and Jackals. Noe the less, opportunists remain to exploit misfortune and, in some cases, exploit catastrophe by natural cause and/or instigated causes, often both.
Naomi puts a milder, more civil light on this greed of catastrophe with a few updates. Still there are thieves, swindlers, and hacks that do similar things just as treacherous until they’re caught by law enforcement, if they ever are, or are displaced by war. At any rate, it’s another angular view (a more sophisticated explicative) on what’s still bad behaviour of an increasing number of those members of humankind.
Speaking of possible weather-warfare, a large tornado swarm swept through the Dayton, Ohio, area last night. (I lived for three years in Fairborn, a suburb of Dayton, so I feel for those folks.) And yes, Ohio gets tornadoes on a regular basis.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/large-destructive-tornado-strikes-dayton-as-severe-storms-ravage-ohio/70008380
https://weather.com/news/news/2019-05-28-ohio-tornadoes-impact-damage-celina-dayton
In case it needs to be pointed out, Dayton is where Wright-Patterson AFB is located (as well as the National Museum of the United States Air Force, the official museum of the USAF). In addition to being a major R&D center, its Foreign Technology Division is where the Roswell wreckage was allegedly taken…
could this have a relationship to doug bowersocks’ comments about Russian aircraft coming into Columbus while local gps performance drops to naught?
IIRC Klein published The Shock Doctrine in 2007 and the book’s subtitle is “The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” so she deserves full credit for this groundbreaking work. It was a huge international bestseller and though her politics is leftist/feminist she hit the nail on the head early on in identifying and analyzing this latest manifestation of predatory capitalism.
She is decidedly mainstream in not considering if disastrous climactic events are actually premeditated. I don’t hold that against her, though, as not everyone is willing to “go there” and who knows what her private views are on the matter?
Agreed. I read her book in 2009 and published a lengthy review at Amazon (copying essential paragraphs from that book). It is an important work for understanding today’s world…
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1M93P4YXMWZT6
That’s some review!
WOW!
I read the book when it came out.
As I read it on the bus, many riders were copying down the title/author to get it themselves.
She’s basically a Chomsky left gatekeeper
in my mind’s eye.
Superb writer/analyst
Ahhh thanks for the heads up
thank you. that’s some of the best assessments (and most succinct) I’ve seen of klein.
Katrina blows in w/dangerous criminal mercenaries.
Like Chris Hedges; she approaches the line[Katrina steered] but won’t cross it. Either she/he just doesn’t know; or, knows not to cross that line into the buzzsaw..
There are other plausibly deniable “Acts of God” which one could possibly include in this scenario.
https://eaglevisiontimes.com/2019/05/23/first-swine-fever-now-a-plague-of-armyworms-threatens-chinas-food/
https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/94875/locust-plague-biblical-proportions-strikes-across-globe-watch/
(brought about by heavy rains)
I’m sure, if one looked around, more such events could be found occurring across the globe such as the record flooding over the last few years, not just in the USSA, but elsewhere.
Famine, along with the disease, wars, and immigration they bring about, are very “natural” methods of population reduction that leave behind large swaths of “small farm and other lands” at fire sale prices for the corporate agribusiness’s and socialist governments to “acquire”.
A weather machine must necessarily be movable hotspots in heaven, controlled by interference of microwave cannons, creating artificial pressure in atmosphere.
Controlling a hurricane would then resemble sheepdog-hotspots herding a weather system. Just like many Pac-Mans chasing one ghost, in a video game analogy.
A military grade weather machine, that supports geopolitical grain monopoly, does narrow down the list of culprits, that play weather roulette video game: Skull and Bones.
serialized and sometimes combined signals from nexrads work as well or better. 2 or more nexrads together get massive and intense heterodyning. magnitudes of order more powerful. and who knows what the possibilities are of awacs are today.
www dot defenseworld dot net/news/23913/Boeing_Delivers_Final_of_14_Modernized_AWACS_Aircraft_to_NATO#.XO4AU_ZFyYM