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217 comments on DrumBeat: August 30, 2008

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JNK on August 30, 2008 - 12:12pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Nate,

Have you read Naomi Kline's "Shock Doctrine"? It is a real education on Free Market economies and how our neocon government works.
Everyone should read this book so you know how to deal with the future regarding diaster capitalism.

John

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Leanan on August 30, 2008 - 12:16pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Speaking of disaster capitalism (literally)...someone posted in the Gustav thread that Blackwater is recruiting goons to provide post-Gustav security.

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joemichaels on August 30, 2008 - 1:53pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Let me guess they are going to protect the oil facilities from home-grown terrorists...

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musashi on August 30, 2008 - 6:59pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

How is that unusual?
They have standing emergency contracts with FEMA and HS.

Why would they keep staff full time when needed only occasionally?

They are professional security people and I would wager that most whiners would be extremely grateful to be able to call on them if their kids or parents were taken by or in the way of a mob.

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ccpo on August 31, 2008 - 5:28am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Your lies are not needed nor helpful. They are mercenaries, nothing more. Thugs, to boot. NO federal force used against the citizens of the US is constitutional.

Shut up.

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davebygolly on August 30, 2008 - 12:29pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I've given out 20 or so copies of the book to friends. Her interviews don't do her justice (not that they are bad). And there is little in the book that I wasn't aware of in a very general way. But the details in the book are what make it spell-binding and totally devastating.

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super390 on August 30, 2008 - 1:38pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I'm up to the part about the screwing of Russia by Yeltsin & Co., which I understand may have been one of the greatest humanitarian disasters since, well, Stalin. Putin should have sent a copy of this book to everyone in the US so we would understand the definition of the term "act of war".

I think the most audacious part of the book is tying the CIA torture and mind-control experiments to neo-capitalism. It's a reach, but it's a way to demonstrate to the public that its standards of justice and fairness, its definition of legitimate government, and its understanding of liberty and property, all have been revised in the past. We don't mean the same things by those words as our grandparents did. But thanks to massive corporate-supported indoctrination, we are made to mean what our great-great-grandparents did, when they accepted imperialism, robber baronry and Christian theocracy as the natural and immutable order.

The intent has been to mold us into the very worst possible people to confront with a resources crisis.

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aangel on August 30, 2008 - 1:42pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

For a first-person account of someone who did some of the dirty-work Kline talks about in Shock Doctrine, read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

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souperman2 on August 30, 2008 - 5:17pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

...and Overthrow By Stephen Kinzer

Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq

http://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Change/dp/080507...

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CSS on August 30, 2008 - 6:45pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Just finished this.

I guess I must have been out-to-lunch during History class because I had no idea the U.S. was so disruptive all around the world. I thought we didn't "turn bad" until the unwarranted invasion of Iraq.

The whole Russia-Georgia thing has a new perspective now.

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weatherman on August 30, 2008 - 7:47pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I likes that review from publishers weekly, that it was implausible and lacking in detail. despite his crisis of conscience the tone was very flat. One for conspiracy buffs.

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Todd on August 30, 2008 - 2:28pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I'd also include Crossing the Rubicon by Mike Ruppert and Catherine Ann Fitts' "book" at http://www.solari.com

I certainly found them as upsetting as The Shock Doctrine. It's hard to come to terms with seeing that your beliefs were nothing but BS.

Todd

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DIYer on August 30, 2008 - 8:15pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

If you want to be reminded your beliefs are BS, read John Michael Greer. What with my ADD, and further foreshortened by the internet and too many birthdays, I can hardly bring myself to plow though an entire book, but I do waste spend a lot of time reading blogs.

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217 comments on DrumBeat: August 30, 2008

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